[DrNuke]

> What It Means for the Space Industry

I am playing the devil’s advocate and writing that the main issue is materials materials materials, ala Steve Ballmer’s developers developers developers?! So that all these five startups seem just ancillary or toooooo long a shot (imho).

[d_silin]

Yes and no. Material science is a limitation for propulsion mostly, but you can let big guys handle that (NASA, SpaceX, etc). There are plenty of niches that require massive amount of hardware and software engineering, but all the tech is already there - space robotics for example.

There is also a question of costs: for deep space missions, beyond LEO you need real rad-hardened electronics. Rad-hardened electronics exists. Cheap rad-hardened electronics doesn't. And there is pleny of other examples. Ion engines is mature enough technology. Cheap ion engines on the other side...

[ianvorbach]

Having trouble following. Interested in hearing more if you'd be willing to expand!

[DrNuke]

At this stage of the space industry evolution, with the sufficient but still limited technology readiness of propulsion (for deep space exploration) and the much lower technology readiness of resistance in extreme environments (for onsite exploration and colonization), it seems to my modest rationale that such five startups are just aiming at minor or lateral goals? Especially considering that YC can really put anyone / anything interesting enough in direct contact with the most important and active people in the field? And the bottleneck, for both branches (propulsion, colonization) is current materials science & engineering, so that 20 years ago the world needed developers for the dotcom revolution, while today it needs materials? Just food for thought, obviously, so take my ramble for what it is.

[simonh]

Developers, developers, developers was about the things those developers would create. The equivalent here would be engineers, engineers, engineers.

You need to use materials to make something, and that thing needs to fulfil a purpose. But until you have an objective and try to make the thing and work out what the thing is, you don’t even know what your requirements are. That’s why engineering projects like Apollo and the shuttle drove materials science advances.

If you put the materials first you run the risk of creating a carbon fibre composites company to make giant space rocket hulls, just as the people actually making the rockets decided for their project they’d use steel.

[ianvorbach]

Ah, thanks for elaborating! Fair and interesting point. It's true that the work these companies are doing is not pushing the cutting edge of technology readiness, but is instead exploiting the most recent advances in R&D by finding business cases that now are possible. As new materials and science advance in research institutions, startups will then step in to commercialize that tech. So I guess I'm saying we shouldn't necessarily expect YC startups to be at the frontier of R&D