This Week in Space 138 Transcript

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00:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
On this episode of this Week in Space, we're talking to Scott Tibbetts, an entrepreneur who made $7 worth of spare parts into a vital piece of Mars probe tech. Join us

00:12 - TWiT.tv (None)
Podcasts you love.

00:14
From people you trust. This is TWiT.

00:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is this Week in Space, episode number 138, recorded on November 22nd 2024, from the Garage to Mars. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the very special this Week in Space, the From the Garage to Mars edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief Badass Magazine, and I'm joined as always by the inexpressible Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief at Spacecom, with a monogram sweater. How are you, my friend?

00:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm doing well, rod, I'm doing well. Happy Thanksgiving early. By the way, we're like t-minus seven days away as we're recording this.

00:57 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And let's give a nod to your brilliant life, brilliant wife, for knitting you that extraordinary sweater. For those of you watching on video, let's. Yeah, he's got a tee for Tarek.

01:07
She actually did it, I happen to know, so that when he got lost, somebody was able to tell who it was and call her and say, hey, your husband's over here, come and get him go ahead and keep him right okay, uh, today we'll be speaking in a few moments with Scott Tibbetts, who is the author of a new book called From the Garage to Mars, and a polymath engineer who origin stories don't get much better than this took $7 worth of parts from the hardware store basically a copper tube and some wax and created from that a company that worked in the space sector with nasa, jpl and other places to make millions and, and an incredible company with over what did he say?

01:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
how many employees? 150 at the, uh, I think at least, and uh, they went to saturn on cassini yeah, man worked on chandra.

02:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Lots of fun stuff okay, but, but we don't want to phone in the uh, the third act. So before we start, yes, please remember, do us a solid and be sure to like, subscribe and all the other good podcast things on the podcatcher service of your choice, because we're counting on you. And now, speaking of space detritus, our weekly space joke, this one from David Robeson Dave, hey, tarek, yes, rod, why don't scientists trust atoms? Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything, including our space jokes.

02:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I like this one. I like it. It's a good one, Dave. That's a good one. I think I've seen that on a shirt before. I like it. It's a good one, Dave. That's a good one. I think I've seen that on a shirt before, but I like it. It's still good, Don't say that. No, I think it's good. It's a good one. It's a good one.

02:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And whatever you saw on the shirt probably wasn't impugning our space jokes. Now, speaking of which, send us your best, worst or most indifferent space joke at twisttv. And now it's time for Headlines. Headline News I love it. Anthony was on the switch for that, so, um, it's hard not to start with the anything but starship test flight number six. Which number six? Not a catch this time, but they did hit some other milestones yeah, in the, so it's, it's in the can.

03:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Spacex has launched their sixth uh uh test flight for starship. It was, um was a pretty good success. Now, as you mentioned, they did not actually land or catch the rocket, the super heavy booster. They actually said they would go for it and then, I guess at the last second, there was some commit criteria that went red.

03:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And so they. Just I read about that. It was that the Elon made a statement about that later. It was that the uh or elon made a statement about that later.

04:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
it was that the rocket apparently lost telemetry with the uh, with the mechazilla yeah yeah, couldn't talk to the landing pad anymore, right yeah, and so so they decided just to go ahead and divert, you know, and and it went out, did a pretty smooth, soft landing. We got video of it here, uh, if you're watching the stream, uh, uh later, of it, like launching into space, gorgeous, gorgeous day. They launched at 5pm at night, eastern time, which was the first time they've done like an evening launch, which was great because for the first time we saw the Starship land in daylight in the Indian Ocean, which was absolutely spectacular. It took about an hour as light. It was very same profile as flight five, so everything else seemed to go well.

04:46
They tested new bits of heat shielding in different places to record the heat. There they did use an older type of heat shield. They said that the new one Flight 7, will have a new, different design of flaps that are going to be a little bit better on the heat resistant on the way down, but it was interesting to me that they didn't have any burn through that I could see that we've seen in the last, the last couple flights. And they put heat shielding in what looked like um, where you would expect windows to be, which I thought was pretty interesting. Like are they testing for? Like what the windows are going to have to you're talking about up in the up on the, the nose, yeah, and ask me about bananas.

05:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, rod tell do you have any bananas today?

05:26 - Tariq Malik (Host)
yeah, well, spacex sure does, because for the first time they launched a payload on starship. And again, starship is like the world's biggest rocket. It's 400 feet tall. It's like bigger than it's more power you man seeing that shot.

05:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I don't remember seeing a shot of the interior of a ship the upper stage before, but the banana was the only thing that gave it any perspective.

05:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's really large, it's their first payload and they sent up a stuffed banana for scale and you have to imagine this massive, cavernous space with a single banana suspended by four different cables inside. That's what they did. That was their first payload and they said it was good practice to going through the FAA about how to go approve payloads. And they also had the little Pez dispenser spit out, a structure that they're going to use to stack all the Starships or Starlinks on in the future and then the Starship is going to just spit them out like a Pez dispenser instead of releasing them all in a big stack. So they did a lot of that. They also relit the Raptor engine for the first time in near orbital speeds yeah, in a vacuum and they had a very smooth landing.

06:36
They were able to touch down in the Indian Ocean as planned, so very smooth flight. I think it would have been nice to see the super heavy booster get caught. We're seeing video of it here now, of its soft landing in the ocean, and the sad part is that right after SpaceX cut away from the super heavy booster splashing down, it exploded like in a wonderful fireball and they cut away before we could watch it happen. So, but there are photos of it that Getty and other folks took, so it's pretty good. Exploded like in a wonderful fireball and they cut away before we could watch it happen. So, um, but there are photos of it that getty and other folks took, so it's pretty good. It's pretty good to see, so I think it's a big notch.

07:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
They got faa approval for 25 flights at least next year, so all right and, and just to put a point on that, there have been other rocket engines that reignited in a vacuum before. I mean as early as certainly apollo, when the upper stage and the s4b had to reignite, yeah, they had not done it with this engine exactly.

07:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So that's something that has to be proved before you can move forward with the most the intended missions for starship and it would not surprise me if we see an orbital flight before this year is out, or at least an attempt. You know, uh, where?

07:44 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
they actually circle the planet yeah, yeah, there's the.

07:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The year is still young. They got a month left. They got a bajillion of those starships and super heavies at starbase right now.

07:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, um, we'll have to see how it all shakes up.

07:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, that's true, it looks like an old, uh, a ford lot and I will say one last thing they said during the broadcast they are looking at being able to pump out, um uh, a ship every eight hours eventually at starbase can you imagine that?

08:10 - Rod Pyle (Host)
every eight hours. Frankly, I can't. 20, 20 ships recently said they wanted to do 400 launches in three years. I think it was.

08:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, it is insane, I mean, if they will hit that rate.

08:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So yeah, bully to them, but let's ask the people down at Boca Chica how they feel about that. Speaking of which, the FAA, which has been, I wouldn't say, glacial, but kind of molasses-like in terms of granting these flight licenses, which are kind of important and they're not the only agency they have to deal with down at Starbase. They have to deal with Fish and Game and FCC and others, but FAA has kind of been the big one appears to have changed their tune, maybe because they see an incoming administration that could say, hey, step it up. What do you think?

08:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
well, an incoming administration that's going to say, hey, step it up, but also a dire need by nasa to to have these test flights complete so they can launch these flights over time.

09:06
By the way, both of these stories are all from spacecom, but you can find them from your preferred space news hopefully spacecom, but yeah.

09:16
On Wednesday, so one day after SpaceX's successful Flight 6 launch, the FAA put out a new draft environmental assessment.

09:23
It's 160 pages.

09:26
Uh, the faa put out a new draft environmental assessment is 160 pages.

09:29
That says that instead of um spacex's kind of current license where it says that they can launch five starships uh a year, uh, now they're they're gonna uh increase that up to um 25 at least, uh, and so that kind of gives them like a no, that's easily two flights a month, right uh to to be able to uh ramp up their, their, their, their testing and they they might have gotten a bit of a uh, a bit of a uh a nod from their most recent flight five, flight six, where they had a license for multiple launches, as long as the profile uh wasn't too different and and the um there there weren't any strange anomalies.

10:06
So it does seem like there's a bit more relaxing of the rules now that they've got six of these under their belts, to say, okay, we understand what you're doing, now you can go ahead with your testing campaign, et cetera. And because NASA really wants to land astronauts on the moon, by what is it? By 2026, if they can and they need, how many did we say 15, 12, like a dozens Of the tanker flights, of these tanker flights at least, and of course you're going to need another order of magnitude of testing.

10:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The smallest number I've seen is 15. The highest number I've seen in print was 24. Yeah, that's a lot of flights and that's a lot of orchestrating.

10:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's a lot, yeah, and, and you know, and it's not just Boca Chica alone this, this slice, this is these are from South Texas. This FAA document is about launching from Starbase. Spacex has already built a tower or they're finishing the tower at the Kennedy Space Center, where they have a lot more flexibility about when and how often they're going to be able to launch, as long as they have the range. There's more complexity there, because they're not the only game in town. You've got your ULAs, you've got your space forces there that they're going to have to deal with.

11:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, but let's be honest for a second. How often are they going to have to stop for ULA launch? I'm not besmirching ULA, but at this point it's like oh, it's the 42nd of november, I guess we have to stand down for ula launch well, well, I mean also also, you got new blue origin coming in with new glenn right out of there so, uh, so.

11:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So there is that too.

11:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, yeah, that'll be exciting to see they might have to wait once a year. Um, okay, so we got two more stories here. Pick your favorite.

11:40 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And uh, yeah uh, real, real, quickly, just a a, a, a quick, a quick note that uh, speaking of all sorts of private spaceflight, uh, the day of this recording uh, uh, is blue origins NS 28 launch. They launched it earlier this morning, uh, and it was their, um, their ninth crude spaceflight. This actually came from, uh, uh, robert Perlman over at collect space, by the way, because it has a little bit of space history in it. They launched Emily Calandrelli, the quote unquote space gal, emmy Award winner and a big STEM advocate, on. You might have seen her on exploration space on TV, etc. But yeah, she was the.

12:21
She became the official 100th woman to fly in space with this NS-28 New Shepard launch on Blue Origin, including, you know they had a few other people Mark and Sharon Hagel, former passengers as well, and a couple of other folks JD Russell, an entrepreneur, and Hank Walfund, the CEO of a Canadian investment firm. So you know, big, successful flight for them and congratulations to Emily Calendrilli. You know a space media person getting to space, rod. So that means that there's hope. There's hope for you and I. We'll get there. Maybe we can get on one of these flights together and do a podcast in space.

12:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Look at that picture and tell me. There are about 10,000 reasons that other people like Emily are going to fly low for you and I do. For one thing, you could fly four of her for the mass of me.

13:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Really other reasons. Let's, let's hit the gym. You and I run, we'll get there. We'll get there one day.

13:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I keep hitting the gym and the problem is it hits back. All right, so what? Wah? So everybody will be back in just a few moments with Scott Tibbetts.

13:29
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14:41 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
it's been good. It's actually it's been. Uh, we've gotten a lot done, so it's been a good morning okay, well, that's good.

14:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
A morning buffered by apple pies, you told us before we came on, is always a good morning, and if I could get away with doing that at night without weighing 300 pounds, I'd do it every night.

14:56 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Well, yeah, Getting up at 2 in the morning eating half an apple pie. I can't be doing that on a regular basis. But yeah, it's true you can't.

15:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's early Thanksgiving, thanksgiving's almost here. Yeah, exactly.

15:11 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
It's Thanksgiving week, isn't it? We are officially in that uh week before thanksgiving period.

15:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You're right, that's right it's taste testing, so that now, when push comes to shove, you know which apple pie to get.

15:23 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I totally, I mean, that's valid, that's valid I like you guys I think, it's the time of year that you go to costco and buy those pumpkin pies the size of a manhole cover for six dollars. Yeah, what I don't understand is why there's oil pooled on the top of them. But anyway, let's move on to more important things. So, Scott, you have kind of an amazing story to tell which you've been telling for a while, and now you've written a book called From the Garage to Mars, which is a fun read. But I can't figure out how to encapsulate you, so can you describe yourself?

15:56 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
That wasn't on the list of questions you're going to ask me.

16:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, that's the joy of it. Yeah, he always has two lists.

16:02 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Scott, he has two lists. Yeah, I know the secret.

16:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The surprise list it's the same way I do accounting for my company. You know I get different columns I understand. Yeah.

16:18 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
How do you? I mean, surely when you go on stage you have that moment where you say you know here's, here's who I am? Yeah, it's actually a really good question and it's taken me longer in life to later in life to figure that out. But um definitely was an inventor and entrepreneur when I was in sixth grade. Um, making up stuff and selling to my classmates, um, getting in trouble for that, that kind of thing. So I've got that piece of it. And the entrepreneur side love space.

16:40
But the thing that I've started to realize that's kind of my DNA is I have a tremendous sense of fun, to the embarrassment of my kids, where my inner child is like right there on the surface. They're always rolling their eyes and saying, dad, for God's sake, no, just no, just don't do that. But then the other thing I found is is the other piece is human connection. I just love connecting with people quickly, at a deep level, and I did not realize that those things would come together to kind of be the foundation of why the company took off. And it's taken me a while to look back and realize, yeah, those were the things, all those things coming together. So that's how I'd answer that one.

17:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So would you say primarily inventor, primarily engineer, primarily entrepreneur? Good question, primarily not of this world.

17:37 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
These are actually really good questions. You know, it makes you think, um, what I think of is the way we can answer that is, what do we lead with when we meet people in our lives? If you said, how would you describe scott? Probably the top of the list would be um, really loves people. He's a great friend, great, it does that have you guys seen this one.

18:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh, I love it, whoa.

18:01 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
I didn't know there was this. I found that by accident.

18:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, for people listening, scott is walking us through the hand gestures for Zoom. I turned mine off that are special because you're on a Mac, then right.

18:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, I was going to say that's not even Zoom, that's just part of the operating system. Yeah, part of the operating system Turn off if you want to. Well, cool Okay.

18:20 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
But finishing up that question, people would say that I connect with people, I'm a very caring, loving person and I'm the party bus. So the fun and the loving is how people would characterize me, and the rest is sort of the details.

18:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So that sort of reminds me of the fun bus I took up to Las Vegas once as part of a timeshare offer, and I'm pretty sure you're more fun than that was. Tarek has a question that he's burning to ask, as always here. I should ask because I don't think we touched on it before.

18:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, as always here, I should ask because we I don't think we touched on it before, but but, scott, you know, obviously, entrepreneur, you, your company, starts this research, you know, grew to 150 people, you know, in launching little model rockets, which I'm going to ask about in a bit, but but all the way up to two, I think, I think, by reading through your description, something like like 3500 devices in space, with zero failures, which is crazy, right? Which?

19:16 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
is extraordinary, and we want to make a point of talking about how that came to be Exactly.

19:21 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I just wanted to give people like a preamble that you know you've done all this work in space but sometime in the past space got its hooks like into you, right, scott? So like when, like was it like little Scotty out there with, with, with their own Estes rockets or whatnot, or or was it something that you fell into later on, either like in college or or later on in life where, where you really got bit by the, the space book to start building like hardware for actual space type of things.

19:49 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
It came from a really interesting direction. My dad was a professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin, where I'm from, and he loved space and managed to pivot his career and in 1967, started working with NASA to fly the first plants in space, which was his experiment, and so that's when I got hooked on space, um, that tracked, and then he kept working with NASA on on shuttle and was the first person to grow crops in space. He grew potatoes, which was the basis for the, the early scene in the Martian. I was going to say, like Mark Watney, we're the author and told them about that, and so we went back and forth a little bit. That's where that came. So I had the space thing, I had the entrepreneurship coming from selling cinnamon toothpicks to my classmates, and then those intersected in about 1988. Well, I hope.

21:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
When you talked to Andy, you told him that it would be a very bad idea to have a bunch of Mars dirt inside your compound, whether or not you're growing potatoes and whether or not you're addressing the question of how you fertilize them. But the perchlorates in there anyway. There's a couple of technical poison dirt.

21:22 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah. Yeah, a little bit of a stretch, but it wasn't bad.

21:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I was impressed we had an interview may have been on the podcast for this one with jim green years ago, who was the nasa chief scientist when that movie came out, when he was an advisor on the film. Yes, I sort of had to, you know, stick him a little bit with. Okay, the, the inciting incident, the windstorm of the non-existent atmosphere on Mars, he goes, I know, I know.

21:46 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah, yeah.

21:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So anyway that's not part of the story. So, uh, track for us, if you will. You came from background, uh, nuclear engineering, but moved aggressively into entrepreneurship after having this sort of I don't know that the challenging entrepreneurship experience a lot of us had when we were younger, the differences you per you press through it and made it work instead of saying, ah, this is too much trouble, so kind of walk us through that path.

22:19 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Well, a little bit of the front end. Graduated in chemical engineering, I was on probation, it was kind of a challenge to get through. And then went to Jackson Hole and was a ski bum for a year and a half and lived with six women in this house at the base well, okay, wait a minute. Sound of screeching brakes oh no, a little more detail. I was gonna stop there. I'm not going any further. Just I'm just telling you my backstory.

22:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Guys, I know I'm loving it, and then, uh, we'll, we'll do that for uh, for tarik, after dark, but okay that's a nicely a reliterative title.

22:59 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
You like that? Yeah, I do like that, yeah, um, so then, but then I uh I got hired, uh, here in colorado at what was called the rocky flats plant, uh, doing nuclear weapons engineering, um, which was fascinating technically, but I was not destined for. Corporate America had authority issues, as a lot of us entrepreneurs do don't do well with people that you don't think should be in that position and had a friend that had just started a company making inventing new water heaters for homes, and I joined him as his chief and only engineer just the two of us in a place with a garage and this invention came out of it for a water heater. That and I've actually got the original one here it's this guy and this I mean this is what started the company and this was used in a water heater by having wax inside. Here the wax melts and when it melts it pressurizes to about 3,000 PSI. Then Daryl came up with a really special seal arrangement that then translated that into mechanical work. This extended two inches with 45 pounds, know, 40 pounds of force, and it was this amazing magic trick.

24:17
You could put this in a cup of hot water and you looked at it and said there's gotta be another use for this. So very different. You know, most entrepreneurial companies start from solving a big problem. You know, you see a big problem, like I got to get packages overnight somewhere and you go well, fedex, every once in a while they start from a technology that you find a place to apply it and, interestingly, things like sticky notes were that. Teflon was that, but this was that.

24:51
It was too cool not to do something else, and so I went off to find another use for it and just randomly started cold calling companies medical. Maybe you could use it for injecting insulin with the heat of your body, or maybe you could use it to passively point solar panels. They could just track the sun like a sunflower. And then somebody mentioned spacecraft and I had this idea like I know, I know what it is, we're going to have this when the spacecraft gets hot, it will open up the windows and cool it off, so to speak. And I was certain that's what I'd found and I cold called NASA.

25:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Stop right there. Yes, that's where it gets really good, but we have to go to break and I don't want to interrupt, absolutely yeah. So hang tight everybody. We'll be right back after this short break. Go nowhere.

25:43
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28:19 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I know.

28:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I mean, I don't want to say the hubris, because of course that's what you do, but the challenge of you know, probably in the day, looking through the Rolodex or the online text-only listings of NASA, all 19,000 of them it's like huh, who will I call?

28:38 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Can you figure it out? There's. I spent a lot of time mentoring college students that are in entrepreneurship classes and there's and I'll just go there for a little bit, because for anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur, there's two things that are often missed. One is customer discovery and the other one's product discovery. And a lot of people start companies just from hey, I got a cool idea, I'll bet I'll just start marketing it. And that is folly compared to do surgically finding the customer and asking him what is it you really want?

29:11
And you know NASA's filled with XAV club and chess club nerds like me and I just kind of was just gosh goings and golly, guys, I got this cool thing and they recognized me as one of the nerd tribe. So it really was a matter of just looking through the phone book. And you know there's a bunch of your viewers that have no idea what that is. But you just riffle through the phone book, yeah and oh, here's the guy that's head of space mechanisms. I'll give him a call. And this goofy guy's calling out of the blue. Nobody does that.

29:47
So he took the call out of curiosity. His name was Karl Marchetto, went on to run Kodak actually, and he said come on out, we might be able to use this. We're going to Saturn and we got some problems. So I put this thing in a box and fortunately my partner said put a heater on one of them, maybe they'll need that. Thank God he did that because I'd have a different life if he didn't. And the hubris of an inventor going I know what this will be used for almost brought me down. So I fly out there and I've got this little cardboard box and I'm walking through JPL and smells like eucalyptus and so JPL is where you flew out to.

30:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Okay, that's good. I was going to ask like which, which? Where did you go?

30:31 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
And for a bunch of reasons, my point of view, jpl was perfect, love them. For a whole bunch of reasons. I went into this room with a bunch of guys and I and and I think part of the reason I succeeded is I took a 25 pound weight with me in my luggage so I could demonstrate this, and there was so much pity for me that they gave me the time to demonstrate it. I mean, what kind of idiot carries a 25 pound weight? But it made for a dramatic prototype. You know, you know it's right in front of them. They said we don't.

31:04
We couldn't care less about cooling our spacecraft, but we're trying to replace explosives. And the reason is twofold. It's a huge problem for us. One is we never test the one we fly right. And so you do it. Statistically, you blow up a hundred of them.

31:21
And the joke at nasa is you know, the technicians go. Well, I would have been a good one to use, I would have been a good one to use. So it's statistics. And then the other thing is you've got a sensitive instrument having a shotgun shell go off by it, so now you've got to make that instrument handle that. And so now you we succeeded is. We had such an effective solution for such a huge problem that created the ability to drive a company from somebody that wasn't a rocket scientist, because I was bringing something that was, you know, world changing for them, and the spacecraft was Cassini. You know, it used to be called Mariner Mark II way back then and we did fly about 20 mechanisms on it. I managed to sneak my kids into the lab and don't tell NASA this, this isn't being broadcast.

32:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's between you and us.

32:34 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Scott, nasa's not listening right now.

32:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, all right, good, we found out that's not true, but go ahead.

32:39 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah, okay he's talking, so I had it. You know, I, and I remember this vividly, having my you know hands around my seven-year-old son as he etches his name on, you know, one of the covers on cassini. Wow, now we anodized it properly and, uh, it thought we followed all the rules but it wasn't something. We actually, you know, necessarily told nasa that that is so awesome.

33:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, they know now because we've got headquarters before and I should just mention for people who most of our listeners and watchers know for sure, but NASA has used since the 50s explosive squibs, small devices that have a little explosive compound in them, to either actuate a part, separate a part, blow fairings off the top of the rocket, or sometimes just initiate an instrument or, like in the case of Viking as I recall, that's what was supposed to release the pins in the seismometer cage, which didn't in one case and anyway. So so these are kind of a one-shot deal, and if you're out at Saturn and the great big, dark, cold and your explosive actuator goes and doesn't happen, it's a really bad day.

33:53
Yeah, and you know know there's lots of stories and just before I let, I let tarik loose on you. So because these act because of the nature of paraffin being this incredible uh pressurizer, in effect. Right, can you cycle that? If it doesn't work the first time, can you heat it a second time and cycle?

34:13 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
this is what got really cool, and it was almost an artifact of how this worked out. So this could operate a thousand times, a thousand, a thousand, and we could test the living daylights out of it. I mean, you want to test a few times? Go ahead. So now the statistics flip. Instead of I've tested one, I've tested, tested a hundred of them. I hope this one works. Now you've taken the one you're going to use and tested a hundred times. The number of nines you get from that is extraordinary. It just works and everybody knew it just would work.

34:47
But the thing, there's a there's a nuance of the that I think you'll appreciate it. The way the seal works is it's not an O-ring seal, it's what we call a squeeze boot and this is what Daryl, my partner, invented. It's a long piece of rubber that squeezes and pops this out, just like you'd squeeze a banana and pop a banana out. But we put a very special lube in it so that when it pressurized, it equally distributed and became a pure hydrodynamic lubrication with no friction. So even though you're squeezing it, it was ridiculously efficient. We got 98% of the energy out as mechanical work and if you didn't have that lubricant, it just was squeezed and blown up, and so the key to it was that lubricant. Wow, anyways, I digress a little bit, but there's.

35:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm still trying to wrap my head around it because I didn't think we were going to actually see it like exactly how it works and I just I was reading the book and I got to the like wax in space and I still couldn't picture it Like until you showed the little squibby thing there.

35:55 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
So it's just insane, insane and I forget about that, tarek, that it really that part of it everybody wants to know about. They don't want to just go oh yeah, cool invention. Talk about the company. I'm realizing I need to have like an animation and really explain that, because people lean in and go oh, I get it, that's cool. So thanks for that, thanks for reminding me of that.

36:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, and I think the part that you hit there is that this is something that you could demonstrate works over and over again. But in space it really only has to work the one time to open the door to deploy this thing or that thing. And I'm still very jealous that you got to see Cassini before it flew, because, as Rod knows, I missed my chance because there wasn't enough room in the car to get me there and so I had to stay back at the campus while the whole hey, okay, wait a minute.

36:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Speaking as the guy who took the zero-g flight that I was supposed to get from you, from spacecom, and yes, I'll never forget, that. Hey, that means that I'd say being late for Cassini is nothing, so we got to go for another break, which is how we're going to shut you down on this particular part of the conversation.

37:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't know, Scott. Zero G flights are a dime, a dozen, right, Scott? I mean you and your whole company went on it a few times, right?

37:13 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
There's a good story there when we come back.

37:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Let's do that of water, okay, and I'll just sit here and feel very small. All right, we're going to break, we'll be right back and we're back. Tarik, take it away. Well, yeah, so we were just talking about zero, like traveling in zero g and how. You know, most people, most most of the people on this call, have had that luxury, but I guess some of us have not. Uh, rod, but but. But no, scott, you said that you had a story, because, because you know, in the book there's there's photos of you and the team testing stuff but also enjoying, I guess, what was officially the Vomit Comet, because there wasn't a zero-G company back then.

37:52 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
No, there wasn't before that.

37:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Tell us about that experience and what story that you wanted to tell. I assume it's about testing, but also having a little bit of fun.

38:02 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Well, I'm going to tag it back to my dad. When the 747 started flying, I was like 11 years old. We were on our first 747 flight. We got into super heavy turbulence. My dad said hey, nobody's looking, Follow me and unbuckled.

38:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I like your dad more and more.

38:20 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Oh yeah, my dad's amazing, yeah. But anyways, we went into the galley where nobody was and when we hit wind shear really heavy vertical wind shear we jump up and float up and then come down. That was my first experience of it. And then we went back into our seats and giggled, Um. But when we started testing we found certain things we needed to tell we benefited from testing in zero G and, like the two of you, I'd die and go to heaven to have that experience. So we found this technique that was a little manipulative.

38:55
But I go to a customer like Ball Aerospace and we'd be building a cover for Certif you know the IR spacecraft, and we'd be building a cover for Certif, the IR spacecraft. And I'd say to the customer we really need to test this in zero G. And they would say, well, how much does that cost? And I'd say, well, about 50K we could do it for. And they'd say, oh, we don't have the budget for that. And I'd be like, no, you don't understand, we have to take a customer observer with us on that flight. And 50K happened like that. So we probably flew.

39:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
A customer observer who, I mean I assume it's going to be you, I think, is how you described it. I think it's going to be you.

39:36 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
We said you get to select who that is, and so we probably flew a dozen times on there. We tried to get everybody on the company on the plane as best we could so anybody could put their name in a hat. We'd take two or three people could be the front desk person or whoever and we'd take them down there because that was a way to give them an experience of being an astronaut. You know as close as you're going to get, and it is. You know. Know, there's things that cost money in life, that you go. Boy, that was a waste. Um, I don't think flying on the zero g is that. I think it's an experience of a lifetime that's worth the money you paid at zero g oh, that's awesome.

40:13 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's awesome. Yeah, there's hope for us yet, rod, so you think, I think so, yeah, yeah so keep doing this podcast, maybe not, so let's just step back for a second.

40:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I mean, you kind of went through this, but if you just give me a little more on the story of you know, here's a guy, so you're an engineer, yeah, and you know, you understand, you've got something in the bag here with this cool little device, but you're a guy working at a water heater company, right? Somehow that translates to oh, I'll call JPL the bag here with this cool little device, but you're a guy working at a water heater company, right, somehow that translates to oh, I'll call JPL.

40:50 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
There's a little bit of a I think more of a story there. Well, you gotta, you gotta remember I'm a high tech guy and I realized, as I you know, through life, I'm high tech and so I just thought of myself that way. There's an interesting thing that happens in an entrepreneurial mindset. It's almost like a compulsive optimism that has a danger to it. And when you have something that you absolutely in your heart of hearts, feel the person you're talking to if they only understood it, they would want this. If they only understood it, they would want this, then when you call up somebody you're coming from this really genuine place. It's like you're calling up the head of the CDC saying you've come up with a cure for COVID. That's exaggeration, but you have this belief. It's bleach, sorry.

41:40 - Tariq Malik (Host)
We're not supposed to get political anymore, Rod. We're not supposed to get political anymore. We're not supposed to get political.

41:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's not political. Yeah, sorry, I shouldn't have broken in myself.

41:51 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
What were you going to say? About what were you going to say, rod, about neurodiverse people? Something about neurodiverse people. I don't know what it was. We'll get to that later. Yeah.

42:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
One of the few traits we share.

42:03
Yeah, you know, I think there's more but that's a really good point, because you know whether you're, uh, uh, an entrepreneur, an engineer, an inventor, an author, a tv guy trying to go in and do a pitch. I remember doing a pitch for the science channel for a very good show idea and I went in with a, an executive producer who is a very close friend, who had done like 5,000 hours of top-rated television. Yes, you know, 27 year old, the executive of the month, because they rotated through there about every six months, sitting there listening to us with this heavy Brooklyn accent, and I can't repeat exactly what he said, but he basically said that we had to somehow sexualize science to get on his network.

42:50
yeah, well, except it was. It was worse to make it sexy. And I just sat there looking at this, this donkey clown, like wow, you are so beneath protozoa and and you know, we tried and we tried and clearly we weren't closing the deal with that elevator pitch, and so this is kind of what you're talking about. It's like going in and saying this is the greatest thing since coffee creamer and they're going what? So clearly you've learned how to do that and you know neurodivergence may be a part of that discussion.

43:20 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
I absolutely do think that was that.

43:23 - Rod Pyle (Host)
People divergence may be a part of that discussion. I absolutely do think that was that. People with ADHD. We know that when we get an idea, it's like I'd say having a tiger by the tail, but it's kind of like the tigers got us by our hindquarters and we just have to tell the world about it, and surely you can see that and this is what I think about 24 hours a day. Why aren't you something like that?

43:41 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
And and well, I'm going to go deep on that because you're bringing up a really interesting point ADHD, I mean, there's all kinds of things that make it challenging, but one of the blessings is superpowers of it is the ability to bring together widely disparate things and see patterns in them how a rose petal is like this, and so there's an ability to bring that together, which also allows you to have a pretty good sense of when you're onto something special, because when you have something and you're bringing everything together, you can very quickly go. There's nothing like this and that sort of informed the idea of I knew I had something nobody else had. It just was a matter of explaining it, and if they didn't get it it was because I didn't explain it good enough.

44:27
Maybe I'll do it better next time and after 20, better, more forcefully perhaps my style was always a little yeah, whatever, a little gentler, but I, you know I would. Yeah, you'd learn the things that people would lean in on. You could see them babysitting and you'd say certain elements and there was a body posture that changed and actually it wasn't actually leaning in, it was usually sitting back and going huh. And so you'd learn when you picked up those clues in people, that's the hot buttons. And then you'd start putting those together and making a more concise pitch and after cold calling 20 space guys saying NASA says you might need this, I got a guy Dick Casper, god bless him, december of 1987, said I want three of them. How much do they cost? And I knew it. How much do they cost? And I knew it, let's see.

45:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Space rated hardware $5 billion, let me check with my friends at Boeing and see what I can get away with.

45:32 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah. So that's what I did. I said hey, dick, I'll, I'll get right back to you on that. Let me do an accurate costing. And I called up JPL and I said how much can I sell them for? And he said, oh, 5,000, easily, because that's what an explosive squib costs. I couldn't believe that. Called him back and said hey, dick, that'll be $16,187. Because we all know significant digits mean you did an accurate costing and you're not making much money, that's right. And he said yes, I found out I'd left about $30,000 or $40,000 on the table. Wow, oh my gosh. And here, okay. So everybody, that's a space company. Here's the secret. You know the secret decoder ring. You say oh, dick, that'll be $5,000 a piece. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. Did you say half an inch of stroke? Oh, geez, that's $50,000. Stroke, oh geez, that's another 50, but they're only five thousand apiece. And that that was the keys to the kingdom that I finally figured out well see, that's good to know, tark, next time we're negotiating on this podcast.

46:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, never mind well, no, I mean this brings to mind, I mean we've seen this like recently in the commercial space sector, just with human spaceflight too. I mean, like you, you, we know for a fact, like how much that that like spacex is charging nasa like x, uh for, for for launches, and boeing is charging x plus like a billion, whatever it is right. I'm not, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just trying to like, like when, when those documents came out, it was like stark, you know for the difference. Because, just like you were saying, it's like they didn't know what to charge at the beginning, like what was good, and so they made a sense like what do we want to charge? Okay, that's great. Not like what you were just saying about how you left all that money on the table just because it was such a new thing for them to do. So that is really interesting, that that kind of challenge is something that I guess all entrepreneurs have to do.

47:26 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah, but dropping into that one you're bringing up, because there's some interesting nuance to that. Elon is all about how do we make a good profit while we're doing this over and over again, and so his whole paradigm is very different than Boeing's, where it's well, we're doing this over and over again, and so his whole paradigm is very different than Boeing's, where it's well, we're only going to make 8% profit or 10, but we're going to put a lot of people to work. And so Elon maybe could have charged more, but his whole point was I'm going to give you a price point that has you going. You had me at hello, yeah, and I'm going to do it in a way that make a ton of money eventually, and it's, it's brilliant. I mean, you know it's, you know wow.

48:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well and the fact that he's got these massive rockets basically on a conveyor belt and we have to take one more break. So, tarek, hold that thought We'll be right back All right, tarek, take it away.

48:25 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, no, I was going to say that. Scott just said you had me at hello. I think that's our first Jerry Maguire quote on the show in a while. I wanted to ask about the culture at Starcis and what you see as an entrepreneur keeps your team both focused but also, I don't want to say like relaxed, but like in a way where, like you, were just talking about the zero G, getting people on those flights so that everyone would have an experience. I was really struck. I think there's a story in the book which I don't want to spoil, but it's like you know, you've had an actuator that's been failing some tests and they gave you one more chance to do it and everyone's like waiting at a picnic table and of course it's successful because you know we wouldn't be talking to you if it wasn't. And you celebrate with some model rocket launchers that then become like a tradition to do it, which of course, grabs. It's very endearing to me. I've got these model rockets right behind me.

49:29
You can't see it here, obviously. But yeah, there they are right there, my SLS and my Falcon right there.

49:35 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah, I get it, I see.

49:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And so I'm really curious about how those types of traditions or just like those kinds of activities really impact a team that is trying to innovate, that is trying to kind of find the niches that you and StarSys were able to do and continue to do in your other endeavors and continue to do in your other endeavors, but maintain that I don't know if it's a stress level or just that balance of energy to keep going forward.

50:11 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
I'm going to start. Actually, you know current time here. What has really astonished me when the book came out was how many people came up and how many people have acknowledged how that culture was so unique and they've never seen it replicated anywhere. And it came about organically, it wasn't crafted, and it actually has impacted a half dozen, a dozen space companies in Colorado. Where the power of that type of culture and you can walk into companies and go, yeah, where the power of that type of culture and you can walk into companies and go, yeah, these are people from Starz's. But coming back at the front end, it came from me creating a company that I wanted to work for and, as we talked earlier, the two key elements of who I am are fun and connection, human connection. So those started coming into the company the way we did it and the thing that made it work is everybody that coming into the company the way we did it, and the thing that made it work is everybody that came into the company I sat down with when I hired them and I had an acronym that I had on the board and-S was the acronym and I'd ask them and they'd say what's that?

51:28
And I'd say it absolutely has to work in space, no matter what. And they'd laugh a little and I'd explain if our stuff doesn't work, a NASA program could be canceled or an astronaut could be killed. And I'm serious. And we have systems but they only go so far and you're going to be in situations where it's up to you and you have to stop and no matter what it takes independent systems. It has to work in space. And that was branded on people and because it's I mean because it's spacecraft people get it viscerally. I mean they own that. You know lives are on the line. And then, within that, we pushed really hard into fun and family, because you've got this anchoring, that it's got to work in space.

52:19
But within that, now that we had that anchored, we just played the others to such an extreme. We had 40 things. We did that. We called them games. We celebrated blunders in the company and if you screwed up, we voted who was the worst screw up and everybody applauded them and they could win a balloon ride for their family. Wow, if they were top of the list. Well, we celebrated wins and heroes also, but we celebrated equally. Saying being honest and transparent about our mistakes is as important as being heroes. As being heroes, we do things like that. We had masseuses in the company that would come in on Fridays and when the company hit their financial goals every other Friday, everybody could sign up and get a 15-minute massage from somebody at the massage school across the street.

53:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Tarek, you and I have to renegotiate.

53:21 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I know right.

53:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, that isn't happening around here. I just want to jump in for a second, because you touched on something that I thought was very interesting from our earlier conversation, which is the idea of intuitive nudges, and I'm sure that's something you addressed in your speaking quite a bit. Would you mind just talking about that for a minute? What are they, how do they happen and how do you respond to them in a way that is productive?

53:48 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
There's a real something that developed over time was how serendipity is created and this kind of ties into that. When I came back from NASA, jpl and I drove into Boulder, I realized I had this chance to start a space company, which was totally crazy and unreasonable. And my brain's saying, no way, I mean that stuff doesn't happen. But I personally get this sort of goosebump feeling when my intuition is saying something else. And I got that. And by the time I got to the bottom of the hill I was saying, but why not? And it was from that intuitive flush. I'll always regret never having found out.

54:37
And so as the company developed, I started to become more aware that I need to take this phone call, or I need to sit next to that person on the bus, or when I go to the symposium, don't try to find the people to get business from, just let the winds guide you to the people that you want to be with. And as time went on, those became more and more obvious to me, to the point that now when I get that goosebump feeling, I just immediately go. I need to go down that path and I'd say probably four to five times the intuition's right on and I'd swear miracles happen. I can tell you miracles that are just from my intuition going Scott. Miracles, you know, that are just from my intuition going, scott.

55:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So when I was reading your book and Tarek, I'm sorry I'll let you jump back in here, but one of the things that occurred to me when you're talking about this is it's a little bit the is it the inverse of the obverse of what you just said? But when I was still working in Hollywood, I remember people coming to me and saying we have to create a cult film. So this is right after Blair Witch, which was a big deal. Yeah, it was a big surprise. It was a mistake. You know, it was a POV found footage, quote unquote drama, horror film that really took off. And so, of course, everybody wanted to create the next cult hit.

56:02
And it's like guys, you can't create a cult film. You know it happens. It's serendipity, like you say, yeah, although you do occasionally get that idea when you're speccing out your next job, hopefully, where you think you get that little chill. You know it's like oh, that's a good one. Sometimes that resonates with people. Yes, in entertainment, the 98% of the time it doesn't. But what is that moment exactly that you're talking about? And how does that translate into an engineering?

56:31 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
reality, boy, that's an interesting one to take it to engineering, because I tend to think of it from business and human connection side. But there really is this, and, to your point, you might be talking about a design and somebody says, well, why don't we use metal bands instead of gears? And your intuition has so much more available to it in terms of all the things that it's known and maybe even things that picks up that they're a little supernatural and they'll they'll be this aha of that's it, and there's a that's it moment. You know, goosebumps are an aha and and you know, I don't know if you know this I'm going to go to the nuclear weapons side of things.

57:17
Sure, there was an aha that happened for Teller to how to make the hydrogen bomb, and he was just sitting out looking over an Arroyo and they were trying to get hydrogen bombs to squeeze and they couldn't get it to work fission weapons and all of a sudden, in probably half a second, he had this boosh of that's how you do it and that was what changed our world in terms of hydrogen bombs. That's there for a good thing, but science is full of those little where the heck did that come from? It just was downloaded to me instantly, and, rod, you know this. The same thing happens in the music industry and in film People talk about. It wasn't me, it just came to me and the whole song was there out of my fingertips. I don't know where it came from and I think that's all.

58:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
One in the same thing, which is why we're pretty sure Mozart was an extraterrestrial, because nobody should be able to compose that kind of stuff in there. Yeah, no way. He started when he was four or seven or something and you look at his career and he didn't last that long. He died fairly young and you see all this stuff. You, I'm simply number 40, which means there were 39 before that by the time. What held, was it? He died like 32 or something I mean, it's just uncanny.

58:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Sorry, tarik, I've completely usurped you. No, I was just gonna. I was gonna ask about that intuition thing and if that's, if that's the same for you, scott, or different than like just trusting your gut, that kind of a thing. But you know it's, it sounds like you get the tingle and then you know now to follow the tingle.

58:50 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
So yeah, Follow the. This goes back to the six women in the house at Jackson hole following the tingle.

58:59
Okay, oh, I'm sorry I digressed. I'm clearing the decks. Go ahead, Back on track. I think it is different than that, because it is something I've never. You're bringing up another good point, which is what's the timeframe when you get those kinds of nudges? It's probably a quarter of a second. You know it's something that happens like this, which is very different than trusting your gut where you go. What should I do? What should I do? You know what my gut's telling me to do this?

59:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It is very much almost a supernatural feeling thing. So you came up with the device, ultimately, and a market for it, which is two smart things. The third smart thing is there was immediate return on investment, and so much of what we see in new space now is hey, invest today and profit 20 years from now. And even for smaller hardware bits, there are people that are working on things that may not catch on for a long time, or, if they do, very few people come up with a quantum computer that works with a little bit of wax and a copper tube right, it takes massive amounts of investment and a copper tube right, it takes massive amounts of investment. All that so I mean, do you think in in some ways, we've crossed this threshold where it's going to continue to get harder and harder to have a near-term roi instead of 10 years out? Or is it just a matter of your idea and how you capitalize on it?

01:00:23 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
um, the way I, the way I see that, is when I started the company and all my contemporaries, the other folks, all my friends that started their companies. It was always self-funded, bootstrapped and it wasn't daddy's money, it wasn't anything like that. It was. We were able to convince a customer that it was worth investing in the development and that's one thing that's really extraordinary about the US in our ability the SBIR program. Other countries just would die and go to heaven for that, but what it did is it was a tremendous separating of the wheat and chaff, because you had to have a great idea, it had to be able to make money right away, you had to have customers adopt it. So it was like this really severe evolutionary pressure that meant that the only companies that survived were ones that were really set up to succeed. So this is all 20 years ago Now, with people investing in new space. It's a great or it's an attractive concept that might attract 10 or $20 million.

01:01:32
There's a couple of problems with that. You know, when you're at PowerPoint slide or things like that, there's a lot of steps before you have a business. Vc pressure tends to have people get very aggressive in. When I can deliver, you know VC will say, well, I'll give you 10 million, but you have to deliver in a year. Well, I can deliver in a year. So there's a lot of pressures there. The other thing that's happening is you have to go through a very steep hiring curve, so I got to put 50 people on the team.

01:01:59
Space talent is priceless from experience not from schooling, because we've screwed up 50 times and we know the silly little things like don't use that lube or don't have any hooks. Here's one Don't have any hooks on the outside of your spacecraft because that's where something can snag and keep your antenna from opening these really nuanced knowledge, wisdom things. And when you hire 30 people out of school that haven't been in space, you have none of that. You have really talented engineers and the stuff looks easy to do, but it's not. So there's a fair amount of companies that I'm aware of getting into trouble and I'm going to go entrepreneurial on you.

01:02:41
A smart VC saves 50% of their money and they put it in their back pocket and the way they work it's a little predatory and they're not all like this is they know that the entrepreneur is going to exaggerate what they can do, the optimism, and they know that they're going to run into trouble and run out of money. And at that point they're going to come in and say, well, we've got the money for you, but now your company's worth a quarter of what you thought it was. And they come in and can take control of the company at that point and it's sort of the circle of life, so to speak, and I'm watching a number of companies kind of get to that point and it's hard to watch. It's very different than our organic.

01:03:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Take it easy, grow at 20% kind of curve, but having been an entrepreneur, it's heartbreaking to see it is it's funny you say the circle of life. It is a little bit like watching those documentaries where the lions chase down that poor gazelle. It's like, oh Bambi, what's happened?

01:03:38 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah, I had a VC sit down with me once and I talked about the predatory behavior and they're like well, school of hard knocks. Eventually, about the third time they'll figure it out. I'm not going to tell you. I was like I'm going to just go a little further with you and then I'll come back to it. I spent a dozen years outside of space doing a distracted driving solution in partnership with Verizon and Sprint and American Family Insurance. This was not the space biz, it's business. And when you get back into the space biz you realize it's full of people that are there because they watch Star Trek and Next Generation and they were here for the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for self-actualization money, secondary and my gosh, it's a much, much more life-giving business market to be in than a lot of other things out there.

01:04:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you know, I wanted to ask about that, just the entrepreneurial part of it, because you know you have that whole background behind you Now. You have not only kind of the work that you do with future entrepreneurs, but you have the book From the Garage to Mars as a memoir. And I'm curious what is different? And maybe this is a time for our last question what is different that entrepreneurs need to, or future entrepreneurs need to, think about now that perhaps wasn't an issue when you were making your initial forays, or is it always the same game new time and that they have the same challenges that entrepreneurs have faced throughout time?

01:05:25 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Oh, that just triggered an interesting way of thinking about it. The piece that entrepreneurs across the board really miss is this piece of customer discovery, product discovery. There's an arrogance in an entrepreneur that this is so brilliant. I don't need to find out. If anybody wants it. Obviously it be. Yeah, you laugh, but believe me no, it's, it's familiar pain.

01:05:47
I'm I'm vibing with you here so if you can do the customer discovery, product discovery, then you've created the bridge that, if you have investment capital, you know you're going to get to the other side. So now you're coming in and saying, listen, I've got lockheed, they've told me I have an mou, they're going to buy a hundred other side. So now you're coming in and saying, listen, I've got Lockheed, they've told me I have an MOU, they're going to buy a hundred of these things for $10,000. All I have to do is get rid of the technical risk. Give me $5 million and I'll make that. So you've just de-risked that by a factor of 10. And now you really are down to technical risk, which we know and you can manage because you've got the product risk handled.

01:06:24
And it's like the old adage spend all your time sharpening your ax versus chopping. It's inexpensive to do customer discovery a few slides and work your way around the industry, and it's also a great way to kill the idea quickly. So you don't waste your time. If they're saying, oh yeah, maybe I'll buy it, well, then kill it. If they're saying when can I get it? Here's how much I'll pay for it, what do I need to do to help? And maybe I'll be a partner and be the one that invests. Take the money.

01:06:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And we'll take 10,000 of them, I guess. Kind of as my closing thought here, I wanted to ask you've got this notion, of which I love stop doing what you suck at. Can you explain that, because that would have saved me about, let's see. Yeah, 40 years off of Frustrating.

01:07:15 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Ventures. So I'd love to hear what you got to say. You know, it's true for all of us, but particularly in entrepreneurs. We think we can do it all because we have to, but it doesn't take much of an honest assessment to realize. The most important thing is first realize what your brilliance, what are the things you do that are like knife through butter, that people look at you and go how do you do that? And and embrace the brilliance. When, once you embrace the brilliance, you can realize it's okay to be sucky at other stuff. It's okay to be sucky at other stuff and like, for instance, me, I am, I'm horrible at quality control, I'm, I just am, you know, good enough, but boy am I good at making connections to customers well, but that's interesting because quality control is like and again speaking as a fellow neurodivergent here, it's like I don't want to do the same thing over and over for the next 40 years.

01:08:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, not at all. There are people that can work on assembly lines. That's QC. What you want is novel experiences and stimulation, right?

01:08:15 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, things that and connection and things that are with people, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for me, the thing that made sense was to bring in the people that could do those things and they love what you hate. I mean, they love it and they hate what you love. And the big problem with technical entrepreneurs the big one is technical entrepreneurs in general suck at operations and business. They can write proposals really well, yeah, yeah, and that's the piece. You know, if you can get a Steve Jobs to partner with a Steve Wozniak, that's where the power comes from and you can look out there. And when you find that partner, that's when things take off and when you think you can do it all. Okay, yeah, maybe gates did, but it's a rare, rare animal that pulls it off.

01:09:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
They can do it all that's an interesting point and it makes you know you can't look at the news for for seven minutes without seeing a new elon musk story these days, but he kind of does seem to do both, which makes him novel and highly neurotic, I think. In my estimation, um, this has been a real pleasure. I want to thank you and everybody for joining us for this episode, number 138, that we like to call from the garage to mars, with scott tibbets. Where can we buy the book?

01:09:43 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
oh, it's funny you mentioned that, rod. This happened to have it in my hand right here. That was good timing. I would love for you to buy it on wwwscotttibbettscom, which has all kinds of cool things, including the stories I tell in third grade which we didn't get to. But you can also just get it on Amazon. All you have to do is Google Space Entrepreneur, scott Tibbetts. It'll be right there. And how do we spell Tibbetts just for those? Oh, with too many T's. That's why I say spell space entrepreneur, put space, but it's. Yeah, I got to come, I got to come up with a better branding for my name, but it's T, I, b, b, I, t, t, s. So a lot of T's.

01:10:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
See, it's hard to miss pile, people do manage to throw an eye. Besides buying the book, which we know all our loyal listeners are going to do because they love us um, where's the best place to keep up with your future ventures? And tarik wants to know if you're going to fly on either blue origin or virgin galactic when you go to this place at somebody else's expense, preferably yeah, yeah, I mean, just my point of view is four minutes aren't enough.

01:10:48 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Um, you know, orbital space would be, would be doing it otherwise. Yeah, I'm not not as much, just take a vr.

01:10:57
Okay, you gave us our website, so your website, so and to your question um, there's a group of people I've gotten together. We call it Level 6 Space. It's kind of like Ocean's Eleven and these are all people that have exited from companies. We have a combined total of about 200 years of experience and some of the smartest people in the world, and we just don't want to retire. We want to keep helping out and so I'm having huge fun. You can also find that under level six space bringing this you know, 18 oceans 11 group to the hard problems around the world. So that's where that's what I'm doing now is. I'm really enjoying that helping people with the hard problems well that the second.

01:11:40 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You said that I kind of thought of muscle cars and cigarettes, but I realize it's a little more than that. So that's cool. Tarek, where can we find you throwing your life away with your PlayStation these days?

01:11:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, I don't have a PlayStation. I'm a PC person, rod, you know this. I built my own computer.

01:11:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, don't give me that. I've built 30 of those. Don't give me that.

01:12:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, basecom, as always also on the Twitters at Tariq J Malik. This weekend you will find me in our fair Nations capital, washington DC, because I'm going to the center of my taekwondo and structureship and we're going to go get master instruction from there. Uh, this weekend, yeah, it's gonna be great. I haven't heard anything about this. No, well, no, yeah. Well, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a first degree brown belt, right so in taekwondo. So I don't know if I've talked about that before, but I can break three boards with my foot.

01:12:33
So I'm trying. We're on the road to black belt. Maybe in a couple of years, you know, or three, I can actually say that I can do that.

01:12:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I want to see you smash cinder blocks with your forehead, but that's just me.

01:12:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Okay, not there yet.

01:12:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And of course, you can always find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom. Do remember you can always drop us a line at twiststwittv. That's twiststwittv. We welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas, and we answer each and every email. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday, so make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcatcher, we don't care which one, just make sure you give us five stars or thumbs up or a wag of the tongue or whatever it is that they want to see, to let the world know how much fun we are. And while you're at it, don't forget you can get all the great programming with video streams for the ones that don't normally provide it on the Twit Network, ad-free club twit, as well as some extras that are only available there for just seven dollars a month. Now I ask you two gentlemen, what else can you get for seven dollars a month? That's as cool as what we just sat here and did today that's not.

01:13:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Even I can't think of it um the space actuator month.

01:13:41 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
These are seven dollars. Oh, that's, oh, what a good alignment. Yeah, wasn't that called a callback in improv?

01:13:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, that was much better than where I was going and I completely forgot to ask you about your career in stand-up comedy, but we'll get to that next time. We'll get to that next time. Yeah, you can follow the TwitTech Podcast Network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook and Twittv on Instagram. Thank you, scott, appreciate very much having you here and thanks to Leonard David for introducing us, and we'll see everybody next time.

01:14:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Happy Thanksgiving.

01:14:21 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Can I give you very high compliment. You guys are big. You guys are big fun. This is the funnest I've had in a podcast in a long time. Thank you.

01:14:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, thank you, that's better than five stars. Thank you very much.

01:14:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
All right. Is that spaceship? Oh sorry, I thought we were done. I thought we were done.

01:14:40 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We're not done. We're not done. Keep rolling.

01:14:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you guys are done, so we're not done. Keep rolling well, you guys are doing well, yeah, so there's everyone's signatures on the rocket, that's the one.

01:14:49 - Scott Tibbitts (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, st's alpha. This was the one that I had everybody sign when we, when we sold the company, and it was the last rocket launch we had coming back to it yeah, and then that's, is that spaceship one behind you too?

01:15:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
yeah, yeah, yeah I'm sorry, tark, did you want to get into a second hour? No, no.

01:15:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I just I noticed all that stuff in the background there. It must be my ADD that was there and, of course, that balloon that's been. So it's all the technologies for getting in space all in one grow, wow, all right, all right, that's it, thank you.