Tom Markusic - Founder & CEO at Firefly Aerospace

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Tom, the CTO and founder of Firefly Aerospace, and we discuss the journey leading to their upcoming rocket launch, why you must be a fan of doing difficult things to be a successful entrepreneur, and what we can expect the future of space travel to look like. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:36) How you doing, Tom?

(Tom Markusic at 00:00:38) Good. Nice to meet you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:39) This is exciting. We're going to have a great time. Are you pumped up?

(Tom Markusic at 00:00:43) Hey, working on rockets, you know, I'm pumped up every day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:47) I know. I just actually watched the video of the SpaceX test explosion yesterday. How did that make you feel?

(Tom Markusic at 00:00:54) It's very inspiring, obviously. I think anyone involved in this profession, to see stuff on that scale going on, is really cool. Of course, I was an early SpaceX employee, so there's always some connection, you know, I feel back to what they're doing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:13) Yeah. And because now you have your own space company, what happens when you do a test like that? You get a bunch of data that you can—I read in an article that you get a bunch of useful data. And what is that, just to make sure it doesn't crash the next time?

(Tom Markusic at 00:01:28) Well, you'll generate terabytes of data. You'll go back to what your goals were for the test to begin with. And first of all, you'll determine, you know, whether you got all the data you needed to evaluate whether you met your goals or not. So that's kind of the first level. And then the next level is to look for anomalous things in the data that would suggest there were problems that were not anticipated. So those are the two major things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:59) And when you got to work at these other companies, what inspired you? At what point were you like, I want to go do my own thing?

(Tom Markusic at 00:02:07) Well, really, my background is really a technologist. You know, I have a PhD in aerospace and mechanical engineering, but primarily working on plasma physics from Princeton. And I always thought I'd be working on warp drive and things like that. I learned eventually that for all that cool stuff to see the light of day, or the light of the sun really, you needed to figure out how to get to space first. So we had to really lick this getting-to-orbit problem and met Elon and got to participate in the first launch of Falcon 1 way back. And realized that something new and transformative was going on here and that I could spend my energy and really substantively contribute by helping that to happen. But after we were successful, it became clear to me that it needed to be about a movement, not about just SpaceX. So I decided to go out and try to help the next company become the next SpaceX. And I worked for a couple of really cool companies, but I just didn't really feel like they were going to reproduce the magic. So it was at that point that I kind of made the leap of faith and decided to start Firefly. It was never the long-term plan or anything like that. It just, after those experiences, became clear to me that if there was going to be another SpaceX, I had to be proactive in going and doing it myself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:30) Because of the culture, right? The people.

(Tom Markusic at 00:03:33) It's a lot of blend of things. You know, if I would have kind of characterized SpaceX in just a couple of words, it would be, you know, applying a Silicon Valley development approach to aerospace. And Elon did that in just an extraordinary way, and I haven't seen anyone since then do it. And so that's what we're trying to do here at Firefly. And to be clear, we're not trying to build a company that's competitive with SpaceX. We're looking at a whole different niche of the market, a rapidly growing niche of the market, but just trying to create a company that has the diverse technology portfolio, the cost structure, and the spirit of what they're doing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:17) They also look really cool.

(Tom Markusic at 00:04:18) When I—

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:18) When I got to see your vehicles, we were sharing them around in our Slack channels, and we're like, the test fires and stuff—it just looks, it just sounds like a kid in the candy shop. It sounds so much fun.

(Tom Markusic at 00:04:29) It is, absolutely. We're really fortunate to live at a time when there's this real renaissance in space. If you think about in the past, everyone that was interested in this, you had to land a job at NASA or, you know, some big aerospace company to be involved. But now you literally have grassroots efforts to go to space going on, which is just nothing like this has ever happened in history. So it's just a really incredible time to be living and working on space right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:55) Now when you started, did you self-fund? Did you raise capital? How did it start?

(Tom Markusic at 00:05:00) Yes. You know, I'm—I think I'm a pretty good engineer, not a very good businessman, or it certainly started with no experience. So I had to learn along the way. But, you know, I surrounded myself with some financially savvy people. But yes, Firefly started very much like any other startup. So you have your seed investors, which ends up being a lot of friends and family, and you have that seed round. The thing that's different about rockets is it's super capital-intensive. So I'm here in Austin, Texas, which is just an awesome place for building companies, and there's just all kinds of startup activity going on. And I went to some of those groups and was hanging out with them. And, you know, it just became very clear to me that I was doing something very different when you're in those groups. And they're talking about, you know, really trying to close their seed round, and it's $200,000. And my seed round was $20 million that I was trying to close. You know? So my first business endeavor turned out to be probably one of the most capital-intensive and risky business ventures that you can conceive of doing. So it's really been kind of a true baptism by fire. And we've had our ups and downs along the way. Believe me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:17) And so what's the business model? Is it shipping? Is it infrastructure play? What's the business model? How do you make money?

(Tom Markusic at 00:06:24) Well, we provide a service, and the need for services is rapidly growing. There's projected to be about 100,000 satellites launched in the next decade, doing all kinds of amazing things for humanity and all kinds of business and defense and exploration opportunities. The one thing that all of those applications have in common is the need for space transportation—how to get there. So we really focused Firefly, at least initially, very much on the space transportation problem. And the first part of that is a launch vehicle getting from the Earth to Earth orbit. The next part is moving around in space, and then the third part is landing on a foreign body like the moon. So at Firefly, we're trying to provide end-to-end solutions. So all three of those facets of the mission, we can support from one company. So we have, for example, our Alpha launch vehicle, which is going to launch next month, which I mean, that's been years in the making. But also on that first Alpha flight, we're flying what we call our SUV, Space Utility Vehicle. So that is an in-space transportation vehicle that allows you to go to higher orbits with your satellite or go to the moon or, you know, do servicing or refueling, all kinds of things. So the prototype of that is actually flying on our first flight as well. And then the third piece is we have a Genesis—what's called our Genesis lander, which is a lunar lander that can take payloads up to about 150 kilograms to the surface of the moon. We're part of a group of companies that have been writing proposals for those missions, and one of those is actually going to be awarded likely this month. So we're excited and enthusiastic, hopeful that we'll get that Genesis contract. And so next year, you're looking at really Firefly, you know, A to Z realizing that end-to-end dream of space transportation. So transportation is the focus. If you have the ability to get to space, you have the keys to space, and very few companies, governments in the world have the keys to space. Very few. So when you have that, then you can start thinking about doing all kinds of diverse business ventures in space. And again, you look at SpaceX, you know, they have the launch vehicle, then the Dragon spacecraft, then the Human Dragon spacecraft, and now Starlink satellites. So they're really filling out that business ecosystem as well. And so we plan on following a similar path. We don't have any aspirations for building, you know, large-scale satellite constellations or anything like that, but we're really going to master the transportation part of it, again, end-to-end, which is different. So I just want to make sure we realize this: Firefly is not just about launch vehicles. It's about the whole journey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:21) Where are you launching from?

(Tom Markusic at 00:09:23) So our initial launch will be from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the beginning of next year. But we're also building, or getting ready to build up our Launch Complex 20 at Cape Canaveral. And we're also in discussions to deploy launch capability internationally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:43) That's pretty cool. So if you want to launch at Cape Canaveral, do you just call them up and pay them a fee for the bay or whatever it's called? Or how do you get the ability to launch?

(Tom Markusic at 00:09:52) It's a partnership, really. You know, it's a very complicated, dangerous business. So there are all kinds of regulations, which are, you know, in there for a good reason. They're not just handicapping you. But it's a process of long conversations, going through everything initially from environmental impact studies. Like, okay, we're going to go do this. You know? Well, how's that going to affect the natural environment around there? And that goes all the way up to, you know, building, construction, safety protocols in place, and then the actual hazards associated with the rocket flying around. It's a huge amount of work that goes in upfront. But then yes, eventually, you do end up on launch day, and you pretty much pay daily to do what's called bringing up the range. And that's them going in, the government going in, setting up their radar stations, their communication capability, making sure that if the rocket gets off course that it can be destroyed before it impacts anything of value or where people are. So that's how they get involved on the launch day. The neat thing is that everything is moving toward autonomous systems. So what that means is at some point, you won't have to have that oversight of the rocket. The rocket is programmed, has its own onboard equipment to make its own decisions about whether it's got a problem and to take care of it itself. And that's really going to dramatically lower the requirement for the range to have as many people involved in every launch. And it will also, I think, increase the ability for these ranges to have more launches for more companies more frequently because there's less human interaction involved. And the last thing I'd say on that is that the FAA is also involved in this since you're flying around, and you have to make sure, you know, flight quarters are cleared and things like that. And General Monteith at the FAA has really been kind of instrumental in modernizing that and trying to get launch vehicles treated in the same system that other aircraft moving around in the airspace are treated so that we can kind of streamline that. It's not like a special thing. It's just another, you know, aircraft going through some flight space that needs to be scheduled with everything else that's moving around.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:16) Oh, that's pretty cool. That makes sense, though, right? It's just another vehicle in the air coming in and out. It's just the altitude and the position of it.

(Tom Markusic at 00:12:23) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:25) So when you were going through your initial business, was it all smooth sailing, or did you have rough moments getting it off the ground?

(Tom Markusic at 00:12:33) Oh, it's been six years of continual rough moments. It's never been easy. And it never, from day one, it's been super hard. And it's all—I mean, it's just, I think, a constant in the universe, though. It's an extraordinary thing to be able to even work on this sort of stuff. But it's like Ringo Starr said in the song, if you want to sing the blues, you got to pay your dues. And incredibly hard work. It's incredibly expensive, like I said. I've had to raise now over $200 million to do this. And to get people to sign up to do that takes a lot of trust. And so the technical challenges are obvious. They're difficult. But to some extent, that's just a matter of having experience and iterating and working effectively as a team. So there are these internal challenges, but then the external challenges, which really where the funding comes in focus, that's even more challenging because to a large extent, you can't control that. You have to go out there and sell. So there's a lot of selling involved in this and maybe to an extent that I didn't realize, but you're always selling people on the vision. You're also just differentiating, right? Because in the marketplace of ideas out there, people have money, they have to choose. Right? So there's a lot of, you know, selling and differentiating yourself amongst your competitors. Then there's, you know, the regulatory aspects of it too. You have to jump through a lot of hoops. You know, there's a lot of regulation associated with what we're doing. So that's kind of a constant thing that you're working on. The other challenge, I'd say, is on the external entities, is working with external vendors. You know, we are what you call very vertically integrated, which means we build our rocket engines. We design them. We test them to a very large extent, and we're able to control cost and schedule really well through that vertical integration. But there are parts of the system that we don't control, that we buy from others. And very often you find that they just don't have the same mindset as you do as to what constitutes a reasonable price, what constitutes a reasonable schedule, you know, and how accountable we should be to holding the schedule and things like that. So that could be an incredible frustration when you just find some vendor that you're critically relying on that's just like, meh, we're not too worried about it. And you're like, my company is, you know, spending millions of dollars a week. I can't just take a six-week hit because, you know, you guys are just getting around to it. So yeah, I'll tell you what, man. This is not business for someone that's interested in leading a comfortable life. But again, I just go back to it's like the way the universe works. If you want to do something meaningful, it's going to be hard.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:56) Yeah, it takes work. You got to apply the energy, perform work, and get a result.

(Tom Markusic at 00:16:00) Yeah, but you got to believe that ultimately in the end, it'll all be worth it. And I think that, really, you know, the world knows Elon so much. I mean, I really think of him as the Henry Ford of our time. And the fact that he did SpaceX and he gave people like me the opportunity to see where it could all end up, you know? I'm not going blindly forward suffering every day with all these challenges, just, you know, thinking maybe something cool will happen. I've seen it. You know, I've had my fingerprints on things that are now floating around in space, so I know it's possible.

(Tom Markusic at 00:16:38) So he's given so many people that opportunity so that we can have second generation companies like ours that know where we're going with confidence if we work hard enough and we stick with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:52) So these problems that I was reading about your company, and I was reading about these, and as you're discussing these problems, I can't stop thinking about the company Stripe. Do you know what Stripe is? They're like a credit card processing company.

(Tom Markusic at 00:17:04) No, I haven't heard of them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:06) Okay, so they're big in like the software as a service type world. Basically, before Stripe, it was very, very difficult to do credit card processing integrations as an engineer, right? Because my background is software for the past seventeen years. And so it was really painful and difficult. And then Stripe came out. They were, I think they're brothers or cousins or something. But they built just an amazing API and made it ultra easy. So it took my job from an incredible amount of hours down to like I could process transactions almost instantly, like in the same day, right? And they have grown over the past, like, I don't know, seven plus years, and they're like all billionaires now. It's the largest, I think it's the largest credit card processing solution out there. But where they won was making it easy for the engineers, and they essentially looked at themselves as like an infrastructure company. Like we build the pipes and everything, and then people build on top of us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:03) And so as you're describing all these difficulties with being reliant on vendors and things like that, have you ever thought, you know, and you're raising money and you've got competitors and they're saying, why should we invest in you over your competitors? And there's a bunch of other companies. And you said earlier, the key is to get up there, right? That's like step one, and then all the opportunity comes. Have you ever thought about like an infrastructure business model play where you're building these components like near cost but enough to make some profit so it's like reasonable, so all of these other second generation, third generation companies would just buy your stuff?

(Tom Markusic at 00:18:39) Yeah, absolutely. I've got a concept called Firefly Markets where we will have an e-commerce site where you can, like in Kerbal Space Program, put together your spaceship and order the parts, and you're gonna get them hopefully the next day. I definitely have a vision for that. I think there's a huge need for like a new space OEM company where you can just go and get those piece parts. I mean, it's crazy in rockets. You know, we build our own rocket engines. We build our own structures, everything. Valves, everything from scratch. You know, if you and I were gonna go start an aircraft company tomorrow and I said, you know, hey, first we're gonna have to invent the turbojet engine, you'd be like, no, this is crazy. You know, we just go buy that from General Electric, Pratt and Whitney. But it's not the case in rockets, which are even more complicated. It's like, okay, we're starting with rocket science 101. So we absolutely wanna sell rocket engines. We will sell rocket engines. We will sell all the pieces you need to build these sorts of vehicles, and we'll make it highly available, and we will make it very low cost. So that's definitely a dream of mine. So thanks for bringing that up. And that's another thing that I think will differentiate us and will really catalyze this. Remember I said I went into this because there needed to be more SpaceX's in the world? And having that type of availability of the equipment needed to do it could really catalyze there to be even more and more of these companies in the world. And I'm, to some extent, I'm not super competitive by nature because I really think even when we look back at what we're doing, this will be looked at as a kind of a time in history where everything changed. And to some extent, we're all kind of brothers in arms in that change. So, you know, I'm happy to see all kinds of companies coming up like this, and also just because I know what they've been through. I know how hard it is. And anybody that's involved in this, whether they're a competitor or not, I hold in high regard and have respect for because I know what they're going through to try to make it happen. And these are people that aren't sensitive to the seduction of comfort. You know, they're laying it all out there and living life to the fullest and hardest.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:00) Well, I always like to say it's because it's like Tuesday or whatever day of the week it might be. It's after you get to a certain point and you do enough difficult things and you realize like the feeling of growth versus just sitting around and doing nothing. It's like you just have to get up every day and do some good work and on top of that, grow yourself. So I'm a fan of doing difficult things. I like how Musk describes it. He says like entrepreneurship, it's like staring into the abyss and eating glass, right?

(Tom Markusic at 00:21:31) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the way he puts it, it's actually really, that's a great quote for him. But there is a preamble to that. And he basically says when you start a company like this, the first year it's magic. Everybody's like, woo, you know, high fives. We're space adventurers. Exciting. But it's like when you get to year two, that's when you're like, you're on the edge of the abyss chewing glass because now you're burning millions of dollars and you don't have a lot of friends and things are blowing up. And it's a really good description.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:06) On the phone with your backers, making them happy and easing their concerns and all of this extra overhead that you didn't really see before, but you just have to roll with it.

(Tom Markusic at 00:22:18) Yeah. And then you got a lot of people out there who are just basically lying about their capabilities and where they are developmentally. I mean, as much as I say I respect everybody that works on this and it's hard, there's just a lot of misinformation out there and just really overly ambitious statements about schedules, you know, like, oh yeah, we're flying next year. And, you know, I can qualitatively look at where they are, I'm like, dude, you're not flying for five years, you know. So you get the investors and backers who are like, well, they're flying next year. Why aren't you? You know, it's like, because they're making it up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:55) I love it. So how long has it taken you from when you started day one to first launch date? And this isn't test launch. This is like actual launch because you're launching and then you have your secondary aircraft, or it's not aircraft, your secondary spacecraft in as the payload, correct?

(Tom Markusic at 00:23:11) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:12) How long has that been?

(Tom Markusic at 00:23:13) So if you go back and look at the history of Firefly, I started a company, Firefly Space Systems, in 2014, and that company folded, went bankrupt in like two years. So I had to start all over. So I started all over in May 2017. So this company, Firefly Aerospace, it's been three and a half years for us to get there. So that'd be like world record. Nobody has moved as quickly as we have from zero to our first fully flight-qualified vehicle in such a short period of time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:46) That's amazing. How did you come up with the name?

(Tom Markusic at 00:23:49) It's a little bit of a long story, but when I was ruminating with my last employer that they weren't gonna be the next SpaceX, I was back on my back porch of my home in California, which was up on a mountainside. And it was so beautiful, our backyard. My wife would hold weddings back there for people. It was just such a beautiful environment. And she had all these lights up in the live oak trees in the backyard, and the flickering lights. And it was getting to dusk, and I just saw them flickering. And I thought, oh look, you know, they look like fireflies. I'm from Ohio originally, and we have fireflies all over. And I also just kind of in my head, I had this vision in the future, like when people are going to Mars. Maybe like when they went to the West, they would go in these Conestoga wagons in trains of these wagons. And then maybe in the twenty-first century, that would look like they're all staged in lower orbit, and then all these rockets light up in lower orbit as they all head out to Mars and how it would look like fireflies. And that was kind of this idea that was going around in my head. And then I was like, I've gotta go start a company to do this because I'm not happy with the way things are going with the folks I'm working for. What am I gonna name the company? And I had already been thinking about fireflies because I've seen all this. And then I just, the words of fire flying, like you're flying on fire, you know, the image or imagery of it, like, was irresistible. So that's where I came up with it. And others had asked me like, oh yeah, like the television show, right? And I was like, what? I'd never seen it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:21) Oh, I haven't either, yeah.

(Tom Markusic at 00:25:22) Yeah. When I went back and watched, there was a year, there's like a cult classic series called Firefly, and that's about space cowboys and stuff. And I think, yeah, it actually kind of resonated. I'm like, yeah, that's cool. Let's go to Texas and be space cowboys.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:37) Let's do it. Yeah. You gave me goosebumps when you said sitting on Mars and seeing all the rocket engines and it looking like fireflies. That was like a very easily translatable like visualization for me.

(Tom Markusic at 00:25:47) Sorry, it's a long story, but that's that's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:49) No, it's great. This is what we do. We just kinda like hang out. We just talk like as if we were at lunch or whatever, and then our producers and stuff, they'll edit everything up and make us sound smarter than we are. So that works really well. Okay. So is Gamma, so Firefly Gamma, is that the in-space vehicle?

(Tom Markusic at 00:26:11) No. The in-space vehicle is called the SUV, space utility vehicle. It uses solar electric propulsion. It's very efficient. It's reusable. It just sits out there. It's kinda like the Uber for space. It sits out there. When a ride is called up, it goes, picks up the ride, takes it to where it needs to go, and then it goes back to lower Earth orbit and waits for the next passenger. And that could be, you know, a swarm of these SUVs sitting out there waiting to do that sort of mission. Now, Gamma would be kind of my magnum opus. And I'm getting older, but hopefully I'll get the resources to go and do Gamma soon because I think ultimately we need to move away from these sticks going up and down in the air. I mean, just yesterday we saw, you know, SpaceX, you know, the hazards of vertical landing. You know, powered vertical landing is rough. And, you know, I don't know if I would wanna be in something that's doing a backflip, you know, a few hundred feet above the ground, slamming on the brakes with rocket engines. And you can see what happened. It's really hard. And I take my hat off to those guys. I mean, it's extraordinary. But I just don't agree with the basic paradigm. And I think the future should be about aircraft-like operations. I think if aliens came down from space right now and looked around, they'd say, well, you guys have been like flying airplanes around a lot. That's great. You have thousands or tens of thousands of airports. And well, hold on, what are you doing to get to space? You have a few locations. These things don't look anything like this other, you know, area that you've perfected in flight. So why don't you just soup up an airplane to get to space instead of doing it this other inconvenient way where you're slamming on the brakes with rockets, you know. Glide in. Use the air around you. Don't fight it. Glide in. Use aerodynamic braking instead of rocket engines. The air is free. The rocket thrust is not free, and the rocket thrust, as you can see, is not necessarily 100% reliable. So I really like a paradigm where you use the air to jump and come in, land on a runway. And I also like the ability to go down a runway because you can couple energy to the vehicle from the ground while you're going down a runway in a way that, obviously, you can't with a typical launch vehicle. Once you leave the launch pad with a normal rocket, it's hands off, right? And if you look at a vehicle like Alpha, to get Alpha moving about 200 miles per hour, it takes about 25% of its fuel. Okay? Now, if I'm going down a runway and I attach myself to an electric sled or something like that, I can get the rocket plane going 200 miles per hour, and I never burned a single ounce of rocket fuel because I'm able to couple that energy from a ground-based system to achieve that first initial boost. So again, I think that is an advantage. You know, the disadvantages of carrying wings around, extra weight and things, but those can be mitigated by the fact that you can couple energy from the ground on launch, and you can utilize the atmosphere to bleed away energy. And the last aspect that I really wanna explore is the air is not only just a fluid that can be used for viscous drag and lift, but it also has rocket fuel in it. It has oxygen in it. So why don't we, instead of just pushing it out of the way, why don't we, like we do in aircraft, suck it into the engines and utilize that oxygen for propulsion? So that's, you know, air-breathing propulsion, high-speed air-breathing propulsion, scramjets, ramjets, hypersonic propulsion. These things, you know, we've worked on, but no one has ever employed in a space launch vehicle. So if I have an opportunity, and this current work doesn't kill me, but some days it feels like it will, I'm certain I'll have the energy to go do something that I would find, like I said, that would be the magnum opus of my career to be able to do that type of paradigm-changing architecture. And I actually think I'm pretty close to figuring out a way to be able to go do that. So stay tuned.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:25) What's your like fitness and nutrition schedule like? Given, I mean, I'm an entrepreneur. I work very hard. And I say that I train like an athlete for the work I do, right? Because it's just incredibly intensive from the stress, the finances, being responsible for employees and their families as an income stream. And there's just so much weight. Experience helps you manage it better. But for me, I've just come up with strict like nutrition and fitness routines that make it so that the stress is manageable, right? It's like have a quality of life. You are same position, but just larger scale. Like are you doing stuff for that? Like how do you handle it?

(Tom Markusic at 00:31:09) No. I probably sleep, you know, five or six hours a day. And I try to take like some day off or at least part of it. Yeah. But my wife and I try to walk a few miles every day. I try to make sure I don't get overweight. I really think like antioxidants are pretty powerful. That's something I take. Antioxidants. I drink a lot of tea. And, you know, I'm 50 years old. I don't feel like I'm 50 years old. I don't think I look terrible for 50 years old despite the fact that I don't do a lot to take care of myself. Definitely, you know, I don't do things. I think like drinking and smoking and stuff can really like add years onto you unnecessarily. So just avoiding that kind of stuff, I think, is probably beneficial. But then again, there's so much genetics, you know, that I'm lucky. I'm thin and kinda naturally, and I don't have to work at it, which is nice. So I got a freebie there at least.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:13) I mean, I don't know. I think that's debatable too. Like, I think a lot about that because I used to be very overweight. And the stuff you say to yourself when you're very overweight, it's fascinating, like, the way the mind works and adapts. But genetics is definitely a part of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:29) But I've also found, like, people that I've talked to that have been thin their entire lives, like, a lot of them just had good eating habits from day one. Like, they just learned their body better and they just were raised in an environment where they figured that out. It's like a subconscious thing. It's just like a learned behavior for them on the amount to eat correctly, and then I had learned the wrong amount to eat in my behavior.

(Tom Markusic at 00:32:52) Well, the beauty of relationships in life, which ultimately I think relationships are the most important thing in the universe, and ultimately, relationship with God, I think, is the biggest and most important relationship. But anyway, I think in my life and for my health, I've really benefited from relationship with my wife. You know, we've known each other since we were 10 years old. She's very fitness conscious. She's very food conscious.

(Tom Markusic at 00:33:19) And so she's taken care of me a lot, and what she brings into the house has had a huge influence on my health. So I've kind of, again, I've lucked out that I haven't had to worry about it as much because I have my partner in life. She's totally on top of that kind of stuff in a way that I never was, and I kind of, just by association, I get to reap the benefits of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:46) That's amazing, right, when your partners have different strengths and can see that. So that's why you're in shape and healthy is because she's making sure you get the right macros.

(Tom Markusic at 00:33:54) It's absolutely right. And there's so many things. Yeah. So we've been together over 30 years as a couple and your personalities and characteristics kind of meld after a while. And there are a lot of things I can see in myself that are her.

(Tom Markusic at 00:34:12) Definitely. Do you have kids? Yeah. We have four kids and she's an adventurer and she's put up with a lot. We've had four children, all four born in different states along the journey.

(Tom Markusic at 00:34:26) And yeah. So I have one daughter who's a student at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and then three boys.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:36) Oh, nice. Any of them working at Firefly?

(Tom Markusic at 00:34:39) Well, one of my eldest sons, he's not working here. He does projects here. He's a student at the University of Texas at Austin. So he comes and does some side projects here with some of the engineers here. But I don't think any of them are really going to be rocket scientists, which is okay.

(Tom Markusic at 00:34:56) Because there are all kinds of cool things to do in the world. But at least maybe they caught the spirit of doing cool things in the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:03) Oh, for sure. How has your faith helped with your business or connected with your business at all?

(Tom Markusic at 00:35:11) It's everything. I mean, I'm a big believer in providence. I don't think there are accidents in the world. I think I'm built to do this for a number of levels. And I just really think one of the biggest goals in life is just to kind of understand God's will and align yourself with it.

(Tom Markusic at 00:35:32) And if you're doing that, then it's just the most natural state of being to be in, and it just feels right despite all the hardships and everything else. You persevere through all that because you know you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. It's super empowering. And along the way, I've definitely seen miraculous things. I don't think we should all be looking around for miracles and things like that to motivate us.

(Tom Markusic at 00:36:05) But I can say along the way, I had some just extraordinary experiences I can look back on and just say, here's a day where God was just like, okay, so I'm going to show you that I'm involved. And those things, I'm very grateful because they do have a way of sustaining you through other situations where you're just down and you can look back on that. And you just saw kind of the hand of God involved and you know that you can have that confidence. That's always there.

(Tom Markusic at 00:36:42) So I don't think there's no way if I had not become a believer that I could have done any of these things. Or I think even really had a productive life, frankly. And this didn't happen for me until a little bit later, you know, I was like 23 years old when I had my kind of conversion experience. And just in a very unexpected way, I really wasn't looking for it. I wasn't in any bad situation.

(Tom Markusic at 00:37:10) It just grabbed me. And so, okay, things are going to be different now. We're going to go do this. And that was kind of the first miraculous experience that just kind of set me on my way.

(Tom Markusic at 00:37:24) So it's really, really influenced me too. In other ways, like just building teams and working with people, I just have a few core things I believe, you know, that all people pretty much have equal value in God's eyes. And when you look at every person that way, you know, you could easily, like, I have a PhD from Princeton, and oh, I've raised hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm just like, you know, that really doesn't make me any better in God's eyes than the guy here who's cleaning the toilet or whatever. We're all just a bunch of guys and gals trying to go do a really cool thing.

(Tom Markusic at 00:38:01) The other thing is I think it's super important to realize that I think God put us all here to build each other up, not tear each other down. And then there are lots of inclinations to get gossipy and to look at people's faults and to verbalize that. And to always have that voice in your conscience and in your mind that says, you are here to build people up. I came here to build people up and you're going to follow in that tradition. I think that's very impactful in how you interact with people and how you can ultimately build strong teams that are based on strong relationships and respect.

(Tom Markusic at 00:38:45) People feel it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:46) Yeah. When you feel like you're in line with your purpose and what you're supposed to be doing and all of a sudden the hindsight becomes really clear and you realize you're on this track, that's like the best feeling in the world, like, feeling in sync with life. Right?

(Tom Markusic at 00:39:04) Yeah. Absolutely. And it all starts with kind of, I think, just being obedient and getting up every day and sloughing off the bat, any of the bad thoughts that may be in your mind and going out and doing it. So, you know, one kind of habitual thing I do every day is I get up. And there have been times literally where I've had to, like, take the left arm and throw it out of bed to, like, get the body to roll out just because it's just like, I mean, I've had so many—I've been getting sued by people, you know, just all kinds of things, and it's just like, ugh, it's the weight.

(Tom Markusic at 00:39:42) But anyway, one thing I do every day is I get up and I neatly make my bed. And it's for me, it's a statement to the universe that, like, I'm here, and I'm very purposely going to put things in order today. And I'm not just going to drag my butt through life. I'm going to go out with a good attitude, a constructive attitude. And that's been really good for me because as I'm doing that, it just makes that go through my head every day, that simple little thing.

(Tom Markusic at 00:40:15) I'm going to put this in order and I'm not like a neat freak or anything. Believe me, you should see the inside of my car. But just purposely doing that, it just kind of sets the tone for me every day that reminds me of how I should think about things in that day going forward.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:32) I do that too. Yeah. My dad was in the Air Force, and so he taught us to do that. And I did it for a while, and then I didn't do it for a while. And then I heard this YouTube general giving a graduation speech, and he says, if you want to change the world, start by making your bed.

(Tom Markusic at 00:40:46) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:47) So you got all these kids out there that are like, I'm going to move here and become this type of person or go to this country and serve or do this or that. He's like, well, you're not even waking up and making your bed consistently every morning. And that just stuck with me. And so it's been about four or five years since I started again. But, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:05) Waking up every day, getting out of bed, making the bed. And then when you get home, getting home to a made bed is the best thing ever.

(Tom Markusic at 00:41:13) Yeah. We're interesting creatures. There's just a lot of things that subliminally go through our mind by our environment. And I'm very purposeful in putting together environments like our company. You know, I think if you come here, you'll see cool symbols, images, and colors and different types of media playing in different things like that.

(Tom Markusic at 00:41:35) Because I think you know, we are influenced by what we see around us pretty more strongly than maybe we would think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:42) Yeah. And I'm actually, like, relocating out to Texas in the middle of this coming year. So we were just out there a couple times taking a look at different places, different cities. We kind of like the Plano area. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:56) But yeah. I think it's quite a few hours from Austin. It's probably like seven or eight hours, I think.

(Tom Markusic at 00:42:00) Did you look at Austin?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:02) We looked at the home prices in Austin.

(Tom Markusic at 00:42:05) It's been going up. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:07) Yeah. Yeah.

(Tom Markusic at 00:42:09) I don't know if you've seen in the media that, you know, Elon is supposedly moving every—

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:13) I did. Yeah. Yeah. He said he's moving the companies, and he compared, like, California to, like, someone who had gotten, like, fat and lazy or something.

(Tom Markusic at 00:42:25) Yeah. Well, I'm a pathfinder. I was the first one here to Austin.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:33) So as we start to wrap up, I was just curious. I remember hearing specifically Elon talk about, like, the cost per pound coming down being, like, a critical factor. Do you have an estimate of what the cost per pound today is to get something into space? And where is it going?

(Tom Markusic at 00:42:51) Yeah. I mean, it varies from about, let's say, $5,000 a pound to $1,000 a pound is kind of the range now. Now as you get into the bigger and bigger rockets, you can lower the cost per pound to orbit. But, you know, that's one place that I disagree with Elon, I think, in that it's not all about the bigger, bigger, bigger rocket. You can think about the analogy to transportation here.

(Tom Markusic at 00:43:24) You know, how many people are going to jump on the city bus, which can carry a hundred people versus dial up the Uber? Right? So the Uber is going to be more expensive. Oh, no one should ever use Uber. No.

(Tom Markusic at 00:43:37) It's not the way it works. Schedule, going to the right place, you know, are important to a lot of people. For some people, the bus works just fine. But that's, I think, a really real analogy for what's going on in space. It's not just about building a bigger bus.

(Tom Markusic at 00:43:54) It's also serving customers that have a different type of requirements that are more important than just the cost. Cost is important, but it's not the only thing that's important. And indeed, for some customers, it's of secondary importance to going where they want to go, when they want to go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:12) Yeah. I mean, if you think about, like, the bus or subway systems, they get you near where you want to be. And unless you have two legs, like, in space to walk your equipment around. So you've got to figure out a way to get it to the exact location, like last mile delivery.

(Tom Markusic at 00:44:31) Yeah. And you have to go stand and wait at the bus stop or whatever too. You know, you may not want to do that. In some cases, you may. But so I think there's a lot of room for a lot of different size vehicles and, you know, multiple players in this business for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:49) And so do you, so you guys are focused on, like, the exact positioning. That's what you want to do?

(Tom Markusic at 00:44:56) We want to do small to medium sized payloads, but the whole and then transportation, like I said. Elon and Jeff are focused on the very big payloads. So there's this whole area of small, medium that's really vacant right now, and we want to build a SpaceX-like company that's addressing that market that is not adequately served by those big rockets and spacecraft that those other two guys are building. So one of the advantages is the time and the place convenience. But there are other advantages to what we're doing.

(Tom Markusic at 00:45:36) Some customers just don't want to ride with other customers. They're sensitive about it. Take, for example, military. They very much just want their own vehicle. They don't want other people walking around looking at it while, you know, other things are being put around it.

(Tom Markusic at 00:45:51) There are other people that have something so valuable that they don't want it to be jeopardized by someone else's thing sitting right next to it that does a backflip and runs into theirs or something. So because there's all kinds of scenarios like that where that more dedicated kind of white gloves service is better. But then even for deploying large numbers of satellites, that's where the medium launch vehicle can actually be competitive with the large launch vehicle too. Because, say, you want to put a thousand satellites up in space, but you want them distributed all around the Earth. You don't want to go up and just puke out a thousand in one spot, and then, like, how do they all get distributed?

(Tom Markusic at 00:46:30) You know, that can be challenging. So if you can instead divide it up in ten flights of a hundred each and do with a smaller launcher and put them in their proper planes, that could actually be a more efficient and economical way to do even large scale deployments. So I hope that answers your question, but it's just about there is no one size fits all approach for space access.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:55) So I was curious. I've been asking this question to a couple people. I'm just a fan of space. I am not, like, a space engineer type person. But I was curious to know, do you think that Mars will be, like, colonized with a hundred plus people, or do you think—I'm going to ask you which one's going to come first. So Mars colonized with a hundred plus people, or like large, like, space hotels that have, like, gravity?

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:24) Which is going to come first, if you had to guess?

(Tom Markusic at 00:47:27) I think neither. I think colonization of the moon will happen first. And I think colonization of the moon will be a precursor to those two other scenarios that you mentioned. Now the two amazing guys in the world out there, Jeff and Elon, are going to achieve the latter two things, the things that you mentioned. Jeff will focus on building the large scale infrastructure around the Earth.

(Tom Markusic at 00:47:51) You know, I've heard him talk about the actual surface of the Earth being the vacation destination in the future. You know, but all the rest of us are out living in space, working in space, and he's really set his mind and his wealth on achieving that. Elon, on the other hand, has always been about Mars, and I think I have no doubt that in our lifetime we'll see SpaceX-led missions to Mars. You know, how things evolve beyond that is anyone's guess. But I think those are things you can expect.

(Tom Markusic at 00:48:26) But with NASA's reemphasis on the moon, learning to live in space for both the space station scenario and the remote Mars scenario. The moon provides a great learning environment for that. So I think that's why we'll see that kind of flourish first.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:45) Are they going to be able to simulate gravity on the moon?

(Tom Markusic at 00:48:48) Well, you have about one-sixth the gravity of Earth on the moon already. And believe me, some gravity is a whole different animal than no gravity at all. At least when you put things down, they'll stay there. Even if with one-sixth of the gravity, they won't just be things floating all over the place. So I don't think there's a need to simulate gravity.

(Tom Markusic at 00:49:07) It's there, and it will be adequate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:11) Excellent. So we're coming up on time, and I know that we had a hard stop at one hour, so I just want to be respectful. Is there any topics or things that we didn't get out there that you want to get out there into the world?

(Tom Markusic at 00:49:22) You know, I think the one other topic I'd bring up, and it's really one of my big motivations for Firefly, is one of the most important things in the world and one of the blessings of being an American is opportunity. That's what America was founded on—was opportunity. And this is obviously currently a very hot political topic. But for me, opportunity is about jobs. And, you know, we approach it in different ways.

(Tom Markusic at 00:49:56) The government tries to get involved in building big government institutions and things to create jobs. I think it's the wrong way to do it. I think the commercial sector is much more efficient in providing more opportunities for more people. My father was a twentieth-century auto worker, blue-collar auto worker, and that provided a really great lower middle-class, maybe, home environment for us where we could build a family, you could have a home. And so one of my motivations for Firefly, and indeed one of my obligations, I think, is to create twenty-first-century jobs.

(Tom Markusic at 00:50:37) And that's what companies like Firefly and the other space companies are doing. The opportunities that my father had are completely different than the opportunities today. A lot of the opportunities that he was pursuing are offshore now. But space, aerospace—these are things that Americans are still preeminent in, and we can build superior companies to what anyone else in the world is doing. So I think that's the other big part of space. For some reason, there's something intrinsic in everyone that makes space interesting. It's just kind of in our DNA.

(Tom Markusic at 00:51:14) But practically speaking, it creates great opportunity for the next generation, which is, you know, ultimately—the jobs and that opportunity are foundational to families, which are foundational to democratic society. So it's one of the other big picture things I'd like to bring up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:33) Oh, I like that. I didn't think about the importance of the family in relation to democratic society. That's a good connection. All right. Any reading about that? Any books you like? Or any people you follow on that topic, or is this just your unique thoughts?

(Tom Markusic at 00:51:51) No, I mean, maybe it's just self-evident. But I just think experientially for me, I've just seen in my life how the industrial world has changed. And again, because, you know, the gifts, the skills that God's given me to do the technology and to build teams, I feel like I have an obligation to use those skills to create really enriching, great jobs to provide, you know, money, resources, obviously, but also just things to inspire people, to make people happy about working on meaningful things.

(Tom Markusic at 00:52:31) You know, that affects everyone's mood and environment that they're raising children, the next generation in. So I just think it's super important.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:41) Yeah. I was so glad that we came across you—you had some blog post or news release about your vehicles, and when we saw it, somebody came up in the pitch meeting like, "We should have this guy on. Check out these spacecrafts." And I was so glad that we ended up connecting. Tom, you're a fantastic person. If there's anything that I could do or connections to past guests, if you ever have news you want us to put out for you, whatever we can do to help, just let me know. We're on your team. We're here to help.

(Tom Markusic at 00:53:11) Really appreciate that, and I'll take you up on that. And also just, if you're going to be out here in Texas, please, if you make it down to Austin, come see us for sure, and we'll show you around, show you some rockets running and stuff. It's pretty cool. And I'd be glad to share it with you anytime.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:28) That'd be so cool. Do you guys—are you guys going to livestream your launch next? I want to—

(Tom Markusic at 00:53:32) You know, there are lots of different camps out there about how discreet you want to be with things. The first launch can be—it's a pretty precarious business. You know, things can go wrong. But one of the core things I've tried to build with Firefly is that we're like the most transparent, open company out there. I think it's really beneficial. I think it draws people in because they get to see more of what actually happens behind the scenes, and I don't think it's embarrassing. You know, if we have a launch failure on the first flight, it's part of the business. And I would like to livestream 100% of everything.

(Tom Markusic at 00:54:13) It's not just my decision, so we'll see what happens. But hopefully.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:18) Yeah. Well, I mean, if transparency is a core culture component, you know, then that kind of answers your question.

(Tom Markusic at 00:54:26) Yeah. I don't see why we should have anything to be embarrassed about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:30) No. I mean, it took SpaceX multiple. It takes everybody multiple. Like, it takes time. It's a process. Nothing is perfect on day one. I mean, this is life, people. Like, I don't know what world they're living in, but everything is a process. Yeah. You've got to trust the process, too, and work through it. So—

(Tom Markusic at 00:54:48) Thanks. It was great meeting you and look forward to seeing you again in the future. Thanks, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:52) Thanks. Talk soon. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected].

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:13) Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.