#35 | Katherine Monson: A Solar Storm Cost SpaceX $500 Million

In February her co-founder called a light hurricane season. Not from a weather model, from the sun. Halfway through, there had been one storm.More on Katherine Monson and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/katherine-monsonHigh solar activity drives high stratospheric winds, and those winds shear storm cells apart before they can build. Katherine Monson is CEO and co-founder of Hale SWx, built on heliophysicist Scott McIntosh's discovery of the forces driving the solar cycle, published in Nature. She sells that forecast to satellite operators, airlines, farmers, miners and, increasingly, to people allocating capital.The commercial case starts with a single day when a solar storm took out a batch of satellites and cost SpaceX around $500 million. SpaceX was self-insured and absorbed it. Most companies cannot. She explains why sunspots only predict about four days out, what a model built on the physics rather than the statistics can do instead, and a long-range call locked in 2022 that is still tracking at a 0.8 skill score 22 years ahead.From there it gets practical: atmospheric drag deciding whether a $5 million satellite earns revenue for two years or eight, what altitude to fly and when to launch once you price FCC de-orbit liability, precision GPS in agriculture and mining, and radiation loads that make a fixed aircraft maintenance schedule the wrong tool for a moving problem. Plus her own path from wanting to be Secretary of Defense to selling physics to hedge funds.Katherine Monson is the CEO and co-founder of Hale SWx, a space weather forecasting company built on heliophysicist Scott McIntosh's Nature-published work on the solar cycle. She previously served as a fellow at the Pentagon and trained in negotiation with the Harvard Getting to Yes team at Vantage Partners.KEY MOMENTS00:00 Why space hardware bankrupts companies03:50 Precision GPS and knowing each seed09:44 Published in Nature: how the sun works11:40 Avionics radiation and maintenance15:09 The storm that cost SpaceX $500M16:09 Drag: chicken broth or clam chowder19:10 Sunspots only predict four days out24:08 Calling a shot 22 years out40:10 A light hurricane season, called early51:13 What a company like this is worthNewsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connectLane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElWFollow The Deal Table: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, XThe Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.Sponsored by Capital Southwest.