"NASA wasted $20 billion on dozens of failed nuclear power and propulsion programs that never went to space once." NASA Administrator @rookisaacman: "I can't tell you how many times I contend with this. NASA doesn't have enough money, the budget is too small. No, we're terrible allocators of capital. We do not have a top line problem." "So I'm going back to all these failed programs. We're taking reactors, partially paid for fuel, power conversion, radiators. We're bolting this thing together. And we are sending it to Mars. The first interplanetary nuclear spacecraft ever." "We're going to drop off an incredibly inspiring badass payload on Mars, three Ingenuity class helicopters that are going to scan for potential landing sites, looking for water ice underneath the surface." The Hill & Valley Forum 2026 @HillValleyForum @zebulgar @NASA @rookisaacman

MAFIA EP 001

We built the spacecraft. Last month, the major flight hardware of DeepSpace-2 came together on our integration floor for the first time. This vehicle is headed millions of miles into deep space later this year to rendezvous with and image a near-Earth asteroid.

We go where we need to be, and today that was @NASAKennedy. Some of my senior engineers and I spent time at @blueorigin with @JeffBezos and @davill, speaking with the workforce and seeing the damage at LC-36 firsthand. I appreciated the opportunity to hear directly from those working through the aftermath and better understand the challenges ahead. There is a lot of work to do, but this is exactly why people choose careers in aerospace, whether at NASA, Blue Origin, or across the industry. The talent in this field thrives under pressure and performs at its best when solving the toughest problems. We have been saying for months at NASA that we are not going to sit on our hands and wait for the capabilities necessary to achieve the nation’s most pressing objectives. We are going to take an active role alongside our partners, just as we did in the 1960s, to overcome setbacks, remove obstacles, and deliver the intended outcomes. @NASA is committed to helping the Blue team recover, continue to advance their lunar lander and get New Glenn back to launching as soon as safely possible. America’s greatest achievements in space were never the result of avoiding setbacks. They came from overcoming them. We have done it before, and we will do it again🇺🇸

Blue Origin's New Glenn just blew up at LC-36 while attempting to Static Fire ahead of NG-4. nsf.live/spacecoast

INTRODUCING GUNDO GRANTS Every summer, hundreds of the sharpest students in the country land deep tech internships in Los Angeles. They show up ready to build things that matter. Then they discover LA rent on an intern salary is its own engineering challenge. We think that's a problem worth fixing. Gundo Grants are $5,000 housing stipends for 10 of the top deep tech interns spending this summer in LA. El Segundo has quietly become the center of gravity for hard tech in America, and the interns showing up this summer will be the most important people in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, robotics, energy, and beyond in 10 years. If you're interning at a deep tech company this summer, building something real, and wondering how you'll make the numbers work in LA, then a Gundo Grant is for you! 10 grants. $5K each. Exclusive events. 1 incredible cohort. Applications are due by May 8th → gundo.house/apply @8vc | @bantervc | @DiscipulusVent | @LongJourneyVC | @lowercarbon | neverlift.vc | @rhobusiness

We spent $15,000 on billboards targeting one person: the guy controlling all the chemical spend at a saltwater disposal company in Texas. We mapped his commute and bought every billboard between his house and the oil field. When we finally called, he said "I see your billboards everywhere." That landed us our first oil field contract. At the time our entire operation was a $10,000 reactor built from PVC pipes from Home Depot, turning corn sugar into industrial chemicals. People keep trying to throw it away. It still works. That leaking reactor started a multibillion-dollar company. @ycombinator visited our plant in Houston. The original PVC reactor is still on the floor next to the Bioforge.

We have shipped our 20kW satellite - Gravitas - to the launch site. Given the supply chain to operate at this power regime doesn’t exist, we had to build 85% of the satellite in-house. This includes building our own large solar arrays, high power propulsion system, large batteries, large reaction wheels and much more. This launch will represent the first time all of these systems are test on orbit together. Internally at @K2SpaceCo, we’ve thought about a few levels of success for this mission - we expect mission success to fall somewhere along this spectrum: - Tier 1 (Baseline mission success): Deploy solar arrays, establish comms, operate the satellite —> we’ve now got an operational 20kW satellite on orbit - Tier 2: Power on the payloads, activate the 20kW propulsion system —> we’re completing payload missions and have fired the highest power hall thruster ever flown on orbit - Tier 3: Orbit raise the satellite, test performance in high radiation environments (like 2,000km) —> we’ve collected massive amounts of data on the performance of the platform in very very difficult environments More than anything, Gravitas represents the start of an iterative journey, where we will take the data we receive from this first satellite and incorporate it into the next wave of satellites launching next year. We’re excited to start this journey, we’ll report back as we get more data. Thanks to Tim for covering our story on TechCrunch techcrunch.com/2026/03/19/k2…

US Army awards Anduril Industries a contract with a total value of as much as $20 billion to buy the defense startup’s software, hardware and services bloomberg.com/news/articles/…