The DownLink Podcast

NASA wants the commercial sector to provide pretty much everything, from housing to mining operations on the moon. But first, the space agency needs to establish itself as the anchor tenant to bring the commercial sector along. Meanwhile, China plans to establish a base within the decade. Laura Winter is at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium’s Fall Meeting at the University of Texas, El Paso. She speaks with U.S. Representative Veronic Escobar, representing El Paso; and Jim Reuter, NASA’s Associate Administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate.

No Satellites, No Economy: What You Need to Know About High Altitude Nuclear Detonation There's been a lot of talk about “tactical” nuclear weapons and rational choices. That discussion has been firmly anchored to ground effects. But what if the state actor simply wants to destroy the economy, without actually destroying much at all, at least immediately, on the ground? They would aim for space, specifically the Van Allen belts. To understand this threat - High Altitude Nuclear Detonation - and get an idea of what can be done to deter such an attack or mitigate its effects, Laura Winter Speaks with Lt. Col. “Tony” Vincent, the Director of Advanced Physics Courses at the Air Force Academy; and Chris Stone, author of “Reversing the Tao – A Framework for Credible Space Deterrence”, and Senior Fellow for Space Studies at The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“It Is Weird Out There”: Space Economists & Space Capital Market Experts To demystify just what is happening in the space capital markets and the space economy writ large, Laura Winter speaks with Justin Cadman Partner at Quilty Analytics; George Pullen, Chief Economist at Milky Way Economy, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University in New York, and Author of the book, “Blockchain and the Space Economy”; and Brendan Rosseau, Researcher and Teaching Fellow at Harvard Business School, and Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton.

This week the Biden Administration released its long-awaited National Security Strategy. To unpack just what the strategy means and doesn’t for space as a region and a warfighting domain, and for our space-based critical infrastructure, Laura Winter speaks with Chris Stone, author of “Reversing the Tao - A Framework for Credible Space Deterrence” and a Senior Fellow for Space Studies at The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Voyager Space and its subsidiary Nanoracks are aiming to launch Starlab, a commercial space station in 2028. They just announced an agreement with The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio to build the terrestrial home for the science and technology the space station produces. Why Ohio? The state’s got a growing ecosystem of small businesses that are at the cutting-edge space manufacturing on and possibly off-world. Laura Winter speaks with Jeff Manber, Voyager’s President of International and Space Stations at Space and Nanoracks Chairman of the Board; John Horack, the Neil Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy at The Ohio State University, and a professor in the College of Engineering’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department and the John Glenn College of Public Affairs; and Mark Norfolk, President and CEO of Fabrisonic, an innovative manufacturing technology company that uses sound waves in its 3D metal printing process.

This week the U.S. Air Force celebrated its birthday, marking 75 years since it gained its hard-won independence from the U.S. Army. This independence remains not only about who is in command of who, but perhaps more importantly it is also about identity and culture. What lessons can the newest branch of the military, the U.S. Space Force, take from the Air Force experience to launch itself into an independent trajectory? To get the answers, Laura Winter is joined by Michael Hankins, Curator for U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps post-World War II Aviation, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; Brian Laslie, Command Historian and Associate Professor Department of History, United States Air Force Academy; and M.V. “Coyote” Smith, Associate Professor, Strategic Space Studies, Department of Space Power, United States Air Force Air Command and Staff College.

What should be the vision of the next and second U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations be for the future of the U.S. military’s newest service branch? U.S. senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee this week asked just that of the nominee for the job, Lt. Gen. Chance “Salty” Saltzman. The only recent and comparable American experience is that of General Hoyt Vandenberg, the second Air Force Chief of Staff since that service branch was formed out of the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1947. Vandenberg’s vision for the U.S. Air Force endures to this day. To discuss the opportunities and the challenges, Laura Winter is joined by M.V. “Coyote” Smith and Brent Ziarnick, both of whom are associate professors of space power at the Air Command and Staff College, at Maxwell Air Force Base; Mir Sadat who is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security; and Stephen Melvin, who has been involved military space operations in a variety of roles inside and outside of the government for years.

The Pentagon on Friday released a readout of a close-hold classified meeting of the Defense Policy Board that illustrates a growing concern that China and Russia are likely developing weapons systems for the space domain that “could impact U.S. deterrence and strategic stability” and a need to develop options to counter those systems. And that’s in addition to the release of multiple defense policies on space and the Biden Administration’s second convening of the National Space Policy Board. To unpack all of these developments, Laura Winter is joined by 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”, and the host of AFPC’s Space Strategy Podcast; and Christopher Stone who is 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”.

While NASA tests its Space Launch System to usher in a new age of human space exploration, testing whether Space-Based Solar Power can deliver an era of net-zero electricity, affordably, to the U.S. consumer energy market is being left up to the commercial sector. Laura Winter speaks with Ed Tate, Co-Founder and CTO of Virtus Solis, whose journey to SBSP started at General Motors, where he worked on the EV-1, the first mass-produced electric vehicle.

Now pushed back to Friday, NASA is billing the $4.1b Artemis I mission launch, a test of the Space Launch System and the crew-rated Orion capsule, as the beginning of a new chapter of U.S.-led human space exploration and sustained presence on the moon. Putting the warm and fuzzy excitement aside, Laura Winter explores the geostrategic and economic implications with Namrata Goswami, an independent scholar on space policy and great power politics and co-author of the book “Scramble for the Skies”; Chris Quilty, a pioneer of Wall Street analysis of the commercial space sector and founder of Quilty Analytics: and Chris Stott, “a Manx-Born American", who is a serial space entrepreneur, and the Chairman & CEO, Lonestar Data Holdings.