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

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.

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

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

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

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.