Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim on the Blue Ghost moon landing, upcoming far-side mission, and commercializing lunar imaging

Speaker 2: appreciate you. And having Good luck. The time. Good luck with everything. And cares. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Have a good rest of your day. Without further ado, we are going to bring in Jason Kim from Firefly Aerospace. We're very excited to talk to him. He's the CEO of Firefly Aerospace. Jason, how are you doing? I'm doing great, guys. Thanks for having me on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat Why with don't you give us a little introduction? I think most people will be familiar with some of Firefly's work, but take us through a little bit of the journey and the milestones that have been important to you.

Speaker 5: Well, this is our ninth year as a company. Wow. And we are the first company success. In the history of the world as a commercial company to land successfully on the moon. Yeah. And everybody's talking about the moon these days. Of course. And the other thing is we did a twenty four hour launch for the Space Force Mhmm. That broke the previous record of twenty one days. That was back in 2023, and that's used for deterrence cause, you know, space is contested. Yeah. And the moon is the ultimate high ground. Yeah. So we're into that. And then we're doing a lot of commercial tech. So a lot of the latest industry technology like what we announced earlier this week. We're putting NVIDIA jets in into space around the moon, and we're going to do space domain awareness Yeah. Imaging and imaging of the moon, and we're going to do all that on orbit, and then just get the insightful data back to the earth. Mhmm. It's it's it's incredible journey. Yeah. We're watching badass rockets, super cool lunar landers and satellites,

Speaker 2: and we're doing AI ground processing as well. Well, give me a little bit of your background. What what led you into the aerospace industry? How long have you been doing this?

Speaker 5: Well, I was born I was born in South Korea, immigrated when I was one. Yeah. And my parents always taught me give back to The US. Yeah. And so what I did was I went to the Air Force Academy out of Dallas, Texas, and made a career in the Air Force. Loved it. Was working with UAVs before they became popular Yeah. In 1999, and then you saw what happened in 09/11. Yeah. And then the same thing with small satellites. I got to work with small satellites and rockets and ground systems, and that's really taken off. Now you've got proliferated systems in LEO, MEO, and GEO with things like Starlink and other. Yeah. And now we're going to the moon. Yeah. And so it's just incredible where space is going. I think in five years, every single company on Earth is going to be related or going to be part of the space industry.

Speaker 2: Talk about the journey to the first moon mission. Was that a milestone from day one? When did you know that that was gonna move forward?

Speaker 5: Well, the team started on that journey in the Trump administration number 45. That's when he built the Artemis program in the first place, and under that, there was a commercial interpayload services program. Got it. And that's where commercial companies like Firefly could bid end to end missions to the moon to do important, you know, exploration of the moon and science missions. Mhmm. A lot of the missions that we flew in Trump's second administration, the forty seventh administration, successfully did the fourteen days of lunar surface operations are actually supporting Artemis. Yeah. You've got, you know, characterization of the carcinogenic moon dust. Wow. We're looking at data on what the GPS looks like on the planet. That's terrible news. The the dust is carcinogenic.

Speaker 2: It can give you cancer? It's harsh.

Speaker 5: Yeah. It's harsh. Okay. We wanna do everything we can to learn about the moon, the surface, the geographic futures, the

Speaker 2: environment. It's terrible. Yeah. Yeah. What's a harsh environment? It's outer space. As

Speaker 5: we learn these things, it gives us a chance to mitigate mitigate those risks. Sure. Sure. And that's what our successful Blue Ghost mission one did is found out a bunch of stuff from the 10 NASA payloads that successfully carried out their missions. I had my fingers crossed that the dust was creatine. Or cheese.

Speaker 1: Unfortunately

Speaker 5: that's really devastating. Very harsh environment. Creatine plus one six acceleration of gravity on moon, that would be a deadly combination. That would be as well.

Speaker 2: Walk me through the Blue Ghost mission one. What were you building? What were you partnering on? Take me through the the launch plan. Was the launch delayed? Tell me the story of that launch.

Speaker 5: Well, the average age of our team was around 28 at So the this is the next generation leaders for space. I'm proud of them. They have this can do attitude. They're bold. This some of them, it was the first satellite they ever, you know, designed and launched and tested and nailed the mid landing. But they, you know, did through all the testing that was necessary in the relative environments. Mhmm. They, you know, rung it out at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. They did hundreds of hours of rehearsals getting ready for the launch and the operations. It's a forty five day operation. Then once we landed, it was fourteen days. So the team had two shifts twenty four seven, and they got through it and celebrated at the very end. But, you know, now we're ready to do it again. We've got a second Blue Ghost mission that we're targeting no earlier than later this year to launch. Sure. And then we got a third one a year later and a fourth one a year after that. And then Jared Isaacman from NASA Yeah. Just came out a couple weeks ago and said he wants 30 landers in the next three years. So we're also looking at that upside opportunity as well. Yeah. What so walk me through what each lander will do. I imagine you're trying to increase the capability of each mission.

Speaker 2: What's the was the only goal of the first test just testing the and characterizing the moon dust itself? Where does this go? What else are you doing?

Speaker 5: Well, on the first one, we looked at the moon dust. We also had some electrostatic shielding that allowed to repel the dust. Yeah. Because if you have dust, you can repel it. And so that's something something that Kennedy Space Center put on there. We also drilled the the longest into the moon, about three feet into the moon and tested the temperature because you're gonna wanna know what's under the Yeah. The moon's surface. So that mean you brought like a three foot drill bit up there? It was actually supposed to go longer, but it turns out we found out what we didn't know that there's actually hard surface Oh, interesting. Around the three feet mark. And so we're learning so much about the moon Yeah. And most importantly, we're learning that we need to learn more. And so the second mission is going to go to the far side of the moon Okay. And it'll be the first time The US attempts this, so we're very honored to do that. Yeah. We're going to be able to send signals

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: From millions of years ago in the dark ages Yeah. You know, after the big bang happened. And so we're going to learn a lot about the universe through that mission. Called Lucy Knight. Yeah. And then the third mission is going to go to a volcanic region of the moon surface that we've never gone to. Nobody's ever gone to. It's called the Grutheissen Domes. Sure. And then the fourth mission, we're excited about because it's going go to the South Pole. It's going to have some rovers. We're going go and look at, you know, there's supposed to be a lot of water and hydrogen and minerals in that area, so we're going to go explore that for NASA.

Speaker 1: Yeah. What is the easiest part of space?

Speaker 5: Think the idea generation. I think Oh, okay. Coming up with ideas and the prototyping. Yeah. The first ofs are are straightforward, but doing it at scale, that's really hard. And you've heard that multiple times, building the system that builds the systems, that's what we're doing at Firefly. And so if you come out to near Austin, Texas, you'll see both our factories just going at rate, delivering one ton rockets and building up a new 16 ton reusable rocket and our slew of lunar landers and our orbiters as well. Yeah. Did you the everyone probably knows from the Artemis mission that was a very successful test of the SLS.

Speaker 2: Did you partner with other space companies for launch capacity? How do you see the launch market generally? Who's who are you partnering with to deliver to the moon since most of the folks that we talk about talked to are going to LEO and they're hitching a ride on SpaceX. Is there anything different about these moon missions for you?

Speaker 5: You know, right now, we're partnering with all of the above to go to the moon. Yeah. We've used Falcon Nine on our last Blue Dose mission one. Yeah. We have a great relationship with SpaceX. K. And, you know, we're forming relationships with Blue Origin and others. Cool. We're also building our own 16 ton reusable rocket as well. Someday that's going to have capability to do amazing things. Yeah. Our Alpha rocket, that's a one ton rocket that does dedicated launches to lower earth orbit and does the response emissions. That's all us. That's all Firefly. Yeah. But the 16 ton reusable rocket, we're codeveloping that with Northrop Grumman who has a rich heritage and launch as well. Yeah. How long do you think this

Speaker 2: stays as a primarily government sponsored project? People are starting to map out what a lunar economy might look like. It took it took decades for SpaceX to, you know, find that commercial side of the business with Starlink. It's been massively successful. So these things sometimes come out of nowhere. But how are you know, if you have ideas, where do you think the commercial opportunity will be in ten or twenty years?

Speaker 5: You know, we're just manifesting it, and that's the way you can kind of predict the future is just do it. Yeah. And so on our Blue Ghost mission two, we're carrying a Electra spacecraft with us, and it's got the Oculus sensor on there, and it's got a Jetson NVIDIA module on there, and we're going to be able to use our SciTech software AI processing to actually take the data of imaging the moon and around the moon and process it on orbit. Okay. And that's going to be the first commercial imaging service that I know of Yeah. In the history. The previous imaging systems were government owned, This government will be all Firefly owned and operated, and we'll be able to sell that data commercially. So, you know, it's it's this first step, and we see more of that. Dedicated landers that, you know, a bunch of business models, businesses, entrepreneurs can put their important payloads on our dedicated lander. That's another commercial idea that we're working on. And I think it's just a matter of time where it will be a good fraction of NASA. They're never going to let go of the moon. National security is not gonna let go of the moon. Sure. But you'll start seeing a lot more commercial endeavors.

Speaker 1: Commercial only type moon missions as well. Yeah. What what year do you expect to set foot on the moon?

Speaker 5: Myself? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I already had that chance going to the Air Force Academy and try to be a fighter pilot. I wasn't able to do that, but my my my kids, you know, the other day I was talking to them and was like, hey, is this cool Artemis two? Don't you want to go to the moon? And they said, dad, I want to live on the moon. So that's what my mind just exploded. Right? So that's what our kids are saying these days. And kids are so genuine. They Mhmm. They say what is on their mind. If it interests and excites kids, you're onto something. Yeah. What what

Speaker 2: are you watching for or learning from the Artemis two mission?

Speaker 5: I just am thinking about about the astronauts. Mhmm. Those are heroes Yeah. For the world and our nation and, you know, other nations. And so my hearts and mind go out to Reed and Victor and Christina and Jeremy. I'm just awaiting them to return home so that everybody can welcome them back to Earth because what they did was historic. I mean, it was inspiring. I was really excited when I saw those images and videos of them on orbit and just looking forward to hearing more stories from them of what it was like.

Speaker 2: Last question from the chat. Where where does the name Firefly come from?

Speaker 5: You know, it it it's kind of towards our vision. We're we're lighting the path to a bold space ecosystem that expands humanity's future. If you think about it, we're gonna be launching and operating satellites on orbit, and it's gonna look like the night sky of Firefly someday. I like that. I'm hearing the song in my head. Firefly? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2: I know the one you're thinking of. Well, thank you so much. Great to meet you, Jake. Great to meet you. We'll talk to you soon. Great to know you all. Have a good rest of your day. Goodbye. Nick Carter's been on a tear talking about CoreWeave. They just signed a big deal with Anthropic and with Meta.

Speaker 1: There's it's in John, the journal you would not believe your eyes What? If 10,000,000 fireflies Oh, yes. Yes. Lit up the world as I fell asleep. Yes.

Speaker 2: Nick Carter said, I I remember a few months ago when everyone he on here insisted Core Weave was a ticking time bomb, had unreasonable depreciation assumptions, was a Ponzi, Magnetar was doing GFC two point o, had no bespoke tech, had unsustainable debt load, was just financial engineering. Well, they've been on its hair building ever bigger data centers. And we had the the folks from CoreWeave come on the show just recently and saw a bunch of the progress there. And there's an incredible amount of demand. NVIDIA in September, CoreWeave said it was expanding its previous agreement with OpenAI to supply data center capacity by as much as 6,500,000,000.0