The Exchanges

Q Here's more from my conversation with Steve Altimas, whose company is planning to send its first lunar lander to the south pole of the moon early next year. Okay, let's talk about your, um, your launch. I know there have been some scheduled launches that have been nixed. There are a variety of reasons, weather, and other challenges, and your next window is, I think, is January of twenty-twenty-four, right?

A Yes, we had a launch window in November, but, you know, there's priorities going off the launch pad all the time, and so we have to fit within the manifest of what's going off of launch pad A at Kennedy Space Center. So SpaceX has given us a launch date for January 12th of 2024. Um, we have a five day window to get off. Uh, there's only a certain amount of days per month that you can fly to the moon where it's in the right position, uh, to where we can land at our designated landing site. Um, so we're very excited about it. The lander has been ready for some time now, uh, since the end of September, uh, and we will ship it Later this month, uh, to the Cape for processing. We'll take Christmas off and, uh, get it, uh, final, fine touches to it and get it on its spacecraft adapter and get it, uh, encapsulated on the Falcon nine and get it out to the launch pad, do a rehearsal and launch it on, uh, I think the launch window opens at 11:59 PM on January 12th.

AI assessment note: “SpaceX has given us a launch date for January 12th of 2024.”

Q All right, so the idea, the idea was to develop capabilities to land material or, or humans specifically on the moon. Was that, is that what you were aiming to do?

A At the time, uh, no, it actually wasn't. What we were trying to do was to provide solutions for those industries, and so we were inventing Uh, we had 24 inventions in the first five years of the company. We had four ventures that were, uh, spinning out of the company. Uh, we were just producing, uh, things. One of them was a, uh, long range over the horizon fixed wing drone, a 55 pound class drone that could avoid traffic in the airspace and, and fly over the horizon for pipeline inspections. Well, that all was well and good. And we were kind of, you know, um, bouncing on the bottom somewhat, you know, single digit millions revenue, um, not really gaining traction with any of the inventions. Um, we found it difficult to work in the healthcare industry and to provide medical devices in that, um, institutional bureaucracy of, of, you know, healthcare. Uh, we had trouble breaking into oil and gas, and, and the drones were restricted by the, uh, FAA. The regulations weren't allowing them to fly in the airspace. Where it turned, Guy, was in 2018, uh, the National Security Council and the National Space Council declared that the moon was now of strategic interest.

AI assessment note: “At the time, uh, no, it actually wasn't.”

Q does, like, um, I mean, how would it work in terms of, like, you know, claiming a part of the moon to, um, you know, to extract material? Like, who, who owns, how do we figure out who owns what? I mean, I know that there are international treaties, but what happens if, you know, your lander discovers, like, some rare earth mineral in that area? Who can claim that?

A That's a great question. Um, and there's very little, um, policy and governance, but there is some framework. So the Outer Space Treaty governs how we live and work in space, but how do we live and work on the moon? The United States offered to the world, um, an agreement called the Artemis Accords, and it's very friendly to To allowing commercialization rights of the moon. So if you land on the moon, you can bring back samples and own those samples, uh, per the Artemis Accords. It's not where they belong to the sovereign governments. They can belong to commercial companies. And I think that's important for the future of building a space economy centered around the moon. Um, and we're, I'm sure, uh, there'll be a lot of legal opinions when the first samples come back.

AI assessment note: “if you land on the moon, you can bring back samples and own those samples”

Q humans. They just want to move around equipment, you know, or, or be delivery vehicles. Do you, do you think that, that, that, I mean, you want to be the first private company to land, uh, Um, you know, to have a lander, um, successfully land on the moon. Do you also want to move human beings to the moon one day? Is that, is that part of your plan?

A Uh, yes, we actually, um, are in the competition today. Uh, we submitted a, uh, proposal to NASA, um, to build their lunar terrain vehicle, which is the. F one 50 pickup truck. That would take astronauts around the surface of the moon. And it's a very interesting and very disruptive kind of procurement that NASA is doing where we would own the rover and we would use it autonomously and commercially to move things around the surface of the moon. But NASA would buy it from us as a service when the astronauts are present. So they would take control of it. They would operate it with astronauts on board. And when the astronauts leave, We would operate it, and we would move material, and we would move logistics, and we would do assembly with a robotic arm, um, and, and make a business out of it. I think it's really exciting to see the kind of partnerships that we're creating with the government to, who is now embracing the commercial model, and seeing how we blend the federal dollar with the investment dollar To stretch the capabilities of this country and, and, and to our, our speed and execution, uh, of moving out into space and intuitive machines bid that to develop that. And so we will deliver it to the surface if we win. Um, and then we'll defer to NASA when they want to put their astronauts in it. So, um, it's a really exciting model. And I, I think that's a, a breakthrough in …

AI assessment note: “Uh, yes, we actually, um, are in the competition today.”