Virgin Orbit

Now to be clear, nearly every space launch company does this.

SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Orbit, and Rocket Lab are each investor-driven.

It's impossible to surpass the rocket development process without investment because the businesses can't earn revenue until after the rockets are developed.

However, no company has yet taken on the level of investment or debt needed to scale their process beyond current demand in order to dramatically reduce costs.

Here, Rocket Lab is- is definitely sort of a titan of the scene.

Um, I think it was Virgin Orbit that really helped you get your facility up and running, and- and then obviously that hit some financial difficulties.

What- what's ...

What do people need to be aware of when they're investing in space, finding partners, and- and trying to work out the risks?

Um, while we offer the operational environment that is, is ... enables people to launch things, it was important that Cornwall got something out of this as well.

So the- the investments that have been made here are to enable these companies to get their technology into space, but also to enable there to be something left in Cornwall as well.

To use a maritime reference that we hear, we say in Cornwall, is like what happens when the tide goes out? So when Virgin Orbit aren't gonna be here, which regardless of their financial difficulty, would've always been the case that they would've been not here for a lot longer than they would've been here.

So what is, what is the ecosystem that's left behind? And some of the investments that we made were to provide destinations and facilities for companies who wanted to be part of the excitement around launch, but potentially in between launch times, and that's been our big success.

[laughs]

Yeah, and you get so many... 'Cause, like, even Virgin Orbit, you know, if you looked at some of their launches, I mean, they had a number of shipping containers that had to be there as, as, uh, support equipment, uh, in addition to the plane.

So, uh, you know, I think we've, we've really tried to be, um, very, um...

You know, how would you operate this in the field if you had, like, three people? You know, so the, so the goal is at the spaceport to have less than five people to be able to conduct the entire, uh, ConOps on the field.

You had-

Yeah

... uh, Virgin Orbit for a while.

I mean, I think there were some attempts at it, but, uh, you know, we get back to only SpaceX has really achieved scale here, um-

Before we go deep, let's kick off with just a quick overview about you and your background.

I know it's very diverse, biomedical engineering, Virgin Orbit, several startups.

Give us the quick background and story on SASE and tell us how that led to co-founding Venus.

Yeah, you know, so it's one of those stories that when I look back, it makes sense, but I don't know that I ever set out in the beginning to do that.

it's the, the, it's always been the technical side.

I've always worked on the business side of technical companies.

And so ultimately joined Virgin Orbit when we moved out to Southern California.

And that's actually where I learned aerospace.