Anpanman - Amazon's $10B Space Bet and AST SpaceMobile's Production Breakout

[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.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: Hey everyone, not sure if this is gonna work. Um, let me just see. People give me a thumbs up if you can hear me okay. Um, I tried to use hotel Wi-Fi, but that didn't work too well. And then I think, uh, I'm roaming on Bell's network, but then I think I used up all my 5G connectivity. And so, um, I think I'm Probably running this space on 3G, so I'm not sure if that's going to work, but I'm getting thumbs up, so seems like it's okay. But I'm in the Vancouver Airport. I'm in the hallway of our hotel. Unfortunately, our room does not have a private place to do this space, and this hotel in particular does not have a business center either. So, so I'm just doing this out here. In the hallway. But yeah, I just wanted to get people together. Quite sorry I've been away. I was— it's actually been with family here in Vancouver for spring break. We went skiing this weekend. Of course, before we started the trip, everyone was sick. And so not ideal, but happy to say that everyone's had a great time thus far, and we're coming to the tail end of this trip. And of course, During this entire week while I was kind of out of commission, of course, a lot of news kind of hit the wire, and whether that was macro stuff or things related to AST, and of course some things in the space sector as well. But I did want to fire up a space and just provide some preliminary thoughts about the rumored Amazon interest in Globalstar and then talk about production as well. So let's talk about Amazon. So the Financial Times ran a report that Amazon is supposedly interested in acquiring Globalstar. They've had talks. And for those that remember Jay Munro, who is the CEO of Globalstar, who owns a pretty hefty portion of it, there were rumors, I think it was like last spring that he was interested in selling the company. And You know, clearly the leaks for that, the sale process came from Munro and his advisors. And, you know, he was seeking something north of $10 billion in terms of valuation for the company. And I think it's important to note that, you know, we're pretty much there. And so for any event-driven or merger arb or speculators who are trying to see if there's any potential upside from Globalstar, we're pretty much at his asking price now. It is possible that perhaps the company could sell for a higher price than what is being kicked around. However, I would say that it sounds like there was some follow-up reporting, I think from Semfor, saying that M&Os had taken a look at Globalstar and had passed, and it seems like SpaceX had probably passed as well. I think for SpaceX, for those that are wondering, it probably doesn't make sense for SpaceX to do this deal. right now, just given that they've got their IPO coming up. And on top of that, they're trying to close the EchoStar spectrum deal. And so from a regulatory standpoint, you probably don't want to go into the FCC process and muddy the waters by going through the approval process, which for EchoStar, I think they're targeting sometime the end of summer of 2027. And so by doing that deal and then potentially getting Globalstar, that transaction going through regulatory process, that just would complicate things quite a bit. And so I think it's probably off the table for SpaceX, but who knows, right? Because I think from SpaceX's perspective, if you look at things from an antitrust point of view, for them to buy EchoStar spectrum and then to purchase Globalstar, and then, you know, there's like supposedly rumors that maybe they're interested in Iridium. I think that's probably too many deals for them to try to get through regulatory review, but who knows? But I think from what I've heard, it sounds like SpaceX, that interest around Globalstar wasn't really there. And it seems like Munro has done, you know, he's used the press to kind of try to drum up interest. And it does seem like the Amazon interest is real. However, Who knows, right? Like, they've— for those that don't know, I think Amazon had tested Globalstar's terrestrial spectrum, this private N53 band back in, I think it was like 2013, 2014, and they never pulled the trigger on it. And so, no, there is some familiarity there, but we'll see. And I think You know, one of the key takeaways is that for those people who, the naysayers, you know, you've got all these like consultants who are at SAT Show who a year, 2 years ago were like, oh, direct-to-device, it's not really a real market, it's niche. And who knows, like if there's any real serious business that can come about it. And then of course, this time around SAT Show, like that's all people talk about is direct-to-device. And those same consultants who poo-pooed the market are now spreading rumors like, um, that SpaceX and Amazon and, and everybody and their brother is like trying to get into the market. And so, uh, it's kind of paradoxical, right? Kind of funny. But, um, but yeah, I think, you know, for, for Amazon, so taking a step back, like Globalstar, what, what do these guys have? So they do have rights to 7.7 megahertz of L-band, and that's for uplink. And then they've got 16.5 MHz of S-band for downlink. And out of that S-band, actually about 11.5 MHz in the US, which is the most valuable market, 11.5 is actually carved out for terrestrial use. And so not for MSS, but terrestrial private spectrum use. And so that's— it's now part of the 3GPP standard and Globalstar for the longest time has been trying to sell enterprises and companies on using this 11.5 megahertz of spectrum, which is similar to Wi-Fi, right? You could license that to a company to use in certain geographies, and that would be TDD, which is— it's not full duplex, but you would actually do both the up and downlink on that one channel. And so that's something that Monroe has been trying to pitch to companies, to MNOs and others as, hey, we've got this like unencumbered Wi-Fi-like spectrum that you could use. And so I think Amazon could actually be quite interested in that part of the spectrum. for terrestrial use, and that can be part of the reason why they're pursuing this. Right. And so, but I think, you know, looking at Globalstar overall, just to, you know, level set what exactly is there, you know, you've got that again, the L-band spectrum, 7.7 MHz for uplink, 16.5 MHz of S-band spectrum for downlink. However, 11.5 of that is carved out for terrestrial use in the US. And then with that, of course, you have Apple, which owns effectively 20% economic ownership in Globalstar, but then they have the rights to 85% of the current and all future network capacity. And so Apple effectively has what we call in deal parlance, a poison pill, right? They have a veto on any deal. So they have a right of first refusal. So let's say if Amazon offered a price, like, to Monroe's like, hey, that's great. I want to sell the company. Apple would have the ability to top that offer if they wanted to buy the company. But the key question there is to ask yourself is like, does Apple actually want to own this company? And based off of the structuring that they've put in place with Globalstar, it's very clear they don't want to own it. They don't want to become a service provider. They don't want to compete against their M&M customers. They don't want to be an FCC-regulated entity, and so they don't want it, right? And, but what they did want out of this was to provide satellite connectivity, like a new feature for their iPhones and, you know, watches, which enabled SOS messaging, some level of tracking. And they thought, you know, back in 20— when they negotiated this, I think in 2021 and then announced it in 2022, and they threw under $2 billion at this. They're like, hey, we're going to provide this new feature for the phone and it's going to help us sell more handsets. What they didn't foresee for whatever reason is that AST SpaceMobile was going to provide broadband connectivity and then Starlink was going to get into the market as well. And so you know, for them, this is a very suboptimal situation, right? Because they're, what was interesting back in 2022 is now kind of a, not, not a has-been solution, but it's, it's something that's not very interesting, right? Like for anyone who's used Apple's SOS messaging, you have to like be outside, point the phone directly at the satellite, you have to hold it there. You can send messaging messages, which is, which is pretty handy. Like if they're in, you know, When there's like no other connectivity where you are, like if you're out in the woods, it's great to have. But from a practical perspective, you know, you can't do a voice call, you can't do video or anything rich. It just is very short messages and you have to point your, you know, the phone at the satellite in order to send and receive messages. And that can take, you know, a few minutes to, perhaps even longer. And it's, it's not very reliable, right? But if you believe what the information reported this past— over the last several months, you know, Apple in the next iterations of the iPhone, they want to get to a service, support satellite service that will be seamless, that will work in your pocket, that will work indoors. And that's something that Globalstar cannot provide today. And it's not something that Globalstar can provide for the Probably the the medium term or the future for that matter, right? And so, so that leaves Apple in a pretty tough spot, right? Like they're they've invested in this company. You know, they've also fronted. They've paid off debt for Globalstar. They've also fronted capital for you know upcoming constellation to not only you know refresh the existing constellation, which. I believe, let's see my notes. I think Apple is paying for about 90, over 95, around 95% of the cost of replenishing the existing constellation of Globalstar satellites. So MDA Space is building 17 satellites, which will just help replace the current constellation. And then they have this plan, which they announced in February 2025, where MDA Space is going to produce 50 Aurora satellites for their next generation, what they're calling C3 constellation for Globalstar. And so that one is going to be more capable. There's not like a ton of details out about it, but it will be, you know, these will be software-defined satellites. For those that have followed some of my previous investments, this will leverage SatixFi, the company that MDA Space acquired. It'll leverage that technology, the ASICs there. And so these satellites will have higher power, it'll have beamforming, capabilities. It will utilize the same exact orbits, but supposedly offer better performance in terms of, you know, reaching a device that is compatible indoors to a degree and also in cars. There'll be less of a need to orient the antenna towards the satellite. So what they're hoping to achieve is better messaging, you know, narrowband data, the ability to allocate capacity more dynamically. And so if there's more users in a specific area, they can put more capacity there versus having fixed capacity in all the areas of coverage. But there's no indication that that constellation will have any ability to do broadband, right? And so going back to what I was saying before about Apple, like they're in a tough spot, right? Like they've got their chips in with Globalstar. It's a nice kind of backup service, but in terms of the roadmap, like it's going to get better, but it's not going to be broadband. And so for Apple, like, what's the point of supporting this thing when you don't have control over it, right? Because they don't want control over it. But then your partner is kind of weak because it's Globalstar and they need money and the technology's old and they're not, they don't have any innovation, right? Like they're actually, they went out on an RFP process and they went to MDA Space and say, hey, said, hey, can you, show me what you got. Like, I want to do these things and can you do them? And MDA Space is like, here, here's the Aurora satellite. This is the best we can do. And they're like, okay, great, we'll do that. But it's not good enough, right? Because then they're competing against AST SpaceMobile and Starlink. And so for Apple, based off of some of their reporting this past week, they're, they're, they kind of want to get rid of being in this spot where they're, they're tied to this kind of mediocre service that's not going to get any better. And while, you know, you've got Starlink and AST that are going to, you know, surpass anything that they're doing near-term, medium-term, long-term. And so with that, you know, there is this idea that perhaps Apple will exit Globalstar because they are acknowledging that train has left the station and why compete, right? Because at the end of the day, like, it's almost the, the analogy would be similar to where Apple has kind of made the right move, at least so far in AI, where it's like, hey, we're not going to invest in AI. We're going to let OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, like, duke it out, and then we'll just, we'll be the gatekeeper. We'll allow people to access AI, you know, pick their API on the phone. And so all of a sudden the market's like, hey, that's great. You're not spending money to go do it and you're getting the benefit of on your phone. You know, whether that or not, that's a good long-term strategy, who knows? But at least Apple, at least from the AI perspective, like maybe they're, they're taking some of their attack for direct-to-device. And so, so that's where Amazon comes in because then I think You know, for Amazon, they, they're, you know, they're clearly focused on fixed wireless. They're doing launch. They don't have a strategy in direct-to-device or IoT. And so this could kind of fill that niche for them, right? And so if you want to have the ability to offer, you know, a full stack, as I know it's like an overused term, but a full stack offering versus Starlink, then direct-to-device is pretty important. Now, does that mean that they're going to go offer the service themselves and compete with Starlink? That's somewhat questionable. It's unclear, right? Because I think obviously Amazon has the consumer relationship and they could offer a service in tandem with their LEO service. However, if it were a mobile device, that would be pretty tough, right? Because you need terrestrial spectrum, which is low band. 600 to 900 megahertz to offer something that's comparable to what MNOs provide. I'm guessing Amazon doesn't want to get into that level of service. Maybe they could do, become like a virtual network operator and partner with Verizon or AT&T, and then they could layer on this new direct-to-device service on top of it. But I think going down that route is not it's probably not going to be that economically attractive, although Amazon could justify it because they obviously could generate economics in other ways from consumers. But I think for Amazon at this point, it's probably worth the optionality, right? Because I think owning spectrum is always a good thing. And for Amazon, they could in the future, once Starlink has built out their fixed wireless business, they can use that satellite capacity to then start building a direct-to-device constellation. And it may not be focused on mobile phones, but it'll be 3GPP compatible. They could do IoT, they could do a bunch of different things there. They could try to sell, you know, services to military. There's a whole host of things that you could try to do, right? Like the key thing is having the ability to build a capable constellation and then having spectrum access to spectrum, which AST has access to spectrum in 2 ways. One is through its terrestrial, you know, they get access to prime real estate terrestrial spectrum through MNO partners. And then they of course have their L and S-band strategy where they bought 80-year usage rights of Legato in the US and Canada. And then they have ITU priority rights globally, which they're going to, you know, for example, in Europe, they're going to go through regulatory process and get 2 GHz of spectrum in 2027 through the EU process. But for Amazon, like, there is optionality and it's somewhat cheap, right? Like, it's $10 billion plus for Globalstar. You get an existing constellation. It's not great, but, you know, it is a constellation. But the key thing is like you have these global rights for spectrum. And so Amazon could do a lot of things with that. Now, you know, some people may ask, well, is this competitive? Is it a threat to AST? It could be long-term. But as we've said before, like the market is going to be huge. It's massive, right? Like it's not just mobile phones, it's IoT devices. It's, I mean, we've seen now like the company is getting Golden Dome Awards. I mean, the company's with its particular satellite, you know, technology. There's other applications beyond just broadband connectivity for mobile phones or IoT devices. There's 10 different military use cases for it, right? Like sensing, jamming, GPS, all kinds of things, right? And so Amazon could be thinking about some of these things too. And so, however, because it's Amazon in talks with Globalstar, it's probably not going to be— it's probably going to be something that's more consumer-focused. It's not going to be if it had more, I guess, military applications, then it would probably be an acquisition done via Blue Origin. So there is a lot of optionality there, and I could see why Amazon wants to do this because, I mean, one of the biggest things, the reasons why Amazon might want to do this deal is that again, they want to preserve some optionality, but there's also a defensive reason too, right? Like if they truly thought that Starlink was going to buy Globalstar and this was kind of their one shot to make a defensive play, then that might be reason enough to do the deal, right? Like Globalstar, it's not like it's hemorrhaging a ton of money. And so for Amazon, by acquiring it, they can continue to provide service to Apple and then at some point decide to make some changes in the future. Now, as I mentioned before, there is a poison pill here because Apple will have the final say and they can make life hard for anybody who buys this. But maybe there's a world where Amazon gets concessions from Apple in terms of giving up 85% of capacity rights. Maybe Amazon, you know, Apple is going to extract serious flesh for this, but in return, Amazon would effectively, you know, provide Apple with a much better direct-to-device, you know, service and, you know, some type of, you know, financial and capacity commitments. But who knows? Like, I think it's very telling that the, you know, the rumors were spring last year and now we're, it's one year later and now you've got leaks, of a potential deal, obviously coming from the Globalstar side, because there's no reason why Amazon would leak this. And that, you know, hey, they're close to a deal and they're working on these complexities. Sometimes you see these leaks, by the way, where the sell side, the bankers or lawyers are trying to drum up interest. They're like, hey, Amazon's really close. Like, are you sure SpaceX or Google or someone, like, are you sure you don't want to, you know, have another look or stop this before it goes away? And so yeah, I think now I couldn't tell you what the probability of a deal is because this deal, if it does happen, is going to be very complex. And I'd be very curious to see what the deal terms are. But as I've said before, because it's Amazon, there's a whole host of reasons why they might want to buy this deal or do this deal. It could be satellite connectivity, or it could just be purely for the terrestrial spectrum, right? That 11.5 megahertz of spectrum in the US is quite valuable and it's already authorized for terrestrial use. And so if you can imagine it being used, I remember Jay Monroe telling people like, hey, we've got this premium Wi-Fi service that people, you know, anyone could license this from us and pay us royalty. And then they, you know, if you could imagine Amazon providing terrestrial service across the US for its customers, like there's some value in that, right? But I think the other thing to keep in mind is that that 11.5 megahertz of spectrum is low power. They don't have regulatory approval to run high power. And so it would be primarily, I believe, solely for local networks. And so it's not as if they could run a nationwide network with towers lighting up that 2.4 GHz of 11.5 MHz of S-band spectrum. So anyway, but yeah, those are some initial thoughts. I mean, I think the key takeaway here though is that— oh, the other thing I forgot to mention is Amazon could also buy this Globalstar, goodbye Globalstar, and then go to Bell and say, hey, you've got the satellites, I got the spectrum, Can you light up my spectrum? And, you know, I provide this special Amazon service. And Bell would be like, yeah, sure, I'll do that. And so that would be another, you know, option for Bezos and Amazon. They could leverage AST SpaceMobile's, you know, Block 3 satellites, which are focused on mid-band, because this fits perfectly in the L and S-band that it'll be serving and allow Amazon to provide that service. Another thing you can keep in mind is that if Amazon buys Globalstar, I guess there's this possibility that they could try to get Verizon or AT&T or T-Mobile to utilize their service. But I would just point out that MNOs are wary of Amazon, just like they're wary of SpaceX. And so any type of relationship where Amazon clearly owns the customer through its Prime service. And so I think AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile would be wary of giving their customer control over to Amazon. And as we all know, this is another thing to point out. I think Amazon is contemplating coming out with AI devices and potentially a mobile phone again. Those, some folks will remember that Amazon tried to create the Fire Phone or whatever it was. But that's, that's another wrinkle. I think that's probably going to be tough for Apple to sort out. Like if they do want— they ultimately do acquiesce to Amazon buying Globalstar. They also probably in the back of their minds know that Amazon's probably going to roll out a new phone. And so what does— what kind of implications does that have in terms of, you know, enabling a future competitor? So there's a lot of stuff going on here. It's very complex. I'm just pointing out some of the issues to think about. But yeah, it's not very straightforward. The other thing I would say is I did see MDA Space rallying on Friday. If Amazon buys Globalstar, on the one hand, from a credit perspective, that could be good. Amazon may go to MDA Space and say, hey, we want a bigger constellation. We want better specs, can you go build it? But that, if you think about it, like they already had that with Apple, right? Like Apple is about as good of a credit as it gets and Apple is already fronting all this investment for this new constellation. So I'm not, I don't think Amazon changes that. And actually what I think the market got wrong is that this is like a huge risk for MDA space, right? Because like for Amazon, they're already building Hundreds of, and ultimately what will be thousands of LEO satellites. So they've already got satellite prowess, satellite-making prowess. And so if anything, if Amazon does buy Globalstar, they'll probably bring satellite design and production in-house. And so I think the future, once the 17 satellites are done to replenish the Globalstar constellation, that future 50-satellite order, 50-plus satellite order for Aurora. I think that's going to be a huge risk. And so I think MDA Space potentially could lose a pretty big customer here. So anyway, there's some initial thoughts. I still, I've got to think through this one a bit more, but I think key takeaway though is that this market direct-to-device, the whole thought that this is a niche market and that it's not going to be very big. You're seeing SpaceX spend over $20 billion on spectrum. Amazon's in talks to buy Globalstar for plus $10 billion possibly, maybe Iridium. I don't know if Iridium is going to get acquired, but clearly they own some valuable spectrum. But, you know, can Matt Desch actually get someone to lease his spectrum, which is what, you know, he talked about on the call, the last earnings call? You know, it's possible. So clearly, like, this is a big area of strategic focus. And so it's, it's, As I said before, it's kind of funny that you've got all these legacy guys in the satellite industry poo-poo direct-to-device for, gosh, maybe it's been almost a decade now. And now everyone is, this is all they can talk about, right? Like you've got Viasat, you know, SES, everybody and their brother is talking about, hey, we've got a direct-to-device strategy and this is the best thing since sliced bread. So it's just kind of funny seeing that. And even these supposed consultants who poo-pooed it for many years, now it's like the only thing they can talk about, right? Like, I think Tim Ferriss was the one who was like spreading the SpaceX rumor, like, oh, the deal's imminent. And of course it didn't happen. And, um, and then, uh, someone shared with me that he's doing a call with Deutsche Bank to tell, talk to people about the landscape. 'Cause clearly like a lot of, um, venture investors and, and hedge fund guys are following the industry and And, you know, whether people have investments in EchoStar or Iridium or Globalstar, I mean, clearly people have made a lot of money. AST stock's doing well too. Everybody wants to learn more about this industry, and unfortunately they're learning from Tim Farr, but that's okay because that's how we make money and those guys don't make money. But anyway, so moving on, let's see. I did want to give some, a bit more color on production. For ASD Space Mobile. And so obviously, like, everyone's focused on batch production and, you know, there's been some anxiety on Twitter. It's like, what's the company doing? And I think it's— I finally got a chance to catch up on most of Cook's Space, and I think he said it rightly, which is what I've been saying too, is that this stuff is not easy, right? Like, if Abel— it's not as if Abel or management are trying to slow roll things, right? Like they, they want to get things done quickly, but you have to, especially for the company's DNA, like you, you want to get things done the right way the first time all the time, right? And so if this stuff was easy, then other people would be doing it, right? But there's only one company that created this market and innovated. And, and of course you got Starlink, you know, following and, And, you know, in terms of competition, just to reiterate, like what Starlink is doing with their first-generation satellites is pretty much like narrowband messaging. Second-generation satellites are going to try to catch up to what the Block 2 satellites are capable of now. But by then, which is, you know, 20— what, 2027, 2028, we will have moved on to additional iterations. And so, and even then, I'm not even sure of like those will be broadband for Starlink. But anyway, I did want to provide some color. So, you know, when the company did talk about stacking being a problem, and so for those that, you know, have followed us closely or haven't followed closely, you know, AST has these tuna cans or rings as we'll call them. And in order for the next generation to in order to send enough into, in a, in a rocket launch, you have to save as much weight as possible. And so the company has gone the extra effort. So, you know, like for example, I think Elon this past week or so had tweeted about how steel was a natural, a great solution for them for Starship. And he talked about how, you know, using aluminum has, you know, it's not as strong and there's like structural issues there. But then composites are just too difficult, right? Like it's, it's, it's very expensive to deal with. Well, AST has decided to go down the composite route where you, if you invest the time and energy into developing satellites with composites, it is tough as hell and it's hard to get off the ground. But once you do it, the weight savings versus, and the strength that you get out of that are unparalleled, right? And so The company, you know, I think they, they got their first batch of composites and when they tested them, you know, I think they, they found that they were not structurally strong enough. And this is what can happen with composites where, you know, when you go through modeling and you, you come up with designs, they may not stand up to the, to actual physical tests, right? And so, You know, whether you've got a, you know, for the company, they had to go back to the drawing board in some respects, and they had to solve this issue, which is stacking, right? So if you can imagine, like, if you have 3 of these satellites or 4 of these satellites stacked, the vertical, the vertical, you know, pressure that especially the bottom satellite has is tremendous, right? Because it's got to support 3 satellites above it. And then for that second satellite, it's got to support 2 satellites above it. And so it's not just vertical, but it's also horizontal because, for example, in a Blue Origin rocket, you've got these things have to be, you know, they get, they get when it's on the launcher, the rocket is sideways and then it gets, you know, it gets lifted up vertically. But anyway, from what I understand, I think the company You know, solved this issue back in February, uh, or sometime over the course of February. And so if you can imagine that tuna can, like if it's vertically not strong enough, what you can do for the rings is you can put, um, maybe tubes around it, right? Like, um, whether it's composite or potential metals, like you, you can reinforce it. Um, and you do that to the point where you don't want to add too much weight, but you want to add enough where At least the bottom ring is strong enough to support the top 3, and then that, that, then the second one is strong enough to support the top 2 or, or 1, and then, you know, and so on.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:11] Speaker C: And so I believe the company, you know, solved this in February. And then obviously then you've gotta integrate the payloads. And here, you know, there, when you, when you talk about payloads, that, that includes the microns and then everything that goes inside as well.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: And so I believe, you know, the company had talked about having enough microns built. I think perhaps maybe the company is now around, they've made enough microns for 30 satellites. And so they've built a lot of these things, right, in terms of microns. And I believe payloads, you know, I'm not sure exactly how many payloads they have, but now that they've solved stacking, meaning, so the whatever rings that they have on site, they've reinforced them properly. And so they can use those. And then you've got to integrate. The microns and the payloads into the tuna can, and then you've got to go through testing, right? And testing takes some time. But it sounds like the company's probably, or not probably, they are on target to get the first batch done by the end of April. And then that first batch will get shipped to Florida and it'll go up on Falcon 9. And then shortly thereafter, there'll be another batch, right? And so we're kind of at this point where we've reached terminal velocity from production hell where they've solved stacking in February. They're now integrating payloads. They now have got to test them. And so I think we're going to start seeing a much faster cadence where the company is confident that they are still on target for 45 satellites for 2026. Now that's going to be, I mean, it's going to be pretty much gangbusters, which is actually going to be quite fun to watch because they're going to start pumping out these batches and sending them down to the Cape where, you know, the first 2 are going to be Falcon 9 launches. You know, we might see, for those that have been following closely, we've seen, you know, obviously we're waiting for New Glenn 3, which, um, I think that's now targeted for sometime April 12th to potentially April 14th. But beyond that, you know, putting that one aside, like, um, Blue Origin has now got an STA for New Glenn 4, 5, and I think 6.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:21] Speaker C: Or yeah, maybe they got 6 already. And so, you know, how many of those are going to be for AST SpaceMobile? It's unclear. But let's— if it's even just 2 of them and you stack 6 to 8 of these satellites, that's going to go pretty far away in terms of being able to hit your, you know, 45 cadence for this year. So, but yeah, I think, I think we're kind of at this point where the company is very confident they've solved sacking. One thing I forgot to mention is that as part of that solution, the, the, the ring has been designed. And so instead of retrofitting, you know, these tubes to strengthen the ring, the future, you know, rings, which call it, say, Bluebird 13+, those are actually going to have composites at the source that are going to be, that are designed to be, you know, that have these improvements where they're going to be strong enough. And so, so yeah, I think, I think now we're in this like target zone where once April kicks off, like it's going to be nonstop. And so my guess is, you know, this, this, this average of 1.5 launches or 1 to 2, what was it? one launch every 1 to 2 months. We actually could start seeing probably more like if they're going to get to the 45 that they need, it's, it's, it could be more like 2 launches a month or who knows. But anyway, I just wanted to pass that along because I think, I think that's an important point where, you know, Cook talks about the production constipation. I think we're now kind of at the point where we're going to have production diarrhea, or whatever you want to call it, where these things are going to be flying out like hotcakes. And so the fact that, you know, for example, we've got 30 satellites worth of microns already built, we just now need to get those composite wings in the door, get everything, the, you know, the microns, the rest of the payloads integrated and tested and then, you know, shipped. So So yeah, I mean, I think the company is very confident now we've kind of gotten over this hump. Now, in terms of the Blue Origin New Glenn 3 launch, yes, it's been delayed, and that's pretty much out of the company's hands. I mean, as everyone knows, like, we sent the satellite down to the Cape quite some time ago. But as I've mentioned before, you know, that New Glenn 3 launch is absolutely critical to show that they can Do a refurbish and relaunch. And so they wanna make sure that they get that right and whatever hiccups or things, you know, double-checking that they wanna do, like that's just causing this thing to kind of get pushed back, which it is what it is and I'm okay with it. So anyway, the last thing I'll mention, then I've gotta hop, but Space Force, this was And I retweeted Space Case Taylor's tweet about this, but the numbers—some numbers came out yesterday today, which were quite staggering. I think for this coming year, the Space Force budget for funding is—is the request is seventy one point two billion dollars, which is seventy seven percent higher than forty billion, which was budgeted in twenty six. And so. Yeah, this just like underscores how important space is for the US in terms of, you know, strategic priorities where I think companies like AST SpaceMobile, Rocket Lab, Planet Lab, any, you know, you name it, BlackSky, any of these other companies, like it's going to be a key focus, right? Like spending is only going to go up. And whether, you know, especially for companies that have dual use case, which AST does, which is, you know, it's got the commercial side, but also the government, you know, defense side. It's going to be a very interesting, you know, next 2, 3 years, right? And you've obviously got the SpaceX IPO coming up, which I didn't even talk about, like the bankers, I believe, talk, you know, discussing a $2 trillion valuation range, which is pretty crazy. But yeah, things are coming together. And I think for AST, obviously production can't come— and production and launch, you know, the affirmation of 6 satellites per month, which I think is going to come sometime by the end of Q2. Obviously, they could be at 4 satellites a month, 5 satellites a month, but eventually you get to 6. With the delays that we've had, I believe they're probably hoping to reiterate that or to confirm that by the end of the second quarter. But yeah, I think all the pieces are coming, are lining up, right? And so, you know, maybe this Globalstar deal will happen and it'll bring even more strategic focus to the sector. And, you know, I mentioned this before, you know, AST is testing with Apple, it's testing with Meta, it already has a partnership with Google. And so, yeah, if Amazon does pull the trigger on Globalstar, like, does that cause other strategic movement, right? Because then AST SpaceMobile becomes, from a strategic perspective, much more interesting for everyone else, right? And/or maybe Amazon is like, hey, AST, can we use your satellites to light up the spectrum that we just bought? And so anyway, I'll close it there. I am— I will be back home next week, and so we'll be more active. But yeah, I'm interested to see what happens in the coming week. And obviously there's a lot of stuff going on in Iran and, and, you know, for near-term volatility, that's not good. But I think as Michael Pollack said it in a presentation, At that show, like the conflicts in Iran and Venezuela just, you know, highlight the importance of what ASD is doing. And he didn't specifically allude to exactly what that meant, but I think we all kind of know. And so I think the importance of what the company's doing by the— is increasing by the day, right? And so if you're an investor in ASD, we're in a very good spot. So I'll end it there. Thanks everyone for joining. And yeah, as this stuff kind of evolves and unfolds for Amazon and maybe, you know, something related to Iridium and what have you, yeah, it'll be interesting to see, you know, what the implications are for AST. And my personal view is I think the company's strategic value just keeps going up. So thanks everyone for joining and we'll talk again soon. Take care.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. 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.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think we need to know that we can really affect billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular mobile connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on 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 What you do, the enemy knows.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:44:27] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.