The DownLink Podcast

What You Need to Know About The Great Ground Station Game Part 2 This week is the second and final episode looking at what rarely comes to mind when we talk about space - the ground. This week is about the great ground game being played out in what has traditionally been in the U.S. sphere of influence - South America. The southern continent is where Chinese entities have access to or wholly manage a rough dozen ground stations, which has caused some concern in defense circles. To understand just what is going on below the equator, Laura Winter speaks with Matthew Funaiole, Vice President of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ iDeas Lab, and a senior fellow of China Power Project; and Brian Hart, a CSIS fellow with the China Power Project. Their report “Eyes on the Skies - China's Growing Space Footprint in South America” can be found here: https://features.csis.org/hiddenreach/china-ground-stations-space/.

What You Need to Know About The Great Ground Station Game Part 1 This week’s episode and the next are all about what rarely comes to mind when we talk about space - the ground. This week is about the great game being played out in the High North on the strategic ground where the U.S., its allies, and adversaries, have located critical ground station infrastructure and the capabilities to disrupt and destroy satellite communications. To explain just what’s going on, Laura Winter speaks with Greg Falco and Nicolò Boschetti both from the Institute for Assured Autonomy (IAA), a joint Whiting School of Engineering and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory research institute. Falco and Boschetti recently published the paper “Commercial Space Risk Framework Assessing the Satellite Ground Station Security Landscape for NATO in the Arctic and High North”, which can be found here: https://bit.ly/CommercialSpaceRiskFramework

There’s No Need To Be So Toxic! This week’s episode is about a potentially disruptive group of thruster technologies that are already being used by space agencies and on U.S. Space Force, DARPA, and other Department of Defense space missions. These thruster technologies are green - better for the environment and humans - and give more real bang for the buck. Could they displace highly toxic gas fuel Hydrazine, which may soon be banned in Europe, but upon which an entrenched thruster industry relies? Laura Winter speaks with Benchmark Space Systems’ Executive Vice President For Business Development And Strategy Chris Carella; Dawn Aerospace Co-Founder Jeroen Wink; and Benchmark’s Propulsion Chemist and Propulsion Engineer Sammy Graham.

Four Space & Finance Experts: What You Need to Know for a “Weird” 2023 Welcome to a “weird” New Year! Most publicly traded space companies are listed on the NASDAQ, which shed a third of its value in 2022. Add to that the highest interest rates in 15 years and dire predictions that at least some of the world’s economies are headed into recession. Yet, the space economy keeps on growing, with new predictions saying it will be worth $10 trillion by 2040. What’s going on here? Laura Winter speaks with Chris Quilty, founder of Quilty Analytics; Pacôme Révillon, CEO of Euroconsult; George Pullen, Chief Economist at Milky Way Economy; and Ryan Brukardt, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company.

Happy Birthday, Space Force… And Happy New Year This week is the U.S. Space Force’s third birthday. While a lot has been accomplished over the past 12 months, there is a lot more yet to do to make the service branch truly independent and first for purpose. This episode’s guests also reveal what they think were the biggest developments for space, in space, or from space for earth in the past year. Laura Winter speaks with Peter Garretson, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, coauthor of “Scramble for the Skies The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space”; Chris Stone, a senior fellow for space studies at The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and the author of “Reversing the Tao: A Framework for Credible Space Deterrence”; and Stephen Melvin, who has been involved military space operations in a variety of roles inside and outside of the government for years.

Rocket Lab & SpaceX: Upping Their Defense Business Game Defense primes with offerings in the space sector buckle up. The upstarts coming, prepared. Rocket Lab and SpaceX have just established defense business lines organized to offer U.S.-based end-to-end white-glove space services to the Department of Defense with a proven competitive rate card. Laura Winter speaks with Rocket Lab Founder and CEO Peter Beck; the Mitchell Institute’s Senior Space Fellow Chris Stone; and Quilty Analytics Analyst Caleb Henry.

What is “resiliency” technologically? You regularly hear the word in talking points about defense and space strategy, but space supremacy is driven by technology. This week’s episode, coming out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is about the development of two very different resiliency technologies, the companies, and a space business incubator, backed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. Laura Winter speaks with: - NewSpace New Mexico’s Founder and CEO, Casey DeRaad, and Scott Maethner, the organization's head of Strategy & Integration. - Goodman Technologies’ Founder and President, Bill Goodman - RS21’s CTO Kameron Baumgardner, and Carrie Powell, the company’s Project Manager for space.

What can we learn from the start of President Xi Jin-Ping’s third term at the helm of the Chinese Communist Party? What we know is that he has frozen out the old guard and elevated leaders from China’s space and aerospace sectors to the highest party and government positions. To unpack just what the era of Xi has in store for the space domain and international security, Laura Winter speaks with Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute focusing on space policy, security, strategy, and capability development; and Namrata Goswami, independent scholar on space policy and great power politics, Faculty Associate at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and co-author of the book “Scramble for the Skies”.

Russian Sanctions Target U.S. Space & Milley’s “Various Technical Means” This week’s podcast is all about the Bear and space. Laura Winter speaks with former U.S. Defense Attaché to Russia, Brig. Gen. Bruce McClintock USAF (Ret.) about Russia’s move to place personal sanctions on a number of commercial space sector leaders. But first, just how did the Biden Administration and NATO determine that a Russian-made missile that hit eastern Poland was actually an errant Ukrainian air-defense munition? Winter speaks with Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO who is now with the Center for a New American Security; and spacepower expert Col. M.V. “Coyote” Smith, USAF (Ret.), who is an Associate Professor and Director at the Air Command and Staff College.

Ursa Major is betting that its one and only product line - 3D-printed rocket engines - will not only disrupt how rockets are manufactured but lower costs for budding launch companies and the Air Force Research Laboratory. What also makes Ursa Major special is where it prints its engines - Youngtown, Ohio. The city has seen some very hard times since the closure of many of its steel mills in the late 70s and early 80s. Nevertheless, it making name for itself in the space economy for its advanced manufacturing of the 3D printed kind. Laura Winter speaks with Jesse Blacker, Ursa Major’s Director of Government Business Development, and with Barb Ewing, the Youngstown Business Incubator’s CEO.