Wild Wild Space

Who Will Control Our Skies? A Wild And Great Long-Term Business Documentary Covering The 'New Space' Sector (Not Your Average Space Doc, Move Over NASA)

I hope I didn't put off some potential viewers for using the term "business documentary". That may sound boring.

Let me assure you, this documentary - basically following three US-based 'new space' start-up companies - isn't boring at all. Some of the main characters in the film are so colorful that you could be fooled into thinking that you watch a fictional movie, not a documentary.

A little bit of background first: Ashlee Vance (also heavily involved and briefly featured in the documentary himself) is a business journalist who wrote a book on new space companies and started filming and interviewing executives as well as academics involved in the space and rocket sectors around the same time.

(I read his book before watching WWS, but this is not a requirement at all. You may even enjoy more surprises watching it without having read his book first - otherwise a few spoilers are obviously revealed in the book already.)

Some readers may be vaguely familiar with Ashlee Vance's name because he was the first to write a biography on Elon Musk - who in turn started one of first private space companies in a Western country (SpaceX).

This documentary and his book only feature SpaceX and other pioneering rocket companies started by fellow billionaires and rivals (Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Richard Branson etc.) in passing.

The main focus of WWS are "normal" (they are anything but normal in all other aspects, trust me) entrepreneurs. Ambitious people who followed in the foot-steps of these business moguls and tried to (and are still trying to) launch space ventures thanks to third-party funding. It goes without saying that most of these companies require billions of dollars until they maybe have a chance to break even and stand on their own feet. As is repeatedly said or allured to in the film: "Space is (ve...