From Chip to Constellation: Building a New Global Network in Space | The Pair Program Ep93

Speaker A: Welcome to the PEAR program from Hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad. Join us each episode as we bring together two guests to dissect topics at the intersection of technology, startups and career growth. Welcome back to the Pair program. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, joined by my co host, Sean Leahy. Sean, um, yeah, we talked about it earlier. Fired up for today's episode. Um, a part of the conversation revolves, uh, around Bluetooth. And so it's, it's wild to think how far, you know, that technology's gone. Oh, yeah, uh, like late 90s, early 2000s, when, when it kind of started popping off. Uh, so I was going to ask you, you know, what was your first kind of. Yeah, okay. This tech's a game changer kind of moment for you.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, you're right. It came out so long ago. The first time I heard about Bluetooth, I thought I was going to the dentist. Right. I thought it might be like a new retainer or something that my mom was going to make me get. But, uh, I consider myself an early adopter of a lot of technologies and Bluetooth was definitely one of them. I. I had an earpiece. Oh, man. Maybe ninth grade. Like really early. Yeah, I remember I had a flip phone that I had that I sync the Bluetooth to an earpiece on, and I just was insufferable with that thing. Right. I'd be walking around my house with an earpiece and talking to my girlfriend or I don't know about what, probably quarterly reports or ARR projections. Uh, but. And like, it would like, lose sync all the time and everything. So, uh, it's come so far. I think those early Bluetooth protocols were pretty flighty, but hey, you know, it's, it's stood the test of time and improved, uh, since then.

Speaker A: I'm going throwback with, uh, PlayStation days. The, uh, the dual shot controllers. Um. Oh, yeah, I remember playing like Metal Gear Solid with the wireless kind of rumble controller and, and just being like, you know, this is the future. Uh, no chords, you know, couldn't get that immersive feedback, you know, on a first person, like, boss fight. So, um, yeah, it took me back to, like, my gaming days when those, you know, Bluetooth controllers, uh, were. We're in.

Speaker B: Fantastic.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. But, uh, yeah, today is going to be a, a little bit of a, A different kind of conversation. We're thinking about, you know, Bluetooth uh, powering a PS3 controller to a uh, world where you the, that same kind of category of a chip can talk directly to a satellite orbiting in space. And uh, not, not a theory, it's actually happening. And so uh, that's what makes today's episode really interesting. Um, we've got a conversation that is uh, also it's bigger than just satellites. Uh, we're talking about infrastructure in space and uh, the advancements being made there. Um, and so we've got a couple of folks joining us, uh, two founders that are building different layers of uh, call it a similar stack. One is building the world's first satellite powered Bluetooth network. Um, so it is creating an entirely new connectivity layer that removes uh, reliance on traditional cellular infrastructure. And the other is industrializing spacecraft production through what they call a uh, mission foundry, uh, enabling repeatable scalable constellation deployment across commercial and national security missions. And so I'll introduce these guys. First is Alex, is it Harrow or Haro? Alex Haro, uh, co founder, CEO of Hubble Network. Uh, previously uh, built uh, and scaled Life 360 to over 90 million users before making this pivot into deep tech space infrastructure. Uh, Hubble became the first company to establish a direct Bluetooth connection to a satellite and is now scaling toward uh, a production constellation. So Alex, thanks for joining us.

Speaker D: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Uh, and then alongside Alex we've got Johnny Dyer, CEO of uh, Muon Space. Um, Muon Designs, builds, operates mission optimized satellite constellations, uh, did uh, some research, recently launched its XL class platform which we'll, we'll get into. And uh, entering this year with uh, 20 satellites manifested in production capacity scaling rapidly. So Johnny, appreciate you joining us on the pair program.

Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Speaker A: All right now before we dive into the heart of the discussion, we've got a little tradition here. It's a warm up that we call pair me Up. Uh, we go around the room, rattle off two things that go together. Um, Sean, why don't you lead us off?

Speaker B: Well yeah, obviously I was thinking about space uh, leading up to this episode and uh, I can't think about space without thinking about Apollo 13, the original Tom Hanks movie. Uh, so my pairing for the day is tie clips and short sleeve button down shirts because both in the Mo movie but also in historical like archival photos of the Apollo mission Center back in the 60s. So many of the guys there are wearing ties with tie clips and these short sleeve button down shirts and they're like, you know, they're Going to the moon. It's great. It's like I think this is a uniform we should bring back. We're all about the uh, you know, we got the vests now and the Patagonias. Mhm. I think if you're serious about, about real space technology, you should be rocking the tie clip in short sleeve oxford.

Speaker A: Well that's the beautiful thing about fashion. You know, it comes, it all comes back again at some point. So next, next recording, I think you and I coordinate something a little, little, little tie clip, little short sleeve button up.

Speaker B: I'm there, I'm there. I'll work on the, I'll start doing

Speaker C: some curls in the gym.

Speaker B: Really make it pop.

Speaker D: Uh, you've motivated me for my next like keynote to show up in that outfit. So we'll see.

Speaker C: It's going to need to do a costume party at the company. I think that would be pretty fun. We'll take some like old grainy black and white photos.

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah, that'll be the new startup swag. You know, it was T shirts, now it's, it's short sleeve button ups. All right, good stuff. I'll jump in. Uh, yeah, very different. Uh, for me I'm gonna go with car dealerships and awkward negotiations. Um, so yeah, I just traded in my, my old truck, got a newer truck this past month. Um, and I always know that it's coming. Uh, but, and I always dread it. And it's that awkward negotiation phase at the dealership right. Where it doesn't matter like how prepared you are at some point, you know, you're, you're sitting in, in silence while someone goes and talks to their manager and you're both sitting there kind of pretending, you know, you're not emotionally attached to this deal. But you know, I've already kind of pictured the truck like sitting in my driveway. So uh, and I've got this like the haggle gene from, in my family. I got it from my, my, my dad who is a, a legend when it comes to the art of haggling. So I had this salesman going back and forth to his manager, I'd say about five times before we agreed on, on the right price. And it was always this awkward silence mode. And at this point, you know, I got chatgpt going in there just uh, you know, coaching me along the way. Like if he comes back with this number, go, go this route or this route. And so uh, uh, I'm going to go with car dealership and awkward negotiations. It's a, it's a Never fail. Happens every time.

Speaker B: So you're Tim, you're basically saying that you lived that Cluley commercial in real life where the guy's on the date and, and, and ChatGPT is giving him or Clulu's giving him like the info you were doing that but for a car. Yeah, that's, that's fantastic.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's so many use cases, you know, that's uh, that's a, that's one that's right up there. Just negotiating with a car dealer, like,

Speaker C: how are we in 2026 and we're still still dealing with like used car salesmen? It feels like we should have moved past that at this point.

Speaker A: I know. Waiting for a ro. Negotiate with at this point, an agent.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Awesome. Uh, we'll pass around to our guest, uh, Alex. Quick, uh, intro and your pairing.

Speaker D: Yeah. So I'm Alex Harrow, co founder and CEO, uh, of Hubble. And uh, I mean this probably speaks to my tech nerdiness more than anything else, but the only thing in terms of pairing on my mind right now is openclaw and Mac Minis. So if you haven't bought your Mac Mini and uh, installed openclaw on it. Yeah, uh, you're missing out.

Speaker C: What do you have openclaw doing for you right. Right now, Alex?

Speaker D: Uh, all sorts of different things. But um, I've always had some random ideas for like side projects that you know, would be fun to just like stand up and say like, this is mine. Um, and so uh, I've launched a few of like these side uh, projects. Nothing I'm quite ready to announce yet, but they're completely running autonomously through OpenClaw and like it's managing um, some like, agent. I mean it's just crazy. Like it's completely set up. What I could have done in maybe a few hundred hours of ah, work is just like, was a weekend half project for me. And now, now it's live and uh, anyone, you know, it's actually generating like small, tiny, uh, amounts of revenue already. So it's just been, been uh, fun to experiment with.

Speaker A: I dig it. Yeah, super timely. I, I was also thinking, I was like, man, I just teed, teed Alex up so perfectly for. And all you had to say was just Bluetooth. You know, just Bluetooth and a mic drop. I was like, yeah, yes, Godfather Bluetooth.

Speaker D: Um, we can play that back.

Speaker A: Awesome. Well, excited to have you, Alex. Um, pump pumped for this conversation. And then Johnny. Uh, yeah, quick intro. And your parent.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm Johnny. I'M the CEO and co founder of Muon Space. Um, and the pairing on my mind is startups and children. Uh, so I have four, four kids. And I'm, I'm kind of doing this in honor of Alex too because I know he just had his first kid so like, uh, he may be resonating with us a little bit, but I keep finding all of these parallels between raising kids and growing a startup. It's like, you know, when you start the company you're wondering if it's going to live through the night and whether it's going to get enough to eat. And then, you know, now I've got a, you know, I got a 14 year old daughter getting ready to go to high school and Muon's kind of in that awkward teenage phase too. So like, I just think there's a lot of interesting analogies there.

Speaker A: I love it in fact, um, you know, so I'm, I'm actually expecting my uh, my second in uh, four months. Yeah, we're about to go on 20 weeks now and uh, yeah, each month it becomes more and more real. And you know, I wanted to do like a specific episode for first time founder, you know, parents, because I just feel like that is such a, uh, maze to, to navigate. There's no guidebook. You're trying to, you know, you're trying to raise this thing and then you're also trying to raise this, uh, between the two. I mean it's just. Yeah, I, you gotta have, you gotta have some serious uh, you know, stress coping mechanisms and figure out time management to a T because it gets real. But Alex May, we'll do a follow up with you now that it's. How far along, how uh, old is the kid?

Speaker D: We're like six weeks in now, so it's brand, brand new.

Speaker A: That's awesome. I remember when we did it.

Speaker D: I'm still worried that it might die, you know, at any moment. So very much in that phase right now.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, we're rooting for you.

Speaker D: They usually don't.

Speaker C: I mean, just so you know. They usually don't.

Speaker A: Yeah, they usually, it's like a little like Giga Pets or something. Uh, Tamagotchi.

Speaker D: The amount of times I've googled like how hard can you burp before you know.

Speaker A: Well, it's cool because I know we've, we came full circle from when I first reached out to you about a discovery call and you're like, I'm gonna need a, I'm gonna need a minute. About to, about to have a Kid. And I was like, oh, fair. Yeah, let's regroup in a little bit. So here. Here we are. Awesome. All right, uh, well, let's, uh, let's wrap that up and, and jump into the. The main conversation. So on this episode, we were. We're looking to cover three main themes. We'll probably zigzag along the way. Uh, first, you know, why the older, you know, networking and spacecraft models weren't really built for scale. What kind of had to change, uh, along the way. Second, what it takes to move from breakthrough demo to production Constellation. Uh, and third, how commercial and national security space are converging into something that looks much, uh, more like infrastructure than exploration. And there's a lot of little stories in between here that'll help these themes kind of come to life. So I want to start with you, Alex, um, on why the older model wasn't enough. And you didn't start in space. You started in consumer, uh, at Life 360, you know, you were building these connected devices, you know, GPS watches, trackers, IoT products. Uh, at what point did you realize that, like, traditional terrestrial networks, like cellular and, and legacy satellites were fundamentally kind of limiting to what Iot could become?

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I, I think my experience as a consumer smartphone guy, to start really helped, um, lead us to this place because we were trying to build hardware devices for our families so you can think about smart collars for pets, uh, GPS watches for kids, fall detectors for elderly parents. There is all this opportunity for really compelling hardware devices for our families. But the existing products in market were super expensive, very bulky, like, barely worked. I mean, you know, you can even think of, like, your headphones, how they barely work when you, like, leave the room. But imagine trying to keep track of where your pet or your elderly parent is. Um, and so spent a lot of my time digging into why are all of these products so, uh, so badly designed and, you know, really not good consumer products? And it turned out it was the networks that was causing it because the existing networks. And we'll get a lot deeper into how we make the tech work at Hubble. But the existing networks, and they, um, really relied on high power consumption, um, so very short battery life, very bulky, like, you know, device, um, hardware. And, uh, led to these devices that were just terrible. And as a person focused on how do I create the best consumer experience. I spent a lot of my time ripping out my little what's left of my hair to try, uh, to solve this problem. And, uh, it's actually how I Met my co founder of Hubble. I became an investor in some really cool companies. And so I, uh, invested in Ben's previous company. Um, he was building a really interesting kind of terrestrial based network where you give consumers these gateways and he figured out how to get miles of range from any one gateway. And he eventually sold that company to Amazon where all of his code and protocol became the Amazon Sidewalk Wireless Network. Um, and that was a cool network and it solved some of the really harder problems. But it wasn't a global network. It only really worked in dense urban kind of city neighborhoods. And so I continued to harass Ben and say like, we need to actually build the network that we know needs to exist. And um, yeah, about four and a half years ago he showed up at my doorstep and said, what about Bluetooth to space? Uh, and so I have the distinct honor of being the first person to say there's no freaking way. Um, but luckily Ben doesn't break any of the laws of physics. And so here we are.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, I mean, yeah, you get that question. Um, what about Bluetooth to space? And people are like, come on man, are you serious?

Speaker D: Um, but you're actually curious what Johnny thought the first time I told him, yeah, let's do Bluetooth to space.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Johnny, what are your thoughts when you hear that?

Speaker C: I mean, I thought it was awesome. One of the things that has often occurred to me is why aren't we using more terrestrial technologies in space? Right. I mean, I think we have all these challenges getting bulk data up and down from our satellites and we've flirted with why can't we use WiFi protocols and sort of the 2.4 GHz spectrum? And there's a bunch of challenges, as Alex knows with that. But uh, I thought it was awesome. I've been wanting for years for somebody to come and say, let's put wifi in space or let's put Bluetooth in space or let's put LTE in space. And um, I think it's really cool.

Speaker A: So let's take a quick step back and more in your space, Johnny. Um, when we think about traditional satellite development, it's historically kind of been a bit, uh, bespoke custom builds, long cycles, you know, more like mission specific kind of architecture. Where did you see that model? You know, kind of breaking down?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a long history of like, kind of, I would call it like risk cost spiral in space. Right. Which is, was driven early on by things that it's like space is hard and it's really hard to build things that will work in space. Launch was not very available and so we got to this place, you know, over the last call. It's 60 years. Um, the analogy that I really like is it's sort of like the Galapagos Islands up there, right where you've got like all of these kind of, you know, product species that have evolved off the mainland of technology and are extremely kind of unique and maladapted to the rest of the world. Um, and it doesn't have to be that way. And I think a couple of things have dramatically changed. One is that launch is much more available now than it was even a decade ago thanks to SpaceX. And that's, that trend is continuing to accelerate and that, that really breaks this kind of cost risk spiral in a lot or starts to break that cost risk spiral in a lot of ways and allows you to think more creatively about the technology that you're going to use to build these things. Um, and then you know, just generally technology has come a long way. And so, you know, the thing I like to say is like our satellites look a lot more like racks in a data center today than they do look like a spacecraft. Um, and that is not, you know, it's not clear for people that I think are outside the industry why that's such a big deal, but it is a really big deal. All of the, all of the kind of advantages we get from standardized componentry, you know, things like Ethernet, things like, um, you know, ubiquitous compute, um, Linux based, you know, software stacks, like we can leverage that now in space. And historically satellites did not work that way. And so I think that's a huge accelerant. It allows us to move faster, it allows us to drive costs down, it allows us to put way more performance in the satell than we would have historically thought about doing. And I just think we're in the beginning of this kind of flywheel, that between those kind of things, um, you know, applications like Hubble's application, which I think are going to, you know, blow the lid off kind of the markets for these things and then launch, like it just feels like we're really in the self reinforcing feedback loop right now.

Speaker B: Yeah. So Johnny, that uh, what she said there made me think of something that I think we can all relate to. Anybody who's ever played a lot of video games understands the concept of a tech tree, right. And how you, you unlock more advanced technologies by building, you know, more basic or simple. It's like the exact right term, but you know, closer in technologies. So you mentioned launch and the decreasing cost of launch as a major unlock, uh, for, for satellite constellations. Um, but you also kind of alluded to some other stuff I'm kind of interested. What other, you know, kind of core technologies, um, that you've seen that are the major unlocks for, for what you're doing?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll give a couple examples, but I'm also going to pitch it back to Alex because I think some of the stuff they're doing on the payload, probably there's some interesting, um, examples there. Um, you know, for example, historically you would not consider putting cutting edge semiconductors in space. Right. Because typically the commercial semiconductors had a bunch of challenges with things like space radiation. That has changed dramatically for a couple of reasons. One is because we can build these things more cheaply and launch them more cheaply and they don't have to live for 20 years in geosynchronous orbit. Uh, you can take some risks and you can also tolerate some amount of, um, less lifetime.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Things like five years instead of 15 years. The other thing that's happened is as electronics have advanced over the last, call it 20 years, the process nodes have gotten so small that some of those same problems that we used to see with commercial electronics in space you now see in data centers on the ground. Google a few years ago turned one of their data centers essentially into a cosmic ray detector by looking at bit flips that were happening in memory across this massive data center. Right. So like the problems that used to be space problems are now Earth problems too. And what that's caused is it's caused a bunch of the nvidias of the world to put the same type of protections in modern commercial electronics that you used to only see in things that were much more space electronics. Um, and so it's much easier to take something off the shelf. It's not bulletproof, you have to be careful. But it's much easier to take something that's cutting edge off the shelf today and put it in space. Um, and the thing I was going to kind of toss to Alex a little bit is, I mean we see this on our side, but things like software defined radios I think are another example of this. I don't know, Alex, if you want to.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, for sure. Like our first testing of Hubble, uh, it wasn't with satellites, it was with weather balloons, but it was just SDRs and being able to have it completely reprogrammable uh, and even as we think about the satellite we're building with Johnny and Yuan, like the entire computer is reprogrammable. And you used to think of satellites as this thing you hunked into space and then it was either a rock or it wasn't. Uh, but now we actually have the ability to update code and kind of have this normal software defined life cycle that you need to be able to iterate quickly and truly innovate. So I think that's been really cool to see. And then to sort of reflect on Johnny's point, it feels very similar to me from an analogy standpoint to when Google first came out and started scaling. Um, they were the first ones that were like, data centers don't need to be full of expensive hardware that you're buying from the traditional Sun Microsystems. Just go buy as many PCs as you can get your hands into and shove them into closets. Um, that wasn't exactly their scaling strategy, but it was pretty close to it. Uh, and so I think you'll see that similar kind of model, um, play out in space as well, where obviously it's a harsher environment and uh, from a hardware perspective, you want to get it right. Um, but you don't need to make it last for 20 years. Uh, and so what is that risk profile that you're willing to take? And if you can make it 50% cheaper, then you can lose half of your satellites and still have the same unit economics. So that's a lot of what we think about at Hubble.

Speaker C: Yeah. And just to play. Oh, can I just play off that a little bit more because.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker C: I think the Google data center thing is an awesome analogy and I think you can take it even further because one of the things that I think enabled that was like, we're going to just overbuild massive numbers of servers in these data centers and then put software layers in to kind of manage things like failure. Right. And help handle that gracefully. And we're kind of this point similarly, you know, uh, as Alex knows, we're like, we can put up many, many satellites for the cost of what it used to take to do one and kind of think about the whole system design very differently from that perspective. Right. And push some of those kind of like system level reliability, redundancy availability problems to a constellation level rather than just like a single satellite level.

Speaker A: I, I love the, the weather balloon story, Alex. It was something that when you told me on the Discovery call, it takes me to like this moment in time with like, the Wright Brothers out, uh, you know, in like, the, the dunes, like, uh, piloting out their, their planes. What, with that, um, you know, with that kind of, like, experiment. You know, was there a moment where it did shift for you from like, okay, this works to, you know, this will scale?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: I mean, we knew from a pure math and physics standpoint what we wanted to do was physically possible. Um, and we certainly believed it. And I appreciate Johnny's enthusiasm from the first time he heard the idea, but pretty much every investor I talked to, their first answer was some version of bullshit. And so we could have raised millions of dollars and launched our first satellite. Um, but we wanted to be as capital efficient as we could. And that's really what' most of these decisions. And so I, uh, hate to say it to everyone, but the Earth is curved. And because of that, there's no two points that are 500 kilometers away. Line of sight. Uh, and so we had to use weather balloons to actually get two things that could talk over 500 miles kind of line of sight using RF alone. Uh, and it was a really cool moment. I mean, we were out here in, uh, Death Valley, Nevada and California, launching these, uh, weather balloons and then picking them all the way up from Sacramento and being able to talk that far using a Bluetooth chip alone. And for those of, uh, your viewers that can see my background, we actually downloaded this from one of the weather balloons using a Bluetooth chip. That was super cool. Kind of the first moment of celebration where it's like, all right, we knew it was possible, but like, holy shit, it actually really is. And so we're going for it. Uh, and that allowed us to raise our first, uh, round of seed funding. And then from there we built the first set of satellites. And, um, uh, again, kind of this risk profile behind what do we build versus what do we entrust other people like Johnny to build for us? For us, it was always around the payload that does the rf. Like, that is our true secret sauce. That's what unlocks this capability. Uh, um, and we don't need to necessarily innovate on the bus design, although, as Johnny can talk about, we push them on what is the bus design and how can we make it better and cheaper and faster and all that sort of fun stuff. But our major innovation as a small company, we need to just keep a singular focus. And for us, it's the RF performance and the payload performance and seeing just, uh, I need to send you guys some photos of the weather balloons because it was basically styrofoam boxes with a bunch of electronics shoved into it attached to a big balloon. It's about as 5th grade science experiment as you can get while still proving, uh, Bluetooth to space.

Speaker A: That's so cool.

Speaker B: So, Alex, you alluded to it earlier. Um, I think we got to talk about the Hubble network and how that operates, because, you know, from my perspective, I'm not a hardware guy, but I know that when you're talking about Bluetooth, these are low power chips, right? These are not super high high power, uh, broadcasts. So how are you traversing these pretty amazing distances? Uh, using this network?

Speaker D: Yeah. So, uh, the way I like to try to explain this is by using an analogy. And, um, the analogy I'll use is like, if you're trying to talk to Tim across a crowded room, um, one way you can talk to Tim across a crowded room is to just yell as loud as possible. Um, and that's kind of how existing cellular and especially existing satellite, um, communication networks work. It's you yell as loud as possible and Tim can hear you across the room.

Speaker B: Uh, I do like to yell at Tim M. That's usually how we, when we're flaming the podcast, I'm just shouting at him through a microphone.

Speaker D: Hopefully this analogy, uh, resonates then.

Speaker B: Yeah, it certainly does.

Speaker D: And you know, it's pretty effective and it might even be fun, but you can only do it for so long before you get tired and your voice gets hoarse and you need some water. And that is why the existing, um, networks are so power consuming. Uh, it's because a lot of the way that they work is by yelling as loud as possible. But then on top of that, as soon as there's other people in the room or everyone is kind of yelling at each other, you have all this interference and crosstalk issues. Uh, and so the way you kind of solve that traditionally is by, by just setting up frequency slots that people talk in. And you have to coordinate who's talking when. And that's kind of how existing cellular towers can handle millions of, uh, cell phones. Um, but it means that the network's ultimately a lot less scalable. And so that ends up impacting your unit economics. And you have to charge more because if you're talking, Sean, then that means someone else inherently can't be talking. And so you have to really kind of load balance uh, who's talking and when. And so that's kind of existing technology and why the cel and satellite networks are so power consuming and so expensive. Uh, what we do at Hubble and sorry to say, Sean, we have you whisper. So you're talking about Bluetooth, uh, power levels, um, but we have you talk slowly so we lower the bit rate down, we change how much energy goes into every bit. That carries it a lot further. We, uh, have you enunciate your words more crisply and cleanly. So that also extends the range that uh, Tim's able to hear you. And then we have you repeat yourself. We add things like error correcting codes and that sort of allow Tim to hear you even if part of your message gets, uh, garbled. And believe it or not, that alone is what we did with the weather balloons and we were able to get over 500km of range with those tricks. Uh, and that you can all do in software. So that is the Hubble software that goes onto the Bluetooth chip. We basically, Sean, give you this instructions and then you can talk to Tim across the room. Uh, but you can do it in a very power efficient manner that you could talk for hours or in the Hubble case, for years on a single coin cell battery. Um, that being said, we still have to solve for this crosstalk and interference issue where if there's other people in the room, it becomes hard for Tim to hear you, uh, in that scenario. Uh, and the way that we solve that is we give Tim thousands of antennas or thousands of microphones, and some of them are all pointed directly at you, Sean, and listening directly on your location. Uh, and so that allows us to filter out all the noise that's happening around you and allow Tim to just listen in on your specific whisper. And that's kind of the really cool, ultimately, um, you know, secret sauce that we've built at Hubble is this antenna array that lives in space, uh, that has thousands of antennas on it doing all this kind of advanced digital beamforming and signal processing that allows us to create a very scalable network where the unit economics, um, work for our customers. And we're able to do it in a very battery efficient manner as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, hear that, Sean? Stop yelling at me. Uh, through, across the room, Alex just

Speaker B: said I can whisper at you and you can never not hear me. I have opened up a whole nother dimension of pestering Tim. No, it's fascinating because the software solution, um, uh, it goes back to the old Mark Andreessen adage, like software's eating the world, right? It's not that you went out and built some sort of amazing new hyper low power Bluetooth. It's that you used an incredibly uh, rigorous and innovative coordination mechanism at the software level to approach long distance communication in a different way. And now we're leveraging, um, space assets. Right. Because of everything that Johnny said earlier. Lower cost, uh, better unit economics. So you can put just more stuff up in orbit. You can have these constellations that you manage at the constellation level as opposed to the individual satellite level. So it's all these things coming together, uh, to enable something that's pretty profound. I mean, just the tiny little energy usage. Right. Is pretty amazing because it opens up remote, um, transmission and remote tracking that just wasn't on an energy level possible before.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker D: Previously. Uh, and this was something we debated hotly at Hubble, was we would have to, uh, look at building satellites ourselves and kind of relearn all the hard lessons that go into building a satellite, uh, by ourself and, and you know, set up our own manufacturing facilities because we don't want to just put one up there. We want to be able to eventually produce, you, uh, know, hundreds of these. Um, and so there's a lot of lessons that go into building satellites that Johnny's had to learn over his entire career. And I'll let, uh, Johnny actually answer this now, but just talking about how Hubble didn't have to, uh, build and learn how to make a satellite bus ourselves. We got to rely on people like you to do it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: I mean, I think that. So that, that sort of idea of like, now we're at a point where instead of everybody having to do it themselves, we can help many different applications be deployed in space without having to reinvent the wheel every time. We get economies of scale from that, we get reuse from that. Um, and it really allows again, sort of focused execution on what matters. You know, for Alex, it's the payload and the service, which is what he cares about, not the box that the thing sits on in space. Um, and so I think that's a huge part. When we think about the foundry, the reason we chose that word is that there's also this perspective out there that, um, satellites are just a commodity and we can just crank Model T's off the line and throw them in space and that'll solve all the problems. And I mean, we fundamentally don't believe that. We fundamentally believe that there is still, um, the system problem of how you pull all these pieces together, make the spacecraft work well with the payload, make the entire system work with operations and automation on the. Is a really crucial, um, in many ways the hardest part, um, for deploying these Type of remote autonomous systems. And um, so we really like to think about one of our value propositions, and Alex can talk to whether he uh, is bought into this or not, is that we're not just delivering a box of parts in a spacecraft form, but we're actually partnering with our customers to pull all the pieces together that need to actually deliver a high availability, high performance, um, service solution, uh, which is ultimately the problem that needs to be solved, not just the hardware.

Speaker B: Yeah. So Alex, right, before you answer though, I gotta double click on something here with Johnny, which is that um, you're fully vertically integrated from what I can tell, and not just at the design, build, operate, hardware level, but you have a full software stack. Right. You've got mucore, muos, musim, which Mu Halo sits, um, Muon Halo sits on top of. Right. I'm not just listing those things off to show your product suite, but to really show that it's hardware and software, that it's been completely purpose built and then integrated. Um, that's an opinionated move. Right. There are folks who would say that vertical integration introduces a lot of risk and a lot more complexity management. Uh, but you've chosen this path and I was hoping you could kind of show us your philosophy for why that that makes sense and that's the best approach.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I mean I would say that there are risks associated with vertical integration, but there's also risks associated with relying on what is a very fragile space supply chain today. It's not a scaled supply chain in the way we would think of many other supply chains, whether it's, you know, data center, automotive or consumer or whatever. And so from a controlling our own destiny and managing risk and making sure we launch Alex's satellites on time, that work in a way that works. We felt very early on, based on experience that we have and other things, that that vertical integration was going to be really important for control. The other part of it that I think is really important again is going back to this idea that integration in many ways is the hardest part. Um, because we have control of that full stack, including things like the software, it dramatically lowers the friction for us to integrate new applications into our platform. It's not like we're having to go and build a bunch of glue, hardware and software glue, uh, between disparate components from different suppliers and vendors that were never really designed to work well together. We kind of have a unified architecture top to bottom again. Similarly, I think in some ways when you think about the early days of Google and The data center, control of the hardware, control of the software stacked together allows you to optimize across all of that in ways that you can't if you're just assembling components, uh, from a supply chain somewhere. And so, so I don't think this is even necessarily unique to space. I would argue that a lot of what Tesla taught the automotive industry is that this deep vertical integration, especially when cars become more dependent on software like modern teslas are and EVs more and more, is really a much more efficient way to build and scale systems. Um, and I just think it's a very similar problem set.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it was actually something on my list was at what point does satellite manufacturing start to resemble automot, you know, more than aerospace? And it sounds like that's kind of what you pointed out.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the numbers are still very different. Right. We're, we're, we're, I think we're targeting hundreds and hopefully thousands over the next few years of satellites that will be building, whereas cars are being built in the tens or hundreds of millions of years. So in terms of just like manufacturing scale, it's very different. But there's a lot of things, again, as things like launch becomes more available and cheaper, uh, that you start to want to look at other industries for. Right. If I'm not trying to pinch every gram of mass out of the satellite I'm building and going to super exotic materials and manufacturing techniques, then I want to go look at how are, you know, how are civil aircraft built, how are cars built, um, and leverage those same kind of economies of scale that they've developed over time to build things faster and cheaper.

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Speaker D: but ultimately the opportunity we see at Hubble is to solve a lot of really interesting, um, problems. Because when you look at whether it's construction, agriculture, oil and gas, defense, mining, um, supply chain and logistics, there are these very important problems where you need tracking and you need telemetry data and you need to be able to know where these things are. And they face a lot of similar challenges that I saw when I was at Life360 in terms of building devices that are um, able to be uh, scalable, cost effective and battery efficient. Uh, and so some of the cool use cases, I mean we've already helped trucks with millions of uh, dollars of metal alloys be found that were stolen. Um, you know, really changing the way that economics for like supply chain visibility work. Um, you know, Bluetooth is almost the cost of rfid. Uh, you know, we're helping uh, certain construction companies keep track of how full their Porter Potties are. So it's like all sorts of crazy different use cases. But um, Johnny, uh, you want to tell us about some of the cool uh, outside of Hubble use cases that you're ah, helping solve at Muon?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you know, as you all know, we, we have a variety of commercial and national security customers. Um, we're more and more, some international customers as um, and our goal is to build a very broad based platform. Um, and so we have other customers that are doing things like um, wildfire detection and tracking. We uh, have a constellation we're building called Firesat that is ultimately aimed at, it's actually built through a nonprofit, uh, that's kind of our customer, um, with the goal of sort of revolutionizing how we manage wildfires through much better kind of situational awareness data collected from space. Um, we have customers that are more in kind of the national security space doing things like various forms of intelligence gathering, both RF and um, things like infrared intelligence. There's a company we're working with, a commercial company that is doing precision agriculture. So they're collecting a very specific type of data, um, that is very um, sensitive to things like water stress and crops. And so they can, can close the loop with farmers much more tightly in terms of um, watering, which is a huge global issue with agriculture. So um, again a lot of different examples, but those are a few of them.

Speaker A: Yeah. Very cool. Alex. Um, you know, first off, I guess, uh, kudos on the, the CES kind of demonstration with Texas Instruments. I was reading about that. It's very, very exciting. Can you kind of, you know, talk a little bit about, you know, at this point you've demonstrated these integrations at the semiconductor level, uh, with Nordic Semiconductor as well. Um, how important is it for Hubble to become more of this invisible infrastructure rather than just a space company?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's kind of funny because obviously we're help with Johnny building satellites. Uh, and everyone sort of thinks of us as a satellite company but at the end of the day uh, we view ourselves much more as like a network, uh, just kind of this subscription based, uh, get your devices on and we uh, help you get connectivity no matter where those devices are. Um, and uh, the reason we build satellites is because that is our core innovation. Um, but if I could one day not ever think about a satellite ever again, I would. Uh, because ultimately building out the network is what I truly care about. Um, and part of the reason we talked a little bit about this but to double click on it, um, from earlier, part of the reason we even went with Bluetooth, um, up front is Bluetooth is embedded into almost every electronics built today. I mean it's just like if you have something and it has a battery, most likely it also has a Bluetooth chip. Whether it's for like you know, pairing with your phone or provisioning or just you know, being able to do otea, uh, over the air updates. Like pretty much every electronics nowadays has Bluetooth. And so even from the earliest days we knew we wanted to make it, it as easy as possible to join this network and not require any hardware modifications for our customers. Because the second you go to a customer and you're like hey, that's a cool device, add my little modem to it, you're looking at a two year go to market life cycle, um, sales process at a minimum. Um, and that's if they even want to spend the energy and effort to test the network in the first place. Um, and so because we're just a software only sort of solution and we can just say like, hey, you've got a TI chip, here's how you activate it. And it's like literally a two step process. All of a sudden we remove all the kind of burden of how do I test this, how do I verify it, how do I start using it without making a big R and D kind of investment. And I think that's one of the cool, compelling, unique aspects of leveraging Bluetooth and making it uh, being able to use this ubiquitous chip.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Can I just add, I think one of the coolest things about Hubble is that, that they're not a space company. I mean, you know, the fact that ultimately for their customers they don't care how this data is getting back. They don't need to think about this hardware being something that's unique for space. Like you know, there's many ways for the data to get moved around, like, I think that is really the future where a lot of this stuff kind of fades into the background and converges in a lot of ways with stuff that we're doing on Earth in a way that for most users, most consumers, they won't ever notice that something touched space. The service is just much better. And, um, you know, there's a whole bunch of reasons, I think that's been really hard historically, that now we're able to make it easier. Um, and I think a lot of the reason that historically companies like Hubble would have ended up becoming sort of space companies is because they've had to end up going and investing the hundreds of millions of dollars to develop their whole vertical space stack. And that kind of backs you into this place where now you are de facto a space company instead of a network company. Um, so I just think this is a really exciting. I think Hubble's a great example of where we're going with all this, and we're hoping there will be many more examples like this.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, it's like we're witnessing these early stages of space becoming like, programmable infrastructure. So it's really cool. That was why I was super excited to have you both on, to kind of see it from these different threads, uh, within the bigger, bigger picture of what we're discussing. And then, Johnny, you rattled off, you know, a number of these different use cases. Um, we talk dual use regularly on the podcast. Do you, I mean, believe that dual use becomes kind of like the default model going forward in space tech?

Speaker C: I mean, I think that, you know, there's a couple things I would say about that. So one is that it's very hard to separate commercial and national security from a technology perspective anymore. Right. And, you know, you look at like, like China doesn't even explicitly does not distinguish between commercial and national security space assets. So, like, we still try to. But anything you put in space has inherently the ability to be dual use. Um, and so I think that's an important consideration. And, you know, sort of thinking about the answer to that question, I think there's going to continue to be commercial use cases that are different than national security use cases. There's kind of a Venn diagram there where, like, there are some that are, you know, totally distinct. There's. There are few, and then there's a lot of middle. Where there's a lot of heavy overlap. Net. Net. I think it's. It's, um, you know, there's risk, but it's a Good thing too, because it helps create a larger sort of market for these technologies, um, especially if the same systems can support both commercial and national security use cases. And again, I think this is a convergence that's happening in the same way that like space and terrestrial infrastructure is converging. I think more and more. A lot of the things that we think about as uh, national security assets in space are heavily leveraging commercial technologies in more and will leverage the commercial supply chain for satellites. And that's going to be an accelerant. It's going to mean there's more investment, there's more market for the systems that are getting built and it will help mature the supply chain. And a lot of the same ways that like, you know, if you look at semiconductors in the early days, right, the DOD was the big customer. Intel very explicitly went out and built a commercial market. But then for many, many years, it was the combination of national security and commercial markets that really powered Moore's Law in a lot of ways. And I think we're in a similar place with space.

Speaker A: Yeah, I guess maybe just want to uh, you know, final in closing, Alex, for, for you, you know, what, what is you maybe five years from now, what kind of looks obvious in hindsight about, you know, where, where we are today.

Speaker D: Yeah, Um, I think, uh, or I'll talk about what I hope is true. For Hubble's sake. I hope that Starship is successful and uh, we are looking at hundreds of dollars per kilogram, not many thousands of dollars per kilogram. Um, I think when that is actually uh, true, uh, terrestrial and data infrastructure merges, uh, or sorry, space and terrestrial infrastructure merges. And that, that's a little bit like there's some use cases where, for Hubble, where we can make the business case close even with Falcon 9 pricing, which is again best in market and way better than all of the competitors even today. Um, but it's still only a certain number of use cases that you can make the business case close, um, with that kind of launch pricing. And no matter how much I haggle Johnny over his pricing, launch is still the biggest component of it today. Um, and I think if you want to get to the point where we are actually seeing the equivalent of PCs thrown into space and jammed in the corner for Google, uh, we still need to see that other order of um, magnitude shift. And um, I think the entire ecosystem's betting on uh, SpaceX being successful with Starship. Uh, we don't necessarily bake that into our models because we need to be able to close the business today and make it work without these optimistic sort of adjustments to uh, our operating costs. Um, but the second it does, all of a sudden Hubble's a even 10x better looking company from a cost structure standpoint. And so that's what I really hope for. And if we do get to that point, we're not talking about tens or a hundred satellites, we're talking about hundreds of them, uh, that uh, Hubble has in space. And that's the future that I get most excited about for my little Hubble corner.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, awesome insight, Johnny. I'll pass the same question over to you.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think I have a similar perspective. I just think there's an opportunity right now looking forward for like a 10 or 100 Xing of the things we're doing in space. And I believe we're headed down that path even to Alex's point, especially if things like starship work. But even without that, I think we're going to get a long way down that path. And this idea of convergence I think is a really powerful one that keeps coming back to me. And I think we're seeing that we're in the early stages of that. Um, and it means things like stuff. You know, I was a startup previously, they got bought by Google and then Google said, well, we don't do satellites. And they sold the startup because like, space is so far from the core business that it's not something we're going to continue investing in. I think in five years companies like Google are going to realize like, oh no, this is very adjacent to the core business and we need to be doing stuff in space just to stay relevant in the technology world. Um, and I think we're in the early phases of that. Is there anything that you have fears

Speaker A: about, um, you know, more satellites we're shooting up there?

Speaker C: Um, yeah, I mean, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about like, you know, the cap, the Kessler syndrome and like, you know, some large scale chain reaction of collisions in space, which, you know, is, is something I, I worry more about kind of governance writ large and kind of bad actors in space than I do about sort of accidents. Um, I think there's a very challenging, competitive, uh, national security landscape with the US and China right now. And um, the thing that worries me the most is a bad actor doing something really stupid that makes a lot of things worse for everybody trying to do stuff in space.

Speaker D: And as a very concrete, uh, example of that, you know, gps, which pretty much every person and company relies on is, you know, essentially 30ish satellites that, um, wouldn't be that hard to target for a, you know, nation state. And so the fact that this core piece of infrastructure is so, um, relatively vulnerable is something that does keep me up at night.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: All right, well, uh, let's put a bell on the main conversation and, uh, wrap with a. A closing segment. It's called the 5 second scra. Uh, it's rapid fire Q and A kind of say the first thing that comes to mind. Try, uh, to keep it within five seconds or you. You get air horned off, uh, off the show. Well, Sean, why don't you lead with Johnny, and then I'll close with Alex.

Speaker B: All right, Johnny, you ready?

Speaker C: Yeah, I'll try.

Speaker B: All right, so first question. What's one thing about the culture at Muan that you want everyone to know

Speaker C: how to work, work?

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, over the next couple, uh, of months, uh, are you hiring? And if you are hiring, uh, what kind of roles are you looking for for people who might be interested in trying to work with you?

Speaker C: Yes, we're hiring. And I mean mostly hardware and software engineering of all kinds.

Speaker B: All right, uh, in your. In your industry, what's. What's a trend that's got a lot of hype behind it right now that you're actually skeptical of?

Speaker C: Um, golden dome.

Speaker B: Oh, all right, we will hot take.

Speaker A: Let's go.

Speaker B: We'll go. We'll go double tap some of our defense tech, uh, uh, previous guests, uh, to get a rebuttal. But, uh, all right, excellent. Um, what's the best decision that you've ever made under time pressure around, let's say, the design or build of a satellite for a customer?

Speaker C: Um, getting. Accepting risks and getting to the launch pad.

Speaker B: Just getting it there. Just m. Meeting that deadline.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: All right. Uh, what's a skill that you learned early on in your career that you thought was going to be useless but then turned out later on to be very valuable?

Speaker C: Oh, asking, um, the right question.

Speaker B: You thought asking the right question was going to be useless?

Speaker C: I don't think I appreciated the value of it. Maybe it's a better way to say it early on, and I've come to realize how powerful it is. Maybe that's a better way to think about it there.

Speaker B: Okay. You upgraded its. Its. Its value.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, what's the weirdest or maybe strangest thing that you've had to explain about, uh, satellites to an investor, a customer, or.

Speaker C: Oh, man.

Speaker B: Uh, or I'll give you this other option, too. What's like maybe a uh, myth that you had to dispel about him.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think actually. Yeah. So there is a belief that space is a really harsh environment. It's not a harsh environment. It's much less harsh than what an aircraft has to deal with. What the engine in a car has to deal with.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Interesting. So it's guiding them through that at learning about uh, the reality of what the constraints are in space.

Speaker C: Yeah, getting to space is harsh. Riding a rocket's harsh. Once you're there, it's actually really benign.

Speaker B: I knew it all along. And then final question, uh, traditional question to end things up here. Is there a ah, charity or corporate philanthropy that's uh, close to your heart that you want our listeners to know about?

Speaker C: I mean the self serving answer is uh, Earth Fire alliance, which is the 501C3 that we're partnered with on the Firesat constellation.

Speaker B: And what do they, what do they help with?

Speaker C: I mean they're basically the ones that will be responsible um, for the impact of delivering the fire sat data to first operators to protect communities and manage our forests better.

Speaker B: Awesome. Outstanding. Johnny, thanks very much for the 5 second scramble. Over to Tim and Alex.

Speaker A: Yeah, good stuff. Um, Alex, you ready?

Speaker D: Let's do it.

Speaker A: All right. If uh, Hubble were a band, what genre would it play?

Speaker D: Ooh, uh, I'm gonna go edm.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, that's the second in a row we've heard EDM sounds like ah, good high, high uh, profile vibes going on in the office. Um, what's the hardest lesson for you? Kind of moving from consumer tech into deep tech.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think it's learning how to manage moving fast but like accepting the reality that we're working with hardware and there's only so much risk we can take. Take.

Speaker A: What are a couple of um, maybe key roles that Hubble's hiring for over the next three to six months?

Speaker D: Yeah, Hubl's expanding quite a bit so really um, focused on the go to market. So like Johnny, ah, always hiring software, hardware, but also go to market and sales.

Speaker A: What's one thing about the culture at Hubble that would surprise someone that's looking uh, to be a part of the company?

Speaker D: I think our transparency, uh, once you're inside of Hubble, we're open about everything.

Speaker A: Cool. What's uh, one of the bigger misconceptions uh, that you've heard about building in space?

Speaker D: I think similar, like surviving getting to space is hard. Once you're there it's a heck of a lot easier. Um, And I think we will get to a point where you basically have commodity hardware up there.

Speaker A: You're, ah, you're a poker player. Uh, you. You played on the, on the world, the world tour, right? At some point.

Speaker D: Yep.

Speaker A: Are you more dangerous with pocket, uh, aces, or, uh, a weaker hand and position? Uh,

Speaker D: uh, definitely a weaker hand. I, uh. Nothing feels as good as pulling off a masterful bluff.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Pocket, ace, like, too much to have, like, sitting there. It's like, all right, this is overwhelming.

Speaker D: It's like, yeah, it's not as fun to cheat.

Speaker A: That's right. What's the first job that you ever had?

Speaker D: Uh, funny enough, life360. So I've never had a proper job.

Speaker A: That's awesome. What a story. Uh, what's one activity that helps you kind of completely unplug?

Speaker D: Uh, actually poker. Funny enough, uh, I feel like the, the very competitive nature and, like, how absorbed you get into playing poker when you're at the table. Um, and the social aspect of it allows, uh, me to separate myself from work, uh, in a way that nothing else really does.

Speaker A: Nice. Uh, what's your go to airport meal or drink?

Speaker D: Ooh, uh, I would do red wine, uh, and probably not any food to make the flight as bearable as possible.

Speaker A: There you go. Uh, and then the, the last question. Is there a, ah, charity or cause that, uh, that's near and dear to you?

Speaker D: Yeah, I want to call out the Liberty Science Center. Uh, it's in New Jersey, um, very similar to the Exploratorium in sf, but anywhere that's focused on education and science for, uh, young kids, teens and adults is very near and dear to my heart. I think we need more of that, and we need more kind of education and excitement around stem, uh, and as things progress, that becomes more and more important.

Speaker A: Awesome. Alex, Johnny, uh, thank you for joining us. It seems like obviously the work that you're doing, uh, is a much bigger story for the advancement in commercial space. So appreciate you guys unpacking it and, uh, joining us on the paraprogram.

Speaker D: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Speaker C: Thanks for having us,

Speaker D: Sam.