WEBVTT - Elon Musk Dominates Outer Space Like Nobody Has Before 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:15.720 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.239 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:24.560 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:28.320 We're very excited about this recording. It's a crossover episode 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.360 with Bloomberg's weekly Elon Inc. Podcasts, So we're all about 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.440 Elon today. And to get into that, Tracy, do you 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.080 remember our interview with the Ukraine post CEO. 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.919 Yes, I do, Igor Smolensky. That was a really interesting 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:45.440 episode for a variety of reasons. One because I just 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:48.479 really enjoy talking about logistics. But secondly, one of the 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:50.440 things that stood out to both of us, I think 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:54.000 from that conversation was when he was talking about how 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:58.279 they're using Starlink in Ukraine and also the idea that, 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:00.560 you know, if they were ever to he designed the 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:04.160 postal service from scratch, they would avoid traditional Internet and 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:05.520 just use all starlink. 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:09.959 No, that was like a very eye opening moment for me, 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.400 and I feel like when it comes to Elon Musk 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.200 obviously it feels like, I don't know, forty percent of 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.960 the attention on him is related to Tesla, another forty 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:24.560 precent is Twitter or x and then we're aware that 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.080 there's like a bunch of all these other companies like 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:31.840 Neuralink and Grock and SpaceX. But SpaceX and Starlink. That's 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.760 a huge deal because my understanding or my sense is 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:37.280 that like he is just dominating the skies. 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:39.880 Yeah, and that's kind of the cool business as well. Right, 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:41.959 it's really cools like rockets that. 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:43.200 Can be reused. 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:45.920 If you ever see the satellites launching into the sky, 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:50.040 the Starlink ones, they're really beautiful. Satellite internet is really 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:52.280 interesting to me, partly because of when I was in 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:54.520 Hong Kong. Yeah, and you know, they had the really 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:57.240 strict COVID rules and they would basically send you to 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.640 a government facility that was extremely limited. If you came 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.680 down with COVID, you had to have satellite internet in 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.120 there because there was no government internet. So you had 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.160 to get a little box and bring it with you 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:09.680 if you were spending like three or. 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:11.320 Four you get it. Wait, you didn't. You never had 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:11.560 to go. 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:12.040 I didn't. 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.080 I know a lot of people who did. 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:15.520 And they had to bring their own box. 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:18.240 Yeah, because otherwise there was either no internet or it 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:18.960 was so poor. 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:20.760 The effectively there was no internet. 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:25.080 I had not realized that element, but it is pretty wild. Like, Okay, 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:29.480 here's one company and it just totally dominates satellite communication. 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:33.600 I know, it dominates rocket launches. And historically space was 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.360 the domain of governments, right, space was the domain of 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.720 the military of any government, and or NASA or the 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:43.160 NASA equivalent. And now we're in this world where there's 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:48.360 one individual and basically one company that is just completely 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:51.359 dominating space. And like I said, you know, I think 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:54.160 people talk about Tesla and they talk about Twitter, but 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.359 I feel like SpaceX deserves more attention and I want 0:02:57.400 --> 0:02:58.400 to learn more about SpaceX. 0:02:58.440 --> 0:02:58.520 No. 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.040 Absolutely, this is something I hadn't really i guess, internalized 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:05.359 until recently. But the degree to which NASA basically opened 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:10.200 up space to private companies is kind of remarkable compared 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:12.480 to the way it was in the past. So absolutely, 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:14.160 I think this is something we should talk about. 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:14.480 Right. 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:18.360 So, we've wanted to do a space slash SpaceX slash 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.320 Starlink episode for a while to like really understand this 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:27.200 company and how it fits into the broader elon Musk Empire. 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:29.640 So I'm very excited to say today we have a 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:33.360 bunch of perfect guests. They are all are colleagues at Bloomberg. 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.200 But first up we're going to be speaking with Ashley Vance, 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:38.760 who reports on all kinds of cool tech stuff for 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:41.240 us here at Bloomberg, sort of like the future cutting 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.000 edge pieces. Every time Ashley writes an article, it's just 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.400 about some crazy, mad scientist, usually out in the Bay 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.760 Area doing anything wild. He's written a biography of Elon Musk, 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:53.160 and his more recent book is called When the Heavens 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.560 Went On Sale The Misfits and Geniuses racing to put 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:00.160 Space within reach. So the perfect guest to talk space. So, 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:02.480 Ashley Vance, thank you so much for coming on. 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:04.360 O Locked, thank you for having me. 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:08.640 I'm aware that SpaceX exists, that it's in the business 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.160 of private rockets and satellites and all that stuff, But like, 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.080 how big is SpaceX, or maybe how far ahead is 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:17.760 SpaceX versus the competition? 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.440 Well, yeah, quite far, you know. I always think of 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:25.440 this as one of the most unlikely business stories there is. 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.800 SpaceX started roughly twenty years ago. Nobody, you know, had 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.720 really proven anything out as far as being a commercial 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.080 rocket company or satellite company in a meaningful way. Before 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.640 it was all governments that a handful of governments that 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:43.520 dominated this business. And if you fast forward now twenty 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:47.880 years later, SpaceX. Last year, for example, they put up 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:53.000 about fifty percent of the world's rockets and probably close 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.240 to around eighty percent of the world satellites. So that's 0:04:56.279 --> 0:05:00.680 SpaceX versus the entire world. That's SpaceX versus China, Russia, India, 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:03.640 et cetera. And if you look at this year so far, 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:07.880 they've put up about ninety percent of the amount of 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:10.640 stuff that's gone into space this year has been put 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.760 up by SpaceX. So they basically revived the United States 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:18.520 space program. We'd fallen behind a number of countries that 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:20.640 looked like China was going to take this thing over, 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:24.360 and now SpaceX is the clear winner of the space 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:25.320 economy so far. 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.440 I have a embarrassing question, but what's the difference between 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:30.799 SpaceX and Starlink. 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:31.920 Oh that's a good one. 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.520 Yeah, well, okay, so there's different pieces here. Traditionally, most 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.640 companies you've sort of divided either you were a rocket 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:42.600 company or you were a satellite company. SpaceX has become 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:46.600 the dominant player in both, and Starlink fits into that picture. 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:51.280 So Starlink is a satellite communications service. SpaceX puts up 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.719 thousands of satellites around the Earth. They're always surrounding the Earth. 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.480 They're beaming down high speed Internet, and so it's really 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:02.040 designed for places where like half the world today cannot 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:05.360 be reached by fiber optic cables because it's too hard 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:07.600 or expensive to put them in the ground. So that's 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:09.599 a lot of people. That's four billion people that cannot 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.479 get high speed internet today. And if you buy a 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:16.680 SpaceX antenna, it's like a little basketball sized thing and 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:19.599 you stick it at your house. You then pull down 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.599 this high speed Internet delivered from space. And so SpaceX 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:26.680 is dominant in rockets that it is really dominant in satellites. 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:28.640 If I could give you one more data point, just 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.919 to like put this in perspective. So from like nineteen 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:35.520 fifty until about twenty twenty, all of the world we 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.920 had two thousand, five hundred satellites surrounding the Earth. That's 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:44.080 what we've done in all those decades, from twenty twenty 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.080 to today, that we've gone from two thousand, five hundred 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.960 satellites to about twelve thousand surrounding the Earth, and the 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:55.479 vast majority of those now are SpaceX satellites. That's why 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:56.679 there's that huge jump. 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:57.719 Wow. 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.800 I feel like it dominates the nights guy amateur like 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:04.799 photography community as well. Do you ever see that online? 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:07.559 People talking about, like, what's this light in the sky? 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:10.040 I can't figure it out? And the answer is always Starlink. 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:12.360 It's always Starlink launching new things. 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:14.440 Well, I mean it's funny. So you know when they 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.160 do a Starlink launch, each rocket is filled with dozens 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.120 and dozens of satellites. Said, yeah, it's just cool phenomenon. 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.520 I mean, when they first come out of the rocket, 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.400 they're all kind of clumped together, and then over the 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:28.800 course of weeks they sort of slowly spread out, and 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:31.360 so now you can see that in the night sky. 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:34.840 It used to be a pretty rare thing, but over 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.800 the last two three years, people see this now all 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:38.280 the time. 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.240 So I used to do a little bit of on 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:44.400 air reporting for Bloomberg Rocketry, like when they would fire 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:46.800 up some of those SpaceX trials and then the rocket 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:48.760 would go up and then come down, and like, I'm 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.240 still pretty blown away when I see those relandings, Like 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:54.560 it still doesn't seem like that should be physically possible. 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:56.720 I know there are other competitors. You wrote a whole 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.720 book about them. Jeff Bezos has won. Some of the 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:02.080 people who used to work for SpaceX have launched their 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:05.040 own sitting aside the Nu Miracle gap. What is this 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:09.680 sort of technological gap right now between SpaceX and how 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:12.080 good it is with its reusable rockets and so forth, 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.640 and where the competition is technologically. 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:18.280 Yeah, I mean that's pretty dramatic too. So there used 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:20.680 to be there was a handful of government programs that 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.640 dominated space since the space race began. And none of 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.559 the government players do reusable rockets at all. So nothing 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:32.120 from Europe, nothing from Russia, India, Japan, any of that, 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:33.840 And so you have to kind of turn to the 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:37.280 commercial players that have popped up over the last ten 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.640 fifteen years. And so SpaceX has this dialed in as 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.520 we all know. You know, they've reused one rocket I 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:45.960 think as many as twenty times. And I wrote a 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.240 biography on Elon you know, that came out a few 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:50.280 years ago. When I was researching that book, all the 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:52.960 traditional players said this was going to be impossible and 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.400 it was wasted time and the math would never pencil out. 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:00.480 But clearly it has. After SpaceX, the second most successful 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.720 rocket company is Rocket Lab. It was started in New Zealand. 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:08.320 It's headquartered now in the United States. So SpaceX has 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:12.439 flown hundreds and hundreds of rockets. Rocket Labs flown about fifty. 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.760 And they have a much smaller, cheaper rocket, and they 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:20.120 have started to move towards parts of reasonable rocket and 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.720 they are building now a larger, fully reusable rocket that 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:26.280 they're hoping to fly next year. So they really are 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:30.679 the only current real rocket competitor to SpaceX, and they're 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:34.400 doing very well. They're starting to launch once every couple 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:34.840 of weeks. 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:35.160 You know. 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:38.280 The next step is the sort of last great hope 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:42.320 to really challenge SpaceX is Blue Origin, which has been 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.680 sort of like a sad tale for it was started 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:49.920 almost the same year as SpaceX and really hasn't done 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:52.080 that much. They do have a reasonable rocket for the 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:56.040 tourism flights where you go to space for about six minutes. 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.840 Blue Origin has never sent a satellite up. It's just 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.600 not been involved in sort of the commercial end of 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:05.120 the business. This year they think will be the first 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.840 time they send up their much larger rocket that can 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:12.200 take satellites. And Blue Origin is also focused on reusable rockets. 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:15.160 Wait, I have another basic question, which is, how do 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.960 reusable rockets actually work? And why did SpaceX decide to 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:21.920 go down that route, because, as you said, a lot 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.040 of people thought it was mathematically or physically impossible. 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.679 Yeah, I mean, there's this thought that there was sort 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:29.720 of a waste of time because the rockets, they go 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.599 through so much damage and pressure and violence during a 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:37.720 rocket launch that the idea of bringing this huge tube 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:42.080 back and it's still being usable again that seemed a 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:43.920 bit far fetched. And you have to deal with the 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:46.959 whole process of actually getting that too back instead of 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:50.000 falling into the ocean or burning up in the atmosphere. 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:53.719 And so SpaceX, you know, they developed this technique where 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:57.720 they have these landing legs actually on the big base 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:00.720 part of the rocket, and it comes back towards Earth 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:02.439 and it's sort of free falling, and then all of 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:06.199 a sudden, the engines kick back on again and they 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:08.920 slow it down and it just lands right back on 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.679 the pad where it took off from. There's a big 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:15.439 trade off in this, so the physics nobody has a 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:18.120 great advantage on the physics of rockets, and the physics 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.720 of rockets aren't that great When you have this giant 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.240 tube full of fuel. You know, it's a few percent 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:28.439 of the total weight of that rocket is the stuff 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.920 that you actually get to take to space. The vast 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:35.440 majority of it is fuel, and you have to use 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.000 some of your fuel to land the rocket. And so 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.360 people also thought that was a bad trade off to make. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.040 It's better just to take more stuff. 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.120 Didn't At one point, some people thought that rockets themselves 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.800 would be inherently impossible for that exact reason that just 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:50.760 like so much. 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:52.800 Of the weight would be the fuel. 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.319 And so some people just theorized that the idea of 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:57.200 rocket true would be inherently impossible. 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.000 Yeah, going way back, you know, the first rocket pioneers 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:03.240 were sort of like in the nineteen tens and twenties, 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:07.640 This guy Robert Goddard was the American pioneer in this field, 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.600 and he there's a pretty famous moment where he writes 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.400 an op ed for the New York Times talking about 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:15.680 flying a rocket to the moon, and he was just 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.280 pilloried as this wacko, you know, and that none of 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:22.360 this would ever happened and the physics don't make sense 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:24.560 at all, And so it took a while to sort 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.400 of get people to believe that these days, the way 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.240 it basically works is like the bigger you can make 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:33.720 a rocket, you start to get these advantages, and so 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:35.280 that's kind of what you want to do. But the 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:37.640 bigger you make a rocket, the more complicated it is, 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.000 the more engines it needs, it gets harder and harder. 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:44.160 And SpaceX is really the only one that has dialed 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:47.240 all this in, has the manufacturing processes to make all 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.840 this this math work. If you look at the government programs, 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.320 they don't really have an answer to what SpaceX is doing. 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:58.280 And these things take ten twenty thirty years to figure out. 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.959 How did we end up with a system where we 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:20.640 have you know, the government has a space program, NASA exists, 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:23.120 and then we have these private companies who are doing 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:28.080 or providing very important services for entities like NASA. It 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.079 seems like a weird kind of pseudo government private commercial 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:33.440 system that we ended up in. 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:35.800 Yeah, I mean, if I could riff for a second, 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.079 I've thought about this a lot. You know, there's an 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:43.760 economist named Alex McDonald. He works for NASA. He wrote 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.520 a really interesting book kind of on this topic. You know, 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:50.000 we were talking about these rocket pioneers in the nineteen 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:54.199 tens and twenties, the US had Robert Goddard. There was 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:57.280 a similar figure in Germany and Russia, and they were 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:00.640 all pursuing these kind of liquid fueled rockets, very similar 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.280 to what we use today. They were essentially startups. These 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.200 were researchers who got private money. Back in the day, 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.080 if you were really rich, the cool thing to do 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.400 was to build a giant telescope. That that's what like 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.800 rich guys used to used to put their money towards philanthropically, 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:19.320 and they started to do that to rockets. It was 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:21.720 kind of like everyone was interested in space and wanted 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:23.440 to prove this out, and so it looked like we 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.400 were kind of heading on this commercial path. I think 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:31.000 World War two spilling into the Cold War, where space 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:36.400 turned into this national sort of achievement, this point of pride, 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:40.000 this way to show your scientific prowess, you know, it 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.400 turned into a government effort. And the result of that 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.600 was that the rockets could not fail. We got on 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.840 this race obviously to send humans into space, and so 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:55.240 you have to build very expensive, infallible rockets, and this 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:58.160 is it was sort of like history that pushed us there. 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:01.760 But then we got stuck, you know, literally, rockets really 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:06.680 did not change from the nineteen sixties until SpaceX came along, 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.760 and so everybody got fixated that these rockets had to 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.720 be huge, costly expensive. They couldn't fail, it was embarrassing 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.080 if they did, and that was the ethos. And so 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:20.640 SpaceX came along. They were able to take more risk, 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.240 to make the rockets cheaper, to use modern technology, modern software, 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:26.680 and so they changed that equation. And it's only now 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:31.440 that we're in this weird world between government and commercial space. 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.840 I think, you know, we are leaving that era of 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:37.800 government space. I wrote my hope my new book was 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:39.920 called When the Heavens Went on Sale, because I think 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:43.720 this is completely becoming a commercial enterprise now. 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:46.560 It's still fascinating, this sort of like path dependency and 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.800 right like the sort of military over engineered. 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:51.200 It's about carrying people. 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.480 It's about that triumphalism and then the idea that okay, 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.239 that's what people think a rocket is. And then SpaceX 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.240 comes along and just rethinks it from the ground up 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:02.440 and sounds like I'm curious about the business. So, you know, 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.440 Tracy and I had a conversation on on Lots several 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:07.680 months ago, and we were actually talking to the guy 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:12.160 who runs Ukrainian postal service, and he was talking about how, 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.440 you know, thanks to Starlink specifically, if Ukrainie were able 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:19.960 to retake a village, they wouldn't rebuild the old internet infrastructure. 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.840 They could get Internet going in a day with satellite. 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.920 And it's sort of like very jarring because you realize, 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:30.440 you know, just what an incredible asset Elon is building up, 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:32.920 and so between SpaceX and starlink, I you know, I 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.360 know that like SpaceX will charge you or an individual 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.120 if you want to like get some space on one 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:40.960 of his rockets to fire up your own satellite. Obviously 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:44.800 Starlink subscribers pay I guess presumably some monthly fee. But 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.760 you know, where's this going in terms of the monetization 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:51.920 and business to have both the launching infrastructure and the 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:55.840 satellite infrastructure together, and what can be done with so 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:58.880 much physical material out in space owned by one company. 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:02.400 Yeah, well, I mean this has been SpaceX's huge advantage. 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.320 It has rivals trying to build this space internet. There's 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:08.840 one web which started as a sort of quasi US 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:12.800 and European venture. It's gone through bankruptcy in many twist 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:14.960 and turns, but It has tons of satellites, but it 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:18.080 lacks rockets, and it was actually hoping to fly on 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:20.760 a ton of Russian rockets. And when the Ukrainian War 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.160 broke out, they don't have access to these Russian rockets anymore, 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:26.600 and so they got sort of stock and SpaceX was 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.359 able to race ahead. Amazon is looking to build a 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:34.080 giant constellation. Jeff clearly has a rocket company, but he 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.880 doesn't have the rockets right now that can can send 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.199 all these satellites up. And so SpaceX is in this 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:43.600 unique position. There's trade offs, right. You can think of starlink. 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.440 I think of it as a it's really like the 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:51.840 first global Internet slash communications provider. As we all know, 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.560 telecoms tends to be a sort of nationalized thing. If 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:57.919 you're in the US, you're on whatever AT and T 0:17:58.119 --> 0:17:59.720 or Verizon. When you go to Europe you have to 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:00.760 switch to something else. 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:01.080 You know. 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:03.919 Being in space you get past all of that, and 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:07.160 so you become this global force. And that is how 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.119 they make their money is on these monthly subscriptions. I 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:12.720 have Starlink at a house in Mexico. I think it's 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:15.720 about sixty or seventy dollars a month. To get the service, 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:18.760 and so you've got consumers paying for that, You've got 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:21.439 some businesses paying for that, and yeah, so there's this 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.879 idea maybe you could avoid building a lot of infrastructure 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.159 on the ground. There is a trade off, Like space 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.200 Internet is almost definitely never going to be as fast 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.399 as fiber, and so if you're you know, if you're 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.439 in a country like the United States where we have 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:39.159 this huge land mass and we have the money to 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:41.200 lay all this fiber, you know, that is still going 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.840 to be in the backbone that most people use. But 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:49.080 in all these other circumstances, planes, cars, boats, also like 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:51.040 this idea. This is what I think about the most, 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:56.440 is this unified fabric of the Internet blanketing the earth, 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:59.479 so that no matter where you are, there's internet service. 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:03.720 All of our modern devices are working, things like autonomous 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:05.879 cars and drones and all this stuff that need to 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:08.160 be connected all the time. You know, I think SpaceX 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:10.840 right now is in the pole position to be that 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.120 sort of future backbone of all that. 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.440 You said something interesting earlier, you said, our last hope 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:21.040 for competition to SpaceX was Blue Origin, And. 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.959 That might have been dramatic, but they are the biggest 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.399 of just because Jeff has so much money. 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:29.520 To actually right well point taken. 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:32.159 But I do get the sense that there is a 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:36.960 desire to have more than one company that's doing this. 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:40.560 And I guess my question is why is that important? 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:43.800 Because when I think of natural monopolies, like, it's usually 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:48.800 something pretty important like infrastructure or rockets. In this case, 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.720 couldn't we have a world where one company is very 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.520 very good at building these and dominates like, what's the 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:55.320 trade off here? 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.280 Well, we do have a world like that at the moment, 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.760 and you know, we've already seen some I think there's 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:04.560 a bunch of reasons you would want multiple rocket companies, 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:08.639 particularly if you're the United States or China or Russia. 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:13.359 Clearly for political, military, strategic reasons. You don't want to 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.840 be dependent on one company for all kinds of reasons. 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:19.800 Something could go wrong, their rocket could stop working, they 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:21.840 could go out of business. You know, you want these 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:25.920 other paths to space. We've talked about how many satellites 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:28.080 are going up. I mean, this is the next I 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:30.359 think of it as them. You know, we spent the 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.879 last thirty years building out this internet infrastructure on Earth. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:36.680 We are now doing the exact same thing in space. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.640 It is going to be the next spot where we 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:42.919 build out our computing infrastructure, and you want lots of 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.640 access to that and ways to put these satellites up 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.720 replace them. And look, if we look at Ukraine, there's 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.520 a pretty good case you could make that Ukraine would 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:57.280 have fallen too Russia quite quickly without SpaceX. In the 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:01.000 early days of the war, all of theseites were providing 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:05.280 tons of imagery that aided the Ukrainian military. After that 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:10.879 SpaceX Starlink became this essential part of the Ukrainian military's infrastructure. 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:15.439