Boundless Enthusiasm

I am super enthusiastic today.  

There are certainly reasons to be glum.  I am not enthusiastic about the national political scene.  Corporations are falling all over themselves to be on the “right” side of politics.  Purported leaders write op-eds like this Thiel piece, and despite being relatively well-read and literate, I have no idea what he is getting at.  There is just a lot of noise that could easily be depressing.

But then I stumbled across this thread from Joan Westenberg, which resonates with me deeply — “Several times a day, I discover I'm carrying around a backpack full of rocks.  And then I realize I can simply...put it down.”  I can ignore all the posturing and ephemeral political nonsense, and revel in people’s creativity and inventiveness.  

Space

Stoke Space has raised another round with leading investors to continue their drive towards reusable medium-lift rockets, following on great progress they’ve made:

The funding round comes just weeks after the company’s successful vertical test firing of its first-stage Zenith engine on its new, state-of-the-art test stand in Moses Lake, Washington. With Zenith, Stoke became one of only two entities globally to successfully develop and test a full-flow staged combustion engine, the type of rocket engine with the highest possible efficiency. Stoke has also pioneered the world’s first actively cooled metallic reentry heat shield, which is integrated into its high-efficiency upper-stage engine and enables full and rapid reuse.

And within Stoke, they are building a great software asset that allows them to perform world-class hardware engineering at high speed.  The team realized early on that there is a significant knowledge management problem at the heart of their manufacturing process and have invested in creating a powerful software infrastructure.  I love these guys.

Oh, and Blue Origin had a successful flight. This week, another cool-looking SpaceX launch from Vandenberg took place — it is awesome to see these.  

Materials

I just finished The War Below, an excellent book about the state of rare earth and lithium mining in the US.   As a country, we will have to get more involved in mining critical materials, dealing directly with the ecological issues surrounding mining – we can no longer reliably outsource supply to unreliable partners.   The Biden administration just announced another lithium loan, to a Salton Sea project. Here’s hoping the new administration keeps up the effort — we can secure the minerals we need for our national security and lead the way in learning how to extract and develop these resources sustainably, which is valuable in its own right.

I’m also excited about the role of AI and materials — perhaps AI can turbocharge materials discoveries in the same way it is turbocharging protein discoveries.  Ever since I first read Feynman’s “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” years ago, I’ve been excited about the opportunities in materials science, and using AI to speed up the exploration of materials has great potential.

AI

Of course, this is the year decade century of AI.  Dean Ball writes on his expectations for the year 2025 in AI — interesting notes about expected advances in AI applications in scientific discovery, multi-agent architectures, and distributed (and democratized) training.   AI is a going to be a force multiplier in so many fields.

And from Ben Thompson, Stratechery ($): “Everything that makes a company work today is about harnessing people — and the entire SaaS ecosystem is predicated on monetizing this reality; the entities that will truly leverage AI, however, will not be the ones that replace them, but start without them.” — there is a massive opportunity here to rebuild companies from the ground up in entirely new ways, which is exciting in its own right, and will result in a complete re-imagining of the SAAS market.  

Space, materials, AI.   And I haven’t even mentioned biotech.  Or AR/VR.   Or robotics.  I'm really looking forward to the coming year of progress.  I’d love to hear what others are excited about!