Transcripts For CSPAN2 How To Make A Spaceship 20161113

Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the Space Gallery here at the museum of flight. My name is jeff nod, adjunct curator here at the museum. Our president and ceo of doug king sends his regards and his regrets. Hes unfortunately unable to be here tonight as he has taken ill. I would like to begin by thanking our special featured speaker this evening. Our special guest Eric Lindberg and dave maurer. [applause] the team from cspan books will be recording this evenings event and conversation for later viewing. We have fabulous even in store as part of the museums orbit around october. Its a series of space focused events throughout the month leading up to her threeday space best, which will be happening from november 3rd through 5th. This years space best esteemed ladies who launch and features three days of women led talks, activities and panels all about space. For a complete listing of the orbit around october events come i encourage you to take a look at the insert in the space you should have all received a check in. All of this program and is part of a broader effort by the museum to highlight the incredible boom of the committee happening in space today to which the events he later tonight helped catalyze. Most people know the seattle area for airplanes, coffee and software, but we are also very much involved in space. From longtime space pioneers like boeing space and are in the folks at rocketdyne to more recent commoners like blue origin and can washington who work on reasonable rockets. The planetary resources to folks up in basel who are working on in space manufacturing. The Space Community as growing, thriving and diverse and is proud and thrilled to tell the story. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce the featured speaker, author julian guthrie. Guthrie is the author of a new but how to make an epic raise the birth of private spaceflight. They dreamed of bringing space to the masses. The cast includes aviators, pilots, Engineering School dropouts, retirees, billionaires and a particularly determined space geeks who read uses to get up on his dream. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce julian guthrie. [applause] thank you for the great introduction. This book is really interesting on many levels. I kind of look at it now had a vague spaceship is almost a formula for it. Theres almost a recipe as i see it. So you start with is by peter d. Amanda sue is eight years old when apollo 11 landed on the man in july 1969. He is wide eyed, transfixed by the magic of nasa, the magic of apollo is by then. The first time in that foot on another body and has determined kind of like a pile that was what was possible and star trek was what could be possible and he drank all that tank and he believed in all of this. He sat out this unbelievable class to become a master not. His original pursuit was to get there through the typical channels through nasa and he went to m. I. T. And harvard and did all of these things just so you could one day get to space. He gets out of college and realizes nasa is winding down its mans face programs or he was not going to be the one. That was not the way he would get there. What comes next in the special recipe is a book. So she reads a certain book, which connects the story to the golden age of aviation. She reads the spirit of st. Louis and he has this moment where hes reading that and he had thought that Charles Lindbergh flew the transatlantic flight as a stunt and he reads this and hes like well, he flew this to win the 25,000 prize. The arcade prize which really was this great incentive competition in the 1920s and he realizes Charles Lindbergh. He wins the prize. Hes the first man to fly from new york to paris nonstop and connect those two major cities and he launches the commercial space industry about what came out of that. Peter is thinking what if i could do the same thing for space. In may 1996, under the arch in st. Louis, ive been hearing Great Stories from folks who were in the Mojave Desert. In 1996, is under the arch in st. Louis and announces this prize for the first team that can build and fly a rocket to the start of space. Yes when asked or not it is the head of nasa. What he doesnt have his 10 million. So he goes out on this quest. The next part is the lender and he made the flying lindbergh in the family. Eric story within the story is so profound that a man who lives with this enormous legacy and grapples with how to find his own identity within that legacy and we let them out first and ends at the mandalay rescue and also rescuing the prize. Really profound story. Nextline you need in this great recipe, you need a maverick aviation designer. You need this guy is in the Mojave Desert in a small team and can build a spaceship. You need somebody who can beat this kind of really, really dissipate and manner. Dave maurer. Again, you need a benefactor and enter paul allen, cofounder of microsoft. Say he was not a late benefactor. He had this 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 machines . You need really intrepid test pilot. We do have Mike Melville. The test pilots have scaled composite. Mike melville, one of the most courageous guys ive ever met is 63 years old when he White Knuckles that to the start of space in june of 2004. You have this great cast of yours. You have great technological innovation. Eucom back. Peter is this great conductor who holds all these different amazing characters into this. He persevered like few people ive ever heard a period the most tenacious guy. He didnt have the 10 million. He went out and saw funding. He gets told no over 150 times. You need perseverance. You need to be very creative. Some of his closest friends were telling him this is never going to work and you shed give it back. He persevered, held onto his dream. Perseverance, dassault tenacity, Great Innovation to make all of this happen. They came together in this magical moment. Many of you were telling me stories of flying out to see one of these in the Mojave Desert where history was made at the small team. Small teams can do really remarkable things. All of this comes together for this moment in history and you have this team of 30 or so people who have built the first spaceship in the replica is right above us. It is a really, really incredible thing that embodies the best of the human spirit, of bravery, and innovation, tenacity and scale at all to levels. I was so happy and honored that i got to tell this story, that i get to talk about this story and the amazing story is now a great inspiration. Im finding and i am so thrilled with that that it is being embraced by this next generation. When we met, he told me that with a gift of a book it was a gift of the spirit of st. Louis that started him on this path and he hopes that how to make a spaceship will inspire the next generation of innovators and the dreamers and of doers. I just want to quickly introduce an amazing small team of High School Students who are from north Idaho Academy and their story is so wonderful is so remarkable if they could come up here real quickly. [applause] they are from north idaho stand Charger Academy and they are building a spaceship. They are building a research satellite. Guess who their handson mentor is . Theyve taken huge inspiration. Amazing. Theyve taken huge inspiration from the story peters story, all of the folks who are here on stage which made the spaceship happened because it was a one person who made it happen. Every person here would play a key role. Erik lindbergh, dave maurer. Paul allen, the test pilots. Those who kept it going. Doug king who unfortunately isnt here, but he rescued the x prize many times. All of these people who manage to keep this dream alive and it was a grueling odyssey of and now we have these really skilled, talented teenagers who are just going to say a few words. We have eric sandman here and we have jessica and just in. Eric, justin and jessica will say a couple of words here. Kind of as the next generation of innovators and dreamers and forward thinkers. Eric, do you want to say a couple words . Thank you. Exactly, like this book by peter read, an amazing book and it inspired him. The advice in this book absolutely inspired us because weve had berbers 10 on the team has an incredible person and we are doing this as teenagers, a High School Team in north idaho. That is like all the odds against you. We are launching a satellite that is the time capsule and modernday 21st century record which is a time capsule in the voyager mission. Watching it on the 40th anniversary of that mission and updated time capsule and we are so fortunate to have hurt and jillian and all of these main role and help us out, give us advice and its absolutely amazing. Just have something to say, too. So, it only takes one person, one vote, one opportunity to unite that number up passion for space. The students may not know that they have. Inspiration for everybody who is our age or older or anybody who has ever heard of the x prize or space ship one. Thank you. [applause] its so wonderful to see the next generation be inspired, i just we wanted to recognize another individual before we start Panel Discussion. I wanted to recognize a gentleman here whose name is arthur davenport. He was the designer of the packbacks for apolo 141. Mr. Davenport is right here. Maybe we can all get only stories from him later on, but i would imagine those are amazing tales. So i think next we are going to have ellen boyle up and we will have a great Panel Discussion and peter has to leave early but we will try to get your questions in. Thank you. Thank you, julian and thank you for the museum. Im not going the take much time, im the what aerospace and i met peter when he was trying to raise that money and came to cover the x prize ever since then. And the x Prize Program has been continuing even after the 10 milliondollar prize awarded. So peter is the founder and executive chairman and has many programs devoted to promote innovation in the works. Look up xprize. Org for more details on that. I just want to refresh your memory about our other panelists, eric linberg is artist, the grand child of charles linburg and helped out the x prize immensely while they were trying to put all this together for the im sorry x prize. Dave moore was project manager for space ship one project. One other thing i wanted to do is catch you up to date, space ship one following by spaceship 24. British billionaire Richard Branson and they had a couple years ago, they recovered from the accident. They have a second spaceship too that they have been flight testing on, Jeff Bezos Space venture launched reusable rockets for the fifth time, amazing, amazing feet that was just couple of weeks ago. We have people from blue origin here and the another Company Called orbital atk. International space station a couple of hours ago. Could be argued that none of this might have happen if it werent for the spark that was led by peter and other people involved in what he calls getting the commercial space flight revolution going all that time ago. Since peters time is limited, im going ask him to share one of your favorite stories and a couple of questions that i wanted to ask you and i know you to get going pretty soon. A hundred of my favorite stories. [laughter] im not honestly not really possible to share one story. I would love to get into the q a. I apologize my team had us starting at 5 30 and 6 30, i had two hours here but im on a flight at 8 15. God, almighty, given that doug is not here, let me embarrass him appropriately. [laughter] next time he shows up. Doug king when i met him was just finished the Challenger Center and just accepted a job at st. Louis science museum. I used to hold a salon in my home, in my living room where i would bring together amazing people and i would come up with the idea of the x prize because i was absolutely positively sure that this 140 milliondollar challenge will work and lindbergh got his money from st. Louis but i was thinking i was going to launch the competition in houston or in la, or in florida or whatever. I was going get money from the city the same way that lindbergh got his must be and doug was over and we were talking, well, you know, you should go to st. Louis again. I said, st. Louis . Yeah. He convinced me to come there and we actually got this going very much in in thanks to him and the long story about how the prize got funded and julian who has done an amazing book and im so proud of the work that you have done. Eric was on my board at the time. When i announced the prize for 10 million i was absolutely positively sure that it was going to be easily fundable. Who would not want to pay 10 million after someone pulled off the flight. It was a nobrainer until after seeking billionaire, no, no, someone is going to tie, no, no, we ended up actually as julian tells in the book, and the whole one insurance policy was this crazy idea that you pay at the time 3 milliondollar premium in order to get the money get someone to bet against you. So we paid the 3 million and someone won the 10 million by the end of 2004 the Insurance Company will pay the money. If no one won they would keep 3 million bucks and the competition was over. The problem was even after we negotiated the prize for 3 million, we didnt have the 3 million for insurance. There would be the 50,000dollar fridays where so i negotiated with them. I will pay you 50,000 a month for a year to give me enough time to raise the rest of the money. And so we would have the 50,000 the first 50,000dollar payment i made myself. That was my maximum i could possibly afford. Eric and i have a lot of Board Members at the x prize wh are the people who reached into their pockets and paid the 50,000dollars friday. Anyway, one period we are short a chunk of change and i go to doug and its like, this thing is over unless you get the museum to pitch in like a quarter Million Dollars. We have the chairman of the museum of flight here, i want you to imagine doug come in and to back, you have to say yes, he did. He got the st. Louis center to pitch in final payments, im sorry family and for that reason, you see on the side of the spaceship along with mars and 7up and the st. Louis sign center is one of the benefactors. He saved my butt a multitude of times. Well, with that, maybe [applause] thatll do. Thatll do. Sure. Why dont we have a couple of questions. I have one that i have to ask. Its been 12 years since the space ship one flights and we were all talking about how tourists were going to be going into space in commercial airliners. If you had give me a hundred to one odds, i would never have won on 12 years. So here is the fact, you know, we live in a planet of gravity 9. 82 meeters squares just low enough to get off the planet. Its hard. Laws of physic make it hard and i know without any question in my heart and soul, youre alive during looking at this is the moment in time, its right here. Its right now. We have incredible people like jeff bezos and elon musk. A bunch of different people ive got in the audience, let me just recognize. I service the cofounder of resources that landed three missions on the martian service. Spirit opportunity in phoenix. [applause] is now ceo and im so proud of having him as a ceo of resources. Another seattle company. Its an amazing time to be alive. Theres enough capital, risktaking capital and we are not going to replicate what happened in the 14960s, u. S. Soviet race. The apolo moment was extraordinary moment in time taken from the future and put in the past but we have the impetus, drive, to open up space because risktakers, reducing the cost of reaching space to the point where we are as a species reaching a velocity. So questions from the floor . Any one . No questions at all . Go ahead. Just a second, we have a microphone for you. Running at you at light speed. [laughter] thank you, sir. Can you repeat the question . You mentioned the tyranny of the rocket, i was curious how much we can scale horizontal take off to lift heavier and heavier vehicles . Its fun to do a physics experiment and its the following, one of my Companies Space adventures have was predecessor to to planetary resources, we flu eight people privately on the capitalistrussian vehicle i should say, a plug in there. [laughter] and because the shuttle, they would never allow that. Its a different story. A different conversation. Its a hub Million Dollars, 1,420,000,000 for a space flight on divided by 3 and thats roughly 40 million a seat. And if you think about what percentage of a cost is the fuel, anybody know the answer . Its less than 1 . Its the fuel, the labor. If you use the vehicle reusable, theoretically you could drop the cost down by a hundred fold. If you wanted to put whats your name . Thomas. If you want to put thomas into space, lets round up the number and say you weigh 50 kilograms, 100 kilograms. So 200 kilograms altitude and if i want to circularize you, 25,000 kilometers per second. If you would go and buy at 1 kilowatts of hour, the cost of you going to orbit is about a hundred bucks. 400,000, but what we need is an economic toning get engine economic and jeff bezos moving industries in space or elon going to mars, the most exciting time ever and a lot of progress to be made. Are there other questions . This one is for peter. You have done so many things in space. The question is which one was the most challenging and what unifies all of those. Oh, god. An 8yearold kid desperate to go to space and dream i will go with nasa as julian says and i meet astronauts who tell me the numbers, your chance of being accepted in astronaut are one and a thousand. Oh, my, god, i can work hard. Even if you get accepted, your chance of flying is only 50 half the restaurants. Penguins because they have wings and dont fly. If you do fly, right, erika, if you do fly, you might fly once or twice in your career. I want to fly like every weekend. [laughter] and so everything has been trying to not get myself into space but create an economic engine that wants to drive us into space more and more and more because that will be a rising tide, so reduce costs and increase the drive. So those are the unifying and the realization for me is all about people, all right, its all about people. You have the right people and the right technology to track technology, the right amount of technology. But its about having the people with a moon shot mind set who are not afraid to take risks willing to do whatever it takes and when i think about i have two 5yearold kids, what i want to teach them is passion, my passion for space is what drove me to everything i have ever done. Having a passion that you care about that wakes you up in the morning and read amazing books, curiosity and grit. If you read the book, i think, the most impactful thing if i would say i had one super power is not giving up. Not giving up. Its refusing to give up. Anyone else . What was the hardest . Oh, god, the hardest was raising the 10 million. [laughter] it was eric was there and you thought that was going to be the easiest. I thought it was going to be easiest. 25,000 at a time. We called knew spirit of st. Louis. He named his airplane after the group that funded him. And i had raised half a million and started to slow down and calculated bet that we would spend all of the money to annex this thing. We had two Board Members resign on the spot because they thought it was a crazy idea and not the right thing to do. It was sort of burning the ships because once we had announced it we had no choice but to raise the money. I was so so absolutely blown away by how risk adverse people had become. Its like honestly, really, no, you have so much money, what are you going to do with all of those billions, really . It was so challenging. So peter, what did you say you came and asked me for money. [laughter] so i have to bring dave moore. Honestly, the most logical person in the world and, of course, it was very difficult and so i was relentless, pitched to dave moore, so dave is representing all of pauls investments and space interests and im like, i finally got my meeting with dave, oh, my god, i got a meeting with dave moore. I remember to this day. I come in and, you know, videos, power points, brochures, its a pretty good pitch. [laughter] is that the way you saw it, dave . Actually it was a great pitch, great pitch. I was thinking, this guy might actually raise the money because at the time i was talking about setting up the project and we were going here he is trying to get the money from me and i cant tell him. He looked at me straight in the face and saying, yes, thats very interesting, i talked to paul about it and all of this time and fund space ship. Two stages, when he first came to us, he only wanted 8 million. Theyre all optimist . Yes. Jeff johnson here. Jeff was my main project manager. Smaller crafted, looks like that but its smaller. Lets not go there. Read the book. [laughter] and so paul goes, go for the x prize and lets just actually go for it and burt came with the model. How much money did he want at that point . 19 million. 19 million. [laughter] how much money did you end up spending . 28. 6. There you go. Honestly between the documentaries and the donation of spaceship and i think paul made money. [laughter] we actually ended up developing two patents, so basically license the patents and material and so with the donation of the spacecraft and winning the x prize and the license fees. Of course, i pitched Richard Branson twice. I pitched Virgin Atlantic and mobile and you said which kills me, the best person, paul allen has to be clearly Richard Branson and after telling me, no, i see Richard Branson the morning of the first x prize flight out on the tarmac and if you go look at the vehicle over there, i had been trying to get these guys to put the x prize logo on the back along in my sponsors because thats where the cameras were pointing and the morning of the flight, the vehicle rolls out with virgin on the back. Im going, i cant even say what im saying because there are kids in the audience. [laughter] i got the check to be at the flight. Hes rolling out a Virgin Atlantic airplane for the cameras. Im like this is like gangster pr. Of course, im thrilled that on the back end richard commits quarter a million billion dollars. That commitment actually turned it into an industry. We have a random guy back here who wants to ask a question. I wanted to build upon comment and i met you when i was 19 and i think what youve conveyed to me what i would like to convey to the audience and could you comment on to make choices to do things and what conditions he should wait for. The question is when is now the right time to take action. And one of the years ago i started cataloging the things ive called peters laws and a friend of guy had murphys law and i wrote on my white board, if anything go wrong, to hell with murphy. If anything go wrong, fix it and the hell with murphy. That was the first one. The realization was the ratio of something to nothing is infinite and just doing something and taking an action every day and for anybody here who is a would wouldbe entrepreneur. Inspire you a cofounder to do it with because when you take the first action, it commits you and one of the important things you can do which was scare early on is tell everybody what your dream is because the more people you tell about it, where is alex in the room . Alex, where are you in the room . There you are. Hes a ceo of a company and i produce today jeff here. He would not have met jeff if i hadnt told him about it. Tell everybody about your dream and about your action, dont ever be embarrassed because thats the worst thing. The difference between something to nothing is infinite and to me the x prize, the only reason it didnt fail was because i didnt give up. Dont do it, dont give up. So many people and we just supported each other and did not give up. Did you have a question . No, sorry. Tell me a little bit about what your dream is. Well, im trying to develop an app that will help people with disabilities navigate public spaces and find safe Reliable Services an employment. Well, god bless you. Thank you. [applause] theres a person that would like to ask a question right over there, a little bit older than our last questioner. Just a little. Usually when you go through entrepreneurship environment, you end up finding that you make a lot of mistakes and mistakes are the places where you actually learn something worthwhile but those tend to get hidden in the history. It all looks like it just worked. Oh, yeah. Im sure that wasnt the case. Oh, my god. Disasters you had aside from financing. I would like to joke that it was an overnight success over 11 years of hard work and i mean, there were so so many and the book talks about that and i think, you know, we were out of money so many times and one of the Great Stories and moves, i met eric, one of the things i did right early on, by the way to say something, the x prize was not the first thing i did. So for any entrepreneurs in the audience, any kids in the audience, you know, it was like the 142nd thing i had done. I started seds. I was the president of mine. Chris was the president of his and its a great learning experience and hopefully we should have lots of chapters, space university, alumni of isu here, led to on and on and on. You build one and you do that and people watch you and support you taking the next risk and the next risk. One of the things that i learn pped was having the right people around you made all the difference in the world. In 1995, i snuck into the space museum for the blacktie gala. I wanted to meet the lindbergh family. Lindbergh Foundation Annual event, i made lindbergh and did something that you never do, i went and pitched the primary person, i was pitching her on and she was the ceo and president of Lindbergh Foundation at the time and said i want to get the lindbergh family involved in the crazy idea called the x prize and she said, well, you need to meet Eric Lindbergh, hes a pilot and he will get this and i met eric very soon thereafter and eric told the story and the arc of that story to fastforward six years later, seven years later when we are out of money 75th . Seventyfifth anniversary where eric does something very daring and recreates his grandfathers flight as single engine aircraft and raises a Million Dollars to keep the x prize going, right in so this is an effort and it was certify perseverance. I know you were dealing with personal challenges at the same time. And you you were purely environmentalist and why are we spending money on space for . Yeah, clearly peter is crazy. [laughter] theres just no question. I was living sort of off the grid. I had, you know, grown up in this of trying to balance advances in technology with preservation of the environment. My grandparents spent the latter part of their lives to help us try to save our quality of life, you know, i thought for me and our generation so that we would know that quality of life that he had and and when peter and byron, an astronaut let me take a second and hit on a couple of names, byron had flown two Shuttle Missions and he was one of the first people i called and byron early on really was a Founding Member of the p prize as well as our friend ms. Beves. A number of people. I get a lot of credit in the book but there were dozens of people who were extraordinarily central to this. These guys were interesting and byron was a twotime astronaut and i got from him dinner in kirkland that i im not a space geek. Im kind of an aviation geek but i wanted to see our planet from space and what would that do to our ability to keep this spaceship, the only reason sustainable spaceship. It has plants and animals, all the people that we love, how to keep that sustainable. Maybe space can 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, you know. I thought, i will check it out further and further and the more you get involved, the more you get infected not just by this idea of going into space and maybe experiencing weightlessness, for me at the time i was disabled, i had Rheumatoid Arthritis because of my personal situation and what kind of evolved through that, you know, this team of people and working with the museum of flight and ralph and the experience of seattle here in raising money here and ah, peter. [applause] im, so sorry. You go girl. We know you have somewhere to be. I look forward to coming back. Thank you all. [applause] so now its just us. Now, we can talk about him and the real stories. [laughter] wait just a minute, hes not out of the building. Just that infectious entrepreneurial startup mentality that that didnt work or we will go talk to this person twice or and we went to see orbal and gave us 25,000 bucks. Its unbelievable. It was just amazing to be a part of a small team of people that got spaceship one hanging in the erin space museum next to my grandfathers plane. That that overnight success of 10 years that was incredibly difficult but had that kind of success, has given me, has given all of us that juice that we need to keep trying even after failure, to keep, okay, what am i going to do next because i know that i can change the world and that was its really the most incredible gift to have it come when it was really at the bottom, disabled, didnt have a life, didnt have a computer at the time, that would have been a good thing but my physical life was over but i was able to gain it back again and to gain that along with this arc with the spaceship was, you know, something, i dont know if i will get another chance but im going keep trying. I know youve got so many things going on here, are you thinking that you would wanting to into space, is there something in that lindbergh genetics that makes you feel like you want to give that a try . I would love to go to space and see our planet, when you talked to jim and those guys who have been out there and said, you know, everything that you know and love and depend upon to survive is down here, i want to experience that, but also looking at spaceship one in the, erin space museum, im not really a Rocket Scientists, im an aviation geek. What did i learn from this . How did we do we do that again and for aviation which is my field . Thats a big frontier for nasa too. And its a hard problem like space flight, density of batteries is way to heavy. The more weight you carry into the air, the more power you need to keep it and therefore the more weight you need to carry. Its a net i have feedback loop but its important, we need clean and quiet flight and exciting flight to get the next generation going and if we dont, someone else is going to be sitting in the left seat, the pilot seat driving that industry. So weve got to do it and we are sort we are at the exuponential curve where we are trying to see tremendous amount of electric development and the batteries are slowly coming along so we can start to see it, taking a lot longer than i had hoped when i started ten years ago. Julian, i want to hear how you got involved because this was such a big story, what were you doing when the flights occurred . What were you thinking . I was thinking you were about 8 years old. I was a reporter at the chronical and i met peter two years ago, thats it. I was doing an a1 profile on him and i said, how did this whole x prize thing began, i knew it only in the most superficials glands. The more he told me about it, the more intrigued. I hadnt looked at the incentive prize model and i certainly didnt know how many times people had told him no. I hadnt known much about burt, hes larger than life, you cannot make this sort of character up which is why i like nonfiction and the test pilots and erics story, paul alan, dave moores story, you know, trying to bring structure to scale composites in a very different ecosystems. I really i go about stories because of the characters and the drama and where they began and where they end and what are their dreams, what are the obstacles they face and what do they do to make the dreams a reality and how does it affect us. I seem to like the underdog stories and this was certainly a david versus golia struggle and i became more captivated by the characters. The more i knew about them and to think that history was made and inspired an industry thats at its most promising state today, as you know. Any other questions right now . Just a second. Here. Put your forecasting hat on, im really sorry peter can participate, but could each of us we heard it was 30 million a person and we heard peter say it was a hundred dollars of energy, whats the cost going to be in ten years. Dave, youre the number cruncher. Lets let him tackle this. [laughter] is that on . Im actually putting a lot of faith in virgin to getting this spaceship together. It was unfortunate that they had the serious accident on halloween where the first crash and killed pilots, but they had the second example built at this point that was being built by the Spaceship Company run by a friend of ours doug and i really think they are going get that thing together. I think we are at year or two away of several world flights available for 250,000. Ten years from now, i dont know. Hopefully i met elon musk a number of times and he has an amazing team and amazing individual and amazing commitment to actually getting people on mars. Hes going if anyone can do it, he can. He is our iron man of our generation. So ten years from now, you know, a lot of possibilities there that could be really affordable for a lot of folks. Yeah, i think the figure that we used to talk about that was the most meaningful to me was that all forms of transportation are expensive at the beginning, trains, automobiles, they are prohibitively expensive and once you start to achieve those economies of scale, the costs go down. Im not up for 250 grand for a flight. Bring it down to 50 grand, 25 grand. I would go maybe twice. That may be possible ten years from now. Thats what i was thinking. I has to get down to 25. Down to 25. I think thats our price goal, 50, maybe 15 years from now 25. Seems like achievable goals with the progress thats been made so far. Dave, this question is for you, you were ive listened to about half of the book and i think you worked in the early days for microsoft along side bill gates; is that correct . Right, i started in microsoft in 1981. Theres 60 people in the company and i was hired in 1981. Bill gates was my boss for four years. Those are the early days of the it industry right here in seattle and you also had a frontrow seat to the early days of the birth of commercial space industry. How would you compare i read about some of the challenges and being a Program Manager and difference between software and aerospace . They brought me in at boeing. I was hired to originally work on microsofts spreadsheet product and so i was charged with sort of grownup control and monitoring and guidance through that whole project and jeff johnson was my project manager on project where we yet to have a role of sort of good cop, bad cop. I did a lot of negotiations on the contracts and sit down and find out what the dirt was, what was really going on at the in the project on a daily basis and there was sort of a seminole moment, december 2002, team had been enactive for about a year. Every time we saw their schedules, here is what we are going to do and do by this particular date and they were telling us, now we have slipped another week or two months, every time we would see a new schedule it slid month to month and we had to go town down and you are inventing new things. In the early days of microsoft we were inventing new things but there are basic way that is you can look at the technology, basic steps that you can apply, basic way that is you work with the events and how do you actually interact with the engineers and the people actually have to do the work. You go out and work with them. This is what we are trying to do. You tell me what sort of systems you need and lets Work Together to put together a plan. At one point jeff and i were describing this and he said, i have to go out and tell them the date, no, burt, you have to ask them when they can get it done. When they actually work with you to come up with the schedule and you have the basic, basic agreement of what youre going to do by a particular time, theyve made that commitment. They are now actually respecting you for asking their opinion of when they actually can get the work done and theyve made that solid commitment to reach that date. Thats when you hit the milestones, thats when you keep the project on scale and budget in control. That was the major thing i learned in microsoft early on that jeff and i were able to train team to get the project on time. Jeff, do you have anything you would want to add, i would love to hear what you have to say maybe i will take peters spot up here. Well, basically working for dave, when you go down there, im the center of the point guard, when you went down the first time, you could visibly how stressed out the engineers were when we talked to them. Whats the date . 12 weeks. You know, this is 25 years old, theres a video about this later. Great engineer and burt had told him the only days they would understand is 12 weeks from now or whatever, i dont know the exact number. Under cover we would go and say, burt is not here anymore, i really dont care what answer you tell me but you cannot slide it in my i have to give an update. If it slides we will have to come to jesus and then you guys are on the hook, you understand, yeah, okay. But it took a few weeks. Burt was really uncomfortable with that. Are we looking at the same kind . [laughter] id date take a few weeks, months for them to understand. You have to learn your way around an organization. You are going get one story from a guy who is really far up in charge to make project work and if you have more foots on the ground, you can kind of that guy hasnt slept in three days. I dontthink youre making the day. Burt told us one number. This is my number. I think we should budget for that. A lot of things they can do. I was just going to say peter was saying. Its really not bad. It always takes longer than what its going to take. That just comes with territory. Aviation is history. Way the project started out for me paul sent me a piece of email and said we should do something with burt. Thats all i said. I had to figure it out. When burt proposed the project to me, i said, here is what burt thinks it is but whatever he tells us in the end its going to cost more, its going to take longer and craft is going to be too heavy. All the things came true. Any other questions . Its true, alan, its true in aviation and space, it always takes longer although blue origin and spacex are kind of changing that curve. Maybe virgin galactic. It always takes longer. Anybody from blue origin hire . Come on. [laughter] every company that i could find, because i wasnt necessarily going tell paul, recommend to paul that we find and i wanted to see all the possible competitors and i knew about blue origin at the time. This was like 2000. I reached out to jeff bezos to find out what was going on. They were going down the path of won x prize. I drove up down to their office down some place and theres actually a sign out blue origin, inocked in the door and no one answered the door. To this day i havent talked to anybody in blue origin. But i talk today 22 other companies in my Due Diligence before we signed the paperwork to spaceship one. This was experimental and taking longer because they had simply never done this before. It had never been done. I had been done by the worlds three largest government, the u. S. , china and soviet union. You have a small team of 20 to 30 engineers working in the mohavi desert and a great story in the book about thermal Protection System. A classic. None of it had been working and they had been coming back from flights and the paint was shipping off and it was like the desert of the mohavi, the nose of spaceship one and young engineer, burt, this is not going work, what are we going to do, we have flight coming up and burt says body puddy. Scrape some of this on and put body putty and will dry like hard candy. Its like automotive puddy. Thank you. Matt is like what, are you kidding me . Hes looking at burt and burt walks away and hes like, okay, body puddy. He tested it in different temperatures and it works. He goes back to burt and says, it works, it works, what works, the buddy puddy. Yeah, great. This proprietary so you cant just call it body puddy, you need to go to the store, you need to get some different ingredients, speaking of the recipe here. You need to get something to make it proprietary, you need to get oregano, this is a true story. This is why i love nonfiction, you need to get cinnamon because you add cinnamon to body puddy which becomes pink and go with the theme and thats what the proprietary thermal Protection System was and it worked for spaceship one. If you look real closely you will see little oregano in the paint. Dont forget the oregano. This gentleman had a question. In both past and the future, who do what do you think has been more important, innovation of technologies, invention of new or just more capital to help create a larger economy of scale for it, for Space Development . Did i mention im not a Rocket Scientist . In most Technological Development its a step by step iteration. Its people putting together off the shelf stuff in a new way. Computer code. My grandfathers flight to the atlantic was off the shelf stuff. Burt, his stuff is a little more crazy, more out there, more experimental. It really isnt. Honest to god. The big story that bert told dave and i, i will ask the question to the audience, how much of the earths air is under 60,000 feet . What percentage of the atmosphere of earth is at 60,000 feet or lower . Anybody know . Guess in the back. 85 . Thats right, 93 to 95 of the air is below 60,000 feet. Above 60,000 feet your body temperature is high enough to boil the water in your body at the air pressure that to 60,000 feet. Lethal about 68 if you dont have a space suit. I dont know when it was. Its a pressurized homebuild aircraft, pressurized. 32. Really . Thats almost a spaceship, right . Thats over half. Youre 70 at 30,000 feet. Dude, youre not even good at it. I could do better than that. That was his first step. If we built a sealed vessel, theres no its just an egg, theres a co2 scrubber, a tank of literally a scuba tank to add extra air in that thing. Thats it. Theres no special freaky space suit or anything like that. We will get a scuppa scuba tank and if the pressure looks low, you should open the valve. [laughter] you can assess but they are way more complicated thing, the spaceship one is like old assessment. The same kind of thing. You only innovate when you have to. Thats the trick to doing it cheaply and quickly. The rocket motor, that was tricky. That took all the innovation. The rest is straightforward and reentry. So right, stable reentry, thats the big thing that burt talks about. If youre too high, you bounce off and end up in the ocean, if youre too low you go too fast and burn up. Both of those are bad. So you want you want to create a way that no matter what the attitude is of the airplane of reentry its stable and you fly home and land. Thats exactly what space ship one does. Two areas of innovation. Thats it. I said earlier we only have two patents on that and the other is southern and the other rocket mounting. Keep the innovation as small as possible and achieve the technical goal you are looking for. If you know where the leading edge of technology is at the time and putting together, thats where most inventions come from. Latest stuff is and go, i could use it for that, i could use it for that. Thats where you want to pay attention. And bondo is much more useful than they thought. [laughter] burt should get a patent for all the crazy beautiful designs because those are not standard. Who came up with that . Is that burts design . The art. Dan. Hes the guy kind of famous for making the modeled airplanes. Artist of scale and this one is a really cool model airplane. He designed the beautiful white knight scheme. They are vinyl. Like sticking on a car. Who else makes designing like that . Exactly. When you hold it up and look at it, its an alien head. Who does that . Only burt. Burt lived in a pyramid. Two guys flying boomerang. One guy is tearing the mask off. [laughter] that tells you a Little Something about his creativity. Alan, i think we have time for one more question. Okay. Lets make it a good one. No pressure. Young man right here. Yes. The gentleman right in the front. Wait a second and you will have the mic. So would this plane so on the sides it kind of looks like planes, my question is why did they make it look like planes on each side, did they want to cut off at the end of the other side thats attached to the main body to make three planes total . It does look kind of weird. It is weird. This is what erika is talking about. Ly get up and show you what happens here. So i think what youre talking about is these arent connected, right . They look like two planes side by side. Remember, jet exhaust into the tail would be bad because its hot. The weird connection is you need to have enough room down here to carry spaceship one fully underneath it. Its a twostage altitude design and flies like an airplane. Totally safe. Everybody gets out. I thought we were going to space today . Not today, too risky. You would be fine. You have room underneath to land. Also that this configuration as will the strat to launcher, another burt ruttan design. Turns out thigh work really way and aviation guys are like, im not sure its going to work and burt is like, im sure its going to work and im in charge and well try it. And it did work really well. All his air planes share this kind of fantastic ethos and the work beautiful because all theyre designed to do is the one specific purpose, burt has in mind, with no hommage to how its done. He used the making of this to prototype the making of that. To save time and effort. One neat thing. How old are you . Ten years old. When burt rattan was growing up, he loved aviation. He loved planes and so did his brother who became a test pilot. But burt was a guy who wouldnt debt a model airplane kit and build it from that kit following someone elses instructions. He would have watch his brother build the plane, his brother would fly the plane, his brother would crash the plane and he would pick up the pieces and make a plane of his own design, and it started when he was your age, and he loved designing planes but also loved designing planes of his own imagination and thats what he kept doing all of this life. So wees drawn it to then and wanted to make things of his own design, which is a really powerful, amazing message. Julian, this is your party. So id love to hear if you head any closing words. I think thats a great message. When you find your passion or think about what it is and listen to your instincts and take in all of the knowledge that you can, but ultimately, follow your instincts, and try to do really, really extraordinary things, about its one step at a time. Was unstep at a time for burt rattan, for peter, one step 0 for everything involved writ was just a mutt matter of going back to the worth perseverance and innovating and coming back to it time and again and having this singular dream that you have to see realized. So thats one of the things i most love about this story. Are we done done are can ihead something . Add, add. Okay. Well, i just want to say that there is so much that is not in this book that when you read it you go, how could there be more . But this young ganymede Mike Melville was to old to fly for the airline, and he flew this rocket ship into space. He was 63 years old. He was 63. Actually flew it. So its not like the spate Space Shuttle the computerfullies it. Space ship one you fly it. Hi did 29 rolls. So i guess my point is, even if youre a young kid at 63, you can still go for it. And this story continues i so appreciate you writing it because it brought tears to my eyes to remember all the stuff we went through, and thinking, we were peter and greg and i had been struggling with this thing for years and we decided, our bucketlift, we want to get our glider rating and i was told you have the to go to minimum den, nevada, to do it. So we out there for a week of r r, get outcome glider rating and we see a longeasy flyin and its Mike Melville, and we go over to there are two operators there doing Glider Training and its mike and pete and brian, and those guys were there to get their commercial glider ratings because they were all kind of glider pilots already, i think, most of them, but the werent commercial glider pilots. They were on the payroll and flying this thing back as a glider so they had to get a glider rating. I so remember that. They had to go to dragster class. This rocket lights off you get all kinds of new things. This is totally burt. Theyre like, okay, rocket lights off, a lot of acceleration, you have to get used to that. How . Well, brian is in the navy, dont know member mo is an Aircraft Carrier theyll let us use so whats the second most acceleration you can have . A top fuel dragster. Isnt there that school in Southern California yes, there is. You guys all go down there for the weekend, and come back and brian is like, that thing launches hard. So 4. 5gs and its like a and thats how the practiced what the rocket would be like, by learning to drive a dragster. That would be like the initial boost phase. To go vertical to go to space. Thats so awesome, jeff, for me julian, writing this book has its kind of laid it all out in what we did, which really was not on anybodys radar. We did it. It was kind of a big thing. We got a lot of front pages at the time, but its a busy world and now its set down sort of as a legacy and thats incredibly powerful for people to learn about, how to persevere, and i had just learned something new from jeff so its like, there is so much and your story was disconnected from our story. It was like trying raid the money and effort inside seattle and st. Louis and new york and l. A. , and that all sort of coming together and even more so for me now, is a great gift. Thank you. [applause] thank you. I feel like we could be here all night but this is greater feel like weve been in on just around the virtual campfire and telling tales. Doesnt the museum do space camp . Let go. But there are mattressesle the museum does do space camp matter of fact. So, make sure to check into the camp. We brogue 2,000 campers last year. Anyway, at this time i invite our panelists. Every everyone can remain seat while our panelists make their way eve to booksigning table. Id like to thank all of you for your final this evening, our wonderful moderator, mr. Allen boyle. [applause] folks still have books to be signed or want to chat a little longer with our panelists, they will be over at the booksigning table. Thank you for coming out this evening to the museum of flight. Heres a look at the bestselling nonfiction books according to the new york times. Top the list is the magnolia story, and then bill oreilly and a recount of americas defeat of japan during world wod war ii. Up next Bruce Springsteens memoir and tim tebows shaken. Dj vance remembers up growing up and then moving away from the appalachian region. A look at the knockfiction betts seller lists continues with phil collins and his moment moyer north debt yesterday and then the chronicle of the life and death of alexander hamilton. James paterson and John Connellly for the rise and fall of Jeffrey Epstein in, filthy reach. National back award winner mary oliver reflects on her life, and fox news host dana perino looks how dogs transcend partisanship in, let me tell you about jasper. Many you can watch these authors on our business. Book of there. Org. I cannot think of a more