Palmer Luckey

There are no independent vendors that are not owned by an existing prime, which is really bad for startups, really, really bad for the primes that don't own their own rocket motor vendors.

And even the ones who do own rocket motor production capacity are not stoked with their ability to produce all of the different things that they need.

So

That was an area where we didn't have to come up with that thesis from the beginning.

You had Congress saying, we desperately need more rocket motor vendors.

You had the Pentagon saying, we desperately need more rocket motor vendors.

Please, won't somebody do something?

And they'd been doing so with minimal effect for many years.

So when we do something...

I think there's four things that need to be true.

First, it has to be something that the Pentagon cares about.

It has to be something they think is a priority because if they don't think it's a priority, it doesn't even matter if it should be a priority.

If they're not convinced it should be a priority, it's probably not something that is gonna get fixed in the near term.

If I think something is a priority and the Pentagon disagrees, that's not an engineering effort I need to deploy.

That's probably a persuasion effort that I need to deploy.

Don't start the engineering on something when you haven't successfully persuaded them.

Most of the time, they know what their problems are.

Two, has to be something that Congress cares about.

They have the power of the purse.

They decide what is going to get funded.