Episode 180 - Branson, Bezos, and Musk dash to Space

Today's discussion centers around the space race among privately owner companies. This includes Richard Branson's first voyage to with virgin galactic. Also - the proposed flying car!

Links

Reuters: Branson set to Fly aboard Virgin Galactic Rocket
WSJ: Branson Races Bezos to Space
WaPo: Branson is Virgin Galactic’s Daredevil

WaPo: 2014 Virgin Galactic Disaster Blamed on Human Error


Why the private space race is a good thing:
ArsTechnica: Nasa to pay more for Less Cargo Delivery to ISS

In 2018 SpaceX was running supply missions to the ISS at $152.1M while the other provider (Orbital-ATK, now part of Northrop-Grumman) was costing $262.6M per mission.  This does not account for the systemic advantages that SpaceX has over the more traditional launcher provided by their competitors at the time (return cargo, reusability, etc.)

Aerospace Security: How much does it cost?

NYPost: Flying Car completes first Intra-City flight in Slovakia
Terrafigia: Did it earlier with their craft

Related Epsiodes

Episode 163 with Previous mention of Flying Cars
Episode 121 with our updates on the private space race from last year

Transcript

Max Sklar: You're listening to The Local Maximum Episode 180. Time to expand your perspective. 

Welcome to The Local Maximum. Now here's your host, Max Sklar.

Max: Welcome, everyone. Welcome. You have reached another Local Maximum. Today I'm gonna have a hard time getting my energy up so please help me get my energy up today. It's been raining for five days. I don't know. But as promised, we add extra, was it bling—

Aaron Bell: Flair? 

Max: —flair, to every live, recorded, not live recorded— 

Aaron: In-studio recording.

Max: —in-studio recording with video of Local Maximum. Today, of course, we have The Local Maximum, what is this? A little poster thingy? 

Aaron: The Local logo? 

Max: Yes, yes. Unfortunately, it's only in my video. You could see, hopefully we'll switch to Aaron's video, Aaron, wave. You can see my hand right here. So okay, we got that. Let's get into it. I don't know what to say. So let's get started. It sounds like a lot of wealthy people are looking on, like what is going on in the world? They're saying, “You know what? I don't think I want to live on this planet anymore.” So let’s—

Aaron: That’s an awfully pessimistic spin put on it. But yeah, this is a very timely issue. So we're recording on July 9 today, right. On July 11th, Richard Branson is scheduled to go into space, there may be an asterisk on that statement. 

Max: I'm gonna have to come in at the beginning if this doesn't work out. Say hey, we till we recorded this, but sorry, go ahead.

Aaron: Yeah. Nine days later on July 20, Jeff Bezos is scheduled to go into space. So it's a lot happening very quickly in the private space sector.

Max: So I've been excited about this stuff for a long time. I covered it, covered stories like this, when I was on Yale radio back in like 2004, 2005. But I'm just not, and I feel like I don't really have a good sense of how technology works when it comes to the space race, whether the private one or the public one. You might have a little bit more knowledge into this. But let's—

Aaron: We talked before we started recording, this is going to be a short episode. So don't open with such a boundless question like that, because we'll be here all day.

Max: Okay, Aaron, tell me everything you know. Okay, so let's start with Branson. So that's Virgin Galactic. I always remember Virgin Galactic, because, you all hear about Virgin Galactic going into space. I remember one time I was going to the airport. I was trying to ask “Where do I go?” They were like, “What airline are you using?” and I accidentally said Virgin Galactic. Then they were like, “What, are you going into space?” I was like, “Oh, no, Atlantic. Sorry. I'm only going to Houston or something. I'm not going to the moon.” Well, these guys aren't quite going to the moon either. 

Aaron: Yeah, not yet.

Max: So where are these guys going?

Aaron: These are going into, not even low Earth orbit. For the most part, they're not going into orbit. They're going beyond an imaginary line, what is it, the Kármán line. I'm sure I'm botching the pronunciation.

Max: They're saying they're not flying above the Kármán line. 

Aaron: Well, yeah, that's where some of the debate is. But they're going just far enough into space that they can make the claim that they have gone into space, and that comes with an asterisk along with it, because “Where does space begin?” is not a clear binary issue. It is something that isn’t determined legally. Much like, is a tomato a fruit or vegetable?

Max: So it's not like a question of, you know, where does the atmosphere and the ocean begin on the ocean floor? That's kind of obvious, probably within— 

Aaron: Right, sea level’s pretty easy to find. Space level, less so. 

Max: Yeah, it's not like the atmosphere just ends at some point. It's more gradual. But there are certain places if I know my science correctly, I'm going to expose so much ignorance here. There are certain areas where the composition of the atmosphere actually changes. It's not that it gradually peters out as you go up, there are certain layers to it. Is that, am I correct?

Aaron: There is a layered nature but even within that, there are not hard dividing lines at certain altitudes. 

Max: Okay. 

Aaron: So there is the aforementioned Kármán line, which is at 100 kilometers. For those of us in America, that's about 62 miles above sea level. That's what the international community recognizes as the beginning of space, and the altitude that you need to go to to get your astronaut wings.

Max: So what happens at this line, is there something specific that changes when you go above this?

Aaron: No, you literally cross an imaginary line. That's what happens, as is hinted at by the fact that it's a nice convenient round number like 100 kilometers. 

Max: Okay. 

Aaron: In the United States, the FAA has a slightly different determination, they consider the beginning of space at 50 miles. That's the level at which they award cruise astronaut wings.

Max: So it sounds like they're going above that, but just below Kármán line?

Aaron: So in the case of Virgin Galactic— 

Max: Kármán line.

Aaron: I believe they are flying to over 50, but they are not hitting the 62-mile line. Whereas I believe that Jeff Bezos when he takes his flight, he is going to be going above that 62-mile marker. You have to consider the source. But an article we were looking at earlier—

Max: So this is still very close to the earth, like—?

Aaron: I mean, compared to the moon, absolutely.

Max: Compared to the moon. What about compared to like, where the International Space Station or something like that?

Aaron: Yeah. So I would have to double-check where that is. That is definitely higher because that is in a relatively stable orbit. Where they're going, you wouldn't be able to turn off the engines and stay there. If you do nothing you will reenter. I believe they're going to be doing a more intentional re-entry, they're not just going to be waiting for their orbit to decay. But they're still in enough atmosphere that gravity and drag would bring them back down naturally, one way or another. So this is very analogous to some of the earliest human spaceflight that was done by nation-states. 

Max: So they're still catching up.

Aaron: Yuri Gagarin, and was it Alan Shepard. I'm blanking— 

Max: John Glenn. 

Aaron: John Glenn. So I always forget which was first, and which, into space, and which was the first to orbit between Glenn and Shepard.

Max: Oh I don’t know.

Aaron: So Gagarin was first period, in space. But between Glenn and Shepard, one of them was the first to get into space. So basically matching the Gagarin achievement, and then the other was the first to actually complete a full orbit.

Max: So this is, they're catching up— Could it be that they're really catching up to tech from 1950s? Or are they just taking a completely different approach here? Was it something like, the tech from the 1950s was just seat of your pants, we're just gonna do whatever we can do to get this guy up here, whereas they're trying to do something a little more sustainable?

Aaron: Yes, and no. So at the most basic level, the technologies are different. Those 1960s flights. Actually, I don't know off the top of my head whether Gagarin was in the late 50s, I believe it was in the 60s. But that era, they were being flown in capsules, which did re-enter with minimal control and, kind of big tin cans, and then crashed into either the ocean where they were picked up, or I believe in the case of the Russians, into the desert. Both of these cases are going to be landing their craft. In the case of SpaceShip Two, which is the Virgin Galactic.

Max: Can I just say, first of all, just on a branding thing? SpaceShipOne was 15 years ago, they're still working on SpaceShip Two. Don't you think they would have moved on to version three or four? How many different iPhones have there been since then? 

Aaron: Well, so SpaceShip Two, and let me just double-check my notes here to make sure I'm getting this right. But yeah, so it is SpaceShip Two. I think they would not have moved on from the SpaceShipOne design if it had not been for the 2014 crash that resulted in a fatality of one of their test pilots, that resulted in a major redesign. That's not to say they haven't made minor and important changes to the design along the way. But going from SpaceShipOne to SpaceShip Two, I think was a major redesign as a result, of that.

Max: Well 2014, so that was a while ago. I feel like at the time, if I remember correctly, they were like, yeah, we're going to have our space tourism product industry set up in like 18 months, two years, and then that setback happens. People died. I believe it was one person in flight and one wasn't, one on the ground, or is it two?

Aaron: I think they had two test pilots on board to test. One was severely injured and the other was a fatality.

Max: Okay. Yeah. So this basically set back the industry 6, 7, 8 years. 

Aaron: Yeah, I think it's fair to say that they thought they were the point they were at then is about equivalent to where they were 6-12 months ago, given current progress. A person had flown on SpaceShipOne into at least past that 50-mile mark zone, so what the FAA determines to be space.

Max: They did it before, 10 years ago. 

Aaron: But they never brought a passenger. Okay. It only been I think when that happened, it was just the test pilot that was on board. 

Max: So now they have a passenger. I hate to say this, but it's not surprising that in a project like this, you'll get some of these kind of catastrophes that occur from time to time. Space is so dangerous

Aaron: That was the other thing, that the technology is dramatically different. Both vehicle types that we're talking about here are going to be landing themselves one, so SpaceShip Two is going to land somewhat more similar to the shuttle as a big glider; whereas the, I think it's the new Shepard capsule, that rides the top of the Blue Origin rocket that'll be landing more similar to the style of what we've seen with the SpaceX rockets.

Max: Wait, New Shepard, who is that? Is that Branson? Or is that Bezos?

Aaron: SpaceShip Two, which is also referred to—I think SpaceShip Two is the design class, Unity is the actual vehicle. So that is what Branson will be flying on. I believe New Shepard is the vehicle that Jeff Bezos will be flying. 

Max: Okay, so they're both doing it this month, both of them are flying, are going up in their own companies. 

Aaron: They're both going up as passengers. 

Max: So it's sort of like, it seems like, yeah, I mean, they've got skin in the game here.

Aaron: Yeah. They are not going to be the first passengers on board. I believe SpaceShip Two has flown with a passenger, I believe it was the head of the Virgin Galactic astronaut program, she flew with that. I think she was the first passenger. I believe, well, actually, I would have to double-check if the Blue Origin spacecraft have flown with passengers on board before. I believe they've had a manned test flight, but perhaps without passengers.

Max: Right. So to make this exciting, the fact that you've got two of these billionaires going up in the same month, Elon Musk is—

Aaron: He's nowhere to be seen here. 

Max: But he's in the game. But the media is framing this as a new space race, and it's probably, given the egos of these people. I mean, I love this quote from Branson in I think that was the Reuters article. Yes. “It's honestly not a race,” Branson told Reuters in an interview, “If it's a race,” and then I'm like, I'm gonna read the rest of it in a second. But I love how he starts. It's not a race, but if it were a race, I'm about to win, because I'm going in two days. 

But he said, “If it is a race, it's a race to produce wonderful spaceships that can make many more people be able to access space. I think that's both of our aims.” I think what he's trying to say is that it's not the kind of race that you might have had between the United States and the Soviet Union or something, trying for geopolitical reasons, but all of these guys want to be the first to get there and look, if you're trying to launch a tech product, of course, you want to be first. Most of the time.

Aaron: Yeah. There's a lot of cachet to be had here by hitting these targets. Just as a side saying, “It's not a race, but if it were a race I'd be winning.” is perhaps the most British way of stating that.

Max: Well, that's not literally what he said. I kind of filled him—

Aaron: I know, but it's, “I'm too much of a gentleman to say that I'm winning this race. But if I weren't such a gentleman, that is precisely what I would say.”

Max: Yeah, I guess so. 

Aaron: It's like the equivalent of someone saying a gentleman never kisses and tells. Because you don't say that when you haven't kissed and desired not to tell.

Max: Unless you want to give off the impression that you have.

Aaron: Both of these men, Branson somewhat more so than Bezos, but they're both very well availed of PR. But Branson has more of a history of both PR stunts, but also a history of adventuring. He attempted to circumnavigate the world in a balloon, which is very Jules Verne. He's attempted to set some, I think it was crossing the Atlantic in a speedboat records. He's done some of these adventurer-type things before, so this is not completely out of character for him, although he is much a much older man now than he was when he was doing that more frequently.

Max: Alright, let's see what else we have here. So the Virgin Launcher. First of all, they’re selling tickets here for little space rides. So let's see how much— so he sold 600 flight reservations at a quarter million a ticket $250,000 and hope it says here hopes to eventually slash the cost of each seat to $40,000. Another order of magnitude and you're getting within the realm of commercial spaceflight so—

Aaron: To be fair, another source I saw said that while the quarter-million dollars for a seat is the current ticket rate, there are expectations that as soon as this flight goes off safely, which, knock on wood, hopefully, it does, that they expect the price to double.

Max: By the time this goes out, people will know if it went off. 

Aaron: Although, to be fair, in spaceflight, it is not unusual for a launch to be scrubbed and delayed. So while it's scheduled for the 11th, I would not take a significant bet against there being a slip in the schedule. Because when safety of lives is at stake here, there is a strong bias towards if the weather doesn't cooperate, or if anything at all, in the preflight check goes wrong, they will push that out until they have removed all of the variables from the equation. 

Max: So I'm just gonna push this episode and see what happens because I feel like people are smart enough to figure it out, given where we are and given what happened.

Aaron: So you mentioned Virgin Launcher, which, I'm just gonna throw that out. So it's related to Virgin Galactic. In fact, they used to be under the same corporate umbrella until they split off a little bit because I believe Virgin Galactic actually went public through a spack in the last year. But Virgin Launcher is the side of the business specifically targeting satellite launches, so not passenger launches. It's using a very similar approach, which I don't know if we mentioned this. But, so SpaceShip Two is the actual vehicle that goes into space, but it does not launch from the ground like a rocket, it does not take off under its own power it gets cantilevered under a large aircraft, which is actually a cool double fuselage design, which then takes off flies up to, I believe it's 45,000 feet, and then releases the rocket, at which point they separate from each other, and then it turns on the engines and flies the rest of the way into space. So those of you who are familiar with the rocket equation, which I don't know how many of our listeners that is, but the—

Max: So I'm only tangentially familiar with it. So you might as well go into it. 

Aaron: I'm going to give the most simple approach, that you burn the most fuel getting the first little bit off the ground, and the further up you get, the less proportionally it takes. So they're having the airplane do the first heavy lifting up to basically the upper bounds of the commercial flight rounds, and that means that they can be much more efficient with the actual rocket-powered portion of the flight.

Max: I'm thinking the reason for that is that first of all, you're getting going so you have momentum to get up. At the bottom, you also have to you have to raise all the fuel that you're already you're going to use later as well as the payload. So yeah, that sounds about right. Makes a lot of sense. 

Aaron: This also means that they can take off and land from regular airports rather than a typical rocket launch center.

Max: Right. What about landing? Do they have to reconnect to the plane for landing?

Aaron: No, I believe SpaceShip Two lands in the style of a glider very similar to how the Space Shuttle worked, and that the Space Shuttle, except the Space Shuttle took off like a rocket, and then it landed like an airplane or a very large fire.

Max: This goes on on the back of an airplane, then launches from pretty high up.

Aaron: I think it's actually underneath the plane. 

Max: So how does it go? How does it—?

Aaron: It gets released, kind of like a bomb, and they glide away from each other and it turns on the rocket.

Max: All right. I was like, well, then how does it get above that without pushing the airplane up? Okay, I see. Maybe it will help if we see—

Aaron: Not like the Space Shuttle, which actually when they moved the Space Shuttle because frequently the Space Shuttle would launch from Florida and it would land out in California. So to get it back to the other side of the country, if necessary for launches, they would actually load that on top of a larger plane, I can't remember whether it was a 747 or it was a different Boeing aircraft, but it would fly mounted on top of, which which is a bizarre-looking configuration. 

Max: Okay. You have a little bit, some notes here saying that you have some personal connection. 

Aaron: Oh, yeah. So a little disclosure. So I do work, part of my professional work is in the space business. So a number of these companies I have direct or tangential connections to. I did some work a number of years back with the folks at what is now Virgin Launcher, trying to integrate some network technology into their launch vehicle. I have a current professional relationship with some folks over at Blue Origin. 

Okay, so disclosing that. This private space business is kind of incestuous in a way that I have a number of classmates or people I've collaborated with, who have worked at SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and then also Strata Launcher. 

Max: Who’s the Space X?

Aaron: They kind of move all around. SpaceX is Musk. 

Max: Okay, SpaceX is Musk.

Aaron: Which is not in this current launch batch.

Max: Blue Origin is—

Aaron: —is Bezos. 

Max: Okay, that's gonna take a long time to keep all of these—

Aaron: The other thing that we didn't mention in our kickoff here is that Bezos taking this flight, I think it's along with his brother and also one of the original Mercury 13 female astronaut candidates, this is in the wake of him stepping down from the CEO role at Amazon. There's some speculation, was a major motivator for that move, that he wants to be able to dedicate more of his focus to, this competition with Musk and I think if you ask Musk and Bezos, Branson is kind of a latecomer also ran, he's not really competing in the same market as them.

Max: Who are they talking about? 

Aaron: So I'd say that's their opinion of Branson because he's going for this low—

Max: Even though he's been in on this for a while. He's doing this for like 20 years.

Aaron: He's not a latecomer in that sense. He's absolutely had this objective for a long time. But they're both looking at, okay, we're gonna do some low Earth orbit and some tourism stuff. But our real objective is the heavy lift, heavy launch into higher and further orbits, you're talking about missions to the moon, possibly missions to other planets, that is very much a focus of their capability suite. That is nowhere on Virgin Galactic’s agenda to my knowledge. If there's the opportunity for a hotel on the moon, I'm sure that Branson will be heavily invested in that, but he's not pushing for moon missions anytime soon.

Max: Do any of these people have a business model like are they just gonna sell tickets that you could be weightless for 10 seconds and you're probably not going to be in good shape when you get up there. You're going to be so discombobulated, you probably won't be able to enjoy it. What exactly are—?

Aaron: These are short flights, and I think the tourism piece is going to remain that for a while. There was some preliminary research work done by another billionaire, I think it was Bigelow. Bigelow Aerospace, looking at setting up some sort of space hotel in orbit, which I think would be very much on-brand for collaboration with Branson. But I think that's a ways off still. 

Max: Yeah. I mean, we used to talked about this 15 years ago, and it was like, “Well, this is a ways off.” But by a ways off, I always thought, well, 15 years, we'd be a lot closer, I guess we are a lot closer, but still no specific product on the mass market scale or even— I mean, look, it's not gonna be mass-market scale for a while. But, I mean, you don't even have a few extremely wealthy individuals going into some kind of space hotel, but hey, maybe that could happen in the near future. What about that space elevator idea? I guess that wasn't going to happen for a while.

Aaron: Yeah, that's going to require some dramatic material restrictions still, to see if that materializes.

Max: That would be better to get to the hotel, I think. All of this is very not in the cards for the near future. Maybe in 100 years or so.

Aaron: I think the tourism bit is kind of a side gig of publicity, maybe a way for some additional income and a sustaining business. But the real cash cow right now, at least for Musk, and Bezos is commercial applications, not consumer applications. So selling to the national space agencies and to large corporations for the capability of putting things in orbit.

Max: So what kind of things would you want to put into orbit like satellites? 

Aaron: So yeah, that's where the Virgin Launcher’s coming in with their launcher one. They can put satellites into low orbit. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are aggressively pursuing that field. I know that SpaceX and Blue Origin were both big players in pursuing the contracts for the next lunar lander. Contracts that were given to SpaceX, but are currently being protested by the national team, which Blue Origin is part of. So they're going after the government market as well as commercial needs to put things in orbit. There is not as of yet a commercial industrial use for space. No private companies are setting up mining camps on asteroids or the moon. But that's the type of stuff they talk about in the medium to long term perspectives,

Max: Right, there's always this idea that “Oh, you're going to mine a space asteroid.” There’s people saying that—

Aaron: If you could get helium stores, helium three on the moon, that could be a major energy resource. Although it's a little bit of a self-perpetuating thing that the most efficient use of that helium three on the moon would be for refueling rockets for going further. So it's not really a resource you would bring back to Earth necessarily.

Max: It seems like, some people talk about mining precious metals in space, but it seems to me that at least for the time being, if you want more of those precious metals, it's gonna be a lot more cost-effective to just get them here on Earth than to mine them in space. But who knows?

Aaron: It depends on the scale you're talking about. I feel like it was not that long ago, they talked about an asteroid that they discovered that had more gold on it than on the entire planet Earth, right? 

Max: But getting it is would be—

Aaron: Right. Right now, it is still nontrivial to—

Max: You can't literally just take the— even if you can land there, you can't just take the whole thing down with you, you have to probably get bits of it at a time, bring them back, and then purify that and who knows, when it, what do you have to do? 

Aaron: Well, so that brings the other piece of the equation in here, which is, a lot of people have said this space race is stupid, it's a bunch of millionaires just, you know, measuring their egos against each other.

Max: Excuse me, billionaires. 

Aaron: Thank you for correcting me. No trillionaires yet, but they're working on it. Which is not incorrect. That is definitely a piece of it. However, there is a reason that we should be excited about this other than just space is cool, and we get to watch this. It's that they are dramatically driving down the cost of putting things into space. You may say, I don't care about space tourism, I don't care how much it costs to put people into space. But things that you use every day are influenced by the cost of putting things in the space. As we mentioned before, satellites. 

It's huge for communications, your cable television you watch, the internet you use, the cell phone communication you do. It all has some tie-in to satellites at some point, GPS signals. So the cheaper they can do that, the more effective that can be, and we don't need to get into the Starlink internet network right now. But that's directly tied into SpaceX’s mission that, not only are they running it, but also their launcher has allowed them to put all those satellites into place, and there may be some interesting synergies they're planning to leverage out of there. 

But the fundamental thing is that this is driving down the cost of moving things into space. So just as an example, I looked up some numbers before we were recording for what the cost to put things into low Earth orbit would be, and in current fiscal year, 2021, dollars. If you were to use the space shuttle, which, yes, the NASA space shuttle was retired, so you could actually do it today, but when it was operating, it would cost you $65,400 per kilogram to put cargo into orbit. When the space shuttle went out of business, we shifted to, for all of our moving personnel and equipment up to the International Space Station, the US government started contracting out to Russia to use their Soyuz spacecraft, which is a capsule-based system that dates back to the USSR. That cost only a dramatic price decrease of $70,900 per kilogram. 

Dramatic drop. They're still the same order of magnitude but several, several multiples less. Falcon Nine, which is the current SpaceX launcher that they're using for moving not just cargo but also people, up to the Space Station because earlier this year, they delivered a crew. I think they've done that twice now. That costs only $2,600 per kilogram so that's a full order of magnitude less. So that is the main—

Max: $2,600, so from like, what was it? 

Aaron: From over $65,000 a kilogram to under $2,600. So that's a huge decrease in cost, and that doesn't take into account things like the fact that with the reusable launchers, they not only have the ability to deliver stuff to the space station, but they can also bring stuff back, that they can turn these around on, have them on the launchpad in a matter of weeks, if not days. There's major innovations happening there in the logistics chain, and the overall cost-efficiency. That is a huge development. If you're at all interested in establishing a prolonged presence on the moon, or on Mars, or even just in orbit. There's some cool scientific things that can be done if even if we never go beyond low Earth orbit. Having the cost to move cargo back and forth as low as possible is a huge game there. So if we have to put up with some obnoxious egos to get there, I think that's a cost well worth paying.

Max: Well, sometimes obnoxious egos, you could channel them in an appropriate way. You can get some stuff done. It's better than the alternative because obnoxious egos are kind of going to be there no matter what.

Aaron: Yeah, the one person who's conspicuously absent from the space race is our friend over at Facebook. I think—

Max: You talking about Mark Zuckerberg?

Aaron: I think if Zuckerberg got involved.

Max: He had the flag, in the what was that? I should just take it out like this. It was in the—

Aaron: His little Fourth of July, it was on Instagram—

Max: —jetski. Way bigger flag than the one I had. It was like woohoo America. Okay.

Aaron: He is not involved in the space race to my knowledge. But maybe if he were to follow in Bezos’s footsteps and step down from Facebook and focus his efforts on another sector like that, that could improve his image dramatically. Or it may just be another reason to hate him. I don’t know.

Max: Another one who’s missing, Bill Gates you think would be into this. Paul Allen has done some stuff in this area, although I am not too familiar with what—

Aaron: I mentioned StratoLauncher earlier because I have a colleague who's working there now. But I think—

Max: Is it Paul Allen?

Aaron: Yeah, he was involved in that. I think they're much more along the lines of what Virgin Launcher, or I'm completely blanking on the proper name for it now, yeah, the Virgin Launcher business was was focusing on. They're doing a similar I think it's launched from aircraft but, you know, hypersonic to space, low orbit vehicles.

Max: Okay. Cool. So you also have something else written here about supply missions being cheaper as well.

Aaron: Yeah. So these numbers are a little dated, because it goes back to 2018. When we just—

Max: We just talk about the price of putting something in orbits, this is the price of supplying.

Aaron: This is looking at that on a per mission basis for resupply flights to the ISS, rather than breaking it down on a per kilogram basis, because—

Max: Is the ISS is still around? I thought it was falling.

Aaron: There's still I think at least three astronauts are, well, no combination of astronauts and cosmonauts. 

Max: It was Mir that was—

Aaron: Mir was, I think Mir was bought privately, but then eventually was deorbited.

Max: Yeah. Then it fell from the sky, right? 

Aaron: Yep.  So the ISS is still in orbit. They have to make adjustments to it. They have to reduce it occasionally. But it's still up there.

Max: All right. Very cool. Okay. So I think, well, there's a lot to think of on this. Thank you for telling us more about it. I'm really interested in this. Who knows, maybe one day one of us will get into space. I don't know if you'd be interested in going. I certainly would think twice about it, but I would consider it.

Aaron: Yeah, it's something that I will definitely be interested in, considering I did apply to the astronaut program once upon a time. I was rejected. I have that rejection letter in a folder somewhere. I think it might be a hard sell to the family. For the same reason I gave up flying and skydiving, I may not be able to go into space. 

Max: Alright, so since we can't go into space, what is happening with this Slovakian flying car that I saw in the New York Post? Probably not nearly as dramatic. So apparently, there is this company that's coming out with a flying car based out of Slovakia. It was on the news recently, just The Post. I don't even think it made any—

Aaron: I've seen it mentioned in a number of places. It's all being sourced from the same article. 

Max: Probably. Anyway, they did an intercity flight from, I don't know if I pronounced this but from Nitra to Bratislava, and Bratislava is a little bit east of Vienna. It's called a roadable aircraft, so it's not called a flying car. It's basically a driving plane; roadable aircraft. So it sounds like you, just the wings kind of fold back and you're allowed to just drive it on the street or something like that. 

Aaron: Right. 

Max: As you point out, this is this particular car’s first intercity flight, but this is not the first time a “flying car,” which is really just a small airplane has flown between cities. These things make the news quite every few years, you get some something like this make the news, but is this something that the average person could theoretically use someday because it seems just insane to put this in the hands of the same people who are driving. Particularly when I drive across the border of Massachusetts here. You don't want those people, I don't think you want those people from Boston up in the skies.

Aaron: Yeah. So this actually calls back to I think it was Episode 163, where we talked about flying cars, in particular, because of a law—

Max: Oh, that was up here in New Hampshire? 

Aaron: —that was passed in New Hampshire.

Max: I haven't seen any flying cars, by the way.

Aaron: I think, even if there are some out there, you're not going to see them anytime soon because there are so few of them. It's kind of a base rate thing. On the one hand, this is exciting because more flying cars, I think this is a technology that needs to be debugged just like the more companies are working on the self-driving car thing, the closer we are to finding a viable solution—

Max: But that seems awfully close compared to this.

Aaron: Well, yes and no. I think this is something that, if you have a significant amount of disposable income, you will be able to go out and buy one of these in the next under five years. I think so. Part of the reason that I caveat at this story is that it's a little misleading. They are technically correct when they say flying car completes first intercity test flight. What they didn't say is flying car completes the first intercity test flight, because it is the first intercity test flight for this particular type of flying car. 

So correct in that sense, but other flying cars have completed intercity test flights, notably in the US, Terrafugia. Early this year in January, they got their— 

Max: That's a cool other plane. Sorry, car. I don’t know what that’s called, a plane or car.

Aaron: —light-sport aircraft for airworthiness certification. Yeah, so again, they're very much they are certified as an airplane. But the objective is to get it dual-certified so that you can also drive it on the road. Right now a general aviation, a private aircraft, your entry-level is looking, you could go real cheap and get one for under 100k. But if you want something new manufactured, you're looking at like quarter of a million, and these are in these quarter to half million band, I think, for the type of investment you'd be making. But unlike a fully autonomous self-driving car, I think you can actually go out and do that in the next couple of years here. Are you going to see the roads full of them? I don't think so. 

Max: Well, especially since they fly, I don't think any of them should be on the road.

Aaron: Nor are you going to be looking up in the sky and seeing them anytime soon, either. Whereas when the big breakthrough happens with self-driving cars, I think there's going to be an explosion of them.

Max: So do you know the answer to this question: Are you supposed to drive these things above the existing highways or are you supposed to drive in current flight paths, regular airplanes—

Aaron: When they're in the air, they're treated as aircraft, and when on the road, they're treated as as as automobiles. These are not vertical takeoff and landing. So you have to drive to an airport to take off and land at another airport and then drive off in them. I think we talked about it a little bit the last time, this avoids the need of, I'm going to get in my private airplane and fly to another airport, and then I need to rent a car to get around in the city, and then I can fly back home and then get my car and drive to my house.

Max: So even if you're traveling in style these days, you still have to have several different steps and I always find it very luxurious, almost whenever I cut out a step like getting your car here, I cut out a step to a lot of public transportation, makes things a lot easier. Here you could drive to an airport, I could even drive to a small private airport which, it's not like driving to the major airport you could drive probably close by a lot of these things, and then take off and then go where you want to go, although you probably need some training on how to fly it. Although people do that, people learn that.

Aaron: The other thing about this light sport, airworthiness certification it is a class of aircraft and I believe a class of license which is if not easier to achieve, easier to maintain. I know with a—

Max: Than a driver’s license? 

Aaron: Well, certainly the driver's license but even compared to a regular private pilot's license, because one of the things about a private pilot's license is it requires you to have periodic medical examinations to maintain your airworthiness. Pilots, like many hobbies, are an aging group. When you hit a certain age, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain that. Whereas the requirements for a light-sport aircraft license are less rigorous. So targeting this specific band of aircraft means that not only are they easier to certify for that from the aircraft/vehicle manufacturer perspective, but also that it's easy for prospective pilots to get and maintain their certification.

Max: So one of the funny things I found about moving here to New Hampshire is that now I drive to the supermarket, which is like the same distance as the supermarket was in Brooklyn where I walked. But now I'm picturing, why don't we just fly there? I'm just kidding. 

Aaron: Well, if you got a drone or a helicopter, and you're able to just take off on the roof, that that wouldn't be so ridiculous. I think that's part of the appeal. Like you were saying, the more steps you can cut out. If you can do door to door with minimal transitions, that's attractive, even if this particular vehicle is not really going to accomplish that for the masses in a reasonable way.

Max: A detachable drone to look ahead or to pick things up. I'm just coming up with ideas here. Alright, so look, maybe I'm not taking this as seriously as it should be taken. But it'd be cool to have it one day. It says here at the end, the prototype cost about 2.3 million, that doesn't really mean much, because a prototype for a new car could cost millions, and then they get the cost down when they mass produce it. It's really interesting stuff. Maybe we will get off the ground in the future in many ways, whether it's space or in some kind of Jetsons-like flying car, we're still waiting. Aaron, any last thoughts before we wrap up for today?

Aaron: I'm going to be eagerly watching to see the results from the billionaire Space Race. Yes. Also watching to see how that trickles down. 

Max: There is, well, I'm not going to announce the live stream because by the time this goes out, the live stream is over. But there is a live stream I believe on, just in case it’s—

Aaron: Is this one that Colbert is going to be hosting? 

Max: Colbert is hosting?

Aaron: I saw something about that. Don't quote me on it.

Max: Okay, well, anyway, I will look up the live stream for the Virgin Galactic launch on Sunday. Or if it doesn't happen Sunday, it'll happen after. I'm sure there'll be one for Bezos as well. So, yeah, this is exciting. I always like watching this stuff. Alright. Great. I think that's all we have for today. There's so many things I could talk about next week.

Aaron: I got it right here. We'll include the link in the episode. But yes, Stephen Colbert will be hosting the Virgin Galactic live stream of the launch.

Max: Okay. Oh, but that will be over by the time this comes out. But all right, well, good enough. I'm also trying to find one for Bezos as well. All right, what do we have in the next couple of weeks? I'm going to try to do maybe a solo show. You could join me.

Aaron: You mentioned you were going to talk a little bit about some of the things that you discussed up at the PorcFest? 

Max: Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. There's a lot of interesting things in terms of political theory, I guess. Well, we talked last week about ranked-choice voting. It turns out that Eric Adams did win that so we already analyzed that to death. So definitely check out last week if you're interested in that. But the idea of constitutions in general and also the idea of, how you set up the game, and it's not just for government, but for any organization, like in a corporation too, or in crypto, how you set up the rules of the game, I think is very important to how the game turns out and so that's, that's a design project in and of itself. So I do want to talk more about that kind of thing. Where we set the rules of decision-making.

Aaron: I’m already thinking about the decision they callbacks to some of the things we discussed in the context of Coinbase and Basecamp, and how they set up the rules for running their companies, and that affected outcomes.

Max: Right, right. So there, it's not like a specific, “Oh, Person A gets to decide this and person B gets to decide this.” It's more like a cultural thing. But that's important, too. So we can continue with that as well. All right. So yeah, yeah, lots of stuff. Definitely check out the Locals, www.maximum.locals.com, and talk to us. Aaron, thank you for being so involved in that group. We have some good discussions on there. Also the website, www.localmaxradio.com. All right. Have a great week, everyone. 

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