Smash Notes

Back to Inside Starcloud’s $2B Space Factory, with Philip Johnston & Ezra Feilden.

How Much Did Starcloud Pay for a Broken Vibration Table?

Philip Johnston says Starcloud bought a secondhand broken vibration table for 200 grand after the team could not find a table in the US that would test a pressure vessel in time. A new vibration table costs about $1.5 million, and the lead time is almost two years.

Starcloud 1 is launched. Starcloud 2 is in the assembly facility, midway through move-in, with boxes everywhere. Two lasers sit on top, with deployables and about a 120 foot wingspan, and the satellite has just been through vibration testing. The team worked all weekend to fix the broken table. A welded mock-up of the Starcloud 3 chassis is in the fab shop to show the size. Newer facilities come online next year.

Grokipedia·StarCloud·Philip Johnston

Transcript

Inside Starcloud’s $2B Space Factory ·

Sourcery

More from this episode

  1. Where Are Most New Satellites Built?Philip Johnston says Starcloud is based in the Seattle region because 90% of all satellites launched in the last few years by mass were designed, built, and…
  2. How Does Starcloud Cool Computers in Space?Adi Oltean says Starcloud cools computers in space with the liquid cooling that data centers on Earth switched to in 2025, because liquid cooling is the only…
  3. How Big Is the Starcloud 3 Spacecraft?Ezra Feilden says Starcloud 3 is the company's largest platform, a vehicle of about two tons, and as many as 50 can deploy on one Starship launch.
  4. How Easy Is Booking a Falcon 9 Rideshare?Ezra Feilden says booking a Falcon 9 rideshare is unbelievably easy.
  5. Why Would Anyone Put a Data Center in Orbit?Philip Johnston says a data center in orbit gets cheaper than one on Earth once launch falls to about $500 a kilogram.
  6. What Is Starcloud One Doing With Satellite Imagery?Philip Johnston says Starcloud One runs inference on satellite imagery in orbit, so the coordinates of a vessel can come down in minutes rather than hours and…
  7. Why Does Everyone Leave a Starcloud 2 Test?Philip Johnston says everyone leaves the building for a Starcloud 2 vibration test because a xenon tank under the satellite has about half the explosive power…
  8. What Did Miguel Rivera Do at Helion?Miguel Rivera was the welder for Helion Energy, where the team built fusion generators, and he ran their fabrication shop for more than a year before becoming…
  9. What Did Bailey Montaño Do Before Starcloud?Bailey Montaño started at SpaceX in aerospace, spent about four years there, tried biotech and consumer product design, and then spent three years in fusion…
  10. Why Is Shooting Down a Satellite So Hard?Philip Johnston says shooting down a satellite is a lot harder than blowing up a data center in Virginia, because satellites travel at about 17,000 miles an…

People

More answers like this

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.