0:00

So if you want it to three prints of hearts,

0:03

from what we know about it the anatomy is very

0:05

thin, but there's a sort of stretchiness

0:07

to it. But because of the gravity,

0:10

if you were to print it layer by layer, you would actually

0:12

collapse under its own weight. Like you can't

0:14

pressurize the heart in the same way that you can do with like

0:16

a tank. So it just literally collapses.

0:19

But if you were able to print it in a microgravity

0:21

environment where gravity has less than effects,

0:23

you also suspended some sort of fluid, medium,

0:26

you can actually print something. And

0:28

so just to give you an example, like, let's just

0:30

say it takes like six months for you to get a new heart

0:32

and that's like being released. If

0:34

you can do a printed heart

0:37

in space at a month, like you just

0:39

reduced it by like one sixth of the time and that's

0:41

significant. So those

0:43

are some things that you can do. So

0:54

it's really interesting. So Peter

0:57

teal wrote in zero to one that

0:59

airlines deliver a lot of value,

1:01

right? Like the ability to fly in a metal bird

1:03

for between an hour to five

1:05

hours can take you literally anywhere in the world.

1:08

But the thing is the amount of profits that they return

1:10

per head per seat is super

1:12

duper small. So even though they're generating

1:15

all this value. He'll argue,

1:17

that's not about just generating value. It's about

1:19

capturing the value, you know, that you generate. And

1:21

so when people look at these launch

1:24

companies, I don't really think

1:26

they're all that picky because

1:28

there isn't a lot of them, but there is

1:31

that push to, Hey, we

1:33

need to make sure that you guys are reliable.

1:35

Right? Cause like the amount of money that goes into

1:37

a satellite is, is so insane.

1:40

It's not insignificant that they really

1:42

want to push for certain people. So

1:44

they're sort of seeing where government is putting

1:46

their bets. So you have the DOD and the air

1:49

force giving for example,

1:51

like a Firefly ABL,

1:53

relativity, and some other like

1:55

lesser known names, the ability to compete

1:57

for these time-sensitive payloads.

2:00

And so. I

2:03

really think that people want

2:05

to find the provider for

2:07

them and they'll just stick with them throughout because it builds that

2:09

sort of relationship it's much harder

2:12

for them to do so, which is why companies like

2:14

place light now exists. They're sort of like the intermediary

2:16

and say, they're basically like baseline now

2:18

is basically like expedia.com. They're like

2:21

the go-to portal where it's like, I need to pick somebody.

2:23

I have no idea how to make that decision, do

2:25

it for me. And they go and do that. And so the biggest

2:27

partner that space spaceflight now has a space X.

2:30

And so space X is always going to be

2:32

like the number one search for a Google result.

2:34

Right. Because they're just that dominant. Everyone

2:37

else is sorta like they're, there

2:39

nobody's really flown anything yet, but

2:42

eventually a few people are going to shake out and

2:46

probably no more than six. I

2:48

think the industry can support like six and

2:50

that's not even accounting for like what type of

2:52

payloads or like the size of payloads that they have.

2:55

So you have like people who are like a thousand kilograms and below,

2:57

and some were way below that or

2:59

above, above a thousand kilograms. And some below

3:02

that you're talking about delivery

3:04

of like delivery of stuff rather

3:06

than delivery, rather than transport of people. Yeah.

3:10

Just purely the delivery of satellites.

3:12

Not the it's

3:14

so much harder to deliver people like, so

3:17

like, just, just within like proportion, right.

3:19

Which is like the field that I'm in. Like you have to

3:21

be able to, to, to

3:23

have your engines perform at certain edge

3:25

cases of what you expect

3:28

the mission to be like. And if you

3:30

never had that. When

3:33

you had, when you, like, if you wanted people

3:35

to fly on there, it's possible that you never

3:37

designed something to be able to hit those profiles.

3:40

So it's not as simple as like, oh yeah, man, rate's a thing

3:42

it's like, you might actually have to do like significant

3:44

design changes. And it's just so much more competitive because

3:47

part of that qualification is

3:49

getting the government agencies to buy

3:51

off on that. And that just costs time and money. So

3:54

is it going to be like a split marketplace where it's

3:56

like, ups does do like flight delivery,

3:59

but it's got nothing to do with Southwest airlines

4:01

or is it going to be like Uber eats type thing?

4:05

I think it's going to be much more differentiated

4:08

on, on

4:10

the satellite side. So if you look at all

4:12

the companies, now you have the

4:15

satellite bus for rocket lab, but

4:17

you have some sort of satellite for Virgin

4:20

Aster has their own. Everyone

4:23

is realizing that launch itself

4:25

is not a sustainable business. They have to do

4:27

basically what they're calling end to end customer

4:29

service. So not only do we get you

4:31

to the orbit that you want, but if

4:34

you need to go somewhere else, we'll also

4:36

give that service. So it's actually, it's kind of like that kick

4:38

stage what they're talking about. And so

4:41

the focus isn't on launch, it's going to

4:43

be much more on like the customer experience of

4:45

like, after we get you there, we're going to make

4:47

sure that data comes to and from

4:49

as easily as you want it to be. Which

4:51

is interesting because AWS is trying

4:53

to build up their ground stations. But

4:55

a lot of people are just so focused on launch. They don't

4:57

realize like once you get to space, what's next. When

5:00

you say that, what is there,

5:02

do you mean the moon or other places?

5:05

Just like, just like earth orbit. I

5:07

don't see like lunar tourism being

5:10

here. I guess it'll take

5:12

like another 10 years or so, but

5:14

it's mostly just like getting stuff into commercial.

5:17

Sure. Sure. In the case of space X,

5:20

I always feel like with Elan because it's Ilan

5:22

so specifically, and I really want to get your take on this because

5:24

you're so into it deeply. You want to does

5:26

this thing where whenever he's about to launch a new product or even

5:28

a company, he first presents

5:30

like an image or a so like a mental model

5:32

or some advert. That this

5:34

is what it's going to be. Eventually we don't know

5:36

how long it's going to take. And sometimes we'll give you like

5:38

an estimate, but really it ends up being wrong

5:41

or whatever. But at the end of the day, he's gotten

5:43

this image into all of our heads that this is possible.

5:45

This is some possibility that's there. What

5:47

he then does is really focuses on the short-term

5:49

to capitalize on what he can actually make money

5:52

on. So in the case of Tesla is like

5:54

making that really fast car. Those are upgrading, what's

5:56

called down the two door car, and then

5:58

eventually he was going to get them all to less than a week. In the space

6:00

case, it seems like, well, he's going to make a lot

6:02

of money, the satellites. And recently they said that

6:04

he might be putting advertisements into

6:06

space. I thought that was crazy. So

6:09

when you sort of compare all of these things, who's

6:11

current operating. Whether it's blue origin,

6:14

Virgin or space X is most

6:16

closely aligned with the mission that they've been

6:19

sort of marketing to the public. That's

6:21

a great question. So in terms of,

6:23

I guess technical scope, I would

6:25

say Virgin is by far

6:28

the closest, right? Like it's, it's VG

6:30

has been an incubation for like, I don't know, like 15

6:32

years or something like that. They're

6:35

they're definitely, they're like, they're, they're, they're, they're

6:37

getting customers at the door willing to throw

6:39

X amount of dollars at the trip. They're

6:41

there. The thing about I think it's the

6:43

VSS, unity is like, I don't think

6:45

the, the design skills very well,

6:47

like if you wanted to make a bigger VSS unity,

6:50

I don't think it's as simple as like 10 X everything.

6:52

Right? Like, obviously it's never the case for that, but

6:55

I think it's a very, like, it's, it seems like

6:57

kind of like a dead end not in like a

6:59

derogatory way, but like that shuttle

7:01

cost design. Yeah. Kind

7:03

of it. Like, there's nothing you can really iterate off of that

7:05

unless they just do like a clean sheet design, blue

7:08

origins like, you know, similar to the discussion

7:10

we had on the last session. Like their scope

7:12

is like thousands of years, but like they're

7:17

still trying to get

7:19

orbital space X in

7:21

terms of their mission are

7:24

in terms of the larger scope has

7:26

been the most successful. I'm actually

7:28

gonna grab a picture real quick and we

7:30

can probably pause it in the thingy, but

7:32

I drew this because

7:34

I was like, you know, it's crazy pants that

7:38

if somebody wanted to create a

7:40

mission to Mars, like there's no way you

7:42

can create a business case for that. Doesn't

7:45

exist, but the way that

7:47

you always been doing it is brilliant.

7:50

And he actually did this thing for Tesla

7:52

too. So with Tesla, he was like, oh, we

7:54

need to mass commercialize electronic

7:57

vehicles or electric vehicles. We can't just

7:59

go straight to mass adoption

8:01

with these mass produced ones. You need to build something

8:03

that basically uses rich people's money

8:05

to like, get it going. And that was the Roadster. That

8:07

was the model S and the X. And eventually

8:09

he got there. So I will show

8:12

this, but basically if

8:14

you want to go from a straight line without all

8:16

these additional divots or arrows, it's basically

8:19

impossible. There is no business case that says

8:21

we should go to the moon or Mars, but

8:23

then you start funding all these other swiped,

8:25

sort of these like detours that are sort of

8:27

tangent, but they actually allow you to reach that

8:29

profitability and those revenue streams to

8:31

actually get there. So base X

8:33

is, is smart. Like the whole

8:35

Starling thing is going to be stupid. Like just in terms

8:38

of pre-orders the amount of money

8:40

they got was like 5 million. And

8:42

that's like chump change. If you compare it to like the

8:45

$69 million base line

8:47

costs for a Falcon nine, but that's

8:49

just like, pre-order like nobody ever has even

8:51

the thing yet. So space X

8:53

is by far the, the industry leader and they're

8:56

a leader for good reason. It's because they are

8:58

relentless, utterly relentless.

9:00

And that's why they have 24 7 people. Here's

9:04

my first question. What is Varda? So Varta

9:06

space industries wants

9:08

to create a supply

9:10

chain in space. And so their focus

9:12

is on creating materials

9:15

that can only be created in a

9:17

microgravity environment and bring

9:19

it back to earth. And because

9:22

of that expensive product, This

9:24

terrestrial value is captured

9:26

only because it would be so

9:29

Marta is, is essentially like a material science

9:31

research company and also supply chain.

9:33

So basically think Andrew Carnegie for

9:35

field, but in space. So what are some

9:38

things you can only build in space? Okay.

9:41

So the co-founder

9:43

DeLeon gave a pretty explicit example.

9:46

So if you want it to three prints of hearts,

9:49

from what we know about it the anatomy is very

9:51

thin, but there's a sort of stretchiness

9:53

to it. But because of the gravity,

9:56

if you were to print it layer by layer, you would actually

9:58

collapse under its own weight. Like you can't

10:00

pressurize the heart in the same way that you can do with like

10:03

a tank. So it just literally collapses.

10:05

But if you were able to print it in a microgravity

10:07

environment where gravity has less than effects,

10:10

you also suspended some sort of fluid, medium,

10:12

you can actually print something. And

10:14

so just to give you an example, like, let's just

10:16

say it takes like six months for you to get a new heart

10:18

and that's like being released. If

10:21

you can do a printed heart

10:23

in space at a month, like you just

10:25

reduced it by like one sixth of the time and that's

10:27

significant. So those

10:29

are some things that you can do. There's also certain things

10:31

that take advantage of like surface tension, like

10:34

capillary effects, Vanderwal phenomenon.

10:37

It's just like something that

10:39

you can only do there and you bring it back. So

10:41

like some other examples they have would be like the lamb,

10:43

which is some sort of fiber optic material, something

10:46

to do with like semiconductor films and

10:48

maybe some sort of alloys, right? Like the way that seeds

10:50

grow from a crystal Instructure to maybe

10:52

something else can only be achieved when you

10:54

don't have to attack. I'll

10:57

just second that like having worked in 3d printing

10:59

for a long time which I know you did too as

11:01

well. You work there's a lot of stuff that you can

11:03

3d print, but it requires extensive

11:05

scaffolding and the major pain

11:07

is just removing the support structure. So

11:09

if you can get away with no support structure,

11:12

there's just like so many efficiency improvements

11:14

that you get out of it. So for the 3d printing

11:16

industry, yeah. It's like a no-brainer if you don't

11:19

have to deal with the weight supporting the weight of

11:21

stuff. So yeah. Yeah.

11:23

I guess, you know, Varda is not

11:25

focused on making it cheaper

11:27

to get payloads in the space, but not focused on what space X

11:30

is doing. They're focused on doing things

11:32

once it is cheap or is financially

11:34

feasible to get to space. But what exactly are they doing

11:36

right now? Like what do they do day to day? I

11:38

guess it just doesn't make sense to me. Like how are they? I mean, they

11:40

want to do something in space. They can't get the space yet.

11:43

So what are they working on today? A

11:45

great question. I actually created

11:48

a PowerPoint and created

11:50

an air table. Who

11:53

they're hiring. Right? So, so

11:55

you can understand what a company wants

11:58

to do technically, and business-wise like who they

12:00

hire. So if you look at their career

12:02

page right now, they're focused on building

12:04

the team. So they've hired like the heads of the department.

12:06

So like they have a structured guy, prop guy, optical

12:08

guy, and material science guy, electronics guy,

12:12

but they need people to actually go and execute. And

12:14

so they're, they're hiring to expand these

12:16

roles. But the biggest category

12:18

that they're looking for is someone who understands how

12:20

to create a product. So they

12:22

want like a client facing product engineer

12:25

who is able to create, for example,

12:27

like these optical materials, like they hired a guy named

12:29

Daniel w his past

12:31

five or six years work with

12:33

specifically in V Lam. And so deli

12:35

and himself was like, yeah, the lab might be a thing

12:38

that we want to do. Cause it's one of those things that

12:40

you've been on getting the space. So

12:44

it's like some sort of material that's used to

12:46

spin fiber optics. And

12:49

so I think it's like a, like a stupidly high

12:51

amount of like a 99% refraction or something.

12:53

So like the signal loss is significantly

12:55

less, but it's just so expensive to

12:57

make. And it's also toxic using the the materials

13:00

that you use. And so they

13:03

are focused on getting their product out.

13:05

And so they basically have three pretty

13:07

components. You have the satellite that's

13:09

going to be used to keep

13:11

that factory, that factory capital

13:13

in orbit. So they have like different propulsion systems.

13:16

Like they have cold gas, thrusters, they have electric

13:18

propulsion. They have and those are the two

13:20

proportions for the satellite side. Then

13:22

after the factory makes the material, they need

13:24

to spend that capital back down. And

13:26

so that capsule is going

13:29

to land it on land. And

13:31

it's also going to have like solid rocket

13:34

motor. So I think it's might be similar to like the escape system

13:36

for FLS and the Saturn.

13:38

But yeah, that's, that's what they want to do. They want to,

13:40

they want to find people that can scale

13:43

that technical side

13:45

of it. And their whole business plan is to

13:47

like, I guess, do a series of demonstration missions.

13:49

The first one's going to be with rocket

13:51

lab, actually, they actually signed a contract with them to

13:55

have three months of operations.

13:57

So beginning of mission to end of mission.

14:00

And yeah, it's going to cost them like 23 mil

14:02

and their war chest is currently at like 54

14:04

mil. And so this is like

14:06

a 20, 23. Sure.

14:10

So who's, who's it going to customer through? It was no cost of Arctic

14:12

23 miles going to cost rocket lab, 23 minutes to

14:14

have do that for them. It's going

14:16

to cost Varda 23 mil. Oh,

14:21

it's like half their funding, but it's like in two years

14:23

time. So I'm sure they're going

14:25

to get more money. Right. Cause like right now they're, they're trying

14:27

to grow the talent. Then there's going to be a phase

14:29

in the startup when he gets. And

14:32

so w I guess when they scale it up, their master,

14:34

you know, a series B series C so

14:37

no short of money. And like, the interesting

14:39

thing is like, I was looking up the competitors yesterday

14:41

and the one that I found with orbit. So

14:43

I looked them up on Crunchbase. They have

14:45

only like $13 million. And

14:48

like Marta has like 54 million. So like the war

14:50

chest is like four times. Well,

14:52

you know, you know, I Al I think I

14:54

read somewhere that the way VCs come to make

14:57

decisions on funding is they basically Go to these deep

14:59

tech entrepreneurs and they're like, how much money

15:01

do you need to prove to me that you

15:03

will one day be able to create what you think will make

15:06

us money. And so maybe it's just

15:08

going to be the case that their competitor only needed 13

15:10

million to have a proof of concept. And

15:12

then once they use all that money to get the proof of concept,

15:14

maybe they don't, but if they can then they'll receive like

15:16

the 50, 60, and they can get the war chest. Probably

15:19

like the one distinction for

15:22

these founder founders fund companies

15:24

is that the investor

15:26

is also a co-founder right?

15:29

So like John Coogan's video talks about like

15:31

this incubation, like model

15:33

in which you have people who are building

15:35

the company, but also be faster. So I think

15:38

having that strong relationship is

15:40

going to be beneficial in getting more money. But

15:43

I definitely agree with you. Like orbit fab might be

15:45

very selective because I know there's that sort of stigma

15:47

where it's like, oh, we asked for 20 minutes

15:49

here, but our next round we asked for 15 and

15:51

people like, what does that mean? You should be getting

15:53

more money for your growing, right. Not less. So

15:56

it might be very strategic. So

15:58

what are some things I know you've been studying this

16:00

company for some time? What are some things under the

16:02

hood that you think you figured

16:05

out that aren't, that haven't been publicly stated?

16:08

So like if there was a hot take right

16:10

now they're, they're assuming that Starship

16:12

is going to be operational. Right now we know that

16:14

Falcon nine is it's super operational, but

16:17

the payload capacity of Starship

16:20

to me implies that they can do

16:22

a mass

16:24

shipment at once. So for example, they send

16:27

50 of these factories into Starship.

16:31

Each of the incubation time for

16:33

the capsules might be different. And

16:36

so you can basically use

16:38

the economies of scale to get like a really good deal

16:40

to get all 50, and then you can drop

16:43

them or deorbit each of the capitals whenever

16:45

the material ready. So essentially you can have

16:47

a capital falling every single day. That

16:52

to me makes a lot of sense. But again, they are

16:54

assuming that Starship is going to be operational

16:56

and I think it will, but if they were to do

16:58

one Falcon nine, I think that would stain

17:00

them for probably like a good five years. So

17:03

I guess when they're really trying to create a, a

17:05

ton of material, Starship is going

17:07

to be no doubt, an instrumental part of

17:09

it. And also it's probably going to be the only thing

17:11

space offers because they're going to eventually decommission,

17:14

how can I, if I remember correctly or

17:17

are these types of companies, companies

17:19

like, Varda you think that's going to be the bread

17:21

and butter of space X there's gonna be a lot of money

17:23

they're making off of that kind of thing. Yeah.

17:26

Like the thing is, this is just, what's publicly

17:28

known. So the great thing about what space

17:31

X is doing is they're essentially

17:34

a fixed they're solving the transportation

17:36

problem. They're not necessarily telling

17:38

what these settlers or entrepreneurs

17:40

what to do. They're just saying, Hey, if you want to

17:42

get there, go ahead. But you can then

17:44

surprise us on what's going to happen next. So

17:46

very similar. Drone example that I gave last

17:48

time, like, like people just created it and they're like, yeah,

17:50

we don't know what's going to happen. And then some people took it

17:52

to the next logical step and then people

17:55

iterated off of that and kept going. And now

17:57

we have drones everywhere. Like you

17:59

can just buy it off of Amazon. And so like with

18:01

Barta, it's kind of like, you

18:04

know, the first person

18:06

to open, like a KFC on Mars

18:08

is going to get all of the, all the winter.

18:10

So like Bardo making that first move is going

18:13

to be the one who's giving the materials that you

18:15

can only get from space. I'm like unlocking

18:17

like a mythical mind on earth, but like only

18:19

one person knows the password to get in. Right.

18:22

That's a good way of putting it actually. So

18:24

how big, so if we're talking about like space

18:27

X being transportation, how

18:29

big of a startup, how big is my war chest have to be

18:31

for me to be really realistically deploying space

18:33

X. Like I can make an iPhone app for no

18:35

money. Right? How much

18:37

money do I need it to have? How will fund is going to start to have

18:39

to be before I'm realistically deploying space X

18:42

for somebody. For

18:44

space X. Ooh, transportation

18:48

is transportation. Yeah. 10

18:50

mil, 10

18:53

mil. That's like, I think what a rocket

18:55

lab costs is 10 mil. And then you have Firefly

18:58

15 ABL at 12 relativity

19:00

at maybe 15. And

19:02

that's the thing. This is all like before anyone's gotten

19:05

a rocket at the orbit. Right? So when people are actually

19:07

getting into orbit there, it's such a, it's

19:09

such a tight profit

19:12

margin. When everyone looks back similar to you,

19:14

like not just on the launch vehicle side, but like

19:16

also the payload capacity side. And even

19:18

like the satellite buses they have, like,

19:21

they all look very similar, but like for

19:23

the customer, they want reliability and they want

19:25

that cheaper. And so at

19:27

some point I think those prices are gonna drop too.

19:30

And those prices are going to drop if these small

19:32

startups. You know, continue to exist

19:34

and develop new vehicles. So it's kinda like every time

19:36

there's a new iPhone, the last one dropped by like $200.

19:39

Right. The same idea. So it's only gonna work

19:41

to the benefit of the consumer because everyone's

19:43

just going to out-compete each other. And the consumer just

19:45

like wipe that wave saves money

19:48

all the way. But yeah, I feel like

19:50

10 mil. Okay. I actually really liked

19:52

the iPhone analogy because it wasn't like

19:54

the iPhone was the first phone

19:56

to have apps on it. I mean, like every,

20:00

even, even before we had smartphones, even when we just had

20:02

these like little Nokia flip phones, many

20:04

companies made games and calculators

20:06

and all these other toys, the reason

20:08

the iPhone app store became crazy,

20:11

it was because everybody was able to make them it

20:13

wasn't gate kept. So I

20:15

think once we have that curve, very

20:18

interesting things will start to happen when people who are

20:20

not big companies are able to commission

20:23

payloads into space. That's

20:25

so crazy. Like you, you just be able to go to sort of a,

20:27

like a, like a website, sort of like Amazon and bid

20:29

for the next payload well,

20:31

what's your take on that yard? The user experience

20:34

is going to be streamlined as hell. Like from

20:36

what I understand, AWS ground stations

20:38

wants you to basically

20:41

say, Hey, these are the, this is the orbit

20:44

that my satellite is going to be on. This is the license.

20:47

I'm going to go on the website. I'm going to book a time,

20:50

say like every hour, I want it to send me

20:52

this amount of data or something. And

20:54

then what you do is just

20:57

book it. And then you're done in

21:00

terms of like space. It's

21:03

going to be the same process. It's going to be like, as simple as

21:05

hitting a few buttons on your phone, and then

21:07

you have access to space. Like you can even like

21:10

get a selfie from space too. So

21:13

I think that's going to be the, the

21:16

big push is like eventually space

21:18

is going to be democratized and everyone has some access

21:21

to it that will benefit them in some tangible

21:23

way. I feel like

21:25

the amount of regulation around the satellites

21:27

is super low. Would you agree with that? I

21:31

wouldn't, I don't really know. I

21:33

know that a lot of people think that the

21:36

Kessler syndrome isn't the big deal. And

21:38

what Kessler syndrome is, is like, if you fragment

21:40

some piece of, of

21:42

a satellite, it's going to hit something else and fragment

21:45

that more essentially just creates the debris

21:47

that you are basically trapped on your own gravity.

21:49

Well, so I know there's there's companies

21:51

that are trying to solve the space debris problem.

21:54

But the way that satellites

21:56

are tracked is, is pretty. I

21:59

don't know if it's efficient, but it is highly

22:01

regulated because there's only so much

22:03

space and they want to make sure that everyone can,

22:05

can get the, the appropriate time, which is why the FCC

22:08

was like super pissed. When the company

22:10

called swarm technologies, didn't tell

22:12

them that they were deploying these like tiny ass,

22:14

little satellites, because

22:17

one, the FTC was like, we have no way to track

22:19

them. They're super small. And two, we didn't know there

22:21

were launching, so we had no way to track them. And

22:23

so there was like a fine, that was levied against swarm,

22:25

but that was swarm being like, you guys are too

22:28

slow. Like we want to go on this basics

22:30

launch. So we're just going to go in and then they did. So

22:33

I think it is regulated. It's super regulated.

22:35

Like space is one of the most regulated industries

22:38

there is. But at some point, like,

22:40

like just looking at like Starship, right? Like Ilan,

22:42

like, Hey, we want to launch this thing into

22:44

orbit and have it crash into Hawaii. And

22:47

the bottleneck is not only just the production of the

22:49

vehicle, but like the FAA has to do like an environmental

22:51

study to be like, Hey, if you drop your thing

22:54

here, Kill a turtle or

22:56

some endangered species. Right. And so like the FAA

22:58

has to have a strong presence because

23:00

if some private company just says, we don't

23:02

care about the government, they're going to look like

23:04

fools, right. Their pants are going to be on the ground.

23:06

So they have to say like, no, we're stopping them. But

23:09

internally they're probably panicking and being like, we have

23:11

no way how to assess it. We need to come up with new

23:13

processes fast. So the rate

23:15

of innovation is in part stifled by how

23:17

government handles these innovations and like their

23:20

knee-jerk reaction. Do

23:22

you have a take on the, sort of the political

23:24

animosity that exists in the space

23:26

industry right now? I think I was reading that China's

23:28

planning to launch their own sort of space operation,

23:31

but it seems like neither side either the American

23:33

side or the Chinese side want to work together.

23:36

Do you think that's for the best or do you think there would even

23:38

be any sort of additional innovation

23:40

if they did work together? What's your take. So

23:44

there's actually a great podcast called the

23:46

dome Fung hour. It's by two

23:48

individuals, one of them lives in Hong

23:50

Kong, and I think another one lives on the

23:52

Eastern board of China. They're the

23:54

only podcast that I know that

23:56

has the sole intent of telling

23:59

a Western audience, what China aerospace

24:01

is up to. And a lot

24:03

of people don't know what China's. Okay. You know, maybe

24:05

it's because, you know, American citizens are sort

24:07

of like in their own bubble, but China

24:09

has these ambitions that are,

24:12

that exclude the U S like they, I don't think

24:14

they trust the U S and U S government also

24:16

doesn't trust China. So I don't see this being

24:19

a partnership that's going to happen anytime

24:22

soon. However,

24:24

I think China's ambitions are

24:27

strengthened by the fact that they're able

24:29

to effectively organize their

24:31

labor and be very single-minded in their commitment

24:33

to getting the aerospace things done

24:36

and in doing so they'll inevitably. Create

24:39

their own innovation. So I think a lot of what

24:42

China's doing is sort

24:44

of like catching up

24:46

to the rest of the world. Like they're, they're obviously a power

24:48

in it of themselves, but like they

24:53

are in a sense still copying what the

24:55

U S are doing, but asking you to develop that

24:57

technical experience and have been doing it for a long time,

24:59

then they can really start to reap those benefits and

25:01

really innovate. And so they're obviously

25:04

taking cues from like new Shepard. Like they want to do suborbital

25:06

space tourism. They're taking cues from like space

25:08

X's reusability. They wanna do

25:10

their own version of the ifs. So like, these

25:12

are all concepts we heard about, but like, because

25:14

China wants to do it on their own, they're going

25:17

to develop that in-house knowledge. And if

25:19

you want in, I guess you've got to pay a huge sticker price

25:21

to do it. But as of now, yeah,

25:24

everyone's just kind of doing their own thing. And there's also

25:26

like an ego obviously, but I think

25:28

ultimately there will be a partner. But

25:30

like, maybe like after I go and chill the hell out.

25:33

Sure. Just when you say China, do you mean

25:35

private industry in China or is it state-sponsored

25:37

sort of Chinese space innovation? So

25:42

I think the dome Fung hour has a great topic

25:44

on this. So when we think of

25:46

private companies, we in the United States, we

25:48

genuinely mean like they're privately held, but

25:51

the way that talent is flowing from Casick, which

25:53

I think is the China aerospace

25:55

science Institute of technology

25:58

or whatever those people go on to found

26:00

these private companies. But they're sort of just

26:03

like cross-pollination between the state sponsored

26:05

agencies and these private companies, and even

26:07

within the private companies themselves, and

26:09

the way that China is able to exert its influence

26:12

and be very single minded is to have

26:14

that government influence everywhere.

26:16

So in a sense,

26:19

they can always rely on the government

26:21

to back them. The government

26:23

is also interested in it. Like if you

26:25

catch the eye of an official yeah. You'll probably

26:27

get money, like pretty easily, I'd say.

26:31

So I want to talk more about this transport line

26:33

that you've described. So space

26:36

X is the number one

26:38

player in terms of creating this highway where

26:40

other startups can come in and, and

26:42

innovate. So Varda is one

26:44

of the, it seems like if

26:47

we're talking like the 20 to $50 million

26:49

price range, who's utilizing it Varda

26:51

is up there. Is that the highest

26:53

price range or is that

26:55

a mid-market like, where does that sit?

26:59

So specifically you're asking with

27:02

a 20 to $15 million mission,

27:05

like where does that stand in terms of the

27:08

ranking? Is

27:10

that the most common is what it is today. It's

27:12

not the one, which is that that's what is being

27:14

utilized or are there even smaller ones that are more. Good

27:17

question. I mean, it kind of explains

27:19

why the small sat market exists.

27:21

Like I would say small fat would be like

27:23

20 mil and below. Because they're

27:25

used to just, there weren't a lot of people that

27:27

could deliver your payloads. And like, now that space

27:29

X is fully operational. A lot of people

27:32

want to go there, but they ended up being secondary

27:34

customers. So

27:36

that's why these small companies are there to

27:38

sort of be like, all right, I personally

27:40

hate this example, but like the, be the Uber of, of

27:42

space, right? Like why hire a truck

27:44

to deliver like a pound of something? We just need

27:46

a small Uber, but I would

27:48

say 20 to 50 million is expensive.

27:50

I'd say like 20 mil and below would be much

27:53

more manageable. I'd

27:55

even say like 10 mil is probably a good starting

27:57

point. You should have a budget for 10 mil, but

27:59

that's, that's just for the launch, right? That's like not leaving

28:01

any margin for your own stuff that you need

28:03

to do to get to that point. Right. So

28:05

what who are other players who were in the, the

28:07

upper price range, who were at the same price point

28:09

as Varda probably

28:13

NASA, like something that I'm looking into right

28:15

now is, well, Varda wants to

28:18

create a series of materials. Right. But like,

28:20

there's so many different materials to make. So

28:22

how do we, how do we take

28:25

inspiration from what's already been done? So I'm

28:27

on the I think it's the ISS lab

28:29

page where they're basically like, oh, this is all the

28:31

experiments that's done. I wanted to

28:33

take a look at that and say, okay, this is a category

28:36

based on like metals and stuff, based

28:38

on organic stuff, based on like

28:40

plastics and be really able to understand

28:42

like what's been done before, because I

28:44

think the way that Bardo wants to operate is

28:47

they don't want to commercialize the lab

28:50

space of the ISS. They

28:52

want to commercialize it. The ISS

28:55

as a whole, right? So it's a difference

28:57

between like renting out a test facility and

28:59

like scaling that test

29:01

facility out. And so Bartow wants

29:03

the base fee 10 X, what the ISS

29:06

is doing in terms of like finding new materials

29:08

and doing research. So I

29:11

would hope that they would

29:13

first look at what's been done and

29:15

then figure out if that material

29:18

has any market viability. And if

29:20

there isn't, is

29:22

there a case such that people are now turned on

29:24

to this idea that yeah, there is this material

29:26

that you're looking for. We can make it for

29:28

you and like connecting the dots between that. Yeah.

29:32

You know, I think in our last conversation, I felt like I left

29:35

the last episode that we did, which by the way,

29:37

everybody should listen to when we left that, I just felt like

29:39

thinking maybe we should have asked York, what

29:41

are the things that we're just not

29:43

even prepared to ask you? Like, you know what cars

29:45

mean for us? We're just not in it that deeply. And honestly,

29:48

reading headlines, et cetera coming up with questions. So

29:51

what, what are we not

29:53

asking that we should be asking you, about space, So I

29:55

will touch upon something that you said before. So

29:57

there was this, you know, these articles that said

29:59

space X was gonna, you know, do advertisements

30:02

and space. So that turns out to be entirely false.

30:04

Turns out that they're not going to do anything

30:06

like huge, it's going to be like super

30:09

duper tiny ass thing. But like, people

30:11

were like, you know, going nuts

30:13

and be like, they're going to pollute our skies. Like they're already doing

30:16

with Starlink. Like how could they so that's the impression

30:18

that I got from what I read that he was gonna

30:20

put like like the cool ones like a blip or something

30:22

up in the sky, and I would be able to see it or

30:24

something. I think they're just launching some companies

30:26

thing and it's going to, it's

30:28

not like a billboard. It's like, it's like a

30:30

panel of lights or something like that. I

30:33

don't even know the details of it. Cause like I was just so

30:35

caught up in the headline and be like, oh my God, it's going

30:37

to be like this big. Superbowl ads

30:39

floating around and like, everyone's just gonna be super annoyed

30:41

at that, but it wasn't anything to that scale,

30:43

but on that topic advertisement

30:46

in space, right? Like, like

30:48

being able to advertise in space,

30:51

like that's going to be a thing, like it's like, there's so

30:53

much real estate in space. It's, it's virtually endless

30:55

and like being able to look up at the sky and know,

30:57

yeah, I can see the golden arches of

31:00

McDonald's on the moon is

31:02

going to be a big thing. So I

31:04

would say something that people aren't ready

31:06

to really jump onto

31:08

is thinking about how

31:11

their business can be more competitive by

31:13

engaging in what the space industry

31:15

can offer. Like everyone's very terrestrial.

31:17

Right. But like, when you start thinking about how

31:20

you can get your services, not just to someone

31:22

next to you, but like on other planets,

31:24

that'll be a big thing. Like tourism is

31:27

one thing, but yeah, advertising

31:29

like marketing, like obviously as a capitalist

31:31

society, we're going to try to push those boundaries

31:33

and space has a lot to us. Well

31:37

along the lines of what Varda is doing. Right.

31:39

Which is like manufacturing in space. That's

31:41

something which wouldn't even like be

31:44

fathomed by a lot of engineers, a lot of chemical

31:46

engineers and mechanical engineers. Right. So

31:49

do you think it's going to be a case where as

31:51

space manufacturing and other types

31:53

of things become more prominent, will

31:55

those be integrated into the classical

31:58

disciplines? Or will there be a new discipline, which

32:00

is like manufacturing for space engineer

32:02

or like space engineer who covers everything

32:04

in the way a mechatronics engineer covers everything. I

32:08

love that question. Yeah. Like if we think about

32:10

education, if

32:13

we think about education yeah. There's going to be,

32:15

so I know that the, I think it's like the university

32:18

of Missouri has like baseball

32:20

degree. Luxembourg is apparently a,

32:22

some sort of like a legislative

32:24

Haven for, for hammering out space. We're

32:28

going to see more people who are to be like, yeah, we want

32:30

to focus on space. And so, I mean, there

32:32

is so like if we take mechanical engineering, you have

32:34

like aerospace engineering as a subset, but

32:37

within aerospace you have like astronautical engineering,

32:39

like we had at USC. I see that

32:41

being a much more

32:43

widespread thing. Like yeah, definitely

32:45

people are going to be like, yeah, like mechanical stuff. Like

32:47

specifically, I want to do space, like being a

32:49

space lawyer, a space Docker. Oh my God. There's

32:52

a guy named Neil who works as a

32:55

medical doctor at space X Nisa

32:57

and posting stuff like every month or so

32:59

being like we're hiring nurses, we're hiring MD PhDs.

33:02

We need to be able to like, check these customers, like,

33:04

make sure they're fit to go and like get them here

33:06

and back. And like all these other things. And like, I've been trying

33:08

to tell people, like I have a friend who's an MD PhD,

33:11

like be a space doctor based

33:14

doctors. There's like very, very few. And

33:16

they all work in like, you know, Johnson based

33:18

in Houston, but like, yeah. Space

33:20

doctors, space lawyers, space, engineers, space,

33:23

trash, like people who deorbit stuff. There's

33:25

an animated show called planet teas, which

33:27

is the Greek word for planet. And

33:29

it basically follows a guy who works

33:32

as a space trash man. And like,

33:34

there's also this discussion, like, is he an astronauts? Like,

33:36

yeah, I think you're an astronaut. And if you perform some

33:38

sort of function in space versus just like going

33:40

there and check it out. But yeah,

33:43

like space space, everything's space, advertising,

33:45

space, marketing space, businesses, space

33:47

restaurants, like, how do you make, how do we

33:49

fly in an airplane and the food sucks,

33:52

right? If you go to space as the food gonna

33:54

suck too, how does anyone take a poop in

33:56

space? Like toilet engineering is so

33:58

underrated, but like, nobody wants to do

34:00

it. Cause it's fuck. But like somebody has got

34:02

to do it, right? Like people pay

34:04

so much money. Like everyone's on the same

34:06

flight, but some people pay first class to get like

34:09

extra stuff. Like I want to be able to

34:11

like take a poop in space without getting

34:13

it everywhere. Right. Like that's in the BSA. Well, I think like

34:15

space Trashman I think space Trashman in particular

34:17

is very interesting because like, for someone to do that today,

34:20

they would have to be a phenomenal mechanical engineer.

34:22

So being like a garbage man in space, you would

34:24

have to be incredibly well-educated, but

34:27

have a ton of experience, be

34:29

like the top of your field. Really? You

34:31

gotta be, you gotta have a PhD. You'd be garbage,

34:34

man. Yeah. So like

34:36

in the show planet to you, like there's a scenario where

34:39

there is a standard mission. They're just going to deorbit

34:41

something by throwing it into the earth, you're

34:43

going to burn up, but they got some

34:45

bad Intel and it turns out that that

34:47

particular trash they were handling was

34:50

on course to hit another

34:52

thing. And so you're a space trash

34:54

man. Right? You don't have a PhD. You're not like necessarily

34:56

top of your field, but now you're surrounded

34:58

by trash and it's not just like floating trash.

35:00

It's like trash traveling at horrible speeds.

35:03

So if you get hit by. A tiny

35:05

little, like nuts and bolts, like

35:07

you're going to die. Right? So like, how does anyone

35:09

get used to that sort of stuff? And at some

35:11

point the risk becomes like much

35:13

less, but the danger is still buried. Like,

35:15

I mean, that's the whole purpose of deer moon. It's like,

35:18

like, like we see that space

35:20

is becoming popular. And so all

35:22

these creatives, these artists, these movie producers,

35:25

dancers, are taking cues and creating

35:27

their own art. And the science fiction writers

35:29

are also taking twos and they're going to be creating

35:31

the next set of inspirations for

35:33

the next set of space people. And there's this sort of like symbiotic

35:36

relationship that two people have. And

35:38

so dear moon is basically trying to jumpstart that like,

35:40

Hey, we're going to be able to show you a

35:42

perspective. That no

35:44

one else has, because not a lot of people get the space

35:47

and there was a genuine risk in going

35:49

and having deficient fail. But like when they come

35:51

back, there'll be bringing back tales from a

35:54

land we may never see in our life. Right. And so like,

35:56

part of creativity is also embracing the madness

35:59

of going into there, surviving

36:01

it and being able to tell the tale coming

36:03

back. Like one thing

36:06

which I've observed, which I think most

36:08

writers will observe is that Hollywood

36:10

and like both movies and TV shows

36:14

are heavily trope based.

36:16

So if you don't know much about cops,

36:19

if you don't know any cops, personally, most

36:21

of what you write is essentially going to be like

36:23

a rehash of all the other stuff you've seen. And

36:26

you can solve that by doing research or just like

36:28

calling a police department or, you

36:30

know, Watching the news, but

36:32

we don't really have much. We don't really

36:34

have much primary sources for space.

36:37

So like all of our TV shows

36:39

and movies are based off of like

36:41

a few things that we've seen about

36:43

space. You know, like any

36:45

of the space meters made today will still

36:48

be influenced by by Apollo.

36:51

And like that might not be accurate anymore. A

36:53

lot of stuff has changed, but we're still going to be

36:55

using the same things. So, yeah,

36:57

I think that's to say that once this becomes

36:59

more mainstream, even if it's a space tourism, we

37:01

will see a huge change in TV

37:03

shows and movies that are about space. They'll greatly

37:06

change because we'll have more primary sources

37:08

to draw. Yeah,

37:10

that's a great point. Like I think the general

37:13

IQ of the population

37:15

in regards to space is growing. Like the

37:17

great thing about space X is that they're creating

37:19

these secondary markets in which people on YouTube

37:22

are able to full-time just stream

37:24

what they're doing at Boca Chica, or like talk

37:26

about like what the competitive

37:28

landscape is like. And so it's creating jobs

37:30

and these people aren't necessarily

37:32

technical, but they're able to disseminate

37:35

this information in such a way that it's digestible

37:37

for the everyday person so much

37:39

so that I would say eventually people

37:41

are able to be like, yeah, that's a,

37:43

that's a gas generator on that engine. Whereas

37:46

people before are like, I have no idea what an engine exactly

37:48

is. Like when people talk about rocket engines,

37:50

like rockets, they think of

37:53

just like the flamey bit, but it's like literally the

37:55

whole thing. So the general IQ

37:57

is definitely going to increase. People are able to

37:59

like, I mean, people even like, as kids

38:01

are like, oh, I want to be an astronaut. Right. And so

38:03

like, they're going to have tech as like

38:05

sort of a point of leverage, right? Jump

38:08

into that technical side of space. Whereas

38:11

people before, like the huge

38:13

stem push, wasn't really a thing until the governance was like,

38:15

Hey, we need smart people for the cold war thing. Right.

38:18

So do you think that there's going to be like, you know how there's like car

38:20

guys for like, really into like, oh, this Ferrari

38:22

is have the VA, these ones have the V tan

38:24

and like, no, all that. Are they gonna be like space guys

38:26

or like rocket guys, space influencers?

38:29

No, a hundred percent. There are those people. There's

38:32

like there's like everyday astronauts there,

38:34

Scott Manley there was like Boca, Chica girl.

38:36

Like, man, these people are so famous.

38:38

Like they're so famous in fact that they

38:40

have their own merch. Like

38:43

you, you can be so good that you can

38:45

have your own merch and like that's amazing. And

38:47

so wow.

38:50

People are really. Dude.

38:55

I thought about that, man, on

38:58

the real though, if you had like a, just

39:00

like a pitch, right? Your field, like a YouTube channel where

39:02

you did three minute, four minute snippets,

39:04

just explaining the things you're explaining on this podcast. I

39:07

swear you'll build an audience. I think the general

39:09

curiosity about what the heck is going on

39:11

between Bezos and Elon and everything. We really want

39:13

the truth. They don't want the marketing like

39:15

blurbs anymore. They want the real stuff,

39:18

you know, people are capable and they really want the little

39:20

stuff. So if you're considering doing it and do

39:22

it, dude, I would listen to a lot of it

39:24

too. I would love to do

39:26

that. It's like part of the, part of the

39:28

barrier is like, I feel like a lot

39:31

of people have been doing it. Like for

39:33

example, there was a video by everyday

39:35

astronaut called the king of

39:37

the small step lock rockets and like

39:39

all the information I knew it was just.

39:42

It's been done. So I'm like, what, what else can

39:44

I say? So it's been very hard for me to sort

39:47

of expand on, but so

39:49

the counter to that is, I've never heard of any of these people

39:51

to your bottom up right now. So that's the counter,

39:53

you might just be so into it that you're assuming

39:56

that there's like a much bigger audience already listening

39:58

to these people. And maybe they have millions of moons of yous.

40:00

I've swear to God. I've never heard a single one of those names. And

40:02

I'm somewhat keyed in like on

40:05

a number of different space things. And I've never heard of these

40:07

people. So be the case where like, it's

40:09

digestible to someone like you, but for someone like

40:11

us, it's not really as approachable. You

40:13

know? Like they say that

40:15

the reason most startups fail is not competition.

40:18

That's like the reason five to 10% of startups fail.

40:20

It's other reasons is

40:22

it like, nobody knows they exist. So like they

40:25

can't get funding kind of thing. It's like

40:27

PMF. It's like it's conservation

40:30

regulations. Yeah. Well,

40:33

it's actually, it's like the fifth or sixth.

40:36

It's like less than 5% of startups fail because

40:38

of competition. Yeah. Honestly,

40:41

I do not know. I don't even have like a

40:43

video camera. Like I have a phone, but like it's crappy.

40:45

Like I have no idea. Where did

40:48

you go on Amazon? You could

40:50

find kits for the, like you buy

40:52

a kit and it gives you everything you need. We'll give you that. The

40:54

ring that like lights your face up, he gives

40:56

you that the phone you

40:59

can, so you just go on Amazon, you can look up, I don't know,

41:01

you gotta look up some kit or some bundle,

41:03

but they'll give you everything you need in one shipment and

41:05

you'll be ready. Let's leave

41:07

all of this. And if

41:12

like, you know, everyone's heard about like blue origin

41:15

and like the, the HLS, like public

41:17

perception thing. I don't

41:19

know if they need, like, this sort of just

41:21

had me thinking, like, can you set the stage actually?

41:24

So you work, I didn't want to talk about that. So can

41:26

you kind of give some context what it w what's

41:28

going on at blue origin and HLS?

41:30

Like what does it even mean? Yeah,

41:32

so NASA based on

41:34

the presidential mandate, that's like

41:36

Trump was like, okay, we're going to go back from

41:38

the moon. And so the first mission was

41:40

the Apollo missions in like the sixties, but

41:43

now there's something called the Artimus mission. And so

41:45

part of going back to the moon is developing

41:47

a human right. Lunar

41:49

Lander that can go, that can be launched

41:52

from earth and then land on the moon and then bring

41:54

people back. And so there were three main competitors.

41:57

There was Dianetics space in Huntsville, Alabama

41:59

base X and Hoffman, California, and blue origin

42:01

and Kent Washington. And so each of these

42:04

people had their own unique perspective on

42:06

what that looks like. And so generally

42:09

speaking, Dianetics had like a very like

42:11

particular way of designing it.

42:13

But blue origin knew

42:16

exactly what NAFA

42:18

wanted for the human landing service HLS.

42:21

They gave everything to

42:23

NASA exactly. As they wanted space

42:25

X didn't do that. Basic,

42:28

this Starship delivered

42:31

way more than what NASA

42:33

was. And then what they were

42:35

expecting. So there was something basically

42:37

like, here's this like weird kind of oddball design.

42:40

Dianetics something that's exactly

42:42

Goldilocks blue origin. And then there's something

42:44

that's just like way out there. And

42:47

so the budget that NASA was given

42:49

was only

42:54

the amount was, was just

42:56

enough to give it to one company, even though

42:58

in prior in the way that the competition with

43:01

that these contracts were like, yeah, we

43:03

reserve the right to give, like to

43:05

people, right. But like, they

43:07

just didn't have enough money to be able to do that.

43:10

And so they only gave it to space X

43:12

and Dianetics and blue origin filed

43:14

a dispute with the GAO

43:17

or government affairs

43:19

office where it's basically, they handle all disputes.

43:22

And the, the gal basically said,

43:24

yeah, NASA was totally in their right to only

43:27

give one based on their budget. Even

43:29

if you wanted to adjust the price. So it was too late,

43:31

like NASA is right, but blue origin

43:33

wasn't taking that very well. And so there's

43:35

sort of this like belief that blue

43:37

was fighting in the law in

43:39

the court of law in order to get a second contract

43:42

because they really want to be like the company

43:44

that's taking the, the humanity back

43:46

to the moon. And so there's a little bit of like

43:49

discontent within the company itself

43:52

where people are seeing these infographics

43:54

of like essentially blue origin marketing

43:57

bashing, bashing the space X

43:59

design for Starship, and also being

44:01

kind of petty to Virgin galactic, to like the whole

44:03

like new Shepard actually takes

44:05

you to suborbital space and unity

44:07

doesn't. So like, it was just a bad look and

44:09

there's this huge rip between management and

44:11

like the workers there. And so

44:14

the public perception of blue has

44:16

changed and soured dramatically.

44:18

And it's not great because not because

44:20

blue is, has always been a very secretive company.

44:23

And so the, if the only thing you hear about a company

44:25

is bad. That's

44:28

all you have to work with. And so everyone just is

44:30

like mad, hating on blue origin. They're hating

44:32

on bayzos they're hating on Bob Smith, who

44:34

has, I think a really, really low Glassdoor.

44:38

The CEO is the CEO of blue origin, the

44:40

CEO of blue origin. So just to give you like reference,

44:42

like I think rocket lab, Peter Beck was like 83.

44:45

Relativities Tim, Tim Ellis was like

44:47

92 and Elon is at a 93%.

44:50

So there can be a bigger gap between like

44:53

culturally engineering

44:55

and like leadership wise for blue origin. Why

44:58

is that? Why, why, why

45:00

is there a big disconnect between management and the employees?

45:03

So if you were to look online,

45:06

a lot of people's perception of blue origin

45:08

is that it's old space with Billy

45:11

and your money, right? The old space being

45:13

very like heavy on traditional systems engineering,

45:15

the whole validation verification, the VMB

45:18

a hybrid. Executives

45:21

and influential positions from old

45:23

aerospace, like Honeywell Raytheon and things like

45:25

that. And so the way that

45:28

these people, these hires have had their successes

45:30

based on, you know, these processes

45:32

that they had in these companies, but the

45:34

fear that these but the fear that people

45:37

have about blue is that they are unable to

45:39

shed their own tendencies and are very diehard

45:41

on what has worked versus being adaptable

45:44

to what could be. And so, because of Elan's

45:46

background in software, which we

45:48

all know is very scalable and very iterative,

45:51

he took space X and they very software

45:54

oriented direction. Whereas blue origin

45:56

is seen as basically just like an

45:58

old, private, like Boeing Lockheed

46:00

Martin, Northrop Grumman. So the

46:02

sort of innovation that people are stuck from blue

46:05

is very low, as opposed to, they think

46:08

basic, just transplanting, right? You

46:10

people blame Bob Smith because he's from Honeywell

46:12

and they're like, he's just bringing all his old

46:15

stuff with them. And we don't like that. This

46:17

is the, I guess it's like a speculation on my end, but it sounds

46:19

like blue origin employees a number of

46:22

contractors. And so maybe when you have

46:24

a high number of contractors there isn't

46:26

incentive alignment between like management

46:29

or the employees and the contractors. And so

46:31

when obviously contractors don't get like stock in the business

46:33

or whatever, do you think that has any effect on it or

46:35

is that not really as, yeah,

46:40

like, I definitely think one thing

46:42

that I've learned from reading about like Y

46:44

Combinator is that they talk about how to align

46:47

your employees, incentives with the company's

46:49

success. And one of them is to dangle

46:51

stocks and other things like that. I

46:54

think for people that work in space,

46:57

it was never really about the money. For

47:00

me, the people in space are the most consistent

47:03

and passionate group of people who really

47:05

love their work and love going to work

47:08

and doing this thing, you know, possibly

47:10

creating these designs in the future in

47:13

which they may never see an actual, tangible, personal

47:15

return. And so

47:18

when you just hire contractors, like they don't have

47:20

that fucking sense of and it's just really about the money.

47:22

And so sort of like circle back to that question about

47:25

like, how does the wards spend their money? It

47:27

seems to be on like hiring contractors.

47:29

It seems to be like

47:32

trying to get there

47:34

quickly by throwing money at it. But

47:37

obviously because of the secrecy of blue origin,

47:39

like, I don't know. And a lot of people

47:41

don't know how that money thinks that, but

47:44

space X people like they're

47:46

pretty diehard. Like it's kind of

47:49

cultish, I guess, in a good, in a bad way.

47:51

I don't think people are. Cultish

47:53

about blue origin. I know the blue origin employees

47:56

really care though. Like it's a really bad

47:58

thing that there's this huge disconnect between

48:01

management and them and the fact that we

48:03

are. So Eric Berger wrote an art

48:05

technical article about project Jarvis,

48:08

which nobody at the company knew because it was secretive.

48:10

They'll sort of siloed off. Bezos was like, we

48:12

don't want char Jarvis to be

48:14

inundated by paperwork, like the rest of the company.

48:17

So we're going to basically give you free reign, closed

48:19

box sandbox, go make something happen. I

48:22

didn't hear about until I read Eric Berger,

48:25

talk about it. And so did a lot of people. And

48:27

it's probably because there is a discontent

48:29

mole at blue origin. The opposite

48:32

is like, Facebook's just like tells people pretty

48:34

much like Elan had a tour with everyday astronaut,

48:36

basically giving a personal tour of Boca Chica,

48:39

be like, oh yeah, that's a tank. This is the thing.

48:41

This is what we're going to do. And he's like, so open about it. And

48:43

people feed off of that honesty. Right? So

48:46

I actually want to go back to one thing, which you mentioned earlier,

48:49

which is that blue origins, you said

48:51

blue origin gave NASA the Goldilocks

48:54

for the HLS, and

48:56

yet they went with space X, Y I

49:01

think it's because I

49:05

think it was about how would you talk? How would you

49:07

say that it

49:10

was too good to ignore? Like

49:12

space X is dine with too good to ignore.

49:15

Like I mentioned before, a hundred tons

49:17

to lunar orbit is insane.

49:20

Nobody has ever done that. Right? Like

49:22

you tell it's like, you give

49:24

someone a single child,

49:26

right. Or like a child who has like 10 brothers.

49:29

You like, Hey, you get this tiny closet. Like Harry

49:31

Potter, you get this. He builds

49:33

his whole life, like picking furniture. It's

49:35

gotta be this exact dimension. My light needs to

49:37

be here. It's very specific. So constraint. And

49:39

then somebody comes along and says, yeah, I'm going to give you

49:42

the entire city of Los Angeles. How

49:45

do you even fathom? Like, how do you, like, you're going to struggle

49:47

to be like, I have no idea what to do with it.

49:49

And I think that that possibility excited

49:51

NASA so much so that they were able

49:54

to say, because the cost

49:56

of launch is so much less, we can now

49:58

dream big and be big and sort of maybe

50:00

capture the glory of the sixties where we

50:03

were well-funded everybody loved us and

50:05

really make an impact and do what NASA

50:07

is really good at. And so

50:11

I think maybe some people thought that

50:13

blue origins was like a

50:16

very straight path to progression

50:18

and space like boom, exponentially. Right.

50:21

So I think that's the big thing is

50:25

the exponential return on, on this thing,

50:27

NASA is making another bet. They bet on space

50:29

X and Kissler when they were first starting.

50:33

No ban on space X again, Are there any reasons

50:35

to be skeptical of what, of the promises that basics

50:37

has been making? Oh,

50:39

a hundred percent undoubtedly, right?

50:42

Like one of the HLS infographics

50:44

that blue origin had was

50:47

they were, they were hating on the amount

50:49

of times the star ship needed to be

50:51

refueled in orbit and

50:55

Ilan got personal and he's obviously on his Twitter

50:57

and he's like, yeah, that's not the right number. It's

50:59

like significantly less. And so

51:02

so-so Starship has some like

51:05

never before done stuff. Okay. So

51:07

they're going to be refueling. An

51:09

entire spacecraft in

51:11

orbit, right? Like Northrop Grumman

51:14

had like a demonstration mission where they were doing

51:16

satellite to satellite propellant, replenishments,

51:19

but star should this stupidly big,

51:21

right? Like it's not just like a small amount of fluid.

51:23

It's a tons of fluid. And like, how

51:26

do you deal with the engineering of that? And like, you're,

51:28

you're also orbiting, right? So you have to be able to

51:30

like, align like your, your lights, like manufacturing,

51:32

tolerances. Like you can only accept so much slip

51:35

in the wrong direction. Interstellar.

51:38

Yeah. That was insane. And like, it's,

51:40

it's gotta be automated. There's no way like human operators

51:43

are going to be able to have that sort of finesse. That's why the

51:45

dragon was so successful with autonomous docking

51:47

was like, great. And that was the answer I gave you for

51:50

the podcast from the last episode. Yeah.

51:53

So there was the in-orbit fueling. There's

51:55

also the fact that it's big as hell and it's going

51:57

to land on the moon and like, what if it sinks

52:00

or like it lands and tips

52:02

over or like the. They

52:05

have to take an elevator to basically go up and down. Like

52:07

what if it just gets stuck halfway? Right.

52:10

So there's all these things and like, it's

52:13

just never been done. Right. But what's never

52:15

been done allows you to do more

52:18

if you're able to actually solve it. I

52:20

just want to say a bit about like Yuan and I was

52:23

reading the zero to one recently, again, like

52:25

a second time. And in it, Peter

52:27

Thiel says that Elan is the greatest salesmen

52:29

that he's ever met. Like, he is like

52:32

an ultra salesman. He could categorize a salesman as either

52:34

bad, good, or like ultra good. And

52:36

he thinks it's like one of those few people

52:38

and Ilan, I think doesn't come across

52:40

as, what we've grown up as thinking is if somebody

52:42

is a good salesman, which is like, they're really in

52:45

your face, they're like always selling you on something

52:47

you want is more like, let me put this idea

52:49

out there, let it germinate in the population.

52:52

And then let me show them just a little bit

52:54

more and let me just like, sort of reel them

52:56

in. I love what he did. I think he got a

52:58

lot of hate for this, but he did the, if you guys saw the AI

53:00

robot thing where he had the suit,

53:03

a dance and everything, that's classic

53:05

Yuan, because I think everybody could tell, look,

53:07

it's not a robot. I think mostly it's not a robot.

53:10

It's enough of an idea to put it into somebody's

53:12

head that they're like, oh, wait a minute. Like,

53:14

you know, is this a possibility, could this

53:17

happen? So I think that's sort of the genius

53:19

of Yuan. I think that's enough. That's enough me complimenting

53:21

him. I did want to ask a few questions on

53:23

blue origin specifically. We've

53:26

been speaking a lot about the brand of blue origin

53:28

of the reputation, et cetera. Do you think

53:30

that Bezos going into space, you

53:32

know, in his company's vehicle, which

53:35

he financed, do you think that's ultimately

53:37

positive direction for the branding or a negative

53:39

direction for the brand? He gets blue origin It proves

53:41

that you can do that also

53:44

autonomously. So I think the big

53:46

success of new shepherd was. I

53:49

don't know if it necessarily proved the business

53:51

plan. I'm not privy to that. But I would

53:54

say the fact that all you have to do is just sit

53:56

in a thing, push a button, and then you get to

53:58

do your thing for three minutes and then come back safely

54:00

is a big achievement, right? Like autonomy,

54:03

autonomous systems are very difficult.

54:06

And so I think that's often like the holy grail

54:08

for something it's, it's as easy

54:10

as breathing air, kind of that feeling, I

54:12

think will ultimately

54:15

it will be a, the, the amount of public

54:18

outrage will be a footnote in

54:21

the history books. Like it's

54:26

because it's its own money. Okay.

54:29

Yeah. Because it's his own muffing money, not,

54:31

you know, Amazon workers and all that, because

54:33

it's his own money, his own company.

54:37

It's like, fuck you, man. Right, right.

54:40

Yeah. People are not happy, dude. I, I

54:42

mean, I get it. Like I get it. But part of me is

54:44

also like, Well he's in space, so,

54:47

yeah. And like that 18 year old kid, like hell a

54:49

lockdown, like you just

54:51

got to go for funsies. Like I

54:53

think ultimately it did push the, I

54:56

mean, I mean, I gave the example of like China

54:58

wanting to do their own suborbital tourism.

55:00

Right. China has a huge amount of people.

55:03

There's a lot of rich people too. And like, they serve

55:05

not just kind of like, you know, all of Southeast Asia

55:07

and Asia as a whole. So like, yeah,

55:09

there's, there's definitely a market there. And like, because of

55:13

which is like the international traffic

55:15

arms regulation and X. Arms

55:18

regulation basically. Like we're not going to be able to

55:20

like give secrets about military

55:22

stuff and rockets and like hiring is a

55:24

pain in the ass. Yeah. It's an

55:26

underserved market. So like, yeah, it's going to be like

55:28

baseless. This thing is going to be a footnote for

55:30

sure. Like the amount of public

55:33

outrage, but like that trip is, is going to be

55:35

historic. For sure. The other

55:37

thing I wanted to ask is how important

55:39

would you say external validation will

55:41

be going forward for blue origin to succeed?

55:44

So I think if you look at historically a good example

55:46

of a failed piece of external validation

55:48

is them not getting that contract with NASA, but

55:50

then a positive piece is maybe

55:52

him going to space successfully like on an autonomous vehicle

55:54

and coming back. So how many of more of

55:56

these advances do you think need to occur in

55:59

the right direction? And do you think that Ilian affect

56:01

the success of origin overall? I think

56:04

right now, blue origin needs. A

56:07

hardware win. Like it would be

56:09

great. Like it definitely 100%

56:11

would be great if they got HLS a hundred percent,

56:14

but people and the outside

56:16

detractors have focused specifically

56:19

on that ULA before partnership,

56:21

I think for more relative to

56:24

be boosted and also for the business plan

56:26

of selling engines to, to also gain some

56:29

traction as well, is we just got to deliver

56:32

those engines, just deliver those engines

56:34

and then get new Glenn flying. Like

56:36

new Shepard is, is not dumb though, but

56:38

like it's, it's done its thing. Right. It's

56:40

got the right people to want to come to the,

56:43

to the company, but we really need to get

56:45

new Glenn going. Right. Like every day that

56:47

passes more people realize like, yeah,

56:50

it's like just getting further and further behind.

56:53

And so getting that, that big

56:55

thing will be like, yes, we have, we have successfully

56:57

completed the before

56:59

and given it to ULA, they're happy. They flew

57:01

a mission on their Vulcan vehicle. It worked great.

57:04

Fantastic. Everyone's like super

57:07

happy. It's like that mean everyone and everyone

57:09

likes that. So thanks for your work. I think that's a

57:11

great note to wrap things up on soon.

57:13

Everyone will be very happy and we will

57:15

all be shooting our podcast

57:17

on the moon. Hell yeah.

57:20

Dude. Space jockey, you

57:22

know, hosts and space, right? Yeah. We talking about

57:24

space lawyers and space artists about space podcasters.

57:27

Yeah. Or space DJs. Like the whole, you set

57:29

up roofers all around the moon so that

57:31

everyone can hear. I dunno. Moonquakes and stuff

57:33

like that. Yeah.

57:35

The acoustics would be very different. Yeah. I wonder if this can be

57:37

like space, like space

57:40

sound is going to be totally anyway.

57:42

Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening

57:44

guys.