6 ms·

After Astra loses 99 percent of its value, founders take rocket firm private

84 points by perihelions 3y ago

GreenTrich 3y ago
[flagged]
bell-cot 3y ago
From a national security & technology policy PoV, there are far too few private space companies. Space is looking very big and important, and the U.S. has far too many of its eggs in the SpaceX basket. From a business PoV, there are far too many private space companies. Beyond satellite internet (which may have very sketchy economics) and maybe, eventually space tourism for the uber-rich, there isn't enough demand for launch services, satellites, etc. to justify even 10% of the current and near-future capacity. But space is cool, and there are plenty of bright wanna-be rocket scientists and dim wanna-be space billionaires - so I'd expect to see plenty more launches and crashes of private space companies.
- marvin 3y ago
  SpaceX is amazing, but having Elon Musk as a critical geopolitical asset seems rather dodgy given his loud anti-Western comments recently.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    's/rather dodgy/dodgy at best/; s/loud anti-Western comments recently/often-poor judgement and problematic mental balance/'
  - ImHereToVote 3y ago
    Could you provide examples of the anti-western comments he has posted? I understand he is one of the few of the ultra rich who wants to increase the birth rate beyond replacement in the west.
    - notahacker 3y ago
      Generally I think the West is more concerned about the fact that he's currently providing infrastructure for a Western ally whilst actively campaigning for them to surrender, endorsing Russia's annexation of the Crimea and questioning the existence of NATO than his enthusiasm for fecundity. Though I think the comment that's most indicative of Musk's actual mental state recently is "super rich ex wives who hate their spouse should be listed under the 'Reasons Western Civilization died'". :D
      - ImHereToVote 3y ago
        Thanks. So you think he is essentially against western civilization in his motives, if I understand you correctly. What do you think drives this sentiment? Does he want another sort of civilization to flourish instead of the Western one?
        notahacker 3y ago
        That's... a long way from what I actually said, which is that it's fairly unusual for a Western ally to be dependent on infrastructure provided by a company lead by an-unstable-seeming guy whose screechingly bad takes on Twitter include an obsession with endorsing their enemy's talking points.
        willcipriano 3y ago
        [flagged]
        panick21_ 3y ago
        Its always kind of funny to me that people call Musk unstable. He had the same 2 jobs for decades now. He does these jobs and works on them insane hours. He is successful in the things he does. Other then people not liking his opinion, he isn't really unstable in any meaningful way. People just prefer to call him crazy and unstable because then anything he says doesn't have to be taken seriously. Of course he is often wrong about things, and has bad takes. And he can get angry and competitive. He is pretty petty. But if that makes somebody mentally unstable there are a lot of unstable people around.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > there isn't enough demand for launch services, satellites, etc. to justify even 10% of the current and near-future capacity. Perhaps. But lower costs can reveal demand. For example, while I think microwave beamed power from space is a terrible idea, an orbital ring can also be used to transport power[0], and Starship makes such a structure somewhat more affordable. [0] can, but I'm not saying it's the best option, even if "a charged object spinning in a vacuum" is a ballistic superconductor[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring [1] without the quantum effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    > lower costs can reveal demand. The markets for sub-orbital passenger service, or transporting bulk goods, are still 99.9% speculation. Otherwise - the total cost of a satellite or space station includes generally-very-high development and construction costs, then serious ongoing operational expenses. Neither dirt-cheap launch, nor a "Raspberry Pi, but for space" generic satellite bus could make useful satellites nearly as cheap as many folks seem eager to imagine. And Kessler Syndrome concerns give every A List nation in space ample reason to discourage anyone who wants to put cheap-but-less-reliable stuff into orbit. (Or abandon their stuff in orbit, after they get bored or go bankrupt.) Lower costs can also reveal that you've blown billions on a 4-lane bridge to Lonely Island, when the 4-trips-daily old car ferry really was enough.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is, given you're responding negatively to the possibility of very small cheap things when my example was a piece of global power-grid infrastructure that's probably got a raw material cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars range even if launch was free? (And made out of a launch system which would make launch costs overlap the price range of cargo flights).
      - bell-cot 3y ago
        >> For example, while I think microwave beamed power from space is a terrible idea, an orbital ring can also be used to transport power[0], and Starship makes such a structure somewhat more affordable... You're obviously more familiar with this concept than I am...and your wording seems fairly unenthusiastic about the prospects for it. So spending billions to unlock the possibility of it...well, just does not sound like a rational business decision. And my "...isn't enough demand...to justify..." point was tagged "From a business PoV".
rvz 3y ago
It doesn't matter about the company, the SPAC route has almost always resulted in the collapse of any company that is unable to make or show evidence of growing revenue and they list on the stock exchange anyway. SPACs are a complete scam and a grift only benefitting insiders.
- hef19898 3y ago
  I know one such person, sold his full stake before the SPAC for the nominall SPAC price minus some, negligible, discount. Shortly after SPAC, it tanked. Since the they are positioning themselves as an Angel investor and early start-up expert. Might well be true, they have the money to be an Angel and argueably stayed with their company until SPAC. What I never understood was, why for the love of god, he choose to stay with the SPAC company...
reisse 3y ago
How does such buyback work? Like, for example, with retail shareholders - all the owners just wake up one day having their stocks exchanged for the money? What happens if you are not legally or contractually allowed to sell your Astra stock? E. g. you're in the process of bankruptcy, or your stock is used as a security deposit or margin for some contract? What happens if Astra is not legally allowed to buy back stock from you? Like if some stock was owned by some Russian investment fund, which was later sanctioned? Should Astra request an OFAC license for the transaction?
- Vecr 3y ago
  It gets replaced with dollars in your account. You don't have a choice. Maybe that's stupidly made illegal somewhere, but in most cases just don't touch the dollars afterwards.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  I can't speak for Astra, but I worked for and held stock in a company that went private, and the way it worked was you were given a choice to either sell at the price proposed by the private party that was going to be the new owner, or you retained your shares but they would no longer be publicly tradeable. If you did nothing, the default was, yes, the shares would just disappear and be replaced in your account by cash. If you opted to retain, however, possibly because you were legally required to for some reason, have at it. You just own a thing you can't sell now. If the company ever goes public again in the future, then you can sell.
FL33TW00D 3y ago
1/4 down out of the new space companies explored in The day the heavens went on sale by Ashlee Vance. Not surprised it's Astra. All in RKLB.
xyst 3y ago
Crash and burn. How fitting for a SPAC company.
tjpnz 3y ago
Why isn't anyone adopting Astra's simple, no thrills approach and applying it to suborbital tourist flights? Blue Origin are only using New Shepard to please hand-picked celebrities while testing their capsule for mating to New Glenn (hence the current phallic appearance), and Virgin Galactic are doing.. well god knows what. Build something small and simple for 2-4 people and launch it around the clock from multiple sites across the world. If it could be offered as a 20-50k carnival ride there would be no shortage of willing customers.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Because building a human capable machine is expensive and its hard to sell tickets to rich people if you kill like 50% of them. Astra approach literally resulted in them not having a reliable rocket ever. Ever rocket they ever build had issues. Simply put, human suborbital is barley a real market at all. Its unlikely anybody will make a profit of it. And given the Blue Origin has infinity money and no need for revenue. And VO has scammed the stock market out of 100 of million of $. Entering in that market would be crazy, you are not Jeff Bezos and you can't scam the stock market again. And anybody smart isn't gone invest in this terrible market.
- danw1979 3y ago
  Could we have a decade or two of expensive civilian spaceflight to work out the kinks before Ryanair get involved ?
- nine_k 3y ago
  Small, simple, and 2-4 people combine poorly. I think the closest is the venerable Soyuz-2 rocket that has been built and flown in hundreds, without drastic changes. It was used for space tourism.a few times, but it's still too expensive, even at $30M per launch (without an orbital vehicle though).
  - tjpnz 3y ago
    Soyuz isn't reusable and doesn't take advantage of recent advances in manufacturing. I recently saw a capsule flown three years ago and could see the hand beaten panels and ruler marks from the people who were cutting the metal and welding it together by hand. Building them like that will be expensive.
AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
Is there any info on what caused their technical issues? Basic rocketry isn't all that hard anymore, the dynamics are well understood, were they trying to do something weird with manufacturing?
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Perhaps every single piece is taught in engineering school, but there are thousands of things that need to go perfectly every time. That's hard.
  - AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
    Turns out there's a list on Wikipedia. Looks like they found just about everything that can go wrong. Mostly fuel system issues though. It's pretty uncommon to be that bad at launch vehicle design. Recently Vulcan and SLS both launched and made orbit with new designs on the first try instead of the 7th, though you could probably just stack $1 bills and get to space just as fast. Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. Relativity almost made it and they had a very weird production technique. SpaceX has been having issues but they're building a much more complicated vehicle.
    - everfrustrated 3y ago
      >Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. IIRC their first launch was destroyed by bad telemetry requiring manual flight termination (if in doubt terminate), the hardware itself flew perfectly on first launch. Which is remarkably impressive.
    - Perceval 3y ago
      It true that Astra took 7 tries to get to orbit, but they did so in record time from founding to achieving orbit. * Astra - 5 years * SpaceX - 7 years * Firefly - 8 years * RocketLab - 12 years * Virgin Orbit - 13 years ABL, Relativity, Blue Origin, Stoke - never made it to orbit Compare the cost of SLS ($4.1 billion) and Vulcan ($100-200 million) to an Astra rocket ($4 million). If you spend 100-1000x more money, is it impressive to have better performance than a $4 million rocket?
yieldcrv 3y ago
Pretty good trade, earn money from SPAC sale, keep the money and invest it your way between 2020 and 2024. Post-SPAC shares now at 99% off, while your personal investments mooned or simply stayed steady in cash. Buy Post-SPAC shares and take company private. Love a good short sale.
- hef19898 3y ago
  How does one call it when the evil short sellers are also the founders and owners of the company?
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    The problem was never evil short sellers and always evil naked short sellers. Two very different things. The latter being highly illegal and policed everywhere except in the US (market maker exemptions).
    - ebhud83 3y ago
      Found the reddit ape. How heavy are those bags you're holding? Post losses, baggie.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    so I personally treat all my entrepreneurial endeavors the same way as I treat shares in my brokerage account. It doesn't make a difference to me if I bought shares from someone for $36/share or if I created shares on a piece of paper for $0.00/share If someone else buys those $0.00 shares for $36/share from me, and then those shares are worth much closer to $0.00 again, I'll make an offer and consider doing it again. Investments where you have an outsized influence on the outcome are tightly regulated but great opportunities to watch out for. In this case, SPACs were always set up to flood the market with shares no matter what the underlying financials of the target company were like. Rosy? Still flooded with shares. Paltry? same result. If people buy that anyway I can't consider that evil. The SEC mandated disclosures. Although in 2020 SPACs were allowed to say forward looking statements of potential target companies, and the SEC has clamped down on that because they have a paternal view that investors - the individual humans - cannot discern and are gullible, swayed by cults of personality. Personally, I think its a matter for investors, many SPAC deals did not close because investors used their discretion to not approve the movement of money into the target company and withdrew. Everyone has agency.
rob74 3y ago
Not to be confused with SES Astra (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra)
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Astra produced one of the most entertaining rocket launch failures ever. Their software/controls people were obviously top notch. https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE
- gridspy 3y ago
  I loved that SpaceX vs SpaceY joke in your linked video (The relevant rocket had an engine failure and left the pad sideways rather than upwards, with impressive control)
- CableNinja 3y ago
  Like watching half my rockets in KSP. This got a good laugh out of me. They tried, good on them. Rockets arent easy! Its rocket surgery!
- avmich 3y ago
  > Their software/controls people were obviously top notch. Ben Brockert was at controls - literally - and led Masten Space to the first place in Northrop Grumman Lunar Landing Challenge - https://www.xprize.org/prizes/lunar-lander https://www.xprize.org/prizes/lunar-lander - and he also participated in Astra activities. I'm sure experience in rocket control can accumulate...
GreenTrich 3y ago
[flagged]

84 points by perihelions 3y ago

[flagged]

From a national security & technology policy PoV, there are far too few private space companies. Space is looking very big and important, and the U.S. has far too many of its eggs in the SpaceX basket. From a business PoV, there are far too many private space companies. Beyond satellite internet (which may have very sketchy economics) and maybe, eventually space tourism for the uber-rich, there isn't enough demand for launch services, satellites, etc. to justify even 10% of the current and near-future capacity. But space is cool, and there are plenty of bright wanna-be rocket scientists and dim wanna-be space billionaires - so I'd expect to see plenty more launches and crashes of private space companies.

marvin 3y ago
SpaceX is amazing, but having Elon Musk as a critical geopolitical asset seems rather dodgy given his loud anti-Western comments recently.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  's/rather dodgy/dodgy at best/; s/loud anti-Western comments recently/often-poor judgement and problematic mental balance/'
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  Could you provide examples of the anti-western comments he has posted? I understand he is one of the few of the ultra rich who wants to increase the birth rate beyond replacement in the west.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    Generally I think the West is more concerned about the fact that he's currently providing infrastructure for a Western ally whilst actively campaigning for them to surrender, endorsing Russia's annexation of the Crimea and questioning the existence of NATO than his enthusiasm for fecundity. Though I think the comment that's most indicative of Musk's actual mental state recently is "super rich ex wives who hate their spouse should be listed under the 'Reasons Western Civilization died'". :D
    - ImHereToVote 3y ago
      Thanks. So you think he is essentially against western civilization in his motives, if I understand you correctly. What do you think drives this sentiment? Does he want another sort of civilization to flourish instead of the Western one?
      - notahacker 3y ago
        That's... a long way from what I actually said, which is that it's fairly unusual for a Western ally to be dependent on infrastructure provided by a company lead by an-unstable-seeming guy whose screechingly bad takes on Twitter include an obsession with endorsing their enemy's talking points.
        willcipriano 3y ago
        [flagged]
        panick21_ 3y ago
        Its always kind of funny to me that people call Musk unstable. He had the same 2 jobs for decades now. He does these jobs and works on them insane hours. He is successful in the things he does. Other then people not liking his opinion, he isn't really unstable in any meaningful way. People just prefer to call him crazy and unstable because then anything he says doesn't have to be taken seriously. Of course he is often wrong about things, and has bad takes. And he can get angry and competitive. He is pretty petty. But if that makes somebody mentally unstable there are a lot of unstable people around.
ben_w 3y ago
> there isn't enough demand for launch services, satellites, etc. to justify even 10% of the current and near-future capacity. Perhaps. But lower costs can reveal demand. For example, while I think microwave beamed power from space is a terrible idea, an orbital ring can also be used to transport power[0], and Starship makes such a structure somewhat more affordable. [0] can, but I'm not saying it's the best option, even if "a charged object spinning in a vacuum" is a ballistic superconductor[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring [1] without the quantum effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_conduction
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > lower costs can reveal demand. The markets for sub-orbital passenger service, or transporting bulk goods, are still 99.9% speculation. Otherwise - the total cost of a satellite or space station includes generally-very-high development and construction costs, then serious ongoing operational expenses. Neither dirt-cheap launch, nor a "Raspberry Pi, but for space" generic satellite bus could make useful satellites nearly as cheap as many folks seem eager to imagine. And Kessler Syndrome concerns give every A List nation in space ample reason to discourage anyone who wants to put cheap-but-less-reliable stuff into orbit. (Or abandon their stuff in orbit, after they get bored or go bankrupt.) Lower costs can also reveal that you've blown billions on a 4-lane bridge to Lonely Island, when the 4-trips-daily old car ferry really was enough.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is, given you're responding negatively to the possibility of very small cheap things when my example was a piece of global power-grid infrastructure that's probably got a raw material cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars range even if launch was free? (And made out of a launch system which would make launch costs overlap the price range of cargo flights).
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      >> For example, while I think microwave beamed power from space is a terrible idea, an orbital ring can also be used to transport power[0], and Starship makes such a structure somewhat more affordable... You're obviously more familiar with this concept than I am...and your wording seems fairly unenthusiastic about the prospects for it. So spending billions to unlock the possibility of it...well, just does not sound like a rational business decision. And my "...isn't enough demand...to justify..." point was tagged "From a business PoV".

rvz 3y ago

It doesn't matter about the company, the SPAC route has almost always resulted in the collapse of any company that is unable to make or show evidence of growing revenue and they list on the stock exchange anyway. SPACs are a complete scam and a grift only benefitting insiders.

hef19898 3y ago
I know one such person, sold his full stake before the SPAC for the nominall SPAC price minus some, negligible, discount. Shortly after SPAC, it tanked. Since the they are positioning themselves as an Angel investor and early start-up expert. Might well be true, they have the money to be an Angel and argueably stayed with their company until SPAC. What I never understood was, why for the love of god, he choose to stay with the SPAC company...

reisse 3y ago

How does such buyback work? Like, for example, with retail shareholders - all the owners just wake up one day having their stocks exchanged for the money? What happens if you are not legally or contractually allowed to sell your Astra stock? E. g. you're in the process of bankruptcy, or your stock is used as a security deposit or margin for some contract? What happens if Astra is not legally allowed to buy back stock from you? Like if some stock was owned by some Russian investment fund, which was later sanctioned? Should Astra request an OFAC license for the transaction?

Vecr 3y ago
It gets replaced with dollars in your account. You don't have a choice. Maybe that's stupidly made illegal somewhere, but in most cases just don't touch the dollars afterwards.
nonameiguess 3y ago
I can't speak for Astra, but I worked for and held stock in a company that went private, and the way it worked was you were given a choice to either sell at the price proposed by the private party that was going to be the new owner, or you retained your shares but they would no longer be publicly tradeable. If you did nothing, the default was, yes, the shares would just disappear and be replaced in your account by cash. If you opted to retain, however, possibly because you were legally required to for some reason, have at it. You just own a thing you can't sell now. If the company ever goes public again in the future, then you can sell.

FL33TW00D 3y ago

1/4 down out of the new space companies explored in The day the heavens went on sale by Ashlee Vance. Not surprised it's Astra. All in RKLB.

xyst 3y ago

Crash and burn. How fitting for a SPAC company.

tjpnz 3y ago

Why isn't anyone adopting Astra's simple, no thrills approach and applying it to suborbital tourist flights? Blue Origin are only using New Shepard to please hand-picked celebrities while testing their capsule for mating to New Glenn (hence the current phallic appearance), and Virgin Galactic are doing.. well god knows what. Build something small and simple for 2-4 people and launch it around the clock from multiple sites across the world. If it could be offered as a 20-50k carnival ride there would be no shortage of willing customers.

panick21_ 3y ago
Because building a human capable machine is expensive and its hard to sell tickets to rich people if you kill like 50% of them. Astra approach literally resulted in them not having a reliable rocket ever. Ever rocket they ever build had issues. Simply put, human suborbital is barley a real market at all. Its unlikely anybody will make a profit of it. And given the Blue Origin has infinity money and no need for revenue. And VO has scammed the stock market out of 100 of million of $. Entering in that market would be crazy, you are not Jeff Bezos and you can't scam the stock market again. And anybody smart isn't gone invest in this terrible market.
danw1979 3y ago
Could we have a decade or two of expensive civilian spaceflight to work out the kinks before Ryanair get involved ?
nine_k 3y ago
Small, simple, and 2-4 people combine poorly. I think the closest is the venerable Soyuz-2 rocket that has been built and flown in hundreds, without drastic changes. It was used for space tourism.a few times, but it's still too expensive, even at $30M per launch (without an orbital vehicle though).
- tjpnz 3y ago
  Soyuz isn't reusable and doesn't take advantage of recent advances in manufacturing. I recently saw a capsule flown three years ago and could see the hand beaten panels and ruler marks from the people who were cutting the metal and welding it together by hand. Building them like that will be expensive.

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago

Is there any info on what caused their technical issues? Basic rocketry isn't all that hard anymore, the dynamics are well understood, were they trying to do something weird with manufacturing?

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Perhaps every single piece is taught in engineering school, but there are thousands of things that need to go perfectly every time. That's hard.
- AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
  Turns out there's a list on Wikipedia. Looks like they found just about everything that can go wrong. Mostly fuel system issues though. It's pretty uncommon to be that bad at launch vehicle design. Recently Vulcan and SLS both launched and made orbit with new designs on the first try instead of the 7th, though you could probably just stack $1 bills and get to space just as fast. Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. Relativity almost made it and they had a very weird production technique. SpaceX has been having issues but they're building a much more complicated vehicle.
  - everfrustrated 3y ago
    >Rocket lab got electron to orbit on their second try. IIRC their first launch was destroyed by bad telemetry requiring manual flight termination (if in doubt terminate), the hardware itself flew perfectly on first launch. Which is remarkably impressive.
  - Perceval 3y ago
    It true that Astra took 7 tries to get to orbit, but they did so in record time from founding to achieving orbit. * Astra - 5 years * SpaceX - 7 years * Firefly - 8 years * RocketLab - 12 years * Virgin Orbit - 13 years ABL, Relativity, Blue Origin, Stoke - never made it to orbit Compare the cost of SLS ($4.1 billion) and Vulcan ($100-200 million) to an Astra rocket ($4 million). If you spend 100-1000x more money, is it impressive to have better performance than a $4 million rocket?

yieldcrv 3y ago

Pretty good trade, earn money from SPAC sale, keep the money and invest it your way between 2020 and 2024. Post-SPAC shares now at 99% off, while your personal investments mooned or simply stayed steady in cash. Buy Post-SPAC shares and take company private. Love a good short sale.

hef19898 3y ago
How does one call it when the evil short sellers are also the founders and owners of the company?
- bboygravity 3y ago
  The problem was never evil short sellers and always evil naked short sellers. Two very different things. The latter being highly illegal and policed everywhere except in the US (market maker exemptions).
  - ebhud83 3y ago
    Found the reddit ape. How heavy are those bags you're holding? Post losses, baggie.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  so I personally treat all my entrepreneurial endeavors the same way as I treat shares in my brokerage account. It doesn't make a difference to me if I bought shares from someone for $36/share or if I created shares on a piece of paper for $0.00/share If someone else buys those $0.00 shares for $36/share from me, and then those shares are worth much closer to $0.00 again, I'll make an offer and consider doing it again. Investments where you have an outsized influence on the outcome are tightly regulated but great opportunities to watch out for. In this case, SPACs were always set up to flood the market with shares no matter what the underlying financials of the target company were like. Rosy? Still flooded with shares. Paltry? same result. If people buy that anyway I can't consider that evil. The SEC mandated disclosures. Although in 2020 SPACs were allowed to say forward looking statements of potential target companies, and the SEC has clamped down on that because they have a paternal view that investors - the individual humans - cannot discern and are gullible, swayed by cults of personality. Personally, I think its a matter for investors, many SPAC deals did not close because investors used their discretion to not approve the movement of money into the target company and withdrew. Everyone has agency.

rob74 3y ago

Not to be confused with SES Astra (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra)

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Astra produced one of the most entertaining rocket launch failures ever. Their software/controls people were obviously top notch. https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE https://youtu.be/x2jU5W4ehPE

gridspy 3y ago
I loved that SpaceX vs SpaceY joke in your linked video (The relevant rocket had an engine failure and left the pad sideways rather than upwards, with impressive control)
CableNinja 3y ago
Like watching half my rockets in KSP. This got a good laugh out of me. They tried, good on them. Rockets arent easy! Its rocket surgery!
avmich 3y ago
> Their software/controls people were obviously top notch. Ben Brockert was at controls - literally - and led Masten Space to the first place in Northrop Grumman Lunar Landing Challenge - https://www.xprize.org/prizes/lunar-lander https://www.xprize.org/prizes/lunar-lander - and he also participated in Astra activities. I'm sure experience in rocket control can accumulate...

GreenTrich 3y ago

[flagged]