Latest / Core Memory / Chris Kemp on Astra's Comeback, Rockets and Drones from Space

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Chris Kemp on Astra's Comeback, Rockets and Drones from Space · Core Memory

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where it's headed, rockets, AI, and drones.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: We'll actually take the drones,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: we'll put them in the rocket,
• 0:07
  and then we'll deliver them to the other side of the planet in
• 0:10
  45 minutes,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: and they will re-enter,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: and they will conduct a mission.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right, here we go, friends.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's Ashley Vance with another episode of Core Memory.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I always say they're special, and this one is extra special.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I swear,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: if you've seen the movie we made,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wild Wild Space,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: on HBO or read my book,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: God Bless You,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: When the Heavens Went on Sale,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: you will know our guest,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Kemp.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: He is the co-founder and CEO of the rocket maker Astrospace.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's the star,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: if not one of the stars from the movie and the book,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: quite a larger-than-life character.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: People have some different views on Chris.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's always happy to get into all that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you watch the movie,
• 1:12
  you know that it left off with Astra in some quite challenging
• 1:16
  financial straits.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: The company was in peril.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't even know if Astra would be around.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it is.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we have news about what Astra is doing and where it's heading.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Chris,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: as ever,
• 1:28
  was a fantastic sport and addressed all of my difficult and
• 1:33
  head-on questions.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going to enjoy the show.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: As ever, our plans for world domination are not yet complete.
• 1:41
  So please go to your favorite podcast app and give us a likey
• 1:45
  thing or a review.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And go to our YouTube channel, Core Memory.
• 1:50
  We have new episodes of our TV show covered all kinds of science,
• 1:54
  technology up.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: People seem to really love them.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'll love them too.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And with that,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: oh,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: last note,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Al Weston,
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: previous podcast guest,
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: makes a special appearance at the start of this one.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll see Al peek in or you'll hear Al peek in.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't heard that episode, you should 100% go check that out.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So with that, let's get to the show.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Chris Kemp.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Kemp, hello.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Ashley.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: How's it going?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you again.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's going well.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I see you,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm reminded that we're almost the same age,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: but you look much better than I do.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what happened to me or what happened to you.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: I can't give Brian credit either.
• 2:41
  This is all just me staying indoors working on rockets instead
• 2:45
  of being out in the sun,
• 2:46
  I think.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: whatever you've done, I chose wrong.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for doing this.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of stuff I want to cover.
• 2:55
  I think some of this will be a little newsier than we do on the
• 3:01
  usual podcast.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'll get to a couple news items here in a second.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: But...
• 3:09
  I've had a question that I wanted to ask you,
• 3:11
  which is we made this movie together.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We did a book.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: The movie,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: did very well on HBO,
• 3:19
  but I seem to get this crazy number of emails from people who
• 3:22
  see it on United.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea that people watch as many movies on United as they do.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Have you been walking the aisles on a United flight?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Run into anyone that knows you?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was saying, oh, look who just walked in, actually.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Did you hear we hired Al Weston?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think he was going to have the podcast.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Special guest.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Al Weston is appearing in the background.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think Al Weston is episode 11, I think.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is for you, Ashley.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're just bringing it all together here.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Cheers.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was,
• 3:59
  I was actually coming back from New York and the guy in the
• 4:01
  security line next to
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: me said,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: are you the guy in the,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: in the movie from my,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: from my last flight?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I've, I've literally seen it playing, um,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: while on flights.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's a bigger platform than HBO, as far as I can tell.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty nuts.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've been, like, shocked.
• 4:18
  I always,
• 4:19
  every time I'm on a United flight,
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  I walk down the aisle to see who's watching it.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Has the experience
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I mean, I'm in the movie, but only, you know, as like a pundit.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it weird to be in a movie?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's the experience been like?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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  I think the thing is you guys put together a really
• 4:41
  entertaining story for what
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  SPEAKER_01: might otherwise be something that,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: is a pretty, you know, insider thing in the space industry.
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  And I think the team and the director did a fantastic job of
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  making that really entertaining.
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  And part of that,
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  of course,
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  is cutting out all of the really boring stuff.
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  SPEAKER_01: And,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: I definitely,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: there's a lot of parts about this that are boring,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: and those parts aren't in there.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Only the most ridiculous things are in there.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I equate it to a funhouse mirror where
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 5:11
  you're seeing this very distorted version of me where I think a
• 5:14
  lot of the things
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: that I was throwing in there to be funny made it appear that,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: that's how I am all the time.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry to say I'm not quite that entertaining all the time,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: but it was a really great,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: it was a great watch.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're high energy, man.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think you're entertaining.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: and I know you give me grief about one part of the movie in particular,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: which happens to bring us to some of the news we want to talk about.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: But what is your main, your primary objection to the film?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think, you know, you definitely told a story about an underdog.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's fair.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this stuff is really hard.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as the movie came to a close, we were having a really rough time.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think your last words were, it just didn't work out.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I had asked you to add the word yet,
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  because we were very much at an inflection point where I think
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  there were a lot of people,
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  SPEAKER_01: employees and investors and customers,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: who were quite excited about the next chapter.
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  And so I guess what this is about is about the next chapter
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  that really starts at
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  SPEAKER_01: the last frame of the movie.
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  Let me set the stage for people who haven't seen the movie or
• 6:26
  who don't follow space.
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  But you guys are a rocket launch company and you also make
• 6:33
  engines for satellites.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you've been at this for a few years.
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  SPEAKER_00: When you first started out, you were trying to make
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  SPEAKER_00: really be the first company ever to mass-produce rockets,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: turn it from this art,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: this handmade craft,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: into having a proper assembly line of rockets.
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  SPEAKER_00: You guys were trying to go very fast,
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  SPEAKER_00: make rockets much less expensive,
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  SPEAKER_00: to launch them often,
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  SPEAKER_00: and to put lots of satellites into space.
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  SPEAKER_00: successful in many ways on this quest.
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  SPEAKER_00: You guys did go extremely fast.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've been to Orbit.
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  SPEAKER_00: You raised a lot of money at some point by going public.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then you guys have done what few others have.
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  SPEAKER_00: You managed to take the company
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  private again and you've been heading towards this rocket four
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  which is is the next
• 7:22
  generation rocket and and we kind of leave the movie um rocket
• 7:27
  four is not finished
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  and and you guys have gone you're in some financial woes at the
• 7:34
  end of the movie so
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  why don't you update us on on the current state of astro and
• 7:38
  what's going on
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we just couldn't continue as a public company.
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  SPEAKER_01: The overhead and the cost was high.
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  The stock was trading so low,
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  we couldn't raise enough capital to keep it going.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so I really,
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: as the CEO of the company,
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: as the founder of the company,
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  this was really hard for me because there wasn't really a
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  precedent for the founder
• 7:59
  of a company to take the company public and then the founder of
• 8:02
  the company to then
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: take the company private again.
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  I didn't sell a single share of stock the entire time the
• 8:08
  company was public,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: so I didn't have the financial resources to do this myself.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so we kind of invented a whole new
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: way to do this.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of coined the term FLAC,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: founder-led acquisition company,
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: where we created the inverse of a SPAC,
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: which is we created a private company.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: We set up the capital structure of that.
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  SPEAKER_01: We did a series A,
• 8:31
  and we were able to raise about $80 million through this period
• 8:36
  to both fund the
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: public company,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: buy out all the shareholders,
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: pay all the transaction fees,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: take out all the secured lenders,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: finance the company,
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: and then put money on the balance sheet.
• 8:45
  And we were able to do that to allow the company to both
• 8:50
  provide an exit for the shareholders,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: albeit a small fraction of what many invested,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: but something versus a bankruptcy or something.
• 9:01
  I tried to help the board investigate all alternatives
• 9:04
  strategically to this.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we were just one option,
• 9:07
  and the board independently looked at all sorts of different
• 9:10
  strategic options,
• 9:11
  and I gave them my full support on whatever would be best for shareholders.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we were able to get the company private.
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  And now the company and the employees,
• 9:20
  and we continue to deliver for our customers.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: We then subsequently won a big DOD contract.
• 9:26
  And then we subsequently have gotten the company to have a
• 9:31
  profitable satellite engine business.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we're taking those profits.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're reinvesting them back in the launch business.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we're now in a really good position.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: We can continue to do this until we put a rocket back on the pad,
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: even if we don't raise any more capital.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's a remarkable position to be in given where we were a year ago.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to dig into a lot of this because it is an amazing story.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: We saw Al Weston pop in the background for a minute.
• 10:00
  He was just hired,
• 10:01
  I think,
• 10:03
  if my sourcing is correct,
• 10:04
  within the last month or so.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's now in charge of the rocket program, I think.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Correct, yes.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and Al was somebody you saw in the movie.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I worked with him at NASA,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: a mentor,
• 10:18
  really someone who has decades of experience working in
• 10:23
  national security space and
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: was most recently working,
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: as you reported,
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I believe originally,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: as a CEO of LTA,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: which was an airship company.
• 10:32
  And we were very lucky to have him come to join us to lead us
• 10:37
  back to the pad.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I've seen you tweet the goal is,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: are you saying kind of early next year to do a launch?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to do a launch.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to try to get as much testing done this year as possible.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: We've actually, with this launch, we've partnered with the Space Force.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the work that we're doing is overseeing a lot of testing,
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the reviews that we do of the different phases of development.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're actually sitting in the room with a bunch of Space Force people.
• 11:06
  Their objective is to have this be a much more reliable system
• 11:11
  than the previous version.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's taking more time.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of course,
• 11:16
  we've been very thoughtful about every penny and every dollar
• 11:19
  we've invested in
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: this because we can't
• 11:21
  We can't invest so much that we put the company in a difficult
• 11:24
  financial position.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Since you guys started a few years ago, the rocket landscape has evolved.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 11:32
  you guys came around in the early part of what was a million
• 11:38
  flowers blooming with
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: all kinds of rocket startups.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: People had different approaches to what they were doing.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: To your credit,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think you guys have always been very consistent in your objective,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: which again was to mass produce rockets,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: keep them
• 11:54
  cheap is probably not the best word,
• 11:55
  but as cheap as possible and to launch often.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then you also had this different approach,
• 12:02
  which is to have the infrastructure really be able to move in
• 12:07
  shipping containers
• 12:07
  so that you're very flexible on where you can launch from to
• 12:11
  not have a lot of people.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to see how this has played out because we had
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: a ton of rocket startups.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them now have gone away.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them have run into financial problems and really,
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a pretty unbiased take.
• 12:30
  I mean,
• 12:31
  we've got kind of SpaceX and Blue Origin on this bit to the mid-range,
• 12:38
  higher end.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: SpaceX, if they do Starship, on the very high end with a huge rocket.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: You've got Rocket Lab and Firefly and possibly Relativity,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: which has just been saved by Eric Schmidt,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: maybe in kind of the mid-range.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Mood Range,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: and then as far as I saw it,
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: you guys' main competitor for a while was ABL,
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: which also wanted to be very mobile and have these shipping containers.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: They've run out of money and they've changed.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're making missiles now, I think.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you pull this off,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: you guys end up as like the only player,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: unless I'm missing someone,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: the only player.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I see...
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I see also Relativity as building a very large rocket.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I see that kind of in the same class.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's larger than Falcon 9, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's in that kind of Starship class.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: You've got New Glenn in that Starship class and Starship.
• 13:35
  And so I think there's three really potentially major players
• 13:38
  now that Eric has
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: stepped in at Relativity on the large vehicle side.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then Neutron, of course, is making a bid for something in between.
• 13:44
  And then I think Firefly has a couple of different rockets
• 13:47
  they're simultaneously working on.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we've really just focused.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And if I've learned anything here, its focus is everything.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And these are incredibly complex systems.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: We did rocket one, two, three, and this is four.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 13:59
  if we had put all of our energy into a one-ton class vehicle
• 14:02
  from the beginning,
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: we'd be fine.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: But we realized that the satellites that Planet was building in 2015,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: 16,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: 17,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: when we started a company,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: were not the big...
• 14:16
  portion of the market that would be driving the addressable
• 14:21
  market that we needed to address.
• 14:22
  So the satellites were increasingly looking like they were 500
• 14:25
  kilograms or 600 kilograms.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you look at Kuiper,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: you look at the latest generation of Starlink satellites,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: you look at Telesat,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: you look at the SDA's transport and tracking layer satellites.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: 90% of the satellites are 500 kilograms plus now.
• 14:40
  So we needed a rocket that we either had to go build another
• 14:43
  starship like
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: everybody else,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: or we said,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 14:45
  there's utility in being able to replace a couple of satellites
• 14:48
  in a constellation,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: or there's remainder problems.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you're launching on New Glenn and...
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: starship and relativity,
• 14:56
  then you are going to have a remainder problem because these
• 14:58
  have different capacities.
• 14:59
  And so maybe you want to be able to put up a few more
• 15:01
  satellites in this plane or that plane.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so we always felt that that was useful.
• 15:05
  What ended up happening with the DoD was we realized that maybe
• 15:07
  putting satellites
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: in orbit wasn't the only market.
• 15:10
  And maybe actually putting drones in the rocket and delivering
• 15:13
  them back on Earth is a market.
• 15:16
  And we started to realize that the mobility of our system was
• 15:19
  something we should
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: really embrace.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so let's make the rocket as large as possible,
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: but still small enough to fit in a shipping container.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And let's make sure the entire spaceport can pack up into containers.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so we can literally put,
• 15:31
  imagine hundreds of spaceports and imagine being able to deploy
• 15:35
  those anywhere.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we looked at the Patriot missile system,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: we said,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: wow,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: there's 1300 Patriot missile launchers
• 15:42
  and typically organized in batteries of four to eight in 18
• 15:46
  different countries in
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: over 100 locations.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's the model for Astra.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do we give every country sovereign access to space?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't do it with a star base.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's not where you start, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: You start just like an airport starts with a small airstrip.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: You start with Astra,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: and then that's what you do to get space access,
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: and then you can,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: as you start to see,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: as the decades go on,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: maybe there's star bases everywhere,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: but we're the first,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: we're the Cessna that lands on the airstrip,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: to get your country access to space.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of interesting things in there.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just to give people some historical background,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: the Department of Defense,
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think since about the 1950s or 60s,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: has dreamed of this idea of responsive space where there's a conflict.
• 16:36
  or anything you're interested in that's going on and you want
• 16:39
  to put up a satellite
• 16:40
  on short notice that's that's orbiting around a particular
• 16:45
  location it's um i don't
• 16:47
  know if it's comical or sad or just the way it is this dream
• 16:51
  has been alive for all
• 16:53
  these years they still sort of have it really pulled it off for
• 16:56
  a while it looked
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: like the falcon one spacex's
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: first rocket was meant to be to,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:01
  DARPA funded a lot of that and it was meant to serve that need
• 17:04
  and then SpaceX
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: changed gears and went big.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: With Space Force being behind you guys,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: the DoD being behind you guys,
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: obviously that fits into this.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the drone stuff,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: is that still kind of the heart of the agenda that the U.S.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: wants to see?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it is.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think you look at what space from a logistics standpoint can do.
• 17:29
  You know,
• 17:31
  we right now,
• 17:31
  the way I look at this is go back thousands of years.
• 17:34
  At some point we discovered that you could move things on water
• 17:39
  by building ships
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: and that transformed civilization.
• 17:41
  Right now we had cities on ports where you could deliver things
• 17:45
  and trade and
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: military strength was based on the superiority of your navy.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then we invented the internal combustion engine.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: We started moving jeeps and tanks and things.
• 17:55
  We would land the tanks on the beaches with the ships and then
• 17:58
  the airplane.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so then that changed everything.
• 18:01
  Now we could have air bases and we could basically project
• 18:04
  force using airplanes.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: But you still had the range of an internal combustion-powered airplane.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then we had aircraft carriers.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so now if you look at the defense budget,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: which is,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: better part of a trillion dollars a year,
• 18:18
  Most of that budget is about projecting millions of people in
• 18:23
  hundreds of locations
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: in airplanes so that you can project force.
• 18:27
  Imagine if you had millions of drones in thousands of rockets
• 18:31
  that you could launch
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: from hundreds of locations,
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: both in the United States and at our allies.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't need that anymore.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't need a $13.5 billion aircraft carrier.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't need airplanes with pilots.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: You could literally put a million drones
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: anywhere you needed them to do surveillance or what have you,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: globally,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: without having a trillion dollars a year of force projection.
• 18:55
  And maybe that's decades from now,
• 18:58
  but that's where it's headed,
• 18:59
  rockets,
• 18:59
  AI,
• 19:00
  and drones.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And what you're able to do with rockets,
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: AI,
• 19:03
  and drones is going to exceed what you're going to be able to
• 19:06
  do with $100 million
• 19:07
  airplanes and $13 billion aircraft carriers and military bases
• 19:10
  you're operating all
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: over the world.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And are the drones in this vision...
• 19:16
  Separate from what you guys are doing,
• 19:17
  or you're talking about using rockets to deliver drones?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Deliver drones.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so we want a contract to demonstrate this.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: So this is this DoD contract where we'll actually take the drones,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: we'll put them in the rocket,
• 19:31
  and then we'll deliver them to the other side of the planet in
• 19:33
  45 minutes,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: and they will re-enter,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: and they will conduct a mission.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we're partnering with Andrel on this.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine being able to do that at scale.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: The rocket goes into space,
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: the drones are its payload,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: and then the rocket— I actually had missed this one,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: shamefully,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: because— So the rocket lets go to the payload,
• 20:02
  and then what are the mechanics of how the drones actually get
• 20:05
  to where they're
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: supposed to go?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: so the rocket would enter an orbital trajectory,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: probably not a ballistic trajectory,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: because you wouldn't want to accidentally start World War III.
• 20:14
  And then you would have a reentry vehicle that would be capable
• 20:17
  of doing a Mach 15
• 20:20
  reentry and travel thousands of kilometers off the nominal
• 20:24
  orbital trajectory.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then you would pop a parachute,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: and then the drones would deploy,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: and then they would conduct a mission.
• 20:31
  So you would have tremendous operational freedom,
• 20:33
  not necessarily above where you were orbiting.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is nuts.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I should know this.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the first mission with the new rocket.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: It will not be the first, but it'll be, I think, the third or fourth.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that is exciting.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you're talking about spaceports all over the world,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: there's this huge part of me that thinks,
• 21:07
  any country that wants to be a space-faring nation should have
• 21:10
  the rights to do that,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: and it's exciting and it's part of
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: doing what's right for your territory and your citizens.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: the United States,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:21
  has lots of feelings about who has these types of machines in
• 21:27
  their country.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: that vision that you were laying out of dozens or hundreds of spaceports,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: how does that play out logistically?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a question,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: you go back to how aviation got started in this country,
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: and you look at the pioneers of the early aviation industry,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Orville and Wilbur Wright really pioneered flight,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: but then we saw Howard Hughes,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: and we saw Boeing,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: and we saw Douglas.
• 21:54
  These companies all created the real foundation of the
• 21:58
  commercial aviation industry,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: and we saw that really take off in America.
• 22:01
  And now we see globally the standards that we use across the
• 22:06
  entire planet
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: largely being driven by that innovation.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: The Internet is the same thing.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: We saw that innovation and that investment.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Our country made the investment,
• 22:15
  and now the standards that derive the Internet are used all
• 22:20
  over the world.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think we have an opportunity now, Ashley, to pioneer space.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Will there be American rockets?
• 22:26
  ITAR makes this very challenging because if you start to build
• 22:29
  spaceports and
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: operate rockets outside of America,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: it's very hard.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: But a rocket in a shipping container
• 22:36
  It doesn't necessarily have to lose,
• 22:38
  you don't have to lose control of it.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: You can secure it and then you can operate it.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: and you can launch it.
• 22:44
  And I think if there is a way to ensure that American space
• 22:47
  technology versus
• 22:51
  Chinese or Russian or Indian technology is what the rest of the
• 22:56
  world uses,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Astra is that,
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: and it takes a decade.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you give anybody a billion dollars,
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: they can either burn a hole in the ground or potentially succeed at this.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: But no amount of money
• 23:08
  is going to give you a working operational rocket system uh in
• 23:11
  less than a decade
• 23:12
  that's my that's my experience for people who have been lucky
• 23:16
  enough not to
• 23:17
  encounter itar it's a it's a law that governs u.s uh military
• 23:23
  systems and and as it
• 23:25
  makes um like when rocket lab was trying to start in new
• 23:29
  zealand they had to go to
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: some pretty great lengths even to allow the u.s to
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: let them exist to take US investment, things like that.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: New Zealand is in five eyes,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: the most favored status,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: and so other countries,
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: it's been a problem historically.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: With this vision,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: as you present it,
• 23:51
  we're heading to a world where you mentioned the satellites are
• 23:56
  a bit larger maybe
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: than we thought as we're entering this age of
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: instead of 1,000 or 2,000 satellites in orbit of tens of thousands.
• 24:09
  Are you going to focus mostly on these pioneering new types of
• 24:14
  uses for your rocket,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: or do you think the bulk of your business is still
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: servicing and replacing, replenishing these existing constellations?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's dual use, right?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think that both drive lots of demand.
• 24:30
  If you are flying thousands of satellites in a constellation
• 24:32
  and you have the
• 24:33
  ability to replace satellites and upgrade and augment planes as
• 24:39
  needed from a
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: capacity standpoint,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: that's going to be more efficient than just over-provisioning the entire
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: constellation by 5%,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 24:46
  Because that's hundreds of satellites that you're having to pay
• 24:49
  for launches and
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: pay for hardware for.
• 24:51
  SpaceX is obviously just continuously flying and upgrading and
• 24:56
  replenishing
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: But every constellation will not have that luxury.
• 25:00
  They're not going to have the capital that SpaceX has to just
• 25:03
  over-provision
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: everything all the time and continue to iterate.
• 25:07
  Many of the other constellations are being a lot more
• 25:09
  thoughtful about capacity planning.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we can really help.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: let's not assume that every constellation is going to meet a homogenous,
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: vertically integrated constellation.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think in the early days of the internet,
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: we saw AOL,
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: CompuServe build vertically integrated networks where
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the infrastructure was owned and operated by one company.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: where we are today with Starlink and with Kuiper,
• 25:33
  where you have incredibly deep-pocketed companies that are able
• 25:36
  to own and operate
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: everything end-to-end as a service.
• 25:40
  But I think what countries will increasingly want is a model
• 25:43
  much more akin to the
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: traditional telecommunications model,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to want to own and operate satellites,
• 25:49
  just like you own and operate your fiber and your cellular and
• 25:53
  your other data centers.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: When Microsoft Azure and cloud services enter a country,
• 25:59
  the country asks for the data center to be local so that the
• 26:02
  laws of that country
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: can govern
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: the data stored in that country.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think we're going to start to see a much more heterogeneous
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: standards-based constellation evolve here in the next decade.
• 26:13
  And those countries will want to probably launch and control
• 26:16
  access to space.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: So if something,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: is able to prevent them from replacing those satellites,
• 26:22
  they're going to want to have a launch system capable of
• 26:25
  launching a couple of
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: dozen satellites pretty quickly.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super curious about how all this plays out.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: As things currently stand,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: SpaceX has moved so fast with Starlink,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think faster maybe than SpaceX even assumed.
• 26:41
  Definitely faster,
• 26:42
  I think,
• 26:42
  than any regulators or countries were prepared for.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Incredibly impressive, to be honest.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:50
  It is because nothing goes fast in space,
• 26:52
  and this was like no small feat.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: They've got this massive constellation,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: OneWeb,
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: which started almost exactly at the same time as SpaceX,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: has gone through huge financial gyrations,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: has been acquired.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: SpaceX is a really interesting concept.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a US telecommunications company,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: but it's really,
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: to me,
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: the first global telecommunications company in that,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: yes,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: other countries can choose to block its service,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: but it's now serving dozens of countries,
• 27:29
  whereas normally you've got AT&T in the US and Vodafone in the
• 27:34
  UK and things get
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: divvied up.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: You have to figure China will build at least one, if not two of these.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: The US with Kuiper is already heading towards two, if not more.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then it becomes a real question.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Europe has this
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: legacy through OneWeb now,
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: and you quickly get to the scenario where it's like,
• 27:59
  who is going to actually be willing to put up the billions of
• 28:02
  dollars to fund one
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: of these things?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Does Russia want one?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: South America, what are they going to do?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're just going to use third-party stuff.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: I actually buy into the scenario that you lay out,
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: whereas it seems like there is room for some kind of,
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the world will accept SpaceX just running this whole thing.
• 28:23
  Yeah,
• 28:23
  and by the way,
• 28:23
  SpaceX is doing a great job,
• 28:25
  but it isn't about SpaceX.
• 28:26
  It's about there being a more open and standards-based constellation,
• 28:30
  right?
• 28:30
  Just like the Internet is the Internet because China's on the
• 28:34
  Internet and Russia's
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: on the Internet.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's TCPIP.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody had an alternative to TCPIP, right?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Microsoft had an alternative
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sun had an alternative.
• 28:43
  But no one company could control the internet because that
• 28:48
  wouldn't work for so
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: many other countries.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think we just haven't gotten there yet with space.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think with these satellites,
• 28:53
  we need standards to evolve that allow a satellite to point a
• 28:56
  laser at another
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: satellite and form a network connection.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And to have that be something that can be done dynamically,
• 29:04
  the satellites are all traveling tens of thousands of miles an
• 29:05
  hour relative to
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: each other.
• 29:07
  So the technology hasn't yet,
• 29:09
  hasn't existed until now to make this possible.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: And now there's no market will,
• 29:13
  because you've got a couple of folks that are enjoying their
• 29:15
  dominant position.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so like today,
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: the SpaceX is not,
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: even if you have another communications satellite up there,
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: it's not sharing data with your network.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly not if they don't want it to.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: For people who don't know,
• 29:36
  you have this background of being into technology since you
• 29:43
  were a high schooler,
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: if not before that,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: of doing startups during the dot-com boom era,
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: of becoming the technology executive at NASA,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: and you really
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: reshaped and modernized NASA's IT infrastructure.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: You did a lot of stuff around open source software,
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: started the OpenStack project,
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: which has to be one of the bigger,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: more recent things from NASA that's carried on throughout the world.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know you've always been in the open source software.
• 30:17
  Is that what's informing some of your thinking around where
• 30:20
  this is heading?
• 30:22
  If you read the prospectus and the shareholder letter I wrote
• 30:25
  when we took the
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: company public,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: we didn't take the company public just to make rockets.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Arguably, that was what happened.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: We tried to do too much.
• 30:33
  and we were unable to continue to raise capital to fund some of
• 30:36
  the other things
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: that we wanted to do,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: and we had to go back and focus.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're now back a private company, much more efficient.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get back to the pad once you can get to space.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Rockets are just the delivery trucks to space.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the question is, once you can get there, what do you do?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And what value can you create?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: The value at SpaceX is in Starlink.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so the question is, can we create something valuable
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: that our rockets can deliver to space that builds on that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're just,
• 31:06
  we're in the extremely early days here of the value you can
• 31:10
  produce from space.
• 31:11
  And SpaceX is,
• 31:13
  what,
• 31:13
  a quarter of a trillion dollar company now as a private company.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: I love being a private company because it's just so efficient.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: the overhead of everything we had to do to operate a public company that
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: manufactures hardware was incredibly costly.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it created a lot of
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: not only a lot of expense that we couldn't maintain,
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: but it really slowed us down,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: and we're going fast again.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote about this in my book.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: When you guys all went public during this back craze, I was...
• 31:42
  I was worried about all you guys and how this would play out
• 31:45
  because the rocket
• 31:45
  business is an unusual business and it usually takes place in
• 31:50
  private and I don't
• 31:53
  think Joe Trader on the internet knows how to judge a rocket
• 32:00
  not being successful
• 32:02
  on a launch and what goes into this and the normal cadence
• 32:07
  these things take.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: I knew you guys would all be
• 32:11
  it was going to be it was going to be intense as the public
• 32:14
  tried to wrap their
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: heads around around this business do you
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: When you look back,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: it sounded like you got all this money by going public,
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: and that was good because it helped one of your central goals,
• 32:31
  which was to produce this mass manufacturing factory for
• 32:35
  rockets that we haven't seen.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was your biggest lesson, that you felt like you took too much on?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been curious to ask you this.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you could do it over again, what would you do different?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the heart of my question.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think you look at, we had a backlog of launches.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: We had over 50 launches that we had sold.
• 32:58
  And so on one hand,
• 32:59
  Rocket 3 could potentially continue to deliver on these launches.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Our team went off to start manufacturing Rocket 3s.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think we had a dozen of them on the production line.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: But we also knew what was coming.
• 33:12
  We knew that the communications constellations were driving the
• 33:16
  requirement
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: well beyond the 100 kilogram capacity that Rocket 3 could perform.
• 33:21
  So would we continue to invest in Rocket 3,
• 33:24
  but then lose the overall market?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because we knew we were selling satellite engines to all these companies.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we knew what the satellites were.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: All the satellites were 500 kilogram satellites.
• 33:34
  And so the team started to work on Rocket 4 while we continued
• 33:38
  to launch Rocket 3s.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you saw what the result of that was.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: We had four commercial launches.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Two failed.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Two were successful.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's not good enough.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we knew that we had a choice to make.
• 33:48
  We could either double down on Rocket 3 and try to make it more reliable,
• 33:53
  but ultimately fail.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Or we could stop that program,
• 33:58
  realize that the speed with which we brought that product to
• 34:01
  market was one of the problems,
• 34:03
  and we'd have to go back and design margin in and do a lot of
• 34:08
  major redesign for that.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: But to what end?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: We would lose the market if we put more years into that.
• 34:16
  or we'd have to keep launching and continue to have launch
• 34:19
  failures cause the
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: shareholders to continue to be very unhappy with us.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that wasn't an option either.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we were in a really tough spot.
• 34:26
  And so what we chose to do was stop spending money on a program
• 34:30
  that was causing
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: launch failures to cause our customers to lose trust in us,
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: focus on delivering the engines to our customers,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: because we had sold hundreds of satellite engines,
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: and then really focus all of our energy on Rocket 4.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was the playbook we ran.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: We also had over $100 million we invested in this factory.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: I like to use the Model 3 as an example.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the Model 3, that is a beautiful machine.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: It is both inexpensive but also very reliable.
• 34:58
  You don't have to equate something being simple and inexpensive
• 35:03
  with being unreliable.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: What we aim to do is build a very simple rocket,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: but design it so that it can be produced on a production line at scale.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the problem is you have a chicken and egg.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have the money to build the production line or not?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can design a Model 3 to be stamped out on gigapresses,
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: but if you can't afford a gigapress,
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: then this is just a piece of paper.
• 35:23
  And so what we did do,
• 35:24
  and I'm proud of this,
• 35:25
  is we did follow through on the investments
• 35:28
  needed to actually deliver the rocket that we had designed,
• 35:31
  which is rocket four.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so as you see the tanks that we've been testing stages,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: they've been passing qual,
• 35:38
  which means that those exact stages are going to be made on the
• 35:42
  exact equipment
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: with the exact manufacturing processes that we're using.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that thing can make a rocket a day.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
• 35:48
  And so now we're a company that has made the capital
• 35:52
  investments needed to drive
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: the cost of the rocket down.
• 35:56
  We just need to finish all of the development and testing of
• 36:00
  the thing to make sure
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: that it is reliable when we launch it again.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: When we first met,
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: and again,
• 36:07
  I actually give you tons of credit for this because I think
• 36:09
  it's the right way to
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: think about things.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you wanted to make rockets faster than anybody had done before.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: There becomes this...
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: issue that I've seen a lot of companies do,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: where it's just,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: you keep over engineering it,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: engineering it,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: you never fly it.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's, it's like, it's never going to be perfect.
• 36:26
  And,
• 36:27
  and this tends to create some of these massive delays in the
• 36:30
  aerospace industry.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I really liked your approach.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: The,
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: it seems like over time though,
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: now you've swung back a bit and it's like,
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: okay,
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: we,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: we were
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: moving too fast, we need to test more.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like that fights your inner personality.
• 36:49
  I'm so curious about your thinking on this,
• 36:52
  if it's evolved,
• 36:54
  how you've come to accept this.
• 36:57
  I think the pendulum did swing back the other direction a
• 37:00
  little bit,
• 37:00
  but then we hired Al.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sure what we're going to end up with is something in the middle.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's two ways to fail.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can basically have flight failures or you can fail to fly.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say 99% of companies that tackle something this ambitious,
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: they just fail to ever fly anything.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: They run out of resources before they ever even put anything on the pad.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's a failure mode.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very real one.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: You waste everybody's time and money.
• 37:28
  So what we did is we did what basically SpaceX is doing now
• 37:32
  with Starship.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: We had five launches and then we got to orbit.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we got to orbit in five years.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, I believe, the fastest that that's ever been accomplished.
• 37:42
  The problem was is we learned that if you take that design work
• 37:48
  and you don't think
• 37:49
  about all the potential failure mode effects and you don't
• 37:53
  design all the margins
• 37:54
  in evenly and have the test coverage applied consistently
• 37:57
  across that system,
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: that stuff takes time.
• 38:01
  I think someone once said,
• 38:03
  physics doesn't care about how much money you have.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: But engineering does, right?
• 38:06
  And when you have a bit more money,
• 38:09
  what you do is you spend more time doing analysis.
• 38:11
  You spend a bit more time making sure that you've sufficiently
• 38:13
  tested everything.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't have escapes, quality escapes.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can spend more money on quality control,
• 38:21
  on supplier quality management to make sure that the thing that
• 38:23
  you built is the
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: same thing as the thing you built before.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're doing, right?
• 38:27
  We're trying to strike that balance correctly with Rocket 4 so
• 38:32
  that we have
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: something that is both relatively inexpensive.
• 38:34
  We probably put about a quarter of a billion dollars into this
• 38:36
  thing so far,
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: which is not as much as other programs.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think Neutron is, they're about three quarters of a billion in.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think Starship is six or seven billion in.
• 38:46
  So,
• 38:47
  you know,
• 38:47
  this is still a very inexpensive Rocket program as Rocket
• 38:50
  programs go.
• 38:51
  But unlike,
• 38:52
  say,
• 38:52
  Falcon 1 or unlike Rocket 3,
• 38:54
  it's not a $100 million program.
• 38:55
  So we needed to dial up the rigor and dial up the analysis and
• 39:01
  dial up some of the
• 39:02
  engineering investment so that what we had coming out of this
• 39:05
  thing is a much more
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: reliable system.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we've been trying to do.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I care about in the end.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: So was that just kind of like a tough lesson to learn?
• 39:16
  Was aerospace harder or different than you thought it was going
• 39:20
  to be going in?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe it was the only path, right?
• 39:23
  Because if we had gone slower,
• 39:25
  maybe we would have had a failure to launch.
• 39:28
  So it's not clear if you go back and you make different
• 39:32
  decisions that the outcome
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: would have been better than this one.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Might have been.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly could have imagined different decisions,
• 39:39
  different allocations of resources at different times where we
• 39:43
  could have avoided
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: certain failure modes.
• 39:46
  But we would have had that overall issue of under-investing up
• 39:50
  front in the design
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: and the analysis and the rigor.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing you can do is what Jeff Bezos did,
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: which,
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: and I complimented him on his success.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: 25 years and 25 billion in, he nailed it the first time, you know?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And...
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's another way to do it.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's how NASA does it, right?
• 40:08
  Where failure is not an option and you're willing to invest
• 40:11
  whatever it takes.
• 40:13
  But what you can't do is kind of what we did and frankly what
• 40:17
  SpaceX did in the
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: early days and expect the thing that you do coming out of that,
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: the Falcon 1 that worked,
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: you don't want to go make hundreds of those,
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: You do need to do what SpaceX did, which is go and
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: take everything you've learned and go do Falcon 9.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they fortunately had NASA support with the $500 million COTS program.
• 40:36
  We had the support of public markets at that time where we were
• 40:40
  able to raise $500
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: million from public markets.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we did our best to try to make that work.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, we just couldn't in that construct.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we saved the company.
• 40:50
  But we,
• 40:50
  of course,
• 40:51
  didn't save much of the shareholder value that was invested at
• 40:54
  that point.
• 40:55
  I've given Blue Origin a little grief online over the years
• 41:00
  because it does seem to
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: have taken an awfully long time.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: But credit to them, it's getting interesting now.
• 41:06
  They're hitting their stride and it doesn't seem like Jeff's
• 41:09
  going to pull back on
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: investing anytime soon.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: To some of your last points,
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: ABL,
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's lots of people listening to this who aren't rocket nerds,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: but they came out as hot shit.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: was like some SpaceX veterans, some kind of new space veterans.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they were gonna,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: I always heard like through the rumor mills,
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: like they really know what they're doing.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna nail this thing.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: They had problems on their first launches.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the time they had issues,
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: the,
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: the financial markets had changed a lot and,
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: and,
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: they,
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: they have
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: pivoted hard.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're,
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: like I said before,
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: kind of a missile heading in the direction of being a missile maker now.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think anyone who's read my book or watched the movie,
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: they always take away,
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: and everyone I know who knows you just says,
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: you're driven,
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: you will never quit.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is miraculous that you guys were
• 42:14
  were going private at roughly the same time as as abl was
• 42:20
  hitting our times
• 42:21
  relativity was hitting our times and you know to go find
• 42:25
  another 80 million dollars
• 42:27
  and people to buy in to what is a extremely high risk business
• 42:33
  um i mean it's kind
• 42:35
  of crazy in some ways how did you what so you gave them the
• 42:39
  pitch you gave us about
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: where this is all all heading are you
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: How did you pull it off?
• 42:49
  I think there were a couple of things that were really unique
• 42:52
  about our situation.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: One was we had a business, right?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: We had customers that were relying on Astra for the satellite engines,
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: and not a small number of them and not an insignificant set of them.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were building... We should explain that business real quick.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 43:10
  So the setup there is when we went public,
• 43:12
  literally the day we went public...
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: rang the bell on NASDAQ, and then we announced an acquisition.
• 43:18
  So I had already worked in parallel to negotiate the
• 43:21
  acquisition of a company
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: called Apollo Fusion.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: This was a satellite propulsion company.
• 43:26
  What that means is when you put a satellite in space with a rocket,
• 43:29
  you've got to keep it there.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: you don't have a rocket engine on a satellite because,
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: frankly,
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: you need something a lot more efficient than that,
• 43:37
  and you don't want to have propellants that are volatile on the satellite.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we have an engine that
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: we call the Astra spacecraft engine.
• 43:45
  It is the world's most efficient,
• 43:46
  lowest cost,
• 43:48
  highest performance engine for these satellites.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were incredibly successful once we bought that company.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: We made it work.
• 43:55
  And we've now delivered,
• 43:57
  I believe,
• 43:58
  about 60 of these engines to customers.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have dozens of them on orbit.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: All of them have worked perfectly.
• 44:04
  And we're trying to get the deliveries of those this year up to
• 44:08
  25 per month.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we have hundreds of these things on order.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is creating cash flow for our business.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we're taking the cash from that business,
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: we're reinvesting it in the launch business,
• 44:20
  and then we're taking this DoD contract that we have and the
• 44:23
  milestones that we're
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: being paid under that contract,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: and that's what's funding us back to the pad.
• 44:28
  So we might raise more capital to de-risk things,
• 44:30
  to accelerate things,
• 44:30
  but I don't need to.
• 44:31
  And that's really a miraculous thing to put the company back in
• 44:34
  a position where
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: we're in control of our own destiny.
• 44:38
  And the reason why we bought the satellite engine business was
• 44:41
  we were going to buy
• 44:41
  a few other core satellite components and we were going to
• 44:44
  build satellites.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this was something we talked about a lot.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea was that the satellites could go in our rockets,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: but unlike a starship,
• 44:52
  we didn't want to deliver hundreds of them on every launch or
• 44:56
  dozens of them on
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: every launch.
• 44:57
  We wanted to do lots of launches from lots of countries and we
• 45:00
  wanted to create a much more
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: much more decentralized constellation,
• 45:06
  where we weren't having to pay for all the launches and pay for
• 45:08
  all the satellites.
• 45:09
  We would sell the launches and sell the satellites for telcos
• 45:12
  that wanted to
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: operate their own constellations,
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: and they would all together form an inter-constellation.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: consider the Internet moving up into space,
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: where instead of having a closed-in proprietary system,
• 45:21
  we'd have an open system where the satellites could route
• 45:24
  traffic to each other if
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: they chose to.
• 45:26
  So this was my vision,
• 45:27
  like an open space,
• 45:28
  like open stack,
• 45:29
  open stack to open space.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we were working on that, and capital markets just didn't cooperate.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think we went public at the best possible time,
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: and from the moment we went public,
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: we saw all the SPACs start to fail.
• 45:39
  We saw companies like Virgin Orbit come out and basically lose
• 45:43
  all the capital that
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: they had in the
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: in the trust and it just became a risk on market.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Investing in these types of things became a risk off market,
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: not willing to make investments in these types of things.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we were a pre-revenue company.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so basically the street and the analyst looked at us and they said,
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: we're gonna basically value this company based on balance sheet risk.
• 46:02
  And there was a lot of balance sheet risk because we would have
• 46:04
  to raise more money
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: in a uncooperative market or borrow,
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: create a lot of debt.
• 46:10
  And it put us in a very difficult position that frankly,
• 46:12
  there weren't a lot of routes out.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: People must have told you... Okay, well, and just finish the thought.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So as you're trying to raise more money,
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: you've got this cash-making satellite business,
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: and then you've got the prospects of where all this is heading.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a bit about how that played out,
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: and then I don't know if the investors are secret or not.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think what we had was this confluence of things.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: We had a real business, so we had cash flow from that business.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: We had employees that were not willing to give up.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just me.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was my co-founder, Adam London.
• 46:49
  It was all of the people on all of the teams that had designed
• 46:54
  Rocket 4 and were
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: supporting the satellite engine business.
• 46:57
  It was the entire management team of the company that they saw
• 47:00
  it through.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: And because of their commitment,
• 47:03
  I couldn't have done it without them and nor could we have done
• 47:06
  it collectively
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: without our customers' support.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Customers were buying things from us when frankly we were in the brink of
• 47:13
  bankruptcy and they knew it because they were trying to save us
• 47:16
  because they needed
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: us and it would have delayed their satellite programs even more.
• 47:20
  And so what we had was we had a confluence of events where we
• 47:22
  had an incredibly committed team.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: We had customers that really needed what we were doing.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the combination of those things, that spoke to investors, right?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because investors saw in us,
• 47:34
  even though there was a very complicated transaction that
• 47:36
  they'd never seen before,
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: the structure that we put together is,
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: one of the most creative things,
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: bankers and people involved in the transaction,
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: they'd never seen anything like this before.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you made some lawyers very happy.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot of work.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: But we were able to do it, you know, because of those factors.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and is Mike Judson, is he still there?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's leading the first-stage engine program.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: Lucas Hundley.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's leading our flight safety team.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so people should know.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they've been there since what, like 2018, 2017?
• 48:09
  I'm calling those two out because they're just like two
• 48:10
  fantastic human beings who taught me
• 48:26
  who spent endless hours with me talking rockets and really
• 48:29
  helped me learn about
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: this technology and are just good people to boot.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got some of the old hands.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: In the kernel, you build the brain, and that's the brain trust, right?
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: That you build the thing back.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we had to literally go down to the core group
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: that really brought this company together.
• 48:49
  And then we brought folks like Alan more recently to really
• 48:54
  push to get back to the pad.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: Doug Kunzman joined us.
• 48:57
  He was running the New Shepard program for Jeff,
• 49:01
  and he's been an incredible asset for us.
• 49:07
  And,
• 49:07
  well,
• 49:08
  I'll ask the questions,
• 49:10
  and obviously you can choose to answer them or not.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you've raised $80 million so far.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are you in the middle?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Is that, like, that gets you to Rocket 4?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are you raising more money?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: call that Series A.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: that was priced basically when we took the company private a year ago.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: This summer,
• 49:26
  we're probably going to do a Series B because we put the
• 49:29
  company in such a strong position.
• 49:31
  I'm looking at probably $50 million of revenue this year from
• 49:35
  both the satellite
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: engine and the launch business milestones.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we're running the business basically breakeven.
• 49:41
  So the profits from the satellite engine business are being
• 49:46
  added to the milestones
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: we're getting from the DoD to support the launch business.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: So in a steady state,
• 49:52
  we will just continue doing this until we get back to the pad
• 49:54
  and we have a launch.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: And another launch.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: If investors want to continue to invest in the company,
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: we'll look at that this summer with a Series B.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Has anyone else ever successfully gone private?
• 50:07
  I mean,
• 50:07
  I know 23andMe was kind of trying to,
• 50:09
  and that doesn't seem to be working very well.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think what I was researching, there's like one or two, right?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a very rare.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Michael Dell kind of did it.
• 50:21
  But usually what happens is you have a private equity firm come
• 50:24
  in and put up the capital.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not aware of any other example of this, which made it tricky, right?
• 50:32
  the founder yeah yeah no i i mean i i didn't phrase this
• 50:36
  question right i mean yes
• 50:37
  i remember i remember dell and some other companies being taken
• 50:40
  private in in like
• 50:41
  you said in in sort of this um it's a private equity firm
• 50:46
  making a big bet on like
• 50:48
  a cash flowing business i mean this was like the founders
• 50:51
  taking the company
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: private and and it's not like you were being thrown into like a i know
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: you guys had the engines making money and stuff like that,
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: but it's still challenges very much ahead.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: To raise money again, I think it would be hard.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think the question is,
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: is obviously,
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: could we have,
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: could we have done a better job?
• 51:15
  And I ask myself that every day,
• 51:16
  you know,
• 51:17
  what,
• 51:17
  what have I learned from this experience?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where, where did we make mistakes?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: How can we, how can we do better?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what gives Adam and I the right to have another shot at this?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: and I think to some degree it's,
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: we,
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: we need to,
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: we need to really take this seriously and,
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: and work really hard and get it right for our customers and for our,
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: for our shareholders.
• 51:37
  A lot of the large shareholders rolled their equity into the
• 51:43
  new company as well.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't do that for everybody because obviously when you're trading,
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: you have thousands of shareholders,
• 51:49
  the SEC limits the number of qualified and unqualified
• 51:54
  shareholders you can have in
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: a private company.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: What has kept you personally doing this?
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: You want to
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're in the space.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: You worked at NASA.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: You've always been in the technology, the future.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's another part of this where you came from the software world.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're building an industrial company.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's another part, I'm sure, that's like you're competitive.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to lose.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to quit if there's still a chance to do this.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it's hard, and I see people
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: going at you guys on Twitter every now and then and things like that.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's kept you wanting to do this?
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I think first it's we have so many customers, right?
• 52:40
  And I have generals in here that say,
• 52:44
  hey,
• 52:44
  what you're doing is very important for the country.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there isn't another option here.
• 52:49
  Your ability to go and deploy this system anywhere and conduct
• 52:54
  an orbital launch
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: from an austere location where there is no infrastructure
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we did that.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: The last launch out of Cape Canaveral,
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: you look at LV10,
• 53:03
  it didn't ultimately get all the way to orbital velocity and
• 53:06
  deliver that payload,
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: as we all know now.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, we did go set that up in less than a week.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there was nothing on that pad.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 53:16
  we brought electricity to that pad because the Cape couldn't
• 53:18
  get electricity run to
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: that pad.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, it is, there's a lot there.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're going to have mission control down to two people.
• 53:27
  So we've automated everything from all of the things that
• 53:30
  happen on the ground all
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: the way through payload deploy.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: So every time we've done a launch,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: and I think we were looking at it,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: we had the four commercial launches.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: Before that,
• 53:39
  we had about a half a dozen launches and counts with various
• 53:44
  versions of the rocket.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this is like the Starship flights.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: I look at what SpaceX is doing, and it's incredible.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I watch each iteration and what they're able to do.
• 53:55
  What they're doing is they're looking at the capital they have
• 53:57
  and they're trying
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: to learn as fast as possible.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's about how quickly can you learn, right?
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it works.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we got to orbit so quickly.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: And with Rocket 4,
• 54:05
  I think what we learned was spend a bit more time upfront doing
• 54:09
  analysis and doing
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: the failure mode stuff and doing the testing of the subsystems.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're not seeing it out there.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to try to be more public about this stuff.
• 54:16
  But we're going to have rocket engines firing again next month,
• 54:19
  for example.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exciting.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: I got to ask this next question.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'll get mad at me possibly,
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: but I think the public would rank me over the calls if I didn't.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Peter Beck.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: How are we feeling about Peter Beck these days?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Peter.
• 54:42
  I came out of that movie thinking,
• 54:44
  well,
• 54:44
  I,
• 54:45
  you know,
• 54:45
  I'm the underdog now.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people are rooting for us and,
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: and I think I'm proud of,
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm proud of the team.
• 54:53
  Uh,
• 54:54
  I think,
• 54:55
  I think,
• 54:55
  uh,
• 54:56
  he's,
• 54:56
  he's,
• 54:57
  he's trying to do something really hard.
• 54:58
  You know,
• 54:58
  they've got a whole new rocket they're trying to build and operate.
• 55:02
  Um,
• 55:03
  they're trying to build and design and get off the pad as a
• 55:06
  public company.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of empathy for him,
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: that that's going to be really challenging.
• 55:12
  And,
• 55:14
  you know,
• 55:14
  I think the movie tried to paint us as these like arch nemesis people.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I never saw it that way.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's hard about this is this, right?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's about making it actually work.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think a lot about Peter.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: I just think about what we need to do to make it work.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: In fairness, you guys both sent me text messages about each other.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to take total blame on that one.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think Eric Schmidt is...
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: Brave, crazy, both for taking on relativity.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think Eric's brilliant.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think Eric sees how important rockets are.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: And for him to go from running Google and a business of that scale,
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: and he spent a lot of time thinking about
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: how we can do a better job with national security stuff, both with AI.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you his heart's in it for the right reasons.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'd love to see him be successful with that.
• 56:22
  I think,
• 56:23
  you know,
• 56:24
  you look at what the DOD needs,
• 56:25
  they need big rockets and small rockets.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at what Europe has with Arian, they've got the
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: Vega and they've got the Ariane 6.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you look at what the Indians have with PSLV, they have SSLV.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you might have a neutron and an electron at Rocket Lab.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: So,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think I want to see Eric successful because I think,
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 56:46
  we need both large and small rockets in this country to meet
• 56:49
  all the needs,
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: both national security and commercial.
• 56:53
  Did you see that European launch site this weekend of that
• 56:56
  small rocket maker?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: That thing is like, that is, that's some Bond villain rocket.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: I actually tweeted.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: I, for the first time I tweeted, I was like, been there.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: Don't give up.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's my message.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I,
• 57:10
  a lot of a lot of people love that you do and again please
• 57:14
  don't hate me for this i
• 57:15
  think it's in i want you guys to succeed i want all this just
• 57:20
  to be happy but the
• 57:22
  the sideways rocket how do you feel about the sideways rocket i
• 57:26
  mean it is i think
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: among it may be like the rocket celebrity in some ways
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 57:33
  the thing that most people don't know about the way that ended
• 57:36
  was your movie
• 57:37
  opened with Peter almost reaching orbit on his first launch but
• 57:42
  not achieving that
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: because there was a flight termination event that occurred.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: That flight had actually recovered from that maneuver.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: That was amazing.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: We'd flown through a gate,
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: busted through a gate,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: sideways,
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: burned off enough fuel,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: right,
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: to recover.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the engine didn't fail, by the way.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: As it lifted off, it actually lifted off more slowly by design.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a leak in one of the QDs as it separated from the pad,
• 58:09
  which caused a little explosion to occur in a little enclosed
• 58:12
  space that severed a
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: wire to one of the engines.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the engine shut down.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then it had four engines when it should have had five.
• 58:20
  And so basically the thrust weight ratio of the thing caused it
• 58:22
  to hover successfully.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: And as it was hovering,
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: it actually GNC hadn't enabled yet,
• 58:28
  but it was because it started to tip over and the vertical
• 58:31
  speed of the nose that
• 58:32
  would normally be in the y-axis due to a little software bug
• 58:36
  also triggered due to
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: the x-axis being off.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so it woke up and then it righted itself and then it flew sideways.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: But it actually returned to its nominal trajectory and was on...
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: track to go to orbit, and it was terminated by the range.
• 58:54
  And they thought that it was off course because they had loaded
• 58:57
  the trajectory of
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_01: our previous launch into their console.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so this was not our mistake.
• 59:03
  It was our mistake probably not to check to make sure that they
• 59:06
  had the right
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: trajectory on their
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: console.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: But, Tom, that very likely would have made orbit as a bubble company.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was, like, heroic.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it did so many things right, you know?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was relentless.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: That rocket embodies the soul of Astra right there.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was going to go.
• 59:27
  This question is tough for different reasons because I think
• 59:31
  you have a long
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: personal history with NASA and are doing business or potential customers.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: As you know,
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love the glory era of Ames when you were there,
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: when Pete Worden was running it,
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: when NASA,
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: that center was trying all these new ideas.
• 59:53
  We're in such a different era now where commercial space really
• 59:56
  is humming along,
• 59:58
  obviously in tandem with the government and a lot of business
• 1:00:03
  depends on that.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not the first person to suggest that maybe NASA changes a bit.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're somebody who lived through the change with the names.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: You really enacted a lot of stuff.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's your perfect vision?
• 1:00:21
  What's your idealized vision of what NASA should be doing or
• 1:00:25
  changing over the next 5,
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: 10,
• 1:00:29
  15 years?
• 1:00:31
  I think the thing to realize is that organizations do not do
• 1:00:36
  great things.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: leaders inspire organizations to do great things.
• 1:00:42
  So if you look at whether it was Kennedy inspiring NASA to go
• 1:00:46
  to the moon or
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: whether it was von Braun,
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: inspiring the people at NASA to build the Apollo moon rocket,
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: you look at what happened that allowed SpaceX to be so successful.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was Elon and his passion for
• 1:01:04
  being a multi-planetary species and inspiring the people at
• 1:01:08
  SpaceX to go and really
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: deliver for NASA the Falcon 9.
• 1:01:12
  And it was Lori Garver right at NASA working with Charlie to
• 1:01:16
  give Elon a chance.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think,
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: what we need to see under Jared,
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: and I think Jared's fantastic,
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: he's brilliant.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: Jared Isaacman, the new NASA head, yep.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:29
  I think when I was at NASA,
• 1:01:30
  it was because Pete was a visionary who wanted to do great things.
• 1:01:34
  And we were able to take an incredibly talented group of people
• 1:01:38
  at NASA and rally
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: them behind everything we were doing.
• 1:01:41
  So I think there's been a lot of focus in Doge and in the
• 1:01:45
  recent weeks about firing
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: people from the US government.
• 1:01:49
  But where the real change can be made is when we start to see
• 1:01:53
  Jared bring the new
• 1:01:54
  leadership in and take the most innovative people at NASA and
• 1:02:00
  make them focus on
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: the right things.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you're only going to get so far by firing people.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps that's important,
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: but by inspiring people,
• 1:02:11
  you're going to see potentially incredible things happen or
• 1:02:13
  nothing happen.
• 1:02:14
  And I think that's the real next test for this administration
• 1:02:17
  and for Trump and
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: Elon and Jared and everybody involved.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think maybe Jared, does that mean he comes up with a new...
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think somewhere in NASA's DNA,
• 1:02:30
  it's still like the Apollo program and we're going to make
• 1:02:33
  rockets and just feels
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: like that has to change.
• 1:02:37
  Does that mean maybe he comes up with a new central thrust that
• 1:02:42
  everybody's chasing after?
• 1:02:45
  I think the idea that don't pay people to do nothing,
• 1:02:48
  pay people to do things.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: What made SpaceX work was,
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: hey,
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: here's a big contract,
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: and we'll pay you if you can deliver things to the space station.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: Elon went, he raised a bunch of money, and he did it.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to see more contracts where,
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: hey,
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: go build a lunar lander,
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: go build a Mars sample return thing.
• 1:03:08
  Don't hand out $5 billion to a bunch of government contractors
• 1:03:12
  to go do that.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Tell people if they do it, we'll pay you for it.
• 1:03:17
  And just allow competition and the private sector to go attempt
• 1:03:23
  these challenging things.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: We'll build rockets if we're given contracts that say,
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: if you launch this payload,
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: we'll pay you X.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: I can go raise capital all day to deliver on this.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't have those contracts,
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult to raise capital.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we're on the right course here.
• 1:03:41
  NASA should be only investing in the things that do not make
• 1:03:44
  any commercial sense,
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: but are good for civilization.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where you should draw the line.
• 1:03:51
  I know you guys are making a lot of stuff in-house,
• 1:03:55
  and you have this factory.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: The aerospace business,
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: like a lot of manufacturing,
• 1:03:59
  still depends on these mom-and-pop shops that are scattered all
• 1:04:05
  over the country in many,
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: many,
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: many cases.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the public is aware of this.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: People are hitting retirement age.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: Their kids don't really want to take over the business.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's weird that in aerospace, we actually seem...
• 1:04:20
  almost in better shape especially versus somewhere like china
• 1:04:25
  where i i would argue
• 1:04:26
  our our space program is ahead and and we have way more
• 1:04:31
  startups doing innovative
• 1:04:33
  things and making stuff themselves but you've been in this
• 1:04:37
  world for a few years
• 1:04:38
  now when i see companies like andrel i know they're making
• 1:04:41
  their own factory um but
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: all these defense startups all these things that the u.s
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: is betting on and hinge on.
• 1:04:49
  I question our manufacturing capacity and the degree to which
• 1:04:56
  it still exists to
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: fulfill this vision of where people want to go.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think about this stuff?
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: What is your take on
• 1:05:07
  As somebody who's dealt with this on a day-to-day basis,
• 1:05:10
  are you concerned or am I off base?
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think you're spot on.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a huge problem.
• 1:05:16
  Most of the aerospace companies that are publicly traded do not
• 1:05:19
  machine a lot of
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: the parts in-house.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: They have a bunch of private companies that are,
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: as you say,
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: mom-and-pop shops,
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: and they're largely integrators.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_01: You look at companies like Boeing,
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_01: they will largely outsource major sub-assemblies of aircraft,
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: wings,
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: things,
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: things that you would think that Boeing would make.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're made all over the world.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then they bring it all together.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: They paint it.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: They do some testing and they ship it.
• 1:05:44
  And what this means is that America doesn't have companies that
• 1:05:48
  can produce things anymore.
• 1:05:49
  And one of the things Astra,
• 1:05:51
  as we think about our system,
• 1:05:52
  we make it in this building.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can make another one of these buildings somewhere.
• 1:05:56
  And the rockets leave in shipping containers that could have
• 1:05:59
  Walmart or Amazon logos on them.
• 1:06:01
  Frankly,
• 1:06:02
  you wouldn't need to know that we're making rockets in this building.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't certainly look like it from the outside.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the value in that is if your supply chain is one level deep,
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: where aluminum comes in one side of the building,
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: and you're running the machines that are machining the parts,
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: and you're able to make most of those assemblies in-house,
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: not only can you go faster in development,
• 1:06:22
  because you're not waiting for some machine shop to make one of something,
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: which they're never going to want to do,
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you have that means of production under your control.
• 1:06:30
  And so you don't have to solve a very difficult combinatorial
• 1:06:35
  optimization problem
• 1:06:36
  with D-Pass and other blunt instruments that the government
• 1:06:40
  uses to try to prioritize,
• 1:06:42
  let's make these connectors so that these missiles can be
• 1:06:45
  shipped to Raytheon
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: versus those airplanes can be made for Airbus.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we've really tried to be intentional about that.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we bring in spools of aluminum and we make the rocket.
• 1:06:57
  We bring in giant bars of aluminum and we cut them into pieces
• 1:07:01
  and we make a lot of
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: the components of the engines.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all part of this.
• 1:07:06
  You can't say that you can make a rocket a day and then have a
• 1:07:10
  supply chain that's
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: incapable of doing that or you're just making stuff up.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's going to be...
• 1:07:19
  gonna be interesting for years i feel like there's all this
• 1:07:21
  ambition there's a lot
• 1:07:22
  of great ideas and then i get i just get a little worried about
• 1:07:26
  the mechanics of
• 1:07:27
  all this and then i see companies like byd in china and the
• 1:07:31
  more i hear about
• 1:07:32
  everything they can make and it's just it's like i don't know
• 1:07:35
  sometimes if all of
• 1:07:36
  the us has wrapped their heads around around what's happening
• 1:07:40
  um i'm keeping an eye
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_00: on time and i promise not to keep you too long i feel like
• 1:07:45
  You've always been incredibly generous with me in your time and
• 1:07:50
  your access,
• 1:07:50
  and then I'm the one who ends up with a big platform to say
• 1:07:55
  what I want to say.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: I know we covered some of the news.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else people need to know about where Astra is,
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_00: what the rest of the year looks like,
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: or if you just want to shit on me or whatever you want to do?
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: The floor is yours.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, I appreciate you coming back.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't talked a lot to the press lately.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: We've been just focused on making this thing work.
• 1:08:20
  I am just in awe of the support we've gotten from our team and
• 1:08:25
  our customers that
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: we can be here right now having this conversation,
• 1:08:29
  that we can say we now have a profitable business that is
• 1:08:33
  investing in launch
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: the investors that supported us, the customers that supported us.
• 1:08:40
  You've seen some of the press and the tweets that has come out
• 1:08:45
  over the last year despite that.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it just shows you how much need there is for what we're doing,
• 1:08:52
  that so many people would continue to work so hard to make this
• 1:08:55
  work despite all of that.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if we have Wild Wild Space 2,
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: What is the opening scene?
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a convoy of shipping containers heading where?
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: Where's it going?
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
• 1:09:10
  I mean,
• 1:09:11
  I think I'd like to see just kind of like the car factory of
• 1:09:15
  rockets coming off.
• 1:09:16
  And I think you're going to come back later this year and
• 1:09:17
  you're going to start to
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: see lots of rocket stages on the production line.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, uh,
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: Then I want to really daily launch has always been,
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_01: it's a Wi-Fi password when we started the company.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're quite serious about that.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: Are you supposed to say that out loud?
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think we changed it.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then what would we call that movie?
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, you know, the return of Astra or something.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the...
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, what was the line you were upset at me about?
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: About it didn't work out.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it could be like, it worked out or something like that.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: But we could just make it, it worked out.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: It worked out.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It worked out.
• 1:10:01
  I think this is going to be a very fun thing for me to watch
• 1:10:04
  you have to begin that,
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: to begin a film.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Bring back the camera.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You've got all the pieces in place, man.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing you has been one of the joys of my life watching...
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if people are listening to this who don't know.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was kind of there when it was like five people in a room.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I, you guys, I've always been pulling for you guys.
• 1:10:28
  I have a lot of like emotional attachments to a lot of the
• 1:10:31
  people who've worked on
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: this for a long time.
• 1:10:33
  You've hired Al Weston who my recent podcast probably makes
• 1:10:38
  clear as one of my
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: idols and,
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: and one of my favorite,
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_00: favorite people.
• 1:10:42
  So all the,
• 1:10:43
  all the elements are there for a,
• 1:10:45
  uh,
• 1:10:45
  for a fantastic,
• 1:10:46
  um,
• 1:10:47
  next chapter.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's been fun and we're just getting started.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Keep in mind how young we are as a company.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're just celebrating our eighth anniversary.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So most of these other companies hadn't launched yet at that point.
• 1:11:01
  So I think we've got a lot of experience under our belt and a
• 1:11:05
  very resilient team.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if anything,
• 1:11:08
  that's the one thing that I'll say is it requires an incredible
• 1:11:11
  amount of grit and
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_01: resilience to make this work.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if the last year shows our customers and investors anything,
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to do whatever it takes to make this work.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, man.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for your time.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you'll have us, we'll come film an episode of our new TV show there.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, just to show people what the factory looks like.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you as always for your time.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then I wish you guys all the best of luck.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Can't wait to go to another rocket launch.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Can't wait to have you.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Ashley.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Chris.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Core Memory is hosted by me, Ashley Vance.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our guest this week was Chris Kemp.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: The show is produced by me and David Nicholson.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Our theme song comes from James Mercer and John Sortland,
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: and Core Memory is edited by the outstanding,
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: incredible,
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm running out of adjectives,
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: John Sortland.