Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - December 28

Transcript

Kook's Weekly - December 28 · 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
OK. Hi, everyone.
0:29
Hi, I figured I'd keep the tradition alive, although it was
0:33
coming down to the wire when I got banned yesterday.
0:37
I got silly amped up on all this fraud stuff that I was trying to
0:40
encourage Bill Ackman to quote die on this hill.
0:44
Bill and X construed that as a death threat, apparently.
0:51
So despite me protesting Diamond saying that dying on this hill
0:55
is a colloquialism of hey, this is important.
0:58
I got I got banned, which made me think and I was telling man
1:03
pin man in tut. I was like, oh, this is great.
1:05
My account is dead. I couldn't really unlock it
1:08
because I forgot which e-mail I tied it to.
1:10
And so I thought I'm just going to start a new account and see
1:14
actually how many people follow me, which would probably be
1:17
about 160. And then I spent the day without
1:21
X and I looked up and I saw all this beautiful world and
1:24
happiness and realize that maybe X is not good for me, but it is
1:29
the source of all of my research.
1:31
So I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place on this
1:37
doom doom device that for some reason figures out how to make
1:41
you really depressed. But anyway, things that don't
1:43
make me depressed are launches. And so this week it already
1:46
seems like a lifetime. We got honestly, we had FM one
1:50
launch this Rocket Tort. It was super cool to watch and
1:59
and this thing just like got up after it when they hit the
2:01
ignition. So it was pretty, pretty cool.
2:04
What was less cool was some of the crappy video stream they
2:09
had. And so when this thing froze, it
2:11
froze on me at least. And I thought, Oh, dear God, you
2:14
know, And so, you know, I know that's what a lot of the shorts
2:18
were open for. But then I would kind of whack
2:20
my phone and I was sitting there with my tour guide who all of a
2:22
sudden got super interested in this as well.
2:25
And then we'd see, you know, there was still going.
2:27
So it was great launch and great for India.
2:30
Good for them. It's really cool to see the type
2:34
of publicity we got from the launch, which tells me that this
2:37
was strategic in nature. I don't know that for this to be
2:40
a fact, but it does strike me as pretty obvious that FM 1 and FM
2:43
2, but these are SDA satellites. So that's that's not really the
2:49
question. It's it seems like they are
2:52
testing out alternative launch providers as well with these
2:54
tests satellites. So these satellites are really
2:57
for the government to try out some new technologies, which
3:01
then will go into Golden Dome. And so FM one, FM 2 are these
3:06
really interesting military satellites in my belief and I
3:09
think pretty obvious when you read all the documents and then
3:12
they're going up on non SpaceX launchers as part of a
3:16
diversification strategy. So I also think that FM 2 will
3:19
not be going on SpaceX, which is going to provide for a pretty
3:22
interesting event for us all. So after we launch, getting to
3:27
orbit is step one big one. That's a very important, it is
3:31
necessary, but not sufficient for a successful satellite.
3:34
The next step, which is also necessary but insufficient is
3:38
for the satellites to actually establish communication.
3:41
So the company, it's very generous to us in immediately
3:45
notifying us when they establish connection with the satellites,
3:48
which they did. So these satellites are now
3:51
zipping around 17,000 mph. I've been able to get my bird
3:56
watching software working. So I'll start publishing that.
3:59
I know a lot of other people have posted the trajectory of
4:02
the satellites and all the space orbit data, which is cool to
4:07
watch. And we'll be certainly tracking
4:10
for signs that they have unfurled.
4:14
And so Scott is trying to change the nomenclature to unfold.
4:18
But as someone who for no reason whatsoever likes to sort of
4:21
annoy Scott, again, no real reason.
4:24
Just because I can, I'm going to continue to use the word
4:27
unfurled until my last days on Earth.
4:31
And so when this unfurls, I'll let you all know if other people
4:35
don't know in advance. So what's cool about launch is
4:39
you get some information. So the company played the hype
4:42
video with this commentator, Emma Yorna, who did a great job.
4:47
And these hype videos actually contain a lot of interesting
4:50
information. So if you study the company very
4:54
deeply, some clues are confirmed in what otherwise might be
4:59
glossed over on these videos. And so for example, one thing
5:02
that I recently brought attention to again was the
5:05
capability for ship to ship transfer.
5:07
And they show this in the video pretty clearly.
5:10
So what's interesting, if you're in the middle of the ocean,
5:13
there's no ground stations, obviously.
5:17
And while you could use optical inter satellite links to beam
5:22
the data somewhere in the world where there is a ground station,
5:24
then you run into data sovereignty issues.
5:27
And so think about the Pacific Fleet operating off of China.
5:32
Where are they going to beam the data?
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Taiwan. Well, depending on the reason
5:36
why they're off China, Taiwan might not be the place you want
5:39
to beam your data. And so for ships to communicate
5:42
with each other, what ASTS has is the capability for the data
5:46
just to go up to the satellite and straight back down to
5:49
another vessel without using a ground station.
5:53
This is pretty interesting capabilities that the US Navy is
5:56
very interested in. This isn't speculation on my
5:59
part. I know this for sure.
6:01
And the company again showed us this in the in the video.
6:08
So that's what's neat about these videos is if you're a very
6:10
attentive watcher, I'm sure there's stuff I missed myself,
6:14
but I did pick up on that, for example, and we'll get to the
6:17
military stuff again in a second.
6:20
There's also a really neat gallery.
6:22
So if anyone's looking to collect any pictures of the LVM
6:26
three, I posted that for you. I know I'm going to be ordering
6:29
my new scale LVM rocket now that we've had this successful.
6:33
So I have my PSLV rocket, which should be arriving any day.
6:37
I got to just make sure this is exquisite quality because if
6:40
there's one thing I take very seriously, it's beating AMPAN
6:43
man and everything. And so I noticed that his rocket
6:45
collection seems kind of like a piece of shit.
6:47
It's like some 3D printed garbage made out of plastic and
6:52
it really speaks to the quality of his account.
6:54
I'll probably get banned for this, but you know, Ampan man is
6:57
known for kind of quick and dirty.
6:59
So I'm willing to wait three to four months to have custom made
7:02
rockets made. I believe my rockets are being
7:04
made in Kazakhstan, which is which is why they're taking so
7:07
long to get to me. But they're going to be awesome.
7:09
And so I can't wait to have my LVM three rocket and then I'm
7:12
going to get my New Glenn rocket.
7:14
But I need to see if we're launching on normal New Glenn or
7:17
New Glenn 9 by 4, because again, I'm going to do it right.
7:21
And you know, you got to have high quality and that's why I
7:26
suggest you only join spaces of people who have been cited by
7:31
world class journals as well. That's the new thing.
7:33
I'm going to hold over in pan pan till the end of time.
7:36
So we also had some really cool videos.
7:38
This company, I don't know, some should go AT and TI don't think
7:42
they own like a phone company, but they retweeted launch for
7:44
reasons unknown to anyone because apparently they were
7:48
going to drop AST space mobile for SpaceX any day.
7:51
But they seem to not have done that.
7:54
And instead they're tweeted boosters on wings out and then
7:59
hashtag space mob and they're CC and AST space mobile to remind
8:03
AST space mobile who the cool people are.
8:07
Space mob. And that video is pretty neat
8:09
and there's, you know, a lot of interesting content.
8:12
What is pretty unusual is to have the Prime Minister of a
8:17
country congratulate your little apparently irrelevant stack with
8:26
the success of their mission. And so Narendra Modi did not
8:29
take me up on putting the red A in his name.
8:32
Shockingly so I'm going to have to have my people call his
8:35
people and get him on board to fix the grave mistaking A.
8:41
But he did his credit tweet two or three times about ASTS is
8:48
Bluebird. And so this is a really big deal
8:50
for India to have AUS customer do something quite remarkable.
8:55
Again, the largest commercial array ever launched brings a lot
8:59
of attention to the Indian space sector.
9:00
And to their credit, they pulled off a heavy launch successfully
9:06
dramatically again, because this rocket just seems like it's
9:09
totally metal and and good job to them.
9:12
So hopefully they get some more business, you know, and glad we
9:15
could have been a part of it. And this local market content, I
9:19
believe is important. And so I have a background in
9:22
natural resources and with natural resources, everyone
9:25
already had always has their hands out.
9:27
You know, you really just can't bring in an all American suite
9:31
of kit and expect to have a lot of friends in the places you're
9:35
doing business. And so it's important then to
9:37
have local content. And local content means
9:39
including parts of the value chain in the country you wish to
9:43
do business as a show of goodwill.
9:45
And you know, frankly, sometimes you're actually required to do
9:47
so. And so launching with an Indian
9:50
partner gets you quite a lot of accolades in India.
9:56
And so then we also had our partner, I think it's VI, it's
10:00
Vodafone India retweet us as well, just confirming again who
10:05
our strategic partners are going to be in this market.
10:09
So what comes next? So what comes next is the
10:11
satellite is hurling through space, doing somersaults in the
10:16
vacuum of space. It's difficult to have it stop
10:19
doing somersaults. So this takes a little bit of
10:20
time for it to do what's called de tumbling.
10:23
And then after that, what we believe happens is they have to
10:27
wait for enough solar energy to be generated and recharge the
10:29
batteries and do whatever they got to do to then proceed with
10:34
the unfurling and again, I repeat, unfurling of the
10:40
satellite. So what we also know to be true
10:43
is that the unfurling of this satellite, despite it being
10:47
larger, is in fact more simple. So the company has a chief
10:51
simplicity officer, which is great, super smart position and
10:54
I think most companies should have one, figuring out how to
10:56
have the least amount of action in the satellite as possible
11:00
action. More action equals more
11:02
opportunity for things to go wrong.
11:04
And so here what we do know is that in ASTSS massive satellite
11:08
production facility, they have the ability to test this action
11:14
and they are unfurled and refurled and unfurled and
11:17
refurled over and over and over again.
11:19
And they test it like crazy so that there's a very high
11:22
probability of this going correctly in space.
11:25
Today we are 6 for six of unfurling satellites of
11:30
increasingly large size in space.
11:33
And there's every expectation that I have that this one will
11:35
also be successful. And that should happen provided
11:39
there's no little issues that came up.
11:42
So for example, there was an issue that came up in BW3 with
11:45
some strap or something happened and it just took a while longer
11:49
for the satellite to detumble. Forget the specifics, but what
11:55
we know is that this could actually happen somewhat
11:57
quickly. The company's now gotten pretty
11:59
good at this, and so I'd expect this to unfurl within a month or
12:02
something. Between here and there, I
12:05
believe we're going to have one potentially 2 additional
12:07
launches. So launch.
12:10
Launch is the new tariff or COVID or European crisis, as it
12:17
turns out. And so shorts have gotten so
12:20
accustomed to thinking that dumb retail is just going to bid
12:23
stuff up into launch and that everyone's going to sell the
12:25
news that that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
12:27
That's exactly what happened on Wednesday.
12:30
And then Friday, frankly, the magnitude was a little bit
12:35
shocking to me. I'm not, I don't say shocking
12:37
because I'm actually not really shocked, but surprising to say
12:40
the least. And so you almost wonder like,
12:43
if the if the rocket had actually blown up, would the
12:46
stock be higher than it is today?
12:49
It's like kind of like maybe maybe that would have been the
12:52
real plot twist. But the shorts took advantage of
12:57
the situation and then just drilled the stock into absolute
13:00
oblivion. And you know, this I think is
13:02
really par for the course. It doesn't really concern me at
13:05
all. I know a lot of us.
13:07
Again, I wasn't really expecting the stock to trade off, but I
13:10
was positioned so that if it did, I wasn't going to get
13:13
hamstrung on my ability to make some adjustments to my position
13:18
for what I believe to be an inevitable reapproach to the
13:25
highs. And so the charts really cleaned
13:27
up and everything but short slam this thing and what I think that
13:31
they're maybe missing. And this is where I really
13:34
thought a lot about on Friday thinking, well, the pattern's
13:36
pretty obvious. And then for most people think
13:38
that there's this massive lag between launches because, you
13:41
know, to date with AST that's been the case.
13:43
It's they've had a lot of time between launch and next launch,
13:48
but I don't know that the algos and the shorts have totally
13:50
dialed in is just how quickly FM 2 is going to have a launch date
13:56
scheduled. And then I do not believe that
14:00
the algos and the shorts have really reflected on what's going
14:04
to happen when we have batch 1. So that's my own sort of term.
14:08
Batch 1 and Batch 2 get slated because Batch 1, Batch 2 is
14:14
where the party gets started. In actuality, FM 2, again, is an
14:18
SDA satellite and very interesting for the military
14:21
perspective, but it's really sort of like the first, first
14:26
hamburger off the line. When your key objective
14:30
objective is to make a McDonald's, the first hamburger
14:33
off the line is not really important.
14:34
It's the fact that there's a billion others that are going to
14:36
come behind it. Batch 1, Batch 2 are the actual
14:40
production satellites. They're going to form the
14:42
backbone of our constellation and that's that's where the
14:45
actual value creation is going to occur is putting this
14:48
constellation up in space. So we did get FM 2 out the gate.
14:55
That's very exciting. And you have to realize that the
14:59
satellite was probably ready to be out the gate before what was
15:02
holding it up was the readiness of the launch vehicle.
15:07
And so AT&T did us a solid and said, hey guys, who's ready for
15:12
the next launch. That's pretty cool.
15:15
So there's a Cape Canaveral roll call.
15:17
I really hope that I'm able to go.
15:19
I just have a couple things that I can't schedule around unless I
15:23
want to blow up my career, which might be a real strong question
15:30
I have to ask myself depending on the launch event.
15:34
But hopefully that's going to not have a conflicts that we can
15:37
go to or I can go to it. I'm sure everyone else can go.
15:41
And then you ask yourself, well, if it was a, a wait for the
15:47
launcher question and which launcher would it be?
15:50
Since there's a very specific type of launcher, which is
15:53
tending to always be ready. Nancy, the process of
15:56
elimination. We know that we're probably not
15:59
going to be launching on the Space shuttle, although that
16:01
would be lit. So I'll leave it to others to
16:05
start to guess. The other thing we know is that
16:08
we don't have an approved STA for FM 2, which is a point that
16:13
I think Tanner or Kevin brought up as always, the smartest
16:15
people on Earth. And so then you go, well, huh,
16:20
SpaceX, SpaceX requires an approved STA to ship in this
16:24
ship to wonder what we could conclude.
16:26
And then ASTS put up a webcast template saying Bluebird 7
16:31
launch coming soon. So I haven't given my orders to
16:35
Scott yet. My name is Christophe, and I
16:39
like to tell him not to cross the bridge and don't go out in
16:42
the water. And so we'll see what command is
16:45
given, but it's very impossible that Scott might have received a
16:49
command to release a launch date next week, which would be great
16:52
if that command was in fact issued.
16:55
So as we build out the coverage, we had an interesting tweet from
16:59
Daniel Thomas, who's the commercial lead of Vodafone, and
17:02
he just said that approximately 20 minutes of coverage is
17:06
created from each satellite that is launched.
17:08
And so then we can start to do some math about just how quickly
17:12
intermittent service is going to build and sort of like building
17:16
railroad tracks to form the Union Pacific.
17:19
There will be a point where you no longer just have like a spur
17:22
line going from New York to Ohio, but actually from New York
17:26
to San Francisco and you have the continuous coverage that
17:30
will be pretty good. And then we had Justin put out a
17:34
nice tweet just simply on just the time between satellite
17:38
launches. So 41 months to 24 months to 15
17:40
months to, you know, this is really collapsing, which is
17:43
good. Collapse is good because our
17:46
satellite factory has been built.
17:49
And a key thing that I think a lot of the bears miss is the
17:54
complexity of getting to the new generation design.
17:57
So the first things you had to tackle was first of all the
18:00
original control set and the arrays.
18:03
Then you had to upgrade the control set.
18:06
You already had the arrays, but FM 1 was a a big engineering
18:11
challenge to get done, but then they did it.
18:14
So something that was difficult at first to do when replicating
18:19
it is no longer difficult to do, which that allows what I have
18:24
lovingly called the installation Constipation to end and we shall
18:30
flow freely very shortly. And the company has also changed
18:35
its worry. And so now they've gone from
18:40
saying that satellites are in various stages of production to
18:43
saying that they're in various stages of assembly integration
18:46
and testing. And I also posted something
18:50
where I took this work and put it in PowerPoint slide format,
18:53
which is my preferred way to identify myself as not Gen.
18:58
Z. And you can see that the ramp up
19:02
is happening. And pretty soon I think in terms
19:05
of T accounts because I'm an accountant.
19:07
And so I like to think of satellites being thrown into the
19:10
work in progress T account and then being credited from that
19:16
work in progress T account and debited into the finished goods
19:19
or finished satellites T account and then upward into space.
19:24
And so pretty soon what we're going to start to have is a lot
19:27
of these satellites shift from in production assembly and
19:31
testing to actually shipped. And that wording change to me
19:35
tells us that we probably now have 6 satellites or batch 1,
19:40
batch 2 getting ready to ship because they're in final
19:44
vibration testing and TVAC, which which is what it's called.
19:48
And, and that's going to I think be a real shock to the market
19:51
when the company proves that they're actually going to get it
19:53
all done. We also had a really cool video
19:56
come out which featured John Joyce, who's the VP of
19:59
production and shows a behind the scenes look at how these are
20:02
razor assembled. But to me, if I'm a bear, we go
20:06
back to some of the bears like Mr. Pink, you know, and, and
20:09
also this Doctor smorgasbord kind of implying that ASTS is
20:14
the Nikola of space. In other words, that there's no
20:17
engine. These videos show you that
20:19
there's actually a lot going on here and it's a shame that the
20:22
company hasn't let its citizen journalists into the factory,
20:26
Although frankly, I haven't asked because seeing is
20:30
believing. We have been able to find people
20:33
who have been inside. Some of these people, all jokes
20:36
aside, are expert consultants and and validate sort of the
20:40
ramp up. We've seen Ted Cruz and Brendan
20:42
cargo to the facilities and to seeing the production would be
20:49
to understand that it's all going to come.
20:52
But you can see how people that are doing 5 minutes of due
20:54
diligence and sort of pattern matching pre revenue growth
20:58
stories might think that, you know, it's all all hat, no
21:01
cattle. They're going to be very
21:02
surprised pretty soon when the satellites are coming out the
21:06
door at scale and then they get their faces ripped off.
21:09
Which brings us to catalyst season.
21:11
So and Panman and his or quality 3D printed rockets did in fact
21:17
do some quality work of I mean this is a crazy tweet.
21:20
This is like Bill Ackman wrote this tweet of every single
21:25
milestone and event and achieve milestone that's happened.
21:29
I mean, this is crazy. And so there's a reason why his
21:33
tweet got 100,000 views is because it's a really good
21:35
tweet. I won't read it all, but let's
21:38
just say that to anyone that is looking for an event driven
21:43
situation, this is a pretty good one.
21:46
And it will transition from event driven at some point to
21:49
just actually being a high quality secular growth stock.
21:53
And that that's a pretty interesting transition because
21:54
that's usually when it gets away from spivvy hedge fund guys like
21:57
me to then the Ron Barons of the world who just dial in the
22:01
growth lock load, buy hold, get rich.
22:04
Pretty good strategy for those guys.
22:06
And then interestingly, someone fed the stats to Grok and just
22:13
said, hey, calculate the stock price and Grok got it right.
22:17
In my view, I just really understand the relationship
22:20
between satellites in orbit, cash flow, stock price up.
22:25
And I've done some basic math just for my own purposes that I
22:28
included in the DD dock, which do a simple calculation of just
22:31
saying will they produce some satellites?
22:33
Yes. At what rate?
22:35
You know, I have an assumption. Dial the satellites in.
22:38
Each satellite is going to generate a certain amount of
22:40
data capacity just because of its throughput.
22:44
And so then you know through some other calculations which I
22:47
show, you can get to how much, you know, saleable data there
22:51
will be. And I just threw a 2 bucks a GB
22:53
on there and then multiplied by 50% to get to what my net
22:57
revenue is. I believe that this is a very
22:59
low number compared to what they're actually going to
23:00
achieve. That notwithstanding, you could,
23:02
it throws out an EBITDA number. I dial in some OpEx, I'll be
23:06
wrong on that, but not off by a mile, maybe off by $100 million
23:09
here or there. And then I put an EBITDA
23:11
multiple on it outcomes the stock price.
23:12
And so my belief is that that will represent a conservative
23:16
estimate of where the market will actually price this thing.
23:19
And that's why I have pretty high expectations of why the
23:21
stock is going to be a great investment in 2026.
23:26
So it's already been a great investment, but it will be a
23:27
great investment. And then the other thing that
23:30
I've become really humble to in my old age is just listening to
23:36
the world. And so when the world says we're
23:39
going to deem space to be this monstrous national security
23:43
priority and we're going to make 6G leadership this priority,
23:48
blah, blah, blah, like just like don't overthink it.
23:51
That's the thing that is going to get capital flows and is
23:54
going to go up. And ASTS is squarely in the
23:58
middle of this theme, if not the leader of it.
24:01
And so that's why I think that over the next years, this is
24:05
going to become the narrative that is highly, highly valued in
24:10
the stock market and is going to set up, set up to generate some
24:14
astounding returns. So I hope, and now we have
24:20
Golden Dome. And so I've been spending some
24:22
more time really trying to understand how these approvals
24:24
work. And I'll post some more stuff on
24:26
this later. I'm still just gathering some
24:29
information, but I'm still convinced that ASTS is is in
24:34
Golden Dome is going to be a major part of it by way of the
24:37
SDA, which feeds technology into the MDA.
24:41
And that I believe we're going to be very prominent in the
24:44
transport and custody layers of Golden Dome and that we'll all
24:48
find that out soon enough. And I gave some tweets that
24:54
Katzie did and tough for you so that other people can start to
24:57
brush up their own knowledge so that they're not surprised by
25:00
anything. Meanwhile, we have Brian
25:02
Dorland, who's the principal director of space tech for the
25:07
US Department of Defense. Small little organization that
25:10
buys guns. And he said that interestingly,
25:15
he gave 5 startups that stood out this year #1 was not Rocket
25:22
Lab, sorry Rocket Lab Bros would beat you #1 was ASTS space
25:27
mobile. And so and he said we
25:29
demonstrated past tense direct to device connectivity using
25:33
large deployable Leo satellites and unmodified smartphones.
25:37
Quote. This is a genuine architectural
25:39
shift in global communications. Sounds noteworthy.
25:47
And then he talks about this company called Rocket Lab.
25:51
So then we have first net funding and they again keep
25:57
talking about quote, in addition to new terrestrial cell sites,
26:00
the announced coverage enhancement includes funding for
26:03
satellite direct to device services.
26:06
So we'll find out how this ends up translating to money, but
26:12
it's it's happening and I don't know the timing, but first
26:18
that's definitely happening. Now we think about just the
26:21
evolution of the shareholder base.
26:23
And so this goes just to maybe like an out outgrowth of what I
26:29
was just saying about how ASTS is going to go from this sort of
26:32
heavy event driven stock to sort of like a high sponsorship long
26:36
only name. And Katzie has a tweet that just
26:40
talks about where the borrow fee is going to be and institutional
26:44
ownership and things like that. I think that's all going to
26:46
happen especially as batch 1, batch 2 happen because that's
26:50
really the operational execution phase of the company and the
26:53
monetization phase. And that's where the if versus
26:57
unless framework that I've put it's in the document.
27:00
If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's where all
27:02
of a sudden everything sort of becomes an an unless statement.
27:05
And for a big long only that's going to buy 5 to 10% of the
27:08
company. Investing behind unless
27:10
statements is a much more prudent path than investing
27:14
behind if statements. And if you don't know what that
27:18
means, again, please refer to the PIN tweet in my profile and
27:22
it's up in the front. And it's a big slide that says
27:24
if versus unless. And it's a very interesting
27:26
concept which I've tried to apply to my work.
27:30
Now we have SpaceX. So it is useful.
27:36
And I've summarized this in some other slides that just show that
27:41
when people think that SpaceX is so far ahead of AST space
27:44
mobile, but not doing the multiplication right.
27:46
And so SpaceX is going to need about 5000 satellites for some
27:50
of this analysis to get to continuous direct to device
27:54
satellite. So when people go, oh, there you
27:55
have 750 satellites. Well, OK, so that's like what
28:00
15% of of the required constellation.
28:05
We, we might have that up as well by February, depending on
28:10
batch 2. So who's who's behind?
28:15
And even if Starlink had their full constellation up, are they
28:21
really ahead given the architecture of their system,
28:23
which is immutable, cannot change that.
28:26
Might really never even support frictionless voice calls, is it?
28:31
Which is a point that Kevin Chen has pointed out is that they
28:34
might not be able to do voice over LTE.
28:37
It might only really be through WhatsApp, which is sort of where
28:40
the disclosure is pointing to. Seems like a problem and then
28:46
Elena also kind of came out saying, you know, really the
28:50
problem is there there a link budget?
28:54
And so this is in response to changes and I believe it was
28:59
Tesla roofs to basically improve the radome of the vehicle so
29:05
that it can work with Starlink and she points out some of those
29:10
flaws. So you know, you can't change
29:14
physics and Starlink, as everyone knows is really the
29:20
kind of shoddy response to ASTES bursting on the scene and Elon
29:26
repurposing the Chamath Swarm business, which was meant for
29:31
IoT only to try to do direct to device, which might have been a
29:35
flawed concept. And lastly, we will just point
29:42
out that other people in the industry kind of humorously are
29:47
calling out Tim Farrar as just saying things that are in, in
29:52
this particular instance, saying this was the quote dumbest thing
29:55
he's ever heard, which comes as no surprise to Space Mob because
29:59
most of what these expert consultants have done is contort
30:04
small, out of context facts to run a narrative.
30:09
And then one might ask, well, why do they have this narrative?
30:12
And it's become very clear over the past five years that they're
30:14
paid anti pumpers to help protect and defend the legacy
30:20
incumbents. And that's really not that
30:23
controversial of a statement at this point.
30:25
And it was a valiant attempt and almost worked, but then
30:28
ironically drove most of us to actually really study the
30:30
company much more deeply than we otherwise would have.
30:33
And it goes to also these other shorts where I just can't quite
30:37
understand what they're doing. But I did invite Stone Fox
30:41
Capital to be on the spaces. He never responded, nor did
30:45
Pivotal Capital, nor did Doctor Schmuckraker.
30:49
And so none of these shorts are are willing to come on the
30:52
spaces where I would actually give them 5 to 10 minutes
30:57
without interruption to present their short case, sort of
31:00
channeling the energy Charlie Kirk had of just let people, you
31:04
know, let people give their their opinion and then let it
31:08
speak for itself. And you know, I wished one of
31:11
these guys would actually join me because I really would like
31:15
to actually prove that I have the self restraint not to
31:18
interrupt them, which would be a true challenge for me.
31:21
Every bone in my body would want to interrupt them and start
31:24
viciously attacking both their their opinions, personalities,
31:30
and ultimate reason on earth. But I would put myself on mute
31:35
so that all those interruptions would in fact be silent to the
31:38
broader audience. But alas, none of these guys
31:41
have been willing to show up, so we'll never know if I actually
31:45
have self restraint. So that's it for this week's
31:49
weekly. And I would just point out that
31:52
as I've been traveling the world, it has been remarkable
31:55
how often I do not have cell phone service.
31:57
And it is also remarkable how many people are also doing the
32:01
same travels I am doing, which that means they also do not have
32:05
cell phone service in. My guide was telling you
32:08
yesterday that he'd had some people that got lost on a trail
32:12
and they ended up having to do a search and rescue because there
32:14
was no cell phone service. And two Irish girls sort of were
32:18
overconfident, went on the wrong trail and got lost for 8 hours.
32:22
So, you know, looks like there's some demand out there for
32:25
services like this, even in the narrow use case of just simply
32:28
solving dead spots. So that's all I got.
32:32
I'm looking forward to a big week in, you know, we do have
32:35
another holiday week. So it wouldn't necessarily be
32:38
the ideal time for the company to drop a ton of news.
32:40
But I think the news sort of drops itself because FM 2 is
32:45
they need to announce that it has arrived at a facility.
32:48
But then that will be really funny when they announce which
32:51
facility. And then I don't think we're
32:55
going to get any news out of FM One for a while, which is fine,
32:59
but and the countdown for batch 1 is starting.
33:04
And so I would imagine the next one to two weeks we're going to
33:08
get batch one out the gate and that is going to be a Seminole
33:12
event for the company. Whether the stock price moves or
33:15
not, I don't know. But for anyone that's a long
33:17
term investor, that is the moment when you know that this
33:21
company's transitioned from an incredible R&D experiment to
33:27
really an north of two operational story.
33:31
Because the only other company that can produce satellites like
33:34
this is SpaceX and ASTS is going to be one of the largest
33:41
satellite producers by tonnage in the world.
33:44
And I think Tanner actually did the exact math, but the just
33:47
simple tonnage of spacecraft that this company is going to be
33:50
producing on an annual basis is unprecedented.
33:56
And so that given that the world is rapidly realizing the power
34:00
of the space economy, should be very valuable thing to own.
34:05
Thanks again for joining me on such short notice and I hope
34:07
everyone has a wonderful rest of their day.
34:13
Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobile Podcast.
34:16
If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
34:19
podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
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media, or leave a rating and review.
34:25
To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
34:29
sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
34:32
next time. We're doing something very, very
34:37
big and I think with this technology we can really affect
34:40
a billion lives. AFT Space Mobile is the only
34:43
company that has proven technology to deliver several
34:47
robot connectivity directly from the state to do everyday
34:51
smartphone. People will just basically turn
34:54
their phone be seamless, regardless of where you are.
34:57
We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
34:59
satellite. Our role is to bring this into
35:03
reality, always in partnership with the MMO Listen.
35:18
Waffles.