Main Engine Cut Off - T+306: Lunar Outpost (with Michael Moreno, VP of Strategy)

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Michael Moreno, VP of Strategy at Lunar Outpost, joins me to talk about what they’ve been up to at the company, the NASA Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract, the idea of services as a business on the Moon, and more.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 35 executive producers—Lee, Russell, Fred, The Astrogators at SEE, David, Matt, Theo and Violet, Warren, Josh from Impulse, Frank, Pat from KC, Steve, Pat, Creative Taxi, Jan, Stealth Julian, Better Every Day Studios, Kris, Heiko, Donald, Natasha Tsakos (pronounced Tszakos), Joel, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Will and Lars from Agile, Harrison, Joonas, Ryan, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Bob, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsHome | Lunar OutpostLunar Voyage 1 Update Lunar Outpost Becomes First Company to Receive Payment for Space ResourcesNASA selects three companies to advance Artemis lunar rover designs - SpaceNewsLunar Dawn Team Awarded NASA Lunar Terrain Vehicle ContractLunar Outpost Signs with SpaceX for Starship Moon MissionThe ShowLike the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by NASAWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to main engine cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo. I am talking today with Michael Moreno, who is the VP of Strategy at Lunar Outpost. I am burnout on the news, as you could tell by the absence on the podcast feed. I was taking a little step back, rethinking, you know, what am I want to do in the next couple weeks? reached out to a ton of guests that'll be upcoming on the show. Scheduling in the summer, it turns out a little bit hard, but I'm really excited. We've got Mike here today with us.

Lunar Outpost is one of the companies that are working on the bigger rovers for the Artemissions. The crude rovers, they would be bidding for the Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services Contract that'll be announced toward the end of the year and who wins that one. They are one of the three companies that had been selected for work on that contract. So we're going to talk today about that contract, the idea of services on the moon generally as a business model, the way that they're approaching the industry, the way that they're approaching the policy times that we're in right now, and how they see the industry playing out, as well as some of the stuff that they've done on the smaller end of the rover scale. They had a rover that flew on an intuitive machine's mission, so they're part of the eclipse program through rovers flying on those smaller landers. Lots to talk about with Mike, I'm very excited for it. But before we do that, let me see thank you to everyone out there who makes the show possible.

Thanks to the 35 executive producers who made this episode possible today. Thanks to Lee, Russell, Fred, The Astrogators at SEE, David, Matt, Theo and Violet, Warren, Josh from Impulse, Frank, Pat, from K.C., Steve, Pat, Creative Taxi, Jan, Stealth, Julian, Better Everyday Studios, Chris, Heiko, Donald, Natasha Saccoos, Joel, Joe Kim, Will & Lars, from Agile, Harrison, Eunice, Ryan, Tim Dodd, the Everdachinod, Bob, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this possible. you want to join the crew, manage you've got off.com slash support. The supporters over there have gotten a bunch of episodes of headlines between the last main feed show that I've done until now. I run through all the stories of the week, everything you need to know about. I filter out the stuff you don't need to know about.

It's a great way to stay up on the news, to hear more from me and to support what I'm doing. So I appreciate all the support. And without further ado, let's give Mike a call. Mike, you told me however the spirit moves me, so I'm going with Mike. It's a nice Thursday here, we're chatting. I think you're starting the day with us, right? You're out in on the web coast. It is just after 9 a.m. in San Diego, yep.

Yeah, perfect time. I've been burnout on the news. So you started hitting me up at the exact right moment when I was making a list of, I'm going to just talk to a bunch of companies. It's been a while since I've done like the interview trail. And it turns out you are, this is like a great timing as well. We're kind of pre-game in some really exciting stuff coming up. Yeah.

You're the VP of Strategy at Lunar Outpost. People heard that in intro, so I don't need to say it again. Can you give us a little previously on Lunar Outposts? And it's just sort of everything that's going on there these days. It seems like a pretty busy place. Yeah. So, I mean, up until now, Lunar Outpost was founded in Golden, Colorado in 2017. We put the first commercial rover in history on the moon.

That was our Map Rover, mobile autonomous prospecting platform in March of this year. So that was a historic milestone. We have several more contracted lunar missions coming up in the next few years. And the big focus for us right now, in addition to those lunar voyages, we call them, and I'd love to talk about those, but it's lunar train vehicle. So we're building the Eagle LTV, and that is the space truck-sized lunar rover that Artemis astronauts will be driving around on the surface of the moon, hopefully before the end of the decade. The smaller rovers, well, let's actually talk about the one very specific one that's sideways on the moon.

I don't know exactly where it was out on the vehicle as it last. landed, but it was on one of the Intuit machine flights. Can you walk us through the, those missions have had quite a story. And I think from intuitive machines, you know, they talked about how many of the payloads were able to do things or operate or at least get some good work done, even though they landed in a suboptim position, especially your payload that was supposed to deploy down to the lunar surface and drive around. So in that state, you know, can you walk us through some of the stuff that was tested on route

to the moon? and then when you're actually on the lunar surface, what kind of stuff you were able to do, even if landing in that orientation? Yeah, so Map was the rover, and Lunar Voyage 1 was the mission. It did fly on IM2, launched in February,

and then landed in March. The good news for us is that we did have a bunch of success. We had hardware and software subsystems that reached TRL9. That's full spaceflight heritage, tons of good data that were pouring into our Lunar Voyage 2, and LTV. It survived the Van Allen belt. It survived multiple cycles of going without power for an extended time, unexpected in flight. We were able to keep our Stargate Space Flight command and control software up. It had a 99.998% uptime. So TRL9 for that, and we're using it on everything else we do.

And then we landed sideways, and that wasn't something we could control. So we did land on our back in the regolith. We survived for around three hours and sent and received commands. We're able to test systems. Of course, when you're in that position, it's hard to roll out of that garage and get mobile on the moon. So we weren't able to achieve that final mission, but we did have a lot of success. And like I said, we're pouring all of that, all of those lessons learned into LV2 and beyond. It's interesting too, especially considering the stuff that you were able to accomplish have in many cases been problems, problem territory for other missions that have headed out to the moon, right? There's, I mean, Intuitive Machines themselves work through a lot of different issues.

And so it's not, I actually do, like, it's not just good spin. Like, there is actual legitimate stuff to be tested out. I mean, even to the extent that you see a lot of companies do kind of shake down missions where there's some subset of their hardware or control software that they would test out before they go ahead and do a full-up flight. So that's legit. And for me, the exciting thing is, too, like, not only are we solving really hard and complex technical challenges, but there are business challenges here, too, right? Like, we are creating the lunar economy as we speak. Lunar Voyage 1 had 100% commercial payloads.

It was a profitable mission for us. We had partners like MIT. We had a resource camera. We had a mass spectrometer looking for water. We had a contract with NASA to collect with lunar resources. and sell it to them. And we also had Lego as a partner. We also had Juventus Football Club. And so we put them on the moon. They're the first football club on the moon. And like that level of excitement where you see Juventus posting an Instagram video after that incident, they got 20 million views.

Like for me, that's a really exciting thing. We are creating the lunar economy. And so like I said, we didn't get mobile, but we got a lot of success out of it. the kind of I'm trying to understand the history of the company and how these different things developed because they're related right the rovers on the moon

there's small ones there's giant ones it's kind of how it goes but when the company started out was there was there this vision for both of these classes or was it like we know that this smaller market exists right now and it developed into something

that we're seeing today the company started out with the first product line, which really impressed me when I met Lunar Outpost, was Canary. It's an air quality sensor. It was spun out of a gateway program. And they, you know, Lunar Outpost sold Canary sensors. Thousands of them collected data points on air quality on Earth. And, I mean, as a venture-backed startup, that was a really impressive thing. I met Lunar Outpost in 2021 when I was at Amazon Web Services. And of the hundreds of space startup, that I worked at or worked with, this was the one that was the most impressive for me because they were building a rover and they were planning on putting it on the surface of the

moon, map. And also they had this product line on Earth. And so a significant chunk of their revenue at the time was from terrestrial products. They always had their sites set on the moon and Mars. And map is the natural first step. This is our exploration class rover. It's 10 to 20 kilograms depending on payload. We have medium class rovers and they're on the website. You can read all about them. And then, of course, lunar terrain vehicle is part of the Artemis architecture. It's part of the moon to Mars architecture. That is the next step. And so for us, it was a natural progression on the product roadmap. These are going to be different functions in these products, right? like the the way that map fits into clips is different than what the lTV services contract is um so

you know you while you did have all those commercial contracts or manifested payloads on board your rover you're not you know lifting the brunt of what gets a clips mission off the ground right you're you're a member of that mission you might be selling things on top of that but lTV is like a totally different ballgame this is one of the services based contract i want to dig into that a little bit on how you see that playing out. But also, I mentioned we're kind of pregame chatting this. Can you just fill us in on the timeline as you know it of like we're getting pretty close to the down select and the announcement in the next couple of months here?

Yeah. So phase one of the LTVS contract, Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract, wrapped in June. And this is an IDIQ issued by NASA. and it's a contract that three different companies won. And so phase one was this feasibility study where for a year we built our prototype. We got to PDR, preliminary design review. We actually built multiple prototypes, drivable, lunar outpost, tested our autonomy systems, exceeded the NASA requirements.

And now that we've wrapped phase two, NASA has a task order request for proposal for phase two. In phase two, they announce in November, December, and that's going to be one company out of the three that did phase one. And the one company that wins phase two, we believe it will be lunar outpost, will then build the demonstrator, we'll build multiple more prototypes, and then we're going to put the demonstration mission on the surface of the moon. And so phase two will take us down to one company all the way to the surface of the moon. That's the demonstration mission. and then that LTV will be on the surface of the moon when Artemis 5 lands with astronauts and they'll be able to drive LTV immediately.

The services structure of this is interesting. I know there's been some debate over the years of how down-selected this round would get that there was talk of, should we have two? Now it seems like just one. The budget's probably gotten even more interesting since that decision was made to go to just one. But the services idea is,

is really interesting, and your perspective is going to be quite telling on this, on how to actually manage this, because we've had a range of results on the service idea in the world of space in the last decade, right? We've got like, I mean, launch services, that's a thing. We've got landing services now under clips. There's cargo service of the ISS. When we started getting into space suits as a service, I think everybody on my side of the industry started going like, oh, this is, this feels weird. And now we're at lunar terrain vehicle as a service, but there's just a single company. So that feels like attention to me on

because it feels like you're building a product for a specific customer to do specific things. So what about it is like defend the use of the word services, I guess? Not that that's your call to name it that or your way to structure it, but like how do you think about that when you're seeing the word services there? How does that indicate how you should run this sort of program if you were to win? Yeah, I mean, one of the big points about the services contract is that we love working with NASA,

and we work very closely in partnership with them on developing our Eagle LTV. That said, they are not our only customer, nor do they want to be. Our vehicle is commercially viable. We have venture backing, multiple lines of business. We're going to put this vehicle on the moon, and for the percentage of the year that NASA is not using it,

we are going to sell that payload space and those missions to other government agencies. agencies, other organizations, other science missions, other commercial customers. And for us, that's a really exciting business model. Like I said, we're creating the lunar economy. And so we love it. We want to own and operate this vehicle. And I mean, by the way, we're doing it with some incredible partners. RLTV is built with General Motors, Goodyear, Lidos, and MDA space. These are all companies with incredible space heritage that we're really looking forward to operating with on the surface of the moon and unlock a whole different commercial market. So as a company, of course, we don't want to just build this and give it away.

We want to run this business model. And NASA wants this too. So it's the aspect of like NASA's got use of it when they need it for their missions, but otherwise, you know, have at it as long. But what is a stipulation on that? Like as long as it's still in position by the next time we need it. And like I'm just kind of understanding if you were presented with a situation where like your intended use case, you know, somebody hired you to drive really far away on the moon, but you couldn't get back in time for our respects or whatever? Yeah, we've been back in time for the next ride.

Right. Okay. I mean, we also pride ourselves on being adaptable and very rapidly responsive to NASA's needs. And we've done that in building it. And we will be doing that in running the standard mission. And so, yes, we will plan ahead and be in place and be ready to execute on the NASA missions that they've asked for and be adaptable and execute on the ones that they're not asking for now, right? Like science missions that maybe they can't perform or aren't going to perform that we can pick up because we have that payload space and we have that instrumentation that we can run for them. So like I said, NASA is not our only customer, but they are our first and most important.

when you're thinking about the the offerings of you know somebody wanting to go make use of the rover between artem's missions is you're going to launch with a certain amount of things attached and then you know is the vision that this would be you know replaceable payloads or containerized payloads to some extent or are there is there a standard suite of instruments that you're flying with this that are kind of general purpose and if somebody was interested in certain Area of the Moon, you've got at least a good enough suite of tools that you can go and actually get them data that they want, or is that all going to be up to the customer to provide payloads? Yeah, so NASA just, actually just a few weeks ago announced some science instruments that they had

selected. So there will be standard instrumentation on Eagle. There also is modularity in the payload and instrumentation. And I don't want to go too much into that because we're still competitive, but we are absolutely responsive to our customer's needs. And we have, you know, ways, of adapting on the surface if and when we have new customer requirements. So, yeah, there will be a standard suite and there will be modularity. Some of this feels like it requires a certain level or like a certain velocity of activity to keep running, both landings at the moon for either the crew or, you know, presumably Eclipse Lander delivers some extra payloads.

You can grab it. You got MDA in the team, so you're going to have a nice arm. you know, grab that thing, slap it on the payload bay. And so is there, how do you design for a, there's activity at the moon now, right? Like there's been a bunch of landers recently, but it's still building. And most of them are not working out successfully. And it's a bit of a slower climb to a rapid pace of multiple landers successfully touching down per year.

We know it's heading that way. And for all, you know, we can predict the future. It seems like we're on a good track to get. get to that one day. And so you have to design the business to be able to handle that level of activity, but also a little bit of like a fallow period at times. And so is there, are there different ways you have to structure it for like quiet times and busy times? Or do you feel like if you build it right for the busy time will be fine when it, when it does, you know, on either of those modes? Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, first of all, I should point out that

Eagle operates crude and uncrewed. So Artemis Astronauts will drive Eagle on the surface of the It also operates autonomously, uncrewed, and tele-robotically. So we can operate it from our mission control in Colorado. So astronauts don't need to be on the surface of the moon. We can be running science missions 24-7, and the requirements for this Class A NASA mission are that it runs for 10 years without maintenance. So we have a plan to run this vehicle effectively non-stop for 10 years without maintenance.

that means all of those science missions, all of those exploration missions, utilizing the instrumentation that we have on the vehicle. So we expect to be fully utilized at capacity all the time. In terms of like the lunar economy and the various levels of, you know, hardware and assets on the surface of the moon, yeah, it's still developing. And we are there for it. We are the first commercial rover in history on the moon. And we have more contracted.

We're building the Australian Space Agency's first lunar rover. We're going to take that to the moon. Like I said, we have several others. And so as this lunar economy is growing, we are there first. We will have the robotic fleet that builds, operates, and maintains the lunar infrastructure and perpetuity, autonomously or crude. So we're going to be there. And LTV is not just a one-shot deal.

we're going to have dozens to hundreds of these in the future. And on a long enough timeline, we're all going to be on the moon. Artemis is about bringing back a sustainable presence. I'm not worried about the variance in the interim because, again, like I said, we have a lot of different business lines. We have a lot of other things going on. LTV is our main focus right now, but it's not the only thing that Lunar Outpost is doing. Yeah, and that's, I mean, obviously there's a couple ways as this goes, right?

Is that somebody else wins that contract and you've got a decision of like, what and when are we flying are we still doing this um the other thing is like man there's there's budget chaos right like this this could even if lunar outpost is selected you know timeline could get shifted years or indefinitely or so what is the is there like a a mindset that you go into with like our company plan is to do this if we win the contract the contract exists great but we are on this path on our own like what how does that shake Look, I'm biased, but we are the best team for this. We absolutely will win phase two, and we're going to be the LTV driving on the surface of the moon before the end of the decade.

We have a world-class team. We have all the right exceedances. We have the business model. There is a plan for our LTV on the moon, and there's a plan for more LTVs on the moon. Budget cuts, EHP went up, right? So human space exploration is being plused up. that's us. That's us going back to the moon and to Mars and beyond. So Artemis is happening. LTV is a integral part of the Artemis architecture and like I

said, of moon to Mars. So I'm not worried about lunar outposts place on the moon. We're going to be there. It's a matter of when. And with LTV, with map, we're already there. And that has been, you're not the only ones that say that, right? Like Astrolab, certain has that plan too. So I think that's an interesting scenario and maybe even compare a little bit to the commercial space station market where a lot of these different players that have been looking at commercial Leo, they sort of know that there's going to be some anchor tenant in NASA. But they're all talking about the fact that, well, we're all going to be flying in orbit

at the same time. So we do have to be thinking competitively even beyond that initial contract win because that's that's kind of a weird aspect because is the contract like is there an exclusivity to this contract that if if you know another competitor were to fly their LTV that NASA couldn't just also add some extra contracting mechanisms to allow them to make use of what does exist you know that's a variable that could exist either to or against your benefit yeah so I don't want to speculate on NASA's contracting mechanisms and what their plans are in the future I can say that within LTVS, within this contract, there are three phase one awardees, and they currently are

planning on selecting one to put their demonstration on the moon. What happens after that? What companies do with their prototypes if they don't win? I think there's a lot of opportunity. And let's be real, on a long enough timeline, we're all going to be on the moon. And we're an American company, and we consider ourselves a U.S. national asset. So I want American companies on the moon. I want our allied companies on the moon. We're going to be putting our hardware there and exploring the South Pole and finding water and building lunar infrastructure. And realistically, we don't want to do that alone. And we're not going to be able to do that with one company doing each thing. Yeah. Like no one wants a monopoly. We're going to win this

contract. Beyond that, we expect to have our allied companies up there with us. It's also the fact that the program is going to be more survivable if, if like, if it results there's a bunch of stuff on the moon, there's going to be a lot of political pressure to continue to make use of it. There's a benefit to that. Yeah, there's a, there's kind of like a network, there's a flywheel effect.

We've also learned the lesson many times over that having multiple providers of capabilities is good for U.S. strategy. There's a 2014 lessons learned on the ISS paper that NASA put out that said, we can't rely on one commercial vendor it's a single point of failure, and that's a critical risk. So we need multiple providers of these capabilities over time.

Okay, let's roll with that and talk about how you get to the moon. We're not going to talk too much about Starship. You do have a contract with Starship to fly to the lunar surface. How does this thing get packaged up and actually deployed out? Is it something that only works with the crazy elevator crane situation on Starship, or is there some learnings from MAP that you're applying to deployment ideas here? So because I am such an avid listener of your podcasts,

I've heard you talk about these deployment mechanisms. I know you follow SpaceX very closely. We can't talk about it right now, not publicly, about how we deploy. Of course, it's public, and I'm happy to say that we have a contract with SpaceX to launch on Starship. It's going to be a successful mission.

We love working with them and looking forward to that launch. How it's actually deployed, can't talk much about it. All right. That leaves a lot to the imagination. Are you saying you can't talk about the specifics of the starship deployment? I'm curious about like, you know, if and when other big launch vehicles come along, is it something that is adaptable enough that there's ways to land it? Yeah.

So, I mean, it's a space truck, right? It is a space truck. It's a utility vehicle. When we drive this thing around the country right now in our road show, it's a wide load and we can only drive during the day. There are swap considerations, but it's a modular utility vehicle. Like think about Eagle LTV, like you would think about a pickup truck at every construction site on Earth. That's what we want on the moon. and that's what will be on the moon in the future.

So, yes, we can launch on, you know, multiple rockets. Like, it's designed to do that. How does that affect, or the scale of it? And there's a competing tension where the scale of the individual unit is really big. And, you know, you can predict in long timelines that there will be many of these on the moon. But when you need many of them seems up for debate. So when you're looking at this from an actual. how do we build this thing?

Is it very one-off right now, whereas you sort of do have a production line of sorts on the smaller-sized rovers? Or are there scale-up plans that are actively in motion to try to make the, you know, to get an economy-scale benefit of building these things?

In the one year of our phase one contract, we built at least four full-size prototypes, two of which were drivable, which I will say is pretty unique in terms of manufacturing capabilities. And we are strong believers in re-industrializing, bringing manufacturing capabilities back to America, working at scale.

We've learned a ton in our, and we have Lunar Voyage 1, which was delivered years ago. And we've already learned about scale and integration and assembly and test. So we're applying those lessons at LTV. We've made four. We're prepared to make many more at scale.

Right now, we're focusing on the ones that we need to make to get to the surface of the moon. In terms of customers, I'm curious how you see it changing or staying consistent from the kinds that you mentioned with Lunar Voyage 1, where you had a mix of, you know, tech demonstrations and then like brand activations to use a very like businessy term, right? That kind of stuff is cool and I enjoy seeing that, but it feels, yeah, you got the Lego sit on the shelf. I know. It's a big week for it and I got to go out and get mine. But I mean, like, and Lego, I think I'm going to put Lego in a class of its own because that's a totally different brand activation level of stuff that will always remain cool and relevant. But the Juventus of it all or like the weird, you know, crypto stuff that we've seen on Clipslanders, that stuff feels like, you know, still knocking off the dust and this is like a brand new kind of thing that people are excited about. And those feel like they would fade over time, whereas the other, the tech demonstration side feels. like the growth area. Does that, is that fair to say about the lunar voyage missions and how do you see that applying to larger scale stuff with LTV? I think there's a lot of this, I mean, this is the exciting part for me.

There's a lot of this that is yet to be seen. And what I will say is when we demonstrated that we could put payloads on the surface of the moon, a lot of doors opened up and a lot of folks came calling that we wouldn't necessarily have expected. And so, yes, we have the traditional science payloads, you know, the MITs. We're doing our next Lunar Voyage 2 mission with J.HU.HPL. We're going, you know, with a magnetometer to Rainer Gamma. And so there are, and we'll continue to be these traditional customers. What I think is exciting is the ones that you wouldn't necessarily expect. Everyone wants to go to the surface of the moon and be the first class, you know, the first of X to be a

on the surface of the moon. And you're right, that only lasts so long, right? Like, you can only be the first once. And then what? Do you want to be the second of something on the moon? Yeah, yeah. I think the answer is yes, to be honest. I think there's a lot of really exciting work to be done in lunar infrastructures, resource harvesting, just building the infrastructure. And I think about it like this. I mean, let me give you the analogy. Like, I spent a lot of time in the government and spent a lot of time in war zones, right? And you basically show up in a really austere environment. And the first thing you do is lay some concrete, right? And put some concertina wire and you have like the basic needs, right? Just like we're doing on the moon. Basic infrastructure,

power, communications, life support. Man, before you know it, there's like a burger king at this forward operating base and a green beans coffee shop. And all the, and there's a market where you can buy DVDs. Now I'm dating myself. Yeah, yeah. We know what era. Yeah. And I genuinely am already starting to see this in planning. I mean, we're not selling DVDs on the surface of the moon yet. There's no green beans coffee shop. But there will be, there will be this infrastructure. And so this is the exciting part.

When we start to have these conversations in these early exploration conversations talking about the art of the possible, hey, can we send this up and then bring it back? Can we send this up and expose it to atmosphere? Can we send this up and leave it and then collect this type of data? So I'm not worried at all about the lunar economy on this timeline. You mentioned infrastructure, and that's one thing I did want to ask about before we close up. Other companies, whether it be Astrobotic, who kind of rolled out a lot of different infrastructure takes over the years, solar panel configurations or ways that they could use their rovers to string wiring across the surface. there's a there's a pressure in the space industry now to like have a niche to begin and then expand to say we're going to do everything in this one area and i haven't really seen that from the lTV companies yet to group you all in and lump you in fair or unfairly as that is i haven't seen the like explosion of we're also going to make these other you know side businesses of infrastructure in the lunar surface as well we are staying focused on this unit that we're shipping and we're

Is that a natural path anyway? And you're just not talking about it because it's so obviously the thing that you would do once you're shipping a bunch of hardware to the moon or does it actually feel like a separate thing that you're not interested in? I think we do have competitors

that are unfocused and working on way more than I would want to be working on if I were focused on making the best LTV. And we are absolutely 100% focused on lunar mobility. And so that does lend itself to multiple product lines.

We have the exploration class rovers. We have our mid-class rovers. We have LTV. And we care about getting that right, about getting mobile on the surface of the moon, taking that beyond to Mars. And absolutely, when we get there and we're mobile and we have that scale,

we are naturally exploring new business lines. But right now, we want to get this right. We also have software that we develop in-house and that we're licensing and selling. We have a product called Mars, mobile autonomous robotic swarm, which allows us to control heterogeneous robotic swarms. So there are multiple business lines

and products that we are selling actively to customers. They all point to, enabling LTV to be the best-in-class vehicle. I do chuckle when you're talking about them in focus. Because sometimes I feel like space companies are apt to start announcing things that would have been really good customers for them at first. It sounds like a good thing to launch or to put on your rover and integrate and fly to the lunar surface.

But then it's like, no, but we want to announce it before any of that so that we're the company that's doing it all. I mean, I'll tell you what, like, I told you I worked to AWS. I ran our space accelerator there, and I genuinely worked directly with hundreds of space startups from around the world. And one thing that always made me nervous was when the business model hinged on selling to other space startups, right? Like, I've seen founders pitch on stage and they say, I'm going to do this and this and

this and this and this. And, you know, we're going to refuel here. And then one of the judge says, and what if that startup fails? Yeah, yeah. The entire business model falls apart. So we're not that. We do have multiple customers and multiple actual businesses. And we don't talk about things until they're real.

We don't like to do that. And this is a lesson that I've learned in the past too. And Lunar Outpost does this very well. We keep our heads down. We do the highest quality work. We execute as well as we can. And we outperform. And we don't, frankly, we don't talk a lot about it.

And I've been at companies in the past. that, and I've seen companies that have a good idea, and immediately the next day there's like a press release about it. I also worked, and I'll tell you this, at AWS, you know, Amazon is really good about not talking publicly about something until it's very real. And they'll say, I've heard people propose things and they're, oh, yeah, let's like, we're going to do this next year.

Let's tease it. Nope. We're not going to tease anything. We're going to talk about things that we've actually done. And that's what we do at Lunar Outpost. there are definitely two branches of companies there's the ones that like to get credit for the stuff they're thinking about and the ones that only get credit for the things they do but and then they what's what's annoying to those of us on the outside is that or i guess those of us on the outside who care about this kind of thing that the you get compared based on what you picked so if you've if you're and the easiest example i have is like facebook and apple facebook gets credit for the things that they announce and are thinking about and those get compared to the things that apple shipped like millions of of this year. And that is not an equal comparison. And in space right now, we're at a moment where that is true to like 10,000 times the amount that the tech world is, because there are

a lot of people that have plans for a lot of things. And then it's like, yeah, but your upper stage doesn't work yet. Or, you know, your thing keeps crashing. And look, like, I actually have a lot of respect for this kind of like build in public approach, right? Folks say what they're going to do. and then they're totally transparent and they bring you along on the journey as they do it. And sometimes it fails and they're transparent about their failures.

And by the way, just for the record, I have a ton, a massive amount of respect, especially for founders who are transparent about their failures and they share that so that the community can learn, especially in the space community, which is so small and we're all doing things

for the first time and it's helpful to learn. I think that's different from the ones that are just kind of talking about everything they do or like the good ideas. And also, I think it's a personality thing and a culture thing. It's about company culture, right? Lunar Outpost is a company culture. We have a really high bar for quality.

We don't spend a lot of time pounding our chests, you know, and showing off. We show the work and we show our results. And that's what we care about. now one last bit though that that is that can feel the same sometimes it's just talking about good ideas though is is that and and relevant specifically to lunar outpost and the kinds of work that you're trying to take on is that there are times when circulating the thing that you are working on is helpful to move the political climate and not like you know red team blue team politics climate but like actual policy level what program should we take on as NASA and how should we architect this. It's helpful to circulate what you're working on to those people making decisions about

how structure programs. And so there is, it's not necessarily a lobbying effort, but it kind of is in some ways of saying, like, we are prepared to take on this kind of a program. So how does that work, especially at a time like this, when there is a lot of policy upheaval? Is that something that Lunar Appos is, you're sort of, like, are you proactive in that way? And how does that actually, you know, maybe use some of your Pascal? government work to know how this things work internally to say, yeah, we should, you know, get this idea to that office right now so that they know.

Yeah, I mean, we, we work very closely with the U.S. government. Like I said, we work closely with NASA. We spent a lot of time on the Hill. Absolutely. And those conversations take place, you know, in public. We're on panels. We're sharing our thoughts. We're also behind closed doors and sharing more about what we're doing and explaining why

this is important and critical to, you know, to NASA's mission and to U.S. national interests. And so those are conversations that we, we are constantly having, not necessarily in public. And, you know, we'd love to move the needle and influence national policy and congressional budgets in a way that supports human space exploration and our turn to the moon. How do you defensively prepare for inherent risk in that, though, that this is, this is a big flagship program that is subject to political changes. Is there like ways that you've worked internally to hedge against that? Or is it just embracing the way that the, like you said earlier, you know, your view is that Artemis is happening and this is that, that momentum is

gaining so much that it feels unstoppable to some extent. And I think that is true largely because we've seen it survive so many weird political moments in the last 10 years. But are there, Is there an actual defensive take, though, that you should be, you know, taking internally? Yeah, it's a commercial strategy. It's commercial customers. Again, Lunar Voyage 1 was 100% commercial payloads, and there are, what now, 55 signatories on Artemis. So there are a lot of other countries.

There probably was one this morning, though, so we, yeah, right. A lot of other countries going back to the moon. And so I don't think this is going to happen. But if the U.S. government, you know, zigged when we expected them to zag and the timeline slowed, we have a lot of other conversations going on and a lot of other potential customers, both in the private and public sector, internationally, with our allies, with Artemis signatories, so that we are keeping that pipeline full of potential missions for, you know, for decades. Well, I've kept you way over this calendar invite. I'm realizing because we're having such a good conversation. So at some point. That's okay. Like I said, I'm a huge fan.

And so it's a pleasure to be here. And I appreciate the chance to talk. This is the most exciting stuff out there in my mind. It's like the greatest adventure in human history. And when we're here at a great time. So I'm happy to take a few extra minutes to talk about it. Yeah, I appreciate it. Can you let us know just real quick again?

Like the things we should be watching, Lynn Rappos. We've got some missions coming up that are like, what are those manifested on? And then the LTV dates is like this fall. generally? Yeah, so LTV Phase 2 will be selected in the fall, November, December. I will say, I'll give a plug that we're going to be at the Tech Connect Space and Space Industry and Government Summit in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside of D.C. on the 27th through the 29th of August. So if you want to come out and see our vehicle in person, you can come check it out, and we're going to have a pretty cool panel with all of our partners like General Motors, Lytos MDA space, and Goodyear.

We're going to be talking about it. So come out and see us there at TechConnect. We'll be driving that vehicle around the country until decision. And then our Lunar Voyage 2, where we're going to Rhiner Gamma, to check out those magnetic anomalies, we'll be roughly the first half of next year. And stay, you know, pay attention to our website, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, everything. We're announcing new things all the time. So like I said, it's stuff that we're actually doing.

And it's pretty exciting missions we have coming up. awesome i appreciate it thanks for hanging out all right thanks a lot thanks again to mike for coming on the show great conversation got in some interesting areas there uh that i didn't have in my notes which is always a good sign of a conversation so very much appreciate that if you've got any questions or thoughts hit me up on email anthony at managing cutoff dot com and until next time i will talk to you soon I don't know.