Starship: The Next Giant Leap

“Most of the coverage in the market focuses on, you know, how cool and exciting and large, Starship is. There’s not a lot of detail on how it will be used andhow it will impact different aspects of the space economy, from the supply chain to the academic world to, you know, existing infrastructure.”

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Welcome to the Space Capital podcast. I'm your host, Chad Anderson, founder and managing partner at Space Capital, a seed stage venture capital firm investing in the space economy. We're actively investing out of our third fund with 100 million under management. You can find us on social media at Space Capital. In this podcast, we explore what's happening at the cutting edge of the entrepreneurial space age and speak to the founders and innovators at the forefront.

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Chad Anderson

This is the Space Capital podcast. And today we're speaking with Justus Kilian and Tycho Bogdanowitsch. You already know Justus, he's a partner here at Space Capital. He and I do a recap on, our podcast and on our YouTube channel covering startup activity and investment trends in the space economy. And I'm pleased to introduce our podcast audience to Tycho. He is currently a, graduate student at Stanford. He was previously co-president, and co-lead of the rocketry team at Columbia University.

And I bet you didn't realize that a New York City university had a rocketry team. So maybe he'll tell us a little bit more about that. And while he was a student there, he also interned at companies like Vast, Maxar and, most recently with us at Space Capital. So, during his time here, these guys wrote a report on Starship called The Next Giant Leap: Why Starship matters and how it will impact the Space economy. So, guys, thanks very much for joining me and talking about your work.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Thanks so much for having me. And unfortunately, they don't let us launch rockets in the actual city. We have to go upstate for that

Chad Anderson

Upstate, where do you do that?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

There's a Columbia lab called Nevis up on the Hudson, and we actually only static fire there, but we have to go over to the west to really launch them out in the desert.

Chad Anderson

Okay. And you did that. What did you launch?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

We launched a high powered, hybrid rocket, nitrous oxide and paraffin wax over at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry site out in June at a competition.

Chad Anderson

And how high did it go?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

We had a little bit of a leak but it still went 5000ft, which is a huge improvement and our second ever rocket launch, and we recovered it successfully.

Chad Anderson

So you've left the team in good hands. They're going to continue in your footsteps?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah, yes they are. Pushing for 25,000ft this year.

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Chad Anderson

Awesome. Okay so, to the report, you know, the first thing that's probably coming to a lot of people's mind is that there's a lot, of talk in, about Starship and about what it can do. there's been a lot written. so why write this report? What did you guys see that was missing? You know what, what made you think that that there was room for, another take on this?

Justus Kilian

Well, there is a lot written. Most of the coverage in the market focuses on, you know, how cool and exciting and large, Starship is. There's not a lot of detail on how it will be used and how it will impact different aspects of the space economy, from the supply chain to the academic world to, you know, existing infrastructure. And so those are really hard questions to ask and find answers to.

You know, I get it why there hasn't been a lot of writing on that. But, that's what we do, you know, in our job here at Space Capital, we like to think deeply about some of the hardest problems that, you know, exist or lack clarity in the market and publish research on it. So it was a great topic for us to dive into. And I think we came up with a really thoughtful approach to bring clarity to some of these ambiguous questions.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah. Here at Space Capital, I think we really focused on thinking with discipline, coming up with a framework at which to approach analyzing these sorts of big technologies and companies. So, a lot of the existing discussion has been around price. You see a lot of people get excited about launch costs going to zero and everything like that. But you know, that's not going to happen, at least for a long, long time. So, we wanted to bring, yeah, more clarity and insight into that discussion.

Chad Anderson

Yeah. There's a lot huge ranges of things. We're right in the middle of a test program. Right. So you've got everything from like the price is going to go to zero to, you know, I don't know, somewhere in between. Right. So, digging through all of this, trying to understand what's going on in this test program, what's real, what's not, where we're actually going to end up, is one of the great things that came from this report, I think. So, first of all, you know, what is Starship and why are we spending so much time, as investors thinking about this?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah, great. Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Just a few key metrics, it can launch three times as much payload mass and four times as much payload volume as any launch vehicle in history. And to give an idea of what that size is, it's, basically the size of the ISS, it can launch all of that in just one launch. So, this represents a whole step change in capability for the industry, which is why everybody's so excited about it. And why we think it's worth discussing.

Justus Kilian

And there's, you know, a more subtle change beneath that, which is, you know, we used to build these very exquisite launch capabilities similar to Ferrari, like single purpose built, you know, launch capabilities. Falcon9 shifted that and, you know, it started to become more of a manufacturing and assembly line. But, you know, the Starship more closely resembles the Toyota Camry, than it does, you know, the very elegant Ferrari, you know, systems that have been previously built. And so there is this radical shift about how we manufacture, how we build, and how we launch things that underpins, you know, those really impressive performance figures.

Chad Anderson

So, something we talk a lot about at Space Capital is how the Falcon9 changed the game, and has given rise to the entrepreneurial space age that we're living in now. And in the report, you say that Starship has the potential to be the next inflection point, which I really like. thinking about, you know, how it differs from other vehicles. What is the point of it? It's massive. It launches a lot of payload. Great. Why? Why does it exist? And how is it different from other launch vehicles?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Sure. Yeah. So Starship really has this end goal of Mars. It is designed for Mars and you can see in the way that it's built out of stainless steel, it's choice for propellants you can actually produce on Mars. Everything about Starship is built for Mars, which aligns with SpaceX's goal of eventually making life multi-planetary. But in order to get to Mars, of course, it first needs to prove that it can A) get to orbit, which it already has, and then out to the moon, and then also generate enough revenue in order to fund SpaceX to get over to Mars. So Starship is a rocket for Mars, but is extremely applicable for us just to get to the orbits just around here on Earth.

Chad Anderson

Talk to me about pricing. There's been a lot of speculation about what this thing will cost. Musk has come out and said publicly, you know, he's thrown around some numbers that were pretty eye opening. You guys have come up with an estimate that you think, you know, brings in a number of different data points and also, is a good estimate of where you think things are going to end up. So talk to me about what you uncovered there.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah. Yeah. So Musk and SpaceX in general is notorious for setting out these very lofty goals. And the way we approached this question was actually through an historical lens. So we first looked at how Falcon nine was supposed to be reasonably priced, and that was in the single digit millions when it first started. Then that was raised up to more reasonable 40 million.

And then we saw when it was introduced back in the 2010s it's actually at 62 million. And then if we look at the price nowadays it's up to 60 to 70 million. So actually the price hasn't dropped at all. And it's nowhere near that original single digit millions. right now it's estimated that they're running a profit margin around 70%, and it costs them about 10 million to launch the Falcon nine. So find that same logic to what we think Starship will be priced at. we end up with a number about 100 million. and this includes two times the predicted internal cost of 10 million, plus an 80% profit margin. in order to get a conservative estimate of what the price is now, that's wildly different than what you know there, Musk say about it being as low as a few single digit millions and ten millions.

But, you know, we heard that before and we saw where it led to now. And, you know, over time, maybe long term, that we'll get down into the tens of millions, but we really need some market forces in order to push that price down, which we don't have. And I'm sure we'll talk about these anchor customers and everything, but this price, we think, is a fair estimate for at least the short term.

Chad Anderson

And reusability is key here, right? Because what you've done is you basically take in like it costs this much to develop the rocket. This is what they charge for it per launch. And then you apply that over the number of times in which that vehicle is launching. Right. So reusability is key here. But also the development cost is really interesting.

You guys have a fantastic chart that shows the development cost of Starship versus, you know, the Saturn five and the shuttle and the SLS, and Starship is like significantly lower than any of those vehicles. How did they do this?

Justus Kilian

So, I think it gets back to that point we made around it being more like the Toyota Camry, this this idea of a mass manufacturing mindset. And, you know, that goes to the stainless steel body. Everything that they're doing, they're thinking about how do we build and launch, you know, many of these things. And, you know, you can actually visually see this mindset playing out. And we highlighted a little bit in the report where, you know, they started manufacturing from these outdoor tents, you know, bringing the pieces together, assembling them in a light, quick, easy way. But now they're moving to a more factory based solution. And so you can actually see the physical infrastructure building up to manufacture these things at scale. And so one, it's the design of the rocket, two of the materials.

And three, you know, what Musk has been able to do really well is manufacture things at scale. He's demonstrated that with Tesla. He's demonstrated that with, you know, Starlink. He's bringing that mindset into fully reusable rockets. And, you know, we're just starting to get that, you know, a glimpse of what that looks like.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah, yeah. And I think a key point and you already touched on this chat, the reusability aspect. Falcon nine was the first ever reusable rocket. And they were totally it was a crazy idea back then. But it's only partially reusable. Not all of it comes back down to earth. Starship, on the other hand, is going to be fully reusable, and that really drives cost savings.

Imagine and this is an analogy that SpaceX I like to use a lot. If you had an airplane and every time you flew across the country, you threw the airplane out and you had to build a whole new, new one. So full reusability really is the key to driving the development cost low as we're approaching, you know, the fifth test flight now, where we hopefully see it be caught on these crazy chopsticks, launch tower, which will allow it to be fully refurbished and reused, that is really what's driving that development cost.

Chad Anderson

And the pace of development. Also, all of this shows up in the pace of development, and you've also got a really cool timeline there when it shows how they went from just like the, R2d2, the hopper, you know, from that early prototype with one engine on it to, you know, the integrated test flight that we've seen recently and how they're able to do that over, you know, just a few years.

That's pretty crazy to see all of that. And so, all of these design choices have led to Starship having one of a kind capabilities. I want to now talk a little bit about the impact of this. So you say in the report that Starship, presents a once in a generation opportunity for new engineers and entrepreneurs to rethink what's possible in space. And I think that's really, really powerful. So, the you guys spoke to, a whole bunch of people in industry, engineers, businesspeople, academic professionals. and you determined that the space economy is unprepared for Starship, who did you speak to? who makes up that group of people? And how did you come to that conclusion?

Justus Kilian

So we reached out to a bunch of folks, you know, across DoD, academia and a lot of folks in the commercial world that have close proximity to what's being built and how it's going to be utilized. So, you know, the folks at Impulse Space, you know, research at Stanford, government, NASA, AFRL, the NIAC program, DARPA, all of these people are thinking about building or figuring out how to use what Starship could be, and-

Chad Anderson

And also on very different time scales. Right. Like you were talking about industry who's like, thinking about it and like, now in the next few years, you're also talking to some NASA, programs that are like thinking about it in the very long term as well.

Justus Kilian

That's right. DoD programs are thinking about for cargo, using it as a cargo capability maybe 5, 10 years out versus the NIAC program is thinking about, you know, deep space satellites that are, you know

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah. Telescopes on the other side of the moon kind of thing.

Justus Kilian

Exactly.

Chad Anderson

From now to decades. That's pretty cool, too.

Justus Kilian

You know, one consistent theme that came from all of these conversations was until Starship becomes like, truly operational, it's not going to change the way people are thinking about and building architecture. And so I think this goes back to a reality where, you know, Falcon nine has lowered the barriers to entry. It's allowed, an incredible amount of new infrastructure to be built. The systems that were architected and built were based on the constraints that Falcon nine brought, you know, with it. And so mass, volume, price, things like that, Starship will relax many of those constraints. You know, maybe the price point won't immediately relax, but the ability to launch much more mass and much greater volume to orbit will just change the way that you think about the design constraints the materials use, how you build things on orbit.

And so from an academic standpoint, you know, none of the teachers are, you know, thinking about this, they're thinking about the known problems and known quantities and that's how they're educating the next generation of engineers. The existing companies that are currently operational, well they've got customers out there building and procuring satellites, and they're still anchored to the existing Falcon nine launch architecture.

So, they haven't really been able to, like, free themselves up and think, you know what, you know, more creative about what that looks like. Very small subsets of the DoD have been willing to that rocket cargo program. But, you know, just the fact that that actually even came to life, the backstory of that, you know, there was actually, you know, quite a bit of resistance to actually take this thing seriously and actually seem kind of like a pipe dream.

Justus Kilian

And, you know, they were able to build enough internal consensus to, you know, spend a little bit of time and resources on it. And now it's becoming, you know, taking more seriously. But so that's where we're seeing some challenges. And then it goes even deeper into the supply chain, the manufacturing. Nobody is really building systems that could scale with the total up mass capability that Starship brings, except SpaceX.

And so they're the only example of what true mass manufacturing looks like in terms of standardized bus, building very deep supply chains and manufacturing capabilities to produce satellites at scale. And so there is going to be a real shake up if a number of customers start trying to produce at scale, there's just not enough components, there's not enough suppliers. It's going to be very hard to keep pace with this capacity that could come online.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah,vI think, one of our more interesting conversations with, with, was with Gerrit Matthews of Astra Lab and he said this great line which, Starship will end the tyranny of mass efficiency. I think it's really a great way to think about how this is changing the engineering paradigm. From our conversations, we've kind of, you know, separated how what that actually means changing engineering paradigm into three larger categories.

And first one being more capabilities. You know, you can have larger solar panels. You don't need as many complex deployables. The James Webb Space Telescope is a great example of this. It took 20 years to build and billions and billions of dollars. A lot of that was because they had to fold the mirror to fit inside of the current rocket that they had available.

With Starship, it can just go with one flat mirror, reducing costs and saving a lot of time. Another big category we saw was simpler production methods, this is touching on the mass manufacturing, you know, if you don't care as much about, as mass as much as possible, you can leave extra material on and, use easier mass manufacturing processes.

And finally, the other one is new mission profiles. Another key aspect of Starship is the cadence. So how often Starship's going up and coming down. This allows you to rapidly iterate on designs, replace things that may be broken. Your lifetime of satellites can be much lower because you can just send up a new one within years, which makes everything cheaper. So, it's all part of this larger, theme that we're seeing, and we're seeing it already in the defense, report that we have published recently. We're moving from exquisite, expensive singular systems to more low cost, mass manufactured, distributed systems as enabled by Starship.

Chad Anderson

So, what I'm hearing is that it's because it is such a step change. It's such a leapfrog technology from where we are today, that it's  why we're unprepared is because there's so many ripple effects, like, there's so many things, that need to come along to support this new infrastructure paradigm. We're just, and people are building for that now.

And the big question that comes to my mind is, you know, why is that? Is it because people don't believe, you know, is there like, a wait, and see? And then we'll, you know, it's like, when it's real and it's out of its test program and it's operational, then we'll start thinking about it. It's just not like a good use of our brainpower or resources to be thinking about that now.vOr is it a lack of imagination? It feels like it's a bit of a lack of imagination where, you know, it's just hard to imagine all of the things that it can, can unlock. And I think that's where this, report that you've written really stands out out of everything else that's been written, is this, understanding of how it's going to impact the future space economy.

And so in all of your interviews, you identified 11 primary use cases. And you know, can you, can you walk us through these use cases and help us understand, where they fit on the reality scale, like how and like which of these are real and which ones of these are pipe dreams?

Justus Kilian

Yeah. So so Starship is going to come to market with three anchor customers. I don't think any rocket has ever come with that much, you know, initial demand for it. And so, you know how it will be used across many different use cases like hasn't really been figured out. And so, you know, what is known is SpaceX will use it to launch, you know, mega constellations, right. It will use it to grow and replenish, Starlink. The DoD is looking at it, you know, for its own communications and, and star shield systems and, you know, potentially other, you know, DoD missions, including rocket cargo. And then NASA is using it, right, for the Artemis program and sending people back to the moon. And so you have some really good, you know, anchor customers there.

And so that's what's known. What's less known then is, you know, sort of moving beyond that. And so, what we were able to do is through these conversations, have very practical, you know, discussions around like how it could be used and then actually rank based on like technical feasibility and market viability, like what's possible. And so at the base, you know, in applying this approach, we had mega constellations that showed up both as the most technically feasible and, you know, market viability. On the farthest ends of it, number 11, you had, you know, Mars infrastructure. And so, you know, it's a company stated long term objective. The people that we surveyed that helped us understand this also agreed it was the longest. But, you know, there's a bunch of other items within that. What's most interesting is the disconnect between what's technically possible and what, you know, market exists.

And for me, what was the most revealing is when we have something that's actually high, technically high technical feasibility, but the market just doesn't exist. And so there's a number of these three in particular that are worth highlighting where there's a big disconnect. So space stations actually ranked number two in terms of what's feasible. We know that we can build these things.

We have been for a long period of time, but it actually dropped to number six in terms of market viability, so it was a pretty significant shift. The second one that was a major sort of, you know, difference was on orbit manufacturing and assembly particularly, you know, these larger structures. And so, this was number four in terms of technical feasibility.

Justus Kilian

We've done some of this. Right. Again, there's a heritage here, but the market, you know, isn't very well known or doesn't currently exist. And then the other one that was pretty surprising is lunar infrastructure. You know, we've heard how much of a priority this is for Artemis and what, you know, they're looking to build around that. Again you know, technically possible it ranked six out of 11, but in terms of market viability, we had this listed at number ten. So, you know, literally a stepping stone to Mars. So everything else that exists, you know, would be more sort of viable and promising than that. And that was surprising to me personally. I don't I don't think that that's, you know, an accurate compared to what we've seen. But, you know, those disconnects I think are really worth highlighting.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah and on the flip side of that, I think, another key one to highlight would be in-space production, which, I think ranks lower on technical feasibility but then ranked much higher on market viability. And if you look at a company like Varda right now, you know, they've proved that they have this technology and they can manufacture a drug in Space.

Now, I think the big question for them is whether they can find a product that is worth doing that for. You know, it relies upon them getting a drug that, pharmaceutical companies worth is, willing to put millions and potentially billions behind. And that's their whole business case. So it's really interesting to look at what kind of new use cases we have. But as Justus was saying, there's a lot of unknown, but with that comes a lot of opportunity and a lot of white space for entrepreneurs and new engineers to, think of the future.

Chad Anderson

Yeah. One of the things that really stood out to me was on the science side. And, great quote was, you know, Starship will enable NASA to be more ambitious. And I really like that. It's like, this is because that's what's been happening through the whole commercialization of space with the Falcon nine originally. Right. Is that, commercial is able to do the routine stuff for a whole lot cheaper, which frees up the limited budget of NASA to go do other, interesting things.

So I'm curious, you know, was there anything, what were some of the ideas that you heard of on the science side? Because I know you interviewed a lot of these folks, you know, was there anything interesting that came out of that that people want to do science mission wise that probably isn't feasible now, but they could do?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked to people both at NASA and, Columbia Astrophysics. the astronomers are certainly really excited about this. You know, as you were saying, Starship can allow NASA to be more ambitious. And why is that? Because, you know, even if we just say NASA has the same budget, because that's probably what's likely going to happen. Starship would allow these flagship missions to be practically reduced in cost. You know, James Webb Space Telescope, for example, has been an incredible mission. It's amazing success, and it's brought a lot of scientific discoveries. However it did eat up the almost entire NASA budget for science for decades. Right? So in doing so, by definition, you're pushing out other types of scientific projects.

So if NASA is able to really utilize Starship to its full potential, it can probably afford many more of these flagship missions instead of one every few decades, which gives room to a bunch of a whole nother, whole bunch of other crazy science ideas. And one of the most exciting ones that we heard from NASA was, going to, Jupiter's moon, Europa to search for life underneath the ice. And I think Elon has actually talked about this as well, where Starship, you know, you could just put this huge mining machine on a starship landed on the surface and have it dig through this huge sheet of ice on top to see if there's life underneath.

Chad Anderson

Because wasn't that wasn't that program actually funded and then canceled because they ran out of money? And then like now, but Starship could do it, enable it, but also do it in a much more interesting way as well.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Exactly, exactly. Mars sample return is the same example where NASA right now has an estimated budget of about 8-11 billion which is huge and they can’t really afford it so they’re trying to find new innovative ways of being able to do that. With Starship capability, this is still decades out, you can bring back tons of samples to analyze back here on Earth from Mars. So there’s a bunch of possibilities ranging from a whole span of science.

Chad Anderson

Well, this is a great example of, like, not a lack of imagination. There are a ton of great ideas, for science missions, and there's just a lack of, capability and affordability in order to be able to do them. So, that's a pretty fun unlock. Yeah. Okay. I also appreciate that you guys put in a section on checks on ambition, which is, you know, it's not all smooth sailing, right? I mean, this is still, a incredibly ambitious, vehicle, program. There's a lot of challenges in their way. You asked your survey respondents to, consider, you know, the headwinds. Like what, what kind of challenges does starship face and so curious, you know, to get your take on on that and the path forward.

Justus Kilian

Yeah. I mean, anytime you're, you know, building and operating something at this scale that changes the way that, you know, things have been done, it brushes up against policy and procedure and regulation. And so that, you know, is what we've consistently heard. It's also what the survey results indicated as sort of the biggest headwind. You know, they're trying to move faster and do, you know, bigger, more grandiose things than, you know, our systems are set up to be able to manage. And so, you know, every time they're going to push forward, you know, they're going to brush up against some of these policy constraints and regulations. And so, you know, things are moving, you know, that's positive. But, you know, I think we'll continue to see, you know, barriers there. I don't know if you any other specific thoughts on policy procedures.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah. Well Starship a great example of what Justus was just talking about is SpaceX is applying for a license to launch 25 Starships a year right now to the FAA and FAA is taking comments from the public and will eventually make a decision on that. But, the regulatory environment spans from here on Earth, where you're thinking about how launching rockets affects the surrounding environment, which is, you know, something we obviously can take into account.

But also just getting the licenses for the launches and the reentries. But then we can think about outside in Earth's orbit, a bigger problem might be orbital debris, right? If Starship is going to launch multiple times, you know, all of human's orbital capacity, in ten years, which it's capable to do. Then there's going to be a bunch of other potential collisions. So, we need to really be, thoughtful on how we proceed. Even if the regulatory structure doesn't really exist yet, for making sure that we keep our not only our Earth safe, but also, Earth's orbit safe. You know, challenges also include technical, I think a really interesting one to look out for in the fifth test flight would be reentry, heating that was, you know, albeit was successful in fourth test flight.

Hopefully Starship is able to maintain that, more integrity throughout this fifth test flight. And then also geopolitical I mean, Congress and the president ultimately decide NASA's budget, which has a huge effect on Starship and you know, when we look at the US versus China in this regard, that our system changes every four years, so that changes our vision kind of every four years. Whereas China has this more unified, we are going to set up a moon base, kind of vision. So yeah, it's just as we're saying, there's a lot of different challenges, but SpaceX has historically been able to overcome all those, and we really believe in their ability to do so again.

Chad Anderson

So, this is a really great piece of research. We do a lot of research here at Space Capital. We have chosen to make this report freely available. So how are you guys hoping that this will be used now that it's out in the wild?

Justus Kilian

I mean I'm hoping that it, encourages the next generation of engineers and business leaders to, see through some of the ambiguity and lock on to the big opportunities and start to take big swings. You know, when we approach the problem, it felt like, you know, there was a lot of, like, lack of clarity about what to prioritize, where there might be opportunity, where you might face challenges. I feel like this gives, a helpful guide to navigate and sort of understand some of those things. And so that's my biggest hope. Uhm, Tycho?

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think, one of the key findings from this report and one of the tools that we really use that I think is going to be most useful for people reading this is going to be that framework of technical feasibility and market viability. You know, the space economy, and especially now early stage space startups have, you know, become victims to this mentality of a build it and they will they will come approach which sometimes maybe has worked.

But really it should not be the way that we go about building the space companies of the future. Instead, we should be using Starship to expand, you know, our understanding and develop practical solutions to address critical market needs. So I really hope that this report helps, center people on that goal.

Chad Anderson

Great. we will link to this report in the show notes. Is there anything else you guys wanted to cover that we didn't hit on?

Justus Kilian

Well, I think we alluded to this, but there is an expectation that prices will significantly drop coming out of the gate. And I mentioned that there's three anchor customers, you know, SpaceX being one of them, they're going to need and rely heavily on Starship. So the idea that, you know, prices will significantly drop, you need to have competition and there needs to be an excess, you know, supply for that price to come down.

And that just really won't be the reality for the first at least a couple of years, maybe for up to five years. So I think that's important for entrepreneurs to anybody who's sort of thinking about building on top of this architecture, to not assume radical cost reduction. So that's one thing that we didn't explicitly state, but I think it is worth stating now.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Yeah, yeah, this desire for competition is industry-wide. Everybody really wants this, and it's only highlighted by the most recent example of Falcon nine being grounded for two weeks, which led to the US having no way to space. Right? Which is a position nobody wants to be in. So the DoD and NASA are looking to find other competitors. But really, the challenge and the question that these companies must answer is how will they be able to support themselves, outside of just government funding? So that'll be interesting to look at in the coming years.

Chad Anderson

Exciting stuff. Really important conversation. Thanks, guys, for coming on the show and talking about it.

Tycho Bogdanowitsch

Thank you so much.

Justus Kilian

Thanks.

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