Is There Life Beyond Earth? - with Dr. Alex Baker & Dr. Chris Rose

What if the next great discovery about life doesn't happen on Earth?

In this episode of Pulse, I sit down with Dr. Chris Rose and Dr. Alex Baker, co-founders of Sent Into Space and Diatom Watches to explore how space exploration is changing the way we think about science, innovation, and the possibility of life beyond Earth.

We discuss their incredible work launching experiments into the stratosphere, the discovery of organic microorganisms at the edge of space, and what it could mean for our understanding of life in the universe.

If you - like myself - are fascinated by space, technology, and the search for what's beyond our planet, I am sure you'll enjoy this next Pulse episode. 

Outer Space is Knocking with 'Sent Into Space' and 'Diatom Watches' Creators Dr. Alex Baker & Dr. Chris Rose.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlphaWireHQ

This episode was brought together by AlphaWire: https://alphawire.xyz/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Oh, we're not immune to the wonder of space, you know, having worked in the space industry for 15 years or so. If we see something cool, like it's a chunk of moon rock or a piece of metal from a specialist craft, we want to touch it, we want to analyze it. And we're not sprinkling a bit of moon dust into these watches. We want to take a full slice of the regular and put it in the face so that everyone could point at their watch and say, You see that? That's made from this XYOZ. We wanted to put that into something that the everyday person could take with them everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Welcome to Pulse by Alpha Wire, the podcast where science and education meet cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence. My name is Aldo DePop, and each week I sit down with innovators, thinkers, and doers who are working to change our world for the better. Together we explore their journeys, uncover the lessons they've learned, and take the entrepreneurial pulse that drives them on their path to success.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

What if the next great discovery about life does not happen on Earth? In this episode of Pulse, I sit down with Dr. Chris Rose and Dr. Alex Baker, co-founders of Sent into Space and Diatom Watches, to explore how space exploration is changing the way we think about science innovation and the possibility of life beyond Earth. We discussed their incredible work launching experiments into the stratosphere, the discovery of organic microorganisms at the edge of space and what it could mean for our understanding of life in the universe. If you like myself are fascinated by space technology and the search for what's beyond our planet, I'm sure you'll enjoy this next Pulse episode. Yes, and we are live with another interview of Pulse, and this one is a very, very exciting one for me because it combines the best of two things that I really am fascinated by and that I love very much. Uh space, let's start there, and then also watches. And I'm going to discuss that with Dr. Chris Rose and Dr. Alex Baker. A very warm welcome to the both of you.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Hi there, Aldo. Good to meet you.

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Great meeting you guys. And um, first of all, uh a big congrats on everything that you have achieved thus far. I was uh I was reading up about you guys and and all your endeavors of getting things into space and better understanding space and finding these organisms in space and then bringing that back. So this is a fascinating world. So uh big congrats uh to the both of you of uh you're already 15 years you were working in this and it's very impressive.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Well, thank you for the guiding words, Aldo. Yeah, we're we're super excited to be here also. We are, of course, space bands as well. And yeah, hearing up back sounds a bit strange actually. Did we really do all that? But no, we we're we're super excited to take a walk down memory lane with you.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Yeah, yes. Well, please do, because it begs the question so your your journey of building your ventures that are space related. So two ventures sent into space and diatome watches. Uh those endeavors are 15 years old, but I can imagine that your your own fascination is is is older than that. So please take me to kind of what got you motivated to to be so much into space.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Well, if we start, I think uh we both loved it for you know, since we were much younger, I'm sure. Um, you know, it's it's like all of the possibilities that you consider and all of the unknowns, you know, like uh something unknown is far more interesting than something known, right? So all of the possibilities that come with that are just fascinating. Myself and Chris both have we're fairly engineering-minded people, you know, we've both studied at university through PhDs, but also we kind of wanted to seek a way to combine that um that interest of uh the unknown and of space and and possibilities with our sort of technical capabilities. That kind of really brought us into this idea of can we personally launch things into space effectively? You know, we we wanted to see what was fundamentally achievable by ourselves in in that kind of field. Yeah, we both sort of just approached it with as much enthusiasm as you would expect.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

I don't think we had a particular end goal in mind right at that point, you know. We were doing our PhDs in mechanical engineering, so we did have access to technology and we were pretty inquiring uh in terms of like what we like to distract ourselves with. But it wasn't like we sat up one day and said we want to be in the space sector sending things into space. I suppose it did start from one particular project, and uh it was centered around trying to capture a very unique in my mind there's a few versions of this because you know Alex tells me one thing, I I remember another, but it's somewhere between uh some sort of photography competition, which we wanted to be part of, and ultimately our angle was to capture a unique perspective of the world, being very poor students and having no access to high-end um cinema grade cameras like our competition would be for you know this kind of competition. Uh, we we really lent into the fact that we were going to get the cheapest camera we could find. I'll spare you the long version of the story, but ultimately the idea was if we can capture a unique shot of the earth using this very accessible, limited technology, that would be something special and maybe stand us in good stead to uh be discussion worthy within the remit of that competition. And that led us to start to think about how can we get it up there? How will we find it yet? How can we get the technology to survive the harsh environment of space? And that led to our first flurry of attention, you know, our first viral hit, so to speak, which got us to sit up and and take stock of well, how do we capitalise on this attention? What do we do next? How do we do this better? And that was the starting point for what very quickly became sent into space.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Nice. So this is 15 years ago. I think things have evolved because not only objects are sent into space, but also people. Is that something you you desire to do as well?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

We don't want to be sending people into space purely for the paperwork. Um we can go as heavy as you want, as complex as you want, but um the red tape that comes with putting people in space is uh is not where we want our attention to be. But what we love about our jobs, and certainly what I love about my job, being uh sort of involved with the sort of front-facing client side of things, is um with we are challenged every day. Like our clients want us to do the biggest, boldest, most craziest feats in space. So I think the name sort of conjures the whole sent into space, we send things into space. It's so much more than that. We we are often tasked with pulling off very elaborate theatrical PR studs in the novel environment of space, and that could be executing some sort of outlandish fireworks display in space for a client like Disney, or it might be for a particular product manufacturer who wants to showcase the complexity of that product, have something open, have camera systems move around to capture multiple angles of that. We're challenged with trying to make the very, very difficult, almost routine in our day-to-day operations. Uh and it's a lot gone for it.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah, and on the other side of that, we also do a lot of serious work as well with um people looking to explore their own technologies in a space environment. So launching things before they would go onto a satellite, for instance, is is the kind of thing that we would do as part of the test platform. So we work with all kinds of different universities or sort of technology manufacturers who want to test something new uh in a space environment. And we've uh effectively over the last 15 years become the the world leaders in both those testing applications but also the commercialization of space itself.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

I was on the Sent Into Space uh website and I love like just doing opening a beer. You know, I saw I saw that happening, and it just adds so much magic to the product for some reason, right? It just allows us to go in that part of our imagination that is like, oh my goodness, so it must be big, it must be huge, all of a sudden it it becomes so much bigger, which is just such an amazing effect, really.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

And I guess that's well that's that's what keeps our day-to-day very fresh, you know. Like Alex says, we work backwards from the objectives of decline. So it might be some real-world, uh fairly regimented structural tests, or it might be some sort of ruggedized systems tests, uh, or it might be, like you say, pouring a beer in space and all have their different complexities for different reasons. Um but it does mean that uh we can find ourselves in some really absurd situations, considering very difficult scientific scenarios, but with a subject matter that can be quite unusual.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

Yeah. And if you don't mind me asking, like because this is so unique, I I I I've never heard of anyone else doing this. Uh, and I I appreciate you started this 15 years ago. Are there now loads more companies doing this?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Or are you, you know, as far as you see, like are you fortunate in being able to say that we we're pretty um solitary in our field. We we are, like you say, in a very unique uh niche market. And certainly there's no one I know that offers a service that's comparable. We do have some friends in the industry that maybe focus on the more tourism side of things. So, for example, there's companies that are prospectively working towards taking multiple tourists up into the space environment so everyone can raise a glass of champagne. And we've actually done a lot of uh promotion campaigns for these types of companies because whilst our area of interest above the earth is is similar, they don't really have the experience in camera technology and cinematography in that environment. But uh it keeps us on our game to remain the sort of world leaders in uh in something that we we're very excited to be part of.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

And then from sending things into space to taking things out of space and something very, very specific, right? A stratospheric diaton. Do I have that correctly?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Those words should not go together, and that was part of the interest. That was an interesting one, wasn't it, Alex?

SPEAKER_00 10:26

It was, yeah. So we um we effectively we conducted a piece of research. So if you imagine that you wouldn't likely find a golf ball floating in the stratosphere that had been lofted from the surface of the earth, so we were looking for particles above a certain size, and we were looking for particles that were organic, so life-based, or the building blocks of life, this is the kind of thing that we were looking for. And so we found a microorganism uh called a diatom at about uh a hundred thousand feet above the surface of the earth. And the current understanding of how things are lofted into the stratosphere doesn't explain how that particle was there, which leaves the intriguing prospect that it has been ceded to Earth from space. So there's a a theory known as panaspermia that um suggests that life may have begun elsewhere in the universe and then ceded to Earth from there. And so this is a piece of evidence that suggests that that may be a possibility.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Which we were very excited about, we wrote the papers on it, then nothing happened for a good while. Um and I don't know what the actual trigger was, um thinking on it, but I think uh there was some maybe some sort of NASA discovery that that sort of got some press attention to a similar kind of thing, and then all of a sudden we were in the limelight as um sort of authors in this field on this particular finding, and it was another whirlwind of attention for us, really. We were found ourselves on uh you can't quite see him in frame here, but um Morgan Freeman show in the US talking about these incredible findings, and we we were very careful from the outset not to get too carried away with how the media portrays these kind of things because you can imagine there's a lot of articles written on aliens coming from space and the likes, but but really the interesting takeaway is exactly how Alex put it. You know, it either came from the earth and the current understanding of the ballistics of particles is incorrect, which is a very um we'd be pretty proud of ourselves to be disproving um sort of physical principles at this point. So that would be quite interesting in and of itself, or quite simply, this organic matter has come from up rather than down. And that's where we sort of walk away from that statement. Um, but it's it was a very interesting project and uh it did get a lot of people very excited at the time.

SPEAKER_03 12:43

And so just so just so I get uh the terminology right, so you call that a diatom, right? The the particle, the organic particle that's in effectively uh is it alive? Is that is that the right way of referring to it? It's a little bit like algae.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Algae diet. So it's it's that kind of um yeah, sort of microorganism. It's like a shell or something. So we're not talking, you know, the size of a a sheep, we're talking the size of sub ten microns kind of size. So very small, but larger than you would expect to find at a hundred thousand feet.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

And and and is absolutely organic life at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_03 13:24

And so is there more lives than you think?

unknown 13:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Well, that's the question. Um have it there not been really like you know, I think it it's hard to imagine. I I I think um for a lot of people the sort of the world can end at arm's reach. But when it comes to space, just the vastness of it have been there not.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

I I think that it feels the statistical probability of it, right? So in millions of solar systems, in billions of galaxies, that it feels reasonably likely that you know this the the soft same um things that can occur to create life on Earth also exist elsewhere within those billions of billions of opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

And the fact we're here is so so statistically crazy that when people discuss openly things like whether life could be ceded from elsewhere, such as what Alex was saying about the panspermia argument, people can quickly dismiss things as all that sounds crazy. But I mean, physics and science can be crazy. Is that so strange as uh you know, life existing anyway and evolving and developing is crazy? The fact that it came from elsewhere rather than developed on Earth, is that is that much more crazy? Uh it's reasonable to me.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

I but I think what we do is we tend to humanize right away kind of what that life looks like. So that's where we get into our UFOs and kind of you know, people very much like ourselves, but aliens that will come and take over. And so we we attribute so many things already to that life, because our imaginations just go everywhere. That and that and that's that gets it into a whole different rabbit hole that I appreciate we won't address here. But I think that's where all these other theories uh rise. I I think the way you say it, of course, that comes across very normal, and of course, that you know we would be arrogant just to think that it's just us, right? But I think once we say, well, they're exactly like us, and they're gonna take over, and kind of all these, you know, novels, movies, and and science fiction, and and and what have you more that have been written, then then it gets into a a completely different rabbit hole, I would say. Yeah, what are your thoughts there? How far do you think we should go? Where should we stop?

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Well, in terms of uh sort of outward communication exploration for intelligent life. How possible?

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Yeah, the intelligent life, but also I think loads of people would they want to draw conclusions to it already. It's like it is what it looks like. Here's a UFO, I saw it yesterday, here's where they're coming, and and and the US government is hiding things from us and kind of you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

I won't believe the number of people that try to talk to us about conspiracy theories. In our line of work, um the flat earthers in particular seem to have a fun time uh trying to talk to us about um their ideas of uh you know the the nature of the planet.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah, it's uh seems to be a human nature for a lot of people to want to find some sort of conspiracy or that that people are working against others, or that there's a secret that perhaps they have an inside line to this new theory every day, as far as we can tell. But yeah, like we are actually quite unpopular with the flat earth community because the nature of our work and the fact that actually you listen to us, then they quite obviously are found to be incorrect because um our results talk for themselves, really. We don't need to talk for them.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

Yeah, let's stick to the the the science way, and I I think you've got so much experience and so many insights already, which is invaluable. And we didn't even get to finish the story because we kind of I got overexcited about a diatom, but with diatom watches, you're you're taking it to a next level because the diatoms are part of the watches that you offer.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Am I correct? The diatom name, yeah, absolutely, is um you've got a bit of insight into the backstory there. But um, with sent into space, we always wanted to develop that to be a sort of globally recognized uh and respected platform for getting things into space. And myself and Alex have always been you know big fans of watches. We love everything about them from the design to the engineering to the f the fashion, the style. It's a really cool balance between sort of mechanics and art. And to be able to utilize our platform to get something into space, there really couldn't be much of a better um, you know, demonstration of something that people could wear on their wrists that has that specialist storytelling to go with them.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Yeah, I think I think there's something very direct about the intersection of engineering and art in what we do every day in launching things into space and taking images of that. There's something very creative and artistic about that, blended with the engineering and the technology that actually is required to do that. And watches are really the same. You know, we have an opportunity to produce something that's admittedly, you know, a an an older technology, but it's still a a technology that is very complex and or it can be intricate, but combined with the art and storytelling that goes into that creation. And so that that intersection is is basically where we find ourselves fascinated constantly. And so developing a watch brand from what we do felt like a very natural thing to venture into.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Oh, we're not immune to the um the wonder of space, you know, having worked in the space industry for 15 years or so. If we see something cool, like it's a chunk of moon rock or a piece of metal from a specialist craft, we want to touch it, we want to discuss it and analyze it. And so we wanted to put that into something that the everyday person could take with them everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Yeah, we're very privileged. We sort of recognise that we have access to things that most people don't. So whether that's through our connections in the in the space sector or elsewhere, we have access to some really incredible materials. Like we we have a piece um of material that came from Apollo 11. And when you when you hold that in your hands, you you feel a certain way, you you feel really connected to the mission and the the undertaking that went into that achievement. And again, we as as part of sort of developing the the watchbrand diaton, we wanted to uh be able to kind of connect other people in the same way. So we incorporate these materials into our watches, so we would incorporate um a piece of the Apollo 11 spacecraft into a range of watches so that when somebody picks up one of our watches they feel that connection, they feel this uh you know this way about the mission. And similarly, we have access to rocks that originated on the moon. So that'll find its way into a watch dial. And we have you know a bunch of other different spacecraft and aircraft that um have a massive historical significance. And yeah, we we see it as kind of like a curation of those artifacts, but also that ability to connect people with those stories and and uh those kind of historic space missions.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

We also get the the the luxury of being able to take people really down the rabbit hole on that storytelling because of our background in in materials analysis and our PhDs in engineering. We we can actually show people, you know, don't take our word for it that it's meteorite. Here's the scanning electron microscopy of the grain structure of your watch face that you can access through, you know, the the warranty cards and and the online content. But ultimately, we don't want people to take our words for it, we want to we want to show them and also not to be sort of combative to our competition because uh I don't think we have direct competition in quite the same way as others because of the uniqueness of the offering. We're not sprinkling a bit of moon dust into these watches. We want to take a full slice of the regular and put it in the face so that everyone could point at their watch and say, you see that that's made from this X, Y, or Z. So we're not figurative about any of this.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

A couple of questions come to mind. One is from you guys doing sent into space to yes, having a mechanical engineering background, but then all of a sudden becoming watchmakers. What was that process like? Is that was that an easy process? Or because that's a whole different ballgame, I can imagine.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

It was a slow process, Aldo. We didn't want to rush anything. First of all, we wanted to make the right watches, something that we felt was beautiful. We don't want to make something that just celebrates these things or shouts about them as a little avant-garde. We want to create something that we jointly, uh as the founders and our lead creatives think is very, very special just to look at. Then we want to uh make sure that uh it's designed in such a way that celebrates all these specialist materials and then have the best movements and everything is carefully considered. Only then do we really sort of lend ourselves to the watchmaking side of things. So it's been something we did not want to jump into and run the risk of potentially creating something that could be argued as merchant. You know, this was never to be sent into space, has made a watch now and could be considered somewhat gimmicky. That's the last thing we would want our products to be perceived as. Um, instead, we developed the brand to be exactly what we feel it is: a prestigious watch, uh watch brand that creates beautiful timepieces that have discussion-worthy content. I mean, every watch that we sell is is launched into space. So we don't limp into these talking points.

SPEAKER_03 22:30

It's amazing. But so did you partner with someone else who actually understands watches, or did you need to start from scratch and creating them? Just give me a little bit of an insight in other than the space bit, like how is the watch created? Because I appreciate this is a this is a market in and of itself, like you've got the Swiss watches, and then you've got this and that, and and and then and the other. So it's kind of this in this entire craft in in and of itself as well. How d where did you start that specific part of your journey?

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Yeah, uh you're quite right. You know, we've internally, you know, we we have designers and uh creatives, and we ourselves are like you know, creative within the center in the space side of of the business every day, you know, the outputs we have there. So from a design point of view, we found it that relatively straightforward to define something that we we felt represented the materials that we were working with. In terms of the uh the actual technologies that are going on inside the watch, uh yeah, we've we've had to kind of do a loss of work there, and uh it arguably leans more onto the the research side of things for us than than anything else. So making sure that a watch movement that works or is designed to work on the ground and can function after a space flight. So we were kind of keeping really keen from the start that the our watches have albeit begun with a journey, um, everything has been flown to space and returned so that that's the first stage of that watch's life, and the watch will last uh for years and years and years and and go on this incredible journey with whoever eventually owns it. So what we needed to do essentially was make sure that the the movements that we were working with would survive that journey because the precision required afterwards is still extreme, right, to make sure that it'll function correctly. So a lot of time and effort and and work went into all sorts of things from the specific movements we're using to the lubricants that are used in those movements. We're sending things into an environment that may be minus 70 degrees Celsius. You know, it's it's it's quite an extreme environment, so we wanted to make sure that the watches would be as perfect as before they were were launched.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Amazing. And if they can hold up in space, they you know, certainly. Absolutely. So we would say our our movements are all space tested, you know, which is just fascinates me, at least I mean all our sides of the same.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Sounds very quality control process following the launch to uh to assess everything, to make sure everything's perfect before it goes out to its uh end user.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

I want to talk about uh space and the future of space. So uh on this show we've had the pleasure of having as a guest Anushe Anzari, and she's the first space tourist. I think the first ever I think female space tourist. Um, I think many years ago she went into space with NASA. So I had the pleasure of talking uh to her earlier on. And I've also interviewed uh a space lawyer. I wasn't even aware that that exists, but it's someone who kind of looks into what we take from space and who is actually the owner of those things, specifically if we if you start mining on Mars or those things, that that is kind of a new like like you had the international seas, or you know, when you when you're there, then what belongs to who, etc. etc. So that is also a further evolving thing. And then you just addressed as well the space tourism, right? So that's kind of a new evolving thing. So when we talk to each other in 20 years, where are we gonna be with with space? Is that is it is gonna be mainstream? Are we just gonna have flights into space? Is that gonna be a normal thing, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Or where people be surprised, won't we? I think the acceleration in technology, I think anyone can know the answer to that question, but we are seeing some exceling trends at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yeah, it's it's hard to imagine it it becoming something that is super cheap to achieve, you know, just just to the energy to achieve escape velocity or to send something into orbit is is really high. So it's kind of hard to imagine that the cost of that energy ever gets to a point where it's cheap enough for it to be like a plane flight. But you never know, you know, technologies do develop and and some technologies appear a little bit out of the blue and move things a long way further down the line. Um certainly right now we're in another space race. You know, you can see uh countries around the world trying to race to establish a presence back on the moon. There's obviously um discharge towards Mars as well, um, so which is you know, it's all really fascinating stuff. It's a new generation that gets to engage with this kind of like promise of space flight and the the potential that that it has. Um so it's it's really great to see from my point of view.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

I was at um a conference on on a sort of that I had an open-ended question on the future of space flight with a couple of months ago, and um, you know, there was a lot of very powerful people in that room with regards to like the space sector. And I think there was a clear answer to that question in that room, but it was a very clear demonstration of the appetite for space and the willingness and how much money these people are are looking to put into what the opportunity they see is is that like Alex was talking about, the future of like mining and things like that and resources, that could be an exponential opportunity for people. So the competition element of it, I think, is really gonna blow the door wide open on this in terms of the investment that goes into it and the speed at which things happen is gonna be accelerated.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

Yeah, and other really cool technologies come out of that exploration as well. So right now there were things going on like the forging of diamonds in space. So if you can forge something very pure, because there are no other particles to interact with that process, you can then return things to Earth that have a have a much higher purity. So diamonds, for instance, that then get could get used into electronics, which would then have a much better performance than something that was manufactured on Earth. And this is something that's up there now and is being developed. So there's all kinds of things that are almost like the fallout from space exploration. You know, I know NATA's credited for hundreds of inventions that we probably use every day because they had to work around a very unique set of obstacles that lead to this kind of innovation. So things things that kind of affect us day-to-day now are because we put in the effort we you know the humanity puts in the effort to uh explore space.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

It's crazy. Yeah, I I haven't even thought about it that way, that things that are very mainstream have found their origins in space because NASA used them, and we thought, oh, that that could also come in uh handy here in our in our day-to-day lives on on Earth. Do you know of anything that is already valuable in terms of mining? Because I remember that Elon Musk was so excited about oh, okay, we get to mine things from Mars, but is there is there already one element that's going to be very useful here, or am I now going too far?

SPEAKER_00 29:39

I I don't think anything is currently being mined. There are missions that have, for instance, captured a sample of um an asteroid. So um that's kind of like the early steps into what ultimately turns into okay, can we return resources from space? You know, and obviously in order to successfully establish a base on Mars, you would need to be able to use the resources of Mars itself to establish that properly, or or at least it's a much more efficient way than sending up rocket after rocket to supply whatever team ends up out there. So, yeah, that there's kind of drive to do more with the things that are available. And I assume that that's a significant portion of what's going on with that return to the moon is kind of figuring out okay, in this environment, how do we use these resources to generate the things that we need in order to kind of need to work within that and and build within that environment.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of attention on asteroids at the moment because I mean with space, scale is is one of the big buzzwords, and then you know that's where a lot of the money and consumables is going, is traveling these far really far different distances, and then you've got to carry weight back with you. But um, I remember at this conference a lot of people were were talking about, you know, they know of a lot of asteroids that are very rich in certain minerals. There's some with um tremendous amounts of um diamond on them, there's some with tremendous amounts of like precious metals on them, which mostly are uh useful for electronics. But um the good thing about them is that they're moving through space and they have a good understanding of their orbits and timings, and then get your timings right, you have to travel a relatively short distance to bring some back and then and you actually use the velocity of that to get you back in an efficient manner. Oh yeah, ten years ago, this would be an unbelievable movie. Like nothing.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

But it but it is things that that people are actively working on and um actively trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:42

So loads of things happening, and that begs the question, even though you've already answered it, is like how has AI kind of changed the game here, or AI or technology? Do you think I mean I can only imagine it has accelerated this, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:55

From the work that we do, we're a little bit combating against the presence of AI imagery, for instance. So people can generate it all kinds of imagery with AI. We like to do things in the real world, if you like. So it's not so much a pushback, it's it's more kind of like a grabbing holder. It's like the vinyl collectors almost who want to kind of retain this physical real thing in the face of something that ultimately can be used to mislead. And the the watch is is is kind of potentially part of that as well. You can't AI a watch onto your wrist.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

I think it's been really good for us. I think that what you know, on Alex's point, like from my seat, talking with clients uh uh very early in their conversation with us, like it's been a really healthy thing for us because on the one hand, people have always been able to manipulate imagery. Like if someone wants to just say my brand went into space, they could do that before AI very easily. Like, Photoshop's been around for ages, and people have been very good at Photoshop for ages. Just like you can Photoshop yourself on a beach in Mauritius and said, I had a wonderful holiday two weeks ago when you actually didn't even leave your house, you could do that, but where is your experience? Like, there's no point in doing that. And and actually, on the other side of that coin, as Alex was saying, we're able to lean into this sort of thirst for doing things for real. There's never been so uh so much appetite for it, really, you know. And and the watches is a is a great reflection of that. Like the watch market at the moment is is doing so well, in my opinion, because you can lay your hand on it. It is absolutely uh it has history, it has personality, it's real world, and that our missions uh are very similar in that point.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Yeah, and it it's not not necessarily even like um purely combatative thing, it's it's kind of just something that lives side by side. Yeah. So there's there's a kind of a a development of AI to kind of essentially improve a lot of aspects of life, although obviously there's various risks in it as well. But there's a whole other side of things that is more of a a kind of tangible thing in the the reality of the world we live in. So yeah, we we kind of sit, I guess, more on that side of things um naturally.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

So deny it's a it's a very useful tool, let's face it, in engineering, in any industry, it's very useful. And you know, it has accelerated things that used to take us a long time, sort of you know, things like coding, and I'm sure it's transformed that industry. But it it really doesn't change much fundamentally for us. It's just an acceleration tool for some processes that were long-winded are a bit faster, but yet for our day-to-day hasn't really been transformative, just a useful tool.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

I like what you're saying, and I I just had a conversation about it this morning that AI in its worst form is seen as kind of this master forger or this master simulator, and it could be almost applied to each industry. It's like, well, why do we need you know, you did the conversation I had this morning, it's like, why would we need music if AI can make the music? Well, you know, music is more than music, music is an entire narrative. So the role that, for instance, music played in the civil rights movement in the United States, and the person I was talking to was talking about Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., and that the fact that Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. were very good friends and they went on tour together, but at some point Sammy Davis Jr. in those days couldn't stay in the same hotel as Frank Sinatra because of the color of his skin. And you know, the fact that they made music together kind of broke through those barriers, and that's not a thing that AI can simulate, right? So it's the music, but it's also the narrative. There's an inherent fear with us that we kind of think, okay, if AI can do it faster or can forge it, and then you know, then people are gonna go for the fast food version, uh, but they won't will never have the narrative. And it's actually the narrative that we're looking for, right? We're really looking for the story and everything that backs that story. And I think your your watches are a concrete example of that. It's like, well, you can use AI, but it it's never gonna be the real thing. So what is it that we humans are after? Certainly it's the it's the real thing. And if the if if you discover later on it's a forgery of sorts, then you're you're not gonna be as excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

I think it's like a a tangible connection to something a human did. Yeah. Ultimately, it's it's like if a machine paints a painting that is identical to uh uh Picasso, that is fine. Like a machine did this thing. Um Picasso did this painting, and it's the connection to the fact that a human did that.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

And I think that's the bit that's ultimately missing between those two options. Yeah. Um and so when you look at a watch or an image that has been actually taken from space or any of those kind of tangible real things, it's a connection to the fact that humanity did that. Yeah, like human did that. So yeah, a c a computer can simulate it, but it's somehow less fulfilling than that feeling. You could watch a remote control car race down a 100-meter track, and it's not the same as watching humans do it. Yeah, it's the same thing, it's it's like we we have a connection because we're all you know living this human experience.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

Yeah. And we want to continue to have the human experience. So I think we're not gonna go for the you know, the AI version of that because it doesn't give us that experience. And I think it uh you know, whatever we try, it has been debunked many times. The fact that people say, oh, social media connects, well, it does to a certain degree, but then on a on another level, it doesn't at all. So it doesn't it doesn't replace the real human connection that we need and crave. It just you know gives you likes and friends and not even friends and kind of all those things. So I I I I think we should stick to our guns and and and and and continue to pursue the path of what gives us a genuine human connection. And I think your watch and sent into space is a concrete example of that. And you're also right in saying, but AI does offer us a lot of new things that we can accelerate and and be better in creating again that connection, that human connection that we want. So let's use it for that. Um what do you think is the biggest misconception when people speak about space?

SPEAKER_01 38:11

I think I think a lot of people think the space is is you know outer space. A lot of people's minds go to the really far away, and there's so much that we don't know about space in relative proximity to Earth. The sort of plethora of different vehicles at people's disposal now to explore space, I think as well, we've already actually touched upon it, just how difficult space still remains, even in the modern day, how expensive and complicated and long-winded it is to sort of plan missions to still explore space.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

It's like inconceivably vast is space. You you can't possibly conceive just how big it is, even if you think, oh yeah, it's really big. No, it's it's bigger than that. It's bigger than that. Uh you know, but at the same time, it's also closer. So, you know, within 30 kilometers of the Earth's surface, you're at less than 1% of the air pressure that there is at sea level. Yeah. So it's really close. It's it's not like there's a whole heap of sky before you're into this relatively hostile work, you know, environment of space. So I th I think that when you don't give it too much thought, it's kind of like, oh yeah, it's uh it's over there somewhere, and then it's kind of yeah, it's big, but actually it it it it doesn't really grasp at the the absolute enormity of it, but also how close you know it is to home.

SPEAKER_03 39:32

Whenever I think about it, it makes me feel really small as well. Like it's like it's so. Yeah, it's it's yeah, it puts things in perspective, I guess. Yeah. Nice. What are you most proud of?

SPEAKER_01 39:51

That's a tough one. I think for now, I'm really proud of the fact that we developed a platform that was not easy to do, remains difficult to do, and we were able to utilize that to bestow interesting USDs to something we have a lot of love for. So we are exactly the same as any of our customers when we're at the bar ordering a pint and we've got that watch on our wrist, and we were able to go, Oh, check this out. Did you know that this is a slice of you know, minky right that's older than the earth? And actually the the metal here is is from the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander or command module. So that's something that I could take a lot of excitement from, and to be perfectly honest, a lot of pride from that we made that happen.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yeah, and and I think sort of just taking that a step further, and I I feel really proud that we're able to share that experience with other people. You know, like I said, we're fantastically privileged to work in this industry and with some of the people that we work with and the historic craft that they work with. And so being able to kind of share in that sort of experiential connection with with those things is just brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Yeah. And so the the watches, because I see I've been taking a look, so there's there's a range, you know, 2,200 pounds to 650 pounds, so it's it's a it's a wide range. You also need to adhere to bringing out new collections and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

And yeah, there's a there's a lot on the horizon. Um, you know, what we wanted to do from the outset is to take that access to space and not just reserve it for the fortunate few that have got very big pockets. We don't want to be making prestige luxury watches that only the fortunate few can afford. We want to open the door to as many people as possible. Having said that, we also want the best of the materials in our watch. We don't want a dusting of a coating of a certain thing. We want to put the physical surface of the moon in. If we're talking about a moon watch, it's got to be all guns blazing in terms of the presence of that material. But I think we we we're pretty pleased with where we're at in terms of like our starting point and the breadth of our range and cost. But there is so much more coming out. Alex has been working on some designs this morning that has really dropped my jaw. And if I'm excited about it, I know everyone else is gonna be really excited about it. We're looking at space here and the space vehicles and space materials from planetary bodies. There's a whole other industries out there with specialist vehicles, with with interesting storytelling that um that we'd sit very neatly at.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

Very exciting, very exciting. Now you've got me curious, and I'll be looking at the website. I must say it's a very original formula, and I I'm I'm not a a watch expert per se, but I I I kind of I like the story, and I like, as you said, like this is older than than the world, or you know, you can you can put so much into it, and that's again that human experience, that extra bit that we're looking for, right? That that symbolism that you can then bring into a watch. So that's that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

I mean our job really is to just make sure we do uh those things justice, and the way that we explain them and the way that we uh talk about them. So yeah, we know how we feel when we're we connect with these uh watches and the the items and the stories and the the space flight, the space journey of the watches. Um and so we we just yeah, we're we're kind of really keen that we make sure we do justice in um sort of curating that history and and making sure people kind of connect in the in the same way.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful. And just to uh kind of also convey to our listener that you've already been so tremendously successful with with all the people that you've met and all the support that you've received in the United Kingdom, but also in the United States. I'm looking at I see Arnold Schwarzenegger there on your wall, and kind of other people that you you've been working with. So it's your endeavor in just 15 years, because it's not long if you're d building your own company, but it's tremendous, right? The impact that you've had and you know, the story that you've been able to tell to all these people, it must be tremendous. I mean, I'm vicariously living my life through you. I I'm very proud. I would be very proud.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

So that's very kind of you to say. Well well, we can't say much more other than that that we we love what we do. Uh it allowed to explore very different approaches to space missions very frequently. Uh and it allows us to indulge our passions for space. And we are so behind giving people access to that storytelling because we know how much we love it. And we've worked in the industry for a good while, but we're not desensitized to it. So we're we're we're excited about the future.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Oh, and we're we're just really fortunate that through doing something that we really love doing, um, yeah, we've we've been able to sort of meet all of these incredible people. So working with uh NASA astronauts and just uh all kinds of really interesting human stories. We've just been so fortunate to kind of be involved in our way with with all that, just from doing something that we love doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:57

Wonderful. Well, it sounds like a dream. Of course, we're not at the end of the interview yet, but I hope you will thrive, thrive, thrive, and be very successful in everything you do. Uh, now to my two very last questions, and that's for each of you. And I ask every single guest uh on the program. I've developed into an amateur researcher on morning routines. So every single guest that comes into the program, I ask the following question: Do you have a morning routine? And if so, do you care to share? Who wants to go first, Chris or Alex?

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Oh well, mine's pretty boring, so I'll go first because I can call it a routine because my mornings are identical, first thing. And it is once the kids are ready, it's uh saving my morning coffee for the office. I don't, I don't can't have it any earlier. It has to be when I walk through the door. It's my little treat. Take the dog for a walk, and then I'm behind my laptop with that coffee, and my day starts with finishing off where the day before was and getting into grips with some of the interesting things that are coming into our inbox, and we're very, very fortunate that we very rarely start our day without at least one interesting talking point.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Nice. And do you live far from the office?

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Not too far from the office door, really. Um probably a 15-minute drive, but um you could run it if uh you were a bit more like Alex, who uh who whose morning I I'm sure starts with a lot of exercise.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:17

I uh begs the question, your morning routine. There we go.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yeah, like my morning start pretty early, uh typically. So I race triathlon's as a hobby. So this morning I was up at uh five, did an hour and a half run, got the kids to school, and had an hour of swimming, and then uh came into the office uh to sort of yeah, grab a coffee and then get on with the day.

SPEAKER_03 46:43

My goodness, this is too much. And is that every morning for you, or is that like now are you now in preparation for something that you are like running and then swimming?

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Yeah, so not every morning is the the same activity. So with triathlon, you've got swimming, biking, and running. So I'll do typically uh at least one of those in the morning, and then potentially if it's uh a shorter run, I might do that on a lunch break. And then uh yeah, I'm I'm kind of currently uh preparing for the world championships in Spain in September. Okay. So um yeah, racing that. So that yeah, really exciting. But obviously it takes a lot of uh commitment as well. And for me, it it's it's really nice to kind of have that um the exercise routine in the morning, you know, something to to wake up to to to have done. And you have that um small feeling of achieving something before the main day starts.

SPEAKER_03 47:35

You say small, but if it's and running and swimming, you have yet to start today that's not small. Like I do a 20-minute uh skipping rope, but it is you know, jumping rope. That's that's my small feeling.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

It's it's really nice, yeah. You know, it I think a little bit of um sort of waking up uh your muscles and your circulatory system, and it just kind of gets everything firing a little bit more for the day.

SPEAKER_03 47:59

Like the like the rush, like the cardio rush that you're kind of like, oh, you feel just a tad more awake, and then you know, and then I already get into my morning coffee, so I'm not able to restrain myself until I'm at the office. That's gonna be my second one already, but good. We could talk for hours about morning routines. I don't know why I'm fascinated uh by and I I asked these questions also to learn, maybe to integrate it into my own program, but I don't think I will do a triathlon prep anytime soon. I'll leave that with you. And then for my very last question, and this is about reading, actually. So I'm sure there are people listening that say, wow, the career path of Chris and Alex, that's amazing. Has there been any type of content, which could be a book, could be a movie, could be an article, that has inspired you as young mechanical engineers and to embark you further on this journey that you would recommend for our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 48:52

I think we couldn't really end the interview without saying that uh you know we've definitely taken some inspiration from the work of Joe Kittinger, albeit in old YouTube videos. If you aren't familiar with Joe Kittinger, he's uh an absolute legend in uh he was a NASA highlight, wasn't he? Uh and he jumped from space. You'll have many people will be familiar with uh Felix Baumgartner, who with Red Bull jumped from uh from space in that incredible project. But but Joe was doing it back in the 60s with uh duct tape holding his gloves onto his hands, and that definitely played a role in uh both our understanding of that that pot that region of space, but also our ambitions to explore it in our own way.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

Yeah, and obviously there are you know a great number of historians of space history, you know, people like Richard Wiseman that do some amazing literature talking about different aspects of the moon programme, the Apollo program, and things like that. So, yeah, it's there's an absolute wealth of things out there to kind of explore and and delve into that in their own way just feel inspiring because you see that progression of you know, it was not very long between the first flight and the Apollo missions, and then it's again not not very long until you've got presumably people flying towards Mars. It's there's a rapid development of all kinds of things, and and some of the history of that development is is really fascinating. Some of the things that people had to endure in the early sort of NASA days in order to effectively test pilots test you know, s sitting themselves on thousands and thousands of tons of explosives to see what happens, is a fascinating read in any context.

SPEAKER_03 50:30

So Joel Kittinger and Felix Baumgartner, do I say that correctly?

SPEAKER_01 50:35

Yeah, Felix Baumgartner um did a a jump about 15 years ago or so, maybe a bit less, 12. Uh unfortunately died not too long ago, um, but was an absolute legend. Of I don't think you could just uh pigeonhole him to that project. He's um he's done some incredible things with regards to high octane stunts. I think he was a pilot. And Joe Kittinger, I mean, he was actually um part of the Red Bull project as well. He was in the control center as a coordinator of all things important.

SPEAKER_03 51:09

It's been lovely talking to you. I'm very inspired. Uh I hope I will send something into space one day uh or maybe become a proud owner of a diatom watch. Uh, we'll be sure to include uh all the links to Sent Into Space and Diatom Watches into our show notes. I wish you all the very, very best. Uh, the world has already heard a lot about you, but I'm sure they're gonna hear uh loads and loads more. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Chris Rose and Dr. Alex Benkin.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

Thanks for having us, Alda. Real pleasure talking with you.

SPEAKER_02 51:47

You've listened to Pulse by AlphaWire, produced by Natalie Piles and Amela Faisal, with great music, The Optimist, written by Holly Hamill, performed and produced by Alo.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Episodes hosted weekly by me, Aldo DePahn.