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 Listen to more episodes:  Apple  Spotify  YouTube Website