EP 118 — CisLunar Industries' Gary Calnan On How a Space Furnace Accidentally Created a Power Electronics Company

Gary Calnan, CEO and Co-Founder of CisLunar Industries, built power electronics to melt metal in orbit. A research partner noticed the same hardware could reshape electric propulsion. That pivot turned a space debris recycling startup into a power electronics company with a test platform on a NASA mission and Lockheed Martin and Safran serving as subcontractors on its Space Force program.

Gary tells Dave Graff how a finance career, nine weeks at the International Space University, and $4.7 million in total funding built a 20-person team now chasing dominance across the space power stack.

Topics discussed:

• Pivoting from in-space metal processing to power electronics
• Building modular, scalable power processing units for diverse space applications
• Using SBIR contracts to bring primes in as subcontractors
• Why non-space backgrounds created an advantage in architecture design
• Capital efficiency with $4.7M raised and $8M in contracts
• Dual-use potential in directed energy and drone defense
• Recruiting from Maxar, Blue Origin, Blue Canyon, Tesla, and Lucid
• Preparing to scale manufacturing for an accelerating customer pipeline

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