Eric Schmidt

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.

I was given a medal, et cetera, for trying to help the Pentagon reorganize itself.

And when the Ukraine war started, I was watching and I thought, well, here's an opportunity to see a country that has no Navy and no Air Force, how they do this with automation.

And indeed, it has been a spectacular success as a matter of innovation and outnumbered three to one with huge differences in kinetic strength, weapons, mobilization and so forth and so on.

Ukraine has held on really quite well.

And what's happening now is you're seeing essentially the birth of a completely new military national security structure.

One way to think about it is that we all, so first place, and I've seen it live, and I will tell you that real war is much worse than the worst movies you have ever seen about war, and that's all I'll say.