Space entrepreneurs wanted

eSpace, the Boulder business incubator for space entrepreneurs, is looking for a half dozen new companies to launch into Colorado's growing space industry.

Part of The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, the incubator was started in 2009 by the University of Colorado at Boulder and Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems Group in Louisville. This week, it opened its third round of recruiting for prospective entrants to the space business.

The program provides money, physical space and business mentoring to successful applicants. Diane Dimeff, executive director, said three nascent companies have already applied, and she expects up to two dozen more to try. To apply, go here. The center plans to incubate six successful applicants.

eSpace has six young companies currently enrolled; the firms are developing products from new spacecraft propulsion systems to moonlanders, like the craft shown here. It was designed by Next Giant Leap, a contender for the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million contest to maneuver and land a small spacecraft on the moon and relay data back to Earth.

Those may seem like lofty ambitions, but in just its first 18 months, eSpace has already graduated two firms to the open market: Net.Centric Design Professionals, which sets up ground-to-space computer networks; and Zybeck Advance Products, a manufacturer of synthetic moon rock that also has developed a milling system able to melt nearly any material at temperatures up to 20,000 degrees centigrade.

Dimeff has a $1.4 million budget for the next 18 months and, naturally, is looking for more earthbound donors and investors. The center's goal is to grow a space-industry workforce in Colorado that literally reaches for the stars.

Space race: Time to go 'all in'

The Denver Post this morning published one of the most honest paragraphs I've ever seen reported on its business page, and it ought to spur state officials into action. (Photo credit: kineticsystems.com)

Ann Schrader, reporting on New Mexico's spaceport, which is still under construction, wrote this about the Colorado space industry:

"Insiders also point to Colorado's shortcomings, such as a lack of proactive leadership, funding erosion in the higher-education system, a congressional delegation with a dearth of seniority and an unfavorable space business climate caused by tax disincentives, looming ballot issues and TABOR amendment restrictions."

Hooray for honest reporting!

Schrader also quoted Tom Clark, the state's premier economic developer, lackadaisically excusing those shortcomings as the product of a state government not being willing to support the industry "with state moneys." Clark went on to say that it's too late now to build a spaceport in Colorado because the New Mexico facility is too close.

He's right about that, but the attitude he takes doesn't seem apologetic enough to me for the state's having missed a great opportunity.

Clark is also right about Colorado's space industry building itself into the third largest aerospace state in the nation -- unassisted but for federal dollars -- by creating a space village of small companies that stretch from Fort Collins to Pueblo along I-25.

The interstate will be the quickest access to the space port once it gets going -- unless, of course, state and federal leaders decide a north-south, high-speed bullet train for Colorado would finally be feasible if New Mexico is brought into the mix.

That's "thinking ahead," as my father use to tell me. And that kind of thinking could make up for the hands-off treatment Colorado has had toward its space-niks all these years.