Hard Tech Holiday Cheer 🚀

Hope everyone’s holiday season is off to a great start.

We have another packed newsletter for you with all the usual content; plus, I’m adding some job opportunities and giving you the heads up on an aerospace incubator opportunity that might just be the gift you or an aspiring founder you know needs this year.

Enjoy!

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

Antares opened up an office at 2400 Marine Ave, Redondo Beach, CA. (source: Me!)

Neros Technologies established its HQ in El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!)

Sift raised $7.5 Million and leased space at 201 Arena St, El Segundo, CA. The capital comes from leading hardware investor Riot Ventures, enterprise SaaS investor Fika Ventures, and participation from First Resonance, Datum and Duro. The team received their first check from Earthrise Ventures, a fund started by ex-SpaceXer Scott Norman. (source: TechCrunch)

Anduril Industries brand new R&D building at HQ is open. After more than a year of delays because of switchgear, Anduril cut the ribbon on its new 190,000 square foot space located in Orange County, CA. The new building includes lab spaces, fabrication and welding rooms, a basketball court-sized area full of CNCs, high bays going 50’, and all the accommodations to support them. (source: LinkedIn)

Adient Aerospace leased roughly 82,000 square feet at 2850 Skyway Drive, Santa Maria, CA. Adient Aerospace leases a small portion of the building at 2850 Skyway Drive, but it expects to move into the rest of the facility once its current tenant moves out later this year. (source: NOOZHAWK)

Dallas-based Firehawk Aerospace announced the development of a 30-square-mile launch range in West Texas. The site will serve as a testing range for the Company’s current and future flight test contracts for the United States government and other partners. Firehawk will now be able to manufacture, ground test, and fly its engines all at Firehawk facilities. (source: Newswire)

SpaceX opened a factory in Bastrop, Texas, which will help expand the “production of Starlink kits exponentially as we race to keep up with surging demand for connectivity all around the world.” (source: LinkedIn)

ThinkOrbital moved out of the OrbitFab aerospace incubator at Tycho Station into flex space at 5721 Arapahoe Ave, Boulder, CO. (source: Me!)

Kayhan Space moved out of the OrbitFab aerospace incubator at Tycho Station to its own space in Boulder, CO. (source: Me!)

NOTABLE FUNDINGS

Founder Isaiah Taylor posted on LinkedIn and Twitter that his El Segundo-based startup, Valar Atomics, has recieved a $1.5M investment from Riot Ventures. The capital will be used to accelerate the buildout of its LA-based team. (source: LinkedIn)

AGREEMENTS AND PARTNERSHIPS

The Space Development Agency awarded Northrop Grumman a $732 million contract for 38 communications satellites that will be part of the U.S. military’s low Earth orbit space architecture. These satellites are for the portion of SDA’s mesh network known as Transport Layer Tranche 2 Alpha, which will have a total of 100 satellites. The agency selected York Space Systems to build the other 62 spacecraft. (source: SpaceNews)

Albuquerque, NM-based X-Bow Systems Inc (X-Bow) announced its selection by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy for a $64 million contract to provide large solid rocket motors (SRM) to the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army. This contract establishes X-Bow as a new supplier of SRMs and strengthens the Defense Department supply chain in a critical period for the United States. (source: PR Newswire)

Hydrosat, the climate tech company that specializes in delivering satellite imagery and data analytics to measure water stress and climate impact, announced today a partnership with Muon Space, a climate satellite company revolutionizing the way Earth is monitored from space. Muon Space has been awarded a Hydrosat contract for its first Constellation-as-a-Service (CaaS) spacecraft that will integrate Hydrosat's multispectral and thermal infrared (IR) imaging instruments. This partnership marks an advancement of Hydrosat's plans to deploy a constellation of LEO smallsats that provide critical data for improving agricultural water use efficiency in response to the increasing scarcity of freshwater due to climate change. (source: PR Newswire)

The governments of Australia and the United States have signed an agreement that could allow American rockets to launch from Australian spaceports, although it is unclear how much demand there is for them. The U.S. State Department announced that the two countries signed a technology safeguards agreement (TSA) regarding space launches from Australia. The agreement provides the “legal and technical framework” for American launches from Australian facilities while protecting sensitive technologies. (source: SpaceNews)

In-space propulsion developer Morpheus Space unveiled its first software product, a mission simulation and design platform called Journey. (source: TechCrunch)

I KNOW A GUY (*JOB BOARD*)

Recently, I’ve had an uptick in hard tech founders asking me if I knew anyone for “x” role. So, I figured I’d post some job opportunities here to see if it could help anyone in the Space Dirt community.

Also, I’m happy to make an intro or referral, but also understand the nature of a job search can be confidential, so no big deal either way. Just here to help!

Anyway, here are two opportunities:

Senior/Principal RF Engineer - Neros Technologies - https://boards.greenhouse.io/nerostechnologies/jobs/4115566007

Senior Electrical Engineer – Outpost Space- https://outpost.space/careers

AEROSPACE INCUBATOR OPPORTUNITIES

Founders, if you’re in the Boulder, Colorado area and looking for a place to build your aerospace startup, I just might know where you should go: Tycho Station.

The incubator features an ISO-7 rated clean room, full machine shops, and electrical engineering development labs. Everything is designed to provide an ecosystem to help you take your company to its next phase.

As we noted in our August issue, Colorado is becoming an aerospace destination.

Let me know (reply to this email) if you’d like some more info on the incubator opportunities, and I’ll get it right over to you.

WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING)

📝 Who doesn’t love a good list? Especially at this time of year. Here’s Always Add the Egg’s “The 2023 LA Hard Tech 50". Lots of familiar names!

📰 I’ve really been enjoying this newsletter I discovered, Hard Startups. The “Hard” in the title is a reference to hard tech. Every week, the newsletter features a hard tech startup building things in the real world.

📈 TechCrunch interviewed five prominent VC investors about the “generational” shift in the relationship between U.S. defense and Silicon Valley VC money. PitchBook found that defense tech VC activity topped out at $34.3 billion last year alone. Speaking of PitchBook, this article (from which the above chart was sourced) also highlights the big uptick in VC deal activity in defense tech.

🛰 The growth of the aerospace industry over the last several years has created much positive impact but has also caused some unintended problems that must be dealt with in order to keep the good times rollin’. This SpaceDotBiz article goes into great detail on the spaceport bottleneck caused by the hockey stick growth in active satellites (see above chart) in recent years. It also includes lots of information on spaceports, in case you are curious.

🌧 I really enjoyed this New Founding podcast interview with Augustus Doricko, founder of El Segunod-based Rainmaker Technology Corporation.

👀 Fast Company’s The 5 next big things in space and telecom for 2023. The list includes the companies of several Space Dirt subscribers!

Was this email forwarded to you? Like what you see?

Thanks for reading.

If you’d like your office and/or manufacturing space or business profiled, let me know. It’s always fun to explore and share the many different components of the space business.

As always, I’m here to help with your real estate needs.

Happy holidays!

Erik Stiebel
Founder and Vice President
CA DRE License #02080746
(c) +1 424.241.4795
[email protected]