what NASA did with the Apollo program
was amazing but the amounts of money
that you had to spend to do that work
enormous you can’t just do space for the
sake of doing space so the only way to
really open up the frontier is to show
that the frontier is worth opening up
our satellites and our system that we’re
building has to pay for itself it has to
exist for its own right not just because
it’s a cool thing to do but because it
actually provides value at the end of
the day makes the world better
[Music]
Kickstarter we’ve all used it to give
our filmmaker or musician friends a
couple of bucks for their latest passion
project we don’t usually think of it as
a tool that new space entrepreneurs are
using to open up the frontier of space
but a company in Glasgow Scotland did
just that
welcome to spire a company that believes
it’s on the cusp of revolutionising a
satellite industry this is Joel spark
one of their co-founders the birth of
spire it was a bunch of us a grad school
and there’s this thing called CubeSat a
satellite size of a wine bottle that
makes it infinitely easier to get a
satellite in space but up until that
point the prevailing idea was that cube
SATs are toys a typical like large
satellite is huge it’s like the size of
a bus it’s really expensive it’s
billions of dollars most big weather or
communication satellites will take 10-15
years to get built with the expectation
that it will then last another 15 years
on orbit so by the end of its lifetime
every component onboard that satellite
it’s 30 years old CubeSat is a
completely different methodology than a
traditional satellite and here’s where
we come to the revolutionary idea what
if they could build a lot of these
little cube SATs on the cheap
get them into space really fast then
start linking them together suddenly it
wouldn’t be about single large
satellites it would be about a network
constellation but first had to prove
that they could build a single cube set
so they launched a Kickstarter we
thought it was a good idea but you know
that doesn’t that doesn’t sail out a
couple of crazy students in garage or
building something the Kickstarter
campaign was a decision point whether to
go on from there and start building this
thing or go our own ways and never speak
of it again
in July 2012 we started the Kickstarter
campaign hit our target about three days
so okay
now we actually have to do this I’m in
about 12 months we go from napkin
sketches to a satellite in space t-minus
10 9
and it’s a weird sense of scale we’re
watching the livestream of this rocket
blasting into space where you have all
your hopes and dreams and in all these
expectations cramped in this little cube
you feel like the cube could fill it the
whole rocket it feels like the rocket is
your rocket it’s not a toy this is real
a verified satellite the deployed
congratulations on it all the
appointment so they got a CubeSat into
outer space that’s when the real work
began figuring out how to build a
business around them their first hires
we’re not engineers they were they’re
actually business people what we really
needed to do was kind of go out to
customers and various markets and see
what our customers interested in what
our industry is interested in one of the
things they found was that there was a
real need in the area of weather
prediction so in 2017 we’re starting to
see a lot of NOAA and NASA satellites
that are primarily used for weather
reaching the end of their useful
lifespan and we don’t have anything that
replaces it right now there is going to
be this gap where we currently have 30
year old technology or older that’s
trying to keep the weather network alive
this is a simulation of just earth and a
satellite moving around it so the dot is
your satellite and this target that I
put here is it could be extreme weather
events like hurricanes and tropical
storms and the idea is even though the
satellite that I’m simulating goes
around the Earth every hour and a half
but doesn’t mean you see the whole world
every hour and half this one satellite
travels around it’s going to see this
target but it’s not going to see it
again until that targets rotated all the
way around to the other sides at 12
hours later and that could be along 12
hours
hurricane can change its direction in
less than an hour and depending on how
much direction it changes whether it
ships inland or Ellen when you’re
looking at a hurricane the loss of life
can go from zero to a thousand or tens
of thousands people depending on how
that path changes over time you need to
be able to replace this capability and
that’s what we think you can do with
CubeSat
so the idea is instead of having one
single satellite you have a
constellation or a fleet this is just a
simulation but it shows that by having
lots of satellites in different places
you can see how you have a greater view
of the planet so this particular target
that you’re interested in you see very
very frequently when you make it
possible for people to get updates every
minute and that’s actually showing a
truer course of that weather system you
can directly impact people’s lives and
possibly save people time will tell
whether or not team spires able to grow
their constellation of cube SATs fast
enough to fill the impending weather gap
but either way they truly believe
they’re on the cusp of a revolution the
beauty of CubeSat is that it’s in
essence a technology demonstration of a
lot of things we’re going to need in the
future when going to other planets what
are we going to do about tracking people
on the surface of Mars we’re going to
have to bring with us a network of small
satellites to do all the stuff that we
have currently happening on earth we’re
really demonstrating the technology that
can be used in the future now they have
a lot of cathedrals here in Glasgow and
one of the things I always found
interesting about cathedrals is when you
read the plaques on some of the real old
ones they say this was built from this
time this time and sometimes the span of
when they started when they finished the
Cathedral was hundreds of years so the
people who started and who built the
foundation and saw what the Cathedral
could be and really designed it didn’t
actually get to sit in it but they still
started and for me that’s what I think
spires do now we’re building a
foundation
because we see that someday humanity
could be using space to be better and
that’s what’s exciting about CubeSat
it’s not what it is it’s what it is
going to be
[Music]
[Music]
you
[Music]
Oh
was amazing but the amounts of money
that you had to spend to do that work
enormous you can’t just do space for the
sake of doing space so the only way to
really open up the frontier is to show
that the frontier is worth opening up
our satellites and our system that we’re
building has to pay for itself it has to
exist for its own right not just because
it’s a cool thing to do but because it
actually provides value at the end of
the day makes the world better
[Music]
Kickstarter we’ve all used it to give
our filmmaker or musician friends a
couple of bucks for their latest passion
project we don’t usually think of it as
a tool that new space entrepreneurs are
using to open up the frontier of space
but a company in Glasgow Scotland did
just that
welcome to spire a company that believes
it’s on the cusp of revolutionising a
satellite industry this is Joel spark
one of their co-founders the birth of
spire it was a bunch of us a grad school
and there’s this thing called CubeSat a
satellite size of a wine bottle that
makes it infinitely easier to get a
satellite in space but up until that
point the prevailing idea was that cube
SATs are toys a typical like large
satellite is huge it’s like the size of
a bus it’s really expensive it’s
billions of dollars most big weather or
communication satellites will take 10-15
years to get built with the expectation
that it will then last another 15 years
on orbit so by the end of its lifetime
every component onboard that satellite
it’s 30 years old CubeSat is a
completely different methodology than a
traditional satellite and here’s where
we come to the revolutionary idea what
if they could build a lot of these
little cube SATs on the cheap
get them into space really fast then
start linking them together suddenly it
wouldn’t be about single large
satellites it would be about a network
constellation but first had to prove
that they could build a single cube set
so they launched a Kickstarter we
thought it was a good idea but you know
that doesn’t that doesn’t sail out a
couple of crazy students in garage or
building something the Kickstarter
campaign was a decision point whether to
go on from there and start building this
thing or go our own ways and never speak
of it again
in July 2012 we started the Kickstarter
campaign hit our target about three days
so okay
now we actually have to do this I’m in
about 12 months we go from napkin
sketches to a satellite in space t-minus
10 9
and it’s a weird sense of scale we’re
watching the livestream of this rocket
blasting into space where you have all
your hopes and dreams and in all these
expectations cramped in this little cube
you feel like the cube could fill it the
whole rocket it feels like the rocket is
your rocket it’s not a toy this is real
a verified satellite the deployed
congratulations on it all the
appointment so they got a CubeSat into
outer space that’s when the real work
began figuring out how to build a
business around them their first hires
we’re not engineers they were they’re
actually business people what we really
needed to do was kind of go out to
customers and various markets and see
what our customers interested in what
our industry is interested in one of the
things they found was that there was a
real need in the area of weather
prediction so in 2017 we’re starting to
see a lot of NOAA and NASA satellites
that are primarily used for weather
reaching the end of their useful
lifespan and we don’t have anything that
replaces it right now there is going to
be this gap where we currently have 30
year old technology or older that’s
trying to keep the weather network alive
this is a simulation of just earth and a
satellite moving around it so the dot is
your satellite and this target that I
put here is it could be extreme weather
events like hurricanes and tropical
storms and the idea is even though the
satellite that I’m simulating goes
around the Earth every hour and a half
but doesn’t mean you see the whole world
every hour and half this one satellite
travels around it’s going to see this
target but it’s not going to see it
again until that targets rotated all the
way around to the other sides at 12
hours later and that could be along 12
hours
hurricane can change its direction in
less than an hour and depending on how
much direction it changes whether it
ships inland or Ellen when you’re
looking at a hurricane the loss of life
can go from zero to a thousand or tens
of thousands people depending on how
that path changes over time you need to
be able to replace this capability and
that’s what we think you can do with
CubeSat
so the idea is instead of having one
single satellite you have a
constellation or a fleet this is just a
simulation but it shows that by having
lots of satellites in different places
you can see how you have a greater view
of the planet so this particular target
that you’re interested in you see very
very frequently when you make it
possible for people to get updates every
minute and that’s actually showing a
truer course of that weather system you
can directly impact people’s lives and
possibly save people time will tell
whether or not team spires able to grow
their constellation of cube SATs fast
enough to fill the impending weather gap
but either way they truly believe
they’re on the cusp of a revolution the
beauty of CubeSat is that it’s in
essence a technology demonstration of a
lot of things we’re going to need in the
future when going to other planets what
are we going to do about tracking people
on the surface of Mars we’re going to
have to bring with us a network of small
satellites to do all the stuff that we
have currently happening on earth we’re
really demonstrating the technology that
can be used in the future now they have
a lot of cathedrals here in Glasgow and
one of the things I always found
interesting about cathedrals is when you
read the plaques on some of the real old
ones they say this was built from this
time this time and sometimes the span of
when they started when they finished the
Cathedral was hundreds of years so the
people who started and who built the
foundation and saw what the Cathedral
could be and really designed it didn’t
actually get to sit in it but they still
started and for me that’s what I think
spires do now we’re building a
foundation
because we see that someday humanity
could be using space to be better and
that’s what’s exciting about CubeSat
it’s not what it is it’s what it is
going to be
[Music]
[Music]
you
[Music]
Oh
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