Max Haot - Mission for Infinite Humanity

Speaker A: What. How would you named vast? It would have been space.

Speaker B: Uh, station.

Speaker A: Yes, you would. Big shots laughing in our face, Cold chairs in hot places Told us no, can't fight but we give it all tonight. Rise up, break the chains, beat the ars, feel the flames, build it up, take it high your unreal. Can't be done. If you have heard the words can't be done and it fuels you with a fiery rage to go build something, then this podcast is for you. My name is Adam Draper. I'm the founder and managing director of Boost vc, where I invest in early stage startups. Every single guest on my show will be doing things deemed impossible to do or cannot be done. I. I am going to be interviewing founders, funders, just amazing human beings. So let's get excited to do what can't be done. Welcome. Uh, hey, Max, thanks for coming to the Boost VC podcast. Um, it's not the Boost VC podcast anymore. We call it Can't Be Done. So welcome to Can't Be Done.

Speaker B: It Can Be done.

Speaker A: Well, Can't Be Done. Why do you think we called it this?

Speaker B: Um, somebody told you you couldn't do it.

Speaker A: Well, someone told you that you probably couldn't do something at some point. And what. What does it do, like, in your head?

Speaker B: I don't even hear it.

Speaker A: You don't even hear. Exactly. Or if some people get fire from it, like, they get the energy.

Speaker B: I'm numb from it.

Speaker A: Yeah, you don't even get fuel from it anymore. It's just like, hey, I'm on the bath. Stop. Just. It's a waste of. Waste of time here. It can't be done. Um, okay, well, obviously, it's an exciting time and space. I wanted to have a conversation with you, catch up. Um, what. But before we begin, where did you start your entrepreneurial journey? Uh, what was the original? I remember there's an elevator in one of your stories.

Speaker B: Uh,

Speaker A: you wrote up and down on it.

Speaker B: That has nothing to do with the entrepreneurial.

Speaker A: Okay, that was from the bad decision.

Speaker B: I didn't think it could not be done. And, uh, with my cousin, we rode up on top of the elevator in the hotel of my dad after watching Die Hard.

Speaker A: Was that the inspiration?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.

Speaker B: I don't do this at home, dude.

Speaker A: I watched Die Hard so many times.

Speaker B: It was amazing.

Speaker A: And I always thought about it. It was amazing because of Die Hard.

Speaker B: We hacked the door, then the elevator would come down, then we would step on it.

Speaker A: That's so funny. Without Die Hard, I don't think I Know what uh, elevators look like on the uh, outside. So. Thank you. Die Hard.

Speaker B: It's pretty scary the first time to know there would be enough distance. Yes. Was there space but not much, but enough.

Speaker A: Did you have to lay down or was it a, uh.

Speaker B: Well, we knew we could lay down under like a beam of metal. So worst case would be fine. There was a little bit more room.

Speaker A: So. And okay, so obviously you know, you, you model record.

Speaker B: I was 10, uh, or something 12. Just really.

Speaker A: So you modeled your life after Die Hard. But. And you were, you were born in Europe?

Speaker B: Yeah, Belgium.

Speaker A: Belgium. Uh, and what brought you over to the States? Like what was the.

Speaker B: But I mean back to your question. The, the other movie that had a big influence was uh, War Games in my life. So I don't know if you watch War Games. I go watch it. I remember War Games. Just amazing. And he has a modem now. He creates nearly thermonuclear global warfare, but that's a different story. Um, but the kid uh, has a modem. And that's the first time I heard about modem. This is before the Internet, like in you know, late 80s or something like that. And I uh, had a Komodo 64 and then I got, I went to the store with my dad and there was a modem. So I got a modem when I was like 8. And so I started to uh, do software development and do BBs where before the Internet you would call each other's computer. Uh, I would call the US to get the McAfee antivirus and run thousands of dollar bill for my parents. Uh, so I could distribute it via my BBS in Belgium and stuff like that. So anyway that, that's how the computing start, you know, interest started.

Speaker A: Man McAfee, the ultimate virus.

Speaker B: It was selling the drugs, the antivirus that you could get. So um, so that, that's how it started. And then I wanted know I developed my own BBS and I was doing some software development for it. And then I um, I wanted to be a TV director. And I went to a company in England called img which is doing uh, you know, sport management and tv. And uh, and then I quickly realized, wow, the Internet just started. This was 95, I was just out of high school, um, and hardly spoke English. I was learning English, I was doing an internship. And then I quickly realized that oh, they don't really know you know how to make websites. And like within two years I had like 100 software engineer working for me and we were making the website for the biggest sport federation like Wimbledon, Manchester United, uh, the Open of Golf and so on. So that, that's how I started. And I, um, never went back to Belgium and never went back to school. So I just became.

Speaker A: What was that? A separate company. The.

Speaker B: Well, this was a. I was a, you know, an employee, an intern. I worked for free for two years and I became, you know, a vice president, whatever. Uh, so this was 95 to, um, to about 2005. I was in England and uh, my dream was we'll talk about space, but was to make it here in California.

Speaker A: That was your first dream.

Speaker B: That was like. Well, like it was very frustrating between 95 and 2000, which, I don't know the audience, you probably all know about the dot com, you know, the invention of the Internet and the dot com bubble in 2000. But, um, it was really frustrating not to be here. So I was a Belgian, I was working in England and I was trying to find any way I could to, to be here. And the first opportunity I. In 2005, when Verizon bought a software made at that company, a content management software. At first they wanted me in the D.C. area. I didn't have kids. I was like 28. It was like, it's probably not, uh, in Virginia. You know, great to raise a family, but not great to be. And uh, you know, San Francisco was not an option. But I ended up in New York. So that's how I.

Speaker A: At last, that's where we met.

Speaker B: 2005, I got there, worked two years at Verizon. I started my first company. So the, you know, the ambition was always to have your own company as every entrepreneur, um, so some of the proceed from that sale, Love, uh, your socks and, and had the, um, you know, had the chance to start my own company and uh, which was Live Stream, a, uh, live streaming platform, uh, which we did that for 10 years, sold to Vimeo and met you like two or three years in it. So I think.

Speaker A: So was that two to three years into it?

Speaker B: Probably 2008. Nine. Yeah, maybe. Maybe two years in it. Um, and uh, thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it was great. It was great. No, it was fun to. I like that we got to connect over that. Actually. It was a big success. It was helpful for me when I was starting Expert Financial because you were kind of, you were innovative in welcoming different financial solutions to uh, the Live Stream secondaries were great secondary raises. Okay, so what do you think has fueled you in your entrepreneurial journey? You wanted to have a startup and we'll get to Space. But the uh, like you wanted, you said you wanted your own company and you started live streaming. It was still in media, which was still what you were familiar with, but media and Internet, like what, what do you think drove you to want to do that in the first place?

Speaker B: I mean, I think you know, independence and then working on things you love and like, uh, and um, you know, I've never worked a day of my life. I'm sure you haven't either where I did something that I was not passionate about or interested in. So that's the common thread. And why work for somebody if you could work for yourself? I guess. But we still need team members.

Speaker A: Well, it's like everyone's, you know, moving in the same direction, you know, and well also great leaders somehow establish that feeling that there no one's working. They're just like solving the hardest problem that they can get to next. Which I always admired about you finding the hardest problem in operating wise. Uh, but then from Livestream you, you started a space company which most people don't do that. Uh, so like more and more do it more and more do it now. So in. What was it?

Speaker B: 20, 20, 17.

Speaker A: 17. Uh, you emailed me and you were like hey, Livestream is selling, it's sold. And I'm, I'm going all in on space. I'm going on and launching rockets. And uh, and so we, I ended up getting to be able to participate.

Speaker B: I still remember the call I had with you. I was in a car, somewhere in a car park and you. And you were right, right ready to back me. So thank you, that was awesome.

Speaker A: I said yeah, yes immediately. And the. Which is good. I. Well, I had seen from Livestream, I'd seen not uh, to go to niche but like you had just such an incredible operating prowess that I didn't think it really like whatever you were pitching me, it didn't really matter what it was. But you were very passionate about space and I was like okay. And we had backed one other space company. I think at this time. I think you were our second space company to invest in. Um, and we ended up backing a fair number. I think we probably have 10 to 12 now. Um, but you were so early in the ecosystem and there were, there was really no MO other than SpaceX. There was no like movement in that ecosystem at the time you decided to do it. What was like why?

Speaker B: It's actually um, uh, like a little series of event around just around the time I started live stream in 2005. Um, you know, I start to think about the environmental movement. And you know, I started to conclude, you know, saving resource to better the Earth, which we should obviously better and save. But I started to conclude that the, the concept of deceleration, right, consume less, build less, uh, as the solution to save the Earth was uh, not something I was interested in. Um, one of the thing that really like crystallize my, my mind is to you know, hear people talk about, you see the population growth graph.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Not, you know, not so dissimilar to the one you have there. Then nothing. Um, people are depressed about it. They point at ah, the fact that that's a big problem and the alternative I guess would be to you know, decelerate and you know, have less human right to save the Earth. Like who are we to decide there should be. There could be another billion or 10 or 100 billion people live in the future. And we, we have decided that we are going to stop that. Right? That's against human nature. Um, and in my view that's not the answer. So if you, if you believe we should celebrate population growth, then you quickly believe that space is part of the solution. Right? That we should explore the stars and we should expand beyond the Earth and we should bring resource. Um, and I dream of a, ah, you know, at that time I wanted to start a movement I should have done it like called Infinite Humanity.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So the idea that I want to contribute to a world where, you know, at some point there'll be so many humans on so many planets, we can't actually count it because we don't know where they are. They've jumped to so many planets. Right. Like yeah, let's take actions, let's do things that make that um, that future possible. So, so that's where it started. And so at that time I was like, oh, uh, as soon as I can, I should make my um, my career to switch from um, from uh, you know, Internet and video, which it got also a bit boring at the time and I'd like to switch it to, to space, you know, to just contribute, do my piece of the rest of my working time and career. Uh, which, you know, which is until

Speaker A: you decided to bet on yourself pretty well. Yeah.

Speaker B: And then the second piece at the time is uh, you know, 2005, 6, I don't remember. You know I come across SpaceX and Elon, right? And that's the second piece which is like oh crap, I could, you know, build a company, you know, make 100 million. We can do this and then start a company. We can Actually do this. Uh, and you know that you know, I mean you know Elon and SpaceX can be credited first for you know every space company, that entrepreneurial company that exists today has to thank it to what he's done. Right. He's shown um, not only that it's possible uh, to you know, create a private, non prime, non traditional, uh, successful space company. And it was wild. Right? Vendors would not even want to work with him. You know, employees, uh, didn't want to join, uh, they, you know he had to put money in escrow for them to join so that if it went out of business they would get a year or two of salary for the early employees. So you know it can be credited for making it not normal for engineers to want to join. Private company, not prime contractor for investors to exist. There were no, I mean your dad and you guys were there right at the beginning uh, as SpaceX investors and there was very few. Right. Like I think DFJ saved the day. Right. It was just his money. And then you guys were in the early days, right?

Speaker A: The first round I think so. I remember the first SpaceX jacket I saw was uh, in 2007 or eight on a flight from San Francisco to, to, to LA because I was in, I was in college. So uh, like SpaceX has been around longer than my career.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is wild.

Speaker B: So any. But it's so little time. So you know they've, they've shown that there should be investor and they've brought investors. Uh, they've shown that you know, young graduates and experienced people are not taking an unreasonable risk to join space startup. And on top of that they've you know, given us low cost rockets. That startup can use many of your companies to build satellites or launch space.

Speaker A: Yeah, we, we had seven companies on a Falcon 9 two months ago.

Speaker B: Yeah. So that, that you like these companies

Speaker A: would not exist 10 years ago.

Speaker B: That was, these companies would not be there if Elon had not started SpaceX in 2002 and succeeded. So um, so yeah, we have a lot to, to thank. And then the last piece is really the, the iterative approach and the algorithm and the, the way to you know, vertically integrate and move fast and, and iterate and that's a DNA that exists in all the best um space startup today. And that also comes from there.

Speaker A: So, and so you went from building rockets and now we're at what was called launcher. You're really good at naming companies. That's something I was talking about.

Speaker B: I did not name Vast Jed founder. So he's better with me.

Speaker A: Yeah, well the, the. Well the first company was called Livestream because you stream live video and then the second company was called Launcher because you launch rockets. You can't like take it back. It's like an incredible.

Speaker B: Got to double down once.

Speaker A: You just double down once it starts. What. How would you named Vast? It would have been uh, space station.

Speaker B: So I guess I'm really lucky to have found Jet.

Speaker A: Yes, I like Vast is good. Four letter.

Speaker B: Uh, four letter is awesome.

Speaker A: Vas is a good name.

Speaker B: And our first space station haven1jed also named it is. Ah yeah.

Speaker A: And so you ended up getting acquired by Vast from Launcher. Um, and then how's your role sort of evolved from being the founder of early stage startup. I always think like you have to grow, right? Like you have to figure out like where you're most useful. Has your role changed at all or is it uh, evolved or what's the uh.

Speaker B: It's been wild. Right. I started launcher in 2017 and uh, I met Jed, the founder of Vast. Uh, so Jed.

Speaker A: So that's like eight years ago now?

Speaker B: Seven, um, nine. Oh, you mean the launcher. Yeah. 2017.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What year are we? Um, um, I don't even know. So um, so I started Launcher. You know we had raised you know a total of just over 30 million. Thank you again for your, for your support. Um, and we were building our rocket engine and we still build and two satellites and uh, and I was in the middle of a fundraising round in, in mid 22 and um, through uh, one of our team members we were introduced to Jed as a potential investor. So I met Jed at the time and was hoping to raise money to build obviously a company that I had uh, created. Um, and uh, Jet had a different plan. He was really impressed with what we had done, um, in terms of the uh, amount of money invested and the hardware and the team we had and what we were executing. You know we, we liked each other. Um, but he wanted to um, to acquire Launcher to have me and our team help accelerate what he had started with Vast. And so two years earlier he had decided to invest a significant portion of his net worth. You know, Jet is a, is a software and crypto, you know, billionaire and he had decided to contribute some of his resource to space exploration. Had concluded that transportation should be taken care by SpaceX and they can be your partner and that he wanted to work on the next big thing, which is in our view human habitation. So he had picked obviously human habitation and space station as our sector for Vast Named Vast and Build seeded it with an amazing team that by the time we finished the acquisition at about 40 people, which were amazing engineers. Most of them had worked um, on SpaceX, on Dragon, on the crewed spacecraft and uh, had assembled them in Nelson do office. So uh, you know, at first we said, you know, I said no, I don't want to be acquired. And then somehow we ended up negotiating a deal that I think uh, all of our investors were happy, our team was happy, I was happy. Um, and uh, in, and we closed the deal in February 23rd and you know, became at the time president at Vast. And then his plan was always to make me CEO if things went well. And so from a founder, you know, I've, since I had a job, you know, late, you know, 95, 2005, I've always been my own founder. Um, so it was new, you know, to, to. I'm not the founder, uh, I was a president, became CEO. I work for Jed. But the, the key factor here as to why I'm like all in super motivated, excited is that, you know, the scale of what we're trying to do. Human spaceflight, build the world's first commercial space station, replace the International Space Station, you know, human spaceflight, if you look at the cost of entry in space, um, you know, SpaceX got to human spaceflight. It took them 15 years, right? We trained to do it day one. Um, and it's the kind of dream, everybody that's involved in space, you know, satellites are good, rockets are good. Yeah, the human spaceflight is very special and it's kind of the pinnacle, you know, of the industry, right? Most engineers want to work on human space flight, most entrepreneurs. So it was basically a chance to be a leader in human space flights. Like a shortcut. Go, don't wait 15 years. Because eventually Launcher I would have hoped would have been involved in human spaceflight. And then jet plus our revenue, it's, it's uh, uh, basically more than $1 billion by the time we fly next year invested. So I don't know where else I could find that or even do that organically through fundraising. Um, and so, you know, at the end it, we did the deal out of practicality and then um, at the beginning I was like, let's see how it will work. And uh, it's now been nearly two years.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's two years, I think, and

Speaker B: it's been wild, right? We've gone from 40 people to 800 people. We're on track to launch the world's first commercial space Station uh, next in May 26th.

Speaker A: 40 to 800.

Speaker B: Yes in. And we're growing by 50 team members a month right now.

Speaker A: I think I remember what the. But the last time the US actually launched a rocket from the US was a while ago. Right people?

Speaker B: Yeah, well that was a shuttle. It was about 2008. Nine. I forget. Um, so we you know we you know the Soviet Union opened up human space before SpaceX with Gangrene's flight which was actually the anniversary is uh, this month. It was a few days ago. Um, and then we did a first suborbital flight with Alan Shepard which was not really space. You know the Soviet were in space right away with, with Gagarin and then um, you know with John Glenn we went to orbit and then you know we, we obviously beat the Russian and the Soviet to, to the moon. So at that point there was only two um, nation in the world that could send people to space. Since then there's a third which is China which not only using a lot of um, Russian bought technology, um, developed the ability to send humans to space and now have a space station. And that's also a big reason why we need to replace the ISS with a cheaper one is that um, we can't see lower forbid to China. It doesn't really make sense from a defense prestige geopolitical way. It's and also with our partners, we have a lot of partners in we the United M. States, um, in uh, in Europe, in Japan, in Canada that if we didn't have a space station, you know it might be reasonable for them to start working with China which has a space station. Because they want to send people to space, they want to do science in microgravity. And so it's really, really important and even more important today with the uh, Trump administration to make sure there is a transition to uh, to replace it with a low cost modern uh, safe alternative basically.

Speaker A: I mean it feels like the privatization of space has accelerated innovation like crazy in the last little bit. Uh, I mean in the last 10 years we went from 3,000 satellites or

Speaker B: something to like, I mean that's the privatization of space. It's reusability um, led by SpaceX. And if you actually look at, you know, if you look at Falcon 9, the most successful rocket ever built. Right they are, they will launch this year 200.

Speaker A: And I mean total, I forget what,

Speaker B: I mean more than 90% of the Earth's total mass of all rocket to orbit. Uh, and that's even before Starship and you know 150 launch or I forget the exact number for this year. The goal, unprecedented, right? Multiple times a week, three times a week, every two days. Um, that rocket, you know, other than reusability, which is key. Right. But the engineering of the engine, the engineering of uh, the structures, the fairing, the stage, everything is actually 1960s, 1950s tech. The only improvement that has occurred is basically the cost, right? It's doing it using modern tools, cheaper avionics, uh, cheaper design tool, cheaper manufacturing tool. And what we've been able to do, you know, humanity, is to just make similar rocket at a lower cost and still expandable. And so there is only one, other than that, there's one key innovation which is Elon's uh, relentless pursuit of reusability which they achieved on Falcon 9. Um, and that's really, that's the only innovation in the last, you know, 50 years. If you look at rockets in space.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Reusability is the only innovation and it's only perseverance and good software code, um, that has achieved it. It's actually, you probably could have done it now that, you know, it's possible. Probably could have done it in the 60s. Right. But no one were pursuing it because they thought it was, you know, too difficult or impossible.

Speaker A: Well, I guess what gets us so, uh, well, the things in space have compounded and so now, now that we have reusability and we're going to space more.

Speaker B: Yes, Downlink. So we are talking about the satellite, right? We know we had 4,000 active satellite for like decades and you know, now we're over 10,000 and it's going to get to 20,000 soon.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And right now it's mostly SpaceX. So if you look at all the active satellite, they are all Starlink satellite mostly, you know, and the percentage of Starlink satellite versus the rest of the world is, you know, it's going to inch towards, you know, well over 90%. It's probably going to get to 99% before this competition. And maybe, you know, one of the

Speaker A: first times I saw a strip of the Starlink satellites was uh, we were, me and my family were going on a Christmas light tour in this garden, uh, that was just, it's called Filoli and it's got a bunch of Christmas lights. And I literally saw the Christmas light come on and I literally, I was like, I was like, Santa, Santa, Santa Claus.

Speaker B: I've seen the video. I've never seen them. I'd love to see them. They're really amazing, dude.

Speaker A: It blew my mind. I was like, what this Is Santa

Speaker B: Claus, by the way, what you observe is also orbital velocity. Like, you know, these are going around the Earth every 90 minutes. And I'm sure it looks strange off, um, how quickly it was moving.

Speaker A: It was moving fast.

Speaker B: Yes. And it's far, right. It's at 400 kilometer or something like that. By then.

Speaker A: Oh, dude, it was move. It was, it was like. And it sort of disappeared at one point. But like, it was just gorgeous. It was gorgeous because we were also looking at Christmas lights. And so Santa Claus was there.

Speaker B: So, so we can thank, um, you know, we can thank obviously, reusability for Starlink. And now we can thank Starlink for um, getting to Mars, getting us to Mars, which is really, really amazing.

Speaker A: Well, that's the move the. You, uh, okay, so you entered, you had an obsession with space. With space, obviously. But, uh, you've had to develop a business in space over the last, this amount of time. Eight years since Launcher, probably before that. You were thinking about it, um, like, what has changed about your perception of space? What's your evolution like from, uh, you had this idea that this was the expansion of humanity and we need to get to space in order to expand the human condition. Uh, and now you, you're like in it, right? Like you got the forest through the trees situation.

Speaker B: I mean, the biggest change is that, you know, the idea. So if you go back to Starlink, which is the, you know, the most successful commercial case study in space, um, not only it's by volume, the biggest amount of satellite, it's changing people's life. It works. You know, soon it'll be in our cars, you know, it's in our mobile phones already. And you can buy the terminals for, you know, 50 bucks or something like that. So my prediction, I think not many people would agree, but five years ago, very few people would agree, is that Starlink will be the biggest telecom company, um, by the end of the decade. I think it's going to be faster now. So it's accelerating even beyond what I can track. Um, that really unlocks everything. Now the idea of Internet Constellation has been around since the 80s. So at first many entrepreneurs were like, there will be rockets launching every day, there will be Constellations. Many people have gone bankrupt trying. Many public companies have gone bankrupt. And so we are now at the stage where it's no longer a question, right? And that's for telecom Constellation. And the same is happening for everything that transition to commercial and the opportunity opening up. So if you look at human spaceflight, it's the same. You Know it's the same opportunity we are, we are seeing it's not yet occurred, it's only occurred for the Dragon capsule where now the public price is about um, $40 million. You can go for three days, uh, around, um, around the earth in orbit on an orbital mission. Right. Uh, and that used to cost you know, hundreds of million and now, now it's a immortal, now it's can buy it for 40 million. And obviously we, you know, we believe that people, even if they're self funded,

Speaker A: what kind of training do they have

Speaker B: to do to be nominally one year mostly? Well for that version where you stay

Speaker A: in the Dragon and for sub orbital, what did they, what would they do? Weeks, weeks of training.

Speaker B: Days maybe. Yeah, um, but it's, it's nominally one year. You know you are part time. If you, if you're an operator like a pilot and so on, you can probably compress it to 10 months being part time. But it's, it's, you know, it's a lot of training and then if you go to the vast space station haven one, then there's additional, maybe 20, 30% more training at our facility in addition to SpaceX. Uh, you know, our lead astronauts should probably go first and many of our engineers can probably be more useful to have gone to space, to our space station than I am. But I'd like to go if that's the answer. Yeah, I'm not first in line unfortunately. So um, but yeah, that would be um, you know, that would be amazing. But the point is that you know right now the, the cost obviously of the capsule has gone down. Uh, it will go even further down with the new starship rocket, hopefully an order of magnitude.

Speaker A: By an order of magnitude.

Speaker B: And then the space station used to be so expensive. But not only that, the iss, which is the only space station you could go to, firstly you can't decide commercially when you go to, there's a few commercial tickets but they're very limited. Um, but secondly what you can do there, whether it's communication, what you say, what you do, what you bring there, what you consume, um, um, the type of brands that you deal with, what you manufacture there, what type of experiment, all of this is controlled by the US government and very, very, very restrictive, um, because it's a government paid, taxpayer paid platform. So no one really knows what will really happen when people can come to our ah, commercial space station which is a very different design. We have Starlink Internet, they uh, will be spending two week mission and perform science and outreach. Uh, your phone Will work like just

Speaker A: on a Starlink Internet on spaces faster

Speaker B: than on the ground because we already halfway there. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be way better than Silicon Valley. I always complain that it's like.

Speaker B: Well we connected directly to the. Connect to the constellation with lasers. So we're like one of the, like one of the satellite of stunning. It is the deal we have a space is.

Speaker A: Is your. Would the space station be moving around at the same speed that like Starlink's moving?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean different altitudes.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and different altitude in space. I mean different, uh, in orbital space mean different speed. Yes, um, but largely yes. Like we will be at, you know,

Speaker A: they're easier to target something that's not moving.

Speaker B: I mean it's, it's pretty amazing technology. So SpaceX is providing us the laser terminal and it's. We give it power, we get a neat. We put an ethernet cable. We have three of them. And they find. And they point at uh, all of the other satellites. They have a database of well the

Speaker A: satellite like a beautiful hotel room and space.

Speaker B: Don't say that we don't want tourists.

Speaker A: No tourists.

Speaker B: I think space is so expensive today, right? It's going down, but it's still very expensive that anyone that goes to space should be going there to do important thing for humanity. And there's two things you can do, right? You can do microgravity research, for example, making drugs that could uh, you know, fix a disease on Earth, uh, in crystal growth and drug manufacturing is, is proven to be better in microgravity. So that's something you could do with your time. You know, if you're there for 10 days on the space station, let's say you want to work eight hours, you have 80 hours, right? So we think you should be doing something to do with that or you should be doing with you know, organ printing or uh, semiconductor manufacturing. Then there's another category. These are, you know, do research in space to make life better on Earth. And then there's another category which is advance the state of the art of space exploration. We believe that anyone that has the money to you know, beyond government. Well number one customer are sovereign astronauts from European, uh nation Canada, Japan, America and then emerging nations like the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, you know, other European countries that are not part of the European space agencies. Um, you know, the number one customer today and the number one market is to help these nation and these uh, professional astronauts go to space. But then we still have, you know, 10 to 20% are wealthy individual that um, could actually fund Somebody else to go, but often are going. So the goal of the original long term mission of Vast, which is still ours, is to build an artificial gravity space station which would be 105 meter long stick that's um, assembled from seven module. We launch on starship, so seven meter diameter, 105 meter. And then if we rotate it at four rotation per minute, um, we would get one G on either end. But we could also test moon uh, and Mars gravity there. Um, and so that, that's you know a key architecture that you know we

Speaker A: think get used to Mars's gravity on

Speaker B: the way, on the, on the way there or even experiment before we go there. Now it sounds like we're going to go there much quicker than that. Um, but that's a, that's a really important part of space station that has to be done and we want to be the first company to achieve it basically.

Speaker A: And how much does it. So we were talking about how much it cost the government for the last space station. And you're trying to do it probably for a fraction of the cost, but it's still pretty expensive. What is the business of uh, international space station?

Speaker B: So if you um, you know the key goal of Vast is you know all these new application media fighting in space. Oh we were talking about fighting. So we hope that space station will be able to maybe do the game you're talking about.

Speaker A: Okay, done.

Speaker B: Sometime in the 2000s, uh, like late 30s, mid-2030s.

Speaker A: Okay, I'll get, I'll get, I'll get my kids ready.

Speaker B: Look at us both losing our trailer folks. But yeah, we got back there.

Speaker A: I'll just get, I'll get my kids going on.

Speaker B: So back to the, you know the, the business, the nuts and bolts. So right now there is a market for space station which are these space agencies, right. Uh, doing um, important science and flying uh, their, their professional astronaut to space. Right. It's an international uh, market and it's, and it's there today, for example the US it's imperative that we don't seed lower forbid to the Chinese. We have to be there. We have to have a continuous human presence in space. It's mandated by Congress and the President. Um, so that creates a market at NASA. Similar um, market exists in Japan, in Europe and then emerging nation. And then as I mentioned we have the private people. Our strategy at Vast is that we believe that we have to be able to be profitable with the current market and then we will be able to iterate and unlock the future market. The future Market is pharma, manufacturing, uh, entertainment, sport in space, you know, uh, sponsorship. We can't rely on that market because it's not there yet today and it might take five years, 10 years, 15 years. It might be a slower growth or faster growth, we don't know. And so the way to do that is to be um, super efficient and low cost.

Speaker A: What's the biggest risk to this market? Because it feels like as private companies it just sort of came out of uh, it didn't come out of nowhere but SpaceX was sort of the first.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Even though they're of this new era of space. Uh, like what is the big, what's the biggest risk for a startup that's starting in sort of the space industry? Is it capital resources, is it customers? Uh, it's just different than like an Internet, I mean media site from our

Speaker B: point of view is that you know there are new NASA prime target customer and they're running a competition to replace the iss. So we have to win that. Right? And um, if we don't win that, you don't have NASA as a customer. I think it's really difficult to close the business case for a space station. And also all of the other um, all of the other nations are following NASA. So for us what the biggest risk is is to you know, continue to do what we do, which is to uh, lead by showing hardware to NASA by launching the first space station even before they select the winner. And we have to win.

Speaker A: You now have, I mean you have a mock up of the Haven One space. You have a real space station that maybe it's not fully functional yet, but you walk through it, it's awesome. What are you most excited about coming in the next year on?

Speaker B: I mean it's pretty wild right? We nearly have fully built a team and the facilities. We're just finishing our control. We are.

Speaker A: I haven't even talked to you about 40 to 800. Sounds like insane.

Speaker B: Yeah, we have 800 and we're going to cap out at a thousand. Uh so if you're an engineer and you want to join us now, now is the time before we win on essay contract. Um, so that that piece is, was the last two years, you know that was the hardest piece building amazing team that could be building each, each of the system. If you build a space station you have hundreds of subsystem. You know somebody has to worry about the shelf, the primary structure, the window, the battery, the computer, the hatch, the cmg. I mean the list never ends.

Speaker A: Where's the Duct tape going to be

Speaker B: I'm sure we will have on standard issue on board human factors. That's a team that figure out um what whatever you know toothbrush to duct tape accessory we might need uh for, for the mission. Uh but we had to do in the last two years you know we said the strategy and then we had to you know if you don't have a team member, you know talented responsible engineer working on it, it's not happening. And we, you need all of these systems, life support system and so on. So we did all of that um and now we have 800 we you know our hiring machine and our hiring brand has really been amazing because there are only two in our view credible human spaceflight. Non prime contractor like Boeing Space Co. You could work at. If you want to work on human spaceflight, it's Space X. A lot of people have already done it uh and they've done their tour of duty and they want to go back to human spaceflight. So they come to vast uh or even graduates. You can go to SpaceX or you can do uh, go to an up and comer human space flight um piece. So the, the hiring and the, the talent of the base of the team that we've done that and so what's you know back to your question the next year. So right now we're finishing the flight primary structure. So that's the. We've built a qualification one but that's uh, that's a weldment. So that's the 3.8 meter by 12 meter. You know space uh aluminium, uh custom milled and welded uh pressure hull right that, that we use as a space station. So that we are due to have that completed in July this year. And then uh, at that point we start something called integration.

Speaker A: So July, July that's like pretty soon

Speaker B: you have to come back, you'll see it's uh, it's getting really exciting. And then in July uh we test it, we put pressure in it and so on and, and we apply loads and then we put it in the clean room and then we start integrating all the piece right There's a lot of wire harness, uh electronic component device. You know there's thousands and thousands of parts that we are making or we are buying and then we have to bolt and integrate in test. Um so that's true to December this year. And then our goal if uh we hold our timeline which we will um is to then do the testing. There's an amazing NASA facility where you

Speaker A: can hold create what you said hold the timeline. And I pictured, hold the. I pictured like the Lord of the Rings.

Speaker B: What's going on?

Speaker A: You said the word no. I just thought it's kind of interesting that you're building this incredible thing and you, you won't be the first person to be, like, in it. In space. At what point do you think you would be using it?

Speaker B: I mean, it's.

Speaker A: Or trying, like, up there.

Speaker B: Like, you know, I'm, I'm ready to go. Right.

Speaker A: Um, put me in, coach.

Speaker B: But, you know, we are, you know, the key. So we have, um, our lead astronaut, uh, Drew. Feisty. Let's spend, you know, 250 days in space. He repaired the Hubble telescope. Is there, uh, every day with our team, teaching them about what it's like to be in space. And, you know, giving design recommendation is a, uh.

Speaker A: What's the first thing he says? Like, does he say something? Is there like a thing? When he's describing what space is like. Like, uh, it's cold and lonely.

Speaker B: Every astronaut, you know, one of the perk of the job is to, you know, if you love space, you love meeting astronauts and, you know, you get to meet more and more and more of them and work with them and that, that's a really, really cool part of the job. Uh, they all have, you know, different description, and the common one is obviously how fragile the atmosphere is and how fragile Earth is. Um, not many people speak about the discomfort of space, but it's a real thing. You know, you can have space.

Speaker A: It does feel like no one really talks about the disc comfort of space.

Speaker B: Yeah, because, uh, you know, no one wants to, but it goes away in two days, you know, and I've been going to the how to. The balance seems to be a bit of an adventure.

Speaker A: I was, I was actually gonna ask, uh, my, my son would want me to ask and my daughters, like, how does a bathroom work in space? Is it like, suck it out? Is it.

Speaker B: There's different style, our style, we're relying on the SpaceX bathroom, which is similar to the Soyuz bathroom. And, um, it's, it's using, um, you know, suction, basically. Uh, like a vacuum, you could say.

Speaker A: And does it send it just out into space?

Speaker B: No, no, no. That's, uh, that, that's a big no. No, that's orbital debris.

Speaker A: Um, and so you're not allowed to have space.

Speaker B: You should not do that. Like, it could like, literally just, you know, kill you on the way back, uh, on the way, you know, to

Speaker A: another orbit, uh, would hit the fan,

Speaker B: just handing Them to you,

Speaker A: Valley.

Speaker B: Um, and uh, what you do on, on haven. One, we actually um, have the space station designed for three years and during that time we can have 40 crude time. So we have four, four expedition of 10 days on the station and all of the, all of the trash and all of the uh, all of that is retained on the station but we have canister uh, that are exposed to the vacuum of space so that it's a canister. Two permission. You put all the wet trash, right, which include um, uh, uh, some of the bathroom trash and uh, the food packaging and so on. And then when you're done you seal it and then you expose it to the vacuum of space so it freeze, dries it and no uh, one will ever smell it.

Speaker A: Uh, I've learned something today.

Speaker B: Yeah. And back to your last question. To wrap it up. What I'm looking most forward to is two event next year. One is the first time our crew will open the hatch to the first commercial space station. That's never been done. Right. And that's we're going to be in the control room and you know, mind blown and then the next thing is when they're back home safe. Yes, that's a big question.

Speaker A: When is that supposed to be?

Speaker B: So the, the crewed mission will launch at the end of June 26th. That's our current plan.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And then they'll spend two week there

Speaker A: and 2026 is going to be a good year. It's going to be crazy.

Speaker B: So that, that's what I'm looking forward for between now and the next year and everything in between.

Speaker A: So fantastic. Thanks for coming on the podcast, man.

Speaker B: Thanks Adam. I hope the audience, you know, loves it.

Speaker A: They're going to love it. Well, thank you for listening to an episode of Can't Be Done. If you enjoyed it, like, follow subscribe, uh, on all of the interwebs and if you have feedback or any questions, please reach out to me on X@AdamDriver. Till next time. Um,