Off-Nominal - 64 - In Between is Hot Topic

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Engineer, Consultant and STEM evangelist Lauren Lyons joins Jake and Anthony to talk about her diverse career at SpaceX, Blue Origin and Firefly, and the unique and interesting paths the space industry can take you on.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 64 - In Between is Hot Topic (with Lauren Lyons) - YouTubeFIRST Robotics Competition | FIRSTWhy Mars Excites and Inspires Us - YouTubeLauren Lyons on Twitter: “Last weekend I spoke on a space career panel, which I nearly bailed on due to my insecurity about being between jobs. But I’m so glad I went & opened up about my funky career path in hopes of inspiring others (and myself!) to dgaf what others think & to embrace career audacity”Follow LaurenLauren Lyons (@Laur_Ly) | TwitterLauren’s Website | Lauren-Lyons.comFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. Hey there, strangers. I'm back from vacation, Jake. I'm coming back to the show. You're back. You thought you were done with me, doing all this yourself. I'm back. I'm so thankful.

All my stress for today is just like, it's like easy, gone, you know, have to do any of this hard work. Yeah, you can just be you and hang out. We've got a fantastic show today. I'm pumped. This is the best way to return is a person who's been on our list, probably since we created the list for people we should have on the show, to be honest.

It's a pleasure to have you here, Lauren. How's it going today? Oh, it's awesome. And that makes me so happy to hear. That's cool. Happy, but also, like, we were really slacking. Major slack. You picked a good timing because there's really probably not a lot of other times where it would have made sense.

And so this is good timing. I'm pumped. I am excited. Yeah, that's great. Should we do some drinks first? Yeah, you provided me some content. here, Jake, that I need to put. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is a, it's a funny story. And Lauren, I'm really curious to see if you, if you know about this because you from your time at Blue Origin may

be relevant here. But there's this document floating around. I don't even remember how we got it. But it's like, I don't know if there was like a party at Blue Origin or something. And they had all these, these drinks here. And so this is like a document of recipes of like rocket inspired drinks. And I made one finally after all this time. So if you go down to. one called the Cosmic Politan. I made that one. There it is. Yeah. How close is it matched? How did I do? It looks great. Look at that. Yeah. So it's got gin, coin tro, a little bit of this, and this is a funny story. So the juice is supposed to be cranberry blueberry juice. So for context, Lauren, I live in Mexico. And so I had to find all this stuff in Spanish. And so the first thing I did

was like, okay, what is blueberry in Spanish? And it's arrandono. And then I look up what cranberry is in Spanish and it is also arandano. They're the same berry. There's just red ones and blue ones. And so I was trying to find this juice that was red arandano and blue aranino. And it was a fun thing. My wife finally dug it out of like the bottom of a bin at the back of a grocery store this week and found it for me.

So yeah, so I made it. This is it. This is the Cosmic Paulson. So we'll see how good it is here. Did you like have this PDF saved somewhere and you've been thinking about this for while or what? Yeah, yeah, I have. I've been like trying to find like looking at all the different recipes because I don't want to go and like buy a cocktail recipe where I need every single ingredient like at once to purchase. You want to like build up a little bit of an inventory. So I didn't want to have

to go by like 10 different things to make one drink. But I finally got to a point where I had most of it. I just needed that juice and it's good to go. So. I don't know stuff on the tea berries being the same name in Spanish. That's like some key information I'm going to use later. Yeah. I know it. There's some. There's some funny translations. One of my favorites, too, is I was trying to find mint once. And the translation for mint here is Yerba Buena, which just means good herb. I was like, okay, good spice.

I'm like, you don't have a specific name for it? You just call it the good one, really? Okay. I do take personal offense to not having a specific term for cranberry as a native New Jersey. Oh, yeah. Major offense to that. Yeah. I'm actually, you know, I think that's more on me, though, because so when you're

in kindergarten in New Jersey, your field trip is you go to the cranberry bogs, like that's what you do if you're from my part of Jersey, the South part. Mine got canceled and I never went. I've still to this day, never, you know, waded into a cranberry bog, and I don't think I've gotten over that. Wait, cranberries growing bogs? I'm learning so much today. They do. Yeah. Yeah, you flood them and then they float to the top and you have to like go and scoop off a lot. Maybe that's like the picture on the bottle of like the ocean spray. Yeah, you've probably seen those ads where the guy's in the ocean spray thing and then he accidentally dumps like sugar in there yeah yeah yeah this is uh I'm pulling up some pictures to see to

thoroughly yeah and we're gonna get into this yeah look at these people in this bog right yeah so I never got to go to one and I'm kind of bummed about that so I'm obviously when my son's old enough signing up for that chaperone day to really check off a thing on my to do list I guess. Anyway, Lauren, did you bring something fun to drink? I wouldn't call it fun, but I'll show you. It's very full, but I'm going to have some. I'm very basic.

So it's an iced coffee, but with Kalua in it? And so half and half. And it's a cold brew coffee, actually. So, yeah, this will be very fun. I thought, I totally thought you just said, it's iced coffee with Kalua in it, half and half, as in it was got like scolting. I didn't I didn't parse that one correctly.

No, it's not half and half because we got to get through that. That didn't look very basic to me though. That looked pretty good. It actually came out looking really nice given it took me like all of like five seconds to pull together. That's fancy. I like it. I've got a dock street same brewery I had last time but I got the summer haze this time. I really dig the little art museum illustration on this. If you ever been to Philadelphia, you've probably been to these steps, and you probably have run up them because that's what people do when they come to our art museum steps.

Is that this one? That's the one. Okay. All right. That's the guy. That's where he lives. It's a statue. You never live that movie now.

Huge line of people to take a picture with that. Yeah, that's where it's at. But it's a sweet. It's nice, you know, American paleout. It's delicious. Good. And it's definitely summer. So I'm drinking summer beers. I'm making the transition. It's great.

It's a great time of year. Great time of year. Cranberry bogs this time of year, just spectacular. I hear, I hear. So where should we start with this? Where do we want to unpack? So I guess, like Lauren, we wanted to bring you on really because you have a really interesting, well-rounded kind of experience across this. space industry, which I think is going to be very interesting. You've done a lot of cool stuff. And we figured, like, with no other agenda other than you probably have some cool stories

to tell, that's like literally like the extent of why we think you'd be great on here. So maybe do you want to just kick it off with like what, what, you know, interest you in space? Like, why did you even start into this career? Were you like a robot geek in high school? Like what was the, what was the origin story? That's it. That's like most space people imagine. Robotics, that's it.

I always, I wasn't even like into the robots though. So fun fact, went to a girls high school. I was in the first graduating class. It was like this super experimental situation. The school is actually like really popular now and is like a top independent school in LA. But at the time, you know, we were the guinea pigs. And I remember our, I was like a biology teacher.

I think it was bio. She goes, okay, we're going to start this robotics. team and the team gets to go to Disney World for the national championships. I heard none of the robot part. Like I heard was Disney World. So I signed up and it was one of the best decisions I ever made because being in L.A., our mentors were from Jake Y'l and they worked on Morris program. And so it was really cool. That was my first exposure to that. Our school, again, super lucky acknowledging how weird this is and how lucky I was that I was at this place during this experimental phase, they sent us to space camp. And like, like us, don't get to do that. So

that's a pretty incredible experience. And so the combination of the robots, space camp, being surrounded by all these, like, incredible engineers, when I didn't know what an engineer was before that, had it not been from a free trip to Disney world. Yeah, that's how it started. But why, okay, that's the point, though. This is interesting. Why did you decide the space robots? Why did you not decide Disney Imagineering and try to, like, stay around and do you? Disney Robo? You could have made Space Mountain. I'm going to tell you,

it is definitely, like, if I wasn't doing this right now, doing space, that is absolutely right to do me. I am obsessed with the Disney. I have a, like, when I, back when they were doing the annual passes, you could ask SpaceXers, like, I talked about it all the time. I go get dinner at SpaceX, and then around like 8 p.m. I would drive to Disneyland, go watch the fireworks, you know, hop on Space Mountain.

And so it's not out of the question for the future. It would be kind of fun. Do you watch that Imagineering documentary that was, is that like a year or two ago that they came out? Yeah. It's so good. It is so good. You would eat that up.

You would eat that up and potentially decide that's the new path for you. I know I'm real susceptible to it. I treated myself to like a solo adult single person in their 30s, Walt Disney World Vacation two months ago. which is weird. I acknowledge it. I love it. And I was definitely just like,

when you go to the avatar area at Animal Kingdom, like that's just some next level imaginary stuff. I still haven't seen that one. Oh, it's amazing. Animal Kingdom's the best market in Florida. Yeah, I agree.

100%. Wow. Bold takes coming out. Yeah, do that. We're going to get a lot of email about that one. Lauren, it's a requirement. We have a weird contractual arrangement with this podcast that,

any Disney related topics come up. We need to discuss Epcot and the world, the, what's it called? What's the world part called? You know, in the back, you know, the World Showcase, is that what it's called back there? Yeah, we're all the countries are.

Yep. If you're starting a drink around the world session, do you start at Canada or do you start at Mexico? Oh, Mexico, 100%. Yeah, it's my favorite, you got to get the margarita real quick. Just get one of those and then you're set for the rest of the day. Put it in.

We need like a page on the website that tracks people's answers to this question. Yeah, yeah. Keep a tally going. Well, Artemis 1 happens. We're doing a drink around the world and you can, you and J can go on the Mexico side, but I'll start in Canada. We'll meet. What's in the middle?

This is where we're happening. Is that where it is? I don't know if it's equal a number around, but that's in the middle and the back. Okay. All right. All right. That makes sense. That's a good design decision.

I can get that with that. Not only America, it's Philadelphia, baby. That is designed after Independence Hall. That does say something about it, though, where they put America in the middle, and then they put their two closest friends as far away as possible. No, it's like anchor stores in a mall. You got to put, you know, the Macy's on one end, the Nordstrom's in the other. There you go.

It's everything else in between is a hot topic. Exactly, yes, totally. Got it. you got Paxon over there by Norway, you know. I don't even know if that company still exists. Got to get through all these hot topic countries so we can get to America. Whatever country Spencer's is, I don't know. Anyway, so you got hooked on the robots.

And then so it sounds like JPL was you were, I mean, honestly, it sounds like they were creating a new farm team for JPL. That's what the intention of this whole robot mentor program was. Yeah, NASA is just support of first robotics coming from, you know, the like Dave Lavery, who's one of my mentors, giving David a shot out here. He was kind of one of those main people within the agency that really supported NASA funding and deploying their engineers out through all these first robotics teams. And so when I got to college, chose to study mechanical aerospace engineering. I remember I went back the first summer in college because I wrote this long letter.

to Dean came in and to our first robotic being like, you guys changed my life. Thank you so much. I mean, I was like 18, but that's how I talked. And so I wrote this letter and they got it. They thought it was cool. So they invited me up to speak at the board meeting right before the kickoff.

And I remember sitting in there and being like, when I grow up, I want to work for NASA. And Dave Lavery comes up to me right after that. And he goes, I can make that happen for you. And from then on, I mean, he connected me with JPL and I had three summers of internships there in college. So yeah, I definitely first robotics, space, those things are like one and the same for me.

A lot of JPLs are proud of like whatever, you know, piece they got the touch that's now on another planet. Do you have one of those things? Yeah. Let's see. No. I have, okay, I do have something. that I don't really like to talk about, nor should I talk about,

but I will say seeing it float by when the astronauts are, you know, doing their live, you know, cast from inside of Dragon, and then you see my stuff float by. I'm like simultaneously, like, cringing, but also, like, super proud that I was a part of that. So, yeah, I won't go into details on it, but, no. So, yeah, I did some work, a lot of work on Dragon, a lot of work on Falcon. Most of our stuff isn't, you know, obviously hanging out in space still. But yeah, when you see something that you worked on up there and you see it like on NASA TV,

it's just, it's pretty amazing. It's absolutely incredible. That's like, that's the engineering dream right there is that, you know, your stuff does things, right? That's like, that's what it's all. Exactly. People are like, what do you like to do? What are your hobbies? of my putting stuff in space. No big deal. No big deal. No big deal. So what was the,

no you were not attracted to the space part of the initial things that got you hooked on the robots. What was like, when did that turn over for you and go, oh yeah, space is like I dig this. I could get into this. I can go work at launch companies. What's that switch in your brain? I think it started with, honestly with biology, with science.

So I did a minor in bioengineering and I did another one in robotics. But I got really hooked on Europa really early, like this idea of finding life. I still get really giddy about it. I'm such a Europa geek. I love that place. And so I did multiple college projects on Europa. I think I forced our space system design team to like do a Europa mission. I was like, yeah, we're going to build a robot.

We're going to go through the ice. It's going to be great. And so that was my first like. interest was planetary science basically. So JPL made perfect sense to be there. And the scientists there are just so open. Oh my God. Scientists, the JPL will sit there and just like talk to you and like just blow your mind with all the cool stuff that they're working on. And it's just such an incredible place to be immersed in these people who like on the whole, the job is not particularly sexy. Like you're sitting there running simulations on your computer. Maybe you're doing like, you know,

kind of hacky tests and lab, you know, that go on for years and years and fighting for funding and all this other stuff, but their passion for their work. It's just so infectious. And so I wanted to enable that. I knew I wasn't going to be a scientist, but I wanted to do things that made their lives easier, but also made it so we can do all these incredible discovery. You must be stoked for Europa Clipper then. Oh my God, you have no idea. Question for you though. So is Europa a planet? Yes or no?

No. We're getting into this whole thing. I was like, I light it off again, see if I can get someone else to be on my side. Did someone argue that? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Really? That's a thing.

Okay, I'm a little. It's a thing. It's a hot topic. A geology. It's got oceans. It's got surface topography. Differentiation of the cores. It's a planet.

Yeah, it's a planet. Yeah. Everything's, I'm just, I, everything's good. Everything's a planet in my. in my eye. There you go. Right. And who can, you know, why do we care? Why do we have to name it? Like, we treat planets very much. I don't think so. We treat them the same. So, yeah. We convinced her. We convinced her. That was easy. We didn't even need film as good long paper. We didn't need the history of how planets became planets. Just, yeah, you know what? That sounds

fun. You're like, that's, yeah. I like. Who's going to stop me? Who's going to stop? Yeah. Do you feel that? What do you feel about Enceladus? then. Planet. Definitely a planet. Same thing, planet? Yeah. Okay.

All of them. Wrong, but that's fine. Endor is a planet too. I've got to say that. So just, yeah, although we're talking about Disney. The forest planet of Endor. As the script goes.

Actually, if you go, we were talking pre-show about the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. If you go in there, you'll see in the original manuscript, it was called the Forest Planet of Endor. really i don't know probably it probably was making that up i'm making it up i'm very gullible all right so you got hooked on planetary science but you just mentioned that you built a lot of things in dragon which is human space flight which is like the two the other main branch of of a space

yeah so actually you got swept out of jpl somehow in there and then what happened So after three summers of JPL working on Mars stuff, I worked on a lunar project and did some really like very good internee work on what had been JMO, the Jupiter icy moons orbiter. And that's another thing that got me very excited about. Then that died and that made me really sad. And so when that died, because I had all these dreams of I'm going to write the senior thesis that's about like astrobiology and Jimo. and I had all these thoughts on what that was going to be like. And then, you know, Gemmo died. I got very sad.

And I had been working in an orthopedics biomechanical or not biomechanical, biometrials lab at Princeton. And the work I was doing, like, turned out to be really fun. And I just ended up turning that into my senior thesis. And so I got the bioengineering bug, like the medical devices, build stuff to, like, make people's bodies better bug. And so that's what I did after college. I went and worked for a company called Medtronic for quite a few years, not quite a few,

like two and a half. And then kind of stuck in that industry working as a consultant, worked with a startup. But while I was in that world, I started to realize like, okay, we're doing a lot of patents. We're inventing a lot of stuff. And it was really cool because like the design timeline on those kind of things is like pretty quick. So even in just that two and a half years that I was there, I think I worked on like five or six different products, took multiple products to market. It was just like this really cool experience in just like the fundamentals of mechanical engineering, which I think set me up really well for the future. But I started looking at this and going, hmm, I feel like it's not about like how great your design is or how many patients you can treat and like how like incredible the clinical outcomes could be if this thing came to market.

there was so much regulatory and political, just weirdness around innovation in that space that I thought, well, I've done what I can on the engineering side. The next way to kind of really make innovation easier for these companies is to tackle it on the policy side. So for some reason, I decided to get a master's in public policy at Harvard. I don't know. I was just like, yeah, we're going to go change the world. we're going to start with the government. That's the place you go do it. And so, you know, yeah, went to, went to Harvard to study government. You got to be careful with those regulations, though, because that's how you get robocop if you're not, you're not too careful, right? Like, that's true. That would be very scary, actually. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that.

I probably would have made a different decision otherwise. Yeah. Yeah, so spent some years, at Harvard, studying health care policy was like very much on that path. That's what I was going to do. I'm just going to go save the world through medicine. I was taking courses at MIT, taking courses at Harvard Business School. So it was like really great. You got to just kind of experience all these different backgrounds. It was awesome. You just picked the easy places to go too. You do robots at JPL, policy at Harvard. That's just like cruise control for a couple of years. there in the middle. Yeah, I don't know why I let me in those places, but for the reason they saw. Wait, so the policy was more like, it was healthcare-focused policy?

Yeah, there's some generic policy. Yeah, that seems highly relevant to space. Oh, yeah, no, totally, totally. The school that I was at did really have, like right now, they're starting to do more space policy. You're seeing that at Harvard Business School. There's a lot of it at MIT. But back then, like, it, it was. it wasn't this huge thing. So you couldn't really, you could force a concentration around it, but the support and the ecosystem,

as opposed like if you're at George Washington University, it just like wasn't there. And so I was doing the healthcare thing and I was sitting at MIT in the Muddy Charles. Have you heard of this bar? It's like in the university. Yeah, so I'm at the muddy and I'm drinking a beer with a professor because that's what, as one does.

And I get a call from, Man, I just keep calling out Dave Lavery. I get this call from Dave Lavery. My name is just like four years later. I talked to him in between it. He's just like, hey, you want to come do this press conference at the Curiosity launch? And I'm just like, yeah, of course. So I go to the, I fly to Florida.

I do this press conference. It's still on YouTube. It's called Why Mars Inspires and Excites us, something like that. There's multiple people on this panel. But so I'm sitting there just like random Harvard grad student talking about what I'm inspired by my heart and how cool robots are. And yeah, through that process

and being back immersed in the launch environment, I mean, man, that was so cool. And so I'm sitting there, well, standing there, in the area, standing with like the heads of the various space agencies, because one of the speakers on the press com, oh my god, you found it. They have been listed as Yale,

university student, which is like very offensive. Yeah, yeah. There's Leland. That's why I met Leland for the time. Yeah, he's super cool. Oh, and that's Clara Ma there, right? Yeah, who named the rover. Oh my goodness.

She's like a rock star, like, she's going to save the world from climate change now. Hey, she's like a rock star. Oh, is that what she doing now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I haven't looked her in a while. Nobody remembers Scott Anderson apparently. Like, when we had no comment, Scott Anderson.

We were such an interesting, look at me, and I'm like, why am I here? Like, that is absolutely. Yeah, first robotics alumni. Amazing. Like, what? Oh, man. You got the vibe right, but you missed all the details in there. Oh, yeah.

And then I'm, like, wearing a tank top. Like, I had no idea what I was doing. Anyway, so we watched the launch. And I'm watching Atlas take off with, you know, something going to Mars. And it was just like I had this overwhelming feeling of, oh, oh, wait, this is what I'm meant to do with my life. And I just like pump the brakes and just radically shifted everything that I was doing from that day forward. It's almost like the invite was planted for a reason. It just seems to be like that was maybe the idea.

Yeah. Do you remember a moment like that? Like, was it, I want, I'm always like curious about like life changing moments like that because like they're, they're such a, they're interesting stories, right? And like, do you remember like it down to a specific moment or was it like that whole day or was it like a week? Like was something leading up to it and this pushed you over the edge? Like tell us a little bit about the when the synapse fires. It was definitely that day was a series of things. I was sitting on, you know, they put all the people on the bus and kind of drive you.

around the Cape. And I was sitting next to a guy named Joe Parrish, who now runs the Mars program at JPL. And he was, I think, the acting like CTO of NASA or chief technologist of NASA. And he said something to me. He was just like, God, I'll never forget this. He goes, we need you in this industry. You should definitely stick to it. You should come back. And so it was a combination of the inspiration of just the moment and walking with Dave around, seeing the crawler, we got to get right up close. Not like, obviously not on the pad with the rocket, but I mean, it was just right there. And just being immersed in the hardware side of things and to physically be there and present with this incredible thing that was about to happen. It's just like hard to not be inspired.

So yeah, it was a combination of seeing the thing actually happening and then being around all these incredible people that are just pumping you up and gassing you up to go give it a shot. Oh, yeah, yeah, launches will do that. Launches are, they're, I mean, they're like quasi-religious moments for a lot of people. Oh, for sure. Especially with some solids on board. Oh, right? Yeah. And then just we had just the prime view. I mean, it was like right there.

To the extent you can be right there watching a launch. But I mean, it was the fancy view. It was like Charlie Bolton view. It was like it was good enough for the administrator kind of view. view and Charlie Blount view. And you're just like not the Richard Garriot view that's you're sitting in the the crawler way like you're sitting on the launch pad in the flame trench yeah. The Charlie Bolton is a safe distance where you could talk to other people while you

watch safe distance where you can like oh isn't that amazing to one another where you're still like I feel like we're probably a little too close yeah yeah I'm just like this doesn't go well yeah there's nuclear material there's an MRTB on that thing I don't know um So yeah, that was that that was the flip for me. And then from there it was, I mean, I have rarely set my intentions on something so clearly. Like when you have a sense of purpose that is just that crystal clear, and I've been looking for that, you know, I've done so many things up. I mean, I left a lot out from in between.

I mean, I started a dating company. I was like, maybe that's what I meant to do with my life. Like I did so many things. And there's not a single thing that, as a single thing. I'm not from being an Imagineer. I've tried literally every job that I've ever had an interest in, because I feel that's the only way for me to learn is to learn by doing. And so, but so knowing that and having felt happy in a lot of those roles to see just the

complete difference in like where you feel that happiness when I talk about space is like in a whole other part of my body. It's not up here. It's like it's down there. And so having that clarity of mission and purpose in life, is I just wish that for everybody in like on the planet is it's an incredible feeling and I wasn't you know necessarily sure at what place I wanted to enter it that I want to do it through policy did I want to do it through engineering actually didn't think it was going to be through

engineering to be honest I thought I was going to be probably more on the policy side and so I managed to pick up a few gigs like as I was transitioning so actually probably more interestingly I went back to my school and I go to the dean and I'm like all right so here's the deal you know that like master's thesis thing I've been doing about like healthcare whatever yeah we're gonna not do that we're gonna change it and we're gonna do something about space and he's like oh this is the best reaction he's like we need you to graduate and just graduate and I'm like now so I actually took a another year. I wasn't doing course work. I got another piece of advice. I love to give all students,

like all grad students, undergrads, is when you are a student, anybody will talk to you. It is insane. Like you can cold email people, you just show up at their office and people will pull out a chair and be like, yes, young one, tell me what you like to know. And I'm going to like really break into this business after being out of it for so long, this is my way, is to meet as many people as I can. and the best way to do that is a student that's writing a master's thesis. And so I was able to get someone at NASA headquarters to agree to be what we call it a sponsor, which is basically someone that you're writing the thesis for. This is a policy school.

What's the point of doing policy work if it's not for something? And so, yeah, I got to do it for NASA, which was like really cool that people at the agency were looking at my stuff as a grad student. Probably also helped your argument to the dean to be like, I'm not just going to write some space thing and send it to like, you know, some weird magazine. Like, I'm sending this to NASA, just to be clear. Yeah, to be clear. They do, they do it to their, to, you know, NASA does quote me as a Yale robotics alumni, but I am going to send it to them anyway.

Right. It's like, that's adjacent enough to be good for Harvard, right? Yeah. They got it. So, yeah, they tolerated me hanging around for another year and getting that done, and it was great. I got an awesome grade on it. It was an incredible experience.

Spent a lot of time in D.C. talking to people. Got to meet Scott Pace, which was really cool. Just lots of incredible people. It was awesome. So did you, you said you didn't think it was going to be engineering? Did you think you were going to get sucked into this black hole that is space policy in DC? And that's why you weren't going to be able to escape back to engineering? Or did you legitimately just, were you like on the policy vibes at the time?

Totally on the policy vibes. I had stopped. I mean, I hadn't done any real engineering. in like three years at that point. And so I was, yeah, definitely was like, I'm gonna be a policy walk, this is my future. And I always had like an interest, and just hadn't pursued it.

And so fast forward, I ended up getting, based on that thesis, which was about NASA's communication strategy, and just like my thoughts on that, on like how to do public comms. You could probably write a pretty good one today. Yeah, I had a lot of thoughts. And so that opened up the door to conversations about joining JPL and doing that type of work at JPL, a little less on the strategy side, more on the execution side. So here you have this person with an engineering degree and a public policy master's degree,

like tweeting from the Juno account. Those are some dark days, man. It was really cool. I did not understand Twitter and the people let me know. They made it very clear. Like, you know, that stuff. We all see it, right? And I was like, I did not know that.

Juno did not know. So fun fact, there was no training program for going in and tweeting to millions of people on Twitter through NASA accounts. They've gotten much better about it. You got to dig those tweets up. Yeah, oh yeah. Definitely reading every Juno tweet from 2014. I'm scrolling.

I'm scrolling later. I'm going all the way back. Oh, yeah. I go to do that, oh, it's, it's, it's, I did some memes. I did some memes that I did, made them in PowerPoint. It's not good, guys. It's not good. It honestly sounds like our Twitter policy for at Offnom, so I feel like we might be more of your target market than like the Juno.

Yeah, if you need an extra work, you have a Twitter account. We did a year in a tweet. Like, I have no idea how that I got cleared. That's been Jake's beat. Like, that's been his beat for the last two weeks. You can recycle all my old material. Like, totally just take it. All right.

I'm going to find it. I'm going to find it. I've been leaning into the urnus joke. He's been selling this shirt for like the last couple weeks. This is his thing. I don't know why my internet's being slow. Yeah, let's see. Why is that no working, Jake?

My internet sucks. I don't know. Here it is. He's been selling this shirt. Oh, my goodness. This is awesome. It sounds like he might quit the podcast. in there. What is that? Like a milk shake? I don't know. It's, uh, it's, you know, some sort of

a uranus liquid. I don't know. I just, uh, that's not a great phrase. You're like, hold on in this segment. Just want to make sure if people have, you know, something enticing to put on their lips, right? So, so. So was your stellar work on at NASA Juno that got you hooked on SpaceX? What was the, how did that happen? So, actually, after J.P. my plans were to go get a PhD. That's what I was going to go do. I was like, the thing that I did learn was I don't think I should be tweeting. I think I'd like to get more involved in the technical side.

It thinks again, just being around all of the robotics engineers that I'd worked with 10 years before as an intern. I was just like, what am I doing? Like I need to be like getting more technical. So got into a PhD, a few PhD programs, chose one, was ready to party, was about to get on the plane on Monday. The day before, I remember driving through Hawthorne, California, you know, and looking up and seeing the SpaceX building and going, ooh, I haven't been there before. It'd be kind of cool to see that before I leave.

So I text a guy that I knew there who I had given a tour of JPL at some point. And he's like, yeah, yeah, come on Monday. So, you know, I canceled my flight. I was just going to rebook it to another day, flight of East Coast. And went on this tour and was just like, oh, no, I need to do this. Like, what am I? Why am I doing this PhD thing? Within a couple of weeks, got an offer.

And anyone who was at Space Symposium in 2015 probably knows about that weird, you know, person running around, pulling into a corner, whoever will listen and asking, okay, here's the deal. I've gotten into a PhD program and I also have an offer from Space X. What should I do? And I was at Space Symposium this year, no fewer than six or seven people were like, do you remember that day? But with the exception of one person, everybody said SpaceX. Even people who were like kind of haters on SpaceX, I especially wanted to ask them. They were all just like, you just got to go.

Like what do you, this isn't even a question. You can always go get a PhD, but like this is the time to go. And so yeah, I accepted the offer and there was. And that's when you entered our hearts across the nation. Funny enough, like, I didn't go with like any plans whatsoever to do that stuff at all, that stuff being webcast. And I almost didn't even know about it because I was new. And there's this like internal, you know, board where they, you know, do company announcements and stuff. I didn't even know how to get to that.

And I remember going to like a like to Eureka to the bar. next door sitting down with some coworkers who I literally just met and they were talking about how they're auditioning for the webcast and I was like what auditioning for the webcast and that's the only reason I even knew what was happening honestly I would not have even known and so I thought it was like somebody pulled your side were like holy shit you were doing the juno tweets we got to get on the webcast this is what we need that kind of energy on yeah are you the Yale robotic student I What if that's what happened? It was Scott Anderson, the guy that none of us remembered on that.

He was like, he sent a text real quick. Behind the things. Just behind the scenes. It's incredible. So that was that quick. Like you were, you were like barely there. Well, yeah. I mean, 2015, like, man, that's when everyone was digging into the webcast.

That was like webcast peak, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, it was like it was spring of 2015. And so we were rehearsing. So they picked a crew of six new people who are just the best and those wonderful people. Kate Tice, I think, is the last of those six that still does it.

And then John and Sproker, of course, a staple. And he didn't have to audition, of course. So the rest of us did. They're going to turn out the lights. He's still going to be doing callouts. And they'll be like, John, we don't work in this building anymore. We got the new one down the street. He's banging forks on his own.

he's on the side. I love John. So yeah, so we got, you know, we all got selected. We became this little family. You know, we rehearsed all the time. And then a few weeks after they selected the host, Sierra 7, we had to CR7 anomaly. So we went down for a while. And what was interesting about that period, I think it was about six months or so.

What was interesting about that period is it gave us a lot of time to prepare and to think about what is it going to be like when we do our. first live webcast with this new crew. And that first one was Flight 21, which was the first land landing. It was like by far like the best day of my professional career. I have ever. That was just like epic. That was incredible.

Well, I mean, that is one of many. But I mean, I think for everyone listening to this, watching this right now, everyone in our Discord, like they all know where they were that day. And and I think that's like, so you, you are just like, you were like hard coded into our memory from that night. Cause like that webcast, like I can almost hear the webcast just from memory. Like I could just, I know the sounds. I know like the pitches of the screams.

I know like all that stuff, right? Like the looks on everyone's faces, like it was such an iconic moment. So I guess like do you, I don't know, what do you, what do you do with that? How do you take that to the rest of your life? And that wasn't the only one you did. Like you, you had tons of really critical ones like the Falcon Heavy first flight. You did DM2, right? So with Bob and Doug, there were some pretty big days for you there.

Yeah, that one, oh, that was a good one too. That was a really good one. I think top three were like, yeah, demo two, Falcon Heavy and Flight 21. And like Flight 21 was wild because, again, we'd never done it before in terms of like broadcasting. I'd never done anything like that before. And it was just, I don't know. I always say like, I think I'd mentioned this multiple times before, but most people probably

haven't heard because I'd say it mostly to myself, which is that like most companies in that situation, you know, having come back from six months of downtime, right, he blew up a NASA mission. I mean, one of the international docking adapters was in there, like it was a big deal. And it was like live for everybody to see. And so I feel like most companies would have taken a safe approach to what that return to flight looks like. But SpaceX is like, nah, here's what's going to happen. Right. And by the way, there were other missions in the pipeline.

It was the one I was working on, which was Jason 3, which was the last of the V1.1 rockets. So I think another company would have been like, you know what, let's play it safe. Let's like, let's do this. But instead, SpaceX is like, now we're going to launch a brand new rocket, full thrust. So new vehicle. We are going to deploy 11 satellites, those are the Orbcom mission. If any one of those didn't work out, like that's considered not great. right and so like yeah let's do 11 separation event sounds good and we're also going to

attempt to land on land for the very first time ever like if any one of those things did not work out like we would have been in not a great spot but that's what i love about the company they're just like just go for it just do it yeah and then you have that day it was incredible it's a real moment i mean also like fun fact december 21st 2015 jake did your podcast exist So the domain name was purchased. The podcast didn't air for another couple weeks. It was right. It was right.

Because mine didn't. I didn't own a domain name. Yeah. Within a couple of months. I got into doing this like as that. So you know, you were part of that. You were definitely a part of that. Yeah.

You were connected to the origin story of the show through all that. So. Yeah. But that's like a legit thing. That whole era was ever like a. like a new generation's Apollo stuff, right? Like there's going to be this show 40 years from now where there's three people talking about how they got into stuff

and it's going to be like, yeah, I was like, you know, I was six and then I watched this rocket land that I thought it was really cool and then I got into this internship and I did that thing. But it's going to be in there the same way that like all the old stories of people that are older than us talking about how they were survive and her dad dragged a TV out for Neil Armstrong, right? Like there is that moment where like there's the Walter Cronkite moments

and then there's the Lauren Lyons talking about stuff, you know, rockets landing at land. So just you should remember that every now and then. Whenever you're like, I just checked. Actually, I just checked. I registered the domain name on December 22nd, so the next day. I knew it. I knew it.

Wow. So yeah. It's a big deal, right? And we're just doing the easy stuff related to what you do after a rocket lands. But there's like a bunch of kids right now that are going to many, probably at Yale, doing robotics at Yale. Absolutely. That were like, oh, man, I'm really in time with this other Yale alum.

I'm at the point in my life where I no longer feel compelled to trash ale as a Princeton and Harvard grad. I don't do it anymore. Actually, this is funny when I, yeah, I'll tell it. A mortifying story. When I started at Blue Origin, so after SpaceX, I went to Blue as you guys know. And when I started at Blue, I remember I had a series of like mortifying first things in my first week. But one of them was I get an email from Brent Sherwood, who's the head of the advanced development programs, business unit there, former JPL or super awesome dude.

And he sends me an email welcoming me to the department. And I'd seen, you know, I knew that he'd gone to Yale for his master's degree. And I made some kind of joke about like, he said something about he went to Yale. And I was like, is that even a college or something like that? in an email to my new vice president because that's what he did as an adult. Amazing. In college. Yeah, it was weird.

And he did not write back, ha ha. And so in a few weeks, I'm just like, I have offended this man. Like, how do I, like, bring this up? I need to apologize, but it's been too long. You can't, like, send an apology at this time. He's also very nice. He's a very nice person. So it's really funny to consider that.

Yeah, I don't think I've. I think to this day, I have not brought it back up again. I just, like, hoped it went away. So when you went to blue, were you doing, I forget your particular roles. You were doing mostly engineering at SpaceX, or were you doing any management type stuff there? Yeah, at SpaceX, I was doing, so I started off in mission management, doing mission integration work there. So what does it take to put the NASA satellites on top of the rocket? And basically coordinating all of the integrated analyses.

and then with the mission management team ends up doing. This is back when, you know, before it was this well-oil-oil machine, right? It's like you ship out there, the satellite arrives like a month before launch, and the mission management team is there as well. And so it would be like a month at a time, sometimes longer, depending on like if the campaign had to start and end again, like Jason three did. So I was at Bandenberg for several months. Been to the Cape, I mean, the Hilton, anybody who spends time at the Cape,

the Cotein-Colton-Coco Beach Point start to rack up. up the national rent-a-car free days rack up. That's the good part about it. So, yeah, spending a lot of time doing basically launch campaign innovation work. From there, I switched to Mission Assurance, which actually was tied into, I remember waking up when Flight 29, the Flight 29, an anomaly. Like, I woke up to people texting me, be like, are you okay? And I'm just like, was there an earthquake?

Like, why are people asking me this? So I go to the news and I'm like, oh, all right. well, that's not good. And so at the time, I've been working on some, some studies for the Air Force. And in my mind, I'm just like, man, I don't know, like, I feel like I got to be doing something to help the company. And so I went to Hans Koenigman, and, you know, he was the head of Mission Assurance, and I just like, awkwardly went up to him. And I was like, just how can I help? Like, what can I do? I want to do something to help the company right now. And that was my four-A intermission assurance. A couple of months later, I joined his team.

And so I joined the launch chief engineering team, where I did chief engineering work for Falcon and for Dragon, mostly on the Dragon side. And I was leading up the certification effort for Dragon, for Crew Dragon. So getting NASA to be good with Dragon technically. So yeah, that was the bulk of it. I mean, man, that was a few years of work there.

After Demo 1 splash down, I was ready to try something new. ready to try something new and then that's when I transitioned onto Starlink. And I was on more of the business side and a little less on the like technical side. Though there was still some aspect of that, but way more on the like, how are we making this a big business side of things, which is super cool. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. Did any of your policy stuff come back in during that? Because I feel like that was a big aspect there. Weirdly enough, like not really, not so much. I mean, I look at what the policy team, the challenges that they were facing there was just like totally different stuff, right?

You're talking, how do you, I mean, at the time, I don't think we had, when I first started there, we had not yet been cleared to do DOD stuff. And so those challenges are super interesting. And then we start talking about FCC policy, landing rights, spectrum, like all this other stuff. That's like a whole other thing. And then when you talk about the global teams, I've got to spend a lot of time with the team in D.C. that handles that work. and I'm just looking at you guys and looking at them and being like, you're doing the Lord's work. I can't do it.

This is incredible. Which is like a thing that I think is really under appreciate it when it comes to like people saying they want to do these satellite internet constellations and stuff. I'm just like, yo, like the stuff that has to happen on the regulatory side, that is crazy. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people are like really undervaluing that and not having that expertise. And if you look at the incumbents in the telecom industry, right, they can just deploy hundreds of lawyers, you know, on all these things. And your startup, like you don't have that those capabilities.

And so like kudos to SpaceX for kind of like breaking down some of that and paving the way for people who come afterwards. But it's going to be like quite an up hills log, in my opinion for people trying to do this work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's like every country is a whole different project, right? Like to go and hang out with them. So yeah, it's, I do not envy that team.

That is like, a mountain of work. Like, I just can't even imagine. There's also like the whole customer support angle that I'm interested about in the future. Like, maybe this has changed recently, but like, man, not a lot of people in the world that love their ISP. You know, like, you become the meme name that everyone's like, well, there we go, Comcast. Like, you have to change your name to Xfinity. to like broad to just market it differently because comcast is so you know nobody likes the name anymore i don't know i just i find that aspect weird that it's like are is SpaceX ready to be the

name that people associate with frustrating moments of not being able to connect at concerns right so that's like do you then how do you make it i think Elon's question response to that would be so then how do you make the system such that it doesn't disconnect and that's how he would push it I think he'd be less likely to be like, let's just come up with incredible customer service perks. Instead, he's going to be like, make the system better. And that's the kind of thing. Which is legit, but like, Elon, they're still going to hate you for like at least 30 minutes a month. That's fine. Make the system great.

My Fios is great. But like, every once in a while, I'm like, damn it, Verizon. This is, you know. Yeah, that's fair. That's going to be interesting how that turns. out there's this um uh i don't know the guy's name uh he tweeted he's a pretty prominent bc and he has pinned up on his profile um hey if you're looking for a thought up idea find an industry or uh you know companies within an industry with a low net report let promoter store blah net promoter

score and take that and then vertically integrate it and like deliver great like service and that's your model and i feel like on the internet side, like, there's so much potential there. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love my ISP. Like almost no one says that.

So yeah, I mean, if they decided to target that or whoever else is going into the sort of consumer side of things, direct to consumer side, like, yeah, like make it your goal to deliver exceptional customer service and you will win. So we're getting low on time here. And so we should probably bring up like the actual, the Twitter thread that you wrote that kind of, you know, triggered this thing. So we've talked to this whole hour about your very zigzaggy and interesting career, all these different places you've been to. So you spoke at this panel and, you know, talked about this. And I'm curious because you wrote in the tweet that you were feeling like kind of insecure about being able to speak about your career. which I find interesting because having listened to you talked for the last hour, like, you're very confident and you're lots of great, great stories and lessons to share.

So you want to just maybe talk a little bit about this thread and sort of what you were trying to impart? Because this is what really like made us send an email to you immediately. Yeah, it's like what you're looking at right now is like a highlight reel, right? And it's the behind the scene part that people don't see and that people just don't talk about very much and you know it's like right now i'm still trying to figure out what what it is i'm going to do next like i'm incubating some ideas and you know there's some trajectory that i'm on right now but it's this weird sort of pressure that you always feel to kind of have the answer like

a clean answer to that story like what are you working on what are you doing and then you start to sort of you build a resume and then the more you go that resume like the more you know pressure you have to kind of like the next thing to kind of supersede the thing you did before. Deliver on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Exactly. And so yeah, it's like I, you know, you go to the space symposium and this is like the event for the space industry and it's at a really fancy place and people are like spending a lot of money there and like the company's money there. And it's just this place where like you're just surrounded by like the who's who,

of the space industry. And so when the space generation advisory council asked me, and I'm an alum of that organization, I know those guys really well, when they asked me to do this event like months before, I was like, oh yeah, absolutely. And then we start leading up to it and they're just like, all right, you're ready? And I'm just like, guys, I don't know, man. I don't know if you want, you wanted to deal with this. I don't think you want me there. And what they told me was, no, you're exactly who we need there because people need to hear this experience. And what I found was with the sheer volume of people that came up to me after, I mean, over the course of that whole week, I still have people coming up to me every day just being like, thank you so much

for saying what like I've been feeling and I've been scared to say or I didn't feel like I could say. And my own insecurities about my career and knowing that, you know what, like you don't have to have that straight line and that super clear path. And that's okay. And so I mostly needed to convince myself of that. And so having and hearing that other people were resonating with it, like just helps me double down on my own sort of self-confidence to just tell myself, hey, it's fine. Like, you're going to figure it out. It's going to be okay. Yeah. Well, as a fellow career zigzagger, I appreciate the thread. It was very good. It was very big. Yeah. There's that famous. This might be less famous, not in the nerd circles that you two travel in as opposed to the one that I travel in, but there's that famous Steve Jobs commencement speech.

I think it was Stanford. Oh, good. And that he had that line that you can only connect the dots looking backwards that I feel like it was relevant to what you're saying at the end there. It's like, you can't really project out, like, where am I going to be in 10 years? I always hate those questions because it's like, I don't know, man. Like, it's 10 years away. I'm going to figure it out then because who knows what I'll be into. But then you get 10 years down the line and you're like,

I mean, you said this at the beginning. Like, man, if that one person didn't say that thing to me at that particular event, I wouldn't have thought of this other thing. And you're doing that even in this story, right? You're sitting on the bus at the Curiosity launch, and then you're having that conversation. But if it wasn't that moment, there would have been a different one that you would connect instead, you know? But it sounds, because you're only telling us the one that worked.

But, like, you probably had a conversation with somebody in D.C. about a different thing that was also exciting, but not as exciting as the one at curiosity. I think you're right. And you have to kind of be in a place where you're ready to receive that inspiration as well, you know, where you can just like you're open to it and you can consume it. And, you know, being in that environment made it just really ripe, you know, for me to be able to even process that kind of info. And I think of, you know, I was chatting with a friend the other day who is in this place where he's trying to figure out what, you know, what's next for him. And and I was telling him, I'm just like, I just remember when I used to journal all the time as I was trying to like, what do I want to do? This is before I, you know, refound the space bug. And I'm just like, what is it that like, I'm just a very mission driven person. Like I need my spirit to align with what I do every day. I can't have disconnected. I think you'll be an investment banker and then like come home and then think about I just couldn't do it. Nothing wrong with me and I banker. It's just like not where my soul is.

And so like I remember writing and, you know, journaling in my journal just like, here are all my skills. and I was like, I'm really good at like public speaking. I should like figure out how to do that. And every time I tried to kind of like force some kind of thing to make that happen, it wouldn't happen. And then I honestly didn't even reflect on this until just a few weeks ago. I ended up doing it in a way that I never would have imagined with an impact that I never would have imagined. And without forcing it. And I made the series of decisions by following my gut and following.

following, like, trying to get into a flow of like, where is the energy of life kind of taking me? That now, again, you're looking back and you're connecting the dots. And you're just like, I would have never guessed that I would have been doing a webcast for a rocket company that's like landing. What? It wouldn't have made sense if you said, in 10 years, I'm going to be doing a webcast for a company that lands a rocket. It wouldn't have made zero sense because it didn't exist. No, none. And so that was for me just like, man, even just reflecting.

on my own life and where I'm at right now and figuring out the specifics of what the next thing is going to look like, just being a little less obsessed with like getting it perfect, a little less obsessed with getting it right. Because when you're trapped in that mindset, you're not taking in the data that's just like coming at you left and right every day, that you can hop on that train and go, you know, who knows where. So, yeah. As the Imagineer, for instance. You know what?

I'm not ready. I'm not ready, but like one day. This isn't the moment yet. It's not the moment. We got to do some real space stuff, some more real space stuff first. Staying in the space world. Got to put more things in space. And then get into the like fake space stuff later.

All of us, that's a really good decision. So we appreciate that as people that. I would like to see more of it. So Lauren, if the listeners and viewers want to learn more about you and stuff, where can they find you on the internet? What's what are, what are you putting out there these days? What's, what's worth that checking out? Yeah, I mean, just you can hit up my website,

www. Lauren dash Lyons.com. There's nothing really here. It's just kind of my background. But one thing that I have been doing a lot of lately is I've been consulting startups. And particularly in the space in clean tech sectors, people trying to save the world. And so consulting with them, being on their advisory boards, it's been really cool. And I've been working with some of those accelerator programs that are out there to just try to help get as many of these young companies cooking and doing really cool stuff.

Cool. All right. That's great. Yeah, this is awesome. This is such a good conversation. I'm really glad that that we were able to get you on because now I'm all like juiced up now. I'm ready to go and I don't know. Yes. She's going to get another job and then bail on me. Yeah. I got to zag again. Yeah.

This was super great. I'm really glad you guys reached out. This is fun. This is a like I just hope that I don't know. I talk to a lot of young people right now who are just trying to navigate the world and kind of their place in it. And it's just like if there's just one thing I could just tell people that I wish that my younger self knew, I think I would have like saved a bunch of years on my life. And I just stop worrying about it so much. It would be okay.

Yeah, and I acknowledge the privilege that I've had, you know, like I've got some cool things on the resume that kind of help me make the next leap, but it doesn't mean that it's easy by any stretch of the imagination. But I just think if we stop setting these expectations and this view, this belief that, you know, what if you're seeing on someone's highlight reel, you know, you're looking at me and you're like, she's got to figure it. I remember that someone was like, oh man, it's so interesting to see someone who's made it having the troubles you're having. And I'm like, I have not made it. What are you talking about? So like, just resist that urge to compare your behind the scenes to someone else.

this highlight reel and just acknowledge that we're all just trying to figure this out we're all confused we're all struggling and some people just talk about it more than others and it's going to be okay it's going to be fine everybody's got to start as a Yale robotics student at some point right hands down the most inspirational off nominal of all time this is excellent next week won't be as good because i think jakes catching me up on the news i missed while i was on vacation Is that? Yeah, we're going to do just an episode, the two of us. We're going to start a starliner.

There's been space suit news. There's been a bunch of stuff hitting the headlines. So we're going to try and I'm going to catch you up from your two week long sabbatical. Yeah, that's basically what it was. Awesome. Yeah. So that's next week. If you guys enjoy the show, be sure to support us by becoming a member.

If you're on iOS, I think it's up here somewhere. If you're on desktop, it's down here somewhere. So five bucks a month, then you can help us talk to more people like you, Lauren, because this was so much fun, and we're really glad to have had you on. Thank you for having me. See you, everybody. Bye, everyone. Bye.

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