Space 2.0: Printing Hearts In Microgravity

York Zhang, a propulsion engineer at Blue Origin, joins us again for a deep cut on Space. We discuss some of the future innovations we can expect and other topics of relevance currently affecting the space industry. 

Time Stamps:

00:54 - How many space companies can the market accommodate?

03:00 - Future market segmentation in space

04:31 - The disconnect between marketing and reality

08:09 - Varda

15:31 - Varda deep cut

16:08 - Will SpaceX derive significant revenue from delivering payloads for external parties?

17:28 - Minimum financing required in order to contract with SpaceX?

20:32 - Bidding for future payloads

21:24 - Regulation around satellites 

23:24 - Can we expect cooperation between the US and China on future space innovation?

28:04 - Other players focused on space innovation

29:00 - Is SpaceX really going to put advertisements in the sky?

30:49 - How will space factor into the classic academic disciplines? 

35:31 - Traditional media and space

41:31 - Blue Origin and HLS

44:28 - The Blue Origin Brand

46:18 - Incentive misalignment between management and employees

48:47 - Why did NASA go with SpaceX and not Blue Origin?

50:35 - Should we be skeptical of the promises being made by SpaceX?

53:36 - Did Bezos going to space help Blue Origin’s brand?

55:37 - How important is external validation for Blue Origin?

Find Vasanth on Twitter - @NextVasanth
Find Faraz on Twitter - @fzfromcupertino

Intro Music: "Pain is the Essence" remix by @AdiSoundsGood on Twitter

Disclaimer: The content presented in this episode is for informational purposes only, you should not countersue any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice. 

Transcript

0:00

So if you want it to three prints of hearts, from what we know about it the anatomy is very thin, but there's a sort of stretchiness to it. But because of the gravity, if you were to print it layer by layer, you would actually collapse under its own weight. Like you can't pressurize the heart in the same way that you can do with like a tank. So it just literally collapses. But if you were able to print it in a microgravity environment where gravity has less than effects, you also suspended some sort of fluid, medium, you can actually print something. And so just to give you an example, like, let's just say it takes like six months for you to get a new heart and that's like being released. If you can do a printed heart in space at a month, like you just reduced it by like one sixth of the time and that's significant. So those are some things that you can do. So it's really interesting. So Peter teal wrote in zero to one that airlines deliver a lot of value, right? Like the ability to fly in a metal bird for between an hour to five hours can take you literally anywhere in the world. But the thing is the amount of profits that they return per head per seat is super duper small. So even though they're generating all this value. He'll argue, that's not about just generating value. It's about capturing the value, you know, that you generate. And so when people look at these launch companies, I don't really think they're all that picky because there isn't a lot of them, but there is that push to, Hey, we need to make sure that you guys are reliable. Right? Cause like the amount of money that goes into a satellite is, is so insane. It's not insignificant that they really want to push for certain people. So they're sort of seeing where government is putting their bets. So you have the DOD and the air force giving for example, like a Firefly ABL, relativity, and some other like lesser known names, the ability to compete for these time-sensitive payloads. And so. I really think that people want to find the provider for them and they'll just stick with them throughout because it builds that sort of relationship it's much harder for them to do so, which is why companies like place light now exists. They're sort of like the intermediary and say, they're basically like baseline now is basically like expedia.com. They're like the go-to portal where it's like, I need to pick somebody. I have no idea how to make that decision, do it for me. And they go and do that. And so the biggest partner that space spaceflight now has a space X. And so space X is always going to be like the number one search for a Google result. Right. Because they're just that dominant. Everyone else is sorta like they're, there nobody's really flown anything yet, but eventually a few people are going to shake out and probably no more than six. I think the industry can support like six and that's not even accounting for like what type of payloads or like the size of payloads that they have. So you have like people who are like a thousand kilograms and below, and some were way below that or above, above a thousand kilograms. And some below that you're talking about delivery of like delivery of stuff rather than delivery, rather than transport of people. Yeah. Just purely the delivery of satellites. Not the it's so much harder to deliver people like, so like, just, just within like proportion, right. Which is like the field that I'm in. Like you have to be able to, to, to have your engines perform at certain edge cases of what you expect the mission to be like. And if you never had that. When you had, when you, like, if you wanted people to fly on there, it's possible that you never designed something to be able to hit those profiles. So it's not as simple as like, oh yeah, man, rate's a thing it's like, you might actually have to do like significant design changes. And it's just so much more competitive because part of that qualification is getting the government agencies to buy off on that. And that just costs time and money. So is it going to be like a split marketplace where it's like, ups does do like flight delivery, but it's got nothing to do with Southwest airlines or is it going to be like Uber eats type thing? I think it's going to be much more differentiated on, on the satellite side. So if you look at all the companies, now you have the satellite bus for rocket lab, but you have some sort of satellite for Virgin Aster has their own. Everyone is realizing that launch itself is not a sustainable business. They have to do basically what they're calling end to end customer service. So not only do we get you to the orbit that you want, but if you need to go somewhere else, we'll also give that service. So it's actually, it's kind of like that kick stage what they're talking about. And so the focus isn't on launch, it's going to be much more on like the customer experience of like, after we get you there, we're going to make sure that data comes to and from as easily as you want it to be. Which is interesting because AWS is trying to build up their ground stations. But a lot of people are just so focused on launch. They don't realize like once you get to space, what's next. When you say that, what is there, do you mean the moon or other places? Just like, just like earth orbit. I don't see like lunar tourism being here. I guess it'll take like another 10 years or so, but it's mostly just like getting stuff into commercial. Sure. Sure. In the case of space X, I always feel like with Elan because it's Ilan so specifically, and I really want to get your take on this because you're so into it deeply. You want to does this thing where whenever he's about to launch a new product or even a company, he first presents like an image or a so like a mental model or some advert. That this is what it's going to be. Eventually we don't know how long it's going to take. And sometimes we'll give you like an estimate, but really it ends up being wrong or whatever. But at the end of the day, he's gotten this image into all of our heads that this is possible. This is some possibility that's there. What he then does is really focuses on the short-term to capitalize on what he can actually make money on. So in the case of Tesla is like making that really fast car. Those are upgrading, what's called down the two door car, and then eventually he was going to get them all to less than a week. In the space case, it seems like, well, he's going to make a lot of money, the satellites. And recently they said that he might be putting advertisements into space. I thought that was crazy. So when you sort of compare all of these things, who's current operating. Whether it's blue origin, Virgin or space X is most closely aligned with the mission that they've been sort of marketing to the public. That's a great question. So in terms of, I guess technical scope, I would say Virgin is by far the closest, right? Like it's, it's VG has been an incubation for like, I don't know, like 15 years or something like that. They're they're definitely, they're like, they're, they're, they're, they're getting customers at the door willing to throw X amount of dollars at the trip. They're there. The thing about I think it's the VSS, unity is like, I don't think the, the design skills very well, like if you wanted to make a bigger VSS unity, I don't think it's as simple as like 10 X everything. Right? Like, obviously it's never the case for that, but I think it's a very, like, it's, it seems like kind of like a dead end not in like a derogatory way, but like that shuttle cost design. Yeah. Kind of it. Like, there's nothing you can really iterate off of that unless they just do like a clean sheet design, blue origins like, you know, similar to the discussion we had on the last session. Like their scope is like thousands of years, but like they're still trying to get orbital space X in terms of their mission are in terms of the larger scope has been the most successful. I'm actually gonna grab a picture real quick and we can probably pause it in the thingy, but I drew this because I was like, you know, it's crazy pants that if somebody wanted to create a mission to Mars, like there's no way you can create a business case for that. Doesn't exist, but the way that you always been doing it is brilliant. And he actually did this thing for Tesla too. So with Tesla, he was like, oh, we need to mass commercialize electronic vehicles or electric vehicles. We can't just go straight to mass adoption with these mass produced ones. You need to build something that basically uses rich people's money to like, get it going. And that was the Roadster. That was the model S and the X. And eventually he got there. So I will show this, but basically if you want to go from a straight line without all these additional divots or arrows, it's basically impossible. There is no business case that says we should go to the moon or Mars, but then you start funding all these other swiped, sort of these like detours that are sort of tangent, but they actually allow you to reach that profitability and those revenue streams to actually get there. So base X is, is smart. Like the whole Starling thing is going to be stupid. Like just in terms of pre-orders the amount of money they got was like 5 million. And that's like chump change. If you compare it to like the$69 million base line costs for a Falcon nine, but that's just like, pre-order like nobody ever has even the thing yet. So space X is by far the, the industry leader and they're a leader for good reason. It's because they are relentless, utterly relentless. And that's why they have 24 7 people. Here's my first question. What is Varda? So Varta space industries wants to create a supply chain in space. And so their focus is on creating materials that can only be created in a microgravity environment and bring it back to earth. And because of that expensive product, This terrestrial value is captured only because it would be so Marta is, is essentially like a material science research company and also supply chain. So basically think Andrew Carnegie for field, but in space. So what are some things you can only build in space? Okay. So the co-founder DeLeon gave a pretty explicit example. So if you want it to three prints of hearts, from what we know about it the anatomy is very thin, but there's a sort of stretchiness to it. But because of the gravity, if you were to print it layer by layer, you would actually collapse under its own weight. Like you can't pressurize the heart in the same way that you can do with like a tank. So it just literally collapses. But if you were able to print it in a microgravity environment where gravity has less than effects, you also suspended some sort of fluid, medium, you can actually print something. And so just to give you an example, like, let's just say it takes like six months for you to get a new heart and that's like being released. If you can do a printed heart in space at a month, like you just reduced it by like one sixth of the time and that's significant. So those are some things that you can do. There's also certain things that take advantage of like surface tension, like capillary effects, Vanderwal phenomenon. It's just like something that you can only do there and you bring it back. So like some other examples they have would be like the lamb, which is some sort of fiber optic material, something to do with like semiconductor films and maybe some sort of alloys, right? Like the way that seeds grow from a crystal Instructure to maybe something else can only be achieved when you don't have to attack. I'll just second that like having worked in 3d printing for a long time which I know you did too as well. You work there's a lot of stuff that you can 3d print, but it requires extensive scaffolding and the major pain is just removing the support structure. So if you can get away with no support structure, there's just like so many efficiency improvements that you get out of it. So for the 3d printing industry, yeah. It's like a no-brainer if you don't have to deal with the weight supporting the weight of stuff. So yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, Varda is not focused on making it cheaper to get payloads in the space, but not focused on what space X is doing. They're focused on doing things once it is cheap or is financially feasible to get to space. But what exactly are they doing right now? Like what do they do day to day? I guess it just doesn't make sense to me. Like how are they? I mean, they want to do something in space. They can't get the space yet. So what are they working on today? A great question. I actually created a PowerPoint and created an air table. Who they're hiring. Right? So, so you can understand what a company wants to do technically, and business-wise like who they hire. So if you look at their career page right now, they're focused on building the team. So they've hired like the heads of the department. So like they have a structured guy, prop guy, optical guy, and material science guy, electronics guy, but they need people to actually go and execute. And so they're, they're hiring to expand these roles. But the biggest category that they're looking for is someone who understands how to create a product. So they want like a client facing product engineer who is able to create, for example, like these optical materials, like they hired a guy named Daniel w his past five or six years work with specifically in V Lam. And so deli and himself was like, yeah, the lab might be a thing that we want to do. Cause it's one of those things that you've been on getting the space. So it's like some sort of material that's used to spin fiber optics. And so I think it's like a, like a stupidly high amount of like a 99% refraction or something. So like the signal loss is significantly less, but it's just so expensive to make. And it's also toxic using the the materials that you use. And so they are focused on getting their product out. And so they basically have three pretty components. You have the satellite that's going to be used to keep that factory, that factory capital in orbit. So they have like different propulsion systems. Like they have cold gas, thrusters, they have electric propulsion. They have and those are the two proportions for the satellite side. Then after the factory makes the material, they need to spend that capital back down. And so that capsule is going to land it on land. And it's also going to have like solid rocket motor. So I think it's might be similar to like the escape system for FLS and the Saturn. But yeah, that's, that's what they want to do. They want to, they want to find people that can scale that technical side of it. And their whole business plan is to like, I guess, do a series of demonstration missions. The first one's going to be with rocket lab, actually, they actually signed a contract with them to have three months of operations. So beginning of mission to end of mission. And yeah, it's going to cost them like 23 mil and their war chest is currently at like 54 mil. And so this is like a 20, 23. Sure. So who's, who's it going to customer through? It was no cost of Arctic 23 miles going to cost rocket lab, 23 minutes to have do that for them. It's going to cost Varda 23 mil. Oh, it's like half their funding, but it's like in two years time. So I'm sure they're going to get more money. Right. Cause like right now they're, they're trying to grow the talent. Then there's going to be a phase in the startup when he gets. And so w I guess when they scale it up, their master, you know, a series B series C so no short of money. And like, the interesting thing is like, I was looking up the competitors yesterday and the one that I found with orbit. So I looked them up on Crunchbase. They have only like$13 million. And like Marta has like 54 million. So like the war chest is like four times. Well, you know, you know, I Al I think I read somewhere that the way VCs come to make decisions on funding is they basically Go to these deep tech entrepreneurs and they're like, how much money do you need to prove to me that you will one day be able to create what you think will make us money. And so maybe it's just going to be the case that their competitor only needed 13 million to have a proof of concept. And then once they use all that money to get the proof of concept, maybe they don't, but if they can then they'll receive like the 50, 60, and they can get the war chest. Probably like the one distinction for these founder founders fund companies is that the investor is also a co-founder right? So like John Coogan's video talks about like this incubation, like model in which you have people who are building the company, but also be faster. So I think having that strong relationship is going to be beneficial in getting more money. But I definitely agree with you. Like orbit fab might be very selective because I know there's that sort of stigma where it's like, oh, we asked for 20 minutes here, but our next round we asked for 15 and people like, what does that mean? You should be getting more money for your growing, right. Not less. So it might be very strategic. So what are some things I know you've been studying this company for some time? What are some things under the hood that you think you figured out that aren't, that haven't been publicly stated? So like if there was a hot take right now they're, they're assuming that Starship is going to be operational. Right now we know that Falcon nine is it's super operational, but the payload capacity of Starship to me implies that they can do a mass shipment at once. So for example, they send 50 of these factories into Starship. Each of the incubation time for the capsules might be different. And so you can basically use the economies of scale to get like a really good deal to get all 50, and then you can drop them or deorbit each of the capitals whenever the material ready. So essentially you can have a capital falling every single day. That to me makes a lot of sense. But again, they are assuming that Starship is going to be operational and I think it will, but if they were to do one Falcon nine, I think that would stain them for probably like a good five years. So I guess when they're really trying to create a, a ton of material, Starship is going to be no doubt, an instrumental part of it. And also it's probably going to be the only thing space offers because they're going to eventually decommission, how can I, if I remember correctly or are these types of companies, companies like, Varda you think that's going to be the bread and butter of space X there's gonna be a lot of money they're making off of that kind of thing. Yeah. Like the thing is, this is just, what's publicly known. So the great thing about what space X is doing is they're essentially a fixed they're solving the transportation problem. They're not necessarily telling what these settlers or entrepreneurs what to do. They're just saying, Hey, if you want to get there, go ahead. But you can then surprise us on what's going to happen next. So very similar. Drone example that I gave last time, like, like people just created it and they're like, yeah, we don't know what's going to happen. And then some people took it to the next logical step and then people iterated off of that and kept going. And now we have drones everywhere. Like you can just buy it off of Amazon. And so like with Barta, it's kind of like, you know, the first person to open, like a KFC on Mars is going to get all of the, all the winter. So like Bardo making that first move is going to be the one who's giving the materials that you can only get from space. I'm like unlocking like a mythical mind on earth, but like only one person knows the password to get in. Right. That's a good way of putting it actually. So how big, so if we're talking about like space X being transportation, how big of a startup, how big is my war chest have to be for me to be really realistically deploying space X. Like I can make an iPhone app for no money. Right? How much money do I need it to have? How will fund is going to start to have to be before I'm realistically deploying space X for somebody. For space X. Ooh, transportation is transportation. Yeah. 10 mil, 10 mil. That's like, I think what a rocket lab costs is 10 mil. And then you have Firefly 15 ABL at 12 relativity at maybe 15. And that's the thing. This is all like before anyone's gotten a rocket at the orbit. Right? So when people are actually getting into orbit there, it's such a, it's such a tight profit margin. When everyone looks back similar to you, like not just on the launch vehicle side, but like also the payload capacity side. And even like the satellite buses they have, like, they all look very similar, but like for the customer, they want reliability and they want that cheaper. And so at some point I think those prices are gonna drop too. And those prices are going to drop if these small startups. You know, continue to exist and develop new vehicles. So it's kinda like every time there's a new iPhone, the last one dropped by like$200. Right. The same idea. So it's only gonna work to the benefit of the consumer because everyone's just going to out-compete each other. And the consumer just like wipe that wave saves money all the way. But yeah, I feel like 10 mil. Okay. I actually really liked the iPhone analogy because it wasn't like the iPhone was the first phone to have apps on it. I mean, like every, even, even before we had smartphones, even when we just had these like little Nokia flip phones, many companies made games and calculators and all these other toys, the reason the iPhone app store became crazy, it was because everybody was able to make them it wasn't gate kept. So I think once we have that curve, very interesting things will start to happen when people who are not big companies are able to commission payloads into space. That's so crazy. Like you, you just be able to go to sort of a, like a, like a website, sort of like Amazon and bid for the next payload well, what's your take on that yard? The user experience is going to be streamlined as hell. Like from what I understand, AWS ground stations wants you to basically say, Hey, these are the, this is the orbit that my satellite is going to be on. This is the license. I'm going to go on the website. I'm going to book a time, say like every hour, I want it to send me this amount of data or something. And then what you do is just book it. And then you're done in terms of like space. It's going to be the same process. It's going to be like, as simple as hitting a few buttons on your phone, and then you have access to space. Like you can even like get a selfie from space too. So I think that's going to be the, the big push is like eventually space is going to be democratized and everyone has some access to it that will benefit them in some tangible way. I feel like the amount of regulation around the satellites is super low. Would you agree with that? I wouldn't, I don't really know. I know that a lot of people think that the Kessler syndrome isn't the big deal. And what Kessler syndrome is, is like, if you fragment some piece of, of a satellite, it's going to hit something else and fragment that more essentially just creates the debris that you are basically trapped on your own gravity. Well, so I know there's there's companies that are trying to solve the space debris problem. But the way that satellites are tracked is, is pretty. I don't know if it's efficient, but it is highly regulated because there's only so much space and they want to make sure that everyone can, can get the, the appropriate time, which is why the FCC was like super pissed. When the company called swarm technologies, didn't tell them that they were deploying these like tiny ass, little satellites, because one, the FTC was like, we have no way to track them. They're super small. And two, we didn't know there were launching, so we had no way to track them. And so there was like a fine, that was levied against swarm, but that was swarm being like, you guys are too slow. Like we want to go on this basics launch. So we're just going to go in and then they did. So I think it is regulated. It's super regulated. Like space is one of the most regulated industries there is. But at some point, like, like just looking at like Starship, right? Like Ilan, like, Hey, we want to launch this thing into orbit and have it crash into Hawaii. And the bottleneck is not only just the production of the vehicle, but like the FAA has to do like an environmental study to be like, Hey, if you drop your thing here, Kill a turtle or some endangered species. Right. And so like the FAA has to have a strong presence because if some private company just says, we don't care about the government, they're going to look like fools, right. Their pants are going to be on the ground. So they have to say like, no, we're stopping them. But internally they're probably panicking and being like, we have no way how to assess it. We need to come up with new processes fast. So the rate of innovation is in part stifled by how government handles these innovations and like their knee-jerk reaction. Do you have a take on the, sort of the political animosity that exists in the space industry right now? I think I was reading that China's planning to launch their own sort of space operation, but it seems like neither side either the American side or the Chinese side want to work together. Do you think that's for the best or do you think there would even be any sort of additional innovation if they did work together? What's your take. So there's actually a great podcast called the dome Fung hour. It's by two individuals, one of them lives in Hong Kong, and I think another one lives on the Eastern board of China. They're the only podcast that I know that has the sole intent of telling a Western audience, what China aerospace is up to. And a lot of people don't know what China's. Okay. You know, maybe it's because, you know, American citizens are sort of like in their own bubble, but China has these ambitions that are, that exclude the U S like they, I don't think they trust the U S and U S government also doesn't trust China. So I don't see this being a partnership that's going to happen anytime soon. However, I think China's ambitions are strengthened by the fact that they're able to effectively organize their labor and be very single-minded in their commitment to getting the aerospace things done and in doing so they'll inevitably. Create their own innovation. So I think a lot of what China's doing is sort of like catching up to the rest of the world. Like they're, they're obviously a power in it of themselves, but like they are in a sense still copying what the U S are doing, but asking you to develop that technical experience and have been doing it for a long time, then they can really start to reap those benefits and really innovate. And so they're obviously taking cues from like new Shepard. Like they want to do suborbital space tourism. They're taking cues from like space X's reusability. They wanna do their own version of the ifs. So like, these are all concepts we heard about, but like, because China wants to do it on their own, they're going to develop that in-house knowledge. And if you want in, I guess you've got to pay a huge sticker price to do it. But as of now, yeah, everyone's just kind of doing their own thing. And there's also like an ego obviously, but I think ultimately there will be a partner. But like, maybe like after I go and chill the hell out. Sure. Just when you say China, do you mean private industry in China or is it state-sponsored sort of Chinese space innovation? So I think the dome Fung hour has a great topic on this. So when we think of private companies, we in the United States, we genuinely mean like they're privately held, but the way that talent is flowing from Casick, which I think is the China aerospace science Institute of technology or whatever those people go on to found these private companies. But they're sort of just like cross-pollination between the state sponsored agencies and these private companies, and even within the private companies themselves, and the way that China is able to exert its influence and be very single minded is to have that government influence everywhere. So in a sense, they can always rely on the government to back them. The government is also interested in it. Like if you catch the eye of an official yeah. You'll probably get money, like pretty easily, I'd say. So I want to talk more about this transport line that you've described. So space X is the number one player in terms of creating this highway where other startups can come in and, and innovate. So Varda is one of the, it seems like if we're talking like the 20 to$50 million price range, who's utilizing it Varda is up there. Is that the highest price range or is that a mid-market like, where does that sit? So specifically you're asking with a 20 to$15 million mission, like where does that stand in terms of the ranking? Is that the most common is what it is today. It's not the one, which is that that's what is being utilized or are there even smaller ones that are more. Good question. I mean, it kind of explains why the small sat market exists. Like I would say small fat would be like 20 mil and below. Because they're used to just, there weren't a lot of people that could deliver your payloads. And like, now that space X is fully operational. A lot of people want to go there, but they ended up being secondary customers. So that's why these small companies are there to sort of be like, all right, I personally hate this example, but like the, be the Uber of, of space, right? Like why hire a truck to deliver like a pound of something? We just need a small Uber, but I would say 20 to 50 million is expensive. I'd say like 20 mil and below would be much more manageable. I'd even say like 10 mil is probably a good starting point. You should have a budget for 10 mil, but that's, that's just for the launch, right? That's like not leaving any margin for your own stuff that you need to do to get to that point. Right. So what who are other players who were in the, the upper price range, who were at the same price point as Varda probably NASA, like something that I'm looking into right now is, well, Varda wants to create a series of materials. Right. But like, there's so many different materials to make. So how do we, how do we take inspiration from what's already been done? So I'm on the I think it's the ISS lab page where they're basically like, oh, this is all the experiments that's done. I wanted to take a look at that and say, okay, this is a category based on like metals and stuff, based on organic stuff, based on like plastics and be really able to understand like what's been done before, because I think the way that Bardo wants to operate is they don't want to commercialize the lab space of the ISS. They want to commercialize it. The ISS as a whole, right? So it's a difference between like renting out a test facility and like scaling that test facility out. And so Bartow wants the base fee 10 X, what the ISS is doing in terms of like finding new materials and doing research. So I would hope that they would first look at what's been done and then figure out if that material has any market viability. And if there isn't, is there a case such that people are now turned on to this idea that yeah, there is this material that you're looking for. We can make it for you and like connecting the dots between that. Yeah. You know, I think in our last conversation, I felt like I left the last episode that we did, which by the way, everybody should listen to when we left that, I just felt like thinking maybe we should have asked York, what are the things that we're just not even prepared to ask you? Like, you know what cars mean for us? We're just not in it that deeply. And honestly, reading headlines, et cetera coming up with questions. So what, what are we not asking that we should be asking you, about space, So I will touch upon something that you said before. So there was this, you know, these articles that said space X was gonna, you know, do advertisements and space. So that turns out to be entirely false. Turns out that they're not going to do anything like huge, it's going to be like super duper tiny ass thing. But like, people were like, you know, going nuts and be like, they're going to pollute our skies. Like they're already doing with Starlink. Like how could they so that's the impression that I got from what I read that he was gonna put like like the cool ones like a blip or something up in the sky, and I would be able to see it or something. I think they're just launching some companies thing and it's going to, it's not like a billboard. It's like, it's like a panel of lights or something like that. I don't even know the details of it. Cause like I was just so caught up in the headline and be like, oh my God, it's going to be like this big. Superbowl ads floating around and like, everyone's just gonna be super annoyed at that, but it wasn't anything to that scale, but on that topic advertisement in space, right? Like, like being able to advertise in space, like that's going to be a thing, like it's like, there's so much real estate in space. It's, it's virtually endless and like being able to look up at the sky and know, yeah, I can see the golden arches of McDonald's on the moon is going to be a big thing. So I would say something that people aren't ready to really jump onto is thinking about how their business can be more competitive by engaging in what the space industry can offer. Like everyone's very terrestrial. Right. But like, when you start thinking about how you can get your services, not just to someone next to you, but like on other planets, that'll be a big thing. Like tourism is one thing, but yeah, advertising like marketing, like obviously as a capitalist society, we're going to try to push those boundaries and space has a lot to us. Well along the lines of what Varda is doing. Right. Which is like manufacturing in space. That's something which wouldn't even like be fathomed by a lot of engineers, a lot of chemical engineers and mechanical engineers. Right. So do you think it's going to be a case where as space manufacturing and other types of things become more prominent, will those be integrated into the classical disciplines? Or will there be a new discipline, which is like manufacturing for space engineer or like space engineer who covers everything in the way a mechatronics engineer covers everything. I love that question. Yeah. Like if we think about education, if we think about education yeah. There's going to be, so I know that the, I think it's like the university of Missouri has like baseball degree. Luxembourg is apparently a, some sort of like a legislative Haven for, for hammering out space. We're going to see more people who are to be like, yeah, we want to focus on space. And so, I mean, there is so like if we take mechanical engineering, you have like aerospace engineering as a subset, but within aerospace you have like astronautical engineering, like we had at USC. I see that being a much more widespread thing. Like yeah, definitely people are going to be like, yeah, like mechanical stuff. Like specifically, I want to do space, like being a space lawyer, a space Docker. Oh my God. There's a guy named Neil who works as a medical doctor at space X Nisa and posting stuff like every month or so being like we're hiring nurses, we're hiring MD PhDs. We need to be able to like, check these customers, like, make sure they're fit to go and like get them here and back. And like all these other things. And like, I've been trying to tell people, like I have a friend who's an MD PhD, like be a space doctor based doctors. There's like very, very few. And they all work in like, you know, Johnson based in Houston, but like, yeah. Space doctors, space lawyers, space, engineers, space, trash, like people who deorbit stuff. There's an animated show called planet teas, which is the Greek word for planet. And it basically follows a guy who works as a space trash man. And like, there's also this discussion, like, is he an astronauts? Like, yeah, I think you're an astronaut. And if you perform some sort of function in space versus just like going there and check it out. But yeah, like space space, everything's space, advertising, space, marketing space, businesses, space restaurants, like, how do you make, how do we fly in an airplane and the food sucks, right? If you go to space as the food gonna suck too, how does anyone take a poop in space? Like toilet engineering is so underrated, but like, nobody wants to do it. Cause it's fuck. But like somebody has got to do it, right? Like people pay so much money. Like everyone's on the same flight, but some people pay first class to get like extra stuff. Like I want to be able to like take a poop in space without getting it everywhere. Right. Like that's in the BSA. Well, I think like space Trashman I think space Trashman in particular is very interesting because like, for someone to do that today, they would have to be a phenomenal mechanical engineer. So being like a garbage man in space, you would have to be incredibly well-educated, but have a ton of experience, be like the top of your field. Really? You gotta be, you gotta have a PhD. You'd be garbage, man. Yeah. So like in the show planet to you, like there's a scenario where there is a standard mission. They're just going to deorbit something by throwing it into the earth, you're going to burn up, but they got some bad Intel and it turns out that that particular trash they were handling was on course to hit another thing. And so you're a space trash man. Right? You don't have a PhD. You're not like necessarily top of your field, but now you're surrounded by trash and it's not just like floating trash. It's like trash traveling at horrible speeds. So if you get hit by. A tiny little, like nuts and bolts, like you're going to die. Right? So like, how does anyone get used to that sort of stuff? And at some point the risk becomes like much less, but the danger is still buried. Like, I mean, that's the whole purpose of deer moon. It's like, like, like we see that space is becoming popular. And so all these creatives, these artists, these movie producers, dancers, are taking cues and creating their own art. And the science fiction writers are also taking twos and they're going to be creating the next set of inspirations for the next set of space people. And there's this sort of like symbiotic relationship that two people have. And so dear moon is basically trying to jumpstart that like, Hey, we're going to be able to show you a perspective. That no one else has, because not a lot of people get the space and there was a genuine risk in going and having deficient fail. But like when they come back, there'll be bringing back tales from a land we may never see in our life. Right. And so like, part of creativity is also embracing the madness of going into there, surviving it and being able to tell the tale coming back. Like one thing which I've observed, which I think most writers will observe is that Hollywood and like both movies and TV shows are heavily trope based. So if you don't know much about cops, if you don't know any cops, personally, most of what you write is essentially going to be like a rehash of all the other stuff you've seen. And you can solve that by doing research or just like calling a police department or, you know, Watching the news, but we don't really have much. We don't really have much primary sources for space. So like all of our TV shows and movies are based off of like a few things that we've seen about space. You know, like any of the space meters made today will still be influenced by by Apollo. And like that might not be accurate anymore. A lot of stuff has changed, but we're still going to be using the same things. So, yeah, I think that's to say that once this becomes more mainstream, even if it's a space tourism, we will see a huge change in TV shows and movies that are about space. They'll greatly change because we'll have more primary sources to draw. Yeah, that's a great point. Like I think the general IQ of the population in regards to space is growing. Like the great thing about space X is that they're creating these secondary markets in which people on YouTube are able to full-time just stream what they're doing at Boca Chica, or like talk about like what the competitive landscape is like. And so it's creating jobs and these people aren't necessarily technical, but they're able to disseminate this information in such a way that it's digestible for the everyday person so much so that I would say eventually people are able to be like, yeah, that's a, that's a gas generator on that engine. Whereas people before are like, I have no idea what an engine exactly is. Like when people talk about rocket engines, like rockets, they think of just like the flamey bit, but it's like literally the whole thing. So the general IQ is definitely going to increase. People are able to like, I mean, people even like, as kids are like, oh, I want to be an astronaut. Right. And so like, they're going to have tech as like sort of a point of leverage, right? Jump into that technical side of space. Whereas people before, like the huge stem push, wasn't really a thing until the governance was like, Hey, we need smart people for the cold war thing. Right. So do you think that there's going to be like, you know how there's like car guys for like, really into like, oh, this Ferrari is have the VA, these ones have the V tan and like, no, all that. Are they gonna be like space guys or like rocket guys, space influencers? No, a hundred percent. There are those people. There's like there's like everyday astronauts there, Scott Manley there was like Boca, Chica girl. Like, man, these people are so famous. Like they're so famous in fact that they have their own merch. Like you, you can be so good that you can have your own merch and like that's amazing. And so wow. People are really. Dude. I thought about that, man, on the real though, if you had like a, just like a pitch, right? Your field, like a YouTube channel where you did three minute, four minute snippets, just explaining the things you're explaining on this podcast. I swear you'll build an audience. I think the general curiosity about what the heck is going on between Bezos and Elon and everything. We really want the truth. They don't want the marketing like blurbs anymore. They want the real stuff, you know, people are capable and they really want the little stuff. So if you're considering doing it and do it, dude, I would listen to a lot of it too. I would love to do that. It's like part of the, part of the barrier is like, I feel like a lot of people have been doing it. Like for example, there was a video by everyday astronaut called the king of the small step lock rockets and like all the information I knew it was just. It's been done. So I'm like, what, what else can I say? So it's been very hard for me to sort of expand on, but so the counter to that is, I've never heard of any of these people to your bottom up right now. So that's the counter, you might just be so into it that you're assuming that there's like a much bigger audience already listening to these people. And maybe they have millions of moons of yous. I've swear to God. I've never heard a single one of those names. And I'm somewhat keyed in like on a number of different space things. And I've never heard of these people. So be the case where like, it's digestible to someone like you, but for someone like us, it's not really as approachable. You know? Like they say that the reason most startups fail is not competition. That's like the reason five to 10% of startups fail. It's other reasons is it like, nobody knows they exist. So like they can't get funding kind of thing. It's like PMF. It's like it's conservation regulations. Yeah. Well, it's actually, it's like the fifth or sixth. It's like less than 5% of startups fail because of competition. Yeah. Honestly, I do not know. I don't even have like a video camera. Like I have a phone, but like it's crappy. Like I have no idea. Where did you go on Amazon? You could find kits for the, like you buy a kit and it gives you everything you need. We'll give you that. The ring that like lights your face up, he gives you that the phone you can, so you just go on Amazon, you can look up, I don't know, you gotta look up some kit or some bundle, but they'll give you everything you need in one shipment and you'll be ready. Let's leave all of this. And if like, you know, everyone's heard about like blue origin and like the, the HLS, like public perception thing. I don't know if they need, like, this sort of just had me thinking, like, can you set the stage actually? So you work, I didn't want to talk about that. So can you kind of give some context what it w what's going on at blue origin and HLS? Like what does it even mean? Yeah, so NASA based on the presidential mandate, that's like Trump was like, okay, we're going to go back from the moon. And so the first mission was the Apollo missions in like the sixties, but now there's something called the Artimus mission. And so part of going back to the moon is developing a human right. Lunar Lander that can go, that can be launched from earth and then land on the moon and then bring people back. And so there were three main competitors. There was Dianetics space in Huntsville, Alabama base X and Hoffman, California, and blue origin and Kent Washington. And so each of these people had their own unique perspective on what that looks like. And so generally speaking, Dianetics had like a very like particular way of designing it. But blue origin knew exactly what NAFA wanted for the human landing service HLS. They gave everything to NASA exactly. As they wanted space X didn't do that. Basic, this Starship delivered way more than what NASA was. And then what they were expecting. So there was something basically like, here's this like weird kind of oddball design. Dianetics something that's exactly Goldilocks blue origin. And then there's something that's just like way out there. And so the budget that NASA was given was only the amount was, was just enough to give it to one company, even though in prior in the way that the competition with that these contracts were like, yeah, we reserve the right to give, like to people, right. But like, they just didn't have enough money to be able to do that. And so they only gave it to space X and Dianetics and blue origin filed a dispute with the GAO or government affairs office where it's basically, they handle all disputes. And the, the gal basically said, yeah, NASA was totally in their right to only give one based on their budget. Even if you wanted to adjust the price. So it was too late, like NASA is right, but blue origin wasn't taking that very well. And so there's sort of this like belief that blue was fighting in the law in the court of law in order to get a second contract because they really want to be like the company that's taking the, the humanity back to the moon. And so there's a little bit of like discontent within the company itself where people are seeing these infographics of like essentially blue origin marketing bashing, bashing the space X design for Starship, and also being kind of petty to Virgin galactic, to like the whole like new Shepard actually takes you to suborbital space and unity doesn't. So like, it was just a bad look and there's this huge rip between management and like the workers there. And so the public perception of blue has changed and soured dramatically. And it's not great because not because blue is, has always been a very secretive company. And so the, if the only thing you hear about a company is bad. That's all you have to work with. And so everyone just is like mad, hating on blue origin. They're hating on bayzos they're hating on Bob Smith, who has, I think a really, really low Glassdoor. The CEO is the CEO of blue origin, the CEO of blue origin. So just to give you like reference, like I think rocket lab, Peter Beck was like 83. Relativities Tim, Tim Ellis was like 92 and Elon is at a 93%. So there can be a bigger gap between like culturally engineering and like leadership wise for blue origin. Why is that? Why, why, why is there a big disconnect between management and the employees? So if you were to look online, a lot of people's perception of blue origin is that it's old space with Billy and your money, right? The old space being very like heavy on traditional systems engineering, the whole validation verification, the VMB a hybrid. Executives and influential positions from old aerospace, like Honeywell Raytheon and things like that. And so the way that these people, these hires have had their successes based on, you know, these processes that they had in these companies, but the fear that these but the fear that people have about blue is that they are unable to shed their own tendencies and are very diehard on what has worked versus being adaptable to what could be. And so, because of Elan's background in software, which we all know is very scalable and very iterative, he took space X and they very software oriented direction. Whereas blue origin is seen as basically just like an old, private, like Boeing Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman. So the sort of innovation that people are stuck from blue is very low, as opposed to, they think basic, just transplanting, right? You people blame Bob Smith because he's from Honeywell and they're like, he's just bringing all his old stuff with them. And we don't like that. This is the, I guess it's like a speculation on my end, but it sounds like blue origin employees a number of contractors. And so maybe when you have a high number of contractors there isn't incentive alignment between like management or the employees and the contractors. And so when obviously contractors don't get like stock in the business or whatever, do you think that has any effect on it or is that not really as, yeah, like, I definitely think one thing that I've learned from reading about like Y Combinator is that they talk about how to align your employees, incentives with the company's success. And one of them is to dangle stocks and other things like that. I think for people that work in space, it was never really about the money. For me, the people in space are the most consistent and passionate group of people who really love their work and love going to work and doing this thing, you know, possibly creating these designs in the future in which they may never see an actual, tangible, personal return. And so when you just hire contractors, like they don't have that fucking sense of and it's just really about the money. And so sort of like circle back to that question about like, how does the wards spend their money? It seems to be on like hiring contractors. It seems to be like trying to get there quickly by throwing money at it. But obviously because of the secrecy of blue origin, like, I don't know. And a lot of people don't know how that money thinks that, but space X people like they're pretty diehard. Like it's kind of cultish, I guess, in a good, in a bad way. I don't think people are. Cultish about blue origin. I know the blue origin employees really care though. Like it's a really bad thing that there's this huge disconnect between management and them and the fact that we are. So Eric Berger wrote an art technical article about project Jarvis, which nobody at the company knew because it was secretive. They'll sort of siloed off. Bezos was like, we don't want char Jarvis to be inundated by paperwork, like the rest of the company. So we're going to basically give you free reign, closed box sandbox, go make something happen. I didn't hear about until I read Eric Berger, talk about it. And so did a lot of people. And it's probably because there is a discontent mole at blue origin. The opposite is like, Facebook's just like tells people pretty much like Elan had a tour with everyday astronaut, basically giving a personal tour of Boca Chica, be like, oh yeah, that's a tank. This is the thing. This is what we're going to do. And he's like, so open about it. And people feed off of that honesty. Right? So I actually want to go back to one thing, which you mentioned earlier, which is that blue origins, you said blue origin gave NASA the Goldilocks for the HLS, and yet they went with space X, Y I think it's because I think it was about how would you talk? How would you say that it was too good to ignore? Like space X is dine with too good to ignore. Like I mentioned before, a hundred tons to lunar orbit is insane. Nobody has ever done that. Right? Like you tell it's like, you give someone a single child, right. Or like a child who has like 10 brothers. You like, Hey, you get this tiny closet. Like Harry Potter, you get this. He builds his whole life, like picking furniture. It's gotta be this exact dimension. My light needs to be here. It's very specific. So constraint. And then somebody comes along and says, yeah, I'm going to give you the entire city of Los Angeles. How do you even fathom? Like, how do you, like, you're going to struggle to be like, I have no idea what to do with it. And I think that that possibility excited NASA so much so that they were able to say, because the cost of launch is so much less, we can now dream big and be big and sort of maybe capture the glory of the sixties where we were well-funded everybody loved us and really make an impact and do what NASA is really good at. And so I think maybe some people thought that blue origins was like a very straight path to progression and space like boom, exponentially. Right. So I think that's the big thing is the exponential return on, on this thing, NASA is making another bet. They bet on space X and Kissler when they were first starting. No ban on space X again, Are there any reasons to be skeptical of what, of the promises that basics has been making? Oh, a hundred percent undoubtedly, right? Like one of the HLS infographics that blue origin had was they were, they were hating on the amount of times the star ship needed to be refueled in orbit and Ilan got personal and he's obviously on his Twitter and he's like, yeah, that's not the right number. It's like significantly less. And so so-so Starship has some like never before done stuff. Okay. So they're going to be refueling. An entire spacecraft in orbit, right? Like Northrop Grumman had like a demonstration mission where they were doing satellite to satellite propellant, replenishments, but star should this stupidly big, right? Like it's not just like a small amount of fluid. It's a tons of fluid. And like, how do you deal with the engineering of that? And like, you're, you're also orbiting, right? So you have to be able to like, align like your, your lights, like manufacturing, tolerances. Like you can only accept so much slip in the wrong direction. Interstellar. Yeah. That was insane. And like, it's, it's gotta be automated. There's no way like human operators are going to be able to have that sort of finesse. That's why the dragon was so successful with autonomous docking was like, great. And that was the answer I gave you for the podcast from the last episode. Yeah. So there was the in-orbit fueling. There's also the fact that it's big as hell and it's going to land on the moon and like, what if it sinks or like it lands and tips over or like the. They have to take an elevator to basically go up and down. Like what if it just gets stuck halfway? Right. So there's all these things and like, it's just never been done. Right. But what's never been done allows you to do more if you're able to actually solve it. I just want to say a bit about like Yuan and I was reading the zero to one recently, again, like a second time. And in it, Peter Thiel says that Elan is the greatest salesmen that he's ever met. Like, he is like an ultra salesman. He could categorize a salesman as either bad, good, or like ultra good. And he thinks it's like one of those few people and Ilan, I think doesn't come across as, what we've grown up as thinking is if somebody is a good salesman, which is like, they're really in your face, they're like always selling you on something you want is more like, let me put this idea out there, let it germinate in the population. And then let me show them just a little bit more and let me just like, sort of reel them in. I love what he did. I think he got a lot of hate for this, but he did the, if you guys saw the AI robot thing where he had the suit, a dance and everything, that's classic Yuan, because I think everybody could tell, look, it's not a robot. I think mostly it's not a robot. It's enough of an idea to put it into somebody's head that they're like, oh, wait a minute. Like, you know, is this a possibility, could this happen? So I think that's sort of the genius of Yuan. I think that's enough. That's enough me complimenting him. I did want to ask a few questions on blue origin specifically. We've been speaking a lot about the brand of blue origin of the reputation, et cetera. Do you think that Bezos going into space, you know, in his company's vehicle, which he financed, do you think that's ultimately positive direction for the branding or a negative direction for the brand? He gets blue origin It proves that you can do that also autonomously. So I think the big success of new shepherd was. I don't know if it necessarily proved the business plan. I'm not privy to that. But I would say the fact that all you have to do is just sit in a thing, push a button, and then you get to do your thing for three minutes and then come back safely is a big achievement, right? Like autonomy, autonomous systems are very difficult. And so I think that's often like the holy grail for something it's, it's as easy as breathing air, kind of that feeling, I think will ultimately it will be a, the, the amount of public outrage will be a footnote in the history books. Like it's because it's its own money. Okay. Yeah. Because it's his own muffing money, not, you know, Amazon workers and all that, because it's his own money, his own company. It's like, fuck you, man. Right, right. Yeah. People are not happy, dude. I, I mean, I get it. Like I get it. But part of me is also like, Well he's in space, so, yeah. And like that 18 year old kid, like hell a lockdown, like you just got to go for funsies. Like I think ultimately it did push the, I mean, I mean, I gave the example of like China wanting to do their own suborbital tourism. Right. China has a huge amount of people. There's a lot of rich people too. And like, they serve not just kind of like, you know, all of Southeast Asia and Asia as a whole. So like, yeah, there's, there's definitely a market there. And like, because of which is like the international traffic arms regulation and X. Arms regulation basically. Like we're not going to be able to like give secrets about military stuff and rockets and like hiring is a pain in the ass. Yeah. It's an underserved market. So like, yeah, it's going to be like baseless. This thing is going to be a footnote for sure. Like the amount of public outrage, but like that trip is, is going to be historic. For sure. The other thing I wanted to ask is how important would you say external validation will be going forward for blue origin to succeed? So I think if you look at historically a good example of a failed piece of external validation is them not getting that contract with NASA, but then a positive piece is maybe him going to space successfully like on an autonomous vehicle and coming back. So how many of more of these advances do you think need to occur in the right direction? And do you think that Ilian affect the success of origin overall? I think right now, blue origin needs. A hardware win. Like it would be great. Like it definitely 100% would be great if they got HLS a hundred percent, but people and the outside detractors have focused specifically on that ULA before partnership, I think for more relative to be boosted and also for the business plan of selling engines to, to also gain some traction as well, is we just got to deliver those engines, just deliver those engines and then get new Glenn flying. Like new Shepard is, is not dumb though, but like it's, it's done its thing. Right. It's got the right people to want to come to the, to the company, but we really need to get new Glenn going. Right. Like every day that passes more people realize like, yeah, it's like just getting further and further behind. And so getting that, that big thing will be like, yes, we have, we have successfully completed the before and given it to ULA, they're happy. They flew a mission on their Vulcan vehicle. It worked great. Fantastic. Everyone's like super happy. It's like that mean everyone and everyone likes that. So thanks for your work. I think that's a great note to wrap things up on soon. Everyone will be very happy and we will all be shooting our podcast on the moon. Hell yeah. Dude. Space jockey, you know, hosts and space, right? Yeah. We talking about space lawyers and space artists about space podcasters. Yeah. Or space DJs. Like the whole, you set up roofers all around the moon so that everyone can hear. I dunno. Moonquakes and stuff like that. Yeah. The acoustics would be very different. Yeah. I wonder if this can be like space, like space sound is going to be totally anyway. Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening guys.