Guest: Sebastian Jean; Topics: Phison Electronics with space storage and disc issues, manufacturing, economics, industrial development and more.
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We welcomed Sebastian Jean of Phison Electronics to the program to discuss data storage, chips and related topics for space development and usage. Also included in this discussion was commercial space industrialization, especially with Phison partners Lonestar and Skycorp. Note that this program and guest Sebastian Jean stand pretty much alone for discussing chips and data storage for in space usage and hardware and as an assist to the active industrialization of space. For the very early part of our program, Sebastian introduced us to the general idea of chips, storage, space and the market for space industrialization which he said many times was extremely small. In fact one time he said that when the market was about the same size as cell phones, it would be a decent market and when I asked when his company project that to happen, as I recall the answer was something like never in my lifetime. Several more times during this program our guest reminded us about just how small the space economy was compared to other terrestrial industrial segments.
Much of the discussion was new to me and probably to many others too since we don't work with chips, storage, radiation, and space or other harsh environments. Thus, for a quick review of this program, once again I suggest you follow the tags as the best way to see a summary of topics discussed with Sebastian and Space Show listeners.
Here are the tags for your convenience: Sebastian Jean, Phison Electronics Corp, NAND Flash controller IC & storage solutions, controller design, system integration, IP licensing, turnkey and innovative solutions, small space sector size, radiation hardening, volume of business, EMP shielding, economic analysis of hardening, SSD chips, 3D printing, competition, China as competition, international regulations, cislunar development, speed and latency with space, quantum advancements, servers, Lonestar, Skycorp, expansion capital, hardware life expectancy, redundancy, changing economics, the use of clean rooms, key business and tech partnerships, SanDisk competition, customized storage.
Much of what Sebastian talked about while new to me, was certainly relevant. His willingness to take us through economic pricing and development analysis for things that we have always talked about but never delved into was fascinating. For example, he did a cost benefit analysis of a type regarding making a decision to radiation harden some hardware going to space. In addition, when he started factoring in volume and launch costs and then the proposed costs behind Starship, decision making took on an entirely new meaning and the process showed itself to be more involved than say a more traditional cost benefit analysis example. I guess operating in the space environment will do that to problem solving. Listen carefully to Sebastian as he provided us with several examples of what I am talking about. I believe these discussions would be good for you the listener to comment upon re our Space Show blog for this particular program. How about it? We do want to hear from you so do post your comments and thoughts for us all to appreciate.
While the entire program was unique and interesting for Space Show listeners given we have never covered this subject in any detail, I also found it interesting that Sebastian commented on long standing questions I've always had about space hardware. For example, what might the life expectancy of a piece of hardware used in space be? Can you really just use an off the shelf item in a true space environment? How do you test for working in the space environment? Plus since Phison does lots of unique and custom work, how do they design, test, customize and build products to work as the would on Earth in such a foreign environment producing similar results to what they would produce back here on Earth.
Please post your comments/questions on our blog for this show. We do want your questions and I will make sure our guest sees them but always, it will be up to the guest to reply.
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