Fact or fiction on the future of the space economy 

Time Markers

00:00 – Episode introduction
00:19 – Welcome
02:04 – Fact or Fiction
06:10 – The economics of the space industry
09:01 – Fact or Fiction
16:51 – A first at Harvard
20:51 – Fact or Fiction
24:55 – On the book – what do you hope readers get from it
30:20 – Fact or Fiction

Transcript – Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau Conversation

Mike Gruss – Hi everyone, and welcome to the Space Minds podcast. I’m Mike Gruss, and I’m excited to have some fun today as we mix it up a little bit with our format, we’ve got two great guests, Matt Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau.

Matt is the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty research and development at Harvard Business School, where he is the Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration. He’s also a research associate the National Bureau of Economic Research. Brendan Rosseau is here. He’s a Strategy Manager for orbital launch at Blue Origin. He previously served as a teaching fellow and research associate at Harvard Business School, and he’s been a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton supporting Space Systems Command. Both of them are the authors of the book, space to grow, unlocking the final economic frontier. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here.

Matthew Weinzierl – Thanks, Michael. Real pleasure to be with you.

Brendan Rosseau – Yeah, great to be here.

Mike Gruss – So there’s obviously this popular saying in space, space is hard. Or maybe the only thing that’s saying that’s more difficult is predicting the future in space. We’re going to try not to do too much of that today, but we’re going to play, like I said, a little bit with the format and do a little bit of a effect or fiction conversation we’ve talked beforehand. And you guys, you guys know that it’s been the the introduction and expansion of market forces in this space that have made this business a little bit in unpredictable, right? So we’re going to start here and then go, you know, let the conversation take us where it will. But this first fact or fiction. In the next 10 years, the space industry will continue to expand, and its impact will be more broadly felt here on Earth than anywhere else or ever before. You know, Matt, why don’t we start with you? Hard to disagree with that one, right?

Matthew Weinzierl – Yeah. Well, thanks, Mike, no, it’s a great way to begin the conversation, and thanks for the brief intro to truly what Brendan and I see as the core thing we were trying to get at in the book, which is that the introduction of market forces into the space sector has changed so much. I mean, that’s why we’re here. That’s right. That’s why this podcast probably exists, and probably why most of your listeners are listening, is because we’ve brought these market forces in, and they’re introducing a whole raft of you can call it uncertainty. You can also just say opportunity that wasn’t there before. And so when I think about this question, yeah, it’s pretty hard to disagree. I mean, I sure hope that we will be at least non negative in terms of the growth rate of the space sector over the next decade and its reach. I think it is an interesting question, though, how just how much that will happen, and the unpredictability is a real thing.

You know, one of the points that Brendan and I make, and in fact, one of the reasons we wrote the book is because we feel like the next level for the space sector really depends on the message getting out to not just people who would naturally listen to space news podcast, but to the next ring of normal businesses and normal business people, and it’s hard to predict how quickly that will happen. Part of the magic of markets is that ideas you aren’t expecting come from places you wouldn’t have known to look before. And so I certainly hope that will happen in a big way, and we’ll see that kind of growth and expansion, but it’s hard to say how fast that’s going to happen.

Brendan Rosseau – Yeah, just to piggyback on what Matt said, I think that we all hope that, you know, the size of the pie that we get out of space activities is going to keep growing. I think one of the real big questions today, and maybe we’ll get into this, is, well, you know, do we think certain areas will maybe expand faster than others, or what is the best pathway to what I think we all want, which is like a space economy or a range of space activities that delivers huge value for those things that we care most about, kind of on the commercial side, the exploration and science side, and, of course, on the national security side too. But what do those relative sides of the pie look like, and how do we get there?

Mike Gruss – Yeah, it’s, I think it’s convenient for us at Space News, and probably for for folks at business school or other places to think of it as one economy. But like you said, you can almost, you can almost parse it out and divide it and say, Hey, this is the launch economy. This is the set you know you can go. You can go very deep and very niche pretty quickly. And those, those numbers move at different speeds and accelerate it at different growth rates. So that’s really…

Matthew Weinzierl – Not to interrupt, but that’s, that’s just a really interesting point to dig in on. You know, actually, there’s some research that I was able to do with Tina Highfill, who most of your listeners will know at the BEA (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis) does some great work for the government on space data and and showing exactly that, that if you actually look at the real growth rates of different sub sectors within the space economy, they are dramatically different, whether you’re looking at, you know, information services versus manufacturing and so on. So I would really encourage, you know, viewers, listeners, to to take that on, to into their consideration and and that, I think, also speaks to this thing.

People often talk about the multi trillion dollar space economy, or whatever, in 10 to 15, 20 years. And I guess the thought that occurs to me there is that, I mean, I think we should all be a little bit skeptical about some of those forecasts, partly because it’s hard to know how to draw boundaries around what is space and what isn’t? But actually that speaks to kind of the question you asked, which is, like you might think the space economy will be a multi trillion dollar opportunity, because it will increasingly be a part of more and more industries. And so if you’re willing to call those space industries, or space sectors, great, then it will have a broader reach.

Mike Gruss – However broadly you want to define it, might mean how large that economy is exactly. So let’s talk how you guys got interested in this field of the economics of the space industry. You know what made you think, Hey, this is, this is something I want to get into, because there’s lots of folks that we’ve had on the pod. Test. And a lot of our listeners who say, like, oh, you know, I got really interested in this topic because of, you know, going out with and looking at the stars with my dad. But space economics is, is not the same as that.

Matthew Weinzierl – All right, I’ll start. I’ll give an answer I’m pretty sure no one has given you before, which is, I got here through tax theory. So I was, that’s my academic focus. And I was teaching a course at the business school on economic policy and tax policy and and I wanted to teach students about the broadly, the role of the government in the economy, but more specifically, public private partnerships. And so this is about 10 years ago, SpaceX is hitting the news with some of what it’s doing in a big way. And I also my attention got caught as an economist that, wait a minute, something is happening here in a private sector way that I always thought was purely a public sector activity. And so I just started writing about it and reading about it and trying to understand the economics of what has changed. And I got completely hooked by that side, but also just by the excitement of this new set of opportunities,

Brendan Rosseau – yeah, yeah. And then for for me, I started off with more kind of the familiar way, where I just loved space as a kid, and I love space science in particular. I thought I was going to be an astronomer, but then as I got older, I really got more interested in the space enterprise, like, what’s the like machine that we as a country and we as you know, people use to do space activities, to study space, to do all kinds of stuff in space that generates value, and that really hooked me. And it was around the same time that we saw new and exciting things happening in space.

We saw the private sector starting to come into, to break into, kind of a more break into the more familiar model of the public sector doing so much of it. And I was lucky to work in different parts of the space enterprise and kind of learn in on the ground perspective. And I think that prepared me really well for when Matt and I reconnected a few years ago, where he said, Hey, you know, I’m excited about building up a kind of, first of its kind, space curriculum, and teach you about the economics and business of space, my eyes just lit up. And I felt very lucky to have the chance to work with Matt on that for several years. And the research was really exciting. And I think it we brought a framework that resonated with a lot of people, both, both people both, both people who had been in the industry for a long time, but also people who were approaching it from a new way. And that turned into the book space to grow, and it’s been a really awesome ride so far.

Mike Gruss – Yeah, that’s awesome. Let’s do, let’s do another fact or fiction here in the 2020s and 2030s so we’re looking five to 15 years here. America’s space program will have shifted to its focused military priorities, and Americans in the 2030s will view this as a good thing. So what we’re saying here is, in the next five to 15 years, there’ll be a great emphasis on military space. And American groups will say, Hey, this is good. This is good for the economy, right? Why don’t we start with you? What do you think there you command is Space Systems. Command is a much part of the enterprises as any place.

Brendan Rosseau – It seems like, yeah, that’s, that’s, I love the question. It’s one that’s especially big now, it seems like maybe the question that’s happening in the US Space enterprise today, where we see budget proposals, on one hand, that are scaling down NASA’s budget at a pretty dramatic scale, and on the other hand, we’re seeing proposals for different kind of national security initiatives, especially golden dome, which, you know, depending on how things shake out, it might have a per year budget comparable to that of the entire NASA. So essentially, it’s, people can think of it as potentially a whole new space program on top of the initiatives we already have, and I don’t,

Mike Gruss – Or Space Force, for that matter.

Brendan Rosseau – I don’t think we know how this story plays out yet. I think one of the things, the ways that Matt and I think about it, putting kind of our economist hat on, is, in general, I think that one of the things Matt and I are advocates for is we see all this opportunity that can be realized in space of opportunity across the board. And one of the key constraints right now is that space activities continue to be really expensive. They continue to be have very long learning cycles, and the costs are very high, and so the ability to participate and for entrepreneurs and innovators to jump in and contribute at a meaningful scale is still fairly limited. I think we’ve made a lot of progress, but there still is a lot of space to grow for that.

I think one of the ways of looking at kind of just public sector investment in space in general, is that it can allow different companies and entrepreneurs to. Get in and then bring down their cost curves, kind of regardless of what the application is, to the point that a function or capability that maybe was only useful for the military for a while or only useful for NASA for a while, then gets brought down to a point where commercial customers get interested, and then that gives a beach head that that entrepreneur can build off of and kind of expand to the commercial market.

That’s a playbook in certain hardware sets that’s not foreign to us, that semiconductors kind of had a similar trajectory. Because I think that’d be like the optimist. Case is that, you know, a really significant investment, almost regardless of what the application is, you know, if there’s, if there’s enough spillovers, and it allows companies doing meaningful things to bring down their cost curves, that’s a positive thing. As far as the negatives, there’s a long list of things that could happen. And just from the economic perspective, I think one of the real concerns is that, instead of creating a, you know, a flywheel that allows entrepreneurs to keep bringing more and more value and bring that to more and more people instead, maybe it just becomes a narrower vision for what we do in space. Maybe becomes a distraction. The allure of so much funding directed at use cases that are really only useful for very specific things ends up delaying or distracting what we hope our path to space will be. So that’s that’s my two cents.

Mike Gruss – How about you? We’ve seen an awful lot of defense company or a awful lot of space companies also become defense companies, particularly in the last years. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that speaks a little bit to the point Brendan raised.

Matthew Weinzierl – For sure. I mean, I couldn’t say it any better than Brendan did. And I think, you know, an economist would first reaction would be, what’s the counterfactual, right? So, like, what, what’s, what is the other option? And the way you phrased it, I think, is telling which is shifted its focus to military priorities that if it’s a shift, I worry more about the second case Brendan laid out, which is, we’ve shifted away from a from a vision that was a bit broader, had the scientific, commercial, civilian and military aspects, to something that’s narrower. And I think, you know…

Mike Gruss – We’re a little bit seen there. We’re on that path funding year. But, I mean, the reconciliation bill, that’s, that’s where it’s headed right now

Matthew Weinzierl – Exactly. So that’s where I was headed. I mean, I think if that’s the long term or medium term path, that I definitely, I mean, my guess is we would not look back on that as a good thing. It might be a necessary thing at some level, given the constraints and geopolitics and so on. So, like, that’s a different question. But I think relative to a path we might have predicted 5-10, years ago, where it was mostly commercial, civilian and or the mix that we had before, I think that would be a less good outcome if it wasn’t shifting its focus so much as adding to its focus more investment in national security priorities, then I think Brendan’s more optimistic cases, is the one that would play out, so.

Brendan Rosseau – And I think an interesting, like, kind of counterfactual thing to think about, as we think about is this investment in Golden Dome, let’s say a good thing. Sometimes I think back to the Apollo era, where we we celebrate that as a really monumental achievement. It’s investment, huge amounts of investment. It was the largest peacetime engineering project in world history. And we it resulted in a fantastic thing, footsteps on the moon, and kind of a sustained, albeit for a time, lunar project. I that’s a result of the goals that we chose. We chose to put someone on the moon, and so we built an architecture that that prioritize, that I think if we were to go back and instead say, Well, what is the right way to use public investment, to kind of supercharge the space ecosystem, to kind of build a ladder where we can do more and more valuable things and have space enterprise that is accretive and is bringing more and more value as time goes on.

I don’t know if we would have built the Saturn five in the way that we did a vehicle optimized for lunar delivery. I don’t know if we would have put so much emphasis on human spaceflight. There’s a lot of decisions. I think that if we were doing it with a blank page, and if we were had other, maybe economic questions in mind, I think we might have done it differently. Obviously, that the situation was very different. We had kind of a Cold War rival, maybe reminiscent of some of the dynamics that we’re facing today. I think it’s an appropriate question to ask if we have these dual goals of you know, we need to have national strength and ensure that our defense goals are being met. But at the same time, across all of our space policy documents, it’s clear that a priority for the United States is also to encourage the commercial sector to do what it can to reap the benefits of a more dynamic marketplace in the same way that you know SpaceX is. Uh, entrepreneurial spirit, and the things that they’ve developed has been a great boon to our national security and other space companies as well. So that’s some of the stuff that’s on my mind, and I think it’s important to think about because, you know, we are, we’re living in some pretty interesting and dynamic times. I think the decisions we make the next few years are going to be really important for for the next several decades.

Mike Gruss – And certainly a lot of fun for us here at Space News. But let’s talk. You know, Brendan alluded to this this class at at the business school. You know, Matt, why don’t you tell us a little bit about that and, and I think, you know, some of our listeners will probably be a little surprised to hear this is, this the first like there was that we there wasn’t more talk of the space economy previously?

Matthew Weinzierl – No, there wasn’t. I mean, well, thanks for the for the question. I mean, there have been case Okay, so let me back up one step. The pedagogy at Harvard Business School is primarily case based. So it’s a case study curriculum, and we write case studies about interesting companies and individuals and teach them as examples to our students, and then draw broader lessons from them. And if you go back in time, there are case studies written about the space economy right to illustrate important ideas and tensions for students to wrestle with, but there wasn’t a dedicated curriculum to the space economy or to space business. And I think that makes some sense. I mean, you know, one of the big things we talk about in the book is what’s changed, right?

Like, why is there now a space course at HBS? And fundamentally, it was a, it wasn’t really a market driven sector for its first 50 some years, and then once we had the various crises of the early 2000s and the shuttle program being retired, we got this push for the commercialization of space to really take off, and it started to become a business more like other businesses. And so it was back in I guess now, four years ago, that I started to toy with the idea of teaching about this to students. I felt I’d learned enough in those previous five years or so that I had something to teach. And one of the great things about being in space is just to see the incredible enthusiasm of the next generation. And we see this played out in the course. The first year I taught it, I had about 20 students sign up. They were the, you know, real enthusiasts about this new thing each year that basically doubles. So I mean, I think last year I could have put 200 people in the class, if we had room in our classrooms, because there’s just so much interest in what this sector might allow people to do and the impact it might allow them to have. So the curriculum, for those of you who are interested in understanding, like, what does Harvard business school teach about space. It’s very close to the book. So the book is essentially what came out of our developing the curriculum for the class. And so the book is a bit of a window into what we do.

Mike Gruss – I was gonna say we’ve talked on this show before, but, you know, it’s not for folks in the industry. It’s not surprised that, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, particularly at the C suite level. You saw a lot of engineers. You saw folks who had spent their entire career in space. And I think, you know, maybe about that time we started seeing more folks coming from the traditional business schools, from folks who have a background like Harvard Business School or McKinsey and Booz, you know. And we saw, we saw just a different, a different, I guess, dossier for for those folks, maybe we had seen previously. So I think that tracks with with what you’re seeing as well.

Matthew Weinzierl – I don’t mean to interrupt, but what’s neat Mike is that actually, in the course, and Brendan was a really essential part of making the course what it is, and also a huge mentor to the students. We have this great mix of people in the classroom. So in a classroom of about 100 folks, I’d say we have 10 or 15 who now come from the space sector, and they’re real experts and and they bring that experience into the classroom. And then we have another 10 or 15 who think, Oh, I might want to get into the space sector, a lot of them coming from other tech forward sectors, but seeing a real, you know, excitement about space. And so they might want to transition in. And then we have, you know, 60 or 70 who think I probably won’t do much directly in space, but I wonder if my business could use space going forward. I know there’s a lot going on. How could I derive value from it? So it’s a really lovely, as you said, sort of expansion of the window of people who are engaged in space.

Mike Gruss – That’s great. All right, let’s do one. Let’s do another. Fact or Fiction here, which is NASA’s funding in the next few years will decline. That looks pretty true, but won’t have much impact on the space industry, since commercial companies can do, will be able to do so much by the late 2020s, who wants to take that one?

Matthew Weinzierl – I’ll kick it off. I’ll be I’ll be brief. Brendan, you can jump in too. I am going to disagree with this one at fiction. Thank you. And. I guess the reason that I would give for that is that, first of all, I mean, if you just look at the money that funds a lot of space activity, a lot of it still comes from NASA. And you know, we have the whole conversation about national security on that side, but NASA is still a major customer, not just for big space companies, but a huge help to small space companies getting off the ground. And so I think there’s that direct mechanism, but I also think there’s maybe a bigger issue at stake, and a conceptual one, which we try to hit early on in the book as well, which is, I think for outside observers, it can be easy to think of what’s happening in space is like a privatization of space activities.

And that’s not really how we think of it. We think of it as a decentralization of space activities in the sense that there are more players, there’s more competition, there’s more decision makers, but there is still a huge role for the public sector to play, in particular through NASA. And so I think if you pull that out, there is a lot in fact that the private sector cannot substitute for. There are things the government’s good at, there are things that the private sector is good at, and we need them working in concert rather than as substitutes.

Brendan Rosseau – Yeah, I completely agree. I put fiction on this as well, and I think maybe the most like straightforward example of how funding cuts to NASA, especially dramatic ones, can really hurt. You know, the private sector is if you think of all the missions that would be canceled if these budget cuts went through. And I give a lot of credit to the Planetary Society for making it very clear exactly what these impacts would be, and translating that into action. You know, those are opportunities for companies to build really, like, amazing and powerful spacecraft. There’s it’s the opportunity for them to get funding and then hire a new generation of engineers that need to come through and learn how to do that and kind of be thrust into this commercialized environments, the opportunity for launch providers to, you know, win business, to launch these actual bills the way that NASA funding both through like the most obvious part of it, which is the missions themselves, but also like the broader role that they play in the ecosystem.

I think it’s not it’s not something that we can overstate their value. I think it’s a critical role. I think it always will be a critical role. I think it’s NASA’s role will shift over time, but I don’t think it’ll become a less important actor in this space community. So for me, the scene the proposed budget guys, has really been not only disappointing, but really worrisome. I worry that we’re and when I hear some of the thinking like the way that the fact or fiction question was described, I worry that we don’t fully understand the role that the public sector and the private sector like the way that they really depend on one another. So I hope, if the book has any impact, I hope that it will be that that folks think about them kind of in concert with one another. What’s the strengths of what an organization like NASA can do, or the DoD or the intel community? What are the what are the strengths of what the private sector can do, and how working together, playing off each other’s strengths? Can we do something truly great in this generation. I worry that we’re maybe starting to move down the wrong path.

Mike Gruss – Well, let’s talk that’s that’s a great segue into my next question, which is I wanted to talk about the book in you know, there are a lot of case studies there, but, but tell me what, what you all aimed, aim aim to do. And what you hope that? Hey, someone, I guess, let’s do this two ways, someone who’s in the space industry and someone who’s outside the space industry. What do you hope they get from it and they read from it? And what do you think they What do you hope they do differently or think of differently?

Matthew Weinzierl – Yeah, sure, so I’ll start again, but Brendan, please. I’ll just kick it off. But one of the key goals, so we had a few key goals for the book. I’ll start there for folks inside the sector. I think what we were hoping it would provide is a framework through which to see sort of the whole right. We each have our specialties, our expertise, our way of plugging into the sector. But we thought, Look, we have the tools of economics that we can bring to trying to see the broader picture and how it fits together. So if we can provide that kind of broader lens for folks ways to think about their role in the industry, we hope that’ll make a real difference to the success of the industry. And I have to say that the most rewarding parts of writing and talking about this book are when people come back to us and say, Actually, no, I hadn’t really thought about it in that way before, and you gave me this new tool through which to better understand so that’s people inside the sector.

We’ve talked already a little bit about people in kind of the next ring, but one of our friends in the sector, Rob Myerson, said to us, you know, this book can be a call to action, basically, to that next ring of people. And we. Really love that phrase, like, let’s, let’s, all of us pay attention to the value we can create for each other and for the world through these new capabilities and opportunities in space. And so that’s the second so that’s really awareness. And then the third is just an introduction. We know there are millions and millions of people out there who are excited about what they hear about in space. We wanted a book we could hand to them that would be engaging, both by telling some great stories, introducing them to some amazing companies and people, but would also have this abiding sort of intellectual structure and lessons that aren’t just of the moment, but we hope would last for a long time, and get them a way to understand what’s really happening at a deeper level. So those are the three goals we had for it.

Mike Gruss – Good ones. All right. Brendan, anything to add?

Brendan Rosseau – I completely agree with everything Matt said. I was gonna say, like, if I had to boil it down, I’d say, for people in the space industry who are thinking about space, I we’d love for them to sort of put this. We’d love to introduce some economics into kind of how they think about things. And for people who are just business people, we’d love to introduce space into how they think about things. So we think that could be kind of a beautiful, beautiful combination there.

Matthew Weinzierl – And I’ll just, I’ll just add Mike, you know, you talked a little bit about the course earlier, too. And I think, you know, I certainly came to this with a lot of to this whole topic, with a lot of humility, in the sense that, like, I’m not a rocket scientist, I have not spent my career in space. I’m under no illusions that you know Brendan or I know everything there is to know about space. But I we also sensed, as we were reading all the amazing material out there on space, including, I have to say, SpaceNews. I mean, an avid reader aerospace news. The entire time I’ve been paying any attention to space, there wasn’t a lot of economics being brought to the table. And so we thought, Well, is there? What could we do to help this industry along? Well, let’s bring the tools we can, and that’s what we try to do in the classroom too. How do we educate a next generation of potential commercial space leaders by giving them some of these tools?

Brendan Rosseau – Yeah, and just to build on that, I think what what we see as the value of economics in this discussion is not it’s it’s not what’s going to help you find that killer app that’s going to get you rich quick. It’s not, you know, does my specific business case make sense or not? I think that’s a different skill set that requires, you know, domain expertise and really talking to a lot of people who are familiar with the problems.

I think what economics can bring in, and the real value that it’s brought me in my life and my career, and the way I see about things is that it it sets up the sets of opportunities and challenges to realizing those opportunities, and in particular, looking at the different institutions and the roles that they play and the ways that we can pull certain levers, both on the public and private side, to tap into what’s the next level that we could get to here, what are the challenges or The constraints or the sub optimal conditions that we’re in now, and we’ve got the great benefit of, you know, hundreds of years of economic history and economic theory. You know, the although the goal of building a robust based economy is fairly new, the goal of building economies robust economies is not a new idea. There’s so much that, I think, and the challenges are not unique, one to the other.

I think economic challenges in faith that we face in space, or, you know, often not too dissimilar from the same kinds of problems that we face at some point back here on Earth. And so that I really I’ve learned a ton from from Matt and his deep expertise in economics and applying the lessons that we can learn to space has really been, I think, a powerful thing for me and hopefully for for readers too. So just because it’s called the dismal science, don’t, uh, I hope people don’t shy away from it.

Mike Gruss – All right, let’s get to this last fact or fiction. In the next 10 years, space activities become increasingly controversial, and more people believe the pursuit of space activities is either not worth it or against their values. I mean, I think we’re already hearing you already hear that in pockets. I don’t know if we hear it so much more than we did five or 10 years ago, but that does not seem impossible, right?

Matthew Weinzierl – Totally not. I was just having a conversation the other day with someone who is a bit newer to this. They’re, they’re digging in deep, right? But it’s only been a couple years for them and and they were saying how surprised they’ve been as they’ve dug in, that it’s not just, you know, a billionaire space race or whatever, the you know, the sort of tawdry reputation, I guess, that sometimes it has out there in in the broader culture. So I think there’s definitely a risk of that. I guess if I had to go Fact or Fiction on it, I think I would still say fiction, and in the sense of it becoming more controversial and more people writing off space. Yes, I don’t think that will happen.

I hope it won’t happen, and I don’t think it’s likely to happen for the following reason, which is that I I tend to believe that the actual benefits, the actual value that can be derived from space, will become more and more apparent to people, so the stuff that seems flashy and whatever will become less salient versus the stuff that actually affects their everyday life in a positive way. And I’m a big believer that, you know, the forces of economics are very powerful, especially over the long run. And I think that that’s likely to bear out. I was trying to think of an analogy, and not to cast aspersions or anything, but I think there’s a lot of concern about the net effect of social media on the world, right? Like, maybe, who knows if it’s been a net positive or negative, but a lot of people are certainly in the latter camp. Whereas I think if you thought just about apps which are superficially kind of similar, I mean, they’re both part of the digitization of the economy, I think most people think, on average, they’re our net apps are pretty great. Like, we get a ton of value out of Google Maps and other things on our phone. So maybe space is a little bit more like the latter than the former. It’s so going to be so useful to people. I think they’re going to feel good about it. I hope.

Brendan Rosseau – Yeah, I hope. I think what’s exciting to me is I think we have the opportunity to, kind of, like, figuratively, bigger, build a rocket ship that takes everyone along for the ride. That this people will look back at this moment and what we did in these few decades and say, you know, we we built something that’s truly valuable. But of course, like, there’s a million different ways in which we could be building something that is maybe valuable for only very few people or very few organizations, and so the rest of the people feel left out. There’s so many different avenues by which I’ve heard people articulate opposition to space activities at all, whether for, you know, admittedly, some well founded environmental reasons, some reason, some concerns about militarization, or range of priorities and all kinds of, I think there are some legit or, of course, there’s the like the billionaire space race paradigm, which I think more and more people are kind of understanding.

That’s not, that’s not the full thing, but it’s, it’s not. Those critiques have not gone away as time has gone on, and in some cases, they’ve gone louder and louder, especially as divisive issues or divisive people are seen as being closely associated with the topic of space. So I do think it’s something that it’s a useful your question is a useful reminder for us that yes, we have to, first and foremost, solve the like, the technical challenges, the economic challenges, all these kind of the X’s and O’s of what it takes to do things in space. But I do think it’s a reminder that we, we can’t and shouldn’t ignore the the social aspect of it as well. I think in some cases, been a huge benefit for space, the inspirational factor of kind of expanding human knowledge and exploration and all these things that’s that’s been a great boon for us, but it has been a double edged sword, and it’s, it’s up to us to make sure that, you know, the values that we are pursuing as we, you know, build out these space activities are ones that people want to support, The support the support at the ballot box, and they’ll support it with their lives and with their career. So that’s…

Mike Gruss – I know this isn’t the right answer, but I would also say I think artificial intelligence right now is sucking up an awful lot of oxygen in the room where folks are having that argument, and so maybe the space business is not getting the the same attention that it that it would, because there is so much focus on AI that I want to thank both you guys for being here. I this. I had a lot of fun with this conversation. Matt, thank you. Brendan, thank you to our listeners.