Roid Rage

Sasha, AstroForge's Principal Mechanical Engineer, spent 29 years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) working on some of the most ambitious missions ever built. He joins Jack and Matt to talk about why he left, what surprised him (and what didn't), and how you build spacecraft when the rulebook doesn't exist yet.

Jack and Robyn bring on Yuri, our xenon supplier, to talk about where spacecraft propellant actually comes from. Turns out xenon is a byproduct of steel production, there's no stock exchange for it, and when SpaceX tried to buy enough for Starlink they basically broke the market and had to switch to krypton. Also: Robyn brought a prop.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission went to asteroid Bennu expecting sandy soil and found a rock quarry instead. In this episode, AstroForge senior payload scientist and former Lead Scientist on OSIRIS-REx's sample physical and thermal analysis working group, Andy Ryan, joins Jack to discuss what the team actually found, why it was so radically different from what was expected, and what it might mean for mining a metallic asteroid. Plus; planetary defense, porosity, and lock-in thermography!

Jack sits down with Max and Chris to talk through the end-to-end RF test we just ran: what worked, what didn't, and why the test plan and the test outcomes were not the same. They also get into why we built an anechoic chamber in-house and what it's like to work two feet away from something that would cook you if the walls weren't there.

Jack is joined by Matt and Chap to talk through the Artemis shakeup, why Jared Isaacman airing NASA's dirty laundry is actually a good thing, and how Lunar Trailblazer failed a year ago and nobody said anything until now. Chap walks through why the mining industry is fundamentally broken: it's a hand-crank engine being asked to power an energy transition. We roast a market report that claims asteroid mining is a $2 billion industry in 2025 - Matt would like to have a word with whoever wrote that.
Medium article: https://medium.com/cathay-innovation/redefining-the-mining-value-chain-3d029e5906db