#184: John Vickers (Blue Abyss) — Building the World’s Foremost Extreme Environment R&D Facilities for Space and Deep Sea Exploration

John Vickers, Founder & CEO of Blue Abyss.

John is building one of the most ambitious and inspiring projects I’ve encountered while exploring what people are building in Cleveland!

After spending eight years in the British Army, John completed his service at the rank of Corporal in 1991 and transitioned to a civilian career where he worked in management consulting, and leadership roles across IBM and GE Capital.

In 2014, grounded in his desire to prepare for an imagined future of proliferated human spaceflight and extreme environment exploration, he founded Blue Abyss to deliver the World’s foremost extreme environment research, development, testing and training facilities — unlocking our ability to ask and seek to answer some of the most important questions in the exploration of space, aerospace, medical, marine, and other robotic technologies.

Adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, and close to NASA Glenn’s headquarters, Blue Abyss is developing the world’s largest and deepest R&D Pool, measuring 40 meters by 50 meters on the surface with a 16m wide shaft plunging to a depth of 50 meters with a volume capacity of 42,000 cubic meters of water.

The Facility will also house ancillary extreme environment capabilities for

• Human Centrifuges to enable training and physiology research at high Gs.
• Hypobaric and Hyperbaric Chambers to enable training and research in pressurized environments.
• and Parabolic Flight to enable microgravity research, training, and public discovery.

Furthermore, besides servicing the gamut of industries from offshore energy to the growing human spaceflight sector, John is deeply committed to educating and inspiring young people to explore and learn about the world around them.

This conversation feels right out of science fiction, but it’s on track to become science reality.

We discuss the balance of ambition and humility, the formative experience of his international upbringing, the influence of his military background and mentors like astronauts and his brother-in-law Sergeant Ian McKay, his appreciation of Cleveland, leadership, persistence, and ultimately the impact he hopes to have with Blue Abyss.

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LINKS:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnvickers1
https://blueabyss.uk/blog/post/blue-abyss-ohio-land-purchase-complete

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbgJ01B89So&ab_channel=BlueAbyss

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-AI - Generated-

John Vickers [00:00:00]:
It's about sometimes if you have an idea, and this is nothing maybe it's an ambitious idea. I don't necessarily think so. I'm just putting together different industries at a scale perhaps that maybe private individuals wouldn't normally cleverly start to do. But time has been the biggest thing that we've benefited from. So we've progressed, we've kept going, we've persevered and everything else has come our way. The need, ostensibly, the validation, the understanding, and more importantly, the collaboration, because we want to disappear. You would come to a Blue Abyss Center. You can see it.

John Vickers [00:00:37]:
The architecture is going to be inspirational. You would land at Cleveland Hopkins. And if you land the right way, you'd see the building and think, oh, I know what that is. And that's great. But at the same time, we want to disappear. It's not about blurrbits. It's about what we enable, what we do to drive collaboration, what we do to inspire young people and businesses, How we foster those ambitions for humanity into our oceans in this space.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:02]:
Let's discover what people are building in the Greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of Northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders, and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today, I had the real pleasure of speaking with John Vickers, the founder and CEO of Blue Abyss. John is building one of the most ambitious and inspiring projects I have come across in my time exploring what people are building in Cleveland. After spending 8 years in the British Army, John completed his service at the rank of corporal in 1991 and transitioned to a civilian career where he worked in management consulting and leadership roles across IBM and GE Capital. In 2004 and grounded in his desire to prepare for an imagined future of proliferated human space flight and extreme environment exploration, he founded Blue Abyss to deliver the world's foremost extreme environment research, development, testing, and training facilities, unlocking our ability to ask and seek to answer some of the most important questions in the exploration of space, medical, marine, and other robotic technologies. Adjacent to the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and close to NASA Glenn's headquarters here in Cleveland, Blue Abyss is developing the world's largest and deepest research and development pool.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:25]:
Measuring 40 meters by 50 meters on the surface, plunging to a depth of 50 meters with a volume capacity of 42,000 cubic meters of water. The facility will also house ancillary extreme environment capabilities for human centrifuges to enable training and physiology research at high g's, hypobaric and hyperbaric chambers to enable training and research in pressurized environments, as well as parabolic flight to enable microgravity research training and public discovery. Furthermore, in addition to servicing a gamut of industries from off shore energy to growing the human space flight sector overall, John is deeply committed to education and inspiring young people to explore and learn more about the world around them. This conversation feels right out of science fiction, but it is on track to become science reality. We discuss the balance of ambition and humility, the formative experiences of his international upbringing, the influence of his military background and mentors like astronauts and his brother-in-law, Sergeant Ian McKay, his appreciation of Cleveland, leadership, persistence, and ultimately the impact that he hopes to have with Blue Abyss. So please enjoy this fascinating conversation with John Vickers after a brief message from our sponsor. Lay of the Land is brought to you by John Carroll University's Boulder College of Business, widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the region. As we've heard time and time again from entrepreneurs here on Lay of the Land, many of whom are proud alumni of John Carroll University, success in this ever changing world of business requires a dynamic and innovative mindset, deep understanding of emerging technologies and systems, strong ethics, leadership prowess, acute business acumen, all qualities nurtured through the Bowler College of Business.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:10]:
With 4 different MBA programs of study spanning professional, online, hybrid, and 1 year flexible, the Buhler College of Business provides flexible timelines and various class structures for each MBA track, including online, in person, hybrid, and asynchronous. All to offer the most effective options for you, including the ability to participate in an elective international study tour providing unparalleled opportunities to expand your global business knowledge by networking with local companies overseas and experiencing a new culture. The career impact of a bowler MBA is formative and will help prepare you for this future of business and get more out of your career. To learn more about John Carroll University's bowler MBA programs, please go to business dotjcu.edu. The Bouller College of Business is fully accredited by AACSB International, the highest accreditation a college of business can have. So I wanted to start our conversation today with a similar acknowledgment that I had actually with my conversation with Doctor. Jimmy Kenyon from NASA a few episodes back, which is actually the catalyst for for our discussion here today. But I thought about how when NASA comes up in conversation and people's minds, you know, turn towards outer space and the greater cosmos around us and the complexities of how we build, you know, technologies, vehicles, infrastructure that allow us to explore that frontier, that Northeast Ohio and Cleveland is not the geography that comes to mind as a leader in innovation behind these technologies.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:51]:
But it is. And so when I heard about the work that you were doing, even in partnership with with NASA locally, I had a similar, you know, sentiment and feeling. And so if I were to pose the idea of the world's largest research and development pool, parabolic flight for zero gravity simulations, human centrifuges, and, you know, lots more amazing technologies that we'll talk about today. I'm just fairly sure most people wouldn't guess Cleveland is where you're building that, but but it is, which is amazing.

John Vickers [00:06:23]:
I was also surprised, Jeffrey, that I mean, historically historically. So I've been doing this for 10 years. And when I started to look at the US, and, of course, I was looking at the US initially from the beginning with an aspirational perspective. And that aspirational perspective focused on NASA, but it happened to be NASA Johnson. Right? Houston is the home of human space flight for NASA and has been since its inception. We have had, as Blue Abyss, trips over to the folks in Houston. We've I've been to the NBL. Fascinating place, obviously a rich history.

John Vickers [00:06:56]:
And I suspect that if it hadn't been for almost a coincidental and that's serendipity is a big part of people's lives. I think Steve Jobs said you can only join the dots of your life up by looking backwards. And you look back and you think, crikey, just that one discussion. And I was fairly negative. There's somebody said to me, I have somebody else that wants to talk to you about, but they want to talk about Ohio. And I thought, why would you why do you wanna talk about Ohio? Great. Send us to John Glenn, Neil Armstrong. I was aware that NASA had you know, I well, I was aware of NASA Glenn.

John Vickers [00:07:28]:
I wasn't aware of necessarily its its breadth of service and history, the first NASA center. Right? And I was also aware of Dayton, Ohio. And so those points and people resonated, but at the same time, I thought, really? Why? But a meeting with some people, John Sankovic and Kim Halisner from the Ohio Aerospace Institute in May of 2022, so still fairly recently. Yep. Then I met some other folks, Colonel Joe Zees, Glenn Richards from JobsOhio, and Joe Colonel Joe Zees from the governor's office in Farnborough in July of that year. And then very kindly, OAI put together a trip and invited us out to come and tour Cleveland and parts of Northeast and Central Ohio. And in those 11 days in September, I went from skeptic, if you like, to completely sold.

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:18]:
Yeah. That's fantastic. So from a place of deep curiosity about, you know, how you came to find yourself in this position to take on, in my mind, what seems like such an ambitious project, I'd kinda just to love to start there knowing, you know, we end up here in a place where this is the project you are undertaking. If you could take us through the, you know, evolution of how you've thought about what to devote your time to.

John Vickers [00:08:45]:
Jeffrey, that's always a sounds like I'm gonna get an excuse to just talk for a long time. But, I mean, in essence, I've always had that that you mentioned the the the thing, the the point of human curiosity. Right? Is that there's a quote that Michael Collins, I'm not gonna quote him exactly now, but he makes the point that the one thing that I think all humans retain, regardless of aspiration or reward in life, wherever they've been, gone, achieved. We remain at heart a curious species. We ask questions all the time. What's out there? What can I do next? How do I improve? You know, why is it like this? Now some of that is pragmatic. It's based on the fact that you're, you know, suffering something, you're struggling a little bit or whatever. But innately, there is this endeavor within this, I think, to learn, to stretch, to go, and to discover.

John Vickers [00:09:36]:
And so from a young age, I mean, I was born in West Africa. That's unusual, perhaps. Most people you would expect, you know, if you say you're British, then there's perhaps Kenya or South Africa. But I was born in Liberia in West Africa. My father and mother then, we moved to the Middle East to Saudi Arabia. We spent a few years there. Then I moved to Bahrain in the Middle East and grew up there before my father was killed. And so my mother and and I were, through circumstances, compelled to come back to, for for me, come to the UK, really, for the first time.

John Vickers [00:10:07]:
I've been on holiday and reassimilate into so from a look perspective, right, I may look and perhaps sound British English, but I've never been there. You know, the weather was awful for me. The food was different. But I mean, until in Africa, I learned to swim at a very young age. I grew up swimming in beaches in Saudi Arabia when tourism was a nothing. I would take myself off on weekends and mornings before school and after school, straight down to the we lived in what we call the compounds, there are about 18 houses. There was a pool for that compound. It had to be right next to the beach.

John Vickers [00:10:41]:
I'd be forever in and out of the water and often solitary. So that the the opportunity to go exploring and being an explorer was very visual for me. Right? A young kid, young boy, I was often to the Portuguese, 4 miles away. I'm sure my mother would come out and think, where the heck has he gone now? But as I got older, you start to conform to, you know, I've got to get a job. I'm supposed to do some normal things. And you I think we talk ourselves out of the aspirations and dreams we potentially had as youngsters. Something by the age of 5, we're told the word no, something like 7 times more than we're told the word yes. So it's an indoctrination.

John Vickers [00:11:20]:
Right? You feel you've got to follow this path. You've got to get a job. And very few people break out of that mold, I think, convincingly or easily at a relatively young age. Most people eventually say, I've had enough of this. I'm going to do something different. Right? I decided at the end of a series of jobs that I was working in the City of London and around for companies and effectively client management, sales related business. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking to people, but I didn't love the work.

John Vickers [00:11:49]:
And so I said to my wife one day, having lost out on an opportunity for a new role, I happened to be the chairman at the same time of an organization that was that helped service leavers learn to network. Mhmm. There's nothing to learn. Right? You just go out and meet people. But like me, if you join the military at 16, your world consisted of the military. You meet people, but I didn't understand the value of creating those long term relationships and that you almost have to give. Even if you think you've got nothing to give, you give and you make an effort. So I was teaching people that.

John Vickers [00:12:20]:
And then somebody said one of the phrases, sorry, that I used was, you know, it doesn't matter where you where you've been. It's where you think you're going, where you want to go that's most important. And do when you come out of the military that which you most want to do. Don't do what you think you're compelled to do. Don't follow that I've been, you know, I've been in the military. I therefore, I've got a service led career going for. There's nothing wrong with being a policeman or a fireman or EMT. But if you don't feel that I've done my service duration, I want to do something radical.

John Vickers [00:12:50]:
I want to be a photographer, a microlight pilot, an explorer, deep sea diver, whatever it is, chef, doesn't matter. That's the opportunity. But for me, after 9 years of service, there was a natural hiatus. And I said to people, do what you really want to do. So I sat down with my wife and said, look, I've lost out on this role. I'm sure there's a reason for it, but this is what I'd love to do. And she said, I think you just said you're gonna build a pool. And I said, yeah, a big one.

John Vickers [00:13:18]:
And it was that sort of now 10 years later, I'm sure she would happily, you know, probably have a different dialogue with me now about that journey. And it's grown, not just one pool, but a series of them to support marine and space aspirations for humans and robots. I think it's as valid today and more so than it was then. Then it was more perhaps visionary or aspirational. Now it's more pragmatic and real. But long may the journey continue because, as you said, talking to other people, often the journey is about where we're going and how we're going to get there. Right? Rockets and and Mars is a great example just to talk about space. Who's going? How are we gonna deal with it when we get there? Because if the minute you say, great, there's a spaceship going next year, you think, okay.

John Vickers [00:14:07]:
Right. How do I get on that? What would I need to do? Why would they choose me? Then you start to understand that there's a much, much, much bigger role that you have to go through and undertake and facilitate before you can become one of those people. And going into space, going into deep oceans is similar, but not perhaps as fraught in some respects because there isn't that distance involved. But as we've seen, you know, this year well, last year, deep horizons. You know, going into our oceans is fraught with difficulty. If you don't take the safety, if you don't take the risks seriously enough and pragmatically enough, there is a huge risk. But we've concentrated so much, I think, on the destinations and the vehicles. We've lost sight of who's going.

John Vickers [00:14:53]:
Because whilst we all might want to, not everybody can.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:57]:
So I I have to ask why, though. So right in in 2014, you had transitioned out of your military career and, you know, managerial consultant pursuits to pursue this true passion of yours and and, you know, preparing for this future that that you're imagining, which which is Blue Abyss. What was this vision that you had? Where did it come from? You know, what was kind of the formative moment when you realized this is what I need to do?

John Vickers [00:15:24]:
There's a formative moment. I think, Jeffrey, how do I go back in time to that point? I mean, you know, start things start to happen. So I had another offer for a role. So the first role fell through. The second role I had was actually to look after a huge toy brand globally. And I thought, wow, that I'd love that. But for whatever reason, I'd like to think serendipitously, it fell through. And so I said to myself, I'm going to pursue this.

John Vickers [00:15:49]:
Now I thought it would take 3 to 6 months, right, for whatever, whether it was to raise the initial amount of money, build, start, build, look back and think that was never going to take 3 to 6 months. When you look back, you get a whole load of hindsight. You realize I should have had that then. But I think I wrote a PowerPoint first and I sent it off to various to a variety of people because I'd had a conversation with another former army guy, a former officer who'd suggested that he and now he'll forgive me hopefully for saying it. He said, that's a stupid idea. Subsequently, I think he continues to feel bad about saying that once because I went out of his house and I thought, well, it's not bad. I'm going to carry on doing it just to prove you're wrong. And so I wrote a PowerPoint.

John Vickers [00:16:34]:
He helped identify some people I should send it to, and we just started from there. No contacts, no knowledge, really, apart from what I'd been able to glean on the Internet, reached out to people in the UK, in the US, abroad, met people and started putting to them face to face that dream and ambition. And it seemed to resonate with enough people that, if you like, the snowball started to grow a bit. In your own words, can you paint a picture for us of what Blue Abyss is? So I don't think it's it's really changed intrinsically that much from when I started, Jeffrey, in that we are intending to create not just one, but a series of these very extreme environment research test training development facilities that happen to be centered around very large multilevel pools. Why pools? Because there are lots of people tackling lots of issues and problems that humanities face, just development of, you know, new motor cars, battery technology, etcetera. But we live on effectively an ocean bound planet. We're wholly reliant on our oceans for weather systems, for oxygen, for a great deal of food, for transport, for health. Right? So our inability to have worked more harmoniously with that environment has bothered me.

John Vickers [00:17:55]:
I have a great lifelong interest in and affiliation to our oceans. I love diving. I love being in the ocean. Being near the beach, right, has soporific effect on people. But the same three-dimensional effect and and the environment, sorry, you get with being in water is akin to being in space. I know it's different. I've had that pointed out repeatedly despite knowing the difference. 1 is a medium of absence of gas and and and things to a greater or lesser extent.

John Vickers [00:18:23]:
They're so spread out, you don't know that they're right, a vacuum. And the other is a dense medium that you can't compress. I get the difference. But the ability to say, okay, I can use 1, an ocean or a pool, to simulate the other and do long duration simulated missions, space walks, trials in, as well as develop technology for our oceans, a pool is a natural answer. In the west, in addition, we have had big, large, aquatic, dry docks, pools, stuff for testing, but we just have not been keeping up in the West with building modern infrastructure to do modern testing, research, training in. So we're using increasingly old facilities to do increasingly modern things with. And not only that, but I think there's more linkage between oceans and stuff we do in our oceans and stuff in space than those 2 individual industries perhaps have recognized. And I think we can be a bridge between the 2.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:21]:
What in your mind does this kind of facility unlock? And I'm not even asking, like, what kind of knowledge do you think we will be able to acquire? But I'd love to understand what are even the kinds of questions that you're hoping this can help answer that we couldn't even really ask before because we don't have a lot of this kind of infrastructure available to us.

John Vickers [00:19:44]:
That's a really good interesting question, Jeffrey. So the Canadians supplied a small robot. Well, there's obviously the Canadarm, which is a robotic arm. But a robotic arm is perhaps akin to those diggers you get in kids' play ground areas. You know, you've got some dirt. You sit in a little seat and you can maneuver levers, and you look like you're the individual that can dig up the pile of dirt on one side of the playground and put it somewhere else. Yeah. That's relatively straightforward and simplistic.

John Vickers [00:20:10]:
When you watch Star Trek, you watch any space movie, there is always, you know I'm trying to think of some now. And then, of course, it just got out of my head. But Interstellar, for instance, right, that very boxy robot, they're all there around us, and we sort of take them in the films for granted. Or where do those robots get developed? Now I'm not suggesting that that being in a pool is gonna enable you to develop, you know, r two d two. Of course not. But if we are going to build a series of commercial space stations, of commercial hotels in space, refueling stations, lunar bases, then at some point, you will probably replace the people. So the the ISS works, the International Space Station works because the Russians and the US and other nations have contributed over the last 20 odd years, people to supplement the work that, you know, you can assemble stuff relatively straightforward in space, some things relatively straightforwardly. But without humans to maintain, to go out and check on things, to go and do basic maintenance and visual inspections of, it wouldn't have gone as well as it had.

John Vickers [00:21:18]:
You know, the solar panels on one doctor Scott Parazynski had to go out on a 9 hour spacewalk with Doug Wheelock to repair them. We haven't got the robot technology to have done that. So we want to send people into space to go and you would you'd love to go in a space hotel for a week, wouldn't you? Absolutely.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:36]:
Sign me up.

John Vickers [00:21:37]:
But who's gonna maintain the outside of that space hotel? What if something goes wrong with its power system and that power system is a solar panel that doesn't deploy properly or breaks or there is a leakage or there is an impact from a piece of of space junk? Who is going to do that maintenance repair? Even if that's just a visual inspection periodically, there have got to be robots. And I think that we can help develop the robots by pioneering what they will do in a no in a water environment. You can test the software because the test is not does the thing do what you expect? I'm sure it would do. But if you lose contact with it, what's it gonna do next? Because in space, an object moving towards you with no other interference will continue to move towards you, whether its engines are firing or not. Now if you don't want it moving towards you, what are you gonna do to stop it? Because if you no longer have control of it, you're not gonna stop it. Now your 3 pound robot, if it's become a 3 pound bomb with an awful lot of mass behind it, because it's probably moving in excess of 19,000 miles an hour. That hits you because it's coming at an angle and it was coming towards you, may have a whole different scenario. So those sorts of questions, I don't think are being if they're being contemplated, they're not being discussed publicly as such.

John Vickers [00:22:51]:
And I think we can help pioneer, enable, reconcile, validate, things like that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:59]:
When you think about how to realize this and actually build it in practice, you know, I'm kind of used to working through the the life cycle stages of a startup, you know, from the idea and inspiration to some form of, you know, validation and early market testing and then product development and, you know, then ultimately some kind of scaling. This from the outside, seems like it may follow a different trajectory or path. And I'm curious when I pose the question how, you know, take us through the the chapters of of what this actually looks like to to make it happen.

John Vickers [00:23:34]:
I think it does go through those stages. We've been doing those in parallel and the validation of we haven't been in a position to build a a test demonstration pool first. Pools are well understood. Right? And what we've done is work with construction and other engineering inputs to say, construct this. Can you construct this? Will it hold the water? It's this volume. It's this depth, etcetera. So that validation is well understood. Engineering in that respect and construction is well understood.

John Vickers [00:24:01]:
The validation for us really has been, yeah, 10 years ago, it was too early in some respects. And in the UK, we've been through a number of issues. So we have this thing, Brexit, where we decided not to be part of a big economic block anymore. And so the initial discussions on big money that we had then went into slightly into abeyance because people were like, Oh, hold on a second. The UK is making this decision. What's going to happen? Yep. We started to get traction again. We've been talking in the US.

John Vickers [00:24:30]:
Maybe we should have come to the US sooner. But, again, what can you say about hindsight? We can say everything, but we didn't do it. Then comes the pandemic. And, again, I think at every stage, the frustrations that I have that I have personally, could we have delivered it sooner? Perhaps. If I was a billionaire first, maybe I would have delivered it for, sooner. But at the same time, I know there are at least 2 space billionaires who were billionaires when they started their space business, and their space business is probably still not where they would have expected it to be. So I don't think it's all about money. It's about sometimes if you have an idea and this is nothing, maybe it's an ambitious idea.

John Vickers [00:25:08]:
I don't necessarily think so. I'm just putting together different industries at a scale, perhaps that maybe private individuals wouldn't normally cleverly start to do. But time has been the biggest thing that we've benefited from. So we've progressed. We've kept going. We've persevered and everything else has come our way. The need, ostensibly, the validation, the understanding, and more importantly, the collaboration, because we want to disappear. You would come to a Bluebiss Center.

John Vickers [00:25:40]:
You can see it. The architecture is going to be inspirational. You would land at Cleveland Hopkins. And if you land the right way, you'd see the building and think, oh, I know what that is. And that's great. But at the same time, we want to disappear. It's not about Bluebiss. It's about what we enable, what we do to drive collaboration, what we do to inspire young people and businesses, how we foster those ambitions for humanity into our oceans and space.

John Vickers [00:26:05]:
And if we disappear, if we become, as I'm very happy to tell everybody, we're supplying the picks and shovels and pairs of jeans. If you wanna go and look for gold, we'll help you in our region and level of expertise. But you don't remember the hardware store. You remember that you found gold. And that suits me fine because I'm not a gold prospector. But I know what you need to go and find gold. In

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:28]:
the, spirit of the the picks and shovels analogy, you know, from a a business perspective, you know, I think lots of the, at least in the stories, you know, the fortunes were made in the picture and shovels rather than the the gold mining itself. When you think about Blue Abyss as a business, I'd love to understand and I, you know, I was thinking about this, like, what is there competition? What what does this model actually look like? Who are the kinds of organizations you envision as customers? What is the path to economic sustainability such that, you know, you you could disappear?

John Vickers [00:27:02]:
So that's another very good question, Jeffrey. So I don't when I started, there were no competitors. There have been a number of people who've said, we can train astronauts. Right? And they'll take you to a hotel, and they'll do what they say. There is no at the moment, there is no printed curriculum that says you must do this on day 1, and by day 5, you'll have, you know, achieved x percentage in these 4 tests. NASA, obviously, we would look to and suggest has a gold standard for how they prepare a human to go in space. Once you're selected, once you qualify out of 20,000 people, if you're one of the sort of dozen that get selected, you'll still go through years perhaps before you actually get a space mission. When you're on mission, it's about an 18 month training window.

John Vickers [00:27:41]:
So we understand that. There are some businesses that we're we're I'm very close to and and welcome there. It's not competition. I think we are broadening the opportunity out there. We're not, though, we are not categorically just a space company. That's perhaps both a blessing and has been a frustration because people when you say to people, I'm going to build a big pool, you get the funding, you know, grandiose people who really don't understand that and sort of dismiss it out of hand. But we live on an oceanic planet, and in order to deliver next generational capability in our oceans, let's give you a next generational place to do that development research and trust testing in. Without it, we won't.

John Vickers [00:28:19]:
It's fundamental. We have a gap in our technology readiness level, TRL, between level 4, so iterative improvement. I've had an idea. The thing floated in my bathtub. Now I'm doing some trials. I don't I'm not doing it in the really the preeminent place to do it. I'm throwing in a pond or a lake every now and again. It's sunk or swam, seem to do.

John Vickers [00:28:39]:
But how do I improve it iteratively? Where's the facility that enables me to do that? How do I get some inputs? And then you get to level 6 stroke 7 when you want to get to the end of that improvement phase and the thing is ready for real world testing. We've never claimed to be the real world. We claim to be a filler part of the chain. So our Oceanic stuff, I mean, there are so many Oceanic customers, Oceanic defense, Oceanic energy, deep sea mining, renewables. So floating offshore wind platforms. There are plenty of offshore wind platforms, but floating, not so much. Undersea cables, now the risk to undersea cables to that defense profile. We talk about just scraping the seabed for manganese nodules.

John Vickers [00:29:23]:
What's the impact of doing that? What about all the sediment we create? What is the knock on effect? If we're not going to do to if that doesn't have that knock on effect, even if it does, how do we mitigate it? But there are deep sea thermal vents. Can we tap them? Can we benefit from another energy source? I don't know. We do take a lot of stuff from our oceans, fish, biomass, but we don't often understand the long term we've now started to plot how much we're taking. But what's the sustainability of that? You know, you kill because you've got a long line, or we used to do it long line fishing, didn't we, with nets and trap dolphins and turquoise. And there was a proliferation of jellyfish and Humboldt squid in the Pacific because you've knocked out some of the predatorial layers. And so another species that may have been predated and kept at a certain level now rises to the top. And it's I mean, take Humboldt squid, they are a huge predator. Physically, they're huge, 6 foot, some of them.

John Vickers [00:30:18]:
Yeah. And you are taking a species that now has less natural predation above it, and you're enabling it to become preeminent. Well, what if you suddenly start noticing a dip in fish stocks? We dump rubbish in our oceans and rivers. Still, like, it's going out of fashion. That all accumulates physically. It's now in our food chain. It's affecting you and I. But just where it is, it's so big and so fundamental that we often ignore it.

John Vickers [00:30:48]:
But when you eat fish, the chances are you absorbing plastic. You eat prawns. You know, I'm not so keen. I'd rather eat just the fish. Thanks very much. The plastic waste. You know, so we're slowly but surely recognizing there is a long term impact. So I'm talking now just about oceans.

John Vickers [00:31:05]:
Yeah. That's pragmatic stuff. We need to do and work in harmony with our planet more. It's not about suddenly being all woke and green, and it's just common sense. I wanna be here, me, for the next 30 to 40, 50 years, my children for the next, you know, 70 or 80 years beyond. We want to continue if we abuse your house, if you dump rubbish in your house, if you're unhygienic, if you don't give a thought to keeping the thing waterproof and weatherproof, don't expect your house to last that long. Your neighbors would be looking at you thinking, Jeffrey, your yard's a mess. Tidy up.

John Vickers [00:31:38]:
And we're not doing that, so I want to get better at that. And then at the same time, I want to enable the opportunity for people to say, and lots of money is flowing into space and less has been flowing. For me, it is the cart before the horse. People are talking about destinations and vehicles and space stations and hotels. Who is going? Because I can guarantee that for every 100 people that turn up, probably 70, 80, 90 just wouldn't do well. Or if we're gonna enable them to do well, Jeffrey, we need to change the way that they're selected, the way they're prepared, the way we deal with them during the mission and afterwards, during that time in space and after. That's not being addressed commercially. So we're here doing that.

John Vickers [00:32:22]:
It's been a long hard battle. It's not over, but slowly and extirably, the wheel turns. What I have really learned was actually based on from, believe it or not, an old Cleveland sort of well, it's a book by a journalist called Napoleon Hill, who, you know, he met Andrew Carnegie and he challenged Andrew he asked Andrew Carnegie, how did you get rich and Andrew Carnegie and stayed rich. And Andrew Carnegie challenged and said, well, go and ask all the rich people that I know and you know, you aspire to know, and find out what the secret is. And the secret for me is quite obvious. It's become obvious. It's become visceral. You just have to persist.

John Vickers [00:33:00]:
If you know that intrinsically, this is a great idea, it doesn't matter how big or small the idea is, just keep going. There'll be naysayers. There'll be every reason not to succeed. The bigger the ambition, the longer it will take to a degree and the more more difficult to because it's that's just the nature of the scale of things. Everest is not as easy to walk up as, you know, Rocky River Reservation Road into into, you know, up to OAI's premises in the back of the airport. There are different sizes, but they're still inclined. Right? But just different scale. You just have to persist.

John Vickers [00:33:34]:
And but if you're attuned to where the blockage is, you'll start to change tack, not what the goal is, but there's a blockage here. Do I keep banging my head on the blockage or do I ignore the blockage and go around the block? Oh, look, I'm behind the blockage and the blockage is not really a blockage from this perspective. It's something that I can avoid, I I just ignore, or I can change. So I've learned an awful lot, and I'd like to think I have also learned to keep learning.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:58]:
It is ambitious. It is as aspirational. It is inspirational. I feel inspired by it. Actually, in the spirit of of that inspiration, I do wanna ask if you'll indulge me on the detour about the educational opportunity because I would imagine, you know, I grew up kinda, you know, watching, you know, the the Magic School Bus and, you know, those kinds of shows about, you know, these kinds of sci fi kind of futures. But I would I would imagine there's so much that could be done from an education perspective with these kinds of facilities that you're building and just what what your vision for for that is.

John Vickers [00:34:32]:
That is a really you're one of very few people. And I I loved talking to people who see things and don't just listen to the conversation, but it prompts their own monologue internally, right, with themselves. Oh, what about this object? And has he thought about, oh, I could. That's what we are trying to do. So like you, there was a series by Leonard Nimoy. I don't know if you got it. I'm sure you've got it in the US, Jeffrey, but you're too young. Where he, for instance, the crystal skulls, he was talking about the Aztec lines in in Peru and stuff, you know, on the ground, these geometric and shapes and artwork and supposedly runways, right, that you could only see when you were airborne, that ancient civilizations laid out.

John Vickers [00:35:13]:
The pyramids are called. There was a series of programs he did. Just fascinating. And they really sparked in me. I watched my son and my daughter and younger people, and we are consumed by the short term. Right? Short TikTok shorts, YouTube shorts, short video, short intention span. It's not interesting to me. Next.

John Vickers [00:35:34]:
Next.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:35]:
And it's diminished.

John Vickers [00:35:37]:
Yes. And therefore, I would suggest, and I'm sure every generation says it about the generation after it, we're getting stupider. We're getting less inquisitive. We are less inclined to feed our curiosity because we become slaves to these little black boxes that consume your mental attention but in a negative way. And I don't want to do that. I want to follow the Jacques Cousteau programs. When I came to the UK from the Middle East, I started watching him on television. And that laconic French accent and just, you know, descending into oceans.

John Vickers [00:36:11]:
I'm doing a bad French accent. I'm not even doing more. And I just I thought, wow. And he dressed his divers in silver suits specifically, and they had the helmets with the lights built into look like, to a degree, space suit. It was proper Gemini and Mercury stuff, and I just I want that. I want that's wow. That's the world out there. If we I I have to insist on my children not being on their phones.

John Vickers [00:36:35]:
Right? And you have to take them out and have to get outside. They have to fall over and scrape their knees and get dirty and taste dirt and pick up worms and look at tree leaves and go and explore and see and hear nothing in the wilderness. To really think part of you, I'm nothing. Look look at all this. We are diminutive. But at the same time, you expand the 2 things you can only ever expand that are worth expanding, your mind and your soul. If you do those things with people, wow, what a difference to make. So the education out for me, Jeffrey, fantastic question because it's the opportunity to go in front of because for a period of time, young people aren't corrupted.

John Vickers [00:37:18]:
They may be being told no a lot. I thought we need to try and maybe stop some of the noes, but they are excitable. They want to be. They're exciting. You can say to them, wow, and they'll, wow, go. What is it? Put your hand in this and it's a bit, woah, you know, and it could be a scary thing, but it could be the start of a you put any child in a snorkel and a suit in Lake Erie, and at that moment, in that place, they're an absolute explorer. They're the first person at that time and place to do that. Now you say to every child in and around Cleveland or Lake Erie, I'm gonna give you the confidence to go and snorkel so you could snorkel down appropriate rivers or go into the lake, And your parents don't have to worry.

John Vickers [00:38:04]:
Alright. I'm not asking you to just go off on your own. You're wearing a suit. You've got a buoyancy jacket on. You have the competence and confidence to go out and explore like that. You broaden children's minds. Now if that doesn't mean every child has to become an aquanaut, diver, or an astronaut, but they go and say, I'm gonna become just being out in nature, just the way these people are talking, just having met this astronaut or this space medicine person or this deep sea diver has caused me to be more driven to become the best garden designer or photographer, then we're achieving. I want to help unlock that excitement.

John Vickers [00:38:40]:
And in and around Cleveland, there's such a rich history, which is great, but that's history. Let's create the future. And if you inspire people, they create the future. I'm an old fuddy duddy now. I want to inspire people to take I'll happily interview everybody I could. And the next person if they if I got the sense they could be the next CEO, I don't care how old they are. I will do whatever it takes to help them be the next CEO of Blue Abyss and let them develop it to be even bigger. Fantastic.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:10]:
Lay of the Land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio, Impact Architects has helped 100 of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you 2 are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free consultation or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies. If you are interested in learning more about partnering with Impact Architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to ia.layoftheland.fm. The link will also be in our show notes. Amidst the breadth of ambitions, you know, embedded in Blue Abyss and, you know, the the path ahead to to realize them. What what are you most excited about looking forward? And and what does you know, like, tactically, what's about to happen in, the path to realization here?

John Vickers [00:40:29]:
So we've got and and it's taken a while, Jeffrey. But at the same time so I think there's an opportunity both in Cleveland timing wise and the way things are developing and in the UK. I mean, I have to start in the UK. I'm happy and willing with my family to move out to the US, but there is it happens to be a coincidental time in the UK where I think that things are coming to an inflection point for both our first sites. So Cleveland, I still am adamant, will be now slightly ahead of the UK, but the UK has caught up. So the ability to start actually physically constructing, not just talking to people. Right? But things take the time they take. If you put a 10 pound turkey in an oven and don't be taking out 45 minutes later and hoping it's cooked, it's gonna take whatever it's gonna take.

John Vickers [00:41:12]:
And we're just not given in life, not necessarily. If you're starting something from scratch, you're not given how long it will take. I think the test that life without intuitively designing it does is just make it as long as it is. You have to have the the gumption and the will to stay the course. So it's getting to that point now where we can start building. We've got I was reviewing with architects yesterday the design for the US. We've already got the design finalized for the UK. I want to be able to get some renditions so we can release that.

John Vickers [00:41:40]:
So that will hopefully inspire other people and stuff. I could use that, and I wanna do a show here, and there's gonna be a planetarium. And now the community and the commercial world take over it. We just facilitate their their desires. So that by the fall, we'll be constructing in the in the US. I'd like to think by the start of the new year 2025, we'll be in a similar position in the UK, and we have aspirations to grow the number of centers. Because we live on an oceanic planet. We need to do more stuff in the oceans.

John Vickers [00:42:08]:
And we if we are going to fulfill people like Elon Musk's ambitions to live on Mars, I don't think we're gonna be there anytime soon. But to even begin the ambition, we need to start planning and preparing and training the people and robots now. And without the centers to do so, it is just ambition. I don't care how wealthy you are. You're talking rubbish.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:32]:
Beyond persistence as the ingredient to success, as you mentioned, I'm curious what else as kind of your earned wisdom you have learned both what you took took with you from your military career and then, you know, afterwards in in a professional context and then as an entrepreneur that's kind of informed your leadership and decision making?

John Vickers [00:42:54]:
I grew up, as I mentioned to you in the preamble, Jeffrey, in the Middle East and then Africa. I felt more like a solitary child. So my both sisters are much older than me, so they would have left home by the time I was really at proper school. I went to kindergarten in Saudi Arabia and then in Bahrain before junior school and starting middle school. But I always felt like a more of a lonely and and not a a loner, right, not lonely. So my desire and interest in going off on my own and discovering my own shortfalls and capabilities was perhaps a little bit more home. The British mid I joined at 16, which is quite early. I would have joined you can see the picture on my wall.

John Vickers [00:43:33]:
There is a picture there of a guy called sergeant Ian John Mackay, VC. He won the Victoria Cross in the Falklands War. I was gonna join with him. He was the closest person. He was a brother-in-law of mine. He was the closest person to a father figure I had since I was 8. He gets killed when I'm 15. So I lost that sense of leadership and I could grow under his shadow.

John Vickers [00:43:53]:
I could benefit from him carving the path in front and I could just benefit from him clearing the path. So I joined the army at 16. At times, really struggled emotionally, mentally, physically. I had to go out at night and do extra runs and stuff to keep myself fit and not be a burden on other people. And so I'm I perhaps took a lot of knockbacks internally. Externally, I mean, I remember a sergeant saying to us all, platoon of us one night, you know, remember guys that, forgive the French, excrement rolls downhill and you live in the valley. And I thought, why does nobody stop that further up the hill? Right? So I thought one of the things I want to do whenever I'm in a position of responsibility is stop just doling out crap for no reason. Stop.

John Vickers [00:44:39]:
That's poor leadership. Big, big people take on more work and dole out to people below them, sufficient that the person below them can handle it. But c, perhaps if they've got the ability to, the person up above is handling more. Okay. I've been given the opportunity to do this right. I want to support the person above me. I will deliver what I need to deliver, and then you'll get given more. Most leaders I've experienced, most subsequent to the army, I've I've worked for some really good professional people, and I've worked for some appalling professional people.

John Vickers [00:45:11]:
Civilians who've never been test the military is not the only validation in life by any stretch of the imagination, but it does an awful lot to stretch you. So I'm always thankful that we in the West have people who have been prepared to to go out and do it. And for my own service, that it shaped what does leadership mean. And leadership is not just being at the front. Leadership means being at the back, means doing the the small, intrinsic rubbish collecting jobs as well as the big presentations on a world stage. If you're prepared to do both, I'll stand next to you and help. If you think it's all the glory and none of the crap, then forgive me, but I'm not with you. That's part of the ethos.

John Vickers [00:45:48]:
So the persistence comes because in the army, they don't in the British army, they don't like if you quit. So they'll kick your your backside repeatedly. You don't be quitting because the boots hurt. Get rid of the boot. Go out at night, work the boot till the boot's softer than your foot. Go out and just grind it out, grind it out. And you you maybe I didn't develop enough toughness, but I developed enough of a toughness that I can put my head down. And I might be bitching and whinging about it, but I'm just going to keep my head down.

John Vickers [00:46:16]:
And I'll I'll I might be fat now, but I'll be at the end of the line. Might take me a bit longer, but I'm carrying quite a heavy load because I've been there. I've been in the squads and there are there are gazelles who are rough at the front and off. And you think, well, I've got just as big a Bergen. Yours doesn't appear to be as full. I'm also carrying my weapon and the squad machine gun and all the rounds. You know, sometimes the big slow guys in the military are just as relevant. You don't have to be at the front.

John Vickers [00:46:43]:
It's getting there together and delivering. So the military gave me a toughness. I would not have done any of this and been able to do any of this without my wife and family and support. The money has been a challenge. If you cannot survive without spending 1,000 of dollars a day, a week, a month on yourself, a family having a wonderful holiday, this journey would not have been for you. We have I have asked them to sacrifice far, far, far more than I was ever had the right to do and put on other people. It's one thing to take on a challenge yourself. It's something else to ask other people to do it.

John Vickers [00:47:16]:
And I have put them through the wringer, but that they have been generous enough to allow me to continue, especially my wife. My children didn't have any choice. Maybe that's why I'm indulging them in on the phone, you know, every now and again because they think, dad, come on. But my wife has put up with an awful lot. If you have somebody supportive, if you have family and friends who genuinely support, they might not be able to give you money, but just words sometimes, just a shoulder, just the space that has been. And then the last thing oh, sorry. I should finish the sentence. And that's been a real boon.

John Vickers [00:47:51]:
And then the last thing I've developed is a taxi driver in Glasgow. I still remember it. There will be things in my life I'll remember that appear completely irrelevant. Yeah. There's a taxi driver at Glasgow Airport who said, you know, how have you been tonight? I just happened to say, oh, you know, I'm not sleeping so well and a bit stressed. And he said, I'm telling you now, you need to learn to meditate. And I thought, really? And he said, yeah. He said, it doesn't matter.

John Vickers [00:48:14]:
5 minutes, 10 minutes. Just somewhere on your own. Lay down, sit, doesn't matter. Just take some time. Don't think. Whilst you at first, you'll think, how am I not gonna think? Eventually, you'll learn not to think and you'll just drift there. And just some 10 minutes to yourself is a balm to the soul, is a balm to yourself. The world can go and hang for you, Keir, for those 10 minutes.

John Vickers [00:48:36]:
If the world's gonna end in those 10 minutes, you wouldn't know about it, so it doesn't matter anyway. Right? But trust me, you're not that important. No matter who you are, no matter how rich you think you are, in 10 minutes, if you can't take 10 minutes out and stop talking about yourself, you're not that important. Go and just have 10 minutes 10 minutes to just let it all wash away. Because in those 10 minutes those 10 minutes, you can be on a beach in Thailand, ski resort in Colorado, you know, the Funoke swamp in flop, whatever. It doesn't matter, but you can be anywhere you want and just at rest.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:09]:
It is a a powerful, humbling tool. I love that it came from a cab driver.

John Vickers [00:49:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You never know. Right? You never know when your inspiration is gonna get you gotta keep paying attention.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:21]:
Yes. Well, in terms of of inspiration, you you mentioned Ian Ian McKay, the the man on your your picture there. I'd love both to hear what you learned from him and more generally how you think about the role and influence of of mentors and mentorship.

John Vickers [00:49:40]:
So, Ian, my father was killed, from when I was about 7a half, 8 years old. So one morning, when I would have normally gotten up to have breakfast with him, he'd already gotten and gone off to work. And I, answered the phone call from happened to be my younger of my 2 older sisters, the young one also in the Middle East, to take a call saying, you know, dad's had an accident. Get mum. So I I heard her crying, but I didn't think anything beyond. I just got on the school bus. It was only later in the after the school assembly that the vicar called me to have a chat. And I thought, I've been caught talking in assembly.

John Vickers [00:50:13]:
I'm under the high jump. And then I got a big sort of talk. And then I got put on the school bus on my own and sent home, which I found a bit challenging since. My older sister, met Ian in the military in Germany. And then I got to meet him, and I got to meet him in the summer of 1976. There was a drought in the UK. A drought rise 2 weeks with no rain. That is what constitutes a drought.

John Vickers [00:50:36]:
In other parts of the world, it's a drought that lasts months or years. In the UK, it was 2 weeks. That may have been a bit longer than that. Anyway, just such a calm, genuine I just cannot begin to really ever captivate and encapsulate how much of a just wonderful man he was. It it would still make me well up to think I was touched by him when he was so generous with his time, so gentle. I only I think we only ever had one sort of slight disconnect, and I'm sure I was at fault. I was a kid. I was being precocious.

John Vickers [00:51:11]:
It really inspired me when his daughter was born, Melanie, my niece, my middle niece, that he would go out at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning and push her around, but she would wake everybody up if she was crying. We were on holiday in Devon, my sister, Ian, their son from my sister's first marriage, Donnie, my niece, Melanie, my mother and I. And he would just get up and take her out and push her around in a pram. And I thought, wow. This is this big army strong guy going off and doing things that are nothing. Right? Parents should do that, but a lot of men wouldn't. There'd have been, you need to get up. I've got work tomorrow.

John Vickers [00:51:45]:
I mean, we were on holiday, but he would do the ironing. So it was the ability to be this big leadership figure. He was a a thick guy. He was determined, persistent, and I learned so many different sides of his character that I'd like to think I've done a poor job of emulating in my life. But last year, I went to the Falklands for the first time. I never went during my military career. And on the 11th 12th June, 12th June is when 11th the night of 11th into 12th is when he was killed on Mount Longden. On 12th June last year, I got to walk up Mount Longden in the Falklands.

John Vickers [00:52:18]:
It was hurricane winds. I think we got 4 seasons in about 20 minutes repeatedly. It was minus 10 on my left hand side, 5 degrees plus on my centigrade on my right hand side. Myself and the battalion photographer were, you know, just complaining about the weather. And I went up this mountain hill feature and just thought, sheesh, just the archer and the battle that these guys, lots of whom I now know subsequently, and and to lose him there, that was a pivotal moment. But I sort of keep him in my mind. I I look at his photograph every day picture, but I've tried to emulate as a person. What does a nice person do, what would you want to do if I meet you? I don't we'd have to get on, but did I treat you nicely? Was I generous? Was I honest with you? You know, I'm not walking in your shoes, so I don't know your challenges and tribulations, so I shouldn't castigate or I'd like to think I'm trying to just be as open and honest with everybody on me.

John Vickers [00:53:17]:
Yeah. And the military taught me certain skills. Life has taught me others, and I'd like to keep thinking that I'm doing my best going forward. I'm probably failing, Jeffrey. But what's failure? Well, it's just you're not practicing enough. By the end of my life, I'll probably be better.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:35]:
I I don't know that you're failing. You know, just from our conversation here, it's it's a a beautiful sentiment in that. I think even the expression of would suggest that you are not.

John Vickers [00:53:47]:
Well, thank you. I it's nice, right, to have validation. But maybe that that childhood growing up on more on my own. One of my sisters said in in Africa, they live she lived with us. For a period of time in Saudi Arabia, the younger of my 2 older sisters live with us. But I've always intrinsically been aware of being on my own, and so I'm comfortable being on my own. I often say to my son, you know, and maybe now as a teenager, you know, he's right in the middle of his teens. Well, no, I think he's past the middle point of his teens.

John Vickers [00:54:18]:
He's getting slightly older, 16. That I said to him, you know, be comfortable being quiet. Be comfortable going up to your room. If you wanna put music on and just I used to lay on my floor. My mother bought me a stereo, and I used to put we didn't have headphones. Right? You know, talk about a hard life, you know, wind up the old record, get the violins out. But I would put the speakers on the floor and turn them inside. I'd lay down, and I used to listen to Donna Summer's I Feel Love on on repeat on that that LP, how it's not a worn out record.

John Vickers [00:54:49]:
I don't know. But I just used to, I suspect, meditate, just drift off. But it was time on your own. You didn't need to be like everybody else. You didn't have to have the latest clothing. That's the pressure I see on on young people. I would love to go into a school. Somebody very kind I I I help mentor young I belong to a program that that has working people, business people, go to schools in the UK.

John Vickers [00:55:15]:
And I went to one sick form, and the kids were all talking, and I just stood there. I didn't need to say anything. They became quiet. And this lady very kindly, she just said to me afterwards, how did you do that? And I said, just is. Right? You just have to have a certainty about you. We don't have to be anybody else. We're all busy fitting in with everybody else when we're born to stand out. Just be yourself.

John Vickers [00:55:37]:
And I I said to my my son and daughter, I think I've always recognized, you don't have to be the most popular. You don't have to be the most good looking, whatever that actually means. Find the oddball. Find the geeks, the nerds, the jocks, because you don't know what actually they're feeling inside. They may be projecting something, but you find some of the oddballs and geeks and nerds are some of the most gifted, intellectual, wonderful, creative, gifted people. You know? So the the aspiration is we all wanna be like the jock, but you don't have to. I was a jock. I played cricket and and and rugby for my schools.

John Vickers [00:56:13]:
But at the same time, I was friends with people who weren't, and it's that variety. You can't make a spicy dish with just some salt. You need a whole, you know, cacophony of spices. We need different people and people that are what constantly inspire me. Why am I really doing it? I'm doing it because I think I'm this is the only thing I'm good at. It's a relatively low level thing. Let's let's I'm not a rocket designer. Don't let me design any rockets.

John Vickers [00:56:39]:
I can dig a hole. I'm don't even let me dig the hole. I have an inspiration to say, let's dig a big hole and put some water in. I think the only other simpler business plan would look, here's a stick. What can we do with this stick? So I've had a next level up from there. I get that, but that's about as far as it goes. But I get to meet you. You asked about Mentors.

John Vickers [00:56:57]:
I mean, Ian was a big facet. But Jimmy Kenyon, he's been great enough with his time. Jim Free, another Cleveland person that's gone on to the headquarters of NASA. Doctor Scott Parazynski, former NASA astronaut, 5 times on this on the shuttle, 7 spacewalks. And now, like you, an an interloper from upstate New York, Doug Wheelock, who is still a NASS NASA astronaut I've become good friends with. Inspirational people who've achieved what you would think are the pinnacle of human I mean, to to be as an astronaut, I got the privilege to meet Amazing. Gene Cernan, the last human to walk on the moon. When you actually contemplate that, you just think you haven't walked on the Sahara on your own.

John Vickers [00:57:39]:
I mean, that'd be challenging enough. Right? You'd think, oh, wow. That was a bit of a journey. But these people, 12 humans have been off the planet and touched another sphere in space and wandered around for a while. When you actually look at a map, an image, the Earth and the moon and how far they are apart, you're a long way from Kansas, Dorothy. They are inspirational

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:01]:
to me. To say the least.

John Vickers [00:58:02]:
I meet people who are generous enough with their time at Glenn, at Sandusky, David Stringer, ex NASA people, business people. All the people are prepared to give me their time help. Even the people that aren't very helpful in one sense are helpful because they may say or do something in the way you think I wouldn't have said or done that, or you're not gonna give me your time, but it actually makes me think, well, thanks. I'm not wasting my time with you, Or I don't wanna be like that. Or as a company, we won't do that. So but those names I mentioned, I mean, you know, doctor Sylvia Earle, she was another hero of mine growing up in the eighties reading National Geographic. She appeared in the pictures of Rolex watches in a nude suit going to 1250 feet. I used to think, wow, what a job.

John Vickers [00:58:45]:
I had the privilege of meeting her. What a phenomenal lady. Anna Lee Fisher, first mother in space, I've met her. She's just lovely. I've met relatives of Jacques Cousteau, Alexandre Cousteau, people who are generous enough with their time, Jeffrey. I just am fascinated. Why were they Alexei Leonov, Dimitri Prenario? Sadly, I didn't get to meet colonel Ed White. He died on Apollo 1.

John Vickers [00:59:08]:
But his son and daughter, the son Ed White, very gracious, and his and his daughter, Karen, have both allowed me to use his father's name. Alexey Leonov, who I got in touch with through Dimitri Prenariv, who is a a Romanian national. Alexei was the 1st human to walk in space. Ed White was the 2nd. Both of them allowing me to use their name on the first facility we built. I mean, I've got no direct connection with EPIC. I'm not a national. You know, I don't hold any world records of anything.

John Vickers [00:59:36]:
I am completely unremarkable. But to them, just the way that they allowed their names for use and and Alexei wrote me a phenomenal letter. I was just

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:44]:
Yeah. Wow.

John Vickers [00:59:46]:
Well, I've been privileged regardless of what happens with Blue Abyss to have been on this journey, to have been enriched by these people and times in quest discussions like this just to share a bit. But that what a privilege. Who gives a monkeys about John Bickers? Right? But just to be able to speak about hope and ambition feels like a a really wonderful thing. So thank you very much.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:07]:
Well, thank you. It you know, it's a it's a mutual privilege. So I I think we can bookend our our conversation here with 2 questions. 1 very broad and one very specific. In reflection on this whole journey, building Blue Abyss, your personal upbringing and and everything else, is there something that comes to mind as most important that is unsaid that that we haven't talked about that you would like to surface and share?

John Vickers [01:00:33]:
Do you know if I could probably give any advice, not that you should listen to any advice I give to I might give you the wrong direction to the to the nearest news agent, so don't listen to anything I've got to say. But just if somebody's out there and thinking, oh, I'd love to do something, I guarantee that they have got the capability to do it. Honestly, if you looked at my bank statement, you'd think, sheesh, this guy. I mean, you know, we validate things too much on material. Right? I have you made a load of money or but you're not successful yet. But the word yet is important. We're so quick to judge people when they're on a journey, when they're in their life, when they're doing something. We pooh pooh back to being told no repeatedly.

John Vickers [01:01:15]:
I'd love to be a cartoon. I know a friend of my sons who is a phenomenally gifted cartoonist, you know, illustrator. I hope they go and have, if that's what they'd love to do, the most wonderful career doing that. There are people that we look at. We're too quick to, you know, rubbish them and pooh pooh them. If you could really spend time with every kid, I would wish that every parent would spend as much time with their children as possible. Too many we've made it slightly too easy for people to have children and the parents don't do enough for their children. It's a privilege.

John Vickers [01:01:49]:
And when you get somebody who is so potentially, positively malleable, I wish nothing bad would happen to the young people, and I wish we could give them every opportunity to do better because then I think we would get ourselves out of some of the hate and some of the the issues that we face. We should be looking to the commonality and the good and the aspiration, not the difference, the bad, and the and the short term.

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:13]:
Well said. I have nothing to to add to that. Well, I'll ask you then our our traditional closing question, which is is this about Cleveland? And I I'm particularly love asking this to folks like yourself because it's to me, a kind of a kindred experience as someone not from Cleveland originally. But for the question being, you know, what what is a hidden gem in Cleveland that you wish, you know, other people knew about that maybe they don't? But I would love to pose that to you.

John Vickers [01:02:40]:
I think you must get this answer then, Jeffrey. That's a really good way of finalizing. I'm sure lots of people would say, but for me, the real jewel I mean, the people have been just phenomenal. Right? The breadth and and the it's a melting pot. Genuinely, Cleveland's a melting pot. And it brings together a warmth and a genuineness that we talked about at the beginning doesn't necessarily that you don't often find in big cities, right, or on the coastal cities in the US or the UK or Paris, wherever. There's a genuance to the people. But as a physical place, I mean, there's such a variety.

John Vickers [01:03:12]:
The food has has been fantastic. The variety, the but the metro parks, for me, are the standout feature. You get to be I mean, I drove through 1 just on my last trip a few weeks ago, and I drove I entered through the Rocky River reservation piece near the back of LAI, and I drove northwards towards the lake. And for the first time I drove past the golf course, I think I was headed to Rocky River. And I just the amount of people who are using it during the day at a time when I wouldn't have maybe lunch breaks you'd think or early morning or evening is great. But who were there? And there were kids playing in the river. So obviously, school had already broken. But just I thought to myself, wow.

John Vickers [01:03:51]:
What a treasure these places are. And the fact that they link, you know, like a necklace round Cleveland. Yes. Just don't miss out in going. If you haven't been, you should.

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:01]:
They they are phenomenal. Absolutely. Well, John, I just want to thank you deeply for taking the time to come on, share your story, more about the work you're doing, which I I am so excited about to to follow along on on that journey. If folks had anything they they wanted to follow-up with you about and and follow along as well, where where would you direct them?

John Vickers [01:04:22]:
So our website, with there is a US version of a US version. It'd be the same website, but we'll be the US URL. So bluerbiss.mglobal. Jeffrey, we're at we've got offices at OAI, very kindly and graciously, Ohio Aerospace Institute to continue to support our endeavors. It's fantastic been working with them and Dennis Anders from Parallax Technologies. You know, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very happy to take questions. I may not always be the speediest recipient now because things seem to have gotten a bit busier, but I'm very grateful for your interest and the questions and for the allowance that you've given me to just ramble on in terms of that reminds me of the song, Ramble On.

John Vickers [01:04:57]:
Is that Led Zeppelin? Anyway, it's been fantastic because it's easy to give just an answer. It's more difficult to give somebody the context to an answer. If you give my son probably looks at me and thinks he's gonna be a long lecture. I'm not trying to give him a long lecture. I'm trying to give him an answer that when he looks and thinks, yeah, but oh, hold on a minute. If I listen to what my dad actually said, it gave me 360 degrees. There's not much arguing because I've now got all the information as to why I'm not allowed to do that or why I've got to do this before I can do that. You know, you give people context.

John Vickers [01:05:29]:
You really take away a lot of the ambiguity. I love giving the context to people. I want people to the one organ we use probably the least sometimes, well, seemingly with some people, is their brain. You know, if we thought a little more and spoke a little less, I think we'd all be a bit better off.

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:46]:
I I think that's right. There's a poem that that, I'm trying to remember that is about a wise old owl who is in an oak. The more he saw, the less he spoke. The the less he spoke, the more he heard, why aren't we like this old bird? That was the fun.

John Vickers [01:06:03]:
I'm gonna look that up now, Jeffrey. Is that exactly right? You know, just sometimes the things you we I think I'm profoundly saying are not. They're just repetition of other people's things. But if we're reminded of of those things, if you can But if we're reminded of of those things, if you can actually get kids to listen to that, if they actually absorb what it mean, you wouldn't all get into a room and start shouting. You'd get into a room and start listening. Wouldn't it be nice to avoid sheesh conflict? Trust me, I've been in the army. I know what getting into fights is all about. I know what riots feel like and conflict.

John Vickers [01:06:36]:
And it's it's not an experience I'm here to say, you know, I'm not decrying being in the forces. I think it's great for me personally. But if we didn't have to have it, I think we would be better off as a species looking outwards to what we can do to improve lives, not find reasons to be divisive and fighting one another. Anyway, it might be a tad ambitious to hope that we'll all just get on, but let's hope crikey. Imagine going to space right and not getting on with the astronauts out next year. That would just be, uh-oh. Here we go. You gotta leave that stuff behind, and at some point, I think you'll leave it all behind.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:08]:
Well, that's a that's a perfect place to wrap it,

John Vickers [01:07:10]:
I think. Thank you, John. Thank you very much for your time. I'm really grateful. Absolutely.

Jeffrey Stern [01:07:17]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We would love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to [e-mail], or find us on Twitter at podlayofthelandor@sternfa, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with the UP Company LLC.

Jeffrey Stern [01:08:00]:
At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on the show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.