Anpanman - Historic Deployment: Bluebirds 8-10 Reach Orbit

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[00:01:03] Speaker C: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:01:07] Speaker D: 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. Everyone, good morning. Figured I'd fire up a space while we wait for second engine burn. Oh man, I'm tired. I went to bed early. Actually had some— I had, uh, some substances to help me sleep, but I went to bed early before the kids so I could wake up for this. But, uh, we had a successful launch of Falcon 9. Which was great. And everything looks nominal from what I can tell. I'm listening to the AST SpaceMobile live broadcast, which the introduction video was outstanding. I'm going to clip that and post it later, but there are some great education and nuggets in there. For example, it looks like I think someone had spoken to the company before, but the composite Bluebirds, the amount of Gs that they have to sustain is somewhere around 6 Gs. Either it's 6 or maybe it's even, yeah, yeah, 6 Gs, I think. And so in one of the graphics that they showed, they talked about how each Bluebird or the Bluebird on the bottom, once you've stacked 8 of these things, that it can support an entire passenger airplane or the Statue of Liberty without the base, which is insane, right? So we're talking about carbon fiber structures, which obviously have been reinforced, but that's some insane engineering. I think somebody on Reddit had talked about how The people who, I guess, industry consultants and other armchair critics have talked about how stacking is impossible or whatever it is, right? Or that SpaceX wouldn't allow the company to stack satellites. But there was a very clear explanation about how they test The structural rigidity of these things. And you have to put them through hell because before any rocket company will allow you to put satellites on in whatever configuration, they need to be absolutely sure that your satellites are going to survive the rigors of launch. Because obviously they don't want a satellite disassembling itself during launch and of course putting the rocket at At risk. So anyway, I think for normal people like you and me, there's a lot more engineering and difficulty that goes into these things. And so much respect to these people. I think for everybody, I think obviously it's not good that the satellites were delayed, but you've got to make absolutely sure that these things are rock solid and are going to survive the forces of launch, and then of course survive out in space and deploy successfully. And so I posted a video a few, maybe it was like a few months ago where, for those that don't know, Mark Rober of CrunchLabs, he, they, that program, they actually built a built an Earth, or they partnered with someone to put up an Earth observation satellite up in space. And this was like an education for children about why, you know, the types of forces that a satellite has to go through during launch and the insane engineering that goes behind it. And so it was pretty cool to actually get a detailed, simple understanding of what What types of rigors the satellite and stresses that, you know, the satellites have to undergo. But I'll post that sometime. Maybe I'll try to find it right now. But I figured I'd start this space because there's probably a lot of people up while their family or whoever else is sleeping. And so we can all just hang out here. But it was funny to Wake up to the company's YouTube channel and there are an— I mean, there's folks from different nationalities, but I wanted to shout out to all the Korean Space Mom. There's a ton of Korean shareholders who are up and excited chatting into the YouTube. Let me just see here. So we do have a number of Space Mob folks down in Florida. I know that they are taking photos and videos, so hopefully they'll share those. I did share 2 pictures from the courtyard in Titusville that one of the Space Mob shared with me, but it shows the lineup of Falcon 9 launches.
[00:06:32] Speaker E: Oh.
[00:06:45] Speaker D: Okay, so satellite separation about 20 more minutes. Just looking at the timeline, we've got second engine starting restarts at 46 minutes, and then that's interesting. So The second, second stage engine only fires for 6 seconds. So you got, it's 46 minutes and then it ends at 46 minutes and 6 seconds. So it's a very short burst. And then you've got Bluebird 8 deploys at 54 minutes and then Bluebird 9 at approximately 60 minutes and then Bluebird 10 at 1 hour and 5 minutes. So I know some people had questions about whether all 3 Bluebirds would just detach simultaneously. Um, no, that's not the case. So you're going to have one, the, the second one will— there's some type of clamp and it will unleash the clamp. And then I believe, as Katzie had pointed out, there's probably some type of, I mean, some type of mechanism that's like a spring and it would help push Bluebird 8 off of Bluebird 9. And then after another 5 minutes, you would have Bluebird 10 would release its clamp. So Bluebird 9 would go off. And then at the end, of course, Bluebird 10, which is at, from what I understand, looking at the timeline here, I guess Bluebird 10 is at the bottom. Eventually that one will release itself. So actually, I guess the way to think about it is Bluebird 8 has clamps that attach it to Bluebird 9, and so Bluebird 8 will release the clamps and then Bluebird 8 can leave. Then Bluebird 9 will release its clamps and then it will separate from 10, and then 10 is on the bottom, and then it will release its clamps and release itself from the Falcon 9 Stage 2. If anyone has any questions, feel free to comment. I could answer them. Wow, there's 350 people in here. A lot of people are awake. Let's see, Morant says, beautiful lunch tonight. I could feel the rumble through my body. Wow. Are you actually there or you're just, that's just the feeling you had? That'd be kind of funny. Let's see. Keys, proud to see all the crews gathered at all hours. Yes. When you have a significant amount of your net worth invested in a stock that's going up on a rocket, a combustible rocket, there's nothing quite like it. I remember when I first watched BlueWalker 3 launch aboard Falcon 9, that was a rideshare mission. Kook and I were the only from, well, I'm sure there are other Space Mob there, but Kook and I were there at launch. I was there with my son and he was there with his daughter. And that was the craziest feeling to see for the first time, you know, Falcon 9 take up BlueWalker 3. And that was a company-defining event because obviously with the success of that mission, that led to additional funding and of course the company to continue to survive. If that mission had failed, that would've been no bueno. But I remember just having a tremendous amount of excitement and anxiety at the same time. And also praying, praying before launch and praying while watching the rocket go up. So, and that was what, September 2022? So I guess that was— approximately 4 years ago, which is pretty crazy. And then of course, Block 1 launch, the 5 Bluebirds, that was fun and that was tremendous because at that event, the company had a big party for Space Mob. And so that was great to meet a lot of folks. And then of course, Bluebird 7, which didn't make it to orbit. That was a lot of fun to watch and everyone was excited, happy. And then we all left the launch site And of course, we didn't find out until later when there was supposed to be an expected separation that the second stage for Blue Origin New Glenn unfortunately didn't have a second light. It was interesting. I think the live countdown from AST SpaceMobile was behind. And so there was a little bit of nervousness, I think, from everyone where, uh, we saw that, uh, our countdown had gone to zero, but then the rocket didn't launch. And maybe it wasn't until 15, 20 seconds later. I'll have to go back and look at the SpaceX or NASA Spaceflight YouTubes to see what happened there. Perhaps they delayed launch for a few seconds or—
[00:11:58] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:11:59] Speaker D: it could have been our countdown was too early, but I feel like perhaps there was probably some delay. Let's see. Toterra must make sure they don't launch with Blue Origin when they get back to flight. Yeah, I know people are pretty upset about Bluebird 7, which is understandable, right? But Blue Origin, Is an important company and vehicle, the New Glenn, for not only AST SpaceMobile, but the US space program. So I don't think we will be launching on New Glenn until obviously the launch pad is rebuilt and they've probably at least executed, I mean, 2 commercial missions successfully. And then perhaps we'll, we'll go back on that vehicle. Some funny comments here. So for those that don't know, um, Cook is down in Cape Canaveral at Titusville. the courtyard of Titusville, there's a nice bar on the top that has, it's an open roof. And so you can see launch from there. I know the handful of folks, or I think it's like maybe there's 8 to 10 of them that are down there. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it because I had a conflict. I couldn't get help to watch our, to chaperone our kids for some event that was coming up. And so I'm here in New York, but There's several folks who are down there. I know Cook had tweeted doing pushups with all of them, and they all did visit Steve Larison's resting site, which is actually right behind the Courtyard Titusville. But yeah, there's a nice bar up there, and so everyone's watching the event. Maybe someone's listening here, which I doubt. They should all be talking to each other, not listening to some podcast. But One of the traditions that we have, which someone had asked about earlier, you know, they had asked what's up with this Dr Pepper tradition. And for those who don't know, it should be a full sugar Dr Pepper, not zero calorie, which I think what Coop purchased. But Dr Pepper, it was a drink that our friend Steve Larsen really enjoyed. And so for those that don't know, Steve Larsen was an early Space Mob guy. He did a lot of research and helped quite a few people in the community and helps me as well. Tremendous individual, selfless, giving, really smart guy. I remember he was telling us to look at AI and machine learning back when it wasn't cool. I think it was like 2023. But anyway, his favorite drink was Dr Pepper. And so memory of him, we always have Dr Pepper on launch day, which is great because I actually, I growing up, I used to drink a lot of Dr Pepper. So we're at coming up on 39 minutes. So I guess we probably have about 6 minutes left before second engine restart. Let's see. Gary Teplis, I bought more shares on Schwab overnight trading platform. Is anyone else buying overnight trading? Clearly there are people buying overnight. The stock is up 6.4%. And then Brian Burke is, he just tweeted his arm tattoo, which is pretty cool. For those that haven't seen it, there's a Block.one bluebird beaming down signals to where he lives, I believe, which is Michigan. Yeah, that looks like Michigan. What do you think Tim Ferriss is dreaming about right now? I don't know if Tim Ferriss dreams. He's such a negative and small individual. I don't believe he is capable of dreaming. For someone who tries to cut the legs of others and discourage people from dreaming, I just don't think he's capable. Is that too mean to say? No, I'm just being honest. Let's see. Can you shed any light on potential tells for the JLEO program Cook alluded to? Odds on a shipment readiness PR tomorrow. Okay. So this JLEO program is something that kind of popped up. There's people who've been following it longer than I have, but it popped up recently. And one of the potential tells is that the company recently hired an APAC program manager in Japan, someone who has tremendous experience in Japan working for one of the large companies there. And so this individual who was recently hired, it seems like hiring this person specifically in Japan for APAC and given their experience in manufacturing, yeah, there could be some potential linkages as to why you would hire this person at this specific time in front of this potential decision. So That that was the that was the potential mosaic, but unclear if if you can directly connect those. But it seems to strongly suggest that. Let's see. Wish we could see a live stream with Abel, Abel, and Scott. There are there are some ASD Space Mobile execs down there in Cape Canaveral for sure. But yeah, that would be pretty cool if Abel could if Abel could. I guess talk to Space Mob and do his, his pump-up speech like he did, uh, on the previous launches. Uh, odds of a shipment readiness PR tomorrow? Um, I don't know. I don't know what the odds are. I mean, I, I'd be surprised if we see one. Um, but I do think we are very close to finishing batch 2. And so, um, for those— I mentioned this yesterday, but There, there is a possibility that we get a PR that discloses that batch 2 is finished and that we are waiting to ship those because you might be in a situation where— oh, Scott just tweeted. Let me just look here. But you might be in a situation where the satellites are ready.
[00:19:11] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Speaker D: But of course the Falcon 9 is scheduled for a later time. And so the satellites may be ready, but then you just wait to actually ship those until they're ready to be processed, which by the way, like AST is, they did hire a, or they were looking to hire a processing manager down in Cape Canaveral. And so I believe the company is going to either rent or build a facility for storage, an integration facility. And so We are probably going down this path where we will be shipping more Bluebirds than can be launched. And, you know, we'll need a facility there to hold them and process them. So that's a pretty— that'll be a pretty cool milestone for us. So let's see what Scott posted here. In orbit again with 3 more of the largest phased arrays ever deployed in LEO. That's right. That's a cool picture. So I guess this is interesting. Maybe just looking at the mission timeline, maybe SpaceX is wrong, or because the Bluebirds are stacked 10, 9, 8 from top to bottom, but then on the mission profile, it shows that 8 is deployed, 9 is deployed, and 10 is deployed. And so maybe you have all 3 deploy and then they separate from each other. I don't know.
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[00:21:39] Speaker D: All right. We should have relighting soon. It's in a minute and 20 seconds. Let me just look and see. Would these 3 Bluebirds be able to operate either the government or military while we wait to have 25 up to start beta service? Okay. And can we just confirm— oh, here, we're going to go back to coverage. I'm going to be quiet. All right, we should have a second burn here soon. Looks like there's like, there's some ice that's flopping off.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Phew.
[00:23:28] Speaker D: There we go. MVAC startup. Second burn. And that was it. It was like a pulse fire. It does look like there's some gases being released. Great. So that's good. We had a nominal restart and that looks like it was a small pulse fire. So I think, let me just go back and see what that was needed for. Oh yeah. Okay. So what that did prior to the second burn, Let's see. That's interesting. Okay, so just so that people know, let me explain what we were. We were in similar to what happened with Blue Origin New Glenn. We are in an elliptical orbit, right? And so, from what I can tell, I'm looking at this. So our speed. You know, at the lowest part of the elliptical orbit, I think the altitude, just looking back, was in the 200-kilometer range. And so at, once we hit the, just looking here, so once we had hit 485 kilometers, call it 500 kilometers. We actually— let me look here exactly. So once we had hit around 535 kilometers, we did this quick burn, which I think straightened the orbit— or not straightened the orbit, but turned it into a circular orbit. And so that's why you needed that short Fire. So now we are at 536 kilometers, and we're currently at 26,278 kilometers per meter in terms of speed. Oh cool! So High Peaks Venture. Just replied with his own video of folks watching the launch. Very cool. So for those who haven't been to a launch, when you're observing the launch, you'll see the rocket ignite and then take off well before you actually hear, hear it, uh, because sound takes quite some time to travel. But there's nothing quite like it. If you haven't been to launch, highly recommend it. Oh, so going back to the question, will these 3 Bluebirds be able to operate for either the government or military while we wait for them to have 25 Bluebirds up to start beta service? Yes. So every Bluebird has the ability to function for dual use cases. And so these are obviously primarily focused on commercial, but they will have capability, you know, You can use them for military purposes as well. Every satellite will be able to do that. Let's see. Seems like they can reliably produce 3 a month now and ship. How do you think that ramps? Does it increase by 1 each month to 6? So from what I understand, I think the company is at a point now where they can manufacture 10 satellites worth of microns, which is the important part of the payload. It's the phased array solar panel portion, the thin panels. And so I think the company is probably at around 10 per month, but then the composite donuts where the phased array is stored. And then of course you have the control sat in there. I think they're just under 6 per month. And so maybe that's around 4 to 5, but that is ramping up. Now, given where we are with launch, getting to 6 a month is not as important right now. And so the company is of course trending to get there, but then with Blue Origin New Glenn offline, That's getting to 6 a month is not as important. But of course, as we add additional launch providers, you know, that will have more capacity to take these Bluebirds up. But yeah, the idea is to get to 6. My guess is that probably happens in Q3 sometime over the next month or 2, and then Outside of that, you know, the company is eventually going to scale that. They've talked about putting up a government shell and as disclosed in the annual meeting today, I think, or sorry, this past week, I think the Block 2 Bluebirds, the first one or two will be launched by the end of this year. Are we ready? Okay, I'm— we're listening to SpaceX right now. Oh, very cool. So we are going— we are not going to have a view of the first deployment, but we're going to have limited views of the second and third. So a minute away from first deployment. So we'll see if they labeled this correctly. They have on their timeline Bluebird 8 deploys first, but if you look at the stack, it looks like Bluebird 10 should deploy first. We'll see here. Going back to what I was saying before, yeah, so the company is planning to get probably closer to 10 to 12 satellites a month when they're at full steam. That takes into account The fact that there's probably going to be a government shell. So in addition to the low band Block 2 Bluebirds and then the mid band— oh, 10 seconds. So waiting for his plant. So we're not gonna see this one. Deployed, but hopefully we'll see the second and third. Okay, so there will be a confirmation of deployment when they go over their next ground station, and then the second deployment is— will be up next, which we should get a potential partial visual. Let's see. Chiming in from Calgary, Alberta. Beautiful launch and landing of the boosters. How long until AST confirms fully functional satellites after they are released? You do get a confirmation that you're in control of satellites, that they're nominal, not long after they're released, because it powers up and then you start flying the spacecraft. But in terms of full deployment and successful operations, that could take weeks or months depending. With each new one, though, that process becomes shorter and shorter. And so, I don't know. My guess is we'll probably hear about successful operations of the satellites maybe a few weeks later. Someone's. Someone's saying, thank you for doing this. Normally I listen to you on the podcast at 1.5 times the speed. They listen to it after. Oh, nice. Okay, so Bluebird, the first Bluebird, um, yeah, they did have this in opposite order. So we just heard over The, the livecast that Bluebird 10 has been successfully deployed. So that's great news. That means the clamping mechanism and the springs or whatever separation force they used was successful. So we're going to wait for Bluebird 9 to deploy. And we should have a visual, hopefully. That's going to happen at 59 minutes and 47 seconds. So in about 2 minutes. Congratulations all. First Bluebird deployed, that Bluebird 10. Nice. All right. So the first Bluebird 10 has been deployed. It's left the nest, as it were, and we're waiting for Bluebird 9. That's Next deployment, 15 seconds. So Bluebird 9 is ready to go. Nice. There we go. So Bluebird 9 is— oh, we got a visual. Very cool. So we got about 4 minutes left. Bluebird 9 has been successfully separated, so that's great. Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that we are separating Bluebirds means that the structure's held up and they are, they're doing just fine, which is great, especially in the context of this new spacecraft, the composite Bluebirds. And so for those that don't know, this is now, let's see, 1, 2, yeah, 1, 2, 3, 4.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:57] Speaker D: So this is the company's 4th design for spacecraft. Bluebird, sorry, BlueWalker 3 was, or actually I take that back. This is the 5th. So we had BlueWalker 1, which is a CubeSat, BlueWalker 3, which is more like what Block 1 satellites, the 8-meter by 8-meter centered control bus satellite. And then you had the Block 1 satellites, which there were 5 of those. That was the 8-meter by 8-meter satellites that had the next-generation phased array/solar panel microns. And then you had Bluebird 6 and Bluebird 7, which were the third— sorry, the fourth design. And then now you've got the 5th design, which is the Block 2 composite Bluebirds, of which we've just launched 3. Or we've got now the 3rd ready to separate, which hopefully we'll have a pretty good video of. You can see in this video feed, the payload adapter on the bottom. I'm going to go back to some of these questions here.
[00:39:14] Speaker E: Okay.
[00:39:15] Speaker D: Am I planning to catch up on sleep later today? Yes. So after this, I'm going to try to go back to sleep and for a few winks before I have to get up. Let's see. Happy to be watching launch that is daytime in the UK rather than at 1 AM in the morning. Yes. I guess this is good for people in Europe, but then I guess we pulled one on you guys since the World Cup games are at terrible hours for you. So this is a little gimme for you guys that Bluebird, this mission is launching at a more reasonable time for you. Okay. Do you know what altitude they're planning to release? Well, you can look at the feed. We are currently at 546 kilometers. So that's the orbital altitude. When can we see the next batch launch? Um, I think the next batch launch is probably going to be late July or perhaps very early August. That's my guess. As we've seen, once you've shipped the Bluebirds, it takes about 3 weeks for integration, which is actually very fast. I think the integration period is so quick because these tuna cans actually just sit on top of the Falcon 9 inside the fairing, the little platform. And so you don't have to put together some type of erector set launch vehicle adapter to hold satellites. These actually think these satellites are self-contained. They stack on each other. So it's very, or I won't say very easy integration process, but it should be A simple integration process. Okay, final play of the point. So we're coming up on here, I think. Ah, 30 seconds. Maybe this is the satellite, which looks a bit more metallic than I had expected. Yeah, I think that is a satellite. No, I think this is the bottom ring, the bottom ring that holds up the satellites. Yeah, that's right. I don't know how much we're gonna be able to see, actually. Congratulations everyone, all payloads successfully separated. Yeah, so great shout out from SpaceX for AST. Let's see if there's any additional words from AST. Probably not. Oh, there we go. Congratulations, everybody.
[00:43:09] Speaker C: Amazing.
[00:43:09] Speaker D: Emma looks good. She looks good for someone at 300— 3:46 AM or 2:30 AM. She's wearing her glasses, so I'm sure she wears contacts, But she doesn't look as grizzled as I do. But yeah, that's it, guys. We successfully launched Bluebird 8, 9, and 10. And so we should expect to hear from the company maybe in a PR or tweet that everything is nominal and the satellites are operating as expected. What we did see What we did see in that visual was the bottom of the adapter on the Falcon 9. And so it's like this upside-down cone that carried the 3 Bluebirds stacked on top of one another. And so that was, unfortunately, that was our visual. We couldn't see the satellite separate, which they might actually, we might see some type of video later, but. Let me just go through some more of these questions. Do we see a potential T-Mobile deal? My answer is yes. I think there will be a deal with T-Mobile. It's not going to be in the next weeks or months, but before the end of the year, I think you'll see an MOU and/or definitive agreement with T-Mobile. I think that's pretty much fait accompli. For those that don't know, AT&T and Verizon invited T-Mobile to join this joint venture, which is focused on direct-to-cell satellite connectivity by pulling together spectrum and sharing infrastructure, which AT&T is quarterbacking. They're going to try to provide a more full broadband experience to consumers in the US and the way that it's going to be positioned to regulators is that this is going to be important for US broadband connectivity and also national security. And as part of that, importantly, if you talk to the company, they say, you know, we've got exclusivity with AT&T and Verizon, and this new joint venture basically opens up T-Mobile for us to work together with them. And so that's going to happen. I don't think there will be a visible or fanfare breakup with Starlink for T-Mobile. My guess is in order to appease regulators, they'll probably offer Starlink as an add-on service and just keep that in place. But for T-Mobile, my guess is the default service for people looking for satellite connectivity will be C Space Mobile. And so you can, you can put some money on it. Um, I think that that's probably going to happen sometime in the 4th quarter this year. And yeah, that's something to look forward to. Let's see, someone says, I highly recommend watching from the 528 Bridge. Okay, we'll keep that in mind. So, um, the next launch is going to be company-sponsored And so they, just given how many launches we're expecting on an ongoing basis, there's not going to be launch parties for all these things. My guess is once the cadence really gets going, instead of having a launch party every other batch, it could be every 2 to 3 batches, but which would be ideal, right? Because that means like we're putting a lot of metal in orbit. But yeah, the next one, Will be a company-hosted event. So if you haven't been to Launch, definitely recommend going, especially if it's one hosted by the company. But if not, you can be just like the Space Mob who are down there right now. Pook, there's Tux, Tanner, quite a few guys who met up at the courtyard in Titusville who are watching it live. Let's see here. Huge milestone, our first commercial batch mission. Let that sink in, Space Mob. Um, yes and no. This is our first commercial batch for Block 2, but this is not our first batch mission. We actually— our first batch mission was Block 1 satellites, so where we launched 5 of the, the Block 1 satellites. Um, if, if you guys remember, there were 5 of these beer cans stacked on each other, 4 on the bottom and 1 on top. That was our first batch launch back in 2024. Questions: Will Knicks repeat? I think they've got a pretty good shot, but I don't know. I feel like one—I haven't been watching NBA lately, but one of the cool things that you know—I yeah, I haven't followed NBA closely, but when it comes to playoffs, I always tune in. But one of the cool things is that I guess over the last what eight years, there's been a different champion, which is great for. for someone who was watching the NBA during the '90s when the Bulls dominated, that was fun but also boring. Whereas now I love that it's kind of up in the air and you have a different winner each time. And I do feel like the Spurs played a really good series that they just were so immature and made so many mistakes and imploded. So, but I'd love the Knicks to win again. That would be amazing. Let's see. So someone who was there, the launch was well worth it. I agree, you could feel the rumble in your chest. Yeah, that's right. Let's see. I think this will be the first time mini squeeze happens after launch, not a dump. Um, yeah, who knows, we'll see. I mean, I think, I think, um, given the sell-off we've had in space names, um, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we have pretty sustained rally from here, but we'll see. I mean, there's a lot of weird factor stuff going on. Let's see. So what happens to stage 2 after the satellites are deployed? Well, the satellites are deployed, the company will establish communications with the satellite, they'll power them up, they'll make sure everything's nominal, they'll maneuver the You know, they'll detumble them and maneuver them into place. When I, when I say detumble, you need to get the satellites in the right orientation, and they have got a number of ways to do that with magnetorquers and propulsion. But once you get it into the right spot, then at some point you can unfold the satellite or deploy it. It's unfold, by the way, not unfurl. Let's see, when do you expect BB-11 to 13? I do think BB-11 through 13 are going to be ready to be shipped fairly soon. And then depending on when the next Falcon 9 launch is scheduled, you would work back, call it 3 weeks, and so that's when you would ship it.
[00:50:31] Speaker E: Right.
[00:50:31] Speaker D: And so I think that one is probably targeting sometime in the end of July or perhaps early August. And so we could see a PR that the satellites are ready for shipment, but then waiting to be shipped, just given the, you know, the timeline of when the next Falcon 9 launch will be. Let's see. Mari Peterson saying, my hope was that since this was the first launch since the SpaceX IPO, I was hoping for good luck. Well, it seems like we were lucky. Why Q4 for T-Mobile? Didn't their exclusivity not end for Starlink? So T-Mobile exclusivity ends in June or July, and I think we could see an MOU with T-Mobile maybe this month or next month, but I don't think there'll be a definitive agreement just yet because it's going to take time for those terms to be worked out. Also from a regulatory standpoint, if the— so you first need to see the joint venture, those parties actually come to a definitive joint agreement with each other. And so right now they, it's basically, you know, an intention to work together, but that agreement is going to take some time. And so maybe if that goes definitive in 1 to 2 months, and then that has to go through some regulatory review, there is some sequencing to this. You probably don't want to have a commercial agreement with T-Mobile until after first that JV is put together and then it's approved by regulators. And so that's why I was saying maybe this T-Mobile definitive agreement could be Q4, potentially even later. But in the meantime, T-Mobile is going to use Starlink for their service. And then as I said before, it's going to be on a non-exclusive basis. So To appease regulators, T-Mobile will say, well, we're offering Starlink as a secondary option, but we're also going to give customers true broadband, which is AST SpaceMobile. And so it would be hard for regulators to argue that it's anti-competitive if Starlink is being offered by T-Mobile. And of course, Starlink is going to go directly to consumers. And so that's You know, it's hard. It's, it, for regulators, it's like, oh, we gave Starlink approval for 60 megahertz of mid-band spectrum and they're going direct to consumers. The market is vibrant. There's competitors there. So let's see. So yeah, we should hear back from the company maybe within the next few hours that everything is nominal and going as expected. Let me just look at the timeline here. Uh, Cook has a good point. He's responding to Scott Wisniewski. Let's get mission patches added to the merch store ASAP so we can add them to our launch jackets. Yes, I'm going to buy some mission patches. Let me just tweet here. Oh, we got SpaceX. Let me just retweet this. All right. Well, I'm not sure. Let me see if there's any other comments or questions, and then I'm going to try to go back to sleep. Let's see, someone is asking, when does AST report they're communicating with the satellites and everything's okay? Uh, we should probably hear that in the next few hours here. Uh, someone wants me— A word for those who said the satellite won't fit in the Falcon. Yeah. So I guess I'll just tip the hat to our friend Dim Spacebar, America's favorite independent consultant, who is more— keyword is unemployed for many years. But this guy started the rumor back in, I think at Mobile World Congress and was telling everybody with his hair on fire that our satellites would not fit in a Falcon 9 fairing. which is a standard size fairing, which our design— our satellites were designed to fit in any standard size fairing. But, um, this clown was saying that it would not fit in a Falcon 9. And then of course this other unemployed independent consultant, uh, Stuart Taylor, um, you know, claimed that SpaceX would not allow, uh, satellites to be stacked in a fairing. And so obviously both were 100% wrong. We successfully stacked our satellites in the Falcon 9 fairing. It was allowed. You know, it's kind of funny because like you have these guys who claim to be industry experts, but yet they talk, they don't have any conversations with the actual companies they criticize, nor do they have a relationship with SpaceX, but they make these claims. Where they come up with the claims, I don't know. Maybe it's a They have some, you know, under some mind-bending substances, they come up with these crazy harebrained ideas. But yeah, they claimed that we would not be able to stack our satellites in the Falcon 9 fairing, nor would they fit. But of course today just dispelled those notions. And what's funny is like they're, There were a number of hedge funds who actually believe them. And so oftentimes some of us have access to these expert networks, and in the expert network reports, you had the hedge funds who were asking questions. The first question would be, do these satellites fit in a Falcon 9? Is there issues? Which is hilarious. Redrum, are you going for a new record of long space? I hope not. I need to go to bed. But what I will do later today is I will snip the opening intro of AST SpaceMobile. That had a lot of great nuggets. Let's see. All right. So I think that's pretty much it. Yeah. I mean, that is a That was tremendous. We had a successful launch and successful deployment of 3 of our satellites. It just goes to show how difficult this is and what a tremendous accomplishment SpaceX, the Falcon 9 program, what that's been. It's a workhorse, a very reliable vehicle. It's something that everybody, whether that's for Starship or a Blue Origin Or Relativity or Rocket Lab. Well, Rocket Lab has it with their Electron rocket, but for the future Neutron rocket, it's something that everyone is aspiring to. And big thanks to SpaceX for the ride, a reliable ride without any issues. And I will say, yeah, what I guess it hasn't hit me fully because it's 4:00 AM and I'm kind of half awake, but For those that are down at Cape Canaveral, thanks for showing up and saying hello to Steve Larsen. And, you know, it, I think everybody, the good vibes in terms of people being down there and supporting launch, and of course everybody being up at this time, every little ounce helps. And so with that, I'm going to conclude. I'm going to try to get a few hours more sleep and then I'll be back up. and we can talk more about this launch and what it means. I am going to, before I go to bed, I'll try to clip the introductory video and I'll post that so people can watch it more easily on X. But with that, I'm going to end this and thanks everyone for joining. We'll do it again soon. Take care.
[00:59:07] Speaker C: 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.
[00:59:26] Speaker D: Listen. Mmm, waffles.
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