Asteroid Mining to Orbital Gas Stations: How Meagan Crawford Built Space Fund’s Infrastructure Empire

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Meagan Crawford, co-founder and managing partner at Space Fund. They are a venture capital firm that invests in emerging space startups, fueling innovation in the growing commercial space industry. With Meagan’s guidance, Space Fund provides entrepreneurs the resources and support they need to create groundbreaking technologies and expand humanity’s presence beyond Earth.

Meagan is more than just an investor. She’s an entrepreneur, business educator and a leading advocate for women in space. She co-founded the world’s longest running space business plan competition helping countless startups secure funding and mentorship. Her background includes coaching hundreds of early stage space ventures and serving in multiple executive roles before launching Space Fund. Megan also holds an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Rice University, reflecting her commitment to both education and industry advancement. She believes deeply in the power of free enterprise to drive us toward a multi-planetary future.

And she hosts her own podcast, The Mission Eve Podcast, which you should definitely check out. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. Alright back to our guest today, the managing partner of Space Fund, Meagan Crawford. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today. Very happy to be here, Anthony. Okay so Meagan, looking back over your long and illustrious career, lots of stops along the way. When did you first get bit by the space bug?

Meagan Crawford : I’ve always had it, as long as I can remember. My mom likes to tell a story about three-year-old Megan throwing an absolute temper tantrum because my Barbie didn’t fit in my space shuttle. And I was extremely offended by this to the point where my mom had to stop everything and take me to the toy store to find me a toy doll that would fit inside the space shuttle. As long as I can remember, I’ve had the space bug.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s hysterical. I mean is there a more fitting story than you as a child being upset that your Barbie doll didn’t fit into the space shuttle?

Meagan Crawford : My mom tells that at every dinner.

Anthony Codispoti : I mean that should be part of like the pitch deck for Space Fund, right?

Meagan Crawford : It’ll be part of my memoirs for sure.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay so as I mentioned, lots of stops in your career along the way. Many of them, certainly not all of them, related to space. As you look back, what was the most formidable stop for you?

Meagan Crawford : So I’d say there were two. This will be another chapter in my memoirs. I’m calling it a tale of two counselors. I had decided very early on that I was going to go to the Air Force Academy, become a fighter pilot, and then fly the shuttle. That was the life path I had been working towards since I was a young child. My high school guidance counselor had the unfortunate job of telling me that at that time women couldn’t have combat roles in the military.

I was never going to be a fighter pilot. And so I had to completely reassess my life plan. I’d always been fascinated by entrepreneurship, having seen my dad be a successful entrepreneur. So I went and did my undergrad and my master’s in business. And when I was doing my MBA in finance and entrepreneurship, I had another great counselor who when I explained to her the type of jobs I was going after, she said, Megan, I’m bored just listening to you talk about that. How bored are you going to be if you go get one of these jobs, right? And she said, you know, what’s your passion? What are you really interested in? I said, well, it’s always been space, but I’m never going to fly the space shuttle because I can’t be a fighter pilot.

Anthony Codispoti : So here I am. So hang on. I need to interrupt for just a second because I want to understand this. Was it a prerequisite to be a fighter pilot in order to be able to qualify for the space shuttle program?

Meagan Crawford : To be a pilot of the space shuttle program. Yes. Now, that changed in later years. But at the time when I was making these life decisions in the 1980s, that was kind of a default requirement in order to be the pilot of the space shuttle. You have to have been a pilot of some some pretty interesting place. So

Anthony Codispoti : you could have been an astronaut and have been on a shuttle, but you could not have been a pilot.

Meagan Crawford : Right. And having grown up with a grandfather who was an Air Force Colonel who had been a pilot, I always thought that’s the way I wanted to go, right? And so as I’m sitting in my MBA career counselor’s office and she’s encouraging me to follow my passion for space, she said to me straight up, she said, Meagan, you’re getting a master’s in business. Aren’t there businesses that do things in space? And it was just this mind blowing moment.

I had never thought about that. She helped me get a scholarship to go to my very first space conference, space business conference. She also helped me apply for an internship at NASA’s Technology Transfer Office, which which I did receive. And that’s what really kickstarted my career was working inside of NASA and seeing how that technology was being rolled out into the entrepreneurial world.

Anthony Codispoti : Oh, interesting. So it’s this one meeting with your your counselor who was like, you could still be involved with all these different space programs without actually having to fly into space. Correct. Light bulb moment. And you’re like, oh, now I’ve got some new ideas.

Meagan Crawford : Exactly. And it was it was perfect timing to when I was working at NASA’s Tech Transfer Office, SpaceX was still blowing up rockets. They hadn’t launched a successful one yet. So I got to see the beginning of what we now call new space or some people refer to as the commercial space ecosystem. I got to see it from its infancy and really be a part of it as it grew over the last nearly 20 years.

Anthony Codispoti : Say more about new space. This is a new term for me. New space, commercial space. This is a different view on what outer space can be.

Meagan Crawford : So commercial space really refers to anything that’s not government or civil or not military or civil, anything that’s not government is commercial. So that would include your bowings and your lockheeds and your north rips of the world. The differentiation for new space is that kind of startup ecosystem that Silicon Valley move fast and break things ethos, which stands in stark contrast to the way the aerospace primes do business. This cost plus contracting where everything’s over budget and never shows up on time. And so that was the shift that was going on very early in my career was this idea that you didn’t have to be a billion dollar 60 year old aerospace prime to compete for these contracts or to build technologies that were valuable in the ecosystem. And that’s what really got me fascinated as somebody who was fascinated in entrepreneurship and finance based on my degrees and background. That’s where I really got the bug that there was now this capability to actually create businesses in the space ecosystem without needing, you know, huge billion dollar government subsidized budgets to do so.

Anthony Codispoti : So is the goal then even in this new commercial space to still compete for government contracts? Like is that how these space ventures ultimately become profitable or are there other paths that ventures are taking?

Meagan Crawford : There’s a combination, right? In the Department of Defense to use the word resiliency quite frequently. And so I use this with my startup CEOs as well. You have to have a resilient customer set. And yes, the US government is likely to be a big part of that. In fact, the US government contributes about 30% of the dollars that we see in the global space economy can be tracked back to the US government. So you can’t ignore the world’s largest space customer.

And they’re a great source of non-dilutive grant funding, especially during that R &D stage for these early startups. But as they grow, we like to see that switch for, you know, a little less dependence on the US government and more interaction with the commercial customer, which is growing really rapidly at this time. Even as space and defense budgets are increasing, they’re not increasing it anywhere close to the rate we see commercial activity increasing.

Anthony Codispoti : So when I think of, you know, it’s an astounding stat, US government provides 30% of all dollars, you know, involved in sort of the global space world. It makes me think, okay, US government, it must be defense related spending that they’re doing. Am I right? Are there non sort of defense categories of things that the US government is spending on?

Meagan Crawford : So within the US government, we chunk this up into two parts. Usually it’s the Department of Defense, so Air Force, Space Force, Intelligence, Community, all of that. And then the other side of it is Civil, which is NASA, effectively. And so that’s where you get kind of the two buckets of interaction with the new space community.

Anthony Codispoti : And sorry, lots of newbie questions, but I think that’s going to be certainly a chunk of our audience. So what kinds of things is NASA hiring commercial companies to do that NASA can’t or won’t do itself?

Meagan Crawford : So over the last decade plus, there has been a big push for NASA to move away from cost plus contracting with the same old usual primes and really start competing these contracts and allowing more of these commercial companies to participate for a firm fixed price contract with a firm delivery date. And it turns out the startup mentality is much better at delivering that than kind of the traditional aerospace mentality. And so when you look at, for example, NASA’s CLIPS program, this is one of my favorite examples, CLIPS stands for the commercial lunar payload system. All of the companies that are currently landing private lunar landers on the moon, these are for the most part startup companies, companies that didn’t exist 10, 15, 20 years ago, that are now building lunar landers that are actually going to the moon.

That’s something that 20 years ago was absolutely unheard of in this industry. And so when we look at these successors to the International Space Station, these are all commercial companies, all startups, all less than 10 years old that are competing for these contracts with NASA right now to build the next generation of space stations. So there’s a lot of activity going on here with these commercial startup companies and NASA.

Anthony Codispoti : And then some of these technologies that folks are working on that can be sold or licensed to NASA could also have commercial applications outside of government. Absolutely.

Meagan Crawford : So we talked about the lunar landers. That one’s a little bit harder to put your finger on a market for that quite yet, but we do see that market coming. But when we talk about commercial space stations, this is everything from private astronauts, so what some people refer to as tourism, to experimentation, and to most importantly, actual manufacturing on orbit. Right now, the International Space Station is a national lab. It’s great for doing experimentation, but there’s no room or workforce or impotence to do actual manufacturing. So all these experiments that have been being done for the last 20 or 30 years that are showing amazing results for pharmaceuticals, for growing human tissue, for creating the absolute most efficient fiber optic cables. All of those advances on the ISS can’t be turned into profitable businesses until you have the manufacturing capabilities aboard the private space stations.

Anthony Codispoti : And what are the advantages to manufacturing in space? Why is it better to grow human tissue there to create fiber optic cables? Is it the lack of gravity or what’s going on?

Meagan Crawford : It is the lack of gravity and kind of the one scientific thread that unites most of the things I’ve just mentioned is that crystals form differently in a low gravity environment.

So crystals of proteins in human tissue or biologics or pharmaceuticals, the crystals inside a fiber optic cable, the crystals inside a computer chip, they form in perfect symmetry and in perfect lines without gravity affecting the way these crystals grow or cool depending on the manufacturing process. So you get much more efficiency, much more repeatability, much more security of the outcome. So when you’re talking about pharmaceuticals or growing a human organ, these little differences make a huge difference in the final outcome of the product.

Anthony Codispoti : So a human organ grown here on planet earth versus up in orbit somewhere, the one that’s created up in orbit is going to have a higher likelihood of not being rejected, of being healthy tissue, of ensuring that it’s providing the proper function to its patient.

Meagan Crawford : So far on orbit on the ISS they’ve already grown a human retina, a human meniscus, human heart tissue. This has all been proven to be able to be done on the ISS. It’s difficult or nearly impossible to even do it here on earth. And so especially human heart tissue becomes very difficult. You have to put a scaffolding on the inside to grow the heart around. And then how do you remove the scaffolding once the heart’s fully grown? And just logistically it becomes nearly impossible. And they’ve already started perfecting this process on orbit as we speak. Wow.

Anthony Codispoti : I want to hear more about all this, but I first wanted to take a step back and hear how your idea to start Space Fund even came about. Obviously, space is in your blood.

It was something that you had a passion for since you were a young girl. But how did the idea to actually form this fund that focused exclusively on Space come about?

Meagan Crawford : So I’m an exited space founder myself. I built and sold a space startup company and made a lot of friends who were building their own space companies, of course, as you do. And across the ecosystem, the biggest pain point was a lack of intelligent funding. Most of the Silicon Valley VCs are so used to software as a service, they wouldn’t touch hardware, much less hardware in a market they didn’t understand.

And then as you started to look out into the wider VC ecosystem, there were some hardware VCs, but again, they didn’t understand the space market. So when other people see a problem, I see a potential solution. I said, yes, this is an opportunity. This is something that is desperately needed in this industry at this time. And as a successful space founder myself, I have a very unique skill set that could be brought to bear to help LPs create a diversified portfolio of well-diligenced companies, but also to help these startup companies, though I feel a lot of camaraderie with, by having that intelligent investor who understands their market, who understands their customers, who can make the right connections for them, who can sit on the board of directors and offer operational guidance, having been there and done that before myself. I like to say, been there, done that, have the scars to prove it, right?

But I want you to learn from my mistakes the easy way, not the hard way. And so that’s why I decided to start Space Fund in 2018. We got our first fund up and running in 2019. And currently working on our third fund, we’ve made 21 investments across funds one and two. And so 21 portfolio companies, some of those companies received multiple investments. And so that again adds to that breadth and depth of not just my expertise in diligently and helping with the operations, but also providing that portfolio effect where these companies can work together to provide complete solutions out into the marketplace. So it’s been a very fun, very wild ride, but one that I’m very happy that I took the plunge to do.

Anthony Codispoti : So I think space investments, I think a few things. I think probably even higher risk than a traditional company. I think if it works, even bigger payoff, and I think probably a longer road to payoff, am I right or wrong on any of those?

Meagan Crawford : So when we first founded Space Fund, every investor we spoke to said, space companies take too much money and take too long. They’re not going to fit into a venture portfolio. That’s what everybody’s assumption was. And so we did a lot of primary research because data didn’t exist on this yet because we were kind of the first ones doing this and thinking about it. And back in 2018, when we did the research, Space Company average age at exit was seven years, which turns out fits perfectly into a 10-year venture timeline with a three-year investment window at the beginning to the point where I couldn’t have created better results if I had tried, but that was what the data told me. And then as far as the amount of money it takes to get one of these up and running, if you’re thinking about this world from the old space perspective, and apologies to my friends at Boeing and Lockheed, they hate it when I call them old space, but traditional aerospace, if you look at things from a traditional aerospace perspective, yes, these budgets are huge, but that’s what makes new space so innovative is the ability to use commercial off-the-shelf parts, the ability to throw 100 birds up in the air instead of one bespoke over-engineered billion-dollar satellite. If you send 100,000-dollar satellites, your budget is still a fraction of what it would be, and you can tolerate some failure.

If 10 of them fail, you’ve still got 90 birds up, right? So it’s just this completely different way of doing business that does now all of a sudden fit into venture capital timelines and investment amounts in a way that most people out there are unaware of. And then as far as the higher upside potential, yes, I think that is correct. And then as far as the risk is concerned, that’s where having a professional help you with this becomes so important because that due diligence can be really, really valuable. For example, most venture capitalists expect a 90% failure rate by year seven of their fund. Our fund one is coming up on year seven pretty quickly here, and we still have 100% of our companies are alive, and most of them are thriving.

Anthony Codispoti : Wait, I want to make sure that I heard this right because I think I must have heard it wrong because it seems unbelievable. You’re saying in most investment scenarios that within seven years, they expect 90% of the companies to have already gone under. You’re at the seven year point, you’re saying that not a single one of your companies has gone under, they’re all still viable?

Meagan Crawford : That’s correct. And that’s a traditional venture capital model to expect 90% failure rate by year seven. We are currently at a 0% failure rate approach.

Anthony Codispoti : How many companies have been with you that long? 14. Wow. Okay, what are you guys doing differently?

Meagan Crawford : It’s the due diligence and the operational control. And really knowing the market that we’re getting into and having very targeted thesis about what we invest in and then finding the best entrepreneurs in the world who are solving specific problems and then taking a board seat to shepherd them through all the hiccups and the problems they’re invariably going to have as they go through this.

Anthony Codispoti : Say a bit more about what the investment thesis looks like.

Meagan Crawford : So the investment thesis is predominantly what we call space infrastructure. So most people look at this industry from the outside and they see launch. Most people have heard of SpaceX. Most people will have maybe even heard of Rocket Lab. Most people have not heard of the 180 plus other rocket companies that are coming down the pike trying to compete for this market. But if you look at that strategically and you say, okay, the richest man in the world thinks this is the next big thing. There’s 180 plus other companies competing with him.

Why? What is being launched? What is the demand signal that’s causing 180 plus companies to build launch vehicles? And that’s the part of the equation that most investors miss. They just see the sexy launch side of it.

They don’t think about what’s inside that spacecraft and what is the business case to send these satellites up into orbit. And that’s where we really focus is the infrastructure that’s being built in this new world. So you can think about this as the railroads across the American West or any time humanity has tried to conquer a new physical area. You’ve got to build the infrastructure, everything from the transportation to the communication to the rules of the road and the laws that everybody’s going to abide by. That’s where the activity is really centered right now is in creating that off world infrastructure. And that’s where to date 76% of our portfolio has been focused. Now, as that infrastructure is coming online, as some of these early investments that we’ve made are starting to be successful, we expect for our fund three that that infrastructure piece will go down to maybe 60, 65%. And then we’ll be able to invest in some of those more visionary things that are enabled by that infrastructure, such as lunar business plans or asteroid mining business plans, or the people who will be doing the manufacturing on those commercial space stations I spoke about as those commercial space stations are set to come online in 2026, 2027, who are their customers, who are the people who are innovating in pharmaceutical or human organs or fiber optics or computer chips. And so this is a really exciting time for me having been so focused on building the infrastructure to now be able to start thinking about how we capitalize on that infrastructure.

Anthony Codispoti : So I really appreciate the example of, you know, like railroads is, you know, we’re expanding westward the benefit of having those and lots of money to be made and investing in that physical infrastructure. Give me an idea of what infrastructure looks like when we’re talking about space.

Meagan Crawford : So when you build the railroad, you also have to build the telegraph lines that typically go along the railroad, right? Okay. So physical transportation infrastructure launches the first piece of it, launch gets satellites into low earth orbit, but then they have to move around while they’re in orbit. And then if you want to go anywhere further than low earth orbit, you’ve got a whole different set of technology problems for the transportation side. Now, once the satellites are on orbit, how are they going to communicate with each other and communicate with the ground? That’s the telegraph example. You have to have the communications infrastructure.

Now, here’s another piece that most people don’t know. Satellites are launched with all of the fuel they’re ever going to have on board. Imagine if you bought your car and it came with one tank of gas. How useful would that be to you? So creating on orbit refueling capabilities and on orbit gas stations, that’s been a big part of the infrastructure push. Now you have an on orbit gas station. How do you connect to it? How do you rendezvous with it? So solving all of these logistics problems to set up this working infrastructure has really been our focus as of the last six, seven years.

Anthony Codispoti : So let’s use the satellite example as me, average Joe living on earth, not really thinking much about space. I think you send a satellite up there, it goes into orbit and it’s just spinning around on its own. This has been going on for a long time. Up until now, how would these things continue to be powered without some kind of a refueling situation existing?

Meagan Crawford : So most satellites in low earth orbit have a two to five year lifetime before the gravitational pull of the earth and the drag of the atmosphere, because there is still atmosphere. It’s very thin, but there is still atmosphere in low low earth orbit. So gravity and atmospheric drag pull these satellites back down to earth and they burn up in the atmosphere within a two to five year time frame. So if you’re sending million dollar assets into orbit and they have this two year lifetime, what would be the value, what would be the price you would pay to extend it another two years? Well, some function of the replacement cost of that asset, because usually these assets are still working perfectly by the time they’re de-orbited. And so that’s the whole point of being able to refuel them on orbit.

Anthony Codispoti : So the primary issue why they only have a two to five year life cycle is because they run out of fuel and they can’t keep themselves in orbit. Correct. And they get pulled fascinating. And so are their companies now, like are there satellites now that can be refueled in orbit today?

Meagan Crawford : There are. And so I will brag on Portfolio company orbit fab here for a moment. As they were trying to solve this fuel depots on orbit problem, they realized that none of the satellites had a gas cap. So how do you refuel a tank when there’s no gas cap? So they invented the gas cap and started selling that into the market even as their first fuel depot isn’t set to go up until next year. So they’re kind of future proofing their market for themselves by selling by being the first ones to sell the gas cap. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : So there’s some satellites that are getting launched with the gas cap. And then sometime this is kind of May of 2025 sometime in 26. Maybe we’ll actually see some satellites get refueled for the first time in space.

Meagan Crawford : The first customer is a DoD customer. And the demo will be completed hopefully in 2026 sometime. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : Fascinating. And I don’t know, can you say more about how you’re actually going to flying around out there in space? How you’re going to, you know, dock with one of these small things and make this happen?

Meagan Crawford : So in this industry, we call that RPOD, which stands for rendezvous proximity operations and docking. And this is as much a software problem as it is a hardware problem. So if you think about the gas cap I mentioned, it does have a docking mechanism as part of the gas cap. But how do you get two spacecraft that are both moving at thousands of miles an hour to not bump into each other and cause a catastrophic failure with a fuel tank? Right. So so that does become very, very precise. And this requires very advanced AI software in order to do this without a human in the loop.

And that’s necessary because communications time to the ground is still even though it’s seconds, it’s not the milliseconds needed to make those very precise timing calculations when you’re trying to dock two objects that are moving so so quickly. So this is something that maybe couldn’t have been possible 10 years ago without the advent of AI.

Anthony Codispoti : Wow, this is wild. A couple other things you said that to me are even more wild. And we touched on one of them earlier, which is this idea of manufacturing in space. So you get the space, the International Space Station up there now, people have been able to do research on there, right? They’ve tested growing, you know, different human body parts. And they’re finding that it works way better than it does here on the ground. That’s just one example. What would it look like? What is the physical footprint of an actual manufacturing facility that could be growing organs at scale look like in space?

Meagan Crawford : So this is another interesting innovation that we have been following very closely, have multiple investments in. If you think about a space station, you know, most people have an image in their mind’s eye of what the International Space Station looks like. It’s this big, long tube, right? With a couple tubes sticking off of it. That’s what I think.

Okay. So that’s the spine of a space station. That’s where all of your life support and your electronics and your communications and your, your, excuse me, your solar panels. But what can then be added to that spine are these large inflatable structures. They don’t need the electronics. They don’t need to have this hard, rigid outside. You can add inflatable structures that give you huge amounts of habitable volume that are connected to that spine.

And so that’s where we’re seeing a lot of really interesting innovations right now. There’s actually two of these inflatable habitats already on orbit. One is a free flyer. One is attached to the International Space Station. So we know this technology works. Now it’s just a matter of scaling it to meet that demand for growing human organs or creating pharmaceuticals or creating optical fibers on orbit.

Anthony Codispoti : So inflatables. I’m thinking of like a giant bounce house. Yeah. Right.

Meagan Crawford : A little bit more rigid than that. A little bit more radiation proof, but effectively, yes. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : So it gets launched up into space sort of in the deflated form. So it’s not taking up as much room. It’s, you know, kind of cheaper payload to send up. And then when it gets up there, there’s a mechanism in which that it can inflate. And there’s equipment that can be moved into it. And this can serve as sort of the manufacturing facility. So it’s a lot cheaper to get it into space. And then it’ll work just as well as a rigid structure. Correct. Correct.

Meagan Crawford : So there’s really amazing innovations going on in this right now. We refer to this in the industry as habitable volume. And then the other part of the manufacturing is that when you’re talking about human organs and pharmaceuticals, you want that to be done in a habitable environment, right? With humidity, control, HVAC, all the rest. But when you’re talking about manufacturing fiber optic cables or computer chips, those can be completely automated processes done on their own spacecraft, not requiring the intervention of humans, not requiring climate control. And so then there’s this kind of whole other set of manufacturing capabilities that can be happening on the outside of the space stations.

Anthony Codispoti : What port codes do you have that are involved in this space?

Meagan Crawford : So we’re investors in Axiom. They are building the commercial successor to the ISS. We’re also investors in Voyager. They have a collaboration with several other firms for what they’re calling Star Lab, which would be another space station. And then we’re investors in Max Space. They’re the inflatable space station, you know, inflatable habitable volume company.

We also have an investment in a company called Spaceforge, which will be launching their Forge Star One, in the next few months actually, to do the test computer chip manufacturing on orbit with no human intervention in a completely automated, enclosed satellite.

Anthony Codispoti : Wow. Okay, so I’m trying to wrap my head around this. You send up this, you know, this reinforced bounce house for manufacturing, you gotta put it in ways that my brain can understand. But then there’s still this highly automated robotic equipment that needs to go inside of that. And so that’s probably a more expensive payload to come up because that’s taking up some buying space.

Meagan Crawford : It depends on the manufacturing. So if we’re talking computer chips and fiber optics, that can be completely automated. You don’t need a human in the loop to do that. So those can happen, like I said, outside the space station, either attached outside or as a free flyer.

But when you’re talking about growing human organs, doing pharmaceuticals, you do want a human. You want an actual professional astronaut there, making sure that that process is being managed appropriately. And so those things will all probably happen inside that habitable volume, even as some of these other processes get automated and happen outside the habitable volume.

Anthony Codispoti : And so when you have these inhabitable volumes, somebody has to go in there initially to set up the equipment though, right? So it’s initially habitable.

Meagan Crawford : It’ll be launched from the ground with all of the processes and robotics and launched as a separate payload. And so, and then it will have to re-enter and then be caught by humans who will then take the payload out and check how well everything’s been manufactured on orbit.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, how far out are we from actual production in one of these kinds of environments?

Meagan Crawford : So for the computer chip production on orbit, the test vehicle will launch in the next, let’s call it six months, and then we’ll know from there what the timeline is to actually get to full rate production based on how that first test does.

Anthony Codispoti : And specifically with computer chips, we talked about why organs are better and that just the crystal structure is better and it’s easier to grow. But what about computer chips? What’s the advantage of those in space? What are we hoping to get that we wouldn’t be able to get here on the ground?

Meagan Crawford : It’s predominantly the silicon wafers on which the computer chip sits. Those silicon wafers conduct the electricity that make the computer chip effective. The more precise those individual, and now we’re not talking about molecules, we’re talking about atoms, the more precise those atoms are lined up, the more efficient the eventual computer chip becomes. So when you’re manufacturing those silicon wafers here on Earth, they already do this in a vacuum, in a near zero degree Kelvin environment. Well, that’s the natural environment of space, plus we get the benefit of low gravity. So it seems like a no brainer for that industry specifically.

Anthony Codispoti : And I’m gonna guess the idea would be to tackle like high end like super computer chips initially.

Meagan Crawford : Right, and with today’s demand for those high end chips for AI, this cannot come fast enough. Fascinating.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, the other thing you said that kind of blew my mind, seems a little bit more like sci-fi is asteroid, what did you say, mining?

Meagan Crawford : Asteroid mining, yep. Now I don’t think that’s quite viable yet. It might not be a fit for our fund three, if I’m being honest, but I am starting to look at it.

Maybe it’ll be a fund four play. But what most people don’t realize about asteroid mining, the headlines in the news are always like, oh, rare earth metals or an asteroid full of gold, that’s not really the play. The amount of cost and time it would take to go capture these rare earth elements, in order to pay for that mission, you would have to bring so much of that rare earth material back, that it would no longer be rare earth material, and so you would crash the market for it, okay?

So the economics just don’t close on rare earth metal mining on orbit. But what does close is once you have an ecosystem now, where you have fuel depots on orbit, most near earth asteroids are effectively floating snowballs covered in water ice. Water ice is hydrogen and oxygen, which is rocket fuel. So now you can imagine an entirely in space ecosystem where water ice is harvested from the asteroids, processed in route back to the fuel depots in low earth orbit. That fuel is then sold to the fuel depot. Fuel depot then resells it to a satellite company who goes about their business. And now you’re not having to launch fuel to orbit anymore. And to me, that’s the interesting business case about asteroid mining.

Anthony Codispoti : So in order for that to be possible, there has to be an asteroid passing by in somewhat close proximity, right?

Meagan Crawford : Most people don’t realize that there is a whole group of what we call NEAs or near earth asteroids that are effectively in a trailing orbit to the earth. So they’re captured in earth’s gravity well, and they kind of follow us on our orbit around the sun. And so you can basically, as a spacecraft, imagine you’re on earth, take a rocket launch up, kind of just hang out there, wait for the earth to move on, and the asteroids to come along right behind it, mine the asteroid, hop off, wait for the asteroids to move along and the earth to come back around, and rendezvous with your low earth orbit fuel depot there. And so energetically, these asteroids are easier to reach than our moon.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s fascinating. What do you think is a realistic scenario for when this might be viable?

Meagan Crawford : So as of yet, I haven’t, a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to solve the technical challenges, which is great, that needs to happen. But I have yet to find a startup company that understands the economics of this. And so if anybody out there is listening and wants to put together a viable, economically feasible business plan for me, I can introduce you to some folks who understand how to solve the technical issues.

Anthony Codispoti : Fascinating. Okay, Megan, the matchmaker, I like it. Can you say more about the Fund 3? I don’t know, can you talk about who you’re looking for, what you’re looking for here?

Meagan Crawford : Yep, so again, that infrastructure piece is gonna be a big part of our investment thesis for some years to come. So I like to say anything that can help companies get to orbit faster, stay on orbit longer, or make more money by being on orbit, I wanna hear about it, okay? And then if you have some sort of innovative plan for Lunar, for Geosynchronous or Medium Earth Orbit, which are areas that the new space economy is just now starting to tackle as far as from a physical distance perspective, that’s something I’m very interested in hearing about, and manufacturing on orbit, who are the customers of my space stations that are already in the portfolio?

It’s another area I’m very interested in. And then one area of this that a lot of people seem to miss is what I like to call a human future. So the reality is the only reason we send things to space is to make life better for those of us here on Earth. So I’m very interested in innovations that can help humans on Earth, communicate with each other more, be more educated, understand our planet and our changing climate better. Anything around that, being kind of using space data to make life better here on Earth. Talk about women in space.

Anthony Codispoti : This was obviously a big thing for you growing up. There were some barriers to what your initial plan were. How much does this factor into your work now?

Meagan Crawford : A lot. So like with any ecosystem where it tends to be male dominated, a lot of this is about just having a good set of friends and mentors and people that you can talk to. But there’s been a couple of hurdles for me. I’m a finance professional. Technically, that’s what I do. It might be the sexy space version of finance, but I’m still a finance professional. That’s predominantly a male industry, always has been. The space industry is even worse. Currently only 25% of the industry is female and only 11% of the people who have been to space have been women. And so when I talk about a future of making humanity multi-planetary, you’re gonna need 51% women for biological reasons, if nothing else, right?

So how do we get from 11% to 51%? And for me, that’s about not just education, but about visual storytelling, right? About showing girls and women what it looks like to be a woman in the space industry and how many different paths there are and letting these women and young girls literally see themselves in an industry that they aspire to be a part of.

And that’s something that I didn’t see much of as a kid. And so if that’s something that I can give back to the world to get to that 51% women on orbit, I will be very pleased that I made a contribution there.

Anthony Codispoti : Why specifically 51 and not 50%?

Meagan Crawford : That’s just the biology of it. You need just, because men tend to die younger and for stupid reasons. So you need to be a few more women than you do men.

Anthony Codispoti : I’d argue with you, but I don’t think I could put up a good case for it. So we’ll move on. How about being a mom and doing all of the wonderful giant huge projects that you’re doing. How do you find a balance between sort of these two sides of your life?

Meagan Crawford : Yeah, that’s been a challenge, being a single mom most of my life. My children have generally been very supportive with the one rule that we don’t talk about mom’s stupid space stuff over dinner. They’re probably the two people on the planet that are the least interested in the really cool stuff that I do every day for work just because they’ve grown up with it and they’ve heard about it their whole lives.

But I do think in the long run that’s made them more resilient and more successful. They’re both adults now, 21 and 24 years old. And so there were obviously a lot of really hard nights and a lot of really difficult moments trying to decide whether to go to a business event or stay home with a sick child. Kind of the same decisions that every parent has to make whether they’re single or in a partnership. And I will say that really the only way that I got through it all was by being able to rely on a family and friends group that were extremely supportive, not just of helping me raise my children but of helping me be successful in my career as well. And I like to tell people that family isn’t necessarily who you were born with. You can create that family to help you. It takes a village to raise a child and nobody can do it on their own.

So if you are not blessed enough to be close to your family, you’re separated by distance because of your career, build that family in your new home and you’ll find that there are many, many other parents who are going through the same struggles as you. And so just don’t be afraid to open up and let new people into your circle and ask for help when you need it. Sometimes that’s the hardest part, especially when there’s an outside persona of you with being very successful to show weakness and ask for help can be very difficult for people.

But it’s also, once you take that leap, it can be very rewarding. As much as you like helping other people, I like to say other people like helping you. So don’t forget to ask for help.

Anthony Codispoti : I think it’s great advice. Do you have any suggestions on how to sort of take that first difficult step?

Meagan Crawford : You know, it’s just about trying to come out of your shell. You know, and that can be really hard for some people, I know. And there’s dozens of support groups. You’ll find churches to be extremely helpful and a great place to start where there’s typically no judgment or religious facilities of any kind, regardless of your religious background. I come from a Catholic background and I know my church will help anybody, it doesn’t matter, right?

They’re just there to help legitimately. And so, and you know, I’d also say, talk to your kids’ teachers, whether those preschool teachers or K through 12, they will know of the resources and the places to go to get the help you need. And I’ve even had in my past, some of my kids’ teachers offer to babysit because I couldn’t find a babysitter. So, you know, start with the local resources that you have, the teachers, the religious facilities, and work your way out from there. They’ll help you find what you need.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, since we’re kind of going in this direction, anyways, Megan, I would like to ask what is traditionally my favorite question. I’d love to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome. How’d you get through it? What did you learn?

Meagan Crawford : My biggest challenge so far, really from a career perspective, I would say being a mom is the biggest challenge. So, but if we’re not considering that, the biggest career challenge that I faced was starting my fund one. Trying to create a venture capital firm in an industry which most people didn’t know existed, where venture capital had not existed before, was a very tall and steep hill to climb. And I came out of the gate with this great idea for the space venture capital fund, and I’m gonna go raise $100 million.

People are just gonna open their pockets, give me all their money, and let me just, you know, go shopping for space companies forever, right? That’s obviously not the way it worked out. And so, I at one point had to kind of admit defeat and realize I was never going to raise $100 million first fund, not when there were too many things working against me. I was a brand new manager. I was a woman who still looked a little too young to know what I was talking about. And it was a completely new sector for venture capital to exist in.

And so, I had to really rein in my own expectations and decided I’m gonna do what I would do if I was a space startup company. I’m gonna raise a friends and family round. I’m gonna call up everybody I know. I’m gonna stop talking to these institutional investors who have never heard of what I’m trying to talk about. I’m gonna call up the people I know, people who have seen me be successful, the people who know my personal track record. And I’m gonna go out and raise a million dollars to do a proof of concept fund. And this included, yes, me calling my dad and saying, “‘Daddy, if you don’t believe in me, who will?” You know? And so…

Anthony Codispoti : That was the pitch? Yeah, that was the pitch to my dad. Was that the first slide? Yeah, yeah, that was the pitch to my dad, for sure.

Meagan Crawford : And luckily I was able to do that based on that personal trust, you know, and really kind of taking that different perspective of saying, “‘No, I’m just gonna raise a friends and family round. I’m gonna prove the concept and then fundraising for fund two will be a lot easier.” And it was.

And fund two, we went out and raised 20 million. It was still hard. It was still definitely hard. But we had the success from fund one to build on. And now I’m finally raising that $100 million fund with fund three, six, seven years later now. It was a… And it’s been a hard journey to get here.

And I think that I… Fingers crossed, we’ll be successful with that $100 million raise now. But, you know, as is often the case with people in this industry, I didn’t have some stars in my eyes. And I had to completely readjust my business plan, my game plan for how to reach that end goal that I was looking for.

So it’s taken a lot longer than I would have liked, but I’ve learned so many valuable lessons along the way. I can look back on it now and honestly say, I wouldn’t have wanted it to go anywhere else. If somebody had just thrown $100 million at me seven years ago, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it, at least not as well as I do now, right? And so sometimes, you know, as they say, life gives you lemonade or when God closes a door, he opens a window, right?

I think that was kind of the most valuable lesson from that time that life kind of smacked me down and laughed at me, oh, $100 million fund one kid. Ha, ha, ha, you know, so. But here we are.

Anthony Codispoti : So you’ve mentioned your track record. And earlier in the interview, you mentioned that you had been… You had your own space business that you had a successful exit firm. What was that?

Meagan Crawford : It was actually an Asteroid morning company. No, it was not. It absolutely was. You’re pulling my leg. It was called Deep Space Industries. We never mind an asteroid, okay? But we built a novel propulsion technology that could operate off of the dirty water we were planning to collect from the asteroids. That propulsion system was valuable enough to sell the whole company for. Wow.

Anthony Codispoti : And it’s being used today?

Meagan Crawford : Yep. The company who purchased it, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : But they’re utilizing the tech. Okay. So when you go out there and you’re trying to raise that first $100 million fund, as you said, you had stars in your eyes.

You kept running into brick walls. Nobody’s hearing it. You’re a woman.

You’re young. And it’s space, right? Like all these things are sort of working against you.

Was there at any point where part of you was like, the heck with this? Like this isn’t going to work. I should just go find another job. I’m smart. I can be useful somewhere else.

Meagan Crawford : Yes. That did cross my mind quite a bit. And I did have other work. I was consulting. I was doing other things on the side. And there were plenty of days where it’s like, no, this consulting client is worth much more to me in the near term than anything I could do for Space Fund would be in the long term.

And you definitely have those doubts and have those moments. But then SpaceX would launch launch again, or I would get a pitch from another startup company that I was fascinated by. And there was always something that drug me back into it. And so here we are today.

Anthony Codispoti : And so you mentioned that you wouldn’t have wanted it any other way because along the way you learned some really valuable lessons that’s made you better suited to kind of handle the funds that you do have control of today. Can you give a specific concrete example of something that you wouldn’t have learned if folks had just kind of thrown you money that first time around?

Meagan Crawford : So this is, you know, there’s been some really important lessons learned about technical founders. Technical founders may be brilliant rocket scientists and engineers in the case of what I do. They’re likely not the best person to be CEO of a rapidly growing company.

Okay. And I think a lot of people know that a lot of you sees know that after having seen that argument happen with CEOs and founders many, many times. Now I talk to them beforehand and say, okay, in the two to three year timeframe, we’re going to replace you with a CEO. So you don’t have to do the accounting. You don’t have to do the hiring. You don’t have to do the marketing. Okay.

I’m going to take that all off your plate and let you go play with your cool space toy as soon as the company is ready and talk and having those conversations with founders ahead of time. Now it’s not a surprise. Now they know that it’s coming.

They see it as a relief and they don’t feel like their babies being stolen from them. Right. And so those are that’s just one example of many of lessons learned over time that you start at the beginning with these things up front. For instance, when we first did our fund one, our reporting cycle was a yearly reporting cycle. So we didn’t have a quarterly reporting requirement for our portfolio companies. Turns out a lot can go wrong in a quarter. And if you’re not minding the store and getting a quarterly update, things can be happening and going wrong.

We could have had time to fix and didn’t find out about until after the fact. So now we have a quarterly reporting requirement for each of our portfolio companies just to make sure we can help prevent problems before they before they turn too big. So, you know, there’s just probably a dozen more lessons like that that we’ve learned just from actually running, operating a venture capital fund and having 21 companies in the portfolio and and seeing the things that happen time and time again and how do we prevent them from becoming issues on the front end.

Anthony Codispoti : I really liked what you said there about because it’s all about in terms of, you know, getting folks ready to say that hey, in a few years, you’re not going to be the CEO anymore. Having that conversation up front and presenting it in a way as to where it’s a benefit to them.

Yeah, I have to worry about all this other stuff over here that you don’t like doing anyways and it’s going to free you up to do more of this. That way when the time comes to make that transition, they don’t look at it as a bad thing. They don’t look at it as I’m being, you know, you know, smacked on the hand with the ruler. They’re like, oh, finally. Yeah, this is the moment we’ve all been working towards.

Meagan Crawford : Exactly. And I’ve had CEOs call me up and say, is it time yet?

Anthony Codispoti : I’m really done with all this accounting. Can we at least get a CFO if not a new CEO? You know, because they know that option’s available and they know they can be honest with me about that, you know. So it makes a big difference. And so what is that sort of, I mean, are you involved in sort of the day to day operations of any of your port codes or is it more like those kind of quarterly check-ins?

Meagan Crawford : It depends on the company and what they need and what sort of growth stage they are. I frequently come in and for a time during either a pivot or preparing for a new funding round, I’ll act as a fractional CFO for instance.

Just to, you know, investor proof the company against, you know, future new investors coming in, or take, you know, a more operational role in a company that’s growing very rapidly, or take a board director position to offer little bits and pieces as needed. In my former life, I did a lot of marketing and PR work. That was most of the consulting I did while I was setting up Space Fund was on the marketing and PR side.

So we recently had a company that was preparing for an IPO and I came in as effectively their outside marketing consultant to help them prepare for that. And so it’s just kind of catches as you can like what do you need right now? How can I be, you know, what tool do I have in my tool set that can help you be successful?

Anthony Codispoti : So finance, marketing, is there anything you don’t do?

Meagan Crawford : I try not to do the accounting. Nobody likes accounting, right? No offense to all the accountants out there in the world. But I try and stay away from legal and policy. That’s not my area.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, fair enough. Tell us about your podcast.

Meagan Crawford : So the Mission E podcast was started to help, as I mentioned earlier, close this gap between 11% of the people who have been to orbit and the 51% we need for humanity to really be multi-planetary. And so I interview women who work in the space sector in some way. And this can be everything from college professors to HR professionals to finance professionals to engineers and rocket scientists or astronauts. People who have worked at NASA, people who have worked at the big aerospace companies and people who work for startups. One of the most interesting ones was a woman who talked about her journey going from a yoga instructor to the co-founder and CEO of a space startup.

And that was a fascinating story. But the purpose again is to get women both the visual and audio aspects of what life is really like as a woman in the space industry and where they can fit in. Most people don’t realize that whatever skill sets they’re being paid for today, whatever is valuable out there in the market, we need that skill set in the space industry. This is an industry just like any other. And like I said, whether that’s HR or finance or operations or legal and policy, we need space lawyers just like any industry needs lawyers, right? So come take a look. Find a job for you.

Anthony Codispoti : You’ve used the term interplanetary multiple times. You’ve also talked about wanting to take the tech from space and make life better here on Earth. What does the term interplanetary mean to you? And how do you really push towards that in our lifetimes?

Meagan Crawford : So I like to say it’s not just about the globe anymore. It’s about the galaxy, right? The sphere of humanity’s economic influence has already gone beyond our home world. And that to me is something that I think is an absolutely fascinating thing to watch in real time. A couple of months ago, an Austin based company, Firefly Aerospace, landed a private lunar lander on the moon, completed their entire 14 day mission with 100% success rate. To me, that was the moment that humanity’s economic sphere became interplanetary. That was a successful, paid for economic success on another planetary body. Again, phenomenal time to be alive, to watch this unfolding in front of our eyes. And Elon talks a lot about Mars.

I think that’s a great next step. I don’t think humans will ever live on Venus. It’s a little harsh environment, but maybe around Venus, right?

Maybe some cloud hoppers in the Venus atmosphere. And then if you look at some of the moons of Jupiter, for instance, may have liquid water on them. They may have life.

They may have habitable zones. We don’t know yet until we get out there. We don’t know, you know, one of the other things I like to say is that this is the only investment sector that has truly unlimited upside potential. There are unlimited resources, unlimited free energy from the sun, and unlimited physical space. There is not a single other industry on Earth that is not limited by real estate, energy, and resources.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s wild. Megan, before I move into my last… Actually, let’s make this part of my last question. Because I think I need to sort of change up the last question that I asked for you.

Before I do that, I want to do two things. First of all, I want to invite all listeners. Go ahead and hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app. You want to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with Megan Crawford from Space Fund.

I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. There are women that wants to get involved in space. They’re an investor. They’re a potential portco. You just find your story fascinating. What’s the best way to track you down?

Meagan Crawford : Great question. So I like to say, you know, we were first to the game because I own the URL, spacefund.com. Not .space or .ai. The actual .com. So that’s very easy to find me. It’s spacefund.com. If you submit an email inquiry that goes directly into my inbox. There’s also two tabs on that website, one for investors and one for potential portfolio companies with specific forms for those two types. And I highly encourage especially entrepreneurs to fill out that form on the, you know, submit your company for consideration page. Because I think that helps them, a lot of them even understand what they, information they need in order to talk to an investor. And it also helps get them into my automated deal flow pipeline, which gives them a much higher chance of successfully getting, getting an actual time to talk to myself and my colleagues. So yeah, spacefund.com and self select from there if you want to just do a general inquiry or an investor specific or company specific inquiry.

Anthony Codispoti : Good stuff. Yeah, and I like how you said that where, you know, for folks that maybe are looking for an investment, you’ve got sort of a process you can take them through. You’re setting them up for success. You’re kind of helping them take some of those early steps so that they’ve got a better chance of finding that funding when they’re ready. Exactly.

Exactly. So the last question I typically like to ask is something along the lines of, you know, what exciting changes do you see coming to your industry in the next two to three years? I think that could be a whole podcast in itself.

I don’t know, maybe with the last question, how I might make this a little bit different is, is there one of your port codes we haven’t talked about? That you’re particularly excited about? You want to give voice to?

Meagan Crawford : So like any good mom, I love them all the same. I don’t have any favorites. But there are the list, the full list of all 21 companies is on the website, the same URL, spacefund.com with links to off to all their websites. If you want to go do some more investigation about about what’s going on in this industry, everything from, you know, laser based communications, optical communications, communications with our company Skyloom, our company Nebula Compute that’s doing on orbit data centers. You know, and I’m sure there’s a dozen more that I haven’t even mentioned that are doing just as exciting things. And I encourage everyone to go take a look.

Anthony Codispoti : On orbit data center. Is that what you said? Yes. That’s what it sounds like, like rather than, you know, me connecting to a web server, you know, in the cloud here on Earth, literally going into the cloud to access that data?

Meagan Crawford : Well, first of all, it’s more secure if you do want to upload your terrestrial data to space. But think about all those tens of thousands of satellites orbiting in low Earth orbit. They’re all collecting data. What are they doing with it? It’s much easier to send it to a data center that’s in their same orbit than it is to try and connect with a ground station here on Earth. So in space data centers for in space data.

Anthony Codispoti : So it’s less about me connecting to it. It’s more about the satellites that are already up in space connecting to it, offloading some other data. And then our folks on the ground then pulling it from the data centers that they can use it.

Meagan Crawford : The data can be processed and stored on orbit and then only the insights, the usable, sellable, valuable data can be downlinked. And so my favorite example here is the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared. We know for a fact there were dozens, if not hundreds of images taken of that aircraft across its flight path.

Excuse me, flight path. However, those satellites are all programmed to automatically delete pictures over the open ocean because nobody pays for those pictures. And they have onboard storage constraints and onboard data processing constraints. So those images that could have told us everything we needed to know about that missing flight were automatically deleted because of problems with storage. So that’s just one kind of day to day example of why having this storage capability on orbit could be so valuable. Because those images that aren’t immediately sellable could be stored on orbit because maybe they will be useful at some later date.

Anthony Codispoti : Fascinating. Megan, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Meagan Crawford : You’re very welcome, Anthony. This has been a good time. I appreciate the kind of fun conversational nature of the podcast. So you’re doing a great job. I really appreciate you having me on.

Anthony Codispoti : Thanks for the kind words, folks. That’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.