00:45:53 · Saurav Shroff, Ty Morse
So it's like a hospitality mindset almost, which is like, I know, like, almost sounds dumb. It's like, what do you mean? It's business. Isn't it supposed to be, like, super cut and dry? But it's like, not... For me, not really. It's very... It's a... From a hot... It feels like... Feels the same as the reason why, like, you know, I'd offer to make you tea after dinner. It's like, oh, what else can I do for you? And, you know, the first thing I can do for you is is give you a great solar panel, and then if I if I notice that I think there's something... Well, it's not very good at cooking, okay? The first thing I can I can do for you is give you a great solar panel, and then if I notice that there's something else that I need to do for you, my thought process is, well, what else can I do for you? And that's the impetus between... Behind a lot of these products. Now past the hospitality phase and in the execution phase, it's very different. The mindset is more like, okay, we've decided to do this thing. What's the schedule? And let's get the damn thing done. And so it's not it's not a very hospitality like mindset when when we're executing, but when we're thinking about what to do, it totally is. [00:47:00] S0: I know that the biggest push for building a moon base is going to, I think, be the mass driver on the moon, which is just basically pumping out. Am I completely off on that? [00:47:13] S1: I think you could totally be right. It's it's not something that strikes me as like completely obvious. Feels like
00:47:13 · Saurav Shroff, Ty Morse
[00:47:13] S1: I think you could totally be right. It's it's not something that strikes me as like completely obvious. Feels like [00:47:18] S0: the most obvious, like, first valuable thing that the moon is able to drive? [00:47:22] S1: I would say it's probably not the first valuable thing. I would say it's probably the first very valuable thing. Right. The first valuable thing on the moon is a product you could call novelty. So, like, if you can bring humans there, you will certainly find a lot of humans that are willing to pay to go, you know, if it's safe. I mean, obviously, it's safe, and if the price is reasonable. Like, probably in the $10,000,000 per trip price, you'll probably find, like, at least a 100 people who wanna go. And probably in the $1,000,000 per trip price, you'll probably found... Find, you know, thousands of people who wanna go. And then if you can get the price to a 100 k, which is like, it's kind of pushing it in terms of like what's physically possible, like, I mean, if you just assume the Starship is perfectly free, SpaceX sells at no margin, it only costs fuel, even then it'll cost around a 100 k. [00:48:14] S0: There's no demand pricing of people can, you know, only a small number of people can go.
00:48:14 · Ty Morse, Saurav Shroff
[00:48:14] S0: There's no demand pricing of people can, you know, only a small number of people can go. [00:48:19] S1: Yeah. I'd I'd say the price probably lands in like sort of $500,000 range in the long term. And at that price, there is there is certainly, like, a pretty high amount of demand. Like, enough demand to create a base, enough demand to fund a a lot of flights. It will not look like United Airlines, but it will look like probably how United Airlines looked when airplanes were brand new. [00:48:44] S0: One of the really interesting things that I'm thinking through in this conversation is you mentioned that there's effectively... Or there's effectively going to be zero limit on the amount of intelligence, I believe, that people want to use, which means that if people... You know, SpaceX can put satellites up in orbit that generate intelligence, it creates this amazing demand pull forward where it's like effectively, is the maximum scaling rate that you can build these starships? That is the thing that you should do. [00:49:16] S1: Or fly the starships. [00:49:17] S0: Yeah. Fly the starships, build the starships, whatever. Build the launch pads, all the stuff. Yeah. Whatever that maximum possible rate is, we should, you know, march down that rate. Yeah. Because there's always going to be demand. Yeah. And this is like not a guarantee with anything other than just GPUs in space. And so, ironically, it's like both bad short term because, you know, there's so much demand for it, and great long [00:49:42] S1: How term is that bad?
00:49:42 · Saurav Shroff, Ty Morse
[00:49:42] S1: How term is that bad? [00:49:43] S0: Bad short term because you aren't able to use it. Oh, Like, you're not building for the customers. They're just literally building themselves. [00:49:49] S1: It's like selfish dynamic where Exactly. You don't wanna be [00:49:52] S0: Then long term, they have such a ridiculous amount of starships built because of And this intelligent explosion. And ability to flash, and they've got like a million tests Yeah. On one starship.
00:50:04 · Saurav Shroff
[00:50:04] S1: Yeah. It's actually it's actually like, so I actually like wasn't... I mean, I'm like clearly AI pilled, but I I wasn't... I didn't enter like the space industry for... Obviously, for that reason. I mean, I didn't have that foresight. But the thing that excites me, probably the second most with superintelligence, the thing that excites me the most is, like, what it will do for humans, obviously. Like, okay, like, if you... Maybe it'll... Work will become optional, which I know, like, socialists think is horrible, but, like, it's very easy to solve, like, just add UBI. So you can do work if you want. Like, that, I think, is amazing. Okay. Like, art will have a resurgence. Maybe we'll have, like, renaissance two or something. Not that, like, that sounds particularly interesting to me, but, I think it's, like, incredible. But the thing that excites me the second most, actually, about the space industry... Excuse me, about the super intelligence is that... Oh, this is what you just said, which is that it will become... It is becoming and it will become, like the ultimate driver for scaling space technology, like cargo and passenger transport was the ultimate driver for scaling passenger and cargo air transport technology. With the caveat that scaling passenger and cargo air transport technology came with barely any benefits. Right? It was just like, we have passenger transport, we have cargo transport, and we have like, I don't know, general aviation where you can like screw around in an airplane as a result. So, like, the side benefits of United Airlines scaling their business are small, and the main benefits, which is that they have passenger transport, you know, are big. But in the case of superintelligence, the side benefits of scaling a rocket are, in my opinion, immense. Because, like, for so many years, you know, nerds like me, I mean, I'm I'm pretty pretty young, but, like, they're older nerds. Right? For a lot... For, like, decades, nerds have been saying, you know, why don't we build based on the moon? Why don't we build based on Mars? And the answer is, like, basically some combination of, like, we can't afford the CapEx to develop the core piece of technology, which is the rocket. Okay? It's undeniable that the rocket is the main piece of technology. And on top of that, you know, like, even if we did, it would take too long.
00:52:16 · Saurav Shroff
But with super intelligence, it's super different because the motivation to put the CapEx into the rocket is completely legitimate economically. Like, it's totally a rational decision because it's like, I spent $5,000,000,000 developing a new rocket. I earned $5,000,000,000 in, you know, in in Anthropics case in two fucking weeks. Like, literally, like like, literally, people for decades were like, why don't we make a rocket and go to Mars? And now it's like, the value of a rocket is two weeks of Anthropics annualized revenue run rate. And so, like, they can quote unquote pay for a rocket in two weeks. Now, obviously, you can't design and... Like, you can't design a rocket that works in two weeks. You can't spend the money that fast. But it's totally rational decision, and then the the the side benefits are now immense, which is that you have, like, this sort of, like, base infrastructure, base technology layer. You've, like, unlocked this level in the tech tree that enables all of these other lower cost levels of the tech tree with respect to the moon and Mars. And so, like, super intelligence lets you have working rockets, a huge amount of revenue associated with them, so they're basically free in the context of other industries that obviously are not free in absolute, and then those other possible industries that could form tourism on the moon, mass driver on the moon, city on Mars, heck, god knows what on Mars, are now now basically have like a free rocket, that all they have to do is pay the operating expenses. So there there actually may be some airline analogies here that make sense, but not really one for analogies. This is the second most exciting thing to me about superintelligence, which is that it will almost certainly be true that we will build a city on Mars after you make, you know, terawatt or even a even a two gigawatt data sack constellation in space will get you to a working rocket. I mean, there it's necessary.