sarwechshar

Thanks! Which did you like in particular?

Haha maybe a new tagline for them ;)

Really cool that they were essentially a bunch of volunteers working together to try something innovative like this - and that was before SpaceX was founded! It's a shame their rockoon prototype didn't succeed, though.

Not the OP you're replying to but you're right! I'll try to get more information on this and update once I do. Thanks!

Out of curiosity, what do you think will make then not viable economically? There's a lot of advantages they have compared to rockets, particularly for smallsats.

I don't work for Z2I (I run Space Bandits) but that's a good point and definitely would have been worth including in the interview.

I found this explanation in their payload user guide of an example flight profile (excerpt):

The first stage burns for 110 seconds, upon which the vehicle reaches an altitude of 80 km and an inertial speed of 2.3 km/s. After ejecting the first stage, the vehicle reaches 400 km and 4.4 km/s in 230 seconds. Upon third and final stage separation, the third stage performs multiple firings, the first one lasting 340 seconds and reaching 600 km of altitude while still slightly below the target orbital speed. Then, after coasting and later finalizing the orbit, the payload is released.

See page 23: http://www.zero2infinity.space/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Z2...

Thanks for raising that :)

This looks so simple but clearly a lot of work went into it. I'm learning Ruby and this is certainly going to be one of my most used tools - thanks!

Plot twist: the engineer is the CTO.

I don't disagree with the guy on the "clock watchers" point but he should appreciate that in some cases people's circumstances push them to become "clock watchers". If they commit and produce excellent work during the time they are there then they should last.

Also, yeah, that doesn't make sense at all! It suggests they didn't a) read the job spec or b) believe in the company's values or c) perhaps the phrase was really "We value [when you] work [your] life [out of] balance" ;)

I don't remember the last time I saw a company with a "CIO". It seems to be a dying trend.

Interesting fact: CIOs are also known as Chief Investment Officers (mainly in finance) and play an integral role to the company, perhaps in importance second only to the CEO.

I would say the type of manager you describe could be more aptly called a leader: visionary (motivating the team behind ideals), willing to do the hardest work (as opposed to handing it down apathetically), respectful (building trust and such) and more.

This reminds me of the stories in The Richest Man in Babylon which had an example just like this.

It would be interesting how they plan on detecting smaller moving objects like birds, which would be more of a challenge than a helicopter or a construction crane. Perhaps lasers and radar similar to how Google's driverless cars detect potential hazards?

I imagine it's because airspace (at least up to 400/500ft) can be relatively empty compared to road traffic in large cities which can be very congested (especially at peak times). So it could lead to reduced delivery times as well as potentially being cheaper than cars. This depends on exactly what the drones are capable of delivering (not your grand piano, of course).

I would be interested in this as well. So far I found a similar app called Mitzuli which is based on open source tools:

http://www.mitzuli.com/en/

Haha. It's difficult to say for sure but those are just the main contrast points. Things could very well turn out badly.

I don't know...I think they're still very different. "Who you know" can apply to any situation (particularly Wall Street) where having a contact in a network will allow you access into that network.

But at least in Silicon Valley, if you can prove you're valuable to others (Silicon Valley "members"/hackers/users of your product or service) then that's still the best way to stay competitive. And it doesn't matter who you know because if someone else has an inherently better product/company out there that's competing with you and gaining users, they'll win. With Wall Street, I agree, competition is predicated on the friends and contacts you have.

That's just my 2 cents though - unless I misunderstood your point.

What's interesting is they say GS have more developers and programmers than bankers and traders...

Almost! People are worried about another tech bubble bursting because of things like overvaluation of companies and the frequency of unicorns (private companies valued over $1bn) appearing on the scene (which gives perhaps an illusion that VCs are funding left, right and center).

But you could say that the huge growth we're seeing in investment in tech now is different to 15 years ago because:

- most VCs are funding significant amounts of their capital in later-stage startups and companies that have shown a lot of promise ("private IPOs"), rather than the other way around

- there are more startups now than 15 years ago but the same (or lower) amount of total capital invested, whereas before a smaller number of startups were funded from a huge pot

- generally tech companies nowadays, even those unicorns a few years old, have solid financials and managed to turn a profit. This wasn't entirely the case 15 years ago.

There was a Andreessen Horowitz presentation on this very topic going around a few weeks back - it's worth a read if I can dig it up (or you could be relentlessly resourceful ;)).

We'll run out of food and starve!

I'm just curious, why is there a perception that coders are poor raise-negotiators in general?

Thanks for those links. The first link was especially useful! (Wish I'd seen this a few months ago hah)

Whilst I appreciate a bird analogy as much as the next guy (and it makes sense from a mechanical perspective), I'm not sure if it works for regulation purely because birds aren't responsible to anyone or anything else if things go wrong. Drones are human products and thus someone, ie their creator or user, would need to be held accountable.