The entrepreneurial space industry appeared to be booming at the end of 2015. Investment in companies hit record highs, buoyed by OneWeb's $500 million funding round, and SpaceX raising $1 billion from Google and Fidelity. In addition, a variety of startups struck dozens of smaller deals during the year. This year has been a different story. There haven't been any of the huge deals like OneWeb and SpaceX. Instead, there have been several high-profile setbacks. Escape Dynamics, a startup pursuing advanced propulsion technologies, shut down at the beginning of the year because it could not attract enough investment to continue its work. In May, XCOR Aerospace suspended work on its Lynx suborbital spaceplane and laid off a large fraction of its workforce to focus on engine development.
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