The First Bungee Jump, Space Weapons, Lunar Landers and Airships: Al Weston Has Done It All

A few years ago, I caught wind that Sergey Brin had started funding an airship start-up called LTA (Lighter Than Air) Research.

After hitting up some sources, I came to learn that the man heading up the airship venture was Dr. Alan Weston. And, after digging around some more, I came to learn that Dr. Alan Weston had lived an extraordinary life.

Among many other things, Weston performed the earliest bungee jumps while a member of the Dangerous Sports Club at Oxford. He later built space weapons as part of the Star Wars effort under Ronald Reagan. Then, while at NASA, Weston led a team making a super low-cost lunar lander. (The story of that project is documented in When The Heavens Went on Sale - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062998870/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

Post NASA, Weston began constructing airships for Brin in a hangar on the NASA Ames campus.

Few people have experienced such a range of engineering adventures and fewer still have such knowledge about the aerospace industry. This is to say you’re going to enjoy the chat with Weston.

Also, this podcast comes with breaking news. We can report that Al Weston has left his post as CEO of LTA and now leads up rocket development at Astra. He’ll be looking to get the company’s Rocket 4 into orbit soon.

(We recored this before our video podcast era started and before Weston joined Astra. It’s also possible I called this Episode 2. Fear not. It’s Episode 10.)

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Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction: The Inspiration Behind the Google Lunar XPrize
00:32 - Who is Dr. Al Weston?
01:02 - From NASA to Airships for Sergey Brin
01:25 - Early Career & Bungee Jumping Invention
04:55 - The Dangerous Sports Club at Oxford
07:21 - First-Ever Bungee Jump & Police Involvement
12:10 - Golden Gate Bridge Bungee Jump Escape
14:58 - Flying Over Parliament in a Gorilla Suit
18:13 - Reflections on an Adventurous Life
19:59 - Getting into Aerospace & the Air Force
26:08 - Working on Reagan’s Star Wars Program (SDI)
28:52 - Switching from Laser Weapons to Kinetic Interceptors
32:16 - Hitting ICBMs with Projectiles Instead of Lasers
35:24 - Testing Interceptors in California
39:54 - How This Led to Modern Missile Defense Systems
41:42 - Did SDI Contribute to the Collapse of the Soviet Union?
44:47 - Weapons in Space & The Anti-Satellite Program
46:45 - Transitioning to NASA & Small Satellites Revolution
50:53 - Building a $50M Lunar Lander Instead of a $5B One
55:31 - NASA’s Pushback Against the Cheap Lunar Lander
56:55 - Google Lunar XPrize & Its Lasting Impact
59:42 - How This Work Led to Planet Labs & Space Startups
1:00:09 - Lunar Lander Concept Turned Into the LADEE Mission
1:01:26 - NASA’s Role in the Future of Space Exploration
1:02:26 - The Challenges of Independent Thinking in Bureaucracy
1:05:14 - How Government and Private Tech Have Swapped Roles
1:07:16 - Moving Into Airships & Why They Matter Today

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