Off-Nominal - 35 - The 2 Mile of the Space Industry

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Jake and Anthony are joined by Caleb Henry, formerly of SpaceNews and now of Quilty Analytics. We talk about SpaceX’s new satellite contract, OneWeb’s new lease on life, Caleb’s new gig at Quilty, and what it’s like transitioning away from capital-J journalism.DrinksPerpetual IPA - Tröegs Independent Brewing - UntappdPeppercorn Saison - 3 Stars Brewing Company - UntappdStella Artois - Stella Artois - UntappdTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 35 - The 2 Mile of the Space Industry - YouTubeL3Harris, SpaceX win Space Development Agency contracts to build missile-warning satellites - SpaceNewsLunar Communications Relay and Navigation Services - beta.SAM.govBritish government and Bharti Global buy OneWeb, plan $1 billion investment to revive company - SpaceNewsArianespace’s revised OneWeb contract drops Ariane 6, two Soyuz launches - SpaceNewsUK Parliament to scrutinize OneWeb purchase  - SpaceNewsVirgin Orbit has a unique launch capability, but it has come at a high price | Ars TechnicaPeter Beck on Twitter: “Less than $100m on development and a total of $180m to date including building 3 launch pads, 4 acres of production facilities, 2 mission controls, 14 flights and accounting for my mission to Venus 😉”PicksAstronomy On Tap – Drink in the Universe!Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, by Samuel Eliot MorisonFlickrWho Anthony Follows for Space FlickrFollow CalebCaleb Henry (@CHenry_QA) / TwitterCaleb’s Writing at SpaceNewsQuilty Analytics (@QuiltyAnalytics) / TwitterQuilty AnalyticsFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterWatch the Launch of Mars 2020 Perseverance with us! - WeMartians PodcastFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS is go for main engine, start. We're on YouTube. We're going over the intro music because we're one month out of practice. We're back. I'm back. You've been here the whole time. It's like trying to remember out or ride a bike again. Yeah, you know.

It'll come back. It'll happen. But what I did was an excellent strategy of lining up one of my favorite people on this planet, Caleb Henry, welcome to the show for the first time. We've never had them on off nominal, Jake. What the hell? I know. it's it's one of these I guess that we're like oh hey we should get Caleb on how have we not done this already like approximately two years ago when we were drinking together at yards when the pandemic didn't

exist and we were all together yeah exactly welcome Caleb how you doing man yeah it's good to see you guys you know last time actually when we all met in person that was my first time seeing the ISS fly overhead. That is right. I remember us all rushing out of the brewery and being like, oh, there it is. And people were like, why are there like half a dozen like millennials hanging out outside this brewery pointing at the sky in Philadelphia? Generally, people pointing at a large group of people pointing at something on Spring Garden in Philadelphia is not great, but at that moment, it was excellent. It's funny when you say that, when you say that, like I actually have to stop and think because there's been far more than one occasion where I've dragged everybody out of a party or a bar to be like,

I've got to show you this thing, man. It's amazing. Awesome. Cool. So we're going to talk about, what, some satellite stuff today? We got all kinds of stuff to talk about. I got a new kid. Caleb's got a new job. Yeah, yeah. Jake. We got, I'm the same. Nothing is different with me. I do need a haircut, though. I am looking at my hair here. I'm like, it's time. It is time to, you don't remember as often during the pandemic that you need your haircut. That's the truth of it. Every live stream will check in. Thanks.

That's about the frequency I need one. You guys want to drink? So what are you guys drinking? Well, first I'm going to show off my medicine hat bottle opener that I'm using because I always forget that's in my office. So thanks to Jake for that. I'm opening right here, an old trustee. because long story, but I couldn't go to the fancy beer store today. I have got a perpetual IPA from,

I've got to get my head out of the shot so it focuses on the beer. This one's from Trobes. It's an old steady. It's been a while since I've done an old steady, so I figured this is the one to do it. Bring it back. Bring it back. Trogues.

Nice. PA. Very important right now. Pennsylvania. For some reason, it's in the news. Spending about a billion dollars on our TV networks, I think. but it's a good spot. That's what I got.

Cool. I like drugs. It's delicious. It's delicious. That's a good spot for a meetup, by the way, future. Future, off nominal people. That's like outside of town, right? It's all the way in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Hershey, okay. Yeah. That's outside of town. It's outside of town by like two hours. Yeah. Caleb, what do you got? So, as Anthony knows, or maybe both of you know, I just got back from a winery.

And so I've already had probably like half a bottle of wine today. He's just front-loaded. So I don't know if I'm going to drink during this session. That was earlier this afternoon. So we'll see how it goes. But in the event that I do, I brought with me, did I get this to focus? This is a three-star peppercorn saison.

from three stars brewing company, which I really love. It's probably my favorite brewery in D.C. So shout out to them. I wish I could describe this for you. It's just a good beer. It says ale brewed with spices, and that does it for me. I like that he's talking himself into actually opening this up as he gives the pitch for it, too. I need to understand more about the peppercorn part, though, because this is not a natural fit for beer for me.

So you think that it would be spicy, and it's not. I have had many bad experiences with beers where they're like, we put spices in this. And like it just turns into like somebody dumped like a whole like cupboard of spices in. And it's a, it's a mistake. But this one is good. I think maybe the fact that they just stuck with one spice. And so like it just feels kind of crisp, but also flavorful. Okay.

It holds its own. All right. Well, next time I'm in D.C. I want to try that. Fair. I actually, I'm kind of bucking the trend this month, Anthony. So we had Canadian Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago, and we actually celebrated late. We did it a weekend late.

So it was last weekend for me. And I had some beer, I will admit. And it was like a lot of like really rich craft beer unfiltered, heavy, like the kind of beer that you really should only have one or two. And I just drank too much of it. I'm like, I kind of need to dry out a little bit on like the fancy stuff. So I went for just like mild standby. Nice. Very simple.

Just very simple light. Like you rolled into any airport bar. Any airport bar. I remember those. Got my Stella Artois. And it's not the only thing that's worthwhile at an airport bar. Exactly. Yeah.

It's not a Jake size bottle. It's a normal human bottle. It looks so tiny. It looks like one of the little alcohol bottles you buy on airplanes. So I got two just in case. So yeah, that's what I'm drinking today. Very straightforward. But I am, I'm still not a classless fool.

I got a glass. Gold rim? Do you do the gold rim thing? I don't have one of those. I used to have a couple of them when they all broke and I haven't replaced them. It feels like a schick. That feels like gold-tipped HDMI cables. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It doesn't do anything. So I too have a glass. because I was told that we were supposed to have something to pitch here on this very show. And I couldn't think of what it would be, but I tend to hate drinking out of a can. And since I just showed off a can, I brought with me, I don't know if you could see this. Let me hold this up.

It's astronomy on tap. Oh, nice. It is an event that used to take place here in D.C. I say used to because pandemic. And I admit I haven't followed up with them as closely, so perhaps they're still doing these talks virtually, but the idea was that they would get like three astronomers or three space professionals together in a bar and have them give talks. And then they would have space bingo. And if you won, you got a glass, which, or if you like spoke or anything. So yeah, I got one

of those from attending said event. Did you win bingo or were you like a space professional at this event? I have done both. Oh, nice. So yeah, although like, so, They have a rule that's like astronomers are not supposed to participate in space bingo. And I said, I am not an astronomer, so therefore I can participate in space bingo. But after winning a glass for me and a glass for my roommate, I said I should stop playing space bingo. And so I just have this here one glass. And that's it. Now I'm just a spectator at these things.

That's fair. That's probably fair. They retired his jersey in the rafters. Yeah. That's the retired hockey players showing up to like a pickup game in the street. You're like, hey, you guys need an ex? Slightly overweight Eric Lindross. Like, no, no professionals around.

No, I'm not a professional. Where should we start, Jake? We got a lot of topics, man. Yeah, there is a lot. Do you want to start with Caleb News or non-Kalib News? Yeah, actually, Caleb, why don't you just introduce yourself? a little bit and maybe talk about what you used to do and then we can talk about what you're doing now because it's exciting, exciting life events for you going on. Yeah, sure. So after seven years

of being a journalist, I've recently transitioned to the analyst world. I've joined the venerable Chris Quilty at Quilty Analytics, which is a consulting, they used the term boutique, which I had never heard outside of flowers, but it's a boutique consulting firm focused on the space and satellite industry. So we do research on the industry and investment banking. Oh, it's right there on the screen. Research investment banking and strategic advisory services

for like M&A activity and things like that. The team is really, really well-versed in the satellite and space industry. They know tons of stuff. Chris Quilty is somebody who I used to quote a lot as a writer, and actually was probably one of the first interviews I ever did. And he just, like, was very patient with me and showed me the ropes for a lot of satcom stuff, which, as you guys know, can be really dense and really complicated and tricky to understand. And their firm is growing, and I'm excited to be working with them. That's awesome. I have to imagine that as a journalist,

Like, the satellite industry is, you know, mostly private companies. And so they're not publishing their P&Ls every quarter to your inbox. Like, you must have had to have done a lot of quasi-analytic as part of that job anyway. This is probably more of a natural transition than you might assume. It is, actually. I mean, when I would look at, like, Space Twitter, which is like a very fun subset of the Twitterverse, there were at times when space Twitter would have like whole freakout sessions over something, usually NASA-related, so everybody is suddenly writing in hopes of posting something in like

the next 60 minutes or whatever it was. And I was just on the outside looking in on a lot of those things. I mean, I covered all of the major satellite operators, which happens to be the majority of spacecraft launches. So when there was a launch, I was definitely on Twitter. I was very active and all those things. But, you know, when a rover descended onto Mars or when there was a major flyby or things like that and people were having a moment, you know, I was just watching as a fanboy enjoying. So it was a lot of analytic stuff following companies and publicly traded calls, reading through securities and exchange commissions documents for interesting things that companies are not usually happy to disclose.

things like that. So it's not a bizarre transition at all. Jake doesn't know what to do with this. He's like, I usually love the analytics, but somebody loves analytics more than me. The funny thing, though, is when Caleb was describing that as like all the hot topics where, you know, other NASA events or the launches itself,

all of a sudden satellites got like drama filled. There was satellites versus astronomer battles. There's FCC. versus everyone battles. There's like a lot of hot drama that's been in the satellite world. So was that, are you feeling like, is there a thing that we should be curious about

where you're like, me and capital J journalism is a little tiring and this other thing where I can focus on this particular aspect of essentially what you were doing before, but putting it together in a different package? Is that, was that something that you've been curious about for a while or was it just a nice opportunity that you like? Capital J journalism was definitely tiring.

It's a great thing to be involved in, so not at all bashing it. It is not at all for the faint of heart. Well, like you said, it did become this drama-filled world, and there was this intersection between mainstream journalism and I say mainstream, because before joining Space News, I was with the satellite, and I was a little bit more embedded in like the trade press of the satellite world. And like that's not the stuff that's like the front page of the Wall Street Journal. But enter Starlink and the British government buying out one web.

And you know, like Jeff Bezos being like, sure, let's launch thousands of satellites. And suddenly everyone's paying attention. So you do have this strange new world where things that used to be like mundane and like very techy and like political and like just like straight up strange. The satellite industry is a weird, amazing industry. But, like, I don't know where else you can go where it's like, oh, in order to understand this world, you have to understand spectrum policy. You will no longer bat an eye at millions of dollars. It better be hundreds of millions or more.

And then you'll start paying attention. And, like, oh, by the way, like, everything goes to space. And, yes, the whole world is actually involved. Like, every regulator, I was talking to a friend of mine just, yesterday actually because he and his wife took a vacation to Sharmolyshake, Egypt. And I was like, you went where? And they're like, yeah, there was a whole bunch of people there from all over the world. We didn't know why.

I was like, well, only because the World Radio Communications Conference was there. Of course. That's who those people were that were in a lot of time. So it was strained. And over the course of my time as a journalist, it didn't start out that way. When I had started writing, granted, when I had started writing, I think that some companies were like quietly filing with the ITU, but nobody really knew about it. And so you fast forward to 2015, 2016, when Telesat's like, oh, yeah, we've had an ITU filing for a mega constellation for several years now. We're ahead of everybody else.

We just have to place the order for our satellites, which we're still waiting on them to do. Building some others and selling other people, though, doesn't stop them. Are you down with this news, Jake? This is in your wheelhouse, right, Jake? This is like when you bring on a planetary science, on off-nominal. We were talking before this, and I'm like, I need you to run this show, man. Because, like, I listen to every Miko episode, but when it goes into the spectrum policy, I'm just like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

But most of those are just me calling Caleb, though. Here, you use this airwaves for 40 minutes, please. I just like, I need to get to the end of the podcast around. He's like, here's the deal. It's just like, this is important, this isn't, and things. about this more like got you I'm in I'm on it excellent I did not know about the radio communications conference that was not on my right now hey you could have had a pleasant vacation in Egypt just wondered why like you're seeing I don't know Koreans and Egypt and

Brazilians and everybody else when you were talking about the fact that like you are you were writing in this area of the space industry that's really important to the space industry, but you don't have to write those, like, stories that are more for somebody out there to grasp who's never heard of spaceflight before. You were in this kind of weird, like, your stuff was approachable to those people, but they probably wouldn't have clicked on that.

But to people that would click on it, it's super informative stuff. Do you feel like that was a easier spot to write because you didn't feel like you had to rush to get the first story out about Osiris Rex jamming full, it's tag Sam with Sam. Like, you didn't have to be that person that's out there saying, I've got the first story about this thing that whole world cares about. Do you feel like maybe you're more natural fit for this more, like, quilty analytics side is you're writing to that audience still, but in a different format. Is there anything like that that you've been thinking about lately? I would say it was a more enjoyable format because my approach to journalism and writing was one where I wanted to write something that would be,

preferably uniquely valuable to the reader. And that's not to discredit, like, you know, NASA spacecraft, like, grabbing a piece of an asteroid. Like, that's super awesome. But I didn't want to be one of, like, 800 journalists that were going to write about that. I really valued writing things that people who cared about the satellite industry and wanted to see, like I look at the satellite industry as the beginning of the commercial space sector. A lot of people talk about commercial spaces like, oh, they know Furgent Galactic

and human spaceflight and they think about going to Mars and all those things. And you can see it. I think I've mentioned on, we have MECO in the past, that SpaceX has built up its credibility launching satellites for SES and IntelSat, TICOM, and operators around the world. And their own Starlink satellite system. It's really those spacecraft that are the entry level to commercial space. And everything else that we hope for in commercial space begins here. So I liked covering that and showing what is going on in commercial space now, how people are using space to try and make the world a better place,

whether it's tracking ships that are doing illegal fishing, or making sure that everyone can watch the Olympics, or the push globally to have universal broadband, which now involves a significant space component. All of those things were really interesting to me and were very scarcely reported on. So I liked shining a light on those things in the hope that that story

will be known when we have a more expensive space presence, and we understand how we got there. There's always those pie charts that's like, here's how much money people make in space, and it's like, launch satellites. It's just enormous, enormous difference. And one is obviously much more easy to talk about, and it's much more engaging and it's more awesome to witness

because it's a rocket and how can you not enjoy that? But I always think about, like, one of my favorite things to throw it back to DC last year is at the back of Udvar Hazi right behind the space shuttle, there's that, I think it's an old serious satellite bus. And it's so, normally so abstract to talk about

like satellite launches and things like that and satellite buses, when you stand next to one, you're like, holy shit, this thing is enormous. Look at what it does. And you can finally actually, like, stand and look at a thing. And it makes a lot more sense.

You know, we were there with a bunch of space nerds, so we were looking at, like, thrusters and antenna arrays and like super nerdy stuff. But when I would be there with family and explain, like, this is the thing that is in the rocket that we're always watching, there's a different moment where people can finally connect to the thing. So I admire your ability to write at a level that is like approachable about a thing that

makes a shit ton of money and is very obscure to most people out there. I love that. And it's probably why you've been on Miko so much because I'm like, this guy is, this is exactly the kind of thing that I like doing. You have the bravery to start writing the story at the point where everyone turns off the live stream. You know, it's like sort of my backstory, I guess. Like when I was in high school, I ran track and my race was the two mile, which is the one where everybody just stops carrying. So it was like, no, no, no, no, no.

Like, the actual team wins or loses based on how everyone does, including this race. It's so long. It's so much longer than all the other ones. I've taken the two mile of the space industry. I like it. There's a title. Write that one down to somebody. It's funny, though, because it's like, it's so true.

I find myself there. Everyone's in a while where I see something. I'm like, I want to do a podcast about this or tweet about this. And I think it's important, but no one else is talking about it. And then I have all this, like, self-doubt. I'm like, am I making this like, nothing? Like, nobody cares about this. Like, why am I trying to...

It's a really hard thing to try and, like, you know, be confident in, you know, shouting out to the world, right? Should we talk about some of this news that we've been here in lately, though? We got some satellite stuff, Caleb. You thought this was going to be a puff piece for Caleb Henry. He's the best person in the world. No. In fact, we're here for some business.

So while I was gone, Jake, SpaceX sells satellites now. Would you like a satellite? Apparently. Would you like a satellite? I would. You get you a great deal on a satellite. I mean, they probably do have good prices, right? Good prices for that.

That's probably the point, right? What do you make of this story? Was this something you knew about for a while, Caleb? Were you hearing about this? Got any little birdies? Is this now proprietary? Do I have to pay you to tell me if you have little birdies? Can you give up your sources now that you're not in-jured?

So I didn't know about this, but I also was out of the loop for like two weeks in between jobs, and that's when the SpaceX and L3 Harris winning, I think it was SDA contracts, was announced. So even now I'm still playing a little bit of catch-up. It's weird to think that like just two weeks of being like, no, I won't follow what's going on, was enough to like catapult me back to the Stone Age. That's what it feels like. Try six and a kid. Fair.

I'm not there yet. But I guess thoughts on. on SpaceX building satellites for others. My first, so I have two thoughts on it. The first is that SpaceX is building Starlink in order to make money to fuel their Mars ambitions. So if they can build more spacecraft and do it in a way that makes a profit, then that's great. And missile warning satellites for DOD is a great way to do that. It's not competitive with telecommunications, with global broadband.

It allows them to use the economy of scale that they've built. I think it's 120 satellites a month they said that they're building, which is really unprecedented. It mirrors what they've done with the ride share business with Starlink and with Falcon 9. I said, hey, if we have excess capacity, we'll launch somebody else's spacecraft for a marginal fee that helps out SpaceX at the end. That part is not surprising. What would actually surprise me is if they built Leo satellites, Leo broadband satellites, for somebody else.

I don't see them doing that. I think that that would be a competitive interest. So I doubt that Telesat Leo would have SpaceX as their manufacturer or OneWeb or Bezos or any of those. I think SpaceX knows where to draw the line on those things. but they've come up with some really exciting technology. I think the most comparable mass satellite manufacturing before the current era, or no, this is still current era, I guess would be Arridium Next.

I think Arridium Next reached a peak of about a satellite a week with Talisalini Space, and that was after years of prep. SpaceX still took years of prep, but like 120 a month is just insane. Years of prep, but it was way more than that. Yeah. So they are revolutionizing satellite manufacturing in a way that's not dissimilar to how they revolutionize launch. And their willingness to share that in non-competitive ways is only a plus for them. I was surprised that they were like inventing a new bus. That was the like if you told me they were like repurposing Starlink, you know, chassis for whatever. I mean like, oh yeah, obviously you do that. But that they're like, they're going to invent this whole new, because it's supposed to be bigger, right?

That's what I... Yeah, I think... I heard some people tell me that. I mean, I also read that piece of info that came out from the SDA contract. There's like a... Well, they... So the day that they announced the awards, they announced,

we would like somebody launch these, which that's the other side for SpaceX. They can sell more satellites. They can launch more satellites and just keep the whole thing going around. And in that document had like two different lines. One was 300. some kilogram spacecraft that didn't, that used, what did I say?

Do you remember what I said on the show, Jake? On my own podcast that you probably didn't listen to? I did listen to it. It's been a while since I looked at the paper. And then one of the other satellites were 1,000 kilograms didn't say anything about propulsion on that one. So it matches enough of what I've picked up

from various other places that it is like four times bigger than there's Starlink bus. So I'm actually curious. if that's, you know, like the Starlink bus we're at now was not the one that they originally planned and this is like a different thing that they can pack more of in a single launch. There's like some, you know, yeah, the Tintin bus. That's what I'm thinking of.

It was a different thing. So I wonder if it's that and this, what actually became Starlink were these two kind of competing situations within SpaceX. But they said, oh, the other one actually we could do for everyone else out there. It's interesting behind the scene stuff that we may know eventually, but, man, the thing that I'm still annoyed at is that... Right, it was much bigger. Right, it was...

Tintin was way bigger. Right, a thousand kilograms-ish? It's not crazy to think that they, SpaceX probably had, like, concept art for other satellite designs that Tintin might have been closer to, because, yeah, those were, I don't remember their weight, but they were certainly much bigger. I mean, they only used two as ride shares when they launched a radar satellite for a Spanish operator. Yeah.

And then the actual start. They weren't IKEA flat packed, so. I feel like I've heard some rumors that there was a bigger falling out around the Tintin era. I think there was some overturn, some like hiring turnover. That was publicized. Yeah, I'd be one way to put it. I don't know. I've heard other things.

I don't know. Doesn't matter how. It's still turnover. No, but can I get one thing off of my, off of my, I've just been. annoyed at this. SpaceX built a gigantic rocket called Falcon Heavy. SpaceX makes a lot of satellites. Why have they not sent one of these goddamn satellites

to Mars? Who's there to talk to? I don't actually care. They just should do it. They got all these satellites. They got rockets. They want to go to Mars. Make a statement. I was thinking about this a lot recently because of, well, I mean, Starship sends me down this road every few weeks, but But if they want to keep that sort of end goal, SpaceX is really good at iterating, right?

So they'll find some sort of stepwise fashion to get to that. And I don't know if just firing one off to Mars is in that step. Like I think they might do it to the moon way sooner than they would Mars, right? Like they're going to start. We've seen that is an RFI, I think, from NASA on the lunar telecommunications network, like something in orbit, similar to what the Chinese did with, Chee Chow. Chichow.

I get that right? Maybe. I have to, I can never remember them. I was just to look them up for I say them on podcasts and I did not do that this time. But yeah, so like they have, NASA has this RFI. They're going to, I, in, there's a lot of times where the NASA RFIs are like coming out because they know someone can fulfill it now, you know? And so like I feel like this is kind of that thing.

It's just like, hey, show us what you can do here. and then maybe they'll throw up some sort of, you know, global communications network on the moon for Artemis, and then they'll use that to iterate further. Like, they'll get there, but I guess at some point they do need to figure out long distance comms, right? That's kind of the tricky bit.

I don't know. People are yelling at me that it's too expensive at a vanity project, and I, that sounds right up the alley of... Yeah, I don't know if it's too expensive. I don't think so. If the satellites are... They have no problem getting money.

They're getting cash money as this video. popular in Discord, apparently. They've been good at cash money. Yeah, they have. Anyway, that's the thing. I just been annoyed by that. Only because I was thinking the other day about when we were at Falcon Heavy, and I think the show we did after that, we were talking about, like,

man, they got to use this to get something to Mars pretty soon because, like, you know, maybe Elon was right and they should have bailed on Falcon Heavy. And when Gwen said, nope, we already sold one of these. I don't know, man. more time goes on the more I think maybe Elon was right about that. I wonder how many times SpaceX has like knocked on NASA's door being like, we'll sell you a real cheap coms orbiter to fill your gap right now, right? No, that's in your dreams, Jake. Come on.

It isn't my dreams, but like it solves a problem that NASA has. They would want that sort of bleeding edge job. Like that's a thing that SpaceX would be like, we'll subsidize it. like give us $10 million, we'll do it. Like we're going to do it anyway to just like give us a little bit of money for it. Like that'd be totally up their alley, I feel like. And I don't know. That's my thought.

All right. New thing. Caleb brought up one web is back from the dead. I didn't expect all of a sudden there to be one web launches on the calendar. Am I, was I an idiot for thinking that? This seemed way quicker than I was prepared for. I think it is still, it is still a surprise that, OneWeb is back already.

It's not a surprise that they are resurrected from bankruptcy. I think the surprise for everyone is the timing, right? So going back to Eridium and using that as the example, like, Motorola invested,

it was over a billion dollars. I'm just trying to pull this off the top of my head. So if I remember it all right, Motorola invested over a billion dollars in Eridium. They got tired of it. because they saw it as like a science project and not an actual business. And they ultimately ended up, like, detaching from it.

And Eridium was sold in bankruptcy court for like $25 million or something like that. So like it was a pittance of the amount that was put into it. The surprise with OneWeb is that they had like around $3.4 billion put into them. They did not launch an entire system before going bankrupt. And now they've been purchased with a billion dollar investment that's going to be put into them between the UK and Barty Airtel and Barthi Global in India. And I think everybody knows that more money will still be needed to complete the one web system. So it's very different in that regard that it's an ongoing expense. and that does just make me wonder what it's going to look like.

I think SoftBank had talked a big game about being very patient with OneWeb and knowing that it was going to be a long ride to seeing them in orbit and seeing them successful. And somewhere along the line, they lost that patience. And I mean, that's a terrible thing. if you're a company and your investor says like, sure, we know it'll take you five, 10 years to make this into anything. And then after two years, it's like, I'm bored of this. It's still a lot of billions, but just bored of this particular usage of my billions.

It's different than like what I think the Branson projects are going through right now, which is like, e, it's a little tight during a pandemic for a company that's all like luxury travel. So go find some cash elsewhere. Did you see the, I think, Peter Beck from Rocket Lab, what did he tweet that? It cost them like $180 million to get to where they are versus a billion for He's getting a little spicy. He's getting a little spicy out there.

He was a little gloaty. It was kind of funny. I mean, when you've launched a bunch of times, you can flex. Yeah, for sure. I see why he did it. If you told anyone, like the day that Rocket Lab had their first launch, that they would be the only small sad launcher operating in this late in 2020,

people would be like, no way, there's a billion of these guys out there. It's crazy. So I do like the flexing from Peter Beck. I'm a pro-BEC flex. Probeck flex. Another thing that is interesting to me about OneWeb is, of course, the UK has had this interest

in a position, navigation, and timing system, their own GPS. And prior to OneWeb going bankrupt, there was already discussion by One Web officials about a Gen 2 system, which struck a lot of people, myself included, as a bit odd because it sort of suggested a dissatisfaction with where they were with the Gen 1 system. And now it's really interesting because if they're going to go forward. given their launch cadence, it suggests that they're going to go forward entirely with a Gen 1 system. But since they were already planning the successor, that could be the pathway for the UK to get their own GPS, their own Galileo, if they wanted it.

It just seems like a very straightforward route. I was going to ask about that because I don't really understand. I mean, there was a lot of, it got all wrapped up in the Brexit stuff. So, like, it's really hard to read about it because everyone's just like shooting their mouth off one way or the other. in the previous war. Yeah, everyone's got to let you know what they think about Brexit. And so there was, you know, all this. There was all this stuff about like, oh, they like bought this, they bought one web for like a Hail Mary to make Brexit work.

And they didn't even like read the documents and they bought the wrong satellite. I'm like, no, that wouldn't have actually happened. Right. Like, what is, is that, so that's what it was? They thought that the second genera. would be their ticket into GPS so they don't have to do the Galileo thing?

Look, I would hope, so I don't know what went on in the UK. I know that when the CEO of Barty, he spoke during an Israel press conference and mentioned being on, it's Downing Street? Forgive me, my ignorance. You got it. Downing Street, you know, the UK

equivalent to Pennsylvania Avenue. Really dingy-looking door. They should clean that thing up every once in a while. So, but he went there, he met with them, and given all the money that the UK poured into just studies over a GPS or GNSS system, I would assume, I would hope, they spent millions of dollars on studies. And like, you know, I could have told them the difference between one web and GPS. Like, it doesn't take that much money to know.

Yeah, we can hash it out right here, three guys at their houses over here. Everything I know about one web we've said on this podcast, and I knew it wasn't GPS. It's my genuine hope that they, so I think that any headline that said they bought the wrong system, that's misleading because they surely knew that a telecom system was not a GNSS system. I think if they bought it with any hope of blending GNSS, it was about potential and long-term potential, not a near-term. fix. But like you said, Brexit, like, I mean, what I've seen of Brexit reactions, not that American politics is particularly civil these days, but if you really want to get people to just foam at the mouth and opine excessively about something else going on in the world, it's going to be Brexit. So you're going to get a lot of fluff and stuff.

As Lars points out in the Discord chat, which one were they supposed to buy? There's not a floating around GPS compatible system to buy. So it's not like, oops, read this wrong, was supposed to buy, I'm trying to do one web backwards in my head real quick, and I just totally could not do that. View, you know, you know. Web one. Web one. I got to write that down later. The second thing that I, I don't know if I was just like reading into this too much, but I felt like the two things that were floated were, hey, maybe we could do our.

own navigation system, an FU to Galileo. And like, maybe we'll have to find some new launch vehicles and FU to the very France and Germany and Italy-centric launch infrastructure in the, in, uh, Issa and Aryan space. Like, it, it did feel like a couple of these things that were floated out there were needling the European partners a little bit, but I might have just been putting my own, like, you know, spin on this whole Brexit-infused drama. I don't know. It's a fun storyline if that's true, though.

There's one guy in the office that knows how it works, and he's like, man, I hate the guys that do the launch thing. I'm going to post some of these stories out there, throw some floaters out there just to get everyone riled up about this and see if we can shake a couple things loose elsewhere. But maybe I'm just reading too much into it. I mean, the Canadian government bought a bunch of submarines that just couldn't drive and just caught fire, I think, and spent most of their life in a port somewhere. in Europe. So, I mean, I guess it's possible for our governments to screw up a big purchase. But, yeah, I know, it just didn't seem right. So, yeah.

We got a couple of those. What's your airplane one? We got that airplane one, too. We both got it, I think. Oh, you're buying that from us. So I'm fine with that. Oh, well, you're on the good side of that deal? Oh, damn.

It's okay. We can't even come up to Canada right now. That's a fair point. Yeah, and we can't come down. So. I was telling the other day. I haven't been the United States since I think January, which is like the longest I've gone in a very,

very long time without popping by to see you guys. That's true. You mostly just pick up your mail, you mean, right? I do. Well, it's just picking up. Yeah, you're not like popping around the U.S. doing meetups everywhere. You're just picking up mail. You should get the mail.

I go to a gas station, get the cheap gas, see what kind of weird chocolate bars you all have. and then pick one of those out of them. That's what I used to do. What else you got? You were all into this looter comms thing, Jake, and I feel like we trampled that a little bit. You got anything else in that?

Does anyone have anything about it? I don't know. I mean, it's interesting. I think I've said my thoughts, but I'm excited for it. I think it's a cool new space for, you know, companies to be involved in all of a sudden. And like, you know, just the whole effort to really expand the use case for space and getting more people involved and getting more cooperation and more projects that are collaborating together and all that kind of thing.

I think it's a really good fit for that. So that's what makes me excited. I like seeing, you know, every time we talk about like space stuff, it's going to be great in the future. Sometimes it just feels so like kind of hollow or it's like, yeah, one day. Like, this is important because one day it's going to do... A lander's going to land and a rover's going to grab this sample that's cached by the rover that I love and have talked about all summer. But then when you actually see that happen, it's like even better. It's even sweeter, right?

So that's kind of why I like, we talked a lot about how cheap launch is going to make all this cool stuff happen in space. Well, look, now they're looking at building a comms network on the moon. That's awesome. That's my story. The one thing that does make me a little nervous about it is that, um, Lunar reconnaissance orbiter is this incredible spacecraft that does amazing imagery, but it is there because one time Project Constellation exists, and that was the first mission of that,

was like, let's go scout some landing sites, and then everything else fell apart except for lunar reconnaissance orbiter, and it's still doing its thing. And every once in a while, I remember the fact that, oh, yeah, that is the vestigial mission from the previous era of, we should go to the moon some time. So I just hope that that doesn't happen again. But, you know, I guess there's an election.

This is the worst off nominal for trying to predict what's going to happen. This episode would be immediately uninteresting to people in the future if we talked about the election. Yeah. Should we talk about some picks and then we've probably got a couple other topics to get into? of like various what's going on in our life kind of situation. Picks? What does that mean? Well, you did yours kind of already with astronomy on tap.

You jumped the gun because you're excellent like that. I think Jake and I both said that we've got a weird one that's a little outside of our normal recommendation for people. It is a little weird, yeah. Do you want to go last? I can go first if you want. I don't know if it's going to be a long topic. I'm going to open a beer for this. Okay.

It's time. I love it. So, yeah, so this one is like, it's not space related, but I found a way to make it space related. So bear with me while I tell a story. But I've been, I've made a commitment to myself to learn more about the colonial history of the Americas. I just, like, like many people who went to school in the United States and Canada, I just

wasn't really taught a lot of the key points. You know, like I learned a little bit about, I'm in Canada, so I learned a little bit about Jacques Cartier and the planes of Abraham. There were some French and British people shooting guns at each other. Hudson's Bay Company, end of story. That's like everything I learned. The soldiers that invented hockey in Newfoundland or whatever. I don't think I even learned that to be honest.

Oh, that's all right. Whatever. Yeah. So, you know, so that's the bit I learned. I didn't know a lot about the United States. And I definitely didn't know a lot about like everything south of the United States. States, which has got tons and tons of colonial history. So I decided to start reading, and I wanted to start at the source of colonialism, which was, you know, Columbus. So I got this

audiobook. It's called Admiral of the Ocean Sea. And it's, I got multiple recommendations for it. Like, I wanted, I want to do Columbus. Where do I start? And they pointed this one to me. But the thing about this book is that it was written in 1941 by a U.S. retired U.S. Navy Admiral turned historian. Wow. So a 1940s Navy Admiral Samuel Elliot Morrison. Is this the one? This is illustrated in 91.

That's the one, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, illustrated, but the publication is 1941. And he did this cool stuff. Like he went on a, he actually, like, did the voyage. He, like, went on a sailing ship and they, like, reenacted it all. And so that's kind of how he does history. He's like wants to experience it, which is cool.

But as you can imagine, 1940s. That's some Richard Garriot shit, by the way. 1940s naval admiral, not the wokeest guy you've ever read a story about. Right. So, and I knew that going into it. I was like, I know that this is going to be completely whitewashed. But I want to know what is whitewashed for when I, when I read the better stuff. You're laying the base to work from.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I want to understand that. So I'm reading this book. It's like, okay, it's fine. I'm learning a lot of stuff about the details and stuff. And predictably, they, oh, yeah, the Portuguese started in Africa and the trade was really good. They got a bunch of jewels and ivory and some slaves.

And then it's fine. I'm going to move on to the next thing, right? And they don't talk about it at all. And I was like, well, that's fine. But the guy spends like, this is where I get to the space part. So he talks a lot about how. like amazing Columbus is, like his, like persistence and his bravery and his ingenuity and like, like really stresses how great this guy is. And even to a point where like he's laying into like

the physical description of how tall and ruddy and long face and Auburn hair and stands tall and you're like, you're really like obsessing about this guy. You're checking. You're like, is this Christopher Columbus fanfic that I picked up? What's it? Yeah, yeah. What is that? And then there was this whole chapter about the boats. It's like, okay, starting with this boat. These are the kinds of sales it had. This is what the wood was made of. This is how big it is. We don't have a direct measurement, but I was able to get all the ratios for what that kind of shift. I pond noose of Christopher Columbus's abs. And then I... Exactly. And like, and I think, and they measured it with with barrels of wine. And if you did it this way and this way and this way, you fit this many

barrels of wine, which fits in with some predictions for other boats that I found. So this is my best guess, and he, like, obsesses about the boats. And I'm, I'm listening to it, just kind of laughing. And then all of a sudden, it clicks. I'm like, this is us with Starship. Oh, my God. This is us. This is us, like, we're watching these cameras, like, I don't, I don't know how big it is, but I drew a line next to the the Ford. I measure this guy on the crane and his hard hat is a, I know, and I know the Ford horse is this tall. Exactly. And then trying to figure out how big these stupid rockets are. I was like, oh my God, this is. And then I think back to the chapter about how amazing Columbus is. And I'm like, oh, no, it's Elon Musk and how I'm smart and amazing he is. And how breaking the mold is. Oh, my goodness.

Right. So then I just like, I had to like stop and like take a breather. And it was, it was a fun moment for me. So now I wanted to share this book. I'm like, I don't know, I throw it the way through it. And I'll finish it just because it's, it's, there's lots to learn. I can't believe you made it as far as you did based on, how did you make, did you read through that section about the ships like entirely? Oh, yeah. Well, I have the audiobook, so it's like a leaser, but you had no choice. You couldn't. You were probably on a hike and you didn't have any choice.

You were out of cell connection. Well, you can skip the chapters, but. Okay. Um, I don't know. It was, it's fine. Like, I want to, I want to just experience this book. So, uh, I'm going to listen to it. But that's my story.

So Admiral of the Ocean Sea. I do recommend it. Lars has asked me if I actually recommend it. I do recommend it as long as you know what you're getting into and you're ready to balance that after, which I intend to do with whatever the right story is. And to be fair, I haven't gotten to the part where he's landed in the Caribbean.

I can't believe how slow of a burn this book is and you're still really going to listen to it. Yeah, well, I had to talk a lot about how amazing Geno is and stuff. So maybe it gets worse and I don't finish it. We'll see. We're going to circle. back for an update on that.

That was like a 10 minute, 10 minute pick explanation. All right. Mine is similarly, you're going to think it's stupid or non-space related, but I'm going to, you'll see very quickly. So social networks, they come and go, everybody got their favorite. Some of them get banned by governments and sold off for parts or whatever. I missed that whole story when I was out with my child. Some of them, though, they die off for most people.

and then you can realize that they maintain their value in other ways. Flickr. I'm going to do a hard sale on Flickr for you because everyone has bailed on Flickr in the entire world, except for whatever reason, every space agency and organization that exists. They upload all these high-res photos to Flickr. So I'm just going to pull up my – what I've done was I've deleted all of the people that I used to know in my past life on Flickr, and I've deleted them all from my following list. And the only things I follow are just space accounts at this point.

And the uploads here, they've got uploads from the Space Station, all the companies, SpaceX does all their photos here, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and everybody does their photos. So you get, like, insanely high-res photos directly from the Space Station and everywhere else. Some historical stuff, I've got, like, the San Diego Air and Space Museum because they do all these crazy high-res archival. dumps.

Cool. The high-rise cam from direct from Mars. These photos are fantastic. And if you completely blow out everyone that you've ever followed on Twitter and or on Flickr and just make it space people, it's awesome. You just log in and you've got like crazy good space photos, historical and current. And I love it. So I just want to let you know that Flickr maintains its relevancy.

And what I will do, look at this photo. Come on. Like, let's look at this. Yeah, like great. Great photos straight from the space station, you know? Love it. So what I will do, I'll put a link in the show notes to my Flickr because you can then click on who I'm following and then pick some of them up as well.

Oh, Steve Jervinson, I should put him in there too because he's got a lot of good stuff. But it's just awesome. It's great. So I often am, if you're a listener to any of our podcast and you see the album art, I'm often pulling photos straight from Flickr because everything's there. It's wonderful. So rediscover your favorite social network of the past. This is making me feel validating.

I will say during my days as a journalist, I very regularly used Flickr as a source for photos and imagery. They do have a fantastic collection of stuff. SpaceX does regularly post. I think usually within the same day. Yeah, directly not there. Same 24 hours. And all the licensing is clear.

Yeah, it's very understandable. You know what's copyrighted, what's creative commons. Yeah, I feel very validated because if you remember way back in the early days of Weimarsians, I actually had an Instagram account. I think I kept it up for like, I don't know, a year or two. That's where I got all the photos, man. I was just like whenever I could. Yeah, because it was all like high-res.

So, yeah, I would like, sometimes I would search for. a photo, like through Google, and then find the one I wanted it, and then go to Flickr to find the high-res version of it, because you could, you could even search, like, with the NASA image tag, and then, you know, at Flickr, and you'd find it. That could be good stuff. So it's great. I'm telling you. It's fantastic. So I just am, like, grabbing all these images and I make it my screensaver. I've got this whole folder of, like, images over time. And I don't know. It's some nerdy stuff. I thought, you know, I thought this show I would come back, having had all this time off and I would have, like, watch some new show or read some new book. I didn't do any of that.

I just, like, didn't, I don't know. I also totally assume that Jake, you tried to watch the, or you might have not even tried to watch that new right stuff because it's your least favorite thing in the world to redo the old space stories that we've already seen a billion times. I haven't tried to watch it yet, no. I probably will. Let's be serious, but yeah. Did we ever, oh, we did, um, I'm trying to think, did everyone pick away yet, but it's canceled? now and oh yeah i missed that should i watch it should i not watch it is it too similar to that other one that we like that got canceled as well i only i'm only two episodes in so i can't really make a good judgment of it yet Caleb are you in on any of these i am not the only recent space show that

i've watched is the expanse which uh i've enjoyed a lot this season five is coming out soon oh yeah that trailer looked great to come up on that train yeah Season four I was not super big on. No? I don't know. It felt it was missing the expansey stuff that I loved. It felt more like Battlestar Galactica. It felt like what?

Battlestar Galactica. It did kind of feel like that. Yeah. But season five trailer looks like back to the wheelhouse. I'm excited. I'll just say I really enjoy just like seeing like visual. depictions of colonies that like weren't just like the moon and Mars like when they went to Ganymede I got super spoiler earlier I guess I should have warned but like there's some stuff

that takes place on that it's not just the usual suspects as far as like where in the solar system are you going to go and so I really liked that yes this is good yeah the Mormons the Mormons are the best in that show also good a surprising addition to sci-five yes yeah it was a surprising it did I guess it shouldn't have been

you've got contact it's too late for spoilers on that one but that's way too late that's like decades late on that so the Mormons have been in space for some time now for counting all these different things I got to rewatch contact it's been too long

I haven't watched it God, I don't know, 15 years or something, so. Jake, it feels good to be back. Yeah? It feels great to be back. Do you want to do like a dad update? I don't know. A dad update?

I don't know. What's it like being a dad now? Oh, I like that. Yeah. What have you been up to the past six months? We got, child is born. Tort de France was on. We got super into cycling.

So watching the Vuelta right now. Cycling is great for when you're off for extended periods of time because it's on during the day in the U.S. Right, because everything's, all the tournaments are over in Europe. So you can wake up and then put it on. It's fantastic. And, you know, just hanging out, reading, you got to read to the kids. So I've been reading them, space news out of my RSS reader. He doesn't know the difference.

Knows a lot about satellites from Caleb. He read him a couple of Caleb articles. The last few, the precious last few Caleb articles that existed out there. And it's great, you know. I will say there's one more article actually from me that is supposed to come out because they held it after I left. I did an interview with the Jeep Pi from the FCC to talk about all things, space with him.

And I don't know when Space News is going to release it. I'm sort of on the outside looking in now. But stay tuned. Don't be shocked if you see my byline sometime in October. You don't also have a log-in to the CMS or anything, no. Alas. I feel like there's always that like the lost interview, you know, like such and such person who was a historical figure,

the lost interview. This is like Caleb Henry, the lost article. It's out there. There's a lost KSP history episode, too. Oh. Yeah. What? Yeah.

There's one that I have pictures of that I never post. left it. Whoa. There you go. Damn. Caleb, I don't know that you're going to have as many plugs as he did in the past, but where can people find you out there? Well, right now, I guess you can still find me on Twitter.

So I am at the same account. I've changed underscore SN to underscore QA for Quilty Analytics. But we're still there and alive. And unfortunately, I guess for the masses, the reports that I'll be are behind a paywall, but I am working on a couple right now. It's definitely fun. I'm still enjoying writing about the space industry, and I'm still here and open to opine on things from time to time.

The best news I've ever heard. The biggest thing I was worried about is like, is Caleb, did I lose Caleb? And is he not going to be able to be on the show anymore? So, yeah, those are the ways we're still here. You know what? Actually, I should have tried to be able to be on the show anymore. tried to use this to plug. We just did, I didn't write it, but Chris Quilty wrote a report on flat panel antennas, which was really fun because of course it ties into the mega constellations

and all that stuff. And I'll just say we're doing some really cool research on things that are critical to the space and satellite industry. And I'll definitely be sharing those things on Twitter. Lars in the chat wants to know if you're going to have more hot takes now that you're not a capital J journalist. So one of the things that I'm like trying to do is I realize that people want more opinions from me. Like people would ask me my opinion on things and I would give very neutral statements because I was the journalist.

And so like I still, I suppose maybe it could be a point of pride that like even like a month or so after that, if you ask me my opinion on something, I'm still very much dear in the headlights. I'm like, well, here's what's been reported. Here are the things. Here's the evidence. Come on over. Come on over, friend.

Welcome to the land of pundits. I'm working on getting to a space where a place where I have opinions on things and I can share them in a way that like I hope to still be as devoid as possible of bias, but also willing to share like whether I think something is. going to succeed or fail or why I think it approach is good or not. So we're getting there, but this ship has been sailing in the same direction for seven years, so it turns slow. When you're ready for opinions, we've got the platforms for you of all variety. Jake, do you have stuff to plug?

Nothing super particular right now, but we're out of the summer and I'm finally getting back into the groove of regular interviews over on We Martians, so it's been fun. We had a really cool episode with Charity Lander Phillips, Phillips Lander, sorry, Charity Phillips Lander. She had a white paper for the Decado Survey, which is about making a spacecraft to explore a lava tube on Mars, which is just like awesome. So we talked all about like, you know, what you can find in a cave. That was pretty fun. And then I had Abby Frayman on, who's the deputy project scientist for curiosity. So kind of the big wig we talked about Vera Rubin Ridge and they're getting

all they had this huge science release on Vera Rubin Ridge so just learning about some of the crazy stuff. I found like evidence of big groundwater swells up there so it's pretty neat pretty cool stuff. Is that an RSL? No no this is like just like tons of groundwater.

Is this an RSL? Is that that I mean? Yeah. Is this? Yeah so it's been fun and there's some more cool stuff coming and And I got to start really thinking about perseverance landing because that's, that's coming, man. They're halfway there already.

Yeah, that's one holiday cycle away. Yeah, I feel like I just- You're already done Thanksgiving, too. Yes, yes, we are. So, yeah, I'm trying to get ready. I'm trying to get organized. What about you? I'm back.

I did a couple episodes, talked about the election. That one will age great, I'm sure. I don't know where we go from here, but I'm back. I'm figuring things out. Are you going to put out an episode between now and the election? If something fun happens, I guess. But I feel like it's about to be a black hole for everything, but the election. We'll see.

We'll see. I'm still figuring out how to be a dad podcaster, to be honest. Yeah. I did a couple episodes like morning nap, get to the podcast, studio. But Dacre hasn't started yet, so. I'm still off from day job. I'm still like full-time dadding and doing a podcast occasionally. So bear with me a couple more weeks.

But we're doing this and it's great. Yes. Everything's good, man. It's very nice to have you back. I am so glad to be back. And I didn't really miss it much. I thought I'd miss a lot more news. But I felt like the...

We were talking about this. You picked a good time. Yeah, it felt like that. Everyone was like, oh, the end of summer and school's starting and it's still a pandemic. So nothing happened for a while. Good plan. ending last Christmas on that one. Yeah, right after that, the whole pandemic started and no one knew yet. And I was like, I got a feeling this whole pandemic life is coming.

That's great. Well, bye, everybody. Bye. See you.