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Fighting Wildfires from Space · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem
0:28
Speaker 1: show about people using technology to solve problems that matter.
0:32
Speaker 1: My guest today is Johnny Dyer. He's the co founder
0:35
Speaker 1: and CEO of a company called Muon Space. Newon Space
0:39
Speaker 1: was founded in twenty twenty one, and the company designs, builds,
0:44
Speaker 1: and operates satellites. Their first big project is a constellation
0:48
Speaker 1: of satellites called fire Sat. And Johnny's problem is this,
0:53
Speaker 1: how do you build satellites that can capture data from
0:56
Speaker 1: space to help manage wildfires around the world in near
1:01
Speaker 1: real time. In our conversation, Johnny and I also talked
1:04
Speaker 1: about his company's work with the US Department of Defense,
1:08
Speaker 1: and more generally, the global geopolitics of satellites, which basically
1:12
Speaker 1: means the US versus China in space. To start, we
1:17
Speaker 1: talked about a satellite company called Skybox. Johnny joined that
1:20
Speaker 1: company just after it was founded in two thousand and nine.
1:24
Speaker 1: Up to around that time, satellites had mostly been giant, expensive,
1:29
Speaker 1: bespoke things, but this was a moment when a few
1:31
Speaker 1: people were starting to think that satellites could get much
1:34
Speaker 1: smaller and much cheaper. Johnny told me that the idea
1:37
Speaker 1: was partly inspired by the emergence of the iPhone.
1:40
Speaker 2: You shrink cameras down enough, you shrink compute down enough,
1:43
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you have this thing that is
1:46
Speaker 2: possible in a much smaller package than was ever possible before.
1:50
Speaker 2: And so there was a strong analogy. We thought with
1:52
Speaker 2: satellites that if you can use these commercial technologies, you
1:54
Speaker 2: can do a lot of the things that these big
1:57
Speaker 2: billion dollar systems are doing in a much smaller package.
2:00
Speaker 2: If you can do it in a smaller package, everything
2:02
Speaker 2: gets faster, cheaper, because most of the challenge of getting
2:07
Speaker 2: stuff in space is launching, and that on a per
2:10
Speaker 2: kilogram basis, like it just costs per kilogram to get
2:12
Speaker 2: stuff in space. If you make it smaller, everything gets better.
2:16
Speaker 2: And so we, you know, we did this and we
2:18
Speaker 2: were very successful at it. We ended up building twenty
2:20
Speaker 2: one satellites that were you know, took data of the
2:23
Speaker 2: same quality that literally, you know, one hundred million dollar
2:26
Speaker 2: systems before us were collecting. We got bought by Google
2:32
Speaker 2: and in the process we learned a lot about what
2:34
Speaker 2: it takes to do this, what works, what doesn't work.
2:38
Speaker 2: But also, you know, there there was sort of a
2:41
Speaker 2: lot of kind of frustrations we had about the fact
2:46
Speaker 2: that we solved this problem, this technical problem, and figured
2:49
Speaker 2: out how to deploy these things in space, but we
2:52
Speaker 2: really were only applying it to one small use case,
2:55
Speaker 2: which was this high resolution visible imagery. Think about what
2:57
Speaker 2: you see in Google Maps. So that's what we were doing.
2:59
Speaker 2: We're taking like submeters roughly one meter resolution visible images
3:03
Speaker 2: like you see Google Maps.
3:04
Speaker 1: So when I look on Google Maps and I see
3:06
Speaker 1: the trampoline in my backyard, which I do, Uh, is
3:09
Speaker 1: that you taking that picture?
3:11
Speaker 3: So probably the trampoline in your backyard.
3:13
Speaker 2: Probably not that was probably taken it from an aircraft
3:15
Speaker 2: because that's probably more like ten centimeter imagery.
3:19
Speaker 3: But if you go to.
3:20
Speaker 2: A big trampoline, yeah, I mean you would see it
3:22
Speaker 2: in our imagery.
3:23
Speaker 3: You would definitely see a trampoline.
3:25
Speaker 2: If you go a little bit outside a major urban
3:27
Speaker 2: area where it's too expensive to go collect aircraft imagery,
3:30
Speaker 2: all of that imagery and Google Maps would be the
3:31
Speaker 2: type of stuff we were collecting. So you can go
3:34
Speaker 2: search around Google Maps and you can see a bunch
3:36
Speaker 2: of that stuff. And so you know, we got we
3:40
Speaker 2: went through that journey. Eventually it ended, but stuck in
3:44
Speaker 2: the back of my head was we've shown, you know,
3:46
Speaker 2: we've shown a different paradigm for doing this, and there's
3:49
Speaker 2: so many possible applications of that new paradigm.
3:53
Speaker 1: So so kind of the basic narrative of how you
3:55
Speaker 1: get to muon just to collapse it is Skybox gets
3:58
Speaker 1: acquired by Google, and then at some point after that
4:01
Speaker 1: you get a call from somebody who wants to build
4:04
Speaker 1: satellites to track methane emissions, this project called Methane and Set,
4:09
Speaker 1: which seems like it is sort of what puts you
4:11
Speaker 1: on the path to starting mewon. The company're running, Now,
4:15
Speaker 1: how did that happen? What happened there?
4:18
Speaker 2: I got a call from some people I knew from
4:20
Speaker 2: Skybox at the Environmental Defense Fund saying we think there's
4:24
Speaker 2: an opportunity, you know, approaching the problem the way that
4:27
Speaker 2: companies like Skybox did, to go build a system that
4:31
Speaker 2: can map methane globally in the world. And this is
4:33
Speaker 2: you know, a huge first order a greenhouse driver. It's
4:36
Speaker 2: in the near term, it's the most important greenhouse gas,
4:38
Speaker 2: even more important than CO two. And we don't know,
4:41
Speaker 2: we don't there's no good source of data for actually
4:44
Speaker 2: how much is getting omitted by all these different sources
4:46
Speaker 2: where not quantitatively at least, And so, you know, that
4:50
Speaker 2: was a really exciting prospect for me to be part
4:52
Speaker 2: of that because it seems like a really important problem
4:54
Speaker 2: that needed to be solved. It was also really interesting
4:57
Speaker 2: to me that here we are in this world where
5:00
Speaker 2: there's a global nonprofitia the Environmental Defense Fund, so philanthropically
5:04
Speaker 2: funded nonprofit that is basically believes they can go out
5:08
Speaker 2: and build old what you know, traditionally would have been
5:11
Speaker 2: only the realm of a government, like a major government
5:13
Speaker 2: project like a NASA mission or an e submission, And
5:17
Speaker 2: so that just seemed like an extremely compelling prospect, like,
5:20
Speaker 2: if you can do that kind of thing and apply
5:22
Speaker 2: it in all these different ways, it's going to blow
5:24
Speaker 2: the door open on the types of things we imagined
5:26
Speaker 2: doing from space.
5:27
Speaker 3: And so for all those reasons.
5:29
Speaker 2: I was really excited to you know, be part of
5:31
Speaker 2: Methane SAD and join the advisory board for it. And
5:35
Speaker 2: we went through this long process of basically, for lack
5:38
Speaker 2: of a better term, trying to recreate some of the
5:41
Speaker 2: things about what we did at Skybox, but with this
5:43
Speaker 2: totally different outcome in mind. And it was really hard.
5:49
Speaker 2: And one of the primary reasons it was really hard
5:51
Speaker 2: was that at Skybox everything was within our control and
5:56
Speaker 2: we built everything ourselves. We literally, you know, we were
5:59
Speaker 2: literally building the circuit boards that went in the satellites.
6:01
Speaker 2: We wrote all the software, we were building the cameras
6:04
Speaker 2: that went into the telescope.
6:06
Speaker 1: You know.
6:07
Speaker 2: Environmental Defense Fund does not have a deep aerospace engineering
6:12
Speaker 2: function that can go build all this stuff. And so
6:14
Speaker 2: they essentially went out to the market and they said, Okay, well,
6:17
Speaker 2: companies like Skybox and Planet exist. There must be now
6:20
Speaker 2: a rich ecosystem of suppliers in the market that we
6:23
Speaker 2: can go buy what we need to go do this mission.
6:27
Speaker 2: The long and the short of it is that is
6:29
Speaker 2: not true. And so what they what we kind of
6:32
Speaker 2: ran up against was the state of the overall ecosystem
6:36
Speaker 2: was still very much like that old mainframe in space,
6:40
Speaker 2: you know, billion dollar ecosystem or these little tiny cottage
6:45
Speaker 2: industry startups that we're trying to build some small piece
6:48
Speaker 2: of a component or a little bit of software or something.
6:51
Speaker 2: And the thing about space is really the hardest part
6:54
Speaker 2: in many ways is integrating all these things together and
6:57
Speaker 2: making them work as a system that can ultimately deliver
7:01
Speaker 2: you know, an answer or a solution to a problem.
7:05
Speaker 2: And so you know, if you fast forward and we
7:07
Speaker 2: spent like five years helping edf kind get up the
7:09
Speaker 2: learning curve doing that, and it was I would say, ultimately,
7:12
Speaker 2: you know, successful in the sense that a satellite got built,
7:15
Speaker 2: it got launched, it collected data. It was way slower,
7:18
Speaker 2: it was way more expensive, it was way harder than
7:20
Speaker 2: everybody thought, and it really kind of oriented me towards
7:26
Speaker 2: there's a huge opportunity here. Like you know, we learned
7:29
Speaker 2: how to solve a lot of these problems at Skybox.
7:31
Speaker 2: There's clearly a need and so we have this opportunity
7:34
Speaker 2: to frankly flood the sky with you know, entirely new
7:37
Speaker 2: types of sensors collecting data that could be incredibly impactful
7:41
Speaker 2: on how we manage the planet. But the supply chain,
7:46
Speaker 2: the ecosystem to go execute that efficiently. You know, when
7:49
Speaker 2: we started Mwon, I felt had not mature, it had
7:52
Speaker 2: did not exist at the state that it needed to
7:55
Speaker 2: to realize that. And so that was a lot of
7:57
Speaker 2: the kind of origin thought process that led us to
7:59
Speaker 2: start the company, is we can go build an entity
8:03
Speaker 2: that is really able to deliver on these really hard,
8:06
Speaker 2: difficult type of missions, but in the way that we
8:09
Speaker 2: did it at Skybox. So we're ten times faster and
8:11
Speaker 2: ten times cheaper. And if we do that, it's going
8:13
Speaker 2: to blow the door open on the types of applications
8:15
Speaker 2: people are doing in space.
8:16
Speaker 3: And that's what we're ultimately trying to do.
8:19
Speaker 1: And so you create me on in twenty twenty one,
8:23
Speaker 1: is it right? And the first project that I'm aware
8:27
Speaker 1: of that you were working on is fire SAT. Was
8:31
Speaker 1: that sort of part of the creation of the company.
8:34
Speaker 2: Well, it predated the creation of the company a little
8:37
Speaker 2: bit in the sense that what it came out of
8:40
Speaker 2: was there's a group of people I worked with at
8:43
Speaker 2: Google when I was at Google and research that we're
8:46
Speaker 2: looking at how to is kind of AI applications, so
8:51
Speaker 2: looking at how they could take a lot of the
8:52
Speaker 2: AI work going on and applied to very particular impact
8:56
Speaker 2: applications like climate, like wildfire. One of the biggest problems
9:01
Speaker 2: with wildfire is there's these data gaps. It's very hard
9:05
Speaker 2: to understand just how little they know when they're making
9:10
Speaker 2: decisions during a wildfire, like where the fire is, how
9:14
Speaker 2: fast it's moving, how hot, it's burning, what's in danger.
9:16
Speaker 2: Usually it is largely from reports coming in from boots
9:20
Speaker 2: on the ground.
9:21
Speaker 3: They have firefires on the line.
9:22
Speaker 2: Did the end of the day come in and say,
9:24
Speaker 2: this is what we saw, this is roughly where the
9:26
Speaker 2: fire line was, and people are hand drawing it on maps.
9:28
Speaker 3: That's literally often like it's.
9:30
Speaker 1: Nineteen fifty or at nineteen hundred.
9:32
Speaker 3: Nineteen hundred.
9:33
Speaker 2: It really is not that different than I think the
9:35
Speaker 2: way wildfires were fought in nineteen hundred. And you know,
9:40
Speaker 2: if you think about most elements of society, most elements
9:44
Speaker 2: of our lives, they've progressed dramatically past that point. You know,
9:47
Speaker 2: we could pull up a map on our phone that
9:49
Speaker 2: has incredible near real time date on traffic.
9:52
Speaker 1: I mean, let me ask us a dumb question about that.
9:55
Speaker 1: They fly planes over wildfires. Once these images of that,
9:59
Speaker 1: can the planes not give them pretty good data about
10:02
Speaker 1: what's happening? At least once they know it's there.
10:05
Speaker 3: They can.
10:05
Speaker 2: At times, the planes are very limited, so they they're
10:08
Speaker 2: off not position in a place where they can get
10:11
Speaker 2: them to an active fire fast enough to get the
10:13
Speaker 2: data they need. So there's all those challenges, and they
10:15
Speaker 2: often can't fly due to the conditions too, so if
10:18
Speaker 2: it's too smoky, they can't fly. If there's really high winds,
10:21
Speaker 2: which was obviously the case in the LA fires last year,
10:24
Speaker 2: so they weren't able to fly the aircraft over those
10:26
Speaker 2: fires because the winds.
10:26
Speaker 3: Were too high.
10:28
Speaker 2: So they can provide very good situational awareness data, but
10:31
Speaker 2: they are very limited in a lot of ways, both
10:34
Speaker 2: from a cost per perspective, from sort of a breadth
10:36
Speaker 2: and geographic passy perspective, and then just from an operational perspective.
10:41
Speaker 2: The thing that satellites give you that is unique as
10:44
Speaker 2: this kind of persistent overhead view.
10:46
Speaker 3: Right A satellite's giving you this.
10:48
Speaker 2: You know, constant kind of persistent overhead map like view
10:51
Speaker 2: of where the fire boundary is, how hot it is,
10:53
Speaker 2: how fast it's moving, and that's just, you know, really
10:57
Speaker 2: transformational for detecting the fires early. You don't have to say, hey,
11:00
Speaker 2: I'm going to go fly a plane and look for
11:02
Speaker 2: a fire. The satellite's going to cover the space and
11:05
Speaker 2: detect a fire if it starts. And that's one of
11:07
Speaker 2: the goals of firesat is to build to attack to
11:09
Speaker 2: fire within about twenty minutes of its starting, and then
11:12
Speaker 2: once it's burning we have this you know, ongoing time
11:15
Speaker 2: series of understanding of how it's moving, which is going
11:18
Speaker 2: to be absolutely transformational in terms of how they think
11:21
Speaker 2: about positioning resources, how to manage risk. The other thing,
11:26
Speaker 2: the other part of this that I think is important,
11:28
Speaker 2: is that the goal is not to eliminate fire like
11:32
Speaker 2: fire is really important. In fact, we don't have enough
11:35
Speaker 2: fire in many in California, we don't have enough fire.
11:38
Speaker 2: Historically there was a lot more natural wildfire, and we've
11:41
Speaker 2: kind of eliminated that.
11:43
Speaker 1: Just to be clear about that, like the ideas, California,
11:46
Speaker 1: like much of the world, all of the American West,
11:49
Speaker 1: evolved to burn, to happen right, fires periodically, and we
11:52
Speaker 1: had this century essentially of not letting anything burn that's right,
11:55
Speaker 1: and you get too much fuel, too much underbrush, and
11:59
Speaker 1: then when there is a fire, it's too hot and
12:01
Speaker 1: it burns too big in a way that it would
12:03
Speaker 1: not have if we had let fires burn in the
12:05
Speaker 1: first place.
12:05
Speaker 3: Perfect, man, you've clearly studied this topic.
12:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting, right, it's not entirely intuitive, but
12:11
Speaker 1: not into about it and it's like, oh interesting, Yeah.
12:14
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time in the Sierras where
12:15
Speaker 1: It's like you see like Manzanita are like pumping out
12:19
Speaker 1: oil because they want there to be a fire.
12:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Manzanita is like a blow torch when it
12:23
Speaker 2: starts on fire. So yeah, so yeah, I mean that's
12:26
Speaker 2: a huge problem. And I think the point is that
12:29
Speaker 2: it's not simple enough to say when a fire starts,
12:32
Speaker 2: put it out. There has to be a decision made
12:34
Speaker 2: about there's you know, the way that this has best
12:37
Speaker 2: been described to me. We work with an advisor named
12:40
Speaker 2: Kate Dargan. He used to be the fire chief of California,
12:42
Speaker 2: and she talks about good fire and bad fire. Right
12:44
Speaker 2: when you get to what you were describing, where you
12:46
Speaker 2: have these over fuel loated forests that burst into flame
12:50
Speaker 2: and are burning basically so hot that they're killing everything
12:53
Speaker 2: in a very unhealthy way.
12:54
Speaker 3: That's bad fire, and like you want it.
12:57
Speaker 2: You don't want that to burn, But we need a
12:59
Speaker 2: lot more low intensity fire through the forest to keep
13:02
Speaker 2: the forest healthy. And so right now, there's basically no
13:06
Speaker 2: way for the fire agencies to distinguish that for the
13:09
Speaker 2: most part. I mean, they're typically because of the risks involved,
13:12
Speaker 2: they're just going to try and put the fires out
13:14
Speaker 2: because there's so much at risk.
13:16
Speaker 1: Well, like politically, if you think about it, politically, you're
13:20
Speaker 1: never going to get in trouble for putting the fires, right,
13:22
Speaker 1: But if you're like, well, you know we made the call,
13:25
Speaker 1: and you know our model said it should burn, like,
13:28
Speaker 1: that's just not going to play if anything bad happens.
13:31
Speaker 3: That's right exactly. Yeah.
13:33
Speaker 2: Kate's big thing is if we can measure the intensity
13:36
Speaker 2: on a near real time basis, we can make way
13:38
Speaker 2: better decisions about how we deploy resources to combat the
13:43
Speaker 2: bad fire while allowing the good fire to burn. And
13:46
Speaker 2: that's that's a very heavily kind of risk based decision
13:49
Speaker 2: process that needs to be much better informed by data.
13:52
Speaker 2: And I think that's in many ways we love fire
13:56
Speaker 2: Set because I think it is such a tangible example
13:59
Speaker 2: of the power of these space based data collection systems
14:03
Speaker 2: to not only tell us something about the world or
14:07
Speaker 2: you know, oh that's interesting, but actually drive decision making
14:10
Speaker 2: on the ground. We now have actionable data that can
14:13
Speaker 2: be used to say we're going to position firefighters here
14:16
Speaker 2: instead of there, and that's not only going to protect this,
14:19
Speaker 2: you know, this town, but it's also going to allow
14:21
Speaker 2: this other part of the forest to burn.
14:22
Speaker 3: So there's less risk next year that it's going to burn.
14:25
Speaker 1: Right. So you say we now have actionable data, but like,
14:28
Speaker 1: we don't literally have it now, right, because the project
14:31
Speaker 1: is still ongoing. And so just to be clear, the
14:34
Speaker 1: goal of the project is to have So it's an
14:37
Speaker 1: infrared image, right, which makes sense of every piece of
14:42
Speaker 1: the earth out of resolution. You said about the size
14:45
Speaker 1: of a swimming pool, right, which is a nice image.
14:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, the actual resolution is a lot bigger than that.
14:50
Speaker 2: It's about fifty meters, so think about half of a
14:52
Speaker 2: football field. But we can see we can detect a
14:56
Speaker 2: fire within that fifty meters down to about the size
14:59
Speaker 2: of a swimming pool. So if there was a swimming
15:01
Speaker 2: pool size fire on half a football field, we would
15:04
Speaker 2: detect that fire.
15:05
Speaker 1: Okay, and to do that of the whole earth every.
15:08
Speaker 3: Twent the minutes, that's right.
15:10
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot.
15:12
Speaker 3: It is a lot of year.
15:13
Speaker 1: It is a lot, right. And so so you start
15:16
Speaker 1: this company five years ago around the time this project
15:19
Speaker 1: is kind of coming into view, right, and you the
15:23
Speaker 1: company and the project sort of get going together.
15:25
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, yep.
15:28
Speaker 1: And so I mean you talked about how you had
15:29
Speaker 1: solved a lot of these things at Skybox. But plainly
15:32
Speaker 1: there's a lot to figure out here. So when you
15:35
Speaker 1: launch the company, what do you have to figure out
15:37
Speaker 1: to do this?
15:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a couple of things. I think one
15:40
Speaker 2: thing is be able to build a small and low
15:43
Speaker 2: cost infrared camera, which is a critical enabler for this
15:47
Speaker 2: to work. And that's something that we bid off very
15:51
Speaker 2: early in the process, very much using again the same
15:53
Speaker 2: kind of approach that we use at Skybox.
15:55
Speaker 3: At Skybox, we were.
15:56
Speaker 2: Much we were focused on visible imagery, which is a
15:58
Speaker 2: different thing that's very much a solved problem now for space.
16:03
Speaker 2: But if you ask anybody when we started the company,
16:05
Speaker 2: what does it take to build like a very high
16:08
Speaker 2: sense it'sivity infrared imager from space, they'd probably tell you
16:11
Speaker 2: it's like a ten to thirty million dollar problem per unit.
16:15
Speaker 1: Wait, you mean it's going to cost you ten million
16:17
Speaker 1: dollars for each camera?
16:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean if you went out to Lockheed or
16:21
Speaker 2: Northrope or whoever builds these things, because you know commercially
16:24
Speaker 2: they're not built.
16:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what they would have told you. That's what
16:26
Speaker 3: you know.
16:27
Speaker 2: In many ways, like the government is paying today for
16:29
Speaker 2: that type of payload.
16:32
Speaker 3: And we couldn't do.
16:33
Speaker 2: That because, you know, ultimately, to get to that twenty minutes,
16:35
Speaker 2: which everybody agrees was a critical goal, you need like
16:38
Speaker 2: fifty satellites and so if you're if just the camera
16:41
Speaker 2: on each satellite costs twenty million dollars, it's pretty hard
16:44
Speaker 2: to imagine that making sense.
16:46
Speaker 3: But we needed like a ten x.
16:48
Speaker 2: I mean, we needed to get this thing down to
16:49
Speaker 2: like a million dollars or you know, no more than
16:52
Speaker 2: two million dollars. And so again we had to go
16:55
Speaker 2: to the out and say, like, what are technologies that
16:57
Speaker 2: have been developed for other industries that we can apply
17:01
Speaker 2: to this problem that haven't been used in space before,
17:04
Speaker 2: because typically there's a lot of industries that have spent
17:06
Speaker 2: billions of dollars on technology and getting the cost down
17:10
Speaker 2: and the performance up. And so what we found was
17:13
Speaker 2: there was there had been work on It was largely
17:16
Speaker 2: for tactical military applications, so not things that go in space,
17:19
Speaker 2: but things like the night vision that a soldier wears
17:23
Speaker 2: in the field, where they're building hundreds of thousands of
17:26
Speaker 2: these things at fairly low cost, and the underlying camera
17:29
Speaker 2: technology is applicable to it's what we needed for this
17:33
Speaker 2: it's a very different way to do it. Again, it
17:35
Speaker 2: was another case of like we literally had people saying
17:37
Speaker 2: this will never work, you can't do it that way.
17:40
Speaker 1: While as you say that, well, I mean when people
17:43
Speaker 1: say that too.
17:43
Speaker 2: I love it when people tell me something's not possible,
17:47
Speaker 2: because that's just like that's a great challenge, like Okay,
17:49
Speaker 2: I'm gonna prove you wrong. So yeah, So that was
17:50
Speaker 2: a big challenge that we had to solve and we did.
17:55
Speaker 2: I think another challenge that we really had to solve,
17:57
Speaker 2: which is related to fire set, but it's also related
18:00
Speaker 2: to the bigger picture for the company is you know,
18:05
Speaker 2: these things produce enormous amounts of data, and they often
18:10
Speaker 2: are constrained in various ways in terms of the ability
18:13
Speaker 2: to get that data back to Earth and then into
18:15
Speaker 2: the hands of people that need it, and certainly on
18:18
Speaker 2: reasonable time scales, so like typical satellite systems maybe only
18:23
Speaker 2: might take an hour and a half or two hours
18:25
Speaker 2: from the time a picture is taken to when it's
18:27
Speaker 2: actually usable in somebody's hand.
18:30
Speaker 3: And again for the fire.
18:30
Speaker 2: Problem, obviously that's not going to work if we're going
18:32
Speaker 2: to put all these satellites up to fly over every
18:34
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, Like, waiting an hour and a half for
18:36
Speaker 2: somebody to get that data is not helpful. So we
18:39
Speaker 2: had to put a lot of time and effort into
18:40
Speaker 2: thinking about how you can build extremely high bandwidth, extremely
18:44
Speaker 2: low latency pipelines basically to get data from satellites and
18:47
Speaker 2: out to users. And the reason I say it's more
18:50
Speaker 2: than just fire sat is because I do think that's
18:52
Speaker 2: something that is an unlock for a whole bunch of
18:55
Speaker 2: other things too.
18:56
Speaker 1: So how'd you figure that one out?
18:59
Speaker 2: So there's kind of two different pieces of it. There's
19:01
Speaker 2: kind of a phase one and a phase two. The
19:04
Speaker 2: phase one is clever, you know, basically clever archets picture
19:09
Speaker 2: of where we put antennas around the world, and how
19:11
Speaker 2: we design our radios to be able to continuously downlink
19:15
Speaker 2: while the cameras are collecting, which most satellites don't do.
19:18
Speaker 2: Most satellites collect some data, store it, down link it.
19:22
Speaker 2: Our system is designed to be able to continuously do both,
19:25
Speaker 2: and to do it to antennas that are basically placed
19:28
Speaker 2: in geographies where wildfire really matters, so it's a near
19:31
Speaker 2: real time connection all the time.
19:33
Speaker 3: That's kind of phase one.
19:35
Speaker 2: So the other thing kind of the phase two of
19:36
Speaker 2: this that we're now bringing on board is we have
19:38
Speaker 2: this partnership with SpaceX where we'll basically be connecting these
19:41
Speaker 2: satellites into the Starlink network in space.
19:44
Speaker 1: Is that the laser part? Are you not saying lasers?
19:47
Speaker 3: It is lasers and space. Lasers and space. Yeah, well,
19:50
Speaker 3: lasers in space.
19:52
Speaker 2: So now rather than having to wait to come over
19:55
Speaker 2: a ground station or try and place one in exactly
19:57
Speaker 2: the right spot to keep that latency down as we're
20:00
Speaker 2: collecting data and space, we will have essentially what's like
20:02
Speaker 2: an always on broadband connection to the Internet and we
20:05
Speaker 2: can just continuously stream that data back for users. That's
20:09
Speaker 2: completely transformative, right in terms of how you think about some.
20:12
Speaker 3: Of these problems.
20:13
Speaker 1: So where is fire SAT now?
20:16
Speaker 2: So we launched what we called the protoflight satellite, so
20:19
Speaker 2: a first instance last year and it's up collecting data.
20:22
Speaker 2: We're launching the first three of what we call the
20:25
Speaker 2: operational constellation in June and then basically we have a
20:31
Speaker 2: you know, a roadmap of launches that gets us out
20:34
Speaker 2: to the first kind of big like milestone we're shooting
20:37
Speaker 2: for is hourly So having a picture every hour of
20:41
Speaker 2: the entire planet, which we should get to in sort
20:44
Speaker 2: of late twenty seven early twenty twenty eight, and there
20:47
Speaker 2: will ultimately be about twenty in that hour hourly constellation.
20:51
Speaker 2: And then after that the goal is to expand that
20:53
Speaker 2: ultimately to fifty two.
20:55
Speaker 3: That'll get us to fifteen minutes.
20:57
Speaker 1: Why might it not work?
21:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one of our biggest worries and concerns, because
21:05
Speaker 2: there's a lot of history of this is up to
21:09
Speaker 2: by the operational community.
21:12
Speaker 1: And I mean if there's no customers essentially.
21:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, our users, or if it's difficult for them to
21:17
Speaker 2: incorporate into their operational flows, and.
21:20
Speaker 1: So somehow it's not actually helpful in fighting fires or
21:23
Speaker 1: understanding fires.
21:24
Speaker 2: Right, And I think we're very confident that the data
21:27
Speaker 2: itself is helpful, but it's only helpful, you know, if
21:31
Speaker 2: you can get you know the term the water to
21:33
Speaker 2: the end of the road, right, So it's not helpful
21:35
Speaker 2: if all this data ends in some cloud bucket somewhere
21:38
Speaker 2: that nobody can get to. It's only helpful if it
21:40
Speaker 2: actually ends up out in these operational command centers, in
21:45
Speaker 2: the tools that the fire operators are using on a
21:48
Speaker 2: daily basis. And so that's actually not a trivial problem
21:51
Speaker 2: because it's a huge patchwork of different systems and tools
21:57
Speaker 2: even in the US, like there is no unified system.
22:01
Speaker 2: So like our priority earliest integration partner is CalFire For
22:06
Speaker 2: that reason, CalFire is the most sophisticated fire agency.
22:09
Speaker 3: They have the best tools to do this.
22:11
Speaker 2: But you know, ultimately we want to do a lot
22:13
Speaker 2: more than that, Like, yeah, this is not just for California,
22:16
Speaker 2: it's not just for the US, it's for the world.
22:19
Speaker 2: And so that long tail of how do you actually
22:21
Speaker 2: get the water to the end of the row with
22:23
Speaker 2: the users that need it, I think is actually the
22:25
Speaker 2: heart and not the hardest problem, but it's one of
22:27
Speaker 2: the harder problems, and I think it's the biggest risk to.
22:30
Speaker 3: Ultimately having impact.
22:32
Speaker 2: Like, you know, if we get all these satellites in
22:34
Speaker 2: space and they're wonderful and they're producing data, but we
22:36
Speaker 2: don't solve that problem, it's all for nothing.
22:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that could totally happen.
22:42
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to try and make it not not
22:44
Speaker 2: a question.
22:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, not technically a question to say that could totally happen.
22:50
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a minute. Hey, it's Jacob,
23:00
Speaker 1: and I want to tell you that I am hosting
23:01
Speaker 1: a new show called Business History. It's about the incredible
23:05
Speaker 1: innovations and massive failures and unbelievable characters in the history
23:10
Speaker 1: of business, and I hope I think the show provides
23:13
Speaker 1: insights about how business works today. At the end of
23:16
Speaker 1: today's episode of What's Your Problem, We're going to play
23:19
Speaker 1: you a clip from Business History. It's the story behind
23:22
Speaker 1: the video game company Atari, and they're surprising early hire
23:26
Speaker 1: of a young hippie named Steve Jobs. The show's called
23:29
Speaker 1: Business History. You can listen to it wherever you're listening
23:32
Speaker 1: right now, and we'll play that clip at the end
23:34
Speaker 1: of today's episode. Tell me about your work with the
23:40
Speaker 1: Department of Defense.
23:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's a couple of worlds out there right now.
23:48
Speaker 2: There's the commercial world, and I would put fire sat
23:50
Speaker 2: in that.
23:51
Speaker 3: World, and then there's sort of the national security world,
23:53
Speaker 3: and they're related in a lot of ways.
23:57
Speaker 2: It's kind of hard to separate them completely, but there
23:59
Speaker 2: is right now a I would say existential need, especially
24:05
Speaker 2: in the US, for new technology and space. And the
24:09
Speaker 2: way I would think about this is that we've spent
24:12
Speaker 2: sixty or seventy years building very expensive, high performance, exquisite
24:18
Speaker 2: systems for space. On the national security side, most people
24:23
Speaker 2: don't even realize exist, and they're absolutely absolutely critical to
24:29
Speaker 2: our country's ability to operate in the world, like in
24:31
Speaker 2: a way that you know, we're very very sensitive too.
24:34
Speaker 2: So historically we have dominated space as a country that's
24:40
Speaker 2: not really been contested, and so this has been both
24:42
Speaker 2: a superpower but also sort of a capability. It's kind
24:46
Speaker 2: of taken for granted. The armed services don't even think
24:49
Speaker 2: about the idea that some of these things, these tools
24:51
Speaker 2: that they have that they rely upon, would not be
24:55
Speaker 2: available or useful.
24:56
Speaker 1: Like that some enemy might shoot them down exactly what
24:59
Speaker 1: you're alluding to, Yeah, or jam them or jam them, right,
25:03
Speaker 1: I guess jam them is actually what happened.
25:05
Speaker 2: Well, I mean the Chinese shot a satellite down a
25:07
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, right to demonstrate they can. So
25:09
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of concern about that. So right
25:13
Speaker 2: now we're in the midst of this period where those
25:16
Speaker 2: old systems have were designed in an era where there
25:19
Speaker 2: weren't threats. There's now threats. There's also a lot of
25:25
Speaker 2: like China has become much more capable in space and
25:27
Speaker 2: it's now more like a peer to us. Versus like
25:30
Speaker 2: a strong second.
25:32
Speaker 3: And so there's this.
25:33
Speaker 2: Huge push to basically modernize and refresh all of the
25:40
Speaker 2: kind of space infrastructure that the US uses on the
25:42
Speaker 2: national security side, but very much leveraging the commercial approach
25:47
Speaker 2: that we've been talking about that I think we kind
25:49
Speaker 2: of pioneered at Skybox a decade ago, and at the
25:52
Speaker 2: time it was perceived as too risky and too early,
25:54
Speaker 2: but there's now a recognition that that is the future,
25:57
Speaker 2: this is how these systems need to be built, and
25:59
Speaker 2: that there is very quickly becoming this vibrant commercial industry
26:04
Speaker 2: that can can build a lot of these systems.
26:06
Speaker 1: Analogous to what SpaceX did for rocket rockets used to
26:10
Speaker 1: be whatever, three two whatever. It was one military contractor
26:14
Speaker 1: and then a private company game. It was like, look,
26:15
Speaker 1: we can do this cheaper, right, That's happening for satellites
26:18
Speaker 1: now for the government, for the military.
26:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, And very similarly, SpaceX, you know, did it in
26:23
Speaker 2: a way that was commercially oriented. They're launching commercial communication
26:27
Speaker 2: satellites but also supporting national security missions. So I think
26:32
Speaker 2: that's space inherently is very difficult to separate from that perspective.
26:38
Speaker 1: Separate private from the military essentially, Yeah, but just because
26:43
Speaker 1: that's where the money is.
26:45
Speaker 2: That's where the money is. But also because anything you
26:48
Speaker 2: put in space inherently has the ability to do both, right,
26:52
Speaker 2: I mean in the limit, if you really want to
26:54
Speaker 2: think about the limit. And it's interesting just to make
26:57
Speaker 2: this make this point pretty clear, China does not really
27:00
Speaker 2: distinguish between commercial satellites and military satellites. We historically have
27:05
Speaker 2: distinguished that. But one of the big fears more and
27:08
Speaker 2: more is that that you know, our government should be
27:12
Speaker 2: depending on commercial satellites. Do those then become targets in
27:15
Speaker 2: a conflict?
27:16
Speaker 4: Right?
27:16
Speaker 3: And so there's it's a little another analogy.
27:19
Speaker 1: I think that's a good thinking of the Lusitania.
27:22
Speaker 2: I I was gonna say naval like kind of pre
27:25
Speaker 2: World War two naval conflict, right, birch and ship can
27:30
Speaker 2: be used for goods, but it can also be used
27:31
Speaker 2: as smuggle weapons and and you know, in a lot
27:34
Speaker 2: of ways, our navy after the Second World War sort
27:37
Speaker 2: of police the world's oceans to kind of guarantee a
27:41
Speaker 2: lot of the kind of separation between commercial and military
27:45
Speaker 2: affairs in the ocean. There's no equivalents of that in space.
27:49
Speaker 2: And so that's I think that's a big concern people
27:52
Speaker 2: have right now, is that even if you want to
27:55
Speaker 2: say this is a commercial system, this is a military system,
27:58
Speaker 2: it's very hard to draw that line in a way
28:00
Speaker 2: that China will respect it or some other adversary will
28:02
Speaker 2: respect it. And so all to be said, the technologies
28:06
Speaker 2: are very similar. The technology are the same, right you know,
28:10
Speaker 2: if you put something in space, it's it's very hard
28:13
Speaker 2: to tell what it's for for somebody else looking on
28:16
Speaker 2: like it's very easy for.
28:17
Speaker 1: It's just a satellite. It's satellite country taking a picture.
28:21
Speaker 2: Scout radios and sensors on it. Are those radios and
28:24
Speaker 2: sensors communicating to commercial stuff? Are they community in the military?
28:27
Speaker 2: Are they taking pictures of you know, people's trampolines in
28:30
Speaker 2: their backyard. Are they taking pictures of military sites? It's
28:33
Speaker 2: very hard to separate. And I think we're seeing a
28:35
Speaker 2: big convergence right now in and a recognized convergence of
28:38
Speaker 2: those those spheres. And so there's you know, there's both
28:40
Speaker 2: huge opportunities and risks with that. You know, the opportunity
28:43
Speaker 2: for us is that the things we're building are applicable
28:46
Speaker 2: to both There's a huge need on the national security side.
28:49
Speaker 2: And to give a very specific example of this, you know,
28:53
Speaker 2: we want a contract with the Space Force last year
28:56
Speaker 2: to basically take what we developed for fire SAT, this
28:58
Speaker 2: infrared camera, this low cost infrared camera, and adapt to
29:03
Speaker 2: a mission set that they've had for forty years that
29:06
Speaker 2: has been very challenging for them to upgrade, which is
29:09
Speaker 2: what they call They call it theater imagery and cloud characterization,
29:13
Speaker 2: but it's basically weather forecasting. So the DoD has to
29:15
Speaker 2: forecast weather. If they want to fly planes, they need
29:18
Speaker 2: to know what the weather is, so they have their
29:19
Speaker 2: own weather forecasting capability, and they have satellites to feed that.
29:23
Speaker 2: And historically these have been these billion dollar, twenty year
29:27
Speaker 2: bespoke things. And what we've been able to identify as
29:32
Speaker 2: the same technology we've built for fire Sat is very
29:34
Speaker 2: applicable to deploying satellites to solve that mission for them.
29:38
Speaker 2: So I think that's a really good example of kind
29:41
Speaker 2: of this crossover and how and how inherently dual use
29:44
Speaker 2: a lot of these things.
29:45
Speaker 1: Are you were saying there's opportunities and risk. That's the opportunity.
29:48
Speaker 1: What's the risk for you?
29:50
Speaker 2: I think there's like a perceptive risk, and I think
29:52
Speaker 2: there's a physical risk. The perceptive risk is. You know,
29:58
Speaker 2: we started the company very much to do positive in
30:02
Speaker 2: the world, and I firmly believe that's what we're doing.
30:05
Speaker 2: I think Fire SAD is a canonical example of how
30:07
Speaker 2: we're trying to do this. I believe there's a lot
30:10
Speaker 2: of things in national security sphere that we can do
30:12
Speaker 2: that also have that characteristic that are positive things for
30:15
Speaker 2: the world.
30:17
Speaker 3: Not everybody agrees with that.
30:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and I mean, you know, somewhat famously, at
30:22
Speaker 1: other big tech companies, right, people who worked at the
30:26
Speaker 1: companies didn't like it when Google and Microsoft started doing
30:29
Speaker 1: work for the Department of Defense.
30:31
Speaker 5: Right.
30:31
Speaker 2: I was at Google when the Project Maven thing happened,
30:33
Speaker 2: like when there was the big backlash against their work
30:36
Speaker 2: on that. So, like, have you encountered any of that
30:39
Speaker 2: at MWON. Yeah, No, We've definitely had people with concerns.
30:43
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that what we've tried to do
30:44
Speaker 2: is just be very open about why we're doing it
30:47
Speaker 2: and why we see it as a positive addition to
30:50
Speaker 2: our mission set. And for the most part, that's been
30:52
Speaker 2: very successful. I mean, people typically are engineers, are very
30:56
Speaker 2: rational people usually, and so I think if we can transparently.
31:01
Speaker 1: Present rational I mean you rational people can disagree about
31:05
Speaker 1: the most prevailance of the American Department of Defense.
31:08
Speaker 2: Oh, you're right, And so I mean again, like my
31:11
Speaker 2: perspective on this is like I never want to jam
31:13
Speaker 2: this down anybody's throat, Like I think people need to
31:16
Speaker 2: make their own decisions and be very comfortable with what
31:18
Speaker 2: we're doing, and we're just trying to be as transparent
31:20
Speaker 2: about that as we can.
31:22
Speaker 1: Let's talk now about the broader state of the industry,
31:25
Speaker 1: of the space industry, such as it is. I mean,
31:27
Speaker 1: it's particularly interesting given that you have seen now this
31:30
Speaker 1: rather long arc, right when there has been this big
31:33
Speaker 1: transformation in the industry over what fifteen years or twenty years? Yeah,
31:38
Speaker 1: twenty years. So you know, how has it changed? That's
31:45
Speaker 1: the big dumb question. Like, yeah, I mean there's the
31:47
Speaker 1: obvious stuff that you've done, but like, what can you
31:49
Speaker 1: do now that you couldn't have done?
31:50
Speaker 4: Then?
31:51
Speaker 1: What's you know, what's interesting, what's surprising.
31:53
Speaker 2: So I'll give some anecdotes. So I interned at SpaceX
31:58
Speaker 2: in like two thousand and four. I was there's like
32:00
Speaker 2: forty people there, and you know, my first job was
32:04
Speaker 2: helping build the first Merlin, which is like the first
32:07
Speaker 2: stage engine for Falcon one, and testing it. And you know,
32:11
Speaker 2: this was kind of when I was there, there was
32:14
Speaker 2: this excitement about how space This was very early, right,
32:18
Speaker 2: there's forty people, and there was this belief that they
32:20
Speaker 2: were going to totally transform the industry that early. You know,
32:25
Speaker 2: I learned very quickly that we were a long way
32:28
Speaker 2: away from that. The first time we put this engine together,
32:30
Speaker 2: probably tore itself apart, burned the test stand down, and
32:33
Speaker 2: you know, I spent the rest of the summer like
32:35
Speaker 2: rewiring this test dan in the summer heat in the
32:37
Speaker 2: Texas eat and it took him another like five years
32:40
Speaker 2: before they even got a first rocket into space after that,
32:45
Speaker 2: And if I fast forward from there and then think
32:48
Speaker 2: about starting Skybox in two thousand and nine, which is
32:51
Speaker 2: roughly at the same time, again we had this perspective
32:54
Speaker 2: that it's like, okay, well it took a while, but
32:56
Speaker 2: SpaceX is solving this problem. They solve this launch problem
33:00
Speaker 2: where access to space is going to be easier. They
33:02
Speaker 2: now have Falcon one. We actually were going to buy
33:04
Speaker 2: two Falcon ones. It's Skybox. Early on and right at
33:07
Speaker 2: the last minute, Elon said, there's not a Falcon one
33:11
Speaker 2: is not business competitive.
33:12
Speaker 3: We're gonna build a bigger rocket.
33:13
Speaker 2: We're gonna build Falcon nine, and all the contracts that
33:15
Speaker 2: we're gonna do for Falcon one are now Nolan bought
33:17
Speaker 2: Void and so this was existential for us at Skybox.
33:20
Speaker 3: We ended up having.
33:21
Speaker 2: To go to Russia, of all places, and buy these
33:25
Speaker 2: converted Cold War era ICBMs to launch our satellites with.
33:29
Speaker 2: That's we were literally launching our satellites out of a
33:32
Speaker 2: missile base in southern Russia off ICBMs.
33:35
Speaker 3: And so again like.
33:36
Speaker 2: We were like, okay, well, this problem we thought was solved,
33:38
Speaker 2: it was going to blow the door open, is still
33:40
Speaker 2: not solved. It is now solved fundamentally. And I mean
33:45
Speaker 2: there's all kinds of stats that show this from the
33:48
Speaker 2: cost of launch that has come down, and launch launch
33:51
Speaker 2: has been the big choke point for most of the
33:55
Speaker 2: history of space. So that's a huge unlocked.
33:57
Speaker 1: Hard to get there space hard to get there now,
33:59
Speaker 1: not as hard, not as hard.
34:01
Speaker 2: I don't think you can underestimate the impact of solving
34:05
Speaker 2: the launch problem. I'll call it in terms of how
34:09
Speaker 2: the world opens up, in terms of what you can.
34:11
Speaker 3: Do with space.
34:12
Speaker 2: The other thing I would say is I think we're
34:17
Speaker 2: even when we were doing Skybox and thinking very differently
34:20
Speaker 2: about how to build satellites, we were still building in
34:23
Speaker 2: a silo. We were building this thing that the analogy
34:25
Speaker 2: I like to use most of stuff in space is
34:28
Speaker 2: kind of like species on the Galapagos Island. They're like
34:32
Speaker 2: these pieces of technology that have been like separated from
34:35
Speaker 2: the mainland for so long. They've kind of evolved in
34:37
Speaker 2: these like perverse ways.
34:39
Speaker 1: And if you actually like this's whatever, like the motors
34:41
Speaker 1: and the cameras and whatever, they're like, oh, I understand
34:44
Speaker 1: how this used to be like a motor or camera
34:46
Speaker 1: on Earth, But now it's totally different, totally.
34:48
Speaker 2: Like literally to the point where if you looked at
34:50
Speaker 2: like the computer on even a satellite that got launched
34:53
Speaker 2: ten years ago, it would look like something that TI
34:56
Speaker 2: put in a calculator in the nineteen seventies, right, I mean,
34:58
Speaker 2: it's crazy. So there's this kind of like frozen in
35:01
Speaker 2: time nature to a lot of the technology in space,
35:05
Speaker 2: and because of the launch, but also because of these
35:06
Speaker 2: things that we've been talking about, there's a big turnover
35:09
Speaker 2: where now the technology in space is looking a lot
35:12
Speaker 2: more like the stuff that goes into data center, where
35:14
Speaker 2: that goes.
35:14
Speaker 3: In your smartphone.
35:16
Speaker 2: And because of that, there's also a lot more interconnectedness
35:20
Speaker 2: between those technologies and the technologies on Earth. And I
35:24
Speaker 2: think we're just in the early stages of this and
35:25
Speaker 2: it's going to cause it's already causing, but it's going
35:28
Speaker 2: to cause this huge convergence in what we think about
35:31
Speaker 2: as space technology and every other bit of technology in
35:34
Speaker 2: our life, to the point where we're going to realize that.
35:37
Speaker 2: You know, right now, I do I use space technology
35:40
Speaker 2: on here GPS, right, satellites are in space and when
35:43
Speaker 2: I look at my map, it's telling me where I
35:45
Speaker 2: am based on satellites and space. But nobody thinks about
35:48
Speaker 2: those satellites, you know, when they look at their map
35:50
Speaker 2: and ask where they're going. That's going to be true
35:53
Speaker 2: of like a whole bunch of different things, Okay, what
35:57
Speaker 2: things and when one of the most exciting things for me,
36:00
Speaker 2: there's been a lot of discussion about like orbital data
36:02
Speaker 2: centers right people are talking about orbital data centers right now.
36:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, And just to be clear, like an actual like
36:07
Speaker 1: AI data center that is some giant.
36:09
Speaker 2: Gigawatts of solar power and space. Yeah yeah, yeah, and
36:13
Speaker 2: it sounds crazy.
36:14
Speaker 3: I think it's going to happen.
36:16
Speaker 1: Okay, when and why?
36:19
Speaker 3: So the why there's there's a bunch of reasons right
36:21
Speaker 3: now to build a data center takes between five and
36:25
Speaker 3: seven years okay, between permitting, construction, power, interconnect, all of
36:30
Speaker 3: these other things.
36:31
Speaker 1: I love that it's permitting, permitting, permit will drive data
36:34
Speaker 1: centers to space.
36:36
Speaker 2: It seems crazy, but I mean it's true, right and
36:38
Speaker 2: so like again, and I'm not saying this is easy,
36:40
Speaker 2: but if you could get a factory set up and
36:43
Speaker 2: rockets launching frequently enough that you can go deploy that
36:46
Speaker 2: one hundred megawatts of data center to space in two
36:49
Speaker 2: years instead of five years, there's a huge time value
36:52
Speaker 2: money component to that.
36:53
Speaker 1: That's it's so wild. What give me the over under?
36:56
Speaker 1: What year is that going to happen?
36:57
Speaker 3: Twenty thirty five?
36:59
Speaker 1: That soon? That soon?
37:01
Speaker 3: I think that scale could happen that soon and.
37:03
Speaker 1: Is part of what has to happen there, Like it
37:06
Speaker 1: keeps getting cheaper to go to space absolute kilogram.
37:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
37:09
Speaker 2: So so like we've done a bit of work on
37:12
Speaker 2: this with some hyperscalers.
37:13
Speaker 1: So they've come to you and asked hyperscalts is whatever.
37:16
Speaker 1: This is four giant tech companies. They're all actually calling
37:20
Speaker 1: you and saying, yeah, I mean it take to put
37:22
Speaker 1: a data center in space.
37:23
Speaker 3: Google has announced it publicly.
37:25
Speaker 2: Okay, so you know the cost per kilogram to put
37:30
Speaker 2: something in space is the key metric. And I think
37:33
Speaker 2: for economic parody, if you think about, like how what
37:36
Speaker 2: it would take to get to a similar cost per
37:40
Speaker 2: unit capability of compute and a data center on Earth.
37:42
Speaker 2: Right now, we're still off by about a factor of six.
37:46
Speaker 2: So like it's six, but it's not one hundred, it's
37:49
Speaker 2: one hundred. It's not even an order of magnetus.
37:51
Speaker 3: It's not even an order of magnitudes.
37:53
Speaker 5: And so is the.
37:54
Speaker 1: Reason it's cheaper once you're up there? What the energy permitting?
37:58
Speaker 1: Like why is it? Why is it only six? So
38:02
Speaker 1: it only effect us.
38:03
Speaker 2: So here's here's a really important factor. If you put
38:05
Speaker 2: a satellite into space in the right orbit, you can
38:09
Speaker 2: have solar rays that are in this sign one hundred
38:11
Speaker 2: percent of the time. So it's baseload power. Now it's
38:14
Speaker 2: solar is no baseload power. I mean, solar is extremely
38:17
Speaker 2: cheap right now, but you can't use just solar to
38:20
Speaker 2: power data center because it's not consistent, so you end
38:23
Speaker 2: up needing massive some other form of massive energy storage,
38:26
Speaker 2: and it.
38:27
Speaker 3: Has become very expensive. So I think that's a big deal.
38:30
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons in my opinion,
38:33
Speaker 2: that it at six x you know, it's cost competitive
38:36
Speaker 2: because it's when you actually factor in all those other
38:39
Speaker 2: costs to terrestrial data centers for things like power, it's
38:42
Speaker 2: actually higher than you would think. Okay, So again, the
38:46
Speaker 2: other thing I just think is an important point is
38:50
Speaker 2: and I think this is being missed a little bit, like,
38:52
Speaker 2: we don't go from here to gigawat data centers in space. Right,
38:56
Speaker 2: there's this huge spectrum between where we are now and that,
38:59
Speaker 2: and I have no doubt we're going to be going
39:02
Speaker 2: way down that spectrum over the next ten years. Right,
39:04
Speaker 2: so where it actually lands, Are we actually going to
39:07
Speaker 2: have gigawat data centers in space?
39:09
Speaker 4: Like?
39:09
Speaker 3: Who knows? Right, who knows if the models will continue scaling.
39:13
Speaker 1: The scaling laws will hold.
39:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a stuff. What's the midpoint?
39:17
Speaker 1: What's the like easier to imagine launches don't have to
39:20
Speaker 1: get that much cheaper. We're almost there now, but still
39:24
Speaker 1: cool thing yeah.
39:25
Speaker 2: I mean I think it's that there are these kind
39:27
Speaker 2: of multi tiered layers of what we would think about
39:30
Speaker 2: as like cloud infrastructure in space, right, so very high
39:33
Speaker 2: speed network. So now you have this high speed network
39:35
Speaker 2: that everything is connected to all the time in space,
39:37
Speaker 2: which is not the case.
39:38
Speaker 1: Now what we thought of a data center ten years ago,
39:42
Speaker 1: like where they're like whatever.
39:45
Speaker 2: You know what you're getting Netflix served from? And I
39:47
Speaker 2: mean Starlink's already doing this a little bit. Starlink cash's
39:50
Speaker 2: Netflix on the satellites, right. And what will happen is
39:54
Speaker 2: as that builds out, there will be reasons to move
39:57
Speaker 2: certain things that are in the cloud on data centers
40:00
Speaker 2: and Earth now up to space to make the latency
40:02
Speaker 2: lower or the processing more efficient or whatever. But we
40:05
Speaker 2: won't even think about it. That'll just be in the background.
40:08
Speaker 2: We'll use the thing and nobody will know whether it's
40:10
Speaker 2: happening in space or happening in the ground.
40:15
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
40:30
Speaker 1: Let's finish with the lightning round. What's the secret to
40:34
Speaker 1: having one of the best breaking balls in the Stanford bullpen?
40:39
Speaker 3: Oh man, it's top spin.
40:46
Speaker 1: What's your favorite satellite that you didn't build.
40:51
Speaker 3: The Corona satellites.
40:53
Speaker 1: Tell me about the Corona satellites.
40:55
Speaker 2: So the Corona satellites were the first imaging satellites we
40:59
Speaker 2: built in the early sixties. And they were film based systems,
41:02
Speaker 2: so they had film in them that ran through them
41:05
Speaker 2: that you know, this incredible film technology that ran through
41:08
Speaker 2: them that you know, one hundreds defeat per second to
41:11
Speaker 2: keep up with the speed that they were flying. And
41:13
Speaker 2: that would get loaded into these canisters and dropped off
41:17
Speaker 2: in reentry vehicles parachute down to Earth and then we
41:20
Speaker 2: would go pick them up by scooping them out of
41:22
Speaker 2: the air behind a plane.
41:23
Speaker 3: To go develop the film and distribute it.
41:26
Speaker 1: Why was I just reading about that? I was reading
41:28
Speaker 1: about the special planes, right, they made special planes to
41:31
Speaker 1: catch the canisters as they're.
41:33
Speaker 3: Coming down, these like tohoks.
41:35
Speaker 1: It's so wild and like physical, right. You're a mechanical engineer, right,
41:38
Speaker 1: that's like very yeah, so mechanical, yeah, yeah.
41:41
Speaker 2: I mean, and you look inside these things and there's
41:43
Speaker 2: just like all these rollers and motors and stuff to
41:45
Speaker 2: like move the film around and develop it and you know,
41:47
Speaker 2: put in the.
41:48
Speaker 3: Canister and drop the canister off.
41:50
Speaker 1: So analog, right, it's just all physical stuff. What's something
41:54
Speaker 1: you learned working on autonomous vehicles that lift that's been
41:57
Speaker 1: useful to you at new.
42:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I actually thought about this a lot.
42:03
Speaker 2: The way that robotics and av used data is totally
42:09
Speaker 2: revolutionary from somebody that's come from aerospace because of some
42:15
Speaker 2: of the things we talked about about how primitive a
42:17
Speaker 2: lot of historically, like compute on aerospace systems is, you
42:22
Speaker 2: end up having to be very conservative about data and
42:26
Speaker 2: processing and all of these things. And avs are one
42:29
Speaker 2: hundred percent the opposite. They're just these like data vacuums
42:32
Speaker 2: and so, but what it does is it means that
42:35
Speaker 2: you think about these problems totally differently, like solving problems
42:38
Speaker 2: totally differently.
42:39
Speaker 1: So what does it mean to you in your work?
42:41
Speaker 1: How do you use that?
42:42
Speaker 2: I mean by architecting our systems to look more like
42:45
Speaker 2: avs than satellites.
42:48
Speaker 1: Just to be able to handle more data.
42:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we can use the same technology. So
42:53
Speaker 2: we are putting massive amounts of compute and networking and
42:56
Speaker 2: you know, bandwidth on our satellites, and so we can
42:59
Speaker 2: do that.
43:02
Speaker 1: Will evidence of extraterrestrial life be discovered in your lifetime?
43:06
Speaker 3: Yes?
43:08
Speaker 1: Okay, Uh, there is there anything you know that I
43:11
Speaker 1: don't know that makes you.
43:12
Speaker 3: Say that, No, I just think that.
43:16
Speaker 2: I think I think we'll discover very simple extraterrestrial life.
43:19
Speaker 2: I think there's life arose so early in the history
43:23
Speaker 2: of the planet, simple life that it just seems like
43:27
Speaker 2: it's very likely to have risen in other places or
43:30
Speaker 2: have been transplanted here from other places.
43:34
Speaker 3: I think complex life is a lot harder.
43:36
Speaker 5: Like.
43:36
Speaker 3: I do not think we will discover complex life in
43:39
Speaker 3: my life.
43:39
Speaker 1: We'll find like bacteria on a moon of Jupiter or something.
43:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think like single cell procaryot like things.
43:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. Will you go to space before you die?
43:55
Speaker 3: I would love to? I think probably not.
43:59
Speaker 1: Why not?
44:02
Speaker 2: I'm not convinced there's great reason to send humans to
44:05
Speaker 2: space A lot I think. I think there's a lot
44:08
Speaker 2: of things we can do without sending humans to space,
44:11
Speaker 2: all right.
44:11
Speaker 3: I think where we do, it'll be limited.
44:14
Speaker 1: Why would you love to?
44:16
Speaker 2: I'd love to see Earth from space? I think the
44:19
Speaker 2: overview effects you I've heard that astronauts talk about the
44:22
Speaker 2: total transformation and perspective that comes from seeing the Earth
44:27
Speaker 2: from space.
44:28
Speaker 3: So I'd love to experience that.
44:36
Speaker 1: Johnny Dyer is the co founder and CEO of muon Space.
44:41
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was
44:44
Speaker 1: engineered by Sarah Bruguire and edited by Lydia Jane Kott.
44:48
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein. You can find me on x at
44:51
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can
44:54
Speaker 1: also email us at problem at pushkin dot FM. We'll
44:58
Speaker 1: be back next week with another episode of the show.
45:10
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and right now we're going to play
45:13
Speaker 1: you a clip of a new show that I co host.
45:16
Speaker 1: The show's called Business History. My co host is Robert Smith,
45:20
Speaker 1: and this clip is from an episode we did about
45:22
Speaker 1: how Nolan Bush, now a stoner turned entrepreneur, created the
45:27
Speaker 1: video game company Atari and hired a young, inexperienced Steve Jobs.
45:33
Speaker 1: I really hope you like the clip, and if you
45:35
Speaker 1: want to hear more, you can find Business History wherever
45:38
Speaker 1: you're listening to this show. Right now, this like nineteen
45:42
Speaker 1: year old hippie kid walks in and he says he
45:45
Speaker 1: won't leave until they give him a job, and the
45:48
Speaker 1: receptionist calls the head engineer and she goes, yeah, we
45:52
Speaker 1: got a hippiekid in the lobby says, he won't leave
45:54
Speaker 1: until we hire him. Should we call the cops or
45:56
Speaker 1: let him in? And the engineer says.
45:59
Speaker 4: Bring him on in.
46:00
Speaker 5: It's nineteen seventies, a Silicon valley, and this guy wanders
46:03
Speaker 5: in and he is whenever you tell a story like this,
46:06
Speaker 5: you know who it is.
46:07
Speaker 4: It's Steve Jobs.
46:08
Speaker 1: It's Steve Job fun. It's so delightful and perfectly. Steve
46:13
Speaker 1: Jobs is very good at his job, yes, and very
46:16
Speaker 1: unpleasant to wrqu with. On surprising, he tells Bushnell that
46:21
Speaker 1: like everybody's soldering wrong, right, they're actually putting together the hardware,
46:24
Speaker 1: soldering the hardware.
46:25
Speaker 4: He's probably right, and bush Nell's like, yeah, he was right.
46:27
Speaker 1: He keeps calling his manager a dumb shit. Probably was
46:31
Speaker 1: not kind, but not necessary. Bushnell winds up putting Jobs
46:35
Speaker 1: on the night shift, partly so he won't bother so
46:39
Speaker 1: many people, and partly because he knew that Jobs like
46:42
Speaker 1: to hang out at night with his buddy Steve Wozniak,
46:45
Speaker 1: who was a great engineer, would be great to have
46:48
Speaker 1: hanging around atari And in fact, Jobs and Wozniak helped
46:51
Speaker 1: to make Breakout great a target. Remember Breakout, of.
46:55
Speaker 4: Course you're trying to knock down the bricks in a wall.
46:57
Speaker 1: Still games like that, when you got a little paddle
46:59
Speaker 1: at the bottom.
46:59
Speaker 4: End, there's a moment when it goes through the wall
47:01
Speaker 4: and then goes so.
47:04
Speaker 1: Good. So Jobs worked at Atari for a little while
47:07
Speaker 1: and then decided he wanted to go out to India
47:09
Speaker 1: to find his guru. Perfect asked Atari to pay for
47:14
Speaker 1: the trip. Nobody ever said he lacked moxie and wound
47:17
Speaker 1: up making a deal with Atari where they pay him
47:20
Speaker 1: to go part of the way there. They had exported
47:22
Speaker 1: some games to Germany and there was some kind of
47:24
Speaker 1: problem with the games in Germany, and they're like, we'll
47:26
Speaker 1: send you to Germany to fix the games and then
47:28
Speaker 1: you can get the rest of the way to India.
47:30
Speaker 1: And you know, the Germans said Jobs was terrible to
47:33
Speaker 1: work with, but he fixed the games. I was thinking
47:36
Speaker 1: about like the link between Atarian Jobs and what did
47:39
Speaker 1: he learn there, and it felt like maybe a little overdetermined,
47:41
Speaker 1: but I do think, you know, clearly he had this
47:44
Speaker 1: profound sense of aesthetics and of delight, right, like think
47:49
Speaker 1: of the Macintosh, right, this breakthrough Apple machine in the eighties.
47:52
Speaker 1: It was round and instead of squares, it was rounded,
47:55
Speaker 1: and it cost them more money, but it was beautiful
47:57
Speaker 1: and it was fun and you were engaged with it
47:59
Speaker 1: like a game.
48:01
Speaker 5: It almost looked a little bit like an arcade game
48:03
Speaker 5: with the curves. Yeah, but more than that, I think
48:05
Speaker 5: that especially at Silicon Valley at the time when they
48:08
Speaker 5: were dealing in action Silicon. Right, if you're making chips
48:10
Speaker 5: for somebody, you're thinking about the future and the computers.
48:14
Speaker 5: You're not thinking about the psychology of the customer, because
48:16
Speaker 5: the customer was another electronics company, right, And so Atari
48:20
Speaker 5: and the strength of it was really the first time
48:22
Speaker 5: where they're just like, how will a regular human being
48:26
Speaker 5: who has no training whatsoever interact with technology?
48:29
Speaker 3: Yeah?
48:30
Speaker 1: So Atari now mid seventies, they're selling all the machines
48:36
Speaker 1: they can make. They need more space, and so they
48:39
Speaker 1: rent an abandoned roller rink and they turn it into
48:42
Speaker 1: this office slash video game factory.
48:45
Speaker 4: I've been ten years older, I would have loved to
48:47
Speaker 4: have worked in a roller rink video game factory.
48:49
Speaker 1: Yes, everybody smoked weed. Yeah, there was a hot tub.
48:54
Speaker 1: There was a pool party where everybody ended up naked
48:56
Speaker 1: in the pool at Bushnell himself looked back on it
49:00
Speaker 1: later and said if that isn't a horror show for
49:03
Speaker 1: any HR person today, I don't know what is