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vpribble

HN member
Joined
Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC
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43
Public activity
15 items

About vpribble

I've spent 11 years at the intersection of space systems engineering and product strategy — launching rockets at ULA, building New Glenn at Blue Origin, founding companies through Y Combinator, and now running radiation-hardened microelectronics at Mercury Systems.

At Mercury, I own product strategy for one of the industry's broadest radiation-tolerant portfolios — memory, processing, and storage flying on defense and commercial space programs across the major US and European primes. The work spans the full lifecycle: roadmaps, pricing, new product introduction, and navigating the supply-chain disruptions reshaping the rad-hard market.

Before that, I was a founder. Y Combinator taught me how to build products customers actually want, how to prioritize ruthlessly, and how to operate when everything is on the line, lessons I now apply with a balance sheet behind them.

My technical foundation is launch operations: Atlas V, Delta IV, Delta II, SLS, New Glenn. I was the Responsible Engineer for Delta IV second-stage propulsion systems with go/no-go authority during countdown, and I helped stand up the New Glenn factory from dirt floor to flight hardware. I've priced the components that fly, and I've been on the floor when they left the building.

I write about the rad-hard supply chain, qualification economics, and what happens when commercial silicon meets orbital physics. If you're working on space electronics, defense semiconductors, or supply-chain problems nobody's named yet — my inbox is open.

Recent public activity

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    Comment #35265184

    We're excited to introduce Correlaite, an AI-driven market research platform designed to help businesses stay ahead of the curve in today's fast-paced industries. Traditional surve…

  4. story
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    Comment #30631354

    Thank you! For the growth factors, we do not have any plans currently for producing them in-house, however there are several companies within the industry (Future Fields for exampl…

  6. comment
    Comment #30630866

    Great question: part of the scaffold will dissolve, part of it (edible materials) will be in the final product. The amount of it in the final product (basically the degradation kin…

  7. comment
    Comment #30630537

    Yes, we are in the process of finalizing our animal-free scaffold composition.

  8. comment
    Comment #30630444

    Good catch! This should have said ATKearney, and has been updated. You can find the report here: https://gastronomiaycia.republica.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

  9. comment
    Comment #30630031

    Of course! As the factories get larger and larger, security becomes even more important, and traditional methods such as limiting access, badge-in/ badge-out, and access codes woul…

  10. comment
    Comment #30629172

    1) We have already created our first piece of edible pork using our method! 2) ATKearney in their article "How will cultured meat and meat alternatives disrupt the agricultural and…

  11. comment
    Comment #30628713

    Yes we are! While the cell metabolism is marginally diminished by our scaffolding method, the overall cell viability remains high.

  12. comment
    Comment #30628627

    Good Food Institute has a great write-up on the reduction of emissions and land use which can be found here ( https://gfi.org/blog/cultivated-meat-lca-tea/ ). To summarize it, with…

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    Comment #30628405

    We definitely agree with you that the reactors currently used in biopharma were not really meant for the level of production required to scale cultivated meat. As for the growth, t…

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    Comment #30628066

    Contamination is definitely a problem for cultivated meat. It is one of the leading risks when scaling because if the reactor is contaminated at all, you could lose entire batches …

  15. comment
    Comment #30627955

    Great question! So the basic medium composition itself is fairly simple, but the growth factors can be difficult to make. There are many places along the supply chain that are stra…