The following is a conversation with Natalia Bailey,
a rocket scientist and spacecraft propulsion engineer
previously at MIT, and now the founder and CTO
of Axion Systems, specializing in efficient space
propulsion engines for satellites and spacecraft.
So these are not the engines that get us
from the ground on Earth out to space,
but rather the engines that move us around in space
once we get out there.
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As a side note, let me say something
about Natalia's story.
She has talked about how when she was young,
she would often look up at the stars and dream
of alien intelligences that one day
we could communicate with.
This moment of childlike cosmic curiosity
is at the core of my own interest in space
and extraterrestrial life and in general
in artificial intelligence, science, and engineering.
Amid the meetings and the papers and the career rat race
and all the awards, let's not let ourselves
lose that childlike wonder.
Sadly, we're on earth for only a very short time,
so let's have fun solving some of the biggest puzzles
in the universe while we're here.
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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support on Patreon, or connect with me
on Twitter at Lex Freedman.
And now, here's my conversation with Natalia Bailey.
You said that you spent your whole life dreaming
about space and also pondering the big existential question
of whether there is or isn't intelligent life,
intelligent alien civilizations out there.
So what do you think?
Do you think there's life out there?
Intelligent life?
Intelligent life, that's trickier.
I think looking at the likelihood
of a self-replicating organism,
given how much time the universe has existed
and how many stars with planets,
I think it's likely that there's other life, intelligent life.
I'm hopeful, you know, I'm a little discouraged
that we haven't yet been in touch.
Allegedly, I mean, it's also-
In our dimensions and so on, yeah.
It's also possible that they have been in touch
and we just haven't, we're too dumb to realize
they're communicating with us.
In whichever, it's this Carl Sagan idea
that they may be communicating at a time scale
that's totally different.
Like their signals are in a totally different time scale
or in a totally different kind of medium of communication.
It could be our own,
it could be the birth of human beings,
like whatever the magic that makes us who we are,
the collective intelligence thing,
that could be aliens themselves,
that could be the medium of communication.
Like the nature of our consciousness and intelligence
itself is the medium of communication.
And like being able to ask the questions themselves,
I've never thought of it that way.
Like actually, yeah, asking the question
whether aliens exist might be the very medium
by which they communicate.
It's like they send questions.
So some this like collective emergent behavior is the signal.
Signal is the signal.
Yeah.
So it's interesting.
Yeah.
Cause maybe that's how we would communicate with,
if you think about it,
if we were way, way, way smarter,
like a thousand years from now, we somehow survive,
like how would we actually communicate in a way
that's like, if we broadcast the signal, you know,
and then it could somehow like percolate
throughout the universe,
like that signal having an impact on-
Multiverse.
Multiverse, of course, that would have a signal,
an effect on the highest number of possible civilizations.
What would that signal be?
It might not be like sending a few like stupid little
hello world messages.
It might be something more impactful.
Where it's almost like impactful in a way
where they don't have to have the capability to hear it.
It like forces the message to have an impact.
Right.
My train of thought has never gone there,
but I like it.
And also somewhere in there,
I think it's implied that something travels faster
than the speed of light,
which I'm also really hopeful for.
Oh, you're hopeful.
Are you excited by the possibility
that there's intelligent life out there?
Sort of you work on the engineering side of things.
It's this very kind of focus pursuit
of moving things through space efficiently.
But if you zoom out,
one of the cool things that this enables us to do is
find, get even an intelligent life,
just life on Mars or on Europa or something like that.
Does that excite you?
Does that scare you?
Oh, it's very exciting.
I mean, it's the whole reason I went into the field
I'm in is to contribute to building the body of knowledge
that we have as a species.
So very exciting.
Do you think there's life on Mars?
Like no longer, well, already living,
but currently living, but also no longer living,
like that we might be able to find life
as some people suspect, basic microbial life.
I'm not so sure about in our own solar system.
And I do think it might be hard to untangle
if we somehow contaminated other things as well.
So I'm not sure about this close to the home.
That'd be really exciting.
Yes.
Like, do you think about the Drake equation much of like?
That was what got me into all of this, yeah.
Yeah, cause one of the questions is how hard is it
for life to start on a habitable planet?
Like if you have a lot of the basic conditions,
not exactly like Earth, but basic Earth-like conditions,
how hard is it for life to start?
And if you find life on Mars or find life on Europa,
that means it's way easier.
That's a good thing to confirm
that if you have a habitable planet,
then there's going to be life.
And that like immediately, that would be super exciting
cause that means there's like trillions of planets
with basic life out there.
Though of all the planets in our solar system,
Earth is clearly the most habitable.
So I would not be discouraged
if we didn't find it on another planet in our solar system.
True, and again, that life could look very different.
It's habitable for Earth-like life,
but it could be totally different.
I still think that trees are quite possibly
more intelligent than humans,
but their intelligence is carried out over time scale
that we're just not able to appreciate.
Like they might be running the entirety of human civilization
and we're just like too dumb to realize
that they're the smart ones.
Maybe that's the alien message, it's in the trees.
It's in the trees.
Yeah, it's not in the monolith
in the Utah desert, it's in the trees.
Right, yeah.
So let's go to space exploration.
How do you think we get humans to Mars?
I think SpaceX and Elon Musk will be
the ones that get the first human setting foot on Mars
and probably not that long from now
from us having this conversation.
Maybe we'll inflate his timeline a little bit,
but I tend to believe the goals he sets.
So I think that will happen relatively soon.
As far as when and what it will take
to get humans living there in a more permanent way,
I have a glib answer, which is,
when we can invent a time machine
to go back to the early Cold War
and instead of uniting around sending people to the moon,
we pick Mars as the destination.
So really, I say that because there's nothing
truly scientifically or technologically impossible
about doing that soon, it's more politically
and financially, and those are the obstacles,
I think, to that.
Well, I wonder of when you colonize
with more than, I say, five people on Mars,
you have to start thinking about the kind of rules
you have on Mars.
And speaking of the Cold War, who gets to own the land?
You start planting flags,
and you start to make decisions.
And SpaceX says this, it's probably a little bit trolly,
but they have this nice paragraph in their contracts
where it talks about that human governments on Earth
or Earth governments have no jurisdiction on Mars.
Like the rules, the Martians get to define their own rules.
It sounds very much like the founding fathers
for this country, that's the kind of language.
It's interesting that that's in there,
and it makes you think perhaps that needs to be leveraged,
like you have to be very clever about leveraging that
to create a little bit of a Cold War feeling.
It seems like we humans need a little bit of a competition.
Do you think that's necessary to succeed
in getting the necessary investment,
or can the pure pursuit of science be enough?
No, I think we're seeing right now the pure pursuit of science.
I mean, that results in pretty tiny budgets for exploration.
There has to be some disaster impending doom
to get us onto another planet in a permanent way.
I don't know.
Financially, I just don't know if the private sector
can support that, but I don't wish
that there is some catastrophe coming our way
that spurs us to do that.
Yes, I'm unsure what the business model is
for colonizing Mars.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, like there is for, we'll talk about satellites.
There's probably a lot of business models around satellites,
but there's not enough short-term business.
I guess that's how business works.
You should have a path to making money
in the next 10 years.
Well, and maybe even more broadly,
and looping back to something we said earlier,
I don't know that getting humans off this planet
and spreading bacteria is what we're supposed to be doing
in the first place, so maybe we can go,
but should we, and I'm probably an unusual person
for thinking that in my industry
because humans want to explore,
but I almost wonder, are we putting unnecessary obstacles?
We're very finicky biological things
in the way of some more robotic
or more silicon-based exploration.
And yeah, do we need to colonize and spread?
I'm not sure.
What do you think is the role of AI in space?
Do you, in your work, again, we'll talk about it,
but do you see more and more of the space vehicles,
spacecraft being run by artificial intelligence systems,
more than just like the flight control,
but like the management?
Yeah, I don't have a lot of color to the dreams
I have about way in the future in AI,
but I do think that removing,
you know, it's hard for humans to even make a trip to Mars,
much less go anywhere farther than that.
And I think we'll have, you know, more,
again, I'm probably unusual in having these thoughts,
but perhaps be able to generate more knowledge
and understand more if we stop trying to send humans
and instead, you know, I don't know if we're talking
about AI in a truly, you know, artificial intelligence way
or AI as we kind of use it today,
but maybe sending a Petri dish or two of like stem cells
and some robotic candlers instead,
if we still need to send our DNA
because we're really stuck on that,
but if not, you know, maybe not even that Petri dish.
So I see, I think what I'm saying is, you know,
I see a much bigger role in the future
of AI for space exploration.
It's kind of sad to think that, I mean,
I'm sure we'll eventually send a spacecraft
with a efficient propulsion,
like some of the stuff you work on out
that travels just really far with some robots on it
and with some DNA in a Petri dish.
And then a human civilization destroys itself
and then there'll just be this floating spacecraft
that eventually gets somewhere or not.
That's a sad thought, like this lonely spacecraft
just kind of traveling through space
and humans are all dead.
Well, it depends on what the goal is, right?
Another way to look at it is we've preserved,
it's like a little time capsule of knowledge, DNA,
you know, that we've, that will outlive us.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Yeah.
That's how I sleep at night.
So you also mentioned that you wanted to be an astronaut.
Yes.
So even though you said you're unusual in thinking,
like it's nice here on earth,
and then we might want to be sending robots up there,
you wanted to be a human that goes out there.
Would you like to one day travel to Mars?
You know, if it's, if it becomes sort of more open
to civilian travel and that kind of thing,
like are you like vacation wise?
Like if you're talking, if we're talking vacations,
would you like to vacation on earth or vacation on Mars?
I wish that I had a better answer, but no.
I wanted to be an astronaut because I,
first of all, I like working in labs and doing experiments.
And I wanted to go to like the coolest lab, the ISS,
and do some experiments there.
That's being decommissioned, which is sad,
but you know, there will be others, I'm sure.
The ISS is being decommissioned?
Yes, I think by 2025, it's not going to be in use anymore.
But I think there are other,
there are private companies that are going to be putting up
stations and things.
So it's primarily like a research lab essentially.
Yes.
Research lab in space, that's a cool way to say it's like
the coolest possible research lab.
That's where I wanted to go.
And now though, my risk profile has changed a little bit.
I have three little ones and I won't be in the first 1000
people to go to Mars, let's put it that way.
Yeah, earth is kind of nice.
We have our troubles, but overall it's pretty nice.
Again, it's the Netflix.
Okay, let's talk rockets.
How does a rocket engine work or any kind of engine
that can get us the space or float around in space?
The basic principle is conservation of momentum.
So you throw stuff out the back of the engine and
and that pushes the rocket and the spacecraft
in the other direction.
So there are two main types of rocket propulsion.
The one people are more familiar with is chemical
because it's loud and there's fire.
And that's what's used for launch and is more televised.
So in those types of systems, you usually have a fuel
on an oxidizer and they react and combust
and release stored chemical energy.
And that energy heats the resultant gas
and that's funneled out the back through a nozzle,
directed out the back.
And then that momentum exchange pushes
the spacecraft forward.
Is there an interesting difference in liquid
and solid fuel in those contexts?
They're both lumped in the same.
So chemical just means that the release of energy
from those bonds essentially.
So a solid fuel works the same way.
And the other main category is electric propulsion.
So instead of chemical energy, you're using electrical energy
usually from batteries or solar panels.
And in this case, the stuff you're pushing out the back
would be charged particles.
So instead of combustion and heat,
you end up with charged particles
and you force them out the back of the spacecraft
using either an electrostatic field or electromagnetic.
But it's the same momentum exchange
and same idea stuff out the back
and everything else goes forward.
Cool, so those are the big two categories.
What's the difference maybe in like the challenges of each,
the use cases of each and how they're used today,
the physics of each and where they're used,
all that kind of stuff.
Anything interesting about the two categories
that distinguishes them?
Besides the chemical one being the big sexy flames and
Fire. Fire, yeah.
Chemical is very well understood in its simplest form.
It's like a firework.
So it's been around since 400 BC or something like that.
So even the big engines are quite well understood.
I think one of the last gaps there is probably,
what exactly are the products of combustion?
Are modeling abilities kind of fall apart there
because it's hot and gases are moving
and you end up kind of having to venture into
lots of different interdisciplinary fields of science
to try to solve that and that's quite complex
but we have pretty good models
for some of the more like emergent behaviors
of that system anyways.
But that's I think one of the last unsolved pieces.
And really the kind of what people care about there
is making it more fuel efficient.
So the chemical stuff you can get
a lot of instantaneous thrust
but it's not very fuel efficient.
It's much more fuel efficient to go
with the electric type of propulsion.
So that's where people spend a lot of their time
is trying to make that more efficient
in terms of thrust per unit of fuel.
And then there's always considerations
like heating and cooling.
It's very hot, which is good if it heats the gases
but bad if it melts the rocket and things like that.
So there's always a lot of work on heating and cooling
and the engine cycles and things like that.
And then on electric propulsion,
I find it like much more refreshingly poorly understood.
Well, that's more mysteries.
Yeah, I think so.
One of the classes I took in college
we spent 90% of the class on chemical propulsion
and then the last 10% on electric
and then professor said like,
we only sort of understand how it works
but it works kind of and it's like that's interesting.
That's going to work on.
Yeah, and even an ion engine,
which is probably one of the most straightforward
because it's just an electrostatic engine
but it has this really awesome combination
of like quantum mechanics and material science
and fluid dynamics and electrostatics
and it's just very intriguing to me.
First of all, can you actually zoom out even more?
Like, because you mentioned ion propulsion engine
is a subset of electric.
So like maybe is there a categories of electric engines
and then we can zoom in on ion propulsion?
Yes, so sure.
There's the two most kind of conventional types
that have been around since the 60s
are ion engines and Hall thrusters
and ion engines are a little bit simpler
because they don't use a magnetic field
for generating thrust.
And then there are also some other types of plasma engines
but that don't fit into those two categories.
So just kind of other plasma like a Vazimir engine
which we could get into.
And then those are probably the main three categories
that would be fun to talk about.
Oh, and then of course the category of engine
that I work on which has a lot of similarities
to an ion engine but could be considered
its own class called a colloid thruster.
Colloid, cool.
Okay, so what is an ion propulsion ion engine?
Okay, so in an ion engine you have an ionization chamber
and you inject the propellant into that chamber
and this is usually a neutral gas like xenon or argon.
So you inject that into the chamber
and you also inject a stream of really hot high energy
electrons and everything's just moving around
very randomly in there.
And the whole goal is to have one of those electrons
collide with one of those neutral atoms
and turn it into an ion.
So kick off a secondary electron and now you have-
Plasma.
Yes.
Okay.
And now you have a charged xenon or argon ion
and more electrons and so on.
And then some fraction of those ions will happen
to make it to this downstream electric field
that we set up between two grids with holes in them.
And in terms of area, the same amount of those ions
also runs into the walls and lose their charge
and that's where some of the inefficiencies come in.
But the very lucky few make it to those holes in that grid
and there are two grids actually
and you apply a voltage differential between them
and that sets up an electric field
and a charged particle in an electric field creates a force.
And so those ions are accelerated out the back of the engine
and the reaction force is what pushes the spacecraft forward.
If you're following along and tallying these charges,
now we've just sent a positive beam of ions
out the back of the spacecraft.
And for our purposes here, the spacecraft is neutral.
So eventually those ions will come back
and hit the spacecraft because it's a positive beam.
So you also have to have an external cathode producer
of electrons outside the engine
that pumps electrons into that beam and neutralizes that.
So now it's net neutral everywhere
and it won't come back to the spacecraft.
So that's an ion engine.
What temperature are we talking about here?
So in terms of like the chemical-based engines,
those are super hot.
You mentioned plasma here.
How hot does this thing get?
I mean, is that an interesting thing to talk about
in a sense that is that an interesting distinction
or is the heat, I mean, it's all gonna be hot?
No, so it's important, especially for some
of these smaller satellites,
people are into launching these days.
So it's important because you have the plasma,
but also those high-energy electrons are hot.
And if you have a lot of those that are going into the walls,
you do have to care about the temperature.
So having trouble remembering off the top of my head,
I think they're at like 100 electron volts
in terms of the electron energy.
And then I'd have to remember
how to convert that into Kelvin.
Can you stick your hand in it?
No, not recommended, yeah.
So what's a colloid engine?
So the same rocket people that came up with these ideas
for electric propulsion,
probably in the middle of last century,
also realized that there's one more place
to get charged particles from
if you're going to be using electric propulsion.
So you can take a gas and you can ionize it,
but there are also some liquids,
particularly ionic liquids,
which is what we use that you also can use
as a source of ions.
And if you use a source of ions,
and if you have ions and you put them in a field,
you generate a force.
So they recognize that,
but part of being able to leverage that technique
is being able to kind of manipulate those liquids
on a scale of nanometers or very few microns.
So the diameter of a human hair or something like that.
And in the 50s, there was no way to do that.
So they wrote about it in some books,
and then it kind of died for a little bit.
And then with silicon, mems, computer processors,
and when foundry started becoming more ubiquitous,
and my advisor started at MIT,
kind of put those ideas back together and was like,
hey, actually there's now a way to build this
and bring this other technique to life.
And so the way that you actually get
the ions out of those liquids is you put the liquid
in, again, a strong electric field,
and the electric field stresses the liquid,
and you keep increasing the field,
and eventually the liquid will assume a conical shape.
It's when the electric field pressure
that's pulling on it exactly balances
the liquid's own restoring force,
which is its surface tension.
So you have this balance and the liquid assumes a cone
when it's perfectly balanced like that.
And at the tip of a cone,
the radius of curvature goes to zero right at the tip.
And the radius, sorry, the electric field
right at the tip of a sharp object would go to infinity
because it goes, is one over the radius
and one over the radius squared.
And instead of the electric field going
to infinity and maybe like generating a wormhole
or something, a jet of ions instead starts issuing
from the tip of that liquid.
So the field becomes strong enough there
that you can pull ions out of the liquid.
What is the liquid?
We're talking about, there's a bunch of different ones.
You can do it with different types of liquids.
It depends on how easily you can free ions
from their neighbors.
And if it has enough surface tension
so that you can build up a high enough electric field.
But what we use are called ionic liquids
and they're really just positive.
They're very similar to salts,
but they happen to be liquid
over a really wide range of temperatures.
This sounds like really cool.
Okay, so how big is the cone over time?
What's the size of this cone that generates the ions?
So if you have a cone that's emitting pure ions,
the, I can't remember if it's the radius or diameter,
but that emission is happening from of that cone
is something like 20 nanometers.
Oh, I was imagining something slightly bigger.
But so like this is, so this is tiny, tiny.
Yes.
Hence the only being able to do it recently.
Yeah, that's right.
So this is all controlled by a computer, I guess.
Like, or like, how do you control,
how do you create a cone that generates the ions
at a scale of nanometers?
Exactly.
So the kind of main trick to making this work
is that physically we manufacture hundreds
or thousands of sharp structures
and then supply the liquid to the tips.
So that does a few things.
It makes sure that we know where the ion beams are forming.
So we can put holes in the grid above them
to let them actually leave instead of hitting, right?
Cool.
But it also reduces the actual field,
the voltage we have to apply to create that field
because the field will be much stronger
if we can already give the liquid a tip to form on.
And those tips we form have radii of curvature
on the order of probably like single microns.
So we are working at a little bit larger scale,
but once we create that support
and the electric field can be focused at that tip,
then the tiny little cone can form on top of that.
So wait, so there's something in them,
there's an already like a hard material
that like gives you the base for the cone
and you pouring like liquid over it, whatever that happens.
From the bottom, yeah, it's porous.
So we actually supply it from the back of the chip
and then it wicks.
And then liquid forms on top on that structure.
And then you somehow make it like super sharp, the liquid.
So the ions can leave.
And then we've applied that field to get those ions
in that same field, then accelerates them.
That's awesome.
And there's like a bunch of these?
Yeah, I should have brought something.
So we...
You could just pretend that you have some nanometer cones
on the table.
So actually, kind of about this scale,
we build, we call them thruster chips
and it's just a convenient form factor
and it's a square centimeter.
And on each square centimeter today,
we have about 500 of the actual physical,
we call them emitters, those physical cones.
And we're working on increasing that by a factor of four
in the coming months.
In size or in the density?
In number and the density, the number of emitters
within the same square centimeter chip.
So that thing,
because I think I've seen pictures of you
with like a tiny thing in your hand.
That must be the thing.
Okay, so that's an engine.
So that is kind of the ionization chamber
and thrust producing part of it.
What's not shown in that picture is the propellant tank.
So we can keep supplying more and more of the liquid
to those emission sites.
And then we also provide a power electronic system
that talks to the spacecraft
and turns our device on and off.
So that's the core of the engine.
That's the core of the...
It's the way I've been talking about it.
It's more of ion electrospray.
Colloid tends to mean like liquid droplets
coming off of the jet.
But if you make smaller and smaller cones,
you get pure ions.
So we're kind of like a subset of colloid, yes.
What aspects of this?
You said that it's been full of mystery
from the physics perspective.
What aspects of this are understood
and what are still full of mystery?
Yeah, recently, we've been understanding
the kind of instabilities and stable regimes of
how much liquid do you supply and what field do you apply
and why is it flickering on and off
or why does it have these weird behaviors?
So that's in the past just a couple of years
that's become much more understood.
I think the two areas that come to mind
as far as not as well understood are
the boundary between, we actually use
kind of big molecular ions.
And if you're looking at the molecular scale,
you have some ions that you've extracted
and they're in this electric field.
One ion, it's a big molecule,
it's getting energy from the electric field
and some of that energy is going into the bonds
and making it vibrate and doing weird things to it.
Sometimes it breaks them apart.
And then zooming out to the whole beam,
the beam has some behaviors as this beam of ions.
And there's a big gap between what are those,
how do you connect those and how do we understand that better
so that we can understand the beam performance of the engine?
Is that a theory question or is that an engineering question?
Theory, definitely.
We're, Axion is a startup and we're more in the business
of building and testing and observing and characterizing
and we're not really diving much
into that theory right now.
Okay, zooming out a little bit on the physics,
I apologize for the way too big of a question,
but to you from either, you mentioned Axion is more
sort of an engineering endeavor, right?
From a perspective of physics in general,
science in general, or the side of engineering,
what do you think is the most to you
like beautiful and captivating and inspiring idea
in this space?
In this space, and then I'm going to zoom out
a little bit more, but in this space,
I keep budding up against material science questions.
So I, over the past 10 years,
I feel like every problem or interesting thing
I want to work on, if you dig deep enough,
you end up in material science land,
which I find kind of exciting
and it makes me want to dig in more there.
And I was just, even for our technology,
when we have to move the propellant from the tank
to the tip of the emitters,
we rely a lot on capillary action
and you're getting into wetting and surface energies.
At a scale of like, nano scale.
Yeah, I mean, if you look further, it's quantum too,
but it all is, you know.
Wait, a capillary action at the quantum level?
Yeah, so I would, I-
That's so cool.
It all comes back to me to, you know, material science.
There's so much we don't understand at these sizes.
And I find that inspiring and exciting.
And then more broadly, you know,
I remember when I learned that the same equation
that describes flow over an airfoil
is used to price options, the Black-Scholes equation,
and it's, you know, just a partial differential equation,
but that kind of connectedness of the universe,
you know, I don't wanna use options pricing
and the universe and the same,
but you know what I mean, this connectedness,
I find really magical.
Yeah, the patterns that mathematics reveals
seems to echo in a bunch of different places.
Yes.
Yeah, there's just weirdness.
It's like, it really makes you think,
I think through definitely loving a simulation.
Like whoever programmed it is using like shortcuts
to program it, like they didn't,
they just copy and pasted some codes to the different parts.
Yeah, think of something new or just paste from over there.
They won't notice.
My conclusion from that was,
I'm gonna go interview for finance jobs.
So I had like a little detour.
That's the backup option.
So in terms of using Colet engines,
what's an interesting difference
between a propulsion of a rocket from Earth
when you're standing on the ground to orbit
and then the kind of propulsion necessary
for once you get out to orbit
or to like deep space to move around?
Yes, the reason you can't use an engine like mine
to get off the ground is, you know,
the thrust it generates is instantaneous thrust
is very small, but if you have the time
and can accumulate that acceleration,
you can still reach speeds
that are very interesting for exploration.
And even for missions with humans on them.
An interesting direction I think we need to go
as humans exploring space is the power supplies
for electric propulsion are limiting us
in that, you know, solar panels are really inefficient
and bulky and batteries.
I don't know when anybody's ever gonna improve battery
technology, you know, a lot of people that work on that.
And nuclear power, we could have a lot more powerful
electric propulsion systems.
So they would be extremely fuel efficient,
but more instantaneous thrust
to do more interesting missions
if we could start launching more nuclear systems, but...
So like something that's powered,
nuclear powered, that's the right way to say it.
Yeah.
But isn't a small enough container that could be launched?
Yeah, so, I mean, as a world,
we do launch spacecraft with nuclear power systems on board,
but size is one consideration.
It hasn't been a big focus.
So the reactors and the heaters and everything are bulky.
And so they're really only suitable
for some of the much bigger interplanetary stuff.
So that's one issue,
but then it's a whole like rat's nest
of political stuff as well.
I heard, I think Elon described or somebody,
but I think it was Elon that described the EV
to all like electrical vertical take off
and landing vehicles.
He's basically saying rockets,
obviously Elon is interested in electric vehicles, right?
But he said that rockets can't.
And in the near term,
it doesn't make sense for them to be electrical.
What do you see a world with the rockets
that we use to get into orbit are also electric based?
It's possible.
You can produce the thrust levels you need,
but you need this, a much bigger power supply.
And I think that would be nuclear.
And the only way people have been able to launch them at all
is that they're in a 100 times redundancy safe mode
while they're being launched
and they're not turned on until they're farther off.
So if you were to actually try to use it on launch,
I think a lot of people would still have an issue with that,
but someday.
It's an interesting concept, nuclear.
It seems like people,
like everybody that works on nuclear power
has shown how safe it is as a source of energy.
And yet we seem to be,
I mean, based on the history,
based on the excellent HBO series,
I'm Russian with a Chernobyl.
It seems like we have our risk estimation
about this particular power source
is drastically inaccurate.
But that's a fascinating idea
that we would use nuclear as a source for our vehicles
and not just in outer space.
That's cool.
I'm gonna have to look into that.
That's super interesting.
Well, just last year,
Trump eased up a little bit on the regulations
and NASA and hopefully others
are starting to pick up on the development.
So now is a good time to look into it
because there's actually some movement.
Is that a hope for you to explore different energy sources
that the entirety of the vehicle uses something like,
like the entirety of the propulsion systems
for all aspects of the vehicle's life travel
is the same or electric?
Is it possible for it to be the same?
Like the coolant engine being used for everything?
You could, and you would have to do it in the same way.
We do different stages of rockets now
where once you've used up an engine or a stage,
you let it go because there's really no point
in holding onto it.
So I wouldn't necessarily want to use the same engine
for the whole thing, but the same technology,
I think, would be interesting.
Okay, so it's possible.
All right, but in terms of-
Yeah, it comes down to the power source.
The power source, that's really interesting.
But for the current power sources
and its current use cases,
what's the use case for electric?
Like the coolant engine,
can you talk about where they're used today?
Sure, so chemical engines are still used quite a bit
once you're in orbit,
but that's also where you might choose instead
to use an electric system
and what people do with them.
And this includes the ion engines
and health resters and our engine is basically
any maneuvering you need to do once you're dropped off.
Even if your only goal was to just stay in your orbit
and not move for the life of your mission,
you need propulsion to accomplish that
because the Earth's gravity field changes
as you go around in orbit
and pulls you out of your little box.
There are other perturbations
that can throw you off a bit.
And then most people want to do things
a little bit more interesting,
like maneuver to avoid being hit by space debris
or perhaps lower their orbit
to take a higher resolution image of something
and then return.
At the end of your mission,
you're supposed to responsibly get rid of your satellite
whether that's burning it up,
but if you're in geo,
you want to push it higher into graveyard orbit.
Was geo, what's-
So low Earth orbit and then geosynchronous orbit
or geostationary orbit.
And there's a graveyard.
Yeah, so those satellites are at like 40,000 kilometers.
So if they were to try to push their satellites
back down to burn up in the atmosphere,
they would need even more propulsion
than they've had for the whole lifetime of their mission.
So instead they push them higher
where it'll take a million years
for it to naturally deorbit.
So we're also cluttering that higher bit up as well,
but it's not as pressing as Leo,
which is low Earth orbit,
where more of these commercial missions are going now.
Well, so how hard is the collision avoidance problem there?
You said some debris and stuff.
So like how much propulsion is needed?
Like how much is the life of a satellite
that's just like, oh crap, trying to avoid
like what if it's in there?
I think one of the recent rules of thumb I heard
was per year some of these small satellites
are doing like three collision avoidance maneuvers.
So that's not zero and it takes a lot of planning
and people on the ground.
And none of that really,
I don't think right now is autonomous.
Oh, that's not good.
Yeah, and then we have a lot of folks
taking advantage of Moore's law and cheaper spacecraft.
So they're launching them up
without the ability to maneuver themselves.
And they're like, well, I don't know, just don't hit me.
And three times a year that could become affordable
if it's like, if it gets hit,
maybe it won't be damaged kind of thing, that kind of logic.
Affordable in that instead of launching one satellite,
they'll launch 20 small ones.
Yeah, so if one gets taken out, that's okay.
But the problem is that one good-sized satellite
getting hit, that's like a ballistic event
that turns into 10,000 pieces of debris
that then are the things that go and hit the other satellites.
Yeah.
So do you see a world where like in your sense,
in your own work and just in the space industry in general,
do you see that people moving towards bigger satellites
or smaller satellites?
Is there going to be a mix?
Like what's, and what do we talk, what does it mean
for a satellite to be big and small?
What size are we talking about?
So big the space industry prior to, I don't know, 1990,
you know, I guess the bulk of the majority of satellites
were the size of a school bus
and costs a couple of billion dollars.
And now, you know, our first launches were on satellites
the size of shoeboxes that were built by high school students.
So that's a very different, you know,
to give you the two ends of the spectrum.
Big satellites will, I think they're here to stay,
at least as far as I can see into the future,
for things like broadcasting.
You want to be able to, you know,
broadcast to as many people as possible.
You also can't just go to small satellites
and say Moore's law for things like optics.
So if you have an aperture on your satellite,
you know, that just, that doesn't follow Moore's law.
That's different.
So it's always going to be the size that it will be,
you know, unless there's some new physics
that comes out that I'm not aware of.
But if you need a resolution and you're at an altitude
that kind of sets your, the size of your telescope.
But because of Moore's law,
we are able to do a lot more with smaller packages.
And with that, you know, comes more affordability
and opening up access to space to more and more people.
Well, what's the smallest satellite you've seen go up there?
Like, what are the smallest kind?
You said shoeboxes.
Yeah. So I think, you know, the smallest,
the smallest common form factor can fit a softball inside.
Wow.
So that's 10 centimeters on each side.
So cool.
But then there are some companies working on,
you know, fractions of that even.
And they're doing things like IOT type application.
So it's very low, you know, bandwidth type things,
but they're finding some niches for those.
Do you mean like there's a business,
there's a thing to do with them?
Yes.
Like what do you do with a small satellite like that?
You can, you know, track a ship going across the ocean.
Like if you need to, if you're just pinging something,
you know, you can handle that, that amount of data
and those latencies and so on.
You have to have propulsion on that.
You have to have a little engine.
No, those are just, you know, letting fall out of the sky.
Okay.
Yeah.
But what, so what kind of satellite lights
would you equip, call it engine on?
Anything that's bigger than probably about 20 kilograms.
Anything that needs to stay up for more than a year
or anything somebody spent more than like a hundred K
to build are kind of the ways I would think about it.
That's a lot of use cases.
What's the small set?
Like what's the category?
Small set is actually very big.
I think it's like 700 kilograms or pitting my microphone.
Maybe a thousand kilograms down to 200 kilograms
or people have their own kind of definitions
of how they break them up.
But small set is still quite large
and then it's kind of also applied as a blanket term
for anything that's not a school bus size satellite.
We need to get our jargon straight industry.
So what, do you see a possible future where,
you know, there's a few thousand satellites up there now,
a couple of thousand of them functioning.
Do you see a future where there's like millions of satellites
up in orbit or forget millions, tens of thousands
which just seems like where the natural trajectory
of the way things are going now is going?
Tens of thousands, yes.
The two, you know, buckets of applications.
One is imaging and the other is communication.
So imaging, I think that will plateau
because one satellite or one constellation
can take an image or a video and sell it
to, you know, infinity customers.
But if you're providing communications
like broadband internet or satellite cell
or something like that, satellite phone,
you know, you're limited by your transponders and so on.
So to serve more people, you actually need more satellites
and perhaps at the rate, you know,
our data consumption and things are going these days.
Yeah, I can see tens of thousands of satellites.
Can I ask you a ridiculous question?
Yes.
So I've recently watched this documentary
at Netflix about flat earthers that, you know,
the people that believe in a flat earth.
As somebody who develops propulsion systems
for satellites and for spacecraft,
what's to use the most convincing evidence
that the earth is round?
Probably some of the photos taken from the moon.
Photos in the moon?
Okay, so it's not from the satellite space.
Yeah, I think seeing that perspective,
maybe I'm answering too personally
because I really love those photos.
Because they're beautiful, yeah.
I really like the ones that show the moon
and the lunar lander and they're taken
a little bit farther back.
So you see earth and first you're like, wow, that's tiny
and we're insignificant and that's kind of sad.
But then you see this really cool thing
that we landed on another, you know, planetary body.
And you're like, oh, okay.
Can you actually see earth?
I don't know if I remember.
Yeah, I'll send you that picture.
Because I love the pictures or videos of just earth
from more from orbit and so on.
That's really beautiful, that's like a perspective shifter.
That's the pale blue dot, right?
It's probably the pierce tiny.
Yeah, and just that, you know,
juxtaposition of the insignificance,
but we built this really cool thing.
I just love that.
Yeah.
That'd be cool.
I personally love the idea of humans stepping on Mars.
I'm such a sucker for the romantic notion of that
and being able to take pictures from Mars.
Next time.
So you would go?
I would be, what did you say you said you wouldn't be?
Not in the first thousand.
The thousand.
Which it's funny because to me that's brave
to be in the first million.
I think when the Declaration of Independence was signed
in the United States, that was like two million people.
So I would like to show up
when they're signing those documents.
Okay.
So maybe the two million.
Oh, that's an interesting way to think of it.
Cause like then we're like participating in citizenry
and defining the direction.
So it's not the technical risk.
You just don't want to show up somewhere
that's like America before.
Yeah, because I, from a psychological perspective,
it's just going to be a stressful mess
as people have studied, right?
It's like, it's people,
most likely the process of colonization
like looks like basically a prison.
Like you're in a very tight enclosed space with people.
And it's just a really stressful environment.
You know, how do you select the kind of people that will go?
And then there'll be drama.
There's always drama in this.
And I just want to show up when there's some rules.
But I mean, you know, it depends.
So I'm not worried about the health
and the technical difficulties.
I'm more worried about the psychological difficulties.
And also just not being able to tweet.
Like, what are you going to, how are you,
there's no Netflix.
So yeah, maybe not in the first million,
but the first hundred thousand.
It's exciting to define the direction of a new,
like how often do we not just have a revolution
to redefine our government
as you know, smaller countries are still doing to this day,
but literally start over from scratch.
There's just our financial system.
It could be like based on cryptocurrency,
you could think about like how democracy, you know,
we have now the technology that can enable pure democracy,
for example, if we choose to do that,
as opposed to representative democracy,
all those kinds of things.
So we talked about two different forms of propulsion,
which are super exciting.
So the chemical base, that's doing pretty well.
And then the electric base is,
are there types of propulsion
that might sound like science fiction right now,
but are actually within the reach of science
in the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years
that you kind of think about,
or maybe even within the space of even just like,
like even ion engines,
is there like breakthroughs that might 10x the thing,
like really improve it?
So, you know, the real game changer would be propellant-less
propulsion.
And so every couple of years,
you see a new, now a startup or a researcher
comes up with some contraption for producing thrusts
that didn't require, you know,
we've been talking about conservation of momentum,
mass times velocity out the back,
mass times velocity forward, yes, exactly.
And you have to, you know, carry that up with you
or find it on an asteroid or harvest it from somewhere
if you didn't bring it with you.
So not having to do that would be, you know,
one of the ultimate game changers.
And I, you know, unless there are new types of physics,
I don't know how we do it, but it comes up often.
So it's something I do think about.
And, you know, the one,
I think it's called the Kazmir effect.
If you can, if you have two plates
and the space between them is on the order of these,
like the wavelength of these ephemeral vacuum particles
that pop into and out of existence or something.
I may be confusing multiple types of propellant-less forces,
but that could be real
and could be something that we use eventually.
Will be the power source.
Yeah, the most recent engine like this
that has was just debunked this year,
I think in March or something was called the M drive.
And supposedly you used a power source.
So, you know, batteries or solar panels
to generate microwaves into this resonant cavity.
And people claimed it produced thrust.
So they went straight from this really loose concept
to building a device and testing it.
And they said, we've measured thrust
and sure on their thrust balance,
they saw thrust and different researchers built it
and tested it and got the same measurements.
And so it was looking actually pretty good.
No one could explain how it worked,
but what they said was that this inside the cavity,
the microwaves themselves didn't change,
but the speed of light changed inside the cavity.
So relative to that, you know, their momentum was conserved.
And I don't, you know, I, whatever.
But finally, someone I think at NASA built the device,
tested it, got the same thrust, then unhooked it,
flipped it backwards and turned it on,
but got the same thrust in the same direction again.
And so they're like, this is just an interaction
with the test setup or, you know,
some of the chamber or something like that.
So forwarded again, but, you know,
it would be so wonderful for everybody
if we could figure out how to do it.
But I don't know.
That's an interesting twist on it
because that's more about efficient travel,
long distance travel, right?
That's not necessarily about speed.
That's more about enabling, like, less.
Yeah, so hook that up to the nuclear power supply.
There you go.
Okay.
But still in terms of speed, in terms of trying to,
so there's recently, already I think been debunked
or close to being debunked,
but the signal, a weird signal from our nearby friends,
nearby exoplanets from Proxima Centauri,
a signal that's 4.2 light years away.
So, you know, the thought is,
it'd be kind of cool if there's life out there,
alien life, but it'd be really cool
if we could fly out there and check.
And so what kind of propulsion, and do you think about
what kind of propulsion will allow us to travel close
to the speed of light, or, you know, half the speed of light,
all those kinds of things that would allow us to get
to Proxima Centauri and then reasonable in a lifetime?
You know, there's the project Breakthrough Starshot
that's looking at sending those tiny little chipsets there.
And like accelerating really fast.
Yeah, using a laser.
So launching them, and then while they're still
relatively close to the Earth, you know,
blasting them with some, I forget what,
even what power level you needed to accelerate them fast enough
to get there in 20 years.
Super crazy sounding.
But a lot of people say that's the legitimate,
like it's crazy sounding, but it can actually pull it off.
Yeah, I love that project
because there are a lot of different aspects.
You know, there's the laser,
there's how do you then get enough power
when you're there to send a signal back?
No part of that project is possible right now,
but I think it's really exciting.
But do you see like human, like a spacecraft
with a human on it, so it's like a heavy one?
Being like us inventing new propulsion systems entirely.
Like, do you ever see that on the radar
of propulsion systems like that,
or are they completely out there in the impossible?
Well, we're going to quickly leave the realm
of what I can describe with any credibility,
but I think because of special relativity,
if we try to accelerate some mass
so close to the speed of light,
it becomes infinitely heavy,
and then we just don't,
we'd have to like harness a lot of suns to do that,
or you know, it's just that math doesn't quite work out,
but you know, in my child's, my childlike heart,
I believe that, you know, we're missing something,
whether it's, you know, dark matter or other dimensions,
and if you can just have some anti-matter
and a black hole, and then ride that around,
and somehow, you know, turn that into some-
Mess with gravity somehow.
Yeah, I feel like we're missing lots of things
in this puzzle and that, you know-
I want to heart that puzzle.
Yeah, right.
Well, I can speak with confidence as a descendant of apes
that we don't know what the hell we're doing.
Yeah.
So there's, we're like really confident,
like physicists are really confident
that we've like got most of the picture down,
but it feels like, oh boy,
it feels like that we might not even be getting started
on some of the essential things
that would allow us to engineer systems
that would allow us to travel to space much, much faster.
Yeah, and there's even things
that are much more commonplace that we can't explain,
but we've started to take for granted,
like quantum tunneling, you know,
just things like, oh, the electron was here,
with this energy and now it's here with this energy
and it's just tunneling.
But so I, you know, we're missing a lot of the picture.
So yeah, I don't know to, you know,
use your same question from earlier.
I don't know if you and I will see it,
but yeah, someday.
You're the co-founder of just like we've been talking
about axion systems.
Yeah.
It says, would you say space propulsion company?
Yes.
Broadly speaking.
So how do you, big question,
how do you build a rocket company
from like a propulsion company
from one person from two people to 10 people plus
and actually, you know, take it to a successful product?
Yeah.
Well, I think the early stage is quite,
I'm not supposed to use the word easy
when you work in rocket science, but straightforward.
When you're working on something, you know, sexy,
like an ion engine, it's more straightforward
to raise money and get people to come work for you
because the vision's really exciting.
And actually that's something I would say
is very important throughout is a really exciting vision
because when everything, you know, goes to crap,
you need that to get people,
getting themselves out of bed in the morning
and thinking of the higher purpose there.
And, you know, another thing along the way
that I think is key in building any company
is the right early employees
that also have their own networks
and can bring in a lot of people that, you know,
really make the whole greater than
just the sum of the early team.
How do you build that?
Like, how do you find people?
It's like asking like, how do you make friends?
But is there, is it luck?
Is there a system?
Like how in terms of the people you've connected
with the people you built the company with,
is there some thread, some commonality,
some pattern that you find to be,
to hold for what makes a great team?
I think, you know, personally a thread for me
has been my network and being able to draw in that a lot,
but also giving back to it as much as possible
in like an unsolicited sort of way, like making connections
between people that, you know, maybe didn't ask,
but that I think could be really fruitful.
And even, you know, weirder than that is just really
getting, you know, having weird, uncomfortable conversations
with people like at a conference
and getting over the small talk quickly
and getting to know them quickly
and having a relationship that stands out
and then being able to call on them later because of that.
And I think that's been because I'm introverted
and I, you know, want to poke my eyes out
instead of go and do small talk.
And so I huddle in a corner with one person
and, you know, we talk about aliens or things like that.
And so, you know, that's all to say that, you know,
having a strong network I think is really important,
but a genuine one.
And let's see, other ways to build a rocket company,
kind of making sure you're paying attention
to the sweeping trends of the industry.
So everybody just cares about cost
and being able to get out ahead of that
and even more than we ever thought we'd need to
as far as what we needed to price our systems at,
you know, people for, since the start
of the US space industry, they've been paying 20, 25 million
in adjusted dollars for an ion engine.
And seeing that now people are going to want to pay 10K
for an ion engine and just staying out ahead of that
and those kinds of things.
So, you know, being out in the industry
and talking to as many people as possible.
So there's a drive.
I mean, I suppose SpaceX really pushed that.
It's frustrating for me.
So SpaceX really pushed this,
the application of, I guess, capitalism
of driving the price down of basically forcing people
to ask the question, can this be done cheaper?
This can lead to like big problems, I would say,
in the following sense.
I see this in the car industry, for example,
that people have, it's such a small margin
for profit, like they've driven the cost
of everything down so much that there's literally
no room for innovation for taking risks.
So like cars, which is funny because not until Tesla,
really, which is one of the, in a long, long time,
one of the first successful new car companies
that's constantly innovating, every other car company
is really pouring in terms of their technological innovation.
They innovate on design and style and so on that you,
that people fall in love with the look and so on,
but it's not really innovation.
In terms of the technology and it's really boringly
the same thing and they are really afraid to have taken risks.
And that's a big problem for rocket space too,
is like, if you're cutting out costs,
you can't afford to innovate and to try out new things.
That's definitely true with ION engine, right?
So, but what, so how do you compete in this space?
Do you, by the way, see SpaceX as a competitor?
And what do you say in general about the competition
in this space?
Is it really difficult as a business to compete here?
No, I don't see SpaceX as a competitor
and I see them as one day not too long from now,
a customer, hopefully.
I mean, to compete against that,
I think you just have to do things in an unconventional way.
So bringing silicon mems manufacturing to propulsion,
NASA doesn't make ION engines using a batch mass-producible
technique, they have one guy that's been making
their ION engines for 20 years,
like bespoke pieces of jewelry.
So bringing things to what you're trying to innovate
to make them, you know, in our case,
more cost-effective was really key.
I like the idea of somebody putting out ION engines
on like Etsy.
Yeah, my advisor at MIT would, you know,
the thruster chip I was holding up,
he would wear one as a lapel pin.
But in general, just on the topic of SpaceX,
you know, 2020 has seen some difficult things
for human civilization.
And it's been a lot of, first of all, it's an election year,
there's been a lot of drama and division about that.
There's been riots of all different reasons,
racial division, there's been obviously a virus
that's testing the very fabric of our society.
But there's been really, for me,
at least super positive things, which inspiring things,
which is SpaceX and NASA doing the first
commercial human flight, launching humans to space
and did it twice successfully.
What is that, did you get to watch that launch?
Did you, what does it make you feel?
Do you think this is first days for a new era
of space exploration?
Yeah, I did watch it.
We played it outside on a big screen at our place.
And I was a little, you know, they kept saying,
Bob and Doug, Bob and Doug.
And, you know, astronauts usually are treated
with a little bit more fanfare.
So it felt very casual, but maybe that was a good thing.
Like this is the era of commercial crewed missions.
It was a little bit more, what is it, what's his name?
Chris Hadfield, like playing guitar.
It's more, it's a different flavor to it of.
Yeah, exactly.
More like fun, playful, celebrity type.
Yes, exactly.
Astronaut versus the aura of the magical sort of,
her role with the element of the single human
representing us in space.
Yes, I think that's all for the better though.
It's so cool that it's such a common place thing now
that we send, you know, I can't believe that sometimes
I'll have to, you know, you don't even realize
that astronauts are coming and going all the time,
you know, splashing back down and it's just so common now,
but that's quite magical, I think.
So yes, we did watch that.
I love, love, love that we finally have that capability
again to send people to the space station.
And it's just really exciting to see the private sector
stepping up to fill in where the government
has pulled back in the U.S.
And I think pulled back way too soon
as far as exploration and science goes,
probably pulled back at the right time
for commercial things and getting that started.
But I'm really happy that it's even possible
to do that with private money and companies.
Do you like the kind of the model of competition
of NASA funding?
I guess that's how it works, is like they're providing
quite a bit of money from the government
and then private companies compete to be,
to be the delivery vehicles for the,
whichever the government missions, like NASA missions.
Yes, I think for this type of mission
is a little bit kind of straddles commercial and science.
So I think it's good.
But I do in general feel like we've pulled back too much
on NASA's role in the science and exploration part.
And I think our pace is too slow there for my liking,
I suppose.
What do you mean on the science, okay.
So did you have, I mean, on the cost thing,
do you feel like NASA was a little too bureaucratic
in a sense like too slow, too heavy,
cost-wise in their effort,
like when they were running things purely
without any commercial involvement?
So I suppose it's more that I just want the government
to fund and maybe NASA's not the best organization
to do it rapidly.
But I think that, again, depending on the goals,
we're just kind of at the very starting point
of space exploration and science and understanding.
So we should be spending more money there and not less.
And other countries are starting to spend more and more.
And I think we'll fall behind because of that.
So you have quite a bit of experience, first of all,
starting a company yourself, but also I saw,
maybe you can correct me, but you have quite a bit
of knowledge of just the, in general,
the startup experience of building companies
that you've interacted with people.
Is there advice that you can give to somebody,
to a founder, co-founder who wants to launch
and grow a new company and do something big
and impactful in this world?
Yes, I would say, like I mentioned earlier,
but make sure the vision is something that will get you
out of bed in the morning and that you can rally
other people around you to achieve.
Because I see a lot of folks that sort of cared
about something or saw a window of opportunity
to do something and startups are hard
and more often than not, just being opportunistic
isn't going to be enough to make it through
all the really crappy things that are going to happen.
So the vision just helps you psychologically
to carry through the hardships, the you and the team.
Yeah, you and the team, yeah, exactly.
To kind of younger people interested
in getting into entrepreneurship,
I would say stay as close to like first principles
and fundamentals as you can for as long as you can.
Because really understanding the problems,
if it's something scientific or hardware related
or even if it's not, but having a deep understanding
of the problem and the customers and what people care about
and how to move something forward is more important
than taking all of the entrepreneurship classes
in undergrad.
So being able to think deeply, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, but have you been surprised
about how much like pivoting is involved?
Like basically rethinking what you thought initially
would be the right direction to go
or is there if you think deeply enough
that you can stick in the same direction for long enough?
So our guiding star hasn't changed at all.
So that's been pretty consistent,
but within that we flip-flop on so many things all the time
and to give you one example,
it's do you stop and build a first product
that's well suited to maybe a smaller,
less exciting segment of the market
or do you stay head down and focus on the big swing
and trying to hit it out of the park right away?
And we've flip-flopped between that
and there's not a blanket answer
and there are a lot of factors, but that's a hard one.
And I think one other piece for the aspiring founder
spending a lot of time and effort on the culture
and people piece is so important
and is always an afterthought
and something that I haven't really seen
like the founders or executives
that companies purposefully carve out time
and acknowledge that yes,
this is going to take a lot of my time and resources
and then, but you see them after the fact,
trying to repair the bro culture
or whatever else is broken at the company.
And I think that it's starting to change,
but just to be aware of it from the beginning is important.
All right, I guess it should be part of the vision
of what kind of place you wanna create
or what kind of like human beings.
Yeah, exactly.
Like you can't wait five, 10 years
and then just slap an HR person on to trying to fix it.
Like it has to be thoughtful from the beginning.
Yeah, don't get me started on HR people.
Don't leave HR to HR people,
but I'll just leave it that you didn't say that I said it.
Okay.
Yeah, HR is actual HR is really important.
It is so important, yeah.
Culture is so important, yeah.
And then I also was surprised,
like I thought you could say,
here will be our culture and our values
and that it was kind of distinct from who I
and my co-founder were as people.
And I was like, no, that's not how that works.
We just kind of like ooze out our behaviors
and then the company grows around that.
So you have to do a lot of like introspection
and self-work to not end up with a shitty culture.
It's kind of a, it's a relationship,
but it's supposed to relationship with two people.
It's a relationship with many people.
Yeah.
And you communicate so much indirectly by who you are.
You have to be.
Yes.
You have to live it, yeah.
As somebody, I think about this a lot
because generally I'm full of love
and all those kinds of things.
But like I also get like really passionate
and when I see somebody in the context of work especially,
when I see somebody who I know can do a much better job
and they don't do a great job,
I can lose my shit in a way that's like Steve Jobsian
and you have to think about exactly the right way
to lose your shit if you're going to
or if at all, you have to really think through that
because it sends a big signal.
You know, sometimes that's okay.
Like if you do it deliberately,
like if you're going to do it deliberately,
if you're going to say like,
I'm going to be the kind of person that allows this
and pays the cost of it,
but you can't just think it's not going to have a cost.
Yes.
This was like the first thing I worked on
with my leadership coach was how not to just snap people
when they were being an idiot.
And first I got really good at apologizing.
That was the first step
because it was going to take longer to fix the behavior.
And then she, I've got,
I'm actually a lot better at it now.
And it started with things.
She's like, every time you walk through a doorway,
think, you know, calm and take breaths before responding.
And there were all sorts of these little things we did.
And it was mostly just changing the habit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Boy, it's a long road.
Okay.
So people love it when we talk about books.
Is there books, maybe three or so technical fiction,
philosophical that had an impact on your life
and you might recommend?
And for each, is there an idea
or so that you take away from it?
Yes.
So I've been a voracious reader all my life.
And I'm always reading like three or four or five books
at a time and now I use Audible a lot too
and you know, podcasts and things like that.
So I think the first one that stands out to me is 10,
it's a novel, Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald.
And I read it when I was much younger,
but I went back and read it recently and it's not that good.
So I'm not sure why it has like such an important place
in my literary history.
But I love Fitzgerald as an author
because he has very like flowery prose
that I can just picture what he's saying,
but he does it in such a creative way.
I remember that one in particular
because I read a ton as a kid too,
but it kind of set me,
is like the beginning of my adult reading life
and getting into classics.
And I kind of, I do feel like I,
they seem intimidating maybe.
And then I realized that they're all just like love stories.
So.
Yeah, isn't everything in love stories?
Yeah, it's really.
At the bottom.
Even, I don't know, I was surprised
that even like a lot of the Russian authors,
you know, they're all just love stories.
Which humans are pretty simple.
There's not much to work with.
So I think maybe that was it.
It made like that whole world less intimidating to me
and cemented my love for reading.
People should have just approached the classics.
Like there's probably a love story in here.
Chick-filx.
Yeah.
So it somehow boils down to a Chick-filx.
So just relax and enjoy the ride.
And then.
So what else?
Changing gears quite a bit.
The beginning of Infinity.
Do you know it?
By David Deutsch.
So he's a physicist at Cambridge or Oxford.
And so I was introduced like more formally
to a lot of the ideas.
Like a lot of the things we've talked about,
he has a lot more like formalism
and physics rigor around.
And so I got introduced to, you know,
more like jargon of how to think about some of these ideas.
You know, like memes and, you know, DNA as ultimate meme.
The concept of infinity and objective beauty.
But he has a really strong grounding in physics.
And then.
So he has a rigorous way of talking about these like big.
Yeah.
So that was very mind opening to me to read that.
But it also, I think it's probably part of why
I ended up marrying my husband is related to that book.
And then I've had some other really great connections
with people because I had read it and so had they.
I like how you turn that book,
even that book into a love story.
I did.
I know.
It's good.
It's good.
Your robot has a heart.
Yeah, exactly.
And okay, the third series is, it's just, it's Harry Potter.
Of course, which somehow connects to,
I haven't read Harry Potter.
I'm really sorry.
Oh no.
Forgive me, forgive me.
But I've read Tolkien, but just Harry Potter
just haven't, haven't gotten to it.
But your company name is somehow,
I think connects to Harry Potter, right?
I think you've heard this.
My, I always feel like I have to justify my fandom.
The first three books came out when I was 10.
So I went along this journey with Harry age wise
and I read them all like nine or 10 times all seven books.
And I think anything that just keeps you reading
is what's important.
And you know, there, I have lulls
where I don't feel like reading anything.
So I'll reread a Harry Potter or a, you know,
trashy detective novel or something.
And I don't really care.
And that's why I mentioned Harry Potter
because it, you know, whatever just keeps me reading.
I think is important.
And it was a big part of my life growing up.
And then yes, Axion, the official story of the naming
of the company is that Axion is like a concatenation
of Accelerate and Ion, but it actually came
from Accio, the summoning charm.
And then we just added an N and it was perfect.
What's the summoning charm?
It's just one of the spells.
Yeah, it probably most notably Harry uses it
to summon his broomstick out of his dorm room
when he's battling a dragon somewhere else.
So he says the spell and the broomstick comes to him.
So summoning in that way.
Okay, there we go.
This is brilliant.
So the big thing is that it's something that you've carried
with, it's like your car, it's your safe place
you return to something like the Harry Potter.
That, you know, I reread them still.
Whatever keeps me reading, I think,
is the most important thing.
Okay, I got it.
So I'm actually the same way in terms of the habit of it.
It's important, it's important to just keep reading.
But I have found myself struggling a little bit too
because I listened to a lot of audiobooks now.
I've struggled to then switch back to reading seriously.
It's just, I read so many papers,
I read so many other things.
It feels like if I'm gonna sit down
and have the time to actually focus on the reading,
I should be reading like blog posts or papers
or more condensed kind of things.
But there's a huge value to just reading long form still.
Yeah, and, you know, my husband was never that into fiction
but then someone pulled him or he heard, you know,
you learn a lot of empathy through reading fiction.
So you could think of it that way.
Well, yeah, that's kind of what, yeah, yeah.
And it's also fiction is a nice,
unlike not less so with nonfiction,
is a chance to travel.
I see it as kind of traveling.
Yeah.
As you go to this other world and it's nice
because it's like much more efficient.
You don't have to get on a plane, you don't have to,
and you get to meet all kinds of new people.
It's like, people say they love traveling
and I say I love traveling too.
I just, yeah, read fiction.
I told my three year old that,
that was why we read so much
because we, you know, see the places in our mind.
And I'm like, it's basically like we're watching a movie.
You know, that's how it feels.
And she's like, I prefer watching Frozen with popcorn.
Wasn't her response that?
Okay, well, you're three.
That's a good point.
But yeah, there's some power to the imagination, right?
That's, it's not just like watching a movie
because something about our imagination,
because it's the words in the world that's painted,
somehow mixing in with our own understanding
of our own hopes and dreams, our fears.
It like mixes up in there in the way we can build up
that world from just the page.
Yeah, you're really creating the world
just with the like prompts from the book, right?
Yeah.
That's different than watching a movie.
Yeah, which is why it hurts sometimes
to watch the movie version.
And then you're like, that's not at all how I imagined it.
Well, we kind of brought this up
in terms of the, depending on what the goals are.
Let me ask the big, your friends with Minolas,
he's obsessed with this question.
So let me ask the big, ridiculous question
about the meaning of life.
Do you have, you ever think about this one?
Do you ever ponder the reason we're here?
Descends the vapes on this spinning ball
in the middle of nowhere?
Yeah, I don't think one ends up in the field
of space propulsion without thinking
of these existential questions.
Yeah, all the time.
Or builds a business.
Yeah, I know, right?
Yeah, we've touched on a lot of the different pieces
of this, I think, so I have a bunch of thoughts.
I do think that, you know, the goal isn't,
the meaning isn't anymore,
just to be like a petri dish of bacteria
that reproduces and, you know,
where survival and reproduction are the main objectives.
And maybe it's because now we're able to answer
these ask those questions, that's maybe the turning point.
And instead, I think it's really the pursuit
and generation of knowledge.
And so if we're taken out by an asteroid or something,
I think that it will have been a, you know,
meaningful endeavor if somehow our knowledge
about the universe is preserved somehow.
And the next civilization isn't starting over again.
So that's, I always, yeah, I resonate with that,
that I always loved the mission of Google
from the early days of making the world's
sort of information and knowledge searchable.
I always loved that idea.
I was loved, I was donated, as people should,
to Wikipedia, I just love Wikipedia.
I feel like it's, that's one of the greatest accomplishments
of just a humanity of us together,
especially Wikipedia and this opens,
like in this open community way,
putting together different knowledge,
like on everything we've talked about today,
I'm sure there's a Wikipedia page about ion engines.
And I'm sure it's pretty good.
Like it's, I don't know, that's incredible.
And obviously that can be preserved pretty efficiently,
at least Wikipedia.
And you'll be like, human civilization is all,
like burning up in flames as there's this one USB drive
slowly traveling out of it, Wikipedia on it.
Yeah.
That's on, from the beginning of our chat,
that one lonely spacecraft, it just means Wikipedia.
And then it will have been a civilization well spent.
So pushing that knowledge along through,
like one little discovery at a time
is one of, is a core aspect of the meaning of it, of it all.
Yes.
And I also, I haven't yet figured out what the connection,
you know, an explanation I'm happy with yet
for how it's connected.
But evolving beyond just the survival piece too,
I think like we touched on the emotional aspect,
something in there about cooperation and, you know, love.
And so I, in my day to day that just boils down to,
you know, the pursuit of knowledge
or improving the human condition and being kind.
Love and knowledge.
Yeah, exactly.
So I'm pretty at peace with that as the meaning right now.
Makes sense to me.
While you work on spacecraft proposal.
Yes, exactly.
Like literal rocket science.
Natalia, this is amazing conversation.
You work on such an exciting engineering field.
And I think this is like what 20th, 21st century
will be remembered for is space exploration.
So this is exciting space that you're working on.
And thank you so much for spending your time with me today.
Thanks for having me.
This was fun.
Thanks for listening to this conversation
with Natalia Bailey and thank you to our sponsors.
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