How to Build Your First Forward Deployed Engineering Team

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A field manual for winning at the edge.

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Starlink, Rural America, and A New American Frontier

antimemo

A quiet revolution is underway, led from Lower Earth Orbit

WHY AREN'T WE FLYING FASTER?

antimemo

Everyone’s heard of hypersonics. Few understand them. It’s time to fix that.

PULSE CHECK, MANUFACTURING

pulse check

We asked the nation about a topic near-and-dear to our hearts: reindustrialization. And here's what we found.

ARCHITECTURE MOVEMENT: PHOTONICS

antimemo

We’re building cathedrals of compute — racks of silicon, corridors of power — on a dying substrate. Electrons powered the last epoch. Photonics may define the next.

Realities of Space-Based Compute

antimemo

There’s been a lot! of noise about space being the “natural” next frontier for data centers. We've been seeing a flood of surface-level commentary on orbital data centers. But very little that digs deep. This antimemo is a step toward greater depth.

The End of Thirst Traps

antimemo

The American Southwest is running dry — and most solutions sound like sermons: conserve more, grow less, accept decline. This isn’t a morality tale. It’s a blueprint for turning sunlight and seawater into a future that can keep growing.

Tribal Knowledge's Comeback

antimemo

There's a common refrain that we can’t build this* anymore, we forgot how to do it. That's called tribal knowledge. This antimemo is a step toward restoring that lost mastery and rebuilding American industrial power from the inside out.

Pray Not for Easy Lives, But to Be Stronger.

mission

This manifesto explains why we champion 'hard pursuits,' the obstacles they face, and how our community aims to overcome them. Whether you're already building at the frontier or looking to join the effort, we invite you to be part of a movement that values the difficult path — because that's where true progress happens.

Teardown: "Mission Critical" c/o Forward Deployed VC

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical firms in today’s deep tech ecosystem—one stack at a time. This edition features Forward Deployed VC, an early-stage investor that marries institutional capital with operator rigor: engineers who’ve shipped code from Kandahar, built hardware under fire, and now back mission‐critical teams bridging national security and emerging tech.

"Tech-Enabled Reinvention" c/o North America Closeshoring

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem—six points at a time. This edition examines North America Closeshoring, a platform helping companies modernize and localize operations while strengthening supply chains and logistics across the continent.

"SkyOS" c/o Skyryse

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem—one stack at a time. This edition features Skyryse, the L.A.-based aviation company behind SkyOS, the first universal operating system for flight. With a backlog that spans military, EMS, and law enforcement, Skyryse is reshaping how America trains pilots, automates airframes, and scales vertical mobility—with FAA certification on the horizon.

"LEADING THE SPACE ECONOMY" c/o Space Capital

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem—one stack at a time. This edition spotlights Space Capital, the sector-focused VC backing space-based infrastructure across GPS, communications, and orbital technology, with $430M+ in AUM and more than a decade of domain expertise.

"Full-Stack Communications" c/o CesiumAstro

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem — one stack at a time. This edition features CesiumAstro.

"Nova" c/o Stoke Space

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem—six points at a time. This edition breaks down Stoke Space’s Nova system, designed for rapid full-stage reuse and orbital launch resiliency.

"Clarity-1" c/o Albedo

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem — six points at a time. This edition breaks down Albedo's Clarity-1 VLEO satellite for unprecedented, ultra high resolution imagery.

"DAPS" c/o Divergent

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today's deep tech ecosystem — six points at a time. This edition breaks down Divergent’s DAPS: an end-to-end platform for design, print, and assembly.

"TILE" c/o Sophia Space

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem—six points at a time. This edition breaks down Sophia Space TILE, a solid-state, modular edge server purpose-built for in-orbit AI compute.

"SiPhOG" c/o ANELLO Photonics

teardown

Teardown dissects the most critical companies in today’s deep tech ecosystem—six points at a time. This edition breaks down ANELLO Photonics’ SiPhOGTM, a chip-scale gyroscope leveraging silicon photonics to deliver GPS-free precision navigation across land, air, and sea.

Newsletter 017

newsletter

Forward Deployed

Newsletter 016

newsletter

A Renaissance fall.

Newsletter 015

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A Renaissance summer.

Newsletter 014

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The rules of American land prices are being rewritten from low earth orbit.

Newsletter 013

newsletter

Intel and the sovereign foundries; a forward-deployed VC; distributed datacenters, and more.

Newsletter 012

newsletter

The U.S. can’t build without China. From rare earths to battery metals, America’s supply chain runs through geopolitical fault lines. This edition maps the mineral dependencies we don’t talk about—and what it would take to mine our way out.

Newsletter 011

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Everyone’s talking about AI policy. Few are asking who’s actually implementing it. This edition traces how America outsourced its digital backbone, why today’s “whole-of-government” plans lack teeth—and what it would take to rewire the system from the ground up.

Newsletter 010

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In 1969, we landed on the Moon with slide rules and soldering irons. Today, we can’t build our own rocket engines. This edition unpacks how America lost its edge in hard tech—and why rebuilding that capacity is our real moonshot.

Newsletter 009

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America once built the future—now it buys it. This edition breaks down the U.S. deep tech dilemma: why the supply chain is brittle, capital risk-averse, and talent fleeing. We dig into what it'll take to build again—and why time’s running out.

Newsletter 008

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Everyone’s heard of hypersonics. Few understand them. It’s time to fix that.Once a Cold War fantasy, hypersonics are now a Pentagon priority. This issue of Per Aspera cuts through the hype—what the science says, why it matters, and how the U.S. can close the gap.

Newsletter 007

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Austin as the first live A/B test of autonomy stacks; the probabilist and the determinist; probing the Per Aspera hive mind; a private GPS successor;

Newsletter 006

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America says “build here” but 81% don’t understand high-tech manufacturing. This is the first honest read on what the country actually thinks about factories, automation, and our industrial future.

Newsletter 005

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Electrons can’t keep up with AI’s thermal and latency demands. This antimemo explores how photonic interconnects and optical architectures offer a path beyond the industrial internet’s limits.

Newsletter 004

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We don’t need a rain dance — we need a systems upgrade. In this newsletter, we give desal the love it deserves. We explore what real intervention looks like: a solar-powered, off-grid desalination system delivering 4.5 million acre-feet per year — integrated with aquifer recharge and targeted flows to revive the Salton Sea.

Newsletter 003

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America’s industrial strength was never just a story of machines — it was a story of people. In this newsletter, we map the people and their expertise. Where it’s vanished, why it’s so hard to recover, and what it will take to preserve and leverage this disappearing advantage in the age of automation.

Newsletter 002

newsletter

So you want AI factories? This 002 newsletter is about how everyone’s hyping space-based data centers — yet, no one’s doing the physics. Beneath the glossy concepts lies a missing conversation: the economics.

Newsletter 001

newsletter

Nobody’s coming to save us. After months of careful preparation, we welcome you to the inaugural edition of the Per Aspera newsletter. Thanks for your patience. As you can see, we’ve poured our heart and soul into this, so this had to be done right.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RYAN DUFFY

CREATIVE DIRECTOR JOY SHIN

ADVISOR, RESIDENT INVESTOR JEFF CRUSEY

CHIEF HISTORIAN & FUTURIST DAN GOLDIN

X (FKA TWITTER)

YOUTUBE

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