Payton Case is Co-founder and CEO of Dispatch, a Y Combinator-backed space startup building refurbishable reentry vehicles and autonomous space stations to enable scalable in-orbit manufacturing.

Payton studied at Purdue University and spent years at Astranis Space Technologies, where he worked in the office of the CTO driving spacecraft architecture, production scaling, and critical mission operations.

Payton co-founded Dispatch on the conviction that the future of space manufacturing must be fully uncrewed and autonomous, dramatically reducing cost and complexity by eliminating life support systems entirely.

Alongside co-founder Andrew Mello, Payton spent four years at Astranis building geostationary communications satellites, developing deep expertise in hardware that survives the extreme environments of space.

Dispatch emerged from stealth in April 2026 with $500K in initial funding, having already successfully tested a full-scale reentry heat shield built for 100x less than competitors, and is targeting a first uncrewed station launch in late 2029.