Transcription
On this episode of our Crowd Create Mastermind series, we've brought together the leaders, legends, and most innovative minds in space and aerospace to talk about what keeps them up at night. Listen to what the minds behind SpaceX, NASA missions, and space investors see as the biggest business opportunities in the final frontier.
While many of us are celebrating momentous breakthroughs in reusable rockets and, ironically, landing a spaceship on Earth, others are thinking even further into the future—around governance, sustainability, and space debris. If you're curious or looking to invest in aerospace, this Crowd Create Mastermind will put you at the cutting edge of where this industry is going. Welcome to the Crowd Create Aerospace Mastermind.
So the purpose of this mastermind is really to bring together the community, share your insights, and leverage what we call the wisdom of the crowds. You've all been invited because you're a thought leader in the aerospace industry. We have a good mix of investors, attorneys, influencers, startups, and just executives from different businesses. And so really, the format of these masterminds is to bring attention to your work, build some awesome connections, and give value to others. So we ask that everybody goes around, you know, just share a one-minute introduction on who you are, what you're working on, and what are you most excited about, and what are some of the big opportunities in the aerospace industry. We will be using the chat to put links to everybody's bio so you can meet each other, and um, yeah, let's go ahead and get started.
All right, I'll kick it off, but um, again, just to mention everybody has um one minute to introduce themselves, so please keep it brief. And if you have any questions, use the raise your hand feature. So my name is Ivan. I'm the co-founder here at Crowd Create. We connect thought leaders, investors, and business executives to go to network. And what am I excited about? We're working on launching these masterminds across multiple industries—not just aerospace, but gaming, blockchain, real estate, uh, startups—and we're launching these private communities where you can join and engage with the speakers here on this call. I'm also excited about the Spinoff 2021, which NASA is constantly putting out, but there's just a lot of innovation on there that people should take a look at. Thanks, Ivan. And this event is brought to us by Hudson Space Systems. They sponsor the event, a phenomenal group of entrepreneurs, and Nathan, would love for you to go next and introduce yourself.
Hi, thank you, Jeffrey. My name is Nathan. I'm a co-founder at Hudson Space Systems. I do our design management.
And my name is Monica. I'm also a co-founder of Hudson Space, and I head our propulsive development here at Hudson Space. We're focusing on bringing microgravity research to more people, making it not only accessible but easy, hoping to spread the wealth of innovation across a larger group of people instead of just focusing on traditional access like NASA and the government. Really, yeah. And we're excited to have a robust conversation with all of you guys about your experience in the aerospace and new space industry. Yeah, thank you. And uh, Michael, would love for you to introduce yourself.
Um, hi, my name is Michael Mealing. I'm one of the general partners at Starbridge Venture Capital. We're a space-focused venture fund, been around since 2017. Um, we are primarily looking at companies that are enabling new space applications, but also uh, are enabling or enable terrestrial markets as well. And um, the thing that we're most excited about in the industry is the slowly emerging in-space manufacturing sector. Much of the industry right now, historically, has been around Earth observation and communications, but between companies like Space Tango, Space Forge out of the UK, and some of the capabilities from Axiom Space in terms of platforms, we do think that in-space manufacturing is kind of the new emerging sector. Thanks, Michael.
Gabe, would love for you to introduce yourself.
Thanks. Hello, uh, my name is Gabe Dominocello. I'm the co-founder of Umbra. We are a a space intelligence company that collects Earth observation data. Um, our first spacecraft is a synthetic aperture radar satellite, which is a novel phenomenology that allows you to see through clouds, and um, we have a novel antenna and radar that allows us to see down to six inches or approximately 15 centimeters.
Thanks. Kate Adam, would love for you to introduce yourself.
Great, thank you. Uh, Adam Harris from Orbit Fab. Uh, Orbit Fab uh, was created to refuel satellites in orbit. Uh, so we're taking this idea of helping the on-orbit servicing companies and really changing the way satellites are built by not just uh, refueling before they launch, uh, but having the ability to maneuver and refuel in orbit. So um, uh, happy to be part of the discussion, and uh, I love to hear kind of other ideas about how on-orbit servicing is really changing the way we do this business. Thanks, Adam.
And you're also previously with SpaceX, is that—
I was. I was in charge of government business development as we uh, got into the ELV business and then told people that we were going to land rockets on the Earth, and everybody laughed at me, so it was a lot of fun. Congratulations on what you've built.
Yeah. Rick, Rick would love for you to introduce yourself.
Hi, I'm Rick Tomlinson. Uh, I guess I was lucky enough to be around and help kick off what we call the new space revolution, uh, a couple of days ago, and uh, uh, built up a few companies, signed up the first guy to fly on the space station, led the team, took over the Russian space station a few years ago for a little while, uh, a few other projects, and then a couple years ago, uh, decided to cash in my scars and start a venture capital company to help some of the uh, brilliant minds that are out there starting space entrepreneurial companies match up with the people who are coming in from the outside who may not know their way around. And so Space Fund is focused essentially on what I call frontier tech—the sort of technologies that will either support or be enabled by the activities you see with uh, folks like Jeff and Elon. Uh, so we're really excited, and uh, and thank you for inviting me.
Thanks, Rick. And Kyle, I'd love for you to introduce yourself.
Uh, a pleasure. Thanks for uh, inviting me on. I feel like I'm a little out of my league, but I'm glad to be here because I'm here to learn. But uh, I was a performing illusionist for the last decade, but luckily I dabbled in the stock market for a little while for the last several years while I was performing, because leading into this pandemic I lost everything, man. When you watch all those uh, magician—probably the least um, what do they call—essential service workers out there, right? But luckily I'm diligent, and I've been investing in the market for several years with a lot of success, uh, focusing highly into emerging sector stocks. I found a lot of success in the cannabis industry early, uh, psychedelic industry, renewable sector. I really love new sectors in the market that I think are just broadly overlooked. The space sector, in my opinion, is definitely being one of those sectors, even though we're crashing today, which is kind of funny to anybody that actually pays attention to some of these companies that are out there, which there are only a handful. So I'm fairly confident and excited to learn more about the industry. Most of my focus right now is on satellite infrastructure because obviously the path quickest to profitability, but we also want hype—something these companies are doing that's different, that's innovative. And luckily a lot of them are going to Mars, Venus, uh, the moon and beyond. So I feel like I'm on the edge of my seat knowing that I can own a piece of this and, you know, get um, pick the brains of people like yourself and further learn about how this industry is going to evolve. But I think now is a great time for investors to be paying attention because it's happening. I'm sure you're all aware it's happening.
Thanks, Kyle. We're all about diversity of thinking, so I have people from all over. Uh, Graham, would love for you to introduce yourself.
Thanks. I really appreciate it. Uh, so my name is Graham Greene. I I spent the bulk of my career actually working in Michelin star restaurants in New York and California, and then spent a bit of time abroad also in Northern England and Copenhagen. But most recently, the project I'm working on is I'm the chief product officer at Mission Space Food. And so we're the first commercial company looking at food and nutrition in space. The the goal of the company being that the innovations that are required to meet the space food constraints apply directly to Earth. And so there's a history of food products—from energy bars to modern baby formula—uh, first innovated for for the space food systems that ended up sparking 10 or 20 billion dollar markets uh, for each of those. So I'm really excited to talk to everyone today.
All right, Graham. And uh, Kelly, would love for you to go next.
Hi, it's a pleasure to be here. Uh, we are focused on space communications, and most people when they talk about space communications and satellites these days are talking about all the robust systems that are closer to the Earth—GEO, MIO, LEO—there are all kinds of amazing things happening. But when you get out to the moon and beyond, which is where we're focused, there's a very little happening, and there is a huge demand coming. So we are essentially stringing satellites—like cell phone towers—through the solar system, and our company is called Aquarian Space, and we're excited to to be the first commercial essentially utility company providing communications at the moon and beyond.
Thanks, Kelly. And uh, Charles Life, are you gonna go next?
Great, thank you. And I appreciate the invitation for being uh, on the panel with such esteemed colleagues and and people in the aerospace and space industry. I've had my firm for nearly 20 years—coming October it'll be 20 years—we've always been focused on technology. For the largest part of that, it's been internet-related technology, both on the litigation and the the business side, the transactional side. And over the last four years, we expanded into the space uh, industry. And so that's where my focus has been primarily over the last several years, particularly representing new businesses within the new space industry, but also doing policy work. And as far as the excitement aspect of the question, I think it's a great time for all new businesses and entrepreneurs to expand into this area and to grow. Our firm is positioned and happy to help them continue in that regard. And I think it's also an opportunity for everybody to come together and work on developing regulation and policy that continues to make space available for all different sectors. And we've seen that most recently with the interaction between SpaceX and other industry key players and the astronomy community in developing guidelines for mitigating the adverse effects of satellites on on that aspect of science. So thanks again. I'm glad to be here.
Thanks for joining us, Charles. And Armand, would love for you to introduce yourself.
My name is Armand Musee. I'm the president and founder of Summit Ridge Group. I joke that we do valuation work before transactions, for due diligence; when transactions go bad, it's litigation support; and when things go really bad, it's for restructuring bankruptcy. But I've been in the industry since the late 1990s, starting as an equity research analyst on Wall Street. And so I've seen an enormous change in the industry. I think that's what's the most exciting right now is that it's gone from a very sort of sleepy industry with a very conservative aerospace type mentality to a much more dynamic industry just over the last couple of years, with an influx of younger people, new ideas, and people taking a lot more risk and doing a lot of iterative—iteration—of different project plans that we haven't seen before. And so this—the explosion of new ideas in the industry—is just a huge change from what it was, you know, 10 years ago, even.
Thanks, Vermont. And we'll unpack that later because I would love to hear your insights. David, would love you to introduce yourself.
Yes, thanks for the invitation. It's a delight to be here. I'm the chief executive officer of Geeks Without Frontiers. We're a global non-profit organization scattered around the planet, and our team is traditionally focused on trying to leverage relatively immediately scalable technologies. We're technology-neutral, so it's really, you know, what's the best mousetrap to get communications and database solutions into those who have either nothing or something that is currently insufficient. We, you know, really cut our teeth on things like open-source regulatory policy frameworks for governments on fiber and satellite and so on—how to leverage them with exponential effect. We saw an opening for a mesh Wi-Fi standard, a need, so we wrote one—that's the 802.11s—which is now hundreds of millions of people are leveraging that tool. Um, and we're doing various things in refugee camps and disasters and so on and so forth. And then COVID hit, and in the past year it has been really bad and wonderful all at the same time, because uh, the tools that are available, uh, including satellite—not least both for data and communications—the the need for ubiquitous wide-area coverage and Earth observation and SAR-based uh, data sets and so forth, the importance of that in the in the eyes of government and of the user community has escalated beyond all recognition. So there's a tremendous opportunity that we see that we did not see before, and excited to be here to to share views with everyone on this distinguished panel. Thank you, David.
And thank you for what you do. Um, I I was actually chatting with you before, and I really respect what you're trying to create. So thank you everybody for your introductions. We're going to jump into the discussion portion. Again, if everybody can take use and make use of the the hand-raising feature so that way we can keep the communication going. Uh, the first topic—so we touched upon this at the very beginning of the call—but, you know, you can tell when NASA—the NASA logo—is now found on AirPod cases to t-shirts to sweaters. We have reached a point where there's so much excitement around aerospace and space, and it's showing up on news everywhere. So why is this such um, why is this happening? And also I want to tie it into why is this such an investable opportunity as well? So we've got a lot of topics to unpack, but um, yeah, if anybody would like to jump in and raise their hand, and we'll call on you first.
Michael Europe?
Sure. So we get this question a lot—is why is this all of a sudden something that I'm seeing in the news all the time, and and why is it investable? And it goes back to something that uh, Rick and I remember uh, back in 2004 or something—called the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act—that really clarified the ability of commercial companies to act in the space to launch vehicles, fly things, and clarified the regulatory environment around the FAA, the FCC—who did what and how—and especially around human spaceflight. But the problem was it took this long, and companies like SpaceX and coming in and and lowering the launch cost to really get to the point where um, all of the technology curves—whether it's the cost of building a satellite, the mass of the satellite, or the the expense of the launch—to get to the point where new business models became viable. And that really started about four to five years ago when you started seeing new launch companies come on the market like Rocket Lab and Relativity. And so, for example, we created Starbridge in 2017. Um, I think Rick and Megan were around the same time, and it was really—that was the point where it became investable from a venture capital standpoint. And now with the uh, SPACs and what's going on in the public markets is being coming something that public market investors can invest in.
If anybody would like to add—
Rick?
Hello. Yeah. Um, as uh, I guess one of the other resident old-timers of new space, um, whatever you want to call that, um, although I'm in complete denial of my age—I'm a leap year guy, so I just went through that this weekend—um, the uh, um, this revolution as we call it, really uh, it started in the in the very late 80s um, and rolled all the way through. And a lot of this—there is a documentary film coming out really soon called *The High Frontier*—about Jerry O'Neil, who's really the godfather of a lot of what you're seeing, where he basically suggested to a generation that you should take the tools of free enterprise, space resources, and go out and expand humanity into space. And for example, there was a young guy that had a a dream of having a book club who uh, hooked up with uh, with Jerry's organization, uh, a guy named Bezos. Um, actually gave his graduation speech uh, about the fact essentially that he was gonna make money and then come back and open the frontier. Um, and so organizations like the Spacecraft Tier Foundation, groups, people like Mike Mieling fought for this—is one of those overnight successes that took 30 years—and uh, and it's breaking now, and it's getting ready to break even uh, even more. If you watched uh, the little uh, flight yesterday of the Starship, um, that baby is learning to walk and finally actually stood up yesterday, landed—landed on his tail—when we hit reusability—100 reusability—um, and rapid transportation—um, that's the railroad to space. So we're in this moment—it's exciting now, but you know, you know, hold on to your straps because it's about to get really crazy up there.
I'm ready for that railroad—railroad to space.
Gabe, uh, you're next.
So I mean, I think that something that we should just touch on is technology, right? You you look at access to space becoming incredibly affordable with uh, Elon Musk, who's brought down the cost of a rocket from, you know, a billion dollars to under 100 million. And then on top of that, you've got what's going to happen in the future—are we going to be laying down cables to like get internet? Are we going to be like, I don't know, getting cell phones like from a cell phone tower, or is that all going to come from space? Like, look at what is happening in the architecture of infrastructure—it's moving higher and higher—and I think that we'll continue to see that. And so we really are in a frontier of a completely new revolution.
All right. David?
Yes, I agree with everything that was just said by the past two speakers, and I—like two speakers ago—I heard the term "really crazy," and also in most recent comments I heard uh, reference to everything shifting to higher altitude uh, in space. And uh, I I just wanted to flag—not to be a downer—let me put a positive spin on on this question. Uh, we are a signatory to the Space Safety Coalition guidance on how to prevent or mitigate the introduction of further orbital debris into LEO, MIO, and GEO orbits—where they don't even know how much trash is floating around—the estimates range from 50 to 200 million pieces. There is no enforceable mechanism at the moment to require anyone putting assets into orbits that would prevent further introduction. There is already, by some accounts, the Kessler Syndrome in effect, where orbital debris is running into more orbital debris, which creates more orbital debris in a cascade effect. So here's the happy spin on all this, and my question for the group at large is: is there—the financial—a financial interest evident to pay for some means by which the further introduction of debris into the orbits will cease or at least be reduced to a functional level? And or finally, is there a financial motivation that can be the heart of a solution to this—what you might call—wicked problem?
Wow, there's a lot to impact there. We'll definitely talk about that next. Thank you, David.
Kyle, let's hear from you.
Uh, yeah, I want to actually chime in because David made a really good point. I want to talk about what excites retail investors in this space—what I kind of—what got me into—because I've seen this space multiple times—I just wouldn't enter it until as of recently for a few factors. But I think David points out a fact that I primarily look at every new emerging sector, which is: what are the problems? What are the issues that investors—at some point—or someone's gonna have to pay to fix? And actually that's probably one of the biggest problems with space—mentioned the most—because there's a compound effect where over time this debris will break down enough that it'll cover pretty much the entire around the planet, making it extremely risky to get into uh, further or late um, obviously higher orbits, right? Um, but we can touch on that because I'd love to hear what everyone else has to say—anybody that actually has um, more intelligence than I do obviously in the space—but from a retail side of investing, I—when you guys are talking about—
How exciting this is! What I don't think people are recognizing is how public this is going to become because everyone mentioned SpaceX. Obviously, they're the ones that are kind of frontiering the hype that we are all experiencing right now. But again, there's so many companies like yourself that, um, are being overlooked. I mean, we're talking, they're going to be putting selfie satellites up. There's a company privately doing that, and the delivery company that's doing it, I believe, is Momentus. Um, and it's incredible when you look at some of these companies and how much they have reduced the cost of some of these space infrastructures that were that are going to be needed to be utilized like right now, which is obviously satellite-related. Momentus is claiming they've lowered the cost of late-stage satellite delivery from 10 million to 1 million—a 90% reduction in cost, which is absurd.
And then again, you're looking at these reusable, scalable rockets. The bigger the rocket can get, the more value we can pack inside of it. And again, I'm more, as a retail investor, trying to focus on the combination of profitability and hype because, at the end of the day, every company has to be fun. If it's not fun, if it can't find a way to attract, um, an audience who's really gonna care, how are they gonna get investment dollars? So I like the fact that space isn't just, you know, a business about satellites and wi-fi. It's also a business like, hey, we can put like Honeywell, that's got, um, a greenhouse up on a satellite right now. The fact that, you know, um, Lockheed Martin landed, or very well helped land, uh, Perseverance on Mars, right? Like it's incredible that how a lot of these companies are only a reach away, but it's really hard to navigate now.
But the thing that stepped me over the edge was the fact that we're getting proof of concept, like you guys were saying, that like it's been 20 years, 30 years in production to get to this point where we finally say, hey, look, we built this thing; we've proven it out. Now we're getting to the point of investor dollars in scale, which I think is brilliant. I think it's beautiful, and like I said, I think it's being largely overlooked because I wouldn't buy these companies even a year ago, but as of today, I mean, Momentus claims—well, obviously in 2019 they proved out their technology, or so they'd claim—and then you're looking at again some of the specs that were mentioned there. I mean, we saw Virgin come through as fact; it's just starting to prove out their engine concepts and things of that nature, which are still finicky at best, but, um, but I'll leave it there from the retail side because that's where I see most of the excitement going to be is those combinations of companies that can do both—not just, you know, make great technology but also find a way to make it fun because it's complicated and dangerous. But if it, you know, Elon makes it fun, right? Like everyone said, you know, the Starships are like sitting in an—like if you could think of like an Apple product—that's how the astronauts were describing the shuttle, right? So I mean, like that's and and that's all we're talking about is SpaceX, so I mean, here we are. Like it's proof of concept. Yes, yes, sir. And uh, Charles, I'd love to hear from you. You have an international perspective on this, and um, yeah, I, I in particular, I mean, I, I love everything that everybody's saying, and Kyle, I'd I'd love to have a further conversation on on some of the business, the businesses and so forth that you mentioned, but I particularly want to talk, um, respond to David's comment on the orbital debris or uh space debris as the European sector uh refers to it.
And you know, we've talked about—Rick has mentioned how, you know, this really has been like 20, 30 years—and over the last few years, the the new new space has really reached the excitement, but with the same perspective, the policy efforts to try to address orbital or space debris are is about as long. I mean, from the U.S. side that began back in 1993 with the White House starting to look at it. From the international side, that was the IADC and UNUSA from the United Nations. And really, from the U.S. perspective, only until like the last couple of years have we started to, through the FCC, um, discuss and really implement uh regulations that are going to have some teeth in in terms of trying to mitigate the orbital debris issue. One of the issues that comes to mind though is—and the reason that I mentioned like SpaceX before with respect to its efforts in dealing with the astronomical issues—now clearly Starlink, it's Starlink is the one that that prompted that in May of 2019 when everybody said, wait a second, you know, how how can we have these streaking across the sky? But its focus on technology and building DarkSat and now VisorSat to address and mitigate those concerns are fantastic, but not all of these companies are going to have the financial capacity to just do R&D and address the issue. So we need to get to a position where other countries, stay—other companies, SpaceX, the smaller companies—everybody's sharing that kind of technology because, as David said, the orbital debris issue is not going away; it is significant, and we need to be in a position to where we still can use different orbital sectors. So that's part of my excitement though; I don't think it's a downer. I think it also can be an opportunity for all of the players to come together and work toward that solution, but we have to do so as a community and not in isolation. And and Ivan, you mentioned the international context again. I think the other issue that comes into play a lot is the—some of you may know the ITAR and EAR issues—the the with respect to the transfer of information and technology outside the United States to our international counterparts. There's got to be an examination of that too because for international cooperation to really take hold across the sciences, there needs to be some kind of uh reassessment of those particular issues. But I'm excited just by this panel and the thought leaders here that are today talking about these issues that were on the right path. So thanks everybody for again including me and contributing your thoughts. Thanks, Charles. You have a lot of wisdom to share, so thank you. I do. I know several of you are raising your hands for this topic, but I do want to move on, but it's really relevant and actually a great transition. So we're we're talking about a lot of things in orbit, you know, from debris, but also I want to focus on what are those business opportunities, you know, that we're seeing because we're talking about why is it so popular and why is it so investable? I do want to switch gears and let's talk about those business opportunities that we're seeing right now, and Graham, I know you particularly are a good example. Love to hear from you.
Yeah, well, I think just to kind of touch on that on that last, just really quickly on the last question brought up by David, uh, to me, the—as someone who certainly is not as knowledgeable as the rest of you about the debris and low Earth orbit—to me, that's a a question that's almost emblematic of the larger issue, which is while we're trying to explore really at the at the threshold of scientific innovation, how do we not bring the problems that exist with the way that humanity interacts with Earth in into those next phases of exploration? Because to me, that that issue of uh debris and low Earth orbit sounds eerily similar to, you know, my time working in restaurants trying to source fish that no longer exist, partially because of plastic pollution in the ocean. But, um, but I think to be a bit more optimistic and to and to answer your question, Ivan, is that, um, I'm sure all of us are on the same page that innovation that happens in space can drastically affect the way that people live on Earth. And so I think that business opportunities are huge. I know, um, Missions—basically the company that I represent—has a different uh a different approach in that in that we're certainly not trying to um we're certainly not trying to bring, for instance, satellite internet to everyone on Earth, but we believe that a lot of this consumer attention uh that exists in space can be leveraged to positively impact the way people eat on Earth, both through, you know, material innovations in the way that food can be stored and nutrients can be stored, but also just in the way that you can convince people to change their eating habits to incorporate better better practices. Thanks, Graham. Love to hear from you, Armand.
So in terms of opportunities, uh, there's a couple obvious ones. The biggest one is is the internet, right? So we see uh SpaceX, uh we see OneWeb, we see Project Kuiper, uh those are going to be huge opportunities for people. Uh there's also a lot of money going into Earth observation and remote sensing, and there's all kinds of ideas of how to make that work and how markets can develop from that. We've been waiting for that to happen for really kind of 20 years. Every time I go to one of these conferences, I see new ideas about remote sensing and Earth's observation, and then they ultimately don't really develop that quickly. We're still waiting for the killer app there, but if you look at just the the massive increase in terms of uh uh satellite launches, satellite manufacturing, um the amount of things going into space and a number of ideas, it's it's clear that we're, you know, sort of like 1999 maybe in the internet era where there's a lot of new ideas, but we really haven't settled in many areas on what the business plans are going to be, what the killer apps are going to be, how are people going to use it. That we're still kind of very um immature in in the industry, and I don't mean that a bad way. I think it's a really exciting time, but I would say that so many of the ideas we see out there in in five years, many of them uh won't be there, and some of the ones maybe we didn't think were great ideas will actually be, you know, astoundingly large. Um, so I don't mean that it is negative, but I'm trying to add a little bit of um, you know, sage advice from uh from an elder. Thank you, Armand. Let's hear from you, Michael. What are you what are your thoughts on that? Oh, you're muted. Um, I'm a little bit contrarian, not really contrarian, but as a venture fund, we look at things that are a little bit different timeline than some of the other uh people in the industry that are looking past that. Um, we we're investing now in looking at things that are exiting in six to eight years. Um, anything that has timelines that are beyond our 10-year fund horizon, we look at—we encourage—we think about—we help from a policy standpoint—and a lot of the things that we see in the industry right now are beyond that. So we really are riffing on a lot of the same things that we've been doing since the 1960s. It's primarily Earth observation, communications, but what we're seeing is innovative companies with new technologies to be able to do that, and that's where a lot of the innovation is happening right now. For example, Umbra with their synthetic aperture radar is a good example, and um those are the opportunities right now. It's the new technologies that are disrupting the way things were done in an industry that was dominated by government that was very much interested in keeping things the same as opposed to tearing things down and building new things every couple years the way we do in the rest of the economy. So where we're encouraged to go back to something that Armand just said is there are notional business models that are out there um that we don't figure out—we can't figure out how they close yet—um and and Rick will probably uh jump in on this one. For example, we can't figure out what the business models are for anything beyond GEO at the moment with some very specific limitations. We think we know what that killer app is, but that killer app is not being deployed right now, and we think that's people in space um and people in space that are willing to pay their own way to go for various reasons. So a lot of the things that people are excited about in the space industry um you have to be very careful about to find, you know, who is the customer. That's the number one question that we ask. In a lot of cases, the customer is another space company, and some of these supply chains are very circular um and so that's one of the things—the the opportunities are for those killer apps to come on soon, but right now if you're an investor in this space, you really have to look at who the customers are and the timelines that you're going to need to get to those customers. I think one is one of the challenges, but on the opportunities, if you know how to look for those signals, those customers would be defining who are going to be those brands that stick around afterwards too. So um yeah, but it's more who the final customer is. So if you're mining water on the Moon to sell to a propellant company, and that propellant company is then selling it to the company that's going to move the water from the Moon to the propellant depot, you know, that's a circular economy, you know, there's no customer. We're looking for who wants to put something on the Moon that's going to justify that infrastructure, and right now, except for NASA, we don't see them. David, I think you'd have a great perspective on this, and we'll move to Kelly afterwards.
Yeah, um uh first of all, welcome aboard, Moriba. Uh I was channeling you earlier in this in this webinar by introducing the subject of orbital uh debris. Uh in terms of opportunity, I just want to say, you know, most of the work that we're doing at Geeks Without Frontiers is is focused down on the planet's surface, um and uh we're we're going where most others are not going because it's more difficult, but what I want to say that's so exciting is what we see right now that's happening—this is right now, it's happening—is an incredible oversupply of satellite capacity, which is really great for end users. At the same time, really exciting complementary technologies and capabilities are being brought to bear through cloud, IoT, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and the list goes on. And what we're seeing now is this is higher in the tree, you know, most of the for-profits are going traditionally after the low-hanging fruit, but what we're now beginning to see is that we're not alone out in the field trying to get to these uh marginalized communities, disenfranchised, disaster-affected, low-income, whatever it is. Right now, today, we have partners who are doing a dollar fifty RPOU for profit as a business strategy. This is rolling out—not not pilots, not proof of concept—these are business plans. A lot of it's under the radar, you know, these are smaller companies who are going where the the big players are not, and there's no no press releases on this, and it's happening. Uh we have seen more public examples of this through space-based players like ViaSat, for example, who's rolled out wi-fi with high-throughput satellite backhaul for 3000 villages in rural Mexico, reaching a million low-income individuals. That's a for-profit business line for ViaSat. So these sorts of things, then we get into data analytics is really starting to come around and synthesize and render the data sets from an unprecedented number of Earth observation and SAR-based data so that it's monit—you can monetize it—and that's going to drive everything. It's like Armand was saying—we totally agree—they're really making it up right now on business cases that will close, and I'm here to say they're beginning to close in amazing ways. Wow, that's a story in itself. Kelly, I'd love to hear from you, and we'll move on to—after Kelly, I want to hear an introduction from Moriba. Go ahead, Kelly.
Yeah, so we're in this really—I mean, there's so much here, right? There's so much about what the what the opportunities are business-wise in space—and we're in this really interesting moment. I love—I'm sorry, I forgot who likened it to 1999 right before the internet boom. I think that seems true. And what's happening right now is unprecedented, as specifically in lunar and deep space. I mean, same with Earth, local space—we call it Earth local GEO and closer—there are incredible things happening there, but at the Moon and beyond right now, there are resources going there that have never been done before. And on top of that, in general, the customers for that right now are governments, right? It's defense and it's civil; it's it's NASA and ESA, and uh and that's real, but NASA's doing something really cool right now, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with—the CLIPS program, which is essentially funding commercial contractors to go and do things that that that NASA used to themselves. They're actually funding the commercial market in such a way that then that commercial market is actually creating plans for after. So what's happening is that in the next 10 years, these commercial companies are going to be able to actually go do their own things in addition to continuing to serve NASA and serve other international space agencies. So as that happens, we need an infrastructure to meet them. So if you think about when people, you know, first settled, let's say the U.S.—that's where I'm at right now—you know, they needed railroads; they needed telephones, right? It's the same thing happening right now as we look at the Moon, as we look at Venus, as we look at Mars. We need the communication systems in place; we need transportation in place. Data is always a really interesting—always a really interesting market—so this infrastructure is is coming to the time where it actually is needed, not only from the space agencies, not only from defense—which both actually needed at this point—but the commercial market is actually going to increase that demand. And then in addition to that, there are other opportunities. Um, I know a startup here locally in Colorado that's working on recycling waste in space, speaking of orbital debris, and looking at how do we actually take this and recycle this metal and then actually create spacecraft parts—maybe eventually spacecraft in space—out of the debris that's out there. And then, of course, as this all lands, as these as these space agencies continue to actually be successful beyond GEO, as the commercial entities start to be successful even more beyond GEO, then there's there's there's the whole question of of course asteroid mining and space mining, but also humans and habitat. How do we not just have really great healthy food to send with astronauts, which is incredible, but also how do we grow our food in space? Um, how do we, you know, how do we communicate as humans across the timeline? There are so many I think opportunities at this moment, and it's just just the moment where we can start to see some of them landing. So those are a few that I'm tracking right now. Love it. Thanks, Kelly. Uh, Moriba, love to hear from you. Introduce yourself. I know you're you're a legend in itself. Oh, please.
Look, um, I'm just I'm happy to be here. Uh, sorry I couldn't be here earlier; I teach a class at this time, which conflicts, and as much as I love all of you, my students are more important. So yeah, I my name is Moriba Jah, I'm an associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, where I lead a transdisciplinary research program in space safety, security, and sustainability. Um, really I'm trying to quantify, assess, and predict uh the behavior of human-made objects or anthropogenic objects in space. Um, I've enjoyed what I've uh, you know, heard so far. Um, I recognized some folks in the room, so hello to to everybody. And really, in terms of uh, you know, the solar sort of infrastructure and trying to find who's who's the paying customer, given your um, you know, line of sight, return on investment, and all this other stuff, look, I think that it really boils down to making a good argument for space safety and sustainability. Right now, we don't have sustainability metrics uh, you know, in space, meaning that there's no way to really quantify risk of anything, you know, it's it's it's he said, she said; different people have different numbers. We do have this thing from the IDC that says, oh, you know, collision probability—when are those real, when are those not so real? People are getting warnings all the time; it's like Chicken Little, sky is falling; there's always a collision that's about to happen. It's like that's no good. So the thing is really what that means when when space is a complex system in that you have a number of participants making decisions with in the
Absence of knowing the decision-making processes of other people, you have very non-linear causal relationships. Small things can have huge consequences. We don't understand all the interdependencies, so because a lot of this stuff seems random, that should be the first red flag. When behavior seems to be random, I'm a huge skeptic of intrinsic randomness. I think like randomness is mostly BS; I think it's mostly us ignorant. We just don't know, and so we like to blanket our ignorance and call it randomness because it's easy to do that. So when things appear to be random, that should be a red flag that you have no clue of what's going on, and it's not because it's not understandable; you just haven't gotten there yet.
And so I think that um, when I look at things like the Outer Space Treaty, uh, Article Six, that says nation states have the responsibility to authorize and and provide continuing supervision of all space activities of non-state actors, to me that means, hey, if if Acme Incorporated in the United States wants to put up a gazillion satellites in in LEO and automate all their maneuvers, the US government uh has continued supervision, meaning it knows what those things are doing all the time. And I can tell you that if you interpret it that way, nobody—there's not a single government on the planet—that has continuing supervision of all this stuff.
I love the idea of the recycling. I'm the first person to say we should minimize single-use satellites, just like minimizing single-use plastics: minimize single-use satellites, make these things recyclable, form-fitting to other types of stuff. But in the business development of rendezvous and prox ops and these sorts of things, it's just a matter of when, not if, when Acme Incorporated is going to service Das Vidanya LLC, and then two days later there's gonna be some dispute saying, hey, this is what they did to me; my stuff's not working quite as well. Okay, where's the evidence? Where does that get reconciled? Who knows who did what to whom, when? We are—we're so focused on the collisions. I can tell you that the space security issues that we face are completely eclipsed in information requirements as compared to this collision stuff. That seems to be the eye of Sauron's on collision, not on this other stuff, to like make sure that people are protected in the businesses and the things that they're doing up there.
We have MEV2 rendezvousing with IntelSat. Guess what? When these things get to within, I don't know, a kilometer from each other, nobody has a clue except the people doing the stuff, like where are these satellites located? We can't even distinguish one thing from the other; we get the identities confused; we have an identity crisis in space. These are the things that need to get solved, and and with sustainability metrics and that sort of stuff, so that there can be this marketplace, and I think business can be open. You know, space insurance companies can now start charging premiums for liability and stuff like that on orbit. Like all these things that don't exist now start going away if we can like establish carbon footprint analog space—space traffic footprint, carrying capacity for orbits—these sorts of things. That's a strong call to action. Wow, I I really respect it. Thank you for sharing, Rick. It seems like you have a uh, you're really agreeing to a lot of those points. I'd love to hear what you think.
Yeah, I'm Marita, and I have passionate agreements and passionate disagreements, but that that's because we're brothers in the cause. Um, the uh, the thing is uh uh, I want to go back to one thing you were talking about opportunities because we're this is about a business, this is a business thing, and now uh, one of the areas that we are not investing in, for example, is uh is rockets. I just want to put that out there. Uh, I think Michael agrees as well. Uh, we have too many rockets. Uh, my thesis is that's because we have too many boys, and boys like rockets, but that's a whole separate argument. Um, I uh, regarding uh debris, um, you know, we have to take care of; we have to protect Sandra Bullock, man, and uh, it is it is critical, right? Uh, and uh, I think there's three levels there real quick. Not just this show has ended up being around debris a lot, but you know, really that is that is interesting, and we can talk about that. Uh, but um, there is the the opportunity that hasn't been created yet for companies that want to clean up existing debris. Um, then there's the the opportunity has to be created to stop new debris, which for me is something like, for example, the right of salvage uh needs to be put into space uh because it's the big objects that are the real real problem because they end up making lots of little objects when they hit each other. Um, so if we could create a right of salvage to where uh, because right now nation states are responsible for the entire lifetime uh allegedly of of the existence of their vehicles, so um, there is that the right of salvage could open up a new business opportunity. You could have a commercial solution. Um, but then the key here, the key to all of this, a lot of this is we're transitioning from an aerospace industrial model that is uh about spending lots of money getting more money from the government, spending more money, and it's all about throwaways so that you get paid to replace, and all of that that is a in juxtaposition with what I call the frontier model, which is bring costs down, reusability, recycling, replacement, repurpose, and resources. And if we can start to inculcate a philosophy into this new industry as we move out that is actually focused on those five things, not only will we create a whole new set of opportunities and interactions in in and it's an overused word, but in the space ecosystem, um, we'll actually be modeling a new set of behaviors that we need to be actually uh expressing down here on the planet while we're engaging in enterprise in space. The idea of of reusing stuff, recycling stuff, of working together, uh the green—you know, there's no bigger environmentalist than somebody floating in a habitat in space above the Earth, re-breathing their own air and re-drinking their own recycled urine. This person is very aware of how to take care of systems, and so we have a lot of potential for um modeling and moving not just as we're doing enterprise uh but as we're moving out into the frontier, showing how we can do enterprise in a way that is both beneficial and positive.
Thank you, Rick. Um, and that modeling actually a really good point. I want to bring up Hudson, Hudson Space Systems. We'd love to hear from you um how specifically you're doing this for startups and helping them uh create these business opportunities. I think you're muted. Yeah, and it will go to Charles uh afterwards. Um, so yeah, that's a really interesting point. One of the things that we are aiming to do with our company is providing access to current companies and enable future companies to access microgravity research and manufacturing to develop these business models for themselves. There's a whole range of opportunity, proven and unproven, across the well the range of STEM technology. So, for example, they're all of these um, sorry guys, I stepped on the mute button there. Um, like preparing technologies um to expand human exploration, we need a proving ground; we need accessible um ways to develop these technologies. So the business model we're developing allows allows companies to access that, and it's part of our vision that people can work on these innovations without having to add extra satellite pollution into the LEO mix, right? So if you can go up and do some experimentation or manufacturing and bring it back down within, let's say like one gravitational cycle, you don't have to worry about adding to that pollution because, I mean, as much as we love to think about what space any industry could be in the future, say it's a model of how we can you know move forward and recycle and make it green from the start, but that's not unfortunately going to happen just of our own volition and all of us willing it into existence. Unfortunately, things like that don't always happen unless there's like a financial um means that people are driving towards or um, you know, either governing body hoping that for that. So I think unless people are going into the industry um thinking about that from the start with good faith um or if there's a regulatory body, we have to be designing for that now ahead of time. So design with that that the option for um extra debris isn't even there for customers.
That's a good point. We are in our final five minutes of our mastermind. If anybody from the panelists or even the attendees have a question to ask, feel free to type it into the Q&A section, and it's open, and everybody can answer it there. Um, if there is any topics or anything you want to discuss, please share it there. Love to hear from Charles. Really quick, I just wanted to jump on two points that Moriba had mentioned and uh related to that is one liability I think and and also what Hudson Space Systems has just said. I think that any whether the company is small, medium, or large, they really need to be thinking about the design and incorporating the design for safety and mitigation now. They also from a legal perspective, even if there aren't so many the all the insurance products out there yet, they need to be thinking about that liability aspect and protecting themselves now. The time to wait is, you know, they don't have the time to wait, and they need the particularly the small companies need to be focused and paying attention to the regulatory process and and looking at the proposed regulations, commenting when they have the opportunity to do so because one of the proposals in the new FCC regulations, two actually, one is to make sure that you're indemnifying the United States by anything that you do in space, and two is the possible requirement of a bond, and depending on what that bond metric happens to be, that could be significantly prohibitive for small businesses. So bottom line: think about design, think about insurance and liability protection now, and pay attention to the regulatory process. There's a there's a there's a very important point, and everybody here is on the innovation side, but also think about the liability and the insurance and the sustainability. Armond, love to hear from from you, and we'll go to Michael and David hopefully we can get everyone in before the time's up.
Sure, I agree with a lot of things that have been said, particularly about space debris, but I think we have to recognize that the you know the strength of the industry is also its weakness. But we've had this incredible evolution that's allowed prices to come down, new entrants to come in, people, companies uh that are very very small capitalizations have now been able to access space. But that means you have companies with small capitalizations accessing space; they don't have necessarily the resources to have all kinds of redundancies on their satellites; they don't have the resources to afford expensive bonds; they don't have the resources to go up and clean up a mess that they put up there. It also means that you have people launching satellites from more and more countries, not just a couple of countries in the world that have space access, but it's gonna be really a global situation, and if the rules tighten up in the U.S., people will launch from another country. Those can be—it's a very difficult situation to to bring under control. It's, you know, it's nice to have ideas, but at the end of the day, there's a lot of small companies who want to get up into space and don't have a lot of money, and it's going to take I think some really creative new ideas to uh to solve this. Thanks, Armond. Michael, love to hear from you. You're muted.
Yep. Um, so I was going to respond to one of the Q&A questions as well, but I do want to go back to a little bit to the the debris problem slightly. Um, I I do not think it's a it's a hair-on-fire emergency. Um, there have been some calls in some circles for a launch moratorium, um, which is I think overkill. Much of what's going on is in LEO, which are in a lot of cases are self-cleaning orbits to a certain degree. For example, one of the causes of significant amounts of debris was the Indian ASAT test, and much of that debris since deorbited itself because of the altitude. They're still um, according to Moriba, about 100 pieces that are still left up there. So nature helps, but it is not a complete solution. Um, but figuring out how to make that into a business is difficult. Garbage trucks are not usually venture-investable businesses. But one of the questions was uh Q&A questions was the role of settlement um and and a lens for which to look at what a lot of the companies in this sector are doing and what even venture funds like ourselves are looking at in the future. Um, we do think that um people living in space um and and either temporarily or permanently um leaving the Earth to go do things elsewhere in large numbers is where you get into um the justification for a lot of things that a lot of more longer-term companies are getting into. So um, that's exactly what Elon's plan is, and uh as a fan of that kind of an idea that both I think Rick and I share, um, that is something that you're gonna see a lot of companies start looking at as longer-term business models that get into generational, multi-generational kind of wealth building and wealth transfer.
Thank you, Michael. And last final final answer from David. Yes. Um, I'm not going to talk anymore about orbital debris, I promise. Uh, what I wanted to do for my closing comment is to share uh the fact that we have two astronauts on our board of directors who served on the the International Space Station, and they have imparted to us this relatively uh actually a decreasingly unique perspective that comes from space about the interconnectedness of major systems on the Earth's surface, and I'm talking about weather, oceans, terrestrial uh realities and so on. And what we're seeing uh is strategies increasingly are part of the mix on Earth that take account of that interconnectedness; their bigger-picture strategies which ultimately cry out for space-based tools and other assets. So again, we're technology-neutral, but space is unusually valuable for us in what we do and more broadly for everybody we're doing it with, so we see huge potential on business plans and on holistic strategies that address the Earth's interconnectedness. Thanks for that, David. And thank you everyone for attending. Uh, we're all here to support each other, and we appreciate all of your insights. Thank you again, Hudson Space Systems are sponsoring this event. We do want to keep the conversation going. We have a private Slack group that we will invite all of you to, and we'll also send you a recording of this so you can share it with all your followers, and hopefully we can help get the word out about orbital debris and all the you know problems that we can solve in the world. So thanks everyone, and we'll see you on the next mastermind.