FLYING OBJECTS

ROCKETS, YOU SEE, are not Platzer’s business. Satellites are. Very small satellites, about the size and shape of a whiskey-bottle box. Each costs less than $1 million to build and deploy, versus half a billion dollars for the latest government-grade spy satellites. They’re assembled largely with off-the-shelf components, the same as what’s in your smartphone, and, like your phone, Spire’s satellites don’t last forever—two years, maybe three, before they tumble out of orbit and vaporize during reentry. That’s not a liability; it’s an asset. Regular turnover ensures that the technology is always fresh. (Who wants a four-year-old phone?) They have on-board cameras, though not amazing ones; they can’t spot your backpack from outer space. But that’s OK. They’re not up there to watch. They’re there to listen: to radio signals from objects equipped with transmitters, and to light waves that can measure temperature and humidity in the atmosphere with astonishing accuracy.

Spire is all about that data. New data, plucked from outer space, the market for which includes passenger and cargo conveyors of all kinds (especially ships; 90 percent of global trade is seafaring), hedge funds, commodities traders, secretive anti-pirate security companies (seen the movie Captain Phillips?), various government agencies (civil and military), and NGOs. Anybody, that is, who regularly sends human or hard assets into the still vast, digitally dark regions of the planet, and anybody else who wants to know where those assets are. That part of Spire’s business