Listen to him: This Houston innovator is on a mission to develop technology for the moon

If you haven’t noticed, the moon is on the rise—and Tim Crain of Intuitive Machines is here for it.

Over the past five years or so, NASA and the federal government have launched and strengthened initiatives to support technological innovation to be used to reach and explore the Moon.

NASA, which is currently focused on its Artemis program that sends four missions to the Moon, has also launched Commercial Lunar Payload Services that works with several American companies, including Intuitive Machines, to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface.

“Around 2018 or 2019, the moon came back into favor as a destination for American space policy, and it came back in such a way that there is a directive at the national level — at a level above NASA — to explore and develop the moon as a national priority,” Crain explains in the episode.

On the show, Crain explains the story of Intuitive Machines, which took a circuitous path to where it is today. The company was founded in 2013 by Crain and his co-founders, CEO Steve Altemus and President Kamal Ghaffarian, as a space-focused think tank. Crain explains that they learned how to run a business and meet customer needs and expectations, but they were never wowed by any of the early technologies and ideas they developed, from long-range drones to precision drilling technology.

But the company answered NASA’s call for lunar technology development, and Intuitive Machines has won three of NASA’s contracts so far, representing three missions for NASA.

“We dipped our toe into the river of ‘let’s grow the Moon’ and got swept up in it pretty quickly,” Crain said. “We left our think tank and our multi-sector efforts behind to focus entirely on NASA’s CLPS needs. (…) The timing couldn’t have been better.”

Since recording the podcast, Intuitive Machines has celebrated a historic mission that landed the first lunar lander on the surface of the Moon in over 50 years, and the first commercial mission ever. The company is also working on a $30 million project for NASA to develop lunar landing technology.

This week, Intuitive Machines announced a successful test result for the motor technology that will be used in the lunar lander project.