Off-Nominal - 260 - Launching on Thursday (with Scott Edwards)

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Jake and Anthony are joined by Scott Edwards, Director and Executive Producer of To the Black, a documentary chronicling Firefly’s journey from bankruptcy to almost bankruptcy again to international drama to orbit and all the moments in between.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 260 - Launching on Thursday (with Scott Edwards) - YouTubeTo the Black – MovieFirefly co-founder Markusic to step down as CEO - SpaceNewsFeds who forced Ukrainian investor to sell rocket company backtrack years later - Ars TechnicaFollow ScottAustin Video Production - Merit ProductionsFollow 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

TLS and go for main engine, start. Go at throttle up. Negative return. Anthony, I have a very important question for you. Are you ready to go to the black? It's like, what is you going to ask? I think I'm ready. You're ready?

Okay. I think I'm ready. I've watched it again shortly before this. I'm ready, Jake. I've never been more ready. Okay, excellent. Yeah, yeah. So we've got Scott Edwards here with us today about

talk about his documentary to the black, which is going to dive into Firefly, all the nuts and bolts of Fireflies start, I guess. I mean, there's a specific time window of this documentary, so we're learning a little bit about the early part of it. Start and then start again, and then the other time they start again, and then the new other one that they did.

Exactly, exactly. So Scott, welcome to the show. We're happy to have you. Oh, thanks. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to see you guys. Thanks. Yeah. Did you bring a drink to start with today?

I did. I brought a drink lately since making this film. Been drinking out of this. I don't know if you can see it. Budget's been a little tight because I spent... You got to do the influence of thing where you're on your face. There you got a big hand in front of it. Man, that is...

That's a tiny little... It's too... Is that a little... Oh man, I'm trying here. I thought I was good at cameras. We got it for a second. There it is. So I spent six years filming this company on my own dollar and budgets a little tight.

So lately until your viewers go and rent this movie and enjoy it and have fun, I'm just drinking out of this. There we go. Incredible. That's a true independent filmmaker right there trying to live a dream. I love it. I feel guilty now. I feel like our drinks are going to be just excess now. Yeah. When I look at you guys,

you are like the one percenters to me. I'm just trying to get a movie out. Those independent podcasts just really have it over the independent lawmakers. A lot of money in the independent new space podcast. We just have to buy less gear, Scott. That's the only difference. So that's the pro tip. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah Anthony you got something I got you know The most Philadelphia area drink I've That is possible that I've never had on this show I just have yinglings today Jake This is like the Takatae of Philadelphia I guess

In your in your parlance They're Phillies ones You got to drink these ones out Now that the Phillies are the worst It's we said this last week Jake The Philadelphia sports scene has gotten zero percent better Since last time I talked about this We've lost everything since

I brought that up. It's been abysmal, and I sat in the rain at the Eagles game on Sunday while we blew it. It was great. So I have a couple of yinglings left over from the tailgate, you know. So here they are. And the rain, the rain makes it worse. Yeah. And it wasn't even like rain.

It was just misty and then super windy. So. Oh, that's the worst. I know exactly what you're talking about. It's the worst. Yeah. I had one of the disposable ponchos on, though. You forget how good they work until you're,

in the upper levels of the link and uh it's quite by the second half it wasn't raining i was just under there for warmth because i it was just cozy under the plastic bag you know so there we go that's it jake that's my week super super high end as scott uh you know described we got we got tiny cups plastic bag clothes all right what do you got jake what are you drink it i just got a little no i just got a little little little screwdriver today so just some more juice and rum. I had a little bit of leftover of this. So this is Matusisland Grand Reserva. So yeah, I think it's Cuban, right? It's nice. No idea. Never seen in my life. It's Cuban. So it's nice. Well,

Cheers, yeah. All of that looks wonderful to me. So cheers. There you go. He's committed to a bit. We're going to stick to it. Full motions. With the fingers up to him. All right. So why don't we start with, we always have to ask this question when it's, you know, people like documentaries and books and stuff, but like why? Why, what drew you to this? And why do you, why did you want to be a, why did you want to make a movie about Firefly of all,

all the companies and all the industries out there in the world? Well, that's a great question. Really, when I started this project, it was 2016. I have a marketing company in Austin and we shoot for companies but our dream was movies you know, you always want to make movies and so we've made short films,

me and my friends, and we've won some contest, done this and that. But documentary started to be my interest and then I was there filming for a client, Autodesk. We're filming like a usual kind of marketing video. These guys were building their first rocket

in AutoCAD and Inventor, I think, whatever the Autodesk software was. And I met them on that day that we're supposed to be there. And this guy, Eric Sullivan, says, look, you can't use this. Whatever you do, just film it. And so it's like 8 a.m. I'm meeting these people. It's that scene right there that's on your screen.

Or no, it was a different scene, but it looked like that right there. And they all toast champagne and they announced that they had raised $30 million of funding, and it was electric and really exciting. And I thought, this is cool. I don't even know what these guys are doing, but I'm just stepping in. And it's exciting from that moment. So I thought, you know, maybe this is the documentary I should make. And that guy, Eric, continued to pressure me and suggest, you know, what we're doing is really inspiring.

It's going to be awesome. You should film it. Come back, film it, film it, film it. And so I kind of got to know them for a few weeks and would go film a rocket test here or there. And it was sort of like getting to know, sort of like dating the company. Like, are you guys interesting? Are you fun? Like, are you worth it?

And the rocket tests were so exciting. and the founder, CEO at the time, Tom, was a really transparent, fun guy. And then a few weeks later, I was still getting to know them. And he pulls me aside and says, kind of, oh, shit, we just lost our funding. And I'm like, you're kidding. And so the story just took off right away. So I continue to follow them. So to answer your question, I didn't like seek them out.

Like, hey, I want to make a movie about Firefly. I just met these guys and they were interesting. and I had a camera with me, and so then I continued, and six years later, I was done filming. They were always supposed to be, by the way, never listened to a rocket scientist if he tells you anything on a calendar. They were always a year or two away from...

Says the fucking movie producer. Yeah, don't listen to them. Yeah, they don't know anything. So I'm actually not totally poor. I've got water here with some. Heck yeah. But, yeah, so they were always a year or two away from filming. So I was always following them for a year or two.

And then six years later, we were done filming. So that's it. So were you a space nerd when you set into this or you were not at all? No. No, I don't really care that much about space. Still? Now I definitely don't. Now you've been through the ringers.

You're like, well, screw this industry. No. I mean, I'm just normal it. In that sense, space is cool. You know, I like to see what's going on a little bit, but I'm not a space nerd. I'm interested just in human stories and drama, people doing really difficult things, adversity, perseverance, all that kind of stuff and cool things to film. And that's what this was to me.

This to me was a business venture. They were trying to raise, at that point, $30 million. Then they were going to raise like $150 million. One of the guys told me I interviewed, he's like, this is not a software app. He's like half a million bucks doesn't get you very far in rocketry. And so these sound bites I loved, you know, this to me is a huge gamble and a huge promise. These are high stakes. And so I wanted to see these guys, you know, corral millions of dollars here in Austin, Texas,

and go out in the cattle fields and the surrounding rural area and build a rocket and see if it could go to space. I was all up for that. What was happening in space at the time wasn't something I knew a lot about. I began to learn about the small launch space race that was going to be. going on, SpaceX had moved on to bigger rockets and you had rocket labs and you had Virgin Galactic and maybe Blue Origin, but they were doing other things and everybody was going to race to sort of fulfill that small payload kind of niche in the market. And these, Firefly was

committed to be that group. And so I was learning about that as I went. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of think the message of space is like, to me the message of space, the further up you go, so first you, you, you, you ascend it gets cold and then it gets really hard to leave and then eventually there's no oxygen and it's just like as you go up it's like screaming to you go back turn around like all the signs are not here back there so i sort of think the lesson of space the further you explore will always be to further elevate the specialness of earth somehow i think that is the lesson now i love of the tech and satellites that we have up there and like making use of that for technology here is fantastic.

I mean, but, yeah, that's my interest. Yeah, it was a, it was a while, like looking back on it now, that time period, the small, the small launch race is very interesting. And like, we just had, we just had Chris Kemp on the show who is, is the CEO of Astro, who was also competing. He's going to be so mad. He left him out of the list, Scott. He's going to be like he mentioned Peter Beck and not me.

It's going to be all the thing. I love it. But, you know, and it's, we chat with him about how it was like, you know, he's trudging through the graveyard of all these like small companies that, the small rocket companies that tried and didn't make it. And it's, it is a big gamble, like you said. Like there was this lot of money just kind of went out and did some stuff and maybe didn't necessarily pay off in the end, right?

Yeah, I think when I was following them, they told me there was a 100 registered rocket companies at that time, something like that. Yeah. And the idea was the market was always only going to sustain three, maybe, four, nobody knew for sure. And so it was a race to be one of those top three or four. And immediately everybody started saying, you know, Rocket Labs was super respectable and great, but rockets not big enough.

So they're like, you know, you got to have a bigger one than that. And so that was what, you know, Firefly was looking to fill that. fill that niche. That's crazy because what you describe makes sense to Jake and I. We haven't even talked that much about the film since we've watched it, but the

I mean you spanned so many weird eras of this company, right? You were there before the original bankruptcy. They went bankrupt and disappeared from Public View for a year. They come back. They got this Ukrainian guy funding them. That goes sideways during

the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He gets kicked out. Then Tom gets kicked out. They lose access to Vandenberg. They get access to Vandenberg. They launch a rocket. It fails. They launch another one. It works. They since have launched a bunch of rockets that some have worked, some have not. This has been one of the most up and down companies that we track. But there were, so as like nerds like Jake and I who have followed this since the original outset, right? I mean, you started filming this right around when Jake and I started doing podcasts like this. So we've spanned the same era. And so the first 20 minutes of the film, to us feel like a whirlwind, because they're like,

wait, there's like six storylines in there that Scott probably knows more about than he's telling us in this film, but we're like super interested in. And then even the Poliakov getting bounced era is like, wait, wait, wait, stop. Let's do an hour and a half on that because it's like absolutely crazy. And we really don't know that much about it. So I'm curious if those moments in time, when, when you're witnessing the tumult of a company, were those things that you just didn't find,

like you didn't want to track these things or you didn't really have the insight to track some of those deeper business storylines and you were like, I'm just trying to film rocket engines and stuff. I don't care about all this other drama. Like, get your shit together, guys. Or was it just like, that doesn't make a good movie, like office drama?

I don't know. Like, what you know? Is it guess my question? Well, that's a great question. I love that. We've got lots to talk about. Let's see. Well, there was always the challenge of I wanted to make a Verete film. Cinema Verete as people, some of you know, means you're following along as the story unfolds.

The documentary Cartel Land really inspired me. I love Cartel Land. It's amazing. It feels like you're watching a fictional movie, but it is a documentary. It's cinematic. You're there when it happens. You're there when these guys get into gun, fires, gun battles, whatever. So I wanted to do Firefly that way.

I wanted to capture them as it unfolds. So that was my main inspiration. I was really trying to do that. The alternative would be you just sit people down and say, hey, tell me about that. And that's just not really what I was interested in. So then all of those storylines that you discussed needed to work for me as something that watched it unfold. And a lot of those are difficult to do. Now, I got to be there when they're laying people off, when they're cutting budgets.

when they're announcing their funding fails, all that's good. But to bring up a specific one, when Max Polyakov bought the company, I hadn't gotten official permission yet from Firefly, and they weren't in a contract with me yet. So then I had to win Max and his, I had to win him to it. And that was really hard to do. And eventually Tom and Eric Solowon convinced him to do that. And then he didn't want to be filmed a lot.

And he didn't like that. At one time he put his hand in the face of my camera and said, too much, too much. And so I was always at risk of him getting too temperamental. He didn't really like it. Now, he wasn't here most of the time. So most of the time I'm here with Tom and they're all for it. You know, he's just living his dream, building rockets. Tom is a true inventor.

He just wants nothing to hide. He wants you to watch all that he's doing, no problem. Max has business interests. And so maybe he feels different. Well, it's a time too. This is the stuff that like our world intersects your world. There was, everyone was digging into Max's background and where he made all the money. And like that, that was coming out through even non-space journalistic outfits. So I would bet a lot of that was the pressure of that from his side, you know.

And then how it all unfolded. There was the whole Snopes article. And there was all the stuff about, you know, where he made his money. I stayed up all weekend. I was very worried about all of that, trying to figure out what's going on. and that was at the time when I was actually creating my contract with Firefly that would give me final cut and that would allow me to basically show up when I want film and leave and own the footage.

That was really important to me. It wasn't going to be like, hey, guys, we're all going to sit in a marketing room afterwards and decide how we like the film. Like, that can't happen. It has to be a real independent film. And I got to tell the story however I want to tell it, you know, because I'm not being paid to do it. And so in drafting that contract, I got,

nervous because I didn't really know who or what Max Polykov was or what he was like or what he would think of me. And so, yeah, I tried to figure all that stuff out. And there's just some stuff I just couldn't figure out. Max hasn't, I don't know much about his past. There's also a lot of people who he has enemies and there's people who, you know, may spread stuff about him. So I don't know much about that. And he wasn't going to talk to me about it. And there's a cultural thing there. like Ukrainians there's something different there like they're they don't they don't trust easy they just they didn't trust me i wasn't i went and filmed in his office i had interviews with them um and also he was really difficult to understand and there was a time when i put him in the movie

and i was like this is just very difficult to understand his english and what is the point this is dragging on too long so along the way i didn't know the answer how much of this would be in how much wouldn't. I explored a lot of storylines that got cut. And in the end, I didn't have an expose film. There was no expose to do. It was a, so I just realized, okay, well, that's all kind of boring, and there's not much there developing. So I left some of that drama out because it didn't really pay off. And then what else? So Sipheus. The Siphyas claim was wild. So for those who don't know, the government, am I getting this right? You're on tracker.

Yeah. Yeah, the government, it's been many years. The government, the government regulates these rocket companies so much because rockets are missiles. This is missile technology. And so it's pretty wild. They began to look at Max's ownership. And I think they said, look, you can't own this. And by the way, this was like a few, this was, the Russian tanks were basically getting ready to invade.

if they had invaded and taken over as people thought they would, all of a sudden this would be slightly Russian-owned rocket company? I mean, that's too much, that's too dangerous for our security. So there was this whole process to force him out. And I tried to film and cover some of that, but again, Max didn't want to be filmed. He wasn't even in the country. There was all kinds of, it just wasn't fun to watch. So I stuck to, this is a team story.

we're building a rocket. This thing goes into space. This company's worth billions. If it fails, they're not. It's worth nothing. It's kind of an all-in bet, and I just stuck to that. Yeah. I mean, it's not, there's almost nothing that has, there's been a few, you know,

reports over the years of that side. But even the, I mean, you had Eric Berger in the, in the show, Ashley Vance, his name was up on screen as one of the, I guess, the original story that broke when he was getting forced out. And, you know, those two and others were always digging into everything. And very little has actually come out. because it is hard to get access at that stuff. But the thing that I loved about being grounded in, like, living in the company

was, like, really hard numbers and a feeling around what it's like to be at a company at that time when Jake and I cover all the companies who are always delayed. But there was something about the way everyone's talking about it internally and the context you provide in the film of, like, no, these, we are three months behind, so we are $12 million over budget. It was like such a clean calculation of it costs this much to run the company every week. We're this far behind. So that's how much money we're down compared to what our trajectory is.

And I not that it's easy for us to glaze over that stuff, Jake, when we talk about like, oh, everything's late. But we don't often do the math because we just don't have those numbers. We don't have insight in those conversations. Seeing the, a whiteboard of like how much money internal structures is costing or the faring cost this much. that stuff I thought was a that's the insight we don't get even in articles and journalism around these storylines so that to me like that's the those those are the crowning moments of the film

is just that weird little tiki talk tiki tech you know run-of-the-mill stuff within a company but we don't you don't see that anywhere else honestly scott well that's what's so fun about firefly for whatever reason these guys were really competent on the rocketry Tom was leading that and he had worked for every other major space company from he worked at virgin he worked at uh blue origin SpaceX NASA he'd worked for them all and then he went and started his own but I don't know if people know this or not but Firefly just was always raising only just enough money and meanwhile relativity raised like 200 million dollars and they'd hardly done anything but said that they would print a rocket and I mean that's it they're like we're gonna command P

print the rocket and everyone they've printed 40 and then one work, one sort of work, and they were like, well, that's it. Yeah. And I remember the Firefly guys being frustrated because they would go to investors, which, by the way, there's only a limited pool of investors on this earth who are willing and have enough capital that they can participate in such a risky investment as rocketry. So there really is this limited pool. And they'd go to them and they'd say, oh, yeah, well, we're already in relativity.

And then this was just really frustrating the Firefly guys. because they saw themselves as so much more competent. So Firefly is really competent, but they're not so good at raising money. And they just always had just enough money. So then they're out there burning a million dollars a week. That was their burn rate. Most of my film, they're burning a million bucks a week just to supply, staff, everything, materials.

And so, yeah, as you said, if they fall three months behind, it's 12 million bucks. And then they had to figure out how to shorten their schedule. so improve in their design process, etc. Or go find some money somewhere. And that's what's fun about Firefly. They're the you and me. They're the everyday man. They're not Elon.

They're not Jeff Bezos. It's Tom and his team in these fields trying to build a rocket. And that was always fun for me to watch and film. And it's really remarkable that they were successful and that they've been as successful as they are because it kind of is that. let's start it in our garage kind of story. Granted, it's not a garage. It's a nice little office, but it was kind of rockets on a budget.

Yeah, as shoestring as you can be when you're running a multimillion dollar engineering effort, I guess. And like for months, for months, I would talk to these guys and they were always like, I'm like, hey, how you doing? They're like, fine. we only have two weeks in the bank and I'm like again yeah if this thing doesn't go through by Friday there's no firefly on Monday

and I'm like you told me that six weeks ago and they're like I know and it's just like constant that was like that for years and they were they were always barely getting by not being a space guy did you think like that's how all the space companies were or did you get enough of that intelligence

at the time that like others relatively have it, no pun intended, have it made in a different way. I think I got a sense early on. These guys were just not as good at raising money. You know, they had a hard time finding money. And I feel like when everyone else would have been like, hey, how much is this going to cost? You know, the Firefly would answer, maybe we could do it for $30 million and someone else was going, really?

I was going to say $150 million. And then you're like, yeah, maybe you should have come up on your first. Like, maybe come up a little. Should have padded it. Yeah. Like, like, I don't know, maybe some contingency. You know? They need to talk to a bunch of freelancers first to see how they price things and then go for there.

Yeah. So interesting. There's been, all right, so we covered the Polikov moment, but the Marcosic getting kicked out in the post. post-PE era. I kind of forgot, honestly. Like the first time I watched the film, I was like, oh yeah, that's right. That happened.

And then I'm like, I wonder if there's been follow-up since. There has been absolutely zero Tom Marcousik news since. There has been no article written since he stepped down. There's been nothing about here's how it went down or what went down. We all collectively moved on because Firefly started launching and then doing Lunar Landers and all this other stuff. We got, you know, we moved on with our life. But there has been zero.

And I find that quite strange. Like, did he step down and be like, oh, I'm going to just go off the grid for a while? Was that a stated intention? Or do you think that there's something else? Like, what insight you had that would make you think that's why it went that way? I mean, Tom remains connected to the company. So he's remained as, like, in a. advisor. Some of that can be an official sort of front-facing story and all that. And then I think

some of that is real. He's there when they need him. So yeah, I'm not sure what to say about that. I think it's public knowledge that he's the highest single shareholder in Firefly. So he has an interest to continue to see Firefly succeed. You know, yeah, I'm not. sure to say about that. Well, I guess we'll find out the story when he no longer does, when he sells all his firefighter shares like he sold his SpaceX shares. So, yeah, he probably did a math on now. I mean, movie covers it. You know, I had, I was able to get access to someone who screen recorded the meeting, the company-wide all-hands meeting where Tom announces to the company that I'm stepping down as CEO. It was all very unexpected, and it was a surprise.

And it was right before their second launch when the rocket that he had built, he and his team, of course, but that he just led, was about to make it. And they had him step down right then. And I think for a lot of people, that was unexpected. Some people were more okay with it, and a lot of people weren't. But that was forced out. It was new private equity. They came in and they bought Max Polykov's shares. And they came in and he had to go.

And that happens a lot. It's really sad. You know, you start a company and you put everything into it. Everything into it. And along the way, you have to trade little pieces of equity, little piece of equity. And all of a sudden you look up and you don't own 51% anymore. And someone says, hey, hey, you're done. And so he was done. Yeah. Especially when you're a polarizing figure, as Markuzik was through history, you know. Yeah. And I think also, like my take on it is just my unofficial take is he's a, he's like an inventor. He's a starter. He's the brain. He's a Thomas Edison type guy. He's the guy who would get this thing started.

And then once it's started and you need someone else to stabilize it, probably. And probably he would be happier off starting something new, you know? And he is. He's building a plane right now. He's working on a plane that can go anywhere in the world in like 45 minutes. So it's like a rocket plane. So, yeah, we'll hear more from him. I hope to have cool things coming up.

Yeah, I can call him up, I guess. Go over to the source. He's like, back to build a bike. I'm building a plane. But I think all in all that relationship's good. You know, he's committed to Firefly. He wants them to continue to succeed. And they were good to him.

Yeah. I wanted to ask about, like, some of the shots. So I'm filming Rockets has always, we end up adjacent to the rocket watching community and how to film these things. And, you know, like the the way like exhaust can blow out your exposure and how you have to have like the keepout zone because you can't be close to it, but you want to be close to it because you want to get a camera close to it. And so you did some drone shots. I was just curious maybe just from a technical standpoint. Like what's some of the fun stuff you got to film and what did you learn from it and, you know, what did you learn not to do?

How many, how many did you melt? How many drones died in the fire? And, yeah. Those are great questions. I actually don't think I melted anything. I'm surprised I didn't. If you did, you would have a lot smaller Lego cup to be drinking out of today. That's for sure.

That's true. Let's see, yeah. So for those who don't know, filming rockets, like the rocket, when it's all loaded with oxygen and everything, liquid ox or whatever, and it's pressurized, you got to stay like half a mile away almost. So, no, people can't go near it. So before they did that, I've got to set up a camera. The problem is I've got to make media run long enough because I can't trigger it from far away.

And if I wanted to, I got to run Ethernet cable or whatever. That's really difficult. Some people have that infrastructure, but they didn't. So for me to do that, I've got to have media that can run for hours and it plugged in and battery for hours. It was really difficult. So we figured out we would, I don't know, I filmed it with Black Magic cameras, high dynamic range. That was really cool. stopped down a whole lot.

Lots of extra batteries. Tried to press record, go away. Three hours later, I'm like, I hope it's still rolling. And then, you know, after a while we got better at it, I'd keep a drone in the air. That was helpful. The first rocket shot I ever filmed, I thought was the coolest, probably. I set a tripod up directly in the line of sight with the rocket engine.

And it's probably 50 yards away. the plume of the rocket is so powerful, it lifts the camera up on the tripod, and then it slams it back down. And so when we came back and watched that, we were just geeking out. We thought it was so cool. Like Michael Bay or something had filmed this rocket shot,

and it had this Hollywood effect. Like, it just was slammed back down. And so that was really fun. Can I show it, or should we do no spoilers? Yeah, show it. Show it, although it looks better after you rented for 499 on Amazon.

You could definitely buy it for when the when Sipheus reclaims all of this footage or whatever. Oh God, don't say that. Like, sorry, Scott,

you no longer own this. That's property of the US government. Yeah, I finally found it. Oh, also, all the color with these, the locals and the interviews that you had with with everybody in the area. Here's the shot you're talking about.

It's just, I didn't want to put the sound. Yeah. You got to pay Scott money to get the sound because it is absolutely glorious. It's a fun movie. It does look insane. Yeah.

Yeah. Killer shots. That was fun. That was just our first time and that was really fun. There you go. There's another angle. That's slow mobe. 90 frames a second probably.

That's so fun. There's another angle. Then they're watching it. in their office. So this was fun. This was their first test that I filmed, and they wanted to do a full duration test. And the full duration means the engine can work

enough to get to space. They did on their first try. And this is when he sits me down and says, so there's been good days and bad days, and today we have both. I just lost my investment because of Brexit. And he's like, now I've got to go to Silicon Valley and knock on doors and beg for money.

And he's like, and I was like, really? Is that, can you get more money? He's like, we have two weeks left, two weeks of money. And I'm like, man, you guys don't have a savings account or like a contingency or a little backup? Maybe a credit card or somebody could use? Like, I don't know. It would have been nice to think of that. That is crazy, though.

I was shocked the whole time that, you know, because I think that what's interesting is like the two death or near deaths of Firefly. that have happened. One felt very typical and one felt very atypical. But the more that you talk about being close with them and realizing that they're raising just enough and not going beyond, like maybe they both were atypical. Because a lot of times we cover stories of, you know, companies raising money and it's, you know, they haven't even hit that next milestone yet. But, oh, this funding is to then accelerate the one that's like two out. And that's just them building that runway. So I get, yeah, yeah. It's like I never really considered that as an ethos kind of decision of what are we actually trying to do here.

And was there any influence that that they should go farther on these other rounds? Or were you joining the storyline at the point where like they already are in this hole and they're digging out? You never were there when they were planning not to get in this hole in the first place. I think they had, I'm just making a guess here. It appeared to me that they had the ambition to build an affordable rocket or the most affordable rocket. most affordably and fastest. And like there's that rule, you know, do you want it, what is it, fast, cheap, or good, or whatever, whatever.

And I think they're like, and everyone says, you know, you can only do two out of the three. I think they're like, you know, we can do all three. And I think they just were overly confident and ambitious. And they're like, we can build it affordably. It's going to work. You know, we'll have a couple of failures. But it'll work quick. And I think they thought they could do it.

and it cost a lot more, took a lot longer, and it was much harder, but yeah, they did it. Yeah. The way the rocket companies kind of like play out,

because there's so much, there's so much riding on these milestones, right? Like, I feel like rocket milestones are very, very far between and they're highly acute,

like very punctuated, right? So it's just like, you just go months and months and months with no idea of progress, and then all of a sudden there's one test and that decides, It's two paths.

Like, it's like dismal failure or absolute success. You know, there's like, there's no middle ground for like, you can't like half ass it. You can't like kind to do okay. Yeah. No, no. You just succeed or just fail. It's the two, it's a binary state.

And it's always like these, these pinch moments. So it feels like a very stressful business to be an entrepreneur. Oh, you just described it perfectly. And yes, it's so stressful. I don't envy those guys. I don't envy envy being a top guy at a company. like this. Tom was, he dealt with so much stress, his family, it was all very challenging and they just put it all in the line. But you're so right, they work for months and months and they'd be

hurrying and hurrying. Everybody's designing their own parts. You know, somebody's working on the turbo chamber or whatever, and they're working on all the different parts, the tanks and the carbon fiber tanks and everybody, and then they're going to put it all together. And then they're so excited to test it to see if it works. And then it was so hard to film because I don't know, like what's going to happen and whose part will cause a problem that could cause a setback for $20 million and two months and if so I should be filming that person and that part and there's a guy over there he's working on this cool part maybe I should go film that what if that part fails and that's like integral to the story and then I'm like I can't film all of these

parts I was filming so much yeah but if you nailed it Matt and how much you'd be hired by every their rocket company, be like, oh, this is the guy who sniffes out the next failure. That would be awesome. That's true. That would be great. That's a marketing angle for you. Yeah, that's true. But, yeah.

So it's fun. Really fun, if you watch the movie, there's a really fun scene where they have a test failure. And I was so glad I was there for that. Now, they had lots of failures, but this was the big failure, where the main highway, Highway 183 that runs through Austin, the entire highway was shut. down and the rocket catches fire and the cameras go out and they're like they don't know what's happening to the rocket they don't have eyes on it a guy runs to the blinds lifts the blinds up and he says there's a lot of fire out there then they run to the glass and look out through the

window or the glass door and all they know is the things on fire the fire department shows up the highway gets shut down the neighbors are evacuated and within you know 10 minutes I'm in the street with Tom, you know, lit by police lights, red and blue lights on a foggy night, as he spreads a map out and tries to explain to them the blast radius, which makes it okay for them to let the people back in the house and open up the highway. And that was an exciting scene when you're making a documentary because it's on the fly. Like as we're leaving the room, I'm there by myself. By the way, they're like, get away from the glass.

I'm running to the glass. You know, and I'm like, that's not my job to. Yeah. We're like, I'm like, I don't have to listen to you. I don't work for you. You know? You're not my boss? I jump in the car with him and like I grabbed some extra batteries and extra cards real quick.

And then I'm on foot and my camera bag is left back at the place. I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen. I just hope I have enough. And it was so cool. Really cool shots came out that night. That was fun. And then it was a very real point in Firefly's story. where if that fire had caused enough damage to the test site,

there was no way they were going to have enough money to fix it. And there was no way anyone who's going to give them money to fix it because fixing it would take so long that you have to fund the whole company for that long. So imagine like your test stand has like, oh, we got a problem. It'll take us two months to fix the test stand. Like no one's going to be like, well, I'll pay for the test stand. Okay, but what is that? That'll be $3 million.

Okay, we'll pay for that. but who's going to pay for the company to sit around for two months? And so they knew they were out of money. If that test stand had caught fire, they'd be done. And that was an exciting night, and you have to watch the movie, but, you know. Or the episode of cops that you ended up filming. So it's like, yeah. They're right along the rest of the thing.

I was shocked at that scene that they had to pull out the map and show the blast radius. So it was like, is this not deeply integrated into the local fire department that, like, there's a rocket test site? No. There's like the whole other scene where they're literally calling the fire department ahead of time. By the way, there's going to be a loud sound. How is this got more operationalized? That's unreal. Yeah, I don't know why they did that.

Back in the early days, they would call the fire department. And how silly, they do not do that anymore. They would call and be like, we just want to warn you. We're about to do a test. And the guy's like, what? What's it going to sound like? Whatever. It'll sound like a Texas, man.

Yeah, he'll sound kind of like a jet engine, you know, going off. Sort of. Yeah, no, they test all the time. They don't call. I don't know. Yeah, that was funny. But the blast radius thing is a real. That's a real thing.

Yeah, I don't know. You're not at space guys. I don't know if you noticed Blue Origin blew up their entire launch pad back in May. If this is the storyline you tracked. No, I didn't. Had a rocket on the pad out at Cape Canaveral, and the whole thing blew up, and it destroyed the whole launch site. So this is exactly the situation you're talking about of, like,

how long we are flying. Now, luckily, who's going to pay for it is Jeff Bezos. So that's probably the best person on the line. Yeah. Yeah, he's in this for the long run. So if something that happens, they'll be okay. But, yeah. You can't.

And then there's, I don't know, it's a whole, it's going a whole different direction these days. But, yeah, this segment of the market did not have the slush fund that you've got when you do that. That's right. Especially not if you're calling the fire department. and they're just finding out about you that night. They're like, I didn't know this was here.

It's like, you should have, but sure. Something else that was really fun about Firefly watching them is they kind of ran on a currency of mission and hope and faith. And what I mean by that is the employees, I just never felt like they were just doing their job. Like it would be on a Saturday and they're going to do a test and they're hoping a test maybe between. between 10 and noon. And so I would go out there and then they're running behind and there's a problem. And then it's 10.30 p.m. and they're all still there. And they just are bought in in a way because they love it and it's their passion.

And it's a lot like filmmaking. If you've ever been a part of a film set, it's so electric and exciting. And people will do anything to get the shot and make it happen. And time flies by and you just work and it's your passion and you kind of do it because you love it. And I just always got the sense that Firefly, all of these young people were really doing that. They were building the rocket. They were trusting Tom and they were trying to do what they love. And time would fly by.

And the job was kind of a formality. Now, I've never been to Blue Origin, but I really doubt it's like that in these companies. You know, I bet it's far more corporatized, but it wasn't. They'd work six days. They'd work seven days. They'd be their Sunday afternoon if it was needed or late Saturday, you know. And that's fun to see. Yeah. It makes you want to root for him.

Yeah, it's easy. It's an easy thing to, yeah, like I said, it's easy to root for that. It's easy to be inspired by that, right? Yeah, it was fun to, fun to see. And there's a lot of young people, you know, a lot of people would go to Firefly because you would have a more influential position. And Tom didn't mind who's training young people. Tons of those people were interns when they started. And now they're like, playing serious roles. So that was cool to see. This didn't make it in the movie. This is kind of fun. There is a girl there.

Her name was Annie. Really nice. I think she would have been like, what would you call it, test director maybe or something. And she got engaged. And I think the person that she got engaged to later got a job there.

And Tom was mentoring her. And they had a, it was, fun to see. He was really nice to her. And she asked him, would you do our wedding? Would you officiate our wedding? And Tom was like, yeah, sure. So he made up a fake church and online and had to have that register. They figured that out. And it was, and then he went and officiated the wedding. They were like, it's Texas. It's probably real. Yeah. It's probably exists. So I go and film the wedding and it was pretty cool and it didn't make it in the movie.

It almost made it, but it was so it was just, it slowed it down a bit. But Tom opened up. Everyone had taken their seats. The bride and the groom hadn't walked down yet. And he says, so I, you're probably asking, what am I doing here if he's shooting a wedding? I'm Annie's boss and he went on to say, I moved here years ago to create a rocket company. And he went on to talk about Annie and the contribution. makes and then he officiated the wedding and anyway it's so cool it's so funny um but they were uh a tight-knit

group you know that's that's that's such a i don't know that story is so texas it's like oh why is that texas i don't know it's pretty i don't like i want i want my boss to officiate the wedding is like oh so he just goes to gets like a efficient like license or something no no it has to be a Oh, so we can't do it? No, no, you just make up a fake church and then you make the layers there is like Yeah. As an outsider looking in, I don't know what's going on there, but it sounds about it. Jake's a Canadian who lives in Mexico, Scott.

So he's got a different cultural vibe, you know what I'm saying? Well, I've never heard of that happening here in Texas, but it is a little bit Texas. It's also very entrepreneurial, you know, like whatever the boundary, what's the boundary? I can go around that. Whatever the boundary is, we can do that. Texas. Yeah, it's super entrepreneurial. I mean, okay, well, what makes a church?

Well, we can do that, you know? Yeah. Is it still operational? We should find out. Is it still running? You know, I think it burned down, actually. Yeah, it was caught in a rocket fire. There was a fire apparently.

At the altar. It was something strange. Firefly remains very intriguing because of the trajectory they've gone on since you ended shooting, I guess, right? Because you ended, I mean, in the intro, I think it says you shot up until 2022 or so, which definitely was a moment in time where things turned totally differently. They went to have the most successful lunar landing of any American company in this era, which is fairly shocking considering Alpha has still has had. a very spotty track record. Like it was not, they're working on this new version now that's totally different because the first one

was so slow, but their spacecraft division feels like the best of all the others, which, I don't know. Like, I still have a hard time figuring out Firefly, honestly. I was like, are they good, are they bad, are they doing well, or they're not? It's still tough to figure out. What's going on with Alpha? Why? Yeah, what is going on? I don't know what's going on with Alpha.

Why are they doing so few launches? They're rebuilding the vehicle, like a totally new version of it, specifically targeted at the things that were problems before with the first version and trying to upsize it in certain ways, make it more robust. At the same time, they're also working on this new version of, or a new rocket entirely. They have this collaboration with Northup Grumman, very like old world, old space company.

They have a collaboration there. That's what I mean. There's sort of like, launch your side of Firefly, I feel like jury's still way out on. They've got awesome success with the first lunar lander. They've got other ones coming up.

If that continues to diverge, like you start to wonder, like, what is this half of the company doing that this half isn't? It's not a huge company, so it's probably the same people. So like, I don't know. Stop with the rockets,

I feel like sometimes. Yeah, they didn't have that one success that was like a 24-hour I think they had to launch one within 24 hours of notice. I think they, I don't know if they do that. They may still do that with the government where they keep a rocket like on hand. Maybe after they get the new one working, but they still, yeah, I mean, they like tore down the other launch vehicle architecture.

Yeah. So, I mean, were you shooting at Vanderberg for that first launch? Those are your shots with the debris raining down. That was unbelievable. Oh, heck yeah. People running and hatching debris. I was like, I don't know if we should be doing this, guys. This seems like not a good decision.

Yeah, apparently that was like a good. major against the rules. They were not supposed to be touching the debris. I don't know why radiation or something. Yeah. But you nailed the shots. So that was awesome. That was such a great day. It was great. Awesome. Awesome footage. That was so fun, man. One of my favorite shots of the rocket, and we mounted a Z cam right. Matthew Godwin is a awesome friend of mine, cinematographer. He put that rocket right by the, put the camera right by the rocket. The rocket took off. off. It gives us a great shot. The power and the thrust is so enormous. Shoot our camera and throws it across the launch site. The security cameras catch that. I need

to post this on social. So our camera gets smashed like 70 yards into a brick wall and it was in a kind of a container that we built. Falls on the ground and then we go and find it and then we're like, oh, please work. And so the camera is like incinerating and smoke. and we pull the card out. And then the footage is corrupt and you can't get the footage off. And so he downloaded all these apps, like how to finish tying the MOV at the end and uncorrupt the whole thing, blah, blah, blah, tried seven apps, paid $2499 to some software guy, figured it out. And then the shot worked and we got the shot and it's awesome.

And so that was fun. But yeah, filming in Vanderberg was really a good time. And I really thought the movie was going to be done after that. It was kind of a, that was a moment we could have ended the movie because, I don't know, it was a nice ending. It's bittersweet. They didn't make it, but they almost made it. Nobody's ever hit a home run on their first try. They almost did, but they didn't.

But it was enough of a success that they had money coming in. Plenty of people were ready to invest after that first launch. That was such a good showing. Firefly had a huge boost after that. And they were, you know, they were okay. money-wise. Yeah. That's actually

that kind of last question I had was like, how do you know when to stop? Like, you make this, you make this documentary

for six years, six, however much years it was. And like, when do you go, okay, there's, that's your end.

Because, you know, you stop filming before the lunar lander, before the new rockets, stuff. So there's more, there's more firefly story.

Oh, man. He's like, Scott, you're slacking. Jam, Jake, damn. But you also can't just film the documentary

for the rest of your life. You've got to release it at some point. I'm just curious to know where you decide to stop and start, you know, putting it all together. Yeah, it's a great question. It's really hard to decide where to stop. And along the way, you have to decide what is the story. And when you figure out what that story is, you can set the frame and the scope of the story. And the Lunar Lander was something I filmed. I filmed some of that stuff. But I never did put it into the scope of the story once I sort of began to see what it was. And to me, what it was is there was a team. And there was a gamble and it was about $150 million, $200 million gamble, which is if we build this rocket and if they can get to low Earth orbit, we're a billion dollar company and we're open for business.

If we can't, we fail. And everyone who invested their money loses their money. And everyone who moved to Austin to have a career at this loses their career. And everyone who, especially Tom, Tom who put his reputation and everything on the line to start a rocket company. would have been a failure. So to me, the poker hand, the story, the gamble is get the rocket to low Earth orbit. And so I wanted to follow it until that. And once they did, they pretty much secured their future.

And now they don't secure their total future. So we can still watch Firefly and wonder how they'll turn out. But they ended being a startup in my view. They became now we have a company, we have a product, you can book a launch. and we just got to figure out, you know, can we make it happen for that customer? So that was my sense. And then along the way, you kind of look for an internal arc or an internal part of the story. So the external is get the rocket into space.

The internal is what's going on on the inside of these people? So is this just trying to prove maybe, like maybe Tom's just trying to show he has what it takes? Well, maybe that's some of it. And in the end, if you watch the film, you'll see. that Tom had just made so many promises along the way. He promised investors, he promised employees who got laid off later came back and moved back to the city to do the job and trusting that there would be a job for them, you know. And he's always making these promises. And so you'll see that, you know, a big part of this story is can I fulfill the promises that I

make along the way or am I just going to fall into a category of sort of a snake oil cell oil salesman who can make promise after promise and never deliver. And so for him, you might see that there is this internal aspect to the story where I really at the end of the day want to be someone who can deliver on the things I say, regardless of the millions or the business or whatever results, I want to be able to do what I say I can do. And so somewhere along the way, that story kind of declared itself to me that that's what we're doing. And we tried to film and focus around that.

That's probably good as an answer as any. Still, the lunge, I admire the longevity because, like, you know, you make that framing and then you're like four years into it and you're like, you don't know when that's going to happen. You're like, I'll just keep filming. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's like tough. Kudos to that.

Yeah. I mean, during the twist and turns, though, were you like, like terrified or were you like, damn, this is good content? Like, what was the? Oh, both. Yeah. You know, both. I would come back from a shoot and transfer the footage, but some.

music to it, test out that scene. I'd be like, this is awesome. But then I'd get terrified realizing, you know, like, it doesn't matter if you can make a one-minute cool thing. Like, this has to form a long story arc. We need three acts. We need 90 minutes here. And that I was terrified about. Yeah. And then I was also terrified like, man, you had axe. You had three acts for sure. Yeah. And then it was really hard. And then there was a time when we thought we had a series, like a three-episode series, and I got to talk to a lot of networks about this, and there was a chance that we were going to do that. And then we edited some of that, and it was boring.

Like the third episode was boring. It was terrible. So then we're like, no, you can't sustain that. We've got to shorten it. And then there's some, you know, I filmed so many rocket tests, but you can only show so many. And so, and they have to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So there's a ton of cool rocket tests.

that I didn't get to include in the film because they really just weren't consequential to the story. So it was very difficult. I filmed way more than I probably needed to. I visited the test site or their office over 120 times. So, you know, somebody says, you know, we filmed 30 days on this. It was 40 days of filming. I had over 100 something days of filming. I never wanted to film this much.

It was just, it's like a poker hand. It's like I'm, after I'm in two years, am I going to lose all that for nothing now? So I got to do a little more. And of course, Tom's always telling me like, hey, the rocket's going to be ready next week. Like, I think it's going to be ready Thursday. You should have talked to Eric way earlier than you did. Yeah. Are you all going to launch on Thursday?

And then it's like six years later, you know. So. Yeah, you're a space guy. You're welcome, Scott. Well, I mean, if you need to, if you need to, if you need to, if you need to afford a bigger cup. All you got to do is just piece together all that extra rocket footage because I know our listeners will pay

extra for that for sure. You give them a couple hours of a high-deaf rocket exhaust footage. Easily an extra 999. You can tack on to that. Oh, good. I've got it. I've got it. There's a fun scene

I need to release where Tom your audience may know this but rocket testing is so, it takes so long. So they'll do something like prep and load the rocket and that takes three or four hours and then they'll secure the rocket everyone stays far away and then they'll get ready to run through their list and ramp up to a test and that may take an hour and a half and then if it fails they're like oh we got an abort we got to go fix a thing and so you could get six eight hours in and then they're so close to pushing the button and

getting the data they need and they're like well we don't want to waste this whole day and there was one night i was there early on and one of the tanks was freezing over and they're like it's getting too cold. And he's like, gosh, all we need is to drop it like a degree or something. And he's like, does anyone have a heat gun? And I have, it's a good little scene and everyone looks at him like, what? And he's like, well, this would require some dumb ass to go up close to the rocket and put the heat gun. And he goes, all right, does anyone have a heat gun? And he goes, all right, this is we're going to get heat gun. So then I follow him and they go out to the shed and then they look for a heat gun. And he's sitting there and he's just staring.

into the, you know, mid-air, just staring thinking, and he's clicking on off, on, off, on off. And I pan over to other guys, and they're looking at me like, what's he going to do? And it's a good, I don't know why, it just didn't make it in. It was a fun scene. I need to post it. Post it as a little promo.

Yeah, he's trying to decide, like, do I go up close and just try to, like, mount this heat gun close? And then maybe we can recoup our eight hours that we've wasted. And anyway, he decides not to do it. And the edit I had at that point a news clip follow because you can hear like SpaceX or version, someone had a successful test or a successful, like one of their competitors was succeeding and these guys are still just trying to get the tank to, you know, the right temperature and it's really defeating.

But it was like that for them a lot. It was fun. And of course, they'd never mind. Tom, those guys never cared. Like the camera followed them everywhere. They never pushed me out. So that was always fun. That's cool.

It's a great story. Well, where can the viewers find this if they want to watch all these great stories and see all these great shots? Well, to the black, it's a 90-minute documentary. It is on Amazon and it's on Apple, Apple TV or iTunes. So you can rent it, check it out. It is a truly independent documentary, which is fun. It's honest. It's about the story.

And then what I really like is it's follow along. You're going to see the stuff happen. And I want to say this, I really, back when I was making this, not being a space geek myself, I thought I need to make a film that someone like my wife would enjoy, which is someone like me, really, just someone who doesn't know rocketry. And that was a real challenge. So if you're not into rocketry, I think that doesn't matter. There's a texture here.

It's a team. Watch the startup culture. Watch the hype and the hurry and the hastiness as they try to test a rocket. And they all sort of sit back, cross their fingers and hope it doesn't blow up. And then so that's it. It's a good roller coaster of a story. Love it. Yeah, it was great.

I really enjoyed it. So listeners should definitely check it out. Into the black. To the black. Not into. Just to the black. To the black. To the black.

Yeah. In the black is your follow-up film when you're, what are they doing? doing in space. That's this part too. In the blacks, the follow up when I can finally get out and get out of the red and buy a real cup and move on. Please help make Scott in the black by watching To The Black. Hell yeah, man.

Thanks for hanging out with us. Yeah. Yeah, you guys are awesome, man. Thanks for all the great questions. Fun conversation. Yeah, I appreciate it. Call us next time, not Eric, you know? Just who actually...

I don't know if he knows it yet, Jake, but we may try to have him on this show next week, I think, right? Isn't that your idea? Yeah, yeah. I don't think we told us. That was my idea. No. We should tell them.

I haven't, yes. Okay, great. We should text them. What did you want to talk to Eric about? You had a thing in mind, Jake. Yeah, I want to go about Starliner, yeah. Starliner. And, you know, human space flight, but, yeah.

To be or not to be, Human spaceflight. To be or not to be. 2030s. That's what it's about. There's always drama, Scott. It's a more dramatic industry than the nerds make it appear, honestly. So are you working on any other space projects or what's the next thing up?

What do you got cooking? I'm not sure. Yeah, I should have an answer to that. Right now I'm doing a bunch of marketing content for Merit Productions, my company. And doing that, Tom called me and said, maybe we film a part. too because he's inventing this plane. And so I don't know if I'll do that or not, but I'm sure that there will be some interesting days seeing what he does next.

I think I'll go take a look. Thank you. All right. Bring a heat gun. Bring a heat gun. Bring a heat gun. Always bring a heat gun. All right.

Thanks again. We will see y'all next week. Bye. Thanks, everybody. Bye. All right. Thanks. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, intercept.