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**Andrew Guenther:** Oh yeah, a Linux embedded system that you never get to touch again, right? It goes up and you're locked in. |
**Autumn Nash:** If something goes wrong, how do you fix it, when it's like in orbit? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, I mean, this really gets into redundant systems. So a lot of the components on board, there's at least two, our own component, so our own dev board - you know, there's one or two of those, but there's kind of like a main control computer that exists separate from ours, that kind of handles a ... |
**Autumn Nash:** I feel like you have to write really good code, because and you have to really think about your hardware, because you're never get to touch it again. And you could miss a picture... |
**Andrew Guenther:** A hundred percent. And this is one of the crazy things. I mean, even in a startup, like an aerospace startup, the dev cycle on hardware is super-long. So a lot of the hardware was designed and locked in and figured out before a lot of people got hired. The hardware was decided before I even got hir... |
**Autumn Nash:** Which is crazy. You said you were number 13, right? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah. |
**Autumn Nash:** So that's like really early. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah. So there's a lot of -- by the time these things go up... You know, you've got three new generations of Nvidia dev boards that have come out; you're running like Ubuntu 18.04 in space for the next half decade. |
**Justin Garrison:** Yeah, long-term support has a different meaning when it's flying around the world. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, it's like L-L-LTS. Long, long, long-term support. \[laughter\] |
**Autumn Nash:** Well, it's funny, because people kind of make jokes about like NASA, and different places in the government, and how they use outdated technologies... But when you really think about it in context, there's a reason why they're still using that very reliable technology... Because hey, you can't go chang... |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, because you've gotta test the hell out of it before it goes up. And it's so interesting to kind of see this boon of aerospace startup... Before I came to OSK, I didn't work in aerospace. Like I said, I was at AWS, and I also had the draw of like "I want to work on space stuff. That sounds awe... |
**Justin Garrison:** First of all, that's really cool, when I think about like 30 people, three satellites, right? Ten people per satellite in space, you're gonna have a couple more... And that's like the opposite of scaling when I think of running systems, where it's like one sysadmin could do 100 machines... But like... |
**Andrew Guenther:** \[23:53\] Oh man, there's so many great questions to unpack here... So I'll try and go at it one at a time. So one of the saving graces to some degree is that as we launch more satellites, they're all based on the same hardware designs. Very minor, minor revisions between them. Like, you have a sat... |
**Autumn Nash:** They're ridiculous. 65 warnings. \[laughs\] Like, "What?!" |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, you install one thing, and suddenly now you've got like 100 gigabytes of dependencies. And even in Python, we have to be really careful of that, like what does our dependency sprawl look like. And we've made conscious decisions to say "That sprawls out a little too much. We're not going to us... |
**Autumn Nash:** It's really interesting, because you're kind of developing in the paradox of all developer angst, I guess, or problems... Like, okay, so you want to build something with low dependencies, something that's not going to be vulnerable, something that's going to last for a long time, but then how do you pi... |
**Andrew Guenther:** And you have to know like three years in advance. \[laughs\] |
**Autumn Nash:** That's what I'm saying. And how do you account for vulnerabilities? You're gonna have to patch things eventually... So how do you patch in space? There's going to be a CVE for something. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, I don't want to fall into the trap of "It's in space, so it's safe..." \[laughter\] |
**Justin Garrison:** Right, the attack surface is a little different than what a typical server might have. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, it's a very different attack surface... But I will kind of pull that card a little bit, at least as far as the Python side of things goes. That system is very isolated. We're not running a web server up in space. But to the point of security and CVEs happening in space, Space Force is actuall... |
**Autumn Nash:** I still can't believe Space Force is real, and every time someone says that, it makes me happy. |
**Andrew Guenther:** It's pretty amazing. |
**Autumn Nash:** That sounds just so cool. Like, "I work at Space Force. No big deal." Right? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Central Space Command, you know... |
**Autumn Nash:** Yeah. Like \[unintelligible 00:27:41.10\] in real life. It's awesome. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, so it's important to not fall into the trap of "We're in space, so we're safe." And especially in that startup culture of like wanting to move really fast, and compete with these bigger guys. That's something that we're very cognizant of, and trying to find those right balances. |
**Autumn Nash:** \[28:02\] How do you make decisions, and what kind of tenets do you have to, I guess, develop? Because you both want to develop quickly, because everybody wants to innovate and develop quickly, and that's how you get an edge in your market... But also, how do you make that last for so long? And then ho... |
**Andrew Guenther:** It's a big push-pull, because you definitely want to try and keep your space systems as simple as possible, and we're very much breaking that mold by saying we're going to do imagery analysis on board of a satellite. And so it's definitely something that we're cognizant of. And we have this nicety ... |
**Autumn Nash:** \[unintelligible 00:29:19.27\] working backwards. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah. Yup. |
**Justin Garrison:** Fundamentally, a customer comes to you and says "I need you to look at something on the ground." You're not running customer code in space, where they're giving you a job to say like "Coordinates... Please send me this data", right? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yup, exactly. |
**Justin Garrison:** You're gonna go "Point the iPhone 25 at those ground spots, and get this image back." It's gonna transmit down just like a terabyte a day out of this - you're just taking pictures constantly - and then you process that a little bit more, and then send them either raw data, or whatever it is that th... |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yup. You got it. |
**Justin Garrison:** What was the benefit there of not making the satellite a dumb client, and putting intelligence in the satellite, and on the ground? Because it feels like you could put that either place, and you chose the hardest decision to put it in both places. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yes. |
**Justin Garrison:** Like, there has to be value that you're getting out of doing that process before -- I mean, if you're just sending a terabyte... I don't know, was that just a big antenna with a satellite dish up there, just like beaming down \[unintelligible 00:30:15.02\] of pictures? |
**Andrew Guenther:** So that antenna that actually performs that one terabyte a day downlink - we get a pass on that antenna every 90 minutes. So if you have a really critical, high-priority workload, and your objective is to deliver some insight to a customer as quickly as possible, you might not want to wait that 90 ... |
**Autumn Nash:** So kind of like how they're using machine learning to look through ultrasounds, but you're using it to like basically prioritize data from satellites to bring that down first? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yup. |
**Autumn Nash:** That's really cool. |
**Justin Garrison:** How do you debug that? Is that only like you have a dev box on your desk, and you're saying "Oh, I think this is what's happening"? At some point when you debug it, you just have to kind of poke at it... But I can't imagine -- like, that latency, you have a 90-minute window. I don't know how long t... |
**Andrew Guenther:** \[32:00\] Yeah, you can SSH into space for like a hot five minutes, and take a look around. So there has to be some planning ahead of time. If you want to run some set of debug scripts, you're going to want to know ahead of time, and just run that in an automated way, rather than just like maybe ha... |
**Justin Garrison:** I can only imagine that constant Tmux session that's like "Oh, it's coming back around. Let me connect to it again. Hold on." That's just amazing. |
**Andrew Guenther:** We don't have space for Tmux, man. It's a fresh shell every time. \[laughter\] |
**Justin Garrison:** Your SSH hangs and you're like "Dang yeah...!" |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, yeah. \[laughs\] |
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