The Exchanges

Q So what does scale actually mean for impulse?

A Yeah. Being able to simultaneously execute a number of things. So, you know, we are, uh, uh, we've got our Helios program, uh, which is the build effectively at the third stage for medium launch vehicles. That's building a, uh, rocket stage. You know, it's like, it's roughly the same size as like the second stage of Falcon one, for example, like as a size of the, the, the program, that's a big undertaking. We've got our, our Mira, uh, product line, which is now scaling to where we have to build one of those per month, uh, at this point. That's a big deal because we both need the engineers to develop it and the production to get it done. Um, and then we've got aspirations on building a number of other vehicles as well. Um, and so being able to simultaneously do multiple things is not easy for a company. Um, so scaling for us is really how do we hire great engineers across all of those programs? Um, there's a saying in, in, uh, in the Valley that, uh, you know, startups don't die from, uh, starvation. They die from indigestion. Right, and I think it's a balance that we always try to find the right place to strike of, hey, should we actually go out and try and execute on this amazing business opportunity, or should we lead by the wayside? And as I think we've maybe talked about a little before, there's not that many great opportunities in the space business segment, and so when we…

AI assessment note: “Being able to simultaneously execute a number of things.”

Q The company was started in November, twenty-twenty-one. What were the early days of product development like?

A Yeah, so I only got here three years ago, so, um, I don't exactly know what the first couple of years were like, um, but I know that, you know, Tom, uh, left SpaceX, he was there for almost 20 years, and, uh, I think tried real hard to be retired, um, and found himself, uh, nights and weekends building rocket engines in his garage, uh, as he is wont to do, uh, and, uh, talked to some folks, uh, that, that we all know well, and, and, and they said, hey, look, you're doing this anyway, why don't you have a company around this, this work? Um, and so he's able to quickly capitalize the company when you're, when you're, Tom Mueller, you start a company, you can just kind of raise your hand and people have been sending checks your way, uh, and that's kind of what happened in, in the early days of the company. And then, uh, as a result of that, starting the company was also able to attract, uh, a lot of really strong talent quickly, uh, people that he'd worked with in the past who were maybe ready for a new thing. And so this meant that your company immediately is well capitalized with extremely strong technical talent, kind of best in class talent. Uh, then the question is, okay, well, what do we do? And, and where's the real market opportunity? Um, when I got here, the company had been working on the Mira vehicle for a little while, and, um, it had, Mira went from not existing to, u…

AI assessment note: “Mira went from not existing to, uh, being built and ready to fly in about 14 months”

Q good keynote on the national security advantage of being able to reposition in space, so I, I'd love for you to go deeper into that, and especially as competition between U.S. and our adversaries just increases more and, you know, we can get into Golden Dome too, but, but could you just explain that a little bit further of the current state of that and why it's been so important?

A It's probably useful to start by just framing up what space defense is historically, um, For, for, for most of the, the existence of Space Force and our, our nation's opportunities in space, it's, it's been assets in space that help the warfighter on the ground. Um, a really good example of this is GPS constellation. So GPS provides, you know, position, navigation, and timing to warfighters. It's how the Air Force drops precision munitions and things like that. Um, it's also become a social good. Uh, for, for the world. It's a amazing thing for, um, uh, for each of us. I think I've seen estimates where it's something like a trillion dollars in economic value every year, um, really rely on, on GPS. Um, uh, but so GPS is, is like the one canonical example of these assets in space that provide benefits of the warfighter underground, but we also have things like, uh, the missile warning tracking layer. So anybody shoots off an ICDM somewhere, we've, Find out. Uh, things like secure communications. So how do you tell somebody else that somebody shot an ICBM? Uh, so historically we've invested, you know, tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in these assets in space, light value on the ground. Um, they've traditionally mostly been in, in medium earth orbit and geostationary orbits and not really in Leo. Um, the, the thing that's happened recently is I, I think we've been able t…

AI assessment note: “It's probably useful to start by just framing up what space defense is historically”

Q We're in Southern California, specifically LA, and there's a ton of space companies here now. So what is the competitive market look like? And could you walk through different kinds of sets of companies, especially, I know you don't like this word, but could you walk through what a tug is and define that and how you're not a tug?

A Yeah, I think people, people thought that there was this market for this, this kind of tugboat service between parts of Leo, and, and they thought that that was a thing, like, if you, I missed the whole SPAC thing. I don't know if you're around during the SPAC stuff, uh, but, but I, I kind of got back into space, like, just after all those kind of stocks tanks, and it was kind of like, I don't know, going to a frat party, like, but, but at, like, seven o'clock in the morning, there was, like, a bunch of half, From silo cups around, and, and there's a bunch of people kind of laying on the floor. It's like, wow, I miss a really good party here, and now I maybe have to clean up. I'm not sure. Um, but, uh, so I, so I, so I missed all this, but I gather that in this back nonsense, there was sort of this, uh, big pitch around how we're going to just be moving things around Leo all the time. We're going to be, you know, picking them up from one spot and dropping them off to another spot, and we're going to be, you know, going up on transporters and tugging them around, and Um, uh, just generally that market has not manifested at all. Uh, there, there's been almost no, uh, examples of this actually getting transactions actually completed in the market or this kind of Leo to Leo move things around, you know, people throw in that, in that bucket, um, like orbital debris remediation, righ…

AI assessment note: “just generally that market has not manifested at all.”