Jim Cantrell, CEO & President, Phantom Space Corporation, joins Cheddar News in the fallout of the latest Artemis I launch postponement to react and break down the fallout while looking ahead to what the success of the mission could mean to the future of manned space exploration.

Opening Bell

Impact of the Latest Artemis I Launch Postponement

joining us now with more insight on what all this means is Jim Cantrell Ceo and president of phantom Space Corporation. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Jim, Good morning. So what can you tell us about this artemis one mission and what this postponement means? Yeah. So this is the first launch attempt of a very complicated rocket in essence the modern equivalent of the Saturn five. Which you know, if you're my age, you you watched as a kid now taking the astronauts to the moon, same size is roughly the same complexity. So it's very surprising if they got it off the first time like this. I'm not the least bit surprised by a postponement. Not not concerned at all. Seems fairly minor but when it does launch it will be a pretty big milestone for this country. We are saying that we're back into the lunar exploration like we were in our holidays And the the the infrastructure behind it I think will be a little bit more long lived this time than it was in the 60s. We have both a commercial track being led by SpaceX and blue origin and then and then the NASA track for the government side of things. And I think you'll start to see a lot more cooperation between the two of those entities and and some cost savings as a result. So it's gonna be exciting decade ahead and on the moon. Mm I know a lot of people are still looking forward to it. But what does this postponement mean in terms of opportunity and lost money as well. You know, I know they're counting the dollar every minute. Yeah, yeah. This, this launch is about $4 billion Falcon nine launch, which is an everyday SpaceX event, that's about $65 million. So to have this kind of expense on the launch means that a postponement is very expensive. Uh certainly it's all playing in the budget and so forth. But it doesn't doesn't help your doesn't have your financial situation, but, you know, it's for complex vehicle like this, not at all unexpected. I would be surprised if they got it off the next time. They try to be just similar the complexity of it. And they're using liquid hydrogen, which is really, really difficult to deal with, I'm sure, and maybe talk about this Artemus one mission and what we hope to discover or find out by circling the moon. Yeah, So this is really a test of the human rated capsule, it's going to go to the moon and orbit around the moon for a number of days and then return to Earth. So without people in it, you know, you're getting rid of the risk of somebody getting hurt, which is probably a very good idea, especially on something, you know, this complex the first time, like I said a number of times. So they're doing the same thing with the capsule eventually, this will be part of a landing system. Uh, SpaceX was contracted to build the landing system and they're going to land on one of the poles and have a human presence there for the first time since 1972. Well speaking of 1970s to, you know, putting this in historic context, the last time we actually went to the moon was during that space race. So everybody was rushing, trying to be the first to get there and put a person on the moon. So now a little less pressure, better technology. Uh, but why has it taken so long? I mean, 50 years people say if we really went, then we should have been able to go back a lot sooner. Yeah, well, I would discount those, uh, those rumors that we never went, but personally, that walked on the moon and any rate, the, the reason it took 50 years is kind of interesting because I think we lost the will as a society to spend that kind of money. We had Vietnam going on and we had a lot of other things that were pressing and nobody really thought this was a good spend of money. And it started back under john f Kennedy when the, the contest with the Soviets was at its peak. So, You know, once that happened, we proved what we could do. The impetus to go back and to put some sort of permanent settlement, there was always was always there, but it didn't really grow until recently as a species, we're starting to walk off the planet and you know, this was our first step in 1969 and will eventually be going to Mars. And so this is part of that overall plan. And I think it just took that long for society to come around to this again to say, hey, this is something we truly value and we want to be doing. And I think some of the commercial developments of SpaceX and Blue Origin in particular have helped push this along. So what would you say that this mission to the moon means now? And how important is it? Well, it's not going to change the stock market, it's not going to change the student loan payments for any of those arguments, but it will certainly in the long term be one of the biggest things mankind is doing If you want to think about, you know, the most famous person uh in humanity, I know who that person is, but they're not born yet. That's the first person to be born on another planet. This is where we're going. Yeah. And this is much bigger than, you know, looking for the new world in the 1500s as the Europeans did. This is this is a big, big story in the, in the timeline of humanity. So, you know, this is our baby footsteps off the planet. So what would you say that this mission is setting us up for as far as one and you're gonna have Artemus to and then Artemus three where we'll actually have people on board to go to the moon, correct? Yeah. So this is a progression of let's fly test it before we put people on it. The next one is we'll fly it and put some people on it and then then we'll put the lander up and that'll be a commercial opportunity there. So, so that's that's NASA's approach to this. It's very similar to what we did on Apollo. We didn't start with just flying people on the first rockets. And I'll remind you that we lost three astronauts on Apollo uh they burned in the capsule on the ground test and we almost lost some on Apollo 13. There was a famous film about it. So these things are all not without risk. It's it's a great adventure. I think for those of us who want to watch this, it'll it'll be a great adventure worth watching. It's a great use of taxpayer's money in the sense that this is one of the destinies of humanity and I can't think of a more uplifting sort of theme is that, you know, we humans are are walking off off the face of the earth and setting up our ability to go anywhere in the universe. And how do you think this will compare to some of the other? You know, people we've seen go in space? You know, we have space X. Going, there's so many other non Nasa companies that are sending rockets into space. So how will this compare to that? And do you think that this will put Nasa at the forefront again saying no, we're still leaders, y'all doing your little trips up but we got it on lock. Yeah. You know, even though Nasa doesn't like to hear this, that it really is a public private partnership, you know, there's a lot of pride within Nasa and rightly so, you know, having led this this enterprise but it really truly is a combined private public activity as as it really was all all the way along. But the private has taken a much more front, front and center role with their ability to go out and raise venture capital and other other money to do this. So, so that, you know, Nasa you're right, is taking the lead role again. And that's a good thing because this is to me that the mission that Nasa ought to be on rather than, you know what we have with the space shuttle which was sending seven astronauts up to launch Comsat's that that didn't make any sense. So, you know, this is back at Nasa back in its rightful role is, you know, leading human exploration in the in the in the cosmos even still, you speak of that private public sector aspect can we see Nasa partnering with more of these public companies in the future And then maybe even getting out of the race themselves where they're just letting them do all the work and sending their astronauts up in their spaceship. That's a great question. I think that's eventually where it goes. My opinion is not very popular but I think that the government can no longer afford to spend the kind of money that used to spend on R. And D. You know, you have to do is look at our deficit and so forth. And a lot of money goes to servicing that debt. And you know, the private sector has shown that they're you know, 5 10, 20 times more efficient with a dollar. And if left to make the sort of risk decisions on their own like SpaceX has done and is doing and so forth. So clearly, uh you know, I think eventually Nasa becomes a mission oriented agency rather than a hardware oriented agency. This particular rocket came under a lot of criticism. It was called the rocket to nowhere. It was called the Alabama jobs program. Uh, and all those criticisms I think had some some merit. And it was it was a bit of a pork program supported by the Alabama uh congressional group. So you know, they got it done and they did a great job. So, you know, I think all those criticisms are forgotten at this point, but it really is a larger issue of what the rightful role of our government agencies are in in in these sort of things. And uh, with Nasa, I believe that Nasa's rightful role is to lead these these missions, and not necessarily to build the hardware to compete with the private sector. Alright, well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens next. Jim Crow, thank you so much, Ceo and president of phantom space Corporation.