Weekly Dose of Optimism #127
New Glenn, Mechazilla, Moon, Varda W-2, Wooly Mammoths, AI Tutors, MatterGen, Anduril
Hi friends 👋,
Happy Friday and welcome back to our 127th Weekly Dose of Optimism. We have an out-of-this-world edition for you this week — tons of space news, Wooly Mammoths, AI tutors, AI material models, massive Anudril factories and more. The optimism keeps on keepin’ on.
Let’s get to it.
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(1) Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launches massive New Glenn rocket into orbit on 1st flight
Brett Tingley, Josh Dinner for Space.com
New Glenn launched for the first time ever this morning (Jan. 16), rising off a pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here on Florida's Space Coast at 2:03 a.m. EST (0703 GMT). About 12.5 minutes later, the rocket's upper stage reached orbit — the main goal of today's test flight, which the company called NG-1.
Bezos is back! (To the extent that he ever left…)
His space company, Blue Origin, successfully launched its New Glenn rocket on its maiden flight early Thursday morning, reaching orbit and achieving its primary mission objective. The massive 322-foot-tall rocket, which was designed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, carried a payload called Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit, and marked the company’s official entry into the commercial orbital launch market.
The launch had two missions — first, launch into orbit and second, land and recover the rocket’s first stage booster. The first mission was accomplished, but Blue Origin did not manage to land the booster. Overtime, however, the company will likely manage to make their rockets reusable and fully compete with SpaceX in the heavy-lift launch market.
Bezos and Musk, arguably the two greatest entrepreneurs of our generation, are going at it in space. Musk has an early and considerable lead, but I wouldn’t be quick to countout Bezos. There are really no losers in this race: Jeff and Elon will both be A-OK if they never launch another rocket and everyone else will benefit from these two pioneers racing to colonize space.
(1a) SpaceX Super Heavy Booster Catch
From SpaceX
As if on queue, just a couple of hours after I wrote the above section on Blue Origin, SpaceX’s Mechazilla caught a super heavy booster for the second time. You know what I’m talking about. That cute little thing SpaceX does when they launch a skyscraper sized rocket into space and then catch it as it hurtles back to earth with a giant pair of chopsticks.
This video is almost more awe-inspiring than the first catch video. Elon and the SpaceX team are turning the miraculous into the routine.
Am I super surprised that Elon scheduled this on the same day as Jeff’s big day? Not really. This is how centibillionaires do friendly ribbing.
(1b) Japan's ispace, US's Firefly launch commercial moon landers
Joey Roulette and Kantaro Komiya for Reuters
Two moon landers, one from Japan's ispace opens new tab and another from U.S. space firm Firefly, began their journeys into space on Wednesday with SpaceX's unusual double moonshot launch, underscoring the global rush to examine the lunar surface.
Elsewhere in space, the race to understand and (eventually) colonize the Moon continues. Earlier this week Japan’s ispace and U.S.-based Firefly Aerospace launched commercial moon landers aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. ispace’s Resilience, carrying six payloads, is aiming for a May-June moon landing after a failed 2023 attempt. Firefly’s Blue Ghost, part of NASA’s CLPS program, plans to land in March with 10 payloads to study the moon’s surface.
The moon’s resurgent importance is driven by three factors. First, and perhaps more rationally, the moon is seen as a jumping off point for future space exploration, with potential resources like water ice that can support in-space applications, like fuel production. Second, it once again has a certain geopolitical prestige, with both countries and private firms competing to establish a presence on the moon. Third, it is militarily important.
If you’ve read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (and if you haven’t, you should), you’ll know that it’s much easier to send projectiles from the Moon down to Earth than to do the opposite.
SpaceX carried these two moon landers, but in just a couple of years, you may see Blue Origin completing missions like this as well. Space Race 2.0 is on.
(1c) Varda's Second Mission, W-2, Launches with Payloads from Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA
From Varda
Varda Space Industries, Inc. today announced the successful launch of its second orbital processing and reentry capsule, W-2, which lifted off aboard the Transporter-12 rideshare mission with SpaceX from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
OK, final space story, I promise.
Earlier this week, Not Boring portfolio company Varda completed the successful launch of W-2, the company’s 2nd capsule designed for manufacturing high-value materials in microgravity. W-2 carried a payload including a spectrometer from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and a pharmaceutical reactor, designed to advance space-based manufacturing.
W-2 is in-orbit and commissioned, Varda is in contact with it, and over the next couple of weeks, it will be doing a little in-space manufacturing. Then, it will re-enter, test a spectrometer for AFRL, and land in Australia. That’ll be a g’day for space.
The launch was part of The Prometheus program, a partnership between Varda and the AFRL aimed at advancing the latter’s high-hypersonic systems and reentry technologies. The program is a great example of public, private partnership — through 2028 the two organizations are expected to complete dozens of iterative test launches — something you can’t imagine a the AFRL executing without the help of a fast-moving startup like Varda.
And for Varda, this type of revenue-generating partnership will allow it to advance its tech, learn a ton, and hit necessary milestones on it’s way towards ultimately making in-space manufacturing and re-entry as common as launch is becoming today.
(2) Woolly Mammoth, Dodo Get Another Shot as Startup Raises $200 Million
Sarah McBride for Bloomberg
A biotechnology startup working to bring back animals from extinction has raised $200 million at a valuation of $10.2 billion, more than six times its valuation just two years ago. Colossal Biosciences Inc. is using DNA and genomics to try to resurrect the dodo, Tasmanian tiger and the woolly mammoth.
Colossal Biosciences has about as ambitious of a mission of any company you’ll come across: use cutting-edge genetic engineering and synthetic biology to "de-extinct" species. To date, the company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and a $10.2B valuation in order to fund that mission.
It’s starting with three species: Woolly Mammoth, Dodo, and Tasmanian tiger. And will be using this funding to hit its target of producing a woolly mammoth calf by 2028. The plan is to splice mammoth DNA with that of its closest living relative, the Asian elephant, using advanced CRISPR gene-editing techniques. The resulting hybrid embryos will then be implanted into elephant surrogates. Once born, the plan is for the calfs to be reintroduced into Arctic tundra.
Which is incredibly cool. Bringing back extinct species is something we humans have dreamed about for centuries in tales, books, and movies. Making it happen opens up a whole pandoras box of possibilities.
Just because they can … does mean that they should. Bring on the Wooly Mammoths!
But $10.2 billion cool?
Turns out, it takes a lot of cutting-edge technology to reanimate dead species, and that technology may be valuable to a bunch of customers. Colossal plans to make money by:
Licensing its genetic engineering technologies and tools developed during de-extinction efforts to other companies and researchers for endangered species conservation, gene editing applications in agriculture and livestock, and medical and pharmaceutical applications.
Commercializing its computational biology and artificial wombs/embryo development technologies for use in livestock breeding and veterinary medicine, human fertility treatments, and drug development and testing.
Creating wildlife reserves and tourism opportunities around their de-extinct species, though this would be further in the future after successful de-extinction
Like space, there’s something about going as extreme as you possibly can that forces innovation that has downstream value. Investors think the net present value of that value is $10.2 billion.
That’s one explanation. The other is that, now that it’s become basic for billionaires to own sports teams and launch rockets, bringing back the Woolies is the only status left.
(3) From chalkboards to chatbots: Transforming learning in Nigeria, one prompt at a time
Simone et al in World Bank Blogs
Students who were randomly assigned to participate in the program significantly outperformed their peers who were not in all areas, including English, which was the main goal of the program. These findings provide strong evidence that generative AI, when implemented thoughtfully with teacher support, can function effectively as a virtual tutor.
One of the major promises of AI, which would fulfill the prophecy of the Primer laid out in Neal Stephenson’s 1995 The Diamond Age, is that we’d all have access to a highly personalized, advanced virtual tutor that would make learning easier, more productive, and fulfilling. A new study out of Nigeria shows that we’re on the right path.
The pilot program in Edo, Nigeria, used generative AI to deliver personalized, interactive after-school lessons tailored to students' needs and the results were extremely promising. Students who participated outperformed their peers in English, AI knowledge, and digital skills, achieving gains equivalent to two years of learning in just six weeks. The program was particularly effective for girls and lower-performing students, helping close gender and achievement gaps.
Importantly, this was a teacher-led initiative. It’s not like students we’re handed an AI iPad and given no direction. These results are the outcome of teacher instruction, plus AI-powered teaching tools. This combination of human expert plus AI tool is popping up across many use cases: Engineer + AI Coding Assistant, Doctor + AI Diagnostic Tool, Lawyer + AI Legal Assistant, and the list goes on. AI isn’t going to replace the top performers in a field. It will make the top performers even better at what they do and increase their bandwidth so they can replace the bottom performers.
(4) MatterGen: A new paradigm of materials design with generative AI
From Microsoft Research
It directly generates novel materials given prompts of the design requirements for an application. It can generate materials with desired chemistry, mechanical, electronic, or magnetic properties, as well as combinations of different constraints. MatterGen enables a new paradigm of generative AI-assisted materials design that allows for efficient exploration of materials, going beyond the limited set of known ones.
Microsoft Research introduced MatterGen, an AI model that creates novel materials directly from design prompts. MatterGen uses a diffusion model tailored for 3D materials, generating novel structures by iteratively refining random inputs based on design prompts. It then adjusts atomic positions, elements, and lattice periodicity to meet specified chemical, mechanical, or electronic property constraints. This process means its can generate materials that have specific traits, such as strength, conductivity, or magnetic properties.
MatterGen is a game changer because it allows researchers to design materials for specific needs, rather than relying on slow trial-and-error methods of material discovery. For example, imagine you work on battery design and you could prompt the model (in very simplified terms): “Generate a material with high electrical conductivity, low weight, and stability at high temperatures.” And then you can iterate from there to meet the specific needs of your battery’s needs.
MatterGen isn’t just theoretical. It’s been experimentally validated by synthesizing TaCr₂O₆, a novel material with properties closely matching its predictions, proving the model’s practical potential.
This is the type of material we love covering in The Weekly Dose.
(5) Anduril Building Arsenal-1 Hyperscale Manufacturing Facility in Ohio
From Anduril
Ohio is the ideal location for Anduril’s first Arsenal factory with its robust infrastructure to support Anduril’s unique needs, a highly skilled and diverse manufacturing workforce, and a legacy of leadership in aerospace and defense. Anduril is investing nearly $1 billion of its own dollars into the development of Arsenal-1 and will bring more than 4,000 direct jobs in the largest single job-creation project in the state’s history.
Anduril has chosen Columbus, Ohio as the home to its first Arsenal factory. The company is planning to invest nearly $1B to develop Arsenal-1 (the existence of Arsenal-1 implies the existence of Arsenal-2…more to come?). In total the factory will bring more than 4,000 total jobs with it, which is Ohio’s single largest jobs project in its history.
This story touches on a couple of the reasons we’re pumped about Anduril. The company is continuing to invest in building up America’s defense manufacturing industry. It’s not only building the physical infrastructure needed to product autonomous drones, but bringing together and training the highly skilled workforce that will be needed to operate the factory.
Anduril is on a tear. According to The Information, the company doubled its revenues in 2024 to $1B. At its current $14B valuation, the company is arranging a $100M tender offer to early employees and investors. Both are signs that its disruptive approach to the defense industry are working.
This isn’t an Anduril puff piece, but a reminder that we can still build stuff in this country. Rockets. Mechazillas. Drone factories. Hell, even Wooly Mammoths.
Thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring! We’ll be back in your inbox next Tuesday!
Thanks for reading,
Dan + Packy
The claim "AI isn't going to replace the top performers in a field, but make them better at what they do and increase their bandwidth to replace bottom performers" seems incorrect based on what I've observed. From the research so far, AI actually makes less skilled workers perform almost as well as the more skilled ones - essentially making normies perform at nearly the same level as nerds.
Noah Smith wrote about this phenomenon almost a year ago in his article "revenge of the normies." Your example actually confirms this equalizing effect of AI, rather than suggesting it amplifies existing skill differences.
As for education in developing countries, most public schools there primarily serve as employment vehicles for lazy, over-educated individuals from upper middle class families. Many don't even show up to work. The issue isn't insufficient pay - Indian public school teachers already earn 4-5 times more than their private school counterparts. An experiment in Indonesia even tried doubling teacher salaries to reduce absenteeism, but it failed. This ultimately stems from most parents in developing countries not caring enough. People are poor because they deserve poverty.
wonderful to see. the USA will be great again
europe? not so much. deregulation at scale is what we need