The Grey NATO – 373 – From The Bottom Of The Oceans To Outer Space With Victor Vescovo¶
Published on Thu, 30 Apr 2026 03:00:00 -0400
Synopsis¶
In episode 373 of The Graynado, hosts James Stacy and Jason Heaton discuss their recent travels and watch-related updates, including James's enthusiasm for the new Ming polymesh bracelet—a revolutionary 3D-printed titanium strap he tested on his Breitling Aerospace. The main segment features an extended interview with explorer Victor Vescovo, who has achieved the remarkable trifecta of climbing Mount Everest, diving to the deepest points of all five oceans (including 15 trips to Challenger Deep), and traveling to space on Blue Origin.
Vescovo discusses his background in naval intelligence and private equity, his philosophy on risk mitigation versus recklessness, and his current ventures including developing next-generation ocean mapping technology, investing in asteroid mining company AstroForge, and pursuing exploratory cave diving. He shares fascinating details about his partnership with Omega, including how his Ultra Deep watch became the only timepiece to visit the bottom of the ocean (11 times), space (inside and outside a capsule), and the summit of Everest. The conversation also touches on his opposition to deep-sea mining, his investment in de-extinction technology through Colossal Biosciences, and his plans to build advanced stratospheric aircraft and deep-diving submersibles.
Links¶
Show Notes¶
- Ming Polymesh Straight
- Sinn 144S
- Arken Alterum Speakeasy Vancouver
- Victor Vescovo
- The Five Deeps
- The Limiting Factor
- AstroForge
- Psyche Asteroid
- Omega X-33
- Omega Seamaster 600m Planet Ocean
- Omega Planet Ocean Ultra Deep
- Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep Pro
- Don Walsh’s Aquastar
- Colossal Biosciences De-Extinction
- “Depth Charge” (Jason’s book)
- “Where The F* Are We?” — 99% Invisible
- Longitude
- — Dava Sobel
- Nextool Mini Sailor Lite
Transcript¶
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| James Stacy | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Great NATO. It's loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 373, and it's proudly brought to you by the always growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you're listening to the show and would like to support us, please visit thegreynado.com for more details. My name is James Stacy, and I'm joined as ever by my friend and co-host Jason Heaton. Hey Jason, how are we doing? |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, since Monday, since we talked last, I'm doing okay. We're uh kind of a weird time warp scenario here where today's main topic was recorded a couple of weeks ago and we're recording this so well over a week before it's gonna run, so it's kind of a kind of a weird scenario. But yeah, so far so good. It's beautiful day here. It's actually gonna be quite quite summery. Um we'll see if that lasts. But uh yeah, how about how about you? You're still you're still fighting some jet lag, I'm sure. |
| James Stacy | I I'm still just getting yeah, just just still in the in the you know, the throes of of figuring out, you know, the post plan for Watches and Wonders and getting stories up and trying to get some sleep and I'm off to Vancouver tomorrow, you're off to California this weekend. So we kind of had like a three-yda window to you know as I like to say put a bow on the butt on the uh to put a bow on the mega sode but also to prep the sort of front and back of the episode for today's chat with Victor Vescovo uh obviously a legendary explorer, a man who's been to the bottom of the ocean, et cetera, et cetera. We will get to that in just a moment. Um today's kind of chit chat up top isn't going to be super timely, again, because this doesn't run for a little while, and because we just did some chit chat a couple days ago, uh you're off to California. Looks like you're gonna be swinging by uh wind up S F. You excited to be out there? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it's gonna be m I think I mentioned this in the last episode. I've got quite a varied lineup of stuff to do. We're we're going to uh some opera performances in LA on uh the next on this coming weekend, which is now in the past for people listening. And then uh driving north up the coast, uh kind of stopping a few places along the way, including uh hopefully a dive if conditions uh uh hold um around Big Sur with some folks that everyone will be familiar with and I I don't want to give anything away there. Um and then uh yeah, ending up eventually in San Francisco a week later with uh with an uh the second of my my girlfriend's daughters who lives there and uh we'll be hanging out in the city and then it just seemed like the timing could be such that I'll end up at wind up San Francisco. So um nice. You know, in a very civilian capacity, just kind of walk the show and say hi to some people. So yeah, if anyone's around and they they they see me and recognize me or at least hear my voice, um say hi. I'd love to love to chat with some folks. |
| James Stacy | For sure. Yeah, no, I think I think that's great. And yeah, like you said, this is some of this will be past tense and some uh in this scenario, uh I'm about to leave for the Vancouver Time Peace show and for a weekend in Vancouver and then a week seeing my brother in rural BC, by the time this comes out, I'll actually be almost heading home um from all of that. Uh the only other thing that I did want to talk about that is timely, but you know, it didn't align with any of the other recordings that we had necessarily is uh another really exciting thing I saw in Geneva that actually came out um it it could have I guess it could have been on the last episode and we were just so kind of stacked up with with watches that we didn't get to it. Uh but this is the new uh Ming polymesh. Uh if you'll allow me to get very nerdy and watchy here right at the start. So the polymesh came out last year with a curved end link meant for Ming's own watches. Um, because Ming recognizes that they're not the only brand out there and they work with a series of brands through their horological alliance that don't use curved that wouldn't need curved uh spring bars, they're now making the same strap but with a straight end link. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And uh I you know, |
| James Stacy | I I met up with Logan Baker who now works with Ming and uh he had a sample of this and I put it on my aerospace and man it I mean it just it cost me fifteen hundred Swiss francs immediately. Immediately. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow. There is no strategy like |
| James Stacy | this. I was wondering where you were going to put this. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's |
| James Stacy | uh so I have one in the mail. Uh they launched uh as we're recording this, it launches tomorrow. When you hear this, it will be a week old. You will have seen the story on uh Hodinky and I'm sure this will be all over the Slack. Is it an expensive thing? Yeah, it's like almost two thousand dollars. Once you probably get it here uh more in Canadian, uh that's more than my aerospace cost to be fair, or very similar. It'll be right in the same zone. I couldn't care less. I this is the most exciting uh strap uh bracelet scenario I've I've come across in years. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Uh I've never experienced anything quite |
| James Stacy | like it. It's heavy and dense, but moves like a fabric. Huh. Um the closest thing I could say is like I guess chain mail, but imagine if the link was uh a a fraction of a millimeter across and if the tolerance is If you don't know the strap and you missed it, it's uh it's an additive. So to borrow the easiest term, it's a three D printed strap. It's technically laser centered titanium powder in grade five. There's like nearly eighteen hundred components. It's printed in place. So there's no pins, there's no screws. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh. The only thing added to the strap |
| James Stacy | that that includes like the buckle and the hinge in the buckle is printed as such. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Uh they add a spring |
| James Stacy | bar and then the um the entire thing is sort of hand finished uh and processed so that there's no little burrs if you're into 3D printing. You know that that can be a thing regardless of what you're printing with. Uh I I just it,'s a unique experience. I've never come across anything like it. It looks really cool on uh on the uh on the aerospace. I published a very quick wrist shot or pair of wrist shots in the story announcing it that would have gone live last week. So by all means uh swing by Hodinky if you didn't get a chance to see that. I have one coming in the mail for like a long term sort of test uh to check out and uh and that that'll be the one that I'm also buying from Ming uh un unless for some reason I end up not liking it very much. But I spent about twenty four hours with one on the aerospace. I fell asleep with it on, totally forgot the watch was on my wrist when I went to bed that night. Uh it's a it's a marvelous, weird, fantastic thing that feels like a magic trick. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow, yeah. Okay, so um I've got a few questions. I'm looking at the photo on Ming's website. They don't have the the straight end one, they've got the the curved uh version on their website. Um but I'm curious about that buckle. What's the deal with the hinge on the buckle? How does that how does that work? It's like two squares, and then there's this triangular piece, and then there's the pin. And I'm just wondering how the strap feeds through that. |
| James Stacy | Oh, so it feeds in and under like an apple strap? |
| Jason Heaton | Okay. Oh, okay. And then there's a |
| James Stacy | little uh tang that's |
| Jason Heaton | you don't need keepers. No keepers needed. That's what it is, yeah. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, it goes in and under like an apple strap or like some of the other sports straps we've seen in the last few years. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a little |
| James Stacy | kind of shark fin tab on the underside that just keeps the strap from it's dude, it's so smooth and soft and kind of almost it has a lot of structure, but at the same time it it's like fabric. Yeah. Like a heavy metal fabric. I don't know how to really describe it. It's a crazy thing to and like watching people check it out for the first time and like run their fingers through it, or if you drape it over the edge of a table |
| Jason Heaton | and it it like fully conforms to |
| James Stacy | the curvature of a table. You can kind of spiral it up on itself like a like a a ribbon. through so that it catches on on the pin buckle and then you you kind of channel it through that part under your wrist or under the the overpass and there's a little tab that kind of keeps it in place. So then when you want to take it off, you get a finger in there and just lift it off of that tab and it just slides right out. |
| Jason Heaton | Fantastic. Okay, so my next question is I'm I'm scheming now um of any titanium watches I have. Yeah, well |
| James Stacy | could you put one on? I mean I only have it's only twenty millimeters right now. I think I think they didn't say this. I believe it was mentioned that uh 22 is possible as well. |
| Jason Heaton | Would it be possible, having handled this, to make a a pass-through single piece strap out of this? I mean it'd probably scratch up the case back. That would be the |
| James Stacy | Yeah, I I think that it would cause a lot of abrasion. Yeah. And it's quite a thin the the strap is strong enough that that if it was you know, if it caught on something, it will break the spring bar before the strap. It's actually a lot stronger than you'd think. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. But I have to imagine if you did, you know, to |
| James Stacy | put it on an FXD, for example. Um I I think mechanically it could probably go through the it might lift a quite a bit as it makes that second turn, like the one to go down and then the one against the back of the |
| Jason Heaton | case. Um it might there might |
| James Stacy | be a little bit of tension there. And I have to just think over time you would either cause quite a lot of like metal on metal rubbing, which titanium's not great with. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. And two, you might just |
| James Stacy | have it where it has a little bit of tension there and you're that's the exact point that you're like squeezing as you tighten it down. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Well, that saves me some money. |
| James Stacy | Yeah, sure. I don't I don't think I think you're you're uh as far as the FXD goes, I think one one of the few things I don't think this strap could work |
| Jason Heaton | on. Yeah. Yeah. Um and I also |
| James Stacy | think it might be too little strap thickness for a watch like that. |
| Jason Heaton | Really? Wow. Like it suits the um well I was thinking of the CW C W N actually. Um in twenty. |
| James Stacy | Oh, CWN one uh being twenty for sure. I I will I will I'll give it a try. I'll I'll try and feed a piece of the one that I get in and see how it kind of looks and works. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, right. Uh who knows, maybe they would make a single |
| James Stacy | pass uh option in the future, like a a titanium printed NATO. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, right. Essentially. Which would be nuts. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. But yeah, I I was blanking on the on the CWN one. Shame on me. But yeah, I I figured you were leaning. I think with the CWN1, there it's a little bit less bulky of a of a case than the FXC. That could that could work. It's such a nice match for just how thin the aerospace |
| Jason Heaton | is. Yeah. Can't wait to see how it looks on the aerospace. That's that's probably amazing. |
| James Stacy | Let me see. I can send you a a picture of theerospace. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, look at it on the aerospace. Oh my god. |
| James Stacy | It's like techie and because of the patterning, it's a little bit broke. And like if I was look, I I was already kind of in the market to buy another bracelet for the aerospace, which would get me the UTC module. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And those are more than the cost of the |
| James Stacy | watch as well to get a bracelet and the module. And I hadn't come across a titanium option that was really suited. So maybe I'm not going to get my UTC module. Maybe this is the way that it ends |
| Jason Heaton | up. But I'm very happy with this combo. Ooh, boy, is that sharp. Oh, that is gorgeous. |
| James Stacy | Super nerdy. Yeah. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | It's super nerdy. But it's |
| James Stacy | even more nerdy that it's out of aerospace. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh. And uh I showed it to a couple people like 'cause I was walking around I and I said, you know, it's don't take a picture or whatever, but you can check it out. And everybody goes like, Oh, it's like a perfect match for |
| Jason Heaton | this silly watch. And some people love love |
| James Stacy | the aerospace when they see it. Yeah. And other people you could see like especially walking around Geneva during watches orders, they're like a freaking quartz watch, you knob. So |
| Jason Heaton | it is that is what it is. But yeah, I uh |
| James Stacy | I I'm I'm pumped about this. Um and and I promise I I'm not being paid by Ming. This is not an ad. I'm paying for the strap if I end up keeping it, I promise. Um and and that's that's my comfort zone for these sorts of things. Uh they offered to send one uh without a receipt, uh like without an invoice simply because I hadn't had a lot of time to to decide if I mesh with it and it's not an inexpensive uh strap, certainly. So that's uh that's where we're at with that one. But uh yeah, I'm very much looking forward to it. I guess I tried to get it to Vancouver in time and and who knows, maybe by the time this episode airs I will have had it in Vancouver. Yeah. Um but it looks like I'm gonna miss it by a day or two in Vancouver and I'll have to forward it back to Toronto. So we'll do what we do what we gotta do with the with the shipping. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. All right. Yeah. So that's |
| James Stacy | what I've got to add. A little bit of color at the top of the show. And uh you've got a little update on the best TGN episode tournament bracket. How's uh how's that shaping up uh to the best of our knowledge as some of this is still up in the air obviously due to the time frame. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah this is um this is uh we didn't plan well in terms of uh the announcements here because we actually don't know who's made it into the championship round, even though we should, because as as we record this, um they've moved on from the final four. And uh championship voting is open until May 4th. So um get in there uh and and cast your votes. There was there was an interesting final four showdown, and I'm curious to see who's going to make it to the the championship round. But um since we're recording this a week ahead of time, not sure that's uh the the suspense is killing me. But yeah, go ahead and and go ahead and vote in the the championship round. Again, it's open until May 4th and uh jump into Slack and uh for more details about that and get the updates. Um and a big thanks to our intrepid uh mod on Slack uh Jackson B who uh spearheaded this whole kind of diversion from our absences from uh from the show the past couple of weeks. So uh it's really cool. It's been really fun to kind of revisit some of these old episodes and see what people are digging up from the archives. So thanks, Jackson, for that. And uh yeah, go check it out. |
| James Stacy | Fabulous. Yeah, looking forward to seeing how that shapes up and uh and having maybe a little bit more of an in-depth convo uh following uh the the finalization of uh of the championship round of voting. So that's super fun. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. What do you say we uh jump into some wrist |
| James Stacy | check and then on to a chat with Victor. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, definitely. I've got on um the uh my Zinn one four four S. This is the limited edition that I bought from from Tom Place last September when when we were all in sitting in your kitchen having some whiskey and I made one of those one of those decisions. We've probably all been there. Sure. And no regrets so far. It's been it's been a great watch. I've I've put it back on the um I put it back on the Porsche design bracelet, which just looks so perfect on this thing. I had toyed with the idea of wearing this watch for for the Defender trophy, given its ruggedness and the the the chronograph functionality. I was gonna throw it on a NATO, but uh there's something about that case shape that just doesn't work quite well for me on a NATO. I haven't or I haven't quite found the right NATO, especially with black hardware because I'm kind of picky about that sort of thing. So, you know, if anyone's got any ideas um of of kind of a perfect strap for this watch that, you know, I'm kind of more of a sporty strap. Um, you know, let me let me know on Slack, you know, tag me and and post up a picture or a link. I'm I've I feel like I'm a little bit behind the curve on on what's out there in terms of straps these days. So if anyone's uh got any ideas for that watch, it'd be great. But in the meantime, it's it's looking really good on the on the Porsche design bracelet. So that's what I've got on. |
| James Stacy | Killer. Yeah, I I love that case on a bracelet for sure. That's uh typically how I wore mine. I was able to scrounge up uh uh kind of a suitable bracelet for my my GMT back in the day, and it always kind of suited it nicely. So that's a good call. |
| Jason Heaton | What are you wearing? Uh speaking of watches that work |
| James Stacy | really well on a specific strap, I'm wearing my Arkin Alterum Vancouver Speakeasy. I was, you know, just kind of packing my bag for Vancouver and and kind of threw it on. And uh, it's just a delight. It's a nice size. I love the rubber strap. It's probably the only watch I have where I wear it on a black rubber strap. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh. I think it suits it quite nicely. |
| James Stacy | Um, yeah. I mean, I've had this watch now for nearly a year. I got it at uh Vancouver last year as part of Ken's kind of West Coast Vancouver San Francisco speakeasy thing. Uh and that's with the green uh Sarako case and the kind of sand-colored GMT hand. I love this watch. I've worn it a ton. It was one of my favorite summer watches last year. And uh and yeah, it's it's a treat to have it on. So it's uh that's what's on rest today. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, that's great. Yeah, and then coincidentally I'm wearing my Arkin heavy cotton t-shirt uh as we're recording this. Uh Ken's got uh some good soft goods too. If you're if you're keen on a cap or a shirt, uh check that out too. But uh you'll be seeing Ken in Vancouver here in a few days. |
| James Stacy | I should see him as early as tomorrow. I believe I believe we both get in roughly or he might already be there. I don't even know. Um, but I I should see him uh a couple times this weekend. I'm looking forward to it along with uh a couple of the other Jasons in my life. And uh whether it's a Gallup, uh Lim, uh Hutton, I'm looking forward to getting a revolver. There's a RZD gear swap on Saturday morning. There's a uh Take's got a uh a whole like camera and coffees things going on Friday. So I'm look, I'm I'm uh I'm gonna be kidding a candy shop. It looks like the weather's gonna be really good too. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow. It's like a little bit cloudy |
| James Stacy | in fifteen for the whole weekend right now on on uh on the weather uh on the weather app. So I I'm very much excited to uh to get out there. I have a very early flight tomorrow, but uh uh it'll be a joy uh to to uh get out there. I just hope I have some internet because um uh I've got some stuff I gotta get done. |
| Jason Heaton | All right. Sounds like a great trip. But hey yeah |
| James Stacy | speaking of all sorts of adventures, how about we get into the main topic, which is a chat with none other than Victor Viscovo? We've got his bio here from uh Wikipedia, and Victor Viscovo is a private investor and explorer who became the first person in history to climb Mount Everest, dive to the bottom of the ocean and visit space. You gotta do all three of those with some sort of a wild triple crown, if I may editorialize during our intro here. Uh he served twenty years in the US Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, retiring in twenty thirteen as a commander. In twenty seventeen, he completed the Explorer's Grand Slam, which requires climbing the highest peak on all seven of the world's continents, including Mount Everest and skiing at least 100 kilometers to the north and south poles. He piloted the first repeated dives to the ocean's deepest point, Challenger Deep, in the Pacific's Mariana Trench, now 15 times, and in August 2019. He became the first person to visit the five deeps, the deepest point in all five of the world's oceans. He's clearly a completionist, is what we're what we're learning here. Uh and not a guy that's going to be outdone by uh many of his peers, certainly. Uh Victor now has personally explored the bottom of seventeen deep ocean trenches and has made three dives to the Titanic, including the only solo dive ever made to the shipwreck. In twenty twenty five, the US Navy announced that a new ocean surveillance vessel would be named after him. He is also a commercially rated multi-engine jet, seaplane, and helicopter pilot, a certified submersible test pilot, and recently flew into space on Blue Origins new Shepherd rocket. If that's not enough for |
| Jason Heaton | you, something's wrong. Yeah. |
| James Stacy | But let's get into this chat between Jason and Victor Viscovo all about his exploits, some of which I'm sure we just listed. Uh I can't wait for this one. It's gonna be great. |
| Jason Heaton | All right, Victor Vescovo, welcome to the Grey NATO, we we're we're so happy to have you and I just wanna throw out an acknowledgement and a thanks to our mutual friend David Cuncanon for connecting us. Uh David was a a previous guest on T GN and we had a lot of fun with him and we also had I guess you're a bit of an air apparent to um or or a spiritual descendant of of Don Walsh who uh who was on our show uh a couple of years ago as well. So welcome. We're so happy to have you. |
| Victor Vescovo | Yeah, thank you very much. Those are both great individuals and uh happy to be here. |
| Jason Heaton | I would suspect most of our listeners are aware of who you are from your your uh your exploits, the the five deeps in uh in particular, um and your some of your work with Omega, being that we're a bunch of watch nerds. But um for those that maybe don't know your background or actually I don't know a lot about your your background prior to kind of when you came on the scene more famously. Um so maybe you can give it a little bit of of a background because I think people often see explorers, people that have gotten some renown as just sort of appearing fully fully fledged, you know, in their element and doing what they do without like hearing about the the background. Like I I'm just curious how a guy like you, you know, came out of the the US Navy um intelligence service and some investing stuff and whatever and how you got into exploration and the stuff you do now. If you can give a uh just a elevator speech or a little bit of a background, that'd be great. |
| Victor Vescovo | Sure. I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. And uh I think I was born with the genetic code that made me extremely curious. And I I've been cited as saying the most dangerous thing that ever happened to me was when I got my first bicycle when I was six years old, because I tended to vanish for very long periods of time exploring my city here in Texas and Dallas. And uh but I led uh a couple of in some respects parallel lives as I was growing up in my 20s and 30s. I was a finance guy primarily, although I did some consulting as well. I worked in investment banking in New York for a while and then I went into private equity. I co-founded a private equity firm in around the year 2000 and did that for about 22 years or so. But in parallel to that, I was approached when I was in business school in my late 20s to join the U.S. Navy Reserves in intelligence. So I had a parallel life in finance, but I also did quite a bit of activity more than the norm in uh Navy circles. And I actually served for 20 years and ended up retiring as a commander. The first 10 years I was a targeting officer. So I worked with the air crews on how to plan missions and bomb targets and then do the battle damage assessment. I was involved in the Kosovo conflict pretty heavily and then after 9-11 happened I was cross-trained into counterterrorism because one of my languages is Arabic and that was useful in that. As you can imagine. But at the same time, I mean, for me, I'm not the kind of guy that would go on vacation and go hang out at a pool or or what have you. I would always want to do something very, very active. And so from the time I was in my early 20s, I got very heavily into high altitude mountain climbing, you know, formal training, really high peaks, very technical. And I did that for like two decades. And I just gradually, you know, worked my way up to more and more extreme environments accumulating to eventually going to Mount Everest and being able to summon that peak in 2010. But then I started, you know, hitting, getting close to my 40s or so. And that's more of a young person's game. And so I said, what's something else that's actually really challenging but isn't so brutally physical as high altitude mountaineering? And that's when I realized in in 2015 that no human being had been to the bottom of four of our world's oceans. And that just was like a personal affront to me because we certainly had the technology to do it. You know, humans had been to the bottom of Challenger Deep twice, you know, James Cameron in 2022, and then Don Walsh and Jacques Picard in 1960. So we had the tech. It's just that no government or no individual had really applied themselves to do it. So, you know, I come from a culture where it's like, well, you know, if you're not gonna do it, you know, why not? You know, the I said the five most dangerous words in the English language, you know, how hard could it be? And that that began a a five or six year endeavor to design and build the mo what at the time and I still think is the most advanced deep diving submersible ever built. And I personally I'm a pilot. Have been since I was 18. So I said, you know, how hard could it be to fly a submarine versus a helicopter? You know, so I w underwent that training and yeah, we did the five deeps and then uh sixteen other deep ocean trenches over the next four years of heavily diving that submersible and doing a lot of science, a lot of exploration. And that's what I guess I got some degree of notoriety for. And then because of that and having a very successful private equity career, I was able to get on board of a Blue Origin flight and uh was in the capsule of the fifth man flight on Blue Origin's new Shepherd and went into space. So I ended up becoming the first person to go to the bottom of the ocean to Mount Everest and into space, which was something I had never really planned on doing. It just kind of happened. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay. So all of these endeavors um are they're very disparate. It's very very different activities, um, but all involve a considerable level of of risk. And yet you don't present yourself as as kind of a base jumper, adrenaline junkie, and correct me if I'm wrong, but like uh would you say risk is something you seek out or or or I mean I there's a lot of risk mitigation that you have to do, of course, but |
| Victor Vescovo | that's exactly it. And uh yeah, people look at me going, Oh my gosh, you do so many dangerous things, but I am the l I am the first person away from recklessness. There's a very fine line. You can do very dangerous things, but you can mitigate risk as much as you can and make them repeatable in some respects, like a stunt person do does. I mean, they extremely dangerous things, but they study the problem, they practice it, they get the proper training, they add as much technology as they can to be able to do the mission, and they make it look easy, right? And that's in some respects what I did in my mountaineering career and then eventually in in diving as well. Yes, these are not the most safe things to do, but if you have the proper training and the right mental attitude and you're not one to panic and you treat things very, you know, rationally, yes, you can do these things. Now, the risk is never zero, but you know, and that gets into some of the things I'm still working on that are pretty out there in terms of extreme environments. But again, I've I've got the training and now the background that I think I can manage the risk reasonably well while still pushing the envelope. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And and are you someone who kind of once you've conquered something or achieved a goal, you are I don't want to say quick to move on, but you seek the next challenge. I I before we started recording a couple of weeks ago when we connected, you know, you reminded me that you'd um you'd sold your submersible, you've kind of moved on from that aspect of your career. Um you'd kind of die. Well, |
| Victor Vescovo | not really. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm not a scientist. I'm not a marine biologist. I'm not a professional mountain climber. I'm I'm a technology developer. I mean, that's what I do now. I'm a venture capitalist. I have my own fund. I make you know pretty extreme investments in venture. But I developed the limiting factor and we dove it hard for four years. What we were really doing was we were showing what it could do. No submersible had ever done anything remotely like that. And it took several years to perfect it. That was really bleeding edge technology. And at the beginning a couple things didn't work, let's put it that way, but we perfected it to the to the point where I was able to sell it to a marine research organization. And that's all they do now is they dive it all over the world and do really cool science stuff. And now what I'm thinking long term in the next five or 10 years is building the next generation of a submersible that'll be even more advanced than the one that we built, taking all the learnings that we got from the first one and apply it to the next one. But I'm also working on an aviation project, I'm working on a diving project that's scuba related. I'm in I'm doing a lot of venture stuff. So I just move on from one challenge to the next because that's what keeps me interested. And uh I think that's why we're here is to keep pushing the envelope. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Um so as someone who has traveled to space and been to the bottom of the sea, I'm I'm curious about I guess I have this I've been a space buff for a very long time, but I have this bit of a strong reaction to this idea that um we need to look to the heavens. We need to go, we need to uh colonize Mars. We need to like I don't want to say it feels like there's this movement towards not abandoning Earth, but finding ways to like leave Earth and and explore space almost at the expense of like forgetting that the ocean is so unexplored. And I I I get the feeling you're someone who you're an ocean lover. I mean I've I've read quotes by you, I've read things, you know. What what's your feeling about space versus the ocean? |
| Victor Vescovo | I reject that, this or that. I'm always a both person. I believe we have the resources, the intellectual curiosity to pursue both, as I personally have and continue to do. I mean, I mentioned I'm a venture capitalist. I'm invested in a company called AstroForge. We're trying to figure out how to mine asteroids, but at the same time, I'm trying to develop the next generation deep diving submersible. I believe that we need to learn and inhabit both domains for the survival of the species. You know, getting off planet is not a bad idea. You know, we're one massive asteroid strike away from having a really, really bad species level event. And the ocean, however, to your point, is 70% of our planet. Most of the life on planet Earth is in the ocean. It's not on land. And we have to make sure that we do not continue treating it in such a horrific way that it ends up destabilizing our lives. So it's not or it's both. And I believe we have the resources and the energy to to do both, as I am. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Interesting about mining asteroids. That that's that seems like a very ambitious uh challenge. |
| Victor Vescovo | I make that's just one vector of wow, that's kind of out there, Victor, but it's actually an engineering issue. We have landed and captured material from asteroids three times in human history. The Japanese did it twice and we did it once. Now, those were billion-dollar government level projects, but now what we're trying to commercialize it, get it at a much lower price point and recover precious metals. And yes, this could be a 10-year or even a 50-year project, but we are moving the needle forward on how to do this. And if we do, it has, I mean, quite literally transformational impacts on the planet and our access to rare resources, like you know, platinum group metals. You know, you you even just think about the asteroid that's out there called Psyche. It's this massive metal asteroid. I mean, if you if you could somehow get there and mine that asteroid, you're kind of done for certain parts of the periodic table that you would never have to mine on Earth again because that's where it came from. All the metal on earth came from space. We're just trying to cut out the middleman. |
| Jason Heaton | What's your take on deep sea mining? I'm strong. I'm fairly against it. |
| Victor Vescovo | I'm very passionately against it. And I've, you know, I was published in Time with an op-ed against it. I'm in many respects, you know, one of the voices that has been most vocal about being against it. I understand it has significant environmental damages, and one can argue that versus the need for the minerals, et cetera. But for me, I don't think it's going to work. I think the people that are strong proponents of deep sea mining, I don't think they've ever up no one has ever operated heavy mining equipment at the bottom of the ocean at 4,000 plus meters, deeper than the Titanic is. I think they're being extremely optimistic about the operating environment and how their economics will actually be when they actually try to retrieve polymetallic nodules. And the other deep, deep, dark secret of polymetallic nodule collection, which they're contemplating doing is you only get four metals from them. That's it. It's not like you get like 20 or 30 metals that's going to solve all these problems. You only get four. And cobalt and nickel are two of them. And those are semi-rare, but not that rare. And they're becoming less important as we get new chemistries for batteries, which was the original purpose of deep sea mining. And the other two are copper and manganese, which are relatively plentiful in the Earth's crust. So the issue is: I think, as I've said, that deep sea mining is an interesting idea, but it is environmentally destructive, it's technologically very difficult, and it is going to address a minerals problem that existed 10 years ago. So I don't see the point. And I think that like many companies, once their original investment thesis doesn't pan out, they don't just one day say, oh, well, you know, time moved on. Here's your money back. We'll stop doing what we're doing. No, they keep flawing their business case until it fails, until they run out of money. And I think that's kind of where they are now. They've done a total pivot away from saying we need to mine the seafloor for the electrification of the world with, you know, electric vehicles, that's no longer that viable a case. So now they're saying, oh, it's for national security, China, China, China. You know, we need to have our own minerals and process them ourselves. But that's a stretch and I don't think it's gonna work. So that's that's really why I'm very strongly against it. I just don't think it's gonna work. |
| Jason Heaton | It's timely that we're speaking um a day after Artemis II um rounded the the the back side of the moon. This this episode won't go up until late April, but we're speaking on April 7th. Um and I I think you mentioned you were well we'll bring it around to watches. You were wearing a special watch uh while while they're up there. Um but um also your your discussion of mining um minerals on on asteroids, I I think there's some plan to to exploit, if you will, the the moon for for similar purposes. Um any thoughts on that? Do you think the moon is a viable place? |
| Victor Vescovo | Well, I will say I I am wearing and I'm wearing it right now. Um you can't see me, but I I've got my uh Omega X33, which uh they're they're they're wearing them on the Artemis, a different a different version, but it's the same model. Uh and I'm gonna keep wearing it until they make it back. safely And this watch was actually given to me by Charlie Duke, who was the youngest person to walk on the moon. He gave this timepiece to me. Uh this is this is a new build. It's not his, but this is a watch that Omega gave to Charlie to give to me before I went up on my new Shepherd flight about four years ago. So so this watch was given to me by the youngest moonwalker ever, which is kind of cool. That's great. It's a great timepiece. But uh but mining, you know, the moon is is interesting. It's not like mining the asteroids. The issue with asteroids is about one percent of them are metal asteroids. They're called class M. And they have a lot of iron, but they also have precious metals. So they can be very valuable to mine. And you don't have to go all the way to the asteroid belt to mine the asteroids. These are actually in orbit in kind of this similar area to where Artemis is now. Now, the moon is much more limited in what you can mine. Now the most valuable thing you can probably mine is simply water. Because if you have water and if you have solar or nuclear power, you can split the water and get oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen to breathe, hydrogen as a fuel. It's great. It's for that. But rare metals like you would mind an asteroid, you don't really get because the moon is primarily made up of regolith, which is just more carbon and not a lot of useful stuff other than for maybe construction. And there's helium-3 on the moon, which some would argue could become a very valuable resource for nuclear fusion. So it there are some companies that are looking at mining the moon, but that's more for government kind of contracting and use. We're going pure commercial. We are building our business case for AstroForge to actually go out and mine precious metals from asteroids. I mean it,'s a single large suitcase of precious metals from an asteroid is worth over $50 million. So it more than pays for the launch and all the support infrastructure. But more than more than that, it's about the capability. And that's really what we're trying to do is just go to an asteroid, land on it, show that we can actually mine it. And then it becomes just a matter of scaling it. And I mean that's a that's a trillion dollar company if you can do that. It would make not in the near term, but in 50 or 100 years, you would make mining on Earth inefficient and obsolete because you can go to asteroids where they're at 10 or even 100 times the concentration they are on Earth. Why wouldn't you mine it? And with SpaceX's stars Sthipars, and I'm an investor in SpaceX, that's dramatically lowering the cost to put payloads into space. So |
| Jason Heaton | it when Starship gets rocking |
| Victor Vescovo | and rolling with the hundred plus ships that Elon wants to build, you're talking about putting stuff into orbit at $10 a kilogram. You can put massive mining complexes into space for the cost of putting a big satellite up there now. Well, yeah, why wouldn't you go to a near-Earth asteroid and mine the hell out of it and just dropped it literally back on the Earth. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Jeez. Space. Oh by the oh by the |
| Victor Vescovo | way. Oh, I have to so I don't forget. Uh I had uh um a a nice meal with the CEO of Omega, Reynold Aeschelman. And I told him that I was an investor in AstroForge. I said, hey, Reynold, by the way, if we mine some precious metals from an asteroid and we bring them back, would would you like to put a bid on some of the metal for your time pieces? He just stared right at me and said, Yes. And his chief commercial officer was going, Wait, wait, wait, we haven't even talked about price. And Reynolds was like, I don't care. We want that. It's right in our |
| Jason Heaton | wheelhouse. That's yeah, I would I would get through the special edition |
| Unknown | spin out from that. Yeah, that's yeah, the first the |
| Victor Vescovo | first platinum dial watch from an asteroid coming from Omega. That's right, that's my hoax. So I'm gonna try and make that happen one |
| Jason Heaton | day. That's amazing. Um yeah, so uh well tell me a little bit how I think I know some lore around your your interest in Omega. Um you know, there's a certain different brand, of course, that that we all know and love as well, but uh that that have had the history with deep ocean stuff, um specifically with the Challenger Deep back with uh with Don Walsh and and Picard um being Rolex. Um but how did you l settle on Omega? You |
| Victor Vescovo | I heard Don was upset about that. I heard that uh you know he did not authorize he was the Navy commander of that vessel and Jacques Picard strapped a Rolex to the outside of the southern. He did not approve that, nor did the Navy. So that was kind of a pirate kind of thing. I didn't know that until recently. Don never told me that, but other reliable people did. And it makes sense to me as a naval officer. There's no way you can commercialize a mission like that. But they did, and you know, it is what it is. But yeah, so they they they kind of snuck one in. Um I was a private expedition because so I could do whatever I wanted on my sub. So I took down Omega. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah but no the the the the story there is true. |
| Victor Vescovo | It's been widely reported, but one of the things I learned in training to be a submersible pilot was we had to have all this type of safety gear inside the submersible in case it got entangled or there was a problem. And one thing that they absolutely required was an analog timepiece. It couldn't be in any way connected to the submersible in case the power failed or there was some other failure. So I said, okay. And you know, I said I'm I've got a decent watch. I don't I don't even remember what it was at the time, but I said, yeah, let's get a hardcore, you know, dedicated diving watch that will keep perfect time, et cetera. And I went to my local uh boutique in omega because they had sea master and i just didn't a little bit of research they made the first commercial diving watch i went okay i'll get an omega it's a it's a great brand and that would work i was kind of in a hurry to be quite frank. I went to the boutique and I'm looking at the different seamasters and uh I I picked one out that was titanium, same material that my sub was made out of. I liked that symmetry. And I'll never forget the salesperson, very nice uh young lady. She said, Oh, do you dive? I went, Yeah, a little bit. She said, Really, really? What kind of diving do you do? Do you scoop? I went, no, I'm gonna take a submersible down to the bottom of the Atlantic in a couple of weeks. She she's like, Oh, oh, that's nice. Okay. Um, what color would you like? You know? I don't think she quite believed me. And uh so I literally just bought at retail an Omega Seamaster uh 300 meter watch, 600, sorry. And then uh I dove to the bottom of the Atlantic several weeks later. And I think that got picked up by the folks in BN. And within a week I had an email from you know Reynold and the others there they're saying, Hey, can you can you come to Switzerland? We want to we want to talk to you about what you're doing. And I went, sure. So I went over there. We had a nice lunch, and then they showed me the factory. They said, Yeah, we'd really like to partner with you on your expedition to all five of the world's oceans and even the Challenger Deep. I said, that sounds great. They said, yeah, I would love to. And here's the another little story about that was the head of product development of Omega, Gregory Kisling, who's now the CEO of Bruget. He's a great guy. He was there and he presented what were going to be commemorative watches with you know engraved case backs to dive to Challenger deep and do the five deeps. And I'll never forget Raynald, the CEO, you know, looked at him saying, This is very nice. This is this is very appropriate, but I think we can do better. I think we need a timepiece that will be outside of the submersible. And I could see Gregory's face just go white and then they both turn a bit. Exactly. They both turned me. They said, when are you diving again? And this was early January. I said, I'm diving in late April. |
| Unknown | Wow. Exactly. And they were like, |
| Victor Vescovo | okay. And uh Gregory didn't speak a lot for the rest of the day. His his the wheels and his head were just turning. And one critical thing that happened was just getting the material that was qualified to go down to, you know, basically 11,000 meters. And we ended up using the offcuts from my submersible that were titanium. They were already qualified. So we got the coupons from that metal from my actual submersible that became the cases for the three ultra deep professionals, X1, X2, and X3. And that shaved off, you know, months of qualification and forging time. They could go right into machining and, you know, unbelievably, they were able to make all three timepieces and they worked spectacularly. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. I was struck by I was at the uh if you remember there was the y you were at that event in London, it was at the British Museum, really short event, but then there was a dinner in the evening and I remember you made the rounds with that watch um from table to table and you were letting people kinda hold it and I remember I've I've got a very blurry photo on my phone. I wish it was a better photo, but a blurry photo of it on my wrist. And that that thing was it was I mean, it's not something you'd you'd wear, but it was kinda wearable. It was and it was really cool. It was it was really neat. And then of course now they've come out with a commercial version of it, which uh Oh |
| Victor Vescovo | well that was that's a six thousand meter, not eleven thousand. So I I'd love for them to keep pushing the technology where it eventually becomes rated for eleven thousand. We'll see how that turns out. But uh yeah, so that was part of the deal that in taking all three time pieces down, I got to keep one. So I got to keep X2 out of the two X3. But I guess I this is more uh a time or better time than any to tell you some of the news I have about that particular timepiece. So the the full name is the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep Professional X2. That's the watch that I own. That is all three of them went down to the bottom of Challenger Deep, 10,935 meters on my first dive that I did in uh 2019. I then took mine down an additional 10 times. So mine has been down to the bottom of the ocean 11 times. The other two have been down once, omega was totally fine with them just going down once. Uh, because one of them actually got stuck on the bottom for about two days and they didn't want that to happen again. And mine went down eleven times. And since then, I actually went into space about four years ago in 2022. And I took that timepiece in the capsule with me uh above the Carmen line, above 100,000 uh kilometers. So it's been into space, but most recently last year in May, a very good friend of mine who is an expert mountaineer, he took the X2 to the summit of Everest. |
| Unknown | Wow. And then in December |
| Victor Vescovo | of this past year, 2025, Blue Origin uh allowed the watch to be strapped onto the booster of New Shepard 37, and it went into space again, but this time outside the pressure capsule. Wow. So this is now the only timepiece in history that has been to the bottom of the ocean and did so 11 times, has been into space inside and outside of a capsule and to the summit of Everest. |
| Unknown | Wow. Wow. Wow. It's |
| Victor Vescovo | a well traveled timepiece. Is it still |
| Unknown | ticking? Is it still ticking reasonably good time? thing The the thing is a tank.. Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. |
| Victor Vescovo | Yeah. It's it's in a uh safe deposit box here and down. Sure. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Man, you're hard on your watches. |
| Victor Vescovo | They like to travel. Yeah, they do. |
| Unknown | Yeah, right. So show me another watch that |
| Victor Vescovo | has that kind of provenance in terms of fridge. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Well, I also have the one. I also have |
| Victor Vescovo | I have the C Master that I wore on my wrist when I did all my dives. So that timepiece, you know has been I also took it into space I I took it down all I've been it's been down 15 times to Challenger deep because that's how many times I've personally been down there but it's been in 17 deep ocean trenches and it was on every dive I ever made for four years. So that's also a very well traveled watch. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. And you have uh |
| Jason Heaton | you bought, I believe it was at auction, right? Don Walsh's Aquastar that he wore in the Trieste back in nineteen sixty. How did that come about? |
| Victor Vescovo | Well, uh Don had uh you know he needed a timepiece to take down with him as well, I imagine, for exactly the same reason. So he went to the PX. And I I can't remember if it was in San Diego or Guam, but at the Navy PX, he bought an Aquastar and he wore it on his trip, the one trip he made to the bottom of Challenger Deep. And then it came up for auction after Don passed, and I thought it really should, for lack of a better phraseology, stay in the family. You know, I'm a fellow naval officer. I know the family. I took his son down to Challenger Deep in the same place that Don did in 1960. And I had the means. So I entered the auction and I paid what I had to pay to acquire the watch. My intention is not to keep it in some vault. I'm working with the Navy because I think they're rebuilding the exhibit of the uh of the Trieste at their museum. And when that is complete, I would like to kind of permanent loan to them to have the watch as part of the exhibit. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's great. |
| Jason Heaton | I I think there's a I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's some interesting overlap with uh Aquastar and Omega because the the founder of Aquastar, who was working for they were a subbrand of Jean Richard back in the early 60s. And when they started making diving watches, they called that line of watches, Aquastar. And they had a guy named Frederick Robert, head up Aquastar, and he was an avid diver and sailor. And so all they made were diving and sailing watches. And then he left Aquastar in, I believe, 69 or 70 and went to Omega. And he was the guy who was behind the development of a lot of those iconic early 70s weird-shaped Omega dive watches like the Ploprof and some of the thousand-meter seamasters and things like that. So I always like that sort of, I guess, serendipity, you know, the uh or synchronicity, I guess, between between Aquastar and Omega. And that's great. In a way, in |
| Victor Vescovo | a way, there was a handoff from Don, who had his AquaStar and he did the first dive and and then then I I came along. was the second American to go down and then uh I had an omega and yeah it all worked out. |
| James Stacy | So let's let's talk a little further |
| Jason Heaton | about ocean exploration and s and uh you know we talked a bit about space, but you have some some interesting work going on with uh specifically ocean floor mapping. Um and I I read you sent me a presentation and and I I'll fully admit there was a lot that I didn't understand about it. Um in in layman's terms, t t talk about what what you're up to with that and what it's called and whatever. |
| Victor Vescovo | When I started my project to go to the the bottom of the five oceans, I viewed it primarily you know as a personal adventure, but it was a technical endeavor to build the most advanced diving submersible that could do that, that could go to Challenger Deep repeatedly and safely, which had never been done before. So I'm more of a technol technologist, not a scientists. In the process of the four years of intensive diving with that submersible, you know, I brought along all sorts of scientists and oceanographers to go along for the ride. And as you would expect, they infected my rather curious mind with all the things that they were doing and spending time with them day after day on the ship. Yeah, I got really interested in ocean science. And the first statistic that just burdened burned into my mind was 71% of planet Earth is ocean, which is it's the vast majority of our own planet. 75% of it is completely unexplored and completely unmapped. Actually, less than 0.01% is actually visually viewed. The rest is all sonar. So three quarters of our ocean is still completely on the map. So if you do the math, that means half of planet Earth, mostly ocean, is completely unexplored. And it's hard to do because radio doesn't work through water and the ocean is very opaque and it's very deep. It's a tough problem. Well give me a tough problem. I'm going to want to try and figure out how to how to make it happen. And that's what I've been doing for the past two years since I sold the diving system. I've been trying to figure out how can we more efficiently map the seafloor. I mean we can do it technically, but it just requires an enormous amount of resources and it's slow. How can we speed it up, make it cheaper? And I think I've come upon the best solution that we have using modern technology. And that's why over the next two years, I'm going to be building a dedicated surface vessel that's actually quite compact, but it has the most powerful sonar you can put on a civilian vessel. And hopefully it'll be out there operating in two years, mapping the seafloor, you know, a couple of million square kilometers per year. And hopefully there are governments and nonprofit organizations or even individuals that would also want to buy a ship to help the cause. I'm going to buy and build and operate the first one. Hopefully, like-minded people that are even wealthier than I am, can say, hey, that's a really good project. I want to get involved. And then we can do it much faster, hopefully in our in our lifetimes if we have four or five of these vessels. But then there are other things I'm developing as well, which are autonomous aircraft that would be used to map the shallow areas. Different depths of the ocean require different technical solutions. And that's the other thing I think I bring to the table, which was historically, you know, governments that are mapping the sea floor, they're not really that cost conscious. So they they use a bulldozer to, you know, to scrape the soil. I mean, it's just not efficient. There are better ways to do it. And that's what I'm now doing as a private individual. I can move faster. I can, I'm very cost conscious, and sometimes that yields the best solution. You know, it wasn't the government that invented aircraft. It was the Wilbur and you know, Wilbur and Orville Wright bicycle guys in Ohio that figured out how to make powered flight. And sometimes the private sector gets the stuff done. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. Um so my familiarity with shipwreck hunting um l leads to uh what might be a naive question, but is the is the sonar similar? I mean I've seen the the results of a sonar scan looking for shipwrecks, and you can s it's this bottom contours, and then you see this anomaly that's shaped like a like a ship, and it's like lo and behold, we found something. What you're talking about is a much more powerful version of the same type of thing, right? You're bouncing sound waves off the what's below and then creating a map. Yeah. |
| Victor Vescovo | Yeah, it's still sonar, but they're too let's just say they're tuned very differently differently. When you're looking for a shipwreck, you've got to do that at very short range with very high-resolution sonar, usually from autonomous vehicles that are being operated. You know, you're only a couple hundred meters off the seafloor, or it's going to get lost in the noise. The sonar you use to map the seafloor is much more coarse. It doesn't have near the detail, but it can certainly see a seamount or an underwater ridge or a canyon. Yeah, that it's good at. I'm just trying to get the first draft of the ocean's seafloor. I'm not trying to get the minute details where you can find shipwrecks. We don't even have the map of, you know, where the Grand Canyon is underwater. I mean, goodness, they gotta start somewhere. So that's the plan. |
| Jason Heaton | Aside from scientific curiosity and just the the idea of just exploring the planet, what um why is it important? |
| Unknown | I know it's funny. It's I always get that's the immediate |
| Victor Vescovo | question. So why are you going to so much trouble? What what's the point you're you're asking that from someone who's you know frankly an explorer we have huge blank spaces on the map of our own planet we have better maps of Mars and the moon than we do of our own planet. And you're asking, you know, what's the point? Well, exploration for exploration's sake. And the other way I'm now kind of positioning it is: can you guarantee me that if we mapped the 75% of the sea floor that we had not mapped, that we will find nothing interesting. That makes no sense. We all know with that sheer amount of exploration to be done, we'll we're gonna find something interesting. I don't know what that is. I don't know if it has any utility at all. I'm not a scientist. What I do know is that at least my job in my existence is to try and fill in the blank spots of the map. That's what makes me happy. That's obviously I think what I was meant to do. And so I'm going to try and do it. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. Uh in the presentation that you sent me about this project, um, I was looking at the the the craft, the the the vessel that you've that you're you're building to do this, and it looks fairly humble. I mean it looks it doesn't look very big and I believe it says that there can be a crew of one or two people. Um this is not some giant, you know, research vessel kind of thing. Um how long is this thing made what what are we talking here? |
| Victor Vescovo | It's twenty three meters. And that's pretty short. But the issue is according to international maritime regulations, below twenty three meters, you can have a single pilot. So that's the issue. We didn't design this as normal oceanographic research vessels are designed, which is okay, it needs to do this. Oh, and by the way, it needs to do this. Oh, and it needs to do this. And you end up with these hundred meter vessels that have a crew of 40. Well, that's massively expensive. I learned that directly when I had my own research vessel and my minimal crew was like 16 people. This thing cost an enormous amount just to be at dock. So we start, I started from the other principle, which was okay, start with the sonar. What's the largest, most powerful sonar I can buy? And then I built the smallest, most efficient ship to house it. I approached it from the other end and I ended up with a vessel that's gonna push the boundaries of regulation in terms of semi-autonomous operation. But we have so much more capability now with sensors, with AI and everything to keep the ship safe. And we have autonomous vessels out at sea now that I think we can get it done. So again, I'm pushing the boundaries, not just of raw tech, but also operating principles and insurance and international regulations at sea and all that stuff to build an incredibly efficient vessel that can map the sea floor at one tenth the cost of what it costs, even for a good ship today. And with that, when you start making things that inexpensive, people will buy more of it. Governments and nonprofits will say, well, gosh, if it was going to cost us 10 million to map the shoreline of Hawaii, and now it costs one, oh yeah, we'll do that. And it's supply and demand. I'm a trained as an economist. Make something cheap enough. It's gonna get done. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. At least that's my theory. Oh, |
| Victor Vescovo | we haven't even talked. We we haven't even talked about de extinction. Yeah, let's go |
| Jason Heaton | there first. Cause I'm still with |
| Unknown | the Yeah, tell me. Tell me. Many people start |
| Victor Vescovo | with that one. I'm I'm invested. I was in one of the early investors in a company called Colossal Biosciences. I know the CEO. He's a good he's a Dallas guy. He contacted me several years ago because he wanted to go on an expedition. And uh I said, Well, what are you working on? He's saying, Well, I got a new startup. We're trying to figure out how to de-extinct extinct animals like the woolly mammoth. And I said, Oh, talk to me about that. And uh |
| Jason Heaton | This is the direwolf thing, isn't it? Okay, yes. |
| Victor Vescovo | And uh we're making good progress on other species as well. So yeah, again, it's about pushing the boundaries of what is possible. I have a theory that if something doesn't violate the laws of physics, it's simply a matter of engineering resources and time. You know, you'll figure it out. It doesn't mean it's easier that it'll be profitable, but but it it can be done. And initially I wasn't going to invest, but I talked to his scientific team, I looked at the problem pretty extensively for several months. And then I said, this is right at the edge of what we could do as a as a species. And so I invested and uh and Ben to his credit builds amazing teams and they've been able to it it's not a pure direwolf and I think the the purists out there are gonna go oh that's not a real dire |
| Unknown | wolf it's gray wolf with a little bit of direwolf |
| Victor Vescovo | DNA well if it looks like a duck quacks like a duck and eats like a duck it's a duck. These these things are white. They are bigger than any gray wolf I've ever seen. And they are they seem to look a lot like what we think they should look like. And they are certainly not gray wolves. So they are a they are a chimera, I think is the technical term. But really the value of colossal biosciences and de-extinction, that's the real, that's the headline, attention grabbing thing. What the company really is, they are becoming the masters of genetic engineering at like a seriously high level, way out in front of anybody. And that has obviously some concerns of what you do with that information, but the medical advances that we can make with that kind of capability are profound. You can see a world 10 or 20 years from now where we have individualized genetic therapies to cure diseases that were completely unapproachable even 10 or 15 years ago. And that's really what we're trying to do. You know, using genetics to to help humanity and also bring back species that we killed off, humans that should not have become extinct. And I think it's a great company. And Ben's a great CEO. |
| Jason Heaton | As an investor in some of these companies, what type of investor are you? What what sort of involvement do you have? Are are you pretty hands off? Do you like to get your hands dirty? Do you I guess it depends on the company and and who you're working with, but |
| Victor Vescovo | I'm I run the full spectrum. I am a completely passive investor in certain investments where I can't add that much. But in one of my investments, I'm actually the CEO of a company. I'm CEO of a biotech company that's trying to develop genetic cures for a couple of incurable diseases that reside in the human nervous system. I've been working on that for eight years with a science team uh based in Seattle. And uh yeah, so it just depends how I can add value and how much bandwidth I have. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. I stay busy. So yeah, |
| Jason Heaton | well, that's a good segue because my earlier question before we talked about colossal um was when you wake up in the morning, how do you pro how do you prioritize your days and your weeks? Like, um, I think that's another thing that doesn't get talked about a lot is kind of um with somebody in your position who's very accomplished and and is just doing a lot of things at a high level. What is a typical day or week like? Are you just would you describe yourself as a type A? I get three hours of sleep. I get up at four in the morning and read seven newspapers. You know, I mean, what's your life like? |
| Victor Vescovo | I'm not that inefficient. I view people that operate that way. I don't think it's sustainable. No, I mean I sleep eight hours a day. It's about prioritization. It really is. You know, you can fill up your day with all sorts of stuff. You can be distracted, or or maybe it makes you feel good about yourself if you're constantly scheduled out every 30 minutes. I reserve hours of downtime just so I can do research or just relax or go work out. Because I I guess maybe if I have a superpower, it's being able to effectively delegate those things that only I can make a call on, like writing checks, making an investment decision. Yeah, I'm gonna spend the time to do that. But all the other minutia of business and communications, yeah. Um, I will try and delegate that out. And I tend to be very efficient in communications, writing and verbal and otherwise. And that's just how I've been trained. And it it's so far it's working. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. One other thing on our list here um that that you asked me told me that might be interest of interest is uh this new interest in exploratory cave diving. Uh tell me about that. |
| Victor Vescovo | Well it's funny, my my career as an explorer, kind of a the accidental explorer where I just wanted to get out in the world and see it when I was in my twenties and thirties. And that led me to high altitude mountaineering. And I just love it. And uh I'm doing less of it now because I'm older and it's much more dangerous and I have no desire to die. That's took me to the ocean. Well well well but that that took me into the ocean and then I I've done that for five years hardcore which I loved because I loved the whole technological aspect of it. I could write checks that other people couldn't write. So I could actually build a titanium submersible. What else am I going to do with the money? You know, buy a big party yacht. No, I want to do something that's actually, you know, technologically significant that moves us forward as a species, like my other investments. This one I just took a direct role in. And then I had the great fortune to go into space. And yes, I was payload. I wasn't piloting the spaceship as much as I would have liked to. But there I believe that the more we go into space and the more we have people paying to go into space, it'll become more regular, it'll become safer, it'll become less expensive. Because I think only good things happen from people going into space because of the so-called overview effect, where you have this psychological appreciation for the earth when you see it from space. Now, that being said, I've now fallen into two other realms of exploration, again, kind of by accident. And I call them the interstitial layers, the boundaries between land, sea, and space. The boundary between space and land is the stratosphere. And, you know, I was read, I was reading an article in the head of the FAI, which is a Swiss-based organization that holds aviation records. The head of that institution said was asked, you know, what's the what record do you want to see broken in aviation? And he's oh I I' wouldd love to see the altitude record for piston engine aircraft because that's been held since nineteen thirty eight and we haven't broken it yet because we developed because we developed jets and the jets just blew through them. But so all piston technology kind of stopped. And that put a seed in my head. Well, okay, now I'm trying to develop what would be the highest altitude stratospheric aircraft ever built that's powered by a piston engine. And I'm gonna fly it. Okay. So I've got that going on. And then I was approached by two of the world's expert cave divers. And they said, Yeah, we have this idea for some things we want to do in ultra cave diving. And you seem like the kind of person that not only would want to help fund the expedition but would participate with us in and undertake the year plus training to do deep cave dives. That is it's very dangerous. And I said, sure. So uh, you know, over the last several weeks, I've done some initial training with them. I think they were testing me out as well to see if I would freak out in a cave and if I could do the procedures and have a level head. And I I think I did fine. So now I'm on this multi-year process. Instead of going on vacation drinking pina coladas on a beach, I'm going to go out with my diving team and we're going to go train how to cave dive. Trimix, helium, oxygen, you know, exploratory cave dives. I mean, what else am I gonna do? That sounds awesome. And I'll be wearing my I'll be wearing my dive watches, you know? It's it's a and it's a great pairing for my my good friend friends with Omega. And I know I keep saying Omega Omega and I'm not just some you know shill. I I truly believe in their products. They're they're great guys and gals at Omega. And I love we have this symbiotic, you know, personal relationship where I do some interesting things. They have amazing time pieces. And I, you know, it I just like doing it. I don't have to do it. And it's the only, it's the only brand I'm really associated with. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, you've never struck me as a as a shill for for Omega or otherwise. I just think you're you I I you just strike me as an enthusiast who stumbled upon Omega and then they they started to support you, and it's a symbiotic relationship that just works for both of you. And we |
| Victor Vescovo | and tested the other ones. I mean, that's that to me, that's what I do. And yeah, they seemed much easier to work with and I have direct access to their people and their engineers. So yeah, it's fun. |
| Unknown | Yeah. But I thought you gave up mountaineering because |
| Jason Heaton | it was it you didn't die and it was too dangerous. So cave diving is by some measures the most dangerous sport on the planet. |
| Victor Vescovo | Well, cave diving is much more cerebral. It doesn't require physical strength or even a little bit of dexterity, but it's different. High altitude mountaineering, you've got to be hardcore cut. You got to be in shape. And if things go sideways, it's a it literally is a matter of life and death about your physical strength and your endurance. And that degrades over time. I'm a realist. But in cave diving, it's very quiet. You know, you're neutrally buoyant. You don't have to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger to survive a cave dive. You just have to be extremely calm, very methodical, and plan everything, have backups. It's much more like going into space. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow. Okay. Well, um, we've blown through 50 minutes here and I want to respect your time. And I just I I there was a question I was going to say, like what what's next for you? And I don't need to ask that because I think you have enough to for the next two decades that'll keep you busy. So we don't even need to ask that question. But um yeah I just uh appreciate your time and and thanks so much for for joining on on the Greenado and uh all the best. I I just I can't wait and I'm sure all of our listeners will concur that um it's just exciting to to watch what you're up to because it's it's it's never dull. |
| Victor Vescovo | I appreciate it. Well thanks very much for having me and uh it's great to share and maybe some of these things will work out great, maybe some of them won't, but uh you just gotta get out there and and try and make some attempts to push your own boundaries. That's what I try and communicate to people, which is look, I'm not a Nobel laureate smart guy. I'm not an Olympic athlete caliber kind of person. I'm just persistent and I just look at things very practically. And I think everybody has that potential. I think the greatest tragedy of the human condition is that people self-limit themselves. They don't think that they can do extraordinary things. And they can. It it it just takes work and it takes dedication and persistence. But you anybody can can do what I do with enough time and attention. I think. Yeah. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Well, those are those are |
| Jason Heaton | good words to close on. I appreciate that. So yeah. All right. Thanks again, Victor. |
| Victor Vescovo | My pleasure. Thank you. All |
| Jason Heaton | right, there you have it. Our uh chat with Victor Viscovo. Thanks to Victor for uh sitting in on that one and being such a gracious guest and and also a big thanks to to our buddy David Cuncanon, who's a mutual friend, actually connected us with Victor, was kind enough to suggest him as a guest, and uh it all worked out really well. And and you know uh you you said at the top before we uh we got into the chat that he's a completionist and boy the guy just um you know for someone who you kind of imagine being a bit of a kind of a type A personality, kind of a go-getter, he's he's he's he's he's a pretty chill guy. Like it was a really pleasant talk, and there wasn't a lot of swagger to him. I mean, he's definitely confident, but uh I kind of like his vibe and it was really great to talk to him. And then I have to throw this out there. I was a little hesitant to admit this, but when I was writing my first novel, Depth Charge, I needed someone in my mind to picture as my villain uh uh Rousing. Okay. It was Victor Viscovo. So um if if if you've read Depth Charge and you can remember my villain um Rousing uh the uh victor viscova is the person I had in mind um with the ponytail and the whole bit and the and even the the big uh expensive ship. So anyway hope hope Victor takes that uh takes that well uh when he listens to this uh and I'll have to send him a copy of my book and hopefully he's flattered and not not upset by it. But that was a great chat. |
| James Stacy | Certainly doesn't come off as anything like available uh in in the convo, so that's great. Uh super cool. And yeah, big shout out to David for connecting us with that. As always, David, your support means the world. Uh look, let's get into some final notes. Put a bow on |
| Jason Heaton | it. Yeah, definitely. You want to go first? Sure. Yeah. This one actually came um several weeks ago from uh one of our Slack members uh named TLR um and it's a a a podcast episode from from podcast I think you and I both have enjoyed in the past called 99% invisible which has some great episodes. This one is particularly relevant to kind of our world, um terms of exploration and uh horology. Um and the episode is uh got a little profanity in it, but uh you know, we'll we'll we'll tone it down a bit. It's uh where the f are we? Um and it really has to do with uh the history of the quest to accurately navigate by longitude. So um, you know, both of us and many of us have read the Dava Sobel book called Longitude, um, that kind of covers the history of the development of the marine chronometer and the search for how to accurately track uh longitude for navigation. And uh this episode kind of revisits that in a in an audio sense. And uh it was it was just kind of fun to to to listen to it. They do a nice job with that that podcast. And uh, you know, thanks to TLR for bringing that up to everyone's attention and thought I'd throw that out there on a final note because it's uh it's a good one. It's always always good to to run across podcasts that are kind of in our space. Uh besides TGN, of course. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean ninety nine percent invisible is just like one of the best. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Uh they've been going for a really long time. They're up |
| James Stacy | in the six hundreds, uh I think well into the six hundreds in terms of episodes. Uh they do a lovely job. Uh Sarah and I will uh commonly when we're road tripping or something like that, pick a few that we haven't listened to and kind of put 'em on a playlist and do that. Uh they do a great job and and I just think there's a great story, obviously it's a fantastic book, which you mentioned by Davis Obel, but uh there's a great story behind the the pursuit of this and the various different like elements of science at the time, whether it was astronomy or timekeeping or otherwise that were all thought they had a solution. Yeah. Uh it's a it's a good one for sure. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And what do you have? |
| James Stacy | Yeah. So for mine this week uh with all of my travel recently, I've been using a a little tool that I got for about fifteen bucks on Amazon. It's called the Next Tool Mini Sailor Light and it's a travel allowed multi-tool. Um I've had the misfortune of having a more expensive version of something. Like I can't remember exactly which one of the uh Leatherman is you know doesn't have a knife and is supposed to be TSA. I've had that taken away in the past and I just never replaced it. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh yeah. Um it was kind of expensive. It was a |
| James Stacy | nice thing or more expensive than say fifteen bucks um which is like twelve eleven dollars uh US uh I think. I think it looks like the standard price for this next tool is $20. But it's just a little simple fold-out kind of version of uh of a multi-tool. It has a pair of pliers, it has a pair of scissors, it has a a couple of little screwdrivers. It has a bottle opener, which is nice to have. And then the one that's kind of handy for nerds that might be listening to this is it has a sim eject tool. It's actually quite sturdy. It's |
| Jason Heaton | pretty cool. And I've used it to size bracelets, |
| James Stacy | like to change the micro adjusts on a bracelet. |
| Jason Heaton | Great idea. Which is actually quite nice to have. Yeah. |
| James Stacy | Um so far i I've had it in my bag and only one time has somebody pulled it out and asked me to open up every tool. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. And uh but that's one time I've probably |
| James Stacy | what flown with it five or six trips so far uh in the last little while and at fifteen dollars if I get a guy or gal at uh you know security that that absolutely doesn't want to accept accept it it's not something where I'm gonna go, well, I I''mm I'm gonna I'm gonna go back to the other side of the line and try and ship it or something like that. I'll just you know you just walk away from it. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. Oh that's but it's |
| James Stacy | nice enough to be useful when you get somewhere. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, this is great. I mean uh it would really be a handy thing to keep in in a dop kit. Um, you know, I always do kind of struggle with that idea of carrying sometimes I almost resist just getting in the habit of carrying a tool because then I'm worried that I'll have it in my pocket when I go to the airport. But uh something like this would just be nice. You know, I there's there's it's one of those things where at that this price I wouldn't have a problem leaving it in my dop kit and seldom using it because then when you do need it um it would really come in handy. That's great. |
| James Stacy | Yeah. I mean it's it's one of those things like I in my dop kit I also have something that I I know I know it's there, but I don't use it that often, and that's like a tick removal knife. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh yeah. Yeah. One of those little like red spoon |
| James Stacy | things like to remove a tick at the cottage, just so I know I'll have one with me all the time. |
| Jason Heaton | Right. Uh just in case because ticks are everywhere |
| James Stacy | now. I was seeing signage for it in Switzerland the other day. |
| Jason Heaton | Wow. Um and and so yeah I think |
| James Stacy | uh I think these I think this is a a notable little thing for fifteen dollars. I'd I'm not sure that it's a fifteen dollar experience, but it's definitely not bad. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Yeah. The bar for a twenty |
| James Stacy | dollar like little tool knife is obviously set by Swiss Army. It's not that level of polish, but it's uh it's a nice facsimile, a nice, you know s,ort of step towards a a little version of like a a wingman from uh from Leatherman. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Good pick. Classic final note choice. Good one. |
| James Stacy | Oh yeah. Put that in the put on the list |
| Jason Heaton | for the stocking stuffers. Yeah. Yeah, |
| James Stacy | yeah, yeah, exactly. I I'll need to remember it and I definitely won't. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. There's uh there's |
| James Stacy | a solid episode. It sounds like you had a great time chatting with Victor, which I'm pumped about, and uh a couple of good final notes there, and certainly a podcast you can dig into if uh if this episode uh left you curious about exploring the world and how we got to a point where we could do such things, some of the uh the amazing things that Victor's done. So as always, thank you so much for listening. If you want to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode, or consider supporting the show directly, and maybe even grab yourself a new TGN signed NATO, please visit thegreatNATO.com. Music Throughout is siesta by Jazzar via the free music archive. |
| Jason Heaton | Happy to leave you with this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said: The reward of a thing well done is having done it. |