[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Dear gentle listener, we were supposed to be all hyped up for today's launch of the Polaris full mission. But instead, we have an additional 24 hours to wait till we reach Feverpitch. It seems another pesky alien leak is involved. It's always alien that's stirring up trouble. None of the other gases give us this much grief. [GASP] Excuse me. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 20 seconds to L-O-I, P-Grid. Open aboard. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August the 27th, 2024. I'm Alice Karuth, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] Myneric restructures amid production issues. Redwire to deliver a payload for a European defense contractor. Polaris is going to launch on Wednesday. And our guest today is Eric McManus, president of the US Space Force Association in Texas. He'll be talking to Maria about supporting the military branch and working on workforce development to stick around for the second part of today's show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Tuesday, everyone. Let's dive into today's Intel Briefing, shall we? And we're starting off with some developments following last week's news that Myneric is suffering on the stock market. As a reminder, the Germany-based company slashed its 2024 revenue guidance by nearly 70% at midpoint, citing production delays in its laser communication product. Now the supervisory board has decided on the termination of Mustafa Vaziragloh as CEO and member of the management board of Myneric with immediate effect. It's all part of the company's plan to restructure. They've announced the appointment of Andreas Reif with immediate effect as member of the management board and chief restructuring officer. In this new position, Reif is charged with reducing costs and near-term cash consumption, while working closely with Myneric customers to meet their requirements. Redwire has been selected to deliver radio frequency payloads for a constellation of satellites for an unnamed European defence contractor. According to the press release, this new contract leverages Redwire's years of antenna and RF systems development and the company's investments in RF and advanced antenna manufacturing and testing capabilities. SpaceX delayed the launch of the much-anticipated Polaris Dawn mission due to a helium leak this morning. They're targeting tomorrow, Wednesday, August 28 at 3.38am Eastern for a Falcon 9 launch of the Polaris Dawn to low Earth orbit. The company shared on X that the teams are taking a closer look at the ground-side helium leak on the quick disconnect umbilical. Falcon and Dragon remain healthy and the crew continues to be ready for their multi-day mission to low Earth orbit. The mission is due to launch from complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. There are two additional launch opportunities within the four-hour window at 5.23am and 7.09am Eastern. SpaceX says if needed backup opportunities are available on Thursday, August 29. Laidos has been awarded a $51 million missile warning missile track enhancement contract by the Space Systems Command's Strategic Warning and Surveillance Systems Acquisition Delta. Laidos will provide mission software and technology-enabled services to enhance missile warning capabilities for the combat commander's integrated command and control systems. The award has a base period of performance of 54 months. ABL has shared an update following last month's fire during a static testing of their rocket engine. On July 19, ABL conducted RS-1 vehicle operations with the objective of 13-second static fire of all 11 first-stage engines. RS-21 auto-aborted out of the test due to low pressure reading caused by a faulty pressure sensor. Immediately after the shutdown, a fire developed external to RS-1's base, fed by fuel leaks from engines 5 and 8. Water and inert gas-based fire suppression systems were able to contain the fire but were not able to extinguish it. ABL immediately initiated its mishap plan and an investigation with oversight from the FAA. The initial data review indicates that engines 5 and 8 experienced a 4.5kHz combustion instability during start-up. ABL was conducting a test campaign at Mahade Air and Spaceport to replicate the as-measured stage conditions and assess the theory behind the cause of the problem. The investigation will also evaluate other contributing factors and potential root causes of the anomaly. The US Department of Commerce is holding two days of government industry talks between US and Japanese base companies for the second-track 1.5 meeting of the nations. The comprehensive dialogue is being held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office and aims to give commercial space companies from both nations a chance to raise issues for consideration. Solar array sun shields for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have successfully completed recent tests. The US space agency says that the assembly is on track to be completed on schedule. The panels are designed to power and shade the observatory, enabling all the missions observations and helping keep the instruments cool. And if you're into engineering designs, then I highly recommend taking a tour of the Roman telescope by following the link in our show notes. NASA is seeking feedback from industry, academia, international partners and other stakeholders on newly developed goals and objectives that will guide the next generation of human presence in low-Earth orbit. NASA published draft high-level goals and objectives outlining 42 key points in six main areas. Science, exploration enabling research and technology development, commercial low-Earth orbit infrastructure, operations, international cooperation and workforce and engagement. The US space agency says feedback on the draft is essential for shaping long-term microgravity research and development activities. And that's not the only project NASA is looking for input on. NASA is also asking for ideas on the use and operation of the free-flying robots aboard the International Space Station. The cute and colourful astrabes are helping astronauts and researchers perform technology demonstrations, scientific research and STEM outreach. NASA issued a request for information to inform strategic planning, inviting industry to provide information to help shape the maturation of robots in zero gravity to achieve the greatest scientific and exploration value. And more details on that RFI and links to further reading on all the stories mentioned in today's show can be found in the selected reading section of our show notes. You'll also find the latest test announcement from Boom Super Sonic's XB1 flight. Hey T-minus crew, if you're just joining us be sure to follow T-minus space in your favourite podcast app. And also do us a favour, share the intel with your friends and co-workers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday please show three friends or co-workers this podcast. A growing audience is the most important thing for us and we'd love your help to be part of the T-minus crew. If you find T-minus useful and we really do hope you do, please share it so other professionals like you can find the show. Thanks, it really means a lot to me. Our guest today is Eric McManus, President of the US Space Force Association in Texas. Maria started by asking Eric to tell us more about the Space Force Association and how it got started in the state. It was kind of an interesting prospect because there is no space force in the state of Texas. However, there is a lot of space action in the state of Texas. And then you compile the opportunities that the Space Force provides to provide national security innovations with the timing of the Texas economy. You really see that we have an opportunity here to reduce barriers for industry to get into the space industry while also accelerating those national security innovation needs. The state of Texas is the eighth largest economy in the world. This is a matter of economies working together and industries working together so that we can achieve dominance in space with our allied countries. Through that dominance and the sustainment of that dominance we'll be able to accelerate into the space exploration, research and further technologies for generations to come. And that's what's really most important to me. I have three sons, they're nine, six and four years old. I don't know what the workforce is going to look like in 20 years or 15 years whenever they graduate from college. But I surely want to do the most I can to make sure that they're prepared. And this is part of that. And so education is a major part of Space Force Association. We provide that education through professional research. Most specifically, I look at economies and want to understand what they're doing on a local level to get involved with the space industry. So one of the communities I work with is Midland, Texas. Midland, Texas boasts the highest GDP per capita in the country. For every one person that lives in Midland, that city generates $334,000 in capital. This is unlike any other city in the country. However, their economy is not very diverse. They're a big oil and gas and energy community. So going into that community asking, what can we do to get involved with space and then finding out, well, they have a spaceport. They have licensee for a horizontal launch. They have agreements on a federal level to allow experiments to occur in a lot of facets of space. And then starting to ask the question, well, how do we connect this? What does your education look like? What does your workforce training look like? So one of the things we're working on there is building internship programs from the university level to go into these space communities or space jobs in the community so that while they're getting their education, they're also getting experience. Over 30% of the population is under the age of six, which is a massive opportunity actually to the kind of shotgun informal and formal space STEM education. If you've got a space STEM program, it should be tried out in Midland. There are tons of kids there. And so that opportunity to provide that education is going to exist for the next 10, 15 years while those children are becoming adults. And hopefully we will have a sustainable space market that they can enter. And that should be achieved at the same time we're achieving all of this for the next generation. All right. So speaking of a sustainable space market, how do we make that happen? So there are programs on a federal level. There's the Small Business Administration provides a small business innovation and research fund. They typically deploy over $4 billion annually between nine agencies. So communities where they have higher GDPs but less cyber interactions, I get curious. And say, well, what if there's a cyber company that would do well in this economy? Well, can we move them here? What does that look like? How can we help with that? And so there are programs throughout the state of Texas that will allow companies, help companies, to move from a community where they need facilities or they might need this economics support to come to a community like Midland and begin working. Almost immediately there's one company in particular that builds rocket engines. These are startups and this startup rocket engine company does make a very cool rocket engine. It's all inert fuels. So it's safe to transport and safe to manufacture. However, testing is very challenging right now to get on a NASA or a military facility to test a rocket engine. Comes with a long wait list and it's also very expensive. So one of the things that we could do, we have done is provide a blanket license agreements that this community has licenses to perform rocket testing. It's a matter of you need a facility, maybe some storage. And so with company, this startup that's making inert rocket fuel and rocket engines, they had a barrier to entry that was a long wait list to get to these facilities to perform tests. However, we speaking with the local economic development community, they were able to begin testing within 90 days because land was available for that initiative. And funding was available from the state of Texas to ensure that testing could be done within the state of Texas by this Texas company. And what I found in the state of Texas is that the industry is supported in a way that it's strategically united in this growth. What the state of Texas has done on a state level is they've started the Texas Space Commission through House Bill 3447. Right. Yes, that was big news. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That bill provided $350 million to the state of Texas and a team of directors and a commission to the state of Texas to essentially provide a baseline understanding of the Texas Space Ecosystem and a strategy for building a foundation for a future space ecosystem that matches the eighth largest economy in the world. And they're doing a wonderful job with that. One of the biggest things they've chosen to do is build the Space Institute. And the Space Institute is a very large facility all in one lunar and Martian, so moon and Mars testing capabilities. That's once again a barrier to entry that's reduced getting a new test facility out there that's modern that other companies can come in and perform their tests, gain viability and report back to their customer that they're ready to go to space, gets us there sooner and allows us to iterate faster. It really does. And those iterations is what means a lot in the space industry fail fast is what people say often. And we don't mean that we want to do a bad job. What we want to do is find out the limits of the capabilities in this technology and then push those limits to where we need them to be. And we've seen that year after year between SpaceX, what Blue Origin is doing, intuitive machines. They went to the moon this year. They put a Texas flag on the moon. That's incredible. These things should be celebrated and they did it because they pushed technology. They decided to iterate until it was done. Okay. So tell me more about the Space Force aspect here. It's it's in the name Space Force Association. So so how does what you do work with the Space Force? What I like to say is if the Space Force has a limitation, Texas has a capability. Let's get aligned on it and we can we can reduce your barriers to entry very fast. And so what Space Force Association Texas has focused on is providing that that public research and education of that public research. We inform communities. We inform the state of Texas and we inform academia as well as a Space Force on these actions that are occurring across the state of Texas. And then we advocate for small businesses or large businesses to be supported and support the needs of the Space Force. When we started the Space Force Association Texas about two and a half years ago, I knew how big Texas was, but I didn't know. No, from Orange County to El Paso County is about a 13 hour drive. I spend most of my time driving around Texas. I love stopping in the small towns, checking out the burger joints and seeing all the new downtowns they're building. It's really beautiful. The Texas chapter is centralized around the state of Texas. However, we have committees that we're building. We just started one in Houston, a strong committee of nearly 12 people to build a body of knowledge for the Houston area in the college station area to understand on a small business scale and academic scale, as well as on an education scale what's happening actively in that area for space and what can be done. For example, Klein High School has the largest concentration of Space Force Junior ROTC in the state of Texas. What can we do? So then we take that committee and we go to their local Economic Development Commission. We go to the Texas Space Commission. We say we want to take these kids because this is the largest concentration of children. We want to take them to a space power conference show. We want to show them what the Space Force is and show them all the work and organization and the technologies that will be available to them. If I was in the Navy, I knew I was going to be on a ship, but I didn't really know much more than that, right? So if we were able to take these children at this at the high school age, show them what this organization looks like and how they can participate in it. I think they would be a lot more prepared, especially while they went through their education in the Space Force to make the biggest difference. And these small actions can really create the leaders of the Space Force from this moment. We're a non-profit and we want the whole state to work together, not compete at all. It's Team Texas for Space. It's just amazing, especially for entrepreneurs, because you mentioned that earlier and that's to me what's so fascinating is how much business space is just thriving in Texas. And I'm wondering if I'm an entrepreneur who's got a company in the space industry and I'm looking for that kind of support that you were talking about that the Space Force Association can sort of help with, how do I interface with you all? How do we work together? I would highly recommend going to a Space Force Association event, as well as reaching out to your Small Business Development Center in your local area. They are charged and funded to help small businesses capture federal grants for small business innovation and research. Over the life of the CIDBRA program in the state of Texas, companies, small business have received over $3 billion since the early 90s. And this has affected over 250,000 employees in the state of Texas. It's a wonderful program, but it's a challenging program to get involved with and it's a little daunting and scary. And so we often link small businesses with large businesses. And this is a great strategy where this small business will then use a typical prime contractor, but then call them a sub in their contract and say, "Well, we are subbing our company to this large company to provide them this innate or novel technology." And it's in these strategies or in these meetings that we find there's a lot of unity for solving these national security innovation needs. [Music] We'll be right back. Welcome back. When you think of characteristics of space, you think of how dark it is, how vast it is, and surely how quiet it must be. After all, space is a vacuum and sound needs air to travel, right? So imagine my response to reading the headline in TechCrunch that "Whisper Aero is working with NASA to bring ultra-quiet tech to space." Seems like an unnecessary thing, surely? Well, apparently space is a lot louder than we think. At least space tech is. NASA has long been concerned about the sound of spacecraft tech causing issues with astronauts and is now looking to the Tennessee Start-Up for a solution. Whisper Aero produces an ultra-quiet electric propulsor for aircraft drones and even leaf blowers. Well, we need some of those around here. They've been awarded a new NASA contract to design the quietest possible fan that's suitable for crewed space environments. At the end of the six-month effort, the Start-Up is aiming to have a prototype parts to show NASA. If the agency deems this Phase 1 project successful, Whisper would likely move on to test a design prototype next year. I'm sure that sounds like music to the ears of astronauts everywhere. We're especially looking at you, Sonny and Birch, on your long-term stay on the ISS. We hope you have some noise-canceling earbuds to get you through. That's it for T-minus for August 27th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. 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 1,400 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. This episode's Associate Producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our Executive Producer is Jennifer Iben. Our Executive Editor is Brandon Carr. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpi is our publisher. I'm Alice Karuth and Maria should hopefully be back on air tomorrow. Thanks for listening. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
