Here is your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, September 18th.

Today on Forbes, this billionaire startup wanted to build a space station.

Now it can barely pay its bills.

Axiom Space, a startup co-founded by billionaire Cam Gefarian, has a lofty goal

to build private space stations

that allow humans to live and work off planet on mass.

But lately, the Houston-based company has been grappling with a more earthly concern,

a struggle for survival.

According to internal documents, seven former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity

due to non-disclosure agreements and space industry experts, A severe cash crunch, business challenges, and a cold

reception to its latest fundraising efforts have hamstrung Axiom and led to

extensive layoffs and pay cuts.

Axiom had intended to build an orbiting outpost using the International Space Station, or ISS, as a base.

The plan was to build modularly, connecting sections of its so-called

Axiom station to the ISS, finishing work on them in space, and finally

detaching the completed station to fly free.

It would make money by hosting tourists and companies looking to use microgravity conditions

for things like drug development and semiconductor manufacturing. But Forbes has learned that plan has been upended

by Axiom's slow progress on the first module and the prospect that the ISS may have

to be de-orbited two years earlier than planned.

Now, a year after raising $350 million in a round led by Saudi Arabia's Al Jazeera capital

and South Korean Pharma Boryung at a valuation of $2 billion, giving it a total of $500 million in funding,

...