AWS in Orbit:  Security and Compliance with Gov Cloud.

Summary

Podcast Summary: AWS in Orbit: Security and Compliance with Gov Cloud

Published on May 31, 2025, on T-Minus Space Daily by N2K Networks.

In this episode of T-Minus Space Daily, host Maria Varmazes engages in an insightful discussion with Jeff McLean, Cloud Security Architect at United Launch Alliance (ULA), and Clint Crozier, Head of Global Space Business at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Aerospace and Satellite. The conversation delves into ULA's integration with AWS GovCloud, emphasizing security, compliance, and the transformative impact of cloud technology on the aerospace industry.

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1. Introduction to the Guests and ULA’s Achievements

Maria Varmazes opens the episode by highlighting ULA's recent milestone: the Vulcan rocket receiving official certification from the US Space Force for national security missions, marking 163 successful missions to date.

Maria Varmazes (00:34):
"Gentlemen, welcome. Let's start with a round of intros."

Jeff McLean (01:03):
"I've been with ULA for about two years now, so it's kind of my first kind of foray into the aerospace industry."

Clint Crozier (01:19):
"I have the privilege of leading the global space business at Amazon Web Services... and I literally believe I have the best job on the planet."

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2. Maintaining High Reliability and Innovation at ULA

Jeff McLean attributes ULA's impeccable 100% success rate across 163 missions to the company's talented workforce and the evolution of their rocket technology from the Atlas and Delta series to the current Atlas V and the new Vulcan rocket.

Jeff McLean (02:11):
"163 missions is an amazing accomplishment... we're taking all that and trying to up the game on it and put all that into our Vulcan rocket."

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3. Evolution of the Space Industry and Launch Capabilities

Clint Crozier shares his observations on the significant shifts in the space industry over his 33-year career, notably the transition from launching single satellites to deploying large constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This evolution has not only reduced costs but also expanded the range of applications for satellites, from climate management to maritime security.

Clint Crozier (03:01):
"We’re launching dozens to more than 100 satellites on a single large launch vehicle. That’s a game changer in terms of cost and capability."

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4. The Critical Role of AWS GovCloud in Security and Compliance

Jeff McLean discusses how AWS GovCloud facilitates ULA's operations by providing a FedRamp-certified environment that ensures rigorous security and compliance for handling national security data. The shared responsibility model between AWS and ULA clarifies the roles in maintaining security.

Jeff McLean (07:45):
"AWS GovCloud gives us a platform to work safely with our data, with national security data... and AWS provides those tools."

Clint Crozier elaborates on the creation and benefits of GovCloud, emphasizing its role in meeting the stringent data security requirements of U.S. government agencies.

Clint Crozier (08:20):
"AWS GovCloud is operated, staffed, controlled, and managed by US Citizens only... it’s a huge vote of confidence from Amazon."

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5. ULA's Journey to Cloud Transformation

Jeff McLean recounts ULA's strategic move to the cloud, initiated by the company's CISO and CIO. This transition involved migrating high-powered computing tasks like telemetry analysis to AWS, resulting in significant time and cost savings. The shift also encompassed a cultural transformation within ULA, embracing cloud-native architectures and microservices for scalable and repeatable operations.

Jeff McLean (10:48):
"We used to take days to run analysis, now it takes minutes. We spin up 10,000 nodes, 100,000 nodes, whatever we need."

Clint Crozier praises ULA's phased and culturally sensitive approach to cloud adoption, highlighting the benefits of hybrid management and the flexibility it offers.

Clint Crozier (14:50):
"You don’t have to go all in on day one in the cloud. You can move over time... ULA has managed that transition wonderfully."

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6. Future Perspectives: Integration of Commercial and Government Space Programs

Clint Crozier expresses optimism about the growing synergy between commercial and governmental space endeavors. He notes that commercial innovation is now matching or surpassing military advancements, leading to more integrated and cost-effective missions.

Clint Crozier (15:54):
"The U.S. Air Force, Space Force, NASA, and the National Reconnaissance Office are leveraging the commercial space market to save money and focus on mission-critical areas."

Jeff McLean echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the positive impact of diverse commercial providers on the industry.

Jeff McLean (17:10):
"Governments using commercial providers to do a lot of different things is a really good thing for the industry."

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7. Leveraging AWS Tools for Enhanced Launch Capabilities

Jeff McLean outlines specific AWS tools and capabilities that have propelled ULA's operational efficiency, including High-Performance Computing (HPC) for telemetry analysis and collision avoidance (ColA). These tools have dramatically reduced analysis times from hours to seconds, enabling timely decision-making crucial for successful launches.

Jeff McLean (10:52):
"We moved all that stuff to the cloud. We can do it faster and more efficiently."

Clint Crozier highlights how these advancements facilitate mission-critical operations, such as ensuring the safety and precision of launches.

Clint Crozier (12:19):
"Using AWS to perform COLA analysis in seconds instead of hours is a big game changer."

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8. Looking Ahead: Project Kuiper and Future Launches

The conversation shifts to Project Kuiper, Amazon's ambitious initiative to provide global broadband via a constellation of satellites. Jeff McLean expresses excitement about ULA's role in launching Kuiper's satellites, signaling a significant expansion into commercial launches.

Jeff McLean (18:38):
"We're immensely excited about Kuiper... it's a huge step for mankind."

Clint Crozier reinforces this by noting the strategic partnership between ULA and AWS in supporting Kuiper, underscoring the trust and confidence Amazon places in ULA.

Clint Crozier (19:15):
"Having Vulcan as a dedicated launch platform for Kuiper is a game changer."

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9. Conclusion and Closing Remarks

As the discussion wraps up, both Jeff McLean and Clint Crozier share their enthusiasm for the future of ULA and AWS collaboration. They emphasize the ongoing evolution of the aerospace industry and the pivotal role of cloud technology in driving innovation and mission success.

Clint Crozier (21:33):
"Thank you, Jeff and the ULA team for trusting us to be your partner."

Jeff McLean (21:51):
"This is an exciting industry... every time you watch that rocket go off, it just gives me chills."

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Key Takeaways

• Security and Compliance: AWS GovCloud provides ULA with a secure, compliant environment essential for handling sensitive national security data.

• Operational Efficiency: Migration to the cloud has enabled ULA to perform critical analyses faster and more cost-effectively, significantly enhancing mission reliability and scalability.

• Cultural Transformation: ULA's successful cloud adoption underscores the importance of cultural shifts and phased implementation in leveraging advanced cloud technologies.

• Future Collaborations: The partnership between ULA and AWS is set to play a crucial role in upcoming projects like Project Kuiper, exemplifying the integration of commercial and governmental space initiatives.

This episode offers a comprehensive look into how cloud technology, particularly AWS GovCloud, is revolutionizing the aerospace sector by enhancing security, compliance, and operational efficiency, all while paving the way for future innovations and collaborations.

Transcript

[Jeff McLean]

SA Maria.

[Maria Varmazes]

I'm Maria Varmazes, host of T Minus Space Daily. And this is AWS In Orbit Accelerating Innovation with ula. In this episode, I'm speaking with representatives from United Launch alliance and AWS Aerospace and Satellite. And we're going to explore how United Launch alliance maintains least privilege at scale in regulated cloud environments while ensuring rigorous security and compliance across AWS GovCloud. Gentlemen, welcome. Let's start with a round of intros. Jeff, could you go first?

[Jeff McLean]

Absolutely. My name is Jeff McLean and I am the Cloud Security Architect over at ULA. I've been with ULA for about two years now, so it's kind of my first kind of foray into the aerospace industry. And it's been a fun ride ever since.

[Maria Varmazes]

Awesome.

[Clint Crozier]

Thank you.

[Maria Varmazes]

Over to you, Clint.

[Clint Crozier]

Yeah. Hello. I'm Clint Crozier, Major General, retired, having served 33 years in the US Air Force and the US Space Force, flying satellites and launching rockets, my entire care. And today I have the privilege of leading the global space business at Amazon Web Services, helping bring advanced cloud technology to the space aerospace, geospatial industry. From commercial companies to government organizations to academic and space agencies around the globe. And I literally believe I have the best job on the planet.

[Maria Varmazes]

Well, it is a very exciting time for ULA right now. Vulcan just receiving its official certification from the US Space Force for national security missions. That is huge. And already 163 successful missions as of this recording. Jeff, can you tell me a bit about how ULA maintains that high reliability standard while continuing to innovate?

[Jeff McLean]

Yeah. So, I mean, 163 missions is an amazing accomplishment and we're very proud of that with 100% success rate. But it really does come from our people and just the amazing talent that we have and the pedigree that they bring. And going back all the way to the early days, the Atlas and Delta series rockets have really been a workhorse. And it's something that NASA and Air Force has progressed over the years and all the way up to the current Atlas V and just retired Delta IV Series. And then we're taking all that and kind of bringing that all together and trying to kind of up the game on it and put all that into our Vulcan rocket. Like I said, just got certified. So we're very proud of that.

[Maria Varmazes]

Absolutely. Now, Clint, I would love to hear a bit about the evolution from what you've seen over your career to where we are today. Can you tell me, like, take me on that journey a bit?

[Clint Crozier]

Well, I mean, so many things the whole Time I was launching flying satellites, it was one rocket, one satellite. And today we're launching dozens to multi dozens to more than 100 satellites on a single large launch vehicle. And that's a game changer just in terms of cost and capability and everything else. So that's certainly one thing. The other thing that's really interesting to me is having sat in the blockhouse, as we called it, running the launch countdown, getting ready to launch a rocket, putting a national security satellite in a payload. You know, I can think about a time where somebody would, would say those dreaded words on the countdown net, red range, red range or red booster or red satellite, signifying that there's a problem somewhere in the countdown. And we would literally, depending on the problem, have to start flipping through reams of binders and documentation to try to identify what's the condition, can it be resolved? How do we resolve it? Have we ever seen it before? What was the weather pattern? What's the pedigree of the part? And today, moving that sort of data to the AWS cloud, it's searchable and discoverable within second. So what might have taken an hour to resolve a relatively routine issue. Now, with the power of advanced technology, you can do a queryable search, identify the specific activity. Have we seen it before? What's the fix action? And you can do that within seconds, in enough time to save the potential launch that day, rather than having to stand down on the launch and come back in and reset the pad and try to launch again the next day. So I mean, those are a couple of really big changes that I've seen.

[Maria Varmazes]

Not just time savings, cost savings, I mean, mission saving.

[Clint Crozier]

Let's just say it cost about a million dollars a day for every day that we had to push a launch to the right. If you have to delay a launch for any reason, you know, not only is the whole team doing another 24 hours of round the clock operations, but about a million dollars a day in terms of overall costs. So that's significant. The faster you can identify an issue and get it resolved. And advanced cloud technology allows ULA and other companies to do that. Not only you're saving money, but you're saving precious opportunities. Because by the way, orbital analysis being what it is, and orbital dynamics being what it is, if I miss my launch window today, that doesn't mean that I might just be able to launch tomorrow. The orbitology might be such that I won't be able to get into my objective orbit slot for another three days or five days or seven days or Whatever the case may be. So it is powerful. Keeping on track.

[Maria Varmazes]

That's fantastic.

[Jeff McLean]

Yeah. I never kind of realized before, kind of get into it, is that. Yeah. A lot of times we have an hour or two in a window. I've seen like three seconds.

[Clint Crozier]

Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeff McLean]

And if you miss that three seconds.

[Clint Crozier]

Yeah.

[Jeff McLean]

Then. Yeah, you may not get another chance.

[Maria Varmazes]

Three seconds. My goodness. Precision.

[Clint Crozier]

They can be.

[Jeff McLean]

And one thing I really was emphasized when I first got to ULA is everybody in the company has the ability to stop a launch.

[Clint Crozier]

Yeah.

[Jeff McLean]

If we see a problem in whatever system that we're in, responsible.

[Clint Crozier]

Red booster, red rocket, then we can stop it. Yeah. Yeah. That's critical. And that's, by the way, that's how you've gotten to 163 consecutive successful launches. Because everybody takes that business so seriously, is so good at what they do, but takes flight safety so seriously that accountability really matters.

[Maria Varmazes]

I mean, that speaks so much to the importance of the mission and what people are taking on. And they understand that. That's incredible.

[Jeff McLean]

The amount of care we took with human space flight was the exact same care that we get with any other client's payload. And that's how you get to 100%.

[Maria Varmazes]

That makes a lot of sense. Now, Clint was telling me a bit about evolution, and I wanted to hear a little bit specifically within the ULA context, Jeff, about how ULA's mission has evolved from sort of its earlier days to what it's doing today with commercial and defense applications.

[Jeff McLean]

Yeah. I mean, it's certainly evolved because it has to.

[Maria Varmazes]

Yeah.

[Jeff McLean]

You're going from a lot of military launches, secret spy satellite stuff, that kind of thing. It's a space economy. That's a. It's a new word that, you know, wasn't around, what, five years ago.

[Clint Crozier]

The global space industry is launching more commercial payloads than military or intelligence community payloads today. It didn't used to be that way. Right. But with the large constellations that are being deployed now into LEO and finding all the new uses of leo. Right. There are LEO satellites that are doing climate management and wildlife protection and maritime safety and security and so many other things with those commercial and civil applications. We've seen the litter explosion of leo. And so that means launching more commercial satellites today than ever before.

[Jeff McLean]

Yeah, absolutely. From a business standpoint, it's what you have to do to kind of keep up.

[Maria Varmazes]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jeff McLean]

Because, I mean, satellites are so integrated into every piece of our lives that we don't even realize. So it's so important.

[Maria Varmazes]

Can you tell me a bit, Jeff, about how AWS GovCloud specifically addresses the challenges that are faced by contractors like ULA.

[Jeff McLean]

The fact that we have a govcloud that is FedRamp certified helps companies like ULA to not only just check that compliance box, but it gives us a platform and an environment to work safely with our data, with national security data and everything that kind of comes with that, with a shared responsibility model that, okay, we know this is being taken care of and we know how it's being taken care of so that we know exactly what we need to do on our end, whether it's through identity management policies, you know, security services, monitoring, that kind of thing. We know exactly. And AWS provides those tools.

[Clint Crozier]

We have the AWS commercial cloud that's available all over the world. The aws recognized some 10 or 12 years ago that due to the special data handling requirements of the US Federal government and others, we created a separate enclave within the AWS cloud we call govcloud government cloud and, and it's operated, staffed, controlled and managed by US Citizens only so that we can manage to the higher level of the US Government's data security requirements. And so almost any company that's wanting to do business with the US Federal government, or certainly the Defense Department or the intelligence community will need to operate on GovCloud, because as Jeff has said, we've pre certified FedRamp and other government security requirements so that when you come to govcloud, rather than having to go out and create your own authority to operate and your own security management and architectures that's already built into GovCloud. In fact, we hear from a lot of government agencies when they tell us a customer submitted a proposal on AWS GovCloud, they say, oh well, we don't even need to worry about your security compliance. If you're on govcloud, you're good. And so that's why we built that capability. And I'm so glad ULA is able to leverage that for its critical mission capability.

[Maria Varmazes]

Yeah, it sounds like AWS was a sort of natural choice in this case for ula for the digital transformation that you all are going through.

[Jeff McLean]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Maria Varmazes]

Can you tell me a bit about that?

[Jeff McLean]

So I joined ULA about two years ago and we were very early on in the cloud journey, if you will. So on my first day, when did the orientation, that kind of stuff, and then the CISO came and picked me up, took me to his office immediately, sat down with our CIO and had a great conversation about, you know, his vision for the for the cloud and how ULA is going to kind of get there. But one thing he said was working on our 25 and 25 initiative. So we were looking to get 25 rockets in orbit by 2025. This is, you know, kind of early 2023.

[Maria Varmazes]

Right, right. Yeah.

[Jeff McLean]

At that, that time in that year we launched three rockets for a company that really does on average about 10 to 12 a year over our almost 20 year history. So hearing 25, that's a big number at the time, especially for us.

[Clint Crozier]

So can you share what are some of the AWS tools, capabilities? How are you leveraging AWS that's enabled you to hit that 25? 25. Right. What are the ways you're leveraging AWS today?

[Jeff McLean]

Even on the enterprise side, we, we leverage a lot of high powered computing, HPC for things like telemetry analysis and what we used to have on prem, you know, clusters to do that. And it costs tons and tons of money. You know, we moved all that stuff to the cloud. We can do it. We used to take days to run analysis, now it takes minutes. And we spin up, you know, 10,000 nodes, 100,000 nodes, whatever we need, I mean. Yeah.

[Clint Crozier]

And then hand it back when you're not using them. Exactly. And pay for only what you consume.

[Jeff McLean]

Yeah, that's right.

[Clint Crozier]

Rather than constantly trying to budget for how many servers you need, and then either over delivering or under delivering, and even either having unused servers sitting around, which is a waste of capital, or not having enough capability and you're trying to surge to a new launch capability. The other thing I wanted to piggyback on, you made a great statement about, you know, telemetry analysis and processing. And I'll tell you the other piece of running a launch business, and that's the collision avoidance. We call it cola, if you think about it, we have to make sure that when we take that very expensive rocket and very expensive satellite and launch it up through the atmosphere, we want to make sure we're not flying right into a debris cluster. And so cola, you've got thousands and thousands of data points that we're monitoring as they're moving through orbit against the timing of the rocket and everything else. That can take hours to run a COLA analysis. And we run the COLA analysis historically, have run it in the days leading up to a launch.

[Maria Varmazes]

Oh wow.

[Clint Crozier]

Using AWS again and being able to do that in seconds instead of in minutes or hours. And that's a big game changer to how we used to do it in the old days. As I like to say.

[Jeff McLean]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're certainly using, using the technology in its most powerful form, but we also use it because being a legacy company and been doing it for so long, the mentality and the infrastructure really was still on premise.

[Maria Varmazes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff McLean]

And so one partly just changing the culture.

[Maria Varmazes]

I was going to say it's a culture shift.

[Jeff McLean]

Absolutely. And kind of retraining and really helping employees and leadership to understand the kind of the art of the possible with that. I mean, that's been a huge shift. So we kind of started off with some of these small projects, but also the ability to take what's on prem and use the cloud for the times when we really need it. And the result of extra capacity or like we can offload some of the computer off of these old servers into the cloud and really kind of in that hybrid model, have them kind of work together. And then once we started doing that, then we started kind of architecting differently than we used to from the on prem to take advantage of these cloud technologies. And what we can really accomplish out of that, and that's really kind of where we are now is making that final shift to getting all that in place.

[Clint Crozier]

And by the way, let me say I really appreciate how ULA approached this in terms of the culture. And you talked about, Jeff, that we really, ULA and AWS really ramped up together over the last two years. It was about three years ago that I sat down here at the space symposium with your CEO Tory Bruno, and we talked about the vision of moving ULA to the cloud. And so that was sort of the crystallizing moment where he, as a CEO, had the vision to start leveraging cloud capabilities and then started moving ULA in that direction. And we have dozens and dozens, hundreds and thousands of space startups who are we call born on the cloud. From the day they create their initial concept of operations, they build it into the cloud. ULA has been operating for decades. What was really good is you don't have to go all in on day one in the cloud. You can move over time. Hybrid management of something's on premise, some things on the cloud. ULA has done a wonderful job sort of managing through that transition, setting the right culture and helping us come up with a phased implementation approach. What I think has really worked out.

[Maria Varmazes]

Well certainly sounds like a best practice for sure, because as it often happens with these massive projects, it's almost always a culture challenge. But it sounds like this was a fantastic approach and it's certainly the results have spoken for Themselves.

[Jeff McLean]

Absolutely. And you know, I mean moving the culture from to more a cloud mentality and throwing things like AI on top.

[Clint Crozier]

Of that to say nothing.

[Maria Varmazes]

Right, right, exactly.

[Jeff McLean]

So it's been fun, but no, ula's really embrace it. And it is because of people like Tory Bruno who understand the value, understand the capabilities and where we need to get and to have that support and that buy in from the top has been 100% reason why we can do what we do.

[Maria Varmazes]

Absolutely. Well, gentlemen, as we're sort of getting towards the conclusion of our chat today, I want to look ahead a little bit. And Clint, I wanted to start with you and ask you about what your view is of the relationship between commercial and government space programs as they evolve over the next five, 10 years or where do you think we're headed?

[Clint Crozier]

Yeah, well, I'm really excited to say I believe we're headed in the right place. And we're headed there for a couple of reasons. When I was growing up in the space industry, right, some 40 years ago, contractors built our satellites, to be sure, but, but we managed our own contract management, we operated our own satellites, we developed our own capabilities. And it was a very tightly controlled thing by the military and highly classified. As we've seen over the last couple decades, there is as much or more innovation coming out of the commercial market than happening in the military. And between the Defense Department and the intelligence community and NASA, with budgets being under pressure the way they are, the U.S. air Force, U.S. space Force, NASA, National Reconnaissance Office have all recognized that they can save a lot of money by leveraging the commercial space market and then employ that limited resources back into those things that make the most difference for their mission. You've got commercial contracts with companies going to the moon and going to Mars on behalf of NASA. We've got space exploration going on. We've got US Space Force leveraging commercial contracts with ULA and others. And so I'm really excited as we look forward to see the continued government commercial integration. And I think that will only increase.

[Jeff McLean]

Fantastic.

[Maria Varmazes]

Your thoughts?

[Jeff McLean]

And actually on that same note, I think something that Tory Bruno really kind of preaches and what we're seeing in the space industry and the competition and the variety of providers is a really good thing for the industry. And so we really believe in that. You talk about, you know, governments using commercial providers to do a lot of different things, to have all these industries kind of come together and work together. It's been amazing to see.

[Clint Crozier]

What's the next thing you see? Cloud utilization for ula I mean, whereas the cloud engineer, cloud architect, what would you like to see the cloud provide you next?

[Jeff McLean]

We're still looking ahead what the next thing is, but I think really for us it's going to be really important to moving toward more that HPC use high performance compute to really optimize our analytics in a timely fashion. But also we're moving to a lot of microservices and to be able to take our applications and just kind of plug in these parts, using services like Lambda to really build out these architectures in a very scalable, repeatable way and then take that and then move that into infrastructure as code and, and put the security around it and do all the things. So it's very repeatable, very scalable and that's where we know we need to be.

[Maria Varmazes]

Excellent. Thank you. So Project Kuiper is launching imminently and I would love to hear your thoughts about this because this is a mission that we're all just really, really thrilled to hear about. So your thoughts?

[Jeff McLean]

Absolutely. From a ULH perspective. Yeah, we're immensely excited about it. And with the partnership with Amazon, we know that Kuiper as a whole to provide communications to underserved and unserved areas of the world. It's a huge step for really for mankind and to again, provide options for people.

[Maria Varmazes]

Yeah. How does it represent a new direction perhaps for ULA's commercial launch?

[Jeff McLean]

Like I said, I mean, traditionally, yeah, we've done much more government missions, so this is a big deal for us because there are a lot of launches.

[Clint Crozier]

So becoming a big focus area for ula.

[Jeff McLean]

Absolutely.

[Clint Crozier]

I will say it's a huge vote of confidence from Amazon too. And, and for your listeners that may or may not know, Kuiper belongs to Amazon, AWS belongs to Amazon, but Kuiper and AWS are separate legal entities, although the Kuiper team is actually building and operating on aws, just like any space organization or launch organization or satellite organization anywhere in the world. They recognize the value of cloud and are building on aws. But from Amazon perspective, what a tremendous vote of confidence in trusting ula. A really big deal for ula. A really big deal for Amazon, Kuiper. And as somebody who supports both of those teams at aws, you've got to be pumped. I can't be more excited for my two partners at Kuiper and ULA for the success of the launch.

[Jeff McLean]

Absolutely. And we're also starting Kuiper on Atlas and then once again and then moving to Vulcan and then we're going to move to Vulcan. Right. So that's also exciting, but also from arp, our perspective, from our developers and all that, we have a single platform with all the government missions. Every mission was a kind of one off, you know, writing millions of new lines of code every time.

[Clint Crozier]

That's a really good point.

[Jeff McLean]

And with Hyper, we're going to be able to streamline that process. We're going to be able to really dial it in. So whenever they're ready to launch, we don't need to say, oh, we need two weeks to, you know, do all the telemetry data and all the testing and all this stuff. Like, so it's really going to just make.

[Clint Crozier]

That's a really good point. All Vulcan, all the time. You know, in the days of bulk, Boeing and Lockheed and then became Ula, you know, we had Titan II, Titan 4, Atlas II, Atlas 3, Atlas V, all those different configurations and they all take some specific expertise and nuance. Focusing on a single launch platform in Vulcan, which has so many upgrades and improvements and modifications and capabilities. It's going to be extraordinary. And having that as a dedicated launch platform for Kuiper moving forward, that's really going to be a game changer and allow ULA to put all of its energy and effort into securing those launch capabilities. And we're just proud at AWS you're trusting us as a partner to do all that in that critically important mission.

[Jeff McLean]

We're so happy you trust us on to do that. So awesome.

[Maria Varmazes]

I want to give you both the opportunity to say any sort of closeout final remarks. You have the floor. So why don't Clint, I go to you and then Jeff, you wrap us up.

[Clint Crozier]

I'm just. Thank you, Jeff and the ULA team again for trusting us to be your partner. I'm so excited about what ULA is doing on the cloud and I just, I look forward to seeing what we can do together next. And it's just so exciting to see where it all goes. So thank you.

[Jeff McLean]

And absolutely, from the ULA perspective, like again, we're so excited to be in this next phase of our evolution as a rocket company. And, you know, certainly having, you know, partners like AWS are getting us to where we need to be. And as someone who's new to this industry, it was quick stories on my, you know, interview for ula when the last questions, when they're like, hey, do you have any questions for us? The only question I had was, does it ever get old? Because we've always, we've all been in those jobs where sounds amazing or whatever. And then six months in, you're like, it's just, you know, same thing, just over and every single one of their answers, absolutely not.

[Clint Crozier]

Yeah.

[Jeff McLean]

And that was the kind of vote of confidence that this is an exciting industry. This is where I want to be.

[Clint Crozier]

Oh, that's great.

[Jeff McLean]

And this is an industry that's moving forward. And every time that you, whether it's 3 o' clock in the morning or 3 o' clock in the afternoon, watching that rocket go off, it just, it gives me chills.

[Clint Crozier]

It's so amazing we've kept you so busy. Heads down on building out the cloud architecture and cloud security architecture. Have you actually been out on the pad on a launch? Have you gotten to see a few of those yet?

[Jeff McLean]

I have not.

[Clint Crozier]

Okay. So again, I know you're relatively new to ULA and the launch business, you're doing important work with cloud security, but I know you will have an opportunity out there soon. And I will just add to that vote of it never gets old. And I can't wait for you to experience that first launch.

[Jeff McLean]

As a kid that grew up in the 80s, watching the shuttle program, very influenced by Challenger and what happened there, and understanding even as a five year old what that really meant, and just kind of following it kind of ever since then, it's a dream come true to be involved in this in any way.

[Clint Crozier]

Well, in the past, in my day, ULA and other launch companies needed a lot of propulsion and rocket engineering expertise. Now they need a lot of cloud engineering and security experts. So welcome to the space mission as the cloud cloud security architect.

[Jeff McLean]

Well, thank you.

[Clint Crozier]

Welcome.