Asparouhov: Emailed capsule photos to 15 early critics upon Varda's US landing
Delian Asparouhov · Varda's Landing, Peter Thiel, & the Future of El Segundo, Delian Asparouhov, Founders Fund · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea · Mar 15, 2024 · at 13:49
Delian Asparouhov, Co-Founder of Varda Space Industries, describes his reaction following Varda's historic orbital capsule recovery.
0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“When we landed our capsule most of the team was focused on, you know, sort of celebrating, they were going out and having a good time. I instead was focused on emailing, you know, like, you know, 15 earliest haters that said we would never land a re-entry capsule on U.S. Soil and making sure that, you know, sort of email them photos of the capsule and being like, you know, look at us now.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Delian Asparouhov
Biden administration delayed Starliner rescue to deny Elon Musk a political win
“The Biden administration clearly turned that down because they didn't want to give SpaceX a political, an Elon, a political win against Boeing in the midst of the, you know, campaign was campaigning for Trump.”
Asparouhov calls progressive San Francisco liberals among the most racist people
“Progressive SF liberals are actually some of the most racist people that I've ever met, you know, on the planet.”
Forty-seven of the top fifty defense startups will fail within fifteen years
“A significant number of the logos that are talked about today and the, you know, sort of top 50 in this field. You know, 47 of those are going to be companies that are completely irrelevant. Yeah. 15 years from today.”
Only Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX have delivered defense tech at scale
“Other than those three, there isn't really, like, a, like, unicorn VC-backed company that, like, has actually delivered things at scale for the Warfighter that doesn't really exist.”
Asparouhov is skeptical of non-pharma microgravity manufacturing startups
“There have been a couple of companies come up, starting to try to tackle non-pharmaceutical product areas in, you know, microgravity manufacturing. And to me, I just find it quite confusing because they always phrase it as like, well, Varda is going to go to t…”
'Gundo bro' culture is off-putting to women and limits talent pools
“I find some of the, like, you know, sort of you know, gundo bros or gundo boys, you know, culture you know, a bit off-putting to, you know, people that are not of the male gender, and it's something that I've, you know, heard validated, you know, sort of acros…”