Welcome back to cheddar news everyone. Small satellite launch
company Astra has aborted and postpone its first operational satellite
launch. Well today the startup was planning to launch
for small research satellites known as cube SATs for Nasa's
Elena 41 mission. But Astros saying a minor issue
was discovered which required the company to stand down from
the launch. Astro stop following nearly 14% this afternoon
in the wake of this news closing at$4.60.
Well, joining me now to talk the space race
is Jim Cantrell's Ceo and co founder of phantom space
, which is also working with Nasa to provide launch
services. It's a private company for now. Jim
thank you so much for coming on the show.
So watching this mission delayed today, what does that
tell you about this state of the space race?
Yeah, this is a normal sort of thing that
happens particularly when a uh, companies young like Astra
, you know, this is uh, one of
their first launches and things happen. So um,
you know, the thing people don't realize about space
travel is, it's far from routine even though we
see it a lot SpaceX is extremely well. It's
not like hopping in your car and going down to
the grocery store. It's really very complex machine that
uh, you know, if you have mastered.
So it's a, this is a normal occurrence.
Your company founded in 2019. You do have your
own operational facilities at Cape Canaveral which is where I
do believe we are expecting this launch to actually take
place today. What is the state of your own
development and working relationship with NASA? Yes. So
we're developing a launch vehicle that's a bit bigger than
Astros called Daytona. It's named after the race track
. And uh, it's about uh, about three
times the payload capacity that the Astro vehicle is.
And uh, we recently received an award from Nasa
. So we're an official launch vehicle supplier to them
. Uh, we have not launched our first rocket
yet. So we're, we're a little ways behind
Astro on that, but we expect to by middle
of next year in terms of the build out here
. I like the name Daytona named after the race
track jim, but how competitive is it within the
space race within other companies that are looking to launch
satellites as well. It's a competitive industry. Right
? So we have SpaceX, it's pretty well the
dominant player at the moment and there's really a competition
that's developing between what I call the small mass manufactured
launchers like Astro, like, like phantom and then
SpaceX, which is the large reusable and you know
, it's, it's a lot like uh, you
know, cars which are mass manufactured and the cost
comes down through that learning curve over time, the
more you build and the more you launch than the
lower the cost gets. So that's really where the
competition is. And the big, the big rockets
like SpaceX have to share space with, you know
, with, with a lot of satellites. So
there might be a launch of 100 satellites. Whereas
the small vehicles for the same price, we believe
we can get individual satellite launches down so that they
can go when they want, where they want.
Walk us through what is happening in the final moments
before liftoff for these rockets jim Obviously you're working on
launching your own with in Partnership Nasa and then of
course Astros delayed today really at the 11th hour at
the last minute. That mess. That mission aborted
iii delayed at this point. What is happening in
those final moments that would cause a mission to be
delayed? There's a lot of things that can delay
it. So one of the first things is range
safety. So this could be a boat out on
the water that's not supposed to be there, they're
all notified. But you know, a couple of
weeks ago there was a cruise ship that stopped one
of the SpaceX launches. You're not very well gonna
launch over the top of a cruise ship. There's
winds a lot, so you know, the winds
very high up in the atmosphere can sometimes caused the
rocket to veer off course. And then of course
there's the state of the rocket, you know,
the health of the rocket. So you have,
you know, a whole bunch of engineers sitting around
consoles looking at the health monitors on the rocket and
if there's something that goes wrong like Astro saw it
today then you don't launch it. So the last
thing you want is for this to go wrong and
you're better to err on the side of safety expectations
jim as to when Astra could launched this mission.
Yeah, I mean they could recite people in a
day, I don't know what's wrong with it,
what happened? So it's really dependent on, you
know, what the nature of the of the problem
is it could be, you know, weeks really
, I would defer to Astra on on what that
is, but you know, in rare cases it
could be longer, but I suspect they'll be at
it, you know, within a few days.
Again, Astra becoming the first company to receive a
launch license from the FAA. Is that something that
your company is pursuing as well? Well, actually
all launches have to be commercial answers have to be
licensed by the FAA what what it is, is
there's a new type of license called the 4 50
sort of Inside Baseball. But uh the trump administration
streamlined the FAA process to make it easier for commercial
companies and actually is the first one through that on
the 4 50 we're also at phantom going through that
same process of getting the 4 50 style license,
which will make it a lot easier for us.
It's a rarity that the government makes our life easier
in this case. They've done it. Well,
we are this week expecting an update from Elon musk
himself, the founder of SpaceX expected to give an
update on SpaceX's starship for the first time, believe
it or not since 2019. What are you expecting
to hear from musk? This will be very interesting
. So there's a lot of speculation as to exactly
the purpose of starship. I look at its sheer
size and you know, I was one of the
early guys at SpaceX and know his, his interest
has really been on colonizing MArs from the very beginning
. So I suspect that's one of the major roles
for it, colonizing MArs and the moon. As
far as a satellite launcher. It's less useful in
my opinion because it's so large. To me,
it's more uh aimed at transporting lots of humans from
that point of view. And you also have to
look at the fuel, which is methane and that's
something that can be easily regenerated on on the surface
of mars out of the atmosphere. So I'll be
watching with great interest to see what his plans are
for that because I think that will affect all of
us in the rest of the industry. Pretty fundamentally
. Elon musk wants to colonize MArs, Jeff Bezoza
envisions a world where millions of people are living and
working in space gym as the Ceo and co founder
of a space company yourself, Do you think that
both of those goals are realistic from those billionaires and
what's a reasonable timeline if so. Okay, Yeah
, especially I think Dylan's goal is pretty realistic.
You know, he, you know, in the
early days, you know, it was all about
Making humanity a multi planetary species and he's worked on
that for 20 years. He's a very smart,
capable person. So I have no doubt that he
and SpaceX will succeed in some form on that within
probably a decade. And I know Ellen would like
to do it sooner. But you know, I
think within the next 10 years is very likely Brazos
plan of making earth essentially residential space industrial is probably
a much longer term goal. And for whatever reason
, you know, his company blue origin is much
slower in coming around to making that a reality.
They seem to be less efficient than SpaceX by by
a long shot. Jim My last question to you
is, what is next for your company based in
Tucson Arizona, where you're joining Me from, just
a few years old, founded in 2019. What's
next for you? Yeah, so we've been very
quiet and very quick in, in our development through
some unique supply chain relationships. And we're going to
be stage testing a full second stage here next month
and uh, the first full stage this summer.
So lots of smoke and fire and then launched next
year. And those are, you know, as
far as we see it, very realistic schedules were
also uh, manufacturing several satellites for customers. So
we're staying very busy. All right, Jim Cantrell
Ceo and co founder of phantom Space, talking your
own company and all things about this space race.
We appreciate it.