Off-Nominal - 105 - There and Beck Again

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined by Ashlee Vance of Bloomberg to talk about his new book, When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 105 - There and Beck Again (with Ashlee Vance) - YouTubeSigned Copies Available on Ashlee Vance’s SiteWhen the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach by Ashlee Vance - Amazon.com: BooksWhen the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach by Ashlee Vance, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble®Starship Flight Test - YouTubeSpaceX on Twitter: “Liftoff from Starbase”T+246: Starship’s First Test Flight (with Jake Robins) - Main Engine Cut OffFollow Ashlee VanceAshlee Vance (@ashleevance) / TwitterAshlee VanceHello World - BloombergFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, everybody. Happy Thursday. We're back here. Jake, you're back. You finally have returned. Yes, I did. I finally made it back after all this time.

I've been leaving you in the cold for weeks and weeks to do this entire job, which I apologize for. It was maybe the worst time vacation I've ever had. I'll just straight up to put that out there. Just generally. Yeah. All the spaces that happened. I could not have picked a worst four weeks in this year to leave and go on a boat with no internet.

But yeah, but I'm excited to be back and we have Ashley Vance with us today. Ashley, welcome to the show. We're going to talk about your book, which is awesome. It is an awesome, awesome book so far. I'm most of the way through it and it has been just a wild ride. This was a, oh, we've got a plug right here on the show. When the Heavens Went on Sale. That looks way bigger in physical form than it does on my PDF.

I don't know, man. This PDF is pretty beefy. It's no joke. It's chock full of goodness. You were like, what if I wrote four books and released it as one book? I did come to the realization somewhere in the middle that I was writing four books. There are threads. There are connective threads through the whole thing that I understand how you ended up at this collection.

But I feel like that's show content. But we should start, Jake. What do you drink it over there? Would you bring anything back from your Atlantic travels? I did, yes. And I'm showcasing it now. So I'm going to show you this. I picked this up in Lisbon.

Oh. So this is a special thing that they do in Portugal, which is like a cherry liqueur of some kind. So I am absolutely brutal at Portuguese because I'm still learning Spanish and I know French. And it just like completely jumbles up in my brain and I can't. So I'm not even going to try to pronounce it. But like, you know, Jinja, I'm not sure. But basically it's like a cool kind of cherry liqueur. So I had a drink when I was there called a Margulosa.

which looks like this, and I made it. Which is kind of like a take on a margarita, but with the cherry liqueur and, you know, some other stuff in here too. But so it's very red and very fun. So that's what I'm having today. That's fancy. Cheers.

Yeah, it looks nice. Actually, you said you just got back from Switzerland. So I don't know what time it is if you have an appropriate drink or if you brought something back from Switzerland. I didn't. Well, I did actually. I didn't even realize it. You said that.

I normally I would I would be going a little classic Johnny Walker Black, but I have I've got too much to do the rest of these day. I'm on Pacific time. But in Switzerland, they had, I don't know if you guys have ever seen this. So my family's half Australian and they have this thing called Baraka. It's like one of these tablets that you put in a drink and it's like the world's best hangover cure I have found. But it's hard to find. And then I was in Switzerland and they had some. Look at that.

The berry flavor. So it also works as jet lag cure, I'm sure. That's probably an equally useful thing. Getting my B-12 vitamins. I'd much rather be having a cocktail, but I have to write this afternoon. Still finishing the book. I'm doing that. I'm preparing the excerpt for business week.

It's going to be the cover next week on Peter Beck. Amazing. I'm just having a good old victory hop devil, Jake. This is one of the first. the best in the area. Wow. I've picked up a case of these. I'm just now finally able to drink again after Space Symposium, which was ridiculous.

That was awesome. Yeah. Oh, we should talk about that for a second. So the last show I put out on this feed was the live show. I don't know if you watched it, Jake, but it was a lot of fun. I'm catching up. I'm through one of your six shows or whatever you did. So, yeah.

I went on a bike ride this morning and got the first one out of the way. Yeah, it was fun times. So there's the off-nominal live show, and then there'll be five episodes of Miko in the MENAjic cutoff feed. So, yeah. We also, like, should we just talk about Starship for five minutes and then talk about the book? Because Jake and I talked over on Managing Cutoff earlier this week.

I forced him into a surprise podcast. Yeah. But, Ashley, maybe you want to, like, shed some thoughts. You know, you've got some history. the crew behind this vehicle. So maybe you've got insight into what was going on down there or just thoughts on how it went. Well, yeah, I mean, probably like a lot of people,

sort of felt like it went through two stages, sorry. The, you know, there's the, I mean, I was definitely in the camp that saw it mostly as a success in terms of just the launch itself, not some kind of failure. I mean, you know, nobody ever gets these things right the first time. This is giant rock. get very complicated. I mean, it flew for four minutes. And so, you know, that felt like a victory, this, all this kind of post analysis of what happened to the pad. You know, I mean, Elon's always

living on the edge of these things. It tends to win out, especially in these, like, squabbles with the government. But this one, I don't know, this one could get hairy because he's going to get, you know, obviously the community up in arms as well. So, yeah, I don't know. A lot of people were like, oh, he just launched it on 420 because he thought it would be funny. I mean, I didn't really, you know, they should have taken more time to prep the pad talking to like, you know, current and ex-S SpaceX people. I don't know. I never heard anyone bring that up ahead of time. They just seemed to think it had a pretty good chance of doing all right and they were ready to test it out. So, you know, I'm not fully sure that was just Elon kind of trying to be cute.

No, it would, it would, like, in order to orchestrate that would be a very bizarre circumstance. You know, like, and I'm not someone who's not prone to this kind of weird level of conspiracy theorizing, Jake. If you remember, no, I do, I do. Yeah. Jake and I sit in the press room and it was, you know, they said, we're good to go at the top of the hour. And then it just kind of, they kept doing more weather balloons and they were delaying a little bit. And I was like, Jake, I'm like 85% sure they're just like building the hype here and waiting like two hours to launch this thing. And they're just good to go hanging out.

So even I am occasionally like that. But that one is much more plausible than we went to launch it one day and the valve froze. And we ended up just doing a wet dress rehearsal. And then we decided to take 48 hours to refuel all of the tanks that we needed to. Like there's so many, there's so many things there. that make that implausible. The primary thing that Jake and I talked about was like,

the balance between waste time or waste steel, not time. This is the first time that it felt like arguable, which one they will have wasted more of, depending on the results of what happened after they blew up a launch pad. It was just a

hilariously janky four minutes, though. There was something going wrong at every moment. Something was blowing up or wasn't working right. And I was shocked by that. Honestly, I thought it was going to go a lot better than it did. But I definitely am still, even more so than when we talked three days ago, Jake, I'm more on like the, no, like they needed to get past this part, make some progress. And I'm not really worried about the things that they need to go fix now. I feel like they'll do fine catching up on that. Yeah. I mean, I texted with Elon a little right after the lodge. I mean, he seems this was before

all the environmental fallout. He was quite optimistic about the rocket itself and kind of where they would get to next. So you guys have patched up a little bit. There was a couple anecdotes in the book of, I had the rice of phone call when you were in New Zealand to hang out with the Rocket Lab. So that's, yeah. We did not talk for quite some time. And then, yeah, I don't know. I guess time heals all wounds.

I mean, the. He realized he has bigger fish to fry than Ashley Vance. I'm pretty sure that's actually. how it worked. I remember when the book first came out and he was upset with a few things in there. I think I was like at the top of the agenda. And then as months passed by, you kind of like moved down until you can no longer be seen on the list. But yeah, we just didn't talk for a while. I mean, he was obviously, he was upset. And then I'm sure, you know, SpaceX was always, my book is quite laudatory to SpaceX itself just because I had so much, um,

interest and respect for all the people that worked there and what they'd accomplished. And I'm sure over the years why I get all these emails of, I want to work there. I quit my job as a lawyer to try to be an engineer. I'm sure people turned up who were like, I've read this book and maybe just over time, he decided it wasn't such a horrible thing. I don't know. But then we started talking again. So good, good.

Who are you worried about with this book? Yeah, I was this going to go there. Which one of these for, we're not talking to you. So can you put that one on pause and tell people what this book is about, where the inspiration for it came from and what your general goal is with it. Yeah, I'll try not to be too long when it. I mean, you know, as the sort of elevator pitch, as the cover says, this is kind of the moment when the capitalist have turned up in space.

You know, you had essentially five or six governments that have mostly dominated space since the space age began, really, for the last 50, 60 years. And, you know, thanks in large part to SpaceX, which I kind of put in the prologue of the book, is this inciting incident that made commercial space feel a lot more real. Now we're seeing what happens when the capitalists turn up. And, you know, you can see, although this stuff takes time, that we're kind of rather rapidly after all these years of fall starts,

shifting to where it's a much more commercial. enterprise and you know I I had finished my book on Elon as I mentioned like SpaceX was always kind of my favorite part of it and but I'd start covering SpaceX long after the Falcon one but right as I finished the book I went to New Zealand in 2016 I saw this this guy Peter Beck down there making rockets and then more and more people were appearing and I was like oh this is kind of cool I could I mean it was sort of just a whim I didn't know turn into book but I was like I could watch what it must have been like to make the Falcon One more or less at a couple of

these startups and and beyond the rockets there was the same revolution happening with satellites and and so I was not a space junkie or a space nerd growing up or anything like that it was kind of coming out of the Elon book and then just what was happening in the world and so you know I probably started reporting this I guess vaguely around 2016 and it was just a matter of like, who are you going to follow? There were so many people getting into this. And so I just kind of placed some bets. And I knew I wanted to do Planet Labs. So that's one of the big stories in the book because it felt like they really were driving this satellite revolution. I knew I wanted to do Rocket Lab because Peter Beck has this incredible life story. And they've

obviously been very successful. Astra, I had this chance to really follow them from the very first day the company started and so that was like this unique opportunity and they were trying to push the economics of rockets to the most extreme point possible and so you know that seemed interesting to watch and then sure was you correct on that one for sure and then firefly is in the book although it's you know it's less i would argue a story about firefly more about max playokov the Ukrainian who ended up owning the company and sort of what it looks like when a when a Ukrainian multi-millionaire tries to to run a American rocket company and it doesn't end all that all that well and so anyway sorry so you know just like the thrust of this was I wanted to tell

the story of commercial space I had amazing access I think like I was in all these rooms that nobody else really usually gets into and and I just I just saw this chance to tell us like what it's like to live, live through it and, and all the highs and lows and comedy and tragedy and heroic engineering. Yeah. Yeah. It is such an interesting, I didn't realize how much of a difference there has become in recording because I was really taken aback when reading this to just be like, okay, I'm

going to tell the story starting seven years ago when I showed up. I'm like, holy smokes, you've been reporting this for like seven years. and I'm just not used to that kind of report anymore. Like, I'm used to it. It happens. And then 20 seconds later, I see 12, you know, takes on it on Twitter. And, like, that's the length of time I wait for information to reach me. And so, like, when I started reading this, I was like, well, wait, all this stuff has been happening and somebody knew about it.

And they're not telling me until now. Oh, my goodness. I was like, it was a real page turner because of that. Because I was like, I'm sucking up all this new, new content. Yeah. It was hard. You know, some of it, like with Astra, I mean, I sort of made this deal with Chris Kemp where he's like, look, we want to operate in secret. But if you want to follow this from the beginning and just wait till we reach orbit to do any reporting, I'll let you watch this journey. And, you know, to Chris's credit, he was like, look, this could go really well.

It could go really bad. Whatever. Just watch it. Say whatever you want. And, you know, there's not a lot of people that are willing to do that. And so that's one where I definitely had to keep stuff to myself. And then similar with Firefly, you know, with Max, we just hung out so much over the course of four years. And I was just dashing all these stories away because it was sort of larger than life and kind of too good to be true.

And, you know, I did some new stories along the way, but I knew this was going to be. I wanted this to be this like fly on the wall kind of thing where you see how the the drama that goes into all this. That's funny because I during the whole Firefly saga, I was reading all of your stuff. I'm like, I don't know why Ashley's like got the tie in here. Because I didn't know until you, you know, the book stuff started coming out that you had this connection. But just trying to make sense of that whole saga that unfolded over the course of two years or

whatever it was. I was like, nobody can really figure out what's going on behind the scenes here. Ashley's got the beat on this. So, like, he's the guy to follow for that thing. I'd love to dig in, though, to that timeline because, so you've been doing all this reporting on all these companies. Had you been writing the different sections of the book and updating as you go, or were you kind of in this collection phase and then writing started in earnest however many months ago or whatever it was? Yeah, for better or worse, I always have to feel like my report. is done really before I start writing. On this one, there was some stuff that had to be sort of updated.

Like I did not know there was going to be a war in Ukraine right at the end of finishing my book that happened to play right into everything I'd been covering. But, you know, the vast majority was stuff I'd reported for me. Not that COVID was fun or anything, but it was like a particularly good time to be locked inside of your house because I just spent the last like four years running around the world gathering all this information that I then had to turn into a book. So that's kind of what I, that's what I did during, during most of COVID. And then, um, as you guys know, all too well, you know, there were timelines on this thing that that move around as aerospace time, uh, takes control. And, and so just sort of like figuring out when was the right time to try and publish something like this was a, was a challenge. But, um,

You know, none, like, the stories aren't complete in many ways because the companies are still going, but each one sort of reached a point where you could put a bit of a pin in what was going on. Exactly why I ask, because I feel like with this particular set of four companies, like, every two years, we just roll back from now to 2016, you know, where they are in like a stack ranking of who's doing great and who's in the right direction, who's in the wrong direction, just seem to change so much that I'd have a hard time, you know, maybe like, did you have any idea which ones would turn out well and which ones would turn out poorly? Because they all, like, each of

their stories is such a cross-section of industry from a company that, you know, it has achieved their vision, which is planet and Rocket Lab to many extents. But Rocket Lab is like expanding into new areas to financially stabilize themselves. Another company that, you know, went through like two different near-death experiences in Firefly and Astro, which is currently going through a near-death experience. It's all of the outcomes of space companies. Yeah, no, I mean, it was a big challenge, especially when COVID hit, you know, at the very beginning, it looked like not just rocket companies, but normal companies were going to go bankrupt. And I was just like, oh, man, this might be, this might be the, these guys might be washing out pretty quick. And then, like, the, like, the, you

exact opposite thing happened, which is like this spec thing took off and money just poured in to these companies. And so like, you know, there were times when I was doing this where I'm like, oh my God, this whole thing might fall apart. And then I was like, oh, my God, like, everybody's going to have a chance to like see this through and get to the pad. And this is amazing. I never saw this coming. I can't believe everybody's throwing money into these things during such a uncertain time. And so, you know, kind of like you said, I mean, planets and Rocket Lab were pretty safe bets, and I knew they would be somewhere interesting. And then, and the other two were more of a mystery. But it was, as you can probably maybe tell from the writing, and they were just

such fun rides that, yeah, I don't know. I kind of just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. It was a bit nerve-wracking. They were definitely fun rides. I was trying to think of a way to synthesize this book into like one line or like what would I describe it as. And it's kind of like to me it kind of ended up being like, look what happens if you let these weirdos do stuff. You know, look what they can accomplish if you leave them alone, all these weird people. At the end of every section, I was like, well, I don't I don't really know if I like this person, but it's some pretty interesting stuff. I mean, I think that's sort of, you know, I think each story has its own, I tried to write it

this way. Each one has its own like sort of tone and lesson. You're supposed to maybe take away from it. And, you know, and then I would say like I, reporters aren't really supposed to, I don't know, I guess you're not supposed to like people you're, there would be friends with people you're writing about but you know I spent I spent so much time with all these people and the companies themselves I have a soft spot for pretty much everyone and you know even during the difficult parts I mean the point was just making Rockets remains extremely hard this is kind of what it looks like and it's not always pretty and there's different approaches to how you go about it it was it was interesting to me that I spent like enough time with all these companies that you start to

see, and I think I like underestimated this before I did it, how the, the company really takes on the personality of the CEO. You know, you always think of these organizations as being so large and that, I don't know, that was surprising to me. I guess maybe it should be obvious. If it's something like Apple, you're like, okay, they have the personality of Steve Jobs, but if it's like a more boring sort of less, less iconic company, you don't really always kind of figure out how this connection. but, you know, I just saw it develop over time, and it was fascinating to watch that. Yeah, yeah.

The planet crew is very interesting. And even some of the anecdotes in the book about, you know, the push that they had for openness and these moments where governments were lying about certain things and they just sort of like, here's the pictures, we'll send them all the reporters we can. And even, like you mentioned, the war broke out, you know, and only a year ago at this point. And that stuff is not in the book, but their imagery, them and Maxar, was like how we knew about this 40-mile convoy going into Ukraine. And it was such a good example of that. All that stuff is, it may not be in the version you guys got or you may not have gotten there. It is that that is the whole epilogue is sort of the space war and what happened in Ukraine. And you kind of all came right at the end.

I was like, my God, this is just tying everything together. Starlink is like keeping this entire army in communication. Planet is, you know, there's some people that argue that not just Planet, but Max Plyakov, whose Ukrainian was buying tons of the satellite imagery and funneling it to the Ukrainian army, that they really helped stave off that initial siege on Kiev. And, you know, I thought, I just think it proved out a major thesis of the book, which is Russia was, you know, one of the. those three, four major space superpowers, obviously, and had space totally turned against it,

you know, not because Ukraine had invested all this money, but because they just grabbed all these commercial assets, and Russia was sort of shocked at what they could do. And so that's kind of, that is one of the notes at the end that sort of ties a lot of this together and the interplay between all these companies. I think I'm like 100 pages from that. Again, so how thick that book is. It's so dense. It's also not one of those books that you can go like, yeah, yeah, I'll skip over this part that explains the backstory of this company. Because it's like, what was Peter Beck writing? Like, all the details about this.

So much good stuff. Is there anything that you cut out of the book? That you were like, this is a great story that I should not put in this book. There weren't so many like things like that where I was worried there was, there was a time. This is the kind of saddest thing. You know, I'd spent so much time at Astra. I mean, I must have gotten there. I don't know.

A hundred something visits. And I'd gotten to know a lot of the 51st employees really, really well. And, you know, I had at one point sort of written out like 12 or 14 character portraits of all the employees. You know, I always find these things focus so much on the CEOs and the top executives. And I really wanted to give people this picture of like the backgrounds of these people where they came. from how surprising, how different new space is than old space. And so that was hard. It just got, the book is already big.

It was kind of like, it was just sort of too much. I think I'm going to throw them up on my website because I've already written them all and I care about these people a lot. And so that part was hard. I don't think there's any, I always try to use my A material. I didn't like leave too much on the cutting room floor. Wasn't anything the publisher was like, eh, maybe not. Maybe not that.

Not really on this one. Not that I could think of, no. I mean, as you guys can tell, yeah, I kind of, and then, you know, I let, I let people speak a lot in their own voice in this one. And so I don't know, some of the controversial stuff, it's just people telling the story as it happened. And it is what it is, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Astros section in particular did a really good job of sort of showcasing past Chris Kemp, you know, like all these different kind of engineers that were going up to Alaska and stuff. You talk a lot about Ben Brockert, who we've had on the show. I'm a very interesting guy.

And yeah, I really, I really enjoyed that part because it felt, it really felt like I was just hanging out with them in the, in the engineering room or on the floor and mission control or whatever, trying to do what they do. And it was definitely an interesting look at how they do stuff. Well, and I wanted that one to be, it was meant to be kind of like, in some ways, like a celebration of engineering, you know, and just that it's not, it's not just this.

sexy polished final product, but like the struggle that goes into it and some of the the tedium and the messy decisions. But, but yeah, again, that was like this part where I'd spent so much time with these people that I did, even though I took out these long things where they told their own stories, I tried to like put some of that in in my own words and to give these people credit for all the hard work they do. You can save that stuff for the book about their company that they'll go found next now that most of them are. moving on, you know. You can see how long the book is.

I've got, you know, probably a thousand times as much in my notebooks. Ben's in the chat, appreciating the call out. So that's good. The answer section was one of my favorite sections because of all the companies in there, it's the one that I was always like, man, I don't know. Like, I have a, I don't know if he's listening or whatever. I have a weird, like, dislike of Chris Kemp from what I, I know, which is admittedly not, you know, it's only the stuff that makes it out there.

But I always found the way that his role at NASA is portrayed to be disingenuous. And it's like almost like an assistant to the regional manager situation. And it's like, you weren't the CTO of NASA, but like, you are like, yeah, you got some of the letters right in that. So I always was disgruntled by that. So I enjoyed getting to spend actual time in that world and understand what the situation was there. Yeah, and that's cool that Ben's on this chat. He's one of my favorite people. I can never tell if he likes me or hates me.

I like Ben. Yeah, I mean, you know, like you'll see in the book, I mean, I kind of detail what Chris actually did at Ames, which was, which was a lot. You know, I mean, if you're talking about NASA writ large, I get your point. But at Ames, you know, he really shook things up. He did all these deals with Google and obviously led to OpenStack, which was pretty, I was a data center nerd when that was happening. It was a pretty amazing technology at the time. But Chris is a controversial character.

I mean, I think I haven't had that many people read the book yet, because I kept it pretty close to the best. But I think more than half of the people read the book, Chris is actually usually kind of their favorite character. And they're like, look, I mean, this guy does what he thinks it'll take to make all this work. And then there's definitely some people who are like, you know, I just don't, I don't sort of like the way this guy goes about things. And I'm not sure if I fully trust those up. He got yelled at a lot at NASA.

That's one of the things that comes out in the book for sure. Proceed until apprehended, I think, was one of the lines. Was that Pete Warden that said that? Yeah, Pete Warden has the best quotes in the book. Actually, I mean, for people who don't know, Pete was, he's this astrophysicist, brigadier. general who did a lot of black ops stuff in the government. He was super high up in the Star Wars program and then ends up running NASA Ames. And he also usually jumps out as some of people's favorite character as like kind of this puppet master behind the scenes. And without question,

gives the best quotations of anyone interviewed. Yeah, yeah. The Kemp stuff is really, I mean, if I can tease the listeners in the right way. The Kemp stuff is so unique that, you know, the part that I enjoyed the most is where you were just like, I've been trying to figure out a way to sum up Chris Kemp and there's no way to do it. So I'm just going to literally just copy and paste the transcript of what he said for the last five minutes. And then you can just read it and make your own judgments about what kind of person he is. And it just like goes in this giant and he just keeps going. It just all these different things that he says.

That was like a wild ride for me. He's this force of energy, you know, and he just, Chris sort of bends the world to his will, you know. And that was the thing. I was like, I could sort of write this, but I don't know if anyone would even kind of believe it. There's a scene where we're just in the car and he's just talking about how his driver's license is expired and how much he hates the DMV. That's why everyone likes them. They're like, yeah, we all do. It's very relatable.

But it's like it was so, I put that in there because I just think it's so quintessential, Chris. I mean, yes, we all hate the DMV, but they're like, here's Chris. He's like, he's just kind of like, screw it. I'm going to live outside the DMV, you know? And just do it my way. And that seemed pretty, pretty fitting. Yeah. Yeah.

That's wild. One thing I enjoy it as well was that, you know, so a lot of these companies have similar sort of milestones they have to go through. You know, there's like sort of a get the right people together. There's some inception of an idea. There's funding rounds. There's getting your thing off the ground. And instead of kind of doing the all the same milestones and covering each one of them for

each story, you sort of focused on different parts of it. You know, like the funding part was kind of really clutch with Astra. Because there's so much about Kemp and the way you interacted with investors to try and get money in. Whereas on the rocket lab side, it was mentioned, but like that's not where the focus was The focus was a lot more on, say, you know, on Peter Beck and sort of the vision of that and how they accomplish that. So that was kind of cool because you get to kind of see the genesis of a company, like all

the steps, but each step you sort of get a perspective of a different place. And I found that kind of, I don't know if that was a conscious decision of yours or if that just sort of ended up happening because of the way the content was. Well, they were, yeah, they were different stages, you know, like on planet. same thing I don't really spend a lot of time belaboring their funding and stuff they you know planet had like accomplished this giant mission by the time I'm sitting there writing about them and then and then it kind of goes back to what we were talking a little bit about before too it's just that feeling of each one's meant to be a little bit

different right like planet is supposed to be this kind of idealistic story it's like why are we doing this what are some of the roots of all all this, what is, you know, like, what's the point of sending all these rockets up? And so you get this super interesting group of friends who are on this mission. And then, you know, I just thought of Peter Beck as like the kind of engineers, heroes journey. This is what it looks like, you know, when. They're in back again.

Like this one in a billion sort of engineer pulls off this kind of miraculous thing. And so that one's really, it is a lot about rocket lab. but it's a lot about Peter. And then, you know, and then Astro was meant to be more just this, sort of like I said before, this, what it takes to do this, this frenetic, you're like in the thick of it, and you're battling all these things at once and the drama that goes into it. And then Max was meant to be more sort of the geopolitical.

And, you know, like the Mac's story is really like a tragedy. And so, you know, I tried to, yeah, you know, and I tried to write each one in a bit of a different. tone so that those different stories kind of come across. That's what I tried to do. You guys have to tell me if it worked out or not. I think it did. I think it did.

So, yeah, it was cool. It's cool to see. I was trying to pull up an excerpt of, I think it was the end of the planet section when you're talking about, like, is this business model even going to work? And how, like, if you talk to most people, it would be like, I don't know. Like, maybe not, probably not. nobody knows we're all just trying to like keep this thing afloat um and i'm i'm wondering if you know when you were sitting talking with all these companies if you had a sense for like would

it outlast the funding rounds would it outlast going spack and being public like did you get the sense that any of these are on more legitimate foundations business wise than any other because none of that seems apparent you know in the way that the public markets are treating uh you know two of the companies at least are public right now and and seem like legitimate businesses, but certainly aren't getting the meme stock kind of pop that intuitive machines is or something like that. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's this hilarious thing about the rocket business that like, you know and probably a lot of the people listening to this know, but that the average public does it, which is, you know, the rocket business is just the worst part of the space economy.

And yet like everybody wants to make rockets because apparently it's like this super sexy thing to do. And so one fourth of your book is about a non-rocket company. Yeah. You know, it's like, that's where all the drama is and you get it. I mean, that's the, it's, I sort of point this out in the prologue too. I mean, you know, there's like this huge assumption that none of us know the answer to. Like, does all this make sense or not? Like, is there business beyond communications and imaging and some science, you know, do we get to, do we get to actual manufacturing in space? Is there more to this economy?

It's sort of like the early days of the internet that I sort of live through, where people can feel all this promise, but you just don't know exactly what's going to click or not. And if you're a venture capitalist, like I have to be honest, I mean, it's baffling to me that they're all funding, like for a venture capitalist to fund a rocket, a pure rocket company makes just like, no sense to me.

But it doesn't stop anyone, right? Confirmation. The next book's about relativity, Jake. It's actually about the investors in relativity. What were you thinking at this moment? This is why, I mean, it's kind of like why Peter Beck is smart and like I would often bet on Peter is that he's obviously had this, he's always like 10 steps ahead. I mean, all this strategy with the satellites and the rest of the businesses is not like stuff.

he's just kind of cooking up on the fly in large part. You know, he's kind of been plotting all this out. And yeah, if you're a pure play rocket company, it sort of makes no sense. But this is why, I mean, I still love it. This is like why I write about this in the prolog. I mean, I mean, it makes no sense for a VC to invest in a rocket company, but they all want to have a rocket company. And even after like the whole first sort of wave had come, you still had like Vector come along.

And like Sequoia is investing. in them and there was really nothing clear about how Vector was any different than five or six other small launch. And like Sequoia is this very prestigious old line VC. It's like, why would you, I didn't understand why you would do that instead of something totally different and try to find like some other. Because it was founded by the very early SpaceX employee who was best friends with Elon Musk. So, yeah.

That's why. The credentialing's on the tin, Ashley. I don't know what your problem is. You know, at least do like spin launch or something, you know, make it, make it interesting. You had a line about spin launch in the book. Wait, I got to find it. Because some very smart people think this might work or something to that effect. Half of the sentence that you're leaving out is that most of them are like, it won't.

Well, I mean, I still think that's true. Spin launch almost the spin launch had been like a little ahead of time. They might have crept in because I spent a fair bit of time with those guys even when they were super stealthy and got to see the catapult in action and Sunnyvale before they moved it to New Mexico. So you were lying to us about what didn't make the book. Well, that one, I didn't mean to lie. It was just, you know, nothing like relativity and spin lodge.

They were all hard because I could tell like the first launch was going. going to be probably outside of the scope of what I wanted to turn this thing in. So I had to table some of those. Launch. The problem is that you have the word heavens in the title of your book, not the mid-atmosphere. Oh, man, yeah. I mean, it's a really good point, though, about the rockets, because I still, this is the question I've been struggling with for years.

I mean, I think every year I come back to Anthony, like, do you have an answer on this yeah, like why do people keep funding rocket companies? The thing that always stands out to me most now is like, like if you pull up the most recent Rocket Lab, you know, earnings, filings, and you look at their revenue and their profits off, it's like way less than half of it is rockets. Like they're not really a rocket company anymore. They're a space service company and they also have a rocket department,

like under their umbrella, just, you know, to sort of have that. But, you know, we don't think of them that way, but that's how they are. That's the only way they stayed. Peter Beck, admitted on stage last week to me on the Miko show he was on, that they're just really bad at naming things. And then I read your book and I was like, well, or I guess the order is inverse and I should have said to him, well, I've read this book about your initial investor is named Mark Rocket.

So like, were you actually bad at naming things or were you like fine at naming things and you decided that was a good name back to the day? And it didn't sign the book, but like, do you have any sense of, was that, was he going to name it Rocket Lab before he heard about Mark Rocket? I think it was Rocket Lab when he, you know, he goes on this trip to L.A. And he's kind of like full of... The Beerbeck Disappointment Tour. Yeah.

But then he's disappointed in L.A. But then he's like super enthused when he gets home, realizing he could maybe fix all these issues he saw. And it's in the book and I'm pretty sure because he gets home and he draws the logo for the company. And he slaps it on his home office door. And I'm pretty sure it was Rocket Lab right then. Yeah. Yeah.

And so that was before Mark Rocket. see somebody in the comments like, yes, literally Mark Rocket is the guy's name. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a good one. It was worth a chuckle. Well, the other aspect of it that I found humorous was him and Mark Rocket debating whether they would ever do military programs. And last week, I'm talking to Peter about a hypersonic testing suborbital program

that they're unveiling. It's like, boy, how things have changed. But like, you know, sensibly so. There's early stories from the very, very, very beginning days of Rocket Lab and Peters saying, you know, we're not going to do military stuff. And then as often happens with space companies, they find out where the money is and the survival is. So I went to some New Zealand parties last week, two different ones that had strong New Zealand presences. and I was talking about some of the military side of space and there's like a immune system reaction to military type stuff

to people that grew up in New Zealand. There's just an immediate rejection of it. It doesn't compute with them just as like a cultural thing. So knowing that, you know, it's not a surprise that that was kind of the initial reaction, but at the same time, they're a five ice country and they build a great rocket so and it's all black yeah so I mean but this is I think that and the New Zealand story is just so fascinating for all these

reasons you're pointing out and and even the fact what you just said you're at this conference and there's all these Kiwis there I mean this is this is a direct result of Peter and rocket lab and New Zealand has like a bubbling aerospace community right now which is this would be like unthinkable 10 years ago. But, you know, they are the rogue member of Five Eyes. They're the ones that nobody quite trust to behave. And so, you know, for all the reasons you point out, which is, is I interviewed in the book, the former prime minister before Jacinda, John Key, you know, who was there sort of during

Rocket Labs formation. And it was just the funniest, one of the funniest encounters I've ever had. I mean, I reached out to him via email and then he gave me his cell phone. and I was in Auckland. I'm like, hey, do you have time to meet up? He's like, yeah, let's grab brunch. Do you want me to pick you up? You know, on my way?

I'm like, is this how this works here? And then we go to brunch. Welcome to small countries, right? We go to brunch and he's in shorts and a t-shirt and we're having like ex-Bededict and all these people are stopping by and say, hey, John, how's it going? You know?

And it was, and then, yeah, I'm like, what was it like the first time Peter came and is like, I'm going to do a rocket company. You know, he's like, oh, I thought that was pretty big for us because, like, we only had, like, a couple boats and one tank laying around. I was like, do we really want to get into space? And, like, everything that comes with it.

But then Peter Seam really determines, and I was like, yeah, let's see what we can do. You know, it was just, it was just cracked me up. Yeah, that's like, I mean, just the stories of how they, like, basically, like, created their own legislation because there was just none in New Zealand. They would just call the office like, this is what we need. They're like, okay, well, guess we'll draft it up and see if we can ask it.

And they just wrote it, you know? They would like grab all the NASA and FAA documents and then like rip them in half or like a quarter. See, the food in the cover page of this. Yeah, that one line is like, oh, if it's good enough for NASA, it's good enough for us or whatever it was. Yeah. It's cool to see how it's evolved. So I think New Zealand now is like the only country that I'm aware of that has a sort of policy in place that you actually have to keep track of your satellites after they've launched and dispose of them in some kind of decent way. And, you know, they're going, anyway, they're going about space in this very New Zealand fashion, which is interesting to see.

Strangely, it's a company, it's a company. It's a country with a lot of barely developed coastline. So, you know, seems like a great place to be a space nation. as we all fight over the tiniest spits of land in the U.S. to see if we can launch rockets from there or Nova Scotia, wherever that one is up in, was it Nova Scotia, where that one was? Jake, yeah.

Yeah, in Mahia, where Rocket Lab Lodge is, I mean, it's in the middle of nowhere. It's quite a trek to get there. We just talked about that with, like, wallups, right? Because that was the big question is, how are they going to get like a top-notch workforce to build neutron in wall-ups when it's, in the middle of nowhere.

And we all kind of said, well, he did it in New Zealand. So maybe this is the right guy to do it. It's a lot closer nowhere than Mahia is though. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Is nowhere, but it's like close to a, the middle is, it's in the middle of a lot of stuff. Yeah. There's a guy, Sean DeMello, who largely, obviously it's a team of people, but he helped

build the site in Mahia. And then, you know, he took over wallups too. And that was, it's one of the coolest parts. of the Rocket Lab story because of ITAR, they really were sort of very limited on having anyone with experience with the previous rocket actually helped them get there. So it was just all these 25-year-old Kiwis and Ozzy's. And they freaking pull it off. You know, I mean, if it hadn't been for the United States, like safety inspectors, you know, their first rocket would have flown successfully, which they would have been the only ones to pull that off. And, you know, I've seen

these other companies that have all these SpaceX veterans come in and they struggled like a lot more than the Rocket Lab did so or you know SpaceX themselves yeah yeah didn't really you know the first one of those so if you if you think about Virgin Virgin though I mean you know they took a huge chunk of the Falcon one team and nothing was launching from there for a very very very very long time Yeah. We talked a lot about these companies and their stories. I'm curious to hear some personal Ashley Vance stories from the reporting on this. You have some interesting anecdotes from the launch that you saw out of India.

There was a guard that handwrote the serial numbers of devices that was in the car with you. I have no idea with the utility of handwriting in a notebook, the serial numbers of laptops. I have no idea what that's about. But any other times when you felt like, oh, this is going not great? Yeah, well, and then, God, now you're really going to call me out as a liar, because I'm remembering things that did not go to the book now. I mean, the coolest part of this doing this book was I got to travel the entire world. And so, you know, for a while, I did not do this on purpose.

You're just reminding me of, like, things I've pushed out of my mind. But one way I was going to be a big part of this book. And so I went to French Guiana, like three times, actually, over the course of a number of years for that. I went to Svalbard and saw us, you know, like kind of the top of the world where all these satellites first start connecting. So all those things were incredibly cool because you get reminded that, you know, the space economy, space is supposed to feel so modern and sophisticated. and sci-fi and all this, but most of this stuff sort of happens somewhere near the equator

in largely very poor, remote areas and comes with like everything that those places come with. You know, it's just, it's decidedly sort of like not kind of Star Trek or Star Wars or anything. Kind of remotely like that. So yeah, the trip to India was nuts. You know, the yeah, these guards literally stopped us.

They made us pull out every computing device we had and wrote down the serial numbers and a ledger, which I thought would be extremely hard to search through later if you were actually looking for something. If anyone ever has the chance to do a launch in French Guiana, it is incredible because it's like, there's not much to do there. And so it's basically like a sporting event,

and they have like this, you know, they've got like an actual sort of theater at the Michigan troll where spectators can watch the French Foreign Legion is there. They're out clearing out the forest and the ocean before the lodge. And then on the day, everybody shows up in their finest, like military outfits and pretty dresses. And there's like a play-by-play person at the front of the theater.

And so it's this very cool experience. And each launch site just totally has its own vibe, which was a fun thing to experience. Alaska is obviously quite exotic. And, yeah, it's cool. Spalbard must be interesting. I feel like I've delved into Swalbard lore occasionally. And, like, everyone has to carry on a rifle because there's polar bears.

Like, that's a thing that just you have to deal with. It's like, I thought the dude was joking. I was like up there and I walked out of the weird this research lab and I'm strolling around. And the guy's like, you probably don't want to stay out there too long. And I was like, oh, yeah, you know. And he's like, no, I'm serious. You should come inside out. I was like, oh, okay.

And everyone has got their guns. It's nuts. Like that KSAT place where all those big orbs are that are sucking down the satellite internet, it is, it's, you know, they were telling me sometimes it snow's so hard you're stuck in there. This is a team of like seven people running the world's internet infrastructure. They're like stuck there for two weeks and have to have supplies helicoptered in. And I mean, I just, I found the whole thing just like comical how the world actually works at some point.

I always get that impression when I remember that undersea cables are a thing. I'm like, that's why we get internet to the underside of all just run a big wire. Like what else would you do? Like, you know. There's this great book called Tubes. And like the reporter actually, yeah, just gets at the physical. infrastructure and it's just like yeah it all just comes down to this tube coming up on the beach you know have you done a Svalbard episode of the show i did one of my tv show um hello world where i

was kind of a quick episode where i went with uh nat freedman the former CEO of git hub and we went down into this cave to bury all this open source code and a vault underground just in case the world goes to hell. Just like the seed bank. Is that like the seed bank? Just like the seed bank, but this was like the code, the code bank. The actual repository that's eventually somebody from Git-HDP in there that we know how to do it. Yeah.

I mean, it was a wild, it was a very wild trip. And then it was on that trip. I got to go up to the KSAT stuff. That's awesome. Can you talk about the show for a minute? Because if people are not watching it, they 100% should. and tell them which ones to start with. I would love to.

Well, so it's called Hello World. Usually every episode is a different country and all the inventors and scientists and startups they're there. We are, it's been off and on a bit, especially with COVID, but we just very near the end of filming 10 new episodes. So there's going to be a whole new season airing on July 3rd, I think it starts.

So we've gone to Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria. I just got back from Switzerland. We did a couple things in California. We did a thing with Ursa Major in Colorado, a Colorado episode. Oh. And so, yeah. Excited about that. People should check it out.

There's plenty of food travel shows. This is actually like a travel show for nerds. And we usually get kind of the coolest stuff on there. Can you give us a little Ursa Major preview? Because they have a knack for signing up customers that I do not. believe in. Like, that's their market. Whoever Anthony doesn't believe in, that's like, we got to get them. We got to sign them up. Well, the facility was really impressive. The engines that we got to hot fire were very impressive that to your point, I mean, that was kind of my big question for Joe,

the CEO is just, is, and it goes back to what we talked about before. We're at this weird point with the rocket companies, right? Where Eursa seems like they're kind of picking up some of the ones that are struggling, and then it's kind of like, how long do those guys last? But you could see a scenario where you have this big washout. And then, yeah, the world wants a big engine maker. There's such a big debate, right? Maybe we just live with SpaceX and Rocket Lab and a couple others that are sort of more government-backed, and that's enough.

Or maybe we really are going to put up two or 300,000 satellites, and we need just a lot more rockets. And you could see where someone like, I just, to me, it makes no sense for some new rocket company to make their own engines from, I've just seen the hell that sort of follows that. It's just, it's like unconscionable to me to want to do that again. So, no, I think you're right. I mean, it's like, I think everybody has to sort of thread this needle for a little bit and figure out where you fit and what's still going.

going in two, three, four, five years. Yeah, yeah. It is funny because there's almost no other market on Earth where engines are a thing that you have to make your own of if you're building like the actual vehicle. Like everyone else, every other, even satellites. Most people buy satellite propulsion from, you know, all of the different companies that are producing propulsion today

of every variety. And it's just rocket first and second stages that are like, we've got to build our own. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Space industry is so strange because it got like, frozen in time in like 1960 you know and just just I think it's like it's it's it's just did not really change that much yeah but it's also the margin like the margins are so tiny that you have to have that level of integration between levels of hardware and well that's the weird that's the

forcing function of it I guess at the like traditional volumes I mean all this stuff is like if and predicated on some exponential rise in everything, you know? But like the, you know, oh, it just cracked me up so much. Like with Planet Labs, you know, it was reminiscent of like the early days of SpaceX when they're like, you know, maybe we can send like a commercial radio in the space and NASA and everyone's like, no, that'll like never work, you know? And then people are like, well, have we tried it?

And then you like, you know, planet, before they were planet, they just sent like a smartphone in orbit and they're like, holy shit, it works, you know? This stuff has come really far. We could just, this is so cheap. We could just send thousands of these up. And, you know, so all these, the economics and what was the industry is like maturing, right? and getting to this point where some of these things should start to change. All right. So when's the book out?

Give us the marketing pitch that you're, the whole reason you're supposed to do a junkie. When is the, where do you get the book? When does it come out? What is it called? It comes out May 9th. It's called When the Heavens Went on Sale. Yeah.

You know, I think, I think clearly I think people who are into space will, will, I think, really enjoy it. I mean, it's meant to be, it's meant to be funny. It's a bit of a travelogue. It's a bit of, like, gets into, it's just this drama of a story. And, you know, I wrote it to be kind of like a page Turner, at least try to. And then it's meant to be like for an audience beyond space. You know, I was trying to call this moment where I don't think the general public at all is aware of sort of what's, what's been going on.

And the fact that we've had this big shift. towards commercial space. And so, yeah, anyway, tell your friends who are not space nerds as well, please. Totally. Yeah. This is the new required reading, Jake, because the stories in this are like off nominal, like they're perfect for the off nominal vibe of. Exactly. You have to come in this book for the communes, like the thought experiment communes and the rocket bikes

and the like secret rocket factory in the middle of a neighborhood. and like just like all this like wacko stuff. Absolute chaos. It was absolute chaos. And the thing I always like to plug when we are, we got somebody with a book release is that don't wait till May 9th. Just you're going to want to read this book. Pre-order it because the day that May 9th hits,

all the pre-orders count for the, the old leaderboards. So Ashley will go way up, way up the list, which is super helpful. Makes a huge difference. Please do. And if if anyone wants to sign, copy if you go to my website, Ashley Vance.com. There's three

booksellers in the U.S. who I pre-signed a bunch of books and people are always asking me for that stuff. So yes, please support it and get it now if you're going to get it. That's definitely definitely some stuff that I

number one, I have a little bit left to go and I'm pumped to finish it out because there's definitely some Anthony relevant stories in the end there, it sounds like. If you're just the firefly part. I think you're in for a treat. There's all kinds of stuff going on in that one. I was like on schedule to finish this, but travel and sickness got in the way. But you know, that's what happens. Yep. All good. All good. I think you'll, you'll enjoy it.

I also, I managed to do a drug deal on the Russian Silk Road with Bitcoin while I'm on my travels to the former ICBM factory in Ukraine. and how that made the book. We'll never know. Yeah, there were definitely some footnotes to countries that you're hoping will let you back in someday. Yeah, that one's in there, so hopefully I can get back in. This one about Disneyland, too, and some gummies. Yeah, I think I said it was my friend in Ukraine, and I'll stick with that.

Jake, what are you up to now that you're back? I'm just trying to dig out. know how it is. So lots of stuff piled up. But lots of work happening on our little Discord. So building some app upgrades and stuff for our little prediction game, which is always a lot of fun. We had a lively discussion about whether Starship was successful or not. And it still carries on seven days later. It's the new one that will debate for years. It's the new SN10. Did it was successful or not? So if you want to be a part of that, if you want to come make wild predictions and get into just enormously pedantic debates about space stuff.

This is the place for you. Offnom.com slash Discord. You can support us for as little as five bucks a month. Or if you want to be a real superstar, never fly ride share, you should do that too, 25 bucks a month. We haven't plugged that in a while because I forgot about when you weren't here. But I do love Never Fly Ride Share. It gives you all of the same perks, but you get to brag and be really, really special about it.

Exactly. Yeah. As we know about now, having read about it. about Peter Beck in great depth. The Never Fly Ride Shirt people really are hoity tooty. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, so come, come, we appreciate the support. And Jake and I did a surprise episode of Miko earlier this week

when we talked about Starship at length. So check that out if you haven't. And then all the, all the live shows from Space and Bosium will be going up in the next week or so, which were quite interesting. Lori Garber's mom is going to be pumped. She was on an adjacent show. So we'll see. We'll see.

And then next week we got, what if it's going on next week, Jake? We have Sarah coming on, right? That is right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Sarah Alameda, who's the new host of Planetary Radio who took over after Matt Kaplan retired last year. So we're really excited to talk to her and see what she's been up to and where that show is going, you know, with a new host and a new era.

So it's going to be a good time. So check it out next week. Ashley, thank you so much for hanging out for letting us read the book early, even though it was close to the vests. And everyone definitely needs to go buy it. So thanks again for hanging out with us. Yeah. Thank you guys.

I noticed Ben Brockett never said if he did hate me or like me. Notoriously drop out of the chat after that moment. So we'll see. Thank you, guys. Say everybody. Thanks. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, end the test.