Relativity Space

SpaceX was built around the Falcon 9, which has a reusable booster stage, and now Musk and company are trying to field a huge, fully reusable rocket called Starship.

But unlike its rivals Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, or Firefly Aerospace, Lapsa's company is aiming straight at that holy grail.

A rocket where both the booster stage and the payload-carrying second stage come back to Earth so they can be reused cheaply.

It's never been done before.

Nancy Priestly, I would always try to read the bio of my guests, but I've learned over time, there's no one better than the actual person to share.

Hey, tell us a little bit more about your journey and what you were doing in your last role at the head of TA at Relativity Space.

So Nancy, can you give a little bit of context about your career and especially what you did in your last role at Relativity Space?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I've been in talent acquisition for about 17 years.

I'm from Los Angeles and always wanted to move back to LA.

because I like the weather here.

So eventually made my way back down to Los Angeles where I worked for Honey, which was a startup down here that was acquired by PayPal and then made the leap over to Relativity Space where I spent the past three and a half years working as their head of talent.

No details on pricing or exact performance numbers have been released.

Stoke Space and Relativity Space are moving forward with construction at Launch Complexes 14 and 16 on Cape Canaveral.

The two sites sit next to current SpaceX pads at the Space Force Station.

Work centers on foundations and support buildings ahead of planned first flights next year.

Our guest today is Sean Moda, the co-founder and CEO of Vendra, a company whose goal is making it faster and easier to order custom manufactured parts in the US with a focus on aerospace and defense.

Though only a few years old, they can already name companies like Anduril, Relativity Space, and Planet Labs and customers, so they are certainly gaining traction.

Look, if you are in any way involved in the hard tech world, you know exactly the problem that Sean and his team are trying to solve.

Manufacturing has been on the decline in the U.S. for decades, and the situation is only getting worse.

Clearly the, clearly the underlying belief in the market is that Falcon 9 is going away.

And so Stoke Space, uh, Relativity Space, Blue Origin with the New Glenn, Isar Space with their, with their Spectrum vehicle, all of the other providers and all of the other launch players, including ULA and Rocket Lab, uh, uh, and, and Firefly.

Like, all of these other players are undoubtedly working to try and, and get market ready as quickly as possible.

Um, we know, we know effectively when that deadline is coming, i- uh, 20, 2028.

But then-

We spoke about AST SpaceMobile actually raising a billion to try and acquire a launch provider themselves about a month ago.

We haven't heard a whole lot of updates from AST as a result, but at the time, Stoke Space and Relativity Space were the two names that we both floated as potentially sort of the best fits.

I think this raise more or less takes AST...