Power and data throughput shape the next space applications

Transcript

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

1. 23:46

   Yeah. So help us outline a little bit of the space economy right now. Is it, how should we think about the, if we were to do the market map, like the different, you know, types of players, is it, and then maybe the attributes to market data, is it like very fragmented? Are there, you know, a couple of big winners to kind of aggregate? Like, what is the right way of thinking about? Yeah, I think the infrastructure plays are really important for space.

2. 24:12

   Like there's a couple or there's a number of fundamental things that can be those underlying components that make a big difference. So for space, things that matter is obviously launch. Like you need to have a way to actually get mass into orbit. Power is another big thing to solve for space. You need to have propulsion. that's another critical thing for space being able to actually maneuver once you're up there and then that connectivity back to earth is really critical and being able to kind of orchestrate and network all of that connectivity is really important um and so i think we are in an interesting moment where that infrastructure is being built out to enable a different set of capabilities like if you look a few years back you had guys.

3. 24:58

   The small satellite boom, where there were a whole generation of companies that were built off of, you know, doing a smaller level of infrastructure to unlock different capabilities. It feels like we've evolved into a higher threshold of infrastructure that's going to unlock a whole other layer of capability. Same way. Here's what you think are the biggest bottlenecks to, you know, sort of unleashing a wave of innovation.

4. 25:25

   Like if in a few years, the economy sort of, you know, accelerates significantly or there's a whole wave of startups that emerge or accelerate in their growth, what would have needed to happen? Why could that be? I mean, like our biased answer is that ground is really critical for that. Obviously, it's not the only thing. Like I think, you know, to unlock the innovation, like, you know, power is a huge constraint for space.

5. 25:53

   space and and so you know being able to do more in space is influenced by that uh but also uh the amount of data throughput you can get from space so like power improves you know how much data you could generate in space um but then ground impacts how much data throughput you can have through space which uh is critical for being able to um actually deliver those missions to losers i was just listening to uh the elon uh john collison door cash podcast on on uh data space which is you know i haven't listened to it yet so apologies if i don't know yeah right you i just said this is the first time i've heard of it what is your um thinking on it the feasibility of it will compute move to orbit yeah what do you think about so our mentality at northwood is we want to take space missions further faster like we want to enable the most

6. 26:48

   ambitious missions and translate them from dream to reality as fast as possible and so like that is the exact kind of juicy problem that gets the nerds at Northwood excited is uh you know here's this super ambitious concept for space um I think what's captivated a lot of people is thinking about you know how it pushes society how thinking about uh kind of limitless power from space pushes society like it gets a lot of people excited and inspired uh and so we want to be supporters of willing that into existence through taking that further faster so i think a lot of people raise a lot of really valid concerns about it um things that require or things that um mean there's going to be long timelines to bring it into existence whatever it is are we talking training are we talking inference etc like you know there's a lot of different um uh there's a

7. 27:45

   lot of different details. But I think our interest in it is how can we understand the space so that we can enable it to go faster towards that outcome. What are some examples of companies or use cases that don't exist today that you could envision? Like Dream Frost, what could some examples look like? Yeah, I think it's like, what are the vertices that you're tracking? So So, like, one vertice might be altitude.

8. 28:15

   Right now, when we talk about space missions, you're thinking of, like, low Earth orbit through to geostationary orbit. You know, it's a certain distance away from Earth. What if you could stretch that? What if you could have missions that go even deeper into space and have new exploratory capabilities or, you know, different planets and the like? I think being able to stretch the tether further and further away from Earth, I think it's really interesting for what that can unlock.

9. 28:45

   Another vertices is data throughput. So right now, like the concept of matching the volume of data from the internet to what's being done in space. feels pretty preposterous, but what if it wasn't? Like, what if you could actually surpass the throughput of data on the internet in space? What kind of applications could you unlock with that? I think, you know, the whole interest with compute in space is kind of like attached to that concept.

10. 29:18

    So, yeah, I think there's a lot that you can do. I think we have like a massive treasure trove of data about our planet that has not really been capitalized. So I think that is like a huge amount of latent potential in my mind. So I'm excited to see where, you know, some of the other advancements going on with technologies such as AI