Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 484 - How Is Space Travel Important? - Kevin Quach

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484 - How Is Space Travel Important? - Kevin Quach · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Today I have Kevin Quatt.
0:03
[SPEAKER_03]: You are a blue origin aerospace engineer and you and I met in New York last week.
0:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And we were in a club in the back room in an on-clave.
0:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're just talking about this stuff that you do and I've found it so interesting.
0:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I always found the blue origin and SpaceX rocket companies
0:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And the more we talk, I mean, I knew that I'd have to actually see one to the podcast, but the more we talk, the more I, you know, I wanted to really explore this idea of space travel and the ideas behind the technology.
0:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So welcome to the podcast.
0:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks, Kenneth.
0:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always good to see you again.
0:49
[SPEAKER_00]: New York wasn't a good time.
0:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a great time.
0:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So let's talk about how early
0:56
[SPEAKER_03]: in your life, did you have this idea of wanting to become a rocket scientist?
1:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so I'm out, I'd say pretty early on, you know, my growing up as a kid, my dad, he had all sorts of stuff in the living room, like he had all these books.
1:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I can cite for PBS with like just pictures of airplanes, you know, like literally it's a picture book, except it's just full of jets and all sorts of aircraft he had models.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: all over the fireplace and little little planes on the shelves and here things like that and I would you know I'd read through the books because you know pictures right picture books you kids love them right so instead of instead of picture books of like I don't know Barney or Winnie the Pooh I was looking at picture books of like military aircraft and jets and airplanes and I had that influence pretty young right as soon as I could really read on my own
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But a aerospace engineer or work with rockets specifically, I just had a, I knew I wanted to to build something right make something.
2:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I might be an architect right when I was an elementary school.
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, maybe I want to be an architect or I would draw buildings and they go maybe I can design buildings when I get older.
2:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in middle school, yeah, I wasn't sure quite sure in middle school, either yet exactly if it was going to be airspace or rockets or anything like that.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really took hold, I think, when I was in high school and I really started thinking, you know, your brain's a little bit more formed, you know, with high school and you're like, oh, what do I actually want to do?
2:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And from there, I pretty much knew I wanted to do airspace or some form of engineering.
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I just looked back at all my memories and all the things that,
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I really connected with as a kid.
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know, I got to do something with planes.
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Or it's got to be something that flies, right?
2:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And so coming out of high school, I was pretty dead set.
3:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew where I wanted to go to school.
3:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew what I wanted to study.
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just took off from there, really.
3:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Is aerospace engineering?
3:11
[SPEAKER_03]: One of those fields where it's like a very narrow window, like the medical field, if you want to be a doctor,
3:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I would say relatively speaking air space engineering is probably a smaller group of folks who are getting degrees in that compared to maybe more general engineering is like mechanical type of degrees.
3:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it's a bit more niche in a sense.
3:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to think of air space engineers like a jack of all trades but master of none type of field because you you have to learn about all the different systems that compose of modern day aircraft or you know launch vehicles or rockets right and so.
3:55
[SPEAKER_00]: To fully understand the whole system, you have to learn about it all, right?
3:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Like rockets and planes are not simple aircraft or, you know, inventions, right?
4:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They comprise many, many, many small systems.
4:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to learn about all of them.
4:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say we have a pretty good understanding of what it all takes to put the planes together or the rocket together.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But we still, as an aerospace engineer,
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: He only goes so deep, right?
4:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the breath and the verse of the shallow.
4:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So not to detract that I don't know my disciplines, right?
4:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would say, you know, as an aerospace engineer,
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You're more focused on how to put all those things together, focusing on a system that is capable of flying, I would say that's more of what air space is focused on.
4:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, make sense.
4:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So, all right, we're going to get into the wacky side of this conversation first, because I think by talking about the wacky side of this conversation, we're going to expose how much you know, which is a lot.
4:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And, and, and when we were singing New York, I wasn't trying to test you.
5:01
[SPEAKER_03]: This has always been on my mind, and I know it's on a lot of my friends' mind.
5:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And I get sent these like really wacky, you know, Instagram posts.
5:11
[SPEAKER_03]: But I just have to go for it, because I think it's going to make a lot of sense once the audience.
5:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's what I'm about to ask.
5:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
5:17
[SPEAKER_03]: This thing about the lunar, the moon landing, being a hoax.
5:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you walk me through this again?
5:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I know you did it in New York with me.
5:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Hearing you explain it to me makes so much sense, and I'm going to send this obviously, this interview, this conversation to many of my friends who believe that the lunar moon landing was not real.
5:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And it frustrates me, it frustrates my brother when we hear it, but I think the way you explained it to me really makes a lot of sense.
5:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So here we go.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I can I can kind of see why people would question that, right, because you think you think, well, okay, you know, 1969 technology back then, right, like we were running, we were running cars with carburetor digital electronics wasn't, wasn't big, right, like,
6:12
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have phones, PCs, like there was very we're at the advent of really computing at that time, right?
6:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can understand and it's an incredible feat, right, to to send people into space and onto the moon and come back, right?
6:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's that's an incredible feat.
6:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And even today's standards, I would still say that that's pretty remarkable, right?
6:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we today, we still have trouble reliably putting vehicles on the moon.
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we do it, right?
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We do have a person on the moon recently.
6:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But things are landing on the moon every year.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Different countries are putting things on the moon.
6:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the coming guy works for, is trying to put people back on the moon again this year.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can understand the hesitation or the skepticism, right?
6:56
[SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to, especially if you weren't around during that time,
7:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So but I would say I would not don't underestimate the technology of people decades ago, right, just because they had a, just because they had a different, there were in a different time of technology.
7:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean they were much less capable, right?
7:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and you got to think like, you know, and I won't get too far into the weeds of like other other theories, I'll come theories, right?
7:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, think about like the pyramids, think about the awkwardducks, think about any other great,
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Great monument that humankind has created or any of the great feet that humankind has made it.
7:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been making these things for centuries for millennia, with different forms of technology.
7:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because they don't have today's technology, doesn't mean they can't accomplish feeds of greatness, right?
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say, you know, if you really read into the people, the math and the science that was involved with going to the moon, these things are all grounded in reality, right?
7:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the physics behind it.
7:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's doable.
7:57
[SPEAKER_00]: These things are doable.
7:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the things are, there's physically, the physics hasn't changed,
8:06
[SPEAKER_00]: In our Earth's fear and influence, get into orbit, transfer to the moons orbit, and land and come back.
8:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the physics don't change, right?
8:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The physics have been there forever, right?
8:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it just took us a while to understand the math, and derive all this stuff, and then apply the technology to get us there.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I think it's perfectly expected to have that skepticism at the same time.
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, we as human kind are very capable when we organize teams together and have the right people in the room and you really focus on what it takes to accomplish that mission, right?
8:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you, you know, I read books about the whole Apollo 11 and the landing,
8:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, these were serious teams, you know, I really respect the people that were part of that mission and I believe every minute of it, right?
8:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course there's going to be some forward-facing public-facing aspect that they always want you to see.
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You're never going to show your dirty lung, right?
9:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, of course, documentaries come out after the fact that they tell you all these crazy things about the people behind the scenes, about what really happened as far as the politics and the angst and the difficulties and the challenges they had, right?
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: They want to say, hey, yeah, we had a good time, we've accomplished the mission.
9:17
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to show too much of that where the dirty laundry of the engineering, right?
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But like these were very committed teams and I just read about all the rehearsal, all the practice, all the different options that they had and I think a lot of that had to do the success even when it looked like it was almost impossible task right like these guys were planning
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a laundry list of different options of how you could do this.
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't just an option A, you know, there was an option A, B, you've ran a letter in the alphabet, right?
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You had to go back around and come up with more options.
9:54
[SPEAKER_00]: But because that's the idea, right?
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, because of the technology limitations and other constraints at the time, you had to, you know, like I say, with, you know, you've ever seen that his books type gene grants his title or the book, right?
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called failure is not an option.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's literally it right like you they had to they had to accomplish this task and they couldn't you couldn't accept no right you couldn't accept failure you had to come up if this happened.
10:19
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you get around it, right?
10:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And they had a, they had a, they had a, how do you get around an answer for almost everything, every possible situation they could think of, right?
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And these things did happen, right?
10:30
[SPEAKER_00]: They had lots of failures.
10:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They had lots of issues.
10:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And not everybody knows about it.
10:34
[SPEAKER_00]: They know it was a perfect no, of course not.
10:35
[SPEAKER_00]: There's, there's, there's always little things that happened.
10:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And any one of those things could have stopped the mission, right?
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Now today with today's technology,
10:43
[SPEAKER_00]: we can mitigate that way more effectively, right?
10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the number of things that can cause the mission to stop, the likelihood of that has to certainly drop, I would say, and with today's technology.
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So even though they were limited at a time and they had a higher chance of failure, they were silly to do it.
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, I very much believe that,
11:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It happened, of course, you know, asking an aerospace engineer of the learning landing has happened is like asking of a, you know, a baker believes in bread.
11:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
11:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just totally, it's fundamental to the study and the existence.
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: To accomplish these really highly technical tasks that rely on a series of events that have to occur all right.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, many times during that process,
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: out, I'll call them, like you have ways of getting around the situation, like there are checkpoints, right?
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And every checkpoint, you have a, you have like a pick your own adventure type of deal, like based on what's happening, you do do this, right?
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: If this is nominal, the UK you pick option A, if you, if something is slightly off, okay, you do option B.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: If this is slightly off, and that is slightly off, and, you know, it's a Wednesday,
11:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You do option C, you know, there's a very long list of all these different things that will enable you to continue the mission and complete, you know, be objective, whereas, whereas today now we still have like many critical decision points when it comes to, you know, flying a, a mission to space right.
12:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But with today's technology, we can leverage a lot of automation, a lot of computing, a lot of rapid decision-making capability is now embedded into computers and algorithms whereas in the 70s, yeah, they had some of that, I would say.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But they had a lot more people in the loop, humans in the loop, making these decisions.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And that subject to human error, up subject to human discretion, ego, personality, you know?
12:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas today's technology a lot of it is more calculated with with with with computers that computers are making these decisions right so so I think that's the big difference between then and now right like we we can still What we can we can do what they did and they can do what we did I'll be at wheat with today's technology we're just way more efficient with it right like.
13:03
[SPEAKER_00]: their computers were much heavier, right?
13:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They had to have people to do this, because not everything could be controlled from ground, from the control room, from wherever.
13:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So, whereas today, a lot of automation can occur.
13:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't actually have to have people to do a lot of this stuff.
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mean, it can help in certain situations because it comms losses and things like that.
13:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
13:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that's the big paradigm shift is, we're not, you know, we're not today.
13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, the difficulty is not necessarily, and it's still difficult, but it's not, I wouldn't say it's the primary thing that's holding us up is not that we can't go back.
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's, how can we go back for way less money.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: and bring a lot more stuff with us, right?
13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And do it way more safe than they did it in the Apollo missions, you know?
13:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So two things, I think before we actually got to the moon, we actually lost a crew, right, right before.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so there, there was the Apollo one fire.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so so that was an incident that happened on the launch side we they lost the yeah they lost the whole you know unfortunately they lost the crew in the capsule during that during that operation you know and the other part is
14:25
[SPEAKER_03]: actual pictures that people claim, you know, the flag and the and the direction of the sun and all of this like sort of hoax style photography, you know, and I asked this knowing full well, you know, I don't believe in it as being a hoax.
14:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I really believe that we got to them.
14:43
[SPEAKER_03]: But the way you explain why these pictures were taken has something to do with the modern
14:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Narrative of Blue Origin and Katie Perry and her team coming out of that capsule People saying that that's like the door, you know Look fake and you know how flimsy it looked so it all ties in and you have I I hate to say you have an explanation for this, but I mean what you described to me makes so much sense.
15:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So can you can you tell me?
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, so so
15:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
15:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, whenever whatever you do something, especially for the first time, right, like, you don't always want to show everybody that dirty, the dirty underneath, right, like it's always, you have to, you do have to worry about PR this there's public reception right how do people see this you don't want to show yourself as.
15:37
[SPEAKER_00]: oh man we barely did like you know we barely did this oh like these people almost died like oh this was the most terrible uncomfortable thing you know because people do want to like to see that right they like to see pretty pictures they like to see you know everything through wrote you know rosecoded lenses as they say you want to look make a look good right
15:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'm not a part of the, I wasn't part of the mission that flew, you know, on that new shepherd with, with Katy Perry, not on the other side of the crew, however, you know, to, to the extent that I would say as a, as a, as a person who, you know, and I guess my words are not blurred words, right, but, but you know, think about it, right, like if you're flying a whole bunch of high profile people.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: in space and back right you there's got any cameras right there's going to be people filming it's going to be on all sorts of social media and it's it's it's advertising for the company right so yes the mission went they left they came back I know that with fact right but i'm sure at some point they're like hey guys we got to do this one for the photo right so so how much of that was for you know how much of that you actually know of like how
16:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to say, because I wasn't there, right?
16:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's just remember, like think about it, right?
17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: With the wedding photo, right?
17:01
[SPEAKER_00]: 90% of your wedding photos were taken like 10 times over, right?
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, because you want to show the best part of it.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it wedding real?
17:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, it was real, right?
17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You have the documents, you had the way ring to prove it, right?
17:16
[SPEAKER_00]: but you need to make it look good too.
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there's a balance of that aspect and then whenever people find out like, oh my god, that's not the real photo.
17:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, well the real photo is like muddy and it's dark and you can't really see anything.
17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like you wanna have that outside.
17:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's just me as a, if I were running my own company, that's what I would do, right?
17:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't speak to what was actually done.
17:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like, you know, hey, you know, hold on people, like let's just think about this for a second.
17:44
[SPEAKER_00]: and not jump check conclusions with these kinds of things.
17:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think it's a human nature too when we, you know, some of these friends of mine that I have are really into conspiracy and it's not.
17:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's not the most intelligent, you know, I have to say it's not the most intelligent debates that we have.
18:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, you know, it gets exhausting to hear this over and over a flat earth debates and, you know, moon landing conspiracy.
18:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It just makes no sense to me.
18:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why I want to sit and talk to you about
18:23
[SPEAKER_03]: the idea of space travel and you know what the realities are and what you do all ties into you know now expanding our mind and we're now moving into the future and I think it's to my good friends who who believe in this all these conspiracies about you know, blu-orgen not making it into space and you know the US not making it into onto the moon back then you know we need to put all that to rest and we need to really hear
18:52
[SPEAKER_03]: what these real-life engineers do, a real-life Vietnamese engineer is doing a blue origin.
19:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, so here we are.
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: What is your day-to-day like?
19:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, you know, I work over at the Cape Canaveral, right?
19:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's where all the history was made back and back in the day in the 60s or 70s.
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's where NASA is.
19:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's where Kennedy Space
19:17
[SPEAKER_00]: the space for space is over there now.
19:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So every day, I commute over there, over to the coast.
19:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I work right next to a lot of that.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of industries, so it's really cool.
19:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually are driving into work.
19:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see the visitor center at Kennedy Space Center and they have, you know, the old shuttle tank and it's sitting outside and I can see that every day.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really cool.
19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see the VAB way off in the distance, which is like, you know, one of the world's largest, you know, structures that can hold a rocket inside.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I work over there, but on day-to-day basis, it could be, I'm actually down there on the manufacturing floor, working on the rocket.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I work a lot on the ADONX and the electrical parts of the rocket.
20:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So it could be, I'm going to test on there, I'm troubleshooting, or maybe some way to ran into a problem, part of the system's not working, so my job is to go down there,
20:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Figure out why it's not working.
20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Give them dispositions, write up engineering instructions on how to fix it, how to correct the problem, or how to just conduct the general tests to make sure that the rocket's working.
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's fundamentally my role.
20:27
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to put it simply is, I'm responsible for, when they build the rocket, I'm responsible for making sure that
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: specific parts of that rock because there's many part of many systems, right, but I had a couple systems I particularly own.
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm responsible that those systems, you know, work.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can put a stamp on and I say, okay, my name is on this piece of paper that says, okay, I've been says that this part of the rocket works.
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not right, like stamped, okay, good to go, all right.
20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but it can be, it can be a variety of things.
20:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be fixing, finding problems, troubleshooting, or just doing routine tests and inspections on as we build the rocket.
21:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And do you ever, I guess this is probably a silly question, but do you ever see things that are defected?
21:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you ever come across things that are not going to work?
21:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And somebody before you passed it along, and it was just, of course, I mean, that's the point of the job, right?
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The point if people didn't make mistakes, you know, my job would be pointless.
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, my, my function only exists because we have to assume that mistakes were made.
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we were the integration team.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We make sure that it was integrated properly.
21:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So of course, we find things, sometimes I'm like, all right, who's the guy who did this?
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But the other happens every now and then, but that's expected, right?
21:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Any complicated manufacturing process, you're always going to have something wrong where there was a design issue or just a defect during manufacturing.
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: One day somebody just picked up the wrong thing and use it where it wasn't supposed to be using, we catch that right or somebody just makes a human simple error like, oh, he just misread, he misread something or and my job is to go in and test and make sure that any simple mistake like that gets caught right we can't allow We can't allow simple human error to to per, you know,
22:28
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, transpire all the way through a manufacturing process and ultimately my job is a catch all of it.
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So I catch something that means my job was, I'm, I'm doing my job successfully.
22:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Be people because I'm thinking when you're doing something this complicated, a million things can go wrong, right?
22:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And a million things just takes one thing like an o-ring
22:50
[SPEAKER_03]: for the challenger to blow up in space.
22:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what I'm thinking to myself, how many guys like you exist on your team to troubleshoot, to do quality control before these things get rolled up into space and you know, you're carrying human beings into
23:11
[SPEAKER_03]: The whole idea of Blue Origin is to bring public regular people up into space, right?
23:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So I mean, there's going to be hundreds of these missions in the next decade.
23:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm supposed, you know, I'm assuming.
23:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is how many of you guys are testing and how many, you know, I'm trying to wrap my mind around like the process of like getting it all figured out that it's
23:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, you know, my team's like about 17 people.
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just one team, we have we have partner teams that also let's, you know, do similar roles as us.
23:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's that's like 17 engineers.
23:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Plus we have another team that's almost about 30 there.
23:57
[SPEAKER_00]: They're they're going to end up around with 30 30 some out engineers.
24:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so between all that I don't know.
24:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why 40 or 50 some people.
24:09
[SPEAKER_00]: on the floor, working with the rocket, getting through production, getting through manufacturing and and testing for all these things, right?
24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not, we're not the final say, right?
24:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just the people who during the manufacturing process are testing it, right?
24:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Once it's done, you know, they go out onto the launch pad and they do their, you know, final practice tests and everything.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's also another team.
24:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's the team
24:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you think of NASA, you know, you think of the control room, you know, with the big TVs in the front and you have the people in the back where in the shirts and the ties, you know, like the classic 90s or not 90s.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: The classic, like 70s, 70s, flying to the moon, you know, vibe, right?
24:50
[SPEAKER_00]: People smoke and say, I mean, they don't smoke cigars in the control of anymore.
24:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a whole other launch ops team, right, that handles that too.
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They're pretty large team too.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a pretty big,
25:03
[SPEAKER_00]: group of people that are responsible from for this whole process.
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes many, many, you know, that's why, you know, space industry is not a cheap, it's not, right?
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: When you get into this business, it takes a lot of money, right?
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why you see people only large, large companies are really big players in the space right now.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're seeing, you know, smaller, smaller players
25:29
[SPEAKER_00]: really big barriers to entry because of the complexity, right?
25:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And because of how many people need to be involved with the process.
25:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:37
[SPEAKER_03]: How far are we from getting into space travel for the public?
25:45
[SPEAKER_03]: On a regular, on a regular sort of, I mean, is this happening already or just we're only seeing
25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I guess I would say, you know, by space travel, if you want to, if you, it's space tourism, you know, I'll call it qualifies the space travel, then they'll say, yeah, we're already there, right?
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's what New Shepherd does.
26:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what, that's what, I mean, space X has brought people into space too, right?
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't, now they don't do it in the same light as what the origin does, but I mean, space travel for people, for ordinary people can happen today.
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: right now it's just it's just a matter of you know do you have the money to fund it and on it kind of stuff it's not like jumping on the metro or something like that right um but but one day right that's the goal right the one day one day the goal is to make it accessible to make it uh simply like buying a ticket on a domestic or I get this case more international or I don't even know what you call it right what do you call a flight at least there are um
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just buying a ticket like that and going to where we need to go.
26:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So part of it is, yeah, we're there today in the sense that we bring the small groups of people to space on a almost trivial basis, right?
27:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we've launched, you know, a new shepherd launched, I think they were into their almost 30 flights, you know, SpaceX has brought many crews to the ISS and they do their own private missions as well.
27:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're there now to this, for a certain degree.
27:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think we're too far from the cost perspective.
27:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we have a ways to go.
27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But from the capability perspective, I think, we could bring anybody in this space today.
27:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have a much, much, much money.
27:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because cost seems to be around $200,000, quarter of a million dollars to get just one orbit into space.
27:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, is that the sort of the going right now?
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh.
27:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, I couldn't tell you, that's the whole, that's all the business side of the house, right?
27:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's hard to, yeah, for me, I'm more of the technical guy.
27:58
[SPEAKER_00]: If I were to try to sell you something like that, I'll get kicked out the door right now.
28:02
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can use two of the worst numbers ever.
28:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:05
[SPEAKER_03]: What is actually the mission of Blue Origin?
28:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I asked that because I know that SpaceX has its own mission, but Blue Origin seems to be more a little bit more passenger, public passenger.
28:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you go into the actual mission of Blue Origin?
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Blue Origin's motto, I guess I should say, it's, you know, for the benefit of Earth, right?
28:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our mission statement, I guess I would say.
28:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But what does that mean, right?
28:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm not a spokesperson for Blue Origin, but I'll tell you what it means as me as an individual, right?
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?
28:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really, like we mentioned before, it's enabling people to travel
28:53
[SPEAKER_00]: off the earth on on a on a regular and I would say on this on a trivial kind of basis right we want to we want to enable folks who for whatever they need to do right whether that be private industry in space right whether that be going to some commercial space station whether that be going to the moon for for for whatever reason for industry for science for tourism right
29:19
[SPEAKER_00]: to basically enable that right because right now we look at traveling to space as an enormous feet right we look at it like how the right brothers look that you know doing their first flights we look at it how when when the first domestic airline flights were happening right this is like oh this is so remarkable this is novel this is crazy like you know oh we do we really trust this right like think about when cars came versus you know horse-drawn characters it's like oh
29:48
[SPEAKER_00]: They run on explosions, right, and machine.
29:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the mission long-term for Blu-Aurge is to kind of make that transition happen for humanity, right?
30:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to make it so that it's just the next form of transportation for all the humanity.
30:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, when I think about your trajectory and your path, what kind of preparation do you need to do before you get to Blue Origin, right?
30:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, coming out of school, where did you have to work before you actually got to a big company, like Blue Origin?
30:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, what kind of things do young people have to think about if they want to go into a company like that?
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's not, I guess it's not easy, right?
30:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, relatively speaking, I mean, there's obviously the schooling part of it, right?
30:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You gotta go through an engineering school and at that to get into the larger, more well-known, or I guess I said, reputable or prestigious employers, right?
31:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, generally, you have to have some sort of a rigorous education at some university that's recognized for that aerospace engineering.
31:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not saying that you have to do that.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, if you have the ability and you have the talent, I would say personally, it doesn't matter where you went to school, but you have to show that somehow, right?
31:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's the academic rigor, right?
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That's part of it, too.
31:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't easy getting through aerospace school, you know, the average GPAs were like on the floor, right?
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Like your grades were terrible.
31:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very difficult, yeah.
31:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but you make it through or you make it through that.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's like step one, right?
31:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and then there's, there's, then there's like how you get to employment to, right?
31:49
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people, I mean, it's, it's not a unique problem to, to aerospace engineering.
31:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably unique to all college graduates.
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's as how do you land that first job, right?
31:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Now for,
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, doing things like interning, there's like co-op programs and things like that.
32:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are all things that, if I were to talk into a student today, like how do you prepare yourself for an industry job, especially in a sector like this?
32:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you got to get experience, right?
32:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to get that internship at that club before you even graduate, right?
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got to get experience before you even finished school.
32:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's part of it, right?
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: After, after I graduated, you know, I had those things, right?
32:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I had internships when I was in school.
32:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working through college.
32:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a real world experience before I got a school in an aviation, right?
32:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I worked with, um, I worked with Gulf Stream.
32:44
[SPEAKER_00]: They're based in Savannah, you know, they make those, you know, probably the business jets, um, very nice ones.
32:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so that's kind of where I picked up the industry experience of what does it mean to work on?
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: a modern day aircraft, right, with leading edge technology, with digital controls, how is it all put together?
33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: How do they work?
33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you test it?
33:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, how does the industry work?
33:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of where I picked it up.
33:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was able to transfer that experience at Goldstream into a full, my first full-time job was actually with a company called Sikorsky.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They're owned by Lockheed Martin now.
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But they make helicopters, right?
33:20
[SPEAKER_00]: They make helicopters like the Black Hawk.
33:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Their fame is for making the Black Hawk
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I worked for, of course, me, which is helicopters for almost eight years.
33:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I worked there, yeah, I worked there as a test flight test engineer.
33:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So I flew on them, you know, in the back with the pilots.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I had my own uniform, I had a helmet, and, and, you know, my job there was to basically watch the, because these were experimental, right, my mom hated this, like, what are you doing, flying on experimental helicopter?
33:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so, but I would fly in the back of my job was basically to make sure that the helicopter was okay.
33:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It was experimental, right?
34:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So, like, a lot of new tech was being vetted out when we weren't ready yet, right?
34:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we were there to make sure we just watched the speed screen that would make sure, hey, you know, this is reading a little high, this is reading a little low, uh, you know, to the positive, hey, you need to do this because, you know, X happened.
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we do Y, right?
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We were like the human backup computer basically because we were still testing the
34:23
[SPEAKER_00]: the actual computers, right?
34:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So it requires some of that.
34:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did that for quite a while and I learned a lot about the a lot about how modern modern aviation modern aerospace model aircraft are put together.
34:38
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you test them?
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you monitor them?
34:41
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you show that they're operating normally, right?
34:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you pick up that type of
34:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you bring like, like, this is very, very key to what makes me or makes a good engineer in my role is you have to start learning these cues, right, like these snap decision cues, right?
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you can't always, you can't always sit down.
35:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you don't have the luxury to sit down, open your textbook, and look at, or look at data for days, right, to make a decision.
35:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be able to quickly over time, and this is where experience comes in,
35:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at those really important factors.
35:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at those really important cues, right?
35:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And based on your experience, what is this meant for you in the past, right?
35:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what typically, you know, when I see this, this is the path, and that's a pattern, right?
35:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And these patterns recur with these types of systems, right?
35:40
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not unique, you know, there are novel issues, but many issues are like, all these are common type of issues.
35:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And you learn to pick up on those things and that really improves your village and age judgment
35:53
[SPEAKER_00]: and react and make the correct decision quickly, right?
35:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're not wasting a week with an aircraft that's not flying, right?
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of like, okay, I think I got this figured out.
36:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You're almost like a detective, right?
36:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And the sharper you get in the quicker you can solve these problems, the more effective you become as a test engineer.
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of that experience I built up during the, you know, the 78 years there,
36:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I started to look elsewhere and then I carried all that experience over to Blorge and where I do test engineering now.
36:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So applying a lot of the same experience and principles of how do you properly test something, how can you show something that's working or not?
36:37
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of how the process occurred.
36:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, but it just sounds to me that Helicopters sound a lot more complicated and testing than a rocket.
36:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I could be long, but a rocket just seems like a tube that needs to go up at the right time and not blow up, but with Helicopters, it did just so much going on.
37:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like with the balance, the propellers and all of that, and did you ever come
37:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course.
37:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
37:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I was in the back of one.
37:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And we didn't actually hit anything, right?
37:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But we had a near miss, I guess you would say, right?
37:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so you're right.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Telecompers are complicated.
37:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think people underestimate the complexity of those machines, right?
37:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because they, they seem simple, they seem, they're not exciting, right?
37:32
[SPEAKER_00]: When you think of like,
37:33
[SPEAKER_00]: flashy high tech cool you don't think about helicopter that's just flying around your house that's just making all this noise are you like a you know what I mean but but yeah they they are very complicated machines they they the dynamics involved are very complex the there's a lot of moving parts that you have a gear box transmission engine controls the everything right um um
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and then yeah, like rock is they appear to be simple, too.
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so I would say you're right in, you know, you're right in some of those aspects, right?
38:03
[SPEAKER_00]: People say, oh, it's it's rocket science.
38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore it must be ridiculously hard, right?
38:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But in some senses, it's actually not as complex as you would think.
38:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are, that's a very broad and general statement, right?
38:23
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were to just be shown the machine, right?
38:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And not understand what it's doing.
38:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if I showed you, if I could show you a design for a rocket and not tell you it's a rocket or tell you that it was something to go to space with and I could show you a design for a helicopter, right?
38:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not telling you that, oh, this is for a helicopter and you just look at those two on paper.
38:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's very difficult to say which is actually the more complex machine, right?
38:53
[SPEAKER_00]: that are unique to certain environments that may be more difficult or less difficult depending on the application, right?
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like rockets don't have to deal with like with the whole rotor head system and that's that's complex control mechanism with all the dynamics involved there, right?
39:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, you know, helicopters don't have to deal with the environmental aspects of flying to space, right?
39:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So they have their own different problems sets and I wouldn't say one is necessarily easier
39:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But in general, we've mastered, I would say human humans have basically mastered the art of making a helicopter, right?
39:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've seen where we've come from the original helicopters that we're literally looked like they're made of sticks, right?
39:40
[SPEAKER_00]: To the first commercial helicopters, you know, with Bell and Secourse G.
39:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, with the black pops around, and we've progressed beyond that, right?
39:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we've seen, we're seeing fully digital control and helicopters, you know, there's no more traditional, you move a stick that moves another stick that moves another stick that moves another, you know, like we're gone, we're done with that, right?
40:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we're, we're, we're, we're all in full digital.
40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: you can make a helicopter that looks like anything that you can make it fly like anything you want with modern technology and controls right so like I would say we pretty much mastered that degree or mastered that aspect of the industry and we're just kind of we're just trying to geek out every single little bit of performance or efficiency or automate automation out of it now.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas with with rockets.
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we're at that level of mastery yet.
40:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still driving a lot of new propulsion technologies and things like that to help make that travel to and from space, even more efficient, especially when it comes to reusability and things like that.
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still developing and that aspect, different materials, different controls, different
41:02
[SPEAKER_00]: and this general different types of technology that will really last master that, right?
41:07
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I've flown DJI video drones before, and I, you know, in the early days, a few years ago when when I first flew home, I was like thinking to myself, and I wouldn't have brought this up if you didn't bring up the whole helicopter work experience that you have, but I've always
41:29
[SPEAKER_03]: drones were not first implemented in its own form before helicopters.
41:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Why helicopters?
41:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Why were helicopters
41:39
[SPEAKER_03]: why did helicopters come before drones because drones with the four propellers pointing up and down just seems so much more efficient and much more manageable from a system's point of view than a helicopter like the helicopter just seems to have like this vertical and horizontal sort of these things working and it just seems to be very inefficient and and and complicated why didn't we have drone
42:07
[SPEAKER_03]: The drone mechanism before the helicopter mechanism.
42:10
[SPEAKER_03]: This is making me sense any.
42:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's an interesting question.
42:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting because it's like in retrospect, right?
42:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's one of those things you can only ask in retrospect, right?
42:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you have the technology, you can look back and say, Oh, what's this so obvious?
42:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't we get this?
42:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'll answer to the best of my degree, and I'll have to make a few assumptions on things,
42:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just want to apologize to the audience how random this question is, but I didn't have this prepared because I just heard your helicopter, you know, you, I when I look at you and when I hung out with you, I always felt like you're some 25-year-old guy, not really liking you're in your mid 30s and you have more experience than I actually thought, because you, I thought you were just that blue coming out of school, your blue origin, and you know, that's the, that's history, right?
43:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But no, I didn't know that that,
43:04
[SPEAKER_03]: that eight year at the helicopter company existed.
43:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So here we are, we're at this random intersection.
43:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I really want to know though.
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So with the helicopter question and the drone question, so the fundamental difference between drones and, and I would say conventional like the helicopter is meant for people in cargo is that drones are electric, right?
43:33
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a field that the rotor craft industry hasn't fully evolved into yet, right?
43:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So electric rotor craft is a different animal than a conventional turbine engine powered with a turbo shaft and gearbox type of engine, right?
43:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of movement in the direction of electric rotor craft, meaning the rotors are powered by motors,
44:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The linkages and everything like that to control the rotor blades are also kind of electronically controlled.
44:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So these have from my experience during my time there, the challenge with electronic with motors and motor with rotor blade control with motors is how much power that they're capable of delivering, how much load that these motors can handle.
44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And how should I do they are?
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So the problem with today, if you were just to want to, like, if you were to take, like a black cock, or I worked on 53K's, which were huge humongous, gigantic helicopters to just put an equivalent electric motor in there.
44:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is where my limitations of the,
44:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Technology are limited here and I have to make some assumptions, right?
45:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But my interpretation or my understanding of what the problem there was, the these motors were not capable of the loads, right?
45:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning, meaning like it can't hand, like a mechanical, like a hydraulic system, right?
45:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Can handle really high loads, right?
45:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, like, loads meaning like when you fly to the air and like the air pushing against you or when you're lifting something really heavy off the ground, like you're picking up a truck, right?
45:28
[SPEAKER_00]: that's really heavy right it's really it puts a lot of load on the airframe a lot of load on the rotor blades a lot of it puts a lot of demand of power in the in the drive in the power train system right.
45:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Motors right now.
45:43
[SPEAKER_00]: For my time in the industry, motors have a limitation on how much load that they can they can handle right before you start to back drive the motor or you overheat them they get really hot right like so so like if you ever if you ever go out I don't know if you've had a good toy little toy with a little motor in it right like you know if you grab if you grab the shaft of the motor right you keep it still and you turn the motor on.
46:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And that little shaft can't turn.
46:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That motor gets really hot, right?
46:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that current is not going, that electricity can't go anywhere.
46:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not turning something, right?
46:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you think about it, instead of putting your hand on a little shaft that's stopping it from moving, you've all of a sudden attached that shaft to some sort of system that's handling a really high load, that motor gets really hot, because it can't just can't handle it, right?
46:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Versus in a hydraulic control system,
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not using a coil of wire to move something and it's using literally hydraulic force, which in hydraulics can be very strong, right?
46:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The technology isn't there where for large, heavy lift, high load, high performance type situations, the motor technology is not there yet.
46:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And in form factor and because of the loads that they can manage.
46:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, drones is easy because drones don't pick up
47:02
[SPEAKER_00]: like tanks, drones don't pick up aircraft, drones don't pick up giant connex boxes, right?
47:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like drones don't pick up 20,000 pound loads, right?
47:12
[SPEAKER_00]: drones pick up like an Amazon box, right?
47:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They, they, they, they, they, they, and, you know, how you're seeing them using, and, um, you know, modern warfare now, they're dropping like a little small ordinance, right?
47:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know, maybe maybe 50 pound, 100 pounds,
47:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not dropping 5,000 pound bombs, because they can't lift that, right?
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where some of the limitations that I, from my time there, I understand that well, why, why didn't we start with the quad-rotor quad-rotor electronic rotors or propellers?
47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's because they don't have the same utility, right?
47:48
[SPEAKER_00]: For light recreation, for commercial, for hobbyists, we're just carrying a little camera
47:55
[SPEAKER_00]: you're not going to be lifting anything heavy, but once when we get there though, right, like when somebody invents the motor, some form of motor, or electronic rotor system, that is capable of really high loads, then I think you'll see that ship.
48:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're not there yet.
48:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But people in this year are moving in that direction.
48:19
[SPEAKER_00]: When I left the company, there were a lot of
48:23
[SPEAKER_03]: R&D projects that are shifting towards how do we how do we electrify our helicopters right and and that that's one of the problems though this leads me to the next question which is propulsion systems are we what's more important right now propulsion like the ability to kind of a power propulsion or the
48:51
[SPEAKER_03]: rotor systems, you know, things that are like mechanically lifting us.
48:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, I think of a rocket, and I think of the other, it's very different technologies between a rocket, the helicopter, and even now when, you know, I know this is going to be sounding wacky.
49:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we get into this territory, which drifts into so many wacky things.
49:16
[SPEAKER_03]: but alien technology and the idea of propulsion, right?
49:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And we can't understand any of it, but the reports come out so often.
49:25
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the most important thing that people work on?
49:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can imagine it being propulsion, energy systems.
49:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm so confused about like, where we can, you know, where humanity is actually going because it seems like the end goal would be to be able to,
49:44
[SPEAKER_03]: propel things the way that we see them in these videos of things moving with with the speed of our imagination.
49:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's an interesting one, right?
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So so you have many different methods of propulsion, right?
50:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And we as human beings have been bound to our minds are bound to, you know, propulsion
50:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And then so propulsion in space or on other extraterrestrial bodies, like the moon or Mars, right, with atmospheres that are different.
50:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a bit of a paradigm shift, right?
50:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you can't use obviously you can't use a regular jet engine in space.
50:28
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no air to move, right?
50:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't use a helicopter in space.
50:31
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no air for the rotor blades to move, right?
50:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So when with
50:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Propulsion technology in space is really you have to it's a movement of that right it's mass and this is something they teach you in school right the only way The only to move something in space is to take you know like conservation of momentum right like you have to be up to objects right the only way to make this one go left is to make this one go right like so they have to go like this right So so in space they do that by ejecting mass out the back of the engine nozzle right like fuel right
51:04
[SPEAKER_00]: feel it becomes that mass, right?
51:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're shooting hot, you know, hot air hot, whatever, right?
51:09
[SPEAKER_00]: There's even electron that news now, but that ejection is what's propelling you through space.
51:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because there's no air for you to suck.
51:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So you carry your own fuel and that field flying out the back of the nozzle at really high speed is what makes you fly through space, right?
51:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But then on Earth, right?
51:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You're moving fluid around, like air is the fluid or water, right?
51:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, you have your physics that go around your, your, your, your prop blade or you have the, you have the physics and a, and a turbojet engine right it's it's moving air that's over here that's not as fast it's accelerating that air through combustion or whatever other means and spitting the air out the back super fast right so so so those are like the modern, that's what we're constrained to as far as like propulsion technologies on earth right now.
51:58
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know, we don't know, right?
52:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So is there another form of propulsion that kind of shifts that paradigm of using, of using the fundamental of conservation of momentum, or moving mass from here to there to move other objects around?
52:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, is there another way to create motion without that, that somehow,
52:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It just puts us on a whole other level of technology and all of you are not here, right?
52:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know, like, oh, anti-gravity.
52:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what does that even mean, right?
52:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what that would look like, right?
52:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm sure there is, there is a way, there, I'm sure there is another, there has to be, right?
52:45
[SPEAKER_00]: There's got to be another form of propulsive technology that is not constrained to the limitations that we have an engineering today.
52:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's one of those things where how do you know what that looks like because we don't know, right, like, like, like if you went back in time, right, and you told the person who's who's writing a horse, right?
53:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, did you know, you know, if you, if you take this fuel and you compress it and then you light it on fire and you put it through a nozzle the shape like this that you can actually go like 20 times faster than what you're going right now.
53:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going, like, I have no deal with your talking about right, like.
53:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They, because you don't know, right, you're bound by the limitations of what you perceive and you understand of the world around you, right?
53:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you invent something that is just totally off the scale, right?
53:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
53:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's where, you know, when you say, you know, how do, like, if UFOs were real, right, that's a whole question on its own, right?
53:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And they move like that, like what sort of proposals of technologies are they using, right?
53:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Who knows, and this is where the sci-fi kicks in.
53:47
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where we need really creative people who write movies and books to just make something up.
53:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the engineering follows, right?
53:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, when the George Lucas and Star Wars, you know, come on, like, he's just making stuff up, right?
54:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, but at the same time, it's almost counterintuitive, right?
54:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really like this, actually personally, is like engineering sometimes follows the sci-fi.
54:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, like because because me engineer, I'm not creative, right?
54:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this is so novel to hear this.
54:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, but I think it's really cool, right?
54:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Because me as engineer, like I'm very rigid.
54:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very, with the way I think I think in boxes, right?
54:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Because everything is defined.
54:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Like everything has a finite solution, finite answer, like, you know what I mean?
54:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's swear, right?
54:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but when it comes to like,
54:41
[SPEAKER_00]: People are coming up with ideas that are not bound by conventional understanding, right?
54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So by crossing that layer, it's like, and then you show the engineer, like, you know, the engineer goes, watch the Star Wars or watch some other sci-fi things like, hmm, that's really cool, right?
54:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how, what can we do to make that, right?
55:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I wouldn't have thought of that.
55:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I can only think of what I know can exist, right?
55:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but how do you think of something that doesn't even exist?
55:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And once you think of it,
55:10
[SPEAKER_00]: right then the engineering follows.
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would love to see, you know, people come up with crazy ideas and then an industry, you know, just adopt, just kind of going in and really embracing that, like, how can we creatively really just go into the wild with new technology and new.
55:27
[SPEAKER_00]: science and things like that.
55:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you think about Star Trek and Star Wars and all of these early sci-fi pictures, you know, Star Trek was having mobile phones, you know, beam down from wherever they were, you know, to the to the floor of the planet they were on.
55:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like the most
55:48
[SPEAKER_03]: crazy thing and I don't even know if they had that technology back then or not yet but whatever he was drawing on you know the creator Star Trek was spot on spot on and then they probably made the engineering work much much later yeah that all being said now I wonder why
56:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that's a really good fundamental question, right?
56:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think the easy answer to that is is, and some people may agree in someone we may not is, you know, Earth is finite, right?
56:30
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only so much Earth, there's only so many resources and there's a lot of constraints of being on Earth, right?
56:37
[SPEAKER_00]: That limit, that limit the human potential.
56:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So I know that's like a very general statement, right?
56:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You could, I could mean a lot of different things like that,
56:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I think some of the, some of the, some of the use cases now, like some of the things we, that are tookable today of why, why is, why is space important for people as I mean, I mean, I mean, do you like your cell phone?
56:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, do you like having Google Maps?
57:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
57:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you like having, I mean, people who you start like now, like do you like having internet in the middle of nowhere?
57:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Anywhere you go, right?
57:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, things like that, right?
57:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, like, those are, those are talking
57:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's just the beginning of it, right?
57:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So beyond that, right, beyond that, like if we can do this much just by orbiting the Earth, right?
57:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, right, and I can't give you the answer because I don't know, right?
57:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But think about what other things would, would what other sorts of, that like really creative really remarkable things could you do.
57:38
[SPEAKER_00]: by expanding that domain to interplanetary, right, to the moon, to the Mars, to other planets, on the solar system, to other solar systems, right?
57:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what other things are out there, what other forms of technology could you develop that would revolutionize the way humans operate?
57:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And that could be, that could be, you know,
57:59
[SPEAKER_00]: some new material that's on another planet that we don't get much of here right like you know we said you know how like we hear was like oh man gold is so hard to find till or so hard to find like manufacturing processes that are really expensive because they rely on really precious metals that only exist in certain places right like and then this one country who nobody likes or something like that only has them right so you
58:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You can, you can create, I think there's a potential for like, you know, you could find abundance, you know, elsewhere off of Earth that limit manufacturing.
58:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So that should be another avenue too, right?
58:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know there are technologies, or there is research going on and progress and fields that are trying to look at how you can manufacture with with the regolith, right, which is, um,
58:48
[SPEAKER_00]: moon dust.
58:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's literally what the moon surface is made of.
58:53
[SPEAKER_00]: People are actively looking at how can you take this and use it as a raw material for manufacturing.
59:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's possible.
59:01
[SPEAKER_00]: There are things that you can do with this and I know that Blurge has a patent on how you can use lunar rail if and develop solar panels.
59:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about that.
59:11
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can manufacture solar panels
59:16
[SPEAKER_00]: there's energy, right?
59:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And from there, like the world's roister, right?
59:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, that could be very real too.
59:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So, there's a great number of possibilities, but I think just just limited to just the examples we see today, like with satellite technology, with communication satellites, with satellite imaging, with GPS.
59:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's way more potential if you go beyond just just an earth and earth orbit, right?
59:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say most emphasis on industry, most of all, I think.
59:52
[SPEAKER_03]: My God, we can spend hours just talking about the proliferation of different technologies like Velcro and, you know, solar panels that are made as a result of the space industry.
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, how far are we from colonizing, not the moon, but like just colonizing another space station, or a docking situation in our orbit that we can frequently go to?
1:00:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, we've already seen that with the ISS, right?
1:00:28
[SPEAKER_00]: The International Space Station.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's been around for quite a while.
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that, that one's going out of commission at some point, I think.
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, that will be replaced with others, right?
1:00:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And that will be replaced with others using more modern technology.
1:00:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I says it's pretty old, actually, think about it.
1:00:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know exactly how old it is, but, you know, I would say in engineering equivalent, it's probably pretty creaking and pretty old.
1:00:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's perfectly safe, I don't know what scared anybody about that.
1:00:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, like, there's a reason why they're talking about decommissioning that I said, right?
1:00:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been up there for quite some time.
1:00:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can tell you, there's work now that's happening about creating private versions of the international space station, right?
1:01:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like Axium is a company that's in the US that I think they're doing, they're working on things to create a private space station, Blue Origin has a concept for a private station as well, it's called Blue Reef.
1:01:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are really cool, right?
1:01:28
[SPEAKER_00]: China and other countries and we're also invested in creating international, not international, but like their own versions of private space stations too.
1:01:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we're going to see more of these, some will be governments, some will be private, some will be international, but these,
1:01:45
[SPEAKER_00]: This is that is happening.
1:01:46
[SPEAKER_00]: That is happening now.
1:01:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're weren't aware, you know, people are going to build more space stations and it's not just going to be limited to like NASA or, you know, the European space industry or agency.
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll be a variety, right?
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what the private sector is trying to open up.
1:02:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to see more for sure.
1:02:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:02:05
[SPEAKER_03]: As someone who's directly involved in this industry, if I had to wear it, ask you, hey, we have a lot of problems here on earth.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_03]: We got a lot of things to solve here on earth.
1:02:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are you trying to solve these things?
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are you taking humanity to space?
1:02:20
[SPEAKER_03]: What's your answer to that?
1:02:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd say you're right.
1:02:24
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of problems on Earth.
1:02:26
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of issues here on Earth that we're not dealing with before we go to states.
1:02:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's true.
1:02:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't deny that.
1:02:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's wars, there's hunger, there's medical disease.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that was many, many, many reasons why you should focus on Earth first.
1:02:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I totally get it.
1:02:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't make sense to be playing around in space when you have family members that are sick with some incurable form of cancer.
1:02:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Like why?
1:02:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, I would say,
1:02:54
[SPEAKER_00]: We cannot work in a serial process.
1:02:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Humanity cannot work in a serial process, right?
1:03:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there are important things that are happening that you could arguably say are more important than developing space technology right now, right?
1:03:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing is we cannot wait for, we cannot wait to solve these big obstacles that are facing humanity in line with one another, right?
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we can't wait to solve cancer first before investing in space technology, right?
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we can't wait to develop low cost solutions for housing.
1:03:34
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't wait to develop the solutions for affordable and healthy food for the globe, right?
1:03:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Before, like, if you wait for all these things, you're never gonna make progress.
1:03:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you're gonna wait by the time you finish, whatever this is you're doing over here, you're gonna be way behind over here, right?
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get that, that, that, that, that, that there aren't your hardifiers, right?
1:03:57
[SPEAKER_00]: They're there in your party that you should address that had high perception, I, you know, that the public is aware of, but at the same time, like, you can't just totally cut it, right?
1:04:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, because otherwise you'll, by the time you finish it, whatever you're focusing on first, you're, you're just way too far behind on the other things that you should know also.
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's got to be a parallel thing, right?
1:04:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you have to be able to do more than one thing,
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Humanity has to be capable of working and evolving in more than one aspect at a time.
1:04:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you just have to do it any other way.
1:04:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You're already behind, you have to be like that.
1:04:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:04:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And this idea of being behind leads me to the next question about something you brought up when New York is the lunar gateway.
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Because when I think about, yeah, behind-and-what?
1:04:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, we're relatively like, what does that even mean?
1:04:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But now, like, if you take the context of all of the countries participating
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's the lunar gateway that you had, can you talk about that?
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so right now, and this rocket is actually going to be launching soon.
1:05:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So NASA, right?
1:05:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're still in the game.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're there about to launch their next really large rockets called Artemis 2.
1:05:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably Artemis program.
1:05:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And that program part of that program is going to be enabling basically a lunar space ecosystem, right?
1:05:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And Blue Origin is involved in this as well.
1:05:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to provide launch and space services that enable the transportation from Earth to the lunar ecosystem, right?
1:05:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And to from the surface of the Moon and back, right?
1:05:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically, you know, you can imagine a route,
1:05:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's the long route which is like from earth to the moon and then there's from then there's the short one that gets from earth just to just to the earth orbit and then the last route which is from from around the moon down to the surface right so it's like a three leg system.
1:06:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is basically going to serve as like your, you know, your halfway, your halfway point, your gas station, you know, like your desktop, I'll just use those words.
1:06:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So that you, you get that first, right?
1:06:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And then from there, you go down to the moon, right?
1:06:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And then to go home, you do the opposite and come back.
1:06:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So so that is in works right now with many, many different industry providers to to facilitate the ease of transportation.
1:06:44
[SPEAKER_00]: back and forth from the moon.
1:06:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a really big.
1:06:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's like happening now, right?
1:06:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like a project that's programmed.
1:06:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There's there's industry moving in that direction, like right now, to get those things enabled.
1:06:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
1:06:59
[SPEAKER_03]: This is not like some pine the sky dream, some pipe dream.
1:07:02
[SPEAKER_03]: This is like actually going to happen.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the way we're going to get
1:07:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:07:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:07:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So it'll happen.
1:07:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This is when the question is just when and hopefully within, you know, within the before we get to older.
1:07:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it'll be, I don't have a good timeline on it, but we'll see within our lifetimes for sure.
1:07:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So for you, what where do you?
1:07:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Where do you see yourself?
1:07:36
[SPEAKER_03]: What is like the end goal of somebody like you?
1:07:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you thinking about, oh, in 10 years, I'm going to be stationed on the moon with my family and I'm going to be working from that side.
1:07:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to go from the moon to Mars or we're going to go, like, what's your trajectory in your professional life?
1:07:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I think there's many facets of that question.
1:08:03
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like, well, you know, do you want to follow the just the typical career path of any working American?
1:08:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, you work until some age and then you retire, you go to the beach and you drink mercury.
1:08:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, there's that answer, right?
1:08:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's the answer of like, oh, you know, your, my identity as an engineer never retires, right?
1:08:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Even even if I, even if I work through, you know, all I can do, you know, at a corporate business, you know, what do I do after that?
1:08:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is my life?
1:08:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in my vision,
1:08:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm going to be someone who makes things for the rest of my life.
1:08:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm fundamentally an engineer, right?
1:08:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have to always be consumed with fixing things, making things, or something, right?
1:08:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's just my identity.
1:08:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I can't imagine a life where I'm just sitting around and I'm not
1:08:54
[SPEAKER_00]: making something right or proving upon something you can't like you put me in a room with with you know a bunch of random stuff I promise you I'll build something out of it right like just just that's just because that's just who I am right um so you know whether I stay at Blue Origin until I retire or whatever retirement looks like um you know I don't I don't necessarily know I do I guess for me I do for seeing me continuing to stay in some sort of
1:09:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, aerospace related or at least making something as leading edge, right?
1:09:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I always no matter where I've gone or worked or studied, I mean, what I do is always at the forefront of the engineering technology, right?
1:09:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the whole concept of aerospace engineering and what I studied is like you're learning about the latest and the greatest of, you know, these technologies and engineering,
1:09:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And along my entire career path, I've always been involved with R&D, right?
1:09:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all research and development, it's all experimental stuff, it's all brand new stuff.
1:10:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not working on things that we already know exists, right?
1:10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what I do now, like, I work on the rockets that are like brand new, you know?
1:10:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this isn't the add-ons to those that make it even newer, right?
1:10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you thought this doesn't do.
1:10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we even have a newer version of this, right?
1:10:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm continuously being always working and being placed in sectors that are kind of at that forefront of technology.
1:10:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I'll always be working on something new, something that we haven't developed before, some new form of engineering.
1:10:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when I get all of us being doing something, making something, whether it's building rockets in the backyard or whatever, it's probably a shit.
1:10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, well, do I ever see myself like in space as someone who is an engineer?
1:10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's possible.
1:10:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's possible.
1:10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, eventually down the road, right?
1:11:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Once we start having more and more people in space, once we start having industry in space, you have to have people work there, right?
1:11:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you can't have a minute.
1:11:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, arguably, you could say what the advent of
1:11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: For now, it's assumed that AI can't entirely replace us.
1:11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a manufacturing facility, you've got to have technicians.
1:11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: When things break down, you have to have an engineer figure out what's going on.
1:11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have a site manage.
1:11:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have somebody there to understand and facilitate the day-to-day operations.
1:11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be, well, I don't think yet.
1:11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be exclusively on robots and AI.
1:11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe that will happen one day.
1:11:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think if we get to that point where we have enough industry in the world and or on on other planets or in space or something like that.
1:11:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're going to need you're going to need like an engineer there.
1:11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to need some people there to fix things when they break.
1:11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's possible.
1:11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, you know, if I were to.
1:12:06
[SPEAKER_00]: They're building it and it's 50 years round they're building it and it's like hey look Kevin you you worked on this when they were designing it you tested it when all the ground like we We need somebody there on site who knows how to fix it when the system breaks, you know, and we can't send their robot or whatever, right?
1:12:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay.
1:12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, someone's got something to do there.
1:12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's a real possibility of something happening like that.
1:12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe yeah, maybe that could happen.
1:12:30
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I got to know you through your wife who is in the Vietnamese film industry and what a chance meeting both of you in New York and I want to end with this thought with this question about your life trajectory.
1:12:48
[SPEAKER_03]: If you don't go to space or rather how involved do you think
1:12:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, you and Vietnam in the space industry in Vietnam, I mean, how real is a space industry in Vietnam one day and having somebody like you be a part of their program happening in Vietnam.
1:13:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I know it's probably a very limited question right now because probably there's no industry, but I don't know if you know anything about it, if you have a finger on the post there.
1:13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I do like, I do get like, um, like those watch notices, you know, like on Google and stuff, you can, uh, if you can set up like certain notices.
1:13:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I did actually see, uh, so you, um, you would just be at tell.
1:13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, right?
1:13:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's like a, uh, then the
1:13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that vign group, I read an article and the people who get non-convushed for this.
1:13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really know too much about it.
1:13:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But I saw that he, the CEO, the owner, had actually filed for the name of a new company, space space space space.
1:13:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:13:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So I saw that.
1:14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, hmm, all right.
1:14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So Vietnam's trying to get the space game.
1:14:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, yeah, I'm making make sense, right?
1:14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a new hot thing.
1:14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's getting into it.
1:14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it makes sense, right?
1:14:07
[SPEAKER_00]: To be a global or later.
1:14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right, you have to start thinking about this, right?
1:14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether that be satellites or launch vehicles or whatnot, and then there's like a there's like telecom Great satellites telecom.
1:14:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me that's that's base two and I know I think I've seen things Online about I think I believe it's a tell right like the cell phone provider.
1:14:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they have satellites And then that's that's technically space two airspace now not in the sense that we think I call you later, right?
1:14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more like cell phones and things like that, but
1:14:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, depending on where he goes with with with Vince based, depending on where that goes.
1:14:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, it's it's possible that they would draw an international engineering community to the country.
1:14:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so if they want to keep pursuing that route, then I would, you know, highly, you know,
1:15:05
[SPEAKER_00]: If there's private and then there's because you're talking about flying to the air and there's also government regulations and support with the industry there.
1:15:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know, maybe if the number to create their own version of the space in like a VSA, you know, you can put space agency or something like that.
1:15:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, those would be the stepping stones that would be something that I would be interested
1:15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, it's with the politics, right?
1:15:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, with the history with U.S. and the government, but with the party and control over there, it's a tricky conversation when you're talking about space.
1:15:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Because space, space, you know, there's the civil side of it, right, and then there's the military side of it.
1:15:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard to separate, too, right?
1:16:04
[SPEAKER_00]: the military, right?
1:16:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we invent, we create the latest tech, we create the newest things and trust me whenever you make something new, the military is going to want to know about it.
1:16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you can't engineer something new technology and not have the military catch on.
1:16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's always been intertwined, right?
1:16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, um, and a lot of the things that we work on are fall behind a lot of, um,
1:16:29
[SPEAKER_00]: international law and politics with the U.S. government, there's export control.
1:16:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk, there's lots of things that restrict the ability to convey information between the countries, like I remember when I was in school, it's like my professor, I think he told me one day, like you see this textbook, you can't bring this textbook, you can't bring this to China, you know, things like that, because the information in that book
1:16:59
[SPEAKER_00]: military technology, right?
1:17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's fundamentally what I like the things that I know in my head can be used for good and that, right?
1:17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we can make things that fly people and expand humanity as a, you know, as a common, as a common people, but the same time if I really wanted to, you, the things I know in my head to be used to just kill as many people as you want, right?
1:17:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a double-edged sword.
1:17:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's, that's, that's where the technology and the politics gets a little tricky.
1:17:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Like murky as an American as a Vietnamese American,
1:17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: who lives, you know, I've used this shit writing that working in Vietnam for an aerospace industry or in the space industry because the industry is an, you know, an explicitly tied to military, you know, space and there's always going to be tied together.
1:17:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be very difficult, I think, for any, any, any Vietnamese American or any American, anybody really who who got their education and works in the industry in the U.S., and wants to move that experience in Vietnam,
1:17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's gotten out maybe talk to a lawyer to confirm all of this, right, but I think that would be a very, that would be an obstacle that would limit how much you could really do because especially like if you have a clearance, right, like if you worked in a certain and I have had to work with people and in in sectors where I clearance was required, right, and I can tell you if you had a clearance or ever we're thinking of one,
1:18:26
[SPEAKER_00]: and you go work in the space industry and Vietnam and you happen to work on a military rocket and Vietnam, that's gonna come up on your, you know, that's gonna come up and they say, oh, who did you work for?
1:18:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you know, what party is in control over there?
1:18:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah, you know, I don't know, we will wanna employ you in the US because you have those connections, right?
1:18:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's a real thing.
1:18:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
1:18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, but that's a very unique American problem, right?
1:18:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, America doesn't like the party control and get not, right, from the political point of view.
1:19:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so there's going to have to be a lot of development, politically, internationally, between U.S. and politicians to, how do you, how do you enable that international flow
1:19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, advancement of technology and collaboration in that field.
1:19:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:19:22
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you how do you enable that.
1:19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'll at the same time.
1:19:25
[SPEAKER_00]: How how do you limit the problem of it being tied to like arms and and the military, right.
1:19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you so that's always been a challenge and I know for the longest time.
1:19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I think even the last five or ten years, I remember.
1:19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it was actually pretty pretty interesting news that the US actually for the first time allowed trade of certain restricted items to it.
1:19:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think it was, um, engine parts like Bretton with your engines.
1:19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe something like that, but they were allowed to, like, sell them parts or they allowed Vietnam to actually like make them there for the first time, you know, and even that was like, oh, well, hey, they're finally kind of like starting to open the doors a little bit because, um, you know, making stuff like that.
1:20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: over there that it's based on U.S. Tech could put in some ways you can consider that a violation of international arms and regulations and things like that.
1:20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So is it possible?
1:20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Would I like to see it?
1:20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course.
1:20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, working in a brand new environment over there with the different culture different people is it would always be exciting at the same time.
1:20:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we have a lot of politics that have to be figured out before you can
1:20:37
[SPEAKER_00]: to Vietnamese airspace industries, you know, working collaborative.
1:20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's a big political block between that.
1:20:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:20:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin, this has been quite an enjoyable conversation.
1:20:49
[SPEAKER_03]: This is one of the longest conversations I've had in a long time.
1:20:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I think typically they're about an hour, but I get sit here for a long, a lot more.
1:20:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope to have you back on, because I think that Blue Origins probably, you know, having something up there sleeve again, like Amanda Wyn, Katy Perry, all these wonderful women being put in space and coming back down safely.
1:21:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So I look forward to the next thing that you guys do, and hopefully we can get back on the podcast to talk about that.
1:21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just look at that.
1:21:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at on the calendar.
1:21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to see a couple of launches soon for our our our bigger rocket.
1:21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully we'll within the next couple months.
1:21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to see a couple.
1:21:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, stay tuned.
1:21:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I might have to take my kids out to Florida to come visit you.
1:21:37
[SPEAKER_03]: It sounds like I'm really interesting place.
1:21:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I sure will Kevin.
1:21:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.
1:21:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Once again.
1:21:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
1:21:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
1:21:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.