Speaker 1: From Bahard where Innovation, money and power Collie in Silicon Vallet, NBN.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed loved Love.
Speaker 3: Welcome to a special edition of Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: We are live from Rocket Lab in Long Beach.
Speaker 3: Coming up this hour, we'll bring you conversations with some
Speaker 3: of the biggest names in.
Speaker 4: The space and defense technology industry.
Speaker 5: And I want to be honest with you, guys. We're
Speaker 5: here because we've been on the road in socaw but
Speaker 5: this is where the industry has happened. What's started with
Speaker 5: a single name has boomed into thousands of startups, many
Speaker 5: here in Southern California and in commercial space. This is
Speaker 5: how it started. SpaceX has become synonymous with commercial space.
Speaker 5: Elon Musk's company is a prolific launch provider, with around
Speaker 5: three hundred and eighty launches of the Falcon nine family
Speaker 5: of reusable rockets to date. The competition is starting to
Speaker 5: catch up, whether abroad or at home in Southern California.
Speaker 6: When you look at sort of the companies that are
Speaker 6: coming out of this defense tech movement, a lot of
Speaker 6: them have been trained at places like SpaceX, or they
Speaker 6: got their start there and then they're building new startups
Speaker 6: and deciding to build where there's a concentration of talent,
Speaker 6: which is in southern California.
Speaker 7: Toam Mueller, one of the early founders at SpaceX, who
Speaker 7: actually brought rocket technology at Eli Musk because he likes
Speaker 7: to say, you can't really throw a rock and also
Speaker 7: going to know, I've hitting as SpaceX alum working on
Speaker 7: another company.
Speaker 5: Others have a home in Socau. Take rocket Lab. It's
Speaker 5: an end to end space company providing launch services, which
Speaker 5: designs and manufactures small and medium class rockets. It's had
Speaker 5: eleven launch missions so far this year. Elsewhere, another launch
Speaker 5: competitor is United Launch Alliance, which is transitioning from its
Speaker 5: previous rockets to the next generation Vulcan family. The Pentagon
Speaker 5: has brought several Vulcan launches to fly before the end
Speaker 5: of this year, but delays have put pressure on the company.
Speaker 5: It has launched two Vulcan rockets so far, neither has
Speaker 5: cracked reusability. Bezos's Blue Origin also has new Glen, a
Speaker 5: heavy lift orbital rocket, but it has yet to launch
Speaker 5: to space. Meanwhile, in Europe, delays and malfunctions left the
Speaker 5: continent unable to get to orbit. With its own rockets
Speaker 5: for quite some time. The Arian six rocket, operated by
Speaker 5: the European consortium Arianne Space, which lifted off early in July,
Speaker 5: was Europe's first Arian rocket launch in a year. Arian
Speaker 5: Space launched the final mission of its smaller Vega rocket
Speaker 5: on September fourth. In the age of commercial space, space
Speaker 5: X is still the most reliable way to hitch a
Speaker 5: ride to Earth's orbit.
Speaker 3: And talking of SpaceX, a California state commission voted against
Speaker 3: a request by the US military to approve more SpaceX
Speaker 3: launches now.
Speaker 4: Commissioner is expressed.
Speaker 3: Concern about why SpaceX was not applying for a permit itself,
Speaker 3: and some also voice concern over working conditions at SpaceX.
Speaker 3: Elil Musk's increasing role in US politics, as well a.
Speaker 5: New story that came out early this morning. We're going
Speaker 5: to dig deep into SpaceX throughout the show, but right
Speaker 5: now we're going to talk about one of SpaceX's competitors,
Speaker 5: rocket Lab, which is a rocket company and much more.
Speaker 5: It's a launch provider and it's where we're at. We're
Speaker 5: in the Long Beach headquarters. Also a focus on a
Speaker 5: company that has a home in southern California and in
Speaker 5: New Zealand. The company's CFO, Adam Spice, is with us.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much for hosting us.
Speaker 2: Thanks for that.
Speaker 5: Let's start with the basics for the audience that might
Speaker 5: just be tuning in for the first time wondering where
Speaker 5: we are. Rocket Lab is an end to end space provider,
Speaker 5: space launch services, systems provider. Bring us up to speed
Speaker 5: on what that means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we think that there's the space companies
Speaker 2: of the future are ones that aren't just a launch
Speaker 2: company or just a satellite company, or just an opera
Speaker 2: or satellites. It's really all about providing an end d service.
Speaker 2: So you're seeing here in Long Beach is really our headquarters.
Speaker 2: We make a lot of the rocket components here at
Speaker 2: Rocket Engines, the avionics and so forth. So we have
Speaker 2: a pretty big footprint here in southern California, but we
Speaker 2: since expanded that and of course the company got started
Speaker 2: in New Zealand, but then expanded to the US and
Speaker 2: started to expand further throughout the United States, including locations
Speaker 2: in places like Denver and Albuquerque and Stennis, Mississippi, and
Speaker 2: Silfur Springs, Maryland, and of course a launch site in
Speaker 2: Wallaps Island. Virginia and a facility in Toronto, Canada as well.
Speaker 2: So we've established ourselves a very broad footprint doing much
Speaker 2: more than just launch.
Speaker 5: An hqu here in SOCO, which fits exactly what we're
Speaker 5: talking about. Two launch systems. What are they and what
Speaker 5: are the differences?
Speaker 2: Right? So, the vehicle you see behind you is Electron,
Speaker 2: and Electron is the second most frequently launched vehicle in
Speaker 2: the United States. It's launched fifty three times. So we've
Speaker 2: got a very say significant lead in the small dedicated
Speaker 2: launch market, and we're developing a second vehicle, which is
Speaker 2: called Neutron, which will address the larger medium class launch market.
Speaker 3: Go, we dig into the practicalities and how difficult space
Speaker 3: engineering is. Where are we with Neutron and what are
Speaker 3: some of the issues in the steps of getting it
Speaker 3: up and running.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we're quite a ways along the path of Neutron,
Speaker 2: you know. So we've been at it now for a
Speaker 2: little over three years. We announced the program when we
Speaker 2: became public in August of twenty twenty one. You know,
Speaker 2: it's amazing to see a rocket program come together. You know,
Speaker 2: I hadn't come from a space background. For joining the
Speaker 2: company about six and a half years ago, and just
Speaker 2: to see what it takes to pull together and pull
Speaker 2: off a rocket development program is absolutely staggering. The complexity,
Speaker 2: you know, not just.
Speaker 5: From just the naturally rocket science out of it, it.
Speaker 2: Is literally rocket science. I'm grateful every day that there's
Speaker 2: people who have dedicated their lives to developing these complex
Speaker 2: systems that are absolutely amazing. So's it's a very you know,
Speaker 2: it's a very detailed, very arduous task to get there.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what's so exciting from a business
Speaker 2: perspective is the fact that if you can do it,
Speaker 2: you know, you're one of a few numbers of organizations
Speaker 2: in the history we've actually pulled it off. And so
Speaker 2: it creates a very defensible position because again space is very,
Speaker 2: very hard, and you know, we have the you know,
Speaker 2: the I would say, the challenge of wake it up
Speaker 2: every morning and doing battle with physics, but also doing
Speaker 2: battle with some of the most fierce competitors on the plan,
Speaker 2: including SpaceX. And so we look around our industry and
Speaker 2: we see bodies everywhere that we have to step over,
Speaker 2: and you know, it kind of makes you wake up
Speaker 2: every morning and kind of like, Okay, this is a
Speaker 2: serious business. We got to make sure that we make
Speaker 2: all the right decisions, be very efficient with our capital,
Speaker 2: and very very focused on execution.
Speaker 4: I mean, you are the numbers guy.
Speaker 3: Let's just talk about capital efficiency. You have to spend
Speaker 3: in extraordinary amount of money. You took this company public.
Speaker 3: You're having to answer to a whole host of retail
Speaker 3: investors and more increasing the institution investors.
Speaker 4: What's a revenue run rate and where is the money
Speaker 4: coming from?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're very fortunate that we've been able to get
Speaker 2: now to a scale. So Q two we generated over
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars in revenue, so we really kind
Speaker 2: of now cross that threshold of scalability. We've shown that
Speaker 2: a model can scale. I think it's very important that
Speaker 2: we've done it. Not just on launch, because launch represents
Speaker 2: about thirty percent of our revenues. Space systems actually represent
Speaker 2: seventy percent.
Speaker 5: And just on that, when you say space systems is
Speaker 5: seventy percent of revenue, just in Layman's terms, what are
Speaker 5: you talking about.
Speaker 2: So we sell a variety of solutions. So we sell
Speaker 2: subsystems that into the merchant market. So we sell things
Speaker 2: like you know, solar solutions for spacecraft. We sell radios
Speaker 2: and battery systems and composites and so forth. So we
Speaker 2: really are a very serious in materials merchant subsystem market.
Speaker 2: But then we also build full spacecraft solutions. So for example,
Speaker 2: we built full spacecraft for NASA, then the Action. In fact,
Speaker 2: we built a couple of spacecraft. They're gonna be orbiting
Speaker 2: Mars and then not two distant. Y.
Speaker 5: Yes, this is big news for you recently, very big
Speaker 5: because you originally you weren't on that list and now
Speaker 5: you are.
Speaker 2: Well, that's actually from the marge sample return. Okay, sound
Speaker 2: forward sow return. Yeah, that's and you're right. We were
Speaker 2: not included in the first but we were ultimately added
Speaker 2: to that program. So that's very exciting. But when you
Speaker 2: look at all the different programs that were across again
Speaker 2: not just subsystems, but we're actually making full satellites for
Speaker 2: including the Defense Department and their Space Development Agency. We
Speaker 2: want a contract to be the prime contractor for over
Speaker 2: five hundred million dollar contract. So it's actually the one
Speaker 2: thing that's most exciting for me is how quickly we've
Speaker 2: come from a very organic base to now building a
Speaker 2: very significant size revenue and getting again past that one
Speaker 2: hundred million dollar thresholder quarter.
Speaker 3: And you talk about the electron behind us fifty three
Speaker 3: already put into space. How many launches are we looking
Speaker 3: at in terms of the next year, what sort of
Speaker 3: cadence you're trying to.
Speaker 4: Live up to.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we've indicated fifteen to eighteen launches this year.
Speaker 2: We've watched eleven times so far, so we've got a
Speaker 2: big Q four coming up. And then when you look
Speaker 2: at the kind of the rate going to next year,
Speaker 2: we see growth off of that, and a lot of
Speaker 2: it's really not depending on how many rockets we can build.
Speaker 2: We can build a lot of rockets we could build.
Speaker 2: You know, we've kind of sized.
Speaker 4: Ourselves three D printing a whole lot.
Speaker 2: We're three D printing a lot of stuff here. We
Speaker 2: could build.
Speaker 5: What is the limiting factor?
Speaker 2: It's really the market at this point. It's really the market.
Speaker 2: We can build as many rockets as the market demands.
Speaker 2: But it's a new market, it's a nascent market, and
Speaker 2: I think, you know, it just takes time for these markets.
Speaker 5: I want to get into this, the business of space,
Speaker 5: and just bear with me. Carry elon, musk, I'm bear
Speaker 5: with you. A lot has a big gap right over
Speaker 5: you a big sort of lead with SpaceX, and he
Speaker 5: talks about this idea that the business of sending payload
Speaker 5: to or pit tops out for them at three billion dollars. Now,
Speaker 5: that's a scale that you're not near yet, but it
Speaker 5: makes it seem like there's a cap, there's a ceiling
Speaker 5: on how much money you can ever make in this business.
Speaker 5: What do you make of that?
Speaker 2: I think it depends on how you define this business, right,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, even as we've seen the SpaceX, I
Speaker 2: don't think they stopped. They just launch. So launch is
Speaker 2: a very critical part of the ecosystem, but it's not
Speaker 2: the biggest piece of the ecosystem. So the applications and
Speaker 2: creating that ongoing revenue stream from applications and having a
Speaker 2: constation on orbit, that is really what people are shooting
Speaker 2: for as far as where the real scale for this
Speaker 2: industry comes from. And that's exactly what we're oriented around.
Speaker 2: We're all about being an end to end space company
Speaker 2: where we can design the spacecraft, we can build the
Speaker 2: spacecraft in a very vertically integrated way with our own subsystems,
Speaker 2: we can launch them on a variety of rockets, then
Speaker 2: we can operate those in orbit so it's a very
Speaker 2: very important thing to think about yourself as an end
Speaker 2: end player, because again, if you're a bespoke kind of
Speaker 2: one solution provider, it's probably not the path to survivability for.
Speaker 3: Those institution investors sat watching and indeed retail investors who
Speaker 3: are excited about putting money into rocketing very excited. What
Speaker 3: tell us about how the market scale up? What is needed?
Speaker 3: You're saying you can get these, you can build these
Speaker 3: as quickly as a market wants. Well, what gets the
Speaker 3: market to the next iteration to the size that you
Speaker 3: want to be able to serve it?
Speaker 7: That?
Speaker 2: I think the most exciting thing about what's going on
Speaker 2: in this market right now is that, you know, you
Speaker 2: think about what typically drives the hockey stick growth kind
Speaker 2: of characteristic of an industry, and it's usually commercial. But
Speaker 2: I think we're in a really interesting period where we're
Speaker 2: actually seeing the hockey stick being derived building from commercial opportunities.
Speaker 2: So everyone seeing what SpaceX is doing with startlinks, that's
Speaker 2: kind of old news to a certain extent. But then
Speaker 2: you see Amazon Kuiper, you see Teleside light Speed, you
Speaker 2: see the SDA constllation, So you're actually seeing a combination
Speaker 2: of government and commercial all presenting hockey stick opportunities. And
Speaker 2: that's really you're not just not a one bet kind
Speaker 2: of situation right now. There's lots of different hiers you
Speaker 2: can be your fired.
Speaker 5: To, Adam. There's so much more to come, as you
Speaker 5: know in this hour. But before we let you go,
Speaker 5: a word for SpaceX. What they enabled your company to do,
Speaker 5: particularly here in California.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you have to give them, you know,
Speaker 2: amazing credit for what they've accomplished. They really kind of
Speaker 2: are a I would say, kind of a an inspiration
Speaker 2: and aspirational target as well. Like we've seen, we've that
Speaker 2: we could be done right. I think that's the one
Speaker 2: thing is we wake up every morning understanding the challenge
Speaker 2: that faces us, but we're not intimidated by it. Never
Speaker 2: that's one thing that this company does not ever get
Speaker 2: is intimidated by competition, whether it's SpaceX or anybody else.
Speaker 2: So we're up for the challenge. It's exciting and there's
Speaker 2: a tremendous amount of opportunity, and I think we're in
Speaker 2: a great position to exploit it.
Speaker 3: You were up early for us. We give you great
Speaker 3: thanks for it, Adam. It's wonderful to have us here
Speaker 3: and you here with us. Adam Spice, CFO of Rocket
Speaker 3: Lab coming up, as Ed says, so much more to come.
Speaker 3: We're actually going to dig into what Ela Musque's also
Speaker 3: been up to. Tesla's Robotaxi revealed and the company debuts
Speaker 3: is first fully autonomous vehicle, but shares a lower because
Speaker 3: let's investor skepticism. We're going to be speaking with a
Speaker 3: key investor who is there and getting the demos, Nazi
Speaker 3: Tangla of Lafetangla Investments.
Speaker 4: This is breen big technology.
Speaker 8: We expect to be in production with the cybercap which
Speaker 8: is really big, highly optimized for autonomous transport in probably well,
Speaker 8: I don't be a little optimist with the time frames, but.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: A little optimistic with timeframes as ever. Tesla CEO Elon
Speaker 3: Musk and bailing rough production timeline should we call it
Speaker 3: about its new autonomous cyber cab shares a test. They're
Speaker 3: lower this morning, the announcement lower and it's because of cynicism, skepticism, right,
Speaker 3: a lack of detail.
Speaker 4: We are down nine percent over the last two training days.
Speaker 3: Nazi Tangler is a holder of this stock was there
Speaker 3: at the event of Laffa Tangler Investments, and you too
Speaker 3: have a little bit of element of more questions than
Speaker 3: answers right.
Speaker 5: Now, and it's based on experience. I just want to say,
Speaker 5: you got in cyber Cab, go from there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's awesome.
Speaker 9: I mean, you know, Elon said the future should look
Speaker 9: like the future, and it does look like the future.
Speaker 4: We just don't know when the future is.
Speaker 9: I mean there were no details except the site cab
Speaker 9: will cost you know, less than thirty grand, that you'll
Speaker 9: it'll cost twenty to thirty cents a mile, but if
Speaker 9: you add in regulations forty and that just felt a
Speaker 9: little bit like this to me because there was no
Speaker 9: substantive backup to that. And so if you were there
Speaker 9: to be wowed, it was it was filled with wow.
Speaker 9: I mean, Optimus stole the show for me. There were
Speaker 9: you know, the Robovan it's super interesting. But when and
Speaker 9: we heard nothing about the ride sharing app.
Speaker 4: We heard nothing about Can I just.
Speaker 5: Jump in on that point, because so we've done a
Speaker 5: lot of reporting on this business model, and the piece
Speaker 5: of news that immediately jumps out is that cyber Cab
Speaker 5: is going to be available to buy and that adds
Speaker 5: another facet or dimension to the master plan. Do you
Speaker 5: understand the proprietary ride hailing app that Tesla will one
Speaker 5: day day offer us?
Speaker 9: No, because we don't. We don't know what it's going
Speaker 9: to look like. I mean, he said a lot of things.
Speaker 9: There was a comment about Uber drivers are going to
Speaker 9: be the shepherds of the flow, But what does that mean.
Speaker 9: We're going to do away with parking lots because these
Speaker 9: cars are just going to keep going so you can
Speaker 9: get you know, lend your car back, and the parking
Speaker 9: lots are going to be replaced by parks.
Speaker 4: It sounds sound like he was running for office.
Speaker 3: You know, which might be a criticism of what's been
Speaker 3: happening at the moment, because look, you are an investor.
Speaker 3: We see the pop in the shares of Uber of
Speaker 3: Lift today because we thought there would.
Speaker 5: Be more of a let's bring up let's bring up
Speaker 5: Uber and left because it.
Speaker 4: Is now. It depends on when you got in.
Speaker 9: But we just added Uber to our twelve best Ideas
Speaker 9: portfolio about two months ago. It was just lucky time
Speaker 9: timing because it was right before they announced their partnerships
Speaker 9: that that was the winner last night, Uber was the
Speaker 9: winner of the event, and I think enjoyed it very much.
Speaker 4: That well, I mean because.
Speaker 9: Now they were worried at the IPO that Tesla would
Speaker 9: replace them and this is proof positive pos Yeah, maybe
Speaker 9: a decade and so WHATLCK can happen between now and then?
Speaker 9: And I think that was the disappointment that we didn't
Speaker 9: hear anything about the model too. There was no specificity
Speaker 9: on things that investors care about.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 9: The retail crowd that was there, you know, we're shouting out,
Speaker 9: we love you, Elon, and you know, it felt like
Speaker 9: a party.
Speaker 4: What was it like being.
Speaker 3: There for the first time at one of these events,
Speaker 3: surrounded by the retail Pretty cool.
Speaker 9: I actually that was the most fun for me talking
Speaker 9: to retail investors why they own the stock, why they
Speaker 9: own the cars.
Speaker 4: But these are devotees.
Speaker 9: It felt like a concert, like a mosh pit of
Speaker 9: groupies right in front of the stage.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Marguerite, who's running the show out the control room
Speaker 5: in New York, bring up some video of the cyber cab.
Speaker 5: I want to make a point here and ask questions
Speaker 5: and Nancy, just by looking at it, if you're going
Speaker 5: to do that and offer to sell it for thirty
Speaker 5: thousand US dollars. Why not just stick a steering wheel
Speaker 5: on it and some pedals and sell it for twenty
Speaker 5: five thousand dollars like a normal car.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 9: And he even said, you know, there's no steering wheels
Speaker 9: and pedals, and we hope that goes well.
Speaker 4: I mean it gets crossed it.
Speaker 5: This is the van as well. So the Robovan again,
Speaker 5: you know, one of his skills is keeping investors looking
Speaker 5: to the horizon, right, Is that something you then redo
Speaker 5: your whole Tesla model on when you see something like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 9: No, because when I mean, we haven't seen the model
Speaker 9: to you, we're supposed to see it first half of
Speaker 9: next year. This would have been a good time to
Speaker 9: kind of give investors a sense of what's going on.
Speaker 9: I think across the board institutional investors were disappointed, and
Speaker 9: we're seeing it in the stock price, but even in
Speaker 9: the reporting afterwards, and I expected stock to trade down
Speaker 9: even though you know, optimist is super cool. I'm going
Speaker 9: to stay in the name as committed in the name
Speaker 9: as you all, yes, because we got in at one hundred,
Speaker 9: one hundred and eight when he was selling off in
Speaker 9: January of twenty twenty three, We've sold back some as
Speaker 9: it rose to two seventy and so forth. But I
Speaker 9: think you want to own it for the next three
Speaker 9: to five years. You may just not want to own
Speaker 9: it for the next one to two years.
Speaker 5: Elon Musque is always late, but he does often get
Speaker 5: there in the end. Nancy Tanglo of Laffer and Tannglar Investments,
Speaker 5: who was there last night, thank you very much. AMD
Speaker 5: saw its biggest stock decline in more than a month
Speaker 5: after the company unveiled new artificial intelligence chips, but did
Speaker 5: not provide info on new customers or kind of financial
Speaker 5: performance in the near term. I spoke with CEO Lisa
Speaker 5: Sue and here's what she said about the company's latest
Speaker 5: AI accelerators.
Speaker 10: This is an incredibly fast growing market. I mean, if
Speaker 10: you think about you know what we've done just over
Speaker 10: the last twelve months or so, We've seen three hundred
Speaker 10: demand increase from when we started the year too. In
Speaker 10: our most recent earnings we actually said we would be
Speaker 10: over four and a half billion dollars in this important
Speaker 10: AI accelerator market.
Speaker 5: Okay, we caught up with Jared Isaacman, who is mission
Speaker 5: commander of Polaris Dawn, the first crew to test Starlink
Speaker 5: laser based communications in deep deep space. Looking ahead, ask
Speaker 5: him when he's going to fly on starship listen to this.
Speaker 1: I leave that to the experts at SpaceX and Elon
Speaker 1: to kind of determine the timeline on it. We'll fly
Speaker 1: it as soon as it's ready. But right now, there's
Speaker 1: a lot we can do with Dragon, and that's why
Speaker 1: the first two playist missions were designed for Dragon.
Speaker 2: Jared, what we.
Speaker 5: Want to do with this is help our bloomleg Technology
Speaker 5: audience around the world understand what is really happening inside
Speaker 5: of SpaceX. Explain it, what it's like working with the engineers,
Speaker 5: and how important you feel this company is not just
Speaker 5: to an industry, but I suppose, as you put it,
Speaker 5: humankind's future outside of Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: I wanted an ask some question, right Look, SpaceX is
Speaker 1: an extraordinary organization. You know, since I've been sixteen, Since
Speaker 1: I was sixteen years old, I've been in business and
Speaker 1: have worked with literally like thousands of companies, you know,
Speaker 1: across a lot of verticals, including defense aerospace. I was
Speaker 1: the CEO of a defense aerospace company I started for
Speaker 1: you know, almost twelve years, and I've never seen an
Speaker 1: organization like SpaceX. You know, there's a a lot of
Speaker 1: companies that have a mission and vision statement on their
Speaker 1: website that no one cares about. I can tell you
Speaker 1: there's fourteen thousand people who show up for work every
Speaker 1: day at SpaceX, and they believe that there is no
Speaker 1: greater impact they can make in the world than trying
Speaker 1: to make life multiplanetary, because the world is a more
Speaker 1: interesting place when you can journey among the stars. All
Speaker 1: that aside, I do want to say that, like SpaceX
Speaker 1: isn't solving all of the world's problems clearly in even
Speaker 1: going to Mars, Like they may develop the optimal vehicle
Speaker 1: and to take us there and back, but there are
Speaker 1: still you know, like who knows how many potential challenges
Speaker 1: that will exist on that journey. They're making it a
Speaker 1: self sustaining city and coming back. So I think so
Speaker 1: cool about SpaceX is they inspire so many other engineers,
Speaker 1: you know, scientists, researchers who start up different companies that
Speaker 1: follow SpaceX philosophies like it. It will take so many
Speaker 1: SpaceX like companies to make this to make the world
Speaker 1: a much better place. And they're just a great beacon
Speaker 1: that is like inspiring many others to do the same.
Speaker 3: Jared Isaacman, Polaristorn mission commander, and who's talking about the
Speaker 3: ecosystem with which SpaceX goes on, And let's talk about
Speaker 3: that because a great example of SpaceX alums branching out
Speaker 3: on their.
Speaker 4: Own is Interlagos.
Speaker 3: It's a new VC firm actually started by former senior
Speaker 3: SpaceX leaders. It's raising five hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 3: for its first venture fund.
Speaker 4: That was a lot of money.
Speaker 3: It's been reported by tech Crunch citing regulatory filings and
Speaker 3: confidential decks and to prospective LP but it's a massive
Speaker 3: fund target to just spread across up to thirty two companies.
Speaker 3: Real capital needed for these sorts of startups.
Speaker 5: And it's a funny timing on a big piece of
Speaker 5: news because that's why we're here in southern California. Elsegindo
Speaker 5: very nearby, and the irony is with everyone giving kudos
Speaker 5: to SpaceX. I think you caught up with Elsegindo's man,
Speaker 5: and what did he tell you? Because SpaceX has mixed
Speaker 5: feelings about this part of the world.
Speaker 3: Might well be moving and he's concerned significantly about that.
Speaker 3: Let's just get his take actually and on the worry
Speaker 3: about SpaceX remaining committed to SOCA.
Speaker 7: We're working on incentives to keep people here. SpaceX is,
Speaker 7: you know, has so much capital invested in Hapdorm started
Speaker 7: in El Segondo, then moved down to Hawthorn, So we'll
Speaker 7: do everything we can to keep the industry here. We're
Speaker 7: working with government officials at a DoD.
Speaker 3: And look with five hundred and fifty million dollar VISI fund,
Speaker 3: you can see that that's going to keep talent wanting.
Speaker 4: To come to this part of the world.
Speaker 5: I'm supposed to live too.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to a very special edition of BlueBag Technology.
Speaker 3: We are here at Rocket Lab in Long Beach where
Speaker 3: we're taking such a deep dive into space and the
Speaker 3: defense tech industry more probably.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Anderill is one of the most prominent defense
Speaker 5: tech companies in Southern California in the United States, and
Speaker 5: it's quickly made a name for itself with how quickly
Speaker 5: it's managed to win contracts with the US government. Now,
Speaker 5: we caught up with Catherine Boyle, a bench capitalists at
Speaker 5: Andresen Horowitz to talk about exactly that. Listen to this.
Speaker 6: Andrewl is a perfect example of a company where you know,
Speaker 6: I think ANDREL always points to how long it took
Speaker 6: SpaceX and how long it took Pallanteer to get those
Speaker 6: first contracts from the US government. It took them a
Speaker 6: very long time. And of course Andreil did this at
Speaker 6: a historic pace, you know, founded in twenty seventeen, by
Speaker 6: twenty twenty they had their first program of record. And
Speaker 6: I think if we take a step back, it actually
Speaker 6: showed us that the government has woken up to the
Speaker 6: need to work with startups, which was not the case
Speaker 6: and the you know, the early twenty tens, it was
Speaker 6: not the case when sort of the Defense one point
Speaker 6: zero generation was really building. So ANDREL has shown that
Speaker 6: you can move much faster. And the thing that I
Speaker 6: think is really interesting is that the success of ANDROL
Speaker 6: has begetting success for startups that were founded in the
Speaker 6: last few years. You know, the program that we always
Speaker 6: loved to point to is Replicator, which was, you know,
Speaker 6: a program focused on working with startups and we're and
Speaker 6: focusing on production that the Defense Department needs. That has
Speaker 6: become a core initiative out of the DoD under this administration.
Speaker 6: Previous administrations really focused on the Defense Innovation Unit, where
Speaker 6: it was building, you know, building ties to Silicon Valley,
Speaker 6: understanding that the best engineers in the world are in
Speaker 6: Silicon Valley and that the d D has to work
Speaker 6: with them. So I think that you know, the we
Speaker 6: always look at the private industry side, which is that
Speaker 6: there's now a talent density, there's momentum, there's capital that
Speaker 6: has really met this movement so that we can build startups.
Speaker 6: But that would mean nothing if there wasn't an buyer.
Speaker 6: And the d D has become an extraordinarily eager buyer,
Speaker 6: supportive of working with startups, understanding that you know, they
Speaker 6: need to be a lot more thoughtful about procurement. They
Speaker 6: need to make it possible for earlier stage companies to
Speaker 6: be able to sell into the Department of Defense. And
Speaker 6: that also these large legacy primes which have had no
Speaker 6: competition for you know, in many cases fifty to one
Speaker 6: hundred years, now have to start working with startups and
Speaker 6: they have to integrate the technologies that these startups built
Speaker 6: if they want to be the chosen supplier to the DoD.
Speaker 6: So we have seen this extraordinary change in how the
Speaker 6: DoD views startups as a possible supplier for the for
Speaker 6: the requirements that.
Speaker 4: They have.
Speaker 3: Great conversation with Katherin Boyle, General Ponnard, Andresen Horrowitz. Of
Speaker 3: course Andreil's work, Well, it's not just Hay on Earth
Speaker 3: at the moment, is it that we're going to go
Speaker 3: straight to what they're now doing in space? Senior Vice
Speaker 3: president Cokosa Romanian is with us. You are in charge
Speaker 3: of the space side as well as a software side.
Speaker 4: I mean your.
Speaker 3: Focus at the business is broad. What impact do you
Speaker 3: want to make in space? I know you've got a
Speaker 3: new deal to announce.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, well, Ed, Carolyn, thank you so much for
Speaker 11: having me. It's so exciting to be here at Rocket
Speaker 11: Lab and you can just kind of feel the energy
Speaker 11: not just at ANDROL, but in the whole space ecosystem
Speaker 11: rit large. So I mean for us, our focus in
Speaker 11: space is really around space domain awareness and ultimately ensuring
Speaker 11: that as space gets more contested and congested with so
Speaker 11: many assets going up there, that we can defend and
Speaker 11: protect US assets in space. And you know, the space
Speaker 11: domain is so critical to everything, not just ANDROL does,
Speaker 11: but the US government does right from things like GPS positioning,
Speaker 11: how our soldiers know where they are, to communications, it's
Speaker 11: never been more important to protect that space domain in
Speaker 11: order for ANDROL to do what it needs to do
Speaker 11: on the ground and to support our US war fighters
Speaker 11: and allies.
Speaker 5: So the case study through the news that is out
Speaker 5: just in the last hour is a deal with Impulse.
Speaker 5: What are the specifics of that, and based on what
Speaker 5: you've just seen, explain to us what does a deal
Speaker 5: like that allow How does a deal like that allow
Speaker 5: you to do it?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, we're so thrilled to be working with Impulse,
Speaker 11: with Tomuller and his team out there and the innovations
Speaker 11: that they're bringing to the space domain.
Speaker 2: What we got really excited.
Speaker 11: About with Impulse is their propulsion technology and the ability
Speaker 11: to access higher orbits, geo and neo orbits.
Speaker 5: And if people just tuning him right now, the basics
Speaker 5: of their technologies, we're talking about a small SATs essentially,
Speaker 5: but they can move them at those different orbits, they.
Speaker 11: Can move them for long durations. They're building what's called
Speaker 11: an orbit transfer vehicle, so they can move from one
Speaker 11: orbit to another orbit at a price point and a
Speaker 11: resiliency that wasn't available before. And the reason that's so
Speaker 11: important at is because the US's most critical systems are
Speaker 11: located in those higher orbits, and those orbits are extraordinarily
Speaker 11: expensive to reach, and so with our partnership with Impulse,
Speaker 11: we'll be able to put assets in those orbits to
Speaker 11: do the kinds of missions that we've been talking about.
Speaker 11: And when it comes to ANDROL, we are a mission
Speaker 11: stems provider, right. We provide end to end systems that
Speaker 11: answer a DoD mission, whether that's observing things in space
Speaker 11: or doing other things, and so we take we are
Speaker 11: really really excited to work with partners like Impulse to
Speaker 11: bring together their systems and ultimately missionize them for a
Speaker 11: DoD use case.
Speaker 3: You articulated the threat there, the idea that these assets
Speaker 3: need protecting overseeing how quickly are we seeing other countries
Speaker 3: doing what ANDREL is doing. How quickly we understanding that
Speaker 3: their assets are being protected or indeed that they're going
Speaker 3: to be able to target us.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, we've heard the US government say openly
Speaker 11: space is now becoming a war fighting domain, just like
Speaker 11: every other domain. Protecting space is critically important. The stat
Speaker 11: I like to say is over the next ten years,
Speaker 11: our adversaries will launch more systems into space than the
Speaker 11: last seventy years combined, right, And so whether that's malicious
Speaker 11: or not, there is just so much going on up
Speaker 11: there that we need to have eyes and ears on
Speaker 11: everything that's going on and ensuring that our bill to
Speaker 11: conduct operations remains undeterred.
Speaker 3: And the pivot the move into space. For you, what's
Speaker 3: that meant? More talent, more investment. What does ANDROL need
Speaker 3: to do to get to the size of scale you
Speaker 3: want to be at?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 11: Look, I mean if you think about what we've done
Speaker 11: in every domain, right, So if you think about the
Speaker 11: air domain with our CCA aircraft or Loyal Wingman, to
Speaker 11: the underwater domain with the submarine that's about the size of.
Speaker 5: A school bus.
Speaker 11: There's one through line that connects all of it, which
Speaker 11: is that fundamentally, what ANDROL does is we go from
Speaker 11: traditional systems which are high cost, low volume, and we
Speaker 11: invert that to low cost, high volume systems, right. And
Speaker 11: the way to do that is through two things. One
Speaker 11: is a focus on software and autonomy. If you want
Speaker 11: to be high volume, you've got to get away from
Speaker 11: one operator commanding one system to one operator being able
Speaker 11: to control many systems. And two is a focus on
Speaker 11: manufacturing and be able to manufacture at scale and fundamentally
Speaker 11: we see that same need in space. If you think
Speaker 11: about the challenges that we were just talking about, we
Speaker 11: need to move to more autonomous systems, more high volumes
Speaker 11: that are able to do these kinds of missions as
Speaker 11: space gets more and more contested.
Speaker 5: Throughout the year, we've covered Andreil, Tray Stevens, the executive chairman,
Speaker 5: has come on the show, Palmer Lucky has come on
Speaker 5: the show, one of the co founders, and it's been
Speaker 5: in that context that portfolio of products. But also I
Speaker 5: want to come back to space. I think it's probably
Speaker 5: a smaller or newer area of the business. Is that fair?
Speaker 5: That's definitely, and so let's look forward. How are you
Speaker 5: growing it? You know, Caroline talk's about talent. From a
Speaker 5: product perspective, will you offer many things? Do you feel
Speaker 5: that it's an area of growth for and Reil.
Speaker 11: We see it as an area of tremendous growth for Androl
Speaker 11: and it's really the demand signal that we're seeing from
Speaker 11: our customers and a big part of that actually is
Speaker 11: the partnerships. The analogy I use is we want to
Speaker 11: bring a team of super friends to this market. All
Speaker 11: these companies in this area, many startups, that you're going
Speaker 11: to talk to today. Where we're really special as our
Speaker 11: ability to understand the government mission and put together a solution.
Speaker 11: And with the government, the demand signal we're seeing loud
Speaker 11: and clear. Captain Boyle talked about it earlier, is wanting
Speaker 11: to work with many startups, each of which provide a
Speaker 11: unique capability, but they need to be put together to
Speaker 11: solve one of those problems. So if you go back
Speaker 11: to the analogy of the super Friends, every super friend
Speaker 11: does a unique thing, they have a superpower, but you
Speaker 11: put them all together and they're unstoppable. And that's what
Speaker 11: I think Androl wants to do. We want to bring
Speaker 11: together a team of companies to go and provide optionality
Speaker 11: to the government to say you don't just have to
Speaker 11: answer these missions.
Speaker 2: In a traditional way.
Speaker 11: We can bring a non traditional team to answer these
Speaker 11: missions at a higher quality, a lower price point, all
Speaker 11: of those things.
Speaker 5: What's it about Southern California and the space industry. It's
Speaker 5: crazy here.
Speaker 2: I mean it's just so exciting.
Speaker 11: You walk into Rocket Lab and you walk past mission control,
Speaker 11: and I mean just the talent density here that is amazing.
Speaker 11: And I think that again, we're all partners in this.
Speaker 11: When it comes to defense, there's only one team that's
Speaker 11: Team America, and so it's really exciting to be able
Speaker 11: to work with all of these companies here and you
Speaker 11: kind of run into the same folks over and over again.
Speaker 2: So we're super thrilled about that.
Speaker 5: Goes Manian and Aerial Senior vice president here with us
Speaker 5: at Rocket Lab. Thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 5: There is so much more to come up on this
Speaker 5: special show. One company's hope to revolutionize some other key
Speaker 5: space architecture which honestly has not been touched since the
Speaker 5: nineteen sixties. We're going to speak with Northward CEO Bridget Mendler.
Speaker 5: That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Northwood.
Speaker 3: It's a space startup that wants to build ground stations
Speaker 3: the talk to satellites.
Speaker 4: Look, you know the.
Speaker 3: Big circular dish antennae, but ones that can actually be
Speaker 3: scaled and scaled, fast, built and installed in.
Speaker 4: Just a couple of days.
Speaker 3: You might recognize Bridget Mendler of course from her acting roles.
Speaker 3: Now Northward CEO, Bridget, welcome to bring bag technology and
Speaker 3: tell us about the sheer infrastructure and technological feat you
Speaker 3: are trying to take on here.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, thank you guys very much for having me
Speaker 12: really excited to be here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I think you know, for space companies, you're running a
Speaker 12: business that is completely reliant upon connectivity, but connectivity with
Speaker 12: space is stuck in a different era where you anticipate
Speaker 12: outages or you find very expensive and cumbersome solutions for
Speaker 12: outages in a way that would be completely unacceptable in
Speaker 12: other industrialized sectors. We were actually talking to a space
Speaker 12: company yesterday that had their contact time just slipped out
Speaker 12: from under them at the last minute, and so it's
Speaker 12: really hard to think of how to deliver a reliable
Speaker 12: business to your customers under those conditions. And so we're
Speaker 12: excited to really change the expectations for space companies where
Speaker 12: you have this always on, reliable and frankly dynamic satellite
Speaker 12: connectivity that you would expect of your power grade or
Speaker 12: of your cell phones. And so we think that this
Speaker 12: is a huge opportunity space and our first contribution into
Speaker 12: it is through shared infrastructure through phase or antennas, which
Speaker 12: offer a ten x improvement on availability for satellite operators,
Speaker 12: along with a lot of other exciting features of Phase raise.
Speaker 5: We explained earlier in the program like antenna arrays have
Speaker 5: not really been touched in since the nineteen sixties, but
Speaker 5: you know what they are. I mean, if you're ever
Speaker 5: lucky enough to drive past one and you kind of
Speaker 5: marvel still at the romance of space infrastructure. But I
Speaker 5: guess the point is is that for all of the
Speaker 5: expansion of constellation that's happening above our heads, you've got
Speaker 5: to have it. What is different about your antenna, Like,
Speaker 5: what is different about what you're offering?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean the model that we are aiming for
Speaker 12: is something that is scalable, as you all said, that
Speaker 12: can be deployed swiftly, that can be really responsive to
Speaker 12: changing needs, that can be placed in more dynamic locations.
Speaker 12: So you know, we're envisioning a system where you could
Speaker 12: be on a rooftop, or it could be in a
Speaker 12: parking lot, or it could be you know, in some
Speaker 12: austere location. This first demo that we did, it was
Speaker 12: deployed in six hours. That was our very first time
Speaker 12: bringing it out into the field. So we're excited to
Speaker 12: bring that time down even further. We built our very
Speaker 12: first system in four months, so we're looking to you know,
Speaker 12: bring that time frame down even further.
Speaker 4: As well.
Speaker 12: And so you know, when you think about cell tower
Speaker 12: infrastructure and that expansion globally of infrastructure that enables the
Speaker 12: cellular industry, that's the kind of scale that we need
Speaker 12: for Space to accomplish all of these super exciting missions
Speaker 12: that have been talked about today and that we're seeing
Speaker 12: pop up day after day.
Speaker 3: Can you give us a sense of time frames how
Speaker 3: long it took from standing start to demo and how
Speaker 3: quickly from demo to getting it out there into the world.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So for North would we really prioritize bringing on
Speaker 12: the right people, the right parts, and the right processes.
Speaker 12: So we've focused on building a team of people that
Speaker 12: are exceptionally experienced in their respective field. We've sourced parts
Speaker 12: from different corners of different industries that are traditionally used
Speaker 12: within the aerospace sector, so we have kind of those
Speaker 12: timeline and cost advantages. And then in terms of processes,
Speaker 12: we're really focusing on a design for manufacturer methodology so
Speaker 12: that we can you know, build things swiftly, have things
Speaker 12: really consolidated into modular units, and just approach that differently.
Speaker 12: So for us, in our first iteration, you know, this
Speaker 12: was from the very beginnings of the design phase all
Speaker 12: the way through you know, sourcing those parts, assembling those parts,
Speaker 12: testing it, and then getting deployed. That was that four
Speaker 12: months timeframe. And frankly, if there weren't some personakeity board vendors,
Speaker 12: we could have been a lot faster.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we've got the hold up.
Speaker 3: Is it regularly you come from having experienced the government
Speaker 3: side before building the private side.
Speaker 4: What are some of the bug bez? Yeah?
Speaker 12: I mean I think uh, I think it's really the
Speaker 12: stuff that we're just trying to systematically embed in what
Speaker 12: we're doing, which is the method of engineering of being
Speaker 12: designed for manufacturer. We already had a ten x improvement
Speaker 12: on our assembly times based off of that first iteration
Speaker 12: that we've built. We already are able to improve that
Speaker 12: by tenx. And the parts that we're sourcing from, you know,
Speaker 12: our supply chain you know to date fully us and
Speaker 12: it's a supply chain that is actually able to be
Speaker 12: really flexible in timeframes.
Speaker 5: And so your customers will be SpaceX and Amazon for defense.
Speaker 4: Well. The cool thing.
Speaker 12: About the ground segment, I would say, is kind of
Speaker 12: like the S and P five hundred of the space industry.
Speaker 12: If the market's going up like ground is going up
Speaker 12: because every satellite, every different spacecraft mission requires ground connectivity.
Speaker 12: So you know, whether it's a launch operator who's needing
Speaker 12: to have more flexible and responsive times or you know,
Speaker 12: different pad locations, or whether it's the satellite operators that
Speaker 12: are on board that are wanting to make sure that
Speaker 12: if there's you know, a schedule slip in a launch,
Speaker 12: that they can still make all of their contacts with
Speaker 12: this satellite that they've invested their blood, sweat and tears
Speaker 12: in and a lot of money for a lot of
Speaker 12: years to get up there. But I think you know,
Speaker 12: the responsive and dynamic space missions like you know, go
Speaker 12: col was just speaking about a moment ago in terms
Speaker 12: of going to different orbits, that's a really exciting space.
Speaker 12: I think comms use cases are a similarly very exciting applications,
Speaker 12: especially when you're wanting to have lower latency, greater availability
Speaker 12: and resiliency. So, I mean, I know that's kind of
Speaker 12: avoiding the answer, but it's kind of across the board.
Speaker 5: Well, you can be find back when you're ready with
Speaker 5: a big name customer. It's really good to see Bridget
Speaker 5: Menla Northward CEO, Thank you very much. Okay, how do
Speaker 5: I say this. Varda Space is a company which builds
Speaker 5: little spacecrafts that process pharmaceutical materials in orbit and then
Speaker 5: bring them back down to Earth. But it needs rockets
Speaker 5: to get them there and then get them back. Let's
Speaker 5: try and work out how it works with the company's
Speaker 5: CEO and co founder, Will Brewie. That's a pretty good summary.
Speaker 13: Not bad, actually almost as good as I would have said. Yeah,
Speaker 13: absolutely love it.
Speaker 5: One thing real quick, you are a customer of rocket
Speaker 5: Lab where we are. If it's actually not right forward,
Speaker 5: is that because they are not your launch provider.
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 5: But take it from there please and explain what it
Speaker 5: is that you do, not on Earth but in space.
Speaker 13: Sure, So we make pharmaceuticals in orbit because the lack
Speaker 13: of gravity allows you to make new drug formulations that
Speaker 13: wouldn't otherwise be possible on Earth in Earth's gravity. So
Speaker 13: we build the manufacturing systems to make those pharmaceuticals and
Speaker 13: the re entry vehicles to bring them from space to
Speaker 13: home to the patient.
Speaker 5: I failed chemistry in high school, and Caroline did very well.
Speaker 5: But the basic point is that it won't be stable
Speaker 5: on Earth, it will be stable in microgravity exactly.
Speaker 13: So I think of it as part of the manufacturing process.
Speaker 13: Just like temperature is part of the manufacturing process. Even
Speaker 13: though you change the temperature, the product remains the same.
Speaker 13: We use gravity to affect the manufacturing process in the
Speaker 13: same way.
Speaker 3: So many questions from there. Yeah, please, but firstly like
Speaker 3: how do you get them back?
Speaker 2: So we build our own re entry vehicle.
Speaker 13: So we are now the third company ever to produce
Speaker 13: a re entry vehicle to go from space to Earth.
Speaker 13: There's SpaceX, Boeing, and now little old Varda one hundred
Speaker 13: and three people the third to ever do it. Yeah,
Speaker 13: so we build those vehicles, they come and hit the
Speaker 13: atmosphere mark twenty five.
Speaker 5: But it's not.
Speaker 3: For example, when we watch the re entry of SpaceX,
Speaker 3: they land in a specific place. You need a broad
Speaker 3: land mass to be able to put it back in exactly.
Speaker 13: So in the near term we have a unguided vehicle,
Speaker 13: which means the area that we need is much larger.
Speaker 13: But we want to bring those dispersion areas closer and
Speaker 13: closer to eventually get to a football field size.
Speaker 5: Well, this is very exciting, and you're very nice. I
Speaker 5: think it's probably very difficult what you're trying to do.
Speaker 5: Could you explain the complexity the re entry vehicle getting
Speaker 5: it even into this area. I think that you guys
Speaker 5: are trying to land in certain area the size of
Speaker 5: Maryland or something like that.
Speaker 13: Oh, a little bit smaller than Maryland. But yeah, it's
Speaker 13: actually relatively simple. It's not trivial though. Re Entering the
Speaker 13: Earth's atmosphere has been done before. We're just doing it
Speaker 13: in a new way for the specific use case of
Speaker 13: bringing pharmaceuticals home to patients. So it's a technology we've
Speaker 13: developed over the last few years.
Speaker 3: Where in the world are you managing to find the
Speaker 3: space to land it? Like, are you doing it here
Speaker 3: in America or there? The size that you need to
Speaker 3: be able to put the re entry is that we're broad.
Speaker 13: So our first re entry earlier this year, that occurred
Speaker 13: in Utah, so there's a nice open area there, and
Speaker 13: the next one's occurring in Australia. We're looking at opening
Speaker 13: up a landing site in New Mexico. So you'll see
Speaker 13: that re entry is going to become as common as launch.
Speaker 13: And so we're laying the infrastructure and building the systems
Speaker 13: for that.
Speaker 5: Okay, the capsules over my right shoulder, okay, and so
Speaker 5: let's go to the relationship with rocket Lab. Rocket Lab
Speaker 5: is a launch provider, but actually the majority of its
Speaker 5: revenues come from other services, So explain the work you
Speaker 5: do with them, because they don't actually take you to
Speaker 5: all bit that's right.
Speaker 13: So you heard much as I say it earlier, there's
Speaker 13: applications once you get to space. That's really just opening
Speaker 13: up the tip of the iceberg of what you can
Speaker 13: do once you get to space. So you can see
Speaker 13: this whole ecosystem developing, and you get an exponential growth
Speaker 13: right now because easier access to space means more demand
Speaker 13: for space, and that's the definition of an exponential growth function.
Speaker 13: So if you think about someone like Varda, who is
Speaker 13: only possible now because access to space is cheaper and easier,
Speaker 13: we're demanding more access to space, and so you can
Speaker 13: see the whole ecosystem come together to make these pharmaceuticals
Speaker 13: in orbit. So SpaceX is our launch provider. Rocket Lab
Speaker 13: sells us a bus to do power comms and things
Speaker 13: like that, and then Varda is the re entry vehicle
Speaker 13: that has both a pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment inside. So we
Speaker 13: did a drug called ratanavier on our first mission, and
Speaker 13: then we do the re entry of that vehicle.
Speaker 5: So it's team sport.
Speaker 3: We've got sixty seconds. That team sport depends on regulation.
Speaker 3: Approval for companies like SpaceX and they've just had a
Speaker 3: knock back.
Speaker 5: Is that an issue regulation?
Speaker 13: So what I tell the team is, anytime you're doing
Speaker 13: something that's never been done before, like we've never done
Speaker 13: this before. Humans have never done this before, So of
Speaker 13: course you're going to need to push regulations along the way.
Speaker 2: They're not going.
Speaker 13: Regulators are not the tip of the iceberg from technology perspective,
Speaker 13: so as the industry matures, so will regulation. So I
Speaker 13: wrote an op ed last week about very pacific standards
Speaker 13: that we can start to put in the FA review
Speaker 13: process to make it cheaper and easier for without reducing
Speaker 13: safety for FA analysts to check work.
Speaker 3: All eyes on the FAA and SpaceX today. In terms
Speaker 3: of the news, Will Bruy great to have some time
Speaker 3: with you, co founder and CEO of Vada Space Now.
Speaker 3: Can't believe it yea flew by part. What an amazing
Speaker 3: show for Bloomberg Technology to be here at rocket Lab.
Speaker 5: This one is you do want to recap find the podcast.
Speaker 5: It is prime for lift off on Apple, Spotify, and
Speaker 5: iHeart from Long Beach, California, and All the Part is
Speaker 5: a special edition in Space and Defense of Bloomberg Technology