
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation set the stage for new leadership as well as new initiatives during its meeting in Seattle this week, says the industry group’s president.
CSF President Eric Stallmer told GeekWire that the meeting signaled the Emerald City’s rising status amid a rising wave of entrepreneurship focused on the space frontier.
“Seattle has really become a hub city for commercial space activity,” he said, “so it’s really a no-brainer for us to come here. … I foresee more companies developing and coming up to Seattle.”
Those companies will follow in the footsteps of ventures such as Blue Origin (founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos), Vulcan Aerospace (funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), Planetary Resources (which counts Google execs and Virgin billionaire Richard Branson among its founding investors) and Spaceflight Industries (backed by Allen’s Vulcan Capital and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, among others).