Jared Isaacman

Could they put a nuclear weapon above us?

It was a very unsettling moment because we knew we overlooked something and we were behind.

And then when we tried to catch up,

The first satellites we tried to put up, well, first, they were very small in comparison to what the Soviets put up.

So that told us already that we were at a disadvantage from a heavy lift capability.

They could put something big in space.

We were going to put something like the size of a grapefruit in space.

And it didn't work.

Our first attempts all blew up on the pad.

It was not pleasant.

So it was a wake-up call, right?

And when we rallied our resources and focused it on something extraordinary, we did it.

Yeah.

I mean, sometimes I guess, you know, look, competition is a good thing.

You just don't want to lose.

And Sputnik set off a great space race.

And in the end, we didn't lose.

But the story doesn't end there.

You know, when I was at Draken, and again, our job was to be the bad guy.

And I watched as years went by and what we were replicating or attempting to replicate in terms of the Chinese threat was getting better and better and better.