The mission to turn space into the next frontier for express deliveries took off from a modest propeller plane above a remote airstrip in the shadow of the Santa Ana mountains.
An engineer for Inversion Space, a start-up that is barely a year old, tossed a capsule out the open door of an aircraft flying at 3,000 feet after sunrise on a recent Saturday. The container somersaulted in the air for a few seconds before a parachute deployed and snapped it upright for a slow descent.
It was slow to open, and the chief executive of Inversion had to watch the parachute through a long lens.
The work of amateur rocketry enthusiasts was apparent in the exercise. It was a test run for something more fanciful. Inversion is building earth-orbiting capsules to deliver goods from outer space. To make that a reality, Inversion's capsule will come through the earth's atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound, making the parachute essential for a soft landing and undisturbed cargo.
As it becomes cheaper to fly to space, Inversion is betting that government agencies and companies will want to bring things back to earth.
Inversion wants to develop a four-foot-diameter capsule that can carry a small amount of cargo. The company hopes the capsule will be able to navigate itself to a private space station or stay in space for a while with solar panels. When it was time to come back, the capsule could drop out of the atmosphere.
The capsule would deploy a parachute to slow its descent and land within a circle of tens of miles from its target location. A 20-inch diameter demonstration capsule is planned to be ready by 2023.
It is possible to imagine hundreds or thousands of containers floating around space for up to five years if Inversion succeeds.
The company's founders think that the capsule could be used to store artificial organs that could be delivered to the operating room within a few hours or as a mobile field hospital that could be dispatched to remote areas of the planet. It could be possible to deliver a New York pizza to San Francisco in 45 minutes.
The founders of Inversion think that sharing space on a $1 million rocket may become more realistic as launch costs drop. Inversion did not give an estimate of how much it will cost.
Matthew C. Weinzierl, a professor at Harvard, said that there isn't much demand to do in space at the moment.
People have thought about living and working in space as an extension of life on Earth. Commercial activity beyond Earth was made more feasible thanks to the private rocket companies that reduced the costs of getting to space.
In the last 30 years, the cost of launching one kilogram has fallen by 90 percent. The costs are expected to be even lower with the next- generation rocket. The rocket will cost less than $10 million within three years, compared with the $62 million price for the Falcon 9.
Launching rockets is only one part of the equation for space to be more accessible.
Facilities in space are an important factor. NASA selected three companies to receive funding for commercial space stations as part of a plan to eventually replace the International Space Station. The company was awarded a $140 million contract in 2020 to build a module for the International Space Station.
Mr. Fiaschetti, who dropped out of college last year to pursue his own start-up dreams, thinks that physical goods could be sent back from space.
Satellites that stay in space are the main cargo for rockets. The vehicles that carry humans or experiments from space are large, expensive and usually work with a specific rocket. Inversion said it designed its smaller capsule to fit into any commercial rocket so they can catch a ride to space frequently and cheaply.
It is not easy to do what Inversion is trying to do. Sending things up to space is not the same as designing a vehicle for re-entry. The danger of burning up when a capsule enters the atmosphere from space is a huge risk for human travelers and nonhuman cargo alike.
When the vehicle size shrinks, it will be more difficult to handle the heat, vibration and deceleration of the capsule.
When you have a smaller item to control, it becomes harder.
There are questions about whether Inversion's plan for a capsule in the middle of space will contribute to congestion in space. Astronomers have complained about the abundance of satellites interfering with their observations.
Inversion said it was using materials to make its capsule less reflective. The company said its capsule would come with systems to avoid debris.
Mr.Briggs and Mr. Fiaschetti met when they sat next to each other at the Boston University ceremony. They worked on rocket designs in the school. They moved to Los Angeles during the epidemic. They were talking about the future of the space industry. They created less expensive re-entry vehicles to carry cargo from space.
They paid $1,250 a month for a guesthouse in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles and used a garage as their workshop. They used Mr. Fiaschetti's woodworking equipment to design and make a working rocket engine out of aluminum in order to prove to potential investors that they had the necessary technical chops.
Inversion Space became a member of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley start-up incubator. Inversion said it had raised $10 million based on letters of intent worth $225 million from potential customers interested in reserving space on its capsule. Mr. Fiaschetti wouldn't identify the customers.
Venture capital is starting to see the potential of space. According to data compiled by PitchBook, venture capital firms invested more in space-related technology last year.
Inversion moved into a warehouse in an office park. It is a tinkerer's dream workshop with tools for making parts, welding equipment and a 20-ton press to pack parachutes as densely as oak.
There is a black, 10-foot shipping container next to a floor-to-ceiling American flag at the far end of the warehouse. The structure has steel-reinforced concrete walls, ceiling sprinklers, and a system to replace oxygen with nitrogen in the event of a fire.
Inversion was about to test a new parachute design. Parachutes are difficult. They need to unfurl perfectly to make sure the capsule slows down and doesn't rock too much. A parachute's effectiveness can be affected by a number of factors.
Inversion sees building their own as an advantage.
Inversion noticed that the capsule was moving a lot. On that day, Mr. Fiaschetti, Mr.Briggs, and two engineers arrived at an airfield used by sky divers to test a new design.
The engineer who oversees Inversion's parachute design climbed into the plane with a test capsule that was attached to a camera and a measurement unit. He jumped out after tossing the capsule out of the plane. Mr. Kelsay shot video of the capsule's movements from a camera on his helmet.
He shared the same observation as everyone else, that the parachute had been slow to deploy. The team ran a list of possible factors after looking at the video. Did Mr. Kelsay toss the capsule in the wrong way? There was a lot of turbulence when the drop occurred. They used a different shaped capsule last time.
The parachute opened in the second test. The capsule's camera fell off in the descent, prompting a frantic search. They eventually found it. The team thought it had solved the problem after the second test, because of the tape used to patch the hole.
Mr. Fiaschetti said he was not disappointed by the slow parachute opening because it was part of the process.
He said that early in development, you expect things to not go as you wanted.
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