Dear readers,
Welcome to Quartz’s newsletter on the economic possibilities of the extraterrestrial sphere. Please forward widely, and let me know what you think. This week: Gratitude, food, and then seconds.
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Happy Thanksgiving to all from here in the US; please forgive a brief edition this week. A few things I’m thankful for:
Readers like you, who send me smart comments. Last week saw the failure of a Vega rocket blamed on a manufacturing error when two cables were inadvertently swapped. Dave Rutkowski wrote in to say that it’s not so obvious that the problem wasn’t in the vehicle design. “Proper design would have keyed the connectors differently so they could not be swapped, it’s called Poka-yoke,” Rutkowski says. The concept emerged from the Japanese auto industry and derives from the words for avoiding mistakes.
“As an example, the Ford oval that appears on the rear deck of all Fords is a plastic piece with three (not two) tabs that fit into three body holes,” he continues. “The holes are not symmetrically spaced so the oval can be inserted only one way.” Sometimes the path to excellent execution is just a better plan!
Entrepreneurs trying to do big things. Relativity, the launch vehicle company set apart by its obsession with 3D printing, confirmed a $500 million fundraising round that values the 230 person company at $2.3 billion. I spoke with CEO Tim Ellis about the news, which he says validates his plan to debut a larger Terran rocket at the end of 2021. “It is not the case we are spending far faster than expected with the prior Series C fund,” he said. “It is very much on track from the prior plan. [Our investors] are actually rewarding the fact that we executed.” The capital is aimed at accelerating the company’s long-term plans, which include extra-terrestrial manufacturing.
At this point, Relativity has raised more than $680 million, which is more than SpaceX or Rocket Lab required to get their first vehicles in orbit. Ellis says his company’s focus on its factory of the future explains some of the difference in timing and capital requirements. “We are intentionally understanding that we have to build the world’s largest 3D printing factory for aerospace,” Ellis says. “It’s like going from on-premise server to cloud, or going from internal combustion to electric. What Relativity is doing is at the forefront of the tradition to software-designed manufacturing.”
People trying to do good things. It’s been a long year with a lot of bad news, but I’m grateful for the many folks who are trying to make the world a better place: The aerospace engineers who turned their expertise to medical devices amidst a crisis; the people working to make this sector more inclusive and representative; and the real impact of space companies on our lives.
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IMAGERY INTERLUDE
About this time last year, astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir harvested Mizuna mustard greens from an agricultural experiment onboard the International Space Station, which presumably offered a bit of a freshness to their otherwise freeze-dried holiday meal.
👀 Read this 👀
Thanksgiving is about many things, and chief among them is food—as a holiday symbol, as venue for fellowship, and as a necessity to be grateful for. But nine months into a pandemic, the way we eat has changed radically. Our journalists looked at the biggest gastronomical shifts around the globe, and the local and multinational businesses being impacted by them. Who benefits, who’s harmed, and when this is all over, which changes will last?
Whether it’s shifts in home cooking, the suffering restaurant industry, or the role of food in our culture and politics, we found creative solutions to difficult situations, ingenious adaptations to short-term shortages, and even some hope for the future. Read more in our field guide to how we eat now.
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One more thing—I had the pleasure of spending an hour fielding SpaceX questions from Canadians on the CBC this week. Give it a listen!
Your pal,
Tim
This was issue 75 of our newsletter. Hope your week is out of this world! Please send your space-themed Thanksgiving traditions, favorite obscure engineering concepts, tips, and informed opinions to tim@qz.com.