[MUSIC] Stop me if you've heard this one before. All companies are space companies. We're seeing Earth observation and space-based communications weave into nontraditional space companies at increasing rates. For example, did you know that good old McDonald's, yes, the fast food chain, uses Earth observation to monitor their cattle? So with all that said, it should come as no surprise when you see big names making bold moves into space. Like, I don't know, Apple spending $1.5 billion on satellite communications. That is just the tip of the iceberg. [MUSIC] Today is November 4th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmausis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] Apple spends $1.5 billion to expand iPhone satellite services. Relativity is facing financial struggles. China's Shenzhou 18 crew returned to Earth. And our guest today is Herb Baker, a former NASA employee who has just released his memoir from Apollo to Artemis, Stories from My 50 Years with NASA. Stay with us for more on that later in the show. [MUSIC] Happy Monday, such as it is. Let's dive into today's Intel Briefing, shall we? Apple is a name that's synonymous with innovation. So it's not a big surprise that the tech giant has its eyes on space for its latest investment. Apple is due to spend about a cool $1.5 billion to expand its iPhone direct to device services. The company is looking to expand its current partnership with GlobalStar. And GlobalStar currently allocates about 85% of its network capacity to Apple. And the news was disclosed in security findings on Friday last week with the deal expected to close tomorrow. Apple's deal with GlobalStar includes $1.1 billion in cash, of which $232 million will go towards the satellite company's current debt and a 20% equity stake. GlobalStar currently operates 31 satellites and has already ordered as many as 26 more to replenish and upgrade its constellation in low Earth orbit. The new funds will allow GlobalStar to purchase new satellites and expand its ground infrastructure. As you can imagine, GlobalStar stock has been performing very well since this news broke. On the flip side, Bloomberg is reporting that 3D rocket company Relativity Space is in financial trouble. According to insiders, the company is struggling to raise some much needed capital to keep it afloat. Relativity has been relatively quiet since its 2023 debut launch of the Terran 1. And that vehicle was 85% 3D printed and successfully launched, but it did fail to reach orbit. Following that launch, the company decided to drop the Terran 1 in favor of focusing on development of the Terran R, which they hope will rival the Falcon 9. Sara Lawson, spokesperson for Relativity, said that the company continues to make significant progress towards a 2026 launch target for the Terran R and that they are confident in their ability to bring the Terran R vehicle to market. Welcome home to the Shenzhou 18 crew. Three Tyco-nauts returned to Earth after a six-month stay on the Tiangong space station. Their capsule made a parachute-assisted landing in China's Inner Mongolia region after undocking from the orbiting lab on Sunday. The China manned space agency says all three astronauts are in good health. Japan launched an H3 rocket earlier today, carrying a Japanese Defense Ministry communications satellite to space. It's the third consecutive successful lift off of the H3 vehicle, following its unsuccessful debut back in 2023. Japan's H3 series is the successor to the country's H2A vehicle, which has supported Japan's space development for over 20 years and will be retired after a final launch expected next spring. JAXA says today's launch was a success, with a satellite, along with two others already in operation, intended to enhance communications for the country's self-defense forces. Canada's TELASAT has selected Israeli company Satex-Fi to develop and deliver landing station baseband units for the TELASAT Lightspeed Network. The contract agreement amounts to US$39 million, with deliveries taking place over a 28-month period. Anish Dalvi, vice president for TELASAT Lightspeed Systems Development, said in the press release that through this agreement, TELASAT will be able to fully integrate its innovative Leo satellites with its global terrestrial network to deliver secure, resilient broadband capabilities that meet the mission-critical requirements of telecom, government, and enterprise organizations. Germany's Polaris Space Plains successfully conducted its first three flights of its Maritou vehicle between October 25th and 27th. According to an announcement from the company, all three flights went perfectly without any issues. The main mission of the Maritou was to serve as a technology test bed and demonstrator for Polaris's in-house-developed LOX kerosene linear aerospike rocket engine. The Maritou completed approximately 20 minutes of cumulative flight time and covered a total flight distance of more than 50 kilometers. Australia's Prime Minister has cancelled plans for a $7 billion Australian dollar program to create a military-grade satellite communication system. Lockheed Martin was selected 18 months ago to deliver a hardened network of three to five satellites for the system, and the project, known as JP9102, was expected to include locally controlled and operated geostationary communication satellites as well as multiple ground stations. But the Department of Defense confirmed it no longer met, and I quote, "strategic priorities." And staying in Australia, Southern Launch has been granted all approvals for the Wailers Way Orbital Launch Complex. Work on permanent facilities is set to begin with the first launches from the site scheduled for late next year. The launch complex is located on the tip of the IR Peninsula in South Australia, and approvals have been granted initially for up to 42 launches per year. Moroccan company PenefSat and Francis Telesiliniya Space have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a Moroccan satellite communications system. The partnership aims to enhance connectivity in rural areas of Africa, supporting digital economic growth. The satellite system will provide very high throughput internet services to 26 African countries, including 23 French-speaking nations, covering a population of 550 million across 12 million square kilometers. And that concludes this Monday's Intel Briefing. You'll find original sources and further information on all of the stories that we've mentioned in the selected reading section of our show notes. We've also included three additional stories on Teledyne's new acquisition, MDA's new leadership appointment, and a seed round financial announcement from Lingo, who are working on STEM workforce development. Hi, T-Minus Crew! If you would like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T-minus page over on LinkedIn. And if you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do here, we are @t-minusdaily over on Instagram. And that's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions, and even some behind-the-scenes treats. Links are in the show notes. We hope you'll join us there! [Music] Today's guest is Herb Baker. And Herb is a former NASA employee who has just released his memoir titled From Apollo to Artemis, Stories from My 50 Years with NASA. And I asked Herb what prompted him to write his book. I worked at NASA for 42 years, recently retired in 2017, but there must be not an audience that didn't keep count. 30 or 40 people said, "You need to write a book. You need to write a book!" And I'm thinking, "Yeah, right. Who's ever gonna want to read a book, you know, written by me?" You know, there's all kinds of astronauts and flight directors and NASA administrators and everybody that have written books. But anyway, the pandemic happened, and I thought, "Well, I've got some free time now." And so then I started thinking, "Well, yeah, maybe I'll give this writing thing a shot." So anyway, really happy to be here chatting with you today. Oh, I appreciate it. And the name of your book is? Oh, yes. So it's, the title of the book is From Apollo to Artemis, Stories from My 50 Years with NASA. And again, you know, if I go back to, like I said, to 1964 when I was 12 years old, and I played on the seventh grade football team with Frank Borman, son Fred, and Scott Carpenter, son Jay. So that was 60 years ago. And again, obviously, I'm still involved today. I'm out at the Johnson Space Center, probably at least once a week or so. So anyway, yeah, my book was just published. It's a brand new baby. Yeah. Well, first congratulations. That writing a book is huge. And your life is so intertwined with the history of Johnson Space Center and so many of the names that we so many of us know. So how did you eventually get to NASA? Because again, we're still the beginning of your journey. So how'd you get there? Well, when I went away to college, I did I was studying business. So it was not a STEM career, you know, wasn't engineering or science or anything like that. And so anyway, I'm at UT Austin. And it turns out that the IRS service center that services five states, Texas and four states around it, is just a few miles from the UT campus. And so I had a part time job there, helping pay my way through school. And so this is 1971, 72. Well, actually, all of this is by the time I took this test, I'm going to tell you about it was 1974, 75. So anyway, the way you got a job, or sometimes a promotion in the federal government back then was you took a civil service exam. And so I'm there in this clerical job, just earning some money to help again, pay my way through school. And but some of the people I was working around were full time, you know, older than me. And that was that was their career. And they were one because it was kind of a clerical job. The tax examiner was my title, like people would send in the paper, tax returns, and we checked them to make sure they were signed. And the social security number was there. And it W2 was attached all those kinds of things. And so there I overheard some, some of the my coworkers talking about this piece, it's PACE, professional and administrative career exam. And they're saying amongst themselves, well, you know, if you take this test, and you do well, you could get promoted to a professional job. And but at the same time, they're talking about how hard they've heard it is that they you take the test, and they give you a score in six different categories or or aptitudes or knowledge or something. So that if you do well enough on the test, they they'll know kind of what you're good at, you know, which job to potentially offer you. But it's the same time. Yes. Yeah. But at the same time, they're saying it's so hard that if you score below 70, you know, a scale of 100 is perfect. If you score below 70, they just don't give you a score. I'm going into this thinking, wow, this sounds really hard. But I thought, well, you know, what do I have to lose at that point? I'm getting, you know, within six months or a year of graduating, I figure I won't have a problem getting a job and some company private industry corporate job with a business degree from University of Texas. And but I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll take that test anyway, just just to see what happens. So I signed up for the test. And when you register for the exam, filling it out with pencil and paper, of course, back in those days, you can indicate which cities that have government agencies in them that you'd be willing to work at. And of course, I put Houston because I live here, not even thinking that NASA was a government agency. I mean, you know, I don't, when I don't think of NASA as a child, I don't never really think of being the government. But so anyway, I'll tell you, I'll get to the punchline. So I got my results back, took the test, and I had four 100s and two 98s. My goodness. So I made almost a perfect, you know, I think, well, they sent me the wrong letter. This can't be my score. And I got an even bigger surprise, you know, a couple of weeks later, when NASA contacted me and said, Hey, would you like to come interview for a job in our business office at the Johnson Space Center? And I said, Oh, yeah. Anyway, 42 years later, you know, I can't imagine having had a better job. I mean, NASA was such an amazing place to work. You know, I sometimes think, you know, I wouldn't have really, but I think I might have done this job for free. I mean, it was interesting, exciting and challenging. Up to the very last day I was there. I believe it. You are not the first person I've talked to who said something like that, which is such a, most people would not say that about their jobs. So what a wonderful reflection, what a gift, honestly. And your blog, and I'm sure your book, which I cannot wait to read, is full of information like that. Herbie, your career, you did so, like you yourself did so many things. You were part of so many things. I mean, it's not easy to summarize 42 years of service, but I'm going to ask you to try if you could. Yeah, so I'll go through it quickly. So when I first started, this is, so this is started in 1975, but spent a couple of years just kind of, they intentionally rotated me around to different, so again, I'm in the business office. I basically managed award and manage, administer contracts that, you know, because NASA spins are back then, I think they still lose almost 90% of their budget on contractors. You know, they didn't build the shuttle or the Apollo, the lunar module or the command module. They had a contractor do, you know, a lot of people don't understand that. That's right. So, billion dollar contracts that we're working on. And so anyway, you know, get a taste of the whole center. And finally, in 1977, they assigned me to working on the EMU or extra vehicular mobility unit, which is a fancy name for a spacesuit. After the Apollo program, we were building or we were having a contractor design and build new spacesuits for the shuttle program. And so I was a young guy involved in working on administering that contract. And in 1979, this is two years before the first shuttle flight, STS-1, they moved me to the shuttle orbiter procurement section. So I was buying, not by myself, it was a large, a large age of 10 of us, we were buying the space shuttle orbiter vehicles, literally, you know, they were about two, two, two billion dollars each. And so we were managing the contract with Rockwell to build the space shuttle orbiter vehicles. And I did that for a few years. And then I got, so now it's the earliest, you know, the space station is a gleam in some people's eyes. And so I ended up going to NASA headquarters for a year in 1985. This is what, 13 years before we finally finished building the space station to work on the space station project. And then I came back after that special one year assignment and working in the space station office at JSC. And then the, the challenger accident happened and some things got changed around and I needed to go back to headquarters. And so they sent me to KSC for a year to, to be the the contracting officer to a select and award contract to an engineering support contract to support the space station program office. The space station program office was in Northern Virginia. And so I did actually spend 10 years in, living in Northern Virginia myself, spent 10 years at NASA headquarters and then moved back to JSC. And when I moved back into, to, to JSC, I was in the, the space station business office. So, so anyway, I did that for a while and then I moved back to the shuttle orbiter or the space shuttle program. And I was working there doing the Columbia accident. And then I ended up working on Orion for a while, which is, you know, the, the vehicle that they're using for Artemis. And, and then after 30 something years of working on the shuttle program, the station program, the Orion program, they, they moved me again to a different business office supporting flight operations, which is, oh, this is, this is going to be a change, but I loved it because that was supporting mission control, you know, flight operations, the astronaut office, astronaut training. And so the last eight years or so in my life were actually much of it was spent giving tours of, because I knew so much and had so much experience in, in history, giving tours of the neutral buoyancy lab, which is a big swimming pool that they astronauts trained in for, for spacewalks and in the space vehicle mock-up facility where they had mock-ups of the shuttle and the station and where the astronauts trained for, for when they were inside, you know, not doing spacewalks outside and mission control. And so that's, that's the job I had when I, when I retired. Yeah. So one of the many, many things I love about hearing your story is in my discussions with people who are in various parts of the space industry, whether, you know, government, military, commercial, we often say, you know, space is for everybody. We need people of all different skill sets working in the space industry and you are such an embodiment of that. That's right though. You know, I think so, so I spent my entire career working with engineers and scientists and doctors and astronauts and, and so I think just by, you know, osmosis, I had to learn some things because we were buying, we were, we were buying space vehicles and, and, you know, providing engineering support. And so we had to kind of at least have a pretty decent idea of what it was they needed. So we were certain to, to actually buy the, the right thing for them. So, you know, about 30% of the NASA workforce is in business, contracts, finance, HR, you know, legal lawyers. So there's, yeah, there's a good chuck of people that have careers at NASA that are not engineers or scientists. And Herb will be sharing more of his stories with us on Saturday's Deep Space. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Now I didn't write this part of the script. This one's all my producer Alice, so don't at me for sounding like I'm bragging. But among my many talents is that I am an artist and I particularly enjoy the medium of cartoons or graphic novel art. That is true. So our kicker story for today makes my artist heart very, very happy. NASA has really leaned into graphic novels for storytelling over the last few years with the release of their first woman novels. And we were excited to see that they're also covering other scientific endeavors through graphic novels. And NASA's Astrobiology program has released a new edition of issue number four, missions to the outer solar system of its graphic history series called Astrobiology, the story of our search for life in the universe. So what's the reason for this update? Well, it's to include the latest NASA and ESA missions that are looking at the outer solar system. Issue number four now includes the Europa Clipper and juice missions to illustrate how astrobiologists study the potential for life on worlds like Europa and the exciting data that these missions will gather. And the best part? It's all free to download and the website includes digital wallpaper for phones, desktops or meeting backgrounds that feature the new Europa Clipper artwork from issue number four. So excuse me a little bit while I'm getting distracted and getting a little lost in the Astrobiology graphic novel series. It is a gorgeous way to engage with audiences and tell the story of what's out there. That's it for T minus for November 4th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and short review in your favorite podcast app. Also, please fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We're privileged that N2K Cyberwire is part of the daily routine 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. N2K makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your teams smarter. Learn how at N2K.com. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth, our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ivan. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I am your host, Marie Overmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
