Chris Kemp on Astra's Comeback, Cheap Rockets and Drones From Space

If you’ve seen HBO’s Wild, Wild Space or read When the Heavens Went on Sale (links below), then Chris Kemp needs no introduction. Kemp is one of the stars in both works. For the less familiar, Kemp is the co-founder and CEO of Astra Space, a maker of rockets based in Alameda, Calif. For several years now, Astra has been on a quest to create the cheapest, easiest to launch rocket in the market and to turn rocket-making into a mass production affair. The company has enjoyed glorious highs all the way to orbit and lows where it verged on bankruptcy. Over the past year, Kemp and Astra co-founder Adam London took the company private and raised a fresh $80 million as they head toward flying Rocket 4 - their next-generation machine. We have lots more on that story on www.corememory.com and the link below. In this episode with Kemp, we get into Astra’s tumultuous journey, his disdain for some of my filmmaking choices and the future of rockets. Kemp envisions a world with rocket launch sites in many countries and rockets ferrying things like drones into battles in far-off places in a matter of seconds. As always, you can listen here or via your favorite podcast provider. Leave a review. Like and subscribe. Calm our souls. Most of all - enjoy! Wild, Wild Space on HBO - https://play.max.com/movie/55ee21e5-4295-4107-859a-a97decf2eebf When the Heavens Went on Sale - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062998870/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= Story on Astra's new funding - https://open.substack.com/pub/ashleevance/p/astra-space-raises-80m-and-plots Subscribe to watch more Core Memory videos https://www.youtube.com/@CoreMemoryVideos/videos Check out our podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@CoreMemoryVideos/podcasts Timestamps 0:00:00 Introduction & Guest Chris Kemp 0:01:18 Astra's Journey and Current State 0:08:01 Taking Astra Private 0:10:17 New Leadership and Space Force Collaboration 0:12:18 Rocket Industry Landscape 0:14:22 Shifting to Larger Satellites 0:15:15 DoD Drone Launch Contract 0:21:19 Vision of Global Spaceports 0:24:25 Satellite Constellations and Dual Use 0:26:36 Global Telecom & Space Race 0:30:01 Open Standards & Space Interoperability 0:31:14 Life After Going Private 0:32:17 Lessons from the SPAC Era 0:34:03 Focusing on Rocket 4 0:36:15 Balancing Speed and Reliability 0:40:06 The Cost of Innovation 0:42:21 Fundraising and Customer Commitment 0:44:12 The Satellite Engine Business 0:45:09 Decentralized Constellation Vision 0:50:14 Future Plans and Series B 0:52:21 Why Kemp Keeps Going 0:54:20 What’s Next for Astra 0:56:06 Thoughts on the Competition 0:59:13 Sideways Rocket Explained 1:00:15 Vision for NASA's Future