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Because Sometimes a Chicken Sandwich Needs to Get to Space · Core Memory

0:01
They reached out to us and asked us if we could launch a
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chicken sandwich to the
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edge of space where they would fly it across the country and
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video at the entire time.
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SPEAKER_01: And you could log into a website and see where the chicken sandwich was.
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SPEAKER_01: Today, you've got thousands of satellites flying over your head.
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SPEAKER_01: You don't even think about it.
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SPEAKER_01: You do.
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SPEAKER_01: I know you do.
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SPEAKER_01: In the stratosphere, you don't really have that.
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SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
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We believe that you will in a decade and that it'll be a second
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nature to you when
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there's dozens of balloons hovering over San Francisco as
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satellites above your head.
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SPEAKER_01: Today on Core Memory, we are going up into the stratosphere.
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We're going to talk
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SPEAKER_00: balloons.
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There is a lot about balloon technology that I have oddly come
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to know over the years,
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SPEAKER_00: and I would like you to know as well.
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SPEAKER_00: We're going to be talking to Andrew Antonio.
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SPEAKER_00: He's a guy I've known for ages.
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SPEAKER_00: He's the co-founder of a company called Urban Sky based in Colorado.
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SPEAKER_00: They make these
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small balloons that can take photos that can take measurements
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to do all kinds of
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things with with moderately sized payloads and um and then
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andrew is just uh he's
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been in the balloon business for a long time so he's got good
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stories about doing
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weird things to to people and objects uh up in the stratosphere
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so i think you'll
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SPEAKER_00: enjoy it
1:34
SPEAKER_00: As always,
1:35
please go visit Core Memory and subscribe to our YouTube
1:40
channel if that is where
1:41
SPEAKER_00: you like to get your videos and podcasts.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: And also, as always, we appreciate you listening.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: How are you?
1:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm good.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: Good to see you again, Ashley.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: How are you?
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We've known each other for quite a while now through balloons
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brought us together.
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SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
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SPEAKER_01: It's a strange way to meet someone, but it's worked for us.
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I didn't know whether to begin with sending a chicken sandwich
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to space or a human
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SPEAKER_00: to space in a balloon,
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but I've decided to settle on the human and then people will
2:18
have to stay tuned for
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SPEAKER_00: the chicken sandwich in space.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Just to give people some context, unless I'm wrong,
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SPEAKER_00: This project that was called StratX, which I think was 2012?
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SPEAKER_00: That's correct.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: I think that, was that your introduction to the balloon world?
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SPEAKER_00: And can you tell people what you were doing with that?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: So I met my co-founder,
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SPEAKER_01: Jared Lydic,
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SPEAKER_01: in the desert of Roswell,
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SPEAKER_01: New Mexico,
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where we were working on Project StratX that broke the world
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record for the highest
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SPEAKER_01: human balloon flight
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SPEAKER_01: and skydive of all time.
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SPEAKER_01: So Alan Eustis was chief of knowledge, SVP of engineering at Google.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just like a Google dude.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: Regular guy for all intents, but he really is.
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SPEAKER_01: And he's an incredible human.
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SPEAKER_01: And he self-financed a project to...
3:10
SPEAKER_01: Let me back up.
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SPEAKER_01: Everyone remembers the Red Bull space dive, I think, for the most part.
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SPEAKER_01: If you don't, look it up.
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SPEAKER_01: It was a huge,
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mostly PR and scientific project that initially broke the world
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record for the
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SPEAKER_01: highest human balloon flight and skydive ever.
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And Alan really stepped in after that project,
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or kind of around the same time.
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SPEAKER_01: There was some development going on, but Alan wanted to build...
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a system and a spacesuit that would allow people to explore the
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stratosphere in
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SPEAKER_01: much the same way that we scuba dive today.
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So he was really looking at it from an engineering lens and
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trying to solve hard
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engineering problems to make it more routine and easy for
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people to explore the stratosphere.
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And so that's where I sort of stepped into the ballooning world
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and I met my co-founder.
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Now,
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I will be honest,
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I was not scientifically important in any way to Stratax.
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SPEAKER_01: My co-founder was.
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SPEAKER_01: He led the spacesuit team for that project.
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But I was there supporting the operations team,
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and it resulted in us breaking the world record.
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We flew Alan to 136,000 feet,
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roughly,
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above Earth,
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and he skydied back down.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, like you said, people might remember the—
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know why the Red Bull,
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SPEAKER_00: I guess,
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SPEAKER_00: just because probably they're pumping a ton of money into marketing,
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SPEAKER_00: why people might remember that one more.
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SPEAKER_00: But there's those images.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean,
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it's somebody basically standing at the edge of where the
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atmosphere starts to give
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SPEAKER_00: way to official space,
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SPEAKER_00: right?
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SPEAKER_00: And then they're just jumping out of a gondola, free-falling.
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SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: And Red Bull,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: look,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: to their credit,
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SPEAKER_01: they invested in a lot of incredible technology to make that happen.
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SPEAKER_01: But it was mostly a publicity stunt to sell Red Bull, right?
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Whereas Alan took the perspective that he wanted to solve a lot
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of the really hard
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SPEAKER_01: engineering problems that
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not previously solved number one you you said rebel was jumping
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out of a capsule
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alan we literally built a spacesuit and attached the spacesuit
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to the balloon with
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no capsule number one that eliminated what mass of the system
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so we could go higher
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SPEAKER_01: but
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SPEAKER_01: Number two,
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SPEAKER_01: it eliminated a lot of the complexity and made it safer,
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SPEAKER_01: in a sense,
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SPEAKER_01: to execute the mission.
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SPEAKER_00: And then not to go,
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SPEAKER_00: because I'm going to butcher some of the history here,
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SPEAKER_00: because I read about it a long time ago,
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SPEAKER_00: but there was this thing called Project Man High,
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SPEAKER_00: and this guy,
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SPEAKER_00: Joe Kittinger,
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SPEAKER_00: or I think people say Kittinger,
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SPEAKER_00: He had set the record, I think it was like the 1950s, right?
5:41
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: So,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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it's like the 1950s and then all these decades pass until
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somebody even tries to do
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SPEAKER_00: this again.
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SPEAKER_00: But back in the day, the U.S.
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SPEAKER_00: military wanted to try to figure out what humans could endure.
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SPEAKER_00: And so they were...
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sending people at crazy high speeds across the desert in sleds
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and then putting
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them up really high and depriving them of oxygen and freezing
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them and just seeing
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SPEAKER_00: what people could tolerate.
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SPEAKER_00: So he had set this record and then all these years passed.
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Why were there these two attempts in such close succession
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after all that time?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really good question.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't know is the answer.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't know why these things happen so closely in succession,
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SPEAKER_01: but it is true that the early history of stratospheric ballooning was,
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SPEAKER_01: they're kind of the early astronauts,
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SPEAKER_01: if you think about it.
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SPEAKER_01: They were going higher and further than anybody else.
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Colonel Joe Kittinger went to a little over 100,000 feet,
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sponsored by the military.
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SPEAKER_01: Again,
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SPEAKER_01: I think you'd have to ask Alan,
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SPEAKER_01: and I think if he did,
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SPEAKER_01: he would say,
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SPEAKER_01: at least for his project,
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SPEAKER_01: he was...
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uh always passionate about skydiving and for him this was a
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really interesting way
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to build a system that could democratize access to the
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stratosphere eventually and
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again let people uh scuba dive in the stratosphere for for lack
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of a better word
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and um it just happened to be around the time that red bull did
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it but there was
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not a ton of collaboration between those projects they were
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just coincidental
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SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
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SPEAKER_00: So before you're doing that, what, how, okay.
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SPEAKER_00: How old are you when, when you worked on that project?
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SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, I was 23 years old.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm now 34.
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So you'd just been like coming out of college and just happened
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to run into people
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SPEAKER_00: that were trying to set,
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SPEAKER_00: have a guy jump from space.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: my,
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my entry point into it all is I worked at a big fortune 100
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company called Danaher
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SPEAKER_01: and it was a good business,
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but I wasn't super passionate about what I was doing my first
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year out of college.
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SPEAKER_01: And I,
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I shot my shot at a couple of founders back in the day and
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basically said,
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SPEAKER_01: look,
7:48
SPEAKER_01: I'll quit my job and come work for you for nothing.
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SPEAKER_01: I want to be part of something bigger than myself.
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SPEAKER_01: And I've always wanted to work in the space industry.
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SPEAKER_01: And so at the time they didn't really have a company,
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SPEAKER_01: but that company,
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SPEAKER_01: as you know,
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SPEAKER_01: was,
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SPEAKER_01: was called worldview.
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And it was just a few people with a dream to build a space
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tourism experience via
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SPEAKER_01: high altitude balloon.
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SPEAKER_01: When I joined that company, they did.
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SPEAKER_01: They said yes.
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SPEAKER_01: They replied to my email and said,
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SPEAKER_01: yeah,
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SPEAKER_01: look,
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SPEAKER_01: we don't really have money to pay you,
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SPEAKER_01: but if you want to come hang out with us and build some cool stuff,
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SPEAKER_01: welcome aboard.
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SPEAKER_01: I did, and I took that leap.
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SPEAKER_01: When I first got there,
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the founders of Worldview were also the leaders of the company
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that was the prime
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SPEAKER_01: contractor on this space dive.
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SPEAKER_01: It was called Paragon.
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SPEAKER_01: For the first year or so, we were really just focused on finishing that
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SPEAKER_01: project.
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SPEAKER_01: So I was technically an employee of worldview,
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but kept going out into Roswell and just supporting the StratX
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team until that
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SPEAKER_01: project wrapped up.
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And then a lot of that team,
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including my co-founder,
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Jared joined worldview.
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SPEAKER_01: And that's, that's where we really started.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Well,
8:51
SPEAKER_00: we're,
8:52
SPEAKER_00: we'll get into worldview now,
8:53
SPEAKER_00: just,
8:53
SPEAKER_00: uh,
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SPEAKER_00: the fat,
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SPEAKER_00: the Paragon,
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SPEAKER_00: the company you're mentioning,
8:56
SPEAKER_00: um,
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
8:59
SPEAKER_00: first of all,
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people should go look up a book called The Pre-Astronauts by
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Craig Ryan because it
9:04
SPEAKER_00: talks all about Project Mannheim.
9:07
It's a book that is fantastic and it's not purchased in the
9:10
quantities that it should be.
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SPEAKER_00: And then Paragon has some interesting history.
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SPEAKER_00: I wrote about them in my Elon book where they were just kind of these...
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SPEAKER_00: weird project,
9:23
SPEAKER_00: often space-related enthusiast,
9:26
SPEAKER_00: and they'd been working on the original design for the,
9:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:31
SPEAKER_00: before Elon started SpaceX,
9:32
SPEAKER_00: he wanted to,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: he wanted,
9:35
he just wanted to do something in space and he wanted to grow a
9:38
plant on Mars and
9:40
have this like camera on the plant to just show people that
9:43
there could be
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Life on Mars is like a publicity stunt.
9:47
And the Paragon and Worldview founders were working with him on that,
9:52
too.
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SPEAKER_00: It's just a weird segment of aerospace land.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: It's absolutely right.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Worldview is how we met.
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SPEAKER_00: And maybe I'll describe it and then you tell me what I messed up.
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SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it was...
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this goal to make these much larger balloons that could carry a
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gondola of sufficient size.
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SPEAKER_00: So,
10:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: people could go to space,
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go to the edge of space and hang out up there and actually
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maybe have like a
10:26
bathroom and some champagne and look out the windows instead of
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being blasted off
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SPEAKER_00: in a rocket.
10:32
And then,
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you know,
10:34
it turns out there's other uses for these balloons too beyond space.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: tourism, but, um, is that how the company started?
10:40
SPEAKER_00: What was, what was the original mission of worldview?
10:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: The,
10:44
SPEAKER_01: the,
10:45
SPEAKER_01: the original mission was that we wanted to give people like you and me,
10:48
SPEAKER_01: the orbital perspective is what we call it.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:51
So this idea that you can see the planet and see it without
10:54
borders and see this,
10:55
SPEAKER_01: this fragile blue dot and get that visceral experience with time.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Right.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: You said it with any rocket experience here.
11:04
up there for a couple minutes and you're experiencing
11:06
weightlessness suborbital of
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course and then you're coming right back down but with a
11:10
stratospheric balloon you
11:11
know the way balloons work is you can sort of float we call it
11:14
float float at
11:15
altitude for hours at a time so you could sit up there for four
11:18
or five six hours
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and look out these massive windows at the this pale blue dot
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and that was the
11:25
original vision and that's what we worked on for several years
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and you know again
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SPEAKER_01: It changed over time.
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SPEAKER_01: We can get into how that happened,
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SPEAKER_01: but that's what the company was founded to do,
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SPEAKER_01: was give people that orbital perspective.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: And had anyone,
11:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
11:39
SPEAKER_00: people see weather balloons,
11:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure,
11:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:41
SPEAKER_00: or have seen weather balloons if they don't see them all the time.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: But,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: and we just talked about,
11:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
11:47
SPEAKER_00: some of this technology existed going back to the 50s,
11:50
SPEAKER_00: but...
11:53
You know,
11:54
had anybody tried to do sort of this tourism angle on balloons?
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And was there something about the worldview balloons?
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Were they like significantly larger than what had come before?
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Or what was the trick to making that kind of thing work?
12:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:09
When we started the company,
12:12
there was at least one other business in the world.
12:15
It was in Spain that was trying to do something similar with a
12:18
smaller capsule,
12:18
less passengers.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: But it was right at that same time.
12:21
So there was no other pursuit to do sort of space tourism via
12:25
high-altitude balloon
12:26
SPEAKER_01: when Worldview was founded.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And the technology had existed or could have existed before it.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: The balloon itself was what we call a zero-pressure balloon.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: That technology had been around for decades.
12:40
the balloons that took Colonel Joe Kittinger and Alan Eustace
12:43
up to the stratosphere,
12:45
SPEAKER_01: building a pressurized capsule,
12:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:47
SPEAKER_01: similar in many ways to building a spacecraft.
12:50
So we were just really the first company to see that future and
12:54
try to bring all
12:55
SPEAKER_01: those components together.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: And...
12:59
as i remember i think this is true i mean the tourism thing
13:02
ends up taking a back
13:04
seat to to using these balloons to fly cameras to do this is
13:10
kind of my favorite
13:11
part of the technology what is called station keeping where
13:15
where you're actually
13:15
you're controlling these i guess before i met you and got into
13:21
this i just always
13:22
thought you're totally at the mercy of the winds and i i guess
13:25
you are to some
13:26
SPEAKER_00: degree but
13:27
But there's software and steering where you can,
13:31
you can measure and navigate the winds.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: And so,
13:34
so I remember the company's kind of primary business was taking
13:37
payloads up into
13:39
SPEAKER_00: the stratosphere.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
13:41
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
13:41
SPEAKER_01: the company broadened its,
13:43
SPEAKER_01: its vision to be really about,
13:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:45
SPEAKER_01: not space tourism,
13:46
SPEAKER_01: but this idea that we wanted to pioneer radical new perspectives.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: And what could that mean?
13:51
SPEAKER_01: That was, that's a much bigger vision for a business and
13:55
SPEAKER_01: Really,
13:55
SPEAKER_01: that meant flying payloads,
13:57
SPEAKER_01: flying systems for science,
14:01
SPEAKER_01: research,
14:02
SPEAKER_01: and people,
14:02
SPEAKER_01: of course.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: And that all sort of fits under one umbrella.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: But you know how this works at a company.
14:06
A lot of it also was related to building a business and
14:11
tracking towards near-term
14:12
revenue and looking at ways to grow a company with the existing
14:16
technology that we
14:16
SPEAKER_01: had faster.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: And so
14:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, we had a balloon platform.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: It takes many,
14:20
SPEAKER_01: many years to build a spacecraft that people can fly in,
14:23
but we can start flying payloads tomorrow that were scientific
14:26
in nature and get
14:27
SPEAKER_01: paid to do that.
14:27
So,
14:28
you know,
14:28
revenue and the business drove a lot of those decisions as well,
14:32
as they should.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
14:33
SPEAKER_01: like you said,
14:34
what balloons can do that other platforms can't is this thing
14:37
we call station keeping.
14:38
It's incredibly unique and specific to balloons that you can do
14:42
what's called altitude control.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: You know this, you make a balloon go up and down and
14:46
SPEAKER_01: In various parts of the world at various times of year,
14:50
SPEAKER_01: you have different directional wind patterns.
14:52
It's almost like a corkscrew as you go up and down between,
14:55
say,
14:56
50,000 and 85,000 feet.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: You can steer kind of like a sailboat, right?
15:00
SPEAKER_01: You're sailing along different winds.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: And if you make these box-like patterns,
15:04
SPEAKER_01: you can actually park a balloon over a particular area for days,
15:08
SPEAKER_01: weeks,
15:08
SPEAKER_01: months,
15:08
SPEAKER_01: even years at a time.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
15:11
SPEAKER_00: it's fascinating because I guess you've got a plane,
15:13
SPEAKER_00: which obviously has lots of control,
15:16
SPEAKER_00: is relatively close to the ground,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: but is passing over objects at high speed.
15:22
And then you've got satellites,
15:23
which are incredibly expensive,
15:24
super far away.
15:27
And,
15:27
and they can kind of station keep and that they can like point
15:30
at one spot all the time.
15:32
But,
15:32
but from the resolution is tough and physics makes it hard to
15:36
take good photos.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Whereas with a balloon, you end up in this middle ground, right?
15:40
And,
15:41
and you can be closer and hang out over whatever you want to
15:45
photograph or measure.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Resolution is, is much higher than, than a satellite.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: The endurance is much longer than an aircraft.
15:54
But the thing that you get with a balloon that you get with
15:56
nothing else is
15:57
SPEAKER_01: continuous monitoring.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Persistence is just not something that exists, right?
16:01
SPEAKER_01: A helicopter can do it for a few hours,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: but if you want to,
16:03
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: for example,
16:05
SPEAKER_01: get to what we're doing at Urban Sky,
16:06
but if you want to hover a balloon over a wildfire for several
16:09
days and produce a
16:11
SPEAKER_01: map every few minutes,
16:13
that's something that a balloon allows you to do that no
16:15
satellite aircraft or
16:16
SPEAKER_01: helicopter ever could.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: All right.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: I promise people...
16:21
SPEAKER_00: chicken sandwich in space while you were at worldview.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, like you said, you're trying to build this business.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: I think you were in charge of marketing if I'm not wrong.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: And,
16:34
SPEAKER_00: and you know,
16:35
SPEAKER_00: want to obviously companies want to get attention,
16:38
SPEAKER_00: let everyone know what,
16:39
SPEAKER_00: what they're doing.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: And if I remember right,
16:41
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember the full sequence of events,
16:43
SPEAKER_00: but I think didn't Kentucky fried chicken KFC,
16:46
SPEAKER_00: did they come to you guys or you went to them to propose this idea?
16:50
SPEAKER_01: They found us.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: They heard about our technology.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: I think they've read about it in popular science.
16:55
And they reached out to us and asked us if we could launch a
16:58
chicken sandwich to
16:59
SPEAKER_01: the edge of space.
17:00
And they had this super cool PR campaign that they wanted to do
17:04
where they would
17:05
SPEAKER_01: fly it across the country and video it the entire time.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: And you could log into a website and see where the chicken sandwich was.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: Is it tracked across the country?
17:13
SPEAKER_00: And like Rob Lowe was the Michigan troll and now he's here on this.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: It was no joke.
17:19
And I know I've written about this before,
17:21
but now I'm old and I write a lot of stories.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: It didn't quite, it got near space, right?
17:27
SPEAKER_00: But not all the way.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we got to altitude, but it did not fly as long as we wanted it to.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: So we did get up, but we did not stay up for multiple days.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: But it was still a successful campaign for the company.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: KFC was happy.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: They got a ton of incredible footage and
17:45
uh we're able to downlink in real time video of the chicken
17:48
sandwich with the
17:48
curvature of the earth behind it but this was a big engineering
17:51
effort you know we
17:52
joke about it and say this is like funny but like behind the
17:56
scenes the amount of
17:57
work that went into preparing a chicken sandwich building
18:01
camera systems that went
18:02
SPEAKER_01: around it to capture and downlink
18:04
real-time video and by the way we were still doing r&d on
18:08
worldview's balloon
18:08
system so even the the actual balloon that we flew was an r&d
18:14
flight for kfc and
18:16
they knew that and they were excited about that and it had like
18:19
a robotic case or
18:20
something around it didn't it it looked like a satellite yeah
18:24
and then did it open
18:25
SPEAKER_00: up at the end
18:26
SPEAKER_01: I did not have anything that would robotically open.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: We opened it.
18:30
When we recovered the chicken sandwich on the ground,
18:32
we opened it and grabbed the chicken.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: You know how food artists work, though, right?
18:37
SPEAKER_01: They put so much epoxy and stuff on that chicken sandwich,
18:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I would have ever even taken a bite.
18:43
Didn't you guys have multiple actual KFC locations producing
18:48
sandwiches for the artists?
18:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they did.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: We had a food artist come out of the facility.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: It was fun.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: there's a lot that goes into this.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: What did you,
18:57
SPEAKER_00: what did you think had become of your life as you're,
19:00
SPEAKER_00: as you're spending day after day working on getting a chicken.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: I loved every second of it.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
19:06
I'm not sure that all the engineers on the team loved every
19:08
second of it to be frank,
19:09
SPEAKER_01: but,
19:10
SPEAKER_01: uh,
19:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:11
SPEAKER_01: the lesson in that for me,
19:13
SPEAKER_01: it goes back to building a company that like building startups,
19:16
SPEAKER_01: as you know,
19:16
SPEAKER_01: this is a winding road.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: It's never a straight line to
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Hey,
19:19
here's our vision and we're going to go from A to B to C and
19:23
KFC and that mission
19:24
SPEAKER_01: to me represented a means to our vision.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: And there's a paying customer that paid well to,
19:30
SPEAKER_01: to,
19:31
SPEAKER_01: to do a project that was funding our R and D.
19:34
And so I would have taken a million more KFC phone calls if
19:38
they were out there,
19:39
SPEAKER_01: but that was,
19:41
SPEAKER_01: we could talk about some of the other ones.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: We actually did get called.
19:43
I can't say who,
19:44
but certain car companies wanted to recreate projects like that.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Um,
19:49
SPEAKER_01: some big hotel companies wanted to create,
19:51
SPEAKER_01: I could talk in generalities about it,
19:53
SPEAKER_01: but there were some interesting ideas.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: What did they want to fly?
19:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't fly a car up there, right?
19:57
SPEAKER_01: No, you can fly, you can fly a car up there, right?
20:00
SPEAKER_01: SpaceX put a car into space.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: We were going to do something similar with a balloon.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: Um,
20:05
some of the cooler ones that I'll just put out in the world
20:07
where we had a big brand,
20:10
SPEAKER_01: uh,
20:11
SPEAKER_01: say a soft drink brand that was interested in,
20:13
SPEAKER_01: um,
20:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know with the age of the listeners on your podcast,
20:18
SPEAKER_01: but we all know Santa comes to town around Christmas Eve.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: And so,
20:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:22
like an experiential program to make sure people could see
20:27
Santa when they looked up.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like that.
20:32
I have a feeling I might know which soda company that might be,
20:36
but any other top memories?
20:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
20:41
SPEAKER_01: there were some other cool ideas,
20:42
like a specific hotel company wanted to put an actual house
20:48
under a balloon with
20:49
SPEAKER_01: some cameras on the inside,
20:50
SPEAKER_01: and so you could...
20:52
could look out in real time at the curvature of the earth
20:54
through the windows of the house.
20:55
And actually the brand idea there was a really good one was it
20:58
doesn't matter,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: where you stay,
21:00
SPEAKER_01: you're,
21:00
SPEAKER_01: you're always home and home is planet earth.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: Right.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: Pretty cool because it's true.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: And astronauts would always talk about that,
21:07
SPEAKER_01: uh,
21:08
SPEAKER_01: that like when they land back on earth,
21:10
SPEAKER_01: um,
21:11
SPEAKER_01: they have this,
21:12
SPEAKER_01: this moment where as soon as they land,
21:13
SPEAKER_01: even if it's in Kazakhstan,
21:15
SPEAKER_01: they're like,
21:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm home.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: And so that the planet earth is our home is the whole idea there.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that makes sense.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: That makes a lot of sense.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: And just to set up where we're going a little bit,
21:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
21:26
SPEAKER_00: so for these large balloons that Worldview was making...
21:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, how long did it take to fill them up?
21:34
SPEAKER_00: How long could they fly?
21:36
And you're talking about sending up cars and gondolas and all
21:42
these things.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, so they can carry a decent chunk of weight.
21:44
But yeah,
21:44
I mean,
21:45
can you give us like the basics of what a large balloon launch
21:49
looks like?
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
21:50
SPEAKER_01: so depending on payload mass,
21:53
and we could fly anywhere from hundreds of pounds to thousands
21:56
of pounds under one
21:58
SPEAKER_01: of Worldview's balloons.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Those are large systems.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: They're anywhere from 100 feet tall to 400, 500 feet tall at launch.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: So huge systems and millions of cubic feet in volume, massive, right?
22:14
SPEAKER_01: The size of skyscrapers or very large apartment buildings.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: they're difficult to launch and operate.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: You need really good weather.
22:22
So we have certain limitations on the types of weather
22:26
conditions we can launch in.
22:27
You generally need teams of 10 to 20 people on a launch line to
22:32
put them into the sky.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: So it's a process.
22:35
You basically need to operate from an airport or a fixed
22:39
spaceport or facility like that.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: So
22:41
They have a lot of value,
22:43
but they're large,
22:45
cumbersome,
22:45
expensive,
22:46
difficult things to deploy.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: And just super, I mean, it's fun.
22:50
I got to hang out with you at a launch,
22:53
and I mean,
22:53
it's a bit of a problem.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: It's Helium, right, that's going into those?
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the Helium's filling up, and...
23:01
I mean,
23:02
it takes a little bit longer than,
23:03
I don't know,
23:04
at least that I thought.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
23:06
SPEAKER_00: it's a process to get the helium going in there,
23:08
SPEAKER_00: and then when it starts to go up,
23:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
23:11
SPEAKER_00: it's actually hard to describe.
23:12
I think I wrote about it as a jellyfish or something like that,
23:16
but it's...
23:19
It's not just like a hot air balloon that you're used to seeing
23:23
floating around.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: It felt more amorphous and almost,
23:26
SPEAKER_00: not to anthropomorphize it too much,
23:28
but like it was alive and this creature that's getting bigger
23:32
and bigger and bigger
23:33
SPEAKER_00: and then going off on its journey.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: We call it a jellyfish too.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what it looks like.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: I probably stole that from you, I'm sure.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:45
So you're doing that for a while and then you get like the
23:47
entrepreneurial bug and
23:49
SPEAKER_00: you've seen what big balloons can do.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And then,
23:53
SPEAKER_00: and you and Jared are,
23:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure talking late at night about,
23:57
SPEAKER_00: um,
23:57
SPEAKER_00: other ways to maybe go about this.
23:59
And so urban sky,
24:00
I had a chance to go visit you guys maybe a couple years ago.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Now, um,
24:06
SPEAKER_00: and see what you're up to.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And so,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
24:08
SPEAKER_00: I'll let you describe it,
24:09
SPEAKER_00: but in general,
24:10
SPEAKER_00: it's like a,
24:10
SPEAKER_00: it's a smaller,
24:11
SPEAKER_00: easier to launch balloon,
24:13
SPEAKER_00: right?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: The big gap we saw in the space and why we started this company was,
24:20
SPEAKER_01: think of Urban Sky like the cube satellite of the stratosphere,
24:24
SPEAKER_01: that everything before us was in one of two categories.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: It was either these massive stratospheric balloons,
24:30
SPEAKER_01: like you've seen that we made at Worldview,
24:32
SPEAKER_01: that
24:32
were very expensive,
24:33
hundreds of thousands of dollars,
24:35
tons of people to operate.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: Or you had one other category and it was weather balloons.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: Many people listening may know what a weather balloon is, right?
24:42
It's like a little latex,
24:44
inexpensive balloon that usually is used for meteorological purposes.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: You can put radio sounds on it and do upper atmospheric
24:53
observation for weather forecasting but they're not
24:56
controllable they go up and
24:58
they pop so they're sort of they fly up to altitude they burst
25:01
and they come right
25:02
SPEAKER_01: back down so there's not
25:03
SPEAKER_01: any long duration or control navigation with those systems.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: So, and there's nothing in between.
25:09
So what we did at Urban Sky was say like,
25:10
there has to be a middle ground.
25:12
How do we create affordable systems that have some of the
25:15
exquisite controls in the
25:17
SPEAKER_01: larger balloons?
25:18
SPEAKER_01: So let's make navigable station keeping,
25:21
but rapidly deployable low cost systems that can be launched
25:26
from virtually
25:26
SPEAKER_01: anywhere in a few minutes.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: And so the way to think about that is we've built
25:31
SPEAKER_01: For our customers,
25:33
SPEAKER_01: which initially are a lot of US defense customers,
25:36
SPEAKER_01: it's like a personally deployable satellite,
25:38
SPEAKER_01: right?
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Imagine a soldier in a field that,
25:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:41
SPEAKER_01: the whole balloon itself weighs less than 12 pounds.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: They can pull it out of a backpack,
25:45
SPEAKER_01: unravel it,
25:46
SPEAKER_01: fill it with gas in three minutes,
25:48
SPEAKER_01: put any payload on it and deploy it from anywhere,
25:50
SPEAKER_01: a tiny boat.
25:51
you know the back of a pickup truck it doesn't matter so that's
25:54
what the we call
25:55
the tactical stratosphere is uh controllable small uh
26:00
stratospheric balloons so the
26:02
big ones i mean it's just so massive that you need a team of
26:05
people to just deal
26:06
with this huge chunk of plastic and getting it full of helium
26:09
and it's just a
26:10
SPEAKER_00: process whereas when i was with you guys we had
26:13
SPEAKER_00: A dude in the back of a pickup truck with a helium tank, right?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, it did.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: I've seen it with my own eyes.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: It just takes a few minutes and off it goes.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: How, I'm sure, how do you get this thing to station keep?
26:29
SPEAKER_00: How do you even have any directional anything with a balloon?
26:34
Because I'm sure people would be thinking it goes up and you
26:38
have no idea where
26:38
SPEAKER_00: it's going to come down and that could be bad.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
26:42
so we have a lot of software in addition to the hardware where
26:45
upper atmospheric
26:46
SPEAKER_01: weather modeling is really important to stratospheric balloon.
26:48
We have to know within a certain degree of accuracy where we
26:53
believe the balloon will fly.
26:54
And so we pull in many different weather forecasts to predict a
26:59
flight path of the balloon.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: But then how do you station keep and navigate?
27:02
SPEAKER_01: So again, it goes back to altitude control.
27:05
We have basically a vent at the top of the balloon and what we
27:09
call a baluster at
27:10
SPEAKER_01: the bottom of the balloon.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Back up a little bit.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: The types of balloons we make today are what's called zero pressure.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: So you put in a fixed amount of gas.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: They start to ascend.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: That gas expands as you ascend through the atmosphere.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: And eventually that balloon finds equilibrium.
27:28
The pressure on the outside of the balloon is the same on the
27:30
inside of the balloon.
27:31
excess gas actually vents out of the bottom of the balloon so
27:34
basically when that
27:36
balloon is ready after about an hour of ascent it floats like
27:41
an ice cube on top of
27:42
earth's atmosphere it finds this equilibrium as soon as it gets
27:45
to float altitude
27:47
and we can predict that with a very good degree of accuracy in
27:51
terms of exactly
27:52
SPEAKER_01: what altitude we will float
27:54
SPEAKER_01: then you can start to do altitude control maneuvers.
27:56
And that's through either a vent at the top of the balloon or a
27:59
balluster at the bottom.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: And when you vent gas off, what happens?
28:03
SPEAKER_01: You lose lift, balloon goes down, right?
28:05
SPEAKER_01: And then if you want to go back up,
28:07
you drop ballast mass off the bottom of the balloon that
28:11
lightens the balloon with
28:12
SPEAKER_01: the same amount of gas,
28:13
SPEAKER_01: you're gonna go up.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: So that's how we steer.
28:16
So we can do these multiple thousand foot altitude control
28:19
maneuvers while we're live predicting
28:22
those differing stratospheric winds to station keep or navigate
28:26
a balloon.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: And station keeping doesn't work everywhere all the time, right?
28:29
SPEAKER_01: I want to be clear on that.
28:30
It's not like,
28:32
you know,
28:32
we're not station keeping over Toronto in December,
28:35
for example.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
28:36
SPEAKER_01: it's a nuanced technical and atmospheric problem,
28:40
but that's what our software does is it sort of trains people
28:43
on where they can do
28:44
SPEAKER_01: certain missions.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: And it's, it's automated.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: If you take off, you guys are in Colorado, you take off near Denver.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Is there somebody sitting there monitoring it the whole time?
28:57
Is there a human that's steering it or the software is doing
28:59
most of the mission?
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Today we have like a, what we call level one autopilot today.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: So it's the early version of Tesla autopilot.
29:10
So it can do some maneuvers itself,
29:12
but it is always tended by a human being and the
29:15
SPEAKER_01: The commands are approved by a human being before they're executed.
29:19
The future,
29:20
a lot of technology we're building is full autopilot into the system.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: So sort of a user could draw a box and say,
29:28
SPEAKER_01: I want it to station keep within this area for one week.
29:34
our software will run a bunch of analysis to tell the user
29:37
whether or not that's possible.
29:38
And if it is,
29:39
they will approve that mission and it'll start to execute it.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: But I think importantly too,
29:44
SPEAKER_01: just to be clear,
29:45
there are different types of balloons and today our current
29:48
balloons can fly for a
29:49
SPEAKER_01: few days.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: So they're not flying for months or a year.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: That's what a zero pressure balloon is.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: But in the future,
29:56
SPEAKER_01: Um,
29:57
and we just raised a series B we're going to start investing in
30:00
technology that
30:01
SPEAKER_01: allows us to fly these small balloons for years at a time.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: And, and okay.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask about that before we do,
30:10
SPEAKER_00: uh,
30:10
SPEAKER_00: can you,
30:11
can you fly it over a city with lots of buildings or do you
30:16
have to fly it in
30:17
SPEAKER_00: remote areas?
30:18
Yeah,
30:18
we fly over cities with buildings and dense population all the time.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: These are incredibly safe vehicles.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: There are regulations for this type of balloon.
30:29
So it's not like we're total Wild Wild West just launching
30:32
balloons over your head.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: It's like it's fully coordinated with the FAA.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: We follow all the procedures.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: In fact,
30:37
we go way above and beyond what's actually written in Code of
30:40
Federal Regulations
30:41
SPEAKER_01: in terms of compliance.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: We file flight NOTAMs so pilots know that we're operating systems.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: But
30:47
but yeah they do float over your head we launched on average
30:49
right now about two to
30:50
three balloons a week as a company and almost always those are
30:53
going over you know
30:55
populated areas and I know like the satellite imagery market a
31:01
bit better people
31:02
SPEAKER_00: use it to
31:05
SPEAKER_00: You know,
31:05
SPEAKER_00: to monitor the environment,
31:07
SPEAKER_00: to watch how cities are developing,
31:10
SPEAKER_00: to gather all kinds of economic data.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: You already mentioned forest fires.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: That's another thing people look out for.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Just anything where you're trying to get this...
31:20
assessment of of changes that are happening the health of
31:23
things and so it's all
31:25
similar types of tasks with with you guys it is except for uh i
31:31
go all the way back
31:32
to the beginning of conversation where balloons can do
31:34
something the satellites
31:35
SPEAKER_01: can't which is persistence they should keep and so
31:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, this idea that we'll talk about a few that we're working on.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: Wildfires is one.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: This idea that you could create a map of a wildfire every few minutes.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: Satellites can't do that, won't be able to do that.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: And in that case,
31:51
it's just to have the absolute best data on what's happening
31:56
during a fire to help
31:57
SPEAKER_00: everybody out.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, another one that we talk about is legal pipeline tapping.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: I think you and I talked about this at Worldview, but...
32:07
SPEAKER_01: There's this,
32:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:08
a billion dollars literally every year is stolen from oil
32:12
pipelines in South and
32:13
SPEAKER_01: Central America.
32:14
And that's because they can't really get a good read on how
32:17
this is happening,
32:17
SPEAKER_01: when it's happening in real time.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: They're remote areas.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: where pipelines exist,
32:21
but if you had sort of a constellation of 20 stratospheric
32:26
balloons hovering over
32:27
SPEAKER_01: South and Central America that could scan for certain things,
32:30
SPEAKER_01: right?
32:30
SPEAKER_01: We also do edge processing on board our payload,
32:33
SPEAKER_01: so we could have cameras that are scanning for,
32:34
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:35
SPEAKER_01: hey,
32:36
SPEAKER_01: pickup truck is within X amount of distance of pipeline.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: This might be a problem.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Let's take a look, downlink that data.
32:43
have an operator look at it and say okay that is a problem
32:46
let's continue to track
32:47
that asset back to its point of origin uh and see if it's a bad
32:52
actor or not right
32:53
so like no satellite could do that uh aircraft couldn't do that
32:57
but like with a
32:57
small balloon constellation you can continuously monitor things
33:01
like that yeah can
33:03
SPEAKER_00: you can you put guns on the satellite
33:06
SPEAKER_00: Can you put guns on a satellite?
33:07
SPEAKER_00: You might know better than me.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, on the balloon, I'm sorry.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: You could neutralize the pipeline.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure we would.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's a use case where we're going, but yeah.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Um,
33:20
SPEAKER_00: so,
33:21
SPEAKER_00: and,
33:21
SPEAKER_00: and,
33:22
SPEAKER_00: and you mentioned the,
33:24
SPEAKER_00: so you guys just raised $30 million and then I saw you had,
33:27
SPEAKER_00: um,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: you've been,
33:30
SPEAKER_00: you were talking about it before,
33:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
33:31
SPEAKER_00: doing,
33:32
SPEAKER_00: doing work with the DOD,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: right?
33:34
I mean,
33:34
and it's not just pictures that you guys take,
33:36
you can put up sensors.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just like basically anything that this, this balloon could carry.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
33:43
we're a platform company in much the same way that SpaceX
33:46
really started as a
33:48
SPEAKER_01: rocket company,
33:48
SPEAKER_01: built a platform,
33:49
SPEAKER_01: and now they have Starlink.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: The way I view the world and our business is we've developed a platform.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: We have several types of balloons and software that control our systems.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: And for the Department of Defense, that's what it is.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: It's a platform.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: They put
34:04
variety of payloads whether it's cameras communication systems
34:08
um uh you know rf
34:11
sensing payloads you name it like so the the military views it
34:14
as a new type of
34:15
SPEAKER_01: platform and on that side there's unique value in the stratosphere beyond
34:20
everything we talked about with station keeping but at high
34:23
altitude there's an
34:25
SPEAKER_01: economic
34:26
asymmetry that makes sense that like our balloons are in the
34:29
tens of thousands of dollars,
34:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
34:31
SPEAKER_01: per balloon in terms of price and to,
34:34
SPEAKER_01: how do I put this to eliminate them?
34:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
34:39
it costs significantly more than that price point to shoot
34:42
something at that asset
34:43
SPEAKER_01: in the sky.
34:44
So there's an element of,
34:46
of the high ground and persistent station keeping with those payloads.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: There's, and there's also an element of economic asymmetry.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: And so they kind of call us like the drone of the stratosphere, right?
34:57
You see what's happening in Ukraine and Eastern Europe with
35:00
drone warfare and things like that.
35:02
Like the entire military is really looking at how do we build
35:05
swarms of autonomous
35:06
SPEAKER_01: systems that sort of overwhelm and are difficult to deal with.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: And we are that in the stratosphere.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Now that we've gone there,
35:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
35:18
SPEAKER_00: right after I went to visit you last time,
35:20
SPEAKER_00: we had the whole China spy balloon thing.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: What's the global state of balloon technology?
35:29
SPEAKER_00: And let's start there.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Where does the U.S.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: compare to everybody else when it comes to balloon efforts?
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we are the most advanced nation in the world.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: I can confidently say that from a stratospheric technology perspective.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: But we are aware of competing efforts,
35:49
SPEAKER_01: and we're seeing more and more come out of,
35:51
SPEAKER_01: as you can imagine,
35:52
SPEAKER_01: you can look this up,
35:53
SPEAKER_01: China and Russia in particular,
35:54
SPEAKER_01: with competing technologies.
35:57
smaller balloons,
35:58
bigger balloons that have more payload capacity and more
36:00
control systems.
36:01
So,
36:01
you know,
36:03
there is a bit of an arms race happening in the stratosphere
36:06
right now.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: It's good that we're positioned where we are.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: But my personal opinion,
36:11
SPEAKER_01: of course,
36:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm biased,
36:12
SPEAKER_01: but I do think small systems are where we need to be.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: That's why I started this company.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: But
36:18
This idea that you can swarm and that you can launch hundreds
36:22
of our systems for
36:23
maybe the same price that it would take to launch one large
36:26
balloon is really
36:28
SPEAKER_01: interesting and differentiates us,
36:30
especially when you look at that economic asymmetry of trying
36:33
to eliminate these
36:34
SPEAKER_01: systems out of the sky.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: Again, you're going to launch a $400,000 ballistic missile.
36:39
That's the price of the missile that took down the Chinese
36:41
balloon over the United States.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: That's what you would need to take down a small urban sky balloon too.
36:46
So it does not work competitively for people to try to shoot
36:51
down these things at
36:52
SPEAKER_01: our price point.
36:53
Did you just get bombarded with phone calls from the press when
36:58
that happened?
36:58
And did you get calls from the military trying to figure out
37:01
what was going on?
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we did.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: I would say a lot of people were asking our opinion on like,
37:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
37:07
SPEAKER_01: what does this mean politically?
37:08
SPEAKER_01: And it's not my position to say what it means politically.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: I think...
37:13
SPEAKER_01: I think that we had a beat on what we think was happening,
37:18
SPEAKER_01: which is,
37:18
SPEAKER_01: it was really one of two things going on with the Chinese balloon either.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Number one,
37:23
SPEAKER_01: um,
37:25
it failed and like their system was not operating effectively
37:28
because we were
37:29
SPEAKER_01: running our own flight models to predict where that balloon would,
37:32
SPEAKER_01: would,
37:32
SPEAKER_01: would,
37:32
SPEAKER_01: or should go based on weather forecasts.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: And, um,
37:37
SPEAKER_01: it wasn't doing any control maneuvers.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: It was pretty clear to us just looking at the data,
37:40
SPEAKER_01: the weather data that was moving in a uniform direction with the winds.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: It was kind of drifting.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: So number one,
37:46
either it malfunctioned and sort of that balloon floated over
37:49
the country because
37:51
SPEAKER_01: the Chinese could not control it.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Or number two, maybe we disabled it as a country, right?
37:57
SPEAKER_01: But like either way, or three, I guess they chose not to control it.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: But it,
38:01
SPEAKER_01: you know,
38:01
SPEAKER_01: it appeared to be a balloon that could be controlled,
38:04
SPEAKER_01: but was not being controlled as it flew over the country.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and have we learned, you're in the balloon circles.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it's a pretty tight-knit community.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: You just laid out a couple scenarios,
38:14
SPEAKER_00: but have we learned now that months and more than a year has passed,
38:20
SPEAKER_00: has there been any interesting chatter about what actually was going on?
38:25
SPEAKER_01: Short answer, no.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we have as much information as you.
38:30
I think the government obviously recovered it,
38:32
but it was pretty tight-lipped on
38:34
what it is and maybe what it was doing so i don't don't have
38:36
any information i
38:37
think we just we just all we can say pretty definitively is
38:41
that it was drifting
38:41
with the wind and it didn't appear to be uh controlled or
38:44
steered in any way but
38:45
that again it appeared to be technologically a balloon that
38:49
would have those
38:50
control mechanisms and obviously everyone freaked out about
38:54
that balloon so i
38:54
assume we don't have like other countries balloons hovering
38:58
over the u.s on a
38:59
SPEAKER_00: regular basis
39:01
SPEAKER_01: Not that we're aware of.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: Um,
39:03
SPEAKER_01: you probably remember as soon as that balloon flew over the country,
39:06
SPEAKER_01: there were reports of additional ones,
39:09
SPEAKER_01: um,
39:09
SPEAKER_01: that,
39:10
SPEAKER_01: that came out.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: There were,
39:11
SPEAKER_01: there were some reports of systems around South and Central America,
39:16
SPEAKER_01: no confirmation on where those,
39:18
SPEAKER_01: whose those were.
39:19
SPEAKER_01: I don't think they were American balloons.
39:20
So take that as,
39:21
as you may,
39:22
but,
39:23
um,
39:23
but yeah,
39:24
not,
39:24
not a lot,
39:25
not a lot of,
39:25
uh,
39:26
uh i think repeat balloon flights from china or other countries
39:31
over the united
39:31
states after that but you don't like back in the day i mean the
39:35
french were and i
39:36
mean way back in the day i think i'm talking like early 1900s
39:39
if my memory serves i
39:41
mean the french were in the balloons the russians were in the
39:43
balloons the
39:44
SPEAKER_00: americans were it was like a real thing and and then
39:50
SPEAKER_00: At least in my head,
39:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
39:51
SPEAKER_00: yes,
39:52
you had things like Project Man High to get Kittinger to space
39:56
and things like the
39:58
SPEAKER_00: weather balloons.
39:59
But,
39:59
you know,
39:59
it didn't feel like there was just a ton of innovation going on.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it felt like this was just some weird...
40:07
SPEAKER_00: side area of, of aerospace.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: And then I know we talked about it a little on the,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: on the stunt jumps,
40:14
SPEAKER_00: but like,
40:15
SPEAKER_00: clearly there's like a lot more economic activity.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Is this, is this just the result of
40:22
people realized what you and worldview and others just came to
40:26
the same conclusion
40:27
SPEAKER_00: that this was an interesting area or did we have to solve,
40:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:30
SPEAKER_00: these software problems,
40:32
SPEAKER_00: these atmospheric sensor problems to start making this work.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: I was just,
40:36
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:37
SPEAKER_00: obviously if you guys are doing what you're doing,
40:39
SPEAKER_00: we have Chinese balloons.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: I know the Israelis have balloons.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: I was just wondering why this is happening.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Why now?
40:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a little bit of everything you just said,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: which is,
40:50
SPEAKER_01: um,
40:51
SPEAKER_01: uh,
40:51
SPEAKER_01: number one,
40:52
technology did develop to a point specifically for urban sky
40:55
where we could not
40:57
SPEAKER_01: have built this company 10 years ago.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: A lot of our tech is around miniaturization of compute and sensors and,
41:04
SPEAKER_01: uh,
41:05
SPEAKER_01: lightweighting of telescope systems for,
41:08
SPEAKER_01: for imaging payloads.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: And so, um,
41:11
SPEAKER_01: If we tried to do what we're doing right now 10 years ago,
41:13
SPEAKER_01: our payloads would be 40,
41:15
SPEAKER_01: 50 pounds,
41:16
but we're able to build camera systems that are less than six
41:19
pounds today because
41:22
SPEAKER_01: that domain has really just opened up.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: So technologically,
41:26
SPEAKER_01: that would be one on the hardware side is things have gotten lower costs,
41:30
SPEAKER_01: lower mass,
41:31
SPEAKER_01: you know all this,
41:32
SPEAKER_01: right?
41:32
SPEAKER_01: But on the software side,
41:34
SPEAKER_01: yes,
41:34
I think wind predictability and forecasting has improved
41:38
significantly in the last decade.
41:41
An old standing perception of balloons was you would launch
41:45
them and they would go
41:46
SPEAKER_01: in a different direction than you thought they would go.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: And that, how can you do that, right?
41:51
Like how could balloons ever really work at scale if you didn't
41:54
know with a degree
41:55
SPEAKER_01: of precision where they were going to fly and could not control them?
41:59
SPEAKER_01: So forecasting has improved significantly.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: Many people have contributed to that.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: AI is supporting that as well.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, new types of AI forecasting models
42:09
SPEAKER_01: many of which are pretty good,
42:11
SPEAKER_01: allow us to improve our accuracy of predicting flights,
42:15
SPEAKER_01: flight paths in particular.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of things have happened.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: I think Jared and I were early in starting Urban Sky in a good way that,
42:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:24
SPEAKER_01: when we started the company,
42:25
a lot of these things didn't even exist and we just assumed
42:27
they would develop over time.
42:29
SPEAKER_01: And that did happen.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: It was a good thing.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: But,
42:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
42:32
SPEAKER_01: we were maybe a few years early in starting Urban Sky,
42:35
SPEAKER_01: but now we're mature and it's caught up to us.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: No, that's, I mean, that's probably the way to do it.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, is to get the atmospheric data.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Like, why is that?
42:48
SPEAKER_00: Why is that better?
42:49
SPEAKER_00: Where does that come from?
42:50
Where are these sensors that are tracking what's actually
42:52
happening in the atmosphere?
42:53
Or it's just,
42:54
it's just like the computer simulations,
42:56
the models are just that much better.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: A little bit of both.
42:59
SPEAKER_01: So, um, every single day across the world, you know, um, uh,
43:03
nearly a thousand weather balloons are launched with radio
43:07
sands that sort of
43:08
pierce the upper atmosphere and collect all this data about
43:11
temperature and
43:12
SPEAKER_01: pressure and wind direction and wind speed and all those things go into
43:14
supercomputers and create forecasts that we all use and rely on
43:18
every you look at
43:19
your your phone and you've got a weather forecast a large
43:22
portion of that is coming
43:23
SPEAKER_01: from upper atmosphere
43:25
SPEAKER_01: uh, weather observations.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: And so,
43:27
SPEAKER_01: um,
43:27
SPEAKER_01: that's been around for a while,
43:29
SPEAKER_01: but the,
43:29
SPEAKER_01: the,
43:30
the systems that can process that amount of data and
43:33
interpolated at scale have
43:35
SPEAKER_01: improved a lot in the last five years.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: Is that,
43:39
SPEAKER_00: are those weather balloons,
43:40
SPEAKER_00: is that like a centralized,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: um,
43:42
SPEAKER_00: do all,
43:43
SPEAKER_00: do all countries kind of feed in to some common platform that,
43:47
SPEAKER_00: uh,
43:47
SPEAKER_00: we've somehow agreed on something.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's globally available.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: We use many different models,
43:53
SPEAKER_01: but the GFS,
43:54
SPEAKER_01: the Global Forecasting System,
43:56
SPEAKER_01: is the primary one,
43:58
SPEAKER_01: and that's readily available free data to anyone that wants it.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: And I should also mention it's not just upper atmospheric balloons.
44:06
There are now satellite constellations that have different
44:09
technologies that can look down and
44:13
and produce a different observation with weather data and all
44:17
of that's getting
44:18
SPEAKER_01: collected into systems that can produce better forecasts.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: So like in the rocket world,
44:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
44:24
there's always this discussion of like how much room is there
44:27
for how many rocket makers,
44:28
SPEAKER_00: you know,
44:29
SPEAKER_00: and it's,
44:29
SPEAKER_00: it's,
44:30
SPEAKER_00: um,
44:31
I guess it's changed a little in that we're sending up so many
44:35
more satellites now,
44:36
SPEAKER_00: but,
44:36
SPEAKER_00: but usually people come to the conclusion that,
44:39
SPEAKER_00: um,
44:39
SPEAKER_00: yes,
44:40
SPEAKER_00: we need like three or four rocket makers,
44:42
SPEAKER_00: but we don't need 20.
44:43
And,
44:44
you know,
44:44
when you start talking about these swarms of balloons and,
44:47
um,
44:47
uh,
44:48
SPEAKER_00: I was just,
44:49
SPEAKER_00: so I was making me wonder what your vision of the future looks like,
44:52
how many balloons you think would actually be up in the air as
44:56
we progress forward.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:59
So,
44:59
you know,
45:00
our vision is to see the stratosphere become as routine as space.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: And so today you've got thousands of satellites flying over your head.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: You don't even think about it.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: You do most.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: I know you do.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but in the stratosphere, you don't really have that.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
45:19
We believe that you will in a decade and that it'll be a second
45:22
nature to you when
45:23
there's dozens of balloons hovering over San Francisco as
45:26
satellites above your head.
45:27
And so our actual mission statement is to make the stratosphere
45:32
routine and easy
45:33
SPEAKER_01: and to unlock the value within it.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: And so to us,
45:37
that means building all the systems that allow us to launch
45:41
eventually thousands of
45:43
stratospheric balloons globally that can circumnavigate the
45:46
world with different
45:47
SPEAKER_01: types of sensors and produce data,
45:49
SPEAKER_01: produce communications networks,
45:52
all the things that satellites do with the added advantage that
45:55
stratospheric
45:55
SPEAKER_01: balloons you can steer and stratospheric balloons you can station keep.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: And those are really important elements that satellites don't give you.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: Like what's stopping you from doing that?
46:06
SPEAKER_00: I know you just raised more money.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: I assume part of this is like mass manufacturing these.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I don't know.
46:15
What are the next steps that you have to accomplish to make all
46:18
that happen?
46:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a lot of technology that still needs to be developed.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
46:22
SPEAKER_01: in particular,
46:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:23
SPEAKER_01: we're,
46:24
SPEAKER_01: we're going to build,
46:24
SPEAKER_01: um,
46:26
SPEAKER_01: balloons that can fly for months and eventually years at a time.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: We don't have those today.
46:31
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the fundraise that we just took in is,
46:34
SPEAKER_01: is about R and D spend on,
46:36
SPEAKER_01: on building longer durations,
46:38
SPEAKER_01: small tactical balloons.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: Is that like a materials problem?
46:42
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit of everything.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: There's definitely materials problems.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: You know, we make balloons.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: We make the first reusable balloons in history.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: And so we've had to innovate a lot on balloon materials,
46:53
envelope materials and manufacturing processes because the
46:55
materials are different.
46:57
But yes,
46:58
permeability of the material is one of the limiting factors of
47:01
long duration flight.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: And so we're going to tackle that even harder moving forward.
47:05
We have to build a suite of different payloads that are ultra
47:09
lightweight that can
47:11
SPEAKER_01: do real-time downlink of data.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: So today,
47:14
SPEAKER_01: most of our cameras require that we recover the balloons,
47:18
SPEAKER_01: grab data cards,
47:19
SPEAKER_01: go process all the data.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: The train to do that could be three,
47:22
SPEAKER_01: four days before I could give you,
47:24
SPEAKER_01: Ashley,
47:25
SPEAKER_01: data from a balloon that flew over your city.
47:28
But we have to build payloads that can instantaneously give you
47:31
imagery or data and
47:33
SPEAKER_01: pair those with those balloons that can fly
47:35
SPEAKER_01: for a long period of time.
47:37
But our goal is to launch a global constellation of
47:41
stratospheric balloons for
47:43
SPEAKER_01: persistent continuous remote sensing.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: And when you are,
47:49
SPEAKER_00: When you are, I mean, have there been moments?
47:53
SPEAKER_00: I know you can steer it.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: You guys haven't had any accidents.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: Have you like landed,
47:57
SPEAKER_00: you know,
47:58
SPEAKER_00: in a farm and some,
48:00
SPEAKER_00: some farmer has come across your payload and I don't know,
48:04
SPEAKER_00: there must be some funny story that's happened along the way.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: There's quite a few.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: Literally last Friday,
48:11
SPEAKER_01: our balloon landed in a field out in Nebraska,
48:15
SPEAKER_01: and we put GPS trackers on our balloons,
48:17
SPEAKER_01: and we land them in safe areas.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: So it landed in a field,
48:20
SPEAKER_01: and then I'm sitting there watching mission control,
48:22
SPEAKER_01: and the GPS device starts moving to the road,
48:25
SPEAKER_01: and then it goes down the road,
48:26
SPEAKER_01: and it goes to the parking lot of a high school.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: And I,
48:29
and I know what high school it is because I have the GPS
48:31
tracker and I called them
48:33
SPEAKER_01: and the science teacher saw it land from the local high school,
48:36
SPEAKER_01: picked it up,
48:37
brought it back to her class and was like teaching her kids
48:40
what a stratospheric
48:41
SPEAKER_01: balloon was with our payload and balloon.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: And they're really nice, right?
48:44
SPEAKER_01: Like they think it's really cool.
48:45
We,
48:46
you know,
48:46
we show up and we talk to them about it and they give it back
48:48
to us.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I have probably a hundred stories like that.
48:52
So like,
48:53
how do you make sure it lands in the parking lot and not like
48:56
in the high school?
48:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: So we have procedures and rules for terminating balloons.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: We have multiple systems that allow us to land them in target areas.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: So number one, they're controllable descent vehicles.
49:13
So it's not like weather balloons that go up and pop and you
49:16
have no idea where
49:16
SPEAKER_01: they're going to land.
49:17
we make a decision to click a button and say,
49:20
okay,
49:20
balloon come back down to earth now.
49:22
And we have simulations where if we're gonna click that button
49:26
to bring the balloon
49:26
SPEAKER_01: back down to earth,
49:28
we know within a certain distance exactly where that balloon is
49:32
gonna land.
49:33
SPEAKER_01: We see a little dot on our screen that says,
49:36
SPEAKER_01: if you click button now,
49:37
SPEAKER_01: it's gonna land right here,
49:38
SPEAKER_01: right?
49:38
So we will not terminate the balloon or bring it back down to
49:42
earth over densely
49:43
SPEAKER_01: populated areas or,
49:45
SPEAKER_01: you know, highways.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: So we look for open areas, public lands.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we land on private agriculture,
49:51
SPEAKER_01: but if we do,
49:52
SPEAKER_01: we,
49:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:52
SPEAKER_01: we always coordinate with landowners to go out and recover our systems.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: Do you end up being able to return these back to home or,
49:59
SPEAKER_00: or the future is,
50:00
SPEAKER_00: is always that you have to have a human grabbing it at the end like that?
50:06
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
50:06
SPEAKER_01: So when we get into the space of ultra long duration balloon systems,
50:09
SPEAKER_01: right,
50:10
SPEAKER_01: they can fly for months or even a year.
50:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can,
50:13
SPEAKER_01: You can steer it anywhere within that period of time.
50:16
So the idea for our global constellation is that we will have
50:20
several areas on
50:22
SPEAKER_01: Earth where we will recover balloons,
50:24
SPEAKER_01: right?
50:24
SPEAKER_01: There'll be,
50:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:27
a zone in the United States where we're constantly landing
50:31
balloons in much the
50:31
SPEAKER_01: same way aircraft land at airports.
50:33
We may have a facility in Australia where we're constantly
50:35
landing there,
50:36
one in Europe.
50:37
But we'll have like three or four areas where we navigate
50:41
balloons towards at end
50:42
SPEAKER_01: of life and then steer them back down to earth.
50:46
SPEAKER_01: And we're working on some really cool technology.
50:48
We're also working on precision descent parafoils that can like
50:52
very precisely land
50:53
SPEAKER_01: a balloon exactly where you want it to land.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
50:56
I was like wondering if there's like a balloon drone hybrid or
50:59
something or you
51:00
SPEAKER_00: kick on propellers when you need them.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
51:04
SPEAKER_01: not so much propellers because the,
51:07
SPEAKER_01: maybe on descent,
51:07
SPEAKER_01: but at altitude,
51:09
the density of the air is just like not enough for us to do
51:11
anything with that.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
51:14
we can build guideable parachutes just in the same way that a
51:18
skydiver can steer
51:19
SPEAKER_01: down to a runway.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: We can do that with a balloon and a payload.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: And so that's where all the technology is heading.
51:24
So again,
51:24
in our future,
51:25
there'll be thousands of balloons over your head at any given time.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: And
51:29
SPEAKER_01: balloon ports where we're landing and launching systems from constantly.
51:33
SPEAKER_01: And we have the ability to precisely steer them back down to earth.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: And like, if you did have a global network of these,
51:43
SPEAKER_00: What is the absolute biggest first use case for that?
51:48
SPEAKER_00: It's like weather monitoring or something like just getting this much?
51:52
SPEAKER_00: I know in the ocean,
51:53
SPEAKER_00: right,
51:53
SPEAKER_00: there's been a couple big efforts to put these buoys all over the planet.
51:58
SPEAKER_00: Sail drone has its robot sailboats going around,
52:02
SPEAKER_00: gathering data all the time,
52:03
SPEAKER_00: just with the hope that you actually start to understand...
52:07
our environment and our planet on a finer level for all sorts
52:12
of reasons.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
52:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
52:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
52:15
SPEAKER_00: as we all know,
52:15
SPEAKER_00: even with supercomputers and all these tools,
52:18
SPEAKER_00: weather prediction is still a little iffy.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know if that is the most obvious thing we'd be going after.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all of our balloons will be armed with meteorological instruments.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: So,
52:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:30
SPEAKER_01: one of the outputs will be weather data and weather forecast from our own
52:34
SPEAKER_01: constellation of balloons,
52:35
SPEAKER_01: that that will be a product that's offered.
52:38
But the,
52:38
you know,
52:38
the core product will be supporting continuous monitoring.
52:43
And I'm,
52:44
you know,
52:44
from like,
52:45
from a business perspective,
52:46
I believe in in
52:48
The way to build a business is to be very specific about the
52:51
problem that you're
52:51
SPEAKER_01: solving with the technology.
52:52
And so when we first deploy a constellation,
52:55
there's always a crawl,
52:56
walk,
52:57
run.
52:57
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna launch 5,000 balloons
53:00
SPEAKER_01: on day one,
53:01
we're going to launch a regional deployment of our systems for
53:05
one specific use case.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: That use case initially will be wildfire monitoring, right?
53:09
SPEAKER_01: Because we know generally very specifically where wildfires can start.
53:14
SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, in the United States, Colorado, California, these areas.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: In Australia, there's a
53:19
SPEAKER_01: a wildfire problem, parts of Europe.
53:21
So we can put regional constellations over those areas for that
53:24
one specific use case,
53:26
SPEAKER_01: excuse me,
53:27
SPEAKER_01: and then begin to build new use cases on top of that success.
53:31
SPEAKER_00: Did they have you fly over the California fires?
53:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we did.
53:35
They didn't have us do that,
53:37
but we did fly and we captured infrared data.
53:42
SPEAKER_01: It's on our website.
53:42
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty cool.
53:43
You can see like a full map of high resolution fire data over
53:47
the Palisades fire and
53:49
SPEAKER_01: We gave it away for free, so anybody can go in there and download it.
53:52
SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
53:52
SPEAKER_00: did the various agencies end up start using it,
53:57
SPEAKER_00: or are they still kind of oblivious that this exists?
53:59
SPEAKER_01: We were careful in the way that we,
54:01
SPEAKER_01: I would say,
54:02
distributed and marketed it because it's in an R&D state for us
54:06
as a company.
54:07
And so what we didn't want to do when we flew over the fire was
54:09
get in the way.
54:10
SPEAKER_01: If people are saving lives,
54:12
I don't want them on the phone with me evaluating an
54:15
experimental data product.
54:17
I want to make sure that the things that they have are
54:19
extremely reliable.
54:21
SPEAKER_01: And our data is good, but it's not fully commercialized yet.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: So yes,
54:25
SPEAKER_01: we shared it with them,
54:26
but we weren't pestering them to give us feedback while they
54:31
were trying to handle
54:31
SPEAKER_01: the situation in Los Angeles.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: So we're engaged with Cal Fire.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: We're engaged with the state of Colorado.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: They all have access to the data,
54:38
SPEAKER_01: but it was not being relied on in real time to support the effort.
54:43
SPEAKER_00: Like when you talked about continuous monitoring,
54:46
SPEAKER_00: and I mean,
54:48
if I'm thinking of continuous monitoring of the globe and who
54:52
might want that,
54:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
54:53
SPEAKER_00: is that like,
54:54
is that first and foremost a military application or that's
55:00
something else?
55:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: What's the figure there?
55:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
55:04
SPEAKER_01: no,
55:04
I think it's really important that the data we produce from
55:08
this constellation is
55:09
SPEAKER_01: available to anyone that wants it.
55:12
So we will not launch constellations of balloons specifically
55:17
to cater to the US
55:18
SPEAKER_01: Department of Defense and sell them data.
55:20
SPEAKER_01: You know,
55:20
we want to support continuous monitoring use cases that are
55:25
good for the world and
55:26
SPEAKER_01: are humanitarian in nature.
55:28
SPEAKER_01: And that's the way that we'll build that business.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: So
55:31
SPEAKER_01: Um,
55:32
SPEAKER_01: the short answer is no,
55:33
SPEAKER_01: our,
55:33
our customer will not be the department of defense for
55:35
continuous monitoring or
55:36
SPEAKER_01: intelligence applications.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: Now,
55:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
55:39
SPEAKER_01: like we talked about earlier,
55:40
SPEAKER_01: we sell hardware to the department of defense and they can operate,
55:44
SPEAKER_01: uh,
55:44
SPEAKER_01: different pieces of hardware and systems themselves,
55:46
SPEAKER_01: but our constellation will serve commercial,
55:49
SPEAKER_01: uh,
55:50
SPEAKER_01: use cases and that data will be available to anyone.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
55:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: All right.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope people enjoyed this walk.
56:01
I try to use the show to take people into different worlds and
56:07
universes they might
56:08
SPEAKER_00: not get to experience usually.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: And even though I don't work there anymore,
56:12
SPEAKER_00: people should go check out the Colorado episode of Hello World.
56:16
They can see your balloons in action when we actually got to go
56:20
launch one and dig in.
56:23
SPEAKER_00: to all the old software.
56:24
We'll obviously have to go shoot a new video with you guys now
56:29
to replace that one.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's been, I don't know, this is funny.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: I think I'd met you just
56:37
were doing your job pitching pitching stories and and then i
56:41
got hooked man not
56:42
just because you and i think i've always got a lot but because
56:46
i just find the
56:47
technology really really fascinating and and different and um
56:52
so i you know i thank
56:53
you for being my guide all these years through through balloon
56:57
land it's been fun
56:58
yeah i didn't even notice it's got to be almost a decade now if
57:01
not a little bit
57:02
SPEAKER_01: less but um
57:03
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's been fun and we've got a lot more work to do.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: So we're excited.
57:08
So like when I finish my next book,
57:10
can we,
57:11
like that,
57:12
you can take that up,
57:13
right?
57:13
SPEAKER_00: Can we do, I'm trying to, I want to be your new chicken sandwich.
57:17
SPEAKER_01: Oh, like literally bring it to the show anytime.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know we can.
57:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
57:24
I don't know that you have the budget that KFC probably had to
57:27
get one of those in
57:28
SPEAKER_01: the sky,
57:28
SPEAKER_01: though I may be wrong.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've sold a book to everyone on Earth.
57:32
SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
57:33
SPEAKER_00: If everyone listening to this would just sign up for a subscription.
57:36
SPEAKER_00: We could get there.
57:37
SPEAKER_00: We could do this, people.
57:38
SPEAKER_00: We could get a book.
57:39
SPEAKER_00: Book to the stratosphere.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: We sent some hops up the other day.
57:45
SPEAKER_01: You have to check that out.
57:45
We got some stratospheric beer,
57:47
so we'll get you a beer when you come out here,
57:49
too.
57:49
SPEAKER_00: That feels like a very Colorado thing to do.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: It is.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
57:54
SPEAKER_00: All right, Andrew, thanks so much for your time, man.
57:56
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: All right.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Ashley.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: Good talking.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: This episode was hosted by me, Ashley Vance.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: Our guest today was Andrew Antonio.
58:09
SPEAKER_00: Core Memory is produced by me and David Nicholson.
58:12
SPEAKER_00: Our theme song is by James Mercer and John Sorlin.
58:17
And today's episode was edited by John Sorlin and Jake
58:21
McPherson at Suncut.