Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast. I have the pleasure of sitting today with

Creon Levitt, who for three decades plus was a NASA scientist. He is now still functioning

as a scientist, but in a private capacity he is at a company called Planet Labs that

was founded by some folks from NASA. Creon, welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast.

Such a pleasure, Brad. We have been having private conversations and social interactions

for a couple of years now, but it is nice to be, I guess this is a close face to face.

We are going to get for a little while, but lovely to see.

Yep, so I should probably explain, since I think you are not widely known, this podcast

was born of the idea that each time we interacted, we found fascinating things to discuss,

the Dark Horse Podcast is certainly about conversations with people you might not

ordinarily encounter, who have lots of important things to convey. Anyway, you are a perfect example

of a Dark Horse, who I think people will be fascinated to hear. But before we get into the heart

of the matter, I have to ask you as a 32-year NASA scientist, how do you feel about it when people

say it's not rocket science? Oh, that's a complicated topic, but let's just say that

arguably rocket science is not so hard. Rocket engineering is pretty hard,

and because like 10,000 things have to go right in order for a rocket to successfully deliver

its payload to orbit, and if any one of them doesn't go right, chances are it's not going to work.

So it's a really daunting engineering task, but when people say it's not rocket science,

I guess I get some solace in that, because I worked on some rocket stuff like that, so we won't see.

Go boost. Yeah, I agree with you about the distinction between the rocket science, which is

pretty straightforward once you get it, and the rocket engineering, which is never straightforward,

because of the number of unknowns and uncontrollables that interface with any given rocket.

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