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Making Oxygen on Mars · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin, tell me about Moxie.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so Moxie. Moxie is a very very cool device.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: It's a small box the size of a kind of
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: a toaster oven, and it is actually kind of like
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: a toaster because it gets quite hot. But it's inside
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: the NASA Perseverance Rover.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: And just to be clear, where is the NASA Perseverance Rover.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's on Mars. Yeah.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: make technological progress. My guest today is Forest Mayan. He's
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the co founder and chief strategy officer of Lunar Outpost.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It's a company that builds machines that go places.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Like Mars and soon also to the Moon.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Forest and his company are part of this space boom
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: that is happening right now. We've seen it over the
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: past decade or so with private rockets, cheaper space flights,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: and all kinds of new satellite applications. The bet that
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Forest is making at Lunar Outpost is that soon this
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: boom will go beyond Earth's orbit, to the Moon and
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: eventually beyond that. I talked with Forest about the Moon,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: about what private exploration of the Moon will look like
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and what problems Lunar Outpost is trying to solve to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: make that happen. But we started out by talking about Moxie,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: which Forest started working on as a grad student at MIT,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: even before he started Lunar Outposts, and that is on
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Mars right now. So what does Moxie do.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: So briefly, what Moxie does is it breathes in carbon
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars, and it breathes out
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: oxygen as well as a little bit of carbon monoxide.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Like a plant, like what a tree does on Earth.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: It's basically a tree, except we can control control how
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: much oxygen it makes. And you know it does have
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: some less than desirable byproducts, but that is not an
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: issue in the total atmosphere of Mars.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: And I mean, I could guess why it would be
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: useful to have a machine, a device that could turn
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: carbo dioxi into oxygen on Mars, But tell me why
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: is that useful?
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Sure? So, I think most people when they think about
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: in a device that can make oxygen on Mars, the
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: first thing they think about is, oh, of course, people
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: need to breathe on Mars, and that's certainly the case.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Producing oxygen for human life support is important. The real
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: reason why we want to produce it is actually to
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: make oxygen for rocket propel. It when you have a
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: rocket at for example, a oxygen methane rocket, seventy eight
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: percent of the mass of the propellant is just the oxidizer.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: It's the oxygen. It's something we don't notice on Earth
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: when we're driving a combustion car because the oxygen's all
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the way around us and it's free. But that's a
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: huge amount of mass. And so by making that there,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: we can basically save billions of dollars of shipping twenty
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: to thirty tons of oxygen needed to be on the
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: surface of Mars just to get astronauts back up off
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the surface of Mars and back home.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: Uh huh.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So it's the underlying idea, like the hardest part of
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: go to Mars is coming back to Earth.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: That's one hundred percent the case. Yeah, And you know
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: right now NASA is trying to do sample return, right.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: They want to bring a couple of rocks back and
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: it's looking to be a very very expensive endeavor. So
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: when you imagine the idea of bringing people back. That's
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: really the key challenge. And we're talking billions of dollars
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: of savings, maybe reducing completely eliminating three to six launches
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: of like the NASAs Space launch System just to get
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: the materials over there. Because anything that you have on
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: the surface of Mars you have to burn field to
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: get it into Earth orbit. You have to burn field
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: to get it to Mars. You have to burn field
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: to get all the stuff that's needed to actually land
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: it on the surface of Mars.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's intuitive that it's hard to take a
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: bunch of rocket fuel to Mars. I feel like that
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: to la birth that is straightforward. And to be clear,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Maxia is a sort of proof of concept, right. It's small,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: it's not like industrial scale, but is the notion that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: you could build a really big one using the same
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: principles if you need it to or when the time
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: comes exactly.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the purpose of it. I mean the
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Maxis comes from the idea of in situ resource utilization
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: and more simply, it's living off the land on other
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: planetary bodies.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And living off the land is kind of your big idea, right,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's the big idea of your company. Yeah,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: understand it. Of your work is let's figure out how
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: to live off the land on the moon.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: On Mars exactly. Yeah, that's the underlying theme everywhere, and
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: we're just laying down the bricks to build the road
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: to make that kind of part of a sustainable future
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: in space.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: So tell me about when Moxie first got to Mars.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: You know, so you're working on this thing for years.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: It actually goes on a rocket ship, it goes to Mars,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: it lands on Mars. Is there some moment when you're
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: like whatever, somebody's at the computer that's like, okay, let's
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: turn it on and see if it works.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: So, I mean the first the first exciting part was,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: you know, did it land right? Like obviously, going to
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Mars that's pretty scary. Lots of things can go wrong.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: So it landed great. And then we go into this
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: initial phase where we're checking out the systems of the vehicle.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: So it goes through the list and our checkout was
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: you know, one item in that list, and Maxie.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Is just like a little like toaster of insized box
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: inside the rover somewhere correct whatever, the belly of the
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: rover something just.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, basically just sit in the belly of the rover.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: It has a little filtered to the outside of the rover,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: and so the rover like turns on, it goes through
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: its list, and then the satellites are orbiting Mars. There's
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: like five different satellites and when one gets overhead then
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: it can send some data back. And so generally you
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: see a command and you don't get information back on
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: if it worked until the next day. So in the
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: next day, the real exciting moment is not not when
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: it actually happened, but when you actually downlink the data
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: and you open up the file and you see what's there.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: And so that very first checkout, you know, we open
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: up the file, we see what's there, we saw it
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: turned on. That was kind of the.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's non trivial, it's step one, so okay.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Then then the next checkout was basically to turn it
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: on and run the pump, which was also kind of
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: another incremental step. But then the very exciting moment, of course,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: as you can imagine, is kind of the third time
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: we actually sent commands to the rover is when we
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: were going to heat up the cells. So the chemistry
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: happens at eight hundred degrees celsius. Very hot, because it's
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: really hot, yeah, very hot, Like I said, like a toaster,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: like a.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Really hot toaster, right, very hot.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, so hot that normal
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: metals and stuff. You got to use special metals so
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: things don't melt in the grade. So it heats up.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: The scroll pub starts pumping, the gas goes in and
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: then it's this chemical reaction happens on these ceramic cells
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: that allow the and you apply a voltage across it,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: and then the voltage pulls strips oxygen ions off of
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: the cells and actually bounces it through this kind of
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: ceramic material and then it joins up with our oxygen
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: on the other side. And then you get the data
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: of the current flow, which tells you how much oxygen
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: was produced.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So, so is there a day. Is there a day
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: when you come in and turn on your computer and
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: see if moxie actually produced oxygen? Yeah?
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: So we knew and downlink was going to happen. Everyone
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: was on zoom. This was in the middle of the pandemic,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: so everyone's remote and we pull up the data. You
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: know this It took many years to happen. So one
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: of the students that was actually an intern under me
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: that I kind of mentored on Moxie. Her name's Maya.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: She was the one kind of unzipping the data. Fen
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: she pulls up the plots, We get the data and
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: then we see the little line that goes across of
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: you know, oxygen production, and then we knew he did it,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: and that was it was a big moment. I think
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: that was, oh, you know, like five and a half years,
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: you know, five years into my experience being on the program.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: So it was you know, you've been waiting a long
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: time for something you think it's hard to wait for,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: you know, as a kid waiting for Christmas, Like, uh,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: is at least that exciting, I would hope.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: So I would hope it's more exciting because like it
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: might not work, right, Lots of things go to Mars
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and don't work. Like that's not a it's not a
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: crazy outcome for a thing do not work. So Moxie worked.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: By the way, what does Moxie stand for?
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: In the great tradition of aerospace, it's a acronym with
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: an acronym in it, So Moxie stands for Mars oxygen ISRU.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Experiment ISRU stands for institu Resource Utilization.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: I want it to be I wanted to be like
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: seven acronyms deep. I want it to be an acronym
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: with it. I wanted to be a Russian doll of acronyms.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I did notice when I was prepairing for this interview,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: like all of the different missions and all of your
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: different vehicles, they work like everything is an acronym, and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the first time like, oh, Moxie, that's clever, and then
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: by the seventh acronym you're like, I don't even want
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: to know. So okay, So you built Moxie. Somewhere along
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the way between when you started work looking on it
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and when you found out that it worked, you started
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: a company. So just stepping back, then, what is your
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: your dream really for your work and for lunar outposts, Like,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: what's your big idea?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the the big idea is to and
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: is to really utilize the Moon as Earth's next continent, right, Like,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: you have the Moon up there, it's not that far away,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: and it's full of resources that could be used for
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: the electrification of vehicles on Earth that could be used
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: to send us out deeper into space, and the you know,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: the environmental cost of utilizing these resources on the Moon
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: is almost non existent. Right. You can basically offshore a
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: lot of these challenges that are done with development on
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Earth onto the Moon in a much kind of safer environment.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: And so that's that's kind of the broad vision, right,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: is to really utilize the Moon to benefit everyone here
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: back on Earth.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Clearly, at this moment, it's very very very very expensive
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: to get to the Moon and back, right, Yeah, like
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: whatever a million dollars a kilogram or something makes it
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: hard for minding to make economic sense. I mean, is
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: that the big barrier? It just cost so much to
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: get there and back.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that. And then you know, there's
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: certain types of like processing techniques that you need to solve.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And then for us, it's you know, the reliable robotics,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: and that's what we're focusing on. We see a lot
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: of the barriers coming down. When Elon Musk is talking
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: about you know, starship, we think that's going to make
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: a huge step change in the amount of mass that
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: can be brought to and from the Moon, and that's
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: going to forever change humanity's relationship with the Moon, because
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: it it will go from you know, millions of dollars
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: per kilogram to get to the Moon to hundreds of
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: thousands overnight. And I think in a shorter period of
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: time than that you could be looking at ten thousand
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: dollars or less per kilogram.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: So you're talking about like one hundred x improvement in efficiency. Like, yeah,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I thing that costs a dollar net will cost a penny. Yeah,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: what five years? Ten years?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it could come as soon as five
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: years that I guess those initial starship launches, and then
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: within ten years it's going to be there.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, is that the underlying bet of your company.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: You're sort of riding on that on the back of
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that bet.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: It's coming down the pipe, and I think we're timing
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: it right. In the near term, we've found ways to
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: basically provide services here and now that are in high demand,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: which is basically just access to explore the lunar surface
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: to do interesting commercial experiences as well as help other
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: nations kick off their space programs on the lunar surface.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about what you're working on now. I
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: know you have a few different projects, a few different
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: acronymst little machines going too the Moon soon, right, Like,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the first one? What do you have
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: that's about to go to the Moon?
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And when's it going to go?
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So our first one, we've been calling them lunar voyages,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: So Lunar Voyage one is going to be our map rover,
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: and this one is going to go basically early twenty
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: twenty four. So we're getting ready. We're just kind of
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: figuring out when the when the launch is going to
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: be with the rockets, I.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Feel like in space terms, that's like five minutes from now.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, the vehicle is you know, we're we're
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: packing up the vehicle and getting it down to the
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Lander provider. So this is yeah, it's it's all the
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: hard work's been done on this vehicle. What's unique about
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: this this mission a couple of things. Is kind of
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: in a race to be the first commercial rover ever
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: to the surface of the Moon India Center Rover, you know,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Russia has of course the United States and China, but
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: we would be a commercial company from Golden Colorado sending
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: a commercial rover, and so to do that, we've partnered
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: with different commercial companies, so We have no Kia that's
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: testing LTE technology on the Moon. We have Mi T
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: and NASA aimes have some cool cameras that we're sending,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: and a little miniature rover that drives on top of
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: our rover. We have a company that's put a private
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: key for a Bitcoin treasure chest on the rover, so
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: if you find our rover, you get a treasure chest.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: So I mean it's all business, right.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can put a giant billboard on the Moon.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: So when I look at the Moon, I see an
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: ad for bitcoin. Don't do it?
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, the scale of that be outrageous.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, and not just the scale. So when you're making
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: a point about being the first commercial rover, like, why
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: does that matter? What does it mean? I mean, are
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: there legal implications? Is it just cool? From a business standpoint?
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: I think it matters because it emphasizes the shift in
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Earth's relationship with the Moon, where the Earth is just
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: not for the big dogs in you know, on the
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: national stage, right, the big countries with massively funded programs.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: If commercial company can get to the Moon, that means
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the Moon's for everyone, right, And we also kind of
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: remove some of the gatekeepers of access to the Moon. Right,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: So the research group from MIT was able to raise
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: funding with some of their supporters to put a some
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: payloads on the Moon, right. I mean that's and without
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: having to go through a big long proposal process and
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: all sorts of other things. That just hoping to try
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: to get your experiment to the moon, which is kind
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: of the you know, the old way of doing it.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: So but we're definitely like broadening the reach of who
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: can go there and do interesting and exciting things and
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: really really form a stronger connection with the Moon that
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: you know, we see every single night.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: In a minute, how forrest rover is getting to the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Moon and what could go wrong once it gets there?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show, how's your rover getting to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: the Moon?
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: It's being packaged into a lander built by intuitive machines.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: That lander is and going into a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: and then that rocket is going to launch from Kennedy
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Space Center, Florida.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So even the rocket is private, like the whole it's
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: sort of end to end a private mission as opposed
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: to kind of piggybacking on a government mission.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Correct. Correct, Now, the NASA has made some really smart
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: choices that have enabled this to happen, and there is
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: definitely NASA money involved in order to make the whole
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: kind of help build the road to space. So NASA
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: started a program called the Commercial Lunar Payloads Services Program
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: where they're contracting lunar landers to send NASA payloads to
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: the Moon, but they're allowing these landers to sell extra
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: space to commercial interests in order to reduce NASA's costs
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: but also kind of open it up. And so we've
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: taken advantage of it. So the Intuitive Machines Lander that
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: we're going on has a lot of NASA funded payloads
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: and a lot of NASA funding, and we're kind of
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: on the ride share side, so we're just hitching a
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: ride on another vehicle.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I I'm very pro progress, pro technology,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: pro private enterprise, but there is some part of me,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: some hippyish part of me that's like a little bit
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: sad about mining the Moon and you know, bitcoin on
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the Moon, Like, I don't know, can you talk me
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: out of being sad about that side of it?
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly. So I think there's enough moon for everyone.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: You know, the visible change will not exist. You know,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: you'll still see the moon, It'll still be there. We're
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: not gonna have any impact on the total mass of
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: the Moon or how the tides change or anything like that.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: This is very minuscule compared to the size of it.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And the other thing is like, we're you know, taking
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: philosophies I leave no trace and things like that to
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: make sure that, you know, we don't leave a mess
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: up there, right. We want to do this in a
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: way where we're not polluting the environment in a way
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: that it makes it difficult for other people to go
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: to the Moon and utilize it in the future. And
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: I think that's another important point to take home.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Is there some kind of international law? Is there a
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: treaty or something that governs behavior of individuals, firms, nations
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: on the moon.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's there's a number of like agreements in place.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I think the most recent one that NASA is trying
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: to bring nations into is kind of like the Artemis Accords,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: which kind of lays a groundwork for some you know,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: rules on the surface of the Moon. NASA's actually been trying.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: To Countries can't even agree to rules on Earth, right,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: it seems hard. It seems like a hard problem. I mean,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't imagine for example, China, which has its own
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: space wanting to sort of follow the United States lead. Yeah,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: and how is it going?
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah? And there there are countries that are not right
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: and there's not a really established, universally accepted authority over
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: the moon. So that is one of the most interesting
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: things about this endeavor is how will that shake up?
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Because there may be even disagreements of countries if our
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: rover even has a right to drive across the moon, right, Yeah,
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: but we're going to be there, and we're going to
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: drive across the moon, and you know, it's accepted by
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: the country where we live, and so there's there's a
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: lot of stuff that's going to have to be sorted out.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: But like any frontier, I think that little bit of
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: kind of uncertainty creates opportunities for the early movers to
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: kind of help shape what that looks like.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So you built this rover that's going to go to
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the Moon soon. It's called MAP. I guess we got
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: to do the acronym. What's MAP stand.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: For Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's it look like? What's MAP look like?
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: It's a four wheeled rover. You know, you often see
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: a lot with like six wheels. Map has four wheels.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: How big is it? How big is it?
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: It's the size of some people say like a like
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: a medium sized dog. So it's maybe like a you know,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: two feet by two feet square. Definitely not huge. So
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: it has it has two cameras or eyes right on
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: top of its front, and then it has another camera
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: that kind of looks like a little nose. And now
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: we've added the MIT camera payload below that, so you
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: can even say, maybe that looks like a mouth, but yeah,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: it actually sees like a like a human as well.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: So the two cameras on the front, I'll give it
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: stereoscopic vision, so it can kind of see in three
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: D as it drives across the surface. So for this
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: first mission, as I mentioned, one of our flagship customers
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: is Nokia, and we're testing their antenna system. And so
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: the rover has these big antennas in the in the
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: back that will actually deploy on the surface, so there's
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: a trust structure, and then we'll fire some pins and
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: they'll flip up in the air. And that's so that
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: their antennas are nice and high off the ground so
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: we can maximize the range of the rover.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: And the idea is to have a basically wireless communications
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: and network on the moon. That's kind of what you're
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: testing with that.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you drive it? How do you tell
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the rover where to go?
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like a like a turn based strategy game.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: That's kind of like the speed of it. You know,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: we'll send a command, we'll get some information back. We'll
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: do that again. So example would be like a waypoint command.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: So we'd say, you know, drive two meters forward one
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: meter to the left, and then the rover would drive,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: uh huh, take a picture, send it back. We'll tell
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: them if you did a good job or not, and
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: then we'll repeat the problem us again.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So so you built this thing. It's a big deal.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: It's going to go to the Moon. It's hard to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: build a thing that can work on the moon. I'm sure,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: what what are you worried about? What might not work?
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Let's see, there's a lot of uncertainty, just like just
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: like going to Mars. I think everyone's always nervous about
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: landing and getting off safely. We saw that, you know,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Russia had a lander that crashed this year. There's a
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Japanese startup that had a lander that crashed this year,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: and then you had the Indian Lander that landed safely.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: So for this year, you know, two out of three
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: didn't make it. So that's always a concern. Even though
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: I have lots and lots of confidence in our partners,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: they have developed an excellent system, really high reliability, it
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: always comes to the back of your mind. And then
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: after that, I mean, we're going to turn on in transit,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: so we're already going to be on, so we're not
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: gonna have to worry about, oh, will it even turn on?
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: And then the next thing is, you know, how what
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: does the surface look like at this area? Like are
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: we are we able to traverse it? Are we in
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: like a big boulder field? Where are we going to land?
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I think that's the other uncertainty because no one has
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: ever been to this part of the moon and the
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: highest Wow, yeah, yeah, this is We're going to Shackleton
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Connecting Ridge, which is within a degree of the lunar
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: South Pole. So for example, the next closest was sixty
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: nine degrees south, which is what the Indian Lander went,
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: and so no one's been there, no one knows what
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: it looks like. The best satellite images are like three
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: to ten meters per pixel, right, so you that's just
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: one pixel covering a large area.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Giant boulders. You could land and just be surrounded by
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: giant boulders and you'd be.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Screwed, right, Yeah, boulders or you know who knows? Quicksand aliens?
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: We think we you have a really good idea of
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: what to find there, but you never.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Know, right, Aliens would be cool. I'd be sorry your
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: rover didn't work, but it'd be a worthwhile trade of Okay,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: So these are all things that could go wrong that
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be your fault. Right If the lander crashes, they
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: didn't build the lander. If there's boulders everywhere, who knew
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: they were boulders? What about if you land and it's
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: nice and smooth and everybody else did their job. Now
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: it's go, time for map, Go time for your rover.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: What are some of the things that might go wrong.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, One of the ones that is very concerning is
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: the dust. So basically, the Moon's been bombarded by micrometeoroids
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: for four billion years or something around that time, and
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: so the surface has been ground up continuously by these
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: things flying in from space. Hitting the ground, turning into glass,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: shattering and then getting pulverized over and over. But there's
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: no weathering effects like wind or water that kind of
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: round out these particles. So you're talking about very sharp
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: particles like I don't know if asbestos is a good example,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: but it's it's nasty, nasty stuff that could grind on
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: your gears and systems, and so we have to try
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: to find ways to keep that off. There could be
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: dust that's levitated that could get on the camera lenses
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: and make it harder to see. The other thing is
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: you're on the moon, so there's a decent amount of radiation.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Radiation could cause faults and electronic components, so we try
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: to mitigate that by having you know, back up electronic
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: systems and failovers and things like that. But there's you know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: certain levels that you can't control. Right Let's say an
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: ion just flies in from deep space and like you know,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: blows a hole through a transistor. There's not much you
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: can do. So then you have that. You have obviously
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: that you know, the sun is at a very low angle,
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: there's very long shadows, and when you go into a
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: shadow you get extremely cold. So those are kind of
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: the big environmental concerns. It's a it's not a comfortable
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: place to be.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: So if you step back from the day to day,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: from the rover that's about to go to the Moon
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: and think about the future, you tell me what the
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: right amount of time is, I don't know, five years,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: ten years, Like, how do you think about the future
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: on the moon. What's the moon going to be like
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: in say ten years?
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: I think ten years is going to be really exciting.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I mean in ten years, what you're going to have
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: is NASA astronauts are going to return to the Moon,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: you know, within five years less than that, and so
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: we'll have people actively on the surface of the Moon.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Hopefully they'll be riding around in a you know, lunar
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: outpost moon buggy. So we've were waiting here back from
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: NASA on a proposal. We have a great team with
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Lockey Martin MDA GM Goodyear to build this moon buggy
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: for them. So hopefully they're driving around these moon buggies.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Hopefully they're you know, you have the first human permanent
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: human habitats within ten years, and hopefully there's some commercialization
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: of those habitats.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: That one seems wildly ambitious, Like, given how long it's
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: taken just to get people there, do you really think
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: there might be permanent human habitats on the Moon in
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: ten years? I feel like in space, you know, I'll
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: take the over.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: I think that's currently there's architectures that are being pursued
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: by multiple international space agencies, whether it's you know, Russia, China,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: United States, that will put human habitats on the Moon
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: within ten years.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: The fact that you say there's multiple countries makes me
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: think it's more likely. Right, Like, in the same way
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: there was a space race in the sixties basically for
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: like not entirely happy reasons, right, the US was kind
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: of goaded into doing things maybe more quickly than it
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: would have done. Like that seems like a plausible mechanism,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a kind of international competition for slightly tense reasons. Like
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: when you put it that way, it's like, Okay, maybe
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: things will go faster than they usually do. Yeah, I mean,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: there's always things that can happen, But I think that
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: that there is going to be some competition. I think
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: that that China is very motivated and they've been very
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: successful in executing their lunar campaigns, and look they've been
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: to the Moon like three times, and the United States
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: has yet to return to the Moon since they first
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: left in Apollo. So we're the United States is not
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: leading at this point on lunar surface explorations. So we
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: have a lot of catching up to do, and we're
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: putting a lot of resources to it. But I think that.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Hopefully, you know, we realize that the competition's there, and
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: we rise to meet it because it's happening. Other people
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: are going. They're not, you know, not waiting for the
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: United States anymore.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: We'll be back in a minute with the Lightning Round.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: That's the end of the ads. Now we're going back
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: to the show.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: We're gonna finish with the Lightning Round. Just a bunch
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: of questions slightly more random than the rest of the interview.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Do you want to go to space?
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Do you think you'll go to space?
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: No?
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Why not?
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I'm too busy making robots.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Rocketman or Major Tom, Major Tom, Star Wars or Star Trek,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Star Trek. Favorite scene in The Martian I don't know.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: I liked when he was grown the potatoes. That was
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: pretty cool.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Also loved loved the potatoes. So it's like the most
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: nerdy basic part. Right. That was what made me so
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: happy about that book and movie was not the like
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: flying on the chair in space part, but kind of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the opposite. The potatoes are the opposite.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Of that lighting the gas making it rain inside. That's cool.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: What's the hardest thing about killing your own meat?
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: If it's an animal that you grew, you know, sometimes
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: you're a little sad, but you're kind of thankful for
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: the time that you got to spend with it.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Are you thinking of chickens?
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Think about turkeys. I have turkeys. I absolutely love turkeys.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: They're fantastic animals. They're so nice.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have to eat them, you could.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: You're happier to kill the chickens.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, chickens aren't that nice. So it's getting that time
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: for the for the turkeys, But it also gives them
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: a reason to be so.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not their reason to be, it's your
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: reason for them to be.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if everything goes well, what problem will you be
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: trying to solve in five years or so?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: In five years, I think the big problem is going
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: to be kind of processing of lunar regolith to sort
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: it out into its kind of constituent components. Hopefully in
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: five years we've got used.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: You used a word that I don't know what's that word.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: It's a it's a fancy term for lunar dirt or
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: lunar soil.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: So if things go well, you'll you'll be mining in
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: some fashion the moon and trying to figure out how
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: to actually make that work exactly. Well, thanks for your time,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: it was a delight to talk to you, and good
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: luck get into the moon.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you appreciate it.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Forrest Mayan is the co founder and chief strategy officer
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: at Lunar Outpost. Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: and edited by Karen Chakerji. You can email us at
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: problem at pushkin dot fm.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: I'm Jacob Goldstein, H