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00:05Okay, this is the session you are all waiting for, and I am asking for a little bit of your
00:18attention. So VivaTech started with a simple, audacious idea. The future doesn't just happen.
00:30It gets built. Built by people bold enough to imagine it and stubborn enough to make it real.
00:39The founders, the risk takers, the ones who look at impossible and here, not yet. Jeff Bezos is one
00:51of these people, a remarkable entrepreneur who started the simple idea of everything in store
00:59online with books, and you know what happened with Amazon. Now flying rockets to new frontiers,
01:11and step by step, furiously, together with David Limp, they are building a new road to space
01:21with Blue Origin. Please join me in welcoming to the VivaTech stage in conversation with former
01:30NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who helped save the Hubble Space Telescope. The CEO of Blue Origin,
01:40David Limp, and the founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos. You will see a short film, and immediately
01:50after that short film, they will be joining on stage.
02:02We have a gift, this nearby body called the moon, that if we move out into the solar system,
02:09we have unlimited resources. This is Blue Moon. It's a very large lander.
02:23It will be the largest lander to ever land on the moon. That opens up huge possibilities.
02:29It will soft land in a precise way onto the lunar surface.
02:36None of this is easy. All of it is hard. There's still a lot of work to do and a
02:40lot of hard work
02:41to come. Mark 1 is a Blue Origin funded mission. High risk, high reward. Mark 2 is a complete Blue
02:51Origin solution. Very ambitious. Reliable, repeatable, low cost access to the moon. We will now have
02:58lunar permanence. It's time to go back to the moon. This time to stay.
03:28Okay, well, thank you very much for that warm welcome. Thanks, Dave and Jeff, for having me join you up
03:33here on the stage. It's a real honor for you.
03:34Thanks, Dave and Jeff, for having me join you up here on the stage. It's a real honor for you.
03:34It's a real honor for me to be here with you guys. We're going to start off with talking about
03:39a little bit of what we saw in the video, anomalies and end response, resiliency. If you look across the
03:45history of space flight, this is nothing new. There's been setbacks going back to Mercury, Apollo,
03:51Space Shuttle. I'm certainly familiar with those setbacks that we had. From the outside, people might
03:56look at that and think of that as a failure. For those of us on the inside, in the industry,
04:01it's
04:02kind of part of the engineering development process. You want to learn from it and move on if you can.
04:09As we saw in the video a few weeks ago, you guys had a setback. Now you're in the beginning
04:15phases of
04:16rebuilding the launch pad. What have you learned since and how does the path forward look?
04:22Well, let me start by saying that was a rough moment. Nobody likes that. It was a gut punch for
04:28the whole team. But what we've learned since then is we got really lucky. Some of the long lead items
04:37in the launch infrastructure were preserved. For example, the propellant tank farm, all the liquid
04:46hydrogen, liquefied natural gas, liquid oxygen, all those tanks. Those are, you know, very long lead
04:51items and they were fortunately undamaged. The booster, we had a booster in the integration
04:57facility which is right there at the launch pad and various pieces of shrapnel missed the booster.
05:02There was a lot of good luck in that incident. You know, in the big picture, kind of what you're
05:07saying,
05:09God knows how to appropriately price his goods and space travel is hard and it's worth it. And so,
05:16you know, we, by the way, by the end of that incident, the end of the day that that incident
05:21occurred within 24 hours, completely spontaneously, the Blue Origin team, and this is a team of just
05:28incredible people, they were making themselves t-shirts that say, it's worth it. Yeah. Cool.
05:34Cool. Very cool.
05:40And I think the other thing is that we're busily rebuilding it. We got lucky in another way.
05:45There was a construction crew just down the road and so we brought in 400 pieces of heavy equipment,
05:52brought in construction workers that were working 24 by 7 and so the pad has now been cleared of all
05:57the debris. It's amazing how quickly that's happened and just yesterday we started the reconstruction and
06:03I think you've said it best. We're going to fly this year. Yeah. We'll fly before the end of the
06:07year.
06:07Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I think what you said about your team is very meaningful and I look back at my
06:14my time at NASA and you know, the highlights of course, successful space flights, but when you look
06:19at the setbacks, the way you respond to them, you find out what your team is made of, right? You
06:24don't
06:24find out necessarily in a good times, but in those times that are a little bit tougher and you guys
06:28have
06:28gotten, got a great team and a lot of support from NASA on this and it sounds great with the
06:32plan moving forward.
06:33Jeff, I want to pick up on something you said about that it's worth it. It's kind of like you're
06:40now,
06:40even though this happened, you're doubling down on it's worth it when others might not have
06:46continued, right? You could also have decided not to move forward. Share with us your vision and why
06:53it is worth it to you. Well, uh, you know, what we're trying to do is build all the infrastructure
07:02so that there can be a completely dynamic space economy. Uh, today the cost of admission to space
07:08is still very high. If you look back at what I witnessed in the internet space over the last,
07:14you know, two and a half decades, you saw an environment where because all this infrastructure
07:19existed, the global networks and so on and so on, very small companies could build very large
07:24enterprises. You know, two kids in a dorm room could build a giant company and we want space to be
07:30like that. You want space to be this dynamic entrepreneurial place where two kids in a dorm room
07:36can build an incredible space company. And, and that's, that is going to happen. Uh, you know,
07:42so the, the job of a company like Blue Origin is to help build the road to space, that heavy
07:47infrastructure
07:48so that many other companies can do incredible things. And there's so many resources in space.
07:53You're seeing that now with, you know, uh, Leo constellations and the, uh, the potential for orbital
07:59compute. Uh, we have the moon as a gift. It's right there. Uh, and so we're, we're working on all
08:05these
08:05things. We're, we're, we are, uh, we're building a lunar lander. We are, uh, building a, uh, uh,
08:13working on in-situ resource projects. So we're learning how to build, uh, solar cells out of
08:18lunar regolith. And, and, and there are many other initiatives that we're undertaking, but all of them
08:23are focused on building this infrastructure so that there can be dynamism in the space economy.
08:29Yeah. So I, this is, this is all great news and I'm so grateful you guys are moving forward and
08:34learn with you. These are not things you'd want to have happen when you have an anomaly,
08:37when you have a setback, but it's, uh, they're unavoidable. You're, they're going to happen,
08:42right? They're going to happen. You don't want them to happen, but when they do happen,
08:44it's how you react to it. It's how you, it gives you a chance to, it gives the whole team
08:49a chance
08:50to show everyone who we are and what we're made of. Right. Yeah. Looking back years from now,
08:55I think the team at blue is the most missionary team I've ever worked for because, you know,
08:59we've, you've been part of this, but we've explored every planet. Uh, we've, we've, we've been to the
09:05deepest parts of the solar system and this is the good one, right? This is the planet you want to
09:09be
09:09on. Uh, it's, it's beautiful. And as we build this infrastructure, uh, you can move polluting industry
09:16into space and you can turn, you know, every, every, uh, place on earth, like the parks in this city,
09:23this beautiful city here. And, and we could support three times the population on the, on this planet. And that's,
09:28that's the long-term goal. That's what we're trying to do. That's why it's worth it.
09:32Why it's worth it. Okay. All right. So I am very excited, uh, to see, uh, New Glenn fly again,
09:39but maybe not everyone, uh, in the room has familiar with what a launch looks like. So we're
09:44going to roll a little tape so that everyone can see how epic one of these launches are. We'll roll
09:49the tape now. It's not just a launch. It's a landing too. Ah, yes. There you go.
10:06We didn't miss it, did we?
10:10Jump back in, I guess. Okay. All right. Well, eventually we'll get, get that going. Okay.
10:15So, uh, okay. We're good. We'll proceed. All right. Uh, so Jeff, you mentioned earlier about
10:25the space economy and I think to some of us that might be kind of like a, uh, like a
10:30science,
10:31people might hear that it's like almost like science fiction. Is it real? You know, is that,
10:34is that something that we, uh, that is, that is for real? Um, but sitting where you sit,
10:39what evidence do you see every day that convinces you that the demand for access to space is real
10:46and accelerating? Well, there's, uh, this is a great question. The, the evidence right now is
10:53very obvious. If you look at demand for launch, demand for launch is insatiable right now. Uh,
11:00we have a tremendous backlog already on our books for launch. Every space launch company has tremendous
11:06backlog. We are supply constrained. We are not demand constrained. And, uh, you know, it's being
11:13driven by, uh, communications with Leo constellations. It's being driven by national security missions.
11:22And it's being driven in the future by things like orbital compute and, and lunar, uh, and lunar resources
11:29and NASA programs to return to the moon this time to stay. There's just a tremendous amount of, uh,
11:35demand for launch. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was sort of underestimated at some point when we were,
11:42you know, years ago when the government, our government was looking for what they would need.
11:45I think it would, is it fair to say they underestimated what the real demand would be?
11:50One hundred percent. I think people underestimated it tremendously.
11:53Yeah. And I think there might be an element to it. I think in some ways, like if you build
11:58it,
11:58they will come, you know, that if people, if you can't get to a place, you can't even imagine
12:03what you would do there. But now that you've increased the access, all types of, even my,
12:08my students at Columbia have flown an experiment on one of the New Shepard rockets. That would have
12:12been impossible. Uh, even, you know, seven years ago, this is a few years ago they did this,
12:18but can you imagine that even thinking that when we were students or in the not too distant past?
12:22And it's a circle too. If you, if, if launch is very, very expensive,
12:26Yeah.
12:27Then the satellites have to have really long lifetimes and they have to be very exquisite.
12:31Yeah.
12:32And so it, but if, if the launch starts to get cheaper, then the satellites can get cheaper.
12:37And if the satellites get cheaper, there's more demand for launch.
12:40If there's more demand for launch, then you get more practice with launch and launch gets cheaper.
12:44Yeah.
12:44And so there's a virtuous circle there that once you get it spinning in the right direction,
12:49that's where we want to go.
12:51Yeah. And you had this vision that you, it's not, you can count on that happening,
12:54but you're confident of course, that this would, you know, it's going to happen.
12:58You just don't know the exact timing.
13:00Yeah.
13:00So you get, you get out there and you get ready and it's here, you know,
13:03by getting reusable rockets, you, you lower the costs because that, you know,
13:08these boosters want to be reused. They're, they're expensive. And when we land them,
13:12then we can reuse them many, many, many times. And these, as you said,
13:15these constellations want to be gigantic, you know, I, especially communications. It's,
13:20people are insatiable on how much bandwidth they want to use. I,
13:23when I had a 300 baud modem, I wanted to use all of it. When I had a gigabit in
13:27my home,
13:27I want to use all of it. And when I go all the way,
13:30these constellations want to be very, very large.
13:34We have the, okay guys, I think we're going to cut to the tape now for real.
13:38All right. We have a little setback, but here we go.
13:44For today's launch, NG-2, we have two goals. The first is to safely deploy the payload,
13:50which is NASA's escapade, which is heading out on a mission to Mars.
13:54And the second is to land the booster for the first time.
14:01NASA's new escapade mission will help us understand Mars' climate history using two
14:06spacecraft in orbit for the first time.
14:09CS-2 at flight level. Autopilot enabled.
14:17NASA's new escapade mission will help us understand Mars' climate history.
14:29NASA's new escapade mission will help us understand Mars' climate history.
14:34NASA's new escapade mission will help us understand Mars' climate history.
14:40NASA's new escapade mission will help us understand Mars' climate-
15:07I have a great shot from a booster.
15:18Standing back to touchdown.
15:23Standing back to touchdown.
15:31Congratulations.
15:32is escapade both blue and gold have successfully deployed we have successfully landed the booster
15:40and we have successfully deployed satellites for escapade
15:51so when you're doing hard things you also get great moments like that yeah that's awesome
15:56yeah ordinary that then you said when i said it was a launch it's also the landing which amazes
16:01i mean that's on the ocean yeah right on on jacqueline the the recovery ship amazing and
16:06this is a very large vehicle that this vehicle will take 45 metric tons to leo it'll take the
16:12the variant we're working on right now the nine by four variant will take over 70 metric tons to leo
16:17this is a super heavy class booster and to watch it land like that on an ongoing platform is
16:23is awe-inspiring and the team is is rightly very proud of themselves for it and the ocean doesn't
16:29always cooperate that thing moves no it's highly uncooperative yeah so to be able to do that like
16:35that is so impressive so all right dave this is all incredibly ambitious right and uh so the question
16:42is because you're the ceo here what what keeps you up at night when you think about all this stuff
16:47coming together the the whole operation the uh the manufacturing the talent pipeline getting getting
16:54the right people in the supply chain all this coming together what what is it that's uh foremost on your
16:59mind with this or is it everything combined there is a little bit of everything i i i've only been
17:04doing aerospace for two and a half years i'm traditionally trained in consumer electronics but
17:09i think people underestimate how hard it is to build a rocket uh these these are incredibly complicated
17:17vehicles pushing pushing the pushing the boundaries of what you know physics allows and uh and so to
17:23to see success like this and and see how space is becoming more normal is is amazing but the to
17:29build
17:30one off of anything whether that would be an engine or it would be a rocket that that doesn't really
17:35keep
17:35me up at night much it what the hard part is is building the machine that builds the machines you
17:42really
17:42want to that takes a lot of time and a lot of thought and that's the factories that are pushing
17:48these out because you don't want it to meet the vision that jeff talked about you don't want to build
17:53just one rocket we want to build we want to fly a hundred times a year and that means a
17:58hundred second
17:59stages that means uh that means hundreds of engines and so building our engine factory in huntsville and
18:06our rocket factory down in orlando and getting those to rate which includes the supply
18:12chain that includes the raw materials and heavy vertical integration is how you build that
18:17machine and we we're making a huge amount of progress uh but you can always get better yeah
18:22so we're we're now building a be4 engine this is our the heavy uh you know lng locks engine
18:29uh every four days coming off the line now a be4 engine so rate manufacturing is critical to this
18:39you know space travel is a solved problem for you know six decades we're not trying to invent
18:47space travel we're trying to make it cost effective and that's the key that's why you need reusability
18:53as david saying and why you need rate manufacturing and so it really is about being world-class
18:58manufacturers and dave and the team are are crushing that they're doing an amazing job
19:03when when dave uh visited us at at columbia where i'm on the faculty that was uh you talked about
19:09the
19:09manufacturing i do want to mention something about your pipeline when you i don't know if you knew
19:13this but when we were looking for someone to come speak we had a ceo lecture series and we did
19:18a poll
19:18within our our student body and what if you can listen hear from the the head of any company what
19:24would it be and it was blue origin came out number one so thanks for accommodating so i think your
19:28pipeline is of of talent is uh is excited to come join you and be a part of this yeah
19:34i think people
19:34are underestimating uh in even in the academic academic world how much building physical things
19:41is going to be valued moving forward right and so at the so uh we we spent the last three
19:46decades
19:47with a not enough computer science majors but i think the pendulum's going to swing the other way and
19:52they i was so inspired seeing this kids at columbia and people that know how to build real physical
19:58things and understand how the complexities of that and how to manufacture them they're gonna they're
20:04gonna be in very high demand yeah and and just to pick up a little bit more on the on
20:08the engines
20:09jeff um as the i don't know if everyone knows it was mentioned early just a minute ago about it
20:15you do
20:15have separate facilities most of your rockets are built in florida yes primarily but you have a whole an
20:21entirely separate facility in alabama yeah and now i've ridden on rockets that take you to space but
20:27i've never tried to build one so in your mind jeff what what what is so difficult about building
20:33rocket engines well rocket engines operate right at the limit of physics so you know the internal
20:40combustion temperatures inside of main combustion chamber of a rocket are 5 000 6 000 degrees fahrenheit
20:47it's beyond the melting points of any materials and so the the complexities of pressurizing those
20:54propellants and high performance turbo pumps that have to be very lightweight of cooling those materials
21:00with regenerative channels that they don't melt this is a very challenging thing to do and then so
21:07designing the engine is hard and then manufacturing it is hard and manufacturing at rate is hard
21:12um and uh you know i think we have a little clip i could show you we have our lunar
21:18lander has an
21:20engine in it called the be7 which is a relatively small engine it's 10 000 pounds of thrust and that
21:27uh we the reliability of this engine is paramount and we just did the longest engine test in history
21:37uh this is a 41 minute engine test this engine ran continuously for 41 minutes that beats the record
21:46for the space shuttle main engine which they once tested 30 years ago they tested it for 36 minutes
21:53so uh it's that's that and so that's a multi-decade record uh that the blue origin team just beat
22:01with the
22:01be7 engine but this is a very challenging thing these engines are very complex we have the be4 engine
22:08which is the one that uses liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen uses an ox rich stage combustion cycle
22:15and then our be3u engine is our second stage engine it's liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen this is the same
22:24basic architecture that was used by the apollo program so a hydrocarbon booster stage
22:31and liquid hydrogen upper stages liquid hydrogen is a a complex fuel to use but it's much higher
22:38performing than hydrocarbon fuels the problem with liquid hydrogen is that it's very voluminous it's
22:45uh the density of liquid hydrogen is very low so that's why you really don't want to use it on
22:51a booster
22:51stage it gets the booster stage would get too volumetrically gigantic but on the second stage it gives you
22:58tremendous advantages so this is what the apollo saturn 5 rocket did and it's what we do as well
23:06the to do uh the the lunar landing with liquid hydrogen has a further advantage which is that
23:13you look just a little ways into the future when we have permanent lunar settlements and this time we
23:18are going to the moon to stay i'm not going to visit we're going to stay and when you uh
23:25look at the
23:26materials available on the moon you have water ice in the permanently shadowed craters on the near the
23:35poles of the moon and that can with electrolysis be converted into liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen
23:43so by using liquid hydrogen as our lunar landing fuel uh one day in the not too distant future
23:49you'll be able to use in situ materials on the surface of the moon to refuel your lander
23:57um let's talk more about the moon right so you guys have had this in your game plan
24:03since the company was founded was the moon and uh lately we've been hearing a lot about the moon
24:08artemis 2 was such a huge success and really captured everyone's attention it's now like a global
24:14interest of going to the moon exploring the moon for various reasons um do you feel like everyone
24:22else's the world is catching up to where you guys have been for a while how does how do you
24:26how do you
24:26feel about that yeah we've been we've been fixated on not skipping any steps i'm very excited to see
24:35nasa and i think most of the world uh recognize that we should go to the moon first we'll go
24:40to mars
24:41and we'll do all the other things but the moon is the first best step and there are many reasons
24:47for
24:47that but it's kind of a gift it's so near earth we can get there in three and a half
24:52days we can
24:53return in three and a half days you can go anytime you want you don't have to wait for the
24:58planetary
24:58alignment to be just right and you can only go to mars every two years or so and so there
25:04are a lot
25:04advantages to the moon and then the moon's gravity well is so much lower than the earth's that when
25:11you get materials from the moon you can lift them off the moon with 28 times less energy per kilogram
25:18than is needed to lift something off the earth and so that's a really valuable thing if you are
25:24producing liquid oxygen for example on the moon lifting that into space is very easy compared to
25:30lifting liquid oxygen off of earth and so as we go about exploring the solar system which we will do
25:36and as we you know we will we will build colonies on mars and so on the moon is an
25:41important first step
25:42and when you skip steps it actually doesn't make you faster
25:47yeah yeah we and and it's going to be an incredible time over the next just the next year if
25:54you if you
25:54look at our lunar roadmap we call our team inside of blue lunar the lunar permanence group for exactly
26:01what jeff said we want to go there and we want to stay on the moon and just next year
26:06early in the
26:06year we'll fly our mark one lander which is on the screen here this is uh uh three metric tons
26:12to the
26:13lunar surface vehicle to be the big the largest thing that has ever landed on the moon and that'll be
26:17our
26:17pathfinder mission and then mid-year it was just announced last week uh artemis 3 will happen
26:23luca from italy will be on that on that flight which would be great uh and that's going to be
26:29a
26:29rendezvous mission with our mark ii lander which is our human rated lander and we'll we'll meet up
26:34at around 450 uh kilometers in low earth orbit and we'll do some of two days of entering into the
26:41vehicle the vehicle will have full environmental control so it'll have an eclipse system and we'll test
26:47that out for when we fly to the moon the following year and then later in the year we'll uh
26:52fly
26:52another mark one lander so these are coming off the assembly line now so we have a factory that's
26:57building these and that'll land nasa's viper rover uh late in the year and so it's gonna the the cycle
27:05time to the moon the cadence to the moon is going to increase very rapidly and it's it's really exciting
27:10and by the way that viper rover is going to go find uh lunar water ice in those permanently shadowed
27:19so that's a very exciting mission uh to we've seen it we've we've seen it with various methods
27:25from orbit and so on but now we'll be able to actually go look at it up close so it
27:30just kind
27:31of seems like the timing has worked out pretty well you guys identified it now the the moon base
27:36announcement from a from a couple months ago you're right that the timing is good i would also tell you
27:41this is so early you know we as a species as far as space is concerned we're we're just still
27:49warming
27:49up right we have we have not even begun this is the earliest earliest earliest yeah and the idea that
27:57we've been to the moon before which we have a great accomplishment much different than what we're
28:02doing now it's the permanence of it of staying there and uh i really love what what you said about
28:07and when we went before we pulled it forward in time yeah yeah we did it before we were ready
28:12yeah it was pulled forward in time and uh because of you know geopolitics and the race with the soviets
28:20and so on and now is the right time right to really get into it and go to stay yeah
28:26we did it before by
28:27spending you know the u.s spent almost three percent of gdp yeah to do it and that's just not
28:32you don't
28:33have those those types of resources that's not sustainable give me three percent of gdp i'll give
28:37you fusion okay so i guess the the question here and we've already i think we know the moon or
28:44mars
28:44jeff well moon first moon first moon first mars and and everywhere else too and we'll build large
28:51you know o'neill uh jerry o'neill style colonies in space as well yeah uh and and we'll build
28:58big
28:58uh you know uh we'll use uh asteroids and near earth objects and the moon and so on to build
29:07uh
29:08compute in space and solar cells in space and so on and a lot of our compute uh will be
29:14done in space
29:15it's it'll make more sense and ultimately we even manufacture the chips that the compute runs on and
29:21then the answers can just be beamed back to us here and this uh planet dave said it before but
29:28our long-term vision our dream is to that all the polluting industry can be done off earth if space
29:36travel gets reliable enough and inexpensive enough and we can get materials from asteroids and near
29:43earth objects and the moon then this garden planet can be returned to its pre-industrial revolution state
29:53this is the only way in which the world is worse today than it was 500 years ago everything is
30:01better
30:02today the the you know global illiteracy is better than it was 500 years ago uh infant mortality is
30:11better than it was uh global poverty is better than was everything is is better and it keeps getting
30:16better and the one exception is the natural world and we can actually have both so we go to space
30:25not
30:25necessarily just for space but for earth yes you want to protect us there's a great quote uh which i'm
30:31sure you've heard from one of your fellow astronauts jim lovell yeah when he went to the uh when he
30:39went
30:39to the moon and he looked back on earth he looked back at the earth and he said i realized
30:46you go to
30:47heaven when you're born not when you die yeah yeah and i really love the way you describe
31:01the moon as a gift you know i've always thought of it like a little brother or sister that's always
31:05with us if we're there it's and it's the right it sounds what you're saying we get there we can
31:10go
31:10other places more quickly um it's also been bombarded time what's that it's been bombarded for four and a
31:15half billion years by every meter right and so just under that surface is everything we need to build the
31:21things that jeff talked about like every mineral's there water's there we know this now and it's just
31:27it's going to be it's going to be an incredible resource and it's untouched for billions of years
31:31so it it really is a i like that it's a gift for us to explore and then use that
31:37as a launch pad to go
31:38other places all right um let's talk about uh some more about the infrastructure stack that that you're
31:45developing um this is all but you know the rockets and the vision for the moon and uh you know
31:52all
31:52this all these things that you guys are into and you're going to need a lot of talent and resources
31:57but you know you said that that that is really the key is companies and we've talked about a little
32:02bit
32:02already companies that can be these world-class manufacturers with uh incredible vertical
32:08integration uh they're the ones that are going to be the leaders and blue argent is doing that to set
32:13up this space economy building that infrastructure so when you when you say that about building that
32:19in an infrastructure layer for the space economy what what does that mean and what are the pieces
32:26of that stack that you're developing well i think uh on the as you said on the manufacture i was
32:32very
32:32surprised coming to a company like blue that you do have to be incredibly vertically integrated in this
32:38area and uh as an example we have our own these engines that jeff talked about the
32:43you know they're running it just the boundary of physics and high heat so we have a material science
32:48group that uh literally invented new two new alloys we call them cascadium and ranerium and these are
32:55to coat these engines so they can survive in these in these uh applications and then we take those
33:00alloys and we put them into one of the biggest uh additive manufacturing factories in the world which
33:05which blue has and we print these metals and literally print an engine and so it's uh it part of
33:13the
33:13infrastructure is inventing new infrastructure to to push the boundaries of what we'll be able to do
33:18again to get to where where jeff said which is lowering the cost you know you could probably do
33:23this in the old ways back in the apollo era but it does take a lot of money in in
33:28this and then i i think
33:29the other place that we're trying to invent is what are the applications you want to put in space and
33:34so we have um we've announced two different constellations one called project sunrise the
33:40other one called terawave that that get uh more infrastructure into space and uh and i think we
33:46can talk more about that as well yeah yeah yeah i was going to ask you about terawave is yeah
33:52data
33:52where are we going is a leo comms uh constellation that uh has very very high bandwidth and is optimized
34:03for uh very demanding users large enterprises hyperscalers government institutions uh includes
34:11very fast earth to space optical links so it's a very sophisticated network um and so we're working
34:19on that we're also working on project sunrise which is an orbital compute it'll those satellites will be
34:27in sun synchronous orbit sun synchronous orbit is an interesting orbit where the satellites 99 plus
34:34percent of the time are always in sunlight so they don't get eclipsed by the earth you know a typical
34:40orbit around the earth you know might be in low earth orbit might be you know 90 minutes or so
34:44and half that time you're in darkness uh and half that time you're in in in sunlight but in the
34:50sun
34:50synchronous orbit you're in daylight almost all the time 99 plus percent and so your solar cells are
34:57working for you the whole time uh and so there are a lot of questions about orbital data centers and
35:04can
35:04it really work and people get worried about heat rejection and things like this all of these physics
35:09problems are easily solvable uh heat rejection is not a real problem it's all these questions are
35:15really about cost and the cost so cost of production of the solar cells the cost of production of the
35:21satellites and the cost of launch uh will eventually the lines will cross and eventually orbital compute
35:28will be a better option than terrestrial compute we don't know exactly when it will be but we're going
35:35to work on we have to work on it now so that we're ready for those two lines to cross
35:39we're already
35:40very reliant on the connectivity we get every day from space and this is a way to to grow it
35:46yeah yeah
35:47and this is going to there's going to be many of these constellations i was just yeah there and you
35:52know just just the first phase of terrowave is 5 000 plus satellites in leo and then another 100
35:58satellites out in uh mid-earth orbit at meo and so you you start thinking about the scale of these
36:06constellations they want to be uh 5 10 20 000 for each shell and uh and they'll have different use
36:14cases you know you have starlink and you have amazon's leo and those are very focused on mostly
36:19on the consumer and great you can go anywhere now and and and get for 60 or 100 euro a
36:25year you can or a
36:26you can you can get great connectivity similarly our we're focused on giving uh enterprises and
36:33governments really really high bandwidth with high reliability and and there'll be 10 more ideas for
36:38this and this goes back to why launch is so constrained now because each one of these uh
36:44constellations can quickly fill up uh many many many launches you know hundreds of launches and so
36:51uh we we got a race to just get lower the cost even further and get more rockets in the
36:56air
36:56and europe will have their own constellations other countries will have their own constellations
37:01it's just uh uh it's just a very valuable thing to be able to do and even just talking about
37:08communications constellations the kind of human appetite for comms is basically in you know uh insatiable
37:18um i want to ask you about another project that you have going uh recently you broke news
37:24of a new endeavor prometheus right an ai company and you've called it uh you're going to be developing
37:32an art an artificial general engineer so as someone who tries to train real engineers i'm very excited
37:39about this because i think i think it's a way that we're going to we can incorporate that in education
37:44and and train engineers to use this thing that you're developing prometheus what can you tell us
37:51about that and the importance of ai and engineering for blue argent and for the world yeah prometheus is
37:56building a set of tools that's designed to empower engineers to really invent and build much much
38:04faster so if you think about you know today there's a kind of a dream build cycle you know dream
38:11of
38:11something and then depending on how complicated it is it may take a few years to 10 years before you're
38:17really producing it at rate and manufacturing it and if you take a step back and broadly
38:26civilizational wealth all of civilizational wealth is driven by invention
38:33six thousand years ago somebody invented the plow and we all got wealthier and then much later
38:42somebody invented the steam engine and we all got wealthier and this cycle continues and if we can
38:50accelerate that cycle that dream build cycle it will create real productivity real prosperity and so
38:58that's the idea behind prometheus and it can't be done with traditional large language models they have a
39:05place but they aren't trained with the right data to be able to do detailed engineering so the analogy i
39:13would
39:14give you is you know i could read a thousand books that's what llms do today they're trained on the
39:20entire
39:20corpus of humanity's knowledge they have scraped the entire internet and they know everything that we've
39:26written down in words and they're unbelievably good at uh at symbol manipulation that's what large
39:34language models do but if i read a thousand books on how to be a great gymnast i would still
39:43be a terrible
39:44gymnast and it's because it's a it needs a different kind of training data and that's what when you go
39:51to
39:51actually design real physical objects it's very complicated and you can't do it just by reading
39:57about it and so we're building a uh a model that is very good at doing engineering and then that
40:06model
40:07becomes the basis of a series of tools that will make it easier for uh for people to to to
40:14dramatically
40:14accelerate that build dream so the goal would be if today you came to me and you said jeff i
40:20need a new
40:20jet engine with 10 percent more thrust and even if i had built 50 jet engines already so i i
40:28would
40:28still tell you that's going to be a 10-year program that's how long it takes to build a modern
40:35sophisticated jet engine for a modern airliner and to by the time you've tested it instead of the
40:42factory and are ready to produce it that's at least a 10-year program and so can we at prometheus
40:49build a set of tools to make that be five years and then three years and then two years and
40:56then
40:56one year and if we can really accelerate that dream build loop it changes everything and it's not
41:04necessarily and it helps blue origin too yeah i think i have it now dave needs these tools yeah
41:09and it's not going to replace people necessarily it's going to be a tool for engineers to use no no
41:14no no i really value i know there's a lot of concern that many people have including many smart
41:19people that ai is going to make humans redundant and so on i i totally disagree with this point of
41:25view and i think in fact ai is going to create a labor shortage because it's going to make it
41:30possible
41:31for people to identify more problems we have an endless set of things to invent and we are only
41:37limited today we are limited not by our imaginations but by what we can actually do i promise you every
41:44single person in this audience has had an idea for a new business or a new product or a new
41:51device that
41:52they wish they could manufacture and that idea stayed in your head and went nowhere and the reason it
42:00stayed in your head and went nowhere is because it's too hard to do and it wasn't worth it
42:05and if we can accelerate the dream build loop all of the ideas will then become possible and then we
42:11end up being limited not by our capabilities but by our imaginations you can already see this with
42:17you can already see this some with vibe coding right you know i was classically trained as a computer
42:29scientist but three years ago i was a terrible computer scientist i got but now i can
42:34in just an afternoon write an ios app and and i and i have some ideas for ios apps and
42:40and that
42:41that is one thing that lms can do very well because it is symbolic and so they can code very
42:46well
42:46and then imagine the tools that they're thinking about bringing that that i could in an afternoon
42:52do that in the physical world yeah and you know contemplate something and magically it comes off my 3d
42:59printer i i'm chomping at the bit it's it's so exciting exciting future for us for all of us here
43:04well fellas we've got a few minutes left here so we've got a couple last questions for you
43:11um you guys have known each other a long time i mean i know you well enough to know you
43:14guys are
43:14friends and trusted we've worked together for uh you know almost two decades at amazon okay so and
43:21so you've worked together at amazon is there any surprises or differences on how working together
43:26at blue origin how's how's that been is it what's that been like now in this new endeavor i i
43:32don't
43:32see it a lot but i there's some things that surprised me uh jeff is the most uh
43:42care and feeding tip for jeff here that he's the most tactically impatient person i've ever met
43:46and the most strategically patient person i've ever met so uh and i know that's an oxymoron but it
43:52but it somehow works and and the the thing that that was the same is at amazon jeff was always
44:01the
44:01longest term thinker in the room there was no question about it he was the long-term optimist in
44:06the room and i when i came to blue the vision is bigger than that it's it's it's it he
44:12mentioned it
44:13it's like we're trying to help this planet and make and and make space a nor the new normal so
44:19that that was one and then i think the other thing uh for me is uh i i've been in
44:28the room a lot with
44:29jeff and you know he always can find and help an idea he always can move it forward and i
44:35and
44:35certainly i thought that that superpower was centered around e-commerce i mean you invented amazon and uh
44:42i can tell you now i've been here two and a half years jeff knows more about rockets and rocket
44:47engines than he knows about e-commerce and that is stunning
44:53thank you dave that's great guys here's what i would say there's a there's a saying some of you
44:59may have heard it maybe not um when you're under 40 never hire your friends when you're over 40
45:08only hire your friends there you go and i can tell you
45:16i'm a very very lucky man with a tremendous amount of gratitude that i get to work with dave
45:21you know thank you yeah that is awesome
45:30okay just a couple more to round out here uh jeff you said that blue origin will be the world's
45:36most
45:37decisive company um how's that going how are things it's going very well especially since
45:44dave arrived and i'm very grateful for it because decisiveness is about speed and speed matters in
45:50business you know amazon is a giant company but we're still we make decisions very quickly
45:56and this is something that you need to be able to do and i can tell you why decisions get
46:01slow
46:02especially in large companies and blue is a pretty big company at this point you know we have
46:0614 15 000 people it's not a small company and the reason is you start making all decisions as if
46:14they're all the same size it's like one size fits all thinking and you know if you have a one
46:19size fits
46:20all robe it never fits so and so there are different decisions that should be made in different ways
46:26there are giant decisions which are consequential and irreversible or almost irreversible super hard
46:35to reverse those decisions should be made slowly with great care and then there are other decisions
46:42which even if they're consequential they can be reversed and those decisions should be made by single
46:48individuals who have good judgment and uh and so you have to remember that there are these different
46:54kinds of decisions and speed of decision making if you go if you when you go look at successful
47:00companies one of the reasons that small companies can be so nimble is because a small group of people
47:05can be so decisive and you know a company with 100 people and a really good founder or a leader
47:11they can touch every part of the company they can be involved in every decision and they can be
47:16incredibly decisive and move fast so that's an important part of culture uh and in aerospace
47:23uh you know traditional aerospace i think often suffers from slow decision making speed
47:31and it's and i know how aerospace gets there but i mean you know you're building things that often have
47:37you know hazardous operations life safety critical missions and so again not every decision is like
47:44that though and so you end up making every decision as if it's life safety critical yeah and then you're
47:51going to move very slowly and that's not going to lead to the results that you want you know you
47:56know
47:56we we want to move humanity forward into this next age and i think we're in the middle of a
48:03bunch of golden
48:04ages right now and i want to see companies succeed in all of them biotech space is an incredible opportunity
48:10all the things that are happening in ai we live in the most incredible moment and every young person
48:18right now should be so excited that they are where they are now because it's never been a better
48:23time to be an entrepreneur a better time to start a company uh there's so many possibilities
48:31in in this compared to what we used to do in the space program with the government where i'm familiar
48:35we used to call it we move at glacial speed here and you guys move quick okay i've got we're
48:41we're
48:41close here i've got a question for each one of you left um dave uh this is what goes through
48:49your head
48:50when you uh when you hear jeff say that blue and apparently you've said this jeff that blue will
48:56eventually be the best business you've ever been a part of even more successful than amazon now i'm
49:03you know i'm not a business major but amazon's pretty successful so the pressure's on what goes
49:06through your head when you when you hear that dave yeah it's a it's a clench up moment let's
49:12yeah you know it's uh um and i i i he mentioned this before i took the job that he
49:20so this i think
49:21it got out publicly later but he mentioned it and so this has been and it is a tough comp
49:26you know
49:27amazon by almost any measure is one of the world's if not the world's most successful company and uh but
49:33i have to tell you that i i am an optimist by general but in general but that as the
49:39time has
49:40gone by and been two years and i've seen how fast the progress we're making in space and how many
49:46opportunities that are that we've talked about some of them here that can happen in space uh i i
49:54think i i'm i'm a believer now and i was a skeptic and so i'm sure of it yeah it's
49:58gonna happen
49:59it's gonna be a giant industry with lots of winners and you know literally hundreds and
50:04thousands of winners yeah it's gonna be very exciting and to watch it unfold well i'm very
50:10grateful for what you guys have done uh devoting your your talents energy entrepreneurship to the
50:15space program well done uh one last question jeff this one's for you it's about your lesson
50:22learn from your grandfather on the importance of being resourceful uh you know today we have ai and
50:30a lot of technical help a lot of technology around us do you still think resourcefulness carries the
50:36same weight as it did when you heard that story from your grandfather or even maybe more so in today's
50:41world i think it's so important and it's funny mike knows some of these stories about my grandfather
50:47because i told i told him that's why he's asking this question but my grandfather when i knew him
50:52was a rancher in south texas and i spent all my summers on my grandfather's ranch from age 4 to
50:5916
51:00and uh and eventually was able to help him and we did everything on our own like a lot of
51:06people in
51:07rural areas you can't call to repair something you know you fix it yourself and so we repaired bulldozers
51:13and took out the giant transmission gears and fixed them and so on but he even made his own uh
51:20veterinary needles you know to stitch up the cattle he would get a piece of wire and heat it with
51:26a blow
51:26torch and pound it flat and drill a little hole in the end and sharpen it some of the cattle
51:31even
51:31survived so this is a a very um good just this this idea it's an attitude this attitude this approach
51:43to life that any problem is solvable it's a good starting point and some problems may take a long
51:51time to solve but i promise you if you start with the opposite point of view that the problem is
51:56not
51:56solvable that will be a self-fulfilling pride for a prophecy and with that where our time is up
52:05thank you mike thank you very much thank you thanks mike thanks very much awesome awesome thanks folks
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