AI in orbit and the future of spaceports.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today is August 18, 2025. I'm Maria Varmazis, and this is T-minus. [MUSIC PLAYING] T-minus. 20 seconds to LOS, T-dred. Open aboard. [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] Fire. Landspace Technologies' methane-powered rocket experienced an anomaly during a launch attempt on Friday. Four. Space Cotan has signed a preliminary agreement with Firefly Aerospace to study the feasibility of launching Alpha from the Hokkaido spaceport. Three. Voyager Technologies is investing in latent AI. Two. NASA and Google are collaborating to test an AI-powered medical assistant designed to support astronauts on long-duration missions. One. According to internal company documents reviewed by the New York Times, SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002. [MUSIC PLAYING] And today we have our monthly segment from the Aerospace Corporation. Parker Wyschik brings us The Nexus. And this month he's joined by Craig J. Smith, Executive Director at Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority, Scott McLaughlin, Executive Director at the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, and Karen Jones, who is the senior project leader in the Center for Space Apology and Strategy at the Aerospace Corporation. They all are going to discuss inland spaceport opportunities, so stick around for more on that later in the show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Happy Monday, T-minus crew. Hope you had a lovely weekend, and thank you for joining me today. Let's dive in. We're kicking off today's Intel briefing for you with a scathing report by the New York Times against industry leader SpaceX. According to internal company documents reviewed by the New York Times, SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002. And has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any. Yeah, what? And with all those federal contracts? Well, how exactly does that happen? Well, according to the documents, SpaceX has found a legal loophole. The space giant can seize on a legal tax benefit that allows it to use the more than $5 billion in losses it racked up by late 2021 to offset paying future taxable income. It is a loophole that was created by US President Trump during his first term in office. President Trump eliminated the tax benefits expiration date for all companies. And for SpaceX, that means that nearly $3 billion of its losses can be indefinitely applied against future taxable income. Not bad for a company that in 2020 generated nearly 84% of its income from federal contracts. Now, we are not saying that SpaceX doesn't pay any taxes. According to the documents, SpaceX appears to have paid some income taxes over the years, though likely not to the federal government. In one document, the company says it's expected to pay a whopping $483,000 in income tax to federal governments and $78,000 in state income tax in 2021. Separately, it reported paying $6,000 for income taxes in 2020 and 2021, but did not disclose if the payments were for federal, state or local governments. Interestingly, SpaceX did not respond to the Times's request for a comment on this story, and we're sure Mr. Musk isn't losing any sleep over it either. What may be keeping him up at night, though, is the impending 10th test flight of the Starship Super Rocket. The FAA has approved a launch license to conduct the 10th test flight of its Starship rocket with a targeted launch date of August 24th. NASA and Google are collaborating to test an AI-powered medical assistant designed to support astronauts on long-duration missions. The idea is that the assistant will fill in at times where communication delays with Earth make real-time medical consultations impossible. NASA and Google are testing a proof-of-concept for what will be called a "Crew Medical Officer Digital Assistant," or CMODA. No word yet on if they got Robert Picardo to do the voice. The AI system is being trained on spaceflight literature and uses natural language processing and machine learning techniques to safely provide real-time analyses of crew health and performance. The tool is designed to support a designated crew medical officer or flight surgeon in maintaining crew health and making medical decisions driven by data and predictive analytics. Early results have shown promise for reliable diagnoses based on reported symptoms. Google and NASA are now collaborating with medical doctors to test and refine the model, aiming to enhance autonomous crew health and performance during future space exploration missions. And no, they are not the only organizations making big moves in AI. Voyager Technologies is investing in latent AI, a software company turning data into decisive action at the edge in any domain. Voyager says the investment will enhance their ability to deliver faster targeting, sharper situational awareness, and decisive advantage. The investment gives latent AI the resources to broaden their hardware reach while accelerating product development. Together, Voyager and latent AI say they will cultivate a larger partner ecosystem, speed up innovation cycles, and deliver improved edge intelligence to defense, space, and industrial customers. Firefly Aerospace is looking to Japan for its next international launch partner. Firefly has already signed a launch contract with Sweden in addition to facilities in the United States. Space Kotan, operator of the Hokkaido spaceport, located about 500 miles northeast of Tokyo, has signed a preliminary agreement with Firefly to study the visibility of launching the small lift rocket Alpha from the launch facility. Adam Oakes, who is Firefly's vice president of launch, said launching Alpha from Japan would allow Firefly to serve the larger satellite industry in Asia and add resiliency for U.S. allies with a proven orbital launch vehicle. A feasibility study is being conducted to assess the regulatory hurdles, timeframes, and investments for a launch pad for Alpha in Hokkaido. The plan would require a space technology safeguard agreement between Washington and Tokyo that would allow American rocket launches in Japan. And yeah, the cliche saying is that space is hard. The thing is that it really is. Chinese commercial rocket launcher Landspace experienced a setback late last week just proving the aphorism. Landspace is the company that beat SpaceX and Blue Origin to the first launch of a methane-liquid oxygen rocket. In Landspace's methane-powered rocket, experienced an anomaly after taking off from a commercial space launch site in northwestern China on Friday morning. Landspace shared a brief statement on WeChat but gave no further details of the cause of the issue. [Music] And that wraps up today's Monday Intel Briefing. You can read more about all the stories mentioned throughout the show by following the links in our show notes, of course. And speaking of those links, N2K Senior Producer Alice Carruth joins us now to let us know about what other stories are included in there for you. Alice? Thanks, Maria. We have four additional stories in the selected reading section today. Staying with China, they launched a modified Long March 6 rocket on Sunday carrying the ninth set of satellites for an Internet constellation. NASA's Tom X-Plus launch has been pushed off until tomorrow, August the 19th. U-Met-a-Sat has assumed control of the Met-Op SGA1 and we've included an ABC article on cybersecurity and space. My favorite subjects. And as a reminder, you can also find those links on our website, space.n2k.com. Hi, T-Minus Crew. If you would love some daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, or maybe even just like them, that's fine too. 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-daily on Instagram. And that is where we post videos and pictures from the events that we go to, excursions that we make, and sometimes even some behind-the-scenes streets. Links are, of course, in the show notes. Hope you'll join us there. Let me hand you over to Parker Wyschik now from the Aerospace Corporation for our monthly NEXUS segment. You're here on the NEXUS courtesy of the T-Minus Space Daily podcast. My name is Parker Wyschik at the Aerospace Corporation. Thrilled to be talking about a very timely topic with you today on spaceports development in the United States. Joining us from the Oklahoma Department of Aerospace and Aeronautics is Craig J. Smith, the Director of Space Industry Development. We also have Scott McLaughlin, the Executive Director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, and Karen Jones from the Aerospace Corporation, the Senior Policy Analyst in the Center for Space Policy and Strategy, and the author of a recent policy paper, Space Portopia. Space ports are a real thing in America today. A lot of America may have missed that memo, so I'd love to give Scott and Craig the opportunity to introduce your spaceports to America, Scott. So, Spaceport America is in southern New Mexico. It was created by an agency of the state of New Mexico, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, in about 2005-2006. Our first partnership was with Virgin Galactic. We're about 18,000 acres. We do vertical launch, horizontal launch, and we're currently working on getting our reentry license. We're in a remote area, so we can do a lot of interesting things. And like all the other spaceports, we're looking to grow as much as we can to economic development for the area. Craig, Oklahoma, rich aviation history, folks might know, might not think of space associating it with Oklahoma. Absolutely. If Oklahoma Air and Space Port is the state agency, we've got our spaceport license in 2006. So it used to be a naval air station in World War II. Later, it became an Air Force SAC base in the '50s and '60s. So we boast a 13,500 foot runway, 300 feet wide. And then, of course, we have an adjacent industrial part next to it. It's a 2,700 acre facility. It's located almost equidistant between Oklahoma City and Amarillo. And so these are both what we would call inland spaceports. And there's talk about this being a needed trend by some, one of them being U.S. Scott, investing in America's inland spaceport infrastructure to ease the glut of space launch demand at our coastal spaceports. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah. One of the ways I talk to groups is I ask people how often do you think launches occur at the Cape? And most people guess around eight or 12 times a year. A few people might say 20 or 30, but it's really once every three days and it's going up from there. So there has been a lot of looking around about how can we find more launch sites and DODs considered overseas sites. They've considered trying to open up more coastal regions. But why aren't we looking inland? Why aren't we looking at the spaceports like the Craig Runs and spaceport America, where we can actually do some inland launch. We can help support that cadence. We can also provide some resiliency for DOD and national security missions. But we have some hills to climb, which one is going to be the technology to make sure that it's safe enough that we can launch over people. Another one is going to be creating the marketplace. And it's probably DOD that's going to have to help on both of those. They're going to have to help with launch vehicles, both vertical and horizontal, that can fly over people and go to space. And to create that initial market, prove that if they can do a cadence, we can have a market that the other spaceports would also enjoy. Craig, Oklahoma likes hearing the thunder make noise. Are your folks wanting more noise from rocket launches in your state? Absolutely. There's a great interest from our legislature to the community and the public at large. They want to see something. They certainly want to help our DOD partners. In that regard, Scott explained that there is a lockdown. And anything that Oklahoma can do to inland spaceports can do to remedy that and provide for some resiliency, some redundancy and access to space. Absolutely. Here and over to you. Your paper, "Space Portopia," kind of has dual meaning. I've read it going in thinking, "All right, we're about to put spaceports anywhere. We've got some flat land." But it's actually more of a caveat, if you will. Is some of this congestion we're talking about actually a good thing? I think when you have congestion, it means you're fully utilizing your assets. Often there's efficiency problems channeling more traffic to certain areas than others, but it's not necessarily a huge warning bill. Certainly underutilization has its own set of problems as well. It's a balancing act ultimately here. And so the paper, "Space Portopia," a primer to successful launch site planning, covers realistic planning that can be done. I wrote this with my colleague Lindsay Dimarshie, as well as Dr. Priyanka Dopey University of Auckland. So we brought in a lot of different expertise and experts across the world. Yes, it has a slight U.S. focus, but we're seeing similar mistakes and similar lessons learned across the world for spaceports. If you could briefly summarize the frameworks that you line up in "Space Portopia," it really sounds like the good principles for spaceport planning are just good business planning principles. That's exactly right. We basically articulate five different suggestions for successful spaceport planning. The first is consider regional compatibility and the opportunity costs. Certain places have better opportunities, not as spaceports, and some have immense opportunities as spaceports. The second point was apply rigorous economic analysis for regional economic assessment. The third one is to improve and expand on spaceport ecosystems. That's the same theme, but going forward, developing strong relationships with the business community and complementary relationships. The fourth one should really be the first one, but when you're citing a spaceport, it's so important to be completely transparent and build trust with the local community. We warn about pork barrels, white elephants, and bridges to nowhere. The final point is to avoid irrational exuberance, establish realistic forecasts and expectations, and don't set yourself up for failure. Scott and Craig, I have to imagine that now, a little ways into your spaceport's lifespan, you all have been doing this with regularity and probably did it a fair bit before you even really broke ground. You want to talk about that, Craig, first? We got our spaceport license in 2006, and there was a great excitement at the beginning when there was all this optimism, and nothing happened for about a decade and a half. There's a lot of expectations from our policy makers, those that fund us going, "What's going on? What is the future?" We only had a few lean years that there were some actual questions about, "Should we continue down this pathway? Should we enclose the phase and see down?" In the last few years, that's spurred back out, but I think getting expectations in front of those that work with us on this thing. To understand what spaceport's capable of, what the timing is on that space takes time. It's a difficult thing to do. And then looking for some ancillary business, the other things that you can do to make money in the meantime, leasing above this land or a hangar space or things of that nature that brings money in and resources in otherwise. Investing and expanding that ecosystem. Scott, you actually came out with an economic impact analysis. Do you want to talk about the relationship with the community, with the state of New Mexico and the public-private partnership model there a little bit? Yeah, sure. I mean, it's exactly what Karen and Craig just said. Having the engaged community, you can't build a spaceport if people are against it, and we've seen that in some other places. Camden and Michigan, who are trying to do some things. We're lucky because we're kind of in the middle of nowhere and we're underneath White Sands Missal Range airspace. So we did have some people that were not happy with the spaceport, but a lot of people were looking forward to those jobs. But it's been a long haul, just like it has been for Craig. We were able to sign up with Virgin Galactic almost 20 years ago, but we're still not quite to regular flights. But the Economic Impact Report, which goes back six years, which is approximately when Virgin Galactic had moved a bunch of their staff to New Mexico. You add that plus a bunch of other activities that we've supported. And we're bringing in about $81 million of new money. It's higher now, but that's the average over the last six years, and plus about 800 jobs, which are indirect, direct and induced, which is the way the economists like to look at it. So I think we've had some good success, but it's been a long time. And I think the point that Karen made about opportunity cost is, you can't ignore the fact that, well, if New Mexico just put that money away in a bank, or if they'd put it on some other project, where would we be? But the one thing I would add to what Karen was talking about is when I have to go talk to legislators and talk about where we are progress-wise, different legislators want different success. Their measure of success is different. Some want me to be in revenue neutral, which is what Alaska is known for doing, is best they can, although they get a lot of federal funds. They don't get money from the state. I think Craig gets money from the state for Oklahoma. We get some money from the state. And you could say, well, that's a bad thing, but we're producing jobs. So the legislators have to decide, our stakeholders have to decide, are we a public good? Meaning, are we like a road that doesn't necessarily have an immediate return on investment, but is an enabling force? Or should we just be revenue neutral, which would be a whole different way to run the spaceport, especially if it were a completely private spaceport? So you'll mention this executive order dated August 13th. We're not going to go too in-depth on it, but it does make reference to spaceports directing Secretary of Defense, Transportation, and NASA to expedite spaceport development as part of promoting commercial space innovation. Well, I think it's good that they're, they recognize the challenge and the difficulty that lies ahead and the bottom if it exists. We'll continue to investigate it and look at the parameters of it and what that entails. So the fact that they're discussing it and bringing it up, is that some optimism to it? More to come on that. There's a 180-some day period for the government to act here. Heron, consistency across government, a good sign that they are invested or interested in spaceport infrastructure potentially? I think it's a good sign that they're interested in spaceport infrastructure, but I also think this needs to be looked through a very wide lens. The Secretary of Transportation and Acting NASA Administrator, Sean Duffy, asserted that the executive order is to support spaceports around the country, and that makes sense for the private sector. While that's true, sometimes space as an industry competes in a region with other industries. So again, it's about optimizing it for the region. Sean, Craig, you all touched on this earlier. The states that you are located in have been very willing and participatory partners in your enterprises. Is that something that the rest of the space enterprise can learn from these other industry sectors that might expand to become offshoots of a spaceport ecosystem? If we're going to get to some sort of orbital launch cadence of any kind, we're not going to exist on our own. We're going to need partners. And of course, we want to create those adjacent businesses, but we need the support of those adjacent businesses. But going real quick back to the executive order, I think one of the key pieces that's missing out of there is actually a national strategy. So sure, they're reducing potentially some regulation to help things pop up, but it doesn't answer the question, what does a network of national spaceports look like? And how does that support national security space and keep us competitive and help private industry? That's what I think we really need. Great discussion. Not nearly enough time to talk about this topic. I want to offer a quick closing point to Craig and then Scott and then Karen. Well, following nearly a decade of not a lot going on at our particular spaceport and some concerns from our legislatures, sometimes there was some challenges on funding they were looking to maybe even defund this organization and close it down. I've got a legislature now that's very excited, very engaged in what's going on here and wanting to make some investments out here. And we had a recent agreement with a company called Don Aerospace, which will provide some opportunity for us in the future as well. So we're really at fad above what the future holds. Yeah. Well, you know, we're trying to move forward like the other spaceports. We're trying to do exactly what Karen said, trying to figure out how to fit into our ecosystem and bolster that area. You know, and again, it's to build jobs in, but people say space is hard. I would say spaceports are hard to hear. The space industry is continuing to mature. And with any maturing industry, they often ask themselves, how can we do more with less? How can we be more efficient? And the space industry is doing that now. We're building bigger rockets, and that means greater payload mass per launch and greater cost efficiencies. There's also greater or more capable satellites. It's going to lower capital expenditures and increase efficiency. But it might mean also potentially eventually a drop in launch because we're being more efficient and we're maturing. And I think that needs to be part of the conversation as we think about our future spaceport capacity. That was a great discussion. Thank you very much to Craig Smith in Oklahoma, to Scott McLaughlin in New Mexico, to Karen Jens at Aerospace. I'm Parker Wysiek. Thanks to the AT-MINUS team as always for having us, and we'll see you next time in the nexus. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Get rolling next generation of explorers, and NASA means that quite literally. The US Space Agency is now accepting student proposals for its annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge, where teams design, build and race rovers across a half-mile obstacle course meant to mimic future Artemis missions. And the Human Exploration Rover Challenge 2026 is on, and the challenge itself has been around since 1994. In this challenge, students will test their builds over simulated asteroid debris, boulders, erosion ruts, and even an ancient stream bed, as they also test tools for collecting samples of soil, water and air. Some rovers will be human-powered with riders playing astronaut, while others will be remote-controlled, simulating a pressurized rover. And more than 500 students from around the world joined last year's competition, and the upcoming event wraps with a live event from April 9th through the 11th, 2026, at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. It is a challengingly fun way to spark skills for the workforce that could one day drive real rovers on the moon and Mars. And it's always a good time full of lots of learning moments. And personally, I always enjoy seeing the videos from the yearly challenge and seeing the fascinating solutions that the students come up with. These are tomorrow's builders and leaders after all, and as the competitors demonstrate every year, yeah, the kids are indeed alright. And that is T-Minus, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. 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 our show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. These also fill out the survey and show notes, or send an email to space@n2k.com. We're proud 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 helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn, and stay informed. As the Nexus for Discovery in connection, we bring you the people, the technology, and the ideas, shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how at N2K.com. 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 Kilpie is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Vermazis. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. [Music] T-minus. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]