Balerion

As you approach the transport vessels, you see there's a lot of panicked-looking Tideguards, and a larger Velonari is talking between them.

He turns around, and he sees Balerion, whatever the fuck his name.

What is this? It's Balerion.

It's like...

Oh, yeah,

it's because you said Balerion, and that's a dragon from Game of Thrones.

Whatever, it's a Velonari name.

Turns around to Balerion, and he goes, Balerion! It is good to see you.

Although the steel and brass body of Barbican is, strictly speaking, far too heavy for the fragile contraption it flies, the Automaton's weight is offset by a small brass rod welded to its chest, thrumming and glowing with bright blue runes.

Whatever Balerion has to say about the descent is lost to the howling wind, but it is plain from the expression of abject terror on his face that this is not his preferred means of transport.

Regardless, he just about manages to keep his glider on course.

Sallow, unfortunately, is another matter entirely.

And yes, we see multiple startups being funded by US companies.

For example, Balerion led Dawn Aerospace round series B in summer.

So, and I understand that this is a kind of building of old building of Rocket Lab now full of new young entrepreneurs building next generation of companies.

So that's exciting.

And especially, I think that could have solved the problem of no hobbits, right? That's true.

You know, like just put every, you know, like every couple of chapters or even every chapter is just like, you know, one night Bilbo and Frodo, you know, Frodo asked Bilbo to tell him a story about Beren and Luthien or something like that, you know, or like, you know, tell me, you know, tell me about the battles of, of Balerion, you know, just something along those lines that could have, you know, that could have introduced and provided that context for people.

Right.

Yeah.

The tale of Aerea Targaryen is a match for any fantasy horror piece.

Balerion flew Aerea to Valyria against her will for unknown draconic reasons.

They returned in terrible shape.

In addition to other half-healed wounds, Balerion had a deep gash nearly nine feet long caused by… a creature of some sort that we can't possibly identify, but is undoubtedly huge and possibly related to Arya's affliction, which was something far worse.

Grand Maester Benefer and Septon Bath described what they saw as best they could.

The phrases, worms with faces and snakes with hands, were included.

But not just that, not just venture funding, which we've seen get bigger and bigger throughout the year.

You know, Balerion just closed a $200 million fund for space specifically, which is huge for a venture fund.

But we're also seeing, you know, other capital markets enter the market.

CSG this week, great example, $600 million in one investment from a firm that doesn't usually do space investment.

He gives you

the address of Archbishop Balerion.

Balerion.

Balerion the Dread.

Alright, Game of Thrones.

Let's rock and roll.

probably fine.

Yes.

the Lunar Lander Program that is about to land humans on the moon, at Reliable Robotics, an aviation autonomy startup, several years as NASA's chief technologist at NASA headquarters, looking into the problems of AI, autonomy, quantum sensing, lunar surface imagery, nuclear power, etc.

And over the last year, supporting Balerion as an advisor, now joining full-time the Balerion team to help us look at the globe, what is happening, and what we're going to talk about today.

Kind of the thesis of the talk today as I'm looking at it is the physical layer of the economy is being rebuilt around us.

Allied governments have already committed the money.

those cowboys are now running the seven billion dollar space strategic fund that i mentioned right and so i've seen these ecosystems grow i've seen these graduate students become ceos i've seen some of those companies go public and and you see those trends of graduate students entrepreneurs innovators in these various countries and and we saw it in the us 20 years ago i saw it in japan 10 years ago you see in Europe, similar kinds of trends.

So kind of like pattern recognition you see of the ecosystem and obviously the US we've been ahead, but we now see these same kind of patterns and trends globally that we can apply the same lessons learned overseas.

The other thing I think about for Balerion, I think we've got an incredibly strong high signal to noise ratio team.

that can help some of these companies to think through these matters and i think even um as we think about helping these companies globally we can bring i wouldn't say some of that american kind of kind of thinking but but kind of help them and encourage them you know which i think sometimes they need um and i think entities like valerian and others can kind of provide that and energize um some some of these ex-us companies using the experience we've generated over more than five years of valerian working with the portfolio of companies that we've worked with so so um yeah i think there are opportunities uh abroad uh the defense expenditures civil space expenditures are are part of that and now we're seeing companies emerge companies successful in launching their first rocket and launching their satellite constellation and then rapidly scaling that up for sovereign uses, commercial uses, et cetera.

And Tituba.

His dragon was Balerion-

Can't beat that

...

Torrhen Stark bending the knee before Aegon Targaryen is an example about how belief informed his actions.

His belief that Aegon would burn him alive with Balerion the Black Dread is what gave Aegon power over him.

But still Torrhen could have chose to fight.

It was his belief in the futility of it that informed his decision.