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XUS Space Force Turns to SoCal Aerospace Firm And Hollywood Studio For its Next Gen Training Platform
Tami Abdollah was dot.LA's senior technology reporter. She was previously a national security and cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. She's been a reporter for the AP in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times and for L.A.'s NPR affiliate KPCC. Abdollah spent nearly a year in Iraq as a U.S. government contractor. A native Angeleno, she's traveled the world on $5 a day, taught trad climbing safety classes and is an avid mountaineer. Follow her on Twitter.

El Segundo-based Slingshot Aerospace Inc. and a Hollywood visualization studio known for its design work on films like The Martian," "The Mandalorian" and "Gravity" are working on a next generation space-simulating training tool for the U.S. Space Force.
The tool, which is being built now for PCs, aims to teach airmen concepts like astrodynamics and let them experience how objects move in space. The goal is to make the platform adaptable for augmented reality on mobile phones and virtual reality on headsets in the future.
"The Air Force has pumped millions of dollars into that foundational education (but) in space, that ground school doesn't exist," said Melanie Stricklan, co-founder and chief strategy officer for Slingshot Aerospace. Instead, she said, airmen go through a professional military education "that just skims the surface."
Slingshot Aerospace, which has its second headquarters in Austin, Texas, announced Thursday it received $2 million to develop its Slingshot Orbital Laboratory, an educational platform that is built on top of its existing "air traffic control system" that tracks and helps users manage the burgeoning numbers of objects in space.
The total amount includes a $1 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) phase 2 contract from the U.S. Space Force and $1 million from ATX Venture Partners, an early-stage capital firm based in Austin.
In its motion picture visualization work, The Third Floor builds virtual versions ofenvironments, vehicles and characters to help the filmmakers to block their ideas and shots.Previs by THE THIRD FLOOR fromCaptain Marvel. Image copyright Marvel 2019 and courtesyof The Third Floor
Stricklan, a retired Air Force veteran of two decades, worked at the Space Force's predecessor, the U.S. Space Command. In 2017, she co-founded Slingshot Aerospace. The new Space Force still uses tools built in the 1980s that are heavy, hard to use and involve an "antiquated simulator," Stricklan said.
"They're still using things like a Hula Hoop and a beach ball for those operators and students to start understanding how orbits work around the Earth. This allows them the opportunity to actually use their hands and their own laptops or iPads to manipulate those types of orbits and orbit parameters in order to see how a spacecraft reacts to the physics around the Earth."
Existing simulation tools tend to be incredibly sophisticated and require operators to have a graduate degree. Slingshot said that their educational laboratory would be accessible for those with a GED or above.
Slingshot has teamed up with subcontractor The Third Floor, a Los Angeles-based visualization studio known for creating physics accurate content that has been showcased in the design blueprints and CGI for "The Martian," "The Mandalorian," "Gravity," as well as many of the Star Wars films and all the Marvel films.
In fact, the founders of The Third Floor worked on Star Wars episode three as part of George Lucas' visualization team and started their company in 2004 after the movies ended, said Albert Cheng, the creative director for the immersive department at The Third Floor.
The two companies are in the process of building a functioning prototype and working "hand-in-hand" with the instructors at the Space Force and the U.S. Air Force Academy as well.
The laboratory design is foremost an education tool but in its effort to improve accessibility, the team is designing the laboratory with a slight video game sensibility, including making visually engaging graphics and a very responsive interface, Cheng said.
The Air Force "really wanted the next gen of space operators to be engaged in the learning environment," Cheng said. "What we're trying to teach and what instructors have said is the hardest part is visualizing the spatial relationships of data. These immersive tools are designed to help do that. If you can see orbits and spatial relationships in 3D (for example), that is a great way of helping people see information that is inherently spatial."
U.S. Air Force Col. Max Lantz, a commandant at the National Security Space Institute, said in a statement that "building an immersive environment to drive better comprehension of these foundational theories will be vital to support the Space Force."
The contract ends in early December 2021, and the company hopes to have the end-to-end prototype be completed by then. It will then either move forward with a phase 3 contract for more sustainable work or license the product back to the Space Force as a commercial subscription.
"Either way, we'd like to get out of the high license costs that they currently pay for other technologies and provide this to them at a more reasonable price point," Stricklan said.
Nominal image of Slingshot Orbital Laboratory provided by Slingshot Aerospace
Space Traffic is Becoming "Contested And Congested"
Space has become increasingly accessible due to the drop in pricing and more access for the commercial sector to launch a satellite with many of the rules and regulations to regulate behavior or mitigate debris, Stricklan said. As a result, "orbits are becoming congested and contested" she said. There are more than 2,000 active satellites in orbit right now and U.S. companies have filed to launch 58,000 new satellites into orbit over the next several years, Stricklan said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Space Force is gearing up to move from a more space situational awareness role, historically speaking, Stricklan said, to a more "protect and defend" mission. The Department of Defense is passing its space traffic management role eventually over to the U.S. Commerce Department per a White House directive issued in 2018.
Slingshot Aerospace has won more than $6 million in government contracts from the U.S. Air Force since it was founded in 2017, according to public data. That includes a contract for the Space and Missile System Center to help provide details about objects on orbit, including their payloads, when they launch and what the objects have been doing to do predictive analysis.
The underlying Slingshot Orbital data tool characterizes space objects, detects threats and enables decision intelligence, while also identifying inconsistencies among data sources including commercial data sources. It's a platform that brings in both commercial and government sensor data to provide a view of objects in orbit around the Earth. She said the ultimate goal, still a ways away, is to build a live simulation that sits on top of a digital twin, for training purposes.
"With 58,000 objects on orbit, and that's not counting the debris that's already up there and will (be created) through the launch process," Stricklan said. "This is the time for these professionals to learn this domain from the ground up."
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- Slingshot Aerospace, The Third Floor Work with Space Force - dot.LA ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Melanie Stricklan on Aerospace's Future - dot.LA ›
- Gen. Susan Helms & Melanie Stricklan Are Diversifying Space - dot.LA ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Gets $1.2M Deal with US Space Force - dot.LA ›
- Red 6 Raises $30M for Military Training in Augmented Reality - dot.LA ›
- GIGXR's Partners With the Air Force Academy on VR Training - dot.LA ›
- Slingshot Aerospace Raises $25 Million - dot.LA ›
Tami Abdollah was dot.LA's senior technology reporter. She was previously a national security and cybersecurity reporter for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. She's been a reporter for the AP in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times and for L.A.'s NPR affiliate KPCC. Abdollah spent nearly a year in Iraq as a U.S. government contractor. A native Angeleno, she's traveled the world on $5 a day, taught trad climbing safety classes and is an avid mountaineer. Follow her on Twitter.
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Greater Good Health Raises $10 Million To Fix America’s Doctor Shortage
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The pandemic highlighted what’s been a growing trend for years: Medical students are prioritizing high-paying specialty fields over primary care, leading to a shortage of primary care doctors who take care of a patient’s day-to-day health concerns. These physicians are a cornerstone of preventative health care, which when addressed can lower health care costs for patients, insurers and the government. But there’s a massive shortage of doctors all over the country, and the pipeline for primary care physicians is even weaker.
One local startup is offering a possible answer to this supply squeeze: nurse practitioners.
On Wednesday, Manhattan Beach-based Greater Good Health unveiled a $10 million Series A funding round led by LRVHealth, which adds to the startup’s $3 million seed round last year. The company employs nurse practitioners and pairs them with doctor’s offices and medical clinics; this allows nurse practitioners to take on patients who would otherwise have to wait weeks, or even months, to see a doctor.
“This access and equity issue is just going to become more pervasive if we don't do things to help people gain more access,” Greater Good founder and CEO Sylvia Hastanan told dot.LA. “We need more providers to offer more patients appointments and access to their time to take care of their needs. And in order to do that, we really need to think about the workforce.”
There has been a growing movement in the medical industry to use nurse practitioners in place of increasingly scarce primary care physicians. California passed a law in 2020 that will widen the scope of nurse practitioners and allow them to operate without a supervising physician by 2023. Amid a shortage of doctors, there’s also the question of what will become of the largest and longest-living elderly population in recent history, Baby Boomers. Public health officials are already scrambling for ways to take care of this aging demographic’s myriad health needs while also addressing the general population.
“By the time you and I get old enough where we need primary care providers to help us with our ailments and chronic conditions, there aren't [going to be] enough of them,” Hastanan said. “And/or there just isn't going to be enough support for those nurse practitioners to really thrive in that way. And I worry about what our system will look like.”
Nurse practitioners function much like doctors do—they can monitor vitals, diagnose patients, and, in some cases, prescribe medication (though usually under the supervision of a doctor). Nurse practitioners need to get either a master’s degree or higher in nursing and complete thousands of hours of work in a clinical setting. All told, it usually takes six-to-eight years to become a nurse practitioner, compared to 10-to-15 years to become a practicing physician.
Greater Good Health’s platform puts nurse practitioners in often years-long care settings where they manage patients—most of whom are chronically ill, high-risk patients that need to be seen regularly and thoroughly. This allows them to follow up more carefully on patients they have managed for years, instead of catching up on a new patient’s history and treating them in the moment. Patients, meanwhile, don’t have to see a rotating door of clinicians and can talk to a provider they already have an established rapport with.
The one-year-old startup will use the funding to provide learning and development opportunities for its nurse practitioners and also connect them with each other through virtual support groups. Burnout has been an issue across health care during the pandemic, spurring an exodus of nursing and support staff and leaving health care facilities woefully understaffed. Greater Good hopes that keeping nurse practitioners in more stable, years-long care situations and offering them career development opportunities will help retain them and keep them in the workforce longer.
“We want them to be well-rounded and balanced both in work and life, and we see that returns us healthier, more engaged and ready nurse practitioners,” Hastanan said.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
Plus Capital Partner Amanda Groves on Celebrity Equity Investments
On this episode of the L.A. Venture podcast, Amanda Groves talks about how PLUS Capital advises celebrity investors and why more high-profile individuals are choosing to invest instead of endorse.
As a partner at PLUS, Groves works with over 70 artists and athletes, helping to guide their investment strategies. PLUS advises their talent roster to combine their financial capital with their social capital and focus on five investment areas: the future of work, future of education, health and wellness, the conscious consumer and sustainability.
“The idea is if we can leverage these people who have incredible audiences—and influence over that audience—in the world of venture capital, you'd be able to help make those businesses move forward faster,” Groves said.
PLUS works to create celebrity partnerships by identifying each client’s passions and finding companies that align with them, Groves said. From there, the venture firm can reach out to prospective partners from its many contacts and can help evaluate businesses that approach its clients. Recently, PLUS paired actress Nina Dobrev with the candy company SmartSweets after she had told them about her love for its snacks.
Celebrity entrepreneurship has shifted quite a bit in recent years, Groves said. While celebrities are paid for endorsements, Groves said investing allows them to gain equity from the growth of companies that benefit from their work.
“Like in movies, for example, where they're earning a residual along the way, they thought, ‘You know, if we're going to partner with these brands and create a tremendous amount of enterprise value, we should be able to capture some of the upside that we're generating, too’,” she said.
Partnering in this way also allows her clients to work with a wider range of brands, including small brands that often can’t afford to spend millions on endorsements. Investing allows high-profile individuals to represent brands they care about, Groves said.
“The last piece of the puzzle was a drive towards authenticity,” Groves said. “A lot of these high-profile artists and athletes are not interested, once they've achieved some sort of level of success, in partnering with brands that they don't personally align with.”
Hear the full episode by clicking on the playhead above, and listen to LA Venture on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Editorial Intern Kristin Snyder contributed to this post.
Rivian Stock Roller Coaster Continues as Amazon Van Delivery Faces Delays
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
Rivian’s stock lost 7% yesterday on the back of news that the company could face delays in fulfilling Amazon’s order for a fleet of electric delivery vans due to legal issues with a supplier. The electric vehicle maker is suing Commercial Vehicle Group (CVG) over a pricing dispute related to the seats that the supplier promised, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The legal issue could mean that Amazon may not receive their electric vans on time. The dispute hinges on whether or not Commercial Vehicle Group is allowed to raise the prices of its seats after Rivian made engineering and design changes to the original version. Rivian says the price hike from CVG violates the supply contract. CVG denies the claim.
Regardless, the dispute could hamper Rivian’s ability to deliver electric vans to Amazon on time. The ecommerce/streaming/cloud computing/AI megacorporation controls an 18% stake in Rivian as one of the company’s largest early investors. Amazon has previously said it hopes to buy 100,000 delivery vehicles from Rivian by 2030.
The stock plunge marked another wild turn for the EV manufacturer. Last week, Rivian shares dropped 21% on Monday after Ford, another early investor, announced its intent to sell 8 million shares. The next few days saw even further declines as virtually the entire market saw massive losses, but then Rivian rallied partially on the back of their earnings report on Wednesday, gaining 28% back by Friday. Then came yesterday’s 7% slide. Today the stock is up another 10%.
Hold on tight, who knows where we’re going next.
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.