00:20:59 · Will Marshall
[00:20:59] S1: We more than thought about it. We just launched last week the first data center's test project for Google. Suncatcher is the name of their project. And before that, we've launched NVIDIA chips on our Pelican spacecraft. The reason we're putting more compute upstairs is to process the data quickly. It's great if we can do the image processing, recognize the ships, do the querying up there, and then just send down the answers. That means we can get the answers much quicker. In the case of the LA fires, we took an image within a couple of hours of the fire starting. We got it down a couple of hours later and then had processing time, maybe that's another hour, and then they got the image. So now we're talking several hours into the fire. What if we could have got that in minutes? That could have meant potentially those firefighters saving more lives or those other first responders getting more quickly to help people, right? So we want to reduce that timeline. And so having compute in space helps with that. Separately though, yeah, there's like, should we just put all of the computers in space? And yes, I believe it totally makes sense from a basic economic analysis. And why? The intuition comes down to something very simple. Data centers are all an energy problem. So, on the ground, you would naturally power them using solar panels if you were just thinking about the cheapest way to do it, because solar panels are the cheapest watts per dollar. However, then you have intermittency because of cloud and nights, but you don't want an intermittent data center. So then you have to add gas power or you have to add nuclear power. Then now we're starting to get really complicated, much more permitting, much more time. In space, for each solar panel, you get five times more power than you get on the ground because you can put them in a sun synchronous orbit that is always looking at the sun. And that means that you just keep the panel facing the sun, and it always is drawing power. No interruption from clouds, no interruption from day and night. So you don't have to have batteries, you don't have to have gas, you don't have any of those other power systems. Five times more power, straight to the chips, and then you just have to add radiators to cool those chips into the darkness of space.
00:23:17 · Will Marshall
We know how to do all of those things, and you and you can send your commands up via radio and get your answers back via radio. There's a little of a latency, but not very much actually. So it all actually is just going to be cheaper. Notwithstanding that, it's also going to be better for communities that don't want these data centers in their backyard because of rising energy costs, water usage and other challenges. It's just going to be smarter to put that infrastructure in orbit eventually. Arthur C. Clarke talked about these sorts of ideas, the sci fi of many, many decades ago, But now it's finally becoming reality, and the first piece, it eventually will put power in space and beam that down and other things, but the first piece, by far easiest, is compute. Back to the Google demo, we're just doing a demo to see how their TPUs do in space. We already commissioned the spacecraft. It's doing very well in space. We're very happy. Google is very happy and it's very exciting. We will test that TPU and we'll see how that goes. And we'll tell the world more about that as we go.
00:24:22 · Molly O'Shea, Molly O'Shea
[00:24:22] S2: How good is AI at real professional work? Mercor's AI Productivity Index or APEX tracks it with every major Frontier model release. Bill with partners like Harvey and Cognition. See where the frontier actually stands at merkor.com/apex. Today's episode is sponsored by VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at getvcx.com. Public is a multi asset investing platform where you can automate your investing with AI agents. Create your own custom agent with a simple prompt. Agents can monitor markets, execute trading strategies, and manage your cash across stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and more. Want to buy at market close and sell the next days open? Just tell your agent. Automate your investing at public.com. Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit Deel.com/sorcery. That's deel.com/sorcery. [00:25:32] S0: So there's increased demand globally. There's also increased sensitivity globally, this brings in new national security concerns, especially with satellites. Why are satellites so sensitive and such sensitive assets? And what can you compare that to if someone took down a satellite? Well, in many ways, satellites are like the sensors of countries. They are acting as their eyes and their ears.
00:25:32 · Molly O'Shea, Will Marshall
[00:25:32] S0: So there's increased demand globally. There's also increased sensitivity globally, this brings in new national security concerns, especially with satellites. Why are satellites so sensitive and such sensitive assets? And what can you compare that to if someone took down a satellite? Well, in many ways, satellites are like the sensors of countries. They are acting as their eyes and their ears. [00:26:00] S1: And obviously, it's very threatening if you say, hey, I'm gonna take out your eyes and your ears. You're suddenly blind. The US, for example, gets its early warning of missile attacks from space. That's how it knows if North Korea is sending a missile this way. It's missiles with GPS, and then there's all this civilian infrastructure that is now dependent on it. You use your maps, you use your iPhone, you're going be using GPS. You pay for a credit card, you're going be using GPS. Look at the Google Maps, you have a satellite layer, you're using satellites. You use the weather report, you're using satellites. People don't realize how much is baked into our lives today. So it also underpins a lot of our economy. The space economy, you know, is a few 100,000,000,000 a year, but the dependencies amount to much more than that. And so countries' security depends on it and their economies depend on it, in short. [00:26:55] S0: As you mentioned earlier, you're scaling across globally and there has been more interest per country. So why has sovereignty increased and what are you seeing?
00:27:04 · Will Marshall
[00:27:04] S1: Well, that's the backdrop of the geopolitical fragmentation. US administration has asked other countries to do more in defense and for The US to shift more of the burden to others. And in doing that, a lot of those other countries, the first thing is, well, I first need to understand the threats in my neighborhood. And how do you do that? Well, satellites, we already just mentioned, are how you get your sensing. It's your eyes and your ears. One of the first things countries want is that. Now, they look around the world and they go, well, who's produced all the eyes and ears? Well, we produce more earth imaging satellites than any other company. And so, of course, we're one of the first people they call. So that is driving a lot of demand right now. It's very exciting. We can really help countries with their sovereignty needs. We can help them have their own satellites to which point where they want them to point, controlling those satellites, and they get to do that really quickly. In the case of Sweden, we managed to launch the first satellite for them in four months after we signed the contract. Wow. Which, you know, normally in the aerospace industry would have taken five or ten years. We did the same, for the, one sponsored by Germany in just two months. So we can do really fast, and that is a complete game changer. So there's two big things that Planet does that no one else does is the daily scan and the fact that we can launch satellites real fast for people. And those two things we're really leading the world in.
00:28:37 · Molly O'Shea, Will Marshall
[00:28:37] S0: Who's on the no go list? [00:28:38] S1: Well, there's definitely no go list. I mean, firstly, there's a list of US embargoed countries. The EU has equivalent lists. The UN, obviously, we don't tell the terrorists to North Korea. But we, in addition, have a group of employees that look at deals and really think, how is this aligned with our values and ensuring that we're going to see positive outcomes from that? So, we really care about this. It's something that we think very carefully about. We know that our technology is very powerful and we want to be good stewards of that. [00:29:18] S0: Will, this is a difficult question. You have probably seen more images of the earth than anyone else. One, have you seen any aliens? I [00:29:31] S1: knew it. No, in the short answer, we've seen lots of funny things. In fact, the US Air Force alien office, whatever it's called, did ask us for imagery and we did provide. No, I mean, short answer, there isn't really anything. [00:29:47] S0: They move too fast? What's the deal?