Short transcript excerpt of an interview (Lex Fridman interviewing Keoki Jackson, Lockheed Martin CTO) discussing competition in the space industry—particularly SpaceX and Elon Musk—and the innovation boom enabling new capabilities (increased computing and communications, additive manufacturing). Jackson frames competition as positive, stresses level playing field, and highlights Lockheed Martin work on software-defined "smart sats" that can change mission on orbit.
Foreign.
What are your thoughts on the efforts of the new folks, SpaceX and Elon Musk? What are your thoughts about what Elon is doing? Do you see him as competition? Do you enjoy competition? What are your thoughts?
Yeah, first of all, certainly Elon, I would say SpaceX and some of his other ventures are definitely competitive force in the, in the space industry. And do we like competition? Yeah, we do and we think we're very strong competitors. I think it's, you know, competition is what the US is founded on in, in a lot of ways and always coming up with a better way. And I, I think it's really important to continue, you know, to have fresh eyes coming in, new innovation. I do think it's important to have level playing fields and so you want sure that you're not giving different requirements to different players. But I tell people, and I spend a lot of time at places like mit, I'm going to be at the MIT Beaverworks Summer Institute over the weekend here and I tell people this is the most exciting time to be in the space business in my entire life. And it is this explosion of new capabilities that have been driven by things like the massive increase in computing power, things like the massive increase in comms capabilities. Advanced and additive manufacturing are really bringing down the barriers to entry in this field and it's driving just incredible innovation. It's happening at startups, but it's also happening at Lockheed Martin. I talked about some of these like Maya and Orion. But we're in the middle of what we call smart sats and software defined satellites that can essentially restructure and remap their purpose, their mission on orbit, to give you almost unlimited flexibility for these satellites over their lifetimes. So those are just a couple of examples. But yeah, this is a great time to be in.
