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Comment by techdragon | Hacker News Reader

Wow that’s disheartening, almost makes me think it’s not worth applying… I’m outside the USA doing a hard tech problem involving a difficult industry with high capital costs… I think my chances are basically zero, why would YCombinator think some random company from Australia can revolutionise space construction…

Really disheartening when you add the fact they added a special early AI around to deal with the thousands of AI startups ( most of which are probably just built on ChatGPT and don’t have a lot of long term value proposition as the real value is coming from OpenAI’s APIs and then adding a thin layer of prompt engineering, a dash of industry specific knowledge, and a bunch of marketing, doesn’t really seem like something that companies won’t be able to easily replicate )

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Honestly, talking from experience, your best bet is to network with folks in the space industry and then get in touch with folks in the American space sector through them. Eventually you will 100% have to have a major American presence, even if you have some functions in Australia. Just shifting ops from the UK to the US gave us a significant bump in cred when working with some major American aerospace players.

Alternatively, you could also work with other countries' space sectors, with the most accessible being the EU's industry, which is mostly dominated by French companies. The Eurosatory summit is often a good place to network with some of the mid-upper level leadership of these EU companies.

Good luck!

Your company sounds really interesting. What part of space construction are you trying to revolutionize?

We’re trying to revolutionise most of it… because at the moment everything we use in space has to be built on earth and launched in one piece on a rocket big enough to launch it one piece… and made tough enough to be launched on a violently shaking rocket… and everything has to be made bulletproof because once it’s up there it’s impossible to repair… all of which makes basically any space construction project extremely expensive to engineer… the only shortcuts are mass production of identical disposable units like planet labs doves or spacex starlink… which are kind of wasteful but work if you have a cheap enough ride into space…

But building anything in space is a massive set of challenges of its own … a space station module requires skilled welding of a pressure vessel, fitting a satellite requires careful cable management and manipulation of sensitive components… low earth orbit is practically a low density oxygen plasma compared to higher orbits (and oxygen plasma will oxidise just about anything given enough time) …

We analysed a lot of options and ended up designing (and are slowly building due to limited budget) a modular system of robotic spacecraft designed to work together in teams like a construction or assembly team, able to work on larger projects like space station modules or simple things like assembling a cubesat from a bin of parts… and designed to handle both construction and maintenance so that we can provide value to the massive amount of existing assets already in space, and because it’s a multi element system capable of maintenance and repair work, each robot can be more low cost and straightforward, like a Bobcat you can fit a bucket or dozer blade or jackhammer or claw to… they can swap tools on each other just like when you use one bobcat to lift a heavy tool up off the ground for attachment to another bobcat, and when one breaks the others can open it up and replace what’s broken…

It seems a lot more complicated when it’s described out in terms of capabilities, but fundamentally there’s a small number of modular components and a handful of support systems that are much simpler than the primary robot platform units are.

The website doesn’t have a lot of PR material at the moment since most of the effort is still on engineering design and prototyping work, but the website https://www.tetraorbital.com will have more information when we have stuff to show, it also has contact info for more specific enquires, and the mailing list is a zero fluff no spam future announcement only list (we’ve literally not sent a single message to it yet since there’s no PR or announcement material to share yet)

YC has plenty of experience with space tech startups, but have you also potentially considered getting some form of Military R&D funding or contracts? Depending on the country it might also be competitive.

Sorry where is YC's experience with space tech companies? They have invested in a bunch of moonshot companies, but that's all the progress I've seen.

Also they won't be considered seriously for American military R&D if they're an Australian team either. They would have to eventually relinquish the company to an American player. And not many militaries outside the US fund R&D, and even if they do, it's often a giant bureaucratic centralized leviathan you have to deal with - it's much easier dealing with the US military in that respect. And YC is kinda sour for startups in the non-US non-tech space.

> Sorry where is YC's experience with space tech companies

Relativity Space (YC W16)

Tesseract (YC S17)

Momentous (YC W18)

SpaceRyde (YC W19)

UTVATE (YC S20)

Inversion Space (YC S21)

TransAstra Corporation (YC S21)

Epsilon3 (YC S21)

Turion Space (YC S21)

HEO Robotics (YC S21)

Albedo (YC W21)

Velontra (YC S22)

Quindar (YC S22)

Wyvern (YC W22)

AstroForge (YC W22)

This is a non-exhaustive list.

> Also they won't be considered seriously for American military R&D

I said military R&D depending on their country. Australia has some Aerospace R&D grant programs as well via the SIF and ISII. You realize Australia has a competitive Aerospace and Defense industry right?

Modular construction has plenty of Space and Military applications. Depending on OP's background they might be competitive if they have some kind of an MVP or prototype

I know that they've invested in those companies, but many of them are in the moonshot stage with most investments being way too recent. I wouldn't say YC is an expert investor in the sector. That's what makes it so hard - there isn't a YC for the hard sciences, and especially not for aerospace. I would say the closest to success YC startup in aerospace is Zipline.

Being in America matters for them, because afaik, Australia is nowhere as competitive as America or the EU in the space sector. More opportunities = more paths to success.

Fun fact, back in the PG days, when we had applied to YC, we were rejected because aerospace was an area where they didn't "have expertise" and where we would have to work heavily with government. Same for another friend and his AI-based visual surveillance startup. Both companies were later acquired by established behemoth players eventually.

That sounds really innovative, hopefully you're able to get proper funding. Sucks that a lot of investments in space engineering is centered around the US. I wish I was an Australlian with some robotics experience, I would've loved to be a part of your mission. Best of luck!

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