S2 Ep 17: Space Tourism with Space Perspective CEO Jane Poynter

Speaker A: Welcome to the Just Raised podcast. As always, I'm, um, your host Joe Sweeney. And today on the show we're talking to Jane Poynter, founder and co CEO of, um, Space Perspective. We will jump right into the episode, but Space Perspective is a space balloon company. Jane is building a luxury space tourism experience where you'll float up into space at 12 miles an hour and on board you'll find cocktails, wifi and a culinary experience. This has to be one of my favorite conversations I've had on the show. Jane has had a fascinating career. She's worked on the space balloons used for the world's highest ever skydive, Red Bull's 2012 Halo jump out of the stratosphere. She's built the first self contained biospheres to breed animals in space on the International Space Station. And she spent two years and 20 minutes living in Biosphere 2, a mock Mars colony in the desert in Arizon. We cover all of this and the business model for space tourism balloons on the show and how more recently she just raised 40 million to build out Space Perspective. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Jane Poynter. I'm here with Jane Poynter to dive right in. What is Space Perspective and what do you do?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, we are, uh, the first luxury space travel company. And um, by that we mean we, we are taking people to space in the most comfortable way possible, the safest way possible, and also for a fairly long flight. You may have recently seen some of the other, uh, flights that have gone up with rockets. And I think when most people think about rocket flight or space flight, I should say, they think about rockets, they think about high GS. They think about either very short flights for a suborbital flight or you're circling around the earth for days at a time. So we're the opposite of all that. We use a space balloon, which is this huge balloon that is the size of a football field and it carries a very comfortable capsule on a six hour, very gentle flight.

Speaker A: Yeah, so this is fascinating, uh, as opposed to a space flight that lasts 12 minutes and you have to strap yourself to the back of a rocket to get there. You're flying flight is six hours, two hours up, two hours in the stratosphere, and then two hours on the way back down. Is that right?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And you know what's super exciting for me about this is that we get to give people the quintessential astronaut experience during the six hour flight. So if you as I'm sure you have talked to astronauts about their experience of seeing Earth in space. It's incredibly moving for them and many of them actually come back so moved by that. It actually changes their behavior. They get more involved in environmental and social causes. But it's that kind of transformational experience of seeing Earth in space. So what we wanted to do was be able to take people to space in such a way that they're relaxed and have that quintessential astronaut experience. And that's what we're doing with space perspective.

Speaker A: What does it look like? Does it look like a giant silver hot air balloon with uh, a, uh, capsule on the bottom or. I don't really know how to picture one of these.

Speaker B: So imagine a small, small compared to the size of the balloon capsule. It's actually very roomy because it's for eight people and a pilot and there's a bar on board and there of uh, course is a loo and WI fi because we all need to be connected now so you'll be able to post whilst you're flying to space and back. So imagine this beautiful capsule that is almost like a flying window because it's all about the view. So it's 360 degree windows and then it is connected a pre deployed parachute above the capsule. And uh, that's only a backup that anytime during the flight the parachute could take over. And then above that is this huge balloon that's about 450ft in diameter. And it's clear. The material is essentially clear so that you don't get, you know, it's a really interesting thermal environment in space. Right. So you don't want it to heat up inside. And so clear is great. And it's also a really good material that we're using for this to be able to take us all to space.

Speaker A: So this is like a glass box with wifi and a bar where you can get a cocktail that takes you up to the edge of the stratosphere.

Speaker B: Yeah, kind of. So it's sort of like the picture behind me. Right? You'll be able to stand. In fact, that's quite similar to what the windows are going to look like, we think. And um, so you'll literally be able to stand in a window like that and sit. Yes. With your, with your beverage of choice. Of course there will be a culinary experience on board as well. I mean you gotta eat during six hours so uh, it'll be more than peanuts.

Speaker A: Wow. Wow, that sounds amazing. They'll have WI fi, you'll have people live Streaming this down to Earth. That's amazing, right?

Speaker B: Exactly. I really want that, you know, from a personal point of view and as a company mission. I mean, you know, I think a lot about what it will be like when we have had thousands of people go to space. Our vision is eventually millions of people. And our engineers like to remind me that that might take a while, but that is the vision. Right. And so imagine when we've had thousands and thousands of people have gone to space. Right now we've only had about 600 people, roughly speaking, but that number is going to start growing very quickly. And when those people, some of those people are going to have that experience that astronauts have, that's really mind expanding it is going to have a ripple effect across society. I mean, I firmly believe that space travel will have a huge positive impact on how we think, um, and behave in the world.

Speaker A: M Now, how does this work? How high does it get? Where does this technology come from? I'd love to get the full breakdown.

Speaker B: Yeah, so it has a lift gas inside of the balloon. So if you ever see a balloon launch, you'll see on the ground sort of this very tall, long balloon with, uh, like a little bit of gas at the top. And that gas is lighter than the air around it. And so it is, it's got lift. And so it literally just lifts the capsule and everybody inside off the ground very gently. You go to space at, uh, 12 miles an hour, literally. And as you are going at cycling speed to space, that gas inside the balloon expands. And as you are at the top of the flight, the apogee. Now the balloon is fully inflated, about the size of a football field, as I mentioned. And you're effectively floating on top of the Earth's, uh, atmosphere. And we're flying at. So imagine an ice cube floating on water. That's really what you're doing. The whole spaceship Neptune is floating on top of our atmosphere and affords us this incredible view from space.

Speaker A: Do you actually go high enough that people reach zero G or reduce, uh, gravity?

Speaker B: So we don't have zero g. So zero g generally has to do with acceleration. So it generally has to do with counteracting gravity, if you will. So if you're in, like, if you're in the International Space Station, it's falling around the Earth. It's going at 17,500 miles an hour. So it's really counteracting, uh, gravity in a sense. Right. So we're 20 miles above the surface of the Earth. And at that altitude you get to see the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space, the iconic thin blue line. It's essentially the same view that you would get on any of those other suborbital flights that, that I'm sure you've seen and heard about.

Speaker A: The balloon itself, I think I heard a while back, I think it was a quote from Elon Musk. He said something along the lines of, if there was an easier way to get to space than rockets, we would have done it. But every time you look at something that might work, there was somebody in Russia in like the 1960s who tried it and it failed. So why are balloons only now working? Is there something new that you guys are building that allows this to work? Why haven't astronauts been going to space in balloons forever?

Speaker B: So we can do suborbital flights with balloons, meaning we're not going to actually get you to go around the planet. So we can take you up eventually. We want to be able to stay up for, uh, days at a time. How awesome would it be to stay overnight in space in this. Right. Floating along over the, the top of the planet. And what's really awesome for us is that these balloons actually have been used by NASA and other governments around the world for decades and have actually been flown thousands of times. So the question then becomes, why haven't you seen this as a commercial product taking people to space before? So NASA has used it for science. So actually, my co founder, Tabor McCallum's father, used one of these giant balloons in the 70s to take a huge telescope, a gamma ray astronomy telescope above the atmosphere to look at the Milky Way galaxy. And it was on the team that discovered that we do in fact have a black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which is pretty amazing. So that was in the 70s, so they have been used for a long time for that. But now then, turning that into a human flight product is very different. Right. So in 2014, I and my team, along with Tabor, actually broke the Red Bull Stratos jump record. You may remember that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I do.

Speaker B: In 2012.

Speaker A: Right. The famous halo jump, where that's really the shot that you'll be getting from your balloons.

Speaker B: I imagine that's the shot that we'll be getting, except you won't have to jump out of the capsule. So, yeah. So we took Alan Eustace up to break Felix's record and actually have amazing imagery from that. You know, we used cameras all over the place and you could see, even through his helmet, you can see this amazing view of Planet Earth behind him. And he taught really about being able to see this, understand viscerally the scale of our planet, which I thought was really interesting. Right. So imagine him, he's in a spacesuit hanging onto the balloon and he's face down as we launch him. And so he was literally just in a spacesuit hanging from the bottom of the balloon. Very different from Felix Baumgartner's jump and very different from what we're going to be doing. So he was looking down on the ground and he could see gravel on the ground. And then as it launched again, very gently, he saw people's feet. And then he saw the airport that we launched from. Then he saw the Grand Canyon, because we launched near the Grand Canyon. Then as he was going up, he starts seeing, seeing more and more of the planet till finally he gets up, uh, to space and he's looking out and seeing the thin blue line of our atmosphere. And he said what was so fascinating is that he was going up slow enough that he, his brain could keep up with the scale change. And suddenly he understood how big or small our planet is. And that's actually what astronauts say too, about seeing our, uh, our Earth, uh, in space.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's pretty amazing. So that's really the mission behind space perspective then, is to be able to take people up. And the business model is going to be mostly focused on space tourism initially.

Speaker B: Yeah. So we do have, you know, research in there as well as something that we are already starting to do. We would like to be able to put research instruments on every flight. It's really important research that can be done here. Ah, sometimes it's called the ignorosphere because it's so hard to get to. So little science has been done here in the region of space and our upper atmosphere that we're going to. So, uh, that's super important. But we really think of that as an incremental revenue stream. The real focus of the company is around this experience for people taking as many people as possible to space using this incredible technology.

Speaker A: How much is a ticket going to cost at scale once you're fully ramped up?

Speaker B: Ah, so our tickets are already on, on sale now, and we put them on sale earlier this year. And I'm really happy to say that we are almost at 500 tickets. So that's pretty exciting. And they're $125,000 a ticket. And right now all you have to do is put down a refundable deposit, anywhere from a thousand to 25,000, depending on how early you Want to fly? Our entire first year is already completely sold out. So we're already booking for the second year, uh, of commercial flight. And we're aiming to start flying people at the end of 24.

Speaker A: That is, uh, I imagine a great way to start funding the manufacturing of some of these ships. Airships. Is that what they are technically?

Speaker B: Actually, no, it's a space balloon, so we call them space balloon. An airship is actually quite different, technically speaking. But they are all lighter than air vehicles. Yes.

Speaker A: One of the things that, uh, always fascinates me when I'm talking to people in the new space industry is kind of how you got here. I know that you've devoted, uh, a lot of your life to space and the space industry and now building products for space. How did you end up coming to building space balloons?

Speaker B: Yeah, right. I have to say that was not the job description I thought I would have as I was growing up. So space, however. Absolutely. I was one of those kids who read Isaac Asimov under my blanket at night with what in England we call a torch flashlight. Right. So I was like totally into reading Isaac Asimov as a kid. I just thought that was the best thing. But it didn't really occur to me that I could really get involved personally in space until I accidentally got involved with a project called Biosphere 2. Accidentally because I got on the, on the training program by mistake.

Speaker A: The training program by mistake?

Speaker B: Yeah, I got on the training program by mistake. So I was, um, very interested in a research boat that was doing really awesome, interesting research on coral reefs and a whole variety of marine research. And it also had a really interesting film crew on board that was filming different peoples around the world and maritime peoples. And so I was on this ship and I had the opportunity to sail from Sri Lanka across the Red Sea and up the Indian Ocean and whole other story to be told around that, but what it turned out was that was biospherian training because it's so remote and you're out at sea for, you know, weeks at a time. It turned out to not just be the training, but the selection process. Fairly unorthodox, but quite effective selection process for those kinds of people who actually can live inside. What I was training for was to live inside Biosphere 2, which was the very first attempt at creating a human made biosphere that was actually a prototype space base. And I ended up being selected and living inside it for two years and 20 minutes. And that was really my entree into the space world. Because Biosphere 2 was the closest thing I Ever thought I would get to going to Mars, but doing it right here on Earth. So that was an incredibly inspiring project to be a part of. And so from there I was like, okay, well if we can build a biosphere, surely we can figure out how to take people to space. And so while I was in there, I actually co founded a company called Paragon Space Development Corporation that you can look up and find today with another biosphere in Tiber MacCallum and Grant Anderson, who was on the outside of the biosphere at the time. And this company does life support systems for space life support and thermal control. So we did a lot of work. In fact, the company now has technologies on the International Space Station on just about every human spacecraft in operation today. Actually we in fact even worked with Alon on SpaceX before he started SpaceX on a, on a project which was, was pretty cool. His sort of first foray into the, into the space world. That's how long we've been around in the, in the space world.

Speaker A: Wow. The biosphere too. That's amazing. This was essentially a contained Mars like mock Mars base in the desert in Arizona I think, or.

Speaker B: Oh, well done. Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you were living in it and the only time you left was in a spacesu. You grew all of your own food within the biosphere. It was like a Martian habitat to test what life was like on Mars.

Speaker B: Yeah, so we actually didn't even leave. So we didn't have spacesuits to leave. We were in there for two years and 20 minutes.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: That's it. We never left.

Speaker A: Two years and 20 minutes.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know, right? So that was a long time. So I think now that a lot of us have been, you know, enclosed during the pandemic, we have sort of a sense of what that's like. But, but we were literally in there for two years and yeah, so we grew all our food, we recycled all our water. It was a really fascinating personal experience because it was actually akin to the experience that astronauts have when they see the Earth in space in this way. So I knew moment by moment that the oxygen that I was breathing was coming from all the plants around me and that my CO2 was going to grow those plants. So we had a small rainforest, a savanna, um, an ocean, a marsh, a desert, and of course where we grew our food. So there were a lot of plants in there that we reliant on and that were reliant on us to thrive. And it really turned out to be a very similar bonding experience. If you will, with our biosphere, as astronauts have in space, you know, we could see the edges of our world, the glass structure with the edges of our world, and we knew that everything we had was within that glass structure. And it was a really profound experience. And that was actually the experience that really propelled me forward to wanting to take us all to space and have that experience that astronauts have. Not that I'm jealous at all. People that have been up.

Speaker A: Well, I'm sure you will be on the first ship up, I imagine.

Speaker B: Yeah, you bet.

Speaker A: How big was the biosphere? That is a, uh, that is a wild experience.

Speaker B: I'm sure it was wild. Yeah, it was wild. Just over three acres and it was completely sealed. So it was sealed tighter than the International Space Station at the time.

Speaker A: Wow. And what was the, uh, what was the outcome? What was the product of the experiment? Was there valuable data collected?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. So. So a lot. Remember, this was the very first time this had ever been attempted. And in fact, when we were designing the biosphere, I was also on the design team. When we were designing the biosphere, a lot of scientists were like, oh, the whole thing's going to turn to green slime. This is impossible. It's never going to work. You know, this is total hubris to think that we can design a biosphere and have it persist for extended periods of time, which was what we were trying to do. Right. We wanted to really understand at a fundamental level, is it even possible? Can you design a biosphere that will persist for an extended period of time and have people live in it? And, you know, you kind of have to wind your mind back a little bit because we were designing this in the 1980s, and there was this astounding technology breakthrough in the 80s called A386, which was a computer that had like a little teeny weeny memory on it, but it was the most enabling thing. Without it, I don't know that we could have actually operated biosphere too. So. So you really have to put yourself in that frame of mind when you think about this project. You know, we were spelling the word biosphere down the phone to people when we were, you know, calling up vendors. There was no such thing as the Internet when we were doing it. So it was this incredibly audacious project. And what came out the other end was, yes, we had some issues with the particular design of the biosphere that we operated, but we proved that it can work. And in fact, afterwards, I, Tabor McCallum, and I Tabor, who was in the biosphere with me now, my husband and also my 30 year business partner. We actually developed these very small biospheres that we ended up split sending to the International Space Station to breed the first animals to go through multiple life cycles in space. We designed these little tiny aquatic ecosystems that we really wanted to fully demonstrate that building human made biospheres and have them persist for extended periods of time is possible. And we did. In fact, uh, I've had one going now for over 20 years and it still has, uh, breeding populations of shrimp and other aquatic animals in it.

Speaker A: Wow. So you did a lot of the original work that's going to be used to keep animals in space and on Mars when people finally go and start colonizing other planets.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it was uh, an incredibly fascinating thing to be involved in. Probably a little ahead of its time, but it's actually getting back into doing space work now as well. For a long period of time, Biosphere 2 was really focused on climate change and understanding biogeochemical cycling of our planetary biosphere, which is incredibly important work. And now it's also beginning to uh, get back into working directly in space because it is so topical now. So one of the things I think about as we move beyond planet Earth is how are we going to thrive, not just survive. You know, when we think about our spacecraft, you know, there's the classic thinking about us all floating around in a tin can, right? Well, humanity did not evolve that way. We evolved within a living system and that's what we need to take with us. So we will be seeing that on the moon when we're eventually there and in the not too distant future. I'm very excited to see that. And eventually we'll see that on Mars. So yeah, I was right there at the very beginning of doing a lot of this work. It was very exciting times. Really, really excited to see where we are now in commercial spaceflight and particularly in commercial human spaceflight.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is incredible. And as, ah, someone who has worked in this space for so long and followed space and been pretty integral to working on it since the 1980s, I would love to get your take on the space industry today because it seems like there's a lot going on in development. I've talked to a lot of people that are building, I guess what I would say in aggregate is the industrialization of space, the movement of private companies into space and actually beginning to create economic drivers for things to get cheaper, for more companies to move into space, for the entire economy to really like bootstrap and be developed. Um, what do you think are just the most exciting things in space right now?

Speaker B: So what is incredibly exciting for me is that all the things that we were talking about 20, 30 years ago are coming to fruition. I mean, I remember when we started talking about large constellations of satellites 25 years ago and everyone was like, oh, don't be absurd. It's way too expensive to get uh, that many satellites up there. It'll never happen. You know, people were talking about servicing satellites on orbit. Well, of course we're never going to do that. Well, now we're starting to do it. Right. And, and tugboats moving satellites around and refueling and all of these things that weren't possible when we only had government sending a few satellites up at a time or a few communication satellites. And now we're seeing a um, full on ecosystem. That's what's so exciting. It's a true industry with a full ecosystem, a robust ecosystem coming together. You know, I think, I think we'll probably see a little bit of a thinning of the herd as with so much heating of some aspects of this industry. But that's just the nature of the beast. Right. And it's just a very exciting time. I'm really looking forward to seeing what's going to come out of new propulsion technologies as well. You know, as we, we think about the very topical subject right now of climate change and sustainability and things like that, we urgently need some other ways of getting up out of the gravity well. So that's also very exciting to see as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I talked to Vanessa Clark who's the founder and CEO of Atomos. She's doing tugboats in space. So the first vehicles that will just live in space and fly around to satellites to move them to different orbits. A bunch of companies working on that. I talked to Varda in space. Zero G manufacturing. Yeah, it is. When you talk about propulsion, do you think there's room for space balloons in some of the industry in space as well?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, for sure. Right. I mean I think space balloons are here to stay and they have their particular uses. Right. I think at the moment we're thinking about space balloons as suborbital flights and that's, that's sort of their, their, their place in the industry. And so I, I'm incredibly excited about what's happening in the human spaceflight realm because you're also beginning to see sort of an ecosystem develop there. Right. So you've got the suborbital players, US Virgin Blue and then you've got the folks that are starting to think about space hotels, uh, orbiting around the planet. We're beginning to think about going to the moon. And then you're also seeing people down here on the ground beginning to develop at, uh, different aspects of the space travel ecosystem. Training centers, for example. You've got travel companies standing up that are dedicated to the travel industry for space. I mean, that's amazing. That's amazing that we've got that much activity going on in this. Right. And I think for some people who aren't in our industry, it's sort of suddenly come out of nowhere. But this is like one of those amazing overnight successes that has been, you know, 40 years in the making, which is incredibly exciting to see. You know, for us, we're focused on really taking as many people as possible to space, not only so that they really connect with planet Earth, uh, in the ways that we were talking about earlier with what we call the space perspective, but also because it gets people increasingly used to the idea of space travel as something that all of us could do, or at least many of us could do. And initially for tourism, but for so many other other applications as well that I don't think we can even imagine yet. I think that's what's so interesting about seeing a new industry emerge. Right. Same thing happened when, when we first started having airplanes fly, we really had a lack of imagination about how you were going to use them. Uh, you know, I think people thought, oh, we'll carry mail across the country and, you know, a few wealthy people will be able to fly on it. And now look, right, everybody's flying on it, more or less. And the same thing's going to happen with space travel.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the boom is definitely happening. And you just raised. So I think you raised your seed last year, but just in October, you raised another 40 million for your series A. Where does that put you as far as target launch and the pipeline? Kind of the next key hurdles that you have to overcome to get into space.

Speaker B: Yeah. So what's amazing for us about this last race that we just did, uh, it has really set us up to get to commercial operations, which is, you know, hugely important for us to have sort of taken that capital risk off the table. So that's awesome. And, uh, so now it's full steam ahead. We are starting to stand up capsule manufacturing, which is just so exciting to be building our spaceship, Neptune capsule, and the, uh, balloon manufacturing. We'll be aiming towards having sort of kicking off our next test Flight campaign starting in the second half of next year, probably later in the year. And then we'll have our first human crewed flight in 2023. Aiming for our first commercial flight in 24.

Speaker A: Yeah. What does it cost you to run these balloons? Because it's pretty amazing. The business model is. It's almost similar to like a Ferris wheel in that, you know, you build it and then you send people up and they come back down. And it sounds like you need to build new balloons for each one because those have to be upcycled. But other than that, it seems like a lot of the upfront costs will just be in building them.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, that's right. So, you know, that's why our ticket prices don't need to be, you know, $450,000 a seat. So, you know, obviously we have reasonable margins and what's exciting for us is that in the long run we are going to be able to bring the ticket price down. Look, the demand is huge, so we're just seeing enormous demand. You've probably seen some of the reports that have come out about market demand, particularly on the total addressable market side. You know, it's somewhere between 500 and 700 billion. And, um, we're seeing that on the ground. Right. We're seeing huge uptake of our offering, which is, you know, very validating for what we're doing. A really good product market fit. So what that really means practically is it is quite likely that we will be putting ticket prices up before we bring them down, but certainly a long term vision is to bring them down significantly. And this kind of technology is such that we believe we will be able to cut costs so that we will be able to do that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And one of the things that's pretty interesting about this technology is that it's been used before and that it's kind of so much gentler than rockets. I talked to Peter Beck at Rocket Lab and he talks about how, like, he crosses himself every time they launch a rocket because they don't always make it all the way up. Blue Origin has gotten suborbital, but they've never delivered a package into space, like a satellite or anything like that. Rockets are just apparently extraordinarily hard to build. But these seem like a lot simpler. Am I right on that? Is it just kind of an easier technical lift?

Speaker B: So, yes, it is definitely simpler than rockets. But here's the interesting thing. You can go to school to learn to be a rocket scientist. You cannot go to school to learn to be a balloon Scientist. It's this incredibly small group of people who know how to do this. And it's very counterintuitive and it is not as simple as it looks.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, when you break it down that way, that makes a lot of sense. I would not want to hit turbulence in a, uh, space balloon halfway to the stratosphere. Ah.

Speaker B: Uh, so you're not going to hit turbulence going in a space balloon because you're going at 12 miles an hour. So, so you're really going with the air volume. So when you're in an airplane, you're kind of bashing through it, if you will, going at, uh, you know, 100 plus miles an hour, however fast your airpl is. So you're buffeting the air as you go through it. A space balloon is incredibly smooth as it flies. I mean it truly is. I mean we've had, uh, cameras on our space balloons. When we got them back, we were looking at it, we went, wait, wait a minute, was the camera broken because it was so stable? And that's because you're going so slowly up through the column of air.

Speaker A: I would love to take a very smooth space balloon ride for six hours with a cocktail in hand and wi fi and a, uh, dining experience as

Speaker B: you described it, and with your closest friends and loved ones. So what? We have found that more than half of our tickets, uh, or about half of our tickets have been sold as full capsules. So somebody will call up and say, hey, I want to buy a couple of tickets, but would you hold this flight for me for a few days? I'm just gonna go talk to my friends and family and then they'll come back and go, yep, we want the whole thing. So this is becoming a social event which I think is hugely powerful and exciting that groups of people want to do this. This technology is really enabling people to reimagine what space travel and space flight can be.

Speaker A: Yeah. That is incredible. Well, my last question for everybody I have on the show is about your vision for the company. So.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: If everything was to go well, extraordinarily well, where would space perspective be in 20 years?

Speaker B: Oh wow. 20 years. So okay, so reeling it forward a little further, uh, into near term time frame, about 10 years. We want to have our operations all around the world. So that then enables us to have thousands of people flying to space every year. And that would be incredibly exciting. And then beyond that, we want to be on the moon.

Speaker A: On the moon.

Speaker B: Well, so can you imagine? So we're an experience company. We're fundamentally a human experience company. And so as, ah, we're taking people to space to experience Earth, we're going to be developing other kinds of exploratory experiences, some on Earth, but some beyond, beyond suborbital flight and possibly to the moon. Because that going to the moon is fundamentally a human experience. You know, I think right now most people think about going to moon as sort of this technological feat, but it's a human experience first and foremost, so we should be there.

Speaker A: At the end of the day, you're a tourism company, a lot like Disney World. Yeah. That's fascinating. You're almost a hospitality company. But in Space Experience Company, we're an experience company.

Speaker B: That's exactly right. And everything that that entails. So imagine if you could be in a hotel on the moon, looking back at Earth, uh, with your best beverage of choice. Right. So we really do believe that we should be going to space, you know, in this deeply human cultured way and taking cultures from all around the planet with us too. Right. You know, I think that's also important as we think about what we're doing at space perspective. We really think about access to space broadly. So we want to be able to take scientists and their scientific instruments, of course, but we also want to be able to take artists, people from all around the planet, from all walks of life, leaders. And bear in mind that we're all leaders in some way and some community, you know, whether that's in our family or on a much larger scale stage. And that's who we want to take to space. So imagine we were also having some of them on, on the moon, looking back at Earth and having that true Carl Sagan pale blue dot moment. This is going to have a huge impact on our, on our planet. And the very topical discussion today is the impact we're having on our planet in a non sustainable way. And I think that space teaches us how to live in a sustainable way. For one thing, being in a spacecraft, being in a habitat on the moon, looking back at planet Earth, uh, you're within a system that has to be sustainable because it's recycling everything. Right. It shines a spotlight in a certain way on what it is to live sustainably, perhaps on a small scale, but can be expanded and scaled up and then to then be looking back at uh, planet Earth and we're holding up a mirror that's hugely powerful.

Speaker A: That is an incredible vision and I am really looking forward to taking one of your capsules up once they're live. Yeah. Jane, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Speaker B: Loved it. Thank you so much for having me.