Roid Rage

Jack is joined by Demyan (Senior Mission Ops Engineer) and Armand (Head of GNC, Flight Software) to talk about how AstroForge plans deep space missions.We talk about why the traditional approach of "throw more humans at it" doesn't scale when you're trying to mine asteroids.

Jack sits down with Chap (Chief of Mining) and Matt to unveil AstroForge's new laser testing facility, though Matt has strong opinions about the beige walls. Between debates over whether the podcast should even continue, Jay and Silent Bob references, and explicit instructions to NOT like and subscribe, the team breaks down why bringing laser capabilities in-house accelerates iteration, protects IP, and proves asteroid mining can hit industrial scale in under 15 years.

Jack sits down with Wes and Orli from the Structures team to break down composite materials and solar array deployment. We jump into carbon fiber facesheets, aluminum honeycomb cores, why Kapton is everywhere, and how plasma from electric propulsion can arc to imperfections in conductive layers.

Jack sits down with James, Flight Dynamics Engineer, and Loic, Principal Flight Science Engineer, to demystify orbital determination; or as Jack learns after claiming GPS expertise, to discover that "everything you just said was wrong." Between hot air balloon analogies, admissions of 1,000+ hours in Kerbal Space Program, and revelations about useless accelerometers, our team breaks down how AstroForge actually figures out where its spacecraft are in deep space and why that's harder than it sounds.

Jack sits down with Ashton and Holly fresh off AstroForge's vibration testing campaigns. Plus: space law (just plant a flag, right?), how to avoid Astra Rocket 3's QA disasters, and investment advice involving Ashton's Venmo.