Noosphere is a global investment fund. We believe we are one of the
most prominent and active investors in space technology. Noosphere is the
primary investor in Firefly Aerospace. To date, we’ve invested a little over  95
million dollars in Firefly. Through various space investments, Noosphere saw
a strong market need for a small and medium launch provider. Having looked
broadly at the market, we determined that Firefly Aerospace had the right team, the
right technology, and fundamentally the right payloads class to deliver on the
market need. So I mean If you see on a logotype, it’s called Noosphere.
Noosphere is invented by Vernadsky. He is a Ukrainian scientist who lived
120 years ago in Ukraine, who believed is like geosphere,
biosphere, different spheres around the Earth. And the top one is the noosphere.
Noos in the Latin language means knowledge.
So, basically, knowledge and envelope exist around the Earth. That’s how we all
get connected, how passions get together, how brains get together to solve
the problems of the Earth. So we are still in the development phase of Firefly. We
are on track to launch in February 2020. The majority of our
technical progress has been leading and building up to this. We’ve completed
full qualification of our upper stage, and beginning in the next couple of
weeks we are going to be working on full qualification for our first stage. From the
business perspective, we are incredibly proud of all the partners and customers
who’ve selected to fly with Firefly. Firefly is not just a launch company. We
actually, operate space crafts as well. So, for example, we are looking forward to
partner with NASA and its return to the Moon in as early as 2021. Firefly is
a new space company. We are trying to dramatically low
the cost of entry to space. We are focusing on the small satellite industry,
so we are trying to prove the solution for small to medium launch. We’ve been
working on this for about the last five years. And we are just about to launch in
the next 6 months. And we’ll begin regular
service in 2020 for both commercial and government customers. At Firefly we are
developing a new space company to build and operate a new launch vehicle to
dominate the small to medium launch class market as well as in space
capabilities small to medium lunar landers and orbital transfer vehicles.
To get to space you really have to develop not only the technical capabilities but
an amazing team to integrate together in a cohesive way, to build the launch
vehicle, the launch site, the test site, do all the technical regulations, and really
build up an operational flow. At Firefly we really wanna come out of the gate,
ready to launch on a steady cadence
building a successful business right
from the start.
90% оf the Alpha rocket is made out of
carbon fiber. There are a lot of different materials we could've chosen
to build the airframe of, but to us, composite seemed like the obvious choice.
Carbon fiber has the highest strength to weight ratio, and so when comparing and
looking at metallics, yes they are really strong in 3 different directions, but
we don't need strength in all directions. So laying up the carbon fiber for us
means that we can put extra strength where we need it and then we don't need
to lay up plies in places where we don't need that strength. Carbon composites
lean themselves incredibly well to robotic manufacturing. Once we are beyond
the development stage for Alpha, we'll migrate nearly all our composite
manufacturing to auto fiber placement. AFP will enable Firefly to manufacture
an entire alpha airframe, start to finish, in as few as 9 days.
As part of Firefly’s five-year plan to expand in the spacecraft, there is an
opportunity called NASA CLPS which is NASA commercial lunar payload services.
And Firefly intends to field a small lunar lander to take cargo to the Moon
for NASA. We are not starting from scratch. Fortunately, we have a partner
in IAI which is an Israeli company that has
demonstrated a lander called Genesis. Firefly is taking that lander and
improving it, and putting American built components into it as a stepping stone
for us to get into building spacecraft.
The lunar lander is a great addition
to Firefly. We started off as a launch vehicle company and the lunar
lander really expands our scope and leverages what we do well. But also
aligns us with the teammate that’s already done it before.
So we are the one competitor out there that is teamed with a company
that has gotten all the way to lunar orbit. And so we are gonna do it again, we
are gonna build that here in the US.
Firefly is a new space company which
means we are trying to change the paradigm. It also means we are trying to
draw more people into the industry and into space access. Noosphere has a
mission that’s very parallel to Firefly’s mission. They are a primary
investor and in the future, we think that not only building hardware will be a
collaboration between us, but also education and STEM will be something
we will focus on with Noosphere.
I think that most humans have a natural
desire to understand the things they can see around them. You know and
for a lot of us it’s looking up in the space and the way to understand that
is for us to get there. So it is really exciting to be working at a company that
builds launch vehicles and in-space services because I get the opportunity to
see the power and the ingenuity that goes into a system built by man that can
lift off in the other space.
In the near-term was a fundamental challenge that
I’m looking forward to overcoming is get into space. We’re on track to be
flying in Q1 next year and I’m looking forward to that day where we're all standing
at Vandenberg Air Force Base and watching Alpha fly to space.
Beyond that an important transitional element for Firefly next year is the
shift in development stage to rinse and repeat manufacturing phase. And so
we are looking to fly five missions in total next year and scaling up to at least
10 mission in 2021. That is gonna require a different set of skills and a
real maturing of the company. And that is the challenge we are looking forward
to making.
