Episodes

In this episode of An Hour of Innovation podcast, Vit Lyoshin speaks with Ethan Barajas, co-founder and CEO of Icarus Robotics, about why the space economy may be limited less by rockets and more by labor in orbit. Ethan explains why astronauts spend valuable time on cargo movement, maintenance, experiment setup, and routine station operations, and why that work becomes a major bottleneck as commercial space stations, orbital manufacturing, and future space infrastructure grow.Vit and Ethan discuss how Icarus Robotics is building robotic workers for space stations, how teleoperation can become the data layer for autonomy, and why AI robotics in microgravity is very different from robotics on Earth. They also explore what it takes to build a company for a market that is still forming, how founders validate demand before building, and why robot labor could help astronauts focus on science instead of housekeeping.The conversation covers space robotics, commercial space stations, …