Racing on the Moon!

Mary Hagy - Founder and CEO for Moon Mark

Mary Hagy is a former U.S Army soldier, renowned Philadelphia businesswoman, and currently the CEO and Founder of Moon Mark - an organization that captures the adventures of high school students from around the world who will compete to design, build, land, and race two vehicles on the Moon!

Contact: Mary Hagy at mary.hagy@moonmark.space | N/A | Visit Online!

       

• Let’s talk about Moon Mark – How did you decide to be the first to race on the Moon? Why bother?
• How can high school students build space-worthy racers?
• Why high schoolers? Why didn’t you choose more advanced racers?
• You’re not a space person. How can you pull this off?
• Racing is expensive. Space is lots more expensive. How are you managing the financials around this?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports related.

The Motorsports community is full of interesting people, and the more time I spend in it, the more stories I uncover. And tonight’s guest is no exception. I had the great honor of working with our guests throughout several H P D E seasons in conjunction with Hooked On Driving. At that time, she was operating a veteran’s outreach organization known as our vet success, and I even rode right seat in her bi turbo V12 Mercedes SL at Watkins Glen.

And let me tell you, that thing was an absolute rocket ship. So ladies and gentle drivers, our guest tonight is Mary Hak, a former US Army soldier. Thank you for your service. She’s a renowned Philadelphia businesswoman and currently the c e o and founder of Moon Mark, an organization that captures the adventures of high school students from [00:01:00] around the world.

Who are going to compete to design, build land, and race two vehicles on the moon. Joining Mary with us on the show is also Moon Mark, project administrator Marianne Burk. And as you’ve guessed it, my special guest host tonight is from our drive-through series. You know her as Tanya, who’s filling in for Brad while he’s on vacation.

With all that, I’m sure our listeners can’t wait for us to unpack all of this. So how about we head to the moon and back? Welcome to Break Fix, Maryn, Marianne. Thank you. So, hey, let’s go. All right, Mary, let’s reminisce in the past a little bit. Let’s talk about motor sports, your involvement in that world, your passion with cars.

And let’s go back to, you know, where we met, you know, circa, let’s call it the 2016 era. Okay, well you’re a little late in the game there. Because I had a passion for driving since I can remember, and I first learned how [00:02:00] to drive with a stick shift. And in recent times that paddles are like, okay, okay. But I love that stick.

When I was 15 years old, I started driving and by the time I was 18 years old and, and thank you Tanya for introducing me as a military veteran. I really appreciate it. I was in South Korea serving there, and I had, I don’t know who gave me the questionable judgment of the possession of a Jeep, but I I, I drove that thing on about two wheels most of the time, so, oh, yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, this has been in my blood for a long, long time. You and I, Eric met at Watkins Glen, like you said, and it was through, uh, a series of really, really meaningful things that kind of brought [00:03:00] me from being a kid who couldn’t drive other than as I needed to drive to a place where it was really a much more important and meaningful experience, meaning understanding the physics and the engineering and the safety.

And oh by the way, everything to do with the camaraderie of motorsports. And so that’s where you and I met like some years ago after you know that Jeep, right? Yeah, I would say a long time after that Jeep probably. Hey, wait. Hey, hey, hey. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Uh, so it sounds like you came about motor sports and racing and the passion for cars.

Honestly, I am really glad to tell you that over my lifetime I have. Thoroughly enjoyed driving and driving safe and fast and stuff like that. [00:04:00] But you and I encountered each other with the, our Vet Success program. That’s correct. And as an Army veteran. Um, just a little bit of backstory. After 2010 I, in 2011, you know, coming out of the Great Recession, uh, I started to feel like and understand that the media was portraying military veterans in a victimized way.

That they were homeless, that they were homicidal, that they were suicidal, that they were unemployable. And, and I started to, you know, just be consumed with these messages. I said to myself, I must do something. To affect this narrative because it’s not Right. Military veterans have come out of the military and every human carries around a bag of rocks.

Okay? But 80% of the [00:05:00] post nine 11 veterans coming back, they were doing their best to transition, but they were, you know, surrounded by this narrative, right? This media narrative. Right. And so that is why I started our vet success, and that’s why I created the Triumph Games. So, long story short, Solomon Rosenthal, does that name ring a bell?

It does. Okay. Sullivan, Rosenthal and I were sitting around in Philadelphia a few years ago, and I’m talking to him about this, and I’m saying, I’m gonna do this television program. Mm-hmm. Because I need to tell stories about veterans who are successful. Right. And he says, well, you gotta have motor sports.

Absolutely. And, and I said, what? So we created the television program and a part of the competition that we created [00:06:00] was motor sports. And that first year the production for CBSs Sports Sports was at Sig Racing Manor in the Hudson Valley. And, uh, Ellen Wilk was so wonderful to welcome us up and Jack Rouch Jr.

Provided a wonderful Rosh Mustang for our competitors to drive on Allen’s court. Here’s the interesting crossover between the story you are telling in a guest we had on not, but a couple weeks ago. So another name you might be familiar with, who is also friends with Solomon Rosenthals, Paul Wilky, and he told the story from his perspective, he was invited.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Good old Pauly. Right? So he tells the story from his perspective as a coach and and working with Brock Gates Jr. And all these other folks that were at that same event. So on his episode, he talks about this story as well. So it’s a small, small world, you know, when we’re talking about motorsport.

Yes, it really is. And it’s [00:07:00] a wonderful world. It is a wonderful world. Paul is a super guy. And I also wanna call out Papa Joe Sela. It’s his birthday today. Right. And he’s the head of NASA Northeast. Mm-hmm. So NASA Northeast came to Wilson Manor and trained the athletes so that they could perform and. You know, compete, uh, effectively and safely, you know, so NASA and h o g booked on driving both of those.

So what you’re hearing me say is that the motor sports community is not only small, but it’s really, really a wonderful experience to be together and make things happen. That’s what we did. And, and then the next year, the next series, Solomon and Brian Humphreys, his cohort in crowd, we created a, a racetrack on the [00:08:00] sea slope of West Point military account.

Whoa. Uhhuh? Yeah. On the other side of that, I got the bug. You don’t say, oh, yeah. Oh yeah. I got it. I got it. I got it. That’s why I ended up spending as many hours. On the track with people I care about and who are having a great time as I possibly can. And this actually influences the story of Moon Mark interesting, because if it were not for the time that I have spent in motor sports, whether it be at an H P D E event or it’d be in, you know, volunteering, uh, or being a part of the pit crew in NASCAR and IndyCar and emsa, uh, I mean, I just had to be there.

And it has influenced how we are [00:09:00] ending up racing on the room. I a woman of action. I, I, I absolutely love it. And I have to add a little color to this. So when we got together in the 2016 timeframe as you were there, frequenting Watkins Glen, just like I do, I’ll never forget, I, if it was Mike a Rigo and Chris Lou and, and a couple others, they came up to me and they said, Hey, We need to put you in the car with the TV lady, right?

And I’m like, what are you, what are you talking about? Just, just go out there, don’t, you don’t have to worry about it. Don’t, don’t just, you’ll be okay. Just get in the right seat. And I’m a coach, a veteran coach, and I’m like, come on. Okay, what, whatever. And I’m like, are you guys sure? Oh yeah, we’ll stick her out in advance, she’ll be fine.

I’m like, what are you guys talking about? I get in the car with you and I had met you casually because you guys were filming and doing everything you were doing. And I glommed onto the whole idea of what you guys were doing. Cuz I was already invested with, you know, wounded warriors and helmets off to heroes and things like that.

So for me, what you guys were doing really resonated. And I’m like, okay, they’re gonna stick me in the car with this lady. I’m like, whatever. And then I see your car and I’m like, oh boy, all black Mercedes [00:10:00] SL convertible. And I’m like, wow. So we get out and I didn’t know what to expect. I’m gonna be totally honest with you.

About turn two, you lit up those turbos and it was like, oh, we are in for a treat and I gotta, I gotta tell the audience, Mary can dry. Okay. I was blown away. Now we did work on a couple of little pointers here and there, but the one thing I remember, and it’s one of the few students and I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna put the label student on you that I’ve had where I’ve actually had to kind of pull the reins back and be like, stop target fixating, cuz you are hunting people on track cuz that Mercedes is wicked fast.

My biggest fear was that we were gonna run outta brakes cuz it’s a big, heavy car and there was no problem going where we needed to be. It was just making sure that we could slow down. But that was an absolute epic ride. Oh, well thank you Eric. It was such a pleasure, uh, to, to, uh, do that with you. And, and my memory of that particular round with you [00:11:00] that you’re talking about is I was chasing a Mustang.

And I was like, come on baby. Come here, come to mama. The red mist was ever apparent, that’s for sure. But no, I, I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I, I didn’t have a lot of red mist. Um, Just laser focus on that chair. Yeah, like a missile.

Speaking about the successes you had with our vet success, I was wondering if you might have crossed paths as one of our previous guests on Break Fix, which is Peter Klein from Vet Motorsport. So if there was any overlap with that. And then my second question is, what happened to the Mercedes and what are you driving now?

So I know they’re totally unrelated questions, but I gotta throw ’em out there. I have not had the privilege of communicating or connecting with Peter, although I am aware of his work. And you know, one of [00:12:00] the things that happens in the course of creating things, which is what I do, is that you go in and with a particular intent to impact and then you see the impact and then you figure out is this still the right place or are others coming in, and things like that.

So there are some amazing people and organizations that are helping veterans in the motor sports world right now. Absolutely. And you know, when I looked around and I, and I recognized that, I said, okay. This is good. This is really good. So I have not met Peter, but I would, I would love an introduction to him and always glad to talk with folks that are supporting veterans and, and so are we.

Absolutely. And I, I’d like to think that Vet Motorsports is definitely leading the charge. They’re at the pointy end of that stick when it comes to veterans outreach and the con, you know, and the intersection with Motorsport and all [00:13:00] that. And for our listeners who might not be aware of what we’re talking about, go back and review the Vet Motorsports episode that we did with Peter Klein and he explains their entire, you know, process and the program and everything like that.

Awesome amounts of detail. So let’s get back to, let’s get back to the car stuff though. So that Mercedes, that big black Mercedes, what happened to that thing? Is it still around? And if not, what are you driving? Now? Now I wanna do tell you, cuz this is really important. My SL was a 400 and I took a four 50 on the track and I didn’t like it at all.

I had to have that 400 because I just melded into it. She was such a beautiful, is that from the torque? Is that from the torque pushing you into the seat from all the acceleration? Uh, yeah. Yeah, that was it. Okay. Now I’ll tell you what happened to that car. So I now live in [00:14:00] Northern Nevada in the beautiful, beautiful foothills of the Sierras overlooking Reno.

Uh, I drove across country in that car and I have to tell you, I didn’t spare the horses. That was a fast cross country trip with a cannonball. It was not a cannonball. But thank you Tanya. Thank you Tanya. Sounds like she didn’t spare the cowboys either. Good lord.

So you, you’re gonna love this, this story because Maryanne and I recently just traversed the same road. It’s called the Loneliest Road in America. Okay? It’s Route 50. You come outta Utah and you come across too Nevada, but you come around and pass and shit. Howdy. That’s a nice ribbon. A road right there.

And I said, I said at [00:15:00] the time now, now this is before Maryanne was with me. I didn’t do this with Maryanne. I only did the one oh oh, like a couple of times before she said Mary. Mary. Um, but while you were asleep, honestly, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t even fall asleep. What I drove while she was asleep, I slept with my hand gripped to the side of the car.

Just, you know, just waiting for it. A white knuckle sleep. Can you believe that’s, that’s like me on, that was like me on track in the right seat. It must be a right seat thing.

So, so I’m driving, uh, and, and I got my little dog. I’m like, I get my, my little brown dog and I’m saying, oh man, you know what? I need to see if there’s a regulator on this thing. Oh wow. Of course you do. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I did. And there’s nothing, I mean, I mean, it’s the great, it is [00:16:00] gorgeous. It is absolutely beautiful.

So what, what does it look like at 178 miles an hour? I don’t even want it. Allegedly. I’m so not confessing to that.

Didn’t ah, so did you have like spare fuel cans in trunk or something? The only Mercedes going down Route 50 with Jerry cans on it. Like Mad Max, but, but, but the tire. Oh. Driven across country. You know that car that you know, Eric, there’s no spare tire. Yes. Probably run flats. Yeah. Oh yeah, those run flats.

Oh, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They work really well until you’re, they have a. They have a speed limit. Wait, you’re supposed to be able to drive [00:17:00] 50 miles at 50 miles an hour. Well, just like she was verifying whether there was a regulator or not. She was verifying the max speed rating on

She found out. Yeah. One 50 five’s not, yeah, so I end up 80 miles east of the closest town, which is Fallon, Nevada. So even if I decide to run out the run flats, I’m gone there. Right. This is a two-lane road. There’s no place to pull off. I finally found some utility thing, right? Utility something or other and, and I pulled off there and I called a friend of mine who’s with the CIA for 29 years and I said, Carl, I don’t know if you might.

Somehow hear that. I’m not gonna be out of this, but my bones are here. [00:18:00] See, I was gonna say, you call aaa, but who needs aaa? When you got cia? Oh no, no. Oh no. Oh, somebody cue the secret agent soundtrack and I said, Hey, you run flat tires or shit. Okay. Um, and can you please come pick me up? Seven. There’s this weird noise.

It’s, it really is. It’s that long. Okay. It was seven hours later and it was, I, I got no complaints cuz it’s a beautiful day. Um, and I was off the road. I got my little brown dog. So the way that I arrived into Nevada for the first time was on the tow truck with my car on the tow truck, sitting in the front seat with the driver, who was very nice.

With an escort, you mean you arrived, escorted into Nevada. Yay.

Was an all black [00:19:00] tow truck, undercover Crown Victoria in front of the tow truck too. So Eric, a long winded way of saying by the time I got here with that beautiful car, which is the most wonderful car that I’ve ever loved, I also have a very steep driveway. It doesn’t do well in snow at all. So you don’t say

So I had to, um, I had to get a new one and I still do have a Mercedes. A G wagon, please tell me it’s a G wagon. If she did, I’d steal it. You and every soccer mom in LA right? Yeah, yeah. No, it’s not a G wagon, but it is an all wheel drive. Very cool. And she’s got some pep in her steps. She’s faster than my car.

I’ll tell you that. You should know you drove it. And [00:20:00] listen, I may not be a speed demonn, but I think I got her up almo. I think I hit a hundred a couple times, which is like pretty fast for me.

So I’m gonna ask, before we transition to talking about Moon Mark, I do want to ask one question. So, Has it always been Mercedes? Was that the big draw? Was, has the goal always been Mercedes or is that what you feel is like the sexiest brand out there, the sexiest car? Or is there something else that is maybe above that, that you’re still kind of aspiring and reaching for?

Hm mm What a question. Um, normally I just ask point blank, what’s the sexiest car of all time in your opinion? I figured I’d make it a little bit more interesting. I I’ll answer that, I’ll answer that question. But the other question you answered or you asked, so it hasn’t always been Mercedes. I love Audis.

Oh, okay. So, oh yeah. You and your tt, you and your tee Tee. That’s right. You remember it? I do. I absolutely do. I love Audis [00:21:00] and I thoroughly enjoyed them. The SL 400 that you and I had the privilege of sharing was my second one. And I had also driven a four 50 and a five. They’re just really, like you said, they’re really heavy cars, but the 400 was just exactly right for me.

Nice. So we’ll have to, uh, I’m, I’m holding off on my sexiest car answer though. Oh, that’s good. We’ll hold it, we’ll hold it for later. That’s okay. And you’re a good company cuz Tanya’s a big Mercedes fan too. She’s the usually at the top of her list. Oh, I’m,

and uh, SL 400 is a beautiful car. Oh, is, it’s, so is I. Um, yeah. I know we had, we had a really nice time together. Great. So let’s start going back. Moon Mark, we talked about in the intro, you know, high school kids and designing some sort of vehicle that was gonna race on the [00:22:00] moon. And, and people are probably wondering, what the heck, what is this episode about?

And, and really stepping back, it’s, it’s very, for people that are familiar with STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, the sounds, and you will correct me, but it’s highly STEM focused, it’s outreach to high school students. I’m a engineer by degree as well. So in, in university I was involved in a couple different outreach programs with one of my professors and we didn’t do things nearly as epic as moon mark.

I mean, we were, you know, You always did the classic drop an egg and, you know, don’t let it break. Or, you know, we did filtration experiments and probably the most sophisticated one we did was, uh, you know, having the kids when we had high schoolers come in and basically do a hemodialysis machine and, and we had stimulated blood and they were filtering out, you know, stuff, but whatever, we, I don’t even remember what we put in it.

That’s, that’s so, that’s so pedestrian. You know, Mary’s full [00:23:00] send, she can’t just do that kind of stuff. No. I mean, we’re sending vehicles to the moon and racing them. Doesn’t get better than this. Tell us how the heck did this come about? I welcomed that question because Eric, I think you may appreciate this and it’s related to Watson’s Glen.

So, while I was still living in Philadelphia, I went to a robotics competition on a Saturday afternoon. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I went to see things people say all the time. I went to see these high school students compete in a robotics competition. You know, I had some wonderful people that, that welcomed me there.

And they introduced me to, um, some young people and one of the, the students said, Mary, Would you like to see our pit? And I went, oh, I’m done.[00:24:00]

Oh heck yes, let’s go. All of the teams had their robots in pits and they were working on them to compete much as we see, you know, in motor sports. So I came out of there and I said, I really wanna work with young people. And then somebody along the line told me that somebody was going to the moon. And, and I went, moon, I thought we were done with the moon.

I thought we were going to Mars. Right? But if, if somebody’s going to the moon, we’re going to get kids work on that lander and it’s gonna land on the moon and it’s gonna be a way for that generation. To have a defining moment that means something to them. And so there’s, you know, a bunch of backstory behind that.

It took me about almost two years talking and talking [00:25:00] and talking about it with different people and stakeholders and opportunities and things like that. And I just was not at all making any headway. And I, I was, you know, it was kind of like perplexing because I said, why don’t people get that space?

Commercialization is here now and this generation needs to have skilled workforce to, to do it and stuff like that. And I just said, hush up Mary. You need to listen to what people are telling you. And what they were telling me was that they could not. Contemplate high school kids being on the moon or having their work on the moon.

The repeated message that I kept getting was, Mary, you silly foe. You need to understand that it is gonna take hundreds of millions of dollars and decades to do what you’re saying. And I knew [00:26:00] differently because. I’m an entre entrepreneur. And I, I looked at the market. I knew what we could do for what we could do it, but the messaging was not right.

I could not get the support behind it. I just like the fact that in Mary’s style and flair and what I like to call bravado, she has basically told all the naysayers, okay, boomer, we’re going to the moon. Right? And I love it and I applaud you for it. And so this is what I mean, Eric, by reckoning back to another time when I was at Watkins Glen and I’m there in the paddock and I’m just looking around.

Uh, you know, it dawned on me that so much of my really, really rich experience. In motor sports, not meaning, you know, just going out and having fun and racing around and stuff like that. The meaning of it, the physics behind it, the engineering behind it, the problem solving the technology. [00:27:00] I, and I love, love, love that you do.

Build, break, fix, repeat. That’s what you do. Mm-hmm. And that’s what we’ve done with Moon Mark. And I’m looking around and I’m saying, okay, there’s so much analogous work here between aerospace and rockets and things like that, which I know nothing about. And these really cool people that are on the racetrack, right?

Yeah. Uh, and I said, alright, we’re gonna race on the moon. That’s how we got to be a race on the moon. Because anything that you do in either one of these industries, Is not only useful to young people who want to find their paths, whether it’s in space. In on the track, uh, in medicine, whatever it is. But if you give ’em something that’s compelling and you wrap around an experience, then you can really make a difference.

And that’s how Moon [00:28:00] Mark, I mean, that’s really very incredible. I can’t even imagine thinking back in high school and, and, and this being a project to work on. I mean, it’s just literally out of this world to think about. Absolutely. And you know, I’m gonna nerd out here for a minute because Mary, I think you touched on something really important, which is.

What we oftentimes reference on this show as car adjacent, right? A lot of things that we talk about aren’t necessarily completely tied to vehicles or even motorsport in that way, but it’s interesting how if you play the Kevin Bacon game, how they’re all really related. And what you touched on and alluded to was the intersection between motorsport and aerospace.

And a lot of people don’t realize that there is a blending there, especially when you look at Formula One level technology. There’s a lot of aerospace influence in that, and. Little known fact when I was a lot younger. And you know, earlier in my career I worked for British Aerospace and one of my goals was to go work on the McLaren team, and I also signed up to do engine management on helicopters.

That’s a whole nother story. We [00:29:00] can talk about that another day. But you know, let’s say I’m not doing that today, unfortunately. SOB story there. But what, what I’m getting at is, if you look at the history of cars and airplanes and what is now aerospace, they’re very tightly coupled, right? The Wright Brothers first flight was in 1903.

The first car was invented in 1897. Thank you, Mercedes. But if you look at. Famous car manufacturers and builders. They got their influence from airplanes and from aeronautics and from aerospace. Let’s take Porsche as an example. They were building airplane engines before they were building cars. Lotus, right?

Colin Chapman also developed his first Lotus based on airplane technology that he learned in the R A F, you know, stuff like that. So there’s multiple manufacturers that started that way. So there’s an interesting blend. You don’t mention SOB in this Born from Jets. Yes, I know. Uh, I’m glad somebody remembered sob and for the one listener that has one [00:30:00] out there, uh, I congratulate you on still having it moving on.

Uh, but no, I, I, it’s interesting, right? And one feeds the other in some ways. And so maybe your mission is to go to Mars, but you gotta start somewhere. And I heard many of people that, you know, when I was coming up, you know, in a different era, I was like, I went to work as an intern for Ford Aerospace. And then you scratch your head for a second and say, wait, what?

Ford Aerospace, how does that work? Right? So there’s a lot of interesting things out there, so you gotta open your mind to it. So I’m, I’m really behind this. I think this is a super cool idea. The other thing I looked at is there’s some pretty big names backing this. If you look at the Moon Mark website, especially folks from the racing community, names that our audience might be familiar with.

Folks like Scott Elkins, who is, you know, famous from F I a, but also the Motorsport Safety Foundation. You have Ross Bentley on that list, you have a bunch of other folks from the Motorsport world. So I thought that was kind of cool. So how did you tie all these people together? How did you convince them that, you know, this is viable?[00:31:00]

There’s a, a, you know, a pretty cool story. I don’t know why everything leads back to Watkins Glen. All roads lead to the Glen All Roads lead to Watkins Glen. So when I was, uh, at Watkins Glen for one of the events, I met Ross Bentley and we had a really great conversation and it’s, you know, a paddock kind of conversation and I learned a lot from him and we parted ways.

So when I moved, To, uh, Northern Nevada, the thing that I immediately went looking for is, where’s the nearest track and what am I gonna do? Right? So the S C C A was having an event at Thunder Hill, and so I said, well, I’m gonna stop out there and see them. So I drive over there, and Mary, you said you went from your new place to Thunder Hill, so for you, that’s a hop, skip, and a jump.

But for anybody else who looks it up on Google [00:32:00] Maps, that’s a 219 mile drive. So it’s not like it was in your backyard, but that’s, uh, knowing the stories you’ve already told, it didn’t take you very long. But so, and I go in and I’ve not been to the track before. When I go in, I immediately see all of these cars parked in front of the building and I said, well, this must be where we are.

So I went in there and lo and behold, the, the place was filled. And Ross was talking, he was having a session, and I’m like, I didn’t know Ross was here this weekend. And I said, well, I’m gonna sit down and learn something. So David Gray, God bless him, who owns, uh, looked on driving and it was their event. I, I wandered into the wrong event.

That’s the, that’s a, that’s a great story. So I wandered into the wrong event and I, uh, learned a lot in the session. Uh, and then I approached [00:33:00] Ross afterwards, and David, you know, welcome. Hey, I, I, I told him, I said, I know this is gonna sound, I know this is gonna sound a little bit out there, okay, but we’re gonna race on the moon, and I would love to have you work with us on that.

And Ross’s first reaction was, You had me at Moon, but you know, that’s the kind of person he is and he’s just a really, really super supporter for us as well as obviously, you know, has deep technical expertise. So he introduced me to saw Elkins. And so Scott is actually gonna design the track on the moon.

Wow. Mm-hmm. It’s pretty cool. Now, the person that you didn’t mention, who I’m surprised about, is Frank Steffenson. He’s designing Clarence Barari [00:34:00] minis. He just is a freaking amazing, not only human being, but an amalgam of art and science in auto sports. And also cause, you know, he, he now has a, a really great portfolio in automated aviation.

This is a great way to segue over to Maryanne when you’re talking about Frank Steffenson and the design of the cars and things like that. So, let’s talk a little bit about the parameters of this particular event and the logistics and what the students are gonna do and what they’re designing towards and, and things like that.

So, can you unpack that for us and kind of give us an idea of what the competition is like? Yeah, absolutely. Before we talk about the competition itself, which is gonna be coming in 22, what we did was we created a challenge for students to kind of get a feel of what they were capable of essentially. And also, you know, wanted to see if what we were designing was of interest to them too.

And you know, we had a lot of people, like Mary said [00:35:00] earlier, every time we told somebody that what we were doing, they’re like, no way, that’s not gonna happen. Or they would say, wow, I wish I could, I had that opportunity when I was in high school. So it was a good way for us to kind of like test the waters.

So we came up with a lunar race car design challenge, and Mary and I really just sat down together and hammered out everything and it became, Just a really awesome initiative that we did. So we put it out there. We had 35 teams, essentially from 11 different countries, which we then whittled down to six teams who went forward with the competition.

So we like to say, you know, when we’re talking about building race cars for the moon, we do this with parental guidance essentially, because we really wanna make sure that these cars work. Um, but we also wanna give these kids, you know, freedom to create and, and do what they’re best at. And so we gave them specification, we gave them guidelines as to how to create it, what they were gonna need, and, and what it was gonna be able to withstand, you know, on the moon and the different environments and things like that.

When we [00:36:00] created it, I kept thinking to myself when I was talking to Mary about it, we used the term steam instead of stem, which includes the A with her arts, you know, and I’m, I’m an A, didn’t get super into science or because I didn’t have initiatives like this when I was in school. So when I was talking to her, I was like, I don’t know how these kids are gonna do it.

And I was a little doubtful myself. I was like, there’s no way these kids are gonna be able, these high school students are gonna be able to cars that could actually run on the moon. And I was looking at the specification and Mary was like, Maryanne, you had to give ’em a chance. You’d be surprised with these people.

Like, you know what these kids can do. So I was like, all right. So we put it out there and the results were incredible. We had the six teams that competed, so over the course of four weeks, they would submit videos that were answering key questions throughout the challenge of how their design was going.

And so we weren’t asking them to actually build it, it was just to design, you know, what it would look like and you know, all the specifications between like what parts and things like that. So we ended up with four winning teams, and we had different categories that each team won in. And those [00:37:00] four winners actually got a thousand dollars to donate to their charity.

So that was like a really cool initiative that they kind of like inspired them to do it. Like, Hey, if we do this, we can, we can help our community. So I saw that as, You know, a really cool way for them to, to motivate them through the challenge. But by the end of it, we came out with two lunar viable racers, essentially, that were cleared by our, uh, engineering teams and our aerospace engineers that were from opposite that, you know, we had one team from Argentina, one team from China.

So watching the kids go through this process and, and seeing exactly what they’re capable and the fact that they actually did design two, you know, very feasible options for us, really helped us kind of realize that we were on the right track. Like, this is definitely possible. These kids definitely have the motivation, they have the skills.

So it was really just figuring out how we wanna frame it. So that was a really great test pilot to know what we’re gonna be doing in, in 2022. I do have a question in terms of the, the kids that are participating in this. So the race is supposed to [00:38:00] happen in, so next year, 2022, sort of T V D. So are, are these kids, are any of these kids gonna be graduated from high school and, and if so, will they still.

Be able to continue, obviously, in the program. Absolutely. That’s, that’s pretty exciting. I do wanna caveat that as we’ve gone along here, COVID has really kicked us in the shins. Like everybody. So the fact of what we’re doing with Moon Mark is global. It’s not us kids. It’s galactic. Nobody owns the moon.

Everybody, every human from birth has had an experience with the moon. Our goal is, we say in the prime directive, right, Maryanne, the prime directive is to reach and engage as many people on earth and in space as possible. Covid has prevented us, for example, this summer, we’re fortunately coming through what we hope will be the worst of [00:39:00] it, but we can’t bring in a lot of kids from around the world.

Right? It’s just not feasible. So, um, we’re doing a lot of other things that will give rich experiences beyond that. While we can, let’s start with the basics. How big are these things? The design that we put out there for the kids, I think they were about 11 paths was the requirement for us. So they were pre, they’re pretty small.

So like an RC car, basically a remote control car. Yes. Thereabouts. Okay. So to put that part in context, the market cost to launch on a rocket. And then on a lander, and then land on the moon is 1.2 million, a kilo per kilo. Wow. Okay. Yep. Per kilo. So, so 2.2 and change kilos per pound. Right.

So it’s like, uh, after, after a while, it’s like, uh, [00:40:00] what, you know, it’s all monopoly money. It’s okay. Um, you know, it’s not monopoly money, but what it is is a change. It’s a pivot in space commercialization. Right? And this is something that we’ve been able to see over the last couple of years. It’s the same thing with racing and spac.

So with racing, it’s very expensive, right? It’s always been very expensive. You’ve got the name, you got the money, you’ve gotta ride. You don’t got those, you don’t gotta ride. And that’s one of the things that really has impacted me over the past few years, that along with being in the pits and looking at the stands and seeing lots of empty seats, right.

That’s really, really bothered me because that means that the sport is not doing, and this is before covid, the sport is not drawing people as it should. And so we need to get more young [00:41:00] people into the sport. That doesn’t change the reality of you gotta name, you got money, you gotta Rio. So Exactly. I think that there’s also a potential for pivoting for the sport as well as looking at how, for example, SpaceX has, because of commercialization, brought down the cost.

Of getting anything into space. So I kept hearing again and again and again, Mary, you can’t do this because it’s gonna be hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s gonna take decades. And I’m looking at the people that are saying this to me and their frame of reference and their filter is, is nasa, right?

Right. This is what, you know, 50 years ago and, and 50 years, hence, this is what it’s taken to get into space, but not now. And that’s what, uh, I’m looking at [00:42:00] is the juxtaposition. For motor sports is, maybe this time is not now for kids who want to come and young people that wanna come into the sport and how can we find opportunities for them to do that, right?

If that’s what they wanna do and not be confined by the constraints that we know have existed for a long time. I mean, I’d be remiss not to, uh, you listen to our drive-through series. I’d be remiss somehow not to bring up Tesla or Tesla. Jason, you mentioned SpaceX, right? So I mean, that’s an Elon Musk company.

Whatever you feel towards Elon or, or Tesla or SpaceX, I mean, it takes him and those kind of companies or someone like him to be a disruptor to the status quo because until. It becomes, and mainstream’s a strong word, but until more and more people are trying to do these things, like go into space, the costs [00:43:00] can’t come down.

You know, something as simple as solar panels, the first time someone came up with a solar panel to power homes, they were astronomically priced and everyone said, this will never be mainstream because the cost is prohibitive. And now we’ve already seen over the last decade, the price has really come down.

And it’s only gonna further come down as, as more manufacturers come online, as technology improves. This is pretty incredible experience for these young kids around the world to take part in this and, and get to, you know, who knows what comes out of this. Maybe some new, something is invented that cuts costs or, or does something better that, you know, Casa.

Or even SpaceX or you know, Virgin Galactic are able to use in the future and is technology that becomes something that the world is using and these kids can, you know, say one day hopefully that they were a part of it. I mean, it’s really incredible. But I do wanna circle back because you know, my imagination is still pretty good.

So I’m trying to figure out how this [00:44:00] is all really gonna work. So I’m putting the money aside, like suspension of disbelief, right? Which you have to do with a lot of science fiction. I envision Face X Rocket. They’re like, yeah, we’re not going to the moon, we’re going to Mars, but we’re gonna drop off your package like the u p S guy, kicking it down the hallway in an apartment building, and your RC car is then gonna land on the moon via parachute, and then the race starts.

So am I totally off base here, Marianne, how is this gonna work? As SpaceX does take us to space, we still have to have vessel that will land us on the moon. So there are multiple companies that are doing lunar landers, so putting our racers on a lunar lander that will land us on the moon, that will then, you know, by robotic arm, drop us on the surface.

And within those landers, and obviously on our cars too, there’s gonna be footage from a lot of different angles. You know, all the different machinery has cameras on them. So not exactly dropping it off, but kind of with the robotic arm and kind of like, you know, setting it down. So pretty much. And then, uh, once they’re on the ground, they [00:45:00] will take off and they’ll, they’ll start racing.

So there’s gonna be a little like time to get, you know, everything acc acclimated once they’re on the ground. I think there’s a few people who wanna race ’em. So looking at your, your site a little bit, I mean, it seems like that part is still under development, like logistically the actual race piece.

Cause that’s what my question is, is like, Which robot is going out and putting cones down or something, marking the track. All right, so that dovetails, that dovetails into my question, which was, which motorsport discipline does this most closely relate to? Are we talking about off-roading? Are we talking about drag racing, auto crossing rally?

Is it gonna be a circuit track? What? What kind of race is this? Oh hell yes. I knew she was gonna wanna say that. It’s gotta compete in five different segments. First in the drag race, followed by the Offroad Preload test. It’s gonna end up an episode of Road but Rock at the end and bring back to Pit. [00:46:00] I really appreciate your question, Tanya, and as an engineer, you know, you wanna know how this can happen.

Thank Heaven, Mary’s not figuring that out. Okay. That would be really scary. But we’re surrounded by an incredible group of people both on the race side and the space side that are philosophically aligned with us. Meaning we are all intending for this to be a generation defining moment for young people.

And so we need to give them as much opportunity and flexibility as possible, but also as Maryanne was saying, to have adult supervision so that when what we have up there. Actually races actually goes, I need adult supervision at the track too, so, oh, it’s, that’s, that’s so true, Eric. It’s so true. And it’s one of the [00:47:00] things that I saw as one of the, like you say, adjacent things between auto, sports and aerospace.

When we get there, the lunar day is 14 days long, then it’s done. That means that our electronics are gonna fry and stuff like that. So we’re gonna get there and then we’ll have a couple of days of the lander, you know, adjusting and making sure that all of the, the payloads are doing what they’re supposed to do.

And then we drop down, uh, on the surface as we get closer to the launch date, you know, where we’re planning to land is at the South Pole of the moon. And so the landing site will come into Sharper Relief and we have people on our team that are gonna enable us to examine. We’re gonna be able to understand [00:48:00] like within a hundred meters of where the land landers gonna land, we’ll be able to figure out, and we’ll do this well ahead of time, how to geo map that whole area and figure out different tracks.

And so, yeah, we’ll do a drag race. Yeah, we’ll do an off-road race. Uh, we’ll do a bunch of stuff at the end of that. It’s really important to know the racers that we put up there are not just gonna sit there and space jump. They are going to have a scientific purpose. Right now our plan is for 30 years. Oh wow.

After we are finished racing, we’ve got those things in play. You know, we could probably spend a lot of time really nerding out on the requirements of the vehicles and getting into specifics, but every little facet of the car of this lunar racer is going to be intricate down from the suspension to the [00:49:00] tires, to the propulsion system and, and all these different kinds of things.

There’s tons to read about on the website, but I think the one thing, the killer thing is gonna be, despite all that, and, and to get you the most followers and the most likes, is you’re gonna have to do some sick lunar burnouts with whatever these racers are. So you gotta add that to the list of requirements.

Must be able to achieve a burnout on the moon. Awesome. Burnout on the moon might cause some, you know, disruption to our cameras just because regular lingers, you know, the, the material on the moon once it, how awesome would it look though? Come on now. It would be pretty cool. Moon dust for a lay people is gonna cover the camera lens.

That’s right, that’s right. Going back to your question or your comment, Tanya, about what, what about technology in this? So what we are finding is as we are creating and making this happen, we are accelerating technology. You know, we’re thinking, [00:50:00] oh, we’ll just go up there and build the race. Yeah, no, that’s not, that’s not happened.

We have to figure out a lot of way. If, if you wanna get an Apollo kind of video from the moon, that can happen. But what we need is something much more than that. What we are challenging our partners to do is really to come up with solutions that accelerate technology in ways that will also enable future moon exploration.

For Mars exploration or whatever. So it’s, it’s a pretty interesting process. I mean, logistically, there’s just so much to, to do, let, let alone just, oh, the design of the track, but just. Everything. I mean, my head is just reeling through. How are you doing all the camera recording and making sure you have all the right angles.

How are you controlling these things? Or is somebody sitting here on earth [00:51:00] like they’re playing a video game, watching it through a screen? Is it somehow you guys map out the track and then you pre-record instructions into these? You know, vehicles and, and they go for it at 1.1 million a kilo, 1.2, 1.2, excuse me.

That start that, that 0.1 adds up after while. So it’s kinda, it’s kinda like an inspiration from the motor sports community for me has been, we figure out how to do this. It’s not that we don’t think about the money, we think about how to make it happen. No, no. Yeah. And in my comment there was more at, at 1.2 million a kilo.

You, you definitely want adult supervision on this. And, and the adults here are the, you know, astrophysicists that you have on the team and the. Lunar geologists and, and other, you know, scientists and extremely intelligent people. Cause you don’t want the payload drops off the vehicles and then suddenly they’re lawn dead arrival.

If the [00:52:00] moon has long, you know, their, their lawn ornaments there for the next 30 years. We want them to be lawn ornaments after they’ve competed. So, you know, what is great about this project? How it relates to what I believe and really appreciate about motor sports. There are a lot of what I call gulp.

Moments. You know, you do your best to manage the risk around those moments. That’s all you can do. Then I’ve been asked again and again, what if it crashes Mary? It’s like, okay, what’s it gonna, what’s it gonna hit? That’s what I wanna know. Did you put up a tire barrier that we didn’t know about? Hey, the last two landers, one from Israel and one from India, they both crashed.

Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. The surface of moon. Yeah. Uhhuh. So it’s, it’s not a matter of, you know, are you, you know, you’re trying to get around the food at the Glen. It really is. There’s a lot of golf moments. The [00:53:00] point of what we’re trying to do, and we are doing is that we want to bring young people into the sport, and we wanna bring young people into thinking big, figuring out and knowing that they can achieve their dreams.

That’s what this is about, and bringing them into steam. I like that. I like the addition of the, a very often engineers stereotypically are not known for being very creative people. But at the same time, I’ve met a lot of engineers that have that creative side to them. And, and you often unfortunately, get it beat out of you depending on the industries you work in, which is unfortunate because the creativity is very important for innovation and advancement.

So, I mean, I think this is, again, I’ve said it like 18 times, I think this is great. It’s very exciting. You wanna know some big news? I’m only telling you guys all ears. Sorry. All, we’re all ears. I mean, I don’t know what’s bigger than the moon at this point, but Go, go, go ahead. Shock me please. [00:54:00] Mary’s going too.

She, she’s dropping the green. She’s the only corner worker on the moon. I’ll, I’ll go to sleep. While we are, we’re going through the march to launch, we are doing lots of things with young people to bring them into both Moon Mark and Motorsports. So one of the things that we’ve just recently developed, and I’m extremely excited about, Is a partnership with N H R A, national Hot Rod Association, the drag racers.

We’re gonna shoot these things straight off top fuel lunar landers. It’s gonna be amazing. Four second quarter mile on the moon. I’m not a drag race, but I, I really like this, uh, organization, which is the largest [00:55:00] sanctioning body racing body in the country, and we’re incredibly blessed to be partnering with them.

In addition to that, we are partnering with. Los Angeles County program called Delete the Divide. And, okay, delete the Divide is a way to reach young people who do not have internet access. They don’t have computers or laptops or phones or any of that. And there are currently about 500,000 of them. And so we’re doing two events with both of the groups, and one of them is on July 30th, uh, at Oma, and the other one is their national Championship on November 12th.

What we are gonna do with Delete the Divide and Moon Mark is there to bring space and race together and give kids the experience [00:56:00] of understanding the interdisciplinary offering of both of these industries and both of these beautiful, beautiful ecosystems. So we’re really excited about that. And, and to touch on what you said Tanya, about, you know, adding the a and and engineers, you know, some kids may not have it in them to be engineers, and I think it’s really important what we’ve discussed with our partnership with the N H R A and and delete the divide is that these different industries have people that all have teams around them, of other people.

And they may not all be scientists, they may not all be engineers, but each person plays a very key role. You know, it’s not one person that sends a rocket to space. It’s not one person that drives a car. You know, they have these entire teams around them that each play their role. And so inspiring kids to understand that they could fit into any aspect of these things if they really want to.

Uh, is something that, you know, we’ve talked about over and over again. And, and it’s, it’s something that we hold close to us. And it goes back to what we talked about earlier, not just the intersection between [00:57:00] aerospace and automobiles. It’s all the different branches of science that are involved just in building a vehicle.

People look at a vehicle and they go, oh, it’s a bucket of nuts and bolts and some sheet metal, but it’s. Chemistry. It’s physics, it’s store biodynamics, it’s electronics, it’s mathematics, it’s aerodynamics, it’s all sorts of things. There’s, it’s not just a toaster. You know, I, I hate it when people think cars are just appliances because they’re not, they’re beautiful pieces of engineering.

Sometimes, you know, handcrafted, you know, they came out of someone’s dream or maybe they were designed by a computer, like the most recent McLarens that we’ve seen, the optimal design or whatever it might be. But there’s a lot of thought, a lot of patience and a lot of, to Mary’s point, trial and error that goes into that.

But a ton of science and a ton of dedication. No car, no vehicle. Whether it be these lunar landers or these lunar racers rather, or, or the cars that you drive on the street, you know, even that base model rental car, there’s teams of people involved. It’s not designed in a vacuum and it’s just incredible what goes [00:58:00] into what we take for granted every day.

What I also see from this is kind of, you know, fantasizing a little bit again about what the future looks like. I mean, we’ve been spoonfed science fiction since the sixties, right? Since Mary mentioned Star Trek and you had Star Wars and the ideas of what the future would look like. And even in, in some video games where it’s like they can take liberties with what science is gonna be like as an example.

And this is gonna be really current mass effect, super popular title. Probably one of the best stories of all time in the video game world has a whole section in it about landing on planet, but what the rover is like six by six, you know, all these different kinds of things and what the physics are like to drive that thing on a, on an alien planet.

Kind of interesting. It, it all come together and if you think about it, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, when somebody said, Hey, do you think we’re gonna have a watch that we can talk to, like on Dick Tracy? People are like, what are you talking about? That’s, that’s nonsense. I mean now even the pads on Star Trek, they called ’em, right?

[00:59:00] Which were the little tablets that they would go around. We already have that. Those are iPads, right? All that technology, it’s just foreshadowing. And I think to Tanya’s point to everything that we’ve been talking about, this is the beginning of something big. And I like the fact that you guys are doing this with vehicles because I think even though it’s miniature, because of the cost, it’s eventually going to scale up.

And that’s where I was going with my example about, you know, like mass effect and some of these other things, because maybe one day it’ll be shuttle craft, just like in Star Trek, right? You never know. And I think too, it’s gonna grow with the kids, right? We get ’em in while they’re young and they have this small remote control car.

Who knows? We’re building a future workforce with those kids. So those ideas are just gonna get bigger. Those cars are gonna get bigger. I see. Are gonna be farther away. Yeah. Not to get on the soapbox. I mean, our society, our country as a whole, we need to push them or steam at younger and younger ages and particularly, you know, historically women, were the minority kind of in that grouping.

And we need to push even, you know, more women to that field and to realize [01:00:00] that you too can be an engineer and Yeah. Something. It’s really critical if we, if we start ’em young and they, and they’re learning those skills or how to think differently and especially when they start out young, they’re not jaded.

Yeah. And, and the creativity and the imagination is so much different when you’re young versus when you’ve gone through college or whatever and you’re working a job. Uh, life can tamp that out of you a bit. So harnessing that energy and that force. Early is, is critical to all this innovation advancement, so it’s great.

Well, we’ve had a lot of spirited discussion about whether to focus our attention on high school kids. Or college kids. I was wondering about that. It was, uh, a very meaningful, not only discussion, but decision process. And like you are saying, Tanya, we concluded that the, the creativity spark. An ability to [01:01:00] reach the demographic that we wanted in order for them to be inspired, motivated, and achieved at that moment in their life is really in the high school versus college age.

By the time you get to college, there’s a lot of other things going on, and high school was challenging enough, but we’ve proven out with our lunar race car design challenge. Clearly, if teams of high school kids can design lunar worthy racers within four weeks and they estimated the cost would be 30,000 bucks, that’s kinda indicative.

And, and Maryanne as and I as as bright as we are. We’re not the ones that determined that, okay, our space partners determined that, that, that they were viable. So if you have that kind of backing of information and [01:02:00] data and experience, that starts to really inform what you do going forward with this opportunity.

Being for high school, you see a lot of kids when they’re going into college, right? Kind of like a demoralization if they don’t get into the college that they want or if they can’t excel in the, you know, in the subject that they are passionate about. And so what this opportunity does, you know, getting them to the moon, giving it to high school students, it kind of propels them through that.

And it’s like, all right, well I mean, maybe I didn’t get this, you know, specific college scholarship, but I already sent something to the moon, so like, I’m not gonna let this hold me back from like pursuing something beyond that. Plus you probably would’ve lost a bunch of people in the sense that once you get into college at a certain point, Everyone is compartmentalized in their major or whatnot, right?

So you’ve got all the engineers over here and astrophysicists and this, that, and the other, and suddenly all the people that are gonna register for this program are gonna be, you know, PhD graduate students that are gonna spend two years [01:03:00] and it’s gonna cost not 30,000, 300,000. I’m sure it’s probably gonna work, but it would’ve been way more than it needed.

And when the kids are still in high school, They’re not thinking about all that. No, no one is, oh, you’re the engineer, you’re the physicist, you’re the, everyone is just kind of team the same. And so you probably had more people willing to put themselves out there. And that’s what we also found with the Lunar Race Car Design challenge.

You know, we didn’t tell them who needed to be on their team. You know, we gave them this investigations, we said, this is what you need. It’d be good to have. And they were the ones that came in. They were like, okay, you’re good at science. You can help us. You’re good at math, you can help us like you’re good at art.

You can make videos, you can make designs, you can help us. Like, that was their doing and it really worked amazing. You know, they had teams that really came together and created something incredible. I do wanna mention our uh, lunar race provider partner, which is Lunar Outpost. And they have done an amazing job of putting together [01:04:00] our prototypes.

And we are all working with Frank Steffenson on the design side for the bodies. And so by the time we get to the moon, number one, we’re gonna know that the young people are gonna be able to race these things. And number two, they’re gonna look pretty freaking awesome. They’re gonna look like Reese cards.

That’s awesome. He has some stickers on ’em, some stickers that don’t melt or freeze them on the moon. I’m gonna, I’m gonna leave the audience with some food for thought. So on the moon, is there a design that cheats the wind? And I’ll let, I’ll let Stefansson answer that question on his own time, right? So I gotta think about that for a minute.

Thank you listeners for staying tuned in with us. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you wanna learn more about Mary, you can always find her on LinkedIn. But if you’re interested in racing on the moon with Mary, be sure to check out [01:05:00] www.moonmark.space. Or follow their progress via instagram@moonmark.space, and be sure to reach out to Marianne for her updates and additional details on the program.

So thank you both again. Absolutely. This has been pretty epic. I, I don’t think we’ve had any discussion like this of any kind before. I think this is gonna be a pretty eye-opening experience for a lot of people. And I, and I love the crossover here between the education side of this, the Motorsport side, the competitive side, aerospace engineering, all the things we talked about.

I cannot applaud you guys enough for the initiative that you’ve taken on. This is above and beyond to infinity and beyond, I suppose to, I salute you both and I wish you all the best of luck and I cannot thank you guys enough, Mary and Maryanne for coming on break Fix and talking with us and telling your story.

Tanya and Eric, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time this evening, Maryanne. Thank you as always. No, appreciate your time. Both of yours. Let’s, uh, it was fun. Let’s go get on track. Yeah, [01:06:00] absolutely. Wakin Glen, October. I’ll see you there. Okay.

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