Ep 5 - Escaping the Gilded Age: Why Humanity Needs a New Frontier

Join Ben and Paul as they welcome Blue Origin’s New Glenn to the stage, analysing its payload capabilities in comparison to Starship and Falcon Heavy and what it means for breaking launch monopolies. The conversation takes a deep philosophical dive, arguing that humanity has stalled in a "Gilded Age" and requires a new frontier to reignite hope and expansion, much like the push West in the 19th century. They discuss the terrestrial energy bottleneck, highlighting that we simply can't build turbines fast enough, and how this validates the explosion of interest in Orbital Data Centres.

The hosts unpack major developments, including Star Cloud successfully launching an Nvidia H100 into orbit and Google’s new Project Sun Catcher, which focuses on the complex coordination of satellite swarms for TPUs in space. Finally, Ben breaks down the physics of "bootstrapping the Dyson Sphere" using Lunar Mass Drivers and in-situ resource utilisation to manufacture solar arrays on the moon, while giving due credit to Rocket Lab’s growing role in the interplanetary ecosystem