Jeff Thornburg

It's an ion engine.

Electric propulsion ion engines are in the same family.

They're very efficient, but they don't have a lot of thrust.

Right.

So you don't, because you're not creating the acceleration because you don't have a lot of thrust, you don't get anywhere very fast.

So satellites said, okay, that's cool.

If it takes us weeks or months to get to an orbit where we're selling electrons for broadband internet or TV or whatever, that's fine.

But then our adversaries started developing spacecraft that could move a lot faster with higher thrust.

And then they started doing things on orbit that threatened some of our critical infrastructure.

And now we have no way to kind of maneuver around that.

Maneuverability is a key ingredient of warfare on land, sea, air.

And space now.

And now space.

Yep, accelerate those particles in the thrust chamber as fast as possible.

And now there's a new need, which is we don't have that patience any longer.

Well, if you look at what China's done, as they've grown the amount of mass they can throw with their Long March launch vehicles, they're just making bigger and bigger spacecraft with bigger and bigger tanks and bigger and bigger thrusters.

Yes, sir.

And we like to be more elegant.

Remember my story about the Russian rocket?

This is American.