Confessions of a Private Space Rocket Engineer

Downstream would be typical satellite applications (usually communication, navigation, imaging / Earth observation), though I don't know their names out of my head. Sometimes one sees a crowdfunding campaign aiming for some novel application. The lunar applications are mostly different, more on the space science and space mining side.

And of course many things not directly doing rocket science. Just some ideas: space suit sensor networks, big data and analytics for spaceflight medicine R&D, AI for autonomous vehicles or on-site assessments a.s.o. Could be done via established smaller suppliers (e.g. co-funded via Horizon 2020 grants) or own project / startup attempts. Even quite a few of the established players moderately embrace the digitalization and automation wave, so they're open for novel techniques and approaches.

One could get involved with one of the many Mars Society chapters and see whether one could spin off something there.

Our challenge is to create a European private space ecosystem. Luckily we have tech and talent, but compared to the US we're small, underfunded, not well connected. Part of my work is to change that, but I'm still preparing.

There's an older post of mine re the GLXP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9916217

Since you're into Lisp, you perhaps like this one: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html