Sure, but who has capacity to take on any serious number of launches? And who can do it at a competitive price to make Kuiper anything but a financial disaster?
The answer is: nobody.
What made Starlink financially possible was SpaceX's lower launch costs and high capacity.
I saw at least two autopilots that used PID control in a couple of different ways. They all needed tuning though because any moderate control input would send them spiraling off into the void.
Do you have any data to share? Most of my family has been involved in Aerospace, with my dad working for skunkworks, my brother working for Garmin (and a formal aerospace engineer).
Most aerospace engineers are lucky to break 75k/yr to start with little to no equity, and often need to move to the middle of nowhere (compared to say NYC, SF, LA, etc for software), and get hit with periodic catastrophic layoffs with the regular cycles in the industry.
It’s pretty common that software folks are paid 2-5x with far less intense or zero credentialing and better work conditions - at the same company.
Oof, even worse than I noted. So median (and that includes established mid and late career aerospace engineers too) is $118k all in?
That’s roughly half of the initial comp for an entry level software engineer at any of the SV firms, and most folks will be making much more than that at said SV firms within a couple years.
Being able to get a team of 4-5 experienced and credentialed aerospace engineers for the comp of a single ‘senior’ (mid-level somewhat competent but not amazing) software engineer sounds dirt cheap to me?
You realize you just compared Silicon Valley software engineer salaries in high margin industries to all location aerospace engineer salaries in normal margin industries?
If you want to baseline off SV salaries, you shouldn't be looking at median all-AE numbers.
We’re on a SV startup website, where the comparison to cheap or not is of course going to be based on this.
You provided as a counterpoint to my statement on aerospace eng’s being cheap, data which shows median salary across all experience levels of the field being half the starting pay of a typical entry level SV software engineer - which typically requires no specific credentials, unlike Aerospace engineering.
If there is a large cluster of companies who pay 4x the median aerospace engineer salary to Noobs, then please provide said data. My understanding is those don’t exist.
SpaceX, a high profile name and maybe the closest to a SV type place you’ll get in the industry pays between $70-100k to their Aerospace engineers, based on multiple sites. Here happens to be a random Reddit thread about it in the first couple results.
Which is exactly the point I’m making. When a straight out of school software engineer has a whole section of an industry they can go to that will pay them 2-5x what an experienced aerospace engineer mid-point or even late in their career can make ANYWHERE (except MAYBE a one-off consulting gig somewhere), then aerospace engineers are cheap no?
It seems this is becoming the norm these days. Astra, Joby Aviation, Lucid Motors, Archer and a few others in the aerospace/automotive industries have done this recently.
1. I know there are a few other startups/companies working on similar technology. What differentiates y'all? I think Turion is the only one I've seen come out of YC though.
2. Don't see a careers page on your website. Are you hiring?
I am super stoked about all the other companies working on solutions to the debris problem, and see this problem as too important to leave to any single entity / team (including ourselves!). What differentiates us from some of the other ideas is our overall approach to vehicle design. Besides robot arms, or other capture mechanisms what are we fundamentally trying to do? Move things around. What is the key design parameter for moving things around in space? dV. Our approach to optimizing for this number is unique (more on that another time, can't spoil all the fun just yet!). Our team will move rapidly, copying the Elon playbook approach to building hardware which I'm quite familiar with (8.5 year SpaceX veteran). In regards to hiring, next month we'll begin our hiring ramp so keep an eye on the site if you are interested!
Thanks for the response, y'all sound like a cool group of people. Wish you the best of luck, and I might sneak an application in once you get that hiring page up.
When commercial airplanes started out, people said the same thing about it being for rich people only. That's how these expensive things start.
One day, the cost of these flights will be much lower, to the point where you and I can afford them. Hopefully that day is during our lifetime.
true, but with airplanes they can at least take you from A to B, so they serve at least some purpose.
Interesting point though, airships come to mind that essentially were just floating cafes / restaurants.
Modern turbofan/turbojet/turboprop (really, any engine) has a ton of SW involved. Engine controllers [1] literally control the engines. Your point is completely wrong, I've worked on this software and they go through many forms of verification for things to work. Look at the failure rate of avionics and compare that to other industries.
Sure you or your friend may have had a bad experience at that company, but the big players generally won't let software bugs through.
Eh,I did say it was only that eng's view of the world, but the big players certainly do let bugs through.
Boeing code leaked in '20 [1] and it was ugly, however it was ~network vs. app layer so unclear how it worked at the engine level.
Add in the track record of CAN bus security difficulties and knowing airplanes use similar tech, "generally won't let bugs through" when paired with the footnoted security leak is a gross overstatement.
For sure, you're right that compared to a jet engine there are fewer parts. The caveat is you're comparing a large engine (and aircraft) with a much smaller one. Electric aircraft of today can't go anywhere near the range of jet engine powered aircraft, and hence the engine sizes are similarly sized. It's not a fair comparison, but you are right.
