Building Space's Future With Ryan Westerdahl (Turion Space)

Ryan Westerdahl is the founder and CEO of Turion Space, designing and building satellites for resilient space infrastructure with a focus on space domain awareness and orbital debris removal. After nine years at SpaceX working on failure analysis across multiple departments, Ryan founded Turion in 2021 with the ultimate goal of asteroid mining. The company now operates 120 people across hardware and software platforms, with two operational satellites in orbit and over $10 million in revenue.

What you'll learn:

1. How Turion's "droid" satellites provide space domain awareness and anomaly resolution for other spacecraft
2. Why orbital debris removal serves as the stepping stone to asteroid mining operations
3. The engineering culture principles Ryan brought from SpaceX to build a flat, department-driven organization
4. How Space Force contracts provided early validation and multi-million dollar revenue opportunities
5. The difference between hardware and software engineering talent pools and motivation levels
6. Why Ryan believes asteroid mining could be the economic forcing function for humanity's galactic expansion
7. The technical challenges of capturing uncooperative space objects at 35,000 mph
8. How a $400 quintillion asteroid could reshape precious metals markets like aluminum did historically
9. The 15-year timeline to meaningful asteroid mining revenue and building for the long term
10. Why mission-driven engineering culture attracts top talent willing to work on decade-spanning projects

In this episode, we cover: 

(00:00) Introduction to Ryan Westerdahl and Turion Space 

(01:31) Turion's satellite operations and space infrastructure mission 

(07:18) Long development timelines and staying motivated through multi-year projects 

(08:27) Ryan's journey from age 11 space obsession to SpaceX to founding Turion 

(14:21) Engineering culture and the "hardcore" mentality required at SpaceX 

(17:01) Building flat organizational structures and engineering-driven decision making 

(22:30) The economic case for asteroid mining as humanity's galactic forcing function 

(25:16) Hardware vs software engineering talent dynamics and motivation 

(28:06) Early fundraising challenges and the importance of actual contracts over LOIs 

(31:21) Current satellite operations: anomaly resolution and space domain awareness 

(33:06) Immad's space investing thesis and evaluation criteria 

(35:33) Science fiction culture at Turion and book recommendations