Best-Of Space Logistics, Economic Opportunities, and Building the New Silk Road

Episode Transcript
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(00:42):
Blythe, welcome into anotherBest of edition of everything is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight. We are
proudly presented by SPIlogistics, and I'm your host,
Blythe Milligan, and now beforeI get into the couple of Best of
conversations that we had aroundspace logistics for this year, I
wanted to highlight a few justnews and notables and some fun

(01:05):
facts that happened in the realmof space logistics and 2025 just
as sort of like a high leveloverview, before we get into a
couple of those interviews thatyou guys really loved, two of
which is Kelly keedis Ogden. Sheis talking about how to build up
the space economy and how youcan get started with it as a

(01:26):
startup in working in and aroundthe space ecosystem and the
space economy. So we have thatgreat interview for you later on
in the show. We also have Joefrom CIS lunar technologies, and
he is talking about building theNew Silk Road in space. We cover
a lot of ground in both of thoseconversations, and so those will

(01:46):
play at the end. But first, Ijust wanted to highlight some of
my favorite stories from thisyear, because we've had a huge
year in space logistics and asserving as a little bit of a
background. Back in July of 2024I was able to go to a NASA
launch and was able to visit thegrounds of Kennedy Space Center,

(02:10):
tour the grounds, get up closeand personal with, you know, the
Defense Logistics agencies andyou know just lunar logistics
and learning all about thataspect of the logistics process.
And so I think I've kind of, youknow, carved out a cool niche
for myself in the logisticsspace by covering all of these

(02:30):
things that are happening in andaround the space economy that it
feels like it's the new WildWild West that it is the new
final frontier, as you know,your favorite sci fi show would
say. But this is also, I'mrecording this on a day that is
a very inspirational in myopinion, because today is

(02:51):
December 18, and I was alreadyplanning on recording this intro
and this, you know, brief storytime for this episode today, but
it's also the day that we have anew NASA administrator in Jared
isaacman. Now he is, if youdon't know who Jared is, he
essentially two successfulparents, and those parents

(03:12):
allowed him, begrudgingly inhigh school, to drop out of high
school because he wasn't thebest student in a structured
environment like that, and hefounded a payments company. And
that payments company ended upturning out to be very lucrative
enterprise for him, where theparents made the correct bet,
they let their son kind of gooff and invest in himself and

(03:34):
invest in these newtechnologies. He built a billion
dollar company, and so throughthat, after he built this
billion dollar company, that'swhen he felt like he was still
his life. Craved more. So we gotinto the military. He has
aerospace experience flying jetsall over the country. He's
worked for defense companies.
He's a defense contractor, andthen he's also the only

(03:57):
administrator to ever go intospace. If you you might have
remembered that there was aSpaceX Dragon capsule launch
earlier in 2025 and Jared wasone of the few people that was
in that capsule. And they wereable to step outside, into, not
step outside, but kind of, Iguess, pull themselves outside
in especially designed spacesuitand become some of the first

(04:21):
humans to ever do that on a, Iguess, a non astronaut
qualification level. Maybe, Iguess, the, the way you would
call it is, I'm not even surethe right phrase that I would
use for this, but just regular,regular people being able to,
you know, go on into a spacewalkand do a spacewalk, and he's not

(04:42):
necessarily a regular person.
He's highly, highly acclaimed.
And so being able to record thison the same day that he is sworn
in and confirmed is incrediblygreat timing, because, I will
say, during my time during itwas just a couple of days spent
at Kennedy Space Center, walkingaround the grounds at that

(05:03):
facility and talking to a lot ofthe employees and seeing the
dynamic. It's still one of, Ithink, the most inspirational
government institution thatpeople, no matter what party
line you're on, you can reallyappreciate in and find it
inspiring what NASA has been,what it continues to be, and

(05:26):
what maybe it will be in thefuture, because Jared Isaac man
has some very strong opinions onwhat he believes that NASA
should be doing. Moreimportantly, what they shouldn't
be doing. He believes that, youknow, some of these missions
that NASA has focused on for thelast couple of decades is is not
something that they should befocused on anymore, because the

(05:49):
private sector has proven to doa much better job at, you know,
going after these programs. Oneprogram in particular is
obviously SpaceX. You can't talkabout, you know, the space
economy without mentioningSpaceX and the remarkable job
that they have done in makingspace flight more approachable,
more attainable, more budgetfriendly. And that's at the core

(06:12):
of being of having reusablerockets. And so Jared believes
that companies like SpaceX andother private sector companies,
they have innovated there, andthey have brought in the cost
structure down from NASA's, youknow, admittedly bloated
budgets, because this is a stilla government institution at the
end of the day, they get certainamounts of money, and that money

(06:36):
changes every couple of years,depending on the election cycle
and budget approvals. And sohaving Jared at the helm and
having a strategic vision forNASA of what doesn't work
anymore and what could work is,I think, tremendously beneficial
to the entirety of the NASAprogram. And what he believes

(06:58):
that NASA should be doing isthat they should be going after
the, more you know, moonshotideas, the science experiments
in managing their resources muchbetter or much they're able to
experiment more, because themoney that they do get is always
in flux, and it's never going tobe what I say it's never going

(07:20):
to be. What I mean is that, froma budgetary standpoint, there
used to be a significant amountof the US budget that was
allotted to NASA, and that hasshrunk tremendously throughout
the decades and every, you know,two to four years as the
election cycles go, that's whereNASA's funding is determined, or
it's increased. It's decreased.

(07:45):
A lot of times it's decreasing.
And for missions and programsthat are multi year or sometimes
multi decade, that can be a realwrench that's thrown into the
entire plan. And so Jared comingin with a new strategic mindset,
from a business mindset, fromsomeone who is a space

(08:05):
enthusiast, from someone who iswell connected and has a proven
leadership track record ofworking with multiple different
people, multiple differentcompanies in a variety of ways,
he's the perfect person to leadNASA into its next generation.
And so it's, it's, you know,it's a little serendipitous that
this is happening on the sameday that I am recording this

(08:26):
episode, because that is such animportant nomination. And as we
kind of round out the year, Iwanted to just briefly mention
some other things that I thoughtthat happened, or that happened
in space this year, that Ithought were really interesting.
And I'm just going to kind ofkind of go through a little bit
of a timeline here, and justgoing through the way I did this

(08:46):
is that I have a very strict wayof managing my bookmarks over on
x, and as I'm scrolling and Isee cool story ideas or things I
might want to talk about in thefuture, I'll save them to
different bookmark folders. Andso I am reading from the best of
of my own NASA bookmarks overthe last year as well. And so

(09:09):
starting with the first one Iwant to read off is a firefly
aerospaces blue ghost mission.
Now you might remember this backin March, but they were the
first company to have acommercial landing on the moon.
This opens up the space economyeven more, because it's the
first company to launch acommercial vehicle to the moon,

(09:30):
and it opens up explorationopportunities even further. Now
I in the show notes, what I'lldo is I'll link to each one of
these tweets that I saved frommy bookmarks. So in case you
want to watch the videos aboutany particular news story I'm
about to talk about, I wouldhighly encourage you to go check
it out, because it it really iscool to see all of the

(09:51):
innovation that has happenedover the last year. And this is
really just the first one, solet's move on to the next one.
Again, I'll have all of theselinked in the show notes. But
moving into April of this year,we also got our first view of
Earth's polar region via theSpaceX Dragon capsule. That
capsule has been a little busythis year, and so just being

(10:12):
able to, just knowing that we in2025 we had our first view of
Earth's polar regions availablefor view is just astounding. I
would have thought that we wouldhave had that decades ago, but
nope, this year, in April, wasthe first time that we ever got
the view of Earth's polarregions. Now the reason this is

(10:33):
important is because we want tomonitor the global shifts. Of of
weather patterns, ice patterns,you know, anything that we're
currently monitoring, as far asa weather perspective, you know,
adding more data and adding morenuance to, you know, the overall
data collection is always a goodthing, in my opinion, plus that
the photos just lookunbelievable. Now, moving into

(10:56):
the next one in May of thisyear, SpaceX released updated
renderings of humanoid robotsworking on Mars. And I know a
lot of you might roll your eyesat this, but I thoroughly
believe that it is importantthat we have humans in our
country that are going for themoonshot or for this particular

(11:19):
phrase, going for the Mars shot,people who are thinking beyond
what our current capabilitiesare, who are not satisfied. You
know, the the Think of theoriginal folks who, in the age
of exploration, sailed acrossthe Atlantic Ocean and had no
idea what they would find. Theyhad an idea, but they had no
idea what they would discover,where they would land, what they

(11:41):
would find. The same thing forfolks who, you know, sought out
manifest destiny in the UnitedStates when they're moving
across out west and they have noidea what to expect. A lot of
those areas had never even beencharted before from a map
perspective, and so havingaccess to the news of these
humans searching and, you know,building and creating the

(12:06):
different infrastructure to takethe human species off planet is
just such an incredible idea toeven bring to fruition and so
but it's not a dream. It's notsomething in far off land that
is never going to occur. This issomething that is actively being

(12:27):
built towards it. You have thereusable rockets with with
SpaceX that is powering this.
Tesla also has humanoid robotsthat will likely be the first
quote, unquote, humans.
Obviously, it's not humans, buthumanoids that are sent to Mars
to start building up theinfrastructure on that planet.

(12:49):
And so some of these photos thatare shown as multiple launch
pads, the humanoid robots, youknow, building out this, these
infrastructure of the launchpads, refueling capabilities,
storage capabilities, all ofthose things would have to be
built out on Mars to truly makethe human species obviously
survivable. If something everhappens to Earth, which history

(13:12):
has told us it's not, it's it'san inevitability that something
will happen, and if we canprolong the life of our species
for the first time that we knowof in human civilization, then I
think that that's something thatshould absolutely be applauded.
So those photos are really,really cool to see. Like I said,
those were released in May ofthis year, and then fast

(13:35):
forwarding a little bit toNovember of this year, and Jeff
Bezos, his Blue Origin rocketcompany, another billionaire
that started up a space company.
But Jeff Bezos has proven thathe is serious about this now.
And they have a rocket calledNew Glenn that had a successful
first launch in November of thisyear, not the one that Katy

(13:57):
Perry was on, but this is theone that is a reusable rocket,
just like SpaceX. So you mightremember from our deep space
logistics episodes that when youcan bring down the launch costs,
which using reusable rocketsdoes, it opens the door to much
more supply and much more demandfor shipping things into space,

(14:19):
shipping things into orbit,eventually the moon, eventually
Mars, SpaceX and Blue Origin,and soon to be that, I think
it's coming in 2026 but rocketlabs, neutron rocket, will all
have reusable Rocketcapabilities in 2026 and beyond.
So the more companies that arethe vehicles that are maybe the

(14:41):
modern or the old schoolrailroads, the you know, when
they were laying track for allof the railroads to be built
out. These are the companies,SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket
Lab, that are building thosetransportation mechanisms into
that next frontier. So that waskudos to Jeff Bezos and the Blue
Origin team for getting newGlenn. Some of the videos that

(15:02):
you'll see from that launch arejust incredible, especially the
reusable rocket standpoint. Therocket coming back down is
essentially coming down in freefall, and then all of a sudden,
the rocket, like, turns back on,and all the propellers and the
propellant and the way that the,you know, the rocket engines are
blowing in certain directions,it can maneuver itself to land

(15:24):
on a little launch pad that's ona barge out out off of the coast
of Cape Canaveral, Florida. Andthen, as soon as it landed,
perfectly stuck the landing. Andthen it the barge drives it back
on into Cape Canaveral inFlorida, and they offload the
rockets, and they will then putthem on a truck, and they'll

(15:46):
send it right back over toKennedy Space Center in order to
prep the rocket to be used againin the near future. I want to
say it was SpaceX that earlierthis year, for the first time
they had three launches in oneday. And that just proves how
quickly this stuff is speedingup. Because this was also this
year 2025. Was an increase inlaunch cadence, mostly driven by

(16:08):
SpaceX. But like I said, withBlue Origin, their new Glenn
rocket, and then rocket labsneutron, that should start, I
don't want to say, like the newGlenn and Rocket Lab will start
eating into a little bit of thatmarket share, but SpaceX still
dominates it. But it'sincredible to see all of these

(16:29):
new companies coming in, butthen all of just also the
frequency of launches that hasstarted happening like I said,
there's three in one day. BySpaceX, in November of 2025 we
had 31 launches in 30 days,which was the first month in
history that we had morelaunches than days in the month.

(16:50):
And I think that that is anotherjust milestone. We can't
continue to hit these milestoneswhen it comes to space
logistics, and I just thinkknowing that, knowing what the
launch capabilities are, is aperfect segue into a couple of
those favorite space episodesthis year covering the building

(17:14):
of the New Silk Road and how todo business in space. So hope
y'all enjoyed this little bitdifferent spin on this best of
episode. I just wanted to share,you know, a bunch of the fun,
positive stories around spacelogistics. And, you know, right
around the holidays when, youknow, I think we could all use
some inspiration and use somegood news going into the new

(17:37):
year, and so this is a topicthat I'm going to continue to
cover in the new year, and we'regoing to continue to expand on
it, but until then, I hope youenjoy these next couple of
interviews covering building theNew Silk Road in space. And then
after that, we will play theinterview with Kelly ketis
Ogborn, and that's how to dobusiness in space. Hope you all

(17:59):
enjoy before we can build a baseon the moon, we need something
most people overlook, a supplychain. Just like the original
Silk Road connectedcivilizations, the New Silk Road
in space will connect Earthorbit and the lunar surface
through transportation, powerand material infrastructure.
This isn't sci fi. It's the nextgreat logistics challenge, and

(18:20):
the companies solving it todayare laying the foundation for a
sustainable space economytomorrow. Welcome into another
episode of everything islogistics, a podcast for the
thinkers and afraid. We areproudly presented by SPI
logistics, and I'm your host.
Blythe Milligan, I'm happy towelcome in Joe pawalski. He is
the CTO at cislunar industries,and we're going to be talking

(18:41):
about how to build that New SilkRoad in space.
So Joe, welcome to the show.
Pleasure to be here. Thank you.
And just right when we startedrecording, you had mentioned

(19:45):
that you had read the box, whichis a book that's in my
background over here. And sothat's a perfect jumping off
place of where we want to havethis conversation, because we've
been doing regular spacelogistics episodes for about a
year now, and it's a topic thatis not slowing down anytime
soon. And I was going throughyour LinkedIn bio, and I noticed

(20:07):
that you have on there thatyou're a plasma propulsion
enthusiast, and I think thatthat's just the perfect way to
kick this conversation off. Sohow do you become a plasma
propulsion enthusiast?
Well, it started out playing agame called Red Alert Command
and Conquer years ago, probablyin mid 90s. So this is a

(20:29):
strategic game where you try tobattle different folks, but you
win by logistics. So you win bycapturing ore and building bases
and building a war factory. Andyou have to have a certain
number of things, the tributes,to build the fancier tanks or
build them faster and more powerplants and all that sort of
thing. You could be the formerSoviet Union countries in this

(20:52):
game, and they had, for basedefense, they had Tesla coils.
And at the time, I was like,wow, this is really neat. You
can zap people of lightning. Andthat's I learned quickly that
that was a real thing, that notthe part. It turns out, it's,
it's, it's, they're actually notvery harmful to people. You can
shock yourself with it. But Ilearned all about Tesla coils
when I was 1312, 13, somethinglike that. I grew up in

(21:15):
Richmond. There was a groupcalled the Tesla or the Tesla
builders in Richmond, and thiswas Richard Hall, who went on to
be the first few, first garagefuser builder. So he built a
fusor in his garage. And anyway,it turned out that I was hanging
out with a bunch of folks. Folksfrom Navy research lab and a
bunch of other national labs atthis age, and they were all into

(21:36):
trying to recreate a bunch ofthe things that Tesla had built.
So Tesla coils, but not justthat, obviously, they gradually
got into building fusers and allkinds of really exotic induction
drivers and directed energy typedevices eventually got into. So
that's, that's really whatkicked the seed, and that's how
I started to meet these people,and started to get these mentors

(21:58):
that helped me build my own highenergy type experiments. And
then I started to meet otherfolks that were, you know,
similar ages in the community.
One of those is Steve ward.
He's, he's got a bunch ofYouTube stuff out there. But he
invented the dual resonant teslacoil, which makes music. You
guys have probably seen playingAWOL nation sale or some other

(22:20):
electronic sounds like on thesteps of University of Chicago
and in places like this. A lotof folks have made those at this
point. He also invented thequasi continuous wave tesla
coil. I have one of them overhere. I might fire it up here in
a second. But second, but itmakes lightning bolts that look
like swords. I'll show you.
Yeah. So this thing right hereis a quiet, continuous wave test

(22:42):
the coil, and makes a littlespark when I plug it in. But
why? Yeah, oh yeah, it makespretty big bolts of lightning.
Here. You can actually shockyourself. We kind of do this as
a hobby at cislunar. We, youknow, any new hires, they get to
play with the tougher done and alittle bit of an onboarding

(23:05):
that's different, exactly foranyone watching that's that's
seen me at some of the events,like Space Symposium, we hosted
a party, and I was runningaround with that thing. So,
yeah, so anyway, that's, that'show I got into the whole plasma
and enlightening sort of thing.
It's kind of been a lifelinething. And so I had this idea

(23:26):
probably a decade or two ago. Iwas like, Wouldn't it be neat if
I could get, you know, these,these folks that are really that
I really look up to, that buildthese things, still get together
and start a company, and, youknow, I bet we could do all
kinds of cool stuff in spacewith, you know, building off of
those types of technologies. Andsure enough, quickly. So when we

(23:47):
started CIS learner, we actuallystarted to build metal foundries
in space. And this was to solvethe problem of space debris, but
also in order for us to buildoff world. So, you know,
something that I'm reallyinterested I used to be in heavy
industry, building, makingplastic bottles and cans at
1000s of minutes. So I reallywanted to, you know, to give

(24:09):
back and figure out a way togive us abundant resources,
abundant energy, but, but not,you know, destroy the Earth in
the process. I figured, well,okay, we got to get off the
Earth. We got it. We got to getthis critical mass. But at a
certain point, there's a bunchof, I mean, the Earth is made of
the same, sorry, the moon ismade of the same thing as the
Earth. So we have all theseresources that we have on the
earth, except the moon has nobiology happening. You know,

(24:32):
there's, there's a lot of, it'scovered in, you know, meter, 10s
of meters of just dust that is,that is metal and oxygen. So
this is a great resource. Soanyway, started looking into
that, and with the NASA project,it was to use metal for metal
foundries. So in order to dothat, we found out that
induction furnaces worked reallywell, and the folks that an

(24:54):
induction furnace forelectronics folks works a lot
like a Tesla foil circuit. So Iended up hiring some of these
folks that I had known from theTesla building community as some
of my first engineers to helpbuild this induction driver. And
then eventually we ended uprealizing that, hey, one of the
cool things about metalfoundries we were looking at,

(25:16):
okay, let's start with metaldebris. And the problem is
getting to the metal debris,because you use propellant to
get there, there's this wholeNewton's law. It's a real, real
pain in the ass rocket equation.
You have to, like, get rid ofmass in order to move anywhere.
Just force equals mass timesacceleration. So no matter where
you're going, you're you'reburning out of propellant.
You're, you know, but forceequals mass times acceleration.

(25:37):
So rocket fuel is can beanything with mass, especially
if you're using electricpropulsion. I learned about
plasma thrusters, like, wow,this is neat. Anything that's
you know, that can you can beconductive, whether it's a gas
that you can ionize and makeconductive, or just metal which
is already conductive, you canuse that as rocket fuel and as
like, hey, wait a minute. Thesesatellites and things are these.

(25:58):
There's 13 most derelict upperstages that, if they run into
each other, you get to Kesslersyndrome, and then you can't
launch things for several years.
It's like, man, if we could, wecould go over there. We could
eat these things. We could,like, poop out metal propellant,
and we could use that to get tothe next thing, and we could use
it for station keeping and allkinds of things. So originally,

(26:20):
you know, we're focused on thisfoundry and making this metal
propellant, but that introducedus to everyone in the plasma
thruster community, and westarted to realize that, hey,
the very near term problem is.
Actually logistics, like, how doyou get there, just in the first
place, so that you could usethat, those resources. And we
realized that a plasma thruster,the one of the one of the
hardest things about this isactually building the power

(26:42):
supply to operate it. And it goteven cooler that we realized
that the things that we had beenmaking for our induction
furnace, and some of the hardproblems we've been solving to,
you know, this thing, literally,it's like, part of it's like a
tractor beam. It grabs metalfrom space that's floating, and
then it directs it in with thesemagnetic coils and everything,
and then it feeds into thefurnace. And we're like, the

(27:03):
plasma thruster folks that westarted meeting were like this
part, this part that takes thething and directs it like and
then the circuit that that youdid that with. That's what we
want to learn more about. Likewe think you might have solved
some major problems for plasmapropulsion. And so, what the
heck is plasma propulsion? I gotto learn all about it. But
essentially, plasma plasmapropulsion, it's all these

(27:23):
things are similar to what wewere doing with with Tesla
stuff. It's all about, you know,controlling, you know, you have
a controlled spark or controlleddischarge, an arc. You know, a
lot of times in microelectronics, you don't want
arcs. That's what destroys yourelectronics. You're really
trying to prevent that. But ifyou're doing a plasma thruster
or an arc jet, or any of thesesorts of things, you're trying
to create an arc, and you'retrying to sustain that for a

(27:44):
really long time. So it turnedout all that experience was like
exactly what we needed to do.
And so that ended up getting usworking with all these other
research institutions that wework with everyone. It's that
any research institution theUnited States, and I know of
this doing plasma thrusters,we've been, we've been working
with in one capacity or another.
So anyway, it was like, Oh, wow.

(28:04):
We can take this stuff and putit on steroids and just do all
kinds of wacky stuff with it.
So, so anyway, that's, that'swhat we've been focusing on a
lot is, How do you take takesomething? Now, plasma thrusters
are really interesting, becauseyou can get much higher specific
impulse. And so what that comesdown to is, again, you know
Newton's law, yeah, you got tothrow mass out. The faster, the
harder you throw it, the better.

(28:27):
But also the more massive it is,the better. So electropollion
allows us to use electromagnets.
And basically our, you know, thespeed of light is a factor that
we're up against, but we canaccelerate things many times
faster than you can with achemical reaction, which means
that if you're Accel that numbermass times acceleration is
acceleration is very high, thenyou can get much more force. And
in this case, what ends uphappening is you get much better

(28:50):
gas mileage, is how you canthink of it. They're still
working on getting the energylevel so that we can get really
high thrust. This power islimited in space. It's not the
same as, you know, a chemicalrocket. You burn this, you can
get hundreds of megajoules, orbillions of billions of watts
generated at a time. And rightnow with solar cells or even a

(29:11):
nuclear you know, you're limitedsomewhat, but it turns out that
we can get very efficient. Soit's the way I could kind of
explain is, like the differencebetween a fighter jet and a
train. If you need to getsomewhere really fast, you're
going to use a fighter jet, butguess what? You're going to have
to refuel that thing. Like, ifyou're going to fly a jet from
here to somewhere, a fighterjet, especially at Mach two or
something, you're gonna have torefuel that thing all the time.

(29:33):
You could take a train, andyou're going to use a fraction
of the gas to get there, andyou're going to be able to pull,
like, a whole train load worthof stuff at the same time. So,
you know, so this really getsdown to logistics thing. And
hopefully that wasn't too muchof a deep dive on propulsion
systems, but basically, you havechemical propulsion, we have
electric propulsion. And rightnow, because we can't generate

(29:54):
billions of watts on orbit, likea, you know, that's the
equivalent of what a, you know,like a falcon nine, is when it
lifts off, it's billions ofwatts generated.
So anyway, what we have is webasically have, like, your air
cargo for logistics, and youhave your train. And so we have
to build those logistics notes.
Anyway. I've been reallyfascinated by the plasma side.
And of course, too, I'm reallyinterested eventually we can get

(30:16):
power levels up to the pointwhere we might be able to get
chemical like thrust. So so youmight have the best of both
worlds, like a fighter jet thatcan go around the Earth many,
many times, or go into space andnot run out of fuel, and also
have the same kind of thrust. Sothat's we're going for. But
yeah, I call myself a plasmaenthusiasm, plasma process
enthusiast, because I love allkinds of plasma. And as the

(30:37):
folks that build the powersupplies, they call them power
processing units, we have tounderstand how all these
different systems work at apretty deep level.
And it sounds like, just basedon our previous conversations
that, you know, one of the, youknow, I guess when we back it up
and talk about sort of spacelogistics as a whole, one of the

(30:59):
bigger game changing moments wasgetting that rocket reusability.
And now that we have that rocketreusability where, you know, I
live in Florida, and, you know,I've told the story before, but
we used to have, you know, maybea few launches every year. Now,
there's a few launches everyevery day, and and then there's,
you know, we had a conversation,really, with recently, with

(31:22):
Kelly from the Space Foundation.
She's talking about how there's,very soon, it could be multiple
launches every single hour. Andso as we're launching. More,
we're starting to find out thesedifferent issues and different
problems that we need to besolving. And it sounds like what
you're talking about with thethe plasma propulsion is that we
that's sort of the fuel for therockets that needs to be solved

(31:43):
as well, and in some of ourinner our greater energy
problems that exist here onEarth, but will also follow us
into space. Did I summarizethat?
Okay, yeah. So onedifferentiator I want to make is
that right now, because we don'thave chemical like energy
levels. So you know, just toget, if you could put a billion

(32:04):
Watts into a plasma thruster andhave it be the same size as the
Falcon nine, you would getchemical like thrust out of the
plasma propulsion, but togenerate billions of watts, you
know, you're talking like anuclear power plant. That's,
that's many buildings large. So,you know, we don't have that
yet. So right now, chemicalpropulsion, or chemical

(32:26):
propulsion, is how we get offthe Earth. It's the only thing
that has enough thrust, youknow, to get you. So that's like
force over time. So you need,you need a lot of force over a
very short time to break free ofthe drag of the atmosphere. But
then once you're out of theatmosphere, now you can use
something like electricpropulsion to maneuver very

(32:47):
efficiently. So, and if you'reoperating from the moon, you can
actually, you can get off thesurface of the moon with with
it's one stick to the gravity.
So it takes a lot less to getinto orbit, the orbital velocity
where you're orbiting. And nowyou can use an electric
propulsion system. So what'sreally interesting about the
moon is that the delta, thevelocity it takes to get off, is

(33:08):
actually low enough that, like,spin launch has a launcher
that's just a momentum launcher,kinetic launcher, and it
actually has enough velocity.
The one that they have in NewMexico has enough velocity, I
believe, to get off the surfaceof the moon. Now it's, it's here
on Earth, so it can't launchthings up off the surface here

(33:29):
on Earth. But, but that's kindof interesting, because now you
could actually launch somethingwithout using any chemical
propellant. You just usingelectricity from converted into
kinetic energy, and then youcould intercept that with
something that's using, perhapselectric propulsion that's
orbiting the moon. And now youhave something that's that's all
EP we're all you know, not usingyour traditional hydrogen and

(33:52):
oxygen propellants to maneuverso. So right now, though, we're
limited. We can't we have torely on, on all of the
traditional, you know, rockettechnology has been around since
Apollo and that era, chemicalpropellant to get off the
surface of the earth and intoLeo. At that point, though, we
can, we can do our transfers. Soprobably what's going to end up

(34:13):
happening is that you'll end uphaving your your like your
trains, your your trucks, thingslike that, that that don't need
to move super fast, carryinglike cargo. You'll also have, of
course, like your Falcon nineor, sorry, your starships and
your new Glens and things thatcan carry a lot of payload for
less going to nodes. And thenyou might have, kind of, your

(34:33):
regional jets, regional carriersthat go in between. Might be
electric propulsion startingout. So that's, that's kind of
where that, that that goes. Sofor humans, of course, you know,
we have, humans need, probablyare going to need chemical prop
for quite a while, because weneed, you know, life support
every day you're out there.
That's another whole cost thatyou have to think about. But,
but equipment, satellites andall these other things, and

(34:56):
again, like moving thepropellant to another depot
where a human spacecraft mightbe able to refuel. Keeping that,
keeping that in orbit, isanother really interesting
thing, because in space, it's alot like trying to have a boat
in the middle of the ocean. Youknow, if you have a ship in the
middle of the ocean, you're not,you're not putting an anchor
down because it's too deep.
You're in it. You know, there'scurrent, so you got to rely on

(35:18):
your motors to stay in the sameposition. It's the same thing in
space. There's, you know, therearen't currents, but there's
other things, there's, there's,there's a little bit drag. If
you're near the earth, you needstation keeping. And then if you
go further out, there's alwaysgravity from other things that
you have to deal with. So So EPis very efficient at keeping
something that you know. So ifyou have a gas station or a
supply node that's going to needsomething to keep it in the same

(35:41):
spot, and EP is very good forthat, yeah.
In a very similar vein, one ofthe the episodes that I was
listening to to prep for thisconversation that made a bunch
of analogies, and I have it onon my little notes here, they
said the Gateway Station is sortof acting as a port, or like a
lunar outpost. Rockets areessentially the ocean carriers.
Landers are the delivery trucks.
And rovers slash drones arehandling the the last mile. And

(36:05):
then one other piece of that,which you have a ton of
experience in, is themanufacturing side of things,
and how, you know, maybe 3dprinters are playing a role. And
so you're that, I mean, to giveevery, you know, give this
audience, you know, it's sort ofthose, those space analogies to
the on Earth transportationsystems, some of what the
lessons that you've learned,especially from from

(36:28):
manufacturing, are being. Takeninto space. And I'm curious as
to what manufacturing looks likein space. Is it just a, you
know, a bunch of 3d printers?
You also mentioned, you know,some recycling efforts as well.
I think you mentioned that thephrase of like, taking the
machine parts poop, and turningthat into something that's

(36:48):
sustainable. Can you kind ofbreak that down for us? Sure?
Absolutely. So, you know, rightnow, in space, manufacturing is
more modules. It's like modulararchitectures, and that's,
that's probably what we're goingto see first. I've been, you
know, in our ecosystems, we talka lot about modular, open source
interfaces, but we also talkabout making satellites that you

(37:12):
could reconfigure an orbit,because, like, the propulsion
system is a module, the solararray is a module. The comms is
several modules. So, you know,something new, some new
frequency, some bandwidth thatyou want to use comes out. You
swap out the comms module with anew one, and now you have an
upgraded satellite, a newpropulsion that's, you know,

(37:32):
twice as efficient and uses halfas, you know, have as much
propellant for delta V orwhatever comes along. You swap
out that propellant system witha new one. So see, so you know,
you can, right now, we havesatellites that are designed to
de orbit in five years. That's,that's requirement if you're in
Leo. So, you know, these, theseare meant to be like disposable,
throwaway type things. Andthat's, that's really, if you

(37:55):
think about terrestrial lifelike that's, that's how a lot of
things are designed there, youknow, fast fashion and
everything else. It's not meantto last. Previously, we had
designed satellites to last 20years because they'd be in some
orbit where they couldn't deorbit them. And now, but of
course, designing something last20 years, an exquisite
satellite, is very expensive, sowe have this interesting spot
where we have, we're able tomake satellites that that are

(38:16):
like, you know, will lastforever, and then we're able to
make satellites that aredesigned to de orbit and fall
apart in five years. So, sothere's this hybrid in between,
where you design a satellite tobasically just be immortal,
because eventually it might nothave any of the same DNA.
Eventually you replace all themodules. And now it's, it's an
immoral satellite. And so thisgets around the problem of,

(38:37):
like, you know, if you had, Ihad a my first phone was, was
even before flip phones, but itwas like, you know, that phone
is useless. Now you can'tupgrade that. There's no way to,
you know, you can't refuel itand make it better. It's just,
it's dead. So, so you don't wantto, you know, you have to be
very cautious that you don'tdesign something that that is
going to just prevent you frominnovating. So that's, that's

(39:01):
why I think this modularapproach is pretty innovative.
As far as near term in space,assembly and manufacturing, is
that, you know, you might stillmanufacture these modules on
Earth. I'd love to see where wemanufacture those modules on the
surface of the moon. Having somegravity really helps. There are,
there are a lot of concepts formaking stations with their own

(39:21):
gravity, like big, rotatingstations, like you've seen in
Space Odyssey and newer films.
But of course, you still have toget a lot of the materials in
orbit. And you know, ISS costbillions of dollars and took
decades to build. So you canassume that's the largest, by
far, the largest ism project todate is ISS, which is
phenomenal, phenomenal learningsfrom that and so, and also,
we've done it, you know, we didit with ISS, and it was awesome.

(39:44):
The next step is to derive thoseresources off world and build
something, and show that we canbuild something without relying
on research from Earth, but, butagain, I think the first steps
are going to be module typesatellites. So, you know, just
like the space station, SpaceStation is pretty, a pretty good
example of a modular approachthere to trusses, although the
ways they connected were prettysimilar. So now we need to start

(40:06):
building satellites that way sothey don't de orbit in five
years. But, and you'll probablysee this with GEO satellites and
satellites that are further out,because it makes a lot more
sense to do that. And thenbeyond that, I think you'll
start seeing, you know, a lunarassembly manufacturing, where
you're still, you know, doing,doing the three printing and
things like that would happen onthe surface of something, but

(40:28):
then they'd be launched up,because generating power, all
those sorts of things, thelogistics of how you would
manufacture are, you know, onceyou get to the moon, which is
not easy, but once you getthere, getting things from the
surface of the Moon back to Leois actually less energy than
getting something from thesurface of the earth to Leo.
Kind of crazy to think of. It'sjust because the gravity well of

(40:49):
the Earth is so big versus themoon. So anyway, there's a very
good economic reason tomanufacture on the moon, but,
but, but I that's where I see itgoing. Is that probably, you
know, 3d printing makes a lot ofsense. We've worked with a lot
of companies that have developedreally cool technologies for 3d
printing that that could work onthe moon today. In fact, one of
the things that I just walkedpast. I'm hoping it shifts soon,

(41:12):
but it's an extruder that wemet, that we built for NASA as
part of the Artemis program. Sothe idea is, is that they'll run
an end to end demo where theytake the dirt on the moon is
called regolith, and it's a veryfine, dusty gray powder, but it
contains. A bunch of differentmetals that are oxidized. So you
have to take the oxygen out,great, because right now,

(41:34):
starship and all the other typesof rockets that can go to the
moon, other than than the artistprogram, SLS, they have to be
refueled to get there. The mainthing that they need to refuel
with that this makes sense, isoxygen, because it has the most
mass. So what a convenient thingthat once you extract the oxygen
from from the regolith, you endup with metal as the waste

(41:57):
product. So now you have allthis metal that you can use to
build things. And so anyway, theidea was to take the metal,
extrude it into wire, and then3d print out of this out of this
wire. Now near what I expectwould be, the first things that
we would do is to buildreplacement parts. So they call
this ground interfacing toolingin the mining industry. But you

(42:20):
can imagine there's, there'sgoing to be a lot of heavy
equipment, or, you know, smallerequipment on the moon. It
doesn't weigh as much, butbecause of gravity. But anyway,
you know, you're going to bedigging through this very
abrasive regolith, so you'regoing to get a lot of wear on
those surfaces. And you know,this is heavy metal teeth that
crack your teeth and stuff likethat, and wheels and whatnot. So

(42:42):
when we did our DARPA work, weidentified that the wheels on
these rovers, the blades, youknow, the things that actually
are interacting with this reallyabrasive regolith, that's what's
going to wear out. And that'swhere you know right now, it's a
million dollars a kilogram toget something that serves the
moon. So, like, why would yousend a bunch of metal teeth that
you could make there, if youcould just make them there for a

(43:05):
marginal cost versus what itcosts to make on Earth and ship
it there? Because, becauseeverything costs a million
dollars a kilogram, doesn'tmatter whether it's water or
steel, it's all, you know, thecost of getting it there. So
that's where we thought thatthat kind of makes, as far as
you know, beyond the modularapproach. Now that you know, in
space manufacturing, if you'relaunching modules and

(43:25):
assembling, we have that techtoday, Northrop Grumman starting
to do stuff like this,astroscale like, you know,
they're showing that we canactually service, we can remove
something, put a new one on. Sothat's that's starting to happen
today, but where we actuallymake things in space, that's
where I think it's really thelarger scale stuff where the
economics makes sense. It'sgoing to be building things like

(43:47):
wheels, like blades, dumb. Wecall it dumb mass stuff that
would be dumb to launch, becauseyou can make it pretty easily
there. But yeah, like the wireextruder we make, we made some
wire that's we can make it outof most alloys, 6061, is the
most common. So, you know, welooked at that for like, ISS.
Could we? Could we take scrapsoff ISS that are 6061, turn them

(44:08):
into wire and then make newparts. So that's that's one way
to do it. Same thing on themoon. You have silicon is one of
the number one materials thatyou have a lot of aluminum. You
have a lot of silicon, aluminum.
Silicon turns out to be a reallygreat wire to use for aluminum
3d printing. So, you know, solike that makes a lot of sense.

(44:30):
You're going to have a lot ofaluminum, a lot of aluminum,
silicon. We can make an alloyout of that. We can make it in a
wire. We can 3d print thosemetal parts. Steel is another
thing is kind of interesting. Wehaven't started extruding steel,
but there's quite a bit of ironon the moon, because, again, the
moon is made of the same stuffas Earth. There isn't any carbon
on the moon because there's nobiological activity. But guess

(44:51):
what? All the rovers, a lot ofhalf the half the landers and
rovers are made in a carbonfiber, and a lot of the ones
that land initially are notgoing to be reused. So carbon
fiber is made out of carbon, andwe realized that you only need,
like, less than 1% to makesteel. So this is a really
interesting value chain wheresteel is super useful. You

(45:13):
could, you can make full on, youknow, all kinds of things, if
you can make steel and aluminum.
So anyway, lunar surface kind ofinteresting. But then I think
that we would start to buildthings in space. Guitar is one
of the companies that's startingto do some pretty interesting
things. So I don't know whenwe'll actually be 3d printing
and manufacturing wild thingsthat orbit. There's been some

(45:37):
demonstrations where they makeantennas and white after arrays.
But mostly that's usingpolymers. There's been years
ago, there was this thing calledthe Grumman beam maker, which
was meant to go up onchallenger. Of course, we all
know what happened there. Thatgot mothballed, unfortunately.
But that was to it could makebeams and trusses that were

(46:00):
unlimited, you know, kilometerslong. So you could build these
big, rotating, you know, space,space, you know, science fiction
type stations and things likethat.
So, so again, though, it'sreally kind of a, you know, are
we going to actually end up onthe moon in the next few years,
like everyone's talking about,or, you know, are we going to

(46:21):
focus more on on space? I hopewe do both, and that'll really
determine, you know, we're, youknow, follow the money wherever
that research goes. Was whereverthat that, that, you know,
demand for, whether it'smilitary or whatever else drives
it, that that's, that's where ithappens first. So now a tangent
from here. Interesting panel Iwas on earlier this week about

(46:44):
human spaceflight. When I wasfirst in this industry, I was
like humans in space, like I'mfocused on the science and
building like logistics. I'm nottoo, you know, humans and space
is a whole other logisticsnightmare. But what's
interesting about this is thatI've kind of, I've come around
full circle and realized that,hey, you know, that could be the
best thing. You know, there'senough people that are

(47:06):
interested in going to space,or, you know, being buried in
space, all these, all thesedifferent things, but
ultimately, what we need is areason to be up there
persistently. It's not justdefense. You know, obviously,
there's a lot going on withenvironmental science, a lot
with communications and thingslike that. But we realized from
from the human spaceflightprogram before, like, you know,
Apollo, 13, people kind of lostinterest, and all sudden, there

(47:28):
is this drama. And everyone'slike, whoa, holy cow. Like space
really matters. You know, nobodyreally cares. When the Mars
Rover gets stuck in a ditch,it's, you know, it made a Freaks
and Geeks episode at one point.
But, like, beyond that, it's notsuper exciting news. But when
people are involved, all of asudden, there's, there's, like,
a lot of excitement around this.
So for me, as someone that'slooking at logistics of this,

(47:50):
I'm thinking, Well, hey, likeyou think about like a hotel.
And I tell my kids this all thetime, when you look at a hotel,
how many buildings do you thinkit takes to support that hotel?
How many cars and trucks does ittake to resupply that hotel
there? And you start to realizethere's a whole ecosystem built
around this one hotel. So, youknow, a hotel in space, you
know, in Leo even, or, you know,somewhere, you know, in lunar

(48:13):
orbit, or, who knows, you couldput it in all kinds of places
all of a sudden in order tosupport that, you have all these
logistics and these highwaysthat have to be created. And
now, as long as somebody isthere, you're gonna have a
constant cycle of resupply inorder to do that. So, you know,
that's one way that we might endup spurring this type of
development, which would leadreally force, you know, if

(48:37):
you're, if you're just thinkingabout machines, like threed
printing something in orbit,like, you may as well the
timeframe isn't really thaturgent, so you might just launch
it and find the slow boat it.
But like, if there's peoplethere now all of a sudden, like,
Oh, you're leaking. Like, no, wegotta, we gotta fix this, like
now. And so the urgency of doingthat is a lot sooner. So I
think, I think there's a lot ofmerits to that, to helping

(48:58):
really, really get things goingand creating. I'd love to see,
kind of, just like we havehighway systems on Earth,
something like that in cislunarspace. And for us, cislunar is
the Earth and the Moon. It's thewhole Earth, Moon environment.
So we're talking about goingfrom Earth to the Moon and
everywhere in between, andcreating logistics nodes every
step of the way, just like thehighway system.

(49:20):
Yeah, what you're saying makes aton of sense, because I think
back to Elon Musk said a coupleyears ago, or maybe even a year
ago, that going to the moon wasa giant waste of time. We need
to be focused on Mars, and weneed to go to Mars, but having
these different outposts andhaving these different spots
closer to the earth, it makes awhole heck of a lot of sense to

(49:43):
in order to, you know, get thosegoals, like, what you're saying
with, with refueling, retooling,resupply, it Sounds like
there's, you know, there's lotsof ways besides reusable
rockets, and, you know, a fewmore efficient fueling that
needs to take place as well,such as that, that manufacturing
in space. And I always wondered,you know, well, why? Why ignore,

(50:04):
like, the the ISS, or, Why arethey, you know, just going to, I
think they're decommissioningthe ISS in a couple of years,
and they're just going to sendit straight into the ocean with
what you're saying, it soundslike there's a tremendous amount
of opportunity that we couldsave and salvage the ISS into
something that that's moresustainable, and something that
you know is actually useful inspace.

(50:25):
Yeah, absolutely. And I, youknow, I got a ton of respect for
Elon. I think we wouldn't behere without SpaceX and Falcon
nine being so successful. Ireally hope that starship is
equally successful, and soon, Ithink that, you know, Elon's, I
think one of these folks thatgets laser focused on, you know,
he's focused on Mars. We shouldfocus on Mars. But you know that

(50:46):
that doesn't mean, I thinkpeople kind of read between
lines like, Oh, we're going toskip the moon. Well, you can't
get to Mars very effectivelywithout the moon. I mean, as
far, I mean, I haven't had thepleasure of sitting down with
Elon and asking him directlyabout this, but as far as I
understand, like, the moon'salways part of this. In order to
get starship to Mars, it'sreally important that we get

(51:07):
oxygen from the moon. So, youknow, it's kind of the way I
look at it is, if we, you know,what we're good at is like
pushing, or we should dowhatever we can motivate
ourselves to do if we want tosay, let's go to Mars. We're
going to learn so much along theway. We're going to end up
developing these resupply nodeson, you know, that go to the

(51:27):
moon and before we ever get toMars. Mars, and that's going to
be huge. Like we might not evenget to Mars in my lifetime. I
think we will, but, but youknow, if we didn't and we just
developed all these logisticsnotes to the moon on our way
there, that would be huge. Butanyway, I don't think that his
Elad plans to go to Marspreclude the moon. I actually

(51:50):
think that that they are verymuch symbiotic. They you really
need the moon and thoselogistics to get to Mars, and
it's just just the way thingsgo. People focus on on the other
things. And, you know, it justgets lost so well, I think
that's the opportunity of what,what space kind of gives us, is
that you can have the folks thatare thinking about a lot of
different things, and then youhave somebody like you that

(52:12):
that's thinking about, well,maybe we can, you know, reuse
some of these things that we'vealready paid a lot of money to
send up and a lot of time andenergy to send up into space.
And so I am curious as to, youknow, why haven't we started
building this infrastructure onthe moon? Yet, it feels like,
oh, you know, the last, youknow, since the 60s, however,
much that math is, I can't domath right now, but it feels

(52:35):
like we could have been buildingthere the entire time and
already had some of this stuff,this infrastructure set up. So
what does that, I guess, whatwas the reasoning for? Maybe not
a building changed.
Great. You know, if folks thatknow me know that I've had a lot
to do with ISS and talking aboutways we could use it more
effectively, and, you know, andcontinue its life and mission.

(52:58):
And I think a lot of that, youknow, for the spacecraft program
we've, we've had, you know, ourbest and brightest engineers for
decades have created phenomenalamounts of things, and a lot of
them have just been put on theshelf. So, you know, I fully
believe in the 80s, we couldhave had icing, you know. And
then I talked to engineers allthe time. They're like, Oh, I'm

(53:19):
glad you're picking up on, youknow, I was working on this 20
years ago. And then if I earlyon, I find people that would and
I'd be a little crushed, becausethey'd be like, Oh, I had this
idea 20 years ago. And they'relike, oh, man, I guess maybe.
And it's like, no, no, there'ssome other person 20 years
before me. And then I findsomething where, like, some,
some guy in Russia wrote aboutthis in the 40s, and someone
else in, like, the teens, youknow, it's like, what's How did

(53:42):
people conceive this thing? Youknow, 100 years ago? It's crazy
to think. But anyway, the ideashave been around. We got close
in the 70s, of course, but then,you know, funding change. I
think with ISS too, you know,I've, I've talked to all kinds
of levels of folks about ISS andreusing it. And really, what I
gathered is that, you know,these things are, are designed

(54:03):
for a certain mission, andthey're so far, we don't design
things in space to have multimissions. So, you know, for
whether it's a satellite, youknow, satellite runs out of
fuel, that's the end of itsmission. You know, it's the end
of its life. ISS, you know, webuilt it. We proved that we were
a superpower and so much betterthan everyone else in the world.

(54:24):
And we were able to collaboratewith everyone else in the world
and all that soft power we weshowed everyone we had soft
power. And, you know, beenthere, done that. So now, you
know, as far as government'sconcerned, and funding, that
it's like, well, we, we met ourobjective. The mission was, was
met like it was totally worthit. We did it. So I to me,
that's the biggest headwindagainst you know that I've

(54:46):
learned now so, but that beingsaid, I do think that ISS, is
still a great has. There's,there's still plenty of life in
ISS, and we can use it. One ofthe things, you know, we talked
about recycling, ISS, there's,there's concerns to doing that,
like, there's safety concerns,there's also policy concerns,
you know, like, how do you get Imean, a lot of it comes down to

(55:08):
like, Hey, who's going to callRoscosmos and explain to them
how we're going to determinateand remove their module.
Because, you know, even if weall, if we are all good friends
and everything else, it's like,well, what if you drop a bolt
and it comes back around atorbit velocities and destroyed
something? Or like, you know,what if? What if you
determinate, or you push thisoff and then it gets, you know,

(55:30):
somehow it ends up coming backand hitting us. There's all
kinds of things. Kinds of thingsthat can go horribly wrong,
right? And who takesresponsibility and ownership for
it between when you have, like,all these different nations
involved. So, so really, I thinkit's a lot more of a we call
these, like, policyrequirements, or, you know,
they're not hard engineeringrequirements. They're really,
you know, diplomatic StateDepartment type things that you

(55:52):
know someone else that's not medeals with. So now, if you could
get beyond that, though, I thinkthat there are we've talked
about using ISS as a propulsiontest platform. There's the guy
behind vasimir has proposedthis, like, years ago, and it
was going to be very expensive.
I talked to a bunch of folksthat worked on that program, and

(56:14):
I said, Hey, you know what, ifwe were to look at this again
and do it when there wasn't anycrew on ISS? And it turns out
that when you don't have crew onthe ISS, it's a lot cheaper to
do exp. You know, it'spotentially 1/10 of the cost,
because now you're not worriedabout killing about. People if
something goes wrong. But also,you know, what's, what's
intriguing about ISS, is it isthe largest generator power on

(56:36):
orbit right now. There's, Ithink, over 200,000 watts of
power capability on ISS. Now youcan't get all that power at the
same time. It's distributed. Itdepends on where it is. There's,
you know, but, but by far, youknow, there's, there's some
other satellites that might bein the 10s of kilowatts as the
next best thing. So like, youknow, this is an order of

(56:57):
magnitude more than anythingthat had been an orbit yet. So
for somebody like us that'sdoing a lot of plasma
propulsion, or, like, man,there's all these labs that are
that can't, you know, nobody's,nobody's throwing blown a hall
thruster that's more than a few1000 watts on orbit. So, like,
what if we could fly a bunch of10,000 watt thrusters, or
100,000 watt thruster, orsomething like that? Like, there
aren't vacuum chambers on earththat can test up to that level,

(57:19):
because, not for any duration,because generating a vacuum you
know, you're trying to fire arocket into a vacuum chamber.
You know, a certain point, it's,it's hard to pump that fast,
once you get to a certain scale.
So, so ISS is really ideal forthat. And we've even proposed
things. Like, I've talked tofolks at SpaceX, you know, see,
like, hey, high level, is thiscrazy? Or, like, you know, and

(57:41):
they're like, man, we could, wecould sell another Falcon nine.
That'd be awesome. And, like,you know, we could attach it to
the orbit vehicle. And, like,you know, just got to come up
with, you know, 100 milliondollars or something, and then
we'll be set. But 100 million is1/10 of a billion. So, so
Anyway, the thing is, isthere's, there's things that we
could do on ISS, but iteverything does cost money. I do

(58:03):
think, though, that you know,that that's the gamut. Is, does
it? Is it? Would it be moreeffective? More cost effective
to to use ISS, to reconfigure itso it could be used as a test
platform for some of these moreadvanced cargos, higher power
cargos, more you know. The otherthing would be obvious is
there's companies like spaceforge that are making chips.

(58:23):
They're making very high bandgap mediums for chips, which is
awesome, but they need to deorbit their vehicle. So like,
they have the same problem, youknow, keeping having something,
a free flyer that's going tohave the power level that's easy
to use for them is, is a biggap. So if you could attach to
ISS and use ISS power, and thende orbit off of ISS, and then

(58:46):
there's companies like Florida,same, same thing, you know,
there's, there's, there's anumber of companies that are
making these de orbitingvehicles that could be powered,
you know, through an umbilicalon ISS, and then as ISS is de
orbiting, all these guys jumpoff and do it themselves. We
could run thruster experiments.
So anyway, this, this to me, youknow, we've, we've come from low
let's reconfigure ISS and sendit to a higher orbit to, hey,

(59:08):
let's just use it while it'suncrewed. Demonstrate, you know,
get the TRL up and prove some ofthese technologies de risk them
so that we could actually use,like, you know, a plasma you
could turn a space station intoa highly dynamic spacecraft with
a big enough some of thesethruster systems are working on,
but until someone actuallydemonstrates that it's a big
risk to spending the money to doit so. So anyway, I think, I

(59:30):
think that would be the mosteffective way.
But I mean, it sounds likethere's so much more opportunity
besides just decommissioning itand just sending it into the
ocean. It sounds like theremaybe are some conversations
that are happening in order tosalvage it, to salvage the ISS
and keep it in orbit for all ofthese you know, additional
benefits, like you justmentioned, is there a slight

(59:53):
chance that maybe thatconversation is kind of
shifting?
I think it's, I don't know. I'vebeen involved in a lot of these
conversations at levels that I'msurprised I was able to be
involved in. But it's, I thinkthat that the ship has failed,
figuratively, for issb, it willget de orbit it at some point.
I'm pretty sure that, I thinkthat there is opportunity to to

(01:00:16):
eke, to squeeze more out of ISSthat is very valuable, that
would Springboard otherinnovations. But I think that,
you know, there's using it forhuman life support is definitely
problematic. A lot of a lot of alot of the things are start, you
know, starting to leak. So, sothe safety for human rated

(01:00:37):
things. So to use it, and then,you know, to push it into a
higher orbit, there's a lot ofquestion whether the dynamics of
it, or, you know, it could breakapart and cause a bunch of
debris, which would be aproblem. And just like, you
know, the way that was built atthe time it was built, it's not,
it's not new space. It's, it'svery much old space. And most of

(01:00:59):
the folks that built it areretired and doing awesome stuff,
doing other stuff. So, you know,to find the group of people that
would be able to say assuredlythat this will be safe. And, you
know, there's the wholegeopolitical problem that's
that's really kind of the bigelephant in the room. So I, I

(01:01:20):
think that the best thing to dois, like, you know, can we get
it? Would? It would cost, youknow, 10 different Falcon nine
flights and all this up mass tobig free flying satellite. Is
they could do the same thingthat ISS could do in the next
five to 10 years, if we, youknow, can extend its life a
little bit longer, you know, wecan get a 10x benefit from it,
from from these test payloads.
And I think I stand likerendezvous, proximity

(01:01:42):
operations, all the stuff thatNorthrop Grumman and astroscale
and starfish and all these, allthese guys are doing, like using
ISS, especially once it'suncrewed, as your platform for
doing, you know, replacingthings doing, proving out ICM
makes a phenomenal platform forthat. So I think that's the best
opportunity for it.

(01:02:03):
Well, keeping in line with thatsame, I guess, sort of the
circular economy. And we brieflytalked about this before, but I
wanted to dig a little deeperinto into that aspect, because
you mentioned a couple ofdifferent interesting things,
of, you know, going to the moonand, you know, having, you know,
mining oxygen and having thebyproduct be metal. What other,
I guess, methods of a circulareconomy, or, you know, circular

(01:02:27):
supply chain of what we talkabout here on Earth can be
applied into space?
Well, yeah, so, so, so again,like getting back to just, just
thinking about the lunarenvironment, there oxygen to
refuel starships, makes sense. Imean, that there's our there's
companies, ethos, Star path, afew others that are, that's

(01:02:47):
their whole business plan. We'regoing to going to land on the
moon, we're going to extractoxygen and we're going to launch
it back to resupply starships.
That's, that's what we're goingto do. So So I think that's the
most obvious that I mean thatone's starship is happening. New
blend is happening. They bothneed to resupply with oxygen. So
I think that's the first step inthe circular economy. And then

(01:03:07):
again, like, I, like, I outlaid,like the equipment that harvests
the converts the lunar dust,regolith into oxygen and metal
slag, they're going to have wearparts. So that's kind of the
first sustaining those andlogistics of keeping those
going. And so logistic keepingthe things that produce the
oxygen going, and then thelogistics of getting the oxygen

(01:03:29):
to the rockets, and thenhydrogen will probably still
come from Earth for a while. Sothat's, that's step one, phase
one. And then, and then, yeah, Ithink you know beyond, beyond
that it's going to be trying toget data centers probably would
be a next, pretty obviousresource to use on orbit. Data

(01:03:51):
centers are very quickly, youknow, they don't, they don't use
a ton of energy right now, butas we know, with AI and
everything else compute, computeis going to outpace everything
else as energy goes so there areadvantages to doing compute on
on orbit, especially, you know,you have a lot more solar
density. So getting energy isgood. Cooling is a little bit of

(01:04:14):
a problem, but I'm sure we'llfigure that out. So I could see,
you know, building these datacenters, and you start to see
some of that in logistics andservicing those data centers,
getting those things on orbit.
And of course, you know, all thecom satellites are going to keep
expanding. So that's kind ofnear term stuff. I think that if

(01:04:36):
we get people on orbit, thenthat's gonna be total game
changer, because now you have tobring cargo and food and all the
things for life support. Anddepending on how adventurous
people want to be, that couldget really interesting. We
could, you know, that becomes alot more like surface logistics.
But same thing you're going tohave starship, it's probably
going to start out whereverstarship and new blend refuel.

(01:04:58):
These will become the nodes thatyou know, your your your ports,
if you will, where you're goingto get all your new stuff and
resupply from that.
Now it sounds super interesting,because from everything that
we've discussed, from what my myunderstanding is, is that cis
lunar does is kind of dabblingin each one of these different
sort of supply chain segments.
Is that accurate or where? Iguess, because it's taken us

(01:05:20):
what, like 4046, minutes ofrecording to get to what you
actually do, what your companydoes. Can you can you break
down? I guess you know what,what? What? I don't want to say
tentacles, but you know, the allof the different lines.
Well, again, it's a lot likethat game I talked about regular

(01:05:43):
Command and Conquer, where it'slike a very, very much of a
multi layer strategy game,where, you know, you have to
think about, well, what? Okay,we solve this problem. It's
gonna open up this other gap,like, you know, if so that's, I
think that's, that's, that's theway to look at it. So we, we are
very much focused commerciallyon power management,

(01:06:04):
distribution, and specifically ahigher power level. So 1000
watts and above is where westart to become very effective.
There's, there's, there'ssomewhat of a proliferation. I
mean, it's, it's hardly aterrestrial version of that. But
for Leo, low Earth orbitsatellites, CubeSats, the
CubeSat market is, is prettywell, you know, there's,

(01:06:26):
there's, you can go online andyou can get parts for CubeSats
pretty easily. What's a cube.
That a CubeSat is 111, unit is ais the smallest CubeSat,
typically, and a one unit isbasically the volume of one
liter of water, which is 1010centimeters cubed. So 10
centimeters by 10 centimeter by10 centimeters is one you

(01:06:48):
happens to be the same thing asone liter of water. Way that
works out, and typically tolike, the density of a CubeSat
is similar to the density ofwater. So 1u is maybe around one
kilogram. 6u might be sixkilograms. It all scales from
there. So, but anyway, there'sAerospace Corporation and a few
others. Taryn, like these guys,kind of really commercialized

(01:07:09):
and made CubeSats prettyaccessible. Now, CubeSats are
not designed to last very long.
They go up. They usually don'thave their own propulsion
systems. Some of the bigger onesmight, but they're kind of like
a disposable, lowest cost ofentry type of satellite. Then
once you go beyond that, you getinto your microsats and your

(01:07:31):
small SATs happens to be a smallset conference coming up here in
two weeks or a few weeks inUtah. But anyway, so these are
anything that's like, not likea, you know, exquisite type of
satellite is typically at thisstage, is called a small sat and
those get into like, you know,maybe tenu up to, like a ESPA,

(01:07:53):
which is, which is, which isjust, I forget what ESPA stands
for, but it's, it's like a ring.
And it used to be, you know, youinside the fairing. This ring is
what would attach yoursatellite, to the to the to the
structural part of the rocket,and then, and then the Esper
ring usually has a bunch ofsmaller ports, so, so there'd be
like, one big, you know, defensetype satellite on the or weather

(01:08:14):
satellite in the top. And then Ithink you might have a bunch of
smaller sets, small sets locatedaround it. And then someone was
like, Man, this Esper ring, wecould just use that as a basis
for a satellite. So anyway,they're like a meter across,
usually, you know, maybe 100 to500 kilograms is kind of in that
range. And so that's where a lotof these satellites for, like

(01:08:37):
SDA, the Space DevelopmentAgency, the ones that are, you
know, looking for, they're doinga lot of, you know,
communications, also spacesituation awareness, those are
kind of in that class. And rightnow, most of them are around,
like 200 watts to maybe 600watts for their their propulsion
overall, they might, you know,somewhere less than, less than

(01:09:00):
1000 watts. The next versionsthat are coming out, though, are
going to be a lot more powerthan that. So that's what we
anticipated, and now we'restarting to see that happening.
So we've really been focusing onthe larger hall thruster power
systems, and then beyond that,just realizing that, you know, a
power processing unit for a hallthruster has to manage a bunch

(01:09:20):
of other power sources. It's apower management distribution
system and satellites. All youknow, we're like, Well, hey, the
used to be like, communicationsand some of these other payloads
would be the biggest powerconsumer. But now that space,
force and commercial space, theywant dynamic maneuver
capability. So they want to, youknow, used to be just get
something to orbit. You mightuse your thruster to get you to

(01:09:43):
that orbit, but and then you youturn it on occasionally, just to
keep you in the same spot. Nowthey want to get to orbit. And
then they want to move aroundand move one place to another,
and then move back. And sothat's dynamic space operation.
So you need so now a sudden,like your your communications
hardware, whatever that payloadis your instruments, that's not
your biggest power consumer. Nowit's your thrusters. So that's,

(01:10:04):
that's an interesting spot. Sonow it's like, well, if you're
going to be if your biggestsource is your thruster then,
then why isn't Sicily or doingour power management? Because,
you know, the biggest demand isthis thing so, and we're already
managing power at lower powerlevels for the rest of the
satellite. So, so that's thekind of thing that we started to
get into commercially. We'vealso, there's, there's a lot of

(01:10:28):
development on directed energyand power beaming, I stumbled
into this concept called dualuse directed energy. So the idea
there is that you can use energyfor, like communications. You
can use it to power yoursatellite. So that's that's
pretty interesting, because nowyou might have a satellite

(01:10:50):
that's, you know, 10 kilowatts,but if you can get directed
energy over your solar panels,you might be able to get up to
100 kilowatts or something. Soget a lot more energy with the
same size solar panel, andagain, with more energy, now you
can move a lot faster, do allthat sort of thing. So it turns
out that receiving that energyis a similar problem to what we
run into with some plasmathrusters, where you got to

(01:11:13):
take, take energy that comes inone packet and then distribute
that at a lesser energy level.
Or, you know, receive a store upa bunch of energy and then send
it out pulse. So just, you know,I jokingly to put it layman's
term, like we've. Basicallybuild doors and do crowd control

(01:11:33):
for electrons. You know,sometimes you're, you know,
you're trying to empty a stadiumreally fast. You need a certain
type of door for that. That'skind of what a power management
system does, or power processingsystem does, but in simple
terms, so power management,that's commercially, that's,
that's where a lot of our moneycomes from. But we also do a lot
with ICM still. So we have theextruder that's going to NASA,

(01:11:55):
and we're going to be involvedin a new group that's a lot of
the funding for that type ofscience from NASA is being I
don't think it's being cut. Ithink it's being moved around.
We're not sure where it's goingto be moved to, but in the
meantime, there's some privategroups that were worth and also
things like cosmic, and there's,there's a handful of these other
groups. They're they're doing,they're still keeping the

(01:12:16):
keeping the burners on, on, onICM. So we're still involved in
that a lot. And as funding as wefigure out where that's going to
be, we very much want to keeppursuing that sort of thing. And
then I guess the last thing thatwe've been involved in a lot is
the logistics and interfacing.
So we've worked with several ofthese companies that are they're
looking at refueling andrendezvous, proximity

(01:12:38):
operations. A lot of our skillset, you know, our skill set is,
is high power electronics andmechatronics. We find that folks
that automation type engineersreally work well for us, but we
developed, and one of our firstSpace Force contracts, a way to
kind of have cartridges. So it'sthe idea of having a Line

(01:13:00):
Replaceable unit, as opposed torefueling. You just swap your
whole thruster and propellanttank altogether. And we realized
doing this with, we were lookingat metal propellant at the time,
but we realized that, hey, youknow, the thing that holds the
metal propellant rods is prettynegligible mass fraction
compared to the propellantitself. And, you know, and a lot

(01:13:22):
of times it erodes, or there's,there's other things that kind
of cause it to not be reliableover time. So we kind of want to
replace it anyway. So, so, so wekind of, the other analogy for
this is the Propane Exchange. Soif you've ever been to a, you
know, the grocery store, or ifyou have propane grill, you swap
out the whole tank. You know,you don't have a propane tank.

(01:13:43):
You know, as you live out in themiddle of nowhere, you don't
have a propane truck. Come toyour house, you bring it to the
grocery store, you swap it outin a little cave, and you get a
new tank. That's, you know, it'snot necessarily new. It's
oftentimes it refurbished, butit might have a new valve. So,
you know, it's not going to leakon you. It's, that's pretty
convenient if you're dealingwith propane gas. It's a similar
thing that we noticed in space.
So that's we've been alsofocused on, you know, how do we

(01:14:06):
develop that's the reason I readthe box, you know. How do we
develop a C container, if youwill. And all and all the
interfaces on the sea container,the mechanical interfaces that
allow it to latch to the ship orwhatever. You know, how do you
build a sea container so that itcan fit the most different types
of systems we've been lookingat, propulsion and energy? So
it's like, hey, it turns outthat a six kilowatt thruster can

(01:14:27):
fit in this box, and so so can asix kilowatt solar array. That's
that's that's pretty convenient.
That's a good universal size tomaybe start with and start
building these So, and ofcourse, the idea is to build
those into modular satellitesthat I was talking about
earlier, the modular, opensource type of assembly you can,
you know, propulsion systems,power systems, whatever it is,
com systems. And so we've beenvery, you know, very involved in

(01:14:51):
various capacities, on on whatthose interfaces might look
like. How do you, how do youmake them latch, right? You
know, what's the thermal? Andthis thermal is a big thing in
space. How do you, how do youmove heat? And, of course, how
do you move power through thoseinterfaces?
Yeah, I mean, everything thatyou've been talking about in
this conversation has felt likebuilding the fundamentals, or

(01:15:12):
everything that we've learned,you know, going back to the box
book, you know, all thefundamentals and systematizing
certain aspects here on earthabsolutely apply in space. And
then one extra bonus to that, Ithink that you really harp on a
lot, and I love this aspect of,you know, what we learned in
grade school, you know, reduce,reuse, recycle, and being able

(01:15:32):
to reduce some of those costsand recycle some of these goods
and reuse some of these goods. Imean, these are all things that
we should be thinking about ifwe could, kind of, you know, be
able to start our infrastructureand our logistics plan over in a
new realm. What does that looklike? And so you've done a
really great job of breakingthat down for us and how people
right now are working on thesecomplex problems. And I thank

(01:15:57):
you so much for your time today.
Is there anything else that youfeel is important to mention
that we haven't already talkedabout, outside of the fact that
I could probably continue thisconversation for another few
hours?
Oh, I guess I always have togive a plug for for NASA and the
folks that helped us get here. Ido think that at least the small

(01:16:18):
business, the SBIR program,innovative small business,
innovative research program. Imean, we wouldn't be here
without that, getting gettingour legs under us with NASA
through our phase one, phase twoand phase two extension. Blythe,
and then tech flights. The techflights have really helped. So
we've done two, sorry, we'vedone three parabolic flights.

(01:16:38):
And then we have an orbitalflight with momentous that that
NASA help pay for. And then weshould have an ISS flight
actually coming up as well. So,so all of this, you know, we, we
started out focusing on thismetal thing and that that's
still happening, and we spun offthis commercial product that

(01:16:59):
everyone needs now, which isawesome. So like that. I mean,
it really did exactly what itwas supposed to do, as far as
we, as we were concerned. Ialso, you know, Space Force has
been phenomenal. I don't knowhow we didn't have a Space Force
all this time. I do think thatSpace Force is, is is critical,
and seeing it grow we, you know,we had a number of SBIRs Through

(01:17:21):
Space Force, and just the typeof folks that we get to work
with at Space Force are reallyawesome. Definitely, some of the
leadership there's is thinkingthe same way I'm talking. I
mean, a lot of this is from,from talking to these guys, and
just, you know, I call it, Idescribe it like Hogwarts. My
job is like Hogwarts. I get togo with, hang out with all the

(01:17:41):
other magicians and come up withways to save the world and
promote, you know, our human anabundant human future. So
that's, that's, that's the bestthing I can say right now, I
guess,well, amazing conversation, and
I can't wait to do this again,because there's plenty of more
quite I didn't even really lookat my notes of what I had, and I
probably have, you know, atleast 40 questions in that
document. So that's thetestament, you know, of how good

(01:18:04):
this conversation was. So, soJoe, where can I send folks?
Where can I direct them tofollow you on social media, you
know, all that good stuff.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, ifyou're a power electronics
engineer or, you know, somebodythat's a big builder of Tesla
stuff and high energy, we arehiring right now. So please find

(01:18:26):
me on LinkedIn, or reach out to,you know, our CIS, linear
industries.com. Is our website.
That's the best way to get ahold of us. We are very active
on LinkedIn. We are at prettymuch every conference. You'll
see us just in a person. We tryto be very accessible. We love
to talk to everybody. We're not,you know we I know that I don't
know everything. That's That'sprobably one of my the secrets
that I don't mind sharing isthat I always ask, I try to find

(01:18:47):
the people that I want to belike and I surround myself with
those people, the people thatare really doing it. And that's
that's how you get here, andthat's how you keep moving
things forward. So absolutely,if you see me, come talk to me,
I'd love to hear it and reachout to us.
Absolutely, I'll put all of thatin the show notes. And I echoed
that statement. I try to usethis podcast to be able to talk

(01:19:09):
to people that are way smarterthan me, and you absolutely fit
that bill. So thank you so muchfor joining us and sharing your
perspective and helping us youknow, understand more of what's
going on in the logistics ofspace and building that New Silk
Road. So thank you again, Joe.
Thank you so much. It's been apleasure. Welcome
into another episode ofeverything. It's logistics, a
podcast for the thinkers infreight. I'm your host, Blythe

(01:19:30):
Milligan, and we were proudlypresented by SPI logistics, and
we've got a great episode fory'all today. We've got Kelly
keedis Ogborn. She is the VP ofspace commerce and
entrepreneurship at the SpaceFoundation, and we're going to
be talking about how to dobusiness in space and the
overall just landscape ofeverything that's going on,
because it's a lot going on. Andso based on our previous you

(01:19:53):
know, series that we've done on,you know, NASA and space
logistics, the I'm sure theaudience is just as excited for
this conversation as I am. SoKelly, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Blythe. I reallyappreciate the opportunity. It's
one of my favorite things totalk to audiences that are
extremely implicated in thespace economy and it's growth,
but probably don't know. So Iappreciate you having me on

(01:20:14):
absolutely now, I have a millionquestions to ask and so, but
before we get into, like, someof you know, like, the more
nitty gritty type of questionsfor this audience, give us a
sense of your career background,how you got involved in the
Space Foundation, all that goodstuff.
Yeah, so I it's a funny story,because I would have never
pictured myself working in thespace industry or doing what I

(01:20:37):
do now, which is kind of partand parcel why I do what I do
now. So just quick, kind ofhistory trajectory highlights. I
come from a social scientistsociological background, so
academically, both undergrad andgrad, I was actually kind of
trained on the conflict of war,and, like the psychology of war,

(01:20:59):
and really a lot of themovements of people, thought
that I wanted to do that with mycareer in terms of international
aid and, you know, sort ofeverything that comes about with
it. But I moved to DC in 2008did a quick stint on the hill,
and then found myself over atDARPA, which is the Defense
Advanced Research ProjectsAgency, which is the science and
tech branch of the Department ofDefense. And while I was there,

(01:21:21):
I was fascinated by innovationtechnology and really like these
cutting edge research anddevelopment projects that really
play into other markets. And Iquickly realized. Is that a lot
of my skill sets from myacademic training is
specifically like aid. Like,what I used to look at is, how
do you design aid packages forthird world crises, and really
get the human side of theadoption really also fits on the

(01:21:44):
tech side. So when we arelooking at moving these radical
innovations and ideas that areso far out of the imagination of
people. How do you get them tograsp those concepts, adopt
those concepts, and how do youactually build a strategy to
understand how to make itscalable, not just from a
business aspect, but from ahuman aspect? So that was sort
of where my career dovetailed,and then I left DARPA ran a tech

(01:22:08):
commercialization company forseven years that worked really
heavily with scientists andengineers to help them find
alternative commercial marketsfor what they developed, because
so many of them might havedeveloped like a laser for a
tank. Well, there's nocommercial market for a laser on
a tank, but there are, you know,very special components, or
maybe, you know, sub parts thatare way ahead of industry

(01:22:31):
standards. So thinking throughthose alternative methods, that
sort of led me to the SpaceFoundation, because at the time,
in 2018 the Space Foundation hadwon a grant through the
Department of Commerce to helpnon traditional businesses find
their place in space. And so Iwas brought in to really help
design and run those workshopsaround the country, so looking

(01:22:53):
at everything from artists tomechanics to people in the food
service and how they they playin the future growth of space,
and it sort of just snowballedfrom there. Wow.
I mean, you really sound likethe perfect person to be able to
have, you know, these types ofinitiatives that the Space
Foundation is is looking toachieve. So give us that that
high level overview of whatthat, I guess, the current like

(01:23:16):
space ecosystem looks like. Iheard it was like a 500 million
or $500 billion enterprise rightnow that's evolving into 800
billion. Is that accurate?
Yes. So there are so manyprojections of what it's going
to become, I think that thebenchmark that a lot of people
use, it's somewhere between oneto 4 trillion by 2040 but in

(01:23:38):
reality, as you mentioned rightnow, so the Space Foundation
puts out a space economy numberevery year that looks at the
past quantification of the year.
We currently have it tagged at570 billion. We're going to
release our new number nextmonth, which is very exciting.
So stay on track for that. Butconservatively, we think that
it's at least going to reach 772billion by 2027 which is only

(01:24:00):
two years away. So I think thebest way to encapsulate what we
mean when we talk about thespace economy, and really just
the space ecosystem is for solong, space has been, I would
say, monopolized by imagery ofrockets and satellites and
astronauts, because that is,that is classic space, and that

(01:24:21):
is 100% true. You know, ourspace industry grew out of the
Apollo era, where we were in amoon race with the Russians. And
at that time, it was, you know,national posturing first,
because we needed to be boots onthe ground first, and then
scientific exploration andtechnical progression were kind
of secondary and tertiary. We'renow in a completely different

(01:24:42):
domain, because, as we'vecontinued to engage within
space, yes, we do haveexploration missions, and we do
have a lot of satellites flowingflying, but the ecosystem now
has shifted to a place wherethere is more access,
opportunity and engagement thanever before, driven by the
proliferation of satellites.
Just as a data point, forexample, there are currently

(01:25:06):
roughly 12,000 active satellitesin orbit. There's already 20,000
that have licenses, and by 2035we think there's going to be
50,000 plus satellites. So that,in and of itself, brings a lot
of opportunity, but alsoreusable launch, and the cadence
of launch now has completelydecreased to the point where

(01:25:26):
more people are able to go up,more people are able to take
advantage of the opportunitiesand the what space can bring to
bear, whether it's frommanufacturing or data or, you
know, space tourism eventuallyand so in the collective mind,
space feels more tangiblebecause it is and that, in and
of itself, has shifted a lot ofcompanies and countries to now

(01:25:48):
realize that they should bethinking about space, or at
least understand how they canplay into the future of space.
Now, of that, you know, nearly800 billion. How much is the US,
I guess, in control of that, ornot, maybe not in control of it,
but how much is that US players?
So that's a phenomenal question.
So just to break that down, sothe 570 billion is really

(01:26:10):
encapsulated by two mainmarkers. It's about 78%
commercial revenue and 22%global government spending. So
this is a global number. What itlooks at is roughly about 50
countries space spending budgetsas. Much data as we're able to

(01:26:30):
collect an interesting datapoint, and then I'll answer your
question, is that around theworld, there's roughly about 80
space agencies, which is quiteremarkable. And what we're
starting to see over the pastcouple of years as a trend is
that if a country isn't able toreally create and mobilize their
own space agency, they'recreating at least space offices,

(01:26:51):
like out of their commercedepartment or out of their trade
ministry, to at least understandthat space is an important
economic driver for theirnation, and also national
security and sort of everythingelse that comes with it. But
it's also a way for them to sortof put their flag in the sand,
to say that we are interested inspace. We want to become part of
this economy, and then lookingat opportunities to bring in the

(01:27:13):
industries that already existwithin their locality to be part
of it. The United States isstill the main, the main driver.
So out of the global governmentspending, the United States, the
European Space Agency in China,sort of make up the top three.
And then there's a the flow downof the other nations, but we are
still the predominantand then how does that break? A

(01:27:35):
breakdown from, I guess, fromthe US standpoint, is it because
it feels like it's mostlycommercial, that it's, you know,
SpaceX, and you know these othercompany, Rocket Lab, Blue
Origin, they partner with NASAand their launch facilities or
their launch programs, but itfeels like it's much more
commercial. Now, is thataccurate?

(01:27:58):
So So yes, and so that's areally interesting question for
a couple of reasons. When youtalk about the commercial space
industry and ecosystem, there's,there really is no such thing as
a true commercial company,primarily because the number one
customer in all commercialmarkets right now are still

(01:28:18):
governments. So we are at thisreally interesting point within
the commercialization flywheelof space, of space traditionally
being a pull industry to a pushindustry, and so it's primarily
been driven by governmentdirectives or government needs.
The commercial market caninnovate much faster. I mean,
they can they can design, theycan develop, they can innovate.

(01:28:40):
But at the end of the day, thegovernment is still the primary
procurement of the product ofthe services. We need to flip
that model. And so currently,right now, one of the best
examples that is supposed tosort of show how this push pull
between the government and thecommercial will actually flow is
with the retirement of theInternational Space Station,

(01:29:02):
which I think most, most peopleknow this is happening, but it's
been flying since the 90s. It'sold, it's outdated. It's time to
retire. And in the mix of that.
What NASA wanted to do is,instead of themselves designing
and developing and sort ofrunning a space station, they
put out bids to allow commercialcompanies to compete to replace
the International Space Station.

(01:29:23):
But the model is reallyinteresting because those
commercial companies would thenown it'd be a privately owned
Space Station. NASA would becomeone of many customers. So the
goal is for them to move all oftheir research and development
and manufacturing currentlybeing done on the ISS to these
private models to then allowthem to still continue the vital
research and and all the thingsthat they need to do, but then

(01:29:45):
also give the opportunity touniversities and commercial
companies and other privateplayers to have access to low
Earth orbit for their needs. Andso it's it's one of the first
examples of how this flywheelcould accelerate and how we can
start to really bring in moreusers beyond a government. But

(01:30:08):
right now, private is they areprivately owned, but the
government is still an anchorcustomer, is kind of the way to
look at it.
Yeah, because I was talking to agentleman that worked at NASA,
and he mentioned that, you know,every four years, their budgets
change, and a lot of thesemissions are sometimes decades
long and are in developmentbefore actually launching. And

(01:30:30):
so he said he's like, we need tobe insulated from that. And I
think, you know, with a lot of,you know, sort of the drama
around, you know, policy changesand things like that, and
budgets being cut, it just makesmore sense to have the
commercial element involved. Soyou're not, especially from a
NASA standpoint, even thoughthey are an institution, but to
be able to rely on commercialpartners to fulfill those those

(01:30:52):
experiments and that researchthat they've been wanting to
build, is that a safe, you know,outside perspective, looking in
completely accurate? Yeah, so,so the rise of the private
commercial company in terms ofdeveloping something
independently from just agovernment bid, right, is really
what we're talking about when wesay that that has been
continuing to rise, and itsurely will continue to have a

(01:31:15):
place at the forefront wherewe're looking now with this
landscape, and particularly, asyou said, with, you know,
shifting budgets, shiftingpriorities, private companies
are really expected to take thelead, really driving innovation,
you know, through theirincreased investments. But. But
then there is this strategiccollaboration between commercial
and government entities from autilization stance. And so I

(01:31:37):
think we're going to start tosee some really interesting
consolidation, some reallyinteresting, maybe innovation
arcs right in the next comingyears. Because I personally
think that scarcity can breedinnovation. And we are at a
point right now in this 2025landscape, where we are starting
to engage with space at such anoperational tempo that we are at

(01:31:59):
a place where it is almost toobig to fail. And so we need to
start closing business models.
We need to start consolidatingsupply chains. And we really
need to start to put a lot ofthe infrastructure and
technologies that have reallyinteresting demos, but they need
to be able to scale to createthis next evolution and next
generation backbone for what wewant the economy to become.

(01:32:21):
I guess, how moving into, Iguess some of the, I guess,
businesses that are kind of inspace now i From what I
understand, you know, imaging isthe the number one business
model for for space right nowcommunications, of course. Are
there any other aspects that arehappening in space right now
that are profitable that canencourage, you know, more

(01:32:42):
missions and more operationstaking place?
Oh, absolutely. So I think thebest way to start for that is
really understanding what ismaking up that 78% of commercial
revenue that I mentioned before.
So the easiest way to thinkabout it is kind of in two main
categories. There. There arethings that enable space. So
these are the classic things wethink of right? It's like

(01:33:02):
satellites and rockets andground stations, because we need
the physical infrastructure totake advantage of satellites.
Human spaceflight is part ofthat. So the suborbital flights
that we're starting to see fromBlue Origin and SpaceX and
Virgin Galactic the insuranceindustry is also a main
component of that interesting,which a lot of people don't
realize, but when you break itdown, it's actually quite

(01:33:24):
practical, because space is veryexpensive and assets are
extremely expensive. So thoseclassical kind of aspects of
space make up 1/3 of thatcommercial revenue. Two thirds
of that commercial revenue rightnow is made up of things that
are enabled by space, primarilysatellites. So it's things like
telecommunications, broadband,precision, navigation and

(01:33:47):
timing, which is actually thelargest, because it's
responsible for things like, youknow, GPS and financial
transactions and an accuratetrain station times. I mean,
all, all of the things that wetake for granted are this
ubiquitous backbone because ofspace tech. So really, a bulk of
the economy right now is thisspace to Earth market. It's
utilizing space assets. It'sutilizing the technology for

(01:34:10):
either terrestrial applicationsor other industries to be able
to benefit from it. Theenvironment we're moving into,
which you alluded to, is thisspace to space market, which
truly, if we are going to unlockthe space economy, you kind of
have to take Earth out of theequation and be able to do
things in space we've never beenable to do before. And that's
really where we're pushing. Socurrently, right now, if you

(01:34:33):
look at things like groundtransport and launch
infrastructure and in spacemaneuvering and recovery
systems, these are all aspectsthat are really, really
critical, not only as a backboneto the space economy now, but
this sort of like logisticschain extends beyond the Earth's

(01:34:53):
surface and will act also as ananchor for things in space. And
then the eventuality that we'removing into are things like in
orbit, refueling, for example.
So extending the the life cycleof satellites, and if you don't
have to actually pull them down,you can refuel them. This also
expends a small spacecraft.
We're looking at things like,you know, debris removal, which

(01:35:15):
is really critical, because ifwe want to continue to utilize
space, we have to sort of cleanit up, you know, where it is
now, power delivery, cargohandling, crew mobility. So all
of the like, really practicalthings that you think about on
earth will need to extend there.
Because if we are going to have,you know, space stations that

(01:35:37):
are going to be servicing reallyprecious payloads for research
aspects, or if we are trulygoing to build this CIS lunar
economy, which we are reallypushing for, which is
infrastructure and servicesbetween the Moon and Earth, we
need to have these other thingsthat allow us to not just send
things from Earth, use them onetime or two times in space and
bring them back, but be able tokind of this, like holistic

(01:36:01):
ecosystem in and of itselfthat is such a fascinating I
could pull on 15 differentthreads with everything that you
just said, from The I guess,from the logistics angle of it,
you mentioned how these reusablerockets are really helping
expedite a lot of thesedifferent missions. So in this,
I guess, in the earth base, itdo you call it like terrest

(01:36:23):
terrestrial, terrestrialapplications? Yeah, terrestrial
applications. So in thatscenario. Rio. So the the semi
truck is like the rocket, and sowhen the rocket gets up into
space, are there currently, youknow, warehouses and refueling
stations, you mentioned debrisremoval. So we've talked
previously about, you know,tracking that debris and, you

(01:36:45):
know, trying to not inmaintenance in space. Are all of
those different, I guess, keypoints already in space are we
working on establishing thatinfrastructure?
We're working on it so they theyare in space in the aspect that
there are a lot of companiestaking on those really hard

(01:37:07):
challenges that have done reallytremendous demonstrations. So
what's really interesting aboutwhere we are currently is, I
kind of mentioned it beforeabout 2025 being a really
interesting year, and I've beensaying this over the past couple
of months, but I really do thinkwe're at this inflection point,
because beyond us growing andwell, it's not even the growth,

(01:37:33):
as I mentioned, it's theoperational cadence. So we are
at a point now where things arenow flying like we are. We are
moving past the strategies andthe tech dev timeline, and we
are now getting things in space.
We are testing them in space. Weare accelerating them in space,
but we're at a point where weneed to close the business
model, because this is theinteresting point. So
infrastructure is expensive.

(01:37:54):
Every space or earth it'sexpensive, right? And a lot of
these companies, they need to beable to attract the kind of
capital to go from demo to scaleto then enable them to be these
anchor points within low Earthorbit to then enable other
industries to take advantage ofit. And so one of the things you

(01:38:16):
know that a lot of people in theecosystem are now focusing on
is, what are those likealternative mechanisms of
capital, beyond venture becauseright now, there's a lot of
venture capital, you know,flowing into space, space
assets. And last year, in 2024there was $26 billion of dollars
of venture capital that went in.
But venture alone cannot get thejob done, primarily because a

(01:38:36):
lot of the venture model islooking at quicker returns,
right? So looking at more likethree to five year returns, or
five to seven year returns. Withthis, with these kind of plays,
are not going to enable that,but they need to actually
succeed in order for the economyand other industries to take
advantage of it. And so lookingat things like sovereign wealth

(01:38:58):
funds and, you know,institutional banks and like
family offices, like theseplayers that understand the
eventuality in the future thatwe are building and the economic
return, but do not need to getsome sort of ROI in three to
five years. So that's, that'sone side of it. So the short
answer is, yes, there are. Theyare now just looking to close

(01:39:19):
the business case and tomaneuver more broadly. One of
the things that really needs tohappen, though, on the other
side, so beyond the capital,though, is that, as you can
imagine, with any sort ofinfrastructure and logistics
that exists on earth, there is acoordination effort. So, you
know, you mentioned things likecargo trucks and gas stations
and these, things like these, donot operate in silos, right?

(01:39:41):
They are designed in a way thatthey enable the success in the
other and that they're easy toto collaborate and to cooperate
when we talk about space, theneed for standards and
interoperability and reallysustainability of these various
companies is really critical.

(01:40:01):
And so another aspect that'sreally being looked at beyond
the technology. But how do youlook at things like common
docking interfaces or refuelingstandards or safety protocols,
right? Because the eventualitywe're moving toward in low Earth
orbit is it's not going to be aninfrastructure that is owned and
operated by one country and onecompany. It is completely

(01:40:22):
coordinated and completelycollaborative. And so all of
those other mechanisms to makeit successful are really
critical, and that's where a lotof the industry is starting to
point their attention to to makesure that that is also there
while the technology develops atthe same time.
That's so interesting, becausethat was, I mean, that's pretty
much how logistics got started.
You know, different ports wereestablished all over the world,

(01:40:44):
and then it really wasn't untilthis this book, actually, Mark
Levinson wrote this book calledthe box, where the container was
invented, and it standardizedshipping all across the world,
and, like, lifted, you know,numerous countries out of
poverty in order to streamlinelogistical operations. So it's
kind of crazy that we haven't Iguess maybe learned from that
that innovation and applied itin space. But maybe there are

(01:41:08):
people who are doing that rightnow is, as you mentioned, with
docking technology,there there are. And the reason
we haven't done it is we haven'tneeded to. I mean, so really, if
you look at how the term likecommercialization of space, so
commercial space has been aroundsince the 90s, especially with a
lot of the telecommunicationsand broadband and all of that.

(01:41:29):
Um, that really is, as Imentioned, a critical backbone
to what the space economy isnow. But 2020 was really like an
inflection point. And so we havethe inflection point of 2025 but
2020 was really this catalystfor commercial space, because it
was the first year that SpaceXflew a crude mission on their
Dragon capsule. And so peoplethen started to realize that

(01:41:52):
space was accessible, not justfor billionaires or nation
states, and that privatecitizens could engage and
interact in ways that theyprobably had never really
thought of before. And so in thecollective imagination, people
started to pay attention tospace in a different way. I
think that people are alwaysfascinated by space. I mean,
it's interesting. Like, in myday job, I don't meet people

(01:42:15):
often that are like, Oh, spaceisn't cool. Like, everyone
thinks space is cool. It's justthat everybody has an opinion of
what space is, and generally youjust think it's out of touch and
out of reach, and that it doesnot encompass every background,
skill set, interest industrythat is necessary for its
growth, and that's why it's sofun to get that aha moment for

(01:42:35):
people to realize like, oh, whatI do actually is part of the
space ecosystem. And it's like,yes, you just have to think
about it in a different way. Soafter 2020 when it became more
accessible, people started topay attention more. And then a
lot of these technologies thatwe're then now looking at, okay,
now, what can we do? And many ofthem were being built prior to

(01:42:55):
that, but at least, like thefunding and the focus and the
interest was sort of catalyzedin a way that it could allow
more growth, and that's whenthings really started to
accelerate. And the idea ofcommercial space in the space
economy, kind of became thismore common, common topic, where
before there were people talkingabout it, but people sort of
were like, Yeah, you're theperson in the corner that space

(01:43:17):
is never going to make moneyoutside of exploration and
satellites. So it's a differentmind shift. I think you
said you mentioned it on one ofyour episodes. It's like the the
mythos of space and how peopletend to maybe before 2020 they
thought it was so far away, butmaybe they don't realize that.
You know, SpaceX is launchingnearly every day, missions up up

(01:43:40):
into space. And I don't even myparents. I was explaining to
them over the weekend, becausewe grew up in Florida, but it
was one of those situationswhere you might have three
launches a year, and then itquickly evolved to three
launches a week. And now it'smaybe three a day, or what we're
I think the cadence is moving upto, oh yeah. So globally right
now, there's a launch about onceevery 34 hours. Wow, which,

(01:44:03):
which is, which is mind blowing,right and, and in your right
like, I think that this mythicalway that we talk about space,
and we and we still do it, Imean, even to the point, and for
good reason, I'll say this sospace is always captured the
collective imagination. And youknow, when we first went to the

(01:44:25):
moon, it was done with thisoptimism and enthusiasm, because
what we were doing had, like,never been done before. I mean,
truly, right? And so it wastechnologically improbable. We
true. We proved it to bepossible, and then we built this
industry around it. Where we arenow is when we still talk about
space as this, like, special,mythical ecosystem. It really

(01:44:49):
obscures the fact that goods andservices are being created and
sold on a daily basis, and thatit is this marketplace, and so
space, in and of itself, isn'tthe gamble that it once was,
although we are still dealingwith very difficult challenges.
I mentioned this on probably thepodcast you listened to recently
about closing the business casefor space, but when you talk to

(01:45:12):
a lot of space founders, theywill sometimes tell you that
space isn't special, like thetechnology engaging in those
environments is the difficultpart, right? But space, in and
of itself, it's all the otherthings. It's the
maneuverability, it's thepolicy, it's the coordination,
it's a lot of that human stuffthat sometimes makes it

(01:45:32):
difficult. Not saying that theenvironment isn't, but it's not.
It's not as tricky as it oncewas, right? And so people still
think of it as the finalfrontier, and it absolutely is,
but when you talk about it inthat way, you forget that like
there's a $570 billion economythat is actually producing
economic return for countriesand localities all over the

(01:45:55):
world and people just forgetabout that and just think the
exploration aspect.
So for all of these launchesthat are taking place, what is
the I guess the cargo on theselaunches Is it mostly
satellites.
So right now, yes. So last year,about 90% of all spacecraft
launched into space wascommercial, commercial, and the

(01:46:17):
bulk of them were satellites. Soa lot of the low Earth orbit
constellations that you will seethrough, like you know, SpaceX
is Starlink, and then Amazon hasthe Kuiper project, and then
there's one web the. That's thebulk of it, because really what
they're trying to do now,satellites give us a lot of
added benefits. So beyond thetelecommunication aspect, and

(01:46:39):
what it's doing actually, forconnectivity and latency to a
lot of areas that maybe weren'tconnected to the internet
before, it's produced reallytremendous results in other
areas that you may not haverealized so I mentioned before,
like the insurance industry, forexample, is a huge component of
the space economy. There is asubsection of the insurance

(01:47:00):
industry called parametricinsurance, which is really the
insurance that extends to likedisaster response and floods and
fires. Well, satellites haveallowed these insurance agencies
to now insure things with suchfidelity, because they now have
clarity in terms of data andimagery, to actually be able to
know blast zones right, or floodzones and how and what the

(01:47:25):
actual economic cost is going tobe. And so it's completely
transformed that side of it.
It's also transformed a lot ofother industries that you don't
think of like the agricultureindustry is actually highly
dependent on satellite data.
They use it now for moreprecision farming to be able to
know how crop yields are goingto perform with precipitation

(01:47:48):
and potential. You know, climateissues over years, there's now a
lot of farms and agriculturalequipment that are now kind of
attached to satelliteconnectivity, so they have more
autonomous farming equipment.
John Deere was actually kind ofthe first agriculture space
company because they started tointegrate satellite data. So it
is pervasive in so many otherindustries. And so when people

(01:48:09):
think about these spacecraftsbeing launched, it's not just
for you and I to be able to talkon this zoom call. There's
actually a lot of reallypractical applications that
people use every day.
And like you said, it's mostlyabout communications for right
now, but imaging is another bigpart of it. We used to we had a
guest on recently calledinversion space, and they're

(01:48:32):
trying to build warehouses inspace that could deliver you
cargo within an hour of placingan order. So just like an Amazon
but they're going to bedelivering it within an hour.
It's mostly in, you know,disaster relief, or, you know,
maybe some hikers are strandedon a mountain. That's kind of
the use cases right now. But I'mcurious if there are, you know,
outside of, maybe agricultureand, you know, inversion space,

(01:48:54):
what they're doing. Are thereany other, like, interesting use
cases that you've seen?
Oh, yeah, so not in thelogistics space. But I think one
of the areas that is reallyrelevant and important when you
talk about the utilization ofspace as a as an economic driver
is really in, like the biotechand pharmaceutical areas. So a

(01:49:18):
lot of, as I mentioned before,like research and manufacturing,
is being done on theInternational Space Station
currently, and it's going tocontinue, but they have done
some really interesting thingsto accelerate drug delivery. So
the conditions of space, nothaving gravity, with the
presence of radiation andothers, has really interesting
properties for like proteincrystal growth that is used in a

(01:49:40):
lot of different mechanisms forprecision manufacturing. For
example, there was a companythat was able to manufacture a
retina up in space that hasthrough nanotechnology and that
has like the size andsophistication to actually fit
on your eye, which you wouldnever be able to do here.
They're currently growing organson chips as backup medical

(01:50:00):
needs, because lack of gravity,again, allows you to do these
really interesting things.
They've accelerated anosteoporosis treatment is a
perfect example. There was onethat was accelerated in space
and then brought down andactually fast tracked through
the FDA. And so thoseapplications not only have
really critical use cases andimportant use cases here on

(01:50:23):
Earth, but it's also a way forus to get things quicker, be
able to accelerate technologyand innovation, and it's also
another way to sort of shore upa supply chain, because instead
of sending things, you know, toother countries to potentially
manufacture and develop, you cansend things into space and bring
it back down, potentially with abit more fidelity and
acceleration and innovativeclarity that you might want.

(01:50:47):
Why does the lack of gravityhelp with discovering some of
these innovations.
So I think it's because,especially well I can tell on
the organ, on the organ aspectand the liver aspect, it's
because it can grow moresymmetrical because of those
aspects. And so I don'tnecessarily know why. On the

(01:51:08):
machining side, I can dig in andsend you some sure on that. I
just know that it does that.
I just as you were talking aboutthese experiments, I'm like, why
aren't we doing them on earth?
Like, wouldn't that be easier orbut it sounds like, you know,
maybe there are just somebenefits to doing things in
space where you don't have,maybe the gravity restrictions.
Well, that's, that's exactlywhat it is. So there is, there

(01:51:30):
are these. Things happening onEarth. And there is, you know,
precision machining happening onEarth and additive
manufacturing, but theconditions of space allow you
just different yields. And so itis really opening up new avenues
of what people can do and whatthey can create and how it can
bring back applicationson Earth. There was another cool
thing when it when I did my NASAtour, is when they were talking

(01:51:50):
about growing plants in spaceand trying to figure out which
vegetables, you know, will we beable to feed the people who are
able to get up in it, whetherit's astronauts or space
tourism, you mentioned with, youknow, agricultural evolution, or
maybe evolving that's happeningin space. Is there other, maybe
aspects of feeding people thatare in space that maybe we don't

(01:52:12):
know about, maybe a startupthat's trying to tackle this,
yeah, so there's, there's a lotof companies that are looking at
that, and a lot of the researchis actually being led by NASA to
figure out what this kind ofcrop development would look
like. The interesting thingabout it is that when we are
looking toward theseeventualities of sustained human

(01:52:34):
presence, right in a in a lunarenvironment or elsewhere. We
don't really have the kind ofdata for that. Really, the kind
of data that we have is the dataof the astronauts who have been
on the International SpaceStation in the controlled
environment for a veryparticular and limited amount of
time. And and so you know, asprobably you know, and some of
your listeners know, theastronauts have to have very

(01:52:58):
precise diets because of, youknow, nutrient replacement. And
also they have to exercise for acertain amount of time a day
because the lack of gravity canhave degradation on the bones
when you look at that in anextended, extended period, and
also in an environment where wehaven't really done that, a lot
of the work is stillspeculative, but there are
things that we know. So forexample, you do know how your

(01:53:21):
body in these environmentsperforms with like drugs. Like,
I was actually really surprisedwhen I found out that, like, ask
even aspirin. So if I take anaspirin here on Earth, and I
take an aspirin in space. Itactually reacts with your body
differently. And so the thecomposition of things, the
nutrient replacement,electrolytes. So there are
companies that are looking atways that you can kind of create

(01:53:43):
strips to put on your tongue,you know, like, like high
endurance performance athletesmight use on rock climbing,
similar things. So how do you dofluid replacement in your body
when you're in theseenvironments? And then also,
what kind of nutrients can growin these ecosystems? So what can
actually grow on the moon? Whatkind of closed loop systems do
you need to create? How doeshydroponics play into it? How

(01:54:06):
does Astro farming? I'm sureyou've seen some of that
vertical vertical farming aswell. So there's a lot of people
thinking through thesescenarios, and there's been a
lot of they call them analogmissions. I don't know if you've
heard of those, but there it'sessentially a concept across the
world where people simulateenvironments that people might
engage, either in the Moon orMars, and they might do one

(01:54:28):
that's like on the side of acave surrounded by water, right?
Or they do them in deserts. Butit's meant to gather research
and kind of behavioralmechanisms of people, of how
they engage. So there are a lotof people thinking through these
ideas, and also what you wouldneed to grow, what people would
need to eat. The other aspecttoo, is that how then bodies

(01:54:51):
adapt? So if you think about theand we're getting kind of way
far ahead, but if you thinkabout future, sustained presence
of humans, people that are bornin these environments, they're
over generations, are going toneed different types of
nutrients. And so how do youthen prepare for that? Not that
you necessarily canspeculatively upfront, but know

(01:55:12):
that you will need to probablyadapt and adjust in a very
different way. Yeah.
I mean, I just imagine ifaspirin affects you differently
in orbit, I wonder. You know asa woman, like being pregnant in
space, like what happens there,and, yeah, all of these
different things that I guessyou know none of us know until
they try it out.
Yeah, your body does all sortsof different things. Like

(01:55:33):
there's different weird fluidshifts upon upon launch and upon
being in these environments. Youknow, bone degradation is a huge
aspect, as I mentioned in thebeginning. So one of the a lot
of the biotech that's actuallybeing developed around that is
looking at ways that you canmonitor like muscle atrophy and
and bone degradation, or overalljust kind of like physiological

(01:55:54):
health, to be able to do morepredictive and preventive
medicine. And so there's a lotof really interesting
applications around future suitdesign and the integration of
artificial intelligence and andmore sensor mechanisms to be
able to look at overall health.
The other side of that too,beyond just physical health, is
also mental health, which is ahuge aspect of future space that
a lot of people don't thinkabout yet, but a lot of those in

(01:56:19):
the community are thinkingabout, because when you are
asking people to be inenvironments that are very
unfamiliar to them for long,sustained amounts of time,
people. Are still people, and sobeing able to inject some sort
of creature comforts or ways forthem to feel more connected to
earth or more connected to theirfamily, or, you know, feel
sunlight, right? Just just basichuman needs. These people that

(01:56:42):
are going to be doing this willobviously be very elite, because
they will be trained and chosento do this, but humans still, at
some point, need to have somesort of connectivity to keep
some sort of sanity.
Yeah, I don't know if you'veever read the book about
endurance. It's Shackleton'smission to Antarctica, and how I

(01:57:06):
remember there was one part inthe book where they had been
stranded in Antarctica for, atthat point, I think, at least a
year, and some strong stormsblew in a stick and like some
seaweed. And the way that thecrew documented reacting to
taking the stick and holding itand burning it was almost it
felt like home. And so I theparallels between space and then

(01:57:30):
the, you know, I guess theenvironment of Antarctica, or
lack thereof. I wonder howhumans are going to be able to
adapt to not having those normalhuman interactions, sitting in
front of the sun, smelling abonfire, things like that.
Yeah, I think it's a reallyinteresting question, because
one of the things when I talkabout, sort of the evolution of

(01:57:51):
the space economy, and what'sreally critical to grow and
sustain it. So as we mentionedbefore, like we're really
looking at this low earth orbit,CIS lunar economy now, and a lot
of that is really predicated onreusable launch right, being
able to reduce access and costto for people to take advantage
the infrastructure, taking theearth out of the equation. But

(01:58:12):
when you look at these long,endurance, sustained missions,
like when we talk about Mars,when we talk about this future
end state, it takes seven monthsto get there. So you have people
on a ship for presumably sevenmonths that and there are
obviously tasks and things theyneed to do, but you're still on
a ship for seven months. And youknow, people need to have some

(01:58:34):
sort of outlet. There alwaysneeds to be a community. There
always needs to be a humanaspect. And so when you start to
then come into more of thatcreature comfort, mental health
aspect, even the environmentsthat you know they will be
living in, they're obviouslylike multiple schools of camp.
When you look at Mars habitats,is it underground? Is it in
domes, like you saw on theMartian? I mean, there's there's

(01:58:55):
pluses and benefits to both, butbeing able to keep people sane
and healthy, I think, is one ofthe most critical aspects,
because we need these humans toalso help make sure there is
mission success. And so that's areally big aspect. The good
thing is that we are now hittinga point where technologically,
we have made advancements inthings like artificial

(01:59:17):
intelligence, not just AI, butAR and VR technology, right? And
being able to simulateenvironments for humans that we
probably will take with us inthose engagements, but it is a
really critical component thatyou sort of take for granted
everything that's around us herethat centers us.
Yeah, I mean, if you spend a fewdays with your family over the
holidays, sometimes you can'twait to get out of there. It's

(01:59:39):
like I would imagine that thethe chemistry within these crews
is just going is going to bejust as important as, you know,
maybe the the intelligence andthe mission itself. Because
otherwise, if they don't getalong, then there's not so many
good things that could happenfrom that, but on on the flip
side, I want to take it back to,you know, sort of the
entrepreneurial role of folkswho are investing in space. I

(02:00:01):
think you with space foundation,foundation. You have space path,
you have space edge, and thenyou also have the Space
Symposium. Can you kind of tellus what each of those programs
are, and then sort of theoverall goals with each of those
absolutely so Space Foundationas an organization is a 41 year
old nonprofit that'sheadquartered in Colorado
Springs, but we also have aWashington DC office that's

(02:00:24):
where myself and my team andsome other departments are. And
really what we do as anorganization is we say that we
advance the global spaceecosystem, and so when you
actually break that down, we, interms of our programs and
services, really toucheverything from elementary to
emeritus. So a quick sort ofhighlight of where we started

(02:00:47):
and where we're going. Mostpeople know us for our annual
Space Symposium, which youmentioned, which we just had our
40th in Colorado Springs thispast April. And that really does
bring together the global spacecommunity. So everyone from
national security space, civilspace, commercial space, both
domestic and international. Andwe, this past year, had just

(02:01:09):
over 11,500 people. So I alwayssay it's a party with like
11,000 plus of your favoritespace friends. We had a bunch of
international entities join us.
We do every year, heads ofagencies. And so it's really a
place where all of the differentspace conversations happen and
how they mix. Because what'sinteresting about the future of
space is that national securityand Dev. Devers civil space,

(02:01:30):
which is like NASA and otheragencies, and commercial they
all intertwine and mix in somecapacity, because, like dual use
technologies, and, you know,some companies have multiple
customers, so that's been ouranchor flagship for a very long
time. On the other side of thehouse, we do a lot of K through

(02:01:50):
12 education and workforcedevelopment, because we do
believe that space begins in theclassroom. If we are pushing
toward this eventuality where weare going to have, you know,
sustained presence of people,and we're going to have all
these new jobs andinfrastructure, we need people
to not self select out earlybecause they don't think it's
part of their career growth. Andso we do a lot of, you know,

(02:02:12):
space in the community outreach.
We do things like teacherliaisons, where we train
teachers around the world onspecific space curriculum. And
then one of our currentinitiatives is called Swift, and
it's focused on workforcedevelopment. And so it's making
sure that we close the criticalskills gap that a lot of
companies are finding to be ableto retain and attract and train,

(02:02:36):
kind of the next generationskilled workers. A lot of my
work, what it does and theprograms, focuses on bringing
the next generation of companiesand capabilities to space. So we
focus a lot on the emergingcountries, the emerging
companies. We work a lot witheconomic development commissions
in different states to get themto understand how their

(02:02:57):
industries are relevant to spaceand we create programs around
it, so like one of them that youmentioned, space path, it's a
one day virtual boot camp that'shappening August 16, and what it
is is for companies are peoplethat want to fully understand,
like, really, what the spaceeconomy is, but start to create

(02:03:17):
a strategy around it. And sowhether it's a company that is
interested in space, or couldpotentially already be in space,
but wants to understand how tobetter scale, how to better
integrate that, this is reallythe program for them. It's kind
of like a like an accelerator,boot camp on steroids. Right
within that, that component,what we also do our space

(02:03:38):
business incubators andaccelerators, that's what you
mentioned, the space edge andsome others, where we put
together either 468, or 12 weekprograms really designed to help
companies understand where theyfit and create a strategy for
the future of space. What's niceabout those is all all sort of
accelerators and programs havean entrepreneurial flair, but we

(02:04:01):
really teach people about thebusiness of space. And so really
understanding how our marketsgoing to evolve. How are
industries relevant? How is yourcompany relevant? How is it
going to scale? And so at theend of that, they really get an
understanding of what to do, howto do it, and when they can
start making money and insertinto the future.
So I guess what? What does maybelike a high level process look

(02:04:22):
like if I'm an entrepreneur andI want to start a space company,
Is it as simple as like, I havean idea and I just need to go
find, you know, make thebusiness case to an investor. So
it used to be, and it can be, soI'll part of the, part of the

(02:04:43):
challenge and opportunity rightnow. I'll say that. So, as I
mentioned early on, there's,there's never been more
interest, activity, engagement,opportunity ever. However, there
is a bit of heartburn in theecosystem right now because of
the SPAC boom and bust thathappened in 2021 all the free
money. Yeah, so just a quickprimer for the listeners, if you

(02:05:04):
don't know what I'm talkingabout. As I mentioned, 2020 was
this kind of critical year,because people realize that
space was accessible. VirginGalactic went public via a SPAC,
a special purpose acquisitioncompany that essentially allows
people to raise capital withouthaving a tech right? So a lot of
like PowerPoint companies wereable to go public and raise

(02:05:25):
capital like none of them pannedout. So, so what what happened
was Rocket Lab was really kindof the only company that saw its
panned out in valuations, and sowithout the companies actually
getting any sort of return orgrowth beyond that, what it
really did, in many ways, iskind of call into question the
integrity of the space ecosystemaltogether and the viability of

(02:05:45):
the capabilities. So we startedto see private capital start to
shrink and start to go moretoward classic things, toward
like hardware and software andmore infrastructure plays like
ground stations that you needfor satellites, and not take
some of those more riskier bets.
It is now recovering, which isgood. So we are now seeing more
capital return to the market,primarily, as I mentioned

(02:06:07):
before, because things areflying. Space is a lot more
visible now in terms of thesecapabilities, but what it means
for companies is that they needto be a lot more savvy, as
opposed to, I just have an idea,they need to actually show how
they're going to make money, orhow they will eventually fit
into the ecosystem and give somesort of economic return. So not

(02:06:28):
all companies. These need to beable to show this three to five
year return, but at least have aplan on how you're going to
build into this infrastructureor eventuality or part of the
supply chain. So it just, itjust takes a bit more pragmatism
in terms of the business growthand not just the excitement of
what the community and ecosystembrings to bear.

(02:06:50):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Like, if the free money is done,maybe it shouldn't have have
been there in the first place.
You can make that, I guess thatargument as well in all
industries, not not just space.
But I am curious how this, howthis industry becomes a little
bit more business savvy, and howthey're making those cases once
they once, maybe an entrepreneuror startup has an idea, what

(02:07:11):
does sort of those next stepslook like? Because I've heard
it's as easy, like, if you wantto get on a SpaceX launch. I
mean, it is, they're booking,like, a year and a half in
advance, I believe. But is itreally as simple as just, like,
booking a flight on theirwebsite? Because that's what I
I've heard.
I think if the So, I don't knowthe full answer to that, but I

(02:07:32):
do know that SpaceX has reallymade the process easy for people
to be able to take advantage oftheir their flights, right, and
put different payloads in space.
Because you know that the typesof things that are going to be
going up is everything frompotentially like a company's
idea to a research payload froman academic institution, and so
the ability to give access to alot of different people needed

(02:07:53):
to be streamlined in aparticular way. I will say that
sort of the next steps. So it'sa it's a couple of things, I
think that ultimately, given thethe pace and the scale and just
the amount of excitement aroundthe industry. One you need to
start engaging with people inthe industry. The one thing I

(02:08:14):
will say, though about space andwhy I really love this
community, is everybody loveswhat they do, and everybody
wants to talk about what theydo, because we are building this
future that is extremelyexciting, and so it's not a hard
industry to start making friendswith. So if you go to a space
conference, or you startengaging on webinars, online, or
even LinkedIn, is like one of myfavorite places, because you can

(02:08:37):
get into, like, reallyinteresting conversations, and
people will always respondbecause they love the topic. So
I think for companies, they needto start there. They need to
start engaging with the playersand getting diverse
perspectives. Because part ofthe biggest, I think, misnomer
with space is, if you build it,they will come that is not true.
And the other piece too is thatsometimes a lot of founders need

(02:08:58):
to get out of the echo chamberof everybody saying, this is
such a really cool idea, andyou're going to be the next Elon
Musk and engage with otheraspects of the industry that are
just as critical to its growth,that might give them alternative
views to think about it. So Ithink the connectivity piece is
critical. I think also start tounderstand where you want to

(02:09:19):
fit. So there is now so muchvalue chain, and there are so
many different aspects that youcan connect to, right? Do you
want to be a component, acomponent supplier. Do you want
to be a third party supplier ofspace data to an ecosystem or an
industry here on Earth? Do youwant to do payloads in space and

(02:09:40):
accelerate some sort of researchfor some other industry on
Earth? Do you want to be anarchitect for the CIS lunar
infrastructure, right? Do youwant to offer additive
manufacturing? There is like somuch that can be done that
understanding more clearly whereyou want to fit will also then
inform how you fit. Because doyou then become a supplier to A

(02:10:02):
prime that may have thatcontract? Do you offer
independent services? Do you goafter a government contract? So
there's lots of different ways,but you need to actually
understand, like, whatspecifically you want to do, and
not just say like cis lunar,because that is 10,000 different
things.
So from a I guess, outside ofgetting the funding and then

(02:10:26):
obviously the environment ofspace, what maybe is, is the
most challenging aspect ofcreating a startup in this
industry.
So it's really the it's thehuman side. I would say that,
you know, you made the analogyearlier, talking about cargo
trucks, right? And like a lot ofthis so sometimes people think

(02:10:50):
that certain aspects are alreadydominated and monopolized by a
certain company. I mean,certainly people think that
about SpaceX. But if you thinkabout the future of space and
all of the different missions,like you mentioned, that company
that you talked to that wants toactually like transport cargo,
we need all sorts of differentrockets for all sorts of
different missions. You needrockets that are going to put

(02:11:11):
people up there. You needrockets that are going to put
going to put small satellites.
You need cargos that are goingto be transportation type
entities. And so there are a lotof different opportunities and
offerings for different types ofaspects. So that is, that is a
good, a good problem to have. Ithink one. The challenges,
though, for companies is theunderstanding that certain areas

(02:11:33):
are convincing people that itmight not be a completely
dominated aspect, and that'sjust launch. I mean, launch is a
very different conversation, butpart of the other challenge for
some of these companies is juststarting and getting people to
trust you. And so when you lookinto this environment, as I
mentioned, where everything isgoing to be integrated and

(02:11:56):
coordinated, you have to trustthe company, and you have to
trust the system. And so it isthen come back to those human
relationships, right? And sobeing able to get people to
understand your vision, but alsoyou as people, and start to
build those sort of companyrelationships is really
critical. And then the otherpiece that is going to hamper, I
think, a lot of them, theecosystem, if we don't solve it

(02:12:17):
pretty quickly, is just aroundthe regular the regulation
aspect of it. So we are in anenvironment now, you know, we've
been we're operating in spacelike we've never operated
before, and there are not lawsthat extend to property rights
in space. There are really noregulatory frameworks for how
commercial companies are goingto be engaging when they're

(02:12:38):
potentially mining on the moon.
And so we also need to make surethat we as a as a country, the
United States, but alsoglobally, kind of look at the
existing regulatory frameworksand potentially update ones that
are antiquated to actually allowthe ecosystem and the innovation
to evolve at the pace and scalethat it needs to. Because for

(02:13:00):
some of these young companies,you know, it may be really
difficult for them to get a slotin orbit right. They may not be
able to get on a ride share.
They may not be able to get theright licenses to be able to
conduct what they need to do.
And so being able to allow theagility of the of the ecosystem
to adapt to like the modernneeds, is really one of those

(02:13:23):
critical aspects, and that hasnothing to do with the
technology and everything to dowith kind of the policy and the
system around it.
Yeah, because there's no, fromwhat I understand, there's no
governing body in space. It'sjust kind of loose agreements
between countries on earth thatkind of agree to a certain set
of rules. But they can, theyreally be enforced?

(02:13:44):
Yeah, so that that, honestly, isthe one of the primary
conversations that is happeningnow, because of how engagement
is accelerating. Becausetraditionally, it was
nationalistic, right? It was, itwas companies that would be
doing things on behalf of NASAor or the European Space Agency
or elsewhere, and that is stillgoing to exist, but yeah, we are

(02:14:05):
now going to create aneventuality where there may be a
commercial company that isengaging outside of the
government. We've already provedit with the moon. There have
been commercial companies thathave landed on the moon, two
that are united states based sointuitive machines and Firefly
aerospace. And so that is reallyaccelerating the pace of these
conversations and the necessitywhat we have right now are

(02:14:28):
there's the Outer Space Treaty,which was developed in 1969
ratified in 1972 but to yourpoint, that doesn't extend to
property rights or sort of thatother sort of ownership. And
then the framework that we areworking on now is the the
Artemis accords. That is, Idon't know if you're familiar
with that, but essentially it,it's essentially an

(02:14:49):
international doctrine thatcountries can sign on to that
essentially establish norms ofengagement, or at least people
signal that these are the normsof engagement. I think as of a
couple weeks ago, there were 55signatories there. There may be
more, but again, that's a nonbinding treaty, so it's an
indication that you want to beallies and that you will work in

(02:15:11):
this way, but there's noenforcement mechanism, and so a
lot of those aspects aroundspace, law and regulation and
the policy around those arebudding on the fringes, because
that really is a criticalcomponent, because economically,
we can justify the return,technologically, we can build
it. We can try to attract thecapital. But if you don't have

(02:15:32):
those other levers to enable itssuccess, it can really stall.
Yeah, because I think it wassome I don't know if it was like
the Russian government or maybea Russian company, but they
exploded one of their satellitesin space a couple of years ago,
and all of that debris went intoall of these different orbital
fields, and that obviouslyimpacts a bunch of countries, a

(02:15:53):
bunch of companies, and so forsituations like that, you kind
of want some checks andbalances, I would imagine,
yeah, and that is, that isactually one of the examples in
particular that a lot of peopleuse about just kind of like
secondary and tertiary effectsof things, and then how that
also plays beyond commercial butpotentially national security

(02:16:16):
threats or or other aspects. Andso the domain is just very
interesting at the moment interms of how we are going to
move forward collectively. I didwant to
pull on on the on the string fora little bit of the
manufacturing side of things.
Because I would imagine that ifwe can manufacture it and we can
make goods in space, then thatwould reduce the amount of
cargo, transports that we wouldneed for maybe some critical

(02:16:38):
supplies. One a reader submitteda question for this episode, and
he was talking about asteroidmining, and what do they see as
a bigger potential marketlassoing asteroids and tugging
them back to Earth or zero Gmanufacturing was the reader
submitted question. I'm not sureif you could answer that, but
would love to hear your insight.

(02:17:00):
So yes, I can answer it. Maybenot as fully as they would like,
but I could give, I could givean example. So asteroid mining
is one of those topics thatcomes up a lot because it is one
that excites people, primarilybecause there have been
asteroids that have beenidentified that have, you know,
more platinum that exists onearth, just on one asteroid. And

(02:17:21):
so the economic gain and thepotentiality of what that could
bring to bear is really excitingfor people. The challenge right
now is that there is no businesscase or market for it. What I
mean by that is that in order toactually conduct the mission,
and you know, dock on theasteroid, mine the Platinum,

(02:17:44):
bring it back down, the yieldthat you can actually get is is
much less than the cost of themission. And so it doesn't the
Delta doesn't make businesssense yet. That is where people
are going, but it is one ofthose examples that a lot of
investors will say, I'm notinvesting in that, because it's
not a viable, practical aspectright now. What is viable,

(02:18:04):
though, for asteroid mining, andwhere a lot of the industry is
looking at, for that space tospace market, which you're
talking about, is looking atthings like water and and rare
minerals and other criticalelements that can be used in
situ for other aspects. And soif we are going to look at lunar
infrastructure and lunararchitecture, we need to not

(02:18:26):
just be shipping water up fromEarth, right? I mean, that's
very expensive, it's verycumbersome, and that that can
stall things. So looking at waysto extract water from potential
asteroids, and looking at waysto get minerals or other aspects
that then can be manufacturedthrough more precision,
manufacturing authoritymanufacturing for infrastructure
and architecture aspects thereis, is one that they're looking

(02:18:49):
at, and their company's focusedon,
what about on that? I guess thewe've talked about it a couple
times of the space tourismaspect Blue Origin just just had
their, you know, their flightthat went viral all over social
media for a variety of reasons.
I am curious as to, are we Howfar away is a future where
regular people can just book aflight and go into

(02:19:13):
space, yeah, so that was thewhole point of those flights,
right? So there's a couple ofpoints for suborbital, and I'm a
big proponent of it, because Ithink, for a couple of reasons,
you need to make people feelpart of the space story. As we
mentioned. You know, people,it's very mythical to folks, and
it's very out of touch. Butspace does affect us, and people
will be able to take advantageof it. So anytime you send

(02:19:37):
humans up into space and returnthem safely, that is a
technological feat that needs tobe celebrated. And so I really
applaud them in their efforts,and by doing more and more of
these flights, that iseventually going to drive the
cost down, because you are goingto be able to prove technology
with more fidelity, close morebusiness cases, give more

(02:19:58):
access. And so I could see aneventuality where in the next
five to 10 years, it is, it ismuch cheaper for folks to access
it. I know there are a lot ofcompanies that are focused on
that. There's also somecompanies. I don't know if
you've seen the balloons, sothere's some companies, and I'm
blanking on the name, but theyit's almost like a it's a space

(02:20:18):
tourism aspect, but it takes youright to the edge on this, like,
souped up hot air balloon. Oh,wow. People want to do so that
is another aspect. What I willsay about the suborbital
flights, though, and why it itis also really critical is that
there are experimentation andother aspects that are done on
these flights. And so people,and I know they did this on the

(02:20:39):
the Blue Origin flight, butthere were sensors worn and
other other types of aspectstested that you don't
necessarily have that kind oftesting. And in the five GS that
you pull up to get there right,or in the microgravity, and so
also what it does to acceleratejust basic science and discovery
and some of these otherinnovations that are going to be
really critical for future humanmissions. It's a really critical

(02:21:00):
component. And so I think thathaving people pay attention to
them, getting excited aboutthem, not just from the science
aspect, but feeling part ofspace. And there will be there
will be a time when, wheneveryone will be able to take
advantage of it, or hope, orhopefully, most
hopefully in my lifetime, isdefinitely a goal and a dream

(02:21:21):
that I didn't think wouldactually be attainable. But if
you're saying within the nextfive or 10 years, you know,
maybe that is really attainablefor a lot of folks, and it's a.
To look forward to and bepassionate about.
Yeah, because, I mean, I don'tthink most folks realize that
they've already flown BlueOrigin has already flown another
human mission since that flight.
Oh, wow. They're set to launchanother one, I think, this week.

(02:21:41):
And so the cadence now of whenthey're flying these with the
individuals on board isaccelerating as well, which is
really exciting.
Wow. So I guess is that maybe,like Blue Origin's main focus
right now is, like more of thesubordinable Tourism style
flights.
That's a component. So they havea lot of different aspects. They

(02:22:03):
flew earlier this January. Theydid a test flight of their new
Glenn rocket, which is a, whichis a heavy, a heavy a heavy
rocket. So essentially, it couldbe a competitor to starship.
They also have a contract for alunar lander, and so they are
very much involved in kind ofthe the moon ecosystem, and so

(02:22:24):
it is a component of one. Butthey have a lot of really
interesting projects andproducts that they're working
on. How realisticis it for us to have a base on
the moon and maybe the next 10years?
I think it's very realistic. Soit does, though, take, as we
mentioned earlier, thecoordination of all of the

(02:22:47):
things to enable the the theinfrastructure. So when you look
at the this individualizedcomponents, a lot of these
technologies are kind of at acritical mass, right? And they
are, they are ready to bescaled. They just need the
capital or some sort of otherintegration infusion to be able

(02:23:07):
to do that. It's thecoordination of it. And so I
think that if you look at thefuture growth, you know, we are
as a nation, we're planning togo back to the moon. I don't
know if 2026 is going to stick,but at least sometime within the
next couple of years, to havepeople back on the moon. They're
already, you know, likeautonomous flyers, as I

(02:23:28):
mentioned, that are going there.
And so I could see very easilyin the next 10 years, if we're
able to coordinate everything ina concentrated way, that it
could be an eventuality. Now,last
few questions here, just morefrom like, I guess, like the
logistics industry standpoint.
I'm sure anybody I talked tothat works in this industry,
they are, they are fascinated byspace as well, but they don't.

(02:23:49):
They don't. They didn't know itwas this approachable. I didn't
think it was this approachableuntil this we had this
conversation. I you know, it'skind of a thing in, you know, an
aspirational thing. So for folkswho may be listening that are
working in logistics, what kindof jobs do you think are going
to be like logistics related ortransferable to the space
economy?

(02:24:11):
You're talking about individualjobs and not capabilities,
right? Or technologies,maybe both, because maybe some
capabilities for professionalshere on Earth would apply, and
maybe they're industrytransferable. Because I think
I've heard you talk about, youknow, we're we need you know
marketing, and we need you know,messaging and you know, that's
what stuck with me. But I knowthat there's other roles,

(02:24:33):
project management, things likethat, that all need to be done
for space as well.
Oh, completely. So the whenpeople start to pull back the
onion and realize what thisfuture looks like, I really do
believe that every background,interest and skill set fits.

(02:24:54):
It's just finding how it fits. Iwould say that some of the ones
that come to mind, particularlyon the logistics side, that are
going to be really critical butalso really transferable in the
future, is understanding likethe OP the interoperability, and

(02:25:15):
also like operation side of lotsof different machinery, right?
So think about like how somebodymanages a port in terms of
things coming in and out andmaking sure that there aren't
collisions, right? And beingable to tag things the same
thing is going to be necessarythere when you have this sort of
infrastructure on the lunarsurface, but also when you look
at a lot of the payloads thatare going in and out of these

(02:25:37):
space stations, right? So beingable to understand how that all
plays together. Another reallycritical thing, though, which I
think that a lot of thelogistics community is already
sort of leading in, is this sortof machine human symbiosis,
particularly when it comes tothe integration of artificial
intelligence. I am not alogistics expert by any means,
but I can speculate that it isprobably being used, you know,

(02:26:01):
not just like I said, for likePort management, but also for
tracking routes and otheraspects. AI is going to play
such a critical role in thefuture of the space economy in a
lot of different ways that Ithink that the people that know
how to utilize it, know how tointegrate with it, know how to
capitalize on its operationalability, is a really it's going

(02:26:25):
to be a common occurrence and acritical thing to know, because
I can give you an example. Sowhen we talked about the
manufacturing side of it,artificial intelligence is
already being used to keep upwith this the scale of satellite
demand, and so a lot ofmanufacturing facilities are now
utilizing artificialintelligence to help design, you
know, manufacture and developtheir satellites. A lot of

(02:26:47):
artificial intelligence will beused on these future missions,
not just for planning, but alsofor coordination of all the
different autonomous vehicles tokind of integrate together. And
so that sort of skill set is areally interesting one. I know
it's definitely one that's beingtaught at schools because kids
are growing up with thistechnology. But if there are
professionals that already knowhow to harbor the genius or the

(02:27:09):
the effectiveness rather ofartificial intelligence into
their daily jobs, I think iswould be a huge benefit.
Yeah, there was that. Going backto that gentleman that I spoke
with at NASA, he talked abouthow he and his team went to an
air cargo conference in order tolearn how to more efficiently

(02:27:30):
pack their cargo in the shuttle.
So they're learning from otherlogistics pros here on, you
know, regular conferences that alot of this audience goes to,
but they're learning from themin order to apply those
learnings in space, which Ithink is just fascinating.
Oh, yeah. And even on thatthread that just made me think
of something else. If you thinkabout putting things in space,

(02:27:50):
every ounce matters. Sounderstanding how to potentially
miniaturize, or, like you said,pack or capitalize on space
available for the optimal outputthat you want on the back end is
something that is going to bereally critical. So it really is
kind of just a, I would say,like kind of a creative leap to
think about how these entitiesmight come together, but if we

(02:28:14):
do or not it, but when we dohave lunar infrastructure, it's
going to be really no differentthan infrastructure here and how
it engages, right?
So let's last I know I said lastcouple questions, a few
questions ago. Last Last couplequestions. For real, are there
any sort of trends that aregoing on within space, any
businesses that we should bepaying attention to before they

(02:28:38):
kind of hit the mainstream?
That's a good question. I wouldsay so, from like, an
interesting capabilities point.
Yeah, so one of the ones thathas come come around a lot
recently, which I find reallyinteresting, is data centers in

(02:29:00):
space. Oh, wow. And so it's,it's, it's an answer to a couple
of things. So it's, it's theability to also maintain
critical communications, right,also keep up with the demand of
the amount of satellites and thepower that they demand in terms
of latency and others to be ablelatency and other capabilities

(02:29:23):
to bring back down to earth. Butthe other reason that they're
putting them in space is that alot of the data centers, or at
least what I've read is a lot ofthe data data centers on Earth
are there's they're sort of outgrowing the space that they
have, and also they're reallyvulnerable to attacks. And so if
you think about this superconnected world that we are

(02:29:45):
moving into, and particularly,everything is connected now,
ground and space and everythingin between. When you move it up
into space, it's not asvulnerable to things like cyber
attacks, and, you know, grid,grid shutdowns and other
aspects. And so that is an areathat is increasingly gaining
more traction, security aspect,from a utilization demand, but
then also from a kind of closedloop communication ability. And

(02:30:09):
that's that's that's one that Ithink is really interesting to
watch. The other piece too, thatis, you know, really apropos to
your readers, is really thisportfolio that I call I Sam, or
I don't call it that. It'scalled I Sam. It's the in space
service, assembly andmanufacturing. And that is that
low Earth orbit integratedarchitecture of the refueling

(02:30:32):
depots, the robotic repair arms,the man the, you know, the
manufacturing in space, a lot ofthe recycling endeavors, that is
one of the aspects that isextremely critical to grow and
scale, as I've mentioned. Butalso a lot of those companies
are really visible, like orbitfab is doing gas stations in

(02:30:52):
space. Astro scale is looking atsustainability at the forefront,
but they are. They recently didthis mission where they got
really close to a piece of spacedebris and were able to survey
it with like, really impressiveresolution. And the next goal is
to capture it. And so thatportfolio is really timely,
really important, and one that'sreally going to change the game

(02:31:15):
when the whole I Sam chainreally comes to conclusion,
yeah.
I mean, it just feels like, youknow, this is very reminiscent
of, you know, for a lot ofAmericans that could be
listening the western expansionand, you know, building the
railroad. Tracks in order to getto and from a little bit faster
and a little bit more efficient.
It's kind of what we're doingright now. We're building those

(02:31:36):
gas stations. We're building,you know, those maintenance
shops, and you know, it's alltaking place like right now in
space, and I don't think thatmost people are aware of that.
So Kelly, this has been anamazing conversation. Is there
anything that you feel isimportant to mention that we
haven't already talkedabout the only thing that comes
to mind is just a response tojust what you said is that is a

(02:31:56):
perfect analogy to use, and Ithink that the best way to use
it is if you think about thatWestern expanse, and especially
the gold rush, the people thatmade a bulk of the money, it
wasn't necessarily the ones likelooking for the gold, it was the
people selling the picks andshovels. And so when you think
about this supply chain aspect,right? It's all of those other

(02:32:21):
aspects that are really criticalto its growth, and that's where
a lot of the opportunity lies.
Is just understanding where thatinsertion is, that's that's a
perfect mic drop moment for thisconversation. Kelly, thank you
so much. Where Can folks followyou? Follow more of the work of
Space Foundation, all that goodstuff.
Yeah, so our website is spacefoundation.org, and you can find

(02:32:43):
all the good stuff that theorganization is up to. I'm very
active on LinkedIn. If anyonealso wants to follow me on
LinkedIn, it's just Kelly, keyto sogborn. Happy to engage,
especially for those companiesthat are trying to start the
conversation, please reach out.
Yeah, absolutely. We will putall of those links in the show
notes, just to make it easy forfolks. But this is another
fantastic conversation, so Kellywill have to have you back on to

(02:33:04):
talk about how theseadvancements are
improving. Thank you so much.
Thanks for tuning in to anotherepisode of everything is
logistics, where we talk allthings supply chain. For the
thinkers in freight, if you likethis episode, there's plenty
more where that came from. Besure to follow or subscribe on
your favorite podcast app so younever miss a conversation. The

(02:33:26):
show is also available in videoformat over on YouTube, just by
searching everything islogistics. And if you're working
in freight logistics or supplychain marketing, check out my
company, digital dispatch. Wehelp you build smarter websites
and marketing systems thatactually drive results, not just
vanity metrics. Additionally, ifyou're trying to find the right
freight tech tools or partnerswithout getting buried in

(02:33:49):
buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the
largest database of logisticsservices and solutions. All the
links you need are in the shownotes. I'll catch you in the
next Episode in go jags. You youyou.

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