March 12, 2025 • 32 mins
Exploring NASA, SpaceX, and the Evolution of Space Ventures with Abhi Tripathi
Secure World Foundation is thrilled to announce the release of the fifth episode of "ESG in Space," a podcast series in collaboration with Exponential Academy, hosted by Nishan Degnarain and Miki Sode. This episode features a fascinating discussion with Abhi Tripathi, Director of Mission Operations at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab.
In this episode, Abhi discusses his journey through the space sector, from his early days at NASA to key roles at SpaceX, and now leading mission operations at UC Berkeley. He shares his unique insights on the transition of space activities from government-dominated initiatives to vibrant commercial enterprises and discusses the critical role of government and military funding in nurturing the nascent commercial space industry.
Listen to "ESG in Space" Episode 3 here or on our YouTube Channel to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities and potential of commercial space ventures.
Recorded January 29, 2025
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Nishan DegnarainIt's almost done.
(00:21):
Nishan DegnarainHello, everybody, and welcome to another episode on sustainability in space. My name is Nishant Green from the Exponential Academy. Know and go ahead.
Miki SodeWe always skip over this, and I'm sorry. How are you doing? Thanks for joining us.
Nishan DegnarainFantastic. And, we're delighted to be joined today by a very special guest. Our guest is Doctor Abhi Tripathi. He's the director of mission operations at UC Berkeley space science lab. He's had a very prestigious and high profile career, working at the forefront of many aspects of space exploration. Prior to his role with UC Berkeley, where they, currently operate various, satellites for space missions.
(01:00):
Nishan DegnarainHe spent ten years at SpaceX in a very senior position, as mission director for various, operations, as well as, the chief engineer for flight reliability for some of the, critical aircraft, like the, like the Dragon, and the, crew demo one and demo two missions. Prior to that, he spent ten years at NASA.
(01:22):
Nishan DegnarainWorking on long term planning for the Moon and Mars campaign. He holds degrees in aerospace and aerospace engineering, from University of Michigan and University Colorado, and a PhD in geology and micro paleontology from UCLA. So with that, let me welcome, Abby to our podcast. Abby. Welcome.
Abhi TripathiThank you. Tim. Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
(01:45):
Nishan DegnarainFantastic. Mickey, I think you had some some some questions for for Abby.
Miki SodeYeah. So, your brief, bio and path, but I have to ask you, like, a how how is your journey from, you know, doing the geology and micro paleontology to space X and now, UC Berkeley health, space science, Islam. Help! The overseeing the mission operations. How's how is that connect?
(02:17):
Abhi TripathiYeah, that's a good question. So, you know, after I got my degrees in aerospace engineering, I really wanted to look for life on other planets. So I went, got my PhD. After my PhD, I went to work for NASA for a couple more years before going to space X, and the honest answer is I've barely used my PhD at all.
Abhi TripathiI had hoped to be an astronaut, and maybe I will someday still be. And if I'm really lucky, I might still get to go to Mars someday. Maybe a little bit older. But, the truth is, I haven't used much of my PhD. Now, that being said, you asked a really good question. Even though I haven't explicitly used my PhD in terms of looking at fossils, I work at the Space Sciences lab, where I'm surrounded by principal investigators for NASA missions that are all scientists, and me being trained as an engineer, working with them.
(03:04):
Abhi TripathiI completely understand their language. I understand their thought process. Oftentimes engineers get very frustrated by scientists because they speak very different languages. And I like to think I'm able to bridge that gap, pretty effectively. So, you know, even though I don't explicitly use what I've learned in my PhD, it definitely does come in handy in my job even now.
(03:26):
Miki SodeYeah, I totally resonate with you that I did have science background as well as the engineering background. So that translation is very important, actually. Yeah.
Nishan DegnarainYeah, yeah. So it's interesting, you know, one of the big things we probably talk about today is kind of this cross-cultural understanding of different domains. And really do they understand whether it's engineer scientist. So what we're going to talk about what your policy makers to the private sector. Yeah. And that takes us a little bit to, I guess the, the, the space economy.
(03:56):
Nishan DegnarainBecause over your career, I imagine you've seen a world where the industry was dominated by primarily state funded organizations to the growth of private sector. And you've worked at the forefront of one of the most interesting, exciting and largest, private space enterprise. I think we've all seen the, the reuse of the, the starship and the the catching, the incredibly impressive feats of, of engineering that took place.
(04:21):
Nishan DegnarainBut what I, what we imagine is that we're at the just a very start of this, of this journey into the, into the space economy. I mean, how do you see the, the space economy evolving right now? It's primarily funded by venture capitalists, philanthropists, large government organizations, primarily to the defense industry. But I imagine as the space industry takes off, as we start to look at different horizons, like private space opera, space stations, lunar bases, bases, or, habitats on on Mars, we'll need institutional investors and other forms of capital to come in to really grow and expand the space economy.
(05:01):
Abhi TripathiYeah. I think, you know, if you look at the history of high tech innovation, you really see that for the first stage, however long that stage is, the business case isn't really there. Oftentimes it is completely a government case. And I think you're seeing, the same thing in the space industry, to be quite frank.
(05:23):
Abhi TripathiI think right now, the startups I'm seeing, you know, one of my other jobs that I do, start a job rather as a volunteer is I'm the, chair of the air and space track for the Berkeley Skydeck accelerator. And the startups I'm seeing. And the advice I'm giving them is, you know, it's good if you have a product that, you know, one day things will be amazing on the moon, like a rover or something.
(05:45):
Abhi TripathiBut you're not going to survive as a business unless you have near-term cash flow. And so you have to think of commercial opportunities, and you also have to think of military opportunities. And I think especially in the year 2025, a good majority of the companies that are trying to get started in, the commercial market for aerospace are going straight for military funding, and they're going to need that until there is a robust enough business case.
(06:11):
Abhi TripathiYou mentioned commercial Leo destinations. I'm not convinced right now that there is a business case for commercial Leo destinations. Of the, you know, maybe handful of companies trying. I think, only one right now is making what I would consider pretty good progress. And partially that's because they have an extremely wealthy backer that does need investment money.
(06:34):
Abhi TripathiThe other ones, I think are all struggling a bit. So I think, you know, it's my, my opinion is, is that kind of get have to get over a little bit of that X factor and realize that, US government and military funding is really what's going to be the way to get your business off the ground for, I would say, about the next five years.
Abhi TripathiThe lone example that doesn't fall into that category is, SpaceX with its Starlink constellation going after the commercial market. However, even that product is being heavily paid for by the government, who is equally interested in having their own version of Starlink, a private military version of Starlink. And that is, a non-trivial source of cashflow.
(07:16):
Nishan DegnarainInteresting. So, yeah, government as a funder as well as as a key customer. So yeah, clearly that's going to be, an important segment. We see that in many industries as well, where government is a it's an anchor. But you know, beyond that, five years to five years will just fly by, especially when you live in Australia. Do you have a mentor model?
Nishan DegnarainHave you seen other mental models on how the private sector can get involved to move away from just a dependance on on public funding?
(07:43):
Abhi TripathiNot. There is no model like there's only a few lone path breakers that are figuring it out. Again, Starlink figured it out, right? They figured out where others had tried the same idea for for decades and failed. Most notably iridium, and they figured out how to make it economically work. So there are other people trying to figure out how to economically make it work.
(08:04):
Abhi TripathiAnother good example that I think is gaining traction and is an idea that I actually think will eventually be a very good commercial product. There are several companies working on small modular, nuclear reactors now. A lot of these companies have aspirations. Well, this is how you would power a, settlement on the moon or a settlement on Mars.
Abhi TripathiSo they they believe in that, and that's their vision. But they also know that this small modular nuclear reactors might pay dividends much sooner on Earth. So the the most viable commercial ideas I'm seeing are people that have a vision and ultimately off Earth vision, but they have the practicality to understand that they need a near-term immediately impact people on Earth, vertical in order to close their business case.
(08:51):
Nishan DegnarainInteresting. So, you know, the pathway to commercialization, diversification away from the public sector is by having a real world, Earth based commercial operations that can then easily scale into into space, I mean, and link to that other, risks, around coordination. And we see this in the maritime industry, for example, where, you know, something that started like the UN of the sea has evolved to various competing uses of whether it's offshore oil and gas windfarms.
(09:20):
Nishan DegnarainThere is a special protection for a whale breeding grounds, the shipping lanes, for example, there's right now a real, a mishmash of regulations and operations. And with the Arctic and Antarctic, they try to be much cleaner forms of regulation on whether it's a model based on exploitation in the Arctic or preservation in Antarctica. I imagine it's going to be the same in the space industry that you would not wish for operations to clash with, future uses of space, for example, space debris, risks in terms of, ownership of certain parts of the moon or areas of, of high value resources, for example, do you do you see
(10:03):
Nishan Degnarainthere being a need for coordination, for space operation, or do you think it's just too early right now? It's the Wild West. Let a thousand rockets bloom.
Abhi TripathiYeah. I think you hit the nail on the head because I was about to use the railroad as an example. You know, in the early days of the transcontinental railroad, there was not a ton of regulations. And there was an important reason for that. You know, I'm a firm believer that when you have a new industry, you have to allow a learning period, and the learning period cannot just involve learning by a single company.
(10:33):
Abhi TripathiIt needs to be learning by multiple companies that you start to have a body of evidence of, okay, this company tried this and it failed. We should take note. There might be a regulation needed there. Future. This he tried this and it succeeded. Until you have a body of evidence you're going to, all you're going to do is you're going to create really, really bad regulations.
(10:53):
Abhi TripathiRight? So I think the FAA has recognized this with commercial spaceflight, where Congress and the FAA keep extending what they call the learning period of commercial spaceflight, not imposing regulations from the government on any of these commercial providers because they're realizing that so far, you really only have 1 or 2 commercial providers that, has enough of a body of evidence to actually inform Smart regulations.
(11:19):
Abhi TripathiSo I think what I'm seeing right now in, the space sector, when you talk about space sustainability or debris is I think you're seeing, you know, SpaceX and other satellite operators that have more than a couple of satellites collecting good data. They're making mitigations on their own. They're sharing the mitigations that they're making. They're going to, you know, science conferences, for example, if I'm talking about, astronomers that might be mad that, you know, there's a lot of, satellites getting in the way of their ability to do astronomy.
(11:50):
Abhi TripathiWell, SpaceX is going to astronomy conferences and explaining the mitigations of doing, the there there are also, other efforts I've heard that are government to government interactions going on right now to provide clean channels of communication between the satellites of one nation and another nation. So I think a lot of things are organically happening, and I think those will help inform, eventually help inform a set of good regulations.
(12:17):
Abhi TripathiThe key is if you try to write good regulations too early, they will not be good regulations, they will be bad regulations. And they will, you know, choke off innovation.
Miki SodeRight. So in this, current state of the space commercialization and then we did, touch on a little bit of pasta commercialization and, I think, learning from weather, ocean or the railroad and past innovation and how the industry took off and all of that stuff. It's sure we need our for learning, period. But also it also we there are things that we can start to place in terms of like the bare minimum, regression so that we don't, you know, shoot down each other's satellites and whatnot.
(13:12):
Miki SodeWhat kind of frameworks? That might be that can be already be in place, like where might be a, sort of, baseline point, the government or commercial entities and, hopefully, you know, wide international community can, like use as a starting point.
(13:38):
Abhi TripathiYeah. I mean, I think the starting point has to be government to government, military to military. So, for example, if Russia launches a rocket and they're trying to deploy some satellites and the, satellites don't deploy properly, they may be the second stage of the rocket fails on the radar. You might see all of a sudden a rocket with multiple things coming off of it.
(13:59):
Abhi TripathiOkay. And that could be mistaken for oh my gosh, is that a warhead with me, or is that a rocket weapon with multiple warheads coming off? Right. So there already is infrastructure in place for the militaries of the, of the spacefaring nations to talk to each other and warn each other about any such misunderstandings. So I think the basis for that already exists.
(14:23):
Abhi TripathiLikewise, if there's a NASA satellite and it looks like it's going to have a conjunction with what the government believes might be a Chinese satellite, the governments can call each other now how much cooperation there might be between, depending on who did state at two state actors are might be high cooperation or low cooperation, but the framework exists.
(14:44):
Abhi TripathiOkay. If you take it a step forward, if you look at SpaceX, on their website, they've already released an API that allows you, as a satellite operator to use their API to figure out where all their starlink's are to help build automation in your own system, to avoid starlink's, to do maneuvers, or to know that Starlink will avoid you, which is what they tend to do.
(15:08):
Abhi TripathiYou know, if I'm a satellite and this has happened to me before as, as a Berkeley operator, if I'm a satellite, I need to know which one of us is going to move before we collide. And SpaceX has already revealed, hey, this is what we do. We are going to be the ones to move. We know where all satellites, satellites are.
Abhi TripathiWe know where other satellites are through common databases. So I think, you know, people have already taken actions and laid down a framework. But at the end of the day, I think you really need government to government cooperation between non friendly nations. Before you can further, a more holistic approach to regulations.
(15:47):
Nishan DegnarainInteresting. So there's probably like a multi-layered approach to this, you know, at the base layer, you talk about communication at least even without regulation, you've got the equivalent of a phone call and a point person that can be picked up. There's probably some elements of training, you know, what is the training to make sure you do or a skilled operator should know.
Nishan DegnarainSo that's probably know that some of these resources exist probably around cultural norms about operators based. And then you get to that regulatory state.
(16:13):
Abhi TripathiExactly.
Nishan DegnarainYou got penalties and punishments and yeah, what your fines, whatever it's going to be. Yeah.
Abhi TripathiIt's yeah, it's I mean if you think about it, it's in everyone's best. It's in every individual individual operator's best interests to not have their satellites collide. I mean everyone's got the carrot right there, right. So you have to wonder when, why, how big of a stick do I need? And how soon, if they already have a very important carrot, you know, if they're if they're satellites out of commission.
(16:41):
Abhi TripathiForget about the debris for a second. Forget about Kessler. If they're going to lose money, they're going to lose capability. They don't want to collide. Right. So I think they're already motivated to not collide. So I think it's important for governments to help push that already natural inclination further and help give all those parties the tools, whether they be automation tools, whether it be simply a red phone, you know, to talk to each other.
(17:07):
Abhi TripathiIt's good to keep encouraging all that type of behavior.
Nishan DegnarainAnd I think, you know, what is interesting, because at the heart of that debate is the set of values, right? Do we have a common set of a common vision for what we want to use space for? And, we saw that, in December, you had put out quite a bold statement on Twitter about a vision for NASA, which was which was interesting.
(17:32):
Nishan DegnarainBecause you said, well, actually, NASA should much more explicitly rather be a science research organization, you know, have a sole focus of being a multi helping human humanity to become a multi-planetary species, right, with regional centers of research. And that should be the focus of NASA. With that already with operation, other, other private operations. Other nations may disagree with that.
(17:56):
Nishan DegnarainAnd even with that becoming a multi-planetary species, there are going to be questions about if I have human habitats in different parts of the solar system, the moon, Mars. Am I allowed to extract from that? Am I allowed to preserve? Am I allowed to share that with other nation states, for example, to other private operators? I mean, how do you see that value system evolving?
(18:19):
Nishan DegnarainYeah. I mean, do you think there's a broad consensus that that's the value system around the world that a lot of people agree with that? Yeah, humanity should be like so.
Abhi TripathiSo I think there's multiple things. I think, people need to have consensus around shared space, which is, you know, there's there's really a lot of condemnation around any country that does a what's called an Asat test and anti-satellite test, because those tests create debris, they create shrapnel and all sorts of, orbits. China has done Asat tests.
(18:50):
Abhi TripathiI think India has, you know, other nations immediately come out and condemn because that is, a very irresponsible way. And it's getting to your point is, Sean, it's it's where maybe the norms and the, and the policies of the government do not match. If you are a nation that feels threatened by another one, you may have less qualms about doing an anti-satellite test.
(19:14):
Abhi TripathiTo show how strong of a nation you are. Right. We're as a nation that is already feels very comfortable. It knows how to do. You know, anti-satellite maneuvers doesn't need to do that. So I think there's a mismatch there. Now, to me, that's a different question than extracting resources on the moon or Mars. To which I would say I don't really care what anyone else thinks.
(19:35):
Abhi TripathiIf you are able to get to the moon or Mars, you're certainly not going to hurt the moon or Mars. There's certainly no way to pollute the moon or Mars. There are completely dead bodies. And so to me, I would just say, I don't really care what anyone else thinks. And you go do what you got to do.
Nishan DegnarainSo. So that's interesting, provocative in itself. And again, you have a deep set of experience on this. And more like the most. But what happens when we find scarce resources like water, for example, and certain craters in certain parts of, of the moon that is very restrictive and very valuable in that area. I mean, what bodies would exist to govern that?
(20:12):
Abhi TripathiFor example, nobody should exist. It should be if you get there, if you are able to get there, and very few people will, then you should have at it and go for it. I don't think anyone should ever regulate that. Until we have planetary wide governments, like in some science fiction novels. Like The Expanse series, where, I don't know if you guys ever watched the show expanse, but it's the Earth against the belters against Mars.
(20:36):
Abhi TripathiI mean, that's like maybe 100 years or more in the future, if ever. So right now, I mean, if only one nation has the ability to go, I don't know, mine. Water on the moon. Power to them. I don't think there should be any regulations.
Nishan DegnarainSo first, first come, first serve the first nation to get.
Abhi TripathiAbsolutely. Yeah. It's a very hard thing. It's extremely capital intensive. You know, maybe 1 or 2 nations might be able to pull it off in the next 20 or 30 years. And the moon is huge compared to whatever effort those 1 or 2 nations can mount in the next hundred years. So I think any regulations are unnecessary.
(21:14):
Nishan DegnarainSo to draw from another science fiction, genre for all mankind, where there was that kind of what happens when you get to risky operators, you know, a risky private sector operator go first, takes risks by drilling in an unsafe environment and then nation states. In that example, I believe it's Russia and and the US had to hold back or bail out the private enterprise.
(21:34):
Nishan DegnarainI mean, you don't think that this will start to engender certain risky behaviors.
Abhi TripathiAnd I hope it does. I mean, lots of people died doing lot coming to the new world. Lots of people are going to die when we try to put settlements on the moon or Mars. I mean, that should be obvious to anybody. Commercially backing a venture to the moon or Mars, that people are going to die. But people have died throughout the history of the world when we explore.
(21:57):
Abhi TripathiSo I definitely don't think regulations are are needed. I mean, I don't know how heavily was, you know, Magellan or Columbus regulated when they went to discover the New World? Probably not at all. And I don't think anything's should be any different for the moon or Mars.
Nishan DegnarainInteresting, interesting. And, Yeah. So go ahead, Mickey.
(22:19):
Miki SodeOh, no. It's okay. I had a thought, but I already covered that, so it's okay. Yeah.
Nishan DegnarainYeah. So so effectively, it's a model of survival of the fittest, you know, survival of kind of the first come, first serve. And in that, in that model, you're effectively saying that those with access to the deepest pockets, just like the Magellan example or just like the the original explorers, your first. Yeah. Up Everest, the first to discover, you know, Shackleton to the, and Anderson to the Antarctica to that, to the, to the North Pole.
(22:54):
Nishan DegnarainThose who have access to the National Geographic Society's equivalent, of other parts of the philanthropies, and venture backers, private capital in many, many, many cases, will likely be the the winners. And so yeah, high.
Abhi TripathiReward is that's consistent with history. You it's not you're risking a ton I mean, nations have gone like I think the Spanish Empire crumbled, you know, because they tried to explore too much. Right. And and that's, that's what happened. Other nations that were able to succeed did so at great risk to their to the to the possibility that their nation or their empire or whatever would collapse.
(23:36):
Abhi TripathiSo if you're willing to bet your private fortune, or if you're willing to bet your national existence to some venture, I mean, that's a risk that deserves a reward, in my opinion. So I think, you know, look at the counter example. Do we wait until all nations are able to have a rocket or a spacecraft that can go to the moon?
(23:57):
Abhi TripathiI mean, there's 100 and almost 200 nations on Earth. You know what would be where do you draw the line at? What's equitable? I don't think that makes sense. I think if you can go there and get to the moon or get to Mars, then you should be rewarded for your great risk.
Nishan DegnarainSo. So it almost sounds if there are different horizon of the space economy that will have to be regulated in different ways, right? You got near Earth, a low Earth orbit. There are risks, you know, as we've started now to do a shuttle, it's 25, 30 years of human occupation that we now know. Things like Kessler effect, the need to have, satellites that can that can navigate themselves.
(24:35):
Nishan DegnarainWe know less about their private stations. We know less about occupation, long term occupation of the moon and Mars. And so maybe there's more, you know, if there was a spectrum of communication, culture, norms, regulation, a lot more around low-Earth orbit, right?
Abhi TripathiYeah, it is low-Earth orbit. It's going back to what we said earlier. It's a more mature market. There's been there's a lot of knowledge people have operated in this space. They have good lessons learned, technical lessons learned, cultural lessons learned that can go to help inform good regulations, good rules, good norms. Whereas, you know, going, going, talking about the moon or Mars, there's no experience whatsoever.
(25:16):
Abhi TripathiYou know, you need people to be able to get there, to form experience, to to begin to lay the groundwork for some future set of norms or rules.
Nishan DegnarainYeah.
Miki SodeBut time to, to, yes, there are frameworks already, but, maybe there are more coordination and, setting standards and norms to be done to, encourage more commercial activities, especially in Leo, with private sector as well as international players. And if, I think that is already starting. But you were saying like, panic.
(26:01):
Miki SodeI think it's, I feel like it's a time to have more, concerted effort for that. But like, who should lead the way? It is a, group effort. But then it would be helpful to have, somebody to kind of guide the way and go towards a shared vision. Right?
(26:25):
Abhi TripathiSo I don't think anyone from outside the companies can guide the way because by definition, the people from outside the companies and in the government, no way, way less than the people inside the companies. Right. So I think there's already an organic effort. You know, again, SpaceX with Starlink, who has the most experience, has already said, here's what we're doing to mitigate, reflection, to make lives easier for astronomers.
(26:49):
Abhi TripathiHere's what we're doing to make sure we don't leave debris up in space. We fly our spacecraft at very low, orbits. So they degrade fast at end of life, and we have extra propellant to make sure we can do orbit them. They're saying everything they're doing to be good stewards. Right. And they're putting the playbook out there.
Abhi TripathiSo you want to make sure that other people see the playbook and are organically accepting the playbook. And if they're not, then you start raising a stink as to, hey, you know, they've already shown you how to make your satellite less bright. Why aren't you doing any of this? Right. And the answer might be legitimate answer. And that answer might lead to a better understanding to eventually write regulations.
(27:31):
Abhi TripathiI do think, however, in the case that I said where it's, where Congress actions need to occur between commercial companies or a commercial company in a government where there's an adversarial relationship, for example, if I have a commercial U.S. satellite and an unknown suspected Chinese military satellite, and I'm worried about a collision there at that point, the commercial company is not powerful enough, is not connected enough, and and frankly, might be illegal for them to the potential Chinese entity.
(28:03):
Abhi TripathiYou need the government to step in and help facilitate those lines of communication. So I think the best thing the government could do right now is to establish clear lines of communications so that you can, you know, pick up the red phone and talk between commercial companies and governments, commercial companies in one country, commercial companies in another, to make sure that they are doing enough to lay that groundwork, because that will be the most important part of any future regulations.
(28:31):
Miki SodeInteresting.
Nishan DegnarainAnd that works today when we have good corporate actors. Yeah, those with the equivalent of the moral compass. And trust us, we do. But at some stage, at some say it's inevitable, just like I'm sure tobacco that came through, you know. Oh, yeah, they, they came in with a, you know, the well-intentioned and they realized big tobacco was big tobacco.
(28:51):
Nishan DegnarainIt was causing cancer. Things that, you know, Big Oil was big on. It was causing a huge, you know, a climate change. And, you know, at some stage, big space will become big space. And the incumbents may, you know, prefer regulation and norms that benefit the incumbents and not newcomers that may try to. Yeah. So how do we think about that?
Nishan DegnarainYou know, there are examples with the governance of the internet, for example, with I can public private party. Yeah. We can start to look at those frameworks, other models like that that you can see, eventually evolving I think.
(29:20):
Abhi TripathiSo I think the key is still collecting more information because right now it's not clear to me who succeeds at all beyond space. Right. You have Kuyper, who have been promising to launch for a long time, and I think they're going to lose part of their spectrum unless they get like, I don't know, some 200 or 600 satellites up by 2026, which is I'm not sure if it will happen or not.
(29:41):
Abhi TripathiSo before I worry about the hey, what if the actors and the incumbents squash the other people? I have to figure out who is going to be another actor, because right now I only see one that's really making it. And, you know, you haven't seen anything in terms of bad intentions, but I think you should definitely on the side of less regulations if you're worried that the incumbent is going to use regulations to stamp out the competition, while the competition is for its infancy, that's even more of an argument for not having regulations until we get more, evidence of how did things unfold for each of these other companies?
(30:20):
Abhi TripathiI think once you have, I don't know, several actors that are all doing well, now's the time you come together with the lessons learned from each to make sure that, you know, we're not creating monopolies, that we're creating, a set of, of rules or norms that other people, have through evidence, can actually work within to bring a product to market.
(30:42):
Nishan DegnarainIt could. Well, I mean, we're we're coming to the time, that that we had for this. I mean, this is a fascinating conversation I feel we could work for, for a long time. I mean, some of the takeaways I got from this discussion was, you know, you know, number one, need to be grounded. If we got to look at the space, the frontiers of the space economy be grounded in us, have some fundamentals, good business fundamentals.
(31:02):
Nishan DegnarainAbsolutely go forwards. I think that's one takeaway. The second is this, this, this, this thing about or this, this, this anchor and shared experience where there's a language code of communication, you know, norms, culture, have these shared experience that's going to form the basis for whatever sort of governance system. I don't use the word regulations about governance systems to ensure that we have an orderly development, of space.
(31:25):
Nishan DegnarainAnd, you know, the third is, your point about kind of how is the space sector going to eventually diversify and you'll see that it's just too early. Yeah. We don't know. There's so many unknown unknowns on where that new capital, what that new venture, how that's going to materialize and evolve. And yeah, that in itself is fascinating for somebody with your deep experience does not know.
Nishan DegnarainIt just shows, you know, like, how much we are still to to learn about this. This is what we built.
(31:49):
Abhi TripathiYeah, absolutely. The capital requirements are enormous. Right. So it's hard to find even venture capitals. Most venture capitalists don't have the pockets or the risk appetite, so I agree with everything you said. It's very early, and we'll see how it unfolds.
Nishan DegnarainWell, I be from from Mickey, and I thank you very much. And we hope you can join us on the future podcast as well to show you insights.
(32:10):
Abhi TripathiAbsolutely. I was chatting with you.
Miki SodeThank you so much.
Nishan DegnarainIt's almost done.
(00:21):
Nishan DegnarainHello, everybody, and welcome to another episode on sustainability in space. My name is Nishant Green from the Exponential Academy. Know and go ahead.
Miki SodeWe always skip over this, and I'm sorry. How are you doing? Thanks for joining us.
Nishan DegnarainFantastic. And, we're delighted to be joined today by a very special guest. Our guest is Doctor Abhi Tripathi. He's the director of mission operations at UC Berkeley space science lab. He's had a very prestigious and high profile career, working at the forefront of many aspects of space exploration. Prior to his role with UC Berkeley, where they, currently operate various, satellites for space missions.
(01:00):
Nishan DegnarainHe spent ten years at SpaceX in a very senior position, as mission director for various, operations, as well as, the chief engineer for flight reliability for some of the, critical aircraft, like the, like the Dragon, and the, crew demo one and demo two missions. Prior to that, he spent ten years at NASA.
(01:22):
Nishan DegnarainWorking on long term planning for the Moon and Mars campaign. He holds degrees in aerospace and aerospace engineering, from University of Michigan and University Colorado, and a PhD in geology and micro paleontology from UCLA. So with that, let me welcome, Abby to our podcast. Abby. Welcome.
Abhi TripathiThank you. Tim. Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
(01:45):
Nishan DegnarainFantastic. Mickey, I think you had some some some questions for for Abby.
Miki SodeYeah. So, your brief, bio and path, but I have to ask you, like, a how how is your journey from, you know, doing the geology and micro paleontology to space X and now, UC Berkeley health, space science, Islam. Help! The overseeing the mission operations. How's how is that connect?
(02:17):
Abhi TripathiYeah, that's a good question. So, you know, after I got my degrees in aerospace engineering, I really wanted to look for life on other planets. So I went, got my PhD. After my PhD, I went to work for NASA for a couple more years before going to space X, and the honest answer is I've barely used my PhD at all.
Abhi TripathiI had hoped to be an astronaut, and maybe I will someday still be. And if I'm really lucky, I might still get to go to Mars someday. Maybe a little bit older. But, the truth is, I haven't used much of my PhD. Now, that being said, you asked a really good question. Even though I haven't explicitly used my PhD in terms of looking at fossils, I work at the Space Sciences lab, where I'm surrounded by principal investigators for NASA missions that are all scientists, and me being trained as an engineer, working with them.
(03:04):
Abhi TripathiI completely understand their language. I understand their thought process. Oftentimes engineers get very frustrated by scientists because they speak very different languages. And I like to think I'm able to bridge that gap, pretty effectively. So, you know, even though I don't explicitly use what I've learned in my PhD, it definitely does come in handy in my job even now.
(03:26):
Miki SodeYeah, I totally resonate with you that I did have science background as well as the engineering background. So that translation is very important, actually. Yeah.
Nishan DegnarainYeah, yeah. So it's interesting, you know, one of the big things we probably talk about today is kind of this cross-cultural understanding of different domains. And really do they understand whether it's engineer scientist. So what we're going to talk about what your policy makers to the private sector. Yeah. And that takes us a little bit to, I guess the, the, the space economy.
(03:56):
Nishan DegnarainBecause over your career, I imagine you've seen a world where the industry was dominated by primarily state funded organizations to the growth of private sector. And you've worked at the forefront of one of the most interesting, exciting and largest, private space enterprise. I think we've all seen the, the reuse of the, the starship and the the catching, the incredibly impressive feats of, of engineering that took place.
(04:21):
Nishan DegnarainBut what I, what we imagine is that we're at the just a very start of this, of this journey into the, into the space economy. I mean, how do you see the, the space economy evolving right now? It's primarily funded by venture capitalists, philanthropists, large government organizations, primarily to the defense industry. But I imagine as the space industry takes off, as we start to look at different horizons, like private space opera, space stations, lunar bases, bases, or, habitats on on Mars, we'll need institutional investors and other forms of capital to come in to really grow and expand the space economy.
(05:01):
Abhi TripathiYeah. I think, you know, if you look at the history of high tech innovation, you really see that for the first stage, however long that stage is, the business case isn't really there. Oftentimes it is completely a government case. And I think you're seeing, the same thing in the space industry, to be quite frank.
(05:23):
Abhi TripathiI think right now, the startups I'm seeing, you know, one of my other jobs that I do, start a job rather as a volunteer is I'm the, chair of the air and space track for the Berkeley Skydeck accelerator. And the startups I'm seeing. And the advice I'm giving them is, you know, it's good if you have a product that, you know, one day things will be amazing on the moon, like a rover or something.
(05:45):
Abhi TripathiBut you're not going to survive as a business unless you have near-term cash flow. And so you have to think of commercial opportunities, and you also have to think of military opportunities. And I think especially in the year 2025, a good majority of the companies that are trying to get started in, the commercial market for aerospace are going straight for military funding, and they're going to need that until there is a robust enough business case.
(06:11):
Abhi TripathiYou mentioned commercial Leo destinations. I'm not convinced right now that there is a business case for commercial Leo destinations. Of the, you know, maybe handful of companies trying. I think, only one right now is making what I would consider pretty good progress. And partially that's because they have an extremely wealthy backer that does need investment money.
(06:34):
Abhi TripathiThe other ones, I think are all struggling a bit. So I think, you know, it's my, my opinion is, is that kind of get have to get over a little bit of that X factor and realize that, US government and military funding is really what's going to be the way to get your business off the ground for, I would say, about the next five years.
Abhi TripathiThe lone example that doesn't fall into that category is, SpaceX with its Starlink constellation going after the commercial market. However, even that product is being heavily paid for by the government, who is equally interested in having their own version of Starlink, a private military version of Starlink. And that is, a non-trivial source of cashflow.
(07:16):
Nishan DegnarainInteresting. So, yeah, government as a funder as well as as a key customer. So yeah, clearly that's going to be, an important segment. We see that in many industries as well, where government is a it's an anchor. But you know, beyond that, five years to five years will just fly by, especially when you live in Australia. Do you have a mentor model?
Nishan DegnarainHave you seen other mental models on how the private sector can get involved to move away from just a dependance on on public funding?
(07:43):
Abhi TripathiNot. There is no model like there's only a few lone path breakers that are figuring it out. Again, Starlink figured it out, right? They figured out where others had tried the same idea for for decades and failed. Most notably iridium, and they figured out how to make it economically work. So there are other people trying to figure out how to economically make it work.
(08:04):
Abhi TripathiAnother good example that I think is gaining traction and is an idea that I actually think will eventually be a very good commercial product. There are several companies working on small modular, nuclear reactors now. A lot of these companies have aspirations. Well, this is how you would power a, settlement on the moon or a settlement on Mars.
Abhi TripathiSo they they believe in that, and that's their vision. But they also know that this small modular nuclear reactors might pay dividends much sooner on Earth. So the the most viable commercial ideas I'm seeing are people that have a vision and ultimately off Earth vision, but they have the practicality to understand that they need a near-term immediately impact people on Earth, vertical in order to close their business case.
(08:51):
Nishan DegnarainInteresting. So, you know, the pathway to commercialization, diversification away from the public sector is by having a real world, Earth based commercial operations that can then easily scale into into space, I mean, and link to that other, risks, around coordination. And we see this in the maritime industry, for example, where, you know, something that started like the UN of the sea has evolved to various competing uses of whether it's offshore oil and gas windfarms.
(09:20):
Nishan DegnarainThere is a special protection for a whale breeding grounds, the shipping lanes, for example, there's right now a real, a mishmash of regulations and operations. And with the Arctic and Antarctic, they try to be much cleaner forms of regulation on whether it's a model based on exploitation in the Arctic or preservation in Antarctica. I imagine it's going to be the same in the space industry that you would not wish for operations to clash with, future uses of space, for example, space debris, risks in terms of, ownership of certain parts of the moon or areas of, of high value resources, for example, do you do you see
(10:03):
Nishan Degnarainthere being a need for coordination, for space operation, or do you think it's just too early right now? It's the Wild West. Let a thousand rockets bloom.
Abhi TripathiYeah. I think you hit the nail on the head because I was about to use the railroad as an example. You know, in the early days of the transcontinental railroad, there was not a ton of regulations. And there was an important reason for that. You know, I'm a firm believer that when you have a new industry, you have to allow a learning period, and the learning period cannot just involve learning by a single company.
(10:33):
Abhi TripathiIt needs to be learning by multiple companies that you start to have a body of evidence of, okay, this company tried this and it failed. We should take note. There might be a regulation needed there. Future. This he tried this and it succeeded. Until you have a body of evidence you're going to, all you're going to do is you're going to create really, really bad regulations.
(10:53):
Abhi TripathiRight? So I think the FAA has recognized this with commercial spaceflight, where Congress and the FAA keep extending what they call the learning period of commercial spaceflight, not imposing regulations from the government on any of these commercial providers because they're realizing that so far, you really only have 1 or 2 commercial providers that, has enough of a body of evidence to actually inform Smart regulations.
(11:19):
Abhi TripathiSo I think what I'm seeing right now in, the space sector, when you talk about space sustainability or debris is I think you're seeing, you know, SpaceX and other satellite operators that have more than a couple of satellites collecting good data. They're making mitigations on their own. They're sharing the mitigations that they're making. They're going to, you know, science conferences, for example, if I'm talking about, astronomers that might be mad that, you know, there's a lot of, satellites getting in the way of their ability to do astronomy.
(11:50):
Abhi TripathiWell, SpaceX is going to astronomy conferences and explaining the mitigations of doing, the there there are also, other efforts I've heard that are government to government interactions going on right now to provide clean channels of communication between the satellites of one nation and another nation. So I think a lot of things are organically happening, and I think those will help inform, eventually help inform a set of good regulations.
(12:17):
Abhi TripathiThe key is if you try to write good regulations too early, they will not be good regulations, they will be bad regulations. And they will, you know, choke off innovation.
Miki SodeRight. So in this, current state of the space commercialization and then we did, touch on a little bit of pasta commercialization and, I think, learning from weather, ocean or the railroad and past innovation and how the industry took off and all of that stuff. It's sure we need our for learning, period. But also it also we there are things that we can start to place in terms of like the bare minimum, regression so that we don't, you know, shoot down each other's satellites and whatnot.
(13:12):
Miki SodeWhat kind of frameworks? That might be that can be already be in place, like where might be a, sort of, baseline point, the government or commercial entities and, hopefully, you know, wide international community can, like use as a starting point.
(13:38):
Abhi TripathiYeah. I mean, I think the starting point has to be government to government, military to military. So, for example, if Russia launches a rocket and they're trying to deploy some satellites and the, satellites don't deploy properly, they may be the second stage of the rocket fails on the radar. You might see all of a sudden a rocket with multiple things coming off of it.
(13:59):
Abhi TripathiOkay. And that could be mistaken for oh my gosh, is that a warhead with me, or is that a rocket weapon with multiple warheads coming off? Right. So there already is infrastructure in place for the militaries of the, of the spacefaring nations to talk to each other and warn each other about any such misunderstandings. So I think the basis for that already exists.
(14:23):
Abhi TripathiLikewise, if there's a NASA satellite and it looks like it's going to have a conjunction with what the government believes might be a Chinese satellite, the governments can call each other now how much cooperation there might be between, depending on who did state at two state actors are might be high cooperation or low cooperation, but the framework exists.
(14:44):
Abhi TripathiOkay. If you take it a step forward, if you look at SpaceX, on their website, they've already released an API that allows you, as a satellite operator to use their API to figure out where all their starlink's are to help build automation in your own system, to avoid starlink's, to do maneuvers, or to know that Starlink will avoid you, which is what they tend to do.
(15:08):
Abhi TripathiYou know, if I'm a satellite and this has happened to me before as, as a Berkeley operator, if I'm a satellite, I need to know which one of us is going to move before we collide. And SpaceX has already revealed, hey, this is what we do. We are going to be the ones to move. We know where all satellites, satellites are.
Abhi TripathiWe know where other satellites are through common databases. So I think, you know, people have already taken actions and laid down a framework. But at the end of the day, I think you really need government to government cooperation between non friendly nations. Before you can further, a more holistic approach to regulations.
(15:47):
Nishan DegnarainInteresting. So there's probably like a multi-layered approach to this, you know, at the base layer, you talk about communication at least even without regulation, you've got the equivalent of a phone call and a point person that can be picked up. There's probably some elements of training, you know, what is the training to make sure you do or a skilled operator should know.
Nishan DegnarainSo that's probably know that some of these resources exist probably around cultural norms about operators based. And then you get to that regulatory state.
(16:13):
Abhi TripathiExactly.
Nishan DegnarainYou got penalties and punishments and yeah, what your fines, whatever it's going to be. Yeah.
Abhi TripathiIt's yeah, it's I mean if you think about it, it's in everyone's best. It's in every individual individual operator's best interests to not have their satellites collide. I mean everyone's got the carrot right there, right. So you have to wonder when, why, how big of a stick do I need? And how soon, if they already have a very important carrot, you know, if they're if they're satellites out of commission.
(16:41):
Abhi TripathiForget about the debris for a second. Forget about Kessler. If they're going to lose money, they're going to lose capability. They don't want to collide. Right. So I think they're already motivated to not collide. So I think it's important for governments to help push that already natural inclination further and help give all those parties the tools, whether they be automation tools, whether it be simply a red phone, you know, to talk to each other.
(17:07):
Abhi TripathiIt's good to keep encouraging all that type of behavior.
Nishan DegnarainAnd I think, you know, what is interesting, because at the heart of that debate is the set of values, right? Do we have a common set of a common vision for what we want to use space for? And, we saw that, in December, you had put out quite a bold statement on Twitter about a vision for NASA, which was which was interesting.
(17:32):
Nishan DegnarainBecause you said, well, actually, NASA should much more explicitly rather be a science research organization, you know, have a sole focus of being a multi helping human humanity to become a multi-planetary species, right, with regional centers of research. And that should be the focus of NASA. With that already with operation, other, other private operations. Other nations may disagree with that.
(17:56):
Nishan DegnarainAnd even with that becoming a multi-planetary species, there are going to be questions about if I have human habitats in different parts of the solar system, the moon, Mars. Am I allowed to extract from that? Am I allowed to preserve? Am I allowed to share that with other nation states, for example, to other private operators? I mean, how do you see that value system evolving?
(18:19):
Nishan DegnarainYeah. I mean, do you think there's a broad consensus that that's the value system around the world that a lot of people agree with that? Yeah, humanity should be like so.
Abhi TripathiSo I think there's multiple things. I think, people need to have consensus around shared space, which is, you know, there's there's really a lot of condemnation around any country that does a what's called an Asat test and anti-satellite test, because those tests create debris, they create shrapnel and all sorts of, orbits. China has done Asat tests.
(18:50):
Abhi TripathiI think India has, you know, other nations immediately come out and condemn because that is, a very irresponsible way. And it's getting to your point is, Sean, it's it's where maybe the norms and the, and the policies of the government do not match. If you are a nation that feels threatened by another one, you may have less qualms about doing an anti-satellite test.
(19:14):
Abhi TripathiTo show how strong of a nation you are. Right. We're as a nation that is already feels very comfortable. It knows how to do. You know, anti-satellite maneuvers doesn't need to do that. So I think there's a mismatch there. Now, to me, that's a different question than extracting resources on the moon or Mars. To which I would say I don't really care what anyone else thinks.
(19:35):
Abhi TripathiIf you are able to get to the moon or Mars, you're certainly not going to hurt the moon or Mars. There's certainly no way to pollute the moon or Mars. There are completely dead bodies. And so to me, I would just say, I don't really care what anyone else thinks. And you go do what you got to do.
Nishan DegnarainSo. So that's interesting, provocative in itself. And again, you have a deep set of experience on this. And more like the most. But what happens when we find scarce resources like water, for example, and certain craters in certain parts of, of the moon that is very restrictive and very valuable in that area. I mean, what bodies would exist to govern that?
(20:12):
Abhi TripathiFor example, nobody should exist. It should be if you get there, if you are able to get there, and very few people will, then you should have at it and go for it. I don't think anyone should ever regulate that. Until we have planetary wide governments, like in some science fiction novels. Like The Expanse series, where, I don't know if you guys ever watched the show expanse, but it's the Earth against the belters against Mars.
(20:36):
Abhi TripathiI mean, that's like maybe 100 years or more in the future, if ever. So right now, I mean, if only one nation has the ability to go, I don't know, mine. Water on the moon. Power to them. I don't think there should be any regulations.
Nishan DegnarainSo first, first come, first serve the first nation to get.
Abhi TripathiAbsolutely. Yeah. It's a very hard thing. It's extremely capital intensive. You know, maybe 1 or 2 nations might be able to pull it off in the next 20 or 30 years. And the moon is huge compared to whatever effort those 1 or 2 nations can mount in the next hundred years. So I think any regulations are unnecessary.
(21:14):
Nishan DegnarainSo to draw from another science fiction, genre for all mankind, where there was that kind of what happens when you get to risky operators, you know, a risky private sector operator go first, takes risks by drilling in an unsafe environment and then nation states. In that example, I believe it's Russia and and the US had to hold back or bail out the private enterprise.
(21:34):
Nishan DegnarainI mean, you don't think that this will start to engender certain risky behaviors.
Abhi TripathiAnd I hope it does. I mean, lots of people died doing lot coming to the new world. Lots of people are going to die when we try to put settlements on the moon or Mars. I mean, that should be obvious to anybody. Commercially backing a venture to the moon or Mars, that people are going to die. But people have died throughout the history of the world when we explore.
(21:57):
Abhi TripathiSo I definitely don't think regulations are are needed. I mean, I don't know how heavily was, you know, Magellan or Columbus regulated when they went to discover the New World? Probably not at all. And I don't think anything's should be any different for the moon or Mars.
Nishan DegnarainInteresting, interesting. And, Yeah. So go ahead, Mickey.
(22:19):
Miki SodeOh, no. It's okay. I had a thought, but I already covered that, so it's okay. Yeah.
Nishan DegnarainYeah. So so effectively, it's a model of survival of the fittest, you know, survival of kind of the first come, first serve. And in that, in that model, you're effectively saying that those with access to the deepest pockets, just like the Magellan example or just like the the original explorers, your first. Yeah. Up Everest, the first to discover, you know, Shackleton to the, and Anderson to the Antarctica to that, to the, to the North Pole.
(22:54):
Nishan DegnarainThose who have access to the National Geographic Society's equivalent, of other parts of the philanthropies, and venture backers, private capital in many, many, many cases, will likely be the the winners. And so yeah, high.
Abhi TripathiReward is that's consistent with history. You it's not you're risking a ton I mean, nations have gone like I think the Spanish Empire crumbled, you know, because they tried to explore too much. Right. And and that's, that's what happened. Other nations that were able to succeed did so at great risk to their to the to the possibility that their nation or their empire or whatever would collapse.
(23:36):
Abhi TripathiSo if you're willing to bet your private fortune, or if you're willing to bet your national existence to some venture, I mean, that's a risk that deserves a reward, in my opinion. So I think, you know, look at the counter example. Do we wait until all nations are able to have a rocket or a spacecraft that can go to the moon?
(23:57):
Abhi TripathiI mean, there's 100 and almost 200 nations on Earth. You know what would be where do you draw the line at? What's equitable? I don't think that makes sense. I think if you can go there and get to the moon or get to Mars, then you should be rewarded for your great risk.
Nishan DegnarainSo. So it almost sounds if there are different horizon of the space economy that will have to be regulated in different ways, right? You got near Earth, a low Earth orbit. There are risks, you know, as we've started now to do a shuttle, it's 25, 30 years of human occupation that we now know. Things like Kessler effect, the need to have, satellites that can that can navigate themselves.
(24:35):
Nishan DegnarainWe know less about their private stations. We know less about occupation, long term occupation of the moon and Mars. And so maybe there's more, you know, if there was a spectrum of communication, culture, norms, regulation, a lot more around low-Earth orbit, right?
Abhi TripathiYeah, it is low-Earth orbit. It's going back to what we said earlier. It's a more mature market. There's been there's a lot of knowledge people have operated in this space. They have good lessons learned, technical lessons learned, cultural lessons learned that can go to help inform good regulations, good rules, good norms. Whereas, you know, going, going, talking about the moon or Mars, there's no experience whatsoever.
(25:16):
Abhi TripathiYou know, you need people to be able to get there, to form experience, to to begin to lay the groundwork for some future set of norms or rules.
Nishan DegnarainYeah.
Miki SodeBut time to, to, yes, there are frameworks already, but, maybe there are more coordination and, setting standards and norms to be done to, encourage more commercial activities, especially in Leo, with private sector as well as international players. And if, I think that is already starting. But you were saying like, panic.
(26:01):
Miki SodeI think it's, I feel like it's a time to have more, concerted effort for that. But like, who should lead the way? It is a, group effort. But then it would be helpful to have, somebody to kind of guide the way and go towards a shared vision. Right?
(26:25):
Abhi TripathiSo I don't think anyone from outside the companies can guide the way because by definition, the people from outside the companies and in the government, no way, way less than the people inside the companies. Right. So I think there's already an organic effort. You know, again, SpaceX with Starlink, who has the most experience, has already said, here's what we're doing to mitigate, reflection, to make lives easier for astronomers.
(26:49):
Abhi TripathiHere's what we're doing to make sure we don't leave debris up in space. We fly our spacecraft at very low, orbits. So they degrade fast at end of life, and we have extra propellant to make sure we can do orbit them. They're saying everything they're doing to be good stewards. Right. And they're putting the playbook out there.
Abhi TripathiSo you want to make sure that other people see the playbook and are organically accepting the playbook. And if they're not, then you start raising a stink as to, hey, you know, they've already shown you how to make your satellite less bright. Why aren't you doing any of this? Right. And the answer might be legitimate answer. And that answer might lead to a better understanding to eventually write regulations.
(27:31):
Abhi TripathiI do think, however, in the case that I said where it's, where Congress actions need to occur between commercial companies or a commercial company in a government where there's an adversarial relationship, for example, if I have a commercial U.S. satellite and an unknown suspected Chinese military satellite, and I'm worried about a collision there at that point, the commercial company is not powerful enough, is not connected enough, and and frankly, might be illegal for them to the potential Chinese entity.
(28:03):
Abhi TripathiYou need the government to step in and help facilitate those lines of communication. So I think the best thing the government could do right now is to establish clear lines of communications so that you can, you know, pick up the red phone and talk between commercial companies and governments, commercial companies in one country, commercial companies in another, to make sure that they are doing enough to lay that groundwork, because that will be the most important part of any future regulations.
(28:31):
Miki SodeInteresting.
Nishan DegnarainAnd that works today when we have good corporate actors. Yeah, those with the equivalent of the moral compass. And trust us, we do. But at some stage, at some say it's inevitable, just like I'm sure tobacco that came through, you know. Oh, yeah, they, they came in with a, you know, the well-intentioned and they realized big tobacco was big tobacco.
(28:51):
Nishan DegnarainIt was causing cancer. Things that, you know, Big Oil was big on. It was causing a huge, you know, a climate change. And, you know, at some stage, big space will become big space. And the incumbents may, you know, prefer regulation and norms that benefit the incumbents and not newcomers that may try to. Yeah. So how do we think about that?
Nishan DegnarainYou know, there are examples with the governance of the internet, for example, with I can public private party. Yeah. We can start to look at those frameworks, other models like that that you can see, eventually evolving I think.
(29:20):
Abhi TripathiSo I think the key is still collecting more information because right now it's not clear to me who succeeds at all beyond space. Right. You have Kuyper, who have been promising to launch for a long time, and I think they're going to lose part of their spectrum unless they get like, I don't know, some 200 or 600 satellites up by 2026, which is I'm not sure if it will happen or not.
(29:41):
Abhi TripathiSo before I worry about the hey, what if the actors and the incumbents squash the other people? I have to figure out who is going to be another actor, because right now I only see one that's really making it. And, you know, you haven't seen anything in terms of bad intentions, but I think you should definitely on the side of less regulations if you're worried that the incumbent is going to use regulations to stamp out the competition, while the competition is for its infancy, that's even more of an argument for not having regulations until we get more, evidence of how did things unfold for each of these other companies?
(30:20):
Abhi TripathiI think once you have, I don't know, several actors that are all doing well, now's the time you come together with the lessons learned from each to make sure that, you know, we're not creating monopolies, that we're creating, a set of, of rules or norms that other people, have through evidence, can actually work within to bring a product to market.
(30:42):
Nishan DegnarainIt could. Well, I mean, we're we're coming to the time, that that we had for this. I mean, this is a fascinating conversation I feel we could work for, for a long time. I mean, some of the takeaways I got from this discussion was, you know, you know, number one, need to be grounded. If we got to look at the space, the frontiers of the space economy be grounded in us, have some fundamentals, good business fundamentals.
(31:02):
Nishan DegnarainAbsolutely go forwards. I think that's one takeaway. The second is this, this, this, this thing about or this, this, this anchor and shared experience where there's a language code of communication, you know, norms, culture, have these shared experience that's going to form the basis for whatever sort of governance system. I don't use the word regulations about governance systems to ensure that we have an orderly development, of space.
(31:25):
Nishan DegnarainAnd, you know, the third is, your point about kind of how is the space sector going to eventually diversify and you'll see that it's just too early. Yeah. We don't know. There's so many unknown unknowns on where that new capital, what that new venture, how that's going to materialize and evolve. And yeah, that in itself is fascinating for somebody with your deep experience does not know.
Nishan DegnarainIt just shows, you know, like, how much we are still to to learn about this. This is what we built.
(31:49):
Abhi TripathiYeah, absolutely. The capital requirements are enormous. Right. So it's hard to find even venture capitals. Most venture capitalists don't have the pockets or the risk appetite, so I agree with everything you said. It's very early, and we'll see how it unfolds.
Nishan DegnarainWell, I be from from Mickey, and I thank you very much. And we hope you can join us on the future podcast as well to show you insights.
(32:10):
Abhi TripathiAbsolutely. I was chatting with you.
Miki SodeThank you so much.
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