A software guy looked at space and saw the missing layer. So he started building it.
I spent years building enterprise software at QBS Software. Platforms, integrations, the infrastructure layer that other businesses build on top of. It's not glamorous work, but it's the work that matters. Without it, nothing else runs.
And one day it clicked: space has the exact same problem. Everyone's building the application layer. Rockets, capsules, landers. The things that look good on magazine covers. But nobody's building the platform underneath. No supply chains. No logistics networks. No shared infrastructure. Every mission starts from scratch, like every company building its own servers before AWS existed.
I kept pulling at that thread. The more I looked, the more obvious it became. Launch costs are dropping fast. Demand for orbital services is growing. But the infrastructure gap is getting wider, not smaller. Someone needs to build the boring stuff. The orbital equivalent of roads, ports, and data centres.
So I started Aether. From Manchester, not from Silicon Valley. Because this isn't about hype or pitch decks. It's about building real systems that work. My background isn't in aerospace. It's in enterprise platforms. And honestly, I think that's an advantage. The space industry doesn't need another rocket company. It needs someone who thinks in terms of platforms, systems, and the infrastructure that everything else depends on.
The name comes from the old idea of "aether," the substance the ancient Greeks believed filled the space between stars. It turned out to be wrong, of course. Space is mostly nothing. And that's exactly the point. We're going to fill it with something.
This window won't stay open forever.
Launch costs are collapsing. SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and a dozen others have driven the cost per kilogram to orbit down by 90% in the last decade. That trend is accelerating. For the first time in history, it's economically feasible to put heavy infrastructure in orbit. But nobody's designing what to put up there.
The demand is already here. NASA's Artemis programme. ESA's lunar gateway plans. Commercial space stations from Axiom and Vast. Mining ventures. Tourism operators. They all need the same thing: somewhere to dock, refuel, resupply, and build. Right now, each of them is solving that problem independently, from scratch, at enormous cost.
The market is a blank canvas. There is no AWS of space. No shared infrastructure layer. No logistics network. Whoever builds it first will become the backbone of the entire space economy, the same way cloud computing became the backbone of the internet economy. That's a trillion-dollar opportunity, and it's sitting there waiting.
I'm not saying Aether will definitely be the one to capture it. But someone will, and I'd rather be the one trying than the one watching.
These aren't slogans. These are the arguments we have in the room when nobody's watching.
Rockets are glamorous. Logistics networks aren't. We don't care. Infrastructure is what makes everything else possible. We want to build the foundations, not the monuments.
Speed matters when you're racing against a timeline measured in decades. But we won't pretend we've solved problems we haven't. Investors, partners, and future crew members deserve the truth about where we are and what we still need to figure out.
Everything we design should outlast us. Every architecture decision considers what happens in 50 years, not just 5. This isn't a product cycle. It's the foundation of a future we won't live to see completed.
Where we are and where we're going. Honest timelines, not hype.
Small today. Building something that will need hundreds. These are the roles that will shape what Aether becomes.
Enterprise software background at QBS Software. Spent years building the platform layers that businesses run on. Now applying that same thinking to space. Based in Manchester, UK.
Looking for someone who lives and breathes systems architecture. Ideally with aerospace or deep-tech experience. Someone who wants to design the platform layer for an entire industry.
The person who turns architecture into hardware. Supply chain, manufacturing, test campaigns. If you've shipped physical products in aerospace or defence, we want to talk.
Orbital mechanics, structural analysis, life support systems. The technical backbone of everything we're designing. This is a role where your work ends up in orbit.