Ben Nowack ☀️🌎🪞
@bennbuilds
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we’ll get you sunlight after dark
Los Angeles, CA
Joined August 2022
Announcing our $20M Series A led by @Lux_Capital with participation from @sequoia and @starship_vc. We truly couldn’t be building this with better partners. The sun will power ~everything until we outgrow this solar system, and we are taking the first practical steps to
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Works pretty good for a “partially assembled” engine :)
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This footage from inside the eye of Category 5 Hurricane Melissa might be the most jaw-dropping video ever captured of a hurricane’s eye, showcasing the infamous “stadium effect."
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I’m obsessed with Skylab
Astronaut Alan Bean enjoying weightlessness in the open space of the orbital workshop on the Skylab space station in 1973.
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It’s all fun and games until china wipes the floor with your work life balance
🚀🇨🇳China's first REUSABLE rocket, Zhuque-3, has completed engine tests and begun final preparations before its maiden flight. 🛰️🌏The rocket will be used to accelerate the building of China's "Starlink" large-scale constellation missions at a lower cost.
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Sunlight can power everything and we are bringing it to you from space
Our CEO & Co-founder @bennbuilds spoke at Up.Summit hosted by @UPPartnersVC about how Reflect is building reliable access to sunlight as a foundation for everything we want to achieve as a species.
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Rockets and satellites are a solved problem (thanks spacex). The coolest companies ever are about to be built in space.
Space isn’t just for stars anymore. 🌠 Starcloud’s H100-powered satellite brings sustainable, high-performance computing beyond Earth. Learn more: https://t.co/euiyEGZaEP
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Reflect Orbital just expanded its clean room capabilities, adding 1,500 sqft. of class 8 clean room space, including a class 4 laminar flow bench for precision assembly and testing.
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Congrats Starlink & Falcon teams on building and launching 10k satellites! SpaceX now has several times more satellites in orbit than all others combined.
SpaceX has now launched more than 10,000 Starlink satellites to date, enabling reliable high-speed internet for millions of people all around the world 🛰️🌎❤️
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Join the party!
This is the path to a Kardashev Type II civilization that harnesses most of the power of our Sun, which is more than a billion times more energy than everything else on Earth combined
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Starship vs 737-8 Easy to forget how massive Starship is, 52m long vs 40m for a Max-8
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Starship vs A380 & 737-8 When stacked with the Super Heavy booster Starship is taller than an A380 and a Max-8 on top of each other, 123m vs 73m+40m
Starship vs 737-8 Easy to forget how massive Starship is, 52m long vs 40m for a Max-8
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This is MASSIVE!! Incredible work!
Big news – we’ve raised $510M in Series D funding! Total funding is now at $990M. This capital will accelerate our fully reusable Nova rocket development and Launch Complex 14 activation at Cape Canaveral. Incredibly grateful to our investment partners and excited to keep the
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Awesome! Batteries are critical
Today we are announcing our $1B Series C, but money isn’t the story. The story is what we’ll do with it, and the scale of the challenge ahead. Our mission isn’t constrained by capital, supply, or demand. It’s constrained by talent. To build America’s next great power company, we
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Today we are announcing our $1B Series C, but money isn’t the story. The story is what we’ll do with it, and the scale of the challenge ahead. Our mission isn’t constrained by capital, supply, or demand. It’s constrained by talent. To build America’s next great power company, we
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Fusion reactors always net out on the same side of zero. HARD problem, no guarantee it works. Glad I got over fusion in high school, the sun does it best!
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This is obviously true. You also can’t take big bets on outliers when it’s hard to fire people so you miss out on the fantastic unconventional weirdos that often make the best hires.
The Economist published this article that's contentious but probably right: It argues that laws protecting labour in much of Europe make lay-offs so onerous that high-risk moonshot projects become unviable. Making it easier to fire people could, weirdly, benefit everyone.
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Rocket reusability isn’t just an optimization - it’s a phase transition. When you throw rockets away, you’re limited by factory throughput (~16 rockets/year). Reuse them, and you enter a different regime of launch volume, economics, and ambition.
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