Cosmic Girl and Launcher One have made it!

I watched the live video streaming until around 1am, to the point when ground station lost the signal; literally seconds from the satellites being dropped off into orbit. What a drama! At the end, it all went well. Quite frankly, I am still trying to absorb the magnitude of the fact that a part machined in our workshop is now in space, orbiting the earth.  But life goes on and today, Josh and James are back to their 'normal' routine designing, making, learning and constantly improving their skills. And we are back to selling watches. Yet there is one more thing that is worth pointing out: we live in strange times. If you are a maker of anything, and you feel that your product or project deserves a bit of attention, then you should really brace yourself for some harsh reality: most people simply could not care less about you or your product. We live in times were everyone else out there is just busy caring about themselves. A YouTube channel about putting satellites into orbit in a revolutionary new way by space engineers, backed up by a company that literally invented marketing 40 years ago has under 14K subscribers.

On the other hand, a video of a video game commentator which goes under the name PewDiePie drawing an airplane received 35 million views. The fact that loser has a following of 110 million brainwashed YouTube subscribers is beyond my comprehension.

BREAKING NEWS: To the skies and beyond!

Following the team’s successful orbital launch demonstration in January, “Tubular Bells: Part One” marks the next big step in Virgin Orbit’s commercial service. For this mission to space, LauncherOne will carry to space payloads for three customers from three different countries: the U.S. Department of Defence Space Test Program, Polish satellite firm SatRevolution, and the Royal Netherlands Air Force.   The livestream will be broadcast live, and kicks off at 22:30pm Sydney time on June 30th, 2021. That is in approximately 12 hours from now. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/bgL5pMDktxA   WHY IS THIS A BIG  DEAL FOR YOU?   One of the satellites inside the LauncherOne, soon to be released in space, contains parts manufactured in Australia - precisely - in our Brookvale workshop. We are extremely proud that a part we have manufactured will soon orbit the earth and stay in space - for many years to come! This is simply as big as it gets, a dream come true for any manufacturer, let alone for small Aussie watchmakers.   Note from Josh: "Over the last 18 months or so our manufacturing facility in Brookvale has been getting more and more attention from niche industries that require high precision, small parts to be made. We have made parts that get used with medical devices, instruments that will be used in extremely high end research, and have worked with the absolute cutting edge of materials- many parts come through our doors with the preface "No-one in Australia could do it- can you?".   Most recently we have been making parts for the space sector. As you might have heard in the news, there has been a massive push to build Australia's space industry. From the decision to restart our space agency, to the massive efforts by private companies to start providing space borne services, it feels like a gold rush! I’ve always maintained, Australia has some of the best IP and human talent in the world. When the right people get together, magic like WiFi, Cochlear hearing implants and Resmed sleep apnoea devices are birthed.   To say that we are proud is understatement. This is the proof in the pudding- the hard work, long hours, head scratching and hyper focus have all paid off. With the NH1 we proved to the world that we can make watches in Australia- the NH2 Timascus proved that we can innovate and make something completely unique, the (coming) NH3 will be yet another step forward, but having a part into orbit, is the nod of approval we never thought we'd get."