00:00Two, one, booster ignition. Two, now bound for the moon. Humanity's neck.
00:07Good roll pitch. Roger, roll pitch.
00:12NASA astronauts have blasted off on a 10-day mission that will send them around the moon,
00:17marking humanity's return to the lunar neighborhood for the first time in more than 50 years.
00:22Bloomberg Technology co-anchor Ed Lutlow joins us live from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
00:28And tell us about the significance of this event today,
00:32given that we're not necessarily landing on the moon, but we're just getting very close to it.
00:40Yeah, you summarized it well, that this is humans going back towards the moon
00:44for the first time in more than 50 years, deep into space, 250,000 miles,
00:51a quarter of a million miles from Earth on what is a 685,000 mile round trip.
00:57You know, this is significant human space exploration.
01:01But you framed it perfectly in the sense that it is a dress rehearsal
01:04for the bigger, nearer term goal of NASA in the United States of landing on the moon,
01:11which could be as early as 2028.
01:13You have to test that the SLS space launch system rocket works
01:17and that the Orion spacecraft or capsule works.
01:20And that is what the course of this 10 days will show.
01:24Ed, in another big piece of space news,
01:28we're hearing that SpaceX has filed confidentially for a massive, perhaps the most massive IPO.
01:36Yeah, I'm told by sources that the confidential filing went in overnight.
01:42You know, it's somewhat mechanical because the SEC reviews the draft
01:47and SpaceX will have opportunities to make changes to it.
01:51But the chronology is important.
01:53And it's something that sources stress to us that it would put SpaceX on track for a June IPO.
01:59And given that they are seeking to raise around $75 billion, we understand,
02:05at a valuation that is around $1.75 trillion to maybe $2 trillion, depending on the offering,
02:12that is a large undertaking, pardon the expression, literally the undertaking,
02:16that the line of banks involved will have to pull off.
02:19But it's happening.
02:21That's the big takeaway.
02:23And what's interesting, Ed, is that we're talking about the SpaceX IPO.
02:28We're talking about the NASA's launch Artemis today.
02:31This convergence of private capital, also government-led projects,
02:35just how does this really reflect the significance of space,
02:39especially in this global race to get there?
02:44Yeah, I mean, it's difficult, too, but there are many different ways
02:49that the Artemis project is linked to what we've just discussed about SpaceX's IPO.
02:54In Artemis's case, SLS is made by Boeing.
02:58The service module is made by a number of European companies
03:01in conjunction with the European Space Agency.
03:04And Lockheed Martin is responsible for the Orion capsule.
03:08As we reported two weeks ago, and NASA has since confirmed,
03:12as has Lockheed today on site, by the way,
03:14SpaceX is in the running for a part of later Artemis missions that it wasn't before,
03:19which is to dock with Orion and push it, literally push it,
03:23towards the moon in later missions.
03:26But investors have an insatiable appetite to back these companies.
03:30The one discrepancy or difference with SpaceX
03:33is that it wants to raise the money in this IPO to fund a new business model,
03:39which is space-based data center or data centers in the form of satellites.
03:43And that's its focus, where once Elon Musk and SpaceX focus
03:47was making humankind a multi-planetary species.
03:52They've been less focused on the moon, but as I said, they're in the running.
03:55So there's a lot of threads there, but the footprint,
03:58not of NASA necessarily, but the private sector here out on the Space Coast
04:02could not have been more evident than today.
04:05And there are a number of investors here on the ground too.
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