The list of companies Kamal Ghaffarian has founded reads like the pages of a science fiction novel: Axiom Space is building the world’s first commercial space station in partnership with NASA and also designed the next generation of astronaut spacesuits. (“The next time you see astronauts walking on the surface of the moon, they will be wearing Axiom Space spacesuits,” he adds.) Intuitive Machines builds lunar landers and will send one to the moon’s south pole in January (weather permitting), one of several launches it is planning that will open the moon up to commercial missions. Quantum Space is creating a space "superhighway" that will help spacecraft refuel and travel in the region between the Earth and the moon. And back down on this planet, X-Energy is making small, advanced (and meltdown-proof) nuclear reactors that can power everything from a remote military base to Dow's 4,700-acre chemicals plant on the Texas Gulf Coast.
All these businesses have a common goal, according to Ghaffarian. "We need to be a multi-planetary species and also be able to go to other stars. But until then, we only have one home, right?” he says, adding, with a chuckle: “If you sort of summarize everything, [we need to] take care of our existing home and find a new home."
The space industry is dominated by larger-than-life moguls who have poured money into rockets, rovers and rides into orbit. But, unlike Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, Ghaffarian, 65, is a rare example of someone who is a billionaire largely because of his space pursuits, rather than one who got into it after making his fortune. The key to that success? Culture, culture, culture, he says. But in a $546 billion business that’s still driven by the U.S. government, according to the nonprofit Space Foundation, it’s actually contracts, contracts, contracts.
"No one is better than Kam Ghaffarian at winning, on a competitive basis, dollars from the U.S. government," adds J. Clay Sell, the CEO of X-Energy and a former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.
All these businesses have a common goal, according to Ghaffarian. "We need to be a multi-planetary species and also be able to go to other stars. But until then, we only have one home, right?” he says, adding, with a chuckle: “If you sort of summarize everything, [we need to] take care of our existing home and find a new home."
The space industry is dominated by larger-than-life moguls who have poured money into rockets, rovers and rides into orbit. But, unlike Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, Ghaffarian, 65, is a rare example of someone who is a billionaire largely because of his space pursuits, rather than one who got into it after making his fortune. The key to that success? Culture, culture, culture, he says. But in a $546 billion business that’s still driven by the U.S. government, according to the nonprofit Space Foundation, it’s actually contracts, contracts, contracts.
"No one is better than Kam Ghaffarian at winning, on a competitive basis, dollars from the U.S. government," adds J. Clay Sell, the CEO of X-Energy and a former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 My personal belief is that as vast as the universe is, our ultimate destiny is for human
00:09 race to become interstellar.
00:12 But in order to be able to do that, we need to take steps to get there.
00:18 And eventually, building technologies that can go beyond our solar system and traverse
00:25 into our galaxies.
00:27 And then I think to me, when you talk about 10 to 15 years, 20 years from now, my hope
00:33 is that we have a space city, you know, a place that people actually can go and live.
00:42 Cam Kefarian is an entrepreneur who has started several space companies.
00:46 His most well-known company is Axiom Space, which is building what could be the first
00:50 commercial space station.
00:52 He's also built other companies in the space industry, including Intuitive Machines, which
00:57 is building lunar landers and pursuing commercial missions to the moon.
01:02 Then there's also Quantum Space, which is trying to build a space superhighway to move
01:07 payloads in cislunar orbit, the space between the Earth and the moon.
01:11 And finally, his other main company is X-Energy, which is building small modular nuclear reactors,
01:19 which are far safer and easier to build and smaller than conventional large nuclear reactors.
01:26 I was born in Isfahan, Iran, and I came to the United States when I was 18 years old
01:33 with an incredible love of space programs.
01:38 Since childhood, I just like looking at the stars.
01:40 I'm a stargazer and just sort of mesmerized about the stars and can we go there, you know,
01:47 how far are they?
01:49 And really a transformational moment was when I saw Neil Armstrong landing on the surface
01:55 of the moon from my neighbor's black and white television and it was like, wow, we can actually,
02:01 you know, go to another planet.
02:03 And, you know, and that sort of really triggered it for me that this is what I wanted to do.
02:09 I actually landed in Washington, D.C. and I got myself registered at Catholic University
02:15 of America.
02:16 That's where I worked on my first degree, computer science engineering.
02:21 I came with $2,000 that I borrowed from my uncle to come to the United States.
02:27 So when I came, I didn't have a whole lot of money.
02:30 Therefore, I had to work every night.
02:32 In fact, I worked downtown Washington, D.C. parking cars for the three years that I finished
02:38 a double degree program.
02:40 Chemgaffarian founded SGT, also known as Stinger Gaffarian Technologies, in 1994.
02:45 They co-founded it with Harold Stinger and it was basically a government contracting
02:49 business.
02:50 They did government contracting primarily for NASA.
02:54 And it was the first company he started after previously working at Lockheed Martin and
02:58 Ford Aerospace.
02:59 It initially started in his basement.
03:01 He mortgaged his house to start the company.
03:04 And over time, it grew much larger.
03:07 It actually started as a Section 8A company, which is a federal program for businesses
03:13 owned by minorities.
03:15 And it eventually grew by 2006.
03:16 It had become the 20th largest contractor for NASA with $100 million in contracts.
03:23 And by the time Cam sold it in 2018, it was worth $355 million when he sold it to publicly
03:29 traded KBR.
03:30 What you're going to hear a whole lot from me is culture, culture, culture.
03:36 And when I say culture, it's not just being ethical or being integrity-based, but a culture
03:42 of being successful, culture of winning proposals, culture of taking care of the people.
03:49 One of the things at SGT that sort of distinguished us from everybody else was really a culture
03:55 and our core values.
03:57 Everybody would say, "Oh, it's the ICE principles."
03:59 And ICE stood for Integrity, Customers, and Employees.
04:04 Integrity at the center of everything that we do.
04:07 Bend over backward to take care of our customers.
04:10 And our employees are at the heart of everything that we do.
04:14 That sort of really was the key to our success at SGT.
04:18 So people who joined the company wouldn't want to leave.
04:22 In fact, in a period of 23 years, this is sort of incredible.
04:26 I had no executive that joined the company in 23 years that voluntarily left.
04:35 The first company I founded after SGT in 2009 was X Energy.
04:40 And it was really because I started a school in Africa, in Kinshasa.
04:48 And I really knew nothing about nuclear, nothing about the energy world.
04:52 I consider myself a space cadet.
04:54 And we sponsored four orphans.
04:58 And that school now has grown to close to 800 people.
05:01 But I learned that the school didn't have power.
05:05 And I learned very quickly that there's a direct relationship between standard of living
05:09 around the world and having electricity.
05:13 So if you don't have electricity, you don't have clean water, you don't have education.
05:17 And also with all the stuff that was going on with using the fossil fuel and how much
05:23 carbon we generate.
05:24 And we are in this beautiful, precious blue globe.
05:30 And if we don't protect it, it's our home.
05:32 If we don't protect it, so far we don't have another place that we can go.
05:37 That was really the genesis behind X Energy.
05:40 And we've sort of done what I call is the holy grail in nuclear, where we design nuclear
05:44 reactors that are 100% safe.
05:47 In other words, if there's a tsunami or there's an earthquake or any of that, or a plane crashes
05:53 to it, they can never go supercritical.
05:56 And because of that, you can have them in the middle of cities or anywhere.
06:00 And today we are world leader in advanced nuclear.
06:02 In fact, we won a $2.5 billion grant from DOE to build these nuclear reactors.
06:09 It's pretty incredible.
06:12 The first company founded after X Energy came in 2013, when he founded Intuitive Machines,
06:17 which eventually became a company whose goal it was to build lunar landers and really start
06:21 to commercialize the moon.
06:23 Three years later came Axiom Space, which he co-founded with Mike Saffardini, who was
06:28 the longtime director of NASA's International Space Station program.
06:32 Axiom is the company that's building what could be the first commercial space station,
06:36 also designing the next generation of spacesuits for NASA.
06:40 In 2016, I got together with Michael Saffardini, who was the previous program manager for International
06:47 Space Station for NASA.
06:49 And we knew the United States government was not going to build another space station.
06:55 They were going to rely on private industry to do that.
06:59 So with this unique experience, and my experience, we actually run the operation of International
07:05 Space Station 24 by 7.
07:08 One of my proud things that I like to say is when the astronauts from space talk and
07:12 say Houston, they would be talking to my company employees.
07:16 And so it was a very bold vision.
07:18 We build the first private commercial space station.
07:22 And that's really, that's the vision that got us started in 2016 to open the doors for
07:28 Axiom Space.
07:30 After about 30 years at the agency, I started looking around.
07:34 Hadn't really thought a lot about what I was going to do, but there were a couple of offers
07:37 out there.
07:38 So they got me thinking, well, maybe there is another life after this.
07:42 By the way, I had the best job in the whole agency.
07:45 You know, I had a front row seat to everything that happened on orbit.
07:47 And it was really, it was a lot of fun.
07:50 So when I started thinking about it, Cam was one of those people that had a reputation
07:55 of being a mover and a shaker in the industry.
07:58 And I wanted to seek his advice, just his thoughts on what I should do in my afterlife.
08:05 Well, if you know Cam, you don't spend a lot of time talking about things like that.
08:09 I called him and said, you know, Cam, the only thing I know how to do is build an operating
08:12 space station.
08:13 So, you know, I've kind of lived it in my capabilities.
08:16 So I'll wait till somebody, surely some company was going to come along.
08:22 And so I told Cam that, so I'll wait, somebody will come along and maybe that's what I'll
08:25 do.
08:26 And he said, okay, let's go build a space station.
08:29 So he seeded the company and we went from there.
08:34 That's how we started together building our space station.
08:38 Axiom Space has a very ambitious goal.
08:40 It's to build the world's first commercial space station.
08:42 They're actually the only company that's out there that has the rights to attach their
08:48 modules.
08:49 So the building blocks of their space station, so to speak, to the International Space Station.
08:54 The first one of those modules is set to go up in 2026.
08:58 That's their main goal.
08:59 And the thing that they're building currently is the Axiom Space Station.
09:02 However, they've already completed two successful missions to the International Space Station
09:08 where they brought commercial astronauts, so people paying to be an astronaut and go
09:12 to the ISS, as well as astronauts from countries that haven't had the chance to go to space
09:17 yet.
09:18 So Saudi Arabia, for example, sent two astronauts on the second Axiom mission.
09:23 My belief is that the ultimate destiny for human beings is to go to stars, to actually
09:30 do interstellar travel, to really go to other stars.
09:33 Because the universe is so enormous and vast.
09:37 And in our galaxy alone, there are 400 billion stars like our sun with planets around it.
09:44 And there are a trillion other galaxies.
09:47 So we're just such a small part.
09:49 So my personal belief is that as vast as the universe is, our ultimate destiny is for human
09:56 race to become interstellar.
09:59 And in order to be able to do that, we need to take steps to get there.
10:04 First is LEO, low Earth orbit.
10:06 We need to have human presence there.
10:09 Then going to the moon and to Mars is, you know, further steps.
10:13 Having the space infrastructure where you can go from Earth to the moon and beyond is
10:19 another thing.
10:20 And so these companies all follow that larger vision.
10:27 The one thing that always came up with the, I think more than a dozen people I spoke to
10:32 about Cam is that he's really ambitious, which you kind of get just from learning about the
10:38 companies he's built, but also that he's able to convince people and motivate them to actually
10:44 get those very ambitious projects done.
10:47 You know, you look at the incredible amount of ex-NASA sort of rock stars he's brought
10:51 over, people who are leading their fields, and he convinced them to come to the private
10:55 sector and build these companies.
10:57 He went with Axe Energy from not knowing anything about energy to now being one of the leading
11:01 companies in nuclear energy, right?
11:03 And these new reactors that could really make a huge difference in renewable energy goals.
11:09 And obviously the jury's still out.
11:10 Anything could happen in the future.
11:12 There's a lot of competition out there.
11:14 It's still a speculative market, right, for space stations and for a lot of these things.
11:17 But when you look at sort of his initial dreams and visions, commercial lunar landers, commercial
11:22 space station, the nuclear reactors, where he's been able to take those ideas in terms
11:26 of the funding and the people he's brought with him and turning them into real businesses,
11:31 that's really impressive.
11:32 And that really stood out to me when I was talking to him and the people who have known
11:34 him for a long time.
11:36 I really hope that my legacy is that I contributed to advancing the state of humanity and human
11:41 knowledge, which is really the vision that I've had for many years, including SGT.
11:47 To know that someone may be breathed easier as a result of you've lived through my philanthropic
11:53 activities and also making a difference for our planet, like with X Energy, so that our
11:58 children can survive the climate change and everything else.
12:02 So making a difference and making this planet and also going to other places a better place
12:08 for us.
12:09 [Music]