Nasa Transition Strategy. Enterprise Architecture: Fill & Download for Free

Why do people believe what they're told by scientists when there is no way to prove what they are theorizing? Examples: space, time, historyPeople who understand and respect scientific methodology, don’t just “believe” whatever they are told by someone who claims to be a scientist.That is the thinking mode of conspiracy theorists and other followers of blind faith, or sensationalist trash-grade media reports.Unfortunately people with such limited critical thinking abilities, tend to project their own modes of thought on to others, such as scientists.Those who have confidence in scientists, check the reputations, credibility, and integrity of the scientists or scientific organisations who they are listening to.Science makes testable predictions which may or may not have got all the details right, but those predictions are based on evidence and planning, and not just some whimsical thoughts which popped into someone’s head.I have been looking at some predictions of a new UK commercial space launch system for small satellites. I am fairly confident that it will be built.Orbex unveils new rocket design for UK spaceport in ScotlandOrbex also revealed the world’s largest 3D printed rocket engine and confirmed the first satellites to be launched from Scotland.Orbex has publicly unveiled its Prime rocket for the first time at the opening of its new headquarters and rocket design facility in Forres in the Scottish Highlands.Designed to deliver small satellites into Earth’s orbit, the rocket was unveiled at an opening ceremony attended by VIPs from the UK and European space community as well as local community stakeholders.The completed engineering prototype of the Stage 2 rocket (the stage that will transit into orbital flight after launch) is made from a specially-formulated lightweight carbon fibre and aluminium composite and includes the world’s largest 3-D printed rocket engine.There are details of some of NASA’s 3D printing rocket engine experiments in my earlier answer.Alan Appleby's answer to What’s the next or newest big breakthrough in technology that once seemed impossible or the stuff of science fiction?Orbex Prime is a completely re-thought and re-engineered two-stage rocket, designed by Orbex aerospace engineers with professional experience from organisations including NASA, ESA and Ariane, as well as other commercial spaceflight companies.Thanks to its novel architecture, Prime launchers are up to 30% lighter and 20% more efficient than any other vehicle in the small launcher category, packing more power per cubic litre than many heavy launchers.Seen for the first time, the 3-D printed rocket engine was uniquely manufactured in a single piece without joins in partnership with additive manufacturer SLM Solutions.Given the extreme temperature and pressure fluctuations involved in space flight, this gives the engine an advantage over other rocket engines, which can suffer from weaknesses associated with joining and welding.It is also the first commercial rocket engine designed to work with biopropane, a clean-burning, renewable fuel source that cuts carbon emissions by 90% compared to fossil hydrocarbon fuels, supplied by Orbex’s new exclusive BioLPG fuel partner Calor.The company revealed the identities of more customers that would be among the first to launch their satellites from the Sutherland spaceport.On Orbex Prime’s maiden flight from Scotland in 2021, the rocket will carry an experimental payload from UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), the world’s leading manufacturer of small satellites.This launch will represent an important first for the UK commercial space industry, demonstrating the UK’s end-to-end launch capability with a UK rocket launching a UK satellite from a UK spaceport.As well as using a 3D printed engine, ORBEX has a novel fuel tank configuration, which is made possible by its choice of fuel.There are two coaxial tanks, with an inner tank of liquid propane surrounded by an annular sleeve of the cryogenic liquid oxygen tank. This is only possible because unlike other hydrocarbon fuels, the propane will remain liquid, despite the proximity to the liquid oxygen.Lockheed Martin and Orbex to launch UK into new space ageLockheed Martin to establish vertical launch operations in Sutherland, Scotland and develop innovative technologies in Reading, Berkshire with support from two UK Space Agency grants totalling £23.5 millionA further £5.5 million will go to British company Orbex to build an innovative new rocket for launch from Sutherland, as part of Government’s modern Industrial StrategyThis builds on awards of £2.5m to Highlands and Islands Enterprise to develop a vertical launch spaceport in Sutherland and a £2m development fund for horizontal spaceports such as those planned in Cornwall, Glasgow Prestwick and SnowdoniaRocket-making start-up Orbex unveils 3D-printed engine at its new Scottish facilityLarmour believes that European customers will be interested in the opportunity to be launching from Scotland rather than having to ship their spacecraft to India or Kazakhstan.The rocket’s first stage will be largely reusable, he said, which will help Orbex to keep the cost down. While he refused to elaborate on how much Orbex’s customers will pay, he said the company’s offering will be “very competitive”.“Certainly the engine pack of the stage one - which is a huge portion of the cost of the vehicle - we hope to make this reusable,” he said.“It’s going to land in the sea, but I am not going to say how [as] that is currently patent pending.”Jonas Bjarnø, Orbex’s chief technology officer, said the choice of propellant is the main strength of Orbex’s technology, allowing the company to pack more power into a relatively lightweight launcher.

From India’s First SaaS Product Unicorn: Druva Executes Steadily | Sramana Mitra on the One Million by One Million blog:Data protection solutions provider Druva was born in Pune but moved to Silicon Valley to create a global product company. It has been executing solidly and quietly without too much hype.Druva’s JourneyDruva was founded in 2008 by CTO Milind Borate, CEO Jaspreet Singh, and Ramani Kothandaraman to cater to the disaster recovery market. They wanted to innovate within the space of compliance, risk mitigation, and disaster recovery of mission-critical data. They built a product geared toward this, but while trying to sell their product, Jaspreet realized that another market opportunity lay in the area of risk mitigation for endpoints. They then pivoted to create an endpoint backup product, the first version of which was released in 2009.Back then, as increasing number of employees migrated to mobile devices, endpoint backup was becoming important. Organizations needed to not only protect on-premise data, but also when their employees were traveling. Products available back then were mostly focused on anti-virus and leakage protection and hardly any one focused on endpoint backup.Today, Druva is one of the fastest growing edge data protection providers. They offer an easy-to-use, single dashboard that lets organizations manage backup, availability, and governance. Their product is installed in over 4 million devices across 4,000 organizations worldwide including NASA, Pfizer, hospitality giant Marriot, NBC Universal, Dell, Hitachi, ServiceNow, Stanford University, Continental, Emerson, Flex, Fujitsu, and defense equipment maker Lockheed Martin.Druva was founded in Pune, but after it gained traction and received funding from Sequoia Capital, it shifted its headquarters to Sunnywale, California. With the move, it has chosen to look and feel more like a regular Silicon Valley company, underplaying its Indian roots. This is very different from the strategy that Freshdesk has followed. Freshdesk has claimed the role of the flag bearer of Indian startups in a way that Druva has not done.In the past two years, Druva has set up subsidiaries in Japan and Germany, and has opened offices in the UK, Australia, and Singapore. It has recently set up new cloud data center offerings in Canada, the UK, and Hong Kong that would satisfy national and regional data protection requirements. About 65% of its enterprise customers are in the Americas, 25% in Europe and the Middle East, and 10% in the Asia Pacific region.It has about 400 employees with over 100 of them in research and development in the Pune and Sunnywale offices. It is an IP-heavy business. In 2014, it received two patents for its distributed scalable de-duplicated data backup system. In 2015, it received the patent for Pre-Population of Data for Replication of Data Backups. It now files for three to four patents every year.Their core products include the endpoint backup platform InSync and remote server backup product Phoenix.InSync uses a single dashboard for backup, availability, and governance of endpoint data. Organizations are able to ensure mobile data backup, data loss prevention, and data governance along with file sharing and access capabilities. It offers Enterprise, Elite, and Elite Plus plans for cloud-based solutions and also offers an on-premise private cloud plan.The remote server backup product Phoenix is a cloud-based backup service that lets organizations store data indefinitely with limitless snapshots and flexible retention policies, while ensuring lower backup costs. It offers Business, Enterprise, and Elite plans for this product.In December 2016, Druva unveiled Druva Cloud Platform to accelerate the full enterprise cloud-first ecosystem. Its open architecture and APIs enable businesses and partners to extract greater value from stored data for solving information management challenges, including compliance, retention, legal, and analytics across disparate sources. With over 20 ecosystem partners, IT is better equipped to mitigate business risk, embrace the efficiencies of cloud, and create a more agile, and efficient data management environment.Druva’s FinancialsDruva does not disclose detailed financials, but revenues had crossed $15 million in 2013. In 2015, it recorded five consecutive years of 100% growth and at a June 2015 1M/1M Roundtable, Jaspreet mentioned that the company was operating at revenues between $10 million and $50 million. In an earlier roundtable in October 2014, Naren Gupta of Nexus Venture Partners mentioned that they’re doing $10 million a quarter. So, extrapolating from these two conversations, Druva should have been at over $50 million annual revenue in 2015.Revenue is currently growing at 70%-80% y-o-y. It recently announced that it has achieved 300% growth in Phoenix revenue. The US, the UK and Germany contribute 90% of its total revenue. Profitability still eludes Druva like most SaaS companies. But CEO Jaspreet expects the company to break even in 2017. Based on 70%-80% growth rate, we estimate 2016 revenue of $85-$90 million and forecast 2017 revenue of $144-$157 million.Druva was bootstrapped initially, and after proving its product and capabilities, it received its first institutional funding of $5 million from Sequoia Capital India and Indian Angel Network in 2010. After this funding, Jaspreet moved to the US to shift the corporate headquarters, a logical move necessitated by the heavy enterprise focus on the company. Its Series B round for $12 million in August 2011 was led by Nexus Venture Partners. Series C and D rounds were for $25 million each in 2013 and 2014. It has raised $118 million so far with investments from Tenaya Capital, NTT Finance, Nexus Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, EMC Ventures, and Indian Angel Network. It raised $25 million in August 2014 at a valuation of INR 14 billion (~$220 million).In September 2016, it raised $51 million at an undisclosed valuation in a round led by Sequoia India and joined by new backers including Blue Cloud Ventures, Hercules Capital, and EDBI, the investing arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board. Other existing investors in the round include NTT Finance, Nexus Venture Partners, and Tenaya Capital.By the end of 2017, if Druva achieves its revenue targets, it will decide the timing of its IPO and the latest fundraising is expected to be its last round. Druva’s growth pattern has been disciplined and understated. Its focus on fundamentals makes it one of India’s most credible software product ventures that has made a clean transition into a global company.There are many possible exit paths through acquisitions including Cisco, HPE, Dell-EMC, Hitachi, and NetApp.A profitable, high growth ~$150 million revenue company should be able to comfortably debut in the public market at a billion dollar plus valuation in 2018, making Druva India’s first legitimate SaaS product Unicorn.