Tag: Seattle Tech Week

Categories
GeekWire

How unorthodox routes can lead to the space frontier

Joydeep Hazra holding up a prototype Mars rover while fellow panelists look on at Seattle Tech Week session
Joydeep Hazra, program director for electric vehicles at South Seattle College, holds up a prototype Mars rover during a Seattle Tech Week session. He’s surrounded by, from left, Alec Courtright, technical program manager at EarthDaily Federal, Anjali Roychowdhury, lead software engineer at SpaceX; Kayla VanderPutten, technical recruiter at Anduril Industries; and moderator Amy Miller, head of people and talent at Portal Space Systems. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

The road to space isn’t always a straight line. Sometimes, the itinerary for a career in the space industry begins with years of experience in other tech fields. And sometimes, it starts at an espresso stand.

“I actually started as a barista at SpaceX, and I somehow got recruited to go build Starlink satellites,” Kayla VanderPutten, a technical recruiter at Anduril Industries, said Monday at a downtown Seattle Tech Week session focusing on the intersection of space and technology. “I don’t know why they let me do that, but I was there for the first 500 satellites before I transitioned into recruiting.”

Over the course of 25 years, Joydeep Hazra’s career path took him through a series of jobs in telecommunications and network engineering, including management positions at Nokia, Mavenir and TRIDENTX. Now he’s the manager of a federally funded program focusing on electric vehicles at South Seattle College — and he’s getting involved in aerospace as well.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Space ventures see defense as the funding frontier

Illustration: Golden Dome visualization
The Golden Dome is envisioned as a network of satellites and interceptors that could counter incoming missiles. (Lockheed Martin Illustration)

Will the Golden Dome be a golden opportunity for commercial space ventures?

That may be a bit of an exaggeration. But at a Seattle Tech Week presentation on the space industry, a panel of entrepreneurs agreed that military projects — including a plan to create a missile defense shield along the lines of Israel’s Iron Dome by as early as 2028 — seem to be the most promising vehicles for getting commercial space ventures off the ground.

Part of the reason for that has to do with the uncertainty that’s surrounding America’s civilian space program. At the same time that the White House is pushing plans for the $175 billion Golden Dome project, it’s seeking to trim billions of dollars from NASA’s budget.

“It’s so interesting right now, because I think there’s more uncertainty around civil space funding than there’s ever been before, and more bullishness on defense space funding than there’s ever been before,” said Erika Wagner, who left Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture last year to lead The Exploration Company’s U.S. business development team.

Seattle-area space companies have been among the beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s surge of support — ranging from the $25 million in Space Force funding granted to Seattle-based Integrate in June to the $2.4 billion in Space Force launch contracts set aside for Kent-based Blue Origin earlier this year. Gravitics, Starfish Space and Portal Space Systems are among other Seattle-area space ventures benefiting from recent Pentagon contracts.

Get the full story on GeekWire