[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Epsilon3 (YC S21) - Software for spacecra...
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Launch HN: Epsilon3 (YC S21) - Software for spacecraft and complex
operations
Hi HN, we're Laura, Max, and Aaron, the founders of Epsilon3
(https://www.epsilon3.io/). We make software to help space
companies run billion-dollar missions and avoid costly and
disastrous mistakes. When you're building a rocket or satellite,
you have written checklists and procedures for how to test and
operate it. Believe it or not, most companies still do this on
paper or Microsoft Word. We are making this digital. Think of it
like supercharged checklists plus version control (like Asana +
Github). This is useful for the space industry and anyone else with
complex testing and operational workflows. There is massive growth
right now in the number of space startups and of spacecraft and
people launching into space. Payloads are being launched multiple
times per day; you don't hear about most of those on the news.
There are so many companies building amazing technology for space
(hotels, debris removal, construction robots, etc.). But to support
this growth and keep everyone safe, the industry needs massively
better software than the inefficient and error-prone stuff that's
out there now. U.S. space mission failures have cost $18.6B ($31B
worldwide), and the average company wastes $400,000 in engineering
hours per year managing procedures inefficiently. We are a team of
engineering and design leaders from SpaceX, Google, Northrop
Grumman, and Stanford. I spent 11 years at SpaceX and 5 years at
Northrop working on spacecraft operations. I've taken part in over
100 launches and was the lead trainer for astronauts who went to
the space station and back last year. I've seen what works and what
doesn't when it comes to software tools and managing operations.
Starting Epsilon3 came as a surprise--we were surprised that it was
still necessary! I had always envisioned a unified set of tools to
operate vehicles and complex engineering systems, and assumed that
one existed that I just hadn't come across yet. But after I left
SpaceX and began talking to my colleagues and friends in the
industry, it became clear that the tools they wanted (and that I
wanted too) just didn't exist yet. In calls with colleagues across
the industry, I heard "I'd use that if it existed," "I've looked
for that but never found anything remotely close to what I'd want,"
"If you build it, people will use it," and "Wow, that would be
great, tell me when you have an MVP." So we were lucky to start
from the beginning with the knowledge that people were in need of
our platform. Our software brings complex operational procedures
into a modern web-based platform, built using React, Node, CouchDB,
Flask, and Supabase, and running on AWS GovCloud for ITAR
compliance. We support the entire life cycle of a project from
integration and testing through live operations. With Epsilon3, you
can create, revise, and track procedures online with critical
mission data collaboratively, all in one place and in a
standardized way. Real-time synchronization of procedure status and
updates guarantee that everyone's always on the same page and knows
who is doing what, when, and where. This may not sound like the
hardest software problem out there, but this industry has a lot of
challenges that more ordinary project management tools can't
handle, which is why these projects have stuck with Microsoft Word
and spreadsheets (and even paper) for so long. Real-time
synchronization of data and user interfaces across earth and space
with low latency and high reliability is hard. Supporting complex
workflows and detailed tracking while also maintaining simplicity
and delightfulness of user experience is also hard. There is also a
lot of telemetry and commanding data involved, and finding ways to
display and visualize it is tricky. There are mission-critical
security and reliability requirements. Finally, everyone's
workflows and data are in different formats and have different
needs, and finding generalized solutions and methodologies to
support all of them is challenging. Our vision is that when
operating your system, you'll need only two tools to manage it:
your C2 (command and control) system, and Epsilon3. You won't need
to communicate via email, chat, tickets, etc. anymore. You also
won't need to store your data on a hard drive or manage an Excel
spreadsheet. This will not only simplify your operation, but it
will make it easier for the next generation of operators to come up
to speed quickly and enable future spacecraft automation. While
doing hot fire testing of new rocket engines, one of our customers
said, "Epsilon3 makes some incredible software that we use for our
engine test operations (among other things) to make sure we don't
blow ourselves up." Running hardware testing for new robotics,
transportation, and spacecraft hardware, another customer said,
"It's made running our tests much easier and more systematic."
Those sorts of comments are what we hope to achieve industry-wide!
A video demo is available at https://bit.ly/3AItU2w. We'd love to
hear your thoughts, feedback, and questions in this, uh, space!
p.s. There was a small HN thread about us a few months ago
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26506819). We've made
significant progress since then.
Author : llcrabtree
Score : 101 points
Date : 2021-07-21 14:31 UTC (8 hours ago)
| kartikkumar wrote:
| Congrats! Great to see YC supporting more software companies that
| are working towards finally bringing the "boring" parts of the
| sector into the 21st century.
|
| If you're interested in exploring the idea of supply chain
| integration, I'd love to chat. We're an ESA-backed, online
| marketplace for the space sector [1], and we've built a few
| integrations already to bring tools and data together for
| engineers.
|
| [1] https://satsearch.com
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Woo hoo! Thank you!
|
| Sure, would love to chat. That sounds like a great opportunity
| for collaboration. Can you fill out the form at
| https://epsilon3.io/contact and we'll follow up with you?
| kartikkumar wrote:
| Sounds good!
| rwesterdahl wrote:
| Excited to be using this product for ensuring clearly documented
| and easy to make test procedures for our propulsion testing, and
| eventually for our satellite operations. Keep up the good work
| Epsilon3 and I look forward to becoming a hardcore power user!
| alchemistmax wrote:
| So grateful for your kind words and honored to be supporting
| your team!
| lavezza wrote:
| Laura, congratulations. Does it support acronyms? :)
|
| Anyone interested should sign up for the changelog emails. It's
| only 1-2 emails a month and shows how much progress Laura and her
| team are making.
| llcrabtree wrote:
| Lol, thanks Pat. I keep telling the team that we won't allow
| acronyms. That feature is 100% on the list. Currently they are
| allowed, however future revisions might not allow acronyms, or
| might force you to define them. Certainly keep your eyes peeled
| for this new *feature*.
| lavezza wrote:
| I was just kidding of course, but the idea of defined
| acronyms is interesting. Hover over an acronym and see the
| expanded text.
| llcrabtree wrote:
| 100% on the roadmap!!!
| giantg2 wrote:
| Very cool domain and background.
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Thanks!
| aml183 wrote:
| They are the real deal! Awesome team and product.
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Thank you!
| dtx1 wrote:
| Is your name a Babylon 5 Reference?
|
| https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Epsilon_III
| llcrabtree wrote:
| 100%
| alchemistmax wrote:
| So excited to be part of Epsilon3 and helping so many awesome
| companies with their testing and operations.
|
| I hope everyone saw the recent epic Blue Origin and Virgin
| Galactic flights. Those are just the first small step in what's
| to be a very exciting future. Epsilon3 wants to eventually help
| so many more people go to space. Now that we've had two
| billionaires go up to space, maybe someone in the HN community
| can be next?
| cuSetanta wrote:
| Is the any planned integration with requirement tracking software
| such as DOORS? If it were possible to flow test results back into
| the requirement specification systems it could seriously save a
| lot of time and money.
|
| Also, for commenting on procedure steps are there any additional
| tools available for the text formatting? We find we have to do a
| lot of red lining and colour coding as things progress to track
| deviations in a simple way for customers and PA to find.
| llcrabtree wrote:
| Most certainly! We are planning to integrate with all software
| packages that our customers are using to enable really
| efficient operations for them. We have a few Next Gen DOORS
| customers, as well as other requirements tracking tools. I love
| the suggestions!
|
| In addition, we can comment and actively redline running
| procedures. If you want me to show you I'd be happy to. You can
| email me at laura@epsilon3.io and in addition I'll make a small
| tutorial and link it here when complete.
| josephgruber wrote:
| Love this! It's certainly surprising that something like this
| doesn't exist for the space industry yet (and other industries
| that do complex texting and operations). Glad to see someone
| working to fill that gap especially as the commercial space
| industry starts to blossom. Couple of thoughts/questions:
|
| 1.) How do you convince space orgs that using a third-party SaaS
| offering is a better approach than building it in-house?
| Especially as part of the ERP the org may be using already?
|
| 2.) Does Epsilon3 support scripted procedures? What language(s)
| does it support?
|
| 3.) Any thoughts on a ChatOps like interface (e.g. Slack)?
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Nice! Thanks for great ideas and questions.
|
| 1. Building in house is expensive, slow, and painful, and most
| teams have better things to spend their time on. We're helping
| several teams move off their in-house solution because they
| aren't satisfied with it.
|
| 2. We are building out automation and scripting capabilities.
| We support integration with Python scripts and other local
| commanding destinations via our API.
|
| 3. Love the idea! We already support real-time comments that
| are embedded in procedures. We want to build out even more
| things along those lines to streamline communications.
| llcrabtree wrote:
| Joseph, for #1, I've worked on in-house tools and: 1. They
| never get enough developers. 2. They usually get deprioritized
| in lieu of other projects. 3. Many small space companies don't
| have resources to build awesome in-house tools.
|
| It can be really time consuming and take the team's focus off
| of the primary goal as well, so we try to get teams to focus on
| the things that they are uniquely qualified to do, rather than
| build software to support their operation.
| k1rcher wrote:
| > 1. They never get enough developers. 2. They usually get
| deprioritized in lieu of other projects.
|
| As a dev currently building out several fairly-complex in-
| house tools for a small startup, I can relate to this first-
| hand.
|
| It's enormously frustrating as a perfectionist with a
| slightly neurotic obsession with (in a balanced and healthy
| way, trust me ;D) and appreciation for best practices, I have
| had to (against better judgement) sacrifice many things such
| as extensive time spent on in-depth automated testing,
| abstraction of reusable code for polymorphism and shared
| packages, extremely in depth documentation, and many other
| aspects that would contribute to long term viability and
| efficacy. This is of course for the sake of a business-
| friendly timeline, and that I can appreciate.
|
| There is a definite balance, and I have (and continue to)
| learn enormously from this business view on software. The "it
| just works" ethos can be scary further down the road. The
| economic upsides to this perspective for an MVP or POC type
| of development are absolutely massive, but I can't help but
| think this could be supplemented further by dedicating more
| resources to focusing on best practices.
|
| Whether that focus comes from an internal team with more
| dedicated resources or a third party, I'm still unsure as to
| how that decision should be made.
|
| Either way, it has been very helpful in further developing my
| skills in communicating things like tech debt (what notions
| like automated testing actually mean in terms of value to a
| SaaS company) to the CEO and other colleagues who do not have
| software dev experience.
| llcrabtree wrote:
| This is 100% my experience too. Something has to give when
| you're developing a tool for in-house use only. The same
| practices you'd use for developing a tool for a larger
| audience can't apply because you don't have endless
| resources, personnel or time when developing in-house.
| Thanks for this information. It's super helpful!
| soco wrote:
| I don't understand yet the pain being adressed. If today it can
| be solved with pen and paper or Word, it looks to me that
| realtime sync or data visualization were not a must (disasters
| seem to be avoided today just as well). Nice to have, without
| doubt, but not a must. So your software makes it a nice
| experience for everybody involved, right?
| llcrabtree wrote:
| Yes, it's been accomplished with paper in the past, but at
| great expense as many of the teams of the past were large. Take
| for example any control room of the 1960s, which had 40-60
| people in it. Today's teams are scattered (and working from
| home much of the time), and much smaller (think less than 5)
| and must be able to accomplish the same tasks as those larger
| teams of the 1960s. Our software enables the teams to be
| smaller, more agile, and communicate better from anywhere in
| the world.
| alchemistmax wrote:
| There's a ton of time wasted in miscommunications and lost
| paper records or illegible handwriting on test logs. And there
| have been many disasters and lives lost in the past, so
| anything that can be done to avoid that is worth seriously
| considering. Plus we make it a nicer experience and way faster.
| spops_anonymous wrote:
| Oh, it's llcrabtree! We didn't cross paths but I've seen your
| name all over Confluence. :) (I was on the training team after
| you left.) This is gonna be rad. Can't wait to see where it goes.
| llcrabtree wrote:
| Oh it is LLCrabtree! I'd love to connect. Send me an email
| laura@epsilon3.io =)
| allyew wrote:
| Really excited to be part of this team! Laura was talking
| yesterday about tearing up at after the Blue Origin launch, not
| just because it's amazing to send people to space, but because it
| requires the work and communication of thousands of people to
| take them up and bring them home safe. We're excited to build
| tools to enable all of the hard work that leads up to a
| successful launch!
| llcrabtree wrote:
| yes to this! It takes a huge team to make something like that
| successful, and we want to continue to support those teams!
| jk4930 wrote:
| First, congrats on launching. Second, "AWS GovCloud for ITAR
| compliance," can the USG access my data (EU company) then?
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Thanks! No, the US Government can't access your data. Only you
| can. GovCloud is just a special portion of AWS that has extra
| security controls so that US companies are confident that all
| their data is housed in US servers and properly treated
| according to ITAR regulations. It's totally fine for companies
| outside the US to use and doesn't give the government any
| access.
|
| We also support on-premises deployments if that's preferable to
| companies outside the US.
| techdragon wrote:
| I'm building up a space related non-profit (space telescopes)
| and I'm not in the USA.
|
| So ITAR is a poison, it is great you have an ITAR Free
| option, do you have any plans to host in other AWS regions
| long term? And how much more is on-premises likely to cost
| me?
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Yep, we are planning on hosting in other AWS regions as
| well. For pricing, let's discuss offline because it'll
| depend on a few things. Can you fill out the Contact form
| on our website (https://epsilon3.io/contact), and we can
| take it from there?
| sullyx wrote:
| Excited for this launch! Our customers are doing literal rocket
| science and every day is an amazing opportunity for us to build
| the supporting technology they need to do amazing things.
|
| Rocket science is hard, but running your operations shouldn't be!
| At Epsilon3 we're solving the software challenges of complex
| operations so you can get back to what you do best - space!
| k1rcher wrote:
| Wow. This is enormously impressive. I currently work for a small
| startup based out of Denmark in the renewable energies space
| (wind turbines) developing web based tools to assist in our ML
| operations.
|
| With a lifelong obsession with cosmology and astronomy, and
| perhaps even more applicably relevant; our own human advancement
| to and into the stars, I have increasingly become more and more
| inclined to the notion of further developing my current skillset
| with the eventual goal of transitioning to the space industry.
|
| My recent experience and exposure to renewable energies has given
| me massive insight to just how important companies like you guys
| are to furthering humanity's progress. My question to you all
| regarding your technology, is how you manage what I imagine to be
| extraordinarily large, rich, and complex datasets that must vary
| between use cases (you mention hotels, debris removal, etc.). The
| data between these use cases must vary in structure-- how is it
| normalized/standardized to work with your pipeline(s)? The
| commonality I see (as a fairly novice layman in terms of space
| technology) is of the rocket propulsion, orbiting, and payload
| delivery kind, but I'm sure the data it is far more nuanced and
| goes far beyond that.
|
| Furthermore, is any sort of machine learning applied on your
| side, perhaps in some sort of statistical analysis / metric
| reporting?
|
| I'm going to definitely keep an eye on you all at Epsilon3.
| Perhaps you will be looking for more engineers with web dev,
| data, ML, and cyber/info security experience in the future!
|
| Huge props. I can tell there is an extraordinary amount of
| innovation involved with this venture. Excited to see where you
| all go with this =)
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words and great questions.
|
| We have been very thoughtful to build as flexible a framework
| as possible to support all those various use cases you said
| (not only in our user interface but also our API). We want to
| give end-users across the continuum of use cases the tools they
| need to be able to make Epsilon3 as useful for them as
| possible.
|
| We have a ton of ideas on applying ML on our side for exactly
| those use cases you described (metrics, analysis, reporting)
| but also for anomaly detection, error handling/risk reduction,
| and continuous improvement.
|
| We have our job openings posted at https://angel.co/epsilon3/.
| We're always on the lookout for strong full-stack software
| engineers.
| deeptailor wrote:
| Extremely excited for this launch! We have amazing companies
| doing some really cool stuff in the space sector! Cannot wait to
| support all the amazing missions with Epsilon3!
| aresant wrote:
| This is awesome and made my day knowing that the space industry
| is big enough to support a startup building this kind of ops
| tooling.
|
| You said "you don't hear about most of those on the news" and
| you're right - most of the customer logos on your website I'd
| never heard of - is there a website / twitter / ? that you rely
| on for daily coverage?
|
| I would love to build a better view of the industry, players,
| priorities.
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Cheers! Thank you!
|
| https://orbitalindex.com/ is an amazing resource.
|
| https://jatan.space/ is another that I follow.
|
| Payload Research newsletter rocks too:
| https://mailchi.mp/payloadresearch/bezos-leaves-earth?e=e515...
|
| There's even a Slack bot to be notified of launches (most of
| which you don't hear about on the news):
| https://groundcontrolbot.space/
| pomian wrote:
| Orbital index has a very good email letter they send out with
| news, links, and great commentary. Sign up on site above.
| aml183 wrote:
| I run Payload Space. We are about to transition from a weekly
| newsletter to a media company. We hope to solve the problem
| that there is no real media coverage of the business and
| policy of space.
| k1rcher wrote:
| Cool service.
|
| FYI: after signing up with the MailChimp form, clicking the
| "Continue to website" link on the signup confirmation page
| results in a 404.
| aml183 wrote:
| Thanks, we just built a new site and hiring some
| journalists. The MailChimp was just MVP to see if people
| cared about space news (which they clearly do).
|
| Expect a much more professional site in the coming weeks.
| llcrabtree wrote:
| Yes! Super excited about this too. We love seeing
| information being shared about this industry more freely
| than before! And an increased interest doesn't hurt
| either. =)
| josephgruber wrote:
| NewSpace Hub (https://newspacehub.co/) is also a great
| resource for tracking all of the new startups, and existing,
| in this industry.
| aresant wrote:
| Awesome thank you
| llcrabtree wrote:
| I second both Orbital Index and Payload Research!
| heaths1 wrote:
| Looks very interesting. I surfed around your site and watched the
| video. So how about nonconformance processing? Do you have
| workflows for that, or is that where something like JIRA comes
| in?
|
| Also, have you utilized anything like the S1000D aerospace data
| schema with this tool, or are you rolling your own?
| alchemistmax wrote:
| We are planning to have some dedicated functionality to help
| with non-conformance, anomalies, and other related things. We
| also plan to integrate with JIRA for separate reasons too.
|
| We have not implemented a standard data scheme yet, but that's
| a great idea. We've been letting our customers set up their own
| schema and structure based on their needs, but I can definitely
| see the value of being able to adopt an industry-standard
| schema, so that's a great idea.
|
| I'd love to learn more about your use case and understand
| better where you're coming from on those points.
| 101008 wrote:
| Congrulations on the launch, it sounds awesome. This is one of
| the companies where I would love to work. Are you taking remote
| candidates?
| alchemistmax wrote:
| Thanks! That's nice to hear. You can see our job openings,
| which are remote-friendly, at https://angel.co/epsilon3/.
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