👋 Happy Saturday—we’re back again with another light read! This weekend’s highlights include a couple of interesting lecture notes, game releases, and a cool startup building low-cost, utility-scale wind power.
Interesting Lecture Note: 2004 MIT Aerospace Course đź“ť
In 2004, SpaceX was still an early startup and there were many (reasonable) doubters of their future, especially when compared with the major incumbents of the time. Here’s a slide from a course on the aerospace industry from MIT, from 2004:
20 years later, SpaceX did this:
Interesting Game: Factorio đźŹ
“The Factory Must Grow”. Check out this video on Factorio: a construction, manufacturing, and management simulation game. A new version, Factorio: Space Age, released last week and has taken the hardware world by storm. They have a free trial of the original game on their website.
Here’s a snippet from of the most incredible Factorio factories ever. Click here for the full version (the photo below is incredibly zoomed in). FactorioMaps, a user-generated forum, has even more ideas to explore.
Startup Highlight: Airloom Energy, Utility-Scale Wind Power
Airloom Energy secured $13.75M in financing to support development of a pilot program in Wyoming to demonstrate power production and system efficiency of their next gen. wind turbines. Airloom's wind turbine design prioritizes mass-manufacturability, a smaller footprint, and reduced infrastructure costs compared to traditional horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs). The financing was led by LowerCarbon Capital following a previous raise earlier this year.
Airloom’s patent application (20230287865) discusses conventional methods of capturing energy from fluid flow, highlighting challenges in usable and deployment costs.
