00:09:49 · Molly O'Shea, Adi Oltean, Philip Johnston
[00:09:49] S0: Yeah. So we're standing in front of Starcloud 2. Do you wanna give us a little rundown on it? [00:09:54] S3: Yeah. So people are busy at the moment. They are about to fire the HDRM, which is essentially a latch that will deploy the solar panels on each side of the spacecraft. And if you hear a loud pop, that's it. So we are testing the satellite actively. We are testing various systems. [00:10:15] S1: There you go. As long I as know. I was was like, something's been [00:10:21] S3: Maybe not as climactic as just wanted, but this is actually the most important deployment event that happens in orbit. We use that to kick off the deployment of both solar panels in orbit and make sure we can get kilowatts of power to all our compete. [00:10:42] S0: So I know this is a very new facility, but where does that get made? Like, where are all these components coming from? Is it vertically integrated? How do you think about engineering? [00:10:54] S3: We try to vertically integrate as much as possible. Obviously, we are not manufacturing the NVIDIA boards or other high level compute systems, but we integrate everything here and we manufactured our radiators. We put together the solar panels. So a lot of the cooling system is being built internally here. So which is kind of our secret sauce, if you will, another HDRM filing. And, yeah, we try to integrate as much as possible in house. [00:11:27] S0: What's been the biggest technical challenge coming over to Starcloud?
00:11:27 · Molly O'Shea, Adi Oltean
[00:11:27] S0: What's been the biggest technical challenge coming over to Starcloud? [00:11:33] S3: I think the cooling system and the radiators are the... By far the largest technical challenge, and I think we are very proud of what we did and and how it works and how compact the whole thing is. It's mostly focused on engineering, costs rather than is this possible or not. We know it's possible, but the question is how do you make it super cheap and how you make it manufacturable at scale? [00:11:55] S0: Yeah. I mean, that's a big point. I was interviewing Sean McGuire and he was talking about data centers in space, and he was like, I did the math on it, and it makes sense. The math, maths. And so a large component of that is energy transfer and, like, how much energy is used on Earth for Earth data centers versus in space. And so in space, this is gonna be a little bit of a different environment. It is very, very cold, but you still need radiators. You need cooling, all that kind of stuff. So could you explain that out a little bit more?
00:11:55 · Molly O'Shea, Adi Oltean
[00:11:55] S0: Yeah. I mean, that's a big point. I was interviewing Sean McGuire and he was talking about data centers in space, and he was like, I did the math on it, and it makes sense. The math, maths. And so a large component of that is energy transfer and, like, how much energy is used on Earth for Earth data centers versus in space. And so in space, this is gonna be a little bit of a different environment. It is very, very cold, but you still need radiators. You need cooling, all that kind of stuff. So could you explain that out a little bit more? [00:12:25] S3: Well, it's basically the engineering math is hard, but economic math is the one that truly matters in orbit. So you... What you want to dissipate every single watt you're receiving from the sun. So that that is the hard part. How you make it very efficiently? How do you essentially emulate a cooling system that mimics the one in data centers today on on Earth? As probably people know, 2025 was the year of liquid cooling in all the data centers. So people have to switch to liquid cooling because that's the only way to achieve the incredible densities of compute in next range of data centers. And we are capitalizing on that and using the same thing, the same technology in space as well. [00:13:11] S0: Mhmm. For those who don't know about the Fermi Explorer mission, can you explain that and why it's significant for you?
00:13:11 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[00:13:11] S0: Mhmm. For those who don't know about the Fermi Explorer mission, can you explain that and why it's significant for you? [00:13:17] S1: Yeah. So my cofounder, Adi Ezra, and I have created a nonprofit, with a few others, Camilo Lopez and others. We created a nonprofit to send the first spacecraft to the nearest star. So the nearest star system to us is Alpha Centauri. It's about four light years away, and we realized after doing Starcloud one that you can do things very cheaply. Like, for example, Starcloud one, we had a quote from one of the primes. They told us it would cost 75,000,000 to a $100,000,000 to do Starcloud one. We did it for about $2,500,000. No way. So we realized you can do things very cheaply, and we [00:13:50] S0: You just found put things in space?
00:13:51 · Philip Johnston
[00:13:51] S1: Yeah. Pretty much. And we found a trajectory. We had a a physical AI lab in... Out of MIT run this analysis and find a trajectory that allows us to get a spacecraft on a trajectory to Alpha Centauri for about 10 or $15,000,000. So it's gonna... It won't use any technology that doesn't exist today. It's gonna use solar... Hall effect ion thrusters with solar to power it, and we're gonna basically spiral in towards the sun for five years, and then we're gonna fire the thruster at the perihelion at the closest point to the sun for another five years to create these ever expanding ellipses. And then on the last firing, we're just gonna fling off in the direction. It's actually not even anywhere close to where Alpha Centauri is today. Alpha Centauri is moving towards us, and it will intersect on a path in about eighty thousand years. So the hope is that we'll be both the first to leave on this journey to another star and also the last to arrive. Hopefully in fifty years or one hundred years, there'll be better propulsion technology. In a thousand years, we'll have a much better propulsion technology. So I hope stuff starts flying past us. Yeah. And then by the time we arrive in eighty thousand years, maybe for fifteen thousand years, there's already been a colony, even if your propulsion technology was only 20% faster. And so what I hope happens is they sort of applaud our spacecraft across the finish line. Yeah. They capture it, and they put it in a museum or something. And then from there, it'll take sort of five to ten million years to settle the galaxy even with just today's technology. And then from there, it's about a billion years to get to Andromeda, our nearest galaxy. And then from there, to get to the local group of 50 galaxies is about another sort of five billion years. And the purpose for me of doing it is like either all of that happens or it doesn't for some reason. And like, yeah, there's this idea of the the Fermi Paradox, the idea that... The question of why we don't see more intelligence in our galaxy or more obvious evidence of it.
00:15:44 · Molly O'Shea, Philip Johnston
[00:15:44] S0: You mean aliens? [00:15:46] S1: Yeah. Why why our solar system isn't part of a galactic empire. You know? Yeah. If they... It's pretty quick. Like, ten million years to settle the galaxy is the blink of an eye in galactic time frames. So if there had been intelligent life on any other star, trillion trillion planets in our galaxy, if there'd been intelligent life on any other one in the last ten billion years, galaxy's been around for more than ten billion years, then it would have been five million years to settle the whole galaxy. And so it's really kind of concerning that we don't see more evidence of that. To me, there's two options. Either we're exceptionally rare. Maybe we're the first species or intelligence to get to this level of complexity in the whole galaxy or maybe even in the local 50 cluster of galaxies. Or and and by the way, I'm open to that. I like that idea. Like, maybe we're gonna be the first to settle the galaxy, and that's a great privilege. Or the other alternative is intelligent life doesn't last very long. Maybe there's been intelligent life on many other stars in our galaxy, and for some reason, it doesn't survive very long. So either way, I think we should, like, know about that. And one of the reasons to do this mission is to make people think more about our place in in the galaxy and more about the Fermi Paradox and others. [00:16:52] S0: How did you get into space, and how did you get interested in this? [00:16:55] S1: I mean I've always been interested in space like I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid like anybody.