- What are your thoughts on the efforts
of the new folks,
SpaceX and Elon Musk?
What are your thoughts
about what Elon is doing?
Do you see him as competition?
Do you enjoy competition?
What are your thoughts?
- Yeah, first of all,
certainly Elon, I would say SpaceX,
and some of those other ventures
are definitely a competitive force
in the space industry.
And, do we like competition?
Yeah, we do.
And, we think we're
very strong competitors.
I think it's,
competition is what the U.S. is founded on
in a lot of ways,
and always coming up with a better way.
And I think it's really
important to continue
to have fresh eyes coming
in, new innovation.
I do think it's important to
have level playing fields,
and so you want to make sure that,
that you're not giving
different requirements
to different players.
But, you know, I tell people,
and, you know, I spend a lot of time
at places like MIT.
I'm gonna be at the MIT
Beaver Works Summer Institute
over the weekend here.
And I tell people this
is the most exciting time
to be in the space
business in my entire life.
And, it is this explosion
of new capabilities
that have been driven by things like
the massive increase in computing power,
things like the massive
increase in comms capabilities,
advanced and additive manufacturing,
are really bringing down
the barriers to entry
in this field, and it's driving
just incredible innovation.
And, it's happening at start-ups,
but it's also happening
at Lockheed Martin.
I talked about some of
these, like, you know,
Maya and Orion, but we're in the middle
of what we call SmartSats
and software defined satellites
that can essentially restructure and remap
their purpose, their mission on orbit
to give you almost unlimited flexibility
for these satellites over their lifetimes.
So, those are just a couple of examples,
but, yeah, this is a
great time to be in space.
