FULL DISCUSSION: Jeff Bezos Unveils Prometheus AI, Predicts Space Computing Will Transform the World

1:09 Thank you. Okay. This is the session you are all waiting for and I I'm asking for a little bit of your attention. So, Vivate started with a simple audacious idea.

1:42 The future doesn't just happen. It gets built. built by people bold enough to imagine it and stubborn enough to make it real. The founders, the risktakers, the ones who look at impossible and here not yet. Jeff Bezos is one of these people, a remarkable entrepreneur who started the simple idea of everything in store online with books. And you know what happened with Amazon?

2:25 now flying rockets to new frontiers and step by step or ferociously together with David Limp they are building a new road to space with blue origin. Please join me in welcoming to the Vivate stage in conversation with former NASA astronaut Mike Masimino who helped save the Hubble Space Telescope, the CEO of Blue Origin, David Lim, and the founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos. You will see a short film and immediately after that short film they will be joining on stage.

3:19 We have a gift this nearby body called the moon that if we move out into the solar system we have unlimited resources. >> Command engine start. into the soul thrust. >> This is blue moon. >> It's a very large lander. >> It will be the largest lander to ever land on the moon. That opens up huge possibilities. >> It'll soft land in precise way onto the lunar surface.

3:53 None of this is easy. All of it is hard. There's still a lot of work to do and a lot of hard work to come. Mark 1 is a Blue Origin funded mission. High risk, high reward. >> Mark 2 is a complete Blue Origin solution. Very ambitious. Reliable, repeatable, lowcost access to the moon. We will now have lunar permanence. >> It's time to go back to the moon. This time to stay.

4:32 >> >> Okay. Well, thank you very much for that warm welcome. thanks Dave and Jeff for having me join you up here on the stage. It's a real honor for me to be here with you guys. we're going to start off with talking about a little bit of what we saw in the video. Anomalies and end response resiliency. If you look across the history of space flight, this is nothing new, right?

5:05 There's been setbacks going back to Mercury, Apollo, space shuttle. I'm certainly familiar with those setbacks that we had. And from the outside, people might look at that and think of that as a failure. But for those of us on the inside, in the industry, it's kind of part of the engineering development process. you know, you want to learn from it and and move on if you can. as we saw in the video a few weeks ago, you guys had had a setback and now you're in the beginning phases of rebuilding your launchpad. What have you learned since and how does the path forward look?

5:40 >> Well, let me start by saying that was a rough moment. >> Nobody likes that. It was a gut punch for the whole team. but what we've learned since then is we got really lucky. the some of the long lead items on the on the in the launch infrastructure were preserved. the for example the propellant tank farm, all the liquid hydrogen, liqufied natural gas, liquid oxygen, all those tanks, those are you know very long lead items and and they were fortunately undamaged. the booster. We had a booster in the integration facility which is right there at the launchpad and various pieces of shrapnel missed the booster.

6:19 There was a lot of good luck in that incident. you know at in the big picture kind of what you're saying God knows how to appropriately price his goods >> and space travel is hard and it's worth it. And so, you know, we by the way, by the end of that incident, the end of the day that that incident occurred, within 24 hours, completely spontaneously, the Blue Origin team, and this is a team of just incredible people, >> they were making themselves t-shirts that say, "It's worth it."

6:50 >> Yeah. Cool. >> Cool. Very cool. >> And I think the other thing is that we're busily rebuilding it. We we got lucky in another way. There was a construction crew just down the road and so we brought in 400 pieces of heavy equipment brought in construction workers that were working 24 by7 and so the pad has now been cleared of all the debris. It's it's amazing how quickly that's happened. And just yesterday we started the reconstruction and I think you've said it best. We're going to fly this year.

7:23 >> Yeah, we'll fly before the end of the year. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I I think what you said about your team is very meaningful and I look back at my my time at NASA and you know the highlights of course successful space flights but when you look at the setbacks the way you respond to them you find out what your team is made of right you don't find out necessarily in the good times been in those times that are a little bit tougher and you guys have gotten got a great team and a lot of support from NASA on this and it sounds great with the plan moving forward Jeeoff I want to pick up on something you you you said about that It's worth it. It's kind of like you're now even though this happened, you're doubling down on it's worth it when others might not have continued, right? It's you could also have decided not to move forward. Share with us your vision and why it is worth it to you.

8:13 Well, you know what we're trying to do is build all the infrastructure so there can be a completely dynamic space economy. today the cost of admission to space is still very high. If you look back at what I witnessed in the internet space over the last you know two and a half decades you saw an environment where because all this infrastructure existed the global networks and so on so on very small companies could build very large enterprises you know two kids in a dorm room could build a giant company and we want space to be like that. You want space to be this dynamic entrepreneurial place where two kids in a dorm room can build an incredible space company and and that's that is going to happen. you know so the the job of a company like Blue Origin is to help build the road to space that heavy infrastructure so that many other companies can do incredible things and there are so many resources in space.

9:10 You're seeing that now with you know LEO constellations and the potential for orbital compute. we have the moon as a gift. It's right there. and so we're we're working on all these things. We're we're we are we're building a lunar lander. We are building a working on insitu resource projects. So we're learning how to build solar cells out of lunar regalith and and there are many other initiatives that we're undertaking, but all of them are focused on building this infrastructure so there can be dynamism in the space economy.

9:46 >> Yeah. So, this is this is all great news and I'm so grateful you guys are moving forward. Learn with you. These are not things you'd want to have happen when you have an anomaly, when you have a setback, but it's >> they're unavoidable. You they're going to happen, right? They're going to happen. You don't want them to happen, but when they do happen, it's how you react to it. >> It's how you you get you gives gives you a chance to gives the whole team a chance >> to show everyone who we are and what we're made of.

10:10 >> Right. Yeah. looking back years from now, I think. >> Yeah. And the team at Blue is the most missionary team I've ever worked for because, you know, we've you've been part of this, but we've explored every planet. we've we've we've been to the deepest parts of the solar system and and this is the good one, right? This is the planet you want to be on. it's it's beautiful. And as we build this infrastructure, you can move polluting industry into space. And you can turn, you know, every every place on Earth like the parks in this city, this beautiful city here. And and we could support three times the population on on this planet. And that's that's the long-term goal. That's what we're trying to do.

10:48 >> That's why it's worth it. >> Okay. All right. So, I am very excited to see New Glenn fly again, but maybe not everyone in the room has familiar with what a launch looks like. So, we're going to roll a little tape so that everyone can see how epic one of these launches are. We'll roll the tape now. >> It's not just a launch, it's a landing, too. >> yes. >> There you go.

11:36 >> >> We we didn't miss it, did we? >> Jump back in, I guess. >> Okay. All right. Well, eventually we'll get get that going. Okay. So, okay, we're good. We'll proceed. All right. so Jeeoff, you mentioned earlier about the space economy, and I think to some of us that might be kind of like a like a science people might hear that it's like almost like science fiction. Is it real? You know, is that is that something that we that is that is for real? but sitting where you sit, what evidence do you see every day that convinces you that the demand for access to space is real and accelerating?

12:29 Well, there's this is a great question. The the evidence right now is very obvious. If you look at demand for launch, demand for launch is insatiable right now. we have a tremendous backlog already on our books for launch. Every space launch company has tremendous backlog. We are supply constrained. We are not demand constrained. And you know it's being driven by communications with LEO constellations.

12:59 It's being driven by national security missions and it's being driven in the future by things like orbital compute and and lunar and lunar resources and NASA programs to return to the moon. This time to stay. There's just a tremendous amount of demand for launch. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think it was sort of underestimated at some point when you know years ago when the government our government was looking for what they would need. I think is it fair to say they underestimated what the real demand would be >> 100%. I think people underestimated it tremendously.

13:34 >> Yeah. And I think there might be an element to it. I think in some ways like if you build it they will come. you know that if people if you can't get to a place you can't even imagine what you would do there but now that you've increased the access all types of even my my students at Colombia have flown an experiment on one of the New Shepard rockets that would have been impossible even you seven years ago this is a few years ago they did this but can you imagine even thinking that when we were students or >> in the not too distant >> and it's a circle too if if you if launch is very very expensive >> then the satellites have to have really long lifetimes and they have to be very exquisite.

14:12 >> Yeah. >> And so and but if if the launch starts to get cheaper then the satellites can get cheaper and if the satellites get cheaper there's more demand for launch. If there's more demand for launch then you get more practice with launch. Launch gets cheaper. >> So there is a virtuous circle there >> that once you get it spinning in the right direction that's where we want to go. >> Yeah. And you had this vision there's not you can count on that happening but you were confident of course that this would >> you know it's going to happen. you just don't know exact timing. Yeah.

14:40 >> So, you get you get out there and you get ready and and it's here. >> You know, by getting reusable rockets, you you lower the costs because that you know, these boosters want to be reused. They're they're expensive and when we land them, then we can reuse them many many many times. And these, as you said, these constellations want to be gigantic. >> You know, I especially communications, it's people are insatiable on how much bandwidth they want to use. I when I had a 300 bud modem, I wanted to use all of it. When I had a gigabit in my home, I want to use all of it. And when I go all the way, these constellations want to be very, very large.

15:14 >> We have Okay, guys. I think we're going to cut to the tape now for real. >> All right, we a little setback, but here we go. Let's have a shot >> for today's launch NG2. We have two goals. The first is to safely deploy the payload, which is NASA's Escapade, which is heading out on a mission to Mars. >> And the second is to land the booster for the first time. NASA's new escapade mission will help us understand Mars' climate history using two spacecraft in orbit for the first time.

15:50 to a flight level. Autopilot enabled. Both engines continue to look good.

16:25 Good data coming down from both stages. >> All right, at 9 minutes is when we're expecting the first stage to touch down on Jack. burning burn ignition. Three good landing burn. >> Great shot from our booster.

17:01 Congratulations Escapade. Both blue and gold have successfully deployed. We have successfully landed the booster and we have successfully deployed satellites for escapade.

17:32 So when you're doing hard things, you also get great moments like that. >> Yeah, that's awesome. >> Extraordinary. >> That you said when I said it was a launch, it's also the landing which amazes me. That's on out in the ocean right on on Jacqueline the the recovery ship. Amazing. >> And this is a very large vehicle that this vehicle will take 45 metric tons to Leo. It'll take the the variant we're working on right now, the 9x4 variant, will take over 70 metric tons to LEO.

17:58 This this is a super heavy class booster. To watch it land like that on an ocean going platform is >> is all inspiring. And the team is is rightly very proud of themselves for it. >> And the ocean doesn't always cooperate. That thing moves. >> No, ocean is highly uncooperative. >> So to be able to do that like that is so impressive. So all right, Dave, this is all incredibly ambitious, right? And so the question is because you're the CEO here, what what keeps you up at night when you think about all this stuff coming together, the the whole operation, the the manufacturing, the talent pipeline, getting getting the right people in, the supply chain, all this coming together. What what is it that's foremost on your mind with this?

18:40 Or is it everything combined? >> There is a little bit of everything. I I I I've only been doing aerospace for two and a half years. I'm traditionally trained in consumer electronics, but I I think people underestimate how hard it is to build a rocket. >> these these are incredibly complicated vehicles pushing pushing the boundaries of what you know physics allows and and so to to see success like this and and see how space is becoming more normal is is amazing. But the to build one off of anything, whether that would be an engine or it would be a rocket, that that doesn't really keep me up at night much. It it what the hard part is is building the machine that builds the machines.

19:22 >> You really want to that takes a lot of time and a lot of thought. And that's the factories that are pushing these out because you don't want to meet the vision that Jeff talked about. You don't want to build just one rocket. We want to build we want to fly a hundred times a year and that means a hundred second stages. That means that means hundreds of engines. And so building our engine factory in Huntsville and our rocket factory down in Orlando and getting those to rate which includes the supply chain that includes the raw materials and heavy vertical integration is how you build that machine. And we we're making a huge amount of progress.

20:00 but you can always get better. >> Yeah. We're now building a BE4 engine. This is our the heavy you know LG locks engine every four days coming off the line now a B4 engine. So rate manufacturing is critical to this. You know space travel is a solved problem for you know six decades. We're not trying to invent space travel. We're trying to make it cost effective >> and that's the key. That's why you need reusability as Dave is saying and why you need rate manufacturing. And so it really is about being worldclass manufacturers and Dave and the team are are crushing that. They're doing an amazing job. When when Dave visited us at at Colombia where I'm on the faculty that was talked about the manufacturing I do want to mention something about your pipeline. when you I don't know if you knew this but when we were looking for someone to come speak we had a CEO lecture series and we did a poll within our our student body and what if you can listen hear from the the head of any company what would it be and it was blue origin came out number one so thanks for accommodating so I think your pipeline is of of talent is is excited to to come join you and be a part of this >> yeah I think people are underestimating in even in the acade academic world how much building physical things is going to be valued moving forward, right? And so the so we we spent the last three decades with a not enough computer science majors, but I think the pendulum's going to swing the other way.

21:32 And they I was so inspired seeing this kids at Colombia and and people that know how to build real physical things and understand the complexities of that and how to manufacture them, they're gonna they're going to be in very high demand. And and just to pick up a little bit more on the on the engines, Jeff, as the I don't know if everyone knows was mentioned early just a minute ago about you do have separate facilities. Most of your rockets are built in Florida, right? Primarily, but you have a whole an entirely separate facility in Alabama. Yeah.

22:04 >> And now I've ridden on rockets that take you to space, but I've never tried to build one. So in your mind, what what what is so difficult about building rocket engines? Well, rocket engines operate right at the limit of physics. So, you know, the internal combustion temperatures inside a main combustion chamber of a rocket or 5,000 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit, it's beyond the melting points of any materials. And so, the the complexities of pressurizing those propellants in high performance turbo pumps that have to be very lightweight, of cooling those materials with regenerative channels so they don't melt. This is it's a very challenging thing to do and then so designing the engine is hard and then manufacturing it is hard and manufacturing at rate is hard. and you know I think we have a little clip I could show you. We have our lunar lander has an engine in it called the BE7 which is a relatively small engine. It's 10,000 pounds of thrust and that we the reliability of this engine is paramount and We just did the longest engine test in history. this is a 41 minute engine test. This engine ran continuously for 41 minutes. That beats the record for the space shuttle main engine which they once tested 30 years ago. They tested it for 36 minutes. So that's that. And so that's a a multi-deade record that the Blue Origin team just beat with the BE7 engine. But this is a very challenging thing. These engines are very complex. We have the BE4 engine which is the one that uses liqufied natural gas and liquid oxygen uses an ox stage combustion cycle. And then our BE3U engine is our second stage engine.

24:01 It's liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. This is the same basic architecture that was used by the Apollo program. So a hydrocarbon booster stage and liquid hydrogen upper stages. Liquid hydrogen is a a complex fuel to use, but it's much higher performing than hydrocarbon fuels. The problem with liquid hydrogen is that it's very voluminous. It's the density of liquid hydrogen is very low. So that's why you really don't want to use it on a booster stage. it gets the booster stage would get too volutrically gigantic but on a second stage it gives you tremendous advantages. So this is what the Apollo Saturn 5 rocket did and it's what we do as well. The to do the the lunar landing with liquid hydrogen has a further advantage which is that you look just a little ways into the future when we have permanent lunar settlements. And this time we are going to the moon to stay. I'm not going to visit. were going to stay. And when you look at the materials available on the moon, you have water ice in the permanently shadowed craters on the near the poles of the moon and that can with electrolysis be converted into liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. So, by using liquid hydrogen as our lunar landing fuel, one day in the not too distant future, you'll be able to use insitu materials on the surface of the moon to refuel your lander.

25:37 let's talk more about the moon, right? So, you guys have had this in your game plan since the company was founded was the moon. And, lately we've been hearing a lot about the moon. Artemis 2 was such a huge success and really captured everyone's attention. It's now like a a global interest of going to the moon, exploring the moon for various reasons. do you feel like everyone else is the world is catching up to where you guys have been for a while? How does how do you how do you feel about that?

26:08 >> Yeah, we've been we've been fixated on not skipping any steps. I'm very excited to see NASA and I think most of the world recognize that we should go to the moon first. We'll go to Mars and we'll do all the other things. But the moon is the first best step and there are many reasons for that. But it's kind of a gift. It's so near Earth. We can get there in three and a half days. We can return in three and a half days. You can go anytime you want. You don't have to wait for the planetary alignment to be just right. And you can only go to Mars every two years or so. And so there are a lot of advantages to the moon. And then the moon's gravity well is so much lower than the earth's that when you get materials from the moon, you can lift them off the moon with 28 times less energy per kilogram than is needed to lift something off the earth. And so that's a really valuable thing. If you are producing liquid oxygen, for example, on the moon, lifting that into space is very easy compared to lifting liquid oxygen off of Earth. And so as we go about exploring the solar system, which we will do, and as we, you know, we will, we will build colonies on Mars and so on, the moon is an important first step. And when you skip steps, it actually doesn't make you faster.

27:29 >> Yeah, we and and it's going to be an incredible time over the next just the next year. If you if you look at our lunar road map, we call our team inside of blue lunar the lunar permanence group for exactly what Jeff said. We want to go there and we want to stay on the moon. And just next year, early in the year, we'll fly our Mark1 lander, which is on the screen here. This is three metric tons to the lunar surface vehicle. It'll be the big the largest thing that has ever landed on the moon.

27:57 And that'll be our Pathfinder mission. And then midyear, it was just announced last week, Artemis 3 will happen. Luca from Italy will be on that on that flight which should be great. >> and that's going to be a rendevous mission with our Mark 2 lander which is our humanrated lander and we'll we'll meet up at around 450 kilometers in low earth orbit and we'll do some of two days of entering into the vehicle. The vehicle will have full environmental control. So it have an Equest system and we'll test that out for when we fly to the moon the following year. And then later in the year, we'll fly another Mark1 lander. So these are coming off the assembly line now. So we have a factory that's building these and that'll land NASA's Viper rover late in the year. And so it's going to the the the cycle time to the moon, the cadence to the moon is going to increase very rapidly. And it's it's really exciting.

28:51 >> And by the way, that Viper rover is going to go find lunar water ice in those permanently shadowed craters. So, that's a very exciting mission to we've seen it. We've we've seen it with various methods from orbit and so on, but now we'll be able to go look at it up close. >> So, just kind of seems like the timing has worked out pretty well. You guys identified it now the moon base announcement from a from a couple months ago.

29:18 >> You're right that the timing is good. I would also tell you this is >> so early. You know, we as a species >> as far as space is concerned. We're we're just still warming up, >> right? We haven't we have not even begun. This is the earliest earliest earliest. >> Yeah. And the idea that we've been to the moon before, which we have great accomplishment, much different than what we're doing now, I would say the permanence of what I was saying there.

29:45 And I really love what what you said about >> and when we went before, we pulled it forward in time. >> Yep. >> We did it before we were ready. >> Yeah. it was pulled forward in time and because of you know geopolitics and the race with the Soviets and so on >> and now is the right time >> to really get into and go to stay. >> Yeah, we did it before by spending you know the US spent almost 3% of GDP.

30:11 Yeah. >> To do it and that's just not >> we don't have those those types of resources. >> That's not sustainable. >> Give me 3% of GDP. I'll give you fusion. Okay. think. Yeah. >> So, I guess the the question here and we've already I think we know the moon or Mars, Jeff. >> Well, moon first. >> Moon first. >> Mars. Mars and and everywhere else, too. And we'll build large, you know, O'Neal Jerry O'Neal style colonies in space as well.

30:36 >> Yeah. and and we'll build big you know we'll use asteroids and near-Earth objects and the moon and so on to build compute in space and solar cells in space and so on and a lot of our compute will be done in space. it's it'll make more sense and ultimately we even manufacture the chips that the compute runs on and then the answers can just be beamed back to us here and this planet Dave said it before but our long-term vision our dream is to that all the polluting industry can be done off Earth if if space travel gets reliable enough and inexpensive enough and we can get materials from asteroids and near-Earth objects and the moon, >> then this garden planet can be returned to its pre-industrial revolution state.

31:34 >> This is the only way in which the world is worse today >> than it was 500 years ago. >> Everything is better today. The the you know global illiteracy is better than it was 500 years ago. infant mortality is better than it was. global poverty is better than us. Everything is is better and it keeps getting better and the one exception is the natural world >> and we can actually have both. >> So we we go to space not necessarily just for space but for earth.

32:08 >> Yes. You want to protect there's a great quote which I'm sure you've heard from one of your fellow astronauts >> Jim Levelvel. >> Yeah. when he went to the when he went to the moon and he looked back on earth, he looked back at the earth and he said, "I realized you go to heaven when you're born, not when you die."

32:40 And I really love the way you describe the moon as a gift. You know, I've always thought of it like our little brother or sister that's always with us >> if we're there. It's and it's the right It sounds like you're saying we get there, we can go other places more quickly. >> it's also been bombarded. What's that? >> It's been bombarded for four and a half billion years by every meteorite. And so just under that surface is everything we need to build the things that Jeff talked about. Like every mineral's there, water's there. We know this now.

33:06 And it's just it's going to be it's going to be an incredible resource >> and it's untouched for billions of years. So it it really is a I like that it's a gift for us to explore and then use that as a launchpad to go other places. All right. let's talk about some more about the infrastructure stack that that you're developing. know this is all you know the about rockets and the vision for the moon and all all these things that you guys are into and you're going to need a lot of talent and resources. But, you know, you said that that that is really the key is companies and we've talked about a little bit already companies that can be these worldclass manufacturers with incredible vertical integration.

33:50 they're the ones that are going to be the leaders and Blue Origin is doing that to set up this space economy, building that infrastructure. So when you when you say that about building that in the infrastructure layer for the space economy, what what does that mean and what are the pieces of that stack that you're developing? >> Well, I think on the as you said on the manufacturing, I I was very surprised coming to a company like blue that you do have to be incredibly vertically integrated in this area. And as an example, we have our own these engines that Jeff talked about the you know they're running at just the boundary of physics and high heat. So we have a material science group that literally invented new two new alloys. We call them cascadium and reerium. And these are to coat these engines so they can survive in these in these applications.

34:39 And then we take those alloys and we put them into one of the biggest additive manufacturing factories in the world which which blue has. and we print these metals and literally print an engine. And so it's it part of the infrastructure is inventing new infrastructure that to to push the boundaries of what we'd be able to do again to get to where where Jeff said, which is lowering the cost. You know, you could probably do this in the old ways back in the Apollo era, but it does take a lot of money in in this. And then I I think the other place that we're trying to invent is what are the applications you want to put in space?

35:14 And so we have we've announced two different constellations, one called Project Sunrise, the other one called Terrowave that that get more infrastructure into space and and I think we can talk more about that as well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I was going to ask you about Terra Wave. Yeah. data going is a a LEOC's constellation that has very very high bandwidth and is optimized for very demanding users large enterprises hyperscalers government institutions includes very fast earth to space optical links so it's a very sophisticated network and so we're working on that we're also working on project sunrise which is an orbital compute. It'll those satellites will be in sun-synchronous orbit.

36:09 Sun-synchronous orbit is an interesting orbit where the satellites 99 plus% of the time are always in sunlight. So they don't get eclipsed by the earth. You know a typical orbit around the earth you know might be in low earth orbit might be you know 90 minutes or so and half that time you're in darkness and half that time you're in in in in sunlight. But in the sun synchronous orbit, you're in daylight almost all the time, 99 plus percent. And so your solar cells are working for you the whole time. and so there are a lot of questions about orbital data centers and can it really work and people get worried about heat rejection and things like this. All of these physics problems are easily solvable. heat rejection is not a real problem. It's all these questions are really about cost and the cost. So cost of production of the solar cells, the cost of production of the satellites and the cost of launch will eventually the lines will cross and eventually orbital compute will be a better option than terrestrial compute.

37:13 We don't know exactly when that will be, but we're going to work on we have to work on it now so that we're ready for those two lines to cross. We're already very reliant on the connectivity we get every day from space and this is a way to grow it. >> Yeah. Yeah. And this is going to there's going to be many of these constellations. I was just >> Yeah. There. And you know just just the first phase of terrow wave is 5,000 plus satellites in LEO and then another hundred satellites out in mid earth or orbit at NEO. And so you you start thinking about the scale of these constellations. They want to be 5 10 20,000 for each shell. And and they'll have different use cases. You know, you have Starlink and you have Amazon's LEO and those are very focused on mostly on the consumer and great you can go anywhere now and and and get for 60 or 100 euro a year you can or a month you can you can get great connectivity.

38:09 Similarly, our we're focused on giving enterprises and governments really really high bandwidth with high reliability and and there'll be 10 more ideas for this and this goes back to why launch is so constrained now because each one of these constellations can quickly fill up many many many launches you know hundreds of launches and so we we got to race to just get lower the cost even further and get more rockets in the air >> and Europe will have their own constellations. Other countries will have their own constellations. It's just a it's just a very valuable thing to be able to do. And even just talking about communications constellations, the kind of human appetite for comms is basically in, you know, insatiable.

38:59 >> I want to ask you about another project that you have going. recently you broke news of a new endeavor Prometheus right an AI company and you've called it you're going to be developing an art an artificial general engineer >> so as someone who tries to train real engineers I'm very excited about this because I think I think it's a way that we're going to we can incorporate that in education and and train engineers to use >> this thing that you're developing Prometheus what can you tell us about that and the importance of AI in in in engineering for Blue Origin and for the world.

39:35 >> Yeah, Prometheus is building a set of tools that's designed to empower engineers to really invent and build much much faster. >> So if you think about, you know, today there's a kind of a dream build cycle. you know, dream of something and then depending on how complicated it is, it may take a few years to t years before you're really producing it at rate and manufacturing it. >> And if you take a step back and broadly, civilizational wealth, all of civilizational wealth is driven by invention. 6,000 years ago, somebody invented the plow and we all got wealthier. And then much later, somebody invented the steam engine and we all got wealthier. And this cycle continues. And if we can accelerate that cycle, that dream build cycle, it will create real productivity, real prosperity. And so that's the idea behind Prometheus. And it can't be done with traditional large language models. They have a place, but they aren't trained with the right data to be able to do detailed engineering.

40:51 So the analogy I would give you is, you know, I could read a thousand books. That's what LLMs do today. They're trained on the entire corpus of humanity's knowledge. They have scraped the entire internet and they know everything that we've written down in words. and they're unbelievably good at at symbol manipulation. That's what large language models do. But if I read a thousand books on how to be a great gymnast, I would still be a terrible gymnast.

41:26 And it's because it's a it needs a different kind of training data. And that's what when you go to actually design real physical objects, it's very complicated and you can't do it just by reading about it. And so we're building a a model that is very good at doing engineering. And then that model becomes the basis of a series of tools that will make it easier for for people to to to dramatically accelerate that build dream. So the goal would be if today you came to me and you said, "Jeff, I need a new jet engine with 10% more thrust."

42:03 And even if I had built 50 jet engines already, so I I would still tell you that's going to be a 10-year program. >> That's how long it takes to build a a modern, sophisticated jet engine for a modern airliner. and to be by the time you've tested it and set up the factory and are ready to produce it, that's at least a 10-year program. And so, can we at Prometheus build a set of tools to make that be five years and then three years and then two years and then one year? And if we can really accelerate that dream build loop, it changes everything >> and and it's not necessarily >> and it helps Blue Origin, too. Yeah, Dave needs these tools.

42:49 >> Yeah. And it's not going to replace people necessarily. It's going to be a tool for engineers to use. >> No, no, no. Really valuable. >> I know there's a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant and so on. I I totally disagree with this point of view, and I think in fact AI is going to create a labor shortage because it's going to make it possible for people to identify more problems. We have an endless set of things to invent >> and we are only limited today. We are limited not by our imaginations but by what we can actually do. I promise you every single person in this audience has had an idea for a new business or a new product or a new device that they wish they could manufacture and that idea stayed in your head and went nowhere. And the reason it stayed in your head and went nowhere is because it's too hard to do and it wasn't worth it. And if we can accelerate the dream build loop, all of the ideas will then become possible. And then we end up being limited not by our capabilities but by our imaginations. You can already see this with you can already see this some with vibe coding, right? You know, I was classically trained as a computer scientist, but three years ago, I was a terrible computer scientist. But now I can in just an afternoon write an iOS app and and and I have some ideas for iOS apps and and that that be that is one thing LM can do very well because it is symbolic and so they can code very well and then imagine the tools that they're thinking about bringing that that I could in an afternoon do that in the physical world. Yeah. And you know contemplate something and magically it comes off my 3D printer. I I'm chomping at the bit. It's it's so exciting.

44:43 exciting future for for all of us here. Well, folks, we got a few minutes left here, so we got a couple last questions for you. you guys known each other a long time. I mean, I know you well enough to know you guys are friends and trusted. >> We've worked together for you know, almost two decades at Amazon. >> Okay. So, and so you've worked together at Amazon. Is there any surprises or differences on how working together at Blue Origin? How's how's that been? Is it what's that been like now in this new endeavor? I I don't see a lot, but I there's some things that surprised me.

45:18 Jeff is the most Karen feeding tip for Jeff here. He's the most tactically impatient person I've ever met and the most strategically patient person I've ever met. So, and I know that's an oxymoron, but it but it it somehow works. And and the the thing that that was the same is at Amazon, Jeff was always the longest term thinker in the room. There was no question about it. He was the long-term optimist in the room. And I when I came to Blue, the vision is bigger than that. It it's it it's it's he mentioned it. It's like we're trying to help this planet and make and and make space the new normal.

45:59 So that that was one. And then I think the other thing for me is I I've been in the room a lot with Jeff and you know he always can find and help an idea. You always can move it forward and I and certainly I thought that that superpower was centered around e-commerce. I mean you invented Amazon and I can tell you now I've been here two and a half years Jeff knows more about rockets and rocket engines than he knows about e-commerce. And that is stunning.

46:34 >> Thank you, Dave. That's very nice. I Here's what I would say. There's a there's a saying, some of you may have heard it, maybe not. when you're under 40, never hire your friends. When you're over 40, only hire your friends. There you go. And I can tell you I am a very very lucky man with a tremendous amount of gratitude that I get to work with Dave. >> Thank you. >> That is awesome.

47:11 >> Okay, just a couple more to round out here. Jeff, you said that Blue Origin will be the world's most decisive company. how's that going? How have things? >> It's going it's going very well, especially since Dave arrived and I'm very grateful for it because decisiveness is about speed and speed matters in business. You know, Amazon is a giant company, but we're still we make decisions very quickly >> and this is something that you need to be able to do and I can tell you why decisions get slow in especially in large companies and blue is a pretty big company at this point. you know, we have 14 15,000 people. It's not a small company. And the reason is you start making all decisions as if they're all the same size. It's like one-sizefits-all thinking. And you know, if you have a one-sizefits-all robe, it never fits. So, and so there are different decisions that should be made in different ways. There are giant decisions which are consequential and irreversible or almost irreversible.

48:14 super hard to reverse. Those decisions should be made slowly with great care. And then there are other decisions which even if they're consequential, they can be reversed. And those decisions should be made by single individuals who have good judgment. And and so you have to remember that there are these different kinds of decisions and speed of decision making. If you go if you when you go look at successful companies, one of the reasons that small companies can be so nimble is because a small group of people can be so decisive and you know a company with a hundred people and a really good founder or a leader, they can touch every part of the company. They can be involved in every decision and they can be incredibly decisive and move fast. So that's an important part of culture. and in aerospace you know traditional aerospace I think often suffers from slow decision- makingaking speed >> and it's and I know how aerospace gets there but I mean you know you're building things that often have you know hazardous operations life safety critical missions and so again not every decision is like that though and so you end up making every decision as if it's life safety critical >> and then you're going to move very slowly and that's not going to lead to the results that you want. You know, you know, we we want to move humanity forward into this next age and I think we're in the middle of a bunch of golden ages right now and I want to see companies succeed in all of them.

49:48 Biotech space is an incredible opportunity. all the things that are happening in AI, we live in the most incredible moment. And every young person right now should be so excited that they are where they are now because it's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, a better time to start a company. there's so many possibilities in in the speed compared to what we used to do in the space program with the government where I'm familiar. We used to call it we move at glacial speed here and you guys move quick. Okay, I've got we're we're we're close here. I've got a question for each one of you left.

50:26 Dave, this is what goes through your head when you when you hear Jeff say that Blue, and apparently you've said this, Jeff, that Blue will eventually be the best business you've ever been a part of, even more successful than Amazon. Now, I'm, you know, I'm not a business major, but Amazon's pretty successful, so the pressure's on. What goes through your head when you when you hear that, Dave? Yeah, it's a it's a clenchup moment. Let's put it that way.

50:53 Yeah, you know, it's a and I I I he mentioned this before I took the job that he So, this I think it got out publicly later, but he he mentioned it and so this has been and it is a tough comp. You know, Amazon by almost any measure is one of the world's if not the world's most successful company. And but I have to tell you that I I am an optimist by general but in general but that as the time has gone by and been two years and I've seen how fast the progress we're making in space and how many opportunities that are that we've talked about some of them here that can happen in space. I I think I I'm I'm a believer now and I was a skeptic and so I'm sure of it. Yeah, it's going to happen. going to be a giant industry with lots of winners and you know literally hundreds and thousands of winners.

51:46 >> It's going to be very exciting to watch it unfold. >> Well, I'm very grateful for what you guys have done devoting your your talents, energy, entrepreneurship to the space program. Well done. one last question, Jeff. This one's for you. It's about your lesson learned from your grandfather on the importance of being resourceful. you know today we have AI and a lot of technical help a lot of technology around us. Do you still think resourcefulness carries the same weight as it did when you heard that story from your grandfather or even maybe more so in today's world? I think it's so important and it's funny Mike knows some of these stories about my grandfather because I told I told him so that's why he's asking this question but my grandfather when I knew him was a rancher in South Texas and I spent all my summers on my grandfather's ranch from age four to 16 and and eventually was able to help him and we did everything on our own and like a lot of people in rural areas you can't call to repair something you know you fix it yourself And so we repaired bulldozers and took out the giant transmission gears and fixed them and so on. But he even made his own veterinary needles, you know, to stitch up the cattle. He would get a piece of wire and heat it with a blowtorrch and pound it flat and drill a little hole in the end and sharpen it. Some of the cattle even survived.

53:13 So this is a a very good just this this idea. It's an attitude. This attitude, this approach to life that any problem is solvable. It's a good starting point. And some problems may take a long time to solve. But I promise you, if you start with the opposite point of view that the problem is not solvable, that will be a self-fulfilling pro prophecy. >> And with that, we're our time is up.

53:46 Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much, Jeff. Thank you. >> Thanks, Mike. Hey, thanks very much. >> Awesome. Thanks, folks. >> Stay tuned.