Watching a carbon-composite aeroshell fly at Mach 3 after spinning up in an evacuated centrifuge is nothing short of phenomenal. Even more impressive is that Jonathan and his team at SpinLaunch built the scaled prototype with less than four million dollars. Most space launch systems (a.k.a. rockets) start with zero…

A little over two years ago, the founder of an autonomous transportation company reached out to me because he wanted to pick my brain on a few things. His concept (over email) was interesting so we agreed to meet at a coffee shop in Los Altos. I found him wearing…