Off-Nominal - 229 - 40% Rule (with Jeff Hill)

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Jake and Anthony are joined by Jeff Hill, Chairman of SATELLITE, to talk about their upcoming event, SATShow Week 2026, and trends in the industry that are sure to be a focus—direct-to-cell services, data centers in space, megaconstellations, and the defense market. Topics Off-Nominal - YouTube Episode 229 - 40% Rule (with Jeff Hill) - YouTube SATShow 2026 - SATShow Week Why the economics of orbital AI are so brutal | TechCrunch The Opportunities and Risks of SpaceX's xAI Deal and Data Center in Space Ambitions - Via Satellite Follow Jeff Jeffrey Hill | LinkedIn Follow Off-Nominal Subscribe to the show! - Off-Nominal Support the show, join the Discord Off-Nominal (@offnom) / Twitter Off-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Jake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Main Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘 Off-Nominal Merchandise Off-Nominal Logo Tee WeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Well, Jake, the bit we thought we would start the show off with paid off right before we went live in which the U.S. victoriously defeated the Canadian women's hockey team. So we're left with no content and me wearing this stupid hat. Yes. That's the episode. We're just going to talk about the game. Just pack it in, yeah.

I'm obviously upset about the outcome, but boy, I'm really glad it wrapped up so that I can actually focus on this show. because I was really worried that I was going to have one eye to the side here watching some stupid live stream and then it would not have been a good host. So it's good. That worked out. Well, we'll take the golden. When you guys were watching it, were you surprised by what hockey looks like when there's no advertisements on the ice?

That's what I was surprised. I was like, wow, I can actually like see what's happening. Yeah. I am mad that they didn't do big international ice. I am very annoyed at the NHL imposing this stupid NHL-sized ice on the Olympics. So. Yeah. The big ice is fun.

Way more fun. That's not where we're here, Jake. Why are we here? No. We are here with Jeff Hill from Satellite. We're going to talk about, we're going to talk about there's a conference coming up, which is exciting,

but we're also going to just let the, let the winds take us into various topics. It sounds like anything to do with the satellite. Does that put a pin on it? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Anything to do with the satellite? I mean, the show is called satellite.

Same thing. It's a very, very apt name. Yeah, that's good. Jeff, did you, did you bring a drink with you today? I did. I saw past episodes where you had people say, oh, it's like four o'clock. So I got to do it. I can't really drink. But I did bring a little glass red wine with me. I brought a little because after this, like immediately after this, I have to go pick up my son from karate. So like I put a little port glass full of, I think this is like Stag's Leap, some mid-level. level cabernet.

I figured that with a... You don't want to be rolling in there, starting fights. Yeah, not the place to start fights. Karate is not the place to start fights. You'll lose, yeah. Where do you got, Anthony? I had a graffiti highway left, which I thought was the most golden can I could find

in the presumptuous hope that we would be wearing or we would be having gold medals for this, so. Yeah. Cheers. So you had the same plan I did, but yours worked out a lot better. Would you bring a little bats? I went for the crown, baby. Bring it in.

Is that like a special edition? Yeah, what's up with the? Yeah, it's Corona 100 looks like it's like an anniversary can or something. Oh, very pretty. Although look at this. This is interesting. This is local. Can you read that?

It says Corona something, Marita on it. Oh, look at that. That's where I live, Marri. Capital. Capital, yeah. There's a, there's a brewery here, so. Is it a brewery? I don't know if it counts as a brewery, but it's like a canning where they, there's a

plant here that makes these. So, you know. Right next to the Takate plants. It's right next to weird, weird, obscure local beer. No, it's right next to a big cookie plant, believe it or not. There's a bunch of cookies down there. All right. Cheers.

Yeah, cheers. We're happy to have you. Because usually we just invite Caleb Henry on the show and ask him every question we've ever had about a satellite. So that's good. We're broadening our horizons. You should bring him back on. He's smarter than I am. A lot smarter.

Caleb's awesome. I worked with him for some years. He's one of the best journalists I know. And he's an analyst now. He's all grown up, sort of. And he's writing a book. So. Yeah.

on one web, right? It's good. I've read all the stuff that he's sent me so far, which is, I think, most of the book, and it's going to kick ass when that comes out. I think he's in the pretty late stage at this point. Yeah, yeah. Jake was joking about it, but your show is named the best of all the satellite-focused shows,

because I was thinking about this recently with small-sat having there some event related to small-sat happening, and I was like, are we out of the small-set? yet as everyone gets bigger and bigger constellations and now data centers in space. I'm like, we're moving up the chain here in terms of masses of satellites heading to orbit. So they're going to have to keep redefining what size they mean. Did we make a big set? Big set.

So that we can get ahead of it. Yeah. Yeah. The show's been around. The show is exactly as old as I am. So it started the week I was born. I guess I was destined to, to run it.

I mean, I'm glad that we're like, we have such a, like, generic name because of how things change all the time. But I don't think we'll ever not be in an era of small sats anymore, like for as long as we're alive at least. I think there will always be a really healthy market and audience for all of these different types of shows, regardless of the name. but yeah I mean satellites get bigger smaller bigger smaller it goes in shifts yeah but that's funny though because I feel like at the beginning of the small satification of the industry people were like well this is it you know we're designing entire launch vehicles air launched launch vehicles around this concept of 200 kilogram satellites and it always did feel like this is going to come back the other direction at

some point and you know obviously the last couple weeks with the whole data center debate or everyone's just doing their own math around like does this or does this not bend the laws of physics. That's the trend that I think is interesting and like especially captured by industry shows because you probably have a log of like, well this, you know, 2018 was the year of X and 2019 was the year of Y and, you know, CES like where like there's always TVs, but there's also these other weird things that occur at these different events. So it's always a good, the annual cadence is a good barometer for what people actually care about. And, you know, like what is, so do you have a projection of what this year is? Is it like golden don't?

home city? Is it direct to device sell? What is the, what is this the year of that we're heading into? I think, well, I think the most certain is direct to sell because it's an application with a real business model and there's a lot more certainty about it, right? The partnerships are in place. There's a clear use case for it. There's a clear business model. So, you know, this is such a long-term industry all the time, just like looking ahead, you know, five, ten years, what's going to be great. And we're a real. And we're a right about 40% of the time. That's not a bad thing.

That's the product being in a constantly changing innovative industry is that no one can really predict the future. But our industry is still largely driven by connectivity because that's the demand right now. And that's whether it's internet connectivity or data or intelligence, that's what's driving. You know, the government is the largest end user, customer, U.S. government specifically in the world. And that's what's going, that need for connectivity is going to fund and fuel all of these long-term plans. And that, and combined with, you know, the civil space and exploration

missions like, you know, lunar, lunar missions are also paying the bills. So, but this year, in terms of satellite applications, I think direct-to-sell and multi-orbit services where you don't have just small SATs in Leo, but a combination of both as a result of all these mergers and acquisitions happening, I think that's what this year is going to be. We're going to find out a bunch of new things that satellites can do in the connectivity world driven by all of these changes that are happening. I don't think I've heard that term multi-orbit servicing before. Like what, can you briefly talk about what that is? Sure. It's when you use satellites in different orbits for different things, but all in like kind of one seamless network package, right? So you have, for example,

you have an enterprise industry customer, like say a shipping fleet or an airline. And, you know, for certain applications in IoT, they can use like low latency stuff. from one orbit and then when they go and do like video conferencing they use service they pull service from another fleet of satellites in a different orbit and because there's so many mergers and acquisitions happening among service providers and operators they're trying to bundle these services into kind of a seamless like you don't even see this kind of handoff happening right like none of these customers really care what the satellites are doing like they can't see into space they just want to be connected all the time like they want all of

their applications working all the time no matter where they are in the world. And so, you know, there's a large group of operators that believes, you know, combining these networks is the best way to achieve that from a service perspective. And there's challenges associated with that. Like, how do you hand off between network? Yeah, I mean, it is a Wi-Fi access point problem on a much, much larger scale. And the engineers in the connectivity industry are just simply amazing. every day they're asked to defy physics in a different way. Like direct to cell is incredible. From a physics standpoint, it just shouldn't be possible.

It shouldn't. It just shouldn't be possible. Like if I, somebody explain the physics to me and just like the ability to like connect from a satellite to like, you know, an iPhone, you know, I know. I know it's just text messaging now, but it's not always just going to be text messaging. It's going to be, you know, you know. That's the first thing in the door, yeah. And if that works, it single-handedly kills the business case for fiber,

which is, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars per mile. And it's impossible to be able to afford to build all that infrastructure. So that's what I think in terms of the business cases, that's what the topic will be this year. Multi-orbit stuff is interesting from, because you're right, that like a lot of them, I mean, was anyone that isn't part of a merger doing that? Was anyone like deploying that? I don't think so really, right? They all ended up in this case where, well, we had, we had medium earth orbit satellites and you had low earth orbit, so now we're

merged and now we have a multi-orbit. No one was really designing this as a system. But it does make sense from like a network traffic management perspective when you got low latency task here, and then, okay, you can switch up to this one that's more dedicated downlink and less switching because of the satellites going to slow or relative to you. It makes sense, but no one was really doing that before they got jammed in the same business. I suppose like Starlink Groxat, it's probably going to end up looking something like that, right? Yeah, the data center stuff is absolutely another layer to it. I mean, you have to differentiate yourself. And I think nobody designed a multi-orbit system in-house as like, yeah, let's build in launch satellites

to two different orbits. A lot of this is the result of either mergers or through technological partnerships. I think everybody is going to be multi-orbit at some point. But yeah, I don't think anybody... It just makes me a little bit skeptical because no one with grand plans designed it that way. Right. We ended up here, but nobody was like, this is the way. We didn't have that moment with it.

Well, and that's also driven by the applications that are being used, right? So for, you know, when, when satellite, when I started working in this industry in 2007, 2008, and satellites were still 90% broadcast. It was broadcast, television. And, you know, the business case for that was you could do that over geo because you're just relaying, you know, broadcast signals from one point on the globe to the next. you didn't need low Earth orbit for that. Now, you know, connectivity now is so complex. These applications are so, I guess, integrated now. IOT and 5G and video streaming that it's sort of like the application drove the technology

and space, right? You know, and it also depends on the business model who you plan to serve. You know, business models change. Like even Starlink's business model has evolved, right? You know, from just a last mile or underserved area connectivity provider to like the largest IFC provider in the world, right? So, yeah, it's kind of an interesting case where, yeah, we built all these satellites, we launched them, and then the applications kind of drove the need for them to do things that,

A, should be physically impossible, but B, also weren't designed for, it is an interesting way to look at it, I guess. Are you worried, Anthony, that it ends up being like an Atlas 5 situation? Like, no one would design an Atlas 5, but because you have an RL10 and some solid rocket bookers and it turned out really good at those things. I'll just, I'll put these pieces together and now I'll do this, right? Yeah, it's a weird mix because I think when, I mean, famously, SpaceX always talks up how everyone that tried this before went bankrupt and doesn't exist anymore.

And everything was sold off for like $10 or whatever that acquisition price was back in the day. Right. So when you're deploying a system like this, you have to be focused. So you don't start out. Like the only thing harder than deploying one satellite constellation is two at the same time. And so I understand why nobody started there and said, we are going to deploy to both these orbits. And what's even harder than that is replacing them all, right? Exactly.

Yeah. Refreshing both of those at the same time. Yeah, which Arridium has done to its credit, you know. And they even threw up a couple extras, you know, so good on them. It was just a moment, though, in the industry where you had people start to actually be successful with a Leo constellation. And then you had, you know, companies like K2 space coming online and saying, yeah, but we're going to have these really large, you know, power-heavy satellites that you launched a medium Earth orbit. I'd feel like they were, they are the most under-discussed company right now in the data center. in orbit situation that we're undergoing.

StarCloud's getting a lot of press. SpaceX, obviously, with their IPOs coming up. But I feel like if you look at K2 spaces positioning over the last couple of years, they're so dead center for what everyone is now interested in. And I don't feel like anyone's been talking about them to the extent that they should. You think someone like Blue Origin comes around and says,

this is what we're going to put Terra Wave on? I wouldn't be shocked if they, yeah. I mean, like that or are they like a Rocket Lab acquisition target because they love buying, you know, well-organized companies in the Southern California area. They just seem like they had their eye. I don't know if they had data centers in mind when they started. I mean, they certainly didn't mention it when they were on this show. They mentioned a lot of other use cases, but maybe that was in the back of their head that we will get there at some point.

But now they just, their positioning is so dead center on what we want to use Medium Earth orbit for, which is like power-hungry, heavy-lifting applications that interface with all these other systems that we're putting in place. So, like, I guess my criticism of no one designed this this way, I don't know if we even had the capability to put that into play because the capital you needed to roll these things out was so large and so many of these other aspects that you needed, like good power generation at that orbit to make something useful occur there.

Like, those were still kind of in their birthing phase too. And now we're here where we can look back and say, obviously, the whole industry merged in this particular direction and we converged on these use cases. And this was so obvious. Why didn't I, you know, buy Bitcoin in 2010? As we've been saying in this show for years. Yeah.

I'd never say anything was obvious. Like I said earlier that we were right about 40% of the time. That's right. Yeah, you did call that shot. Yeah. I hesitate to ever make any four. And I'm in a luxurious position where I don't have to, which I'm very, unlike Caleb. It's true.

We were talking about earlier. Yeah, yeah. They have to get it right. That's their business model. he's getting it right. Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned how awesome Caleb is.

He's really great. Oh, he's the best. Yeah. Yeah. We're all Caleb fans here. Yeah. You know, you guys were talking about data centers in space. And I'm curious.

I mean, I'm, it's talk right now, right? And it's a lot of, you know, it is talk. And I'm just curious as I've seen some of your past episodes and how, how are we going to get around the major challenges associated with getting a data center in space? And my colleague, Rachel Jewett, who works at Via Satellite Magazine, just did a really good interview with Ramon's space. I know that we're talking a lot about physically building these things or launching them into space and how we're going to get around just the sheer volume. of the spacecraft itself that will be needed for this and also the cooling issue. Right. It's one thing I've seen out there is this argument that space is, is, is the cooling

environment. And, and that's not really how space works, right? In a vacuum? Like, the environment of space is so harsh and awful that we still don't even really know how to run, like basic compute in space with with the radio you know radio shielding it from radiation and and and all that kind of stuff so I'm just curious as to what you guys how you feel about it how you feel about data centers in space right now I think the part I get stuck on I mean like like you I don't I don't devote very much of my brain power to like the section of the internet that tries to do like laws of physics math about space solar power or you know, yeah, data centers in space.

I feel like everyone's always constantly writing about how this, and from the, no one's ever a little bit like, I don't know how this will shake out. Everyone's like physically impossible. We'll never exist. And the other's like, obviously the most ekeesious path to doing this thing is XYZ. And you can never find anyone that's in the middle ground. It's very much

like the New York Times article where it said rockets could never happen, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. 1930 or whatever it was. Yeah. And so I always put my money on, I bet the smart engineers that we have in the industry will figure out the fundamental, can this even exist problem? What I approach it

from, though, is that everyone equates what we deploy in space to be very equivalent to a data center on Earth when I think it's, you have to break that thinking. And you don't compare this data center to an earthly data center. Like, those are totally different pieces of infrastructure.

And you should look at, like, a constellation of data center satellites as replacing a particular data center, right? Because we, on Earth, we accumulate them all in the same area, because it make sense to buy land in one spot and get power generation to that spot and cooling to that spot, there are benefits on Earth to pooling where these things exist, but in space, it's the exact opposite, that there are benefits to distributing it across the area of users. So I don't,

I don't think when people look at, well, you could never run an AWS data center in space. I'm like, that's the wrong question entirely. How would you break it up and run it in space? is a much better question. And then when you do that, it all seems to be much more achievable than what is out there when you're doing like a one-to-one. I've taken this warehouse

and I've put it in orbit in geo and it's this blindingly white object in the sky. And then it will run as a data center. You would never do that. That doesn't, it's not how, that's not the benefits of space. So I can't tell though, is that me being a total novice or

and looking at these articles and criticizing them because I'm like, you're doing weird math on this. It's almost like they're like, the satellites are like individual racks at the data center, right? Like you can kind of think like that. So you're rolling them around the data center.

You're swapping them out. You're swapping the mob. You're swapping our drives inside of them. You can't do that in satellite. But, you know, same idea where it's like much more of a smaller unit that you're modularizing, right? Yeah. And I said that in the last show where I thought, like, one of the benefits is that, like, you can, the data center can mutate over time, whereas you can't do that with a large physical building.

It's always going to be there. It's always going to be roughly that size. It's always going to have a huge power drought. Whereas like this one, you can, like, drop off old satellites that are wrong and bring in new ones that are. that are right and it can slowly, it's a ship a thesis kind of a situation, right? So you can have a second layer data center up in geo that then feeds something out to MEO and then pass it off to Leo to get it down the ground.

The benefit is you don't have the time that you met the mayor with a big pair of scissors and you did the thing, you just a piece of dirt, right? Like you're unchanged from the launch site. The launch site gets that. Yeah, sure. I mean, the cooling thing, I don't, I'm not too worried about the cooling thing. I know it needs a lot of cooling and that's like, math you can do that makes it look really bad. But at the end of the day, like, you either make

the compute smaller or the, or the radiator bigger. And then at some point, you'll hit, like, this is an equilibrium and it's okay. And so the question is more just like, does a satellite of that size with that mass ratio of like compute to radiate or make sense from a business standpoint? But then it's all just like, well, if you can make launch cheaper and compute cheaper, then eventually it will. So like, it's just all the, all the trends are in the right direction for that, right? Computers getting lower power and faster, launches, getting cheaper. So, like, maybe today you can't figure that out, but if you start building it now in a few years, it'll probably fine. I think you've asked us a question, Jeff, that puts it into the category of ghost

stories that we avoid on the show. Like, is radiation the biggest problem ever to get humans to Mars, or is it a non-issue? We never talk about it because we're like, everyone has in our opinion already, and I don't know how to sort this out. And this is an unanswerable question to some extent. So we've like, we have this section of things that people are probably feeling weird that we've never covered on the show. But like, I don't know if we know what to do with them. I don't know. Do you feel, did you, as you've read all these articles that have come out, all these think pieces, like where did you land? I landed on, you made a comment, am I a novice?

I don't think you're a novice. I don't think anyone knows, right? I think there's just like a half dozen people that are crazy enough to try. And maybe two or three of them will be. right or onto something. And out of those two or three, two people will change direction and find some other application that actually works. And one person will continue to fight. And there's a 40% chance that person will be right. So I mean, I think, again, like, it's a 40% rule. Jeff's 40% rule is like the new guiding element of my life. I mean, look at the,

Look at the ISS, right? I mean, that that was, that was possible. That happened in the 90s, right? Like, you know, and then look at like, again, I go back to the D to C, like, example. That shouldn't be possible, but it is. And somebody spent a crazy amount of time and energy making that happen. So that's why I'm in learning mode right now.

I just want to see what people have to say, what they've heard about it. Yeah. Because I don't know. And I think that it's a good idea from a, like you can put a mission behind it. Obviously, nobody wants data centers next door. So let's just put it in space where no one can see it and hear it. Yeah. What if we shot all of our trash at the sun, you know?

Like, what if we did that? Yeah. Yeah. I don't want people to think, though, of space as like, oh, no one wants to see it here. So let's just do it in space. I mean, you might as well do it at the like North Pole, right? A lot of wind. But there's just as much of an, like if you're saying, let's avoid the impact on Earth,

there's just as much impact up there. And you can ask the companies that are doing space situational awareness, space debris, that are, that are, you know, have made that their life's work. They will tell you the same. I have another framework the way I work through this in my head. I have this theory that I talked about many times before, which is that I think we're going to discover that life is like everywhere at all times.

It's just because you look everywhere on earth, the most harsh areas, the most dead areas we thought, there's just life everywhere. So I'm convinced that we will continue to find this everywhere. And I similarly, I'm like, I bet if we, I bet anywhere you would propose we put a computer,

we'll find a really good use for it. Like so far, human existence is computers are useful everywhere you put them. There hasn't been a spot in human society where we put a computer and we're like, well, that wasn't that useful. They're in our ears. They're in our, you know, like, it's like everywhere. And if there's more computers around, God damn it, we'll figure out what to do with them.

Yeah. And they solve the problems they create, right? We need computers to solve the problems that computers create. Yeah, more computers. More computers, more humans is my policy on life. Yeah. Honestly, the biggest issue for data centers for me is not a technical one. It's more of a economic one.

My biggest fear is that the capital resources required to like nail that business case is so high and it needs to be combined with engineering acumen at the same time. And like the Venn diagram of those companies right now is SpaceX. And like I don't I don't want, I don't want SpaceX to go out there and like nail this and have this amazing orbital data center. and then no one else can pull it off. And then we're just like, that's what we run on for like the next 50 years. It's like Starlink, Groxat.

Like that's how like the internet works from now on. And I just, and the price is just going to go up. And like, I just don't know what's going to happen with that. This is not, it's not a competitively safe environment, you know. And so that's my biggest fear is how,

how do we get, like how do we encourage that market to actually blossom into one where it's healthy and competitive and good for consumers and all that kind of thing, right? Innovative. That's important too, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, what you just said is is one explanation of all of what SpaceX has been doing in the run-up to an IPO, which at any other point in time, you would say, this is bizarre. Like, why would you do any of this within months of going public? But, you know, that's the explanation. And all I can say is that, like, man, we are really taking high-risk.

reward to another level and like all i'm just glad i'm not the one that has to take the risk like i can sit back and say you know i got a glass of wine here like if they did it great if they didn't like um someone else is going to try it um but yeah you really do need a 1.5 trillion dollar valuation to get that done and you know um you know i i think like uh the the common enemy here is time yeah time everybody wants to do it next week or 10 years from now or seven years from now. And, you know, we are constrained by time and physics and science. But that's what makes these things so exciting and interesting, right?

Is that like the little victories that happen here and there and seeing what comes of it? But man, you know what? We're going to find some startup that does it in three years for like $5. dollars. Coming and disrupt the old space SpaceX people that are all encalsified into the Yeah, it'll be a cycle. It'll be like some hockey player from the Canadians women team has ever since losing that game. You know, listening to this podcast, they say, you know what?

I'm going to build the $5 data center in space. I'm like having a $5 foot long commercial or whatever. Is that a subway commercial? I think so. You can go make a SORA video. Use the data center, Jake. I'll do it. I'll do it.

One aspect of this that I also, in the way that I thought K2 space was underdiscust in the data center argument was like, everybody doing this math on only a commercial basis and nowhere close to a government or military basis on like, okay but what would they with given these computing resources what would they want to fund and deploy that don't have to meet a business case and do not have to close they just have to you know have

have enough budget in the black part of the budget that year to fund this thing which is astronomically more than like what people will pay for services um things are a weird spot right now with golden dome like space of lm agencies getting some of their procurement taken away from them which i think is getting consumed into the golden dome you know bohemoth that is eating the rest of the space defense budget. But presumably they will have a say in the way that they've started picking up proliferated constellations to, you know, send communications all over the earth. I bet they'll be buying some data centers too if these things are actually deployed.

This is where I put my shameless plug for the event here. The GP from SDA is going to come to our show and talk about all that stuff. All right. They've got a lot to say. and you'll be hearing it. You'll be hearing it straight from that. Look at that. But, you know, Golden Dome is a good example of the fact that the commercial industry has taken a leadership position in driving what they feel the government needs.

Again, there's so, I don't think the government knows what it needs, but the industry will say, we can do these kinds of things for you. And when you have a budget, a defense budget that you have now, the industry is going to think big, right? I mean, it's going to think massive and near impossible. And that's natural. And what, you know, we'll hear from some government to see what the needs are. I think the government this year, especially on the Space Force out, has done a really good job of really reexempting. examining their needs for space. You know, Space Force is still a relatively new concept, right?

And I think that's the other thing you're going to hear about at our show is how Space Force takes more of a leadership position in the commercial space development. and really like it evolves their concept of existence, I guess, in the Pentagon, right? Like what's what's driving their mission? But yeah, Golden Dome, data centers in space. I mean, these are things you can sell to the government with the budget. So again, maybe that's explanation number two, right? You can have a $1.5 trillion valuation or you could have a $1.5 trillion defense budget. Somebody's going to do something with that money, right?

It's just money. It's fungible. That's a big, big number. This is why I love my job because I can just sit, like, I can sit back and watch it like a hockey game. And it's best for me to do that. That's the way I serve the industry with a trade show. I just basically give people the space to talk about this stuff, like work it out, like inviting your two friends. to your basement they were fighting work it out um like drink it some wine and going to a karate

and go and pick my son up at karate but i mean if i if i worked at these companies i give a lot of credit to these people because i don't know if i could handle that kind of pressure these i mean they're always like every day at the cutting edge um it's amazing it's the expectations um they're put on these companies. It's unreal. Yeah, we like our jobs for the exact same reason. We're just asking questions here. And this is a praise to the industry,

because I really do believe it's like being on the front lines. It's, it's, you know, like, I wish all of our wars were fought intellectually and maybe technologically, but like this is what it is. It's a race against time. And, you know, we'll hopefully. we see some a few good surprises right the crazy thing is that the space industry like for a while SpaceX itself kind of dragged the space industry in one direction and then the performance of that kind of dragged the rest of the defense industrial complex in a direction where you have other

companies that are in other areas that now want to work like SpaceX or have try to have similar vibes or try to execute the same way or learn some lessons so in a lot of ways. I thought the space companies taught the rest of the defense industry how to shake out of their kind of like, you know, weird, huge prime contractor fugue state that they were in for the latter part of the 20th century. And then, then all the sudden between Starlink and Amazon getting in the game there and then the data center chat, now it's like, oh, space is also now just the tech industry and everyone has been, you know, and then SpaceX buys a social media company. And then tech, you know, and then tech. industry is now like, well, that's our future too. So now the space industry that we've all been nerding out about is at the driver's seat of how the defense industry should run and how the tech industry should run. And it's just like accumulating more stuff, which was always the storyline since like the space age, which I never thought was true. That like, oh, well, we're the cutting edge and we're, you know, we push the boundaries. And then that redefines everything down below

us. And it was like, I don't know, the NASA spin-off dock comes out every year. And you're like, I guess temper pedic mattresses, like, cool. Yeah, I mean, they're comfortable, but, like, it's not really, like, leading the technology. But then all of a sudden, they're at the forefront of defense and tech at the same moment in time, which is so much pressure. That's what you're saying, Jeff. All of the weight of this amount of capital is on their shoulders to, like,

well, the only place left for data centers is up. So please launch them, build them, operate them, and also sell those to the defense market and do all the things. And then we'll just, you know, coast on the, back end of that. Yeah. You know, what's missing, you know, interestingly, you were saying that, what's missing here is the pressure from the public.

The one thing that the government hasn't done is effectively, is sell these missions, these big projects to the public, whereas in the 60s and the 50s and 60s of the previous century, you had this like the public was behind the fight against time, right? So you had, this was a matter of like national pride importance, whereas the public today, you know, there's not the same kind of urgency or, you know, there's not a public, a general public push to succeed. And I think like in some of the same. ways for these big projects, especially like Mars and the moon, the one thing that's missing is that really like selling this to the public as to like, why. I think that's an essential

part to it as well. I don't think that you can do this without the general public behind you, because it's going to require moving money around. It's going to require putting a lot of trust in the hands of like, you know, companies that the people aren't familiar with. It's, I was just thinking about that. Or are familiar with and hate. When I jumped into the industry, I mean, that was the year, those were the years when, like, you know, the NASA, the space shuttle was retired. Like the last kind of big symbol of the government owned and operated space company were being dismantled. And the public just had lost interest in it because there were other things happening.

There was a big recession, right? There was the whole like, I mean, from the challenger right on to the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the public's mind was elsewhere. And, you know, the minute we started, the minute we started sending people back into space on privately owned spaceships, there was this moment of public awareness that I think was then quickly maybe like overshadowed by, the whole like private space tourism thing which kind of you know then the pandemic hit and people are like you know i need my you know i need to make income and and not die of COVID so like hard times for the public outreach yeah yeah it's interesting like the commercial industry is definitely leading the although i would say Starlink was the is the biggest thing that that would have i would put as like the first notch back the other direction that what you're talking about that

people are like, wow, this service is awesome. Correct. I've seen more regular people saying, wow, Starlink kicks ass than ever have cared about space before. Right. Like, you know, getting, you know, 50 megabits up and down is life changing for people. But I'm talking about like, you know, that's the clear, there's a clear business case for connectivity.

There's, that's like a slam dunk. I'm saying like the big projects like the Golden Dome, big projects like, you know, lunar mission. And the public still needs to be sold on that. Yeah. Yeah. Public still needs to be sold on that. And we have a lot of times a government will come to the industry and say, we need to tell a story to the public where, you know, in the past, it's always been like, but that's your job.

Like your government. Like you're spending this money. You're supposed to be going out to the public and saying this is why we're doing it. But, yeah. I just, I mean, I think it's interesting how like the time. shifts so fast. And that really, you were right, the commercial space industry is essentially a leading tech industry.

And they're driving government in a direction of what is possible. And, you know, the government is like, yeah, all right, here's a check. We'll have some of that. Yeah. We'll do that, sure. Anthony, that really, that Starlink story kind of cheapens your point about what being a hated ISP, hey? It does. That's the thing I'm most shocked about.

It is weird. I feel like, I don't know. What is it? I feel like 20, let's say, maybe it was just a smartphone era that generally shook this. But I feel like in the pre-2010 era, everybody hated their ISP. Like, no one was happy about it. They were annoyed.

They thought they were getting throttled all the time. The connectivity was bad. Maybe it was just fiber rolling out and Verizon actually competing against, you know, Comcast everywhere that I've ever lived. Like, it got better. I wasn't aware they don't hate them anymore. They still, they're like to like, like Verizon. I like, I actually like my Verizon stuff. I'm not, I'm not sponsored, but like the Fios, Fios has been great. And, uh, maybe it's just a fact that like most people are doing most of their internet on their phone over five. That's what I mean. They don't notice it. It's like, yeah.

I just felt like it was such a prevalent, like, ISP hate was covered in like tech blogs a lot. And I just don't feel like that's there anymore to the same. extent of their data capping me and this, that, and the other. I guess net neutrality was the last big culture war over that, uh, which has evaporated entirely. And since then we've never really, I just don't think ISPs get covered. But I thought, hey, SpaceX getting in the game. Like, everybody hates ISPs. They're going to be. And maybe they just haven't hit, gotten that part of the, of the, uh, you know, of their life cycle yet, Jake. Like, once you start getting data capped, you'll be pissed. There's still like, okay, well, I, I feel like I'm like the perfect example use case.

of that argument, right? Because like I don't really, I don't really, like, objectively, I don't really like, objectively, I don't really like, it goes out when it rains and it's like way slower than a fiber connection. But it's the only thing I can get where I am. And it is a hundred times better than the alternative. Like, the alternative is like a Hughes Net three megabit down thing from a, a little antenna on my roof that points at some receiver somewhere. Like, it's, it's brutal. We would cancel this show if you did any other option. So it's like, Starlink is like not good and it changed my life. You know, It's like that weird dichotomy of service. And so the people that have it right now,

like most of the customers are upgrading from absolute garbage, right? And so, but let me tell you, if there was back to competition again, right? If there was a viable Kuiper alternative, you know, Amazon Leo alternative and something else, and all of those were like racing to the bottom on price and everything was getting cut the way like airlines do and exist. ISPs do where you don't get anything and it's capped and you got to pay extra for everything just to like just to try and get that that the price that they put on the flyer down as low as they can go just to try and get in the door like it'd be a different story you know I I was under the impression that we're in an era where tech enjoys like the lowest reputation level of trust

that we've ever seen like in general I mean I think everybody agrees that they need connectivity to complain about this, right? But like they, you know, I think that's another big challenge, I think, for our industry is that I think, yeah, I think people are, the trust in technology is at an all-time low. You know, I mean, like Amazon and SpaceX are not like well-liked companies according to surveys, right? like you see it and they're just the brand trust has definitely you know moved down and to be real about it it's because tech has been politicized in the last few years but that's a challenge that's a that's a that's a that's a big challenge uh and i think we need to we need to address it um if we're

going to talk about getting the public behind some of these big missions um yeah yeah when you have the same the same people that are building the rockets are are also building like these these these walled gardens on the internet where you're the only way you can talk to your friends and family is in this like, you know, highly politicized misinformation landscape with ads and, and, you know, all your privacy is just gone. You know, all your data sold to third parties. Like, that's not a very fun environment to operate in from, you know, okay, I got connectivity, but, you know, not to what I wanted to connect to. So it's hard. It's hard when that's, when that's the same crowd, it's a really difficult, uh, uh, PR problem, right?

Yeah. There was a time not too long ago when space was the most bipartisan, like, paradise land. No one argued. Everyone got along. I mean, you can get, I've worked with Democrats and Republicans. No problem sitting at the same table, all on the same page, all in the same, you know, all with the same vision. And I'll be honestly, and this is definitely the wine talking here. But like the one thing, when you said that, when Elon bought Twitter, that was a moment where I was like, that was a face palm moment for me because I was like, that's it. The days of like everyone getting along are over. When the market leader does this and there's going to be people taking sides. And fortunately, I mean, fortunately, again, I feel like I've worked well with everybody in every administration, everybody I've engaged with. has always come to our event with the same purpose. It's the further leadership in space.

But yeah, like, to get the public trust, you know, is going to take some time. Yeah. I mean, you can just look at, you know, like Jared Isigman's confirmation hearing, right? Where like all the hard questions were not really about Jared Eisenman. They were part of Elon Musk, right? It's like, so that gives you kind of indication about where the, where the politics are, right? I feel like the job of NASA Sorry

No, yours is more interesting to mine The job of the NASA administrator Always makes people less political Like they always go into the job And people think they're going to be super partisan They always exit the job A lot less partisan I think every single NASA administrator goes in

Because they get told about the aliens Yeah They show them the JFK files and the aliens And then they snap back to the midline Yeah, I I think it's generally because, like, you know, you're working with such a wide, diverse group of people that are all on the same mission, right? And you come out of it and you're still like, you know, you, you always, your job is to advance

the mission, the mission of the U.S. space program, but also to maintain U.S. space leadership. And I think that, I don't know, I, this is a credit. I mean, I see it with Isaacman. I definitely see it with Bridenstein. and Bob, you know, and Senator Nelson, they've always gone in and people have said, you know, they're going to bring a partisan angle and never, never ends up working out that way, fortunately.

Isaac Min thing is interesting this week with like the Starliner stuff coming out and then even just him having to go out and talk about wet dress rehearsals of SLS is like smash cut to a year ago in the tweet threads you would have about the art of his program, right? It's like, it's, it is headspinny, but yeah, you get into like the, functional, you know, what do I need to get done? This is the messaging I need to put out there. And you just get, you actually get contact with people that are working on the thing. And then your perspective changes because of that as well.

Well, and not only that, but you should have them on the show and get a couple drinks in them and say, so what, what mellowed you out? What was it? Was it the training video? Is there something in the training video? They're like, oh, my goodness. It's like the first day at Severance at Levin, you know, he's laying on the conference table. I mean, I think part of that's got to be just like a professionalism aspect, right? Because it's like, okay, when you're outside looking in, you're just like, I'm me and I have my opinions.

But then like when you sign the document and you get sworn in, now I'm the NASA administrator, it's like, okay, what is my job? Well, that's like written into law. And there's also laws that says what you're supposed to do, right? Like when the law says the NASA administrator shall make an SLS program, you're like, okay, well, that's what I signed up for. I'm fueling this thing. He's out there fixing the hydrogenics himself, you know? So, like, in a sense, yeah, it's like, that's, he's doing exactly what he agreed to do, you know, and it's. And guess what, Jake, if I, if I was successful in my run for NASA administrator in this era, I would have done the same thing.

I'd have been like, these were true professionals fueling this thing. And it would be funny if he went out and was like unhinged on one of these press conferences, though. Cancel it right now. Or just like, why do we not have a test tank? You know, he at least talked to journalists about this. But like, I don't know. If I were him, I would have said it in one of these things. Like, probably should have had a test tank to fuel.

But I would have done it in this hat, too. Everyone takes me very seriously in this hat. He doesn't want Senator Shelby to bring him into his office, right? Man. Yeah. The thing you're talking about with the politicization of tech and space and all that, I try to wonder, though, like, I don't know why I try to wonder. I do wonder this.

Is that merely the fact that they have a bigger prominence in people's life now? And anything that gets that prominence in American life gets politics? Like, football, big enough, that has achieved politics status. We will argue about, like, what you do during the anthem and what the halftime show is and what you wore on your cleats and all that. Which needs you're done to take. You've achieved political status because you've garnered enough, like, notoriety. variety in people's lives. And before, the tech industry was like nerds with iPhones that didn't

even have the app store yet. And it was, you know, nerds with, you know, satellite, big satellite phones on their cargo ships that were talking to the Arridium network originally. But then now it's everyone's life. So, ergo politics. Like that, I guess what I'm saying is I criticize more of our general culture for that than space itself. Yeah. No, I agree. But there are some people that are very online that should maybe log off for one or two that we have in mind yeah especially when you're

you're you're you're you're representing something that you need this kind of consensus consensus on but you know I think you're right like we live in very we live in very decisive times

and connected times maybe to connected at some point we all need connectivity but you know I I think that like you know again when they it's weird when they come to the show like the act the public act drops and then you see people who like put on the professionalism and say let's solve a problem I just wish we'd see more of that in public right like I wish I wish there didn't have to be this kind of act to grab people's attention yeah yeah but yeah oh wishful thinking, right?

40% success rate. But, you know, yeah, again, it's an exciting industry that there's so much going on that that's just really exciting from a scientific and like just things that we're able to do now in space that would be unheard of years ago. with all the missteps we take though we have made some incredible strides forward and

you know it's a cool thing about satellite week is that you really get to learn about all these really cool projects that are happening you know yeah what's the give us the deeds where should people go if they're can they get tickets still if they want to come hang

oh yeah yeah uh sat show dot com you can register uh you know all there's programs for all different types of attendees anybody with any pass can go to the general sessions. We've got a great couple of general sessions lineup. You can see all the leading operators on Tuesday, the new director of the Office of Space Commerce on Wednesday,

and then a big talk with one former NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstein, and a bunch of industry leaders talking about the future space economy. You got Amazon making a big, announcement. You've got SES link talking about their merger. Yeah, I mean, it's, you've got all the leading launchers on the same panel talking about, you know, the future of propulsion, which that's, I mean, we, we could do another hour on that, right? Just like, what do we go from here in terms of propulsion systems? Yeah, we're my nukes. Yeah. We're my nukes at.

You and Jared. Love it. I want to go on nuclear propulsion. Would you have went as hard in nuclear propulsion if you were Jared Eisenman? Would that be your thing too, Jake? Well, I think I'm already on record saying the propulsion development of weird stuff like nuclear is like, that's like NASA's wheelhouse. That's exactly what they should be working on, right? Because there's not going to be some startup.

You're like, we're going to get into nuclear propulsion. We're going to disrupt news. No, it's not going to happen, right? They'll drown in regulatory paperwork before they're even out of the womb. So, you know, I think that's a perfect place for NASA to be, yeah. I'm still waiting for Space elevator. That was the thing. I was like, oh, I mean, I could push a button and be in space.

That's. They'll think too hard about it, you know. No, I'm not. But, you know, water propulsion is another thing, you know, thing some companies are working on, you know, we'll save it. But that's the kind of stuff that, spin launch. Yeah. Lots of interesting ideas.

and concepts out there. And hopefully, you know, like I said, 40% success rate. That's right. Yeah, yeah. You can calculate your own percentage of what you think spin launch is worth in that. Are they on the 40 side or the 60 side? I don't think they're on the 40 side. Maybe on off the moon.

I still think that, you know, you've got even got an atmosphere to deal with. That's a good one. There are a lot of people in a space industry who are like yelling at me right now. We never do anything with a 40s. percent success rate crazy like yeah um i'm just saying overall like i the people i know there are people out there that like do these these calculations to the nines i get it yeah i'm just saying they get in history yeah business more right than they are in this case yeah yeah we've had a i mean that trail of destruction in our wake that's just tech and capitalism baby like it's messy

you have a lot of wrong ideas to get something right yeah yeah i'm comfortable with that You know? Yeah, for sure. Cool. Well, it's been a pleasure talking with you guys. I got to go. Yeah. You know,

you got to pick up my kid. I just want to my, my, you mentioned COVID earlier, which made me realize, wasn't your show happening when everyone locked down during 2020?

Yeah. That's funny. It was the last day of our show got, got canceled by the D.C. Department of Health. That's a fun little. Yeah.

I remember that. Yeah. And, um, that's, also the same year I asked Elon Musk, are you ever going public? And he said, zero percent chance. He was 40 percent right. And he said, I don't want to go bankrupt. But now here we are six years later. Yeah. And then we, you know, we were very fortunate because the way our show falls on the calendar,

we only missed one year of the show. But we actually didn't even miss it. We postponed it. because we always were landing on when COVID cases were down. Like, we are super lucky. I know a lot of shows that were like, oh, man, like the shows that came in the fall after everyone went on vacation. Real shame. But I'm glad that all of these shows survived. Well, we had a couple that went away for a little bit, but most of our industry survived.

I'm very happy with that. I think that's something to celebrate. I really did not know how this industry was going to survive like two years of a shutdown. Yeah. But it did. And that's to our credit. Well, thanks for hanging out with us, Jeff. Yeah, that's great.

We'll have you back and I should come hang out. I should come to the show. So I've got to work that. Yeah, come on. Get a press pass and see everything. I'm so close. I'm so close. It's stupid that I'm not there. So I'll wear this hat.

If you wear that hat, you'll definitely get in for free. I'll add you heard it here from the chair. If you wear a hat with lots of feathers, you get in for free. I'll see if Jake will break his embargo for it and wear a Canada hat. It's a wrong day to ask me, but I'm pretty sad. I know, I know. That's true. Well, I'll ask you a Monday.

All right, y'all, Jake, do we have a particular plan next week? Are we rolling with the news? Should we talk about artists next week? Probably. probably that and Starliner Yeah, Starliner. Okay, we're good. Okay, there it is.

Well, thanks for hanging out with us, Jeff. Thank you guys so much. Great talking to you. See you later. Bye. Cheers later. Bye. One, two, three, four, five, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.