Latest / Core Memory / The First Bungee Jump, Space Weapons, Lunar Landers and Airships: Al Weston Has Done It All

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The First Bungee Jump, Space Weapons, Lunar Landers and Airships: Al Weston Has Done It All · Core Memory

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: When the Google founders came and saw this,
• 0:04
  they initiated what's called the Google Lunar XPRIZE because it
• 0:10
  gave them the
• 0:11
  inspiration that going to the moon isn't that hard and people
• 0:15
  should really be able
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: to do it,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: could,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: should,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: would be able to do it for tens of millions,
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: not billions.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there is a man, and in this case, that man is Dr. Alan Weston.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: You probably haven't heard of him unless you're in the aerospace field,
• 0:47
  but you should have because he is one of the closest things to
• 0:51
  a living legend of
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: anyone I know.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: He helped invent the bungee jump while he was a student at Oxford.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: He went to the Air Force and made space weapons.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: He went to NASA and built a low-cost lunar lander
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then later in life,
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: he ended up building airships for Sergey Brin,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: a story that I broke a few years ago and that helped me get to know Dr.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Alan Weston.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And today you'll get to know him as well.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Episode two of Core Memory.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Dr. Al Weston, thank you for doing this.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Great pleasure.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I could not be more excited about this.
• 1:31
  I'm going to embarrass you for a second,
• 1:34
  or at least I think I'm going to.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I get to interview all kinds of interesting people.
• 1:38
  I've been living in Silicon Valley for a long time and run
• 1:42
  across all sorts of
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: quite compelling individuals.
• 1:45
  You were always one of these figures who I would hear about
• 1:48
  from my other friends,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: and they're like,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: you can't believe
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: the life this guy has led.
• 1:53
  And so I always wanted to meet you and we met under unusual circumstances.
• 2:00
  I'm going to go nearish the present and then we'll go back into
• 2:04
  your life.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Several years ago,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had heard about this airship being built at NASA Ames,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: which is this NASA center near my house.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was intrigued by this project and I ended up
• 2:16
  breaking a story about it,
• 2:18
  I think,
• 2:19
  before you guys were prepared for that to come out.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I followed you on LinkedIn,
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I followed you on Facebook,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: and you made these connections.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then a couple days after my story came out, they all went away.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd been cut off.
• 2:34
  So my sense was you didn't appreciate the story I'd written
• 2:37
  about the secret airship.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that fair?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we were, as they say here, in the stealth mode.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we kept a low profile, as you've noticed, for a really long time.
• 2:53
  And it wasn't until a year or two later that we started working
• 3:01
  with media,
• 3:02
  including you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, at the time when I found out, it was...
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was sad because I wanted to meet you,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: this legend,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: and I wanted to learn more about the airship.
• 3:15
  But then a couple of years passed and we end up at a dinner
• 3:18
  that a mutual friend of
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: ours had arranged.
• 3:21
  I don't think he fully knew what he was doing,
• 3:23
  but he sat the two of us next to each other.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember being excited and I was scared.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: because I wanted to talk to you about the airship.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in hindsight,
• 3:34
  or at least I think I learned you were prepared to walk out of
• 3:37
  this dinner with
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: this evil reporter nearby.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's true.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know you.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I sat down next to you, I didn't know who you were.
• 3:46
  And the person who had organized the dinner didn't tell me who
• 3:52
  was coming to dinner
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: and that he had put me next to you.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I found out,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was, as you remember, I was horrified.
• 4:02
  However,
• 4:04
  we had a great dinner and we agreed not to talk about the
• 4:08
  airship project.
• 4:09
  So we talked about other things,
• 4:10
  including my experience at NASA working on space projects.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really the thing that you wanted to talk to me about anyway.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was fun.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the night, you gave me a ride home.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was fun.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we became good friends.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: But at the beginning, you're right.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, no.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, that's the way it happened.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's the way I remember it.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was very happy.
• 4:34
  I was nervous while we were sitting there,
• 4:37
  and then,
• 4:37
  yes,
• 4:37
  we end up on this ride home.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is just a setup, how we met.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: You've lived this extraordinary life.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Al's shaking his head modestly.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of places we could begin,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: or we could go biographically,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: but there's a particular spot I want to start,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: and maybe we'll work our way back a bit later,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: but...
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: As you know,
• 4:56
  I've been fascinated by this thing that you were a part of
• 4:59
  called the Dangerous
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sports Club,
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: which was at Oxford.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: It started in roughly... Well, I think it began around 1977.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get connected to it until 1978.
• 5:14
  It was started by David Kirk and Chris Baker,
• 5:21
  Philip Oppenheim,
• 5:23
  and Ed Holton.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I met Kirk in 1978, I think at a karate class.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And while some of the people were at Oxford at some point,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: it was never associated with the university.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was in the same town.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's been referred to as the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: but it had no university affiliation.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you were studying at Oxford at the time?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was at Oxford from 1975 to 78, and I was studying engineering.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:57
  And I got to know David Kirk,
• 6:00
  and through him I met other people in the club,
• 6:03
  yes.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I could describe the Dangerous Sports Club,
• 6:07
  but how would you describe it to people who have never heard
• 6:10
  about it before?
• 6:11
  Well,
• 6:11
  it was an interesting collection of people which has evolved
• 6:15
  over the decades.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: When I met David Kirk, he was very interested in hang gliding.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I had taken up hang gliding.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I bought a hang glider and taught myself how to hang glide.
• 6:28
  And that led me to spend time with him talking about various
• 6:35
  adventures that we
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: could do together.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's how it started.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing.
• 6:41
  There's a documentary on the internet for people who want to go
• 6:45
  look for it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: You guys got up to all kinds of adventures.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: You were catapulting people, skiing down mountains.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't just go on skis.
• 6:54
  You had to build like a contraption that you would then ride
• 6:58
  down the mountain.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You guys would just paraglide off mountaintops in Africa,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: sort of heading into totally unknown spots when you would land.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: and, quite famously, more or less invented bungee jumping.
• 7:12
  I know there's islanders who jump with vines and have done for
• 7:16
  many years,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: but as far as I understand,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: you guys were the first ones to jump off a bridge with a bungee cord.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: The idea came from Chris Spaker,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: who lived next to the Clifton Suspension Bridge just outside of Bristol,
• 7:28
  and he came up with the idea after watching people in the
• 7:32
  islands near Papua New
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Guinea attach vines to their ankles and jump off towers.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was the origin of bungee jumping.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Simon Keeling and I,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: who were engineers together at Oxford in 1978,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: we were called upon to do some analysis of the dynamics,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: the bouncing part,
• 7:53
  to make sure that people didn't get too high G and also that we
• 7:58
  didn't hit the ground.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so we did.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you did the math to see if bungee jumping checked out?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't actually think I was going to jump.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I was at Oxford, I wasn't one of the cool set.
• 8:10
  And so when it came to this event,
• 8:12
  I thought the cool people were going to jump off.
• 8:14
  But it turns out that in the morning,
• 8:16
  because there'd been a party the night before,
• 8:18
  In the morning of the first bungee jump,
• 8:20
  all the cool people disappeared.
• 8:22
  And so I think kind of by accident,
• 8:25
  I ended up being one of the first bungee jumpers.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you're on a bridge somewhere near Oxford?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, Bristol.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bristol.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: You guys just line up one after the other and give it a go.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not one.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: We were all in a line.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't one after each other.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody had their own bungee rope.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were lined up and we jumped off.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: There was an invitation that was sent out around people in the UK,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: maybe in other parts of the world.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So bungee jumping at dawn.
• 8:56
  And somehow my sisters got hold of this invitation and called
• 9:01
  the police and said,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: look,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: you've got to stop my brother.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's going to commit suicide on April Fool's Day.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the police were alerted and they went there.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: They went there to arrest us and stop us from killing ourselves.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: However,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: they got there at dawn,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: which is what the invitation said,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: said bungee jumping at dawn.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: But we didn't show up until, I think, I don't know, 10 or 11.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And by that time, the police had gone.
• 9:26
  So we jumped off and then,
• 9:29
  you know,
• 9:30
  there was media there and there was a big circus.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then the police heard about this and they came back.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And while the lower level policemen thought this was very entertaining,
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: the guy in charge was really upset about it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just the spectacle of the whole thing?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: He had a really bad attitude.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you see the videos, you can see the look on his face.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: He was called Superintendent Powell.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I still remember his name.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we were marched off to prison and spent the night in jail.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: The police who were there went to Chris's house.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: We had this party at his house the night before,
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: and they confiscated what was left of the booze.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then the people who got arrested,
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: the bungee jumpers,
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: actually the police came to our cells and gave us each a bottle of wine.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was very unusual and sweet of them.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then we met the magistrate the next morning,
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Monday morning,
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: and she very sternly told us to not do this again.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: We were, as they say, bound over to keep the peace.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: That was the charge.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: We were charged with disturbing the Queen's peace.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And did this receive national attention?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was a lot of publication.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of articles in newspapers, primarily in England.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think it may have spread a bit.
• 10:46
  But that time,
• 10:47
  it was the very first time ever,
• 10:48
  so it was more of an English thing.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Was this club notorious?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Was it celebrated?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Was it all engineers and kind of nerdy types?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: What was the makeup of the dangerous sports club?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was no formal membership when I was there.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Simon and I were engineers.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Chris Baker was a hang glider pilot and someone that likes to ski.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think he ran a school maybe with his brother.
• 11:13
  And then David Kirk,
• 11:15
  the chairman,
• 11:16
  would teach young people English at Oxford.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: He had graduated maybe 10 years before us, before Simon and I.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Philip Oppenheim was a conservative MP.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: He was, I think, the youngest MP in the 20th century.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a collection from people.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Ed Halton, I never saw Ed Halton at any of the events.
• 11:38
  He had been part of the earlier activities,
• 11:41
  which involved going down the Cresta Run.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they had an underground canoeing trip in Switzerland.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: But really the thing that got us a lot of fame,
• 11:52
  a lot of attention was the bungee jumping off the Clifton
• 11:56
  Suspension Bridge.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then later that year,
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: because we had been told not to do it again,
• 12:02
  we came up with a plan to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge on
• 12:06
  Columbus Day of the
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: same year,
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: 1979.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: I love those stories.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: You guys do do this.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You come to San Francisco.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: The police, if I remember, find out that this is going to happen.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Refresh me.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, the police found out about it when it happened.
• 12:21
  We jumped off the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge during rush
• 12:26
  hour on Columbus Day.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's Columbus Day, it's a national holiday, so it wasn't that busy.
• 12:31
  But it was very different to the first jump on April Fool's on
• 12:35
  the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Clifton Suspension Bridge is very light traffic.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: and maybe even no traffic.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly it's a footbridge.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we had lots of help.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: When we jumped off the Golden Gate,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: every person,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: every man and woman had to take care of themselves.
• 12:53
  And so we had to attach our bungee ropes to the bridge and then
• 12:56
  throw them over the
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: side and then jump off.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Wearing a tuxedo.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't wearing a tuxedo.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: A few people did.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think Kurt did and Peter Carew did.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: But no, I wasn't wearing a tuxedo.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: I did come up with an escape method.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Working with a friend of mine.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to Virginia Tech at the time.
• 13:15
  And a friend of mine at Blacksburg,
• 13:17
  where Virginia Tech is,
• 13:19
  ran a climbing shop.
• 13:21
  And so he came up with a scheme where we could slide down on a
• 13:25
  ring after the
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: bungee had stopped bouncing.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so we had a second line in our shirts and we did that.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Two of us, Simon Keelan and I got away.
• 13:34
  It was a bit tricky getting your weight shifted from the bungee
• 13:38
  onto the second line.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody else wanted to practice, but Simon and I did.
• 13:42
  And so we figured out how to do that and slid down the rope
• 13:46
  onto a speedboat that
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: was waiting for us.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: that then took us to the north side of the bridge,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: got into a waiting Cadillac limousine,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: a white Cadillac limousine that took us back across the bridge,
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: back to San Francisco Airport,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: where we were going to jump on the first plane and escape.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: But it turned out the police who came, they weren't that upset.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: They arrested everybody there.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But as we were driving to the airport,
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: we did listen to news of this and listened to people saying,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: there's this thing called bungee jumping.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder what this is all about.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: On the radio while you're in the car.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: While we're in the car, we're listening to news reports.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And also there was a report that two people had escaped.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was us.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that the police were after us.
• 14:24
  And I thought,
• 14:24
  yes,
• 14:25
  finally,
• 14:26
  I'm a wanted criminal being chased by the law.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: But you make it on the plane.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we didn't actually leave.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: It turned out the police weren't that upset.
• 14:33
  I think they fined people a hundred bucks and they confiscated
• 14:37
  the bungee ropes.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we got them back.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so it wasn't a big deal.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've watched the documentary about this.
• 14:43
  There was also a person in a gorilla costume who had a
• 14:49
  saxophone that I remember
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: flying around either Parliament or I think it was Parliament in London.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is the identity of that person disclosable?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's been such a long time.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they're going to press charges.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that was me.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was around 1982, either 81 or 82.
• 15:13
  And what happened was the chairman of the club dared me to fly
• 15:18
  a powered hang
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: glider over London.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was supposed to fly through Tower Bridge.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to wear a gorilla suit and I had to play a saxophone,
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: which I can't play the saxophone.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And really, it just got in the way.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'd never flown a powered hang glider before,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: but being a bold young man,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I can fly anything.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a hang glider pilot.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: How hard can this be?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually pretty tricky, particularly getting off the ground.
• 15:45
  And the day that this happened was really windy and there was a
• 15:48
  lot of low-level turbulence.
• 15:50
  I did finally manage to get the hang glider off the ground
• 15:53
  after several tries and
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: started flying slowly towards the bridge.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: But at low altitude,
• 16:00
  I realized I couldn't control the glider close to the ground
• 16:05
  and I wasn't going to
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: be able to make it through the bridge.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was just going to collide with one of the towers.
• 16:11
  So I chickened out and I flew over the bridge instead and crept
• 16:15
  up towards the
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Houses of Parliament.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 16:18
  there's video of me flying over the Houses of Parliament and
• 16:21
  then over Buckingham Palace.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was over Buckingham Palace that the helicopter showed up.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it was really a police helicopter,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: but it could have been,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: and it should have been.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But this was 1981 or 82,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: and so people weren't really thinking about terrorism,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: things like this.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Something like that.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, oh, what's that?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the police,
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: or whatever it was,
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: maybe news helicopter,
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: and thought,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: hmm,
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: time to leave.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I flew into a cloud,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: and fortunately the helicopter didn't join me,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: otherwise we might have collided with each other,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: and headed north,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: and ended up landing north of London.
• 17:00
  One of the people from the Golden Gate Bridge,
• 17:04
  Peter Carew,
• 17:05
  picked me up.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: He chased me on the ground with a motorbike,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: picked me up after I landed,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: took me to Heathrow,
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: where I jumped on a plane and flew back to the US,
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: because I was still at school at that time.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this made national news as well, I assume?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: There was some news, yes.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've got an article where it discusses it, yes.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been impressed by all this for many reasons.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 17:29
  the exploits that we just went through are a small portion of
• 17:34
  what the dangerous
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: sports club got up to.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know...
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: In the latter years,
• 17:38
  there were some injuries and a couple tragedies that cast a bit
• 17:42
  of a pall over the club.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: More generally,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: stereotypically,
• 17:45
  I think of Oxford as a pretty stuffy place and you're this very
• 17:50
  respectable man in
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: the world.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do you reflect back on this time of life?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was just something fun that you guys wanted to do.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's quite exceptional and unusual.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it was sort of a student thing.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 18:03
  I was active in the club when I was a graduate student and also
• 18:08
  maybe in the very
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: early days of the club,
• 18:11
  maybe I was involved right in my last days of being an
• 18:15
  engineering student.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember exactly.
• 18:18
  But I stopped being active with the club after I moved to the
• 18:22
  States to study at Virginia Tech.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: So many of the things that you referenced earlier,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: like the ski races and the catapulting,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't involved with at all.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was aware of them, but I didn't participate in those things.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was a bit nervous when I came to America when I got a job.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I got a job working for the Air Force,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: and I wasn't sure how they would feel about these activities.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't tell anybody, but of course, eventually people found out.
• 18:52
  But it turned out that my bosses thought it was kind of funny,
• 18:55
  and they didn't mind at all.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this helps us get into what you did next.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: You've had this career in aerospace in different forms and shapes.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: When you were at Oxford as an engineer,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: was it clear to you that was the direction you were going to head in,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: or what did you think you might end up doing?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely no.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: When I was at Oxford, I didn't have a clue what I was going to do.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: They had job fairs.
• 19:20
  You'd go and meet people,
• 19:21
  and they would say,
• 19:22
  here are the jobs you can do.
• 19:24
  The coolest job that I think I applied for or didn't get was to
• 19:28
  go and work for one
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: of the big oil companies and do exploration,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: work on the rigs in Malaysia or somewhere or Indonesia.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Schlumberger was the company.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they paid really well at the time.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: They paid, I think, £10,000 a year, which was a princely sum.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't get any of those jobs.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Some of my friends did.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get that job offer.
• 19:53
  The other jobs were not terribly exciting and engineers weren't
• 19:58
  paid very well.
• 19:59
  And so they were sort of,
• 20:00
  I don't know,
• 20:01
  three or four thousand pounds a year.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I just didn't find them that interesting.
• 20:07
  So trying to stave off the inevitable challenge of finding out
• 20:13
  what I was going to
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: do when I graduated,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: I decided,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: let's go and get another degree.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to Virginia Tech.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I studied aerospace engineering.
• 20:21
  I'd studied engineering science,
• 20:23
  which was like a mixture of everything at Oxford.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I narrowed in on aerospace.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I was a hang glider pilot, so I was interested in aviation.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the whole thing of spacecraft and rockets, I thought was kind of fun.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a little boy, I really liked Tintin going to the moon.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I studied my masters, but my masters didn't last that long.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I was thinking, oh gosh, what am I going to do next?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, well, my professor said, well, why don't you do a PhD?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, great.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to make up my mind for another year or two.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I stayed on for another, actually, it wasn't that long.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was maybe a year and a bit.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what happened.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Did your family have an academic background?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Were the things you were doing expected or unusual for your family?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Both of my sisters went to university.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: My sister, my oldest sister, Margaret, went to Lady Margaret Hall.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And she studied, I'm going to get this wrong, she's going to kill me.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think she studied philosophy.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think she did PPE, philosophy and psychology and economics.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then Anne went to Sussex University and studied economics.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then later, she got a master's at the London School of Economics.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Your parents also had academic background?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, both our parents had degrees.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: My father had an undergraduate degree from Perth,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Western Australia,
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: which is also where my mom went to school.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then he got a graduate degree at Wadham College in Oxford.
• 22:03
  At one point,
• 22:04
  he was studying in the Sorbonne for his PhD,
• 22:06
  but didn't finish it.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone in the family had degrees.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So both of your parents were Aussies.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you were born in Canada.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: My father was a professor of law, and he moved, the family moved.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: My mother and my father and my eldest sister moved to Edmonton,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: and that's where my middle sister,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Anne,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: was born.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was a professor there.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then he moved to Toronto, and I was born in Toronto.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then you go just about everywhere as a kid.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: not everywhere,
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: but my family moved in 1961 to Dar es Salaam,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: and we stayed there till 1964 and left Dar es Salaam,
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Tanzania,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: and moved to Lusaka,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Zambia,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: where my mother then joined the United Nations.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then after two years in Luzarka, the family moved to Ankara, Turkey.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And my mother was there for five years.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: For the first three years, I went to school there.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then at the age of 12, she shipped me off to boarding school in York.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went to school in York from 1969 to 1974.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why were you moving around so much?
• 23:19
  Well,
• 23:19
  my mother working for United Nations,
• 23:22
  that was something that they did.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why did my father move?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: He was interested in different areas.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of exciting for him.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: He started the first law faculty in East Africa in 1961.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: What effect do you think that childhood had on you?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I moved around a lot as a kid,
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: and it's always been,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: some part of my identity,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you felt the same way.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I enjoy travel.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: I like going to foreign countries.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: I like traveling the world.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when I was 13,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: traveling on my own in between Ankara,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Turkey,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: and York,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: England,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: where my boarding school was.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sitting in an airplane on my own,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: feeling a little bit,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: not intimidated,
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: but a little bit like,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on my own.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it suddenly hit me like a lightning bolt that,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: wow,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: being on my own in an airplane isn't a bad thing.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a wonderful thing.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing thing.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I suddenly realized how it was like a sense of power.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like I could travel the entire world in this beautiful, shiny tube.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I never looked back.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: But yes, it did impact me a lot.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: It gave me a sense of confidence,
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: which partly related to traveling around the world,
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: but also just a sense of self-confidence.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think many,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: there's not many 13-year-olds that would be in that situation these days.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I traveled with my sisters,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: but a lot of the time,
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: most of the time I was traveling on my own.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you eventually get into aerospace engineering,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: had at least that part been a long running interest for you,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: just aviation in general,
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: or was that something you stumbled into just as you studied engineering?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:09
  Well,
• 25:10
  I really liked hang gliding,
• 25:12
  and I taught myself how to hang glide in 1976.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I bought a hang glider in 1976.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then I was 19.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: But the choice of a job came down to almost an accident.
• 25:28
  I was at the graduate department of Virginia Tech when an Air
• 25:34
  Force captain was
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: wandering around the corridors and my professor said,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Alan,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: go and find someone with a tie,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: borrow it and talk to this captain.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: So someone very kindly lent me their tie.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I chatted for maybe an hour with this captain.
• 25:48
  And that led then to an interview at the Air Force Rocket
• 25:52
  Propulsion Laboratory at
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Edwards Air Force Base.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they offered me a job.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I moved out there.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the beginning of my career.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:03
  So we're about to get into some absolutely fascinating stuff
• 26:07
  that you worked on.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was it easy for a British citizen?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was Canadian.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in Toronto.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you could go into the Air Force and no problems.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Then you could.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Then it was possible for the Air Force to hire a Canadian citizen.
• 26:27
  When I started,
• 26:28
  I was actually a Virginia Tech employee for the first few months.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: But then the Air Force offered me a position,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: which I took,
• 26:36
  with the proviso that I had to become an American citizen as
• 26:40
  quickly as possible.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: In March of 1984, I became an American citizen.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned today you got top secret clearance.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I got a clearance at the same time.
• 26:54
  So yes,
• 26:55
  I got a clearance on the same day that I became an American citizen.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:01
  The part that I know the most about from your time at the Air
• 27:05
  Force is working on
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: what's commonly called Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative.
• 27:11
  It was this Reagan-era program to create a missile shield
• 27:16
  against the Soviets,
• 27:18
  very famous.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a mutual friend,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pete Worden,
• 27:21
  who used to run NASA Ames down the street and was also involved
• 27:25
  in that program.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to get into that,
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: but I assume that's not the first thing that you started working on.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't the first thing because the speech that started SDI,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: do you remember,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: happened in 1983.
• 27:38
  And it took a while for the Department of Defense to actually
• 27:42
  put programs into place.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: But in 1985, it began for the rocket lab.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: When I first started, I was working on other things.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: I managed technology development efforts with air-to-air missiles,
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: with ADA-based real-time control on a very fast computer at the time,
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: a chip called the Intel 432,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: and also managed the development of autocode,
• 28:07
  which has now become standard practice for many aerospace and
• 28:11
  other applications.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: However,
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: in 1985,
• 28:15
  everything changed and we started getting money to develop
• 28:21
  technology for the
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Strategic Defense Initiative.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: SDI had begun on the basis of laser weapons,
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: directed energy that could move at the speed of light.
• 28:35
  Unfortunately,
• 28:36
  the technology wasn't then ready to deliver on that promise.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so after many years of investment,
• 28:45
  the Department of Defense realized that they needed to get
• 28:48
  something simpler and
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you might say more old fashioned.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so they went to kinetic energy,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: which is basically throwing a rock at the target,
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: a guided rock.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I worked on.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, OK, so the original idea is you put some systems up in space.
• 29:06
  They spot presumably Soviets sending an ICBM that's passing
• 29:11
  through space and you
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: want to intercept it.
• 29:14
  And so the original conception was that we would instantly just
• 29:17
  vaporize it with a laser.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so in, I think like Edward Teller was a proponent.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was no joke.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of money.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Billions.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And very smart people.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is always a big question about SDI is like,
• 29:30
  did we actually believe this could work or was this all just
• 29:33
  meant to have the
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Russians spend themselves into oblivion?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Presumably people did believe that the space lasers could work.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there were two flavors.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: There was the X-ray laser and the chemical laser.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: The X-ray laser was nuclear pumped,
• 29:48
  and that was the idea that Ed Teller had and others at Lawrence Livermore.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, the underlying technology was never proven.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't show that the weapon actually worked.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so while a lot of money went into that,
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: other people in the national lab community at Los Alamos and Sandia
• 30:11
  reviewed the data that Livermore had been gathering and said,
• 30:15
  look,
• 30:15
  this isn't going to work.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not working.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not a laser guy, but this is what I read about that time.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, so that effort slowed down and eventually was stopped.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: The chemical lasers kept on going, but they were really big.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: They weighed hundreds of thousands of pounds.
• 30:38
  They were so big that they needed a new launch system to get
• 30:42
  them into space.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like an enormous rocket.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: A huge rocket.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: there was an initiative in the late 80s called ALS,
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: the Advanced Launch System,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: which was really there to support the launch of these lasers.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: But in the end...
• 30:56
  There was a realization in the Defense Department that this
• 31:00
  doesn't make any sense,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: and so that came to an end.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: But for the first maybe five years from,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: 84 through 89,
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of money went into lasers,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: and then that's slowed down.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: You said you're not a laser guy.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: When you would hear about this stuff,
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: did you think it was practical at the time,
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: or you instinctually felt like it wasn't going to work?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't involved in it.
• 31:28
  I studied this after the fact to find out how far away they
• 31:33
  were at the time.
• 31:34
  At the time,
• 31:34
  I was just doing my thing,
• 31:38
  working on rockets,
• 31:39
  but it turned out that
• 31:41
  The powers that be realized that this wasn't working and they
• 31:44
  needed something else.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so in 1985,
• 31:50
  technologies were developed to support kinetic energy
• 31:54
  interceptors as opposed to
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: directed energy weapons.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I started getting involved in SDI.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: In this case,
• 32:02
  I believe kinetic interceptor means far from a laser knocking
• 32:08
  down an ICBM,
• 32:10
  you're actually going to try to hit an ICBM with some kind of
• 32:14
  projectile and blow
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: it up.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 32:16
  It's a guided missile,
• 32:18
  basically,
• 32:18
  that works in space,
• 32:19
  but with no warhead.
• 32:21
  The point is that you're closing at velocities up to 20
• 32:25
  kilometers per second.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And all you need to do is to touch the target and everything goes away.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the emphasis was making these interceptors,
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: these projectiles,
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: the guided missile,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: really small and light.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And initially,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: where I was at Edwards Air Force Base,
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: at the rocket lab,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: we developed the technology for propulsion,
• 32:48
  the rocket propulsion that could both boost the interceptor
• 32:52
  towards the ICBM target,
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: as well as the projectile propulsion needed,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: the divert,
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: the maneuvering,
• 33:00
  and attitude control systems that used various kinds of
• 33:04
  propulsion technologies.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so please tell me before I get this wrong, but I'm picturing...
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm picturing a large piece of hardware that's orbiting in space,
• 33:13
  and then coming out of this large piece of hardware are these projectiles,
• 33:18
  and you're putting the propulsion systems on the ends of the
• 33:22
  projectiles so that
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: they can find their target.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Not so they can find their target, so that they can maneuver in the way.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: So other people were working on the technology for the telescope,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: the sensor,
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: the camera that could find the target.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: We developed the technology to maneuver the interceptor into the path,
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: the oncoming path of the target.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there's what?
• 33:45
  There's like a bus-sized container of these projectiles that's
• 33:49
  going around in orbit?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: What was the plan?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was one plan.
• 33:52
  One plan was to have a platform with some number of these
• 33:57
  interceptor missiles.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think the smallest number was three and the largest was 100.
• 34:02
  There were different prime contractors that were optimizing the constellation.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: And these were in orbit,
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: waiting for that time that the Russians,
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: because the Soviet Union,
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: that was the threat of the time,
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: were to launch a lot of their ICBMs at the United States.
• 34:19
  Another approach that was being developed by other elements of
• 34:26
  the defense research
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: community was called a space-based rail gun.
• 34:31
  So this was an electromagnetic launcher which accelerated the
• 34:35
  intercept of the
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: homing vehicle at up to a million g's to up to 20 kilometers per second.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And did that actually move along or...?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: The platform, the railgun itself, did not move along.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: However,
• 34:54
  technologies were developed for the projectile that would use
• 34:58
  the railgun that were
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: very helpful for the evolution of missile defense.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's all these wonderful...
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: YouTube videos surrounding different parts of your career.
• 35:07
  From this particular period,
• 35:09
  you can find these tether tests that you would do.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, it's very difficult to test some of these things in space.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: You probably want to find out how well some of this stuff works on Earth.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you were testing your propulsion systems here in California.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1987,
• 35:25
  the program office at Los Angeles Air Force Base asked the
• 35:30
  rocket lab where I worked,
• 35:31
  are there ways that we can test the propulsion technologies
• 35:37
  that will show that
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: they work in space?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we came up with an approach which we called hover testing,
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: where we would integrate an interceptor,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: a projectile,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: and fly it around in a room.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the program office said, great, let's go and do that.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so we selected a contractor to build the propulsion elements.
• 35:59
  And we found an old shed that had been used in the Apollo
• 36:04
  program as a pre-test
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: site for the F-1 engines that were tested.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of those were tested at the rocket lab.
• 36:12
  And we started flying these interceptors around in the room
• 36:16
  starting in 1988.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this gets a lot of attention.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Seems like quite promising work.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we were successful eventually.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: We had a number of events that we had to correct.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: We were moving very quickly.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so in our first tests, we would try and test again within days.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we found that we were moving too quickly.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so we had to slow down and test again.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean, too quickly?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: we found out that after our first test,
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: when we tried to test again within,
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: a couple of weeks,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: that after that one failed,
• 36:56
  we found out it was because the fuel and oxidizer had been
• 37:00
  sitting on the valves
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: and the valve material had been corroded.
• 37:06
  And so things needed to be cleaned more carefully in between tests,
• 37:11
  as an example.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually, we got it to work really well.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the community was really excited about this.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it showed a pathway for testing that was treaty compliant.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it was observable.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it was repeatable.
• 37:28
  So you could go and do it again and again and again and show
• 37:32
  that the systems actually worked.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Initially, the tests were just on the rocket propulsion element.
• 37:39
  But then we integrated the cameras,
• 37:42
  which were infrared at different wavelengths.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them were visible cameras.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we tested different propulsion elements as well.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: You were talking about the treaties.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's an element that I hadn't thought of in all of this.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: So already there must have been all kinds of treaties.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 37:57
  I know there were all these treaties between the US and the
• 37:59
  Soviet Union around
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: weapons tests and...
• 38:02
  SDI itself was very controversial,
• 38:04
  this idea of putting weapons in space.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: So how did you deal with that?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what was the thinking around being able to do this kind of work?
• 38:12
  Well,
• 38:12
  we weren't responsible for the deployment of an operational
• 38:17
  weapon system.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were very early on in the phases of technology development.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: We were trying to answer the question, can this work at all?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Does it make sense to even go to that level?
• 38:29
  Can we develop the technologies that are small enough,
• 38:31
  that are affordable,
• 38:32
  do they work?
• 38:34
  And so I was never involved in the question of how this would
• 38:39
  be deployed and what
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: treaties would have to be changed or potentially broken.
• 38:43
  But the point that we were showing was that by using this
• 38:47
  ground test facility,
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: we could find out on the ground very quickly,
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: very inexpensively,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: whether or not the approach could work at all.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that would lead to suborbital tests,
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: which we later did at White Sands Muscle Range in New Mexico,
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: and also at sea,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: which were...
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Exo-atmospheric,
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: the tests happened in space,
• 39:09
  but they were all treaty compliant because they weren't an
• 39:12
  operational space weapon system.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't in orbit.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was just going up and down.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the major breakthrough here,
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: you went over some of it,
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: but it was to get a propulsion system that was small enough,
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: reactive enough,
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: cheap enough,
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: and they could work in space.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: These were all things that had to be breakthroughs that you solved.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the propulsion part was our primary responsibility.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: But after we started hover testing,
• 39:35
  the group that I managed also inherited program management
• 39:38
  responsible for the
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: entire projectiles.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: and that included other technologies as well.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: The sensor and the guidance and the communication.
• 39:49
  Everything had to be small and lightweight and inexpensive and
• 39:53
  to work very well.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: I became the program manager for the Air Force for LEAP.
• 39:59
  That is the lightweight exo-atmospheric projectile program that
• 40:03
  is now deployed as
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: part of the standard missile 3
• 40:07
  And it's called the Aegis Leap Interceptor and has been
• 40:11
  shooting down missiles from
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Iran targeting Israel.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is the legacy of some of this technology.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: When did this work start to wind down, that particular program?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it hasn't wound down at all.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's operational.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: It evolved.
• 40:26
  So I was building kill vehicles from 1988 to 1998 and testing
• 40:29
  them at Edwards and
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: also at C and these other places.
• 40:40
  But there was a transition from R&D that different labs were
• 40:46
  doing into operational developments.
• 40:49
  And so the Navy,
• 40:51
  of course,
• 40:51
  has a big program office for the standard missile.
• 40:54
  They absorbed our kill vehicle developments into their standard
• 40:59
  missile development.
• 41:00
  And there's a transition that takes place with SDI itself as
• 41:03
  the Soviet Union collapses.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: Reagan was already under a lot of pressure around SDI.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people thought it was a waste of money.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: It would never work.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: The Soviet Union collapses.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: We maybe don't need this.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: missile shield anymore anyway.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have two questions on this.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: One is, in the broadest possible terms, what's your take on SDI?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Did it make sense to pursue?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it had any effect on the collapse of the Soviet Union?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people make that case.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's true that we were very public about our activities.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's different today.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of research that's done by the Department of Defense is hidden.
• 41:48
  But back then,
• 41:49
  we were encouraged,
• 41:50
  we were directed to bring in the media all the time.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we had press conferences.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Larry King came out from CNN.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: He came out to Edwards for a press conference that we had.
• 42:03
  I did a press conference in the Pentagon after our first hover
• 42:07
  flight test,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: our first kill vehicle.
• 42:09
  And I don't know if this really helped cause the collapse of
• 42:14
  the Soviet Union,
• 42:15
  but...
• 42:16
  Certainly,
• 42:17
  we were very open about the progress that we were making,
• 42:21
  and it could have.
• 42:22
  I guess my assessment is that it may have had an impact on the
• 42:26
  Soviet Union.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know exactly what happened.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: I know that people make that claim, and it doesn't seem crazy to me.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: It could have had an impact.
• 42:33
  And then what you're saying is I think people sometimes hear
• 42:35
  about SDI and it ends
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: and they think,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: oh,
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: well,
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: this was this crazy space laser program.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: It got canceled.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: That all went away.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: And while maybe the laser part faded,
• 42:46
  what you've been saying is that this work led in some
• 42:49
  interesting directions for
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: technology that continues to this day in various forms.
• 42:54
  There was this period post-1989 where all kinds of interesting
• 42:57
  things happened.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: happen from these different groups.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: again,
• 43:03
  want to reiterate that the Aegis program with Standard Missile
• 43:08
  3 did an amazing job,
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: and it's working right now.
• 43:11
  I am really in awe of what the Standard Missile community has
• 43:15
  done with Elite Projectile.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's taken a long time,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: and at first they weren't sure that this made sense,
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: but they became advocates in the early 1990s,
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: and they've run with it,
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: and it's working.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's also,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 43:31
  another interceptor that used to be called the ground-based
• 43:34
  interceptor that I also
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: worked on.
• 43:36
  I wasn't responsible for the program management,
• 43:40
  but I supported testing of that vehicle.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the technologies that we developed for the Air Force program ended up
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: supporting the ground-based interceptor as well.
• 43:49
  But we did some significant testing of their kill vehicles at
• 43:54
  Edwards Air Force Base as well.
• 43:56
  You and I share a couple of friends who have spent decent
• 43:59
  chunks of their life
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: politicking against weapons in space.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're in an era where there's drastic increase in activity in space,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: mostly driven by commercial players.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you have so much experience in this.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: you did this work,
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: so I assume you're not hugely just anti-weapons in space,
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: but maybe you are.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts on that?
• 44:21
  What are your thoughts about where all this is going as space
• 44:24
  clearly becomes more
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: of a domain for military activity?
• 44:29
  One program that we haven't talked about that was derived from
• 44:33
  SDI is called the ASAT program.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: also called the KEASAT, Kinetic Energy ASAT program.
• 44:40
  It was a joint program office that was set up by General
• 44:44
  Moorman and run out of Huntsville.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was joint in between the Air Force and the Army and the Navy.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: It had a fly swatter.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea was that it wouldn't hit the target spacecraft,
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: but it had a veil that would be ejected with pellets on it.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that veil would crush the target satellite.
• 45:06
  And the theory was that you could destroy the other satellite
• 45:11
  without creating debris.
• 45:13
  However,
• 45:14
  it was never proven to work in the sense that I'm sure that we
• 45:19
  could kill satellites.
• 45:20
  But the big question with kinetic energy weapons for
• 45:24
  anti-satellite applications is debris.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen good examples and bad examples of that.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: There have been tests by the Chinese that create a huge mess.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were tested against a target at higher altitudes.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: The United States did not test,
• 45:43
  but used the standard missile-3 LEAP to take out a NRO
• 45:50
  spacecraft that died on birth.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was taken out just as it was re-entering.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the debris from that event was minimal,
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: and it all re-entered,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: within a couple of weeks.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: The Russians have shot down one of their own satellites.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think India has done tests along these lines.
• 46:08
  And they've demonstrated that kinetic energy anti-satellites
• 46:11
  can cause a huge
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: amount of debris,
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: and they really aren't a very good idea.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I share concerns that many people have about that.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing this work for a number of years,
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: and after the Air Force,
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: if I remember right,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: you go straight to NASA Ames,
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: or was there a break in there?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: I got a job working at NASA Ames in 2006.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd been in the US Air Force research community from 1983 until 2006.
• 46:43
  And then 2006,
• 46:44
  I started working for Pete Warden when he took over NASA Ames
• 46:50
  Research Center.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: I had also worked for him earlier.
• 46:55
  He had been the director of technology at the Strategic Defense
• 46:59
  Initiative back in 1992.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: And during that time,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: he sponsored both the leap work that we've discussed earlier,
• 47:06
  but also a series of small spacecraft called the Miniature
• 47:10
  Sensor Technology
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Integration spacecraft.
• 47:13
  These were the precursors of what we're seeing today,
• 47:17
  what we call small spacecraft.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so these were things about the size of a small fridge.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time,
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: they weren't very popular with the brass,
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: the leadership of the Air Force or NASA.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: They were frowned upon, and we were kind of pariahs.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: But now today, they've become very, very popular.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: After that time,
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: in the 2002 timeframe,
• 47:44
  Pete Worden had become the head of developmental planning at
• 47:48
  Space and Missile
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Systems Center at LA Air Force Base.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he called it something else, I can't remember now.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it was historically known as XR.
• 48:00
  So I worked for him as his chief scientist on loan from AFRL
• 48:06
  for a couple of years.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then he left the Air Force and I started doing other things online.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: in the Washington DC area.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: But when he took over Ames,
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: I applied for a job there and got a job working for him,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: setting up the small satellite activities in the Mission Design Center.
• 48:24
  All right,
• 48:25
  I'm going to take a stab at setting the stage a little bit here.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Please correct me for the things that I get wrong,
• 48:32
  but NASA Ames is this Silicon Valley NASA center that goes back
• 48:36
  many decades.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's had some tremendous highs and some lows over the years.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: Pete Worden is a brigadier general in the Air Force.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: He is an astrophysicist,
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: a scientist,
• 48:50
  and an iconoclastic type figure who had been in these various
• 48:55
  jobs in the government,
• 48:56
  has a tendency to get in trouble because he fights bureaucracy
• 48:59
  and has original
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: ideas and is something of a shock to the system.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: And
• 49:06
  He'd been basically fired from a previous job in return for
• 49:10
  taking the fall for
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: something for Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: They gave him this NASA center.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes in and he has ideas,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: some of the things you talked about,
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: about doing space a little bit differently.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Smaller, cheaper satellites, smaller, cheaper rockets.
• 49:28
  Wants to bring in some young people who were not old NASA hands
• 49:33
  who thought a bit
• 49:34
  differently and some friends that he's known along the way who
• 49:38
  think differently.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was this grand, I'm fond of all this.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote a book about it and made a movie partly about this.
• 49:48
  But it was a bold experiment to do something different with a
• 49:51
  NASA center and see
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: what could happen.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: Could you do space cheaper, better, faster?
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: I would say.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is a vaguely fair characterization.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 50:01
  What I remember is that Mike Griffin had brought Pete Worden to
• 50:07
  run NASA Ames to
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: get it back into space again.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Mike Griffin knows Pete Worden really well.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he knows that Pete Worden would run the center with
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: independent thinking and just make things happen.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: He wouldn't call up Mike every day and ask him for permission.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: He would go and make stuff happen.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what Pete did from day one.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, unfortunately,
• 50:36
  One of the very first things that Pete did was he asked me to
• 50:41
  come up with a lunar
• 50:43
  lander concept to go and land some scientific payloads on the
• 50:49
  moon and to do it
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: faster and less expensively than had ever been done before.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: This sounds like a good idea, Al.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 51:02
  and there's some legacy that I had experience with because
• 51:06
  actually when I was at
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: the Air Force,
• 51:07
  we modified one of our small kill vehicles to try to show how
• 51:13
  kill vehicle
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: technology could be used to land on the moon.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: This was called
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: ACAT,
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: and I think I've showed you a YouTube video of this,
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: where we created a lunar landscape at the hover test facility,
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: and Dave Scott,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: who actually went to the moon,
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: helped us,
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: and we actually flew around and landed on what looked like the moon,
• 51:33
  and had a little robot that came out of the kill vehicle and
• 51:36
  crawled around the moonscape.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, wow, okay, great, let's go and build a lunar lander.
• 51:41
  Now,
• 51:41
  I'd never built a lunar lander before,
• 51:43
  but I thought it was,
• 51:45
  how cool is this?
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd learnt everything there was to learn.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a big fan of history,
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: and when given a new opportunity,
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: I love to go into what's been done before.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I read everything about what had ever landed on the moon,
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: and based on that,
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: I started a project to go and do this again,
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: and do it as quickly as possible,
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: and
• 52:07
  And this was the time when SpaceX had just started with its
• 52:13
  Falcon 1 program.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're what?
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're like 2004, 2005.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: 2006.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: 2006.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: So 2006, 2007 was when this all began.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:26
  And so I came up with an approach that leveraged some of the
• 52:32
  technology from SDI.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we thought we could do this and get to the moon,
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: land on the moon,
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: all for less than 50 million.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: How much does a lunar lander usually cost?
• 52:45
  Well,
• 52:45
  there was another program at the time that I think was
• 52:50
  programmed for 5 billion.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: And no, it was a much bigger program with greater ambitions.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was going to carry a much bigger payload and do much more stuff.
• 53:02
  But the fact that it could be done as cheaply as this turned
• 53:06
  out to be a real problem.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem surfaced because when
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: The people who had the big lander,
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: who were at Marshall Space Flight Center,
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: found out that we were planning on going back to the moon for 15 million.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: They thought, wow, this could really hurt our chances for funding.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so they complained bitterly to the senator,
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: called Senator Shelby,
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: who was in charge of the NASA budget.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite person.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway,
• 53:37
  so Pete and I actually went to Luxembourg to teach at the
• 53:42
  International Space University.
• 53:44
  And we were on our way out there when Mike Griffin got a call
• 53:48
  from Senator Shelby,
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: who chewed him out and just said,
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: look,
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: you've got to stop those,
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 53:55
  warden and western they've got to be stopped right now and so
• 53:58
  mike griffin did a
• 54:00
  u-turn because he'd already heard about this and really liked
• 54:02
  this but but but he
• 54:04
  obviously had to protect his budget so he called up steve zorn
• 54:07
  so who was the
• 54:08
  acting director while we were away he was the number three
• 54:11
  person there and he
• 54:12
  called him up said steve i've got three things to tell you and
• 54:15
  steve said what
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Bad, bad, bad.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: That was the message that we got.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, can we just spell this out very clearly for some people?
• 54:27
  A lunar lander,
• 54:29
  you said 5 billion,
• 54:30
  is almost always in the billions of dollars range.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody had even...
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: conceptualize that you could do it in the tens of millions range.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: To your point,
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: the other ones might have a lot of scientific equipment to do it,
• 54:43
  but the idea was can we make one that is not in the billions of
• 54:48
  dollars range?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: Could we do things a bit different?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: NASA
• 54:52
  Because of this competition between the different centers and
• 54:56
  to maintain your budget,
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: more or less did not want to find out.
• 55:00
  Certain elements of NASA and the government didn't want to find
• 55:03
  out if you could
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: make a lunar lander for tens of millions of dollars.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the key was the Falcon 1,
• 55:10
  because that at the time had just enough launch capability to
• 55:14
  get us to the moon.
• 55:16
  And it was advertised to cost,
• 55:18
  I think,
• 55:18
  I remember 7 million or something.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, Elon was pulling numbers out.
• 55:23
  But yeah,
• 55:23
  so it was a super cheap rocket,
• 55:25
  far cheaper than anything else that was available.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, Pete was ordered to stop.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in true Pete Warden fashion, he said, yes, but we didn't stop.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: We just went undercover.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so our facility became known as Area 51.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we kept on working on the lunar lander.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: We just didn't tell anybody about it.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was not quite a shed, but it was sheddish.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was an old paint shed.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:53
  But we strung together some netting and we actually brought in
• 55:57
  the original bungee
• 55:58
  cords to hold the lunar lander so it could bounce around inside
• 56:02
  the netting.
• 56:03
  And so it married two parts of my career,
• 56:07
  dangerous sports and lunar landers.
• 56:10
  And also the Google founders came to visit and they got very
• 56:14
  excited about it.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: Will Marshall and Chris Boshhausen.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: Who started Planet Labs eventually.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: They were working on this with me and they did a great job.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: This was their first real spacecraft work because they were physicists,
• 56:28
  but they came out to work for me at Pete Warden's invitation
• 56:33
  and we were very successful.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was working and
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so when the Google founders came and saw this,
• 56:39
  they initiated what's called the Google Lunar XPRIZE because it
• 56:45
  gave them the
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: inspiration that going to the moon isn't that hard and people could,
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: should,
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: would be able to do it for tens of millions,
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: not billions.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, was the Google Lunar XPRIZE successful?
• 57:00
  Nobody won it,
• 57:01
  but it did inspire people all around the world to work on it.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: And people tried.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: People around the world tried.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: But no one ever won the prize.
• 57:13
  But I think that it spawned lots of new technology and it
• 57:18
  inspired students,
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: it inspired universities,
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: it inspired companies.
• 57:22
  And we're seeing now,
• 57:24
  like Firefly,
• 57:25
  as we're talking,
• 57:26
  is on its way to the moon.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that in some small way,
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: even though we didn't actually land on the moon,
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: we supported and we helped the new wave of commercial lunar activity.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: just part of a whole renaissance,
• 57:42
  revolution of interest and trying to do all kinds of things in
• 57:46
  space cheaper,
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: faster,
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: better.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think totally to your point.
• 57:49
  You start to see students doing projects,
• 57:52
  this idea that these things are possible.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: When I was reporting my book on Elon and SpaceX,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: you would talk to 25-year-olds and their option was basically,
• 58:01
  you've got your master's degree or your PhD and you're going to
• 58:04
  go to Lockheed or
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: Boeing and you're going to not work very fast.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't...
• 58:11
  This is not a previous generation who grew up watching the
• 58:14
  Apollo program and was
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: full of excitement.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was more like, oh, you're going to get a government job.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think what you guys were doing was part of this new era,
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: along with SpaceX and of excitement coming back to space and new ideas.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: as you've reported in your book and also in your movie,
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: in the case of Will Marshall and Chris Boshausen,
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: they then started working really with Pete Kluper,
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: although I helped a bit,
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: on what they called phone sat,
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: which they launched in rockets.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think they put up in balloons.
• 58:47
  that actually led them to start Planet Lab,
• 58:50
  which has been an extraordinary success.
• 58:52
  And they're doing amazing things for humanity by mapping the
• 58:56
  world every single day.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you had SpaceX doing cheap rockets.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: You guys were trying to change the economics of lunar landers,
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: and they were very focused on the satellite part of bringing cheap,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: modern electronics into the satellite industry,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: shrinking the size of them.
• 59:11
  And same thing,
• 59:12
  going from a billion dollars to hundreds of thousands or a
• 59:16
  couple million.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, some of their phone sats were less than $10,000.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: They used tape measures.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: They used tape measures for the antenna.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: They used tape measures.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: You got shut down a couple times on the Looter Lander,
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: and Pete Warden would keep moving you around.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about some of...
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: with the XPRIZE and what happens with this technology.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it did eventually, didn't it become an actual mission?
• 59:42
  It got supersized with,
• 59:44
  like,
• 59:44
  the heart of this did live on and got expanded into.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: our Lunar Lander project,
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: the head of science was going to give us a mission to land on the moon,
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: but he was told by microphone,
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: no,
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: do not do that.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he said, okay, then we'll turn it into a lunar orbiter.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so it became a spacecraft that went around the moon called LADEE.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: The D was dust.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we went really low around the moon to measure the dust.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we also demonstrated
• 1:00:17
  an optical laser communication system that actually counted
• 1:00:21
  individual photons.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: At the time,
• 1:00:24
  I believe it was the most efficient communication system in the
• 1:00:28
  galaxy because it
• 1:00:29
  did a gigabit or so per second from the moon back to the earth
• 1:00:34
  on a quarter of a
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: watt of laser energy.
• 1:00:36
  This particular week when we're recording this was probably the
• 1:00:40
  most prolific week
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: in commercial space history.
• 1:00:44
  You had SpaceX set up Starship,
• 1:00:47
  Blue Origin flew New Shepard for the first time.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned Firefly, which was on a...
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: SpaceX rocket that had two lunar lander missions.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: Varda had a space factory go up.
• 1:00:59
  Stokespace,
• 1:01:00
  which is another startup,
• 1:01:01
  got another $300 million for a reasonable rocket.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was a banner week.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: It looks to me like NASA's giant rocket, the SLS, with Trump coming in.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is all just Ashley Vance speaking.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think it'll probably get canceled here in the coming months.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've worked there.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: What's your view on NASA and its role in the next 10, 20 years?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: What should it be doing?
• 1:01:26
  well that's a really big question i i think that you're right i
• 1:01:31
  think that sls is
• 1:01:33
  in in risk it sounds like the new administration might cancel
• 1:01:40
  it i think that what
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: aims has done and others in the agency
• 1:01:49
  have really helped spur commercial space and i think that
• 1:01:52
  there's a role to
• 1:01:53
  continue that there are certain things that the agency can do
• 1:01:57
  really well but
• 1:01:59
  building great big rockets doesn't seem that that's that's the
• 1:02:02
  thing that that the
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: agency should focus on as much
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: working on small satellite technologies and helping the industry grow,
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: these are areas that I think NASA can really help on.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was a very measured response, Al.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to come back to something you said, though, about Pete.
• 1:02:26
  And one thing that Pete and I have shared is that we've both
• 1:02:31
  gotten into a lot of
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: trouble in our careers.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we've both been removed from positions many times.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: So Pete got removed from a lot of different positions in the Air Force.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually, he left NASA.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had the same thing.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: Both of us were very independent thinkers.
• 1:02:52
  And there have been many times when I was in the Air Force when
• 1:02:57
  I would follow a
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: path that I thought was the right path,
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: but sometimes my bosses wouldn't appreciate.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: So for example,
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: when I was talking earlier about the small spacecraft program,
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: it wasn't popular with the mainstream Air Force.
• 1:03:14
  And I was actually under instructions from my boss,
• 1:03:17
  not from Pete Warden,
• 1:03:19
  who was funding it.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: He was the funding source from SDI.
• 1:03:23
  And he actually told me,
• 1:03:25
  we need to operate this on the need to know basis.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: And your boss doesn't have a need to know.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, eventually he had to find out when we launched it.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he wasn't very, very happy about that.
• 1:03:37
  There have been other times like that when I've done things
• 1:03:41
  that I believed were
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: the right things to do,
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: but the chain of command really didn't appreciate.
• 1:03:48
  Pete and I both found ourselves in hot water by following the
• 1:03:55
  path that we thought
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: was correct at the time,
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: but the chain of command would sometimes say,
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: no,
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: no,
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: no,
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: what are you doing?
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's an age-old story.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're two of my favorite people.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're obviously incredibly smart.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: You guys try to do things in an intelligent,
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: whatever it's going to take to get the job done in the most pragmatic,
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: effective way.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: bureaucracies don't always like that.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is not news to anyone.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: through all your experience of doing this,
• 1:04:27
  do you have any words of wisdom of how institutions like NASA
• 1:04:32
  or the Air Force can
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: somehow find a way to embrace
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: the people that you want,
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: the creative thinkers,
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: and still give them a chance to do their thing.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've seen a lot of change in my life.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that that has happened.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think both in NASA and in the Air Force, there's a lot of change.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a realization,
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: I observe,
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: that particularly in the Department of Defense,
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: but more broadly speaking within the government,
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: that we can't continue what we've been doing for the last 20,
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: 30 years because we're just falling behind.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: And this is independence to Republican or Democratic administrations.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's obvious.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody has the best of intentions.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: And now I see changes coming across the board.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: Give you an example.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_01: The National Economist Office used to only build really big spacecraft.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: They're starting to look at smaller spacecraft.
• 1:05:39
  So far,
• 1:05:40
  they're really just buying data as a service,
• 1:05:43
  but it's a beginning.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there's less of a reliance across the board
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: on $5 billion spacecraft,
• 1:05:50
  there is an appreciation that we need to diversify and to look
• 1:05:56
  at what the Space
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: Development Agency is doing,
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: with proliferated architectures.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: People are realizing, hmm, this isn't crazy.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: From my perspective, I smile and say, yes, finally after 30 years.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I see change,
• 1:06:11
  and I see that people are willing to accept more of an
• 1:06:18
  independent thinking than
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: they used to in the past.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's encouraging.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: We are at a weird time.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think it used to be the,
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: whether it's the military or the Department of Energy,
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: you name it,
• 1:06:32
  the idea was things they were taking on were so big they had to
• 1:06:35
  build it themselves.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: They had the most advanced technology.
• 1:06:39
  I remember I covered the world's top supercomputers for more
• 1:06:42
  years than I care to remember.
• 1:06:44
  And they were always at some national laboratory and typical
• 1:06:49
  companies didn't have
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: anything that could compare to them.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: Today, that situation has flipped, right?
• 1:06:54
  Google,
• 1:06:54
  Amazon,
• 1:06:55
  Facebook,
• 1:06:56
  Microsoft have computing systems that I don't even think the U.S.
• 1:07:00
  government could even match if it had the resources and the
• 1:07:03
  people to try.
• 1:07:04
  And so I guess there is this adjustment of consumer world
• 1:07:07
  technology has gotten so
• 1:07:09
  the government has to find its place in this new era and really
• 1:07:12
  decide what it's
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: going to tackle on its own.
• 1:07:17
  One of the things that you got into after your Ames career were airships.
• 1:07:23
  And you are the most knowledgeable person on airships I've ever
• 1:07:27
  met by quite a margin.
• 1:07:29
  We're in this interesting time where there's some efforts to
• 1:07:32
  build new airships and
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: have a go at this technology that I think for lots of people would think.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: Back to the 30s and 40s and 20s.
• 1:07:41
  What makes airships so interesting to you and why are we
• 1:07:44
  potentially in an airship renaissance?
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: One word, energy.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember the movie?
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: Plastic.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, energy.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about energy.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so airships are the most energy-efficient form of aviation.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: Always have been.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_01: You get, in essence, from an energy perspective, free lift.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're not using energy to stay afloat.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so while they can't travel as quickly as airplanes or rockets,
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: they can travel a lot faster than ships,
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: trucks,
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: and trains.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: Not a lot faster than trains and trucks, but faster.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the most significant thing.
• 1:08:37
  But they also offer potential to operate with less
• 1:08:41
  infrastructure and give global
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: access to places that don't have regular transportation infrastructure.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like if you went to the average person on the street,
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: to the extent they know an airship,
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably the Hindenburg,
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: which is also maybe at least when I first got into this,
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: in my mind,
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: was part of the problem.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have this giant explosion.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's captured on film, kind of doomed the technology.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know the story is more complicated and nuanced than that.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: But even before we get there...
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: For people who know nothing about airships,
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was shocked at how prevalent,
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: how big they were,
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: how far they traveled in their heyday.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: Can you paint a picture of the glory days of airships and what they did?
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't realize that the world's first airline
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: called Delag was started in 1909.
• 1:09:34
  It was started by Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen and it flew all
• 1:09:40
  around Germany in
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: between 1909 and 1914.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they took up to 25 people up to a thousand nautical miles
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: After that, in 1929, the Graf Zeppelin flew around the world.
• 1:09:56
  The Brits had a program to fly people all around the British
• 1:10:01
  Empire from Canada to New Zealand.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it flew from Germany to Brazil, right?
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: It had a regularly scheduled service from Germany to Brazil.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, and it was remarkable.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was very comfortable.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Lie flat beds in 1929.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it was extraordinary.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: when you go to,
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to butcher the name of the city every time I say it,
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: but I've been to Friedrichshafen on your suggestion.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go there, they have a,
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: a replica of one of these giant airships.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unbelievable.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: there's restaurants in there,
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_00: light-out beds,
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_00: like there's little office spaces to work in.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I honestly had no idea.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even when I saw the pictures of the big ones,
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I assumed it was still sort of some people jammed into a little,
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: just some tiny little area,
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: some cabin.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost like a cruise ship in the sky.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: They were described as flying hotels.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So they took up to 100 people around the world.
• 1:11:00
  It was an extraordinary thing and very spacious,
• 1:11:05
  really quite extraordinary.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_00: How long would it take to go from Germany to Brazil?
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that long.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was, I don't know, maybe two or three days.
• 1:11:14
  And they flew quite low,
• 1:11:15
  I think about 1,000 feet above the ocean so you could see the whales.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_01: They stopped in northern Brazil, I think Recife, when they came down.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it wasn't that long.
• 1:11:28
  I don't know why this sticks in my head,
• 1:11:29
  but why was that route from Germany to Brazil?
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: But that was the main international...
• 1:11:35
  It was the first big one,
• 1:11:37
  but then they started also flying to New York and back as well.
• 1:11:42
  And then even away from some of this commercial sort of
• 1:11:45
  touristy or passenger stuff,
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: we both live in Silicon Valley.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen these pictures.
• 1:11:50
  I mean,
• 1:11:50
  on the military side,
• 1:11:51
  it wasn't just like there were one or two of these things.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the sky would have...
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_00: all kinds of airships in them.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: You showed me a picture of one that could refuel planes.
• 1:12:00
  It would catch a plane in midair,
• 1:12:02
  cycle it,
• 1:12:03
  refuel it,
• 1:12:04
  and then spit it out the other side.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, just things I had no idea about.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_01: two rigid airships were built in Akron,
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Ohio,
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: called the Akron and the Macon,
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: and they were flying aircraft carriers.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: The Macon used to come out here and flew out of Hangar 1 at Moffat Field.
• 1:12:22
  Part of the Silicon Valley legend of how this place became a
• 1:12:26
  technology company
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: hub in a lot of ways.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: NASA aims going back to, what, the 30s.
• 1:12:31
  You're starting to build these hangars for the airships you
• 1:12:34
  just mentioned to house them.
• 1:12:36
  You're recruiting engineers from universities all over the
• 1:12:39
  country who are in their
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: 20s to come work out here,
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: this starts to build,
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: in addition to some early electronics work,
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_00: and to me,
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: it's always stood out as part of building this tech energy out here.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, what does happen?
• 1:12:55
  Is the Hindenburg,
• 1:12:57
  this lore that that sort of killed airships,
• 1:12:59
  is that legitimate?
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or I'm sure there's much more to all this.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the arrival of the airplane must not have helped.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Hindenburg used hydrogen.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And since then,
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: in the modern era,
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_01: in the last 80 years,
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: maybe 90 years,
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: airships that carry people have used helium.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And helium is inert.
• 1:13:23
  There has been research in various universities to explore
• 1:13:30
  additives that would
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_01: make hydrogen less flammable,
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: but no one has proposed to use that to carry people at this time.
• 1:13:39
  Some companies are proposing to use hydrogen as a lifting gas
• 1:13:43
  for unmanned airships
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_01: to carry cargo.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard of that.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, the airships that people are on board all use helium.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so that image that you refer to of,
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_01: the humanity,
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_01: that's not going to happen with a helium gas airship.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_00: One other thing we should clear up,
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_00: which Monty Python,
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I believe,
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_00: has done a decent job on,
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_00: is the blimp versus the airship.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's not a debate.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a fact.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_00: When people have seen Goodyear blimps,
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_00: things like that,
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_00: the big difference is they do not have this rigid structure.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_00: They are what I was describing before,
• 1:14:21
  this giant lifting bag with a tiny little gondola for the
• 1:14:25
  pilots and just a couple
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: passengers to sit in.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Once you put that structure,
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: that's what lets you get to carrying lots of people,
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_00: carrying lots of cargo.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_00: you
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly correct.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Broadly speaking, there's two kinds of airships.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_01: There are rigid airships with a skeleton that defines the shape,
• 1:14:43
  and then there are non-rigid airships whose shape is defined by
• 1:14:46
  internal pressure.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the non-rigid airship,
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: which we also call a blimp,
• 1:14:52
  is basically a big balloon where the cut of the surface defines
• 1:14:57
  its shape,
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: but you've always got to keep it pressurized.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you start to lose pressure, then the whole thing folds up.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's happened.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Back in 1961,
• 1:15:07
  there was a big blimp by Goodyear that unzipped and it folded
• 1:15:12
  up and it fell out of
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: the sky.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think 18 out of 21 of the people on board died.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_01: A rigid airship has a number of individual independent gas bags.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think maybe up to 19 or 20,
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: depending upon which one you talk about,
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_01: but always a number of independent gas cells for lift.
• 1:15:32
  Okay,
• 1:15:32
  if obviously we've known about helium for a long time,
• 1:15:36
  we can solve that problem.
• 1:15:38
  Why did we go decades without there being really new takes on a
• 1:15:42
  rigid airship if it
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_00: has all these benefits that you listed out?
• 1:15:48
  When you look back at the last 80 years or 90 years,
• 1:15:54
  there have been waves of interest.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: It comes and goes.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So in the 1970s,
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_01: there were studies and conferences actually sponsored by NASA Ames,
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: along with the Navy,
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: that looked at why we should bring airships back.
• 1:16:12
  however funding was never made available and it was considered
• 1:16:16
  too risky by banks
• 1:16:18
  to fund the first one it's always been the case who's going to
• 1:16:22
  pay for the first
• 1:16:23
  one back in 2000 there was a project in germany called cargo
• 1:16:28
  lifter that raised i
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: think 500 million euros maybe a billion
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_01: But they ran out of money before they could complete the airship.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: They did build a great big hangar, which is now a tropical paradise.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the last great big airship project that happened.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, the hangar is what?
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a... It turned into a tropical paradise.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: They built a hangar.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's really big.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's maybe two or three times the size of Hangar 1 here.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And when the project stopped,
• 1:17:02
  it was sold off to a company that has converted it into a
• 1:17:06
  year-round tropical paradise.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_01: So in the middle of winter, you can go...
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's really close to Berlin.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like an amusement thing.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's an amusement thing.
• 1:17:15
  So they have,
• 1:17:16
  you know,
• 1:17:16
  like sound and they've got a fake beach and surfing and stuff.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've seen photos of this now.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge building.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so people, it comes, it goes.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: People spend some money.
• 1:17:29
  It turns out to be difficult and expensive and just nothing's
• 1:17:33
  ever reached the...
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_00: full momentum to make a real another crack at this.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk airships with people and I try to explain some of this stuff,
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_00: everyone says,
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: oh,
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: but still,
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: come on,
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_00: a plane's so much faster.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's always...
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_00: well,
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: if the airship's taking cargo,
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_00: how are you going to deal with the ballast and getting the cargo off?
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, there always seem to be more and more questions.
• 1:18:03
  I mean,
• 1:18:03
  lay out your absolutely pro case for why an airship makes sense
• 1:18:11
  and what it would do.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: when I look at the history of airships,
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_01: if all we could do that which has already been done before,
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_01: it would be spectacular.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: But with today's materials, we ought to be able to do a lot better.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_01: We ought to be able to build airships that are stronger,
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: that are less expensive to build,
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_01: less expensive to operate,
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_01: that at a minimum can take up to 100 people around the world,
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_01: if not more.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I understand that people question how we could carry cargo.
• 1:18:52
  But there are lots of ideas to address the question that you
• 1:18:55
  brought up about
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_01: unloading or offloading cargo that people are exploring today.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't rule that out.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_01: But again,
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_01: if all we could do was build the Graf Zeppelin,
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_01: that flew around the world,
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_01: if we could build today's Graf Zeppelin,
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: but make it
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_01: faster,
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_01: make it lighter,
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_01: make it stronger,
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_01: make it less expensive to build,
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: make it less expensive to operate.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_01: It would be extraordinary.
• 1:19:24
  And I didn't fully believe you until I went to Germany and flew
• 1:19:27
  in one of these.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_00: it is like,
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_00: it's such a unique experience to be in one of the...
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: You sold me because you feel...
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can open the windows.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: The world isn't rushing by you.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of feel like you're actually part of the environment.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to put into words.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It felt almost magical and so different.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in, like, every...
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Helicopters, planes, gyrocopters, you name it.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a totally unique experience.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even think most people know you can take a Zeppelin ride today.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Would you call it an American?
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, yeah.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like you've been immersed in this world and you're so into this.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_00: But surely you've run across this too,
• 1:20:14
  that people just don't seem to even have the first inkling that
• 1:20:17
  this still exists.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this has just been some of the limitations of the business.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was shocked.
• 1:20:24
  This town,
• 1:20:25
  Friedrichshafen,
• 1:20:25
  is like,
• 1:20:26
  you almost feel like you're transported in time.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the airships are going all the time.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's this museum.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's all these, like...
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a statue of Count Zeppelin in every corner.
• 1:20:35
  In fact,
• 1:20:36
  I remember you stayed at a hotel that had a Zeppelin standing
• 1:20:38
  right in front of it.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Count Zeppelin,
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_00: I fully recommend anyone should hop onto Wikipedia,
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_00: if nothing else,
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_00: and go read about this guy.
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting guy.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So he is obviously into this idea and this technology,
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: but he does what amounts to almost like the first Kickstarter campaign,
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_00: where he gets a large chunk of the populace of
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Germany to help back him in making his technology.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_00: He ends up leaving the intellectual property to this city.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and it's turned into this empire.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 1:21:12
  these patents that he had are used by both an automotive and an
• 1:21:17
  aerospace company,
• 1:21:18
  and they funnel a certain percentage of their profits back to Friedrichshafen.
• 1:21:23
  One of the technologies that was developed to support airships
• 1:21:27
  was the gearbox.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you're exactly right.
• 1:21:32
  That technology and that company was separated from Zeppelin,
• 1:21:36
  but owned by the city.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's called ZF.
• 1:21:40
  And it's a huge multinational company that is,
• 1:21:45
  in essence,
• 1:21:46
  run by the city.
• 1:21:47
  And the Lord Mayor is in charge of a foundation that oversees
• 1:21:51
  ZF and other companies.
• 1:21:54
  So they say in Friedrichshafen that the Lord Mayor has more
• 1:21:57
  employees than he has citizens.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's the chairman of the company.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's the chairman of the foundation that runs the company.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's not a chairman of the company.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's a foundation above the company.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the citizens get like vacations and schools.
• 1:22:11
  No,
• 1:22:11
  I don't think they get vacations,
• 1:22:12
  but some of the profits from ZF go into the community.
• 1:22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there are parks and it benefits the community.
• 1:22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So having studied airships for so long,
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_00: worked on the technology,
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_00: what's your prediction for 10,
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_00: 20 years?
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, should we all be expecting to see airships in the sky?
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this would please you?
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's good for humanity.
• 1:22:39
  Airships are going to provide a green transportation method
• 1:22:45
  that will help everybody.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be useful for disaster relief and humanitarian aid,
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: but it will reduce the carbon footprints of aviation.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it's not going to replace airplanes.
• 1:22:58
  People are always going to want to fly at 600 miles an hour or
• 1:23:03
  whatever an airplane can do.
• 1:23:05
  But a lot of people are going to be happy flying at 100 miles
• 1:23:08
  an hour and seeing things.
• 1:23:11
  Because right now,
• 1:23:13
  when you travel from coast to coast,
• 1:23:16
  you can't see anything from 35,000 feet.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just stuff down there.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're flying at 1,000 feet, it's different.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: As you've seen, because you've done this.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is not even part of like the propaganda or anything.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I just emotionally felt it.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was an experience I will never forget.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being so generous with your time.
• 1:23:35
  I feel like we just did the highlights of your career because
• 1:23:38
  when I talk with you
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: other times,
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: I know behind each one of these stories,
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: we told there's,
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: a hundred or a thousand.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_00: stories and layers to all this.
• 1:23:46
  But thank you so much for at least letting us indulge in some
• 1:23:50
  of the big stuff and
• 1:23:51
  just getting to know you has been one of the real pleasures of
• 1:23:54
  the last few years
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_00: for me.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you, Al.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Ashley.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you for your continued interest in all of these technologies.
• 1:24:01
  And also thank you for showing the world what has happened in
• 1:24:06
  the Silicon Valley since 2006.
• 1:24:08
  The movie that you made and the book that you wrote that
• 1:24:14
  focused on a lot of these
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: small companies,
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think was great.
• 1:24:19
  I really think that you've helped explain to the world some of
• 1:24:24
  the really exciting
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_01: developments in what people now refer to as new space.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was very kind of you.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Al.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a real honor.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Cheers.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Ashley Vance.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Our guest today was Dr. Alan Weston.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Core Memory is produced by me and David Nicholson.
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_00: The theme music is by James Mercer and John Sortland,
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: and the sound editing is by John Sortland as well.