Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - April 26 - The 99 Successes of a Launch Failure

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Kook's Weekly - April 26 - The 99 Successes of a Launch Failure · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:11
  Just basically from your phone, be seamless regardless of where
• 0:14
  you are. We don't want the user even to
• 0:16
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 0:21
  Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
• 0:27
  So apparently there are some people on the spaces, even
• 0:31
  though it does appear in terms of acts showing that no one
• 0:35
  showed up. So this time last week I was
• 0:43
  exhausted and so coming back from Orlando and we had all
• 0:47
  learned the fate of BB7, which brings me to tears.
• 0:54
  But Space Mob has lost before. And I really think that the
• 1:02
  launch last week in my book was a success in 99 ways in a
• 1:08
  failure in only one. And so there's obviously some
• 1:12
  bias in that statement. I'm I'm a hopelessly positive
• 1:15
  person and with respect to this company, but when you take a
• 1:21
  step back and think about it, we really did achieved quite a lot
• 1:28
  with this. And so for a lot of us, it was
• 1:30
  again a time to meet the team and meet the company.
• 1:33
  I had the opportunity to sit on a bus next to one of the ASTS
• 1:36
  employees and I would say that these guys really do honor the
• 1:41
  NDAI tried to play dumb, which is not very hard for me, and
• 1:46
  started to ask some technical questions and he immediately,
• 1:49
  this guy immediately shot back. I can't tell you that I'm like,
• 1:52
  Oh, no, no, no. But like, you know, high level.
• 1:54
  So they're a vault, which is good to know because for all
• 1:58
  this guy knows, I was a SpaceX employee trying to figure out
• 2:00
  the unfurling mechanism. And, you know, I would have
• 2:03
  promptly reported him to a bell and had him guillotined if he
• 2:06
  had given any information away. But what I did learn is how
• 2:11
  confident this team is in the future of this company, how
• 2:15
  confident the team is in the tech.
• 2:17
  And interestingly, just how confused they are at what their
• 2:20
  competitors are doing. They really don't have an answer
• 2:24
  on how SpaceX is going to come up with a competing tech
• 2:28
  solution. And they're even more confused
• 2:31
  on how Amazon is going to do it with the third party contractor,
• 2:37
  MDA doing it. Because ultimately what I value
• 2:41
  about this company is the vertical integration.
• 2:44
  I can't even begin to imagine the process of inventing
• 2:47
  something and not controlling it.
• 2:50
  And so all of the testing, all of the iterations, all of the
• 2:53
  little things that go require control in short cycles, not
• 2:58
  having to then negotiate a change order with a third party
• 3:02
  Canadian company who doesn't really even have your interest
• 3:05
  in mind. And so when I studied this
• 3:07
  industry going back to the 90s, which is all in the DD document,
• 3:12
  you can see that a common thread behind 100% of the failures is
• 3:17
  the use of a prime contractor to build out a constellation.
• 3:21
  Usually this would end in protracted decade long
• 3:24
  litigations where a Boeing, a Motorola or whatever would
• 3:30
  really screw the client and the client being the teledesic and
• 3:35
  that kind of the IICOS of the world.
• 3:39
  And then you even look at ViaSat today, they have problem with
• 3:42
  their antenna. And I believe that that is a
• 3:43
  Harris design and it's just the same problem.
• 3:47
  Like where's your recourse? And then you get to everyone
• 3:49
  lawyering up, the first thing you're going to do because all
• 3:52
  of a sudden becomes a contractual or breach of
• 3:54
  contractor or contract interpretation issue, not
• 3:57
  necessarily a problem solving issue because all of a sudden
• 4:00
  the contractor goes, well, aren't you going to pay me?
• 4:03
  And so I think it's to me the precursor of failure is when you
• 4:08
  don't control that process. SpaceX controls that process and
• 4:13
  so that's a more likely competitor in this field.
• 4:16
  But it just goes back to the ASTS team is so focused on doing
• 4:20
  this. I'm impressed that the talent
• 4:22
  they've been able to recruit and it is really good to see the
• 4:25
  team showing up that energy. I know for me that's a big part
• 4:28
  of my investment research is seeing this team and just
• 4:32
  reading body language. Rightly or wrongly, I view
• 4:36
  myself as having a reasonably good ability to read people.
• 4:40
  And you know, I could be wrong, but that's at least something I
• 4:43
  think that I'm reasonably good at doing.
• 4:45
  And reading a room and seeing whether there's a team coming
• 4:48
  together or if it's a broken team and people that don't
• 4:51
  believe in a mission. I see an enthusiastic team that
• 4:54
  believes in a mission, sees a real challenge and sees an
• 4:57
  opportunity for themselves. It's not available at the big
• 5:00
  primes. That's really exciting.
• 5:02
  What we also learned from A Bell is that BB7, rest in peace, rest
• 5:06
  in Pieces now, was going to be doing 150 megabits per second.
• 5:11
  And so previously they had disclosed that it was going to
• 5:14
  do, I think greatly over 120 megabits per second.
• 5:17
  But in the morning breakfast that they held for us, which was
• 5:21
  again extremely generous of the company to do, he disclosed 150
• 5:25
  megabits per second. Very exciting.
• 5:29
  And it was very exciting to see the New Glenn vehicle.
• 5:32
  And so again, it was 99 successes last Sunday and one
• 5:39
  failure of the 99 successes, the things that really have me
• 5:45
  excited about what we learned. And let me just see actually, if
• 5:48
  I'm doing this in sequence, you know, let me take a step back.
• 5:52
  So we, we covered the 150 megabits per second.
• 5:55
  That's an important piece of information for people to
• 5:57
  reflect on. Why is that important?
• 5:59
  And so 150 megabits per second really relates to the capacity
• 6:06
  per beam. And each satellite can do
• 6:08
  something like 2000 beams. This is all going to be limited
• 6:12
  by the spectral processing capacity on the satellite.
• 6:17
  But not every beam is pumping at full level.
• 6:19
  It's all very dynamic. But what it means is that in a
• 6:21
  given beam, that's where all of a sudden the users are splitting
• 6:25
  capacity. And so that means, you know, if
• 6:27
  I'm so unlucky, unlucky to be in the same beam as Corey, Corey's
• 6:31
  going to be hogging all the data, doing ridiculous memes
• 6:34
  with that dude, which his little avatar of that to say, very
• 6:41
  thick, high caloric avatar, he's going to be using all the data.
• 6:47
  And because we're splitting it. And then, you know, by contrast,
• 6:50
  I wouldn't want to be sharing a beam with Anpan Man, because the
• 6:53
  guy is going to be on spaces 24 hours a day hogging up the data.
• 6:57
  But the more data a beam has, the more data there is to split.
• 7:01
  And SpaceX, if memory serves, is doing like, I think it was like
• 7:06
  4 megabits per beam, like very low.
• 7:09
  And Elon was very transparent about the data limitations they
• 7:14
  have. So what we're seeing is more
• 7:18
  spectral efficiency. That's that's the math.
• 7:21
  So given a certain amount of megahertz that the company is
• 7:24
  allowed to operate on the mega bits per second then means the
• 7:30
  satellite is increasingly efficient and that is good.
• 7:33
  That's, that's really alpha that's owned by the company and
• 7:36
  something that we we want to see.
• 7:40
  So the tech has made an improvement.
• 7:42
  I still emphatically will tell people that the most difficult
• 7:48
  thing is to get the factory churning.
• 7:50
  And so this company is doing really two things at the same
• 7:53
  time. They're developing a new
• 7:55
  technology and financing it and building the team.
• 7:58
  They're also building a satellite factory.
• 8:01
  So one thing is to design the satellite itself hard.
• 8:05
  The second thing is to build your own satellite factory super
• 8:10
  hard. So I don't know if everyone saw
• 8:12
  this pretty cool video SpaceX put out, but it was this 28
• 8:16
  minute video around Starship and it it's just knock your socks
• 8:21
  off. Impressive.
• 8:22
  When you just think about the infrastructure that's built to
• 8:25
  build the rocket, it's wild. The just the size of the
• 8:30
  infrastructure, the manufacturing capabilities
• 8:33
  they've built, the testing capabilities they've built, even
• 8:37
  the thing that moves the rocket to the pad is crazy.
• 8:41
  All of this infrastructure is really mind boggling.
• 8:44
  Then the same has been true for Blue Origin.
• 8:47
  And so these companies that are vertically integrated are
• 8:50
  building this incredible PP and E footprint in addition to the
• 8:54
  ultimate unique tech that they're doing.
• 8:56
  So to me, a lot of the real value of FM one, FM 2, aside
• 9:01
  from the military proof point, which is certainly important and
• 9:04
  FM 1 achieve that is getting the production line spun up so that
• 9:09
  they started to work through all the critical path items which
• 9:12
  relate to building the phased arrays, which they seemingly
• 9:17
  have really nailed because they seem to be very much ahead of
• 9:20
  production on the actual microns.
• 9:23
  But then you have the composite rings, which has certainly been
• 9:26
  a bottleneck. Composites, very difficult to
• 9:28
  work with. You got to make sure it doesn't
• 9:30
  break, not too brutal. Then you have the buses, which
• 9:34
  are very difficult. And so these, this is just an
• 9:36
  absolute huge control set. That's the bus.
• 9:40
  Getting that working the first time is hard.
• 9:42
  Then you have to scale production of that.
• 9:44
  Looks like they've been receiving a lot of control sets.
• 9:46
  That's what's being dropped off in that Antonov.
• 9:49
  And so you're shaking down this satellite production facility.
• 9:53
  Once that's going, we move into a totally different cadence.
• 9:59
  And that's to me, you know, one of these things where it's going
• 10:01
  to sound like, you know, kook, kook is a kook.
• 10:05
  And that would be true. But the boy who cried wolf, the
• 10:09
  boy who cried satellite production, you know, and all
• 10:13
  the villagers show up at the stock, you know, at $100.
• 10:16
  And then there's no production and they curse the name of the
• 10:18
  kook. And then the kook says, no, no,
• 10:20
  the production will happen. And all the people show up at
• 10:22
  $105 and they curse the kook and, you know, throw a pitchfork
• 10:26
  at them. But I dodged it because of my
• 10:28
  lightning fast reflexes. And then the kook cries.
• 10:31
  But, but they'll be producing soon.
• 10:33
  Constellation Constipation is ending.
• 10:35
  And all the villagers show up one last time and go, we'll give
• 10:38
  this guy a shot. Stock closed above 100 to the
• 10:41
  overnight market. And then bam, everyone got
• 10:44
  crushed again, cursed the kook. But there will be a day when I'm
• 10:51
  right. And the interesting thing is
• 10:53
  many of the villagers will no longer be there.
• 10:56
  And kind of hard to parlay this analog of, you know, the boy who
• 11:01
  cried wolf, because I don't know what that means.
• 11:02
  Like all the wolves going to come in the village and, like,
• 11:04
  eat everyone alive. And that's a victory for the
• 11:06
  kook. I don't know.
• 11:07
  So this is where the analog sort of drops off.
• 11:09
  And I'll just change real fast. But the point is, I've been
• 11:13
  crying satellite production cadence for now.
• 11:17
  God, no. It's probably nine months and I
• 11:20
  will be right at some point, which isn't really probably
• 11:24
  inspiring a whole lot of confidence in people.
• 11:25
  But I do believe that that moment is coming very soon.
• 11:30
  And FM 2 had a role in shaking down that production cadence.
• 11:35
  The satellite production plant is a enormous source of value
• 11:40
  for this company, defensible value, very difficult to
• 11:44
  replicate. We also got experience working
• 11:47
  with Blue Origin and so we were able to successfully mate to a
• 11:52
  new Glen, work with that team. Presumably there's a good
• 11:55
  relationship between the two companies.
• 11:57
  And honestly, having the satellite fail with Blue Origin
• 12:01
  at fault gave us an opportunity to be a good client and give
• 12:08
  Blue Origin the opportunity to make it up to us.
• 12:10
  And I can only imagine that a Bell was deeply disappointed.
• 12:15
  But I find it very hard to believe that he called Jeff
• 12:17
  Bezos and chewed him out and poison the relationship.
• 12:24
  I don't know. Maybe he did.
• 12:25
  But my guess is that he probably did not.
• 12:28
  My guess is that the companies are now as resolved to work
• 12:31
  together as ever before. And now Blue Origin knows us.
• 12:34
  They blew up one of our satellites.
• 12:35
  That's not cool. They know that I was watching
• 12:41
  painfully as Bezos and David Limp were taking victory circles
• 12:44
  around the launch, thinking that that is perhaps a little bit
• 12:48
  tone deaf. But then they seem to kind of
• 12:50
  get it. But I also understand at some
• 12:52
  level their absolute unbridled excitement because never mind
• 12:56
  that it wasn't in a way my cargo that was lost.
• 12:59
  So as a enormously large owner of this company, I feel like I
• 13:02
  had every right to be absolutely livid, but I was not.
• 13:06
  I also wasn't the person on the production line working 24 hours
• 13:09
  a day on the satellite, but I was the person worrying about
• 13:12
  that for 24 hours a day. So I didn't have the labor
• 13:16
  investment, but I had the emotional investment.
• 13:18
  And I might just also be more of a live and let live type of guy.
• 13:23
  I'm only vindictive toward anonymous accounts on acts that
• 13:26
  disagree with me. But when it comes to real life,
• 13:28
  I'm actually pretty forgiving individual.
• 13:30
  And so my own emotional reaction was, this shit's hard and
• 13:36
  clearly Blue Origin was trying their best.
• 13:40
  They suffered an enormous consequence from this failure.
• 13:44
  They did not achieve their NSSL certification, which requires 4
• 13:48
  successful launches in a row. That is a big problem for them.
• 13:54
  So these guys paid a huge price for this failure.
• 14:00
  We got our money back through insurance.
• 14:02
  We will probably get a free launch based on my
• 14:04
  understanding. But at another level, we saw
• 14:06
  Blue Origin land its booster again, that's a big success.
• 14:11
  We saw them get to orbit. That's a big success.
• 14:15
  And so now we had obviously some issue with the the the last burn
• 14:20
  to get it in the right circular orbit.
• 14:24
  I'm going to, you know, flounder the science a little bit.
• 14:28
  It's called the second stage burn is circularization.
• 14:31
  The first burn lifts the apoplopsis.
• 14:35
  Boy, this is revealing very quickly that I am a poorly
• 14:41
  educated individual. But some of these words are very
• 14:43
  difficult to say. And once it's there, it relights
• 14:45
  and lifts the periopsis up. In this case that failed and the
• 14:49
  orbit remained elliptical. So elliptical is bad because we
• 14:54
  were going around at 100 and thinks 116 kilometers at the
• 15:00
  perigee, I believe, and then 400 kilometers at the apogee, which
• 15:03
  is just wrong because we'll have way too much drag.
• 15:06
  And I, I know for sure that Blue Origin will identify the root
• 15:11
  cause of the problem and fix it. And there's also going to be a
• 15:14
  government investigation into the FAA and they will have to
• 15:17
  account for what happened. And what's great for Asts is
• 15:23
  that this satellite was a copy satellite, really an insurance
• 15:27
  satellite for the SDA program. So it was the twin of FM 1.
• 15:33
  And FM one went up obviously earlier this year on the ISRO
• 15:37
  rocket. And they put this satellite on
• 15:41
  an experimental rocket where they had it mated while they hot
• 15:44
  fired it, which told you that the wrist posture on the
• 15:46
  satellite was very high. ASTS was willing to run hot on
• 15:51
  this satellite from the initial idea of using New Glenn 3 to the
• 15:57
  readiness of New Glen three. That's the hot fire, which
• 15:59
  having the cargo attached to it is unusual to ultimately the
• 16:04
  loss of the cargo. And that kind of tells you that
• 16:08
  this was not make or break. I'm sure that the company was
• 16:13
  deeply, deeply disappointed. But then we also got new
• 16:17
  information on what is a hot point for Fudsters, which is the
• 16:24
  orbital debris. And I actually don't know what
• 16:27
  ODAR stands for in this moment stands for orbital debris and
• 16:33
  something, let me just look it up for the record.
• 16:37
  Orbital debris, this issue was a big pain in the butt.
• 16:46
  So the orbital debris assessment report, this thing called an
• 16:49
  ODAR, basically wasted an entire week of my life during the
• 16:55
  holidays one year when free speech, this flood account
• 16:59
  started making claims that because of the delays in block
• 17:03
  one, we were missing a grandfather period with new FAA
• 17:07
  rules and regulations around orbital debris mitigation
• 17:10
  things. And I had to go down the rabbit
• 17:12
  hole and read a bazillion filings, research all this
• 17:16
  stuff, only to find out that it was absolutely just malignant
• 17:21
  falsehoods that this guy wrote on the Internet to throw people
• 17:24
  like me off. I think the thought was someone
• 17:26
  would create the uncertainty. It would seem real enough, and I
• 17:29
  would go, oh, my God, they're not compliant.
• 17:31
  The satellites won't work. I should sell instead.
• 17:34
  What I found out was the company was entirely consistent with all
• 17:38
  of the regulations. Like, duh, you know, the joke
• 17:41
  was, you know, thinking that, like, Scott was going to get a
• 17:44
  memo and be like, oh, shit, we forgot about deorbiting the
• 17:47
  satellites. God damn, What are we going to
• 17:49
  do? Yeah, like, as, as if.
• 17:51
  And, you know, and then you look at the resume of the company and
• 17:54
  it's, you know, the guys at the head of University of Maryland,
• 17:58
  they're all like the defense specialists.
• 18:00
  And you have all these like, payload deorbiting specials to
• 18:02
  the company. It's like, yeah, yeah, these
• 18:03
  guys actually probably read the rule.
• 18:05
  But now what's what's cool? And again, unfortunate that we
• 18:08
  learned this right now. We had a real life example of
• 18:12
  deorbiting. So what's it like to deorbit
• 18:14
  A6000 kilogram hockey puck in the wrong orbit?
• 18:19
  Well, that used to be hypothetical and people would
• 18:22
  say, well, you cannot possibly approve this constellation
• 18:24
  because we don't know if they can, you know, deorbit, maybe
• 18:27
  they'll cause the Kessler effect and ruin Leo for everyone.
• 18:30
  Well, boys, we had an opportunity to collect some
• 18:35
  data. And so the next thing we have,
• 18:38
  which is wild, is video in the Dahula Atoll and the Thaw atoll
• 18:46
  of what looks to be the satellite breaking up, which is
• 18:50
  just wild. And so I recommend people look
• 18:52
  at this tweet. It's from at MV crisis now.
• 18:58
  What a name, right? I was in a crisis when my
• 19:02
  satellite blew up, but you can see it breaking up and it looks
• 19:06
  like this is it. And so we had the Harvard
• 19:07
  professor track the right orbital path.
• 19:10
  The timing was a little bit off, but I mean, geez, what's the
• 19:12
  probability of something like that letting up the sky on the
• 19:16
  exact orbit it's supposed to be on?
• 19:18
  Right after we knew we were deorbiting our satellite, sort
• 19:20
  of, you know, the glove fit, and so now we know we can deorbit
• 19:25
  it. It really showed the company's
• 19:27
  end of life engineering. And I have to believe that this
• 19:31
  thing was probably more of an orbital risk than composite.
• 19:34
  The composite I would imagine, would be easier to destroy and
• 19:38
  deorbit, but we learned that too.
• 19:40
  And so the company actually had an opportunity to close the loop
• 19:44
  on a big engineering question that the Fudsters would talk
• 19:47
  about. If anyone has more information
• 19:50
  about this deorbit, please send it to me, DM it to me so I can
• 19:54
  sort of follow it. And but you know, would love to
• 19:56
  know if what I'm saying is correct in terms of the
• 19:58
  importance of those learnings. But there's really never a lost
• 20:02
  opportunity. If you think positively in the
• 20:05
  development of a company, There was useful information and
• 20:08
  useful experience. And one thing that I reflected
• 20:11
  on is it actually taught the investor base quite a lot.
• 20:15
  I was always living in fear of what happens when we have our
• 20:18
  first failure. You have to pop that cherry at
• 20:22
  some point, and we did. And so now the take away, I
• 20:26
  believe is we're going to have another failure at some point.
• 20:30
  We're launching so many satellites that it just seems
• 20:33
  inevitable that we'll have a launch failure in the future.
• 20:37
  You know, if this is on, you know, launch 10, it really
• 20:39
  doesn't matter at that point. There's already constellation
• 20:43
  build out, but it will be a good lesson so that the stock market
• 20:46
  knows that these are really by the dip type things.
• 20:48
  And so Monday we had the stock and a lot of people making
• 20:51
  emotional, emotional decisions. And those people that sold at 72
• 20:55
  or whatever, you know, felt pretty bad when the stock then
• 20:58
  went to like 84 two days later on FCC approval, which we'll get
• 21:02
  to. And now obviously the stock's
• 21:04
  been trading pretty weak now for reasons we can get into later,
• 21:07
  but but again, I do think that this launch was in a way a, a, a
• 21:12
  big, I want to say big success, but in a way it really did move
• 21:15
  the ball forward quite meaningfully for us.
• 21:18
  If you consider yourself to be a long term owner of the company,
• 21:21
  you have to look about the progress that was made just
• 21:23
  because you can't, you can't undo the the Blue Origin mishap.
• 21:29
  And you just have to take appreciation that we did learn.
• 21:31
  We integrated a satellite with a new launch vehicle.
• 21:34
  The payload adapter worked, the separation system worked.
• 21:38
  The satellite survived the launch loads, The satellite
• 21:41
  turned on with functioning systems, and the satellite was
• 21:44
  controllable and deorbited. That's a lot.
• 21:49
  And we get our money back. So yay.
• 21:55
  Yay. First failed satellites.
• 21:57
  You know, people want metal in orbit.
• 21:58
  Well, yeah, we should qualify that metal that stays in orbit.
• 22:03
  But then Blue Origins looking good.
• 22:05
  I mean, I just can't help but thinking these pictures of never
• 22:08
  tell me the odds, which is the name of the booster looks like,
• 22:12
  you know, CGI. This thing is just so beautiful.
• 22:16
  And this Blue Origin program really looks to be a winner.
• 22:21
  They seem to be so far ahead from on SpaceX in terms of
• 22:27
  development of this program versus Starship, especially
• 22:31
  considering that they don't have the reps of Falcon 9 to sort of
• 22:36
  subsidized learnings. I mean, Glenn Shepard, you know,
• 22:40
  it's kind of a weird thing. And so Blue Origins looking
• 22:44
  really good. But the other thing I think the
• 22:46
  market doesn't quite understand is people saw a Blue Origin
• 22:49
  failure and went, oh, no, the, the launch vehicle program is
• 22:52
  now totally screwed up. Well, the the contracts with
• 22:57
  SpaceX are a peculiar thing. The first rule of Fight Club is
• 23:01
  you are not allowed to talk about Fight Club and SpaceX is
• 23:04
  Fight Club. What I know and what we saw a
• 23:07
  lot of evidence out this week of the company reiterating is the
• 23:13
  company is going to be using SpaceX for most of the launches
• 23:17
  this year. That was really the plan A with
• 23:21
  some optionality on whether Blue Origin was going to be able to
• 23:24
  get commercial operations going in the near term.
• 23:27
  And then we had company executives sort of unwittingly
• 23:31
  confirm that, for example, a guy with the first name Michael,
• 23:35
  I'll just save his last name. Done.
• 23:36
  Everybody else said, we looked at seeing you back at the Cape,
• 23:40
  quote very soon for the launch of Bluebirds 8 through 10.
• 23:44
  And he says, I can attest that these new satellites look
• 23:48
  awesome as we get ready to ship them shortly.
• 23:50
  Well, that's batch one that's going up on a Falcon.
• 23:54
  And then we had, what else do we have this week we had Ross, who
• 24:00
  is with ASTS, stated the company will launch satellites in
• 24:02
  batches of three using SpaceX Falcons until reaching over 40
• 24:06
  satellites. And then our European
• 24:09
  correspondent picked up something.
• 24:13
  This is really just the correspondence between David
• 24:15
  Limp and the NASA administrator, Jared, just talking about how
• 24:20
  NASA is really supportive of Blue Origins doing great.
• 24:22
  Of course they are. And so I don't have any any
• 24:26
  doubt because I actually know this, but I don't know if the
• 24:29
  market has knowledge on the next batches all being SpaceX and in
• 24:35
  some of these expert expert consultant calls that I get and
• 24:40
  that I know only 6 inches gets as well and shares.
• 24:44
  Interesting hearing what hedge funds are asking these experts
• 24:46
  because it really is just, hey, are there any launch vehicles?
• 24:49
  Are there any launch vehicles? Does a bell like Elon answers?
• 24:53
  Seemingly no. But Oh my God, Oh my God, how
• 24:56
  are they going to launch? What does this mean?
• 24:57
  What does this mean? Can they get 45-O?
• 24:59
  If they don't get 45, Can I pull my hair out?
• 25:01
  What if I light my hair on fire? Oh my God, it's just going to
• 25:03
  shave my head. I mean, these guys are just
• 25:05
  doing the classic hedge fund thing is they identify some sort
• 25:09
  of hurdle and then they have a complete mental breakdown over
• 25:13
  assessment of whether that arbitrary hurdle at some future
• 25:15
  point in time is going to be met or not without thinking about
• 25:18
  directionality and and pace. But the fundamental thing that
• 25:22
  they don't know, which I do know is that the next launches are
• 25:25
  with SpaceX. And so I have that on multiple
• 25:30
  sources of of information then not the least of which is what
• 25:35
  the company is telling you. And that's is what it is.
• 25:39
  And I think it's something that's kind of missed in the
• 25:41
  market. The market is very quick to
• 25:43
  hyperventilate and to find reasons to sort of out guess
• 25:46
  itself. And and this is certainly the
• 25:49
  hedge fund way. Notice we've moved on from does
• 25:52
  the tech work, will they get FCC approval, all these other
• 25:55
  things. Now it's this, you know, line in
• 26:00
  the sand people have drawn on. Will they reach 45?
• 26:04
  I have no idea. I just assumed they won't
• 26:07
  because I truly don't care. This is all of a sudden we're
• 26:10
  sort of different mindsets kick in and sometimes I remind
• 26:16
  myself, oh, that's the thing everyone is worrying about, I
• 26:20
  should worry about that too. But I can't bring myself to
• 26:22
  worry about that because I just don't give a shit if they're in
• 26:25
  the process. Let's say they have 20
• 26:27
  satellites up by year end, 30 or whatever.
• 26:30
  Only thing that matters is at that future point in time what
• 26:35
  the pace looks like and whether though there is a light at the
• 26:39
  end of the tunnel. Just like right now, we just had
• 26:43
  a failed launch and the stock is at $78.
• 26:48
  People have been living in this hyperventilation state now for
• 26:53
  like basically 10 months worrying about FM 1.
• 26:58
  And so we've had it already an enormous delay.
• 27:01
  But now people can kind of see we're on the cusp, even though I
• 27:04
  think people do have some reservations on if this kind of
• 27:08
  30 day guidance that the company told us about for, for batch one
• 27:12
  will hit or not. But that's really the wall of,
• 27:15
  of worry. And So what I, what I know to be
• 27:18
  true is the future is what determines the path of a stock
• 27:23
  price. And you really have to focus
• 27:24
  hard on what you think that narrative and really what the
• 27:29
  milestones will look like 6 to 9 months in advance.
• 27:33
  And NPMN did a nice job summarizing sort of a Bill
• 27:37
  Lackman length tweet with the upcoming catalyst and he points
• 27:41
  out, you know, sort of what I just said is we have numerous
• 27:45
  batches coming on Falcon Nines, Golden Dome, Firstnet, FCC
• 27:50
  approval of legato all you can read the list yourself an
• 27:53
  incredible list of things, but then importantly, a lot of
• 27:57
  things that have already been done.
• 27:59
  And so that's where the achievement of milestones.
• 28:02
  It's very easy and and so rich of the bears to, you know, name
• 28:06
  call. I was, I thought I'd block some
• 28:09
  of these guys and then I saw them on my feet this week and I
• 28:11
  started just to, you know, do a lot of bathroom tweets, which
• 28:15
  are my finest work, just randomly doing ad hominem
• 28:18
  attacks for really no reason. She's one of the great things
• 28:21
  about Anonymous account as I just can punch low and
• 28:25
  mercilessly without any fear of reprisal and these guys will
• 28:29
  just come in with some cheap shots.
• 28:31
  And they just failed to look at what this company has achieved.
• 28:33
  And when you actually look at this list of green boxes that
• 28:35
  and Pan Man highlighted, the achievements are incredible.
• 28:42
  And when you, when you look at that, there's a reason why this
• 28:45
  company trades at, you know, a certain market cap and there's a
• 28:49
  reason why the market cap isn't as high as it should be.
• 28:52
  Some of these things are self-inflicted, but there's,
• 28:55
  there's a path to to solve those things.
• 28:57
  And so I get really excited about thinking about what the
• 28:59
  next six months hold. And then I'm sure I'll be very
• 29:02
  excited at that future point about what the next six months
• 29:05
  hold. But that's really what keeps me
• 29:07
  in the game. And I don't think it's
• 29:09
  delusional, but I also do have to adjust my mindset for
• 29:13
  disappointments. And so delays are disappointing.
• 29:17
  I've obviously a failed launch was enormously disappointing.
• 29:19
  I, I think like most people, I, I just kind of got on on my
• 29:23
  flight home and just went to sleep.
• 29:25
  It was like, I can't be conscience right now.
• 29:29
  And so you got to put yourself in the mindset of realizing it's
• 29:32
  one step forward. I thought I can only imagine
• 29:34
  that the team was was pretty bummed out, but you got to just
• 29:38
  put your, you know, big boy pants back on.
• 29:41
  If you if you want to play in the big leagues, if you want to
• 29:44
  be mentally weak and give up, that's fine.
• 29:46
  Stock isn't for everyone. A lot of people already have
• 29:48
  some nice gains on this and maybe some people want to exit.
• 29:52
  That's not that's not what I'm going to do, but it's
• 29:56
  understandable. You know, the mental
• 29:58
  capitulation that I think happened this week is certainly
• 30:01
  predictable and it's usually the same pattern for anyone that's
• 30:04
  sort of newer to the stock. What happens is, you know,
• 30:07
  everyone starts to become a, a technical analysis guy.
• 30:10
  You're going to start to see me like retweeting all the charts
• 30:13
  incessantly because I'm looking for voodoo.
• 30:15
  You have people get tested with each other until there's
• 30:18
  infighting. Everyone kind of the gloves off
• 30:20
  with space mob. Then the bears come out and drop
• 30:23
  some random FUD. People like me then are in a bad
• 30:26
  mood and so start to launch again.
• 30:28
  Vicious mean one liners against these people.
• 30:32
  That's the pattern and that usually is, you know, can can be
• 30:36
  part of a bottoming pattern, but you never know.
• 30:40
  But I'm pretty excited about what happens in the next month,
• 30:42
  especially when those next satellites ship and people
• 30:46
  realize they're going on a Falcon.
• 30:49
  But you do have blue origin not standing still.
• 30:51
  And so they were quick to come out and show that their new
• 30:56
  booster know it's necessary is almost ready to go.
• 30:59
  So again, this is a program that's on pace to add a
• 31:02
  considerable amount of capacity to the market.
• 31:05
  And the fact that they were able to land the booster on the
• 31:08
  second try is still and then repeat that is simply
• 31:12
  astonishing to me. And so the idea that these guys
• 31:15
  are not going to get their second stage to complete a
• 31:18
  second burn, I mean, to take to take the other side of Blue
• 31:24
  Origin being successful in the very near future strikes me as a
• 31:29
  really bad bet to take. So I'm a I'm a Blue Origin
• 31:34
  believer, but almost like Brendan Carr felt bad for us is
• 31:40
  of course, right after the launch failure, Brendan Carr
• 31:44
  approves our SCS application. And so supplemental coverage
• 31:49
  from space is a very important FCC approval.
• 31:53
  It's in fact the one we've been waiting for forever.
• 31:57
  It's been five years in the making the bears when you go
• 32:01
  back and look at the FUD around this issue Oh my God, the scars
• 32:08
  we have from this of all of the experts saying this company was
• 32:13
  totally screwed doing these parades whenever language will
• 32:18
  come out that would seemingly be adverse to AST space mobile how
• 32:25
  quickly they were celebrating this company's demise.
• 32:32
  I just saw someone say that I I cut out so hopefully hopefully
• 32:37
  I'm still alive. Let me just check and see if
• 32:40
  people can still hear me. You still hearing?
• 32:46
  All right, so I might actually be talking to myself now, but
• 32:48
  I'll keep going. Just wait for confirmation.
• 32:50
  But the FCC approval is what enables the partnership leases
• 32:57
  for the low band spectrum with AT&T, Verizon and Firstnet.
• 33:02
  This is ultimately access to the world's biggest telecom market
• 33:09
  and a, from what I can tell, basically an impenetrable mode
• 33:14
  because it not only enables their spectrum, but then the
• 33:18
  access to the customers and, and payment.
• 33:22
  Just pointed out that when people say I can't hear you cook
• 33:25
  on the spaces, they're just trying to get in my head.
• 33:27
  And you know what, pretty effective psyop right there.
• 33:31
  So nice try, but I got friends. But this, this SES approval is
• 33:36
  really the thing. And we've been speculating on
• 33:40
  this forever. And so I still remember when I
• 33:43
  was having my initial calls with some of my hedge fund buddies on
• 33:46
  this, and it must have been in early 2021.
• 33:51
  Yeah, I remember they were like, oh, we're going to wait until we
• 33:53
  get visibility on the FCC. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
• 33:56
  yeah, that makes sense. I'm, you know, I'm just going to
• 33:57
  like take the risk on that. And I thought, you know, we'd
• 33:59
  have like FCC approval, you know, sometime in mid 2021.
• 34:02
  And so for anyone that's leaning on me for, you know, batch 1
• 34:05
  estimates, just beware. You know, I was only off by five
• 34:09
  years. So, you know, I think I'll be a
• 34:11
  little bit better on the timing with batch one, but I was
• 34:14
  definitely really wrong on the timing for us, yes, However, it
• 34:18
  didn't really slow us down. In fact, I don't think it slowed
• 34:20
  us down at all because we had St. as which are these temporary
• 34:24
  approvals in the meantime and we didn't have satellites in there.
• 34:27
  So everything happens, stock price is gone up 8X since those
• 34:33
  worries that I had with you know, various hedge funds.
• 34:35
  So you got paid to wait, but now we have it.
• 34:38
  And importantly, this low band spectrum is the exact stuff that
• 34:44
  other people do not have. SpaceX cannot technically
• 34:49
  accommodate it, nor do they have it.
• 34:51
  They only have S band. And so since 80% of traffic is
• 34:55
  indoors, low band is crucial because that's what allows ASD
• 34:59
  to penetrate walls. And the competition cannot
• 35:03
  access low band because we already have our MNO deals.
• 35:07
  And there's also a technical reason why they cannot access
• 35:09
  low band. It has to do with the spacing
• 35:12
  between the elements on the phased array, which is why our
• 35:15
  satellites are so big. We're using high band and S band
• 35:20
  spectrum. The waves are smaller, so the
• 35:23
  elements can be closer together and your your smaller satellites
• 35:28
  can then achieve something in that spectrum.
• 35:30
  But if you want to be in low band, you need a big bird to
• 35:34
  spread those wings so the elements have enough space
• 35:37
  between them so the waves don't interfere with each other.
• 35:40
  So interesting stuff that I learned, you know, along my
• 35:42
  journey with, with Catsy. Sometimes it's like so simple.
• 35:46
  You're like, oh, yeah, OK, low band, big wave, need more
• 35:48
  distance, need a bigger satellite.
• 35:50
  You're like, OK, sometimes rocket science is actually very
• 35:57
  elemental and straightforward not to under score, but like you
• 36:00
  actually need a really big satellite to use low band.
• 36:03
  And we got it. And this really unlocks our
• 36:09
  revenue model in the world's biggest market, which Scott was
• 36:13
  very quick to point out in his tweet, quote regulatory approval
• 36:17
  in the world's largest wireless market.
• 36:19
  This is the price we got it. Big deal stock cared about it
• 36:26
  for one day. And so totally classic ASTS and
• 36:32
  this one, I saw this start to fade on Wednesday.
• 36:34
  I was just like, oh God, here we go again.
• 36:35
  Because all the sort of impatient little people that,
• 36:39
  you know, expect others to do their work for them.
• 36:42
  We're going to be like, but I thought this was the big deal
• 36:43
  and now it's going down. You guys are all scammers and
• 36:46
  pumpers and it's like, look, I'm definitely not a scanner
• 36:52
  scammer. There are a lot of people that
• 36:54
  met me at launch and even AMPAM man was quick to say, kook, your
• 37:00
  upper body definition is looking really good.
• 37:01
  Like these push ups are clearly working.
• 37:04
  And so I've LED people on the right path.
• 37:07
  I said do the push ups every night.
• 37:09
  You will get ripped. I did the push ups, I got
• 37:11
  ripped. No scam truth.
• 37:14
  I sell truth. And so these these bears have no
• 37:17
  idea what they're talking about. And if the stock goes down a
• 37:20
  little bit on the FCC, it's like the same thing as someone that
• 37:23
  you know is flabby who doesn't do the push ups being like,
• 37:26
  whoa, who's a scammer? Do the goddamn push ups.
• 37:29
  And so, yeah, it doesn't happen overnight.
• 37:33
  And so the FCC approval doesn't magically change the stock price
• 37:38
  overnight for reasons that maybe makes sense, maybe they don't.
• 37:40
  But it's a massive enabler. And so now we have quite
• 37:45
  literally the license to print money and we're going to get
• 37:50
  into the spectrum stuff a little bit more in a second.
• 37:55
  But we did have a good spaces with Anpan Man, which I've
• 37:59
  quoted out and I'm sure he said a lot of these things.
• 38:02
  Actually, he didn't. It's time to listen to it.
• 38:05
  But don't tell him because I always tell him I listen to all
• 38:07
  the spaces and I'm like, so amazing, bro.
• 38:10
  But the reality is, unfortunately, I don't really
• 38:12
  always have the time. But we also had a cool graphic
• 38:15
  come out from at Chasing Polaris, which was really cool.
• 38:19
  So I wanted to highlight this, this really cool space mob
• 38:22
  content. It just visualizes the number of
• 38:25
  satellites at the varying altitudes and inclinations.
• 38:30
  Of note is that we have this 28 satellite shell at sun
• 38:38
  synchronous orbit, which is really a giveaway for a lot of
• 38:40
  us that we have, you know, very promising military business.
• 38:45
  But anyway, that graphic is there.
• 38:47
  And then you would think after, boy, at this point, 7 years of
• 38:52
  incessant FUD and then the company gets FCC approval, you
• 38:58
  would think that Tim Farrar would say, doggone it, a bell
• 39:04
  did it? I know when I'm wrong.
• 39:07
  It takes a big man to shake the other man's hand and say, good
• 39:10
  work son, and let's check in on Tim.
• 39:15
  Did he take the High Road? Did he actually show some honor
• 39:19
  in this world? Quote.
• 39:21
  Kudos to Jennifer for navigating this to a conclusion at the FCC.
• 39:26
  While the near term problem remains ASTSS lack of
• 39:29
  credibility re satellite delivery and launch timelines,
• 39:31
  the big bigger issue now is the lack of consumer demand for this
• 39:35
  low speed DDD service as Starlink is showing.
• 39:38
  Holy crap. Like really?
• 39:42
  The thing this guy staked his entire reputation on, which was
• 39:45
  ASTS, would fail on the altar of the FCC and as that dream of his
• 39:52
  slipped filing by filing, all he can bring himself to do is
• 39:58
  congratulate our regulatory person Jennifer who comes from
• 40:02
  Echostar, but not even throw a bone and be like wow, ASTS got
• 40:09
  SES approval which is the regulatory framework that was
• 40:12
  basically written for them because they invented the
• 40:16
  category and the FCC. Singularly accommodated their
• 40:20
  entire business model by rewriting all of the rules.
• 40:25
  Holy crap, what an accomplishment.
• 40:27
  Moving heaven and hell. Probably more impressive than
• 40:31
  Uber being able to legalize their own illicit pirate taxi
• 40:36
  business. Oh my God, that would have been
• 40:39
  the appropriate response from a normal human being, but not Tim
• 40:42
  Ferrar. He's like, congratulations, you
• 40:45
  got your license and now you'll go bankrupt because there is no
• 40:48
  market and you are not credible because you cannot deliver
• 40:51
  satellites. Never mind we just launched a
• 40:53
  satellite and showed it with the orbit.
• 40:56
  Oh, you know, sideshow. But this, you just can't make
• 40:59
  this up. But that is why we know we're
• 41:01
  right, because Tim is the counter indicator of all time.
• 41:09
  And so at least we still have fun, but people who are a little
• 41:12
  bit more objective are excited. And so Firstnet is really
• 41:17
  pumped. There's a cool video out from at
• 41:19
  GR space-time who found this Chief Morris of Cal Fire talking
• 41:25
  about including Leo satellites, about how AI enablement allows
• 41:30
  them to really identify things. This is an issue near and dear
• 41:34
  to anyone in the state of California.
• 41:36
  The heartache caused by wildfires really can't be
• 41:41
  understated until you've seen one.
• 41:44
  It's easy to see something on the news and you see a bunch of
• 41:46
  smoldering ashes and go, you know, never happened to me.
• 41:51
  Sometimes it can happen to you. And let me tell you, it is super
• 41:55
  bad and very disoriented and you don't want to wish this upon
• 41:59
  anyone. And having technology that can
• 42:02
  help spot these issues so that you can respond is incredible.
• 42:06
  And it will save hundreds of billions of dollars of damages
• 42:10
  and mental trauma. And Firstnet is very excited to
• 42:15
  be able to deploy this. And I am very excited for
• 42:17
  Firstnet to deploy this. Then we also have things like
• 42:20
  the Mystic Act. And so there's a really cool
• 42:22
  video that at the Mad Monk found with Congressman August
• 42:28
  Fluegler, who specifically gives ASTSA shout out at the
• 42:32
  streamlining of Satellite Act. And they specifically talk about
• 42:38
  Asts. And this is another thing where
• 42:40
  if you're looking for a cause in your life helping avert the
• 42:45
  Mystic crisis, if that is the one thing you achieve in your
• 42:48
  life, which is saving 100 little girls, then you have achieved
• 42:53
  more than probably every canonized St. ever.
• 42:59
  There is no higher cause than preventing what happened there,
• 43:04
  and so thank God that our legislators are trying to
• 43:08
  streamline things like this and incorporate the latest
• 43:12
  technology so that disasters like this can be mitigated.
• 43:19
  You can't stop the floodwaters. That's the thing.
• 43:21
  You can't stop. But the response and the time to
• 43:25
  action is what technology can help, especially if disaster
• 43:32
  strikes. Helping define survivors and
• 43:34
  coordinate rescue response is would be an incredible
• 43:38
  achievement. I don't think that this is
• 43:40
  necessarily the best commercial opportunity, but I also really
• 43:43
  don't give a shit because there's going to be plenty of
• 43:47
  money to make with ASCSS technology in other ways.
• 43:51
  But this is the thing that is going to really avert things and
• 43:56
  it will be sort of like Man in the High Castle.
• 43:58
  There are going to be two realities.
• 44:01
  One is the reality we will live in, which will hopefully not
• 44:04
  have the heartache and we'll never have the stories.
• 44:06
  And the other reality is what is presently happening today where
• 44:09
  people are dying for reasons that can be averted.
• 44:12
  And I'm very much looking forward to a reality where ASTS
• 44:15
  really doesn't even get any praises because it worked
• 44:17
  properly and people were able to get out of harm's way and no one
• 44:20
  really ever knows what could have happened.
• 44:21
  And that would be great. And the legislators are jumping
• 44:24
  on real fast to do this too. And that's also really inspiring
• 44:29
  to see. The next thing we had this week
• 44:32
  is certainly very complicated. And something I'm still really
• 44:36
  working on and debating with other people is this other FCC
• 44:40
  action that came, which really locks down incumbent spectrum
• 44:45
  rights. And so this at face level is
• 44:48
  really just like a hard slap at SpaceX, who is trying to
• 44:53
  basically sneak into everyone's spectrum by saying like, well, I
• 44:56
  don't use it. So we're we're just going to use
• 44:58
  it. Spectrum likes to take things,
• 45:00
  they don't like to pay for things.
• 45:02
  The FCC with prejudice, which means you cannot come back and
• 45:08
  retry this because we remember said no.
• 45:12
  And so for the licensed spectrum holders on a global basis, that
• 45:17
  is theirs. And it reaffirmed exclusive use
• 45:23
  for incumbent licenses both domestically and international
• 45:27
  operations. This is good news for the global
• 45:31
  stars, iridiums, Legatos and Echostars.
• 45:35
  This preserves their rights and forces value to the people who
• 45:39
  have those licenses because if other people want to use it,
• 45:43
  they have to pay or work out a deal.
• 45:46
  This preserves the idea that legato spectrum is a scarce
• 45:50
  exclusive asset. That is great news for us
• 45:53
  because by way of the bankruptcy proceeding, we have the lease
• 45:57
  for it in the United States in the L Band, which is incredibly
• 46:01
  well situated for very high bandwidth DTC services.
• 46:07
  Spacex's L Band ambitions are dead.
• 46:10
  SpaceX had applied to use the L Band both inside and outside the
• 46:14
  US, and those were all dismissed with prejudice.
• 46:17
  This removes SpaceX as a competitor in the L Band.
• 46:21
  Not good for them. It preserves the Legato and the
• 46:24
  ASTS partnership. That is good.
• 46:27
  Where it gets a little bit murky is ASTS was trying to do the
• 46:32
  same thing SpaceX was doing, of basically sneaking in and
• 46:35
  drafting on other people's spectrum in some of the S band.
• 46:39
  And so with ASTS, it was a little bit unclear actually if
• 46:42
  this was just sort of like a 3D chess move they were playing
• 46:45
  where SpaceX was taking a legal position which it, if it had
• 46:50
  worked, would have resulted in a spectrum land grab.
• 46:53
  ASTS appears to have had a reciprocal strategy such that if
• 46:57
  SpaceX got away with murder, ASTS would too.
• 47:01
  Where SpaceX gets shut down, ASTSS little back door approach
• 47:06
  to S ban would also get shut down.
• 47:08
  But ASTS didn't lose the full ball of wax in this respect.
• 47:14
  And so they have remaining requests for some other S band
• 47:19
  spectrum, which the FCC explicitly sets aside for later
• 47:23
  consideration. And so, but the important thing
• 47:26
  is all of the competitors are relying on S band spectrum.
• 47:32
  MSS more broadly, none of them other than Asts are using
• 47:40
  terrestrial spectrum. ASTS business model has always
• 47:43
  been to use terrestrial mobile carrier spectrum via SCS
• 47:46
  framework. So the AT&T deals for example,
• 47:49
  rather than holding their own MSS licenses.
• 47:51
  This order does not touch SCS at all.
• 47:54
  ASTSS commercial service will still run on partner carrier's
• 47:58
  existing terrestrial allocations.
• 48:01
  The only thing AST has lost was clean access to some prime 2
• 48:05
  gigahertz international frequencies.
• 48:08
  And you know that's a loss, but they did get an endorsement of
• 48:16
  their legato type structure where they get to lease and
• 48:22
  contract on arm's length basis. And so the strategic
• 48:25
  architecture of ASESS business, which is really riding on the
• 48:29
  other licensee spectrum rather than owning the MSS allocations
• 48:32
  outright actually got stronger from this order rather than
• 48:36
  weaker. And so I'm still trying to learn
• 48:39
  more because I never really saw how ASTS ambitions really relied
• 48:45
  on getting S band. It really to me always look like
• 48:49
  a supplement and that the low band that they would get from
• 48:53
  their partners was always the unfair advantage that they had.
• 48:58
  And I still think that to be true, but a lot of us are still
• 49:03
  spending a lot of time debating this and trying to understand
• 49:05
  the puts and the takes because it's clearly there's some puts
• 49:07
  and takes on this. This is not just outright
• 49:12
  positive for Asts, and it does look to be just outright
• 49:17
  negative for SpaceX. And, you know, this is something
• 49:21
  that we'll be learning a lot more on.
• 49:24
  The other thing this week, which certainly might have caused
• 49:26
  people some back and forth is the AT&T earning call.
• 49:30
  And so Stanky went out of his way to say, quote, we've been
• 49:36
  working with one satellite partner very closely now to make
• 49:39
  sure they get off the ground and they're vile.
• 49:41
  That's AST Space mobile. We've been putting most of our
• 49:44
  R&D and our work on bringing product out with what they will
• 49:46
  be matching to the market. But I fully expect that SpaceX
• 49:51
  will ultimately have a robust direct device capability.
• 49:54
  I would expect that Amazon Leo will have a robust direct to
• 49:57
  device capability and who knows, maybe even a fourth shows up.
• 50:00
  My goal being John Stanky would be to have a good strong
• 50:05
  wholesale relationship. And it may not just be with one
• 50:08
  of them. It may be with more than one.
• 50:12
  A plain read of that you go, Oh my God, AT&T might have other
• 50:15
  partners. And I, you know, I saw people's
• 50:18
  read on that and I thought, well, that's interesting.
• 50:20
  But think about it from a behavior, a forensic behavioral
• 50:23
  standpoint. There is a lot to unpack with
• 50:26
  Stanky's statements. And so he's at some level trying
• 50:33
  to outright commoditize the satellite layer in this
• 50:36
  narrative and really elevate AT&T is sort of the platform
• 50:42
  that collects all these other modular pieces.
• 50:45
  Well, that's exactly what you'd expect him to say because he's
• 50:49
  certainly not going to diminish the importance of AT&T on his
• 50:54
  own earning call. But if ASTS were genuinely
• 50:57
  replaceable, he didn't, he wouldn't have said what he's
• 51:01
  going to say. He would have said we're
• 51:02
  evaluating multiple partners. He did not.
• 51:05
  He named Asts specifically and by name as the one they're
• 51:09
  actively working with and said, quote most of our R&D.
• 51:13
  That's a disclosure. It's a very weird thing to say.
• 51:16
  They don't casually say on their earnings call that we are
• 51:19
  dedicating most of our R&D to a partner.
• 51:22
  If they think that partner is fungible, he wouldn't do that.
• 51:27
  And then he also could have described SpaceX and Kuiper as
• 51:31
  near term options. He didn't.
• 51:33
  He used some extremely choice words.
• 51:36
  He says that SpaceX quote will ultimately have a robust direct
• 51:41
  to device capability. If you've ever taken any of
• 51:45
  these CIA courses on forensic behavior analysis, this is a
• 51:52
  dead giveaway. Ultimately will have.
• 51:55
  And then with with Amazon Leo, we would expect that Amazon Leo
• 51:59
  will have. That's an admission that ASTS is
• 52:02
  actually the only operator with a credible product that AT&T can
• 52:06
  work with. And So what he laid out is that
• 52:09
  these others are aspirational, but ASTS is the only one.
• 52:14
  And then he explicitly said we're going to help them get off
• 52:17
  the ground and make sure they're viable.
• 52:20
  That is a really odd thing to say by a Tier 1 carrier about a
• 52:26
  partner. You don't publicly start talking
• 52:29
  about how you're going to make sure they're viable unless
• 52:32
  they're viability matters to your road map.
• 52:35
  That's a tell that AT&T needs Asts to work.
• 52:39
  And then he also set the ground actually for some very useful
• 52:43
  FTC optics about effectively saying that there's going to be
• 52:47
  competition, not out there saying that there's a monopoly.
• 52:50
  So thank you very much. And then he's of course trying
• 52:53
  to posture for some negotiating leverage to keep a bell probably
• 52:56
  in his seat by reminding him that, you know, while we do have
• 53:00
  five year exclusivity, you know, we're going to try to make sure
• 53:02
  you don't rake us fine. But I thought that these
• 53:06
  comments from AT&T were very revealing about just how
• 53:11
  important ASTS was to AT&T and what the true state of play is
• 53:17
  with SpaceX. There was some expert calls this
• 53:20
  week too with SpaceX where they mentioned they don't have a
• 53:22
  technical problem product. And you know, they think that
• 53:25
  they might have something in 2027, but their business teams
• 53:29
  are really not even focused on it.
• 53:31
  That the 8, the T-Mobile deal was just a one year deal that
• 53:34
  they just wanted to do some proof of concept.
• 53:36
  But until they have a technical solution, they're not going to
• 53:40
  be putting a lot more work on it.
• 53:42
  He does think the SpaceX people do do think that this is a
• 53:45
  priority for SpaceX. Hard to ever say that SpaceX
• 53:48
  can't do something again, vertically integrated, very
• 53:50
  talented company, but they don't have it and they could be late.
• 53:53
  They have their their plate full.
• 53:55
  ASTS engineer I sat with on the bus just reminded me that SpaceX
• 54:00
  is not the company that they were 10 years ago, which is a
• 54:02
  good reminder. And then I think we're all very
• 54:05
  confused about Amazon's viability.
• 54:09
  And so, you know, a lot to unpack in that comment in the
• 54:14
  next tweet we had is from only 6 inches, which is going into this
• 54:19
  call that the SpaceX former employee did.
• 54:23
  And I was listening to it today in its entirety.
• 54:27
  But he did just say that ASTS does have the lead and really
• 54:32
  just expected it to be a 2 horse race with SpaceX and ASTS.
• 54:37
  They did note that SES does have a pretty interesting advantage
• 54:42
  with all the M&O contracts. And that's something that SpaceX
• 54:45
  first needs to lead with engineering and have a product
• 54:48
  that works and then they're going to figure out the business
• 54:50
  model later. And that seems like a pretty
• 54:53
  fair evaluation. There is some work put out by
• 54:56
  that sort of doctor evaluation guy at NYU on SpaceX.
• 54:59
  Not going to really get into that because I have no idea if
• 55:02
  SpaceX is efficiently valued or not.
• 55:05
  It's certainly in amazingly fascinating company, and I can
• 55:09
  understand why people are really excited to own it at any price.
• 55:14
  And it's a big idea. And I think it's wonderful that
• 55:18
  humans can do things with private capital like that.
• 55:22
  And yeah, go SpaceX. But the other thing that's just
• 55:26
  bizarre is they're buying cursor.
• 55:28
  And so we saw this this week like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 55:31
  whoa. You're buying an IDE.
• 55:34
  And so to me it just tells you that these guys kind of got
• 55:36
  themselves in the wrong path with that XAI acquisition.
• 55:42
  So they have this money suck of all time building up their AI
• 55:46
  business. They need to do something.
• 55:48
  They need to generate some front end usage probably for all the
• 55:52
  back end they have with XAI. Probably need to figure out how
• 55:56
  to compete with Kodak's and Claude Code, Who knows.
• 55:59
  But to say that this company is starting to have some style
• 56:03
  drift is an understatement. And so this company now having
• 56:08
  to chew on their AI business, potentially integrating Cursor
• 56:12
  while getting Starship going, maintaining their Falcon 9
• 56:17
  business, which itself is an incredible feat of industry.
• 56:23
  And then Starlink, they really have quite a lot going on.
• 56:28
  It does to me tell you that this, that SpaceX is really
• 56:31
  going to push this AI narrative and these AI data centers from
• 56:35
  space. And my instinct, unfounded but
• 56:38
  instinct is that that's the direction they're going to go if
• 56:41
  they have scarce resources that the DDPD business can't possibly
• 56:46
  be their first priority. The only counterpoint to that is
• 56:50
  just the simple observation that SpaceX has now spent more on DDD
• 56:54
  by way of the Echostar deal than they have on the Starship
• 56:57
  program. So that that is a humbling
• 57:00
  realization to me. You know, I clearly just can't
• 57:03
  say, well, SpaceX is going to give up.
• 57:05
  You know, they've spent more on DDD now by way of spectrum than
• 57:09
  they did on on Starlink. But the way in which they use
• 57:14
  that spectrum, the way in which they can compete can in fact be
• 57:17
  completely orthogonal to the way ASTS is competing.
• 57:22
  So I think there's a lot to be seen in terms of how SpaceX is
• 57:25
  actually going to deploy that spectrum and whether it's really
• 57:28
  going to be going to the same commercial markets that we're
• 57:31
  going toward. So we'll see.
• 57:35
  And then we also learned a little bit more this week about
• 57:38
  Amazon's own challenges. And so Deutsche Bank came out
• 57:41
  just highlighting some of the challenge that they see for
• 57:44
  Amazon's D to D efforts, including that it's not coming
• 57:48
  anytime soon. They don't have any M&O partners
• 57:52
  and no one really understands their technology.
• 57:55
  They don't know if Amazon has already designed a satellite
• 57:58
  that can work with DDD. We do not think that's the case.
• 58:01
  Is it just going to be done by third parties?
• 58:04
  We do believe that is the case, but no one really knows.
• 58:07
  Then we'll find out. WhatsApp is starting to take a
• 58:12
  little bit more of a trajectory that squares the circle with
• 58:17
  their work with Asts. So Meta is offering a
• 58:21
  subscription service in WhatsApp.
• 58:23
  So Regrum, pick this up and it's a nine to five Mac article about
• 58:28
  WhatsApp Plus and it's launching soon with new features.
• 58:32
  Some of these features are kind of silly, like you get your own
• 58:34
  avatars or whatever, but starting to look like WhatsApp
• 58:38
  might be his own stand alone service without requiring MN OS.
• 58:43
  Given how WhatsApp is used in markets outside the US, that's
• 58:47
  supposed to become an entirely plausible thing.
• 58:50
  WhatsApp is huge, and many small businesses rely entirely on
• 58:56
  WhatsApp, which implies that a lot of users rely entirely on
• 58:59
  WhatsApp. So if WhatsApp is connected via
• 59:03
  STS outside of an MNL, that works.
• 59:08
  And you know, one must ask whether Asts is front and center
• 59:14
  right there. And that starts to get pretty
• 59:17
  interesting for Asts because they start to have more control
• 59:21
  over the stack. They're no longer just a sub
• 59:24
  vendor to an M&O who is doing its own deal directly with Meta.
• 59:28
  All of a sudden it's just Meta and ASTS ruling the roost in
• 59:33
  some of these geographies. We'll see how this develops, but
• 59:35
  it starts to to show why John Stankey might try to publicly
• 59:40
  lessen fears on Asts dominance to his own investor base.
• 59:46
  Because we don't know how fast this technology will evolve.
• 59:51
  We don't know the extent to which ASTS as a platform starts
• 59:55
  to look a lot like AWS did 10 years ago.
• 59:59
  My belief is that the platform effect of ASTS could in fact be
• 1:00:04
  pretty robust. Now let's remind ourselves,
• 1:00:08
  which is geared, that space is hard.
• 1:00:10
  So Tanner pointed out, just when we're trying to contextualize
• 1:00:14
  all the FUD that's out there. Neutron, from the Rocket Lab
• 1:00:17
  Bros, was set to launch in 2024. Still hasn't two years.
• 1:00:23
  Elon said in December the Starship would launch in six
• 1:00:30
  weeks. It's been over 12 weeks.
• 1:00:33
  Space is hard. And so I think anyone that owns
• 1:00:36
  these stocks needs to recognize the challenges in the timelines.
• 1:00:40
  And I always get pretty put off when the company misses
• 1:00:44
  timelines. I'm not put off by the company
• 1:00:47
  missing timelines, to be clear. But what I am put off by is
• 1:00:49
  people then immediately making accusations that the company is,
• 1:00:53
  is lying, quote UN quote lying or committing fraud or things
• 1:00:56
  like that. And it would be nice if the
• 1:00:58
  company had more realistic timelines, but I can also see
• 1:01:01
  how they're doing the best they can.
• 1:01:03
  Maybe they shouldn't give any timelines, but I don't think
• 1:01:05
  that's helpful. But what they're certainly not
• 1:01:07
  doing is willfully misleading people or lying.
• 1:01:11
  Because if that were the case, look at every other single space
• 1:01:14
  company and it's the exact same story.
• 1:01:17
  And so you could hardly say that that is just a common
• 1:01:19
  pathological thread across all space companies.
• 1:01:23
  They're probably all psychos. To be ACEO of a space company
• 1:01:26
  means you're probably hopelessly optimistic of a risk tolerance
• 1:01:30
  of that of a freebase jumper. Those things are all probably
• 1:01:36
  true, but you need to just recognize the challenges of
• 1:01:39
  doing this and why so few companies have been successful
• 1:01:44
  and if difficult sort of ground breaking technology investment
• 1:01:51
  is hard for you. No one's making you do it.
• 1:01:57
  And and for most people, this is a completely unsuitable
• 1:02:00
  investment. And that's why, yeah, I really
• 1:02:03
  didn't get very many of my actually, like close friends in
• 1:02:05
  this, certainly none of my family members in it.
• 1:02:08
  I mean, my God, what a terrible decision that would have been in
• 1:02:13
  terms of dealing with all his expectations.
• 1:02:15
  It's bad enough now that my dad text me about the stock price,
• 1:02:18
  which implies that he probably bought it, just won't admit it
• 1:02:20
  to me. But at least I never told him to
• 1:02:22
  buy it. He just sort of got FOMO.
• 1:02:25
  But space is difficult, and we got a real taste of that this
• 1:02:28
  week, and so I'm glad we got a taste of it.
• 1:02:31
  I hope that the institutional memory of of FM 2, Bluebird 7 is
• 1:02:36
  going to be when failures happen, there's the weak people
• 1:02:41
  that flush it and that's an opportunity for people because
• 1:02:44
  then we RIP higher. So I hope that's what happens
• 1:02:46
  and I hope that's the learning, but time will tell.
• 1:02:49
  We also had golden Dome contracts start to flow this
• 1:02:52
  week. And so unfortunately ASTS did
• 1:02:54
  not get any of them, but it was also for the space based
• 1:02:56
  interceptors. But Space Force announced that
• 1:03:00
  there was $3.2 billion of contracts going out.
• 1:03:04
  And this is starting to flow, which is getting to be pretty
• 1:03:08
  exciting. So I know I'm anxiously awaiting
• 1:03:13
  to see whether ASTS gets some big deals in the future.
• 1:03:17
  And I, I really hope, hope they do.
• 1:03:20
  The time will tell. And then the last thing this
• 1:03:22
  week is Mickey Mouse rained on our parade.
• 1:03:26
  And so Rakuten, whose CEO is named Mickey, has been selling
• 1:03:32
  shares. He is a big conglomerate in
• 1:03:35
  Japan, has Rakuten Mobile, has big shopping business and bank.
• 1:03:40
  He's very, very levered. He hit an absolute home run on
• 1:03:44
  his seed investment in AST space Mobile made a couple billion
• 1:03:47
  dollars. He needs that cash for his core
• 1:03:49
  business. So he's been selling down his
• 1:03:51
  shares in the open market, which certainly isn't helpful.
• 1:03:54
  But if you're wondering why the stock has been trading heavy,
• 1:03:58
  that is a very good reason because and any sort of market
• 1:04:02
  makers just going to know they have sort of a free put on the
• 1:04:04
  stock because you have the seller that's going to come in,
• 1:04:08
  but they are getting close to being done.
• 1:04:11
  And So what I'm really looking forward to is when we get really
• 1:04:15
  close to the end of their selling, there's the stock
• 1:04:19
  should start to lift because people are going to know there's
• 1:04:20
  going to be a clean up trade and that could that could be a nice
• 1:04:23
  pop. And so if we do get sort of like
• 1:04:25
  a big burst of strength, it wouldn't surprise me if that's
• 1:04:29
  one of the reasons why. And we look back and it's like a
• 1:04:31
  house so obvious. And there's just be aware of
• 1:04:35
  rackets and sort of leaning on the stock and why there's a
• 1:04:39
  reasonable chance that once he kind of steps off the bed, then
• 1:04:45
  this thing could could really torque higher.
• 1:04:47
  So that's really my personal expectation, but I don't know, I
• 1:04:52
  bat like 5050 on this stuff. So that's what we have for this
• 1:04:55
  week. I certainly am emotionally
• 1:04:58
  exhausted. It was kind of posting how I
• 1:05:00
  feel with the Ben Affleck meme. I don't smoke, but all of a
• 1:05:05
  sudden I was trying to think, I'm like, I don't know, maybe I
• 1:05:07
  should, Maybe I should pick up smoking.
• 1:05:09
  You know, what destructive habit could I pick up to help pass my
• 1:05:12
  ASTS woes? But then I decided that I wasn't
• 1:05:15
  going to actually invite lung cancer into my life because of
• 1:05:21
  some stock market volatility. So, you know, be careful what
• 1:05:24
  your habits are when we deal with ASTS.
• 1:05:25
  So I decided not to pick that one.
• 1:05:28
  Thanks for joining me. It still shows that no one is
• 1:05:32
  here, but I have had confirmation that people can
• 1:05:34
  hear me. So it goes to show you that Elon
• 1:05:38
  is strapped for technical resources and things are
• 1:05:41
  breaking all of around around him.
• 1:05:42
  So we'll see if this guy can launch his Falcon Heavy
• 1:05:46
  tomorrow, which I really hope he does.
• 1:05:49
  Might wake up early to see that one which is launching, I
• 1:05:52
  believe it, 7:20 Pacific, right when I'm usually get my kids at
• 1:05:58
  the door for school. And so that's going to be that's
• 1:06:02
  another kind of big launch vehicle that is actually really
• 1:06:05
  exciting to watch and that's kind of it.
• 1:06:09
  So thanks again. Thanks for listening to the AST
• 1:06:14
  Space Mover podcast. If you enjoyed this episode.
• 1:06:17
  And you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it
• 1:06:20
  with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating
• 1:06:24
  and review. To catch all the.
• 1:06:26
  Latest news about. AST Space Mobile.
• 1:06:28
  Make sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 1:06:31
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 1:06:37
  big and I think with this technology we can really affect
• 1:06:40
  billion lives. AST Space Mobile is the only
• 1:06:43
  company that has full technology to deliver several mobile
• 1:06:47
  connectivity directly from space to do everyday smartphone people
• 1:06:52
  will just basically. Turn their phone.
• 1:06:54
  Be seamless, regardless of where you are.
• 1:06:56
  We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
• 1:06:59
  satellite. Our role is to bring this into
• 1:07:03
  reality, always in partnership with the animal.
• 1:07:18
  Listen, Waffles.