Space exploration is a complex, highly technical and increasingly expensive endeavor that traditionally has been the domain of big governments. But more private firms are jumping into the fray and achieving success. In a recent paper, “ Watershed Moments, Cognitive Discontinuities, and Entrepreneurial Entry: The Case of New Space ,” Wharton management professors Laura Huang and Anoop Menon — along with coauthor Tiona Zuzul from the London Business School — studied the watershed moments that have enabled this frenzy of entrepreneurial activity. Huang and Menon recently spoke with Knowledge@wharton about their findings. An edited transcript of the conversation follows. Knowledge at Wharton: Could you summarize what you were studying in this paper? Anoop Menon: We are big aerospace buffs. There has been a huge amount of buzz in the aerospace industry in the past five years or so. There’s Elon Musk, there’s Mars colonization, space travel. But aerospace is a classic example of a hard-to-break-into industry.…