Natalya Bailey: Rocket Engines and Electric Spacecraft Propulsion

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Natalia Bailey,

00:00:02.840 | a rocket scientist and spacecraft propulsion engineer

00:00:06.000 | previously at MIT, and now the founder and CTO

00:00:09.540 | of Axion Systems, specializing in efficient

00:00:13.200 | space propulsion engines for satellites and spacecraft.

00:00:16.840 | So these are not the engines that get us

00:00:19.360 | from the ground on Earth out to space,

00:00:22.000 | but rather the engines that move us around in space

00:00:25.600 | once we get out there.

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00:00:51.320 | As a side note, let me say something about Natalia's story.

00:00:54.600 | She has talked about how when she was young,

00:00:57.240 | she would often look up at the stars

00:00:59.320 | and dream of alien intelligences

00:01:01.400 | that one day we could communicate with.

00:01:03.840 | This moment of childlike cosmic curiosity

00:01:06.520 | is at the core of my own interest in space

00:01:09.800 | and extraterrestrial life, and in general,

00:01:12.480 | in artificial intelligence, science, and engineering.

00:01:15.600 | Amid the meetings and the papers and the career rat race

00:01:19.320 | and all the awards, let's not let ourselves

00:01:22.360 | lose that childlike wonder.

00:01:24.680 | Sadly, we're on Earth for only a very short time.

00:01:27.680 | So let's have fun solving some of the biggest puzzles

00:01:30.040 | in the universe while we're here.

00:01:32.120 | If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,

00:01:34.520 | review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify,

00:01:37.560 | support it on Patreon, or connect with me

00:01:39.560 | on Twitter @LexFriedman.

00:01:41.820 | And now, here's my conversation with Natalia Bailey.

00:01:45.480 | You said that you spent your whole life

00:01:48.280 | dreaming about space and also pondering

00:01:50.820 | the big existential question of whether there is

00:01:54.120 | or isn't intelligent life,

00:01:56.740 | intelligent alien civilizations out there.

00:01:58.640 | So what do you think?

00:02:00.080 | Do you think there's life out there?

00:02:02.120 | Intelligent life?

00:02:03.560 | - Intelligent life, that's trickier.

00:02:07.360 | I think looking at the likelihood

00:02:11.120 | of a self-replicating organism,

00:02:15.920 | given how much time the universe has existed

00:02:20.440 | and how many stars with planets,

00:02:23.400 | I think it's likely that there's other life.

00:02:26.380 | Intelligent life, I'm hopeful.

00:02:30.440 | I'm a little discouraged that we haven't yet been in touch.

00:02:34.460 | - Allegedly.

00:02:35.520 | I mean, it's also--

00:02:37.360 | - In our dimensions and so on, yeah.

00:02:39.560 | - It's also possible that they have been in touch

00:02:42.200 | and we just haven't, we're too dumb to realize

00:02:46.160 | they're communicating with us,

00:02:47.520 | in whichever, it's the Carl Sagan idea

00:02:51.320 | that they may be communicating at a time scale

00:02:53.280 | that's totally different.

00:02:54.600 | Like their signals are in a totally different time scale

00:02:57.800 | or in a totally different kind of medium of communication.

00:03:01.920 | It could be our own,

00:03:04.760 | it could be the birth of human beings.

00:03:08.200 | Whatever the magic that makes us who we are,

00:03:13.400 | the collective intelligence thing,

00:03:15.480 | that could be aliens themselves.

00:03:17.680 | That could be the medium of communication.

00:03:19.560 | Like the nature of our consciousness and intelligence itself

00:03:22.440 | is the medium of communication.

00:03:24.120 | - And like being able to ask the questions themselves.

00:03:28.920 | I've never thought of it that way.

00:03:30.480 | - Like actually, yeah, asking the question

00:03:32.440 | whether aliens exist might be the very medium

00:03:34.720 | by which they communicate.

00:03:35.920 | It's like they send questions.

00:03:38.600 | - So some, this like collective emergent behavior

00:03:42.720 | is the signal.

00:03:44.480 | - Is the signal, yeah.

00:03:45.760 | So--

00:03:47.440 | - It's interesting, yeah.

00:03:48.720 | - 'Cause maybe that's how we would communicate.

00:03:50.600 | If you think about it, if we were way, way, way smarter,

00:03:53.480 | like a thousand years from now, we somehow survive,

00:03:56.400 | like how would we actually communicate?

00:03:58.360 | In a way that's like, if we broadcast the signal,

00:04:03.200 | and then it could somehow like percolate

00:04:07.640 | throughout the universe,

00:04:09.080 | like that signal having an impact on--

00:04:10.840 | - Multiverse.

00:04:11.840 | - Multiverse, of course.

00:04:13.040 | That would have a signal, an effect on the most possible,

00:04:19.240 | the highest number of possible civilizations,

00:04:21.280 | what would that signal be?

00:04:22.560 | It might not be like sending a few

00:04:24.400 | stupid little hello world messages.

00:04:28.200 | It might be something more impactful.

00:04:31.320 | It's almost like impactful in a way

00:04:36.320 | where they don't have to have the capability to hear it.

00:04:40.240 | It like forces the message to have an impact.

00:04:42.760 | - Right.

00:04:43.760 | My train of thought has never gone there, but I like it.

00:04:47.600 | And also somewhere in there, I think it's implied

00:04:51.520 | that something travels faster than the speed of light,

00:04:54.920 | which I'm also really hopeful for.

00:04:58.120 | - Oh, you're hopeful.

00:04:59.520 | Are you excited by the possibility

00:05:01.720 | that there's intelligent life out there?

00:05:04.000 | Sort of you work on the engineering side of things.

00:05:08.040 | It's this very kind of focused pursuit

00:05:10.920 | of moving things through space efficiently.

00:05:15.840 | But if you zoom out, one of the cool things

00:05:19.480 | that this enables us to do is find,

00:05:22.680 | forget even intelligent life,

00:05:23.760 | just life on Mars or on Europa or something like that.

00:05:28.200 | Does that excite you?

00:05:29.680 | Does that scare you?

00:05:30.820 | - Oh, it's very exciting.

00:05:32.960 | I mean, it's the whole reason I went into the field I'm in

00:05:37.960 | is to contribute to building the body of knowledge

00:05:42.280 | that we have as a species.

00:05:46.200 | So very exciting.

00:05:47.480 | - Do you think there's life on Mars?

00:05:49.280 | Like no longer, well, already living,

00:05:54.360 | but currently living, but also no longer living,

00:05:57.320 | like that we might be able to find life

00:05:59.840 | as some people suspect, basic microbial life.

00:06:03.560 | - I'm not so sure about in our own solar system.

00:06:07.320 | And I do think it might be hard to untangle

00:06:10.320 | if we somehow contaminated other things as well.

00:06:15.320 | So I'm not sure about this close to home.

00:06:19.120 | - That'd be really exciting.

00:06:20.520 | - Yes.

00:06:21.360 | - Like do you think about the Drake equation much of like--

00:06:23.960 | - That was what, yeah, what got me into all of this, yeah.

00:06:28.480 | - Yeah, 'cause one of the questions is how hard is it

00:06:31.480 | for life to start on a habitable planet?

00:06:34.280 | Like if you have a lot of the basic conditions,

00:06:36.280 | not exactly like Earth, but basic Earth-like conditions,

00:06:39.860 | how hard is it for life to start?

00:06:41.600 | And if you find life on Mars or find life on Europa,

00:06:44.980 | that means it's way easier.

00:06:48.600 | That's a good thing to confirm

00:06:50.000 | that if you have a habitable planet,

00:06:52.560 | then there's going to be life.

00:06:55.600 | And that like immediately, that would be super exciting

00:06:58.840 | 'cause that means there's like trillions of planets

00:07:02.520 | with basic life out there.

00:07:04.680 | - Though of all the planets in our solar system,

00:07:07.360 | Earth is clearly the most habitable.

00:07:09.400 | So I would not be discouraged

00:07:12.440 | if we didn't find it on another planet in our solar system.

00:07:17.040 | - True, and again, that life could look very different.

00:07:19.080 | It's habitable for Earth-like life,

00:07:21.040 | but it could be totally different.

00:07:23.560 | I still think that trees are quite possibly

00:07:25.880 | more intelligent than humans,

00:07:27.400 | but their intelligence is carried out over a time scale

00:07:31.280 | that we're just not able to appreciate.

00:07:33.080 | Like they might be running the entirety

00:07:34.680 | of human civilization, and we're just like too dumb

00:07:37.800 | to realize that they're the smart ones.

00:07:40.360 | - Maybe that's the alien message.

00:07:43.720 | It's in the trees.

00:07:44.800 | - It's in the trees.

00:07:46.520 | Yeah, it's not in the monolith in the Utah desert.

00:07:50.480 | It's in the trees. - Right, yeah.

00:07:52.720 | - So let's go to space exploration.

00:07:55.120 | How do you think we'd get humans to Mars?

00:07:57.240 | - I think SpaceX and Elon Musk will be the ones

00:08:01.360 | that get the first human setting foot on Mars,

00:08:07.000 | and probably not that long from now

00:08:10.120 | from us having this conversation.

00:08:12.640 | Maybe we'll inflate his timeline a little bit,

00:08:14.920 | but I tend to believe the goals he sets.

00:08:19.200 | So I think that will happen relatively soon.

00:08:22.360 | As far as when and what it will take

00:08:25.060 | to get humans living there in a more permanent way,

00:08:28.800 | I have a glib answer, which is when we can invent

00:08:34.760 | a time machine to go back to the early Cold War,

00:08:38.600 | and instead of uniting around sending people to the moon,

00:08:43.240 | we pick Mars as the destination.

00:08:45.760 | So really, I say that because there's nothing

00:08:48.920 | truly scientifically or technologically impossible

00:08:54.640 | about doing that soon.

00:08:57.720 | It's more politically and financially,

00:09:00.920 | and those are the obstacles, I think, to that.

00:09:04.480 | - Well, I wonder of when you colonize

00:09:07.080 | with more than, I say, five people on Mars,

00:09:10.720 | you have to start thinking about the kind of rules

00:09:14.920 | you have on Mars.

00:09:16.600 | And speaking of the Cold War, who gets to own the land?

00:09:21.180 | You start planting flags, you start to make decisions.

00:09:25.720 | And like SpaceX says this, it's probably a little bit trolly

00:09:30.080 | but they have this nice paragraph in their contracts

00:09:34.340 | where it talks about that human governments on Earth

00:09:39.340 | or Earth governments have no jurisdiction on Mars.

00:09:46.720 | The rules, the Martians get to define their own rules.

00:09:50.240 | It sounds very much like the founding fathers

00:09:53.900 | for this country, that's the kind of language.

00:09:56.240 | It's interesting that that's in there

00:10:02.120 | and it makes you think perhaps that needs to be leveraged.

00:10:07.120 | You have to be very clever about leveraging that

00:10:10.040 | to create a little bit of a Cold War feeling.

00:10:14.800 | It seems like we humans need a little bit of a competition.

00:10:18.960 | Do you think that's necessary to succeed

00:10:21.200 | and to get the necessary investment?

00:10:25.480 | Or can the pure pursuit of science be enough?

00:10:28.840 | - No, I think we're seeing right now

00:10:30.920 | the pure pursuit of science, that results

00:10:34.360 | in pretty tiny budgets for exploration.

00:10:39.360 | There has to be some disaster impending doom

00:10:43.920 | to get us onto another planet in a permanent way.

00:10:48.000 | Financially, I just don't know if the private sector

00:10:52.640 | can support that.

00:10:54.160 | I don't wish that there is some catastrophe coming our way

00:11:00.560 | that spurs us to do that.

00:11:04.440 | - I'm unsure what the business model is

00:11:05.960 | for colonizing Mars.

00:11:08.000 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:11:09.160 | - Yeah, there is for, we'll talk about satellites.

00:11:11.320 | There's probably a lot of business models around satellites

00:11:14.800 | but there's not enough short term business.

00:11:18.160 | I guess that's how business works.

00:11:19.760 | You should have a path to making money

00:11:23.000 | in the next 10 years.

00:11:25.120 | - Well, and maybe even more broadly

00:11:29.720 | and looping back to something we said earlier,

00:11:33.400 | I don't know that getting humans off this planet

00:11:37.840 | and spreading bacteria is what we're supposed

00:11:42.840 | to be doing in the first place.

00:11:45.480 | So maybe we can go but should we?

00:11:48.720 | And I'm probably an unusual person for thinking that

00:11:53.720 | in my industry because humans want to explore.

00:11:59.400 | But I almost wonder, are we putting unnecessary obstacles,

00:12:04.400 | we're very finicky biological things

00:12:07.480 | in the way of some more robotic

00:12:10.160 | or more silicon based exploration.

00:12:15.160 | And yeah, do we need to colonize and spread?

00:12:19.040 | I'm not sure.

00:12:20.360 | - What do you think is the role of AI in space?

00:12:22.880 | Do you, in your work, again, we'll talk about it

00:12:25.640 | but do you see more and more of the space vehicles,

00:12:30.640 | spacecraft being run by artificial intelligence systems?

00:12:37.320 | More than just like the flight control

00:12:39.120 | but like the management?

00:12:41.000 | - Yeah, I don't have a lot of color to the dreams

00:12:43.880 | I have about way in the future and AI

00:12:46.200 | but I do think that removing,

00:12:51.200 | it's hard for humans to even make a trip to Mars,

00:12:54.760 | much less go anywhere farther than that.

00:12:58.040 | And I think we'll have more,

00:13:01.680 | again, I'm probably unusual in having these thoughts

00:13:05.920 | but perhaps be able to generate more knowledge

00:13:09.440 | and understand more if we stop trying to send humans

00:13:13.000 | and instead, I don't know if we're talking about AI

00:13:17.760 | in a truly artificial intelligence way

00:13:20.700 | or AI as we kind of use it today

00:13:23.840 | but maybe sending a Petri dish or two of like stem cells

00:13:28.840 | and some robotic handlers instead

00:13:31.980 | if we still need to send our DNA

00:13:34.000 | because we're really stuck on that.

00:13:36.080 | But if not, maybe not even that Petri dish.

00:13:40.020 | So I see, I think what I'm saying is,

00:13:42.440 | I see a much bigger role in the future

00:13:44.800 | of AI for space exploration.

00:13:47.080 | - It's kind of sad to think that,

00:13:50.080 | I mean, I'm sure we'll eventually send a spacecraft

00:13:53.680 | with efficient propulsion like some of the stuff you work on

00:13:57.600 | out that travels just really far with some robots on it

00:14:00.680 | and with some DNA in a Petri dish

00:14:05.000 | and then human civilization destroys itself

00:14:07.760 | and then there'll just be this floating spacecraft

00:14:11.280 | that eventually gets somewhere or not.

00:14:13.920 | That's a sad thought, like this lonely spacecraft

00:14:16.520 | just kind of traveling through space

00:14:18.600 | and humans are all dead.

00:14:20.600 | - Well, it depends-- - That's a possible future.

00:14:21.920 | - It depends on what the goal is, right?

00:14:25.600 | (both laughing)

00:14:27.200 | Another way to look at it is we've preserved,

00:14:29.640 | it's like a little time capsule of knowledge, DNA,

00:14:33.000 | that we've, that will outlive us.

00:14:36.400 | - Well, that's beautiful. - Yeah.

00:14:38.000 | (both laughing)

00:14:39.920 | It's how I sleep at night.

00:14:41.400 | - So you also mentioned that you wanted to be an astronaut.

00:14:43.760 | - Yes.

00:14:44.600 | - So even though you said you're unusual

00:14:47.480 | and thinking like, it's nice here on Earth

00:14:50.840 | and then we might wanna be sending robots up there,

00:14:53.880 | you wanted to be a human that goes out there.

00:14:57.120 | Would you like to one day travel to Mars?

00:15:00.680 | You know, if it becomes sort of more open

00:15:04.800 | to civilian travel and that kind of thing?

00:15:07.280 | Like, are you, like vacation-wise,

00:15:09.920 | like if we're talking vacations,

00:15:12.440 | would you like to vacation on Earth or vacation on Mars?

00:15:15.400 | - I wish that I had a better answer, but no.

00:15:20.240 | I wanted to be an astronaut because I,

00:15:23.560 | first of all, I like working in labs and doing experiments

00:15:28.520 | and I wanted to go to like the coolest lab, the ISS,

00:15:33.520 | and do some experiments there.

00:15:37.060 | That's being decommissioned, which is sad,

00:15:39.680 | but you know, there will be others, I'm sure.

00:15:42.280 | - The ISS is being decommissioned?

00:15:44.720 | - Yes, I think by 2025, it's not going to be in use anymore.

00:15:49.420 | But I think there are private companies

00:15:52.000 | that are going to be putting up stations and things.

00:15:55.360 | - So it's primarily like a research lab, essentially.

00:15:57.320 | - Yes.

00:15:58.160 | - A research lab in space, that's a cool way to say it.

00:15:59.920 | It's like the coolest possible research lab.

00:16:02.440 | - That's where I wanted to go.

00:16:03.720 | And now, though, my risk profile has changed a little bit.

00:16:08.720 | I have three little ones and I won't be

00:16:13.680 | in the first thousand people to go to Mars,

00:16:17.240 | let's put it that way.

00:16:18.680 | - Yeah, Earth is kind of nice.

00:16:20.460 | We have our troubles, but overall, it's pretty nice.

00:16:24.000 | Again, it's the Netflix.

00:16:26.000 | Okay, let's talk rockets.

00:16:28.560 | How does a rocket engine work, or any kind of engine

00:16:31.980 | that can get us to space or float around in space?

00:16:36.840 | - The basic principle is conservation of momentum.

00:16:40.540 | So you throw stuff out the back of the engine

00:16:47.500 | and that pushes the rocket and the spacecraft

00:16:50.080 | in the other direction.

00:16:51.040 | So there are two main types of rocket propulsion.

00:16:56.040 | The one people are more familiar with is chemical

00:17:00.820 | because it's loud and there's fire.

00:17:03.500 | And that's what's used for launch and is more televised.

00:17:08.180 | So in those types of systems,

00:17:11.080 | you usually have a fuel on an oxidizer

00:17:13.700 | and they react and combust and release

00:17:17.020 | stored chemical energy.

00:17:18.700 | And that energy heats the resultant gas

00:17:23.700 | and that's funneled out the back through a nozzle,

00:17:26.800 | directed out the back, and then that momentum exchange

00:17:30.820 | pushes the spacecraft forward.

00:17:32.420 | - Is there an interesting difference between liquid

00:17:34.060 | and solid fuel in those contexts?

00:17:36.780 | - They're both lumped in the same.

00:17:38.740 | So chemical just means that the release of energy

00:17:43.140 | from those bonds essentially.

00:17:45.700 | So a solid fuel works the same way.

00:17:48.220 | And the other main category is electric propulsion.

00:17:52.820 | So instead of chemical energy,

00:17:54.540 | you're using electrical energy,

00:17:56.840 | usually from batteries or solar panels.

00:18:00.700 | And in this case, the stuff you're pushing out the back

00:18:05.700 | would be charged particles.

00:18:07.780 | So instead of combustion and heat,

00:18:11.540 | you end up with charged particles

00:18:13.820 | and you force them out the back of the spacecraft

00:18:16.180 | using either an electrostatic field or electromagnetic.

00:18:20.120 | But it's the same momentum exchange

00:18:23.580 | and same idea of stuff out the back

00:18:25.420 | and everything else goes forward.

00:18:27.780 | - Cool, so those are the big two categories.

00:18:30.140 | What's the difference maybe in the challenges of each,

00:18:39.280 | the use cases of each and how they're used today,

00:18:43.760 | the physics of each and where they're used,

00:18:47.280 | all that kind of stuff.

00:18:48.220 | Anything interesting about the two categories

00:18:49.920 | that distinguishes them?

00:18:51.480 | Besides the chemical one being the big sexy flames and--

00:18:56.480 | - Yeah, fire. - Fire, yeah.

00:18:59.640 | - Chemical is very well understood.

00:19:02.320 | In its simplest form, it's like a firework.

00:19:07.000 | So it's been around since 400 BC or something like that.

00:19:11.080 | So that, even the big engines are quite well understood.

00:19:15.040 | I think one of the last gaps there is probably,

00:19:20.040 | what exactly are the products of combustion?

00:19:27.400 | Are modeling abilities kind of fall apart there

00:19:31.400 | because it's hot and gases are moving

00:19:35.560 | and you end up kind of having to venture

00:19:40.560 | into lots of different interdisciplinary fields of science

00:19:46.200 | to try to solve that.

00:19:47.760 | And that's quite complex, but we have pretty good models

00:19:51.920 | for some of the more like emergent behaviors

00:19:54.140 | of that system anyways.

00:19:55.200 | But that's, I think one of the last unsolved pieces.

00:20:00.200 | And really the kind of what people care about there

00:20:04.800 | is making it more fuel efficient.

00:20:07.800 | So the chemical stuff, you can get a lot

00:20:11.680 | of instantaneous thrust, but it's not very fuel efficient.

00:20:15.400 | It's much more fuel efficient to go

00:20:16.900 | with the electric type of propulsion.

00:20:20.000 | So that's where people spend a lot of their time

00:20:23.300 | is trying to make that more efficient

00:20:24.880 | in terms of thrust per unit of fuel.

00:20:28.320 | And then there's always considerations

00:20:31.840 | like heating and cooling.

00:20:33.700 | It's very hot, which is good if it heats the gases,

00:20:36.340 | but bad if it melts the rocket and things like that.

00:20:40.680 | So there's always a lot of work on heating and cooling

00:20:42.660 | and the engine cycles and things like that.

00:20:45.320 | And then on electric propulsion,

00:20:48.680 | I find it like much more refreshingly poorly understood.

00:20:53.680 | - Lots more mysteries.

00:20:57.240 | - Yeah, I think so.

00:20:58.780 | One of the classes I took in college,

00:21:02.200 | we spent 90% of the class on chemical propulsion

00:21:06.080 | and then the last 10% on electric.

00:21:07.880 | And the professor said, "We only sort of understand

00:21:11.400 | "how it works, but it works kind of."

00:21:13.880 | And it's like, that's interesting.

00:21:16.880 | Yeah, and even an ion engine,

00:21:20.120 | which is probably one of the most straightforward

00:21:22.780 | because it's just an electrostatic engine,

00:21:27.500 | but it has this really awesome combination

00:21:29.900 | of quantum mechanics and material science

00:21:34.140 | and fluid dynamics and electrostatics.

00:21:38.180 | And it's just very intriguing to me.

00:21:41.480 | - First of all, can you actually zoom out even more?

00:21:45.220 | 'Cause you mentioned ion propulsion engine

00:21:47.940 | is a subset of electric.

00:21:51.020 | So is there a categories of electric engines

00:21:53.540 | and then we can zoom in on ion propulsion?

00:21:55.780 | - Yes, so sure.

00:21:57.740 | There's the two most kind of conventional types

00:22:01.540 | that have been around since the '60s

00:22:03.700 | are ion engines and Hall thrusters.

00:22:06.820 | And ion engines are a little bit simpler

00:22:08.860 | because they don't use a magnetic field

00:22:11.520 | for generating thrust.

00:22:12.920 | And then there are also some other types of plasma engines,

00:22:19.220 | but that don't fit into those two categories.

00:22:22.000 | So just kind of other plasma like a VASIMR engine,

00:22:26.380 | which we could get into.

00:22:27.640 | And then those are probably the main three categories

00:22:32.660 | that would be fun to talk about.

00:22:33.820 | Oh, and then of course the category of engine

00:22:36.500 | that I work on, which has a lot of similarities

00:22:39.460 | to an ion engine, but could be considered its own class

00:22:42.620 | called a colloid thruster.

00:22:44.580 | - Colloid, cool.

00:22:45.620 | Okay, so what is an ion propulsion ion engine?

00:22:48.980 | - Okay, so in an ion engine, you have an ionization chamber

00:22:54.340 | and you inject the propellant into that chamber.

00:22:57.660 | And this is usually a neutral gas like xenon or argon.

00:23:02.660 | So you inject that into the chamber

00:23:05.060 | and you also inject a stream

00:23:09.340 | of really hot high energy electrons.

00:23:12.300 | And everything's just moving around very randomly in there.

00:23:16.660 | And the whole goal is to have one of those electrons collide

00:23:21.660 | with one of those neutral atoms.

00:23:24.180 | And turn it into an ion.

00:23:25.980 | So kick off a secondary electron.

00:23:28.180 | And now you have--

00:23:29.340 | - Plasma.

00:23:30.180 | - Yes.

00:23:31.000 | - Okay.

00:23:31.840 | - And now you have, (laughs)

00:23:35.020 | and now you have a charged xenon or argon ion

00:23:39.700 | and more electrons and so on.

00:23:42.020 | And then some fraction of those ions

00:23:46.180 | will happen to make it to this downstream electric field

00:23:50.600 | that we set up between two grids with holes in them.

00:23:53.900 | And in terms of area, the same amount of those ions

00:23:58.220 | also make runs into the walls and lose their charge.

00:24:01.700 | And that's where some of the inefficiencies come in.

00:24:04.500 | But the very lucky few make it to those holes in that grid.

00:24:09.020 | And there are two grids actually

00:24:11.260 | and you apply a voltage differential between them.

00:24:14.460 | And that sets up an electric field.

00:24:17.160 | And a charged particle in an electric field creates a force.

00:24:21.280 | And so those ions are accelerated out the back of the engine

00:24:24.960 | and the reaction force is what pushes the spacecraft forward.

00:24:29.720 | If you're following along and tallying these charges,

00:24:35.560 | now we've just sent a positive beam of ions

00:24:39.760 | out the back of the spacecraft.

00:24:42.040 | And for our purposes here, the spacecraft is neutral.

00:24:45.720 | So eventually those ions will come back

00:24:49.000 | and hit the spacecraft because it's a positive beam.

00:24:51.560 | So you also have to have an external cathode producer

00:24:56.320 | of electrons outside the engine

00:24:58.800 | that pumps electrons into that beam and neutralizes that.

00:25:02.320 | So now it's net neutral everywhere

00:25:04.000 | and it won't come back to the spacecraft.

00:25:05.320 | So that's an ion engine.

00:25:07.800 | - What temperature are we talking about here?

00:25:09.800 | So in terms of like the chemical base engines,

00:25:13.040 | those are super hot.

00:25:14.880 | You mentioned plasma here.

00:25:16.760 | How hot does this thing get?

00:25:19.160 | I mean, is that an interesting thing to talk about

00:25:22.120 | in a sense that, is that an interesting distinction

00:25:25.240 | or is the heat, I mean, it's all gonna be hot?

00:25:28.320 | - No, so it's important,

00:25:30.240 | especially for some of these smaller satellites

00:25:32.800 | people are into launching these days.

00:25:35.320 | So it's important because you have the plasma,

00:25:39.280 | but also those high energy electrons are hot.

00:25:42.360 | And if you have a lot of those that are going into the walls,

00:25:46.620 | you do have to care about the temperature.

00:25:48.200 | So I'm having trouble remembering off the top of my head.

00:25:52.520 | I think they're at like 100 electron volts

00:25:54.960 | in terms of the electron energy.

00:25:56.800 | And then I'd have to remember

00:25:58.840 | how to convert that into Kelvin.

00:26:00.720 | - Can you stick your hand in it?

00:26:02.640 | Not move the temperature. - No, not recommended.

00:26:04.600 | Yeah. - Okay.

00:26:05.680 | So what's a colloid engine?

00:26:07.720 | - So the same rocket people that came up with

00:26:14.360 | these ideas for electric propulsion,

00:26:17.640 | probably in the middle of last century,

00:26:22.240 | also realized that there's one more place

00:26:25.440 | to get charged particles from

00:26:28.180 | if you're going to be using electric propulsion.

00:26:30.340 | So you can take a gas and you can ionize it,

00:26:33.220 | but there are also some liquids,

00:26:35.740 | particularly ionic liquids, which is what we use,

00:26:38.660 | that you also can use as a source of ions.

00:26:42.500 | And if you have ions and you put them in a field,

00:26:44.680 | you generate a force.

00:26:45.600 | So they recognized that,

00:26:48.280 | but part of being able to leverage that technique

00:26:52.560 | is being able to kind of manipulate those liquids

00:26:56.600 | on a scale of nanometers or very few microns.

00:27:01.280 | So the diameter of a human hair or something like that.

00:27:05.320 | And in the '50s, there was no way to do that.

00:27:08.640 | So they wrote about it in some books

00:27:10.520 | and then it kind of died for a little bit.

00:27:12.900 | And then with silicon, MEMS, computer processors,

00:27:17.900 | and when foundry started becoming more ubiquitous

00:27:21.460 | and my advisor started at MIT,

00:27:25.560 | kind of put those ideas back together

00:27:29.260 | and was like, "Hey, actually there's now a way

00:27:31.620 | "to build this and bring this other technique to life."

00:27:35.160 | And so the way that you actually get

00:27:39.920 | the ions out of those liquids is you put the liquid

00:27:44.020 | in again, a strong electric field

00:27:47.220 | and the electric field stresses the liquid

00:27:50.260 | and you keep increasing the field

00:27:51.820 | and eventually the liquid will assume,

00:27:54.340 | I'll go this way, a conical shape.

00:27:57.100 | It's when the electric field pressure that's pulling on it

00:28:01.220 | exactly balances the liquid's own restoring force,

00:28:04.780 | which is its surface tension.

00:28:06.940 | So you have this balance and the liquid assumes a cone

00:28:10.480 | when it's perfectly balanced like that.

00:28:12.440 | And at the tip of a cone,

00:28:14.840 | the radius of curvature goes to zero right at the tip.

00:28:18.560 | And the radius, sorry, the electric field

00:28:22.980 | right at the tip of a sharp object would go to infinity

00:28:27.520 | 'cause it goes as one over the radius,

00:28:31.240 | and one over the radius squared.

00:28:33.240 | And instead of the electric field going to infinity

00:28:37.460 | and maybe like generating a wormhole or something,

00:28:40.620 | a jet of ions instead starts issuing

00:28:44.300 | from the tip of that liquid.

00:28:46.240 | So the field becomes strong enough there

00:28:47.780 | that you can pull ions out of the liquid.

00:28:50.500 | - What is the liquid?

00:28:51.660 | We're talking about,

00:28:52.500 | or is it there's a bunch of different ones?

00:28:54.620 | - You can do it with different types of liquids.

00:28:58.480 | It depends on how easily you can free ions

00:29:02.060 | from their neighbors and if it has enough surface tension

00:29:06.540 | so that you can build up a high enough electric field.

00:29:09.100 | But what we use are called ionic liquids,

00:29:12.420 | and they're really just positive.

00:29:14.780 | They're very similar to salts,

00:29:16.060 | but they happen to be liquid

00:29:17.160 | over a really wide range of temperatures.

00:29:19.460 | - This sounds like really cool.

00:29:21.620 | Okay, so how big is the cone are we talking?

00:29:25.180 | What's the size of this cone that generates the ions?

00:29:27.660 | - So if you have a cone that's emitting pure ions,

00:29:31.300 | the, I can't remember if it's the radius or diameter,

00:29:35.140 | but that emission is happening from,

00:29:39.180 | of that cone is something like 20 nanometers.

00:29:41.860 | - Oh.

00:29:42.700 | I was imagining something slightly bigger.

00:29:45.340 | But so like this is, so this is tiny, tiny.

00:29:48.940 | - Yes.

00:29:49.760 | - Hence the only being able to do it recently.

00:29:52.140 | - Yeah, that's right.

00:29:52.980 | - So this is all controlled by a computer, I guess.

00:29:55.720 | Like, or like, how do you control,

00:29:59.380 | how do you create a cone that generates ions

00:30:01.580 | at a scale of nanometers exactly?

00:30:04.020 | - So the kind of main trick to making this work

00:30:08.500 | is that physically we manufacture

00:30:12.220 | hundreds or thousands of sharp structures

00:30:14.700 | and then supply the liquid to the tips.

00:30:17.180 | So that does a few things.

00:30:20.260 | It makes sure that we know where the ion beams are forming

00:30:23.060 | so we can put holes in the grid above them

00:30:25.280 | to let them actually leave instead of hitting, right?

00:30:28.020 | - Cool.

00:30:29.420 | - But it also reduces the actual field we have to,

00:30:33.020 | the voltage we have to apply to create that field

00:30:35.300 | because the field will be much stronger

00:30:36.820 | if we can already give the liquid a tip to form on.

00:30:41.460 | And those tips we form have radii of curvature

00:30:45.260 | on the order of probably like single microns.

00:30:50.940 | So we are working at a little bit larger scale,

00:30:53.460 | but once we create that support

00:30:55.700 | and the electric field can be focused at that tip,

00:30:57.980 | then the tiny little cone can form on top of that.

00:31:00.140 | - So wait, so there's something in the,

00:31:02.020 | there's already like a hard material

00:31:04.700 | that like gives you the base for the cone

00:31:07.140 | and then you're pouring like liquid over it,

00:31:08.740 | whatever that happens. - From the bottom, yeah.

00:31:10.180 | It's porous, so we actually supply it

00:31:12.060 | from the back of the chip and then it wicks.

00:31:13.580 | - And then liquid forms on top on that structure.

00:31:17.060 | And then you somehow make it like super sharp, the liquid,

00:31:20.580 | so the ions can leave.

00:31:24.900 | And then we've applied that field to get those ions

00:31:28.540 | and that same field then accelerates them.

00:31:31.660 | - That's awesome, and there's like a bunch of these?

00:31:33.980 | - Yeah, I should have brought something.

00:31:37.220 | - You could just pretend

00:31:39.620 | that you have some nanometer cones on the table here.

00:31:42.060 | - So actually, kind of about this scale,

00:31:45.020 | we build, we call them thruster chips

00:31:47.660 | and it's just a convenient form factor

00:31:50.020 | and it's a square centimeter.

00:31:51.860 | And on each square centimeter today,

00:31:53.780 | we have about 500 of the actual physical,

00:31:56.740 | we call them emitters, those physical cones.

00:31:59.460 | And we're working on increasing that by a factor of four

00:32:04.540 | in the coming months.

00:32:05.700 | - In size or in the density?

00:32:08.180 | - In the density, the number of emitters

00:32:10.420 | within the same square centimeter chip.

00:32:12.340 | - So that thing, 'cause I think I've seen pictures of you

00:32:14.460 | with like a tiny thing in your hand, that must be the,

00:32:17.380 | okay, so that's an engine.

00:32:19.940 | - So that is kind of the ionization chamber

00:32:24.420 | and thrust producing part of it.

00:32:26.140 | What's not shown in that picture is the propellant tank

00:32:31.140 | so we can keep supplying more and more of the liquid

00:32:34.460 | to those emission sites.

00:32:36.800 | And then we also provide a power electronic system

00:32:40.620 | that talks to the spacecraft and turns our device on and off.

00:32:43.900 | - So that's the colloid engine?

00:32:45.740 | - Yes.

00:32:46.580 | - That's the core of the colloid engine?

00:32:47.740 | - It's, the way I've been talking about it,

00:32:50.460 | it's more of ion electrospray.

00:32:53.220 | Colloid tends to mean like liquid droplets

00:32:58.220 | coming off of the jet.

00:33:00.580 | But if you make smaller and smaller cones,

00:33:03.460 | you get pure ions.

00:33:04.900 | So we're kind of like a subset of colloid, yes.

00:33:07.500 | - What aspects of this, you said that it's been full

00:33:10.740 | of mysteries from the physics perspective.

00:33:13.300 | What aspects of this are understood

00:33:15.820 | and what are still full of mystery?

00:33:19.700 | - Yeah, recently we've been understanding

00:33:24.700 | the kind of instabilities and stable regimes

00:33:29.420 | of how much liquid do you supply

00:33:32.660 | and what field do you apply

00:33:34.540 | and why is it flickering on and off

00:33:38.000 | or why does it have these weird behaviors.

00:33:39.760 | So that's, in the past just couple years,

00:33:41.940 | that's become much more understood.

00:33:45.880 | I think the two areas that come to mind

00:33:49.220 | as far as not as well understood

00:33:52.940 | are the boundary between, you know, you have,

00:33:57.280 | we actually use kind of big molecular ions.

00:34:03.020 | And if you're looking at the molecular scale,

00:34:06.720 | you have some ions that you've extracted

00:34:10.440 | and they're in this electric field.

00:34:12.820 | One ion, you know, it's a big molecule,

00:34:16.180 | it's getting energy from the electric field

00:34:19.220 | and some of that energy is going into the bonds

00:34:21.760 | and making it vibrate and doing weird things to it.

00:34:24.260 | Sometimes it breaks them apart.

00:34:26.460 | And then zooming out to the whole beam,

00:34:30.460 | the beam has some behaviors as this beam of ions

00:34:34.740 | and there's a big gap between what are those,

00:34:38.080 | how do you connect those

00:34:39.700 | and how do we understand that better

00:34:42.260 | so that we can understand the beam performance of the engine.

00:34:45.780 | - Is that a theory question or is it an engineering question?

00:34:48.740 | - Theory, definitely.

00:34:50.140 | We're, Axion is a startup and we're more in the business

00:34:54.380 | of building and testing and observing and characterizing

00:34:59.380 | and we're not really diving much into that theory right now.

00:35:03.060 | - Okay, zooming out a little bit on the physics,

00:35:06.340 | I apologize for the way too big of a question,

00:35:08.320 | but to you from either, you mentioned Axion

00:35:13.320 | as more of sort of an engineering endeavor, right?

00:35:16.760 | But from a perspective of physics in general,

00:35:19.760 | science in general, or the side of engineering,

00:35:22.520 | what do you think is the most, to you,

00:35:24.760 | like beautiful and captivating and inspiring idea

00:35:28.760 | in this space?

00:35:29.720 | - In this space, and then I'm gonna zoom out

00:35:33.440 | a little bit more, but in this space,

00:35:35.640 | I keep butting up against material science questions.

00:35:40.640 | So I, over the past 10 years, I feel like every problem

00:35:46.800 | or interesting thing I want to work on,

00:35:51.300 | if you dig deep enough, you end up in material science land,

00:35:55.420 | which I find kind of exciting

00:35:57.880 | and it makes me want to dig in more there.

00:36:00.760 | And I was just, even for our technology,

00:36:05.760 | when we have to move the propellant from the tank

00:36:09.160 | to the tip of the emitters,

00:36:10.800 | we rely a lot on capillary action

00:36:12.840 | and you're getting into wetting and surface energies.

00:36:15.960 | - At a scale of like nano.

00:36:17.920 | - Yeah, I mean, if you look further, it's quantum too,

00:36:22.200 | but it all is--

00:36:24.360 | - Capillary action at the quantum level.

00:36:27.880 | - Yeah, so I would--

00:36:30.320 | - That's so cool. - It all comes back to me,

00:36:31.920 | to material science, there's so much we don't understand

00:36:35.440 | at these sizes.

00:36:36.780 | And I find that inspiring and exciting.

00:36:42.720 | And then more broadly, I remember when I learned

00:36:47.640 | that the same equation that describes flow over an airfoil

00:36:52.640 | is used to price options, the Black-Scholes equation,

00:36:57.440 | and I was like, and it's just a partial differential

00:37:00.880 | equation, but that kind of connectedness of the universe,

00:37:05.880 | I don't want to use options pricing and the universe

00:37:10.000 | in the same, but you know what I mean,

00:37:11.520 | this connectedness I find really magical.

00:37:15.300 | - Yeah, the patterns that mathematics reveals

00:37:17.840 | seems to echo in a bunch of different places.

00:37:20.320 | - Yes.

00:37:21.160 | - Yeah, there's just weirdness.

00:37:22.280 | It's like, it really makes you think,

00:37:25.080 | I think, through definitely living in a simulation,

00:37:27.280 | like whoever programmed it--

00:37:29.160 | - I like that that's your conclusion.

00:37:30.400 | - Is using, I don't know, is using shortcuts to program it.

00:37:34.400 | Like, they didn't, they're just copying pieces

00:37:36.480 | and copying different parts.

00:37:38.240 | - Yeah, think of something new or just paste from over there.

00:37:41.560 | - They won't notice.

00:37:42.800 | - My conclusion from that was, I'm gonna go interview

00:37:45.800 | for a finance job, so I had a little detour.

00:37:49.560 | - That's the backup option.

00:37:51.760 | So in terms of using colloid engines,

00:37:56.040 | what's an interesting difference between a propulsion

00:37:59.280 | of a rocket from Earth, when you're standing on the ground,

00:38:03.000 | to orbit, and then the kind of propulsion necessary

00:38:06.880 | for once you get out to orbit or to deep space

00:38:10.880 | to move around?

00:38:12.800 | - Yes, the reason you can't use an engine like mine

00:38:19.000 | to get off the ground is, you know, the thrust it generates

00:38:25.400 | is instantaneous thrust is very small,

00:38:27.920 | but if you have the time and can accumulate

00:38:32.200 | that acceleration, you can still reach speeds

00:38:34.560 | that are very interesting for exploration

00:38:37.880 | and even for missions with humans on them.

00:38:40.920 | An interesting direction I think we need to go

00:38:46.600 | as humans exploring space is the power supplies

00:38:51.800 | for electric propulsion are limiting us in that,

00:38:55.980 | you know, solar panels are really inefficient

00:38:58.920 | and bulky and batteries, I don't know when anybody's

00:39:02.120 | ever gonna improve battery technology.

00:39:05.840 | I know a lot of people that work on that.

00:39:07.840 | And nuclear power, we could have a lot more powerful

00:39:14.160 | electric propulsion systems, so they would be

00:39:16.560 | extremely fuel efficient, but more instantaneous thrust

00:39:20.080 | to do more interesting missions if we could start

00:39:22.560 | launching more nuclear systems.

00:39:25.240 | - So like something that's powered, nuclear powered,

00:39:29.640 | that's the right way to say it.

00:39:31.400 | - Yeah.

00:39:32.680 | - But is in a small enough container that could be launched?

00:39:36.400 | - Yeah, so I mean, as a world, we do launch spacecraft

00:39:41.400 | with nuclear power systems on board,

00:39:45.140 | but size is one consideration.

00:39:47.760 | It hasn't been a big focus, so the reactors

00:39:51.320 | and the heaters and everything are bulky,

00:39:53.880 | and so they're really only suitable for some of the much

00:39:56.920 | bigger interplanetary stuff.

00:39:59.840 | So that's one issue, but then it's a whole like

00:40:02.520 | rat's nest of political stuff as well.

00:40:06.280 | - I heard, I think Elon described, or somebody,

00:40:09.760 | but I think it was Elon that described the eVTOL,

00:40:13.240 | like electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicle.

00:40:17.600 | So basically saying rockets, obviously Elon is interested

00:40:21.160 | in electric vehicles, right?

00:40:22.560 | But he said that rockets can't, in the near term,

00:40:27.560 | it doesn't make sense for them to be electrical.

00:40:30.320 | What, do you see a world where the rockets that we use

00:40:36.000 | to get into orbit are also electric based?

00:40:39.460 | - It's possible, you can produce the thrust levels you need,

00:40:43.640 | but you need this, a much bigger power supply.

00:40:47.280 | - Like nuclear. - I think that would be nuclear.

00:40:49.200 | And the only way people have been able to launch them at all

00:40:52.400 | is that they're in a 100 times redundancy safe mode

00:40:57.040 | while they're being launched, and they're not turned on

00:40:59.080 | until they're farther off.

00:41:00.640 | So if you were to actually try to use it on launch,

00:41:03.760 | I think a lot of people would still have an issue with that,

00:41:06.680 | but someday.

00:41:08.160 | - It's an interesting concept, nuclear.

00:41:11.000 | It seems like people, like everybody that works

00:41:13.400 | on nuclear power has shown how safe it is

00:41:16.720 | as a source of energy. - I know, right?

00:41:18.320 | - And yet we are, seem to be, I mean, based on the history,

00:41:23.320 | based on the excellent HBO series,

00:41:26.160 | I'm rushing with the Chernobyl.

00:41:28.160 | It seems like we have our risk estimation

00:41:31.200 | about this particular power source is drastically inaccurate.

00:41:35.520 | But that's a fascinating idea that we would use nuclear

00:41:39.600 | as a source for our vehicles, and not just in outer space.

00:41:44.200 | That's cool, I'm gonna have to look into that.

00:41:45.920 | That's super interesting.

00:41:46.960 | - Well, just last year, Trump eased up a little bit

00:41:50.920 | on the regulations, and NASA, and hopefully others,

00:41:55.120 | are starting to pick up on the development.

00:41:57.840 | So now is a good time to look into it,

00:42:00.240 | 'cause there's actually some movement.

00:42:02.320 | - Is that a hope for you, to explore different

00:42:04.760 | energy sources that the entirety of the vehicle

00:42:07.720 | uses something like, the entirety of the propulsion systems

00:42:13.040 | for all aspects of the vehicle's life travel is the same,

00:42:18.040 | or electric, is it possible for it to be the same?

00:42:20.400 | Like, the colloid engine being used for everything?

00:42:24.280 | - You could, and you would have to do it in the same way

00:42:27.400 | we do different stages of rockets now,

00:42:29.520 | where once you've used up an engine, or a stage,

00:42:34.520 | you let it go, because there's really no point

00:42:36.720 | in holding onto it.

00:42:37.540 | So I wouldn't necessarily wanna use the same engine

00:42:41.120 | for the whole thing, but the same technology, I think,

00:42:43.160 | would be interesting.

00:42:45.000 | - Okay, so it's possible, all right, but--

00:42:47.760 | - Yeah, it comes down to the power source.

00:42:49.360 | - The power source, that's really interesting.

00:42:51.040 | But for the current power sources,

00:42:52.480 | and its current use cases, what's the use case

00:42:55.000 | for electric, like the colloid engine,

00:42:58.920 | can you talk about where they're used today?

00:43:01.600 | - Sure, so chemical engines are still used quite a bit

00:43:06.600 | once you're in orbit, but that's also where you might

00:43:10.320 | choose instead to use an electric system,

00:43:12.480 | and what people do with them, and this includes

00:43:16.760 | the ion engines, and Hoth thrusters, and our engine,

00:43:19.480 | is basically any maneuvering you need to do

00:43:22.600 | once you're dropped off.

00:43:24.040 | There's, even if your only goal was to just stay

00:43:29.320 | in your orbit and not move for the life of your mission,

00:43:32.560 | you need propulsion to accomplish that,

00:43:34.620 | because the Earth's gravity field changes

00:43:38.320 | as you go around in orbit and pulls you out

00:43:40.440 | of your little box.

00:43:42.600 | There are other perturbations that can throw you off a bit,

00:43:47.600 | and then, most people want to do things

00:43:50.780 | a little bit more interesting, like maneuver

00:43:53.500 | to avoid being hit by space debris,

00:43:55.960 | or perhaps lower their orbit to take a higher resolution

00:44:00.320 | image of something and then return.

00:44:03.040 | At the end of your mission, you're supposed

00:44:06.560 | to responsibly get rid of your satellite,

00:44:09.480 | whether that's burning it up, but if you're in geo,

00:44:13.560 | you want to push it higher into graveyard orbit.

00:44:16.000 | - What's geo, what's--

00:44:19.360 | - So low Earth orbit, and then geosynchronous orbit,

00:44:21.920 | or geostationary orbit.

00:44:23.240 | - And there's a graveyard?

00:44:24.720 | - Yeah, so those satellites are at like 40,000 kilometers,

00:44:29.360 | so if they were to try to push their satellites back down

00:44:33.840 | to burn up in the atmosphere, they would need,

00:44:36.520 | even more propulsion than they've had

00:44:38.760 | for the whole lifetime of their mission.

00:44:40.600 | So instead, they push them higher, where it'll take

00:44:43.400 | a million years for it to naturally deorbit.

00:44:46.840 | So we're also cluttering that higher bit up as well,

00:44:50.240 | but it's not as pressing as LEO, which is low Earth orbit,

00:44:54.160 | where more of these commercial missions are going now.

00:44:57.000 | - How hard is the collision avoidance problem there?

00:44:59.320 | You said some debris and stuff, so how much propulsion

00:45:03.280 | is needed, how much is the life of a satellite

00:45:05.840 | just like, oh crap, trying to avoid little things

00:45:09.080 | around there? - Yeah, I think one

00:45:10.480 | of the recent rules of thumb I heard was per year,

00:45:15.480 | some of these small satellites are doing

00:45:17.960 | like three collision avoidance maneuvers.

00:45:20.820 | So that's not-- - Oh, it's not too bad.

00:45:23.520 | - Yeah, but it's not zero, and it takes a lot of planning

00:45:28.520 | and people on the ground, and none of that really,

00:45:33.840 | I don't think right now, is autonomous.

00:45:36.280 | - Oh, that's not good.

00:45:37.640 | - Yeah, and then we have a lot of folks taking advantage

00:45:40.720 | of Moore's Law and cheaper spacecraft,

00:45:42.960 | so they're launching them up without the ability

00:45:44.920 | to maneuver themselves, and they're like,

00:45:46.320 | well, I don't know, just don't hit me.

00:45:49.160 | - And three times a year, that could become affordable

00:45:51.600 | if it's like, if it gets hit, maybe it won't be damaged

00:45:55.680 | kind of thing, that kind of logic.

00:45:57.680 | - Affordable in that instead of launching one satellite,

00:46:00.960 | they'll launch 20 small ones, yeah,

00:46:02.920 | so if one gets taken out, that's okay,

00:46:05.080 | but the problem is that one good-sized satellite

00:46:08.080 | getting hit, that's like a ballistic event

00:46:11.680 | that turns into 10,000 pieces of debris

00:46:14.040 | that then are the things that go and hit

00:46:16.400 | the other satellites, yeah.

00:46:17.880 | - So do you see a world where, like in your sense,

00:46:22.360 | in your own work and just in the space industry in general,

00:46:25.760 | do you see that people are moving towards bigger satellites

00:46:28.160 | or smaller satellites, is there going to be a mix?

00:46:31.200 | Like what's, and what are we talking,

00:46:32.840 | what does it mean for a satellite to be big and small?

00:46:36.280 | What size are we talking about?

00:46:37.120 | - So big, the space industry prior to, I don't know,

00:46:42.120 | 1990, I guess the bulk of, the majority of satellites

00:46:46.800 | were the size of a school bus and cost

00:46:50.680 | a couple billion dollars, and now,

00:46:55.160 | our first launches were on satellites

00:47:00.000 | the size of shoeboxes that were built

00:47:01.840 | by high school students, so that's very different,

00:47:05.360 | to give you the two ends of the spectrum.

00:47:07.440 | Big satellites will, I think they're here to stay,

00:47:12.320 | at least as far as I can see into the future,

00:47:15.640 | for things like broadcasting, you want to be able

00:47:19.600 | to broadcast to as many people as possible.

00:47:24.020 | You also can't just go to small satellites

00:47:28.840 | and say Moore's Law for things like optics,

00:47:32.040 | so if you have an aperture on your satellite,

00:47:34.680 | that just, that doesn't follow Moore's Law,

00:47:36.640 | that's different, so it's always gonna be the size

00:47:39.280 | it will be, unless there's some new physics

00:47:42.040 | that comes out that I'm not aware of,

00:47:44.280 | but if you need a resolution and you're at an altitude,

00:47:46.600 | that kind of sets the size of your telescope.

00:47:49.160 | But because of Moore's Law, we are able to do

00:47:54.640 | a lot more with smaller packages,

00:47:56.800 | and with that comes more affordability

00:48:00.320 | and opening up access to space to more and more people.

00:48:03.800 | - Well, what's the smallest satellite

00:48:05.200 | you've seen go up there?

00:48:07.120 | What are the smallest, you said shoeboxes.

00:48:09.360 | - Yeah, so I think the smallest,

00:48:11.880 | the smallest common form factor can fit a softball inside.

00:48:16.880 | So that's 10 centimeters on each side.

00:48:21.360 | But then there are some companies working on fractions

00:48:25.120 | of that even, and they're doing things

00:48:27.200 | like IOT type applications, so it's very low,

00:48:31.800 | bandwidth type things, but they're finding

00:48:35.200 | some niches for those.

00:48:37.320 | - Do you mean like there's a business,

00:48:38.560 | there's a thing to do with them?

00:48:40.440 | - Yes, these are--

00:48:41.280 | - What do you do with a small satellite like that?

00:48:44.040 | - You can track a ship going across the ocean,

00:48:48.360 | like if you need to, if you're just pinging something,

00:48:51.160 | you can handle that amount of data,

00:48:53.800 | and those latencies and so on.

00:48:56.200 | - You have to have propulsion on that,

00:48:57.440 | you have to have a little engine.

00:48:58.800 | - No, those are just letting fall out of the sky.

00:49:03.280 | - Okay. - Yeah.

00:49:04.320 | - But what, so what kind of satellites

00:49:06.480 | would you equip a colloid engine on?

00:49:08.960 | - Anything that's bigger than probably about 20 kilograms,

00:49:13.120 | anything that needs to stay up for more than a year,

00:49:16.440 | or anything somebody spent more than like 100K to build

00:49:20.300 | are kind of the ways I would think about it.

00:49:21.960 | - That's a lot of use cases.

00:49:23.600 | - Yeah.

00:49:24.440 | - What's a small sat?

00:49:26.080 | Like what category--

00:49:26.920 | - Small sat's actually very big,

00:49:28.540 | I think it's like 700 kilograms,

00:49:31.340 | or, pity my microphone,

00:49:33.840 | maybe 1,000 kilograms down to 200 kilograms,

00:49:38.840 | or people have their own kind of definitions

00:49:42.360 | of how they break them up,

00:49:43.320 | but small sat is still quite large,

00:49:46.000 | and then it's kind of also applied as a blanket term

00:49:49.880 | for anything that's not a school bus-sized satellite.

00:49:52.960 | So we need to get our jargon straight in the industry.

00:49:56.360 | - So what, do you see a possible future where,

00:50:00.040 | you know, there's a few thousand satellites up there now,

00:50:02.520 | a couple of thousand of them functioning,

00:50:04.520 | do you see a future where there's like millions

00:50:07.520 | of satellites up in orbit?

00:50:09.960 | Or forget millions, tens of thousands,

00:50:13.000 | which just seems like where the natural trajectory

00:50:16.200 | of the way things are going now is going.

00:50:20.120 | - Tens of thousands, yes.

00:50:22.480 | The two, you know, buckets of applications,

00:50:26.360 | one is imaging and the other is communication.

00:50:30.480 | So imaging, I think that will plateau

00:50:35.120 | because one satellite or one constellation

00:50:39.100 | can take an image or a video and sell it

00:50:41.240 | to, you know, infinity customers.

00:50:44.300 | But if you're providing communications

00:50:47.560 | like broadband internet or satellite cell

00:50:51.640 | or something like that, satellite phone,

00:50:54.120 | you know, you're limited by your transponders and so on.

00:50:58.680 | So to serve more people, you actually need more satellites

00:51:02.040 | and perhaps at the rate, you know,

00:51:05.000 | our data consumption and things are going these days,

00:51:08.840 | yeah, I can see tens of thousands of satellites.

00:51:11.240 | - Can I ask you a ridiculous question?

00:51:14.480 | - Yes.

00:51:15.360 | - So I've recently watched this documentary on Netflix

00:51:18.720 | about flat earthers, you know,

00:51:23.240 | the people that believe in a flat Earth.

00:51:25.920 | As somebody who develops propulsion systems

00:51:30.040 | for satellites and for spacecraft,

00:51:33.080 | what's, to use the most convincing evidence,

00:51:37.560 | that the Earth is round?

00:51:38.840 | - Probably some of the photos taken from the moon.

00:51:46.600 | - Photos from the moon?

00:51:47.440 | Okay, so it's not from the satellite space.

00:51:50.760 | - Yeah, I think seeing that perspective,

00:51:53.760 | maybe I'm answering too personally

00:51:58.320 | 'cause I really love those photos.

00:52:00.960 | - 'Cause they're beautiful, yeah.

00:52:01.800 | - I really like the ones that show the moon

00:52:04.320 | and the lunar lander and they're taken

00:52:07.680 | a little bit farther back.

00:52:08.680 | So you see Earth and first you're like,

00:52:10.960 | wow, that's tiny and we're insignificant.

00:52:13.840 | - Yeah.

00:52:14.680 | - And that's kind of sad,

00:52:15.520 | but then you see this really cool thing

00:52:16.360 | that we landed on another planetary body

00:52:17.200 | and you're like, oh, okay.

00:52:18.040 | - Can you actually see Earth?

00:52:18.860 | I don't know if I remember those.

00:52:19.700 | - Yeah, I'll send you that picture.

00:52:20.540 | - 'Cause I love the pictures or videos

00:52:21.360 | of just Earth from orbit and so on.

00:52:22.200 | - Right, yeah.

00:52:23.040 | - That's really beautiful.

00:52:23.860 | That's like a perspective shifter.

00:52:24.700 | That's the pale blue dot, right?

00:52:25.540 | It probably appears tiny.

00:52:26.360 | - Yeah, and just that juxtaposition

00:52:27.200 | of the Earth and the moon.

00:52:28.040 | - Yeah.

00:52:28.860 | - And then you see the moon,

00:52:29.700 | and then you see the Earth,

00:52:30.540 | and then you see the moon,

00:52:31.360 | and then you see the moon,

00:52:32.200 | and then you see the moon,

00:52:33.040 | and then you see the moon,

00:52:44.040 | and then you see the moon, and then you see the moon.

00:53:05.040 | - Yeah, I would be, what did you say?

00:53:08.040 | You said you wouldn't be in the first 100.

00:53:09.040 | - Not in the first 1,000.

00:53:10.040 | - 1,000.

00:53:10.880 | - Yeah.

00:53:11.700 | - Which, it's funny because to me,

00:53:14.360 | that's brave to be in the first million.

00:53:17.160 | I think when the Declaration of Independence was signed

00:53:21.760 | in the United States,

00:53:22.640 | there was like two million people.

00:53:25.600 | So I would like to show up

00:53:27.280 | when they're signing those documents.

00:53:29.200 | - Okay.

00:53:30.040 | - So maybe the two million.

00:53:31.040 | - Oh, that's an interesting way to think of it.

00:53:32.880 | 'Cause then we're participating as citizenry

00:53:35.960 | and defining the direction.

00:53:38.000 | - So it's not the technical risk.

00:53:41.160 | You just don't wanna show up somewhere

00:53:43.400 | that's like America before that.

00:53:46.960 | - Yeah, because from a psychological perspective,

00:53:51.560 | it's just gonna be a stressful mess

00:53:54.360 | as people have studied, right?

00:53:59.560 | Most likely the process of colonization

00:54:03.120 | looks like basically a prison.

00:54:07.320 | Like you're in a very tight and closed space with people

00:54:10.600 | and it's just a really stressful environment.

00:54:13.440 | How do you select the kind of people that will go?

00:54:15.400 | And then there'll be drama.

00:54:16.480 | There's always drama.

00:54:17.560 | And I just wanna show up when there's some rules.

00:54:21.400 | But I mean, it depends.

00:54:22.960 | So I'm not worried about the health

00:54:24.360 | and the technical difficulties.

00:54:26.080 | I'm more worried about the psychological difficulties.

00:54:29.520 | And also just not being able to tweet.

00:54:31.320 | Like, what are you gonna, how are you?

00:54:33.640 | There's no Netflix.

00:54:34.680 | So yeah, maybe not in the first million,

00:54:37.360 | but the first hundred thousand.

00:54:39.880 | It's exciting to define the direction of a new,

00:54:42.680 | like how often do we not just have a revolution

00:54:46.240 | to redefine our government as smaller countries

00:54:49.760 | are still doing to this day,

00:54:51.240 | but literally start over from scratch.

00:54:54.200 | There's just our financial system.

00:54:56.840 | It could be like based on cryptocurrency.

00:54:59.680 | You could think about like how democracy,

00:55:02.600 | we have now the technology that can enable pure democracy,

00:55:06.920 | for example, if we choose to do that.

00:55:09.760 | As opposed to representative democracy,

00:55:11.560 | all those kinds of things.

00:55:12.840 | So we talked about two different forms of propulsion,

00:55:16.560 | which are super exciting.

00:55:18.040 | So the chemical based, that's doing pretty well.

00:55:20.720 | And then the electric base is,

00:55:24.480 | are there types of propulsion

00:55:26.960 | that might sound like science fiction right now,

00:55:29.320 | but are actually within the reach of science

00:55:31.360 | in the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years

00:55:34.360 | that you kind of think about?

00:55:36.040 | Or maybe even within the space of even just like,

00:55:39.360 | like even ion engines,

00:55:43.960 | is there like breakthroughs that might 10X the thing,

00:55:46.800 | like really improve it?

00:55:49.040 | - So, you know, the real game changer

00:55:51.920 | would be propellant-less propulsion.

00:55:55.400 | And so every couple of years you see a new,

00:55:58.920 | now a startup or a researcher comes up with some contraption

00:56:03.920 | for producing thrust that didn't require,

00:56:07.280 | you know, we've been talking about conservation of momentum,

00:56:09.600 | mass times velocity out the back,

00:56:12.840 | mass times velocity forward. - So there's usually mass.

00:56:14.440 | - Yes. - That's what.

00:56:15.280 | - Exactly.

00:56:16.120 | And you have to, you know, carry that up with you

00:56:19.680 | or find it on an asteroid or harvest it from somewhere

00:56:22.960 | if you didn't bring it with you.

00:56:24.040 | So not having to do that would be, you know,

00:56:27.080 | one of the ultimate game changers.

00:56:29.760 | And I, you know, unless there are new types of physics,

00:56:34.760 | I don't know how we do it, but it comes up often.

00:56:38.920 | So it's something I do think about.

00:56:40.920 | And, you know, the one,

00:56:42.840 | I think it's called the Casimir effect.

00:56:45.380 | If you can, if you have two plates

00:56:48.000 | and the space between them is on the order of these,

00:56:50.960 | like the wavelength of these ephemeral vacuum particles

00:56:54.680 | that pop into and out of existence or something,

00:56:57.080 | I may be confusing multiple types of propellant-less forces,

00:57:02.520 | but that could be real

00:57:07.520 | and could be something that we use eventually.

00:57:11.480 | - What would be the power source?

00:57:13.120 | - Yeah, the most recent engine like this

00:57:16.000 | that was just debunked this year,

00:57:19.920 | I think in March or something was called the M-Drive.

00:57:23.240 | And supposedly you used a power source,

00:57:26.920 | so, you know, batteries or solar panels

00:57:28.860 | to generate microwaves into this resonant cavity

00:57:32.440 | and people claimed it produced thrust.

00:57:36.160 | So they went straight from this really loose concept

00:57:39.360 | to building a device and testing it.

00:57:40.920 | And they said, "We've measured thrust."

00:57:42.920 | And sure, on their thrust balance, they saw thrust

00:57:45.240 | and different researchers built it and tested it

00:57:48.640 | and got the same measurements.

00:57:49.880 | And so it was looking actually pretty good.

00:57:52.720 | No one could explain how it worked,

00:57:54.080 | but what they said was that this inside the cavity,

00:57:59.080 | the microwaves themselves didn't change,

00:58:01.920 | but the speed of light changed inside the cavity.

00:58:04.560 | So relative to that, you know,

00:58:07.040 | their momentum was conserved. - Wow, okay.

00:58:10.520 | - And I don't, you know, whatever.

00:58:15.280 | But finally someone, I think at NASA,

00:58:17.360 | built the device, tested it, got the same thrust,

00:58:19.800 | then unhooked it, flipped it backwards and turned it on,

00:58:22.880 | but got the same thrust in the same direction again.

00:58:25.360 | And so they're like, "This is just an interaction

00:58:27.360 | "with the test setup or, you know,

00:58:29.020 | "some of the chamber or something like that."

00:58:31.280 | So forwarded again, but, you know,

00:58:35.240 | it would be so wonderful for everybody

00:58:37.240 | if we could figure out how to do it, but I don't know.

00:58:40.200 | - That's an interesting twist on it

00:58:42.100 | because that's more about efficient travel,

00:58:45.560 | long distance travel, right?

00:58:46.800 | That's not necessarily about speed.

00:58:48.580 | That's more about enabling like--

00:58:51.840 | - Yeah, so hook that up to the nuclear power supply.

00:58:56.120 | There you go. - Okay.

00:58:58.160 | But still in terms of speed, in terms of trying to,

00:59:01.960 | so there's recently, already I think been debunked

00:59:06.580 | or close to being debunked, but the signal,

00:59:10.280 | a weird signal from our nearby friends,

00:59:14.260 | nearby exoplanets from Proxima Centauri,

00:59:17.120 | a signal that's 4.2 light years away.

00:59:22.460 | So, you know, the thought is,

00:59:25.680 | it'd be kind of cool if there's life out there, alien life,

00:59:30.340 | but it'd be really cool if we could fly out there and check.

00:59:34.360 | And so what kind of propulsion,

00:59:37.020 | and do you think about what kind of propulsion

00:59:39.360 | would allow us to travel close to the speed of light,

00:59:42.160 | or half the speed of light, all those kinds of things

00:59:44.640 | that would allow us to get to Proxima Centauri

00:59:47.000 | and have reasonable, in a lifetime?

00:59:49.380 | - You know, there's the project Breakthrough Starshot.

00:59:54.800 | - Yeah.

00:59:55.640 | - That's looking at sending those tiny little chip sets.

00:59:59.680 | - And like accelerating really fast.

01:00:01.840 | - Yeah, using a laser, so launching them,

01:00:04.160 | and then while they're still relatively close to the Earth,

01:00:07.080 | blasting them with some, I forget what,

01:00:10.200 | even what power level you needed

01:00:12.800 | to accelerate them fast enough to get there in 20 years.

01:00:15.720 | - Super crazy sounding,

01:00:16.720 | but a lot of people say that's a legitimate,

01:00:19.400 | like it's crazy sounding, but it can actually pull it off.

01:00:22.280 | - Yeah, I love that project

01:00:24.120 | because there are a lot of different aspects.

01:00:26.040 | You know, there's the laser,

01:00:27.320 | there's how do you then get enough power

01:00:31.240 | when you're there to send a signal back.

01:00:33.160 | No part of that project is possible right now,

01:00:35.600 | but I think it's really exciting.

01:00:38.320 | - But do you see like human,

01:00:41.040 | like a spacecraft with a human on it,

01:00:43.880 | so it's like a heavy one,

01:00:45.480 | being like us inventing new propulsion systems entirely.

01:00:49.080 | Like do you ever see that on the radar

01:00:52.200 | of propulsion systems like that,

01:00:53.960 | or are they completely out there in the impossible?

01:00:57.240 | - Well, we're going to quickly leave the realm

01:00:59.680 | of what I can describe with any credibility,

01:01:03.160 | but I think because of special relativity,

01:01:08.040 | if we try to accelerate the mass

01:01:10.560 | to close to the speed of light,

01:01:12.360 | it becomes infinitely heavy,

01:01:15.240 | and then we'd have to like harness a lot of suns to do that.

01:01:20.240 | Or, you know, it's just that math doesn't quite work out,

01:01:25.040 | but you know, in my childlike heart,

01:01:30.560 | I believe that, you know, we're missing something,

01:01:34.080 | whether it's, you know, dark matter or other dimensions,

01:01:38.320 | and if you can just have some antimatter

01:01:41.960 | and a black hole and then ride that around

01:01:46.680 | and somehow, you know, turn that into some--

01:01:49.560 | - Mess with gravity somehow.

01:01:51.280 | - Yeah, I feel like we're missing lots of things

01:01:55.560 | in this puzzle and that, you know--

01:02:00.120 | - I want to harness that puzzle.

01:02:00.960 | - There's something.

01:02:01.800 | - Yeah, right, well, I can speak with confidence

01:02:03.680 | as a descendant of apes

01:02:06.280 | that we don't know what the hell we're doing.

01:02:08.560 | - Yeah.

01:02:09.600 | - So there's, we're like really confident,

01:02:12.800 | like physicists are really confident

01:02:14.800 | that we've like got most of the picture down.

01:02:17.520 | - Right.

01:02:18.360 | - But it feels like, oh boy,

01:02:20.960 | it feels like that we might not even be getting started

01:02:25.460 | on some of the essential things

01:02:27.000 | that would allow us to engineer systems

01:02:31.360 | that would allow us to travel to space much, much faster.

01:02:36.360 | - Yeah, and there's even things

01:02:38.280 | that are much more commonplace that we can't explain,

01:02:42.520 | but we've started to take for granted,

01:02:44.120 | like quantum tunneling, you know,

01:02:48.440 | just things like, oh, the electron was here with this energy

01:02:51.560 | and now it's here with this energy and it's just tunneling.

01:02:55.680 | But so I, you know, we're missing a lot of the picture.

01:02:58.120 | So yeah, I don't know,

01:02:59.920 | to, you know, use your same question from earlier,

01:03:03.480 | I don't know if you and I will see it,

01:03:05.560 | but yeah, someday.

01:03:08.000 | - You're the co-founder of,

01:03:09.680 | just like we've been talking about Axion Systems.

01:03:12.280 | - Yeah.

01:03:13.120 | - It's a, would you say a space propulsion company?

01:03:15.960 | - Yes.

01:03:16.800 | - Broadly speaking.

01:03:17.640 | So how do you, big question,

01:03:22.280 | how do you build a rocket company?

01:03:25.740 | From like a propulsion company from one person,

01:03:30.740 | from two people to 10 people plus,

01:03:35.300 | and actually, you know, take it to a successful product?

01:03:40.300 | - Yeah, well, I think the early stage is quite,

01:03:44.560 | I'm not supposed to use the word easy

01:03:48.540 | when you work in rocket science, but straightforward.

01:03:51.900 | When you're working on something, you know, sexy,

01:03:53.980 | like an ion engine, it's more straightforward to raise money

01:03:58.340 | and get people to come work for you

01:04:00.860 | because the vision's really exciting.

01:04:02.320 | And actually that's something I would say

01:04:04.660 | is very important throughout, is a really exciting vision,

01:04:09.660 | because when everything, you know, goes to crap,

01:04:13.320 | you need that to get people getting themselves out of bed

01:04:16.620 | in the morning and thinking of the higher purpose there.

01:04:21.480 | And, you know, another thing along the way

01:04:24.200 | that I think is key in building any company

01:04:27.480 | is the right early employees

01:04:31.160 | that also have their own networks

01:04:33.840 | and can bring in a lot of people that, you know,

01:04:38.360 | really make the whole greater

01:04:43.560 | than just the sum of the early team.

01:04:46.680 | - And how do you build that?

01:04:47.640 | Like, how do you find people?

01:04:49.400 | It's like asking, like, how do you make friends?

01:04:52.440 | But is there, is it luck?

01:04:55.920 | Is there a system?

01:04:57.880 | Like how, in terms of the people you've connected with,

01:05:00.920 | the people you've built a company with,

01:05:05.460 | is there some thread, some commonality,

01:05:10.400 | some pattern that you find to be,

01:05:13.200 | to hold for what makes a great team?

01:05:17.760 | - I think, you know, personally,

01:05:19.760 | a thread for me has been my network

01:05:23.680 | and being able to draw on that a lot,

01:05:27.860 | but also giving back to it as much as possible

01:05:31.960 | in like an unsolicited sort of way,

01:05:33.980 | like making connections between people

01:05:36.720 | that, you know, maybe didn't ask,

01:05:38.640 | but that I think could be really fruitful.

01:05:41.480 | And even, you know, weirder than that

01:05:44.880 | is just really getting, you know,

01:05:48.880 | having weird, uncomfortable conversations with people,

01:05:52.160 | like at a conference,

01:05:53.160 | and getting over the small talk quickly

01:05:57.400 | and getting to know them quickly,

01:05:58.800 | and having a relationship that stands out,

01:06:01.200 | and then being able to call on them later because of that.

01:06:04.880 | And I think that's, it's,

01:06:06.600 | that's been because I'm introverted

01:06:09.160 | and I, you know, wanna poke my eyes out

01:06:11.880 | instead of go and do small talk.

01:06:13.880 | And so I huddle in a corner with one person,

01:06:16.800 | and, you know, we talk about aliens or things like that.

01:06:19.640 | And so, you know, that's all to say that,

01:06:23.020 | you know, having a strong network,

01:06:24.480 | I think is really important, but a genuine one.

01:06:28.240 | And let's see, other ways to build a rocket company,

01:06:32.000 | kind of making sure you're paying attention

01:06:33.580 | to the sweeping trends of the industry.

01:06:35.840 | So everybody just cares about cost

01:06:37.920 | and being able to get out ahead of that.

01:06:41.520 | And even more than we ever thought we'd need to

01:06:44.160 | as far as what we needed to price our systems at.

01:06:46.960 | You know, people, for,

01:06:50.260 | since the start of the US space industry,

01:06:53.040 | they've been paying 20, 25 million in adjusted dollars

01:06:57.140 | for an ion engine.

01:06:58.200 | And seeing that now people are going to wanna pay

01:07:03.200 | 10K for an ion engine,

01:07:05.960 | and just staying out ahead of that

01:07:08.960 | and those kinds of things.

01:07:10.640 | So, you know, being out in the industry

01:07:12.440 | and talking to as many people as possible.

01:07:15.080 | - So there's a drive, I mean,

01:07:16.440 | I suppose SpaceX really pushed that.

01:07:18.480 | - Frustrating for me.

01:07:20.280 | - So SpaceX really pushed this,

01:07:22.660 | the application of, I guess, capitalism,

01:07:27.000 | of driving the price down,

01:07:28.480 | of basically forcing people to ask the question,

01:07:31.840 | can this be done cheaper?

01:07:36.040 | - This can lead to like big problems, I would say,

01:07:41.040 | in the following sense.

01:07:43.040 | I see this in the car industry, for example,

01:07:46.200 | that people have,

01:07:49.480 | it's such a small margin for profit.

01:07:53.840 | Like they've driven the cost of everything down so much

01:07:57.120 | that there's literally no room for innovation,

01:07:59.880 | for taking risks.

01:08:01.240 | So like cars, which is funny,

01:08:04.520 | because not until Tesla, really,

01:08:07.560 | which is one of the, in a long, long time,

01:08:10.520 | one of the first successful new car companies

01:08:14.400 | that's constantly innovating.

01:08:16.240 | Every other car company is really boring

01:08:19.200 | in terms of their technological innovation.

01:08:21.600 | They innovate on design and style and so on,

01:08:24.380 | that people fall in love with the look and so on,

01:08:27.360 | but it's not really innovation.

01:08:28.960 | In terms of the technology in it,

01:08:31.240 | it's really boringly the same thing,

01:08:33.360 | and they're really afraid of taking risks.

01:08:35.840 | And that's a big problem for rocket space too,

01:08:38.520 | is like if you're cutting on costs,

01:08:41.220 | you can't afford to innovate and to try out new things.

01:08:44.120 | And that's definitely true with the ion engine, right?

01:08:49.120 | So, but what,

01:08:50.240 | so how do you compete in this space?

01:08:54.660 | Do you, by the way, see SpaceX as a competitor?

01:08:57.440 | And what do you say in general

01:08:59.880 | about the competition in this space?

01:09:01.480 | Is it really difficult?

01:09:03.280 | As a business to compete here?

01:09:05.960 | - No, I don't see SpaceX as a competitor,

01:09:09.120 | and I see them as one day, not too long from now,

01:09:13.000 | a customer, hopefully.

01:09:14.640 | I mean, to compete against that,

01:09:18.700 | I think you just have to do things in an unconventional way.

01:09:23.120 | So bringing silicon MEMS manufacturing to propulsion,

01:09:28.720 | NASA doesn't make ion engines

01:09:30.600 | using a batch mass-producible technique.

01:09:34.920 | They have one guy that's been making their ion engines

01:09:38.360 | for 20 years, like bespoke pieces of jewelry.

01:09:41.800 | So bringing things to what you're trying to innovate

01:09:46.800 | to make them, in our case, more cost-effective

01:09:51.120 | was really key.

01:09:52.520 | - I like the idea of somebody putting out ion engines

01:09:56.400 | on like Etsy.

01:09:57.520 | - Yeah, my advisor at MIT would,

01:10:00.920 | the thruster chip I was holding up,

01:10:02.360 | he would wear one as a lapel pin.

01:10:05.720 | - But in general, just on the topic of SpaceX,

01:10:08.980 | 2020 has seen some difficult things for human civilization.

01:10:14.920 | And it's been a lot of, first of all, it's an election year.

01:10:17.840 | There's been a lot of drama and division about that.

01:10:20.560 | There's been riots of all different reasons,

01:10:24.880 | racial division.

01:10:25.880 | There's been obviously a virus that's testing

01:10:29.440 | the very fabric of our society.

01:10:31.480 | But there's been really, for me at least,

01:10:34.520 | super positive things, inspiring things,

01:10:37.000 | which is SpaceX and NASA doing the first commercial

01:10:41.960 | human flight, launching humans to space,

01:10:47.840 | and did it twice successfully.

01:10:49.640 | What is that, did you get to watch that launch?

01:10:54.560 | Did you, what does it make you feel?

01:10:57.020 | Do you think this is first days

01:11:01.000 | for a new era of space exploration?

01:11:04.520 | - Yeah, I did watch it.

01:11:06.680 | We played it outside on a big screen at our place.

01:11:09.880 | And I was a little, they kept saying,

01:11:12.640 | "Bob and Doug, Bob and Doug."

01:11:14.360 | And astronauts usually are treated

01:11:19.240 | with a little bit more fanfare.

01:11:20.720 | So it felt very casual, but maybe that was a good,

01:11:24.040 | a good thing.

01:11:25.240 | This is the era of commercial, crude missions.

01:11:30.200 | - It was a little bit more, what is it?

01:11:34.000 | What's his name, Chris Hadfield, playing guitar.

01:11:37.800 | It's more, it's a different flavor to it of--

01:11:41.120 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:11:42.560 | - More fun, playful, celebrity type--

01:11:46.120 | - Yes, exactly.

01:11:47.080 | - Astronaut versus the aura of the magical

01:11:51.800 | sort of heroic element of the single human

01:11:55.480 | representing us in space.

01:11:56.920 | - Yes.

01:11:57.760 | - Yeah.

01:11:58.580 | - I think that's all for the better though.

01:12:00.400 | It's so cool that it's such a commonplace thing

01:12:03.000 | now that we send, you know, I can't believe

01:12:05.240 | that sometimes I'll have to, you know,

01:12:08.160 | you don't even realize that astronauts are coming

01:12:10.600 | and going all the time, you know, splashing back down.

01:12:13.640 | And it's just so common now,

01:12:15.120 | but that's quite magical, I think.

01:12:19.120 | So yes, we did watch that.

01:12:20.960 | I love, love, love that we finally have that capability

01:12:24.760 | again to send people to the space station.

01:12:27.780 | And it's just really exciting to see the private sector

01:12:32.800 | stepping up to fill in where the government

01:12:34.920 | has pulled back in the US.

01:12:36.200 | And I think pulled back way too soon

01:12:38.380 | as far as exploration and science goes.

01:12:42.520 | Probably pulled back at the right time

01:12:44.140 | for commercial things and getting that started.

01:12:47.940 | But I'm really happy that it's even possible

01:12:51.880 | to do that with private money and companies.

01:12:55.840 | - Do you like the kind of the model of competition

01:12:58.520 | of NASA funding?

01:13:01.440 | I guess that's how it works is like they're providing

01:13:03.600 | quite a bit of money from the government

01:13:05.560 | and then private companies compete

01:13:08.240 | to be the delivery vehicles for whichever

01:13:12.400 | the government missions, like NASA missions.

01:13:17.600 | - Yes, I think for this type of mission

01:13:20.800 | is a little bit kind of straddles commercial and science.

01:13:25.800 | So I think it's good, but I do in general feel like

01:13:30.160 | we've pulled back too much on NASA's role

01:13:34.220 | in the science and exploration part.

01:13:37.160 | And I think our pace is too slow there for my liking,

01:13:42.160 | I suppose.

01:13:43.400 | - What do you mean on the science?

01:13:44.880 | Okay, so did you have, I mean on the cost thing,

01:13:48.560 | do you feel like NASA was a little too bureaucratic

01:13:52.600 | in a sense, like too slow, too heavy cost-wise

01:13:57.600 | in their effort, like when they were running things

01:14:00.920 | purely without any commercial involvement?

01:14:03.760 | - So I suppose it's more that I just want

01:14:06.800 | the government to fund.

01:14:08.720 | - I see, yeah.

01:14:10.000 | - And maybe NASA's not the best organization

01:14:12.760 | to do it rapidly, but I think that,

01:14:17.240 | you know, again, depending on the goals,

01:14:20.600 | we're just kind of at the very starting point

01:14:23.520 | of space exploration and science and understanding.

01:14:28.520 | So we should be spending more money there and not less.

01:14:32.360 | And other countries are starting to spend more and more,

01:14:35.000 | and I think we'll fall behind because of that.

01:14:38.200 | - So you have quite a bit of experience,

01:14:39.880 | first of all, starting a company yourself,

01:14:42.120 | but also I saw, maybe you can correct me,

01:14:44.600 | but you have quite a bit of knowledge of just in general,

01:14:49.600 | the startup experience of building companies

01:14:52.320 | that you've interacted with people.

01:14:54.400 | Is there advice that you can give to somebody,

01:14:59.400 | to a founder, co-founder who wants to launch

01:15:02.240 | and grow a new company and do something big

01:15:07.160 | and impactful in this world?

01:15:10.100 | - Yes, I would say, you know, like I mentioned earlier,

01:15:15.060 | but make sure the vision is something that, you know,

01:15:19.900 | will get you out of bed in the morning

01:15:21.580 | and that you can rally other people around you to achieve.

01:15:26.580 | 'Cause I see a lot of folks that sort of cared

01:15:32.460 | about something or saw a window of opportunity

01:15:35.180 | to do something and, you know, startups are hard

01:15:38.660 | and more often than not, just being opportunistic

01:15:42.300 | isn't going to be enough to make it through

01:15:44.980 | all the really crappy things that are going to happen.

01:15:48.860 | - So the vision just helps you psychologically

01:15:51.300 | to carry through the hardships, for you and the team.

01:15:53.620 | - Yeah, you and the team, yeah, exactly.

01:15:56.180 | To kind of younger people interested

01:15:58.580 | in getting into entrepreneurship, I would say,

01:16:01.220 | you know, stay as close to like first principles

01:16:04.260 | and fundamentals as you can for as long as you can.

01:16:08.840 | Because really understanding the problems, you know,

01:16:12.040 | if it's something scientific or hardware related,

01:16:15.080 | or even if it's not, but having a deep understanding

01:16:18.560 | of the problem and the customers and what people care about

01:16:22.680 | and how to move something forward is more important

01:16:26.400 | than taking all of the entrepreneurship classes in undergrad.

01:16:31.400 | - So being able to think deeply, yeah.

01:16:33.400 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:16:35.120 | - Yeah, well, have you been surprised

01:16:37.040 | about how much like pivoting is involved?

01:16:39.320 | Like basically rethinking what you thought initially

01:16:42.280 | would be the right direction to go?

01:16:44.280 | Or is there, if you think deeply enough

01:16:46.520 | that you can stick in the same direction for long enough?

01:16:50.560 | - So our, you know, our guiding star hasn't changed at all.

01:16:55.560 | So that's been pretty consistent, but we,

01:16:59.320 | within that we flip flop on so many things all the time.

01:17:04.320 | And, you know, to give you one example,

01:17:06.080 | it's do you stop and build a first product

01:17:10.240 | that's well-suited to maybe a smaller,

01:17:14.200 | less exciting segment of the market?

01:17:16.720 | Or do you stay head down and focus on, you know,

01:17:21.720 | the big swing and trying to hit it

01:17:24.000 | out of the park right away?

01:17:25.320 | And we've flip flopped between that.

01:17:27.600 | And there's not a blanket answer

01:17:30.280 | and there are a lot of factors, but that's a hard one.

01:17:33.600 | And I think one other piece for the aspiring founder,

01:17:38.600 | spending a lot of time and effort on the culture

01:17:44.800 | and people piece is so important

01:17:47.880 | and is always an afterthought and something

01:17:52.160 | that I haven't really seen like the founders

01:17:56.560 | or executives that companies purposefully carve out time

01:18:00.920 | and acknowledge that, yes, this is going to take a lot

01:18:04.840 | of my time and resources.

01:18:06.440 | And then, but you see them after the fact trying to repair

01:18:09.440 | the, you know, bro culture or whatever else is broken

01:18:12.760 | at the company.

01:18:14.040 | And I think that it's starting to change,

01:18:16.400 | but just to be aware of it from the beginning is important.

01:18:19.520 | - Right, I guess it should be part of the vision

01:18:21.720 | of what kind of place you wanna create

01:18:24.120 | or what kind of like human beings.

01:18:28.520 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:18:29.520 | Like you can't wait five, 10 years

01:18:31.880 | and then just slap an HR person onto trying to fix it.

01:18:35.120 | Like it has to be thoughtful from the beginning.

01:18:37.800 | - Yeah, don't get me started on HR people.

01:18:40.920 | Don't leave HR to HR people, but I'll just leave it at that.

01:18:46.520 | You didn't say that, I said it, okay.

01:18:48.320 | Yeah, HR is actual HR is really important.

01:18:54.040 | This is so important.

01:18:55.360 | - Yes, but so overlooked. - Culture is so important.

01:18:57.680 | Yeah.

01:18:58.520 | - And then I also was surprised.

01:19:01.480 | Like I thought you could say,

01:19:04.080 | here will be our culture and our values

01:19:06.520 | and that it was kind of distinct

01:19:07.840 | from who I and my co-founder were as people.

01:19:11.200 | And I was like, no, that's not how that works.

01:19:12.960 | We just kind of like ooze out our behaviors

01:19:16.520 | and then the company grows around that.

01:19:18.280 | So you have to do a lot of like introspection

01:19:20.920 | and self work to not end up with a shitty culture.

01:19:24.960 | - It's kind of a, it's a relationship,

01:19:27.640 | but it's supposed to relationship with two people.

01:19:29.720 | It's relationship with many people.

01:19:31.640 | - Yeah.

01:19:32.480 | - And you communicate so much indirectly by who you are.

01:19:35.640 | You have to be, you have to live it.

01:19:37.880 | Yeah.

01:19:38.720 | As somebody, I think about this a lot

01:19:42.440 | 'cause generally I'm full of love

01:19:45.280 | and all those kinds of things.

01:19:47.120 | But like, I also get like really passionate.

01:19:49.960 | And when I see somebody in the context of work, especially,

01:19:54.600 | when I see somebody who I know can do a much better job

01:19:58.440 | and they don't do a great job,

01:20:01.360 | I can lose my shit in a way that's like Steve Jobsian.

01:20:05.680 | And you have to think about exactly the right way

01:20:09.960 | to lose your shit if you're going to, or if at all.

01:20:13.440 | You have to really think through that

01:20:14.880 | 'cause it sends a big signal.

01:20:16.600 | You know, sometimes that's okay.

01:20:19.400 | Like if you do it deliberately,

01:20:21.160 | like if you're going to do it deliberately,

01:20:23.240 | if you're going to say like, I'm going to be the kind

01:20:25.240 | of person that allows this and pays the cost of it,

01:20:27.960 | but you can't just think it's not gonna have a cost.

01:20:30.800 | - Yes, this was like the first thing I worked on

01:20:33.480 | with my leadership coach was how not to just snap at people

01:20:38.480 | when they were being an idiot.

01:20:41.680 | And first I got really good at apologizing.

01:20:46.640 | That was the first step because it was gonna take longer

01:20:49.680 | to fix the behavior. - That's brilliant.

01:20:51.800 | - And then she, I'm actually a lot better at it now.

01:20:55.000 | And it started with things, she's like,

01:20:56.520 | every time you walk through a doorway,

01:20:58.880 | think calm and take breaths before responding.

01:21:03.360 | And there were all sorts of these little things we did.

01:21:05.760 | And it was mostly just changing the habit.

01:21:08.640 | - Yeah.

01:21:09.480 | Boy, it's a long road.

01:21:13.200 | Okay, so people love it when we talk about books.

01:21:18.200 | Is there books, maybe three or so,

01:21:20.720 | technical fiction, philosophical

01:21:22.400 | that had an impact on your life and you might recommend?

01:21:26.320 | And for each, is there an idea or so

01:21:29.080 | that you take away from it?

01:21:30.640 | - Yes, so I've been a voracious reader all my life.

01:21:36.540 | And I'm always reading like three or four

01:21:40.200 | or five books at a time.

01:21:42.440 | And now I use Audible a lot too

01:21:47.400 | and podcasts and things like that.

01:21:50.440 | So I think the first one that stands out to me is,

01:21:54.440 | it's a novel, "Tender is the Night" by Fitzgerald.

01:21:58.120 | And I read it when I was much younger,

01:22:01.560 | but I went back and read it recently.

01:22:02.960 | And it's not that good.

01:22:04.040 | So I'm not sure why it has like such an important place

01:22:08.240 | in my literary history.

01:22:10.600 | But I love Fitzgerald as an author

01:22:13.560 | because he has very like flowery prose

01:22:18.360 | that I can just picture what he's saying,

01:22:22.240 | but he does it in such a creative way.

01:22:25.960 | I remember that one in particular

01:22:27.760 | 'cause I read a ton as a kid too,

01:22:30.380 | but it kind of set me,

01:22:32.600 | is like the beginning of my adult reading life

01:22:35.540 | and getting into classics.

01:22:39.060 | And I do feel like they seem intimidating maybe.

01:22:45.340 | And then I realized that they're all just like love stories.

01:22:48.560 | So--

01:22:51.860 | - Yeah, isn't everything a love story?

01:22:53.780 | - Yeah, it's really.

01:22:55.860 | Even, I don't know, I was surprised

01:22:59.140 | that even like a lot of the Russian authors,

01:23:02.340 | they're all just love stories.

01:23:04.780 | - We're humans are pretty simple.

01:23:05.940 | There's not much to worry,

01:23:06.860 | there's not much to work with.

01:23:08.500 | - So I think maybe that was it.

01:23:09.700 | It made like that whole world less intimidating to me

01:23:12.780 | and cemented my love for reading.

01:23:17.140 | - People should have just approached the classics.

01:23:18.780 | Like there's probably a love story in here.

01:23:20.820 | - Chick flicks, yeah.

01:23:21.660 | (both laughing)

01:23:22.980 | - Somehow it boils down to a chick flick.

01:23:24.580 | So just relax and enjoy the ride.

01:23:27.500 | - And then--

01:23:28.460 | - So what else?

01:23:29.300 | - Changing gears quite a bit.

01:23:33.740 | "The Beginning of Infinity," do you know it?

01:23:35.860 | By David Deutsch.

01:23:37.420 | So he's a physicist, I think at Cambridge or Oxford.

01:23:41.340 | And so I was introduced like more formally

01:23:45.020 | to a lot of the ideas,

01:23:46.580 | like a lot of the things we've talked about,

01:23:48.740 | he has a lot more like formalism and physics rigor around.

01:23:53.740 | And so I got introduced to more like jargon

01:23:59.020 | of how to think about some of these ideas,

01:24:01.080 | you know, like memes and DNA as ultimate meme,

01:24:10.580 | the concept of infinity and objective beauty,

01:24:15.580 | but he has a really strong grounding in physics.

01:24:19.180 | And then--

01:24:20.020 | - So he has a rigorous way

01:24:20.840 | of talking about these like big topics.

01:24:22.620 | - Yeah, so that was very mind opening to me to read that.

01:24:27.620 | But it also, I think is probably part

01:24:30.100 | of why I ended up marrying my husband

01:24:32.500 | is related to that book.

01:24:33.540 | And then I've had some other really great connections

01:24:36.380 | with people because I had read it and so had they.

01:24:39.940 | - I like how you turn even that book into a love story.

01:24:44.220 | - I did, oh no.

01:24:45.660 | - Somehow.

01:24:46.500 | - No, it's good, it's good.

01:24:47.700 | Your robot has a heart.

01:24:49.300 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:24:50.620 | - And okay, the third series is, it's just, it's Harry Potter.

01:24:55.620 | - Of course, which somehow connects to,

01:24:59.740 | I haven't read Harry Potter, I'm really sorry.

01:25:01.940 | - Oh no.

01:25:02.860 | - Forgive me, forgive me.

01:25:04.700 | But I've read Tolkien,

01:25:07.380 | but just Harry Potter, just haven't gotten to it.

01:25:09.900 | But your company name is somehow,

01:25:12.220 | I think, connected to Harry Potter, right?

01:25:14.140 | I think I heard this.

01:25:15.300 | - I always feel like I have to justify my fandom.

01:25:21.420 | The first three books came out when I was 10,

01:25:25.060 | so I went along this journey with Harry age-wise.

01:25:28.980 | And I read them all, like nine or 10 times, all seven books.

01:25:33.980 | And I think anything that just keeps you reading

01:25:39.380 | is what's important.

01:25:41.540 | And I have lulls where I don't feel like reading anything,

01:25:44.580 | so I'll reread a Harry Potter

01:25:46.580 | or a trashy detective novel or something,

01:25:51.140 | and I don't really care.

01:25:52.380 | And that's why I mentioned Harry Potter,

01:25:55.140 | because whatever just keeps me reading,

01:25:58.620 | I think, is important.

01:25:59.700 | And it was a big part of my life growing up.

01:26:02.820 | And then, yes, Axiom,

01:26:05.700 | the official story of the naming of the company

01:26:09.700 | is that Axiom is like a concatenation of accelerate and ion,

01:26:14.700 | but it actually came from Accio, the summoning charm.

01:26:18.860 | And then we just added an N, and it was perfect.

01:26:21.540 | - What's the summoning charm?

01:26:23.700 | That's one of the spells in the book?

01:26:25.500 | - Yeah, probably most notably,

01:26:30.420 | Harry uses it to summon his broomstick

01:26:33.460 | out of his dorm room when he's battling a dragon

01:26:37.340 | somewhere else.

01:26:38.180 | So he says the spell, and the broomstick comes to him.

01:26:40.220 | So summoning in that way.

01:26:41.780 | Okay, there we go.

01:26:44.780 | - This is brilliant.

01:26:45.780 | So the big thing is that it's something

01:26:48.860 | that you carry with you.

01:26:50.580 | It's like your safe place you return to,

01:26:53.900 | something like the Harry Potter.

01:26:55.340 | - That, I reread them still.

01:26:58.580 | Whatever keeps me reading, I think,

01:27:00.460 | is the most important thing.

01:27:03.020 | - Yeah, I got it.

01:27:03.860 | So I'm actually the same way in terms of the habit of it.

01:27:07.660 | It's important to just keep reading.

01:27:12.620 | But I have found myself struggling a little bit too,

01:27:16.620 | because I listen to a lot of audio books now,

01:27:19.140 | I've struggled to then switch back to reading seriously.

01:27:24.140 | 'Cause I read so many papers,

01:27:27.540 | I read so many other things,

01:27:28.980 | it feels like if I'm gonna sit down

01:27:30.580 | and have the time to actually focus on the reading,

01:27:33.540 | I should be reading blog posts or papers

01:27:36.740 | or more condensed kind of things.

01:27:38.980 | But there's a huge value to just reading long form still.

01:27:42.700 | - Yeah, and my husband was never that into fiction,

01:27:47.460 | but then someone told him, or he heard,

01:27:50.580 | you learn a lot of empathy through reading fiction.

01:27:55.180 | So you could think of it that way.

01:27:56.780 | - Well, yeah, that's kind of what, yeah, yeah.

01:27:58.740 | And it's also, fiction is a nice,

01:28:00.620 | unlike not, less so with nonfiction,

01:28:04.040 | is a chance to travel.

01:28:06.340 | I see it as kind of traveling.

01:28:08.260 | 'Cause you go to this other world,

01:28:09.740 | and it's nice 'cause it's like much more efficient.

01:28:12.700 | You don't have to get on a plane,

01:28:13.940 | you don't have to,

01:28:14.780 | and you get to meet all kinds of new people.

01:28:17.540 | It's like people say they love traveling,

01:28:19.860 | and I say I love traveling too,

01:28:21.300 | I just, yeah, read fiction.

01:28:23.140 | - I told my three-year-old that that was why

01:28:28.780 | we read so much, 'cause we see the places in our mind,

01:28:32.540 | and I'm like, it's basically like we're watching a movie,

01:28:36.220 | that's how it feels.

01:28:37.060 | And she's like, I prefer watching Frozen with popcorn,

01:28:39.580 | was her response to that.

01:28:42.060 | Okay, well, you're three.

01:28:43.540 | - It's a good point.

01:28:45.260 | But yeah, there's some power to the imagination, right?

01:28:47.620 | That's not just like watching a movie,

01:28:49.460 | because something about our imagination,

01:28:53.260 | 'cause it's the words and the world that's painted

01:28:56.740 | somehow mixing in with our own understanding

01:29:00.100 | of our own hopes and dreams, our fears,

01:29:02.580 | it like mixes up in there in the way we build up that world

01:29:06.260 | from just the page.

01:29:07.620 | - Yeah, you're really creating the world

01:29:10.260 | just with the prompts from the book, right?

01:29:13.340 | Yeah, that's different than watching a movie.

01:29:15.900 | - Yeah, which is why it hurts sometimes

01:29:17.380 | to watch the movie version,

01:29:19.220 | and then you're like, that's not at all how I imagined it.

01:29:23.660 | - Well, we kind of brought this up in terms of

01:29:26.740 | depending on what the goals are.

01:29:31.740 | Let me ask the big, you're friends with Manolis,

01:29:35.060 | he's obsessed with this question,

01:29:36.620 | so let me ask the big ridiculous question

01:29:38.460 | about the meaning of life.

01:29:40.540 | Do you ever think about this one?

01:29:44.140 | Do you ever ponder the reason we're here,

01:29:49.140 | the sons of apes on this spinning ball

01:29:52.860 | in the middle of nowhere?

01:29:54.060 | - Yeah, I don't think one ends up

01:29:57.620 | in the field of space propulsion

01:29:59.820 | without thinking of these existential questions.

01:30:04.500 | Yeah, all the time.

01:30:05.820 | - Or builds a business.

01:30:07.260 | - Yeah, I know, right?

01:30:08.380 | Yeah, we've touched on a lot of the different pieces

01:30:12.940 | of this, I think.

01:30:13.820 | So I have a bunch of thoughts.

01:30:18.900 | I do think that the goal isn't,

01:30:23.260 | the meaning isn't anymore just to be like a Petri dish

01:30:28.260 | of bacteria that reproduces,

01:30:31.380 | and where survival and reproduction are the main objectives.

01:30:36.380 | And maybe it's because now we're able to answer these,

01:30:40.780 | ask those questions, that's maybe the turning point.

01:30:46.220 | And instead, I think it's really the pursuit

01:30:49.860 | and generation of knowledge.

01:30:52.380 | And so if we're taken out by an asteroid or something,

01:30:57.180 | I think that it will have been a meaningful endeavor

01:31:03.100 | if somehow our knowledge about the universe

01:31:07.860 | is preserved somehow,

01:31:09.620 | and the next civilization isn't starting over again.

01:31:15.460 | - So that's interesting.

01:31:17.260 | That's, I always, yeah, I resonate with that,

01:31:21.660 | that I always loved the mission of Google

01:31:24.300 | from the early days of making the world's

01:31:27.660 | sort of information and knowledge searchable.

01:31:30.660 | I always loved that idea.

01:31:31.700 | I always loved, I was donated, as people should,

01:31:34.620 | to Wikipedia.

01:31:35.640 | I just love Wikipedia.

01:31:38.460 | I feel like it's the,

01:31:41.020 | that's one of the greatest accomplishments

01:31:44.060 | of just a humanity of us together,

01:31:46.340 | especially Wikipedia and this open,

01:31:48.340 | like in this open community way,

01:31:50.140 | putting together different knowledges.

01:31:51.820 | Like on everything we've talked about today,

01:31:53.940 | I'm sure there's a Wikipedia page about ion engines,

01:31:57.540 | and I'm sure it's pretty good.

01:31:59.380 | - Yeah.

01:32:00.220 | - Like it's, I don't know, that's incredible.

01:32:02.420 | And obviously that can be preserved pretty efficiently,

01:32:05.180 | at least Wikipedia.

01:32:06.540 | I know you just, you'll be like,

01:32:07.780 | the human civilization is all like burning up in flames

01:32:11.500 | as there's this one USB drive slowly traveling out.

01:32:14.300 | - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:32:15.140 | - With Wikipedia on it.

01:32:16.420 | - Yep.

01:32:17.700 | That's on, from the beginning of our chat,

01:32:20.460 | that one lonely spacecraft, it just means Wikipedia.

01:32:24.900 | And then it will have been a civilization well spent.

01:32:28.620 | - So pushing that knowledge along,

01:32:30.860 | - Yeah.

01:32:31.700 | - Through like one little discovery at a time

01:32:35.020 | is one of, is a core aspect to the meaning of it all.

01:32:39.060 | - Yes, and I also, I haven't yet figured out

01:32:42.860 | what the connection, you know,

01:32:46.060 | an explanation I'm happy with yet for how it's connected,

01:32:48.940 | but evolving beyond just the survival piece too,

01:32:53.940 | I think like we touched on the emotional aspect,

01:32:59.420 | something in there about cooperation and, you know, love.

01:33:04.180 | And so I, in my day to day, that just boils down to,

01:33:08.900 | you know, the pursuit of knowledge

01:33:11.340 | or improving the human condition and being kind.

01:33:16.340 | - Love and knowledge.

01:33:18.180 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:33:19.900 | So I'm pretty at peace with that as the meaning right now.

01:33:23.780 | Makes sense to me.

01:33:24.620 | - While you work on spacecraft propulsion.

01:33:28.020 | - Yes, exactly.

01:33:29.860 | - Like literal rocket science.

01:33:32.140 | Natalia, this is amazing conversation.

01:33:34.140 | You work on such an exciting engineering field.

01:33:36.780 | And I think this is like what 20th,

01:33:40.140 | 21st century will be remembered for is space exploration.

01:33:43.140 | So this is super exciting space that you're working on.

01:33:46.860 | So, and thank you so much

01:33:48.900 | for spending your time with me today.

01:33:50.980 | - Thanks for having me.

01:33:51.940 | This was fun.

01:33:52.780 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

01:33:55.300 | with Natalia Bailey.

01:33:56.540 | And thank you to our sponsors,

01:33:58.420 | Monk Pack Low Carb Snacks, Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee,

01:34:02.580 | Blinkist, an app that summarizes books,

01:34:05.340 | and Sun Basket, meal delivery service.

01:34:08.260 | So the choice is snacks, caffeine, knowledge,

01:34:11.540 | or a delicious meal.

01:34:13.140 | Choose wisely, my friends.

01:34:14.620 | And if you wish, click the sponsor links below

01:34:16.860 | to get a discount and to support this podcast.

01:34:20.480 | And now let me leave you with some words from Carl Sagan.

01:34:24.260 | All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

01:34:28.820 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

01:34:31.520 | (upbeat music)

01:34:34.100 | (upbeat music)

01:34:36.680 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Natalya Bailey: Rocket Engines and Electric Spacecraft Propulsion | Lex Fridman Podcast #157

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