Onward and upward
Some evenings stay with you forever. For me, and for many of us at VGP, 5 September was one of them. At 22:12, we sat glued to our screens, holding our breath as the countdown ran: fi ve, four, three, two, one. Mission “Onward and Upward” lifted off from Andøya in Norway, and a few minutes later Isar Aerospace became the first commercial space company from Europe to successfully deliver satellites into orbit, on what was only its second flight. I admit it was emotional. It was one of those rare and beautiful moments when a whole company celebrates the success of a customer as if it were its own. In a way, it was. Dear Daniel, dear team at Isar Aerospace: thank you, and congratulations. We all needed that.
A start-up with a rocket, and a lot of conviction
The story of Isar Aerospace starts the way the best stories often do: with a few students who refused to think small. Daniel Metzler, Josef Fleischmann, and Markus Brandl met at the Technical University of Munich, in the student rocketry group WARR, where they were given all the freedom they needed to tinker with rocket engines. Daniel was 25 when the company was founded in 2018. He once admitted that in 2021 he was still the only one doing commercial sales at Isar Aerospace, which he found somewhat strange because he never saw himself in that role. Most founders will recognise that feeling. So will I. The road to orbit was anything but straight. The first flight in March 2025 suffered an anomaly and came crashing back to Earth less than a minute after launch. The second attempt, first slated for 25 March 2026, was interrupted by a fishing boat that was stuck within the safety zone. Imagine it: years of engineering, a rocket fuelled and ready, and a fishing boat decides the date. Rocket science, it turns out, is sometimes humbled by very ordinary things. The team smiled, regrouped, and kept going.
Believing before it is obvious
When we started working together, Isar Aerospace was still a young company with a bold dream. Convincing everyone to believe in that dream was not easy. The region, local politics, our financing partners: all had to put their trust in a project for a company that was, at that moment, still a start-up. It took many conversations, patience, and the right arguments. But together we succeeded. Today, more than 40,000 square metres of state-of-the-art headquarters, development and production facilities in our VGP Park München in Vaterstetten have been completed and handed over. Isar Aerospace joins BMW and KraussMaffei on a campus we are proud of, and is already writing the next chapter of its history inside those walls. I want to thank sincerely the municipality of Vaterstetten, the regional and local authorities, our partners and neighbours for their trust. This success belongs to you as well.
What real estate is really about
I have always believed that real estate is first about location, and about building assets that can serve for generations. But it must also have a purpose. For us at VGP, that purpose is to support local entrepreneurs and their ambitions, and in our modest way to contribute to the re-industrialisation of Europe. Europe does not lack ideas, talent or ambition. What it sometimes misses is confidence, and the infrastructure to turn them into industry. In a certain way, our role is also to help close that gap. That is why we offer tailor-made solutions in prime locations, as a true one-stop shop. We co-ordinate design and planning, permits, construction, and property and facility management so that our customers can focus fully on their core activity. Our job is to take away the worries of real estate so that they can build rockets, cars, machines, or what ever their dream may be. We try to build tomorrow, today, and to create projects our communities can be proud of when
we look back.
Isar Aerospace as a mirror
Isar Aerospace is, to me, a metaphor for so many of the projects we carry together with our customers. Every project has its own countdown, its own scrubbed launches, its own fi shing boats. What matters is not never making a mistake. What matters is learning from it, staying focused and dedicated, and never giving up. That is exactly what I have seen at Isar Aerospace. To our own teams: this is also your story. Behind every building we hand over are countless hours of planning, negotiating, solving, and believing. Our family motto says sine labore nihil: nothing without hard work. I would add that work becomes lighter when it is carried by friendship, by faith in what we do, and by the pleasure that comes from passion.
With those ingredients, I am convinced there is a solution to everything.
This issue also accompanies us to EXPO REAL in Munich, just a stone’s throw from our VGP Park München. If you visit, come and say hello. We would love to share this story with you in person.
Onward and upward, all of us.
Best regards,
Jan Van Geet
CEO