Meet the San Francisco exec going to space with William Shatner

When Blue Origin announced the crew for its next space launch, a media frenzy erupted over William Shatner, the 90-year-old actor famous for playing Captain Kirk on “Star Trek.” But a real life rocket scientist will be onboard, too.

Chris Boshuizen is a 44-year-old Australian who earned his doctorate at the University of Sydney and has dedicated his life to space. He later moved to the U.S. to work as a space mission architect at NASA Ames Research Center, and he's now a co-founder and venture capitalist living in San Francisco.

Boshuizen co-founded Planet Labs in 2010 and served CTO for five years. The company has a fleet of more than 200 satellites that document changes on Earth — anything from climate change to natural disasters. Bay Area venture capital firm DCVC has invested in the company, now known as Planet, since its Series A round in 2013, and Boshuizen joined DCVC in 2015 and is now a partner.

Boshuizen, Shatner and two others are scheduled to lift off on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship from Texas on Oct. 12. It will be the company’s second crewed flight, coming less than three months after its first human flight with owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos aboard himself. The rocket ship operates autonomously and will have no pilot, and the participants, called “customers” by Blue Origin, paid an undisclosed amount for the journey.

I spoke with Boshuizen on Thursday before he left for Texas to begin a three-day-long pre-flight training. We talked about dreaming of space, how he’s preparing for the 11-minute journey past the Kármán Line and what the future of cosmic exploration might look like.  

When did your interest in outer space begin? I've always liked it as a kid. It's just been an indelible part of my life and me. I just gravitate towards to it. My mom says as long as she can remember, since age 4 or something. 

Did you ever imagine that you’d be flying on a rocket ship one day? Kinda, yes. I very much hoped so. I just didn't know when.

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Chris Boshuizen

How are you preparing for blast off? The prep for this flight is relatively minor. Unlike a normal astronaut when you're gonna be up in space for a year, where you have to be really fit. A trip like this, the chances of getting appendicitis is pretty low. So the training's not too bad. I'm flying to Texas today and I'm gonna do three days of onsite training where we'll look at all the things like how to escape the cabin if there's an emergency, a simulation of takeoff.

Are you nervous at all? Yeah, a little. Yeah. I'm definitely in the excitement phase this week, I'm really jazzed, but over the last six months I've gone between really excited and it'll be OK. I've definitely had my moments of cold feet. 

I think that makes you human. I hope so (laughs).

Do you think going to space will change your perspective on life on Earth? I'm trying to not overthink that because you can't really imagine what that's like before you experience it. This view is something that fewer than 600 people in the entire history of billions of people have ever experienced. I'm open to the universe telling me something.

What do you think the future of space exploration will look like? I think this is the beginning of something really magic. For the first 60 years or so of human space flight it was the domain of governments. You had to be a highly trained specialist, a government trained astronaut to go to space. And somehow this year there has been three separate companies taking private citizens into space, some of them into orbit even. That's a really big change. I'm excited about what's coming next. Would you go?

I don't know... I mean, maybe? It's a little scary. It is. I mean, you don't have to go on the first one. That's also why I think it's not tourism, right? Because it's far too dangerous to really be a tourism ride. It's a very strange and high-risk activity and definitely not for your average person yet. I think these companies really need to prove their safety record before everyone can fly. But the costs will come down and then we can send more people. The first thing I want to see is thousands of people going off and experiencing that same view. And I think that will have a positive impact on how we see the earth and responsibility for our planet. Next I think we should start living and working in space. I think there's all sorts of wonderful things we could do if we just extended our horizon a little farther.

Do you think we're gonna get to Mars? I'm a moon guy. I like the moon because it's only three days away, so if you do get appendicitis on the moon you can come back. On Mars, you're kind of screwed. I think the moon is a really nice spot to start at and get comfortable with living and working in space without being a nine month trip away.

Do you think that will be the first human colony? I think the moon is a good spot or a space station in orbit. I grew up loving that movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I think we should've had a big Hilton hotel orbiting in space by 2001. So we're exactly 20 years late at this point. That would be a great next stop.

Why did you decide to ride with Blue Origin, versus some of the others doing manned space flights? I think all of the companies are wonderful. SpaceX I would also love to go orbital with but that’s a little out of my price range at the moment. Maybe that's a future trip. Of the two suborbital companies, I think Blue Origin has an impeccable track record with safety. And as an aerospace engineer myself, I'm really taken by the design of the New Shepard rocket. It's built like a tank. It's quite heavy and strong, which is a good thing.

One of the new things in the industry is the fact that these rockets are reusable. Imagine flying to Sydney, Australia, and United Airlines threw out the airplane when you landed and then built you a new one to fly back to San Francisco. That's what space flight has been like. Vehicles like New Shepard are fully reusable. That's great because the cost is coming down, so it makes the tickets affordable. And you know that the rocket is safe because you can see how many times it has flown. It's designed to refly which means it's designed to be better, stronger. A disposable rocket doesn’t have to be that good. 

Do you know Jeff Bezos personally? I've met him at conferences but wouldn't say I know him personally.

Can you tell me a little bit about your work at NASA Ames Research Center and how that experience has prepared you for this mission? That was a really amazing time in my life. I remember when I got the job, it was Christmas and I said to my mom, hey mom, I'm moving to America in two weeks to work at NASA. She said, "It's about time." My mom's a great supporter of what I've done. I remember that virtual world Second Life. We built this entire NASA rocket park and a space station in Second Life. That virtual reality thing never panned out but that was the kind of the range of things we were looking at to make NASA more relevant and have higher impact.

In my work, I was looking at lower cost spacecraft. One of the cooler things we did was launch an Android phone into space as a satellite. And that was really the tipping point for us realizing that we could build low-cost space craft and then we went to Planet, my company. At that time, satellites were flying 20-year-old computers and 20-year-old hardware because NASA likes to fly stuff they've flown before because they trust it. And we got a cutting-edge Android smartphone and what we added was about $3,000 and had the most capable satellite in orbit, ever. 

How do you launch an Android phone into space? You put it in a little cube, which went in a box with a little door. And that got bolted to a rocket, the rocket launched and the door opened and pushed it out into orbit with a giant spring. And we made an app to take photos and radio it back to us on the ground. (Click here to read more about PhoneSat.)

You’re a partner at DCVC. What’s your investing philosophy, and do you have any space startups in your portfolio? We invest in deep tech, which is either a combination of hardware or software with a proprietary advantage. Whether a hardware design that is revolutionary or an algorithm or data set that gives the company some sort of computational edge. We have a real focus on ESG (environment, sustainability, governance) and making the world a safer and cleaner place. A lot of our companies now are focusing on technical approaches to solving some of the world's biggest problems. In space, Planet, my company, was a DCVC investment before I joined the firm. And now Rocket Lab was a huge success. The very first company I invested in when I left Planet was Rocket Lab in New Zealand because access to space was always a pain point for us. We do about one space company a year on average. They have to meet the criteria I described. We want companies that have global reach and impact.

Let's talk about Planet Labs. Where did this idea come from to scan the Earth with satellites? It begin with the PhoneSat and at that point nano-satellites existed but they weren't that capable. We wrote a list and I think we met with other friends in the space industry and asked them, what would you do with this technology? And once we thought about it, imaging was the one to do. We basically created a line scanner for the planet. The satellites are orbiting in a line and as the Earth turns around once a day, you scan it. We never pivoted, we have the same mission and approach. Our original idea from 2010 is what we're still executing to this day.

You're flying with William Shatner. If you could ask him one question, what would it be? I do want to ask him if he has come to peace with playing the role of Captain Kirk. I don't know if he sees it, but with his role on this flight he is a tremendous advocate and ambassador for the democratization of space and I hope he's ok with that.

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