The notion of a space industry isn't new – even back in the publicly funded space travel era it was imagined in fiction and talked about in lofty terms of mining asteroids and holidays in orbit.

But as SpaceX has become a household name the field has become something else entirely. Not just a reality, but a very particular kind of industry, one that has very close parallels with the cycles the tech industries have gone through since the dotcom boom, and a big part of that is the personalities of the tech bros (like those other movements and eras, they're almost universally brash young men).

This movie is just as concerned with the trials and tribulations faced by the public faces of the three companies profiled as it is the industry overall. Astra Space is led by Chris Kemp, a flop-haired programmer who made his millions with shopping websites.

Planet Labs' Will Marshall is a starry eyed idealist who's mission is to photograph the entire Earth's surface regularly enough from orbit that we can track the effects of climate change, food insecurity, etc.

And Kiwi Peter Beck, who has no formal training apart from a thirst for engineering and a childhood interest in space travel, made Rocket Labs one of the world's foremost private spaceflight providers by brute force.

The film is based on a non fiction book by journalist Ashlee Vance, who features prominently speaking to camera making a lot of the same points we can presume his book was about.

It tells the backstories of the three CEOs amid the backdrop of the burgeoning private satellite industry and charts the rise (and sometimes fall) of the three companies they built.

There's a strong theme of the scrappiness of it all, one founders and storytellers love to spin about the formations of industries, companies or ideas – at one point, a cadre of young geeks are arguing about cheap spaceflight in a bar and former US government astrophysicist Pete Worden happened to be sitting nearby, joining the discussion and going on to lead NASA's Ames Research Center, where he helped at least two of the stars of the show get their projects off the ground.

There's a little bit of mythmaking going on, but it's a fun and vibrant ride into a world you might not know about.