(cheerful music)
- I am Torsten Hoffmann,
an award-winning filmmaker,
..
...entrepreneur,
and techno-optimist.
You're gonna see it
go over my shoulder.
..
I'm really into
emerging technologies...
and how a trillion dollar industries
...are forming around them.
Right now the space
sector is going ballistic.
(rocker roars)
And trust me, it's way
bigger than Musk and Bezos.
(rocket zooming)
- There were headlines,
new era private industry
is gonna lead the way.
(crowd cheers)
No, they're not.
- [Torsten] So allow me to
whirl you around the world,
catapult you into orbit,
and hurl you through space.
You ready?
- [Astronaut] Ten.
- [Torsten] This space renaissance
isn't just fueled by governments.
Hundreds of companies are
competing for fame and fortune.
- SpaceX were the first private company
to put a satellite in orbit.
We were the second.
- [Astronaut] Nine.
- Oh, my god.
- My mommy's gonna be an astronaut.
- [Torsten] Meet the next
generation of astronauts,
the new faces of new space.
So you're literally a rocket scientist.
- Yeah. (laughs)
- [Astronaut] Eight.
- A cube set can be as small as this.
- Launching into space for,
say, $100,000 or $200,000.
- So, why is this guy spending 2 billion
on three huge satellites?
Okay, one question, are you crazy?
- No. (laughs)
- [Astronaut] Seven.
- [Torsten] New constellations
are filling the skies.
- This is creating a trillion
dollar market opportunity.
And the list is really endless.
- [Torsten] Tracking climate change
and tackling geopolitics.
- [Astronaut] Six.
- I think it will change
the political calculus
going forward if everyone gets to know
that these things aren't gonna
be possible to hide anymore.
- [Astronaut] Five.
- [Torsten] Dying
satellites can now be saved.
- I deorbited dozens of spacecraft.
But we don't have to do that anymore.
- We don't have the right to make mistakes
because it would be fatal.
- [Torsten] But debris
puts it all in danger.
- This is kind of scary to
think about something like this
reentering and like maybe
hitting a populated area.
- [Astronaut] Four.
- [Torsten] In our future,
asteroid mining is a thing.
- The amount of platinum
group metals out there
is in the trillions of dollars.
- [Astronaut] Three.
- Maybe someone is
already building a space hotel
like the one I read about as a kid.
- This is happening.
We are building a space station.
- [Astronaut] Two.
- And we use the
inedible part of the plants
to feed the insects
which create the
substrate for the mushroom.
- My role and purpose is to
help save the DNA of Earth
and spread light to the stars.
- [Astronaut] One.
- If the public does
not see the value of this,
immediately I will work
to ensure that they do.
- Roger that.
Let's meet those turning
science fiction into science fact.
(upbeat music)
(bright music)
(elevator dings)
A little space history,
the first rockets were
built in Hitler's Germany,
but let's not talk about
Operation Paperclip here.
The Russians were
leading the early space race.
Sputnik, the first object in orbit.
Scary.
Yay, gold medal.
Sputnik II had the first creature in space
like (indistinct) space dock.
Sadly, she gave her life.
Then Yuri, the first man
in orbit, a hundred minutes.
Alexei did the first space walk.
And then Valentina,
the first woman in space,
for three full days.
The Soviets sent this little sturdy guy,
hi, Sheldon, around the moon.
And he made it back safely.
- Ah, comrade.
- Seriously guys, the
Russians were k*lling it.
But then, President JFK
mobilized 400,000 Americans.
- But it will be done.
- And a lot of taxpayer money
and made the ultimate moonshot possible.
The Apollo board computers
had less memory power
than Shelly's birthday card.
Yes, back then the future was bright.
We actually built nuclear
reactors and supersonic jets.
And the airline PanAm
even took reservations
for tickets to the moon.
No kidding.
Take five.
It's amazing to me that it
took humanity only 12 years
from a small Russian ball
of steel in low Earth orbit
to 12 Americans with, well, ba*ls of steel
to walk on the moon.
12 years.
That's faster than getting a permit
for a new bridge in my town today.
But after the achievements of Apollo,
some say NASA lost its thrust.
Per kilogram of payload,
the space shuttle of the 1980s
was 10 times more expensive
and less reliable than
the rockets from the 1960s.
We are skipping ahead
a few history chapters,
but eventually it was
high time for competition
from the private sector.
Jeff Bezos was inspired by
NFI legend, Robert Heinlein.
Maybe when he grows up,
he can build his own
rockets and go to space.
Back in 2000, Bezos founded
and fully funded Blue Origin.
And 21 years later, his
dream finally came through.
Some critics say that the
billionaire's Blue moves too slow.
Oh, hi, Shelly, buddy.
Is that you?
Well, if Bezos is the tortoise,
then this guy is the hare.
Elon Musk Musk Musk
Love him or hate him,
SpaceX reached orbit in
fast and furious fashion,
only six years after Elon Musk founded
and funded it in 2002.
Legends of science
fiction like Isaac Asimov
were foundational to Elon Musk as a kid.
Maybe humanity could be
saved on a galactic scale.
Ironman is just a clown boy.
Yep, the billionaires sure
are getting a lot of heat from the media.
Tech unicorns
But why'd you flame the union
One man saving humanity
Come on that's just insanity
- Cut it out guys.
This is a serious documentary.
We don't care about
drama and all this gossip.
(glass tinkling) Oops.
Window broke again.
Sorry, Elon.
(fire blazes)
- Ouch.
Tunnel support really regulates
(indistinct) till the
energy storing out of space
Exploring flames and throwing drinks
(indistinct) poke and go
smoking with Joe Rogan
- Ah, stop it.
That's our TikTok video.
- Three, two, one.
- [Torsten] Seriously though,
the new space parents were early,
piling billions into
this space 20 years ago.
Long before there was a market,
launch was dominated by
the government and military.
Slowly, other private initiatives took off.
- My name is Anousheh Ansari
and I'm CEO of XPRIZE Foundation.
- [Torsten] In 2004,
Dr. Ansari funded the XPRIZE competition
to build a spaceship, fly three passengers
a hundred kilometers to
the edge of space, and return.
Twice in two weeks without
a dime of government support.
- 2016, from 11 countries competed,
a hundred million dollars
was spent by the teams
to win the $10 million prize.
And most people thought it's impossible,
they called us crazy.
A lot of people told me that
you're gonna get people k*lled.
What are you doing?
And to me, it just,
it was, you know, a risk worth taking
because it was about future of humanity.
- [Torsten] The winning team was financed
by billionaire, Microsoft
co-founder, Paul Allen,
and acquired by debonair
billionaire, Sir Richard Branson,
who quickly christen it Virgin Galactic.
We'll get to space travel in a minute.
The point here is that
competition leads to dropping costs.
Today there are hundreds of
competing rocket companies
hoping to reach escape velocity,
but SpaceX towers over them all.
That one company controlled
by a single singular man
hauls five times more payload
than all other countries
and companies combined.
Ha, and now all eyes
are on Elon's even bigger
fricking rocket, Starship.
(gentle music)
Meanwhile, NASA is back on the launch pad,
the new mega rocket,
SLS, destined for the moon.
- [Announcer] And lift off of Artemis I.
- [Torsten] Uses leftover engines
from the space shuttle program.
But with each launch,
two of them are thrown away into the ocean.
Imagine discarding an
airplane after each flight.
That's why this version of SLS
can only fly a total of eight times.
- [Reporter] And then so now we're seeing
some more of that
video of the external tank.
- [Torsten] No wonder launch
costs are 40 times higher
than what private rocket
companies advertise
because the real key for
lower cost is reusability.
Since first landing boosters in 2015,
SpaceX has done it hundreds of times
and offers the cheapest access to orbit.
(bright music)
- SpaceX we're the first private company
to put a satellite on orbit.
We were the second.
You know, we are often asked like,
who do we see as our competitors?
And really, it's only SpaceX
if we're honest about it.
- [Torsten] Peter didn't go to university
and instead cut his
teeth building jet packs
and bicycles with rocket propulsion.
He found a rocket lab in
the most unlikely of places.
New Zealand.
His home country lacks
robust venture capital,
and don't they have
strong regulations there?
That's right.
Can you hear me guys?
- Yeah, I can hear you fine, Torsten.
- [Torsten] I do also hear sometimes
a little bit of criticism
about the fossil fuels
that are being burned.
- We have more carbon emissions
from the diesel generators
at the launch site than we
actually do from the rocket.
But like I say, one launch for us
is the equivalent of going
from LA to San Francisco.
And I don't know how many hundred flights
there are a week, but tremendous number.
- Rocket Lab has an impressive track record
and a stellar reputation but...
That's what you guys are doing even better
if a company like SpaceX
is pulling up 200,000 kilograms a quarter.
- Yeah, no, that's a fair question.
And, you know, the reality is,
as I mentioned to you before,
like if you've got...
You have to get a satellite
to a particular destination
for it to be commercial.
So, piling up, you know, a
hundred tons of satellites
and dumping them all out of one spot
doesn't make a business.
It's kind of got all of the
advantages and disadvantages
of riding a bus.
So, you know, you don't
get your schedule certainty.
The bus arrives when it arrives
and it leaves when it leaves.
You might be sitting beside someone smelly,
but it's cheap.
- [Torsten] Right.
So you won't see Peter
taking the bus anytime soon.
His company's like a white
glove limousine service.
Personally, I am more of an Uber guy.
- We are kind of Uber in space,
just a little bit more complicated.
For example, when Falcon 9
delivers a bunch of satellites
to the target orbit,
Falcon 9 deploys all
these satellites into space.
But this specific orbit might not be ideal
for the small side customer.
So we need to use our OTV
to take all these satellites
to their custom destinations.
We've launched over
100 satellites with SpaceX
over the last couple of years,
but we are open to work with everyone.
And a lot of emerging players
will enter this field very soon,
and we can't wait to
launch with all of them.
I'm in charge of the commercial
success of the company
of like sales, bidding our
contracts with our customers,
with our launch vehicle providers.
Yeah, surprisingly, we
are a self-funded company
and we've been profitable from day one,
which is like a very unique
case for the industry.
- [Torsten] This German
company has deployed
more than 350 satellites
for over 60 international customers.
The wait time for Exolaunch's rideshare
lifting you to low Earth orbit, LEO,
can be as fast as four to six months.
But time is money.
So if you're in a hurry,
there's an express from Texas.
- I'd always been making engine sections,
I'd been building engines,
I'd been integrating vehicles,
but I'd never made fire.
And that was the next step for me,
was to be the mother
of rockets to make fire.
- [Torsten] The US Space
Force wanted to demonstrate
the capability of launching
payload on short notice.
- I got a phone call and it said,
"You are launching to this orbit,"
which we had not known before.
"Go ahead and get ready."
In 24 hours, you have to launch a rocket
exactly in this three-minute window.
So it's actually more
like a ten-second window,
24 hours out.
- Well when they pointed at us and said go,
we were able to get done in 24 hours
what previously had never
been done faster than 21 days.
This company, Firefly, we did that.
- So there's nothing both more
exciting and more terrifying
than when the rocket leaves the pad
and she's moving and
you're not just testing,
she's actually lifting off.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
(gentle music)
- [Torsten] The most
precious payload is people.
Someone beat the billionaires
to space by 15 years.
- I grew up in Iran wanting
to become an astronaut.
As a young girl, becoming an astronaut,
of course, was a big dream for me,
but my parents thought it's impossible.
I sort of hung on to that dream
and wanted to make it come true.
- Dr. Ansari trained as a Soyuz astronaut.
And for a few million dollars,
bought herself a ticket to ride.
She spent a full nine days aboard the ISS.
That's 140 times around the
planet, fulfilling her dream.
These new companies
and an influx of investment
created modern day space tourism.
You can follow it on a screen near you.
Even Captain Kirk was beamed up.
- What you have given me
is the most profound
experience (indistinct).
- [Torsten] Whether you think billionaires
should ascend to the heavens or go to hell.
- Maybe Bezos shouldn't
be allowed to return to Earth.
- [Torsten] Their fed wallets
have kicked open space
trouble for more of us,
and some are really into it.
My friend Dylan, a space entrepreneur
and a leading figure in
the new space economy,
was one of the first to go with Blue.
And he has an appetite for more.
- I'm a ticket holder on Virgin Galactic.
I think number 642 in
line space perspectives,
which is the high altitude
stratospheric balloon and worldview.
(crowd cheering)
(rocket zooming)
(indistinct)
The first space investment
I made was about 2007,
which was very early for this industry.
And my friends at the time in finance
were sort of snickering.
You know, you're
investing in asteroid mining
and all these crazy ideas.
And, of course, those same
friends now call me today
for investment, advice, and tips,
which I think is hilarious.
- I had an opportunity just coincidentally
to dive to the Mariana
Trench, to the Challenger deep,
which is something I don't
think you can say no to.
We actually went to a
part of the Mariana Trench
that no humans had ever been to.
Wow, look at that.
And so it was like
exploring another planet.
- [Torsten] Astronauts often describe
a profound moment of awe.
Frank White dubbed it the overview effect.
So that others can experience it,
Dylan founded the
nonprofit Space for Humanity,
which aims to democratize access to space
by giving tickets to those
who could otherwise not afford it.
- [Dylan] So it was really
founded around this idea
of getting citizens to space
but for the benefit of Earth.
Everyone seems to be profoundly
impacted by this experience.
I know I was.
I think you'd come back a changed human.
I think you'd come back a better human.
So how do you change people's perspective?
You get as many people as you can to space.
(upbeat music)
- [Torsten] I really wanted
to talk to Space for Humanity's
first citizen astronauts.
So we crashed Dylan's birthday party
and set up shop in the corner office.
- I've dreamt of the moment
when we get to tell someone
that they're gonna be
our first citizen astronaut.
Right now is that moment, Katya,
and you're gonna be our
citizen astronaut number one,
and you're going to space.
(Katya sobs)
- Congratulations.
- Oh, my god.
My mom is gonna to freak out.
My name is Katya Echazarreta.
I am an electrical engineer.
- [Torsten] So you're
literally a rocket scientist?
- Yeah.
(camera shutter clicks)
I am a citizen astronaut
with Space for Humanity.
And through that,
I also became the first
Mexican-born woman in space.
Living through that and
going through that experience
and being able to actually see our planet.
- I had what I guess you
would call an epiphany.
- Oh my... - Hello.
The Earth is a whole system.
Everything's interconnected.
We're a part of it.
And I thought, "Okay,
it's the overview effect."
We're all astronauts on spaceship Earth.
- Oh my god.
That image of the Earth,
it was just burned
into my eyelids for days.
- You picked?
Good job.
- For me, I remember that
I had just such big dreams.
And so with my salary at McDonald's,
with my mom cleaning houses,
with both of us walking dogs,
with me grading papers,
with me doing tutoring,
that's how we paid for a family.
This is really important
because for the first time in human history
we are seeing organizations take the lead
in this way, like Space for Humanity,
of sending very talented
qualified individuals
to have this space experience
to come back empowered and
do something to help the world.
- Oh, my god.
Can I show you? - Yeah.
- I am Sara Sabry.
I'm going to space.
I am the first Egyptian
and the first African woman
and the first Arab
woman to ever go to space.
(camera shutter clicks)
I have a background in
mechanical engineering,
worked in aerodynamics on
Formula 3 car body designs,
and then did my master's
in biomedical engineering,
and then worked in stem cells for a while,
and then also on robotic surgery.
Thank you.
Now when I look at the sky,
it just feels very, very different.
It's not that big anymore.
Like, it's kind of weird to say that,
but it feels manageable.
It could really, really touches you.
It's not something that
you just look at, you know?
(indistinct)
We're right here.
- [Speaker] So we pay for their tickets.
But in return, they've
gotta come back to Earth
and do something, a
fellowship benefiting Earth
linked to one of the UN's
sustainable development goals.
- The more I got into this space field,
the more I realized how inaccessible it was
for people like me.
I don't have a US citizenship,
I don't have a European citizenship,
so I decided to do something about it
and founded a company
called Deep Space Initiative.
We're a nonprofit.
And we're trying to change that.
We're trying to make space more accessible
by providing opportunities
and education and research.
- My next goal is to create a foundation.
I'm currently working with
the Mexican Space Agency
to draft up what this foundation
is going to eventually look like
to start supporting those individuals
that are interested in STEM
and interested in joining the
space industry within Mexico.
- Hi, I am Sirisha Bandla.
I'm the vice president
of government affairs
and research operations at Virgin Galactic.
Also, I'm Astronaut 004 at Virgin Galactic.
It was amazing.
When my name was announced on
as a part of the Unity 22 crew,
the amount of messages I got,
especially from young women in India
that just talked to me
about being an inspiration.
And it wasn't necessarily,
I've seen you go to space,
I'm gonna go to space now.
It was, "Hey, it's so great
to see someone from a community like mine
do incredible things."
- You're kind of a big
deal in India nowadays.
No?
- My Instagram definitely says so.
- Oh, my god.
- You can't wait till we send up lawyers
and professional communicators
and artists to space
'cause they'll go through
that transformative experience.
- [Crew] Please return
to your seats and strap in.
Approaching reentry.
- I cannot imagine anyone's
gonna come back to Earth
the same as they were before.
It...
I came back to Earth energized.
Just completely energized.
- [Torsten] Just look at this
new generation of astronauts.
They're already having an
impact in India, Mexico, and Egypt
and they're just getting started.
- I'm Kellie Gerardi.
I'm a citizen scientist
and I'm flying to space on a
dedicated research mission
with Virgin Galactic.
I'm gonna be conducting
bioastronautics research.
I'm gonna be conducting
healthcare experiments
and fluid experiments in space.
One of the most emotional
parts of this journey
is seeing it through the eyes
of my four year old's daughter, Delta V.
- Guys, this is important.
My mom used to be an astronaut.
She could go space.
- Delta is growing up
with this new framework.
She believes that going to
space is just something moms do,
and I love that.
We need to have more accurate
representation of humanity
be a part of that.
- One of our major goals
here and our commitment
is to diversity, equity,
inclusion and accessibility
in terms of our workforce.
So we put a lot of effort into making sure
that, you know, we are bringing in
diverse classes of interns.
- [Torsten] Katya was one of those interns.
And look at her now.
She's already being
immortalized as a Barbie,
just like Neil Armstrong and
the other Apollo superstars
were part of the cultural
zeitgeist in their time.
- We know when we have a diverse workforce
that we are going to be more successful.
And so it's really exciting to know
that for the Artemis Mission,
the next humans going to the moon
will be the first woman
and the first person of color.
- [Torsten] As we break
through the galactic glass ceiling,
maybe diversity in space means more
than where you're from,
your skin color, or your gender.
- So one of the realities
that we face here on Earth
is that one out of every five individuals
on the planet right now has some kind
of measurable significant disability.
My name is Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen,
and I study astrobiology
and disability studies
and how those two things
intersect with one another.
We can't say, "Oh, we're cool with only 80%
of humanity combating global warming
or working on all the other
problems that we have."
We need all of us.
We need our best people
on every job, including space,
not just our best people who happen
to also not have a disability.
- If I was legally blind,
you wouldn't let me pilot this car.
But if I was, say, unable to speak,
you would still consider
me capable of driving, right?
Now, in space,
this notion of what is
and what isn't a disability
is about to get turned upside down.
- What these super qualified,
highly paid individuals have to do
with two hours of their day is exercise.
So if you have someone
who is not worried
about losing muscle mass,
at least in their legs,
does that decrease the amount of time
that they need to exercise?
Do they need to exercise at all?
What is that accommodation that we need
to make a zero gravity
environment accessible
to a disabled scientist
whose job is to go to space
and get their work done?
In 2021 in October,
we chartered our first
zero G parabolic flight
with the Zero G Corporation
and we sent 12 disabled people.
We had some deaf folks, some blind folk.
And our mobility crew,
which are our wheelchair users
and our folks with prosthetics.
(astronauts cheering)
Most fun anyone's ever had in their life
is to be in lunar gravity.
Not gonna lie, we should all go do it.
And we figured out some tasks
that we thought might
be initial investigations
that we wanted to do.
What it revealed to
us is that there's a lot
that we have to learn
and we know how to do it now.
- [Torsten] Dylan is one of
the benefactors of AstroAccess
and many other space companies
are supporting the cause.
- Boy, why space?
Well, because it benefits Earth.
And, oh, by the way, space is gonna happen
whether we want it or not.
And I'd rather shape that future
and make sure that humanity 2.0
is a better version of what we've been.
- [Torsten] These are the
new faces of new space.
And they've got the right staff.
Okay, so reusability and
other rocket technologies
are elevating the Earth to space sector.
But now the downstream
space to Earth economy
is also seeing dramatic
leaps in innovation.
This enables entirely new business models.
Satellites have been
around for a very long time.
Actually not very far from here,
just after World w*r II,
a young scientist called
Arthur C. Clarke first described,
oh, they could act like
a very large cell tower.
Today we know him as a
towering figure of science fiction
and his principle as
geosynchronous orbit or geo for short.
- And if you think about it militarily,
it is the ultimate high ground, right?
If you have superior assets in space,
you really control the b*ttlefield.
Maybe a bit of Hobbesian fear
about what the other person might be doing.
- [Torsten] That's why the first generation
of satellites was
commandeered by men in uniform
to spy on adversaries.
Get this, decades before
photography was digital
and ground stations could receive data,
actual film canisters had
to be ejected from up high,
slowed down by mini thrusters
and then caught mid air by planes.
Crazy.
Anyway, spy satellites were soon joined
by communications and
observation satellites.
They offered services for the public.
Weather forecasts typically
brought to you by the government
and broadcast television usually provided
by private businesses.
All right, so this is Viasat mock take one.
So who are you?
- Hi, I'm Mark Dankberg..
I am one of the founders of Viasat
and I'm the CEO and chairman.
- So you've been around for a little
longer than two or three years, don't you?
- Yeah, 36 and a half years.
Since we started the company, yeah.
We had a really good technical
understanding of satellite.
We did a lot of defense stuff.
We didn't have any money,
we started my house,
and there were three of us.
- A startup story from the 1980s.
Today Viasat is a
multi-billion dollar business
with over 6,000 employees.
They're all about very large
communication assets and geo
that require very large investments.
But haven't we been
told the polar opposite?
Satellites like these used
to be the size of a mini bus.
It took nation states
hundreds of millions of dollars
to launch and operate them.
Today a cube set can be as small as this.
- So that little box is called 1U.
- And everybody wants to
have one, or a few thousand.
- A small fridge size,
another size of a microwave.
- In the size of a loaf of bread.
- The size of a pizza box.
- Maybe two shoe boxes.
- [Torsten] Sheldon, there you are.
Clearly, precision manufacturing
with the latest components
is one of the key drivers in this industry.
- So this is a star camera.
Solar rays fold flat.
There's a really interesting disruption
happening in the industry
where Moore's law was
starting to arrive in space,
and the incumbent
space industry at that time
hadn't quite noticed
this massive disruption that was coming.
- [Torsten] Today, Spire
Global operates a constellation
of more than a hundred nanosatellites
that are specialized in
radio frequency technology
and manufactured in Scotland,
a place for the history in electronics.
Though the physics challenges
for these devices are out of this world.
- Traveling at eight kilometers per second,
which means it goes around
our planet every 90 minutes.
So you go into the hot side
where your plus 100 Celsius
to the cold side, minus 40 Celsius.
You can imagine the engineering
challenge that presents
between making sure
your electronics will function
in all these temperatures,
making sure that thermal fatigue,
you know, expansion and contraction
every 90 minutes doesn't cause problems.
- Planet runs the largest constellation
of optical satellites.
Founded back in 2010,
they kept improving the hard and software.
- [Astronaut] Did you
literally start in a garage
or is it just a marketing...
- No, it's not marketing rumor.
We started in a garage.
So since that,
literally had to sweep the
leaves out in the morning.
It wasn't very clean room like.
- [Torsten] So, you build many iterations
and generations of these satellites.
So help me understand, roughly,
like, the performance increase
that you managed to achieve.
- Roughly, over the period of,
from our first satellite to
our latest satellite today,
we've had about a 10,000
fold increase in performance.
So that means in terms
of the amount of imagery
produced per day, per dollar spent.
And a 10,000 increase is just...
It's crazy, right?
I mean, very rarely does
that sort of thing happen.
Once somebody said,
"Oh, this is like Model P4.
It's the first mass
manufactured satellite."
And I looked up,
and actually the Model P4
was about two to three times lower cost
than lowest cost cut at that time.
So, this is not two or three X lower cost.
This is hundreds if not thousands of times
lower cost for this
same sort of capability.
That is closer to the revolution in Iwhen it went from mainframe
computers to desktop computers.
That's the kind of shift
we're talking about,
and that's happening in space today.
- [Torsten] Shelly, how
about a 2:00 PM booster?
- Satellites I've worked on in the past
have cost up to half a billion dollars.
So now with a CubeSat for example,
you could be launching into space
for, say, 100,000 or 200,000 dollars.
- The entire fleet of
satellites we've ever launched
is much lower cost than a
single typical satellite from NASA
or anyone else.
- [Torsten] That makes mega constellations.
- I hate using the word constellation
'cause that's our word.
Constellations don't move.
They're like there, and the
ancients have seen them
and we have stories about them,
and they took that word
to describe satellites.
Okay?
To describe too many satellites.
- Right.
As I was saying,
these low cost consumer
electronic components
make mega constellations
economically viable.
- The OneWeb project, Kiuper, Starlink,
there are definitely differences in them
that I won't get into right now.
But the idea is they're
all trying to offer a service
that is similar to what
we would've thought of
as satellite internet.
But it is different.
It's designed to work in
places that are harder to reach
or that are in conflict
or that are more mobile.
And so my parents are RVers, you know?
They drive around the
country on one of those big rigs.
And without me ever mentioning Starlink
or any of these companies to them,
they were discussing with
me the various reasons
why this service might
be better than this service.
No one ever says that 60-year-old Americans
are the first adopters of a lot of things,
but we're seeing that, as well as these,
hopefully, these services
be adopted in countries
where they are filling
an even more critical gap.
- Like providing connectivity
that cannot be shot off even in w*r,
Starlink is getting a lot of attention
and is already generating a ton of cash.
But internet from space isn't new at all.
So, Mark, basically I'm
coming here to this place.
The whole day is for
this one question, okay?
People in this industry
have been telling me
the costs to build a satellite
is a couple hundred thousand
dollars that the size of this,
and you're building a $2
billion fleet of three satellites.
Are you crazy?
- No. (laughs)
When you're really close to the Earth,
your field of view is small.
What turned out is, the
farther away you go from Earth,
the more of it you can see.
So now I'm accessible...
Instead of just to this
small area underneath me,
I'm accessible to a very large market.
- [Galactic Gal] Hey this is Galactic Gal.
Let me take it over from here.
Compared to LEO, the geosynchronous orbit
is about 100 times farther from Earth,
and satellites there
are all circling the planet
in the same direction.
Think of it as a fixed parking position.
Some very powerful satellites are here
because it's almost always sunny.
Viasat's rationale for geo
is also based on the technical ability
to focus its beam on
areas where the demand is.
In fact, 95% of the world population
lives on only 10% of the land.
In other words, the
majority of economic activity
happens on only 3% of
our blue planet surface.
We can see human activity
with a naked eye at night.
From geo, all these markets can be served
with very few satellites.
Meanwhile, in low Earth orbit,
the new space constellations
are spending most of their time
over oceans and unpopulated areas
where there are no customers.
Moreover, they are in
the shade half of the time
each round trip.
Their position in very low orbit
brings the benefits of
much lower launch costs
and lower latency,
but this also means a
much smaller field of view.
That's why so many are needed
to offer reliable communication services.
- [Torsten] But there are more use cases
than just internet connectivity.
This UK-based fund has
deployed around $300 million
in over a hundred different companies.
- And our thesis at Seraphim
is that that is now creating
a digital infrastructure
in the sky.
So this is about space
looking down at planet Earth.
This digital infrastructure
which is made up
of hundreds and thousands of satellites
are able to collect data,
a tsunami of data that they're
collecting about our planet
in high resolution, low
cost, and importantly,
real time or close to real time.
And we believe that
this digital infrastructure
is a bit like the creation
of a new internet.
This is creating a trillion
dollar market opportunity.
- In other words,
different constellations
for different markets.
There's optical radar, infrared,
so many different technologies
serving different customer needs.
In a dark forest,
MindPoint's Sven has
identified a market opportunity.
He's building a business
based on all this new data.
And how can you help
me not have train delays?
- That's a great question.
So what we do is we analyze satellite data
and identify precisely where trees
are sending too close to railway tracks
and where they could
fall potentially on them.
The trees is one of the biggest reasons
why trains are being delayed.
We can identify where the trees are,
how tall they are, whether they are sick.
What we do is we take two satellite images
which are taken from
slightly different angles.
And from these two satellite images,
we calculate the height of the tree.
It works very similar to your human eyes
so your eyes can calculate depth.
- Ha, 3D glasses for satellites.
Brilliant.
LiveEO has raised one of the largest
space investment rounds in Europe.
They already protect millions
of miles of railway tracks
and electrical grids globally.
With their help,
I'll make it to my next
destination on time.
A former American spy
station in Berlin, Teufelsberg.
Locations like this remind
us that governments
have been spying on other governments,
and sometimes their own
citizens, for a very long time.
But finally space data can empower us
to look back at government activities
with a virtual time machine.
- I think our data in general
can be very empowering
for journalists around the world.
It's a tool that enables
them to see what's going on.
It was a great case where
some journalists from Buzzfeed
had used our data to discover
Uyghur detention camps.
- Megh is an investigative journalist
who was based in China for many years
until somehow her visa wasn't extended.
Thanks, Luke.
Thanks for catching that.
Satellite data helped
her and two collaborators
to get to the truth on the ground,
and they want a Pulitzer for it.
- So basically the process started
actually with Baidu Maps
where we noticed that the government
was essentially putting grayed out tiles
over a number of locations in Xinjiang.
- [Torsten] Low resolution
images that looked like this.
Megh and her team suspected
that the Chinese government
was censoring Baidu Maps
to hide prison camps holding Uyghurs
and other Muslim minorities.
Ultimately, they used high
resolution images from planet
to identify several hundred new prison
and detainment centers.
- We won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021.
We were really grateful for that award
because it brought a lot more attention
to the work than I think it
would've otherwise gotten.
- It's mind boggling to
me how this panopticon
could have changed world history.
Think about the Cuban m*ssile crisis
or the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
- Again, it comes to accountability.
I think it will change the
political calculus going forward
if everyone gets to know
that these things aren't gonna
be possible to hide anymore.
(camera shutter clicks)
- So let's imagine a world
where traffic jams, oil spills,
troop movements, bouncy
castles, everything can be seen
and verified by everyone
almost in real time.
Journalists, the open source
intelligence community on Reddit,
the good guys, the bad guys, me and you.
- But yes, we work with militaries.
And I wanna say this about this,
we do that on purpose, in good faith,
because we believe that it
will enhance peace and security
with one important caveat.
We will never do it exclusively.
We will not give this image to this client
with saying, "I will never
give this to anyone else."
If the New York Times also
wants access to that image,
they can also get access to that image.
If the UN and this NGO
wants access to that image,
they can also get access to that image.
- But can't the bad guys hide in the dark?
Well, turns out there's a set for that.
- [Tero] Real-time SAR.
- [Torsten] Which is a form of radar.
- That is something that can
be looked through the clouds,
through the darkness,
through rain, through snowfall.
You don't need the optical light
in the Arctic areas where
you have the darkness,
I mean, half of the year.
Or if you go to an area like the Amazon
where there's a lot of rain all the time,
it doesn't matter when you
have a radar constellation.
But also many other layers of data,
including geographical data,
stuff like meteorological
reports and things like that
where we help the insurance companies
to predict a flood development
or we support the Finnish icebreakers
in the Bay of Bothnian area.
We take images, how the
ice develops, you name it.
A lot of different types of use cases.
- So optical satellites look
at the outside of the building,
infrared gives you an inference
on what's going on inside.
So it sort of opens the box.
It's a new category of
Earth observation data.
If you're a housing association,
then you would be interested in this data
to make sure that your
portfolio is getting to net zero.
- [Torsten] The tech is maturing.
It can defeat darkness,
peak through clouds
or locate leaky windows.
And there's even a Canadian company
that can detect cow farts from space.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.
Eat your veggies.
- We have a huge vision going forward
to enable this transition
to a sustainable economy
and a secure world.
- [Torsten] Climate tech,
a trillion dollar opportunity
for Earth observation companies.
- We have fantastic investors at...
- One of planet's latest
investors is BlackRock,
the world's largest asset firm.
- Oh, they're trying to
demand all their companies
to track their ESG.
And the E in ESG is environment.
- Yeah, and what's good for the planet
is good for planet, right?
- Well, that's also true.
- I mean, I remember that first Earth Day
and, you know, that view from space
back looking at our planet
that you know kind of became the beginning
of the environmental movement.
That we are just one part
of the greater universe.
And how do we make sure that we survive?
There were a lot of things that came up.
A new awareness, a new consciousness
- Now, to live long and prosper,
humans and vulcans need a planet.
Climate science relies
heavily on satellite data.
Using AI, we can now
zero in identify and analyze
billions of individual trees.
- So space diplomacy and
space information is critical.
Climate change is a global problem.
We can't solve it without global data.
Without that big picture view
of what's happening on our planet.
And making sure that every country
is meeting their pledges.
And that globally, we're
able to meet our targets
for keeping within 1.5
degrees Celsius of warming.
- Actually, over half of our users,
half of the users are scientific
communities worldwide.
And they have published
over the last few years
more than 2,000 papers.
Research papers, thesis
and also white papers.
- Legal fishing, another great example.
We are plundering the oceans now.
There are many bad actors in the ocean,
and the only way we can tell
how much they're impacting the ocean
is by following their tracks in space.
- So one of our portfolio
companies, HawkEye 360,
they are the largest
constellation of radio frequency
signal intelligence satellites.
So that means that they're
able to monitor signals
from walkie talkies or mobile phones.
- [Torsten] When a boat
switches off their beacon,
Spire Global notices it
and notifies Hawk I 360.
Their small sats can detect
and document the dark vessel's activities.
- And they're able to
then use that information
to hold the owners of that boat to account.
- [Torsten] Yeah.
- So this can ultimately eradicate things
like ill*gal fishing,
but it can also work on other areas
- [Torsten] Like drug or human trafficking.
Next stop, Ecuador, where
they make heavenly coffee
and where agriculture
is critical to the economy.
- Size of our pineapple farm is 230 acres
And we produce seven
to eight shipping containers every week.
About 70% of it is exported overseas,
30% is for domestic sales.
- I had asked an Irish
company, Origin Digital,
to do a thorough biomass
analysis of Emilio's Fields.
This is what I'm showing him here.
- So one of the many
challenges that farmers have
is to be able to keep an eye on the crops
and how the crops are
developing seamlessly.
So they have to walk miles and miles
to be able to find that out.
And that too, they do
not have bird's eye view
of the entire thing.
- [Torsten] Madhumita says
that their sophisticated analytics
can help Emilio to understand
where a pest might be spreading,
where he should use
more or less fertilizers,
or adjust irrigation where
the moisture levels aren't right.
This is a potential game changer.
- If the farmers are using
our optimal technology and software,
yield can increase to
around 11 and a half times
per hectare, which is like
straight away 38% increase.
That is phenomenal.
- This would be a useful
tool as we would save money
and a lot of factors like
analysis and laboratories.
We technicians could manage
everything here on the ground,
and that would be invaluable.
- We are the top quality producers
of food-based products in
Ecuador such as pulps, jams,
toppings that are used
in the food industry.
We have clients in the dairy,
in the ice cream industries.
(upbeat music)
In the food industry, we
use not high tech technology
but we should start moving over there.
Resources are very limited,
Water, soil, and the
population keeps growing,
so therefore we need to look for better
and higher technology
to introduce to our sector.
- [Torsten] Okay, drones
make me kind of nervous,
I'm out of here.
EO Constellations, the hardware,
and machine learning, the software,
make monitoring millions of
farms possible on a daily basis.
- So defense and climate are connected.
As the climate changes,
there will be droughts, wildfires,
and other natural disasters
which might lead to migration of people,
which is obviously a security issue.
- No matter where I go in this industry,
national security is always close by.
How about the CIA, venture capital fund,
the involvement there?
- They don't like to
be called the CIA fund.
One of our investors is In-Q-Tel
that represents the US
defense intelligence community.
So they allow us to sell our data
and open doors to those agencies
that are interested in
intelligence as a whole.
- I hear echoes of my meeting
with the co-inventor of the internet.
It was also funded by the Pentagon.
That's the thing, defense
isn't a dirty word in space.
Satellites protect ecosystems
but also connect weapon systems.
Developed by the Department of Defense
and still operated by the US Space Force,
GPS is the one space service
that everyone uses daily.
And now startups see an opportunity
in the satellite navigation market.
This one, funded by
Lockheed Martin and Toyota,
wants to enhance the accuracy
of GPS to a few centimeters.
Aren't you competing with like the biggest
and most powerful governments in the world?
China, Russia, the US and the European.
They all have their own GPS.
- So we're not competing
with (indistinct) actually.
What we're doing is that
we are augmenting GPS.
So autonomous vehicles,
they need to know precisely
where they are on the road,
what they are on the road,
and where within that lane they are.
- All these satellites need to place
to beam back the data.
Contact is a South Korean company
that operates a global network
of ground stations like these.
Clients include Viasat and ISI,
allowing them to focus on things
other than building
dishes in remote places.
So how many constellation pitch decks
have you seen and watched
and how many are there
being built right now?
- We get to see around a hundred a month,
and we have consistently since 2016.
So that's thousands of
businesses around the world
that are looking to
develop technology solutions
to address this market.
- It doesn't take a genius to predict
that the number of
satellites is going to take off.
(indistinct) Arthur C. Clarke
wrote about accumulating
space junk back in the 1970s.
You probably remember this
from my previous documentary.
Before mass production and standardization,
cars used to be just toys
for rich people, really.
Well, at one point, satellites
used to be the size of cars
and were so complex and expensive
that only a handful of
countries could afford them.
Well, those costs are now plunging.
So just like on our roads
where space is congested and contested,
LEO is getting so crowded,
we may need to check for traffic.
- We don't put satellites in random places.
We put 'em on very
specific orbital highways.
Just like regular highways
have a finite capacity for space traffic,
each of these orbital highways
has a carrying capacity as well
for safety and sustainability.
- It's really quite shocking
when you think about it.
We are racing into this domain
and we don't actually know
what it's carrying capacity is.
- With low Earth orbit,
you have satellites that
are crossing in space
at 15,000 miles an hour.
The speed at which things happen
and the consequences of a
collision are enormously worse.
Nobody cleans up after you in space.
- Let's go back in time
when plastic was invented
and became a significant commodity
in the packaging of goods.
- [Torsten] Everywhere.
- Nobody's thinking,
one day we're gonna have
to get this plastic out of the ocean.
We were just throwing away plastic.
- Compared to plastic in the ocean, though,
space junk is a lot faster and more lethal.
You see, at this speed,
it will take me an hour
to cross the city.
Satellites do it in a second.
- [Galactic Gal] Everything
in orbit is traveling
at the same speed of around
25,000 kilometers an hour.
That's more than four miles per second.
Anything faster would
reach escape velocity,
and maybe the moon.
Anything slower would be
pulled back by Earth's gravity.
This constant high speed
is the reason why even
small objects are lethal.
- Yeah, so even a piece of debris
the size of a Tempe coin
can cause catastrophic
damage to a satellite.
- [Galactic Gal] These two satellites
cross paths every 90 minutes,
tens of thousands of times
during their operational life.
Even if these two never collide,
there are thousands
of other to worry about.
- [Torsten] Astroscale has
been on my radar for a while.
This Japanese company
wants to mitigate
cascading collisions in orbit.
- We're not gonna pick
up all those small pieces.
What we need to do is stop the big pieces
from coming to small pieces.
'Cause even the small
pieces are a significant risk,
and that could destroy a satellite
or destroy a space station.
- What we're seeing
here, this is kind of scary
to think about something like this
reentering and like maybe
hitting a populated area.
We see more and more
of these big rocket bodies
that are reentering.
- [Galactic Gal] Objects in low Earth orbit
naturally fall back down
after about 20 years
due to small atmospheric drag.
But space stations,
geo satellites or debris in higher orbits
will be in space for a much longer time.
- [Torsten] Some generals
don't seem to understand
the gravity of the situation.
In order to show off the
fire prowess and accuracy,
they've created even
more debris on purpose.
- Space junk from a Russian
anti-satellite weapons test
is threatening seven astronauts
aboard the International Space Station.
- In the middle of that test
in an immediate aftermath,
we knew that there was a debris cloud
in the vicinity of the
International Space Station,
but the data doesn't come in that fast.
And so trying to understand
the immediate danger to the astronauts
was not easy to do.
- [Torsten] And the irony is,
I think there were Russian astronauts at-
- Two of the seven.
Yeah, absolutely.
And of course there's sort
of the plausible deniability.
"Oh, they were never in risk."
And the reality is, we didn't know.
- The test has so far generated
over 1,500 pieces of
trackable orbital debris
and hundreds of thousands of pieces
of smaller orbital debris
that now threaten the
interests of all nations.
- [Torsten] I know that also the US
has done similar tests
in the '50s and '60s.
- Sure.
You know, honestly,
the last test that we
did, really, was in 1985.
We shot a satellite, and then we said,
"We don't think we're
going to do that anymore."
- [Torsten] That all doesn't matter
if China or Russia doesn't comply with any
of what you guys are talking
about here today, right?
- So what the Chinese choose to do,
what the Russians do today,
that that's on them, all right?
We know that they did the
Russian ASAT test, right?
That was completely,
completely inappropriate.
- [Torsten] Experts estimate
that there are more than
a hundred million pieces that
are way too small to detect.
Plus, even for the medium
sized objects, we have a problem
because we don't know
how they tumble and spin.
- Things move a certain way
mostly due to gravity or
curvature of space-time.
But then also, there's everything else
about how the sun is exerting forces
and pressures on objects.
And we are hindered
in our ability to predict
where these things are gonna
be at some point in the future.
- [Torsten] Okay, to recap,
this garbage grows
exponentially and travels fast.
Deliberate or accidental crashes
can cause cascading effects.
And to make things even worse,
we don't even know where
most of it is in time and space.
No matter how much I squint,
I get the remote sense
that solutions need to start
with better data.
Some already work on
improving situational awareness.
- So at Privateer, it's a platform company
co-founded by myself, Steve
Wozniak, and Alex Fielding.
Just like an iPhone is a
platform that has apps,
we would love to have
people from across humanity
exposed to the data and information
in Privateer's platform.
- [Torsten] Another company, LeoLabs,
is already generating
a billion conjunction alerts per month.
But even with perfect vision,
you still have to maneuver
to safety when necessary.
Eutelsat is one of the
most important companies
in this field.
We got exclusive access to
this mission control center.
With a recent acquisition of OneWeb,
this 40-year-old European
company is taking on Starlink.
Eutelsat wants to bridge the digital divide
from multiple orbits.
- So if there is a
problem on the satellite,
this ground control system
will automatically detect
that there has been a
violation of the threshold
and we trigger an alarm.
We are performing
manual collision avoidance,
but it's most likely with other satellites
that are uncontrolled
in the stationary orbit.
- [Torsten] You said earlier
you need to react fast.
Are we 20 hours?
Are we talking seconds?
- No, no, we are talking in real time,
which means immediately.
Immediately.
It's less than every second.
- So you can imagine the resources
that you need to pull through
to have the right people here 24/7,
making sure that they are able to react.
It costs money.
- We don't have the right to make mistakes
because it could be fatal.
- But there's good news.
For starters, bureaucrats and lawyers,
yes, you heard right,
are starting to lay the groundwork.
- Hi, my name is Niklas Hedman,
and I'm now acting director
of the Office for Outer Space
Affairs of the United Nations.
If you create space debris,
you can be hit by it yourself.
You see, if you want a long-term investment
to really benefit your company,
then you have to act responsibly.
- 25 years ago, there was no...
It was just NASA, it was
just ESA, it was just JAXA,
the few countries that were launching.
Now you'll have a satellite
that's built in country A,
it's launched in country B,
it's being insured in country C,
it's getting a license from country D
and it's being managed by country E.
Just the basics of what is
up there, it's multinational.
- Space sustainability is fundamental.
We can't get all the
amazing benefits of space,
and they are truly amazing.
If space is so congested,
then it's too to be up there, right?
So there's nothing more
important to the world
than making sure that space
is sustainable to reform now
and for future generations.
So we've put that right at the top
of the priority list for the UK.
- For instance, in 2019,
this intergovernmental body
adopted the long-term
sustainability guidelines.
It took 10 years to
negotiate that instrument.
21 guidelines.
- The Vienna spirit is the idea
that even though things may be tensed
outside the negotiating room,
that you come together
and that you compromise
and you do it for the good of the goal,
which is either nuclear safeguards
or the peaceful use of outer space.
- [Torsten] But new space
companies like to move fast
and you guys are pretty
slow at getting anything done.
No?
- We are slow.
However, there is no
other consensus platform
that deals with these issues in the world.
- [Torsten] Meanwhile,
the first fuel stations
on the orbital highways
already planned and funded.
- So a very large percentage
of satellites, well over 50%,
they reached the end of their life
because they ran out of fuel.
Not because their hardware is obsolete
or, you know, something
else happened to them.
It's because they simply
just ran out of fuel.
- [Torsten] No one would
ever leave their car stranded
if it ran out of fuel.
So extending the life of these spacecraft
sounds like a no brainer to me.
There are already test missions
on the way to power up some probes.
- Cars, airplanes, washing machines,
everything is serviced after it gets sold.
Satellites aren't.
Satellites are launched,
and there's no intention to service them.
Once they launch, they're gone.
You're not going to see them again.
That's going to change.
- We are launching our first
fuel demonstration mission
to prove out the refueling port
and to prove out the fuel transfer
so that we can start
refueling our customers.
- So the way you've
been selling me this is,
you are solving one of the biggest issues
in the space industry,
but what you actually have at the moment
is just a 500 gram little widget.
Isn't it a little bit too much hype?
- No, not at all.
So we have been baselined already in 2022
on four Department of Defense satellites,
and then 91 commercial satellites as well.
So there's already a huge demand for it.
- [Torsten] That's some
real customer traction
for this startup right there.
- So today, absolutely zero satellites
that are in geosynchronous
orbit have refueling capability.
- [Torsten] But not everyone is convinced.
- In fact, in any orbit,
no satellites have refueling capability.
- [Torsten] Space logistics
is an ambitious entity
inside a mega corporation
of 90,000 employees.
Welcome to what some call
the military industrial complex, old space.
- Yeah, so Northrop Grumman
has quite a long history
in aerospace industry,
especially in space actually providing
some of the key elements
landed men on the moon.
- [Announcer] The Eagle has landed.
- Back in the 1960s,
I deorbited dozens of spacecraft,
and I always felt like such a grave digger
every time I was pushing
one of those perfectly
good satellites out to service
simply because it ran out of fuel.
But we don't have to do that anymore
with the MEV-1 and MEV-2
that can extend the
life of those satellites.
- [Torsten] The big
idea, instead of refueling,
why not simply attach as a jet pack
and take over control?
You just mentioned geo,
and I thought all the actions in LEO.
- Yeah, well, geo is where the money is.
And so it's very exciting after 19 years
to be sitting in this control center,
seeing that Intelsat 901 coming
up very close on the screen,
full size, being right
there in front of us,
knowing that we're now
docking to that satellite
and extending the life.
Something we never dreamed of 20 years ago
when we first launched it.
- [Torsten] Is it possible
to do this with any satellite?
- So those two key interfacing features,
the liquid apogee engine
and the launch adapter ring,
are present on approximately 80%
of all satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
And it should be compatible
with nearly all of those.
- [Torsten] Life extension
services for satellites
are an important part
of space sustainability.
Removing pieces of debris safely
is another even bigger challenge
that needs to be confronted head on.
- Our tagline is the space sweepers, right?
So we like to kind of
think about, you know,
in the same way if your car
breaks down on the roadside,
you know, you call up
the car breakdown service
and they'll come and
take it off the highway.
We are looking at doing
the same thing with satellites.
- Astroscale's plan is to maneuver
close to defunct satellites and grab them.
With almost $400
million of venture capital,
they might actually be able to pull it off.
If you think about it,
this is the ultimate
tragedy of the commons.
Sure, there's exciting
technology on the horizon,
but let's be honest.
At the moment,
there are no binding
international rules in place
and no punishment for polluters.
We can't even keep the
rubbish off of our street
or recycle our consumer electronic devices.
But when small sats
get cheaper and cheaper to make and deploy,
they are also cheaper to replace.
If reuse, reduce, recycle is more expensive
than litter and relaunch,
then are we becoming a
space fairing throwaway society?
Probably better to be
responsible stewards of near Earth.
- I'd like to think that in 10, 20 years,
we look back and we say,
"Glad we did it just in the nick of time."
(spirited music)
- So I work at NASA Johnson Space Center
and we are what is called the
Space Vehicle Mockup Facility.
I am currently the deputy program manager
for the Commercial LEO
Development Program here at NASA.
- [Torsten] NASA's
grants are the rocket fuel
for the privatization of space.
After the retirement of the ISS,
there will be benefits to becoming a user
rather than an owner of a space station.
- It dries down costs for NASA
so we can take those funds
and apply it to exploration.
The exploration of the
moon and exploration of Mars,
which is really our main goal.
400 million over the next several years,
that is NASA's investment
in development of these
commercial space stations.
And beyond that, we
will be procuring services
from these commercial space stations
at the tune of about one
and a half billion dollars.
- Three stations are in the running.
We've already met Blue Origin.
They're also designing a
mixed use business park
called Orbital Reef for a crew of 10.
Axiom is one of those
companies building such a station.
They hired this guy to
make it commercially viable.
I'm, sorry, you have a fly.
Yeah, it's...
Got it.
- Very nice.
- [Torsten] One shot.
We don't fool around here.
- I'm not a rocket scientist
and I'm not a billionaire yet.
I got my start in technology,
software technology.
I was a startup founder for 10 years,
three different companies,
web and mobile apps.
And then I was working
at Google for many years.
And Axiom Space was
my first angel investment.
So in a few years, you'll
see our first module dock.
It's a habitat.
Few months after that,
the second module will dock.
Also a habitat.
Then our lab, our Earth observatory,
and then our power tower.
(spirited music)
- We're building the replacement
to the International Space
Station called Star Lab.
And that really validated,
I think, our model,
which is to acquire great companies,
invest in technologies,
and demonstrate our ability
to build infrastructure and space.
- [Torsten] The European
Space Agency and Airbus,
the world's largest
manufacturer of airplanes,
have joined as partners.
Airbus is also a defense
and space prime contractor.
Starlab will be half the size of the ISS,
but will fit nicely into
a single Starship rocket.
Northrop Grumman will
also provide cargo supply.
NASA might have
provided the initial funding,
but surely won't be the only customer
on these private space stations.
The market is expanding.
- So I think there's now 60 plus
space agencies in the world.
Pretty much every major country has one.
And they're starting to be
well funded and well supported.
And yeah, it's a renaissance
for those space agencies.
But we're still scoping out our designs.
I think we'll be,
you know, in the
single billions, certainly.
It's hard for me to say for sure,
but it's gonna be several orders
of magnitude less expensive
than the International Space Station.
- [Torsten] Still, financing these projects
will be a massive lift.
Axiom's latest investment
round transcended borders
and included capital from a Saudi bank
and a South Korean healthcare company.
- Axiom will be a trillion dollar company.
How?
I'll tell you the same
answer I gave my board
three weeks into my job.
I don't know, but I'm certain
we're gonna figure it out.
- Clearly, there's a gold
rush happening right now.
Maybe someone is already
building a space hotel
like the one I read about as a kid.
(gentle music)
- Well, we signed a
partnership with Hilton.
And as you reimagine
human habitation in space,
why not go to a habitation expert?
So that's one strength that
Hilton brings to the table.
- [Torsten] I don't know how
many stars this hotel will have
in the Hitchhiker's guide,
but I'll take the penthouses
with the views please.
- Second strength is they're
spending a lot of money
researching things like
anti-microbial technology.
- [Torsten] Finally, some
peace and quiet, a real getaway.
In the space elevator,
I imagine how my stay would be like.
For once, I'll hit the gym before sunrise,
and finally, will improve my bench press.
Here, I'll even weigh less.
- And it's also a brand
that everyone knows.
And I think it lends credibility
to the fact that this is happening.
- [Torsten] I'll have my Ecuadorian coffee
just over the equator
and eat my yogurt while spying
on the Great Wall of China.
Oh, it's full of stars.
- Well, it's gonna be expensive,
I hate to break it to you, Torsten.
It's not gonna be...
It's not gonna be cheap.
- It's definitely going here.
When you're hungry,
there is no bigger food desert than space.
A place where you cannot waste anything.
So how can humans live here sustainably?
Paris-based, Interstellar Lab,
won the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge
for their modular system Nucleus.
Just add water.
- So we are using actually the CO2
that is produced by
mushroom to feed the plants.
The plants are producing
oxygen that goes into the insects
and the mushroom box.
And we use that inedible part of the plants
to feed the insects,
which create the
substrate for the mushroom.
So it's kind of a small ecosystem
just divided in different box
but trying to close the loop.
- [Torsten] It turns out
that you need about 55 square meters
to sustain one human for
one year with food and oxygen.
Welcome to Barbara's (indistinct).
Personally, I'm still undecided
about drinking recycled
urine and eating crickets.
A bit hard to swallow,
but I'm certainly a big fan
of building a space business
by first selling to terrestrial clients.
- What we're doing now
is we're working with very big
natural ingredients company,
cosmetic company, food companies as well.
And we're growing rare
species or endangered species
or species that
traditionally are not growing,
you know, where you live inside the bubble.
And so we are helping
actually the food industry
and natural ingredient industry
growing plants in a more sustainable way
because we use less water,
because we scrub CO2,
because it's a sealed bubble
and it was designed
with this space constrained
engineering approach
where you need to minimize the input
and maximize the output.
- There was a technique that was developed
for freeze drying food,
which is actually the
same technique we use now
for food onboard the ISS.
But it's a technique
that we use on Earth too.
So that is a direct spinoff from,
you know, having to solve that problem
for the Apollo astronaut.
- [Torsten] It's doubtful
that the Cold w*r taxpayers
beating the Soviets to the moon
ever thought that their grandkids
would use space race tech
to feed their families today.
- The International Space Station
is a beacon of international collaboration.
And we have many nations, you know,
who send their astronauts.
They eat together, they work together.
We have many nations
who send their experiments.
School children send experiments
to the International Space Station
for astronauts to
conduct research for them.
And this spans the globe.
- [Torsten] To fact check this,
I went down under to Australia
- And the high school sends
us a team of their students,
about six students,
and those students work
with our university students
who are mentors to them.
They have to research what they think
would be an important
microgravity related experiment.
And they research that,
they design their own
experiment, they test it here,
and then they fly it to the
International Space Station.
- Last year, they decided
to send yogurt to space
because probiotics are
incredibly important for your gut.
Gut health in space is incredibly important
and not well understood yet.
So they hit several nails
on the head with their idea.
- So I think we were
just putting milk samples
in an incubator,
and then milk with yogurt
and milk with probiotics.
And we were seeing
like the bacterial strains
that would like develop over
time with different dilutions.
So from one tenth to one billionth?
- Yeah. - Yeah, I think so.
So we're gonna open up some of the vials
that have actually been to space
and we're gonna see like
the bacterial strains there.
- [Torsten] My high school
didn't catapult students
into a career in science quite like this.
- We actually just signed six agreements
with Latin American countries.
Everything from Mexico to
Columbia, even Costa Rica.
So you have all these emerging countries
that wanna have a space agency.
They want to have national
identity around space.
They see it as a way to inspire
students in STEM education.
- [Torsten] But how does this relate
to entirely new industries emerging?
- We can't say exactly,
well, what's gonna be the
next billion dollar industry?
Actually I can.
It's gonna be pharmaceuticals in space.
- [Torsten] Pharma giant, Merck,
known as MSD outside North America,
was founded at the end of the 19th century.
Merck has been able to develop
more pure formulations on orbit.
- Well, microgravity, the
particles remain suspended,
and therefore can grow more
perfect in all three dimensions.
- [Torsten] Which could help
improve cancer treatments.
- I think that these companies
miss the opportunities
in research and development.
Particle engineering, stem cell growth.
There's organs grown in space.
- Sounds like something
straight out of a sci-fi novel.
But why make anything
in space in the first place
if the rockets are getting elongated
and the shipping costs are falling?
Well, here's an example.
The European Space Agency
needs very powerful antenna,
and those need to be way longer
than even the biggest
pod bay doors are wide.
In the past, complicated
folding mechanisms were needed.
A little like an umbrella.
- Your spacecraft is
sitting nicely, so to speak,
in a microgravity environment.
So it doesn't need to be as strong
as what you would build on Earth.
So your structures can be lighter.
- What if we could make
materials up in space
that would be impossible to
produce back here on Earth?
- For example, optical
fibers with less defects
than what you would get on Earth.
Semiconductor materials with less defects,
metallic alloys, even superalloys,
the kind of alloys we use in
airplane engines, ceramics.
- [Speaker] People say,
"Well, there's not gonna be enough demand
to meet the launch capacity."
And I reject that.
I think capacity creates demand.
- Build it and they will come.
- Yes.
But in this case, it
really is true, Torsten,
because the limiting factor has been
essentially getting projects
through the NASA system,
astronaut time, and space manufacturing,
biopharma research, ag tech,
these are all leading edge
research projects and programs
that just need habitat.
They need more space.
- [Torsten] Before central
bankers could just print money
out of thin air,
whoever controlled the gold
mines would rule the lands.
History is full of stories
about explorers extending frontiers
and extracting wealth from new continents.
So perhaps it's time
to revisit a far out idea.
Recently, NASA and Japan's JAXA
have demonstrated the ability
to navigate to and land on asteroids.
Today I'm traveling light.
My little bird is taking me
to a Californian company
hunting for treasure.
- The amount of platinum
group metals out there
is in the trillions of dollars.
And that's just for a
couple of asteroids, right?
And we have millions
of asteroids out there.
So this is a lab prototype
of what we aim to build for space.
The vapors are ionized,
so they're positively charged
and they get accelerated.
So AstroForge is building a
vehicle that's gonna go out
and extract material from asteroids,
refine the material,
and bring that refined
material back to Earth.
If this is successful,
platinum will be as common
as aluminum or iron or nickel.
It would be a very common metal, right?
- How certain are you
that this survives launch
and the vibration, the
speed and the radiation?
To be clear, AstroForge
is currently ridesharing
a small experimental payload
with our friends from Exolaunch.
These first tests are to demonstrate
that refining platinum
and microgravity could work.
Two year long robotic roundtrip missions
are in the business plan
by the end of the decade.
- When we were doing Y Combinator,
we had a myriad of
investors wanting to invest
and throw money at the company.
- [Torsten] See, nothing is
truly scarce in this universe,
but you disapprove of
galactic gold diggers?
Personally I find parachuting
in platinum from outer
space pretty cyberpunk
and much more palatable than
obtaining it from rogue nations
or by children slaving
in underground mines.
Yep.
Yet again, we're touching
on geopolitical matters.
Some of these companies are now so huge
and the billionaire founders
behind them are so rich.
Do governments still matter
or is it all about commercial space?
- I mean, as a government employee,
I definitely have to say
the governments are still
very much involved in
kind of all aspects of this.
And an interesting aspect
of the outer space treaty,
which is really the foundational document
for international space law,
is that it states that
governments are responsible
for the activities of
their nationals in space.
- [Torsten] Apparently,
SpaceX does not want
to commit to these rules
when it comes to the free people of Mars.
If the planet's aligned,
we'll cover that in our sequel.
But let's not forget that
it's not a pale blue flag
for all mankind on the moon.
The American Eagle had landed.
- When Columbus crossed the Atlantic,
he was sent by Queen
Isabella and King Ferdinand.
There was some private investment in there,
but the motivation was geopolitical.
Okay?
And by the way, Queen Isabella didn't say,
"Oh, Chris, you know, when you come back
give us a slideshow of
the, you know, the plants
and the terrain."
No, it's like, "Here's a satchel of flags.
Plant them wherever you go."
- China and Russia
are very active in space.
The United States is very active in space.
A lot of countries are.
And I think the important thing
is that nations that are active
in space behave responsibly,
they behave sustainably.
- You know, for US-based
companies in general,
China's completely off limits,
really, for regulatory reasons.
What I see happening, Torsten,
is we're gonna have two
different space economies.
We're gonna have a Western,
US-led space economy,
and then you'll have a
Chinese-led space economy.
And I think those will be quite distinct
and I don't see a lot of overlap there.
- Hi.
Torsten, nice to meet you.
- I think there's a historical
perspective to be had here
because the way the Chinese understand
the history of the 18th, 19th, 20th century
is that China did not stand their ground
on the geopolitical scene.
And so it was the Western powers
that sort of established the
way the world works today.
- [Torsten] John has lived in the region
for half of his life
and is an expert on the
Chinese space economy.
- There was an interesting
poll a couple of years ago.
They basically asked the
young population in the UK,
in the US, and in China,
what would you like to do when you grow up?
And the answer in China
was being a taikonaut
be an astronaut.
- China take three.
Meanwhile, the kids in the West
dream of becoming influencers on Instagram
or professional TikTokers.
Perhaps it's no wonder that
China's the clear number two
in the modern space race.
- The Guo Wang Constellation
announced last year,
we're talking about
almost 13,000 satellites,
and that's comparable
to the super constellations
that we have in the US,
which, you know, Starlink, OneWeb, Kuiper.
It's the similar order of magnitude.
- But here's the twist,
the private space entrepreneurs
in Communist China
are jealous of their capitalist
counterparts in America
because they are not getting
those juicy government grants.
- You don't see any of
those subsystems, at least,
for the time being, being
subcontracted, being outsourced
to these private companies,
these commercial companies.
So that is one big difference,
and that is a significant difference
that enabled SpaceX to survive and to grow
in the late 2000s.
- So it's time to ask
just how much of the space renaissance
is really the achievement
of free enterprise
if most of the revenue
still comes from Uncle Sam.
Maybe commercial space
doesn't necessarily mean private demand.
- When Elon Musk first sent
cargo to the Space Station,
there were headlines.
New air private industry
is gonna lead the way.
(crowd cheering)
No, they're not.
Taking cargo to the space station,
NASA has been doing that for 20 years.
- So it's not a dirty
secret that governments
are the primary revenue source.
The whole reason this new
space industry is coming up
is 'cause the government
wants the private sector to do it
'cause the private sector can do it faster.
The private sector can
iterate and experiment
and find these other markets.
- It's an interesting, fun future,
a little bit of a Wild West right now.
- [Torsten] The Wild West always reminds me
of the historic gold rushes
in California, Australia,
or soon, in asteroid near you.
The upside of fresh
capital is new jobs globally.
- We have 40 startups in
our accelerator program.
More than half of them
come from other countries.
There are close to 2,000
jobs created in Singapore.
They're high value adding jobs
in a very, very niche and competitive,
but very exciting industry.
- So we're at the front
end of a very steep slope.
I mentioned earlier,
700 employees at Firefly.
Well, we've estimated
that in the next 10 years,
we're gonna need 10 times
as many employees in space
than currently work there today.
In this industry, not
even the sky is the limit.
- 16 and a half billion pounds of income,
47,000 jobs.
So it's phenomenally highly skilled jobs.
But here's the thing,
I think sometimes people
think space and think,
"Oh, that's only for the astronauts."
"That's only for the astrophysicist."
We could not be further from the truth.
We need the designers, the artists,
the human resources
professional, the engineers.
- A filmmaker, whether it's a diplomat,
whether it's an engineer,
whether it's a space station manager
or an artist or a botanist.
- We've got designers,
we've got architects,
we've got even mechanics
who want to build fuel stations in space.
We've got bankers interested.
We've got fashion designers interested.
- One of the reasons that I chose
this area to focus on and to fund
is the idea that space
from the beginning of time
has been our source of inspiration.
You know, we've looked to the heavens.
Working together, you know,
space can help us find that
ground of connectedness
that we all have, and hopefully
bring out our better angels.
(gentle music)
- Dinosaurs found out the hard way
that if you don't have a space
program, you may go extinct.
I'm meeting the guy
who's building life ship,
a company that wants to
preserve humanity's DNA.
It's fitting that we are here
in the ocean where life began.
- Yeah, where life began,
and then came out onto land.
Gaia and Earth wants to reproduce.
And so with LifeShip, what we're doing
is we're assembling the genetic
code of Earth and humanity
to send to space and to send to stars.
So we created a consumer product.
Customer registers online
and they build out their
profile of who they are.
For people to send their DNA to space,
kind of like a digital
twin backup of yourself.
There's a guide with a
number of facts on the mission
and how it gets to the moon.
A boarding pass to the moon.
And then there's a saliva
swab that you do a sample
and then put it back in this envelope
and mail it back for the LifeShip mission.
- [Torsten] The DNA isn't sequenced.
It's extracted and encased in polymer,
then sealed in a capsule
that protects it from radiation.
- It's someone like a
Noah's Ark to the stars.
This is a record of Earth today
that future generations could get
and bring back species
that are no longer here.
- Yeah, in a way, your company and the kit
is sort of like the smallest,
cheapest consumer product,
the most easy to grasp idea
that I've seen in my whole journey.
Very, very cool story.
Together with many other precious species,
Sheldon's genetic code
is aboard Ben's LifeShip,
which is mounted on a Firefly Moon Lander,
which is powered by
Rocket Lab made solar panels
and launched on a SpaceX
rocket on a private mission
primarily financed by a new
commercial NASA program,
bringing us back full circle.
Millions love space and
follow every rocket launch life.
I ask you, which other industry
captures our collective
imagination like that?
Space has always had
a different kind of ROI,
return on inspiration.
- It's hard to understand today
a sort of multi-year slow motion race
that captivated the entire planet.
And first, we were losing and
we were behind the Soviets.
Then we were winning.
The imagery was beautiful,
seeing people floating
in space for the first time.
So it's easy to be
captivated as a young kid.
I was three or four years old, literally.
And I was fascinated by
the "Star Trek" ecosystem.
- I think the first time that
I really like got into space
was when I was a kid, I
like read a lot of space books.
- You know, I was born
in Trinidad and Tobago.
And as a little girl,
I was really excited and
really good at math and science.
- My parents took me to
Kennedy Space Center in Florida
and I saw that gigantic building.
And my dad said, "That's
where they make rockets."
And it was as if my mind,
my heart, and my soul
exploded at the same time.
And you don't forget
moments like that in your life.
- Ever since I was very young,
maybe, you know, nine or 10,
I was actually lying in the
back of my dad's pickup truck
in rural Georgia looking up at the stars.
- And to see a young child in
the next generation growing up
knowing that not even the sky is a limit,
what a gift to be able to provide to her.
- When I was a kid,
I was dreaming of becoming multi-planetary.
So making drawings of domes
and structures on all the planet
full of plants and flowers.
- For me, I have always
had really big dreams.
And as a child, it's easy to say,
"I wanna go to space,"
"I wanna be president,"
"I wanna be a CEO."
- [Torsten] And her journey
started at McDonald's.
See, what I learned making this documentary
is that it's not the billionaires
against the rest of us.
- Thanks to Humanity, we're here.
- It's not about public
versus private initiatives.
This is all about those
who are effectively
accelerating us into the future.
Our story always has
and always will be written
by those who imagine any
new space as a blank canvas.
However, their lofty dreams
still need to be tethered
to the hard realities
on the ground below, like cash.
Space businesses are
still, well, businesses.
So many startups will crash and burn,
but some will be making a galactic profit.
- Pass that off to private enterprise
'cause they'll figure
out how to do it cheaper
'cause that's kind of what they do.
That's...
That's why they exist.
To make a buck.
- Now I'm returning to
42 HQ, having seem early,
but thriving markets and
real customer traction.
And this is the end.
Take four.
So let's just imagine for a sec
our next giant leap of this rock.
Perhaps then, humans way in the future,
those spacefaring h*m*,
who for sure will be
force of gravity defying,
and Elon edifying,
habitat's finding and
shiny asteroids mining.
These supreme beings
of all shapes and sizings
may be even blindened with
a trillion dollar spaceships
and their microgravity bread protein dips.
Yes, those future
h*m*, ha, h*m*,
will look back at us
ancestors and be thanking us.
Not just the four or five famous dudes.
No.
The rest of us,
the best of us who
possess the mental fortitude
from our high school kids science fairs
to boomers boosted into
cislunar nursing cares.
Our climate defenders and metal benders,
the bureaucrats, plutocrats,
diplomats, copycats,
the engineers and marketeers,
the musketeers and pioneers,
the privateers and financiers.
We are not mere passengers
here on spaceship Earth.
For what it's worth, me
and you, we're all crew
because the science girls and rocket fellas
have no time to k*ll to
see their dreams fulfilled.
Today is day one,
and it's time to build.
(inspirational music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music continues)
(upbeat music continues)
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Fortitude: Forging the Trillion Dollar Space Economy (2024)
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