#80 Austin Link, Starfish Space: Space Tugs

Space Business Podcast

My guest this week is Austin Link, a co-founder of Starfish Space. Starfish develops a space tug that can be used for satellite life extension and space debris removal. Austin and his co-founder Trevor both came out of Blue Origin and are now well on their way at Starfish, which raised a seed round last year. Please enjoy listening to their story. https://www.starfishspace.com/ Opportunities to learn more about space & the space economy:

• Check out the edX/EPFL Space Economy MOOC: https://www.edx.org/course/new-space-economy
• Do you want to specifically learn about investing in Space? Join the pre-release of Raphael's new live-taught course on Maven:
  https://maven.com/space-business-institute/investing-course
• Raphael's introductory book on the space economy recently came out in its Portuguese translation: https://www.amazon.com/Para-Cima-Economia-Espacial-Portuguese-ebook/dp/B09X5WV3WC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ROKTHNSCZCRI. Stay tuned for the English translation, which should come out soon.

The Space Business Podcast is sponsored by NanoAvionics.

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Timestamps

0:00 Intro

2:16 Elevator pitch & origin story

6:06 Blue Origin

14:14 The satellite life extension market

19:42 Debris removal

24:00 Going to market

27:10 Rendezvous, Proximity Operations, and Docking (RPOD)

33:43 Starfish Space timeline

36:59 Working with Governments

38:46 Starfish Space is hiring

39:04 What else to do in the space sector

41:50 Sci-Fi