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**Justin Garrison:** Man, that is exactly what I would hope to be. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, it's the dream. |
**Justin Garrison:** There's so many challenges in this. What would you say is like one of the things that stood out to, something you didn't expect? Because you're going into this knowing this is going to be a hard thing to do, there's a lot of variables and things at play... What was something that surprised you abou... |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, I think -- and maybe I was uniquely naive, in that... You know, I think everybody has that vision built up of like how NASA does things. And you imagine clean rooms, and this perfection, and just everything is immaculately tested... And not to say that there's not problems, but you have that ... |
So I think that's kind of where that push and pull really comes into play, and I think that was really surprising to me, was just how much leniency there was towards moving fast. I didn't expect it to be able to move as fast as we've been able to move. |
**Justin Garrison:** I wonder what the culture was like In the '60, where it's like "We're landing on the Moon..." They had to move fast. My grandfather actually worked on the Apollo missions, which is just like, his pictures were absolutely amazing. And I never got to hear stories from him of what the culture was like... |
**Andrew Guenther:** \[35:57\] Yeah, it's nuts. I mean, this is something that even 10 years ago wasn't possible. Launches have become way cheaper... $5 million is a lot, but in the grand scheme of like Silicon Valley VC money, that's not a lot. And it's become super-accessible for startups to launch payloads into spac... |
**Autumn Nash:** That's wild, that you can do something in space that much quicker... Also, I think it's really going to add - I don't even know if I'd say add value, but it really sets you apart if you can move fast and cheaper, because of the market that we're in right now, and less VC funding, and higher interest ra... |
**Andrew Guenther:** Well, still our CapEx, but lower than it used to be CapEx. |
**Autumn Nash:** Yeah. I mean, back in the day, the only people that launched anything into space was NASA. So the fact that it is even an industry that multiple companies can do is kind of just wild in itself. |
**Andrew Guenther:** So my dad also worked in aerospace, and when I told him \[unintelligible 00:37:46.19\] company, he was like "You mean you're just a bunch of guys and you put some satellites in space?" Like "Yeah. Yeah, they just let us." You just apply for your FCC license, and let Noah know, and they're like "Yea... |
**Autumn Nash:** Which is like wild. There's no space license, or something? |
**Andrew Guenther:** It's interesting, because there kind of is. It's governed by the FCC, because they control the radio waves. I got into like a whole conversation with somebody on Hacker News a while ago about this, because I just find this fascinating how the US finds really unique ways to have regulatory vectors o... |
**Autumn Nash:** It's wild, because I think \[unintelligible 00:38:47.21\] we've seen what happens when we don't have regulations... But then sometimes you're just like "Where did these things come from?" Like, the FCC is not what I \[unintelligible 00:38:55.15\] of your space license, you know what I mean? So that's l... |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, even better - the FCC issued their first fine for space junk a couple months ago. |
**Autumn Nash:** Oh, that's cool. |
**Andrew Guenther:** The Federal Communications Commission, the champions of litter in space. \[laughter\] |
**Autumn Nash:** But it's also interesting though, because so many things get launched, right? And even if it doesn't go wrong, there's just so much that doesn't go with your, like, rocket, or whatever. They're made to have parts that break off... So did people even think about what we're gonna do with all that at some... |
**Andrew Guenther:** It was just like "Let it all burn up." A lot of these satellites -- our satellites don't have propulsion. So after X number of years, the orbit decays, and they burn up, and that's... That's game. |
**Autumn Nash:** Do they really just burn up completely? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Mostly so. |
**Justin Garrison:** what's the lifespan? We're talking like servers are like seven years. Like, I could buy a server, put it in a rack, and I hold it for seven years. You launch a spaceship, and how - not a spaceship. I don't know what the technical term -- it's obviously a satellite, because there's no propulsion, or... |
**Andrew Guenther:** \[40:16\] So the actual -- so there's a difference between orbit decay and mission life, because the components on board, in theory, will go out long before the actual orbit will decay. So I believe that satellites are slated to be a five-year mission from the onboard component perspective. But thi... |
**Autumn Nash:** But do they completely dissolve? Because you know how the rovers -- like, one will live way longer than they're supposed to, and then one gets like too much dust, and then solar plates can't keep powering it. Also, I cried; I was so in my feelings about the rover... I was like "Noo, but I love your pic... |
**Andrew Guenther:** It's just out there, all alone... |
**Autumn Nash:** I know...! It was so lonely, and I was so sad. I was so sad. My kids were like "What's wrong?" and I was like "The rover..." |
**Andrew Guenther:** You build up feelings around these things. It's funny, because each of our satellites we name after a sidekick... The official designations are like Ghost 1, Ghost 2, Ghost 3, but we call them Robin, Goose and Chewy. |
**Autumn Nash:** Oh my God, what if Goose dies? Like, I would be all, like -- |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, Goose is ill-fated... |
**Autumn Nash:** Are you trying to make us cry, Andrew? You had to name it Goose... |
**Andrew Guenther:** That's definitely not the objective. This is just a plug that we have... We have a Slack bot that announces telemetry and new imagery, and it uses a picture of the appropriate sidekick, and speaks as if like "Goose checking in. Got new imagery." |
**Autumn Nash:** You have a Slack bot with pictures? Andrew, hire me. Wait... You get paid to do this? I literally stalk all of James Webber, and all the different satellites, and like post them like a crazy person... Just -- we're best friends now. It's happening. |
**Justin Garrison:** I mean, talk about like pets \[unintelligible 00:42:25.12\] right? This is the epitome of -- you have a 15-year decay... But also, $5 million for a five-year mission. A million bucks a year per satellite, and you are gonna get more than a million dollars of value or revenue from that... That's an i... |
**Andrew Guenther:** Well, you want to talk about crazy scale - look at Starlink. They have some rudimentary propulsion, but they're even, I think, on a less than 15-year mission cycle, and they're launching thousands of those. It's just crazy. |
**Justin Garrison:** Like Starlink, do you have satellites and satellite communication to help with that 90-minute delay, and will five satellites reduce that for you significantly? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, so we have a radio for satellite-to-satellite communication. They're not enabled yet. But feasibly, yes. The more satellites you have, the better network you have, and you can kind of communicate in between. There's also proposals kind of going through for a larger network, so we could over e... |
**Justin Garrison:** Would that be like the outronet? I don't know what you call that, instead of the internet. |
**Autumn Nash:** You guys have to name it something cool. After Space Force, you can't just -- and like you named the satellite Goose... The bar is high. |
**Andrew Guenther:** \[43:59\] Yeah, inter-satellite communication networks are definitely something that's up and coming, and trying to get off the ground. It's a bad joke... |
**Justin Garrison:** I got the pun. I was late on that. |
**Autumn Nash:** Are you about to dad-joke us? \[laughs\] |
**Justin Garrison:** Who's the jerks in space? Is Starlink like -- do they just litter everywhere, and we can't see around them? Is there some other country that's like "Well, they're not working with the FCC, so they just threw --" If you can't answer it, that's fine, but I'm curious now, is there space beef between l... |
**Autumn Nash:** You're gonna get Andrew in trouble... |
**Andrew Guenther:** I mean, there's only -- like, low Earth orbit is smaller than you think... And I would say, without naming names, the jerks are the people who are just launching tons and tons... Which is pretty much anybody who's looking to offer satellite-based internet. Satellite-based internet takes an absurd n... |
**Justin Garrison:** How close is really close? I think in space it's like you're hundreds of miles away... But no, this is really close, probably... |
**Andrew Guenther:** Close enough that somebody called, right? \[laughter\] |
**Autumn Nash:** Can you change the course of direction if you're gonna get too close? Or you're just kind of out of luck and you're gonna hit each other? |
**Andrew Guenther:** Us, no. Starlink has some rudimentary propulsion, so they can do some stuff... Even the space station had to move to dodge -- I think there was like a Chinese satellite where they were like "Hey, there's a satellite that we have, and you need to move the space station so that our satellite doesn't ... |
**Autumn Nash:** Just move the whole space station, no big deal. |
**Andrew Guenther:** Yeah, you can just like shift altitude control a little bit, and... Yeah, just real fast. |
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