Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: Sometime in the next ten years, the most expensive machine
Speaker 2: ever built by humanity is going to be deliberately pushed
Speaker 2: out of the sky.
Speaker 3: It really is wild to think about, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I want you to just picture the sheer
Speaker 2: scale of this event. We are talking about a four
Speaker 2: hundred ton titanium and aluminum behemoth.
Speaker 3: Roughly the size of a football field.
Speaker 2: Exactly a football field, that has been flying two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty miles above our heads for over two.
Speaker 3: Decades, traveling at you know, seventeen five hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is just insane. And it's going to fire
Speaker 2: its thrusters one last time, altering its trajectory so it
Speaker 2: just it slams right into the Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 3: And most of it will vaporize into plasma on the
Speaker 3: way down.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a meteor shower of our own making.
Speaker 2: And whatever actually survives that apocalyptic re entry is going
Speaker 2: to crash into a remote stretch of the Pacific Ocean. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, point Nemo, the spacecraft graveyard.
Speaker 2: Point Nemo. Right, And that is exactly how the International
Speaker 2: Space Station ends. But the thing we really need to
Speaker 2: focus on today, the real story here is what replaces.
Speaker 3: It, because it's not going to be what most people think.
Speaker 2: No, it's not what takes over That orbital real estate
Speaker 2: won't be built by NASA or the European Space Agency
Speaker 2: or ross Cosmos.
Speaker 3: It's going to be private industry.
Speaker 2: Today, our mission is to explore this profound transformation happening
Speaker 2: right above our heads. We are stepping into the dawn
Speaker 2: of the commercial orbital economy.
Speaker 3: It's a complete regime change, it really is.
Speaker 2: And look, if you aren't an aerospace engineer or like
Speaker 2: a billionaire, the idea of bus this is operating in
Speaker 2: space probably feels totally disconnected from your daily life.
Speaker 3: It sounds like pure science fiction, honestly, right.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a movie. Yeah, But I want you
Speaker 2: to imagine a reality where low Earth orbit operates like
Speaker 2: a high tech industrial park.
Speaker 3: With actual storefronts and manufacturing plants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a place where entirely new classes of life saving
Speaker 2: medicines are made, where materials we can't make on Earth
Speaker 2: are manufactured, and where people just you know, go for vacation.
Speaker 3: And this matters to you because this is the foundational
Speaker 3: layer of a much larger off world economy.
Speaker 2: Exactly, the materials in tech that come down from those
Speaker 2: orbital factories are going to embed themselves in our global
Speaker 2: supply chains. It's going to fundamentally alter Earth's markets.
Speaker 3: But to really grasp how this commercial orbital economy is
Speaker 3: going to work, we have to look backward for a second.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. How did we get here?
Speaker 3: Well, we have to diagnose why it took so incredibly
Speaker 3: long to happen. I mean, why was space entirely closed
Speaker 3: off to private enterprise for the entire twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Why were there no space startups in the eighties?
Speaker 3: Exactly? And it basically comes down to a very unforgiving concept,
Speaker 3: which is the economics of gravity.
Speaker 2: Let's unpack the physics of that a bit, because the
Speaker 2: sheer amount of energy required to fight Earth's gravity, well
Speaker 2: is it's hard to wrap your head around.
Speaker 3: It's not just about going up right, that's the common misconception.
Speaker 2: Right, going up is the easy part. It's about going sideways.
Speaker 3: Yes, you have to go sideways so incredibly fast that
Speaker 3: as you fall back toward Earth, you just keep missing it.
Speaker 2: That's orbit in a nutshell, falling and missing the ground exactly.
Speaker 3: And to achieve low Earth orbit, your vehicle has to
Speaker 3: accelerate to roughly seventeen thousand, five hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 2: Which is mind boggling speed it is.
Speaker 3: And achieving that velocity means your vehicle has to be
Speaker 3: essentially ninety percent highly explosive propellant by mass.
Speaker 2: Basically a giant bomb that you're carefully directing out the bottom.
Speaker 3: That's a very accurate description. The engineering tolerances required to
Speaker 3: maintain that kind of controlled explosion are incredibly narrow.
Speaker 2: You can't have a bad day at the office when
Speaker 2: you're building a rocket engine.
Speaker 3: No, you really can't. And historically the only reason anyone
Speaker 3: bothered to develop that crazy capability was the Cold War.
Speaker 2: The military industrial complex.
Speaker 3: Right, the entire foundation of spaceflight wasn't born out of
Speaker 3: some altruistic scientific curiosity or desire to build a free
Speaker 3: market in space.
Speaker 2: It wasn't about exploring the stars for the good of humanity,
Speaker 2: not at its core.
Speaker 3: No, it was born out of a desperate existential military competition.
Speaker 2: Because developing a rocket capable of putting a satellite in
Speaker 2: orbit is mathematically identical to something much darker.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is mechanically and mathematically identical to developing an
Speaker 3: intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead across
Speaker 3: the globe.
Speaker 2: Wow. So when the goal is to prove to a
Speaker 2: rival superpower that you own the technological high ground, you
Speaker 2: really do not care about your profit margin.
Speaker 3: You don't care about cost efficiency at all. Just throw
Speaker 3: billions and billions of dollars at the problem until it works.
Speaker 2: The economics of a sustainable business just completely did not
Speaker 2: factor into the blueprints.
Speaker 3: Not even a little bit, and that created a paradigm
Speaker 3: where getting a single kilogram of payload into orbit costs
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2: Which completely prices out normal businesses totally.
Speaker 3: At those prices, the only viable cargo is, you know,
Speaker 3: a multimillion dollar spice satellite or a massive government science experiment.
Speaker 2: You can't build a business when your shipping cost exceed
Speaker 2: the value of your actual product by a factor of
Speaker 2: a thousand.
Speaker 3: It's economically impossible.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes total sense. And that absurdly expensive paradigm
Speaker 2: lasted for decades. But then the physical architecture of the
Speaker 2: rockets actually changed.
Speaker 3: Yes, and this is the catalyst for everything happening now.
Speaker 2: I want to use an analogy here because it highlights
Speaker 2: just how broken that old system was.
Speaker 3: JILLBD.
Speaker 2: For the first fifty years of spaceflight, going to orbit
Speaker 2: was like building a state of the art, multimillion dollar
Speaker 2: luxury cruise ship, loading it up with a few passengers
Speaker 2: and a tiny bit of cargo, taking one single voyage
Speaker 2: across the ocean, and then literally just deliberately sinking the
Speaker 2: entire ship at the end of the trip.
Speaker 3: It sounds insane when you say it like.
Speaker 2: That, right, if you wanted to go back across the ocean,
Speaker 2: you had to build a brand new, multimillion dollar ship
Speaker 2: from scratch.
Speaker 3: And obviously nobody would ever buy a ticket for a
Speaker 3: terrestrial transportation system that operated that way.
Speaker 2: The ticket price would have to cover the entire construction
Speaker 2: cost of the vehicle exactly.
Speaker 3: But that is literally what we did with rockets for
Speaker 3: half a century. We threw them in the ocean.
Speaker 2: It's so wasteful.
Speaker 3: But the catalyst that changed everything over the last decade
Speaker 3: was the development of reusable rocket.
Speaker 2: Systems, where companies finally figured out how to land the
Speaker 2: first stage of the rocket back on Earth.
Speaker 3: Yes, the biggest, most expensive part of the rocket, the
Speaker 3: part with the main engines. They land it, refurbish it,
Speaker 3: and fly it again.
Speaker 2: They took the disposable cruise ship and turned it into
Speaker 2: a ferry system.
Speaker 3: That's the perfect way look at it. You build the
Speaker 3: ferry once and you just run it back and forth,
Speaker 3: paying primarily for the fuel and the maintenance.
Speaker 2: And fuel is actually relatively cheap compared to the rocket itself, right.
Speaker 3: Very cheap. The economic impact of reusability just cannot be
Speaker 3: overstated here. It caused launch costs to absolutely freefall.
Speaker 2: We're seeing prices drop by orders of magnitude.
Speaker 3: Far beyond what legacy aerospace engineers believed was physically or
Speaker 3: economically possible.
Speaker 2: They thought it couldn't be done. But the private sector
Speaker 2: didn't stop at merely building cheaper delivery trucks, did they.
Speaker 3: No, they didn't. The true turning point where you are
Speaker 3: experiencing right now is that private aerospace companies are increasingly
Speaker 3: capable of engineering the entire orbital.
Speaker 2: Ecosystem, meaning they aren't just dropping off NASA's cargo anymore.
Speaker 2: They are literally building the destinations.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and this is a huge leap. For half a century,
Speaker 3: the ability to keep human beings alive in the lethal
Speaker 3: vacuum of space was considered the absolute pinnacle of national power.
Speaker 2: Because base actively wants to kill you.
Speaker 3: Every single second. Developing an environmental control and life support system,
Speaker 3: what we call on ECLSS, is incredibly hard.
Speaker 2: Right, because you have to scrub the carbon dioxide so
Speaker 2: people don't suffocate, yes.
Speaker 3: And recycle moisture from human breath and sweat into drinkable water,
Speaker 3: and regulate extreme thermal swings.
Speaker 2: Is essentially building a perfect miniature Earth pretty much.
Speaker 3: And that was the exclusive, highly classified domain of agencies
Speaker 3: like NASA and ross Cosmos.
Speaker 2: But now private corporations are mastering these technologies.
Speaker 3: They are they are building their own crew capsules, their
Speaker 3: own life support architecture, and their own docking sensors.
Speaker 2: Which is wild. Yeah, the technologies that used to define
Speaker 2: a global superpower are now basically off the shelf.
Speaker 3: Commercial products, well, highly specialized commercial products, but.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, So if the ferries are running cheaply and
Speaker 2: private companies have figured out how to build the habitats,
Speaker 2: who is actually constructing the real estate to replace the ISS.
Speaker 3: We are watching a heavily capitalized, intense race to build
Speaker 3: the first generation of privately operated orbital stations, and.
Speaker 2: The architecture of these new stations is completely different from
Speaker 2: the ISS.
Speaker 3: Right, completely different. The ISS is at its core, an isolated,
Speaker 3: bespoke scientific laboratory.
Speaker 2: It looks like a giant science experiment.
Speaker 3: It basically is. But these new platforms are being designed
Speaker 3: from the ground up as mixed use orbital business parks.
Speaker 2: Mixed use like a zoning law.
Speaker 3: In space exactly. They are explicitly intended to support manufacturing,
Speaker 3: commercial research, media production, and tourism all at the same time.
Speaker 2: One of the strategies for actually getting these things built
Speaker 2: is fascinating to me, and honestly, it's a bit bizarre.
Speaker 3: You're talking about Axiom Space, aren't you, Yes.
Speaker 2: Because building a space station from scratch and hoping it
Speaker 2: works perfectly on day one in a vacuum is incredibly risky.
Speaker 3: It's an immense financial and technical risk.
Speaker 2: So Axiom Space is doing something I can only describe
Speaker 2: as a hermit crab maneuver.
Speaker 3: Out analogy is actually highly accurate.
Speaker 2: Break down how that works because it's brilliant.
Speaker 3: So Axiom strategy is to avoid launching a standalone, unproven
Speaker 3: station into the void all at once. Instead, they are
Speaker 3: leveraging the existing multi billion dollar infrastructure of the ISS.
Speaker 2: The negotiated agreements to launch their own privately built commercial
Speaker 2: modules and just physically dock them to the International Space Station.
Speaker 3: Right, they are literally just plugging into the wall.
Speaker 2: That is so smart. They're using the ISS as massive
Speaker 2: solar arrays for power.
Speaker 3: YEP and it's communication dishes to talk.
Speaker 2: To Earth, and the gyroscopes to keep everything stable. They're
Speaker 2: using the larger shell for protection and resources while they.
Speaker 3: Grow exactly like a hermit crab. They can fly up
Speaker 3: corporate research teams or private astronauts, park them in a
Speaker 3: Axiom module, but rely on the ISS for the heavy lifting.
Speaker 2: It mitigates so much early stage developmental risk.
Speaker 3: It really does. It provides a transitional bridge between the
Speaker 3: government dominated era and the commercial era.
Speaker 2: There is a secondary phase to this strategy rg.
Speaker 3: Yes, as they add more modules, so more habitats, research labs,
Speaker 3: their own power systems. The Axiom segment will eventually gain
Speaker 3: its own critical mass.
Speaker 2: It will become self sufficient.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, I see a massive ticking clock here, though,
Speaker 2: what's that? We started this conversation by saying the ISS
Speaker 2: is going to be crashed into the ocean in less
Speaker 2: than ten years. We did so. If Axiom is physically
Speaker 2: bolted to a dying space station, what happens when NASA
Speaker 2: finally decides to pull the plug. Does the hermit crab
Speaker 2: go down with the shell?
Speaker 3: No? And that is the elegance of the plan. Shortly
Speaker 3: before the ISS is decommissioned and begins its final destructive descent,
Speaker 3: the entire Axiom commercial segment will simply detach.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it just unhooks itself.
Speaker 3: It will undock fire its own thrusters, separate from the
Speaker 3: legacy hardware, and become an independent, free flying commercial space station.
Speaker 2: That is wild. It literally just walks away from the explosion.
Speaker 3: Basically, yes, but Axiom.
Speaker 2: Isn't the only player in this game. The scale of
Speaker 2: some of the other proposals is just massive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have to look at concepts like blue Origins
Speaker 3: Orbital Reef for example.
Speaker 2: Orbital Reef such a cool name.
Speaker 3: It is, and there are architectures being developed by Voyager
Speaker 3: Space and legacy defense contractors like Northrop Grumman two.
Speaker 2: And Blue Origin specifically uses the terminology of a mixed
Speaker 2: use business park.
Speaker 3: Right they do. They envision a massive, scalable structure with
Speaker 3: modular leasing options.
Speaker 2: Imagine signing a commercial lease where your primary concern is
Speaker 2: micrometeoroid insurance.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a whole new world of real estate.
Speaker 2: But this shift from the ISS to something called an
Speaker 2: orbital reef is a huge philosophical pivot in what way. Well,
Speaker 2: the ISS was an instrument of diplomacy, right. It was
Speaker 2: designed to force rival nations, specifically the US and Russia
Speaker 2: after the Cold War, to work together.
Speaker 3: To inextricably link their hardware, so they had to cooperate
Speaker 3: to survive exactly.
Speaker 2: Its currency was international goodwill. But these new stations, their
Speaker 2: currency is literally just currency.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right. It is a transition from geopolitical diplomacy
Speaker 3: to raw market capitalism.
Speaker 2: The survival of an orbital reef doesn't depend on international treaties,
Speaker 2: not at all.
Speaker 3: It depends on profitability, scalability, and market.
Speaker 2: Demand, which means if they don't secure tenants, the station
Speaker 2: goes bankrupt and just becomes orbital debris.
Speaker 3: It's high stakes, very high stakes, which.
Speaker 2: Demands we answer the multi billion dollar question here.
Speaker 3: Why why go to space?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Why would a company on Earth go through the immense,
Speaker 2: dangerous and incredibly expensive hassle of operating a factory in space?
Speaker 2: What is the actual market advantage?
Speaker 3: The advantage lies entirely in the bizarre physics of microgravity.
Speaker 2: Okay, I need you to break that down, because when
Speaker 2: people think of zero gravity, they just think of astronauts
Speaker 2: doing flips and catching floating droplets of water with their.
Speaker 3: Mouths, right, the fun stuff.
Speaker 2: How does floating around translate to industrial manufacturing.
Speaker 3: Well, when you remove the constant, crushing downward force of
Speaker 3: Earth's gravity, physical and biological processes behave in radically different ways.
Speaker 3: How different The implications for heavy industry, advanced materials, manufacturing,
Speaker 3: and medicine are honestly staggering.
Speaker 2: Let's get specific. Give me an example of something we
Speaker 2: can make in space that we can't make here.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's look at the microscopic level, specifically, advanced fiber.
Speaker 2: Optics, the stuff that runs the Internet.
Speaker 3: Yes, currently the backbone of the global Internet relies on
Speaker 3: silica glass fiber optic cables. Okay, they are highly efficient,
Speaker 3: but they suffer from signal degradation over long distances. You
Speaker 3: constantly need repeaters to boost the light signal.
Speaker 2: Because the glass isn't perfectly clear.
Speaker 3: Essentially, yes, but there is a theoretical material called z blan.
Speaker 2: Z blan what is that.
Speaker 3: It's a type of heavy metal fluoride glass and it
Speaker 3: could transmit data with incredibly low signal loss, far far
Speaker 3: out performing standard silica.
Speaker 2: So why aren't we laying z bland cables across the
Speaker 2: ocean right now?
Speaker 3: Because of gravity?
Speaker 2: Gravity ruins the glass.
Speaker 3: It does when you try to manufacture z bland on Earth.
Speaker 3: The heating and cooling process is subjected to gravity induced
Speaker 3: convection currents.
Speaker 2: Convection like how hot air rises and cold air sinks.
Speaker 3: Exactly that, But inside molten glass, as the material cools,
Speaker 3: the heavier elements subtle to the bottom and microscopic convection
Speaker 3: loops cause the glass to crystallize.
Speaker 2: And crystals are bad for fiber optics, very bad.
Speaker 3: Those microscopic crystals scatter the light passing through the cable,
Speaker 3: completely ruining its transmission properties.
Speaker 2: But if you manufacture z blan. In a microgravity environment,
Speaker 2: there is no up or down, so there's no convection.
Speaker 3: Precisely, or rather, the convective forces are practically eliminated. The
Speaker 3: glass cools into a perfectly amorphous solid. Without those microscopic crystals,
Speaker 3: you can pull a flawless optical fiber. The resulting cable
Speaker 3: can transmit data over vast distances with almost zero signal loss.
Speaker 2: That is incredible.
Speaker 3: And the same principle of eliminating gravity induced convection and
Speaker 3: sedimentation applies to manufacturing pristine semiconductor lattices for microchips.
Speaker 2: So for a massive tech giant, the astronomical cost of
Speaker 2: sending raw materials up to a commercial space station, paying
Speaker 2: for robotic manufacturing time, and flying the finished product back
Speaker 2: down to Earth, it's actually worth.
Speaker 3: It because the product physically cannot exist otherwise. It's that
Speaker 3: vastly superior.
Speaker 2: That is the economic calculus currently being modeled.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it extends far beyond material science. It reaches
Speaker 3: deeply into the pharmaceutical.
Speaker 2: Industry, medicine in space. This is where it gets really
Speaker 2: sci fi.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it, but it's very real. Let's examine
Speaker 3: protein crystallization.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm with you.
Speaker 3: Designing highly targeted drugs medicines that interact perfectly with a
Speaker 3: specific disease receptor without causing side effects, requires scientists to
Speaker 3: understand the exact three dimensional molecular structure of a protein.
Speaker 2: You have to know the shape of the lock to
Speaker 2: build the perfect key.
Speaker 3: Great analogy. Yes, and to do that, they grow protein
Speaker 3: crystals and hit them with X rays to mac them.
Speaker 2: But I'm guessing gravity ruins these crystals, just like it
Speaker 2: ruins the z Bland glass.
Speaker 3: It absolutely does on Earth. The heavier molecules just sink
Speaker 3: to the bottom of the solution.
Speaker 2: They collapse on themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the crystals grow unevenly. They are flawed, misshapen, and
Speaker 3: compress under their own microscopic weight.
Speaker 2: So the MAP protein is blurry exactly.
Speaker 3: But in microgravity, those disruptive forces just vanish.
Speaker 2: The proteins just float perfectly in the fluid.
Speaker 3: Yes, they grow into larger, highly uniform, perfectly structured lattices.
Speaker 3: Researchers get an absolutely flawless blueprint of the molecular structure.
Speaker 2: And once you have that perfect blueprint, you can design
Speaker 2: a chemical key that fits the lock flawlessly.
Speaker 3: You could be talking about entirely new classes of targeted
Speaker 3: cancer therapies or treatments for autoimmune diseases that are simply
Speaker 3: impossible to synthesize or map on Earth.
Speaker 2: That is, I mean, that's world changing.
Speaker 3: It is. Pharmaceutical giants are actively investing in this space
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: Because if orbital manufacturing yields a proprietary, highly effective medication,
Speaker 2: the return on investment easily justifies the orbital overhead.
Speaker 3: A thousand times over. These stations will quickly transition from
Speaker 3: exploratory outposts into essential industrial infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Okay, I see the massive financial upside for applied science
Speaker 2: and manufacturing. It makes total sense. But I have a
Speaker 2: real concern here.
Speaker 3: What's the concern?
Speaker 2: It's a belic it's left behind in this transition. Yeah,
Speaker 2: when space was purely the domain of national governments like NASA,
Speaker 2: the mandate was at least in part basic scientific exploration, right,
Speaker 2: pure science. We went up there to ask why not
Speaker 2: just how much money can this make? If market demand
Speaker 2: and profitability become the absolute dictators of who gets to
Speaker 2: go to space, what happens to fundamental science.
Speaker 3: It's a very valid question.
Speaker 2: If an astrophysicist wants to study cosmic rays but their
Speaker 2: experiment doesn't yield a patentable fiber optic cable or a
Speaker 2: lucrative cancer drug. Do they just get priced out of orbit?
Speaker 3: Your concern is highly validated by the current dynamics of
Speaker 3: the aerospace industry. It's a very real tension because.
Speaker 2: Real estate up there is going to be incredibly expensive.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is the classic tension between pure curiosity driven
Speaker 3: research and applied commercial research, but it's magnified by the
Speaker 3: extreme costs of spaceflight.
Speaker 2: In a purely market driven economy. An experiment studying fundamental
Speaker 2: fluid dynamics might be incredibly important for human knowledge, but
Speaker 2: it won't make a dime, and.
Speaker 3: If it cannot generate a return on investment, a commercial
Speaker 3: station operator has absolutely no financial incentive to host it
Speaker 3: over a highly lucrative pharmaceutical payload.
Speaker 2: So the pure science might actually suffer. We get better
Speaker 2: Internet cables, but we lose our understanding of the universe.
Speaker 3: It is a very real risk fundamental research will struggle
Speaker 3: to secure funding or physical space on these new platforms
Speaker 3: unless governments step into subsidize and lease laboratory space, specifically
Speaker 3: for academic researchers.
Speaker 2: That tension is going to be fascinating to watch play out.
Speaker 3: The commercial transition will undoubtedly accelerate innovation and profitable sectors,
Speaker 3: but it will fundamentally reshape the priorities of off world science.
Speaker 2: Okay, but let's look out the window of one of
Speaker 2: these future stations for a minute, because it isn't just
Speaker 2: robots making medicine up there.
Speaker 3: No, there will definitely be humans.
Speaker 2: Specifically paying tourists. We are moving from the era of
Speaker 2: highly vetted, physically perfect government astronauts you know, the folks
Speaker 2: with the right stuff, to wealthy civilians.
Speaker 3: Wealthy civilians, filmmakers, private researchers.
Speaker 2: And the architectural designs of the commercial stations reflect this
Speaker 2: demographic shift perfectly, don't they.
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, The ISS is a utilitarian masterpiece, but it's
Speaker 3: not comfortable.
Speaker 2: It's essentially a submarine in space.
Speaker 3: Yes, filled with exposed wiring velcrow everywhere science reacts buzzing constantly.
Speaker 2: Not exactly five star resort.
Speaker 3: No, But commercial stations are actively designing dedicated hospitality environments.
Speaker 2: We're seeing proposals for massive panoramic observation modules.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, constructed from advanced polymers, designed specifically to give
Speaker 3: tourists these expansive views of the Earth.
Speaker 2: Imagine waking up and just staring down at the entire
Speaker 2: continent of Africa.
Speaker 3: It would be life changing. And the life support systems
Speaker 3: are being engineered to provide a much more comfortable, less
Speaker 3: intensely rigid environment for non professional visitors.
Speaker 2: Which sounds incredible a luxury hotel orbiting the Earth, it does,
Speaker 2: but having a bunch of civilians in a massive glass
Speaker 2: dome flying at seventeen thousand miles per hour brings up
Speaker 2: a terrifying operational reality.
Speaker 3: The environment outside that dome.
Speaker 2: Exactly lower th orbit today is not an empty, pristine void.
Speaker 2: It is a highly congested highway.
Speaker 3: Congested is almost an understatement at this point.
Speaker 2: It's a mass up there.
Speaker 3: It is severely crowded, and the primary issue isn't even
Speaker 3: the active satellites, although the Mega constellations providing global Internet
Speaker 3: access have added thousands of new objects.
Speaker 2: Right The real hazard is the dead material space.
Speaker 3: Debris, spent upper state of rockets from the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: defunct satellites that have lost power.
Speaker 2: And the millions of fragments generated by previous orbital collisions. Yes,
Speaker 2: let's talk about the physics of a collision up there,
Speaker 2: because on Earth. If you have a fender bender at
Speaker 2: sixty miles per hour, your car is crumpled, but you
Speaker 2: probably survive.
Speaker 3: But in orbit, the math is entirely different because of
Speaker 3: the velocities involved.
Speaker 2: It's all about speed.
Speaker 3: Yes, we must consider the formula for kinetic energy one
Speaker 3: half the mass times the velocity.
Speaker 2: Squared velocity square. That's the kicker.
Speaker 3: Exactly. In low Earth orbit, an object is moving at
Speaker 3: roughly seven kilometers per second because velocity is squared in
Speaker 3: that equation, the destructive energy is just astronomical.
Speaker 2: So even something tiny, a.
Speaker 3: Tiny piece of debris, a stray steel bolt, or even
Speaker 3: a fleck of paint that chipped off a booster in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five carries the kinetic energy equivalent of a
Speaker 3: heavy anvil being dropped from a skyscraper.
Speaker 2: A fleck of paint acting like an explosive charge. Exactly
Speaker 2: that that is terrified.
Speaker 3: If a one centimeter aluminum sphere hits a commercial space
Speaker 3: station at orbital velocity, it will effortlessly punch through standard shielding.
Speaker 2: Potentially causing rapid explosive decompression of a habitat module where
Speaker 2: tourists are sleeping.
Speaker 3: Yes, and furthermore, a collision doesn't just destroy the station,
Speaker 3: It generates thousands of new pieces of debris trapanel right,
Speaker 3: which then spread out and threaten other infrastructure. It's a
Speaker 3: cascading catastrophic scenario known as the Kessler syndrome.
Speaker 2: So if a private company is going to invest billions
Speaker 2: of dollars into an orbital reef or an axiom module,
Speaker 2: they can't just cross their fingers and helpe A rogue
Speaker 2: bolt from a Soviet satellite doesn't annihilate their investment.
Speaker 3: No, they absolutely cannot.
Speaker 2: How is this traffic being managed well?
Speaker 3: Currently? It is managed through a patchwork of radar tracking
Speaker 3: by military organizations like the US Space Force.
Speaker 2: They track the debris and send out warnings right.
Speaker 3: They issue warnings of potential conjumptions. But as the commercial
Speaker 3: sector explodes, this de da centralized system is completely insufficient.
Speaker 2: It's like trying to run air traffic control for JFK
Speaker 2: Airport with a pair of binoculars exactly.
Speaker 3: The orbital economy urgently requires a profoundly sophisticated, predictive traffic
Speaker 3: management architecture.
Speaker 2: It needs to track millions of microscopic objects in real time.
Speaker 3: And automatically communicate with autonomous thrusters on commercial stations to
Speaker 3: execute evasive maneuvers. Human reaction time is too.
Speaker 2: Slow, but setting up a global automated traffic control system
Speaker 2: for space brings up a massive, massive issue.
Speaker 3: The legal framework.
Speaker 2: Yes, on Earth, air traffic control operates within specific national borders.
Speaker 2: In space, who is in charge?
Speaker 3: It's a fantastic question.
Speaker 2: Let's say a commercial station owned by a US corporation
Speaker 2: has to maneuver to avoid a dead European satellite, but
Speaker 2: in doing so it puts a Chinese communication array at risk.
Speaker 2: Whose laws apply?
Speaker 3: You have identified arguably the most intractable problem of the
Speaker 3: commercial space age, governance and.
Speaker 2: Jurisprudence, because there's no space police.
Speaker 3: No. The foundational legal document for human activity in space
Speaker 3: is the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty seven, right in the middle of the Cold War. Yes,
Speaker 2: and I'm guessing a treaty from nineteen sixty seven didn't
Speaker 2: include provisions for patent law regarding fiber optics manufactured in
Speaker 2: zero gravity by a private corporation.
Speaker 3: It definitely did not, shocking. The treaty's primary concern was
Speaker 3: preventing the Soviet Union and the United States from placing
Speaker 3: weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 2: In orbit, keep the nukes out of space.
Speaker 3: Right, and establishing that no nation can claim sovereignty over
Speaker 3: a celestial body. It declares that space is the province
Speaker 3: of all mankind.
Speaker 2: That sounds beautiful and principle, but it leaves a massive loophole.
Speaker 3: It really does.
Speaker 2: Article two says no nation can claim territory. But what
Speaker 2: happens when a massive, incredibly wealthy private corporation essentially builds
Speaker 2: a monopoly on the infrastructure in low earth orbit?
Speaker 3: This is a profound legal gray area right now.
Speaker 2: It's the wild West.
Speaker 3: It is under the current framework, specifically something called the
Speaker 3: Registration Convention, a space object remains under the jurisdiction of
Speaker 3: the state that launched it, or the stay where the
Speaker 3: corporation is registered.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, if a tourist commits a crime aboard a
Speaker 2: US registered commercial module, US federal law generally applies.
Speaker 3: Generally yes, But what happens in a mixed use business
Speaker 3: park composed of modules built by companies from five different nations?
Speaker 2: Oh wow? If an astronaut from Japan floats from a
Speaker 2: European module into an American one and slips, who handles
Speaker 2: the OSHA violation.
Speaker 3: Exactly, how do you enforce labor laws for private astronauts.
Speaker 3: How do you regulate a corporate monopoly that physically controls
Speaker 3: the only viable docking ports in low Earth orbit.
Speaker 2: It feels incredibly similar to the era of the railroad
Speaker 2: barons in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: That is a very apt historical comparison.
Speaker 2: Private entities that lay the tracks, build the stations, and
Speaker 2: control the switching yards get to dictate the terms of
Speaker 2: the entire economy that relies on that infrastructructure.
Speaker 3: Yes, if you want to do business in space, you
Speaker 3: have to play by the rules of the corporation that
Speaker 3: owns the oxygen supply.
Speaker 2: That is a lot of leverage.
Speaker 3: The commercialization of space introduces an immense potential for technological
Speaker 3: innovation and wealth generation, but it simultaneously threatens to concentrate
Speaker 3: vast power over critical offworld infrastructure into the hands of
Speaker 3: a few technologically advanced corporations.
Speaker 2: We already see how deeply terrestrial communication monopolies impact global
Speaker 2: society today right now.
Speaker 3: Project that dynamic into an environment where a corporation controls
Speaker 3: your actual life support, it raises severe ethical and legal
Speaker 3: questions regarding inequality.
Speaker 2: Which means Operating these stations is a nightmare of lethal physics,
Speaker 2: microscopic debris, staggering costs, and completely unresolved international law.
Speaker 3: It's a daunting environment.
Speaker 2: Given all of that, it seems to me that relying
Speaker 2: on human beings to run these factories is just a
Speaker 2: terrible business model.
Speaker 3: From a purely economic standpoint, you are correct.
Speaker 2: Humans are the most extat defensive, fragile cargo you can
Speaker 2: possibly put in space.
Speaker 3: We need pressurized air, clean water, radiation, shielding, food, sleep,
Speaker 3: and constant.
Speaker 2: Medical bear We're incredibly high maintenance. If you want a
Speaker 2: manufacturing module to actually turn a profit, you can't have
Speaker 2: humans constantly sloating around, turning wrenches and fixing broken pipes.
Speaker 3: The aerospace industry has universally arrived at that exact conclusion.
Speaker 2: I figured as much to.
Speaker 3: Achieve scalability and profitability, the human element must be aggressively minimized.
Speaker 2: So future commercial orbital infrastructure will not look like the ISS.
Speaker 3: No on the ISS, astronauts spend hours every single days
Speaker 3: performing routine maintenance and cleaning.
Speaker 2: Air filters, glorified space janitor.
Speaker 3: Essentially, yes, But the backbone of the new orbital ecosystem
Speaker 3: is artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: And advanced robotics break down how an AI actually manages
Speaker 2: a space station, because that sounds terrifyingly close to a
Speaker 2: sci fi movie where the computer decides to lock the
Speaker 2: pod bay doors.
Speaker 3: I know it evokes HL nine thousand, but in reality,
Speaker 3: it is a highly complex, deeply integrated sensor network. Okay,
Speaker 3: the environmental control and life support system is incredibly dynamic,
Speaker 3: and AI will constantly monitor thousands of data points regarding
Speaker 3: oxygen concentrations, trace contaminant levels, and thermal loads.
Speaker 2: It's constantly taking the pulse of the station.
Speaker 3: Yes, and if a manufacturing process suddenly generates a massive
Speaker 3: spike and heat, the AI instantaneously diverts coolant loops to
Speaker 3: prevent catastrophic failure without waiting.
Speaker 2: For a human operator on Earth to analyze the telemetry
Speaker 2: and send a commands.
Speaker 3: Exactly, which is crucial because of the communication delay.
Speaker 2: Right even in low worth orbit, bouncing a signal from
Speaker 2: the station to a satellite, down to a ground station
Speaker 2: and into mission control.
Speaker 3: It takes time, it does, and if a valve blows,
Speaker 3: you do not have time to ask for permission to
Speaker 3: fix it.
Speaker 2: The systems must be semi autonomous.
Speaker 3: They have to be and AI guided robotics will handle
Speaker 3: the external maintenance too.
Speaker 2: So no more astronauts going out on spacewalks to fix sol.
Speaker 3: Panels, far fewer. Yes, Instead of risking a human life
Speaker 3: in a cumbersome space suit for a dangerous extra vehicular
Speaker 3: activity to inspect a micrometeoroid strike.
Speaker 2: An autonomous drone will just detach, navigate the exterior of
Speaker 2: the hull, and execute precision robotic repairs.
Speaker 3: Precisely and inside the station. Manufacturing modules producing z bland
Speaker 3: fiber optics or pharmaceuticals will operate continuously twenty four hours
Speaker 3: a day.
Speaker 2: Entirely managed by automated systems. Yes, so you can have
Speaker 2: a giant floating factory module attached to an orbital reef
Speaker 2: where the lights are literally turned off.
Speaker 3: Because robots don't need light to see right, just.
Speaker 2: Churning out materials in the dark, with humans only visiting
Speaker 2: once a month to swap out raw materials and collect
Speaker 2: the finished products.
Speaker 3: That is the precise operational model being developed. It's so efficient,
Speaker 3: and AI will also manage the human element when they
Speaker 3: are present, providing critical real time medical diagnostics for private
Speaker 3: crews who are physically isolated from terrestrial metas facilities.
Speaker 2: Over time, these stations just transition into largely autonomous hubs.
Speaker 3: They do. But there is a bigger picture here that
Speaker 3: we need to touch on.
Speaker 2: Okay, what is it?
Speaker 3: These commercial stations in low Earth orbit aren't just an
Speaker 3: end goal in themselves. They are a means to an end.
Speaker 2: We aren't just building space factories.
Speaker 3: No, we're building the ultimate testing grounds for human expansion
Speaker 3: into the rest of the Solar System.
Speaker 2: Oh Man prototyping deep space exactly.
Speaker 3: The architecture being developed for commercial Low Earth orbit is
Speaker 3: fundamentally prototyping our future. When space agencies outline their plans
Speaker 3: to return humans to the Moon for sustained periods.
Speaker 2: And eventually establish permanent settlements on Mars.
Speaker 3: Right, the technological hurdles for that are historically unprecedented.
Speaker 2: Because Mars is millions of miles away. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 2: just call Axiom and ask them to send up a
Speaker 2: replacement oxygen scrubber on the next rocket.
Speaker 3: If yours breaks, you are completely on your own. The
Speaker 3: logistics of a Mars mission dictate that the life support
Speaker 3: systems must be prac infallible.
Speaker 2: And almost entirely closed loop.
Speaker 3: You have to recycle virtually one hundred percent of your
Speaker 3: water and.
Speaker 2: Oxygen, every drop of sweat.
Speaker 3: Yes, you have to perfect radiation shielding to protect the
Speaker 3: crew from galactic, cosmic rays and solar flares.
Speaker 2: And you have to engineer closed ecological systems capable of
Speaker 2: growing food sustainably in microgravity.
Speaker 3: Or partial gravity environments like the surface of the Moon
Speaker 3: or Mars.
Speaker 2: And we can't test those systems on Earth because we
Speaker 2: simply cannot replicate the gravity or the radiation.
Speaker 3: We have to test them in lower th orbit.
Speaker 2: First, lowerth orbit is the ultimate proving ground.
Speaker 3: It is it provides a harsh, authentic space environment, but
Speaker 3: with the vital safety net of being only a few
Speaker 3: hours away from a terrestrial abort. If a system fails catastrophically.
Speaker 2: If the scrubber breaks, you just jump in a capsule
Speaker 2: and come home exactly.
Speaker 3: The commercial space stations will serve as the laboratories where
Speaker 3: these critical deep space technologies are vetted.
Speaker 2: Furthermore, they are the environments where we will study the
Speaker 2: long term psychological and physiological adaptation of humans living in confined, artificial,
Speaker 2: machine dependent environments.
Speaker 3: So, when a pharmaceutical company pays to test a new
Speaker 3: closed loop water filtration system on a commercial station, because
Speaker 3: it's cheaper to maintain their tourist module.
Speaker 2: They are inadvertently funding the exact technology that will keep
Speaker 2: the first Martian colonists alive.
Speaker 3: That's the beauty of it. The stations are working models
Speaker 3: for future off world civilizations.
Speaker 2: That perspective aligns perfectly with a broader historical framing that
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about.
Speaker 3: Maritime analogy.
Speaker 2: Yes, the maritime analogy is just fascinating. Let's really dig
Speaker 2: into that.
Speaker 3: It's a great way to understand what we're going through.
Speaker 2: If you look back centuries ago, crossing the major oceans
Speaker 2: was an incredibly perilous, technically demanding, and exorbitantly expensive endeavor.
Speaker 3: It was not a commercial enterprise in its infancy at all.
Speaker 2: The early transoceanic voyages Columbus Magellan, they were undertaken exclusively
Speaker 2: by heavily funded state sponsored armadas and exploratory fleets representing
Speaker 2: major empires right.
Speaker 3: The ships were the equivalent of Apollo.
Speaker 2: Capsules, cutting edge, dangerous and built for exploration and geopolitical posturing,
Speaker 2: not sustained commerce.
Speaker 3: There were no shipping lanes back then, there were no
Speaker 3: commercial ports.
Speaker 2: It was just uncharted wilderness. But then the technology of
Speaker 2: shipbuilding improved navigation became more reliable.
Speaker 3: The extreme risks were slowly mitigated, and as.
Speaker 2: Those risks decreased, the economic model flipped entirely.
Speaker 3: Private enterprise realized the vast wealth to be generated by
Speaker 3: establishing reliable maritime trade routes.
Speaker 2: Companies like the East India Company stepped in. Governments stopped
Speaker 2: building all the ships and started building the regulatory frameworks.
Speaker 3: Instead, commercial ports were constructed, formalized shipping lanes were established.
Speaker 2: The ocean's transitioned from being a terrifying frontier of pure
Speaker 2: exploration into the foundational bedrock of the global supply chain.
Speaker 3: And that is exactly, and I mean exactly what we
Speaker 3: are witnessing in the night sky right now.
Speaker 2: The International Space Station, the Apollmichians, the Space Shuttle, they
Speaker 2: were the state sponsored armadus.
Speaker 3: They mapped the territory and proved it was theoretically possible
Speaker 3: to survive.
Speaker 2: But axiom space orbital reef the reusable rockets. They are
Speaker 2: the commercial ports and the merchant vessels.
Speaker 3: Low Earth orbit is simply the first layer of a
Speaker 3: new maritime economy. But instead of the Pacific Ocean, it's
Speaker 3: the vacuum of space.
Speaker 2: It is a profound, irreversible transition.
Speaker 3: It really is a threshold moment for our.
Speaker 2: Species because for the entirety of human history, from the
Speaker 2: emergence of our species in the Rift Valley to this
Speaker 2: precise moment right now, our civilization, our economy, and our
Speaker 2: daily existence have been entirely confined to the surface of
Speaker 2: a single planet.
Speaker 3: Space was relegated to mythology or observational astronomy and the
Speaker 3: occasional brief, temporary excursion.
Speaker 2: But the construction of permanent, commercially viable orbital infrastructure represents
Speaker 2: the physical structural expansion of human society beyond Earth.
Speaker 3: And we have to acknowledge that this process is not
Speaker 3: going to be smooth.
Speaker 2: No, it's going to be chaotic.
Speaker 3: Very chaotic. There will be massive engineering failures.
Speaker 2: Companies will go bankrupt.
Speaker 3: There may be tragic accidents involving debris or life support failures.
Speaker 3: We have to be prepared for that.
Speaker 2: These first generation commercial space stations are going to look
Speaker 2: incredibly primitive, fragile, and utilitarian to our great grandchildren.
Speaker 3: Oh, they definitely won't look like the massive, spinning gravity
Speaker 3: simulating cities we see in science fiction movies yet anyway.
Speaker 3: But transformational infrastructure always begins with fragile, modest prototypes.
Speaker 2: The first railroads were little more than a few miles
Speaker 2: of iron track, carrying steam engines that frequently exploded.
Speaker 3: The first airplanes were canvas and wood contraptions that could
Speaker 3: barely sustain flight for a minute.
Speaker 2: The early Internet was a text based network that struggled
Speaker 2: to send a single packet of data.
Speaker 3: They all appeared rudimentary to the people building them at
Speaker 3: the time, but they can take the architectural seeds that
Speaker 3: fundamentally reshaped human civilization.
Speaker 2: The commercial space stations currently being drafted are that exact
Speaker 2: threshold moment for our era.
Speaker 3: We are crossing the threshold from visiting space to inhabiting space.
Speaker 2: Orbit is no longer just a destination for a handful
Speaker 2: of highly trained specialists. It is becoming an environment.
Speaker 3: It's becoming a place where businesses are balancing ledgers.
Speaker 2: Where industrial manufacturing is quietly churning.
Speaker 3: Away in the dark, and where the physical modules that
Speaker 3: will eventually take us to Mars are being welded together.
Speaker 2: The central question facing the aerospace industry has really evolved,
Speaker 2: hasn't it.
Speaker 3: It has. It is no longer a purely engineering question
Speaker 3: of how we.
Speaker 2: Access orbit or even a financial question of whether these
Speaker 2: commercial outposts will turn a profit.
Speaker 3: The deeper, much more profound question is about human identity.
Speaker 2: What kind of civilization do we become when our economic
Speaker 2: engines are critical infrastructure and a segment of our population
Speaker 2: begin to permanently reside in the solar system is the
Speaker 2: big question, And I want to leave you with a
Speaker 2: thought that builds on that exact idea. Think about how
Speaker 2: much of human culture, our architecture, our art, our philosophies,
Speaker 2: the very structure of our societies and how we govern
Speaker 2: ourselves is fundamentally invisibly shaped by the geography and the
Speaker 2: gravity of Earth.
Speaker 3: Gravity dictates almost everything about how we live.
Speaker 2: We build things to withstand gravity, We draw borders based
Speaker 2: on rivers and mountains. But what entirely new forms of
Speaker 2: human culture, art, and philosophy are going to be borne
Speaker 2: from a generation of people whose daily mundane existence happens
Speaker 2: in weightlessness.
Speaker 3: It's going to be completely alien to us.
Speaker 2: When a permanent population of humanity looks out the panoramic
Speaker 2: window of a commercial space station, not as a once
Speaker 2: in a lifetime life altering treat, but every single day,
Speaker 2: over the morning coffee.
Speaker 3: And they see a unified globe, suspended in the void,
Speaker 3: completely devoid of national borders.
Speaker 2: How will that daily reality change the way we see
Speaker 2: ourselves as a species.
Speaker 3: That is the ultimate consequence of the commercialization of space.
Speaker 3: The shift in perspective will inevitably redefine our collective understanding
Speaker 3: of what it means to be human.
Speaker 2: It is going to change absolutely everything. So the next
Speaker 2: time you are standing outside at night and you see
Speaker 2: that tiny, fast moving point of light urpenting across the
Speaker 2: darkness of the sky, remember that you aren't just looking
Speaker 2: at a dying piece of government engineering. You were looking
Speaker 2: at the foundational bedrock of humanity's permanent off world economy.
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us on this journey today. Keep
Speaker 2: looking up and we'll catch you next time.