Space Minds with Kam Ghaffarian

Time Markers

00:20 – 1969 & Apollo 11
02:36 – On being inspired
04:51 – Starting in his basement & all in
07:39 – The companies
10:32 – Connect the dots … and synchronicity
13:23 – Interstellar ambitions
17:37 – Space Takes
17:38 – Troubles at Boeing
21:27 – Advertising in space seen on Earth
25:09 – Science cuts including the James Webb Space Telescope
27:38 – Space Loop: trivia and your feedback

Transcript – Kam Ghaffarian Conversation

David Ariosto – Kam Ghaffarian, it is great to see you again. I think the last time we saw each other was about a year ago in Cape Canaveral, watching that that Falcon nine rocket, take your intuitive machines, lander up toward the moon, and I know you’ve got another moon shot coming up very soon. And I wanted to get to all of that, but first, let’s just get into a little bit of history. And if you’ll sort of allow me to paint this bit of a picture, I think this will kind of help people kind of get a sense of where you’re coming from, and then you can sort of weigh in. But weigh in. But want to go back to the summer of 1969 or in Iran, the city of Isfahan, it’s almost midnight, and you were watching something on your neighbor’s television that would effectively change the course of your life and the trajectory of where you were heading. And I was hoping we could just start off this conversation about you kind of bringing me to that moment and tell me about that moment, how it, how it sort of set in motion, this, this change of events.

Kam Ghaffarian – Yeah so thank you. I mean, David, I was since I was six years old. I was really mesmerized with stars. You know, I would, I would. I remember sleeping outside, because in Isfahan, you could sleep outside a few months a year and just go to sleep by looking at the stars every night.

David Ariosto – Sleep right on the right on the rooftops there, right.

Kam Ghaffarian – Yeah, exactly, exactly. And sort of think about, wow, you know, how far they may be. Is it possible that people are living in them? And so, you know, since that childhood, I was just sort of so intrigued, and I would say mesmerized by the stars. And in 1969 you know, again, when, like you indicated, I saw Neil Armstrong land on surface the moon. And, you know, as a 11 year old, you know, my eyes are like this big, and it’s like, holy macro. Those are not my exact words. You know, somebody actually landed on surface of the moon. And it was like, Man, that’s, that’s, that’s so cool. And that’s, you know, as a child, you know, that that’s what I want to do, that’s what I would be involved with.

David Ariosto -You know, I just find this so, so interesting, not only in terms of that, and, like, how many stories I’ve heard about that, but, you know, in the region there, I mean, sort of early Babylonian astronomers, and sort of the lack of humidity kind of gives that sort of the primacy of stargazing out there. And, you know, I mean, I live out here in the Sonoran Desert, and I get, sort of have a similar dynamic, and take my daughter out just go star gazing. But it’s interesting how, like that moment, was this galvanizing moment for so many different people in STEM and in space. And that kind of how it had this kind of ripple effect, in a way

Kam Ghaffarian – Exactly, I would say, I’ve talked to a lot of people in many conferences, and especially people who are associated with space. I would ask them is like, raise your hand if you were inspired. And that’s the key word for me, inspired when Neil Armstrong landed, surfaced the moon. And you know, most of the people who are associated with NASA and space program would raise their hand. I said, Yeah, that that moment inspired me to be part of the space program.

David Ariosto – Yeah, and I just sort of wonder, like in the context of, now, you know, where we find those sort of newfound inspirations, and I kind of want to get to all of that in terms of everything that you’re doing in the sort of panoply of companies that are all orienting in terms of this next phase in space. But before we do, you know, about two years before the Iranian Revolution, right, about 1977 January, us, yeah, you’re in the US. You’re on a student visa Catholic University. Then you worked at Lockheed, and then you just took this sort of, what seems to be sort of a massive gamble, right there. You’re borrowing money against the value of your home to start your own engineering firm and become an advisor to NASA. And so this boy from Isfahan is all of a sudden, now this advisor to NASA. And I would venture to say that gamble paid off.

Kam Ghaffarian – Yes, thank you. And by the way, it was all in gamble. So if I was not successful with that business, I wouldn’t have a home. And I remember it was like 250,000 Dollars. That’s what it was. And we just opened this, you know, actually, we started in my basement, believe it or not, and then later on, we opened the office. You know, that’s, that’s how I got started.

David Ariosto – It doesn’t strike me that a lot of the, I mean, this might be, just be true in business generally, but there’s not a lot of part timers in this game. You’re either, I mean, Elon himself has talked about sort of, you know, moment of truth in terms of whether to to, you know, keep both Tesla and SpaceX yourself, or it took out a $250,000 you know, the take against your home. So it, it just doing space. It just requires kind of that, that level of investment and energy, doesn’t it absolutely,

Kam Ghaffarian – I mean, if you’re, you know, and you know, I would say this for those of us who are Space Cadets, you know. And what I mean by that is like, you sort of fall in love and and it’s like, I don’t want to do anything else, and, yeah, love what I’m doing, then you’re sort of all in and you want to be committed. You don’t want to do it part time.

David Ariosto – Well what you’re doing, though, is also some somewhat different than some of the other sort of major players out there. I mean, when you look at Elon Musk, when you look at Jeff Bezos, when you look at Peter Beck, a lot of their interests and efforts, not interests, but a lot of their efforts are structured around getting into space, getting on orbit. And it seems that, you know, with the companies that you’ve built, you know, talk about lunar landers and commercial space stations and modular nuclear reactors and space suits and even sort of a research lab dedicated to sort of deciphering the physics of interstellar travel, that all of this orients around what you do once you’re in space rather than getting to space. And so it almost seems like what you’re looking at is the next chapter, so to speak.

Kam Ghaffarian – Yeah, I usually tell people they’re in the Uber business, I’m in the Airbnb business, you know, they all sort of provide the transportation. But get there. But once you get there, you know that destination, whether it’s cislunar or is the super highways to go from the Earth to the Moon and Mars or building the space station and space suits, exactly right? So I’m not, I’m definitely not into transportation business, at least as of now.

David Ariosto – You know what? Explain to me a little bit more about what these companies are doing and sort of the the challenges and opportunities you’re seeing.

Kam Ghaffarian – Sure, so let’s start with Axiom Space, because that’s the closest to Earth, so we’re building the first private commercial space station. We made incredible progress. We are planning to launch our first module by first quarter 2027 and I’m going to try to push it so maybe get it done end of 2026 and it’s going to connect with the brand ISS, and we’ve spent a lot of money so far on our own building, the station and the modules associated with it. So that’s super exciting. But at Axiom Space, we’re also are the sole provider for Artemis program, the space suit, the next generation spacesuit. And these are like each one is like a spacecraft on its own. And so not only we’re doing LEO space suit, but also lunar, so next time you see American astronauts walking on a surface to moon, they will be varying Axiom Space, space suits. So it’s an incredibly exciting company.

David Ariosto – And then X-energy as well.

Kam Ghaffarian – Yeah, so that’s, that’s Axiom Space. And then you talked about Intuitive Machine, where we’re building the moon landers, right? But we also are building the lunar communication satellites. We just recently won a $4.82 billion (communications) contract to develop, and also a lunar terrain vehicle, you know, these are the moon buggies that traverse surface to the moon. So that’s Intuitive Machine. Quantum Space we’re really building the super highways from the Earth to the Moon to Mars, and we’ve developed this incredible satellites called Ranger that can stay in orbit much longer, and can do extraordinary things. And X-energy, we’re building the safe, secure, affordable nuclear plants and the fuel for them. It’s a pretty incredible company. We just closed a massive round to power the Amazon AI data centers. Building the first plant for Dow Chemical in Cedar,Texas. But we’re also working on space nuclear, right? Nuclear electric propulsion and nuclear thermal proportion, yeah, but each of these companies really are advancing state of humanity and human knowledge and propelling us forward.

David Ariosto – Help connect the dots. For me a little bit like, how does this web of companies that fit into these broader ambitions? Like, where does this, where does this coalesced, and where does this take us?

Kam Ghaffarian – Yeah, so it’s sort of interesting. You know, one of my favorite words is synchronicity. It’s sort of like you have something in the back of your head, and the dots sort of get connected, and you connect with the right people at the right time. So, you know, ultimately, I really believe that the ultimate destiny for humanity is to be Interstellar. And that’s what I truly believe. Now, if we sort of start from that end, sort of like when you have a flight plan, flight plan, and you say, you know, I’m going from this point to this point, and you identify a destination, and then you have intermediary steps right to get there. So you say, Okay, if, if that’s the ultimate destination, then we got to have something in low Earth orbit, right? To be able to, you know, 250 miles above Earth is where the International Space Station is to sort of, you know, experiment with many things, which we have been doing, you know, for, for a long, long time, but never commercialized. Now we, what I want to do is really commercialize it. So that’s where the starting point. And you say, Okay, what was the next place? Well, the next place is the moon. I mean, that’s the closest body to us, right? And to be able to live and and work and have a habitat and surface the moon, and have a regular intervals where you can go there and all of that. And then what’s the one after that is Mars right, to be able to do something similar there. But ultimately, beyond that is really going outside of other planets within our solar system, is to sort of really go beyond and say, Wow. I mean our galaxy alone is, I mean, this is the part where, you know, I just, I don’t think people quite appreciate and understand that there are approximately 400 billion other stars just in our galaxy alone, with planets around them, right? And it’s 100,000 light years to go from one point of our galaxy. I mean, it’s so vast, right? And, you know, just, just imagine the 400 billion stars, and then you leave our galaxy, and there are 2 trillion other galaxies with, you know, you know, all this stars in them and all that. It’s just the universe is so massive, and we. Are so small. So I just don’t think whoever was the architect, if you’re not getting into spiritual aspects of this, it wasn’t designed for it not to be discovered.

David Ariosto – I mean, isn’t that maybe kind of part of the problem? Then, in terms of, like, the greater sort of cognition about what we’re talking about, is that these numbers are so great and the distances are so vast that it’s almost like the human brain can’t really contextualize it, because there’s nothing relative to these distances. I mean just that the notion of Alpha Centauri being 4.3 light years away, and the many 1000s of years that it might take to get there by conventional means, but at in that same vein, you know, conventional means, is sort of like the key, the key word in this, right? Because it just, it seems that you’re on the vanguard of something that’s happening at the same at the same time that there’s this confluence of technologies, whether it’s AI or quantum or nanotechnology and and it’s happening at the same time there’s a push toward commercialization. And I don’t know. I mean, do you see it that way? Do you see this from like, almost this perfect storm of convergence?

Kam Ghaffarian – Absolutely, in fact, I tell people that, you know, we live in a golden era of space exploration because of what you just said, that there is this convergence of all of this happening. I mean, I think commercial space is accelerating things, right? And then you have this accelerators, like you talked about, like, AI, robotics, quantum computing, even nuclear right? Because, you know, like, nuclear thermal propulsion is going to shorten the time that we can go to other planets, right?

David Ariosto – But, you know, that was, that was a concept that was developed decades ago, right? And it just, it was never really brought to fruition. And there’s, you know, some some crazy concepts, I mean, sort of dig into the archives, and you look at some of these documents of, like these old NASA archives about the nature of exploding, you know, nuclear fission, essentially behind a craft. And you know how that might, how might that traverse at fractions of light speed? But you know, the I just wonder, in the context that in the 1960s and the the era that, you know, that trickled afterwards, there was, there were these questions of, like, big questions about our place in the universe, and sort of a sense of, why can’t we do this? And it seems to have waned, and only now picking up again. And like, I wonder, like, what do you attribute sort of that lull to?

Kam Ghaffarian – Yeah, I think that. I think you’re exactly right. And I think what happened was, when we went to the moon, right? I mean, it created this new curiosity as like, where are we going next, right? You know. And then we said, well, you know, hold on, we’re going to come back and do other things. I mean, Isn’t it incredible? I mean, it was, I think, what 50 years, 52, 53 years ago that we had, you know, Americans land on surface the moon, and we haven’t really gone any further. So I think at that point, it created that sort of mindset, that curiosity as to, hey, where are we going to go next? And then, you know, I think we stopped. And I think now when we’re talking about going to Mars, and, you know, have people land on the surface of Mars, and all of that, that it is sort of bringing it back up. But I can tell you definitely, for me, it has never stopped.

David Ariosto – Kam Ghaffarian, the boy from Isfahan who watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, make those first trots on the lunar regolith, ended up building crafts to get back there and is looking much farther. Thanks so much, so much for joining us.

Kam Ghaffarian – It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you.