{"id":91467,"date":"2026-10-30T01:40:43","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T17:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/industry-built-the-factories-washington-keeps-throttling-the-money\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T01:40:43","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T17:40:43","slug":"industry-built-the-factories-washington-keeps-throttling-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/industry-built-the-factories-washington-keeps-throttling-the-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Industry Built the Factories. Washington Keeps Throttling the Money."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"York
York Space Systems\u2019 Melanie Preisser on the \u201cBuses vs. Vertical Integration\u201d panel at Silicon Valley Space Week 2026. (Photo: SatNews)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Satellite makers say they did what the Pentagon asked and built for high-rate production. Now they want the money to show up on schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of different companies have actually invested quite a bit of corporate capital to scale production, assure supply chain, et cetera,\u201d Melanie Preisser, general manager and executive vice president of York Space Systems, said Wednesday on the panel \u201cBuses vs. Vertical Integration: Who Builds the Proliferated Era\u201d at Silicon Valley Space Week. Noel Rimalovski, managing partner at GH Partners, moderated.<\/p>\n

The problem, she said, is \u201cthe changing demand signal, the tendency to incrementally fund contracts, slow contracts down.\u201d That \u201cmakes it quite hard for those of us in industry to be able to maintain the cadence of high rate manufacturing and delivery if we\u2019re always throttling contract timelines and contract funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terran Orbital\u2019s Carl Couch, vice president of strategy and business development, agreed. Defense money is planned over five years, he said, but it can be cut, paused or shortened at any point. Suppliers get told to prepare for material buys and higher-rate manufacturing, \u201cbut then the money could stop, dry up, restart, start again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The factories are already running<\/h2>\n

The capacity exists. Preisser said York has 55 satellites in orbit across five missions. Couch said Terran Orbital, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary that can still sell as a merchant supplier, turns out about six spacecraft a month and is about 85% vertically integrated, with Lockheed\u2019s backlog insulating it from much of the turbulence in new space.<\/p>\n

Samara Aerospace, which is building its first satellite, is taking production in-house. A supplier that will take a one-satellite order can\u2019t keep up once production scales, said Patrick Haddox, its co-founder and CEO: \u201cThis one-off manufacturer cannot keep pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

CesiumAstro isn\u2019t waiting for the signal. \u201cWe have and we are investing in infrastructure regardless of the demand that\u2019s in front of us right now. We know the demand is coming,\u201d said Shey Sabripour, its founder and CEO. He put the spending at half a billion dollars in Austin, with more in the Denver area and at other U.S. sites, for factories that build everything from chips to complete missions.<\/p>\n

What would help most, Preisser said, is \u201chaving a stable, I\u2019ll just call it demand signal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews York Space Systems\u2019 Melanie Preisser on the \u201cBuses vs. Vertical Integration\u201d panel at Silicon Valley Space Week 2026. (Photo: SatNews) Satellite makers say they did what the Pentagon asked and built for high-rate production. Now they want the money to show up on schedule. \u201cA lot of different companies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}