Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Maguire: NASA designs missions around outdated, high-cost launch assumptions

Shaun Maguire · Shaun Maguire breaks down Wiz investment, building great teams, and the Everything App. · Mar 24, 2025 · at 23:49

Shaun Maguire, partner at Sequoia Capital, discusses space industry economics and institutional thinking at NASA.

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“NASA has been still designing missions with the constraints of 1020 years ago, which is when launch costs are in the limit infinity and there's very few slots per year, then like the economic rational thing is to spend close to infinite money, making sure that your satellite works the first time because the launch costs dominates in the return math.”

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