Spreadsheeting Our Way to the Age of Infinite w/ Meagan Crawford #41

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the age of infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which in turn lead to the renaming of periods into ages. You've personally just experienced the information age and what a ride it has been. Now consider that you might now be living on the cusp, the transition to a new age, the age of infinite.

An infinite age set is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefined lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources. The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that has come to life is together, we create a new definition of the future. The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hut Foundation.

We were named by NASA, where we look to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon, the moon hut, through the accelerated development of an Earth and space space ecosystem. Then to use the endeavors, the paradigm shifting thinking and the innovations and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species. Today, we're going to be exploring spreadsheeting our way to the age of infinite. And with us is Megan Crawford. How are you, Megan? I'm wonderful.

Thanks for having me, David. Love having you here. So let me just short, brief intro to Megan. She's the managing partner of the a managing partner of the VC Fund, the Space Fund. So kind of apropos being in the space industry, which means she also is an investor. She's also done advising. She runs her own podcast called Mission Eve Podcast. Let's get right on to the program. Megan, do you have an outline for us? I do. You do. I'm so excited. What what's not give me the outline.

Start with number 1. Alright. We've got 7 points here. Number 1 is, and I have to give credit where credit is due. It's a saying that's, my cofounder at Space Fund and long term long term mentor, Rick Tomlinson, always, always says, which is nobody stays until somebody pays. Nobody pays. Okay. Next. Number 2 is the case for Space Force as an economic driver. Driver, next. Number 3, launch is a solved problem. Ipso facto, the time to invest in launch has passed. Ipso facto. The time my favorites.

The time, to invest in launch has passed. Invest in launch has passed. Next. Number 4. What's being launched? The constellation craze. Constellation craze. Next. And then, 5, 6, and 7 are along the same theme here. 5 is where is the economic opportunity in the near term? So I'm calling that 3 to 5 years. Hold on. Economic activity. Or opportunity. Economic oh, opportunity. In the near term? Near term, 3 to 5 years. And then we'll do medium term, 5 to 7, and long term, 7 plus. 7 plus.

Okay. So let's start with your number 1. Help me understand this. Nobody stays until somebody pays. Yep. So in the theme of today's podcast of spreadsheeting, right, I tend to live and die by the numbers. And so so let's start with a few numbers here. The United States spent $28,000,000,000 to land men on the moon between 1960 and 1973, which adjusted for inflation is over $280,000,000,000 today. Okay. The NASA budget was 4% of the national budget in the late sixties.

Today, it's less than 1 half of 1%. Less than 1 half of 1. Yep. Okay. And and then this is not necessarily a numerical point, but an important geopolitical point. The new cold war with China is not a race to the moon, but a race for the high ground from a military perspective. Mhmm. And so let me kind of weave these three points together for you here.

During the Apollo program, which, I was, unfortunately not alive yet for, but, it's, it, you know, created a a a fervor, just not in the United States, but around the world. Everybody believed this was the beginning. This was the beginning of humanity's breakout into space. We were finally gonna settle the high frontier, and all we ended up with instead was flags and footprints. Right? Why is that? Because we did not go to the moon in an economically sustainable way.

We went to the moon as a geopolitical stunt, as part of our cold war with China, as a point of national You mean with Russia? You mean with Russia? With Russia. I'm sorry. With Russia. I'm I'm moving ahead to the next point. Yeah. That's okay. I just Yeah. You can't With the USSR. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And so and so, you know, it was that's why we ended up with only what, you know, how we refer to it as flags and footprints. Right? There's there's no long term presence on the moon.

It was not the beginning of, of this, you know, human outreach into space because it was done for political reasons, not for economic reasons. There is there is no way to sustain a NASA budget at 4% of the national budget. There's no way to spend $280,000,000,000 to send, you know, men back to the moon as as a political stunt, especially in a post COVID world.

And so, you know, so really the question is, how do we get to that sustainable off world economy, that, that will allow us to stay and stay sustainably. And that only comes if there's real valid economic reasons to go, and there's private capital, preferably a combination of public and private capital, is gonna is what it's gonna take to open the frontier. Okay. I mean, it's it's it's what we're people have been talking about. So how do we get to the sustainable? So that's a great question.

And and that's by, you know, basically, by investing in business models that make sense, that provide, not just reasonable, but higher than average, risk adjusted, as we say, returns. Because space is new, because it's not well understood by the investment community, the returns have to be outsized enough to outweigh that risk. Okay. So you need to get a high return for the patient capital or for the risk that's involved where you could lose everything. Right. And that's the patient capital.

I'm glad you brought that up because that's another important factor in this is that there is a misconception, around space investing that's twofold. 1, it's too rich for my blood. Right? It's too it requires too much capital. And number 2, that, that capital has to be tied up for too long.

A typical investment time frame, whether you're talking about a venture capitalist, whether you're talking about, you know, somebody nearing retirement, you know, you've gotta look at an investment windows usually in the 7 to 10 year time frame. Whereas SpaceX and Blue Origin are both 20 years old, and neither of them are going public anytime soon. So there's no investor exits there. So you have to look at that exit timeline, as a really important factor in investing in these private companies.

And, SpaceVent has done some research around this, and we found that the average age at exit is 7 years, which does fit within that typical investment timeline. But until kind of this year where you saw a flurry of space related stacks over the last few months, These space exits were not very big or grand or had much fanfare. And so, it was harder for people to believe you could get an exit within that time frame. Well, I I I would I would complicate that a little bit.

It's not that the exit is because the companies are profitable. Many it's because the way in which individuals are valuing the companies today at at a at an x in many cases that's far beyond what people would can seem rational is turning out to be a windfall for those investors, but it's not because that they're highly profitable businesses. In the case of the SPACs, in most of the cases of the SPACs, that is true.

We have seen a couple of companies with some revenue, which was really exciting to me. Yay. Companies with revenue going public. Love it. I Rocket Labs' fire. But but a lot of the exits, the the ones that didn't have much fanfare, a lot of these acquisition and acquisitions that have been happening quietly in the industry over time, A lot of those exits were, based on, you know, a multiple of revenue, on real revenue. That's why the companies were acquired.

And so, you know, that's kind of the part of the exit ecosystem that has not been, well published, let's say, to the public, but is a very robust and real and growing, part of the the entire NewSpace ecosystem. So if I was to remove the and it's not that it has to be removed, but just for my own sake of understanding.

If we were to remove all government funded spending to all of these companies where their contracts are purely, in the United States, DOD, Department of Defense, the NASA or the intelligence community, or we go over to Europe and it's not the European Space Agency and we go over to, and we could travel the world. If we were to remove all of that, would these companies have still been profitable? That's a great question.

So governments currently account for a full 25 percent of the global space economy. So regardless of whether or not you as a company have received r and d funding from a government, from a government body, you can't ignore the government as a customer when they comprise 25% of the sector that you're working at. So governments are an important part of the sector, whether it's the r and d funding or or as a customer.

And so, so would would the industry fall down without 25% of the the economic driver of the industry? It might well, honestly. And and so, you know, that's one of the things one of the reasons I mentioned earlier. This industry needs a combination of both private and public capital to to survive and be as robust as we want it to be. Well well, that's the reason the reason I'm asking is I get questions that says, well, there are people commenting.

Well, if Elon Musk didn't make the money off of the US government, would they be alive today? Would that have happened? And their first contract for it was a $200,000,000 came out of it was a government contract that enabled them to take the next big jump in their in their positioning. And I do understand what you just mentioned. Pfizer, which did not get any money for the development of the COVID vaccine, was not part of project warp drive.

Individuals saying, well, they were part of warp warp drive. And I said, no. No. No. No. The fact that they had a customer who was willing to buy their product enabled them and made their investment portfolio worthwhile to put money into it, but they still were investing on their own to secure a contract that is commercially viable. Right. And so similar type of scenario.

I just wanted to know if these companies, so especially the smaller end companies, would would a large portion of them not even be around if not for these entities? I think that there's some truth in that. I think that the best of the best companies would be able to survive on private capital alone, especially through the r and d stage, which can be expensive.

But having that early government funding to cover r and d costs really positions these companies to take private capital, once they have, let's say, a working prototype, which means the company can raise at a higher valuation, which means the founders don't get diluted nearly as much Mhmm. Which is which is in a in a sense good for everybody in the community.

It it reduces that early risk, that early technical risk for the investor, and increases the value of the company before they ever have to fundraise. So, you know, my in my ideal world, we have a a well functioning ecosystem that includes both the private and public capital at the right time to make the most sense for the company life cycle. And so that's that early r and d funding from the government to cover technical risk.

Then private capital comes in to help the company scale, build business team around the tech, all of that. And then, at the next stage, the government comes in as a customer once the company has scaled to the point where it can fulfill, larger government contracts. And so, so we we have you you break it up into 3 phases. There's the initial, which is government. You have the the middle phase, and then the government is the customer. As one of several customers, hopefully. Right?

You don't ever want just one customer. I tell people all the time. One customer does not a business make. Yeah. Right? And so, having the government or having multiple parts of the government as customers can be can be great as part of a, you know, combination of of commercial and government portfolio of customers. Right? Mhmm. Okay. Got it. So going back to sustainability, how do you get that sustainability out of out of what you're seeing here? What we just described.

So it's all about, you know, the kind of the first wave of companies making a good, a good return, then investors will take some portion of that return and reinvest it into the same economy that now they're learning more about and have more confidence in. And so you get a kind of a virtuous cycle. Right?

And so that's how you get to economic sustainability is by continuing to grow, continuing to show good returns for investors, continuing to reduce timelines to return, increase ROI, return on investment, and continue to build the the hype about the industry as well. Some of this, spec craziness earlier this year has done has done a good job of that, but the industry as a whole could be much better about, you know, we're really good about, yay, Rockets.

But we're not very good about, hey, guess what? Look at this company who just exited in 6 years at, you know, 10 x what the initial investors put in and little yay. Let's talk about that for a minute. You you know what I mean? Right. And so, we could get a little bit better about overall as an industry talking about the the outsized returns that this industry is capable of providing.

You might plan on covering this later, but one of the questions that immediately is coming to mind is what if or if there is a sort of collapse in an industry? What happens to the whole ecosystem when this these rocket companies, for example, become the main focus? And I'll give you my my take. You can fix adjust it. Over a 150 space launch companies out there today, maybe 20% of them are actually doing something that's up in space, if that is even the number.

If you start to see a cascading number of these failing simultaneously, what does that do? So that's, that's number 3. We'll talk about that number 3 if you don't mind. Okay. So I I will share so you do have a context and this is not because of who you're associated with, but both Deep Space Industries and, Planet Resources. However, they turned at the end and bought out, the the Luxembourg put in a lot of money, different groups put money in, and then 2 companies just disappeared off the map.

And while I was in Luxembourg, I spoke at the conference and I was lured to the conference because 500 people had attended the year before, Luxembourg had invested. The next year I show up and there's there's thousands of people attend this conference, so there's a space component to it, but only 75 people were in the audience. And it was when I asked individuals, it was because they felt that they just got taken advantage of as a country.

And there was a large, negative feeling towards the industry. So we can address that later, but that's one of the reasons when I hear we have good returns. We have 7 years, But there's there are those that flame out in a big way. Absolutely. And that's always a risk of investing. Right? It's a risk of a 100% loss in any investment you make. That's the risk component, you know. But as with any nascent, ecosystem or or sector, you're going to have a lot of failures beginning.

And then the percentage although the number of failures will continue to increase as the number of businesses increases, hopefully, that percentage of failure starts to decrease. But you will always have, you know, the risk of complete loss in any investment that you make.

Are we seeing are are we on the in your opinion, are we on the upswing of the actually seeing more of these as a higher percentage, or are we far away from seeing what you're talking about a percentage of failures decreasing as an overall percentage of the ecosystem? I believe that we're definitely headed that direction. And one of the things that I'm most excited to see is what I call round 2 entrepreneurs.

And the industry is at an age now where we've got some really, really solid round 2 entrepreneurs. And these are people who have built a business that has failed, built a business that has had a medium amount of success, or built a business that's been successful, been through the entire life cycle, come out the other side, learned a lot of valuable lessons, and are now going at it for round 2, starting a new business based on those lessons learned.

Those are some of the most valuable entrepreneurs you can have in an ecosystem. And we're we're seeing a lot of those right now. So I think that's a really good indication that we're kind of rounding the hump. What are what are some of the names that pop out pop off pop out? So, you know, one that I I'll talk about, I always like to compliment him as, CEO of 1 of Space Fund's portfolio companies, OrbitFab. He was the CEO of Deep Space Industries, company you just mentioned.

And, he was a he had been a technical founder, took some time off, went and got an MBA, and came back into the industry to start Orbit Fab, which is, doing refueling depots, gas stations in space. And so, you know, and and DSI did have That's, Daniel Faber. Daniel Faber. Yep. Daniel Faber. Sorry. I thought I had said his name. Thank you. It's Dan Faber. No worries.

Daniel has a play Daniel has a place in my heart because as I entered the space industry and he was at deep space and he was right behind our offices at NASA Ames, and I was introduced to him. And I told him what we were working on, And I call him the human calculator because he said, no, no. Wait, wait, give me a second. And you could see his brain moving. I mean, it's amazing.

And he says, no, no, no. What we could do is we could grab this and do this and do this and throw the asteroid at the moon. And I'm thinking, wow. And so he made me rethink many constructs past that because of the way he addressed his thinking. Yeah. He's absolutely brilliant.

But, again, having this kind of first round of entrepreneurial experience and then being able to apply all of those lessons learned, you know, and and full disclosure, I was chief operating officer at Deep Space Industries while he was chief executive officer. So I worked very closely with him at that time. And just watching his evolution as he's become this absolutely phenomenal entrepreneur and and just great leader at Orbit Fab, you know, is is is been excellent to watch.

And I've seen my business partner, Rick Tomlinson, go through this as well. He's been through he he's he's been a little too early with a lot of the businesses he started over the years because he's a visionary, and he can see what's coming down the pipe. But if your customers aren't ready to buy your product till 3 years from now, it doesn't really for 5 years from now. Right? You could be visionary, and congratulations. You're written as the visionary.

But, but, you know, learning those lessons by having been through those experiences, you know, you have the scars to prove it. And as long as you're, you know, go stick your head in a hole and say, woe is me. The industry wasn't ready for me yet. You say, no. What's the industry ready for now? Let's go do that thing. You know? And that's that's an attitude that we absolutely love to see.

So how do we get to to a point where besides governments or where are you seeing going back to your nobody stays until somebody pays? So how do we get to that point? Yeah. How do we get to that? So that's a that's a great question. It starts you know, the industry is still at a very early stage, and what the industry needs now is seed capital and growth capital. And that need can largely be met by the venture capital community, the angel community.

But as these companies get into later growth stage realms, we're gonna need different financial mechanisms just like you find in other industries. Everything from, you know, from debt, you know, kind of longer term low interest financing for infrastructure projects. You know, we're going to need, futures and options markets. We're going to need all of the other parts of a of a robust and working economy.

And there are a lot of brilliant people working right now to help solve those kind of bigger gaps that are coming in the future. But but right now, you know, Venture Capital, Angel Capital is really instrumental to getting this industry up and moving in in a sustainable way that's focused on, as I mentioned earlier, those those shorter term good return on investment numbers that will continue to keep capital flowing in. Each interview is very different. Sometimes I don't have a lot of questions.

Sometimes I do. For some reason today, I do. But the book it's, if we're looking at I see your the statement, nobody stays until somebody pays. In your mind, is that customer or VC at this moment or or capital? The VC capital is needed to get to the customer capital. And then, you know, so it it's gotta it's gotta be all of the above. Right? You have to have an early funding ecosystem that gets the companies up and running into the point where they can service customers.

You have to have customers who, who are doing well enough themselves to buy the products and services. Right? Yeah. So then that means they have to have customers. They have to have had some early financing to get them to the point where they are. And then, like I said, you need these kind of, later stage growth mechanisms. And then, and then you need a robust, you know, public market that's ready to receive these companies as they, as they get to that stage.

So you have exits for the early investors. Okay. So anything else you wanna add to nobody stays until somebody pays? I think we're good there. Okay. So let's take your second one. The case for Space Force as an economic driver, and I will stop you for one moment before you start on it. For those who are listening in, there is an absolutely fantastic podcast by Peter Gerritsen who defined his version of the Space Force.

So if you would like to dig deeper after this, you will have an option to go to that one. Okay. So let's go on to 2. Okay. Great. And so this one, I just wanted to keep in as a bit of put in here as a bit of background, to kind of address something that that investors oftentimes see as a big risk with investing in space.

And to also kind of, build off of this comment I made in number 1 about, the new cold war with China is not a race to the moon, but a race for the high ground from a military perspective. And and so a lot of people, I think, look at Space Force, maybe rightly so as as, you know, a military unit, which it is. But I think that it's really important, part of the economic discussion as well. And so investors are oftentimes concerned about, let's call for shorthand, space pirates. Right?

Now this isn't necessarily gonna be guys on ships with funny hats. Right? But this could be, you know, robotic spacecraft that any spacecraft, for instance, that has the capability to do satellite servicing also has the capability to do satellite destruction. Right? Yeah. Just by the nature of of what the spacecraft can do. How do you protect from bad actors in space? And that is a risk that one has to consider when investing in in in the space industry.

And so one of the things to me that's, that's really talked about and is really important from this economic perspective is to think of Space Force as, you know, if Space Force were to exist to, quote, unquote, protect all American assets in space, both public and private. K? Yeah. Which is the terminology that I've heard tossed around. Okay. From from these folks. Right?

Now if that is in fact the case so one of the reasons we have such a robust global economy right now is because we have safe shipping lanes. We have safe shipping lanes, thanks to the great navies of the world, not the least of which is the US Navy. Right? Without those great navies, we would not have a global economic system where we could we could, reliably ship goods all around the world.

So having something like Space Force exist that provides some protection for American assets, both public and private, provides that equivalent of the US Navy protecting the global shipping lanes. So if you were a European, and you just heard that, or you're an African, or you're Southeast Asia, when you, and I could just a bunch of others, but we'll stop at that. Is this American imperialism again? American expansionism again? Is it is it about America?

No. It is hopefully the first step in creating a global group of allied navies or space forces that work together to protect the global shipping lanes. And there's, there's an analogy that's frequently made, when you're talking about, say, the, the policy and regulatory environment of asteroid mining. And the comparison is always to fishing in international waters. Right? Nobody owns that ocean. And when I move my ship out into international waters, I'm not claiming that I own the ocean.

When I drop my net in the waters, I'm not claiming that I have any ownership to any of that. But once I pull that net net up out of the water and dump the fish on onto my boat, now I own those fish. Right? And so, if the if the universe is seen as international waters, your your ship, your spaceship is flagged to your home country. And so, yes, if there's an emergency at sea, you hope the US Navy is somewhere nearby.

But if the British Navy is nearby or, you know, the the Singaporean Navy is nearby, they're gonna come help our allies at sea, and they're gonna come defend them from the pirates that are trying to steal the fish. Right? And so so that's the the eventual, you know, international cooperation that I would love to see in a case where the allies are coming together to protect assets and to protect the rights of individuals to utilize the assets of space, based on on international agreements.

It it's an interesting construct because if 2 two pieces of it. One one is that we have these things called oceans, which are very distinct. We have borders around each continent, each country. So that makes it very clear what on the surface is that boundary. If we were to then realize that there are 100 and 100 and 100 of submarines underneath, they're also floating in this space, but there are still some boundaries that can be defined. When you look up, how do you define that? So you know?

And that that's a good question. So right now, based on, you know, kind of some older agreements, the UN during the initial space age, there's, you know, the there's agreements that say, basically, you know, space belongs to everybody. When when the United States, planted our flag in the moon on the moon, we weren't claiming the moon as US territory. Right? And so that's, you know, it it is kind of internationally owned.

But then you look back at, several years back when we were at DeepSafe Industries, we we helped on some legislation that was passed here in the United States. There was similar legislation in Luxembourg and I think the UAE as well, that kind of set up this international water scenario that while you can maybe while you, individual, or country can land on the moon or land on an asteroid, you can't claim the moon or the asteroid as your own.

Whatever whatever resources you extract, you can you can claim as your own. And so, you know, thereby kind of reducing some of the geopolitical and legal risk around things like in space mining. But you have to have those kind of international agreements in place and, you know, bilateral, multilateral agreements that that kind of protect the the rights of commerce. Does it I tell me if I'm wrong here.

In the construct of, the the agreements, they've not been for private companies as more as much as they've been for countries. So the the US one was very much, you know, directed towards US companies and individuals having these rights, not the US government. Okay. I mean, yes, the US government by de facto. But the purpose of of the legislation was to give individuals and corporations as individuals, the right to do that. So the did anybody else sign up to this?

So like I said, there there was some legislation in the US, some legislation in Luxembourg, and some legislation in the UAE. To my knowledge, there has not been any bilateral or multilateral agreements between the countries yet. It was all just legislation passed within their borders. So in essence, if I go to the moon and I set up my place and somebody else wants to come and take my place, They're not supposed to, but they could. And So they're all we do is create war on earth.

Well, I I mean, in theory, if it's 2 corporations, I don't know, arises to the level of a of a real war, but maybe a, you know, a stock buyout battle on the New York Stock Exchange or something. You know you know what I mean? But, but, you know, there are kind of respected zones of noninterference, in space. But, again, who's there to enforce those if there's no space police? Right?

And so, you know, the idea is if you set up somewhere on the moon, you have a a zone, whatever you wanna call it, however many meters out, where it's not safe for us to both be operating spacecraft near each other. And and those are kind of international norms that are gonna have to be worked out over time. Do do you actually your opinion excuse me. I got something in my throat. Do you actually believe in the in the light of what's going on, Russian, China, the Europe excuse me.

I could take a drink. The European Space Agency just made an announcement or Europe has been looking at the fact that most of the launches are happening. A large percentage of them are happening through SpaceX, so they wanna ramp up their own activities. Do you believe we're closer to coming to these compromises and understanding, or do you believe this will be pushed on and not achieve that or anywhere in between?

I think that both Russia and China are gonna do whatever Russia and China wanna do. I think that the rest of the world will, you know, the legal and political always lags behind commerce. That's just the nature of our our economic you know, our our legal and political systems is that they don't write laws until there's a problem to write a law about. Right? So the problem has to happen first usually.

And so I think that you will start to see these things develop amongst the kind of the rest of the world, over the coming years, and I think that'll happen quite amicably. But then you've always got China and Russia will do what China and Russia will do. You know? We're we're also seeing the UAE has its own capabilities. We're seeing India with their capabilities.

And, personally, I'm a person of the world, not not to say complete globalist, but I've lived in Europe, and I've lived in in Asia past 10 years in in Hong Kong. I see a much different perspective as to what the future could be. And I'm given the pen and I'm not as as optimistic being pragmatic in the form of being optimistic.

I'm not as optimistic that in the short term or reasonably reasonable time that the individuals, companies, the the political wherewithal will be to create a multilateral, multi everything agreement that people are going to stick to because they'll see so many opportunities and such an expense that they've outlaid to get there. I I agree that it it there's not gonna be, you know, some multilateral everybody agrees to. This is now the international rule of law space thing.

I think that's probably gonna take decades to develop over time through, like I said, problems developing, solutions being figured out for those problems, norms developing over time. This is why everybody files their their corporate paperwork in Delaware. It's not because Delaware is better than any other state or cheaper than any other state to file in. It's because they have they have the most case law history.

So you can if there's ever a dispute, you can go and you're you're litigating it in Delaware, you can go back and there's 100, if not 1,000 of of of case law examples of the same problems being solved in the Delaware courts before. And so you have to kind of build up that body of case law. You have to build up that body of examples and and and put agreements together as they're needed, and then it it piecemeals together into a bigger, you know, patchwork quilt over time.

This is not something that's gonna have a single immediate solution. Interestingly brought up the case law side and the way you've approached it. Working in Luxembourg, one of the individuals I dealt with was constantly against America and against the British. And this individual would say, you all work on case law. We, in her country, work on an existing set of laws that everything is compared to.

So there is the school of thought that you come up with your policy, and it doesn't matter what case law is. It's always brought back to the origination of what the law is. The American system and many other systems are based upon this case law history, and it is for good and for bad. I would agree with that. I mean, you know, there's there's pros and cons to to every situation, but but the the beauty of case law in my mind is that it's based on real examples.

Like, you and I could sit here and, you know, spend 6 months hashing out what all the laws of the universe should be and makes perfect sense and everybody agrees, yep. This is it. This is the way it should be. But, you know, no good plan survives contact with reality. Right? Like, you have to real things have to happen, and you have to be able to go back and edit and inform and and modify, as real world examples come up. Yeah. If you went through my head, you'd see you'd see things flying.

And there's there's a scenario in the United States. I won't get into the specifics of it because it's too, it's too ignitable as a topic. But there's a a certain law that's been a challenge of a certain type of, public servant. And the law is that they cannot be brought in front of a, as a case unless there's a case that has existed before it. So therefore, there's never been a case. So no one can ever bring a case against it. And they just had something passed in the United States.

I don't know if I said that well, but they just had something where the Supreme Court, I believe, said, no, you cannot do that anymore. You cannot play that game. But for decades, the law was you can only bring a case against an individual if in fact it was there was a case that existed like it. And people would say, there's nothing like it, so we can't have a case. And for decades, people were able to get away with certain types of activities.

So my my question is, we're coming to the space side. I'm seeing 2 big things. I'm seeing the big space. There's a lot of space and space, and I'm seeing political wherewithal lacking on this planet. And I'm wondering when do you see when we're going to the case for the Space Force, Do you think the space the Space Force is a large enough answer? No. Not by itself. And that's the key. Right? Is that there has to be international counterparts.

We cannot be you know, the United States cannot be the police of the entire universe for a lot of reasons. Well, let's let me let me add an estimate. Do you believe space forces is the answer? Do you think that will be enough? I think that it's a good start. Right? I think that it's an important derisking factor. Right? Because looking at things as I do from the investor perspective, you know, it's interesting.

There's very few industries where geopolitical risk is a risk that you as a company, you as an investment fund have to be aware of and trying to solve. Right? Mhmm. And so yeah. So it's a big part of the geopolitical risk. It's a big part of the legal risk, and it's a big part of the just general physical risk of operating in space. Space forces can can really help that. Do we the Space Force was just formed in the United States.

Do you believe how long is your timeline for there to be an actual I don't even know what a Space Force would look like in 5 years or 7 years. I don't know. Is it lasers from Earth? Or are there going to be little people and ships up in the sea, up in the ocean in the air? I'm going the wrong way. What would that look like to you? I think that, you know, it's mostly like with most things in space, at least for the next few years, it's going to continue to be robotic.

But I do think you're gonna see some some interesting innovations that are going to allow a lot more people to be in space, but I think that's more in the 7, 10, 15 year time frame. Okay. So anything more to add to the case for the Space Force? No. I think we're good there. Okay. Launch is a solved problem, ipso facto. The time to invest in launch has passed. Yeah. Alright. So, again, let's start with some numbers.

In the 19 eighties, the shuttle, caught it took it was $20,000 per kilogram, roundabouts, to get things into space. A reusable Falcon 9 can do it for about 1500, 1,500 per kilogram. K? That is huge. That is that is just an absolutely mind boggling decrease, in in the cost of launch. K? Now there's gonna be a time in the not too distant future where we're talking about the cost of launch in the 100 of dollars per kilogram, not 1,000. Right? Yeah. But here's the thing.

You mentioned earlier, by Space Fund's account, there are currently a 162 live rocket or launch companies, excuse me, around the world. Yeah. Now I say live because we have, over time, tracked well over 200 companies, a lot of which have gone dark or gone zombie as we call them or or failed, publicly and brutally, or otherwise disappeared. So current count, as of today is a 162.

And, to date, LAUNCH has received 47% of the venture capital funding that has gone into space, yet accounts for less than 2% of the global space economy. 47% of the venture capital has gone into a subsector that accounts for less than 2% of the space economy. So let's talk about why that is. K. So if you're gonna go into that, can you give a definition to me what to you is the space economy? As, the I think the easiest way to define it is Bryce's yearly starburst, graphic that they put out.

Bryce Space and Technology does a great yearly overview of the space economy, and they break everything down by subsectors and and, and so you can kinda see where, that's where I also got this, you know, 25% of the global space economy comes from government budgets that comes out of the Bryce report as well. So to them, the space economy is a space company. Well, so Well, the reason I say it is the space economy to me is not that.

John Deere with their tractors that are being run by satellites, GPS systems on earth that would not exist, the transportation mechanisms that we have, that would not exist without the technology on Earth that leverages the space industry is also inclusive of that space economy. So in order to to put bounds, I I would agree with you in a in a kind of an esoteric sense, let's say. K. But in order to to do a real economic analysis, we have to have bounds. Right?

You know, otherwise, you could just keep going forever, and eventually, everything's related to space in some way. You know what I mean? But so the way that I would draw the line there is to say that the satellite operator who is providing the GPS services is definitely included in the space economy, and John Deere is not. However, when we're talking about the size of the economy, we're talking dollars and cents.

So John Deere's dollars that are being paid to the satellite company count as revenue in the satellite company's balance sheet. And so that does go into being counted as part of the global space economy. Does that make sense?

Yes. So if you're using GPS and there's no fee to use the GPS to be able to do your work and no one's making money off of it in terms of any specific company It's likely that John Deere has a contract with 1 of the GPS providers where John Deere pays that, and it's a feature that you get when you buy your tractor. And John Deere's got a long term contract with a GPS provider. Okay. Because somebody's paying for it. You know, I think they're always paying for it.

Some reason I'm always paying for something someplace, and and sometimes it's the sometimes well, is is bright when Bryce does those numbers, do they include, for example, the fact that the Russian or the Chinese or Are how how are they lot rolled in? Yeah. Are how how are they lot rolled in? You know, I'm not sure, especially with the Chinese.

You know, people ask me a lot of times if Space Fund would ever invest in a Chinese company, and aside from, ITAR and CFIUS and other issues that we would we would be concerned about having any involvement with with the Chinese company. But, the I don't necessarily believe that any of the companies in China are not in some way state owned and operated. Mhmm. Right? Yes. And so I don't know if you can count any of them as companies. So I don't know. That would be a good question for Bryce.

Well yeah. And and if you think of the United States, so we take out any activity that involves the US government that owns and operates something, then it changes those numbers also. So Right. But but a lot of what's going on in space right now, especially, is US government buying products and services from public companies. And again, that counts as revenue. You know what I mean? Mhmm. So that does go into the calculations.

So if the so, is there are there balance numbers, not income statements that show what the International Space Station makes for its I'm sure that that information is public. I've never tried to dig it up. But Okay. I'm just trying to to in my mind, the space industry, at least for on the, for the Project Moon Hut side, is to demonstrate that into to individuals that you don't have to be specifically in the space industry to be in the space industry.

If you're utilizing space to be able to perform your duties, if you have, some type of connection that requires your supply chain to work or requires your products to be manufactured in a certain way or you feed and you help spell space companies, you are part of the ecosystem. So I the space economy and the space ecosystem to me sometimes are inter are not interchangeable and sometimes they are. So I that's why I was pushing on the question. Gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It it's not an easy thing because if we want people like me, because I'm not a space enthusiast I happen to be in the space industry, but I'm not a space enthusiast. I don't look to the stars. If you want someone like me to be involved and I'm an opportunistic person, well, then I need to show how the opportunities in the space industry that I could be a part of that space industry, but I don't have to have a rocket to be engaged in it. No. You don't. Absolutely. You don't.

And, when we get down a little bit further in the outline here, I'm gonna talk about some of the, like, entrepreneurial opportunities that are that are outside of this this launch discussion. Okay. So I stopped you after you're gonna so you gave me the less than 2% of the space economy, 47% of VC funding. Yes. Yes. And so, yeah, that that's that's a serious imbalance. Right? 2% of the sectors receiving nearly 50% of the funding. Yeah. And so why is that?

I think there's a couple of reasons there. I think one, launch is easily understood by an investment community that maybe doesn't understand space in general or the market or or where it's heading. You know, it's a it's a rocket. Right? You light one end, it goes to space. Awesome. Big toys. Yay. Yeah. Exactly. Right? And so, I think that there's a lot of investor interest right now because you can't get into SpaceX.

SpaceX doesn't want any new investors on their cap table, and so people are looking for other, you know, opportunities to invest and launch. And I think it's just, you know, interesting and exciting and and an industry that's big and shiny and bright and that want people want to be a part of. Yeah. And I think that's what's driven the valuations in that industry up to to levels that I think are are a little bit ridiculous right now.

But, you know, we did some research, almost 2 years ago now, around around this, specifically the supply and demand in the in the launch industry. And the results of that were that, even though we expect the number of things to be launched to increase rapidly over time, and we'll talk about that one a little bit in the next bullet point, but, even even with some kind of generous predictions, we got to the conclusion that no more than 15 to 20 of these companies would survive Yeah.

Of the 162. And so, you know, we're concerned that that might and that if a lot of investors lose a lot of capital as these launch companies start to fail, that that might, reduce investor confidence in the industry overall. Which was the Luxembourg effect that I had spoken about earlier. Yep. And so, so, you know, we've been kind of shouting from the rooftops. You know? Woah. Woah. Woah, guys. Don't invest in launch. Let's talk about let's talk about what's being launched. Right?

Let's talk about what's going on that's creating the need for launch. Let's look a little bit deeper into the ecosystem here and see, and see why launch is even a thing. And, you know, I think we've we've done a fairly good job of getting that message out. I think that a lot of the people with their heads on straight in this industry have been thinking the same So what do you what do you tell them? I mean, what's your pitch?

You're you let's say I've I've got 2 and a half $1,000,000 right now, and I wanna spend it on something. And I like big shiny objects flying up into space. What would you tell me? So I would I would number 1, I'd say, look. You know, we've made 2 launch investments, 1 in SpaceX, 1 in a company that's not a rocket company that we think has paradigm to to or the ability to disrupt the current rocket paradigm.

And if you if you want any more information about trying to get into those 2, neither is easy, but we'll see if we can help you. But, really, really, what what you need to be thinking about is not what is what's launching, but what's being launched. And that's my 4th bullet here. So you kinda set me up for that one perfectly. K. You can send me a check. Actually, actually, I'm from in Asia, we just wired everything. In the United States, people still send checks. So, yeah, what's being launched?

The constellation craze. The constellation craze. Yeah. And so, right now, there's around 3,000 satellites in orbit. I used to know the exact number, but with how frequently, Elon's putting up these batches of Starlink, so I can't keep track anymore. But it's around about 3,000 right now. And so the, we expect 50 to a 100000 satellites to launch in the next 7 to 10 years. So that's where the demand is coming from on the launch side.

Now even even with demands that high, which are, you know, very high, very, very good numbers for the industry. There's still, like I said, only room in the in the market for 15 to 20 launch companies. But but what what is it that's being launched? What's creating that launch demand? What are these 50 to a 100000 satellites? And more than that, I like to always make the comparison that the constellation craze is like the gold rush of the American West. K?

It wasn't the gold miners who necessarily came out on top economically. Right? Most of them made no money, but, yeah, a few struck it rich, but those were few and far between. But the people who really made out well during the gold rush were the folks selling the pickaxes and the shovels and the Levi's jeans. And there's a reason that Levi's jeans is still a household name a 150 years later. Right?

Because every single gold miner, whether they were gonna hit it rich or not, needed a pair of Levi's jeans to get out into the river and pay for gold. And so, that to me is really the most interesting way to look at the market is the launch availability is creating the movement of a 100000 new purchasers of products and services. An entirely new market is being developed in LEO. And so this, you know, so this is where we are really focused from Space Fund's perspective.

This is where my kind of personal, focus is. This is this is where I go out, you know, looking for opportunities and looking for companies, is in those companies that can provide a product or service that every one of those 100000 satellites are going to need. Right? This is this is the guy, you know, creating servers during the Internet boom. This is the guy, you know, laying cable during the Internet boom. This you know what I mean?

These are the products and services that are needed for for that ecosystem to exist, And that's where there is a huge market opportunity and huge value to be created. I'm where I am, I'm probably 20 miles away from or 40 kilometers away from a building where 3 brothers had started a company laying cable and doing, setting up networks. And they were offered $300,000,000 to your about 2,019 99 for what they had built, and it was amazing.

3 brothers were two and a half years and were given the opportunity to walk away with $300,000,000. What did they say? It sounds like they said no. They said no because they thought they were worth a half a 1000000000 to a 1000000000 or whatever number. And 6 months later, they were broke. The family was living the 3 families were living in Florida in a 2 bedroom home with death threats and everything else because the ecosystem completely collapsed on the valuation and company swooped in.

I'm I know the guy who also did the, he was also the bankruptcy judge, and they were getting pennies on the dollar for these ecosystems built by people who really have put the ecosystem in. Is that a possibility here? There's always a possibility for a bubble. This is one of the reasons, you know, we've talked a lot about believing the launch industry to be overvalued. This is one of my concerns about the current spat craze.

And and, you know, one thing that we always try to be very level headed about in in our investment decisions is is maintaining valuations that make sense, for for what companies are really providing. Now not everybody's gonna be that level headed, especially with something as exciting as space. This is, if you've ever made, made cupcakes or or sugar cookies with your kids or your nieces and nephews, you know that the the most important part of the process is the sprinkles at the end. Right?

My mouth is watering, so I don't know why you're doing this to me. Okay. Upcakes are a weakness for me. So, this is what I like to call the magic space sprinkles. Right? Like, you take a company that's just a normal company. Let's say they build hard drives. And now you make those hard drives, you know, radiation tolerant. Oh, now they're a space company. They make space hard drives. Valuation has just gone a 100 x. Right? Because you can put space at the end of the company name. Right.

And so, you know, that to me has been there's been I I do have some concerns that a bubble could form around this kind of excitement that drives valuations up to a point that's unsustainable. So I'm hoping that the industry will get industry will get a hold of it. I'm hoping that, you know, as some diligent Wall Street analysts are put on the space beat permanently, they start to see what's going on here that you know what I mean? That that things will normalize.

To see what's going on here that you know what I mean? That the things will normalize, that the the systems that are in place will will work to to kind of normalize valuations. But, yes, there is always a possibility of of this being a a bit of a bubble right now. I I personally would love it to succeed.

And the questions are not meant to be negative as there are to be to clarify for my own thinking because I'm, we have we have some members on our Project Moon Hut team that are absolute, like, spot on with everything that they say. They will say, that won't succeed. This is not right. This won't work. And almost every time they've been right that I can think of. I can't think of a time that they've not.

And so, I'm, I see so much garbage out there, so many promises, and so much when confirmed data that is not accurate. Projections will be there in 6 years. Will be there in 5 years. Hey. How are you going to be there in 5 years? Like, where where did you come up with this? And they're raising money where they're getting investors, so they're hiring employees. And so I do wonder, and I I would we at Project Moon like to be a little bit more pragmatic. Not that we won't make our mistakes.

So that's why I'm asking these questions. I wanna make sure that anybody that I'm learning, how to be able to identify, how to look at, how to make sure that I'm doing the right or working with the right people to build our initiative. So if you were to advise me, how do I how do I stay away from the bad actors? So I I'm actually involved in the purchasing of the right applications, the right pieces, or am I gonna fall prey to people who are just putting sprinkles on? How do I know?

That's a great question, and one that's that Space Fund set out to to help with. You know? It's not a it's not a problem that any one entity or or person is gonna be able to solve for everybody all the time. But this is why we developed what we call our reality ratings. And back to our theme of spreadsheeting, there are some beautiful spreadsheets. If you're a spreadsheet nerd like me, I keep everything in a spreadsheet. So we put together these databases.

Go into what you've told me spreadsheet. That's why. I I let's I do know that. Yeah. Yeah. Spreadsheet narrative. Guilty for sure. So we created these databases of, of every company that we're tracking in every one of our sectors of interest. Now we don't have them all published yet. These do take some time and and effort to produce as you might imagine. And so but we're going through sector by sector, cataloging all of the companies.

And then based on publicly available information, private information that we have access to, and sometimes just a phone call with the company, or or or, you know, an email thread, we put together our reality ratings. And if are you familiar with, NASA's TRL technology readiness level? No. So it is a scale that NASA uses in order to rate the readiness of certain technologies for for space.

And a 0 is just a concept or an idea, and a 9 is a piece of technology that's that's been tested and and works in space. And so it's a scale. Mhmm. And so our real reality ratings are a similar scale, kind of 0 to 9. And, but we use more than just the technology, you know, readiness level of the company.

We also look at business, legal, finance, team, market, you know, all kind of all the things all the typical things a a venture capitalist would look at and, and rate those companies, and kind of you know, there's a kind of back end, how the sausage is made that that that pops out at the other end, a number between 0 and 9. And, and we keep those updated as frequently as we can as, you know, for instance, a launch company has a successful launch.

They they move, and they may move up the scale of a point or 2. Right? And so, and that's how I had that number at the ready of a 162 launch companies. That's how many are in our our reality range. And I and I took a guess at over a 150. So Yeah. You're pretty spot on. Yeah. Pretty spot on. But so we're hoping that that can be one tool for investors, for customers, for for any actors in this industry to be able to cut through a little bit of the noise.

Obviously, that's not every company in the industry. Obviously, we haven't gone through all of our sectors yet. Obviously, all of our investment sectors aren't gonna be all the sectors of the, of the space industry. So But, hopefully, that can be a starting point. So how not not your system. But how do you look how do you know a company is just sprinkled, and how do you know if a company has got it? I I I have one in mind.

I've used it before on a podcast, so I don't want to put it out there, but asking the project estimated cost by our team is 300 I think it's $36,000,000,000, and they're asking for almost nothing as their 1st round of financing. And he's like Yes. I know which one you're talking about. How how do how do you how do you know which is a sprinkle and which is not? It's that's a great question, and it's a combination of kind of looking into all these factors that we talked about.

And also keeping in mind that a lot of companies will start out with a 0 or one reality rating because because they're new. And it's it's so it's not so much as their reality rating of 1 right now is is there was their reality rating a 1 last year and the year before and the year before? Okay. So so you're using time as a variable, t 0 to t x. Right. Because of brand new company yeah. No. They don't have tech yet. No. They don't have financing yet.

No. They don't have any of you know, they can't They haven't gotten over even the first hurdles. Right. And so so a low number does not mean a bad company. It means an ex inexperienced company, an early, early stage company that might be just a PowerPoint company. But can they turn that PowerPoint into reality? You know? Right? Because everybody starts as a PowerPoint company. But can you turn that PowerPoint into something real? Are you telling me how to create PowerPoints now?

So so they do start out that way. What I'm finding, and I'm asking for your advice, I see a lot of individuals who've created a brand for themselves in the space industry that they go from project to project. They put their name on things, giving these companies a boost or an opportunity. They might make some money for consulting or whatever is their their value proposition. Yet in the end.

These are old thinkers with old constructs, and all they're doing is sucking wind out of the sails of the space industry. I definitely know if you have met a few of the folks you're talking about. I've we I know you and I have not compared names, but you you do know that there there's just it's not even new space and old space. It because those are industries and those are approaches and there's size and scale.

But there's just a lot of old thinking out there, resugar coated as new, and yet they're not gonna go anywhere either. And and they scare me as an industry because for me and what we're doing at Project Moon Hut, we're trying to be on our end as and it's we like it to be exciting. We're the age of infinite. It's a podcast, infinite possibilities, infinite resources. People love the hope. So we wanna make sure we don't give them false hope in the process.

So I'm trying to figure out how do I look at a company without you and get it? Yeah. So, you know, there's for us, one of the biggest indicators, and this is something that does require some industry knowledge, but also a little bit of Googling goes a long way. It's it always comes down to the team. Right? Technical problems can be solved. Business problems can be solved. If you have a founding team that have problems, that's very, very hard to solve. Right?

And with the particular company that you were just mentioning, which I won't say the name of, if you do just a cursory googling of some of the people on their team, you can tell that they're people you might not wanna work with for various reasons. Okay. Yep. You know, so company people who have a very puffy resume, but no results and have had lots and lots of jobs, very short turnover over their life, and have no never produced results anywhere. Right? You know?

Yeah. And and things like that just kinda stand out like a sore thumb when you just when you just look at them critically. Right? And so, you know, I would all I always say you start with the team. Look at the team. That will tell you just about everything you need to know. Also, look for a well rounded team. So many of these early stage team, it's, you know, 2 scientists and an engineer. Well, that's great for r and d, for research and development, but who's gonna run the business?

Who's gonna do the accounting? Who's gonna talk to the customers? Who's gonna talk to the investors? Right? And so so looking for for a group that has kind of thought through what type of team is actually needed to run a business, not just create a piece of technology. I you know, I think that that's really fundamental in in the early stages because they like I said, they may not have tech yet, may not have customers yet, and so it's really it's about the team.

It's it's interesting that you went that way, but I didn't expect that. One of the patents that I have secured that I come up with years ago was decision making based on programmatic and algorithmic analysis, which and we we secured it within a period of 6 to 8 months. It was unbelievable how quickly it went through because it was so unique.

And we have the ability using experiential data, and it could be data of activities or performance or whatever, you put as variables, that those decisions get weighted and that weighting is tied to future decision making. And so I hadn't thought about the interconnection of that patent with this part of the business. Interesting. That is very interesting. Yeah. It's the longest patent we've ever written.

It was, like, 60 pages long, and it cost us a fortune because it's in this very crowded space of AI. And the only way to get it through was to get the top AI lawyers that you could find. It was $800 an hour. Even though my eve even though my partner is a former attorney and has over 200 patents to his name, he's not a patent attorney. So what we did is we wrote what we could, and then we handed it to the attorneys.

And this was just like owning a boat would have been cheaper because the money just flew out for them to write this complex patent, and we ended up getting it. So, yeah, you you've kind of brought me back to how maybe there is a mechanism that could be used to give a weighted average based upon historical references as to what these individuals are capable of or have delivered in the past. The the only challenge is you could have 5 failures and then one whopper. That's a win. Right.

No. No. And and that that absolutely does happen. It absolutely does. But, you know, one of the things I always like to say about these face companies is do they have any adult supervision in the room? You know? Because a lot of times, they don't. You know? And so, and so, you know, even even an entrepreneur who has failed 4 times is probably a better CEO than a rocket scientist. Oh, yes. Right? We've got some of those. Okay. Right.

And so and so it's like rocket scientist, you are you are probably better suited to be chief technology officer of your company than CEO. I promise, if you enjoy being a rocket scientist, you likely don't enjoy most of the tasks required to be a CEO. Right? They're very thorough. Or a CTO. You should be building rockets. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

So, and and most of the founders we talk to, in fact, are very keen keenly aware of that and very happy to have help finding a CEO if they need 1, etcetera. Right? And so but but, yeah, it's about finding the teams who are well rounded, who have thought these things through, who are more than just a technical team, and and, who are people that you believe can actually make it make it happen. So how do you put a number on it in your relativity scale?

How do you, with thousands of companies, go through each one and say, okay, there are 6 players here. You do a LinkedIn look, you do a this look or that look. How do you know if they're gonna build a space company? Well, you don't, especially if they're very early stage. Right? That's why they start with the lower numbers. And a lot of times when we release our reality ratings, we'll hear from several of the companies that say, hey.

Yeah. It's I guess it's not on our website, but did you know that we just got this massive contract and we just got this and we just got that? I go, oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. They don't want their ratings to be they're giving the data because they don't wanna move Right. Up. Yeah. Exactly. And so they'll go up a couple points.

And then, again, as they reach milestones or get NASA contracts or do press releases about big customer contracts and, you know, you see a a products get go to space and demonstrate, perfectly and, you know, and then their reality ratings will go up over time. And so to me, that's the most interesting part of the reality ratings. It's not what everybody's static rating is today, but it's watching the ratings changing over time. And people will go down too, not just up. Of course.

And so, so yeah. So that that to me is it's the dynamic part of the reality ratings that's so fascinating. Meeting. Okay. The so let's, I I'm assuming we're gonna go on to the 3 forms of economic opportunity in the near, 3 to 5, 5 to 7, and 7 plus. Unless you've got something else you wanna add. Let me double check my notes here. Make sure that I didn't miss anything on that one. Alright. No. Okay. Yes. So let's start with economic opportunity in the near term, 3 to 5 years.

So I told you earlier, I'd kinda talk about what are some of the entrepreneurial and investment opportunities. I'm sitting here saying, don't invest in launch. Say, well, Megan, what should I invest? Right? First of all, this is not investment advice. I'm not a registered investment adviser. This is this is Okay. Yeah. This is an educational opportunity for me and anybody else who listens to understand more about the space industry so that we can achieve the age of infinite. Perfect. Perfect.

Alright. So, so I mentioned earlier kind of as part of point 4, the constellation craze, This idea of thinking of of the constellations as a market in and of themselves. So so what are the problems facing that market? And when I say problem in business speak, that's also an opportunity. Right? So wait. So let's define constellation. Okay. A, 3 or more satellites working together for a single purpose. Oh, really? Okay. I would never have defined it that way, but that's great.

How would you define it? No. I I my mind went to constellation, so I'm thinking constellation, you know, 5,000 or I even even the GPS of having, the a larger number. I would have not started with 3, but I could understand if you have Some people would say 3 is a cluster if you wanna be the you know what I mean? The engineers all have their own terms for these things.

No. That's why that's why I asked you to define it because, I'm learning about different types of orbits and different types of capability. Even though I've been in this for now forever, it seems like there's always something new to learn about. For example, yesterday, I did Andrew McCarthy, and he's talking about the the one of the astronauts kicked the dirt and his boot became, like, an orange rusty color, Apollo 17, I think it was.

And I said the the moon is full of color, and he said, oh, it's absolutely colored. And then he talked about how all these asteroids have hit, and they've and I said it's more or less almost like dust on the top of the moon. It's covered all these colors that the moon is actually colorful underneath. Didn't know that. And you'd say, why don't you? Because it doesn't come up in conversation. Right. When I think of these 3 or more, when you said that, I said, okay.

So we could have a polar orbit satellite system of 3 different satellites that suffice in giving enough data so that there's continuous information being fed to whomever needs it. Right. And depending on what kind of data they're collecting and their yeah. What kind of data they're collecting and the frequency and blah blah blah blah. Right. Yes. Yes. So that's why I said that. So 3 really changes my mind, my mindset on what I thought.

So 3 is a good number to hit me across the face and say, David, think smarter. Okay. Right. Because there and there's lots of constellations that are being planned right now that are 12 or 24 satellites. Right? You also hear of 40,000 plus satellites for Starlink and, you know, but but not all constellations need to be that size. You know? But the hype the hype is what pulled me so far higher. That's why when you said a 100,000, and I'm thinking, okay.

We got all these big 40,000 or 10,000 or and you went right back to basics. It could be 3. It could be 12. It could be a a much different number. Yes. Absolutely. And so if you're interested, there's a really good website, called new space dot I m. I'm not affiliated or associated with it in any way. It's a gentleman named Eric Kulu, and he is tracking every planned and announced constellation.

And it has great information on here, like how, you know, how many they've how many are launched versus the total size of the planned network, a first estimated launch date, you know, how big they are, what they're doing. And so you can you can take a look at that, and it's just a really, really fun website if you're interested in what are all the constellations, what are they being launched for, what are they doing. Space geek. You know, a really fun site. Can look at this spreadsheet nerd.

Right. You can look at this spreadsheet, and you could see all the different you know, spend your weekends. Spend your nights. I have spent Ignore your children. Yes. Yeah. So I know all the good stories. Okay. So he he's put the how long has he been in business? Do you know? I don't know how long this has been up. It's been up for at least a couple of years. I've been referencing it at least that long. Alright. Yeah. So, but yeah.

So this is a real handy dandy little tool if you wanna know what all the constellations are. So I won't I'll give you guys that tool and so I don't have to go No. No. No. I'm looking at it. It is massive. This is a lot of Yeah. Projects. And, yeah, this is a lot. So there's a lot going on. Okay. And yeah. And a lot of the ones down at the which are 0 launched and question mark for total number of Oh, yeah. Yeah. Constellations. See that. Yeah. So you have to Oh, right. They're all canceled.

Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Right. A lot of those are canceled. A lot and then there's a lot on here as well that are have not yet received funding. Yep. A lot of question marks. Yeah. Right. Right. And so so, you know, keep all of that in mind. But this is this is, I think, a really good and interesting starting point if you're interested in in the constellation craze. So so okay.

So if you think about all of these constellations, and now you have your your list in front of you, if you think about them as as customers, as the market themselves, right, what are the products and services that they're gonna need? Okay. So you think about, well, all the different widgets that go into a satellite. Sure. That's a that's a great place to start. Can you make a better solar panel? Can you make a better battery? Can you make a better, motherboard? Right?

Okay. Mhmm. And there are definitely ways for incremental and even better than incremental progress in kind of all of those areas. But here's an interesting data point, me always going back to my numbers.

Yeah. And this comes from one of our portfolio companies, Skyloom, which put some information together, around this, that currently, where there's only 3,000 or so satellites in orbit, less than 1% of the data they collect makes it back to Earth because of 3 important bottlenecks, downlink and then on orbit storage and on orbit processing. K? Yep. So here's here's an example I love to give. The disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight.

We know for a fact there were multiple Earth observation satellites that took pictures of that space of that aircraft along its entire flight path wherever it ended up. K? Yep. But because nobody pays for Earth observation data from Open Ocean, in order to maintain storage and processing capability onboard the space craft, all open ocean imageries are images are immediately deleted if you're not necessarily, like, a ship tracking satellite constellation. If if that's not your business. Correct.

Right. Right. And so what if those satellites have the ability either on the satellite themselves or via, let's say, in, you know, a a server in space to to just beam all of that information directly to a server that could store it, process it when it was when there was time, and keep it for 48 hours. Keep it for for 10 days or or or 2 months until you know the data is not needed, until you've processed it and know there's nothing valuable on it, then dump it. Right?

So a sir a server firm in space. Correct. Or finding better ways to manage storage and processing onboard the spacecraft. And a lot of those problems come from, from energy availability. Right? And Mhmm. The, you know, hot and cold cycles of of the spacecraft. Right? And so solving those problems can could help, increase storage and and processing capability on board. And the as with most problems like this, the likely, best solution is a combination of solutions. Right?

Having your backup storage available just like you back your everything up to the cloud right now. Right? Why wouldn't you do the same if you have the opportunity to do it cost effectively in space? Because, Megan, you're not backing up to the cloud. You're backing above the clouds. So you'd actually be backing down to the clouds. Well It's a joke. It's a joke. You're back backing to the Because we Van Allen belt. To the clouds. We're going down. Back up to the Van Allen belt. They Right.

We're going right. So we're backing down to the so yes. Yes. Yes. That was a joke. I just I just want you to know it was a joke. So so you're saying is for opportunities, individuals could decide to be a part of the infrastructure that helps to create the products that go to that are built into the constellations or products that service the constellations. Right. And and so, yeah, this you know, the the, processing and storage is the downlink.

So I mentioned Skyloom is the one who kind of did the research to come up with this data. They're, they're building some some interesting technology for, this coming switch from radio frequency to optical or or laser communications that the industry is gonna be undergoing in the next few years. And Skyloom is building both intersatellite laser comm links as well as a future kind of backbone layer to do, laser comm, transmission and processing in space.

And so, but there's lots of opportunities like that in opportunities like that in in helping kind of transition to this new infrastructure, you know, in in the comms and down lake arenas.

So to take what you're saying, and I'm gonna ask you a question and see how you go with this, Wouldn't it be advantageous to the space ecosystem or the space economy if in fact, a company such as a laser company that is already producing lasers decides to start a space division where all they're doing is producing space lasers, wouldn't it be advantageous to the ecosystem to say, hey.

They're part of the ecosystem, but they're they're a space company because they're building lasers used in space. There's there's a lot of companies that exist like this right now where space is is one of their sectors. Yeah. You know, with aluminum companies and, you know, with all kinds of different types. So my my mine is about language. I think the space industry is exclusive instead of inclusive. So I'm asking you when we talked about the space industry.

If a company says we're building lasers, we have 25 people working on it. That's their sole job and it goes into space. In theory, according to Bryce or whatever company, the way we defined it, they're not a space company. No. They're not. But, again, those, you know, that sector of their, of their company could be counted as part of the space sector even though you wouldn't count the lasers that are being used on the ground. Right?

You would have to divide it up in some way, to get the to get the calculus right. You know? But but, you know, that should definitely be considered a part of the space economy. And that's and that's where in Project Moon Nut, this is where I've had this challenge is that the industry kind of says it's got to be in space in order for being a space company. I said, yes. But if you build it, you build the satellite, but you don't ship it. You're not it's you don't own it.

You've been contracted out to build the satellite. Well, then it's really not your satellite. You've been contracted out. So therefore, you're not in the space industry. You're just a manufacturer. And I would argue, no. They're in the space ecosystem. They're part of the space sector, the Sparta space industry. And if we're inclusive of them, we start to see that the industry is pretty darn large. Right. And that's good. That's a good thing. That is a good thing. I I agree with that.

Although it might not be exactly the way to slice it up in order to get to the right numbers for for a pure economic perspective. But from from from the way we speak about the industry perspective, I completely agree. Yeah. It's the numbers still would have to be defined for a spreadsheet expert like yourself. You'd have to set the parameters. And you could say, they only manufacture on Earth and they don't go to space. So they're in space, so they don't do. Or they utilize space, so they don't.

But yet if a company relies on space to be an integral part of their services that they sell in order for them to function or to them to make money, then I would, in my opinion, I would start to include them in the space ecosystem. It's a lot more complicated guaranteed, yet it does change the dynamics because now that laser company is a space company. They have they have a space unit and they become different. They become part of the family, and I think that's a positive thing for the industry.

I would agree. Okay. That's where I was that's where I was talking about much earlier on. That's where I I kind of play this. We want the industry to grow, but we're telling people you're not part of the club because you're not wearing the right sneakers. Yeah. But I'm inside with everybody. You know, but you're not wearing the right sneakers. You don't know the secret handshake. Yes. Come on. It would be the space nerds that would need a heat a secret handshake. It would be.

So so we have this say that as one of the space nerds know that. Oh, I know that. I I know it's it's, it's a scary thing. Sometimes. Yeah. I won't go in how far into this. So the, so you have this example. This is a great example of someone who can see an opportunity in servicing that. How do you find or identify or what's if you were to advise somebody today, you're looking for something to do.

You just got COVID has destroyed your life, and you're an engineer or you're smarter, you've owned a business. You would say, go look. Go look at what the constellations are building. Go talk to the people building and operating the constellations constellations and ask them what their pain points are. The thing that I give, young entrepreneurs advice the piece of advice I give most frequently, let's say, is talk to your customers.

You would not believe how many brilliant product developers, right, engineers, scientists, whatever the case may be, get all the way through to a prototype and have never spoken to a customer about what the customer actually wants or needs. Right? It's like you might think you know, but the but you're not your customer. Go talk to them. Ask them what their pain points are. Ask them, you know, what you can do to solve them.

Have those conversations first before you before you spend 2 years developing a product that you're not sure the dog foods are gonna want the dog if the dogs are gonna want the dog food as they say. You know? Uh-uh. I taught new product and service development and innovation at NYU for 12 years, and that is that is such but it's not just that. It's it happens the same way in creating a deck in the business development side. Did you try it with anybody? Well, no. I wanna finish it first.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Just go tell talk to somebody. No. No. I want it to look good. The graphics are still being worked on. Why are you making graphics? You know, pretty pictures. Just go talk to somebody. So I understand. So you're talk to customers. So today, based upon your data, where would I go to who would I talk to? Constellation is 1, but what would be some of the other key areas that you feel there are opportunities in marketplace?

So, I think there's opportunities in the marketplace to, let's say, scale manufacturing. Right? So there's kind of a a few shops that are starting to come out on top as as ones that, that can kind of build a spacecraft for you soups soup to nuts. Right?

And whereas it used to be that if you wanted to start a space company, you had to build your own spacecraft, and you had to go figure out what's the best propulsion solution, what's the best satellite bus to buy, what's the best solar panels to buy. Now you can you can walk into a company and say, hey. I need a spacecraft that does this. And they'll go, great. We'll have 6 of them for you in 18 months. You know what I mean?

And so I think there's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of innovation around manufacturing, around streamlining manufacturing, and and reducing costs and increasing timelines. So that that would be a company like Relativity Space. Is that what you come to mind, or who do you what comes to mind when you think of building an aircraft? Built not building not building a, a A spacecraft. A launcher, but like a Oh. Like a satellite. A satellite. Oh, okay. Building a satellite. Yep. Okay. Right. Right.

Okay. And so, so so that's, I think, gonna be a really interesting innovation to watch. I think, as I mentioned earlier, is this constellations as customers goes a long way. Everything from, you know, component parts that go into these new manufacturing lines that are being set up, all the way through, one of the things we we talked didn't really talk about was satellite servicing. Right?

And so the ability to, one of the things that I've that I've really enjoyed watching over this last 2 years is kind of the the launch of the new, OTVs, orbital transfer vehicles, right, that that change the dynamics of your ride share situation. And so, you know, being on a SpaceX ride share is like taking the bus. You get dropped off or you get dropped off, bud. You don't get a choice. You know?

But, but if you have one of these orbital transfer vehicles, then you can get delivered to your final orbit, without having to have as much onboard propulsion. And and so it it it just really changes the dynamics. So that's kind of the first leg of satellite servicing. And then you have, you know, the capability to refuel a satellite, capability to change a satellite's orbit if it's been placed in the wrong orbit or it's fallen to the wrong orbit for some sort of technical reason.

You have the ability to unfurl solar panels that didn't unfurl themselves appropriately. We have kind of all of these services that can be provided by these satellite servicing robots. That's gonna be very interesting to to watch develop as well. And, you know, so so I think there's a lot of parts to that kind of low earth orbit satellite supply chain that you can start looking at that from from soup to nuts and find opportunity along every step of the way. K. And anything else in the 3 to 5?

That's that's the big focus for for me for the 3 to 5. Okay. 5 to 7. Alright. So this is where we get to talk about a little bit more the fun stuff. I like the fun stuff. Okay. So, so this is where I like to talk about the in space supply chain. So we just talked about the satellite supply chain. That's the majority of that supply chain is based here on Earth. Right?

And then you launch your saddle the satellite and it does its work on orbit, but it was designed, built, manufactured, and launched, you know, all here on Earth. And so an in space supply chain gets more into this kind of what we were talking about satellite servicing. Right? So a satellite servicing spacecraft is an expensive robotic spacecraft to build. And you're not gonna you know, it's not really a sustainable business model if you only get one use out of that servicing spacecraft.

And so in order for that satellite servicing spacecraft to have multiple uses And for it to be able to provide fuel to its satellite customers, there need to be fuel depots in space, going back to Dan Faber and OrbitLab. Now fuel depots in space are, to me, one of the most important first nodes in a future all in space supply chain. So we'll talk a little bit about asteroid and moon mining in the next one, in the 7 to plus you know, 7 plus years.

But in order for those things to make sense, for the business case to close, for those things to be economically viable, you have to start the development now and especially over the next 5 to 7 years of an in space supply chain. So imagine that asteroid miner, the first thing it brings back from an asteroid is water. There's a lot of reasons for that. Water is hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen and oxygen make rocket fuel.

It's also really important if you wanna breathe or drink or anything like that. Right? And so so where is that water gonna go? Who is it gonna be sold to? There needs to be a functioning and robust in space supply chain for those materials to be sold into. And so in the next 5 to 7 years, you're gonna see the development of of the early stages of this supply chain, where eventually raw materials such as water can be launched into space.

They can be processed into fuels, to oxygen for breathing, water for drinking, at a processing plant in space. That processing plant then one of its customers are commercial space stations who need water and oxygen and fuel, but they're also refueling satellites with hydrogen peroxide, or some other, you know, the, fuel derived of water.

And so, then once asteroid mining comes online, there's a place for it to you know, the that asteroid miner to come and deposit its dirty water from the asteroid into a ready and waiting fuel propel you know, propellant depot, propellant processing and depot and sales. Right? All already functioning and on orbit. Another really important part of this in space supply chain is in space manufacturing.

And so, you know, again, these raw materials from space need a robust manufacturing pipeline to be sold into. And so this is everything from the kind of the most famous example you hear about a lot, which is Ziplan optical fiber, all the way through 3 d printing of of human organs, and pharmaceuticals. And and then, you know, silicon wafers for for integrated circuits, for computer chips.

The the environment of space, natural vacuum, natural near, absolute zero temperatures, the, you know, low gravity, all of these things can be very beneficial for certain manufacturing processes. And so right now, even though raw materials are being launched from Earth, you know, those businesses can start to really scale once they have a source of of in space sup you know, supply chain.

But in the meantime, those businesses can be profitable and and, and in fact, create quite a bit of revenue, even still having to launch their raw materials from Earth. The I'm gonna add something and just for someone who might be listening later is that hydrogen peroxide for most is not a common chemical or I people don't know the formulaic version of it, so it's h two zero two.

The reason I'm saying that is that there's a hot if you have water within hydrogen and oxygen, you can now create the h two zero two. And that might not be something that someone would understand without knowing that it's you're still using the same elements to be able to create that. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's it's hydrogen peroxide. I I never thought about what hydrogen peroxide was made out of.

And now that I'm thinking about it, my background is organic chemistry, physics, calculus, but that was a long time ago. And I was like, what is in hydrogen peroxide? Is there anything that's necessary that would make it more challenging to create? And it's not because you've got everything you need.

So so you're on the fuels on the, the supply chain side, you're supplying basic raw materials to space, then you're solving the challenges of manufacturing or converting what's ever been brought to space into something else through some type of robotic technology Mhmm. That enables that to be reconverted and brought back down to earth or used in space. Correct.

Okay. And any other variance within I hate these word variance given what that means today, because of COVID, is 55 that's why we I use variant and I went, oh, god. I'm going in a different direction. 5 to 7 years, do you see you just talked about pharma. You said Siliconwave. You had 3 d human organs. You had Z band. What else might be in that category? As far as manufacturing and space, I don't know, man. I heard, I, we'll we'll be making an announcement here in the next couple weeks.

I can't quite talk about it yet, but we have a a deal ongoing right now with an in space manufacturing company. And, I remember on on a call with with one of the founders listening to him get so excited. He's like, you know, he's going through all the kind of stuff and the the business side of it and and, you know, all the very practical stuff. And then and then we asked him.

I said, so based on what you're telling us about this and and how you're combining these two elements in a unique way, You know, what other elements could you combine? And, man, did you see his eyes lit up. He and he's got the biggest smile on his face. He's like he's like, that's the thing, man. We could start crashing all sorts of stuff together. We don't know what's gonna work. We don't know what we're gonna create. Unobtainium, maybe. You know? You know? Right?

And he's absolutely the the combination of microgravity and zero atmosphere, as well as the the temperature are very much different conditions that we have on earth. Exactly. The And so we have no idea what's possible. So you really think, on the continuum, we can have that? Because I've been working on that in my garage, and I now I I I knew I was doing something wrong. Right. Right. I think But don't you need you need a superhero to come in and save the day, though.

So that's, you know, somebody from another planet. Okay. So anything else within than the 5 to 7? Nope. That's my that's my big pitch for the 5 to 7. So we'll go to our 7 plus. Alright. So this is where we get into asteroid mining, moon mining, which I'll I'll I'll spend as much or as little time as you want on as as you you know. I we worked at Deep Space Industries, so I can I I didn't say to to go on a little too long, so try to keep it short? No. It's okay.

I I have I stopped you yet on a have I told you to stop anywhere? No. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So, so asteroid and moon mining, I think are both very realistic in kind of the 7 to 10 year time frame. This is gonna have everything to do with kind of when the first private dollars, significant private dollars, go into a mission of this sort, and then it'll be 5, 7, 10 years out, depending on the specifics of the business plan.

And so this is the key to making that in space supply chain work that we were just talking about, in the 5 to 7 year time frame. This is what drastically brings down the cost of operating in space, and this is what makes long term permanent human habitation possible. Now I I you asked me what if I can cut you off at any time. What's the name of our foundation? Moonhut. Right. So where are we positioned in terms of the Mearth economy, moon and earth economy?

And what does this what might we need to make it happen? That's why I said I'm not gonna cut you off. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There you go. So, as you probably know, this is something that we refer to a lot in the industry as in situ re in situ resource utilization. We're basically living off the land. Right? Using the resources of where you are, as much as possible, relying on resupply from Earth as little as possible, to really, again, get to this idea of sustainability. Right?

And so, so in this kind of 7 plus year time frame, to me, the the real key is getting asteroid and moon mining, online, working economically viable, because then that opens the door for the ability to build large structures in space. When you have the ability to 3 d print those large structures and you have a supply of raw materials with which print them, now you can build anything you want. Now you can build a habitat as as big as you need to.

Now you can build return rockets on the moon, so you don't have to bring your return rocket with you. Right? Or or, you know, kind of any of those the being able to source water on the moon, again, for breathing, for drinking, but also as fuel to survive the lunar night. And so, you know, that in situ resource utilization is so important because, 1, it's then the basis of all of this other economic activity. The 2, in and of itself, has the potential to, be a huge value creation opportunity.

And so so that's that's my first key to the the longer time frame. And then the next topic I wanted to talk to about there and and I'll I'll kinda weave these together a little bit, and then, and then we can go back and and see if you have any questions. But when Starship comes online? Now I expect star Starship to come online in less than 7 years. Starship will probably come online with the reliability to take humans to and from space in the 5 to 7 year time bracket.

And Okay. Starship is SpaceX's define it so that it's on record when you say Starship because that. Yeah. It's just not not someone who listens to this podcast the first time ever is not gonna know what Starship is if they're they've not been the space industry, and they come in at number 41 of our podcast. That's why I say it. Yeah. No no no problem. So Starship is the the big new, the big new rocket that SpaceX is currently building that they're testing, down in Boca Chica.

Seems like about once a month at this rate where or so we're getting to see a test flight of, of Starship prototype. And and the idea is that Starship will be able to take a 100 tons to orbit. It will be able to take a 100 people to orbit at a time. And that's the capacity that I think is is really interesting to talk about. Okay? So right now, a dragon capsule on top of the falcon can take what what is it? 6 people is the max you can put in in there?

Yeah. Yeah. And so imagine imagine how different low earth orbit would look if if SpaceX had the capability to take a 100 people at a time back and forth to Leo on a reusable spaceship that could fly dozens or 100 of times a year. Okay. So when we look at By the way, it's it's 7. I kept I'm saying to myself, the space shuttle space shuttle had 7. I believe this has 7. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're probably right.

6 wasn't sitting well with me, but I couldn't It wasn't sitting well with me, and I'm saying to myself, I know I made an analogy before because I think there were 3 on one deck in the space shuttle and 4 on the other. And then I used that same analogy when I was thinking about the Dragon, and I'm I'm probably completely wrong, but maybe. Okay. Yeah. So let it's 7 people. And it depends on the crew versus cargo configuration and all that. Right? Yeah. Okay. So currently, you can do 7 at a time.

What happens when you can do a 100 at a time? Oh, and I'm gonna stop. I just looked it up for us. The though the space shuttle had the capacity of flying as many as 8 people, they had the capacity to do 8, but it depended on, on conditions the way they had done it. So I don't think they did. I think they typically did 7, but I'm looking at it very quickly just so we can have it here and and we don't get any space nerd saying, David, what is wrong with you? Don't you know this?

Because I I watch people attack people in the space industry. I know it's not 47 kilograms. It's 49. How could you have made that mistake in your lifetime? Get off planet Earth. You are no longer valuable. And that happens a lot. So Yes. It does. Okay. So we've got 7. Sorry. Go ahead. So we did find out Dragon was 7? Yep. Okay. So, so how different does the world look when you're taking a 100 Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna caveat this.

It says in May 2014, Musk unveiled the 7 seat crew Dragon. Didn't this guy in Japan who's got the seat, who's doing this thing to the moon? Well, that's a different rocket, but that's supposed to be 8, I think. Okay. Not that it's important, but it is important because I don't want people to hit this podcast and say we screwed up and everything else was fantastic, and then we have one thing wrong. Right. Right.

Exactly. So I apologize for keep on stopping you, but I'm I'm kinda, like, I'm sweating right now. What did I do wrong? I'll never be loved. Alright. Not not an unreasonable concern in this industry. I know where you're coming from. Alright. So so when we start looking at that plus 7 year time frame, you know, I like to say, look. When when Starship comes online, where where are all these people gonna go? Right? There's no Disney World in space. There's there there's no casinos.

There's no sports arenas. What are what are we a 100 people at a time gonna do? Where are they gonna go? And so I think that as people start planning now for businesses that will be in high demand 5, 7, 10 years from now, start thinking about the real estate of space. Start thinking about the coming housing shortage in space. If, we have robust in space manufacturing facilities, you know, when you're talking about manufacturing of a well defined product, almost all of that can be automated.

But when you're talking about r and d, product development, all that initial stuff, you really do need humans in the loop. And so you're gonna have lots of people working and living in space, developing these new products, playing with these new atoms tiny atom smashers as that one entrepreneur I mentioned was talking about. Like, Smash all kind of things together, see what happens. So where where are all those people gonna work and play? Where are their families gonna live?

Are their families gonna move up up there with them? Are there gonna be elementary schools in space? Right? And so you start to think of kind of a world of possibilities when you start thinking of 100 of people at a time. This is what my business partner, Rick Tomlinson, likes to call a Mayflower class. Right? This is this is something that could really change the way people move and think about space.

And so in that 7 plus year time frame, the, you know, the, housing shortage, I think, is is a really important conversation to have, and and and the work and play aspects of human life as well. People aren't gonna just go up there and and, you know, do their job and then go sleep in their little, you know, strapped in bunk and then go do their job. Like, they wanna be able to work, but they also wanna be able to play. They wanna be able to have their families with them.

They wanna be able to, you know, to eat locally grown vegetables that were picked this morning. So how do we how do we grow vegetables in the space? Right? And so there's a lot of questions to start asking now if you wanna look at that solving that how housing shortage of 7 plus years from now.

And then, and then the last thing I'll leave you with on on this on this final 7 plus years point is is that if you're really interested in trying to think about how to solve some of these longer term problems, start thinking about completely new business models, completely new governance models, and completely new monetary systems.

Space is a place where all of these things can be tried in a way that they haven't been since kind of, since the dawning of the new world, quote, unquote, as as rough as it was and as much as don't agree with a lot of the the principles of colonization, That was kind of the last time that we were able to develop new, new political systems, new monetary systems. Right? What are those new systems going to look like off world? This is an opportunity for us to reinvent everything.

And to me, that's where we get to this kind of age of the infinite and unlimited possibilities. Cool. And and, full circle, I met Rick at Pioneering National Space Summit, which you and I shared. Then he introduced me to David Johnston, who's on our team, and we're building, a DAO together, which and his podcast that he did was about new governance and governance in space. Yes. David is, of course, a very good friend and then, partner in the fund.

And, yeah, just absolutely this is one of the things, like, when he and I go out to lunch or dinner, we'll just go off for an hour. You know? And that's where he yeah. He's been with us for 6 months, 7 months, and we meet every week, and we're working on how do we make these changes for the future. So, yeah, the I like I like where you you brought it in terms of these new infinite opportunities and infinite resources, which changes our future. And Absolutely does.

And that's the you know, one of the things I like to say is that space is the only economic sector that exists that has the actual potential for unlimited growth, unlimited value creation. Everything else, every other sector on earth is by definition finite. It is limited in its resources. It's limited in the amounts of product that it can produce. Is limited in the amount of oil you can pull out of the ground.

There's a limited amount of rare earth metals to make all these important commuter computer parts. Right? Everything else is you know, the Internet is limited by bandwidth. Yep. Everything else is Internet is limited. Space is the only economic sector with truly unlimited growth potential. And and the the infinite word is much more powerful than abundance because, to me, in order to have the abundance, you have to have scarcity. There's a yin and yang.

But you have this infinite possibility, and it's tough to get your mind around the fact that on the moon, for every 100 asteroids that have hit, 3 of them have more platinum in them than we've used in the history of mankind each, and there have been 1,000,000. So there's this infinite possibility for hope and and and a new age. So it's, it can be for Earth an exciting time.

And the the positives of what you spoke about also come back to Earth in the form of new materials, in the form of bio, pharmaceutic, a new pharma, in the form of new constructs that allow us to live in a different way than we've had for all 7.5 or by that time, 8 or 9 8 and a half 1000000000 and for all 50,000,000 species on this planet. Exactly. There's you know?

And and that's the thing too is that once you know, obviously, you gotta start small and and start with, start with close to home and what we know. But but the better we get at this, the further out we get, the the more and more, you know, we'll be able to not only expand as a species, but expand our economic sphere as well. And and, you know, the one comes you can't have the one without the other. Right? People need to eat. People need places to live.

And so as that economic sphere increases, so does humanity's sphere of influence and knowledge and and and interest and access and resources and all the rest. And that's the what you just described as the Mearth economic system and the Mearth economy. And we at Project Moon Hut believe that the next iteration is that there will be a Mearth ecosystem economy that there will be on the moon, on earth, and between the moon and earth.

And there will be trade routes and and activity that happens constantly between them and within each other to create this new infinite possibility. And I like the term Mearth. Our us old timers in the industry refer to it as the very boring, drying, cislunar economy. It's terrible. A 9 a 9 year old has to learn that. I mean, a challenge, but Mearth is a simple word.

People the first time I delivered this, the first presentation I gave was the National Space Society, and that's, was where at the end of the event, there were about 40, 50 people. 8 people in their summary of the event said and used Mearth in a sentence. Oh, awesome. I like that. Those are real hard those are real core hard those are hardcore space people. Yes. Well, this was fantastic. I never know where someone's going to take me.

I never know what the experience is going to be as you now know. There is I don't hear anything in advance. I don't see the outline in advance, and we go through it 1 by 1, and and I'm learning from you. So I appreciate, Megan, very much. You're taking the time to construct this for us, for me, and for taking the time to answer all these ancillary questions that I know were not on your list, but they help us Absolutely. But that's the fun of it.

I mean, that it's a real conversation is that I'm really trying to learn to help us to be able to, in Project Moon Hut, to do a better job. And so your help is very much appreciated, so thank you. It was an absolute pleasure being here, David. It was a lot of fun. So I do wanna thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen in today. And I do hope that you learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Remember, we're part of the Project Moon Hut Foundation, where we're looking to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a Moon Hut, through the accelerated development of the Earth and space based ecosystem, which we've been talking about today, and then to use the endeavors, the paradigm shifting, those innovations, and turn them back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. And, Megan, what's the single best way to connect with you?

Best way is to go to spacebund.com, spelled exactly like it sounds where a fund an investment fund, investing in space. And there's a contact form on the website if you wanna get in touch, And you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn, but spacefund.com, you said single. I'll leave it at that. I I also I would like to connect with anybody who's listening in, but I will make a short announcement that we took down the old website even though it had a lot of current information. It was old.

I did it in 2015 in a weekend before I was allowed to speak in Latvia. They required me us to have a website, so we tossed one up. We took it down, and right now up on project moon hut.org, there is a placeholder, but it's starting to form. We're creating our new website. It shouldn't be done shortly. And you can also sign up to keep in touch. So this will be part of the beta and all the others. We're not gonna be spamming you, hitting you, selling any of that.

It's just so that you if you wanna be close to us and see a little bit of our imagery, you can go there. You can connect with me, David, at [email protected]. You can connect to us at at, Project Moon Hut on Twitter, also at Goldsmith. And then LinkedIn and Facebook, we have Project Moon Hut Foundation on both of those. So you're avail we're available there. And that's it. I'm David Goldsmith. And thank you for listening.

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the age of infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which in turn lead to the renaming of periods into ages. You've personally just experienced the information age and what a ride it has been. Now consider that you might now be living on the cusp, the transition to a new age, the age of infinite.

An infinite age set is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefined lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources. The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that has come to life is together, we create a new definition of the future. The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hut Foundation.

We were named by NASA, where we look to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon, the moon hut, through the accelerated development of an Earth and space space ecosystem. Then to use the endeavors, the paradigm shifting thinking and the innovations and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species. Today, we're going to be exploring spreadsheeting our way to the age of infinite. And with us is Megan Crawford. How are you, Megan? I'm wonderful.

Thanks for having me, David. Love having you here. So let me just short, brief intro to Megan. She's the managing partner of the a managing partner of the VC Fund, the Space Fund. So kind of apropos being in the space industry, which means she also is an investor. She's also done advising. She runs her own podcast called Mission Eve Podcast. Let's get right on to the program. Megan, do you have an outline for us? I do. You do. I'm so excited. What what's not give me the outline.

Start with number 1. Alright. We've got 7 points here. Number 1 is, and I have to give credit where credit is due. It's a saying that's, my cofounder at Space Fund and long term long term mentor, Rick Tomlinson, always, always says, which is nobody stays until somebody pays. Nobody pays. Okay. Next. Number 2 is the case for Space Force as an economic driver. Driver, next. Number 3, launch is a solved problem. Ipso facto, the time to invest in launch has passed. Ipso facto. The time my favorites.

The time, to invest in launch has passed. Invest in launch has passed. Next. Number 4. What's being launched? The constellation craze. Constellation craze. Next. And then, 5, 6, and 7 are along the same theme here. 5 is where is the economic opportunity in the near term? So I'm calling that 3 to 5 years. Hold on. Economic activity. Or opportunity. Economic oh, opportunity. In the near term? Near term, 3 to 5 years. And then we'll do medium term, 5 to 7, and long term, 7 plus. 7 plus.

Okay. So let's start with your number 1. Help me understand this. Nobody stays until somebody pays. Yep. So in the theme of today's podcast of spreadsheeting, right, I tend to live and die by the numbers. And so so let's start with a few numbers here. The United States spent $28,000,000,000 to land men on the moon between 1960 and 1973, which adjusted for inflation is over $280,000,000,000 today. Okay. The NASA budget was 4% of the national budget in the late sixties.

Today, it's less than 1 half of 1%. Less than 1 half of 1. Yep. Okay. And and then this is not necessarily a numerical point, but an important geopolitical point. The new cold war with China is not a race to the moon, but a race for the high ground from a military perspective. Mhmm. And so let me kind of weave these three points together for you here.

During the Apollo program, which, I was, unfortunately not alive yet for, but, it's, it, you know, created a a a fervor, just not in the United States, but around the world. Everybody believed this was the beginning. This was the beginning of humanity's breakout into space. We were finally gonna settle the high frontier, and all we ended up with instead was flags and footprints. Right? Why is that? Because we did not go to the moon in an economically sustainable way.

We went to the moon as a geopolitical stunt, as part of our cold war with China, as a point of national You mean with Russia? You mean with Russia? With Russia. I'm sorry. With Russia. I'm I'm moving ahead to the next point. Yeah. That's okay. I just Yeah. You can't With the USSR. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And so and so, you know, it was that's why we ended up with only what, you know, how we refer to it as flags and footprints. Right? There's there's no long term presence on the moon.

It was not the beginning of, of this, you know, human outreach into space because it was done for political reasons, not for economic reasons. There is there is no way to sustain a NASA budget at 4% of the national budget. There's no way to spend $280,000,000,000 to send, you know, men back to the moon as as a political stunt, especially in a post COVID world.

And so, you know, so really the question is, how do we get to that sustainable off world economy, that, that will allow us to stay and stay sustainably. And that only comes if there's real valid economic reasons to go, and there's private capital, preferably a combination of public and private capital, is gonna is what it's gonna take to open the frontier. Okay. I mean, it's it's it's what we're people have been talking about. So how do we get to the sustainable? So that's a great question.

And and that's by, you know, basically, by investing in business models that make sense, that provide, not just reasonable, but higher than average, risk adjusted, as we say, returns. Because space is new, because it's not well understood by the investment community, the returns have to be outsized enough to outweigh that risk. Okay. So you need to get a high return for the patient capital or for the risk that's involved where you could lose everything. Right. And that's the patient capital.

I'm glad you brought that up because that's another important factor in this is that there is a misconception, around space investing that's twofold. 1, it's too rich for my blood. Right? It's too it requires too much capital. And number 2, that, that capital has to be tied up for too long.

A typical investment time frame, whether you're talking about a venture capitalist, whether you're talking about, you know, somebody nearing retirement, you know, you've gotta look at an investment windows usually in the 7 to 10 year time frame. Whereas SpaceX and Blue Origin are both 20 years old, and neither of them are going public anytime soon. So there's no investor exits there. So you have to look at that exit timeline, as a really important factor in investing in these private companies.

And, SpaceVent has done some research around this, and we found that the average age at exit is 7 years, which does fit within that typical investment timeline. But until kind of this year where you saw a flurry of space related stacks over the last few months, These space exits were not very big or grand or had much fanfare. And so, it was harder for people to believe you could get an exit within that time frame. Well, I I I would I would complicate that a little bit.

It's not that the exit is because the companies are profitable. Many it's because the way in which individuals are valuing the companies today at at a at an x in many cases that's far beyond what people would can seem rational is turning out to be a windfall for those investors, but it's not because that they're highly profitable businesses. In the case of the SPACs, in most of the cases of the SPACs, that is true.

We have seen a couple of companies with some revenue, which was really exciting to me. Yay. Companies with revenue going public. Love it. I Rocket Labs' fire. But but a lot of the exits, the the ones that didn't have much fanfare, a lot of these acquisition and acquisitions that have been happening quietly in the industry over time, A lot of those exits were, based on, you know, a multiple of revenue, on real revenue. That's why the companies were acquired.

And so, you know, that's kind of the part of the exit ecosystem that has not been, well published, let's say, to the public, but is a very robust and real and growing, part of the the entire NewSpace ecosystem. So if I was to remove the and it's not that it has to be removed, but just for my own sake of understanding.

If we were to remove all government funded spending to all of these companies where their contracts are purely, in the United States, DOD, Department of Defense, the NASA or the intelligence community, or we go over to Europe and it's not the European Space Agency and we go over to, and we could travel the world. If we were to remove all of that, would these companies have still been profitable? That's a great question.

So governments currently account for a full 25 percent of the global space economy. So regardless of whether or not you as a company have received r and d funding from a government, from a government body, you can't ignore the government as a customer when they comprise 25% of the sector that you're working at. So governments are an important part of the sector, whether it's the r and d funding or or as a customer.

And so, so would would the industry fall down without 25% of the the economic driver of the industry? It might well, honestly. And and so, you know, that's one of the things one of the reasons I mentioned earlier. This industry needs a combination of both private and public capital to to survive and be as robust as we want it to be. Well well, that's the reason the reason I'm asking is I get questions that says, well, there are people commenting.

Well, if Elon Musk didn't make the money off of the US government, would they be alive today? Would that have happened? And their first contract for it was a $200,000,000 came out of it was a government contract that enabled them to take the next big jump in their in their positioning. And I do understand what you just mentioned. Pfizer, which did not get any money for the development of the COVID vaccine, was not part of project warp drive.

Individuals saying, well, they were part of warp warp drive. And I said, no. No. No. No. The fact that they had a customer who was willing to buy their product enabled them and made their investment portfolio worthwhile to put money into it, but they still were investing on their own to secure a contract that is commercially viable. Right. And so similar type of scenario.

I just wanted to know if these companies, so especially the smaller end companies, would would a large portion of them not even be around if not for these entities? I think that there's some truth in that. I think that the best of the best companies would be able to survive on private capital alone, especially through the r and d stage, which can be expensive.

But having that early government funding to cover r and d costs really positions these companies to take private capital, once they have, let's say, a working prototype, which means the company can raise at a higher valuation, which means the founders don't get diluted nearly as much Mhmm. Which is which is in a in a sense good for everybody in the community.

It it reduces that early risk, that early technical risk for the investor, and increases the value of the company before they ever have to fundraise. So, you know, my in my ideal world, we have a a well functioning ecosystem that includes both the private and public capital at the right time to make the most sense for the company life cycle. And so that's that early r and d funding from the government to cover technical risk.

Then private capital comes in to help the company scale, build business team around the tech, all of that. And then, at the next stage, the government comes in as a customer once the company has scaled to the point where it can fulfill, larger government contracts. And so, so we we have you you break it up into 3 phases. There's the initial, which is government. You have the the middle phase, and then the government is the customer. As one of several customers, hopefully. Right?

You don't ever want just one customer. I tell people all the time. One customer does not a business make. Yeah. Right? And so, having the government or having multiple parts of the government as customers can be can be great as part of a, you know, combination of of commercial and government portfolio of customers. Right? Mhmm. Okay. Got it. So going back to sustainability, how do you get that sustainability out of out of what you're seeing here? What we just described.

So it's all about, you know, the kind of the first wave of companies making a good, a good return, then investors will take some portion of that return and reinvest it into the same economy that now they're learning more about and have more confidence in. And so you get a kind of a virtuous cycle. Right?

And so that's how you get to economic sustainability is by continuing to grow, continuing to show good returns for investors, continuing to reduce timelines to return, increase ROI, return on investment, and continue to build the the hype about the industry as well. Some of this, spec craziness earlier this year has done has done a good job of that, but the industry as a whole could be much better about, you know, we're really good about, yay, Rockets.

But we're not very good about, hey, guess what? Look at this company who just exited in 6 years at, you know, 10 x what the initial investors put in and little yay. Let's talk about that for a minute. You you know what I mean? Right. And so, we could get a little bit better about overall as an industry talking about the the outsized returns that this industry is capable of providing.

You might plan on covering this later, but one of the questions that immediately is coming to mind is what if or if there is a sort of collapse in an industry? What happens to the whole ecosystem when this these rocket companies, for example, become the main focus? And I'll give you my my take. You can fix adjust it. Over a 150 space launch companies out there today, maybe 20% of them are actually doing something that's up in space, if that is even the number.

If you start to see a cascading number of these failing simultaneously, what does that do? So that's, that's number 3. We'll talk about that number 3 if you don't mind. Okay. So I I will share so you do have a context and this is not because of who you're associated with, but both Deep Space Industries and, Planet Resources. However, they turned at the end and bought out, the the Luxembourg put in a lot of money, different groups put money in, and then 2 companies just disappeared off the map.

And while I was in Luxembourg, I spoke at the conference and I was lured to the conference because 500 people had attended the year before, Luxembourg had invested. The next year I show up and there's there's thousands of people attend this conference, so there's a space component to it, but only 75 people were in the audience. And it was when I asked individuals, it was because they felt that they just got taken advantage of as a country.

And there was a large, negative feeling towards the industry. So we can address that later, but that's one of the reasons when I hear we have good returns. We have 7 years, But there's there are those that flame out in a big way. Absolutely. And that's always a risk of investing. Right? It's a risk of a 100% loss in any investment you make. That's the risk component, you know. But as with any nascent, ecosystem or or sector, you're going to have a lot of failures beginning.

And then the percentage although the number of failures will continue to increase as the number of businesses increases, hopefully, that percentage of failure starts to decrease. But you will always have, you know, the risk of complete loss in any investment that you make.

Are we seeing are are we on the in your opinion, are we on the upswing of the actually seeing more of these as a higher percentage, or are we far away from seeing what you're talking about a percentage of failures decreasing as an overall percentage of the ecosystem? I believe that we're definitely headed that direction. And one of the things that I'm most excited to see is what I call round 2 entrepreneurs.

And the industry is at an age now where we've got some really, really solid round 2 entrepreneurs. And these are people who have built a business that has failed, built a business that has had a medium amount of success, or built a business that's been successful, been through the entire life cycle, come out the other side, learned a lot of valuable lessons, and are now going at it for round 2, starting a new business based on those lessons learned.

Those are some of the most valuable entrepreneurs you can have in an ecosystem. And we're we're seeing a lot of those right now. So I think that's a really good indication that we're kind of rounding the hump. What are what are some of the names that pop out pop off pop out? So, you know, one that I I'll talk about, I always like to compliment him as, CEO of 1 of Space Fund's portfolio companies, OrbitFab. He was the CEO of Deep Space Industries, company you just mentioned.

And, he was a he had been a technical founder, took some time off, went and got an MBA, and came back into the industry to start Orbit Fab, which is, doing refueling depots, gas stations in space. And so, you know, and and DSI did have That's, Daniel Faber. Daniel Faber. Yep. Daniel Faber. Sorry. I thought I had said his name. Thank you. It's Dan Faber. No worries.

Daniel has a play Daniel has a place in my heart because as I entered the space industry and he was at deep space and he was right behind our offices at NASA Ames, and I was introduced to him. And I told him what we were working on, And I call him the human calculator because he said, no, no. Wait, wait, give me a second. And you could see his brain moving. I mean, it's amazing.

And he says, no, no, no. What we could do is we could grab this and do this and do this and throw the asteroid at the moon. And I'm thinking, wow. And so he made me rethink many constructs past that because of the way he addressed his thinking. Yeah. He's absolutely brilliant.

But, again, having this kind of first round of entrepreneurial experience and then being able to apply all of those lessons learned, you know, and and full disclosure, I was chief operating officer at Deep Space Industries while he was chief executive officer. So I worked very closely with him at that time. And just watching his evolution as he's become this absolutely phenomenal entrepreneur and and just great leader at Orbit Fab, you know, is is is been excellent to watch.

And I've seen my business partner, Rick Tomlinson, go through this as well. He's been through he he's he's been a little too early with a lot of the businesses he started over the years because he's a visionary, and he can see what's coming down the pipe. But if your customers aren't ready to buy your product till 3 years from now, it doesn't really for 5 years from now. Right? You could be visionary, and congratulations. You're written as the visionary.

But, but, you know, learning those lessons by having been through those experiences, you know, you have the scars to prove it. And as long as you're, you know, go stick your head in a hole and say, woe is me. The industry wasn't ready for me yet. You say, no. What's the industry ready for now? Let's go do that thing. You know? And that's that's an attitude that we absolutely love to see.

So how do we get to to a point where besides governments or where are you seeing going back to your nobody stays until somebody pays? So how do we get to that point? Yeah. How do we get to that? So that's a that's a great question. It starts you know, the industry is still at a very early stage, and what the industry needs now is seed capital and growth capital. And that need can largely be met by the venture capital community, the angel community.

But as these companies get into later growth stage realms, we're gonna need different financial mechanisms just like you find in other industries. Everything from, you know, from debt, you know, kind of longer term low interest financing for infrastructure projects. You know, we're going to need, futures and options markets. We're going to need all of the other parts of a of a robust and working economy.

And there are a lot of brilliant people working right now to help solve those kind of bigger gaps that are coming in the future. But but right now, you know, Venture Capital, Angel Capital is really instrumental to getting this industry up and moving in in a sustainable way that's focused on, as I mentioned earlier, those those shorter term good return on investment numbers that will continue to keep capital flowing in. Each interview is very different. Sometimes I don't have a lot of questions.

Sometimes I do. For some reason today, I do. But the book it's, if we're looking at I see your the statement, nobody stays until somebody pays. In your mind, is that customer or VC at this moment or or capital? The VC capital is needed to get to the customer capital. And then, you know, so it it's gotta it's gotta be all of the above. Right? You have to have an early funding ecosystem that gets the companies up and running into the point where they can service customers.

You have to have customers who, who are doing well enough themselves to buy the products and services. Right? Yeah. So then that means they have to have customers. They have to have had some early financing to get them to the point where they are. And then, like I said, you need these kind of, later stage growth mechanisms. And then, and then you need a robust, you know, public market that's ready to receive these companies as they, as they get to that stage.

So you have exits for the early investors. Okay. So anything else you wanna add to nobody stays until somebody pays? I think we're good there. Okay. So let's take your second one. The case for Space Force as an economic driver, and I will stop you for one moment before you start on it. For those who are listening in, there is an absolutely fantastic podcast by Peter Gerritsen who defined his version of the Space Force.

So if you would like to dig deeper after this, you will have an option to go to that one. Okay. So let's go on to 2. Okay. Great. And so this one, I just wanted to keep in as a bit of put in here as a bit of background, to kind of address something that that investors oftentimes see as a big risk with investing in space.

And to also kind of, build off of this comment I made in number 1 about, the new cold war with China is not a race to the moon, but a race for the high ground from a military perspective. And and so a lot of people, I think, look at Space Force, maybe rightly so as as, you know, a military unit, which it is. But I think that it's really important, part of the economic discussion as well. And so investors are oftentimes concerned about, let's call for shorthand, space pirates. Right?

Now this isn't necessarily gonna be guys on ships with funny hats. Right? But this could be, you know, robotic spacecraft that any spacecraft, for instance, that has the capability to do satellite servicing also has the capability to do satellite destruction. Right? Yeah. Just by the nature of of what the spacecraft can do. How do you protect from bad actors in space? And that is a risk that one has to consider when investing in in in the space industry.

And so one of the things to me that's, that's really talked about and is really important from this economic perspective is to think of Space Force as, you know, if Space Force were to exist to, quote, unquote, protect all American assets in space, both public and private. K? Yeah. Which is the terminology that I've heard tossed around. Okay. From from these folks. Right?

Now if that is in fact the case so one of the reasons we have such a robust global economy right now is because we have safe shipping lanes. We have safe shipping lanes, thanks to the great navies of the world, not the least of which is the US Navy. Right? Without those great navies, we would not have a global economic system where we could we could, reliably ship goods all around the world.

So having something like Space Force exist that provides some protection for American assets, both public and private, provides that equivalent of the US Navy protecting the global shipping lanes. So if you were a European, and you just heard that, or you're an African, or you're Southeast Asia, when you, and I could just a bunch of others, but we'll stop at that. Is this American imperialism again? American expansionism again? Is it is it about America?

No. It is hopefully the first step in creating a global group of allied navies or space forces that work together to protect the global shipping lanes. And there's, there's an analogy that's frequently made, when you're talking about, say, the, the policy and regulatory environment of asteroid mining. And the comparison is always to fishing in international waters. Right? Nobody owns that ocean. And when I move my ship out into international waters, I'm not claiming that I own the ocean.

When I drop my net in the waters, I'm not claiming that I have any ownership to any of that. But once I pull that net net up out of the water and dump the fish on onto my boat, now I own those fish. Right? And so, if the if the universe is seen as international waters, your your ship, your spaceship is flagged to your home country. And so, yes, if there's an emergency at sea, you hope the US Navy is somewhere nearby.

But if the British Navy is nearby or, you know, the the Singaporean Navy is nearby, they're gonna come help our allies at sea, and they're gonna come defend them from the pirates that are trying to steal the fish. Right? And so so that's the the eventual, you know, international cooperation that I would love to see in a case where the allies are coming together to protect assets and to protect the rights of individuals to utilize the assets of space, based on on international agreements.

It it's an interesting construct because if 2 two pieces of it. One one is that we have these things called oceans, which are very distinct. We have borders around each continent, each country. So that makes it very clear what on the surface is that boundary. If we were to then realize that there are 100 and 100 and 100 of submarines underneath, they're also floating in this space, but there are still some boundaries that can be defined. When you look up, how do you define that? So you know?

And that that's a good question. So right now, based on, you know, kind of some older agreements, the UN during the initial space age, there's, you know, the there's agreements that say, basically, you know, space belongs to everybody. When when the United States, planted our flag in the moon on the moon, we weren't claiming the moon as US territory. Right? And so that's, you know, it it is kind of internationally owned.

But then you look back at, several years back when we were at DeepSafe Industries, we we helped on some legislation that was passed here in the United States. There was similar legislation in Luxembourg and I think the UAE as well, that kind of set up this international water scenario that while you can maybe while you, individual, or country can land on the moon or land on an asteroid, you can't claim the moon or the asteroid as your own.

Whatever whatever resources you extract, you can you can claim as your own. And so, you know, thereby kind of reducing some of the geopolitical and legal risk around things like in space mining. But you have to have those kind of international agreements in place and, you know, bilateral, multilateral agreements that that kind of protect the the rights of commerce. Does it I tell me if I'm wrong here.

In the construct of, the the agreements, they've not been for private companies as more as much as they've been for countries. So the the US one was very much, you know, directed towards US companies and individuals having these rights, not the US government. Okay. I mean, yes, the US government by de facto. But the purpose of of the legislation was to give individuals and corporations as individuals, the right to do that. So the did anybody else sign up to this?

So like I said, there there was some legislation in the US, some legislation in Luxembourg, and some legislation in the UAE. To my knowledge, there has not been any bilateral or multilateral agreements between the countries yet. It was all just legislation passed within their borders. So in essence, if I go to the moon and I set up my place and somebody else wants to come and take my place, They're not supposed to, but they could. And So they're all we do is create war on earth.

Well, I I mean, in theory, if it's 2 corporations, I don't know, arises to the level of a of a real war, but maybe a, you know, a stock buyout battle on the New York Stock Exchange or something. You know you know what I mean? But, but, you know, there are kind of respected zones of noninterference, in space. But, again, who's there to enforce those if there's no space police? Right?

And so, you know, the idea is if you set up somewhere on the moon, you have a a zone, whatever you wanna call it, however many meters out, where it's not safe for us to both be operating spacecraft near each other. And and those are kind of international norms that are gonna have to be worked out over time. Do do you actually your opinion excuse me. I got something in my throat. Do you actually believe in the in the light of what's going on, Russian, China, the Europe excuse me.

I could take a drink. The European Space Agency just made an announcement or Europe has been looking at the fact that most of the launches are happening. A large percentage of them are happening through SpaceX, so they wanna ramp up their own activities. Do you believe we're closer to coming to these compromises and understanding, or do you believe this will be pushed on and not achieve that or anywhere in between?

I think that both Russia and China are gonna do whatever Russia and China wanna do. I think that the rest of the world will, you know, the legal and political always lags behind commerce. That's just the nature of our our economic you know, our our legal and political systems is that they don't write laws until there's a problem to write a law about. Right? So the problem has to happen first usually.

And so I think that you will start to see these things develop amongst the kind of the rest of the world, over the coming years, and I think that'll happen quite amicably. But then you've always got China and Russia will do what China and Russia will do. You know? We're we're also seeing the UAE has its own capabilities. We're seeing India with their capabilities.

And, personally, I'm a person of the world, not not to say complete globalist, but I've lived in Europe, and I've lived in in Asia past 10 years in in Hong Kong. I see a much different perspective as to what the future could be. And I'm given the pen and I'm not as as optimistic being pragmatic in the form of being optimistic.

I'm not as optimistic that in the short term or reasonably reasonable time that the individuals, companies, the the political wherewithal will be to create a multilateral, multi everything agreement that people are going to stick to because they'll see so many opportunities and such an expense that they've outlaid to get there. I I agree that it it there's not gonna be, you know, some multilateral everybody agrees to. This is now the international rule of law space thing.

I think that's probably gonna take decades to develop over time through, like I said, problems developing, solutions being figured out for those problems, norms developing over time. This is why everybody files their their corporate paperwork in Delaware. It's not because Delaware is better than any other state or cheaper than any other state to file in. It's because they have they have the most case law history.

So you can if there's ever a dispute, you can go and you're you're litigating it in Delaware, you can go back and there's 100, if not 1,000 of of of case law examples of the same problems being solved in the Delaware courts before. And so you have to kind of build up that body of case law. You have to build up that body of examples and and and put agreements together as they're needed, and then it it piecemeals together into a bigger, you know, patchwork quilt over time.

This is not something that's gonna have a single immediate solution. Interestingly brought up the case law side and the way you've approached it. Working in Luxembourg, one of the individuals I dealt with was constantly against America and against the British. And this individual would say, you all work on case law. We, in her country, work on an existing set of laws that everything is compared to.

So there is the school of thought that you come up with your policy, and it doesn't matter what case law is. It's always brought back to the origination of what the law is. The American system and many other systems are based upon this case law history, and it is for good and for bad. I would agree with that. I mean, you know, there's there's pros and cons to to every situation, but but the the beauty of case law in my mind is that it's based on real examples.

Like, you and I could sit here and, you know, spend 6 months hashing out what all the laws of the universe should be and makes perfect sense and everybody agrees, yep. This is it. This is the way it should be. But, you know, no good plan survives contact with reality. Right? Like, you have to real things have to happen, and you have to be able to go back and edit and inform and and modify, as real world examples come up. Yeah. If you went through my head, you'd see you'd see things flying.

And there's there's a scenario in the United States. I won't get into the specifics of it because it's too, it's too ignitable as a topic. But there's a a certain law that's been a challenge of a certain type of, public servant. And the law is that they cannot be brought in front of a, as a case unless there's a case that has existed before it. So therefore, there's never been a case. So no one can ever bring a case against it. And they just had something passed in the United States.

I don't know if I said that well, but they just had something where the Supreme Court, I believe, said, no, you cannot do that anymore. You cannot play that game. But for decades, the law was you can only bring a case against an individual if in fact it was there was a case that existed like it. And people would say, there's nothing like it, so we can't have a case. And for decades, people were able to get away with certain types of activities.

So my my question is, we're coming to the space side. I'm seeing 2 big things. I'm seeing the big space. There's a lot of space and space, and I'm seeing political wherewithal lacking on this planet. And I'm wondering when do you see when we're going to the case for the Space Force, Do you think the space the Space Force is a large enough answer? No. Not by itself. And that's the key. Right? Is that there has to be international counterparts.

We cannot be you know, the United States cannot be the police of the entire universe for a lot of reasons. Well, let's let me let me add an estimate. Do you believe space forces is the answer? Do you think that will be enough? I think that it's a good start. Right? I think that it's an important derisking factor. Right? Because looking at things as I do from the investor perspective, you know, it's interesting.

There's very few industries where geopolitical risk is a risk that you as a company, you as an investment fund have to be aware of and trying to solve. Right? Mhmm. And so yeah. So it's a big part of the geopolitical risk. It's a big part of the legal risk, and it's a big part of the just general physical risk of operating in space. Space forces can can really help that. Do we the Space Force was just formed in the United States.

Do you believe how long is your timeline for there to be an actual I don't even know what a Space Force would look like in 5 years or 7 years. I don't know. Is it lasers from Earth? Or are there going to be little people and ships up in the sea, up in the ocean in the air? I'm going the wrong way. What would that look like to you? I think that, you know, it's mostly like with most things in space, at least for the next few years, it's going to continue to be robotic.

But I do think you're gonna see some some interesting innovations that are going to allow a lot more people to be in space, but I think that's more in the 7, 10, 15 year time frame. Okay. So anything more to add to the case for the Space Force? No. I think we're good there. Okay. Launch is a solved problem, ipso facto. The time to invest in launch has passed. Yeah. Alright. So, again, let's start with some numbers.

In the 19 eighties, the shuttle, caught it took it was $20,000 per kilogram, roundabouts, to get things into space. A reusable Falcon 9 can do it for about 1500, 1,500 per kilogram. K? That is huge. That is that is just an absolutely mind boggling decrease, in in the cost of launch. K? Now there's gonna be a time in the not too distant future where we're talking about the cost of launch in the 100 of dollars per kilogram, not 1,000. Right? Yeah. But here's the thing.

You mentioned earlier, by Space Fund's account, there are currently a 162 live rocket or launch companies, excuse me, around the world. Yeah. Now I say live because we have, over time, tracked well over 200 companies, a lot of which have gone dark or gone zombie as we call them or or failed, publicly and brutally, or otherwise disappeared. So current count, as of today is a 162.

And, to date, LAUNCH has received 47% of the venture capital funding that has gone into space, yet accounts for less than 2% of the global space economy. 47% of the venture capital has gone into a subsector that accounts for less than 2% of the space economy. So let's talk about why that is. K. So if you're gonna go into that, can you give a definition to me what to you is the space economy? As, the I think the easiest way to define it is Bryce's yearly starburst, graphic that they put out.

Bryce Space and Technology does a great yearly overview of the space economy, and they break everything down by subsectors and and, and so you can kinda see where, that's where I also got this, you know, 25% of the global space economy comes from government budgets that comes out of the Bryce report as well. So to them, the space economy is a space company. Well, so Well, the reason I say it is the space economy to me is not that.

John Deere with their tractors that are being run by satellites, GPS systems on earth that would not exist, the transportation mechanisms that we have, that would not exist without the technology on Earth that leverages the space industry is also inclusive of that space economy. So in order to to put bounds, I I would agree with you in a in a kind of an esoteric sense, let's say. K. But in order to to do a real economic analysis, we have to have bounds. Right?

You know, otherwise, you could just keep going forever, and eventually, everything's related to space in some way. You know what I mean? But so the way that I would draw the line there is to say that the satellite operator who is providing the GPS services is definitely included in the space economy, and John Deere is not. However, when we're talking about the size of the economy, we're talking dollars and cents.

So John Deere's dollars that are being paid to the satellite company count as revenue in the satellite company's balance sheet. And so that does go into being counted as part of the global space economy. Does that make sense?

Yes. So if you're using GPS and there's no fee to use the GPS to be able to do your work and no one's making money off of it in terms of any specific company It's likely that John Deere has a contract with 1 of the GPS providers where John Deere pays that, and it's a feature that you get when you buy your tractor. And John Deere's got a long term contract with a GPS provider. Okay. Because somebody's paying for it. You know, I think they're always paying for it.

Some reason I'm always paying for something someplace, and and sometimes it's the sometimes well, is is bright when Bryce does those numbers, do they include, for example, the fact that the Russian or the Chinese or Are how how are they lot rolled in? Yeah. Are how how are they lot rolled in? You know, I'm not sure, especially with the Chinese.

You know, people ask me a lot of times if Space Fund would ever invest in a Chinese company, and aside from, ITAR and CFIUS and other issues that we would we would be concerned about having any involvement with with the Chinese company. But, the I don't necessarily believe that any of the companies in China are not in some way state owned and operated. Mhmm. Right? Yes. And so I don't know if you can count any of them as companies. So I don't know. That would be a good question for Bryce.

Well yeah. And and if you think of the United States, so we take out any activity that involves the US government that owns and operates something, then it changes those numbers also. So Right. But but a lot of what's going on in space right now, especially, is US government buying products and services from public companies. And again, that counts as revenue. You know what I mean? Mhmm. So that does go into the calculations.

So if the so, is there are there balance numbers, not income statements that show what the International Space Station makes for its I'm sure that that information is public. I've never tried to dig it up. But Okay. I'm just trying to to in my mind, the space industry, at least for on the, for the Project Moon Hut side, is to demonstrate that into to individuals that you don't have to be specifically in the space industry to be in the space industry.

If you're utilizing space to be able to perform your duties, if you have, some type of connection that requires your supply chain to work or requires your products to be manufactured in a certain way or you feed and you help spell space companies, you are part of the ecosystem. So I the space economy and the space ecosystem to me sometimes are inter are not interchangeable and sometimes they are. So I that's why I was pushing on the question. Gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It it's not an easy thing because if we want people like me, because I'm not a space enthusiast I happen to be in the space industry, but I'm not a space enthusiast. I don't look to the stars. If you want someone like me to be involved and I'm an opportunistic person, well, then I need to show how the opportunities in the space industry that I could be a part of that space industry, but I don't have to have a rocket to be engaged in it. No. You don't. Absolutely. You don't.

And, when we get down a little bit further in the outline here, I'm gonna talk about some of the, like, entrepreneurial opportunities that are that are outside of this this launch discussion. Okay. So I stopped you after you're gonna so you gave me the less than 2% of the space economy, 47% of VC funding. Yes. Yes. And so, yeah, that that's that's a serious imbalance. Right? 2% of the sectors receiving nearly 50% of the funding. Yeah. And so why is that?

I think there's a couple of reasons there. I think one, launch is easily understood by an investment community that maybe doesn't understand space in general or the market or or where it's heading. You know, it's a it's a rocket. Right? You light one end, it goes to space. Awesome. Big toys. Yay. Yeah. Exactly. Right? And so, I think that there's a lot of investor interest right now because you can't get into SpaceX.

SpaceX doesn't want any new investors on their cap table, and so people are looking for other, you know, opportunities to invest and launch. And I think it's just, you know, interesting and exciting and and an industry that's big and shiny and bright and that want people want to be a part of. Yeah. And I think that's what's driven the valuations in that industry up to to levels that I think are are a little bit ridiculous right now.

But, you know, we did some research, almost 2 years ago now, around around this, specifically the supply and demand in the in the launch industry. And the results of that were that, even though we expect the number of things to be launched to increase rapidly over time, and we'll talk about that one a little bit in the next bullet point, but, even even with some kind of generous predictions, we got to the conclusion that no more than 15 to 20 of these companies would survive Yeah.

Of the 162. And so, you know, we're concerned that that might and that if a lot of investors lose a lot of capital as these launch companies start to fail, that that might, reduce investor confidence in the industry overall. Which was the Luxembourg effect that I had spoken about earlier. Yep. And so, so, you know, we've been kind of shouting from the rooftops. You know? Woah. Woah. Woah, guys. Don't invest in launch. Let's talk about let's talk about what's being launched. Right?

Let's talk about what's going on that's creating the need for launch. Let's look a little bit deeper into the ecosystem here and see, and see why launch is even a thing. And, you know, I think we've we've done a fairly good job of getting that message out. I think that a lot of the people with their heads on straight in this industry have been thinking the same So what do you what do you tell them? I mean, what's your pitch?

You're you let's say I've I've got 2 and a half $1,000,000 right now, and I wanna spend it on something. And I like big shiny objects flying up into space. What would you tell me? So I would I would number 1, I'd say, look. You know, we've made 2 launch investments, 1 in SpaceX, 1 in a company that's not a rocket company that we think has paradigm to to or the ability to disrupt the current rocket paradigm.

And if you if you want any more information about trying to get into those 2, neither is easy, but we'll see if we can help you. But, really, really, what what you need to be thinking about is not what is what's launching, but what's being launched. And that's my 4th bullet here. So you kinda set me up for that one perfectly. K. You can send me a check. Actually, actually, I'm from in Asia, we just wired everything. In the United States, people still send checks. So, yeah, what's being launched?

The constellation craze. The constellation craze. Yeah. And so, right now, there's around 3,000 satellites in orbit. I used to know the exact number, but with how frequently, Elon's putting up these batches of Starlink, so I can't keep track anymore. But it's around about 3,000 right now. And so the, we expect 50 to a 100000 satellites to launch in the next 7 to 10 years. So that's where the demand is coming from on the launch side.

Now even even with demands that high, which are, you know, very high, very, very good numbers for the industry. There's still, like I said, only room in the in the market for 15 to 20 launch companies. But but what what is it that's being launched? What's creating that launch demand? What are these 50 to a 100000 satellites? And more than that, I like to always make the comparison that the constellation craze is like the gold rush of the American West. K?

It wasn't the gold miners who necessarily came out on top economically. Right? Most of them made no money, but, yeah, a few struck it rich, but those were few and far between. But the people who really made out well during the gold rush were the folks selling the pickaxes and the shovels and the Levi's jeans. And there's a reason that Levi's jeans is still a household name a 150 years later. Right?

Because every single gold miner, whether they were gonna hit it rich or not, needed a pair of Levi's jeans to get out into the river and pay for gold. And so, that to me is really the most interesting way to look at the market is the launch availability is creating the movement of a 100000 new purchasers of products and services. An entirely new market is being developed in LEO. And so this, you know, so this is where we are really focused from Space Fund's perspective.

This is where my kind of personal, focus is. This is this is where I go out, you know, looking for opportunities and looking for companies, is in those companies that can provide a product or service that every one of those 100000 satellites are going to need. Right? This is this is the guy, you know, creating servers during the Internet boom. This is the guy, you know, laying cable during the Internet boom. This you know what I mean?

These are the products and services that are needed for for that ecosystem to exist, And that's where there is a huge market opportunity and huge value to be created. I'm where I am, I'm probably 20 miles away from or 40 kilometers away from a building where 3 brothers had started a company laying cable and doing, setting up networks. And they were offered $300,000,000 to your about 2,019 99 for what they had built, and it was amazing.

3 brothers were two and a half years and were given the opportunity to walk away with $300,000,000. What did they say? It sounds like they said no. They said no because they thought they were worth a half a 1000000000 to a 1000000000 or whatever number. And 6 months later, they were broke. The family was living the 3 families were living in Florida in a 2 bedroom home with death threats and everything else because the ecosystem completely collapsed on the valuation and company swooped in.

I'm I know the guy who also did the, he was also the bankruptcy judge, and they were getting pennies on the dollar for these ecosystems built by people who really have put the ecosystem in. Is that a possibility here? There's always a possibility for a bubble. This is one of the reasons, you know, we've talked a lot about believing the launch industry to be overvalued. This is one of my concerns about the current spat craze.

And and, you know, one thing that we always try to be very level headed about in in our investment decisions is is maintaining valuations that make sense, for for what companies are really providing. Now not everybody's gonna be that level headed, especially with something as exciting as space. This is, if you've ever made, made cupcakes or or sugar cookies with your kids or your nieces and nephews, you know that the the most important part of the process is the sprinkles at the end. Right?

My mouth is watering, so I don't know why you're doing this to me. Okay. Upcakes are a weakness for me. So, this is what I like to call the magic space sprinkles. Right? Like, you take a company that's just a normal company. Let's say they build hard drives. And now you make those hard drives, you know, radiation tolerant. Oh, now they're a space company. They make space hard drives. Valuation has just gone a 100 x. Right? Because you can put space at the end of the company name. Right.

And so, you know, that to me has been there's been I I do have some concerns that a bubble could form around this kind of excitement that drives valuations up to a point that's unsustainable. So I'm hoping that the industry will get industry will get a hold of it. I'm hoping that, you know, as some diligent Wall Street analysts are put on the space beat permanently, they start to see what's going on here that you know what I mean? That that things will normalize.

To see what's going on here that you know what I mean? That the things will normalize, that the the systems that are in place will will work to to kind of normalize valuations. But, yes, there is always a possibility of of this being a a bit of a bubble right now. I I personally would love it to succeed.

And the questions are not meant to be negative as there are to be to clarify for my own thinking because I'm, we have we have some members on our Project Moon Hut team that are absolute, like, spot on with everything that they say. They will say, that won't succeed. This is not right. This won't work. And almost every time they've been right that I can think of. I can't think of a time that they've not.

And so, I'm, I see so much garbage out there, so many promises, and so much when confirmed data that is not accurate. Projections will be there in 6 years. Will be there in 5 years. Hey. How are you going to be there in 5 years? Like, where where did you come up with this? And they're raising money where they're getting investors, so they're hiring employees. And so I do wonder, and I I would we at Project Moon like to be a little bit more pragmatic. Not that we won't make our mistakes.

So that's why I'm asking these questions. I wanna make sure that anybody that I'm learning, how to be able to identify, how to look at, how to make sure that I'm doing the right or working with the right people to build our initiative. So if you were to advise me, how do I how do I stay away from the bad actors? So I I'm actually involved in the purchasing of the right applications, the right pieces, or am I gonna fall prey to people who are just putting sprinkles on? How do I know?

That's a great question, and one that's that Space Fund set out to to help with. You know? It's not a it's not a problem that any one entity or or person is gonna be able to solve for everybody all the time. But this is why we developed what we call our reality ratings. And back to our theme of spreadsheeting, there are some beautiful spreadsheets. If you're a spreadsheet nerd like me, I keep everything in a spreadsheet. So we put together these databases.

Go into what you've told me spreadsheet. That's why. I I let's I do know that. Yeah. Yeah. Spreadsheet narrative. Guilty for sure. So we created these databases of, of every company that we're tracking in every one of our sectors of interest. Now we don't have them all published yet. These do take some time and and effort to produce as you might imagine. And so but we're going through sector by sector, cataloging all of the companies.

And then based on publicly available information, private information that we have access to, and sometimes just a phone call with the company, or or or, you know, an email thread, we put together our reality ratings. And if are you familiar with, NASA's TRL technology readiness level? No. So it is a scale that NASA uses in order to rate the readiness of certain technologies for for space.

And a 0 is just a concept or an idea, and a 9 is a piece of technology that's that's been tested and and works in space. And so it's a scale. Mhmm. And so our real reality ratings are a similar scale, kind of 0 to 9. And, but we use more than just the technology, you know, readiness level of the company.

We also look at business, legal, finance, team, market, you know, all kind of all the things all the typical things a a venture capitalist would look at and, and rate those companies, and kind of you know, there's a kind of back end, how the sausage is made that that that pops out at the other end, a number between 0 and 9. And, and we keep those updated as frequently as we can as, you know, for instance, a launch company has a successful launch.

They they move, and they may move up the scale of a point or 2. Right? And so, and that's how I had that number at the ready of a 162 launch companies. That's how many are in our our reality range. And I and I took a guess at over a 150. So Yeah. You're pretty spot on. Yeah. Pretty spot on. But so we're hoping that that can be one tool for investors, for customers, for for any actors in this industry to be able to cut through a little bit of the noise.

Obviously, that's not every company in the industry. Obviously, we haven't gone through all of our sectors yet. Obviously, all of our investment sectors aren't gonna be all the sectors of the, of the space industry. So But, hopefully, that can be a starting point. So how not not your system. But how do you look how do you know a company is just sprinkled, and how do you know if a company has got it? I I I have one in mind.

I've used it before on a podcast, so I don't want to put it out there, but asking the project estimated cost by our team is 300 I think it's $36,000,000,000, and they're asking for almost nothing as their 1st round of financing. And he's like Yes. I know which one you're talking about. How how do how do you how do you know which is a sprinkle and which is not? It's that's a great question, and it's a combination of kind of looking into all these factors that we talked about.

And also keeping in mind that a lot of companies will start out with a 0 or one reality rating because because they're new. And it's it's so it's not so much as their reality rating of 1 right now is is there was their reality rating a 1 last year and the year before and the year before? Okay. So so you're using time as a variable, t 0 to t x. Right. Because of brand new company yeah. No. They don't have tech yet. No. They don't have financing yet.

No. They don't have any of you know, they can't They haven't gotten over even the first hurdles. Right. And so so a low number does not mean a bad company. It means an ex inexperienced company, an early, early stage company that might be just a PowerPoint company. But can they turn that PowerPoint into reality? You know? Right? Because everybody starts as a PowerPoint company. But can you turn that PowerPoint into something real? Are you telling me how to create PowerPoints now?

So so they do start out that way. What I'm finding, and I'm asking for your advice, I see a lot of individuals who've created a brand for themselves in the space industry that they go from project to project. They put their name on things, giving these companies a boost or an opportunity. They might make some money for consulting or whatever is their their value proposition. Yet in the end.

These are old thinkers with old constructs, and all they're doing is sucking wind out of the sails of the space industry. I definitely know if you have met a few of the folks you're talking about. I've we I know you and I have not compared names, but you you do know that there there's just it's not even new space and old space. It because those are industries and those are approaches and there's size and scale.

But there's just a lot of old thinking out there, resugar coated as new, and yet they're not gonna go anywhere either. And and they scare me as an industry because for me and what we're doing at Project Moon Hut, we're trying to be on our end as and it's we like it to be exciting. We're the age of infinite. It's a podcast, infinite possibilities, infinite resources. People love the hope. So we wanna make sure we don't give them false hope in the process.

So I'm trying to figure out how do I look at a company without you and get it? Yeah. So, you know, there's for us, one of the biggest indicators, and this is something that does require some industry knowledge, but also a little bit of Googling goes a long way. It's it always comes down to the team. Right? Technical problems can be solved. Business problems can be solved. If you have a founding team that have problems, that's very, very hard to solve. Right?

And with the particular company that you were just mentioning, which I won't say the name of, if you do just a cursory googling of some of the people on their team, you can tell that they're people you might not wanna work with for various reasons. Okay. Yep. You know, so company people who have a very puffy resume, but no results and have had lots and lots of jobs, very short turnover over their life, and have no never produced results anywhere. Right? You know?

Yeah. And and things like that just kinda stand out like a sore thumb when you just when you just look at them critically. Right? And so, you know, I would all I always say you start with the team. Look at the team. That will tell you just about everything you need to know. Also, look for a well rounded team. So many of these early stage team, it's, you know, 2 scientists and an engineer. Well, that's great for r and d, for research and development, but who's gonna run the business?

Who's gonna do the accounting? Who's gonna talk to the customers? Who's gonna talk to the investors? Right? And so so looking for for a group that has kind of thought through what type of team is actually needed to run a business, not just create a piece of technology. I you know, I think that that's really fundamental in in the early stages because they like I said, they may not have tech yet, may not have customers yet, and so it's really it's about the team.

It's it's interesting that you went that way, but I didn't expect that. One of the patents that I have secured that I come up with years ago was decision making based on programmatic and algorithmic analysis, which and we we secured it within a period of 6 to 8 months. It was unbelievable how quickly it went through because it was so unique.

And we have the ability using experiential data, and it could be data of activities or performance or whatever, you put as variables, that those decisions get weighted and that weighting is tied to future decision making. And so I hadn't thought about the interconnection of that patent with this part of the business. Interesting. That is very interesting. Yeah. It's the longest patent we've ever written.

It was, like, 60 pages long, and it cost us a fortune because it's in this very crowded space of AI. And the only way to get it through was to get the top AI lawyers that you could find. It was $800 an hour. Even though my eve even though my partner is a former attorney and has over 200 patents to his name, he's not a patent attorney. So what we did is we wrote what we could, and then we handed it to the attorneys.

And this was just like owning a boat would have been cheaper because the money just flew out for them to write this complex patent, and we ended up getting it. So, yeah, you you've kind of brought me back to how maybe there is a mechanism that could be used to give a weighted average based upon historical references as to what these individuals are capable of or have delivered in the past. The the only challenge is you could have 5 failures and then one whopper. That's a win. Right.

No. No. And and that that absolutely does happen. It absolutely does. But, you know, one of the things I always like to say about these face companies is do they have any adult supervision in the room? You know? Because a lot of times, they don't. You know? And so, and so, you know, even even an entrepreneur who has failed 4 times is probably a better CEO than a rocket scientist. Oh, yes. Right? We've got some of those. Okay. Right.

And so and so it's like rocket scientist, you are you are probably better suited to be chief technology officer of your company than CEO. I promise, if you enjoy being a rocket scientist, you likely don't enjoy most of the tasks required to be a CEO. Right? They're very thorough. Or a CTO. You should be building rockets. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

So, and and most of the founders we talk to, in fact, are very keen keenly aware of that and very happy to have help finding a CEO if they need 1, etcetera. Right? And so but but, yeah, it's about finding the teams who are well rounded, who have thought these things through, who are more than just a technical team, and and, who are people that you believe can actually make it make it happen. So how do you put a number on it in your relativity scale?

How do you, with thousands of companies, go through each one and say, okay, there are 6 players here. You do a LinkedIn look, you do a this look or that look. How do you know if they're gonna build a space company? Well, you don't, especially if they're very early stage. Right? That's why they start with the lower numbers. And a lot of times when we release our reality ratings, we'll hear from several of the companies that say, hey.

Yeah. It's I guess it's not on our website, but did you know that we just got this massive contract and we just got this and we just got that? I go, oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. They don't want their ratings to be they're giving the data because they don't wanna move Right. Up. Yeah. Exactly. And so they'll go up a couple points.

And then, again, as they reach milestones or get NASA contracts or do press releases about big customer contracts and, you know, you see a a products get go to space and demonstrate, perfectly and, you know, and then their reality ratings will go up over time. And so to me, that's the most interesting part of the reality ratings. It's not what everybody's static rating is today, but it's watching the ratings changing over time. And people will go down too, not just up. Of course.

And so, so yeah. So that that to me is it's the dynamic part of the reality ratings that's so fascinating. Meeting. Okay. The so let's, I I'm assuming we're gonna go on to the 3 forms of economic opportunity in the near, 3 to 5, 5 to 7, and 7 plus. Unless you've got something else you wanna add. Let me double check my notes here. Make sure that I didn't miss anything on that one. Alright. No. Okay. Yes. So let's start with economic opportunity in the near term, 3 to 5 years.

So I told you earlier, I'd kinda talk about what are some of the entrepreneurial and investment opportunities. I'm sitting here saying, don't invest in launch. Say, well, Megan, what should I invest? Right? First of all, this is not investment advice. I'm not a registered investment adviser. This is this is Okay. Yeah. This is an educational opportunity for me and anybody else who listens to understand more about the space industry so that we can achieve the age of infinite. Perfect. Perfect.

Alright. So, so I mentioned earlier kind of as part of point 4, the constellation craze, This idea of thinking of of the constellations as a market in and of themselves. So so what are the problems facing that market? And when I say problem in business speak, that's also an opportunity. Right? So wait. So let's define constellation. Okay. A, 3 or more satellites working together for a single purpose. Oh, really? Okay. I would never have defined it that way, but that's great.

How would you define it? No. I I my mind went to constellation, so I'm thinking constellation, you know, 5,000 or I even even the GPS of having, the a larger number. I would have not started with 3, but I could understand if you have Some people would say 3 is a cluster if you wanna be the you know what I mean? The engineers all have their own terms for these things.

No. That's why that's why I asked you to define it because, I'm learning about different types of orbits and different types of capability. Even though I've been in this for now forever, it seems like there's always something new to learn about. For example, yesterday, I did Andrew McCarthy, and he's talking about the the one of the astronauts kicked the dirt and his boot became, like, an orange rusty color, Apollo 17, I think it was.

And I said the the moon is full of color, and he said, oh, it's absolutely colored. And then he talked about how all these asteroids have hit, and they've and I said it's more or less almost like dust on the top of the moon. It's covered all these colors that the moon is actually colorful underneath. Didn't know that. And you'd say, why don't you? Because it doesn't come up in conversation. Right. When I think of these 3 or more, when you said that, I said, okay.

So we could have a polar orbit satellite system of 3 different satellites that suffice in giving enough data so that there's continuous information being fed to whomever needs it. Right. And depending on what kind of data they're collecting and their yeah. What kind of data they're collecting and the frequency and blah blah blah blah. Right. Yes. Yes. So that's why I said that. So 3 really changes my mind, my mindset on what I thought.

So 3 is a good number to hit me across the face and say, David, think smarter. Okay. Right. Because there and there's lots of constellations that are being planned right now that are 12 or 24 satellites. Right? You also hear of 40,000 plus satellites for Starlink and, you know, but but not all constellations need to be that size. You know? But the hype the hype is what pulled me so far higher. That's why when you said a 100,000, and I'm thinking, okay.

We got all these big 40,000 or 10,000 or and you went right back to basics. It could be 3. It could be 12. It could be a a much different number. Yes. Absolutely. And so if you're interested, there's a really good website, called new space dot I m. I'm not affiliated or associated with it in any way. It's a gentleman named Eric Kulu, and he is tracking every planned and announced constellation.

And it has great information on here, like how, you know, how many they've how many are launched versus the total size of the planned network, a first estimated launch date, you know, how big they are, what they're doing. And so you can you can take a look at that, and it's just a really, really fun website if you're interested in what are all the constellations, what are they being launched for, what are they doing. Space geek. You know, a really fun site. Can look at this spreadsheet nerd.

Right. You can look at this spreadsheet, and you could see all the different you know, spend your weekends. Spend your nights. I have spent Ignore your children. Yes. Yeah. So I know all the good stories. Okay. So he he's put the how long has he been in business? Do you know? I don't know how long this has been up. It's been up for at least a couple of years. I've been referencing it at least that long. Alright. Yeah. So, but yeah.

So this is a real handy dandy little tool if you wanna know what all the constellations are. So I won't I'll give you guys that tool and so I don't have to go No. No. No. I'm looking at it. It is massive. This is a lot of Yeah. Projects. And, yeah, this is a lot. So there's a lot going on. Okay. And yeah. And a lot of the ones down at the which are 0 launched and question mark for total number of Oh, yeah. Yeah. Constellations. See that. Yeah. So you have to Oh, right. They're all canceled.

Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Canceled. Right. A lot of those are canceled. A lot and then there's a lot on here as well that are have not yet received funding. Yep. A lot of question marks. Yeah. Right. Right. And so so, you know, keep all of that in mind. But this is this is, I think, a really good and interesting starting point if you're interested in in the constellation craze. So so okay.

So if you think about all of these constellations, and now you have your your list in front of you, if you think about them as as customers, as the market themselves, right, what are the products and services that they're gonna need? Okay. So you think about, well, all the different widgets that go into a satellite. Sure. That's a that's a great place to start. Can you make a better solar panel? Can you make a better battery? Can you make a better, motherboard? Right?

Okay. Mhmm. And there are definitely ways for incremental and even better than incremental progress in kind of all of those areas. But here's an interesting data point, me always going back to my numbers.

Yeah. And this comes from one of our portfolio companies, Skyloom, which put some information together, around this, that currently, where there's only 3,000 or so satellites in orbit, less than 1% of the data they collect makes it back to Earth because of 3 important bottlenecks, downlink and then on orbit storage and on orbit processing. K? Yep. So here's here's an example I love to give. The disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight.

We know for a fact there were multiple Earth observation satellites that took pictures of that space of that aircraft along its entire flight path wherever it ended up. K? Yep. But because nobody pays for Earth observation data from Open Ocean, in order to maintain storage and processing capability onboard the space craft, all open ocean imageries are images are immediately deleted if you're not necessarily, like, a ship tracking satellite constellation. If if that's not your business. Correct.

Right. Right. And so what if those satellites have the ability either on the satellite themselves or via, let's say, in, you know, a a server in space to to just beam all of that information directly to a server that could store it, process it when it was when there was time, and keep it for 48 hours. Keep it for for 10 days or or or 2 months until you know the data is not needed, until you've processed it and know there's nothing valuable on it, then dump it. Right?

So a sir a server firm in space. Correct. Or finding better ways to manage storage and processing onboard the spacecraft. And a lot of those problems come from, from energy availability. Right? And Mhmm. The, you know, hot and cold cycles of of the spacecraft. Right? And so solving those problems can could help, increase storage and and processing capability on board. And the as with most problems like this, the likely, best solution is a combination of solutions. Right?

Having your backup storage available just like you back your everything up to the cloud right now. Right? Why wouldn't you do the same if you have the opportunity to do it cost effectively in space? Because, Megan, you're not backing up to the cloud. You're backing above the clouds. So you'd actually be backing down to the clouds. Well It's a joke. It's a joke. You're back backing to the Because we Van Allen belt. To the clouds. We're going down. Back up to the Van Allen belt. They Right.

We're going right. So we're backing down to the so yes. Yes. Yes. That was a joke. I just I just want you to know it was a joke. So so you're saying is for opportunities, individuals could decide to be a part of the infrastructure that helps to create the products that go to that are built into the constellations or products that service the constellations. Right. And and so, yeah, this you know, the the, processing and storage is the downlink.

So I mentioned Skyloom is the one who kind of did the research to come up with this data. They're, they're building some some interesting technology for, this coming switch from radio frequency to optical or or laser communications that the industry is gonna be undergoing in the next few years. And Skyloom is building both intersatellite laser comm links as well as a future kind of backbone layer to do, laser comm, transmission and processing in space.

And so, but there's lots of opportunities like that in opportunities like that in in helping kind of transition to this new infrastructure, you know, in in the comms and down lake arenas.

So to take what you're saying, and I'm gonna ask you a question and see how you go with this, Wouldn't it be advantageous to the space ecosystem or the space economy if in fact, a company such as a laser company that is already producing lasers decides to start a space division where all they're doing is producing space lasers, wouldn't it be advantageous to the ecosystem to say, hey.

They're part of the ecosystem, but they're they're a space company because they're building lasers used in space. There's there's a lot of companies that exist like this right now where space is is one of their sectors. Yeah. You know, with aluminum companies and, you know, with all kinds of different types. So my my mine is about language. I think the space industry is exclusive instead of inclusive. So I'm asking you when we talked about the space industry.

If a company says we're building lasers, we have 25 people working on it. That's their sole job and it goes into space. In theory, according to Bryce or whatever company, the way we defined it, they're not a space company. No. They're not. But, again, those, you know, that sector of their, of their company could be counted as part of the space sector even though you wouldn't count the lasers that are being used on the ground. Right?

You would have to divide it up in some way, to get the to get the calculus right. You know? But but, you know, that should definitely be considered a part of the space economy. And that's and that's where in Project Moon Nut, this is where I've had this challenge is that the industry kind of says it's got to be in space in order for being a space company. I said, yes. But if you build it, you build the satellite, but you don't ship it. You're not it's you don't own it.

You've been contracted out to build the satellite. Well, then it's really not your satellite. You've been contracted out. So therefore, you're not in the space industry. You're just a manufacturer. And I would argue, no. They're in the space ecosystem. They're part of the space sector, the Sparta space industry. And if we're inclusive of them, we start to see that the industry is pretty darn large. Right. And that's good. That's a good thing. That is a good thing. I I agree with that.

Although it might not be exactly the way to slice it up in order to get to the right numbers for for a pure economic perspective. But from from from the way we speak about the industry perspective, I completely agree. Yeah. It's the numbers still would have to be defined for a spreadsheet expert like yourself. You'd have to set the parameters. And you could say, they only manufacture on Earth and they don't go to space. So they're in space, so they don't do. Or they utilize space, so they don't.

But yet if a company relies on space to be an integral part of their services that they sell in order for them to function or to them to make money, then I would, in my opinion, I would start to include them in the space ecosystem. It's a lot more complicated guaranteed, yet it does change the dynamics because now that laser company is a space company. They have they have a space unit and they become different. They become part of the family, and I think that's a positive thing for the industry.

I would agree. Okay. That's where I was that's where I was talking about much earlier on. That's where I I kind of play this. We want the industry to grow, but we're telling people you're not part of the club because you're not wearing the right sneakers. Yeah. But I'm inside with everybody. You know, but you're not wearing the right sneakers. You don't know the secret handshake. Yes. Come on. It would be the space nerds that would need a heat a secret handshake. It would be.

So so we have this say that as one of the space nerds know that. Oh, I know that. I I know it's it's, it's a scary thing. Sometimes. Yeah. I won't go in how far into this. So the, so you have this example. This is a great example of someone who can see an opportunity in servicing that. How do you find or identify or what's if you were to advise somebody today, you're looking for something to do.

You just got COVID has destroyed your life, and you're an engineer or you're smarter, you've owned a business. You would say, go look. Go look at what the constellations are building. Go talk to the people building and operating the constellations constellations and ask them what their pain points are. The thing that I give, young entrepreneurs advice the piece of advice I give most frequently, let's say, is talk to your customers.

You would not believe how many brilliant product developers, right, engineers, scientists, whatever the case may be, get all the way through to a prototype and have never spoken to a customer about what the customer actually wants or needs. Right? It's like you might think you know, but the but you're not your customer. Go talk to them. Ask them what their pain points are. Ask them, you know, what you can do to solve them.

Have those conversations first before you before you spend 2 years developing a product that you're not sure the dog foods are gonna want the dog if the dogs are gonna want the dog food as they say. You know? Uh-uh. I taught new product and service development and innovation at NYU for 12 years, and that is that is such but it's not just that. It's it happens the same way in creating a deck in the business development side. Did you try it with anybody? Well, no. I wanna finish it first.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Just go tell talk to somebody. No. No. I want it to look good. The graphics are still being worked on. Why are you making graphics? You know, pretty pictures. Just go talk to somebody. So I understand. So you're talk to customers. So today, based upon your data, where would I go to who would I talk to? Constellation is 1, but what would be some of the other key areas that you feel there are opportunities in marketplace?

So, I think there's opportunities in the marketplace to, let's say, scale manufacturing. Right? So there's kind of a a few shops that are starting to come out on top as as ones that, that can kind of build a spacecraft for you soups soup to nuts. Right?

And whereas it used to be that if you wanted to start a space company, you had to build your own spacecraft, and you had to go figure out what's the best propulsion solution, what's the best satellite bus to buy, what's the best solar panels to buy. Now you can you can walk into a company and say, hey. I need a spacecraft that does this. And they'll go, great. We'll have 6 of them for you in 18 months. You know what I mean?

And so I think there's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of innovation around manufacturing, around streamlining manufacturing, and and reducing costs and increasing timelines. So that that would be a company like Relativity Space. Is that what you come to mind, or who do you what comes to mind when you think of building an aircraft? Built not building not building a, a A spacecraft. A launcher, but like a Oh. Like a satellite. A satellite. Oh, okay. Building a satellite. Yep. Okay. Right. Right.

Okay. And so, so so that's, I think, gonna be a really interesting innovation to watch. I think, as I mentioned earlier, is this constellations as customers goes a long way. Everything from, you know, component parts that go into these new manufacturing lines that are being set up, all the way through, one of the things we we talked didn't really talk about was satellite servicing. Right?

And so the ability to, one of the things that I've that I've really enjoyed watching over this last 2 years is kind of the the launch of the new, OTVs, orbital transfer vehicles, right, that that change the dynamics of your ride share situation. And so, you know, being on a SpaceX ride share is like taking the bus. You get dropped off or you get dropped off, bud. You don't get a choice. You know?

But, but if you have one of these orbital transfer vehicles, then you can get delivered to your final orbit, without having to have as much onboard propulsion. And and so it it it just really changes the dynamics. So that's kind of the first leg of satellite servicing. And then you have, you know, the capability to refuel a satellite, capability to change a satellite's orbit if it's been placed in the wrong orbit or it's fallen to the wrong orbit for some sort of technical reason.

You have the ability to unfurl solar panels that didn't unfurl themselves appropriately. We have kind of all of these services that can be provided by these satellite servicing robots. That's gonna be very interesting to to watch develop as well. And, you know, so so I think there's a lot of parts to that kind of low earth orbit satellite supply chain that you can start looking at that from from soup to nuts and find opportunity along every step of the way. K. And anything else in the 3 to 5?

That's that's the big focus for for me for the 3 to 5. Okay. 5 to 7. Alright. So this is where we get to talk about a little bit more the fun stuff. I like the fun stuff. Okay. So, so this is where I like to talk about the in space supply chain. So we just talked about the satellite supply chain. That's the majority of that supply chain is based here on Earth. Right?

And then you launch your saddle the satellite and it does its work on orbit, but it was designed, built, manufactured, and launched, you know, all here on Earth. And so an in space supply chain gets more into this kind of what we were talking about satellite servicing. Right? So a satellite servicing spacecraft is an expensive robotic spacecraft to build. And you're not gonna you know, it's not really a sustainable business model if you only get one use out of that servicing spacecraft.

And so in order for that satellite servicing spacecraft to have multiple uses And for it to be able to provide fuel to its satellite customers, there need to be fuel depots in space, going back to Dan Faber and OrbitLab. Now fuel depots in space are, to me, one of the most important first nodes in a future all in space supply chain. So we'll talk a little bit about asteroid and moon mining in the next one, in the 7 to plus you know, 7 plus years.

But in order for those things to make sense, for the business case to close, for those things to be economically viable, you have to start the development now and especially over the next 5 to 7 years of an in space supply chain. So imagine that asteroid miner, the first thing it brings back from an asteroid is water. There's a lot of reasons for that. Water is hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen and oxygen make rocket fuel.

It's also really important if you wanna breathe or drink or anything like that. Right? And so so where is that water gonna go? Who is it gonna be sold to? There needs to be a functioning and robust in space supply chain for those materials to be sold into. And so in the next 5 to 7 years, you're gonna see the development of of the early stages of this supply chain, where eventually raw materials such as water can be launched into space.

They can be processed into fuels, to oxygen for breathing, water for drinking, at a processing plant in space. That processing plant then one of its customers are commercial space stations who need water and oxygen and fuel, but they're also refueling satellites with hydrogen peroxide, or some other, you know, the, fuel derived of water.

And so, then once asteroid mining comes online, there's a place for it to you know, the that asteroid miner to come and deposit its dirty water from the asteroid into a ready and waiting fuel propel you know, propellant depot, propellant processing and depot and sales. Right? All already functioning and on orbit. Another really important part of this in space supply chain is in space manufacturing.

And so, you know, again, these raw materials from space need a robust manufacturing pipeline to be sold into. And so this is everything from the kind of the most famous example you hear about a lot, which is Ziplan optical fiber, all the way through 3 d printing of of human organs, and pharmaceuticals. And and then, you know, silicon wafers for for integrated circuits, for computer chips.

The the environment of space, natural vacuum, natural near, absolute zero temperatures, the, you know, low gravity, all of these things can be very beneficial for certain manufacturing processes. And so right now, even though raw materials are being launched from Earth, you know, those businesses can start to really scale once they have a source of of in space sup you know, supply chain.

But in the meantime, those businesses can be profitable and and, and in fact, create quite a bit of revenue, even still having to launch their raw materials from Earth. The I'm gonna add something and just for someone who might be listening later is that hydrogen peroxide for most is not a common chemical or I people don't know the formulaic version of it, so it's h two zero two.

The reason I'm saying that is that there's a hot if you have water within hydrogen and oxygen, you can now create the h two zero two. And that might not be something that someone would understand without knowing that it's you're still using the same elements to be able to create that. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's it's hydrogen peroxide. I I never thought about what hydrogen peroxide was made out of.

And now that I'm thinking about it, my background is organic chemistry, physics, calculus, but that was a long time ago. And I was like, what is in hydrogen peroxide? Is there anything that's necessary that would make it more challenging to create? And it's not because you've got everything you need.

So so you're on the fuels on the, the supply chain side, you're supplying basic raw materials to space, then you're solving the challenges of manufacturing or converting what's ever been brought to space into something else through some type of robotic technology Mhmm. That enables that to be reconverted and brought back down to earth or used in space. Correct.

Okay. And any other variance within I hate these word variance given what that means today, because of COVID, is 55 that's why we I use variant and I went, oh, god. I'm going in a different direction. 5 to 7 years, do you see you just talked about pharma. You said Siliconwave. You had 3 d human organs. You had Z band. What else might be in that category? As far as manufacturing and space, I don't know, man. I heard, I, we'll we'll be making an announcement here in the next couple weeks.

I can't quite talk about it yet, but we have a a deal ongoing right now with an in space manufacturing company. And, I remember on on a call with with one of the founders listening to him get so excited. He's like, you know, he's going through all the kind of stuff and the the business side of it and and, you know, all the very practical stuff. And then and then we asked him.

I said, so based on what you're telling us about this and and how you're combining these two elements in a unique way, You know, what other elements could you combine? And, man, did you see his eyes lit up. He and he's got the biggest smile on his face. He's like he's like, that's the thing, man. We could start crashing all sorts of stuff together. We don't know what's gonna work. We don't know what we're gonna create. Unobtainium, maybe. You know? You know? Right?

And he's absolutely the the combination of microgravity and zero atmosphere, as well as the the temperature are very much different conditions that we have on earth. Exactly. The And so we have no idea what's possible. So you really think, on the continuum, we can have that? Because I've been working on that in my garage, and I now I I I knew I was doing something wrong. Right. Right. I think But don't you need you need a superhero to come in and save the day, though.

So that's, you know, somebody from another planet. Okay. So anything else within than the 5 to 7? Nope. That's my that's my big pitch for the 5 to 7. So we'll go to our 7 plus. Alright. So this is where we get into asteroid mining, moon mining, which I'll I'll I'll spend as much or as little time as you want on as as you you know. I we worked at Deep Space Industries, so I can I I didn't say to to go on a little too long, so try to keep it short? No. It's okay.

I I have I stopped you yet on a have I told you to stop anywhere? No. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So, so asteroid and moon mining, I think are both very realistic in kind of the 7 to 10 year time frame. This is gonna have everything to do with kind of when the first private dollars, significant private dollars, go into a mission of this sort, and then it'll be 5, 7, 10 years out, depending on the specifics of the business plan.

And so this is the key to making that in space supply chain work that we were just talking about, in the 5 to 7 year time frame. This is what drastically brings down the cost of operating in space, and this is what makes long term permanent human habitation possible. Now I I you asked me what if I can cut you off at any time. What's the name of our foundation? Moonhut. Right. So where are we positioned in terms of the Mearth economy, moon and earth economy?

And what does this what might we need to make it happen? That's why I said I'm not gonna cut you off. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There you go. So, as you probably know, this is something that we refer to a lot in the industry as in situ re in situ resource utilization. We're basically living off the land. Right? Using the resources of where you are, as much as possible, relying on resupply from Earth as little as possible, to really, again, get to this idea of sustainability. Right?

And so, so in this kind of 7 plus year time frame, to me, the the real key is getting asteroid and moon mining, online, working economically viable, because then that opens the door for the ability to build large structures in space. When you have the ability to 3 d print those large structures and you have a supply of raw materials with which print them, now you can build anything you want. Now you can build a habitat as as big as you need to.

Now you can build return rockets on the moon, so you don't have to bring your return rocket with you. Right? Or or, you know, kind of any of those the being able to source water on the moon, again, for breathing, for drinking, but also as fuel to survive the lunar night. And so, you know, that in situ resource utilization is so important because, 1, it's then the basis of all of this other economic activity. The 2, in and of itself, has the potential to, be a huge value creation opportunity.

And so so that's that's my first key to the the longer time frame. And then the next topic I wanted to talk to about there and and I'll I'll kinda weave these together a little bit, and then, and then we can go back and and see if you have any questions. But when Starship comes online? Now I expect star Starship to come online in less than 7 years. Starship will probably come online with the reliability to take humans to and from space in the 5 to 7 year time bracket.

And Okay. Starship is SpaceX's define it so that it's on record when you say Starship because that. Yeah. It's just not not someone who listens to this podcast the first time ever is not gonna know what Starship is if they're they've not been the space industry, and they come in at number 41 of our podcast. That's why I say it. Yeah. No no no problem. So Starship is the the big new, the big new rocket that SpaceX is currently building that they're testing, down in Boca Chica.

Seems like about once a month at this rate where or so we're getting to see a test flight of, of Starship prototype. And and the idea is that Starship will be able to take a 100 tons to orbit. It will be able to take a 100 people to orbit at a time. And that's the capacity that I think is is really interesting to talk about. Okay? So right now, a dragon capsule on top of the falcon can take what what is it? 6 people is the max you can put in in there?

Yeah. Yeah. And so imagine imagine how different low earth orbit would look if if SpaceX had the capability to take a 100 people at a time back and forth to Leo on a reusable spaceship that could fly dozens or 100 of times a year. Okay. So when we look at By the way, it's it's 7. I kept I'm saying to myself, the space shuttle space shuttle had 7. I believe this has 7. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're probably right.

6 wasn't sitting well with me, but I couldn't It wasn't sitting well with me, and I'm saying to myself, I know I made an analogy before because I think there were 3 on one deck in the space shuttle and 4 on the other. And then I used that same analogy when I was thinking about the Dragon, and I'm I'm probably completely wrong, but maybe. Okay. Yeah. So let it's 7 people. And it depends on the crew versus cargo configuration and all that. Right? Yeah. Okay. So currently, you can do 7 at a time.

What happens when you can do a 100 at a time? Oh, and I'm gonna stop. I just looked it up for us. The though the space shuttle had the capacity of flying as many as 8 people, they had the capacity to do 8, but it depended on, on conditions the way they had done it. So I don't think they did. I think they typically did 7, but I'm looking at it very quickly just so we can have it here and and we don't get any space nerd saying, David, what is wrong with you? Don't you know this?

Because I I watch people attack people in the space industry. I know it's not 47 kilograms. It's 49. How could you have made that mistake in your lifetime? Get off planet Earth. You are no longer valuable. And that happens a lot. So Yes. It does. Okay. So we've got 7. Sorry. Go ahead. So we did find out Dragon was 7? Yep. Okay. So, so how different does the world look when you're taking a 100 Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna caveat this.

It says in May 2014, Musk unveiled the 7 seat crew Dragon. Didn't this guy in Japan who's got the seat, who's doing this thing to the moon? Well, that's a different rocket, but that's supposed to be 8, I think. Okay. Not that it's important, but it is important because I don't want people to hit this podcast and say we screwed up and everything else was fantastic, and then we have one thing wrong. Right. Right.

Exactly. So I apologize for keep on stopping you, but I'm I'm kinda, like, I'm sweating right now. What did I do wrong? I'll never be loved. Alright. Not not an unreasonable concern in this industry. I know where you're coming from. Alright. So so when we start looking at that plus 7 year time frame, you know, I like to say, look. When when Starship comes online, where where are all these people gonna go? Right? There's no Disney World in space. There's there there's no casinos.

There's no sports arenas. What are what are we a 100 people at a time gonna do? Where are they gonna go? And so I think that as people start planning now for businesses that will be in high demand 5, 7, 10 years from now, start thinking about the real estate of space. Start thinking about the coming housing shortage in space. If, we have robust in space manufacturing facilities, you know, when you're talking about manufacturing of a well defined product, almost all of that can be automated.

But when you're talking about r and d, product development, all that initial stuff, you really do need humans in the loop. And so you're gonna have lots of people working and living in space, developing these new products, playing with these new atoms tiny atom smashers as that one entrepreneur I mentioned was talking about. Like, Smash all kind of things together, see what happens. So where where are all those people gonna work and play? Where are their families gonna live?

Are their families gonna move up up there with them? Are there gonna be elementary schools in space? Right? And so you start to think of kind of a world of possibilities when you start thinking of 100 of people at a time. This is what my business partner, Rick Tomlinson, likes to call a Mayflower class. Right? This is this is something that could really change the way people move and think about space.

And so in that 7 plus year time frame, the, you know, the, housing shortage, I think, is is a really important conversation to have, and and and the work and play aspects of human life as well. People aren't gonna just go up there and and, you know, do their job and then go sleep in their little, you know, strapped in bunk and then go do their job. Like, they wanna be able to work, but they also wanna be able to play. They wanna be able to have their families with them.

They wanna be able to, you know, to eat locally grown vegetables that were picked this morning. So how do we how do we grow vegetables in the space? Right? And so there's a lot of questions to start asking now if you wanna look at that solving that how housing shortage of 7 plus years from now.

And then, and then the last thing I'll leave you with on on this on this final 7 plus years point is is that if you're really interested in trying to think about how to solve some of these longer term problems, start thinking about completely new business models, completely new governance models, and completely new monetary systems.

Space is a place where all of these things can be tried in a way that they haven't been since kind of, since the dawning of the new world, quote, unquote, as as rough as it was and as much as don't agree with a lot of the the principles of colonization, That was kind of the last time that we were able to develop new, new political systems, new monetary systems. Right? What are those new systems going to look like off world? This is an opportunity for us to reinvent everything.

And to me, that's where we get to this kind of age of the infinite and unlimited possibilities. Cool. And and, full circle, I met Rick at Pioneering National Space Summit, which you and I shared. Then he introduced me to David Johnston, who's on our team, and we're building, a DAO together, which and his podcast that he did was about new governance and governance in space. Yes. David is, of course, a very good friend and then, partner in the fund.

And, yeah, just absolutely this is one of the things, like, when he and I go out to lunch or dinner, we'll just go off for an hour. You know? And that's where he yeah. He's been with us for 6 months, 7 months, and we meet every week, and we're working on how do we make these changes for the future. So, yeah, the I like I like where you you brought it in terms of these new infinite opportunities and infinite resources, which changes our future. And Absolutely does.

And that's the you know, one of the things I like to say is that space is the only economic sector that exists that has the actual potential for unlimited growth, unlimited value creation. Everything else, every other sector on earth is by definition finite. It is limited in its resources. It's limited in the amounts of product that it can produce. Is limited in the amount of oil you can pull out of the ground.

There's a limited amount of rare earth metals to make all these important commuter computer parts. Right? Everything else is you know, the Internet is limited by bandwidth. Yep. Everything else is Internet is limited. Space is the only economic sector with truly unlimited growth potential. And and the the infinite word is much more powerful than abundance because, to me, in order to have the abundance, you have to have scarcity. There's a yin and yang.

But you have this infinite possibility, and it's tough to get your mind around the fact that on the moon, for every 100 asteroids that have hit, 3 of them have more platinum in them than we've used in the history of mankind each, and there have been 1,000,000. So there's this infinite possibility for hope and and and a new age. So it's, it can be for Earth an exciting time.

And the the positives of what you spoke about also come back to Earth in the form of new materials, in the form of bio, pharmaceutic, a new pharma, in the form of new constructs that allow us to live in a different way than we've had for all 7.5 or by that time, 8 or 9 8 and a half 1000000000 and for all 50,000,000 species on this planet. Exactly. There's you know?

And and that's the thing too is that once you know, obviously, you gotta start small and and start with, start with close to home and what we know. But but the better we get at this, the further out we get, the the more and more, you know, we'll be able to not only expand as a species, but expand our economic sphere as well. And and, you know, the one comes you can't have the one without the other. Right? People need to eat. People need places to live.

And so as that economic sphere increases, so does humanity's sphere of influence and knowledge and and and interest and access and resources and all the rest. And that's the what you just described as the Mearth economic system and the Mearth economy. And we at Project Moon Hut believe that the next iteration is that there will be a Mearth ecosystem economy that there will be on the moon, on earth, and between the moon and earth.

And there will be trade routes and and activity that happens constantly between them and within each other to create this new infinite possibility. And I like the term Mearth. Our us old timers in the industry refer to it as the very boring, drying, cislunar economy. It's terrible. A 9 a 9 year old has to learn that. I mean, a challenge, but Mearth is a simple word.

People the first time I delivered this, the first presentation I gave was the National Space Society, and that's, was where at the end of the event, there were about 40, 50 people. 8 people in their summary of the event said and used Mearth in a sentence. Oh, awesome. I like that. Those are real hard those are real core hard those are hardcore space people. Yes. Well, this was fantastic. I never know where someone's going to take me.

I never know what the experience is going to be as you now know. There is I don't hear anything in advance. I don't see the outline in advance, and we go through it 1 by 1, and and I'm learning from you. So I appreciate, Megan, very much. You're taking the time to construct this for us, for me, and for taking the time to answer all these ancillary questions that I know were not on your list, but they help us Absolutely. But that's the fun of it.

I mean, that it's a real conversation is that I'm really trying to learn to help us to be able to, in Project Moon Hut, to do a better job. And so your help is very much appreciated, so thank you. It was an absolute pleasure being here, David. It was a lot of fun. So I do wanna thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen in today. And I do hope that you learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Remember, we're part of the Project Moon Hut Foundation, where we're looking to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a Moon Hut, through the accelerated development of the Earth and space based ecosystem, which we've been talking about today, and then to use the endeavors, the paradigm shifting, those innovations, and turn them back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. And, Megan, what's the single best way to connect with you?

Best way is to go to spacebund.com, spelled exactly like it sounds where a fund an investment fund, investing in space. And there's a contact form on the website if you wanna get in touch, And you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn, but spacefund.com, you said single. I'll leave it at that. I I also I would like to connect with anybody who's listening in, but I will make a short announcement that we took down the old website even though it had a lot of current information. It was old.

I did it in 2015 in a weekend before I was allowed to speak in Latvia. They required me us to have a website, so we tossed one up. We took it down, and right now up on project moon hut.org, there is a placeholder, but it's starting to form. We're creating our new website. It shouldn't be done shortly. And you can also sign up to keep in touch. So this will be part of the beta and all the others. We're not gonna be spamming you, hitting you, selling any of that.

It's just so that you if you wanna be close to us and see a little bit of our imagery, you can go there. You can connect with me, David, at [email protected]. You can connect to us at at, Project Moon Hut on Twitter, also at Goldsmith. And then LinkedIn and Facebook, we have Project Moon Hut Foundation on both of those. So you're avail we're available there. And that's it. I'm David Goldsmith. And thank you for listening.