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The anti-gravity business

What if space was not simply a place to launch satellites – but a factory floor for making things that cannot be produced on Earth?

That is the bet being made by Auckland startup Outlier Space, which has raised around US$7.35 million (NZ$12.3 million) in pre-seed funding to build reusable spacecraft that carry customer payloads into microgravity, operate them in orbit, then return them safely to Earth. Its first mission is booked for 2028.

The premise is straightforward, if technically formidable. In orbit, a spacecraft is in continuous freefall, creating a microgravity environment in…

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