Los Angeles residents had a special space sight in 2012 when Space Shuttle Endeavour arrived atop a 747, before being ferried through city streets for a permanent exhibit at the California Science Center.
Brianna Clark remembers her elementary-school teachers telling students to look up as the spaceship flew by. Last November, all of us could have looked up again to see Clark’s own contributions to a spaceship aboard the Vast Haven demo, which tested out tech that will one day support humans living in LEO
Building the future: Clark, a propulsion engineer at Vast, said she is excited to also work on Haven-1’s launch NET Q1 2027. “It provides so much opportunity for not just people who love aerospace, but everyday people,” she explained. “We’re doing science for medical research. We’re doing science for pharmaceuticals, everything that patches and impacts everyday life.”
Clark always had aspirations to be an aerospace engineer. Her childhood projects, like “satellites” made of coffee cans and aluminum wrapping, led to student work at California State University, Long Beach building experimental small rockets.
Clark took on internships at several name-brand companies, including Relativity Space, Blue Origin, and Vast. She also was accepted into the Zed Factor Fellowship class of 2024, and was a Brooke Owens Fellow for the class of 2026.
The big payoff: One of Clark’s favorite parts of aerospace engineering is seeing “stuff that you worked on touch space. That is such a surreal feeling,” she said. And she says her experience is not so unique, as space applications are quickly opening up access for all of us.
“Everyday people can also look up to [space] and see it as their access, and their accessibility,” she said. “In previous space programs, it’s this huge division of how normal people get into space. And I think with commercial, we’re trying to bridge that gap now.”
Maximillian Bhatti, Basalt
Max Bhatti’s recipe for success in the space industry is one part luck, and nine parts hustle.
Robert Ihnatisin, Orbital Matter
As an expert in 3D printing for terrestrial applications, Robert Ihnatisin was surprised by how slow the in-orbit manufacturing industry was progressing. So, naturally, he started a company to solve the problem himself.
Patrick Miga, Advanced Space
In first grade, Patrick Miga saw a photo of Neptune (snapped by the Voyager 2 spacecraft).. Ever since then, his life has been directed toward space.
Muhammad Hunain, Melagen Labs
“That’s where I realized we’re stuck at a 1980s standard: still shielding spacecraft with aluminum, and rad-hardened electronics [were] too expensive to build at the scale this economy demands,” Hunain told Payload.
Dallas-based Balerion Space Ventures has surpassed its $200M target for its second fund, the firm announced Thursday. Fund II—which remains open—is more than five times the size of the firm’s debut fund, which came in at just under $40M.
Balerion had closed ~$90M as of May, according to Venture Capital Journal. Cofounder and General Partner Daniel Kleinmann chalked up the momentum since then to portfolio companies hitting milestones and raising up-rounds—which he said resonated with LPs.
The firm is also holding back capital for follow-on rounds. “These are really capital-intensive businesses,” Kleinmann told Payload. “Having the ability to reserve capital to continue supporting these businesses as they hit major technical, commercial, government milestones is really important to us.”
Keep reading