The Malaysian Launching an LLM Into Orbit
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About this episode
The commercial space industry is moving away from exclusive government monopolies to an era where securing a rideshare slot on a commercial rocket is now accessible to private citizens. Ken Chan is proving exactly how accessible this new frontier is by building KENSAT, a 2U CubeSat, entirely from his home. Outfitted with an NVIDIA Jetson running a compressed language model for in-orbit computing, the satellite will soon launch on a SpaceX rideshare, marking the first time a Malaysian private individual has put a satellite into orbit.
While launch costs have significantly decreased, Ken quickly discovered that internal satellite components remain heavily priced for institutional buyers and suffer from months-long lead times. With zero prior hardware experience, he designed his own power and radio boards to bypass these bottlenecks. After successfully passing the rigorous vibration testing required for launch, these homemade components became the foundation of Swordholder Technologies, a solo venture built to disrupt the inaccessible satellite parts market.
Ken joins us to discuss the realities of building and launching a satellite on a bootstrapped budget. We explore his pivot from co-founding a massive crypto derivatives exchange to starting a zero-revenue aerospace hardware business, and unpack the real economics of commercial space rideshares, the process of qualifying homemade hardware for orbit, and how Swordholder Technologies plans to bring affordable infrastructure to the booming space economy.
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