00:00 My personal belief is that as vast as the universe is, our ultimate destiny is for human
00:09 race to become interstellar.
00:12 But in order to be able to do that, we need to take steps to get there.
00:18 And eventually, building technologies that can go beyond our solar system and traverse
00:25 into our galaxies.
00:27 And then I think to me, when you talk about 10 to 15 years, 20 years from now, my hope
00:33 is that we have a space city, you know, a place that people actually can go and live.
00:42 Cam Kefarian is an entrepreneur who has started several space companies.
00:46 His most well-known company is Axiom Space, which is building what could be the first
00:50 commercial space station.
00:52 He's also built other companies in the space industry, including Intuitive Machines, which
00:57 is building lunar landers and pursuing commercial missions to the moon.
01:02 Then there's also Quantum Space, which is trying to build a space superhighway to move
01:07 payloads in cislunar orbit, the space between the Earth and the moon.
01:11 And finally, his other main company is X-Energy, which is building small modular nuclear reactors,
01:19 which are far safer and easier to build and smaller than conventional large nuclear reactors.
01:26 I was born in Isfahan, Iran, and I came to the United States when I was 18 years old
01:33 with an incredible love of space programs.
01:38 Since childhood, I just like looking at the stars.
01:40 I'm a stargazer and just sort of mesmerized about the stars and can we go there, you know,
01:47 how far are they?
01:49 And really a transformational moment was when I saw Neil Armstrong landing on the surface
01:55 of the moon from my neighbor's black and white television and it was like, wow, we can actually,
02:01 you know, go to another planet.
02:03 And, you know, and that sort of really triggered it for me that this is what I wanted to do.
02:09 I actually landed in Washington, D.C. and I got myself registered at Catholic University
02:15 of America.
02:16 That's where I worked on my first degree, computer science engineering.
02:21 I came with $2,000 that I borrowed from my uncle to come to the United States.
02:27 So when I came, I didn't have a whole lot of money.
02:30 Therefore, I had to work every night.
02:32 In fact, I worked downtown Washington, D.C. parking cars for the three years that I finished
02:38 a double degree program.
02:40 Chemgaffarian founded SGT, also known as Stinger Gaffarian Technologies, in 1994.
02:45 They co-founded it with Harold Stinger and it was basically a government contracting
02:49 business.
02:50 They did government contracting primarily for NASA.
02:54 And it was the first company he started after previously working at Lockheed Martin and
02:58 Ford Aerospace.
02:59 It initially started in his basement.
03:01 He mortgaged his house to start the company.
03:04 And over time, it grew much larger.
03:07 It actually started as a Section 8A company, which is a federal program for businesses
03:13 owned by minorities.
03:15 And it eventually grew by 2006.
03:16 It had become the 20th largest contractor for NASA with $100 million in contracts.
03:23 And by the time Cam sold it in 2018, it was worth $355 million when he sold it to publicly
03:29 traded KBR.
03:30 What you're going to hear a whole lot from me is culture, culture, culture.
03:36 And when I say culture, it's not just being ethical or being integrity-based, but a culture
03:42 of being successful, culture of winning proposals, culture of taking care of the people.
03:49 One of the things at SGT that sort of distinguished us from everybody else was really a culture
03:55 and our core values.
03:57 Everybody would say, "Oh, it's the ICE principles."
03:59 And ICE stood for Integrity, Customers, and Employees.
04:04 Integrity at the center of everything that we do.
04:07 Bend over backward to take care of our customers.
04:10 And our employees are at the heart of everything that we do.
04:14 That sort of really was the key to our success at SGT.
04:18 So people who joined the company wouldn't want to leave.
04:22 In fact, in a period of 23 years, this is sort of incredible.
04:26 I had no executive that joined the company in 23 years that voluntarily left.
04:35 The first company I founded after SGT in 2009 was X Energy.
04:40 And it was really because I started a school in Africa, in Kinshasa.
04:48 And I really knew nothing about nuclear, nothing about the energy world.
04:52 I consider myself a space cadet.
04:54 And we sponsored four orphans.
04:58 And that school now has grown to close to 800 people.
05:01 But I learned that the school didn't have power.
05:05 And I learned very quickly that there's a direct relationship between standard of living
05:09 around the world and having electricity.
05:13 So if you don't have electricity, you don't have clean water, you don't have education.
05:17 And also with all the stuff that was going on with using the fossil fuel and how much
05:23 carbon we generate.
05:24 And we are in this beautiful, precious blue globe.
05:30 And if we don't protect it, it's our home.
05:32 If we don't protect it, so far we don't have another place that we can go.
05:37 That was really the genesis behind X Energy.
05:40 And we've sort of done what I call is the holy grail in nuclear, where we design nuclear
05:44 reactors that are 100% safe.
05:47 In other words, if there's a tsunami or there's an earthquake or any of that, or a plane crashes
05:53 to it, they can never go supercritical.
05:56 And because of that, you can have them in the middle of cities or anywhere.
06:00 And today we are world leader in advanced nuclear.
06:02 In fact, we won a $2.5 billion grant from DOE to build these nuclear reactors.
06:09 It's pretty incredible.
06:12 The first company founded after X Energy came in 2013, when he founded Intuitive Machines,
06:17 which eventually became a company whose goal it was to build lunar landers and really start
06:21 to commercialize the moon.
06:23 Three years later came Axiom Space, which he co-founded with Mike Saffardini, who was
06:28 the longtime director of NASA's International Space Station program.
06:32 Axiom is the company that's building what could be the first commercial space station,
06:36 also designing the next generation of spacesuits for NASA.
06:40 In 2016, I got together with Michael Saffardini, who was the previous program manager for International
06:47 Space Station for NASA.
06:49 And we knew the United States government was not going to build another space station.
06:55 They were going to rely on private industry to do that.
06:59 So with this unique experience, and my experience, we actually run the operation of International
07:05 Space Station 24 by 7.
07:08 One of my proud things that I like to say is when the astronauts from space talk and
07:12 say Houston, they would be talking to my company employees.
07:16 And so it was a very bold vision.
07:18 We build the first private commercial space station.
07:22 And that's really, that's the vision that got us started in 2016 to open the doors for
07:28 Axiom Space.
07:30 After about 30 years at the agency, I started looking around.
07:34 Hadn't really thought a lot about what I was going to do, but there were a couple of offers
07:37 out there.
07:38 So they got me thinking, well, maybe there is another life after this.
07:42 By the way, I had the best job in the whole agency.
07:45 You know, I had a front row seat to everything that happened on orbit.
07:47 And it was really, it was a lot of fun.
07:50 So when I started thinking about it, Cam was one of those people that had a reputation
07:55 of being a mover and a shaker in the industry.
07:58 And I wanted to seek his advice, just his thoughts on what I should do in my afterlife.
08:05 Well, if you know Cam, you don't spend a lot of time talking about things like that.
08:09 I called him and said, you know, Cam, the only thing I know how to do is build an operating
08:12 space station.
08:13 So, you know, I've kind of lived it in my capabilities.
08:16 So I'll wait till somebody, surely some company was going to come along.
08:22 And so I told Cam that, so I'll wait, somebody will come along and maybe that's what I'll
08:25 do.
08:26 And he said, okay, let's go build a space station.
08:29 So he seeded the company and we went from there.
08:34 That's how we started together building our space station.
08:38 Axiom Space has a very ambitious goal.
08:40 It's to build the world's first commercial space station.
08:42 They're actually the only company that's out there that has the rights to attach their
08:48 modules.
08:49 So the building blocks of their space station, so to speak, to the International Space Station.
08:54 The first one of those modules is set to go up in 2026.
08:58 That's their main goal.
08:59 And the thing that they're building currently is the Axiom Space Station.
09:02 However, they've already completed two successful missions to the International Space Station
09:08 where they brought commercial astronauts, so people paying to be an astronaut and go
09:12 to the ISS, as well as astronauts from countries that haven't had the chance to go to space
09:17 yet.
09:18 So Saudi Arabia, for example, sent two astronauts on the second Axiom mission.
09:23 My belief is that the ultimate destiny for human beings is to go to stars, to actually
09:30 do interstellar travel, to really go to other stars.
09:33 Because the universe is so enormous and vast.
09:37 And in our galaxy alone, there are 400 billion stars like our sun with planets around it.
09:44 And there are a trillion other galaxies.
09:47 So we're just such a small part.
09:49 So my personal belief is that as vast as the universe is, our ultimate destiny is for human
09:56 race to become interstellar.
09:59 And in order to be able to do that, we need to take steps to get there.
10:04 First is LEO, low Earth orbit.
10:06 We need to have human presence there.
10:09 Then going to the moon and to Mars is, you know, further steps.
10:13 Having the space infrastructure where you can go from Earth to the moon and beyond is
10:19 another thing.
10:20 And so these companies all follow that larger vision.
10:27 The one thing that always came up with the, I think more than a dozen people I spoke to
10:32 about Cam is that he's really ambitious, which you kind of get just from learning about the
10:38 companies he's built, but also that he's able to convince people and motivate them to actually
10:44 get those very ambitious projects done.
10:47 You know, you look at the incredible amount of ex-NASA sort of rock stars he's brought
10:51 over, people who are leading their fields, and he convinced them to come to the private
10:55 sector and build these companies.
10:57 He went with Axe Energy from not knowing anything about energy to now being one of the leading
11:01 companies in nuclear energy, right?
11:03 And these new reactors that could really make a huge difference in renewable energy goals.
11:09 And obviously the jury's still out.
11:10 Anything could happen in the future.
11:12 There's a lot of competition out there.
11:14 It's still a speculative market, right, for space stations and for a lot of these things.
11:17 But when you look at sort of his initial dreams and visions, commercial lunar landers, commercial
11:22 space station, the nuclear reactors, where he's been able to take those ideas in terms
11:26 of the funding and the people he's brought with him and turning them into real businesses,
11:31 that's really impressive.
11:32 And that really stood out to me when I was talking to him and the people who have known
11:34 him for a long time.
11:36 I really hope that my legacy is that I contributed to advancing the state of humanity and human
11:41 knowledge, which is really the vision that I've had for many years, including SGT.
11:47 To know that someone may be breathed easier as a result of you've lived through my philanthropic
11:53 activities and also making a difference for our planet, like with X Energy, so that our
11:58 children can survive the climate change and everything else.
12:02 So making a difference and making this planet and also going to other places a better place
12:08 for us.
12:09 [Music]
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