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00:29Transcription by CastingWords
00:31Welcome, Hélène.
00:33Thank you very much.
00:34So, the space industry is changing faster than it has in decades.
00:39We've just been talking about it with our previous panel.
00:41I think most people were there to listen to that.
00:44So, new companies are emerging, among them yours.
00:47New business models are taking shape.
00:50Decisions are being made today that could shape Europe's place in space for generations to come.
00:57And you're at the heart of this transformation, Hélène.
01:00I believe you've just arrived from somewhere rather important, haven't you?
01:05The Minister, Lescure, just announced the TB3 initiative, which for Europe and for France is very important.
01:12It's basically, you know, we are very rich in Europe.
01:15We have a lot of savings, but that savings is not always invested in, let's say, startups, scale-ups, etc.
01:23And he announced TB3 really focused on deep tech.
01:27And also, he announced that this TB3 initiative will be coordinated with the Spring German initiative so that we can
01:34scale what has been so great for France, also in Europe.
01:37So, it made me very, very happy.
01:38So, Hélène, before we move into the future, I'd like you to tell us about this company that you've built
01:45here in Europe.
01:46It's one of the most ambitious space startups in just a few years.
01:51When did you create your company?
01:53We'll be five years ago in September.
01:56Okay, so what is it you're trying to build with the exploration company?
01:59Well, we focus on space transportation.
02:02And I'm sure all of you, of course, you know SpaceX.
02:05SpaceX started with rockets, and then they built a capsule, and then, of course, Starlink, and now data center in
02:12space.
02:14So, we decided to start the other way around, because when we started the exploration company,
02:19there were really lots of small launchers in Europe.
02:21So, we said, let's build first a capsule, because there is no capsule in Europe.
02:26And because there is no capsule in Europe, basically, every year, we pay half a billion to our dear friends
02:32in the United States to fly our astronauts.
02:34And I thought it would be great to keep that money and build the technology here.
02:39In addition, NASA needs additional capsule.
02:42So, I could see a possibility for a market perspective to be number one in Europe, to be one of
02:47the key players in the U.S., a market which is growing, and also to be an inspiration for Europe,
02:52because that capsule will be done together, and because if you're European, and you picture yourself in a few years,
02:58and you watch on the TV, or you watch on your phone, or whatever device will be,
03:03and you see, taking off from French Louisiana, big rocket reusable on the top, a capsule of European astronauts on
03:11board, made in Europe.
03:12I think everybody will understand what Europe is for, and what it means to build stuff together, which is very
03:18important at a time when we have wars, just in our vicinities.
03:21So, that was the first product.
03:24We've been flying two prototypes in space already.
03:27We have won two billions in less than five years, two billions of contracts, which are real contracts.
03:32I'm not talking LOIs whatsoever, and we'll be flying our recurring final product in 28 to the space station with
03:39cargo.
03:41And so, now is the right time, because the business is de-risked, the technology is significantly de-risked.
03:45Now is the right time to move to the next step.
03:48The next step is, of course, rockets.
03:50So, we just unveiled, last week, in Germany, the biggest model, the model of the biggest rocket engine ever built
03:59in Europe.
04:01And, number one, we need to build this rocket engine, because when you build a house, you don't start with
04:05the windows, you start with the foundation.
04:08So, no big rocket engine, no big rocket.
04:10So, first step is big rocket engine.
04:12And afterwards, of course, a very big rocket.
04:15We target a performance, a reusable performance of 40,000, 4-0.
04:19So, to give you an idea, this is in reusable, double what Ariane is doing today.
04:25And if we don't reuse the rocket, it will be triple the size of Ariane.
04:28So, we think big.
04:29And so far, we've been able to attract a lot of talents because of this ambition.
04:33And to reignite the energy that Europe needs, you know, to build a global leader of European roots in space.
04:41Talk about the size.
04:42I mean, we're not talking at all about the same size as the Maya space rockets.
04:46Because it was very funny.
04:47They just met as one was leaving stage and one was arriving.
04:49We had Johan Leroy from Maya space with us just before.
04:54And they were like, good friends, you know.
04:57Yeah, we are very good friends.
04:58And I appreciate a lot Johan.
05:00I don't know if he's here.
05:01So, he's a great CEO.
05:03And, okay, we're building rockets.
05:04We target different class.
05:06So, Johan is about 1 to 2.5.
05:10Maybe go a little bit bigger.
05:12And we are 40 up to 60.
05:14So, why was 2021, that's when you launched your company, why was that the right time to start the exploration
05:20company?
05:23So, I think there is a personal and also like more business reasons.
05:27Personally, I was at that time one of the youngest executives at Airbus.
05:31And I was at the beginning of my 40s.
05:33And this is where you think, okay, like I have accumulated certain talents, certain knowledge.
05:37And it's really now the time to give that, to make sure I'm like using that whatever talent, knowledge in
05:45the best possible way so that we impact the world in the most positive manner.
05:52And I was not sure staying at Airbus.
05:54And I love Airbus.
05:55I'm a proud child of Airbus and Ariane.
05:56But I was not sure that would be the right thing to do because we are in an industry which
06:02is moving very, very fast.
06:04Space is being disrupted.
06:07Like every five to ten years, Musk and others, they come with a new disruption where space can serve the
06:15world in different manners.
06:16So, I thought if I'm really serious about building something that's going to transform the world and starting here from
06:23Europe, it's very difficult to do that.
06:27But we've been a historic player with a lot of respect.
06:30And again, I learned everything from Airbus and Ariane.
06:32So, I decided to leave.
06:35And more like riskier, but like probably more impactful if it works.
06:41And we, so we were at that time four people.
06:45So, two colleagues from the Ariane vehicle, one colleague from Ariane.
06:48And basically we said, okay, let's go.
06:50Let's build the first capsule and afterwards like a very big rocket.
06:53And this is this.
06:53So, that was, it happened at the right time because
06:57the vehicle we were working on Orion was qualified.
07:00Some of you might have seen the Orion flying around the moon and coming back.
07:04And also it was a time when the Open Space Agency was thinking about having its capsule program.
07:09So, we knew there were a chance actually to start that capsule program in Europe,
07:13not only backed by private money, but also public funding.
07:16Yeah, public, private.
07:17And that capsule that you're building, it's on show here at the Innovation Gallery.
07:22So, if you want to check it out, you can see the capsule there.
07:27Yeah, you can see it's half the size.
07:30Yeah, of course.
07:31But back to the spacecraft.
07:33So, Jeff Bezos here on Wednesday morning was reminding everyone just how hard it is to build a rocket.
07:40And how it's even harder to build the team that's building the rocket, to get the right people together, putting
07:48together this team.
07:49So, how do you convince some of Europe's best engineers, you've worked with them, did you steal them when you
07:55left Airbus?
07:56I mean, how do you convince them to join a company that didn't exist just a few years ago?
08:01And how do you keep them?
08:03How do you retain them?
08:05Yeah, I think if you think seriously about it, it's rare and it's a privilege to be able to contribute
08:17to the transformation of an industry.
08:20It's rare and it's a privilege to be able to write space history.
08:25And this is what we are proposing.
08:28Not only we are transforming space history in Europe, as an example, for the first time together, the Open Space
08:34Agency, I mean, and thanks to the Open Space Agency and Open Member States,
08:39the capsule is now built between a partnership with private investors and the Open Space Agency as an anchor client.
08:47It was never been done before.
08:51It was organized for a competition where new players, historic players, could compete.
08:55Again, never been done before.
08:57So, and Europe never had a reusable capsule and we're building that capsule, never been done before.
09:03And Europe never had a full-flow stage combustion massive rocket engine.
09:07And I hope in a few years we will, you know, we will be hot firing that engine and et
09:13cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
09:14So, it's a privilege.
09:16It's very hard, right?
09:18I mean, if you are the first to climb the Everest, or in our case, we're not the first because
09:21some Americans did that before, but it remains very, very hard.
09:25So, we're looking for people who are mission-driven.
09:29Our mission is to build vehicles for humanity.
09:33It means that we start in Europe here because Europe has this history of collaboration.
09:38We started a company between Germany and France because I strongly believe we live today in peace within the European
09:47Union
09:48because we've shared military technologies, dual technologies, between the nations which founded the European Union.
09:56And we need all to be very aware, and I think the world is very clear about that, that peace
10:01is very fragile.
10:02Democracy is very fragile.
10:03So, if we are serious about protecting peace and democracy in Europe, we need to continue to share military technologies
10:10across countries in Europe.
10:12And space technology, most of the space technologies are dual-use technologies, so military technologies.
10:20So, we've built the exploration company between now Germany, France, Italy, and we are opening in Spain in June
10:26so that we can continue that sharing of military technologies across nations in Europe.
10:31And not only do we want to do that in Europe, but we are scaling that worldwide.
10:36So, we're working closely with the United States.
10:38The capsule is being certified by NASA, and once we've flown the capsule, made in Europe,
10:46we'll open a production line in the U.S. so that we can serve the American market.
10:51And we are working together with the UAE on our lunar ambitions
10:56and also working together on what could be a launch pad, you know, for this rocket.
11:01So, the point here is, I'd love to contribute to building a space ecosystem, a space future,
11:09which very concretely, via the vehicles we built, demonstrates that first and foremost, we are humans.
11:16We can be scientific engineers, business people, whatever.
11:19And then when we work together, we build these vehicles which are greater than ourselves.
11:24And if we can build that in space, it will be like, you know, a private-driven international space station.
11:30And that's where the exploration company wants to go.
11:34And this is very, very unique.
11:35So, people joining us, they join for the mission about, you know, what we represent for Europe.
11:39But also, we have a lot of people in the United States, in the UAE,
11:43joining us for this collaboration that we are building and we are leaving at the exploration company.
11:47You're talking, you talk a lot about collaboration.
11:50And of course, as we know, the ISS was probably one of the most ambitious international projects ever undertaken.
11:59As space becomes more commercial, more strategic, you're saying it, amid growing geopolitical tensions,
12:06do you think we can preserve that spirit of cooperation?
12:10Well, it's a must, right?
12:12Sometimes you do things, not because we think we can, but sometimes we do things because we must, right?
12:21It's our duty.
12:22So, for me, it's our duty to protect the European values of democracy, of collaboration, of being united in our
12:30diversity.
12:31And, you know, there may be some, I would say, tsunami or waves here and there, you know,
12:38with that administration or that administration.
12:40But if you think long-term and what we are, like, space we call, you know,
12:45they are here for 10 to 15 years and it takes, like, 5 to 10 years to build this kind
12:50of stuff.
12:50So, again, it's hard, it's long.
12:52So, we are long-term thinkers.
12:55And long-term, and also, I mean, the G-SET was just demonstrating just a few days ago.
13:00I really believe in the collaboration between United States and Europe
13:03and I really believe in the collaboration between the Arabic world and Europe.
13:07and we want to move forward in that direction.
13:11Right now is not the right time to collaborate with China,
13:13but I really hope that one day also our vehicles can collaborate with whatever,
13:18wherever China will be at this point in time.
13:20And if Europe wants to keep its place in this, let's not call it a space race,
13:25it's no longer that, but if Europe wants to keep its place,
13:28what would you say really needs to change?
13:31I mean, as we know, there's going to be a massive space conference here in Paris in September.
13:37You're one of the ambassadors of this conference together with Thomas Pesquet, the French astronaut.
13:43What do you hope is going to come out of this conference?
13:46What needs to change?
13:57What needs to change in Europe is, number one, the level of ambition.
14:01And I'm very happy because I see the space ecosystem growing and growing and growing,
14:05but like, let's take Airbus, which is an amazing example of a company which is global leader of European Roots.
14:14It doesn't cost 10 times more to build an Airbus than to build a Boeing for the same performance category.
14:20Right?
14:20And if it would take 10 times more, I mean, Airbus would not be what Airbus is today.
14:25I'm talking about commercial airplanes, of course.
14:28And some people say, oh, in space, you know, we cannot be that competitive because guess what?
14:34The United States, they are giving so much DoD money to their players that we cannot be
14:39because we only have, like, the space budget in Europe is like 20% of the space budget in the
14:44U.S.
14:45Yeah, but, I mean, to my knowledge, Boeing is receiving a lot of DoD subsidies,
14:49and still, the cost of building a Boeing aircraft is not like 10 times, I mean, not, sorry,
14:54one-tenth of the cost of building an Airbus aircraft.
14:57So, we shall not accept to be not competitive, especially when a European space engineer
15:04is costing half the cost of an American space engineer.
15:07So, the first thing to change is our level of ambition.
15:11If we want to, like, come back as, because Ariane was, like, number one in the past decades,
15:21if we want to come back as number one with European Roots, it starts with ambition.
15:26And then, of course, we have to execute.
15:28And here, the second thing that needs to change, and which is changing,
15:32and again, ambition is changing, but that's really, really important.
15:35So, the governments, and us as entrepreneurs, and the whole industry,
15:39needs to think, how can we be number one?
15:42And it's not acceptable to just serve European sovereignty.
15:46Of course, it's important, but we will serve better European sovereignty if we are number one worldwide.
15:53And then, the way to do that is that the risks are very, very high, right?
15:58When you build a capsule or rocket or whatever, you know, very, very big space infrastructure.
16:03And so, what's been done in the U.S. since now 20 years is that there's been open competition between
16:09historic players and startup,
16:11and most importantly, the contracts which were awarded were service contracts.
16:15So, NASA would act as the anchor client of SpaceX, Northland Groupman, Boeing, etc.
16:20This is exactly what the Open Space Agency did with us, and also with Thales, and we are now racing
16:25with Thales.
16:27And this is something that has to be done more and more, because if you receive, as a company, one
16:31euro of a service contract,
16:33you can raise ten times more, because a service contract means, hey, you have clients, and there is a market.
16:40And again, as an example, we received, at the beginning, now we have much more,
16:44but we received 25 million from the Open Space Agency at the beginning,
16:47and we raised 250 million thanks to this first contract.
16:52So, and it's still like the first, or now there are two examples, but we need to scale that.
16:58And now for the Space Summit, and I want to be very clear, I'm speaking here with my hat of
17:02CEO of the exploration company.
17:04I am not speaking here with my hat of special envoy, so I'm really here as a CEO of the
17:09exploration company.
17:09I have one wish, is that we decide to build human spaceflight capability in Europe.
17:16This is my one and only wish, and we can start that at constant budget.
17:23But we need a political decision in September, and we are, because we are at a very historic moment right
17:29now.
17:30We have started to build, from a technical perspective, the capabilities to do this human-related capsule,
17:37because we have now started to build a cargo capsule.
17:40So, we start to have the capabilities.
17:43We have a massive opportunity in the U.S.,
17:47because NASA would very much like to have additional crew capsule.
17:51So, it means that if we build this capacity in Europe,
17:55we have a massive business opportunity in the U.S.
17:59And because of that, we can convince private investors to co-finance this capsule
18:04at a time when private investment in space is very, very hype, and huge, and massive.
18:10I am not sure the three factors will represent themselves in the next 50 or 100 years,
18:15so this is the moment to size for Europe, and to say, let's build that.
18:21And some people will say, but why, right?
18:24Because we have so many things on Earth we need to take care of.
18:27And we're going to wrap up with that.
18:29Yeah.
18:29I'm telling you, building something of that ambition, of that magnitude together,
18:34would inspire each of us, and our children, and the generations after.
18:39We'll demonstrate what Europe is, and inspiration is very, very important.
18:46It's not something which is tangible, but think about yourself.
18:48We are who we are because we've been inspired by people.
18:52And this needs to continue in a very positive way in Europe.
18:55Helen, thank you so much.
18:57That is a wonderful way to end our conversation.
19:01And actually, speaking of ideas that end up shaping generations,
19:06well, we're about to switch gears completely here,
19:09because we're going to turn in our next session to one of the most influential games.
19:13You all know it.
19:14You've all played it, I'm sure.
19:16Thank you so much for the time that we've ever created and the remarkable story behind it.
19:20Stay with us for a conversation with Alexey Pajitnov.
19:24He's the creator of Tetris, and Henk Rogers from the Tetris Company.
19:27Let's give Hélène a huge round of applause.
19:33Thank you, Hélène.