Latest / Whisky Unfinished / Why Would Anyone Send WHISKY to the MOON? - David Peng Chief Strategy Officer, AstroHub

Transcript

Why Would Anyone Send WHISKY to the MOON? - David Peng Chief Strategy Officer, AstroHub · Whisky Unfinished

• 0:56
  All right, David Peng. I'm just gonna jump right in. Tell me about the space economy as if I'm a 18-year-old fresh graduate out of high school and I've never really read anything on the internet about the space economy. Tell me what this is all about.
• 1:11
  Sure, happy to. But maybe before I get to that, I do have a great way to introduce people to space and what's happening now.
• 1:16
  But I think people realize that space has been happening for a bit. But the big shift is really over the last 15 years we've moved from where space is very much in the purview and control of the government and public space to private and commercial space. So it really happened in 2004 when the X Prize was won. That was the prize for commercialized space travel, going to space. SpaceX and the bigger companies that we know who are. The X Prize, rather. If I said SpaceX, I didn't mean X. SpaceX was the X Prize. And that really kicked off that huge rapid development. And of course, the person that's front and center is Elon Musk. So SpaceX did a lot. I mean, there are great books about their success. Lift Off by Berger. About, they almost literally last flight, their fourth test flight. And that was make or break. And they made it. And then they allowed them to get government contracts and then build space, the newer models and the reentry models and reusables.
• 2:22
  So what is the space economy, though? Talk to me as someone who doesn't know what we're even talking about. So the space commercializing is that, usually I ask people when we have a discussion, what does your life have to do with space? And young people usually say nothing. I say, do you have an iPhone, smartphone? Yes. Do you use any geolocation services? Do you play any games? Do you do food deliveries?
• 2:42
  GPS, yes. Then you're using space every day. But that's just satellites, right? Or are we talking about more than that? Well, that is satellite. But then satellite is the biggest piece of space right now.
• 2:50
  We're gone from 2017, under 2,000 satellites. We're now, today, just today's number, 12,000. Just this year, 2,250 satellites went up.
• 3:02
  Okay, so help me understand that. Why do we need so many more satellites? Is that just because there's more phones and therefore more connectivity? Or is it more because we're upgrading 4G, 5G? I'm sure 6G. Is that why we need more satellites?
• 3:15
  It's a good question. Because we're looking at different orbital planes, right? So the old space, when we were younger, when you have sort of trans-global communications and live feed on TV, those are usually geosatellites, or geosynchronous satellites, or geosynchronous orbit satellites. That's about 35,000 kilometers from Earth. It's at a fixed spot to Earth, so moving at the same angle, so you have the same coverage, so beams going up and down. And then you have now, more recently, especially over the last five years, low Earth orbit. Now, these are for broadband. These are smaller satellites, not the bus-sized satellites that are up in the geosynchronous zone orbit. But smaller ones, that's where you have SpaceX. 50% of the 12,000 satellites are SpaceX Starlink satellites. The Chinese, the Europeans are putting up their own constellations because they're closer to Earth. They travel faster. They go around the Earth, just like the ISS, every 90 minutes, they go around the Earth once. And you need a whole bunch of these satellites to really to fill in the hole and the gap, right? To have the right coverage for broadband communication. So that gives us the 5G, the coming 6G, that there's very short latency because it's so close to Earth, really good. But there are dangers to that, which we'll get to.
• 4:33
  But let me go back to your first question.
• 4:33
  Why space? What is space about? Yeah, what's the economy part of it, I guess? So me, as an average user, I get it. I use an iPhone. I use a lot of things. Obviously, I'm from a technology point of view. But what is the economy part? What are the actual opportunities for, let's say, an entrepreneur today, or I run a business?
• 4:52
  Where does that go? So this, you're asking really good questions. What do we see? Why is it pertinent? Why is it important?
• 5:01
  Right, because I'm not going to go out there and mine asteroids, right? Okay, I'll give you the best way to looking at this is actually looking at it historically. So I like to take people on a journey, okay? If you're looking at space, trying to understand space, let's pretend you and I, I have a time machine.
• 5:20
  If we get on this time machine, we're going to go back in time, two stops, okay?
• 5:25
  First stop, we're going to go back to 1890. Why 1890? Because 1890 is literally five years after the invention of the combustion engine by Mercedes, okay? So the car's just about to come out, and you like cars, you're wealthy. 1890, you buy a car, automobile, whatever you want to call it. My first question to you, if you live there and you own one, where do you get your gasoline or fuel for the car?
• 5:49
  Right, there's no gas stations, this doesn't exist yet. So people usually figure out that there are no gas station, where do I get it, right? But before I answer that, let's look at that auto industry, right? That is now part of our life built in in every single aspect of our lives, okay? Yeah, look, I went to Michigan, Detroit, this is where the Model T was invented, this is all, you know, automobiles. But that's, you know, the manufacturing, the whole processing, that's one aspect of the development came coming out of automobile. But if an automobile, if you're in 1890, most towns, cities didn't even have roads for cars, didn't have traffic lights, traffic rules, right? Everything we now know is part of a life, whether for work, for travel, for deliveries, for transport, it all came out from that original start of that automobile, building the infrastructure, building the gas stations, building the roads, whether it's local, state, federal, international highways.
• 6:47
  So wait, so are you saying, like, that's where we are in terms of the space economy, we're building that basic infrastructure? We need to build that infrastructure, and that could be also legal aspects, right? Rules and regulations, conventions, right? Within US, globally, but then it's also a mindset. You travel to work now, but think about vacations and destinations, people traveling, and how economics is built because people are getting, going to destinations. So that's just the automobile, but keep in mind, Rickesh Kishnani, this has only been 135 years since 1890. So from nothing to today, we now mapped out, we can see it, we can look back and think about, oh, we should have done that better, we should have done this, but we are here where we are today, okay? So let's- So that was one stop on the- Well, let me answer you, right? So where do you get your gasoline?
• 7:36
  Yeah, I don't know, I guess, yeah, from whisky? Is that where you get the- Well, no, it's, you know, highly combustible- I mean, I know they were drinking super high proof stuff back then, moonshine! You probably could have, you probably definitely could have started a car. I don't know how far- you probably could have. I don't know how far the car would take you, but you definitely could have put a bunch of moonshine in there and got it going. But back then, before gas stations, the answer is you had to go to your druggist or your chemist, right?
• 8:02
  Because they would special order or whatever for that. But then we built out the whole supply chain infrastructure, which we're doing today. If you think about sort of cars, we're moving from combustion engine to EVs, right? We're building the electrical support infrastructure as well. That continues to develop.
• 8:22
  So let's now get back to the time machine.
• 8:22
  Let's move forward in time. Okay. Okay, closer to the present. So next stop is 1910. Why 1910? Because seven years ago in December of 1903, the Wright brothers flew their plane in Kitty Hawk, first time successfully, okay? And seven years later, people start selling these very new planes, very wires and wood and canvas and fabric. They were actually selling planes by that point? Obviously it wasn't commercial, but like we're talking about.
• 8:49
  Again, it's like the car. You have money.
• 8:49
  You like adventure. Here is Rickesh Kishnani. He bought a plane. What do you do for? Loop-de-loops, you know, stunts and so forth. Usually raise money, you know, as you know, sort of barnstorming.
• 9:03
  And you do this and get people paid money to see these crazy contraptions move around. That's before, again, similar to your industry, mapping out the entire infrastructure from both legal, tangible, intangibles of that way of life. Okay? We didn't have airports. We didn't even think about air mail yet. We didn't think about the defense side, which is the biggest part, will allow the United States to be the dominant country militarily in the world because they control the air.
• 9:32
  Right. Well, and the Navy, I would argue.
• 9:32
  And the Navy. The Caesars, yeah. It started with the British, but the air was really the Americans coming in, taking over the seas and then the air. Yeah. And having the aircraft carrier. Absolutely.
• 13:27
  Absolutely. As the dominant ability to launch a plane. But from a way of life, you know, way from the military side, we now know as people go, I mean, look at all these influencers. Where do they go? They fly around the world to post something.
• 17:23
  Without air travel, it wouldn't be there.
• 17:23
  I mean, it was really moving from the early days of pioneers you have.
• 20:00
  you know, clippers, right? The Pan Am clippers that landed on water, that flew from Long Beach to Shanghai to Hong Kong back in the 1930s, right? Slowly you have the jet age, you have Pan Am and Boeing, 707, really economize traveling around, allowing people to really, to be able to visit places. Today it's more like a bus rather than a luxury, right? And it's equalized, democratized. I get what you're saying. And that's a really interesting, the time travel bit is really interesting.
• 20:27
  Though, of course, definitely I would not be rich back in those days. I'm not sure I'd be even allowed to have a job back then. So I'm glad to be living in this, this day and age. But so, so give me the analogy. Where are we with the space economy in relation to where auto was or where flight was?
• 20:45
  So look at, so what I want people to do is look into the future. We do not have the answer. We have the answer for the era in auto, right? It's 1910, it's only 115 years since we started, right? But look what we built out, the infrastructure, the route system, the conventions, the legal standards, the destination, right? The whole concept of flying, right? So if you are someone from 1910 and I tell you that, hey, by the way, let me tell you a secret.
• 21:11
  In 60 years, in 1970, we'll have a new invention called the 747, Queen of the Skies. It could take 300 people. Yeah, exactly. So it's happening today for us to think about the unthinkable. But you're laying out the template for what the space industry will need.
• 21:32
  Is that really the infrastructure? That's the piece? Well, technology will change.
• 21:36
  Yeah, and we've seen people obviously go into space already, Bezos, blah, blah. And is that really what's missing? It's like taking it from what's been mostly government programs and obviously professionals, astronauts, etc., to laymen, people, anybody being able to get there. Is that the hurdle? But the whole society needs to change the mindset because there is a big debate. You remember the women that went up on the New Shepard? No. Katy Perry? Oh, yes, Katy Perry. Yeah, the other women, several scientists as well. There's a big debate in society because some people feel they didn't add anything to it. As if going to space must be of value, adding scientific knowledge, whereas we're just acclimating people to the idea of going to space.
• 22:25
  Really, I've seen a lot of debate from people who are true scientists, done wonderful things. They're very upset that these people went in and didn't add anything. I disagree. I think we need anyone and everyone going to space. Space has to be democratized in a way that people feel comfortable. We can be sitting on our couches and moaning and complaining about these women that did nothing, right?
• 22:46
  But the fact that they were brave enough to go into space to experience something new. Yeah, I guess people were debating the cost involved, right? And that's the other bigger issues. Obviously, at this point, this is only available to the very, very rich. What do you think the airplanes were worth? In 1910, only rich people can sit on a plane for fun. And the first passengers, same thing. We're wealthy people.
• 23:12
  That's where this is now going to hopefully get more and more common over time. But the idea is that space has nothing to do with me, which goes back to the point that you asked about what is the space economy, right? So the space economy, I personally look at it's too nefarious or too big a nebulous, right?
• 23:29
  You just say the space economy. I personally break it down into three different sub economies. One is Earth to space. Anything and everything you build, and it's called up massing, bringing stuff up into space, right? For ISS, building the ISS, the Tiangong for the Chinese, doing experiments and so forth. Lots of things happen on the ISS, which, as you know, it's going to be decommissioned by 2030. A lot of the benefits out of the research on ISS directly benefit mankind, humankind on Earth.
• 23:59
  For example, experiments in microgravity, perfect formation of crystals for drugs, for materials. Using stem cells to build and grow and 3D print your own organs, a structure, right? On Earth, you grow pancakes. In space, you have 3D organs. So that's part of what we do. So everything that we bring up to space is what I call the Earth to space sub economy. The second part is space to Earth. Of course, you could talk about growing these organs and nanostructures or even pharmaceutical crystals, bring it back. Yes. And then the ideas that you bring back, that's all. But the biggest part of the space to Earth is satellite data.
• 24:44
  We have 12,000 satellites going to 100,000 in 10 years time, right? These are eyes in the skies that look at everything. So for part of my work, we're looking at one of these amazing satellite companies out of India that does hyperspectral imaging.
• 24:57
  They have the most advanced hyperspectral imaging, which means that their satellite can see 300 wavelengths from sky. It's like an x-ray or MRI from the sky. Wow.
• 25:06
  Most regular satellites probably give you 5 to 10 wavelength. You have visible light, you have infrared, you have ultraviolet, maybe something out of that.
• 25:15
  But to have a satellite imaging at 5 meter resolution, give me 300 wavelength views of anything you want. That means if you have a business, you want some view of Earth.
• 25:29
  You can choose and see what wavelength will be beneficial to the business you're doing. So, for example, if you're a farmer. Yeah, I was thinking farming, agriculture, transportation. Pollution, all that. So let's just say agriculture.
• 25:41
  If you're looking at a crop, your crop, you grow a certain crop, right? Find the wavelength where your crop thrives and is healthy and you can see it, right?
• 25:49
  However, if you still keep on looking at that, you see different types of wavelength coming up or different colors within that. That means it might be a disease, might be lack of water, humidity issue, right? And you'd be able to better diagnose that from this type of imaging.
• 26:01
  And then if you're on Earth only without this imaging, then it's constant testing this little spot, that little spot. You might hit it, you might not.
• 26:14
  But from space, give you a constant view.
• 26:14
  Pretty interesting. Insurance industries, because the weather patterns are changing, right? They can actually look at predictive using AI and analyze data and predict what may look like if there's a major storm in a certain category, right?
• 26:30
  So that means that they can predict the potential premium, insurance premiums for properties along certain – They may even refuse coverage because they know that particular point because of geography, geology. Shifting patterns, right. So these are just minor issues. So that data is so valuable right now, right? And by the way, we didn't talk about the actual economy. 2025, the whole space economy is about just shy of 700 billion.
• 27:03
  700 billion. That's 2025. Six something, 650 to 700. It's debatable, right, what it is. Most people misunderstand. The misnomer is that a lot of people say that they do not know space. Well, it's like, wow, that's all launch. Wow, SpaceX must have a lot. Well, of all that, the whole amount, 6%, 7% is launch. All launch. So all the rest of it is all this other – Satellites. So finish your sub-economies.
• 27:29
  So the second one is space. Bringing up into space is one. Bringing things back down is two. Downmassing, downloading, data downlinking. Third is once we build certain infrastructure and advance our technology, you have a third space to space where you don't need to bring things up and down.
• 27:50
  You might be going to the moon. You're developing a cislunar economy where you do mining. The Chinese brought samples back in the Chang'e 5, Chang'e 6 mission. They found helium-3. They confirmed the amount of ice in lunar regolith or soil. That allows us to look at future where earth is not directly involved in everything you do. Once you build that infrastructure, you can start moving between the different space, right? It could be lower orbit, low-earth orbit, middle-earth orbit, to synchronous, geosynchronous. You have cislunar, the lunar orbit, and the moon itself. Beyond and which Elon Musk is looking at the future is just Mars, right?
• 28:30
  Everything Mars to earth.
• 28:35
  But think about this. Not only if you have the infrastructure, you're also looking at entire system, financial system. Do you still need international settlement U.S.
• 28:45
  dollars when you're up in space and doing space to space business? That's an interesting question. What would be the financial sort of value, holder value in that future? Would it be a new currency?
• 28:55
  Would it be a space token? The people working on this are looking at Moondow.
• 29:00
  They're looking at different things. What would work? This is all for us to look, debate, and develop. Well, it's very exciting. I think it's great that you are obviously well-knowledged and really spending your time on this. I want to ask you about your current company. But first, obviously, let's… I've chosen today a very special whisky.
• 29:26
  This is a 60-year-old, 6-0 Invergordon, which is a single-grain whisky. So not a blend, not a single malt. Most single-grain whisky goes into making a blend. So it's quite rare to see single-grain whiskies on their own. And then for it to be aged for 60 years. I chose this whisky. I chose this whisky.
• 50:07
  Obviously, you and I have been talking about the 60-year anniversary coming up of the moon landing.
• 1:00:28
  Yeah, we're getting a good sense of that.
• 1:00:28
  And there's still a lot of small errors that can have big impacts. So let's just ballpark me here. I wanna send something to the moon. I wanna send this glass of whisky to the moon. How much are we, what's the range of how much I would need to do that?
• 1:00:44
  So before we had large landers, right? So very good question, because when we did this study for NASA, we went and we thought the first perfect people would be mining people, they wanna go there. They actually said, we're good, we'll hold off.
• 1:00:56
  Why? Because the current landers are too small. Because if you're doing sort of mining operation, you need rovers, you need to get things around to test things and so forth, right? So they're waiting for the larger lunar lander modules.
• 1:01:08
  You're talking Armageddon movie style, where they go drill on. They're waiting for SpaceX and Blue Origin. Both have larger landers, right? But the pace is so slow, I don't even know if SpaceX will go to the moon, I don't know.
• 1:01:21
  Well, they're more focused on Mars. But they basically said, we need larger landers, we need rovers. More importantly, we need sample return missions. We can't do a little lab on space, on the moon to do the testing. We need to bring samples back to thoroughly do that research, right?
• 1:01:35
  So, okay, so I wanna send this glass or this bottle to the moon, and I wanna leave it there. The cost, when we were doing this research last year. I don't wanna bring it back. I wanna leave it there forever. Is one million US dollars for a kilogram. Per kilogram. One million US.
• 1:01:46
  It's not out of reach, right? It's not crazy. Well, if you're a crypto billionaire, two million dollars, you get something on the moon. Who else can say that?
• 1:01:58
  That's less than I would've thought, I'll be honest. I would've guessed probably several tens of millions of dollars, but that's per kilogram. You're sharing a ride, only if you're not deploying anything. If it's a statics, just something to get it on the moon, I think it's that range, right? The more complex, if you need to deploy, you need power, you need to do things. It goes up.
• 1:02:19
  So how do I decide, or who decides where this goes on the moon? And what I'm getting to is, okay, the moon, who controls what space on the moon? NASA's still doing the scientific mission, so a lot of the planning out of where to land, it's in conjunction with NASA. But how's that working with the Chinese, the Japanese? What's happening here in terms of who owns the land space? Like the space on the moon, obviously there's a limited amount of land. So how is that getting divided up in the future?
• 1:02:53
  The most important treaty governing space and actions in space is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the United Nations. I think almost all the countries signed it, right? Which says that space- Including the United States, which is usually the country that doesn't sign these things.
• 1:03:06
  No, no, no, no, no. The US is one of the first. They basically built this out. I'm joking. The Soviets, the Russians, the former Republic of China, and then after they left the UN, the People's Republic of China signed in 1980s. So what is this? So basically it says that peaceful use of space, no country can claim any territory space. You cannot go to the moon or claim it after you say, mine, mine. So even in Armstrong, they're planting a flag there.
• 1:03:33
  That doesn't mean anything. It's not like this is American property.
• 1:03:38
  That's an interesting possible misconception that to some degree that space or that area belongs to- But I'll tell you the closest comparison is Antarctica. You cannot claim Antarctica as a national sovereign, sort of piece of land, but you can set up research stations. So the concern right now, again, is that, oh, if the Chinese- I'm already here. This is my research station. You're not going to- Or you can set up a exclusion zone. So the concern is that he who first get to the most prime real estate on the moon, usually is at the South Pole with ice, and can claim the exclusionary zone of 50 to 100 kilometers and say, well, we're doing our experiment.
• 1:04:17
  But the Outer Space Treaty has a lot of protocol conventions allowing you to do certain things, right? Give aid to each other, that you have the right to go and explore other people's with approval and- Right, all that stuff. The fact that the OST, the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, was really to prevent a space war in space.
• 1:04:36
  Okay, a war, a nuclear war in space. So a lot of that. But all these things have to be rediscussed and looked at, right? The knock-on effect is that we have sending so much stuff into space, we have this whole issue with space debris, which I think is the biggest threat and the biggest opportunity. And I'll explain to you why.
• 1:04:54
  Because you go from just 2017, 2,000 satellites to now 12,000 today. And that number is going up. And not only that, those are satellites. Those are satellites and some of them die. They don't work anymore. There's no propulsion to control them. The current way of doing this, and then the new protocol for all satellites going up is that at the end of life, there's an end-of-life protocol. Meaning that if you send a satellite up today, you are required to get rid of it.
• 1:05:26
  You're responsible, right? You are required to get rid of it. Which wasn't there before. Because there weren't that many. But also, most of the junk is American and Soviets. Right, not surprising. The Chinese, minimal, right?
• 1:05:38
  Not surprising. They've been there for much, much longer. And a lot of these are giant, multi-stage, second, third stage rockets just floating out there. They have irregular orbits. There's no propulsion system on them, right? So they're just out there. And it's very difficult to go get these things or dispose of them, so to speak. But the thing is, you know, the danger is that even down to like one centimeter or even smaller, right? These are going at 27,000 kilometers per hour.
• 1:06:02
  It's not easy to just go catch it.
• 1:06:06
  It's not easy to catch it, but also the danger. So did you ever see that movie Gravity with Sondra Bullock and George Clooney, right? Yeah, George Clooney was in it for a while. Describing what is called a Kessler syndrome. A Kessler syndrome is just knock-on effect of two things colliding and it just, it expands on the sphere. It goes in every direction, right? It hits other satellites and that does it. So this continues to get worse.
• 1:06:28
  Yeah, so it's a cascading catastrophe, right? So if that happens, right now, scientists are doing mathematical modeling to look at if we don't do anything to clean up space, when is the likelihood of a Kessler syndrome? And it's 2035.
• 1:06:47
  That's not far, that's only 10 years. At the current rate of development. You know what it means when you have a Kessler syndrome? It affects low Earth orbit. That means all the start links, all the low Earth orbit, the broadband satellites will be gone. Your phone will be dead, okay?
• 1:07:00
  And baby boomers will be back in vogue because we know how to read an actual map and navigate the analog world.
• 1:07:10
  Going back to having maps. Exactly. I don't want that world. We don't want that world. I grew up in that world. No, no, we absolutely don't want that world, but that means it needs to be action now. You have to start doing it. And there are companies looking to do it, but you're spending $8 million, $12 million to try and to bring, grapple a piece of 100 kilogram garbage down. There's 5 billion tons of garbage up there.
• 1:07:34
  Yeah, so catch me up now. You're working on a couple of different projects. Is this an area you're exploring? Or tell me more about BluFin Advisory. What are you working on now? Because you obviously have this fascinating career, both in finance, which I want to touch on briefly, but then obviously you've now, let's say, graduated into the world of space and you're very knowledgeable. What are you working on today?
• 1:07:56
  Well, you're right. After first round, late 80s, I came out to Asia and basically 35, close to 40 years now in asset management. So I worked for the likes of Aetna, Merrill Lynch, Blackrock. That was altogether 16, 17 years. Worked for the Scottish company, Standard Life, and then the UK company, Legal & General. Worked as advisor for AXA. So right now in my new role, I'm trying to combine my interest in global business, right? Finance and space.
• 1:08:22
  And currently wearing three hats. You mentioned BluFin Advisory. BluFin Advisory basically is a private placement company.
• 1:08:32
  And I was brought on board to really look at the space tech and deep tech. Because we now, you know, getting that feedback, more and more family offices and institutions are looking at space tech and deep tech. So that's one thing, right? The second thing is I'm on a non...
• 1:08:54
  And is that, sorry, just to finish, is that how a family office or high net worth individual, let's say they wanted to get involved in space tech. So we represent GPs, right? If that's the way you would do it. So we do two things. One is there are more and more of these GPs or VC funds investing in space, right? So they're coming to Asia and so forth. But again, there's that political dimension we'll get to before we finish that, you know, certain markets are limited because of technology and political dimension.
• 1:09:21
  Meaning some of these funds come here.
• 1:09:25
  They love to have Asian investors.
• 1:09:30
  Usually in China. Yeah, right. Security issues, et cetera. So that's one is fun.
• 1:09:33
  The other is actual deals. I mean, for example, I mentioned that hyperspectral imaging company, other satellite companies, other space tech company. I know a company they're looking at to do space radiation shielding to create a safer environment, to build infrastructure. So many different companies in that area. So that's one.
• 1:09:53
  That's BluFin Advisory. That's BluFin Advisory. So you're helping with the placement of funds from the private sector into, well, I guess.
• 1:20:00
  still the private sector, but in the space economy in various different fields. So that's one.
• 1:20:05
  The second one...
• 1:20:06
  You seem to do everything in threes. Are you noticing that?
• 1:20:08
  It's a rule of three.
• 1:20:09
  Yes.
• 1:20:10
  Yes.
• 1:20:11
  Easier to keep in track.
• 1:20:12
  Yeah.
• 1:20:13
  Keep track of.
• 1:20:14
  The second one is with the Orion Astroneer Space Academy, OASA, we call it OASA for short, was started by Dr. Greg Lee about now six years ago, seven years ago. And basically he wanted to help Hong Kong train young people. So we actually do space education. We have CubeSat programs.
• 1:20:30
  We have summer programs, our high school sort of a summer space program starting in at the end of this week for students 14 to 18, really, you know, giving them a really in-depth look at space, teaching them how to build CubeSats.
• 1:20:52
  And is this part of you think just because you're in Hong Kong or you think Hong Kong, particularly because we're a finance hub, has a better advantage to do something or because we're part of China?
• 1:20:59
  Like what angle are we going at this to say why Hong Kong, why OASA?
• 1:21:06
  OASA started because, you know, Hong Kong has lots of resources, but I think the government and the perspective is very practical, right? The founder was not, was surprised that countries like Bhutan, Vietnam and Nepal had government space programs for college and high school kids.
• 1:21:20
  Hong Kong did not.
• 1:21:25
  Right. Okay.
• 1:21:27
  Compared to we do have great universities, graduate programs. We have great, absolutely. And by that point, I want to make a key point that Hong Kong is the only city in the world, only city in the world with five top 100 universities in one city. We have HKU, we have Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Polytech and CityU. No other city in the world has five top 100 universities.
• 1:21:53
  Which is surprising, right? You'd think, I would think London would definitely have five top five.
• 1:21:57
  Well, there's Cambridge, Oxford, one city.
• 1:22:00
  Which is not London. One country, absolutely. Yeah. I'm thinking London, the city, New York, I think, okay, NYU, but then, yeah, I run out after one or two.
• 1:22:07
  So that's actually an amazing feat. But what are we doing with that? What are we doing with this talent?
• 1:22:12
  So that's where you're coming in.
• 1:22:13
  Well, so with OASA, this is where we're coming in, right? In addition to the education, which we continue to do, we've been working since last year on advocacy.
• 1:22:20
  You know, we've been bringing like-minded people, think tanks to start talking about Hong Kong in service commerce. Hong Kong is at a very unique position, right? It's a financial hub for China. China is desperate for Hong Kong to get involved.
• 1:22:31
  Not only that, for in space, right?
• 1:22:35
  Yeah.
• 1:22:36
  Not only that, we are one hour away to the only commercial spaceport for China, which is on Hainan. One hour away, visa-free and duty-free, okay? I was there last August to watch the Long March 5 rocket launch.
• 1:22:46
  Amazing. You would think it's very, you know, sort of official and military, and it's not.
• 1:22:56
  Yeah, I think of kind of Cape Canaveral, kind of.
• 1:22:57
  They had pink astronauts in pink astronaut suits, and you're doing songs and teaching kids. Making it fun. Yeah. It's, you know, China is on this big commercial growth in space, which American went through in the 60s when the Apollo program came out.
• 1:23:11
  So Hong Kong, you have this, you know, commercial spaceport to support what you want to do. Hong Kong's role would be the legal, the potential, the compliance, and also the financing side.
• 1:23:25
  Now I may have mentioned this before. If you look at, if you, you know, map out the powers of space, right? The great powers of space is US, China, Russia, and then India. India at the cusp. So India, if India approves its human spaceflight in the next couple of years, then there will be a true great power. But that's fine. We all know that. That's their coming. The more interesting is the middle powers. The middle powers are usually US allies. So Japan, Canada, European space agency dropped from great to, because they miscalculated. They didn't believe in commercial and private space. They continued to believe it was to be the domain of public space, right? You have UAE, who's able to, to- I was going to ask about the Middle East.
• 1:24:09
  Invest into the space program. Right.
• 1:24:09
  They've got the money. But the last country I tell people, and usually I get this disbelief from people, is that the middle space power is Luxembourg.
• 1:24:19
  Interesting.
• 1:24:20
  Luxembourg basically helped Hong Kong, right? Landlocked, tiny little country, tiny, you know, but Hong Kong, you know, its success is from Luxembourg. The whole USITS fund, fund administration, the whole concept of funds is basically, we've learned that from Luxembourg.
• 1:24:39
  But Luxembourg, why middle space power?
• 1:24:39
  Because 15, 20 years ago, they started to revamp and look at commercial space, how they can play a role as space developed.
• 1:24:46
  15, 20 years ago, they're saying that's in 20, 30, 40 years. But when you want to start looking at- It's gotten much faster.
• 1:24:54
  Right.
• 1:24:55
  And they did. So if you know, like, you know, Panama, usually for large ship registration. You know, if you want to go to space, as a space company, you will want to register in Luxembourg. Right.
• 1:25:04
  Because their laws align with the Outer Space Treaty, allowing countries to go to space. You cannot own property, right? And you know, sort of space, actual physical property in space. But the rules say you could go and utilize it. So in situ resources utilization means that if you're a company and you go to the moon or you go to asteroid, you mine it, okay? You basically extract everything that comes out of it. You get to own and hold, okay?
• 1:25:32
  And many countries are now looking and revamping the law. So Hong Kong should be looking at that, how to work together to help build that commerce.
• 1:25:42
  And the idea there is, okay, if we if we can extract things, these could help in everything from medicine to technological development to who knows what, the farmers that are- Well, the different orbits. So let's say cislunar right now, right? The low earth, middle earth, and then the geosynchronous orbits. That's all helpful. Tiangong, if the Americans don't put up a commercial space station, you know, by 2030, the only space station will be the Tiangong, the Chinese space station, right? So there's a rapid race. But the other thing is that, as I told you, the political dimension.
• 1:26:12
  We're now sitting in the bifurcation of the space ecosystem. You have the US space ecosystem and their allies, you have the Chinese space ecosystem and the Chinese supporters, right?
• 1:26:25
  Sounds a lot like the, you know, the chip race, the microchip race, the AI race, another level of the same race.
• 1:26:32
  But this was created because the Americans in 2011 put in a Wolf Amendment. So Congressman Frank Wolf in the appropriations bill to fund NASA or all the government agencies, but for NASA specifically saying that if NASA gets funding from the government, US Congress, they cannot have anything, no bilateral relationship with Chinese government space. So since then, there's been no discussion, no talk. So force the Chinese to move on their own.
• 1:27:00
  Now, going back to remember what I said, Sputnik to Apollo 11, 12 years. In America, there seemed to be this lack of interest in what the Chinese are doing. So 2011 to now is 14 years. The Chinese literally has gone from behind to literally par to American space capability. US still leads in the commercial side. The Chinese still very much government driven, but they made an announcement last year in Hong Kong at PolyU at a space conference, the CNSA, China National Space Agency said, we believe that commercial space is important and we want to go forward. Which is like them saying that, yeah.
• 1:27:39
  Whisky.
• 1:27:40
  Why space?
• 1:27:41
  Because we know that, you know, in the US at least in Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center, there's a little cabana that the astronauts go in before the mission, before they get on their spaceship. And it's been sort of day one that they all bring a bottle of whisky, tradition, or whisky or drink. But usually it's whisky.
• 1:28:01
  So I can't say it's only whisky. It's not Russian vodka. We know that. It's usually whisky. And they place the whisky in that cabin. They go on their mission and when they come back successfully, they open it and they imbibe the drink.
• 1:28:16
  Right. That's a great tradition.
• 1:28:18
  So they're a couple, maybe more than two.
• 1:28:18
  But as far as I know, the two Challenger and Discovery, I think it was Discovery, right? The two- That failed.
• 1:28:28
  That failed. Yeah. Those two bottles are sitting there.
• 1:28:31
  Wow.
• 1:28:32
  So you think about the emotional, right?
• 1:28:32
  So those who go in and see all these empty bottles that's been drank and celebrated, but there are several bottles that's still there. Pretty amazing.
• 1:28:42
  Well, I'm trying to work with you guys because I think, you know, 2029 is the 60th anniversary. This is a 60-year grain, right?
• 1:28:49
  That's right.
• 1:28:50
  That's why we're drinking.
• 1:28:51
  We should be putting this. And, you know, NASA, because it's a government agency, you can use this logo and without any, you know, anybody can use it.
• 1:28:57
  Absolutely.
• 1:28:58
  So I'm thinking we should really do a 60-year-old whisky and put the NASA logo on and really celebrate, you know, the first landing on the moon.
• 1:29:09
  Absolutely.
• 1:29:10
  60 years ago.
• 1:29:11
  Well, I'll drink to that.
• 1:29:12
  Cheers.
• 1:29:13
  Thanks so much.
• 1:29:14
  Cheers.
• 1:29:15
  Thank you so much for joining the podcast.
• 1:29:15
  As always, the whisky's never finished.
• 1:29:16
  Neither is the conversation.
• 1:29:18
  Absolutely.
• 1:29:19
  I feel like we could have talked for a few more hours, but thank you so much for your time.
• 1:29:22
  Oh, thank you for having me.
• 1:29:23
  There's tradition here. Right. You get to pick a pen and please sign a glass, which will keep a collection here of- Do I sign my name?
• 1:29:31
  Yeah, please do.
• 1:29:32
  All right.
• 1:29:33
  I'm going to put my Chinese last name on here.
• 1:29:36
  Perfect.
• 1:29:37
  There you go.
• 1:29:38
  Thanks so much, David.
• 1:29:39
  Thank you, Rickesh.
• 1:29:40
  Cheers.
• 1:29:41
  Cheers.