Great book, one thing it missed is how these satellite constellations are also funded by the government for their dual use potential in Strategic Defense Initiative development (now officially called Golden Dome)
Cool solution, and kudos on investing in getting the compliance groundwork stuff sorted out early. I can't imagine that was cheap or easy. I'd think this is primarily interesting to the newer a&d companies, right? Or even companies who are looking at their first government project. That seems to me like where the value is. The usual suspects tend to already have people and policies in place for proper handling of sensitive info.
Rented a model y last month from them and drove nearly 6,000 miles round trip to visit family out of state. Had to stop more than I did when I’ve previously done the drive in my ICE car, but other than that, very smooth experience. The supercharger costs were more than I expected, but basically a wash with gas. More chargers of course are needed (looking at you SE Arizona and West Texas), and it’d be nice to see EVs have a useable range of 300+ miles of highway driving between charging stops.
One data point, but ~10 years ago, I called the electric providers in DFW to get some quotes. We have this and that option, yada yada yada. I told them that I wanted whatever was cheapest, and much to my surprise, it was the 100% wind option.
I've been hearing lately that "buy what you can, build what you must" is the approach to procurement for orgs like NASA and SDA. If it is the case, one would hope this means more folks like ROCKY can get over that initial hump and grow within those orgs. Would be interesting to hear if that mirrored your experience or not.
I'm not so convinced based on my experience. Seems like that could be the ideal, but in practice for such a large institution it seems difficult to implement. Sharing the word that this team over here is using XYZ and seeing good results to that team over there is challenging.
Easier to keep the employees around with the threat of legally enforced unemployment without the safety net than changing the business or working conditions or pay to something worth sticking around for.
Isuzu sold a small truck called the Hombre. I saw one this week here in the US, and thought it was some joke sticker or something. Nope, turns out Isuzu took an S-10 and called it "guy" or "man". The Isuzu man truck.
