The Inventivity Pod

Will factories in space enable us to become a “multi-planetary species?” Yes, according to Aaron Kemmer, founder of Made in Space. In 2014 the company's Zero-G printer was launched from Cape Canaveral and went on to successfully print the first ever part manufactured in space. Kemmer talks about space manufacturing, a moon base, and a potential trip to Mars. 

Will factories in space enable us to become a “multi-planetary species?” Yes, according to Aaron Kemmer, founder of Made in Space. In 2014 the company’s Zero-G printer was launched from Cape Canaveral and went on to successfully print the first ever part manufactured in space. Kemmer talks about space manufacturing, a moon base, and a potential trip to Mars. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:40

Will factories in space enable us to become a multi-planetary species. Welcome to Radio Cade . I’m your host Richard Miles today. We’ll be talking to Aaron Kemmer founder and chairman of Made in Space. Joining us from the Philippines. Welcome to Radio Cade Aaron.

Aaron Kemmer: 0:54

Thanks for having me, Richard. I appreciate it.

Richard Miles: 0:56

So before we get into the details of Made in Space, the company you founded, I got to ask why space is this something that fascinated you when you were a kid? Are you a science fiction fan or just something that sounded interesting?

Aaron Kemmer: 1:09

Yeah, really , really good question. I think ever since I was a little kid, I’ve definitely been fascinated with space. Like many kids. I wanted to be an astronaut. And I think when I was five years old, I would tell a lot of people this, but I was playing with a toy space shuttle and jumping up and down on my bed. It was stainless steel, like a little metal hot wheel, but a space shuttle. And I flew off the bed. Didn’t want to let go of my space shuttle. And it like slammed into my skull. And I still got a scar, like a little Harry Potter scar right in my forehead with the giant line down the middle. And that reminds me ever since then, I’ve wanted to go to space. I grew up in Florida. So watching space, shuttles launch, it was kind of inspiring to me growing up,

Richard Miles: 1:47

You founded, Made in Space in 2010. And I think by any measure, you had an extraordinary run in the early years, probably way more success than other startups do. So you founded the company in 2010, you created a 3D printing lab at NASA in 2011, you were awarded a grant to design a 3D printer for the international space station. And then that was launched. That mission was launched in September, 2014. And then a couple of months later in November, you successfully printed the first ever part manufactured in space. So that’s really a stunning record. Walk us through sort of the early months from the concept. When you came up with the idea of 3D printing as a viable concept that you wanted to work on to that moment in 2014, when you saw the part being printed in the space station, what was that like ? Let’s start with who came up with the idea and then how did it develop after that?

Aaron Kemmer: 2:37

Really great question. Early back in 2010, when we started the company, there, wasn’t a lot of space startups and we’re kind of seeing a renaissance now, which is super exciting, but there was companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, but the general mindset was the way you become a millionaire in the space industry is you start out as a billionaire. You know , you have to be a billionaire to even play the game. So I think from the beginning, we were always maybe cautiously optimistic, but realistic that, Hey, maybe this, we really hard to get a space startup can off the ground. I think the reason we had like a good run of success was we had amazing kind of team, good team of co-founders there’s four of us. And then also just our founding employees early on, who were passionate about the mission. For me, the journey and to starting Made in Space started personally when, when I did my own like deep dive exploration on where is humanity today and where are we going to be in like 500 years? And w hen I thought about what we would be in 500 years is really clear that we’re going to be like a spacefaring civilization b ar and we don’t kill ourselves or something like that 500 years, w e’ll probably be on the moon, Mars, many moons of Jupiter and beyond, and really throughout the whole solar system. And I looked back o nto l ike that would probably start to happen a lot more in my lifetime. And I really just wanted to kind of be a part of that. And then when I met my co-founders, we started to l ike, look at the problem of what is it going to take to really journey out into space and have humans live all throughout the solar system and through talking to astronauts and people w ho’ve been to the space station like D an B arry t hree-time a stronaut. It was clear that manufacturing is something that’s going to be required. When humans, people came to America to live, they didn’t bring their house and everything with them, they built that stuff there. They just b rought the tools. And so starting with 3D printing seemed like a natural choice through talking to people like Dan B arry, having a 3D printer on the space station. He was on a space station three times would be an immediate effective, helpful t his for the astronauts building tools and stuff for them there. So I was pretty clear that that’s a good place to start. And so we just pick that and started working on it, to be honest.

Richard Miles: 4:39

So I’ve got to mention it’s a little bit harder than just working idea and then calling up NASA, Hey , uh , my name’s Aaron , I’ve got a great idea. What do you think you obviously had some in some connection to NASA or what was that like getting your idea before the decision-makers there that eventually ended up on the space station?

Aaron Kemmer: 4:56

Yeah, half of me is like, yeah that kinda is what happened. We did kinda just call up NASA and say, here’s our idea now that wasn’t like, okay, well here’s a contract . Let’s go. It was a multi-year process where we were communicating with NASA. We were fortunate enough to know the director of NASA Ames through a program that we went to a Singularity University, which was at NASA Ames. And he offered us a kind of free lab at NASA Ames. They have a research park where companies can set up labs and it was almost like the startup story of you’re in your garage. But we were in a NASA Ames garage, just tinkering with 3D printers, learning how they work playing around what might or might not work in microgravity because essentially like our first year and then the second year, because of the work that we did the first year, we were able to get a unpaid NASA contract to fly on the vomit comet with the 3D printer. And so we had to front the money. We actually were able to get sponsorships through some corporations, as well as I put it a little bit of cash. And that second year with the main milestone was testing these 3D printers in microgravity . And then through that, we were able to get the third year, like a small SBIR, small business innovation research contract to actually start developing a concept for a 3D printer that would go to the space station. And then the fourth year, because we had that small contract, we were able to get the larger contracts, actually put a 3D printer on the space station, which ended up happening in the fourth year. So basically each year it was like one small milestone after another, that led to the big one actually kind of happening.

Richard Miles: 6:28

So for the wannabe startup CEOs , listening to the podcast, how much of this would you look back and say, well, actually that was a lucky break. And how much was result of following a plan that you already had a strategic plan? I mean, did you have step one, get the SBR grants step two and so on, or how much of this just sort of fell in your lap?

Aaron Kemmer: 6:47

Hmm. Such a great question. Definitely like I think with any success, very mixed. I think we did have good fortuitous timing right around when we started the company was when NASA started to push under the Obama administration, if a startup or a company can do it, let’s try to have a contract with them, particularly around like 2012. I remember when we were negotiating the contract, there was some people within NASA that kind of wanted them to do it all on themselves. Others were like, no, we’re going to start trying to enable startups now. And that was very lucky timing that if we would’ve started at 10 years earlier, it would have been a lot harder. I would add the other thing. It’s easy doing multiple startups right now. It’s like very easy to overestimate what you can get done in like one year. So, one of my favorite Bill Gates quotes, and I really believe it “You can overestimate we can get done in one year, but really underestimate what you can get done in like a decade” during those years, it just felt so slow. It’s like, Oh man, in 2010, all we ‘d d one is played with 3D printers in a g arage. 2011, all we’ve done is like flown on a few planes with some 3D printers on 2 012, all we ‘d d one is designed a 3D printer in C AD. If you go to each year, it seems a little bit like slow, but over time it leads to bigger and bigger things. And now we’re designing and building and it g oing to be very soon manufacturing, large parts of satellites in space. It took a decade of work and we’ve been working on that for de cades. Ma ke t he same thing, goes for like SpaceX. We often call them a success. But I think the biggest success is they’ve been able to have two decades straight of just working on an idea and it’ s ex citing things can kind of happen. Yeah.

Richard Miles: 8:17

Essentially for 2014, you just wanted to prove that you could print something, anything right in space. And now what, six years later you said you’re printing pretty large stuff. What is the immediate use of the technology that you have right now? And is there an upper limit to this? I mean, in theory, could you print almost anything that you wanted to, or that a , let’s say a moon base would need in space or is there some sort of limitation past which there has to be some sort of breakthrough at an engineering or physical level before you could print something or manufacture something there?

Aaron Kemmer: 8:46

Really good question. So the first printer was basic abs plastic. And then since then we’ve launched several others, which has more complex aerospace grade plastics with those printers. We’ve actually done several different things. What are some basic tools like we printed a basic plastic wrench or experiments or games, for astronauts or education. The students have done programs where they could digitally launch hardware to space. And generally it takes a couple years to design and launch something to the space station like we did when we did it in those first couple of years, it was actually considered really fast. I think we broke a lot of records, but now with the 3D printers up there, you can get stuff up there and days design apart and digitally launch it by printing it. We’re now working on metal manufacturing machines that aren’t necessarily 3D printers, but are combined additive and subtractive manufacturing. We’ve actually manufactured with lunar dirt or dust taking that lunar basically and making bricks or roads or landing pads or eventually houses, I definitely think is feasible today. Getting to the point where you have a machine in space that can make everything you’d ever want and you don’t need anything else, but just the raw material feasible in our lifetimes. Probably not right now, but feasible. I’d say within the next couple of decades, when it will become useful. Yeah.

Richard Miles: 10:04

Let’s get in the realm of speculation here. Now there’s a lot of enthusiasm right now because it’s success of things like Blue Origins and the SpaceX and other companies in this renaissance of space exploration. And from my very limited reading of what’s going on right now, it seems like maybe there were three strategic goals that I see bandied about. One of the main efforts is to actually make things in space that are g onna improve life here on earth. Something like a improved GPS systems or solar r ays that are g oing t o beam energy back to earth, that sort of stuff essentially doing in space stuff that will help us out on earth. Then a second one, not mutually exclusive s eems to be like, we want to go back to the moon. We want to establish a moon base. And on the moon base, we’re going to learn, we’re going to do research. We’re going to figure out how to actually sustain life on another planetary piece of earth. Right? And then the third one is sort of the most futuristic, right. Is l ike, wow, we’re going to build a moon base so we can go to Mars. So based on the experience that you’ve had over the last decade or so one, is that an accurate description of what you think the industry public private is heading towards one of those three goals? And then what is the realistic probability that for instance, we’re going to see a moon base in the next 10 years.

Aaron Kemmer: 11:13

Really, really great, great description, Richard, on, I think the multiple aspects people are working on in space, I’ll start with the middle one. I’ve always been like a moon first guy for people in t he space industry. There’s often a debate. Now the m oon i s not really valuable. It doesn’t have an atmosphere it’s you never want to settle millions of people t here. Mar, we can terraform eventually and turn it into our second kind of earth. A nd which I agree. Mars is really, really exciting. And if you go into the future a few thousand years, probably definitely within the next 10,000 years, we’ll have a second or a foreign that we don’t blow ourselves up or something, but the mo on j ust ad d s o much value and it s p roximity of being able to iterate the technologies for whether it’s la unch t echnologies or like the SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets th at t h ey’re b uilding today, like St arship o r landing technologies or the technologies that Made in Space is building to sustain to build off the land. And so I definitely think that the moon allows us to kind of iterate and give us kind of speed to test things out. Th en i t kind of ties in a little bit into the first one. So one of the big reasons I t h ink SpaceX decided to do Starlink one is as a big business Starlinks the ir in ternet that kind of helps humans down here in ea rth, internet from space. But the other reason is because they have Sta rlink, i t gives them a real reason to launch a lot of rockets. By launching more rockets, you get to test out the technology more and iterate and kind of improve and faster iterations. Again is im portant for a t e chnology to drop costs, which for people like me and you to go to space, Richard, we’re going to need to see a couple orders of magnitude cost dro pped in there. So the internet in space communications in sp ace, a hundred billion dollar market today, things like satellite radio GPS, et cetera. I think we’ll continue to see that expand where more and more space is, i s helping people down here on ea rth. Especially the further out tha t we go. Eventually we’ll be mining asteroids for raw materials and not needing to do large scale industrialization down here on earth within the environment.

Richard Miles: 13:10

Very interesting to me, because I think the last few nights I’ve been watching the Netflix series on the challenge. I don’t know if you’ve seen that at all, but it’s a four part series and it talks about the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. But what’s really interesting. It gives background where the space program was by the mid eighties. And one of the interesting points i t makes is that the public by and large was almost bored because they got so used to seeing the space shuttle go up and the space shuttle come back and it didn’t have the same sort of g lamor of say the Apollo program o f, of launching and putting people on the moon. So that one of the reasons why challenger disaster happened is because NA SA w as under so much pressure to show results. But then another part of the show talks about the results we re a ctually kind of thin in terms of what they’re able to accomplish on th e s pace shuttle missions. I mean, th ey’re a ble to do research and so on. So from a pu blic p erspective, you face a real conundrum with the space program is th at p art of this is y ou have to get people excited about it in almost a romantic way, right? Like the idea of exploration of doing things that no one has ever done before being first, right? Be cause t hat really gets people motivated. But on the other hand, you’ve got this real practical need to demonstrate results, right? To justify all the millions and billions of dollars that are going into this putting people’s lives at risk and so on. So how do you see that part of it, t he public relations, but also sor t of the popular view of space exploration playing out. Have you seen any indications that what we’re seeing now is more than just a nerdy engineer thing where we just love watching rockets land in the middle of the ocean on a little platform? Is that it, or do you think there’s a broader base of public support for the whole concept of really making a serious effort to build the infrastructure, to build the industry like what you’re doing? Right. So you’re creating now, not just three or four ginormous companies run by billionaires, but a whole ecosystem of hundreds of suppliers and companies that are all producing parts of the space program in an open market. They’re all not just working for NASA, but they’re working various competitors. So I know it’s a big unwieldy question with a lot of parts in it, but rea lly be fa s cinated be c ause yo u really joined or you st arted your company, right. As you said, jus t pi vot moment where all of a sudden people rea lized li ke, wow, the private sector can really contribute here in a way that just wasn’t possible even 20 years ago.

Aaron Kemmer: 15:26

Yeah. It’s great. Merging essentially your Silicon Valley move fast mindset with a generally kind of slow moving industry in terms of public support. I mean, I’m definitely speculating here, Richard, but I do think it’s important to think a little bit more longer term than a single or dual election cycles for this. I think there’s obvious benefits to a nation going into space in terms of like defense and military reasons, you know, space is kind of the high ground. So to speak from a defense kind of standpoint, I think that that’s kind of important to the nation, but I think the much broader scope of building out the future for humanity and technologies , you build out in space, help people down here on earth. A lot like GPS is a great example. I mean , most people use GPS every day or at least every week. Another example you can have offshoot technologies, like did we develop a lot of technology and Made in Space that actually would be great. And we have helped people down here on earth through partnerships with like Lowe’s for instance. And it kind of in the past more larger scale things people know about is like memory foam that was kind of designed for the space station. And now it’s down here on earth and people’s like mattresses, right? Comfortable. I think like there’s a great opportunity here. And I applaud the public industry for supporting and thinking ahead, and that those that do. I travel all around the world a lot, normally not doing that now, but everywhere I go, no matter what country, I always spot people with like NASA t-shirts on. I think the reason that is, is because NASA and the work they’re doing and now private industry SpaceX, Blue Origin is just very inspiring. It shows that there’s not really a limit to humanity’s imagination going and landing on the moon when computers were basically the size of the Cade Museum is pretty cool to kind of think about thinking about like a future where like when you look up in the sky and you see a little twinkle on the moon and that twinkle is though city that’s kind of on there and it’s showing that we can expand and help and become a multi-planetary species. It’s really exciting kind of future. When I think about it and something that I’m just glad to be helping out and be a part of in some way,

Richard Miles: 17:25

Last question, I’m sure you’ve probably been asked at least once, if five years from now NASA or a private company says, Hey, we need to build a big 3D printing factory on the moon and we really need people know what they’re doing and you’re offered the chance to go for a couple of years or even six months. Would you go?

Aaron Kemmer: 17:42

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, very scary and dangerous being attached to a rocket as an astronaut and launching, I mean, you’re watching the Challenger series . So , you know, it’s a very risky job, but given the opportunity, no doubt. I wanted to go to space my whole life. And I really hope that maybe it will happen in five years, but hopefully within the next 30 I’ll get an opportunity to go. Any people who have been to space made astronauts, you look down at earth and you see that there’s no fake lines in the sand that that’s all made up by humans and they get what they call the overview effect. And you realize that we’re all like one group humans and can add more empathy for others and understanding t his fake division that we all l ike create, call it fake, but it’s real, but it’s created by us. That overview effect i s really exciting. And I think the more we go to space, it’d be cool to have people experience that.

Richard Miles: 18:30

Looking forward to doing a podcast with you on the moon in five or 10 years, if you can go to the moon and do a podcast on the moon, Aaron , thank you for joining us. You’ve had a phenomenal line of success with Made in Space and whatever you’re continuing to do now in that arena, I’m sure we’ll probably be successful. You join the renaissance at a very opportune time, but really look forward to seeing you succeed and thank you very much for being on Radio Cade.

Aaron Kemmer: 18:52

Thank you, Richard. Yeah. And I’m looking forward to visiting the lunar Cade Museum in a couple of decades, Cade Museum 2.0 on the moon.

Richard Miles: 18:58

As we can build it with 3D parts for cheap we’re in.

Aaron Kemmer: 19:00

Alright we’ll help you with that.

Richard Miles: 19:02

Look forward to that very much, Aaron, thank you .

Outro: 19:08

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida . Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinists Jacob Lawson.

We have learned a great deal about radiation here on earth, and that knowledge has paved the way for us to discover a solution to an even more difficult problem, radiation in space. Space explorers need to be able to move and work without worrying about radiation. Dr. Oren Milstein, CEO and Co-founder of StemRad, has created a wearable radiation shielding vest that takes up minimal space and protects the most susceptible vital organs — like bone marrow, reproductive organs and lungs — from the harmful effects of radiation. 

We have learned a great deal about radiation here on earth, and that knowledge has paved the way for us to discover a solution to an even more difficult problem, radiation in space. Space explorers need to be able to move and work without worrying about radiation. Dr. Oren Milstein, CEO and Co-founder of StemRad, has created a wearable radiation shielding vest that takes up minimal space and protects the most susceptible vital organs — like bone marrow, reproductive organs and lungs — from the harmful effects of radiation. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

James Di Virgilio: 0:39

Welcome to Radio Cade, I’m your host, James Di Virgilio. We’re exploring a series on space colonization. And today my guest is Dr. Oren Milstein. He’s the CEO and co-founder of StemRad. And he’s working with radiation. When dealing with deep space. Radiation is one of the most important challenges facing astronauts and colonization of not only the moon, but also Mars. Dr. Milstein, welcome to the program.

Dr. Oren Milstein: 1:05

Thank you, James. It’s really great to be here.

James Di Virgilio: 1:07

Your research is fascinating. I think the best way for us to start out our discussion today is to talk about radiation in general. What is it? And why is it something that is so important to deal with?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 1:20

Radiation is a topic that people really don’t know how to grasp . You don’t feel it. You can’t see it, it doesn’t have a smell or a taste, but it’s there it’s like something almost mystical, I would say, but there is a way to measure it specifically ionizing radiation. It’s ionizing because it creates occurrence. So it’s creates ionized particles that generates current and that current is something measurable and you could actually compute different doses of radiation based on that current. So really what it is, it’s photons. In most cases that strike, for example, a cell of the body and generate charge particles. In the case of the cell, it could be a free radicals that are able to create mutations within the DNA and therefore hinder a replication of that DNA and ultimately cause cell to undergo apoptosis or suicide, and also create higher susceptibility to cancer down the road

James Di Virgilio: 2:19

When we think of radiation, most Americans, especially they think of the nuclear power plants, three mile Island Fukushima and of course, Chernobyl, maybe in the largest sense they think of an atom bomb and all of these cases, if radiation strikes, can you see it? Is there a wave of radiation you see coming at you or is it something invisible?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 2:38

Radiation really is invisible in the spectrum that we’re talking about. It’s invisible. You have to understand that the ionizing radiation that we’re talking about is basically just another portion of the spectrum of light. So it’s invisible light . So to speak of a higher frequency that has penetrating power and wreak havoc within the tissue, that it, but it is a form of light and you have a spectrum, but that is not harmful at all. Within the spectrum of light arrange , that is not harmful. Is there a way to detect, well, basically radiation monitors sensors are what the modern world utilized to sense radiation. Back in the day of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and nobody had those capabilities. The radiation was just something that nobody even realized even the U.S. military had overexposed itself, not realizing until many years after the damage that was incurred in the soldiers unnecessarily. So , so we’re very lucky to have radiation monitoring in place all around the world in a way that today these sensors, our network to the point where you can almost not smuggle irrigation, emitting device into the U S through its courts or airports without the government knowing about it.

James Di Virgilio: 3:51

And so let’s take a look at it. Maybe the most famous example of radiation exposure that wasn’t in wartime Chernobyl. I’ve had a chance to go to both Hiroshima and Chernobyl during the world’s cup. I went and visited Chernobyl and Ukraine. It was an amazing experience, a sobering experience. And one that taught me a lot about something I didn’t really know about, which is radiation, but while you’re walking around the site of Chernobyl, they know here in this town of Pripyat where most of the hotspots are, right? So you’ve got your Geiger counter It’s beeping, you’re walking around, it’s telling you what’s there. And they’ll say, Hey, don’t walk over there. Here’s a hotspot. Of course you can’t see it. You would never know. You would have no idea, right ? What’s around you. It’s completely invisible. But if you were to stand on that spot for enough time, it would really obviously, as you mentioned, wreak havoc. So I know that someone you learned from that was formative in your experience was one of the first responders. And one of the only people in the outside Soviet union world to come assist with the victims of Chernobyl, what did he learn? And what did you learn from that experience of radiation directly into first responders and those that were helping to save people from that disaster?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 4:57

So really a Chernobyl was kind of like the inspiration for me that the start StemRad, even ahead of the Fukushima disaster, which served as the trigger for the founding of the company. I was deeply inspired by my professors by my PhD mentors experience Dr. Ira Reisner was basically on the tail end of his post- doctoral studies back in 1986, when he got a call that there’s been a disaster in the USSR, we’re talking about the days of the USSR still. And if he could get on a plane together with two U.S. physicians, Robert Peter Gale, and Dick Champlin, and try to treat those first responders that had gone in courageously and put out those fires within the reactor that exploded. If it could go out and treat them that the Russians, they don’t have the capability to treat them. And that specifically my professor, Dr. Reisner during his research, he found a way to transplant bone marrow that is not identical and still get a good outcome. And bone marrow was what the Russians needed to save these courageous firefighters because they were exposed to doses that really specifically wiped out their bone marrow, the bone marrow, being the most sensitive organ in the body when it comes to radiation, the most sensitive tissue that was wiped out to the point where their blood counts were really low falling fast. That is the body blood factory after all. And the only remedy the Russians were smart to realize that was bone marrow transplant patients. So they went over, this is before there was even any kind of diplomatic relations between Israel and the USSR . So Dr. Reisner was obviously deterred from going there and frankly didn’t even know how to go there. So they arranged for a plane for him that landed in Moscow. The first responders had been transferred to a hospital in Moscow, and that’s where he together with two other scientific advisors for StemRad today, Robert Peter Gale and Dick Chamblin, they harvested bone marrow from siblings, from brothers and sisters. Bone marrow is only half identical. And they put that bone marrow through the process for which professor Reisner, that’s his claim to fame, that this process of being able to remove immune cells specifically T-cells from within the bone marrow graft and in doing so enable tolerance so that the bone marrow graft given by the donor, in this case, brother, or sister to the recipient is accepted and not rejected within the body of the recipient. And also does not wreak havoc due to the presence of immune cells from the donor. So that was his specialty. But the only problem was that he had done this process only rabbits, very successfully. So he used certain molecule called peanut to gluten and actually to capture the T-cells from within the bone marrow graft . And they did that under conditions that were very difficult. He told me with very old age centrifuges in conditions that were only sending sterile. And this is the first time ever doing this in the human setting. And they’re doing this to save about 25 people that would die without it basically walking dead people. And they went through an arduous process and they were able to harvest that bone marrow removed about 99% of the immune cells transplant into the recipient . Unfortunately though this only prolong their life by a few weeks, ultimately they did succumb to what we call graft versus host disease. So the remaining T-cells within the bone marrow, those that were not successfully eliminated from the bone marrow grafts , we’re able to grow and expand and ultimately attack the recipients from the inside. Basically there wasn’t graph rejection, but the graph rejected the recipients and ultimately they died. Most of them. I think they saved only two people using that methodology. So, the human setting is many times more challenging than the animal setting. You have to remember the rabbits and mice . I said that they’re very uniform and their genetics, everything is almost binary in the way they respond. Either get no response or a full response. In humans, a lot more gray area. And yeah , that was a tragic outcome for that courageous effort , but left me with a thirst to try and solve the problem.

James Di Virgilio: 9:05

And you mentioned something there, very interesting. One major thing I learned in Chernobyl is there were a handful of people who responded early, were highly exposed to radiation, but did not succumb to it. And as far as I knew, no one really knows why that is. It’s just that some people tend to be able to handle it better. And that’s fascinating to me, that’s sort of hard to understand, right? Because as the story you’re describing, you have these invaders come into your body, they basically get into your bone marrow. They change, as you mentioned, what’s going on in there. And then that’s, what’s going to wind up killing the patient. You’re mentioning in your research to we’re about to talk about, but can you speak for a second on how some people handle radiation better?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 9:50

Yeah. It’s a very interesting topic that you were touching upon. Uh , we really don’t have a very good answer. What we know is that there is a whole distribution in those responses. So the responsiveness of the tissue of the person to a certain level of dose varies in a very big way to the point that you’re right. We do have what we call an LD 50 threshold, a dose at which 50% of the population would perish. But that’s just kind of like a mean, or an average, that though . So you have those being five fevers, for example. So you would have 50% dying and 50% not buying at all, why you would be subscribed to one group rather than the other, we can’t tell. But more than that, we have people that would die from doses as low as one grade or one seabird . If you use those units and then you have people that wouldn’t die from eight seabirds , and these people are from the same populace without any very different background between the two. So it’s really extreme that one could take potentially eightfold , more radiation than the other and still survive. Whereas the other succumbs and why this exists, nobody has a very good answer. There is a gender difference. Women are generally more susceptible to radiation than men. There is an age difference. Generally younger people, especially children are more susceptible than older people. There is a mass issue. Generally, if you have more body fat than you’re more protected, that’s for sure the case, if you compare an obese person to a very thin person and there’ll be, this person would be clearly more resistant in a significant way, people must realize that mass blocks radiation and does so in a good way. So radiation is not something you cannot block. You can definitely block it. Just a matter of how much mass you need to block it. So I just touched upon a three or four factors creating this variability within the populace , but it can add up to the extreme where you’re going to get people that are way more sensitive than the others.

James Di Virgilio: 11:52

I mean that’s such a good 30,000 foot view of testing, anything medically, including something like COVID and you nailed it. Testing on animals is so much different than humans because each human is drastically different from another. And at times we don’t even know why their defenses may hold up better, but it does make it a challenge, which is what makes your research. I think so fascinating. So you take these stories, we’ve just talked about, you begin to develop a strong interest in them. You do your own studies on mice, but you do something very unique, unexpected. Even when you read about it today, it doesn’t seem to make any sense. Tell us what it was that you discovered.

Dr. Oren Milstein: 12:27

So basically I had a strong desire to make sure that no first responder doing the courageous act that had been then Chernobyl would wind up with a lack of bone marrow following exposure. And my initial idea was to harvest bone marrow from each first responder that would potentially go into a nuclear disaster worldwide and store that bone marrow in a place that should he needed, or she needed. It could be transfused in their bodies. Bone marrow is very amazing in the sense that a transplantation is something that is able to work. And in the case of transplantation, we don’t transplant large amounts of bone marrow. We’re talking about small amounts of bone marrow that are transplanted. So today a leukemia patient that receives a radiation therapy and his, or her team , this was a wiped out. Should you send that person home without any kind of transplantation , then that person would perish within a week or so. So he or she would die from the treatment, not from the cancer. So what we do today is we basically harvest bone marrow from an identical donor that is identified through the bone marrow registry. And that donor doesn’t give all of his or her bone route . Doesn’t get half, just give a small, a tiny percentage of the bone marrow up to 5% of the donor’s bone marrow is given away. And that donor has lunch and goes home. Doesn’t suffer the consequences of giving just 5% of his or her bone marrow. Whereas the recipient that’s 5% or even lower, is able to replenish all of the bone marrow and all of the blood forming system to the point where that person lives for many years after due to that gift of life, so I thought quite nicely , why not harvest bone marrow from all of these courageous responders and freeze it, and whenever they need it, we transplant it. And then you wouldn’t have the problem of locating an identical donor because each potential victim would already have his own bone marrow stored. I started looking at doing that, but that turned out to be a potential logistical nightmare to harvest bone marrow from so many potential individuals around the world who really don’t know who is going to be going in, where at what given point in time to save the day when the numbers add up, it gets to millions of people. They would have to harvest bone marrow from. And then you look at the side effects of harvesting bone marrow that one to 10,000, you have severe complications. So you’re looking at a situation where for sure you’re going to have in the process of trying to save these people already severe complications . So I just went back to research and continued working on mice with my research was basically finding ways to enable engraftment of bone marrow. That is not identical, basically to induce tolerance towards mismatched bone marrow grafts . And then I stumbled upon an amazing observation that whenever I was irradiating the mice, there were some times mice that would survive even without bone marrow transplantation, maybe one to 10 mice or so they would just go on and live without any transplant. And I’d tried to figure out what was going on. And then I learned that in the process of irradiating, sometimes I leave a segment of a mouse outside of the radiation field, and that segment could be as minimal as just the pale of the mouse . So it was enough for me to leave the tail of the mouse outside of the radiation field to have that mouse recover from radiation injury without introducing new bone marrow into that mouse. And ultimately what I figured out and what was basically also established in the literature that bone marrow within the vertebrae in the tail of the mouse is of a quantity that is in excess of what is necessary to survive. And that quantity is two and a half percent. So you need as little as two and a half percent of your bodily bone marrow. I assume it could say it’s identical and it’s not rejected and no complications to regrow your bone marrow and return to normal blood counts and as little as one month. So that was basically my understanding that if you can save a person by introducing so little identical bone marrow into his or her body, why not protect that same amount of bone marrow within the body of the first responder while he or she is responding to an event. And that is something that I really latched on because I realized that it solved a big, big problem. The problem of being able to shield from radiation, how do you shield from radiation in a way that you don’t inhibit the performance of the first responder? Sure, you can put the first responder in a nuclear bunker, but that won’t do so well for his job definition. And the past people have tried to invent suits that protect all the body, but these suits do very little to block the radiation. Even a 100 pound suit, a 200 pound suit will do nothing to block gamma radiation because that mask would be spread out throughout your whole body. But given this finding that it’s enough to protect the bone marrow, to get recovery of the individual, we can focus shielding just on where bone marrow is. And then I studied the distribution of bone marrow within the human body, the amazingly good 50% of the body’s bone marrow resides within the hip region of the individual. And that lends itself to the personal protective equipment that we later developed. Because now you don’t have to this mask all over the body of the individual, you can focus a significant amount of shielding on a specific area of the body. So our product is called three 60 gamma product. What it does, it puts basically about 15 kilograms or about 30 pounds of mass around a minimal area of the body, as small as 11% of the body surface area. And in doing so you basically create protection. That’s on par with a suit that would weigh half a ton. So these half ton suits were never brought to market because it would never work. But this solution is something that I felt was reasonable and it could be very meaningful for protection of first responders.

James Di Virgilio: 18:28

What you said there is mind boggling on so many levels. You go back to the Chernobyl story and there was true, just incredible heroic acts that occurred that you learned about there from people that lived in Ukraine that were living under the USSR that were not fans at all of the Soviet union that knew that in their community, they had people that were in trouble that knew they were going to die. That went in right underneath the reactor, right into the reactor long exposures to save other people’s lives, truly moving stuff. They did so wearing rudimentary hazmat suit or what people think of when they think of people going into a nuclear disaster. But what you’re describing is basically like a back brace, or if you like to lift weights, something you would use when you’re squatting, it’s very minimal, it’s wearable. You can go in. And this discovery you’re saying that you can protect the main part of your bone marrow, which is in your pelvic region, as you mentioned. And just by protecting that from radiation, your body then is able to fend off the rest of the radiation you receive in the rest of your body. That’s essentially what’s happening right?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 19:31

In effect. The result is exactly what you described, at the biological level what happens is that the bone marrow that is rescued by this shielding within the hip region is able to proliferate to multiply in the hours and days and weeks following the exposure. And then when it reaches a certain level, then the cells, the bone marrow STEM cells, if you will, they’re able to enter the bloodstream. They leave the bone cavity and they migrate into the bloodstream. And then they know how to hone directly towards bones that were wiped out by the radiation. And then they settle within these empty bones. If you take the bone, you take a cross section , you can see after the radiation it’s empty and these small cells know how to repopulate these empty areas. And they proliferate like mad. So on average, each STEM cell is giving you 10,000 better cells. And that process goes on until the bone are full of red prosperous bone marrow within as little as one month.

James Di Virgilio: 20:30

That’s incredible quite the discovery. And a question comes to mind, in the Chernobyl disaster as in space, which we’re about to talk about. You had very limited times, you could have a worker go in. Now, the Russians were incredibly rudimentary. They were essentially making things up. There’s a road in Pripyat out that they knew was heavily radiated. And they would say, drive 110 miles an hour, get out of your car, spend exactly four minutes, cleaning something up, get back in, get out. Right? That was obviously a bad idea, but there is a reality that there’s only so much time, a first responder should be spending in an environment like this. Does the gamma three 60 belt, ss this able to allow first responders to spend more time saving people without changing a shift? Or is it a scenario where they spend the same amount of time? They just have protection. Now we know that 15 minutes will be safe, so to speak.

Dr. Oren Milstein: 21:17

So that’s a question that we get from our customers all the time. So they want to know how much longer they can stay in. And what I like to answer is that even in Chernobyl, they were very cognizant of the radiation. It’s not sometimes the first responders are portrayed as, as people that didn’t know anything about the radiation just went in blindly. No, they knew very well. And actually they went in, in shifts of 12 minutes, in Chernobyl and those 12 minutes had everything been like a uniform spread of the radiation. It would have been okay. But what happened was they went in and groups of let’s say 10 people with only the commander observing his radiation monitor and the other nine spread out on the roof of the reactor. So the problem is that the radiation deposits or the radioactive material, the fall out was not uniformly present on the roof of the reactor. You had piles of debris, highly radioactive, but then you had the areas that were not so radioactive because the radiation dose, the dose rates declines exponentially with distance, right? So if you increase your distance twofold from the pile of rubble , then the radiation decreases fourfold . So what do you see is a crazy distribution of sickness within this group of 10, you would have seven that are unscathed really. And then three that were standing near the rebel, even for a few seconds. And they received that high dose of radiation. It’s really a matter of uniform or non-uniform exposure. So with these first responders, they can never know if it’s going to be uniform or non-uniform and therefore they must have protections. My pitch to customers is go in as you plan to go in under the assumption of uniform radiation, but should it not be uniform you’re protected. To what extent you’re protected theoretically? You could stay twice as long as what you would have without the protection. But I would never add to the case for the first responders to go in longer than what they had planned. I just want them to go in knowing that even if their plan was not accurate given the circumstances, there able to survive.

James Di Virgilio: 23:21

Yeah. And that’s definitely a comfort, like you mentioned, in Chernobyl, all those first responders, there’s a monument to the firefighters nearby who all perished, you went in knowing exactly what they were doing.

Dr. Oren Milstein: 23:30

They all knew exactly what they were doing,

James Di Virgilio: 23:33

Right. Knowing it was a death sentence.

Dr. Oren Milstein: 23:35

There are a lot of people belittling how much they knew, especially in America, the USSR was not the perfect place, but you had people that were heroes there. And these people were heroes.

James Di Virgilio: 23:43

Yeah true heroes. And again, people that politically oftentimes did not align at all with what was being done, had to go in, could have attempted to run away, fight, take whatever punishment, but they didn’t. They responded immediately knowing that death was certainly the sentence and attempt to rescue others, really amazing stuff. And your innovation obviously is helping that. And now we’re going to talk about space and space colonization. So astronauts of course are facing radiation. Right? Once we leave the Earth’s atmosphere in the magnetic field, the radiation gets to be serious. It gets to be much more serious. The closer we get to the sun, as we have cosmic galactic radiation, that’s bad, that’s really bad stuff. Right? Solar flares, things like that. So you had to develop something that was a little bit different, right? You couldn’t have used the personal protection device in the same way. Instead you developed device that had to be a little heavier, a little bulkier, but still does the same thing. What were some of the challenges for developing protection in space?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 24:36

So that was a tremendous shift in the company’s overall outlook to the market from dealing with a, the worst case scenario of a nuclear disaster. Suddenly we’re also dealing with the best case scenario of sending people to Mars. And that’s what NASA wants to do today. So being involved in both worlds really creates a great sense of fulfillment. But to your question, the technical challenges were quite significant, but surprisingly, not something that we could not overcome. And I saw we could from day one. So we collaborated with Lockheed Martin who was building the spacecraft to take people back to the moon and onto Mars and lucky for me to have good physicists working for me. And it was very apparent to us that the radiation threatening space is quite different than the radiation threat here on earth. You’re concerned less about gamma radiation, more about radiation emanating from the sun and from the galaxy and this radiation, and this is something I didn’t know, actually going in is not photons. You’re talking about actual particles ion , mostly hydrogen plus. So H plus particles that are huge compared to photon . So you’re talking about something that millions of times larger than a photon, huge particles and coming at energies much higher than that, of a photon and gamma radiation. So it sounds very scary and I thought going in wow, but the very quick, I was comforted to know that even though they’re so energetic, because they’re so big, you’re able to block them, you’re able to shield against them. So they don’t seep in easily through the atoms in the shielding material like photons do. So photons are able to seep through bathrooms of the led in the shielding here. They’re so big, it’s pretty easy to trap them. Now the best material for trapping photons here on earth is lead. Specifically Virgin lead. That is pure lead. That’s what we use in a three 60 gamma solution, but in space, should you use the lead? You’re going to create what we call secondary radiation. So the particles are going to strike the lead , then create a gamma wave or an alpha wave or a better wave, which going to be dangerous in itself. So better to use what we call low Z materials . So atoms, with a smaller number of protons within them and an atom with the smallest number of protons is obviously hydrogen. So use hydrogen to block hydrogen. That’s basically what we’re looking at today. So we basically used almost, I would say off the shelf, polymers such as polyethylene, you could even use water by the way, any material that is rich and hydrogen is able to effectively block hydrogen atoms or ions coming from the sun with creating minimal secondary radiation. So that was one challenge. The material challenge was easily overcome. And then we had the whole issue of what are you going to protect? Are you going to protect the same organs they are protecting here on earth? Or are you going to look at the picture a bit differently here ? So, given the nature of the relation space, we were actually driven in the direction of looking at a bit differently because you do have the threat of a high dose coming from the sun, just like a high dose coming from a Chernobyl reactor. That creates what we call acute radiation syndrome, which is wiping out the bone marrow and deaths within a month or two, but in parallel, you also have radiation coming from the galaxy, what we call galactic, cosmic rays, and they’re coming in regardless of any sun activity. And it’s a constant bombardment of ion sometimes bigger than hydrogen has a biggest lead by the way, coming in from supernova in the galaxy. But they’re coming in at a very low dose rate . But if you’re looking at a long duration mission, not the mission of a week to the moon, like the Apollo astronauts , but a mission to Mars, that’s a three year round trip, then you’d better try and mitigate as much of that low level, dose as well. So here we realized we’d be better off having a solution that protects against both . So having something that is able to minimize the chance of acute radiation syndrome, vis-a-vis Chernobyl, but also help as much as you can in the dose. That’s incoming on a daily basis over the duration of three years. So working with Lockheed Martin and given the luxury of microgravity , we decided to expand upon the three 60 gamma solution and going from a hit belt, we went all the way up to a vest , a vest that protects from under the hip and all the way into the chin of the astronauts and in doing so, protecting the bomber, but also vital organs, such as the lungs, such as the stomach and the gastrointestinal system. And in the woman also the very sensitive breast tissue and ovaries, and in doing so you’re shielding the bone marrow and preventing that horrible death like in Chernobyl, but also contributing to the reduction of the likelihood of cancer within those organs in a very significant way. So what we have is instead of a heavy metal like lead , we have polyethylene instead of just the belt , we have a whole vest .

James Di Virgilio: 29:33

And what is this vest way ? And are the astronauts wearing this every day? Only when they go out for a space walk, what does that look like?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 29:40

Yes, that’s something that is still evolving. As far as how they’re going to use it, but the weight is 27 kilograms for a larger male, maybe 22 kilograms for a smaller frame, female. So ballpark 50 to 60 pounds of mass. But bear in mind that it’s just mass. There is no weight in space and we’re using that to our benefits . It’s never too heavy. So whenever I wear this vest here on earth, it’s pretty bad. But in the ISS, we have one vest on the station right now, circling earth, there it’s meaningless, but what is not getting less is the launch mass . So you want it to be light for the purpose of not burdening the launch with the additional mass that you could avoid. So having it weigh not as much is a big boom for whoever’s launching this mass in this case, the NASA where it costs a crazy amount of money to launch mass for the lunar environment outside of earth gravity, well, it’s currently $50,000 per pound. So any pounds you can take off the weight of the garment is really appreciated. And we’ve done that. So we’ve capitalized on the body self shielding. So we will be realized that you want to protect all these organs, but some of the organs are more protected naturally than others. Meaning that you have organs that are more concealed by the body’s tissue than others. On one extreme, you have the woman’s breast tissue, which is completely exposed to the outside environment. So you need to have a lot of artificial shielding. So that’s where the vest is really thick , but then you have areas that are naturally concealed, like parts of the gastrointestinal tract, like parts of the bone marrow, specifically the anterior bone marrow is quite well shielded. So we created a variable thickness that accommodates the natural shielding properties of the body and in doing so, we reduced the potential mass of about 50 kilograms to just 27 kilograms. And that’s part of our patents that was also employed in the 360 gamma solution that had we not utilized this understanding, but then it would have been almost twice as heavier and really a no-go for first responders.

James Di Virgilio: 31:42

That’s really interesting stuff. Weight, obviously anyone who’s a pilot understands the importance of weight , even here just flying right. Sub the Earth’s atmosphere, low orbit, and then of course, going to space even more so $50,000 per pound, you just shaved off 25 pounds. I know you’re saving a couple million dollars there. So looking at how to use it, I want to go back to that. You mentioned we’re not totally sure how to use this yet. So NASA space X, anyone working on space exploration has to deal with what you just mentioned, shielding the spacecraft from radiation, and then also shielding those who are living at the astronauts any dwelling you build any structure you have, they must be shielded. So do we have any suggested ideas of how we would use these vest once we’re up in space? I land on Mars. What is my daily life potentially looking like when it comes to radiation?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 32:29

Right. Initially I was thinking that this would be worn only during solar particle events, what we call SPE and layman term, maybe solar flare is more acceptable. These events occur on average a couple of times a year, and usually they’re benign, but sometimes they’re quite awful on the magnitude of going in such a Chernobyl reactor . And the problem with these eruptions of the sun is that they’re really not foreseeable. There is a correlation with the number of dark spots that you count on the sun, but sometimes it could be like very few dark spots, but still you have a solar particle events and astronauts they have just between 30 minutes and one hour warning before it hits them. That is a small amount of time, but we feel it’s enough time for the astronauts to be able to wear their vests. Should they be on hand. And then they have to wear it for the duration of the solar particle events , which could be a day, which is pretty long in itself, but it could be up to two weeks. And that’s where the product comfort comes into play. There are dynamics of the product and that’s exactly what’s being tested on ISS right now. Is, is this something that you can wear for more than a day for more than a week, maybe even, and that’s something that’s being tested. We invested a lot of effort making it comfortable and flexible. It’s comprised of 15,000 parts that each part moves independently of the other so that you create a fluid like motion. It’s a really nice, very nice solution that we hope to also display at the Academy museum very shortly. But to answer your question, yes, whenever there’s a solar particle event , it will be worn, but from talking with astronauts more and more, I realized that if they find it comfortable, they’re going to wear it whenever they go to bed. Even if there’s not a solar particle event , just to avoid the background radiation that I mentioned from the supernova, as much as they can, no , they won’t wear it for the whole mission because at the end of the day, it is quite a bulky garment, but they’re going to wear it whenever it’s critical, vis-a-vis solar particle events, or when they’re sleeping. That’s a vision that I currently have on the way to Mars. You’re looking at a three year mission. You can have solar particle events on the way there when you’re there. And on the way back, they’re going to have at least a handful of solar particle events. It’s going to be very important to have the vest on hand, to prevent in an extreme case fatalities during the mission in a more likely case to reduce the likelihood probability of cancer in their bodies, years after their mission is done.

James Di Virgilio: 34:52

And it begs the question, why not shield the structure they’re in or the spacecraft they’re in from these types of radiation events? Is it a weight issue? Why not create a coating on the craft or the dwelling?

Dr. Oren Milstein: 35:06

So that was really the direction of many, many scientists over the years. I would say that there were a few that try to do what we’re doing. Those people that tried, that didn’t have our methodology of selection , shielding. But to answer your question, why not shield the whole craft? Well, we calculated that to get the same effect on the Orion capsule, which is massive flagship to the moon and beyond built by Lockheed Martin. So you can either take four vests in aggregate weigh about 200 pounds, or you can add 14 tons to the shielding, of the vehicle. So that’s basically the number we’re looking at. The comparison is extreme. You just would have to double the weight of the vehicle, going back to the calculus of how much a pound or a kilogram costs to deep space, about $50,000 for a pound. The number becomes catastrophic for any organization. That’s trying to go outside of earth gravity well. So it’s really not possible at all. At least if you’re doing it on earth, if you’re doing it on the moon, now you can send an unshielded that aircraft and possibly shield it on the moon. And then the gravity well is not so bad and go on to Mars, but you’re talking about a very difficult situation compared to having these vests on hand.

James Di Virgilio: 36:17

Quite elegant solution, as you just mentioned, there’s potentially no exploration of Mars at all, unless you have a way to do it more efficiently. And that’s exactly what this solution is providing. You can see this vest for yourself, if you Google Astro rad, it’ll pop right up. You can see images of it. People actually wearing it. Get a look forward of course, as you mentioned, you guys are on like kind of the final tweaking phase to see what’s it going to look like? How might you reshape it? But it’s quite remarkable. Obviously space colonization is going to be something that amazingly, it still feels amazing to me, right in our lifetimes is pushing forward rather aggressively to hear your story today, Dr. Milstein going through Chernobyl radiation, bone marrow space. It all seems so big, but remarkably you’re answering a lot of questions in ways that are quite compelling using evidence to back up what you found. Just absolutely fascinating stuff. It’s been great to have conversations with you. We at the Cade look forward to potentially seeing some of your stuff here on exhibit at the museum. Obviously we look forward to keeping in touch with you, Dr. Milstein, CEO, co-founder of StemRad. Again, you can find this stuff online. Definitely check it out. Thanks for being with us today. Quite the insightful episode.

Dr. Oren Milstein: 37:26

No thank you, James. It was a pleasure talking with you and I hope that information is going to help other innovators and entrepreneurs and making the mission even safer.

Outro: 37:36

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. This podcast episodes host was James Di Virgilio and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage, and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist, Jacob Lawson.

A public private partnership in Space. What does that look like in Florida, the rest of the country, and the world? Part two of our series on the renaissance in Space Exploration features Tony Gannon, the Vice President for Research and Innovation at Space Florida. Tony reveals how our new space ecosystem pairs NASA, with billionaires, and corporate space mavericks, to yield an extensive infusion of innovation and capital…transforming the future of space travel and dramatically reducing government costs.

A public private partnership in Space. What does that look like in Florida, the rest of the country, and the world? Part two of our series on the renaissance in Space Exploration features Tony Gannon, the Vice President for Research and Innovation at Space Florida. Tony reveals how our new space ecosystem pairs NASA, with billionaires, and corporate space mavericks, to yield an extensive infusion of innovation and capital…transforming the future of space travel and dramatically reducing government costs.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro : 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles : 0:38

Astronauts landed on the moon 50 years ago, and we have never stopped looking toward the stars, imagining what the future holds far beyond earth, launching into Radio Cade’s Space Pod, and step inside the future of humanity’s journey into deep space. Meet the innovators and visionaries who are charting a bold new course to the moon. Then to Mars and beyond discover the revolutionary technology that will get us there and see how it’s already transformed life here on earth. Today, I’m speaking with Tony Gannon , vice president of research and innovation at Space Florida. Tony reveals how our new space ecosystem pairs NASA with billionaires and corporate space mavericks to yield an extensive infusion of innovation and capital transforming the future space of travel and dramatically reducing government costs. Welcome to Radio Cade, Tony.

Tony Gannon: 1:25

Thank you very much, Richard. It’s an honor to be on your podcast.

Richard Miles : 1:28

So Tony, before you tell us about getting to space, tell us about getting to the United States. You were born in the UK, you’re raised in Ireland. You’ve spent some time in Spain and France. How on Earth did you end up in Florida?

Tony Gannon: 1:40

That’s a great question. And I’ll try and be very brief for the sake of your audience, Richard. So I have that mixed background, which made me set aside diverse in nature. And so when my wife and I decided we were getting married, of course we couldn’t do that in any logistical fashion. We decided we would go to Florida, have a vacation with some friends and get married while we were here. My wife’s twin brother lives here in Cocoa Beach, Florida. And it seemed like the occasion of marriage, what an ideal situation. So we did that. Got married, and while I was here, my wife often jokes . She said, I think I became a widow overnight, but I was space widow, because I literally spent two weeks every day going up to the space center, absolutely enamored with the space program about what could be achieved, but really having no idea that I could ever be a part of it. But I think a love was born my heart for it. And I said, I , somehow, I’m going to work out a situation whereby I can work in the future in the space industry.

Richard Miles : 2:37

It’s a great story. And I know that you wrote that you witnessed the 1969 moon landing, I presume as a child and that made you want to play some sort of a role in the space program. And then of course, as anyone who’s seen the great Apollo 11 documentary or other similar movies back then, of course, getting to space, the moon was something that only governments did. And now that’s a totally different story. If you could give us a little bit of a history lesson, when did private companies , I mean, they’ve always had a role right, as, as contractors and suppliers to the government, but when did they start taking the lead in certain areas? What were some of the early milestones with respect to privatization and what do you expect to see over the next decade? So in other words, past present future, how did we get to now and where do you think we’re going?

Tony Gannon: 3:21

Richard, that’s a very comprehensive and that very smart question. I’ll do my best to make my response and the way that I see it personally, the Space Shuttle program, of course, which followed shortly after the Saturn V or the moon program was very, very costly. According to my memory, it was something in the region of $500 million dollars to send a space shuttle into space. And that does not include a payload and one could easily have a payload in the cargo bay that costs three quarters of a million dollars, be a satellite, be it , some observation component are indeed products of the international space station. And so the federal government and close contact with NASA decided we need to introduce commercial industry to this program because we are heading up a federal program that is going to get costlier and costlier, and it doesn’t seem to have any end. And so in the instance is perhaps of recognizing one of diminishing public participation in the program and we’ve been to the moon . And so people felt well, it’s all done now, but no, there was a commercial element and it could turn into very productive industry, the powers that be at the time. And I must say with great reluctance of many people in the industry, they decided they would commercialize the space industry. And so NASA essentially sent out RFPs requests for proposals, from companies that have been developing the thought along the same lines let us build design rockets that meet NASA specifications, but it’d be our rockets . So, SpaceX would own the rocket. They would send eventually astronauts into the space. They would communicate with the space station. They will do all of this kind of work in space, but they were not just the only one. And so that commercial thought, which met with so much resistance at the early stage really was very farsighted. It was the true answer to commercial space that we take to federal element out of it let them provide some funding, but we let the industry be driving the industry. And that was the commercialization of space exploration.

Richard Miles : 5:17

And that is really, I think what’s captured the imagination of a lot of people, particularly in the last few years, as we see the fruits of that investment, right? That incredible videos of the SpaceX rockets, landing on platforms over the ocean and stuff like that. I think everyone, all of a sudden realize like, wow, this isn’t just small stuff. This is actually the major components of all the stages, right. Of getting liftoff. And then actually once you’re in space. What’s clear though, is this is probably not going to ever be just a private thing, right? Or is it, is there a potential where let’s say 20 years from now, or even 10 years from now, is there going to be an equivalent of United Airlines, American airlines saying, okay, you want to take a trip up to space. Good. Here, go online, buy your ticket, or is it always going to be something to do with a government mission, government funding? What would you say?

Tony Gannon: 6:04

It’s going to be a mixture. It’s funny. You should say that, that the thought has crossed my mind. As you were mentioning about it being massive prior to our federally driven program, then you have the introduction of all of those commercial space companies. And we always mentioned SpaceX first, pretty obvious reasons, but it can be said not as mission itself changed . And now they’re being challenged with, you might say the expiration of distance space. And so the recent launch we had from Cape Canaveral and SpaceX, rocket owned by Elon Musk and company has on board, a NASA Mars Explorer with little helicopter on board , which is a NASA entity. But here we have privately owned spacecraft, launching a mission to Mars on behalf of NASA. I mean that in itself, is amazing. It’s so challenging, but it’s also so exciting. I had the pleasure. I was watching. I won’t mention a local TV station some weeks ago, but I saw the chief scientist who had worked on the helicopter on the Mars mission. And she was discussing how for the first time ever a craft, be it , a drone will be launched from a Lander on planet Mars and explore sections of Mars and take videos and send it back via satellite back to Earth. It’ll probably take about 8 to 10 minutes for that signals to get back to planet Earth. But I mean , that is the ultimate. Here we are. And exploring in a drone planets , Mars gone into all of us caves and caverns the turning data. All the trucks will pick up for the first time, which something I have thought a long time ago, listen to the sound of Mars, the sound of the wind. What is it like? And there are very, very strong winds on planet Mars. So that element is really exciting. I think the commercial elements would have probably overtake what NASA’s mission is able to say. Bernie singularly focused on getting to Mars so we can have the near future. Just like you said, we don’t have SpaceX astronauts. We will have Blue Origin astronauts, Virgin Galactic, or a Virgin astronauts and a whole range of companies. Boeing. Of course, I shouldn’t forget with the Starliner. So we might have 10 different astronaut core for the moment. It appears to training through Houston and the NASA programs to meet those NASA standards. But who can say that in the future in 10 years time, that astronauts might not be trained in New York City and Washington DC , or even in Florida where the lanches take place from. So it is and you drew a great comparison with the airlines. We had the hedge hopping days of the 1910s and 1920s people trying and risky maneuvers in their flying machines. And then we moved on to commercial enterprise driven by that great challenge as guests of Lindbergh flying the Atlantic. And now we have in the future prospect of having a choice of companies who will fly us perhaps to the moon around the moon for a honeymoon, which would be ideal, or taking design for the locations such as Mars. So we live in a very challenging, but it isn’t really exciting to think of such deeds what happens possibly within our lifetime .

Richard Miles : 9:07

Tony, you said something earlier that I think you put your finger right on it in terms of NASA has to focus on one goal. And it strikes me that probably one of the best things about privatization, at least of the participation in private companies is they have a lot more room to be creative, right? Where the government and I spent almost all my career in government. So I know this well, you identify your one big goal and that’s where all the resources go. That’s where all the thought and the planning go . And a lot of the smaller stuff, it’s like, well, that’s a distraction, but that’s kind of the whole point of the market, right? Is you have a little company and they say, Hey, wouldn’t it be great to make a drone fly on Mars or some sort of other thing that they know would probably do well in a space environment and is necessary in a space environment . And they devote all their efforts, creating that little thing in a way that the government would probably just say yeah, we don’t have time to do that sort of stuff.

Tony Gannon: 9:54

You’re so right Richard I’m not sure what government agency that you worked with. In a different life, I worked for a government agency in Ireland following college, and every document that I saw or read had to be signed about 10 times. And this was in the business development area, this was new technologies. I would like to mention if I may. And I think we play a fairly big role. I’m very honored in Space Florida, to be involved with a section of the community that comes up with this innovation. And I’ll give you the examples Space Florida. When we were initiated 12, 13 years ago by our then Governor Bush, Jeb Bush in a very insightful manner, combining three existing agencies to one. So we’re like to go to point, if you want to go to Florida, if you want to catch us up, involve commercially or federally in the aerospace program. And so what happened was we were dealing with the big guys, the Boeing, the Lockheed Martins, Harris corporation, now L3 Harris, Northrop Grumman, NASA of course, SpaceX, Blue Origin, the entire gambit of major companies. But I often felt in my heart and I spoke to our president Frank DiBello one day. And I said, no, we need to take care of the little guys too. Those young companies, which are formulated by very smart young entrepreneurs who come out of some of the colleges, like University of Florida, UCF, Embry Riddle, and a whole host all our Florida universities and indeed throughout the United States and to have great ideas, but how do they get those ideas to fruition that can assist in this great aerospace adventure that we’re sitting on the threshold of? And so I thought one thing that all need and they all have in common is they need money. They need lots of money and we need to place our thrust in their enthusiasm and their determination to succeed. Many would fail, but let’s give them a chance. And so about six or seven years ago, I met with a group, forgive me for jumping into this too quickly. I apologize on that. I said, how can I do this? I said, I need a team of investors who have the openness to say, we can’t guarantee you anything, Tony, but we listened to these young entrepreneurs and we’ll make our decisions that we, you know, and so we formed this partnership with the Florida venture forum space of Florida. And our capacity while we could do was put up a prize money. And we determined that that prize money will be a hundred thousand dollars per capital accelerator. And that we would undertake two of those accelerators per year. So with an investment of $200,000 over the past six years, we’re at about $1.3 million investment into the companies. In other words, if you Richard had a company called ABC technologies and you won the accelerator today with Space Florida, chances are, you would receive an award of about $40,000 in second place. It’s 30 and 20 and so forth. And so you have this exposure to the investors who are sitting around watching you. I’m not here to forward. It’s been live now where on a webinar. And their listening to you and their thinking this young man or this young company, I was looking for $5 million. That’s an extraordinary amount of money. I want to see their technology and it’s the technology that will attract the investment and the investors. And I can tell you, this is an ROI that I can actually provide full details up to date. Over six years, over $460 million has been invested in those Florida companies during the last six years. With an investment of less than 1.5 million, this is what we can show. And this is fantastic. And yet when it’s judged by California standards, it may seem quite small. I’d love to hear California investors say, you know what, I threw $50 million in here. I took $40 million in there. Hey, Darn-it, I lost it all but I threw $200 million into Amazon. And the sun is shining, the fact that the investors can talk in those terms. I mean, obviously I’m not in the same payroll as them , but is that investing community is really driving commercialization, entrepreneurship. And I think of great assistance to where I use. So I’ll get off my bandwagon now and pass it back to you , Richard.

Richard Miles : 13:50

You know, at the Cade Museum, we also have a similar prize Cade Prize that we’re not focused necessarily on a particular sector. Like you are on space, but basically the same stage, very early seed stage companies. And you’re exactly right. I think that’s been a game changer, particularly in a state like Florida, where the number of ideas coming out of universities is huge, but the capital to fund those ideas is relatively tiny. And then the management talent to take on the next level is also somewhat thin . So I think what you’re doing is exactly right. Can you give some examples of maybe some companies that have come out of the Florida venture forum, the space related companies that are working on current technologies related to space.

Tony Gannon: 14:27

I should know Richard, I have no notes in front of me. So I’d go from my poor memory. I could say our last aerospace adventure, which was only in May and June this year, we had something in the region of 89 or 90 applications and actually the zero charge to apply. So we had that number 20 were selected to present the one success story that I’m particularly fond of is Censys Technologies who are located at the Microflex in Embry Riddle. And essentially they’re working on drones, drone technology, and they have drones that test at the airport. There it’s a wonderful location for them, but their CEO call me just about three weeks ago and said, Tony, I want to tell you a little story. Do you remember, we appeared in your venture forum collaboration, and we got second place. We’d love to have been first, but we got second. But more importantly, we got an investor interested in our company and within about a month, following their appearance in a webinar, they had investors of over $2 million. And when I read the press release that he sent to me and he copied our president Frank DiBello. I said, well , you’ve just made, not just my day, but my week and my month, because you have done exactly what we wanted to do for you. And I’ve often said, and that might sound like a cliche, but what we’re trying to do in Space Florida is help those companies, those smaller companies in that supply chain that it’s so competitive to be in. But think of the joy, the fact that the company down with maybe 8 to 10 employees, they get this enormous pint of blood in the arm said , you know what? We’d like, what you do. We like your management team. And we believe in your technology. Here’s $2 million to be successful. That to me is phenomenal. I’d also If I meant mention not a company that participated in the Florida venture forum , but with whom Space Florida has had a very strong relationship with. And perhaps, you know, they call them Made in Space. They were the company who first installed 3D printer onboard the International Space Station several years ago. And coincidentally through my Florida Israel Innovation Partnership, I suggested to their management, you know what? You guys have got great industry going on. However, you need to build a manufacturer in space. And perhaps if you were to partner with another innovative 3D company, you might come up with some smart ideas you apply for the grant. And if our judges deemed that you’re worthy, you might pick up 250, $300,000 dollars as an award to explore can you do this in space. They did. And they did successfully twice, which means they have achieved what $500,000. And now they are starting a program of manufacturing in space. So what was initially seen as being a gimmick, that they can build a little plastic container in space. Hey, how cool is that? Manufacture in space, but how about manufacturing for the purposes of generating revenue and building a company, expanding a company portfolio, that’s really something else. And I’m very proud of what they have done, but it’s not just me. It’s been whole team or business development team led by Howard and Frank our two senior executives and I’ve been really happy to be a small part of that success story.

Richard Miles : 17:36

So not only am I familiar with Made in Space, but Aaron Kemmer, their founder is going to be also one of the interviews on this space series.

Tony Gannon: 17:43

But do please tell Aaron that I said hello.

Richard Miles : 17:45

I will, well lets go back to what you said about the partnership with Israel, which I think is Very exciting. We’re chatting a little bit earlier about the book startup nation, which came out probably 10 years ago. So we were chronicling Israel’s rise from being this quasi agrarian, semi social state. And then in the early nineties that creativity and innovation explode and the startup companies and so on. And it gives a whole bunch of different reasons for that. But I’d really like to hear what the Florida Israel Innovation Partnership looks like. What does it consist of and what sort of results have you seen from that so far?

Tony Gannon: 18:17

Thank you again Richard for allowing me to speak on this particular program. This is a program that’s extremely close to my heart. I tell you what happened. So about eight years ago, our president Frank DiBello called me into his office and said, Tony, I’d like you to do something it’s kind of unusual. I’d like you to write a speech for me. And I know Frank has a great rec on tear . He also writes extremely well. I’m very experienced. I said, Frank, do you think I can justify I’ll do something for you ? He said, I just think you might come up with a different angle. And that was really probably from my research background , but also because I had taken a personal interest in the flight of Space Shuttle Columbia , on which as you know, amongst others, there was the very first Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, and Ilan of course like the other astronauts perished, but I’ve been very interested in this story and success. Frank’s speech was to be presented to about 200 Israeli Jewish congregation in the Orlando area. So very supportive of Israel, but very supportive as you say, the startup nation theme. So I wrote a speech for Frank and I got some words through various interpretations in Hebrew. And essentially I wrote about Ilan Ramon about his success and what he dreamed and how important was to explore space in very simple words, but also the fact that several personal items that Ilan had onboard had survived that dreadful crash back down to where , including parts of his personal notebook and which he wrote in. And I kind of paraphrasing here and now he said today, I feel I’m a real man in space because I working here in space, I’m happy to return. And it was a very moving piece that I included in Frank’s speech to this Israeli congregation. Well, apparently it was very well received. And within two weeks of that, Frank came to me and said, we’re taking this a step four , I want you to go to Israel. I want you to come to Israel with me because I have this program, which has been generated to Israeli support and indeed through our governor, and we want to allocate $2 million per annum for a joint partnership, 1 million from Israel, 1 million from Florida, so that we can collaborate in aerospace, R and D two companies working together and typically award would be expected to be between 200 to $300,000 each. So it was really exciting. So I go to Israel and I’m sitting, looking at young Israeli men and women, and I’m absolutely not dealt with the technology out . And next to me alongside our president was Mr. John Carlos is like the number two guy in Lockheed Martin. So this guy is way above my pay scale, but we on really well. And he too could see something was happening. The very first company that walked in the door was a young man called Dr. Oren Milstein, who had graduated his PhD in California. And he’s the CEO and cofounder of a company called StemRad from Israel. And Steve and his partners had come up with a very, very instinct form of radiation protection, which would be utilized in a military situation. And he wasn’t sure where to go with it. And so we were looking at it and I said to John, I kind of kicked him on the back of his leg. I said, this could be of great interest to Lockheed Martin in the future radiation protection for astronauts. Why not use that as perhaps in a suit, one of the , be instinct to compare that to what the current radiation protect is like and then how it might improve. If you could incorporate the StemRad technology, it was successful. It was enormously successful. Lockheed Martin worked really hard, very closely with NASA in conjunction with this small company in Tel Aviv. Could they also have offices up in Haifa and they now Lockheed Martin are going to use that technology. And it’s been sent into space I’ve tested and proven to be superior to the current radiation detection, kind of protecting the brain human brain human body, the vital organs, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the Capitec, those earliest of a human it’s face. There’s no, man. That was my first introduction to Israeli technology. And never, since I continue to be wowed by what I’ve seen and heard and been a part of. So we’ve now had our seven calls for proposals, typically three to four winners per year. And I’m happy to announce that in late October, I believe from memory it’s the 22nd of October, we have the eight rounds for projects and we’ve had winners from all over the state of Florida from Miami to Tampa to Gainesville. I think the winner from Gainesville is called Micro gRx affiliated with the Innovation Center at the University of Florida. And Dr. Siobhan Malany I’m really trying to follow this in the back of my head is the CEO and Co founder . She did a wonderful job of her investigations into actually something that I can take care a great deal about is the aging process amongst us humans. You know , how do we detect, how do we take it up? How do we improve? How do we slow it down and utilizing space as a research vehicle? So they’re just some of those windows from that program, but it has been very successful. And Richard, I apologize for talking so long. Other countries are watching it and they’re saying, Tony, this is great for Israel and wonderful and congratulations. But what about me? And so in this period of time, both my presidents trying to battle, I know we’ve had certain amount of very friendly and jovial pressure from other countries recently, about six months ago at the OneWeb Satellites Facility, we signed an MOU with the Republic of France and a banking institution called BPI France to have a similar style program, which I am looking forward to seeing, being initiated in the spring of 21. Spain is chasing us for an MOU. Brazil has already signed an MOU in March just before we went under that curfew of Covid. Our president had signed down in Miami with the president of Brazil. And as I mentioned, Spain, but also Japan and certainly not least United Kingdom absolutely would love the idea to collaborate with us. And we are open to working with all of them.

Richard Miles : 24:11

That’s amazing, Tony, it’s all from one great speech that you wrote. So I got to say, when the Cade Museum gets big enough, we’re going to hire you as a speech writer . That’s this phenomenal results to get that sort of program going. And it’s really a reflection right of again, it’s not only governments and it’s not just US companies now. It’s this diversification of talent, but also risks . So that by pulling in companies from these different countries, whether it’s Israel or Brazil or Spain, or the UK, you really are building this international supply chain of various thing . The market’s doing that. And you’re , it’s not just governments doing that. So I think that’s phenomenal because that’s really what will make a lot of this sustainable.

Tony Gannon: 24:48

Yeah and Richard just like to briefly add. You reminded me in our last etcetera event in May, the winner was not from Florida, but it was a UK company that I had met two years ago in London. And I said to him , Archangel Lightworks sounds like communications company. Think about Florida. Don’t forget about it. Sure enough. He applied and they have to indicate yes, if we, win we are considering opening up a facility in Florida, and now I’ve learned in the past few days that they are opening up, but they won the competition from United Kingdom, excellent company, great management team . They’re now in negotiations with investors from fraud, that when they come here, they get a major boost. Can I just mention something? And it’s on a personal nature sometimes when it’s really personal, it drives you even farther . When I was on the Israel on that first visit and I finished the first five days when we were returning home, it happened to be the anniversary of the death of the Ilan Ramon and entire Space Shuttle crew. And I remembered that it was scheduled to come back Columbia, at 9:00 AM in the morning, which would have been 3:00 PM in Israel. And I just totally out of the blue. And it was almost like divine inspiration or something. I walked down to the beach, took off my shoes, socks and put my feet in the water. And I just said a prayer for the crew for particularly thinking about Ilan Ramon that evening, I got a call totally out of the blue from this lady. Her name was Rona Ramon . It was his widow. She called me out of the blue. She said, I heard as a crazy Irish UK guy working on this Israel program. I’d love to meet you. And we met the following day for lunch. It was almost like what’s going on here. Something that sticks, but this program is going to be very successful, I can feel it in my heart.

Richard Miles : 26:30

That is a great and very touching story. Although I got to ask Tony, when are the Irish going to get involved? Come on,

Tony Gannon: 26:36

You are reading my mind , Uh , in Ireland , uh , as we have enterprise, Florida, here who do a wonderful job and the collaborate with so many around the country and did all the development agencies some weeks ago, I contacted enterprise Ireland. And ironically, when I sent an email to Dublin Capitol City, my email was deflected to Texas, to Austin, Texas. When I discovered enterprise Ireland have several representatives. And in the past three to four weeks, I’ve been in discussions with one of them. Now I mentioned his name, Steven Kell . And today we had a discussion and he’s asked me to present to a group of Irish aerospace companies in October, probably about 11 to 12. I don’t have a calendar in front of me. And he essentially wants me to talk about Florida and the opportunities for our aerospace companies. And they would be early stage, probably looking for investments anywhere from one to five million, it would be very competitive for them. But if there are not in front of investors, then they’ll never gain. So it’s only when to go up front and you say, okay, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll give it everything. And I’m hoping that in the future, yeah , something will come up. That was a nice pun there Richard.

Richard Miles : 27:41

I’ve gotta put you on warning here, Tony, we’re going to hold you personally accountable. If the Irish are not in the game and somebody has gotta be blamed here. So,

Tony Gannon: 27:48

Hopefully we’ll have Guinness beer and Jameson Irish whiskey, also on board, a future space shuttle mission would probably help us. And that’s better than an aspirin or something of that nature in the long term , but in mild moderation.

Richard Miles : 28:01

I’m friends with one of the heirs of the Guinness family. And so we’ll try to make sure that that’s doable. Tony, last question, let’s get visionary for a moment here. Where do you think we’re going to be say 10 years from now in 2030 with regards to space exploration in general. And then as a sub question of that, where do you think we’re going to be in terms of public private partnerships or the commercial part of space? So dream big here and assume that everything goes well in the next 10 years, where do you think that might put us?

Tony Gannon: 28:28

That’s like a big hundred thousand dollar question or a hundred million dollar question I tell you what I’d love to see in the more short term is that it amazes me still that thinking back to the sixties, the 1970s, that if one were to fly from New York or Washington DC to London, it’s an overnight trip of seven to eight hours. And here we are in the 2000 and twenties and it’s marginally shorter. It’s still five to six hours of a flight supersonic jets. I would love to see them operate. And I think perhaps Virgin Atlantic leading their efforts in their suborbital flights might be a pathway where we will see a group of airlines who all have these supersonic jets that might fly us from say, New York or Washington, DC to Canberra in Australia in four hours. That to me would be an incredible achievement. It would be under the general mantle of aerospace, but the technology that might be used in communications to enable that to happen, I think would be phenomenally of great benefit to mankind here on earth. Agriculture concerns me deeply. One all was assumes that when you come from a nation like Ireland , where it rains pretty much every day, but not all day, that water is never an issue and so I was saddened over the last couple of years to read that it is the pollution of water and the destruction on our agricultural processes vote in Florida. And also in Europe start accelerating at an alarming rate. I would like to see the space program take a bigger lead. And I think that it’s coming up priority ever so slowly and to use this of drone technology and water purification system in identifying those areas of our planet on our state in particular, where the pollution exists and how do we stop that pollution. And undoubtedly University of Florida play a major lead in our state and indeed the entire country, the reputation of the University of Florida is beyond par. Likewise, when our Everglades Foundation in South Florida, as we’re protecting that very fragile environment, to me, that’s critically important. So I would say agriculture production of food, increasing the yields, watching our atmosphere, our environment, using technology to improve the information we have. And how would you say rectify the bad things that are happening on our planet? I think that’s very, very critical if I could make a crazy wish for the future. Richard, I’d say something that always struck my mind. I think two things in particular, I think the ability to fly, I think there was some crazy guy flying over LA recently. It was about a couple of hundred feet away from United Airlines. That’s not the kind of thing I’m thinking of something responsible whereby one could fly on short trips. I’ve given altitudes from point A to point B, which our own little backpack. I think that would be phenomenal. I’d love to see that. Just think of the doors would open up to you going down for a beer, are you allow it have one. Maybe one?

Richard Miles : 31:22

I would love that too, but you made a very interesting and important point. Tony is that a lot of the excitement around space when people read about space exploration and go, great, we’re going to go back to the moon. We’re going to go to Mars. A lot of the utilities actually going to be focused back on here on earth. It will improve our ability to observe the Earth much more accurately and make improvements to technologies here based on what we have in space. Like, as you said, the climate agriculture energy, this sort of thing’s important derivatives of maybe the aspirational goal of making it tomorrow . But nevertheless, we should be producing downstream effects that we can use almost right away here.

Tony Gannon: 32:00

And Richard, I would just sort of add, and it might be sounding a little comic to things in the far distant future. We should bear in mind. One of them, I would love the ability to teleport. There is a University of private in Switzerland as working out so far and not getting there. They’re moving objects about one centimeter, but the ability to teleport from point A to point B be at 5,000 or 500,000 miles, 50 million miles. That to me, would be absolutely phenomenal, I would say this is I’m quoting the words of our good friend from Cambridge, Dr. Stephen Hawking, whom I met actually about 14, 15 years ago. We didn’t have a discussion, but a question I raised to his group was tell us about aliens. Would you like to meet aliens? His answer was very surprising he said I don’t think we really want to meet aliens, but it’s probably gone beyond that now, because those signals are going off into space for the past 100 years. Because I think in the long term, the aliens would be so far ahead of us that they would see us simply as protein, which is an alarming thought.

Richard Miles : 33:06

So Tony , you may have just caused me to lose a bet with my son. We’ve been arguing for at least 10 years about whether teleporting is possible or not. So I don’t think I’m going to let him listen to this podcast or else you don’t want to collect on his bet. And now I’m going to hold you accountable for three things, Irish astronauts, jet packs, and teleporting. And so when we do our follow up in 2030 podcasts, we’ll see if you were right on any of those. Tony, thank you very much for joining me today on Radio. Cade it’s been a great fun discussion, and I look forward to having you back on the show at some point.

Tony Gannon: 33:36

Richard, thank you very much. The honor was all mine. Thank you so much and good luck to the great work that you do .

Richard Miles : 33:41

Thank you very much

Outro: 33:41

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.

Launch into Radio Cade’s Space Pod and step inside the future of humanity’s journey into deep space. Our first episode features Mark Sirangelo, who was involved with more than 350 space missions at Sierra Nevada and is the visionary NASA tapped to lead its Moon to Mars Mission Directorate. Mark discusses not just the how of the space exploration renaissance, but the why. Although we need the excitement of discovery to motivate us, much of the current work on space will improve life on earth soon.  

Launch into Radio Cade’s Space Pod and step inside the future of humanity’s journey into deep space. Our first episode features Mark Sirangelo, who was involved with more than 350 space missions at Sierra Nevada and is the visionary NASA tapped to lead its Moon to Mars Mission Directorate. Mark discusses not just the how of the space exploration renaissance, but the why. Although we need the excitement of discovery to motivate us, much of the current work on space will improve life on earth soon.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

Astronauts landed on the moon 50 years ago, and we have never stopped looking toward the stars, imagining what the future holds far beyond earth. Launching the Radio Cade’s Space Pod, and step inside the future of humanity’s journey to deep space, meet the innovators and visionaries who are charting a bold new course to the moon, then to Mars and beyond. Discover the revolutionary technology that will get us there and see how it’s already transformed life here on earth. Today. I’m speaking with Mark Sirangelo, who is involved with more than 350 space missions at Sierra Nevada, and is the visionary NASA tapped to lead its moon to Mars mission directorate. Hear Mark on this first episode of our Radio Cade Space Pod, because we’re headed back to the moon and this time we plan to stay. Mark , welcome to Radio Cade.

Mark Sirangelo: 1:25

Hi Richard, Good to be here. I’m glad to be able to speak with you on the topic of space and its feature .

Richard Miles: 1:30

So Mark, as you know, this is part of a bigger series that we’re doing on space exploration in which we’re going to talk, not just about the how of getting on the moon and beyond, but the why . And perhaps few people are better positioned to talk about both the how and the why than you. So to give listeners an idea of what you bring to the table, why don’t you start with a brief summary of your career, including the non-space parts, which I found fascinating. So what made Mark Sirangelo?

Mark Sirangelo: 1:56

Thanks Richard, I’m happy to give a little background. I think one of the things I like to talk about when I speak to groups or students is the fact that I didn’t have a traditional path to space. I didn’t grow up as a space engineers, spend 30 years doing it and wound up coming out the back end. Many of the people today are looking at their lives and careers and deciding what they want to do. My background, although I have a long history in flying, I was flying as a teenager and an active pilot ever since. And the love of space and aviation came from many generations of my family who’ve been involved with that. I didn’t actually start in the space industry. I started as a nature photographer. I’d spend time traveling the world as a mediocre photographer, but when that was good enough to get a lot of work and I think I got more work than most people because I could fly myself around and that was making me cheaper than most other photographers, but I saw a lot of imaging and I also got to see a lot of different cultures and people. And that really started me off on a understanding of the world, understanding of the world we live in and the people in parts of the world that really mattered to how we look at ourselves in many ways. One of the very earliest pitchers out in the space industry that helped change the world was the Apollo eight picture called Earthrise. When the earth was first seen by human, as they came around the backside of the moon. And many people think that moment where you saw the earth hanging, there was the start of what’s. Now the ecological movement, the idea of connecting the world to the fact that we live in it and it’s a very precious place. And although that was just the photograph that was done on Christmas Eve and that photograph in many ways on the painting in millions of people’s rooms and making people understand the world we live in. So the connection is really interesting. I have a interesting background, perhaps I was in the military for awhile . I started up two different companies that were not directly related to the space industry. One was in the events and entertainment business, and another was in computer technology. I also continued to do artistic work and helping to produce Broadway shows and theatrical shows, but in a short version in the beginning of this century, around 2000 number of people, including myself, started looking at the space industry. And ironically enough, I was working in a business that used the NASA technology, or I was able to use a NASA technology to make a difference in the healthcare world and others and NASA recognized that and recognized my work in that area and invited me to come out to their annual event to receive an award. And it was at that event that I started wandering the space industry and the trade show, unbeknownst to me, several other, the key players in the new wave space were also starting up at that particular time. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and Paul Allen and others. And collectively, we came at this industry and started, what’s now known as the commercial space flight industry of which there have been well over a hundred companies now who have tried to rethink the space industry in a different way. I was part of that becoming the CEO of a company called Space Dev in the early two thousands, and continuing on for the next couple of decades and had an amazing space career. And lots of ups and downs have been on hundreds of space missions, or my company has been, and people have worked with me. We’ve been to seven planets with something that we’ve built. I got to stand on the mountains in Colorado where I live and watch Mars as something that we had built was about to land on Mars and been involved in going to as close to the sun as possible on a mission. And then on the new horizons mission to Pluto. So for the kid that came out of nowhere with no particular background, it’s been a fascinating journey.

Richard Miles: 5:33

So Mark, I got to say probably in the Venn diagram of successful Broadway producers and also part of missions to Mars to space, there’s probably only one person right?

Mark Sirangelo: 5:43

There probably is and to take that little bit more seriously, I actually give a talk where I compare Broadway to space, which is probably not something anybody does, but I go through 10 key things in Broadway, i n t he theater business and t he space business. And I show how t hey’re a lot more alike than people realize the passion that exists in theater business is very similar to the passion that exists in space business. People do it because they love it. When you start a show at eight o’clock, the curtain goes up, it’s not dissimilar t o pushing a button on a rocket launch. You don’t get to return it. And there are a lot of connections that I find just playful, but also sort of fun. People have passions in many different ways.

Richard Miles: 6:21

I’ll bet. I mean, with all those moving parts, and like you said, on a very tight timeline that, that has to be executed You don’t really get a do over or at least not right away.

Mark Sirangelo: 6:29

We have a lot of professionals and artisans that are involved. I actually think of space as art because a large part of what we do in space, particularly in the commercial space industry has never been done. It has to be imagined. It has to be created. It has to be drawn in many ways, literally sometimes drawn and imagined in terms of what it might look like. And that’s a very artistic activity, which people don’t always attribute to the space industry.

Richard Miles: 6:52

Mark, before we move on to the future, let’s just spend a little bit of time talking about where we are right now from listeners who don’t necessarily follow the ins and outs and capabilities. They might see an occasional YouTube clip or something like that. What are commercial private efforts in government capable of doing right now, or at least in the next few months? And then let’s talk about what we might expect in the next 10 years.

Mark Sirangelo: 7:14

Sure. I think this is, I would say a golden age in many ways of the space industry. There is a whole lot of change going on right now. And if you go back before the new year, 2000 virtually all the space business was conducted by governments, run by NASA, as we know, or the defense department or around the world by governments. Since then there have been hundreds of companies, commercial companies that have taken on many of those parts of it. So for example, recently the astronauts who went to the space station or brought up on a commercially designed commercially built and commercially launched space vehicle built by space X under a program run by NASA called the commercial Crew Program. That program did not make NASA build anything. NASA became, the manager became the overseer, became the certifier, the space X did all the work to make that happen. And I think what we’re seeing more and more of the satellites that drive our days, the research that’s going on in space is now in some ways, a public private partnership in some ways, completely commercial. And the idea that commercial companies would be building their own spaceships as my former company did and space X and others. It was not really conceivable when I first started building a replacement for the space shuttle, people laughed at me saying, how could you possibly do that with 40 people in a garage in San Diego when there are 18,000 people working on the space shuttle program, but we’ve seen it is possible to do that. And I think there’s a lot of people look at their lives and their careers, the idea of looking at something that seems impossible and making it possible is one of the greatest thrills that you could do in your life I think.

Richard Miles: 8:49

So we’re now at the point where it’s fairly routine, certainly the launch rockets into space to carry passenger into space, to and from the space station, let’s take head on to space skeptics who say like, well, great it was wonderful to have a space program in the middle or the apex of the cold war where we definitely wanted to prove U.S. superiority. Oh , it’s in space, but also technologically speaking, militarily speaking, just so you know, when president Kennedy committed the United States go to the moon. I mean, that was part of that national effort. And now you have some people say, well, okay, great, cold war is over. What do we really get out of going to space setting aside, of course, the very powerful, romantic ideas of exploration, which has always motivated humans. So you can’t discount that or disregard that, but from a sort of practical, hard nose standpoint, what justifies the money and the time, both by commercial interests in governments into essentially this space Renaissance.

Mark Sirangelo: 9:41

And I think with one of the most interesting and oftentimes misunderstood parts of the space industry and NASA for all its value and all the people who respect it really doesn’t get as much credit as I think they should get for the work that’s been done in space. And people often think of spaces, the big rockets and the satellites and the moon landing and the Mars landings that we’re about to see the next Mars Rover that’s kind of my end called perseverance or Percy for short, but people don’t really see that in their day to day lives. How much NASA has impacted everything we do. I think I would cause a national craze if I just say, if we told everybody that they no longer could use Google maps or Apple maps, because space is shutting off GPS. Think about just that one thing, how much that has changed the way we live, the way we drive , how much time we’re not spending in traffic anymore and how that contributes to a better environment, because we’re not wasting gasoline and creating carbon dioxide. And that one thing alone is a derivative of the space program, but there are thousands of examples, many of which are in your daily lives and your daily house in your life, in your personal life and your health, but also in your fun life and the things that we do every day. And to me, that’s one of the best examples of why we go to space . Space is certainly about exploration. And many of us who’ve done it feel that spark or that passion, if you will, going back to the theater comment I made, but it’s also a pallet of innovation. It’s a pallet of understanding what tomorrow could be. And it drives the change that we see in our society. Unlike anything else, it’s not about the hardware. It’s about all the medical things that we get. It’s about all the things that happened in our day to day lives, all the things that exist in our homes and what we do is we take what’s in space and we bring it back and we drive it into our societies. In fact, NASA’s chartering, which is different than virtually any other part of the U.S. government. It is chartered by its own definition to take everything it does and send it back to the American people in some way, shape or form. And it has done that marvelously in my view, it has nothing to do directly with necessarily landing on the moon. It’s all the things we’ve learned along the way that makes your life better in my life better. And if we can talk maybe a little bit about some examples of that. I think,

Richard Miles: 11:57

Yeah I was just about to ask, give me some concrete examples of what we have already learned or an expect to learn soon. So the average person go, Oh, I get it. Like GPS is a perfect example of just as a personal side. I mean, we both were in desert storm and I remember the day that the first tank platoon leader got a GPS and it just seemed like this incredible magic, we didn’t even understand how it worked , but you could immediately grasp the utility of it. And it was quite something. And as you said, people take that for granted now, but it was quite new,

Mark Sirangelo: 12:26

And we live in such a different time. So let’s bring it to where we are today. How many packages do we now all get delivered to our homes? That’s all driven by root systems, which are driven by GPS. And the fact that my FedEx package from Amazon shows up here on time is in part because of the space industry and the ability to do it. Well , let’s be even more personal. I like talking about the things that we all feel all the time. For example, the technology behind the invisible braces, that many of the young children and even adults now have used, came out of the space program. If you go to the dentist and we all have, and we get this device put in our mouth that keeps our mouth clean and vacuums and wet. The purification that came out of that was NASA technology, heart rate monitors, which have become important from a physical device per physical activity, but also in the medical world, particularly in the area of virus and the amount of oxygen and how your heart’s working is our devices that came out of NASA. For those that live a little bit in science fiction, we now have ingestible thermometers looks like a vitamin that you swallow , and it creates an environment where then doctors can tell what’s going on inside your body, that’s a NASA technology. I have friends who have children who are hard of hearing cochlear implants started in a NASA world. Those people who’ve ever used a thermometer in the ear, the infrared system for that was used to detect planets. It came from a NASA technology to look at long distance, to look at planets that are outside of our solar system, but even more fun and more practically skin cream file systems inside skin cream that allow for the moisture to stay in your face was a NASA technology, but even more important stuff. One of the things that happens when you go to space, as you lose your bone mass, and you could lose up to five to 10% of your bone mass for being in space. It’s a very similar thing to what happens when people age and they start losing their bone mass, osteoporosis it’s called. The treatments for that, how that might be able to work were developed on space station for long distance space explorations, but even more fun things increased dry technology, freeze dried foods for example, was something that things that famously came out of the Apollo program. But the idea of how to do dehydration is really important by living in Colorado, everybody’s outside all the time. The water filtration bottles that we use was a NASA technology, the filtration system that was inside or device that finds us if we get lost, a lot of people carry devices, whether or not they’re on the water in the mountains that you can press an emergency signal gets sent. So stuff like that, it’s really pretty interesting to me and people don’t think of reading the same way that NASA is that a space program, even those of us who eat meat. Inspections of chicken are now done using something called a hyperspectral thermometer and a visual device, which scans for bacteria and salmonella and things. That was actually a space program device. And it’s keeping thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people safe from food poisoning. So those kinds of things, and there are many more examples that I just love to talk about, but it’s really pretty fascinating. I have an artificial limb made NASA technology is now driving into artificial limbs as well as prosthesis’. So the ability to move a prosthesis using your brain, the ability to make it feel more comfortable came out of NASA. The toughness of the artificial lens that are being put into people those, the technology that can drive by the NASA. So I know I’m Johnny on here, but you see this kind of thing and people don’t live their lives . They don’t realize how much NASA and touches your lives every day. Speaking to touching, if you have any faucets in your home that have polished brass finishes or any polished metal finishes, that was a NASA technology. So when you’re touching something that clean your hands, you’re actually touching the space program every day. So it’s a fun thing to do. And NASA has a lot of problems that they have to solve. How do we feed people in space? For example, since they’re in zero or limited gravity water, doesn’t go down into roots. We’ve had to figure that out. And that’s turned into systems that allow people to grow food in their homes in a very limited environment, which these days is even more important, LED light bulbs in your home. The air purifiers that we use in our home now all derived out of NASA work. If you’re sleeping on a Tempurpedic mattress or anything that has temper foam in it, that was a foam that was developed in the NASA world. Things like that you start thinking about, and those are very, very personal things, but even looking into the future and I know we want to talk a little bit about tomorrow. The AI, the artificial intelligence that’s going into autonomous vehicles was used initially to drive the rovers around on Mars. And that same technology is now coming down. And in my view, in many people’s view in five or ten years, we’re going to see many autonomous vehicles out on the road. And it’s not that NASA is building those vehicles, but if you have to drive Rover a hundred million miles away on another planet and that’s a onetime vehicle, or you can’t fix it, you can’t go up and do anything about it. That autonomy, that intelligence behind doing that is quite important and NASA’s taking that and it’s now finding its way into vehicles and the devices that are in our world.

Richard Miles: 17:42

Let’s talk about a few things that really continue to catch the popular imagination. One is the , the whole idea of a moon base. We see it in movies. I mean, people think about a moon base. It seems very much science fictiony. And then of course, a mission to Mars or man mission to Mars. And by movies, I mean more than just two or three people staying for a couple of days, but actually similar to international space station or a Antarctica research station where you’ve got a permanent group more than just a couple of people staying there for extended periods of time. What would it take to get to that? And then again, the question is what would a research station do on the moon? Would most of that research be focused on creating more benefits? Like the ones you listed doing research that would help us understand ourselves on earth or what a good portion of that also be pointed the other direction, going further into space.

Mark Sirangelo: 18:31

It’s a great question. And those of us who’ve been involved in some of this effort get asked for why go back, you’ve been there. And it’s a good question. And particularly in his time of financial stress, it’s a question that ought to be asked. Is there value? Is there reality behind it? I think many of us, and this is a personal opinion for me, is that there’s no point to go back to the moon unless we go back to stay or to have some longterm kind of presence. And I believe that’s what NASA’s goal here is eventually to do that. What does that look like? I think it looks more like Antarctica station than it does the space station, meaning that Antarctica in many ways, if you’ve ever taken a look at it is a super harsh environment. People go there for periods of time, but don’t live there forever. Or they go to do research and why go to the probably the most hospitable part of the world go do research. What has happened in the Antarctica is both a historical marker and a precursor to what’s going to happen to us elsewhere. And the work that we do, the research that we do allows us to understand what has happened in our world and what might happen in my view, going to the moon is something that will allow us to do multiple things. It will look like eventually if the plants work out, a inhabited station, it doesn’t mean that people are going to live there as permanent residents , although maybe someday, a long time from now that might happen. It’s more about having a facility that could be made permanent and used as a permanent base, the space station for all that. We have garnered from it since it started operation. Now almost 20 years ago is a temporary facility. It’s not going to stay up forever. In fact, it’s probably going to stop being operational. Sometime this decade, it’s been a marvelous platform, but it’s also suffers from a lot of problems. It moves around a lot. It’s a machine that has to be taken care of it’s in gravity. So every day it drops down a little bit so it has to be made to be permanent. It can house only these six or seven people. And there’s many things that are very difficult. And with the space shuttle not flying anymore, we don’t have a vehicle that can properly upgrade it or fix it. And there’s really not one that’s designed to do that, moving to the moon though, and taking that effort and putting it into something that has a permanence to it. The moon is a solid mass. It doesn’t move. So whatever you do there, you’re not worried about falling out of the sky. You can invest in it because you’re going to be there for the long term . If you’re doing research about earth, what better place to put the kinds of instruments to observe earth then from a stable platform, that’s looking at earth all the time, but it also allows us to learn is it possible for us to live off of earth? Is it possible before we go to Mars, which is anywhere from a nine to twelve month journey to get there in one way, the moon is a few days to get there. So we can learn, much like we learned how to do everything in our lives we don’t start by riding a motorcycle. We start by riding a tricycle and we learn, and that’s part of what would happen on the moon base or when it’s done. But it’s a lot more than that. We believe that there are significant minerals that could help the world and society. Many of the things that we use every day are in limited supply. The moon may be able to provide us with some of those activities, but in order to do that, besides the obvious of figuring out how to get there and building some sort of structure for us to live in, you also need to do practical things. Well, how does one survive there? We can very well carry up all the water. For example, that’s needed. So NASA and its research, there was a very special mission that mapped all the surface of the moon. In that process of mapping, we found out that there could be significant water on the moon, which we didn’t fully appreciate before in the form of ice. So right now, the plans for NASA literally to go to the South pole, the moon, to bring the analogy of Antarctica even further and explore potentially a place called Shackleton’s crater and Shackleton is humane. Always wanna explore us of Antarctica. So there’s a little poetic justice there, but we’re going there because there could be significant water in the form of ice and people think of water and they think of drinking or fluids for humans. And that’s true, but water is energy. All the research we’re doing on hydrogen vehicles, for example, on having water on moon, if we could find it could power it so we might be able to have the essential elements for life and for research. And the answer is once we get there, we will do the research, whether or not we stay there long term will be determined by how valuable the research is.

Richard Miles: 23:05

And this is also kind of the second part of the question in terms of Mars, make some predictions, Mark, which I know is always a dicey. I’m not going to hold you to these. He’s not legally binding, but where do you think we will be saying in 2030, regards to a moon base? And then where do you think we will be with regard to planning for preparing for a mission to Mars?

Mark Sirangelo: 23:26

Obviously much of this relies on people say money, and that’s certainly true. I will say, will and there’s a interesting saying that’s carved into the national archives, goes back to Shakespeare. I believe what is past is prologue. In many cases, if you look back and if you drove back human history 500 years ago, and the people in Europe thinking, should we get on these wooden rickety boats and head out to a place that we think the earth is flat and we’re going to fall off of, we have no idea what’s out there and we have no idea how to get there, how to get back. For that time, it is not much different. We know a lot more about moon and Mars and those explorers from the 1600’s ever knew about finding your way to Plymouth, Massachusetts. And I think that’s sometimes lost on people if they did not do that. If they did not start that if society didn’t continue to explore earth, we would not be nearly as progressed as we are now. So I think in many ways, this is an extension of what’s been going on since there’ve been humans. Those people that walk from Russia to North America and became the first native Americans, they decided to move and look and explore. And I think that’s part of what we’re doing. NASA’s plans right now, which I think are reasonable, is to have some permanent presence doesn’t mean full time, but some ability to have a permanent presence on the moon by the end of the decade by 2030, which means you have transportation, you have the rockets that can take people back and forth, but you also have the supply ships that can go back and forth. The robotic rovers that will be used where humans can’t go or don’t want to go on the surface, the communication systems that will allow us to have real time communication. We’re doing this on a video call, which is enhanced by NASA technology originally. And the idea of being able to talk simultaneously and concurrently to the moon will come back into society in the form of better video calls and better communication. But I think if things go as I think they probably will, we will have that ability to have some longterm presence on the moon. By the end of the decade, the rockets are being built to capsules that will take the people back and forth being built. The science missions have been contracted. The rovers that would be moving people around on the moon are under contract or going to be under contracts . All the elements of the physiology, the medicine food have all been researched is what we did on the space stations . Figure out not that we were going to live on the space station. The point of having the space station was to figure out how we could live in space so that when we wanted to go further, we could understand what that meant. So I think that’s a reasonable goal that will in some form likely happen. And it’s not just the United States. Other countries are participating or doing your own programs and much like Antarctica , which has dozens of countries involved with it in a peaceful way, that’s what we’re hoping to see on the moon. From ther I think many of the same technologies that will be demonstrated on the moon are the precursors to what we would need to go to Mars. We have demonstrated that we could go there. We’ve had now I think, well, over a dozen missions, tomorrow’s the us has been very successful in that. I have another one flying there as we speak right now, which will be the most advanced Rover ever built. Certainly in the world or in NASA’s history. Not only will we do a lot of research and be able to traverse much of Mars. It has from the first time a helicopter onboard , we have built a small helicopter to be able to do a drone flight over Mars so that we can see a lot more of it than we could see for a rover. We also are taking samples for the first time and bringing them back. So we have shown that we can get there. We can work. We can operate. You don’t have humans there. And I think the eternal question that will be asked for the next decade or longer, probably much longer, is do we need humans? And I think that’s in many ways, the essential and maybe vital question in all of research, if you could go without a human, should you? It certainly is easier and safer, but is there exploration? And that’s, I think the question may be for many of these viewers and listeners to this, when you really come down to it, these are things that are super helpful. We learn a lot makes our world a better place, but at the end of the day, it comes down to a singular question which has been around for thousands of years. Should we go, should we take that step? Why we have a perfectly good village in Spain or in Africa or in South America? Why do we need to go explore? Why did the Polynesians need to go find Hawaii? They were living on a pretty good Island when they left. It is that kind of thing I think. And that’s the question of human will. And do we want to go to Mars? Technically, we’ve been there. We can get there again. It’s hard, it’s challenging. It costs a lot of money and we have to decide, is it worth it? Do we want to do it as a society? And I don’t think it’s one country alone. I think in order to do something that big, it needs to be some sort of coalition.

Richard Miles: 28:21

Mark, one final question as a former producer of Broadway plays and large events, you know, you’re gonna have a great product, but you’ve got to sell that product. You got to get people to come in the door. So if you were given the task by NASA or a private company, and what’s the 30 second pitch to the American people, why this is important, why they need to buy our product, which is returning to space and doing whatever we need to do, sort of what would that 30 second pitch sound like?

Mark Sirangelo: 28:45

I think the elements of that pitch would be, we are human because we are curious. And that curiosity isn’t much about what we do, whether or not it’s art, music, science, exploration, and there’s nothing that has been more prevalent in American society than the moon landings. It is a seminal moment of now 50 years ago. It’s still being talked about as if this happened yesterday and think about how many young people have been inspired, including me and others, to do something different, amazing, challenging to dream off of something that started as a scientific program in a cold war. And I think the 30 second pitch beyond all the things that benefits society is the fact that it is who we are as humans. We want to feel that we can do something great and something big and something special. And it doesn’t mean that the person who sees the moon program doesn’t go out and find a way to fix a major disease or to figure out how to start a computer or to do things that are in our everyday lives and make ourselves better. I think it is that spark of humanity and that spark of curiosity and that spark of passion. When you see somebody do something great, whether or not it’s in the Olympics that makes us want to go out and ride our bike farther, or if it’s going to the moon and NASA should, in my view, take advantage of that. And then they have, but they need to do more of it.

Richard Miles: 30:08

Mark, thank you very much for joining me today. I’m convinced by your pitch, I’ll buy the product and we’re going to go ahead and schedule you for a podcast in 2030, about 10 years from now. And we’ll see how much we’ve come and how much we need to go. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time today on Radio Cade.

Mark Sirangelo: 30:22

Alright, Richard. Thank you very much too. And good luck to you.

Richard Miles: 30:25

In the next episode of our Radio Cade Space Pod here, Tony Gannon , Vice President of Research and Innovation at Space Florida, discuss the tremendous impact of public/private space collaboration.

Outro: 30:36

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews. Podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist, Jacob Lawson.

Antibiotics are used to keep cattle healthy and lower their feeding costs. But as with humans, antibiotic overuse leads to super resistant bacteria.  Is there a better way? This week listen to Horace Nalle, CEO of Nutrivert and the winner of the 2020 Cade Prize for Innovation. Nalle is the co-inventor of “postbiotics,” which achieve the same beneficial effect as antibiotics without the creation of super bugs. If successful, Nutrivert could upend the nearly $4 billion market in antibiotics for livestock.

Antibiotics are used to keep cattle healthy and lower their feeding costs. But as with humans, antibiotic overuse leads to super resistant bacteria.  Is there a better way? This week listen to Horace Nalle, CEO of Nutrivert and the winner of the 2020 Cade Prize for Innovation. Nalle is the co-inventor of “postbiotics,” which achieve the same beneficial effect as antibiotics without the creation of super bugs. If successful, Nutrivert could upend the nearly $4 billion market in antibiotics for livestock.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We’ll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we’ll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:37

Antibiotics for animals, specifically livestock, they keep cattle healthy and lower their feeding costs, but they also create antibiotic resistant bacteria. Is there a better way? Welcome to Radio Cade . I’m your host Richard Miles, Today I’ll be talking to Horace Nalle, CEO of Nutrivert, the winner of the 2020 Cade Prize for Innovation. Welcome to Radio Cade, Horace.

Horace Nalle: 0:58

Thank you very much, Richard.

Richard Miles: 0:59

First off, congratulations. We had a virtual ceremony this year and I wasn’t able to meet you in person, but I hope you enjoyed the evening. And we want to know, did you crack open the cocktail kit that we sent all of the finalists?

Horace Nalle: 1:10

Yes, we did. I had my wife and son here and we enjoyed the champagne and cocktails, thank you.

Richard Miles: 1:14

We would have sent champagne, but we don’t have a license to ship booz across state lines. So who knew that you could not do that? So Horace, first of all, congratulations, it was a great field this year. I mentioned this during the ceremony, but this is the first year that we actually went beyond state of Florida for the competition. So it’s great that you’re currently in Atlanta, but you are using a technology I think developed at Auburn, correct?

Horace Nalle: 1:35

Auburn and outside Auburn. Bernhard Kaltenboeck recently retired professor at the vet school is a key inventor of this technology.

Richard Miles: 1:42

Okay. So at any rate, beyond the state board, of Florida, so we’re very pleased in the first year in which we expanded the prize to see teams from outside of Florida, do quite well in the competition. But before we get too much further down the road talking about the company, let’s talk about the technology itself so that our listeners fully understand what it is that we’re talking about. I give a little bit of description of antibiotics in livestock , but why don’t you first start with, what is the current state of using antibiotics for livestock? How does that work? Why is it necessary? And what is the issue?

Horace Nalle: 2:11

We looked very hard and we can’t find a bigger pharmaceutical market on earth for antibiotics for livestock. Current estimates are on the order of 130,000 tons of active pharmaceutical ingredient. So this is just an enormous use of drugs. In about 1950, it was discovered that these products enable livestock to grow on less feed or to grow on worse feed. And as livestock producers experimented with the technology, they quickly found that you could cut the dose right down to a minimum and still have this effect. You could cut the dose to a dose that was too low to control bacterial disease. And it still had this miraculous affect of enabling livestock producers to reach target rates for their animals on the less feed. That was so attractive to them because feed 70% of their expense, and if they can cut the expense of the feed, but achieving the same output, it’s just everything they want. And it’s helped them to feed the whole planet in a way that they get too little credit for.

Richard Miles: 3:23

Just to be clear, the antibiotics are not to treat sick cows it’s to make this whole feeding more efficient and lower the costs and therefore be able to deliver to market, or is it also used to treat cattle that are actually safe ?

Horace Nalle: 3:36

It’s both Richard often antibiotics are given because animals are sick and then they tend to be given a doses sufficiently high, that they control the disease. That’s one thing and Nutrivert supports it, but a very large proportion of these drugs are given a t s ub t herapeutic doses to improve feed efficiency. And thats thing that we think has to change very honestly, that e normous volume of drug, given that doses to low to k illed the p opulations of bacteria. I t kills only the weak and when it kills only the weak bacteria, it leaves the strong and it shifts the whole population in the direction of strong bacteria that just can’t be treated with antibiotics. Then those bacteria l eap from animals to humans and give us diseases, that doctors just can’t cure.

Richard Miles: 4:32

I think probably a lot of people are familiar with that. And everyone knows a lecture from their doctors when they get an antibiotic take the whole thing. Don’t stop halfway through for precisely that reason. Otherwise the unintended consequences, you’re letting the really strong bacteria live. And then they come back with a vengeance. So people in the ag business have known for a long time, antibiotics have this effect, but it seems like from what I understand, they weren’t exactly sure about the causation. They just knew antibiotics are good, even at low doses, lower the feeding costs. So along comes this technology that you are developing postbiotics as you call them, how are they the same or different from antibiotics?

Horace Nalle: 5:09

That’s a very good question. Everybody knows what antibiotics about are, Richard and people generally know what probiotics are. There bacteria live bacteria, which you consume one way or another many people know that tree biometrics are things that you consume that are designed to provide food for the bacteria within you . But only in the last few years has this new class of agents called postbiotics been defined when science grasp the importance of the microbiome, they realized that at the microbiological level, the bacteria in you and there are trillions and trillions of release compounds into you. Some of them can be toxins, but that’s not what we’re talking about now. Some of them have coevolved with us in a way that’s mutually beneficial because we’ve had this bacteria in our guts for a hundred million years and more , some of the bacteria can release compounds that help us. And they’re called post-class because they kind of, after the bacteria, you need the bacteria to release them, they’re postbiotics that are good for the health of the host.

Richard Miles: 6:21

So this I presume came from you and your co-inventors study of the microbiome to figure this out, right? Because it doesn’t sound like it’s necessarily intuitive.

Horace Nalle: 6:30

That’s exactly right. We had to discover what it was about the bacteria in you that under antibiotic pressure, make your gut work better. And to do that, we had to think about what antibiotics work and what kind of bacteria they work on and what they do to those bacteria . And from that, we were able to kind of figure out what was being released postbiotically from the gut microbiome .

Richard Miles: 6:57

So Horace, this is put into their feed , or do you have to inject this into the livestock or anything?

Horace Nalle: 7:02

No it’s in the feed.

Richard Miles: 7:02

And then what is the cost look like? Cause this is a significant cost as a percentage of the total feed, or is it pretty much nominal.

Horace Nalle: 7:09

No, this is not a significant proportion of the overall cost of the feed. Or the overall cost of producing livestock. And we will always charge a livestock producer, just a third of what’s the feed savings that they get. So overall it will reduce expenses .

Richard Miles: 7:27

So they come out ahead because even though they’re paying you a premium, they’re reducing it by well into the profit zone to make it a worthwhile transaction. Yes . Okay. So this sounds pretty big if the numbers are all correct and pretty straight forward . And one thing we’ve learned from talking to other people in the ag sector, when we talked to the president of FourH we had her on the show a few months ago and she told me in the context of FourH that agricultural producers have always been early adopters of technology, because for them, the profit margins are so thin that if you can bring them to something that is going to improve their yield or reduce crop failure or reduce watering costs or whatever it is, they’ll try it out. And if it works great, if it doesn’t work, they don’t use it. Particularly younger farmers are already prime to engage with new technology. So you put young FourHers, and then you say, here’s a new thing and they’ll go, let’s try it right away. I’d never thought about that sector being early adopters of technology before we move on to what your path to market is or how you can expand this. Tell us a little bit about the origin of that idea, who the original inventors, and then who contributed and how long has this been in development?

Horace Nalle: 8:33

The original inventors are Bernhard Kaltenboeck, professor of veterinary science, at Auburn and myself, I spent a career in animal pharmaceutical companies that produce products that many of your business may have heard of like Frontline and Heartgard. And I took an early retirement in 2012. For years, I had known about the problem of low dose antibiotics for feed deficiency in livestock and the selection pressure that they create for antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. For years, I had known that the mechanism of action, the way this work was described as unknown. And it seemed to me that if you were giving 130,000 times of drugs and creating antibiotic resistance strains, it just wasn’t good enough to say, we don’t know how it works. So with Barnhard, we kind of turned off the phones and turn off the computers and put our heads together and just thought, how can that be? How can that work? We did a lot of research. So we turn the computers on the do some of the research, but we were totally focused on this one problem. And the good news is Richard in the last 10 or 15 years. This scholarly community is just woken up about the microbiome. We just didn’t think about the microbiome until this millennium. And suddenly the whole world has realized that the 30 or 40 trillion bacteria in our guts are actually doing something and Bernhard and I we’re able to kind of dig in to the literature of what the microbiome does and to tease out of it , a single thread, that thread explains how antibiotics work at low doses for growth promotion, feed efficiency. Once we understood it, we could design analogs of the postbiotics, to solve the problem.

Richard Miles: 10:26

It’s interesting that you say that I’ve had a couple of other researchers on telling me the exact same thing in different contexts about the microbiome, precisely what you said. It’s like your gut, who cares. If it’s not quote unquote, a sexy organ, we don’t really even care about that. And all the things that research now discovering and how it relates to other parts of the body, how it relates to health how it relates, even mental health, a lot of things that you just wouldn’t intuitively connect. And its there. That’s pretty amazing. One thing I always find fascinating Horace is the personal journey of people in the ideas or in the invention business. So I know you’re from Philadelphia and I know that you’d like to animals as a kid, but then you went off to the big city. You went to Harvard, and then you got your law degree at University of Pennsylvania. So I’m not going to make any jokes about being a lawyer and working with farm animals. But if you want to make those jokes feel free, but tell us a little bit about your path. Were you always interested in animals, but how did that all combine in your career as a lawyer? And then you worked for pharmaceutical companies in this area? Tell us a little bit about that story.

Horace Nalle: 11:25

All my life. I’ve wanted to take care of animals and make them better, make them feel better and protect them. And by the same token, we all know now that animals and humans share common repents share common, shared common diseases. It’s natural for me to apply myself to kind of disease . Then once you apply it to humans or animals, it’s all the same story . I was lucky to be able to work for the pharmaceutical company Merck. And at Merck a guy called William Campbell invented Ivermectin which he won the Nobel Prize. It has relieved more suffering from parasitic disease in humans, in animals than any other drug . And so it was a great honor and privilege to be able to work with him. Then when I decided at 55 to leave big companies, I thought, okay, this is your chance to do your own thing to chart your own course in these things you’ve already spent of doing. And that’s how Nutrivert come to be.

Richard Miles: 12:25

That’s a fascinating story. Sometimes you see this, that if you’re in the midst of a large organization, some of the knocks on larger organizations is that large organizations find it difficult to be innovative. They find it difficult to be creative, cause they’re all sorts of either bad incentives or lack of incentives within a large organization. But you’re one of those folks that gained the experience. But as you said, once you went into a frame of mind where you could at least part of the time, turn off the computers and just think on one problem and really try to dig deep on that is when you develop this insight , okay. Or this is possible, but it obviously wouldn’t have been possible without your previous training in a large organization and your experience in the animal pharmaceutical business. I think that’s a great story.

Horace Nalle: 13:07

Thank you. Great ecosystem of innovation. And it used to be, I think that more than happened in big companies as a proportion, that is the case now. And most of the big pharma companies realized they have to sew a lot of seeds outside the company to reap the best innovation, but there’s still an incredibly important part of the ecosystem in nurturing and cultivating these technologies and then delivering them to the world at large, right ?

Richard Miles: 13:35

And particularly in pharmaceuticals where the amounts of capital that you need to properly develop and test any pharmaceutical are massive. And even the most Intrepid venture capitalist is going to pause when they look at the price tag of bringing a new drug to market, whether it’s for animals or humans, hurdles are pretty significant. And so along those lines, let’s talk about that. A lot of people in your position or situation decide, okay, well, I’ve , I’ve developed a great idea. It’s got mark potential, but developing it on my own or my own company tried to do that going to be hard. So they ended up licensing the technology to other companies. Have you thought about that? Where are you in terms of development? Is this something that Nutrivert, wants to do itself for awhile or what is the thinking along those lines to bring it to market? And then I guess there’s a subset of that question. Where are you in terms of the regulatory approval, which is always huge as you know, from your experience, where are you in that process?

Horace Nalle: 14:25

I’ll answer the second question first, we have made up our mind that the right way to develop Nutrivert is as a registered animal pharmaceutical. We understand that Food and Drug Act to require us because of the claims we’re making for this product or that we will make for this product when it’s approved to register it as an animal pharmaceutical. Now that makes that makes us jump over a higher hurdle than is the case with other products and agriculture, some other products. But we’ve done this before with ivermectin, which I referenced before and we intend to do it with Nutrivert, but it means several years until approval. And it means millions of dollars in investments before you can sell. So that’s the stage we’re at. We’re funded now to continue the development of the product. And we’re aggressively moving forward with studies and FDA studies to move towards registration. The technology in our opinion wants to be extended worldwide, and it wants to be extended to all the major livestock species . That means that it may be attractive and it may be efficient economic sense for a global pharmaceutical company to project it into those areas. At every stage of our development, we’ll have two columns, one column, what it looks like if we develop it ourselves and another column, if we out license it to big pharma or others, and we will always do what’s best for the technology, what creates the most value.

Richard Miles: 15:58

So if I understand your thinking on this, just as there are for humans as a whole class, so things like vitamins and minerals, right, where I can go out and take some sort of supplement and, buy it from whole foods that has not gotten FDA approval, doesn’t need FDA approval, but their claims that they can make about it are limited, right? As opposed to getting a prescription medicine in which it says it , this is going to help X, Y, and Z. And that’s the distinction you’re making, right? Because presumably you could just say, this is a supplement with limited claims and that would be good.

Horace Nalle: 16:26

Well, the way Nutrivert works is the same way antibiotics work except to a hundred percent antibiotic free. As I said before, antibiotics released postbiotics from the microbiome . And we’re developing analogs of those because that’s the mechanism, Richard, just like antibiotics, which are registered drugs. We think that the ethical course is for us to register Nutrivert as an FDA approved postbiotic.

Richard Miles: 16:55

Do you have any competition at the moment? Are there other companies out there doing something similar or what does that look like in terms of the competitive marketplace?

Horace Nalle: 17:02

Well, everybody’s out there saying we have supplements. We have probiotics, we have prebiotics, we have enzymes, we have, immunostimulants all kinds of things are out there. In about 2017, the two Memorial Trusts did a review of all those classes. The problem is none of them are consistent. If anybody has anything that works as consistently as Nutrivert, we haven’t found out about it. And we look all the time. It’s possible that people have these things that are keeping them secret as they sometimes do with research projects. But in the published literature, we can’t find anything that delivers the consistent results that Nutrivert delivers and we think it makes sense because antibiotics deliver those results consistently. And we’re triggering the same pathway.

Richard Miles: 17:51

And obviously that’d be a huge deal for a large ag producer, right? Is that reliability and consistency. Cause you don’t want a one off benefit that you can’t replicate the following year .

Horace Nalle: 18:01

No they just won’t use it. If it doesn’t work consistently, you said before, if the FourH person who was telling you that the farmers are innovators and it’s true , but they’re quick adopters and they’re quick, abandoners it’s got to work or it won’t be bought.

Richard Miles: 18:16

Tough audience, right? They’ll welcome you onto the farm, so to speak, but they’ll tell you to get lost. If your product doesn’t work.

Horace Nalle: 18:21

That’s just fine. They’re very good at stopping by. They have to be because they have to deliver food at terrifically, low prices that they deliver that and they won’t waste money on things that don’t work.

Richard Miles: 18:32

So Horace we like to give everyone on the show, an opportunity to dispense wisdom. And so you’ve had a very interesting career in a number of different areas. And you’re now right in the thick of developing new idea, what would you say to listeners who really want to pursue a career of entrepreneurship or invention? And they want to do the right things. If you are giving advice to say your 25 year old self, are there things that you think now like, wow, I should have done that. Or I shouldn’t have done that. Whatever the category you’ll probably ask to speak to groups from time to time on lessons learned. What are some of the things that you would say,

Horace Nalle: 19:05

Learn the ropes and follow your passion. Lots of people when they’re asked the question, you’re just asking me to say, follow your passion. And it might just be an entrepreneur inventing Facebook. I’m not sure, but in the biological sciences and in established industries, you have to learn. I think how the world works and have experience and make a lot of mistakes and see other people make the mistake to have the robust understanding of the ecosystem that you’re entering into. So yeah, you kind of want the passion, but we couldn’t have done what we had done. If we hadn’t spent decades trying and failing and learning how the system works.

Richard Miles: 19:44

That’s a great answer. And it’s a version that I’ve heard from other folks, but useful corrective to this idea of like, we’ll just follow your passion. I remember seeing a great graph. I think it was in the book Good to Great. The three Venn diagram. One was like stuff you love to do. And another will things you’re good at. And the other one was things you could actually make money at . So it’s where those three come together. Cause they don’t necessarily overlap the things that you’re really, really love to do. And the things you’re actually good at and that have some sort of value that someone’s willing to pay you for when they come together. And I remember Dr. Cade the inventor of Gatorade, who the museum is named after. He always said like, you have to be prepared. So an idea can strike you. But if you don’t have, as you said, sort of the fundamental training, you’re not going to be able to do much with that idea because you aren’t really going to understand the mechanism to make it work. And so if you have the science and you have the training and the background and idea strikes you, did you like, why is it the antibiotics work? How is it that nobody understands that there’s gotta be a reason and then you can actually do something with it.

Horace Nalle: 20:44

Fully agree.

Richard Miles: 20:45

Horace, this has been great conversation. I want to, again, thank you for taking the time to do the interview, but also more importantly, congratulations on winning the Cade Prize this year. You have a big idea and hopefully in a few years, we’ll have you back on the show and Nutrivert will be a roaring success and will be famous and so on which doesn’t always happen, but it happens enough to where good ideas remain good ideas.

Horace Nalle: 21:10

Thank you, Richard. Pressure to be on the show.

Richard Miles: 21:10

Look forward to having you back.

Outro: 21:12

Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida . Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews, podcasts are recorded at Heartwood Soundstage and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak . The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.