Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:33:02 · Dylan Taylor
[00:33:02] S1: With their orbital rocket. The the the the new Shepard, which I took on my suborbital flight, that booster already was relanding and being used. In fact, I think the one we launched onto space had been used four times, but that's different than an orbital rocket, right? That's a much more difficult thing to do. So now we have two companies that have reusable orbital rocketry. That completely changes the game. So just to give people a sense, a bottle of water, which is almost by a 16 ounce bottle of water, which is kind of by definition a pound, to orbit on the space shuttle was $200,000 a pound. We're now pre Starship, which is the next generation rocket that Elon's working on, SpaceX is working on, we're at around 800 a pound, you know, 1,000 a pound, depending on what the payload is. And then with Starship, we're to 200 a pound, and maybe lower. So this is a really extraordinary development. So what does that mean? Well, now it means a lot of business plans close. We can get more hardware to orbit. In fact, more satellites were launched in the last twelve months than the entire history of the world to this point put together, right? Now a lot of those are Starlink. They're Starlink because Elon controls the Falcon program, but Jeff and Amazon are building their own satellite constellation called, I think they just renamed it to Amazon Leo, it was called Kuiper before. All these different business plans now close, so lots and lots and lots of hardware are being launched to space. Lots of startups are built around this. Lots of data being generated. Back to kind of putting your investor hat on, I think anything with ones and zeros, one of the things we're focused on with Palantir as a partner is this notion of doing edge computing. Rather than collect a bunch of data in space, transmit it back down to space, put it in the cloud, machine learn it, put AI on it, and send the answer to the customer, why wouldn't you just build that technology stack where the satellite is collecting data, and then you're just transmitting the answer to the customer? That whole technology stack is being worked on. I think there's a massive, massive, massive data play, and here's the way I think about it. We have roughly a $75,000,000,000,000 global economy.
00:35:29 · Dylan Taylor, Alexa von Tobel
If you had perfect real time information about the earth, by virtue of having satellites in orbit, measuring our economy, measuring the power grid, measuring boats that might be clogged at the Panama Canal in two weeks, and you know that because you forecasted everything, If you can make the global economy 5% more efficient, which I think is a pretty easy thing to do with this information network, that's $3,500,000,000,000 of value, right? So when you think about these constellations, think of them as data layers that feed into an overall information paradigm that allows better decisions to be made. And of course, I'm not even factoring in AI, I'm just talking basic data collection and machine learning. You put AI on that, and who knows where it goes from there. So I think space is a fascinating... And here's just a final thing I'll say. Think of space as the eighth continent. Right? A lot of people think of the space industry. Well, we don't Yeah. Don't say the China industry. Right? We don't say the China industry because China is a domain, it's a place. So think of space as a domain, and of course it has impacts to these other seven continents here on earth, but think of it as the eighth continent. [00:36:48] S2: Dylan, that's a really interesting shift. I really like it said that way. I want to quickly pull back. You're talking about just incredibly improved data computing. What does that mean for people? Like, just give us a a few things that make it that tangible. What could that mean for us here down on on Earth?
00:37:11 · Dylan Taylor, Alexa von Tobel
[00:37:11] S1: Yeah. So I think, I mean, climate data's one. I mean, that's... I think everyone's recognizing that better climate data matters, so this would be forecasting fires and hurricanes and all that. But, you know, here's just a practical one. Let's say you're a trader, and you wanna put a trade on, should I buy Costco? Is it a good Christmas season? Well, with machine vision and satellites, you can do the parking counts in every Costco in America, and see how many cars are in the parking lot on any given day, and have your little algorithm say, well, that's 2% better than it was last year, and you can put your trade on based upon that information. That's push of the button, right? Think of all the different things, whatever industry you're in. I talked to a group of CEOs at the Wall Street Journal recently, Wall Street Journal CEO Council, which I'm a member of, and I said, Look, everyone in this room is in the space industry. You just don't know it yet, because every industry is going to be disrupted or facilitated or accelerated by space. In everyday experience, just think about what it is space based assets could illuminate, and assume that that's real time. Assume someone's building it, because they are. To me, it's a really, really fascinating thought experiment to say perfect real time information about the earth, that's happening. It's being built right now. [00:38:37] S2: That's amazing. So effectively, perfect real time information about the earth that you can use in real time [00:38:43] S1: Mhmm.
00:38:43 · Dylan Taylor, Alexa von Tobel
[00:38:43] S1: Mhmm. [00:38:43] S2: Despite of putting in space. What about some of the things that you're worried about? Given that you're at the bleeding edge of of thinking about our future, What keeps you up at night when you think about this future?
00:38:56 · Dylan Taylor
[00:38:56] S1: Well, my vision for space is very Pollyanna ish. It's very Star Trek. Let's all get along. Let's be better humans. My goal in life, get Starlab built, and let's have a G7 meeting up there, let's have a national security council meeting up there, I think you would get a different outcome, I really do, if people had that perspective. That's kind of my passion. The reality is you know, there's a military posture in space. We have a space force now. You know, we have a space force in reaction to other threats that other countries are projecting, so I do worry about the militarization of space, and I have a thought experiment I ask audiences sometimes when I speak to them is, here's the way I frame it. Said, The future of humanity in space will be determined by the answer to a single question, and that question is, what will happen first? The first human born in space, or the first combat fatality in space? I in think many respects will define what humanity's future in space is, right? Obviously, I'm working towards the former and not the latter, but a lot of our issues here on earth are projected into space, whether we like it or not. Think we've really... So am I worried about it? Yes, but I also think, as you and I talked about earlier in the conversation, you can't just sit back and say, okay, well that's someone else's problem. It's like, no, I'm gonna help shape that. I'm gonna help talk about it. I'm gonna help people understand the potential for space to be good and bad, and you have to be actively involved in helping people understand this, I think. I'm optimistic that we'll have a human born in space before we have a war in space.
00:40:49 · Alexa von Tobel, Dylan Taylor
[00:40:49] S2: That's amazing. That's such a nice, simple thought experiment of how to think about how do we show up in space. Dylan, question I have to ask because you have been such a prolific angel investor and investor, and I think it's more than 50 companies and many of those touch outer space and space. What other innovations are you seeing that maybe Voyager doesn't necessarily touch, but that you're paying a lot of attention to because they're profound. And and, you know, just to kind of summarize what you've said, which is we now have the elevator to get up and down the space. That's gonna get cheaper and faster and easier. We have more satellites than ever. The data up there is coming back down in real time. And it's the eighth continent. It's not this very far away world that we don't get to go to often, and you made it very real. What other innovations are you seeing or have you invested in that are worth giving a shout out to? [00:41:50] S1: Yeah. Think quantum is becoming realer. Cubits, believe it or not, appear to be more stable. [00:41:55] S2: Dylan, I just did a year long thesis on quantum, so I'm like, you've got a good audience here.