FYI - For Your Innovation: Building a Commercial Space Station with Amir Blachman and Michael López-Alegría

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So, welcome to Arc's four-year innovation podcast. Today, we've got great guests from

Axiom Space and I'm very honored to be in both of your presence. We have Michael Lopez-Elegria,

a five-time astronaut, and we have Amir Blockman, who's the chief investment officer for Axiom

Space. And both of you are shaping the future of space, but before we dive in, I want to be sure

to shout out your backgrounds here because they're both so impressive. So, Michael, you've been a

five-time astronaut here. You've been on pretty much all of the spacecraft that are interesting,

so we're going to have to get your review on which one is most comfortable. You've also

set some records here for most extra vehicular activities. So, space walks, you know, you've

spent 67 hours out in space itself, 275 days in space, and you're in the astronaut hall of fame,

so that's pretty impressive. Michael, did I miss anything there that our listeners should know

about? You definitely got the high point, Sam. Nice. And Amir, you're an Israeli Air Force

instructor. You served as one. And your Axiom Space's first employee helped raise over $500

million for Axiom Space. You've co-authored reports and proposals that are helping NASA

shape its strategy on the future of space stations. What else should we know about you?

I appreciate that. I think those are some of the more important points. I have had

some relevant experience in running what, at the time, was the world's largest space investment

syndicate, so I hope that that's some value that I've been able to bring to the table at Axiom.

Amazing. Very honored to have both of you here. So much insights that we can learn from you.

And before we go down the rabbit hole, maybe just the basics here, Michael, what is the

International Space Station? Why is it so important to us? And why is it important to have

next-generation space station? Well, I don't know how much time we have,

but I'll try to cover it. The International Space Station is really the first of its kind

cooperation between five agencies, the most important in the world, I would say. So, obviously,

NASA, the Europeans, the Canadians, the Japanese, and the Russians. It is a multi-module vehicle

that is in low Earth orbit as we speak. The first module was launched in 1998,

and it largely was finished construction in 2011, although there have been some modules added to

it recently. It has currently seven people aboard. It has been permanently inhabited since 2000.

Astronauts from 19 countries have visited it. They've done over 3,000 experiments. It's a giant

structure, big as a football field, weighs about 450 tons, has 1,000 cubic meters of interior volume,

and it's really a platform for doing cutting-edge science. So, first and foremost, it's a laboratory,

but it's also a platform from which the astronauts can make outreach events with audiences around

the world. It is obviously a symbol of diplomacy when you think about the current geopolitical

situation. We work hand-in-hand with our Russian colleagues every day, both on board and more

in greater numbers on the ground. So, it's an amazing piece. It's the U.S. conduit to get

experiments to the ISS. It's called the ISS National Lab. It's a non-profit run by NASA or funded by

NASA, and it is the first entity to start bringing commercial work to the ISS, but suffice it to

say that the discoveries that are going on there continue to improve life on Earth and off it.

However, it is a machine, and as such, it will someday wear out, and we are very keen to not

have it wear out before we have a replacement on board, because the agencies that I mentioned

want to continue doing the important work that's going on there, and we want to have a platform

that can transition that work from the ISS to itself seamlessly. And so Axiom's

role in this and really goal as a company is to build the world's first commercial space station.

We plan to do it by launching modules that will attach to it. We can get into that a little bit

more later, but suffice it to say that it is important that we not have a gap in the permanent

presence that is going on in low Earth orbit today, and we are very keen to enable, facilitate that

transition. That's amazing. And if I'm correct, you were on the space shuttle mission in 1995,

and you've been up as recently as the past year. What's changed? What's evolved? You know,

for most of us, we've never been up there. Have things changed in the past two and a half decades?

Well, in 1995, there was no space station, so that mission was a microgravity research mission,

kind of a precursor to the work that's being done in ISS, but it was done completely self-contained

within the shuttle, and it's payload being in a European-built module. But the second mission I

flew, which was in 2000, was the third mission, the third of the assembly missions to the ISS.

Nobody was living on board yet, but we've brought some important elements to it. And when we left

in late November of 2000, we closed the hatch on the uninhabited space station for the last time.

So a few days later, literally, the first crew showed up, and it has been permanently inhabited

ever since. I spent the most time in 2006-2007, where I commanded Expedition 14. It turned out to

be seven months. It was a three-person crew back then. And I will tell you that the duration

then and last April, when I went as commander of AX-1, the first fully private commercial

mission to the ISS, it was very, very different. I mean, physically, it had more than doubled in

size. The crew had gone from three to seven. It's just loaded with stuff, cables, and computers,

and fluid lines, and experiments. I mean, it's really a busy place. So back then,

you know, 15, 16 years ago, we were still very much in the assembly phase, but now it's full-on

utilization. But I like to say it's kind of like, you know, when you go back to the home that you

grew up in, that your parents may have remodeled a few times, but it had a very familiar feel and

dare I say, smell to it. It felt very comfortable, very familiar to me, even though the appearance

had changed so drastically. And like going home to the childhood home, did you see the markings

where you're measuring your height? Did you, you know, graffiti anything before people were on

there? So every time you go back, you say, yep, I was here. I was here before people were living

up here. Well, every crew that visits leaves their patch, they're insignia stickered to the

wall somewhere, so I definitely checked out those other ones. That's amazing. One of the other

things that I think goes under appreciated talking about space is it's amazing. It's a

huge structure in space, but it's out of sight, out of mind. Same thing. People just appreciate

that they can use GPS and all of these other functionalities that are space enabled, but they

don't necessarily connect the dots because it's in outer space. So with all of the experiments

going on in the International Space Station, what are some of the things that have come from that

that have benefited humanity that are, you know, these tangible things where people don't even

appreciate that that's where it started? There are quite a few, I would point to a couple in

particular, most of them have to do with human health. And, you know, we study that on board for

two reasons. One kind of selfishly is we want to understand how the human body reacts to microgravity

and what we can do to make humans more healthy in space. But it turns out there's a lot of

application to things that happen on Earth. So for instance, one of the big problems that we have

when we live in microgravity, which is delightful, by the way, I mean, it's so pleasant to float and

move around effortlessly. But your body is pretty smart and it says, wow, this is pretty easy. I

could be like a jellyfish. I really don't need this skeletal structure that I have. And you start

losing bone density. And that's fine while you're in space. But when you come back to Earth, that's

a real problem. And so in the work that we have done, both in improving the exercise equipment,

which is one of the most important countermeasures, but also some of the medications that we can take,

you know, we've actually advanced research into osteoporosis, a huge amount on Earth.

So that's one, there are other things that it turns out certain viruses grow more virulently

in microgravity, not really understood why, but the fact that they do has helped us create

more effective medications for people who are ailing on Earth. So I think, again, we could spend the

entire podcast talking about the spin off benefits, but now suffice it to say that they are plentiful.

Maybe we'll transition now. The ISS has been incredible. And it continues to do amazing

things. But it's set for retirement. So Michael or Amir here, what's the plan for retiring it?

And how does that tie into what Axiom Space does? And what's the plan here for the company and for

the lab itself? Amir, do you want to jump in? Sure, I'd be happy to. So Sam, first of all,

I just want to say that we really do appreciate being on the air with ARC and with you. And thank

you for providing us a platform to share this very exciting work that we're doing in space. So

thanks for that. And regarding your question, so there are three phases to what Axiom is doing,

the transition from the International Space Station to the Commercial Space Station. So today,

we send these commercial missions, these crews to the International Space Station,

under an agreement that we have with NASA. And that's an opportunity for us to demonstrate to

NASA and its international partners that Axiom is able to run these missions and to work cooperatively

with the ISS program in terms of operations and safety and communications and other elements like

that. We are simultaneously building the commercial space station modules that will connect to the

International Space Station. And eventually when ISS retires, those modules that we've sent to the

ISS will operate as a separate and independent new commercial space station. So the first phase

is today we are sending our customers, our crews, to the International Space Station. We'll then have

a period of about four to five years where we'll be connected to the International Space Station

as we assemble our new space station. And then towards the end of the decade, the International

Space Station will separate from our station. It will retire and Axiom Station will be the new

cornerstone of human spaceflight activity in Earth's orbit. That's pretty incredible. So you're

building off of it. It's like building a new wing to a home and then you keep expanding that wing

and then eventually the new wing is the main thing and the old house crumbles away.

That's pretty much it. Yes. And so where did the initial idea come from for Axiom space?

Why is now the right time? And obviously other people know the plans for the International

Space Station. How has Axiom space really become this go-to partner?

So I'll share with you a little bit about the company's genesis and the reason behind it,

the why of our company. So the launch companies like ULA and SpaceX and others are building

the railroad to space. Axiom Space is building the space stations that are the destinations

in space. And just like SpaceX is leading the commercialization of the launch side of things,

Axiom is leading the commercialization of the destination side of the business of the space

stations. So as I mentioned that the International Space Station will be retired at the end of the

decade while more and more countries and companies are coming to depend on it. We're building this

new space station at about a 30th the cost of ISS. So ISS costs approximately 100 billion dollars to

build. We're building the new space station for about three billion dollars and in the process

we're improving the capabilities that are available on orbit by leveraging some more modern technologies.

So we are reimagining the way humans live and work in low-earth orbit and like we're doing today

we're educating the global community on how to leverage microgravity. So the private astronaut

missions that Axiom Space sends to the ISS like the first one we did last April which LA commanded

are not only providing perspective, expanding access to space for research development,

outreach and inspiration, but also these are precursor missions that help us flesh out and

test the procedures and processes and communications so that when our space station is ready to become

independent the teams are in place, the platform they support will be fully operational

and it'll be ready to execute on behalf of all of our customers around the world.

So the space station that we're building, Axiom Station ends up being the ultimate proving ground

to build the experience that's required to explore the solar system and enable humans to

permanently live and thrive off the planet as we say for the planet. So what we're doing is we're

building prosperity through these opportunities. You see it's only by creating an economically

sustainable business, economically sustainable reasons to go to space that we codify the rationale

for a human permanence in space, right? Why should we leave earth and expand our footprint out into

the solar system? So we're beginning the transformation of low earth orbit first into a global space

marketplace through these building blocks of research of in-space manufacturing and tech

demonstrations and then through that we're facilitating the extension and the invention

of commerce and space through which we offer access to countries and institutions and industries

and individuals that have these new ideas that fuel the human economy beyond earth and the result

of that is like LA said we're helping build a better life on earth through advances in medicine

and material science and even just the perspective of how we view the planet and as really the only

home we have in the place that we need to take care of and then of course we're preparing for

the beyond. So humanity's desire to learn and grow as a species fuels this drive to push

farther into the universe. So our critical work which now extends also to next generation

spacesuits advances the world's collective knowledge about low earth orbit, about the moon

and beyond and the work that we're doing today on the ISS is the bridge to building our next

generation space station and that's where we're going to refine technologies and procedures and

operations while enhancing the level and the quantity and quality of human productivity in space.

And then maybe Amir just on the very high level business model it costs a lot to build

space station but how does that compare to the original space station and then the plan is

countries and companies then pay you essentially to have room and board and access to the space

station. Is that the right thinking there? That's exactly the right thinking yeah so you asked about

what was it on ISS and what's it going to be on our station. So the ISS is owned and operated by

five space agencies that represent about 15 countries and they are the owners and users of

this platform. So we're building a new platform where those customers will be tenants and so now

we have really three customer segments so we've got the space agencies who want to send astronauts

and payloads to orbit and who have the need for hardware and services that Axiom is uniquely

suited to provide. So for space agencies this is an opportunity to continue to signal status,

they get diplomatic opportunities through working it as part of the family of space faring nations,

they have an opportunity to build a technically capable workforce within each of their countries

and of course there's a whole upstream industry that comes from having an astronaut program.

So that's the space agency segment, the second segment are the companies who have started in

very very small volume to do work on the ISS and there are so many who want to utilize our

infrastructure and Earth's orbit and do the things that you can only do on a space station and in

microgravity. So I'll just give you three small examples. One is on our first mission, AWS sent

up its first server to go to space so eventually we'll have server farms in space. The second is

3D bioprinting so here I'll just read you a very brief quote that's about the second mission that's

coming up now. So on our second mission Axiom Space will be working with the University of Connecticut,

ESCRO Biotech, Cedar Sinai and the Wake Forest Institute to learn about how microgravity affects

stem cells and thick tissue construct. This research is going to provide valuable insights

into detecting diseases and developing therapies for people on Earth. Among the experiments flying

on X2 are bioengineered liver and kidney constructs which will assess the impact of

microgravity on the vascularization of thick tissues which could help create a solution

for patients in need of organ transplants. And I chose to read that to you one because it's a lot

of information but also because it's so exciting. I mean we're getting to a point where

we're going to help companies actually print human tissues in space to be brought back to

Earth for patients who need transplants who otherwise wouldn't get it by just waiting in

the transplant line. Third example is retinal implants so you can produce higher resolution

retinal implants in orbit than you can on Earth. So these are the types of things that our second

customer segment companies are doing and then lastly of course there's the individuals who want

to experience astronaut training and life in space. It's an opportunity for them to test their

metal and also to contribute significantly to this science because when they're in space they're

actually activating all of these payloads so that gives you a sense of who the user base is

and why they fly with us to ISS and later to our station. That's incredible and I also love what you

said too just comparing it to launches the railroad and then Axiom Space is these destinations

and we've seen just how well the public-private partnership has worked for building those railroads

and how the commercialization of space really leads to increased velocity of innovation.

So I think that's very exciting. And then you mentioned AX2 and that's when is that taking

place? I think that's pretty imminent is it not? Kelly do you want to talk about that? Yeah it's

coming up. It's very complicated. We are second in line on SpaceX's pad 39A at the Kennedy Space

Center and so we have to wait for the rocket that's on the pad right now to launch and then

they start the process to convert it to our launch. So right now we're holding May 17th

but it depends on the launch that is scheduled to happen tonight so we'll see.

Amazing and then Michael maybe we can just get into AX1 first fully private astronaut

trip to the space station. What was it like up there? What were the learnings? Was it like a

space camp you're going around waking people at 6 a.m making sure they're sticking to the schedule?

What is the dynamic for these types of operations? We know the story starts way before then when we

actually began training together and I have to say you know these are three people one American,

one Canadian, one Israeli who had had very successful business careers that wanted to

have the experience that Amir I think well described and they really hit the ground running. I mean

I was super impressed with their dedication and their commitment to the training process which

at the end of the day it took over a year. It doesn't necessarily have to take that long if we do it

you know back to back but the way things turned out it was a it was a pretty long process. It

started with us spending about a week together in the Talkeetna range of Alaska doing something very

very far from glamping. It was pretty rough. The idea was to put us in a difficult physiological

situation to help teach us things like leadership and followership and self-care and self-management

and more than anything it just ended up being an amazing bonding experience,

bonding through adversity we like to say and then we got into training for the two vehicles that

would be spending time on of course the ISS and the SpaceX Crew Dragon and when I say training to

live and work on there it's obviously it's about rather mundane things like how do you

prepare a meal or how do you go to the bathroom or you know simple daily life things but also what to

do in an emergency because that can happen obviously at any time and the things you worry

about in space typically are depressurization and a fire and so we did a lot of what we call reps a

lot of repetitions of those kinds of drills in both vehicles and again these guys were very

attentive present participative it was really a pleasure to see and let me tell you when we got

on board I mean first of all the smiles on their faces were worth the price of admission it was so

gratifying to see how the experience was just soaked into them right from the beginning and it's

difficult to describe in words to be honest I mean you've got this incredible sensation of the

launch sequence which is like no roller coaster ride you could possibly imagine followed immediately

by microgravity basically weightlessness and the peace and tranquility of what that transmits to

you as you look out the window at this earth that's now 250 miles below you going by at five miles a

second I mean it's really an overwhelming sensation but we spent about a day not quite 17 hours on

the Crew Dragon on the way to the ISS between launch and docking and then when we got on board

ISS it was work work work I mean each of these guys brought a very complete package of research

and outreach the Larry the American teamed with the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic

marked the Canadian with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Montreal Children's

Hospital and Eitan who has an interesting story he was a squadron mate of a man named Elon Ramon

and Elon was the first Israeli astronaut who was tragically killed in the Columbia accident in 2003

and when that happened in Israel they stood up the Elon Ramon Foundation which Eitan leveraged to

help get the word out to the entire country that this mission was happening and used it as a

platform to call both for scientific investigations as well as opportunities for outreach so with

all of that stuff going on the guys were super busy and you know it takes a while to get used to

working in the microgravity environment this weightlessness is super fun but it's also very

different and it's not what you expect you can't just put your pencil down and expect it to be there

when you go reach for it you know two minutes later so that took us some time and luckily in a way

we were delayed in our landing we were supposed to spend 10 days docked to the ISS we ended up

spending 15 I'm sorry we're supposed to spend eight we ended up spending 15 so almost double the

time so we really got the full experience of being able to appreciate what a magnificent

life it is up there to be able to look out the window and see that blue planet you know going

by beneath your eyes it's really special and then Splashdown another pretty amazing roller coaster

ride the recovery crew had us on the ship and the hatch opened 37 minutes after Splashdown which is

incredibly fast that's practically faster than getting off a plane these days exactly especially

if you're seated in the back right yeah and that doesn't involve you know lifting the airplane up

with a crane and putting it on the deck of a ship and sliding it forward and checking for

hazardous gases and all that so yeah it's an amazing process and SpaceX did a great job I think

if you were to talk to any of those three they would first of all tell you they'd go back tomorrow

and convince you that it was really an experience of a lifetime that's incredible and then what are the

takeaways from that mission did their experiments yield anything interesting is it too early to tell

well let's see they're starting with Larry and the two hospitals that he teamed up with they also

were looking at stem cells and so what we were looking at there is seeing how they react in

the microgravity conditions we weren't trying to grow them we were just trying to observe them

and how they multiplied and it turns out they multiplied well Mark did the first two-way

holoportation from space so I watched him he was you know floating in the laboratory module

talking to people who thought that he was in the room with them and he thought that they

were in the module with him so that was pretty neat to watch eight time did a lot of things one

of the ones that I remember was he would take a syringe full of a polymer and inject it into a

circular ring and once you eject enough liquid it basically adheres to the ring all the way around

and closes and then the more or less liquid he would inject he could make that form become concave

or convex and then it would be solidified under ultraviolet light in just a few minutes and we

actually got lenses out of those and I didn't mention it but one of the things that we are

dealing with with long duration space light right now is people have a hyperoptic shift so they get

farsighted they need stronger reading glasses to put it a different way and imagine being able to

make new lenses to accommodate a new prescription because your vision changes in space so I think

the results and we've had a couple of conferences now to discuss results of many of the experiments

and they've all been relatively positive and I would say really worthwhile for the investigators

and then Amir what about from the economic side of things what was the significance of the AX1

mission so like Galei said this was the first all private mission so the whole customer base

pretty much was a commercial customer base and it helped us grow in as a company in a few ways one

is all of the contracting and regulatory hurdles involved were solved so that was very important

and took a number of years to get done cooperation was demonstrated between NASA the launch providers

us as the commercial space station builder and in this case the mission operator governments and

the commercial customers over 25 payloads were sent up in markets like I mentioned including

on-orbit server farms stem cells radiation protection material science and I mentioned

a few of them like AWS's first server but also MIT sent up a payload to prototype

self-shaping structures so what would it look like if we could send up pieces of a space station in

the future and have itself assembled and UC San Diego sent up a payload to investigate cancer

biomarkers so some massive opportunities for the pharma industry so from an economic growth

standpoint it really started to you know set the bit on what kinds of businesses would we see

evolving today the company and the whole space station business is kind of where the internet

was in 1995 where we can see how eventually it's going to permeate every aspect of human life

we don't know which killer apps are going to be the ones that launch first but we know they're

happening and we're seeing the sparks of them right now on the international space station

missions we even had things like sponsorships and brand partnerships so Loro Piana provided

apparel David Uriman designed the mission pin and Jose Andres who is a very well-known executive

chef and philanthropist provided both food for the astronauts while they were in quarantine and

also on orbit so this mission provided all of that provided support for scientific research and

institutions that LA mentioned and on this first mission we were very excited we didn't know

what the level of demand would initially be thanks in great part to the work that

Etan Stebe and the Ramon Foundation did which Mike LA mentioned a moment ago we had over 65

applicants for the 25 payload spots and we were really only limited in terms of the business we

could produce here by the bandwidth of the ISS program the cargo capacity of the vehicles and

maximum zone operational capabilities so now what this has done this first mission has done is

provided us very clear evidence that we're going to be oversubscribed for the foreseeable future

that's a good spot to be and so what should we look forward to the experiments going up on

AX2 hopefully in the next month here and are you already seeing that you only have one module up

there but you're already starting to really commercialize things that NASA would have otherwise

done let me take a stab at that first of all I think where we really are going to make a difference

in addition to sort of expanding or continuing maybe the kinds of research that NASA is doing

as a government agency they pretty much stop short when it comes to fabricating things so they

try to do the research can we make higher quality crystals in microgravity and maybe the answer is

yes but they don't have a mandate to actually do the development to make those crystals on a big

scale which is exactly what a company whether it's a pharma company for protein crystal or a

semiconductor company for a way for a kind of crystal would do right so I think that is a pretty

untapped market that we are looking forward to exploiting and then on specifically on AX2

they're doing actually interestingly some stem cell research where they're actually trying to

produce stem cells for regenerative medicine targeting the heart the brain and blood we've

got some experiments coming out of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia where two of the emission specialists

are from doing weather control technology to generate artificial rain believe it or not

we're developing dna mic nanotherapeutics for cartilage repair there's a lot of interest in

the pilot john schoffner has a sort of a contest of that stem related that he's doing I think

teamed with MIT as well axiom has its own a couple of technology demonstrators one of the things that

we really struggle with an ISS is what we call storage so putting stuff away and being able to

find it when you need it we have an inventory management system that is basically an enormous

excel spreadsheet but there's probably a better way and right now we use a barcode reader to scan

something scan the location put a local location and hopefully when you come back it's still there

but you know things move around in space and it's time consuming to do all that so we're doing a

technology demonstrator where we're using the cameras that are already on board

and a little bit not sure I'd call it AI but let's just say advanced computational techniques

to identify objects by their shape so I mean you can go through passport control now by having

your face be recognized so that same idea can recognize an object and watch you put it in a

place so it eliminates that whole scanning process which obviously is a big time saver so those are

just a few of the things that are planned for x2 super exciting can't wait to see it launch and see

the results obviously right now things are pretty expensive but costs are declining rocket launch

costs are declining in theory as more space becomes available in outer space maybe those costs

decline as well Michael when could an everyday person be involved and be an astronaut

what's the timeline there is that a reality hey I think it's a reality for sure but be I don't know

I mean that is a great question and one that we struggle with it is as you suggest completely

tied to launch costs and those costs first of all have come down a lot but I think it's still

going to take some more both innovation and competition for the prices to come down even more

and I like to use the analogy of commercial airline service in the 1920s and 30s century ago

when again only very wealthy people could fly and now you see people getting on airplanes for

almost any reason I don't know when what the time scale is of that but I'm very convinced that it's

going to happen and I think you know as we saw the Starship although many would call that a failure

the SpaceX Starship launched the other day was in many ways a great success and that I think will

be a game changer in terms of cost of getting both goods and humans to low earth orbit and beyond

so you know they sort of led the first revolution in reducing launch costs and maybe this is the

cost for the second absolutely and that's what our our modeling suggests as well it was surprising

to see so many people call it a failure despite the impressive achievements obviously it wasn't a full

success in landing in Hawaii in the ocean but definitely impressive and lots of learnings there

maybe before we wrap up Amir what is Axiom Space doing that's allowing it to execute so well relative

to you know other space companies I think one of the things we see as an investor is space is big

and exciting but oftentimes you can see solutions in search of problems what is Axiom Space doing

differently here yes Sam it's a great question and it started with our founders because like you

said there have been other folks over the years who have played with the idea and some put a lot

of money into trying to build a successor space station to the ISS but our founders came with

deep roots in the human spaceflight history and program so Mike Saffordini our CEO and co-founder

ran the International Space Station program for about a decade and for a decade before that

ran the program's business office so he personally had a hand in overseeing the final assembly of the

International Space Station and the expansion of the International Space Station's customer base

from government to the commercial sector our other co-founder Cam Gaffarian

Cam started a company that ended up growing to be NASA's second largest engineering service

provider and a critical operational partner to the ISS program so they did things like orbit

determination and in fact about two-thirds of the staff in Houston mission control were Cam's

employees outsourced to NASA so when astronauts were calling down to earth they were speaking with

his company's employees and so Mike and Cam early on were testifying to congress about what the

destiny of ISS would be and how long the station could effectively remain in orbit and how long it

would be a cost-effective solution and so they probably earlier than anybody else understood

that by the end of this decade ISS would have to be retired because right now the ISS for example

costs two billion dollars per year to maintain and we're building the entire new space station for

three billion dollars so as that two billion dollar per year cost goes and increases there's a

stronger and stronger economic argument for the countries to become tenants on a new commercial

space station with all of its various efficiencies relative to you know maintaining ISS or what could

newly be built under the government paradigm so the first thing like I said is started with our

founders second is it extends to the team that we built which is now really the world's leading

team in space station engineering and business so our team has specialized expertise in human

spaceflight and deep experience in the design construction assembly and operation of the ISS

so we specifically assembled this team to build on the legacy and on the success of ISS to bring in

new people with innovative ideas to keep ISS's utilization maximized so long as it's around

and then to succeed with a next generation destination and microgravity platform in orbit

so basically what that means is we have two decades of experience that comes from working

on ISS and from that understanding where we need to now improve in materials and tech and design

and processes and so that's what's enabling us to build this new space station with a far lower cost

and next generation technologies so I mentioned to you that there's that three phase model of how

we transition from the ISS to our new space station and we proposed that to NASA as part of

the competitive bid in 2019 and at the beginning of 2020 NASA's sole selected axiom to be the

company that would connect its modules to the International Space Station and that connection

when you ask really what helped us to succeed is probably one of the most important ingredients

because that unique connection to the ISS provides us with a few critical competitive

advantages so one it means that we are at least a decade ahead of any competitor who would propose

to build a free flying space station because we've already started operating missions in terms of

planning in 2019 in terms of revenue and customer proceeds in 2019 we actually launched the first

mission in 2022 it's not likely that competitors will be launching hardware to orbit this decade at

least not hardware that is commercially operational so we're about a decade ahead of the competition

in terms of operations we're probably about 15 years ahead of competition in terms of market

capture because when we operate these missions to the ISS and when we connect our modules to the

ISS there are astronauts both within the current ISS partnership and countries that are not yet

sending astronauts to the ISS who will fly with us so what that means is the current ISS user base

is already starting to transition over to axiom and as our new modules come up we'll see more and

more of the country's transition over to us and then eventually by the time ISS separates we expect

that that whole user base will become axiom space's customer base and then on top of that we're adding

more countries that will join and more commercial customers that will join so that's what puts us

about a decade a decade and a half in front of any competitors in terms of market capture

so today like I mentioned we're the only company selected by NASA for private astronaut missions

to the ISS and that connection helps us lastly delay massive capex associated with bringing

hardware to orbit so we are pulling electrical power from ISS's solar panels once our modules get

up there we'll be pulling co2 scrubbing from the air and other types of utilities so that means

that instead of having to launch that up in 2025 we can launch some of that hardware as late as 2027

2028 and what that translates to is that we can fund the construction of the station out of the

profits of our missions to ISS instead of funding it dilutively and that's great for the investors

that have joined us already and it really minimizes the amount of equity that we need to sell

in the company so I would say that those are the ingredients that have helped us to succeed

and where that puts us now is in a position where we've had a number of really significant

milestones that cement our position as the category maker so we had the ax1 mission fly

with 25 payloads over 20 public affairs events we signed agreements with six countries and the

european space agency that represents multiple countries to fly with us and lastly I do want to

mention that there are some super interesting derivative technologies and revenue lines coming

out of building a space station so for example we set out to build a space station and as part of

that we had to build a new generation of spacesuits that would integrate with our space station

and once we built that capability to build next generation spacesuits in-house we competed on a

NASA program to build what's called the next generation extravignicular activity suits or the

XEVA suits and we won from NASA a $1.3 billion contract to build that next generation of spacesuits

so we are actually now building the spacesuits that will be worn by NASA astronauts when they

land on the moon in 2025 and and so that's probably our first major derivative revenue line

but all of that together gives you a complete picture of why ax1 has become the first company

to succeed in this area that's incredible and super exciting last question here michael

what is your prediction for first human on mars what timeline well that's a tough one

i actually don't see it happening anytime soon and i think the reasons are not new to anybody

but the idea of traveling that far with today's chemical propulsion technology will be a mission of

depending on whom you ask anywhere from two to three years and when you think about the logistics

required to support humans for that duration it's really daunting so i don't know i could be wrong

and you know never bet against elon as they say but i think that we are well to focus on

lunar exploration and establishing an iss-like presence on the lunar surface to be able to

develop in situ resource utilization to live off the land to the extent possible there's

not a lot of it there but you can use a regular to make structures you know you might be able to

extract water from the ice and the poles and use that for both drinking and making rocket propellant

and oxygen and all those things so all that i think are good things for us to do while we wait

and maybe nuclear propulsion is not that far away i feel like there's some movement in that

direction but i think it's going to be a pretty heavy lift to try to go there with chemical

propulsion and so therefore i'm saying decades got it michael and amir thank you so much for

joining us and sharing axiom spaces a story and goal thank you for joining thank you sam it's a

pleasure sam all the best arc believes that the information presented is accurate and was obtained

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