I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.

Diamandis is underscoring an early pattern in his career: treating space access as an engineering-and-entrepreneurship problem rather than a purely governmental one. By placing the founding of International Microspace immediately after medical school, he highlights a deliberate pivot from a conventional professional track toward high-risk, mission-driven innovation. The mention of a “microsatellite launcher” signals an early recognition that smaller satellites would need cheaper, more frequent launch options—an idea that later became central to commercial space. The quote functions as a credentialing anecdote: it frames his later initiatives as rooted in hands-on attempts to solve launch economics, not just in advocacy or futurism.