Category: Satellite & NewSpace

In episode #61 of The Tech That Connects Us, we were excited to be joined by Thomas Grübler, the CEO of OroraTech. 

We touched on his career so far, as well as his insight on Diversity and Inclusion as well as what he’s actively doing.

We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did recording it.

What’s been going on since Covid? 

“We really grew during Covid, we launched our product actually a few weeks before the first lockdown, so all the ideas to travel everywhere and to get customers, and we got a partner in South America from it!”

How does it work? 

“So, when we started, we found out that these companies are actually not using the data which exists today already!

For example, when you have a firefighter’s number, and in a control room, quite often, they don’t know about the FS system, or the Global Forest Watch systems, and there are several reasons for that. Now let’s say there’s a huge fire, we fuse the data from all the different satellites, which are existing now, and we added our own algorithms on top. 

Then we can use our data to send off to them to use. So, they get the information, partly via email via API in the system, or we used WhatsApp previously!”

So from a diversity perspective, what is your take on it?

“Oh, what we were super lucky that from the beginning is we came from university, and our university is the most diverse place, we went to LSE. So, yes, there are people from everywhere in the world studying at the Technical University of Munich. 

So, we grew up as a complete diverse team. And what I’m super happy about is that we are not based on government defence contracts, and without needing defence, we can hire anyone from all over the world.” 

What would be the one piece of advice that you’d give to somebody that was entering the industry?

“So it’s super important to focus on the customer. It’s advice I always get from my investors, I think I do it. But on the other hand, it’s advice I’m giving to everyone. So, the customer should be really at the beginning.”

To listen to the full episode, click here. 

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

What’s in store for the Satellite & NewSpace industry?

2022, where’s it going to go, what does it have in store?

We’ve collated key trends from some of the influential figures across the 4 sectors we recruit into – Cyber Security, Connectivity, Content & Media and Satellite & NewSpace.

We’ve spoken to experts from companies such as A5G Networks, Dish Networks, Casa Systems, and more!

If you want to find out what we think will be the key trends for cyber security this year, then just click the link below to download now!

Click here to download now.

In episode #55 of The Tech That Connects us, we had the opportunity to speak with Bart Womack, CEO of Eden Grow Systems about his thoughts on space colonisation (amongst other insightful topics). 

Eden Grow Systems have had a fantastic year, from exceptional growth through to making significant key hires to take them to the next level. The future looks incredibly bright for the business, and we were so glad to have Bart on the podcast – we hope you enjoy it!

What do you see as the next major barrier to space colonisation? 

“I was at a conference one time with Bezos, we got to meet him and we were also both speakers. And, the biggest secret is that unless we radically genetically modify our bodies, we’re not built for space. 

When Bezos gave a talk at the New World Summit, he was saying that the real future of humanity will be in low Earth orbit; sky cities and sky platforms. This is because you can access the resources of the planet, and you can create a living environment that’s much more suitable for humans and enjoyable for humans, than in space.”

What are the realities of us living in space? 

“I don’t want to be negative, but from a resource standpoint, it’s not feasible. It’s not feasible without radically altering humans. So, I think we need to understand how we’re going to adapt our physiology and even our psychology to adapt to these environments and retain our humanity. 

I think a lot of times when I talk about the Earth being like a garden, one of the most important things that we understand is that we have to grow out of the pot first. You’re not going to just go out into space and Earth. 

Maybe when we have technology that can instantaneously transport us to other places. But until we have that technology, we have to grow out so that we’re still connected into the ecosystem here.”

What’s next for you and the team? 

“Right now we’re building our manufacturing facilities so that we can start expanding the orders that we’re doing. One of the most significant things is in January, we’re launching our crowdfunding on Republic. 

My dream is for our towers because as Dr. Day said, our towers are resilient, they offer the greatest profile of what can be grown. The next step is looking at getting high nutrient density food into kids stomachs. I went to public school, and the food that they eat is one step away from prison food!” 

If you’d like to listen to the full episode, click here to access it!

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Joining us on episode 49 of The Tech That Connects Us was Daniel Faber CEO at Orbit Fab. Daniel joined Andrew Ball and Ewan Lawrenson to discuss the future of the space industry and how Orbit Fab will fuel it. The vision Daniel has for the future of space is nothing short of spectacular!

So why does the space industry need to be thinking about refuelling?

“The problem is nobody is buying fuel in orbit yet. It’s worse than that, as nobody has fuelling ports. Everyone is in a paradigm where you just don’t refuel satellites. We’re working on getting people out of that paradigm and shifting that mindset. 

‘don’t disrupt your customers, disrupt your competition’ 

 So we’re trying to convince our customers, the satellite operators whose business is providing telecommunications service to people on the ground, they’re focusing on that, so they don’t want their business disrupted. 

 What we decided to do instead was realise that they shouldn’t be our first customers. The satellite operators will come along eventually but for now, we’re looking to partner with other satellite servicing businesses. For example, companies that are building tow trucks in space, these tow trucks are used for rendezvous and docking, it’s part of their procedure. 

 What currently happens is the tow trucks are used for four or five operations, they run out of fuel, you then throw away the tow truck and build a brand new one. You run out of fuel, throw away your tow truck and buy a completely new one and launch it. 

 In the space industry, despite how inefficient something is we still do it. Because there’s so much value to having that vantage point in space. 

 Once we’d realised that our market was the tow trucks and satellite servicing companies our probability of winning as a company is predicated on the satellite servicing industry. 3 years ago there were eight companies in this industry, today more than 60 companies are working on satellite servicing a 600% increase. 

‘today more than 60 companies are working on satellite servicing a 600% increase’. 

 The perception in the industry is that satellite servicing is inevitable. So it’s been a huge change in a brand new industry.”

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Joining us on episode 46 of The Tech That Connects Us was Sascha Deri CEO at bluShift Aerospace. Sascha joined Laurie Scott and Andrew Ball.

bluShift Aerospace, are an exciting New Space company aiming to not only drastically reduce the cost of space flight but also offer a much more environmentally friendly solution than any other launch provider out there at the moment.  

So what is the state of the New Space marketing currently? What’s happening and what’s coming to the market soon? Here’s what Sascha is currently seeing. 

“The market is taking off, there was some suppression of the market last year thanks to COVID, but that was for everybody. So with the nano and small sat launches that are occurring now they’re being owned by Space X, the majority of the small sats that are out there are theirs. But they are out there making it happen – so kudos to them. 

But there are also rocket companies left and right, in addition to launch specifics services like our own. But now those companies are looking at the possibility of also providing some payloads of their own because you’re sending stuff all that way, it isn’t a stretch to provide some of your services or at least some of your technologies. 

The market certainly didn’t grow as much as we wanted it to in the last year from what I saw. But Frost and Sullivan came up with a market report which said the market is looking strong and aiming to do 38 billion in just launches for small satellites to space by 2030. So that will remain a very strong industry. 

For us, the opportunities is not only that, but the population and corporations are looking to do things in a more earth responsible way. There’s a lot of focus on carbon footprints, there’s a lot of focus around transportation and electric vehicles and space transport is one of the last industries which hasn’t been touched by the ‘we should do things in a little more environmentally responsible way’. So what was cool for us as a small company launched in the United States was when we first launched a rocket using bio drive fuel we’d then see articles pop up in spacenews.com and other places then the dialogue started to change to ‘Hey space companies, you should be doing something that’s a little bit more earth-friendly.’ 

So our next launch will be off the coast of Maine, and we’ll be launching over the ocean, and in Maine, there’s a very strong fishing industry. So if your rocket has highly refined kerosene in it, or a nasty oxidizer what’s that going to do to the fisheries below? What is it doing to the ecosystem below? So even if we ignore the climate change aspects, if that rocket is plunging to the ocean and it’s not always being retrieved or it’s leaking a bit what’s that going to do to the fisheries? With ours, we can safely say other than the kinetics we will not contaminate the ecosystem below. Of course with our orbital launches and first stages of our rocket engines we plan to fully recover them and then next year we’ll be doing the same with civil, academic and commercial rockets. But you know in the bad case that one does plummet into the ocean we feel very confident that it won’t affect the ecosystem below us, and we won’t have our local fisherman being mad at us. 

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Joining us on episode 45 of The Tech That Connects Us is John Kinney VP of Quality Assurance with Intelsat. John joined Laurie Scott and Tom Wilding to talk about all thing’s connectivity, aircraft connectivity, business optimisation, quality and customer service. 

 John has an impressive background with over 20 years at Motorola and beyond, having worked at Rockwell Automation and Blackberry, so we wanted to find out what can the satellite industry learn from the mobile device space? Here’s what John has to say. 

“There are certainly some parallels between the two industries. They’re very similar actually, we’re just sending bits and bytes over different media. 

The main thing we can learn from the cellular industry is to focus on the customer experience. Everything starts with the customer. 

How does the customer want to use it? 

What issues does the customer currently have? 

Once we know what the customer wants and what issues we’re trying to solve for them we can work our way back through the network and supply chain, but we need to stay focused on the customer experience. 

As you know I worked for Motorola for a long time, and then went on to Blackberry and so I had a front-row seat watching Apple evolve. I remember the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. They came out with it and when it first launched the iPhone wasn’t very reliable, in fact, it was the worst-performing phone from a reliability perspective. The phone itself was fantastic from an applications point of view and it was neat and the industry was of course very curious, but it just wasn’t reliable. 

This is where Apple changed the rules to the game, this is where their focus went to customer experience. They knew when it launched that it wasn’t going to be the best, but the end isn’t the beginning. We need to remember the end, and Apple and the iPhone went from the worst to the best in two years from a reliability perspective. How did they do that? By focusing on customer experience, they did it by just learning, learning and learning some more. 

This is where they changed the rules in the industry. It was always the case that the network carrier would own the customer experience, so if you had a problem with your phone, you’d have to take it back to AT&T, Sprint or Verizon who would then send it back to the OEM. You’d have a middle person, within the loop. But Apple said no, we don’t want that middle person, everything went directly back to Apple, they bypassed AT&T who had an exclusive deal on the original iPhone. They did that intentionally, they wanted to learn and they didn’t want that learning to be filtered through the carrier, and they wanted to figure out what was going on fast and fix it fast. Which is what they did. 

 So, I learnt a lot from Apple just dominating from a customer experience point of view, they were a formidable opponent. 

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.