EVERY SPOKEN WORD
25 min read · 4,864 words- 0:00 – 1:27
Throwing Things Into Space
- MGMike Grace
We're trying to build gigantic space guns that throw things to space. So a rocket carries something to space. That's not how we do it. We throw stuff to space. This is currently the largest gun on the planet. This is part of a projectile that we are going to be shooting through accelerator, uh, later on this evening. This particular accelerator has been shot 150 times. If this works, drop the price of putting stuff into space, all of a sudden human civilization can bloom in space, and I never think, I don't think that rockets are gonna solve it.
- SPSpeaker
What did your family or friends say when you told them you're joining space gun company?
- MGMike Grace
They were like, "You're nuts. You left SpaceX for what?"
- SPSpeaker
This sounds like science fiction.
- MGMike Grace
It should, but that doesn't mean it needs to remain science fiction. Right now we've had like $8 million in contracts and bookings with the Department of War.
- SPSpeaker
Right now our record of speed is Mach 4.2. If you watched Top Gun at the beginning, we go- went faster than that plane.
- SPSpeaker
When you started, what were the odds this would work?
- MGMike Grace
Low, super low. They're still low, but if you have a very small probability of owning the solar system, it's worth it. You try. Uh, you know what? I'll give Elon Mars. He can have Mars. I just want what's left. I just want the rest. We are going for a test in five, four, three, two, one. [gun fires] That is ridonculous.
- SPSpeaker
Other than that, that's crazy.
- MGMike Grace
Yeah.
- 1:27 – 2:54
Welcome to Longshot
- MGMike Grace
Welcome to Longshot. This facility is where the United States developed the Phalanx gun, which is a 20 millimeter cannon that's on every, like, American naval vessel. So they built it in a big machine shop on that side, and then this is actually an indoor cannon testing range for naval guns. [gun fires] Watch your head as you come up here. This is currently the largest gun on the planet right now.
- SPSpeaker
Oh.
- MGMike Grace
Yeah. I'm Mike Grace. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Longshot, and we're trying to build gigantic space guns, these huge pieces of fixed infrastructure on the ground that throw things to space. Most guns go boom. My gun doesn't. It goes bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. Many, many, many small injections of gas over a long shot. So hence the company's called Longshot. We're planning on building one of these that's gonna be half a kilometer long, and that's going to be in Southern California, a town called Barstow. Um, that's where we're building that right now. When we're done with that, it'll be able to push about 100 kilograms to flight of, uh, Mach 5, five times the speed of sound. This is one of the pressure vessels that mounts right here, and so there would be a steel burst disc sandwiched between these two things with bolts holding it all together.
- 2:54 – 3:49
Why Space Needs a Cargo Ship
- MGMike Grace
This is, uh, the diameter of the gun that's gonna throw things to space. It's got great acoustics also. I could do a podcast in here. This would basically be the minimum diameter for a gun that you would use for throwing things to space. This is a fun fact. Like, for every human being on the Hawaiian Islands, they have to import 10 tons per year. That's how much the Hawaiians import to sustain Hawaii. But imagine how much poorer if we only had airplanes, if there were no ships, there were no trains, there were no trucks. So you're trying to transport fuel with airplanes. You're trying to transport food with airplanes. No, it's not gonna work. So if we want to build a civilization in space, we need airplanes. We also need boats, right? This is a boat. This is a ship. This is a way for moving huge amounts of tools, materials, food, air to destinations off the surface
- 3:49 – 5:36
Have "Everyone Else is Wrong" Mindset
- MGMike Grace
of the earth.
- SPSpeaker
What kind of child were you?
- MGMike Grace
I was a weird one. I was born in Los Angeles. My parents went bankrupt every seven years basically. We lived in like motels and trailer parks and all kinds of problems. I didn't learn to read till I was like 12. I had a terrible time learning to read, and I was deeply ashamed about that at the time, and it was really, really hard for me. One of the ways to try and deal with not being able to fit in is to decide that you're not going to fit in. I was making an active decision. I don't care if society wants me to be a particular way. I'm gonna do something different. That characteristic, that personality type is actually a necessary prerequisite for what I'm doing today. To do a company like Longshot, to do really any startup, you are effectively making an assertion that everybody else is wrong about something. Everyone's wrong about this one thing, and I'm right, and they're wrong, and I don't care if there are hundreds of people out there who are smarter than me or know more than I do about this thing, they're wrong, and I'm right, and I know it. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
I was first employee at Longshot. When he first explained this, he told me, "How would you like to work for free to build a space gun?" This feels very obvious to me. I read Dune in high school, and that scratched my itch because what happens if you make a, like, purely, like, human civilization in space? What does that look like?
- MGMike Grace
When I was a kid, super into Star Wars, and I f- feel almost kind of a claustrophobia here on Earth. 99.99999% of everything, the copper, the iron, the energy, the physical space in the solar system is not here, it's elsewhere.
- 5:36 – 7:10
Why We Really Use Rockets
- MGMike Grace
Okay, why do we put stuff into space with rockets? I wanna ask you a question. Why?
- SPSpeaker
Actually, I haven't thought about it.
- MGMike Grace
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
But it's been more than 100 years people-
- MGMike Grace
Been launching big rockets
- SPSpeaker
... Yeah, it is.
- MGMike Grace
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So I guess that might be the most effective way-
- MGMike Grace
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... 'cause it's the only way what we've done.
- MGMike Grace
So here's an alternative hypothesis for you. After World War II, the Americans and the Soviets, they kidnap every single rocket scientist they can. Is that because they wanted to put stuff on the moon? No. It is because they wanted to deliver hydrogen bombs to the surface of the earth. Do you care about the marginal cost of launch if you're delivering an atomic bomb? No, not at all. The reason we put stuff into space with rockets today is because the Soviets and the Americans put $4 trillion, built this technology up, and it built a workforce and infrastructure around it, not because somebody made a first principles decision that it's the right way to put things into space, but because it was a great weapon. But it's very, very hard for somebody like that to hear feedback 50 times in a row from somebody who's older, more experienced, more knowledgeable, smarter than you and say, "No, no, no, you're wrong. You're an idiot. You need to stop," and then keep going. It's very hard for them to do that. Another thing to say about this is most people with this kind of non-conformist attitude don't succeed [laughs] , right? The vast majority do not. However, for the kind of success that I have had, and for this kind of success, it might be a necessary
- 7:10 – 8:48
Prepping Today's Test Fire
- MGMike Grace
prerequisite. [upbeat music] Uh, this right here is the small gun that Longshot's built. So, uh, this is kind of what for us is sort of a bench top scale prototype of our system, which is a multi-injection super gun. [machine whirring] [metal clanging]
- SPSpeaker
What I'm machining here is, uh, this is part of a projectile that we are going to be shooting through our, uh, six inch accelerator, uh, later on this evening.
- SPSpeaker
How long does it take to prepare one test shoot?
- SPSpeaker
We could go from not having a projectile, not knowing what we're gonna do, basically have no idea that we're about to shoot, and four hours later we can be shooting a main- a made projectile for one of these more simplistic projectiles. For something a little more complicated, like what I have behind you, this is one of our wedged projectiles. So this projectile that we use to test the impingement mechanism, basically the pushing of air on both sides of the projectile, this takes, um, about six or seven hours to fabricate. So for today's test, I can basically stage one for you to make it look roughly what it's gonna look like. Functionally, these pieces like this, again, held together, and it'll be a projectile look roughly like this, weigh about 1.4 kilograms.
- SPSpeaker
This might be a dumb question, but why don't you guys just starting from this projectile even though your goal is this?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, the only reason we don't shoot this projectile instead is, uh, this projectile, uh, in time and labor costs about $2,000 to fabricate, whereas this projectile in time and labor costs about $200
- 8:48 – 9:49
Inside the 6-Inch Accelerator
- SPSpeaker
to fabricate.
- MGMike Grace
This is the breach. You remove this section of tubing.
- SPSpeaker
Goes into the barrel. It's riding on a couple of rails in here.
- MGMike Grace
The vehicle slots in on, mounted to those two rails. [machine whirring] [metal clanging] Let me show you the inside here. This is kind of like a big silencer. This is, um, uh, we want to be nice to our neighbors, so we drilled a bunch of holes in the ceiling right here, and we put a bunch of acoustic baffling material. The, um, this is the exit of the system. We have to have a very, very bright light here because we're using a high-speed camera. And then it plows into this, the safety safe. So this is just a safe we bought for like $200 on Craigslist and then filled with concrete. So we use carpet. We go to a used carpet store and we go in their dumpster and we steal a bunch of, like, used carpet. The nylon carpet actually kind of melts and grabs, so you don't get debris all over the place. It's much easier to clean up. [machine whirring]
- SPSpeaker
That is ridonkulous.
- SPSpeaker
Other than that,
- 9:49 – 10:36
From Backyard Potato Gun to Air Force Funding
- SPSpeaker
that's crazy.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
When was the most dangerous moment happened during the test launch?
- MGMike Grace
In the very early days of Longshot, it was just me and I was in my backyard, and I was building potato guns out of PVC. Ah, there it is. So it l- started off looking like this. This was basically you had one large pressure vessel back here with a piston valve that would drive the projectile.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- MGMike Grace
And then we had two other piston valves right here that would release this. This thing was catastrophically dangerous. [laughs] This was by far the most dangerous thing that I built because these pressure vessels, like, would just explode periodically. But, um, what I was able to do with this thing was sufficient to convince the United States Air Force to, like, give me some real money. So from there I went on-
- SPSpeaker
So you convinced them with that?
- MGMike Grace
Yep.
- 10:36 – 11:33
Why You Should Build a Bad Prototype First
- SPSpeaker
Whoa.
- MGMike Grace
I know.
- SPSpeaker
How did you turn a science fiction idea into a real business?
- MGMike Grace
I'm a very strong believer in bad prototypes. Build something. Build the worst version of the possible thing. We managed to convince the Air Force Research labs to give us a phase two SBIR. At that point, I had built a Mach 1.8 potato gun out of irrigation equipment from Home Depot. The black ABS that I made the thing out of, I got out of a dumpster from behind Home Depot. It was made out of offcuts that they'd had there because I was broke. I had another co-founder, another CTO initially, and he wanted to wait to build a prototype because he was embarrassed by the PVC prototype. He didn't think it was a real prototype. He was like, "Doesn't actually prove anything." What it proved is that we're people who build things. That's a big difference. There is a big difference between people who, like, have great designs and ideas and a spreadsheet, and the ability to build
- 11:33 – 12:46
The First 60 Pitches
- MGMike Grace
anything. And here's another thing. In order to raise money from Silicon Valley, they won't give you the money for the whole thing because it's, it's gonna take a decade. It's too far away. I pitched Longshot initially as a s- pure space launch business, and what I learned over the course of pitching it is that I had to be able to tell an intermediate story about doing, uh, hypersonics work for, like, the Air Force and the Army, that this intermediate market, it's a good business in its own right and it's, it's sooner than the large space launch version of the system. I think that I was bad at pitching Longshot the first 60 times I pitched it. I didn't have a story articulated that I could explain to somebody that didn't have my background, that didn't have my vision. One of the major advantages of being in Silicon Valley is that there are a lot of investors, so you can fuck up a lot, and I had to fuck up a lot before I got good. All good aerospace projectiles is held together by rivets and super glue. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
I didn't know that.
- MGMike Grace
[laughs] The rivets are very on brand. The super glue, not so much. [laughs]
- 12:46 – 14:22
Almost Bankrupt, Three Times
- MGMike Grace
[upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
How many times did you almost go bankrupt?
- MGMike Grace
Depends how you define almost. I think at least three, and I think that sort of like being within three months of bankruptcy is what I would count as being close to bankruptcy. So maybe like three.
- SPSpeaker
Could you give more details about how was the financial status of Longshot and how was your personal financial status look like at the moment?
- MGMike Grace
I asked my wife... I had just finished graduate school, um, and I had a, [laughs] um... I had just finished graduate school, and I had a, um, uh... I asked my wife if I could have six months of not earning any money. And like I was already broke from going through graduate school. And so I was borrowing money from the bank of my wife. So just living off of my wife, super uncool, and I said, "Could I have six months to like try and do this startup? Because I'm 35 years old. If I don't do it now, I'm probably not gonna do it." And she said, "Sure. Go for it." And it was five and a half months in when David Kempson gave me that $20,000. So like if I hadn't gotten somebody to give me some money at some point, I was gonna stop. That's the promise I made to Diana. The reason Longshot exists is because he put $20,000 in. I used that $20,000 for like a year, right? So I was paying myself $1,000 a month and the rest of it was going into plastic for Super Gun, right? Uh, that was it. And it was, it was rough. I'm really grateful to my wife for like helping to support me, but she doesn't make a ton of money either. It's been, it's
- 14:22 – 15:49
Why Everyone Knows Everyone's Salary
- MGMike Grace
been tough. We're very open here. I don't hide from the employees what's going on. Everybody knows that I'm raising money right now, and everybody at Longshot knows everybody's salary and everybody knows everybody's equity compensation as well. When you get hired, that's part of the onboarding process, like, "Here's the table with everything that everybody's making." Everybody knows my salary. Everybody knows how much of the company I own. So when we're about to go bankrupt, I let people know because I don't ma- Most startups around here, you come in one day and everybody's like, "Hey, everybody, guess what? You're all fired today because we just ran out of money. Bye." And like that's usually how it goes.
- SPSpeaker
So does that mean the newest employee knows your salary?
- MGMike Grace
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And, um, they should.
- SPSpeaker
Do you know Mike's salary?
- SPSpeaker
Um, I know... Well, I could look it up. I honestly have it on the computer. I have seen his salary at different times over the years. What I will say is I have known times, there's been a whole year of this, of this company when we were in financial straits where Mike made no money at all, and that was listed and we all verified that. Like everybody else kept their salaries, but Mike made no money whatsoever.
- MGMike Grace
I can't pay as well as many startups. I don't have that much money. I can't pay you like Lockheed Martin, I can't pay you like Google, I can't pay you like many of these places, but I can be op- open with you, and that in itself is a kind of compensation because maybe they're offering you more, but maybe they're not. You don't actually know. But you know
- 15:49 – 18:34
150+ Shots, and Every Way to Fail
- MGMike Grace
exactly what you're getting at Longshot. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
So this is to ensure that, uh, this barrel itself can hold vacuum. So the way that this system works is we install our projectile, goes into the barrel. It's riding on a couple of rails in here, and then get a photograph of it in there for our documentation. [camera clicks]
- SPSpeaker
Why do you need a photograph?
- SPSpeaker
Um, basically to prove that I put it in there. [laughs] We have definitely run tests before where we've closed everything up and gone to press the button and we're like, "Wait. Why is the projectile sitting on the shelf over there?" W- Again, this particular, um, accelerator has been shot 150 times at least, probably more. And so over the course of that, we have probably failed every imaginable way. I... You know, most of them, th- they're all funny looking back. At the time, they're all scary because you're dealing with a high pressure, high energy system, so everything's terrifying in the moment. And then afterwards you look back on it and you're like, "Oh, idiot." There was one time where we had very important tests and we have lots of people here and it's kind of a big deal, and right as we're, we're filling up the tank, one of the bungs, one of our pressure sensors pops out and we're not anywhere near it. We just see that all of a sudden the, the volume of the tank, the, the, the air pressure is dropping and we're like, "Oh no, oh no, oh no. What do we do?" And so I immediately turn off all the valves, close everything out, and we're, we're dealing with helium, which is a very expensive gas to use, and we don't have a lot of money and we can't have this shot fail. We have lots of people watching us in this one moment, and the air is still venting out, but there's still hundreds of PSI of, of pressure in the tank 'cause it's just one itty bitty little hole that things are coming out. And, uh, me and the CTO were like, "Well, we gotta save all the helium that's in that tank." So we put on a bunch of safety gear and we go run out to the shed and we close up that hole and put a, put a fitting in it and, you know, make sure that everything's... We come back in and we're like, "Ah, we saved 300 PSI of helium. Yes." That's like, that's a couple thousand dollars of helium, which at the time in, at our company, was a tremendous investment. If we don't do this, then the company will fail and we won't get to do any of the fun things later on in life. But that certainly was, um, you know, where we were at, at that stage in the company, was we could not, we could not let things fail. [laughs] Um, if they did, it was gonna be catastrophic for us in the long term. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
So what is the data do you wanna get from today's test?
- SPSpeaker
So today's test we are using as a baseline test to determine how fast a projectile that weighs 1,410 grams, how fast that projectile, when propelled with CO2, will travel through our system
- 18:34 – 21:13
Can a Vehicle Survive Max-Q?
- SPSpeaker
Is it just the problem of scale? If it can make it long enough, can we shoot it to the space or is there any other technical challenge?
- MGMike Grace
[sighs] It's a y- it is. I actually think it's on the vehicle side, though. On the gun side, I think that it would just scale to throw vehicles faster, faster, faster, faster, up to maybe, like, 13, 14 kilometers per second. That's like the upper end of what, like, gas guns can do. It's about the vehicle. Can a vehicle survive traveling through the lower atmosphere at those speeds? So I think that that's where the open questions lie in whether or not this is gonna be a viable kinetic launch system.
- SPSpeaker
My name's Alexander Stroud h- I'm the head of engineering here at Longshot. I've been here for two and a half years. I was technically employee number two, I think. Before this, I was at SpaceX working on Crew Dragon life support systems. This is a really hard problem. You're coming out of the gun. How do you make a thermal system that handles, you know, Mach 25 at sea level? There's never been a vehicle that's flown at this flight regime, at this pressure, at this enthalpy ever. So this is going to be a major challenge as we go.
- SPSpeaker
This is what comes out of the cannon. Our cannon's flat on the ground. This thing comes out of the barrel and, uh, takes off, uh, using lift like an airplane. This one is just a tiny model, right? We'll need to make one that's, like, five to 10 times larger to go to space. For a rocket, there's something called Max-Q in a rocket, and if you watch a SpaceX launch, there's two times people cheer. The rocket will start and people, you know, go, [imitates rocket] and people will be like, "Yay." And then you wait a bit, and then there'll be a guy being like, "Max-Q" And then the people go like, "Yay," because the Max-Q is when there's the most amount of pressure on the rocket. So it's like if it's gonna blow up, it's gonna blow up there or before there. It's not gonna blow up after. Or very rarely does it blow up after. So our Max-Q is immediately when it comes out of the cannon. It's not up in the sky. For us, the maximum speed is right when it comes out of the cannon, so here is the maximum amount of heat, pressure, and speed, and everything after that is less. So if we prove that we can make a vehicle come out and survive this Max-Q, everything after that is supposedly easier.
- SPSpeaker
But thankfully, we have the cheapest way to accelerate large vehicles to speed. You know, with this, we can launch our vehicles really fast out of the gun, and you don't have to have that thing go to space. The hardest part of that flight is the initial kind of few seconds that it comes out of the gun. So we can do a bunch of ground tests. You don't have to do any flight permitting to do that. You get out of the gun, you shoot, you hit a berm. So it allows us just to quickly iterate and launch every single day. We have at least have the cheapest
- 21:13 – 23:55
The Test Fire
- SPSpeaker
and easiest way to do that on the planet. [upbeat music] Uh, today's test objective is we're launching a dumbbell projectile to assess the, uh, high-speed ADC fix, and then I'll give the go-ahead to proceed up to 750 psi. Post-test, uh, we're gonna be doing the projectile recovery. Uh, I'll entrust that to Simon?
- SPSpeaker
Sure.
- SPSpeaker
Cool. I will give the all clear signal that the hangar is safe. Pneumatics, you are clear to continue kickstage filling up to 200 psi.
- SPSpeaker
Copy. Filling to 200 psi. 400 psi. 500 psi. 600 psi. 700 psi. 725 psi. 740 psi. Reading 756 psi.
- SPSpeaker
Copy, 756. Final poll. Pneumatics, are you go for test?
- SPSpeaker
Pneumatics is good for test.
- SPSpeaker
Are you go for test?
- SPSpeaker
Go for test.
- SPSpeaker
Clear coil.
- SPSpeaker
Let's start.
- SPSpeaker
And go on. [upbeat music] Okay, so we are at our target pressure and our target capacitor voltage, and we are going for test in five, four, three, two, one. [cannon firing] [laughs] We did it.
- SPSpeaker
There we go.
- SPSpeaker
That was awesome. [upbeat music] [cannon firing]
- MGMike Grace
Whoa. It hit. A bunch of it sheared off and went in. So projectiles coming apart is what they do, 'cause they rapidly decelerate into carpet. Um, it's just how they come apart is always the interesting thing to find out. This one came apart in a very, uh, novel way. Uh, obviously this was the front and that was the back, and it came in and hit. A bunch of it went in and stayed in, and this part just fell back out.
- SPSpeaker
So did it succeed?
- MGMike Grace
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's... As far as, like, what the projectile was supposed to do, it was supposed to go through the barrel and hit in here, and it definitely went through the barrel and it definitely hit in here, so
- 23:55 – 25:36
Think Like an Economist, Not an Engineer
- MGMike Grace
that much it was definitely a success. [laughs] [gentle music] I am an economist. I have an undergraduate degree in economics. When I'm thinking about space, which I care about, I n- I don't think about it like an engineer. I think about it like an economist. Many people who start companies, they want to see the world change and they want to see the world change through technology. I'm an economist. I see the world change through incentives and markets. My goal is to look for a technology that can solve a very specific problem right now and absolutely minimize the new technology that's needed to solve that problem, and I would actually argue that you know who is also an economist? Elon Musk, by his undergraduate degree. There is nothing about the Falcon 9, the reusable rocket that they built, that could not have been built in the 1970s. Nothing. The electronics would've been harder in the 1970s, but it could've been done entirely analog. What Elon did was basically he was the first person to try and build a company that ruthlessly attacked price and drive costs down in rocketry, and I actually think that's the right way to do hard things because if you combine, uh, something with a lot of technical novelty with a problem that is categorically hard, like putting things into space, uh-uh, you get to do one of those things. You get a hard problem or you get technical novelty. You can't do both. You won't succeed. And I think that's a mistake that I frequently see, unnecessary novelty in my opinion, in, uh, kind of like deep tech, and particularly among companies that are started by people with an academic background
- 25:36 – 27:07
Launching a Tesla, and What Success Means
- MGMike Grace
or people with a pure engineering background.
- SPSpeaker
Then what is the first thing you want to put into space?
- MGMike Grace
I think that, like, it would be really fun to launch a Tesla because it would go pfft, [laughs] just like completely crush the thing. Like, uh, it'd be a, an homage to Elon launching a Tesla as well, so we launch one and turn it into a complete pancake by crushing it at 200 Gs. I think that'd be pretty funny.
- SPSpeaker
What would be the success-
- MGMike Grace
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
-for you when you die?
- MGMike Grace
Even if Longshot became a multi-billion dollar company that I sold as just a defense company doing hypersonics, I would still qualify that as a failure. That would be a failure because what I care about is space. So I will have failed in my core mission. I might be ludicrously rich and I'll h- be able to dry my tears with big wads of money, but, like, I don't count that as success. That counts as failure to me. I hope that maybe not for me, but maybe for, like, my kids, there's a real option for them to go to space if they want to, not as an astronaut, not as a billionaire, right, but as a human being that just wants to decide to, like, do something dangerous and crazy and go try to start a new life on Enceladus or whatever. Like, th- this sounds crazy, but I think that there's effectively a future where human industry leaves the surface of the earth, and the earth can be a garden. The only thing that's unique about this planet is that we evolved here. That's it. [gentle music]
Episode duration: 27:07
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Transcript of episode EOeL6xGtjRQ
