Space Forward Podcast

In this second installment, we continue our discussion with Harvard Professor Avi Loeb. We discuss ― Life In The Cosmos ― an academic textbook he co-authored with Manasvi Lingam which provides an analysis of the latest scientific methodologies for detecting life beyond our planet. We dive into the Kardashev Scale, a theoretical model for classifying stages the development of intelligent alien civilizations based on energy consumption, and the potential of applying a modified version, based on a more indirect but proportional scale of wasted heat or entropy production, toward today’s search for extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs). Learn more about Avi’s work with Breakthrough Starshot, a proposed flyby mission to our neighboring solar system Alpha Centauri, and how his recently funded Galileo Project will help to demystify Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Join us as we survey the latest endeavors to detect alien technosignatures, and explore whether monkeys may one day compose Shakespeare’s Hamlet on a typewriter.

This episode is the second part of our talk with Harvard Professor Avi Loeb. We discuss ― Life In The Cosmos ― an academic textbook he co-authored with Manasvi Lingam which provides an analysis of the latest scientific methodologies for detecting life beyond our planet. It’s an updated version of an original book written in 1966 by astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky. We dive into the Kardashev Scale, a theoretical model for classifying stages the development of intelligent alien civilizations based on energy consumption, and the potential of applying a modified version, based on a more indirect but proportional scale of wasted heat or entropy production, toward today’s search for extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs).

Learn more about Avi’s work with Breakthrough Starshot, a proposed flyby mission to our neighboring solar system Alpha Centauri, and how his recently funded Galileo Project will help to demystify Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Join us as we survey the latest endeavors to detect alien technosignatures, and explore whether monkeys may one day compose Shakespeare’s Hamlet on a typewriter.

Professor Avi Loeb is the Director of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He received his PhD in plasma physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and worked as a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Loeb is a New York Times bestselling author, chairs the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and founded the current Galileo Project advancing the search for extraterrestrial life.

CONTENT

00:00:35 Intro

00:02:21 Kardashev scale

00:07:01 Building Noah’s Ark in Space

00:12:35 Breakthrough Starshot

00:16:36 How to Decelerate as you get to Proxima B

00:22:05 A Masterpiece: Monkeys Typing Hamlet

00:22:39 Technosignatures: detecting Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)

00:26:44 The Galileo Project

In Episode 10, we talk to astrophysicist Avi Loeb about what he thinks we might find in the observable universe. Will it be biosignatures that will reveal extraterrestrial life? Or technosignatures, evidence of a past or present alien technology? Join us as he discusses his latest book “Life in Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures”, the possibilities of self-replicating, artificial intelligent von Neumann probes, and the absurdness - or not - of eating aliens!

Professor Avi Loeb is the Director of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He received his PhD in plasma physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and worked as a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton Institute of Advanced Study. Loeb is a New York Times bestselling author, chairs the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and founded the current Galileo Project advancing the search for extraterrestrial life.

CONTENT

00:01:36 Intro

00:05:14 Life in cosmos | Text book

00:07:11 Technosignatures | Oumuamua

00:11:51 Von Neumann Probe | Golden Record 2.0

00:14:05 Alien A.I.

00:15:58 Eating aliens

00:19:54 Smart kids on the block

00:25:21 Self-reflection

In this episode, we talk with astrophysicist Avi Loeb about what he thinks we might find in the observable universe. Will it be biosignatures that will reveal extraterrestrial life? Or technosignatures, evidence of a past or present alien technology? Join us as he discusses his latest book Life in Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures, the possibilities of self-replicating, artificial intelligent von Neumann probes, and the absurdness - or not - of eating aliens!

Professor Avi Loeb is the Director of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He received his PhD in plasma physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and worked as a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton Institute of Advanced Study. Loeb is a New York Times bestselling author, chairs the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and founded the current Galileo Project advancing the search for extraterrestrial life.

We discuss Earth's first on-orbit satellite inspection service with William

Crowe, CEO of the Australian startup High Earth Orbit Robotics, who is on a

quest to “makes space assets transparent”. We unpack how this space start

up pivoted from asteroid mining to space situational awareness, and future

business to scale for the Moon, asteroids, and beyond!

In this episode we discuss Earth's first on-orbit satellite inspection service, Australian startup HEO Robotics, on a quest to "Make Space (Assets) Transparent". We dive into how they pivoted from Asteroid Mining to Space Situational Awareness, the methods they used to find Product-Market Fit, and future possibilities to scale their business to the Moon, asteroids, and beyond!

Joining us for this conversation, we have an enthusiastic leader in space technology research, development, and innovation, Dr. William Crowe, Founder and CEO of HEO Robotics. William holds a Bachelor's of Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering and PhD in Space Flight Dynamics from the University of New South Wales Sydney.

CONTENT

00:01:44 Intro

00:02:35 May the force be with you / Star Wars Planetary Exploration

00:03:03 Low cost Asteroid Mining

00:04:59 The right time of funding / Competition out of business

00:06:04 Pivoting from Asteroid Mining to Space Situational Awareness / Finding Product/Market Fit

00:08:16 Observing Oumuamua?

00:11:11 Operational vs technical constraints

00:13:12 Flybys / Slingshots / Change of Economics of Launch

00:15:18 Shift from Academia to Start-up

00:17:42 Accelerators/Incubators / Lean Start-up & Academic becoming Founder

00:20:05 Sizing the problem / Investigating the problem / Trends that helped to raise the company

00:22:47 How to expand the value chain / Extending the business / Use Cases

00:28:25 The technology of swarm constellations / Starlink

00:33:05 Experimentation Framework & Prototyping

00:38:08 Licensing

00:39:08 LEO, HEO or Lunar Orbit?

00:40:08 The solutions customers want

00:42:34 SpaceX & Blue Origin

00:44:05 Australian Space Agency & Space Market

00:47:25 Why Space

In this episode we will explore the bleeding edge of satellite and satellite constellation miniaturization. These awe inspiring craft commonly known as Chipsats, Wafersats, Sprites, Monarchs, Kicksats, Starchips, or even just “Smart Dust” are facilitating the rapid miniaturization of space craft following an exponential trajectory stipulated by Moore's Law, no doubt enabling new incredible possibilities and discoveries just around the corner.

We talk about the unique physics and associated challenges that these low-mass vehicles face in space, how incredible engineering is overcoming them, and how the Breakthrough Starshot project will tackle the very difficult problem of sending a spacecraft interstellar to Proxima b.

Our guest today is Professor Zachary Manchester, who studied physics and aerospace engineering at Cornell University earning his BS and PHD respectively. Zac undertook his Postdoc at Harvard and became Assistant Professor at Stanford University, and later at Carnegie Mellon University where he now heads the Robotic Exploration Lab. He received critical acclaim for his Kickstarter.com crowdfunded Kicksat project - deploying an armada of chipsats in LEO and has published together with Mason Peck and Avi Loeb and is member of the Breakthrough Starshot Research team, who are working on an interstellar spacecraft mission to Proxima-b.

CONTENT

00:02:36 Intro

00:05:51 Inspiring Moments | Working with Professor Mason Peck

00:06:47 What are Femtosats, Attosats, Zeptosats, Yoctosats, Chipsats?

00:11:29 Regulatory Constraints | Collision Risks

00:15:12 Cubesat & Chipsat costs

00:20:00 Most valuable uses cases and applications

00:25:50 Chipsat Communication

00:28:28 Length Scaling

00:32:16 Thermal Equilibration

00:34:12 Attitude Determination and Orbit Control

00:43:36 Bio-inspired Constellation Management

00:53:15 Limits of Miniaturization | Smart Dust

00:56:00 Breakthrough Initiative | Starshot

00:59:45 Starshot Payload

01:07:39 Is Earth going to look like a Death Star?

01:08:59 Nuclear Propulsion

01:15:00 Most advanced Breakthrough Propulsion

01:16:18 The Origins of the Chipsat Idea | Kickstarter Campaign

01:30:42 Next Research Projects

01:35:09 Hard Problems to solve

01:38:58 Science Fiction becomes Science Fact

01:40:20 Why space and why space now?

In this episode, we will explore the rapid miniaturization of spacecraft,

commonly known as Chipsats, Wafersats, Sprites, Monarchs, Kicksats,

Starchips, or even just “Smart Dust” with Zachary Manchester, who received

critical acclaim for his crowdfunded Kicksat project, deploying an armada

of chipsats in LEO. Manchester is also a researcher with the Breakthrough

Starshot team, working on an interstellar spacecraft mission to Proxima b.

In this episode we talk about MIT's Lunar Knowledge Graph called Lunar Open Architecture and MIT’s intriguing research on a crowd-sourced, sharing-economy-like, tokenized satellite constellation. A sat-constellation-as-public-utility.

The MIT’s Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative has the goal “to invent, create, and deploy ideas that seem exotic and impossible today, but could be commonplace in ten years.”

Our guest today is the research lead of MIT’s Lunar Open Architecture project, Mehak Sarang. Mehak is a trained physicist and a Research Associate both at Harvard Business School and MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, and an active member of the Open Lunar Foundation, Moon Dialogs, and the SGAC EAGLE Team.

CONTENT

00:02:14 Intro

00:07:44 MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative

00:12:50 Lunar Open Architecture

00:19:47 Knowledge Graph / GraphQL / Automated Reasoning

00:26:04 Stakeholder Interests of NASA, SpaceX, and others

00:32:32 Database Open Access

00:35:35 How to contribute?

00:37:03 Sharing Economy in Space | Blocksat

00:44:39 Satellite constellation for the people by the people

00:53:53 Time to market

00:56:17 What is needed to start up Blocksat?

01:00:13 Federated Satellite Applications

01:03:26 What’s next at MIT Space Exploration Initiative

01:05:33 Next Harvard Business Review Case Study on ISS

01:11:49 Why space, why space now?

In this episode, we talk about the rise of Space Marketplaces and how the Satsearch Product Knowledge Graph helps solve problems for marketplace users. We ask, what kind of Acquisition Loops work in the space sector, how does their Experiment Framework look like, and should space marketplaces scale vertically or horizontally? We talk about unit economics, defensibility, and how Satsearch bootstrapped its way forward with the support of the ESA Business Incubation Center.

Our guest is Narayan Prasad, co-founder, and COO of Satsearch, a global marketplace for the space industry, incubated by the European Space Agency. Narayan is a multiple degrees academic in space-related sciences, a vivid member of the Indian space community - an Indian in Germany living space entrepreneur.

CONTENT

00:01:25 Intro

00:09:18 Bootstrapping

00:12:47 Getting the Supply-side

00:16:09 Investment Thesis | Problem to solve

00:24:53 Experimentation Framework

00:27:34 Cold Start Problem | Two-sided Network Effects

00:34:12 Entry Barriers & Pricing

00:35:54 Marketplace Liquidity

00:38:17 Helping suppliers to find Product-Market-Fit

00:39:19 Acquisition Loops | Buying Traffic

00:47:02 ESA BIC Support

00:49:17 The Rise of Marketplaces

00:51:51 Small Niche Market becomes big

00:57:44 Clean Space Initiatives

01:01:42 Vertical vs Horizontal Integration

01:04:46 Product Knowledge Graph

01:08:10 Defensibility | Moats

01:12:35 Most Striking Learnings

01:17:32 India Space Program

01:22:21 Unfair Advantages

01:25:46 Why Space and Why Now?