Interviewee
Jim Cantrell is an American entrepreneur, mechanical engineer and road racer. He is the CEO and co-founder of Phantom Space Corporation, a space applications and launch company working to remove access barriers to space.
Transcript
Jim Cantrell: Thanks for having me on. So, I usually refer to myself as a builder. I like to build things. I don't care if it's cars or spaceships or bus businesses or, or homes. It's the art of building that interests me. But I've been in the aerospace industry for a little over 30 years and I've done a lot of interesting things there. I've had the fortune to work with some great people, and one of them that's most notable is Elon Musk and helping start SpaceX. And, prior to that I was at the French Space Agency for a number of years. I worked with NASA and then did a lot of work with the Department of Defense in post Soviet Russia to help stop brain drain over there.
And since SpaceX, I've been working with a lot of startups in the commercial space area, namely ICI and Planet and Skybox Imaging among many others. And you mentioned Phantom, which is my latest startup, which I started three years ago. And we're focused on making, making space happen more often and cheaply, more cheaply by, by using mass production. So we're looking to become the Henry Fortive space, which is really what we're trying to do.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow. Thank you so much for sharing. I mean, you have been kind of like all over the place in the industry. And talking about Phantom, I wanted to ask: I know that you guys successfully staged a hot fire test at Spaceport America last November. So maybe you can share a little bit about it?
Jim Cantrell: So we're in the process of building our first vehicle called the Daytona, and it's the, we believe, the world's most inexpensive vehicle that's capable of launching 500 kilograms into space. So as part of that development process, we're testing stage components. So these are stages of the rocket that could fly in space but weren't really necessarily made to fly in space, but we can test it out on the ground. And so we started with our second stage, it's a two stage rocket, and this has about 80% of the functionality of the overall rocket because all the, all the avionics and software and all that resides on the second stage and, and continues on after the first stage burns out.So it was a very complete test of the vehicle. And we used major engines that we've contracted with those guys, and they're a major partner with us. And the test went flawlessly. We ran the stage for 60 seconds on a test stand out in Spaceport America. And it was really a great success.
We spent a lot of time last summer testing it a little closer to home in our, in our test yard as we call it, you know, working out the bugs and the gremlins and things like that. But by the time we got to SpacePort America, everything went very smoothly. And the, and the result after one test was everything hit the mark 100%.
“We were awarded a 300 million task order contract from NASA as a launch supplier to them. And we've won four of the task orders that have come out for launch”.
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Elisa Muñoz: Wow. Well congratulations on that. This was a big step for the launch of Daytona that I think it's at the end of this year, right?
Jim Cantrell: Yeah, that's the plan to launch at the end of the year. Everything seems to be coming along to that goal. Things happen, but you know, it looks pretty good for now. And you know, we're working with the FA to get licensing. We're working on a test of the first stage, which has nine engines. So that requires a new test facility, which we're building here in Tucson.
And so we expect our first launch out of Vandenberg, we are, we've got a use of Slick eight, which is the multi-user pad down there, set aside for the end of the year. And we'll keep our fingers crossed and hopefully we can, we can make it, it'll be record time, you know, a little bit, a little bit over four years from start to first launch.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow. And are you guys planning on doing another test anytime soon? I mean, you mentioned nine engines, right?
Jim Cantrell: Yeah, that'll be a series of tests. So to fire nine engines on a stage, one of the big issues is how do you ignite them simultaneously without things going boom. And so, you know, we have Chris Thompson, who's our C T O, and he was very key at SpaceX on the Falcon nine, which had nine engines as well. So he has been through this before. And so we'll, we'll, we'll be doing a sequence of tests where we start with just one engine, then we'll go with three and then six and then nine and gradually work our way up to that. That'll be sometime this summer. And that'll be a major, major milestone test for us.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow. I'm pretty excited about it. And why do you think Phantom Space is making a difference in the industry?
Jim Cantrell: Well, we're just taking a different look at things. I, I like to think of what SpaceX might have been like 20 years later, is really what we're trying to do. And the same objective of making space more affordable, less barriers to getting there. And for us, that's the cost. And it's also frequency of flight and it's also convenient to where people are going. So, you know, right now about half of the satellite industry, our satellites under 500 kilograms. So that's the growing part of the industry. It's probably gonna be within 10 years, three quarters of the upmass that goes up.
And so many of these satellites need to go to unique places. And, and with a small launch like ours, we'll be able to accommodate that. And that's a very, very important feature for a lot of companies. The second thing is that by using mass production, we're actually able to keep the cost down. We're, we're charging 4 million per launch in our, I can tell you our first bill of materials for our first vehicle is under $4 million. So we're, we're actually gonna hit the cost targets there. There seems to be nothing in our way of, of, of not meeting it. So I think between those two things, you know, we'll, we'll continue the tradition that SpaceX has done, but on, on the smaller scale and addressing really a, a, a growing part of the market that's being largely ignored.
Elisa Muñoz: And talking about supply chain, did you have any procurement issues when the pandemic started?
Jim Cantrell: No, the pandemic really didn't affect us too much by the time it hit, it was February of 2020 and we hadn't really ramped up employment. And my co-founder, Mike and I had started with our own money, and so we had plenty of money to last us through the initial phases of, of that. And, and it turned out, you know, as, as the market is kind of crazy today as well, that aerospace and defense and, and space in particular, has remained a favored target of investors. And it's certainly, you know, with the Ukraine war breaking out the importance of space elements in, in, in national defense is becoming more and more obvious to everybody in the world.
So, we've been fortunate to ride those, those tailwinds and it's, it's not really, the supply chain has not really been a problem in the sense of, you know, covid impacted supply chain issues. It's more the traditional, you know, people aren't buying a lot of these, these valves in particular. And so, you know, the lead time on getting that stuff is very long. It's very expensive. So we've solved that by just doing it ourselves when we need to.
Elisa Muñoz: Well, I'm glad to hear that. So, talking about what are the next steps, we know that we have Daytona the launch at the end of this year, but do you have anything else?
Jim Cantrell: Yeah, so we were awarded a 300 million task order contract from NASA as a launch supplier to them. And we've won four of the task orders that have come out for launch. And we're really proud of that. I'm looking forward to launching those, you know, in some of the early manifests of our, of our vehicle. We also have a satellite business, which is a companion to the launch. And we, we right now have four contracts in place where we're designing satellites and, and two of them will take us through the build phase and we'll also launch their constellations. So, that is something to watch out for for the next few years. It's a little bit like SpaceX and Starlink, you know, we see launch as a strategic asset as well as a way to make money and you use that then to deploy constellations. We're gonna start with third party constellations with companies that we partner with, and later we'll build out our own, which we call Phantom Cloud.
Elisa Muñoz: Wow. Pretty exciting news for the company. Thank you so much for sharing that as well. And last but not least, do you have any advice for future entrepreneurs, people starting in this industry?
Jim Cantrell: Yeah, my best advice for you is never give up. I came across a picture of a boxer last night and he was in the shadows and had his head down and his hands were wrapped and kind of bleeding through the edges. And that's how you end up as an entrepreneur. It's a little bit like eating glass, I think somebody said before me. And you have to enjoy the taste of blood, but you can never give up if you're gonna be successful, you know, you're gonna get knocked down many times and you gotta stand back up and get back in the fight.
Elisa Muñoz: Well, that's true, thank you so much Jim for being here today!
Jim Cantrell: My pleasure.
