Neil Koenig, former BBC Producer/Director and now ideaXme board advisor interviews Chris Stott, Founder, CEO and Chair of Lonestar Data Holdings Inc. to talk of how data centres on the Moon will fuel human progress.
Neil comments:
Space entrepreneurs often have grand visions. As the billionaire Elon Musk explained, in a BBC Radio 4 documentary I produced some 15 years ago, his dream is to help mankind become a space-faring civilisation by lowering the cost of interplanetary travel. Today, Mr Musk is making progress, as his company SpaceX continues to build ever bigger rockets and win new customers. And according to fellow entrepreneur Chris Stott, there has indeed been a dramatic fall in the cost of space transport, largely because of the work that SpaceX and its rivals have been doing. As a result, many opportunities for new businesses have emerged. Chris Stott has long been fascinated by space, and he has worked in the industry throughout his career; his wife Nicole is a former NASA astronaut. He now has an audacious plan: to put data centres on the Moon. It sounds like a crazy idea, but Mr Stott is deadly serious. He says that, because the costs of space travel have come down so much, the project is now eminently feasible. In this interview with me for ideaXme, Chris Stott talks of his passion for space, why he thinks it is vital for human society to have data backups in places beyond Earth, and why he believes that the survival of human civilisation depends on mankind successfully venturing into space.
Official biography: Experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of profitably working in the space, satellite, and telecommunications industries consistently delivering shareholder value. Skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, Corporate Social Responsibility, Business Planning, Analytical Skills, and Innovation Management. Strong entrepreneurship professional with a MSS focused in Space Sciences from International Space University. Multi Award winning Documentary Film Maker and Executive Producer. Lonestar Data Holdings Inc. Lonestar has been founded by a proven team of experts from the Cloud and Space verticals to pioneer a future for data at the edge for all of us. Our mission is to apply abundance thinking and exponential technologies to the exploration of the Moon and the endless possibilities of lunar storage for the human race. Lonestar’s vision is fueled by remarkable investors led by Scout Ventures, 2 Future Holdings, Seldor Capital, the Veteran Fund. Irongate Global Capital, Atypical Ventures, and Kittyhawk Ventures. Image credits: Shots of data centres on Moon: Jason Riley, Artificial Lens for Lonestar.
The ideaXme interview with Chris Stott
Chris Stott ideaXme interview
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:00:00] We’re here to “idea” everyone, to fire up your curiosity and connect you with the people and ideas that shape our world. Watch, Listen. Understand. Connect. Create. Let’s Move the human story forward™ together.
Chris Stott founder of Lonestar Data Holdings
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:00:20] Welcome to ideaXme. Today we’re joined by someone with an audacious plan to put data centres on the moon. Chris Stott is the founder of Lonestar Data Holdings and he’s here to tell us more. Welcome, Chris. Just before we go into the details of your plan, can you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:00:41] My name is Chris, founder of Lonestar Data Holdings Inc. and several other companies in the satellite communications and space business. I’ve been working in the space industry close to 30 years now. Had a background in politics and regulatory way back when, back in the old days, back in the 90s and have had the good fortunate to live and work in many different places around the world. I grew up on the Isle of Man, and I’m now living in America as an American citizen. I met my best friend, married her, and never looked back.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:01:16] So what drew you to the space industry?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:01:21] Neil I honestly can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t fascinated by space. I have vivid memories, and apparently so did my parents of me going to play school and find, you know, searching out the astronaut helmet and suit at the playtime and dress up all the way through to, you know, I think physically battling my father and my brother for control of the television when I you know, when I was much younger because they wanted to watch Match of the Day and I wanted to watch Star Trek. Growing up in the Isle of Man, we take something for granted on the island. We’re Europe’s “dark skies capital”. I thought it was normal for everyone in the world to be able to walk out of their school or their home, look up and see the Milky Way with the naked eye and just see every star and planet and just be in awe of that. And yeah, so I’ve always had this passion for space.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:02:11] So how did you then get into doing this for a living?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:02:16] Actually, my math is really bad. I’m dyslexic in a few things. That’s one of them. So, I realized back when I was doing A-levels that I had more of a flair and a passion for everything from the rules of the game to the regulatory side, the history, the policy, the economics of it. And so flash forward, I was very fortunate to be able to do my master’s degree at the International Space University, an incredible place for postgraduate training and education for the space program founded by NASA and the European Space Agency and every other space agency in the world, but also founded by Peter Diamandis, the founder of the XPrize and Singularity University, and other organisations. So, I was sort of cross training. And going there, I realized that my passion for regulatory and economics and the business of space was so very important, equally as important as the financial science as the rocket science. Just when everything was deregulating and becoming global and privatized and Thomas Friedman spoke of the “Flat Earth” (The World is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman, in which he talks of globalisation and the flattening of the world). And just as the industry itself changed from being primarily government focused and government funded to these little inflection points that we’ve had, where with the deregulation in the mid 90s, everything then became satellite communications and the explosion in growth of services, the reduction in prices, the increase in quality globally was astounding, followed again recently by this influx of venture capital money into space because the price of getting to space has come down so much.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:03:41] When I started out, it used to be around about $100,000 a kilogram. Just to put something in space. Today, as we’re talking, it’s down to $5,000 a kilogram. And once and I have absolute confidence that the team over at SpaceX, who are an extraordinary team that that first star ship launch is one of many test flights and the moment star ship is up and running commercially, that price will probably come down to somewhere in the realm of $100 a kilogram. And that is game changing because it means that the cost of getting to space now becomes less than the amazing machines that we put in space as tools to drive our modern civilization.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:04:21] Let’s just talk now about your plan of putting data centres on the Moon. Before we go into that, what is a data centre and why are they important?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:04:34] They are the modern engine of our entire technological civilization. We think of the Internet and the cloud. In reality, it comes down to a lot of computer chips doing processing and a lot of storage devices. Think massive thumb drives. And we house these things in buildings and we’re all of the Internet inquiries go in and they’re processed just like a massive laptop. Imagine a laptop and imagine it the size of a football field. That’s a data centre. It’s an incredible thing. And the amount of these data centres that we have around the world are growing in their own exponential fashion because our needs as humans, every man, woman, child, and machine on the planet needs these things. And so, the Earth in itself is almost becoming one giant integrated circuit with a group of data centres outside almost every single major city or population centre, all connected by cable, fibre, and satellite communications. It’s an incredible thing. It’s becoming like one living giant breathing mind for the human race. And yet all of our civilization now depends on these. They are the modern-day version of a cathedral. They won’t be going away. They will be getting bigger. They’ll be getting more complicated and more and more crucial to what we do.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:05:49] So, they are kind of the backbone of the Internet.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:05:52] They very much are the Internet. And so, we talk to people about the cloud. The cloud is not a cloud. The cloud is these huge facilities where we take the ones and the zeros because we’re still using silicon. So, like a yes no, you go back [00:06:08] to Tron [a 1982 science fiction film] you [00:06:09] know, the old days. Yes. No, yes, no, the ones and the zeros and those computations. Bits and bytes drive everything that we do. So, imagine what would happen if we lost that. Now, there was an event 2000 years ago back in 48 BC that we still talk about. It was so bad, so awful a loss of data. And it happened during the Roman Civil War with Julius Caesar. And that was the burning of the Library of Alexandria. And like yourself, and I imagine like almost every single one of your listeners, I still find it heart-breaking. And we weren’t even alive then. We weren’t even speaking English then, and we go: Oh my gosh, what was lost in the library of Alexandria? How long did it take us to recover from that? Yes, I know there were other libraries, but you go back, and it was up until maybe the mid the midpoint of the Middle Ages that we fundamentally started to recover some of the lost texts over 1400 years later. Imagine if that happened today. And the sad thing is, Neil, it almost has several times in the last five years and it’s getting worse on a daily basis.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:07:18] You’ve explained why you think data centres are important. Why put them on the Moon, or indeed in space at all?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:07:28] Excellent question. And it’s a very legitimate question because it sounds it sounds like lunacy. No pun intended. Right. It sounds like we’re lunatics. And for us, we’re following what our customers want us to do. So, this is demand pull, versus technology push. So, data centres themselves being so crucial, so unique, they do draw a lot of energy. They do create a lot of heat and a lot of carbon. But they are fundamental to what we do. So, we do need them down here on the planet and they’re still growing. So, for us, keeping that data safe means that we have to put a data centre somewhere outside the norm, because here on our planet, inside our biosphere, inside our atmosphere with that interconnection of the cable fibre and the satellite and the cellular networks, we have problems with network interference as the polite word. It means people hacking physically into cable, fibre, satellite, and data centres and doing malicious things. There’s also then ransomware hackers, people coming in and trying to steal your data, trying to scramble your data, hold you to ransom.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:08:30] Your data is so valuable, more valuable than oil. It’s a precious commodity. And then throw in Mother Nature and climate change as potential threats. So, we’ve seen recently that you can have data centres around the world. And yet if it gets too hot, as in London last summer, the data centres literally turn off, their batteries start to melt. They did in two major sets of data centres.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:08:54] The Rhine River in Germany ran dry. So, the water they use to cool the data centres physically wasn’t there. Turn off the data centres, lose hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of value. But more importantly, the people who needed that data. Hospital records, police records, traffic lights stopped working. You know, everything grinds to a halt and then throwing a freeze in Texas when it’s so cold and there’s so much snow, you can’t get a truck of diesel fuel to the backup generators at the data centre or forest fires in California or brownouts in South America. It’s getting pretty bad. And so, let’s take these things that are so valuable and the data that is stored there more importantly, and let’s put them somewhere where they themselves don’t impact our biosphere. They don’t create carbon here at home. They don’t need energy here at home. Let’s put them in space. We put it somewhere where they have 24 hour a day energy, carbon free, solar energy, natural cooling. The two biggest costs of data centres are energy to run it and energy to cool it. And it’s away from any kind of geopolitical stuff that goes on inside our atmosphere. And then we looked at the Moon, Earth’s largest satellite, and there she is, majestic, Celine up she goes every day, and we can see her line of sight. There’s no atmosphere, there’s no climate change. There’s no climate incredibly geologically stable. The moon doesn’t spin like Earth does.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:10:17] Earth spins 24 hours a day underneath the moon. That near side of the Moon is what we see all the time. The Earth, the Moon doesn’t spin. And so, we can put things there that can see the earth 24 hours a day. They can use natural cooling. They don’t harm the biosphere; they don’t cause climate change. [00:10:31] And we can put a lot of storage and a lot of processing power there because, China and Russia are “pal’ed” up in more ways than one [00:10:40] and they’re going back to the Moon. The Chinese have been active on the South Lunar Pole, actually far side [00:10:45] South Aitken Basin, [00:10:45] claiming territories for over 1550 days now nonstop. And that was the [00:10:51] Change 4 mission. [00:10:52] They’ve got all sorts of things happening on the Moon and around the Moon. And the Russians have now palled up with them for a lunar base, as have Britain, America, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Korea, and most of Europe. Look at that as “team freedom” because we’re realizing going back to the Moon, is a like the Rock of Gibraltar over the Earth. Whoever controls the Moon, controls the Earth. It is that fundamental from a strategic position. But also, the Moon is full of resources for helium three, for fusion, which we have now demonstrated. It’s also full of other raw materials. And the greatest function for us is to be a wonderful, stable platform to operate from.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:11:35] This plan is extraordinary and audacious. Is it legal?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:11:41] Yes. First thing we did, Neil, coming from a regulatory and policy background myself, and if I behave myself every now and then, they let me out to teach postgraduate space law. So, I think the hardest thing about getting to space is getting permission. You can’t just simply [00:11:57] walk into Mordor. [00:11:58] You can’t just simply launch something into space. So, you have to have a license to put the rocket up. You have to have a license to put a satellite up to what satellite is doing. There’s a whole host of treaties, starting with the [00:12:07] Outer Space Treaty of 1967. [00:12:09] Everything sort of rolls out from there. Liability registration, Astronaut rescue, the International Telecommunications Union on the use of spectrum and non-interference. It’s massive, but basically the nation state that licenses you to go do something in space is forever, and I don’t say that lightly, is forever liable financially and diplomatically for your actions. Nobody owns the Moon. Under the Outer Space Treaty, the Moon and all other celestial bodies are the province of all Mankind.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:12:43] You don’t own the Moon. But when you land on the Moon, the rocket or the spaceship that takes you there and you land on the surface, that is like a ship on the high seas. It has a flag. And whichever flag is on your lander, those are the laws of that nation define what you’re allowed to do. So that’s what we’ve done, especially with a concept called data sovereignty, which is so very important. 104 countries now have data sovereignty laws. Britain, of course, does. And the idea that if it’s regulated data and British data, you can’t store it outside the country. Just like a passport. Right. Just like a diplomatic pouch. You can’t say I’m going to go store my data in a country that has fjords and it’s very cold and it’s cheap to store it there. Well, at the moment, your data crosses that international border. It’s not your data anymore. No. You might have a contract with a data centre provider, but the nation state upon which that data centre resides, their laws apply to that data centre and anything that happens inside it. So, the idea that you must keep your data in your own place so when you go to the Moon, say you land a British registered lander on the moon, that’s like landing London, literally London on the moon. The British government has a legal obligation to continuing supervision, regulation and has jurisdiction over it and its activities. Now, that’s great for British data because there’s a little bit of Britain on the Moon, right? You connect it via satellite and it’s like, wow.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:14:06] Then add a couple of embassies. Some hosted payloads. Have some boxes of electronics that belong to America or Canada or Australia or whoever. And that works. We’ve been doing that on big geo sets for years and years and years. And so, you’ve got these sorts of with beams coming together of these two industries where you’ve got satellite communications and what we do regularly and routinely in space there from a permissions point of view and here’s data. And because in satellites and let’s say it’s a $440 billion a year industry in satellite communications, it’s an incredible thing. I mean, the entire human race is now connected for the first time in human history. It’s astounding what’s happening out there. But oh, my goodness, we use satellite as a transport layer. You can beam data around the planet any way you want, but the moment you stop and store it, data sovereignty laws. So, satellite meets the moon, meets data sovereignty, and it works on the Moon. But, you know, but by being on the Moon, it’s very stable. We don’t need manoeuvring fuel. It just sits there. We know where it is and it’s nice and easy to work there. It’s a very benign environment compared to most of the rest of space.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:15:11] About 15 years ago, I made a BBC documentary about the space industry, and amongst the people we spoke to was Elon Musk, who told us that the reason he was starting the company was because the cost of interplanetary travel was too high. He thought humans ought to go to Mars. So, he started a space rocket company to bring down the cost. 15 years on, there he is launching rockets. He’s got customers. Are you saying then that you’re kind of one of the beneficiaries of his work?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:15:44] Oh, 100%. I must admit. Hats off to Elon and Gwynne (Shotwell) and [00:15:49] Jonathan (Hofeller) and [00:15:50] everyone over at SpaceX, because they have, they have done so much for the human race. And I know billionaires and SpaceX get a bad rap and that’s maybe a huge misunderstanding. What he and Jeff Bezos and [00:16:04] Sir Richard (Branson) and [00:16:05] others are doing is breaking apart a status quo, breaking apart a paradigm using new technologies, using advances in computing to radically change the chances of survival for the human race. Now, Elon, you know, is someone who sleeps under his desk and doesn’t take vacations. And the same with Jeff, who is very focused as well. I mean, go back, and look at Jeff’s valedictorian speech when he graduated high school in Miami. I think he was 17 or 18. He actually talks it’s on record. He talks about founding a company that would make enough money that he could then found a private space program and save the human race by moving all industry off the planet and cleaning up our atmosphere when he was 17. Right. These aren’t casual things that these guys are doing. What’s happened has been nothing short of a revolution in the price of getting to space. It’s the cost of putting something in space has come down by orders of magnitude. And so, what once, a $100,000 a kilogram when I was out launching and selling launches [00:17:05] from McDonnell Douglas and [00:17:06] Boeing years ago on the Delta program, an incredible program. One of the best vehicles ever built has gone from $100,000 a kilogram, right down to maybe 5000. And when Starship gets going, it’ll be down to less than 100.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:17:18] I mean, think of this. I mean, that means round trip to the moon for $50,000. Right now, you can do a first-class cabin on Etihad between Orlando and Dubai for 60,000. And that change and the cost of getting things up and back is nil. It’s astounding. So, in fact, paying $100 million to across the Atlantic, you pay $1,000. Right. It’s this democratization of space, of access to space. So, it means the more things we can put up there, the more we can do. All we do is put cameras, sensors, and tools on these amazing machines in space that then provide data for us to enrich our lives down here, whether it’s communications, cameras, keeping track of crops, methane plumes, climate change and a space station for all the biomedical things that we’re doing there. Because here’s the other thing, Neil, that no one ever talks about. It’s one of the greatest shock factors to a lot of people when they think about space, because no one ever thinks of it this way. 100% of the money spent in space is the Dr. Evil little quotation marks there. 100% of the money spent in space isn’t. It’s all spent down here in our economies. That rocket scientist driving his car, picking up his dry cleaning, going to her house, going out for a nice meal. And developing all these new technologies that transfer into everything we do. And even the computers we’re talking came from the space program. It’s like, wow, that’s a that’s like a shot in the arm for our economies of high-tech goodness.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:18:52] Just going back to this question of sovereignty again and the sort of status of the Moon. Could you start and run a company on the Moon or because of this business over each country kind of having its own sovereignty over what happens from that regulatory point of view, it’s as if you’re back on Earth.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:19:15] Exactly. That’s it. And so, yeah, you could form a company that works on the moon, but of course you have to form a domicile that and incorporate it somewhere down here. And that in itself though is interesting because then that raises the question of where do you do that? So which countries are going to protect your investment? Which countries have a good reputation, good regulation and, you know, good controls of revenue and everything else that you’re doing. And Britain and the Isle of Man and United States and others do. I think. Okay, well, what else does that come with? The technology transfer issues are the financial issues are the stability is it politically, economically, and stable? Is it will protect my reputation? Do I have access to the enabling regulations? And all of a sudden, like, oh, wait a minute. So, if I form my company, say, in London or Douglas on the Isle of Man, oh my goodness, look at that. I’ve got a safe, stable place and do business from. I can get investment. I can employ really good people. Right? And it’s like, oh, my goodness gracious me. You mean I’m growing an entirely new part of the economy? I’m not taking away from someone else. I’m adding to the pie. I’m growing a bigger pie, and that is helping schoolchildren, that’s helping the NHS, that’s building roads, that’s helping the M.O.D, that’s helping everything that we do, that’s helping all of our universities. This is like a found pot of gold out there that’s just sitting out in space. And you mean I don’t have to displace anyone to do this? I don’t have to go out there like in the old colonial times and sadly do something awful. I can actually go out there and I don’t have to strip mine the Amazon for the platinum on an asteroid. I don’t have to displace a native tribe. Right? Oh, my goodness gracious me. This is doing good by doing good.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:21:01] Some critics might say this is a crazy idea, sending rockets into space, full stop. There are some people who say this is not a good idea at all and that, there are alternatives. We could just have the data centres down here. What’s the answer to that?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:21:20] I’d I would take them gently by the hand and make sure they had a nice cup of tea and then tell them the truth. This is a very binary decision. We either go to space or have an opportunity, a slim possibility that we survive as a species. And please really understand this for your listeners, Neil, if we don’t go to space, that one becomes a zero and it is 100% certainty. No if, ands or buts. We’re done. No human race. Nothing. Super volcanoes. More Covid’s, Climate change, war. You know, we’ll fight each other to death with our growing populations over an ever-decreasing supply of resources. The word “river” and the word “rival” have the same derivations. It’s a 100% guaranteed that we’re dead. Probably in about less than two generations. Whereas, if we use the tools that we have been given, use these minds that we have to think beyond this little island earth to step outside the cave, to go up there and have access to that free energy, those free resources and fundamentally change the equation for the human race, opening up new areas, new avenues and eras of liberty going out and resources coming in. It’s like a steam pressure cooking away on the planet with all our population. And we are the valve, and then out it comes, and we can actually buy time for the human race to find a solution for us to grow up and evolve. Otherwise, World War II is going to look like a picnic. Right mean right now as we speak today – Sudan is kicking off. Ukraine is kicking off. We’ve got more problems in South America. These people are haunted by the ghosts of the past and they can’t even see the abundance of the future. The human race is bound and constrained by this mentality of scarcity that there’s only so much and we have to fight each other for it. And there’s not. There’s a whole universe full of stuff. We don’t have to fight anyone for it. There’s abundance in our future. The space program has figured this out.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:23:32] Well, you’re clearly excited by this industry and what it enables. If this is such a good idea, you presumably, therefore have some competitors.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:23:43] Oh, we do. Oh, gosh, yes. At Lonestar for what we’re doing with the data centres. Amazon is putting up a data centre on the lunar surface in 2027. [00:23:52] Thales Alenia, [00:23:52] the great European company, is doing similar in 2030. The People’s Republic of China have an operational data centre there right now. Actually, when we file for our spectrum a couple of weeks later, the Chinese government filed a patent for lunar data centres. Someone said to us, this is like David versus Goliath. And I was like, well, thank you. Actually, I feel more like Bruce Willis in a ventilation shaft with a Zippo lighter in Die Hard at the moment. I have an incredible team. We’re a small company and we’ve seen this opportunity because its market driven, it’s meeting a demand, it’s meeting pain points and meeting a need down here, you know, and all we’re doing is putting data somewhere. It’s safe, accessible, secure and under data sovereignty. And our customers are being tremendous. They say, okay, where is it, Chris? You know, as long as it meets our needs. And I said, is it underwater in a data centre? That’s a terrible idea because we’re trying to keep heat out of the oceans, not put it in. But this data sovereignty issues in a jungle, a desert, a top of a mountain underneath a mountain, I’m like, no, because you’ve got data sovereignty issues and you’ve got the same thing.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:24:50] We’re still connected with the same terrestrial networks. And so where is it? And I said, Look, it’s on Earth’s largest satellite. And they were like, what? Telstar 18, B 19, B and Via-Sat 3 launches today. Massive thing going up. Amazing for the human race. I’m like, No, it’s on a satellite bigger than that. And they’re going, What? What satellites are on? I’m like, Earth’s largest. Which one is that said on the moon? And everyone is like, Oh, the Moon. I mean, we even get people who call us up and say, oh, did we ever go to the Moon? I’m like, yes, we did. I promise you. And by the way, vaccines work, and the Earth is not flat, right? I’m like, really? But yes, we did go to the moon. You can actually get a really good telescope and see the lunar landers for yourself. Now, the Japanese company [00:25:30] ispace [00:25:30] tried valiantly yesterday and they got within 100m of the surface and it’s really hard. This is literal rocket science and hats off to [00:25:38] Takeshi Hakamada San and his team. [00:25:41] They were amazing, and they’ll do it again. And this is really the survival of the human race. It’s at stake here. And we’re just using private capital to drive it forward because we think government capital should be better spent in schools and hospitals.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:25:53] What’s the timescale then for your business? When do you get your first data centres up and running on the Moon?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:26:02] This year – 2023. Our first launch with [00:26:04] Intuitive Machines [00:26:05] is this June and our second launch [00:26:08] with a great data centre coming [00:26:09] up is in November. These are test articles. This is proof of concept technology tests, concept of operation tests, and both of those missions are sold out, which is wonderful. We’re doing edge processing and data storage and disaster recovery as a service. Draas is the technical term for it. And then 2025, we’ll go to our next level. Much bigger storage, much more capable, but nothing new. No new technology, same rocket, same satellites, same SSDs, same chips just put to a different purpose. And there will probably be in lunar orbit, not just on the surface. We’ll be testing that out, but there will be 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for years and years and years onwards. And we’ll just keep building our capacity. No more libraries of Alexandria. The ability for us to have communications and back the most mission critical premium data at first and then as we go. It’s our goal and our vision and our mission that I want every man, woman, child, and machine on this planet to have access to free storage up there. I mean, the data that we create, the moment you’re born now you have a little data cloud around you as a baby.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:27:16] Your medical records, the time you were born, all the different things that are going on, all the vaccines, everything you’re doing. And as you go to school and your music and your life and your friends and your social and oh, you’re basically a walking cloud of data. It’s not quite like The Matrix, but it’s not far off it, right? And so, this idea that we should never lose any of that. This is an ongoing conversation for the human race. Human rights organizations were supporting a lot of human rights organizations as well. And we’re saying to them for free. I please anyone listening? If you know someone that we haven’t found yet, please put them in touch with us. Those records, those human rights organizations, those records are the first thing the bad guys go after because that’s ultimate accountability. So, we store those people for free. Of course, we do. We’re all about Western civilization here. You know, we’re all about that shining city on a hill. And that’s why we’re called Lonestar. That’s the Lone Star, the guide star. I got my US citizenship in Texas, the Lone Star State. You know, out here on a frontier. We can do better. Sometimes humanity does its best when it’s pushed and stretched the most when we’re working towards a common goal.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:28:20] We can do amazing things as people. Amazing teams of people. And the space program and everything we do in space is so difficult. It is literally “rocket science”. It’s so hard Neil, it’s so hard, and yet the rewards are so great. So, look, we need more energy. We need more resources there in space, whether it’s solar or space based solar power or whether it’s helium three for fusion and more. We need more resources. We can’t keep digging up the Amazon rainforest. It’s a nice place. We should leave it alone and let it grow back. We kind of need that. Same thing with the oceans, right? We need the plankton and everything else. You know, we need to fix climate change and do all these things. Well, we do that for space, but for our data, we need an incredibly safe place. So, someone said to us, Oh, you like the Svalbard Island, the International Seed Bank? But for data I said, yes, except unlike Svalbard Island, we don’t flood. You know, it flooded because of climate change. They got the seeds out, thankfully, but it’s like, whoops, yeah, we need to have this outside the big boiling pot we have going on down here and it’s that crucial.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:29:24] What would be your advice then to young people who are interested in a career in the space industry?
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:29:34] Go for it. We need everybody. We need the best and brightest. We need everyone from journalists, doctors, engineers, scientists, and every denomination you can think about. We need the best lawyers, the best businessmen, best policy people, the best everything. This is something you can dedicate your lives to, something that you can do to help everyone around you. And it is so exciting, and it is right now where we need it to. And it will grow forever. And if you really want to make a change in the world, do this and you’ll be supporting everyone in agriculture, everyone in manufacturing, everyone in transport, everyone in government, everyone in education, everyone in medicine, in everything. Right. This is the hardest thing we’ve ever done as a species. And I look at that international Space Station up there, it’s been up there for almost 23 years now. It’s incredible. I mean, that was built by 16 nations. With imperial and metric. I mean, you know, they fitted that thing together in space. They didn’t practice fitting it together down here. And it all worked. All these different languages and cultures. And we did it. The most complex thing ever built by the human race. And we pulled it off and it just goes on from there. This is the beginning of human history, not the end. You’ve got a bunch of people out there. We call them “the doomers”.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:30:44] There’s a lot of people who are professionally negative, Neil, who love to sit there and moan and groan. Don’t be those to the kids out there. Don’t be those people. We will solve climate change. We have no choice. But you have some of the best and brightest minds actively doing so today. So, we go into a lot of schools and my family does that a lot. Nicole (Stott, Chris wife, who is a retired NASA astronaut and founder of Space For Art Foundation) does is horrified.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:31:06] These kids are like: Oh, I’m so depressed about the future? I say: Why? Who told you that? Oh, my gosh. Look at what’s happening. There are so many opportunities, so many tools that are coming online to help us create a better world for everybody. As Jerry O’Neill and did with the Space Studies Institute, which is what Jeff Bezos is doing and [00:31:27] Dr. Jerry Pournelle did with the Institute of Space Commerce with Larry Niven. This [00:31:31] idea that we can use tools to get to space and we don’t just survive as a species, we survive in style. By doing this, we’re changing the economic equation. We are allowing every man, woman, and child to rise up in economic standards, right? As opposed to sharpening knives and going at each other for the ever-decreasing pile of resources that are left here.
Neil Koenig, ideaXme: [00:31:55] Chris Stott, thanks very much.
Chris Stott, Founder, Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.: [00:31:59] Neil. Thank you for having me. Thank you, everyone, for listening to my rants and raves. I don’t get out much and I don’t often get to talk about this. So, thank you.
If you liked this interview, be sure to check out our interview with Jekan Thanga, Phd, Head of SpaceTREx
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