Anpanman - Beyond the Burn: Conviction in the Face of Satellite Setbacks

[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 A: Hey everyone, thanks for joining. I decided to start a space after getting some sleep last night. I feel a little better, although I have a headache. Um, but yeah, new day, uh, new dawn, and just wanted to talk about additional thoughts around AST, what happened overnight. We learned a few more things, and maybe I'll just briefly cover what I did last night as well. Um, because it's, it's relevant. But, but yeah, thanks everyone for joining. Um, I guess first I'll just start off and— oh, by the way, I'm, I'm gonna take questions. So if you have a question, just comment on the space and then I'll try to answer them, whether it's related to the company or, um, Blue Origin or, or whatever it is, right? So feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get to those. But, um, yeah, it's a new morning. Uh, last night we saw overnight trading. There was really high volumes. I think the stock got down to $72, $71 at one point. I bought some shares at $72.50 out of defiance, I guess, but more so that I thought the price was cheap relative to what had transpired, obviously. There's some uncertainty with Blue Origin as one of our primary launch vehicles, but I think they're going to solve it and they're going to fix it. I think the concerns at this point are overly priced in, especially after Rakuten had sold some portion of its position and put downward pressure on the stock. And so I think quite a bit of negativity is priced in. And so I'm bullish at these levels. And so overnight I bought stock on Robinhood. I have a Robinhood account in order to do so. I'm not sponsored by Robinhood, but I also bought shares today. And I don't often do this, but I also bought some of the levered ETF just for— sorry, levered— I think it's an ETN for AST. I don't often do that, but today I decided why not just give it a shot. But for anyone who does trade levered products, it is for a trade. Like, don't ever hold them for any long period of time. Um, but if you're looking to do a short period of time, uh, they can give you some additional leverage. Um, but anyway, I did want to cover a few things and again answer questions. Um, first I'll just say, um, this morning, uh, all your usual suspects, the haters, they were out in full force, the doubters. Uh, and of course, like, these are people, um, you know, it's, it's very clear, like, what their objectives are. Um, I mean, there are some people who just, like, revel in others' misery And they try to get under people's skin and get engagement. But the pretty sick ones are the ones who try to prey on your vulnerabilities. And so the ones who are like, yeah, AST, it's negative and here's why you should buy this other company or this company's better. And so it's pretty clear what ploy they're trying to take. And it's like, yeah, you should just take losses and invest in this other company. And Yeah, I just find it pretty disgusting, but I guess that's how some people choose to live their lives, right? I think one thing about the space community is that this tribalism is pretty sad, like the fact that people celebrate when another company has had some difficulty and then they will um, you know, tout that perhaps their executives are better or whatever it is. But yeah, I mean, if that makes you feel better, um, like if you admit— if that makes you feel better about your investment that perhaps like, you know, this other company has gone through— it's going through some difficulties, um, I guess in particular for AST, you know, they— I, I don't put fault on them for the loss of the satellite yesterday. Um, could you fault them for accepting this particular mission profile? Um, yeah, I guess they take some level of blame, but they also were smart about it, right? Like, they got insurance, um, which is more than going to cover the cost of the satellite. They also get another flight credit with Blue Origin. But, um, you know, one thing that came out overnight which I didn't really think about and, um, is important is that, uh, I think it's— let me just look here— I think it was Scott Manley who was saying that, um, and Robert— I think his name is Robert McDowell— that had this mission the second stage just, had it just done a single burn to get to a higher orbit, so say like 500 or 600 kilometers, it would have been successful. But Blue Origin New Glenn, part of rolling out a new vehicle is testing. And so in this test, there was a focus on doing a dual burn of the second stage. And so in order to deliver the payload into 460-kilometer orbit. And so for those that remember, Bluebird 6 was actually inserted into, I believe it was 600 kilometers. And so here we actually accepted a mission profile where the orbit was going to be lower and it was going to be riskier because of those 2 burns. And of course, as we know, the second burn didn't happen. And so Yeah, things happen. Like space, in space, things can and do go wrong. And as you, um, try to push the envelope of what a vehicle is capable of, you're going to have situations where things don't hand out, you know, come out the way that you expect them. But, um, I have full confidence that Blue Origin will figure it out. Um, you know, they— for those that may have missed it, David Limp, I think, gave an interview with Bloomberg, ahead of this launch, obviously, they were targeting anywhere between 8 to 12 launches this year. In order to achieve that, they have 2 boosters now that are working first stage, and those 2 are, if they can get to the 30-day reuse cadence, then you're looking at a launch every 2 weeks. But obviously the second stage is not reusable, so you need to manufacture as many of those as you can. I think Their goal is to, and Katzie has talked about this, which is, for example, Bluebird 6 and Bluebird 7 were developed, and that whole process was to build the machine that builds a machine, meaning in order to stand up manufacturing, you have to build this new spacecraft, which was Bluebird 6 and 7, and 6, 7. Anyway, but Bluebird 7 was actually a backup plan to Bluebird 6, and so had they got Bluebird 7 into orbit, that would have been kind of like gravy. But the fact that we lost it, it doesn't impact the mission for SDA and the Department of Defense work that we're doing, from what I understand. But going back to Blue Origin, they are in the process of ramping up production and Dave Lim talks about this, is building the machine that builds the machines. And so their key constraint is going to be building many, but of course highly reliable NG-2 boosters. And so I think this is the second stage. And so those, I think they've built like 6 or 7 or maybe 8 of them so far. And in order— those are one-off uses. So they are talking about getting to a point where they can launch every week. And so that's building 52 second stage boosters in a year. And so they're— hold on one second, someone's saying that I'm cutting out. Am I cutting out? Okay, maybe it's just one person. But yeah, they're getting to a point where they can build, or they want to get to a point where they can build these on a weekly basis. And so Yeah, they, you know, they— the first burn was successful, second burn was not. Um, as I mentioned last night, after you do the first burn to get to raise the apogee, um, the, the booster coasts for a while. And some things, you know, some things can get complicated when it's coasting because if you have a leak or some of the, the fuel freezes, then reigniting for a second burn in order to achieve the pedigree which is what happened yesterday. If you fail that, then you're gonna be in an elliptical orbit. And of course, the lowest point of that elliptical orbit, I think it was like 150 kilometers. And so if you don't turn that into a circular orbit, then you're gonna have obviously the satellite come down in a very short period of time, which is what's gonna happen. But yeah, that's, I mean, Blue Origin, I think they're going to figure it out. Obviously, there's going to be an FAA review, and depending on what they find, it could be a pretty quick turnaround. It could be, they could close their investigation in a month or two, or it could be longer. And so if it is longer, that's where the timeline for getting, for example, approximately 45 satellites, which they've softened that language. Originally it was 60, then it was 45, and now they're saying approximately 45.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: So—
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Obviously there's like some wiggle room, perhaps they won't get there, but it's gonna be dependent on Blue Origin fixing this problem. That said, we do have 2 Falcon 9 launches, I believe, which are gonna take the next 2 batches. And that's the timing, that's probably looking at a June, July launch for those. And then from that point on, you're probably looking at Blue Origin again. And hopefully by that time, Of course, when you have a failure like this, you don't want to be the first customer on Blue Origin. And so my assumption is that New Glenn 4 is probably going to take Amazon LEO satellites to orbit. And if that's successful, then we'll move on to sending up 6 Bluebirds and eventually 8 at a time. The other thing about last night, or sorry, yesterday, is that this was going to be— for some of the conspiracy theorists who are like, well, they probably sabotaged the rocket themselves. That makes no sense because for Blue Origin, becoming an industrial, reliable, heavy-lift rocket is really important to them. This was their 3rd certification flight with the US government. And so by not achieving that success, they're going to have to wait. I think the US government has quite a few payloads booked with Blue Origin. And so until they achieve a a successful 4th certified flight, um, they won't be able to take any of those. And so in terms of silver lining, it actually, um, that opens up their manifest. Um, and so that in a weird way, um, once the rocket is successful, um, they might end up taking more AST satellites up. But, um, you know, the company, the company does have, um, some backfill capacity with, with Falcon 9. Ideally, Blue Origin gets everything in order and we continue to launch with them, but if they don't, then you still have got the alternative, which is Falcon 9, and of course, this new heavy launch vehicle where they're on standby. I'm not sure, someone speculated that maybe that's Mitsubishi. It could be Ariane or ULA, but from what I understand, by going on standby, if that if that vehicle has customers who are not ready, then we can step in and take that launch. So that's another alternative as well. But yeah, so I think, let's see here, just going through some of my notes. I did cover the failure of the second stage and FAA review. But yeah, I mean, we're obviously gonna wait and see what the investigation finds. And I think another thing too, and I understand where people are coming from, it would be nice for Blue Origin to come out immediately with a very simple apology that they're sorry they lost the customer's payload. But what I don't know is, and what we, or I guess all of us don't know, is that I'm sure there are conversations have happened between Bezos and Abel, and, and, you know, the 2 teams as well. And so I'm sure there's, there's that going on. The other thing is that, um, you know, I, I'm not an FAA investigator and I don't know what the legal issues are, but, um, I assume that Blue Origin is going to wait and see exactly what transpired, um, before they put anything more formal out. Aside from what they've disclosed thus far. And so I think people should just be kind of aware of that before jumping to conclusions about them. But yeah, I mean, obviously yesterday it was not good and it was negative, but at the same time, the company's continuing on, right? They're working on the next batches of satellites and there's a lot of things ahead. And so in space, with these companies, you face a setback, but you don't let it get to you. You got to keep marching forward. But yeah, so I think a few things. I did mention this yesterday. Obviously the guidance changed a bit. So the first batch of Bluebird satellites that the company was kind of indicating towards the end of April, this was as of maybe 2 weeks ago, but now looking at 30 days from yesterday, and so now you're looking at mid-May, which coincides with the earnings update, which will be good because we'll hear— someone had asked a question about how Bluebird 6 is performing, and the company actually mentioned, I think Abel during his welcoming speech talked about how they were getting in excess of 100 megabits per second performance, which is really great. And I assume that that's got to be Bluebird 6. And so we'll probably hear some performance updates in regards to that satellite. And then of course, yesterday there's been multiple questions of like, how are they going to get to 45? To get to approximately 45, does that end up being 39, 38, 40, 41? It's really going to depend on Blue Origin and if they can get to that 8-satellite cadence. Because you only need a few of those for that to happen. And based off what Dave Limp was saying yesterday of getting to 8 to 10, 12 launches this year, clearly they're pretty optimistic. Obviously there was a setback yesterday, but if they can solve it and keep pushing forward, then I think you can get to that 45 number. But clearly it's a stretch goal. But let's see here. But yeah, I think You know, those are— that's kind of a quick recap of some of the negatives from yesterday. I mean, the positives, um, you know, obviously Blue Origin learned a lot about this flight and they'll take that back to the drawing board and make a few changes and hopefully solve some of the issues that occurred here. AST learned, um, probably quite a bit as well. And then the key thing, one of the key things, which I think some of the sell-side analysts mentioned today, is that these 2 companies learned to work together. Because when you bring payloads and you integrate them, it's a very complex process. And so doing that integration work together, by putting these processes in place, you're going to be able to do it much faster the next time. And so this holds true with ISRO and will hold true with SpaceX. The company already has experience in delivering payloads to SpaceX, and so they can do that pretty quickly. But with Blue Origin, now we've kind of unlocked this capability. Let's see, one thing I forgot to mention. Let's see here. Yeah, so I guess I did mention it. The insurance is going to cover, more than cover the cost of Bluebird 7, but of course you can't get that time back and all the sweat. blood, sweat, and tears that went into it, but at least you're getting something back. And so I believe the company overinsured Bluebird 7. You can do that based off of what premiums you want to pay. And so there's that. And then also Blue Origin, what's customary in the industry is that you offer to provide another rocket launch. And so I believe the company's going to get that, which interestingly will be for the next launch, which will have multiple Bluebirds. And so in some ways, it's going to be more cost-effective since you're putting up more satellites versus just one. I guess a few nuggets from various interactions with the company down in Cape Canaveral. Someone did have a conversation with the CTO, and it sounds like they have now 2 TVACs, 2 chambers for testing satellites, putting them through the temperature changes, environmental, all that. And then I believe the company also has another 2 that are on the way. And so the company's now going to have 4 TBACs in order to do multiple satellite testing. So this is part of the process of standing up production and building the machine that builds a machine. And so that was a pretty positive nugget that I had heard. Another thing is One of my conversations with Michael Pollack, it was really cool to meet this guy, super sharp, very nice. But Michael Pollack is the head of the defense business, and he was indicating without obviously telling us anything, but apparently there's a lot of positive developments that are coming soon. I assume based off of the timing of where we are right now, one of those probably has to be like Golden Dome. Golden Dome Award. But, um, but yeah, perhaps there's, there's other things too that are, that are in the cooker. Um, but, but yeah, there was a group of us that were speaking to Michael Pollack and were pleasantly surprised at his, his positive— and his— how positive he was about, um, what lies ahead. Obviously, you know, yesterday was a— for him though, it was a gut punch because, um, FM1 and FM2 are part of of the government work, and so losing FM2 is not ideal. But as I mentioned before, FM2 was a backup to FM1 in case FM1 was not successful. And so the fact that it was successful, and then of course FM2, the one that we thought was going to be successful but wasn't, it doesn't impact the company's ability to meet its financial obligations or performance obligations related to some of this government work. I did, one thing that was kind of interesting is I did ask the company about whether it made sense to build another FM-2 and put it up in space, and maybe if that would be a requirement. And the response was that they're actually, they've already moved on to the next platform. And so that tells me that perhaps they're, you know, maybe they're building obviously another experimental satellite for the government, but then perhaps that is going to lead to this concept of a completely government-focused shell of Constellation. So something similar to what Starshield is for SpaceX. But that was a pretty interesting nugget that I learned. But yeah, what lies ahead? I mean, I saw a bunch of negativity from people, which is, again, it's understandable for some of the people who've gone out in the deep end and lashed out at others. You know, some of the people who've been toxic for quite some time, instead of trying to talk them down or interact with them in a rational manner, I— if you find yourself blocked, it's probably because I just, I just don't want to deal with people who are toxic on this platform. Because for me, I'm doing this, I'm doing this just out of, you know, fun and camaraderie, because I get just as much as I do as I put into the community, because I think As I met like a number of people this weekend, you know, I wouldn't have been able to make it this far if it wasn't for other people's due diligence and some of their friendship. But during the obviously the difficult times, but also the good the good times, and so if you're toxic and you you know you're not adding anything to the conversation, and by the way, like there were some people yesterday who. Aren't AST shareholders, or maybe they are. But there were some people calling me names. Some guy was claiming that I was a scammer, which— and today I saw one of our haters saying AST is a multi-level marketing scheme, which didn't make sense to me because in a multi-level marketing scheme, people sell products, they take a cut, and then you have to get more people to buy the product and take a cut, which doesn't make any sense. AST is a publicly traded company. They're obviously trying to achieve a very big objective. They created this market of direct-to-device. They're working with MNOs globally. They're working with the US government. They have Department of Defense work. So it's a real company, and I happen to be invested in it, and I research and I talk about it. So not sure how that relates to being a multi-level marketing Scheme, but but like I said before, like these haters are going to come out and they're going to throw everything against the wall to make you feel bad or revel in your misery. But yeah, this morning I woke up and I was like, "Ah, you know what? I know a lot of these guys have shorted in the hole. I'm going to buy stock because I believe in the company. I think it's like at a good level, and so I'm going to add to my position." One thing oh there was this one guy. He's he's kind of. I might tweet about it later because I think it's something good for people to learn. But if you're not feeling good and you need to sell, you need to mitigate your losses or you need to raise liquidity, perhaps you got over your skis, I'm all for that. When I was working in the hedge fund industry, when I suffered a big loss or things were going against me, one of the best things that I could do back then was to gross down my book, meaning take risk down, take losses, maybe sell some of the winners too, but get to a point where you have some mental stability and you can think clearly. That was often encouraged by chief risk officer, chief investment officer of my firm. So sometimes you need to do that to kind of clear the decks and get back to a balanced mental state where then you can start making good decisions, right? Sometimes, and at least for me, it may not be for you, but personally, sometimes taking losses can be very therapeutic because then you're not tied to something anymore and it's not weighing on you. You can start with a fresh slate and move on. But it's important to, if you decide to do that, that's fine. And I encourage that if that's that's what it takes. But I did see, for example, there was this one guy who he's been long AC. I don't know how long, but he's been positive. But as the stock price came down, he became quite negative. And then of course, understandably, the Blue Origin setback, BB-7 being lost, this guy lost it. And so he lashed out on Twitter, complaining about the company and Not as if anything's competitively changed with the company, but we lost a satellite and it sucks. But this guy overnight sold his shares when it was trading in the low 70s, and then he went short. He said, I'm all in short. So I guess out of spite, decided to do that, which my key recommendation is, if you're on tilt, just like in poker, I guess our friend Taylor would tell you the same thing, like, do not go on tilt. Don't make big financial decisions while you're not in the right mental state. So this guy shorted in the hole and now he's down— at one point, he was down like 10%. Not only did he sell at the lows, but then he shorted and now he's losing more on the way up. So yeah, just be careful mentally. I think Kook was telling me this morning, you know, he was in a rough state overnight. He's like, when I wake up, I'm not gonna open the app and I'm just gonna go do push-ups and do some work, do his workout or whatever, which I think is great. Like, that's— if that's what you need to do, then great. But yeah, don't— just like, don't drink and drive. Like, don't be on tilt and trade, because then that's like one of the quickest ways to financial ruin. But let me take a look here. Let me see if anybody has questions or comments. Let's see. How quickly do you think we will get to 25 satellites? What does breakeven do for the stock in your opinion? If we get to 25 satellites, then our operating costs are covered at that point. And I think it's important to understand that we have 6— sorry, we have 7 satellites in orbit. And so when you think about the total, we think about 25, that includes everything we've already launched right now. Blue Orca 3, that might be on the margin. It may not be enough performance. So maybe you don't count 7, maybe just count 6. So BB1 through BB6. But when getting to 45, we need to get another 39 up.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: And so, but 20, how quickly can we get to 25? I mean, It's pretty simple math. Like if it's all Blue Origin, if you get 2 Falcon 9s, so that's 6, and then you get, let's see, if you get like 2 Blue Origins or 3 Blue Origin launches or put in another Falcon 9 and 2 Blue Origin launches, that will get you to the 25 pretty fast, right? Or more than, well, more than 20. Well, actually wait, what am I saying? Sorry, I'm a bit— my head is a bit cloudy. So let's say, let's do the math together. So 6 satellites already in orbit, let's not count Blue Archer 3. So now you've got 19 that you need to get up, right? And then 2 Falcon 9 launches, so that gets you to, you need 13. And then if you can get 2 Blue Origin flights up there successfully, So that's 16. Then you're going to get to 28 satellites. So if you're— again, if you're able to do from this point on 2 successful Falcon 9s and then 2 successful Blue Origin flights, then— or sorry, actually not 16. What am I doing?
[00:28:03] Speaker B: 12.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: 2 successful Blue Origin flights, that gets you to around 24. So that's pretty close. But what that unlocks for you is intermittent service, some service with the government that gets you to cash flow breakeven on the operating business. But obviously, you have to still dole out a lot of CapEx in order to build the satellites and launch them. But yeah, so in terms of timing, I mean, so we should have 2 Falcon 9 launches over the course of June, July, and then if you can get 2 Blue Origin launches with 6 apiece on them over the next 2 months after that, then you're almost there. You're looking at probably sometime in Q3, but knowing how space is hard, let's just say Q4. And so in order to get to approximately 45, you obviously need to get Blue Origin New Glenn to reach a point of 8 satellites and maybe launch 2 to 3 more of those. But that's the math. Let's see. What do you imagine Vodafone execs are thinking today? How do they digest the news and update their service offering schedules? They're very public partners with AST, have a lot to gain and lose given Satellite Connect Europe. Our portfolios are riding along theirs as well. Yeah, obviously it's not good. It's a setback, right? But they sit on the board, so they're intimately aware of the issues and they know. It's not as if like AST is going to AT&T or Vodafone or Verizon and saying, hey, this is where we are on the schedule. This is where we are in terms of rolling out the service. They all sit on the board. Verizon is not an active board, but they have board observer rights. And so they know what's going on. So none of this stuff is a surprise to them. Is it good in terms of the service getting delayed? No. But also, is there a competitive service offering out there and should they wait? There isn't a competitive service offering and should they wait? Yes. Because I think for Starlink, V2 is not going to be available until probably 2029. everything goes well for them, and they have similar issues in terms of iterating the Starship itself. And then of course the satellite, that means getting regulatory approval for AWS-3 spectrum. It also means that they're successful in spinning up their ASIC, which we know that's a really long and tough process. So yeah, it's going to take them time. And then if you look at Amazon, we've talked about this before, but like they're going to be using Globalstar's, um, the X17 replenishment satellites, and then the Aurora 50, you know, 50-satellite constellation from MDA Space, which, um, I don't— I don't off the top of my head know what the performance is. Um, they haven't released specs, but I, I'm pretty certain like that's not going to be a broadband constellation. And that's going to be an interim solution until they can develop a, a satellite from scratch that can do direct-to-device. And so you're probably looking at something 2030, maybe. In order to achieve proper performance, they'll need to develop an ASIC as well. And so as long as we aren't off by a magnitude of years, but we get service up and running within some reasonable timeframe and are able to leverage our MNO partners to pretty much lock in service. And I've talked about how, because of the way that our service works, that MNOs integrate it into their core network. Once you're integrated, it's really hard to move on and utilize another service. And that's part of the beauty for the operators too, because it's integrated, they can provide the service offerings that they want to their customers. They own the customer versus passing it along to Starlink, for example. So yeah, once the service is up and running, then you're good, but obviously you got to get there. So for Vodafone, they're probably frustrated, but they understand how difficult this is and it's not easy. This is part of the moat. If it was easy, everybody would be putting up direct-to-device constellations. Imagine ViaSat talking with Equitas and trying to put up a direct advice constellation, and they're committing $1 billion. That's not enough money. I guess you could put something together for SOS messaging and some narrowband applications, but if you're going to compete offering broadband connectivity to unmodified devices, then that's going to be really tough. But yeah, I think they're frustrated, but they understand this is part of the process and They're probably and continue to be supportive of the company. Let's see. Do you believe the 45 satellites end-of-year target is a reach? If not, does that have a significant impact on when commercial services start? I do think it is a stretch goal. So the company softened the language. Before it was like 60, 45 to 60, then it became 45, and now it's become approximately 45. And so it is a stretch goal and it's something that they should be running towards and hopefully can execute. And obviously a lot of things have to go right in order to get there, but is it gonna impact when commercial services start? I think commercial service is gonna start on an intermittent basis, but the robustness and the user experience is dependent on getting enough satellites into space. And so I think like, for example, you might have a situation, Similar to Starlink, where when they got the initial satellites out, they did offer a service, but then they told people, you know, as we as we add to the constellation, it will get better. So you're probably going to have some type of marketing effort. I think probably around there. Let's see. BB six was inserted at 521 kilometers against the ask of 523 kilometers, which was declared as global record. Yeah, actually, I think I misspoke before. I said 600. This person's right. So when Israel inserted BB-6 at 521 versus the mission parameters, the exact, you know, ask of 523. I believe I read that too. That was a global record within a 2-kilometer insertion. So that's— I know people before were kind of worried about ISRO, and— but ISRO, they're good at what they do, and they deserve praise and kudos for that. Let's see. Why is Origin silent? No official, unofficial post-PR communications. Well, we are in the process and they are in the process. Like, they're trying to figure out what happened with the booster, right? And so part of the issue is that the booster is like still out there in space, and unfortunately it's going to get— it's going to come down, this massive multi-ton, um, in addition to our satellite, but the booster is even bigger. It's going to deorbit. And so based off of data and mission information, they're trying to figure out what happened. My guess is that they're going to be quiet until they fully know. And for those that don't, I guess, forget, for those that have forgotten, if you recall Blue Origin New Glenn 1, when the booster did not return successfully, they pretty much went into complete dark mode, right? There was no videos. Obviously it was done at nighttime and there were no videos of Booster 1 coming down. It wasn't done live. And then of course, they didn't share any information around that. What we learned later, which I don't think was something formal, but people kind of figured out, is that obviously there was some issues with the fuel reigniting that burn for the Stage 1 booster, but they figured it out and they fixed it. And so in this instance, I think they're probably going to stay quiet until they truly know what happened. And then I would expect, and I could be wrong, but I would expect that you'll see some more official news from them around what happened and what they're doing to fix it. And as I mentioned before, I think it would be a nice touch to say, hey, sorry to the team at AST and also obviously the team at Blue Origin are disappointed, perhaps saying something like that, but I'm sure they probably have their reasons for holding that back for now. But we'll see. But I'm fairly confident, like they probably, I mean, they certainly have talked to AST's management and they probably have given them an apology for what happened. Yeah, we'll see. Let's see. Have you heard any update about other launch providers, Mitsubishi or others? I have not, but I do know, as I mentioned before, that the other heavy launch provider is— that's going to be a standby platform. So if customers to that heavy launch platform aren't ready by the time that the rockets are ready, then we can step in to replace those customers. But that's probably something that's not going to be available until closer towards the end of this year. And then over 2027, I think that's when things really kick in. But I'm not sure. By the way, I was talking to some Space Mob this weekend, and I forgot to mention this, but I talked about it yesterday. I really enjoyed meeting everybody. I guess some people figured out who I was just from the voice of talking, but It was, I mean, aside from losing Bluebird 7, the event was amazing. It was great to see Blue Origin New Glenn go up and the booster come down. It would have been obviously better for Bluebird 7, the mission to be successful, but putting all that stuff aside, like it was great to see old friends and new faces. And yeah, I'm looking forward to the next one. The reason why I mentioned this is that I would love for, that other heavy launch provider would be Mitsubishi. Because we talked about this concept with some friends, like it would be absolutely amazing to be able to go to Japan and see that launch. And of course, obviously enjoy the culture of Japan, the food while going to this great event. But yeah, my guess is obviously, or not obviously, but the company did mention Mitsubishi Heavy on one of their calls referring to these other providers that are becoming available. And so my guess is that It's probably Mitsubishi, but you could also be looking at Ariane or ULA. Let's see. My understanding is the latest satellite was aimed for government defense test purposes. Do you have an idea of potential impact? Yeah. So this was, as I mentioned before, this was a backup to BB-6. So if BB-6 didn't succeed in getting to orbit, then BB-7 was the backup to that. And so it would've been gravy. But from what I understand, I don't think it impacts the government mission, 'cause I believe you only need one satellite, but of course 2 would've been better, but I don't think that really impacts things. Let's see, can you talk more about the FCC application? Is approval contingent on anything? What is the FCC waiting on given they fully support AST? That's a good question. I think we're in the strike zone, right, of approval. It could happen any day, any hour now. And we've seen Brandon Carr publicly support the company. And so I'm not sure, the FCC is like a big bureaucracy, even though they're trying to cut down on and speed up the process for these approvals. But yeah, we could see that anytime now, which I think is a pretty big watershed event for the company. Moving from special temporary authorities to put constellations up to actually having full authority to put up a a large constellation for this service and having approval for market access in the US. I think that's gonna be a pretty big event. So as we see in the document, the FCC filings, it looks like we're kind of in the last strokes of the brush here. I think that approval will be soon. Let's see.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: This person, Let's see.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Said it to Cook this morning and wanted to say to you, thank you for everything. Without you both, others have been bounced years ago. Oh, others, I'd have been— I would've bounced years ago and this has changed my life. Thanks for the good comment or nice comment.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: I've heard this from people and it's pretty amazing to hear personal stories of people whose lives have been changed by having conviction in holding this company. over the years, which has not been easy. It's not been easy for anybody. And while people have thanked me for sharing my due diligence and I guess helping people have some level of conviction, I also thank the community, whether that's Kook or especially Katzi or Tanner or Kevin. I mean, there's a whole host of people, but yeah, I've benefited just as much as Perhaps people have benefited from me because there's no way I would have held on to this stock with conviction if it wasn't for some of the amazing people who've done research work around the company. Let's see here. So iPilot OmniAeronautica is pointing out. Yeah, so yeah, yep, that's right. If you look at the transcript of Abel at the welcome event, it sounds like BB6 is doing well north of 150 megabits per second. So that's a big positive news development. So eventually, my guess is that the company's going to be touting higher speeds. And as we know, with AI optimization, they're talking about getting, I think in the near term, 3x the performance of what they thought was possible before, and eventually getting that to 11 times.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: more performance.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Let's see. When do we anticipate more government contracts will be announced? I think we're kind of there. I know the company seemed pretty confident that they were going to get more awards in this quarter, I mean Q2. So we're what, April 20th? We're into the early part of Q2. So I think we might hear something. I don't know when exactly, and perhaps that's why Michael Pollack was was very happy, of course, before launch, but we should be finding out soon. Let's see. I've always been curious. You say you talk to the company. Are you reaching out to investor relations? Do you have personal relationships with employees at this point? Genuinely curious. Yeah. So let me address this part. So when I first started researching the company, part of the initial due diligence I did is I had a a call through a banker with Abel. This was like in, I think it was like January of 2021. And so I've built a personal relationship with Abel. I also built a relationship with Scott as well. And so as my experience as an institutional investor, part of your job is to build these relationships with executives. So not only you have touchpoints with executives of the company, you're also talking to investor relations. And for many years, by the way, that was just Scott. So he was doing Chief Strategy Officer and he was doing investor relations, but they obviously hired Max who does investor relations as well. And so this is something that probably most retail people don't know, and I saw this past week where people were giving me a hard time. They're like, well, how do you know? You claim that you talked to the company. How's that possible? Anybody, if you're a public investor or you're not, you may not even own shares of AST, but you're more than welcome to call IR, there's a phone number you can email them to. I mean, some of you have astutely sent questions during quarterly updates of which the company addresses those questions, but anybody is free to reach out to the company. Now, will they respond? It's unclear. If the company's $30 billion in size and they've got a ton of institutions to deal with who are contacting them, asking them questions, also sell-side research, then they may not get back to you. But if you've built a rapport over the years, then you might have the ability to still interact with management. That said, when you do talk to company management, and it's not just AST, I've built a relationship with some of these other companies like T1 Energy, Bridger, Strata. Over the years, I've interacted with many management teams, Pagaya, another one. But yeah, over time, I guess the shtick for me, for some of these companies that I haven't built a relationship with, but then they pick up the call, is that I tell them, hey, I'm formerly an investment banker. I was in the hedge fund industry. So I kind of try to lay out my credentials, like I'm somewhat of a sophisticated investor. So I'm not like some, I guess, yahoo. And I'll tell them, I personally I also am on social media and so I will tell them that if I invest in companies, I often write about them and so I wanted to engage and just get an overview of what your company's doing and have the ability to ask questions over time. And most companies are pretty receptive to that. And so that's how I build relationships with a lot of these companies and obviously I respect the boundaries. And so for example, with AST, I'm not calling them every day. It may be weeks, months before if there's something important and I want to reach out and get some clarity on something, then I'll reach out to them. And this is similar to how it works on the institutional side of investing. And so the other thing is when you build a relationship with management team, you also have to respect that, meaning there's this balance. If I were to go out and start talking really negatively about a company, then are the chances of them picking up my phone call, do those chances go up or go down? They probably start going down. So you want to be careful in how you manage that relationship. And the same goes on the other side as well. That said, there is clear lines, like what we call Reg FD, where these companies will not be sharing material non-public information with you. They will tell you what they're telling everybody else. And so it's not as if you're getting cutting-edge insight that's material. You're actually getting some level of color, but it's going to be within the realms of Reg FD. Are there companies out there that could break that or they go beyond that? I guess there are, but if you're a public company, obviously that's the quickest way to trouble for you and also for an investor. So one way that companies do get some information out there that's not part of a quarterly update is they'll talk to research analysts and then research analysts will publish. So sometimes research analysts will have good insight the company. But yeah, for me, I build relationships with companies and so I'm able to have some conversations and within the realms of proper public disclosure, I'm able to get some insights, but it's no different than what an institution can do. And so part of what I do is being someone who interacts with retail investors, I try to provide of those insights. Like, in my previous job as an institution, this is how I look at things, or this is based off of my conversation with the company, this is what I think is relevant or how I'd look at it. And so even my early days when I started this account and people were all crazed about SPACs and there was so much misinformation because people didn't understand the product, that's when I started posting about them because I was like, oh, well, this is how you value a company. And This SPAC has— this PIPE is going to go effective in a few weeks and these shares are going to come up for sale. This particular sponsor doesn't have an ability to short stock. So that was part of the early days of this account. I also would talk about M&A, which is my background as well. But But then of course, over time, I started sharing ideas, the stuff that I was invested in, which anybody who followed what I did either made money or lost money along with me. But yeah, I mean, for me, this is just— I do this out of fun because especially for someone who is managing their own investments, it can be a lonely endeavor, which is why social media is so popular. If it was just me, staring at Bloomberg screens all day and just going through ideas. That would be boring. But for example, I talk with Kook from time to time and we'll talk about ideas. And obviously we're not invested in all the same things, but that's what makes investing— Part of investing is very stressful, but when you have friends that are doing it, just like, I don't know, a book club or some of these other things, it just becomes more interesting and fun. And hopefully by Having a community, you can make better decisions. That's not always the case, but that would be the goal, right? To have fun while you're doing it, but also in Space Mob, for example, you've got lawyers, accountants, engineers, people from all walks of life, people doing production. And so when people have views about anything related to investment, that unique insight is really helpful. If you can imagine going toe-to-toe with a hedge fund and all these guys are finance bros, but they have no background in medicine or actual production, but then you've got people on your side who have that experience, that can be a very useful tool in understanding and underwriting an investment. But yeah, that's the quick and dirty. That's how I'm able to talk to companies and sometimes I'll do Spaces and host people. AST is not has not accepted my offer to do that. Maybe they will at some point. But yeah, that's the quick background. When people find out about my experience, they decide to engage. And because I understand— because I think the other thing too is for some of these people on Twitter who perhaps are younger or didn't come up in the finance industry, which by the way, you don't have to, but I think some of the folks who who haven't interacted with companies and then over time, they kind of abuse that relationship or they— I think for a company, you're always wary about that because if you have retail investors who you're talking to who might own a few hundred, a few thousand shares, and you're spending a lot of time on a handful of these accounts, that's tough because you should be talking to spending your time better talking to Fidelity or Vanguard or BlackRock. And so talking to accounts that if they're so disposed and they like your company, they might buy 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% of your company versus talking to Joe Schmo who requires— oftentimes retail investors require a ton of handholding. You interact with one guy and then the stock is down 2% one day and you're going to email that person's emailing IR and is like, what's going on? Why is the stock down? Or stock down 5%. It's like, the company needs to do something about this. They need to issue a PR. My shares are down. Whereas institutions are like, okay, this is kind of just day-to-day volatility. I'm not really worried. And they're obviously, they've got other fish to fry in their portfolio. And so they're probably thinking, they're doing work on the next investment or they're focused on an actual issue with the company. they don't really care if this position in AST is up 3%, 4%, 5%, 10% even. I'm sure there are some institutions that are concerned about what happened and they're talking to management. There are others that are like, well, this is just part of being a space company and part of the risk. And so I'm just going to hold or I might buy more, or maybe they're selling. But then if you can imagine, if the company's talking to 10 retail investors who that have the company's attention, there's probably a lot more handholding that has to happen on a day like today. So this holds true for all these other companies as well, where if you— for any company that decides to engage with retail, it's almost like on the one hand, it can be a huge asset in terms of people who are willing to take more risk and can be fervent supporters, but it can go the other way too, just like we're seeing over the course of today where people who are believers in the company one day and then the next day you have a negative event happen, they turn into something completely opposite of that. So for a company investing their time and resources, do you pursue large institutions or do you pursue retail investors? So that's a trade-off that people have to make. Let's see. Any guidance on what is pushing off BB8, BB10 shipment from March, April to May, June? BB8, BB10 shipment, that is targeted for mid-May, and obviously that's pushed it back. We've talked about it at length that stacking was the primary issue. This is something that they solved in February. The existing composite rings for BB8, 9, 10, 11, 12— those rings, I think— so I'm just going to make something up here, right? But this is how I can play it out in my head. They probably got 2 or 3 rings from the factory in India. They tested them in terms of how much load they could bear vertically and horizontally. Those rings failed. Or maybe one ring failed, and they're like, okay, well, let's check another one. And then the second ring failed, and they're like, okay, this is not good enough. So then they had to come up with a workable solution to reinforce that ring. And so Cassie's talked about this idea of putting tubes, a bunch of little tubes all around the ring, so that gives you a bunch of vertical strength, and then you're able to stack these things. And so they solved that in February, And then they probably ordered some additional rings in order to fill out those first 6. And that ring is gonna be the original design, which then they will retrofit like some tubes to make sure that vertically it's strong enough. And so what did I mean by that? Like, if you're gonna stack these things and you put them into a rocket, like imagine the amount of pressure and force that goes onto one of these structures, right? So, the 7 were metal, made out of like metal, and so they could, they were super heavy, but they could withstand a lot of pressure. With composites, like, you're gonna try to balance weight versus strength, right? Like, you can over-engineer and put a ton of composites, but then you're gonna lose out on what you're trying to achieve, which is weight savings, right? And so, for BB, Bluebird 8, 9, and 10, 11, 12, those are going to be the old rings. And then based off of the learnings from there, the company then, they're like, okay, these are the areas where it needs to be reinforced. And so they sent that new design or redesign to the factory, which we believe is in India, for new composites. And so those new composites the next 7 rings showed up. I think it was what, I guess it's been now a week ago or 2 weeks ago. So then they're going to start using those rings for the next set of satellites. But in the meantime, for BB-8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, or sorry, 11, 12, they're integrating all the payload into those. And then once they do that, they've got to test it. And so at any point in time, and this is where slips and delays can happen, While you're putting together the satellite, you might run into issues. Once you've put the satellite together, you might, when you're testing it for electronics and all these things, you might run into issues. And then once you're done doing that, you put it into a TVAC. So you bake this thing, you freeze it, you do all these things, and you might run into issues there too. And so throughout that process, you're going to learn how to build these things. And over that time, you might run into some issues and you fix them. This goes back to yesterday, if there is a silver lining, which there always is in space, because Bong failed, Blue Origin New Glenn failed, it's almost akin to like, I used to say this to people, I remember when these low-cost carrier airlines, whenever they were having a crash or like US Air would have a crash, my inclination would be like, oh, maybe I should go fly that airline because they've had a crash, they're probably extra focused on making sure that the next flights, any flights that they have, they don't suffer another crash. It's like one of these maxims where if a company fails, they'll be extra focused on not failing again. And so with Blue Origin New Glenn, it's better that we had a failure with one satellite versus a failure with 6. And so fixing the second stage is important. And they're obviously doing that and that's how they improve the vehicle. And so with AST SpaceMobile, once you build a few of these satellites, and so BB-6 and BB-7 were important because they created the process to build the Block 2 satellites. Learning how to put those together, doing it efficiently. As you build more and more of these things, you're going to get into this, which management has talked about, it's like you get into this point where you get exit velocity. There's a hockey stick in terms of production cadence. And so we're not there yet, but I believe the company is on the cusp of that, and we'll find out. Once the first batch comes out, we'll see how quick the next batch comes out of 3, and then see how quickly that cadence after that second batch is done, how long does it take to get the third batch out? And is that third batch going to be 3 or is it going to be 6? And so we're still waiting. We're still waiting for that to happen. But when it does happen, that's going to be reflected in the market. Because at the end of the day, like for Blue Origin, New Glenn, and for AST, it's all about building the machine that builds a machine. And once you do that and you get it down, then these things will start popping out like hotcakes. And that will be the exciting time. Let's see. It's amusing how when we're experiencing rapid growth, bears remain completely silent. However, as soon as we encounter any setbacks along the way, they all rush and share their latest insights how they successfully sold or bought ideal options the week because they knew. Yeah, this is this is part of the the social media game, right? It's like people people looking for opportunities to dunk on others. There's this guy, for example, Cyber Prince. His whole shtick is like. He's like, if you want to be a millionaire, you got to follow what I do and whatever you're invested in is crap. So just follow me. And his fall from grace in terms of absolutely blowing up, nuking his account, he was a big Rocket Lab guy in the beginning. And his shtick was to say how Rocket Lab was much better than AST when I've talked about it ad nauseam. These are 2 separate companies. They have nothing to do with each other. But he was able to get a lot of people on board who kind of, I guess, followed that same toxic narrative. And he did well. He did well. And he kept telling people like, this is a holding that I'm going to have for life. And then he was levered up on options. I think the stock, when it went on its first run, I think it went to like, it peaked at $40 and then it came back and he kept kind of leveraging into that. And then he got wiped out pretty bad, which I don't I don't like it when anybody loses money. I don't revel in that stuff. But he sold down, he still had a lot of money, and then he started shilling meme coins. And then I guess he suffered some things there. And now he's back in stocks. And then of course, one of the first things he posted yesterday was like, or the day before, who are all these AST shareholders? They're a bunch of mid-twits or something like that. And so yeah, there's always going to be people like that. Oftentimes the detractors from AST, they'll tell you why AST is crap and then they're going to tell you about this new company they're invested in or the company that they prefer. And so that's a very normal ploy that people take. And so especially during periods of time of vulnerability, where if there's uncertainty or the stock is down, they're going to tell you, hey, here's a quick fix. Here's how you can make your money back. And so yeah, just ignore them. I mean, they are part of— actually, they're part of an important signal. Originally today, I'll be honest, I wasn't planning to buy much, but then when all these haters and detractors came out and people were gloating, and then of course you had some AST SpaceMobile shareholders who they probably haven't been around that long when they were calling for blood and shitting all over Blue Origin, and of course, crapping on management. To me, that was a signal. I was like, okay, we're at pretty heavy negativity here, and so maybe now's a bottom. And so the stock was trading at $73, $74. I didn't buy at that point. I bought some overnight on Robinhood at $72 to $73, but then This morning, I don't have infinite amounts of capital. So this morning I had to shuffle some things around. I did sell some things to make room. And then I was like, I'm going to buy AST. So I bought some stock. Let me see here. I bought in the $75 to $76 range. And then I don't do that. As I mentioned, I don't do this often. I bought some ASTX as well. And so I think in total, yeah, I bought a few thousand shares of AST and also ASTX because of all the negativity. So if these guys, by the way, who are truly big haters, if they shorted in the hole this morning, they're not happy, which it's almost like human psychology where people buy the top. It's like these haters, they short the bottom, and then they get upset when the company bounces back, and that just drives their hate, I guess. Then later, they're short, they lose money, they eventually cover, and they're pissed with themselves. But then when the stock is like, I don't know, if it goes to like $130, $140, and then it goes down to like $120, they'll be back out and say why they were right. And so it's like a tale as old as time. I would encourage if you're out there, obviously there's people who have constructive criticism and it's fair, and you should read those things and obviously make your own decisions. But when you have all the vitriol and hate coming out, usually that's a signal. We're pretty close to the bottom. These guys doing touchdown celebration dances that the company lost a satellite and they're rubbing it in your face. This guy, Deep Value Bagger, is like clockwork. Whenever AST stumbles, he comes out and says, see, this is why I don't think the company is good. He's another one of these toxic Rocket Lab bros. He'll say, this is why Rocket Lab is way better, which by the way, I like the company Rocket Lab. There was a point in time when I considered investing, but it was just a handful of these small toxic guys. It was just like, I just don't want to deal with these people. But for the most part, Rocket Lab holders, there are quite a few who came to AST, they're great. They're great. And I hope that Neutron does well. I hope that they're successful because their success means that launch prices are going to come down. They might become a supplier for AST. So that's great. They're also doing really cool things around Mars and lunar. And then of course, they have ambitions to start producing direct-to-device satellites for any number of customers and more power to them. If you have paying customers, then you should go produce things for them. And can they be competitive? Who knows? But the market is huge. And of course, Years ago when AST, when Abel had this vision and put it together, as I've mentioned before, all these legacy guys were like, there's no way that whole sector, the technology's not going to work, and even if it does work, there's no market. Well, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are telling you something totally different. They're not just telling you differently, they're putting $13 billion, $23 billion to work at it. So I think this Abel guy, he's on to something. Um, let's see. Volume is absolutely huge today. It looks like we might bounce back to normal sooner than we thought. Uh, yeah, I agree with you. I mean, if there were short guys— so when you have a bad event, um, that's, that's a hard catalyst, which is what we're currently experiencing, this is where short sellers can become your friends. Um, because they will— they have now, uh, realized a profit, and so they will most likely be covering to some extent. Obviously, there's high conviction shorts who won't be doing that, but oftentimes on down days, some of the support you have will be coming from short covering. So it'll be interesting to see where short interest is tomorrow. But yeah, there's a ton of volume. So this is the fact that the stock is here. I thought going down 15% was an overreaction to losing one satellite out of what will be hundreds of satellites, but the market sentiment is what it is and people are going to extrapolate what this means for Blue Origin. I personally think Blue Origin is going to figure out and it's going to be a successful vehicle. Um, if I didn't, then, um, if I didn't think so, then I wouldn't be buying AST stock today. Let's see. Why doesn't Blue Origin owe us a refund on launch? And why does AST insurance— doesn't AST insurance cover this and not PO Blue Origin? Um, I've already talked about this. So AST did get insurance because this was a risky mission. It included a dual burn for the second stage, and this was part of the reason why Blue Origin did this flight. They wanted to see if that could work. And so AST was like, okay, this is new to you, so I'm gonna get insurance. And they got insurance, and they're gonna get paid back for it. And then, as I mentioned before, Blue Origin does owe us a flight on launch. They're not gonna refund you money. I mean, it's just like going to a restaurant Or it's more cost-effective. They're not going to give you your cash back. They're like, okay, here's a credit for a meal in the future. That's what Blue Origin's doing here. They're saying, we're sorry we lost your satellite. We learned a lot. We also learned how to work closely with you, so it'll be faster next time. But for your troubles, we're going to give you this coupon for a future Blue Origin New Glenn flight. And that's typically how the industry works. Let me see here. SPAC Man put on— yeah, so there is this Bloomberg podcast. I'll share it. There's actually a video too, but it was a good interview with Ed Ludlow. Before this mishap, Blue Origin was looking to get to a cadence of one per month. And they probably are still doing that. So before it was, they're looking at 8 to 12 flights this year. Does that get reduced to 6? Probably. But then also some people might be concerned, well, if it's reduced to 6, how will we get our cargoes up? Well, the reduction is actually going to impact US government missions because Blue Origin did not get their certification. then they need to fly successfully 2 more times. And then my guess again is Amazon LEO is gonna be the next one. And then if that's successful, then perhaps we could be the next one after that, or maybe they'll do a lunar lander. But look, we don't need Blue Origin New Glenn until probably the August, September timeframe. And if we can get, man, if we can get like 2, 3, 4 of those done, that would be amazing. I'm not holding my breath, but that would be like, the optimal outcome. What do you consider as the main catalyst milestones, financial, regulatory, operational, for new and existing institutions to meaningfully accumulate shares? FCC approval, recurring government contracts? Yeah. So obviously getting, I think a big catalyst is getting that first batch out the door and then the second batch as well. How quickly the second batch comes out. FCC approval is huge. Any additional MNO contracts would be big. FirstNet, we talk about that being soon, but that coming. I think Golden Dome, we should expect to hear about some awards in this quarter. And so yeah, there's quite a bit that are in play. Let me see. Rakuten has to be done selling now, right? Any updates, education? educated guesses on that. We should get a Form 4 filing for any sales that happened towards the end of last week and then probably today. I don't know how much they're selling with stock down, but they could be. And that's going to be an overhang on the stock for the fact that they've got half of their position to sell. But once they're done, if we start seeing they only have 2 to 3 million shares left for cleanup, the stock's going to bounce off of that because that selling pressure is going to be going away and you'll have guys who trade technicals and event guys that will say, oh, I'm gonna take a shot on, on this because the overhang is gone. Let's see. Uh, sorry, you covered already. Any thoughts on 150 megabits and what that potentially means for future service? Uh, well, more capacity and speed is better, right? And so that's going to be good for service. And then, you know, I, I talked about this concept where Bell has, through the use of AI in managing capacity and improving performance, they think that they can get to near-term 3 times performance of what they had been projecting before, and then over the long run, potentially up to, I think, 10 or 11 times. So that's really good for service, especially if it's just using your hardware more efficiently and improving software perspective, improving performance. So imagine getting 3x more performance for the same dollar cost of hardware. That's pretty impressive. Let's see. I think that's probably— oh, someone's saying, do you think it's a bad idea that I have half my portfolio in AST? Well, coming from someone who has a majority of their portfolio, I would say it is a bad idea. unless you know what you own and it depends on what your financial situation is. So my public portfolio is very large, the majority of my net worth, but then I also have some private investments, some real estate, and the house that we live in and a few other things. And so the public portfolio is pretty big relative to all that, but then if I get nuked on ASD, it's not going to be the end of the world. But if you have half your portfolio in AST and that represents all your net worth, and if you were to ask yourself what would happen if AST got cut in half or something like that, and if that would impact your ability to be financially comfortable, then perhaps maybe it is too big. But for example, if you're young and you've got a ton of earning years ahead of you, then you might be willing to take that risk. So it all depends on what your situation is. Let's see. What is the lifespan of Block 2 satellites? What's realistic revenue? 2027 revenue target? Well, I'll tell you what the revenue targets are. So the Street, which is the accumulation of the best guesses of all these research analysts, have 2026 revenue at $176 million. Then 2027 at $710 million, and then 2028, $1.6 billion, and then 2029, $2.5 billion. So those are the revenue targets. Will we get to $710 million in 2027? It depends. It depends on if we can get the constellation up and then what other government contracts are coming in. But 2026, I think the company feels pretty comfortable about This is, by the way, this is Street projections, $176. I think they feel comfortable of the range of something like $150 to $200. And so obviously probably part of that depends on if we can get Constellation up. And so the risk is that there's slippage, but also as we've discussed, if things slip out by a quarter or 2, in the grand scheme of things, that's not a big deal. Let's see. I think maybe there's a few more questions here, but I'm starting to peter out here. So I'm going to end it there. Maybe I'll try to do another space in, you know, today or tomorrow. But yeah, I hope that that's helpful. I think, you know, the next day after you have something like this, it does require Yesterday, for those that don't know, I was at launch. I got to Orlando at just past midnight. I didn't get much sleep. And then I was on full adrenaline, met a ton of people. We all went out to launch it, got on a bus at like 4:15 AM, went out to the launch site by 6:00, and then had breakfast, got to hear a bell, and then we were out there. We got to see Blue Origin New Glenn, this amazing rocket, go up and successfully land the booster, And then we were all elated and happy. And then once we got back to the hotel, it started sinking in like, hey, we haven't heard what happened to Bluebird 7. And I think part of the, at least for me, I got used to Falcon 9 being such a successful vehicle that sometimes it doesn't dawn on you how much risk there is for these new platforms. But we saw it. We saw it happen. And so because of that, Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out initially what had happened, was it okay? And then of course the company PR'd it, which was great because they were transparent. And then from that point, it was like dealing with loss. And so I was dejected and my flight got delayed going back to New York. On the plane, I had bad sleep and then I got home, had to turn into family mode, engage with wife and kids and be as calm and normal as possible, which I usually am. And then when they heard that, when they heard that we lost a satellite, the first thing my son said is like, are we broke? Are we going to be broke? Which I told him no. I was like, well, if you read some of the replies and posts on X, you would assume that that's the case. Like we're going to be bankrupt. But I told him, no, this is a small setback. Like this stuff happens in space and it's part of the risk. which is why me and a bunch of other investors went down to go cheer the company on and hope for the best. And unfortunately, it didn't go our way. But the company is going to have more launches and more satellites up, and the mission hasn't changed. And the thesis hasn't changed. I didn't obviously go into such detail with my son, but I told him, this is part of space. It's hard. If it was easy, every company under the sun would be doing it, and they're not. And so this is the risk that we take. And I told them, the stock's going to be down a lot and people are going to feel upset, but then maybe there'll be a buying opportunity and we'll see. But I have conviction in this company. And my wife was like, oh, okay. So are we going to be okay? And I told her, yeah, we're fine. This is just a bump in the road. And then that was it. They expressed 5 to 10 minutes of concern. My wife then understood that and God bless her, that I told her, I was like, I need to go do a space because I have a lot on my mind and there's probably people who need to hear this out, like kind of talk through thoughts. And she was like, go ahead, please. And so yeah, that was my day yesterday coming back. And so overnight I slept and then decided, hey, this morning after I saw all the vitriol, haters, all that stuff, I decided after buying some shares last night, I'm going to buy more today. 'Cause that signals to me that we're probably at the bottom. So anyway, that's it. I hope this was helpful, useful, therapy, whatever you need. But yeah, I'm confident in the company. They are confident in Blue Origin, New Glenn. I know some people talk about whether a public apology is appropriate or not. I really don't care about apologies. I just care that they get this shit right. And so instead of Abel, Scott, Jeff Bezos, Dave Limp coming out, doing a PR, engaging with media, apologizing, I want them on top of every engineer at Blue Origin focused on fixing this. Because I want the next issue, or sorry, the next mission to go smoothly. I want this platform to be successful so that there's choice, there's customer choice. And that's good for the nation, right? Like having Blue Origin, SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Stoke, Firefly, all these companies be successful. And so I don't give two shits about apologies. I'm focused on fixing the problem and so we can move forward and get our constellation up. So I'll end it with that. Thanks everyone for joining. And until next time, which is probably gonna be soon, we'll talk again. 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.
[01:20:32] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think this technology, we can really affect a 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 important that you do the animals. Listen.
[01:21:13] Speaker A: Mmm, waffles.