Natalya Bailey: Rocket Engines and Electric Spacecraft Propulsion | Lex Fridman Podcast #157

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 quick mention of. our sponsors. monk pack low carb snacks four sigmatic.

mushroom coffee. blinkist an app that summarizes books. and sun basket meal delivery service. so the choice is snacks caffeine. knowledge or delicious meal choose. wisely my friends. and if you wish click the sponsor links. below to get a discount and to support. this podcast. 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 wander. 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 review an apple podcast. follow on spotify support on patreon or. connect with me on twitter. at lex friedman 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 i think looking at you know the 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. in in our dimensions and yeah it's also. possible that uh 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 the it's this carl. sagan. idea that they may be communicating at a. time scale that's totally different. like their signals are on a totally. different time scale. or like a totally different kind of.

medium communication. it could be it could be our own it could. be the birth. of like human beings like. that the whatever the magic that makes. us. who we are the collective intelligence. thing that could be. aliens themselves that could be the. medium 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 they send questions so. some this like collective emergent. behavior. is is the signal is the signal yeah. so interesting yeah because maybe that's. how we would communicate with if you. think about 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. multiverse of course. uh that would have a signal an effect on. the most possible. the most 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 what 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. 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 on the engineering. side of things. it's this very kind of focused pursuit. of. uh moving things through space. efficiently. but you know if you zoom out one of the. cool things that this enables us to do. is. find or get even intelligent life just. life. on mars 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. um so very exciting do you think there's. life on mars. i like uh no longer well. already living but at 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 and i do think it might be hard to. untangle. if we somehow contaminated other things. as well uh so i'm not sure about. this close to home that would be really. exciting. yes like do you think about the drake. equation much of what that was what. yeah what got me into all of this yeah. yeah because uh 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's that. would be super exciting because that. means. there's like trillions of planets yeah.

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 right. 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 they're the smart ones. maybe that's the alien message. it's in the trees the trees. uh yeah it's not in the uh monolith in. the utah deserts and the trees. right yeah so let's go to space. exploration. how do you think it would get humans to. mars i i think spacex and. and elon musk will be the ones that.

get the first human setting foot on. mars uh and probably not that long from. now from us having this conversation you. know maybe we'll inflate his timeline a. little bit but i tend to. believe um the goals he sets so. i think that will happen relatively soon. um as far as. you know when and what it will take to. get humans living there. in a more permanent way um.

you know i have a glib answer which is. you know 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. um we pick mars as the destination. so really you know i say that because. there's nothing. truly scientifically or technologically. impossible about doing that soon. it's more you know politically and. financially.

and and those are the obstacles i think. to them. well i wonder of when you colonize with. you know more than i say five people on. mars you have to start thinking about. the kind of. uh like rules you have on mars. and speaking of the cold war who gets to. own. the land you know you start planting. flags. you start to make decisions and uh. like spacex says this night it's. probably a little bit trolly.

but they have this nice paragraph in. their contracts. where it's like it's it talks about that. uh like human uh governments on earth. or earth governments have no uh. jurisdiction. on mars like the rules the martians get. to define their own rules. it sounds very much like uh like the. founding fathers for this country. that's the kind of language uh it's. interesting. that that's 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 uh to create a little bit of a. cold war feeling it seems like we're. we humans need a little bit of a. competition do you think that's. necessary to. succeed in um to get 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 and but i don't. you know i don't wish that there is some. catastrophe coming.

our way that that spurs us to do. that yes i'm not sure 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 like you should have. you should have a path to making money. in like the next 10 years. well and maybe even. more broadly and and looping back to.

something we we said earlier. i don't know that getting humans off. this planet and you know spreading. um like bacteria is what we're supposed. to be. doing in the first place so maybe we can. go but. should we and and i'm probably a an. unusual person for thinking that in my. industry. because humans want to explore. but i almost wonder you know are we.

putting unnecessary obstacles. like uh we're very finicky biological. things in the way of some more robotic. or you know more silicon based. exploration um 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 uh 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. and 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 this.

again i'm probably unusual in having. these thoughts but. perhaps be able to 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. as we kind of use it today but maybe. sending a. petri dish or two of like stem cells. and some robotic handlers 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 uh i mean. i'm sure we'll eventually. send a spacecraft with uh. efficient propulsion like some of the. stuff you work on out that travels just. really far. with some robots on it and with some.

with some dna. in a petri dish and then human. civilization destroys itself. and then they'll just be this floating. spacecraft that eventually get 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 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 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 and 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 uh. like vacation wise like if you talk if. we're talking vacations. would you like to vocation 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. um i wanted to go to like the coolest.

lab the iss. and do some experiments there uh that's. being decommissioned which is sad. but you know there will be others i'm. sure um. the iss is being decommissioned yes i. think by 2025. it's not going to be in use anymore but. i think. um 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 lobby. that's where i wanted to go and now. though. my you know risk profile has changed a. little bit i've. three little ones and um i won't. i won't be in the first thousand 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 uh 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 um 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. 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. um in in those types of systems you. usually have a. fuel on an oxidizer and they react and. combust and release stored chemical. energy. um and and that energy heats um. heats the resultant gas and and that's. funneled out the back through a nozzle. directed out the back and and then that. momentum exchange.

pushes the spacecraft forward is there. an interesting difference between liquid. and solid. fuel in those contexts they're both. lumped in the same. so uh chemical just means that the. release of energy from. 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 you know batteries or solar. panels.

and uh in this case the stuff you're. pushing out the back. would be charged particles so um. instead of combustion and heat you you. end up with charged particles and you. force them out the back of the. spacecraft using. either an electrostatic field or. electromagnetic. um and 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 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 the chemical one being. the big sexy flames and yeah fire fire. yeah chemical is very well understood.

um you know uh in its simplest form it's. like a firework. so it's been around since 400 bc. or something like that um so that even. the big engines are quite well. understood i think. you know one of the one of the. last gaps there is probably um. what exactly are the products of. combustion. um our modeling abilities kind of fall. apart.

there um because it's hot and gases are. moving. and you end up kind of. you know having to venture into. um 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 um and really the.

the kind of what people care about there. is. 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 um so that's. where people spend a lot of their time. um is trying to make that more efficient. in terms of thrust per. unit of fuel and then. um there's always considerations like.

heating and cooling it's very. hot which is good if it heats the gases. but you know bad if it melts the. rocket and 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 uh lots more mysteries. yeah i think so one of the classes i. took.

in college spent we spent 90 percent of. the class on chemical propulsion. and then the last 10 on electric and the. professor said like. we only sort of understand how it works. but. it works kind of and it's like that's. that's interesting. yeah and you know even uh an ion engine. which is. probably one of the most straightforward. because it's it has just an. 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 and it's just very. intriguing to me um first of all can you. actually zoom out even more. like because you mentioned ion. propulsion engine. is a subset of electrolytes so like. maybe is there a categories of electric. engines and then we can zoom in on. ion propulsion yes so sure. there's um 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. vasomere. engine which we could get into um. 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 is 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. i imagine 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 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 um. and now you have a charged you know. xenon or argon. ion and and more electrons and so on. um and then uh 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 you know in terms of area the same. amount of those ions also makes 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 and in that. grid and. they're two grids actually and you apply. a voltage. differential between them and 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 is what pushes. the spacecraft forward.

if you're you know following along and. tallying these. charges now we've just sent a positive. beam of ions out the back of the. spacecraft um. and 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 that's an ion engine what. temperature we're talking about here. so in terms of like the the chemical. based engines. those are super hot uh you mentioned. plasma here. how hot does this thing get um. i mean is that an interesting thing to. talk about in a sense that is that a. interesting distinction or is the heat i. mean it's all going to be hot. no so it's important especially for some.

of these smaller satellites people are. into launching these days so the. 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. um i am 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. is that no no temperature not. recommended yeah okay. so what's a colloid engine so the same. rocket people that um. came up with with these ideas for. electric propulsion. um probably in the middle of of last. century also realized that. there's one more place to get charged. particles from. um 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 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 or you know very few microns so you.

know 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 um silicon mems computer processors. and. and when foundry started becoming more. ubiquitous. and my advisor started at. mit uh 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. um. and so the way that the way that you. actually get the. the ions out of those liquids um is you. put the liquid. in a 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. uh this way a conical shape um. it's the 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. um and uh the radius. sorry the electric field um right at the. tip of a sharp object would go to. infinity uh 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 you know. issuing from the tip of. of that liquid so the field becomes. strong enough there that you can pull. ions. um out of the liquid what is the liquid. we're talking about. so there's a bunch of different ones you. can do it with. um with different types of liquids it. depends on you know 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 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. uh how big is the kona we talk what. what's the size of. this cone that generates that if you. have a cone that's emitting pure ions.

um the i can't remember if it's the. radius or diameter but. um 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.

ions on 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 um but it also reduces.

the actual field we have to 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 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're pouring like liquid over it. whatever from the bottom. yeah it's porous so we actually supply. it from the back of the chip. and then liquid forms on top yeah on. that structure yeah. 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 and that same field then. accelerates them that's awesome and.

there's like a bunch of these. yeah i should have i should have brought. something um so. well you could just pretend that you. have some nanometer cones on. so actually you know kind of about this. scale um. 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 um.

and we're working on increasing that by. a factor of four. in the coming months in size or in 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. yeah and that must be the thing okay so. that's an. engine um so that is. kind of the ionization chamber and. thrust producing part of it what's not. shown you know in that picture um 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 colloid engine that's the. core of the coolidge um it's. the way i've been talking about it it's. um more of. ion electrospray colloid um. 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. uh 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 um we've been. understanding the kind of instabilities. and and stable regimes of.

um you know how much liquid do you. supply and and what field do you apply. and um why is it flickering on and off. or why does it have these weird. behaviors so that's. in the past just couple years that's. become much more. understood um i think the two. areas that come to mind as far as um. not as well understood are um. the boundary between you know you have. um we we actually use kind of big.

molecular. ions and if you're looking at. the molecular scale you have. you know some ions that you've extracted. and they're in this electric field. one ion you know 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. what how do you connect those and how do. we understand that better so that we can. understand the beam performance of. of the engine is that a theory question. as an engineering question. theory definitely we're axion is a. startup and. we're more in the business of building. and testing. and observing um and characterizing. and we're not really diving much into.

that theory right now. okay zooming out a little bit on the. physics uh. apologize for the way too big of a. question but. to you from either us you mentioned. axion is you know. more sort of an engineering endeavor. right performer 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. um in this space i keep. butting up against material science. questions so i over the past 10 years i. feel like every. problem or interesting thing i. 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.

you know 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 yeah i mean you're it's if you look. further it's quantum. too but it it all is. you capillary action at the quantum. level yeah so i would. i i it all comes back to me to.

you know material science there's so. much we don't understand. at these sizes um and i. 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 and it's you know just a partial.

differential equation but. that kind of connectedness of. the universe you know i don't want to. 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 you're. definitely living in a simulation like. whoever programmed like that that's your. conclusion is using.

is using like shortcuts to program it. like they didn't they just copy and. pasted some code for 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 back that's the backup option. so. in terms of using uh kohler engines. what's what's an interesting difference. between a propulsion of a rocket.

from earth when you're standing in the. ground to orbit. and then the kind of propulsion. necessary for once you get out. or better to like deep space to. 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. if you have the time and and can.

accumulate that acceleration you can. still reach speeds that are. very interesting for exploration and and. even for missions with. humans on them um an interesting. direction i think we need to go as as. humans. exploring space is um the power supplies. for electric propulsion are. are limiting us in that. you know solar panels are really. inefficient and bulky and.

batteries i don't know when anybody's. ever going to. improve battery technology i know a lot. of people that work on that. and nuclear power you. we could have a lot more powerful. electric propulsion systems so they. would be. extremely fuel efficient but more. instantaneous for us to do more. interesting missions. um if we could start launching more. nuclear systems but. so like so something that's powered. nuclear-powered. that's the right way to say it yeah.

but is it a small enough container that. could be launched. yeah so um i mean as a world we do. launch spacecraft with nuclear power. systems on board but size is is one. consideration it hasn't been a big focus. so the. the reactors and the heaters and. everything are. bulky and so they're really only. suitable for some of the much bigger. interplanetary stuff um so that's one.

issue but then it's a whole like. rat's nest of political stuff as well. i i heard i think elon described or. somebody. i think i think it was elon described. the uh ev tall like. electrical vertical takeoff and landing. vehicles so basically saying rockets. i'm obviously elon is interested in. electric vehicles right. but he said that rockets can't. uh in the in the near term it doesn't. make sense for them to be electrical.

uh what do you see a world with the. rockets. that we use to get into orbit are also. electric based uh it's possible you can. produce the thrust levels you need but. you need this. uh 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 you know 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 a 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. value. and uh and yet we are seem to be. i mean based on the history based on the. excellent hbo. series russian with the chernobyl it. seems like we have. our risk estimation about this.

particular power. drastically inaccurate but that's that's. a fascinating idea that we would. use nuclear as a source for our vehicles. uh and not just in outer space that's. cool i'm going to look into that. that's super interesting well um just. last year. trump eased up a little bit on the. regulations and. nasa and hopefully others are they're. 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 to explore. different energy sources. that the entirety of the vehicle uses. something. like uh 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 cool load 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 the same engine for the whole thing. but the same technology i think would be. interesting. okay so it's possible all right but uh. yeah. it turns down to the power source the. power source it's that's really. interesting but for the current power. sources and its current use cases. what's the use case for electric like. the the the corallite engine. can you talk about where they're used.

today sure. so chemical engines are still used. um 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. and this includes you know the ion. engines and health thrusters and orange. and. um there's basically any maneuvering you. need to do once you're dropped off. um there's 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 um there are other. perturbations. um that that can throw you off a bit. and then you know 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. um what's geo what's um so low earth. orbit and then geosynchronous orbit or. geostationary orbit. and there's a graveyard yeah so those. satellites are at. um 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 you know even more. propulsion than they've had for the. whole lifetime of their mission. so instead they push them higher where. it'll take you know 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. as. leo which is low earth orbit where more. of these commercial missions are going. now. cool 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 the life of a satellite is. just like. oh crap trying trying to avoid like. literally i think. one of the recent um you know rules of. thumb. i heard was per year some of these small. satellites are doing like three. collision avoidance maneuvers um so. that's. that's not yeah but it's not zero um. and it yeah it takes a lot of um. planning and people on the ground and.

you know. 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 you know moore's. lawn 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 be 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 you know 20 small ones. yeah so if one gets taken out. that's okay but the problem is that you. know one good-sized satellite getting. hit. um 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 are moving towards. bigger satellites or smaller satellites. is there going to be a mix like what's.

and what do we talk what what does it. mean. for satellite to be big most and small. what's that 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 cost. a couple billion dollars and now. you know our first launches were on. um satellites the size of shoe boxes.

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 um. for things like. broadcasting um you want to be able to. you know broadcast to as many people as. possible. um there you also can't just go to small. satellites. and say moore's law for things like.

optics so if you have an. an aperture on your satellite you know. that just that doesn't follow morris law. that's. that's different so it's always going to. be the size it 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. size of your telescope but. because of moore's law we we are able to. do. a lot more with smaller packages and 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. what are the smallest kind you said shoe. boxes yeah so. i think you know the smallest their uh. smallest. common form factor can fit a softball. inside. wow so that's 10 centimeters on each. side um 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 you mean like there's a. business there's a thing to do with them. yes what do you do with a small. satellite like that. um you can you know track a ship going. across the ocean. is like if you need to if you're just. pinging something you know you can. handle that. that amount of data um and those. latencies and. 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. um okay yeah but what uh so what kind of. solid. lights would you equip a colloid 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 100k to build are kind of the. ways i would think about it. that's a lot of use cases what's this. what's the small set. like what what's category it's actually. very big i think it's like. 700 kilograms or keep hitting my.

microphone. um maybe a thousand kilograms down to. 200 kilograms or people. have their own kind of definitions of. how they break them up but small. sat is still quite large and then um. it's kind of also applied as a blanket. term for anything that's not a school. bus size satellite. so we need to get our jargon straight. industry. so what do you see do you see a possible. future where.

you know there's a few thousand. satellites up there now a couple of. thousands of them. functioning do you see a future where. there's like millions of satellites up. up in orbit or if we get 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. uh the two you know buckets of. applications one is. imaging and the other is communication.

so imaging uh 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 um you know you're. you're limited by your. transponders and and so on so to serve. more people you actually need more.

satellites and and perhaps at the rate. you know our data consumption. and things are going these days um yeah. i can see tens of thousands of. satellites. can i ask you a ridiculous question yes. so i've recently. watched this documentary on netflix. about. flat earthers that bel you know the. people that believe in a flat earth. as somebody as somebody who develops. propulsion. systems for for satellites and for a.

spacecraft. what's uh to use the most convincing. evidence. that the earth is around. probably some of the. photos taken from the moon. photos on the moon okay so it's not from. from the satellite space. yeah i think seeing though that. perspective. i maybe i'm just i'm answering to. personally because i really.

love those photos they're beautiful yeah. i really like the ones that show the. moon. and um 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 her i i. don't i don't know yeah i'll send you. i'll send you that picture because i. love the pictures.

or videos of just earth from more from. orbit and so on. right yeah those that's really beautiful. that's like a perspective shifter. that's the pale blue dot right it. probably appears tiny. yeah and just that you know. juxtaposition of. the insignificance but you're not going. to build this really cool thing. i just love that yeah that'd be cool i. can't i personally love the idea of. humans stepping out of mars i'm such a. sucker for the romantic notion of. that and being able to take pictures. from mars.

like so you would go i have. i uh yeah i would be what did you say. you said. you wouldn't be not in the first. thousand. which it's funny because to me that's. 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 about it. because like then we're like. participating as 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 it's 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. 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 yeah i'm. more worried about the. psychological difficulties and also just.

not being able to tweet like what are. you gonna. how are you yeah there's no netflix so. yeah maybe not in the first million but. the first hundred uh. 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. start over from scratch there's uh. just our financial system it could be. like based on cryptocurrency. you could think about like how democrat.

you know we have. we have now the technology that can. enable pure democracy for example. if we choose to do that yeah as opposed. to representative democracy all those. kinds of things. so we talked about two uh different. forms of propulsion which are. super exciting so the chemical based. that's doing pretty well and then the. electric base is um 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 years you see a new now a. startup or.

a researcher comes up with some. contraption. for producing thrust that didn't require. you know we've been talking about. conservation of momentum. mass times velocity out the back um. 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 um and and i.

you know unless there are new types of. physics. um i don't know how we do it but it. comes up often so it's something i. i do think about and um you know the one. i think it's called the casmir. effect um if you can if you have two. plates and. 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. um. i may be confusing multiple types of.

propellant-less. forces but um that. that could be real and could be. something that. that we use eventually what would be the. power source. yeah the most recent engine like this. that. has was just debunked this year. i think in in march or something was. called the m drive and. um 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. 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. um this inside the cavity. um the microwaves themselves didn't.

change but the speed of light changed. inside the cavity so relative to that. um you know there their momentum was. conserved. um and i don't you know i. whatever um 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 um.

forward it again um 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 yeah so. hook that up to the nuclear. power supply there you go okay yeah. but still in terms of speed in terms of.

trying to. so there's recently us already i think. been debunked or close to being debunked. but the. uh 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 the thought is uh. it'd be it'd be kind of cool if there's. life out there alien life.

uh but it'd be really cool if you could. fly out there and check. and so what kind of propulsion and did. 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 have. reasonable. in a lifetime you know there's the. project. breakthrough star shot yeah um. that's looking at sending those tiny. little chip sets. um 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. to accelerate them fast enough to get. there in 20 years crazy sounding. but uh a lot of people say that's a. 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 um.

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 uh do you see like human. uh 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 in the 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. i think because of special relativity if. we try to accelerate. some mass to 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 that math doesn't quite work out. but you know in in my. child's my childlike heart i believe.

that. you know we're missing something um. 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 i feel like we're missing. lots of things in this puzzle and. that you know i wonder how is that.

puzzle. yeah right well i can speak with. confidence as a descendant of. uh apes that we don't know what the hell. we're doing. yeah so there's uh we're like really. confident like physicists are really. confident that we've like. got most of the picture down right it. feels like. oh boy it feels like that we might not. even. be getting started on some of the. essential things. that um that would allow us to engineer.

systems that. would allows 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. um quantum tunneling you know um. just things like oh the electron was. here with this energy and now it's here. with this energy and. it's just tunneling um 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 um yeah someday. you uh you're the co-founder of just. like we've been talking about axion. systems. uh yeah this is would you say space. propulsion company. yes broadly speaking um so. how do you big question how do you uh. build a rocket company from like. a propulsion company from one person.

from two people. to ten people plus and actually. you know take it to a successful product. yeah well i think the early stage is. quite. uh i'm not supposed to use the word easy. when you work in rocket science but. straightforward um 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 um you need that. to get people. getting themselves out of bed in the. morning and thinking of the. the higher purpose there um and. you know another thing along the way. that i think is key in 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 this. the whole greater than than just the sum. of the early team. yeah how do you build that like how do. you find people it's like asking. like how do you make friends but is. there um. is it uh is it luck is there a system. like how in terms of the people you've.

connected with the. the people um 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. uh i think you know personally uh. a thread for me has been my network. and being able to draw on 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 um. 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 um and i think. that's it's. 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. um 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 um 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 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 um. and just staying out ahead of that and. those kinds of things. um so you know being out in the industry. and talking to as many people as. possible so there's a drive. i mean yeah spacex really pushed that. frustrating for me. yeah so uh spacex really pushed this. uh yeah the application of uh i guess. capitalism of driving the price down. of um basically forcing people to ask.

the question can be. this 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 uh 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. 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. the in terms of the technology in it.

it's really boringly the same thing and. they're really afraid to have taken. risks. and that's a big problem for rocket. space too is like. you if you're cutting out costs you. can't afford to innovate. to try out new things and then yeah. that's definitely true with i. ion engine then right so but what. um so how do you compete in this. uh in this space do you by the way see. spacex as a competitor. uh and what do you say in general about. the competition in the space is it.

really difficult as a as a business to. compete here no i. i don't see spacex as a competitor um. and i see them. as one day not too long from now a. customer. hopefully um 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 you. know. nasa doesn't make ion engines using a.

batch mass producible technique they. have you know. one guy that's been making their ion. engines for 20 years like. bespoke pieces of jewelry so um. bringing things to what you're trying to. innovate to. to make them you know in our case more. cost effective was. was really key well i like the idea of. uh. 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 uh 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 um. reasons racial division there's been. obviously a virus. that's testing the very fabric of our.

society but this has been really. i for me at least super positive things. which. inspiring things which is uh spacex and. nasa. uh doing the first commercial yeah. human flight uh launching humans to. space and did it twice. successfully uh what is that um. did you get to watch that launch did you. uh what does it make you feel. uh do you think this is uh first days.

for a new era of um space exploration. yeah i did watch it we played it outside. on a big screen at our place and. um i was a little you know they kept. saying bob and doug. bob and doug and you know astronauts. usually. are um treated with a little bit more. fanfare so it felt very casual but maybe. that was a good. a good thing like this is the era of. commercial. crude missions and it was a little bit.

more. um what is it um what's his name chris. hadfield. like playing guitar yeah it's more it's. a different flavor. to it of uh yeah exactly more like. fun playful celebrity type yes. exactly astronaut versus uh the or. the aura of the magical sort of heroic. elements of the single human. representing us in space. yes yeah i think that's all for the. better though it's so cool that it's.

such a commonplace 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. um 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 and companies do you. like the the kind of the model of. competition. of uh nasa funding i guess that's how it.

works is like they're providing quite a. bit of money from the government. and then then private companies compete. to be. uh to be the delivery vehicles for. whichever the the the government. missions. like nasa missions yes i think for. this type of mission is a little bit. kind of straddles. um commercial and and science so. i think it's good but i do in general. feel like.

we've pulled back too much on you know. nasa's role. in the science and exploration part and. i think our pace is too slow there you. know for my. liking i suppose what do you mean ana. 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 i see yeah and and maybe nasa's not. the best. organization to to do it rapidly. but i think that you know again. depending on the. goals we're just kind of at the very. starting point of. space exploration and science and and. understanding so we should be spending.

more money there and. and not less and um other countries are. starting to spend more and more and i. think we'll file. we'll fall behind because of that so you. have quite a bit of experience first of. all. to start starting a company yourself but. also i saw maybe you can correct me but. you. you have quite quite a bit of knowledge. of um. just in general the startup experience. of building companies. you've interacted with people if is. there 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 uh i would say you know. like i mentioned earlier but make sure. the vision is something that you know. will get you out of bed in the morning. and. and will get and that you can rally. other people. around you to 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 you know startups are hard and and. more often than not. just being opportunistic isn't going to. be enough to make it through. all the really crappy um things that are. going to happen. so the vision just helps you. psychologically to carry through the. hardships. for you and the team yeah you and the. team yeah exactly. to kind of younger people interested in. getting into entrepreneurship.

i would say you know stay as close to. like first principles and. and fundamentals as you can for as long. as you can. because really understanding the. problems you know if it's something. scientific or hardware related or. even if it's not but having a deep. understanding of. 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 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 you know our guiding star. hasn't changed at all um so that's been. pretty. consistent but we within that we flip.

flop on. so many things um all the time and you. know 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 you know 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. one other piece for the aspiring founder. spending a lot of time and effort on the. culture and people peace is so important. and is always. an afterthought and something that. i haven't really seen like the founders. or. or executives that companies. purposefully carve out time and 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 you know bro. culture or whatever else is broken at. the company. and i think that it's starting to change. um but just to be aware of it from the. beginning. is important right i guess it should be. part of the vision of what kind of place. you want to create. or what kind of like. human beings yeah exactly like you can't.

wait. five ten years and then just slap an hr. person on to trying to fix it like it. has to be thoughtful from the beginning. yeah and don't get me started on hr. people. uh don't leave hr to hr people but i'll. just leave it at that you didn't say. that i said it. okay uh yeah hr's. actual hr is really important this. is so myself yes but so culture 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 it's a relationship. but as opposed to a relationship with. two people it's relationship with many.

people. yeah and you yeah you communicate so. much indirectly. by who you are you have to be yes you. have to live it. yeah uh 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 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. in a way that's like steve jobsian. and you have to think about exactly the. right way to lose your if you're. going to. or if at all you have to really think. through that because it sends a big. signal. uh you know sometimes that's okay like. if you do 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 to how not to. just snap people when they were being an. idiot. and um first i got really good at. apologizing that was the first step. because it was going to take longer. to fix brilliant 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 oh 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 uh take away from it.

yes um so i've been a voracious. reader all my life um and i'm always. reading like three or four or five. books at a time um. and now i use audible a lot too and you. know podcasts and things like that. um so i think the first one that stands. out. to me is um 10 it's a novel um tender is. the knight by. fitzgerald and i 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 um in my literary. history but. um i love fitzgerald as an author. because he's very. he's very like flowery prose um. that i can just picture what he's saying. but he does it in a. such a creative way i remember that one. in particular because it. you know i read a ton as a kid too but.

it kind of set me. it was like the beginning of my adult. reading life. and um getting into classics and. um i kind of i do feel like i they seem. intimidating maybe and then i realize. that they're all just like love stories. um uh so. yeah isn't everything yeah it's really. at the bottom even you know i don't know. i. i was surprised that even like a lot of.

the russian authors. um you know that's all they're all just. love stories. are pretty simple there's not much to. worry there's not much to work with so. so i think maybe that was it it made. like that whole world less intimidating. to me and. and cemented my love that's for reading. people should have just approached the. classics like there's probably a lot of. chick flicks. yeah so it somehow boils down to a chick. flight so. just relax and enjoy the ride and then. so what else um changing gears.

quite a bit um the beginning of infinity. do you know what by david deutsch. um so he's a physicist um i think 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 um. 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 um.

you know like memes and you know dna. as as ultimate meme um. the concept of infinity and um. objective beauty um but he has a really. strong grounding in in physics um and. then there's 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 is 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 um. i like how you turn. that that even that book into a love. story i did. i know it's good it's good your robot. has a heart. exactly and okay the third uh. series is it's just it's harry potter. um of course which somehow connects to i. haven't read harry potter i'm really.

sorry. forgive me forgive me uh but. uh i've read tolkien but just harry. potter just haven't. haven't gone to it but your company name. is somehow i think connect with harry. potter right. i think they heard this my i. always feel like i have to justify my. fandom um the first three books. came out when i was 10 so i went along. this journey with. harry um age-wise and i read.

them all like nine or ten times all. seven books. and i think um anything that just keeps. you reading. as 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. and i don't really care and that's why i. mention harry potter because. it you know whatever just keeps me. reading i think is important and.

um it was a big part of my life growing. up and then yes axion. i the official. 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 that's just. one of the spells. yeah it um 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. the big thing is that it's something. that you've. carry with it's like your car is your. safe place you return to. something like the harry potter that you. know i reread them still. um whatever keeps me reading i think is.

is the most important thing okay i got. it so yeah. i'm actually the same way in terms of. the habit of it. it's important yeah it's important to. just keep. yeah keep reading but i have found. myself. struggling a little bit to because i. listen to a lot of audiobooks now. i've struggled to then switch back to. reading seriously uh. because just read so many papers read so. many other things it feels like if i'm. going to 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. yeah but there 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 told him or he. heard um you know you learn a lot of. empathy through reading fiction. um so you could think of it that way. well yeah that's kind of what. yeah yeah the 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. it's nice because it's like much more. efficient you 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 um 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. with her. response. but yeah there's some power to the. imagination right that's it's not just. like. watching a movie because some something. about of. our imagination because it's 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 and the way we. can. build up that world from just the page. yeah you're. you're really creating the world just. with the like. prompts from the book right yeah yeah. that's different than watching a movie. yeah which is why it hurts sometimes to. watch the version. and then you're like that's not at all. yeah yeah i imagined it. well we kind of brought this up in terms. of uh. the depending on what the goals are.

let me ask the big uh your your friends. of manila's. he's obsessed with this question so let. me ask the big ridiculous. question about the meaning of life uh. do you have uh you ever think about this. one do you ever. uh ponder the the reason we're here. he's descends the vapes on this spinning. ball. in the middle of nowhere yeah i don't i. don't think. one ends up in the field of space. propulsion without thinking of.

these existential questions uh yeah. all the time or bill's a business yeah i. know. um yeah we've touched on a lot of the. different. pieces of this i think so. i i have a bunch of thoughts um. i do think that you know the goal. isn't the meaning. [Music]. isn't anymore just to be like a petri. dish of. bacteria that reproduces and um.

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. um that's maybe the turning point. um and instead i i think it's really the. the pursuit and generation of knowledge. and and so if 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. um and the next civilization isn't. starting. over again um so that that's. that's i always yeah i. resonated 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. the it 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 just. 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. yeah like it's i don't know that's.

that's incredible. and obviously that can be preserved. pretty efficiently at least wikipedia. and you just you'll be like human. civilization is all like burning up in. flames. as there's this one usb drive slowly. traveling yeah. wikipedia 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. um so pushing that knowledge along yeah.

through. like one little discovery at a time. is is one of is a core aspect to the. meaning of it. of it all yes and i also i. i haven't yet figured out what the. connection you know an explanation i'm. happy with yet for how it's connected. but. um evolving beyond. just the the survival piece too i think. like we touched on the. 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 while you. work on. yeah spacecraft propulsion 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. uh 21st century will be remembered for. as space exploration so. this is super exciting uh space that. you're working on so. 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 monk pack. low carb snacks.

four sigmatic mushroom coffee blinkist. an. app that summarizes books and sun basket. meal delivery service so the choice is. snacks. caffeine knowledge or delicious meal. choose wisely my friends and if you wish. click the sponsor links below to get a. discount and to support. this podcast and now let me leave you. with some words from carl sagan. all civilizations become either. space-faring or extinct. thank you for listening and hope to see.

you next time.