Building The New Silk Road in Space with CisLunar Joe Pawelski

Episode Transcript
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Joe Pawelski (00:05):
When I was first in this industry, I was, like,
humans in space, like, I'mfocused on the science and
building, like logistics. I'mnot too, you know, humans in
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,

Unknown (00:21):
that could be the best thing. You know, there's enough
people that are interested ingoing to space or, you know,
being buried in space, allthese, all these different
things, but, but ultimately, weneed is a reason to be up there
persistently

Blythe Milligan (00:33):
before we can build a base on the moon. We
need something most peopleoverlook a supply chain, just
like the original Silk Roadconnected civilizations, the New
Silk Road in space will connectEarth orbit and the lunar
surface through transportation,power and material
infrastructure. This isn't scifi. It's the next great

(00:55):
logistics challenge, and thecompanies solving it today are
laying the foundation for asustainable space economy
tomorrow. Welcome into anotherepisode of everything. Is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers and afraid. We are
proudly presented by SPIlogistics, and I'm your host.
Blythe Milligan, I'm happy towelcome in Joe Pawelski. He is
the CTO at CisLunar Industries,and we're going to be talking

(01:16):
about how to build that New SilkRoad in space. So Joe, welcome
to the show. Pleasure to behere. Thank you. And just right
when we started recording, youhad mentioned that you had read
the box, which is a book that'sin my background over here. And
so that's a perfect jumping offplace of where we want to have
this conversation, because we'vebeen doing regular space

(01:38):
logistics episodes for about ayear now, and it's a topic that
is not slowing down anytimesoon. And I was going through
your LinkedIn bio, and I noticedthat you have on there that
you're a plasma propulsionenthusiast. And I think that
that's just the perfect way tokick this conversation off. So
how do you become a plasmapropulsion enthusiast? Well, it

(02:03):
started out playing a gamecalled Red Alert, Command and
Conquer years ago, probably inmid 90s. So this is a strategic

Unknown (02:12):
game where you try to battle different folks, but you
win by logistics. So you win bycapturing ore and building bases
and building a war factory, andyou have to have to have a
certain number of things to theattributes, to build the fancier
tanks, or build them faster andmore power plants and all that
sort of thing. You could be theformer
Soviet Union countries in thisgame, and they had for base

(02:35):
defense, they had Tesla coils.
And at the time, I was like,wow, this is really neat. You
can zap people with lightning.
And that's I learned quicklythat that was a real thing that
not the part. It turns out it'sthey're actually not very
harmful to people. You can shockyourself with it. But I learned
all about Tesla coils when I was1312, 13, something like that. I

(02:56):
grew up in Richmond. There was agroup called the Tesla, or the
Tesla builders of Richmond. Andthis was Richard Hall, who went
on to be the first, 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 fromNavy research lab and a bunch of
other national labs at this age,and they were all into trying to

(03:17):
recreate a bunch of the thingsthat Tesla had built. So Tesla
coils. But not just that,obviously, they gradually got
into building fusers and allkinds of really exotic induction
drivers and directed energy typedevices eventually got into. So
that's really what kicked theseed, and that's how I started
to meet these people and startedto get these mentors that helped

(03:40):
me build my own high energy typeexperiments. And then I started
to meet other folks that were,you know, similar ages in the
community. One of those is Steveward. He's he's got a bunch of
YouTube stuff out there, but heinvented the dual resonant tesla
coil, which makes music you guyshave probably seen playing AWOL
nation sale or some otherelectronic sounds like on the

(04:03):
steps of University of Chicagoand in places like this, a lot
of folks have made those at thispoint. He also invented the
quasi continuous waves Hesselcoil. I have one of them over
here. I might fire it up here ina second, but it makes lightning
bolts that look like swords.
I'll show you. Yeah.
So this thing right here isquite a continuous wave tesla

(04:25):
coil, and makes a little sparkwhen we
plug it in. But why? Yeah, ohyeah, it makes pretty big bolts
of lightning. Here,you can actually stock yourself.
We kind of do this as a hobby atcislunar. We Yeah, any new
hires, they get to play with thetougher done and a little bit of

(04:45):
an onboarding that's different,exactly for anyone watching
that's that's seen me at some ofthe events, like Space
Symposium, we hosted a party,and I was running around with
that thing. So, yeah, I.
Yeah, so anyway, that's, that'show I got into the whole plasma
and enlightening sort of thing.
It's kind of been a lifelongthing. And so I had this idea
probably a decade or two ago. Iwas like, Wouldn't it be neat if

(05:10):
I could get, you know, these,these folks that are really,
that I really look up to, thatbuild these things to get
together and start a company,and, you know, 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
started cislinar, we actuallystarted to build

(05:33):
metal foundries in space, andthis was to solve the problem of
space debris, but also in orderfor us to build off world. So,
you know, something that I'mreally interested I used to be
in heavy industry, building,making plastic bottles and cans
at 1000s of minutes. So I reallywanted to, you know, to give
back and figure out a way to togive us abundant resources,

(05:54):
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 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,
there's, there's a lot of, it'scovered in, you know, meter, 10s

(06:17):
of meters of just dust, that is,that is metal and oxygen. So
it's like, this is a greatresource. So anyway, I started
looking into that, and with theNASA project, it was to use
metal for metal foundries. So inorder to do that, we found out
that induction furnaces workedreally well, and the folks that
an induction furnace forelectronics folks works a lot

(06:38):
like a Tesla boil circuit. SoI ended 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,
okay, let's start with metaldebris. And the problem is

(06:59):
getting to the metal debris.
Because you use propellant toget there, there's this whole
Newton's law. It's a real painin the ass. Rocket equation, you
have to, like, get rid of massin 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.

(07:20):
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.

(07:41):
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, so So
originally, you know, we'refocused on this foundry and

(08:02):
making this metal propellant,but that introduced us to
everyone in the plasma thrustercommunity, and we started to
realize that, hey, the very nearterm problem is actually
logistics, like, how do you getthere, just in the first place,
so that you could use that thoseresources? And we realized that
a plasma thruster. The one ofthe one of the hardest things
about this is actually buildingthe power supply to operate it.

(08:25):
And it got even cooler then werealized that the things that we
had been making for ourinduction furnace, and some of
the hard problems we've beensolving to, you know, this
thing, literally, it's like partof it's like a tractor beam. It
grabs metal from space that'sfloating, and then it directs it
in with these magnetic coils andeverything, and then it feeds
into the furnace. And we'relike, the plasma thruster folks

(08:45):
that we started meeting werelike this part, this part that
takes the thing and directs itlike, and then the circuit that
that you did that with, that'swhat we want to learn more
about. Like, we think you mighthave solved some major problems
for plasma propulsion. And so,what the heck is plasma
propulsion? I got to learn allabout it. But essentially,
plasma, plasma propulsion, it'sall these things are similar to

(09:06):
what we were doing with withTesla stuff. It's all about, you
know, controlling, you know, youhave a controlled spark or
controlled discharge, an arc.
You know, a lot of times inmicroelectronics 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

(09:27):
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 that I any
research institution the UnitedStates and I know of is doing
plasma thrusters. We've beenwe've been, we've been working
with in one capacity or another.
So anyway, it was like, Oh, wow.
We can take this stuff and putit on steroids and just do all
kinds of wacky stuff with it.

(09:50):
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.
Yes. And so what that comes downto is, again, you know, Newton's
law, you gotta, you gotta throwmass out. The faster, the harder
you throw it, the better. Butalso, the more massive it is,

(10:10):
the better. So electric collagenallows 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 accelerated, thatnumber mass times acceleration
is if acceleration is very high,then you can get much more
force. And in this case, whatends up happening is you get

(10:32):
much better gas mileage, is howyou can think of it. They're
still working on getting theenergy level so that we can get
really high thrust. This poweris limited in space. It's not
the same as, you know, achemical rocket. You burn this,
you can get hundreds of megajoules, or, you know, billions
of billions of watts generatedat a time. And right now with

(10:52):
solar cells or even a nuclearyou know, you're limited
somewhat, but it turns out thatwe can get very efficient. So
it's the way I actually kind ofexplain is, like the difference
between a fighter jet and atrain. If you need to get
somewhere really fast, you'regoing to use a fighter jet, but
guess what? You're going to haveto refuel that thing. Like, if
you're going to fly a jet fromhere to somewhere, a fighter
jet, especially at Mach two orsomething, you're going to have

(11:14):
to refuel that thing all thetime. You could take a train,
and you're going to use afraction of the gas to get
there, and you're going to beable to pull, like, a whole
train load worth of stuff at thesame time. So, you know, so this
really gets down to logisticsthing. And hopefully that wasn't
too much of a deep dive onpropulsion systems. But
basically, you have chemicalpropulsion, you have electric
propulsion, and right now,because we can't generate

(11:37):
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 billions of wattsgenerated.
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 nodes.
Anyway, I've been reallyfascinated by the plasma side.
And of course, too, I'm reallyinterested eventually we can get

(11:57):
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 you 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 plasmaenthusiastic, plasma repulsion
enthusiast, because I love allkinds of plasma. And as the

(12:18):
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 based on our previousconversations, that you know,
one of the, you know, I guess,when we back it up and talk
about sort of space logistics asa whole, one of the bigger game

(12:39):
changing moments was gettingthat 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, wehad a conversation, really, with

(13:02):
recently, with Kelly from theSpace Foundation, and she's
talking about how there's, verysoon, 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

(13:22):
that's sort of the fuel for therockets that needs to be solved
as well and in some of our innergreater energy problems that
exist here on Earth, but willalso follow us into space. Did I
summarize that? Okay, yeah. Soone differentiator I want to
make is that right now, becausewe don't have chemical like
energy levels. So, you know,just get, if you could put a

(13:45):
billion Watts into a plasmathruster and have it be the same
size as the Falcon nine, youwould get chemical like thrust
out of out of plasma propulsion.
But to generate billions ofwatts, you know, you're talking
like a nuclear power plant.
That's, that's many buildingslarge, so, you know, we don't
have that yet. So right now,chemical propulsion, or chemical

(14:07):
propulsion, is how we get offthe Earth. It's the only thing
that has enough thrust,you know, to get you so that's
like force over time. So youneed, you need a lot of force
over a very short time to breakfree of the drag of the
atmosphere. But then, onceyou're out of the atmosphere,
now you can use something likeelectric propulsion to maneuver
very efficiently. So, and ifyou're operating from the moon,

(14:31):
you can actually, you can getoff the surface of the moon with
with it's one sticks thegravity, so it takes a lot less
to get into orbit, the orbitalvelocity where you're orbiting,
and now you can use electricpropulsion system. So what's
really interesting about themoon is that the the Delta, the
the velocity it takes to getoff, is actually low enough

(14:52):
that, like spin launch, has alauncher that's just a momentum
launcher, kinetic launcher.
Earth, and it actually hasenough velocity. The one that
they have in New Mexico hasenough velocity, I believe, to
get off the surface of the moon.
Now it's it's here on Earth, soit can't launch things up off
the surface of the Earth, hereon Earth, but, but that's kind
of interesting, because now youcould actually launch something

(15:15):
without using any chemicalpropellant. You just using
electricity from converted intokinetic energy, and then you
could intercept that withsomething that's using, perhaps,
electric propulsion, that'sorbiting the moon. And now you
have something that's that's allEP we're all, you know, not
using your traditional hydrogenand oxygen propellants to
maneuver. So, so right now,though, we're limited. We can't

(15:37):
we have to rely on, on all ofthe traditional, you know,
rocket technology has beenaround since Apollo and that
era, chemical propellant to getoff the surface of the earth and
into Leo. At that point, though,we can, we can do our transfers.
So probably what's gonna end uphappening is that you'll end up
having your your like yourtrains, your your trucks, things

(15:58):
like that, that that don't needto move super fast, carrying
like cargo. You'll also have, ofcourse, like your Falcon nine
here, sorry, your starships andyour new Glenns, and things that
can carry a lot of payload forless going to nodes. And then
you might have, kind of yourregional jets, regional carriers
that go in between might beelectric propulsion starting
out.

(16:21):
So that's, that's kind of wherethat, that that goes. So for
humans, of course, you know, wehave humans need, probably are
going to need chemical prop forquite a while, because we need,
you know, life support every dayyou're out there. That's another
whole cost that you have tothink about. But, but equipment
and satellites and all theseother things, and again, like
moving the propellant to anotherdepot, where a human spacecraft

(16:43):
might be able to refuel. Keepingthat, keeping that in orbit, is
another really interestingthing, because in space, it's a
lot like trying to have a boatin the middle of the ocean. You
know, if you have a ship in themiddle of the ocean, you're not,
you're not putting an anchordown because it's too deep your
current. So you got to rely onyour motors to stay in the same
position. It's the same thing inspace. There's, you know, there

(17:04):
aren't currents, but there'sother things. There's, there's,
there's a little bit of drag. Ifyou're near the earth, you need
station keeping. And then if yougo further out, there's always
gravity from other things thatyou have to deal with. So So EP
is very efficient at keepingsomething that, you know. So if
you have a gas station or asupply node that's going to need
something to keep it in the samespot. And EP is very good for
that. Yeah. In a very similarvein, one of the the episodes

(17:27):
that I was listening to to prepfor this conversation that made
a bunch of analogies, and I haveit on on my little notes here,
they said the Gateway Station issort of acting as a port, or
like a lunar outpost. Rocketsare essentially the ocean
carriers. Landers are thedelivery trucks. And rovers
slash drones are handling thelast mile. And then one other

(17:49):
piece of that, which you have aton of experience in, is the
manufacturing side of things,and how, you know, maybe 3d
printers are playing a role. Andso you're that, I mean, to give
every you know, give thisaudience, you know, it's sort of
those, those space analogies tothe on Earth transportation
systems, some of what thelessons that you've learned,

(18:09):
especially from frommanufacturing, are being taken
into space. And I'm curious asto what manufacturing looks like
in space. Is it just a, youknow, a bunch of 3d printers you
also mentioned, you know, somerecycling efforts as well. I
think you mentioned that thephrase of, like, taking the
machine parts poop and turningthat into something that's

(18:29):
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 ourecosystems, we talk a lot about
a modular, open sourceinterfaces, but we also talk

(18:52):
about making satellites that youcould reconfigure in orbit,
because, like, the propulsionsystem is a module, the solar
array is a module, the comms isseveral modules, so, you know,
something new, some newfrequencies, some bandwidth that
you want to use comes out. Youswap out the comms module with a
new one, and now you have anupgraded satellite, a new

(19:12):
propulsion that's, you know,twice as efficient and uses half
as you know, have as muchpropellant per delta V or
whatever comes along. You swapout that propellant system with
a new one. So, so you so, youknow, you can, right now, we
have satellites that aredesigned to deorbit in five
years. That's, that'srequirement if you're in Leo.
So, you know, these, these aremeant to be, like, disposable,

(19:33):
throwaway type things. Andthat's, that's really, if you
think about terrestrial life,like, that's, that's how a lot
of things are designed. They're,you know, 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'tdeorbit them and now, but of
course, designing something last20 years, an exquisite
satellite, is very expensive, sowe have this interesting spot

(19:55):
where we have, we're able tomake satellites that that are
like, you know, will lastforever. You.
And then we're able to makesatellites that are designed to
deorbit and fall apart in fiveyears. So so there's this hybrid
in between, where you design asatellite to basically just be
immortal, because eventually itmight not have any of the same
DNA. Eventually you replace allthe modules, and now it's, it's

(20:16):
an immortal satellite. And sothis gets around the problem of,
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

(20:37):
going to just prevent you frominnovating. So that's, that's
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, havingsome gravity really helps. There

(20:59):
are, there are a lot of conceptsfor making stations with their
own 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 know,you can assume that's the
largest, by far, the largestISAM project to date, is ISS,
which is phenomenal, phenomenallearning from that and so, and

(21:22):
also, we've done it, you know,we did it with ISS, and it was
awesome. The next step is toderive those resources off world
and build something and showthat we can build something
without relying on research fromEarth. But, but again, I think
the first steps are going to bemodule type satellites. So, you
know, just like the spacestation. Space Station is pretty
a pretty good example of amodular approach. There to

(21:43):
trusses. All the ways theyconnected were pretty similar,
so now we need to start buildingsatellites that way, so they
don't deorbit in five years.
But, and you'll probably seethis 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 and manufacturing where

(22:05):
you're still, you know, doing,doing the three printing and
things like that would happen onthe surface of something, but
then they'd be 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

(22:27):
getting something from theservice the earth to Leo. Kind
of crazy to think of, justbecause the gravity well of the
Earth is so big versus the moon.
So anyway, there's a very goodeconomic reason to manufacture
on the moon, but, but, but Ithat's where I see it going is
that probably, you know, 3dprinting makes a lot of sense.
We've worked with a lot ofcompanies that have developed
really cool technologies for 3dprinting that that could work on

(22:48):
the moon today. In fact, one ofthe things that I just walked
past, I'm hoping it shifts soon,but it's an extruder that we
met, that we built for NASA aspart of the Artemis program. So
the idea is, is that they'll runan end to end demo where they
take the dirt on the moon iscalled regolith, and it's a very
fine, dusty, gray powder, but itcontains a bunch of different

(23:11):
metals that are oxidized, so youhave to take the oxygen out.
Great, because right now,starship and all the other types
ofrockets that can go to the moon,
other than than the artistprogram or 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

(23:35):
from from the regolith, you endup with metal as the waste
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

(23:57):
this ground interfacing toolingin the mining industry. But you
can imagine there's, there'sgoing to be a lot of
heavy equipment, or, you know,smaller equipment on the moon.
It doesn't weigh as much, butbecause of the gravity. But
anyway, you know, you're goingto be digging through this very
abrasive regolith, so you'regoing to get a lot of wear on

(24:18):
those surfaces. And you know,this is heavy metal teeth, like
tractor teeth and stuff likethat, wheels and whatnot. So
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

(24:38):
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
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.

(25:00):
Sure we we thought that thatthat kind of makes, as far as
you know, beyond the modularapproach. Now that you know, in
space manufacturing, if you'relaunching modules and
assembling, we have that techtoday, north of Grumman,
starting to do stuff like this,ASTRA scale, like, you know,
they're showing that we canactually service, we can remove
something, put a new one on. Sothat's that started happening
today. But where we actuallymake things in space, that's

(25:23):
where I think it's reallythe larger scale stuff where the
economics makes sense. It'sgoing to be building things like
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.

(25:46):
Could we? Could we take scrapsoff ISS that are 6061, turn them
into wire and then make newparts. So that's, that's one way
to do it.
Same thing on the moon. You havesilicon is one of the number one
materials. So you have a lot ofaluminum, you have a lot of
silicon. Aluminum. Silicon turnsout to be a really great

(26:07):
wire to use for aluminum threedprinting. So, you know, so like
that makes a lot of sense.
You're gonna have a lot ofaluminum silicon. We can make an
alloy out of that. We can makeit into wire. We can threed
print those, those metal parts.
Steel is another thing isanother thing is kind of
interesting. We haven't startedextruding steel, but there's
quite a bit of iron on the moon,because, again, the moon is made
of the same stuff as Earth.
There isn't any carbon on themoon because there's no

(26:29):
biological activity. But guesswhat? All the rovers, a lot of
half the half the landers androvers are made in a carbon
fiber, and a lot of the onesthat land initially are not
going to be reused. So carbonfibers matter of carbon, and we
realized that you only need,like, less than 1% to make
steel. So this is a reallyinteresting, you know, value

(26:50):
chain where steel is superuseful. You could, you could
make full on, you know, allkinds of things, if you can make
steel and aluminum. So anyway,lunar surface kind of
interesting, but then I thinkthat we would start to build
things in space.
Gitai is one of the companiesthat's starting to do some

(27:11):
pretty interesting things. So Idon't know when we'll actually
be 3d printing and manufacturingwild things that orbit. There's
been some demonstrations wherethey make antennas, and, you
know, wide after arrays, butmostly that's using polymers.
There's been years ago, therewas this thing called the

(27:31):
Grumman beam maker, which wasmeant to go up on challenger. Of
course, we all know whathappened there. That got
mothballed, unfortunately, butthat was to it could make beams
and trusses that were unlimited,you know, kilometers long. So
you could build these big,rotating, you know, space,
space, you know, science fictiontype stations and things like

(27:52):
that. So,so again, though, it's really
kind of a, you know, are wegoing to actually end up on the
moon in the next few years, likeeveryone's talking about, or,
you know, are we going to focusmore on, on space? I hope we do
both. And that'll reallydetermine, you know, we're, you
know, follow the money whereverthat research goes, wherever
that that, that, you know,demand for, whether it's

(28:14):
military or whatever else drivesit, that that's, that's where
it'll happen first. Sonow a tangent from here.
Interesting panel I was onearlier this week about human
spaceflight.
When I was first in thisindustry, I was like, humans in
space, like, I'm focused on thescience and building, like
logistics. I'm not too you know,humans in space is a whole other

(28:37):
logistics nightmare. But what'sinteresting about this is that
I've kind of, I've come aroundfull circle and realized that,
hey, you know,that could be the best thing it
you know, there's enough peoplethat are interested in going to
space or, you know, being buriedin space, all these, all these
different things, but, butultimately, we need is a reason
to be up there persistently.
It's not just defense. You know,obviously there's a lot going on

(28:59):
with environmental science, alot with communications and
things like that. But werealized from from the human
spaceflight program before,like, you know, Apollo, 13
people kind of lost interest,and all sudden, there is this
drama. And everyone's like,whoa, holy cow. Like space
really matters. You know,nobody really cares. When the
Mars Rover gets stuck in aditch, it's, you know,
it made a Freaks and Geeksepisode at one point, but like

(29:21):
beyond that, it's not superexciting news, but when people
are involved, all of a sudden,there's, there's, like, a lot of
excitement around this. So forme, as someone that's looking at
logistics of this, I'm thinking,Well, hey, like you think about
like a hotel, and I tell my kidsthis all the time, when you look
at a hotel, how many buildingsdo you think it takes to support
that hotel? How many cars andtrucks. Does it take to resupply

(29:42):
that hotel there? And you startto realize there's a whole
ecosystem built around this onehotel. So, you know, a hotel in
space, you know, in Leo even, oryou know somewhere, you know, in
lunar orbit, or, who knows, youcould put it in all kinds of
places all of a sudden, in orderto support that, you have all
these.
These logistics and thesehighways that have to be
created, and now you as long assomebody is there, you're gonna

(30:05):
have a constant cycle ofresupply in order to do that.
So, you know, that's one waythat we might end up spurring
this type of development, whichwould lead really force. You
know, if you're, if you're justthinking about machines like
threed printing something inorbit. Like, you may as well,
the time frame isn't really thaturgent, so you might just launch

(30:26):
it, and it's fine to slow boatit. But like, if there's people
there now a sudden, like, Oh,you're leaking. Like, now we
gotta, we gotta fix this, like,now. And so the urgency of doing
that is a lot sooner. So Ithink, I think there's a lot of
merits to that, to helpingreally, really get things going
and creating I'd love to see,just like we have highway
systems on Earth, something likethat in cislunar space. For us,

(30:48):
cislunar is the Earth and theMoon. It's the whole earth Moon
environment. So we're talkingabout going from Earth to the
Moon and everywhere in between,and creating logistics nodes
every step of the way, just likethe highway system. Yeah, and
what you're saying makes a tonof sense, because, you know, I
think back to Elon Musk said,you know, a couple years ago, or

(31:09):
maybe even a year ago, thatgoing to the moon was, you know,
a giant waste of time. We needto be focused on Mars, and we
need to go to Mars. But havingthese different outposts and
having these different spotscloser to the earth. It makes a
whole heck of a lot of sense toin order to, you know, get those
goals, like what you're sayingwith, with refueling, retooling,

(31:29):
resupply, it sounds likethere's, you know, there's lots
of ways besides reusablerockets, and, you know, a few
more efficient fueling thatneeds to take place as well,
such as that, that manufacturingin space. And I always wondered,
you know, well, why? Why ignore,like the the ISS or, why are
they, you know, just going to, Ithink they're decommissioning
the ISS in a couple of years,and they're just going to send

(31:52):
it straight into the ocean. Withwhat you're saying, it sounds
like there's a tremendous amountof opportunity that we could
save and salvage the ISS intosomething that that's more
sustainable and something that,you know, is actually useful in
space. Yeah, absolutely. And I,you know, I've got a ton of
respect for Elon. I think wewouldn't be here without SpaceX
and Falcon nine being sosuccessful. I really hope that

(32:15):
starship is equally successful,and soon,
I think that, you know, Elon's,I think one of these folks that
gets laser focused on, you know,he's focused on Mars. We should
focus on Mars. But you know thatthat doesn't, I think people
kind of read between lines like,Oh, we're going to skip the
moon. Well, you can't get toMars very effectively without

(32:35):
the moon. I mean, and as far, Imean, I haven't had the pleasure
of sitting down with Elon andasking him directly about this.
But as far as I understand, likethe moon is always part of this.
In order to get starship toMars, it's really important that
we get oxygen from the moon. So,you know, it's kind of the way I
look at it is, if we, you know,what we're good at is like

(32:56):
pushing or we should do whateverwe can motivate ourselves to do
if we want to say, let's go toMars. We're going to learn so
much along the way. We're goingto end up developing these
resupply nodes on, you know,that go to the moon and before
we ever get to Mars, and that'sgoing to be huge, like we might
not even get to Mars in mylifetime. I think we will, but,

(33:18):
but, you know, if we didn't, andwe just developed all these
logistics notes the moon on ourway there, that would be huge.
But anyway, I don't think thathis elads plans to go to Mars
preclude the moon. I actuallythink that that they are very
much symbiotic. They you reallyneed the moon and those
logistics to get to Mars. Andit's just just the way things

(33:39):
go. People focus on, on theother things, and for, you know,
that just gets lost so well, Ithink that's the opportunity of
what, what space kind of givesus, is that you can have the
folks that are thinking about alot of different things, and
then you have somebody like youthat that's thinking about,
well, maybe we can, you know,reuse some of these things that
we've already paid a lot ofmoney to send up, and a lot of

(34:01):
time and energy to send up intospace. And so I am curious as
to, you know, why haven't westarted building this
infrastructure on the moon? Yet,it feels like, oh, you know, the
last you know, since the 60s.
However, much of that math is, Ican't do math right now, but it
feels like we could have beenbuilding there the entire time
and already had some of thisstuff, this infrastructure set
up. So what does that, I guess,what was the reasoning for?

(34:25):
Maybe not a buildingchanged. Great. You know, if
folks that know me know thatI've had a lot to do with ISS
and talking about ways we coulduse it more effectively, and,
you know, and continue its lifeand mission. And
I think a lot of that, you know,for the spacecraft program
we've, we've had, you know, ourbest and brightest engineers for

(34:47):
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 glad you're picking up on,you know, I was working on this
20 years ago. And then you find,early on, I find people that

(35:07):
would be a little crushed,because they'd be like, Oh, I
had this idea 20 years ago. AndI'm like, oh, man, I guess
maybe. And it's like, no, no,there's some 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
people conceive this thing? Youknow, 100 years ago? It's crazy
to think, but anyway, the ideashave been around. We got close

(35:30):
in the 70s, of course, but then,you know, funding changed, 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
for a certain mission, andthey're so far, we don't design
things in space to have multimissions. So, you know, for

(35:51):
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,
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

(36:13):
know, as far as governmentsconcerned 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 biggestheadwind against, you know, that
I've learned now so, but thatbeing said, I do think that ISS
is still a great has. There's,there's still plenty of life in

(36:34):
ISS, and we can use it. One ofthe things, you know, we talked
about recycling, ISS, there's,there's, there's concerns to
doing that, like, there's safetyconcerns, there's also policy
concerns, you know, like, how doyou get I mean, a lot of it
comes down to like, Hey, who'sgoing to call Ross cosmos and
explain to them how we're goingto determinate and remove their
module? Because, you know, evenif we all, if we are all good

(36:57):
friends and everything else,it's like, well, what if you
drop a bolt and it comes backaround at orbital velocities and
destroy something, or like, youknow, what if? What if you
determinate, you push this offand then it gets, you know,
somehow it ends up coming backand hitting us. There's all
kinds of things that can gohorribly wrong, right? And who
takes responsibility andownership for it, between, when

(37:20):
you have, like, all thesedifferent nations involved. So,
so really, I think it's a lotmore of a we call these, like,
policy requirements, or, youknow, they're not hard
engineering requirements.
They're really, you know,diplomatic State Department type
things that you know someoneelse that's not me deals with.
So now, if you could get beyondthat, though, I think that there
are. We've talked about usingISS as a propulsion test

(37:42):
platform. There'sthe guy behind vasimir
has proposed this, like, yearsago, and it was going to be very
expensive. I talked to a bunchof folks that worked on that
program, and I said, Hey, youknow what if we were to look at
this again and do it when therewasn't any crew on ISS. And it

(38:04):
turns out that when you don'thave crew on the ISS, it's a lot
cheaper to do. It's potentially1/10 of the cost, because now
you're not worried about killinga bunch of people if something
goes wrong. But also, what'sintriguing about ISS is it is
the largest generator power onorbit right now.
There's, I think, over 200,000watts of power capability on
ISS. Now, you can't get all thatpower at the same time. It's

(38:28):
distributed. It depends on whereis there's, you know, but, but
by far, you know, there's,there's some other satellites
that might be in the 10s ofkilowatts as the next best
thing. So, like, you know, thisis an order of magnitude more
than anything that had been anorbit yet. So for somebody like
us that's doing a lot of plasmapropulsion, we're like, man,
there's all these labs that arethat can't, you know, nobody's,

(38:48):
nobody's thrown a hall thrusterthat's more than a few 1000
watts on orbit. So like, what ifwe could fly a bunch of 10,000
watt thrusters, or 100,000 wattthruster or something like that?
Like, there aren't vacuumchambers on earth that can test
up to that level, because, notfor any duration, because
generating a vacuum, you know,you're trying to fire a rocket
into a vacuum chamber. You know,a certain point, it's, it's hard

(39:09):
to pump that fast once you getto a certain scale. So, so ISS
is really ideal for that. Andwe've even proposed things like,
I've talked to folks at SpaceX,you know, see, like, hey, high
level is this crazy? Or, like,you know, and they're like, man,
we could, we could sell anotherFalcon nine. That'd be awesome.
And, like, you know, we couldattach it to the orbit vehicle.
And, like, you know, just got tocome up with, you know, 100

(39:30):
million dollars or something,and then we'll be set. But 100
million is 1/10 of a billion.
So, so Anyway, the thing is, is,there's, there's things that we
can do on ISS, but it everythingdoes cost money. I do think,
though, that you know thatthat's the gambit is, does it?
Is it? Would it be moreeffective? More cost effective
toto use ISS, to reconfigure it so

(39:51):
it could be used as a testplatform for some of these more
advanced cargoes, higher powercargoes, more you.
The other thing would be obviousis, there's companies like
spaceforge that are makingchips. They're making very high
band gap mediums for chips,which is awesome,
but they need to deorbit theirvehicle. So like, they have the

(40:12):
same problem, you know, keepinghaving something, a free flyer
that's going to have the powerlevel that's easy to use for
them is, is a big gap. So if youcould attach to ISS and use ISS
as power, and then deorbit offof ISS, and then there's
companies like Florida, same,same thing, you know, there's,
there's, there's a number ofcompanies that that are, you

(40:32):
know, making these the orbitingvehicles that could be powered,
you know, through an umbilicalon ISS. And then as ISS is
deorbiting, 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,
let's just use it while it'suncrewed. Demonstrate, you know,

(40:53):
get the TRL up, improve some ofthese technologies. De risk
them, so that we could actuallyuse, like, you know, a plasma
you could turn a space stationinto a 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
think that would be the mosteffective way. But, I mean, it

(41:15):
sounds like there's so much moreopportunity besides just
decommissioning it and justsending it into the ocean. It
sounds like there maybe are someconversations that are happening
in order to salvage it, tosalvage the ISS, and keep it in
orbit. For all of these, youknow, additional benefits, like
you just mentioned, is there aslight chance that maybe that
conversation is kind ofshifting? I think it's, I don't

(41:36):
know. I've been involved in alot of these conversations that
at levels that I'm surprised Iwas able to be involved in. But
it's I think that that the shiphas sailed figuratively for
issb, it will get deorbited atsome point. I'm pretty sure
that, I think that there isopportunity to to eke, to
squeeze more out of ISS that isvery valuable, that would

(42:00):
Springboard other innovations.
But I think that,you know, there's using it for
human life support is definitelyproblematic. A lot of a lot of
the things are start, you know,starting to leak. So, so the
safety for human rated things.
So to use it, and then, youknow, to push it into a higher

(42:24):
orbit, there's a lot of questionwhether the dynamics of it, or,
you know, could break apart andcause a bunch of debris, which
would be a problem. And justlike, you know, the way that was
built at the time it was built,it's not, it's not new space,
it's, it's very much old space,and most of the folks that built
it are retired and doing awesomestuff, doing other stuff. So,

(42:46):
you know, to find thegroup of people that would be
able to say assuredly that thiswill be safe. And, you know,
there's the whole geopoliticalproblem that's that's really
kind of the big elephant in theroom. So I, I think that the
best thing to do is like, youknow, can we get it? Would it
would cost, you know, 10different Falcon nine flights

(43:07):
and all this up mass to big freeflying satellites that could do
the same thing that ISS could doin the next five to 10 years. If
we, you know, can extend thislife a little bit longer, you
know, we can get a 10x benefitfrom it, from from these test
payloads. And I think ICM likerendezvous, proximity
operations, all the stuff thatNorthrop Grumman and astroscale
and starfish and all these guysare doing, like using ISS,

(43:30):
especially once it's on crude asyour platform for doing, you
know, replacing things, doing,trying, proving out. ICM makes a
phenomenal platform for that. SoI think that's the best
opportunity for it. Well,keeping in line with that same,
I guess, sort of the circulareconomy. And we briefly talked
about this before, but I wantedto dig a little deeper into into

(43:52):
that aspect, because youmentioned a couple of different
interesting things, of, youknow, going to the moon, and,
you know, having, you know,mining oxygen and having the
byproduct be metal. What other,I guess, methods of a circular
economy, or, you know, circularsupply chain of what we talk
about here on Earth can beapplied into space?

(44:14):
Well, yeah, so, so, so again,like getting back to just, just
thinking about the lunarenvironment, there oxygen to
refuel starships makes. I mean,that there's our there's
companies ethos, our path, a fewothers that are, that's their
whole business plan. We're goingto going to land on the moon,
we're going to extract oxygen,and we're going to launch it

(44:34):
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
Glenn is happening. They bothneed to resupply with oxygen. So
I think that's the first step inthe circular economy. And then
again, like I, like I outlaidlike the equipment that harvest
the converts the lunar dust,regolith into oxygen. And.

(45:00):
And metal slag, they're going tohave wear parts. So, so that's
kind of the first, you know,sustaining those, and logistics
of keeping those going. And, youknow, so logistic, keeping the
things that produce the oxygengoing, and then the logistics of
getting the oxygen to therockets, and then hydrogen will
probably still come from Earthfor a while. So that's, that's
step one, phase one.
And then, and then, yeah, Ithink

(45:23):
you know beyond, beyond thatit's going to be trying to get
data centers probably would be anext pretty obvious resource to
to use on orbit. Data centersare very quickly, you know, they
don't, they don't use a ton ofenergy right now, but as we
know, with AI and everythingelse compute, compute is gonna

(45:44):
outpace everything else asenergy goes so there are
advantages to doing compute onon orbit, especially, you know,
you have a lot more solardensity. So, so getting energy
is good. Cooling is a little bitof a problem, but I'm sure we'll
figure that out. So I could see,you know, building these data
centers, and you start to seesome of that in logistics and

(46:06):
servicing those data centers,getting those things on orbit.
And, of course, you know, allthe comms satellites are going
to keep expanding. So that'skind of near term stuff.
I think that if we get people onorbit, then that's going to be
total game changer, because nowyou have to bring cargo and food
and all the things for lifesupport, and depending on how
adventurous people want to be,that could get really

(46:28):
interesting. We could, you know,that that becomes a lot more
like surface logistics,but, but same thing you're gonna
have starship. It's probablygonna start out wherever
starship and new Glenn refuel.
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 itsounds super interesting,

(46:49):
because, from everything that wediscussed, from what my my
understanding is, is thatcislunar does is kind of
dabbling in each one of thesedifferent sort of supply chain
segments. Is that accurate, orwhere, I guess, because it's
taken us what, like 4046, to getto the recording, to get to to
what you actually do, what yourcompany does. Can you, can you

(47:10):
break down? I guess you knowwhat, what? What? I don't want
to say tentacles, but you knowthe all of the different lines
doing well, again, it's a lotlike
that game I talked about RedAlert Command and Conquer, where
it's like a very, very much of amulti layer strategy game,

(47:31):
where, you know, you have tothink about, well, what? Okay,
we solve this problem, it'sgonna open up this other gap,
like, you know, if so. Sothat's, I think that's, that's,
that's the way to look at it. Sowe, we are very much focused
commercially on power managementand distribution, and
specifically a higher powerlevel. So 1000 watts and above
is where we start to become veryeffective. There's, there's,

(47:54):
there's somewhat of aproliferation. I mean, it's,
it's hardly a terrestrialversion of that. But for Leo,
low Earth orbit satellites,CubeSats. The CubeSat market is,
is pretty well, you know,there's, there's, you can go
online and you can get parts forCubeSats pretty easily. What's a
CubeSat? So that a CubeSat is111, unit is a, is a, is a

(48:18):
smallest CubeSat, typically, anda one unit is basically the
volume of one liter of water,which is 1010 centimeters cubed.
So 10 centimeters by 10centimeter by 10 centimeters is
one you happens to be the samething as one liter of water. Way
that works out and typically tolike, the density of a CubeSat
is similar to the density ofwater. So at 1u is maybe around

(48:41):
one kilogram. Six you might besix kilograms. It all scales
from there. So but anyway,there's Aerospace Corporation
and a few others Taryn likethese guys kind of really
commercialized and made CubeSatspretty accessible. Now, CubeSats
are not designed to last verylong. You know, they go up. They
usually don't have their ownpropulsion systems. Some of the

(49:03):
bigger ones might, but they'rekind of like a disposable,
lowest cost of entry type ofsatellite. Then once you go
beyond that, you get into yourmicrosats and your small fats.
Happens to be a small setconference coming up here in two
weeks or a few weeks in Utah.
But anyway, so these areanything that's like, not like
a, you know, exquisite type ofsatellite is, typically, at this
stage, is called a small sat.

(49:27):
And those get into, like, youknow, maybe 10 you up to, like a
ESPA, which is, which is, whichis just, I forgot what ESPA
stands for, but it's, it's likea ring. And it used to be, you
know, you inside the fairing.
This ring is what would attachyour satellite to the to the to
the structural part of therocket, and then, and then the

(49:48):
Esper ring usually has a bunchof smaller ports. So, so there'd
be, like, one big, you know,defense type satellite on the or
weather satellite in the top.
And then, and then you mighthave a bunch.
Smaller sets, small sets locatedaround it. And then someone is
like, Man, this Esper ring, wecould just use that as the basis
for a satellite. So anyway,they're like a meter across,

(50:10):
usually, you know, maybe 100 to500 kilograms is kind of in that
range. And so that's where a lotof these satellites for like
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,

(50:33):
like 200 watts to maybe 600watts for their their
propulsion, overall, they might,you know, somewhere less than,
less than 1000 watts. The nextversions that are coming out,
though, are going to be a lotmore power than that. So that's
what we anticipated, and nowwe're starting to see that
happening. So we've really beenfocusing on the larger hall

(50:55):
thruster power systems, and thenbeyond that, just realizing
that, you know, a powerprocessing unit for hall
thruster has to manage a bunchof other power sources. It's a
power management distributionsystem and satellites. All, you
know, we're like, Well, hey, theused to be like communications
and some of these other payloadswould be the biggest power
consumer. But now that SpaceForce and commercial space, they

(51:19):
want dynamic maneuvercapability. So they want to, you
know, used to be just getsomething to orbit. You might
use your thruster to get you tothat orbit, but, and then you
you turn it on occasionally,just to keep you in the same
spot. Now they want to get toorbit, and then they want to
move around and move one placeto another, and then move back.
And so it's dynamic spaceoperation. So you need so now a
sudden, like your yourcommunications hardware,

(51:41):
whatever that payload is yourinstruments. That's not your
biggest power consumer. Now it'syour your thrusters. So that's,
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 this later doingour power management? Because
you know, the biggest demand isthis thing. So and we're already

(52:01):
managing power at lower powerlevels for the rest of the
satellite so, so that's the kindof thing that we started to get
into commercially. We've also,there's, there's a lot of
development on directed energyand power beaming.
I've, I stumbled into thisconcept called dual use directed
energy. So the idea there isthat you can use energy for,

(52:24):
like communications. You can useit to power your satellite. So
that's that's prettyinteresting, because now you
might have a satellite that's,you know, 10 kilowatts, but if
you can get directed energy overyour solar panels, you might be
able to get up to 100 kilowattsor something. So get a lot more
energy with the same size solarpanel, and again, with more

(52:45):
energy, now you can move a lotfaster, do all that sort of
thing. So it turns out thatreceiving energy is a similar
problem to what we run into withsome plasma thrusters, where you
got to take, take energy thatcomes in one packet, and then
distribute that at a lesserenergy level, or, you know,
receive, store up a bunch ofenergy and then send it out a
pulse. So just, you know,I jokingly, to put it layman's

(53:08):
terms, like we basically builddoors and do crowd control for
electrons. You know, sometimesyou're, you know, you're trying
to empty a stadium really fast.
You need a certain type of doorfor that. That's kind of, kind
of what a power managementsystem does, or power processing
system does, but in simpleterms. So power management,
that's commercially, that's,that's where a lot of our money

(53:30):
comes from. But we also do a lotwith ICM still. So we have the
extruder that's going to NASA,and we're going to be involved
in a new group that's, you know,that a lot of the funding for
that type of science, for NASAis, is is being I don't think
it's being cut. I think it'sbeing moved around. We're not
sure where it's going to bemoved to. But in the meantime,
there's some private groups thatwere worth and also things like

(53:52):
cosmic and there's, there's ahandful of these other groups.
They're they're doing, they'restill keeping the keeping the
burners on, on on ice. We'restill involved in that a lot,
and as funding as we figure outwhere that's going to be, we
very much want to keep pursuingthat sort of thing. And then, I
guess the last thing that we'vebeen involved in a lot is the
logistics and interfacing. Sowe've worked with several of

(54:15):
these companies that are they'relooking at refueling and
rendezvous, proximityoperations.
A lot of our skill set, youknow, 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

(54:39):
kind of have cartridges. So it'sthe idea of having a Line
Replaceable unit, as opposed torefueling, you just swap your
whole thruster and propellanttank all together. And we
realized doing this with we werelooking at metal propellant at
the time, we realized that, hey,you know, the thing that holds
the metal propellant rods iswe're.

(55:00):
Be negligible mass fractioncompared to the propellant
itself.
And, and, you know, and a lot oftimes it, it erodes, or there's,
there's other things that kindof cause it to not be reliable
over time. So we kind of want toreplace it anyway.
So, so, so we kind of the otheranalogy for this is the Propane
Exchange. So if you've ever beento a, you know, the grocery

(55:21):
store, or if you have propanegrill, you swap out the whole
tank. You know, you don't have apropane tank. You know, if you
live out in the middle ofnowhere, you don't have a
propane truck. Come to yourhouse, you bring it to the
grocery store, you swap it outin a little cage, 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. That's pretty
convenient. If you're dealingwith propane gas, it's a similar

(55:42):
thing that we noticed in space.
So that's we've been alsofocused on, you know, how do we
develop that's the reason I readthe box, you know. How do we
develop a sea container, if youwill? And all the interfaces on
the sea container, themechanical 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

(56:03):
it's like, hey, it turns out thesix kilowatt thruster can fit in
this box. And so, so can a sixkilowatt solar array. Hey,
that's that's pretty convenient.
That's a good universal size tomaybe start with, and start
building these so and of course,the idea is to build those into
modular satellites that I wastalking about earlier, the
modular, open source type ofassembly you can, you know,

(56:25):
propulsion systems,power systems, whatever it is,
calm systems. And so we, we'vebeen very, you know, very
involved in various capacitieson, on what those interfaces
might look like. How do you, howyou make them blast, right? You
know what's the thermal is?
Thermal is a big thing in space.
How do you how do you move heat?
And, of course, how do you movepower through those interfaces?

(56:47):
Yeah, I mean, everything thatyou've been talking about in
this conversation has has feltlike building the fundamentals,
or everything that we'velearned, 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

(57:07):
lot, and I love this aspect of,you know, what we learned in
grade school, you know, reduce,reuse, recycle, and being able
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

(57:30):
really great job of breakingthat down for us and how people
right now are working on thesecomplex problems. And I thank
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 to give a

(57:51):
plug for for NASA and the folksthat helped us get here. I do
think that at least the SmallBusiness SBIR program,
innovative small business,innovative research program. I
mean, we wouldn't be herewithout that, getting getting
our legs under us with NASAthrough our phase one, phase two
and phase two extension, andthen tech flights. The tech

(58:12):
flights have really helped. Sowe've done two, sorry, we've
done three parabolic flights,and then we have an orbital
flight with momentous that thatNASA helped pay for. And then we
should have an ISS flightactually coming up as well. So,
so all of this, you know, we,we started out focusing on this

(58:33):
metal thing and that, and that'sstill happening. And we spun off
this commercial product thateveryone needs now, which is
awesome. So like that. I mean,it really did exactly what it
was supposed to do, as far as wewere concerned. I also, you
know, Space Force has beenphenomenal. I don't know how we
didn't have a Space Force allthis time. I do think that Space

(58:53):
Forces is critical, and seeingit grow, we, you know, we had a
number of SBIR Through SpaceForce, and just the type of
folks that we get to work withat Space Force are really
awesome. Definitely, some of theleadership there is, is thinking
the same way I'm talking. Imean, a lot of this is from,

(59:14):
from talking to these guys, andjust, you know, I call it, I
describe it like Hogwarts. Myjob is like Hogwarts. I get to
go with, hang out with all theother magicians and come up with
ways to save the world andpromote, you know, our human an
abundant human future. Sothat's, that's, that's the best
thing I can say right now, Iguess, well, amazing
conversation. And I can't waitto do this again, because

(59:36):
there's plenty of more quite Ididn't even really look at my
notes of what I had, and Iprobably have, you know, at
least 40 questions in thatdocument. So that's the
testament, you know, of how goodthis conversation was. So, so
Joe, where can I send folks?
Where can I direct them tofollow you on social media, you
know, all that good stuff. Yeah,absolutely. Well, if you're a

(59:59):
power.
Electronics engineer, or, youknow, somebody that's a big
builder of Tesla stuff and highenergy we are hiring right now.
So please find me on LinkedIn,or reach out to, you know, our
cislunar industries.com. Is ourwebsite. That's the best way to
get ahold of us. We are veryactive on LinkedIn. We are at
pretty much every conference.
You'll see a cislunar person. Wetry to be very accessible. We

(01:00:19):
love to talk to everybody. We'renot, you know, we I know that I
don't know everything. That'sthat's probably one of my the
secrets that I don't mindsharing is that I always ask, I
try to find the people that Iwant to be like, and I surround
myself with those people, thepeople that are really doing it.
And that's, that's how you gethere, and that's how you keep
moving things forward. Soabsolutely, if you see me, come
talk to me. I'd love to hear itand reach out to us absolutely.

(01:00:42):
I'll put all of that in the shownotes. And I echoed that
statement. I try to use thispodcast to be able to talk to
people that are way smarter thanme, and you absolutely fit that
bill. So thank you so much forjoining us and sharing your
perspective and helping usunderstand more of what's going
on in the logistics of space andbuilding that New Silk Road. So
thank you again, Joe. Thank youso much. It's been a pleasure.

(01:01:10):
Thanks for tuning in to anotherepisode of everything was
logistics, where we talk allthings supply chain for the
thinkers in freight, if youliked this episode, there's
plenty more where that camefrom. Be sure to follow or
subscribe on your favoritepodcast app so you never miss a
conversation. The show is alsoavailable in video format over
on YouTube, just by searchingeverything is logistics. And if

(01:01:30):
you're working in freightlogistics or supply chain
marketing, check out my company,digital dispatch. We help you
build smarter websites andmarketing systems that actually
drive results, not just vanitymetrics. Additionally, if you're
trying to find the right freighttech tools or partners without
getting buried in buzzwords,head on over to cargorex.io
where we're building the largestdatabase of logistics services

(01:01:53):
and solutions. All the links youneed are in the show notes. I'll
catch you in the Next episodeand Go jags. You.

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