Damn my friend, that is awesome. It's amazing that you have the financial capability to be a stay-at-home dad. I'm willing to bet that your little fella shows the improvement he does because of the one-on-one time with you.
Nice! Trying to become a Radiologist here myself, so hopefully come January I have my degree and stare at a computer screen all day to make sure nothing blows up.
This is awesome! Any chance your company goes public in the future? So we can throw our money on real (i.e. non-digital) spaceship-(parts)? :D
Most startups do begin with an exit strategy in mind, where they hope to go IPO within 5 years. We're not that way at all. Especially if the thruster works, we're expecting exponential growth for more than the next decade, so leaving before then doesn't make sense unless you want to retire, and I don't. Designing and building spacecrafty kinds of stuff is just too much fun, and I have warned my partners several times that they'll need to ask me to retire when I can no longer do the job. I can easily imagine doing this into my 70's, so they probably will need to come to me one day and tell me to make room for a younger man. My father is in his late 70's now, and still working with the 5th company he built. He wouldn't know what to do with himself if he retired, and I may have more of him in me than is good for me. Have to wait and see.
Part of my training is in philosophy of technology, and I have been very focused on space sciences for the last 15 years. So by studying how spacecraft do what they do, it naturally occurs how one might improve this or that. So instead of sitting down to ask "what can I invent?", I ask "how can I use this emergent material, or instrument, or nano-machine?" etc. It's much easier to begin that way than with an empty sheet of paper. I actually have notions for dozens of next generation devices, for guidance, navigation, communications, etc., but most of them we can't bring to market within 1 or 2 years, and that's where we need to be focused for a startup. How to get rid of the huge sets of mirrors for an X-Ray millisecond pulsar navigation device (XNAV) will have a great market, but it will take several years to turn that notion into a commercial device.
Well, you can always try IT -- this industry is known for its wide range of job roles, and you don't necessarily need to be a programmer or system administratror. I've been working in IT for 20 years on a technical position while I finished Fine Arts college and then served in the Army.
I knew it!!! You're an android.
Now that's a life you can hang your hat on.
I'm formally trained in IT (internet security and e-business economics), and I did work as a C++ programmer for a year, then as a full stack developer for another few years after finishing school. Started liking what I did less and less until decided it was not for me and one day I just quit (and ran away with the boss' secretary, but that's a story for another time).
Let us know when you need crash testers!
They are holding your beer for ransom aren't they... You don't have to say anything just blink twice.
Hahaha, naw they're actually good people.
I do woodworking if you want you can send your scraps wood haha. my favorites are babinga, mahogany, and tamo ash.
That's the only hobby left that I haven't tried to automate with a computer... and that's coming. But the ability to shape some wood into whatever I want has been amazingly satisfying, not to mention useful. One of my next project though is an automagic 8' X 4' CNC machine for wood.
You posted this just as I was finishing the last sentence above by the way. I'm also here to tell you that not all jobs require you to work for someone else. This is a skill you might be able to leverage as nerds like me keep automating everything else.
