Rapid Response: Landing on the moon, with Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines

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1:18All stations, this is Mission Director on IM1. we're evaluating how we can refine that signal and dial in the pointing for our dishes. What we can confirm without a doubt is our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting. So congratulations IM team. We'll see how much more we can get from that.

1:45An excellent call from our mission director, Dr. Tim Crane. and over to our CEO, Steve Altus. Yeah, if I could just pass on a few words to the entire team in Intuitive Machines at SuperFab and here in the Mission Control. What an outstanding effort. I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting, and welcome to the moon. Houston, Odysseus has found his new home.

2:28Hey, everyone. Bob Safian here. That was Steve Altimus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, which recently became the first company ever to land on the moon and the first U.S. presence there in more than 50 years. But so many things didn't go as planned, requiring multiple rapid responses, always with imperfect information and under intense time pressure. The fact that the Odysseus lander made it to the moon's surface at all, even if it was on its side, is kind of miraculous. Back in the day, Steve worked on space shuttle launches at NASA, some 40 of them. Now he's trying to start a whole new industry in space.

3:10And ODI, as he calls the Odysseus lander, is the first step in that process. My colleague Reid Hoffman talks about entrepreneurship as jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. Steve and his team found themselves rebuilding Odie while in even thinner air in space from more than 200 ,000 miles away with little to guide them. And as Steve says, it worked. Let's listen in.

3:48I'm Bob Safi, and I'm here with Steve Altimus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. It takes a lot out of you, and so I needed a little rest here, and the whole team's catching up right now. But it's a great feeling. You spend all this time planning. I know you 3D print your own rockets. You pull together a communications network to stay in touch. You developed autonomous landing process. Odysseus becomes an autonomous vehicle as it approaches the surface, which we'll get to. So much prep. But you said in advance that only 75 % chance of success. Do you expect things not to go as planned as you're going into something as difficult and dramatic as trying to land on the moon?

4:34So many things have to go right, have to go absolutely perfectly. only 40 % of all missions to the moon in the history of mankind were successful. That means a 60 % failure rate. And that includes all the Apollo missions that were successful, right? It's hard to know which dramatic moment to ask you to walk us through first. You have the February 15th launch. And then as you get closer to landing, all kinds of trouble breaks out, which you resolve and are able to land on the moon. but then things are not quite operating as you hoped once you're on the moon. We launched off of a Falcon 9, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and we had our problems with loading the liquid oxygen, liquid methane onto our lander.

5:23You know, that has not been done in over 30 years. It was very hazardous. We went through two wet dress rehearsals and then finally a launch. Getting to launch vehicle separation and acquisition of signal was another major piece where we fly then separately from the rocket on our own, on our way to the moon, and we have to orient ourselves in space. That was a major, major milestone. This liquid oxygen, liquid methane engine that we 3D print in-house and we built the whole thing and invented the whole thing ourselves had never been fired in space. We'd never been fired in a vacuum. So was that going to work?

6:01So take me to the first sort of mission-critical moment when you're approaching landing. It's the night of the 21st. It's around 10 o 'clock. And you get a call to come in. Boy, it was one of those calls like you don't want to get at night when it says, you ought to get in here right now. Turns out that our lunar orbit insertion maneuver that puts us into roughly a 100-kilometer-by-100-kilometer circular orbit around the moon was misshapen. We were very low on what they call paraloon, the bottom of the orbit near the South Pole. And we know that the mountains in the area in the South Pole that we were flying by were six kilometers high.

6:42And, you know, folks were worried about, oh, we're going to hit the moon. We're going to hit the South Pole of the moon. We're too low. He says, wait a minute. Let's just calm down. Everybody just stay focused. take our time, let's get this maneuver right. And we actually burned the engine again and raised that Paraloon up to the right altitude to set us up for power descent. And so that was a matter of, you know, just keeping our heads together, deal with the problem that was right in front of us, solve that one, to go live another day to solve the next problem that was coming. One of the hardest challenges for leaders in all situations is knowing sort of when to delegate and when to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself?

7:25In times of crisis or critical moments, how you carry yourself is really important and a calming influence in this case was necessary. The operations team knew what to do. They had a plan. But the criticality or the consequence of doing that wrong was so severe we were going to lose the mission to the moon that we need to take a deep breath. We have three operations teams, red, white, and blue team. And then on the outside the control room, there's a team four. And I was one of the two leaders of team four. So we're there to troubleshoot, to make sure, to get the experts together and make a decision, and then give that to the mission director to go implement.

8:12And that's what we did here in this case with that critical lunar correction maneuver to raise that orbit. And it worked. It worked. So my understanding is that Odysseus, as it approaches landing, it becomes an autonomous vehicle. In other words, it's got to find its own spot to land, right? And you've got a hazard detection avoidance, HDA, which are sort of cameras and lasers that help the computer on the vehicle find the right place to land. Am I explaining that the right way? Yeah, the vehicle had to be prepared to autonomously start the engine. The Odie burned the engine himself and cruised along and took pictures or images of the craters and then could tell how fast he was going over the surface by how fast the craters moved underneath him.

9:07We look ahead at the landing site and scan with hazard relative navigation cameras, we call them HRN, scan. And we found nine different points within our landing ellipse that were clear to land in and that had slopes less than 10 degrees and rocks smaller than bowling balls. My understanding is that there were lasers that you were planning to use for this landing, but that for some reason they weren't operating. And so you sort of borrowed lasers from a project that you were carrying on Odysseus, on the vehicle for NASA. Tim Crane, who is my partner in the company, he also was the mission director.

9:52And when I told him, hey, we're going to have to land without laser rangefinders, he turned white as a ghost. It was like a punch in the stomach. He was like, we can't. We can't land without rangefinders. So we're walking down the hall trying to figure out, do we put a script in there and just pretend we understand the surface of the moon and go for it? and, you know, a simulated script. No, no, no, that won't work. And then all of a sudden the light bulb goes on in his head. He's like, I know. We've got three lasers on board that aren't being used. Those are the NASA Doppler LIDAR lasers. Brilliant, brilliant idea of how to use the spacecraft and how to use other assets on the spacecraft.

10:29And so we made a phone call as team four to NASA and said, hey, you have this NASA Doppler LIDAR, and we're watching it, and it's shadowing our landing. We want to have the actual navigation application read those laser measurements. So we made makeshift laser rangefinders out of the NASA Doppler LIDAR by reprogramming our navigation application to trick the software to have those laser beams think they were the laser rangefinders. We took about a month's work of navigation software development and did it in about 45 minutes. You mentioned earlier this sort of the adjustment you were making on the orbit.

11:13Was this adjustment around the lasers happening at the same time? The fact that we had a low orbit coming in after lunar orbit insertion, we turned on one of the lasers and attempted to fire it to see what our altitude was, and we didn't get the laser to fire. So all of a sudden we realized we have to do something. So if you hadn't had that orbital problem, when you discovered the laser problem, it might have been too late to make the adjustment that you ended up making that allowed you to land the way you did. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We would not have been able to make it. As it turns out, though, as we worked it all day to write that software to solve the problem with the NASA Doppler LIDAR, as we went into power descent, we did not receive those NDL measurements.

12:01and so we landed without the laser altimeters in the end. But we had done some work, you know, to get us there. And we looked at the NASA Doppler LiDAR telemetry and boy, did it track perfectly. So it would have really put us down softly if we could have read those measurements. I see. So you went through this effort to pull that together, but in the end, it didn't impact the way the vehicle actually operated. Right. We failed to ingest those measurements and so we didn't get the benefit of using them. But that's okay. We did the work and we showed it could be done. And then in the end, it proved out just how accurate our navigation application is.

12:43So that while some people say you landed short of your landing site or you landed hard, probably three meters a second versus one meter per second. The fact is it's like flying a fighter jet blindfolded with a dead stick onto an aircraft carrier. That's what we did on the moon, basically. And it just showed that the algorithms that we have for navigation were so accurate that we were able to salvage the landing without all the necessary equipment. So I was watching the video of the landing, and sort of the lander gets to the surface. I'm watching your control room there, which I guess for you is just the office, but it looks like a control room.

13:26It's a control room, yeah. And it gets to the surface and silence. Like there's like one minute and two minutes, and you're sort of waiting. Like what is going through your head while you're waiting to find out? Because you don't know whether it's at that point whether it's landed successfully or not because you're not getting any data back, right? Yes, I'm looking over my shoulder, and there's the prop console, which is watching the engine firing. And there's the flight dynamics officer who's watching how we're tracking the spacecraft. Everything looks perfect. And then all the screens go purple.

14:00And that's an indication that we don't have communications. So it's funny because all of the NASA VIPs that were here were in the conference room that looks over the control center through big glass windows. And we're like, okay, I better go say something to them. So I went in there and I says, look, we had good propulsion. We had good flight dynamics and control. But we don't have communications yet. and boy, their faces were kind of stern. And then I go back into the control room, and we're sitting there for minutes, and then all of a sudden, bing, we get a ping from the spacecraft. That's when you saw a little bit of cheering in the control room, just modest.

14:39And then I went back into the conference room with the NASA officials and said, we have communications. And they just were ecstatic at that point. And from that point on, just more and more communications and more and more understanding as we got data back on what the vehicle orientation was. and that we were going to be able to do science on the surface. And we were going to be able to receive all the data back from how our system performed on the surface. And so it just got better and better. One of your colleagues said to me that there were 11 different things that went wrong, that each had like a 70 % chance of being able to fix them, which in aggregate means that the odds of success were like 2 % when you put all that together.

15:22When you look at all that, do you feel like, oh, we were lucky? Like, how do you gauge your success in light of those parameters? Odysseus or Odie wouldn't let us sit back and watch. We had a lot of work to do all the way to the last moment. There is something spiritual about it. I think there was a whole lot of people around the world pulling for our success. And there is a certain reverence and respect we have for the mission to return the United States to the moon in the first time in 52 years. But how do you take those odds of potential failure? And it was the team who showed agility and resilience and stick-to-itiveness or perseverance.

16:10No one gave up until the last moments or the last breath of Odie, when the sun was leaving the solar rays and the battery was discharging. We blasted down the last image. And I think that's how you raise the odds, is you have that attitude, like we're not going to give up. We're going to find a way. We're going to be innovative to the end. And that's what we did. There is something spiritual, as Steve puts it, about navigating through all those last-minute travails, especially when you're up in the heavens. But there were also challenges once Odie was on the surface of the moon, and then, of course, all the business challenges back here on Earth.

16:48We'll talk about those when we come back. Stay with us. Real leaders don't back down when the stakes are high. They innovate, they push forward, and then they take the stage at the Masters of Scale Summit. Join us in San Francisco, October 7th to 9th, to hear from the CEO of the New York Times, scientists using cutting-edge technology to find cures, the leader of crypto powerhouse Coinbase, a retired four-star general, and many, many more. Apply now at mastersofscale.com slash apply25. That's mastersofscale.com slash apply25. If you're ready to take your startup from idea to impact, then AWS is your launchpad.

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18:22The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one. So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free. Before the break, we heard CEO Steve Altimus of Intuitive Machines talk about being in the control room as the first U.S. moon lander in 50 years encountered difficulties on its way to the surface. Now we dig into the touchdown, whether it was a success and how his background at NASA paved the way for his business. plus planning for the next moon buggy and other adventures in the emerging space exploration industry, which, thanks to Odie, is now operational.

19:09You started your career, spent a lot of your career at NASA, and you left. And I'm curious, like, why? Obviously, you're working very closely with NASA. Yes, absolutely working closely. I worked at Kennedy Space Center for about 16 years and was involved in 40 launches of the space shuttles, half of which were off of Launch Complex Pad A, which is where we launched our own spacecraft on the SpaceX rocket. And then went and ran engineering at the Johnson Space Center for human spaceflight programs for another decade or so. And that was my career. And we had no political will at the time I left to return the United States to the moon.

19:52I think that period of time inside of NASA, So working in engineering with no destination was very frustrating. And I went through the cancellation of the constellation program, which was the moon program, and came up with this idea to fly a walking robot to the moon in a thousand days and do it within engineering like an entrepreneur. And so I started that and that was successful. We flew that Earth-based testbed of that lander 37 times. And we built a walking robot and flew that on the International Space Station. We never got to go to the moon, but we did that for pennies on the dollar and showed that you can be innovative, you can be agile within a bureaucracy, you can be lean and affordable.

20:39So that was the premise going into starting Intuitive Machines, that culture. And that's why we were able to be successful, I think. And I think we'll continue to be successful as a result of that. And so when Odie's there, but it's on its side, it's not exactly where you want it to be. And there's a challenge about how to maximize communications and data exchange and stuff. How do you think about the relative success of the mission? Because you're still scrounging at that point, right? I think, let me just say, unqualified success. And that's land softly on the moon, do your science on the moon, and return that data back to your customer.

21:20And in the end, we used our model, our business model, and proved it right, which is this lean, affordable, fixed-price way of contracting to go to the moon. And I think we've established a new economic limit and are ready to open up this cislunar economy as a result of it and be the first ones pioneering through it. So from that perspective, this is a wild success. Would I like the gear to stand up to that heavier load or touchdown? Sure. And, you know, there's a lot of detractors on social media who say you broke a landing gear. Well, you know what? Our spacecraft got the opportunity to use their landing gear.

22:01Not many have, right, in the past. Because of all the drama around this landing, in some ways you got more attention maybe than you might have gotten otherwise. Do you think about that at all? Well, I guess there's no bad press. All press is good press. I would like to be perfect going to the moon, but I'll tell you, I've been associated with a lot of spacecraft missions, a lot of space exploration missions. There has not ever been a perfect space exploration mission, period. 40 shuttle launches, there's always in-flight anomalies. I think there's a little naivety in the community outside of the space community that thinks that it can be perfect.

22:46It's just physics and hardware and software and sometimes they're in harsh environments and sometimes they're in conflict and you have failures that you have to deal with. I'm thinking back in 2003, after the shuttle Columbia fell apart on reentry and killed everyone aboard, you were part of the team, the reconstruction team. During the last few weeks, did you find yourself reflecting on that and going back to those experiences? Or do you try not to think about that? I don't want to think about what the worst that could happen is. I led a team of about 400 people in the reconstruction of Columbia back in 2003.

23:24Very intense time. But what we were doing was we were solving a problem to return the United States back to flight of the space shuttle. You know, we had gone through the mourning period. And now this part of rebuilding the orbiter and finding a solution was cathartic for us. I'm sure you've gleaned a bunch of technical lessons from the experience. Are there process and leadership lessons as well that the last two weeks have either anchored for you or introduced for you? Oh, my goodness, yes. There's so many technical and operational things, but I think, one, it's the culture of this company, right?

24:04The people, you build a company that is mission-focused with a purpose, a national strategic purpose, and they're going to give you every bit. You know, Odie didn't leave anything on the table. There was no methane left. There was no helium left. There's no power left. And I think this team did the same. This team gave everything to this mission, and that's why we're successful. And now we have not only the ability to build incredible spacecraft, we have the team that knows how to do that and can fly them in space. So we're leaps and bounds ahead of others in the world that are trying to do this.

24:44Yeah. So what's at stake now for intuitive machines? I think what we've done is shown that there's a different model in aerospace, in space exploration. One, we're a publicly traded company. Lunar is our call sign, L-U-N-R. Amazing call sign, by the way. It's the coolest ever. And then we have two more missions to go, you know, probably later this year and then one early next year. we've we designed and offered to the government uh their next human moon buggy the lunar terrain vehicle and we would deliver that to the surface it's about the size of an f-150 pickup truck and uh and sell that as a service to the government and sell it to commercial interests also and so providing that space infrastructure as a service is kind of we're on our way for landing softly communicating navigating and bringing equipment cargo and mobility to the surface.

25:41I think we're a category-defining business at this point. Publicly traded space exploration company. Well, somebody said it, that back in Apollo days, it was a great time to be alive as an aerospace engineer. Everybody would say that and look back at Apollo and say, boy, that was the best time. And now we say, this is the best time to be alive as an aerospace engineer because you can dream this big and succeed and have a business that does that for a living. So I think it's a really special time in history and I'd love to be a pioneer and breaking this new frontier for the United States. Well, Steve, this has been great.

26:21Thank you. Thanks for sharing all this, even though I know you're still recovering. Just a little bit. I'm going to take a vacation. My wife's going to steal me away for a week and hide me away in the world someplace. To be honest, I've never been much of a space buff When I was running Fast Company, editors would pitch space-related stories, and I was always lukewarm. It just seemed more like science fiction than business. But what intuitive machines and Odie have done kind of turns me around. Operating in space seems fantastical, but it's becoming real. There's so many lessons in this journey about planning and about adaptability, about taking ideas from everywhere, about software and autonomous vehicles and the potential of AI.

27:07but most of all for me, it's about dreaming, about creating the future we want through active, deliberate, considered effort. And yes, a little bit of luck too. There are a lot of intractable problems on earth right now, but if we can manage to handle difficulties all the way on the moon, maybe, just maybe, we can be inspired to handle things here at home too. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening. Meet Nicole Nicholas, Capital One business customer and co-owner of Ansett Uncles, a plant-based restaurant and community space in Brooklyn, New York, that got its start from a need for unity. The inspiration, it was born from the desire to create a space that felt like home, where we can connect community culture, good food, and come together with family and friends.

27:56That's how we birthed aunts and uncles. Nicole and her husband, Mike, were fulfilling their dream of bringing people together out of their home kitchen. But they soon learned that the demand for community was greater than they knew. It became overwhelming and we were like, we need home, but not in our actual home. We realized that there was also a need in our community for something bigger in our neighborhood. So we had to find a place. Moving from a home operation into a storefront was a huge next step. But Nicole and Mike were able to take it on with the help of Capital One Business. It's not for the weak.