Baiju Bhatt on Aetherflux’s Vision to Build a Power Grid in Space

Hi, thanks so much for having me on.

Yeah, I mean, so first of all, thanks so much for having me on. My love of space and the space industry and wanting to work on scientific problems and physics, it's kind of been the story of most of my life. And arguably, the story actually starts before I was born. So my family moved to the US originally from India, and the reason my family moved to the US was because my dad wanted to pursue a graduate degree in physics in America. So me and my mom, sorry, my mom and my dad moved to the US. My mom was actually pregnant when she got on the plane. I was born in America, and I grew up with my dad studying physics at the University of Huntsville, Alabama, and then throughout my whole childhood, he worked at the NASA part of Langley Air Force Base, so NASA Langley Air Force Base, as a scientist. So I remember as a kid going to my dad's office and seeing his computer, which at the time in the 90s was like, whoa, he's got a computer, and those big wind tunnels at Langley Air Force Base. And I was just drawn towards it. I was really drawn towards physics through my entire childhood. I went on to study physics as an undergrad at Stanford and my graduate degree in math, and had just kind of always loved that subject matter. Through the course of building Robinhood, which I co-founded with my good friend from college, Vlad, we were co-founders, co-CEOs through the company's beginning all the way until late 2020, shortly before IPO, and I stepped back as CEO. And I had a passion for space, and in particular was really curious about the commercial space flight revolution that was still in its very early days. And through the entire sort of journey as an adult, I'd always been drawn towards, maybe there's something interesting to do in natural resources, maybe there's interesting commercial opportunities in space that are going to get unlocked when it's not just sort of nation states that are going to space, but the revolution of sort of reusable rockets and all that stuff. And so this has kind of been in the back of my head for the better part of my life. I was drawn towards the idea of space solar power when I kind of started asking myself the question, what opportunities did I think were new that were going to get unlocked by a mass abundant future where there's Starship and the amount of mass that's able to move to orbit? I think is going to be a pretty big step change. And I actually think space solar power is one of the first applications that you would pursue in a world where you have mass abundance. So it's been something that has been sort of in the back of my head for a really long time.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's on purpose, if that makes sense. Robinhood was an interesting... I think the parallels are as follows. When we started Robinhood, I had hardly any sort of professional or formal training in financial services. I'd worked at a financial services company for a couple of years and I'd started a few companies, but we were novices. We were newcomers looking at how the finance industry worked, and we took an approach that I felt like from first principles led us to an idea, and we kind of pursued that in the face of a lot of people thinking that it wasn't going to be possible. And I think in that sort of analogy, there's a part of this that for me personally is about being a student again, right? It's about being at the early point of a journey and figuring stuff out, which is the thing that really gets me passionate. I would add to this also that as far as problems to solve go, I found, I don't know if this is on purpose or if this is a pattern that's emerged for me, but I'm drawn towards problems that have been around for a long time, where the problem statement is not a new one. And I think that was the case with zero-commission stock trading, because there were people talking about if there was a world in which zero-commission stock trading happened, how would people interact with the stock market differently? And they've been writing about this for a long time in academic journals before Robinhood. And similarly, the idea of space solar power is not a new idea. As a matter of fact, it's a pretty old idea from the 1970s. And I think the parallel in my mind is that for both of them, the problem statement's been around for a long time. It's kind of the 'how' that's been a question mark, and people have tried different approaches. For what we built with Robinhood, there's been a lot that's written, although I think there's been less tried with space solar power. So they're both new.

Yeah, I think the reason that I was very drawn towards this problem was looking at it through two lenses. The first one was, what are applications that could exist in space that benefit people on Earth? Right? Like, what are things that we can do that are sort of 'Earth-native space ideas'? So not necessarily stuff that involves going to a different planet or going to the moon or going to Mars, for example, but how can we make something that's going to be useful on Earth? And the other lens is, what are distinct commercial opportunities in space that could exist but that don't exist yet? And I think coming back to the question of the parallels to what we did with Robinhood in the past, one of the big observations there, and this was for me as a human, kind of seeing the effect that what we built had, was when we gave people the ability to sort of control their finances, when we put capitalism through the product on people's phones, we were kind of surprised and sort of astounded at different points along the way at how people used it. And it kind of left this impression in my mind that if you give people the ability to make money, pursue their own self-betterment, they're always going to surprise you. And looking at the space industry through that lens, and one of the things growing up in this space household that I did was kind of asking the question, where, what's going on? Why isn't cool stuff happening in space? It seemed like all the cool stuff happened before I was born in a lot of ways. And as an adult, the thought that's crystallized for me is, maybe one of the things that's missing in space is the number of commercial opportunities. Because the space industry, stuff that happens in space that people can work on today, I think falls into a couple of buckets: there's telecommunications, there's Earth imaging, there's defense activities, there's academia, and there's a few others. But kind of asking the question, is this the full scope of what can happen commercially in space? And here's the thought that leads to: if we could stand up a distinct commercial opportunity in space, that would create another reason for people to study aerospace, study physics when they're coming out of school, pursue that degree, and want to go work in the space industry because there's jobs there, because there's commercial opportunities there. And as you have more people pursuing commercial opportunities in space, things will start happening faster, and you'll see the rate of progress hopefully really astound us. So those are kind of the thoughts.

I mean, I think there's certainly applications for it in space. I think that's certainly an interesting market as well, and one that we might be interested in the future. But I think the goal of doing something that brings space power from orbit down to Earth is kind of the vision that we have for this. And a little bit more on that, that's kind of the future that we think is possible, that we want to help create. It's one where you look at the effect that Starlink has had on terrestrial internet. I use Starlink at home, I find it to be really useful. And there's an interesting thing where that capability in space, and you compare it to the ground capability of fiber optic cables, by putting this capability in space, it's actually extremely disruptive. And it makes having the internet mobile in a way that is still in the early stages of happening. And we kind of asked the question, what would that look like for energy? Imagine a world where there's an energy network in space, a power grid in space, where as we add more satellites, we add more capacity to the energy network, and you can have ground stations potentially all around the world that are able to connect to this energy grid in space and get power kind of when they need it. That, in my opinion, is pretty space-age stuff. And if we can help create that, that would be a really aspirational goal.

Yeah, so maybe it's worth actually rewinding the clock here a little bit and kind of explaining what our path towards getting to this fantastical new future that we're talking about is. So baby steps at first. The first thing that we're working on, and we're hoping to get this in orbit either near the end of 2025 or sort of Q1 or maybe a little bit later in 2026 time frame, is getting a first satellite in space that can demonstrate this capability. So what is this thing going to do? It's going to be a satellite that flies in low Earth orbit. We're buying a satellite bus from a company called Apex. We are building the optical payload and the power transmission system, the method that the satellite is able to find the ground station, establish a link, and then actually downlink the power. We're using largely commercially available, some off-the-shelf, some custom stuff for the actual power transmission. So the method of power transmission is using a high-power infrared laser. And the basic architecture of this is to try to demonstrate this capability as much as possible with stuff that exists today: satellite bus that exists today, lasers that exist today for a different reason, optical payload which there's lots of different systems like this that exist today as well, maybe not for power transmission. And the last part is a ride share to space, which is available today. And with that, we'll have a first satellite in orbit that's able to find the ground stations, which we're also going to build. Once it's in orbit, as it's passing overhead with the ground station, it's in lower orbit so it'll be 5 to 10 minutes within the field of view of the ground station that we're building. We'll send a test signal down to the ground station. The ground station will bounce the test signal back to the satellite. The satellite will use that bounce signal to form a link between the satellite and the ground station. And once the link is established, it'll basically discharge the energy from the satellite into the laser and transmit it to the ground station as it's flying overhead. And once it passes out of the field of view, the satellite will start looking for a new ground station, and the ground station will either have enough energy in it that it needs for its current use or it'll start looking for another satellite that's passing overhead. So one satellite, one ground station. The satellite is not huge. We expect, we're kind of shooting for one of the architectures of our design is we want to have small spot sizes on the ground. So for the first mission, it's going to be a little bit bigger, but long term we see the spot sizes in the 5 to 10 meter range. We think we'll get somewhere in the 10 to 10-plus meter range for the first mission. That works. And the reason that's relevant is because we see the first commercial opportunities for this to be getting power to places that it's really hard to get to. So think remote mining applications, think forward operating bases with the DoD. And I think those are the scenarios where, step one, get one to work. Step two, build for one of these commercial applications where it's difficult to get power, continue to mature the technology, and then long term, to be able to compete with terrestrial power.

Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question for anything new that hasn't happened yet. Well, we've talked about a couple of times already, this is not a new idea, it's actually kind of an old idea. And interestingly, I think that there has been a lot written about this idea with different technical approaches. Back in the 1970s, the original idea at the time was to build one really big array, as opposed to a constellation of smaller satellites, that transmits power using microwaves or radio waves, so kind of much longer wavelength electromagnetic radiation. And if you rewind the clock, that architecture kind of makes sense. You would want to pick an orbit that's far enough from the Earth where you're not in the shadow of the Earth, so those were contemplated to be in a geostationary orbit. And you would pick a band of the electromagnetic spectrum that passes uninterrupted through the atmosphere, so you would pick these longer radio waves, microwaves. The byproduct of that is that you end up with something that's extremely challenging to make in space. It's very, very big, and the initial cost to get it off the ground and to get a first demo of the thing requires the whole thing to be put together. So I think it's both technologically very challenging and it's also difficult to contemplate how you actually make something like that happen. Our approach is built on a different technology stack, and I think the interesting thing is that in the intervening years, there's actually been a tremendous amount of progress on all of the component technologies. So looking at it in 2024 versus looking at it in 1975, the underlying component technologies are ones that have gotten really mature. So think fiber lasers, we use those in society in a lot of different places. Think constellation manufacturing and management, like Starlink is up there right now. In addition to all the advancements that have happened with photovoltaics, that's been on a really aggressive maturation curve, as well as battery capacity. And then obviously the last big one is access to orbit, which I think Starship is going to fundamentally change.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's been really exciting to see. I mean, it goes without saying, but that chopstick maneuver that they pulled off, holy cow, that was inspirational. It was crazy. It is crazy. It's pretty mind-boggling to watch. Lots of crazy things are possible if you put your mind to it. It's hard not to be left with that feeling seeing that happen.

Yeah, so we are, I mean, it's just good old-fashioned company building. So stuff as little as, or I guess sort of like, getting our lab space stood up, which we're on a video call so you can kind of see behind me. We've just moved into our lab space in San Carlos. And I mean basic stuff, right? We need to have the equipment to be able to rapidly iterate on component testing and design for our power transmission system. So we've got a lot of work to do on going through the components that we're using, testing each one of them. There's going to be a lot of components that we want to make sure that they're space-rated, so we're going to be vibe testing stuff, we're going to be thermal cycling stuff, we're going to be testing how different optical components behave under different power levels. We're going to be stress testing the system, we're going to be iterating on the actual design. There's a lot of sort of meat and potatoes engineering that we have to do. We're also gearing up for doing demonstrations terrestrially of the system. So once we've gone through and developed some of the concepts in the lab, we're going to want to test them in the real world. We're going to want to test things like tracking of our ground station target with our transmission system. We're also going to want to do things like characterize how the power transmission behaves as it passes through the atmosphere. So a lot of testing to be done, a lot of building to be done. And obviously working closely with the regulatory bodies and sort of paving the way for this to happen.

Yeah, so we're engaging with the folks in DC on this already. It's early, but we're talking to folks at the FAA, the FCC, and a lot of other folks. It's new territory, so this is a new application. And our approach with this is to be very proactive in communicating what we're trying to do and working with all the regulators that regulate space to kind of illustrate exactly what we're trying to do, demonstrate the safety systems, demonstrate our approach to safety, and just generally being good citizens of space.

Oh man, that's a good question. I mean, I think it's been exciting for me, that's for sure. Getting out there that I've been thinking about space for a while, and getting some positive feedback from folks that are like, 'Oh, you're going back to science, that's awesome to hear.' I would say my dad has been pretty thrilled, which makes me happy. My dad is a scientist and was the one that really inspired the love of physics for me. So shout out to my dad, if he's listening to this podcast, I'm sure he'll appreciate it. It's also, I think the other thing is that it's kind of fun to reactivate that part of my brain, the physics part of the brain, and to have an excuse to go and meet with professors at Stanford and do all that stuff, which brings me a lot of happiness.

Like I said, that's kind of on purpose. I love building stuff, and that was a big part of Robinhood, is we were building something that people were making a part of their day-to-day lives. And the curiosity there of like, I want to try my hand at building physical things. I felt like I understood what it took to build a digital product, I'd done it year in and year out at very big scale. And it's interesting because the way that the desire to build physical stuff started to manifest itself for me was actually in tinkering on cars. So that was like my first foray into building physical stuff, and it really got me excited about it. I've done some car restoration projects for fun in my garage over the last couple of years. I built a kit car once.

Yeah, I mean, it was just very fun. I built a... there's a company called Factory Five that makes Shelby Daytona race car replicas, and I just rolled up my sleeves and put one of those things together. And then had some more experienced mechanics double-check my work. But yeah, that process of being like, okay, you've got a set of instructions and a thing to make, and you're just staring at them and you're like, okay, I have to do this, and I don't really know what the right tools to do this are, I don't really know how to make this happen, but let's give it a go. And it always takes longer to build physical things when you're sitting down with a wrench and instructions, at least in car projects, because car parts sometimes don't fit.

It's an interesting question. I mean, I think it is what it is. It's mostly positive. It's definitely easier starting a company having the repetitions under your belt. But yeah, I don't know that I think about that that much.

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, needless to say, extremely impressive what SpaceX is doing. I think across the board, it's jaw-dropping what they've been able to do. I say that from the perspective of looking at the aerospace industry and how they fundamentally turned the space part of it on its head. There was a landscape of the established legacy primes in the space industry, and this little upstart came from nowhere, and look at what it's doing now. It's doing incredible things. When we started Robinhood, there was a backdrop of a bunch of existing online brokerages, and kind of seeing them navigate that path... it's super impressive. I think there's a nice crop of folks that are getting started in the space industry now. I've spent time with a bunch of folks, like the folks at Varda, Will and Delian are both very sharp and I have a ton of respect for them. Also spent a decent bit of time with folks like Bridget from Northwood, who I have a ton of respect for. Who are some of the other folks? Oh, of course, the founders of Apex, which I'm a small investor in, as well as the folks at Reflect Orbital, doing another space solar approach, which I wrote a check into. Those guys are very hardworking entrepreneurs. It's cool to see that kind of energy in the space industry.

Oh, I forgot one super important one. Let's give a shout out to my man John Garam at Astris. He's a good friend of mine and has been super helpful in helping me think through becoming a space entrepreneur.

So the company is, to this date, backed by me. We will raise outside capital to be able to make this happen.

Yeah, thank you. It's been great to talk with you.