Ashlee Vance book: When the Heavens Went on Sale

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/djsnm/status/1813814943650824321

Just watched this, and I recommend it! I especially appreciate the unfiltered reactions of the CEO’s to successes and failures. And while I knew the Astra launch record, I was glad we got some of the early launch footage released rather than the snippets which have been shared privately for so long.
Also good to see the little bit with @LeoLabs_Space in there because that wasn’t in the trailer.

I am disappointed they skipped over the Astra fairing deployment failure on flight 7 since that was kinda comical.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1813773892160520454

@RossKauffman warmest congrats - just saw the movie at last and it is everything I might have hoped for. You tell the tale thrillingly.

[TrevorMonty]

In reading that book, my impression was that Kemp at Astra was going to bring in more money than Beck at Rocketlabs, but that Rocketlabs would ultimately be more successful. 

Kemp might've brought more money in, to his personal bank account to the tune of $59m. While Astra shareholders are penniless.

https://www.benzinga.com/sec/insider-trades/0001870125/chris-kemp

[Blackstar]

Ha! The documentary literally starts with Kemp getting in his car and saying "This might be a little risky" and then explaining that he doesn't have a driver's license, insurance, and the car is not registered. A true American hero.

[Blackstar]

I have now watched "Wild Wild Space" all the way through. It is really good. There are several themes:

-the competition between the two rocket guys, one of whom takes the steady, do-your-math, approach and succeeds, while the other takes the "hold my beer" approach and doesn't exactly succeed

-the con man who keeps spinning the truth, even when the camera is recording his lies

-the idealistic company (Planet) that is all about peace and love, but eventually builds satellites that are being used by the military (there's an ominous statement about how if you want to find out where the refugees are hiding, you can now buy that data--the implication being that countries can use this to kill people they don't like; and another comment about how a man could use satellite imagery to find out if his ex-wife's car is parked in her driveway)

-the warning about how this technology is getting out of control and is unregulated, and we don't know what is going to happen, but it could be pretty bad

I thought that it's a bit of a shame that this is only on HBO (er, MAX) rather than getting wider exposure. It deserves to be seen by more people.


Chris Kemp of Astra provides the unintentional humor throughout the show. There are numerous examples where something bad happens and he immediately says that it's good. For instance, their rocket flew for 27 seconds and he tells an investor that it achieved their 30-second goal, plus or minus ten seconds. There's another scene where the rocket goes straight up, then comes straight down and explodes, and he is talking to an employee who looks very skeptical and Kemp refers to it as a fantastic outcome. And then there's the scene where he asks somebody if their rocket is (finally) in orbit and the guy says "We don't know yet" and five seconds later he is on the phone and says "We're in orbit." Why should anybody trust anything that this guy says? He's like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail denying that his legs have been cut off.

Astra really comes across looking like a bunch of incompetents here, with not only many launch failures, but many many aborted launches. It would be really interesting to hear the inside story about what was going wrong there. Did they just not have people who knew what they were doing? Or were they cutting corners on so many things that they kept sending hardware to the pad that was shoddy and incomplete and then did not work at all?

It ends with Astra closed down, everybody fired, and there he is sitting outdoors and insisting that he will succeed and the only way he won't succeed is if he's dead. Yeah, all those people who worked there lost their jobs, but the guy in the black T-shirt and the coifed hair is doing fine.

[CameronD]

I have now watched "Wild Wild Space" all the way through. It is really good. There are several themes:
........
It ends with Astra closed down, everybody fired, and there he is sitting outdoors and insisting that he will succeed and the only way he won't succeed is if he's dead. Yeah, all those people who worked there lost their jobs, but the guy in the black T-shirt and the coifed hair is doing fine.

Sounds depressing... and unlike any of the space startups I've come across. Yet.

[Blackstar]

I should add that it pretty much ends in the spring of 2024. I think the filming ends at the end of 2023, but then they have some text about the status of the companies and the text about Astra mentions that it went private in the spring of this year. It describes this as a stunning development, but I remember reading assessments at the time that nobody really thought that this meant the company is saved. It avoided bankruptcy, but it still has to get off the ground. And in some ways they have a bigger problem now because although they have the designs and the equipment, they fired all their people.

[Blackstar]

This is an interesting article with good information. It goes into the current financial status of a whole bunch of companies that started trading stock back around 2021. That includes three companies that Ashlee Vance's book focuses on: Astra, Planet, and Rocket Lab. I thought Planet was doing better. But even a company that has stuff to sell can spend too much or make mistakes in the marketplace.

https://spacenews.com/spac-class-of-covid-19-where-are-they-now/