She recently spoke at the museum of flight in seattle. This is one hour and 20 minutes. The lovely director welcome, everyone to the Space Gallery hergalleryhere at the museum of. My name is jeff and i am the curator for space history here at the museum. The president and ceo sends his regards and regrets he is unfortunately unable to be here as he is ill. I would like to begin by thanking the special featured speaker this evening Julian Guthrie and the special guest dave moore [applause] and also, the team from the cspan books will be recording this evenings events and conversations for later viewing. We have a fabulous evening in store as a part of the orbiter on october the space focused events throughout the month leading up to the space fast which will be happening from november 3 through 5th. This years is themed ladies who launch and it features talks, activities and handles all about space. For a complete listing, i encouk at the insert in the magazine you should have received at the checkin. All of this programming is a part of the effort to highlight the incredible boom of activities happening in space today of which the offense but you will hear about tonight help catalyze. Most people know that the area for airplanes, coffee and software but we are also very much involved in space. From longtime space pioneers like the space center and the folks at rocketdyne to the more recent comers like ten washington that are working on the reusable rockets, its a planetary resource to the folks working on in space manufacturing the Seattle Space community is growing, thriving and diverse and we are thrilled to help that story so it is my pleasure to introduce tonights speaker offered Julian Guthrie the author of a new book titled how to make a spaceship a band of renegades, an epic race and the birth of private spaceflight that tells the story of the cast of characters that dreamed of bringing space to the masses. That includes easy gators, test pilots, engineering dropouts, retirees, billionaires in a particularly determined to space geek who refused to give up on his outside dream. Without further ado it is my pleasure to introduce Julian Guthrie. [applause] thank you so much for the great introduction. We are having the best time here. So, this book is really interesting on many levels. You know, i kind of look at it now how to make a spaceship as almost theres almost a formula for it. Theres almost a recipe as i see it. So, you start with this guy who was 8yearsold when apollo 11 landed on the moon in july, 1969. He is wideeyed and transit spied the magic of nasa, of apollo 11. The first time man sets foot on another body and he is determined in that moment its kind of like apollo was what was possible and star trek was what could be possible and he believed in all of this and he set out on this great adventure into this unbelievable quest to become an astronaut. His original pursuit was to get there through the typical channels, through nasa. He went to mit and harvard and did all these things so he could one day gets to space. He gets out of college and realizes that its winding down its manned Space Programs and he wasnt going to be the one. That wouldnt be the way that he would get there. So, what comes next in this special recipe is a book. So he reads a certain book that connects the story to the golden age of aviation. He reads the spirit of st. Louis and he had this moment where he is reading it and he thought that Charles Lindbergh flew the transatlantic flight as a stunned. He reads this and he is like he flew this to invest 25,000dollar prize which really was a great incentive competition in the 1920s and he realized that Charles Lindbergh wins this prize, he is the first man to fly a transatlantic flight from new york to paris nonstop and to connect the two major cities and he launches the commercial space industry. What came out of that. Peter is thinking what if i can do the same thing for space. So it is a great story in may of 1996, in st. Louis some of you may have been there and there are Great Stories from those of you that are in the Mojave Desert a decade or so later. So in 1996, hes under the arch in st. Louis and announces this prize. Its a 10 milliondollar prize for the first team that can build and fly a manned rocket and he had 20 astronauts and the head of the faa and the head of nasa that what he doesnt have this 10 million, just a small detail. So he goes out on this quest and the next part of the recipe is he needs to lindbergh. He needs the only socalled flying lindbergh in the family, Erik Lindbergh. And they are meeting and the story, whats in the story is so profound of a man who lives with this enormous legacy and grapples with how to find his own identity within the legacy and is reluctant at first to get involved and ends up in a way being rescued and also rescuing the prize. A really profound story. So next what do you need in this great recipe . You need a maverick aviation designer. You need this guy named bert who is in the Mojave Desert working as a small team and heating us he can build a spaceship, the worlds first private spaceship. What else do you need, you need somebody that can be this kind of really disciplined Program Manager. So enters dave moore who was working so you need one thing, you need a benefactor. So they called the cofounder of microsoft and he was not only the benefactor but he had a vision that other people couldnt necessarily see at the time. So you have all of these great components and then what else do you need to fly these experimental machine . You need a really intrepid test pilots. So we have mike, brian, the folks that were test pilots. Mike melville, one of the most courageous guys i ever met is 63yearsold when he first White Knuckles it in the start of space in june of 2004. So, you have a great cast of characters and huge human bravery and technological innovation. You come back and here is this great conductor who pulls out all of these different characters into this and he persevered like few people ive ever heard of in my life. The most tenacious guy. He didnt have the 10 million but he went out and he thought about funding. He knocked on door after door after door and gets told no over 150 times. So you need perseverance. You need to be creative. Even some of his closest friend is worth telling him this is never going to work. You should give it up it isnt going to happen but he was tenacious and persevered and held onto his dream. So perseverance, this whole tenacity, Great Innovation to make all of this happen. It came together in this really magical moment as some of you when i was signing books you were telling me stories of flying out to see one of these flights in the Mojave Desert where history was made by this small team. Small teams can do remarkable things. So, all of this comes together for this moment in history. You have this team of 30 or so people who have built the worlds first private spaceship and the replica is right above us. It is a really incredible thing that again just embodies the best of the human spirit, bravery, innovation, tenacity and scale at all Different Levels and i was so happy and honored that i got to tell this story, that i get to talk about this story, this amazing story is now a great inspiration im finding and im so thrilled with that that is being embraced by this next generation. When we met, he told me with the gift of a book it was the gift of the spirit of st. Louis that started him on this path and he hoped that help to make a spaceship will inspire the next generation of innovators and dreamers and doers. And i just want to quickly introduce an amazing small team of High School Students who are from north Idaho Stem Charter Academy and their story is so wonderful and remarkable if they could come up here quickly. [applause] so they are from north Idaho Stem Charter Academy and they are building a spaceship, a research satellite. Guess who their mentor is not none of the veteran burt. Theyve taken huge inspiration from the stories. All the folks that are here on stage that made this happen because it wasnt just one person that made it happen, it was every person here that played a key role. Obviously peter, paul allen, the test pilots, those that kept it going. Doug rescued the price many times but there were all these people that managed to keep this dream alive long enough to make it happen and it was a grueling odyssey ended they were unrelenting and now, we have these really skilled and talented teenagers who are just going to say a few words. We have erik and we have jessica and we have justin. Eric, justin and jessica and they are just going to say a couple of words here kind of as this next generation of innovators and dreamers and forward thinkers. Did you want to say a couple of words . Thank you. Exactly. This book is an amazing book and it inspired him. The advice in this book inspired us because we have a team with an incredible person and we are doing this as teenagers, a High School Team in north idaho. Thats why its all the odds against you. [laughter] and we are launching a satellite that is the time capsule kind of a modernday 21st century golden record which was on the Voyager Missions are actually launching it on the 40th anniversary of that Voyager Mission for the 21st century and we are so fortunate to have all of these amazing people helping us out to give us advice and it is amazi amazing. It only takes one person, one book, one opportunity to ignitee the ember of passion for space that students may not know that they have. For me if you would have told me a year ago i would be launching a satellite i probably would have laughed at you but now that its opened up my eyes to the opportunities i have which is i could send somebody to mars or be the person sent to mars if i wanted to, so as i was invited it is my honor to be here with people like this and have mentors like burt. We are building a satellite for all and that means everybody can use it and we want to bring that passion for space back to the nation so thank you for writing your book. It was an inspiration for everybody that is our age or older or anybody that has ever heard of the prize were spaceship debate could space prize one. Thank you. [applause] it is so wonderful to see the next generation be inspired. I just want to recognize another individual before we start the Panel Discussion. I want to recognize the gentleman here whose name is Arthur Davenport and he was the designer of the backpacks for apollo 11. Mr. Davenport is right back here. [applause] maybe we can get some stories later on but i imagine those are amazing tales. Next we will have alan boyle and we are going to have a great Panel Discussion and i think peter has to leave a little bit early but we will also try to get your questions answered. It is a great honor to be here. Thank you. [applause] im not going to take much time my name is alan boyle and i have the privilege of meeting peter back in 1998 when he was trying to raise all that money. The program has been continuing even after the 10 milliondollar prize was awarded. So peter is the founder and executive chairman of the foundation and as many programs devoted to promoting technological innovation in the works. So look this up for more details on that. I just want to refresh your memory about the panelist Julian Guthrie who you know well by now, Erik Lindbergh is an adventurer, artist, grandson of Charles Lindbergh on the board of trustees for the foundation and helped out immensely while they were trying to put all of this together and then dave was the project manager for the spaceship one project and one other thing i want to do this catch you up to date. It was followed by spaceship two, which is being developed by Virgin Galactic and backed by british billionaire Richard Branson and they had a fatal accident a couple of years ago but theyve recovered from that accident and have a second spaceship that they have just begun flight testing. Blue origin launched a reusable rocket for the fifth time. An amazing feat. That was just a couple of weeks ago. We have some people here and another company Just Launched a commercial cargo ship to the International Space station a couple of hours ago. It could be argued that none of this might have happened if it were not for the spark was lit by peter and other people that were involved in getting what he called the spaceflight commercial revolution goinspacel that time ago. Since his time is limited im going to ask them to share one of the favorite stories and then i have a couple questions i want to ask and i know you have to get going pretty soon. 100 of my favorite stories . [laughter] honestly not really possible to choose just one story. From my standpoint i would love to get into the keeping day. I apologize 19 as a starting at 5 30 knots 6 30 so i had two hours by my flight at 2 15. Given that doug is no god is not me embarrass him appropriately and you can all give him help next time he shows up. So, when i met him, he had just finished the challenger center. He just accepted a job at the science museum. I used to hold a salon at my living room home every month when we would bring together some amazing people in the Space Business we talk about what is and i brought up the prize because i was absolutely positively sure that this idea of incentivizing a 10 milliondollar challenge would work. Lindbergh got his money from st. Louis that i was thinking i was going to launch this competition in houston or la or florida or i would get money from the city the same wa way he lindbergh golindbergh got his mg was over for this and he said you know, you should go to st. Louis. So he convinced me and we actually got this going very much thanks to him. So a long story about how the prius got funded as julian who has done an amazing book and im so proud of the work done, it was my fourth time when i announced the prize under the arch in st. Louis for 10 million by this absolutely positively sure that it would be easily funded. Who would not want to pay the 10 million after someone put off the flight it is like a nobrainer until i started pitching billionaire after ceo and they said youre crazy it cant be done. So we ended up actually as told in the buck funding this through a holeinone insurance policy. The holeinone insurance policy was this crazy idea that you pay at the time it was a 3 milliondollar premium in order to get the money to get someone to bet against you so we paid the money if someone won the 10 million by the end of 2004 the insurance would pay the money and if no one won they would keep our 3 million the competition was over. The problem was even after we negotiated the prize for 3 million, we didnt have the 3 million. So there would be the 50,000dollar fridays where i would negotiate with them i will pay you 50,000 a four year if you give me enough time to raise the rest of the money. So we would have these 50,000dollar the first one i made myself, that was the maximum i could afford. The next one i went in fact we have a lot of our Board Members that actually reached into their pockets and paid the 50,000dollar friday. Anyway, at one time we were short a chunk of change and i go to him and its like this thing is over unless you get the museum to pitch in like a quarter of a Million Dollars, so we got the chairman as you could imagine god coming in to you you have to say yes and he did. He got them to actually pitch one of the final major payments before we had the family and for that reason you see on the side of the spaceship along with the family the st. Louis Science Center is one of the benefactors ssaid he saved me a multitude of times. [applause] why dont we have a couple of questions. I have one that i have to ask. Its been 12 years since the spaceship lights and we were all talking about how the tourists were going to be going into space on commercial space whiners in three or so years. Did you ever think that it would be 12 years and we would still be waiting for that . If you asked me the odds, i would never have bet on 12 years. So here is the fact. We live on a planet where the gravity is just low enough to get off the planet. Its hard. The walls of physics make it hard and extraordinarily difficult, but the beautiful thing is i know without any question in my heart and soul that this next decade is the decade for the kids and you are a liar during a time that whatever we become a thousand years from now its this next decade that we are going to look back at this as the moment in time we moved irreversibly. Its right here right now. We have incredible people like your very own and a multitude of different people i fought in the audience here. I servi service to cofounding executive chairman of the planetary resources and chris landed three emissions on phoenix. [applause] and is now the ceo and im so proud of having him as a ceo again. It is an amazing time to be alive. The cod code is being cracked rt now and there is enough risktaking capital. We are not going to replicate what happened in the 1960s where it was the u. S. Soviet race. The Apollo Program was an extraordinary moment in time taken out of the future and put into the past but we do have the impetus and the drive and the need to open a space and its going to happen now because the risk takers, the mindset, these Exponential Technology is reducing the cost to the point where we are as a species reaching this philosophy. Questions fro questions from the floor. Anyone . No questions at all . Go ahead. We have a microphone coming for you. Running at light speed. [laughter] can you repeat the question. I was curious how much we can scale before it will lift heavier and heavier vehicles. Its fun to do a basic experiment and first of all one of my companies that was a predecessor to the planetary resources, we have flown eight people at the space station privately owned for years vehiclso years ofvehicle just ag because the shuttle they would never allow that that is a different conversation. So it is 120 million for a spaceflight divided by three that is roughly 40 million a seat. And if you think about what percentage of the cost is the fuel does anybody know the answer . It is less than 1 . Its the laborers if you make the vehicle of reusable old you have to do is fuel and go, theoretically you could drop the cost down by 100 fold but now can they go and do this with the students tomorrow if you want to put what is your name . Name . If i put tomas into space lets round up the number and say you weigh 50 kilograms and view have 100 kilograms in space is that good enough . So 200 kilograms into space is going to get you up to 200 kilometers of altitude and then if i want to circular rise due to orbital velocity, 25,000 kilometers per second or thereabouts whatever it is it is one half so you can count the amount to get them into orbit and if you were going by that it is 7 cents per kilowatt hour and it got you to space over the course of an hour the cost of going into orbit is about 100. What we need is an economic engine to get us into space. Its the most exciting time ever with progress. From a Space Adventures the question is which one was the most challenging and what unifies all of those . Your chance of being accepted are one in a thousand. Your chance of flying, half have never flown because they and they are cold penguins because they have wings but never fly. If you do fly i want to fly every weekend so everything has been trying to not get myself into space but create an economic engine that wants to drive us to space more and more because that will be a rising tide. So reduced cost and increase the drive. The realization for me is that it is all about people. The right people and the right amount of capital you can build the right capital. Its called rmd but its about having people with a mindset that are not afraid to take risk and they will do whatever it takes. When i think about my five year old kids and what i want to teach them it is passion. My passion for space drove me to everything ive ever done in life. Having a passion that wakes you up in the morning and as you read amazing books, curiosity and great. If you read the book i think the most impactful thing if i said i had one superpower, it is not giving up. Its refusing to give up. The hardest was praising the 10 million. This 25,000 at the time and we called it the news. It was crazy and not the right thing to do. So burning bishops because once we announced we had no choice but to raise money. But i was so absolutely blown away by how riskaverse people have become. But honestly, really, no. You had so much money. It was so challenging. The most ideological person in the world of course is very difficult and i emailed him and called him. I was relentless. So hes representing their best interest and i finally got my meeting with him. I remember to this day i come in with video power plants and brochures, it is a pretty big pitch. Is that the way that you saw it . [laughter] i was thinking he might actually raise the money. I was setting up the project, so we were going after the prize before it was funded and i was taking the risk to fund this thing and build the spaceship but i knew he didnt have a the money but i couldnt tell him. All this time they were putting up the ultimately 26 million. But when he came to use to fund the spaceship one project, how much money did he want up front . Theres two stages. When he first came to us he only wanted 8 million. They were all optimists. He was going to build by the way he was the main project manager and bert was going to build a spacecraft that only flew just the pilot and he was going to hang it underneath the smaller craft that kind of looks like this but its smaller. It was a predecessor, long story. Lets not go there. [laughter] its in the book. So, at one point he said lets go for the prize. Lets just actually go for it and that is when he came up with the model 316 and he won with 19 million. And how much did you finally end up spending . 28. 6. I think honestly between the documentaries and the donations of the species began and the licensing, he made money. [laughter] basically it was to license the patents and all of the protected material. With the donation of the spacecraft and the licensing i pitched him twice. I pitched Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Mobile and he said no twice which killed me because he was a perfect person and clearly had Richard Branson and then all of a sudden out on the tarmac if you look at that vehicle i had been trying to get them to put the logo on the back. On the morning of the flight it rolls out and i cant even saying what im saying because this kid did the audience here. He is rolling out for the cameras and this is like gangster pr. Of course im thrilled that he has a billion dollars to commercialize because the first thing would have been that it would end up in the museum. I am glad. That commitment actually turned it into an industry that was the goal after all. We have a random guy back there that wants to ask a question. I wanted to build upon the inspiration and finding inspiration in books. I think what you conveyed to me is an attitude about taking action. Could you comment on when is the right time and fine art right circumstances to make choices to do things and what conditions you should wait for. So the question is when is the right time to take action. I started cataloguing things and a friend of mine had on his wall murphys law if anything can go wrong it well and i wrote on the whiteboard if anything can go wrong, fix it. The realization was something to nothing is infinite so just doing something, taking a step in action every day and so for anybody here that is a wouldbe entrepreneur who has a dream youve not told anybody, and your ability to take action on it immediately and it can be reading an amazing book that will inspire you in finding a cofounder to do with wave and raising the first dollar because when you take that first action it commits you and one of the most important things you can do a. What is the name of your Company Called . He wouldnt have met jeff if he hadnt told me about it. So tell me about your dream in action and dont ever be embarrassed because that is the worst thing. The difference between something to nothing is infinite and the difference between, you know, for me, the prize the only reason it didnt fail is because i didnt give up. It was said dont do it, give up. I have an amazing team of partners, dianne murphy, Erik Lindbergh, so many people. We supported each other and we did not give up. Did you have a question . Tell me a little bit about what your dream is. Im trying to develop an application to help people and navigate spaces and find safe Reliable Services and employme employment. God bless you. [applause] there is a person that would like to ask a question right over there. A little bit older than the last questioner, just a little bit. When you go through entrepreneurship in the environment, you end up finding that you make a lot of us. And mistakes are the places that youve learned things worthwhile. But they tend to be hidden in the history. Also i the dislike it just work. That is the case it wasnt an overnight success after 11 years of hard work. We were out of money so many times on fumes. One of the Great Stories, the great hero that moves, one of the things i did write early on, and by the way just to say something, it wasnt the first thing i did so for any entrepreneurs in the audience were kids in the audience, it was like the 12 things i have done. Please start this in high school, jeff was the president of his chapter and i does the we president of mine, chris was the president of his and it is a great learning experience. We should have a lot of chapters here in the seattle area. It leatlanta to the national spe university. We have some alumni year that led to this on and on. So, you do that and people watch you and then they support you taking the next risk. One of the things i learned is having the right people around you made all the difference in the world and i was in 1995 i snuck into the space museum for the blacktie gala. Didnt have an invitation but i snuck in because i wanted to meet the family. It was an annual event, and i met lindberg and i did something you never do. I pitched to the primary person. She was the ceo of the foundation and said i really want to get the family involved in this crazy idea. She said well, you need to meet Erik Lindbergh, he is a pilot and he will get this. I met him very soon thereafter. To fast forward six years later, seven years later when we are out of money on which anniversary, the 75th . Seventyfifth where he does something daring and recreates his grandfathers flight as a single pilot aircraft and raises a Million Dollars to keep the x. Prize going. So, this is a an effort that dies a thousand deaths along the way that it was preserve your hands and having amazing people that didnt give up and kept us going. I would love to hear your side of the story. I know you were dealing with personal challenges at the same time. So, ive got to think that you thought he was one of the craziest people alive to come up with this idea. You were an environmentalist. What are we spending money on space for. Clearly hes crazy. [laughter] theres just no question. I was living in a year on brain damage sort of off the grid. Id grown u up and deceive those of trying to balance the advances in technology with preservation of the technology. My grandparents spent the latter half of their lives working to help save our quality of life for me in our generation so that we would know that quality of life that he had. And when peter and byron, everybody take a second. He had flown to Shuttle Missions and was one of the first people i called. Early on, he really was a Founding Member of the x. Prize as well as our friend. So a number of people. I get a lot of credit in the book but there were dozens of people that were extraordinarily essential to this. He was a twotime astronaut and it just got from him i am not a space gee geek im kind of an aviation geek that i wanted to see the planet from space. And what would i that do to our ability to keep this spaceship the only sustainable spaceship we have, its got plants and animals and all the people we love, how to keep that sustainable maybe space could teach us that how to not screw up our own nest as humans. Thats where it came from and this was cool. It was a little bit over the edge. I thought okay i will check it out further. But the more you get involved, the more you get infected not just by this idea of going into space and experiencing weightlessness but its that time i had Rheumatoid Arthritis and went from a state champion gymnast to walking with a cane and i met a few guys i was walking with a cane barely and i thought im going to go to space to experience weightlessness because my personal situation, but what kind of evolved through that was his team of people and working with the museum of flight and the spirit and seattle here in raising money [applause] you go girl. We know you have somewhere to be. [laughter] [applause] now its just us and we can talk about them. That infectious entrepreneurial startup mentality of that didnt work lets try it this way or talk to this person. So we went to see orville in st. Louis and he gave us 25,000. Unbelievable. It was just amazing to be part of a small team of people that got spaceship one in space and e museum next to my grandfathers claim and that overnight success of ten years was incredibly difficult but having that kind of success has given me, has given all of us that jews we need to g co juice to keep gg because i know i can change the world. And its the most incredible gift ive ever had in my life to have it come when i was really at the bottom, disabled, didnt have a life committed and have a computer at the time. That would have been probably a good thing but my physical life was over. But i was able to gain it back again along with this arc of the spaceship. I dont know if i will get another chance, but im going to keep trying. I know you have so many things going on, what are you thinking that you would want to go into space . Is there something in the genetics that makes you feel like you want to give it a try . I would love to go to space fantasy our planet. When you talk to jean and all these guys that say everything that you know and love and depend upon to survive is down here. I want to experience back, but also looking at spaceship one in the air and space museum, i realize im not really a Rocket Scientist, i am an aviation geek therefore what did i learn from this and how do we do that again and how do we do that for aviation which is my chosen field so ive been pointing at electric propulsion that represents a hard problem like spaceflight. Its wa way to have even more weight you carry up in the air the more power you need therefore its a negative feedback but its important. We need exciting flight that gets the next generation going and if we dont, someone else will be in the left seat driving the industry. So weve got to do it and we are sort of at that exponential curve where we are starting to see a tremendous amount of electric development and the batteries are slowly coming along so we can start to see itf taking longer than i had hoped when it started ten years ago. I want to hear more about how you got involved in this because it is such a big story. What were you doing when the flights occurred and how did you get into the project . I was thinking that you were about 8yearsold. I was a reporter at the San Francisco chronicle and i met him two years ago doing a profile on him and i said how did this whole thing began. I knew it only in the most superficial details or superficial kind of glance. The more he told me about it, the more intrigued. He didnt know the connection to lindbergh or the incentive. I hadnt really looked at the incentive price model. I didnt know how many times people have told them no. I hadnt known much about burt. You couldnt make this character up. And then the test pilots and a story paul allen, dave moore, trying to kind of brings structure tbringstructure to thd composites in a very different ecosystem. Put your forecasting hat on. I am sorry peter cannot participate. We have heard it was 30 million per person. We heard peter say it was 100 of energy. What is the cost going to be in ten years . Lets let him tackle this. I am putting a lot of faith in getting the two together, i think its unfortunate they had a serious accident two years ago on hollowing where the first had an inflight problem that crashed and killed one of the pilots. But the second example at this point is being billed by company run by a good friend of ours, the chain. Theres great engineers down there and theres i really think they will get it together. Think where your or two away for flights being available. Tenures, i dont know. Elon musk has an amazing teen an amazing commitment to getting people on mars. If anyone can do, he can. He is our iron man of our generation. Ten years from now theres a lot of possibilities that could be affordable for many folks. The figure we used to talk about the most meaningful was that all forms of transportation are expensive in the beginning. Trains, automobiles, they are prohibitively expensive. Once you start to achieve those economies of scale the cost comes down. So, i am not up for 250,000 for flight, bring down to 50 or 25 grand, i would go, maybe twice. That may be possible ten years from now. Down to 25. I think the price to 50, maybe 15 years from now 25. Seems like an achievable goal with the progress that has been made so far. This question is for you, ive listened to about half the book. I think you worked in the early days for microsoft alongside bill gates, socratic . I started microsoft in 81. There are 60 people in the company but i was hired 108. So bill is my boss for four years. Those are the early days of the it industry in seattle. You also had a front row seat of the early days of the commercial space industry, how would you compare come i read some of the challenges of being a Program Manager. There are similarities. I was hired at microsoft because i had worked at boeing. They brought me in a someone who had some experience in support of scale. I was hired to work on multiplan which was the microsoft spreadsheet project. I was charged with a lot of grownup control and monitoring and guidance through the whole project. My primary Program Manager on the project very you have to have a role of good cop, bad cop. I did negotiation on the contract and to find out what the dirt was, what was really going on in the project on a daily basis. It was a moment in december 2002 the team had been active for about a year and every time we saw their schedules heres what we will do and we check the date and they would tell us well now we slipped another week, month or two months. Every new schedule slid monthtomonth. We had to talk about basic Program Management. Even in an environment when youre inventing new things. There are basic ways you can look at the technology and steps you can apply, basic ways you work with the team. Had you actually interact with the engineers and people who have to do the work so that youre communicating with them. A fundamental thing i learned at microsoft is jeff and i had to teach the folks and you dont go tell the youre going to reach this milestone, you work with the red were working as a team trying to reach this goal. You tell me what it will take. You tell me how much time you need. You tell me what decisions you need them over to put a plan together. At one point we were describing this and use saying i have to go tell them. And i said you have to go ask them when they can get it done. When they actually work with you to come up with a schedule and you have a basic agreement of what you will do at a particular time, they have made that commitment. They are now respecting you for asking their opinion of when they can get the work done and they have made the solid commitments reach the day. Thats when you had the milestones and keep your budget and control. That was a major thing i learned early on that jeff and i were able to train the team to get the project done on time. Basically two budgets. You have anything to add . Maybe ill take peters thought. Basically you go down there, on the center for the point guard, right. We went down the first time you can visibly see how stressedout the engineers were. They said whats the date, there are looking at me like 12 weeks. The guy is 25 years old, a great engineer, and they had told him the only date they will understand is 12 weeks from now or whatever it was. Then undercover, we would say hes not here anymore i dont care what answer you tell me but you cannot slide it. I would have to give them an update every week or two. If it slides again will have a come to jesus because the money might not be here. Give you a couple weeks work out the real number and then you are on the hook. And then we would do that everywhere. Bert was really uncomfortable with that. Engineers want to be slackers. So i did take a few weeks, months for them to understand. Even then you have to understand and then your way around the organization. You will always get one story from a guy who is far off in charge who may not have to do something that has to be done to make the project work. If you have more boots on the ground to save all the guy hasnt slept in three get days, that kind of feedback is good too. So based on this number this is berts number, this is my number was budget for this. Theres a lot of techniques. Just Program Management you can do to get the actual prediction out. We had to train it to the scale folks. Is just gonna say what i was looking back at the stories i wrote in 1998, peter was saying all this is going to be in 2001, three years from now we will have it one. Was 2004 which is not bad when youre talking about rocket science. Seems like there is a trend that it takes longer than people think its going to take. That just come with the territory with any project . The way this project started out is paul sent me an email and said we should do something with bert. Thats all it said. I had to figure it out from there. Windber propose the project to me i said this is what bert thinks it is but whatever he tells us in the end its going to cost more, take longer and its going to be too heavy. All those things came true. Other questions . Is true in aviation and in space, it always takes longer. Although, blue origin and spacex are changing that curve. Maybe Virgin Galactic is taken them time. It always takes longer. Is there anyone from blue origin whom i want to say word . I will add something. Putting a proposal together for spaceshipone i did a full survey of every company i could find doing everything space related. I was not going to necessarily tell paul that it was done, i wanted to see other possible competitors. I knew about blue origin at the time. I found out where the addressing company was and i reached out, the problem were having is they were going down the path of the next price. I joke to their office and there is a sign that says blue origin, i knocked on the door knowing it was the door. To this date i have never talked to anyone from blue origin even though i reached out and they say there is a window i talked to 22 other companies before he signed the paperwork. This was experimental and it was simply bad never done it before. It had been done by the worlds three largest governments by the u. S. , china and the soviet union. Youve got the small team of 20 to make 30 engineers of the Mojave Desert. Theres a great story in the book about thermal Protection System. It is a classic it epitomizes the scrapping is of this group of people. So theyre ready to grow with the supersonic site. They need to get the thermal protection figured out and they have been fretting over this and the paint was chipping off. It is like the desert of the mojave. The nose of station one. In a young engineer he said this isnt going to work. We have a supersonic flight coming up and bert said body party. Scrape some of this off and put body party on. Dry like a hard candy. Guys like body party . Automotive party. They like what, are you kidding me. Bert walks away and so he tries it out and tested at different temperatures. And it works. Here he goes back to bert and said it works said what . The body party. Great he says. But this is proprietary. So you can call it body party. You need to go to the store. You need to get different ingredients. You need to get something to make it proprietary. You need to get some oregano, this is a true story. You cannot make these things up. You need to get some cinnamon because you had some sentiment to the body party and suddenly you have a big issue that will go with the patriotic pain. So that is what the proprietary thermal Protection System was. It worked for spaceshipone. If you look closely may be in the smithsonian you will see flecks of oregano. Dont forget the oregano. This gentleman had a question. So what do you think will be more port in, innovation of existing technologies, invention of new, or more capital to help create a larger economy of scale for Space Development . Did i mention i am not a Rocket Scientist . In most Technological Development its a stepbystep reiteration. People putting together offtheshelf stuff in a new way. Using new Technology Like computer code to make it work at the right timing. Like my grandfathers flight across the atlantic was all off the shelf. He just did it in a different way. Bert is a little bit more out there and experimental. It really is in. The big story that he tells us is that his says how much of the earths air is under 60000 feet or lawyer . Is 93 or 95 . Above 60000 feet it is enough to boil your water in your body. It above 60v dont have a spacesuit. He was at oshkosh and its a pressurized home built aircraft. That was almost a spaceship. Right. Thats over half. You are at like half. And these like to do not even good at that. If we built a steel vessel, there is no co2 scrubber, a little tank of a scuba tank of air in that thing. Thats it. No special spacesuit or anything. Well have a scuba tank and if the pressure looks for you should open the valve. Literally that is how it works. The Flight Control is the same. Its a pushrod Flight Control system with an electronic trend. You can i dont know if theres any flyby airplanes but theyre way more complicated than the spaceshipone. Its just like an old cessna. The same kind of thing. You only innovate when you have to. Thats the trick to doing it on time and cheaply. The rocket motor was a little tricky. That took all the innovation. The rest is straightforward. This stable re entry with independence is the big thing talked about. Most have to reenter outofcontrol pitch. If youre too high you bounce off and end up in the ocean. If youre too fast you go too fast and burn it. Of those are bad. You want to create a way that the matter what the attitude is it stable and then you fly homeland. So two areas of innovation, thats it. I think we said earlier well have two patents for that keep innovation as small as possible and still achieve the technical goal youre looking forward. If you know where that leading technology is at the time thats where most of the inventions come from. Just keeping abreast of what the latest office and say no i could use it for that. Thats where you want to pay attention. And banda was much more useful than i thought. The thing is they should get a pad for all the beautiful designs because those are not standard. Who came up with that . Was that birds design . The art is dan cray. The guy that did the stars stripes. Hes a guy famous for making these model airplanes. He works with artists at scale and has cool airplanes. He designed the beautiful white night skiing in the stars stripes. And then the locals litigious into the artwork and put it out. Theyre just vinyl on the plane. Like stick on like you did a car. But who else makes designs like that. Exactly, when you hold it up and look at it its an alien head. Who does that . I saw him one time minutes to guys fine boomerang, one of his other crazy design and it is to aliens. The oval shaped head and it says, one guys caring his mask off and his like all these masks are really uncomfortable when theres aliens underneath. That tells you a Little Something about his creativity. I think we have time for one more question. Okay lets make it a good one. We will bring it microphone. So on the side it looks like planes, my question is, why did they make it look like planes in each side. Did they want to cut off at the end of the other side . Thats attached the main body to make the planes total. It is weird. This is what theyre talking about. What were talking about is these are not connected. They look like to plane sidebyside. You have exhausted to the tail would be bad because its hot. You dont want Something Back there. You need to have enough room to carry spaceshipone underneath it. If we wanted to the way it was designed to be safe as its a twostage altitude design certifies up like an airplane so something goes wrong you cant go today so than just land, totally safe. They thought i thought were going to space today and not today. You had enough room underneath to land. That means you had to have everything out of the way. Then when you drop it early did of fire theres exhaust that comes out the back and you dont want to affect anything. So to get it all together he built the two tail pieces separately. There is a lot of discussion on it think it mightve been one of the first airplane not have a stabilizer across the back. Although white night to has this configuration as will the launcher. They work really well. A lot of aviation guys are like im not sure its gonna work like im sure its gonna work and on the guy in charge. So were going to try. It works really well. All of his airplanes sure this fantastic keep those where they put beautiful because all they are designed to do is one specific perspex bird has in mind with no of the old way of doing it. Know how these two are the same. He is the making of this to prototype the making of that. To save time and effort. How old are you . Ten. So when bert was growing up he loved aviation and loved planes and so did his brother who went on to become a tech pilot. The part was a guy from the very beginning who would not get a model airplane kit and building from that kit following someone elses instruction, he would rot his brother build the plane. His brother would fly the plane and crash the plane and he would pick up the pieces and make a plane of his own design. It started when he was your age. He loved it designing planes but he loved designing planes of his own imagination. Thats what he did all of his life. So if that was a really powerful, amazing message. Julia, this is your party i would love to hear if you had closing words. I think thats a great message that when you find your passion or think about what it is and listen to your instincts and taken the knowledge that you can but ultimately follow your instincts and try to do really extraordinary things. It is one step at a time. Was one step at a time for bert. And for peter, it was one step at a time for eric, for everybody involved in it. It was just a matter of going back to the word perseverance. And innovative. And going back to it and having this singular dream that you have to see realize. That is one of the things i most love about the story. Can i add something . I just want to say the theres so much not in this book the when you read it you go, how could there be board. But this guy name mike was too old to go for the airlines. On the floor rocket ship into space. He actually fluid. Its not like the Space Shuttle doesnt up there the spaceshipone you fly the plane to space. I guess my point is, even if you are young kid at 63 you can still go for it. The story continues. I appreciate your writing it because it brought tears to my eyes just remembering the stuff we went through and thinking peter and greg and i have been struggling with this for years and we decided a bucket list, we want to get our glider rating and cliff, the actor told me we had to go to the place to do it. So we are out there for a week of r r getting our glider ratings and we see an easy fly in and its like, there were two operators doing glider train and its my and brian and they were there to get their commercial glider ratings because they were glider pilots are ready, but they were not commercial glider pilots. Theyre getting paid because they were on the payroll and were flying it back as a glider so they had to get the glider rating. They had to go to drag class. The rocket lights off and you get all kinds of new things. So they like the rocket lights off there should be acceleration get used to that. So brians already in the navy we dont know anyone who owns an aircraft carrier, so was the second most you could have. A top fuel dragster. Is there that school in southern california. Yes there is, go down there for the weekend. They come back and say that lunch is hard. Its just like a launch what the rocket would be like by learning to drive a dragster. That would be the equivalent of the pilot load of what it would be like to to the initial boost to face to pull around the corner to go vertical. That is so awesome because its kinda laid it all out is [inaudible] anybodys radar we got a lot of front pages at times. Its a busy world and now it is set down thats incredibly powerful for people to learn about. How to persevere. I learned something new from jeff. There is so much in your story was disconnected from our story trying to raise the money and behind us. And in st. Louis, new york and l. A. That all coming together and even more so for me now is a great gift. Thank you. [applause] i feel like we could be here all my. I feel like we have been around the virtual campfire. Doesnt the museum to space camp . [laughter] they do space camp. Make sure to check in i think we broke 2000 campers last year. At this time i am better panelists to make their way back over to the book signing table. Will have conversation and book signing. I would like to thank all of you and i like to think a wonderful moderator. [applause] [inaudible] if you books to be signed or want t