
Apply HN: openastro – an open stack for the space industry - kartikkumar
PROBLEM<p>Finding the right parts for your satellite is time-consuming and inefficient: matching specs consumes a lot of engineering man-hours. Why can&#x27;t it be as easy as shopping for a laptop, cell phone or flight?<p>SOLUTION<p>We&#x27;ve launched a satellite parts search engine: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;satsearch.co. Satsearch will deliver parametric-search for the space industry for engineering, procurement and market analysis.<p>We are building a set of open-source &amp; open-data tools to break open the traditionally conservative space sector. Satsearch belongs to this set of tools. We have open-sourced a number of simulation libraries: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;openastro.<p>TEAM<p>I am an Aerospace Engineer with 10+ years of experience developing software for mission analysis, trajectory design and mission planning. I&#x27;ve directly faced the pain of trying to find parts for mission concepts that I&#x27;ve worked on. I am founder of the thriving Tudat library (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tudat) and I&#x27;m finalizing my PhD from Delft University of Technology. My co-founder, Alberto, is a software developer (iOS and Node primarily) with a PhD in Bioengineering from Politecnico di Milano.<p>WHY WE&#x27;RE APPLYING<p>We&#x27;re bootstrapped and could use the money offered through YCF. More than that though, we think that YC is ideal for what we&#x27;re trying to build, given that they&#x27;ve recently supported teams building launchers and small-satellites. We would greatly benefit from access to and mentorship through the YC network.
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kartikkumar
A few more details due to the character limit:

BACKGROUND

There are a slew of new applications that can benefit from space technology,
e.g., "internet everywhere", IoT (M2M messaging), asset tracking etc. Rapid
growth of the small-sat sector and robust consumer electronics have
precipitated a drastic drop in the cost of space-based infrastructure.

BUSINESS MODEL

We'd love to put together something like the Red Hat business model:
delivering enterprise-level, open-source software under SLAs. With satsearch
specifically, we plan on delivering a comprehensive analytics report (likely
monthly) that allows suppliers to monitor what's being search for and how the
market is evolving (under a subscription model).

We've already had a number of inbound requests from suppliers to be listed in
satsearch. We are in advanced negotiations with a major space agency (direct
procurement), a supplier that wants our structured data for market analysis, a
university small-satellite team and two governmental organizations seeking to
raise the profile of their space clusters.

Besides directly serving the space industry, we have supported an indie game
developer in adopting our libraries for a new space-based strategy game. We
have also had discussions with a company interested in leveraging our tools
for tech transfer.

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mdorazio
Are we talking about the commercial/military space sector, or about the
burgeoning public/research/cubesat sector? I can't help but feel like the
former doesn't really have an incentive to make things more efficient given
the way the contracts typically work, while the latter might be more
interesting.

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kartikkumar
We are indeed talking about the burgeoning sector that is often referred to as
NewSpace, which is made up of universities, research institutes, agencies and
commercial companies. The idea is to use our network in the Cubesat/PocketQube
community to prove the benefits of integrating the spacecraft design phases,
ultimately leading to more robust designs and cost savings. It's also a sector
that is highly fragmented at the moment, with parts suppliers popping up all
over the world.

If we reach the target of proving the benefits of our open stack, I think
large industry players will have to take note. We've had some discussions with
the likes of Airbus DS in Europe and the sales cycle is very long, but not
impossible.

The mission that we're on is really to open up the sector to completely new
applications and teams. We want to expose the tools and technologies that are
needed, so that it's not just a select few that can reap the benefits of space
technology and infrastructure.

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kumarski
I think you have to better explain the key difficult or problem for those who
try to build satellites.

This sounds cool at first glance, I think you have to elaborate a lot more on
the user pain intensity and who they are.

~~~
kartikkumar
Thanks for the feedback.

Satellites are complex machines and there's a lot of engineering work that
goes into figuring out exactly what to build. The goals for a mission are
usually set by a client/end user: e.g., I want images of San Francisco at a
resolution of 5m/pixel or less.

Engineering work goes towards simulation and analysis to figure out what the
size of the solar panels are that you need to generate enough power on-board
to power the camera, what the size of the battery needs to be to make sure
that the satellite keeps functioning during eclipse, what the size of the
thruster is that you need to keep the camera pointing at the right spot, etc.

Once you've figured out what you need, the job of finding a vendor that has
your part involves wading through their websites to find data sheets, calling
them, emailing them etc. It's a really time-consuming process and all you want
to know is if there's a part that matches what you need, within your budget,
that has heritage in space, etc.

The engineering work is iterative because the subsystems within the satellite
all depend on each other. Hence, you're doing this search over and over again.
Usually, you just end up making sub-optimal choices.

We've tried to explain the search problem in the following video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlHEoq7utW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlHEoq7utW4).
The low-hanging fruit comes from the fact that a lot of data is already
available online, just completely unstructured.

The idea of tying this in with simulation tools is that it allows you to do
things like programmatically figure out what happens to your design if the
vendor you've picked for e.g., your battery fails to deliver. This kind of
sensitivity and robustness analysis is very important during the design
process, because it allows you to reduce uncertainty and figure out the main
risk items that you need to devote engineering time to.

Bit a long explanation, but hopefully that gives you a better sense of the
immediate problem we're trying to tackle for engineers.

For vendors, the pain simply comes from not knowing where their users are,
i.e., teams that need the parts that they are selling.

Does this help explain the pain better?

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kumarski
Great. I think to win, you've got to have aggressive conversation with the
folks who buy sattelites/ your customer base.

While your answer to this question right now is generic, in the future, you
can have a lot more insight and it will shine through in your pitch with
customer stories you can tell.

~~~
kartikkumar
Thanks for the feedback! It's a slow process, but we're plugging away at
trying to on-board users and pinpoint where our open stack can directly
address challenges they're facing. Our best starting point at the moment seems
to be universities building satellites, as we have a good network and the
barriers to get started on evaluating product/market fit are lower than B2B.

