Loft

It’s a clear day in Zermatt, a remote Swiss town anchored in a sharp valley under the gaze of the Matterhorn. We’ve taken off from Air Zermatt, home to some of the best high-altitude rescue pilots in the world. I’d flown in helicopters before but never piloted one. And this location was hardly a beginner course.“Are you ready to take the reins?” the controller asks.“Um, I think . . .?” I said nervously.“In three, two, one . . .” And with that, the full power of the craft shifts to my command. The controls are exquisitely…

SaaS — software-as-a-service — was the paradigmatic acronym for startups operating over the last decade. But if Loft Orbital has its way, SaaS will soon come to mean something very different: space infrastructure-as-a-service. The San Francisco-based startup has already made enormous progress by developing what it calls an “abstraction layer” between the satellite bus and payloads: It buys standard satellites from vendors like Airbus and LeoStella and outfits them with payloads from customers, saving them the hassle…

Trek subsidiary Electra has added a new member to its Loft family of ebikes, a lightweight commuter named the Loft Go 7D EQ with torque-sensing pedal assist and a 40-mile battery, plus the option to add a range extender for more miles between charges.The Loft Go 7D EQ is the latest member of a city bike line that began with four regular (non-motor) models back in 2014. It's available in step-over and step-through frame varieties, rocks a modern-classic aesthetic and is designed to be a relatively lightweight ebike for an…