It’s been several months since I’ve done any sort of comprehensive update on our various projects, so I wanted to take some time today to get everything up to speed on what we’ve been doing lately. To keep things somewhat less long-winded, I’m going to focus just on the technical side of what we’ve been up to. Over the next little bit, I’m planning on writing a few blog posts discussing more about what exactly it is that we’re trying to offer from as a business.
Just a quick note to say that yes, we did change the website design. This has been in the works for a while but other items took a much higher priority. This was mostly in response to a few people who had issues with the font and color scheme. But it also gave us a chance to make it cleaner and much simpler. We are also re-working some old content and adding new stuff about our hardware sales and R&D services. If you have any issues or browser incompatibilities let us know!
New Moored Testing Hurdles
If you closely follow the New Space industry, you may have read that the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation sent out a letter claiming that a moored vehicle test is considered a launch by the FAA, and as such a waiver, license, or permit from the FAA is required to do such tests. The letter is not available on the FAA’s website, as far as I can tell. We do not believe that a moored test is a suborbital launch, but we do not have the time or resources to argue it in court. (more…)
Startup Riot
Michael Mealling mentioned a few posts ago that he did a short pitch on our company at Startup Riot. The video and slides are now online, you can watch them here or here:
There’s probably some stuff in there that we haven’t mentioned here.
Interns
Our current interns are working out great. Melissa Schaffer has been working on a model of XA-0.2’s landing gear, so we can be confident in the gear before dropping an expensive vehicle on it. She’s also been contributing to the various other projects we’re working on. As has Wayne Neumaier, who has also taken on work on the rocket test trailer and the igniter testing work that I was doing before. We all went out to the test site yesterday and hauled back the hold down test stand. We’re closer to testing a vehicle by the day.
We had a lot of interest in having interns again this fall, so we’re now open to applications. The previous information is still applicable. Though we are an aerospace company, you don’t need to be an aerospace engineer to apply. There is a great deal of work to be done in electrical, mechatronics, software, and mechanical engineering.
The general time line is as follows:
Resumes in by August 3rd
Interviews by August 8
Offers accepted by August 15
Start in late August or early September, and work for 3 months total.
If you wish to apply, please send a resume and a filled-out application to internships [at] masten-space.com
And finally, hello to Melissa’s mom, a new reader of the blog.
We received the new tank Jon posted about in his last update, then made the brackets and went through the process of getting it installed in the XA0.2 frame.
It’s been a long time since the last time I wrote an update, so I figured that now as a good time to stop and take a few minutes to go over what we’ve been up to out here in Mojave. I apologize for the long delay in posting–we’ve been fairly busy over the past month or so, and as any of you who read Selenian Boondocks may have noticed, I haven’t been in much of a blogging mood lately.
Earlier this week I did my shortest investment pitch yet. The official length was 1 minute 40 seconds. This was part of an event in Atlanta called Startup Riot put on by the amazing Sanjay Parekh. Out of the 55 companies presenting, ours was one of the shortest. When pitching a space company you either end up very short or very long since explaining the details of the business generally requires non-trivial background material.
A little over a year ago we pitched at a New York Angels event and was limited to 5 minutes. In retrospect it would have been better to not try and cover ALL of the information possible in 5 minutes. Instead I should have slowed things down, even if it meant leaving a minute “on the table”.
For me this event was a particularly good one since it represents a growing community of entrepreneurs in the Atlanta area. Starting up any technology business can be a lonely and exhausting thing if you don’t have a support network of others who are going through the same thing. For the longest time Atlanta’s entrepreneurial community has been very disjointed and uncoordinated. Events such as Startup Riot, Startup Drinks, Startup Weekend, BarCamp Atlanta, and even Geeks and Guns (my little contribution) help create a sense of community and support that makes all of our jobs a tad bit easier and more enjoyable.
Just wanted to post a short note letting people know that we’ve now selected two interns for this summer, and therefore will no longer be taking applications for this summer. However, due to a surprising amount of interest in the possibility of internships for this Fall, we’ve decided to go ahead and offer two internship positions for the fall. We don’t yet have precise dates, but these would likely start sometime in August, and run through sometime in November, depending on when people are available. We will be releasing further information on these Fall internships in the coming days, including the deadline for submitting applications, when we’ll be running phone interviews, and when we’ll announce our internship selection.
April 2008 already. That means we have been around for four years and we’re still kicking. More importantly, we are still progressing. The coming year looks like it will be exciting. But before I get to what we are planning for next several months, let’s go back a few months to set the stage.
