Industrial Origins explores how the industries that shape our world came to be—and where they're headed next.
Each season takes a deep dive into a single industry, starting with the people, inventions, and ideas that sparked its beginnings. From there, we follow the breakthroughs, failures, rivalries, companies, and characters that transformed it into what it is today—and the startups, technologies, and new ideas that could define its future.
Because if you want to understand where an industry is going, you have to understand where it came from.
The Space Industry: New Startup Disruptors & The Future of Space (Part 4)
The fourth and final part of the series. We arrive in the present day: the startups building on top of the new world of cheaper & more frequent launches SpaceX enabled — mini satellites, satellite servicing, in-space manufacturing, and orbital data centers — plus a look at China's space program and where the industry goes from here.
1 Sept 2026
The Space Industry: Founding and Success of SpaceX (Part 3)
Before SpaceX, the rocket business was shaped by governments, defense contractors, the rise of commercial satellites, and decades of attempts to make private spaceflight work.
In Episode 2 of Industrial Origins, we traces the origins of the modern aerospace industry —from Arianespace and the post-Cold War consolidation of American aerospace to the entrepreneurs who tried and failed to build cheaper rockets—before following the rise of SpaceX and the transformation of the launch industry.
25 Jul 2026
The Space Industry: NASA's Shuttle Program (Part 2)
After the triumph of Apollo, NASA faced an unexpected problem: what came next?
In Episode 2 of Industrial Origins, we explore the difficult years following the Moon landings as shrinking budgets, changing public priorities, and political realities forced NASA to reinvent itself. Rather than pushing onward to Mars, the agency bet its future on a revolutionary idea—a reusable Space Shuttle that promised to make access to space routine and affordable.
We examine how that vision evolved from early concepts into the Shuttle that ultimately flew, and how repeated compromises driven by cost, military requirements, and engineering constraints fundamentally changed the vehicle's design. Along the way, we explain why solid rocket boosters were chosen, how the Shuttle's ambitious goals created unexpected complexity, and why early warning signs inside the program began to be normalized.
This episode sets the stage for one of the most consequential engineering stories in modern history, showing how the decisions made in the 1970s shaped not only the Challenger and Columbia disasters, but also the philosophy behind companies like SpaceX decades later.
31 May 2026
The Space Industry: The Early Days (Part 1)
With speculation growing around a potential SpaceX IPO, we wanted to start at the beginning.
In the first episode of Industrial Origins, we trace the origins of modern rocketry from the ideas of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the experiments of Robert H. Goddard to the V-2 rocket of World War II. Along the way, we explain how rockets work, why staging was such a breakthrough, and how early enthusiasts transformed science fiction into engineering reality.
We then follow the paths of Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev as post-war missile development evolved into the Space Race, culminating in the Soviet R-7—the rocket that opened the door to the space age.
This episode is the first chapter in a larger series that will eventually take us through Apollo, the Space Shuttle, satellite communications, the rise of private space companies, and ultimately to the emergence of SpaceX and a potential public offering. Before we can understand where the industry is going, we need to understand how it started.
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