 Welcome to TomorrowOrbit12.22. I can't even believe it's 22 already. I've got Jared with me. I am Karianne. And today we are interviewing none other than the astrobotic CEO, John Thornton. John actually previously was on our show in orbit 8.12. So if you'd like to go back and see that episode, that was a great episode. It was not in the studio. So for those of you who have joined us in the last couple of years, it might be a different experience for you. But we're really happy to have John back. And just for those of you who don't know, astrobotic used to be a Google Lunar XPRIZE competitor and has actually moved on and gotten a lot more money to do a lot of other things. So John, welcome back to the show. It's really lovely to have you. And I'm really excited to talk about. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. About all the things that you've done. Since the last time we've had you on the show, but just to lay some groundwork, if you would like to tell us a little bit about yourself and for those of you who have not seen you before, so we can get to know you a little bit better. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. Really excited to be here again. I'm the CEO of Astrobotic and we are building a DHL like delivery service to take payloads up to the surface of the moon. So actually you have 28 payloads signed up so far flying on the first mission. And big news is that NASA added 14 to that manifest with a contract of 79 and a half million. So we are ready to go. That's amazing. I like how you just randomly put out the 79 and a half million. Like that's a cool, I mean, it is a cool number. Don't get me wrong, because it's a little bit more than I think most people were expecting to hear, generally speaking. That's so funny. So that's a little bit about you. A little bit about Astrobotic. Can you tell us a little bit about how, what the founding story is behind Astrobotic itself? We got started 12 years ago. Originally it was to pursue the Google Interact Prize and we started as a more of a project than a company. But what we quickly realized when pursuing the prize is that we needed something more. The prize wasn't enough to cover the costs. We needed something that could create more revenue, create more money to make the mission actually occur. And that's when we started to look at business. So about six years ago, I transitioned from the engineering side and the business side. And we refocused the company on payload sales. So since then we've been building the market and making sales in that market and we're world leading now. So it's been a long time coming and the prize is no longer in effect since expired. But I think it's really, it's done its job because we exist and there's other companies that are out there building a lunar delivery market. So John, what about Astrobotic attracted you to come and work for them? Well, going to the moon, that's the big one. It's fair. So I had an opportunity to go work for a big aerospace company or I could take my moonshot with Astrobotic. And originally when I joined Astrobotic, the plan was to land on the moon two years after I joined. So 12 years later, we are now at two years out from our moon landing. That's amazing. That's really, that's really cool. It's kind of funny though. I appreciate that you have a sense of humor about that just generally speaking. I think a lot of Google lunar XPRIZE teams were like, oh yeah, this is no problem. We've got this and sadly we've seen what's happened. But there have been a lot of companies like yours that have gone on to other things. And I think that's really fantastic. And that's kind of what the XPRIZE was really intended to do anyway. So how would you describe, if you don't mind, the way that the Google lunar XPRIZE or GLXP accelerated or sort of kickstarted the company's development itself? I think the most important thing that Google XPRIZE did is it created a platform to talk about lunar delivery and talk about lunar missions. If you are a small startup in Pittsburgh with just a handful of folks going around saying you're going to land on the moon, that's kind of hard to do. And people will look at you funny. But the Google XPRIZE gave us the platform to talk about that. And what other people talked about it is it was the beginnings of a promising industry to market very, very early. But it gave us that platform to get started. So then over the years, we were able to show our technical capability by winning three of the milestone prizes in the Google XPRIZE. We had numerous NASA contracts at that point to date. So it gave us a platform to get started and talking points and a place to tell the world about what we're up to. That's awesome. Yeah, and when you guys were deep in the Google lunar XPRIZE, what was that environment like? Was it like a cordial competition amongst everybody in the prize? Or was it sort of what I would expect aerospace to be where it's like you're friendly with each other but you're also keeping very close to yourself, very secretive about what you may be working on? I think it transitioned over time. In the beginning, it was very secretive and a little bit more competitive. But over time, people quickly realized that it was necessary to be working together. And we actually took a unique step in offering other XPRIZE teams to fly with us. And in fact, we have a couple signed up for our mission today that will be flying with us to the surface of the moon. So we actually took the opportunity of the XPRIZE and treated it as a market opportunity for sales and to build up the payload sales pipeline necessary to fly to the moon. That's awesome. Actually, that ties in really great with one of the questions coming in from our chat room. AstroYYZ says, who do you partner with to launch payloads speaking of partnerships? So the partnerships for getting to the moon are really critical. I mean, one of the biggest challenges we have as a company over the last 12 years is convincing people that it's possible to fly at land of the moon, which has only been accomplished by superpowers. So that's where the partners are so key to show that, hey, this small startup in Pittsburgh can actually get this done because they are partnered with Airbus, great power in the space industry and really world-renowned experience. We're partnered with NASA through the Catalyst Program where their engineers are working on our lander. We're partnered with Dynetics to build our propulsion system. And we're currently partnered with ULA to fly our lander to space to get out to the surface of the moon. So it's really that partnership that is key for building the credibility, building our story, building the technical capability to make something like this happen. So as we found out, unfortunately, the big accomplishments, the big goals that were set for you to win in the Google Lunar X Prize. Unfortunately, nobody was able to do it in the amount of time and I know Google kept extending it and everything. But even with that passing, the expiration of it, what were some of the things that Astrobotic learned from that? What were some of the things that Astrobotic had to take and kind of adapt yourselves for? I think we learned a lot about the market. I mean, we were focused on payload sales and building up this Lunar Payable Delivery Market. And what we learned by selling back to other X Prize teams is how to build the business to go to the moon. How is it going to happen? How do you have the customer interactions? What do the customers expect? And how do you build the service that's going to satisfy their needs? So we really focused our service from the very get go on that delivery objective. And the X Prize gave us a perfect platform to talk to the other teams, to understand what their needs were, what their concerns might be, and try to address them and really build the company from the ground up as a customer-centric company for delivery. That's awesome. I really like that. There's a question coming in from our chat room. Actually, it's from our YouTube channel where Steven Porter is sounding a little bit harsh, I will admit. But it is an interesting question, which is to say, why are you using 60 technology and design instead of moving forward? Which, yeah, exactly. I think it's maybe a little bit on the harsher side. But at the same time, I think anybody who is not actively in the industry, and even some people who are, I suppose, sometimes can look at a lot of these designs, and they all sometimes sort of look alike. And they look like some of the stuff that came out in the 50s and 60s. And at the time it was brand new and nobody had been to the moon yet. And so it was really cool and it looked really futuristic. And now anything else that you see after that, sort of, if it's even remotely reminiscent, even the Lander that Blue Origin just recently put out also has a relatively similar shape and design aesthetic to it. So I think that's kind of where this is sort of coming from as a question, as opposed to being as harsh as maybe it sounds. But what would you say, is there like a good reason for that? Like, I don't design, I'm not an engineer. Can you explain to me why your Lander maybe doesn't aesthetically look that drastically different? And like the stuff that we maybe dreamed of while going to the moon in a really cool, sleek sort of situation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the biggest reason, not to be glib about it, but the biggest reason is that physics hasn't changed since the 60s. Sure, it's fair. So the fundamental ways that you solve the problems are the same. So some of the technology is literally dropping in place from the 60s. So for example, the landing legs have to absorb the impact on landing. And in order to do that, you want to absorb the impact but not bounce. So you can't put a spring damper system in there like you might have in your car suspension, but you need something that could absorb the energy and not rebound. So the Apollo engineers created a system of crushable honeycomb, which is a super affordable, easy way to do exactly that, to absorb that impact and not rebound. So we are using the exact same system in our lander. A lot of the components that fly this spacecraft are the same basic ideas that were in the 60s, but they are 50 and 60 years advanced compared to where they were back then. The computer, for example, that flew Apollo out to the moon was on order as powerful as pocket calculator. Our processors are much, much, much more powerful. Orders of magnitude were powerful. And that enables the spacecraft to be much more autonomous in its descent down to the surface of the moon. So I think that there's a lot of parts that are similar and we're building it on that foundation, but the industry as a whole has advanced dramatically. If you think about it, I mean, during the Apollo era, they were creating components for the very first time and now we have a $360 billion industry worldwide to send things up to space. And only a quarter of that is government spending. Yeah, no, that makes sense. So there's vast quantities of components that are available off the shelf that can be integrated and are very well proven. Totally. Yeah, and a lot of sort of in the same vein as the question that we just had from Stephen, right? Yep. Is that people will often say, we went to the moon back in the 60s and 70s, so why are we going back? I mean, it's Apollo 1150th this year, right? Yes. Next week. Yes, and even towards the end of the Apollo program, people were saying that as well. So I guess sort of the kind of throw Stephen's question around a little bit as well again, which is sort of why the focus on the moon? Like what is so exciting about the moon that Astrobot excited to start designing landers for it? When we went to the moon 50 years ago, the objective was essentially a flags on footprints program. It was to show the rest of the world who had the biggest rockets, to show the rest of the world who had the best technology and the US accomplished what they needed to accomplish during a cold war. So now the objective to go back to the moon is different. Instead of accomplishing a national priority like that for defense, now the priority is what can we use the moon for to advance our species here on earth and also further exploration on our solar system. So one of the first things I point out in this is that the fuel can be used to refuel spacecraft. The moon can become a fueling station. So you could have water at the poles of the moon, for example, you can split that in oxygen, hydrogen and then stat, and that's rocket fuel. So you can use that fuel to refuel spacecraft to go back and forth from the moon and to refuel spacecraft to go deeper in the space. You can dramatically reduce the cost to get to Mars, for example, if you can refuel at the moon. And the moon is also our nearest neighbor. It's our practice ground. It's the place where we need to learn to live off the land where we've spent 40 of the last 60 years of space living in space with astronauts. We've only spent two weeks on and around the moon. So we don't know how to live on another planetary body. And it makes sense to practice that and figure out the technologies, figure out how to create components from the local terrain, how to mine materials and potentially use that for creating components on the moon and for future destinations and potentially bringing some of that mining output back here to Earth to potentially reduce our impact on the environment here on Earth. Oh, awesome. I love, I didn't know that part. I wanna get back to that for sure, but what you just said also leads in really well to another question that we have coming out of the chat room from Johnny Spacer, saying, does Astrobotics have plans beyond robotic missions, i.e. like crude lander vehicles, et cetera? So we are a space robotics company at the core. So we are building robotic delivery services to go to the surface and we're taking various robots with us. So there's gonna be robotic exploration, robotic science and robotic development of the lunar resources. When humans go to the surface of the moon, robots are gonna play a key role as well. They're gonna be the scouts, they're gonna be the ones to figure out where to land, they're gonna be the ones that are enabling and helping the astronauts along the way. You could imagine, you know, teleoperated robots being driven out and finding the spots where the humans need to go and explore. So there's a whole array of applications that robots fit hand in glove with human explorers. All right, awesome. Yeah, so speaking of landers, you guys are working on a lander to send to the moon. Can you tell us a little bit about the story of that lander? Like where did that begin and how did you go through your different designs that you've gone with it? Yeah, our lander development started 12 years ago at the beginnings of the company. We needed a way to go from a launch vehicle in space down to the surface of the moon to a Christina lander for that. So our lander Paragren is designed to take up to 200 kilograms of payload to the surface of the moon. It uses, it has four tanks, two fuel tanks, two oxidizer tanks. They're liquid fuels in both of them. You mix that together and it ignites. And essentially you aim that out of rocket nozzle and that's what creates the rocket propulsion. So we have five main engines, 150 pound forces thrust underneath that provide the main braking force. We also have 12 attitude control thrusters around the spacecraft. And those are essentially used to already have big thrusters underneath. The lander is solar powered. So we're pointing the solar panel towards the subject to generate power to keep things warm and to operate the computer and everything else we need to get out to the moon. Once we get to the moon, we slow the vehicle down into lunar orbit and descend down to the surface for soft landing. Once on the surface, we become the local utility. So we provide power and communications for the payloads that come with us. So we're like the local infrastructure for the customers and payloads operating on surface next to our lander. Oh, that's awesome. And I love how you describe that like local utility. Totally. You know, you're the phone company, you're the electrical company, you're the sanitation company, other things like that for whatever your payloads may need. So I never really thought about it like that before where you really are providing those services with it. So that's so... No, that's really cool. That's a great way to describe it. Yeah, totally. And you know, you are going to be carrying payloads to the surface of the moon with your lander. So what is Paragon going to be carrying to the surface? We have 28 payloads flying with us on the first mission and it's a ray of science instruments, exploration instruments. We've got some marketing things like time capsules and other stories. We also have a moon box shipments from individuals all over the world. We have eight countries represented on our first mission. We've got rovers, we've got science instruments, we've got precursor instruments to understand what the materials of the moon are. So it's a first precursor toward creating that moon water fuel. So there's a whole array of different instruments and developments. I mean, you could kind of think about the UPS truck or the DHL truck driving around in your neighborhood, think about all of the different packages on the back of that truck and all the different stories that are attached to that. And that's a little bit like what we are, we are that delivery truck taking all the different missions from all of the world up to the surface of the moon. Speaking of stories and not that this is broadcast live and nobody's watching, so you don't have to worry about that. What would you say your favorite payload is on Paragon? Oh, favorite payload, that's hard. I'll say a few of them. So our goal as a company is to make the moon accessible to the world. And towards that, we have eight nations flying with us. One cool story that I like to tell is the Mexican Space Agency. They're a fairly small new space agency, but because they're flying with us, they could be the fourth nation to operate on the moon after China. Oh, that is cool. And that's pretty darn cool for Mexico. Yeah, we also have a payload from Nepal. So literally the other side of the world. There was an astronaut that climbed Mount Everest and brought a moon rock along with it. And now Nepal is sending a moon rock to the moon or a piece of Everest, I should say, a piece of Everest to the moon. So going full circle. So we are touching the farthest reaches of the globe with our stories and connection points to the moon. I also really liked our moon box program. So this is designed for individuals to send payloads up to the surface of the moon, so small mementos. So previously you had to be an Apollo astronaut to leave anything on the surface of the moon. And now you can do that through our service. And we have some really cool stories in there. We've got a school in the middle of the country called Baltco Schools K-12 School. And traditionally they're focused on agriculture, but now because of our program, they're actually able to think about literally sending things to the moon and every kid in that school is going to be sending something up on an SD card that's going to go up to the moon. So I just really like all of the human stories and the touch points all around the world that we get to bring together on our mission. Yeah, and I saw on your website too, I was kind of playing around with some of the, there's a configurator on your website for it. I saw that you can literally launch your own personal payload to the moon for under 500 bucks. What? For that. That is ridiculous. That is so cool. That's practically it. So if you've got like a reasonable amount of money, you could launch, you could literally send a payload to the moon. So. Oh, that's really cool. And now I'm thinking about that. That's right. Cool. But I want to send to the moon. Yeah, it's exciting. We have a whole bunch of different payloads inside there. Some people will send inscriptions to the surface of the moon on metal. We have family photos in there, like the astronaut that left his family photo on the surface of the moon. We actually have some pet hair from a family pet that passed. We've got little little mementos really that are touch points to people. And I think it's just kind of fun that if you can send something up to the moon, your story will forever be intertwined with what we all see in the night sky. Totally. Do you have something on Peregrine or are you planning something? I will. I haven't decided what yet. I have a short list and I'll make that decision right before we fly. Awesome. Oh, I love it. That's so amazing. That's such a great story. I love it. Okay. So Peter Quinn from our YouTube chat is asking, whereabouts are you planning to land on the moon? So we're going to land at a location in the northeast part of the moon. So it's the upper right hand quadrant as you see in the night sky. It's a place called Lacus Mortis. And for the Latin scholars out there, you know that translates to Lake of Death. That sounds like a lovely place to land. That's great. I'm sure that was chosen for a very logical reason, if you wouldn't mind going into that a bit. Yeah, so it just so happens that Lacus Mortis is near a pit at the moon and pits can be entrances to caves under the moon. So it's a destination that couldn't be interesting for the future. And we found a nice safe, flat landing site that's fairly benign, that's off the equator. So it's a little bit cooler and it's a good place to go for our first landing, trying to make it as easy as possible. But in the future, we can return to this kind of site to potentially explore these caves. And caves are amazing on the moon. And I think they don't get enough attention. I think it's probably the second greatest discovery on the moon after water because it is a fundamental building block for settling the moon. So if you have a cave, you have shelter and people settled in caves on earth first for the exact same reason that we might settle on caves on the moon first. When you're on the moon, you have radiation that comes from the sun. There's no magnetic sphere to deflect that radiation. But if you're underground, that can absorb that radiation before it reaches you. There's also meteorites that come down to the surface of the moon. On earth, we have an atmosphere that burns them up and we see beautiful displays of light in the night sky. On the moon, it's a little different. All those meteorites come straight down to the surface at orbital velocity. But if you're under meters and meters of rock, it's a pretty good place to be. The other is the thermal extremes. The surface of the moon can get up to 120 degrees Celsius or 250 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. That's the part you see lit at night. And then it can get down to liquid nitrogen cold overnight. And it's two weeks of light and two weeks of darkness. That's a long period of really extreme temperatures. But if you're underground, it's one temperature that's fairly well regulated throughout the day, just like being underground here on earth. So these caves could be the first place for people to settle on the moon. And they're very, very large. NASA found one that they think could fit Philadelphia inside of it. So there is more than enough room inside these things to build a settlement. Nice. Yeah. Let's just move Philadelphia there. So why don't we do that real quick? So, yeah. I was just thinking of the Lake of Death as well. To land there, do you have to ask three questions or not? Oh, see, and I was thinking the patch should have a kind of a death metal sort of theme to it. But that's just kind of where my head goes at that. It's like, you're gonna survive the Lake of Death. Yeah. I think that's super, that's super hardcore. Peter Quinn on YouTube is asking sort of on the same point, regarding the landing area, is it near caves? Is it near any dead rovers or spacecraft that we have on the moon? Or is it sort of like its own area that's been relatively unexplored? Yeah, so that location at Lacus Mortis is near one of the pits, which could be an entrance to a cave. And this one in particular is compelling because it looks like it partially collapsed. And that's actually good because it creates a natural ramp to get down inside of it. What we don't know is if it's collapsed enough that there's no entrance left or if potentially you could get inside. Because the traditional thing that you'd have to do for these other pits is it's kind of like a sinkhole, like what appears in Florida sometimes. So it's just straight down drop for tens of meters. So you would have to descend down to get to the bottom before you could enter these caves. But if you could find a cave that has a collapsed entrance, potentially that's a natural ramp to just drive straight down inside. So that's what really drew us directly to the Lacus Mortis pit in particular. So we're going to be landing in the vicinity of that. Probably not close enough to see it directly on the first mission, but we will have some low altitude imagery of it as we come in. Awesome. Now from our chat room, there's actually two questions that I'm going to combine together real quick from two separate people. So in our own chat room, AstroYYZ is asking, are there rules around putting things on the moon? Because one person's momento could be another person's trash. And then Wicked in our YouTube chat is asking sort of in the same area, which is do you think Apollo sites should be protected with a certain radius, no go perimeter? Great question. So first is that there are protections for going to the moon. So to fly anything to space from the US, you have to get FAA approval. You also, so the FAA will check all the other agencies like NRO and NOAA and the DOD just to make sure that you're doing the right things up there. You're not weaponizing moon, for example, that's against the moon treaty. But otherwise after that, then there is no international law that governs the moon other than the moon treaty, which is fairly, you know, based somewhat on the law of the cities. There's like a non-interference agreement there. So around Apollo sites in particular, NASA has guidelines to say, hey, stay away from these particular Apollo sites because we want to protect them because they're historic sites and they should be protected for a very long time. But we should probably pick one or two of them that we could learn scientifically from. So it is one of the few locations on the moon where we have very, very, very good data about the materials and what occurred on those locations. We could learn a lot about material degradation and what occurs over a long time after having some kind of human presence on the moon. In terms of leaving things on the moon for our missions, I actually think that our first several missions will be historic sites as well, that are the first commercial landings on the moon. They will be the first landings for numerous countries around the world. But over time, maybe mission five and beyond, maybe it becomes a little more of a routine. And at that point, I think those landers have been eligible for reuse on the surface. So anything that is man-made on the surface is incredibly valuable. So future developers could use the fuel tanks, for example, to store lunar fuel. They could take the metals, they could grind it up potentially, maybe make powder for 3D printing, for example. You could take the copper and reuse it on something else. So I think anything that's man-made up there is valuable and the future missions will just be recycled and reused. Over time, though, we would like to get to the point where we can ferry back and forth from the moon. And that's going to need the fuel at the poles of the moon to provide that fuel source to go back and forth from moon up to lunar orbit. And just create a ferry service down on the surface. Yeah, I like the idea of stripping apart moon landers and making your own with it, like a Frankencraft or something like that. It's like Mad Max on the moon, though. So something like that. So it'd be pretty entertaining to see what people would come up with. That is funny. All this just keeps reminding me of the, I think it was a Duncan Jones film called Moon, which if anyone hasn't seen, you should go see that because it's really amazing with a really great soundtrack as well. Yeah, but that was really interesting. There's a question coming out of our chat room, I'm sorry, from our YouTube chat room, from Luke S. Van Hout, I'm going to say. And Luke, I apologize if I totally butchered your name, but are there any other spacecrafts where your company is working on or thinking about? Because I know that Peregrine is supposed to be launching, I believe it's in 2021. And you said with ULA, is that correct? That's right. So ULA is our partner right now for launch and Peregrine is flying in 2021. So Peregrine can take about 200 kilograms to surface the moon. We have a larger lander that's twice the size of Peregrine called Griffin that can carry up to 400 kilograms of payload to surface the moon. We also have rovers in development. We have a planetary mobility department that is building small rovers that we call cube rovers that can carry a small scale payloads. You can think a little bit like CubeSat, but mobile on the surface of the moon. We also have mid-scale rovers. We just won a $5.6 million contract from NASA to develop a rover called Moon Ranger, which is about a 15 kilogram rover for exploration and autonomy development. And then we also have a larger scale rover called Polaris that can carry 90 kilograms of payload across the surface of the moon. That we like to think of as our pickup truck. So we can, you know, screw the payloads on the back and drive around and take them around. And it's amazing. Yeah, it's not just that too that you guys are doing. It's not sort of these things you yourself are working on. You're actually working with NASA as well. Like you just won a commercial lunar payload services contract with NASA. And like, what does that entail for folks who may have never heard of the, what we're calling now the CLIPS program? That's right. So NASA created a very forward-leaning program that I think could be a roadmap for other future developments and ways to push the bounds of space exploration and development. And it's called CLIPS, Commercial Lunar Payload Services. And what that is, is a program for NASA to buy payload delivery to the moon as a service. And that's really innovative because historically, if they wanted to go to the moon or some of their planetary destination, they would put a mission together. They'd build a lander, they'd buy a launch, they'd put the payloads on to the spacecraft and they'd lump it all together in a big mission and it might cost 250 to 500, maybe $750 million for this kind of mission. Instead, NASA says, hey, well, we have payloads and there's commercial providers out there. We're just gonna pay for a ticket and pay for a ride to get those payloads up there. So it offers a much, much lower price point for NASA and basically lets the commercial providers optimize that delivery part and make it regular routine access for our nation scientists and also access for the world to get to the moon on a routine regular basis. Very cool. So it's like a TWA moon liner, flying from the earth to the moon and carrying whatever it needs to with it. So yeah, really cool. That's really cool. We got word that your cube rover, as you mentioned earlier, was actually called Andy. I imagine that there's a story behind that. Yeah, so one of our small rovers is called Andy. We're partnered with Carnegie Mellon University and the founder of the Carnegie side is Andrew Carnegie. And of course, that's a big name here in Pittsburgh because he was a major steel magnet and one of the great founders of the city of Pittsburgh. So the rover is named Andy after him. That's really, that's really cute. I adore that. I also, I love the concept of, as you say, cube rover based off of the CubeSat idea, which is that there's a specific size that it is going to be, that it can be and that the modifications can come pretty easily based off of that size is my understanding, yes? Exactly. Yeah, our goal is the same thing with CubeSats. We want to make cube rovers ubiquitous and easy for folks all over the world. So we imagine universities and high schools and small companies around the world could access the moon in a very affordable way using cube rovers. And we've got a few things in the pipe on that and we should have some cool announcements on that soon. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah, I'd love a cube rover to go drive it into one of the caves, see what it looks like inside. Right, right. Yeah, I would also love to see a student competition of cube rovers. You can have some kind of terrestrial based competition and maybe there's a smaller group that gets to actually fly there. The rovers, the moon, you have a race on the moon. I would just be awesome. Ah, that was really cool. Yeah, the Lake of Death 500 or something. Yes, it's like the best name ever for that. Yeah, the Mario Tranquilla Tottis 250, so this year, or the Cinder Ceridium Rally. So I'd go watch it, so. Totally. I participated in it, so somebody sponsor me. There you go. Yeah. We get off on a tangent, don't mind us. So, to work in YouTube chat is asking, do you intend to also build a relay satellite for the far side launches or are you only focusing on the near side? So in the near term, we are focused on the near side, but we are in conversations with a couple partners that have interest in relay satellites, so that could open up far side landings for us. The other interesting thing that a relay satellite can do is it can provide a very rudimentary GPS system, so there is no location system on the moon like we have here on Earth. So it is actually challenging, but if you have a few satellites in orbit, you can do a very basic GPS and that can provide even an additional service for things on the surface. So we are in conversation with a couple of satellite companies on exactly that to start to build the infrastructure around the moon. Very cool. So I'm only picking on this question because of who's asking it. Vax Headroom in our chat room that we know as our resident Moonabomber. You work on Elcross. Yes, thank you. Is Red Whitaker, Dr. Red Whitaker still a part of Astrobotic? Yeah, Red Whitaker is our founder and with me, we started the company 12 years ago. So Red Whitaker is a professor at Carnegie Mellon, but he's still the chairman of Astrobotic and we work closely together on multiple programs. He's primarily focused on the rover side of the developments right now. So he is, for example, the chief scientist behind the Moon Ranger rover, which is that mid-scale rover for exploration and autonomy development. Very cool. Awesome. And what's some stuff that's coming up that you can then tell us about? What's the exciting stuff on the horizon? We don't have to wait another four years to have you on again to talk about maybe. Yeah. Well, I think the most exciting thing is that we are counting down to launch. So we are making regular steps in progress. We're buying components. We will be booking a flight with a launch provider very, very imminently. So we're gonna see hardware coming together. We're gonna see big milestones around our, we're actually gonna be building a new facility here in Pittsburgh. Opening its doors probably early next year. We're gonna have rover developments and lander developments and the pieces and parts of the mission are gonna start coming together. And I think we're gonna, it's just gonna be an exciting time to watch the development and build of all of these things coming together. It's the dreams of the last 12 years finally becoming a reality. That's amazing. And I assume if you're building a new facility, then you are also hiring? Like what kind of skill sets are you possibly looking for? We are. So we are scaling from around 20 people up to about 60 people. We are well underway right now in that. So we're looking for engineers of all disciplines. So mechanical, electrical, software, V and V, embedded systems, integration and tests. You name it, we're looking for it. We are getting a lot of candidates and things are filling quite quickly but if there's engineers out there, we are hiring and send your resumes over. It's just a real hypothetical question here. If somebody wanted to start up their own lunar lander company like you guys did, what would be some of the real core pieces of advice that you would give them from what you've learned over the past 12 years? Well, I think one of the most important things to your starting a space company is you have to have passion and persistent passion. In our case, we were trying to build this thing for 12 years, we had our ups, downs, lesson rights, there were multiple points in our history where we probably should have gone under and given up. But we didn't, we kept going and it was really for the love of the game. It was the passion that got us through the bad times. So you have to love it. There are, if you're in space, you're in it for the love of the game. It's not a place to, it's not like Wall Street where you're just gonna make tons and tons of money. This is a passion play and everybody that we work with is very, very passionate about what we're up to. So that's really the key ingredient I think you need to have to start a space company. Awesome, that's amazing. As we are wrapping up, of course, in case anybody wants to know more or get involved in any way, where can people find out more information or follow Astrobotics process? I think you can check out our website at astrobotics.com. We also are on Facebook and Twitter and we have regular posts and updates there. And then of course, if you wanna join our mission, we've got our DHL Moonbox program right on our website. And for a few hundred dollars, you can send something to the surface of the moon. That's amazing. Very, very cool. John, thank you so much for joining us. Again, we have to have you on more than every four years because the things are really coming together and we wanna make sure that we are getting the appropriate, what am I trying to say, progress report, if you will. We need to know more is really what I'm trying to say. And then maybe tomorrow we'll come together and maybe we'll put something on the moon. Yeah, let's figure out what we can put in a box. Yes, oh my goodness. Put that there, so. Thank you so much for being with us, John. Thank you so much for having me. It's an exciting time and the 50th anniversary of Apollo coming up. I think it's just such a perfect time to be thinking about the moon and what's next. A million percent. And of course, we can't do all of this without you, the viewers helping us out. And we wanna thank all of our patrons of tomorrow. You can head on over to patreon.com slash TMRO or now, just today. Announcing today. Announcing today. You can head over to youtube.com slash TMRO slash join where you can actually go through YouTube if you want to financially contribute to the show at the same tiers with the same rewards. Yep, you don't just have to do super chat anymore. If you don't like Patreon for whatever reason, you just really love YouTube, then please feel free. Yeah, and we can't do this without you. Yeah, we really can't. And it's amazing that we're able to do that. And we can't bring people like John on without your help to be able to do this as well. So every little bit helps. And of course, if you'd like to help us but you can't contribute financially, that's great as well. You can head on over to community.tmro.tv. And that wraps up orbit 12.22. We're really looking forward to next week's show because it's on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing. So get your lunar gear out, get your moon shoes on and moonwalk yourself into wherever you're gonna have to go in order to watch the show next week. So thanks for watching us and until next week, we'll see you later, bye-bye.