Anpanman - WAKE N BAKE - Let's run it back and discuss BB6 Unfolding

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. 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.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Good morning. Hey everyone, thanks for joining. This is a bit unprecedented, even though I did a space last night. I am so excited and I wanted to share the enthusiasm that I decided to do another space this morning. I'm pretty much going to cover the same topics, but last night, to be candid, I was quite tired. It was very late, but yeah, I went ahead and did the space and this morning I was energized and I wanted to do it again. So, um, so yeah, big news overnight. A lot, uh, we just learned that Bluebird 6, uh, successfully unfolded. And so that's a huge, massive milestone for the company. Um, this is a massive de-risking event, meaning, you know, this is a new spacecraft, a totally new design. And so the fact that It was successfully unfolded out in Leo is a major catalyst because it clears a way for the rest of the constellation. And you know, one of the biggest potential issues would have been if the satellite had failed to unfold or if there were any issues. Then you would assume that you know the company would still move ahead with Bluebird Seven, but the troubleshooting. And the complications that would arise from this first test satellite having any issues, it perhaps would have slowed things down. I wanted to start by just, you know, talking about a quote from a former SpaceX engineer that was used in the short report back in 2022. I'll just read it here. So this was a former director of engineering at SpaceX. This person led a team of 150 engineers across multiple disciplines. So clearly someone very senior, but Anonymous. Um, they quote, the size of the antenna is terrifying. They're talking about AST SpaceMobile. The size of the antenna is terrifying. There's only a handful of entities that have deployed a foldable thing in space that big, and they're NASA and intelligence entities. It's an extremely difficult thing to do, and it's also more or less impossible to accurately test on the ground. And so back in 2022, when I read this quote, it definitely gave me pause because here's someone in the industry at a, you know, the leader in space at that time and currently, to be candid, SpaceX, saying that what AST was doing is terrifying and basically impossible, right? And so I think it's a huge testament to the company and their vision to actually pull this off. Not only with BlueWalker 3 and the Block 1 satellites did they unfold a 693-square-foot phased array, and they did that successfully 6 times, so they were 6 for 6. They have now successfully unfolded a satellite that is 3.5 times bigger, 2,400 square feet. And so what was traditional thinking that something like this It was impossible and that only a handful of entities could pull this off, whether that's NASA or intelligence entities. And quite candidly, this is even bigger than those 2, right? Like, this is the absolute largest communications array that has been unfolded and successfully flown in low Earth orbit. That puts the company in a very elite group and special group of entities that could pull this off, right? And so here you have an engineer at SpaceX saying that that's terrifying, like we would never try that, you know, and then of course the company did it, right? And so Abel with his vision knew from the beginning that in order to communicate and provide a broadband seamless experience utilizing low-band spectrum, you're going to need this massive phased array with a ton of power in order to properly communicate with unmodified phones on Earth. And the company did it. And so that's a huge milestone. It's something that, you know, for me, just thinking about this journey over the number of years, it's something that I've looked forward to, but also was very scared and anxious because when you would hear the skeptics say, you know, trying to put something that large into space, like, is it going to be able to, can you control it? Can you, is it going to be able to dissipate the heat? You know, there's, there were skeptics back then saying, The engineering, maybe they didn't properly think through heating issues and maybe the satellite would melt and any number of things, right? But the company did it and it's gone beyond just unfolding it and I'll talk a bit more about it later. But the satellite you can assume is operating normally and is orbiting and doing its thing, which is why it took quite a bit of time for the company to communicate. But I think, you know, this is a testament to the company's approach in development and, you know, the philosophy of measure twice and cut once. You know, they're not a company that is going to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks and keep throwing it. They, the attitude and the DNA is to get it right the first time and every time. And so I think that's an important thing for people to understand. In that this company, sometimes things will take longer than they expect and that you expect, but it's to get it right. Like, the philosophy is not to have any room for errors. And so the other thing, just closing on the second half of that quote, this former SpaceX engineer said, it's an extremely difficult thing to do, and it's also more or less impossible to accurately test on ground. I think that quote is pretty funny because the company AST back in the day, this is how they think outside the box. When they first started to test the concept, can it communicate with an unmodified phone hundreds of miles away, they did the smart thing. So anyone like you or me would be like, okay, well, we'll develop a test satellite, we'll go put up in space and we'll see if it can communicate with phones. And then based off of that feedback and data, they will create another satellite and then send it up and that'd be version number 2 and keep iterating. Well, Abel thought about it in a different way and his team, they're like, well, why don't we just send the thing that we don't have to modify? Well, let's send the phone up into orbit. And so that was BlueWalker 1. It was a CubeSat that had a phone inside and then we'll develop the satellite here on the ground. And we'll be able to tweak it and we'll be able to keep iterating and do that quickly because obviously the satellites here on Earth, we have access to it, we can like change it, but it's going to mimic the same type of characteristics. That phone's going to be rotating around the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. And so it's going to still have the same issues of Doppler delay and managing all that and connecting with the phone. And so There again, thinking outside the box, where this SpaceX engineer is like, it's more or less impossibly impossible to accurately test on the ground. Yeah, you actually, because the way that you test it is you send the phone up into space and then you put the satellite on the ground. And so that was one of the things I remember when I learned about the company in 2020, you know, when when Abel discussed how they tested the concept and made sure that it worked, to me, that was like so innovative, right? So out of the box that this company thought about the problem and then found a practical way forward that probably most companies, actually, I don't know if there's been any companies that have done testing the way that you guys have. And so yeah, this, when you think about moving on to This particular spacecraft, it's a new design, and it was designed to remove complexity and risk and points of failure versus the Block 1 satellites. And so back when, I think it was like the fall or winter of 2024, I remember after they had successfully launched the Block 1 satellites, I was talking with management and it was hinted at that time. I didn't know, but it was hinted that, oh yeah, you know, We all knew that the Block 2 satellite was going to be bigger because that was an eventuality because they were always going to be— the Block 1 and BlueWalker 3 were smaller versions, but that the Block 2 satellites were going to be the large, massive satellites that the company had always planned. And so I remember talking to the company and they'd hinted that, oh yeah, you know, this new Block 2 design, It's going to be less risky and simpler. And at that time, I had no idea what they were talking about. I just assumed that the Block 2 satellite was going to be the same form factor as Block 1, but just bigger, you know, more microns. But then, of course, we found out, you know, Space Mob through FCC filings, we found out, and of course, you know, skeptics as well, that yes, indeed, the company had developed an entirely new design. meaning a design that, you know, the control sat, instead of being in the center, actually was out on the corner. And the phased array and the way it was deployed, instead of 6 major movements, was reduced down to 2 major movements. And so, you know, that was like a brilliant piece of engineering. So part of it was to reduce complexity and risk. The other part of it was due to regulations. What I mean by that is in the first Block 1 satellite, You had a launch vehicle adapter. If you can imagine like a, let's say like a Coke can cut in half, this Coke can would encapsulate the satellite, go around the folded phased array and the control sat and keep it safe. You had this, the 2 halves of this can that encapsulated the satellite, and then you had, call it 3 straps that kept it together. And so once the Block 1 satellites were launched up into space and they were, you know, successfully detumbled and stabilized at the right time, the way that you would unfold the satellite is you would pop off those straps and the 2 parts of the camera would fall away. And then that would initiate the first 2 moves, which is the one arm to, let's just say, the left and one arm to the right to unfold into the bar configuration.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Right? And so that LVA, so there were changes in regulations where if you, once you deploy a satellite, any pieces that came off the satellite, major pieces, you would need to, above certain orbits, like say 500 or 600 kilometers, you would actually need to deorbit those pieces. And so what that means is those 2 halves of the can would need to have some guidance and propulsion system in order to move those things proactively down to a lower orbit, which then they would eventually go into the atmosphere and burn up. If you didn't have that ability to control those pieces, they would basically sit up there for 10, 20 years and become space junk. And we all know potential issues around debris And what that could cause. And so what the company did is they decided, hey, we're not going to— we're going to do away with an LVA. We're going to create this like tuna can shaped satellite. The control sat's going to go into the tuna can and within the tuna can, the array is going to accordion— in an accordion way, it's going to unfold one big arm out. And then once we're ready to deploy it, the arm will unfold in one direction. out and basically deploy the entire array. And so this new design, I believe, you know, the company was probably working on it for quite some time, but we didn't really learn about it until, I guess it was like the fall. And if you could imagine, like they were building the Block 1 satellites, but yet they were thinking about this new design and were making preparations to build it. And so within, when we learned about it in the spring of 2025, It was essentially a several-month process where they got approvals from the FCC in order to launch this thing, but they also built it, right? They built it and they tested it. And not only were there— did they— it wasn't just one spacecraft. It was actually 2 metal cans for these SDA satellites, the Bluebird 6 and Bluebird 7. Which also we've speculated that there might be a solar tail, there might be some other add-ons that were requested by the government to put into that satellite, which also of course delayed the build time. But that's one particular spacecraft. And then you've got the composite, the commercial spacecraft, which is the next generation, the one that is going to be the majority of the 248 satellites that are going up in space. And so, so yeah, the company has been innovating and working on all these different designs. And so it's just, you know, to me, it's very impressive that they were able to, in some respects, like build in parallel 2 different space— or 3 different spacecraft, Block 1, and then overlapping with that to some degree, FM-1, FM-2, and then of course Block 2. So yeah, I mean, it, Going back to the design itself, this is a simpler design, although at deployment, it does introduce a bit more stress on the panels. And what I mean by that is in the original Block 1 design, a Micron, which has the solar panels on top, and then, you know, you've got processors and magnetorquers and other things in the middle, and then you've got on the bottom the antenna elements. In the original design, you had 2 of those fused together, and that would create a panel, right? And then those things were connected by hinges and then folded into the satellite, which then later would be unfolded. Here you have much bigger panels, right? So original design, I think you had 2 microns. In this design, you actually have 8 microns fused together. And so when they say simpler by design, not only are the major movements just 2 big major movements, you know, accordion movements, of course, but 2 big major movements. But then within those movements, there's less, there's less, you know, smaller movements, if that makes sense. Because you have 8 microns that are attached together. And so these things are much bigger. And so even though it's simpler and less risky, there is a bit more stress in the unfold. Because when the satellite unfolds, there's going to be some level of vibration and you need a lot you know, some level of flexing as well. But the cool thing about once it's deployed, like that array is a lot more rigid than the original design. And then on top of that, you know, that it, by having that rigidity, when you're flying the spacecraft, you're not going to have as much risk of this thing, you know, kind of having waves or vibrating as the previous one. So yeah, it's great because this design is less risky. It's bigger, it's more effective. You know, the new satellite is about 10x the processing power and capability of Block 1. And so this is going to be the workhorse for the company. And so, you know, we've got Bluebird 7 that's going to be launching no earlier than late February. We saw a bit of back and forth with Blue Origin and the FCC. It looks like they're doing the prep work in order to coordinate spectrum usage for that launch, the communications between the rocket and, and of course the, the com— um, the command center. Um, when will that rocket launch? It's unclear. Um, with all these things, when you say net end of February, that's the earliest, and then of course it could get pushed further beyond that. Um, we do know that down at, at Cape Canaveral there is a bit of a backup. Obviously you've got, um, SpaceX with their crew launch, which is been pushed back by 2 days. I think it's now targeted for no earlier than February 13th. And then you've got Artemis at the end of the month. And so, you know, is Blue Origin gonna launch with Bluebird 7 before Artemis or after Artemis? Who knows? Also, I think Blue Origin has to make a decision of whether or not they're gonna reuse the New Glenn 2 booster, which has been, you know, refurbished, or if they're gonna use a new booster for that mission. So So yeah, it's a pretty exciting time. We've got another batch of Bluebird satellites that are going to be ready to ship soon. Unclear if the company is going to PR that. I'd assume they probably will. But I will say, you know, 5 orbital launches by the end of March, that's not going to happen. It's probably going to be more like 3 at best. And then you've got 2 that will slip into April. But, you know, the company reiterated a, you know, target of 45 to 60 satellites by the end of the year. And so as most people know, you know, the company has booked about, I think it's enough launch capacity for 75 satellites. So they overbooked for this year. And so a big swing factor, of course, will be if Blue Origin can get the cadence up because, you know, that particular vehicle, at least the early ones, will be able to take 6 satellites and then eventually take 8. Um, once it's been optimized. Um, one question that I guess people have had, uh, over the last few days. So, you know, I want to applaud Katzi and a few others, um, for calling the successful unfolding, as some of you guys have probably followed on X and Reddit, that a number of Space Mom, um, had already called a successful unfolding a few days ago. And by the way, like, that's true alpha, uh, you know. The ability to call events before the company can PR them is pretty impressive. But some have asked, why did it take so long? Or when people were posting about this satellite being successfully unfolded, people were like, well, why aren't they PRing it? Or what are they hiding? Maybe something went wrong. I think it's important to understand once you launch a satellite up in space, you have to detumble it. And so that means stabilizing it and making sure it's in the right spot. And so what I mean by detumbling is if you launch a satellite into space, it could be, you know, pointed the wrong way, it could be slowly rotating, or it could be flipping end over end or sideways, you know, all kinds of different things, right? And so there are certain technologies that you use to stabilize a satellite where it automatically uses the Earth's magnetic, you know, field to orientate itself. And that's what magnetorquers are used for, for example. But then once you do that, you know, it takes some time. You gotta like turn on the satellite. This is not like going to the Apple Store and buying a Mac mini. There's no software that comes prepackaged and you just like turn it on and everything works. All the stuff is like proprietary in-house stuff. So you're going to take your time to turn it on, make sure thermal's okay, you gotta recharge the batteries, you gotta do all these things. And then what happens is you wait for the right conditions, right? So this is a very expensive satellite out in space, especially the government ones. You're going to wait for the conditions to be just right. So no solar flares or any disturbances out in space. You're going to wait for the most optimal conditions and then you will unfold it. And so my guess is that the company unfolded successfully Maybe like, you know, a handful of days ago. But then once you unfold it, you don't put out a PR and say, hey, we unfolded it. You actually wait, right? You unfold it, you make sure that everything is working as planned. That's nominal. You know, there's no issues with parts of the phased array. There's, you know, nothing has been damaged. You also you know, test some of the signals probably. You also see if the spacecraft is stable, like you can operate, you can maneuver it and operate it to a degree. But generally speaking, like you want to make sure that everything is under control, right? And then you PR it. The reason why you do that is you wouldn't want to PR that you successfully unfolded it and then you find out some big issues later or, you know, maybe a day or two later, something bad happens. Like you're going to wait As long as legally possible to make sure that everything is okay, and then you PR that you've successfully unfolded you know the satellite and that everything's under control and working as planned. And so that that requires patience, right? And that's a big theme. I think you know for anyone who wants to be a successful investor in space companies, you've got to have a very large dose of patience. And also the ability to understand that things take time and they do get delayed and that the cost of rushing something and getting it wrong is way higher for a company that's putting these large complex systems out in space versus someone, a company that's making toothbrushes down here on Earth. Like if you're making toothbrushes and you get the design wrong and you could do a recall, maybe you pay people back for you know, the bad toothbrushes, like that's not a big problem. But if you put a satellite up into space and it gets bricked, that's a really big problem, right? And so you do not want to be in a situation where you put up something that's suboptimal and then it doesn't work. And I think it's important to understand too that for this company with the lead that it has in terms of the technology, Our biggest competitor is SpaceX and they've got Starlink Direct-to-Cell, which there's 650 satellites that are currently rotating, orbiting the Earth, which are basically like a minimally viable product, right? Like it can do texting, it can work with like some dumbed-down applications through low-band data. But even, I mean, putting that constellation aside, the V3 satellites that they're going to put up, I think at most are going to have a 5-meter by 5-meter phased array compared to our 15 by 15 meters, for you metric fans out there. But that satellite, if you look at the paperwork they filed with the FCC and the specs around it, it's still going to have major issues because it doesn't have an ability to put down pinpoint cells that are fixed on the ground. Also, a really big one too is that it's just going to work with mid-band spectrum. And so our first-generation satellites are working with cellular spectrum, which is low-band spectrum. And that spectrum has the ability to propagate through, you know, send signals through walls. It has great coverage characteristics. And so when Apple, the name that we'd like to talk about recently, talks about having a seamless broadband experience where you don't have to point the satellite at the sky or to have an unobstructed view. That's what AST's delivering. And that's what Starlink's going to have difficulty with, even with this purchase of EchoStar spectrum, which is actually higher band spectrum than they currently use. They currently use 1.9 gigahertz with T-Mobile, and then they purchased 2 gigahertz spectrum from EchoStar. And so that's going to have pretty decent data, but it's not going to be a cellular, know, like experience that's seamless. You're going to have to be outside. It might be able to like go through a window, but for AST SpaceMobile, it's just going to work. It's going to work like if you're in a plane, it's going to work in your house. You know, may not work in your basement that well, but it's going to work. And so I think it's important to understand that, yeah, there's going to be delays and it's going to take time to get the constellation up, but you're going to do it right. From first principles, like you're going to build a product that's purpose-built and is going to meet and exceed customer expectations versus having people be upset. And so delays by a few weeks, months, you know, even quarters, like that's not a big deal. As I've always said, you know, this product and the eventual, you know, sending up the constellation and turning it on the service, it's inevitable. And so I'd encourage people to just be patient and encourage the company instead of giving them a hard time if things are a bit late, encourage them that, hey, you guys are doing it the right way. This whole idea of measuring twice and cutting once, you're doing it right the first time and every time. And that's the type of philosophy that you want to have with a company that's deploying such an important service that's going to be applicable to consumers. It's going to be applicable to governments, the military, all kinds of applications that we haven't even thought of yet. But yeah, so what's next? We've got Bluebird 7 launch at the end of this month or early March, and we've got to look forward to batch shipments as well. And yeah, today, what a tremendous milestone. I mean, this is a de-risking of this spacecraft in this platform, which is going to be the backbone of our constellation. And so yeah, there's, this has been a crazy 5-year journey and we're just getting started. Like, this is the fun part. We're going to start seeing multiple launches with multiple satellites and it's going to be something that, I mean, I don't know, I don't know if I'll ever get used to it, but it's going to be very regular, right? And, but yeah, it's, it's It's an exciting time. And yeah, hopefully I'll be able to go down to Cape Canaveral and see the Bluebird launch on top of Blue Origin's New Glenn, Bluebird 7, that is, and see many of you as well. So I'll wrap it up there. Tried to keep it short. We'll see how things go in the coming weeks. I'd expect to hear more news from the company. And by the way, we will be having a 4th quarter update relatively soon. I'm sure the company will be setting a date soon. And so that will be pretty chock-full of information. As everyone likes to say, this will be the most important quarter in the company's history. And so that'll be something to look forward to. But I'll cut it there. Thanks everyone for joining and yeah, enjoy it. Today is a tremendous day and yeah, I think we should all be very happy and thankful that the team pulled this one off and, and excited for the future. Take care.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time. We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect a billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on their phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want something you don't even know that is connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with the NMO. Listen.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Mmm, waffles.