Revolutionising nuclear technology for use terrestrially and extra-terrestrially
Welcome to Beyond blueprints I'm Andrew Smith and today we're joined by Will Madson who's here from Antares Industries hi will thanks very much for joining us and you're joining us it looks like from much sunnier than it is here in in the UK I'm in the very dreary Midlands but it looks like you're somewhere much warmer where are you based at the moment I'm in the let's call it the Greater Bay Area I'm a little bit on the outskirts but yeah within the Bay Area so Northern California okay sunny no Cal dreamy and will here state to talk a little bit about Antares Industries now um well if if somebody Googles Antares at the moment it's very mysterious your website so can you tell us a little bit more about what what does Antares do what is the problem that it's setting out to solve absolutely so our mission I think that's about all that appears on our landing page but our mission is to provide abundant energy anywhere from from Earth to the asteroid belt what that really means is we're trying to build very small nuclear reactors that are optimized to be rapidly deployable and usable you know with plenty of trade-offs in there you know so that they're robust reliable and easy to use vs you know the you know most cutting edge technology let's call it or something it's certainly a problem more about form factor and systems integration than it is about you know Cutting Edge nuclear R&D but that is the goal and what we're going out to solve incredible and when you say so I can get my head on kind of the size are we talking kind of a basketball court a tennis court something could fit in my bathtub how big let's say the size of a car like a sedan okay wow okay and you can get out of something the size of a sedan with nuclear power you can get something that is able to produce a useful amount of power in these different orbits absolutely yeah we can get about 300 kilowatts electric based on our current system design which you know it would be certainly incredibly compelling if you're going to run like a forward operating base for the DoD or something like that I think the best thing to consider that would be like a terrestrial system that people are used to might be big diesel generators so if you're ever at like a work site or you know someone setting up some kind of construction on a house or whatnot where you have to take out the power often times they'll bring in one of these huge diesel generators it kind of looks like the back of a trailer on a truck and you're constantly filling that thing up and it's incredibly noisy and loud we would be similar form hopefully a bit smaller and putting off you know two to three times as much energy as your typical system like that and of course you wouldn't have to refuel the thing but every three to five years since there's a nuclear core in there okay well so a real kind of game changer in terms of um just refuelling really because there is no hard shoulder to pull over and just top up the tank when when you're I guess in low orbit or beyond yeah absolutely so I mean that's that's one of the key things is we think that we're solving for contested Logistics issues so like it's very difficult to fly fuel around if you're in a war zone or you know you're in incredibly remote locations whether that's you know in the Arctic or Antarctic or however it is you know if you're in a remote place that you don't have infrastructure to have electricity it probably also is difficult to be constantly be flying in fuel and we do see that as an issue and have done plenty of customer discovery on the pain point of getting power to remote locations especially because you're then constantly trying to build up the supply chain to get more diesel or jet fuel or whatever it is in there okay and so I mean this idea is fascinating to me because I can clearly see the the problem that it solves is you you're getting power where it's difficult to get it whether that's terrestrial or extra-terrestrial why hasn't it been done before kind of why why not what's the enabler that's bringing Antares into the space sure well I would advocate anyone watching this to go do a little Wikipedia search and look up you know the Snap 10 reactor that was launched in the 60s so it's not the first time that someone will have put a nuclear reactor in space and reach criticality like a lot of things in the nuclear industry there are regulatory hurdles getting things approved getting things qualified so I think the biggest issue of why it hasn't been done before has a bit to do with you know it's an interesting engineering problem and figuring it out is a lot to do with regulatory and economic hurdles and we think that we've reached you know a point where there's a confluence of things in our favor in terms of manufacturing processes focus on you know eventually building up this high-assay low-enriched uranium supply chain in the US with these triso particles various entrants coming in to solve some of the fuel challenges that's normally you know an incredible hurdle within the nuclear industry as well as you know so many people in the space industry are doing so many interesting things with turbo machinery you know in small for jet engines and rocket engines and coincidentally if you're going to be running a closed brayton cycle or something like that in space the the expense for small components and much smaller turbines than you know traditional nuclear power plants that have massive turbines that are incredible cost those things have come down as well and we think that we can you know reach economic viability and piggy back off of a lot of the more recent work that's been done on qualifying higher temperature reactors higher temperature reactor you're running you can make it a bit smaller but we're not looking to have to go through massive fuel qualifications because you know other other folks have done that over the past 20 30 years now as we look to build up this new newer supply chain around Halo in the US Very interesting so it's not necessarily a technology itself challenge that's obviously come along but it's the other kind of contributing engineering factors the environment that you're operating in is more favorable more launch platforms I'm guessing as well more launch platform options is that factoring into kind of why no is a great time yeah absolutely and I mean I don't want to index too far simply on the space-based applications because while that is incredibly interesting and something we're definitely looking at and we're certainly optimizing for form factors that fit on C17 aircraft and will be able to be you know pretty much deployed anywhere you can put a runway even an unimproved runway okay amazing so so that's the why that's that's the big the problem that Antares is solving where do you fit into the the picture will what is your what is your role what you bring to the table absolutely I'm the head of engineering and you know I kind of came into this position because I have a whole lot of experience across a whole bunch of different disciplines I haven't spent too much time in any one place so I'm more of a systems engineering type than someone who's deep diving on a specific problem we have those kind of Engineers too you know we've got nuclear Engineers on the team experts in heat transfer and what I'm doing is you know being a general generalist plugging in wherever I can on helping with the design and the analysis and what are we coming up with but focusing a ton of time on running the requirements process the systems engineering how are we validating verifying everything everything what are we planning in terms of test is that enough planning for test have we actually called out our risks have we double checked and made sure that we have retirement plans around all of these so that you know we we feel comfortable when we're getting into the tough engineering or economic decisions over you know what to build ourselves what to buy ourselves how many quality assessments are the right amount and those sorts of things you mentioned requirements there it's an interesting one because I imagine my knowledge the nuclear industry is very surface level but I imagine in terms of kind of design life and requirements you've got quite a long horizon to account for compared to some other engineering field I'm guessing oh absolutely yeah especially when you're just you know considering you know what is your path to getting your full reactor qualified what needs to happen there and then how many additional requirements are you leveraging at the behest of your regulator versus just your end user you know you know you can visualize your end user like let's say somebody's got a mining operation in the Arctic they need a lot of power you know that person probably cares about having an energy source that works and that's relatively safe you know so like we have to care certainly about our nuclear safety things but you know as long as it works and we give them the right exclusion zone like they're going to be happy but our regulator has many more concerns about you know the inner workings and all of the materials and margins of safety and factors of safety we don't need to get into philosophical arguments about over regulating or under-regulation and putting places for sensors at appropriate spots so that we can collect the right data provide the right data to the regulators to make that process a little swift and easier rather than something that's going to be very difficult because you know unaware of what the regulators is going to want to see don't carve out space or methods for measuring various points in the reactor and then coming up with oh I don't know we're gonna have to do a redesign to get this thing actually approved for use okay so it's quite a complex I guess requirements environment both from both in the the the life cycle of the product but also commissioning and decommissioning you've got to kind of be thinking about all of that before you even get into the the design of the product itself absolutely 100% sure so the concept of operations is is huge that's kind of a military term that we come back to quite a bit but you have to know how you're going to install it you have to know you know what are the safety concerns with turning the thing on and then you know how are you to get rid of this what are going to be the regulatory concerns about removing a reactor that you had buried in soil what did you activate how do you get rid of that how are you containing that you know and does all of that make sense when you factor in the economic analysis of your build and deploying this thing I really relate to the concept of operations we struggle with that a bit as also an aerospace because people really run their jet engines hard in certain environments sometimes in anybody who's had any product at home very rarely do you read the the limitation instructions on the product but I guess you've got to try and anticipate what everybody's behaving really interesting to hear about the technology coming back to kind of Antares as a team am I right in thinking you're you're pretty kind of early stage kind of how big is the team at the moment is it can everybody kind of fit in a room or are you geographically distributed yeah I don't know how much is technically inside baseball but we are all located in California and the team is somewhere between five to 10 let's say so we can definitely all fit in a room unless it's a closet okay so you're kind of at that that sweet spot of being really agile I guess because you're still very much there's a manageable number of connections there and you know how was it at what point were you kind of into the team have you been in since day since day one have you seen the team starting to grow yes so I mean Jordan's the founder so he was the one person that was there from day one and he handled you know getting the company set up and the pre-seed raise but then I was the first employee to join so I have seen it you know seen the team double when I joined and then since then we've been growing fast as well but I guess slightly smaller by percentage just by the fact that we keep gaining people which has been great okay amazing so are you at the point because I think often when when we're talking especially to other kind of start-up companies that three to four kind of engineer point tends to be the the sweet spot and it's the expanding how do you maintain that good understanding of the requirements if you've got a massive requirements list you've had previous experiences in bigger companies is that right so you you've kind of seen it from both sides I guess the startup and the beyond startup phases interested to hear your reflections yeah absolutely so I do have experience as a developmental engineer for the air force where I was doing flight test on radar systems so the AWACS which is a big radar in the sky as well as launch operations for the Delta 4 rocket which is a big three stick rocket made by ULA which does a lot of spy satellite stuff because has a super massive payload capacity and then since going on from being a developmental engineer in the Air Force I worked for four years helping build super conducting quantum computers with Rigetti Computing that team was quite a bit bigger by the time I joined we had already gotten through the series B rays and you know we were at around a 100 people or something like that and then you know Antares is much smaller but going so getting through the the crux of the question which is you know how do you manage requirements and alignment between teams of varying sizes where you can't where you either have you know plenty of touch points and you know sub teams or you're just individuals working on things within the air force you know the requirements management process has like entire organizations you know designed funded and you know operating on that to make sure you know these things flow out and I would say that that process is expensive and is not something you'd necessarily want to replicate at a private company let alone a startup it all it all kind of bit of a luxury to be able to do that yeah absolutely you know so like they were certainly spending more in terms of risk reduction especially on the space launch events you know they were willing to pay the premium to do additional risk reduction and make sure there was additional verifications validations against all requirements and have requirements Engineers that are looking at vendors and test data and pouring over these things at Rigetti Computing the requirements problem and alignment was quite quite difficult only in so far as it was such an emerging technology and coming up with like what is the end user and what's the valuable next thing to build and therefore what are the requirements that flow down was very murky I don't don't know how many folks listening are super familiar with Quantum Computing industry but if you could build a big million Cubit quantum computer which is out of reach by today's current manufacturing technologies the thing would be very useful and you could point to those requirements picking something that's more intermediate is difficult because you know you can do a bottoms up of like what can we build now but you want to always be pushing the envelope in a meaningful way forward so that we can get to these final big systems so the the art and science of requirements definition there was why is this a requirement since it's not quite a fault tolerant quantum computer so therefore you're picking something that's a bit lesser you have to justify why that is a worthwhile target and ensure the entire team's aligned and make sure that you're interpreting how a requirement for one of the subsystems actually flows up to the performance that a user is going to see which is very difficult just because of the levels of abstraction that happen from a physical system to distilling Quantum logic at Antares the difficulty I would say is just making sure that like while everyone's running at 100 miles an hour that we are checking back enough and looking back at the same documents and really detailing out what are all the assumptions that we're making as we're going forward and as we're starting to proliferate analyses and spreadsheets simulations doing our first CAD modelling our neutronic simulations like all of these things just like any anything else you'd be engineering take plenty of inputs that are you know given assumptions and maybe it's based on a material you're using or maybe it's based on some pressure level that you're selecting for a working fluid and then you're going back to your table of the thermodynamic properties you know and like if people don't have exact assumptions around like well what what do we think our starting spec is and how does that come from the requirement if you're not listing these things and ensuring that everyone is aligned when you have a very small team everyone has so much work to do and it's usually you know a it's pretty attractive opportunity to ambitious folks that like to do a lot of heads down work like that's why people generally come to startups and want to work in that environment so ensuring that everyone slows down enough to come together and make sure that you've got you know multiple tag UPS a week and that you have centralized documentation over like any assumption that you're making and starting to proliferate that's kind of hardcoded in one of your analysis whether it's sheets or mat lab code or whatever it is and just making sure everyone agrees with it and it's it's a reasonable assumption by everyone's estimation rather than just your estimation you know there's the whole joke about you know what Engineers or physicists think a reasonable assumption is and disagreements but the main thing is whenever you come to an understanding on something you should be paring that out and making sure that no one disagrees and that your your entire team is aligned on on everything that is a shared assumption and that you're constantly questioning those things so that the team is not holding false beliefs yeah it's very true and what you were saying about you know people people join startups they want to be part of that pacy environment where they're getting to get the engineering work done so I guess it's quite important especially when you're at that you know early Crux decision point to have quite a lean process so people can get on with the work and you've got enough oversight that you're managing your requirements kind of efficiently but you know we all love doing the engineering absolutely technical work so slightly um a slightly provoking question I guess kind of coming at that a different direction and this could be on the kind of the technological approach or more about how you work as a team if let's say we had Antares and it was set up in 1985 versus Antares as it is in 2023 would you be doing it the same way or what has changed in that time um in how you're kind of approaching the problem of power where it needs to be anywhere in the world big question I know yeah provoking question so your solution I think is the same today as 1985 if you just consider at a high level what is a known technology with a very high power density that you could scale down and operate I think that still is a fission reactor I can't think of a better system B powered that you can operate that that we understand very well I mean maybe you want to get kick started on some of this Fusion work or something like that but you know a fission reactor is something you can point to in 1985 and say I'm starting a company I want to build the thing and I'm going to scale it down now perhaps we'd be bigger I mean you'd have to look at what what fuels have been qualified what's going on how is the regulatory environment around it a lot of nuclear always always comes back to that I don't think that we are solving things with too much brand new cutting edge technology which I think is a you know something in favor but like I mean you can point to nuclear submarines the the reactor rooms or whatever on those highly classified but you know they're no bigger than you know the you know one4 of a submarine say or something like that so like that would be that would be what you'd point to and say like what what would be the best the best power source so yeah I suppose I'm not sure if I totally answered it correctly but we would I think we'd be building the same thing the way we're building it has definitely changed and that's definitely the engineering tools why are we able to go faster than we would before the proliferation of information just through the fact that we all have computers and are all connected and we don't have to hand build every single software tool that we're going to use so there's tons of Open Source tooling out there which allows us to quickly iterate and evaluate different design decisions and Vary things and you just can't go that fast in 1985 when you're dealing with main frames or whatever people were working on back then apologies if I butchered that one and we were already you know at least on desktops by then I guess yet that that ability to iterate and I guess simulations I'm imagining that's a huge part of of what you do um how how that interfaces with what when do you prototype when do you get on with the hardware versus The Growing Power of simulation and how you how you how you balance those two when is the right point to get early Hardware done when is it best to really nail your model absolutely um and I think like really understanding how your simulations are built so like even if we're going to be taking open source tools or whatever is in there like I want to know what assumptions they made as well and where where is something you know they're just using something that's an association versus like a first principles how thing how something is happening not like yeah a good thing to always point to is like if you look at any like simulation tool for a gas generator or something like that generally speaking they just assume like a straight up heat transfer is happening rather than like the chemistry of a combustion event or something like that I'm sure that comes up in the Aerospace industry a lot just because that's notorious hard hard to simulate like perfectly and then you say like ah well I'm going to need empirical data on how my combustion event happens or whatever it is not that we're going to have combustion events this is just trying to pick you have to you have to figure out what's unique about your system that is just not modelled you know 100% based on first principles and if it's hard to model that thing because you know nature can be hard to simulate then you have to make sure that you're making a representative test and that you're eventually able to feed in that data when you're you're making your digital twin and your simulations keep getting better as you add proprietary layers on there Based on data that you're taking and making sure that you're testing you know the right things that you know the least about so that you're I always like to say that you're like trimming off your margin of uncertainty like how many things are we just completely uncertain how they work and then you know maybe you're over engineering something because you can't get super close to the limits on something that you don't understand super well you want to just make sure that you're constantly cutting down on that uncertainty and that's where you're going to be spending you know your your test budget versus just trying to simulate yeah yeah pick finding the kind of the holes in your verification and validation where you can kind of plug in the new data I'm guessing yeah it's something we really struggle within Aerospace as well actually you know when to um when to start testing component level and when to start looking at kind of what the integrated system does because you know Hardware is expensive um and so yeah yeah the idea of like digital twins and stuff I think we're just going to see more and more of um so I mean you've got you've got a great team you've got a great idea you've got the technology what what keeps the company up at night what's what's kind of your your big challenge at the moment what's kind of you know when Antares is is lined out of the evening what's your um yeah what's what's your your problem that's right in front of you sure well because of all of the things that you listed that you know this thing can be engineered the technology exists we're certainly not the only very good team out there looking at this issue I think what keeps us up is that we have to be focused on execution and making you know optimized decisions on the best information that we have at a pretty quick Cadence to make sure that you know we're building the best product on the most favorable time scale as it's going to be seen by our end customer we think the DoD is going to be our first customer there but they have other micro reactor projects up and running the US Department of Defense out of the Strategic capabilities office is running this project pay demonstration which is focused on micro reactors now those are a lot bigger than our Reactor with a smaller more modular design versus a huge one megawatt plus unit but point being is I think what keeps us up is the fact that there is some competition you're in a race this market and we need to make sure that we do things the best we're the best stewards of the capital that we have and that we are you know executing quickly but you know with the appropriate amount of engineering rigor so of course that we're not you know falling on our face by trying to go too fast yeah so you've got the jeel pressures in a way you've got the the End customer who obviously wants to wants to see something and then you've also got other people kind of rushing towards that customer so you're you're feeling the pace from a kind of pincer movement yeah I I think that would be a way to describe it I mean like we've gone through iterations on designs and what's possible and we we always try to come back to what can we leverage that's already been qualified by Regulators in nu in in the nuclear space so whether that's the doe that's the US Department of energy or the NRC the nuclear regulation Committee in the US and like trying to make sure we're using as many components and items within the limits of things that already exist so that we can go you know faster to our first prototype unit and then we can you know after we have a system that works we can work on you know how can we push the boundaries and limits and how can we engage to get new things qualified and like really you know blow the doors off what this technoloy is at and but you know the point being is to get to that we need to make sure that we are we are turning over every stone and that we're not putting anything too exotic into our first system and I mean you mentioned kind of first first customer is likely to be kind of DoD that's like going in at The Deep End right that's kind of that's not a kind of nice operating environment so that's I guess that's a really demanding requirement set to have as a kind of entry into the market you know it is it is interesting so my background is in the DoD certainly I'm used to playing in that swimming pool they are a demanding customer I think there's been a lot of focus in the last 10 years on non-traditional contractors so startups and others engaging with the DoD and the DoD trying to make systems to engage with small businesses and various offices that that call themselves the front door to X like the front door to space or the front door to Air Force research lab or whatever it is they they certainly are working on on improving processes to engage with smaller companies and I think there's a lot to to like about the DoD both in the facts both in the the way that they are demanding customer but also in the way that you know they have pioneered a lot of Technologies you know if you look at the history of DARPA the various research Labs but like the DoD likes to take bets on emerging technology some of those they they solely use themselves some of those make them to dual use markets certainly we'd like to be in that category but you know they're they're a customer that has demanding requirements but perhaps they're not as price sensitive on the first OFA kind unit as some kind of commercial customer might be so so I don't know it is it is tough you know it's not always the easiest to sell into the DoD there's definitely big companies that are competing with us for those exact same Contracting dollars but I think there is a lot to like about the market opportunity yeah interesting as well that as a customer they also I guess have been it maybe it's a different division but you know they've been a developer as well so they're used to making and designing into requirements so I'm wondering if that also makes them kind of quite tricky because they know what they're talking about they know what are the requirements it's not kind of vague customer they've got quite a laser focus on what they want to do um which could be good and bad I guess it gives you gives you a clear requirement set but it means it's quite uncompromising absolutely so I think the way to Envision it is like look if you're going to try to build a new system to the DoD it's not just a commercial offering or or you know something that just is off the shelf today like you're going to be building something with the DoD they have a fleet of Engineers and World world-class scientists and they put the resources behind it to ensure that this is like a core capability and that whatever they are buying and bringing to Market that you know it's exactly what their user is going to need and their user is somebody that's you know in life or death scenarios so they are you know unrelenting on the requirements and I think for us that's great I mean I want I want to build safe nuclear systems that can be deployed all over the world and certainly if we can build something to the DoD standards I think that we're going to be in Prime position going out and eventually trying to augment that design to make it more palpable to the commercial Market so you know I'm I'm excited to partner with the DoD like they have all of this expertise already in house and all of these engineers and like I consider an honor to get to work work with them and hopefully we will you know pick up the right contracts so just that will happen yeah yeah it's so interesting the so with with the the DoD the requirements are clearly so important so how do you maintain um you said you have you got to keep this laser focus on kind of delivery and you know root product how do you keep that kind of end goal you know in mind how do you maintain the kind of visibility of ultimately what the product needs to do is that through these kind of regular reviews is that's through kind of people really regularly talking about the the requirements kind of the system subsystem level yeah so I mean I like to structure things as much as possible as you know an engineering project where you're working towards various Milestones and and then you're having reviews that are Milestone driven rather than like arbitrary points on the schedule so you want to get a certain amount of things done and different work streams done and have you know simulations done or whatever it is and then you want to review that work and always come back I make sure that requirements are a focal point of any and all reviews so like just upfront when you're discussing what will we be reviewing what's the point of this why are we all getting together and even though we're a five-person team and we talk every day and we're constantly together like why are we having you know a more formalized you know meeting thing where we're going through a deck and going going over the results and somebody's presenting all the work they did we want to point to the requirements you know we needed to validate this thing about the core or I needed to confirm that this was the assumption that we had made in the working fluid for our power conversion unit and you know sure sure enough you know everything looks favorable and just making sure that you're always pointing that pointing that back to you know this was the unit of work that was being done or you know maybe this was around test planning and you know these are the sets of tests that we are going to be reviewing today and you can link those directly to you know these requirements which end up you know if you follow the chain to like the parents that like this is what the user is going to see and this is why we're doing this so I like to make sure that you know you have Milestones you're reviewing after Milestones in some kind of more formalized way even with your small team like I think it's important to put that kind of muscle in place and that anytime you're holding a review you're pointing back to the big picture of why why this matters and that usually comes down to the requirements yeah yeah yeah they're at the core of everything so with all that in mind I mean you're and I forgot to ask actually kind of and I don't know if you can talk about kind of timelines or you know what you what you're shooting for if you can say decade I don't know even what you're shooting for or if that that's all under wraps at the moment less than a decade certainly I don't okay oh wow okay yeah we're certainly targeting less than a decade I don't know given our current stage how much more I can divulge but well less that's but fast fast for nuclear that's amazing how do you see um as we're kind of coming to it's be so interesting to hear about this how do you see the future of engine in and Broad question but specifically I guess in in the industry that Antares is playing in where where do you see things going what are you excited for I am excited you know for the entire push for I guess it's a slight Renaissance for small modular reactors micro reactors that word wasn't even in the common parlance I'd say about five six years ago so it's a regular it's a It's relatively New Concept that it's actually economically feasible to build reactors that are not power plant scale and that are well less than 10 megawatts and seeing that pushed forward I think gives us so much so much opportunity to kind of really thrust into a second nuclear age I mean that's probably a bit of a buzzword and you might hear that get thrown around by other folks within the industry but like you know the promise of nuclear back in the day was that we'd have all of these Boundless Energy sources and consumption would be so high that it wouldn't even be you know a concern obviously one of the biggest concerns facing all of us in the world is power consumption how are we generating power and what is that doing to the environment world we live around I think you know more nuclear will solve a lot of those and I think that doing that in a in a safe and reliable way you know will be like not non-trivial for you know the way the way we live I mean first you solve this problem for remote circumstances I think eventually you know energy eventually comes down to micro grid scenarios more distributed power generation and I think on the ground mendous terms it just allows you know people to live better like if if energy and the cost of energy is no longer a concern for people imagine how many more things you could be doing it could be quite amazing so I think not that not not only that it solves you know current scarcity issues and and climate types of problems which is definitely a big part of our mission it's the fact that you know abund energy for any person no matter where they are would be profound in in the way of life and how they can live it's got a key role to play in the energy transition and that question from a slightly different point of view then so that's that's the technology future in terms of you know if you were to fast forward 10 years time how can you see how we as Engineers are going to be working differently um or what would you like to see maybe that's a better question what would you the thorn in your side that would just be amazing if it could just go away and it doesn't need to be about requirements it could just be about the world of engineering today yeah absolutely um I think the biggest thing is you know more collaboration more collaborative tools you know the fact that all Engineers can be sharing models and simulations they're easy to work with there's more or open source tools even just being able to pull things up on your computer in terms of like you know going back to thermodynamics tables or anything rather than having to like sort through a book thumb through the old text I think I've got one of them over here a kind of thermodynamics reference book just of shot yeah it just lets you go so much faster and then the fact that the just proliferation of pre-print servers and allowing people to easily read into the science that's being done at The Cutting Edge all across universities across the world I just don't think there was that much access to that that type of information you know even 15 years out unless you had like Niche subscriptions to many different journals and periodicals and those those types of papers are prevalent in everyone's engineering job these days and you know reading through seeing what this group's doing that group's doing so I just think that speeds us all up overall and allows us to you know iterate faster because you don't have to solve every single fundamental science issue and you don't have to write all of your own software to start investigating things you can start tinkering you know as fast as possible and then you can share those results out and people can you know iterate in real time with you rather than having you know to download and get a courier to hand over some papers or a disc to someone for them to upload into their computer and start working so I think like there's always a plenty of like a chorus of people out there that like you know with the space industry and the Resurgence of that or the nuclear industry that like oh you know the course of development has kind of gone arai since the 50s and 60s and we were doing all these amazing things you know I think we may have focused on the right problem first in terms of highly developing all of the networking and internet Technologies and compute power and we've gotten to a point where it's very easy to have almost any information at your fingertips so much so that like it's a it's a real skill to have a good filter on whether the information is valid or not and being able to share those things you know and work in real time as seamlessly as possible so yeah that's where I think 100% agreed on the collaboration the something I struggle with and it just sprang to me there when you were talking about access to research it is incredible something I sometimes struggle with is just the volume so You' got it's like you've opened the Taps is knowing how to keep a bridged of all the developments um I I certainly feel like that in Aerospace is that there's so many studies to kind of triage that it's a it's a blessing but it can feel like a curse sometimes as well what to pay attention to in terms of developments in the space I don't I don't know if that's the same for you and kind of you know um the latest you know reactor geometries or materials all that kind of stuff that I guess you've got to keep an ear out for but you got to balance your time yeah absolutely I think I think almost most every single field is inundated and that's just because you know everything is pro posted pre-print now which is net good for civilization net bad for engineer that needs to filter through you know 20 different papers and pick which one to read since they're all you know seven pages long with additional figures and appendices yeah that's that's a universal problem all Engineers um could attest to um brilliant and before we leave I've got to ask you and I don't know if you can say this when will we be able to see read more about Antares or is that very all under wraps at the moment um you should be able to see and read more you know within this year okay very exciting very exciting got to keep the cards close to your chest um thanks very much for joining us will and really look forward to seeing what Antares Industries does in the future um thanks for joining us today on um and I'm going to say that again forgotten what the second word was thanks so much for joining us will on Beyond Blueprints today thanks it was great brilliant
2023-10-16 10:31
