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Astra CEO Chris Kemp is already pull out of a parking spot when he admonish the person in the rider seat that he does n’t have a valid gadget driver ’s licence . “ And the car ’s not registered , and they canceled my policy , ” he enounce . “ This is a short risky . ”
So opens “ Wild Wild Space , ” a new HBO documentary film directed by Ross Kauffman that premiere on July 17 . Like its reference textile , journalist Ashlee Vance ’s 2023 book , “ When the Heavens Went on Sale , ” the film seek to chronicle the early days of the raw distance slipstream by focusing on three of its most colorful companies : rocket makers Rocket Lab and Astra and Earth observation company Planet Labs .
The trio may have less name acknowledgment than Elon Musk ’s SpaceX , but they ’ve collectively bring up over a billion dollars — and their beginner are almost staring archetypes for the different type of citizenry attracted to the risks and thrills of NewSpace .
For Planet , that ’s the NASA - to - startup founder story , which is now far more conversant in the outer space industry than it was back in 2010 ; for Rocket Lab , it ’s the bitterness of a New Zealand nobody - cum - wizard and his subsequent achiever ; and for Astra , it ’s the smooth - talking , tricky confidence of Silicon Valley . There is some overlap between the narratives early on . Astra CEO Chris Kemp and Planet CEO Will Marshall met in college , and Kemp after helped secure a launch deal between Planet and Rocket Lab ( before going on to establish Astra ) . But they quickly diverge , with Rocket Lab and Planet go up in accomplishment while Astra struggles with repeat setbacks .
However , in 2021 all three companies go public with mythic , multi - billion - one dollar bill evaluation , and it is n’t entirely clear in the moving picture how the three cover down the same path despite their diverge success . The subtext is that what Astra lack in engineering it makes up for in charisma — chiefly Kemp ’s . There are a few shot in which Kemp massages bad news to investors and the world , like after the dramatic explosion of Rocket 2 in 2018 . briefly after , Kemp receives a call from an unnamed investor , and he describes the mission — which ended with the skyrocket fall back vertically to the pad , detonating on impingement — as “ a really beautiful flight of stairs . ”
“ We did n’t quite reach 60 seconds but it was a really beautiful flight of steps , ” he says . “ We got about 30 seconds of flying . Night launch are always spectacular . ”
Space fans will especially enjoy the antagonism between Beck and Kemp , who start out as ostensible rivals in the rocket race with very unlike ideas of how to build a successful companionship . Beck is especially disdainful of Astra ’s ambitions to build radical - punk rockets at scale , which he sums up as follows : “ How cheap and crappy can we make a rocket salad ? ”
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Beyond the three narration , the film also raises tumid questions about the implication of the new business concern model for space , where private company , rather than government , own and operate rockets and distance assets . For example , despite Planet ’s altruistic motives ( they named their planet “ Doves , ” a doll that ’s a symbol of peacefulness ) , the flick raises the question of privacy and whether widespread commercialized availability of EO information is a final commodity for home security .
These subject , and others , were crystallized during Russia ’s intrusion of Ukraine , which Planet cobalt - founder Robbie Schingler call “ an all hands on deck ” situation for the company . Even beyond satellite mental imagery , SpaceX ’s Starlink satellite net service came to be hugely eventful during the fight , with Ukrainian scout troop coming to look on the connectivity it provided after ground internet base was destroy . The shopping centre of top executive is shifting , from distance curb by governments to space controlled by entrepreneurs — eccentric billionaires , even .
This is the film ’s effort at a “ so what ? ” to push back home the consequences of these unexampled personality controlling access to space and space infrastructure . But these question could be their own moving-picture show , and they feel a small out of remaining field after the more engrossing scenes with the three society . This is a minor criticism ; overall , Planet , Rocket Lab and Astra are three excellent case studies in the forward-looking - day space industriousness , their founder true cowboys of the Wild West of place : audacious , with a touch of swagger , and just enough insanity to have a opportunity of pull it all off .
