This Week in Space 127 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
On this episode of this Week in Space. We're talking about Space Stations Inc, the rise of the private sector in orbit. Stay with us Podcasts you love From people you trust this is Tolt. This is this Week in Space, episode number 127, recorded on September 6, 2024, space Stations Inc. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the Space Stations Inc edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astor Magazine, and I'm here, as always, with my good friend, tarek Malik, editor-in-chief at Spacecom. Hello, my friend.

00:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Hello Rod, hello, it's Friday.

00:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's friday again, it's podcast day so podcast day and I don't know what it's like where you are, but it's going to be 110 here today oh, it's in the 60s we're done, I am blowing down, because if I go over, the mountains.

00:57
To the north, it's 20 degrees cooler. But, importantly, today we're going to be talking about private space stations and their implications with Max Haut, ceo of Vast, a major player in commercial space, and he'll be joining us shortly. Before we start a subtle reminder, not-so-subtle reminder please don't forget to do us a solid and make sure to like, subscribe and all the other cool podcast things when you subscribe, because we need your support. All right, very important. It's time for a space joke. Yes, and this comes from loyal listener Jason Egan hey, tarik, yes, rod, of all the moons in our solar system, which one is the most edible?

01:40 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The most edible moon. I don't know. Is it the moon Right? I don't know. Is it the moon Right? I don't know no it would be Enceladus. Oh, don't you mean? Don't you mean Rod Enceladus? Come on, it's the tastiest of moons.

01:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Or appropriate to today. What sound will Starliner make when it comes down later on this afternoon? Yay, spoilers, spoilers. It will go boing, boing, boing. Okay, now I've heard that some folks put their heads in the oven and pretend they live on Venus when it's joke time on this show. But you can help save us and you from being singed by our humor although I did like the first joke there, that was a good one and you from being singed by our humor although I did like the the first joke there, that was good. On. Send your best, worst or most indifferent space joke to us at twists at TWIT TV. This TW is at TWIT TV. And now, now let's get some headlines, cuz, yeah, headlines, and I always like to start with starliner, but yeah no difference to you.

02:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know, that's not always star later. This big news, big news, big news. This well, we hope it's big. Yeah, no, that's fine In deference to you, let's do that. No, let's start with Starliner.

02:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's big news big news, big news this week. Well, we hope it's big news today. Yeah, we hope it's good news today, so tell us what's going on.

02:52 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, we got our stories. By the way, they're all from spacecom this week, but I mean, everyone be really quick. The big, big news is that it's coming back to Earth. As you and I are recording, NASA and Boeing are getting ready to pop that thing off the International Space Station, land it overnight tonight back on Earth at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. Undocking is around like six o'clock in the afternoon Eastern time, Landing is around 12 03 am saturday eastern time.

03:27
Uh, white sands, you can watch it all on spacecom but also from nasa on that nasa plus app that they've got and, uh, and that'll be interesting to see, you know, caveat, no astronauts riding aboard, right about it before. Uh, it's returning back crewless and that's the other kind of big story that came out this week in the big pre-landing conference, NASA was pretty much asked like what's the deal, Like what's the mood, Because there were reports and we talked about them I think last week, last episode, about a lot of I can't say differences of opinion on the NASA and the Boeing sides of this, and in fact there was a New York Post article and a few others that really said that there was a lot of really harsh. You know words that there might have been yelling and screaming. You know about all of this because of the disagreements between is Starliner safe to undock? Because of the thrusters and in fact.

04:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
excuse me, but just to be clear, this is Boeing saying hey, you know, we reviewed everything, it's safe, use it.

04:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's safe, use it and NASA's saying look, we're abundance of caution.

04:34
Exactly, yeah. So that's the fundamental disagreement and apparently it got very emotional and NASA's Steve Stitch, you know, said pretty overtly that there was tension in the room when they made the decision to do that. So it's kind of one of those decisions where no one is left feeling good at the end at it. Nasa clearly doesn't want to have to make that call. Boeing thinks that it wasn't the right call and it will have you know. Regardless. It means that changes have to be made to Starliner to avoid a lot of the issues that caused the thruster dropouts and we'll see how that goes.

05:14
In the meantime, we've got this landing. Hopefully it goes well, hopefully there's no thruster issues, and then Boeing can say look, we told you so it's fine. If anything pops up, then NASA's caution was very well warranted and then they'll go back to see how they can fix it. Nasa did say that they have pushed back the Starliner 1 launch. That's the next crewed launch of this vehicle from February of 25 to August of 2025. One year from just the past month, as we're recording this, that's when the next one could fly. Depending on the nature of whatever fixes, on how they do the thrusters for the issues that they've been seeing.

05:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And just a quick coda to this I read earlier I don't remember if it was in your article or another one that the haunted spacecraft effect that they were getting, which really you know. At first I thought, oh, this is a clickbait, but you listen to it. It was weird. It sounded like sonar pings in that thing and it was just an interference pattern setting up right.

06:14 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It was an audio setting between the ISS and the station. They had these weird noises. They couldn't figure out what it was there was. But there was another bit of audio that came out this week. That was very interesting and the folks at ABC News and Nightline had it first and they caught because you know there's this live stream of downlink from the space station. You can tune into it and hear what the astronauts are up to. And they caught kind of a final conversation between Sonny Williams, one of the astronauts on Starliner, which Will Moore is the other one of the astronauts on Starliner Butch Wilmore is the other and the ground as she's packing up Starliner for the last time because they closed the hatch the day prior to this podcast recording, and she was talking about how good she felt launching on the vehicle, how bittersweet it felt to be packing up simulators in the seats, for her and Butch Wilmore to go back to the ground because they're putting their suits on the ship. They can't wear them on Dragon.

07:09
So, their Starlighter suits are on the capsule coming back to Earth. Are they stuffed with dirty laundry or something I'm not certain. Or maybe they just pressurize them.

07:20
Yeah, or they just kind of strap them in. She said that they had like a mass simulator in the seats to be them. But it was a little sad. You know, that's what they trained for for this mission and now they don't get to perform that part of it. But she understood all the rationale and is good that the safety is kind of the paramount there. So it's a little bit of a downer, I mean. But I really hope that everything comes off swimmingly for this undocking so that so that it'll you know we've NASA and Boeing can move forward with the other six you know planned flights that they have Trevor Burrus.

07:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Jr. Ironic, you said swimmingly fora spacecraft that's going to come down on dry land. But let's move on to New Glenn. So after all my comments on this show for the last two years about supplies going into the new grown Glenn factory and us waiting for the back door to open, the back door is opening and things are happening.

08:14 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right, that's right. This week, boeing made not one, but two big announcements for their new New Glenn rocket. New Glenn for the noobs is a massive heavy lift vehicle that is going to be reusable, will land on a ship at sea. If that sounds familiar, it's because they thought of it first and then sued SpaceX to try to get them to stop. Oh, really.

08:36
Yeah, they did. I didn't know that, but it turned out that the concept predated both of them, and so SpaceX ended up proceeding, and of course we know where history is done. But this week Blue Origin unveiled Jacqueline, and that is their new barge landing ship, and they did it on X and showed photos of it and some aerial video of it. It's a very large ship that will hold the first stage of New Glenn when it comes back, and Jacqueline, if you're wondering, I thought it was like a Kennedy reference, but no, no, jacqueline is Jeff Bezos' mom, and so they named the ship after her, and it's in Port Canaveral and it's going to be a base there for the next few tests. Meanwhile, they moved the second.

09:26
Blue Origin moved the second stage of New Glenn out to their launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, where they're expected to start doing some hot fire tests in the future. The first stage was tested earlier this summer, and so this is the second stage and then they're going to pop that thing together and, if everything works right, they have set a launch date in October to launch the Escapade mission for NASA, which is going to launch missions to Mars. I think it's two To Mars and I think that that launch date is the 10th of October Don't quote me on that, it's either the 10th or the 13th or somewhere around there but it's within the window to go to Mars. So they're going to make it is the big story, right, that's. Otherwise they have to wait another two years to go to Mars, and no one wants to do that. I have it down for.

10:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
October 13. There you go there, yeah, okay, it's not really just a quickie. We have a solar sail story Now. When I was in my 30s yeah, late 30s in the 90s, I was working with a group of jpl people called the world space foundation that built a solar sail that didn't end up flying, but they spent years, we spent years developing them, mostly this deployment mechanism. That, I think, is ultimately what ended up getting used. So there was some actual good work that came out of that and there's been a couple of solar sails flown both by the US and Japan, right, yeah, that have worked. But now we've got one.

10:54
Japan sent one to Venus, but it's having some interesting things are going on. What's happening?

10:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, well, so NASA developed, they launched, a new solar sail, CubeSat called and I'm going to make sure I read this properly the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System. So solar sail say that three times fast Rod. They call it ACS-3 because there's three S's like a snake, and they launched it in April. And this week they showed off the very first kind of selfie picture of the solar sail deployed in space. They deployed it in very late August.

11:31
I guess they had some challenges trying to get it out there in the beginning, but they were able to get it deployed and now the spacecraft is kind of in a free drift mode, kind of tumbling end over end, while NASA uses cameras on the spacecraft to make sure that the sail is extended properly, that the booms went out, that the kind of thin mylar type sheeting is extended, so they can start preparing the navigation tests to see how this new kind of a solar sail technology will work. Can they tack the way that they expect to? Does the spacecraft respond? Is it viable for small payloads across the solar system? There was a lot of talk that, oh my God, it's like tumbling in space.

12:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and some press outlets kind of used that as a draw right.

12:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They did, they did, but it was always planned to do that and nothing is always certain. Now why?

12:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
is it? Is it so they can recover from a tumble? It's To test that.

12:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's Well when Think about the CubeSat, it's the size of like a toaster 12, 12, whatever. And everything is wound up in there, so. So all of that has to spring out, so the momentum of opening it.

12:48
And you need that to dampen out and you want to make sure that you don't start firing thrusters or reaction wheels or whatever they're using for orientation before you know the sail is okay. You know that it gets snagged and we have to do something else, you know to kind of McJigger it out or not. That's kind of what they're trying to do right now. It's going to take them a few days or weeks and then, once they do that, then they'll orient it the way they need it to be and then they'll get things sorted. Well, very cool, you can see it from the ground. Use the NASA app and you can look up and see it pass overhead.

13:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's very cool and it this if this works out as hoped, it portends for a lot of good things in the future, because this is a great way to go places quick, slowly at first, eventually with some speed, but, you know, very energy efficient and so forth. All right, let's move on. We will be back in just a few moments after this short break with max haut of vast. Stay with us. This episode of this week in space is brought to you by veem.

13:52
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14:59 - Max Haot (Guest)
Max Hout of VASTcom. Thanks for having me. Rod and Tarek Really, really excited to be here.

15:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Rodger Bellenberger, it's a great pleasure to have you, and I saw you speak at the International Space Development Conference and you knocked it out of the park, so we just couldn't wait to get you. So, as we usually like to do, could you kind of give us just a primer of how you got to where you are and then we'll talk about what Bass does? But I think it's always interesting for somebody that reaches the level that you have in this business to understand sort of your progression there.

15:34 - Max Haot (Guest)
Yeah, thanks for asking. So I'm originally from Belgium, french speaking, and I had the chance very early days as a kid, like 8 to 12 year old, to write software for BBS, which was a predecessor to the internet. So I became quickly skilled in some basic software programming and kind of the precursor to the internet. Then I wanted to be a live TV director and I went and did an internship in London at a company called IMG and instead of staying there for one year, I'm actually self-taught, never went to college. I ended up being the CTO of the Internet Division and I think by the time you know this was 95, by the time I was 19, you know I had a hundred software developer working for me building websites like Wimbledon, manchester United, the Patriots in the US, and already early days doing live streaming and high-scale computing because these websites are very popular. So I did that for 10 years and throughout that I built a software tool to do basically television and web broadband at the same time and we sold that to Verizon.

16:46
And as somebody involved on internet I was always dreaming of immigrating to Silicon Valley in the US. So that was my opportunity to move to the US. I ended up in New York City, worked a couple of years at Verizon and as soon as I can I wanted to become an entrepreneur. And after a couple of years I started a company called Livestream, which was taking a lot of the background I had in early live streaming and website development. And Livestream is basically a live streaming video player and platform that creators can use to put it on their website. So we did that for 10 years and we sold that to Vimeo. In that process I also built some hardware expertise in building a video camera called Mevo you can check it out at Mevocom which is a video camera, wireless video camera, you know, focused on, you know, specialized for live streaming. So that was my, you know entrepreneurial, I guess, in software and internet career.

17:47
But as early as 2000, and you know call it five or something like that when I arrived in the US, you know I started to think about the environmental movement and the problem on earth and you know, trying to decide, you know, should we decelerate, should we conserve or should we strive to expand humanity and embrace our nature and strive for, you know, at the time I was thinking about, you know, infinite humanity. You know a world where there are more humans in, you know, in space than on earth, and maybe a world where we don't even know where they are and how many there are right, and so that's what I, you know became kind of convinced that I wanted to contribute to that future and I think that's not mutually exclusive from obviously making sure we save the Earth and Earth is our home planet but I wanted to, you know, move my career to space as quickly as I can. At the time, I also came across SpaceX and what Elon was doing, and it was pretty interesting Like, oh God, an internet guy can make that switch. And so it took me about 10 years to finish Livestream, have enough money. Obviously, I was lucky that it was a lot easier to start a space company in 2017 than it was in 2002. You needed less capital, you could raise money, and so that's when I really started Launcher.

19:12
So Launcher was basically a small launch company with a vision to build a small rocket. Our main unique aspect was focus on engine performance, and we are still developing the E2 engine to sell or spin out later. And then you build a bigger rocket and a reusable one, and so on. So that was Launcher. We started in New York because I was there. Then I sold my third company, mevo, to Logitech in 2021. And after selling that I was able to move. I have three kids and was living in New York, so before they were too old, I fulfilled my dream to get to California maybe not Silicon Valley, but actually a better place for space. And then we moved in 2021 with a small launcher team five people and obviously my family here, and we opened in Althorne the launcher office that we grew to about 80 people. We flew to satellite to orbit on transport emission.

20:13
That was our third stage there, to various success. On the second one, we deployed all payload, but a bit too quickly. On the first one we had an anomaly, but we communicated with it, but we built all the technologies and skills to achieve that. And then, basically, I met the founder of Vast, jed McCaleb, and the reason I met him is in the context of fundraising for Launcher, the company I'd created as a founder and creator, and Jed was not interested in investing in a rocket company. He had already done that and he had created Vast and obviously we're not segwaying to Vast.

20:52
That's why I'm the CEO now. You know, with the mission that you know, rocket are sort of taken care of and SpaceX says, but what SpaceX is doing? And Jed had really, you know, decided on his own timeline that when he was successful and had enough money, he would invest a significant portion of his net worth in space exploration. And so he looked at that and said you know, the rockets and space access is done. It's not for me. But I'd like to focus on the next big thing, which is obviously habitat and space, habitat and space station. So that's how VAST was born, about three, three and a half years ago, before I was involved.

21:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Not very long.

21:33 - Max Haot (Guest)
Yeah, not very long. And you know, vast had assembled an amazing team of engineers that had worked on crew program mainly Dragon, had worked on crew program, mainly dragon. Instead of the next level of the vision, which is, you know, we want to be the company that makes you know artificial gravity that obviously has never been done at human scale and through spinning and you can obviously see in science fiction. But we we set up the long-term vision of us, which is we want to be the company that makes that a reality. And then through that process I joined as we, jed and I agreed to a deal to buy Launcher and his vision of it was really to acquire the talent and acquire, you know, have partner with me and see if I could help him run it and scale it there. So that was in February last year.

22:23
I've been here for a year and a half. At first I was president and I became CEO in August last year as I built the trust with the team and with Jed and it's been a pretty wild ride and I love obviously space in general and space exploration and just want to do everything I can to contribute. And I love rockets and still do. But, you know, the chance to be able to develop the world's first commercial space station and obviously the roadmap beyond that. You know space. You know human spaceflight is obviously the pinnacle of the space industry. Anyone working in the space industry wish they will get at some point the chance to work on it. So I sort of get a shortcut, enabled by the. You know the incredible investment that we have at VAST to make it possible. Right, you couldn't really start a human spaceflight company without significant investment and with, you know, being invited to be CEO by JET, I get that chance. So that's the background. Sorry it's been long, no, but that's great.

23:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is like a key inspiration moment for people looking at a new space career. Most of us won't achieve your heights, but that's a hell of a story and I'm really anxious to talk to you about the artificial gravity angle, but I know, because Tarek always does. He has a burning question he wants to ask, which he will do as soon as we come back from this break Stand.

23:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know it's funny that you mentioned Launcher Max because I recall several years back actually more than that visiting Final Frontier Design, the spacesuit company in Brooklyn at the Naval Yards, and like down the hall I remember going to their workspace was the sign for Launcher and I was like what is that company over here? You know, there's a rocket company in New York. I was really excited when I found that out back then and then you moved away and I was really sad.

24:16 - Max Haot (Guest)
You know I was really excited about, you know, New York. The Lunar Lander was built by Grumman on Long Island and you know there's an amazing history and still some contractor there and you know thought investors would be kind of interested to. You know, because most investors are in New York to sponsor a local company. Some talents were interested to move there. But you know, if you, after I moved to California and realized the people I could work with and hire the contractors, the ecosystem here, yeah I get why. You know it was sort of a joke to be there for what we were trying to do. So it was great for the early days to really build the kernel of the team that designed the E2 Rock and Engine. But yeah, los Angeles area is where one needs to be if you want the odds on your side. You know the big one.

25:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And, to be clear, I am from California, so I highly, highly hail the plaudits of that state.

25:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know I was curious, you came from Stockton. Hey, hey, hey. So he's the cool part of the state.

25:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I lived in Los Angeles for six years.

25:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You lived in Long Beach actually. Okay, sorry, go ahead.

25:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I did. No, I was curious. You mentioned like in 2005 when you started thinking about kind of about the overall future of the Earth and whatnot. But was there a kernel in Little Max when you were young looking up at the night sky or really getting into space? That was there in the background the whole time. Or was it a new interest born from that desire to do something for the world?

25:51 - Max Haot (Guest)
Yeah, unfortunately it wasn't you. So, like a few, inspiration as a kid was the trip my dad took me to Florida in, you know, when I was 10 or 11 year old and you know I got to see Disney World and so on. But the thing that really struck me was obviously Cape Canaveral. I'm not a naturalized, a thankful naturalized citizen, but I have a photo where I'm sitting on the manifold, the turbine or the gas generator exhaust manifold of the F1 engine in the rocket garden at Cape and I'm tiny on it, something that's not really legal and no one should do. But I was very interested already there at, you know, at age 10, 12. And actually one of the things that struck me the most in that trip is, you know, I was looking down combustion chambers and so on and like where are all the stuff? Like you know, I guess I had to get interested. You know, I guess if you've never thought about it, you know you'd think it would be like a jet engine with rotating parts and so on. So that's the early interest.

26:53
Another interest that converged a lot was watching the movie War Games as a kid. That's actually what got me into computing, you know. He had a modem and had a Commodore 64 and got a 300 board modem when I was like eight, and then obviously a bigger computer, bigger modems, all before the Internet, um, but also you know war games kind of straddled, also rockets, but they miss out. But there is the. You know the. You know geopolitical um, icbm, space kind of side of it.

27:24
Um, and I I took a really keen interest in in, you know, learning a lot of history about deterrence and mutually assured destruction and developed views that unfortunately that's what really you know the presence of it is or fortunately, or unfortunately, we'll find out in the future is what dictates everything about our world today and most people are not even aware it exists, think it's gone since the Cold War. So all of that kind of merged together. That's really the technical side of the interest and excitement of rocket engine and rockets and space, but obviously the philosophical side of it's time for me to spend the rest of my life and career to contribute to space exploration whichever best way I can. That's kind of the 2005 part of it.

28:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
See, the space bug Rod gets us all young, whether we like it or not. And for our younger, you guys don't have it at all. Right, that's right. But for our younger listeners and viewers, I'll just point out that War Games is a 1980s sci-fi film starring Matthew Broderick and Ali Shidi and an iconic computer, like Max was saying, unfortunately named Whopper. But you should really check it out, because it still holds up.

28:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It aged really well. It still holds up. Right now it does. And I was going to say, you know, if I ever get to visit Vast, I expect to see a mock-up of Whopper taking up a whole wall there.

28:56 - Max Haot (Guest)
Joking aside, we're building our control room and our headquarter and I push very hard for it to be a replica of the War Games. And then you know we have some amazing design advisors games. And then you know we have some amazing design advisors. Peter Russell Clark, that was one of the 20 industrial designers at Apple, worked for Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs for 20 years and he said you know, maybe we have a greater goal and mission, so it won't look like that. It'll look really cool and it'll be a different brand. But I tried.

29:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's it. As long as you have blinky lights it'll be okay. Brand, but I tried. I said, well, as long as you have blinky lights it'll be okay, that's right. So, um, my question I want to jump right into space stations here. Um, I mean, your core business, at least from what we see looking outside the company in, is private space stations and just to kind of give us a, a grounding here, could you talk a little bit about, I mean, it's kind of obvious but the difference between what you're doing versus something like the ISS or Mir or Skylab? And specifically, you know how a private company operates in this setting, so you know if you look at the, you know, vast.

30:03 - Max Haot (Guest)
We decided that. You know we want to create a world where you know there are more humans living in space than they are living on Earth. And obviously, if you go to space right now and you stay, you know you start as a professional astronaut athlete. On day one, you exercise two hours a day for six months to a year. When you'll come back you'll be a physical wreck in terms of bone loss, muscle loss, some vision problem and other medical issue. And so you know, to physical wreck in terms of bone loss, muscle loss, some vision problem and other medical issue. And so you know, to create that future where people live in space, we obviously need to go to Mars and the moon and other planets, but we also need, you know, space habitat in space that are livable for more than six months to a year and that are livable for anyone. And that's where artificial gravity come from. And so if you look at that, that's a long-term roadmap, right 20 years, 15, probably more than 15, 30 years, and that's all guiding stuff. And then, as a company, we have an incredible amount of funding available from our first investor and our founder, jed McCaleb. But if you look at that money to get to that vision of an artificial gravity space station built on seven Starship module. You can see it on the right, the stick. It's 105 meter long by seven meter diameter. It rotated at four RPM and create one G on either end. It will take a lot more money than we have to get there. So what we need is to have stepping stones right. You need a roadmap and you need to get there. So what we need is to have stepping stones right. You need a roadmap and you need to get there.

31:34
If you look at the space station market, you know we are a company, a business. You mentioned commercial. You know right now all space station project and all space station that exists are government. You know government programs the ISS, obviously with Europe. You know government programs. The ISS, obviously with Europe, japan, canada and in the US, and now the Chinese space station and obviously the historical Russian space station. You know they all are government, expensive government programs and so you know our bet and obviously is that you know we there is.

32:06
It is not a time to have a commercial space station. You know one that is anchor customer from governments and NASA specifically, but also is working with industry and private individual, whether on flights or on payload and in-space manufacturing. And so at VAS, we look back at this decade based on the funding we had. And you know, as you might have mentioned, there is an incredible opportunity in this market, or this new market, which is the retirement of the ISS in 2030. And the procurement that NASA has going, called Commercial Year Destination, nasa's CLD, where in 2026, mid-2026, nasa will pick a partner or two, we don't know to basically build a successor to the ISS and obviously, just like the commercial crew program that created Dragon and Starliner in the past, if you look at crew vehicles, nasa owned the asset and designed them on the COSPAS contract for, for example, space shuttle and and saturn 5 and so on. But now, with dragon, they've had an amazing success in creating a commercial transportation layer by not owning the dragons or the star liners and paying per seat per flight and obviously they helped certify the, the vehicle, they've helped developed it, but they didn't pay for the full development and they certainly don't own it and they have a guaranteed price per seat which is orders of magnitude lower than or at least one order of magnitude, probably more than, the shuttle. So NASA wants to do the same for Space Station. Right now, the Space Station is built and owned by NASA and its partner, and they want to recreate what they did with Dragon for space stations. So it means being a customer of it, paying per day on the station, per trip, per payload power, per facility, per dedicated rack, and this is an incredible opportunity for the company's bidding to basically have an anchor customer of NASA and then be able to find other customers and generate more revenue. So this decade, vast's number one objective is to win this competition, the NASA CLD, and, as you've seen on the website, we have a program before that. So the NASA space station of VAST will be called, probably Haven 2.

34:32
But we basically looked at it and we said this was about a year and a half ago. This was between February and May last year. You know how are we going to win this? We actually were not even selected on the first phase of it because we didn't exist, and so NASA picked a few of our competitors about four years ago or so. They picked Northrop Grumman, that now retired. They picked Axiom Space, they picked NanoRack that became Voyager, that became Starlab so now it's Starlab. And they picked Orbital Reef, which is a partnership between Blue Origin and Sierra Space. And so they gave each of these companies roughly $160 million to design a paper space station, do maybe a bit of hardware with a window and so on, but none of them are expected to fly a space station as part of the phase one and demonstrate that they can be a space station company.

35:24
And so last year we realized are we late?

35:26
Nasa doesn't even know who we are.

35:29
What could we do to make sure we late?

35:29
Nasa doesn't even know who we are? What could we do to make sure we win? And that's when Haven 1 came about. And the answer was we should build a space station. We should, you know, launch it on a Falcon 9 to orbit, should make sure it's safe and check it out, and then we should send a crew of four to go and visit it for at least two weeks and come back home safely. Visit it for at least two weeks and come back home safely. And our view is that, if we are able to do all of that before NASA and obviously the Congress, senate, white House, international partner have to decide on who should be the partner for the international, the successor to the International Space Station, our view is that if we do all of that and we do it safely, which is number one, obviously, and we do it by mid-26, it will be very difficult for our competitors to win or us not to win. And so in May last year, we announced it in one, and that's what we're doing.

36:19 - Tariq Malik (Host)
He just said it's Field of Dreams, Vastest Field of Dreams, Rod. If they build it, they will come right. No, that's what it is.

36:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's what it is. Yeah, that's what it is. Well, and it's a really, really exciting vision, max, yeah, I mean we've got bundles of questions. We're not going to get through them all, but before we go to them because I could see Tarek squirming in his chair we have another break. We'll be right back Stand by.

36:44 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah. Well, you know I was going to ask Max why you thought now was the time for a commercial space station like VAST and the others there, but you kind of really laid the argument out there. For us, as you said actually in the beginning, 2017 is much different to start a company than it was in 2002. There's a much more openness and much more demonstration, like you're talking about there. And you mentioned Haven 1, and that's like kind of the next question I want to talk about, because now we know what you and what Vast are trying to do. But Haven 1, I mean, it's been just over a year May 2023, I think that Vast announced the Haven 1 and the Vast 1 mission, which would be that first module, and I guess you would fly up there with SpaceX. Is that correct? And I'm just curious if you can walk us through what Haven 1 will be like to prove out some of the fundamental concepts that you want to make sure that you cement down as you build up to bigger and bigger space stations.

37:43 - Max Haot (Guest)
So you know, if you look back at our goal to win the CLD program, Haven 1's sole purpose is to turn us into an actual space station company. I don't think anyone can say they are a space station company unless they have a space station on orbit and a crew has visited and come back home safely. So that's the purpose of it. The scope was actually. You know, if you look at how we designed Haven 1, we started with this goal. Right, we need to become a space station company and we need to do it before mid-2026. We decided on priorities and requirements. Number one safety. Right. It's obvious that the government and no one would want to be involved or work with a space station that is not safe or has had incident. Number two is the timeline, not the features of the space station. We need this to happen before the government makes its selection, because that's the biggest opportunity in the world to find an anchor customer. Nasa is the biggest customer you can have and is your foundation to then build upon there. And then we started designing the actual space station and we felt we shouldn't really design a space station, especially a single module space station, without the visiting vehicle partner being part of our weekly meeting and the design reviews and so on. There are many things, from MMOD shielding to making sure we design it so that the nose cone of Dragon doesn't interfere with the uh, with the space station. You know keep out zone and uh, the life support system and how it interacts between the heaven one, you know the airflow, and uh attitude control. I mean it's, it's endless. The amount of interaction between the two system especially, you know, if you're at isa scale and dragon is very small. It's one type of interaction but in our case we're kind of a little bit bigger. But we are sort of equal, even close to equal, on mass. So we then went A. We have a very aligned culture and we love SpaceX and we have the same long-term mission, right Make life multi-planetary. But on a more practical sense, the only working visiting vehicle or spacecraft you can, human spacecraft you can work with for a US company, is the Dragon, right? Yeah, so we went to them in. You know this was in April, March, April, after we decided and we started to design the mission together.

40:10
You know, originally we wanted even one to be even a lot simpler, more like a. You know, a second stage of a rocket with not much inside and we would prove docking and the crew would just go, maybe with an IV or EV suit. We'd just go there for an hour or two and come back home and you know, as we started talking with SpaceX, you know we started to realize, hey, you're going to make all this investment. Why don't you focus on something different, where you can really extend the amount of time people that buy a Dragonflight can stay in space? Right now, SpaceX can offer a flight to the ISS, to the PAM mission, but these are limited to, you know, let's say, one a year. And then they also offer free flyers, as you know Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn, which we're really excited for that mission in the next few days, hopefully and I don't know if you saw there's another mission with a leader called Chan that is going to polar orbit. That has been announced.

41:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
PAM2. This year, too, it's going to polar orbit that has been announced M2 this year too.

41:12 - Max Haot (Guest)
That's right. Yes, that's coming so quickly. I think it might be early next year, but, yeah, maybe this year. You're right. So we basically realized that, hey, if heaven 1 existed and it was equipped with life support and space and sleeping berth and so on, people could, instead of going two or three days in space which is that's what the free flyers are limited to they could dock to heaven one and stay for two weeks, and two weeks will give you, you know, the space. Sickness actually happens for the first two or three days. So two weeks is really important. It's a really important milestone so that you can get comfortable and you can enjoy your time there. And also you can get comfortable and you can enjoy your time there and also you can have more space. You know it's about four or five times more volume than you would have on a free flyer. And you have other features we have Starlink internet, we have payloads, we have a large window, we have sleeping berths, and so together we sort of felt, hey, if you're going to do something vast, you know you should try to do a space station that Dragon can dock to and people can stay for two weeks.

42:18
And so that became the next requirement where we started to design within, you know safety timeline in this, and we looked at how much consumables can we pack into Haven One. Haven One is not closed loop Eclipse, that takes a much longer development cycle. So Eclipse, meaning life support system, it's an open loop one, meaning you have CO2 scrubbing cartridge you have to replace and that don't recycle. The water is not recycled, the trash is not recycled. And so Heaven 1 was designed actually as a disposable space station. It will be on orbit for three years and during that time we can have 40 days for four crew. So in our plans the first expedition will be three months after its launch and then during the three years we hope to have another three expeditions of two weeks.

43:00
So that's how it came about, and we signed a deal with SpaceX that you know provide the first crewed flight. So we are on a full contract for the first Dragon mission, also to launch Haven 1, on a full contract for the first dragon mission, also to launch haven one, on a reusable falcon 9 and that's also public at the announcement we did with spacex. We have an option for the second uh expedition. Oh nice, um. And then, since then, we, we furthered the relationship. Uh, we also announced that we will be the first space station or maybe the first customer, but definitely the first space station to have Starlink laser connectivity. So we are installing Starlink created laser terminal on Haven 1 that communicate with Starlink satellite and provide the crew over Wi-Fi or over the control system, you know, one gigabit two-way connectivity at very low latency, something that's very unprecedented from anything on the ISS and, I think, something that they will experiment with on Polaris Dawn. So we're watching eagerly how that will work.

43:58 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That means your Vast 2.1 crew can watch Vast 2.0 launch in live stream in real time, right.

44:06 - Max Haot (Guest)
I mean it means that if our customers have devices Android, iphone, whatever but they will be able to do FaceTime or Zoom and it's actually less latency than Starlink on Earth we have to go up, down, up down and we actually have half the distance. I don't know how it will convert in latency, but it will be really incredible. And that's another aspect of getting closer and working closely with SpaceX, the partner. Our roadmap requires Starship, our access to our space station requires Dragon, and so this is our long-term partner. We look forward to keep working with.

44:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And size-wise. You mentioned the size compared to Dragon early on. But about the size of a bus inside? Or like Destiny or Columbus?

45:02 - Max Haot (Guest)
what should people who are yeah, it's a 4.2-meter diameter on the outside, 3.8-meter inside skin and it's designed a little bit differently. We haven't revealed the interior design. We will, I mean, before the end of the year. Um, it is. You know, if you look at the iss, um, all of it is racks all around and there's actually no area where you can have direct access to the precious skin. There might be some, but most of them are, or not?

45:27
Um, and so in vast, we have a first area which is more like a smaller corridor with a lot of the systems and consumables and the sleeping berth, and then we have a room at the front which you have access to, the full 3.8 meter volume basically, which is the lounge or something like that. And, by the way, keep watching our website, we'll reveal that soon. And so if you look at Dragon, obviously Dragon, the pressure vessel is not the full of Dragon with the trunk, and so you're looking at about four time more usable volume, like livable volume, than you would have if you were just in the dragon, but also a lot more facilities and a different aesthetic. You know we are more lesser transport, more destination, a bigger window and so on. Obviously, if you do an Inspiration4 type mission. They had a great window there, but that's not on all missions. Like Polaris Dawn, they have the best window no window, I guess.

46:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Rod was just asking if you're trying to get Jared Isaacman to book that first trip to Haven 1.

46:36 - Max Haot (Guest)
We love Jared, we know each other, we communicate and we love the Polaris Zone crew and you know, of course we'd love to have him come to Haven 1.

46:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right, well, I've got the big burning question coming, but not until we take a break. So stand by, we'll be right back. So we've seen a lot of space stations over the years that have attempted to show us designs that would create artificial gravity, you know, through centrifugal force. I mean back even when I was a kid, in the 60s, there was a 10-year-old Disney show called Disneyland and later relabeled as Tomorrowland, where they showed these versions of Von Braun's big circular space station.

47:15 - Max Haot (Guest)
Yeah, I've seen their YouTube videos.

47:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and I was very surprised to find out as an adult. Oh, that was inflatable, that was just rubber, you know, and there were concerns about people puncturing and the thing zinging around like a, like a deflated balloon. But, and of course, in movies, you know, continually we've seen both space stations and spacecraft with artificial gravity creation, uh, through throughout.

47:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, of course, then you see star trek with, you know, the push, gravity, push button but in terms of gravity plating, they have gravity, yeah, yeah, that's what they're allowed to use I worked on it, I know, but in terms of realistic designs, what are the big challenges in creating a space station that can have some level of artificial gravity?

47:56 - Max Haot (Guest)
Well, the biggest at first is to become a space station company. That can, you know, build these habitats and have the life support system and do docking, and of that, if you really look at the Delta being able to do that, you can sort of iterate and get your way to bigger and spinning. So that's why we do Haven 1 and why we need to get there before we really execute on that. Even in Haven 1, we have opportunities to start developing some of the technologies. So we have a plan to even in Haven Dem. We haven't talked about heaven demo, but we are flying early next year a satellite on a bandwagon mission of SpaceX, 500 kilogram satellite. That is all of the sensors, all of the propulsion, all of the flight, computer flight software, radio, single solar panel, the batteries, all the power system and charging and so on. It's just a demonstration to make sure our avionics stack is reliable before we obviously send the larger Haven 1.

48:58
It's like a space station in a jar, basically, yeah, without any of the human, no pressurized volume, nothing human-related other than obviously it's all redundancy and fault tolerance, like it will be on Haven 1. But back to the point even as early as that, we actually plan to spin the demo satellite and have some IMUs and other sensors that we're concerned. You know what will happen to these sensors if we are spinning right? There's no real answer. So, even though it's very long-term for us, you know what will happen to the sensors if we are spinning right? There's no real answer. So, even though it's very long term for us, you know, on our first space mission we already are doing spinning and we are testing On Haven 1, we plan to spin and do a lunar uncrewed lunar artificial gravity demonstration for the payload. So at the end of the life, the three years, we will be spinning Haven 1 and generate lunar gravity. On the payload rack we have 10 mid-deck locker which is the kind of the standard format on the ISS and we will be spinning. And obviously we're offering customers of these payloads, or some of them. Some of them will have microgravity for three years, but one or two of them will wait for the spinning opportunity. We even have a soft plan to consider doing it crude, and we are in discussion with SpaceX about how much Dragon can spin. What are the limitations? Obviously we need to keep Dragon safe after the spin there.

50:24
Back to your original question in terms of, for example, the stick, which is seven Starship launch module that creates 105 meter by seven meter diameter stick. Some of the challenge, obviously getting to the point we can build that and build Starship size, seven meter diameter structure and launch them. The next big problem is also docking these adapters. Right now there are two ways to dock Space Station. I guess the Russian and the Chinese have different ways, but for us there is IDA docking. It's about a 1.2-meter circular interface that Dragon, for example, has, and then there is a larger one called CBM, common birthing mechanism that Cygnus has and that's how they interface a lot of the module and that's birthing. So you need the robotic arm, but it's larger I don't know the exact dimension and it's square with rounded corners, much, much larger In our vision of the artificial gravity space station. We're talking about seven meter diameter docking. We need much bigger. So is it berthing, is it docking? It's definitely. We want a big opening in between these seven modules, so that's not trivial, definitely not trivial and something we will have to develop.

51:47
The other piece, obviously the propulsion that's needed to obviously maintain it, the rigidity and, as I mentioned, all of the sensors and system and make sure that they are good with spinning. And then, lastly, it's a lot of energy to spin and unspin. It's not that much propellant energy to maintain the spin, but to unspin the structure and re-spin. It is something we can only do a limited amount of time. So what that means is that we need to find a way for visiting vehicle to come and dock while you're spinning, and so now you're talking about developing a way that the visiting vehicle is spinning as well in synchronization.

52:33
Again back to, I think, 2001,. You see that Right, it's been seen and we have to make sure that works. So I think that I'm probably just scratching the surface, but the main point is that before we can do any of that, we need to be able to do something like Haven 1 and something bigger than Haven 1 that has multi-module assembly, and then we'll get to do all of that amazing thing. And if you look at VAS, what we're really building is you know we didn't talk about it, but you know, before the launch acquisition, vas got to about a team of 40. You know, some of these were the founding team, incredibly experienced engineers. And then we merged with Launcher, which had more junior engineers, but more of them, and we became like 120 people. We are now 550 people. We are scaling at 10 new team members a week, mostly engineering, and by the time we will fly we expect to be around 800.

53:32
So clearly, my point there is that the most important thing we have to do is to build a culture, a team and obviously all the engineering tool and process in the company that can build safe human system at low cost. And low cost means fast as well, right, and so once we have that right we don't have that yet, we will only have that once the crew is back from heaven, one for the first time. Once we have, you know, gone from zero to one and created this system, you know, then I believe we can build any other human system. It's just time and money. So that to me is the biggest challenge how many human-rated, low-cost companies exist in the United States? I think there's only one right now. It's SpaceX, yeah.

54:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, given the design you're talking about and and it looks like all these design, none of them are tether, uh, tether systems for creative gravity. They're rigid, right, yeah, correct, yeah. So, given that, ultimately, do you see, uh, the company and those technologies moving into um spacecraft components for long transits, like going to Mars and so forth?

54:51 - Max Haot (Guest)
I mean when I logical progression when I got involved with VAST, you know, one of my first personal observation was you know space station and spacecraft or you know they obviously are different, but you know there's a lot of commonality. So you know, I know. If you look at the, so you know I, you know, if you look at the roadmap, you know I, I'm, I very much like to think about. You know, how do we get from zero to one, and like 99% of my brain that's is that, uh, and actually I don't even do a lot of the. It's probably less than 1% of long-term roadmap in dream, and a lot of our team obviously have have contributed to that. But point is that you know you set this roadmap, uh, that that you see, and as you learn, as you build, as you reiterate, you know it might change right, maybe there will be a theter and after the stick, maybe the stick will have a theter. Um, you know, maybe we will. You know we will not do artificial gravity for a bit longer, and then we'll go directly to a circular design or also, you know, a wheel design. So I think it's hard to tell whether you know what we've decided three years ago is going to. You know for sure, we'll just, you know, put our head down and just build exactly that. I think we'll learn and we'll adapt, but the goal remains the same, right, we want to be the company that makes artificial gravity a reality, right?

56:08
Not science fiction, and you know we haven't talked about it, but one of the, as you know, I'm sure one of the really interesting aspects of it is, you know, does it need to be 1G? Maybe you know, quarter G, lunar gravity, mass gravity, whatever is going to be enough to live a full life, right, or maybe to live 10 years without any problem in space. That is probably the biggest contribution, like the next step, right Before you scale it. If we were able to prove that, uh, at human scale, not at my scale or whatever, um, you know, that would be an incredible contribution to space exploration, you know, I think so. So that that, I think, would be the big next step, and a stick can definitely do that, a starship-built stick of 105 meters by 7. Then the other designs obviously can be informed on that. Yes, we absolutely need 1G. No, we just need 0.1 of a G.

57:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know very different scenarios basically, well, that would be such a gift I mean I don't want to get overly dramatic here but really to everyone certainly involved in this great endeavor, because we have almost no data on that and it's something that they've been talking about for decades but nothing's been done. So I think that's going to be a remarkable thing. All right, tarek, you're up for the lightning round?

57:25 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yes, I have four hopefully really short questions, max, and they're not that serious, they're kind of silly and you totally shared them with me before. No, no, they're just about the spin themselves. So I think we saw it in the video animation, but for our listeners who haven't seen it, this spin it's like end over end, right, it's not like a barbecue roll. Yeah, it's like end over end, right, it's not like a barbecue roll. Yeah, that's correct. If I'm inside, then will I get dizzy or will I get used to it If I'm looking out the window and seeing, I guess, the earth or whatever bobble around as I spin?

58:00 - Max Haot (Guest)
So, as you said, it's end over end and the place that will have 1G would be the, the circular end of the cylinder. You know, seven meter diameter, right and, and obviously, if you're at different levels, in the center of the spin you have microgravity and then an increase variably, um, you know, with coalesce, for coalesce effect and forces, um, you know, no one really knows. Right, the, the russian, actually build a full scalescale centrifuge, but you're still on Earth and you have 1G, you know, pulling you down. So no one knows. Everybody believes that you know 4 RPM, or everybody. I guess our team, informed by the state-of-the-art science that's out there, in theory that you know 4 RPM might work and it's not clear whether it's compatible with Windows. You know you might have to shed all the windows and ignore that and maybe only occasionally look at it, but it's not clear, no one knows. I mean, that's the whole point of it is, we need to know and we don't know, and then I guess kind of building up a next step from that.

59:06 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm just very curious what your favorite science fiction space station is.

59:10 - Max Haot (Guest)
That's interesting. You know what it's like in the industry. There are people interested in, obviously, astronomy and science fiction and so on, but I'm more like real, so I don't even have that answer, which is really boring and will disappoint no, it's great.

59:28 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's good to know.

59:29 - Max Haot (Guest)
But I, you know, I'm more interested in the, in the real spacecraft. I guess, uh, you know, today would be would be dragon and and uh and falcon, and I'm so excited about you know how starship is moving forward and and and when we'll see crew there. So that inspires me more than the science fiction. So sorry for everybody that's doing space because of science fiction.

59:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And finally, do you plan to fly Rod this is Rod's question Do you plan to fly up to Haven 1 or even the bigger stations in the future?

01:00:04 - Max Haot (Guest)
This is all a ploy for me to get to space.

01:00:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yes, I love it I love it.

01:00:10 - Max Haot (Guest)
No, in seriousness, obviously the CEO of a space station company should try his own product eventually. I love it. So, yeah, Now, of course I would love the opportunity, but that's a long way away, it might never happen and we all want the price of flight to go down and it's still very expensive. And the best way I can contribute is on the ground, helping lead the team, the incredible team that is contributing to space exploration.

01:00:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, the best way to amplify your efforts is to host the first space podcast in space. So I heard that there's these two guys, rod and Tarek, that are pretty good at that, so just keep in mind.

01:00:51 - Max Haot (Guest)
All right, you're looking for a challenge accepted, take me up on it when you see I'm on a crew.

01:00:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You have anything else, you know. I just wanted to say I've been hiding a secret this whole time. Max, I just wanted to say my sister actually started as an engineer at vast this summer. So a big, big shout out to yasmin hi, yasmin you know, yeah, that's my little sister, that's your sister?

01:01:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
yeah, I obviously know, yasmin was that the sister that worked for boeing?

01:01:22 - Tariq Malik (Host)
at one point. No, no, she, she worked for a company that did subcontract work for Boeing. Okay, okay.

01:01:28 - Max Haot (Guest)
Got it. She's in there helping us build primary structure.

01:01:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right.

01:01:34 - Max Haot (Guest)
We're really happy that she's here, that's really cool.

01:01:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's a perfect response. That's way better than oh her. So this has been really fun. I guess my last question is is there any other future plans or things we should be looking for in the next couple of years, other than the obvious first launch you want to talk about or anything else? I mean, this is your spot.

01:01:56 - Max Haot (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, if you follow us, one of the big next public milestones will be we'll show the primary structure of Avon 1 and we will take it, ship it out of the qualification articles, ship it out of our, of our the qualification articles, ship it out of our, of our building and send it to our Mojave test facility where we'll put pressure and we'll put loads on it and then that will clear the way for building the flight one. Well, we're actually doing them in parallel, but you know, not redoing the flight primary structure and then following on integration. So that's an exciting milestone that I think, when we reveal it very soon, hopefully a lot of people in the industry and obviously at NASA and other place stakeholders we are the underdog right. We arrived late on the CLD competitive landscape and every time we are delivering against our Haven 1 promise and timeline, everybody pays more attention and takes us more seriously. So that's what I'm really excited about. We'll also reveal the interior design soon that I'm really excited about and then we'll fly our demo satellite. I think a lot of people will also pay attention to that and the outcome.

01:03:08
And the other big one is, you know, start of integration, environmental test campaign. You know, vibe and acoustic and shock and EMI testing of the fully assembled space station. The launch is going to be very interesting and you know I've participated, obviously, in building two small satellites and worth a single million dollar program. This is going to be a lot more stressful. And then the crew mission that goes through it and docking and opening the hatch, I mean that's going to be absolutely incredible. We have 20 cameras inside and outside and, as I mentioned, we have styling connectivity. So just can't wait for that to happen. So that's sort of what we're looking at, and I guess the other one I didn't mention is the selection of our crew and the announcement for the first expedition to Haven 1. I think that's going to be also a big deal, that people oh wow, this is real, like people that are signing up to this right, and so, yeah, that's all. The next year and a half or a little bit more, a little bit less, we'll see, but that's a lot to do.

01:04:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Wow, that's exciting and the ambition is really impressive. We've seen some companies no names mentioned here. We've seen some companies kind of go along for decades where we know there's a lot of work going on and we see all this stuff going in the front end of the factory and we keep waiting for something to come out the back end of the factory. So it's cool to see how fast you guys are moving, yeah, and we're excited to share and build in public.

01:04:44 - Max Haot (Guest)
That's a really important part of our culture and strategy. While we've been around for just a little bit over three years, Haven One was announced last May. At that time we were maybe 150 people. We've accelerated. It's a fun place to be, it's intense, but everybody is focused on this single goal to build Haven 1 and make sure it's safe and launch it within that timeline of our strategy.

01:05:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right. Well, I want to thank you very much, max, and I want to thank everybody else for joining us for episode 127 of this Week in Space, which we're calling Space Stations Inc. Max is vastspacecom the best place for us to keep up with what's going on.

01:05:37 - Max Haot (Guest)
Yes, sorry, I thought it was an announcement, not a question. Oh sorry.

01:05:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yes, vastspacecom is the best place to keep up with what's going on and it's exciting and check back often because there's a lot of things happening. Tarek, where can we find you saving the world from space misinformation these days?

01:05:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can find me at spacecom, as always, where this weekend, right after we finish recording, we're going to watch the undocking of Boeing Starliner and hopefully successful landing at White Sands Space Harbor. It's where the shuttle landed in Space Camp, by the way. That's another shout out to that movie 80s movies abound, this episode and then hopefully playing some video games, because, man, there's a lot of new stuff, a lot of new stuff New Fallout 76 season, new Doctor Doom stuff. It's great, it's great stuff Okay.

01:06:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Max has things to do and of course you can always find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom, please don't forget. You can drop us a line at twist at twittv. That's twis at twittv. We welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas and jokes, and we will answer all your emails. New episodes of this podcast published every friday on your favorite podcatcher. So please make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us thumbs up, likes, reviews, whatever you can. We're counting on you, don't forget. You can get all the great programming with video streams and extra features seen nowhere else on the Twit Network ad-free through Club Twit, and that's only $7 a month, and you certainly can't buy a ride to a space station for $7 a month. So stick with us and join Club Twit and support the cause. Max again, thank you very much, really appreciate it and we hope to have you back.

01:07:18 - Max Haot (Guest)
Yeah, thank you, Rod and Tarek, for having me Love to be back one day.

01:07:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I really enjoyed it. Yeah, well, it sounds like at the rate you're moving, we'll have you back as soon as we can, so thanks again.