The Japanese startup Gitai, fresh off raising a new round of funding, is expanding in the U.S. as it seeks to create a robot workforce that will reduce the costs and risks of operating in space.
While Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are working on rockets and the challenges of getting to space, Gitai Chief Executive Officer Sho Nakanose is focused on labor costs. He believes it’s too risky and impractical for humans to assemble and inspect machinery in space, while equipment now used is far too expensive.
"The bottleneck of the space industry has been changing rapidly,” Nakanose said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Monday. "Huge space companies such as SpaceX and BlueOrigin are solving the space transportation problem, and now the bottleneck has changed from transportation costs to operational costs.”