Defense Business Brief: Satellite firm’s ‘secret sauce’ | 3D-print factory in a box | Ship-lobby ad

Apex wants to provide satellite buses to primes building proliferated constellations, which means building at scale, CEO Ian Cinnamon says.The company recently announced plans to make an XL version of its Comet satellite bus, adding power and mass yet still remaining small enough to fit 16 on a Falcon 9, Apex CEO Ian Cinnamon said in a recent interview.But, he said, “I think what everybody tends to forget about is the need to really build these at really high rate production. And that's really the focus around Comet.”Cinnamon said Apex builds at scale by reusing avionics and other systems from its earlier, medium-sized Nova bus—but also by using Octopus, the custom software that he calls his company’s “secret sauce.”“Effectively, it's not even our manufacturing operating system; it's our entire company operating system,” he said. “It controls everything from, you know, forecasting demand, understanding on inventory, receiving quality from suppliers. How many, you know, kits we're holding on inventory at any given time, all the way to work, instructions on the factory floor, tracking, NCRs, traceability on orbit.”Like seemingly everything else these days, Octopus “uses a significant amount of artificial intelligence, a significant amount of software automation for processes,” the CEO