BRIAN RIDER
LeoStella — CTO
The constellations provide almost continual communication to-andfrom earth for a variety of reasons , from GPS-to-television to monitoring applications .
Rider shared that the days are over with the old model of spending a lot of money and time to get into orbit . He said that organizations like Apple changed the thinking around engineering new innovations . Today ’ s model , for consumer applications , and commercial applications for satellites is more , “ incremental , with rapid upgrades .” He said that is why LeoStella was started . The company now has about 45 employees .
Rider also noted that before SpaceX , anything related to space exploration was cumbersome . Now , with private industry running programs , there are “ small satellite companies , universities , and bootstrapped companies getting in on building and launching satellites .” He added , “ SpaceX and Elon Musk are big enablers of this industry .”
There is growth in rocket launches as well with a variety of companies Merski said , “ SpaceX has a great launch service ; we launched with them four days ago through Spaceflight .” But he added that there are other commercial providers for satellite launches such as Airbus Defense and Space , Boeing , Northrup Grumman , as well as other worldwide companies .
Merski shared , “ The Pacific Northwest is where there is a lot of innovation for the space launch market .”
The satellites being made now , come in a variety of sizes from a bread box-to-refrigerator-to-MINI Cooper-sized , said Rider . LeoStella specializes in micro-satellites which are the refrigerator-sized satellites .
“ There is a compatibility issue that has to do with launch and ride share –
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