# Planet can build a Dove satellite in about eight hours

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/planet-can-build-a-dove-satellite-in-about-eight-hours/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Will Marshall](https://realalpha.app/people/will-marshall/) · Will Marshall is cofounder and CEO of Planet Labs. · Co-founded Planet and leads its Earth-imaging satellite network, after developing low-cost spacecraft at NASA/USRA.
- Host: [Molly O'Shea](https://realalpha.app/people/molly-oshea/) · Founder, Sourcery · Ex-Upfront Ventures investor; has interviewed Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey.
- Show: Sourcery
- Episode: [Inside Planet Labs (NYSE: $PL): Satellites, Planet AI & Area 51](https://realalpha.app/v/NjebKeJ8Ws8/), Nov 9, 2026
- Moment: 20:01 to 22:25 of the episode (2 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/planet-can-build-a-dove-satellite-in-about-eight-hours/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/NjebKeJ8Ws8/?t=1201

## Quote

> “i think each satellite takes about **eight hours to build**”
> — [Will Marshall](https://realalpha.app/people/will-marshall/) at [21:24](https://realalpha.app/v/NjebKeJ8Ws8/?t=1284) · Sourcery

## Takeaways

1. Planet buys chips but builds satellite systems in-house.
2. A Dove takes about eight hours to build; capacity reaches 40 a week.
3. A new Berlin facility is intended to expand production.

## About this segment

Will Marshall says the team can build up to 40 Doves a week, with each taking about eight hours. He contrasts that pace with an eight-year NASA build and describes a Berlin expansion.

From “Inside Planet Labs (NYSE: $PL): Satellites, Planet AI & Area 51”, Nov 9, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/NjebKeJ8Ws8/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[20:13](https://realalpha.app/v/NjebKeJ8Ws8/?t=1213) wow any questions yeah go on then okay so uh planet labs is vertically integrated so how many of these components are you building in-house versus which parts are not as yeah kind of uh it's a little bit nuanced because at the chip level we buy almost everything externally yeah but at the system level we build almost everything internally so the telescope we get the blanks from a company but we integrate the telescope as you saw over there here um and so we build up the framing and the and the structure um similar for almost everything else the radios we don't build our own chips you know we get the same chips from other people wimax components other things But we integrate them into special circuits and with special antenna that enable us to get the radio frequency sort of output that we need.

[21:07](https://realalpha.app/v/NjebKeJ8Ws8/?t=1267) So it really depends. I would say the way to think about it simplistically is the chips we buy, the systems we build. And so how many pelicans do you produce a year? How many doves? How many tanagers? Great question. How do you think through all these? So we're ramping up on the pelicans. that the doves we build hundreds we've built about over 650 of those doves here in this lab we can build up to 40 a week so we can we don't do that every week but we can build really fast so i think each satellite takes about eight hours to build okay um to give you a sense yeah and to give you a sense when i was at nasa it was like eight years okay not eight days so it was like completely changing. These bigger ones take a bit longer and we're ramping up the production so we can do many dozens of those. In fact we just announced a

[21:58](https://realalpha.app/v/NjebKeJ8Ws8/?t=1318) new facility in Berlin where we're doubling again the manufacturing space that we have that we announced could do up to 60 of those these sort of per year. So they give you a sense of scale and then the tanagers is rather lower volume because they're sort of specialized instruments that we're working with NASA