The Exploration Company has hired Blue Origin’s director of human spaceflight, Mark Kirasich, as its vice president of US operations. According to the company’s CEO, Helene Huby, Kirasich is the ideal candidate to accelerate the development of its lunar and human spaceflight vehicles.
Founded in 2021, The Exploration Company is developing Nyx, a modular spacecraft designed to deliver cargo and crews to low Earth orbit and beyond. To date, the company has raised approximately $72 million and signed a service agreement with Axiom Space to deliver cargo to its planned space station from 2027.
While The Exploration Company has always hinted at Nyx being capable of delivering crews to space, the company has stressed its focus on first delivering a cargo transport service.
During a March 2024 interview with Bloomberg, Huby stated that the company was starting with cargo “because cargo is easier.” She went on to explain that developing a cargo vehicle would cost between $300 and $400 million and would take five to six years. She added that this meant that cargo was “fundable by private investors.” In contrast, she explained that crew vehicles take around ten years and require $2 to $3 billion in funding to develop. Although not explicitly stated, her inference suggested that developing a crew vehicle would, as a result, require some or another source of public funding.
Kirasich is an individual you hire to head up a human spaceflight programme. This is a conclusion shared by Blue Origin as the Jeff Bezos-founded space company hired him to do just that in January 2023. Before going private, Kirasich spent almost 40 years at NASA. He spent 12 years as a flight controller before a decade-long stint as flight director at the US space agency. He then held a pair of leadership positions overseeing the Orion crew vehicle programme for more than fourteen years before spending his final two years and nine months at NASA as the agency’s deputy associate administrator. He has now ditched Blue Origin for The Exploration Company.
In The Exploration Company’s 13 May announcement, Huby stated that Kirasich was “the ideal candidate to lead our US operations, foster the certification of Nyx, and accelerate the development of our lunar and human spaceflight vehicles.” Does this mean that Kirasich will be otherwise involved until the company is ready with $3 billion in hand to pursue human spaceflight? Or, does Huby have as yet unannounced commitments that Europe is preparing to once again pursue its white whale, a human-rated spacecraft offering the continent sovereign access to space for its citizens?
