The Exchanges

Q Well, pulling out a bit broader, what is the current state of play between public policy and space companies?

A Um, the, the job of regulating space companies is split, um, into multiple different agencies, which, you know, sort of makes it a little trickier on the startup side, um, to navigate that all, um, to give you like, you know, the three simple examples, not everybody's regulated by all three of these, but let's say the three that are, you know, sort of most important to Varda. Um, we get regulated by the FAA, both as a part of our launch on SpaceX's rocket, as well as our re-entries. Um, we get regulated by the FCC for the radio spectrum that we use to communicate with our satellite. Um, and they specify, so for example, recently the FCC actually specified a particular frequency for ISAM, which is in space assembly and manufacturing. Um, and so for, you know, basically spacecraft like ours, we're now assigned a particular frequency. We still have to apply for it, get a license. Um, and then you're also regulated by NOAA, um, which, you know, sounds surprising because I think it's like, uh, the, National Ocean something administration? I forget. But anyways, it's kind of funny that an ocean, you know, regulator is regulating space, but they actually regulate all of the cameras that are up in orbit. So if you have a camera pointing anywhere, NOAA is responsible for that. There's been some talk about, do you centralize some of these functions into a, you know, a single vertical spa…

AI assessment note: “the job of regulating space companies is split, um, into multiple different agencies”

Q What are the biggest challenges for this year?

A Well, I mean, I think it comes back to, you know, uh, uh, what I talked about, which is at the end of the day, none of these companies make sense unless they're making revenues. Those revenues ultimately have to come through budgets from the DOD. Those budgets have to be approved by Congress. You know, the president, you know, sort of Congress, you know, have both said that we are freezing those budgetary levels. Now DOD is allowed to do some, uh, reprioritization and reallocation of that. It still has to reflect what, you know, sort of Congress and the president, you know, told them to prioritize. Um, but that's gonna be a real challenge for a lot of companies. There are a lot of companies that almost certainly had, you know, appropriations requests in for fiscal year 25 that now have gotten zeroed out. And so, um, you're having to navigate that. And so, yeah, I think whenever you see that there's a, um, Uh, huge mismatch between investor expectations and the inflow of capital, and then the end customer, which ultimately is the federal government, um, and their signaling. There's probably, you know, something that, you know, is a little, a little wrong there. And so the fact that you're seeing the most insane pricing that I've ever seen for defense tech deals, while Congress is literally saying, like, we are not giving people more revenue this year. We've got to think about th…

AI assessment note: “none of these companies make sense unless they're making revenues. Those revenues ultimately have to come”

Q Okay, bringing it back to the astronauts that were stranded in space for nine months, their bodies were affected, and the whole process of this was also just chaotic. Could you explain more about what happened and why? Was there a deep state involved? Like, what's going on here?

A Yeah, I mean, to backtrack all the way to the beginning of the program, right, you know, uh, Obama era, we shut down the space shuttle, which, you know, almost certainly was the right thing to do, but it left us somewhat stranded in terms of using that same word again, stranded. Um, without an ability to basically get astronauts up to orbit. And so for a period of years, we were dependent just on the Ruskies, uh, to get up using their Soyuz capsule. And so in order for us to get American astronauts on the ISS, which, you know, is a, uh, a decent chunk of it is, you know, American modules. We would have to basically go send out our, you know, astronauts to Russia to have them, uh, sent up and down. Um, uh, in that same time period, NASA started to think about, you know, basically what would, uh, you know, sort of, um, commercial contract look like, uh, for crew resupply. Um, and the original thinking and NASA's predisposition was to do a single contractor for it. The plan was for it to be Boeing. Um, they were marching down that plan. They were weeks away from announcing. Um, they backtracked in the final moments and they're deciding, okay, actually we should have a second provider. Um, the entire structure of the contract is kind of insane in that they literally just, you know, gave SpaceX the same workload, but said the price for you doing it is going to be half of Boeing. So …

AI assessment note: “to backtrack all the way to the beginning of the program”

Q On Twitter, uh, today I did read that, um, Varda is a part of enabling a new field of research in gravity, um, for science and manufacturing. So how do you describe what materials will work on and the effects in gravity?

A Yeah, so what we found very surprising when we first started the company is if you looked at like the past, you know, sort of, 40 years of research, you know, I would argue that it is, you know, sort of closer to monkeys throwing darts at a dartboard versus like a true scientific process where people were basically taking however their pharmaceutical process worked down here on Earth, and just running that exact same process in space, and then just seeing if the result was different effectively, um, and that was effectively, you know, it, that was where the scientific field basically ended. Um, Our sort of thesis, you know, at this point almost a year and a half, two years ago was, um, well, if the whole point of going up to microgravity is that you're studying how the material is sensitive to gravity, is that not something that you can do down here on Earth? Because yes, we all experience, you know, sort of one G at the surface, you know, of the planet, um, and you can't decrease, you know, gravity here on the surface of the planet, but you can simulate an increase in gravity, right? You can basically spin up a large scale centrifuge and use that to experience effectively two G, three G, four G. It's sort of the opposite of going to orbit, right? The reason you experience zero gravity in orbit is because the centrifugal force basically perfectly cancels out the gravitational f…

AI assessment note: “use that to actually study basically what is the effect of various material systems”

Q So, to kind of just dive right in, your launch, uh, Varda's launch was my number one newsletter of 23. Now the landing will make it full circle. This was a huge accomplishment for the space sector, and it seems like every week there's a new announcement for Varda and your team. Could you share more about Varda, its founding, and the launch into space? Yeah.

A Um, you know, so the idea behind VARTA, you know, was predicated, um, on an idea that, you know, I can't necessarily say, you know, I came up with. They're actually, you know, sort of papers from the 19 sixties that, you know, sort of theorize about the value of doing sort of solid state crystalline, you know, work across a variety of materials in the environment of microgravity, uh, you get in space. Um, and you know, that work has been expanded on obviously over the past, you know, sort of, uh, you know, 60 years in particular really took off in the space, you sort of You know, Skylab, Space Shuttle, and then ultimately, you know, sort of ISS era. Um, I really, you know, sort of got fascinated with this, you know, sort of, uh, you know, let's say scientific field and world, uh, in the, you know, sort of, you know, sort of, you know, sort of painted a potential path to, you know, humanity having an industrial future in space rather than just an exploratory future in space. Um, and I felt like that was the way that you really made something truly sustainable, right? You know, I think a part of why, you know, the Apollo era, you know, while it had a lot of success, ultimately didn't turn into a, you know, sort of permanent, Capability the community had, which was ultimately entirely based off of state budgets and entirely exploratory. But ultimately, if you look at everything fr…

AI assessment note: “the idea behind VARTA, you know, was predicated, um, on an idea”

Q Anyways, getting back to, like, but with your newborn, right, like, you probably have an entirely new perspective on the world. I would love to learn, like, How has that changed your outlook on life, and building, and creating an ambitious future, um, having a child?

A Yeah, I mean, um, you know, I, I feel like sort of the Eastern European Slavic culture is, you know, sort of very, you know, sort of pro-family, pro-children, pro, you know, sort of pro-future, pro-building, uh, part of why I actually think like, you know, sort of Western Europe is, you know, headed into probably a multi-decade decline, and it's gonna regulate itself to death, while Eastern Europe probably, you know, steadily starts to, you know, sort of exit from the EU, um, and is, you know, sort of pro-mathematics and pro-building. And so I go to like, you know, sort of the capital of, you know, Bulgaria, Sofia, And I feel like I just see like way more interesting startups than I do in like London at this point. Um, and so, you know, the things you start to extrapolate that out, you can just see it in like, you know, GDP growth in London has effectively been flat now for almost like 15 years. Whereas like in Bulgaria, the last 15 years, it's been like, you know, a 10 or, and again, they're starting off in different bases, but still you continue to extrapolate that trend for another 10 years. And like Western Europe is going to look like a second world country while Eastern Europe actually just sort of rises to the top. Um, So, you know, I think, you know, having, having a kid, you know, is something that I felt like I was, you know, sort of always, you know, very, um, excite…

AI assessment note: “in some ways I didn't feel like, you know, sort of that massive a shift”