Molly MacEachen wants to help companies comply with space-sustainability frameworks, but that market doesn’t exist today—so she’s building it herself.

Max Bhatti’s recipe for success in the space industry is one part luck, and nine parts hustle.

“As I begin to understand how much [impact]…things like cellular telecommunications, imaging, climate [research]…have globally—once I started to understand that, I was like, ‘Okay, this is definitely the industry that I want to work in,’” Shin told Payload.

His introduction to space started with a childhood-science-fair hoverboard. He emailed experts for the math behind it until Robert Boyd—who was working on hybrid airships at Skunk Works—wrote back.

“As a political-science major, I knew I wasn’t going to design rockets or build satellites,” she said. “But I understood I could contribute by shaping the policies that enable those missions.”

Now at In-Q-Tel, Chalphin is tackling one of the most challenging moves yet—moving startup technology into the hands of the government.

Growing up, Tyler Bernstein’s favorite NASA missions—from Mars rovers to Voyager’s interstellar journey—all had one thing in common: They all ran on nuclear batteries.

When a former colleague shared that his company was working to counter a recently-launched Russian military sat, Pasha Kravtsov wanted in.

“I grew up assuming going to space was easy,” Mickey Matthew told Payload. With seven friends who had astronaut parents, going to space felt like something everyone was doing.

Hayley Blyth’s path into space started with a question about war: how do the rules of armed conflict apply in orbit?

Not many people can turn a childhood dream of being a “space cowgirl” into a career, but Ashling Sugarman is getting close. She’s just traded a lasso for law books.

Shah was drawn to more “creative parts” of the space industry and is now creating art that’s touched down on the lunar surface.