Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Would you start by just giving Blue Origins perspective on
Speaker 2: why New Glen three is so important.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole purpose of our company is to
Speaker 1: build a foundation to lower the cost of space, you know,
Speaker 1: so that we can benefit this planet and get millions
Speaker 1: of people working in space. And one of the absolute
Speaker 1: keys to that is reusability. You know, you don't throw
Speaker 1: away an airplane every time you fly it. And so
Speaker 1: the booster that we'll be flying hopefully tomorrow is the
Speaker 1: one we flew on our last flight. We've refurbished it
Speaker 1: and we'll be able to launch it again, the booster
Speaker 1: again and land it and then we'll just rinse and repeat.
Speaker 3: So it's a big milestone.
Speaker 1: For us to show that a refurbished booster can go
Speaker 1: through the same intensity of a launch and a landing
Speaker 1: and be able to do that.
Speaker 3: These are very large machines.
Speaker 1: This is the this is the largest thing that's ever
Speaker 1: gotten into orbit and and and landed.
Speaker 3: On Earth.
Speaker 1: And so so we're kind of cutting new ground here.
Speaker 1: But you know, team's confident and we're looking forward to tomorrow.
Speaker 2: The world was watching when when New Glen two went
Speaker 2: in November give give some insight into the engineering that
Speaker 2: goes on between the two missions. There will be some
Speaker 2: data that would have informed strategy from New Glen to
Speaker 2: Did you have to make some changes on the engineering
Speaker 2: side or was this just a refurbishment focus.
Speaker 1: It was mostly refurbishment, you know, the flight for there's
Speaker 1: little things on the edges. We've updated some software, We've
Speaker 1: done a few other things, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: the second mission was incredibly incredibly clean.
Speaker 3: You know, the data review after that was we we.
Speaker 1: Learned a lot, but most of it was inside the
Speaker 1: box that we knew and so we could make minor
Speaker 1: tweaks and kind of kind of do this.
Speaker 3: There's the refurbishing campaign.
Speaker 1: There's things that we learned earned you know, some of
Speaker 1: the places where we have we have parts of the
Speaker 1: booster that have thermal protection on them, and we've we've
Speaker 1: adjusted where we put that thermal protection. We've changed some
Speaker 1: materials that are a little more blative and and but
Speaker 1: beyond that, it was kind of pretty straight ahead.
Speaker 3: Between kind of two and two and three.
Speaker 1: We did a much deeper inspection of the booster than
Speaker 1: we normally will do ongoing because it was our first
Speaker 1: one and we just really wanted to understand what were
Speaker 1: the stresses and loads on the vehicle. But we're ready
Speaker 1: to go, and it looks it looks, it looks clean
Speaker 1: and ready to go.
Speaker 2: Dave introduced New Glenn to the world. You know, for
Speaker 2: those that aren't familiar with the launch stack, maybe even
Speaker 2: not even with the company, you know, what do they
Speaker 2: need to know about this system and what its big
Speaker 2: picture goals are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as I said, the mission of the company is
Speaker 1: to build infrastructure to get things to space at much
Speaker 1: lower cost. And when you want to have lower cost,
Speaker 1: I mentioned the first thing you need reusability. If you're
Speaker 1: throwing away a rocket every time, you're just never going
Speaker 1: to get the cost. And when I talk about lowering
Speaker 1: the cost, we think of it as how much how
Speaker 1: many dollars does it take to get a kilogram of
Speaker 1: payload to orbit the rocket? You know, it can be reused,
Speaker 1: but it's not benefiting a customer. It's not getting anything
Speaker 1: to orbit it in itself. It's the payload that's on
Speaker 1: the top of the rocket. And so reusability helps a lot.
Speaker 1: And for that you have to build. You have to
Speaker 1: get the cost down on the rockets themselves. The second stages,
Speaker 1: but you also have to build engines that can be
Speaker 1: used over and over again, and again the airline analogy
Speaker 1: is probably the right one there. And then I think
Speaker 1: the second thing that's super important about this is you
Speaker 1: want to throw a lot of mass to orbit, and
Speaker 1: to do that, rockets want to be much much larger
Speaker 1: than they have been in the past. So a new
Speaker 1: Glen which you've seen being built behind me, the current version,
Speaker 1: which has seven engines in the booster and two engines
Speaker 1: in the upper stage, it can take forty five metric
Speaker 1: tons to lower Earth orbit in a seven meter fairing.
Speaker 1: So that's just it's about double what the rockets that
Speaker 1: are out there today are doing in terms of throwaway
Speaker 1: to LEO. And then if you look forward, we have
Speaker 1: a next generation vehicle that we're currently building now that'll
Speaker 1: be ready late next year probably is it has nine
Speaker 1: engines on the main stage, it has four engines on
Speaker 1: the second stage, and it has an eight point seven
Speaker 1: meter fairing the part where the payload goes, and that
Speaker 1: will be able to throw seventy metric tons to lower
Speaker 1: Earth orbit. So you can see as the scale of
Speaker 1: this goes up, the rocket doesn't linearly scale in cost
Speaker 1: and it has reusability, and then you're starting to get
Speaker 1: to the overall mission, which is to dramatically take an
Speaker 1: order of magnitude off the cost of payload to orbit.
Speaker 2: What is that current dollar per kilogram?
Speaker 3: Dave?
Speaker 1: You know, it varies depends on the orbits that you're at,
Speaker 1: but it's measured in thou thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3: Of kilogram today, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at a Falcon nine, I
Speaker 1: think they're pretty public and they're pricing it's thousands of dollars,
Speaker 1: and I think you want to in What we want
Speaker 1: to do is take an order of magnitude off of that.
Speaker 3: Someday maybe two orders of magnitude. That's That's a way
Speaker 3: is in the future.
Speaker 1: But I think in my span in this career, in
Speaker 1: this career, if I was able to take a zero
Speaker 1: off that and the team were able to take a
Speaker 1: zero off, that I would I considered a huge victory
Speaker 1: for not only Blue but for the planet itself.
Speaker 2: Success for New Glen three is putting a customer payload
Speaker 2: into orbit, right, and it is having that first or
Speaker 2: primary stage land back on Earth and so thus can
Speaker 2: become reusable. But I think what people really are trying
Speaker 2: to understand is jumping from November from New Glen two
Speaker 2: to today, how a successful mission changes the cadence of
Speaker 2: launch for Blue Origin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again you describe the mission goals exactly right.
Speaker 1: We want to we want to customer in this case
Speaker 1: ast to get their payload right on the spot that
Speaker 1: we're telling them to get it, which is in a LEO.
Speaker 3: Orbit, a circular orbit.
Speaker 1: And then we want to land the booster and so
Speaker 1: we can bring it back and recycle again. But the
Speaker 1: real thing to get to caves and is to build
Speaker 1: the machine that makes the machine. So I think I
Speaker 1: talked to you about this back when I was living
Speaker 1: my first thirty years of my life in consumer electronics.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to build a prototype of consumer electronics.
Speaker 3: To build a machine that makes ten million.
Speaker 1: Of them a month or twenty million of a month,
Speaker 1: that is a very hard problem. That you have to
Speaker 1: build the factory and build the software that builds the factory.
Speaker 1: And same thing is true if we want to get
Speaker 1: to a point where we fly once a week or
Speaker 1: twice a week, and that is our aspiration is we
Speaker 1: have to build the factories that can that can turn
Speaker 1: out the second stages. That's what you see being built
Speaker 1: over my shoulder here, And so you think about what
Speaker 1: rate you have to do.
Speaker 3: So if we want to fly once a week, we
Speaker 3: have to build fifty two of.
Speaker 1: Those things down there. And these are not small objects.
Speaker 1: These are large objects. So you have to think about robotics, automation,
Speaker 1: You have to think about supply chain and simplifying your
Speaker 1: designs such that that is manufacturable. And aerospace rockets weren't
Speaker 1: dramatically different forty years ago. They just were being made
Speaker 1: at very very slow cadence. You know, you might make
Speaker 1: one a year or one every two years, whereas we
Speaker 1: want to make you know, one of these every week
Speaker 1: and even more than that over time. And that's the
Speaker 1: challenge is we think about scaling the cadence.
Speaker 2: Dave, how many times are you modeling for New Glenn
Speaker 2: to fly in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it'd be a really good year.
Speaker 1: If we could do you know, eight to twelve flights
Speaker 1: this year, up from two last year, that would be
Speaker 1: you know, that'd be a good cadence for us.
Speaker 3: I can see a path that we have plenty of
Speaker 3: hardware to do that. It really is what we learn.
Speaker 1: From I would tell you that there's never been a
Speaker 1: time where launch is in such demand. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I think the demand's going up with all these directed
Speaker 1: device announcements. Amazon made one obviously, other ast is doing
Speaker 1: directive device and these mega constellations. We have our own constellation.
Speaker 1: We announced with Tero Wave that I, if I could
Speaker 1: fly a rocket every week right now, I would be
Speaker 1: sold out for the indefinite future. And so our job
Speaker 1: is to get out there, get as fast a cadence
Speaker 1: as we can, as quickly as possible. And the foundation
Speaker 1: of that, again is just to build a world class
Speaker 1: manufacturing business.
Speaker 3: And you know, that's something I've done.
Speaker 1: For a long time, and the team's done for a
Speaker 1: long time, and I think we're on the right path.
Speaker 1: We still have ways to go, but I'm excited about
Speaker 1: the progress.
Speaker 2: The world became familiar with Blue Origin through New Shepherd,
Speaker 2: the smaller form factor launch system, and the first focus
Speaker 2: of that was kind of spaced tourism, you know, going
Speaker 2: to a pretty low altitude relatively speaking, for a few
Speaker 2: minutes of weightlessness. And you know, of course I was
Speaker 2: in Van Horn, Texas when Jeff Bezos himself went up
Speaker 2: but you took the decision to halt that program in
Speaker 2: large part to focus on Blues participation in getting America
Speaker 2: back to the Moon. And so you know, in the
Speaker 2: first instance, Dave, what has the result of that decision been.
Speaker 2: Have you been able to accelerate that other program, the
Speaker 2: lunar program? How have you moved and reassigned resource and
Speaker 2: people to fulfill that ambition?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we were able to fly ninety eight
Speaker 1: people above the Carmen line. I've never seen so many
Speaker 1: smiles on every astronaut that we were able to.
Speaker 3: Do that for.
Speaker 1: And I think if you had to make the decision
Speaker 1: to put New Shepherd on pause, we put on pause
Speaker 1: for at least two years. With your heart, it would
Speaker 1: have been a very hard decision because you see the
Speaker 1: you saw it when you.
Speaker 3: Saw Jeff fly.
Speaker 1: Every customer is the happiest customer you've ever seen. But
Speaker 1: when you make it, when you make that decision with
Speaker 1: your head, it was probably one of the simpler business
Speaker 1: decisions that I and Jeff have ever made, because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so passionate about getting the US back to the Moon,
Speaker 1: as is Jeff. It's you know, I don't think the
Speaker 1: country wants another Sputnik moment. We have been saying it
Speaker 1: blue for twenty plus years that the Moon is this
Speaker 1: incredible gift.
Speaker 3: Given to us.
Speaker 1: You know, it's three days away, It's got all the
Speaker 1: resources that we'll ever need right there, at least for
Speaker 1: the foreseeable millennium ahead of us, and.
Speaker 3: We know how to get there.
Speaker 1: And so what we've done is, as you said, we've
Speaker 1: repurposed those those very talented people that have worked on
Speaker 1: New Shepherd. They're unbelievable engineers, and we've moved them into
Speaker 1: our lunar efforts. They're already up and running. I already
Speaker 1: see it curial changes and the cadence. We just brought
Speaker 1: our Mark one lander back from being cryo tested, and
Speaker 1: it's now back here at the Cape. We'll finish up
Speaker 1: testing and I think we have a very good chance
Speaker 1: of landing the largest thing that's ever landed on the
Speaker 1: Moon in the second half of this year, and then
Speaker 1: you know, we'll see what NASA says. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: about Jared's new plans and if he wants to help,
Speaker 1: we are ready to go. So we have a huge
Speaker 1: lunar plant just across the street here, and we want
Speaker 1: to build as many landers as the US wants.
Speaker 2: You know that the imagination of the nation was captured
Speaker 2: by Artemis too, but I still think it's always worth
Speaker 2: going back to basics. So Blue is working on a
Speaker 2: lunar lander. Could you just explain the technology and I
Speaker 2: guess the engineering and physics and how you think it
Speaker 2: will get to the Moon's surface, so that everyday people,
Speaker 2: all the most sophisticated investors who are desperate to back
Speaker 2: the commercial space industry understand how.
Speaker 3: Yeah we have.
Speaker 1: I think of it as we have two product lines
Speaker 1: of lunar landers. I know that sounds amazing, but the
Speaker 1: first one is our Mark one lander, and it's, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's going to be the largest thing that's
Speaker 1: ever landed on the Moon.
Speaker 3: It's almost two x the.
Speaker 1: Size of the Apollo limb and it can take three
Speaker 1: metric tons, and over time, I think we might get
Speaker 1: got more cargo of cargo to the lunar surface. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that we need to do over
Speaker 1: the next three to four years, and I think NASA
Speaker 1: just laid that out in their plan, is we need
Speaker 1: to kind of swarm the Moon with lots of experiments
Speaker 1: and cargo and to try to build the basis for
Speaker 1: a moon base, and so Mark one is really efficient
Speaker 1: on that. It takes one reusable launch of new glan
Speaker 1: to throw that to the Moon, so you don't there's
Speaker 1: no refueling. It's got a single B seven engine which
Speaker 1: runs on hydrogen and oxygen, and it's very efficient path
Speaker 1: to the Moon, and so we can just lob those
Speaker 1: off to the Moon over simplifying obviously there's a lot
Speaker 1: of orbital dynamics to that and get a lot of
Speaker 1: cargo to the Moon. And then we have under our
Speaker 1: HLS contract with NASA, we are building a human capable lander.
Speaker 1: It's again twice as big as the Mark one, and
Speaker 1: that's our Mark I lander, and that has the ability
Speaker 1: to bring astronauts down to the lunar surface and not
Speaker 1: only put them there, but have them loiter there for
Speaker 1: thirty plus days. And so it's an important nuance about
Speaker 1: the line of business that we call our lunar line
Speaker 1: of business. We actually call it lunar permanence. We don't
Speaker 1: want to just go to the Moon and come back again.
Speaker 1: That will be the path to get there over time,
Speaker 1: but what we want to do is establish a permanence
Speaker 1: on the Moon, and we've had that group named that
Speaker 1: for four years because we think, again, it's such a
Speaker 1: good gateway to the rest of the Solar System.
Speaker 2: This was a part of the original thesis of Blue
Speaker 2: right that Jeff had the idea that there is opportunity
Speaker 2: and commodity in space that the human race can take
Speaker 2: advantage of.
Speaker 3: David, the Moon's been being you know, pummeled by asteroids
Speaker 3: for four and a half billion years, and unlike the Earth,
Speaker 3: it doesn't have running water to erode all that away.
Speaker 1: And so with you know, every known element is likely
Speaker 1: on the Moon at at our fingertips to be able
Speaker 1: to build heavy industry in orbit and out on the Moon,
Speaker 1: and then we can reduce the amount of heavy industry
Speaker 1: here on Earth.
Speaker 2: I should ask you, Dave, you know, myself and my
Speaker 2: colleague Lorin crush a broker's story that you know, in
Speaker 2: future stages of the Artemis program. There are basically two
Speaker 2: proposals on NASA's desk. One is from SpaceX and the
Speaker 2: other is from Blue And what they're trying to work
Speaker 2: out is the best method to get the Orion spacecraft
Speaker 2: developed principally by Lockheed Martin from low Earth orbit to
Speaker 2: a lunar orbit. And part of what we reported is
Speaker 2: SpaceX's Starship is one example, would basically go nose to
Speaker 2: nose whether Ryan and push it to the moon. That's
Speaker 2: a stage that's somewhere in between what you and I
Speaker 2: have discussed thus far. But could you say anything about
Speaker 2: blues proposal and how you feel you can fit into
Speaker 2: the current artomis architecture for Automis three four and five,
Speaker 2: and what the current status of the program is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good reporting on your own behalf, first of all,
Speaker 1: But I would say that I won't give too much
Speaker 1: away because I think it's That's not because I'm being
Speaker 1: cag I just think it's for NASA to decide and
Speaker 1: when they want to announce if they choose to work
Speaker 1: with Blue. Here, you know, we're obviously very hopeful and
Speaker 1: we want to help. I can tell you that none,
Speaker 1: I love our architecture. I think it closes very well.
Speaker 1: I think it's extremely affordable in lunar terms, so I
Speaker 1: think I think it will benefit us tax bearers. But
Speaker 1: I also I can all to tell you that none,
Speaker 1: none of our architecture requires of us pushing a Ryan
Speaker 1: to the moon.
Speaker 2: So understood and Dave. When you and I first started talking,
Speaker 2: you were the Devices and Services chief at Amazon, a job,
Speaker 2: I suppose, in the first instance, very much focused on
Speaker 2: what's happening here on Earth. But what's the experience been
Speaker 2: like going into commercial space? Was there some very clear
Speaker 2: similarities between those lines of works, you know, I guess
Speaker 2: are on the electronic side super interesting? Or if you
Speaker 2: sort of gone about this with a clean slate, I
Speaker 2: think it'd be really useful to reflect on the time
Speaker 2: so far and what you've learned along the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm about two years into this, and the first
Speaker 1: thing I would tell you is that I probably didn't
Speaker 1: realize it before I took it, But it's it's it
Speaker 1: is a dream job.
Speaker 3: You know. I get to wake up. It's a hard job,
Speaker 3: but I get to wake.
Speaker 1: Up every morning, and I have this unbelievable team of people,
Speaker 1: and we get to make rockets for a living and
Speaker 1: lunar landers and satellites, you know. So it's I often
Speaker 1: used to say, you know, I had the world's biggest
Speaker 1: Lego set.
Speaker 3: Now I really do have the world's biggest Lego.
Speaker 1: Set, and and it's so much fun, fun to play
Speaker 1: with it, and and kind of invent new things. So
Speaker 1: that's that's been just such a pleasant surprise. Also, the
Speaker 1: missionary nature of the team here at Blue has been
Speaker 1: such a pleasant surprise.
Speaker 3: People are here because.
Speaker 1: They love space, they want to make the Earth a
Speaker 1: better place to live, and they want to move pluting
Speaker 1: industry into space. And that's just to a tea to
Speaker 1: all our employees, all ten thousand plus of them.
Speaker 3: It's just amazing to see.
Speaker 1: I would say the biggest similarity to what I you know,
Speaker 1: I spent thirty years in consumer electronics, starting at Apple
Speaker 1: and as you said, ending at Amazon, is that, even
Speaker 1: though these things are a thousand times larger than what
Speaker 1: I'm used to, manufacturing the basics of building a manufacturing
Speaker 1: plant and building it to work very efficiently, and how
Speaker 1: you build a product to make it manufacturable, those have
Speaker 1: transferred better than I would have guessed. Actually, So I
Speaker 1: think that's the you know, I'm still coming up to
Speaker 1: speed on becoming at least a toddler in terms of aerospace.
Speaker 1: Jeff has forgotten more than I will ever know, probably,
Speaker 1: but I do think I can bring a good amount
Speaker 1: of transferable expertise on how to make these lines run,
Speaker 1: how to make the supply chain work better and we're
Speaker 1: already starting to see huge benefits of that. And I
Speaker 1: think it's just the velocity of our learning curve is
Speaker 1: just getting better.
Speaker 2: Dave, I want to ask you very quickly, I guess
Speaker 2: as a case study, space based internet, you know, call
Speaker 2: it connectivity. But you know, AST is clearly an important customer.
Speaker 2: SpaceX has its Starlin coffering, Amazon has its own offering.
Speaker 2: You know that seems to be pushing a lot of
Speaker 2: momentum towards or I guess motivation to increase launch cadence.
Speaker 2: How is that playing out on your desk?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think that people would have.
Speaker 1: Ten years ago, people would have really said, our reusable
Speaker 1: rocket's going to happen at these frequencies.
Speaker 3: They were to poop poo that, and people would have
Speaker 3: pooh pooed that. You know, in the.
Speaker 1: Seattle area, between Amazon, Leo and Starlink, both their manufacturing
Speaker 1: plants are there, and we're based there as well. I'm
Speaker 1: in Florida right now, but we have a manufacturing plant
Speaker 1: there as well. That more satellites are being made per
Speaker 1: day in the satellite era in the Seattle area than
Speaker 1: we're built per year.
Speaker 3: A decade ago. So's the you know, that's the.
Speaker 1: Amazing thing that's happening in the space industry as we
Speaker 1: start thinking about building things at much higher rates. And
Speaker 1: what when you get the cost down and the cost
Speaker 1: of a Starling satellite or a LEO satellite, they're incredibly
Speaker 1: low cost. Then the economics of the these mega constellations
Speaker 1: because they don't look much different than terrestrial cell towers.
Speaker 1: And so if it's directed device, or it's broadband services
Speaker 1: or with terror away of what we're working on is
Speaker 1: enterprise back haul and very high speed data, it can
Speaker 1: it can compete against terrestrial things. And I think that's
Speaker 1: why you know you're hearing a lot more and Jeff
Speaker 1: started talking about it a year ago around data centers
Speaker 1: in space, that that crossover point is going to happen
Speaker 1: as well. And all that does is it just takes
Speaker 1: what is already a pretty limited launch market and just
Speaker 1: there's just a craving for more. So I feel that
Speaker 1: and we feel it blue that it's our responsibility to
Speaker 1: make sure that there's lots of alternatives with lots of
Speaker 1: capabilities to go up. And that just means building more
Speaker 1: infrastructure down here at the Cape. Because This is the
Speaker 1: best place to launch a rocket from, and we just
Speaker 1: need more infrastructure.