Main Engine Cut Off - T+332: Quantum Space (with Jim Bridenstine, CEO)

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has joined Quantum Space as CEO. We talk about what the company is working on, the Ranger spacecraft, how they fit into the industry, where he sees their market going, and what it’s like to be a former NASA Administrator running a company in the industry. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Fred, Frank, Better Every Day Studios, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), David, Steve, Kris, Stealth Julian, Will and Lars from Agile, The Astrogators at SEE, Pat, Warren, Josh from Impulse, Miles O’Brien, Russell, Matt, Natasha Tsakos, Joakim, Lee, Theo and Violet, Joonas, Joel, Jan, Donald, Ryan, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters. Topics Quantum Space hires Bridenstine as CEO - SpaceNews Quantum Space to build spacecraft in Tulsa - SpaceNews Quantum Space acquires Phase Four propulsion assets - SpaceNews Quantum Space raises $40 million - SpaceNews The Show Like the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack! Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Follow @[e-mail] on Mastodon Listen to MECO Headlines Listen to Off-Nominal Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Artwork photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls Work with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

and welcome to Managing Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo. And today I've got a guest returning the show in a different form. Jim Bridenstein, former NASA administrator, now the CEO of Quantum Space, joins me to talk about joining the company, what he's up to these days, why he's interested, how the switch is going, some considerations about sort of transitioning your role from such a high-profile thing to working at a company like Quantum and running a company like Quantum. So let's talk about Jim. Let's give him a call. All right, Jim Bridenstein back on the show. The third time I've had you on a podcast and three different roles. There you go. Happy to be here. I'm glad you're doing this. It's interesting timing, I think, with not only quantum space. In the last year or two, I think talking up a lot more of the defense side and less the civil side.

There's obviously a lot of both, I don't know, it's weird. Now there's more CISL lunar talk, but there's also more national security talk. So the positioning of quantum space over the years has changed a bit. I'm curious to hear from you on coming into the role, what you're excited about jumping into, where you see the company going from here. Yeah. So I recently joined Quantum Space.

It's a very unique company at a very unique time. So I would start by saying that when you think about my days on the Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives, going back to, oh, 2014, 2013 even. In those days, we had a lot of talk about disaggregation and distribution of our networks in low Earth orbit, trying to complicate the targeting solution for the enemy, trying to change the economies of force. In those days, you know, instead of, they always talked about,

instead of building multibillion-dollar Battlestar Galactica satellites that are big, easy targets, let's build thousands of satellites, network them to, together, make it such that if the enemy spends $500 million to take down a $20 million satellite, those economies of force are not sustainable. And oh, by the way, they won't affect the outcome of the war in any way. So that's kind of where we got started when I was on the Armed Services Committee back in those days. Largely, that has now materialized, and it continues to materialize day in and day out.

I would say when you think about low Earth orbit today, and people talk about the three Cs, it's congested, it's contested and it's competitive. That word contested, of course, is the one that we think about on the national security front. And then we start thinking about, you know, there's, there are scenarios out there that can be contemplated about maybe an adversary detonating a nuclear weapon in space or fundamentally, destroying low Earth orbit, maybe not in its entirety, but a big chunk of it. And you do that enough times and you can really mess things up. So then the question is, how do we distribute further? How do we complicate the targeting? As you get further away from the Earth, space gets really big. And you can't hold all of it at risk. So we need to start getting to higher energy orbits and, you know, medium Earth orbit matters, geostationary orbit, XGO, beyond geostationary orbit, cis-loom,

The lunar matters and the moon matters. And so what quantum space is building is a super high energy satellite. Think of it like a high performance satellite for these high energy capabilities. We hear the Space Force talk about sustained maneuver for dynamic space operations or maneuver without regret. We're building exactly for that. So this is a satellite that has 4,000 kilograms of hydrazine for a fuel tank. It's capable of being refueled. It has multi-mode propulsion so we can actually use that hydrazine for electric propulsion,

not just chemical propulsion. And you add all those things up with a design life of 15 years, and you have what will be the highest performing satellite on the market. And I think it is designed for maneuver without regret. It's capable of not only carrying fuel, but being refueled, but also the same satellite could be a fuel depot in itself. So there's just a lot of flexibility that it brings to the architecture of space. And I think we're meeting all the requirements that we hear the Space Force talk about.

I'm curious on the trend in the industry right now to build these kind of spacecraft, right? We've got Blue Ring over at Blue Origin, Fireflies working on one, impulse space working on several different models as well. Help me get my head around the way that this would work in practice, right? you're focused on this maneuverable bus that payloads would be attached to essentially. Yeah, and so why that direction and not the Space Force, Space Force puts out a bid for a particular program and it's, you know, one company building both payload and the bus and operating that all in one. Is it the idea that quantum space would go off and partner with those companies providing sensors or do you have your intentions to go build those as well? I'm trying to understand

the breakdown and like the bifurcation of those two components. Yeah, I think right now what you've to think about is there's lots of different sensors out there. And we are sensor agnostic. And we're also mission agnostic. So when we think about intelligence surveillance reconnaissance, there's lots of different ways to think about it. But it can be, you know, remote sensing of the earth from space. It can be space-based, space domain awareness. We can do communications. We can do missile warning. We can do missile tracking. We could be part of Golden Dome. We could provide, you know, alternative of GPS payloads as well for distributing the GPS capabilities. So there's lots of different missions we could take on, but what we've decided to do is that

we understand that all of these missions need the same type of capability, which is to maneuver without regret, to be unpredictable. You know, for the longest time, everybody wants to be predictable in space, and as long as there's peacetime, we absolutely want to be predictable. But when it comes to war these days, with the enemy putting up things like anti-satellite missiles, co-orbital anti-satellite satellites, jamming, spoofing, dazzling, directed energy, with all of the threats that are proliferating, we have to sometimes, when the time is right, we have to move to a different mode of operation where we are, in fact, unpredictable.

And where the adversary doesn't know where we are or what we're doing, and we can be anywhere. It's a different way of thinking about space. But if we're going to have what now is called space superiority, just like in the air domain, we have air superiority. If we're going to have space superiority, we have to operate in space like we do in the air domain. And that is now taking place.

When you hear the space force talk about this theory of competitive endurance, which, by the way, I think is a really good framework. and we are designing intentionally to that framework. The number one principle is to avoid operational surprise. That requires tremendous amounts of domain awareness. Back in 2014, when I was on the Armed Services Committee in the House, it was declassified that a satellite, an adversary satellite, was a million miles on the other side of the moon.

A million miles basically where James Webb Space Telescope is, the L2 point. and from that point everybody thought it was dead it had been there for years it hadn't communicated it hadn't maneuvered all of a sudden it turns itself on it flies way out in deep space in formation with an asteroid and then it comes back to earth and i think it woke a lot of people up including those people who were interested in maybe a thing called the space force that eventually got formed but all of a sudden people said look if if they can use the moon in that way there's all kinds of nefarious things that they could do. I'm not saying they have the intent to do,

but there's things that they could do. They're capable of doing. Attacking from above, getting into unique orbits that are sometimes would be considered very dangerous. These are all things that have to be contemplated. So number one pillar, avoid operational surprise, and we need to know what's happening in deep space. Think of deep space like we as in the Navy.

We think of undersea warfare as stealth. deep space can be thought of as stealth as well. And so we have to have domain awareness out there. The second pillar is to deny first mover advantage. So when we talk about denying first mover advantage, you know, there used to be a day where they could take down a Battlestar Galactica satellite and, you know, for, you know, $500 million, they could take down a satellite that was $2 billion. Well, we fixed that.

We complicated the targeting solution. We proliferated the Leo, we networked them together. All of that is moving forward, and it's very good, and it needs to continue, mind you. I'm not suggesting that that day is over. It's only just beginning. But now we need to proliferate further, because if the enemy contemplates destroying low Earth orbit in its entirety, then we need to contemplate, how do we make sure that that doesn't affect the outcome of the terrestrial war?

And we do that by proliferating further. So that's denying first-mover advantage. We call it deterrence by denials. they can try, but it won't have an effect. And if it won't have an effect, then they won't try it to begin with. Deturance by denial. And then the third piece is that we don't like to think about or talk about, but it's reality now, is this idea of counter space campaigning.

The idea that we have to, the way we use space to affect every domain of warfare, terrestrial, air land and sea, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communication, navigation, networking, missile warning, missile tracking, nuclear command and control, all of these capabilities, we have to use them to affect the terrestrial war fight while the enemy is trying to deny us the ability to use them. And at the same time, we have to be able to deny the enemy their ability to use their systems to affect the terrestrial war fight in space. So it goes to, just like the air domain, we talk about air superiority. These are the precepts of space superiority. They're now being applied. And what we're trying to build at quantum is a spacecraft.

It's really not a satellite. I mean, it is a satellite, but it's more than a satellite. It is, in fact, a spacecraft that can accomplish the objectives of the nation in these very complex dynamic scenarios. So this is more, you know, very much focused on those applications and not, not to the same extent that others, you know, I point to impulse space being very much like a last mile delivery service that can also do some of these payload accommodations. Blue Ring, I think, is in that lane as well. Obviously, they're built out of companies or founders coming from the launch stack. So that made sense that overlap. But on the quantum space side, you're definitely not pursuing that sort of like last mile tug and really just focused on. being the spacecraft platform itself? Yeah, I think you're thinking about it just right. We are in fact not a tug.

We could be a tug. I mean, we could do like, we could attach to a satellite and maneuver it in geo if we wanted to reposition it or if we wanted to. We have those capabilities. But our mission set is space, it's really sustained maneuver for dynamic space operations. It is maneuver without regret.

It is building a high-performance. We would like to call ourselves the highest performance satellite on the market, and we are payload agnostic. So we are building a national security capability that we think will be second to none. We're not a tug. We're not an orbital transfer vehicle. But we do believe that people who want, whether it's communications or maybe it's GPS or whatever it is, we are payload agnostic. We can do all of that. and we want to do all of that, and we will do all of that.

But we're designing for what we think the national security apparatus of this country is going to need. So in that, Lane, do you look at the next couple of years and you're taking the approach that you're going to go off and partner with others to bid on certain national security programs? Or how do you see yourself spitting in? Yeah, in some cases we will. In other cases, they might just want to buy the bus itself and then tell us, what the payload is. Or they might want to, there's different ways of doing different contracts, as you're aware. In some cases, they just want to buy the satellite and then they want to put it on orbit and

operate it themselves. And if that's the case, we're all for it. In that case, we're selling satellites. In other cases, they might want us to operate a constellation in geo, for example, in which case we're going to have the ability to do that. And we can provide those services over a period of at least 15 years. That's the objective. We like the services model better just because it gives us stability.

We'll know what our income is over the next 15 years, and the markets really like that. But certainly there are missions that have to be done under the ownership of the U.S. space command because they're the ones that are fighting and winning wars on behalf of the United States. And certain missions, you need somebody wearing a uniform to do, and they need to be owners and operators of that vehicle. You dusters off. No problem. Just put it back on.

You dusters right off. Throw it back on there. Yeah, there you go. So, yeah. So, but different missions will require different things and we want to be flexible. Comparing them to these, the different kind of competitors on the market, I think is interesting because it also influences the way that you might approach building these out. You know, and the others that are doing it from more of a launch angle, there is an economy

of the scale they get where using these as third stages, right, the way the Rockalab does and then selling the platforms elsewhere, has the ability to boost their production numbers quite a bit. And I'm curious how you approach that because, you know, you talk to constellations a lot. So is the idea that leaning into a proliferated, you're always making me say this word. You're the other one that's putting it out there. Leaning into that direction is the way to get the production numbers up high enough that you get the benefits of that and not leaving it to be a bespoke thing that eventually makes its way up to be those very expensive one-off kind of satellites, whereas the others can lean on launch to do that. You don't

have that nice thing to lean back on in that case. Yeah, so a couple of things. I think that you're thinking about it right. Like I said, we are in favor of people building tugs. I mean, that is necessary for our country. It's necessary for a lot of commercial capabilities. It's necessary for national security capabilities. Tugs are a really good thing, and we want them to go build those. But what we're building is something different. We are building with an intent to be able to maneuver. So, for example, if you're building a Golden Dome constellation and you want contract providers to provide satellites that can provide that as a service, not as a service, that would be owned and operated by the government,

but a Golden Dome capability, if you wanted that, that's probably not a tug that you're looking for. It's a high-performance satellite that you're looking for. So it's a different market. Where tugs are valuable, super valuable, is if you have a satellite that may or may not be terribly maneuverable that needs to go out to geostationary orbit,

it might need some fuel for stationkeeping, It might need some fuel maybe to go from one position in geo to another position in geo. But it's not a satellite that's ultimately designed to be highly maneuverable to go, to go from medium earth orbit up to geostationary orbit up to XGO and beyond. It's not a satellite that's designed necessarily to be refueled. So, but those satellites are important. And for commercial markets like communications and others, I think it's super valuable.

But we're designing for a different purpose. You know, it's important to recognize that what is necessary for commercial markets is not always the same thing as what is necessary for national security markets. Sometimes it's very different. A lot of times we try to create the Venn diagram and figure out where we're going to fit. For our purposes, we're focused on national security. And to the extent that there are commercial. markets, and I think there are and there will be, and we want to participate in that.

But we're focused on national security first, and everything else after that is ancillary. That's always one of the things that I feel like the space industry was hesitant to say for many years. And I don't know if there's, I have theories about why the vibes shift occurred, but now it's more common to say, no, no, like there are national security concerns that shape things differently. I mean, there's a, you know, a 15 in the background here of your backdrop here. I don't fly on those when I need to get out to Tulsa to visit you. I'm hopping on a plane that is built for a bunch of people that need to fly to Tulsa. Well, Jared Isaacman came out here and I think he brought like a mig or something.

He's different. He's the commercial application of a national security program. But yeah, it's so obvious elsewhere in other markets that the needs are divergent and they take different shapes. But in space for so long, everybody felt beholden to say, well, no, it's all the same thing. And to some extent, the good things are, right? There's Starlink and there's Star Shield. And the Falcon 9 looks the same when it's launched off the pad and it's carrying a NASA mission or a commercial mission or a DoD mission. So there are overlaps.

It's not to say there isn't, but it's not all an overlap. And people are weird about that. There are very specific national security needs that you're going to want somebody in uniform performing. And there are other areas where it doesn't need to be a person in uniform, but it's still a national security need. There's not a lot of commercial market. it. But no, like when you think about a cis lunar domain awareness, right now there's not a big commercial market for that. But there's a national security need. And every day we're learning more about how needed it is. And then one day maybe there will be a commercial need for it.

And it's like a thing that it can grow into. You know, it's not always one of the other. I'll tell you, if we get this moon base going, there's going to be a lot of satellites for communication and navigation and all kinds of things. So yes, we might need some cis lunar or maybe even lunar domain awareness. That day could come. And by the way, we're all going to be super excited when it's here. Let's talk for a few minutes on you shifting into this role. And like I said, there's been many gyms on the podcast that I host. And I didn't get to talk to Congressman Jim at the time, but even roll back a couple more years, right? You've had all these different positions in the industry.

And I don't think there's a terribly long list of NASA administrators that have then went back to leadership positions. I think you exclude interim, it's like you and Thomas Payne, I believe, are the only two that have then went back and had a C in their title. Now, I think that's also an indicator that the industry is different today than it was, you know, in decades past. My sense is that there would probably be more like you that then go, oh, I'm going back and I'm going into the industry and into a company.

But did you have any thoughts on how that shift would feel? Is that something that you kind of got bored about talking about space policy and now you want to go back and be in the arena to some extent? Or what's it, you know, from your perspective, why is there the right time? I honestly think it's all of the above. On the space policy front, you look at the Space Force budget. It's $31 billion today. And if you add some, the big, beautiful bill money, you could argue that it's a $40 billion

space budget. And next year, it's going up to $71 billion. So when I was on the Armed Services Committee, subcommittee on strategic forces, which deals with all of our national security space capabilities, we were in those days focused on separating a military service that would be focused on space because of what we were seeing happening. And within the Air Force budget, it wasn't getting the attention. So we wanted a military service that could compete for resources, commensurate with the other

military services. And I see what I'm doing now as in alignment with what we were doing back then. And the space force budget going from, call it, 40 billion up to 71 billion, this isn't like, this isn't a partisan thing anymore. This is, this is a very real bipartisan effort. By the way, when we created the space force in the House of Representatives, we got in the strategic forces subcommittee, it was unanimous, Republican Democrat alike. And I give tremendous amount of credit to Jim Cooper and Mike Rogers. Mike was the chairman of the committee at the time, and Jim Cooper was the ranking member. And those two, because of their leadership and their willingness to work together and come to results, we got this unanimous support. And when it went to the full Armed Services

Committee, it got everybody. And we've got 60-some members on that committee. Got everybody except for two. And then when it went to the full floor of the House, it got 344 bipartisan votes. That's rare. Now, it ended up getting very partisan. I say, name the years those happen, Jim. Yeah, no, that's right. So, and it got partisan. First of all, it went to the Senate, and the Senate killed it because they kill everything over there. But they killed the, they killed the space force because the Air Force didn't want it. And then when President Trump got elected, he was all of a sudden a believer. And he provided the leadership to get it over the top. Now, when he did that, as you can imagine, it became partisan, just like everything in Washington does. It became partisan.

Republicans were for it in the House already. What's fascinating is the hypocrisy is on both sides. Remember, the Republicans in the Senate that killed it, now all of a sudden they were for it. And the Democrats in the House that were against it, all of a sudden they were for it. So they were against it, I should say, all of a sudden they were against it. So the hypocrisy is bipartisan. I'm not trying to play politics here in any way. But once it became a partisan issue, you can actually negotiate on both sides. So the Democrats wanted paid family leave and the Republicans in the Senate were blocking it.

And by the way, President Trump campaigned on paid family leave. And in the House, you know, they wanted to create a space force and the Republicans wanted a space force. So we combined a space force with paid family leave and voila, we got a space force and paid family leave and the president signed it. The last moment of how things used to work. It kind of reads out like that. So what's fascinating here?

And I think this is the important point. Good things can still come out of Washington, D.C. in a bipartisan way. And I will tell you right now, everybody knows, everybody knows how important the space force is to what's happening today. So, and that's why we're seeing the budgets increase in a bipartisan way. That's why we see the budget request going up to 71 billion. And I don't think it's going to stop there. I think it's going to continue. So NASA Jim is the aberration is what you're telling me.

That was a little request into civil space. I'm wearing my NASA shirt here. You're wearing the shirt. I know. The worm. We got the worm out. But, you know, run your brain out 10, 20 years, right? Like, which of these?

Are you, your national security gym? That's kind of the primary path. And then there was a hot moment there when you were civil space gym. So I will tell you, I actually interviewed in the first Trump administration, I interviewed for Secretary of the Air Force prior to interviewing for NASA administrator. Heather Wilson became the Secretary of the Air Force. She did a great job. I think she would have been better than me.

So congrats to her. It worked out. and she did great for our country. And I had the opportunity to go to NASA. And I will tell you, if you would have asked me ahead of that, I would have said, I want to be the Secretary of the Air Force. After serving at NASA, I was thrilled to have done it. And it was the right place for me to be, even though I didn't know it going in.

It was bipartisan. Everybody loves the NASA administrator. We were able to do big things. We created the Artemis program. The president not only said go to the moon, he gave us budgets to go to the moon, which today the budget is kind of flat, which is really, and by the way, it's flat because Congress keeps pushing it back up. So in those days, it was very different. We were getting bigger budgets. We were able to create new programs like commercial lunar payload services.

We started this idea of doing commercial destinations. in low Earth orbit, which became a program shortly after I had departed, but we were kind of getting it moving ahead of that. We created private astronaut missions. We created all kinds of different programs that I think were valuable. The key is, and this is what I was really hoping to do as an NASA administrator. Number one, do no harm. Don't cancel things that are working just because we want to fund some other things. Let what's working work, but to the extent we can get more budget, let's use that additional budget to bring innovation in.

We do that with entrepreneurs and private capital and public-private partnerships. And Clips is now, it's a huge element of how Jared Isaacman is going to go to the moon and build a moon base. So I'm thrilled to hear him talk about, you know, Eclipse 2.0 and what's coming next there. And by the way, hearing, you know, that there's interest in clips among, you know, the national security apparatus as well. So there's, I think there's a lot of good things happening. And I'll tell you, I loved NASA. It was the best job I've ever had. I'm not making you talk crap about it. I'm just saying, you know. And I will never have another job

that good. And I love quantum space, but man, being at the helm of NASA, it's, it's a good. I don't think they're I'm not at you for saying that. Yeah. What's that? I don't think they're going to be mad at you for saying that. You'll be all right. You can't be mad about saying that. Like, it's just, it's like, it's a dream job. That's kind of what I'm interested in, though,

because you have a lot of people in leadership positions in, in the space world that are a little bit hesitant to weigh in on any particular policy, concerns, or really express opinions. And, I mean, like, you kind of can't escape it with you, right? You've got at least 10 years of space opinions, probably more like 12, 13 years of space opinions in your wake. You've been a little out of pocket recently. You've been getting some flack from the space nerds out here.

You know, I've been out there talking up some provisions about launch. You've been throwing a little shade on the Starship Contract Award. But like that all is out there and exists, right? So you don't have to run away from it or be avoidant of it, but you do have to sort of find a way to communicate when you're in CEO role and you're in these CEO positions that you have to communicate in that lane, but then still be open to talking about these other things. And no one else really in the industry has to do that right now.

Yeah, and look, to the extent that I'm critical, I am critical because I want to see us beat China to the moon. Period, end of story. And by the way, we need our programs to do that to actually work. And I'm not critical because I want anybody to not be successful. I want, we need Starship to be successful. The nation needs Starship to be successful. And it's looking like they're turning a corner, which is thrilling and necessary and

we're excited about it. I do think, you know, if I get, if I test, if Congress, whether it's the Senate or the House, if they ask me to testify and they ask me questions, I'm not going to sugarcoat challenges that need to be addressed. And I would hope that everybody can see that with a fair mind. and say, huh, maybe we do need to put some more emphasis on some of these things. You know, sometimes I think it has to be a, like when I try to, I mean, I try to speak the truth and I try to be dispassionate when I deliver, you know, that what I really think is, is the

situation. But it's never with an intent to do any harm. And I think sometimes people might suggest that, but it's not the case. there is a trend I feel like where there are people that are either looking at the industry as like this is all the pie that we've got and it's all going to be divided up versus not scared of the growth that may come you know in the in the same conversation we're having here about the others out there building similar platforms a blue ring and I forget what fireflies calls there's Elytra or something like that. Like if this all goes well there's all of them flying. You know there's I don't think there's a world in which people are like this went well and there's only one of these vehicles actually in. orbit. Like, that is a bad case scenario. No, you're exactly right. Then this is the glory of

space. People say, oh, well, there's no demand for the moon. Well, how do you know? We haven't gone there yet, number one. Number two, if you look at Firefly, you mentioned Firefly, they've now landed on the moon successfully

and they've got additional moon missions coming up. They now have their the Blue Ghost lander, a lander that is entirely commercially manifested. So people who say that there's no commercial market, yes, there's no commercial market when there's no commercial landers. But once they're built, now they're sending stuff to space that has nothing to do with NASA.

They're sending stuff to the surface of the moon that might have ancillary kind of NASA things, but it's not being done by NASA for NASA in most cases. So we're going to find that in low Earth orbit as well. Once these commercial space stations get up and running, there's going to be a whole host of opportunities that people are going to see and want to take advantage of, everything from pharmaceutical companies to regenerative medicine companies, to advance materials, and so much more.

So I mean, I think when people suggest there's not a market, they're very short-sighted because there's generally not It's like people, imagine the Europeans saying there's not a market in the United States, there's not a market in the new world or whatever. But the reality is if once you start going there, you'll find there's a market. And by the way, we've seen that with clips now. Yeah, and I mean, the tech industry generally has always been that case, right? There is not a market for a lot of things that are now just the normal tech that we use every day.

That's right. Yeah, so I think it's that abundance mindset that the space industry typically, you know, kind of, contributes to and facilitates to some extent. And then you talk to the people in the industry, and it's like four people wide. Everybody knows everybody. It's not that big, right? There's still very few people working.

So no one really ever that cross with each other about like, I hope my thing works and your thing fails. It's not really a vibe out there. There's no better example of that than SpaceX. I mean, everything they do, there's no market for until they do it. And then it turns out there's a big market. There's no market for the IPO though, Jim. Right, there's no market for...

Right. I've heard people say to Elon, well, how do you do your market research? And his answer is, I just do what's cool and people do it also. You know, it's, I think, I don't know that I want to run quantum that way. But if you're Elon Musk, it works. Awesome. Well, what did we miss talking about that we should have? Is there other aspects of Ranger or anything else that you see down the pipe for Quantum that we should make sure to get to before we wrap up?

No, I think that's it. I appreciate you having me on. It's good to see you again. And I still have my, I still have my mug. Oh, man. Then the pin came up. We had Andrew Rush on Off Nominal the other day. He still's got his JBFC pin. So it's been a while. Very cool. They're still out there. They're going to be prize merchandise one day. I know it. There's no market for it yet. But. Oh, yeah. We put them on the moon. There'll be a market. Put them on the moon. That's the way. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Jim. Is there, uh, you. You should also talk about this. I saw, did you join quantum space before or after you all decided Tulsa was going to be a spot that quantum space builds out? How related is this? Well, so quantum space had actually received a number of proposals from a number of different cities. And this was long before I joined. But I made sure that the state of Oklahoma and the city of

Tulsa put together a very good package that would be better than any of the others. And they did. So that worked out well. And then when it was clear that there was going to be a real opportunity to do large-scale manufacturing in Tulsa, it only made it that much more attractive for me to become the CEO. So they wanted to announce me as the CEO ahead of the Tulsa announcement because they thought it would be helpful for the announcement.

But the reality was that was that was in works well before I got here. Not unrelated, but not. Yeah, not unrelated, but it was. Yeah, that was, it was a, it was a nice added benefit, I should say. Yeah, there you go. Awesome. Well, thanks for hanging out. Hopefully we'll talk again as you guys get closer to launch.

Sounds like sometime next year there might be something in space. Yes, we're looking at the second quarter of 2027 to do our pathfifes. mission, the first ranger, and then we're going to be scaling up from there. Awesome. Well, thanks again. All right, brother. Good to see you. Thanks again to Jim for joining me on the show and for having a conversation like that. I like the fact that he can still go out and have these kind of conversations, even in a new role like that. So very appreciative of that and for him coming back to talk about what he's up to

now. And all this is possible, thanks to everyone out there who supports the show over at main engine cutoff.com slash support. There are 32 executive producers who made this episode of main engine cutoff possible. Thanks to Fred, Frank, Better Everyday Studios, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astonaut, David, Steve, Chris, stealth Julian, Will & Lars from Agile, the Astrogators at SEE,

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they could sell that domain for a lot of money, and yet they did not, and let me build a new website there. Anyway, moving on. Pat Warren, Josh from Impulse, Miles O'Brien, Russell, Matt, Natasha Sackos,

Joe Kim, Lee, Theo and Violet, Eunice, Joel, Jan, Donald, Ryan, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support every single month for making this show possible. Head over to manage a got off the comm slash support. Join the crew there. He get access to Miko Headlines, a show I do every week to 10 days or so, depending how much news there is, run through all the stories that matter in the news. I filter all the ones that don't, tell you about the ones that do, give you an initial hot take on some of the things that may or may not make their way onto the show in the future. So great way to support the show, to stay up on the news, to win-win all around. I thank you all so much for that. And until next time, I'll talk to you soon.