The Exchanges

Q happens in 2014. The Russians invade Ukraine for the first time, obviously, now, and this is when they invaded the Crimean Peninsula, and that actually Uh, unbeknownst to, I think any of us, I didn't even know this, it, it actually caused a huge shift in the US space industry, right? Because basically when Russia invaded Ukraine, that was the beginning of, of like a ban on buying Russian rockets.

A That's right. And it really, it sparked a few bouts of funding that have been really successful. It, it sparked some development funding toward new rocket, domestic rocket engine programs. Unfortunately, Ursa Major wasn't around then. We might've Benefited very well from that, but, uh, it also sparked funding toward, um, both Boeing and SpaceX providing launch services of people, because we were also dependent on Russia to launch people to space. So the space shuttle retired in 2011, and that was the U.S.'s only means of putting humans in space, until I think last year, two years ago, two years ago now, was SpaceX's first launch. And so, 2014 was the first time we saw Real traction and dedication in the U.S. toward developing a new domestic human flight capability.

AI assessment note: “That's right. And it really, it sparked a few bouts of funding”

Q This is, this is just a, maybe a naive question, but, you know, given the fact that it's so expensive, what value is there right now for, like, space exploration? I'm not talking about going to Mars, but like, Going back to the moon or just, you know, going into, um, you know, low earth orbit.

A Oh, I get so excited about low earth orbit. I think we're just tapping into if, if you start to dramatically reduce the cost of access to space, you open up a window of opportunity, you know, where this is, this is similar to, I used the analogy of a PC boom before. This is computers going from the size of a room to being on every desk or, um, smartphones being in our pockets where, We start to open up windows of data transformation and from space that weren't accessible 10 years ago. A few examples there. SpaceX's Starlink constellation is really, uh, intended to bring a new capability of internet globally. They've been very, very vocally on the front lines in Ukraine. They are in rural parts of Africa, and that's just data provision, access to internet. If you start to look at collecting new types of data, think about, um, looking at groundwater for farmers and making that cost 10 cents every time they pull it up on a daily basis versus 10,000 dollars, so it's only hedge funds trading on that data.

AI assessment note: “We start to open up windows of data transformation and from space”

Q All right. You're there for two years. This is actually awesome because you leave and you go work for Blue Origin. So you're basically going, it's like going from Apple to Google or like something, you know, it's like you're going from one great space company to another. This is obviously Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin. Um, why did you make the decision to leave SpaceX?

A You know, I, I remember thinking before I started at SpaceX that there were two companies in the world I'd want to work for, and it was SpaceX or Blue Origin, and so I, I'd spent time at SpaceX, like I said, really drinking from a fire hose, and we had gotten to, back then it felt like a mature product, it was far from it, but we were launching Falcon nine successfully, and I saw in Blue Origin, um, Really a very tangential ambition. They were focused much more on the human side of space flight, and frankly, what, what won me over was, uh, the engine technology. Blue Origin had a completely different architecture, so I, I could work on a more complicated machine.

AI assessment note: “what won me over was, uh, the engine technology”

Q And you decided to start this in Colorado, I think, from the outset, right?

A Yes. Um, I, I really, I was living in West Texas, uh, when I left Blue Origin, so I, I had a decision to make as to where's the best place to start a company like this, and Los Angeles makes a ton of sense. There's a lot of aerospace out there, but it's also costly and we weren't going to be able to fire. It doesn't matter where you go in Los Angeles, you're not going to be able to fire a rocket engine. So yeah, um, it started in Colorado with the hope of having some sort of proximity and Kind of having a test facility that's more closely tied to the community, to be honest, every rocket test facility I'd worked in is middle of nowhere, um, no access to anyone allowed, but.

AI assessment note: “Yes. Um, I, I really, I was living in West Texas”

Q group called the Rocket Propulsion Lab, which, from what I guess, like, this was a student group that, like, had the intention to send a rocket to space, which they actually did after, a few years after you left, I think they did in 2019, and you were a student there in like, like the late 2000, um, early 2010, um, What, what, um, like, what did that group do?

A So it, you, you hit the nail on the head. It was really an entirely undergraduate student group. We had a ton of autonomy. We had a professor that kind of oversaw our kind of safety and overall activities, but We had a small amount of funding and some really innovative founders. And, you know, now that I'm thinking back, kind of the founders behind that lab are probably the, the first, uh, ounce of entrepreneurialism that I got me, but there was a, a composites and kind of think, think airframe or aerodynamics expert, um, you know, as 18 years old, as, as much of an expert as you can be. And then there was a propulsion expert, another 18 year old who had built hobby rockets in his free time. And they had a competition to see if the person doing the propulsion could design a powerful enough rocket to tear apart the structures that the other student made. And so that was really how the group started. And, uh, you got it right. We had the ultimate vision of being the first student group in space, which they ultimately achieved.

AI assessment note: “It was really an entirely undergraduate student group. We had a ton of autonomy.”

Q Of, of, of an engine. So, uh, help me understand how you actually build, I mean, are there like off the shelf components that, that you can get to start to construct a prototype?

A Very few. And the first hot fire is a nice, really fun milestone to celebrate, but it Anyone who's been through engine development knows you've got to fire the thing thousands of times before you really understand it and can go sell it. But for us, the, the really important piece there was as a startup that didn't have a ton of money, we, we could take a lot of kind of outsized risk. We didn't do a lot of testing before firing that engine. We just built the first one and went and fired it and blew it up. And that's an approach we've really stuck with that you want to learn and you want to fail as quickly as possible.

AI assessment note: “Very few. And the first hot fire is a nice, really fun milestone”