Voyager Aims Higher With AI Space Station

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00:00The ISS will be decommissioned right around 2030 or so. And so NASA intends to utilize commercial

00:08space stations going forward. So we were honored to be one of the phase one winners of the space

00:14station program. There will be a phase two awarded sometime early in 2026. The shift,

00:20no doubt, has been moving more towards private sector space engineering and space innovation

00:26away from public sector. Dylan, how do you see that transition continuing in that mix of the two?

00:33Yeah. So, you know, this has happened before, actually, when we had the space shuttle

00:38in the mid 90s and that program was canceled. There was a new program that was created called

00:43Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew. And in fact, that's what gave birth to SpaceX,

00:49right? The whole privatization of rocketry in sending both cargo and humans to space.

00:54So this had been used in the past. And basically, you're turning the model,

00:59inverting the model from owner operator to commercial activities that the government's

01:06using as a service. So it's actually a successful model that's been used in the past. And now it's

01:12being applied to space stations and destinations in low Earth orbit.

01:16The administration's budget, though, for 2026, maybe we'll bring that even further towards the

01:22private sector, looking at cutting NASA's overall funding by 24 percent, including a 47 percent cut

01:28to funding, reducing NASA's workforce by 35. It takes them back to a budget and a workforce size

01:34that it hasn't seen since the 60s. Dylan, is that a problem for overall space advancements for the U.S.

01:42If we're looking at those types of budget cuts?

01:45You know, so back to the space station program, even in the president's budget, which is the most,

01:50you know, has the highest level of cuts of anything proposed, even more so than the congressional budget,

01:57the space station program is very well funded and protected in that.

02:01So it really depends on the program, Danny. So, for example, SLS, which is the large rocket system,

02:07that's quite vulnerable in the president's budget. So depending on what programs you're involved in,

02:12it could have an impact. But keep in mind, we have a heavy lift rocket with Starship coming online.

02:18So if SLS were to be cut, many would observe that that doesn't necessarily hurt the industry

02:24the way you might think, because you have commercial alternatives coming online.

02:29But a lot of those commercial alternatives, again, see NASA as one of their biggest customers,

02:33Voyager among them. Does it slow down things if NASA doesn't have the budget

02:37that it once did?

02:39Again, it depends on where the cuts are coming from. So again, back to the space station program,

02:43that's quite well protected. There are a lot of other programs that we're involved in that are

02:47quite well protected. So I think it really depends on which programs you're competing for.

02:52But at the same time, you know, commercial activities have never been better in terms of

02:57the technology and the innovation. As you mentioned, we got public earlier this year. There were a couple

03:02other space companies that got public as well. So I'm very bullish on the industry in general.

03:08And I think there's a lot that commercial activities can do to contribute to NASA.

03:12What do you think is next in major commercial opportunities, Dylan? I love in your biography,

03:18you were the first person to 3D print something in space, which I think is incredibly cool.

03:23So is it manufacturing? Is it defense? Is it tourism? What leads this next leg higher

03:27in commercial opportunities in orbit? Yeah, no, it's a great, great question. I think data centers,

03:34ones and zeros, a lot of data processing. There's a huge trend, Danny, towards edge computing.

03:39So rather than collect data in space, transmit that data back down to the earth, put it in a cloud,

03:45machine learn it, put AI on it, and transmit the answer to the customer, why not do all that data

03:50processing where the data is collected and just transmit the answer? So as you mentioned,

03:55Starlab, our commercial space station effort is AI enabled. We have great partners involved with

04:01that activity, including latent AI and Palantir, amongst many others. And so the whole idea is how

04:08do you actually create a technology stack to process that data in low earth orbit? So I would

04:13anticipate that'll be a big push. You mentioned space manufacturing, you can grow essentially perfect

04:18crystals in space in microgravity. So whether that's semiconductors or extruding, you know, perfect

04:24crystalline structures for biopharma drugs and the like. There are a lot of activities you can do in

04:32low earth orbit if you actually have the real estate to do it. And that's why these commercial

04:36space stations are so important. Yeah, Dylan, I got to stay on this for a moment because it is a moment

04:41in time, especially when it comes to AI and data centers and the build out there and the infrastructure

04:46that trillions of capital are being committed to this project. It's very self from the hyperscalers to open AI.

04:54Is there a conversation about some of their role in commercial opportunities in space? Have you heard

05:00any of them talk about this?

05:03Well, I think Jeff Bezos talked about this a couple of weeks ago at a conference, as I recall,

05:09talking about, you know, 10 to 20 years out before the hyperscalers are building data centers in space

05:14cheaper than they can build them on on earth. You know, I think he's on the right track there. I would

05:20actually think the timeline is going to be sooner than that. But whether it's cheaper to do a data

05:25center in space or not, there's a lot of advantages to having a data center in space. You have unlimited

05:31power up there, right? I mean, you have the sun is shining 24 seven, depending on where you're oriented

05:36in orbit. So I think there is promise to do that. Data centers on the moon have been talked about.

05:44And just back to the, you know, the original question you asked, I think low worth orbit will

05:48be commercialized, but certainly the lunar environment will ultimately be commercialized as

05:53well. And then, of course, you have people like Elon and others that have deeper space ambitions,

05:59including Mars and things like that. So it's a very, very exciting future for the industry.

06:04So it's a very exciting future for the industry.

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