💫 HELLO AMERICA! DG here. Today, I’m happy to report that the American community is very much alive.
For most of my life, I’ve been in the business of big. Everything has been universal-scale (although, the goal has always been faster, better, cheaper). My little sister, Ellie Goldin (👆 there!), on the other hand — has done the opposite. She went smaller and more local. She was an NYC public school teacher for 31 years. More recently, she’s been teaching me about her small community on City Island, NY, that’s come together to do something astonishing in the city’s waters using oysters — more below.
Today’s Per Aspera is a bit different. Close to heart and home (hello fellow New Yorkers), but just as important — to our collective pursuit of the next American century. 🇺🇸 💫
IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:
🦪 A Bronx oyster reef project
🧆 Recap & Recount: Worm v. Meatball
📰 Discovery at sea, magazines, the race is on…
🇺🇸 Castelion takes the Navy + more friends winning
🪩 ICYMI: recent catalog, & a Pluto update
Forwarded this email? Subscribe to Per Aspera here.
My sister Ellie and I are two years apart. When we were little, our father would drive us out to City Island — a New England-style sailing village just off the eastern edge of the Bronx mainland. We'd rent a rowboat from a long-gone boatyard, go fishing, and fall a little more in love with the place every trip.
While my pursuit of the space biz took me west. Ellie moved east: onto City Island itself, becoming what the islanders call a “musselsucker” (a transplant, as opposed to a “clam digger,” who is someone born there).
A few weeks ago… Ellie sent me the Annual Report for City Island Oyster Reef — her local neighborhood group that’s been working to filter the island’s surrounding waters by installing oysters in the area (first in prototype-scale cages; and soon as production-level reefs). Ellie — at 80-something years old — has been the group's official (*award-winning*) photographer for the last seven years.
City Island Oyster Reef… started in 2019 as a pitch by two local scientists — literally a startup — to undo 200 years of water pollution by re-installing oyster reefs around their island.
A single adult oyster filters up to 50 gallons a day, pumping water across cilia-lined gills coated in mucus that trap algae, sediment, nitrogen, and pathogens. Engineer full reefs correctly — the right density, geometry, vertical relief oriented to the current — and you've built filtering infrastructure. Earth's natural Brita, at scale.
Fitting for an island whose shipyards once built five America's Cup defenders, CIOR is ‘vertically integrated’. Where the modern American nonprofit contracts the work out and writes grants to keep the machine funded, CIOR sources from within: a chair who was Deputy Director of Community Affairs at the Manhattan DA's office, a 10-year NYPD scuba diver, a former executive editor at the Met, plus scientists, attorneys, and carpenters — all neighbors on the island. Since that 2019 pitch, they've built partnerships with Cornell, Hunter, and SUNY Maritime, twelve Bronx schools, and an international delegation that flew in from South Korea to see the work.
I go through the science, the design considerations, the community in more depth in the write-up I’ve prepared. But I wanted to share the CIOR story, because they have done and continue to do the hard work of community building. While the hundreds of millions of us succumb to the temptation of siloed screens, they reach out to their fellow islanders. Their American neighbors. To undo 200 years of damage. Does this not sound like the exact path we’re on and the people we aspire to be within our Per Aspera community?!
America is simply the sum of our local communities. And we have much to learn from the oyster-people of City Island. Ad astra per aspera.
P.S. If you have a local American community worth sharing — write in. I’d love to chat with you.
Last week we asked you: Worm or Meatball? 64 of you weighed in. Goldin, who reinstated the Meatball logo at NASA, can rest easy. Meatball took the W:
🧆 Team Meatball — 40% (26 votes)
⚖️ Both are great — 38% (24)
🪱 Team Worm — 13% (8)
✍️ Write-in — 8% (5)
WHAT Y’ALL HAD TO SAY…
Very strong write-in turnout from the engaged-reader caucus this time around:
🧆 Pro-Meatball: "Meatball, but can we fix the retrograde orbit? // “Mama mia, that’s-a one spicy meatball!” (🤌 c/o our contrived Italian-American reader)
⚖️ Team Both: "Why can't we have both?" // “The meatball is the leading logo, but the worm has its uses” // "[🧆] is great for branding (pins, Powerpoint, building signs, letterhead), but the worm is much better for flight hardware [‘plus branding for backs, arms of jackets, hats’], so you can actually read it.”
🪱 The Vocal Worm Minority: "Worm is easily the most recognizable. Meatball just not as much."
🥇 Saved the best for last… A 🧆 voter: “Universally recognized — and my tattoo.” (from Brad Gilbert, who granted us attribution rights to award him with the ‘best response’ trophy)
BUT WAIT… With such a close vote, we found ourselves in recount territory, and upon tallying the write-ins, it’s basically a tie. So for those of you asking, “¿por qué no los dos?” — we can, and do, have both. NASA’s been running los dos since 2020 (meatball on the building, worm on the bird). Everyone wins, case closed.
001 / A SURPRISING DISCOVERY AT SEA… Earlier this month, an Indonesian fisherman pulled a 3.7 m Chinese undersea drone out of his net near the Lombok Strait, one of the few deepwater channels a submarine can use to slip between the Pacific and Indian Oceans without surfacing. The hull bore markings tied to China’s state shipbuilding complex, and analysts have linked the drone to the 710th Research Institute, a state designer of sonar and undersea offensive/defensive systems. This is one of several undersea systems found in regional waters in recent years, fitted with advanced sensors that could help one determine things like where submarines can and can’t hide. The grey zone we wrote about last week in ‘Confessions…’ is, evidently, having quite a wet spring.
002 / NO MAGAZINES & NEW MAGAZINES… We’re seeing a lot of excitement building the largely still theoretical ‘new magazines’ category of low cost-per-shot, RF/energy-based counter-drone systems (not a moment too soon). Epirus is making progress on maturing & mobilizing its Leonidas high-power microwave system, while a new player — Aurelius — has de-stealthed to attack the cheap UAS/swarm problem with lasers. Elsewhere, at the federal level, FAA & DOW reached a “landmark agreement” to deploy laser systems (the 20kW AMP-HEL system) at the U.S. border, while the U.S. has set aside $600M+ for cUAS across Operation Epic Fury, homeland defense, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Then there’s the less good news…
The legacy, high-end magazines are getting drawn down faster than you probably thought. CSIS estimates that after the Iran campaign, the U.S. has expended 50+% of prewar inventory across four of seven key munitions categories. (Bear in mind, these are the same magazines Pacific contingency planning has counted on...)
003 / THE RACE FOR CRITICALITY… The NRC's 10 CFR Part 53 final rule took effect this week. Now we don’t normally dwell on the vagaries of regulatory code here, but this is a special exception: it’s the first technology-inclusive reactor licensing pathway in decades (!), expected to reduce reactor design approvals down to ~18mo and ~halve application costs. Meanwhile, DoE’s Reactor Pilot Program plows ahead with an ambitious milestone: at least 3 test reactors achieving criticality outside the national labs just 67 days away (July 4 🇺🇸). We see you — PA subscribers from the competitive SMR field, and the 11 projects in the DoE’s program. And for the rest of you, time to place your bets…
How many of DoE’s 11 selected reactor projects will reach criticality by July 4?
$105M / CASTELION TAKES THE NAVY. The U.S. Navy has awarded Castelion a $105M contract to integrate Blackbeard onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, as the service's first air-launched hypersonic strike weapon. Air-launched hypersonics on the carrier air wing have been on the wishlist for decades (for more on this, read: Why Aren't We Flying Faster?). Crusey dropping in here: Castelion isn’t a new name around these parts. Yours truly backed them at pre-seed in 2023, because I saw what I like to call a special right to win. As Castelion bossman Bryon Hargis told PA back in Issue #008: Deterrence doesn’t come from prototypes, it comes from volume. 🇺🇸 Castelion’s been executing accordingly. Congrats, team Castelion, for being well on your way there!
$3.2B / GOLDEN DOME AWARDS. The U.S. Space Force has announced 20 OTA agreements totaling up to $3.2B across a dozen companies for its Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) program — including Crusey portco, True Anomaly, and Quindar (friend of PA partner OOTWD, thus friend of ours!)
10 YRS / STEVE “BUCKY” BUTOW. After a decade helping to start and scale DIU (DOW’s Defense Innovation Unit), and serving as its first Space Portfolio Director, Brig. Gen. Steve "Bucky" Butow has been appointed as Senior Advisor to DIU Director Owen West and new Executive Committee member. Bucky's a DIU legend: founding member of the unit from the 2015 DIUx era and force behind $250M+ in space prototypes. Godspeed, Bucky!
UD / FIREHAWK + ROCHEFORT FUELS SOLID ROCKET MOTORS. On Tuesday, Rochefort Asset Management closed a senior secured loan (undisclosed amt = UD) to Firehawk Aerospace for scaling 3D-printed solid rocket motors (+base bleeds/hybrid engines/propellant grains).
Rochefort is a JV between Serengeti (hedge fund by former Goldman banker Jody LaNasa) and Kyle Bass's Hayman Capital (the Dallas macro shop that audaciously bet against Japan's sovereign debt in ‘09-’11 and, at bigger scale than Michael Burry, shorted subprime MBS and CDOs).
Rochefort was one of the early approved managers under the Critical Technologies Initiative launched by DoD x SBA in Sep 2023.
Through the initiative, licensed funds can access SBA-backed leverage to finance critical technology companies at scales that traditional lenders often avoid.
A prior bet also includes $290M equity + debt investment into PA Founding Sponsor Divergent.
This is the diversification in capital structure & stack offerings we lobbied for in our antimemo on venture financing. 🇺🇸 Go Will Edwards, go Team Firehawk, go Rochefort.
LASTLY, THE PLUTO SAGA. Over the last few weeks, we’ve closely followed — and jumped into — the Pluto planetary restoration saga. As a recap:
Pluto was first discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, a self-taught — and handsome 👆 — astronomer from Burdett, Kansas, and was considered the 9th planet from its confirmation on Feb 18, 1930 until the IAU stripped its status in 2006. Now, 20 years later, after 10-year-old Kaela of Florida sent NASA a request amid the Artemis II crewed lunar flyby mission, we put it to a vote and 80% of you said that Pluto should be restored to its former glory.
🇺🇸 America discovered Pluto, and as we lead humanity back to the moon (and beyond!), let’s restore it to its rightful place among the planets. Have a good evening y’all!
|