Comments on: Voyager Space buys satellite electric propulsion company Exoterra

By: Blair Ivey

Blair Ivey — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 09:52:32 +0000

john hare: I believe that’s from the 70’s. 120 hp V8’s. Some consumer-available engines today get more from one cylinder. I have had a Datsun 210 wagon, and while rattly, noisy, mildly uncomfortable, and with a sub-standard (understeer) steering rack, did offer 5 row-your-own gears, Could get north of 35 mpg on the highway, but almost no sound insulation. Snoqualmie Pass: barely 40 in 3rd gear with the engine near redline. Passed by semi-trucks. I took the car places it had no business being, and while tough, I wouldn’t care to own another.

By: john hare

john hare — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 22:11:45 +0000

I remember it as the 100 mile per gallon carburetor, not that it makes a difference. Anyone here remember the joke about it not being the oil companies that bought the carb to keep it off the market. It was the Japanese and they were selling it back to us 5 miles at a time.

By: Aussie Dave

Aussie Dave — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 22:34:50 +0000

The “200mpg carburettor “! That and X-ray Specs. Good times, simpler times. I may also have some MAD magazines in the attic somewhere

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 21:39:30 +0000

Ah yes, the “200 mpg carburetor” being suppressed by Detroit – a story already decades old when I was a boy. That ancient lefty fable might actually be a legitimate concern if the acquiring company was some arrogant and intellectually barren legacy outfit with an inferior extant product it wanted to continue foisting on the market – like, say, any of the major contractors who work with Marshall or the iconic, but fictional, North American Veeblefetzer Corporation from MAD Magazine during its glory days.

But Voyager Space hasn’t been around long enough to have any superannuated product lines to protect. Nor has Rocket Lab, which is another company that has grown notably from its start-up roots via multiple acquisitions of smaller firms with complementary technologies but also with capital and production problems.

Far from suppression of acquired technologies, the NewSpace acquirers of NewerSpace companies want to sort out production bothers, slap their own names on the acquired tech and send its sales force out to flog the new stuff to existing and potential new customers. Rocket Lab, Voyager Space and Redwire have all demonstrated the benefits of such a business strategy.

By: Jeff Wright

Jeff Wright — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 20:46:24 +0000

How many of these buy-outs are just ways to sit on others innovations as opposed to helping develop said innovations?