HELLO FUTURE: The Space Station Next Door

Speaker 1 (00:07):
The International Space Station is actually getting ready to retire. Okay,
all of this exploration, only about three hundred people have
ever visited the International Space Station the United States, Russia, China. Really,
this is a great example of humans working together to
solve some of the most complex mysteries in space and
science exploration. Well that airs over, Hello Future, it's me Kevin.
This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The year
is twenty twenty five. The planet is Earth. My name
is Kevin Surilli. I am the founder of MTF dot
TV's Meet the Future and my guest today. Honestly, I'm
so excited for this episode because he is someone who
is at the forefront of the private space industry and
what will be replacing the International Space Station. And I've
had the privilege of meeting with him before this episode
to learn all about it, and he's just awesome. His
name is Max Hout. He is the CEO of VAS,
which is the company racing to launch Haven one, which
could be the world's first private space station, and it
is scheduled for liftoff no pressure max in May of
twenty twenty six, so in just a few short months
and it will be blasting off up into space via
SpaceX's Falcon nine, and it's designed to be humanity's first
true commercial habitat in orbit. So it is a compact,
human centered station with private sleeping pods, starlink Internet, and
a science lab for groundbreaking research. So Max, first of all,
thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you for having me, and yeah, great to see you, Kevin.
So look forward to the discussion.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, so I look forward to going to space one
day on a round trip ticket, and I want to
get into all of that, but I want to explain
to our audience first and foremost how we are at
such a transformational moment where private space stations are going
to be replacing the ISS. How did we get here
and how significant of a moment is this and an
opportunity is it for humans?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, firstly, a little zoom back in a quick correction
to your introduction. So, about six hundred and forty people
in humanity since obviously the fifties and sixties, they's ever
gone to orbital space, and as you mentioned, you know,
three hundred of them on the space station. I think
you mentioned China, but China is their own space station
and it has never been on ours and the partners
we have for our space station. Obviously we've led the creation.
The key partner at the time was Russia. As the
Soviet Union was falling apart or it stopped, we turn
our own plan for a space station called space Station
Freedom into a collaboration with them and kind of leverage
the technology our and our and our funding. And then
we have Europe in Japan and Canada as key partners,
and that has grown to other nations that are allied
of the United States. But China, which you know has
not gone to the ISS since then, created their first
space station. We've had continuous presence in orbit on the
ISS for more than twenty years. In China has launched
their space station the last few years, three or four
years and now are there too. So it's so it's
really critical that as the ISS needs to be retired
and I'll get to that, that that we don't lose
this this presence we have in lower for bit right
as as a nation as the Western world, and so
that that makes it even more important to make sure
that we have commercial and commercial replacement right there on time.
And yeah, and the data is the kind of deadline
for retiring the ISS is the end of twenty thirty,
so here.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Enter your company. So why did you want to get
into this? Because your career is fascinating because you worked
for a te t. You worked in my old industry,
television and the TV division of IMG in London, and
you created live stream which was originally called Magulus with
some of your other co founders. You had this really
fascinating communications engineering backgrounds and now you're literally building private
space industry caps. That's it's awesome. But why do you
want to make that jump? And how important is it
especially in the next twelve month sprint.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, my personal journey here, you know, my main scaling
trade as an entrepreneur right to the actual the actual
thing I'm building. I'm raising funding and creating strategy, building
incredible team. If personally I've always felt can be can
be on different sector and different topics. So you know,
I'm kind of a product of the early stage of
the Internet. You know, I've started in ninety f five
in London, you know, building large scale website for sports
federation at IMG and then doing live streaming for big
events like Wimbledon and you know, the Patriots in the
US and so on and then you know, as an entrepreneur,
I got the chance to sell a product, then come
to the US. It was always my dream to become
an American and live on the West coast. Got there
in two thousand and five, started a couple of companies
that I've solved one live stream. You mentioned another one
called Mevo that that did video camera that I sold
to Logitech. But back to your question on space. In
two thousand and five or six, I started to ask
myself questions about the environmental movement and about about the Earth.
And you know, as you know, some people are advocating
and already at the time right that the way to preserve,
the way forward for humanity is the deceleration way. Let's
use less energy, let's do less things. Let's actually reduce
the amount of humans that exist, which is like insane.
Our whole DNA is kind of created so that we
grow humanity and we populate ourselves.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
It is insane. I want to I want to interrupt
you a little bit just to keep that. But that
is insane. And it's like we should be smaller, we
should limit our potential, or we should stop exploring, and
that is such a dumb way of thinking. Because it's
so anti everything that is natural and what's great about
being human?

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, I mean it's a it's a spiral of death
to norwhere. Right, you get to the point, what maybe
I shouldn't exist or we shouldn't exist, that would be great.
We'll consume less less energy, right, and just if the animals.
So I started to think about that trend, and then
I started to project, you know, kind of a thought experiment.
You know, what if, what will happen in ten thousand years,
What will we teach at school? What will be important?
At that time, I wasn't yet thinking about fully merging
with AI. We'll leave that on the side. But my
conclusion was, you know, in ten thousand years, if we
are not around, you know, we're not around. If we're around,
we will have become multiplanetary. And if we've become multiplanetary,
then it's insane that I'm born and second point zero
zero one of the space age, right, it's sixty years ago, easided,
but on a you know, I'm like right there. And
so at that time, you know, I concluded that, you know,
the way forward for humanity is to expand our resource,
celebrate the growth of population. You know, have people living
in the Solar System obviously, on Mars, on the Moon,
on space station everywhere, have more resources, have more power,
and just embrace our human nature. And that doesn't mean
as you know, some people will say, well that that
means you want to torch the Earth and leave it. No.
You know, I look at a world where we are
thriving on Earth too. We've used technology to take care
of it better. We have even more people that are
on Earth. You know, there's plenty of space. You know,
astronaut tell you that when you're in space, it's actually
really hard to find cities, like it's really really, really
difficult to find them. And some people will tell you
that we are overpopulated, which you know, insane from my
point of view as well. So that's at the time
that I'm like, oh, personally, let's switch my career as
soon as I can to contribute to space exploration, right
to be a small piece in that ten thousand year roadmap,
because I have the chance to be here. And also
a second influence is that you know, I was I
started tracking SpaceX and Elan at around that time two
thousand and five, you know, just as they were launching
their first rocket, and you know, they maybe had one
hundred two hundred people, and no one knew that there
was an internet entrepreneur that that was, you know, crazy
enough to start a space company. But what that told
me is like, oh wow, you know, anyone can make
that jump and contribute to space.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
I think that's what's so interesting for me, Max is
coming from more traditional media and working at Bloomberg. I
remember specifically waiting for a live shot to go on
air and watching a SpaceX rocket on Bloomberg last Well, yeah,
I will find for you the year. It was obviously
after twenty six because that's when I was at Bloomberg
covering the first Trump administration. But I remember watching it
and I remember thinking to myself, I wish there was
a whole channel that literally just did this stuff all day,
because this is way more interesting than watching politicians fight
over government spending bills, which is important. I don't want
to knock my old colleagues, but as a kid, that
was what I was so fascinated by. And to your point,
we're just at the starting point of this. I mean
Ben Franklin with when he invented the double spectacles of
the double bifocal, the glasses. Think of where we are,
not even two hundred and fifty years into the future.
We're now artificial intelligence is on our glasses and we're
getting augmented reality.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
And what about.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Exactly literally exactly That's what I'm trying to say, is,
like you said, ten thousand years, even in twenty years,
where we're going to be, Which leads me to the point,
which is a very simple question that I think is
so crucial for folks to understand. The ISS is a lab, okay,
and eventually a laboratory. What do you do in a lab?
You do science, you do research, you conduct experiments, but
it also could one day be a manufacturing hub. So
what Max's company does is essentially the first outpost for
a couple of humans. They're small hubs, right, I mean,
how big is.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Well, the first one is about four meters about ten
meters long, and convert that in feet. But it's multimodule,
where our first one is just the start, and then
all the time we will add more module, especially before
the ISS is retired, and then we will also grow
it and leverage the new SpaceX rocket to make them
larger diameter and longer and slow down.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
When you say modular. You're talking about legos. You're going
to connect them to make them bigger and bigger and bigger.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Correct, And it's similar to the way the International Space
Station has been built. But yes, you launch a module
on a rocket and then later on you launch another
module and you duck them together, you connect them together
in space, and so that allows you to obviously build
larger and larger structure and larger and larger space station.
Obviously it's a lot better when the rockets get better.
Right now, we use Falcon nine, which is the currently
operating SpaceX rocket, and we are waiting for the Starship
rocket which will go from four meter diameter to nine meter,
so you can start building much much bigger, bigger things.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
So the average person on Earth should care about this.
Why why? I know why, But I want to hear
from you because from my perspective, to be able to
have a scientific lab in outer space, to be able
to research on a host of different issues in outer space,
and to be able to do it with the private sector,
to embrace capitalism, to embrace the entrepreneur's spirit, I think
it's a great thing for the country number one. But
also I think it's great for human potential, which could
also help our economy here in America.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, I mean there are two real use of a
space station. So one of them is the one you've described,
which you know is under the category of make life
better on Earth. You know, let's develop drugs that leverage
the fact that it's microgravity where crystals grow better faster.
Let's three D print organs, right that we can't three
D print on Earth because there's one G and there
we you know, in space, we can print them because
there is no gravity, so we can have more intricate
structures with the way we print these organs. Let's make
fiber optic, Let's make silicons that are purer. So we
have all this opportunity that is just nascent. No one
has yet created a product. There's been a lot of
research and all of that. What that does that make
life better on Earth? Right? That that's if we can
if we can cure a disease with a drug that
can only be made in space, that clearly makes life
better on Earth. So that that's one key category. That's
the microgravity laboratory. The second category is that if we
are space fearing species and we have a plan to
go to Mars, which we do, and we have a
plan to go to the Moon and to go in
space stations. Lower fobit where we put off first space station.
That's not the last space station will build. That's only
the first is only ten minutes by rocket away from
the Earth right the Moon and Mars. The Moon is
a weak away. Mars is up to a year away
or sometime longer, or maybe six months at best, and
so lower fobit is the best place to develop the technology,
to test the technology, to train the astronaut before they
go to the Moon and mass. So they're the two
real reasons why we need a space station.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
I want to ask a follow up on that, because,
first of all, it's crazy to me it takes ten
minutes to get to outer space. I mean, by the way,
it takes about an hour to get across Washington, DC
with the Beltway traffic during rush hours. So just ten
minutes time and you can be an outer space. I'm
more optimist. I'm optimistic. I think you can get to
Mars in a couple of months. I don't think it'll
take a year personally, if the stars aligned pun intended.
But why what technology are you developing and the space labs,
and that help get us to Mars, because that's always
I'm a huge believer. I want to colonize Mars. I
want to be interplanetary. I want it to happen in
my lifetime. But what technology truthfully is being developed to
help make that mission faster?

Speaker 2 (14:21):
I mean, the first step is, for example, on the
International Space Station, we now send astronaut between six months
and a year, and we've proven that, you know, we
know what happens to the body, and there are issues,
right you, bone loss, muscle loss, but we have proven
that humans on the transit to Mars there will be microgravity,
can be there for that long and we know what
other challenge is for when they align on Mars. We
can also use the environment to develop technology, right, life
support technology and so on, which we will need we
will need on Mars and on the Moon. So it's
basically the closest ut post we can have in space.
Basically technically out of space, it's lower fourbit, but it
is in microgravity. And what's amazing, you know a lot
of people don't understand that the difference between suborbital and orbital.
You are basically when you see a SpaceX rocket that
takes our astronaut or a payload or anything styling satellite.
You know, it goes maybe four hundred you know, three
hundred miles let's say, in altitude. But what it really does,
it goes seventeen thousand miles per hour, and it accelerate arizontally.
And when you turn off the engine, when you reach
that speed and you are in space, when there is
no friction from the air, you basically continue and you're
in orbit, right. But what the rocket does mostly is
to accelerate you in horizontally so that you don't fall
fall back on Earth. And that can happen in ten minutes,
which is you know, pretty amazing. It takes a little
bit longer to duck to the space station, and you know,
going back to your question, you know, what is the key?
Why is there transition right now to commercial space? So
we've had the iss it. It's really incredible, amazing technology,
but there's a few issues with it. The first issue
is that it's the most expensive objective created by human
single object, you know, more than one hundred and fifty billion.
It's costing NASA and the US taxpayers about three billion
a year to maintain it and operate it. And you know,
everybody obviously from the Trump administration to NASA leadership to
opposite the reality of budget. We want to stay in
lower for it, but we need to do it at
a much lower cost to the taxpayer. And the goal
is to get to about a billion dollar a year.
And so the view is that you know, a commercial transition,
whether it's external investment, it's not just NASA owning and
operating it, whether there are other customers you know, private
individual corporations, other countries using it. The view is that
once private industry can do it and vast owns their
own space station, right the ISS is owned by NASA
and all other countries that are involved. Once we get
to this commercial model, the cost to NASA will be
greatly reduced and there will just be a tenant or
an anchor customer. The other two reasons is that it's aging,
it's been there well over, it's past lifetime. There are
some leaks, and there are some safety concern And the
last reason is that it's a partnership with Russia. You
know about the two bigger piece is with Russia, which
you know, geopolitically right now, is not the right partnership
to have. So these three reasons have created the momentum
to retire the ACESS in twenty thirty one and give
the opportentity companies like us to build a replacement as
soon as we can and to make it commercial. And so,
while there's been a laboratory in space, and there's been
pharmaceutical manufacturing attempts and research, it's always been in a
government platform at government speed and without really using capitalism
to be able to accelerate it. So all the industries
are really excited that soon we will have a platform
that's that's commercial, that that can be leveraged for as
a laboratory.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
I created the show and I created MTF dot tv
because I want to interview people like you, so Max
how thank you so much, CEO of VAS, thank you
so much, and for explaining to us the importance of
why it's important to have US based companies that are
the ones who are leading the way to replace the
International Space Station, and for explaining how this is literally
the second step I'll call it the second millisecond of
our journey to colonizing Mars. Thanks Max, Thank you