Gm. Remember how like 3 days ago we did a poll of who would go on a space ride. Well, SpaceX’s rocket exploded yesterday. Let me explain why this may actually make you more bullish on space travel.

POLLS

Wednesday’s poll had a surprising amount of Other responses. Y’all are thinking out of the box and I love it.

“Ability to instantly teleport through space. Why? The really short answer is "I hate commuting."” What I’d pay to never sit in traffic again.

“To change elements into another ones 😉😎” You know the story of King Midas and how he turns everything into gold. I’d be him but for chocolate.

“How awesome would it be to travel by flight? No airports/delays/cancellations, no traffic, no crowded sidewalks, AND you get to look cool af at the same time.” You must also have mind-reading ability because SAME.

“Creativity cos the other superpowers are taken by AI. To paraphrase Einstein's quote 'Creativity is intelligence having fun', I need Creativity superpower to have superfun with AI and AGI.” You already have creativity! It’s in you, just keep creating.

“I’m a big outdoors fan. You can’t fathom how much I envy the birds and their flying ability.” I do love sitting in trees.

🏠 SPACE

Starship Go Boom

Yesterday while eating lunch, my Dad showed me a headline of SpaceX’s rocket explosion. “Why the hell is Elon Musk wasting money on this?”

Do I try to explain that the explosion is actually progress? Do I explain that many people didn’t expect the rocket to get off the pad, let alone make it into the atmosphere? Do I explain this is how you do science?

Here’s why an exploding spaceship was a success.

This is how you do science.

At 119 meters, Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever flown, and the first intended to be fully reusable.

Proposed near-term applications for Starship include delivering astronauts and large satellites to Earth orbit, building the Starlink internet constellation, and facilitating the exploration of the Moon and Mars.

The plan for building Starship followed an “iterative and incremental approach” including a lot of prototypes, testing, and refinement. Explosions are expected.

But this was the first fully integrated Starship lifting off.

It successfully lifted off from the orbital launch pad and climbed to an apogee (point where its furthest from earth) of ~39 km over the Gulf of Mexico.

Then it exploded. Or in the much nicer words of SpaceX, it experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation.”

“Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months,” tweeted Elon alongside some cool rocket pictures.

Why should I care? As much as we like to ignore the sad reality, the future of humanity may one day depend on being interplanetary. Elon’s philosophy is, the more progress we can make now, the better prepared we’ll be for when that day comes. This is far bigger than space trips and zero-gravity parties. This is the future of humanity.

🏠 MR HEADSETS

An iPad On Your Face

If you haven’t already heard, Apple is betting big on their soon-to-be-released mixed-reality (VR/AR) headset. So big that CEO Tim Cook ordered its launch despite the wishes of his design team.

So, there’s a lot riding on this pair of $3,000 goggles for the world’s preeminent tech company. Everything has to be top-notch, which explains why Apple’s engineers are working 80-hour weeks. Getting awfully close to Twitter engineer hours there.

Now, because of a report from Bloomberg, we get to hear a bit about the fruits of their labor.

All The Software That’s Fit To Print

If hardware is Apple’s peanut butter, then software is their jelly. You can’t have one without the other.

Well, according to Bloomberg, we don’t have to worry about the headset lacking software. Basically every app pre-installed on the iPhone will also be on the headset, with highlights including:

• A books app that lets you read in VR.

• A camera app that can take pictures from the headset.

• A wellness app to help users achieve ~zen~.

• A fitness app so you can get your virtual sweat on.

• A Freeform collaboration app that will allow you and your team to work on virtual whiteboards together.

And, if Bloomberg is to be believed, there will be millions more where that came from.

Success Isn’t Guaranteed

This all sounds pretty cool, but we can’t forget why Apple is working so hard on the headset in the first place: no VR headset has proven very successful so far.

VR just hasn’t yet become the next frontier like Zuckerberg believed it would be. Only 4% of teens, the demographic you’d think would be most into VR, use it daily, and Meta has lost more money on VR than everyone reading this newsletter has made in their lives, 100 times over.

But if anybody can buck this trend, it’s Apple.

Why should I care? Apple’s MR headset is likely the best bet for VR to go mainstream for the foreseeable future. If they fail, I really feel bad for those of you with Metaverse real estate.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

• Snapchat came out with a bunch of new features.

• Google has merged its AI research units into one big happy family.

• We’re about to build telescopes…on the moon.

• Twitter removed the legacy bluechecks. Journalists are going nuts.

Stat: Meta laid off another 4,000 employees. That laidoff-to-founder pipeline is about to get a whole lot stronger.

Rabbit hole: A Peter Thiel-Backed Startup City Wants To Be Africa’s Delaware (Wired)

🤑 FUNDING FRIDAY

If you want a full list of startup raises, you can go check Crunchbase. If you want the 2 coolest raises of the week, then check here every Friday.

2 COOLEST STARTUP RAISES OF THE WEEK

1. Ransomware damages are expected to exceed $30 billion worldwide in 2023. That’s why Halcyon raised $44 million in Series A funding this week to build out their ransomware-defense software. “We hate ransomware” is their motto. Makes sense, ransomware is some evil stuff. Highly recommend listening to this episode of the podcast Darknet Diaries. Quite an entertaining, educational listen.

2. French startup Kate is building mini electric cars. And they raised $7.6 million this week to do just that. Built for short trips around the suburbs or countryside, Kate’s new vehicle K1 can only go up to 56 MPH. The Original (shown below) goes for $25,000+. You can make your car 100% customizable through their site. Take me to Paris ASAP!

   

   The Original by Kate

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