← T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
Lunar nuclear power and next-generation quantum sensing.
00:22:51
CSMC is advancing space nuclear micro-reactors and quantum sensing technologies that could dramatically improve subsurface mapping on Earth and in space.
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to the N2K space network. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast. Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are sel selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. So how do you go from real estate finance to founding one of Canada's fastest growing space and defense companies? It's not a rhetorical question. It's all about being in the right place at the right time. According to our guest today, throw in lunar nuclear power and breakthrough quantum sensing and maybe he's sitting on the right formula for the next big thing in Canada's space economy. I'm maria varmazas and this is t minus deep space. Our guest today is Daniel Sachs, founder and CEO of Canadian Space Mining Corporation, better known as csmc. Daniel is now leading ambitious work in lunar nuclear power and breakthrough quantum sensing. In this conversation, Daniel walks us through how his team is pushing the edges of what's possible in subsurface mapping and energy for the moon and the Arctic and the future of planetary exploration.
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B
My name is Daniel Sachs. I'm founder and CEO of csmc. We're a space and defense company based in Toronto, Canada. My background before starting it was as a real estate developer and real estate finance person. Have worked in a bunch of different facets of the real estate industry. Anywhere from developing condos and communities to distress investing, retail shopping centers and the beginning of the pandemic. I had some existential crisis just like everyone else. Trying to avoid the plague, I started making sourdough. And then shortly after that, I decided to build a space company.
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A
Oh, one of the totally logical leap between the two.
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B
Yeah, it just follows entirely. Yeah, I think there was this point where everyone was like making puzzles and I felt like that was kind of a waste of time. And so I just started wanting to work on like a bigger puzzle with some friends and, and that was csmc. And you know, I think still, shockingly to me, we've built one of the fastest growing space companies in Canada and are an emerging and I would say leading player within the the nuclear space in Canada as well as within quantum sensors.
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A
Wow. Okay, that is quite an intro. I don't think I've ever heard an intro like that. So first of all, Daniel, I. You officially win Stump the host. Because that's amazing.
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B
Because.
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A
Do you have any formal space back? Not that it's required, but do you have.
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B
Do you have any in the narrator narrative of this story? Like, I'm an unlikely character in all of this.
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A
You sure are. But it's not just a space company, which is hard enough, but a quantum space company. So you've got two, two areas right there that are just not easy to dive into. And yet you're doing, not just doing it, but you're, you know, your company is really thriving. You guys are doing amazing stuff. So. So I don't want to get ahead of myself. Tell me about your company because what you're working on is really, really interesting.
- [03:56]
B
Yeah, thank you. I mean, we've evolved over the years, right? We started in our early days working on lunar exploration and space mining. And that brought us into a couple opportunities, firstly being nuclear reactors and energy for space. And we've built out of that the fastest growing and key kind of micro reactor company in Canada. We're leading. We've been a leader in space nuclear for the last four years with a contract, a couple of contracts to the Canadian Space Agency. And we're working to put both a nuclear reactor on the moon as well as to power the Arctic. And around the same time, we started working on quantum sensors, initially as what I would call a disruptive sensors for resource exploration, as in our space mining routes. We were working on ways of doing resource exploration on the moon and looking at terrestrial resource exploration, which is, I would say, well, it has this kind of juxtaposition of being both highly technical and completely antiquated. The way we do things right now is very needle in a haystack. A lot of money is made not finding resources. You'd be actually shocked at how much of the resource exploration business is people paying a lot of money and getting paid a lot of money to drill holes in the middle of nowhere only to find nothing. And it's an industry that's quite resistant to change and resistant to innovation. And so we saw, you know, an opportunity within Earth observation, within remote sensing, to disrupt that and to utilize a new form of data by adopting quantum physics instead of classical physics to make a new category or an improved category of sensors. And so that's what we've been working on there.
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A
Wow. Okay, so quantum in general, I'm not alone in this going, this is something that is hard for a lot of us to wrap our brains around. Physics is hard enough. The regular, regular Set. Once you get into quantum, it goes. Okay. As I was mentioning to you sort of before we started recording, I often hear quantum spoken about in the space context. You know, usually quantum key distribution, communications encryption, that sort of thing. So you sort of started describing a little bit about how quantum is a differentiator in this context. Can you explain a little bit about how that. Not that we have to get into like the quantum physics, because I won't understand it, but how does it work in this set? Because I really, I had no idea it could even be used in such a way.
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B
Yeah, look, there's a great Feynman quote and I'm going to completely butcher it, which I guess is occurring at this point, but that, you know, the second you think you know anything about quantum, quantum, you actually just don't know anything at all. And so it is this deep and confusing subject matter. You know, to better quote a Zoolander. Quantum key distribution so hot right now. You know, that's been kind of the hot. That's been the.
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A
You went from Feynman to Zoolander in the same sense.
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B
Yeah, you got to move from Feynman to Mugatu. Quantum key distribution has been this kind of hot area right within space, an area of promise that has attracted lot of funding in the same way that quantum computing has on Earth, right? Where really quantum computing has sucked up all of the funding and it has been kind of this, this everything quantum to the investor world. I think within the space context, it's really been quantum key distribution that, that has. Now I think if you look at, just take a step back. If you look at all of the sensing modalities that exist out there, right? So you look at, you know, synthetic Aperture radar, optical lidar, you know, these all in some ways use classical physics. Now if you were to adopt them and you're, you're to overlay kind of this lens. What if we applied quantum physics to this problem? I think that's what quantum sensing is in a sense as a broad category, and I'm no expert on the entire category, but I think within that you have the potential for not just single exponent leap, not just exponential leap, but a multitude of exponents leap potentially within resolution of sensors. So within some of the stuff that we're looking at, which is within quantum gravity, we think that there's an opportunity for, you know, 10 plus exponents of resolution increase. And, and that's no silver bullet that probably takes place over, let's say a decade or, or two of work that includes, you know, software layers on top like everything else, and AI processing of that data. But I think it's fair to say we're at the early stages of quantum sensing. Quantum sensing is actually probably closer to market than quantum computers. So these things could be in the market in the next two or three years. And then, and then they have this kind of massive growth curve on where the technology can go in terms of maximizing the potential of that resolution. We're probably not there when it first gets in the field, it's maybe not halfway through its potential seven years from now, but maybe 15 years from now. It's kind of fully realized on that potential. So that's what we see it as. Then. We're focused on subsurface mapping, which is still an unexplored category. And I think there's been obviously some announcements around muon tomography and different modalities and stuff like that. And so we think we're pursuing another approach here which could be impactful.
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A
And I'm sure you will have your hands full with Earth. But I also was wondering, the Moon.
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B
Also maybe, I'd say every sensor is agnostic, right? It really doesn't care where it gets used. So, you know, it could be used on, on the Moon if there's a customer, which is primarily space agencies at this point that are, that are looking at planetary exploration could be used on one of the outer planets. I think if you're, you're looking at subsurface mapping and any type of subsurface data. To me, places like Europa and stuff like that are extremely exciting, right? Anywhere we want to see deep ocean worlds, that's something that could be quite impactful.
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A
We'll be right back after this quick break.
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A
Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class.
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B
I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts.
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A
Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry.
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B
I almost couldn't breathe when I saw.
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A
The discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. Yeah, beyond resource extraction, it's just the scientific potential of this obviously also is, is really huge. That's my sci fi brain just started going down that rabbit hole as you mentioned going, yeah, that would be amazing.
- [13:07]
B
These things are all tools, right? You know, they're all tools and in different people's hands they have different uses and different needs. And I think we as a company are just trying to push through this R and D effort to get these fields, these tools into the field to be utilized by different parties. Right. So I think we'd like to get them in the hands of mining and resource companies to more efficiently do explorations so that we're not cutting down so many trees to drill holes to not find resources. You know, Earth needs a lot of resources. We need them to run our society, but we should be getting them more efficiently. And if we can increase the effectiveness of getting resources by even a percentage point or a couple percentage points, that's a large solution. Likewise, we think there's a lot of things we can do with this technology in space for space exploration and, and other kind of applications.
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A
Yeah, I would love for you to tell me about that and if you would, wouldn't mind also telling me, maybe in the context of the new contract that you got through the Luxembourg Space Agency, maybe that would be a good place to start.
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B
Yeah, yeah. We're extremely thankful for the contract from LSA and esa. A combination of the two. Can't say enough good things about the team at the Luxembourg Space Agency. They're great partners and worked with us quite well through this process. So it's really funding in order to kind of validate this technology and move it forward to the next steps. We think of development as a kind of stepwise approach. So it's funding that allows us to do some important lab work so that we can turn this into a payload so that we can move towards getting it on a satellite and testing it.
- [14:57]
A
And getting data from space that is extraordinarily validating. And I'D love to hear about maybe how this partnership came about or any just sort of background info. Tell me the story of this.
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B
Yeah, like all partnerships, a long amount of hard work and relationship building. I think relationships are always about trust. And this relationship for us goes back several years with Luxembourg Space Agency and the team there and building trust with them that we were a good partner and capable of executing on this. Certainly that's been helped by our track record with the Canadian Space Agency. And we've now delivered on eight projects on time and on budget with the Canadian government. And this is our first foray into Europe. And so that's very exciting to start proving out a track record in other countries and with a very important customer in the European Space Agency.
- [15:56]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And the news of your deal also came right after there was news about the Canadian government investing historic amounts into esa, as well as, I think, the federal budget putting historical amounts into the Canadian Space Agency. So the Canadian space industry is really, I mean, just making huge, huge moves. And I'm just wondering for you first, as a Canadian, you know, as a Canadian company making this incredible partnership with esa, what does that mean for you all right now?
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B
Yeah, it's really big. Obviously, to be able to grow into another continent and another kind of key customer in space is extremely significant. As a international company, it's very hard for us to expand south of the border with NASA, certainly with U.S. contracting rules. And Canada has a key piece as a member in esa. This new contribution, which is, I could be wrong, but $528 million Canadian to ESA really will pay dividends for Canadian companies. I think there's a multiplier effect of about 3 to 1 on that capital, but effectively it means that Canadian companies are able to win at least that much in contracts from esa. Right. So I think for, for us, as we look to expanding our pathway for it, it's just more work that we can do on the quantum side with, with esa, more work that we can do on the nuclear side with the European Space Agency, and a sign that Canada is here to play and here to play with international partners.
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A
Absolutely. And it's just been really wonderful seeing so many great success stories out of the Canadian space economy doing really just amazing things. And again, the news from your company also was just really wonderful to see. So congratulations on this amazing partnership. I do wish you all the absolute best and I want to make sure I give you the final word because I always like to do that with my guests. So, Daniel, your thoughts on, on the future on you know where you're going with your company. Anything at all. Any wrap up thoughts?
- [17:56]
B
Yeah, look, things are growing. It's a very exciting time in the space sector. We find ourselves at an interesting point. I, you know, I've been around business for a little bit and I think one of the key lessons I learned early in my career or mid career working within the retail sector. I work for a large retailer, Hudson's Bay and they had acquired Saks Fifth Avenue and a lot of others. And I was on the M and A team and we bought largest department store chain in Germany, a company called Galleria Kofhoff. And I was the guy they sent to Germany to figure out what the hell we were buying. And we had this great plan to buy the company. And it all looked great on paper, but the headwinds were there on retail. The whole move to online shopping was really crushing the department stores. And it didn't really work out the way they thought it would. And it was just an important lesson that being smart is great, being better timed is a lot more important. It's better to be dumb and well timed than brilliant and poorly timed really. So we see a number of trends that position I think the space sector in general. Well, you've got this well written about expansion from let's call it $300 billion to 1.5 trillion in the space economy. If you take kind of the average of a bunch of these reports, you've got this massive where we're at as a company on the nuclear side, this forecasted $10 trillion expansion in nuclear globally. You've got the huge expansion and rise of Quantum which is I would say like analogous. Quantum is analogous on the hardware side to what AI is on the software side. And so I think it's this big macro trend. And then you have the defense Perfect storm and all of that is this tremendous tailwind that I think it will be really great for a company like us. We're obviously seeing that in our work right now and I think hopefully we'll be great for the whole sector. As you said, there's a lot of great space companies in Canada. There's a lot of space companies that are great globally. We'd like to see them all successful. I've got a lot of good friends in this industry and other leaders we really look up to and peers and I think the tailwinds are good and hopefully that can continue forward for all of us. And we can see a lot of this hard work that people are doing become reality. We're confident we can bring these products to market and, and make an impact on the world, make the world a better place through these technologies and, and that's what we're going to do.
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A
It's amazing. Thank you so much. Daniel. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
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B
Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure.
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A
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