Eric Schmidt

It's okay.

rockets are really cool and they're really hard I had I'm as you know I'm a pilot and I know lots about jets and I'd assume that rockets were as mature as jet engines they're not it is an art and a science these things are very hard to do the amounts of

In our case, the rocket is 4 million pounds of thrust.

You have to hold the thing down to test it, and you can't even hold it with metal things.

You have to have other things to hold it down as well.

There's so much force, otherwise it will take off.

Another interesting thing about rockets is that a rough number is that 2% of the weight of the rocket is the payload, 18% is roughly the rocket, and 80% is the propellant.

And my reaction as a new person is, you're telling me you can't do any better?

And the physicists say, after 60 years of physics, that's the best we can do to get out of the gravitation of the Earth.

And so I think rockets are interesting and they're challenging.

There's always an opportunity for competition.

In relativity space's area, it's essentially a LEO competitor.

So low Earth orbit, satellites, that sort of thing.

The order book is full.

We just have to launch the rocket.

Well, first of all, I'm a software person, not a hardware person.

I explain to people that hardware people go to different schools than software people.

and they think slightly differently.

So I'm always at a limitation in these new industries.

I had worked for the Secretary of Defense and have a top secret clearance and all that.