The institute uses research as a tool toward sector transformation. The work takes three forms: publishing, ecosystem engagement, and convening. Each is oriented toward the same outcome: turning today's sovereign and commercial capital into self-sustaining markets, not stranded infrastructure.
Building and disseminating the analytic discipline of market formation in space. Frameworks, market signals, cases, readiness assessments, ecosystem playbooks, and briefs: six output types, each with a fixed length and purpose.
Direct, hands-on work with the people whose decisions create markets. Founders shaping mindsets and approaches as they build toward those markets. Policymakers shaping procurement and buying discipline so that sovereign spending creates markets, not capability silos. Active engagement, not passive coordination.
Pulling operators, funders, program leaders, and policymakers into rooms together around the institute's analytic infrastructure. The institute as host of the field's coordinating conversation.
Sovereign capital is reshaping the space sector at a scale and pace the world has never seen, and the patterns being set now will shape the sector for the next generation. Done well, this becomes the foundation of new industries, new experiences, and a new wave of human prosperity. Done poorly, it produces capability silos that never find markets and stranded infrastructure that never finds users. The difference comes down to analytic discipline: the ability to tell, in real time, the difference between markets that are actually forming and markets that have only been declared. The space sector has plenty of advocacy organizations, trade associations, and consultancies. It has very little independent analytic infrastructure built to do that work systematically. The institute exists to fill that gap, and to engage directly with the people whose decisions move the field.
The institute publishes six output types: frameworks, cases, market signals, readiness assessments, ecosystem playbooks, and briefs. Each has a fixed length and a fixed position in the program. The discipline of the catalogue is load-bearing. A reader who has seen one institute framework should know what to expect from the next.
All institute publications are open. There are no subscription walls. Patrons receive pre-publication briefings, not exclusive findings. The work is built to be cited, applied, and argued with.
Independence is the asset. When the analytic position implied by a framework conflicts with the commercial interest of a patron, the framework wins. That is the operating principle the institute is built around.
Garretson founded Orbital Progress in 2026 after circulating the foundational market-formation corpus as private research during the preceding two years. An astrophysics PhD from Harvard, he led the space portfolio at the Science and Technology Policy Institute in the 2000s, including leaing analytical work on early SpaceX and the COTS program. He subsequently oversaw McKinsey's aerospace and defense knowledge portfolio, including work with the Brookings Institution on the Colorado space cluster. He is also the founder of CounterFlow Solutions.
CEO and President of the Aldrin Family Foundation and Executive Director of Space Programs at Embry-Riddle Worldwide. He previously held executive roles at Boeing, United Launch Alliance, and Moon Express, and founded the ISU Center for Space Entrepreneurship at Florida Tech. His career spans commercial space, policy research, entrepreneurship education, and public-interest space leadership.
Joshua Smith, a Partner at Bell Nunnally & Martin LLP in Dallas, Texas, and an LL.M. candidate in Air & Space Law at Ole Miss, has developed a strong foundation in the institutional infrastructure of the commercial space economy and provides practical advice on the frameworks governing future outer space disputes.
Executive Vice President of Beyond Earth Institute and President of the Washington Space Business Roundtable, Stadd has dedicated his career to addressing the challenges of enabling a market-driven, competitive commercial space sector.
Read the published work. Subscribe to receive new Market Signals. If the institute's program aligns with where your decisions are made, the Patron Circle is the channel for closer engagement.