China’s commercial space industry gets a galactic boost.

[ Music ]

>> Maria Varmazis: Axial tilt. It's the reason for the seasons, and today, it's also the winter solstice. I know I'm looking forward to later sunrises after today, because where I am, anyway, the sun is setting tonight at 4:15 p.m. For all our Northern Hemisphere listeners warm, wishes on this shortest day and longest night of the year. At least it gets better from here.

[ Music ]

Today is December 21, 2023. Happy solstice. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-Minus.

[ Music ]

Galaxy Power Aerospace has successfully raised about $154 million in new funding. The US Vice-President announces a new international space collaboration effort. Firefly sets a new mission date of December 22nd for their Alpha rocket launch, and our guest today is space lawyer and science-fiction author, Laura Montgomery. Stay with us for her chat with Alice in the second part of the show.

[ Music ]

And now let's take a look at our Intel briefing for today. We're starting out our show today with news from the Chinese space sector, and Beijing-based Galaxy Power Aerospace has successfully raised 1.1 billion yuan, or approximately $154 million C and C+ financing rounds. The rounds were led by Ziyang Heavy Industry Fund, with participation from other investors. The funds raised will be used to develop the Palace-1, medium-to-large reusable liquid launch vehicle, as well as its associated infrastructure. The company, a key player in China's commercial launch vehicle sector, aims to address the increasing demand for low-orbit constellation networking. Galaxy Power Aerospace has achieved notable milestones, including the production and launch of the Ceres-1 rocket for small-constellation networking. Its next rocket, the aforementioned Palace-1, is set to make its first orbital flight in 2024. And staying in China, the Shenzhou-17 taikonauts will conduct their first extravehicular activities, or spacewalk, in the next few days, according to the China-manned space agency. The taikonauts have been in orbit for 54 days, nearly a third of their six-month space mission. Space walks are a regular occurrence on the International Space Station, but Chinese astronauts have made just 13 space walks to date. The most recent one was made by the Shenzhou-16 crew in July and lasted for eight hours. US Vice-President Kamala Harris held the third meeting of the National Space Council in Washington, D.C. where she announced that, alongside American astronauts, the United States will land an international astronaut on the surface of the moon by the end of the decade. Harris said this: "For generations, our nation has led the world in the exploration and use of space. In the coming years, one of the primary ways we will continue to extend that leadership is by strengthening our international partnerships, combining our resources, scientific capacity, and technical skill with that of our allies and partners around the world, all in furtherance of our collective vision. The Vice-President also underscored the importance of international partnerships, enabling long duration stays on the moon and future human missions to Mars. And during the meeting, NASA announced it will deepen its partnership with the US Agency for International Development by advancing data collection for enhanced air quality monitoring in South America and Africa. Under this effort, NASA and the Italian space agency will partner to build and launch the Multi Angle Imager for Aerosols mission, which is expected to launch in 2025 to enable improved measurements of airborne particulate matter in large metropolitan areas. The US has released the implementation plan of the National Space Weather Strategy and Action plan. The Biden-Harris administration has worked to ensure that the US can better forecast and prepare for space weather events. The next solar maximum is expected to occur over the next two years, and the upswing in space weather has the potential to pose significant risk on Earth and in space. The plan identifies three policy objectives and supporting activities in space weather observations, research, and forecasting. The first is to enhance the protection of national security, homeland security, and commercial assets and operations against the effects of space weather. The second is to develop and disseminate accurate and timely information of space weather characterization and forecasts, and the third is to establish plans and procedures for responding to and recovering from space weather events, and the link to the full plan is included in the show notes for you. And speaking of weather observation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA's, Department of Commerce, is soliciting information on existing or planned on-orbit commercial satellite, environmental data, and related capabilities that will be available in fiscal year 2024 through 2032. The request for information is looking to explore and, where appropriate, pursue demonstration projects to assess the viability of using commercially provided satellite data and products, to improve weather forecasting, and to diversify Noah's portfolio of data collection capabilities. If you're interested in learning more, we've included the full RFI in our show notes. Sixteen missile detection and tracking satellites manufactured by L3Harris that will be part of the Space Development Agency's Tranche-1 tracking layer program have passed critical design reviews and production readiness reviews. The milestone demonstrates that design will meet the mission requirements, while the production readiness Review provides L3Harris with the SDA's approval to begin the full production process. These major milestones move the program closer to achieving the SDA's proliferated warfighter space architecture in low-Earth orbit. L3Harris was awarded a $193.5 million deal in January 2021 to develop satellites for the system to provide global indications, warning, tracking, and targeting of advanced missile threats, including hypersonic missile systems. Wichita State University will lead a three-year project to assist NASA's manufacturing paradigm shift from factories on Earth to factories in space. The university aims to develop a new research enterprise directed towards long-term, self-sustaining, nationally competitive aerospace research capabilities on ISM, which contributes to Kansas's aerospace economy and expand on the nation's base for aerospace research and development. Wichita is working with Spirit AeroSystems, who will support the development, characterization, and enhancement of nanofiber electrospun membranes in collaboration with the project partners. Kim Caldwell, Senior Director of Spirit AeroSystems Global Research and Technology, says that this research will make it more feasible to eventually fabricate parts on space factories, enabling new scientific and economic missions. The physics-informed AI-enabled smart electrospinning of nanofiber membranes towards in-space manufacturing is funded by a NASA grant of $750,000. Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, have successfully tested a 3D-printed RDRE or a Rotating Detonation Rocket. Engine. The static fire lasted for 251 seconds (just over four minutes) producing more than 5,800 pounds of thrust. The primary goal of the test was to understand how to scale the combustor to different thrust classes, supporting engine systems of all types, and maximizing the variety of missions it can serve from landers, to upper-stage engines, to supersonic retropropulsion, a deceleration technique that could land larger payloads or even humans on the surface of Mars. And Firefly Aerospace has announced that it has rescheduled its Alpha FLT004 rocket launch for the morning of Friday, meaning tomorrow, December 22nd at 9:18 a.m. local in California. They scrubbed yesterday's planned launch due to weather conditions.

[ Music ]

And that concludes our intelligence briefing for today. Our last briefing of the year will be tomorrow before our team takes a much-needed break over the holidays. And we've included links to further reading on all of the stories that we've mentioned in our show notes, and we've added a piece on the satellite-directed device market and one on the ISS National Labs write up on the major milestones achieved in 2023. Hey T-Minus crew, if your business is looking to grow your voice in the industry, expand the reach of your thought leadership, or recruit talent T-Minus can help. We'd love to hear from you. Just send us an email at space@n2k.com, or send us a note through our website so we can connect about building a program to meet your goals.

[ Music ]

Our guest today is space lawyer and science fiction author Laura Montgomery. Now Laura spent 20 years with the Federal Aviation Administration in the Office of the Chief Counsel where she supported the Space Office and helped draft regulations and legislative proposals. And Laura spoke with our producer, Alice Carruth, about her work in space law and how that influences her science-fiction writing.

[ Music ]

>> Laura Montgomery: I practice space law. I have a few clients. I help launch operators with their FAA licensing issues, and I've done some testifying to Congress on policy questions and interpretations of the outer-space treaties. But I left the FAA about seven years ago now, and I started writing seriously. I'd been writing before I left, but now I've spent a lot more time on the science fiction, too. And so, my background, I guess the book where it shows up the most is something called Banks Prize. When I started working on it, I was working on orbital debris issues with the FAA. You know, if you send up a rocket, you might leave the upper stage on orbit for decades or centuries, and there's regulations and safety requirements about how it should the vented, as they say. In other words, get rid of the propellants so that as you orbit the Earth and go in and out of daylight and night and your gases heat up and cool down and heat up and cool down, they might go bang. And then, you've created a whole lot of orbital debris. So orbital debris was really on my mind. But also, at the time we were hearing a lot about prizes. Just like aviation had prizes to encourage folks to go from the United States to Europe, and that was won by Charles Lindbergh, the space sector also started getting some prizes. The most famous of which, I think is the X prize, and it occurred to me, well, why couldn't we have a prize to get rid of orbital debris for someone who could figure out how to deorbit some big, old satellite that should get out of everyone else's way? So the story is about a prize, or the race to win a prize, for deorbiting large pieces of space junk.

>> Alice Carruth: Which has gone being science fiction to almost science fact now because there's so many companies that are working on this problem. Do you think that, yeah, science fiction has an influence on the industry when it comes to thinking about problems like that and maybe putting it out to an area that people don't think about, you know, does it influence the way that we approach the industry as we go forward?

>> Laura Montgomery: Yeah, well, I think in a very broad sense, science fiction influences a lot of people who are in the industry and that many of us grew up reading it. I certainly did. So I think that that we do see some of that. I was a big fan of Robert Heinlein, and some of his books are really good at explaining physics. So I learned a lot from them as a kid, and it's, you know, it can help you later, especially if you are, as I am, a philosophy major and a lawyer, so not a STEM person. But you can learn things, and lawyers are supposed to learn all about their clients. So, you know, I've been working on that.

>> Alice Carruth: I think there's a lot that could be said about the art community and the influence it can have on space. You just have to look at Star Trek for a perfect example of how science fiction has really influenced science reality. What areas do you think that we need to be covering, really, and put into to the forefront of things like storytelling and are really showing off to the industry where they should be thinking about next?

>> Laura Montgomery: Oh, goodness, you mean this is for science fiction writers to help influence the industry?

>> Alice Carruth: Yeah.

>> Laura Montgomery: Well, I think one of my favorite topics these days is terraforming. And so, I've -- I personally have gotten very interested in the whole native plant thing where, you know, 90% of insects only eat one plant. So again, Robert Heitland, we should reference him. He was right. Specialization is for insects. They do specialize. But that means you need to plant the right plants if you want the caterpillars to live and turn into butterflies, if you want the birds to get the right amount of proteins and fats in the berries. Because planting nandina is not going to do it, but for extraterrestrial purposes, this means that we have to send out an actually integrated ecosystem to another world if we are going to live there and have things work on a biological level. So I'm very interested in the whole notion of, you know, terraforming by setting up big screens and creating -- creating all sorts of technical things. But I'm also interested in the biology of it. So I write -- my space opera has a lot of terraforming thinking in it with people stealing terra seeders, et cetera, so that so that they can survive on alien worlds. So I think terraforming should be at the forefront of everyone's mind.

>> Alice Carruth: Do you feel any influence, given the fact that you are a space law expert, when it comes to your science fiction? Do you think you feel like you're influenced to have to push some of this idea forming into your narratives?

>> Laura Montgomery: I'm just telling stories, but you know, storytellers tell stories based on their own experience and things they know. So one of my stories that appeared in the Ross 248 Anthology this year, which is a great collection of short stories based on a shared timeline where humanity goes to a new solar system with its AI children, and one of the stories is about finding an alien artifact. So I did actually incorporate a whole bunch of legal research into that story, because they turned to the shipboard lawyer and said can we go mess with that alien artifact? You know, it's not ours. They belong to some aliens. They don't seem to be around. And so, he had a whole puzzle about whether to apply the law of salvage or the law of finds because they're different for whether you're in the ocean or on land. And there was this notion that -- there is a current legal notion that all of outer space gets treated more like an ocean, or all is the same thing without distinguishing between what some people call void space, vacuum or being on a planet. So I had a lot of fun with that because I have had lots of heated discussions about that topic, and so, here I got to have my fictional character make all sorts of pointed observations about whether an alien planet was more like land or like a vacuum.

>> Alice Carruth: You have been in front of the UN talking about the Outer Space Treaty. Have you had any chance to really think about, you know, beyond your short stories, how you could form some narratives around that to come influence the way things are going to be looking forward? You know, we're looking at how we're going to go and colonize the moon with all these commercial companies going over that, and multiple nations, really, trying to get to their part of the moon. Has that really come up as an idea for you for future stories?

>> Laura Montgomery: More for my space law side. I've written -- recently started researching and writing on space property rights. And so, I have looked closely at the treaties to explain why they do not forbid private property rights in space. So, but that's on -- that's under my lawyer hat. And I guess, I sometimes think about it in the story context, and I suspect it's going to come up in my near future series that I haven't started yet. But I have a lot of ideas for -- so property rights are something important. The other thing that's going to be very important for my stories is the concept of planetary protection, because Article 9 of the Outer Space Treaty says that the countries who signed the treaty are supposed to do their best to avoid harmful contamination, both going forward out into outer space and bringing things back. So that's a really tricky question, and you see a lot of people getting very concerned about microbes. Are we going to harm the microbes on Mars if they exist? Which, we haven't found any yet, just to be clear. We're apparently covered in microbes. Don't get all creepy-crawlied out, but we don't worry about the microbes here on Earth. I'm wondering why we would worry about the microbes on Mars if they existed. And when I say that, I don't mean it in the heartless antiscientific way, but in a, perhaps we could coexist with the microbes. Just because there's -- we find one microbe doesn't mean we can't go to some other portion of Mars and have people there. Because right now, NASA sterilizes its spacecrafts. So does the European Space Agency before sending them to Mars, but I think it would hurt us if people were sterilized before going to Mars. They'd be killed. We need to -- we need to figure out a way that everyone can coexist together, the Martian microbes, any Martian microbes, and human beings from Earth.

>> Alice Carruth: Good insight. So as somebody who is a storyteller by trade, how much do you think narrative really plays into the future of space? You know how to -- how do we get the public involved in space through narrative, for example?

>> Laura Montgomery: Well, I think it's very powerful. You hear a lot about people who worked on the moon, the Apollo program, who grew up reading Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and were very, very motivated by the visions these people laid out. And so, I think narrative has a strong effect of -- sometimes it has a detrimental effect. You know, we see so much science fiction now in the movies and television that we think it's easy. And so, you see a lot of people are worrying about, well, how are we going to stop everyone from fighting each other? How are we going to regulate them? How are we going to control everyone? Oh, no, people who will be out there doing something without permission. And that's a lot based on these densely populated science fiction movies, where right now, you know, the moon is pretty darn big. It's bigger than Texas. So, you know, that's big. And so, as we go up there at the start, we are probably not going to run into conflict with each other. There will be distance separation and spatial separation. Now I would like, of course, to recognize that the peaks of eternal light, which aren't actually eternal. But there's a lot of light so you can get a lot of solar power, are perhaps, going to be a point of contention. But they aren't yet. So let's not, you know, try and overly regulate, but let's think about -- let's think about encouraging people to go, and I think that stories do because you can start picturing things going on out there. In Andy Weir's The Martian, what a wonderful story that was, and it really does let you picture Mars and see it vividly as a story even before you see the movie. So it's -- I think it was very helpful for bringing Mars to life here on Earth.

[ Music ]

>> Maria Varmazis: We'll be right back.

[ Music ]

Welcome back, and I mentioned at the top of the show that it is the winter solstice today, and space history buffs, no doubt, also know that today is the launch anniversary of Apollo 8, launched today in 1968. Now Apollo 8 marked the very first time that humanity broke away from the bounds of low Earth orbit and went all the way to and around the moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders made this incredible six-day journey, and they landed back on Earth on December 27th. And they were the very first human beings to see an Earth rise and the far side of the moon. It feels especially poignant that it happened right around the winter solstice, when we often reflect on the nature of light and darkness. And I know I don't get sick of seeing pictures of our beautiful blue marble taken from spacecraft on their way to lunar orbit or beyond glancing back at our gorgeous planet as they carry out their mission. But it really is awesome, in all senses of that word, to think of the three explorers, Borman, Lovell, and Anders, and that they were the first to see the incredible sight of the Earth rising over the lunar surface with their own eyes 55 years ago.

[ Music ]

That's it for T-Minus for December 21, 2023. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We're privileged that N2K and podcasts like T-Minus are part of the daily routine of many of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector, from the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth, mixing by Elliott Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music and sound design by Elliott Peltzman. Our Executive Producer is Jen Iben. Our VP is Brandon Karpf, and I'm Maria Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

[ Music ]