Amazon Vans in Space, and A-Rod Wants Your Phone Plan

Happy Tuesday, everyone! This week’s newsletter is 859 words, a 6-minute read.

Table of Contents

• 1 Big Thing: Amazon Vans in Space (Sort Of)

• 2. Cool Stuff You Might Have Missed

• 3. Alex Rodriguez Wants Your Phone Plan

• 4. Don’t Touch It, Or It’ll Kill You

• 5. An Awesome Book You Should Read

• 6. Check Out This Electric Vehicle Newsletter

1 Big Thing: Amazon Vans in Space (Sort Of)

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin released more details about its Blue Ring orbital vehicle this week, and it has the space world excited.

What is Blue Ring?: In true Amazon fashion, Blue Origin hopes to make its Blue Ring spacecraft the premier space logistics platform. It’s a mid-sized spacecraft with 12 docking ports, power systems, thrusters, and extra fuel.

What’s the Point?: Imagine you own a company that needs to launch a satellite. As it stands now, you’ll have to build the entire satellite from scratch, get someone to launch it for you, and operate it - solar panels, batteries, fuel, thrusters and all.

A Better Way to Work: According to Blue Origin, instead of building an entire satellite from scratch, companies should just build the components that they need and host them on a pre-built Blue Ring spacecraft.

An Earthly Analogy: It’s sort of like the difference between sending your packages on an Amazon truck versus building a truck from scratch every time you need to ship something. You worry about your own product, and Amazon takes care of the rest.

What it Means: As we continue to explore space, we’ll see new industries spring up as space companies become more and more specialized. Blue Ring is a great example of this trend.

2. Cool Stuff You Might Have Missed

1. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took a picture of the lonely, broken Ingenuity helicopter that I wrote about last week. (Space)

2. An astronaut successfully remotely controlled a robotic dog from orbit. (Phys.org)

3. NASA is launching a satellite called PACE to study Earth’s oceans on February 7th. (NASA)

3. Alex Rodriguez Wants Your Phone Plan

A company called Lynk Global is merging with famous baseball player Alex Rodriguez’s SPAC, Slam Corp.

SPAC stands for Special Purpose Acquisition Company. It’s basically a shell company that goes public on the stock market, then finds a company to merge with that actually does something - in this case, Lynk Global.

What is Lynk Global?: Lynk Global is a company looking to launch spacecraft that will bring cell service directly from space to your phone. The company already operates three low-bandwidth satellites that allow customers to text. In other words, they don’t do much - yet.

I wrote about direct-to-smartphone satellites a few weeks ago, when T-Mobile and SpaceX announced a partnership to eventually bring cell service to customers across the globe.

Why it Matters: This is a technology with the potential to change the world. We’re likely to see many companies like Lynk Global take a shot at raising enough capital to build, launch, and maintain the satellites required to connect everyone on Earth to high-speed cellular internet.

Will it Even Work?: The technology certainly works, but Lynk will need lots of capital to do it - something A-Rod might not have. Slam Corp has about $99 million left to invest, so it’ll likely be just one of many places Lynk looks to raise money.

4. Don’t Touch It, Or It’ll Kill You

TL;DR - Some rocket propellants are extremely toxic and dangerous, but we still use them anyway. Here’s why.

I wrote an article this week on Medium about hypergolic rocket propellants and why we still use them even though they’re deadly. Check it out here:

5. An Awesome Book You Should Read

I’m about ¾ of the way through Shoot for the Moon by James Donovan, and I can’t recommend it enough.

It tells the story of the famous Apollo 11 mission, but not in the way that I expected. The book goes into great detail about how the astronauts were selected and trained, some drama at NASA leading up to the mission, and lots of extra bits of info that I had never heard before - and I’m a huge nerd for this stuff, so that’s really saying something.

It has 4.7 stars on Amazon and it’s on sale for $11 right now. Check it out here:

6. Check Out This Electric Vehicle Newsletter

If you’re like me, the world of electric vehicles interests and excites you.

I started reading the free EV Universe newsletter a few weeks ago and it’s a great way to keep up with new developments in the EV industry. Subscribe for free right here!

The newsletter has been growing a lot more than I ever thought it could. Thanks to each and every one of you for reading my stuff. It means the world to me.

Thanks as always.

-Michael