Founder and CEO of Auriga Space, Winnie Lai, joins me to talk about their electromagnetic launch infrastructure and the path she sees for Auriga across space and defense markets. And yes, we talk about whether this kind of alternative launch architecture is a good fit for Earth, or a better fit for pretty much every other rock in the solar system. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Steve, Ryan, Matt from Built, Russell, Joel, David, Kris, Joakim, Fred, Pat, Matt, Theo and Violet, Natasha Tsakos, Donald, Warren, Miles O’Brien, Will and Lars from Agile, Frank, Jan, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Josh from Impulse, Stealth Julian, Lee, Joonas, The Astrogators at SEE, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters. Topics Auriga - Electromagnetic Launch for Space and Defense Auriga Space raises $6M to shoot rockets off an electromagnetic launch track | TechCrunch The Show Like the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack! Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to anthony@mainenginecutoff.com Follow @WeHaveMECO Follow @meco@spacey.space on Mastodon Listen to MECO Headlines Listen to Off-Nominal Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Artwork photo by SpaceX Work with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

T+335: Auriga Space (with Winnie Lai, Founder and CEO)

Main Engine Cut Off

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Main Engine Cut Off

## Participants

- **Anthony Colangelo** (Colangelo Studios, LLC)
- **Winnie Lai** (Auriga Space)

## Transcript

I'm Anthony Colangelo and I've got an interesting show for you today. We'll be talking with Winnie Lai of Auriga Space. She founded this after leaving Spin Launch, among other places, and they're working on electromagnetic launch capabilities. They've got a bunch of different ways that they think they could apply this. Hypersonic testing, obviously, in the near term. In space, there are some interesting use cases from the moon or even between orbits. The very much murkier one that I get into a lot with her here is the actual use case down here.

On Earth. She was very open to my questions and skepticism in that department. It's a little bit more futuristic of a show than I typically do on MECO, but I do think this is an interesting company because a lot of their tech approach fits better with some near term markets than something like Spin Launch did. Still has some of the pitfalls for the longer term markets and trade offs that we're seeing play out in real time about how good our reusable first stage is and where are the problems to be solved in space technology. But I always appreciate somebody that's willing to come on and say,

talk with somebody who is bought in on certain parts of their mission and has skepticism in other parts. So I think it's a really interesting conversation with me and Winnie. So without further ado, let's give her a call. Winnie, thank you so much for joining me on MECO. I'm excited about this one. This is a little outside of my typical lane. It's a little more futuristic feeling than most of my shows, but I'm excited that you're here with us. Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me, Anthony. Good to meet you.

We need, I'm going to be honest. You've got some legwork to do with me because I'm somebody that is generally skeptical of the alternative launch stack. Many of my listeners know I'm not a fan of Air Launch. We'll obviously talk about your former placement employment spin launch. So I've got struggles versus reusable first stages, but there's a reason that you're also on the show because typically I would be like, let's not talk about the steam rocket or whatever.

But there's a lane here that I think is really interesting to pull on in terms of some of the overlaps between the things that are in front of you on the near term, long term, medium term, and trying to understand the general tech stack you're after I think is important for the future. But let's start with a little story time. Tell me about where you came from, what you were working on, and how you ended up where you're at now. Sure, absolutely. I'm happy to talk about my background and how I got to the founding of Auriga.

So first of all, I'm a space nerd, just like probably everyone who's listening to the show. So I studied engineering physics in college for that reason, because I've ...

T+335: Auriga Space (with Winnie Lai, Founder and CEO)

Transcript

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T+335: Auriga Space (with Winnie Lai, Founder and CEO)

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.