The Secret Space Revolution in Australia & New Zealand

Hey everyone. Welcome back to TechMates. Today we're diving into the new space era, but we are putting a massive spotlight on Australia and New Zealand. Believe it or not, Australia and New Zealand actually has a really unfair advantage when it comes to space. There's an incredibly exciting emerging ecosystem down here. A lot of this momentum was kick-started by Rocket Lab, which is now a $45 billion company. But it's also been heavily aided by a unique geography. There's a lot of water and a lot of land down here. And it comes with a very forward-thinking regulatory environment. There's another reason this region's standing out. As it's almost always the case with ANZ startups, these companies simply know how to do more with less. Without those massive Silicon Valley blank checks, our founders are forced to be leaner, scrappier, and highly capital efficient.

Today we're going to hear from three founders that are doing exactly that, hacking space and achieving massive technical feats on leaner budgets. We'll be talking about building satellite sensors with off-the-shelf electronics and a wild idea to move energy globally using lasers. But to kick things off, we're starting with Stefan, the founder of Dawn Aerospace, who's completely rethinking the economics of the launchpad by flying rockets into orbit like airplanes. Let's get into it.

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Let's go and do it and see what happens.

Ideas are worth like jack absolute jack Like if you can't execute, [music] it is nothing.

Just take that initiative to actually take whatever crazy ideas that they might have and just try to [music] see what comes of it.

Don't be afraid of ambition. Chase it, love it, wrap your arms around it, and and say it out loud.

don't know any better, and they will just get up and give it a shot.

That's why we were first to get to the top of Mount Everest.

Go to [music] dream that ultimate dream. Like what is it that you ultimately want to do? And it's all achievable.

New Zealand government has to hand this liability down to the actual launch provider and make sure it's covered.

Okay, so you were like So basically you saw that and you're like, "Hey, screw this. We're going to like just use a plane."

Well, pretty much. Like more like, "Hey, if 90% of this rocket doesn't actually have to be a rocket, it can just be an aircraft with the performance of a rocket as in it takes off from a runway, it's certified as an aircraft. Yes, it probably also needs a high altitude license, but that's [music] fine. Like aircraft can get that. And now it just flies under this license as much as it wants because this bit of the thing doesn't actually have a chance of you know, damaging something in Philadelphia.

Doesn't it still have the same like risk factors? [music]

Not really because this this bit is never going to go that far or that fast. Like that first stage is never going to do that. So so that you can actually separate out that whole bit of hardware from the going to orbit bit of the equation because you're only going to space. Like the difference between space and orbit is quite large especially in terms of your um like like risk areas. [music] So that can be

there's like like being in orbit is like is like you're closer to Earth and it's has less

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damage potential than being in space. Is that the difference?

Well well like going going into orbit means you're going to go all the way around. Yeah. So let's say you you got 95% of the speed [music] you need to get into orbit, but you didn't quite get all the way. That means you're going to come down but potentially like on the exact opposite side of the world.

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So you know, that could be over some other country, right? So like you have you could you could hit anyone at that point. But just going to space, like just going up to 100 km altitude and back down again, like your maximum range

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if you're only going that high is like it's hundreds of kilometers still, but it's not 10,000.

Right. When you came up with this concept, did you already think about the commercial applications for

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you know, why why would you want to do this basically?

Yeah, so so that's a really good point cuz like at this point we're totally thinking about getting to orbit, right? Like I want a better way to get to orbit. And that's like an eight

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eight to 10 billion dollar market depending on who you ask. Now as we've gone on, like zoom right forward to now, we've really refined our philosophy around this is an aircraft with the [music] performance of a rocket, not a rocket with wings. And actually there's so many interesting applications that are not even getting to orbit. Go back from orbit and you go to something like hypersonic aircraft. Um the US government is spending $7 billion a year at the moment in hypersonics research programs. [music] So that's just trying to understand the hypersonic domain, new technology that operates in the hypersonic domain. [music] Hypersonics is like that's literally a fifth of the speed that you need to get to orbit. So this is like a very low performance rocket to get to hypersonics. So it's like, "Oh we can do that. I can do a very low performance rocket, sure."

Yeah, the the thing that we built as students went to Mach 3.5 Mach 2.5.

What is a What is a Mach thing?

Mach is like um the speed of sound is Mach 1. So flying faster than sound is supersonic and then flying five times

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faster than sound is called hypersonic.

Right. So you saw that hypersonic exploration is definitely an interesting market just to kind of understand the technology and I guess the US government spends money on it for primarily [music] defense purposes. Just uh what's the reason for them to explore that?

Yep. Uh primarily defense but also just like fundamental science reasons. Like they just you know they're just pushing science forward in a whole bunch of different domains. But yeah, like one of the one of the major ones is like missile defense. So like all missiles are hypersonic to some extent cuz they're basically all based on rocket technology. So they you know they come back from very high altitudes at 10 to 15 times the speed of sound and then slow down through the atmosphere. So there's being able to simulate or like replicate that with a reusable vehicle is really great for them being able to test their missile defense systems to [music] know like, "Can I actually detect one of these things?" And keeping people trained, keeping people sharp. You know these are many many [music] billions of dollars worth of systems.

Um spending some money to make sure that [music] that are like to maintain that capability is is important to them.

So, Stefan is fixing how we get into space, but what about the hardware we actually put up there? Next up, we are talking to show. He's the founder of Alba satellites. He explains how his team skipped the expensive military gear and built high-tech satellite sensors using simple off-the-shelf electronics. Let's go.

What exactly did that entail? I mean, just [music] so we can really understand. So, you were like, okay, we can get more data, we get more insights for use hyperspectral, [music] can see more bandwidth of light, give us more information. And then you wanted to say that the ones are too expensive, especially the ones you're putting in the Are there already existing ones in space and you just wanted to build a cheaper cheaper one or what what was the kind of thought?

There were none in none in space when we started working on this. So, it was something that people were starting to look at, but to our knowledge back then, I think there were no hyper hyperspectral satellites. I think there were like multispectral [music] satellites with many bands where hyper you'd probably be thinking of like hundreds of different bands. So, we're I guess the cutting edge technology back then was probably 20, 30 bands, which now is pretty nominal. Uh back then it was still for a lot of bands and I think we saw the gap that we saw, okay, there's this technology that's been around for decades. No one's really put it up into orbit. There's been permutations of that that are I guess kind of, [music] you know, not as good versions of it already up there.

So, we kind of wanted to investigate why that is and what could be the solution to you know, getting these things up there. So, that's what I guess another thing that we realized is why we wanted to go down the route of DIY type of, you know, technology at least initially was to figure out, okay, what is the actual underlying concept behind this thing and can you swap out parts? Like sure, space requires a certain level of engineering, but can you sort of swap out things that would with consumer level electronics that could [music] still operate at the same performance with a few trade-offs, obviously, but still can get this technology out there so we can get the value that this technology promises at the scale that, you know, putting something in orbit can offer. So, that was like the insight that we were we were essentially chasing.

So, Joe, and if we [music] just maybe how does a regular DSLR camera work? And what did you guys kind of

So, you'd probably have with a normal camera you only have like an image sensor and the lens in front [music] of it. So, the lens takes in the light, focuses it on the image sensor, and that is the digital output is the image that you see. Now, to get hyperspectral light, so within let's say a normal DSLR system you're getting all of the light together. You're getting what we normally see. To get hyperspectral light, we want to be able to split that into all of its different hundreds of colors instead of just having red, green, and blue that a DSLR would be capturing. So, we replaced that entire front lens system and just kept that image sensor piece, and then added basically these eBay bought electronics and components that were basically a couple of lenses, something that you would call a diffraction grating, which kind of acts like a prism.

Like those three, it splits it into all of its different wavelengths of light, and then we'd have another lens that would focus all of these different bands or these different colors coming in. It would then [music] refocus that onto the image sensor. So, instead of capturing, you know, a normal image of all the [music] colors overlapping, we were able to basically separate them out into all of its different spectral components. And then you could then run software to actually see, okay, what the spectral curve is, what are you capturing for each different pixel on the on the image sensor, and that would be the spectral data that you get that you can then use to classify what you what you might be looking at.

So, basically, whereas a normal camera takes a lens, focuses the light that's all in the visible spectrum, you guys took a prism, split the visible spectrum from like [music] with the infrared, the ultraviolet, some other ones, and then had a a set of lenses and then focused each of those bands onto

Yeah, that's uh essentially the concept of our first hyperspectral sensor and even the first few version iterations that we built after that. So, the problem with the DSLR camera is obviously it's big, it's bulky. We like our thing was like half a meter long, probably even a meter long if if I recall correctly. [music] So, not something that you'd put on a satellite because

Is it Is it Is it because some of the wavelengths are that long?

Well, no. It was just the entire DIY aspect of it. So, we were working with a consumer like nothing was custom to it. We literally picking stuff that was available off the shelf and then building the rest of the system to kind of kind of work together. So, eventually it would make the the entire system a little bit more bigger because you're working with the lenses that had longer focal length. So, if you're trying to focus something with a long focal length, you you kind of have to have that space to do [music] that. So, that would just increase the size of it. So, I think that really just taught us the [music] initial concept of how to make things smaller, to what levers can we pull.

The next iteration that we ended up building actually fit

Just with that camera, what could you see that you couldn't see with a regular DSLR?

So, with that I guess we were able to split it into like all these If it's still within that visual range because the DSLR sensors can't see anything beyond the deeper into the infrared. That's where we sort of had to fix that with the next iteration. But, I think at that point we couldn't really see anything more per se. It was like for us, we were just able to get those different spectral outputs, but it wasn't that valuable. It was more like technologically technically we were like, all right, this thing works in some sense, but we weren't really applying it to let's see whether we can differentiate you know, metal from wood or that kind of thing. I think we needed a much better sensor with better wavelengths that could capture. That was was the next iteration that we built where we replaced the DSLR camera with an astrophotography camera.

So, the difference between those two cameras is that the DSLR has something called a Bayer filter on their sensor. The Bayer filter is essentially what gives you your red, green, and blues and filters everything else out. On an astrophotography camera, you don't have that. So, in astronomy, if the concept of hyperspectral doesn't really exist, but the science is also used pretty often where you'd probably look at different types of filters to see what different stars might be made of, like, you know, doing those different bands and doing that filtering. So, that's one of the reasons why why astrophotography sensors don't have any filters on them stock. So, we were able to basically capture infrared light for the first time. And that iteration of the sensor, we were actually properly able to discern different types of vegetation from each other.

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Um and because, you know, we learned all the different levers we could pull to miniaturize the sensor, that was [music] the first uh iteration that was under, let's see, a 3U CubeSat form factor. Initially, we were going around that CubeSat form factor just because it's simpler to build. And if you wanted to launch this up into space, you could launch somewhere and find a spot to end up going up in orbit. But that was how we had arrived at, you know, something was closer to what could, you know, actually capture valuable data and also survive to an extent in orbit.

It's crazy what you can do with DIY hardware in orbit. But what's the bigger picture for all this tech? Our last guest, Billy, has a pretty contrarian view. He wants to stop moving energy with heavy cables and start moving it with light, making energy as borderless as the internet. Let's go. What is What is the fundamental sort of, like, I guess, contrarian insight that [music] where you think it's it's actually, like, you need to solve this through transmission instead of through storage? So, the contrarian insight, I would say is that uh energy at a core level is the currency of civilization. And just like how we have to shift currency around, we can't just store currency. Like, we also have to have mediums for for transmission, even if, like, we live in in a world of currency abundance. Like, the same applies for energy.

So like there needs to be obviously the bank account, but then it needs to be also the global infrastructure for shifting the money around. And that's like what Lightway represents.

But but but I mean I mean people are using

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batteries and you know, hydrogen and number other like I mean people are using solar to to generate all kinds of like natural gas and jet fuel and other things like just in random places. There's a bunch of startups doing stuff like that. So why not? Yeah, what why is why is their approach kind of like not the right one or why is yours better?

Yeah. Yeah, it's all very material driven. So I think that's like a limitation around like energy density and speed. So like I do think of this in terms of the trends of history [music] and what the trends of history show is is generally like this like another maybe contrarian insight here which is that the way I guess the consensus is suggesting that the energy sector is going to evolve is actually towards more localized networks [music] and I guess very uh physical methods of transmission between those localized networks. So what I mean by that is So in communications we've had a trend towards essentially global connectivity. There's like an internet of information. But there's no internet for energy and in fact the opposite is happening in energy. People are saying look um energy is too difficult [music] to get around.

We're going to disconnect all these communities from the grid and they're going to have their localized microgrids and like they're going to do what they need like batteries and solar and whatever. But that's like totally against the trend of of history um in like every other sort of sector whether it be global trade or information, the internet. Like that the trend of history is like more interconnection, more globalization. And like that's not happening in energy. [music] And like what that suggests to me is obviously if you've got a force of nature and a force of history like towards interconnection and that's not happening, then there's some problem with the solutions that would enable that to happen. I think currently it's like

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because the physical so like oil is very difficult to get around. Um you need to ship it for weeks. The same applies like any type of physical infrastructure. So, if you wanted to ship energy around with batteries, like first off, there's like a weight limitation, a watts per kilogram issue. With light and with light, there is zero cost per kilometer and speed of light sort of transmission of of energy. So, like you you move from a world where energy is like essentially in the stone age to a world where energy is like digital and feels like the internet. And that's like kind of um a very core difference with the way it's it's it's currently done.

Interesting. Interesting. [music] So, I see. So, you're sort of cuz I mean your your examples of trade and the internet and whatever, I mean, [music] you're sort of saying they they actually globalize and like they go away from the the local, like more the global interconnected. I mean, that the difference with energy is like there is a physical component, whereas like like the idea of a trade network or the idea of like the internet, like it's um I mean, they're they're kind of weightless, right? They don't really have like the capex and multiple [music] building out. So, I guess what you're saying is you can sort of get there with with energy by removing the capex and like making it be Don't you still need to have some kind of capex to to transmit the light?

Yeah, yeah. Um,

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this is a really fascinating question. So, the current capex where energy is is considered like it's on a transmission basis, on a cost per kilometer. So, like with the HVDC, for example, high voltage DC, it's [music] currently the way that we get a lot of electricity over long distances. That costs about a million dollars per kilometer. [music] So, that's the capex that you're talking about. With energy networks of light, the core kind of thesis behind Equinix is that, hey look, um, the only capex you're expending is like the material cost actually transmit [music] that power optically. And the floor price for that is like one cent per watt.

And then like once you've built that infrastructure, the the sort of scaling and reconfiguration costs of the network are essentially zero because you're able to just redirect the light through like different pathways and like the cost per kilometer for a light beam is is zero. So, in that world, energy feels a lot like the internet. Similar to how Starlink made information essentially borderless and like reconfigurable, like you could you could access the internet from anywhere through through Starlink, the same could apply [music] to an energy network. And that seems to be what the trend of history is towards. That's what we're kind of building [music] towards.

Thank you for tuning in to Tech Mates. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with friends. We'll be back soon with more stories of Kiwi and Aussie founders reshaping the future and disrupting down under. Until next time, keep dreaming big and daring to disrupt.