Space Terminal: Frontier Tech Intelligence

Gabriel Schlumberger, Managing Director of Techstars Space, details how his accelerator achieves 85% startup survival. This episode covers the SBIR/STTR reauthorization and its immediate impact on early-stage space funding, non-dilutive capital stacking strategies for capex-heavy space hardware, why $10M is pre-seed in space but Series A in SaaS, the rideshare disruption that broke small launch ec...

Yuk Chi Chan, founder of Charter Space, collapsed satellite underwriting timelines from months to days and the insurable asset threshold two orders of magnitude, from $200M to $2M. This technical deep-dive covers the $1.8B in 2023 space insurance losses, why ViaSat-3, Inmarsat, and Astranis dominated the claims ledger, how the 1967 Outer Space Treaty creates state-level liability for private launc...

Julie Newman, VP Engineering at Outpost Space, is building a reusable reentry vehicle that delivers cargo to any helipad on Earth in under 90 minutes with 25-meter precision. This technical deep-dive covers deployable fabric heat shields vs. ablative tile systems, autonomous GNC algorithms for paraglider-guided landing, the Kessler Syndrome risk to the global economy, in-space manufacturing of per...

In this episode of Space Terminal, Taofiq Huq, founder of Spiral Blue, explains how his team survived two near-bankruptcies, restructured management during Techstars, and rebuilt to target 7-day satellite payback periods using LIDAR for carbon farming. This conversation unpacks why 50% accuracy in carbon measurement equals a coin flip, how edge computing cuts satellite power by 10X, and why Starsh...

Justin Kelley, co-founder of Black Sheep Group (BSG), details how his team collapsed DoD signal classification timelines from 2-5 years to 24 hours while underbidding defense primes by 90%. This technical deep-dive covers the training data bottleneck in AI-driven signal intelligence, mixture-of-models architecture for edge deployment, GPS jamming mitigation strategies using cesium clocks, space-ra...

Ethan Baehrend, Founder of Creative 3D Technologies, details the engineering reality behind decentralized semiconductor fabrication and single-cell manufacturing. This technical deep-dive covers the $300 billion low-volume chip production gap, self-healing robotics with nervous system architectures, cost-per-product economics, material science limitations, Arctic defense applications, and the tran...

Dennis WIngo, Founder of of SpaceBilt, details the engineering reality behind orbital data centers and in-space assembly and manufacturing (ISAM). This technical deep-dive covers thermal management constraints, radiation hardening economics, volume-limited rockets, lunar vacuum manufacturing, nuclear propulsion systems, and the transition from cost-plus contracting to commercial space infrastructu...

Lee Wilson, Founder of Astracene, address the "gravity gap" in orbital manufacturing. He details the engineering of expandable space habitats equipped with internal rotating centrifuges. This technical deep-dive covers the transition from microgravity research to industrial-scale production of semiconductors and organoids in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Subject Matter Expert: Lee Wilson (Caltech / Inter...