🚀 The New Space Age meets the Age of AI: My interview with Phil Metzger

Thanks in large part to the massive drop in the cost of getting a pound or kilogram of stuff into orbit and beyond, many of the boldest Space Age dreams are now possible. The business of space makes economic sense like never before. And here comes the AI Revolution to really give the sector a boost.

Today, on Faster Please!—The Podcast, I am joined by Phil Metzger. Phil is a professor of planetary science at the University of Central Florida and director of its Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education. Before joining UCF, Phil spent nearly 30 years at NASA, where he worked as a senior research physicist. (I also highly recommend his X account.)

In this episode, we talk about why AI has made the economics of space work by providing a “killer app,” what the first off-world industries might look like, what obstacles we still have to overcome to make them viable, and what the long-term future holds.

In This Episode:

* The economics of space (0:49)

* Industries launching in space (7:36)

* Cutting space expenses (11:31)

* How do we start? (16:55)

* Dealing with lunar dust (22:31)

* What does the future hold? (29:31)

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation will appear in my Week in Review issue on Saturday. (Another option is using the Substack auto transcript function.)

But here are some edited highlights from the chat: