Supporting Space Tech Startups – Casey DeRaad and Arial DeHerrera

What was the original motivation behind starting New Space Nexus?

Well, part of it was back when I was running the industry partnerships in the Air Force Research Lab, the Tech Engagement Office.

I was trying to help a lot of these space companies from the federal side, but it's really difficult to do because you can't really... work with one company or the other.

There's a lot of open competition type rules.

And so I left AFRL in 2017 and said, I'm going to go start this up from the outside.

And So, you know, started doing some workshops.

I just knew we had so many assets in the space industry in the New Mexico and this Southwest region.

And so just try to start telling the story that, you know, We have White Sands.

We have two NASA centers down south.

We have a spaceport.

We have three now space force organizations.

We have two Department of Energy national laboratories, the Air Force Research Lab, where Space Rapid Capabilities Office, Space Systems Command, they're all doing the leading thought strategy for really this space industry growth.

And so I wanted to help the companies and I also wanted to help the workforce.

And so from that came New Space Nexus.

Interesting.

Since you joined fairly early, Ariel, how has your kind of work in your role, how's that evolved over the last eight, nine years?

We use the term, we wear a lot of hats.

So I think I've kind of worn a lot of hats throughout the years.

I'll never forget, I was getting my MBA as we were starting, helping start NewSpace.

And Casey would ask, hey, you're taking this class.

See how they do this.

So I was kind of learning it in school while we were actually doing it.

So just kind of the growth.

We started... a little bit of history with new space.

We started with just Casey and I, we had a contractor, Scott Maitner, and it was the three of us.