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July 22, 2025 15 mins

In this episode, Alex discusses his transition from aerospace engineering to 3D printing with the next adventure being AI development. Also, we're getting Space Internet with Starlink!

Lot's of updates from Behind The Scenes at Today In Space - between a deep dive of what Space Internet is like, to AI Tool development, and stories about new adventures in life and career.

All while there is chaos about the funding at NASA and what the future holds in the second Space Conundrum. Not to mention, a new venture with Alex's friend & business partner Matt Guy of Niche3D (niche3d.io to learn more about Matt) on early August!

Let's dive in!

Thanks for joining us for our adventure here at Today In Space and AG3D Labs Here's to building a fantastic future, on Earth and off it - and continued progress in Space (and humanity)!

Spread Love, Spread Science Alex G. Orphanos

Timestamps:
00:00 Space Internet and Starlink
04:01 Skill Set LEVEL UP with AI 
05:31 3D Printing and Podcasting Skill Adventures
07:33 Building Our Private AI and Getting Back to Coding 
12:50 Future Plans and Announcements

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AG3D Printing (go to ag3d-printing.com to learn more & start 3D printing today!)

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SpaceX Starship-Inspired Rocket Pen (3DPrinted) https://ag3dprinting.etsy.com/listing/1602850640

Blue Origin New Glenn-inspired Rocket Pen (3DPrinted) https://ag3dprinting.etsy.com/listing/1859644348

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• Donate at todayinspace.net

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to today in space,the All Things Space Science

(00:04):
Podcast. As always, I'm yourspace science podcast host from
the East Coast, Alex G orfanos,and we're here for another
episode this week. I'm talkingabout space internet, building
my own AI, and investing in myown skill set. It's a way of
easing my mind as we continue tosee a lack of leadership at NASA

(00:25):
and lots of cuts happeningbefore the program and the cuts
are actually official, it's veryfrustrating. Lots of chaos, and
many good public servants who'veserved NASA for a decade or two
are now choosing the option toleave, and there really isn't
anyone technically in charge atNASA. We now have an interim
administrator, but really just afew people at the top making

(00:47):
decisions before anythingofficial has happened. So I've
been focusing my energyelsewhere and back to our 3d
printing lab, AG, 3d where I canfeel like I'm useful and there's
a lot to share. So this episode,what I'm gonna do is share more
about my choice to get spaceinternet, why I'm building my

(01:08):
own AI on my computer, and howI've entered another state and
investing in myself and my skillset. So buckle up, and let's
dive in. Welcome to today inspace. You
space space internet, the pricehas finally reached a point

(01:29):
where I can actually partake inspace internet with Starlink,
actually getting a service fromsomething operating in space,
which is pretty cool. I mean,GPS, yes, but it doesn't feel
like you bought GPS right wherethis is internet, so it's
interesting, and I was happythat we could finally dive in,
and we we've been needing betterperformance with internet, with

(01:51):
all the streaming that we'vebeen doing these days, we've
been doing the telescope atnight, which has been awesome.
Our 3d printing lab is veryclose to start streaming there,
and we've been doing a lot morein that area, so we need better
internet. Again, I am just acustomer, right? I'm not getting
paid by SpaceX or Starlink. I amnow just purchasing the tech and

(02:12):
the service, and since we're aspace podcast, we're definitely
going to talk about it. It'susually $350 for the dish and
the router and all the hardware,and then I believe it's 120 a
month for residential internetfrom Starlink. They're giving
people free hardware, so $350off if you pay for 12 months of
the service at $90 per month,which is discounted since that's

(02:36):
only $30 more than I'm payingnow, and the speeds in the low
end of what are available foraround here, assuming I get good
coverage for the skyline, itcould be at least two times
faster than what I'm gettingnow, and potentially more
reliable for streaming. So whatto expect from today in space?
We'll be sharing our experiencewith the series on social media

(02:57):
and our YouTube page. We'll doepisodes and updates here on the
podcast too. Make sure yousubscribe to the YouTube page.
Make sure you're following us attoday in space pod on Instagram
and Twitter and today in spaceon Tiktok. We'll share the
unboxing and the installationtesting of the actual internet
and why we're choosing internetfrom space. We'll dive into the

(03:19):
business, the product and theservice from some service from
space. I can tell you one thingthat was a big consideration is
that Starlink funds the futuredevelopment of starship which
has the best chance right now ofbringing progress to human space
flight the Moon and Mars andcarrying NASA's human missions
forward. But with all the chaosat NASA, with the funding and

(03:40):
cuts something like starshipbecomes very important on my
list very quickly. And if I getgreat internet from that as
well, then that's great too. Butthere's a little bit of my why
there that I want to share, andwe'll dive into more later. And
next, I want to share somethoughts on a new stage that I'm
entering in. When I firststarted this podcast, I thought

(04:01):
of myself as a pure aerospaceengineer. Like I was like, Oh,
what do you do? I'm an engineer.No, I was always I'm an
aerospace engineer. That's whatI told people I was, it's what I
identified for a long time. Itwas what I was going to do, and
it made sense. Like, that's whatI went to school for, and went
into student debt to get mydegree in. But around that time,

(04:21):
2012
like the space shuttle, had justbeen retired, the space industry
was hurting. We didn't have anoption. They had just started to
get the commercial crew programup and running. It was not a
great time for someone who hadjoined aerospace engineering as
a degree to go work on the spaceshuttle, and that was just too

(04:42):
far out of reach for me as,like, a second generation Greek
American who's, like, not a rockstar student by any means, but
was really passionate about thesubject, and it was just not
something that my family haddone before. I didn't have
people who were engineers closeto me that I could have had.
Questions. It was just, it wassomething that I was passionate

(05:03):
about, about working on thespace shuttle, working in space,
and helping build the thingsthat were taking people into
space. So it was, it wasdefinitely a dark time for me,
and also the impetus for mestarting this podcast. I was
going to be my digital resume.I've talked about this before,
but for anyone that's new, thispodcast started as a digital
resume. It was a way for me toget experience in space, even in

(05:27):
an industry where they weren'tlooking at someone like myself,
to join the jobs that I wasinterested in. And it helped me
communicate about it, to dive indeeper, to learn more, right?
And in that process, I found 3dprinting and how it was going to
be used in space. And at thattime, there were only a few 3d

(05:48):
printers out there in themarket, and some of those kits
and Kickstarters were affordablefor just out of college engineer
salary. And so that's what Idid. I've told this before, but
when I started the podcast, Iwas working in a machine shop of
injection molders, and I waslearning M code and G code, and

(06:09):
is the language of how thesemachines move and machine
things. And I was working withextremely talented tool makers
who made me believe that anyonecould learn to operate these
machines. And so that was, waslike, what's going to be my
machine? And so a 3d printer wasthe budget friendly way to
manufacture on my own, make myown parts and maybe even start a

(06:29):
business. And that ended updoubling as the experience that
I needed for my resume. And Iadded another skill to my tool
belt of making things andsolving problems. And so to me,
skill building is one of mystrengths. It's what I love.
It's what I'm good at, and Ilove doing it, and it's also
kind of meditative too. But I'ma quick learner once I've asked

(06:51):
enough questions. And the sidequest of learning 3d printing,
because of my space podcast, setme on this trajectory where, eg,
3d the business we started fromit was funding the podcast with
our 3d printed prototypingbusiness and part service. And
eventually my experience allowedme to enter the 3d printing
industry, where I was able toget the equivalent or better

(07:15):
learning experience of 3dprinting, working inside the
industry, working with all theamazing, talented people being a
part of building 3d printers,testing them, making sure that
the customer on the other sideof it had a great experience,
and proving to somebody the ROIof a part they could make so
that they'd buy that system. Thereason, I tell you this whole

(07:38):
thing is because I'm back atthat same place I was back then.
My three printing and podcastinghas brought me to a place where
I'm now curious about AI and AItools. We've done plenty of
episodes and content about howleveraging AI tools in my
editing and promoting thepodcast has saved me hours a

(07:59):
week back in my own time, and itonly costs me hundreds of
dollars a year where finding anassistant and trying to figure
that out was just out of thequestion and not financially
viable. You know, we've we'vetalked with a lot of experts in
AI, and I've discussed for hourswith coworkers about it, and

(08:19):
have plenty more friends thatare more experienced than I am,
that I'm able to bouncequestions and ideas off of, and
now that I've asked enoughquestions, I'm ready to start
building my skill set in AI andreally understand what's going
on under the hood and how tohelp work with AI to solve the
problems that we're looking tosolve in the world. So it's for

(08:40):
the why that I'm building my ownprivate AI, right? Here is the
same reason that a company mightnot let you use chat GPT, but
they may let you use their owntrained AI or built AI. It comes
down to the data, right? And ifI'm going to make tools that
help my business or mepersonally, then I don't want it
going to a server filled witheveryone's data to have in there

(09:04):
or to be trained on, right? Andthis is especially true for
companies that have intellectualproperty, or, you know, if
you're working on any kind ofgovernment work, throwing that
stuff just into a chat GPT or aGemini technically, that data is
now Geminis. It's now chat gpts.So that's a lot of the
resistance is coming right nowin these companies using AI

(09:27):
tools, and they're looking forpeople to help build their own.
And I came to the sameconclusion after asking enough
questions, because I don't wantto be training some big
companies AI on my own businessinformation, and more
importantly, I want to tailor myown AI partner to me and what
I'm working on, the powerfultools like Gemini and chatgpt

(09:48):
and others are great grok andall those other different ones,
but they're not being built ortrained on data that is
specifically useful to me andyou. And I've been fascinated
in. The training and tuning ofAI, and that's kind of where I'm
heading using an open sourcePython based AI and toolset, and

(10:09):
we'll be training it on 3dprinting. Part success my own
knowledge transferred to it andbuilding tools that will make
the experience of 3d printingwith a G 3d better for customers
and users and the parts thatthey'll end up making, and
they'll be able to excel moreoften and catch issues before

(10:31):
you even start printing. Sothat's a small encapsulation of
what we're trying to do and whywe're building these tools, and
eventually we'll do some someopen source stuff. But just to
start, I wanted to play aroundand build something custom, so
that way I have a better focus,and I'm not inundated with every
single way that I could help,which could very easily happen
with an open source project. Andright now, I just don't have the

(10:53):
bandwidth. So private it is, andthat would be a skill that would
add to the resume for anypotential future business work
or maybe another job, who knows?But I did it with 3d printing,
and it's time to do that withAI. And so we enter the AI stage
of ag 3d which we'll call ag 3dlabs for now, three printing,

(11:16):
making software, AI, lots oftech, all in one lab, and in
building my own private, localAI on my computer, I've gotten
back into coding, which has beenvery interesting, especially
having AI as like my codingassistant, right? Like I learned
coding in college for a projectwhere we were building an app

(11:38):
for a paperless lab experiencefor studio students in the
biology department. So I knowenough about coding to make
prototype, but really, just likeany good engineer or scientist,
I know enough to ask goodquestions, and with AI as an
assistant, if you ask goodenough questions and prompt

(11:59):
well, then you're going to getsome really interesting stuff,
and that's where I'm going todive in. And so I've been in the
middle of building some of thosetools for the printing business,
and I've got some projects fortoday in space in mind that we
will get to but I'm going to domy best to share that journey
with all of you. And I'd lovefor you to jump in too and share
with anybody who else is who'sinterested. And more

(12:21):
importantly, for you to askquestions, because we're only as
good as the questions we ask,and I will have my own bias, and
there'll be areas that you'reinterested in or that you're
questioning that I maybe nevereven considered. So please ask
questions at today in space, weare definitely more on the side
of using curiosity to learnsomething that's new and scary,

(12:41):
artificial intelligence isdefinitely on the next boogeyman
list. So dive in with us. We'regoing to build an AI and develop
tools and work on the problemsthat we're here to solve. And
I'll close out this episode bysaying there's honestly a ton
that's going on, and we've gotanother big announcement and
project coming out in August ofthis year, my friend Matt, Guy

(13:02):
of niche 3d will be startingsomething new together about 3d
printing, and I can't wait toshare with you, Matt and I first
met working in the 3d printingindustry together, and we've
stayed in touch, and we'veworked together again in a
different 3d printing businessafter that, and plenty of other
personal projects, and this timewe're joining forces, it's going

(13:23):
to be a lot of fun. So staytuned and get ready for August.
Go to EG, 3d dash printing.com,and see what we're up to. Yeah,
that's, that's kind of theepisode is, is me just sharing
that I'm, I'm at this kind ofnexus point of my next adventure
as I wear my adventurousastronaut t shirt, which is
amazing. Thank you, V friends,but yeah, I'm at this nexus

(13:45):
point and one of those newprojects that we're working on
with Matt. Like I would not havemet Matt if I had not been
curious enough during the earlydays of the podcast to dive into
3d printing. I never would havebought that Urd printer. I never
would have worked at that firstcompany, and then I never would
have been laid off during thepandemic to then work with Matt

(14:06):
at another 3d printing companyfor us to become friends and
coworkers and now partners in aventure. So it's not lost on me
how special that is, and I havethat same feeling now with AI.
So I'm very excited. I hope youare too. Thank you for joining
us on another episode of todayin space. Make sure to follow us
on Instagram at today in spacepod x, at today in space pod,

(14:31):
our personal account on X orTwitter is El Greco, E, L, G, R,
the number 3c, O, and then we'reat today in space on YouTube and
tick tock. So go check that out.We've got a lot of series coming
out on just little things likespace internet and plenty of
other stuff, including our 3dprinted parts. If you haven't

(14:54):
already, definitely check out.We're we've been making like
crazy in the 3d printing live.In the part detective. If you
have any 3d printing mysteriesthat you want solved, hit us up.
EG, 3d part detective@gmail.com
and, AG, 3d printing.com so youcan book anytime. So hit us up
there, and that's it. Folks.Have a great week. Spread love,

(15:16):
spread science. Stay curious,and we'll see you on the next
episode of today in space, seeya you.
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