Steve Kwast
speaker
426 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Steve Kwast’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And even the gauge of the railroad, the innovation of the railroads, his family has been part of innovation for generations. So he comes by it honestly, one of the most fascinating minds.
And so when we got out of the military, a number of us dedicated ourselves that we would start a company with this guy and we would help this because America needs this technology and space to defend American interests. because if we don't have it, we will be victims. What China is building is an infrastructure in space that will be able to see and kill anything that flies above the trees.
And we need to build the same capability so that space is peaceful. and that there's a deterrence where China knows that if they behave irresponsibly in space, whether it's creating space junk or a directed energy weapon that paralyzes a portion of our economy at the time of their choosing,
that they can't get away with that because we're up there with them with better or equal technology and that there is a balance of power. Right now, we're on a track where we build better satellites, but they're building a superior strategy. And all the money in the world cannot solve a disconnect in strategy.
Yeah.
Yeah, so what we're doing on the moon is part of what America is trying to do, and that is take the steps to build an economy in space. So one of the steps is a permanent presence in space that's more than just astronauts on the International Space Station. And this is about resources in space. It's about the asteroids, mining the asteroids. It's about exploration.
most people don't realize how much The 1960s and going to the moon uplifted the human condition. The technologies and the innovation that happen when people are gathered around a goal, like going to the moon in the 60s, that transforms so much of our economy, of the things that benefit people on the Earth. So going to space is not about being in space.
And a lot of people will criticize and say, why do you spend all this money on space? Let's just solve the problems on Earth. It may be counterintuitive, but the human mind and the human experience, if you are not moving forward and exploring and learning and discovering, you are falling backwards.
Or putting a finer point on it, if you're a civilization like America that is not moving forward, exploring, pushing the boundaries and the limits of discovery and pioneering, You will fall behind other countries that are doing the same. China understands this. Every historian understands this. Every psychologist understands it.
But it's hard if the American people do not realize that there's a purpose behind this. And the purpose is their betterment. The purpose is their freedom and their prosperity, their security, their health, their free will. So China is moving forward with exploration and with the ability to build an infrastructure to be able to bring value to their country.
Just the power in space that they're investing in, not only the solar power that we talked about, beaming it to the earth, but also nuclear power and their plans to have a nuclear power plant in space in the coming years. If they can tap into the telecommunication market globally and the energy market globally, trillions of dollars flow into the Chinese economy.
It's part of their Belt and Road Initiative. But if you read Chinese literature, doctrine, vision, and their speeches of their leadership, it is a clear statement. Space is their national vision. And they plan on bringing in the Middle Kingdom, by dominating the economy that space brings to them.
And you might say, well, space economy, you got a satellite, you got a cell phone that now can talk to the satellite. How can that make them the dominant economy of the world?
And it's because space with one build of an infrastructure can tap into every person on the planet versus a linear model where you build one power plant and now you're limited to the capital investment of power lines and then the fact that those power lines are vulnerable. There is a tremendous amount of cost in a linear system of delivery of goods and services versus a networked method.
And I'll give you a perfect example. And it's the mail system, okay? Before the internet, if I wanted to mail out 100 letters, I'd have to buy 100 stamps and then send them out. And that's costly. Now with a networked approach, I can type one email, send it to 100 people, and it is a fraction of the cost. Pretty much just the electricity and the service I purchase.
Okay, that's the difference between. And so now in America, for example, we have over one million cell towers. But you still only get one bar in West Texas or zero bars. And if you're in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, you have no capability. It would just take a few, a handful of satellites in geosynchronous orbit over America, and you have 5G and five bars everywhere.
So now, the difference in cost. And it's about the price point. This is about the fact that everything that is national security is upstream of the economy.
And if you can build an infrastructure of reusable satellites that you build in space where you can build them as big as you want, you can upgrade, modernize, and recapitalize them at pennies on the dollar so that every new innovation, whether it's quantum coming online or a new supercomputer, you just unplug the old computer, unplug the new one in, now you can invest in a very low-cost infrastructure that taps into trillions of dollars worth of revenue.
versus building a power plant in every village in Africa and power lines to every hut. You can see the power of the networked effect of space and why it's going to be so powerful.
Yeah, so again, I'll let the experts talk to it, but again, being a generalist and talking to the experts at length and being in a company that's going to build the infrastructure for this technology to be delivered, I can give you the simple answer, and that is that the first thing is that the current way we build a satellite in America is like how we used to build rockets before Elon Musk came along.
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