Main Engine Cut Off - T+233: Jared Isaacman, Polaris Program

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Jared Isaacman of the Polaris Program joins me to talk about how the program began, how it’s envisioned, how they choose what to take on and solve, how they interact with SpaceX, and why he’s chosen to contribute to spaceflight in this way.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 43 executive producers—Simon, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian, Lars from Agile Space, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Hemant, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, Benjamin, SmallSpark Space Systems, Tyler, Sean & Daniel Hart, and seven anonymous—and 841 other supporters.TopicsPolaris ProgramPolaris DawnInspiration4 - HomeCentrifuge and hypoxia symptoms training - Polaris ProgramPolaris Dawn Selects 38 Science and Research Experiments to Advance Human Health and Space Exploration - Polaris ProgramPolaris on Twitter: “Our teams visited White Sands Test Facility to observe how EVA suit materials behave after being struck by micrometeorites or orbital debris, an important part of developing the spacesuits the Polaris Dawn crew will wear during the mission’s spacewalk”The ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by ULA

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and I'm very excited about today's show where we'll be talking with Jared Isaacman of the Polaris program. You may remember Jared Isaacman as the commander of Inspiration4. He is an entrepreneur, a couple different businesses, and then went on to buy that private spaceflight from SpaceX and fly Inspiration4. After that, he has developed this thing called the Polaris program, which is, as I put it, it's a private Gemini program. They are in partnership with SpaceX,

developing capabilities that SpaceX has not yet worked on as part of their human spaceflight portfolio. So first one they picked off, Polaris Dawn, that is the first of three missions as part of the Polaris program. Jared Isaacman will be flying along with Scott Poteet, who was involved with Inspiration4, not on the crew, but involved with the program. And then two SpaceXers, Sarah Gillis and Adam Ennin. They're going to be going up, they're going to be doing an EVA, they're going to be flying to about 1400 kilometers of an apogee. They're going to be doing an EVA. They're going to be flying to about 1,400 kilometers of an apogee. They are picking off a bunch of different tasks that they need to achieve to push SpaceX's human spaceflight capability a little bit farther. I'm very interested to talk

to Jared about the why behind this program. We're going to zoom out a little and talk about how it originally started, the way that they choose the things that they'll work on as part of the Polaris program, how they interact with SpaceX, how they develop the ideas behind this, what kinds of things that they're thinking about for the future, what kind of things that they thought about for this particular flight, and the way that those are, you know, special capabilities that they want to see in the future. We also talk a lot about the way that spaceflight needs to change for handling an increased load of human spaceflights. You know, if you project your head in the future, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, when

there's tons of people flying to space, how does that change the things that we need to be able to do? How does it change the infrastructure we need? It's really interesting to dig into some of that and hear how he's trying to make the Polis program contribute contribute to that storyline of space flight so very cool conversation i'm excited for you to hear it so without further ado let's give jared a call all right jared thank you so much for joining me in engine cutoff it's a pleasure to have you here oh thanks for having me uh we were talking right before we started but i want to give everyone else the context that on an upcoming episode we'll talk with the whole polaris dawn crew the other three not the whole We've got one of them here.

And on that one, we're going to talk about the mission itself, preparation, execution of it. But with you, I wanted to talk about some of the higher level stuff, the why behind Polaris program, because I find it quite interesting. And I feel like most media outlets get caught up on, you know, man buys space flights and does cool things. And I'm more interested in in the way that that you see this contributing to, you know, the story of spaceflight over time. So, you know, where we sit now, we're about a year after Inspiration4. I'm curious to follow the story there about when the spark for the Polaris program, you know, did you have it on orbit when you're up there thinking about what else could be done? Or was it talking to the SpaceX team afterwards? When did that idea come about? You know, I guess it goes to late summer prior to Inspiration4's launch. So, you know,

late summer 2021. And, you know, there were some very, very preliminary conversations with SpaceX about what comes next. And, uh, and we, you know, we hit the pause button, uh, as soon as we started getting in anywhere near, you know, launch timeline, just to make sure focus was all in the proper place. And, um, and, you know, honestly, when we came back from inspiration four and everything went so well. And, you know, Elon came in with that, you know, last minute donation and put us well above our objective. I mean, basically everything we set out to accomplish on orbit and as part of the, you know, the bigger, you know,

kind of objective of raising, you know, funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital was like, man, we, we really, you know, accomplish everything we set out to do. And, um, you know, the bar is really high. Maybe this is, maybe this is enough. And now, you know, we, we, we leave it for all the other exciting missions to follow. It was kind of the idea, but, um, you know, I was invited in October, a couple of weeks after we got back to go to Starbase again. And it was a conversation with some of SpaceX leadership and some of the mission directors from Inspiration4. And Elon was there.

was really born, which was, hey, this, there are some really, you know, exciting things we can accomplish from, you know, a tech development perspective that will help, you know, the bigger picture of Starbase and opening up, you know, space for others and making life multi planetary. And, you know, this seems like something that would be, you know, up your alley. And also, you know, will fit in really well with a continuation of our work with St. Jude. So it was like instantaneously appealing. Like it was like, yes, this is exactly the kind of thing that I would like to be able to contribute to. And, you know, it does kind of achieve, you know, that balance between making progress for the world of tomorrow while continuing our work for St. Jude today. So that's how it kind of all came to be,

I'd say in October, most of the work was done after Inspiration4. It's really interesting to hear that because it's not surprising if you dig into what you're trying to accomplish. But, you know, I find Polaris program so interesting because it is like we're getting to watch a private Gemini program in a lot of ways, where Gemini was a step between Mercury and Apollo, where we had figured out the basics, but we needed all these advanced things to actually go do Apollo EVA and docking and rendezvous and living in space. And that's kind of the interaction you're having here with what SpaceX has been working on, where they had a baseline that they needed to hit for NASA for

commercial crew missions, but they were never going to, you know, spend resources on some things that they didn't have a customer for, or they didn't have a reason to go fly and do these, even the cupola on Inspiration4 really was, you know, they were going to build that as a side thing to commercial crew because they didn't really have any reason to. So is that the methodology that you take with the capabilities that you choose to take on as part of Flair's program, that you're trying to look for things that SpaceX does not yet have a necessary need for, but needs to develop if you have this wider view of where they're going in the future? Yeah, I think you characterize it incredibly well. Now, I mean, I don't put

anything that we're endeavoring to do on the scale, you know, as, you know, the pioneers from, you know, Mercury and Gemini and, you know, not just the astronauts, but all the engineers and such that contributed that. I mean, that was a massive effort. I mean, we've been... I hope your budget is a little smaller than that. We benefit so much from everything that has been achieved decades before us. But I think you actually have the idea really close to correct in that with Dragon, there's no real, there's little to no incentive to invest, to learn on that vehicle when you have a customer that has a very specific requirement of going from, you know, A to B to the space station, which means you have to do then a lot of your learning in Starship. But that's kind of way down the road. So, I mean, imagine how much, you know, progress we can make and what we can cut off the timeline if, you know, the EVA suit development, which would never have been contemplated with Dragon, can be accomplished now.

Or, you know, some of the thoughts about how to scale up Eclis and avionics for Starship can be tested in Dragon, like by going to, you know, near the Van Allen radiation belt, which you never would have gone for Dragon. It wasn't initially part of its design purpose. And then, you know, when you start looking at things like contingency or emergency de-orbit from much higher altitudes than was initially designed, the way you can account for that in a vehicle like Dragon can carry over, whether it's entry angles or otherwise into into you know future vehicle design and such so there is a lot that you can stand to gain um and and no question spacex would have absolutely gotten to it anyway it just could have been years down the road for when starship is that platform to do all that devon um you know versus in dragon so i think this was this this worked out really well,

and that we all know where we want to get to, which is Starship. I mean, that is going to be the game changer to really open up space for others, not just humans. But I mean, think of all the other applications, not just even satellites or cargo, but like, you know, new space telescopes or probes could all leverage this amazing prefab design, if you will. space telescopes or probes could all leverage this amazing prefab design, if you will. But before we get to that, there's a lot we can learn using one of the only, you know, crew rated, you know, proven vehicles in the world. And we should do that. And that's what Polaris endeavors to, you know, to achieve, to accomplish.

Yeah, with excess capacity too, right? There's this headroom in Dragon that, you know, until you came along, it's going to be used a couple times a year for space station flights, for private astronaut missions to the space station. But, you know, they never really got off with Dragon Lab back in the day where there was this idea to sell, you know, on crew Dragon flights that never really took on anything. And it was like, okay, well, let's see what comes along

in the human spaceflight department. So it is cool to hear, you know, the way that that meshes with what we know about SpaceX historically, where they try to be part of programs that are heading directionally in the same way that they are, where they know they want to develop a certain capability. And that's close enough to what NASA is looking for, or what the Space Force is looking for, or even commercial flight, right? They're doing commercial satellite launches, and then they're like, let's see if we could land these things after that part of the mission is done um so they've always tried to find that way where they're going this direction if you've got something that's sort of

heading the same direction we'll do it uh as well so um i guess does that mean that that anything that you're going to bring to the table um needs to be in line with like starship utility in the future you might personally feel like that's what you want to take on anyway, but is that a kind of ground rule requirement from SpaceX side? Uh, I would say like, we're, we're both like completely aligned on the point that it should all help us get to Mars.

Um, and that is very, very, uh, ingrained in the SpaceX on how they evaluate, uh, virtually everything. Um, so, um So yeah, I would say that

when we looked at what we wanted to accomplish on Polaris Dawn, what was in, you know, open for consideration for the second Polaris mission, we're all meant to kind of, you know, either, you know, de-risk elements of Starship, accelerate certain components of that, that program. Um, and that's why it ultimately includes with the first flight of Starship. Uh, so yeah, I, I think that that's pretty, pretty fair. Um, you know, that, uh, yeah, the, the, the program has to generally support progress being made to get humans to Mars. Now, does that, I'm curious to dig into the SpaceX partnership, the way that they look at it, I guess, really like timeline wise, right? They have, you know, Sarah and Anna are from the SpaceX team, they're flying on Polaris Dawn. Do they see that as, I guess, did that come about

because of the specific requirements around Polaris Dawn? Or is that something that's going to carry through on the other two flights as well and elsewhere in the program? No, I mean, I think the, you know, you build the crew around the objectives. So, I mean, I was, you know, I had a pretty good idea of who I was going to, you know, look to go to on a crew coming off of Inspiration4. You know, Sarah and Anna both played big roles in it as, as did a lot of others. Um, the ultimate, you know, kind of how we arrived

at a selection process was very joint with SpaceX because Polaris is a, is, is kind of a joint program there, but, but you build a crew around the objectives. Um, you know, if, uh, if there is a, you know, or when there is a second mission, um, you know, its requirements could, you know, if if there is a, you know, or when there is a second mission, you know, its requirements could, you know, necessitate a crew that's outside of SpaceX. And that's fine, too. My my dream shot for the second mission was that you were going to do the the polar inclination corridor for Dragon. You know, I had a whole theory about how now that they got these polar flights out of cape canaveral you can abort zones is what you're worried about right so you can't really you don't have a lot of abort zones outside of the corridor that we're all using to get to you know the same inclination that you've done for inspiration four i'm like man i'm looking at

this map and it looks like the east coast of florida the west coast of south america is a pretty good line you know it's interesting you bring up well first of all i i thought that's what the name was i was like polaris they're doing it they're going polar yeah i mean not not to crush your hopes there on that but the two high probability second missions when we and that we knew of internally we announced polaris neither were a uh a polar orbit um i think people have a pretty good idea of what one of them is right now um but you know what's interesting by the way is like a lot of what people, you know, believe to be, um, you know, obstacles, blockers to doing things outside the norm, like the inclination, whether it's, um, you know, the launch escape system itself, or just simply the, you know, feasibility of recovery forces or, you know, putting mass in

the, in the trunk. Like I've seen all these things as, as ideas around the second mission have been floated. It was like, it was only because it wasn't a requirement before, um, not like some sort of like impassable mountain that you can overcome. Like that's kind of the whole point of a tech development mission too. Um, you know, the IVA suits that we wore on inspiration for, we're not designed to undertake an EVA, we're building EVA suits. Um, you know, EVA suits. And these are all things that I think is part of very much the SpaceX way. So we will solve launch escape system and recovery forces for a non-ISS inclination should we choose to go somewhere else on a follow-on mission. So you're saying there's a chance.

Yeah, no, I mean, maybe not necessarily with a, with a polar, but I think like, when you think of like, what comes next, right? Like, what is the launch escape system on a, on a starship? And, you know, Many read it a thread about that, if you want to get into it. So I think like, again, just, you know, as we move away from what the vehicle has, you know, safely and successfully done consistently, we can keep doing so in support of ISS missions into these more development missions, you should expect things that were traditionally believed to be like, you know, you know, impassable to be cleared. And one we should all actually be quite enthusiastic about

because maybe it's not Polaris, but somebody else is doing a polar mission five years from now, who knows? So what is the interaction like when you, or it might not be you, but anyone in particular comes up with a capability that you'd like to work on on one of these missions? Does it come up as a topic at one of the meetings at Hawthorne

and you start kicking around ways to solve it? What's that flow like for any of these given capabilities? I would say most of this happens before an announcement takes place. So to give you an idea, I mean, if people saw the Inspiration4 documentary, things like the orbital altitude, what we were looking to accomplish on that were worked out before an announcement, before you ever start training to a mission. The same was applicable to Polaris Dawn. And that process involves quite a lot of healthy debate. And I mean, that's kind of core to SpaceX DNA is to question the requirements, why we're doing anything kind of right from the get-go. By the time you, you know, work through that mission design and get to an announcement,

everyone should generally feel really good that the objectives that have been established are achievable. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot of work that goes into it. There is. But now you're generally in a path where we can start building a training program around this. So like, uh, for example, at the time we announced Polaris Dawn, you know, we, I think we, we carefully picked a word, like we endeavor to achieve the highest earth orbit ever flown. You know, we, we think we'll go farther than anyone's gone since the last lunar mission. Um, you know, basically signaling, we think we can get to 1400 kilometers. Um, that's your,

you're kind of, um, hashing that out during mission design. Now, as you build on it, you gain a lot of confidence and you kind of close out some of the, you know, blockers to getting to that. And you, um, so that's kind of like how the, the product and like that early sausage making goes, I'd say. Uh, just, just thinking thinking about we're talking about the eagles before we started recording and uh pete conrad was on the gemini flight that went to 13 whatever kilometers so eagles fans only above a certain altitude in earth orbit oh let's see um some of the capabilities that you are working on for polaris dawn starlink was one of those as well the connectivity aspect. Is that something that just like you'd like to tweet more this time around? What was the specific idea behind Starlink?

Is that something that SpaceX was really interested in getting on, something that you were? Oh, I mean, it's a big objective for SpaceX. I mean, that is very much in the line of, does this help us get to Mars? For sure. There's, I mean, I not conclusively saying, but I can't imagine that start, you know, a, an armada of starships is going to rely upon TDRS and ground stations, and it will become completely like impractical, um, you know, uh, for, you know, super long duration spaceflight mission. So, uh, Starlink is going to be,

you know, the logical way you're going to communicate with starships and maybe, you know, a lunar base, a Martian base at some point in time. So that is, that is really hard. You know, as we've gone through Polaris Dawn's mission design and all the engineering updates we get, you know, as we get closer, I'm like, I hope that documentary crews and such are capturing this because people are just going to think you just turn the on switch, like flip the switch and just internet's work. It's so hard. I mean, the laser links between, you know, two objects going 17, firings on Dragon that can change its orientation to optimize for, you know, electrical generation and such. And that light can create problems. So it's just like it's really just amazing how many talented people are working on really hard problems that from the outside may not people may not appreciate how challenging they are. And Starlink is certainly one of them.

Yeah. And especially I don't know if it's going to be active the whole flight, but you're, you know, you're flying under Starlink and then you're going above Starlink. Uh, there's, it's not just like you can design for one orbital scenario when you've got such a dynamic mission plan in front of you. But, but I mean, it is like, it's so important. I mean, I remember some of the, you know, critiques that, you know, on inspiration for of like, why, why wasn't there more video on day one and two? And, you know, I don't think people realize because it was the first private mission, like we didn't have, you know, the same unrestricted tier one access to, you know, national assets like TDRS the same way every other mission prior to us did, like we were a step down in priority from

every other one. So we, we had on average about 80% comm coverage over our three day mission, which was totally fine. And it was what was anticipated. But like, you have to be able to reduce some of those dependencies on it. It's like it, you know, right now, I mean, you know, or relatively up until recently, you know, the government is essentially, you know, building their their uh, hiring their pilots, training their pilots, um, picking their missions and, you know, building or contracting out the various assets to support it. Um, I don't, I don't think that's very scalable if we're trying to talk about, you know, hundreds or thousands of people in space.

In fact, like the way to do it is to bring on other assets that can, you know, create good competitive environments to drive down costs. And that's, that's the whole key for the this whole thing of opening it up is bringing costs down. So I think like getting Starlink operational out there, reducing dependency on legacy assets, and bring down costs, it's like a, you know, kind of part of the bigger, bigger vision. Oh, the whole thing was really funny when people were getting hot and bothered about not enough video. I'm like one they don't have to like this is not one of those missions where like the taxpayer demands to know what time they're eating their pizza like i don't i don't particularly care but number two yeah like the logistics of that is just a whole

other aspect but you know internet um from inspiration for where they're you know there's going to be certain lessons about let's fix the toilet next time, let's do this different. Are there particular lessons that you've learned from that in terms of a mission planning perspective? You just announced earlier today all these science missions that you're doing on board. Axiom1

that floated the ISS recently notably said that they packed their schedule way too tight. Are there just like workload concerns that you've thought about differently this time or planning things that you've done differently? Yeah. I mean, frankly, I mean, from inspiration for, we didn't have enough. Um, and you know, we, that was a very important part of our, uh, our mission and, you know, we had like a half a dozen, uh, you know, science and research experiments. And I

think they, they got quite a bit out of it. I found it, you know, rather fascinating. Um, it should be, it should be a lot more than that. Um, so, I mean, that was, you know, why we kind of intentionally went out and sought a lot more, um, inputs from various, um, educational institutions and such. We've like, it's great to look, I mean, haven't been there. Look, it's absolutely fantastic to look out the window, uh, and have, um, you know, such an incredible view that few others, um, have seen, but, you know, you kind of owe your time back. Um, and, um, just for having the privilege of even being in that position right now. So we will still catch plenty of great views. But I think we can ensure we're more, you know, productive, and maximize the value

of what we're able to, you know, do on orbit, maximize the time value of what we're able to accomplish on orbit. Less distracting window this time. Yeah, for sure. That matters a little bit. this time. Yeah, for sure. That matters a little bit. More Twitter, less distracting window. So we'll see how that shakes out in terms of your focus on it. The other aspect that I wanted to dig into on, you talked a lot there about how what you're doing is leaning into a future where there are, you know, an abundance of flights to space. And there's, you know, an abundance of flights to space and there's, you know, more people in space than our infrastructure today can handle. I'm curious now, you know, the way that you're preparing for these missions, if you, if you've thought about

the preparation side at all, where you're, you know, you were doing fighter jet training and scaring the shit out of Eric Berger recently and doing, you know, very hardcore serious business prep for these missions. Um, certainly with Inspiration4, you know, the serious business prep for these missions um certainly with inspiration 4 you know the whole normies to space angle was was a big part of that of like preparing um this one more serious business but still a lot of preparation what do you what do you view preparation like in the future when it is you know point-to-point starship or or just more frequent access to space like are we going to get to a point where that preparation is not going to be as necessary? We don't have to go take fighter jet rides

to be prepared for it? Or is that something that you're like, I don't know, man, that's, you know, for people 10 or 20 years from now to figure out? No, I mean, I think about this all the time. I mean, that was kind of my big, you know, feedback coming back from Inspiration4, you know, where we, you know,

did all of our debriefs with all the engineers and such. It was like, you know, where we, um, you know, did all of our debriefs with all the engineers and such was like, you know, I don't think, um, despite all the training you get on medical and, uh, flight physiology, space medicine, I don't think, you know, it was really possible for me to fully appreciate how different you feel, uh, until you were there. It's kind of like the same thing, even just talking to people about putting, you know, G's on, on someone here. It's like, well, I've been on roller coasters. It's like, no, it's not the same. And until you, you know, pull seven G's and like a fighter jet, you can't, you know, pot. And then it's very eyeopening. You're like, wow, this is, this is, this is something different than I ever imagined. Well, that's what it's like being in space.

And you feel different. And 50% of people, um uh really bad uh i mean we you know 50 of the crew of inspiration 4 had to be treated with you know three different you know um you know escalating layers of um you know uh of treatment to uh kind of control um space adaptation syndrome and that's consistent amongst like the most highly screened NASA astronauts, cosmonauts, European Space Agency and such. So I was like, what are you going to do when you put 100 people on a starship and 50% are feeling really bad and throwing up and then the other 50% probably aren't appreciating everything that's floating around next to them. But that's why you do all this, right? I mean, I think quite a bit of the research we're

taking up on Polaris Dawn directly relate to space adaptation syndrome, neuroocular syndrome, you know, intracranial pressure. There is a lot we're trying to learn to develop countermeasures so that, yeah, it can be that same day, like that like world we want to get to if it's now boarding flight 55 to the moon and a hundred people get in their seats and they're happy and healthy the whole way there. So, um, there's a lot to learn to develop, uh, treatments or countermeasures to some of the, you know, things that we just know, um, are problematic about opening up space to, to lots of people. Now there is also a vehicle, um, design element to it as well. So, you know, you build something

as massive as Starship where, you know, there's no question there's going to be a handful of crew members that have real responsibilities in case something goes wrong. And then everybody else will have, you know, substantially more training than getting on an airline. But basically like, this is how you take care of yourself under a, you know, a handful of like, you know, low likelihood contingencies or something. So dragon isn't built that way. Um, you know, dragon was built for NASA where there were a lot of, you know, um, backup and manual capabilities built into the vehicle. So you could save your life if something goes wrong. So you can't avoid, like you're never going to not train to that if the capability is there. So that's why you have like, you know, call it a six-month dragon

training timeline. And the EBA and research extended that for us. But when you design a vehicle that doesn't require that, and you come up with countermeasures and treatments to prevent, you know, some of the realities we know exist today in, um, you know, uh, space, um, you know, in flight physiology that like happens to human beings, then, then, yeah, I think you can cut it down like materially. Um, I don't think that's, you know, necessarily hours, but it's certainly not months. Yeah. Might not have to climb mountains to, to go on the flight, But you know where that comes in, right? Again, what's very known about Inspiration4, well, there was a broken toilet,

but that actually wasn't apparent to us until after we came back. The actual alarm and system failures were much scarier than that. They're the ones that should never go off and was applicable to NASA's crew too, as well. So it was, you know, an issue. So you have like a system issue that creates a stress, stressful environment. And then you have two crew members that feel not well at all, right? You don't get to just say like, mission's over, time to come home. Because that introduces a whole new set of risks, like hitting, you know, an emergency

deorbit profile is a super risky event. So the idea that you can kind of persevere in a situation that's very uncomfortable now on a number of levels and still be reasonably happy and productive throughout the duration of the mission, that's why you do, you know, the mountain climbing or, you know, the NOLS courses and such that NASA uses. Yeah, I mean, it makes a ton of sense. And I think it is an aspect of how novel it is at this moment in history, right? I mean, like, you roll the clock back and we were like, what would happen if humans went past the sound barrier? I bet they would explode. Like we were we had crazy theories for what would happen when we started doing more and more aeronautical feats. And then you look 100 years later and it looks kind of silly.

So, you know, I feel like there's an aspect where this is just that border of human experience. And as we do more of it with different kinds of people and different types of flights, like, that's just the process. That's how this stuff goes, you know, in the same way that how you bring the cost down on anything. It's like, well, books were once for very rich people and now now they're very cheap. So like, that was a good trajectory. How else can we do that with other things in technology, like cell phones and computers and mattresses, like there's everything in history has taken that, that, you know, trajectory. So if you have that long view,

then then, you know, I think that's why I'm so interested in what you're doing is that you have this idea to contribute in the ways that you can. And maybe that's a spot to take a minute to talk about that. You're a very entrepreneurial person, you know, by trait. And as we can see from everything that you're involved in. So why is it that for space, you chose this way to contribute to the storyline versus doing another company that is doing something else in space or doing space services? Like, why was this the direction that you felt passionate about? Well, I think for starters, it's impossible to compete with SpaceX. So I do believe that as an entrepreneur for 23 years, starting my first company,

opportunity is a pretty key ingredient. And SpaceX has a monumental lead in this and they are not slowing down. It's actually like quite, quite extraordinary. Whenever you think about some like really groundbreaking technology that, you know, is just eye watering, lightning, like it's there's usually somebody in second place, not that far behind. You know, smartphones, good example. iPhone comes out. Wow, this is amazing. lightning like it's there's usually somebody in second place not that far behind um you know smartphones good example iphone comes out wow this is amazing you know the android comes out six months later okay um apple pay google pay whatnot like i mean you know it pretty well i mean it's been seven years no one else has landed a rocket on a ship and they've done it a hundred times

they're over so i'd say like you know it became very clear and I've been following SpaceX for Jesus. It's like, you know, very relatively early days of the company. So none of this is that surprising. But in my mind, this isn't like a let's try and, you know, compete for the sake of competition. And like this is they've got a winning winning team. And how can I help? How can I how can I literally do anything, you know you know, to, to contribute in a, in a small way to what, what you're trying to accomplish and the history you're making. And that's really where Inspiration4 came in. It's where, um, you know, the Polaris program, uh, came along. So

that, that's just where I feel like I can make the most, the impact, most impact. And, um, and I, you know, aside from, you know, being able to contribute financially into this, I think, you know, there's a right way for ensuring or trying to generate support across the world of, of having the right, you know, the right focus that, uh, it's not just all about, you know, space. We're not trying to abandon the planet because we've destroyed it. Like we can make our planet a lot better. Um, and we can do these things because it will be a more interesting world if we can destroyed it, like we can make our planet a lot better. Um, and we can do these things because

it will be a more interesting world if we can accomplish it. Um, and, you know, I have a little bit of an aviation aerospace background that, you know, maybe can contribute, um, you know, uh, you know, in just a, you know, a small part from a technical perspective too. So that that's why this has become my, um, you know you know a big a big focus area for me your aviation background i forgot to mention i i feel like i've probably seen you flying a lot of air shows because i used to go to the atlantic city air show every year i still do it to some extent but i feel i'm like man i remember watching that black diamond team so i feel like you were man yeah you were you were in there a couple of times i feel like scott too probably right he's

he was in thunderbird side um now all that said about not wanting to start a company in the same way and contribute in a different way polaris program is certainly um capturing some some expertise internally in the team that you've got and the things that you're taking on um we're in this era where there's a lot of different companies starting their own private astronaut training centers you know like there's a lot of different companies starting their own private astronaut training centers. You know, like there's a ton of them now with all the space station stuff coming online. Do you see that as any way that the Polaris program might roll out in the future where maybe beyond that third flight, you've got a different tact on how do you now share this expertise? Or do you feel like once that third flight happens, you're going to say, OK, you know, now what? What is the what is the stuff before us given given where we're at, at that point in the industry? Yeah, I mean, I think it's so much

more likely that and I, and I would say it's kind of unlikely. But I think it's more likely that there would be a fourth, you know, Polaris mission, then trying to pivot, you know, what we've assembled here with Polaris into some sort of commercial entity, it's just not what we're you know, what we've assembled here with Polaris into some sort of commercial entity. It's just not what we're setting out to accomplish. So. So the polar mission, it's still, still a chance. I'm going to keep pushing for this. If you had a fourth mission, it is going to ruin the other, uh, fun theory that we've been referring to the Polaris missions in the way that the foundation guys are named the Polaris dawn, day and dusk though. That's a little darker, darker connotation than we want for the final one. No, you'd have to, you Polaris Dawn, Day, and Dusk, though. That's a little darker connotation than we want for the final

one. No, you'd have to have a new naming convention for subsequent missions. I'm running out of questions here. It's been really cool to pick your brain on this stuff. I'm curious, just mentioning future Starship flights, we saw Dennis Tito in this announcement

last week that he's back in the space tourism headlines which is cool there's Dear Moon obviously out there you've had interactions with the NASA side crews on flying Dragon flights and all that are there similar interactions going on on the starship side as well

and obviously the Polaris mission is the first starship flight so those are going to be more likely to learn from you versus the other way around but um is that is that more of a bigger collaboration with the starship team overall um well i mean in terms of like we do interact with nasa astronauts pretty frequently because we we basically share the same training center and simulators so you see each other there and there's kind of always mutual interest in, um, you know, mission objectives and such. But, um, you know, on Starship, it's, uh, everybody is just so focused on getting to

orbit. Um, like that's, uh, you know, the organization is very singularly focused in a great direction on that. So there's not a lot of, you know, you could be at, um, you know, you could be having casual conversations over dinner and, and, and, you know, you could be at, um, you know, you could be having casual conversations over dinner and, and, and, you know, throw out some questions on like how something hypothetically might be from like a habitability perspective, but it really is very focused on let's, let's just get to orbit right now. And we'll, we'll go from there. They're like, man, we're still

figuring out the outside. We're not talking about the inside yet. Um, the last bit that I thought was interesting to pick your brain on is, is things that you're interested in outside of, of the human spaceflight stuff. Um, obviously Hubble is a, is an aspect to that, right? We've,

we've heard about this, um, study that's going on with reboosting Hubble, but are there other things within the space industry that you're keeping an eye on and either just interested on and kind of enthusiast perspective or something that you might find interesting in the near future? Well, I mean, I'm pretty focused on, I think, essentially the same KPI that Elon often references, which is just the cost to accelerate mass to orbit. Because as that continues to come down, it's just really impossible to anticipate everything that could

come from it. I mean, I use the example all the time, but, you know, cell phones in the 1980s and car phones and rich Wall Street guys. And you could never imagine in my mind how many multi-billion dollar, you know, companies have emerged simply to provide like an app on a cell, not even the operating system, not making the phone, not the network. In fact, some of the infrastructure players are like, you know, the least interesting, uh, like you just couldn't possibly, you know, anticipate that or all the utility that is essentially come from it. Um, you know, like even our insights into what's going on in conflicts, like in Ukraine or, you know, other humanitarian or disaster issues from storms and what, like all this evolved from

something that we would have like you know you know stuck our nose up to at one point you know 40 years ago so i don't even want to begin with predictions um uh you know like what i think could be the most interesting or compelling coming from it other than just simply if starship succeeds uh the it just opens up so much in the realm of possibility. It's, it's just exciting. And it's not like all like, I mean, naturally I'm like very interested in human spaceflight. Um, you know, that's a, that's a focus of ours. I'm like incredibly interested in what could be done when you, when you have basically like a prefab,

uh, very low cost rocket that you could mount sensors, telescopes, turn into probes, um, maybe dock like 50 of them and literally create a floating city. I don't know. I mean, there's just so much in the realm of possible now. The question I'll leave you with, I'm just trying to get ahead of the gatekeeping that's going to happen because that was the thing that, oh, well, they went this high. They didn't go that high.

And, you know, this thing was higher than that thing. And all of the gatekeeping of firsts, the EVA is going to be one that's going to attract this, right? Where whoever the two are that go out, the other two are still sitting in spacecraft that has been vented to vacuum. So in my book, everyone is doing an EVA if you're in a space suit.

So I just want you on the record that everyone's doing an EVA. I actually think that it fits within even a NASA definition. My understanding is the Gemini and apollo crew members um that vented their vehicles down to vacuum that everyone was given credit for an eva some might call like like to stand up uh but yeah yeah uh yeah i look they're taking all the same risks i would be no more comfortable if i'm sitting in a suit or floating on a tether. So yeah, everybody is like you, you all have to be 100% bought off and believe that, you

know, the EBA is worth the risk that we stand to gain quite a bit from it. It is without question, like the most highest risk element to our mission objectives. But yeah, and just also like we we're not i think sometimes people get like really hung up with all the the first um on that like we're not trying to like stack a list on some of these things like from our perspective like altitude wise like you're going there to learn a lot um you're taking a lot of science experiments uh from like you know a human side of the whole thing like we want to be able to go to the Mars and back and not die of cancer along the way. Um, you know, we want to build our vehicles to, you know, be robust against radiation

hits without putting like, you know, surrounding them with water or lead or some other, um, you know, costly or impractical solution. Right. So, um, you're going as high as you need to learn from that. And, and then you're coming down. And like to us, it didn't matter, you know, 14 or 1500, we just knew there was a particular zone that you're going to want to be at on this. So yeah, yeah, I mean, it was chosen before for a reason. Like that's not a random number they picked out of the book. So yeah, you don't really want to be much higher into the, uh, into the belts if you can avoid it.

Yeah. You're less invested in the first than many people on, on the interwebs. So I'm just trying to get ahead of gatekeepering that's heading your way in the near future. So, um, Jared, thank you so much for this. This was really cool to hang out and best of luck with the remaining training. And I'm sure we'll talk sometime between now and the, and the flight as well. So hope to catch up with you and, uh, maybe we'll see it at your needles game or something like that. Yeah, sounds good. Enjoy the conversation with the rest of the crew. They're all like immensely talented, awesome individuals and really lucky to get to go to space with them.

Yeah, I'm excited. It feels like we're gonna have the whole story. Now we talked a lot about the founding and the inspiration behind it and all that. So to dig into what they've been working on will be really cool as well. So thanks again. Thanks. Take care. Thanks again to Jared for the conversation. It was really cool to sit down and talk. He's just such a down to earth guy and very easygoing to talk to. So really cool. Thanks to him and the Polaris program team overall for making this thing possible. And as I mentioned, we'll be talking with the rest of the crew in the near future. So very cool to have this kind of access to the crew of Polaris Dawn, and I'm excited to watch them get closer to the launch pad. If you like these shows, you got to head over to

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