Mitch's NASA work on kilometer-scale structures becomes a company
From Football Field Size Solar Arrays That Fold Into a Rocket on Deeptech Decoded, with Pele Collins.
Transcript
Mm. Need exposure.
opportunity of a lifetime for both of those at a place like SpaceX, which I knew I was going to learn a lot as a mechanical engineer, but also I thought at the time had the potential to grow as a company significantly. I think in hindsight, it's easy to say that like, yeah, now SpaceX is like the biggest, one of the biggest companies in the world. But I think that was like, for sure, not a sure thing when I joined.
Mm. Yeah. Yeah, actually there's only one thing in front of me on my other screen. It's the picture of you and Mitch that you're giving high five to each other from 2013. I could see the joy on your face. Both of you guys.
Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. I remember that photo that was like in our like robotics lab. had like just like completed this project that we'd been working on all night and we were like deliriously tired, but it was like finally working and it was like, it's just, yeah, Hey, we happy moment. made it work exactly.
Yes. And then 2013, fast forward to last year and then you guys said okay it's time let's go.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think maybe the fair way to say it is like, so Mitch was doing his PhD at Carnegie Mellon in robotics. And while he was doing that, he was working with NASA on sort of kilometer scale deployable structures. And so while doing that, he developed some new technologies and he was the first one that had the idea to go and try and commercialize some of those ideas into a business. So he started the business.
Hmm.
And from the time he started, basically reached out to me at the time I was, uh, I actually working at Commonwealth Fusion Systems and said, Tepele, I've got this idea. It sounds, it might be kind of crazy, but let's this business together. And I think, I mean, I think it's fair to say that I didn't say yes immediately. I actually went back to SpaceX for another year and a half, um, because I had an opportunity there. But.
you
The more I thought about it, the more I was, I would just convince myself that yes, this is like what I want to do. This is the person I want to do it with and why not give it a shot? so yeah, joined Mitch Beyond Reach Labs in October of last year.
