Roid Rage

When you’re building spacecraft, the difference between a pass and a failure can come down to how you built your FEM. In this episode, Structures Engineer Holly walks us through how we simulate Vestri’s structure before it ever hits the shaker table. From modal margins to mass tradeoffs, modular models to the limits of simulation—this is how CAD gets us close, and where real life breaks away.

Spacecraft don’t fail because of one big thing; they fail because of 100 small ones. This one’s about the small stuff: fasteners, helicoils, backshells, and epoxy. The spacecraft parts no one talks about until they fail. This week, Ashton helps us break down how minor hardware choices impact everything from integration, to thermal control.

This week on Roid Rage, we dive into the brutal, thankless math of orbital mechanics with James, one of AstroForge’s Flight Dynamics Engineers. James walks us through how we get our spacecraft from a rideshare drop-off orbit to a fast-moving metal rock millions of kilometers away— without crashing into the moon or missing the asteroid entirely.

We talk low-thrust trajectory planning, why everything’s harder without a propulsion team, how to optimize when you can barely steer, and why half the job is just educated guessing and praying your simulations are right. 

In this episode, Demyan (Senior Mission Ops Engineer) walks us through how AstroForge approaches ground communications, from pass scheduling and real-time visibility to handling missed links and operational drift. We break down what went wrong during Odin’s mission, how we're currently rebuilding our tools for Vestri, and why deep space comms is so much more than getting a signal: it’s all about timing, geometry, and operational realism.

Spacecraft comms aren’t guaranteed—and we design with that in mind. In this episode, Ashton, our Head of Space Systems, breaks down how we handle communications in deep space, what Vestri learned from Odin, and how we’re building spacecraft that stay operational even when the link goes dark. From RF architecture to pass planning to system-level autonomy, this is how we close the gap between signal and silence.

In this episode, we sit down with Ashton, Head of Space Systems, and Chris, Head of Avionics at AstroForge, to break down how we handle power under constraint. Specifically, the differences in our approach for Vestri vs. Odin. It’s not just about generation—it’s about enforcing priorities, managing faults, and surviving without human input. We cover how power is routed, how systems are shut down in emergencies, and how Vestri is being tested to validate autonomous survival logic before anything flies.

In this week's episode, we get into what vibration testing actually does for a spacecraft, and what happens when it reveals problems you didn’t plan for. Structures Engineer Wesley joins us to break down how Odin performed on the shaker, what failed, and how those lessons shaped our approach for our upcoming mission, Vestri. From fixture design to broken fasteners, this episode is a candid assessment of testing under fast timelines and tight margins.

In this episode, we break down what mass budgets actually mean in the context of building flight hardware. Mechanical Engineer Eric joins us to talk about baseplate iterations, machining mistakes, margin shrinkage, and why even with careful design—everything ends up overweight. This one’s for anyone who thinks spreadsheets survive contact with the shop floor.

In this episode, we dig into what the space economy actually looks like today—versus how it’s been pitched. AstroForge Chief Business Officer Krystle Caponio joins Chap, Matt, and Robyn to talk about outdated incentive structures, what makes a sustainable space business, and why asteroid mining is built around Earth customers—not off-world speculation. From government contracts to failed pivots, this is what it’s really like to build for deep space.

This episode breaks down how spacecraft autonomy is structured through mission modes: predefined system states that control how a vehicle behaves, recovers from faults, and configures its subsystems. Chap (CoS), Robyn (COO), and Matt (CEO) cover how and when transitions happen, what “Oh Shit Mode” actually is, and how AstroForge designs and tests mode architecture to prioritize survivability over ideal execution.