Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York stock exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York city, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICEs exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Here's a backyard science project for parents trying to keep their kids eyes on something other than an iPad screen during a pandemic. You know that massive telescope on a tripod that someone gave you as a housewarming gift so long ago, that's been gathering dust in the basement? Why not take it out for a spin? See what you can see. That's what we did last week in search of comet NEOWISE, discovered by and named for NASA's Near Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer Mission. It was literally a once every 6800 year experience. Suddenly a cohort of teens found themselves transformed from TikTok mavens to Galileo wannabes, and all it needed was a spray of Windex and a wipe from a paper towel to bring space into crisp focus. The view was okay, but probably not as good as what Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken could see on July 21st, when they stepped outside to install the most expensive shed in the history of mankind.
Josh King:
The two United States astronauts were adding an external storage compartment for the international space station. Completing, by my count, the 300th spacewalk by US astronauts since Ed White first left his Gemini spacecraft back in 1965. This year was figuring to be as important for humanities goal to go interplanetary as those Gemini program years in the 1960s. Unfortunately, so far 2020 has fallen a bit short of expectations with delays in several ambitious projects from companies like Virgin Galactic, that's NYSE ticker symbol SPCE, and Boeing ticker symbol BA, the result of COVID-19's impact on the global economy.
Josh King:
On the investment side, a recent study found that venture capital inflows into space focused startups were down 83% in the second quarter of 2020, cutting off a good chunk of the cash lifeblood needed for the capital intensive research demanded by new ideas to take flight. So, despite these headwinds, we've seen the first manned rocket to launch from the United States in over a decade. The United Arab Emirates launched its Mars mission. And the launch of Lockheed Martin's GPS III satellites into orbits. And these are not the kind of GPS satellites that let you simply find your way to the nearest post office. The GPS III SV03 will help provide positioning, navigation and timing signals for more than four billion military, civil and commercial users with three times better accuracy and up to eight times improved anti jamming capabilities over any previous GPS satellite. And yeah, they'll probably also let me find my way to the nearest post office.
Josh King:
But joining us today in the ICE house, is Rick Ambrose who leads Lockheed Martin space. He's going to help us navigate through the complex government and private partnerships that are driving innovation. Explain why humanity needs to look to the stars and share how the space economy is going to drive growth right here on earth. Our conversation with Rick Ambrose is right after this.
Speaker 3:
In our time of greatest need, we want to thank the true heroes around the world for stepping up, for taking care of us and keeping us safe. With your expertise, your commitment, your sacrifice, and your selflessness we'll work together to create a brighter future. And we thank you for reminding us what really matters. From all of us, thank you.
Josh King:
Our guest today, Rick Ambrose is executive vice president of Lockheed Martin space, NYSE ticker symbol LMT. In his two decades with the company he's held a number of leadership positions across Lockheed's businesses, including space information systems and global solutions national business and management and data systems. Rick joined the company from Raytheon's command control and communications business segment, and has over four decades of experience in defense and aerospace. Welcome Rick Ambrose, inside the ICE house.
Rick Ambrose:
Josh, thanks. Real glad to be here, and thanks for having me.
Josh King:
I'm looking for more things to do with the kids with that backyard telescope. Last year, NASA committed to returning a person to the moon by 2024 and what will have been, I think, 52 years and more than four lifetimes for my daughter since Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans made the voyage aboard Apollo 17, along with five mice as traveling campaigns. Why has it taken so long to send a person back to the lunar surface?
Rick Ambrose:
I think if you look at the history here, as we belted out the space shuttle and spent a lot of time going back and forth to the International Space Station to build multinational partnerships. That kept us in lower orbit, but I think the new vision established by the administration and by NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, that do this very quickly is very exciting.
Josh King:
For those who don't remember, Rick, Jay Barby reporting live from the Kennedy Space Center. And instead think of Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton as astronauts Lovell, Swigert and Haise, do you have your own memories of those Apollo missions and how the world reacted to putting a man on the moon?
Rick Ambrose:
Absolutely. I'm in the job I'm in today because I was a 10 year old kid watching the first man step on the moon, which excited me about the moon. How many times as a kid did you lay out on your roof or sleeping bag out camping and look at the stars and wonder with amazement how they form, how they evolve, where do we come from and all. That would motivate anybody. But I think it's exciting. We're motivated to get back to the moon. It's a challenging schedule, but we're all in with Orion. As you all know, we've built, which will go back and forth to the moon. Probably the only capsule designed for deep space exploration and been in years development. Matter of fact as we speak, the Orion capsule and the service module are stacked up down at the Cape ready to launch. And as soon as the space launch system's ready to go, we're going next test launch up and we're going to go past the moon, around and back.
Josh King:
We're going to get into Orion in depth in the second part of the show, but let's go back well before Apollo. Allan Lockheed installed a two cylinder, 12 horsepower motor on a glider in 1910, when he climbed aboard that homemade aircraft in Chicago and operated its ailerons while its builder, George Gates operated the rudder and elevators. That was seven years after Wilbur and Orville Wright got the Wright flyer airborne four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, back in 1903. Curious, from that 10 year old boy looking up at the Apollo missions, how did you get your start in the business and then move through it to where you are now?
Rick Ambrose:
Well, it's interesting you go back there, because Lockheed Martin's powerful as a hundred and something year old company, as you mentioned, doing innovation along the way and navigating all these technology cycles. But for me again, seeing that, you come out of school, you go to college and come out. And I started, at that time, with Hughes and doing communications. Satellites were booming as the communications emerged, which is what drove this industry, at least in the satellite side of the industry, for a long time. And then just having challenge after challenge and getting as Lockheed Martin, whether it's back in the timeframe of developing aircraft or satellites, we take on the hard roles. If something's hard and difficult, that's what you lean into. And if you want to come into aerospace and defense, that's why you do it, is take on those hard challenges that not only help defend the nation, but also propel all of humanity. And most of our employees walk in every day because they know they're saving lives.
Rick Ambrose:
We're monitoring now a sensor we built for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the global lightning mapper. Over 1.3 billion images a day are being taken of lightning and what does that mean? Why just take pictures? Well, the science says we might be able get a 12 to 20 minute advanced warning of a tornado if we can perfect this. And that's probably hundreds of lives saved every year. And that list just goes on and on when you deal with space, because space is global by its nature. It has to be global because you're out there monitoring this earth and you realize how precious this earth is and planet, which is also why we want to go explore to understand more how earth works and how do we protect it in the future?
Josh King:
The space race of the 60's was this competitive sprint, Rick, between the US and the USSR to the moon that directly evolved in the cold war and a nuclear arms race. But the human urge to explore goes back centuries. Is the drive to explore beyond the moon, as you say now with Orion's plans simply, to borrow from George Mallory's answer to on why he would attempt and ultimately fail to climb Mount Everest, because it's there?
Rick Ambrose:
Well, I think the human condition, naturally we're explorers. We go back from the beginning of time, we always wondered what was that unknown? Let's go explore it, whether it was just coming out west, Lois and Clark, or going to the top of the mountain or what's out there. Now, it's not only that it's there, it's also we realize how finite our resources here on earth. So can we go out and find rare materials on the moon or in an asteroid? There's also that quest of how the universe was formed and a lot of quest will we find some life out there in the universe somewhere?
Rick Ambrose:
If you think back, at least when I was in grade school, since you shared I've been in the business for four decades, I'm probably a little older than you. We were taught that the reason the earth was so precious was it's the only place in the solar system with water. But now we're finding water everywhere. I mean, I cannot keep up with NASA publications and the scientists and how they're finding, it's in different forms, but we learned how to look. And it's that inquisitiveness that drives us, I think, as humanity, whether you're looking at the stars or down at the lowest molecular level in biology, how things work. That's what we're about is learning and discovering.
Josh King:
So much focus is you talked about going back to the Nixon years on the development of that orbital truck, as beautiful as Columbia was getting jacked up by its solid rocket boosters. In the hindsight of the last 50 years, did the need to put a man on the moon and our subsequent retreat back to low earth orbit, spark or hinder the infrastructure needed to support regularly putting humans into space and eventually colonizing beyond the earth?
Rick Ambrose:
Well, it comes down to what your focus is. I think at the time, and I was pretty early in career, with going back to the station and the shuttle and the truck, the theory was if we can't get a very fast launch rate up there, going back and forth, we would propel technology. And then a lot of experimentation was going on on the International Space Station in a micro gravity environment from growing food, even for deep space exploration, to medical advances, understanding how the body reacts in a zero G or a microgravity environment. So I don't know if it was wasted, but we were learning and then building international coalitions around that as we go forward. Now clearly, when we went to deep space, instead of putting someone back on the moon, we actually went to lower cost methods, doing it robotically.
Rick Ambrose:
Now we deep space probes, we put probes around Mars. We put rovers down on the surface. Perseverance, which is going up, was to be the first basically helicopter we're going to fly around Mars. So we'll get, instead of a slow moving Rover, we'll get a helicopter. And for those inclined to study this, Mars is only about 2% of the atmosphere of the earth. So we first did a calculation, you'd have to have rotor blades from a helicopter about 15 times the length which we couldn't do with a Mars Lander, but JPL figured out how to do counter rotating propellers and stuff to get it out there. Then Lockheed Martin did the ejection system to launch the helicopter, think of it as a small helicopter UAV, if you want, for a lack of anything else. So it'll have cameras, it'll have probes that go around. So we're going to get a whole different perspective on the surface of Mars.
Rick Ambrose:
We've perfected that, but there's nothing better for exploring than a human being. They can see something that's a little unusual and react. As much as we've mapped the surface of Mars many times over, we've only probably brought back four or 5% of the data just because of the bandwidth and comms. So getting a person out there with their inquisitiveness, their ability to reason, and really look at something different is going to be huge. And that's why we want to do both. And NASA's vision to try to commercialize Leo. And then as we go out and explore, I think that's all going to come together and then we'll have a permanent presence on the moon.
Josh King:
Nothing better for exploring than a human being, Rick. As of 2020, less than 600 people have even reached orbit. So many of us of a certain age wanted to see what Christa McAuliffe could teach us from 200 miles above. And we've been treated to some of that from the likes of Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, who recently gave a spell binding lecture at the New York Stock Exchange before the coronavirus hit. But what will it take to make space travel scalable? So we don't have to rely on the mesmerizing reflections of Hadfield and allow the establishment of a significant human presence in orbit and beyond. I went to your website, saw the Orion capsule sitting there. The order is for 12 of them, but you're going to need more than 12 of these to get more than 600 people up into orbit.
Rick Ambrose:
Yeah, that's correct. Exactly. They're not going to bring large scale, but to get to that point, we have to still learn more. And I think getting out there and using Orion and then the Human Lander System, and eventually in the lunar Gateway to get more astronauts back and forth, to discover, and what's going to take to set up that permanent presence. But when you come back to long term sustainability or go to scale, we have to keep driving one launch cost down in our ability to access space up and down at fairly economical terms and be safe and reliable.
Rick Ambrose:
Two is once we're up, we have to discover how to keep people safe. We're still struggling with technology around the radiation environments. How do you protect people from long term microgravity exposure, which has a effect on the body we've learned from our International Space Station experimentation and things. So we have to solve that, but then going to the lunar surface where you at least get some gravity, I think's going to help that. Then how do we establish the presence? How do we find water? How do you produce fuel on the surface and grow food, not just take it up there because if you try to go to Mars, if you're going to rely on pure shipment, back and forth, that's an expensive endeavor. So how can we set up those ecosystems on a lunar planet surface to go. So we have to figure all this out.
Josh King:
Rick, in his review for the New Yorker of one of Netflix's highly toted new series, starring Steve Carell, Troy Patterson wrote the lighthearted dystopia of Space Force is too close to home to serve as an entertaining escape. The show cannot escape the gravity of its own premise. But in reality, Rick, this is no longer the US and USSR racing to see who can get a monkey into orbit first. Talk to us about the real stakes involved right now, 250 miles over our heads.
Rick Ambrose:
First of all, if you look at the space... Come back to just the economic side of space and close to earth. Which by the way, 98% of the money is spent close to earth, it's about just under a $400 billion enterprise. JP or Morgan Stanley will say it's growing to about a trillion dollars a year by 2040. But if you put that in perspective, that 400 billion, that actually engenders a multi trillion dollar marketplace. So just take example of GPS, the US government might spend... You might see a few billions of dollars in a budget line, that's engendering but one or two orders of magnitude bigger than that in the economy, just from, if you stay in a home during COVID and you ordered Uber Eats or Door Dash, they probably used GPS to get to your house.
Rick Ambrose:
But if you extend that and then clearly the US government uses that. And as more and more in adversaries, get up there and participate, it can threaten certain military capabilities hence is why the Space Force was formed. As Lockheed Martin, we'll support a government organization regardless of how they organize, because our job is to help them with their missions. But Space Force is definitely needed because of 90 countries are now engaged in space in some capacity. And this is truly a dual use technology, the same weather systems and technology that can be used to find clouds are not too dissimilar than the same system that try and finds missiles. I mentioned global lightning map, that attracts lightning. They can see meteor as its hitting the atmosphere down to the size about a grapefruit. So any attack on even the military systems will actually risk all that economic vitality.
Rick Ambrose:
And that's not just for the US, that's at global scale. But look through human history, wherever humans have gone, there's been conflict. Look at maritime, the maritime law, you've got a Navy. Keep the skies, you've got other forces. I think it's just an evolutionary step that we're going to have to figure out, make sure we keep the peace, but space has its challenges. Someone does a bad actor and destroys an asset, even through a test, leaves a ton of debris up there, that threatens that human exploration. That'll threaten if you want to take human tourism or anything out to space, that makes that riskier. So we need to treat space today, very sustainably. We need to come up with international agreements at how you act. If you put something up, how do you behave and how you bring it back down, if you can. If you do put an asset up there, how do you make sure it's not going to cause other pollutions or try to minimize it as much as possible? And I think these are going to take international cooperations to go do.
Josh King:
I want to get into that a little bit, Rick. NASA is taking steps to prepare for governing space. I want to talk about the Artemis Accords and how the United States is hoping to build an established international law. The first tenet of the outer space treaty is, and I'm going to quote it, the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind. So where is this headed from here?
Rick Ambrose:
Well, I think you're seeing that play out now. I mentioned 90 countries are involved in space. NASA itself helps engender those countries. They support a lot of tech transfer and enablement of a lot of these particular missions and capabilities. US firms support, you mentioned the UAE and the Mars project. Many, many countries and companies worldwide supported them in that endeavor. And many other countries share a lot of the technology back and forth. It's a global supply chain. And what's interesting, as large as space is, it's a small industry segment. And with 90 countries, most of supply chains and the different companies that interact know each other well. Of course we have to follow national policies and things on how that interaction happens, but there's regulatory bodies that govern that.
Rick Ambrose:
But if we're going to go out and be sustainable in space, whether it's the moon or Mars, my belief is this has to be international. It has to be a global cooperation. And I mean, a good equivalency of that might be where we end up is maritime law. If there's a vessel in distress, maritime law says you render aide. Imagine if you're down one or two different countries or out on a moon or further in Mars. Don't you want some policies that you render aide? Because it's too far away. No one's going to send a really fast rescue ship and come around, at least in the early days.
Josh King:
Talk about cooperation between countries. I want to dive in a little bit to cooperation between companies, Rick. You look at that old footage of Saturn five launches and you see technicians in their white PPE with the names of so many different contractors working together to clear the spacecraft for liftoff. So many decades later, it seems like a similar cooperative spirit is taking place among the companies creating the technology needed to explore and colonize space. What's the relationship between the great established names in space and defense and the newer players coming from the tech world, such as for instance, Blue Origin, where my old buddy Clay Mowry is head of the customer experience.
Rick Ambrose:
Yeah, that's an excellent observation. I tell you, the reason I say space is big, the industry is small, is we do help each other. Don't get me wrong, everyone's competitive as well. But when you form a lot of these approaches in these programs as you go forward, it takes a lot of cooperation. Now you won't see the same number of company names and stuff as you saw back in the Apollo days. There was a lot of convergence in the industry and Lockheed Martin itself is a compilation probably about 67 different companies over the years. Where my take is what I feel we have a special duty as Lockheed Martin for is, we need a robust, dynamic market environment for it to continue. And that means you need a tier of competitors at multiple levels, supply chain, countries, all involved, all competing, but all dynamic helping each other.
Rick Ambrose:
So for instance, because we do Orion for NASA, a lot of data, as NASA funded that, think of the parachutes as we reenter, that data's shared with other companies that are reentering to help them develop because that's what governments do. When you got the high risk point, that threshold they're investing to dilute that risk, then commercial companies or other players can come in and take that to scale. And that's a simple example of many, many of the other technologies, even some of the reentry dynamics and the thermal protection systems and all that, is all out there. And NASA does that research on behalf, but that is shared.
Rick Ambrose:
In particular for Lockheed Martin, we've spent about 100 million since about 2007, is we'll go out and find startup companies. And it's where they have a unique technology that we'd like to exploit and move forward. And as we do that, we help accelerate that tech into many of our customers as we can, as we go forward. And then as we develop that, we'll either put it in orb, but we also help them. One example of that is a small stack company called Tyvac. We are both an investor in, we also partner with them to take capability out for our customers. So we recently flew a program we called pony express, which helped us validate artificial intelligence and some new additively produced a antennae technology that was on a Tyvac bus, but with our payload suite.
Rick Ambrose:
And so we could go very fast to market and validate that, and that'll scale up to larger satellites. I just want to reiterate, for this to be sustainable, to hit that trillion dollar opportunity out there, it has to be a dynamic marketplace. Create its own capabilities, self-fund commercial markets, and broaden that economy out. And it's got to be a multiple players, multiple levels in there. And that's how we participate. You might be surprised to find out as well is because it is a risky business, you may have a competitor on a launchpad if you've discovered a part problem that you know they use, there will be a phone call go across. I've received them from my competitors and I've called other competitors to go and say, Hey, we just discovered this parts issue. What do you do to be careful with that? And the government's entities are set up to process that kind of capability.
Josh King:
Talking about broadening the economy out. We have 50 states in this union and Orion is NASA spacecraft that's going to take humans into deep space from Florida. No other spacecraft in development has the technology needed for the extremes of deep space, such as life support, navigation, communications, radiation shielding, and the world's largest heat shield that's going to protect the astronauts when they do return safely home. Lockheed is the prime contractor on Orion, but how's the company working in every state in the country to create this sustainable moon colony?
Rick Ambrose:
We actually hold, believe it or not, suppliers conferences every year in Orion in DC and bring everybody in. One to help coordinate what's going on and happening. But two, so even Congress can see some of the activities and the effects that that has across the board. Again, I think because of the rigors of space, we're going to go find the best in class of any capability that's out there. And what's great about the new technology. It may not be sitting in one of the major state traditional space states, think Florida, California, Colorado, Texas, and maybe in some small state or a small company sitting in Illinois or Montana, someone hasn't come up with a great idea on how to protect with that radiation. There's also a global supply chain that feeds us as well. But if there's an expertise, and that's why NASA established a partnership with a European space agency to do the service module coupled with us and, and the Orion capsule to go out there.
Josh King:
Besides the collaborative aspects, the economic aspects that you and I have just talked about, what's going to make the Orion program stand out from other space delivery systems that people have become used to watching? Either the Apollo program at a certain period, the space shuttle program in the 80's, 90's and 00's. I mean, I went to your website, I looked at the capsule and the rocket. It looks like a bigger Apollo on top and a space shuttle on the bottom. How should we think about it as an average space nerd?
Rick Ambrose:
It will kind of look like Apollo because it's a ballistic reentry. And so just by its nature of that kind of reentry, and what I mean by that, it's going to come back in and it's going to use the atmosphere to help slow it down and things. So it's going to form that shape and it's larger. But the inside is anything but Apollo. It says all the modern technology and avionics and flight. Where Apollo was ballistic, Orion does have the ability actually to navigate a little bit on its reentry, because it has an offset center of gravity from the surface. Not a lot, doesn't have wings like a shell coming in, but I think all the safety protocols we've gone through and the software... So we have a full digital twin model by the way of Orion down to finite element models its material. We do AR VR techniques for processing that and helping keep the cost down.
Rick Ambrose:
We actually do physical models and I have a building over here, if you go in, it looks like someone turned Orion inside out. That's so we can test it. After we go through all the normal simulation tests, we can actually test it thoroughly to keep those astronauts safe. And every cable an astronaut will see when it flies is there, the exact length. In case there's any extra delays we want to know and we test that out. So that's why we say it's safe, is we know it's the rigor we've worked with NASA to go through all this test programs and everything, we know it's safe. Because everyone talks about a race. They say, Rick, do you want to be the first one on Mars or not? Do you want to be the first one on? I said, we've had to look the [inaudible ] and the ISN job to get you out and home safely and back home to your families. Very safe.
Rick Ambrose:
And that's what our focus is on that mission. If you look back at Apollo, it went out and back in days, not weeks to months. So you didn't have all those protective features. But because of the long duration flights we had to put that protective features in, and frankly, we're still learning. We fly again next year, we are going to go out beyond the moon. We'll have tons of devices on there to test and to look, because that'll be the last flight before we put an astronaut in that capsule. And we're constantly collecting that data to learn. And then by the way, the actual capsule that will take astronauts out is under construction down at the Cape today, being integrated.
Josh King:
Talking about safety right above us, Rick, my old stamp collection is filled with commemoratives noting past missions that surely left a lot of debris floating above us. We talked about debris a little bit earlier. Currently there are over 2000 active satellites and thousands of defunct ones orbiting the earth. Space may be endless, but there's only a limited space just outside our atmosphere. What needs to happen, not just for Orion, but generally to make sure that we can safely orbit the planet without getting into a literal train wreck?
Rick Ambrose:
That is something we're concerned with as we go forward. I think we talked a little bit earlier about setting up international agreements and policies, even to the point where a lot of universities are put up a small cube sat nanosat. Some of these don't even have propulsion systems, so they'll hang up there forever. And I think we have to go to the policy to how do you de-orbit these when you're done with your test? And it's not big money, NASA puts on our website, how to do a simple propulsion system on something like that. And as does ISA. And I think setting policies up and while it might be a little more involved in the design, if you want to learn space, you got to learn the entirety of space, not just putting a small piece of a satellite up that ends up becoming debris, as an example.
Rick Ambrose:
But then especially in low earth orbit, the US has pretty good policies. We build for our US government, we have to de-orbit satellites that are there. But I think getting to an international agreement around that. And we have the space sustainability index, we're working with the world economic forum, which is... They're not a over governing body per se, but there's many international folks there engaged. I know we're doing a lot of work there, here ourselves. There's European companies in there, have agreed. They actually give a contract through MITs coming up to the space sustainability index. So it'll have provisions and policy recommendations like that.
Rick Ambrose:
We've also volunteered our satellites to be scored by this, but it'll also evaluate the satellite itself and how much pollutants it might leave, let's say in a space environment. Your listeners may not be aware of, it's not the large things. Stuff's moving about 17,000 miles an hour. So even a paint or a small little debris can be very lethal. The best thing to do is you can't fix what's already up there, but how do you go forward? Do everything you can to minimize debris and impact.
Josh King:
After the break, Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space and I will discuss how the space economy will shape the future of the economy and create jobs. That's all right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Josh King:
Welcome back. Before the break, Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin space and I were discussing the impact of returning to the moon and how private companies are both competing and collaborating to drive innovation. Rick, you oversee I think about 20,000 people who make up Lockheed's space division. We discussed in the first half how private companies and governments are working together, but growth in innovation is going to require a skilled workforce. How's Lockheed Space partnering with universities to make sure there's a deep pool of talent for all those jobs?
Rick Ambrose:
We're in a transformative period here that we're working through. An exciting transformative period where we're able to now move out and try to re reshape all the space, either satellites or vehicles we deliver and make many of these software definable. So software, digital, all these types of skill sets are really important. But also knowing how to operate in a tough physical environment, whether you're out in space or moving at very high velocity through the atmosphere. So more and more, we're doing more simulation, verification, full augmented reality. You can go in and see Ryan in an augmented reality cell as an example. Or even satellites before we build them in that capacity. So that's creating a lot of demand going forward. In the meantime, we're seeing a generational transition as well. Probably retiring 10% of folks eligible every year, not just Lockheed Martin, the whole industry sectors at some rate.
Rick Ambrose:
So we partner for that high tech quite a bit, and not just with the universities. We go out and cut partnership with other companies. You mentioned Blue Origin, as you know we're on their team for the human landing system. That's going to go in, we do the ascent vehicle, which is based on Orion derivative, Orion components. But with the national labs we partner with, and then as well as the universities themselves. And then we also invest in our own technology. We probably spend well over $200 million a year in R and D ourselves, both accelerating the product as well as our own tech. And some of that's partnership with these universities. But a couple programs, there's probably 50 different for the whole corporation across the country. And some international universities, we do partnerships and things with both, whether we set up labs or even help affect their curriculum or even recruit out of.
Rick Ambrose:
So for instance, locally here at the University of Colorado Boulder, we got our space systems research center. We help fund and we partner with them and we even bring interns. As we sit, we have 700 interns sitting in our campuses just for space alone today. 60% of those are on campus, 40% are virtual. And some of those are high school as well as college. So we're actually, like most, reach down in high school to keep those stem students coming through, going forward. But we're also having to pioneer some of our own programs. Some of the universities are not graduating, for instance, software engineers as fast as we need them, with over half of my engineering staff being software engineers. So we have a swap program, we call it, software associate degree program, but basically we start taking either first year junior college or right out of high school and put them in a developed program of our own.
Rick Ambrose:
We put them to work pretty quick. And as they mature, we'll actually fund them to go through a university degree program. We're also a partner with the Metropolitan State University here in downtown Denver, which is a minority serving institution. And there, we set up a manufacturing curriculum and sponsored that. Matter of fact, you drive by their campus, you'll see an Orion scale model hanging in their lobby. And then one we got started on, believe it or not, is we struggled with some of our technicians, that's where we saw the early retirements in. And so we created advanced manufacturing technician, apprenticeship program. It's US Department of Labor registered apprenticeship to train skills that we need on electronics and building these satellites and things. That's a great program. And we've taken folks that have had career changes. It's about a six to nine week program, depending on how they come in.
Rick Ambrose:
And we actually put them into work right on satellite equivalent components and units and structures in their training. And they go right out to the production floor after that certification. But with that, you'll see anything we're doing, anything you're seeing that's driving the high tech sector, high density, computer process, multi-core processing. I mentioned pony express, we emulated in setting up a cloud in space because that's our drive. When you hit these satellites in the future, they're going to look like an IT system you've had here on earth. So we can flip processing in and out and repurpose them through software. So think of personalizing your phone. We can personalize satellites as you move them around and put them in different missions. So it's exciting time bringing all this high tech capability into the forefront here with this model based design and simulation and augmented reality. And some of these interns are doing things that probably 20 years ago an engineer didn't do for five or 10 years. It's unbelievable what they're doing as they come into the workplace.
Josh King:
You got your start at the DeVry Institute of Technology, your master's degree from University of Denver. But even traditional industries, not some of the ones that you were just talking about, are preparing to evolve their skills for space. Talk about your own backyard. The Colorado School of Mines now offers a degree in lunar mining. Do you actually see a prospect where the 2020 mining school graduates will find a job in a lunar drilling rig sometime during their career?
Rick Ambrose:
I hope so. I would like to see that as we go forward, when we get to the moon in '24, to see a mining career there. There's no reason if we stay on course, that shouldn't happen in a decade or two. I do have to say is when I watched that Neil Armstrong first step on the moon, I thought by the time I hit four decades in my career, we'd be hopping around space a little more frequently than we are. So I'm hoping this time is going to be a lot different. And a lunar mining degree will just be one of many types of degrees we're going to see with space exploration.
Josh King:
Dr. Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist recently published a book called How to Die in Space that captures the multitude of dangers facing anyone exploring or living in space. You think, Rick, the technology will be able to overcome the dangers or will leaving the earth remain the domain of the infinitely brave as exhibited by the 15 astronauts and four cosmonaut fatalities during space flight, in addition to those that have perished during training?
Rick Ambrose:
Yeah. And that's a good point to look at. There's clearly hazards with space. I'm one to believe as we apply our innovative prowess as a country, as a world, and put the best and brightest minds on this stuff. And some of those minds might be sitting in the colleges or sitting in high schools, as we speak today, we're going to overcome those. But go back to air travel, back in the fifties you looked at the number of airline crashes and there were more fatalities. Now you don't even think about getting on a plane. It's very, very rare. It's safer than driving home. And so when you go through that, I think the same thing's going to happen with space. In the beginning, yeah, it's going to take the brave women and men that step on there and go out, but then we're going to learn. Which is why we're taking a lot of time with Orion and getting the safety things.
Rick Ambrose:
And there's some things we don't know yet. I mean, we don't know fully how to perfectly protect from radiation. There's a spot within the Orion in the service model, which is if there's a solar flare, well, they'll get a alert from NASA to go hunker down and protect themselves. How do we get to the point someday where they don't have to do that, we have that tech? Today, we don't know, but we will create that. How do we go figure out how to mine and again, grow on another planet, grow food? It's going to be different. There's a lot of great science going on, a lot of great breakthroughs by NASA and scientists and ISA, but we're going to have to solve that. And at first, yeah, it will be more dangerous, but over time, we'll get it safer and safer. I think like anything else.
Josh King:
The most optimistic writing, Rick, often portrays the experience of becoming a space faring people as the catalyst, perhaps to put an end to war, combat famine and strife on earth. But there's also an equal chorus of critics of that view. And in many ways at its height, the space race was a unifying event in the country. You think it can be so again? Will the cooperation needed to explore space unify the world, or will it just be utopian fantasy?
Rick Ambrose:
Well, I'm more of a optimist going forward. You look at the height of the cold war, we had the Apollo-Soyuz mission. For many years, with United Launch Alliance, we flew Atlas rockets with Russian engines. I think with the tech needed, my hope it does unify an ability. And I think we'll go faster if we can find a way to unify out and go do space exploration. And even with Mars 2020, there are international partners on that mission for NASA. So I do believe it's unifying, not just utopian to go out. And I'll also tell you, when you go out, a lot of people want to go live on Mars. That's a pretty inhospitable place. Right now, the earth is still the best game in town.
Rick Ambrose:
And as learn as we go out, we learn more how to protect this planet and how to manage this planet. And I think all of us on a global scale have interest in doing that. So, I don't think it's going to be overnight we're going to suddenly solve some of these issues, but as we move out and realize how precious the earth is, how sensitive the environment we already talked about around earth and spaces. Because if we're going to navigate through that, we don't want a lot of debris and hostile things going on as we go out. And the more we can figure how to go out and discover oceans and other planets and water and how to navigate around the cosmos over the decades, I think that will be unifying in many ways.
Josh King:
You mentioned pony express. As we wrap up, Rick, Lockheed Martin Space is working on thousands of projects. Which one do you think will have the most immediate impact on our day to day lives?
Rick Ambrose:
The interesting thing about that question, if you talk to probably an average person, they don't know how much they use space every day. And we've almost made it too good and too easy. It's almost become ubiquitous. Whether you're going to your ATM or transacting that credit card that's being tax, helping through GPS in space. Whether you're navigating and communications. So my hope probably would be, communication's probably the most dominant one people see every day. And GPS, whether it's navigation, position, timing, you referenced in your opening remarks. All of these help save lives. Weather systems. If you think of what space has done is it produces massive amounts of data at scale that can help improve the quality of life here on earth. But I'd say, GPS navigation, communications are two, but I'm really fond of Orion and anything we're doing to explore.
Rick Ambrose:
And I'll probably leave you one last... Saw it here on later in the year, you're going to see a probe we're working with NASA called the OSIRIS-REx. And so it's been hovering around the asteroid Bennu. This is one of those asteroids that come pretty close to earth periodically and the type of asteroid. And we've been down to 0.2 miles of the surface. What's going to happen later in the year, is we're going to go down, we're going to tag it because we've caught it. We're going to tag it, but we're going to collect a sample on the surface they call regolith. And we're going to bring that back to earth for the NASA scientists to study and understand better and that's going to happen. But there's nothing more exciting than chasing down an asteroid, it's been four years by the way of travel, chasing down this asteroid, collecting the sample. And clearly everyone was surprised by what happened when we got there, bigger rocks than we thought, everything else. So we're learning a lot about the cosmos. So I'm particularly fond of anything that we go to discover how this universe works and how this great world ticks. So I'll probably leave you with that.
Josh King:
Well, from my backyard, with that telescope, looking up at the ISS to OSIRIS-REx, and what comes back when we finally get those samples back to earth for analysis, can't wait to discover more. Rick Ambrose, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE house.
Rick Ambrose:
Thanks for having me, Josh.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Pete Asch, Ian Wolf, and Ken Abel. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the remote library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Keep your eyes on the stars. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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