David Anderman: Space (Investing) is Big. Really Big. From Lucasfilm’s Star Wars to SpaceX to…The Final Frontier

Episode Transcript
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Kent Lindstrom (00:01):
Uh, Space the final frontier. Hey, folks, it's
Kent Lindstrom, my guest today,David Anderman, you know, maybe
a way to think about thisepisode is that in technology,
every so often a new technologyemerges, a new world opens up,
and everything changes. Thinkabout the internet. Before the

(00:24):
internet, you might have dreamedof a social network, but you
couldn't build one. But when theinternet emerged, it opened up
the world, and now there'ssocial networks that connect
billions of people. The samewith, for example, mobile.
Before mobile existed. Now youmight be able to imagine Uber
but you couldn't build it, butthen mobile came along, and
transportation changed forever.So today, there are two

(00:47):
technologies that are like that,which means we're living in just
an extraordinary time. One ofthem is AI, that's not the topic
of this episode, but the otheris space. And while you weren't
looking SpaceX and othercompanies like it made access to
space cheap, impossible, wherepreviously it was basically
expensive and impossible foranybody who wasn't a government

(01:11):
today, people with a dream andan idea and $5 million from a
venture capitalist can go try tobuild a space mining company, a
hauling company, manufacturingcompany in space, a startup, a
startup just landed a probe onthe moon. I don't think anyone
has a more interestingperspective on investing in

(01:32):
space, or space in general thanmy guest today, David Anderman.
David Anderman were forLucasfilm, for George Lucas.
That's right. Star Wars helpedGeorge Luca sell that company to
Disney. And then, well, he wentto real space. He went to work
for Elon Musk as his generalcounsel, where he oversaw things
like the launch of Starlink. Andthen, well, you'll find out what

(01:54):
he does next. He starts aventure capital company called
stellar ventures, and we'll tellyou what they do. But I really
think you're gonna like thisepisode. As Douglas Adams said
in hitchuckers Guide to theGalaxy, space is big, really
big. Welcome back to thesomething that's your podcast.

(02:16):
All right. Welcome back to thesomething about your podcast.
I'm Kent Lindstrom. I'm yourhost. My guest today is David
Anderman, how are you doing? I'mdoing great. Thanks so much for
doing this. David's an attorney.That's doesn't sound that
interesting, but hang on,there's more. This is the week
for cool careers on on somethingventured. He was at Lucasfilm as

(02:39):
general counsel and chiefoperating officer that wasn't
enough. He went to SpaceX, wherehe was general counsel, and if
that wasn't enough of a career,he's now a co founder partner at
stellar ventures, which isinvesting in space and related
things. This is a heck of acareer you're putting together
here. Oh, thanks.

David Anderman (02:58):
Yeah. I feel pretty fortunate. My sisters
like to say that I manifested myeight year old self into a
career.

That is pretty accurate. Now, did your eight
year old self, uh, see StarWars? Like, when you came to
Lucasfilm? Oh yeah, it was likeyou saw the thing, like the,
like, your eight year old, yeah,the real star wars?

Oh yeah, yeah. No. I mean, I had, you know, I
famously watched Star Wars 17times in the movie theater when
I was eight years old. And thatwas like the thing that summer
of 1977 that was the thing youdid as an eight year old. I
mean, every single weekend wewent to the Nanuet mall and we
watched Star Wars, yeah, so Isaw it 17 times. Now, of course,

(03:37):
I didn't tell George that when Iinterviewed for the job. In
fact, I didn't tell George thatuntil we were on the plane. It
was he and I on the plane goingdown to Disney from Northern
California to sign the deal. AndI told George I saw Star Wars 17
times in the movie theater whenI was eight years old, and my
favorite movie is Empire StrikesBack. And he was really touched.

(03:59):
He was It was great. And as agift when I ultimately left
Lucasfilm a few years after,when we were doing the
integration with with Disney,when I left, he gave me a one of
the original at Acts and snowspeeder from Empire Strikes Back
as a going away gift.

Oh, that's incredible. It's hard to
describe to people who weren'tkids in 1977 what that was like
there? And there's a thing thatI think, if I get this one
wrong, you know, there's amoment in the movie where the
thing comes overhead, it's thethe think it's like an Imperial

(04:35):
cruiser and a star destroyer,Star Destroyer, right? It's
Darth Vader ship, right? Yeah,comes from, kind of feels like
behind you and comes over youand is so enormous, like, you
just can't believe what you'reseeing. It's so

the music from John Williams, since at that
point, you know, don't it's thechasing the Tantive for because
you got to know this. Rebelblockade runner, and it's
leaving, and then it rushes offthe distance, and suddenly the
star destroyer comes behind you,this ominous president, one of
the best

it's just an incredible moment when you like,
I know now people like, oh yeah,that's like a fortnight, you
know, I see that all the time,but back then, at that time, and
that summer, when you saw that,it was just, just incredible.
Yeah, it

was amazing. It was, it's an amazing feat of
movie making. And one of thethings that I'm super proud of
is, right, right after we didthe deal with Disney, John Noel,
who's a, you know, Oscarwinning, world famous, you know,
visual effects artist, butcreative genius, and is now a
senior role at Lucasfilm, hecame to me afterward, and he
said, Look, I've had this ideapercolating in my head for a

(05:40):
long time about, you know, thethe story leading up to that
scene, right? And that's whatbecame Rogue One. He said, Do
you think that Kathy Kennedy, atthat point, became the the
president of Lucas? Do you thinkshe'd be interested? And I said,
Absolutely, you know, do youthink she'd be open to listening
to this story idea? And I said,Of course she would. And we, you
know, brought it over to toKathy, and then ultimately,

(06:03):
that's what became Star WarsRogue One, which is one of my
favorite of the new movies. Andit's that whole story leading up
to that moment, right? You know,Darth Vader is chasing Princess
Leia and trying to get the plansback to the Death Star, yeah.
And it shows that moment. Itjust, I mean, it just shows how
iconic that moment is, that youwant to have a whole film just

(06:24):
about the lead up to thatmoment. Yeah,

it's such an incredible world. You're a
venture capitalist. Now, I hadto bring this all together. Cyan
Banister on the podcast a coupleweeks ago, and she has a great
story. If you haven't heardthis, I think you're a character
in her story, where she wasmaking films as a kid with her
buddy, Lucas and they bought theURL Lucasfilms. And for the next

(06:47):
couple years, she was receivingemails inadvertently, from
people who are trying to emailLucasfilm. And at some point,
the lawyer Lucasfilm sent her acease and desist, and I think
she said she settled for ajacket and a tour of the ranch
or something like that.

We, that would definitely have been me. I mean,
I was known as the when I wasthere. My screen name was Dark
Lord of the cease and desist. Sothe Yeah, we, it was, it was an
interesting time to be there.We, we definitely, you know, try
to get back a lot of domainnames. I mean, I was there
starting in early 98 Iinterviewed 97 started early 98

(07:26):
and it was really just like, youknow, the heyday of the growth
of the internet, yeah. And wewere trying to deal with this
whole thing of domain names, andhow do we deal with that? How do
we go after them? And what do wewhat kind of approach do we
take? And I'll say while we werethere, you know, George in
particular. But you know, ofcourse, myself as well, you
know, trying to, trying to doit, had a real change of

(07:49):
approach with how we were goingto, you know, go after these
things, and, and, and, you know,I think we started off pretty
strident, and then within a fewyears, very quickly, George
realized that, look, you know,the internet is it's, it's, it's
here to stay. It's never goingto change. People are going to
be taking, you know, at firstyou kind of thought of people
taking his art and changing it.That was something, a real

(08:10):
problem. And I think, like thePhantom edit fame, listen, which
is a film that people created, avideo tape that was like,
distributed behind the scenes,where they edited out the scenes
of Jake Lloyd from PhantomMenace, right? And, you know, he
was really upset about that, andbut then he had a real change of
heart and realized that, youknow, the the fan community is
one to embrace and embrace theinternet and embrace what we

(08:33):
decided to call expressions offan enthusiasm. And we so we
stopped really going after, youknow, the people who are just
creating fan sites and peoplewho are creating, you know, you
know, knitting patterns of howto make, you know, Yoda caps
with Yoda ears for their babies,right? And started embracing it.
And it was a huge flourishing ofthe online community for Star

(08:54):
Wars, right? And it was, it waspretty amazing. And we really, I
think, I think we reallycreated, you know, the this,
this, the beginnings of this fancommunity that's so famous now
for Star Wars, that thrivesonline, and people express
themselves in so many differentways. And I'm so proud of, like,
what we did and how weapproached it. You know, going

(09:15):
forward from that

point, it's kind of incredible watching that
happen in people make that movefrom, like, fighting it to not.
It happened in, like, liveconcerts. There was a moment
when the internet and mobilecame and the whole thing was,
like, put down your phone. Like,don't, don't record this. You
know that that kind of thing.Like, there's even some things
where they would take yourphones at the door and they had

(09:37):
some system. And then peoplerealized, maybe culminating in,
you know, the Taylor Swiftphenomenon. Wait a minute. Like,
share what we're doing. Sharethis moment with 500 people.

With like, well, think about the Grateful Dead,
right? I mean, the Grateful Deadfamous. They had taper sections
the in for their whole, youknow, history. And now that's,
that's every day, right? Andthey were way ahead of their
time. It's, you know. Know,embracing expressions of fan
enthusiasm. That's the phrase wewould use at Lucasfilm. And I
think it's, it's, it's even moreapplicable today. I think the

(10:09):
grateful

that that's, it's a great example of that.
Well, I mean, you know, it to bea fan on this. What is it like
working for George Lucas that's,I mean, he's just a larger than
you think of a thing withworking for larger than life
figures. But he seems like alarger than life figure. His
wife's, you know, one of themost incredible investors in the
world, like Melody's

amazing, yeah, George, George. George is a
really incredible, I mean, he'sa, he's a true visionary, I
mean, and a visionary, not juston the filmmaking side, you
know. And he has an incredible,you know, filmmaker's eye for
detail and for creating imageryand envisioning what these
things are going to look like.But not just that. He, you know,

(10:47):
he's a visionary on on on thetechnology as well. He's as much
a technological visionary as heis a filmmaking visionary. And
he would joke sometimes, I mean,he would say to me, you know,
look, Lucas Films, 50% of filmcompany, 50% of technology
company, and 50% of toy company.So his math wasn't so good, but
he, you know, depending on theday it was it was true, and that

(11:09):
was one of the things thatreally attracted me to
Lucasfilm. Look, I was not anentertainment lawyer. I was a
technology lawyer in SiliconValley. I was doing IP
litigation for Apple and Inteland all these companies and
exciting stuff, right at theheart of the Internet age, in
the internet day. And I went toLucasfilm because it's it's as
much George's. George was wayahead of his time on technology.

(11:30):
One of the first things that Idid for George when I came to
Lucasfilm was they put me onthis thing where we're going to
make digital cinema. And we werenegotiating deals with Texas
Instruments and JVC to put inplace the first digital
projectors ever. This is 1999and we were doing it to try to
do it so that when the PhantomMenace came out in May of 1999
that we'd be able to project thefilms digitally. Because

(11:52):
George's vision was that allStar Wars content, and certainly
the film was going to bedistributed digitally over the
internet. And it was impossibleat that point. You didn't even
have, there were no digitalcinemas. Right now, it's
impossible to think of, becausethere's, there's not a single
celluloid projector left in theworld, pretty much, right? And
when George did it, you know,Steven Spielberg came to me and

(12:13):
said, you know, George, you'renuts, right? You're you're
getting rid of the film camera.You're getting rid of the film
projector. It's like telling,you know, telling, you know,
Michelangelo to get rid of paintbrushes or the chisel, right,
right? It's just, that's, thisis the that's the art, that's
the craft. And George like,Nope, it's, it's, this is how
it's going to be done. It's allgoing to be digital. You're
going to do the capture it, andyou're going to edit it, and

(12:33):
you're going to change thesound, and you're going to do
visual effects, and you're goingto distribute it digitally. And
so working for him was amazing,because you really saw the
future, and you're actually apart of doing that future. And
you know, it's it was really aprivilege to be able to work
with him, and obviously, as a asthe eight year old kid who saw
Star Wars 17 times, it was verypersonal for me to then be

(12:55):
entrusted with helping topreserve his legacy. You know,
when we were negotiating thedeal with Disney of how we were
going to preserve this group ofcharacters in this environment
where you created thistechnology and these stories,
and make sure that was preservedfor for you know, his children
were basically sent off in theright direction. Real, real. It
was really amazing for me. Did

any of it ruin it for you? Like seeing how it
was actually made? Did the magicever go away? We're like, oh,
that's what it is. It's just,no,

I've never thought that. It's so funny.
I've never thought that. Italways amazed me that, like, you
know, the total company ofLucasfilm was about 2200 people
total. And it, you know, 200 ofthose were at Lucasfilm, and
that's where, you know, we'rekind of the people entrusted
with making the Star Wars films.And of course, we'd hire lots of
cast and crew. Of course, youknow, so 1000s of people. But it
always amazed me that, you know,these 200 people could

(13:44):
ultimately touch hundreds ofmillions of people that way. I
mean, that's the power of media,is that you can make something
and it just it. You wouldviscerally, you'd see the
people. So even today, I see itall the time, people just so
touched by those stories. Andit's amazing to see that now,
filmmaking is hard, right? Imean, the thing that most

(14:05):
surprises me, and most peopledon't realize, is just how hard
it is to make a movie. Yeah,like, making a great movie is
really, really, really hard, andpeople don't appreciate it,
right? Thinking, Oh, they justthink, Oh, you get a camera, you
start filming, and everything itis, it's incredibly hard. Well,
you see more of appreciation forthat.

You see it at the end of the movie where
you're like, Good lord, like,there's this thing's been
scrolling people's names.There's seven people, seven
accountants. You know, we'restill rolling it's crazy. How
did it take a lot of people tomake a movie? I know you weren't
the filmmaker, but did you? Myunderstanding is the original
Star Wars was a lot of physicalstuff, like, they really built
that? Oh, yeah, model. Did youknow how anything changed as it

(14:44):
became more digital all thetime?

Yeah, it's massive. I mean, it's funny me
and friends of mine, like, I'vesome good friends from
Industrial Light Magic andthings, who went through these
revolutions while I was there.You know, we went through the
digital revolution. I mean, Iwas just talking about the
projector digitally. But, youknow, you. Then we were in the
midst of the revolution at ILM,where things were going from
physical props, like makingmodels of things, and we were

(15:07):
making models on Episode One,like incredible models that you
just can't believe exist. And Ihave lots of stories about that.
I won't go down that rabbithole, but they made these
incredible physical modelsbecause it wasn't possible to
make everything digitally. Andthey had so many challenges just
with the things they had to dodigitally and so but, you know,

(15:27):
it was the right at that periodwhere the ILM bottle shop was
becoming, you know, obsolete,and all of model makers were
turning from making physicalmodels to having to make these
things in CG, in computergraphics, and that happened
during between Episode One andEpisode Two. Episode Two was
almost entirely digital. Byepisode three, we even captured

(15:50):
the film edited. Did everythingdigitally, and that's really
because George was pushing thestate of the art repeatedly. He
wanted it all done digitally sohe could create anything that
his mind could imagine. And,yeah, it's a really amazing and,
you know, now, right now, withAI and generative AI and the
ability to generate, you know,hyper realistic movies and hyper

(16:11):
realistic images of humans andhyper realistic situations very,
very, very easily, it's anotherrevolution in filmmaking where
these new tools are enabling,you know, people to make things
that never could have been madebefore, much easier, much
quicker, much more cheaply. So,and it's, I think it's a real,
another revolution, especiallyfor the for the computer
graphics industry,

the future is cool, you. So at some point this
chapter comes to an end and itgets sold to Disney. Was that a
kind of inevitable, obviousthing, or how did that come to
come to pass. I mean, at somelevel, it's

inevitable and obvious. I mean, talk about any
venture company, right? Anycompany, at some point, in
almost every case, you know, thethe founder, even if it's a
single founder who stillcontrols the company, as was the
case with Lucasfilm, ultimatelythey get to the point where, you
know, they want to, you know,liquidate it, like, move away
from the company, and go on tothe next phase of their life. I
mean, that point, you knowGeorge had done, you know, been

(17:04):
at it for 40 solid years. Andyou know he had, he had just
gotten married to melody, andthey wanted to have a child, and
which they did. And you know, hewas facing the prospect. We knew
he had to make seven, eight andnine. We knew how to make these
new films in order to keep thisis something that George always
knew about Disney was that WaltDisney and the Disney company
were very good at keeping, youknow, characters and stories

(17:27):
alive for generations ofchildren better than anyone
else. There's really no othercompany, or, you know, that ever
has done it the way Disney hasdone it. And so George was like,
I need to, you know, I don'twant to face the prospect of
another 10 years of doingepisode 789, he says it's
exhausting, right? For him,every day was like a final exam.

(17:48):
It was making films isdifficult. It's not easy, even
for George Lucas, even forSteven Spielberg, right? And he
just was like, you know, I I'mnot ready to do that. I don't
want to do that. And so he wentand had a conversation with Bob
Iger, famously, and he came backto, you know, the the top
leadership team at Lucasville,very like three of us, and said,

(18:09):
hey, you know, I talked to Bob.I'm ready to sell to Disney. You
guys go off and startnegotiating this deal. So I went
off and started doing that.

Wow, that's incredible. Well, before, before
we move on, I have to ask, Doyou have a preferred order for
watching the nine films? Forsomeone who's no you

know, I just did it with my my young kids from a
second marriage, seven and 10.And we did it a couple years
ago. We did the we did the wewatched the films and we did it.
123456789, we did it in theorder that George wanted it in.
Okay, you know, I of course didit, 4561239, right? Um, but I

(18:50):
think watching it, you know, onethrough nine makes a lot of
sense. And it worked really wellwith the kids, and they get the
story. And it does, it flowsincredibly well. So I'm going
to, I'm going to advocate forone through nine. I know the
Star Wars fan boys will kill mefor that. Hey, that's

a whole podcast episodes worth of value, right

there, no doubt. So at

some point, okay, so you decide, all right,
I've had enough with thisimaginary space. Let's go to
real space.

That's right. I always say I go from fictional
space to real space. I mean, it

wouldn't be credible. You know George Lucas
right? In the story for you, youend up at SpaceX. How the heck
does that? Yeah,

so, yeah. So I, you know. So I, for about 18
months, I ran Lucasfilm underDisney as the COO and, you know,
which was incredible, right? Igot to work with Kathy Kennedy,
who's just an amazing producer,just, just really amazing. Got
to work with Bob Iger, you know,Kevin Mayer, who I negotiated
the deal with at Disney, youknow, Alan horn and Alan Bergman

(19:48):
at the studios. And it wasamazing to be able to work with
all those people. But it wasalso a little soul sucking,
right? It was like I had, Ipersonally had to go into a
screening room and fire. Were400 of the people at Luca starts
when we shut it down after theacquisition, because maybe we're
better off licensing this stuff.And that was super painful and

(20:09):
and, you know, Disney was, youknow, I can't blame them. All of
the divisions of Disney weresuper excited to have Star Wars
as their thing, their plaything, to be able to exploit and
make them crazy amazing content.I mean, I just literally, for
the first time, I had not beento Star Wars, Galaxy edge at
Disney World. I just wentthrough this past weekend for
the first time. And it's amazingwhat the Imagineers did with
Star Wars. So I'm not surprisedwhat Disney wanted to do that.

(20:33):
But for me personally, it waslike, you know, I was no longer
doing it. I was no longer incharge. I was no longer the guy
making the deal. So it was timeto leave. So I finally got back
to what I thought I was going todo three years after I came to
Lucasfilm in the first place, in1998 I thought I'd go back to
Silicon Valley and start workingwith startups and do a startup,
be it a startup, help create astartup. And I did that. And I

(20:57):
actually ended up at a VRcompany called jaunt, which was
the hot VR time company at thetime, and it was super exciting,
and I just loved it. But it wasfive of us. I went from the COO
of Lucasfilm to being a, first,an advisor and eventually Chief
Business Officer of this littlestartup with five employees. I
was literally on a couch in alittle office above the mattress

(21:17):
store on university half in PaloAlto, and it was like, I was
like, Yes, I finally did it, andwe were doing the VR stuff at
the point was incredible. Wasjust before Oculus was purchased
by Facebook by meta, right? Andit was like the time to be doing
VR was amazing. And I'm stilldisappointed that VR hasn't
caught on with consumers the wayit really ought to. They

(21:37):
certainly, from an entertainmentperspective, there's nothing
like it. And in fact, I wentback as a side story. I took, I
took John back to Disney andpitch them on the technology.
Showed it to Bob Iger, and in 30seconds, they decided to invest
and they led our our B round.But I did that for a while, and
then, you know, I took a breakand for personal reasons, and

(22:01):
decided, Okay, what's next in mycareer? And I just thought,
like, who would I want to workfor? What's another visionary
I'd want to work for? And Isaid, you know, I'd really love
to work for Elon Musk. You know,I just really appreciated the
the vision he had for makinglife multi planetary, the vision
he had for Tesla, vision he hadfor for a lot of the things that
he does. I couldn't haveenvisioned Doge, of course, but

(22:22):
that's a whole different story.But, you know, I was, I said to
myself, look, you know what'snext? I'd love to work for Elon
Musk. And I got Elon's emailaddress from a actually, a co
founder of John the VR company.He had Elon's email address.
Didn't know him. He met himonce, so he said, Look, I'll

(22:43):
give you his email address, butyou're on your own. So I wrote a
cold email to Elon and said, Hi,my name is David. I love I love
you. I'm making the heart sign.I love you. I love what you do,
and here's what I've done, andI'd love to work together. And
amazingly, Elon responded, andthe next thing you know, on the
General Council of SpaceX, Imean, you know, it literally was

(23:06):
that. And, I mean, it didn'thurt. In the end, this happened
after a whole bunch ofinterviews. And I met Gwen
Shotwell and Brett Johnson theCFO, and I met everybody. And,
you know, everyone blessed me.And then I got in front of Elon
at that point. I said, okay, myreference is George Lucas. And
yeah, Elon was all over that.That was, that's I for sure, how
I got through that interview. Ithink was, you know, he wanted

(23:27):
to get to the interview, thediscussion with George about
about everything. But I think hetalked to George more than he
talked to me during myinterview. But George was really
funny. We talked about workingfor visionaries. I went to
George. I sat down with him forbreakfast in San Anselmo was a
town where we both lived, and wesat down for breakfast, and I
said, Look, George, interviewingwith Elon Musk. I'm thinking of

(23:51):
going to SpaceX, and I wouldlove if you'd be so kind as to
be a reference for me. And hesaid, Oh, it's so exciting. And
SpaceX and going to Mars. And Iwish I was 17 again and I could
do these things. It'sincredible, very excited. But he
and then he turns me, he said,But, but, David, are you sure
you want to go work for anothernutcase? And I said, George, I

(24:12):
don't, I don't call you anutcase. I call you a visionary.
He said, You know, that's justcode word for nutcase. So, you
know, but they're, you're both,you know, incredible
visionaries. And I've got theopportunity to go work for Elon,
which was also reallyunbelievable, really amazing.
And

how is this company possible? I mean, it
goes from, I mean, just, how doyou imagine that you can build a
rocket, go to Mars, catch therocket backwards on a couple
chopstick like, who? I mean,you've shared it, the engineer
describes what it's like,catching it like it's catching a

(24:50):
lightsaber. Yeah?

You like, yeah, Bill Riley said that Bill Riley
was one of the smartest,loveliest guys, helps run the
starship program, has beendesigning it. He said that
famously a few months ago. It'slike trying to catch us
lightsaber, you know, fallingthrough the air with a pair of
chopsticks, right? It's, I lovethat. I totally share that I
think Bill is and Bill is thebest. He's like, you don't want

(25:13):
to be too early. You don't wantto be too late, yeah, no doubt,
no doubt, be careful where itdrops. But, yeah, I mean, it,
look, Elon is pretty amazing,obviously. I mean, it's, it's,
the vision is to make life multiplanetary by colonizing Mars.
You know, you know, he says itto everyone. He says it. He's
been saying it for 20 years.Plus, you know, he's, he said it

(25:33):
to me during my interview, like,I want to die on Mars, just not
on impact, yeah. And what hemeans is, like, and he said, you
know, he said during theinterview. He said, Look, I want
to retire in a self sustainingcolony on Mars by age 70, is
what he said. And and he said,you know, the reason I want to
make Starlink, and the reasonthey brought me in primarily,
was to help launch Starlink wasto help, you know, they didn't

(25:53):
need help figuring out how tolaunch rockets, obviously, or
even doing contracts forlaunching rockets. They really
needed my help thinking aboutStarlink primarily. And what he
said was, look, I need you to Ineed you to go help build this
Starlink thing and set it up sothat we can have enough capital
to go to Mars. And he said it tothem, I was like, I think I need
about $200 billion in capital,and then I can, I can, I can get

(26:14):
to Mars, yeah. And, um, and so,you know, that's what we did.
And you know, he just but heenvisions these things and he
has these goals. He's notmotivated by money. I mean,
people say this, but you see it,he's not. He's motivated by
these visions, by these visionsof wanting to cheat us. So with
Tesla, it was, you know, how tomake, you know, save the world

(26:35):
from climate catastrophe. Youknow, get rid of climate change
by getting rid of fossil fuels,getting rid of, certainly, you
know, fossil fuel based enginesfor cars and trucks, and, you
know, that was his vision forTesla, and his vision for SpaceX
is to make life multi planet.His vision for SpaceX still, is
that that's, that's his goal.Yeah, that's number one goal in
life.

Yeah, that seems kind of, I know people
criticize, though, and he'sdoing this and that, and he's
trying to make more money. It'slike, on the one hand, what is
more money than he has like, Ithink he's not. The only reason
he's

doing it for the money is to look like he can use
the money to go to Mars. Andhe's been consistent about and
he keeps saying, he says it.He's probably said the last
week, I'm pretty sure. And it's,that's what he wants the money
for us to go to Mars. Yeah,that's what it's for, even the
Tesla money. Now you want, hewants to make enough money at
Tesla so you can have enoughmoney to go to Mars?

Yeah, you have to have a vision like that too.
It seems to me, to buildsomething that incredible. You
don't build those things. Youknow, George Lucas wasn't like,
Oh, I could make money on toysif I could come up with a space
story. George had

a vision, a vision, obviously, a vision.
And, you know, it's a and that'sthe, you know, that's the
passion of of greatentrepreneurs and great, you
know, they're not doing it tomake money. They're doing it to
achieve this vision. There's noteven a business plan from Mars,
right? There's no, there's nogrand secret plan of how they're
going to make money by going toMars. They're not going to have

(27:55):
a real estate century 21 on Marsto sell plots of land. They're
not going to, there's no secret.One time someone asked me,
literally, when I was at SpaceX,you know, are there secret
diamond mines on Mars, andthat's where they're going? No,
right? There's no money. There'sno plan. There's no, like,
secret strategic document abouthow we're going to make money
going to Mars. What do yourealize is, look to get to Mars.
He used first principles, and hefigured out, okay, I got to make

(28:17):
reusable rockets. Ah, we couldprobably make some money if we
make reusable rockets. Let'smake those. Then you have
reusable rockets. Okay, so whatdo we do with that we have we
can get to space really easily,and we can launch things
cheaply. We could launch a bunchof satellites. What could we do
if we launch a bunch ofsatellites? Hey, we could
deliver internet service. Let'smake Starlink, and that'll make
us a bunch of money, becausethen we can get to Mars, right,

(28:37):
right? That's, that's, that'sthe thinking, and that's how the
business plan worked.

And so what is, what is next? It's just with
like autonomous cars and withlike rockets being caught and
going up and down to space everyother day, you just always
imagine that being 10 years inthe future, 20 or some, some
weird number in the future, notbeing here. And it seems here
with the rockets, what's next?Like? When do people get like,

(29:04):
What ship goes to is there acolony ship or a space yacht
involved here?

This is what I love. So I love one of those.
Yes, there is a colony ship.It's called starship. It is
sitting on the launch pad downin Boca Chica, Texas. It has
launched now, what eight times?You know, they're still working
through the home of the bugs.Obviously, they got to make sure
it can launch and stay in orbitand not blow up, and that's a
big thing, but that's how SpaceXdoes things. But that thing has

(29:31):
successfully reached orbit. Ithas successfully gone around the
earth and softly touched down ina test landing. You know, on the
other side of the Earth that isa Mars colony ship. Starship is
designed to carry 100 colonistson the six month journey to
Mars. And Elon's Elon is isbuilding the SpaceX is building

(29:54):
that wants to build hundreds ofthese, and ultimately 1000s of
these down in Boca Chica, Texas.To send 1000 them at a time to
Mars every two years. That isthe plan, and that's what's
happening. This thing is flying.This is not the future, right?
This is like right now. I'veseen it twice. I saw the first,
the IFT five when it launched,and they did the catch of the

(30:15):
booster. I was there. It wasunbelievable. And it is, it's
what people don't realize. Andthat's what I feel people from
the venture person, ventureperspective, right? It's like
this is happening right now,yeah, and the time at which you
can make you know, Elon wastelling me all the time, when I
was at SpaceX, one of the thingshe tasked me with was helping to
figure out how to get methanesuper cheap and super easily.
And like, he had me studying oiland gas law, and how do we drill

(30:37):
for methane and Bucha Chica anddrill off shores from these big
oil rigs and be able to fuelstarship directly, you know,
which is, you know, how do Imake the marginal cost of launch
as cheap as possible? And whathe's, what he says, and you've
heard him say it before. He saysit repeatedly. Said it to me
was, if I can get, you know,fully reusable rockets, I can

(30:58):
reduce the cost to launch up to250 metric tons to low Earth
orbit. And I can do it for thecost of a tank of methane and
liquid oxygen, which, if hefully vertically integrates, he
thought he could get down to,ultimately, about a million
dollars. Wow. That is mindblowing. Like, if you could
launch 250 metric tons for amillion dollars to low Earth
orbit. And that's, by the way,that's easily within reach. We

(31:21):
can argue, oh, it's going to be2 million. It's going to be 3
million, whatever we're talkingabout, another couple of orders
of magnitude of reduction of thecost to get to low Earth orbit.
Yeah, knows he can get to Mars,and that's why you keep hearing
him talking about it all thetime. That was with Trump.
Trump's talking about it. Elon'stalking about it. He knows
they've now solved it. They'vegotten to the point where it's
with some changes, you know,changing software, changing some

(31:44):
hardware. They have the shipready to get to Mars, yeah. And
not only that, it's going toalso make access to space
generally. The Fringe Benefitfor everybody else is now you
can get to space easily. Yeah,you can, you know, you can now
do anything in space. You can goto the moon, you can do stuff in
low Earth orbit. You can goexplore the solar system,

(32:05):
ultimately explore the galaxy,because now you can get off of
the confines of Earth veryinexpensively. Ultimately, for
the cost of what it's like, itis the cost of FedEx a kilogram
from Los Angeles to New York.It'll be the same price to get a
kilogram of payload from earthto low Earth orbit. And once

(32:25):
you're in low Earth orbit, youcan do anything.

I mean, viewed that way, the whole thing with
him and Donald Trump and Doge,it just seems like it's another
hack for him. There's no doubtto to get his damn thing to
Mars. He's like, Well, if Idon't get the right faster. And

what he saw was, absolutely, look, I don't have
any special inside knowledgeinto it, but you could just see
he operates the same way everytime. And he says it, he says it
out publicly, and people justdon't believe him. They think
Walter Isaacson recently was inan interview, I think it was
last year, and he was saying,you know, you know, Elon, you
know, he would say these things,like about going to Mars and
these big visions andeverything. And I kept thinking,

(32:58):
Oh, he's just posturing for hisemployees, and he's just saying
it to get them motivated. Andthen I heard it again and again.
Once I heard it 20 times, Ifinally realized, wow, he's
serious about this stuff. And Isaw the same thing. He just
repeats these things again andagain and again, and he says it
out loud. He's saying toeveryone what he's planning to
do. So with respect to Doge, youknow, it was certainly the

(33:19):
support of Trump. It's like Irealized, look, Biden and Harris
weren't going to support me.They clearly hadn't. They wanted
to, you know, all I was gettingregulatory hassles, and they
were using it for politicalpurposes, because they they for
whatever reason, they hated me.And so I realized, if I go with
Trump, he was very clear, if Ispent a couple 100 million
dollars supporting this guy,he's going to make it much

(33:40):
easier for me to get to Mars. Loand behold, the President of the
United States, in his inauguraladdress, talks about going to
Mars, yeah, is it just repeatedit again last week. That's just
he fully achieved his goal, andall you had to do is spend a
couple 100 million bucks. Yeah?That's

incredible. And so you survive as I mean,
working for him cannot be aneasy thing. I think in the time
you were there for However, mytime, I think Tesla went through
four general counsels,

four general counsels while I was at SpaceX,
yeah, there's no doubt I hadstarted. Right when I started,
he had just fired the GeneralCounsel of Tesla after two
weeks. Oh, yeah. And thenproceeded to fire, like, while I
was there. I mean, I wasinterviewing GCS at Tesla, like
all the time, because he keptfiring the GCS of Tesla. I was
there. He's, he's tough onlawyers. I will say that he's

(34:30):
tough on lawyers. And I was oneI had to send, you know, I
reported to Elon and Gwen. I hadto send Elon my weekly update
every week with at least fivepoints of what I achieved that
week. And, oh, man,

the president of SpaceX? Everyone forgets

shot well. Glenn Shotwell is the long time
president, one of the first 10employees at SpaceX. Still
there. Incredible, incredibleleader.

Because when NASA talks about SpaceX, and
they want to avoid Elon, theytalk about how great she is.
Yeah, right.

She has fabulous relationships. With, with NASA.
You know, she has fabulousrelationships with the
Department of Defense and theintelligence community. She's,
you know, she's been in thespace business, or long before
she came to SpaceX, and hasreally built it up, and has
incredible credibility, and hasthe complete trust of Elon,
right? That's so she's supercredible and manage that stuff

(35:19):
unbelievable, and also knows hownot to get in Elon's way, right?
Like, don't get between him andMars. Like he's smart. Make sure
you enable him. It's the samething that I, you know, did it
Lucas film, which is like, makesure George can create whatever
films and television and, youknow, digital and technology,
whatever he wants to do. We'reOur job is to make sure he can

(35:41):
do that, yeah. And that's whatGwen's job is at SpaceX, right?
And, and she's built anincredible business doing just
that.

So it's not enough of a career yet you move
on again. What is, tell me, RedRock media, I

yeah, I think this is, well, I had to finally
merge the streams, right, right?Like straight out of
Ghostbusters, you know, when Ileft SpaceX, you know, I I knew
at that point, first of all, Iknew where launch costs were
going, and I knew that, youknow, you could build these
constellations of satellitesincredibly inexpensively, and

(36:16):
you could do just about anythingin space, the things I'm talking
about. So I said, I want tostart a venture fund, because
people are going to takeadvantage of this. And advantage
of this and and so I met up withcouple partners, and we put
together a fund, and launchedthat fund, and now we're
launching our second fund. We'reraising we're targeting 75 to
100 million dollars. We alreadydid our first close. It's going
really well, so, but I neverlost that itch of the space

(36:41):
media stuff. And while I was atSpaceX, I got there, and again,
when I first got there, Ithought to myself, Okay, I'm
never doing another producerdeal or agent. I don't have to
deal with agents. I have to dealwith distribution deals. Never
gonna have to deal with any ofthat stuff again. And literally,
two weeks later, a guy named PJvan Sanjay comes in with Tom
Cruise and Doug Lyman, and theywant to flight to space so they

(37:03):
can make a space movie on theISS like, two weeks after I got
to SpaceX, and I'm like, oh mygod, this is crazy, right? It
just just, you know, I try toget out. They keep pulling me
back in. And I realized veryquickly, and you know, that the
media opportunities in space arejust massive, right? People love
space content, science fictionis almost always the most
profitable films that are madebecause people love space. They

(37:26):
love science fiction. And alsorealize, you know, look, this
opportunity to go to Mars isgoing to be massive, right? And
that, and I went to Elon, and Isaid, Look, when, when we land
the first human on Mars, thatwill be the biggest media event
in human history when Apolloastronauts landed, you know,
when, when Neil Armstrong tookthe first step on the moon. At

(37:48):
that point, it was a 93% Nielsenshare, which means that 93% of
the televisions in the worldwere tuned in to watch him. Do
that live, right? If 93% of thepeople, the 8 billion people on
the planet watch, you know, thefirst human take a step on Mars,
probably going to be a woman, ismy guess. But you know, whoever
it is, everyone's going to watchthat. It's going to be the

(38:09):
biggest media event in humanhistory. And so Elon agreed.
He's like, Oh, that's huge. Isaid we should take advantage of
that opportunity. That's a multibillion dollar opportunity all
by itself. And he had me, put mein touch with Ari Emmanuel at
WME, you know, obviously a very,very famous talent agent and and
we with at WME, and a lot ofpeople there, and also even

(38:29):
worth working with CAA as well,another big agency, we just
worked out, you know, theopportunity, and I worked on it
while I was there, and when Ileft, you know, there's really
Elon doesn't have, there's Notlike, marketing and media
people. There's not filmmakers.There's barely anybody at SpaceX
or at Tesla. The dude does thosethings. He doesn't believe in
advertising. He doesn't believein doing those stuff, those
things. And so when I left, itkind of died and but I couldn't

(38:53):
get out of my head. And so I raninto a guy I worked with a long
time at Lucasfilm, who randistribution, and we started
talking about it. I said, Youknow what? We should just start
what? We should just start acompany to do this and start,
not only try to document thehuman mission to Mars, but just
make content about humanity'sexpansion of cosmos. And that's
what became red rock media. SoRed Rock referring to Red Rock

(39:14):
as in Mars, right? And we formedthat and raised some money for
it, and have been working oncontent. We've been in
discussions with SpaceX for along time about a lot of
different content. We've filmeda short film about the starship
launch, which is available onour website, about one of the
starship launches from theperspective of a welder. We're
working on a TV show right now.We're calling go for launch,

(39:37):
which is kind of like, thinkabout like, imagine like, f1
drive to survive. But with spacecompanies, these, all these
space thump companies that Ideal with, spice startups that I
deal with all the time, they'rereally interesting characters,
right? There's lots of elons andpeople who are visionary, and,
you know, lots of people workingin the trenches and people who
have become passionate aboutspace. You see that in this
little movie we made about thiswelder didn't know anything

(39:59):
about space has now. Becomepassionate about making life
multi planetary. And there's allthese kinds of stories. So
that's the stories you want totell and go for launches, about
these companies all competingwith each other and cooperating
with each other and working witheach other and against each
other, constantly fighting witheach other and trying to achieve
these incredible things inspace. And so we're we've
started production on that asour first show. So

who's, does someone have the rights to the
the 100 people on the starshiplike, filming that SpaceX does?
Oh, wow. That's, I mean, that'sgoing

to be a show, yeah, right. No doubt, that's
what I'm

excited about. Real Housewives in space. Like,
that's, yeah,

it's like, I sometimes joke. It's like, it's
like, you know, big brother,it's gonna be covered with
cameras, right? Yeah, it'severywhere the ship, of course.
You know, it's going to be like,big brother meets survivor,
hopefully, meets love Island,right? I mean, it's going to be,
of course, right, love and dramain space, because the the
journey, like, you're going tohave incredible things
happening. You're going to havethe launch, right? Amazing.
Everyone's going to watch that.Then you have this six months,

(40:55):
and you have the build up,right? You have who's going to
get selected, who's going to go,and, you know, why are they
going to go, and why would theywant to be there? And then you
they launch, and then you have asix month journey to Mars,
right? So you're going to reallyget to know these people, right?
You're going to, you're going tolive broadcast every day, but
it's got to be great, right? Itcan't just be turn on the camera
and see what they're doing andright? Why don't we float around
in space? It's got to be like ayou got to have someone who

(41:17):
helps create a story. You know,among it, I'm not saying are
officially created story. I'msaying the best non scripted
television has a story as a plotthat they pull out of the things
that are really happening. Andso you make that kind of a story
of that six month journey, andthen you're really going to
care. Do they live or die whenthey land? Yeah. Is the landing

(41:37):
going to be successful? That'swhy everyone's going to watch
it. Yeah. Be successful, youknow? And then even better,
they're going to live on Mars,right? And you have endless
stories to tell about what lifeon Mars is going to be like,
right? And that's why I'm soexcited about Red Rock media. I
mean, our goal is to make itlike the discovery media for
Humanity's expansion of thecosmos. That's our goal. And so

(42:01):
it's not as big as, you know,Elon's goal, but it's a pretty
big goal. And I think we can doit because it's, it's, you know,
adventure is kind of dead onEarth. If you could pay someone
$15,000 to take you to the topof Mount Everest, and you can
take a beautiful cruise on afour season ship, to the edge of

(42:22):
the Antarctic shelf. And they'llliterally put, literally have
pictures of this. They'll put atable with a white tablecloth
down next to the penguins, rightwhere Shackleton died. And
they'll put, and they'll andthey'll put champagne on your
table and caviar. And you canhave, you know, brunch on the
Antarctic ice shelf like there'sno adventure. There's only a few
things. And you can do some basejumping, and, you know, try to

(42:42):
get into, you know, asubmersible, to go down to see
the Titanic, if you want to.But, you know, it's, it's,
there's no adventure left onearth. And that's why, I think
the, you know, one of thebiggest things about going to
Mars is it's going to be thebiggest adventure in human
history. People will die, andit'll be like going into the
wild west. It'll be like, justlike people who went on the
wagon trains, or people who goton the Mayflower and came, came

(43:04):
to, came to the Americas, and,you know, they're probably going
to die, right? But it grandadventure. And you write a lot
of stories about it's going tobe people want to hear those
stories, and people want toparticipate in those stories.
They want to do it. And that'swhat I think is so exciting, and
something I want to, you know,make content, man, I

can't wait for the future. So we come, at long
last, you're now a venturecapitalist investing in these
space companies. This thing hasopened up now, making the
future, that's right, and youhave these points in history
where the internet comes and abunch of companies emerge, and
the mobile comes and a bunch ofcompanies emerge, and now I
guess access to space comes anda bunch of companies emerge. And

(43:43):
is this what you're investingin? 100, 100%

so I started as a lawyer 1993 1994 in Silicon
Valley, right? Just as theinternet was starting, I got my
first email address, right then,you know, and you know, all
these companies I remember, youknow, I remember going to the
partner at the law firm who wasthe former general counsel of
Intel, and as a partner at mylaw firm. And I went to him, and
I said, you know, I really wantto try to get some IPO shares.

(44:08):
This company called Netscape.It's doing this incredible
stuff, and you'll be able tobrowse the internet. It's going
to be amazing. This guy, MarkAndreessen, he knows what he's
doing, and he's talking aboutthat's not a real business. It's
going to go away. Blah, blah,blah. And then there's these
company like Cisco, right? Likemaking these routers that are
connect people in space. Nowthese pipes exist. Now we have
to connect people with theseboxes that are connect people.
And then, you know, there'sthese crazy guys who are saying,

(44:31):
I'm gonna sell books on theinternet, right? It's gonna be
great. And you're gonna start,ultimately, you'll buy
everything on the internet, youknow, okay, let's go forget that
wacko, right? And that's what itwas like in the mid 90s, going
into late 90s. And then 90s. Andthen obviously we know what's
happened. You know, most of theFortune 50 are these internet
companies. Now you have the samething happening with space. We

(44:51):
now the pipes are there, thereusable rockets are the pipes,
and the access to space isthere, and it's cheap. Okay?
Done. Now that now that's today.Now you're seeing all these
companies that are going to bethe Ciscos and the Amazons and
the, you know, the the companieslike Netscape, you know,
ultimately, you know, browsersthat the huge browser wars

(45:12):
that's happening right now. Andyou can invest in those
companies because they exist.They're being formed right now.
And if you put money in them,are going to succeed. There's
plenty of examples of internetcompanies to succeed, but some
of them are going to be the nextSpaceX, the most valuable
private company in the worldtoday. SpaceX is a space company
that nobody thought was going tobe successful and doesn't have a

(45:34):
business plan for their mission,right? Yep, there's going to be
a lot more like that. And so nowis the time to invest in those
and that's why I got into makinga venture fund to invest in
those companies. And it's superexciting, right? What could be
more exciting want to invest in,you know, SAS middleware, or
for, you know, financialtransactions, or whatever the
hell it is. Or do you want toinvest in a company that's

(45:55):
making cool rocket thrusters,you know? And go, you know, one
of the last some months ago, Iwent and drove a moon rover in a
parking lot, and this company'sactually going to bring that
rover. It's called astrolab, isbringing that rover to the moon
the next year. Wow. And, youknow, I work with Firefly, like
Firefly just landed all its ownlander on the moon. They just

(46:15):
yesterday, last night, took thefirst picture of a eclipse of
the earth, of the Sun by theEarth from a moon rover. And
they just posted, it's amazingphoto. That's incredible. We
actually helped them. Weactually went out there last
March, me and a film producerfriend, helped them kind of
figure out, where do you want toput the cameras, and what angles

(46:35):
do you want on your rover, onthe lander, so that you get
great shots. And, you know, theytook the advice, and they got
some incredible shots. They'vebeen publishing in the last few
weeks. And, you know, it's,again, it's amazing. You get to
do this stuff that you get to,you know, invest and help these
entrepreneurs that are going tochange the course of Humanity.
That's, that's, if you can't getexcited about that, yeah, what

(46:57):
you're going to get excitedabout. So that's why we do the
venture foot. Successful venture

capitalists say they try to be helpful. It's
kind of a cliche. I'm not sureI've heard the I bring Lucas
Film, sort of advice to how totake a picture of Earth from the
moon. Yeah, value add, yeah.

You know, like, I have to say, no, look, I bring
the value it's, you know, forwhat it is. You know, I've had
some experiences that are thatare helpful, certainly to, you
know, big visionaries who wantto do things but, and I
certainly saw how things aredone at SpaceX, and learned a
lot in a very short time there.But, you know, I bring the
SpaceX mafia to the table, whichis helpful as well, right? You

(47:38):
know, like this company is worththree, $50 billion there's a lot
of engineers there who are nowhave enough money to go take the
risk of starting their owncompanies, and there's a lot of
them doing it. We invested inone company called Argo. Three
brothers from SpaceX, theCarlyle brothers, who all left
SpaceX at the same time. Theygrew up together in Houston,
dreaming of running their ownspace company. They ended up as

(47:58):
engineers and at SpaceX, youknow, one ran government sales,
one ran launch operations. Onewas working on reusability of
the Falcon nine and FalconHeavy. And they left at the same
time and started a company. Theywant to be the ice truckers of
space. They want to be the guys,remember, from the expanse, that
transport the ice around thegalaxy, around the solar system.
They want to be those guys whocollect the ice, and then

(48:21):
transport around the world. Andthey're started by making these
incredible water basedthrusters, two types of water
based thrusters. And they'rebuilding an orbital Transfer
Vehicle, basically a space tugthat can move things around in
space at high, high delta V.It's called very hot, very
quickly. And you know, that's agreat example of the SpaceX
mafia. And it's just nodifferent than the PayPal Mafia,

(48:42):
which Elon was part of, and, youknow, Peter Thiel was part of.
All of these guys are, you know,Reid Hoffman, all of these guys
left after the great success ofPayPal and started these
incredible other companies. Andthat is absolutely happening
right now in the space business.Yeah. And my partner, Celeste
Ford, she's kind of a legend inthe aerospace business. She
won't tell you because she hasto kill you, but it's, it's out

(49:02):
there on the internet that sheactually helped run the military
space shuttle program in the 80sand 90s, and then, when she left
the military, started a 300person aerospace engineering
firm called stellar solutions.And you know, that's our secret
sauce. Like we have access tounbelievable technical
diligence, unbelievable accessto markets, market information,

(49:23):
unbelievable access to to, youknow, the people who are
spending the money in thegovernment in particular, but
also the big primes on spaceprograms, and we bring that to
our entrepreneurs. So it'sproved to be a very great
combination. Our first fund was25 million. It's up. It's TV. Pi
is now 1.49 which is great. No,J curve. I don't even know what
a J curve is, but we don't haveone and and now that we're we're

(49:46):
raising our second fund, hopingto be $100 million

you're also spot not supposed to know what a
military space shuttle is as Iunderstand it. Yeah,

exactly. That's what the selection said. She
keeps telling me she's going tohave to kill me, but I keep
telling it's on the internet. Isaid. Celeste, it's on the
internet, and she's like, No, Ican't confirm or deny that
that's what I did or did not do.So

the space lady's name is Celeste. Is that Celeste
Ford?

Yeah, appropriately, no. She insisted
we're it's, we're separate fromstellar solutions. But she
insisted on sticking she lovesthe name stellar. She uses it in
conversation all the time. Soshe said, we have to call this
stellar ventures, becausethat's, good luck for me. And I
said we were me and my otherpartner, Matt, who's the finance
guy. He was like, we're like,okay, fine, let's do it.

It is so fortuitous that her name is
totally I'm on season two of theexpanse. Should I keep going?

Oh my god, yeah. Better and better and better.
Less zombies, you know, andmore, you know, sort of the
drama of like the politics,politics and the drama of space,
but done really, really well. Ithink, I think the expanse is
fantastic. It's maybe one ofthose rare examples where the
show is even slightly betterthan the books. The books are
great. I've read all the books,but the show is really

(50:54):
fantastic, and absolutely youshould keep watching it.

Let me I'll wrap up on this. This is just someone
personally curious about, do youwant, like, the Drake Equation?
Like, what that is? As Iunderstand the Drake Equation,
people are like, Well, ifthere's alien life, like, why
has it in time? Why hasn't, whyhaven't they shown up here? Yep,
it's a Fermi paradox. Yeah,exactly. And so the drink

(51:20):
equations is kind of this longequation. It's like, well, you
know, what's the probabilitythat there's a planet that works
and then that someone could liveon the planet, and that they can
build, they don't kill? I don'tknow something like that.

Well, just add up a number of it's really just
an equation that was createdthat that said, Okay, if we
assume there's X number of starsand X number of planets and X
number of habitable planets, andthat life was created in X
percentage of those. It was alltiny fractions. And think about
this. They were doing this. Theydid this on the time in the in
the 30s and 40s, where theydidn't even know that there were

(51:52):
so many planets. Now we knowthere's planets everywhere
because we found them 1000s and1000s of everywhere. Look, we
see planets so and then the theFermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi
famously asked at a lunch, youknow, I don't think it was, I
don't know if it was at theManhattan Project or something
in the 40s, 50s, asked at alunch, you know, in Los Alamos
or something, where he said, youknow, okay, well, if it's so

(52:12):
obvious that it's gonna there's,there's, there's aliens, where
are they? You know, why are theynot here? And then a lot of
things have come up with,theories have come up about
that, which I particularly kindof subscribe to, which is that,
well, the time scale is so long,right? It's billions and
billions and billions of yearsto use, you know, to quote Carl
Sagan, billions and billions.It's such a long time scale.

(52:34):
Humans have only been around fora few 100,000 years, and we've
only been writing for 5000 andwe've only been going to space
for 75 right? Not even. And sothink about that time scale of
humanity. You know, 75 years,100 years, even if you say 1000
years, it's such a tiny fractionof the scale of the universe
that it's very unlikely weactually overlap with any of

(52:56):
these other intelligent species,even if it's 100% guaranteed
obvious that there are otherintelligent beings probably in
our galaxy, much less in theuniverse. And so that's the big
question, right? And I wasliterally, we were just me and
some friends were talking aboutthis at dinner. Max, how is a
good friend? He's the CEO ofvast which is trying to build a

(53:17):
space station, the firstcommercial space station, and
they're doing a great job, andhe's a good friend, and we were
literally last night at dinnerwith our kids and our wives,
talking about this exact issue.And, you know, I think you know,
one possibility is time horizontoo long. Another possibility is
that, you know, people destroythemselves. Civilizations

(53:37):
destroy themselves. It's calledThe Great the Great Wall, right,
right, the great filter, yeah,that civilizations end up
destroying themselves throughnuclear war, you know,
pandemics, or what have you.And, and, you know, again, I
think that's possible. But Ithink one of the programs I'm
on, I'm on the board of a groupcalled the Galileo Project out

(54:00):
of Harvard. It's run by a guynamed Avi Loeb. He's the, he's
the, he's the head of theAstronomy Department. I've had

him on the podcast. Oh, there you go.
Obviously, great. So I talkedabout a muammua, that thing.
Well, there you go. So his

hypothesis, and I look, I believe it, I'm I sit
in on his our general meetingsevery month. You know his
hypothesis is that the best wayto look for Intelligent Life in
the Universe is by looking fortheir artifacts. In the same way
that we look for artifacts ofancient civilizations on Earth.
People ask, Well, why aren't weseeing them all? We can barely.
I mean, we didn't even find theMayan temples on these little
1000 years after they'd beenlost in the jungles. Like we

(54:35):
can't even find it on earth. Howdo you think we're going to find
it in space? But we can look fortheir technological detritus, as
it were, like the junk, thespace junk, like the Voyager
craft, is just like that, thatStar Trek movie where Voyager
goes off and gets captured bythe aliens, and they return it,
they bring it back, and that'sthe whole lot. It's that's

(54:55):
exactly the story, right? It'sexactly the

thing, yeah, should we be broadcasting into
space? Well, we

are, doesn't matter, right? You know, you
watch contact, right? I mean,the Nazis are, are here, right?
That's the first broadcastaliens. God, we heard you. Yeah,
right. We're doing it. So we arebroadcasting space. I don't
think it matters, whether we'respecifically pointing it in a
particular direction or not. I'mnot sure about that, but it's
it. We are. We're announcing ourpresence to the universe. It's

(55:21):
probable that whoever'slistening is dead, right, right?
Or their AIS, and then they'regoing to come and, you know,
come, take over whatever, orthey don't care, or they don't
care, right? You know, or we'relike, in the in, you know,
anthill, in, in the desert,right? We do they don't care.
Um, but so I don't think that'san issue, but I think we should
be looking, I mean, it is thefundamental question of

(55:42):
humanity. Peter Beck justposted. There was an article
posted about Peter back theinterview. I read it this
morning, and Peter Beck wastalking about that either
sending a probe both to Mars,but also sending them to Venus
to look for signs of life onVenus. I think one of my
hypothesis, I said, I'll leaveyou with this. I think when we
go to Mars, there's a decentchance that what we find there

(56:02):
is basically DNA, you know, nothuman DNA, but you know the
earliest forms of DNA, bacterialDNA, and that, what that will
prove to us is a couple ofthings, right? Either life is
ubiquitous, right? It grows.It's easy to for it. The
Lightning in a Bottle can happenon if it happens on two planets
in one solar system, and if itbe finding on Venus, even more

(56:24):
so three planets in our solarsystem. All three have evidence
of life. That means that life isubiquitous in the universe,
okay? Or it means that it gottransferred from one planet to
another. Maybe a meteor hit itand a rock came up and it had
DNA on it, and boom, it went tothe other planet. Still don't
know where it came from,ultimately, but who knows. But
the third option is that someoneseeded it. The panspermia theory

(56:48):
is that some intelligent lifesent out automated, self
replicating probes that containDNA, and intentionally were
Johnny Appleseed for the wholegalaxy, and not on this, on the
planets that could support life,life bloomed. All three are
super interesting, and I wouldlove to explore that further.

The future is cool. Thank you. Thank you for
doing this. What? How do peoplefind you? Your firm? Easy.

Just Google. David Anderman, you'll find me.
It's pretty easy. There's acouple others, but not many.
David Anderman, Lucasfilm, DavidAnderman, stellar ventures. You
can see our website, svc.vc, youcan find Red Rock Media Group,
net. You can look me up onLinkedIn. I'm pretty easy

to find. Alright. Thanks so much for
doing this.

This is awesome. I really enjoyed talking about
it. This is cool. This is

cool. This has been the something Metro
podcast, David Ander With myguests, talk to you next

(58:02):
time you

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