Closing Bell - Manifest Space: The Cusp of Cash with Firefly Aerospace CEO Bill Weber 7/13/23

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Since launching their first-ever successful orbital launch in October 2022, rocket maker and in-space services company Firefly Aerospace has kept busy. Firefly has doubled its manufacturing facilities, inked deals with NASA, the US Space Force, and Lockheed Martin—and now is on the cusp of raising more cash. CEO Bill Weber returns to the podcast with Morgan to discuss the startup’s diversification strategy, recent acquisitions and plans to go public.

When Firefly Aerospace conducted its first successful launch last October, CEO Bill Weber, brand new, just a month on the job, told me the milestone would be just the beginning. And then when we're ready and when we can actually do what we say we can do, then we'll sign contracts and we'll sign agreements that give them a manifest and give us the assurance that they have a payload that needs to go up. And so that work is going like gangbusters right now. Since that podcast appearance nine months ago, the startup has been busy. Firefly has doubled its manufacturing facilities,

inked deals with NASA, the U.S. Space Force and Lockheed Martin, and now is on the cusp of raising more cash. You know, we were involved in capital raise. We've got some really good news that we're going to be announcing soon. That's coming to a close. We're oversubscribed, and it was an up round for Firefly. On this episode, we talk about Firefly's strategy to diversify, recent acquisitions, including some assets of bankrupt Virgin Orbit, and even plans to go public.

I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. It's like, where to start? I guess let's start with Alpha. Yeah, yeah. Alpha. So I think we may have joked the last time we got together that that was literally within the first 30 days that it took over as CEO and we got Alpha into orbit. I think I probably made the joke that maybe it wasn't as funny to everybody when I made it. There's nothing, this isn't that hard, right? I mean, I'd only been in place 30 days. What Alpha is doing now, though, the intention's never to do it once. The intention is to drive the commercialization of space.

That's what Firefly is in this for. These are businesses. They're not science projects. And so what we've been doing since then is getting out of a development footing on that rocket and getting into production. So don't do it once. Do it once a month, ultimately, or really once a week if demand says that's what we need. But be production ready in everything we do. So most of the time, most of our energy and effort since last fall

has been building manufacturing capability in Austin so that we can produce that rocket, making sure that our processes are intended to be repeatable and not everybody rallying around every single step. So 13 individual work cells to build an alpha, making sure that work cell one does what it is intended to do and then passes it down the line and begins again on its particular function so that we get into full rate production. That's hard to do. The good news is the aerospace industry has been doing it for decades, for a century. And so you have to bring those processes to what we're doing in space over and over and over, just repeatable. And that's that's Alpha. So we're there. We're ready to go. We've got our next launch. And then after that, we will we are in a production cadence right now where we can do everything we do with Alpha every two months.

Every two months. Every two months. And you're looking to get to one month. Yes. And so we have a schedule to do that. Again, I think part of my job as CEO is to not push too far too fast and create an unforced error. Right now, arguably, we have a lead.

There's no other rocket that's flying in the one metric ton class today. We are. There's nobody else that can take a payload manifest from a customer with a schedule that would say, you can fly on this particular date. We can. And we intend to maintain that lead. And so my judgment on the business was it's ready right now to move out of that development cycle into an every two month window. And we're going to get really good at that and sharpen and learn some things along the way and sharpen our edge on how do we produce that rocket every two months? And just as importantly, how do we ship it, stage it and launch it every two months?

And then when we're comfortable with all those processes across that production cycle, we'll shorten it to a month and a half. So we'll go every 45 days. And we won't stay there long. We'll ultimately then bring it down to every 30 days. And I think when we look out at the demand that we see for small launch, we can project out about 48 months. And if I could build a rocket a month, yeah, we can just based on those customers that we know are intending to launch. If there is capacity, we can see a launch a month for us. And let's say two or three other competitors in that launch class,, roughly one metric time.

And so our perspective is, if we can get that down to one a month, we think there's demand that keeps Alpha flying for the foreseeable future. I think it goes on beyond 48 months, but your headlights start to dim really beyond 36 months because you just need to watch the market evolve and just see what happens, what goes to medium class, what stops flying altogether. And so our perspective is Alpha has a demand signature for the next three to four years, which is more than good enough for what we want to do with it. We'll fly it longer than that if it's a productive workhorse in the market. But for right now, that's all it needs to do for us. So demand is there, and particularly for the next couple of years. I

mean, when you see more of these medium class rockets come online, you see something like Starship come online, which is being discussed as a very disruptive capability, potentially including to small launch. How are you thinking about that competitive landscape over the medium to longer term then? I think there are so many corollaries when you think about transportation. That's what, really, that's what we're talking about here, is this is transportation infrastructure. And so whether you want to go with wheeled vehicles and the way that we move things around the country, around the world with wheeled vehicles, or by water, or by air today. You don't, there are in any of those markets there's not a one-size-fits-all. There isn't. There is not cargo that you

would put in in a moving van that in some cases might be more appropriately put in the back of a pickup truck. There's not cargo that that you would ultimately like to move across the country that in one fell swoop, that putting it in the back of a smaller truck and making multiple trips just starts to get a little bit unnatural and inordinate. Space is very similar. Starship most definitely has a place. I'm sure SpaceX is really glad that I believe in that and I agree with that. But the intention of taking everything up with a 100 metric ton rocket and dropping it off where that rocket goes and then using the resources of all of those things you took up there to then move to exactly where in space it wants to go,

I think is a gross oversimplification. So what we believe, and I think the rational market believes, is that there is a small, a medium, and a large demand signature out there. And so some things will go up on large and get deployed. Some things in between those areas where the large flies will drop off 20 to 30 to 40 instances, the medium class, and kind of fit in between. And then some things will require precision, whether they're national security issue payloads in the one metric ton class or replacement sets that need to go exactly to a street address and not a state or a region of space.

Small, medium, large fits very, very well. What we intend to be is a dominant player in the small and medium landscape. And so far, so good. I mean, it does raise questions. I mean, you've got the space utility vehicle as well. And does that sort of speak to this idea of payloads that get deposited in a region or a state and need to get moved to a specific address? Yeah, absolutely.

It's all about precision. So that space utility vehicle, so says our customers, is intended to do a couple of things. Where we drop them off and they say a little to the left, a little to the right, or a further journey than that rocket drops me off, they're going to buy that capacity from somebody. They're going to pay for the ability to get there from someone. They're either going to build themselves on their payload, which could be a little bit different than their mission set. They're going to ask a third party to fly on our rocket or our competitors' rocket to then take them the rest of the way. Or they're going to naturally say to somebody like us, you do it.

And our perspective is the carbon fiber structures that we build a rocket out of and that we build a lander out of are very similar in terms of the physics and the engineering principles to build an orbiting class vehicle. The propulsion technologies, particularly in the lander, are very, very similar to that with what we would use to maneuver an orbital class vehicle. And so who better to do that than Firefly, than the entity that got you there?

And then when you think about the economies of scale of that craft flies on our rocket for free. So if we can pay for the cost of the rocket with the payload that's getting deployed, and we fly our orbital class vehicle with it, low volume, relatively low weight, that then can act as a third stage. It can help them maneuver once they're there. It can help them deorbit. Then we've solved a very needed problem in the market. Someone's going to solve that. It's either going to be a third party that has to pay to get there.

It's going to be that entity that's, again, now they're getting away from their focus in their business area. It should be the infrastructure end-to-end transportation companies, and that's again now they're they're they're getting away from their focus in their business area it should be the infrastructure and to end transportation companies and that's what we are so that's why it's it's very natural vertically integrated same manufacturing facility same engineers you can come to Austin and see it it's you know they're being built right now it's part of the reason for the spaceflight acquisition it's why it was interesting to us. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But it just makes sense for us, very much as a hand-in-glove capability of what we already do with launch and landing. When do you start deploying those spacecraft, or are you already? So first, what we call today the SUV, and we're going to get away from that, and it's going to

have a much cooler name than just SUV SUV but there'll be an SUV is helpful though it is in terms of describing it it did snap in with several people to go oh I get it right I understand what that's intended to do so maybe maybe we just you know put a bug around it or make it you know black and green and and have a little bit better logoing and branding than that. But the first iteration is ready to fly on, we think, Alpha Flight 5. And the reason I say we think is because there is a little bit of manifest maneuver going on right now in terms of some demand from some of the customers of when they'll fly. There's available capacity somewhere in a flight that will either be five, six, or seven. I think it's going to be flight five right now, but again, as we get closer to those launch dates.

So it's ready to fly in the fourth quarter this year. We'll put it up. That first article will just be to prove flight worthiness, maneuverability, communication. We're going to wait to see what is the first capability that we deploy, whether it is a third stage, whether it has a mechanical arm, a multi-use connector, a camera. That really is demand set by the customer. They tell us, all right, if you can put that capability on it, then we'll pay to do that. Having said that, that first SUV is an intelligence community mission. So you know the answer to your next question. Can't talk a lot about exactly what it's going to do, but it's the right customer for us to be flying with. And we're super excited about that.

Let's talk a little bit about your customer backlog. You mentioned the lander too. I want to get to that because I think that has a really fun name too, right? Blue Ghost. But first, just a little bit about the backlog because I know you've struck some partnerships with some different big primes like Northrop Grumman

where you're working on a rocket together. You're going to be sending satellites to orbit for Lockheed Martin. You are working with the Space Force. I guess just walk me through some of these customers, some of these deals, and sort of how you're thinking about commercial versus government. Yeah. So the government marketplace is a perfect place for companies like Firefly to start. The scrutiny that the U.S. Space Force puts Firefly through and the amount of exacting standards we have to meet in order to fly for NASA will say to every commercial customer out there, we're ready for your mission

as well, which is why we gravitate there on launch and landing and our orbiter. If we can prove it there, then there isn't a customer out there that would say, our standards are even more robust than that. There are some that would match and that would replicate, but it's a perfect place for us to prove out that this isn't a risky venture. It is predictable. It's dependable. It's repeatable. And that's why you will see on everything that we do, whether it's a launch vehicle, an orbiter, the orbiting

vehicle, a lander, the first customer set and the initial demand is going to be heavily tipped towards government customer. Now, the commercial market then watches that and says, how might I use that? The deployment of constellations of communication satellites gets more and more provable over time the more defense and intelligence entities that go up. And so what you see then over time is alpha, where it'll be very heavily defense focused initially

and intelligence community focused initially, ultimately will prove out to be a repeatable on demand solution for the commercial entities as they're replacing satellites in their communication constellations. So we kind of view it as a, let's say, at first 24 months, it's 75-25 government. Whether it's a launch vehicle, a lander, maybe more, but let's call it a 75-25 launch lander

or orbiter, the government customer will lead the way. And then in the next two to three years beyond that, so through your five-year cycle, you're going to tip to something like a 60-40 or 50-50 mix. But the expectation always is, as the commercialization of space comes to life, that'll go the other direction. 75% of what Alpha does nearing its latter stages of life will be commercial launch. And the same will be true of the medium vehicle. The same will be true of Blue Ghost and our lander platforms and the same will be true of the medium vehicle, same will be true of Blue Ghost and our lander platforms and the orbiting entity. The ultimate customer that will use the SUV will be commercial customers but all along the way the defense and intelligence community loves that

because they get to take full benefit of all of the innovation that then happens as we adapt it and build it out and mature it. So it works the way it's supposed to. They use a lot of their initial demand set to build out a capability, but commercial market really is what ramps it into full production. So, yeah. Yeah. That relationship and how that's evolved is something that's come up in conversations

with Space Force, with National Reconnaissance Office, so many folks I've spoken to and sort of this idea, to your point of government being able to leverage some of the innovation coming out of private sector, out of a company like Firefly. Yeah, we will host US Space Force next week in Austin. They are as interested in how our commercial pipeline is developing as they are in our ability to perform their missions. Interesting. They need us to be a commercially viable entity long term.

Not just us, by the way. Yeah. Several of our competitors, which it's an interesting twist in the markets that we operate in. We root for, we never root against a competitor on launch day or when they're trying to land, ever. It's bad for all of us if any of us don't succeed. You know, we're competitive. We're going to win every single time we can out there. There's, you know, no apologies about that. But we don't root for anybody else to fail. Neither does Space Force or NASA or the intelligence community. More choices out there,

more things flying helps our nation and other nations like us. And so they want to know that the market that they're driving is also well supported by other customers as well. Blue Ghost. Yeah. Let's talk about it. You know what a Blue Ghost is? No, tell me. It's a firefly.

That's very clever. That's like extra clever. Yeah, it's a lot of the hidden gems inside our company as you get to know us more. There's a rhyme or reason to, you know, kind of how things come together. There is a firefly in the North Carolina and South Carolina region of the country that when it glows, it glows blue. And it is a, it is commonly referred to as Blue Ghost. And so what better name then for, for our lander as Firefly thinks about putting out on the moon than Blue Ghost. And that's how the name got its start with us. Super proud about that spacecraft.

That lander is now contracted on its second mission, so Blue Ghost 1 and Blue Ghost 2 are both coming to life. Blue Ghost 1 is in final assembly. Again, when you come to Austin, you'll see it in our clean room. The payloads are being integrated in it right now. And it'll fly sometime around this time next year. It'll orbit for about a month, and then it's going to touch down in the South Pole region of the Moon. When it does, and it'll touch down softly, because that's the distinction that the engineering community at

Firefly always points out whenever I say when we land. It's always interesting to me that in my earliest days, when I would talk about Blue Ghost landing, they would bristle. And so I noticed several of the engineers, and I would say, guys, what am I saying wrong there? What is it you're reacting to? And they would point out that, Bill, it is going to land. We want it to land softly. Gotcha, right?

Gravity takes over, and so it's going to land on. Gotcha, right? Gravity takes over and so it's gonna land on the surface of the moon. So Blue Ghost will touch down softly around this time next year, a little bit later. And then depending on how the manifests go, there are a couple of missions on the NASA eclipse contract that are going on at the same time. It very well may be the first U.S. presence back to the surface of the moon since Apollo 17. Incredibly humbling, certainly as a leader. But I think if you talk to the folks at Firefly, that's not lost on any individual, that we have that opportunity in this company. It's incredibly cool to be a part of an organization that has that opportunity. And NASA gave us that first contract and then said, how's this

for a follow-up act? We'd like you to go to the far side of the moon or the dark side, and we'd like you to land in a place that no human entity has ever landed. And so Blue Ghost 2 will go to the far side, literally out of any, completely shielded by the sun or the earth or any of the radiation that comes off of it in order to look deep, deep, deep into space and figure out some really interesting questions unobstructed about some of the origins of the universe. And again, we have the opportunity, the men and women who work for Firefly every day have that opportunity. They brought that to life. I'm just the guy who gets to come out here and talk about it, but it is a

really, really cool mission set. Really cool. I mean you're the guy who comes out to talk about it, but you're also the guy that came in to basically turn the company around because it had some issues along the way in its earlier stage and it does seem like it's progressing very quickly under you and there is this diversification of the portfolio that's afoot as well. Yeah. I would probably term it a little bit different. Okay. Where it, I don't know that it turned around. Firefly was in a very similar state to a lot of the technology environments of early and mid-stage, small cap, mid-cap technology companies, they get so far on the back of founder entrepreneurs

who can do things that frankly I could never do. I give incredible credit to my predecessor, Tom Marcusek, and the vision that he and the other founders of Firefly had to say, why not us? Look what we...there are some things that should be developed. We can do that. Now, taking that critical mass, though, and turning it into a viable business, a repeatable, dependable entity, there's a trick. There's a set of skills that you develop over time that you get good at.

That's what I love to do. That's where I come in and say, listen, the ability to do that and not kill the culture and not drive people out and not take the things about Firefly that were cool a year ago and make them just as equally as exciting today and enticing for that same kind of workforce, that's what I'm drawn to. And so that's what I get to work on. You know, look, we're all good at certain things. That's where I'm particularly good. So if I've done anything right in my career, it's probably around that.

Okay. But I could never, and I never try to pitch myself as, I mean, the people I grew up with who know me find it hilarious that I am responsible for a team of rocket scientists. I laugh about it to myself every day as I'm driving in. But the reality is that combination of business leader and scientist is required in order for companies like Firefly to go do what we have to do. So I'm needed and they're needed. We're needed together. And so that's how I've presented it to the company. They've been really receptive to it. Look, we have a pact that I'm going to be square and straight with them. They're going to continue to work as hard as they ever have. And I think in combination, we're going to get everything

done we need to get done out there. So we got a lot, a lot of really good stuff happening. Yeah. Well, so when you look at these different pieces of the portfolio, I guess, what are you thinking in terms of, since you're a numbers guy, addressable market and where you see the biggest opportunities in terms of future businesses and business growth and revenue? Yeah, I think it starts with what are you good at? Assess that really quick and be honest. Not what do you want to be good at, but really where are the skills in the company? This company does two things particularly well and a third thing that we have as our advantage and I'll describe them really quickly. What we do with carbon

composites is unique. We've cracked a code that many have tried to harness. We've done it. It allows us to build strong, flexible, and light structures. Critical when you think about taking mass to orbit and doing that at scale. So we have that as an advantage. Others will figure science out along those lines. But we don't intend to relinquish the lead that we have. And so we're all in on building carbon composite structures where it makes sense. I think that's important. I think committing to any technology just for the sake of the technology is always a mistake. But what we're good at with

building carbon composite structures, where it makes sense in a rocket, in a lander, or in an orbiter, has given us a great advantage. So that's number one. Number two, Firefly's known in our advancements and our prowess in propulsion. What we do to build engines and thrusters that are efficient, that scale well, that are reliable, that don't have added intricacy and weight and complexity that cause them to fail and break down, we have an advantage. What we do, you've probably heard us talk about it before,

tap-off cycle technology in our large propulsion. There's not a company out there that hasn't either investigated it or would like to fly that technology on their propulsion systems. I know because virtually every one of our competitors has called and said, would you sell us an engine similar to what you're using on Reaver, Lightning, Miranda, the engines, the propulsion systems that provide lift for our rockets. So I know there's an admiration out there in the market. We're doing it really well. Our focus is going to be on Firefly and making our things fly before we consider

perhaps down the road, maybe selling that at scale to the rest of the market. Because you knew that was my next question. It gives us a great advantage. And there's a time where once you've cemented your role in the market, you can then think about, does that then give you an opportunity to say, we have our place. Maybe the right partners could use it for their particular part in the market. market but I have no intention of giving a competitor you know kind of the the the secret sauce or the or the or the keys to the kingdom that's a hard problem to tackle we've done it and so that that would be number two and number three what we do in Austin and the proximity we have from where we build

from where we design and do our engineering, and where we test and manufacture is a huge advantage for us. We are based, the engineering design center is in Cedar Park and then 20 minutes north in Briggs, Texas is where we manufacture and we test everything. So literally we can design in the morning, we can manufacture by noon, and we can have it on a test stand by the end of the day and then rinse and repeat. And that's not, that's actual, that's practical. That happens at Firefly. A change that an engineer will say, I saw something in the data from the night before, I come in in the morning,

I design it, we manufacture it in our facility, and we test it and rinse and repeat over and over and over. It allows us rapid iteration. Our competitors are doing that hours away, days away, states away from those facilities. We can do it literally in a straight shot right there just north of Austin. So it's a huge advantage for us. And that's where we're going to continue to exploit that going forward. That's a great advantage for us. So you have to know what you're good at, right? So the vertical integration allows us to look at the market and say if we can do that right there with carbon composites and and and and propulsion it makes sense for us to make a larger rocket than

alpha it makes sense for us then take that and say are there some parts of that that would make us a natural provider of lender capability and and then if you're doing those two things the third piece that those same customers are asking for is can you help me maneuver when you launch me or get ready to land me which is why we're in the businesses that we're in they they do make sense. They pass muster. There's a financial market there. We think that that total addressable market is north of $8 billion just for the things we're involved in today. There will be new players that come in and say, I have a demand set. Didn't know I could

put that in orbit. Now I do. There will be new things we branch into as a company. But just where we are right now, that's more than big enough market for us to go get our fair share of it and give us great growth through the end of the decade. So we're excited. One of the things you always look for in my role is, all right, we do some really cool things,

but are there enough paying customers out there? I would say at Firefly, relative to other places I've been, that's the one question we do not worry about. The onus is on us to get there, not on an if you build it, they will come. The customers are there waiting for companies like Firefly to do it repeatably and dependably over and over and over. So we're gonna be one. I know there will

be others, but we will be one of those that do that. Okay. Yeah. You've been acquisitive. I guess walk me through that, whether it's the deal you made that enables, you know, in-space transportation services or whether it's even picking up some of the assets from the Virgin Orbit bankruptcy? Yeah. Well, it starts with health. You've got to be healthy in order to be in the M&A arena, unless you're doing it to save a burning platform, which we are not. So the first thing was get the finances of the company stable over the long haul. You know we were involved in capital raise.

Got some really good news that we're going to be announcing soon. That's coming to a close. We're oversubscribed. And it was an up round for Firefly. That alone in this market, incredibly proud of the track record that this company put us in in order to go do that. There's a lot of companies out there that we compete with that are either announcing down rounds

or they went with a shorter cycle and they raised less than they thought they were going to raise. So we did not. It took us longer to do that than I think anybody imagined last fall. But I think, as we said last time, you deal with these markets, the capital markets, as they are, not as you hope them to be. At the end of the day, we're a great story. It took longer on diligence to get there, but that's what it took. And so that's what the team did. Countless tours. Come live with us. See who we are.

See for yourself. This is not a PowerPoint rendering. These contracts, everything we talked about, all of it, you can come see it and touch it. There are launches scheduled. There are real contracts that you can diligence and look at that have good business relationships for us and our investors, our shareholders. So the business is sound. relationships for us and our investors, our shareholders. So the business is sound, the macro conditions are tough, but you can raise capital even in difficult markets. And so we got that done.

So health, number one. Then you can turn your attention to, all right, how's our plan going? And my judgment with the leadership team was there were a couple areas we were lagging behind a little bit when we wanna to be a dominant launch landing and orbiting provider out there we saw a couple things that we were organically building that were taking a little longer to get done than some of the other areas number one our

lander I'm sorry our orbiter capability, SUV, there were some constraints there. We were not able to bid on some work because we didn't have past performance having an orbital lander. Well, Spaceflight had five iterations of their platform, Sherpa, that has already launched, already achieved orbit. Two of them are still on orbit, and we're communicating with them right now. So we immediately picked up past performance that allows us to bid on more work that our customers are asking us to bid on. So check. Number two, when you imagine a launch every other month

turning into a launch a month on Alpha, the medium launch vehicle coming online in the 25 timeframe, taking paying customers. Blue Ghost, two of them already, and again, nothing to announce, but soon to be. Two more contracts, just like it. And then you think about an undetermined, but growing demand for orbiting vehicles.

Those are a lot of payload manifests that A, need to be sold, and B, need to be mission managed. Firefly's sales capability has largely existed on our tailwinds. We've got some really great sales stories in the company, but we were building a formal structure, a business development and sales culture in the company, we picked up some real great market intel of how do you take small customers and aggregate them to put them on our rocket?

Or how do you find customers that really want orbiting capability and that will ride along on the SUV? Well, Spaceflight had that. So again, business development and sales, we just got a lot better overnight. And the third piece was 416 missions that have been managed by Spaceflight. I need that knowledge. We needed that knowledge in Firefly.

That needs to be institutional. We need to have methodology, and we need to have templates, and we need to understand from experience what's the best way to handle a particular customer. Well, that mission management capability is now resident in Firefly. So it pushed those three areas SUV and the orbiting vehicle, mission management and business development far forward and now it is even with the other areas of the company that need to develop. So it was a good deal for us to do it. We did it with no cash and it didn't it didn't take us out of our mission set. There's some

things Spaceflight did historically that we won't be doing going forward. We're not an aggregator. I'm not looking to collect up a lot of small payloads and fill my competitors' rockets going forward. And I'm sure they don't want me to do that. But we will be filling up our vehicles, all of them, with that same capability. So it made a lot of sense for us to do that deal. The Virgin Orbit deal, similarly, opportunistically, there were a lot of things in an inventory that we already had in our 2023 and 2024 business plan to buy. And suffice it to say, what I was going to pay for it is a lot more than I

just paid for it. So we paid a certain price. We're taking that and we're selling all the rest of that inventory off. So it'll end up being a moneymaker for the company. You can't do that if you don't have that relative health we talked about at the beginning. So more to come. We're looking at the market. There are opportunities out there. There are companies in our sector, as you know, that can't get all the way there. They're having difficulty and they're struggling in some areas. And if that makes sense for Firefly, then we'll be active in the arena. So, yeah. So final question for you then. And I suspect I may already know the answer since it sounds like you're getting ready to announce another successful round of capital raise, but plans to go public. How do you think

about that? Do you think about it? Yeah, of course. I mean, I'm a public company CEO. If you look at my background, I've done that a couple of times over. And I embrace the public markets. I think if you can learn how to communicate with public investors in the way they expect to be communicated in a very predictable and dependable way and give them insight into where the company's headed and then hit your numbers, then you can have great success as an organization. There are a lot of companies out there that shouldn't be public that are public right now, and I think they're facing the difficulty of that.

So there's a time and place for that. My expectation though is whether we are a public offering or we remain private, good execution today is going to set up whatever that outcome is. So if Alpha's flying once a month and the medium launch vehicle then comes to life, this time next year we ship a little bit in fourth quarter. We ship the first article of that to Northrop Grumman, and we start flying the medium launch vehicle. Blue Ghost lands. Whether we IPO or whether we're a larger consolidator or whether it were a strategic acquisition, it'll be the result of good execution. So that's what I'm focused on. I think this company would be, with that performance, would be a great IPO candidate. I do.

But the macroeconomic conditions are going to have a say in whether that's the right thing for us at that time. My job is just to make sure the company is in a position to do that if and when that happens. If and when that time comes upon us, we will be ready no matter what. But there are some other folks that have a say or two on what Firefly does, and that's our owners. So my job is just to make sure that the way we execute today puts us in a position we can do that or any of the options are available for us.

That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts and by watching our coverage on Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan. Thanks for watching!