Impulse Space

Founded in twenty twenty-four by SpaceX veteran Scott Morton, Revel makes testing and control software for companies building rockets, supersonic aircraft, nuclear reactors, and other complex machines.

In less than two years, it's raised a hundred and eighty million dollars, won customers like Impulse Space and Radiant Nuclear, and was reportedly valued at just over one billion dollars.

In today's episode, Scott and I discuss the hardware renaissance, why industrial software got stuck in the nineteen eighties, what he learned from Elon Musk, and why Revel decided to create its own programming language.

I'm Mario, and this is The Generalist.

Yeah.

I mean, as you know, my background is also in propulsion engineering from NASA and then at a couple of startups, Momentus and Impulse Space, both focused on in-space transportation.

So, yeah, this is definitely an area where I spent a lot of time thinking about how we can create this kind of highway to the moon to help facilitate the shipping containers in space.

And and all that so um yeah i think it's a really interesting problem and and you know i'm sure you think about this way as well it's somewhat of a chicken and egg right if if we we need to reduce the cost of transporting things around in space and then and then folks will start transporting more things and it'll be a virtuous cycle um i guess in that in that kind of distant future though where we're transporting many many tons to the moon every every month do you see uh a need where you might eventually want to be sourcing your propellant from the moon? You know, in-situ research usually from the ISRU.

Um, I think in total, there's been around 11 IPOs and probably around five or six, you know, acquisitions.

And, um, yeah, and you know, we're thrilled to continue to invest in a number of- of leading names in the industry, including, you know, Impulse Space and Muon and- and so on.

So, um, you know, what we like to do and how we like to invest is very early.

We think we have a- a unique set of information, an asymmetric advantage really early on.

You know, it's been a very interesting series to follow because it, it kinda kicked off before there was a, a broader push for space, uh, defense capability.

It's been ongoing for a couple of years now, um, but it's only picked up speed, and that's kind of why Rocket Lab was chosen while Alpha was on pause, um, and the companies that are involved in it are growing.

This week adds Impulse Space for the SALO, Victus SALO 2 and Victus SALO 3.

And so they're going to use their Impulse Mira spacecraft, two of them, uh, to deliver United States government payloads, uh, to missions in LEO.