May 7, 2026 • 32 mins
Rob Meyerson is the co-founder and CEO of Interlune. Rob's problem is this: How do you help build an economy on the moon? Eventually, Rob hopes Interlune will help build a moon base. For now, he is focused on bringing a gas called helium-3 back from the moon to sell on earth.
Earlier in his career, Rob was the president of Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos.
In this episode, Rob explains:
- Why reusable rockets are only the first step for going back to the moon
- What it's going to take to actually manufacture things in space
- How to build a business by sifting through moon dirt
- How nuclear fusion and quantum computing could rely on mining the moon
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Finally, almost sixty years later, humanity is going back to
the Moon. The plan, at least is for the United
States to build a base on the Moon in the
not terribly distant future, so that the Moon can be
both a literal and metaphorical launching pad for humanity to
(00:41):
explore the Solar System rad So what's it going to
take to build a base on the Moon?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
A lot?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
The answer is a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is what's your problem? And my
guest today is Rob Myerson. Ub spent fifteen years running
Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, and
in twenty twenty he started a company called interlun Rob's
problem is this, how do you build the infrastructure for
(01:23):
a lunar economy that doesn't really exist yet? Eventually, Rob
Hope's Inner Lune will help build that base on the Moon.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
For now, though, he's.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Focused on a more short term but still not that
short term goal, going to the Moon and bringing back
a gas called helium three to sell on Earth. Helium
three is an isotope of helium that is wildly rare
on Earth, so rare that it sells for around ten
million dollars a pound. Helium three is used to identify
(01:55):
smuggled nuclear materials at ports and border crossings. It's also
used in certain kinds of quantum computing in certain forms
of fusion energy. Both fusion energy and quantum computing are
of course acting billions of dollars in investments right now,
and that is part of the reason Rob wants to
go to the Moon to bring back helium three. In
(02:18):
our conversation we talked about a lot. Rob told me
why reusable rockets are only the first step for going
back to the Moon, what it's going to take to
actually manufacture things in space, and how he's trying to
build a business by sifting through the.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Dirt on the Moon.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I talked to Rob on April tenth, and I mention
that because when we talked, the Artemis two astronauts were
on their way back from the Moon.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So of course that's what we started with Rob.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
As we're talking right now on this day, Artemis two
is about fifty thousand miles from the Earth, hurtling toward
us at about six thousand miles an hour. Everything goes well,
it'll splash down later today.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
What does that mean for you? What does it mean
for the Moon. What does it mean for your company?
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Well, first off, I started my career. I'm an aerospace engineer.
I started my career as a NASA co op in
nineteen eighty five, so I worked on the Space Shuttle.
I worked on aerodynamics of vehicles that re enter the atmosphere,
just like Oriyan will do this afternoon.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So you tell me you know a lot about what's
about to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Is that what you're telling me? I do?
Speaker 5 (03:28):
And I'm this is right up my alley, and I
know personally, I know that people who worked on it
to make it happen, And I'm super excited and I'm
super confident, and I'm quite honestly a little surprised at
the media, like the national excitement about it that is
(03:53):
shared because it's because it shows that human spaceflight is different.
We can generate excitement about the space program from a
broader audience by doing these new and exciting things and
going to the Moon to stay. You know, it's like
we've been to the moon before, but we haven't, like you,
(04:13):
and I like industry today hasn't been that was fifty
plus years ago, and we have a whole new group
of people that are doing it nuts. It's exciting to watch.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It is so.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Wild that we went to the moon and then we
stopped going to the moon, right, It's weird. You would
not have thought in whatever nineteen seventy two that humanity
would be like, well, that's it, we're done. We went
to the moon, and let's just stop going to the moon. Now,
exactly what's that all about? Like, why quit? We don't really,
(04:47):
it's not in our nature. I mean, there's so much
more to learn on the moon. There's so much more
to benefit from. So going back to stay as it
really matters well and as you point out, right, so
this is Artemis two, right, and Artemis one was the
same thing, but without people, right, And it is much
(05:08):
more excited when there are people on board, which, oh yeah,
I get as a you know, as a human being,
as an English major whatever. On a certain level, it's
not entirely rational, right, because you could do a lot
without people, certainly easier to go without people. There's a
lot less to worry about, and yet it's so much
(05:29):
more exciting when there are people doing it.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
There there are you can talk to my co founder
Harrison Schmidt, who walked on the moon on Apollo seventeen.
But the anecdotes you hear from these artemists, two astronauts.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
You know, that.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Spacecraft that flew around the Moon on Artimist one didn't
tell us what it was seeing. These astronauts are telling
us that the moon looks brown. That's a surprise. What
it's all about lighting, And it's about the human observation,
what the eye can see that you don't show.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I don't believe you, right, it's about feelings. You're saying something.
I don't believe what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Okay, yeah, all right, it is it is. You're right,
You're right.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
It is all about feelings, and it's making me feel
great right now.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
So and I think that there's a lot of people
that feel the way I do.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So I want to talk about your kind of short
to medium term plans at Innerlon. But to start, since
we're already talking about astronauts and the moon and whatever,
let's actually start with like your big dream of you know,
humanity and the moon and where inter Loon fits in.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Sure, so, reusable rockets are something that is here to stay.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Like we I worked on the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
I worked on a private company called Kissler that didn't
make it, and then I went to Blue Origin and
spent fifteen years there building reusable rockets and SpaceX right
alongside there. You know, these companies are building rockets that
are being reused in a way that will lower the
cost of spaceflight and eventually lower the price of space flight.
(07:09):
But that only gets you so far, Jacob. The the
the next lever for lowering the cost of space missions
is to build things in space using resources that you've
sourced from space so metals, rocket fuel, helium three, helium gas.
So there will be factories in space building things that
(07:32):
will support a long term in space economy.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And our big vision.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
For Interloon is that we're we're the you know, the
central cogon net providing the resources that are used to
build buildings and uh and once you get that second flywheel,
that in space manufacturing flywheel going alongside the reusable rocket flywheel,
then you you kind of see, you know where where
(07:58):
the costs and where these economics can go in the
long term.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Why did you why did you start the company? I
mean you were you were president at Blue Origin, and
that's a cool space job building rockets to go to
space or almost to space.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
What led you to start interloan?
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Yeah, so I'd been at Blue Origin for fifteen years.
I was the president for most of those years. I
recognized that the infrastructure that we need to do things
long term on the Moon and in space is being
built by companies like Blue Origin SpaceX. But I also
(08:39):
noticed that the Artemis program, which was created under the
first Trump administration to go back to the Moon to stay,
was continued by the Biden administration. And that was the
first time in my career that a major nasive program
of record had been continued through the change of administration,
which meant to me that there is a lot of
(09:00):
support for going to the Moon and on to Mars,
what the artist program was created for, and I knew
that now was the time to go to go do that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
So you have this idea, Oh, like the US government
is serious about going back to the Moon. I'm interested
in getting into the moon business. How do you get
from there to Helium three?
Speaker 5 (09:21):
So my co founder, Harrison Schmidt, is the only geologist
to walk on the Moon.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's a cool business card.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Right, He is at one of a kind.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
And I met him in twenty sixteen when I was
at blue Origin. We talked about helium three at that time,
but he was focused on fusion energy and going to
the Moon in twenty sixteen to get helium three for
fusion is.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
The classic two miracle business plan, right.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Because fusion is not a thing, like there is not
commercial fusion. People are working on it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
There's a lot of money pouring into it, but it's
not happening. So that's one miracle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
the one miracle. The second is the moon. But what
happened since then is that the Artemis program was created
by NASA and there's money being invested in lunar landers,
(10:23):
lunar rovers, and all lunar infrastructure. That's one miracle eliminated exactly.
What's the other miracle that gets eliminated?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, so the fusion energy part of it.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
We realized that we could build a pretty good business
to support quantum computing, because the truth is, over the
next ten to twenty years, there will be people scaling
up quantum computers from one hundred cubits to one thousand,
to ten thousand to a million and a million cubit
quantum computer will need as much helium three as we
(10:59):
produce in the United States in one year. So the
future I want to see is a data center full
of quantum million Cuba quantum computers. But the fact is
we won't be able to support that future with the
helium three we have on Earth.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Is that data center in space in the future of
your dreams?
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Well, I'm not going to go there, Jacob. It might,
it might, but that data center with you know, quantum
computers will need a lot of helium three, and we'll
need to go to space.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
We'll need to go to the Moon to get that
helium three.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Okay, So I got the plan. That's the plan. I
can see it on the whiteboard with a few arrows.
When what do you have to do to actually make
that happen?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So you mentioned that lots of other people are building
lots of other things, Right, you're building some piece of it,
So like, what do you have to figure out?
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Yeah, so ten years ago, there was no lunar landers
being built in the US. There was no lunar rovers
being built in the US. Today there's many companies building those.
And if you think of the technologies we need as
a tech stack, that rover provides the wheels, the transmission
to drive train the mobility that.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
We need and we need.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
What we need is we need to excavate large volumes
of lunar soil regolith. We need to sort it. We
need to sort the rocks from the sand because we
know that the solar wind implants the helium three and
other solar wind gases in the outer nanometer thick rind.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Of the of the lunar regolith.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The lunar regolith is the dirt basically on the Moon. Yes,
an outer nanometer you're just saying, in the tiniest sliver
of the surface is where the helium three is.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
Yeah, So you want to get the rocks out because
the rocks aren't going to be the high volume producer
of the helium three.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Do you want to get the fine sand?
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Then we want to do a mechanical process where we
crush the regolith and we release those solar wind gases,
and then we cryogenically separate the helium three from the helium.
And that last step, that cryogenic separation is.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
That part sounds harder than the other parts.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
It is, and we've developed we've developed it here in Seattle.
We're operating below two kelvin, which is just you know,
two degrees above absolute zero. And what we've demonstrated is
that we can enrich helium three helium mixtures from very
very low point zero zero zero zero two percent helium
(13:42):
three and helium to ninety nine percent. And what that
represents is that this needle in a haystack, in the
helium three we have on Earth, the very very trace
amounts of helium three, we can go use this technology
that we've envisioned, we've developed for the Moon, but we
can use it on Earth in a great a helium plant.
(14:03):
We can extract helium three in twenty twenty eight before
we get to the Moon, and we can and sell
that helium three to our customers in the quantum computing industry.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Wait, just so I felt it when you say you
can extract helium three in twenty twenty eight before you
get to the Moon. Do you mean you're going to
be in the helium three business on Earth just by
extracting the trace amount exact helium three that are here.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
Yeah, And we kind of we came upon this wrinkle
and the business plan as we were working back from
the original Moon architecture. And that's that's how a lot
of these things happen. You know, you have this grand vision,
you work backward from it. You start developing core technologies excavation, size, sorting, extraction, separation,
(14:47):
and then we realized, hey, well this cryogenic separation process,
which is hard on.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
The Moon, it'll work on Earth too.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
The problem is there's when there's a million tons of
healium three on the Moon, there's very very small amounts
on Earth. So we can we can maybe triple the
US apply of helium three if we maximize, if we
pull every molecule of helium three out, But on the
Moon we can ten x one hundred x thousand x
ten thousand x the helium three production and we can
(15:20):
do that in a in a managed, scaled fashion to
allow the market to catch up. So we want, we
want to operate on the Moon, and we want to
make space resources available on Earth and in space to
solve some of these big problems.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And that's what we're focused on.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So when you're going to send something to the Moon,
when did you get to go to the.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Moon, Well, we yeah, great question.
Speaker 5 (15:42):
We have a we have a camera that we're going
to send this fall with a company called Astra Lab.
We developed it with NASA Ames Research Center in San Francisco,
Mountain View. We're going to land on the South Pole
with Astra Lab and our camera. Our camera will image
the surface as the Astra Lab rover is driving around,
(16:03):
and we'll bring those images back and we'll look and
we'll use our measurements to correlate and get better under
standings of where helium three is now. We're not sure
how much helium three is down at the South Pole,
but this is this is an opportunity for us to
do a very early mission.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The next thing and the hardware behind me the lab
that I'm in right.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Now, is we're building up a payload that we will
want to fly to the Moon in twenty twenty eight.
So it's about a forty kilogram payload, and it's going
to include a robotic arm, and it's going to include
several devices. One device will sort regulith, one device will
mechanically process the regulith, and one device will heat the
(16:45):
regolith up to nine hundred and fifty degrees centigrade. And
all three of those processes are going to release solar
wind gases. So this this mission will do two things
for us. One is it'll demonstrate that we know how
much helium three is in a certain landing area on
the moon, and two will demonstrate some of our core
(17:06):
technology are sorting our mechanical processing and reduce risk for
the eventual deployment of a robotic harvesters, a fleet of
robotic harvesters that will operate for many years processing the
soil and extracting the heliot three. Once we have that
fleet of harvesters, then we we you know, establish a
(17:28):
head start. Then we'll start to add technologies that will
extract water and make propellant, extract metals and start to
service other markets in space as those markets.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
You know, begin to begin to grow and take hold.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I mean, one of the interesting things about your business
is you know, you're creating one piece of this whole
space economy that many parts of which don't really exist yet, right,
like completely getting to space that exists, but the like
going back and forth to the moon in an industrial way,
like other people are working on other pieces of that,
(18:07):
but it's not a real thing yet.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
It's not an industry yet, right.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And so so talk me through, like what other pieces
do other people have to figure out for your.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Business to work?
Speaker 5 (18:20):
So right now, for we envision in the twenty thirties,
we'll have a rocket based system that's bringing a small
spacecraft back to Earth, re entering ther Earth's atmosphere, just
like Artemis two is going to do today, but it's
smaller with a payload, with not people, so it's a
little different risk profile.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And we'll be doing that four or five times a year.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And we meaning not your company, but what America, the world.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
We meaning inter Loom, like this is what we need
to do.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Okay, we might be able to buy that service in
the future, but right now we're planning to build it, okay.
And it's a small system that will carry twenty five kilograms,
so that's enough mass for a pressure bottle and say
three to five kilograms of helium three, which which is
you know, a very very valuable payload.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Just so I can picture it, like you got this
rocket coming back from the Moon to deliver helium three.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Like how big is the like? Do I picture a
tank like a scuba diver wears? What am I even picturing?
What do you put the helium three in?
Speaker 5 (19:24):
It would be roughly a sphere that's a little less
than a meter in diameter.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Okay, that's amazing, and you're going to the Moon and
back for that little ball of of helium.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
And it's going to be worth fifty one hundred million dollars.
So and you sell that into a market that's growing
and really looking for it.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
So that's that's what we're counting on.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
We'll be back in just a minute. Who else is
trying to do this?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
You know?
Speaker 5 (20:09):
Our biggest competitor, I would say, is probably China. You know,
the Chinese are talking about space resource extraction, including helium three.
They published papers, they've already demonstrated over the last five
six years that they can bring samples back from the
Moon and they can operate spacecraft twenty four to seven
(20:33):
during the lunar.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Night using nuclear batteries.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
You know, the reason I bring up China is because
thirty forty years ago, we sort of made decisions in
the US that seeded the rare earth elements.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Supply chain to China.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
You know, and today the processing of those rare earth elements,
ninety plus percent of it is controlled by China.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
The key thing about rare earth elements is they're not
that rare. Right, China is winning on rare earth elements
because they have the industrial capacity, not because the elements
are in the ground there and not elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
And you see a lot of headlines that the US
got is investing billions of dollars in rebuilding the rare
elements supply chain in the US. By focusing on helium
three right now and making it a priority, I think
we can avoid that mistake of the past that was made,
and I think it's worth it.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What you're doing is hard, and you have to figure
out a lot of things when you think about what
might go wrong or why it might not work.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
What do you think about?
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Well, I think five years ago I would have thought,
are my projections Are our projections about the future.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Going to come true?
Speaker 5 (21:48):
You know, like we're dependent on many other companies, we're
dependent on NASA.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
So we've done our best to project things, and then you.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Make sure, like in any other business, are there adjacencies
where you can make some money along the path to
your big vision. One of those is extracting helium three
from terrestrial helium. So we're taking our prygenic distillation technology,
we're packaging it up and we're plugging it into helium
plants on Earth. The Air Force is backing network, but
(22:24):
we have investors that are really interested in that.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Another thing is using.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
Our knowledge of excavation on the Moon to apply to
construction of a moon base. So NASA just announced a
three phase, thirty billion dollars moon based program, and we
intend to be a part of it. And we want
to demonstrate grading a surface, compacting a surface, digging a trench,
building a berm remotely on the surface of the Moon,
(22:51):
which I think is going to do. You think Artemis
too is exciting. I think watching construction happen on the
Moon is going to be a pretty fascinating thing for
people to watch and witness and witness a part of history,
and we want.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
To be a part of that.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
When do you think there will be a base on
the Moon.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
So NASA's administrator, Jared Isaacman announced a new program to
start increasing the number of flights to the Moon, robotic
flights to the Moon, starting in twenty twenty seven. He's
described the early phases of a moon base is looking
like a junk yard, and I think that I think
it's appropriate to set expectations really low on what this
(23:32):
is going to look like. It's not going to look
like your science fiction Moon base. It's going to look
like a series of demonstrations, some of them that work
and some of them that don't, and he's using he's
putting to work these companies that NASA has enabled over
the years that are building small cargo landers, and we'll
be working with them. We'll be working with the companies
(23:55):
building lunar rovers to put our tools for processing the
lunar soil and moving the lunar soil, and we'll be
a part of that.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
When I asked you a minute ago what you're worried about,
I think you told me what you were worried about
five years ago.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
What you're worried about now.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Surely there's a lot to worry about, giving your job
and the difficulty of what you're trying to do.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of technical risk, a lot
of dependencies we have on other companies. The Moon is
an unforgiving place. It's extremely hot and cold. The lunar
day lasts for two weeks and then the lunar night
lasts for two weeks. There's radiation, there's hard vacuum, there's dust.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It's very different from Earth.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
So we're going to learn a lot as we go
while we solve some of the big challenges around dust mitigation,
heap rejection, operating in a vacuum, all those things.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
It's hard, just nuts and bolts, like literal nuts and bolts,
engineering challenges.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Hard engineering, and we've got to raise money to go
do all this. So, you know, we have to convince
outside investors that this is the this is the the
right thing to go spend their money on while they're
watching AI and defense tech are big areas where the
venture capital, you know, frontier tech investors are focusing their
(25:21):
time on. And I think in the coming weeks months, year,
we're going to start to see a little more attention
paid to space tech, especially with the SpaceX IPO coming up.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
It's an exciting time for us.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
So how do we make sure we're positioned right to
take advantage of that.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
So you've been working in the space industry, in the
space space for thirty five years, Like this whole industry
such as it is now has emerged since you started
working in space, right, it's so different than when you started.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
What is surprising to you?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Like when you look at the way the world is now,
how is it different than you might have thought it
would be?
Speaker 5 (26:00):
I told someone yesterday that when I started my career,
I thought I'd missed the Golden Age. You know, Apollo
had happened, and NASA working on Shuttle Shuttle was routine,
and then and then all of a sudden, some things
happen where, oh, you know, it's not so routine. We
can't really you know, take our eye off the ball
(26:21):
here because this is still extremely risky and we don't
have this NASA doesn't have the support that we needed
that we had in the past.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
You mean, the space shuttle blew up. Just to be clear,
not to be crass, but that's what you're referring to.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
And yes, I was in college. I had just you know,
done my first internship with NASA at that time. Yes,
and the shuttle blew up, and it's like, oh, it's
so the space industry is so hard, Like it's just people.
You take things take a long time, they take a
lot of money, people persevere. It's a it's not it's
(26:58):
it's not an industry for the.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Faint of heart. The work is hard.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
It takes a lot of effort, a lot of grinding,
and so seeing that there's so many people working in it,
we've almost refreshed the entire space talent density, space talent
base over the last ten to fifteen years, and I'm
proud to have been a part of that, building Blue
Origin and in the next space seeing seeing operating on
(27:28):
the lunar surface as a real career path for young
people coming out of college. That's the next thing that
I'm really excited about being a part of.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
People graduate and say I want to work on the Moon.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I want to build robots and systems that operate on
the Moon and build build the next factories in space.
I think that's a great thing to put on the resume.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And so come talk to us.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Let's finish with the lightning round. What's one thing you
learned working for Jeff Bezos?
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Oh gosh, keep you cool, Jeff is uh yeah, here here,
you know.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I I love that answer. Jeff's wonderful.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
I really really love working Jeff. He has I just
I just listened to another podcast. It was with Jeff Wilkie,
who ran Amazon retail, and there was a time when
he went to Jeff Bezos and said, you're coming up
with so many ideas rapidly that it's it's hurting the company.
(29:00):
And I want to qualify this by saying, when I
ran Blue Origin, we spent nine years below two hundred people.
So we were a very small company being you know,
led by me, but owned by Jeff who would come
in and had new ideas all the time and fabulous ideas.
(29:21):
I wanted to do all of them, but we just
never we were never at the scale to do it.
But a lot of those, you know, it's hard when
you've got always got new ideas coming at you. It
does really affect you know, it does affect the pace.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
You think we'll find extraterrestrial life in your lifetime?
Speaker 5 (29:43):
I hope we still keep looking, and I hope we
continue to look. And you know, I don't know, I
don't know the answer to that, but it's worth looking.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Do you think you'll go to space?
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Me personally, probably.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
You know, the opportunity to go to space would have
been on New Shepherd, the Blue Origin.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, did you have that tuned it? Did you? Did
you choose not to go?
Speaker 5 (30:11):
I did not have that opportunity, So but I would
say that that would have been the one opportunity where
you know, it's a vehicle that I was involved in building.
I trust the team that designed and operated it, you know,
one hundred percent. And unfortunately Blue decided to pause that
program and they're not they're not flying that anymore. So
(30:33):
I don't think my you know, i'll have a chance
to go to go to space in my my lifetime,
but I think a lot of other people will.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So, yeah, what's the secret? What what's one secret to
running a barbecue restaurant?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
You you've done your your your homework.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
So my grandfather and my dad both operated restaurants and
barbecue restaurants in Detroit. I worked for my dad for
three or four years through high school. You know, the
the amount of work involved and not just being an entrepreneur,
but owning a restaurant where you're serving people and your
(31:17):
busiest day of year is on Super Bowl Sunday when
you just want to be home watching the game. Though,
those are you know, the amount of work to go,
you know, to go do that, and you're hiring high
school kids like me who want to be somewhere else.
I think I think those are you know, some of
(31:38):
the secrets I took away work.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
The secret is work all the time, not a secret.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
I not a secret.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
But I picked up work ethic from my dad and
my mom too, and I think I think you need
to to do do what we're doing here at Interland.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
So it's it's it takes hard work.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Thank you so much for your time, good.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Luck, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Jacob rob Myerson is the co founder and CEO of
interlun Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang and
edited by Lydia Jane Kott. Our engineer this week was Hansdale.
She we're always looking for ideas for who to talk
(32:21):
to and what to cover on the show. You can
email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm. You can
find me on x at Jacob Goldstein. You can find
me on LinkedIn. I'm Jacob Goldstein. Thank you very much
for listening to the show, and we'll be back next
week with another episode.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Finally, almost sixty years later, humanity is going back to
the Moon. The plan, at least is for the United
States to build a base on the Moon in the
not terribly distant future, so that the Moon can be
both a literal and metaphorical launching pad for humanity to
(00:41):
explore the Solar System rad So what's it going to
take to build a base on the Moon?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
A lot?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
The answer is a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is what's your problem? And my
guest today is Rob Myerson. Ub spent fifteen years running
Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, and
in twenty twenty he started a company called interlun Rob's
problem is this, how do you build the infrastructure for
(01:23):
a lunar economy that doesn't really exist yet? Eventually, Rob
Hope's Inner Lune will help build that base on the Moon.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
For now, though, he's.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Focused on a more short term but still not that
short term goal, going to the Moon and bringing back
a gas called helium three to sell on Earth. Helium
three is an isotope of helium that is wildly rare
on Earth, so rare that it sells for around ten
million dollars a pound. Helium three is used to identify
(01:55):
smuggled nuclear materials at ports and border crossings. It's also
used in certain kinds of quantum computing in certain forms
of fusion energy. Both fusion energy and quantum computing are
of course acting billions of dollars in investments right now,
and that is part of the reason Rob wants to
go to the Moon to bring back helium three. In
(02:18):
our conversation we talked about a lot. Rob told me
why reusable rockets are only the first step for going
back to the Moon, what it's going to take to
actually manufacture things in space, and how he's trying to
build a business by sifting through the.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Dirt on the Moon.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I talked to Rob on April tenth, and I mention
that because when we talked, the Artemis two astronauts were
on their way back from the Moon.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So of course that's what we started with Rob.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
As we're talking right now on this day, Artemis two
is about fifty thousand miles from the Earth, hurtling toward
us at about six thousand miles an hour. Everything goes well,
it'll splash down later today.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
What does that mean for you? What does it mean
for the Moon. What does it mean for your company?
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Well, first off, I started my career. I'm an aerospace engineer.
I started my career as a NASA co op in
nineteen eighty five, so I worked on the Space Shuttle.
I worked on aerodynamics of vehicles that re enter the atmosphere,
just like Oriyan will do this afternoon.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So you tell me you know a lot about what's
about to happen.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Is that what you're telling me? I do?
Speaker 5 (03:28):
And I'm this is right up my alley, and I
know personally, I know that people who worked on it
to make it happen, And I'm super excited and I'm
super confident, and I'm quite honestly a little surprised at
the media, like the national excitement about it that is
(03:53):
shared because it's because it shows that human spaceflight is different.
We can generate excitement about the space program from a
broader audience by doing these new and exciting things and
going to the Moon to stay. You know, it's like
we've been to the moon before, but we haven't, like you,
(04:13):
and I like industry today hasn't been that was fifty
plus years ago, and we have a whole new group
of people that are doing it nuts. It's exciting to watch.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
It is so.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Wild that we went to the moon and then we
stopped going to the moon, right, It's weird. You would
not have thought in whatever nineteen seventy two that humanity
would be like, well, that's it, we're done. We went
to the moon, and let's just stop going to the moon. Now,
exactly what's that all about? Like, why quit? We don't really,
(04:47):
it's not in our nature. I mean, there's so much
more to learn on the moon. There's so much more
to benefit from. So going back to stay as it
really matters well and as you point out, right, so
this is Artemis two, right, and Artemis one was the
same thing, but without people, right, And it is much
(05:08):
more excited when there are people on board, which, oh yeah,
I get as a you know, as a human being,
as an English major whatever. On a certain level, it's
not entirely rational, right, because you could do a lot
without people, certainly easier to go without people. There's a
lot less to worry about, and yet it's so much
(05:29):
more exciting when there are people doing it.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
There there are you can talk to my co founder
Harrison Schmidt, who walked on the moon on Apollo seventeen.
But the anecdotes you hear from these artemists, two astronauts.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
You know, that.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Spacecraft that flew around the Moon on Artimist one didn't
tell us what it was seeing. These astronauts are telling
us that the moon looks brown. That's a surprise. What
it's all about lighting, And it's about the human observation,
what the eye can see that you don't show.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I don't believe you, right, it's about feelings. You're saying something.
I don't believe what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Okay, yeah, all right, it is it is. You're right,
You're right.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
It is all about feelings, and it's making me feel
great right now.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
So and I think that there's a lot of people
that feel the way I do.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So I want to talk about your kind of short
to medium term plans at Innerlon. But to start, since
we're already talking about astronauts and the moon and whatever,
let's actually start with like your big dream of you know,
humanity and the moon and where inter Loon fits in.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Sure, so, reusable rockets are something that is here to stay.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Like we I worked on the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
I worked on a private company called Kissler that didn't
make it, and then I went to Blue Origin and
spent fifteen years there building reusable rockets and SpaceX right
alongside there. You know, these companies are building rockets that
are being reused in a way that will lower the
cost of spaceflight and eventually lower the price of space flight.
(07:09):
But that only gets you so far, Jacob. The the
the next lever for lowering the cost of space missions
is to build things in space using resources that you've
sourced from space so metals, rocket fuel, helium three, helium gas.
So there will be factories in space building things that
(07:32):
will support a long term in space economy.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And our big vision.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
For Interloon is that we're we're the you know, the
central cogon net providing the resources that are used to
build buildings and uh and once you get that second flywheel,
that in space manufacturing flywheel going alongside the reusable rocket flywheel,
then you you kind of see, you know where where
(07:58):
the costs and where these economics can go in the
long term.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Why did you why did you start the company? I
mean you were you were president at Blue Origin, and
that's a cool space job building rockets to go to
space or almost to space.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
What led you to start interloan?
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Yeah, so I'd been at Blue Origin for fifteen years.
I was the president for most of those years. I
recognized that the infrastructure that we need to do things
long term on the Moon and in space is being
built by companies like Blue Origin SpaceX. But I also
(08:39):
noticed that the Artemis program, which was created under the
first Trump administration to go back to the Moon to stay,
was continued by the Biden administration. And that was the
first time in my career that a major nasive program
of record had been continued through the change of administration,
which meant to me that there is a lot of
(09:00):
support for going to the Moon and on to Mars,
what the artist program was created for, and I knew
that now was the time to go to go do that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
So you have this idea, Oh, like the US government
is serious about going back to the Moon. I'm interested
in getting into the moon business. How do you get
from there to Helium three?
Speaker 5 (09:21):
So my co founder, Harrison Schmidt, is the only geologist
to walk on the Moon.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
That's a cool business card.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Right, He is at one of a kind.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
And I met him in twenty sixteen when I was
at blue Origin. We talked about helium three at that time,
but he was focused on fusion energy and going to
the Moon in twenty sixteen to get helium three for
fusion is.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
The classic two miracle business plan, right.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Because fusion is not a thing, like there is not
commercial fusion. People are working on it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
There's a lot of money pouring into it, but it's
not happening. So that's one miracle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
the one miracle. The second is the moon. But what
happened since then is that the Artemis program was created
by NASA and there's money being invested in lunar landers,
(10:23):
lunar rovers, and all lunar infrastructure. That's one miracle eliminated exactly.
What's the other miracle that gets eliminated?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, so the fusion energy part of it.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
We realized that we could build a pretty good business
to support quantum computing, because the truth is, over the
next ten to twenty years, there will be people scaling
up quantum computers from one hundred cubits to one thousand,
to ten thousand to a million and a million cubit
quantum computer will need as much helium three as we
(10:59):
produce in the United States in one year. So the
future I want to see is a data center full
of quantum million Cuba quantum computers. But the fact is
we won't be able to support that future with the
helium three we have on Earth.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Is that data center in space in the future of
your dreams?
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Well, I'm not going to go there, Jacob. It might,
it might, but that data center with you know, quantum
computers will need a lot of helium three, and we'll
need to go to space.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
We'll need to go to the Moon to get that
helium three.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Okay, So I got the plan. That's the plan. I
can see it on the whiteboard with a few arrows.
When what do you have to do to actually make
that happen?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
So you mentioned that lots of other people are building
lots of other things, Right, you're building some piece of it,
So like, what do you have to figure out?
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Yeah, so ten years ago, there was no lunar landers
being built in the US. There was no lunar rovers
being built in the US. Today there's many companies building those.
And if you think of the technologies we need as
a tech stack, that rover provides the wheels, the transmission
to drive train the mobility that.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
We need and we need.
Speaker 5 (12:19):
What we need is we need to excavate large volumes
of lunar soil regolith. We need to sort it. We
need to sort the rocks from the sand because we
know that the solar wind implants the helium three and
other solar wind gases in the outer nanometer thick rind.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Of the of the lunar regolith.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
The lunar regolith is the dirt basically on the Moon. Yes,
an outer nanometer you're just saying, in the tiniest sliver
of the surface is where the helium three is.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
Yeah, So you want to get the rocks out because
the rocks aren't going to be the high volume producer
of the helium three.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Do you want to get the fine sand?
Speaker 5 (13:02):
Then we want to do a mechanical process where we
crush the regolith and we release those solar wind gases,
and then we cryogenically separate the helium three from the helium.
And that last step, that cryogenic separation is.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
That part sounds harder than the other parts.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
It is, and we've developed we've developed it here in Seattle.
We're operating below two kelvin, which is just you know,
two degrees above absolute zero. And what we've demonstrated is
that we can enrich helium three helium mixtures from very
very low point zero zero zero zero two percent helium
(13:42):
three and helium to ninety nine percent. And what that
represents is that this needle in a haystack, in the
helium three we have on Earth, the very very trace
amounts of helium three, we can go use this technology
that we've envisioned, we've developed for the Moon, but we
can use it on Earth in a great a helium plant.
(14:03):
We can extract helium three in twenty twenty eight before
we get to the Moon, and we can and sell
that helium three to our customers in the quantum computing industry.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Wait, just so I felt it when you say you
can extract helium three in twenty twenty eight before you
get to the Moon. Do you mean you're going to
be in the helium three business on Earth just by
extracting the trace amount exact helium three that are here.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
Yeah, And we kind of we came upon this wrinkle
and the business plan as we were working back from
the original Moon architecture. And that's that's how a lot
of these things happen. You know, you have this grand vision,
you work backward from it. You start developing core technologies excavation, size, sorting, extraction, separation,
(14:47):
and then we realized, hey, well this cryogenic separation process,
which is hard on.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
The Moon, it'll work on Earth too.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
The problem is there's when there's a million tons of
healium three on the Moon, there's very very small amounts
on Earth. So we can we can maybe triple the
US apply of helium three if we maximize, if we
pull every molecule of helium three out, But on the
Moon we can ten x one hundred x thousand x
ten thousand x the helium three production and we can
(15:20):
do that in a in a managed, scaled fashion to
allow the market to catch up. So we want, we
want to operate on the Moon, and we want to
make space resources available on Earth and in space to
solve some of these big problems.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And that's what we're focused on.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So when you're going to send something to the Moon,
when did you get to go to the.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Moon, Well, we yeah, great question.
Speaker 5 (15:42):
We have a we have a camera that we're going
to send this fall with a company called Astra Lab.
We developed it with NASA Ames Research Center in San Francisco,
Mountain View. We're going to land on the South Pole
with Astra Lab and our camera. Our camera will image
the surface as the Astra Lab rover is driving around,
(16:03):
and we'll bring those images back and we'll look and
we'll use our measurements to correlate and get better under
standings of where helium three is now. We're not sure
how much helium three is down at the South Pole,
but this is this is an opportunity for us to
do a very early mission.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
The next thing and the hardware behind me the lab
that I'm in right.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Now, is we're building up a payload that we will
want to fly to the Moon in twenty twenty eight.
So it's about a forty kilogram payload, and it's going
to include a robotic arm, and it's going to include
several devices. One device will sort regulith, one device will
mechanically process the regulith, and one device will heat the
(16:45):
regolith up to nine hundred and fifty degrees centigrade. And
all three of those processes are going to release solar
wind gases. So this this mission will do two things
for us. One is it'll demonstrate that we know how
much helium three is in a certain landing area on
the moon, and two will demonstrate some of our core
(17:06):
technology are sorting our mechanical processing and reduce risk for
the eventual deployment of a robotic harvesters, a fleet of
robotic harvesters that will operate for many years processing the
soil and extracting the heliot three. Once we have that
fleet of harvesters, then we we you know, establish a
(17:28):
head start. Then we'll start to add technologies that will
extract water and make propellant, extract metals and start to
service other markets in space as those markets.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
You know, begin to begin to grow and take hold.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I mean, one of the interesting things about your business
is you know, you're creating one piece of this whole
space economy that many parts of which don't really exist yet, right,
like completely getting to space that exists, but the like
going back and forth to the moon in an industrial way,
like other people are working on other pieces of that,
(18:07):
but it's not a real thing yet.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
It's not an industry yet, right.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And so so talk me through, like what other pieces
do other people have to figure out for your.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Business to work?
Speaker 5 (18:20):
So right now, for we envision in the twenty thirties,
we'll have a rocket based system that's bringing a small
spacecraft back to Earth, re entering ther Earth's atmosphere, just
like Artemis two is going to do today, but it's
smaller with a payload, with not people, so it's a
little different risk profile.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And we'll be doing that four or five times a year.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And we meaning not your company, but what America, the world.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
We meaning inter Loom, like this is what we need
to do.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Okay, we might be able to buy that service in
the future, but right now we're planning to build it, okay.
And it's a small system that will carry twenty five kilograms,
so that's enough mass for a pressure bottle and say
three to five kilograms of helium three, which which is
you know, a very very valuable payload.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Just so I can picture it, like you got this
rocket coming back from the Moon to deliver helium three.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Like how big is the like? Do I picture a
tank like a scuba diver wears? What am I even picturing?
What do you put the helium three in?
Speaker 5 (19:24):
It would be roughly a sphere that's a little less
than a meter in diameter.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Okay, that's amazing, and you're going to the Moon and
back for that little ball of of helium.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
And it's going to be worth fifty one hundred million dollars.
So and you sell that into a market that's growing
and really looking for it.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
So that's that's what we're counting on.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
We'll be back in just a minute. Who else is
trying to do this?
Speaker 3 (20:09):
You know?
Speaker 5 (20:09):
Our biggest competitor, I would say, is probably China. You know,
the Chinese are talking about space resource extraction, including helium three.
They published papers, they've already demonstrated over the last five
six years that they can bring samples back from the
Moon and they can operate spacecraft twenty four to seven
(20:33):
during the lunar.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Night using nuclear batteries.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
You know, the reason I bring up China is because
thirty forty years ago, we sort of made decisions in
the US that seeded the rare earth elements.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Supply chain to China.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
You know, and today the processing of those rare earth elements,
ninety plus percent of it is controlled by China.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
The key thing about rare earth elements is they're not
that rare. Right, China is winning on rare earth elements
because they have the industrial capacity, not because the elements
are in the ground there and not elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
And you see a lot of headlines that the US
got is investing billions of dollars in rebuilding the rare
elements supply chain in the US. By focusing on helium
three right now and making it a priority, I think
we can avoid that mistake of the past that was made,
and I think it's worth it.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What you're doing is hard, and you have to figure
out a lot of things when you think about what
might go wrong or why it might not work.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
What do you think about?
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Well, I think five years ago I would have thought,
are my projections Are our projections about the future.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Going to come true?
Speaker 5 (21:48):
You know, like we're dependent on many other companies, we're
dependent on NASA.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
So we've done our best to project things, and then you.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Make sure, like in any other business, are there adjacencies
where you can make some money along the path to
your big vision. One of those is extracting helium three
from terrestrial helium. So we're taking our prygenic distillation technology,
we're packaging it up and we're plugging it into helium
plants on Earth. The Air Force is backing network, but
(22:24):
we have investors that are really interested in that.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Another thing is using.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
Our knowledge of excavation on the Moon to apply to
construction of a moon base. So NASA just announced a
three phase, thirty billion dollars moon based program, and we
intend to be a part of it. And we want
to demonstrate grading a surface, compacting a surface, digging a trench,
building a berm remotely on the surface of the Moon,
(22:51):
which I think is going to do. You think Artemis
too is exciting. I think watching construction happen on the
Moon is going to be a pretty fascinating thing for
people to watch and witness and witness a part of history,
and we want.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
To be a part of that.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
When do you think there will be a base on
the Moon.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
So NASA's administrator, Jared Isaacman announced a new program to
start increasing the number of flights to the Moon, robotic
flights to the Moon, starting in twenty twenty seven. He's
described the early phases of a moon base is looking
like a junk yard, and I think that I think
it's appropriate to set expectations really low on what this
(23:32):
is going to look like. It's not going to look
like your science fiction Moon base. It's going to look
like a series of demonstrations, some of them that work
and some of them that don't, and he's using he's
putting to work these companies that NASA has enabled over
the years that are building small cargo landers, and we'll
be working with them. We'll be working with the companies
(23:55):
building lunar rovers to put our tools for processing the
lunar soil and moving the lunar soil, and we'll be
a part of that.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
When I asked you a minute ago what you're worried about,
I think you told me what you were worried about
five years ago.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
What you're worried about now.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Surely there's a lot to worry about, giving your job
and the difficulty of what you're trying to do.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of technical risk, a lot
of dependencies we have on other companies. The Moon is
an unforgiving place. It's extremely hot and cold. The lunar
day lasts for two weeks and then the lunar night
lasts for two weeks. There's radiation, there's hard vacuum, there's dust.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It's very different from Earth.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
So we're going to learn a lot as we go
while we solve some of the big challenges around dust mitigation,
heap rejection, operating in a vacuum, all those things.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
It's hard, just nuts and bolts, like literal nuts and bolts,
engineering challenges.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Hard engineering, and we've got to raise money to go
do all this. So, you know, we have to convince
outside investors that this is the this is the the
right thing to go spend their money on while they're
watching AI and defense tech are big areas where the
venture capital, you know, frontier tech investors are focusing their
(25:21):
time on. And I think in the coming weeks months, year,
we're going to start to see a little more attention
paid to space tech, especially with the SpaceX IPO coming up.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
It's an exciting time for us.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
So how do we make sure we're positioned right to
take advantage of that.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
So you've been working in the space industry, in the
space space for thirty five years, Like this whole industry
such as it is now has emerged since you started
working in space, right, it's so different than when you started.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
What is surprising to you?
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Like when you look at the way the world is now,
how is it different than you might have thought it
would be?
Speaker 5 (26:00):
I told someone yesterday that when I started my career,
I thought I'd missed the Golden Age. You know, Apollo
had happened, and NASA working on Shuttle Shuttle was routine,
and then and then all of a sudden, some things
happen where, oh, you know, it's not so routine. We
can't really you know, take our eye off the ball
(26:21):
here because this is still extremely risky and we don't
have this NASA doesn't have the support that we needed
that we had in the past.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
You mean, the space shuttle blew up. Just to be clear,
not to be crass, but that's what you're referring to.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
And yes, I was in college. I had just you know,
done my first internship with NASA at that time. Yes,
and the shuttle blew up, and it's like, oh, it's
so the space industry is so hard, Like it's just people.
You take things take a long time, they take a
lot of money, people persevere. It's a it's not it's
(26:58):
it's not an industry for the.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Faint of heart. The work is hard.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
It takes a lot of effort, a lot of grinding,
and so seeing that there's so many people working in it,
we've almost refreshed the entire space talent density, space talent
base over the last ten to fifteen years, and I'm
proud to have been a part of that, building Blue
Origin and in the next space seeing seeing operating on
(27:28):
the lunar surface as a real career path for young
people coming out of college. That's the next thing that
I'm really excited about being a part of.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
People graduate and say I want to work on the Moon.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I want to build robots and systems that operate on
the Moon and build build the next factories in space.
I think that's a great thing to put on the resume.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And so come talk to us.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Let's finish with the lightning round. What's one thing you
learned working for Jeff Bezos?
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Oh gosh, keep you cool, Jeff is uh yeah, here here,
you know.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I I love that answer. Jeff's wonderful.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
I really really love working Jeff. He has I just
I just listened to another podcast. It was with Jeff Wilkie,
who ran Amazon retail, and there was a time when
he went to Jeff Bezos and said, you're coming up
with so many ideas rapidly that it's it's hurting the company.
(29:00):
And I want to qualify this by saying, when I
ran Blue Origin, we spent nine years below two hundred people.
So we were a very small company being you know,
led by me, but owned by Jeff who would come
in and had new ideas all the time and fabulous ideas.
(29:21):
I wanted to do all of them, but we just
never we were never at the scale to do it.
But a lot of those, you know, it's hard when
you've got always got new ideas coming at you. It
does really affect you know, it does affect the pace.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
You think we'll find extraterrestrial life in your lifetime?
Speaker 5 (29:43):
I hope we still keep looking, and I hope we
continue to look. And you know, I don't know, I
don't know the answer to that, but it's worth looking.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Do you think you'll go to space?
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Me personally, probably.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
You know, the opportunity to go to space would have
been on New Shepherd, the Blue Origin.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, did you have that tuned it? Did you? Did
you choose not to go?
Speaker 5 (30:11):
I did not have that opportunity, So but I would
say that that would have been the one opportunity where
you know, it's a vehicle that I was involved in building.
I trust the team that designed and operated it, you know,
one hundred percent. And unfortunately Blue decided to pause that
program and they're not they're not flying that anymore. So
(30:33):
I don't think my you know, i'll have a chance
to go to go to space in my my lifetime,
but I think a lot of other people will.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So, yeah, what's the secret? What what's one secret to
running a barbecue restaurant?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
You you've done your your your homework.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
So my grandfather and my dad both operated restaurants and
barbecue restaurants in Detroit. I worked for my dad for
three or four years through high school. You know, the
the amount of work involved and not just being an entrepreneur,
but owning a restaurant where you're serving people and your
(31:17):
busiest day of year is on Super Bowl Sunday when
you just want to be home watching the game. Though,
those are you know, the amount of work to go,
you know, to go do that, and you're hiring high
school kids like me who want to be somewhere else.
I think I think those are you know, some of
(31:38):
the secrets I took away work.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
The secret is work all the time, not a secret.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
I not a secret.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
But I picked up work ethic from my dad and
my mom too, and I think I think you need
to to do do what we're doing here at Interland.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
So it's it's it takes hard work.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Thank you so much for your time, good.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Luck, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Jacob rob Myerson is the co founder and CEO of
interlun Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang and
edited by Lydia Jane Kott. Our engineer this week was Hansdale.
She we're always looking for ideas for who to talk
(32:21):
to and what to cover on the show. You can
email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm. You can
find me on x at Jacob Goldstein. You can find
me on LinkedIn. I'm Jacob Goldstein. Thank you very much
for listening to the show, and we'll be back next
week with another episode.
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