Anpanman - Block 2 Unfolded

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: Hey everyone, thanks for joining. What an amazing time. Oh man, what, what crazy news. I mean, you know, we all expect it, but of course it's one thing to expect it and it's another thing for it to actually happen, uh, because there's always associated risk with this unfolding. And so, um, once it happens, Wow, what a— what an amazing feeling. Um, thanks everyone for joining. This is, yeah, a truly special evening and the dawn of a new era for communications. Um, you know, for this company, AST SpaceMobile. And, um, yeah, this is just a tremendous milestone. I don't think people outside of SpaceMob truly understand what this means, but I think perhaps articles and as investors kind of dig into the name more, they'll understand what kind of milestone this is. But before I start, I just wanted to highlight, so there was this, I guess it was in, yeah, in 2022, Kerrisdale put together this short report. They timed it perfectly. after the company had launched their first major test satellite, which was BlueWalker 3 in September of 2022, Kerrisdale issued a short report. And of course they issued it right after the launch was successful, knowing that the company was going to be, you know, their hands are going to be tied behind their backs in responding to it. Of course it was good that they didn't, but they put out this short report. There was like a ton of FUD, and one of the key nuggets in the short report was this A quote from a former director of engineering at SpaceX. And this, this person led a team of 150 engineers across multiple disciplines. And, and this was a quote that was supposed to scare people out of their AST SpaceMobile chairs while we waited for BlueWalker 3 to unfold. And so I'll just read the, the quote here. It's in the report. The size of the antenna is terrifying. There's only a handful of entities that have deployed a foldable thing in space that big, and they're NASA and intelligence entities. It's an extremely difficult thing to do, and it's almost also more or less impossible to accurately test on the ground. And so this is a senior engineer at SpaceX. This is their quote, which, you know, let that sink in for a little bit. Let's, let's, let's, let's analyze what this person said back in 2022. So first, the size of the antenna is terrifying. And so if you can imagine SpaceX, their satellites back then were using phased arrays that were on— this is like probably V1s, they were probably about 1.5 by 1.5 meters in size. So really small. And so the idea of having this massive phased array for Blue Walker 3 was unimaginable, right? And so this guy in particular is saying the size of the antenna is terrifying. There's only a handful of entities that have ever done this thing in space, and they're NASA and intelligence entities, meaning the CIA and Department of Defense and what have you. And so back then when you saw this quote, I'll be honest, the first time I saw it, it made me a bit worried. I was like, oh my gosh, am I not assessing the risks of this company properly? But the funny thing is that when you look at this quote now, it's actually a higher compliment, right? And this company, AST SpaceMobile, was audacious enough to to try to pull this off and they did it. And even the huge behemoth SpaceX, the leader back then and the undisputed leader now, was terrified of doing it and they still haven't done it.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: And so the fact that this guy is saying, okay, this startup company, if they can pull it off, they're essentially going to be in a very elite class of entities that have ever done this thing. that have deployed a foldable array. So that's NASA and intelligence agencies. And so, so yeah, I guess, I guess we're one of the most elite companies out there now because not only have we unfolded a 693-square-foot array, but now we have successfully unfolded a 2,400-square-foot array. And so that's, that's a big deal. And so Not only have we done that, we've done it multiple times successfully. And so if you think about the DNA of the company, obviously people have from time to time have criticized the company for taking longer than they've projected in terms of their timeline. And there's been delays and what have you, but that's the company's DNA. They measure twice and cut once. They're, they are, their DNA is to succeed the first time and every time, right? And so here we've got, we are, the company's now 7 for 7 in terms of success of unfolding these large phased arrays. 6, 6, which would be BlueWalker 3, and then of course the Block 1 satellites, Bluebird 1 through 5. And so those are 693 square feet in size and At the time, those were the largest communications arrays in low Earth orbit. And now we've successfully unfolded the largest ever again. So 3.5 times bigger in size, but now we've unfolded a 2,400-square-foot phased array. And so that's huge. I mean, the ability to engineer that and to pull it off successfully is is invaluable, right? And so it's not just for communications applications, but it's also having the engineering and the patents behind it. There's going to be other applications for it. And, you know, we've talked about data centers and all these other things, but yeah, there's not another company in the world that's pulled this off. And so yeah, kudos to Abel to Scott, the rest of the team, the company, they're in a very elite class, a very select group of organizations that have done something like this. Going back to this SpaceX engineer's quote, he also says, or she, it's an extremely difficult thing to do, and it's also more or less impossible to accurately test on the ground. And so this is kind of like traditional thinking where, okay, we put up a large communication satellite, the first of its kind out in space, that phased array, like how are we going to calibrate it? How are we going to test it? It's pretty much impossible, right? And so this is where the out-of-the-box thinking of Abell comes into play, where the company in a very intelligent and creative way, I mean, they were just ingenious in this. They decided for Bluebird-1, what they were going to do is actually do the reverse to test if this phased array was going to work properly. What they did with Bluebird-1 is that that was a little CubeSat. They put a phone inside of it and they sent it up to space and had the phone orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour. And then they built the phased array on Earth. And by doing so, they, they were able to properly test and calibrate it on the ground, and they could iterate that very quickly because obviously the phone's not going to change and it's going to continue to orbit around the Earth. But then the phased array on the ground or the satellite, they could continue to iterate and improve that design because they had access to it. It was on Earth. And so that's the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that this company is capable of. And I think perhaps that's not really appreciated by most people who don't understand the story of ASD SpaceMobile and the heritage, right? Where these problems that, and issues that perhaps traditional companies or I guess people who think in a traditional way you know, may approach a problem and see the difficulty in it and perhaps like, you know, the impossibility. This company actually thinks several steps ahead and thinks outside the box and figures out a way to solve these problems. And so I think it's a, again, it's a big testament to the innovation that this company brings. And, you know, we've always talked about 3,800 patents and patent pending claims and how ingenious the unfolding mechanism is, which I'll talk a bit more about. But yeah, that's, it's kind of weird to see, you know, someone from SpaceX talking in that way about how it would be impossible to test and how this company got around it. I mean, you obviously could, in a traditional sense, you could send up satellites and keep iterating and then test them. And if they You know, calibrate them, but they fail, then you send up another one, then that, you know, you have to make more improvements and you send up another one, which is the SpaceX way, right? Like they sent numerous Starlink satellites up into space and I'm sure they continue to upgrade them over time. Whereas AST SpaceMobile, again, they developed the satellite on the ground and they put the phone up in space and they developed it that way in reverse. which was way more cost-effective and it allowed for a more rapid improvement in innovation and changes to the satellite. So yeah, it's, I mean, today, what an incredible, you know, 5 years in the making. 5 years meaning for the people who, you know, invested in the company and started investing in the company in 2020. But Yeah, this is an incredible testament to the engineering. For those that don't understand what was accomplished here, so the Block 2 satellite, I think the company had been designing and thinking through this potential form factor for quite some time, but it wasn't until, I think it was like the fall The fall or winter of 2024 when the first time that I actually heard about it, but I didn't understand what it meant. And so I had this conversation with management and I remember them saying, oh, well, you know that this, because I was under the assumption that Block 1, like that was the final design and, or they were going to increase the size, but they were going to keep the same overall design. But then that was hinted to me. It was like, well, you know, we're for this, the next generation, which is going to be bigger. It's going to be simpler in an unfolding mechanism and less risky. And I didn't understand what that meant. I didn't realize that the control sat was going to get moved from the center. And then, you know, the fold was going to be very different. But I think, you know, the company Once, I think it was like in the beginning of 2025 when they filed with the FCC and they talked about the, they actually disclosed the design change. And that's of course like when our friend Tim Ferriss came out and was like, oh my gosh, they've changed the satellite completely. There's no way they're going to be able to get this thing up in space and it won't get approved and yuck, whatever. The same FUD that he continued to peddle, that he's always peddled. But there were definitely a number of us who were like, okay, wow, this is a really different form factor and design change. Like, I understand why they're doing it, but are they going to be able to pull it off? Right? Because from that point on, I think it was until now, it was about a 9 to 12 month process, right? And so they rolled out this completely new design. It leveraged the same fundamental building block of a micron. But then the way that those microns were put together, and then of course the control sat and the encapsulation of the control sat, all that completely changed. I mean, this is a completely new spacecraft. And that requires different ways that, or a different way to load it onto a fairing. It's obviously much bigger and heavier, and then it's going to fly differently too out in space, which is probably why it took some time to confirm that everything was okay before announcing that this was successfully unfolded. And I'll talk a bit more about that. But yeah, this, I mean, talk about rapid innovation. And of course, people are probably going to push back and say, well, the company was hoping to launch by I think the original timeline was like they were going to launch sometime in April of 2025. And of course, due to internal delays and then also launch provider delays, it got pushed back basically to the end of the year. But yeah, that, I mean, the company is, as I've mentioned earlier today, with space companies, like you have to expect delays, whether that's on the company side or things that are out of your control. And as I mentioned before, like this company, they, they, the DNA is to get it right every time, all the time. And so there's no room for error. And so this is a completely new spacecraft. And, you know, it was developed in a short period of time. The reason why they had to move to this, I guess what we'll call like a cat food can or tuna can design is that the regulations changed. I'm not sure exactly when it had happened, but previously in the Blue Walker 3 design and the Block 1 design, the, you know, Bluebird 1 through 5, that design actually was one where if you had the folded array and then you had a control, like a rectangular, kind of like a rectangular box control sat on top. And then you had an LVA, a launch vehicle adapter, which That was like the 2 cylindrical halves that kept the whole thing together. And then you had like, what do you call it? Like these straps, maybe it's like 2 or 3 straps that keep that whole thing together. And so once you launch the satellite and then it got to the correct orbit, what the company would do, it would pop off, they would pop off these latches and then the 2 cylindrical halves would fall off. And then the The, the, you know, phased array would then start the unfolding process, and it would start by unfolding, um, in 2 directions. So it would go from, if you can imagine, like a stack of, uh, playing cards, it would go from that to 2 arms swinging out. So imagine like your left and right arm, and that would be the bar configuration, right?
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:20] Speaker C: And so from that point, then at the right moment, the company would communicate to the satellite and then it would unfold from the bar configuration into the entire satellite, which there's some GIFs out on Twitter or YouTube. There's videos that show that entire unfolding process. So from going, you know, 2 arms going out and then from those arms, you have 2 directions where it unfolds and then, you the phased array is completely deployed. The issue with that design though is that those 2 cylindrical pieces, which are the launch vehicle adapters, they would basically just fly out there into orbit and over time, which would be, you know, if it's at 500 or 600 kilometers up in space, it would take, you know, a decade or more for those 2 pieces to eventually fall back to the Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. And so what the regulators have been doing is that they're trying to reduce the amount of stuff or garbage that's out there in space. And so one of the requirements is that if you have to use a launch vehicle adapter, you need that, those 2 things that were left out in space, they actually, in the future, if you decide to do that, they would need to have some propulsion, some type of system that would be able to Essentially bring them back down to Earth and deorbit them more quickly. And so that's a big economic and weight cost to do that, right? Because then you're in essence not only sending one spacecraft up, you're sending 3 spacecraft up. Like each piece of the launch vehicle adapter needs to have like some kind of flight control and like propulsion to basically bring it back down. So what the company did in a very elegant way Is they developed this tuna can, which in that large tuna can, FM1 and FM2, which are BB6, BB7, those are made of, you know, some type of metallic or metal, you know, material. But within that tuna can, you have the control sat and then the phased array is inside. And so this new mechanism, and there's been various speculation As to how that unfolds. This new mechanism just has one arm that swings out. And so once it's deployed, the phased array swings out in one big arm, right? And then that arm only— then that arm unfolds in one direction. And so if you can imagine, let me count. So in Block 1, you had 1, 2, which are the 2 arms that come out. And then you have 3, 4, 5, 6. You have like 6 6 major unfolding directions. But then within that 6, there's also the fact that the panels, each panel had hinges and would unfold themselves, right? And so there was, you know, it was a great design, but it wasn't overall the rigidity, it wasn't as rigid. And then of course there was a lot of room for potential failure, right? Right? So if one of those unfolding processes gets stuck, then that's a big problem. And of course, you know, that could be due to a hinge getting stuck or, you know, one of the panels, I guess, maybe it breaks or something. So that was a pretty complex design, elegant, but it got the job done, but complex. And so this design was much simpler in the sense that you had one big arm fold out, And then it unfolded in one direction. So it's basically 2 major fold unfolding motions. But then within that, and I remember this was like based off of some research and what have you, I think the microns in that first design, I think at most, I'm trying to remember, I think it was like 2 microns would get fused together. Mm-hmm. And so, so you would have 2 microns worth of, you know, array fused together and then the hinges would connect to those. Whereas in this new design, you actually have 8 microns fused together. So they create like this much bigger rectangle. And so within those, the large major unfolds, the hinges, the number of hinges that you need and the minor unfoldings that happen is much lower because Um, that you have much larger rigid pieces, if that makes sense. And so, um, so yeah, this, this design was a lot more elegant. It's much less complex. There are fewer hinges. There's, um, fewer potential opportunities for failure. Um, but that said, there in this unfolding process, and this is where I think people, um, all of us quite frankly, were a little nervous in that this, um, in this design, The actual unfolding process, even though it's simpler and less complex, it actually is more stressful. So if you can imagine, like, instead of having 2 microns together, you fuse together 8 of them. And so when it unfolds, like, you're going to have a pretty— it's going to be like, there's going to be like a pretty big like tremor through this whole thing, right? Because it's a much bigger— Yeah. Swing-out process. And then the amount of stress that you're putting on each of these Microns is much bigger, 2,400 square foot versus 693 square feet. And so yeah, there's more stress, but of course the company has taken that into account. I'm sure they fortified or used stronger hinges and when they fused them together, they probably Hardened them a bit more. But yeah, so this is a totally new aircraft or spacecraft. It does not— once the satellite is deployed and then once it unfolds, there's no debris that comes off of it. There's no launch vehicle adapter that comes off. The whole thing is encapsulated in and of itself. And so that's one of the, for example, that's one of the elegant design things that you have with Starlink where the satellite is, it's like this little flat plate and then the arrays deploy from one side to the other. But there's nothing that complex about the satellite, which that's part of the elegance. And of course they're cheap and there's, they deploy a lot of them, but that also limits the ability to deploy like a large phased array. Like they can deploy large You know, solar panels, but then the phased array is pretty limited in size unless they do something similar to what ASD is doing. So anyway, but yeah, that's, you know, in a nutshell, this spacecraft is, it's more efficient in terms of not having any additional waste that you have to, like a launch vehicle adapter, to keep, to keep the thing encapsulated. It's all contained. And so, yeah, this is pretty exciting. The reason why people are excited about this being successful is that this means that obviously, you know, Bluebird 7, which is going to launch on Blue Origin New Glenn 3 as early as late February, although it's probably going to be more like March, you know, that de-risks If they've done the same exact thing in terms of production and testing with BB-6, then that means that BB-7 has a high chance of success. And then of course that also means that BB-8 and then all the other 240-some-odd satellites behind it will likely be successful as well. Obviously, if Bluebird 6 had any issues, then that would probably cause the company to Then pause potentially, or potentially pause Bluebird 7 until they understood what the issue was. And then of course, for the production of all the other satellites, again, that probably would've paused production to figure out in terms of troubleshooting what the issue was. But as far as I can tell, it's clear sailing now and BB-7 is going to launch and then we should get an update on the BAT. BB-8 through 10 batch. But, you know, there were some questions today, and I guess over the last few days of like, why is it taking so long? Well, I think it's important to understand, you know, once you launch a satellite up into space, you've got to go through this process called detumbling, where the satellite might be spinning end over end very slowly, or it's oriented the wrong way. And so through various technologies like magnetorquers and you know, other things. Magnetorquers use the Earth's natural magnetic, uh, pull to, um, basically orientate, orientate the, the aircraft or spacecraft in the right way. But, um, you want to get it stable, right? You want it to have it— you want to have it oriented the right way towards Earth before you unfold it. You obviously don't want to do it when it's upside down or if it's like spinning. And so that takes about a bit of time. Um, and then you've got to You know, turn on the systems and make sure, you know, you do all these checks and make sure everything's working correctly. And then you've got to wait for the right conditions, right? Like if there's solar flares or there's whatever events that are happening in space, you wouldn't want to take the risk until— of unfolding satellite until it's an optimal time to do so. And then once that's all good, then you might, and this is where Space Mob came into play, then you go through the unfolding process, which you might go through the initial step of getting the large arm out, and then the second step, which is unfolding the array in one direction from the arm. And so whether you followed Katzi or Toad or some of these other folks who were following very closely, Space Space Mob correctly predicted that the phased array was deployed over the last few days, actually, or we had a high degree of confidence. But of course, people are like, well, the phased array has been deployed. Why don't they PR it immediately? Why are they waiting? And so the reason why you would wait is that you don't want to unfold the array and then PR that it's been successfully unfolded and then something go wrong. And then you have to basically walk it all back. And so once the array is unfolded, then you have to go through these system checks and make sure that everything is okay, nothing was damaged, you know, perhaps like 1 or 2 microns might have gotten damaged or whatever it is, right? Like you want to make sure that everything is performing normally as expected. And you also have to make sure that you can still fly the spacecraft, right? So in the form factor of a little Tuna, or not a little, I wouldn't say a 4, 5-ton tuna can is little, but in that form factor, it has different dynamics than a deployed satellite with a large phased array. And we still speculate on where exactly the control sat is, but I think that's, it's probably like in the corner. And according to Katzi, it's probably flying in kind of a manta ray direction where you've got the the sharp end kind of pointing forward, and then you've got, you know, it's like a diamond, right? Like this, this array is a diamond, and then at the end you'll have the control sat and potentially a solar tail, which is space bomb speculation. But you want to make sure that once the phased array is deployed, that there's nothing wrong, everything's working normally, and that you're flying the spacecraft as well. Like you have good control over it, you know. the thrusters are working, all that stuff, right? And so once you are absolutely sure that everything is working as expected and everything is, you know, you feel confident that there's not going to be any complications, then you PR it, then you put out a press release and say, we have successfully unfolded this thing. And you do, you know, spike the football in the end zone and do your little dance. And so that's kind of the process and that's why it took longer, right? Because that process, this satellite is orbiting the Earth very rapidly. And so you only get a few looks at it during the day and they've got operation centers around the world, but it does take some time. It's not as if it's an object that's directly overhead and it stays there the entire time. It's actually flying very quickly. at 17,000 miles per hour. And so you've got to make sure that everything's stable before you, you PR this thing. Because again, it would be, um, it would be a disaster, right, if you unfolded it and everything was fine and then all of a sudden something bad happened and, and the end of the satellite's like spinning out of control or something. So, um, so yeah, that's, that's why it took time. And as I mentioned before, you know, earlier today, if you are going to be— obviously I think space is one of the most exciting areas to invest in, in terms of financial upside and opportunity. I don't think there's anything out there quite like it. But as part of that, as part of the contract of investing in space, if you want to be a successful investor and not be buying into situations when, at the wrong times or selling at the wrong times, A really key aspect of being a good investor in the sector is you have to have patience and you have to have an understanding that these things take time, right? It's, they're not easy. It's not like making widgets that you're selling to consumers and that, you know, you have a good handle on, oh, here's a widget that I'm making, I'm selling it at Walmart, and then, you know, I've got to spend so much money on marketing dollars and then people buy it and then If there was any issues with it, I can just take returns. Space is very unforgiving in that once you put a satellite up in space, there's a lot of things that can go wrong. If you don't test it properly, it could get shaken apart in the rocket on the way up. Or if it's not hardened for radiation, the chips can fry inside. Or if you don't have it properly, you know, you don't have it set where it can handle very high degrees of variations in temperature, you know, from going to really hot to really cold. If the systems inside can't handle that, then you're going to have a failure. And so all these things are something that you have to take into consideration. It's not like building a data center here on Earth. Like there's a lot of Other things that you have to plan for, and you have to have redundancy too, right? Like oftentimes these satellites will have 2, 3 backup systems and be redundant. The phased arrays, for example, if any microns or antenna fail, you can actually continue to work and that the phased array will continue to be effective. You can just basically remove some of those from the system and continue to operate. So, but yeah, it's investing in space. It requires patience. And I saw people on Twitter and on Reddit, oh my gosh, people losing it, right? That why isn't, you know, we know that the phased arrays unfolded, like why isn't the company PRing it? And then of course people, when you don't hear from the company, and of course like, you know, we have a period of volatility where where the entire space sector is selling off and any number of things that are happening, then people's minds go to like really dark places, right? Like, oh man, maybe the satellite failed or something bad has happened. And this is where you kind of have to put your trust in management, right? Like they've, they were previously to this, they were 6 for 6 and now they're 7 for 7. And so that's a really good record. You don't want to have any failures. Eventually, at some point, knock on wood, the company will have a satellite probably fail or get bricked. But at least in this early stage, the company doesn't want to have that happen, right? And so to have that impeccable record and to put forward like this, again, this new spacecraft, it requires very Deliberate planning and timing and development and testing, testing again and again and again. And so yeah, I think people should just give the company some breathing room, right? Like, yeah, things do get delayed and it takes longer than expected, but given where the company is in terms of technology, I mentioned this earlier today, what we have on our hands is something that is far superior to what Starlink has put out. in their V2 satellites or 2.5 satellites, the 650 direct-to-cell satellites that are currently out there. And then even for V3, the ones that are going to fly up on, that are going to be deployed by Starship, those are inferior to what we're doing right now. And so yeah, it's at this point, the constellation and our success, I think, is inevitable. And I think, you know, it's probably hard for people to accept that, you know, when the stock price is down. When it's up, it's like, okay, I can forget about the fact that this is taking perhaps longer than people expect. But yeah, that's like, that's the DNA of the company. And you should, if you've come this far in the journey, just trust in what management is doing, right? Like, as Tut mentioned earlier tonight, he put out the great reminder in that Abel hasn't sold a single share. You know, like the stock, whether it was at $2 or whether it hit $130, our founder who has voting control in the company and truly believes in the mission, the guy hasn't sold a single share. And so I think for those that perhaps like have a difficult time When there is volatility or there's some uncertainty, yeah, just follow someone's SpaceBob because people are doing due diligence. I think it was like it was two days ago. I think it was one of the Koreans Korean investors who who follows LinkedIn very closely, or maybe it was someone else. They had posted the I think it was like a few AST SpaceMobile partners had liked a post which kind of indicated or hinted that. Oh, someone had posted, I think like perhaps that Bluebird 6 had unfolded according to their data. And then there were like AST SpaceMobile internal folks and then some partners who were liking the post. And so sometimes you can like piece together the mosaic where it's like, okay, if the satellite failed, then you probably wouldn't have all these people liking that post. And so you could deduce that perhaps like, you know, the satellite had deployed successfully. And so I think, yeah, it's, it's, and I, you know, for short sellers and for bears, if they had followed SpaceMobile, like SpaceMob shareholders, they would know that this thing had successfully deployed a few days ago, which was a similar dynamic for Block 1 satellites. And then of course BlueWalker 3 as well. But But yeah, this is huge. And of course, what's next is that we've got Bluebird 7 launch today. There was some correspondence between Blue Origin and the FCC around communication channels and some process-related stuff as well, which Blue Origin is getting ready to launch Bluebird 7. And I think obviously there's a lot going down. lot going on down at the Cape, which is, um, I think the Dragon crew, um, on Falcon 9 is supposed to launch no earlier than February 13th. That's, that's got pushed back by, I think, 2 days. And then of course you've got Artemis as well, which is going to happen towards the end of this month or early March. And so, um, Blue Origin New Glenn 3 is either going to come before Artemis or it's going to come after. But, um, But yeah, I would just tell people like, just relax, you know, it's going to happen. Like all these things are inevitable. I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping, I'm praying that I don't have any conflicts and that I can fly down to the Cape because that's going to be probably one of the most memorable launches to see a new vehicle, you know, very high-profile launch, New Glenn 3, which is going to potentially reuse or most likely reuse the New Glenn 2 booster, but although there is a chance that they'll use a new one if they can't get the New Glenn 2 booster refurbished and ready in time. But yeah, it'll be cool to see Bluebird 7 go up on that vehicle. So it'll be a very, you know, the company has already talked about inviting investors, and so that's going to be a really cool event. And as I said before, I think there'll probably be some Blue Origin folks there and guests, and so there may not be as as big of an event for people. But, and if you don't get invited or don't make the cut, which, you know, I believe previously it was some type of selection slash lottery process, but if you don't even go to the formal event there, you can go down to the Cape and there's good viewing from basically anywhere within a few miles of the launch site. And so there's definitely going to be, you know, people planning to at meetups like at Chilo's or Waffle House, any number of places and different groups too. So I, what I found out later, you know, we obviously have like a pretty tight community on X, but there's like people, these other groups that met, like whether it was like Facebook groups or Reddit groups that met down at the Cape. And so it was really cool to see all these different people come together. But anyway, Yeah, we'll see what happens tomorrow. I mean, this is, again, this is big news, and I think everybody should feel really good about this. And obviously congratulations are in order for the company and management. I mean, this is a tremendous milestone, and this is the future. This particular spacecraft successfully deploying is a collective sigh of relief for the company and also a huge triumph, right? And this is the way forward. You've got Bluebird 7 that's going to be launching here soon, and then all the batches after that. And so this coming quarter, by the way, for Q4, the quarterly update, it's going to be pretty chock-full of updates in terms of production cadence, which based off of our due diligence, it sounds like the company's already at 6 satellites per month. And of course, by then, hopefully one batch of 3 will be shipped to the Cape. I will say, I guess another thing I'll add is that there is, you know, people have been a bit nervous about, you know, will the company get to 5 orbital launches by the end of Q1? I'm here to tell you that they are not going to. Not that that's a big surprise, but yeah, you know, there's the delays down at the Cape. and the backups, I think probably we'll get 3 at most. So you're going to have Blue Origin take FM2, Bluebird 7 up, and then you'll probably get one more batch of 3 happen by the end of March. And then the other 2 are going to slip into April, right? And then everything kind of backfills from them. The company did reiterate though that they are planning still to get 45 to 60 satellites by the end of the year. And so a big part of that, of course, is going to be whether or not Blue Origin New Glenn could pick up its cadence. And then, however, if they can't, I'll just remind people that the company has booked enough launch capacity for, I think it's 70, 75, 70 satellites. And so what that means is that they probably overbooked with SpaceX Falcon 9. And so yeah, and until we hear differently, that's still the target, 45 to 60 satellites by the end of the year. And yeah, it'll be an exciting time. So I'm going to end it there. It's almost 12:30 and we'll catch up again tomorrow. But yeah, it's a very exciting time. I wanted to get people together, talk about it. Yeah, this is, this is great. And I'm looking forward to the next, the next Bluebird 7 launch. Hope to see many of you there. And yeah, we'll, we'll talk again soon. Take care.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. Post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver. Cellular broadband connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless. Regardless of where you are, we don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with the NMO. Listen.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Mmm, waffles.