Taylor Sargent

1/12 - To the #DeepTech founders struggling to raise from VCs - I find @DARPA’s Heilmeier Catechism is a useful framework for evaluating new opportunities. Start here and add relevant business and market metrics to show us how you think about your tech + business.

@ConnorLoveCA Very excited to see how that 20kW thruster performs.

20kW is big. Rly big.

I think anybody following space has known for a while now that every bus builder, and soon every company doing space-to-ground power beaming will be pivoting into orbital data centers.

I asked Claude and ChatGPT to create perfect March Madness brackets last night. Claude was relatively conservative, picking a few minor upsets with Arizona beating Duke 74-71 in the finals. ChatGPT on the other hand, has VCU vs VCU in the second round with Furman winning, which would be quite the bracket buster.

Claude - fill out a perfect March Madness bracket. Make no mistakes.

I’ve had the domain name lunaroutpost.com since I was 5 years old. My life’s mission is to use the resources of space to make humanity interplanetary and improve life here on Earth.

I’m a (borderline irrrational) optimist. But there’s a strategic reason for that! Capitalism only works if people believe the future will be bigger than the present. A merchant builds a factory because he thinks demand will grow. An engineer specializes because she thinks her skills will matter. An investor funds a startup because, against all statistical evidence, it might actually work. If capitalism depends on optimism, then societies need to create reasons for it. New technologies, ambitious companies, scientific breakthroughs, and visible progress all reinforce the belief that the future will be larger than the present. The job of builders, founders, scientists, and investors is to make that belief rational.

@realKunalAShah New company idea… Reusable rocket fuel

Cc @TaylorCSargent

@MrGoldBro @magratheametals I know this company. Love the name.

@TaylorCSargent @magratheametals

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has some gems like “Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters,” the “Infinite Improbability Drive,” and the “Kill-o-Zap Gun” 😅

Colorado 🙌

@mouthofmorrison @lukefischer See you there

If anyone will be at Tectonic in Austin this week, I’ll be around most of the day on Wednesday. I’m on a panel with leaders from the National Reconnaissance Office, Vantor, and the inimitable @lukefischer (CEO at SkyFi).

@buildingMadrid O that’s so sick

celebrating our 11 year wedding anniversary (i’m a lucky guy!), for which the traditional gift is steel so for part of today we booked a blacksmithing class and just forged ourselves damascus steel rings

Here's a frequent tension we see in the best / fastest growing Hard Tech startups: Demand for product is real. Customers want it yesterday. Need is urgent. BD team / leadership want to deliver on it and vacuum up all the demand today. This is the core of what drives fundraising momentum, especially at growth stages. But engineering needs to actually build the product(s)! And they're short resources. Hiring is hard. BD pushes forward anyway. "We won the contract!" Head of Engineering says "but how do we resource it / prioritize?" Engineering gets mad at BD for going too fast. BD gets mad at engineering for being negative. CEO is caught in the middle needing to pick a side. Investors want more revenue. Customers want things on time. Engineering wants to deliver great work ahead of schedule. This is hard! Do you compromise on eng talent quality and hire faster to meet contract deadlines? Do you say no to new contracts you'd easily win to make sure you deliver on contracts you already have? What's the solve? It's not an easy one! Solve 1: give your leaders more agency than it might seem their experience warrants. If they have good judgement, they'll figure it out. Solve 2: give these leaders cash to solve the problem...if you can raise it. Solve 3: delay deliverables if you have to. You're likely already 2x faster than a legacy player anyway. But be transparent with the customer as things develop. It builds trust. Saying "no" to real contracts now feels safe, but may be long term damaging. It's hard to mobilize customer interest, need to strike while the iron's hot and resource aggressively in other ways. Anyone have different views on this?

That’s such a bummer to hear you were told to look elsewhere. Jared has the right mentality that NASA should be leading research and building the things that are too risky for the commercial sector to build. I think a lot of mission-motivated people would take a sabbatical from their full time jobs for a 2-year stint at NASA.

@TaylorCSargent @SpaceAbhi Agree completely. When I was in grad school a high ranking NASA employee recommended I search for jobs elsewhere if I want to do serious space biology research. He was right. I worked on Jared’s Inspiration4 mission.

Term-based appointments is a great approach to bringing new talent into NASA. DARPA has used this approach for decades to bring in some of the industry’s best technical experts. Attracting the best technical talent was easy for most government entities until about the mid 2000s. If you were a STEM PhD, the government was a great place to work if you wanted to build technology’s bleeding edge. Now the private sector across space, maritime, aviation, AI, and most other technical areas offers equally exciting projects and much better pay - basically removing the government’s ability to attract top talent. Term-based appointments can help bring the technical expertise that now largely exists in private sector back into the government with the added benefit of helping the private sector better understand government requirements and needs once the person returns from their appointment. Great move overall by @NASAAdmin

Awesome to see across the board. Special shout out to @AntaresNuclear @jordanbramble

My wife and I got married a few years ago in front of Kissing Camels, and I’m realizing we made a monumental error by not waiting until yesterday morning at 4AM.

We’ve really enjoyed getting to know Orbit and following his DARPA programs over the last few years. Very excited to bring him on as an advisor to help our portfolio companies with technical assessments and navigate all things DoD.

February brought real industrial scale across the i(v) portfolio. Satellite servicing, reusable launch, advanced nuclear manufacturing, and commercial LEO infrastructure moving forward. ↓ @StarfishSpace @stoke_space @AntaresNuclear @voyagertech

Autonomous mobility platforms are required to build out permanent lunar infrastructure. Lunar Outpost is the only company building in this space with relevant flight heritage.