The DownLink Podcast

The European Space Agency’s Director General Josef Aschbacher this week announced on LinkedIn that the agency will “propose a Space-Based Solar Power preparatory programme to Member States called #SOLARIS.” That means Europe is getting primed to move forward with its own proprietary SBSP program, independently. Put another way, this is not going to be another exercise in admiring the problem. Laura Winter speaks with Sanjay Vijendran, ESA’s Mars Exploration Strategy Team Leader and Future Mars Studies (MarsX Team) Coordinator, and the lead for the agency’s Space-Based Solar Power efforts; John Mankins, a former NASA physicist, now President of Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, who designed the Solar Power Satellite concept, Alpha - Mark 3; and Peter Garretson, an American Foreign Policy Council Senior Fellow, coauthor of “Scramble for the Skies The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space”. To get a grounding in just what Space-Based Solar Power is, please go here first: https://defaeroreport.com/2022/08/15/the-downlink-aug-14-22-space-based-solar-power-and-the-u-k-s-bet-that-science-fiction-may-become-science-fact/

Is this sci-fi? Or could there be a space-based solution to securing reliable, renewable, and affordable energy and stop making awkward trips and payments to the petro-dollar-funded authoritarians, like that guy in the Kremlin? This week Laura Winter explores Space-Based Solar Power, or SBSP, with Martin Soltau, Co-Chair of Britain’s Space Energy Initiative and Frazer-Nash Business Manager; and 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.

Will norms of space behavior be enough to protect the $469 billion-dollar and growing space economy, the government-funded exploration and science programs, and the critical defense assets in orbit? Perhaps what’s needed is a bit stronger and binding. Like rules. Laura Winter speaks with Kevin O’Connell, the former Director of the Office of Space Commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce, under the Trump Administration; Mir Sadat, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and an Adjunct Scholar at West Point’s Modern War Institute; and Julia Siegel, the assistant director of the Forward Defense practice in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Together they discuss Sadat and Seigel’s policy paper, “Space traffic management: Time for action”, which you can read here: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/space-traffic-management-time-for-action/.

Sure. It’s easy to simply pin Russia’s announcement that it is quitting the International Space Station as a natural result of President Vladamir Putin’s unprovoked war in Ukraine. Yet, Russia’s reduced space industrial base, Putin’s ambitions, and a series of sackings and demotions illustrate a more complicated political and security picture in the space domain. To read the tea leaves, Laura Winter speaks with the head of the Rand Corporation’s Space Enterprise Initiative, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Bruce McClintock, a former U.S. Defense Attaché to Russia, who was also a special assistant to the commander of Air Force Space Command; Jan Osburg, a RAND Corporation senior aerospace engineer, with experience in designing inhabited space systems; 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”.

Space companies bring high-paying high-tech jobs and create revenue for local businesses, and municipal and state governments. They can lessen the brain drain from rural localities. Thing is, it’s got to be the right fit - the right business plan for the right community - or the business may not even break ground, let alone launch. Laura Winter speaks with U.S. Representative Don Beyer of Virginia’s 8th congressional district; Christie Mastric a staff reporter with the Mining Journal, the newspaper of record in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; and Ryan McDevitt, CEO of Vermont’s Benchmark Space Systems.

Macroeconomic forces are just as inescapable as gravity. The commercial space sector is not immune from the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine, historic inflation, and the cost of borrowing. Laura Winter speaks with Chris Quilty, a pioneer of Wall Street analysis of the commercial space sector and founder of Quilty Analytics. He says what's different from past economic downturns is that the space sector's fundamentals have changed.

The U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond said Sunday that China “enjoys the same space capabilities and the same advantages that we currently enjoy.” That sounds a lot like parity. Congress is including inflation in its calculus, but what about what’s needed for deterrence in the space domain? To take a closer look at the numbers and what they mean, 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”.

This week’s episode is a part two of two on PNT - positioning, navigation, and timing. This is about the business opportunity of providing time as a service to critical infrastructure sectors. PNT comes from the space-based Global Positioning System, or GPS. Anything from precision farming and guided missiles, and the operational synchronization of critical infrastructures like dams and refineries depend on it. Thing is, if something goes wrong, there’s no publically funded “plan B”. Laura Winter speaks with Richard Hoptroff a serial entrepreneur and inventor, who is Co-Founder and Chief Time Officer at Hoptroff, a company that provides Traceable Time as a Service (TTaaS®).

This week’s episode is a part one of two on PNT - positioning, navigation, and timing. All three parts come from the space-based Global Positioning System, or GPS. Anything from precision farming and guided missiles, and the operational synchronization of critical infrastructures like dams and refineries depends on GPS. Thing is, if something goes wrong, there’s no “plan B”. Laura Winter speaks with Dana Goward, a retired Coast Guard captain, who’s now serving on the National Positioning, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board, and president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation.

Hypersonic weapons are a tricky class of missile systems. They’re hard to find and even harder to persistently track, even when using satellite capabilities together with ground-based radar. That affects America’s ability to deter attacks on the homeland. Laura Winter speaks with Christopher Stone, who has an idea, which he laid out in his most recent policy paper, “Orbital Vigilance: The Need for Enhanced Space-Based Missile Warning and Tracking”. Stone 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”. If you wish to read the policy paper in its entirety, go here: https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/orbital-vigilance-the-need-for-enhanced-space-based-missile-warning-and-tracking/.