Another rocket company in turbulent territory as Sir Richard Branson's Virgin

Orbit pauses operations and furlough staff seeking a funding lifeline amid a

cash crunch. It speaks to a broader dynamic. A crowded launch market under pressure

after a world once awash in capital now adjusts to tight monetary policy.

It's a dynamic investors in the sector have been watching closely.

Right now we're currently tracking over 160 private launch companies around the world.

So these are startups who are trying to emulate Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and they all have their own little original spin on their rocket engines or their business model.

But there's not room in the market for 160 launch companies to exist.

Even if 100,000 satellites are launched in the next 7 to 10 years,

we believe 10 to 15 companies can fulfill that demand.

In this episode, Space Fund co-founder

and managing partner, Megan Crawford

breaks down the state of space investing

and where her venture capital firm is putting money to work.

I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is manifest space.

So we're still pretty young, pretty early stage for a venture capital firm.

I like to say we're a startup ourselves. We founded the firm in

2018 but didn't really get started until 2019. It took us a while to get set up. And we have two funds, Space Fund 1 and Space Fund 2, we're really great at naming these things. And we have 19 companies that were invested in across the two funds.

So we have a pretty diverse portfolio.

I like to say we only invest above the Carmen line,

so that's 62 miles or 100 kilometers up.

So we don't do drones or electric airplanes.

...