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[MUSIC] Today is April 17th, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis and this is T-minus. [MUSIC] The Texas State Commission has approved grant applications that total $26 million for five proposed projects. Blue Origin's Orbital Reef Space Station has completed a human in the loop testing milestone. L3 Harris Technologies has completed a $125 million expansion at its space manufacturing facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Northrop Grumman launches a Minotaur 4 rocket from Vandenberg for an NRO mission. The United States Space Force releases its war fighting framework. [MUSIC] And our guest today is Joshua Western, CEO and co-founder of Spaceforge. And I caught up with Josh at the Space Symposium just the other week to find out the latest on their upcoming ICAM mission, Spaceforge 1. So stick around to find out more. [MUSIC] Here is your Thursday intel briefing. The United States Space Force released its space war fighting framework today. The document outlines the service's vision for achieving and maintaining space superiority while ensuring the long term safety and sustainability of the space domain. It argues that the United States needs to establish space superiority as a precondition for winning a war. It explains that the Space Force does that by exercising space control. The United States Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman added to the release of the framework that quote, it is the formative purpose of the Space Force to achieve space superiority. To ensure freedom of movement in space for our forces while denying the same to our adversaries, we must be prepared to employ capabilities for offensive and defensive purposes to deter and if necessary, defeat aggressors that threaten our vital national interests. The framework outlines the three primary mission areas for the Space Force, which are orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare, and cyberspace warfare. It goes on to say that at the direction of combatant commanders, guardians may conduct counter space operations, including terrestrial strike, orbital strike, space link interdiction, and active and passive space defense. The United States Space Force says the space war fighting framework marks a significant step forward in solidifying the space force as a war fighting service and is an integral part of the joint and combined force, highlighting the essential role of space superiority for national security. And if you want to read more about it, you can read the full document from the Space Force by following the link in our show notes. Northrop Grimman launched a minotaur rocket from California for the National Reconnaissance Office, NRL 174 mission earlier this week. It was the first minotaur launch from the state in nearly 14 years, and the NRO gave no indication prior to launch that there would be a live stream of the mission. However, a camera controlled by the University of California, San Diego's Alert California program happened to catch the ascent. As expected with NRO missions, little is known about what was sent into orbit. The NRO did share that the NRL 174 consists of "multiple national security payloads designed, built, and operated by the NRO." NRL 174 is the third mission launched as part of the orbital, sub-orbital program 3, which is managed by the U.S. Space Force's Rocket Systems Launch Program. The program is designed to give the government flexible access to space by buying rides on smaller rockets like the Minotaur 4. L3Harris Technologies has completed a $125 million expansion at its space manufacturing facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana. L3Harris says that the facility will support the Department of Defense's urgent need for on-orbit technology to defend the homeland by building a golden dome around the United States. L3Harris says the investment in facilities in Indiana will enable strategic capabilities to be delivered around the second half of the president's second term. Blue Origin's Commercial Space Station orbital reef has completed a human in the loop testing milestone. The milestone is part of a NASA Space Act Agreement, originally awarded to Blue Origin in 2021, and focused on the design progress for multiple worksites, floors, and translation paths within the station. This ensures a commercial station can support human life in low-Earth orbit. The human-in-the-loop test scenarios used individual participants or small groups to perform day-in-the-life walkthroughs in the life-size mock-ups of major station components. Participants provided feedback while simulating microgravity operations, including cargo transfer, trash transfer, stowage, and worksite assessments. The first modules of orbital reef were initially planned to launch in 2027, but it is unclear if Blue Origin is still on track to meet that milestone. The Texas State Commission held a meeting yesterday and voted to approve grant applications that totaled $26 million for five proposed projects. Aegis Aerospace was approved for up to $10 million, Icon Technology up to $694,000, Interloon Corp. was approved for $4.8 million, KULR Technology Group will receive $6.7 million, and Venus Aerospace Corp. will receive up to $3.9 million. These latest awards bring the total awards granted by the Texas Space Commission to $95.3 million for 14 projects. A $54.7 million balance remains available in the Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund, also known as SERF, for future awards. And that concludes our daily briefing. And by the way, today is our second anniversary on the air, and it happens to be N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth's anniversary with us here at N2K. So happy anniversary, Alice. Thanks, Maria. Two years and many extra grey hairs. I relate. What extra stories do you have for us today? We have one additional story today in the selected reading section of our show notes. Japan's asteroid sampling Hayabusa-2 probe has been put into safe mode. Let's hope they figure out that glitch quickly. Yes, and all the links to all the stories mentioned both throughout the show and what Alice just told us now can be found on our website, which is space.n2k.com. Hey, 2-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] I got to catch up with Josh Western from Spaceforge at the Space Symposium just last week. Here's our chat. [Music] I am Josh Western and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Spaceforge. We're an in-space manufacturing company. Really, we're a materials company first and a space company second. We produce advanced compound semiconductor substrates. Those are the inorganic crystals that make up computer chips. Right now, we do that here on Earth. From later this year, we'll be starting the process of doing it in space. That's very exciting. Well, thank you for joining me today. You all have had quite a journey the last few years, and I know coming up soon, we're having a launch. Can you tell a little bit about what's going on there? Yeah. It has been a journey. It has been a journey. I realize, as I say this, I'm sounding almost shell-shocked. So, back in '23, we launched our first mission, forged our zero. Unfortunately, that was on a launch vehicle that didn't quite make it. Got to spend the grand total of six and a half minutes in space. We did get to do a re-entry, not the one we'd hoped to do, unfortunately. But since then, we have been through almost a Phoenix level of transformation. What we've been doing at Spaceforge is we really focused in on the materials manufacturing. So, one of the things I'm really pleased to update your listeners on is we now have a pilot line semiconductor capability in the UK. So, we are already producing semiconductors for customers right here on Earth. To be open about it, that basically saved the company. It's not a fab, basically? Basically, yes. For lack of a better term, we have reactors that are operational. That's not an easy thing to do. It is not. We took benefit from some infrastructure that was aging for other people, but for us, worked just as an immediate kind of gap-fill capability. Wow. That allowed us to sustain the business while also proving out, effectively, people want to buy semiconductors. We already know they do. What's really important is the people that we're working with today are buying them because they want to work with the ones that we bring back from Space. That's really critical for us. That then allowed us to also keep the money coming in to start the development of our upcoming missions as well. We were in the position where, a couple of years ago, we had one mission launching. This year, we've got three. A couple of them we're not really talking about. Mostly because we've already been on the pointy end of missions not working out, and we don't want to live that again. We've decided to just talk about them if they're successful. But the capstone mission that's launching later this year is 4-star-1. Yes. As a platform, it is 11 times larger than the last time that we went to Space. So it's a bit of an upgrade. I was going to say, despite everything happening with 4-star-0, it's still lessons learned from that. Sure. Anything in terms of what you brought to 4-star-1 that you can share? Yeah. So the important thing about 4-star-0 is all of the lessons we wanted to learn from it were in the manufacturing. Oh, interesting. So we went from paper to a finished satellite in four and a half months. 4-star-1 is speaking on a mass basis about twice as fast as that on a per kilo build. But it's also a significant upgrade. So 4-star-0 was all about demonstrating the deployment of the reentry technology. 4-star-1 still has that objective, but we're also effectively pipe cleaning out our manufacturing payload as well. So this is our opportunity to basically demonstrate that we can create the right environment for scalable semiconductor production in Space. Yeah. And you all also just recently got your license also for 4-star-1. So can you walk me through what that process has been like? I imagine interesting. That is a very nice way of putting it. Interesting is a very good word. Yeah, I mean, it's been, I'm really pleased that we've gone over the line. So it's the first time the UK has licensed an in-space manufacturing mission. Congratulations, by the way. That is huge. I think it also makes us the second country ever to have licensed an in-space manufacturing mission, followed, of course, second to the US as you would expect. And it's been a journey. It's been a very interesting journey. I have yet to count all of the pieces of paper that it took. Just begin to imagine. But it has been a two and a half year journey to get that license together. We are really pushing the envelope with basically when the regulator was stood up for space, where they thought the industry was going. So they had incredible foresight on some areas, like mega constellations for telco, et cetera. And then we come in as two guys in a garage saying, "Hello, we'd really like to make semiconductors in space and then return them to Earth." They were not anticipating that. We've had some interesting points in this journey, such as realizing that there's no law about re-entrable spacecraft in the UK. It is a bit new. Yes. We had a point where the CAA updated their definition of the word "parachute." The distant stare you've got thinking about this, I feel like it says a lot, honestly. It was, I mean, there were two people on it full time for two and a half years. And I reckon at one point about 45 people across the company touched one part of the license or another. This is the stuff when we talk about the space industry. We're so much of that sausage is made. It's not the glamorous part, but my goodness, it is a lot in there. I will give an absolute shout out now to Andrew Dunn, our licensing and regulation manager, who spearheaded all of this effort. He put it very succinctly that without a satellite, you don't have a mission. But without a license, you definitely don't have a mission. So, fingers crossed for 4*1, of course, wishing you all the best. I'm curious what you're after 4*1, what you're thinking about, what's happening there. So originally 4*1 was going to be a product family in itself. Nah. We are going straight for 4*2. I need to come up with a new system that isn't just numbers. I need to call a name, but we are, I like call names. That's the thing I bring to the organization is coming up with call names. The thing that we're looking really forward to is basically getting stuck into the development of that platform. So in terms of a scale up from 4*1, so 4*1 is 11 times larger than 4*0. 4*2 will be about 25 times bigger than 4*1. And the payloads, same idea of what you've been doing now are different areas in Isam or... So still focused on semiconductor production, but that will be at a scale where we can basically make money for lack of a better term. I think that's a really important thing. People tend to forget that you are sometimes trying to make money in this industry. You are a business. So one of the critical limitations of 4*1 is it can't produce very much material. 4*2 allows us to produce much greater quantity, but importantly we also had a chemistry breakthrough in the past intervening years as well. How? That chemistry breakthrough is that we can actually maintain the purity of the semiconductors that we produce in space for a far longer period of time back here on Earth than we thought. Wow. What that meant is we've been able to drastically reduce the amount of missions we need to launch, but at the same time massively increase the scale of our semiconductor operation. So right now we're looking at roughly, for each mission we launch, we can produce up to 10 million chips. My goodness, that is quite a scale. Alright, with all this, your company is also growing quite a bit. Tell me a bit about how you all have been doing on that trajectory. I think the last time we sat down we were maybe like 35 to 40 people. We're now 75. Wow. And so when was that? Like maybe 24 months ago. So doubled in size also since that point. That's been a hell of a journey. We were, what, five years ago, two guys in a garage. There is, that's the, you used the term where the sausage is made earlier. I did, I did. I'm a big fan of that term. Not least because it applies to things like licensing, it also applies to headcount growth. Yeah. Growing from 50 to 60 people was harder than two to 50. Really? Things, once you get past 50 people, the things that worked just stop working. Like you actually, even though you still want to maintain that startup mindset, you actually have to start implementing things like process. You realize that you can't actually get all of the team anymore around one table. It's actually quite difficult to find a room big enough to hold that amount of people if you just want to do like a monthly update. Yep. And at the same time, the company as well as hiring people went through a seismic shift. And that seismic shift was again around the semiconductor work. We're now roughly 50-50 in terms of our engineering landscape. The 50% of our team are material scientists, chemists, semiconductor physicists, and the other half is spacecraft engineering. Whereas in our early days, because it had to be, we were much more weighted toward spacecraft engineering. So not only do you have to speak two different languages, semiconductors and space, you then also have to straddle the way that the customers in those different organizations or different sectors think about working with you. So we've learned the semiconductor language of business as well as the space language of business. And the human management business, yeah. And the human management business and time zone management. So one of the other things we've done is establish an office in the US. Yes, indeed. So that's based out of Florida, led by the incredible Michelle Fleming, our president of Inc. We've just doubled that team in size. We've just brought on ATL, our new VP of semiconductors. And we have another couple of people joining us over the coming months as well. So not many companies that can say they've quadrupled in size in a couple of months. So I'm looking forward to that as well. And the way in which globally we're now thinking about semiconductors has also changed. Yeah. And the way that we started-- Why would that be? No, just kidding. I'm sorry. I can give a history lesson. But even in the time, you know, Spaceforges existed for barely any time. And already the way in which people think about us. You know, when we, 2018, two guys from the UK who wanted to make semiconductors, we got mostly blank looks if we were lucky. If people understood what a semiconductor was outside of that field, yeah. I'll tell you how good the release of Chitwall was for our business. Because all of a sudden, like the secretaries of state, they had it. You know, ministers were reading it, civil servants were reading it. And all of a sudden they went, oh, this is really important. Yeah. And then alongside that, you also had just the increasing geopolitical tensions. And in a business which works in semiconductors and space, there is never, ever any getting away from the politics. So you have to play to it. Yeah. And the politics around something like semiconductors and around space today are creating the opportunities for companies like Spaceforge. I really respect the fact that also you have to walk that very difficult line in two fields that are very tricky. So that is quite a challenge, but you all are doing so well. So as always, really thrilled to be able to catch up with you and wish you all the best as you continue. Anything else you want to leave for our podcast today? To be honest, all I want to say is it's been so good to see the growth that you've gone through, like as T-minus, like when I think about how it started out, you know, and we were like one of the really early interviews. You were. To see it go from strength to strength, like it's really nice to just grow up with you. And it's been real and just really enjoyable to catch up with you again. I feel the same way. Thank you so much for that. It's a great kind of you to say. I appreciate it. Well, thank you so much. Cheers. Oh, thank you. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Hey there, stargazers. You got any plans this weekend? Well, if not, you might want to look up because the Lyrid Meteorite shower will be lighting up the night sky. The shower will be peaking around April 21st to 22nd. That's coming up soon. The Lyrids are one of the oldest known meteor showers with records of them dating back over 2,700 years. That is some ancient sky magic. And if you happen to catch them, you could expect 10 to 20 meteors per hour. And if you're lucky, maybe even a Lyrid Fireball and those streaks can leave glowing trails that hang in the sky for a long time. And the meteors come from debris left behind by the Comet Thatcher. And they're named after the constellation Lyra where they appear to originate. The best viewing tip for these and really any other meteor showers is to head out after midnight, get away from city lights, and let your eyes adjust to the dark for at least 20 minutes. To catch a meteor shower, you don't need anything fancy like a telescope or even binoculars, just the naked eye, a comfy spot, and a little bit of light. Unless you happen to live in a dark sky area like Alice does, she's very lucky. So grab a blanket, maybe a friend, and definitely a thermos of something warm if you're going to be out that late. And enjoy the show. The universe is putting on a free light display and you definitely don't want to miss it. That is it for T-minus for April 17th, 2025, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We privilege that N2K and podcasts like T-minus are part of this show. We hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please like, share, and subscribe to our channel. And if you haven't already, please leave a comment. We privilege 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. N2K's senior producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tre Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. We're your host, Marie Varmazis. Thanks for listening. We will see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
