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Maria Varmazas (11:11)

Next up, I speak with Stefan Powell, CEO and CTO at Dawn Aerospace about their exponential growth and Oklahoma's purchase of their space plane.

Stefan Powell (11:23)

There's really strong leadership and there's a really solid understanding of the value of space. You know Jim Bridenstine, he's former NASA administrator, of course. You know, he's represented Oklahoma at the NASA national level and the House of Representatives. So clearly there's a very good understanding at the top and senior positions of just how valuable space is for everyone. There is a lot of aerospace going on, just no actual space access. So, you know, the Oklahoma University has a lot going on with atmospheric science, expertise in drones. There's lots going on in semiconductor industry, especially in Texas and northern Texas that's quite close to Oklahoma. They are interested in microgravity experimental. There's a robust aerospace industry since just about forever in Kansas. So there is like demand and expertise in this area and that combined with a piece of infrastructure that's actually left over from the space shuttle days. The spaceport at Burns Platte was one of the emergency landing areas for the space shuttle. So there's like this fantastic capability. There's this big need, an actual a vehicle actually flying to space is kind of the last link in the chain to really extract value out of this and make it happen. So I'm very stoked that Dawn Aerospace can be the one to be that last link in the chain. If you like.

Maria Varmazas (12:47)

You mentioned a bit about the industries that would be very interested in accessing Leo with your services. Tell me a bit about the customers that you are working with.

Stefan Powell (12:56)

Yeah, so the customers that we're working with are interested in suborbital microgravity primarily. So semiconductor industry is one that I mentioned. The whole semiconductor industry, you know, like Essentially growing a big silicon crystal, cutting it up and then etching a chip onto that, and that chip ending up in your iPhone or whatever, that whole process, like the yield of that process, the efficiency of that process is entirely dependent on the quality of the input material, the quality of that silicon wafer and the crystal quality of that wafer. So we, we actually know from a bunch of science that's been done on ISS that crystals grow much better in microgravity because there's, there's less convection currents and less things disturbing that crystal growth. So you get a much more pure crystal. So that's, that's really important because that basically means that the, that the chips you get are going to be higher quality, they're going to be higher yield. If you look at like, you know, intel chips, how you can buy like an i3 or an i5 or an i7 or an i9 and they're all like, you know, the price difference between an i9 is huge compared to an i3. You know, they're actually the identical chip. The only difference is that an i9 had fewer errors in it. There's more of the chip is active because it's less broken. So if you, if you just start the entire chip manufacturing process for an intel chip with a perfect silicon wafer, the chance that you get i9 chip, like all of your chips, i9s is much, much higher. So, you know, it's, it's incredibly valuable for them if they have a higher quality crystal going in the start of the process. So, yeah, so semiconductor industry in general is extremely interested in how microgravity can result in better crystals. This ingot being a better crystal and therefore higher yields coming out the end.

Maria Varmazas (14:53)

Makes a lot of sense.

Stefan Powell (14:54)

The thing that we're really excited about is that potentially you don't even have to go to orbit to grow these crystals. You can actually just grow what's called a seed crystal, where you only need a few minutes of microgravity to just grow the start of the crystal perfectly. And then with that perfect seed crystal, you can now grow a perfect crystal of that terrestrially on Earth.

Maria Varmazas (15:16)

That is a fascinating prospect. And I feel like that also dovetails a little bit into something that talking to Team Oklahoma about you all working together was the cadence of launch that you all offer. And that sounds like a massive differentiator. I know, I remember vaguely two years ago when we, when we last spoke that that was also something you had mentioned. Can you speak a bit to the cadence? Because it is, it is quite amazing.

Stefan Powell (15:41)

Yeah, so like we can even go back to that exact example, right? Like let's say I'm a semiconductor, you know, I'm trying to figure out how microgravity is going to improve my semiconductor processes. I want to run experiments in micrograv if I want to get something onto station on the ISS and to figure out do these changes improve the process or not. That cycle of getting something up there, running the test, getting it back, analyzing, did it improve it or not, that's years currently, like two to three. If you're doing well with flying suborbitally, you can potentially do that in days. You can fly, you can get the thing back, you can analyze it. The analysis takes a couple of days. But talking to industry, it looks like you're going to shrink that design, test, evaluate, cycle from literal years down to days. It's a thousand times increase in the velocity of science. It's obviously just a complete game changer for them.

Maria Varmazas (16:44)

I was going to say we don't often get leaps like that. So that one sort of speaks for itself for how huge that is. Yeah, not a small deal. That's the only.

Stefan Powell (16:53)

We should recognize that orbital microgravity is going to be much higher quality, much longer duration, you can do much more with it. So I'm not trying to say suborbital microgravity is going to completely replace orbital, but it's very complementary in the sense of we don't actually know exactly how to use orbital microgravity effectively yet, but we can probably understand at least the first 40, maybe 80% of the problem. In suborbital microgravity, we can narrow the design space from like 1000 parameters down to like the 5 that we just can't evaluate properly in suborbital microgravity because we don't have enough time. And you know, that massively reduces the problem of understanding how to use orbital microgravity properly. And there's probably some processes that actually just don't need to go to orbit. So in some sort of cases, we may be able to actually get the value of space without going to orbit altogether.

Maria Varmazas (17:48)

Can you tell me a little bit about some of the other partnerships that you've been working on?

Stefan Powell (17:52)

Yes, yeah. I mean, yeah. One of the advantages of actually not being a US company is that it is actually easier to serve the rest of the world. So yes, we're, we're forging partnerships in Japan as well. We have agreements with an atc, which was the company that brought or sorted out all the agreements for getting Virgin Orbit to Launch out of Japan. Now, that launch never actually happened, unfortunately, for obvious reasons. But, yeah, they understand the Japanese market really, really well. We're forging other relationships elsewhere in the world. We've recently opened up a French office as well. Key market there for us, too. I mean, Europe remains a stronghold for our in space propulsion business. We continue to sell pretty well into Southeast Asia in general. So, yeah, certainly a thriving global business.

Maria Varmazas (18:49)

Fantastic.

Stefan Powell (18:50)

I think the real significance of what we're doing here is kind of in something that we've only really just recently figured out. We've always known and always talked about the Aurora being special for three reasons. There's a technology reason, the vehicle. Obviously, we want highly scalable operations. You want to be able to fly multiple times a day, thousands of times per aircraft. And that means that you need a reusable aircraft. Because you want a highly reusable aircraft, you need to have a highly reliable aircraft. And so that really necessitates like, a ton of early decision making that makes the vehicle, like, literally hundreds of times more reliable than a traditional rocket. Like, that's what's really pushed us towards this. An aircraft. Essentially, it's an aircraft for the performance of a rocket, not a rocket with wings. And then the infrastructure side, which is, you know, like. Yes, like with Oklahoma, it's a fully licensed spaceport. A lot of the interests that we're fielding right now are actually people that. Or organizations that don't actually have a spaceport yet. It's really an airport, which is just in a somewhat rural area. But because this vehicle is so much more accessible, it's so much safer, it's certifiable as an aircraft in lots of cases, it's really bringing space capability to people that wouldn't have traditionally even been able to consider this. So it's really, you know, it's opening this up a lot. And for us, it's really like we don't want to be building launch pads. You know, everyone talks about how hard it is to build a launch pad. You know, the launch pad is like, more expensive than the rocket. So, like, this is so key to scalability that we can access these not just dozens spaceports across the US but like literally hundreds, if not thousands of airports that could support our vehicle. And then the third bit being regulation in New Zealand, we fly as an aircraft, we integrate with other airspace users. We really want to be able to bring this model as much as we can to the States as well. Because just the amount of congestion in the airspace, this is an increasing topic Especially around spaceports. There's as many airline flights in about 65 minutes as there are spaceflights have ever been. So clearly there's a much more scalable model here of many, many airspace users working together. If we really want to be doing a lot more spaceflight, we should be doing it according to the airline model so that we can all play together. That's really important. Now the fourth bit that we've really realized is that we actually need to change the business model of space. Right now. If you go to market, you want to get to space, you can really only buy a service. The people who have the capability will only sell you the service. They won't sell you the factory to build the rocket. They won't give you that capability themselves. That really limits how the ecosystem can grow. Because, you know, a SpaceX or a ULA or a rocket lab, they're probably only going to operate from like a select few places in the airline model. You know, Boeing will sell a plane to, you know, not quite everyone, but just about everyone. Which means, you know, Thai Airways can buy a plane and service their Thai market. They understand Thailand, the local government, the local people, the local needs way better than Boeing ever could. So we want to do the same, right? You know, we want to provide the vehicle within reason to other operators who understand their local governments and their local needs. And they can build their own space ecosystem. And that means we'll serve into an ever growing ecosystem that's way bigger than we ever could have served, you know, by ourselves.

Maria Varmazas (22:56)

We'll be right back.

Dave (23:03)

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Maria Varmazas (23:43)

Welcome back. Now yesterday was the big reveal of the first images from the Vera Rubin Observatory. And I did spend a bit of time talking about the its fantastic eye on the southern night sky. And I urged you to check out the images. So did you. If you didn't, that's okay. I'm not mad, I'm just a bit disappointed. And I'm here to drop a URL for you. Here it is. Skyviewer app. It features images from the Rubin Observatory in high, high, high definition and you can pan around and zoom in and in and in to your heart's content. You can poke around the image on your own or take a guided tour, which I highly recommend. They did a really nice job with it. It'll show off spiral galaxies, edge on views, galaxy clusters, and even in one case, three galaxies merging into one. It is a cosmic treasure chest indeed. And remember that just about every colored dot you see is not a star, but a galaxy. And many of the objects observed don't even have any labels of any kind yet because they haven't yet been studied studied. There is so much out there to learn. And really, Reuben is just getting started. So yeah, here's that URL again. Sky Viewer app, definitely check it out. That's it for T minus for June 24, 2025, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire for additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@space.n2k.com we're privileged that N2K and podcasts like T minus are part of the daily routine of many of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector, from the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

Stefan Powell (26:05)

T minus.

Dave (26:19)

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