Kistler Aerospace has filed Chapter 11. They’re half a billion dollars in debt.

I’ve never thought much of them. It’s another example of people who know what to do not having the money, and people with money not knowing what to do. The original Kistler concept (which Walt Kistler himself came up with) was a little loony–a flying bedpost for a first stage, and recoverable rockets that landed in nets. But things really went downhill, in my opinion, when they brought in a bunch of Apollo retreads, in an effort to get credibility to raise the money they thought they needed.

They spent many hundreds of millions of dollars–enough to fund a half dozen other, more sensible startups, and I’m not sure at this point what they have to show for it. They’ve demonstrated, sadly, that private ventures can blow large amounts of money seeking low-cost access, just as NASA does.

I think they had a failed business model (like Beal, they didn’t understand the market or the forces that would be arrayed against them), that resulted in a failed development approach as well. XCOR has learned the lesson–you don’t get low costs by spending lots of money.

Fortunately, I think we’re past the days that we need to hire ex-NASA managers to raise funding.