Robert Cringely Attempts an Air-Launching Space Startup (cringely.com) 74
"How does a 67-year-old hack with three minor children recover from going blind, losing his home and business in a horrible fire (like 2,000 others, we are still fighting with insurance companies), while appeasing an angry crowd of Kickstarter supporters armed with pitchforks and shovels?"
That crowd still wants long-time tech pundit Robert X. Cringely to deliver on his Kickstarter-funded project to create custom Minecraft servers. So in a new blog post this week, Cringely writes that "I went looking for venture money to recapitalize MineServer and I simultaneously started a satellite launch company to fund my eventual retirement. I am not making this up..."
He's now found a Beverly Hills patron who wants to be a co-investor in the Minecraft servers, but "I will have to earn the matching money on my own, which is what I have been trying to do with my other startup, Eldorado Space." Eldorado will later this year begin launching into low earth orbit CubeSats up to 12 kilograms in weight. Doing a space startup may seem like the stupidest, highest-risk way to go about restarting a career, but I thought it would be fun and it has been. Fortunately, we found a visionary billionaire to be our seed investor. We will shortly close our Series A round with most of that money already committed...
[F]or Eldorado, we (which means my co-founder Tomas Svitek -- a real rocket scientist who used to report directly to Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin -- seven engineers and me) pledged to invent nothing and to avoid liquid fuels if possible. We took 50-year-old ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (the same solid fuel used in the Space Shuttle's strap-on boosters) and improved it using modern materials, processes, and some common sense. NO 3D printing! The result is a cheaper rocket that can sit on the shelf for years then be launched as-needed within hours...
[W]e've offered to launch on FOUR hours notice and then launch again every TWO hours after that until they tell us to stop. So if Bond villain Ernst Blofeld, for example, figured out a way to take down the GPS system, we could replace the whole constellation in less than a day, then do it all over again as often as needed. That would probably deter Dr. Evil from even trying his trick in the first place.... Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit drops its rocket horizontally from a Boeing 747 flying at 35,000 feet going Mach 0.7. We "toss" our rocket while flying in a 45-degree climb at 78,000 feet going Mach 2.2, which is much more exciting. You can see the curvature of the Earth. Launching higher, faster, and at the proper angle lets us use a smaller cheaper rocket on a smaller cheaper aircraft for a lower launch price. Virgin charges $12 million per launch while we charge $1 million for up to 12U into any orbit....
"But how do you protect your business if you aren't inventing anything? Where is your intellectual property? Where is your defensive moat?" There's actually plenty of clever IP inside Eldorado, but what mainly keeps another startup from just copying our work is the required fleet of Mach 2.2+ launch aircraft. We bought all of them, you see... all of them on the planet.
That crowd still wants long-time tech pundit Robert X. Cringely to deliver on his Kickstarter-funded project to create custom Minecraft servers. So in a new blog post this week, Cringely writes that "I went looking for venture money to recapitalize MineServer and I simultaneously started a satellite launch company to fund my eventual retirement. I am not making this up..."
He's now found a Beverly Hills patron who wants to be a co-investor in the Minecraft servers, but "I will have to earn the matching money on my own, which is what I have been trying to do with my other startup, Eldorado Space." Eldorado will later this year begin launching into low earth orbit CubeSats up to 12 kilograms in weight. Doing a space startup may seem like the stupidest, highest-risk way to go about restarting a career, but I thought it would be fun and it has been. Fortunately, we found a visionary billionaire to be our seed investor. We will shortly close our Series A round with most of that money already committed...
[F]or Eldorado, we (which means my co-founder Tomas Svitek -- a real rocket scientist who used to report directly to Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin -- seven engineers and me) pledged to invent nothing and to avoid liquid fuels if possible. We took 50-year-old ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (the same solid fuel used in the Space Shuttle's strap-on boosters) and improved it using modern materials, processes, and some common sense. NO 3D printing! The result is a cheaper rocket that can sit on the shelf for years then be launched as-needed within hours...
[W]e've offered to launch on FOUR hours notice and then launch again every TWO hours after that until they tell us to stop. So if Bond villain Ernst Blofeld, for example, figured out a way to take down the GPS system, we could replace the whole constellation in less than a day, then do it all over again as often as needed. That would probably deter Dr. Evil from even trying his trick in the first place.... Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit drops its rocket horizontally from a Boeing 747 flying at 35,000 feet going Mach 0.7. We "toss" our rocket while flying in a 45-degree climb at 78,000 feet going Mach 2.2, which is much more exciting. You can see the curvature of the Earth. Launching higher, faster, and at the proper angle lets us use a smaller cheaper rocket on a smaller cheaper aircraft for a lower launch price. Virgin charges $12 million per launch while we charge $1 million for up to 12U into any orbit....
"But how do you protect your business if you aren't inventing anything? Where is your intellectual property? Where is your defensive moat?" There's actually plenty of clever IP inside Eldorado, but what mainly keeps another startup from just copying our work is the required fleet of Mach 2.2+ launch aircraft. We bought all of them, you see... all of them on the planet.
What aircraft is he using? (Score:4, Interesting)
There aren't that many Mach 2.2+ 78,000 ft aircraft. Is it a trainer?
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There aren't that many Mach 2.2+ 78,000 ft aircraft.
There isn't much of anything, when Robert X. Cringely is involved.
in a new blog post this week, Cringely writes that "I went looking for venture money to recapitalize MineServer
He launched a Kickstarter campaign 5 years ago. According to his Kickstarter page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
He raised more than $35,000 (original goal was only $15,000). So why does he need to "recapitalize" MineServer? What happened to the money? Why hasn't the Kickstarter page been updated since 2016? Why are there lots of angry comments from people on Kickstarter, wanting their money back and complaining that Bob isn't respondi
Cool, but won't launch GPS (Score:2)
Interesting idea, but a lot of competition in that market.
Still, the F104 is a really cool airplane. I'd love to see one launch a satellite.
Won't be able to replace the GPS constellation from that, though. GPS is in 20,200 km. A cubesat launcher will be able to make low Earth orbit at best.
(and a GPS satellite is a lot heavier than 12 kg!)
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Perhaps he realized that $35,000 gets you a contract developer for a couple months.
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He raised more than $35,000 (original goal was only $15,000). So why does he need to "recapitalize" MineServer? What happened to the money?
The burdened (salary+benefits) of a full-time coder is at least $10k per month. For a contractor, figure $15k. So $35k is enough for two months, or about enough time to flesh out the spec, but not enough to start writing code.
For a software startup, you have two choices:
1. Write your own code
2. Fail
Re:What aircraft is he using? (Score:5, Interesting)
His cringley.com website has been tracking this (via reader comments for YEARS). From what I can recall:
1. I have a great idea for custom minecraft servers as an appliance.
2. I'm going to use this as a project with my kids.
3. I have a kickstarter, get in on the ground floor.
4. Technical delays...This is harder than I thought...
5. New supplier for some components
6. Rethinking this, maybe we'll redesign, sorry for delays.
7. I think I'll get involved in this budget moon launch project.
Mineserver? What?
8. My house burned down in wildfire (some compelling evidence that this didn't actually happen)
9. I think I'm going to incorporate a Mineserver company to drum up more money.
10. Mineserver company goes nowhere. Readers investigate a little and can find no evidence that anything was incorporated under names and states in article on website.
11. I've been ill
12. Goes dark. Site updates pretty much stop.
Anyway, at some point, maybe around #6 he pretty much stopped even discussing Minserver on his website at all. Kickstarter hasn't been updated in years. I used to respect the guy, but he's really changed.
Some links to more info (Score:4, Informative)
Having identified the image of the plane as an F104 Starfighter [wikipedia.org], and doing a bit of googling, it turned out I wasn't the first.
Summarising from comments on his blog post:
NASA: Starfighters Ready to Launch Research, Satellites [nasa.gov]
CubeCap [cubecab.com]
Re:Some links to more info (Score:4, Informative)
The image in TFA looks a photoshop of this image of a Starfighters Inc F-104 [incredible...ntures.com]. Which makes sense, as it sounds like he plans to use their aircraft. Starfighters Inc are a real, working operation, and on their website they list "air-launch of microsatellites" as one of the services they provide.
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Re: Some links to more info (Score:5, Funny)
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Caveat Emptor, folks (Score:2)
Re: Caveat Emptor, folks (Score:1)
Caveat Emptor isn't a crime in the US?
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Caveat Emptor isn't a crime in the US?
No, in the U.S. it's a business model.
A business model perfect for a con-artist like Robert X. Cringely who has made an entire career out of spewing nonsense with no value and pretending to be something that he is not.
"Robert X. Cringely" isn't even his real name. It's actually a pseudonym that has been used by several people over the past 30 years. He acquired it some years ago through some sort of convoluted legal manuvering and now pretends that he is the original Robert X. Cringely (he's not).
So now,
Re: Caveat Emptor, folks (Score:4, Informative)
Caveat Emptor isn't a crime in the US?
No, in the U.S. it's a business model.
From Wikipedia:
"Under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, the sale of new goods is governed by the "perfect-tender" rule unless the parties to the sale expressly agree in advance to terms equivalent to caveat emptor (such as describing the goods as sold "as is" and/or "with all faults") or other limitations such as the below-discussed limitations on remedies. The perfect-tender rule states that if a buyer who inspects new goods with reasonable promptness discovers them to be "nonconforming" (failing to meet the description provided or any other standards reasonably expectable by a buyer in his/her situation) and does not use the goods or take other actions constituting acceptance of them, the buyer may promptly return or refuse to accept ("reject") them and demand that the defect be remedied ("cured"). "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
tl;dr, you're being an idiot (which is why you posted this anonymously), as are the people who modded you up.
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How do you "protect" your business?? (Score:2)
What happened to just being *better* at it?
Instead of making up imaginary property crime schemes to ban the competition a healthy market needs, grow a monopoly, employ artificial scarcity, and extort people to pay higher prices for a product that isn't actually able to be competitive on its own merits.
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What you describe was never the case, it has always been a cool story out of the pages of Adam Smith's utopia.
Business has always been about grabbing a piece of the pie and fighting everyone else to keep it. The only difference is that it used to be ad-hoc, but today the process is industrialized, streamlined and available for a fee from your nearby Big Five consultancy. All in one neat package.
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Adam Smith never suggested anything stupid like "just be better" at business, and Wealth of Nations isn't a utopia.
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and Wealth of Nations isn't a utopia.
How so?
Re:How do you "protect" your business?? (Score:4, Informative)
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Smith's work is a recipe on how to organize the economy. A rather unrealistic one. Which pretty much is the definition of utopia. His analysis is there to justify his recipe.
Re:How do you "protect" your business?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the early 90s they said that the Internet would put the world's knowledge at everyone's fingertips. Some of the first things online were dictionaries. Today that promise has pretty much been realized.
Still nobody reads the dictionaries.
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True enough, for that matter almost no Libertardians even bother to read Adam Smith, the writer they claim to base their entire belief system on.
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Adam Smith wrote some inconvenient things. He warned that capitalist systems tend to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, and that's anathema to capitalism, for example.
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He also said that government control and supervision of business was necessary to keep the wealthy from manipulating the markets. You won't often see that quoted by the Libertardians, though.
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Yup. Reading Marx and Smith back to back is pretty interesting. They identified a lot of the same problems with capitalism. A few of the same solutions too.
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I mean, Smith had a fairly clearheaded way to organize an economy. What's so unrealistic?
And a utopia isn't just unrealistic, it's defining characteristic is that it's a perfect society.
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Those mythical good times where everybody was good and engaged in honest competition by just being the best at what they do wasn't really a thing.
Go read about guilds, Finding ways of banning the competition, growing monopolies and creating artificial scarcity is a proud tradition more than 1000 years old.
Re:How do you "protect" your business?? (Score:4, Informative)
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"It simply doesnâ(TM)t fail as badly as other systems due to faulty assumptions."
No, it fails worse, because it's based on the idea that endless growth is sustainable. It spends natural capital faster than it can be replenished by encouraging waste.
Re:How do you "protect" your business?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't confuse a market economy's effectiveness with man's limitless wants for more. Those exist as much in any system as another, and market economies simply do the best job at supplying that unending desire. If you think they're not producing the right things, it's only because most people want something else more. Don't misplace your dissatisfaction with the state of the world on the shoulders of free market enterprise. It only supplies people with what they want. I don't necessarily agree with their choices all of the time either, but they're free to make them as they will.
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The assumption of exponential growth doesn't have anything to do with dividends, or a lack thereof.
A central assumption of capitalism is that you can use your capital to generate more. You can make money simply by having money. If you work out the math you will see that this scheme requires growth, and in any sane scenario that growth is exponential. Whether you're investing in "growth" stocks, dividend bearing stocks, or just putting your money in a savings account, you expect a return on that investment
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"Don't confuse a market economy's effectiveness with man's limitless wants for more."
As long as the markets are run by humans, greed remains relevant. It's inseparable from economic activity.
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IP (Score:3)
Where is your intellectual property? ... There's actually plenty of clever IP inside Eldorado,
I thought that was what patents were for. You invent something UNIQUE, describe it in detail, and get years of legal punishment over someone else copying your process. (PROCESS.) Then later when it expires, it's a free-for-all. Patenting "breathing" for instance, isn't unique. (But if you can get that patent for it ....)
When created, wasn't it originally was for physical processes (insert slot A into tab B and voilÃ! (Or voila for slashdot.) ) Now-a-days it's of course morphed into anything you can think of for as long as you want. ("I envision a thing which is near another thing." "Who-hoo, it got patented, now to sue everyone who's breathing.")
I'm sorry, code is not an invention. It's at best "literature"(?) aka writing, in which you can't plagiarize someone else's work and call it your own. If I steal your actual code in a product then I get zapped. If I write it only by the inputs and outputs (clean room, shades of IBM BIOS vs Compaq's rewrite) then sorry, it's fine.
Apparently I'm in the minority: Paperback software vs Lotus 1-2-3 [nytimes.com] -- Holy Crap, they LOST -- WHY do I remember them winning -- did they lose on appear? "The company was found guilty." Well that explains a lot. Oracle's going to win against Google. You can't copyright math but you CAN copyright numbers [independent.co.uk].
[But] We bought all of [the required fleet of Mach 2.2+ launch aircraft], you see... all of them on the planet.
Smart. He's set until someone builds another plane or figure out a even better way to launch. THAT's what patents are for, not Micky Mouse @ Disney literally Forever or a song that's got notes in it. [youtu.be]
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I thought that was what patents were for.
That used to be the case long ago. But the business didn't like it, because a patent expires. So, the business renamed the term-limited monopoly licenses like patents and copyright to "property" and went around to sell the "property rights" to the corrupt politicians, telling them that their payback will increase if they support this narrative.
And support it they did.
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Patents are not necessary for so-called "intellectual property"; one may instead keep it a trade secret and receive a lower level of legal recognition and protection. Patents were a (flawed) scheme to encourage public disclosure of novelty (and therefore "progress in the useful arts and sciences") in exchange for a limited monopoly. Nowadays patents are, shall we say, very loosely based on that idea, just like today's corporations are very loosely based on what corporations were.
And no, the famous DVD-CSS p
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Yeah (Score:2)
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But at least there's a business model and from precedent know it obeys physics
I'm not so sure. It's one thing to claim a Starfighter can do Mach 2.2 at 78,000 feet clean, quite another when loaded with a big and heavy rocket/missile. I doubt they will be able to get that high or fast. But they'll have a nice plane collection...
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It's not a big and heavy of a rocket, though. The rocket weighs about as much as ten people. Less than a sixth the weight of the plane.
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Wikipedia says "The F-104S was cleared for a higher maximum takeoff weight, allowing it to carry up to 7,500 lb (3,400 kg) of stores; other Starfighters had a maximum external load of 4,000 lb (1,800 kg). "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-104_Starfighter
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Wikipedia also says the service ceiling is 50k feet.
Physics? (Score:2)
Nothing he said makes sense in the context of physics. GPS satellites are 1-ton, 1000-watt devices (solar panels produce 1136 watts when first deployed) with a 500W transmitter, that are launched to an orbit of 11000 nautical miles [gpsinformation.net]. That's the high end of "Medium Earth Orbit (MEO)", so they can receive from a larger portion of the planet and spend more time outside the Earth's shadow.
If he thinks he can replace GPS with 12-kilogram satellites launched to LEO, he's on hepped up on spaceballs or something.
The most crude analysis. (Score:5, Interesting)
Specific impulse 242.
Mach1@80000ft = 297m/s.
Total horizontal velocity at release - 470m/s.
Required orbital velocity for low earth orbit (NOT GPS ORBIT) 7800m/s.
Required 7330m/s horizontally.
Neglecting the vertical, the rocket equation says with inputs of 242 ISP, 1050kg->40kg, you get 7749/ms, so there is a 0th order margin.
However, this ignores the mass of the rocket apart from propellant.
SRB dry mass was 20% of the total mass.
It is reasonable that you can improve this somewhat, but the small scale, and the fact that burning rocket propellant is hot limits things.
For 40kg - hell no.
For 15kg - it's really, really marginal.
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Solid propellants are awful. You're basically sitting on an intimately mixed block of fuel and oxidizer separated by a fair of firmly crossed fingers, also known as a bomb.
It was a pork battle decision, not a smart engineering one. Perchlorates are a fast way to end up dead. They are not stable.
Liquid motors are more predictable, controllable, tunable, you name it.
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Liquid motors are more predictable, controllable, tunable, you name it.
Although "controllable" probably was meant to cover it, the biggest advantage with liquid motors is that you can turn them off if something goes wrong. Can't do that with solid fuel. With solid fuel, not only is your payload figuratively sitting on top of an extended-detonation bomb, the rocket only has two conditions, somewhat-less-dangerous and full-throttle.
And, again, I'll take the opportunity to promote one of my favorite books that every space enthusiast should read: "Ignition!" by John D. Clark, wi
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Many solid rocket propellants have a pressure exponent that means they burn really really fast at high pressures, and basically smoulder if you vent the pressure.
Venting the pressure to atmospheric by blowing off the nozzle stops the burn dead.
Re: The most crude analysis. (Score:2)
Perchlorates are a fast way to end up dead. They are not stable.
They're also extremely toxic and bioacumulate in agricultural products, typically leafy greens.
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That’s a useless factoid given that the perchlorates in the rocket motor end up burnt before being able to poison any plants.
Re:The most crude analysis. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there are people for whom getting a launch of a small satellite in a short time frame is more valuable than waiting for a cheaper or higher-powered launch. On the other hand, now that it seems SpaceX is committed to launching a Starlink stack twice a month, and the recent start of their "hitch a ride" offering, anyone who can wait a month or two can probably get a lot better price.
So this will probably end up being used for university projects (6-12+ months wait doesn't work well with 2 or 3 semesters a year), or government projects that need a quick launch. I suppose it's also possible that other startups may want to use it, but SpaceX's offering could cut into that business. We'll have to see if lower prices for space access cause higher demand.
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Last I heard, SpaceX's smallsat launches were only going to be once a year dedicated rideshare missions. Have they indicated that Starlink launches will take other cargo?
Anyway though, for most satellites it matters what orbit you end up in. That's why small launch providers are more attractive than a rideshare on a big rocket. This startup is competing with Rocket Lab, not SpaceX.
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The Shuttle SRB had specific impulse of 268s in vacuum. When you launch at this altitude, you're at 3% sea level air pressure so probably closer to vacuum numbers. Of course, the SI is also a function of the rocket motor design, and this is obviously not using the same nozzle as the SRB so who knows what their real numbers are...
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This isn't an assumption one should make without seeing any actual data whatsoever! One of the predecessors mentioned in the story was a Japanese multi-stage sounding rocket that sent a tiny payload to orbit from the ground. Their specific impulse was listed as 265s at sea level using this same propellant.
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Oh fine, reveal me as a space nerd. I went and looked further into the SS-520-5 nano satellite platform. Their solid-fuel third stage has a vacuum ISP of 282.6s. This is at a gross weight of 86.27kg. Which is quite a bit smaller than the SRB, so scaling down doesn't appear to be as much of a problem as you think.
Already (Score:3)
GPS Satellites? (Score:3)
Eldorado will later this year begin launching into low earth orbit CubeSats up to 12 kilograms in weight.
So if Bond villain Ernst Blofeld, for example, figured out a way to take down the GPS system, we could replace the whole constellation in less than a day, then do it all over again as often as needed.
The last GPS satellite to be launched was around 4 tonnes [af.mil]. There is a HUGE difference between launching 12 kg and 4000 kg. The last vehicle to launch a GPS satellite was 564 tonnes, can your airplane take that much mass to altitude? Cringely doesn't sound like he understands the tech involved in rocket science, which is par for the course for him. He might be able to fling a couple of toys into orbit (although he hasn't even been able to accomplish that feat yet) but launching something substantial is another story altogether.
So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that right?
Please tell me that nobody actually expects him to do either of those things.
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He's (by his own description) a 67 year old man with 3 minor children.
I wouldn't call that a stellar track record of reasonable decisions.
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Dunning-Krueger effect in action. He's so incompetent that he doesn't even realize he's incompetent.
Kickstarter enabled a lot of these people. It lowered the barriers to entry so severely that they're able to take a half-baked idea, get financial support from a lot of other people who also have no idea what's involved, and then the creator finds out just what a huge project it is. By then he has their money, so it's too late.
I don't think a lot of them are thieves. They just get in over their heads, a
News to me (Score:2)
For the DoD (Score:2)
If he can replace the GPS constellation with 12U cubesats, I'd say that's a better business to be in than air launch. (Current GPS sats have a launch mass of around 4 tons.) But I'm sure that was just trying to use an example of a satellite constellation people are familiar with.
Anyway, with the "responsive launch" focus, this is clearly a defense contract play, which is fine. A lot of people make money that way, though it's a bit dangerous for a small company when you have one customer. Commercially, it's
Robert's visionary credibility? (Score:2)
I like Robert X. Cringely. His book, "Accidental Empires" is one of the best books ever written about Silicon Valley.
But this is the guy who was an early employee of Apple and chose regular pay over stock options.
So I wouldn't necessarily consider him a good helmsman for future tech products.
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"You can see the curvature of the Earth." (Score:1)
Not at 78,000 feet, you can't! Amateur hobbyists have sent a camera up as high as 120,000 feet, and it's flat from up there as well. (Of course if you're using a fish-eye lens, you'll see curves everywhere.)
Not only that -- the sun makes a "hot spot" on the clouds, from above! It can't be as far away as they say, if it's creating a hot spot like that.
Good luck to him, going blind sucks. I remember reading his "Accidental Empires" book decades ago and the intro included a neat bit about his cats hiding r
Who is this Beverly Hills patron? (Score:2)
My immediate thought was: could it be Notch [polygon.com]?
Wow (Score:2)
He really puts the cringe in Cringely.