🌌 Hi everyone, Robert here. I hope you’re enjoying The Deep End, a subsection of the Airframe newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed, join us: aerospace executives, investors, and deep tech operators who read Airframe and The Deep End.
Defense tech’s moment
You can listen to the entire War on the Rocks podcast episode here, but here’s an excerpt on dual-use versus defense tech startups:
I’ve been in venture since my time at In-Q-Tel, so about a decade. Within the world of defense tech, the biggest change I’ve seen is the emergence of defense tech startups. I would say that’s something that’s been a good idea only in the last three to five years.
I would draw a distinction between defense tech and dual-use: defense tech startups are focused on scaling their businesses by selling to one primary customer, and that is the government. Dual-use has been around for a long time. It has always been a good idea because it means the government is going out and buying the best in class version of some technology that’s already the best in the world. That was a good idea yesterday, and will be a good idea tomorrow.
But for the stars to align in a way that it makes sense to start a company, shoot for a multi-billion-dollar outcome on the basis of selling something specifically to the government, I’d say that’s only recently become a good idea.
Related news from this week: Congress Looks To Shake Up Pentagon Acquisitions With A ‘Hedge Portfolio’
Major step for space tourism
Virgin Galactic has sold 800 tickets to the edge of space and the first customers just took flight. The mission carried two Italian Air Force personnel — Col. Walter Villadei, who is also slated to travel to orbit on a future paid SpaceX mission; and Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi, a physician who has trained as a crew surgeon for Russian cosmonauts. More here.
Worms that can eat plastic
Cleo Abram on how we could break down plastic in days, rather than centuries. Video here.