Dr. Leon Alkalai: From Rockets to Real Estate on Mars

32:31This is going to sound like science fiction for people, but this is your reality and the reality you've lived. How far away is this kind of stuff? So, you know, the vision that I described of launching missions from the moon to Mars, you know, I would say it's a good 15, 20 years away, but that's not such a big deal for humanity. You know, so it's really just a matter of making those first steps, proving that it can be done on a smaller scale, and then letting a lot of the commercial private industry take a leadership role. Certainly, the government has a role to be risked and to prove that it can be done.

33:20But then, just like a century ago in the US, the industry will take over. Now, how are you thinking about space junk and the amount of stuff? I mean, because obviously, SpaceX themselves are putting up thousands of satellites and everybody else is launching satellites too. How do we deal with that? Does that become a problem? For sure, it's a problem. But already there are some regulations in place and more, I'm sure, to be developed that are kind of, I would say, increasingly addressing the problem. You can't go back in time, but you can make sure that from here on, you are setting up the right rules of engagement and also the right regulation that you don't compound the problem unnecessarily.

34:15I'll give you an example. There is a regulation right now in place that satellites need to have enough fuel, remaining fuel, like the Starlink and so on, so when they are running out of juice, so to speak, they have enough fuel to deorbit and crash into the ocean and disintegrate. That is a good step forward, and that is a law that needs to be followed. But the right question is, well, what happens to those that were sent before and don't have those capabilities or those that are nonfunctional and are just dead debris up there? So there are companies, there are technologies to actually deorbit them.

34:59There are there's a company here local in Pasadena that plans to dock a little device on a defunct satellite and then open up like like a sail and then use the drag, use the forces from the sun to basically deorbit slowly and bring it down into Earth. So people are already working on removing space junk. Absolutely. And there's ideas, I think, really good ideas for laser-based incinerating and blowing up junk and vaporizing it in space, meaning more small debris, small particles. So there's definitely ways to do it. There are companies. There's Astroscale is one company that is planning to – it's a viable company doing something like this.

35:54the U.S. Space Force has a program called Orbital Prime just focused on that kind of capabilities. It will take some time, but people, including myself, are very worried about, you know, just going up there and not thinking ahead about orbital debris because there is this phenomenon that if there are bad actors in space, that one failure or explosion can then cause enough debris to do it, cause a chain reaction and hit other satellites and other satellites, and that would be a very bad day in space. So this is a concern, and people are thinking about it very much, including regulatory agencies.

36:47Okay, last big picture question before we go into some of the things you're looking at. How important currently is SpaceX in all of this in terms of getting up hardware into space for others, allowing them to do things? And how is the world going to solve the fact that there is a monopoly currently? So first of all, it is extremely important. And I can tell you from my experience that SpaceX is a, let's put it this way, a wonderful problem for the U.S. to have. You know, in a sense, yes, it might be a monopoly. Yes, it may be dominating, but they deserve it. And they're doing great. And the way I see it, the rest of the world is envious.

37:31And so that's, you know, let's not paint a negative picture here. It's wonderful. It's good for business. It's good for space. And if I were to directly be asked, I would love to see the Starship up and running as quickly as possible. Hopefully by the end of this year, maybe early next year. The Starship is a game changer for the whole space industry. At once, once that's available, we've been trained over decades in space to design systems that are very lightweight. The lower mass, the better because the launch vehicle is cheaper. All of a sudden with a Starship, you know, SpaceX is telling you, well, you can relax some of those constraints.

38:16You want to build large structures? You want to build data centers? You want to build big things in space? You can do it. Starship can do that. Not just Starship, you have the new Glenn and SLS as three heavy launch vehicles, certainly in the U.S. arsenal. So I see SpaceX as an amazingly positive phenomenon. And I don't see why anybody would complain other than they're doing great. What I see, let's kind of knock down SpaceX a little bit, is there is room for new players, in my opinion, for smaller launch vehicles. So there is an oversubscribed demand for access to space, no doubt about it. And there are companies that certainly I'm in touch with, ABL, Stoke, and Radian, that are all developing upmass capabilities that would very likely take a share of the market from SpaceX.

39:19I frankly don't think SpaceX would mind at all. It's good for business, more the merrier. It is somewhat ironic that with all, you know, there's really not a big competition today to SpaceX. There's Rocket Labs and virtually nobody else of the newcomers in this business. So they're doing something right. And we should congratulate. But we should see over time more people coming in, which opens up more opportunities, more innovation, which plays into the kind of thing. I want to go through a bit of your, you know, as you're putting together your incubator, some of the companies, you know, because that's all of this is what enables all of the stuff you're doing.

40:03So talk us through what you're seeing because you're at the earlier stage. So, you know, everything we're talking about is actually a bit later stage because it's been out there for a while, but you're seeing, you're at the coalface seeing the very early stuff. What are you seeing and what's getting you excited? Yeah, so I will mention a few things that we're tracking and very excited to follow and maybe invest. And there are a few companies emerging in the nuclear fusion space propulsion business. So that's one area, nuclear fusion. That means you don't need all of the usual fueling. That's right.

40:40Right. That you have basically energy, you have power, even at very long distances from the sun. So normally in space, you're limited to how far you can go from the sun based on the size of the solar rays or the efficiency of it. With nuclear energy, like we are using nuclear thermal, radioisotopic thermal generators on Mars. We do it routinely. All the large rovers, the Curiosity and Perseverance, are all nuclear-powered, but it's nuclear-thermal. You couldn't do the mission on Mars with that big rover with solar rays, because you would just require a lot of power. But with nuclear, you can drive around Mars for years and still have enough energy.

41:31Now, there's a progression, nuclear thermal, which has been around since Voyager, and we're using it all over the solar system. And then there's nuclear fission. Fission reactors is what we have on Earth. And in the submarines and airplane carriers, those are fission reactors. date back to the Manhattan Project and you name it, Oppenheimer. But now fusion is the next level of harnessing the energy that has been stored for billions of years in the nucleus of an atom. So that energy can be now released and that energy can be hardest to propel the spacecraft of the future. So that's one. I just want to ask a question about that.

42:22You know, always space leads the rest of the industry because you need so much innovation. So what you're telling us is we've already for a decade or longer been using nuclear to drive vehicles. Absolutely. So does that mean dot, dot, dot, eventually we'll have the same on Earth? So we have on Earth nuclear fission for decades now. And that's standard, I would say, in the world. There are always concerns, environmental effects, safety for the planet Earth. But fission is, I would say, the standard today. But fusion is much smaller, right? No, fusion, at this point, it's bigger because it's still early stage in development.

43:12But the prospects for what we would call better specific power, that means more energy per mass, is with nuclear fusion. And companies are working, the French, the U.S., others are working on nuclear fusion reactors to give energy to planet Earth. just as a more efficient way. The benefit of space is that space has the opportunity to provide capabilities that were unavailable until recently, and that organizations like NASA, the U.S. government may pay, may be the first customer to actually buy a nuclear fusion source of energy for exploration. So definitely I'm tracking nuclear fusion. There are a few companies in the U.S.

44:09and around the world working on nuclear fusion. That's one area of strong interest. We're tracking a number of different areas. I'm particularly interested in the area of infrastructure and the area of data aggregation about space. We have space weather. We have, you know, we have huge industries on Earth dealing with data about the Earth, whether it's navigation or it's just 3D maps, autonomous vehicles, and so on. I believe that there's room for a similar industry, but dealing with the moon, dealing with asteroids, and many other resources. So I'm interested in data aggregation of data off-world, data about space, space weather and many other.

45:14And I believe we're actually studying internally this as an idea for incubation. What else are you seeing? What are you seeing in terms of other crazy ideas from people who are doing things, whether they're things that you're investing in or just you're observing and saying, well, this is super interesting? So the other things that I'm really excited about that I'm tracking and is a number of companies and ideas in, for example, inflatable structures in space. So how do you launch something that is small and then either through a pressurization or through an origami structure, they can inflate or develop into large structures.

45:59So I would call those large deployable structures or inflatable structures. They can be used for habitats. They can be used as part of private space stations. That's another area that we're tracking. There are companies like Axion Space and others that are planning to build private space stations. The NASA International Space Station is going to kind of become a thing of the past, and there'll be more and more private real estate in space. And doing what? Oh, lots of stuff. We started this conversation about manufacturing. So setting up manufacturing facilities. So imagine as a real estate developer, you have this infrastructure in space, and then you open it up to manufacturers, bring your 3D printing machines, bring whatever you want.

46:51Here's real estate in space. So there's developers of real estate in space for manufacturing, for tourism, for research, for training of astronauts, for growing food, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals. There's a lot of opportunities and there are companies, just real estate development companies going up into space. I didn't quite imagine that one. Now, is there a location benefit in terms of proximity to Earth or proximity to the orbit that there's a different value you imagine to real estate for different purposes? Yes, but there's where, you know, it gets a little bit complicated. So in terms of Earth orbit, there are many layers.

47:40The closer you are to Earth, let's say three, four, five, 800 kilometers, that's called lower Earth orbit. Then there's MEO, medium Earth orbit, and GEO, geostationary. Geostationary has a long span of thousands of kilometers away. And geostationary simply means that the vehicle, the spacecraft, orbits the Earth at the same pace as Earth rotates. That means it's always over the same location. Now, until a decade or so ago, putting constellations in LEO was just not practice because when you're in Leo, you're traveling very fast and you're orbiting the Earth very fast. And that's what Starlink is.

48:23Starlink is in about 550 kilometers up. And so there as a mesh, they're orbiting the Earth very fast. And it used to be a pain to kind of keep track of these satellites in Leo. Now you see it for five minutes, then it's gone. And then you have to track another one, another one. Now the technology for the user on Earth to not care and not think about which one is up there, the system is tracking and is moving around and solving that problem for you. So the short answer to your question is where you go into space has many, many trade-offs. Into lower Earth orbit is a different radiation environment than in MEO and then geo.

49:09And then the speed is different. The tracking time from Earth is different. So you really need to kind of design your mission with all these parameters in mind and pick your the right location for the right mission. How long before people truly understand the scale of, you know, you and I've had this conversation a couple of times now. And to me, it's this whole thing is exponential in how fast it's developing, but most people don't have a clue. They're kind of waiting for their Starlink satellite. They don't really see it. They don't really believe in any of this. That's okay. I'm not so worried about that, but I do think there will be a few game changers that people will, as a much broader scale, they will take notice.

50:00In my opinion, people did take notice when India landed on the moon. That was a pretty remarkable event, and I certainly congratulate India for successfully doing that second time around. I think the next big development would be when a startup company, one of the intuitive machines or Astrobotic or iSpace, successfully land on the moon. That would be a new chapter. Private moon message. with not the amount of money on the scale of a sovereign country, but VCs. VCs putting money into a company that's now successfully landed on the moon, deployed a rover. To me, that's a game changer from kind of a how we view space.

50:49Certainly, that's one big development. But things have been happening, I think, in space year after year, which are just building blocks of humanity's expansion. A decade or so ago, when NASA retired the shuttle program and then decided to commercialize the cargo and the crew access to the space station, that seemed crazy. But today, that's working beautifully. And SpaceX and Axiom Space are sending their astronauts docking to the space station. That is not US government. They're paying for that. But now it's a commercial enterprise. So I think we're building these elements of a commercial infrastructure to do exponentially more and more.

51:44How do we find enough capital for this? Because space is not cheap, right? SpaceX have been, obviously, again, amazing at doing this, is generating revenue streams to do ludicrously expensive things. Are you starting to see capital flowing into the space? Is there enough capital yet? How does that need to evolve? I generally think there is enough capital going into space and will go into space. everybody will most likely agree that in the last two years, the financial investment market has been very challenging. So capital has a way of ebbing and flowing into different sectors. And, you know, I don't know that there's too much.

52:34There's always good rationale after the fact, but not good predictors ahead of time. But, you know, still topics that the world cares about include climate change monitoring. They include a lot of things that are of benefit to Earth. And those are increasingly more and more solvable from space. And so I think space is going to kind of grow on everybody and be part of certainly our future. In terms of money, I think today it is noticeably hard to raise capital for startup companies. They're looking for differentiators. They're looking for lower capital intensive investments. But that is all business as usual.

53:25That's been like that in history of investments. So I don't think that's... Yeah, it's just cyclical, right? There's too much money, then there's no money. It's always how it is. I think it's cyclical and the market adapts to new developments. You know, there's companies that raised capital quickly a couple of years ago, and then maybe they failed. Maybe they didn't achieve what they wanted. Then there's contraction. Then there's down rounds and buying into companies at a lower value. All of this is kind of business as usual. and I think most would agree that it's healthy as corrections in the marketplace, which is part of a market-based economy.

54:07And if this is so strategically important for the game of nations, does the US and others not have funds to fund these companies or people like yourselves who are finding the companies, holding their hands, working with them? Is there state capital available? and not really yet? Oh, there's plenty. There's plenty. One of the largest, in the US, there's the Small Business Administration, SBA, which as they brand themselves, they are the angel investor or seed investor in the US entrepreneurial business. So this is government money. The SBA, Small Business Administration, they funnel money through all the agencies like NASA, Air Force, and so on.

54:56And they have multiple solicitations a year for exactly that, for startup companies. Countries other than the U.S. have their own programs. I know Israel does, the U.K. and France and others. The U.S. is just on a much larger scale. The SBA is in billions of dollars every year. And then you have other organizations. There's a well-known VC firm called In-Q-Tel, which particularly addresses the needs of the U.S. intelligence community. And there are other VCs that focus on these dual-use applications. They're all very active. so what is the thing that you believe will happen that nobody else does what is your crazy idea leon's crazy idea that you say you know what i think this might happen and nobody else believes that yet because you know you're in the business of crazy ideas i mean there's practicality to it but to most people these don't seem practical but you know you're out of JPL, you know what's doable, what's not doable, when it becomes doable.

56:08So what's Leon's crazy idea that you think, you know what, this may happen and people don't expect that yet? Well, one of those crazy ideas that I believe that we just, and I'll give you more, but one of those crazy ideas that we've acted on are these data centers in space. And these are not just your your regular satellites where you just plug in the servers and, you know, launch a Microsoft or NVIDIA server in space. We're talking about a completely redesigned system that is designed for space. As I said, natural habitat. So I envision that to me is a crazy idea in the sense that even though it's been envisioned many decades ago, I think the timing today is right to build these data centers in space.

56:56I think not a crazy idea, but manufacturing in space will take off. Just building infrastructure and manufacturing in space is a big deal. But I want to use your platform role, as I've done last time, to kind of project something long-term. And I've done that last time and basically kind of in a way criticizing society today for you know being technologically advanced but not not advanced in in consciousness as well as as much as in technology and I want to send a message that I want to envision and believe that space will enable peace on earth that space um whether it's providing uh various regions of this world for a uh kind of a broader view of that little dot where where the wars are going on that are just sensitive in my with all humility there is a condition i can't remember what it's called that astronauts find when they go up and see the earth and it kind of changes the chip in their head absolutely and and i've i've talked to dozens and dozens of astronauts i don't know the term for it somebody may uh yeah i can't remember but uh but there is a certain kind of an epiphany a certain awakening and a certain spirituality that astronauts bring back uh from experiencing the world from above, from space or from the moon.

58:44And that is just a certain level of grandness or vision that basically awakens a belief that we are all one, that we are on one planet, whether we destroy it or take care of it. and the wars and the killings and the fighting just don't make sense. And do you think that they're based on the fact that this globe in the middle of nowhere, we think of it as finite resources. So we fight over resources because we're humans. And if you remove the finiteness of resources, that maybe alleviates that pressure on mankind to fight over everything. I think that's part of it, but I don't think that's the immediate issue.

59:37I think the way we are structured today, if we bring resources, let's say an asteroid with trillions of dollars of resources, the way we're structured today, those resources will belong to somebody and not everybody. historically the way we've managed this planet is in a very i would even call it childish way we protect our own and we exclude everybody else so you know birds and animals don't think that way You know, resources belong to everybody. And, you know, to me, this is how as a society, we've evolved through colonialism, through wars, through this is mine, build the borders, build the fences, shoot anybody.

1:00:35It's just part of our history. The history of humanity is defined through wars, unfortunately. And way beyond my time, I believe there will be a time where we will kind of revisit that. And even a country that doesn't have any resources, in my opinion, should have some ownership of all planetary resources. and we are on one planet and breathe the same air. And so I don't think we're developed yet as a society to deal with it that way. We kind of hog our own resources, but eventually I think it should be thought different. I mean, I really hope so, because we need a reset somewhere. We can't just continue down this path because that path is not a good path.

1:01:28You know, and it leads to the inevitable destruction of ourselves and the planet. Well, the planet will survive, but humanity doesn't in the end, if we're not careful. That is kind of what I'm worried about, is that we're kind of set in our ways. And in a way, the winner takes it all. And I think, again, back to my talk with you two years ago, I still am concerned that as a society, we seem to be in the dark ages, technologically, were advanced. But in terms of global vision and caring about the whole planet and all the people on this planet, we're very backwards. I'm going to ask you the question because I really desperately want to ask you this.

1:02:15What is your thought on aliens? And have you read the book American Cosmic yet, which was a very interesting book? So let me answer the first question. I I strongly believe in aliens. Let me ask, but I will rephrase that in case somebody just cuts it off there. I do believe that there is life outside of Earth. I even think that it is not unlikely that life did not originate on Earth. It could have easily originated on Mars or Titan or some other body and then exported to Earth under various interplanetary communication systems, meaning, you know, debris and so on. So, but I do believe that there are many, many other forms of life in our galaxy just by the sheer statistics.

1:03:06I would think that that is very likely. The number of exoplanets detected in our galaxy are huge in the thousands, many of them in the Goldilocks zone comparable to Earth. And we are imaging and finding ways to look into the atmospheres of those exoplanets more and more. So aliens, if you call aliens, other life forms, other life forms in our galaxy, absolutely. I think there's most probably many of them. The real question is how many of them are intelligent? How many of those have organized into intelligent forms? That's hard to say. You know, it's hard to understand. But I certainly believe in forms of life outside of Earth.

1:03:59And, you know, I hope we find that in our solar system in the coming years. We have a mission going to Europa and a mission going to Titan. So I hope we'll find some real evidence of life outside of Earth. And what about, I know these are crazy questions, but we're having a crazy conversation, about the UFO phenomena. Is it possible that either there is something that has an ability to propel itself and come into our thing, or is it some part of maybe the quantum field, which is us looking back at ourselves in the past or in a different thing? You know, if you were over a glass of wine with some friends, what would you say the hell is going on?

1:04:46I would most probably disappoint most of your audience or many of them. I really think so far, everything I have seen, there's no reason for me to believe that there's anything that cannot be rationally explained, even if we cannot explain it today. So, you know, I've always thought about this. there is a tendency for people that when they don't have an answer but don't have an explanation you fill it up with whatever imagination and so on i just believe that's not a scientific method it's not uh it just means that we don't know answers today and i'm of the belief that uh tomorrow or within the next couple of years we will have answers so there's no reason to jump to conclusions and fill it in with religion or things that we don't understand, that's my honest opinion.

1:05:46Yeah, I mean, I just keep an open mind to all of it and try and absorb information and just say like you do, we don't know. We don't know what this is. We don't know why people see these things. We don't know why they see ghosts. We don't know why they believe in religions. We don't know any of this stuff. It's just, so it's just, you put it down as unexplained and I guess we'll figure it out as we go. Yeah, the other answer I would normally give is that if let's assume, and this is scientific, let's assume that they're correct. Let's assume that there's something there that even if we cannot explain rationally, it is true.

1:06:21My answer to that is if it were, then it would ultimately materialize itself in ways that we would be sure. In other words, it wouldn't necessarily remain a mystery for years if there is an alien. It depends what it is, though. I mean, one of my theories is that it's something to do with the quantum field. So you've got various states at the same time. And therefore, it's just kind of a window on it somehow. And so eventually we'll be able to prove that. But physics is still trying to deal with this quantum theory and what the hell to do with it. That's right. That's right. But my point still remains that if these were aliens visiting or if this was an intelligence visiting, they wouldn't keep us guessing.

1:07:13Right. I mean, why not? Why not simply, you know, present yourself? Why not spell it out? I don't see a reason to. Well, also, I guess that presumes that their timescale is the same as our timescale. You know, we're thinking you've been here for 2000 years. Why can't you say something? And for them, maybe 2000 years is a day in our lives. Yeah, who the hell knows? But, you know, that's why space is so amazing, because it's beyond what we thought humans were capable of. and it's our imaginations. And, you know, I thank you for playing your role in making, manifesting this amazing thing that humanity can do that doesn't seem possible.

1:08:00And every time I speak to you, I just feel like it's amazing how possible it is. And thank you for all of the stuff that you've done to make this happen. You're more than welcome. And I want to just add to your point, And space has also always been a motivator for curiosity with the young people. Kids, looking up, I used to sit down at night and watch the shooting stars and ask myself, where does space end? That was kind of always bogging my mind. Is there an end to space? Those kind of thoughts and those kind of opening kind of moments, I think, are inspirational to the young and curious. It encourages the young to go into science and technology.

1:08:51And I just hope that at the end of all these, there's also the notion of peace and prosperity and bringing more peace around our planet with the people of different kinds, different religions. We just need more hope, more optimism and more helping people all around. So that's the moonshot we should aim for. There you go. All right, my friend. Thank you so much for this. It was brilliant. Thank you so much. And look forward to talking to you again. Absolutely. Thank you. So there you go. I told you it's going to be crazy. And what a journey is. And I told you, I'd take you on a journey. And I took you on a journey to space.

1:09:36I took you on a journey to the moon. I've taken you on a journey of understanding of stuff that you didn't know was happening. server farms in space and manufacturing in space and private expandable spaces in space, the real estate market in space, how the privatization of space is accelerating, why the moon matters. These are not things that you read in newspapers, but they are things that are incredibly important. But most important of all to me was Leon's big idea. The idea that maybe space offers us a chance to restart how we as humans deal with each other as humans. Again, it's the idea of travel.

1:10:25When you travel away from your town, your village, your country, your city, and you go to an incredibly different one. So I would urge anybody to go into the middle of Africa or go to India and travel around and have your mind blown. Or if you are in India, go somewhere else, have your mind blown by different experiences. And what it does is it really changes your perspective on what is what. And you don't believe the narratives that you read in newspapers any longer about who is good and who is bad. And you realize that is not the case. And so travel to space to look back at this little blue dot from the distance and realise how small that all is and how we can do things differently is Leon's message of hope.

1:11:12That's his mission. And I think that's a mission I can get behind. That is the moonshell. See you next time.

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