back to indexNatalya Bailey: Rocket Engines and Electric Spacecraft Propulsion | Lex Fridman Podcast #157
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The following is a conversation with Natalia Bailey,
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a rocket scientist and spacecraft propulsion engineer
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previously at MIT and now the founder and CTO
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specializing in efficient space propulsion engines
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for satellites and spacecraft.
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So these are not the engines that get us
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from the ground on Earth out to space,
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but rather the engines that move us around in space
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once we get out there.
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Quick mention of our sponsors,
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Choose wisely, my friends,
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to get a discount and to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say something about Natalia's story.
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She has talked about how when she was young,
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she would often look up at the stars
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and dream of alien intelligences
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that one day we could communicate with.
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This moment of childlike cosmic curiosity
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is at the core of my own interest in space
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and extraterrestrial life and in general
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in artificial intelligence, science, and engineering.
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Amid the meetings and the papers and the career rat race
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and all the awards,
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let's not let ourselves lose that childlike wonder.
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Sadly, we're on Earth for only a very short time,
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so let's have fun solving some of the biggest puzzles
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in the universe while we're here.
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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
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support it on Patreon,
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or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
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And now, here's my conversation with Natalia Bailey.
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You said that you spent your whole life dreaming about space
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and also pondering the big existential question
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of whether there is or isn't intelligent life,
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intelligent alien civilizations out there.
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So what do you think?
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Do you think there's life out there?
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Intelligent life, that's trickier.
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I think looking at the likelihood
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of a self replicating organism
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given how much time the universe has existed
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and how many stars with planets,
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I think it's likely that there's other life.
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Intelligent life, I'm hopeful,
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I'm a little discouraged that we haven't yet been in touch.
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Allegedly, I mean, it's also.
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In our dimensions and so on, yeah.
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It's also possible that they have been in touch
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and we just haven't, we're too dumb to realize
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they're communicating with us.
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In whichever, it's the Carl Sagan idea
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that they may be communicating at a time scale
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that's totally different.
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Like their signals are in a totally different time scale
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or in a totally different kind of medium of communication.
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It could be our own, it could be the birth of human beings.
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Whatever the magic that makes us who we are,
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the collective intelligence thing,
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that could be aliens themselves.
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That could be the medium of communication.
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Like the nature of our consciousness
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and intelligence itself is the medium of communication.
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And like being able to ask the questions themselves,
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I've never thought of it that way.
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Like actually, yeah, asking the question
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whether aliens exist might be the very medium
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by which they communicate.
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It's like they send questions.
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So some of this like collective emergent behavior
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Is the signal, yeah.
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That's interesting, yeah.
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Because maybe that's how we would communicate with,
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if you think about it, if we were way, way, way smarter,
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like a thousand years from now, we somehow survive,
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like how would we actually communicate?
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In a way that's like, if we broadcast the signal,
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and then it could somehow like percolate
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throughout the universe,
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like that signal having an impact on.
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Multiverse, of course, that would have a signal,
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an effect on the most possible,
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the highest number of possible civilizations.
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What would that signal be?
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It might not be like sending a few
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like stupid little hello world messages.
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It might be something more impactful.
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It's almost like impactful in a way
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where they don't have to have the capability to hear it.
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It like forces the message to have an impact.
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My train of thought has never gone there,
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And also somewhere in there,
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I think it's implied that something travels faster
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than the speed of light, which I'm also really hopeful for.
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Oh, you're hopeful.
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Are you excited by the possibility
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that there's intelligent life out there?
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Sort of, you work on the engineering side of things.
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It's this very kind of focused pursuit
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of moving things through space efficiently.
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But if you zoom out,
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one of the cool things that this enables us to do is find,
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get even intelligent life,
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just life on Mars or on Europa or something like that.
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Does that excite you?
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Does that scare you?
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Oh, it's very exciting.
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I mean, it's the whole reason I went into the field
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I'm in is to contribute to building the body of knowledge
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that we have as a species.
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Do you think there's life on Mars?
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Like no longer, well, already living,
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but currently living, but also no longer living,
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like that we might be able to find life,
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as some people suspect, basic microbial life.
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I'm not so sure about in our own solar system.
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And I do think it might be hard to untangle
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if we somehow contaminated other things as well.
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So I'm not sure about this close to home.
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That'd be really exciting.
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Do you think about the Drake equation much of like?
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That was what got me into all of this, yeah.
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Yeah, because one of the questions is how hard is it
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for life to start on a habitable planet?
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Like if you have a lot of the basic conditions,
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not exactly like Earth, but basic Earth like conditions,
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how hard is it for life to start?
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And if you find life on Mars or find life on Europa,
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that means it's way easier.
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That's a good thing to confirm
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that if you have a habitable planet,
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then there's going to be life.
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And that like immediately, that would be super exciting
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because that means there's like trillions of planets
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with basic life out there.
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Though of all the planets in our solar system,
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Earth is clearly the most habitable.
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So I would not be discouraged
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if we didn't find it on another planet in our solar system.
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True, and again, that life could look very different.
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It's habitable for Earth like life,
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but it could be totally different.
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I still think that trees are quite possibly
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more intelligent than humans,
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but their intelligence is carried out over a time scale
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that we're just not able to appreciate.
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Like they might be running
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the entirety of human civilization,
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and we're just like too dumb to realize
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that they're the smart ones.
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Maybe that's the alien message.
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It's in the trees.
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It's in the trees.
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Yeah, it's not in the monolith in the Utah desert.
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It's in the trees.
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So let's go to space exploration.
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How do you think we would get humans to Mars?
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I think SpaceX and Elon Musk will be the ones
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that get the first human setting foot on Mars,
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and probably not that long from now
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from us having this conversation.
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Maybe we'll inflate his timeline a little bit,
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but I tend to believe the goals he sets.
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So I think that will happen relatively soon.
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As far as when and what it will take
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to get humans living there in a more permanent way,
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I have a glib answer, which is when we can invent
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a time machine to go back to the early Cold War,
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and instead of uniting around sending people to the moon,
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we pick Mars as the destination.
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So really, I say that because there's nothing
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truly scientifically or technologically impossible
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about doing that soon.
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It's more politically and financially,
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and those are the obstacles, I think, to that.
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Well, I wonder of when you colonize
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with more than, I say, five people on Mars,
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you have to start thinking about the kind of rules
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you have on Mars, and just speaking of the Cold War,
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who gets to own the land?
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You know, you start planting flags,
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and you start to make decisions.
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And like SpaceX says, it's probably a little bit trolly,
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but they have this nice paragraph in their contracts
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where it talks about that human governments on Earth
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or Earth governments have no jurisdiction on Mars.
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Like the rules, the Martians get to define their own rules.
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It sounds very much like the founding fathers
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That's the kind of language.
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It's interesting that that's in there,
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and it makes you think perhaps that needs to be leveraged.
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Like you have to be very clever about leveraging that
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to create a little bit of a Cold War feeling.
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It seems like we humans need a little bit of a competition.
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Do you think that's necessary to succeed
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and to get the necessary investment,
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or can the pure pursuit of science be enough?
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No, I think we're seeing right now
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the pure pursuit of science.
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I mean, that results in pretty tiny budgets for exploration.
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There has to be some disaster impending doom
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to get us onto another planet in a permanent way.
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I don't know, financially, I just don't know
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if the private sector can support that,
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but I don't wish that there is some catastrophe
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coming our way that spurs us to do that.
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Yeah, I'm unsure what the business model is
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for colonizing Mars.
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Yeah, like there is for, we'll talk about satellites.
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There's probably a lot of business models around satellites,
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but there's not enough short term business.
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I guess that's how business works.
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Like you should have a path to making money
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in like the next 10 years.
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Well, and maybe even more broadly,
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and looping back to something we said earlier,
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I don't know that getting humans off this planet
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and spreading like bacteria
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is what we're supposed to be doing in the first place.
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So maybe we can go, but should we?
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And I'm probably an unusual person
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for thinking that in my industry
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because humans want to explore,
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but I almost wonder, are we putting unnecessary obstacles?
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Like we're very finicky biological things
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in the way of some more robotic or more
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silicon based exploration.
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And yeah, do we need to colonize and spread?
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What do you think is the role of AI in space?
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Do you, in your work, again, we'll talk about it,
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but do you see more and more of the space vehicles,
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spacecraft being run by artificial intelligence systems?
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More than just like the flight control,
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but like the management?
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Yeah, I don't have a lot of color to the dreams
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I have about way in the future in AI,
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but I do think that removing,
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it's hard for humans to even make a trip to Mars,
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much less go anywhere farther than that.
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And I think we'll have more,
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again, I'm probably unusual in having these thoughts,
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but perhaps be able to generate more knowledge
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and understand more if we stop trying to send humans
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and instead, I don't know if we're talking about AI
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in a truly artificial intelligence way
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or AI as we kind of use it today,
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but maybe sending a Petri dish or two of like stem cells
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and some robotic handlers instead,
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if we still need to send our DNA
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because we're really stuck on that,
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but if not, maybe not even that Petri dish.
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So I see, I think what I'm saying is,
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I see a much bigger role in the future
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of AI for space exploration.
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It's kind of sad to think that,
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I mean, I'm sure we'll eventually send a spacecraft
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with efficient propulsion,
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like some of the stuff you work on out
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that travels just really far with some robots on it
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and with some DNA in a Petri dish,
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and then human civilization destroys itself,
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and then there'll just be this floating spacecraft
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that eventually gets somewhere or not.
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That's a sad thought, like this lonely spacecraft
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just kind of traveling through space
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and humans are all dead.
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Well, it depends on what the goal is, right?
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Another way to look at it is we've preserved,
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it's like a little time capsule of knowledge, DNA,
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that will outlive us.
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Well, that's beautiful.
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It's how I sleep at night.
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So you also mentioned that you wanted to be an astronaut.
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So even though you said you're unusual
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in thinking like, it's nice here on Earth,
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and then we might want to be sending robots up there,
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you wanted to be a human that goes out there.
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Would you like to one day travel to Mars?
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You know, if it becomes sort of more open
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to civilian travel and that kind of thing?
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Like are you, like vacation wise,
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like if we're talking vacations,
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would you like to vacation on Earth or vacation on Mars?
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I wish that I had a better answer, but no.
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I wanted to be an astronaut because I,
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first of all, I like working in labs and doing experiments.
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And I wanted to go to like the coolest lab, the ISS,
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and do some experiments there.
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That's being decommissioned, which is sad,
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but you know, there will be others, I'm sure.
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The ISS is being decommissioned?
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Yes, I think by 2025, it's not going to be in use anymore.
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But I think there are other,
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there are private companies that are going to be putting up
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stations and things.
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So it's primarily like a research lab, essentially.
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A research lab in space, that's a cool way to say it.
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It's like the coolest possible research lobby.
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That's where I wanted to go.
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And now though, my risk profile has changed a little bit.
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I have three little ones and I won't be in the first
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thousand people to go to Mars, let's put it that way.
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Yeah, Earth is kind of nice.
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We have our troubles, but overall, it's pretty nice.
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Again, it's the Netflix.
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Okay, let's talk rockets.
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How does a rocket engine work or any kind of engine
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that can get us to space or float around in space?
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The basic principle is conservation of momentum.
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So you throw stuff out the back of the engine
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and that pushes the rocket and the spacecraft
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in the other direction.
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So there are two main types of rocket propulsion.
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The one people are more familiar with is chemical
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because it's loud and there's fire.
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And that's what's used for launch and is more televised.
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So in those types of systems, you usually have a fuel
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on an oxidizer and they react and combust
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and release stored chemical energy.
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And that energy heats the resultant gas
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and that's funneled out the back through a nozzle,
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directed out the back and then that momentum exchange
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pushes the spacecraft forward.
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Is there an interesting difference in liquid
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and solid fuel in those contexts?
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They're both lumped in the same.
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So chemical just means that the release of energy
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from those bonds essentially.
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So a solid fuel works the same way.
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And the other main category is electric propulsion.
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So instead of chemical energy,
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you're using electrical energy,
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usually from batteries or solar panels.
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And in this case, the stuff you're pushing out the back
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would be charged particles.
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So instead of combustion and heat,
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you end up with charged particles
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and you force them out the back of the spacecraft
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using either an electrostatic field or electromagnetic.
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But it's the same momentum exchange
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and same idea stuff out the back
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and everything else goes forward.
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Cool, so those are the big two categories.
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What's the difference maybe in the challenges of each,
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in the challenges of each, the use cases of each
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and how they're used today, the physics of each
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and where they're used, all that kind of stuff.
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Anything interesting about the two categories
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that distinguishes them?
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Besides the chemical one being the big sexy flames.
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Chemical is very well understood
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in its simplest form, it's like a firework.
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So it's been around since 400 BC or something like that.
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So that even the big engines are quite well understood.
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I think one of the last gaps there is probably
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what exactly are the products of combustion?
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Our modeling abilities kind of fall apart there
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because it's hot and gases are moving
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and you end up kind of having to venture
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into lots of different interdisciplinary fields of science
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to try to solve that.
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And that's quite complex, but we have pretty good models
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for some of the more like emergent behaviors
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of that system anyways.
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But that's I think one of the last unsolved pieces.
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And really the kind of what people care about there
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is making it more fuel efficient.
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So the chemical stuff, you can get a lot
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of instantaneous thrusts, but it's not very fuel efficient.
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It's much more fuel efficient to go
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with the electric type of propulsion.
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So that's where people spend a lot of their time
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is trying to make that more efficient in terms
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of thrust per unit of fuel.
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And then there's always considerations
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like heating and cooling.
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It's very hot, which is good if it heats the gases,
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but bad if it melts the rocket and things like that.
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So there's always a lot of work on heating
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and cooling and the engine cycles and things like that.
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And then on electric propulsion,
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I find it like much more refreshingly poorly understood.
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Lots more mysteries.
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One of the classes I took in college,
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we spent 90% of the class on chemical propulsion
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and then the last 10% on electric.
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And the professor said like,
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we only sort of understand how it works,
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but it works kind of.
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And it's like, that's interesting.
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Yeah, and even an ion engine,
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which is probably one of the most straightforward
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because it's just an electrostatic engine,
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but it has this really awesome combination
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of like quantum mechanics and material science
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and fluid dynamics and electrostatics.
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And it's just very intriguing to me.
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First of all, can you actually zoom out even more?
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Like, cause you mentioned ion propulsion engine
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is a subset of electric.
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So like maybe, is there a categories of electric engines
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and then we can zoom in on ion propulsion?
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There's the two most kind of conventional types
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that have been around since the sixties
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are ion engines and hall thrusters.
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And ion engines are a little bit simpler
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because they don't use a magnetic field
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for generating thrust.
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And then there are also some other types of plasma engines,
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but that don't fit into those two categories.
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So just kind of other plasma,
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like a VASMIR engine, which we could get into.
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And then those are probably the main three categories
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that would be fun to talk about.
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Oh, and then of course, the category of engine
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that I work on, which has a lot of similarities
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to an ion engine, but could be considered its own class
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called a colloid thruster.
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Okay, so what is an ion propulsion, I imagine?
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Okay, so in an ion engine, you have an ionization chamber
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and you inject the propellant into that chamber.
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And this is usually a neutral gas like xenon or argon.
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So you inject that into the chamber
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and you also inject a stream of really high energy electrons
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and everything's just moving around very randomly in there.
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And the whole goal is to have one of those electrons
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collide with one of those neutral atoms
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and turn it into an ion.
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So kick off a secondary electron and now you have...
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And now you have a charged xenon or argon ion
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and more electrons and so on.
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And then some fraction of those ions will happen
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to make it to this downstream electric field
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that we set up between two grids with holes in them.
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And in terms of area, the same amount of those ions
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also runs into the walls and lose their charge
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and that's where some of the inefficiencies come in.
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But the very lucky few make it to the downstream
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and the very lucky few make it to those holes in that grid
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and there are two grids actually
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and you apply a voltage differential between them
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and that sets up an electric field.
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And a charged particle in an electric field
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And so those ions are accelerated out the back of the engine
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and the reaction force is what pushes the spacecraft forward.
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If you're following along and tallying these charges,
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now we've just sent a positive beam of ions
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out the back of the spacecraft and for our purposes here,
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the spacecraft is neutral.
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So eventually those ions will come back
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and hit the spacecraft because it's a positive beam.
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So you also have to have an external cathode producer
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of electrons outside the engine
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that pumps electrons into that beam and neutralizes that.
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So now it's net neutral everywhere
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and it won't come back to the spacecraft.
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So that's an ion engine.
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What temperature are we talking about here?
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So in terms of like the chemical based engines,
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those are super hot.
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You mentioned plasma here.
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How hot does this thing get?
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I mean, is that an interesting thing to talk about
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in a sense that is that an interesting distinction
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or is the heat, I mean, it's all gonna be hot.
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No, so it's important especially
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for some of these smaller satellites
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people are into launching these days.
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So it's important because you have the plasma
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but also those high energy electrons are hot
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and if you have a lot of those that are going into the walls
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you do have to care about the temperature.
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So I'm having trouble remembering off the top of my head.
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I think they're at like a hundred electron volts
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in terms of the electron energy
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and then I'd have to remember how to convert that
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Can you stick your hand in it?
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Not move the temperature.
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Not recommended, yeah.
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So what's a colloid engine?
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So the same rocket people that came up with these ideas
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for electric propulsion probably in the middle
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of last century also realized that there's one more place
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to get charged particles from if you're going
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to be using electric propulsion.
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So you can take a gas and you can ionize it
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but there are also some liquids particularly ionic liquids
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which is what we use that you also can use
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as a source of ions and if you have ions
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and you put them in a field you generate a force.
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So they recognize that but part of being able
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to leverage that technique is being able
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to kind of manipulate those liquids on a scale
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of nanometers or very few microns.
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So the diameter of a human hair or something like that
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and in the 50s there was no way to do that.
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So they wrote about it in some books
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and then it kind of died for a little bit
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and then with silicon mems, computer processors
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and when foundry started becoming more ubiquitous
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and my advisor started at MIT kind of put those ideas
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back together and was like, hey actually there's now a way
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to build this and bring this other technique to life.
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And so the way that you actually get the ions
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out of those liquids is you put the liquid
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in again a strong electric field
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and the electric field stresses the liquid
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and you keep increasing the field
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and eventually the liquid will assume a conical shape.
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It's when the electric field pressure that's pulling on it
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exactly balances the liquid's own restoring force
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which is its surface tension.
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So you have this balance and the liquid assumes a cone
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when it's perfectly balanced like that
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and at the tip of a cone the radius of curvature
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goes to zero right at the tip
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and the electric field right at the tip of a sharp object
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would go to infinity because it goes as one over the radius
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and one over the radius squared
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and instead of the electric field going to infinity
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and maybe like generating a wormhole or something,
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a jet of ions instead starts issuing
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from the tip of that liquid.
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So the field becomes strong enough there
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that you can pull ions out of the liquid.
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What is the liquid?
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We're talking about, there's a bunch of different ones.
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You can do it with different types of liquids.
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It depends on how easily you can free ions
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from their neighbors and if it has enough surface tension
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so that you can build up a high enough electric field
link |
but what we use are called ionic liquids
link |
and they're really just positive.
link |
They're very similar to salts but they happen to be liquid
link |
over a really wide range of temperatures.
link |
This sounds like really cool.
link |
Okay, so how big is the cone we're talking about?
link |
What's the size of this cone that generates the ions?
link |
So if you have a cone that's emitting pure ions,
link |
I can't remember if it's the radius or diameter
link |
but that emission is happening from,
link |
of that cone is something like 20 nanometers.
link |
Oh, I was imagining something slightly bigger
link |
but so like this is tiny, tiny.
link |
Hence the only being able to do it recently.
link |
Yeah, that's right.
link |
So this is all controlled by a computer, I guess.
link |
Like, or like, how do you create a cone
link |
that generates ions at a scale of nanometers exactly?
link |
So the kind of main trick to making this work
link |
is that physically we manufacture hundreds
link |
or thousands of sharp structures and then supply the liquid
link |
So that does a few things.
link |
It makes sure that we know where the ion beams are forming.
link |
So we can put holes in the grid above them
link |
to let them actually leave instead of hitting, right?
link |
But it also reduces the actual field we have,
link |
the voltage we have to apply to create that field
link |
because the field will be much stronger
link |
if we can already give the liquid a tip to form on.
link |
And those tips we form have radii of curvature
link |
on the order of probably like single microns.
link |
So we are working at a little bit larger scale
link |
but once we create that support
link |
and the electric field can be focused at that tip,
link |
then the tiny little cone can form on top of that.
link |
So wait, so there's something in them,
link |
there's already like a hard material
link |
that like gives you the base for the cone
link |
and then you're pouring like liquid over it,
link |
whatever the heck. From the bottom, yeah.
link |
It's porous, so we actually supply it
link |
from the back of the chip and then it wicks.
link |
And then liquid forms on top on that structure.
link |
And then you somehow make it like super sharp, the liquid,
link |
so the ions can leave.
link |
And then we've applied that field to get those ions
link |
and that same field then accelerates them.
link |
That's awesome. And there's like a bunch of these?
link |
Yeah, I should have brought something.
link |
You could just pretend that you have some nanometer cones
link |
So actually, you know, kind of about this scale,
link |
we build, we call them thruster chips
link |
and it's just a convenient form factor
link |
and it's a square centimeter.
link |
And on each square centimeter today,
link |
we have about 500 of the actual physical,
link |
we call them emitters, those physical cones.
link |
And we're working on increasing that by a factor of four
link |
in the coming months.
link |
In size or in the density?
link |
In number, in the density, the number of emitters
link |
within the same square centimeter chip.
link |
So that thing, cause I think I've seen pictures of you
link |
with like a tiny thing in your hand.
link |
That must be the...
link |
Okay, so that's an engine.
link |
So that is kind of the ionization chamber
link |
and thrust producing part of it.
link |
What's not shown, you know, in that picture
link |
is the propellant tank.
link |
So we can keep supplying more and more of the liquid
link |
to those emission sites.
link |
And then we also provide a power electronic system
link |
that talks to the spacecraft
link |
and turns our device on and off.
link |
So that's the colloid engine.
link |
That's the core of the colloid engine.
link |
It's, the way I've been talking about it,
link |
it's more of ion electrospray colloid
link |
tends to mean like liquid droplets coming off of the jet.
link |
But if you make smaller and smaller cones,
link |
you get pure ions.
link |
So we're kind of like a subset of colloid, yes.
link |
What aspects of this, you said that it's been full
link |
of mysteries from the physics perspective.
link |
What aspects of this are understood
link |
and what are still full of mystery?
link |
Yeah, recently we've been understanding
link |
the kind of instabilities and stable regimes of,
link |
you know, how much liquid do you supply
link |
and what field do you apply?
link |
And why is it flickering on and off?
link |
Or why does it have these weird behaviors?
link |
So that's, in the past just couple of years,
link |
that's become much more understood.
link |
I think the two areas that come to mind
link |
as far as not as well understood are
link |
the boundary between, you know, you have,
link |
we actually use kind of big molecular ions.
link |
And if you're looking at the molecular scale,
link |
you have, you know, some ions that you've extracted
link |
and they're in this electric field.
link |
One ion, you know, it's a big molecule,
link |
it's getting energy from the electric field.
link |
And some of that energy is going into the bonds
link |
and making it vibrate and doing weird things to it.
link |
Sometimes it breaks them apart.
link |
And then zooming out to the whole beam,
link |
the beam has some behaviors as this beam of ions.
link |
And there's a big gap between what are those,
link |
how do you connect those?
link |
And how do we understand that better
link |
so that we can understand the beam performance
link |
Is that a theory question or is it an engineering question?
link |
Theory, definitely.
link |
We're, Axion is a startup and we're more in the business
link |
of building and testing and observing and characterizing.
link |
And we're not really diving much into that theory right now.
link |
Okay, zooming out a little bit on the physics,
link |
apologize for the way too big of a question,
link |
but to you from either, you mentioned Axion is,
link |
you know, more of sort of an engineering endeavor, right?
link |
But from a perspective of physics in general,
link |
science in general, or the side of engineering,
link |
what do you think is the most, to you,
link |
like beautiful and captivating
link |
and inspiring idea in this space?
link |
In this space, and then I'm gonna zoom out
link |
a little bit more, but in this space,
link |
I keep butting up against material science questions.
link |
So I, over the past 10 years,
link |
I feel like every problem or interesting thing
link |
I want to work on, if you dig deep enough,
link |
you end up in material science land,
link |
which I find kind of exciting
link |
and it makes me want to dig in more there.
link |
And I was just, you know, even for our technology,
link |
when we have to move the propellant from the tank
link |
to the tip of the emitters, we rely a lot on capillary action
link |
and you're getting into wetting and surface energies.
link |
At a scale of like nano scale.
link |
Yeah, I mean, it's, if you look further, it's quantum too,
link |
but it all is, you know,
link |
a capillary action at the quantum level.
link |
Yeah, so I would, it all comes back to me to, you know,
link |
material science, there's so much we don't understand
link |
at these sizes and I find that inspiring and exciting.
link |
And then more broadly, you know,
link |
I remember when I learned that the same equation
link |
that describes flow over an airfoil
link |
is used to price options, the Black Scholes equation,
link |
and it's, you know, just a partial differential equation,
link |
but that kind of connectedness of the universe,
link |
you know, I don't want to use options pricing
link |
and the universe in the same, but you know what I mean,
link |
this connectedness I find really magical.
link |
Yeah, the patterns that mathematics reveals
link |
seems to echo in a bunch of different places.
link |
Yeah, there's just weirdness.
link |
It's like, it really makes you think,
link |
I think you're definitely living in a simulation,
link |
like whoever programmed it.
link |
I like that that's your conclusion.
link |
Is using like shortcuts to program it,
link |
like they didn't, they're just copying and pasting some codes
link |
for the different parts.
link |
Yeah, think of something new or just paste from over there.
link |
They won't notice.
link |
My conclusion from that was I'm gonna go interview
link |
for a finance job, so I had like a little detour.
link |
That's the backup option.
link |
So in terms of using call it engines,
link |
what's an interesting difference between a propulsion
link |
of a rocket from earth when you're standing
link |
on the ground to orbit and then the kind of propulsion
link |
necessary for once you get out to orbit
link |
or to like deep space to move around.
link |
Yes, the reason you can't use an engine like mine
link |
to get off the ground is, the thrust it generates
link |
is instantaneous thrust is very small,
link |
but if you have the time and can accumulate
link |
that acceleration, you can still reach speeds
link |
that are very interesting for exploration
link |
and even for missions with humans on them.
link |
An interesting direction I think we need to go
link |
as humans exploring space is the power supplies
link |
for electric propulsion are limiting us
link |
in that solar panels are really inefficient
link |
and bulky and batteries.
link |
I don't know when anybody's ever gonna improve
link |
battery technology.
link |
I know a lot of people that work on that.
link |
And nuclear power, we could have a lot more powerful
link |
electric propulsion system.
link |
So they would be extremely fuel efficient,
link |
but more instantaneous thrust to do more interesting
link |
missions if we could start launching more nuclear systems.
link |
So like something that's powered, nuclear powered,
link |
that's the right way to say it.
link |
But is in a small enough container that could be launched?
link |
Yeah, so I mean, as a world we do launch spacecraft
link |
with nuclear power systems on board,
link |
but size is one consideration.
link |
It hasn't been a big focus.
link |
So the reactors and the heaters and everything are bulky.
link |
And so they're really only suitable for some
link |
of the much bigger interplanetary stuff.
link |
So that's one issue, but then it's a whole like rat's nest
link |
of political stuff as well.
link |
I heard, I think Elon described or somebody,
link |
I think it was Elon that described the EV to all
link |
like electrical, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles.
link |
So basically saying rockets, obviously Elon is interested
link |
in electric vehicles, right?
link |
But he said that rockets can't, in the near term,
link |
it doesn't make sense for them to be electrical.
link |
What, do you see a world with the rockets that we use
link |
to get into orbit are also electric based?
link |
It's possible, you can produce the thrust levels you need,
link |
but you need this, a much bigger power supply.
link |
And I think that would be nuclear.
link |
And the only way people have been able to launch them at all
link |
is that they're in a 100 times redundancy safe mode
link |
while they're being launched and they're not turned on
link |
until they're farther off.
link |
So if you were to actually try to use it on launch,
link |
I think a lot of people would still have an issue with that,
link |
It's an interesting concept, nuclear.
link |
It seems like people, like everybody that works
link |
on nuclear power has shown how safe it is
link |
as a source of energy.
link |
And yet we are, seem to be, I mean, based on the history,
link |
based on the excellent HBO series,
link |
I'm Russian with a Chernobyl.
link |
It seems like we have our risk estimation
link |
about this particular power source is drastically inaccurate,
link |
but that's a fascinating idea that we would use nuclear
link |
as a source for our vehicles and not just in outer space.
link |
I'm gonna have to look into that.
link |
That's super interesting.
link |
Well, just last year, Trump eased up a little bit
link |
on the regulations and NASA and hopefully others
link |
are starting to pick up on the development.
link |
So now is a good time to look into it
link |
because there's actually some movement.
link |
Is that a hope for you to explore different energy sources
link |
that the entirety of the vehicle uses something
link |
like the entirety of the propulsion systems
link |
for all aspects of the vehicle's life travel
link |
is the same or electric?
link |
Is it possible for it to be the same?
link |
Like the colloid engine being used for everything?
link |
You could, and you would have to do it in the same way
link |
we do different stages of rockets now
link |
where once you've used up an engine or a stage,
link |
you let it go because there's really no point
link |
in holding onto it.
link |
So I wouldn't necessarily want to use the same engine
link |
for the whole thing, but the same technology
link |
I think would be interesting.
link |
Okay, so it's possible.
link |
All right, but in terms of.
link |
Yeah, it comes down to the power source.
link |
The power source, that's really interesting.
link |
But for the current power sources
link |
and its current use cases, what's the use case
link |
for electric, like the colloid engine?
link |
Can you talk about where they're used today?
link |
Sure, so chemical engines are still used quite a bit
link |
once you're in orbit, but that's also
link |
where you might choose instead to use an electric system
link |
and what people do with them.
link |
And this includes the ion engines and hall thrusters
link |
and our engine is basically any maneuvering you need to do
link |
once you're dropped off.
link |
Even if your only goal was to just stay in your orbit
link |
and not move for the life of your mission,
link |
you need propulsion to accomplish that
link |
because the Earth's gravity field changes
link |
as you go around in orbit and pulls you
link |
out of your little box.
link |
There are other perturbations that can throw you off a bit.
link |
And then most people want to do things
link |
a little bit more interesting like maneuver
link |
to avoid being hit by space debris
link |
or perhaps lower their orbit to take a higher resolution
link |
image of something and then return.
link |
At the end of your mission, you're supposed
link |
to responsibly get rid of your satellite,
link |
whether that's burning it up, but if you're in geo,
link |
you want to push it higher into graveyard orbit.
link |
What's geo and what's graveyard?
link |
So low Earth orbit and then geosynchronous orbit
link |
or geostationary orbit.
link |
And there's a graveyard?
link |
Yeah, so those satellites are at like 40,000 kilometers.
link |
So if they were to try to push their satellites
link |
back down to burn up in the atmosphere,
link |
they would need even more propulsion
link |
than they've had for the whole lifetime of their mission.
link |
So instead they push them higher
link |
where it'll take a million years
link |
for it to naturally deorbit.
link |
So we're also cluttering that higher bit up as well,
link |
but it's not as pressing as Leo, which is low Earth orbit
link |
where more of these commercial missions are going now.
link |
Well, so how hard is the collision avoidance problem there?
link |
You said some debris and stuff.
link |
So like how much propulsion is needed?
link |
Like how much is the life of a satellite
link |
is just like a crap trying to avoid
link |
like little things down there?
link |
I think one of the recent rules of thumb I heard
link |
was per year some of these small satellites
link |
are doing like three collision avoidance maneuvers.
link |
So that's not, yeah, but it's not zero.
link |
And it takes a lot of planning and people on the ground
link |
and none of that really, I don't think right now
link |
Oh, that's not good.
link |
Yeah, and then we have a lot of folks
link |
taking advantage of Moore's law and cheaper spacecraft.
link |
So they're launching them up
link |
without the ability to maneuver themselves.
link |
And they're like, well, I don't know, just don't hit me.
link |
And three times a year that could become affordable
link |
if it gets hit, maybe it won't be damaged kind of thing,
link |
that kind of logic.
link |
Affordable in that instead of launching one satellite,
link |
they'll launch 20 small ones.
link |
Yeah, so if one gets taken out, that's okay.
link |
But the problem is that one good sized satellite
link |
getting hit, that's like a ballistic event
link |
that turns into 10,000 pieces of debris
link |
that then are the things that go and hit the other satellites.
link |
So do you see a world where, like in your sense,
link |
in your own work and just in the space industry in general,
link |
do you see the people moving towards bigger satellites
link |
or smaller satellites?
link |
Is there going to be a mix?
link |
Like what's, and what do we talk,
link |
what does it mean for a satellite to be big and small?
link |
What size are we talking about?
link |
So big, the space industry prior to,
link |
I don't know, 1990, I guess the bulk of,
link |
the majority of satellites were the size of a school bus
link |
and cost a couple billion dollars.
link |
And now our first launches were on satellites
link |
the size of shoe boxes that were built
link |
by high school students.
link |
So that's a very different,
link |
to give you the two ends of the spectrum.
link |
So big satellites will, I think they're here to stay,
link |
at least as far as I can see into the future
link |
for things like broadcasting.
link |
You want to be able to broadcast
link |
to as many people as possible.
link |
You also can't just go to small satellites
link |
and say Moore's law for things like optics.
link |
So if you have an aperture on your satellite,
link |
that just, that doesn't follow Moore's law.
link |
So it's always going to be the size that it will be,
link |
unless there's some new physics that comes out
link |
that I'm not aware of.
link |
But if you need a resolution and you're at an altitude,
link |
that kind of sets your, the size of your telescope.
link |
But because of Moore's law,
link |
we are able to do a lot more with smaller packages.
link |
And with that comes more affordability
link |
and opening up access to space to more and more people.
link |
Well, what's the smallest satellite you've seen go up there?
link |
Like what are the smallest kind of, you said shoe boxes.
link |
Yeah, so I think the smallest common form factor
link |
can fit a softball inside.
link |
So that's 10 centimeters on each side.
link |
But then there are some companies working on
link |
fractions of that even.
link |
And they're doing things like IOT type application.
link |
So it's very low bandwidth type things,
link |
but they're finding some niches for those.
link |
Do you mean like there's a business,
link |
there's a thing to do with them?
link |
What do you do with a small satellite like that?
link |
You can track a ship going across the ocean.
link |
Like if you need to, if you're just pinging something,
link |
you can handle that amount of data
link |
and those latencies and so on.
link |
You have to have propulsion on that.
link |
You have to have a little engine.
link |
No, those are just letting fall out of the sky.
link |
Okay, so what kind of satellite
link |
would you equip a colloid engine on?
link |
Anything that's bigger than probably about 20 kilograms,
link |
anything that needs to stay up for more than a year
link |
or anything somebody spent more than like 100K to build
link |
are kind of the ways I would think about it.
link |
That's a lot of use cases.
link |
What's a small sat?
link |
Like what category?
link |
Small sat is actually very big.
link |
I think it's like 700 kilograms,
link |
or I keep hitting my microphone,
link |
maybe 1,000 kilograms down to 200 kilograms.
link |
People have their own kind of definitions
link |
of how they break them up,
link |
but small sat is still quite large.
link |
And then it's kind of also applied as a blanket term
link |
for anything that's not a school bus size satellite.
link |
So we need to get our jargon straight in the industry.
link |
So do you see a possible future where,
link |
you know, there's a few thousand satellites up there now,
link |
a couple of thousand of them functioning.
link |
Do you see a future where there's like millions
link |
of satellites up in orbit?
link |
Or forget millions, tens of thousands,
link |
which just seems like where the natural trajectory
link |
of the way things are going now is going.
link |
Tens of thousands, yes.
link |
The two buckets of applications,
link |
one is imaging and the other is communication.
link |
So imaging, I think that will plateau
link |
because one satellite or one constellation
link |
can take an image or a video
link |
and sell it to, you know, infinity customers.
link |
But if you're providing communications
link |
like broadband internet or satellite cell
link |
or something like that, satellite phone,
link |
you know, you're limited by your transponders and so on.
link |
So to serve more people, you actually need more satellites
link |
and perhaps at the rate, you know, our data consumption
link |
and things are going these days.
link |
Yeah, I can see tens of thousands of satellites.
link |
Can I ask you a ridiculous question?
link |
So I've recently watched this documentary on Netflix
link |
about flat earthers, you know,
link |
the people that believe in a flat earth.
link |
As somebody who develops propulsion systems
link |
for satellites and for spacecraft,
link |
what's, do you use the most convincing evidence
link |
that the earth is round?
link |
Probably some of the photos taken from the moon.
link |
Photos from the moon?
link |
Okay, so it's not from the satellite space.
link |
Yeah, I think seeing that perspective,
link |
maybe I'm just, I'm answering too personally
link |
because I really love those photos.
link |
Because they're beautiful, yeah.
link |
I really like the ones that show the moon
link |
and the lunar lander and they're taken
link |
a little bit farther back.
link |
So you see earth and first you're like, wow, that's tiny
link |
and we're insignificant and that's kind of sad.
link |
But then you see this really cool thing
link |
that we landed on another planetary body
link |
and you're like, oh, okay.
link |
Can you actually see earth?
link |
I don't know if I remember this.
link |
Yeah, I'll send you that picture.
link |
Because I love the pictures or videos
link |
of just earth from orbit and so on.
link |
Just like those, that's really beautiful.
link |
That's like a perspective shifter.
link |
That's the pale blue dot, right?
link |
It probably appears tiny.
link |
Yeah, and just that juxtaposition of the insignificance,
link |
but we built this, really cool thing.
link |
And I just love that, yeah.
link |
Oh, that'd be cool.
link |
I can't, I personally love the idea
link |
of humans stepping on Mars.
link |
I'm such a sucker for the romantic notion of that
link |
and being able to take pictures from Mars next.
link |
I, yeah, I would be, what did you say?
link |
You said you wouldn't be the first one.
link |
Not in the first 1,000.
link |
1,000, which it's funny because to me,
link |
that's brave to be in the first million.
link |
I think when the Declaration of Independence
link |
was signed in the United States,
link |
that was like two million people.
link |
So I would like to show up
link |
when they're signing those documents.
link |
So maybe the two million.
link |
Oh, that's an interesting way to think about it.
link |
Because like then we're like participating
link |
in citizenry and defining the direction.
link |
So it's not the technical risk.
link |
You just don't wanna show up somewhere
link |
that's like America before.
link |
Yeah, because I, from a psychological perspective,
link |
it's just gonna be a stressful mess
link |
as people have studied, right?
link |
It's like, it's people, most likely the process
link |
of colonization like looks like basically a prison.
link |
Like you're in a very tight and closed space with people.
link |
And it's just a really stressful environment.
link |
How do you select the kind of people that will go
link |
and then there'll be drama.
link |
There's always drama.
link |
And I just wanna show up when there's some rules.
link |
But I mean, you know, it depends.
link |
So I'm not worried about the health
link |
and the technical difficulties.
link |
I'm more worried about the psychological difficulties.
link |
And also just not being able to tweet.
link |
Like what are you gonna, how are you talking?
link |
There's no Netflix.
link |
So yeah, maybe not in the first million,
link |
but the first 100,000.
link |
It's exciting to define the direction of a new,
link |
like how often do we not just have a revolution
link |
to redefine our government,
link |
as smaller countries are still doing to this day,
link |
but literally start over from scratch.
link |
There's just our financial system.
link |
It could be like based on cryptocurrency,
link |
you could think about like how democracy,
link |
we have now the technology that can enable pure democracy,
link |
for example, if we choose to do that,
link |
as opposed to representative democracy,
link |
all those kinds of things.
link |
So we talked about two different forms of propulsion,
link |
which are super exciting.
link |
So the chemical based, that's doing pretty well.
link |
And then the electric based is,
link |
are there types of propulsion
link |
that might sound like science fiction right now,
link |
but are actually within the reach of science
link |
in the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years
link |
that you kind of think about,
link |
or maybe even within the space of even just like,
link |
like even ION engines,
link |
is there like breakthroughs that might 10 X the thing,
link |
like really improve it?
link |
So, you know, the real game changer
link |
would be propellantless propulsion.
link |
And so every couple of years you see a new,
link |
now a startup or a researcher comes up with some contraption
link |
for producing thrust that didn't require,
link |
you know, we've been talking about conservation of momentum,
link |
mass times velocity out the back,
link |
mass times velocity forward.
link |
And you have to, you know, carry that up with you
link |
or find it on an asteroid or harvest it from somewhere
link |
if you didn't bring it with you.
link |
So not having to do that would be, you know,
link |
one of the ultimate game changers.
link |
And I, you know, unless there are new types of physics,
link |
I don't know how we do it,
link |
but it comes up often, so it's something I do think about.
link |
And, you know, the one,
link |
I think it's called the Casimir effect.
link |
If you can, if you have two plates
link |
and the space between them is on the order of these,
link |
like the wavelength of these ephemeral vacuum particles
link |
that pop into and out of existence or something.
link |
I may be confusing multiple types of propellantless forces,
link |
but that could be real
link |
and could be something that we use eventually.
link |
What would be the power source?
link |
Yeah, the most recent engine like this
link |
that was just debunked this year, I think,
link |
in March or something was called the M drive.
link |
And supposedly you used a power source,
link |
so, you know, batteries or solar panels
link |
to generate microwaves into this resonant cavity.
link |
And people claimed it produced thrust.
link |
So they went straight from this really loose concept
link |
to building a device and testing it.
link |
And they said, we've measured thrust
link |
and sure on their thrust balance, they saw thrust
link |
and different researchers built it and tested it
link |
and got the same measurements.
link |
And so it was looking actually pretty good.
link |
No one could explain how it worked,
link |
but what they said was that this inside the cavity,
link |
the microwaves themselves didn't change,
link |
but the speed of light changed inside the cavity.
link |
So relative to that, you know,
link |
their momentum was conserved.
link |
And I don't, you know, whatever.
link |
But finally someone, I think at NASA built the device,
link |
tested it, got the same thrust, then unhooked it,
link |
flipped it backwards and turned it on,
link |
but got the same thrust in the same direction again.
link |
And so they're like, this is just an interaction
link |
with the test setup or, you know,
link |
some of the chamber or something like that.
link |
So forwarded again, but, you know,
link |
it would be so wonderful for everybody
link |
if we could figure out how to do it, but I don't know.
link |
That's an interesting twist on it
link |
because that's more about efficient travel,
link |
long distance travel, right?
link |
That's not necessarily about speed.
link |
That's more about enabling like,
link |
let's hook that up to the nuclear power supply.
link |
But still in terms of speed, in terms of trying to,
link |
so there's recently, already I think been debunked
link |
or close to being debunked, but the signal,
link |
a weird signal from our nearby friends,
link |
nearby exoplanets from Proxima Centauri,
link |
a signal that's 4.2 light years away.
link |
So, you know, the thought is it'd be kind of cool
link |
if there's life out there, alien life,
link |
but it'd be really cool if it could fly out there and check.
link |
And so what kind of propulsion,
link |
and do you think about what kind of propulsion
link |
will allow us to travel close to the speed of light
link |
or, you know, half the speed of light,
link |
all those kinds of things that would allow us
link |
to get to Proxima Centauri and have reasonable,
link |
You know, there's the project Breakthrough Starshot.
link |
That's looking at sending those tiny little chip sets.
link |
They're like accelerating really fast.
link |
Yeah, using a laser, so launching them
link |
and then while they're still relatively close to the earth,
link |
you know, blasting them with some,
link |
I forget what, even what power level you needed
link |
to accelerate them fast enough to get there in 20 years.
link |
Super crazy sounding,
link |
but a lot of people say that's a legitimate,
link |
like it's crazy sounding, but it can actually pull it off.
link |
Yeah, I love that project
link |
because there are a lot of different aspects.
link |
You know, there's the laser,
link |
there's how do you then get enough power
link |
when you're there to send a signal back.
link |
No part of that project is possible right now,
link |
but I think it's really exciting.
link |
But do you see like human, like a spacecraft
link |
with a human on it, so it's like a heavy one,
link |
being like us inventing new propulsion systems entirely.
link |
Like, do you ever see that on the radar
link |
of propulsion systems like that
link |
or are they completely out there in the impossible?
link |
Well, we're going to quickly leave the realm
link |
of what I can describe with any credibility,
link |
but I think because of special relativity,
link |
if we try to accelerate some mass
link |
close to the speed of light, it becomes infinitely heavy
link |
and then we just don't,
link |
we'd have to like harness a lot of suns to do that.
link |
Or, you know, it's just that math doesn't quite work out,
link |
but, you know, in my child's, my childlike heart,
link |
I believe that, you know, we're missing something,
link |
whether it's, you know, dark matter or other dimensions.
link |
And if you can just have some anti matter
link |
and a black hole and then ride that around
link |
and somehow, you know, turn that into some.
link |
Mess with gravity somehow.
link |
Yeah, I feel like we're missing lots of things
link |
in this puzzle and that, you know.
link |
I want to heart that puzzle.
link |
I can speak with confidence as a descendant of apes
link |
that we don't know what the hell we're doing.
link |
So there's, we're like really confident,
link |
like physicists are really confident
link |
that we've like got most of the picture down,
link |
but it feels like, oh boy,
link |
it feels like that we might not even be getting started
link |
on some of the essential things
link |
that would allow us to engineer systems
link |
that would allow us to travel to space much, much faster.
link |
Yeah, and there's even things
link |
that are much more commonplace that we can't explain,
link |
but we've started to take for granted,
link |
like quantum tunneling, you know,
link |
just things like, oh, the electron was here
link |
with this energy and now it's here with this energy
link |
and it's just tunneling.
link |
But so, you know, we're missing a lot of the picture.
link |
So yeah, I don't know, to, you know,
link |
use your same question from earlier,
link |
I don't know if you and I will see it,
link |
but yeah, someday.
link |
You're the cofounder of,
link |
just like we've been talking about, Axion Systems.
link |
It's a, would you say a space propulsion company?
link |
So how do you, big question,
link |
how do you build a rocket company
link |
from like a propulsion company from one person,
link |
from two people to 10 people plus,
link |
and actually, you know, take it to a successful product?
link |
Yeah, well, I think the early stage is quite,
link |
I'm not supposed to use the word easy
link |
when you work in rocket science,
link |
but straightforward when you're working on something,
link |
you know, sexy, like an ion engine,
link |
it's more straightforward to raise money
link |
and get people to come work for you
link |
because the vision's really exciting.
link |
And actually that's something I would say
link |
is very important throughout,
link |
is a really exciting vision
link |
because when everything, you know, goes to crap,
link |
you need that to get people
link |
getting themselves out of bed in the morning
link |
and thinking of the higher purpose there.
link |
And, you know, another thing along the way
link |
that I think is key in building any company
link |
is the right early employees
link |
that also have their own networks
link |
and can bring in a lot of people
link |
that, you know, really make the whole greater
link |
than just the sum of the early team.
link |
How do you build that?
link |
Like, how do you find people?
link |
It's like asking, like, how do you make friends?
link |
But is there, is it luck?
link |
Is there a system?
link |
Like how, in terms of the people you've connected with,
link |
the people you built the company with,
link |
is there some thread, some commonality,
link |
some pattern that you find to be,
link |
to hold for what makes a great team?
link |
I think, you know, personally,
link |
a thread for me has been my network
link |
and being able to draw on that a lot,
link |
but also giving back to it as much as possible
link |
in like an unsolicited sort of way,
link |
like making connections between people
link |
that, you know, maybe didn't ask,
link |
but that I think could be really fruitful.
link |
And even, you know, weirder than that
link |
is just really getting, you know,
link |
having weird, uncomfortable conversations
link |
with people like at a conference
link |
and getting over the small talk quickly
link |
and getting to know them quickly
link |
and having a relationship that stands out
link |
and then being able to call on them later because of that.
link |
And I think that's been because I'm introverted
link |
and I, you know, want to poke my eyes out
link |
instead of go and do small talk.
link |
And so I huddle in a corner with one person
link |
and, you know, we talk about aliens or things like that.
link |
And so, you know, that's all to say that,
link |
you know, having a strong network,
link |
I think is really important, but a genuine one.
link |
And let's see, other ways to build a rocket company,
link |
kind of making sure you're paying attention
link |
to the sweeping trends of the industry
link |
so everybody just cares about cost
link |
and being able to get out ahead of that
link |
and even more than we ever thought we'd need to
link |
as far as what we needed to price our systems at.
link |
You know, people for,
link |
since the start of the US space industry,
link |
they've been paying 20, 25 million in adjusted dollars
link |
for an ion engine.
link |
And seeing that now people are going to want to pay 10K
link |
for an ion engine and just staying out ahead of that
link |
and those kinds of things.
link |
So, you know, being out in the industry
link |
and talking to as many people as possible.
link |
So there's a drive.
link |
I mean, I suppose SpaceX really pushed that.
link |
Frustrating for me.
link |
So SpaceX really pushed this,
link |
the application of, I guess, capitalism
link |
of driving the price down,
link |
of basically forcing people to ask the question,
link |
can this be done cheaper?
link |
This can lead to like big problems, I would say,
link |
in the following sense.
link |
I see this in the car industry, for example,
link |
it's such a small margin for profit.
link |
Like they've driven the cost of everything down so much
link |
that there's literally no room for innovation
link |
So like cars, which is funny
link |
because not until Tesla, really,
link |
which is one of the, in a long, long time,
link |
one of the first successful new car companies
link |
that's constantly innovating,
link |
every other car company is really pouring
link |
in terms of their technological innovation.
link |
They innovate on design and style and so on,
link |
that people fall in love with the look and so on,
link |
but it's not really innovation.
link |
In terms of the technology in it,
link |
it's really boringly the same thing,
link |
and they're really afraid of taking risks.
link |
And that's a big problem for rocket space, too,
link |
is like if you're cutting out costs,
link |
you can't afford to innovate, to try out new things,
link |
and that's definitely true with ion engines, right?
link |
So how do you compete in this space?
link |
Do you, by the way, see SpaceX as a competitor?
link |
And what do you say in general
link |
about the competition in this space?
link |
Is it really difficult as a business to compete here?
link |
No, I don't see SpaceX as a competitor,
link |
and I see them as one day, not too long from now,
link |
a customer, hopefully.
link |
I mean, to compete against that,
link |
I think you just have to do things in an unconventional way.
link |
So bringing silicon MEMS manufacturing
link |
to propulsion, NASA doesn't make ion engines
link |
using a batch mass producible technique.
link |
They have one guy that's been making their ion engines
link |
for 20 years bespoke pieces of jewelry.
link |
So bringing things to what you're trying to innovate
link |
to make them, in our case, more cost effective
link |
I like the idea of somebody putting out ion engines
link |
Yeah, my advisor at MIT would,
link |
the thruster chip I was holding up,
link |
he would wear one as a lapel pin.
link |
But in general, just on the topic of SpaceX,
link |
2020 has seen some difficult things
link |
for human civilization.
link |
And it's been a lot of, first of all, it's an election year,
link |
there's been a lot of drama and division about that.
link |
There's been riots of all different reasons,
link |
racial division, there's been obviously a virus
link |
that's testing the very fabric of our society.
link |
But there's been really, for me at least,
link |
super positive things, inspiring things,
link |
which is SpaceX and NASA doing the first commercial
link |
human flight, launching humans to space
link |
and did it twice successfully.
link |
What is that, did you get to watch that launch?
link |
Did you, what does it make you feel?
link |
Do you think this is first days
link |
for a new era of space exploration?
link |
Yeah, I did watch it.
link |
We played it outside on a big screen at our place.
link |
And I was a little, they kept saying Bob and Doug,
link |
Bob and Doug, and astronauts usually are treated
link |
with a little bit more fanfare.
link |
So it felt very casual, but maybe that was a good,
link |
a good thing, like this is the era
link |
of commercial crewed missions.
link |
It was a little bit more, what is it?
link |
Chris Hadfield, like playing guitar.
link |
It's more, it's a different flavor to it of.
link |
More like fun, playful, celebrity type.
link |
Astronaut versus the aura of the magical
link |
sort of heroic element of the single human
link |
representing us in space.
link |
Yes, I think that's all for the better though.
link |
It's so cool that it's such a commonplace thing
link |
I can't believe that sometimes I'll have to,
link |
you don't even realize that astronauts are coming
link |
and going all the time, splashing back down.
link |
And it's just so common now,
link |
but that's quite magical, I think.
link |
So yes, we did watch that.
link |
I love, love, love that we finally have that capability
link |
again to send people to the space station.
link |
And it's just really exciting to see the private sector
link |
stepping up to fill in where the government
link |
has pulled back in the US.
link |
And I think pulled back way too soon
link |
as far as exploration and science goes.
link |
Probably pulled back at the right time
link |
for commercial things and getting that started.
link |
But I'm really happy that it's even possible
link |
to do that with private money and companies.
link |
Do you like the kind of the model of competition
link |
I guess that's how it works,
link |
is like they're providing quite a bit of money
link |
from the government and then private companies compete
link |
to be the delivery vehicles for whichever
link |
the government missions, like NASA missions.
link |
Yes, I think for this type of mission
link |
is a little bit kind of straddles commercial and science.
link |
So I think it's good, but I do in general feel
link |
like we've pulled back too much on NASA's role
link |
in the science and exploration part.
link |
And I think our pace is too slow there,
link |
for my liking, I suppose.
link |
Okay, so did you have, I mean, on the cost thing,
link |
do you feel like NASA was a little too bureaucratic
link |
in a sense, like too slow, too heavy cost wise
link |
in their effort, like when they were running things
link |
purely without any commercial involvement?
link |
So I suppose it's more that I just want
link |
the government to fund.
link |
And maybe NASA's not the best organization
link |
But I think that, again, depending on the goals,
link |
we're just kind of at the very starting point
link |
of space exploration and science and understanding.
link |
So we should be spending more money there and not less.
link |
And other countries are starting to spend more and more,
link |
and I think we'll fall behind because of that.
link |
So you have quite a bit of experience, first of all,
link |
starting a company yourself, but also I saw,
link |
maybe you can correct me, but you have quite a bit
link |
of knowledge of just in general the startup experience
link |
of building companies that you've interacted with people.
link |
Is there advice that you can give to somebody,
link |
to a founder or cofounder who wants to launch
link |
and grow a new company and do something big and impactful
link |
Yes, I would say, like I mentioned earlier,
link |
but make sure the vision is something that will get you
link |
out of bed in the morning and that you can rally
link |
other people around you to achieve.
link |
Because I see a lot of folks that sort of cared
link |
about something or saw a window of opportunity
link |
to do something, and startups are hard,
link |
and more often than not, just being opportunistic
link |
isn't going to be enough to make it through
link |
all the really crappy things that are going to happen.
link |
So the vision just helps you psychologically
link |
to carry through the hardships,
link |
for you and the team.
link |
Yeah, you and the team, yeah, exactly.
link |
To kind of younger people interested in getting
link |
into entrepreneurship, I would say stay as close
link |
to first principles and fundamentals as you can
link |
for as long as you can, because really understanding
link |
the problems, if it's something scientific
link |
or hardware related, or even if it's not,
link |
but having a deep understanding of the problem
link |
and the customers and what people care about
link |
and how to move something forward is more important
link |
than taking all of the entrepreneurship classes
link |
So being able to think deeply, yeah.
link |
Yeah, have you been surprised about how much pivoting
link |
is involved, basically rethinking what you thought
link |
initially would be the right direction to go?
link |
Or is there, if you think deeply enough,
link |
that you can stick in the same direction for long enough?
link |
So our guiding star hasn't changed at all,
link |
so that's been pretty consistent,
link |
but within that, we flip flop on so many things
link |
all the time, and to give you one example,
link |
it's do you stop and build a first product
link |
that's well suited to maybe a smaller,
link |
less exciting segment of the market,
link |
or do you stay head down and focus on the big swing
link |
and trying to hit it out of the park right away?
link |
And we've flip flopped between that,
link |
and there's not a blanket answer,
link |
and there are a lot of factors, but that's a hard one.
link |
And I think one other piece for the aspiring founder,
link |
spending a lot of time and effort on the culture
link |
and people piece is so important
link |
and is always an afterthought and something
link |
that I haven't really seen the founders or executives
link |
or executives at companies purposefully carve out time
link |
and acknowledge that, yes, this is going to take
link |
a lot of my time and resources,
link |
but you see them after the fact trying to repair
link |
the bro culture or whatever else is broken at the company.
link |
And I think that it's starting to change,
link |
but just to be aware of it from the beginning is important.
link |
Right, I guess it should be part of the vision
link |
of what kind of place you want to create,
link |
or what kind of human beings.
link |
Yeah, exactly, you can't wait five, 10 years
link |
and then just slap an HR person onto trying to fix it.
link |
It has to be thoughtful from the beginning.
link |
Yeah, don't get me started on HR people.
link |
Don't leave HR to HR people, but I'll just leave it at that.
link |
You didn't say that, I said it, okay.
link |
Yeah, HR's actual HR is really important,
link |
is so important, culture is so important.
link |
And then I also was surprised, I thought you could say,
link |
here will be our culture and our values,
link |
and that it was kind of distinct from who I
link |
and my co founder were as people,
link |
and I was like, no, that's not how that works.
link |
We just kind of ooze out our behaviors
link |
and then the company grows around that.
link |
So you have to do a lot of introspection and self work
link |
to not end up with a shitty culture.
link |
It's kind of a, it's a relationship,
link |
but it's supposed to be a relationship with two people,
link |
it's a relationship with many people.
link |
And you communicate so much indirectly by who you are.
link |
You have to be, you have to live it, yeah.
link |
As somebody, I think about this a lot
link |
because generally I'm full of love
link |
and all those kinds of things,
link |
but I also get really passionate
link |
and when I see somebody in the context of work, especially,
link |
when I see somebody who I know can do a much better job
link |
and they don't do a great job, I can lose my shit
link |
in a way that's like Steve Jobsian.
link |
And you have to think about exactly the right way
link |
to lose your shit if you're going to, or if at all.
link |
You have to really think through that
link |
because it sends a big signal.
link |
You know, sometimes it's okay, like if you do it deliberately,
link |
like if you're going to do it deliberately,
link |
if you're going to say like,
link |
I'm going to be the kind of person that allows this
link |
and pays the cost of it,
link |
but you can't just think it's not gonna have a cost.
link |
Yes, this was like the first thing I worked on
link |
with my leadership coach was how not to just snap at people
link |
when they were being an idiot.
link |
And first I got really good at apologizing.
link |
That was the first step because it was going to take longer
link |
to fix the behavior.
link |
And then she, I'm actually a lot better at it now
link |
and it started with things.
link |
She's like, every time you walk through a doorway,
link |
think, you know, calm and take breaths before responding.
link |
And there were all sorts of these little things we did
link |
and it was mostly just changing the habit.
link |
Yeah, oh boy, it's a long road.
link |
Okay, so people love it and we talk about books.
link |
Is there books, maybe three or so technical fiction,
link |
philosophical that had an impact on your life
link |
and you might recommend and for each,
link |
is there an idea or so that you take away from it?
link |
Yes, so I've been a voracious reader all my life
link |
and I'm always reading like three or four or five books
link |
at a time and now I use Audible a lot too
link |
and you know, podcasts and things like that.
link |
So I think the first one that stands out to me is 10,
link |
it's a novel, Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald.
link |
And I read it when I was much younger
link |
but I went back and read it recently and it's not that good.
link |
So I'm not sure why it has like such an important place
link |
in my literary history but I love Fitzgerald as an author
link |
because he's very like flowery prose
link |
that I can just picture what he's saying
link |
but he does it in such a creative way.
link |
I remember that one in particular
link |
because I read a ton as a kid too
link |
but it kind of set me, it was like the beginning of my adult
link |
reading life and getting into classics
link |
and I kind of, I do feel like they seem intimidating maybe
link |
and then I realized that they're all just like love stories.
link |
Yeah, isn't everything a love story?
link |
Yeah, it's really.
link |
Even, you know, I don't know.
link |
I was surprised that even like a lot of the Russian authors,
link |
you know, they're all just love stories.
link |
We're humans are pretty simple.
link |
There's not much to worry, there's not much to work with.
link |
So I think maybe that was it.
link |
It made like that whole world less intimidating to me
link |
and cemented my love for reading.
link |
People should have just approached the classics
link |
like there's probably a love story in here.
link |
Chick flicks, yeah.
link |
So somehow it boils down to a chick flick.
link |
So just relax and enjoy the ride.
link |
Changing gears quite a bit.
link |
The Beginning of Infinity, do you know it?
link |
So he's a physicist at Cambridge or Oxford.
link |
And so I was introduced like more formally
link |
to a lot of the ideas, like a lot of the things
link |
we've talked about, he has a lot more like formalism
link |
and physics rigor around.
link |
And so I got introduced to, you know, more like jargon
link |
of how to think about some of these ideas,
link |
you know, like memes and, you know, DNA as ultimate meme,
link |
the concept of infinity and objective beauty.
link |
But he has a really strong grounding in physics.
link |
There's a rigorous way of talking about these like big.
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So that was very mind opening to me to read that.
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But it also, I think it's probably part of why
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I ended up marrying my husband is related to that book.
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And then I've had some other really great connections
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with people because I had read it and so had they.
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I like how you turned that, even that book
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into a love story.
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No, it's good, it's good.
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Your robot has a heart.
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And okay, the third series is, it's just, it's Harry Potter.
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Of course, which somehow connects to,
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I haven't read Harry Potter.
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Forgive me, forgive me.
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But I've read Tolkien, but just Harry Potter,
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just haven't gotten to it.
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But your company name is somehow I think
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connected to Harry Potter, right?
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I think I heard this.
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My, I always feel like I have to justify my fandom.
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The first three books came out when I was 10.
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So I went along this journey with Harry, age wise.
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And I read them all like nine or 10 times, all seven books.
link |
And I think anything that just keeps you reading
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is what's important.
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And I have lulls where I don't feel like reading anything.
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So I'll reread a Harry Potter or a trashy detective novel
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or something, and I don't really care.
link |
And that's why I mentioned Harry Potter
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because whatever just keeps me reading,
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I think is important.
link |
And it was a big part of my life growing up.
link |
And then yes, Axion, the official story of the naming
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of the company is that Axion is like a concatenation
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of accelerate and ion.
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But it actually came from accio, the summoning charm.
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And then we just added an N and it was perfect.
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What's the summoning charm?
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It's one of the spells in Harry Potter.
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Yeah, probably most notably Harry uses it
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to summon his broomstick out of his dorm room
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when he's battling a dragon somewhere else.
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So he says the spell and the broomstick comes to him.
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So summoning in that way.
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Okay, there we go.
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This is brilliant.
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So the big thing is that it's something
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that you've carry with, it's like your safe place
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you return to something like the Harry Potter.
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That, I reread them still, whatever keeps me reading
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I think is the most important thing.
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So I'm actually the same way in terms of the habit of it.
link |
It's important to just keep reading.
link |
But I have found myself struggling a little bit too
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because I listen to a lot of audio books now.
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I've struggled to then switch back to reading seriously.
link |
It's just I read so many papers,
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I read so many other things.
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It feels like if I'm gonna sit down
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and have the time to actually focus on the reading
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I should be reading like blog posts or papers
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or more condensed kind of things.
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But there's a huge value to just reading long form still.
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Yeah, and my husband was never that into fiction
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but then someone told him or he heard,
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you learn a lot of empathy through reading fiction.
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So you could think of it that way.
link |
Well, yeah, that's kind of what, yeah, yeah.
link |
And it's also fiction is a nice,
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unlike not less so with nonfiction is a chance to travel.
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I see it as kind of traveling.
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As you go to this other world and it's nice
link |
because it's like much more efficient.
link |
You don't have to get on a plane,
link |
and you get to meet all kinds of new people.
link |
It's like people say they love traveling
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and I say I love traveling too.
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I just, yeah, read fiction.
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I told my three year old that that was why we read so much
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because we see the places in our mind
link |
and I'm like, it's basically like we're watching a movie.
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That's how it feels.
link |
And she's like, I prefer watching Frozen with popcorn,
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was her response that.
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Okay, well, you're three.
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That's a good point.
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But yeah, there's some power to the imagination, right?
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That's not just like watching a movie
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because something about our imagination
link |
because it's the words in the world that's painted
link |
somehow mixing in with our own understanding
link |
of our own hopes and dreams, our fears.
link |
It like mixes up in there
link |
and the way we can build up that world from just the page.
link |
Yeah, you're really creating the world
link |
just with the prompts from the book, right?
link |
Yeah, that's different than watching a movie.
link |
Yeah, which is why it hurts sometimes
link |
to watch the movie version
link |
and then you're like, that's not at all how I imagined it.
link |
Well, we kind of brought this up in terms of
link |
depending on what the goals are.
link |
Let me ask the big, you're friends with Manolis,
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he's obsessed with this question.
link |
So let me ask the big ridiculous question
link |
about the meaning of life.
link |
Do you ever think about this one?
link |
Do you ever ponder the reason we're here?
link |
Descends as the vapes on this spinning ball
link |
in the middle of nowhere?
link |
Yeah, I don't think one ends up
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in the field of space propulsion
link |
without thinking of these existential questions.
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Yeah, all the time.
link |
Or builds a business.
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Yeah, I know, right?
link |
Yeah, we've touched on a lot of the different pieces
link |
So I have a bunch of thoughts.
link |
I do think that the goal isn't,
link |
the meaning isn't anymore just to be like a Petri dish
link |
of bacteria that reproduces
link |
and where survival and reproduction are the main objectives.
link |
And maybe it's because now we're able to answer these,
link |
ask those questions.
link |
That's maybe the turning point.
link |
And instead, I think it's really the pursuit
link |
and generation of knowledge.
link |
And so if we're taken out by an asteroid or something,
link |
I think that it will have been a meaningful endeavor
link |
if somehow our knowledge about the universe
link |
is preserved somehow and the next civilization
link |
isn't starting over again.
link |
So that's, I always, yeah, I resonate with that.
link |
I always loved the mission of Google from the early days
link |
of making the world's sort of information
link |
and knowledge searchable.
link |
I always loved that idea.
link |
I always loved, I was donated as people should to Wikipedia.
link |
I just love Wikipedia.
link |
I feel like it's the, that's one of the greatest
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accomplishments of just a humanity of us together,
link |
especially Wikipedia and this opens like
link |
in this open community way,
link |
putting together different knowledge is like,
link |
on everything we've talked about today,
link |
I'm sure there's a Wikipedia page about ion engines
link |
and I'm sure it's pretty good.
link |
Like, it's, I don't know, that's incredible.
link |
And obviously that can be preserved pretty efficiently,
link |
at least Wikipedia.
link |
I don't know, you'll be like, human civilization
link |
is all like burning up in flames
link |
as there's this one USB drive slowly traveling out.
link |
Yeah, I know, exactly.
link |
With Wikipedia on it.
link |
That's on, from the beginning of our chat,
link |
that one lonely spacecraft.
link |
It just needs Wikipedia.
link |
And then it will have been a civilization well spent.
link |
So pushing that knowledge along.
link |
Through like one little discovery at a time
link |
is one of, is a core aspect to the meaning of it all.
link |
Yes, and I also, I haven't yet figured out
link |
what the connection, you know, an explanation
link |
I'm happy with yet for how it's connected,
link |
but evolving beyond just the survival piece too,
link |
I think like we touched on the emotional aspect,
link |
something in there about cooperation and, you know, love.
link |
And so I, in my day to day that just boils down to,
link |
you know, the pursuit of knowledge
link |
or improving the human condition and being kind.
link |
Love and knowledge.
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So I'm pretty at peace with that as the meaning right now.
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Makes sense to me.
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While you work on spacecraft propulsion.
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Like literal rocket science.
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Natalia, this is an amazing conversation.
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You work on such an exciting engineering field.
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And I think this is like what 20th, 21st century
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will be remembered for is space exploration.
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So this is super exciting space that you're working on.
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So, and thank you so much
link |
for spending your time with me today.
link |
Thanks for having me.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Natalia Bailey.
link |
And thank you to our sponsors,
link |
Monk Pack Low Carb Snacks,
link |
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an app that summarizes books,
link |
and Sun Basket, meal delivery service.
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So the choice is snacks, caffeine, knowledge,
link |
or a delicious meal.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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And if you wish, click the sponsor links below
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to get a discount and to support this podcast.
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And now let me leave you with some words
link |
All civilizations become either space faring or extinct.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.