The power couple behind NZ's big space companies
Auckland-based space consultancy SpaceBase wants New Zealand manufacturers to get into the space industry. That includes companies who might never have considered it before.
It’s a fairly new move for the company, co-founded and headed by husband and wife team Emeline PaatDahlstrom and Eric Dahlstrom.
They emigrated to New Zealand in 2017 just as the Kiwi space industry was gaining traction, after careers in Nasa and other space industries. By 2019, the sector was valued at $1.7 billion by Deloitte, which said it supported 12,000 jobs.
But Kiwi companies should make the most of their expertise because they see their work in New Zealand as a step towards a wider “democratisation” of space.
Paat-Dahlstrom is SpaceBase’s chief executive while Dahlstrom is its chief technology officer.
The company operates on charitable lines but isn’t a registered charity in New Zealand. It funds itself through consulting, sponsorship and ongoing activities outside New Zealand.
Paat-Dahlstrom said it didn’t qualify as a charity because of its focus on economic development. It was incorporated in New Zealand in 2017 with ownership split equally between Paat-Dahlstrom, Dahlstrom and third co-founder Richard Bodo.
“We thought that we would specifically focus on the manufacturing industry in New Zealand because it’s already a mature industry in a terrestrial sense,” said Paat-Dahlstrom.
One company they came across had technology which SpaceBase thought could apply to advanced spacesuits. The company visited the US and SpaceBase arranged the meetings to connect them to Nasa, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and others.
“If there’s anybody who’s . . . really interested in getting into the space industry or understanding what that pathway is, we’re definitely open for projects and interests within New Zealand,” she said.
To push New Zealand manufacturers into the space industry, the company has teamed up with another New Zealand consultancy, Space Trailblazers.
Eric Dahlstrom has a background in physics and astronomy and worked for Nasa at several of its divisions, including working on the design of the International Space Station (ISS). He has also worked for Lockheed and Raytheon (now RTX Corporation) and has been working on commercial lunar landers for three different companies.
He has also helped Californian space start-ups and is today on the faculty of the International Space University (ISU), which is headquartered in Strasbourg with hubs in the US and elsewhere.
Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom, originally from the Philippines, also has a physics background, plus a Master’s degree in space science. The pair met at the ISU, where she developed some of the university’s programmes.
Some 20 years ago she worked for Space Adventures, the first space tourism company. “We were leveraging the Russians to send multimillionaires [and] billionaires up to the [International] Space Station via Soyuz rockets.”
Despite the enthusiasm for all things New Zealand, Paat-Dahlstrom and Dahlstrom are anything but industrial nationalists. SpaceBase has maintained its links with start-ups in the US and Australia and is casting its net far wider.
Putting on what she calls her social enterprise hat, Paat-Dahlstrom said she was trying to create a “global space enablers” network this year. “We’ve been talking to India, Japan, Chile, Costa Rica.”
New Zealand is a developed country with a newly emergent space industry and serves as the prototype for Spacebase’s global plans.
“Our long-term goal is to do what we call the democratisation of space, which is really getting that opportunity to every single region or country that is interested in being part of it,” Paat-Dahlstrom said.
With such impressive CVs in the space sector, what are they doing in little old New Zealand?
As outdoor lovers, the couple had long been passionate about this country, but dreams of living here were just that in the complete absence of a space industry.
Then the New Zealand Space Agency was founded, a new visa class was created, and Rocket Lab looked like it might launch a rocket. “It was just the right timing, so we took the opportunity,” said Paat-Dahlstrom. They moved to New Zealand in 2017 through the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. That was part of a three-year trial of the then-new Global Impact Visa (GIV), which was designed to encourage foreign entrepreneurs and investors to foster new businesses in New Zealand.
The following year they began organising space challenges for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). “That’s really to leverage satellite technology and data to solve a specific problem like climate change. So, this last one was on methane emissions,” PaatDahlstrom said.
By 2019, SpaceBase was a core consultant for the Christchurch Aerospace Sector Plan, which set out the city and region’s competitive advantages, such as the city’s strength in electronic manufacturing.
It conducted the technical due diligence for Dawn Aerospace’s seed and series A capital raises and the seed round for Zenno Astronautics.
They have also carried out around 150 briefings on the space industry around New Zealand to groups down to primary school level. Even such high achievers have their weak spots and Dahlstrom said they now really appreciated the skills of primary school teachers.
“We’re not very good at talking to really young kids.”
They don’t see themselves as salespeople either. Paat-Dahlstrom said the partnership with Space Trailblazers melded their international contacts and knowledge with Space Trailblazers’ local knowledge and background in New Zealand manufacturing.