01:00:15 · Molly O'Shea, Bailey Montaño, Philip Johnston
[01:00:15] S0: You're not doing enough. Yeah. Bailey, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know we're in front of Starcloud two, something just happened, you guys are testing things. But we'd love to learn more about you and how you contributed. [01:00:27] S6: You bet. So I'm the engineering manager here at Starcloud, and what we're doing right now is a leak check of the prop system. So right now, we have a fully fueled electric propulsion system, ion thruster, and we are testing it after Vibe to make sure that we didn't introduce any cracks or other leaks during the Vibe test. [01:00:44] S0: How did you come here? How did you get to Starcloud? [01:00:47] S6: It was a bit of a long journey, so I started my career at SpaceX in aerospace. I spent about four years there. Then I did a couple other side quests in, like, biotech and consumer product design. Those didn't really stick. Moved on to fusion energy, which was really cool. But at the end of that three year stint, I realized I'm a space nerd. I need to be working on space to be happy. And fortunately, living in Seattle, there's a ton of cool companies in the in the area, but Starcloud really stuck out. Back then, they had a different name, and got in contact with the founders super early on, and the rest is history. [01:01:17] S0: What's your favorite thing about Philip? [01:01:23] S1: You can't do that. You can't do that. What do hate about? Yeah. What do you hate about him? What's your [01:01:30] S0: least favorite? We don't say hate. [01:01:32] S1: Love it.
01:01:32 · Philip Johnston, Molly O'Shea, Bailey Montaño
[01:01:32] S1: Love it. [01:01:32] S0: What's your biggest challenge with Philip over here? Does he not give you enough attention? What's going on? Let's work this [01:01:38] S1: out on camera. Could be... [01:01:42] S6: It's a it's a two sided coin or whatever, but, the office is very busy with tours and things like that all the time. [01:01:47] S0: We gotta go. [01:01:48] S1: There you go. There you go. Go. [01:01:50] S0: There There you go. [01:01:51] S1: He's like, I have [01:01:52] S0: to wear [01:01:52] S1: a copy. Was the politest way to tell you to fuck off. [01:01:55] S0: My god. Damn, Bailey. Give me the mic. [01:01:58] S1: Yeah. Oh, [01:02:00] S0: that's funny. Okay. So what are you most looking forward to? What is your favorite part of the process? [01:02:07] S6: I think the next thing I'm looking forward to most is obviously the launch for sure. I'm gonna be tremendously proud of this, like a lot of blood, sweat, and literal tears into this thing. As far as the whole design process goes, I would say kind of the test is my favorite part. That's where the rubber really hits the road. So this recent vibration test was a really big one. And then the cooling system was another big one where back when we were in Colorado not long ago, that was our first, like, full up integrated test of the whole cooling system, which was kind of like my baby from day one. So it was really cool to see that up and running too.
01:02:07 · Bailey Montaño, Philip Johnston, Molly O'Shea
[01:02:07] S6: I think the next thing I'm looking forward to most is obviously the launch for sure. I'm gonna be tremendously proud of this, like a lot of blood, sweat, and literal tears into this thing. As far as the whole design process goes, I would say kind of the test is my favorite part. That's where the rubber really hits the road. So this recent vibration test was a really big one. And then the cooling system was another big one where back when we were in Colorado not long ago, that was our first, like, full up integrated test of the whole cooling system, which was kind of like my baby from day one. So it was really cool to see that up and running too. [01:02:39] S1: So everybody always asks about what the hardest thing about Starcloud is, and it's the thermal system, these radiators in particular. Bailey was responsible for designing and fabricating the radiators. And also, Bailey is responsible for this satellite being here. So we had... In the end state, we only had three weeks to do the final assembly of all of the the satellite, and Bailey went down and basically built that bus by scratch... From scratch. So... [01:03:01] S0: Damn. It was fun. Where'd you build it? [01:03:03] S6: In Colorado, in our bus provider's office. [01:03:06] S0: Oh my god. Alright. So we're just leaving [01:03:08] S1: So you're... [01:03:09] S0: The main facility. We're now going over here. [01:03:11] S1: Yeah. We're gonna go to... [01:03:12] S0: You're buying up the entire
01:03:12 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[01:03:12] S0: You're buying up the entire [01:03:14] S1: We're building a bit of a campus here. This is definitely the place where you need to be to to build AI satellites, basically, SI satellites. Yeah. So we've got now this middle section that we are... We have now where this will come online in November, and then we have access to the third one in February next year. Mhmm. And so this enables us to scale manufacturing for Starcloud three. And the reason we need so much space... One of the reasons is you have a 100 meter, almost 400 foot deployables on Starcloud three that we need to test test the mechanisms on. But also, to manufacture something like 88,000, you know, we're gonna need a way bigger facility. [01:03:57] S0: Just think Brett's gonna check. [01:03:58] S1: I'm so sorry. It's fine. It's fine. [01:04:01] S0: Manufacture 88,000. [01:04:03] S1: Yeah. Yeah. To manufacture 80,000, we're gonna need a whole bunch more space. [01:04:07] S0: So how many do you think you'll be able to produce a day? [01:04:11] S1: So we'll be up to a 100 a week from what we've got here. So 10 a day or more than 10 a day after you. So this is one of the three spaces. And so we've got about a 100,000 square foot that we can fit out for manufacturing. So we're gonna remove this wall and we'll remove that wall, and then that enables us to... This is huge. [01:04:35] S0: Oh my god. [01:04:36] S1: Yeah. It's gonna be it's gonna be quite a sight to behold when this is up front. [01:04:39] S0: You should throw a Halloween party in here with
01:04:39 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[01:04:39] S0: You should throw a Halloween party in here with [01:04:41] S1: the Yeah. Easter We're gonna do a... We'll do an opening party sometime soon. You're very much welcome. [01:04:50] S0: Thank you. [01:04:50] S1: I know you're on the road all the time. [01:04:53] S0: You never know where I land. So... [01:04:55] S1: Who knows? Maybe wooden building in three weeks. I know. [01:04:59] S0: Okay. So in here, it's gonna look look much different than the previous [01:05:04] S1: It will look pretty similar actually to the three sixty. [01:05:05] S0: It'll look the same? [01:05:06] S1: Except with a manufacturing line, like a proper Right. In the end state, we want it to be like an auto manufacturing line. So if you... When you see a Tesla factory, you see cars going down the line, it'll be exactly like that, except with Starcloud three chassis going down the line with various things being added. [01:05:23] S0: How do... Okay. So this is crazy question. How does Starcloud three get to Starship? [01:05:34] S1: We load them on the back of a truck and then drive them down the motorway. That's it? That's it. Yeah. It's very similar to the way... At the moment, just down the road from here is where the full Starlink facility is. So they literally load all those on the back of a truck and then drive them across the country to Florida. [01:05:52] S0: Damn. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Alright. So one thing we haven't talked about yet is Starcloud has raised $450,000,000 in total. What are you using the money for? Yeah. How is the capital being utilized?
01:05:52 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[01:05:52] S0: Damn. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Alright. So one thing we haven't talked about yet is Starcloud has raised $450,000,000 in total. What are you using the money for? Yeah. How is the capital being utilized? [01:06:06] S1: Yeah. Well, right now, launch is very constrained right now, especially from 2028, 2029 onwards. So a portion of that cash is going to reserving launch slots. A bunch of it's going to fitting out these places and then hiring and materials and everything else. Yeah. We're making about a million dollars a week on interest right now. Oh my god. A million dollars a month, sorry, in interest. Wow. Soon We use Brex. We'll be spending. [01:06:35] S0: Brex has a really good [01:06:36] S1: treasury product. We do use Brex, actually. They do have a great treasury product. So there I you [01:06:42] S0: know I get a good interest on that. [01:06:44] S1: There you go. Yeah. [01:06:46] S0: So one major thing that has been a topic of discussion as global competition heats up and satellites become the greatest asset for national security is what happens if someone tries to shoot it down or our adversaries get in contact with it, or maybe there's a listening device. Apparently there was one at OpenAI. So how do you think through the national security concerns when it comes to chips and data centers in space?