Galleon Space

The Space Economy in the Developing World

The Idea Behind the Name

From 1565 to 1815 — for two hundred and fifty years — Spanish wooden ships called galleons sailed across the Pacific between Manila and Acapulco, creating the first truly global trade route in history. For a quarter of a millennium, the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade was the engine of the world’s most significant economic network, connecting Southeast Asia, Spanish America, and Europe through a single continuous thread of commerce.

Then it ended. And for the two centuries that followed, Southeast Asia and Latin America moved from the center of the global economy to its periphery.

We believe that is about to change again. And we believe the space economy is how it happens.

The new galleons are not wooden ships. They are rockets carrying satellites into orbit, orbital platforms manufacturing materials that are impossible to produce on Earth, AI systems processing planetary-scale data from the edge of space, and eventually — within the lifetimes of children alive today — human settlements beyond our planet. This new fleet is crossing the same distances, connecting the same civilizations, and carrying something more valuable than spices, silk, or silver: the data, connectivity, intelligence, and resources that will define the economy of the 21^st century.

Galleon Space exists to cover this story — and to ensure it ends differently from the first time.

What We Will Cover

Galleon Space is the authoritative English-language newsletter covering the full space economy in Southeast Asia and Latin America — from launch vehicles and satellite infrastructure to the applications built on space data, to the frontier industries that will define the next century. Every two weeks, we will publish deeply researched, analytically rigorous essays on:

▪ Launch vehicles and infrastructure — the private launch companies emerging across the developing world, the equatorial geography that gives Southeast Asia and Latin America a physics-based advantage over higher-latitude launch sites, and the regional infrastructure being built to support the next generation of small satellite deployment.

▪ Satellites and Earth observation — the constellations monitoring our oceans, forests, farms, cities, industrial infrastructure and the founders building the data platforms and analytics layers that turn raw satellite imagery into decisions that save lives, grow food, and build economies.

▪ Space manufacturing — the emerging industry of producing materials in the microgravity, vacuum, and extreme-temperature environment of space that cannot be replicated on Earth — from pharmaceutical crystals and ultra-pure fiber optics to exotic semiconductors — and how developing world operators can participate in the global supply chain.

▪ Space mining and resource extraction — the near-term commercial reality of asteroid and lunar water and mineral extraction, the long-term potential of metals from near-Earth asteroids, and — critically — what the rise of space mining means for developing world economies whose government revenues depend on the terrestrial extraction of the same materials.

▪ AI and compute in space — the convergence of artificial intelligence with space infrastructure: satellite data processed by machine learning, onboard AI enabling autonomous spacecraft decisions, and the emerging concept of orbital AI compute nodes that process data at the edge of space.

▪ Space-enabled connectivity — the LEO satellite constellation revolution bringing high-speed internet to the remote islands, highland communities, and maritime zones that terrestrial networks will never serve, and what universal connectivity means for economic inclusion across the developing world.

▪ Space tourism and the commercial space station era — as the ISS era closes and commercial stations open for business, the ground support, managed services, and supply chain opportunities that developing world technology companies are positioned to capture.

▪ Investment and venture capital — who is funding the developing world space economy, where the gaps are, and why the most significant untapped investment opportunity in global technology is hiding in plain sight.

▪ Research and development — the university laboratories, government research programs, and technical institutions that are building the foundational science and engineering capability of the next generation of space economy companies.

▪ Policy and ecosystem — the space agencies, regulatory frameworks, international partnerships, and government programs shaping whether the developing world captures its fair share of the space economy it is enabling.

▪ People and community — the scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers in the developing world who are building this ecosystem from the inside, one company, one breakthrough, and one policy at a time.

The Thesis

Here is the argument we are making — and will spend years proving:

The nations of Southeast Asia and Latin America are not behind the space economy. They are the space economy’s largest, most urgent, and most underfunded market.

Every segment of the space economy maps onto a regional need of extraordinary scale and urgency:

Rockets and launch infrastructure? Southeast Asia and Latin America have the world’s best equatorial launch geography — yet almost no domestic launch capability. The physics advantage is real, proven, and almost entirely unexploited.

Satellite data and Earth observation? The problems that satellite intelligence solves best — agricultural monitoring across millions of smallholder farms, maritime domain awareness across archipelagic waters, infrastructure assessment across territories too vast to physically inspect — are an order of magnitude more acute in Southeast Asia and Latin America than anywhere in the OECD.

Space manufacturing and mining? The countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America are some of the world’s most significant terrestrial mining nations, with centuries-old expertise in mineral extraction and processing. That expertise translates directly into the emerging field of space resource extraction — but only if their engineers are part of the conversation that is happening right now, largely without them.

AI in space? Southeast Asia and Latin America are generating the largest and fastest-growing volumes of Earth observation data on the planet. The AI models that make sense of that data should be trained on it, by people who understand it, building for the national communities they represent.

Connectivity from space? 150 million people in Southeast Asia and another 150 million people in Latin America remain unconnected to the global internet. LEO satellite constellations are the only realistic path to closing that gap. The opportunity to build the service layer, the integration infrastructure, and the managed connectivity services on top of this constellation infrastructure to deliver communication services to the region is enormous — and largely uncaptured.

The cost structure advantages of building space economy companies across these regions mean that Southeast Asian and Latin American startups can reach profitability faster, serve lower price points commercially, and survive longer on less capital than their Western counterparts.

And the capital gap is extraordinary. Almost no venture capital is explicitly focused on space economy startups from Southeast Asia and Latin America. The market opportunity is vast. The founders are building. The funding is nearly absent.

That gap is real. Galleon Space is here to document how — and to help close it.

The Civilizational Argument

There is a deeper argument beneath the investment thesis — and we want to be honest about it from the beginning.

In the first Age of Exploration, the nations of Southeast Asia and Latin America were the objects and oftentimes victims of European expansion. Their resources were extracted. Their wealth flowed outward. Their civilizations were disrupted. The Galleon Trade that made Manila and Acapulco the hubs of the first global network enriched Spain for two and a half centuries. The Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia and Latin America did not benefit in proportion to their geographic centrality.

We are living through a new age of exploration and economic expansion. And a similar pattern is already visible: satellite data companies based in San Francisco and London that sell developing world data back to developing world governments. Launch companies that charge per kilogram to put Philippine satellites into orbit from facilities in California. The intellectual property and economic value of the space economy are concentrating in the same countries that concentrated the value of the first age of exploration.

And in the longer term — space mining threatens to do to developing world terrestrial mineral economies what the age of exploration did to indigenous trade networks: disrupt them from the outside, for the benefit of those with the technology and capital to act first.

Galleon Space exists because we believe this new age of exploration must end differently.

Southeast Asia and Latin America will not be the objects of the new space economy. They will not be spectators, customers, or afterthoughts. They will be architects — building the rockets, the satellites, the orbital platforms, the mining systems, the AI infrastructure, and the companies that serve their own national communities and generate economic value in and for the region.

That is not a hope. It is already happening. We are here to cover it.

About the Author

Vicente Diño is the founder of Galleon Space.

Vicente brings more than 3 decades of experience building and scaling global enterprise software and services organizations. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Philippines — Diliman.

His mission: to accelerate the full participation of the peoples of Southeast Asia and Latin America in humanity’s exploration of and economic expansion in space.