October 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\nBruey says people often get Varda wrong. The company isn\u2019t \u201cin the space industry; we\u2019re in-space industry,\u201d he said. Space is \u201cjust another place to ship to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Put another way, the actual business is pretty prosaic, he proposed, suggesting that people imagine a bioreactor, or just an oven, that has the usual knobs \u2013 temperature, stir rate, pressure \u2013 and offering that Varda is adding a \u201cgravity knob.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cForget about space for a second,\u201d said Bruey. \u201cWe just have this magic oven in the back of our warehouse where you can create formulations that you otherwise couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Worth noting: Varda isn\u2019t discovering new drugs or creating new molecules. It\u2019s aiming to expand the menu of what can be done with existing, approved drugs.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t speculative science. Companies like Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck have been running pharmaceutical crystallization experiments on the International Space Station for years, proving the concept works. Varda says it\u2019s just making it commercial by building the infrastructure to do it repeatedly, reliably, and at a scale that might actually matter to the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n
As for why now, two things have changed. First, space launches have become bookable and predictable. \u201cTen years ago, you would have to get a chartered flight. It was like hitchhiking to get to orbit if you were not a primary mission payload,\u201d Bruey explained. \u201cIt\u2019s still expensive today, but [it\u2019s dependable, you can book a slot, and we [have] booked launches years in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Second, companies like Rocket Lab started producing satellite buses that could be purchased off the shelf. Buying Photon buses from Rocket Lab and integrating its pharmaceutical manufacturing capsules with them was a major unlock.<\/p>\n
Still, only the highest-value products make economic sense. That\u2019s why Varda started with pharmaceuticals; a drug that can command thousands of dollars per dose can absorb the transportation costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The \u201cseven domino\u201d theory<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen Bruey talks to members of Congress, which he says he does frequently these days, he pitches what he calls the \u201cseven domino theory.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Domino one: reusable rockets. Done. Domino two: manufacturing drugs in orbit and returning them. Domino three is the big one: getting a drug into clinical trials. \u201cIt\u2019s a big deal because what it means is perpetual launch.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is where Varda\u2019s business model diverges fundamentally from every other space company.<\/p>\n
Think about how satellite companies work. SiriusXM launches satellites to broadcast radio. DirecTV launches satellites to transmit television. Even Starlink, with its thousands of satellites, is fundamentally building out a constellation \u2013 a network that, once complete, doesn\u2019t require constant launches to function. These companies treat launch as a capital investment. They spend money to place hardware in orbit, and then they\u2019re done.<\/p>\n
Varda is different. Each drug formulation requires manufacturing runs. Manufacturing runs require launches. More demand for the drugs means more launches.<\/p>\n
This matters because it changes the economics for launch providers. Instead of selling a fixed number of launches to build out a constellation, they have a customer with (theoretically) unlimited demand that grows with success. That kind of predictable, scalable demand helps justify the fixed costs of launch infrastructure and drives down per-launch prices.<\/p>\n
Domino four triggers the feedback loop: as Varda scales, costs drop, making the next tier of drugs economically viable. More drugs mean more scale, lowering costs again \u2013 a cycle Bruey says will \u201cshove launch costs into the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Varda\u2019s commercial viability remains unproven, and no space-manufactured drugs are currently on pharmacy shelves. But the virtuous cycle Bruey imagines won\u2019t just benefit Varda. Lower launch costs make space accessible for other industries, including semiconductors, fiber optics, and exotic materials \u2013 everything that benefits from microgravity but can\u2019t yet justify the expense.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Bruey tells his team, launch costs will get so low that it will be cheaper to put an employee in orbit for a month because creating additional automation would cost more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI imagine \u2018Jane\u2019 goes to space for a month. It\u2019ll be like [heading to] an oil rig. She works at the drug factory for a month, comes back down, and [becomes] the first person ever to go to space and back where she generate[s] more value than the cost to take her there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s at that moment, Bruey says, when \u201cthe invisible hand of the free market economy lifts us off our home planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The near-death experience<\/strong><\/p>\nThe path to those shooting star drug deliveries nearly ended before it began, Bruey told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n
Varda launched W-1 in June 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission. The pharmaceutical manufacturing process inside the capsule worked as planned, producing crystals of Form III ritonavir, a specific crystalline structure of the HIV drug that\u2019s difficult to create on Earth. The experiments were completed within weeks.<\/p>\n
But then the capsule just . . . stayed in orbit. For six months. The problem wasn\u2019t technical, Bruey said; Varda couldn\u2019t get approval to bring its W-1 capsule home.<\/p>\n
The Utah Test and Training Range, where Varda wanted to land, exists to \u201ctest weapons and train warriors,\u201d as Bruey put it. Space drugs didn\u2019t fall into that category, so Varda wasn\u2019t a priority customer. When higher-priority military missions needed the range, they bumped Varda\u2019s scheduled landing windows. Each bump invalidated the company\u2019s reentry license with the FAA, requiring it to start the approval process over.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were 80 people in the office who had spent two and a half years of their lives on this thing, and it\u2019s in orbit, but we\u2019re not sure if it can come home,\u201d Bruey recalled.<\/p>\n
The situation looked bad from the outside. To observers, it seemed like Varda had been reckless and launched without proper approvals. But he said in reality, the FAA had authorized Varda to launch without a finalized reentry license because the agency wanted to encourage the nascent commercial reentry industry.<\/p>\n
The FAA had authorized Varda to launch without a finalized reentry license, encouraging the nascent commercial reentry industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey encouraged us to proceed with our launch, with the goal being that we would continue to coordinate that license, as well as the use of reentry timing with the range, while we were in orbit,\u201d Bruey explained.<\/p>\n
The real problem was that this was the first commercial land reentry ever attempted. There was no established process for the Utah range to coordinate with the FAA. Both entities felt like they were shouldering all the liability.<\/p>\n
Varda explored every alternative it could think of. Water landing? The capsule doesn\u2019t float; they\u2019d lose it. Australia? Possible, and they started those conversations. But Bruey says he made a call: no half measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cEither you have to push the boundaries of regulation to create this future, or you don\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cIn order for Varda to be successful, we need to land on land regularly. So we just sucked it up and said, \u2018Let\u2019s figure this one out.\u201d<\/p>\n
While its first mission remained stranded in orbit, the company continued production on the next capsule. It kept hiring.<\/p>\n
In February 2024, eight months after launch, W-1 finally came home. It landed as originally planned at the Utah Test and Training Range, the first commercial spacecraft to land on a military test range and the first to land on U.S. soil under the FAA\u2019s Part 450 licensing framework, introduced by the agency in 2021 to make commercial space operations more flexible.<\/p>\n
Now Varda has landing sites in both the U.S. and Australia, and it\u2019s the first company to receive an FAA Part 450 operator license that lets it reenter the U.S. without resubmitting full safety documentation for each flight.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Varda has a secondary business that emerged from necessity: hypersonic testing.<\/p>\n
Very few objects ever travel through the atmosphere at Mach 25. The environment at those speeds is extreme and unique: Temperatures reach thousands of degrees, creating a plasma sheath around a vehicle. The air itself undergoes chemical reactions as molecules are ripped apart and recombine. This environment can\u2019t be replicated on Earth, even in the most advanced wind tunnels.<\/p>\n
The Air Force and other defense agencies need to test materials, sensors, navigation systems, and communications equipment in real hypersonic conditions. Traditionally, that would require dedicated test flights that cost upwards of $100 million each and involve significant risk.<\/p>\n
Varda offers an alternative. Its W-1 capsules are already reentering at Mach 25. The company can embed sensors, test new thermal protection materials, or validate equipment in the actual flight environment rather than in approximations. The capsule is akin to a wind tunnel, and the reentry is the test.<\/p>\n
Varda has already flown experiments for the Air Force Research Laboratory, including an optical emission spectroscopy payload that took in-situ measurements of the shock layer during reentry.<\/p>\n
Investors are, big surprise, excited about Varda\u2019s story. The company raised $329 million as of its Series C round this past July, most of it earmarked for building out the company\u2019s pharmaceutical lab in El Segundo. It\u2019s also hiring structural biologists and crystallization scientists to work on more complex molecules, eventually including biologics like monoclonal antibodies, which Bruey says is a $210 billion market.<\/p>\n
A whole lot has to go right between then and now for Varda to elbow its way into that business, as well as to make a dent in the business it\u2019s currently targeting. But if Bruey is right, \u201cthen\u201d is closer than most people might right now imagine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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