Mary Lynne Dittmar, chief of government and external relations officer at Axiom Space recently told Vice-President Kamala Harris and the rest of the National Space Council that “There are business cases that are developing for a future LEO economy, but it does not today exist. . . .As with any economic development in a new environment, the greatest contribution that the government can make is to enable private enterprise to develop the infrastructure necessary to grow that economy. This means there must be a predictable, transparent and common sense regulatory framework that protects investment and lower barriers to entry for private capital.”
In this episode, I will break down what the National Space Council is doing to bring about that economy. We will also review the latest rough news of alleged employee abuse at SpaceX, licensing changes in the UK, and changes to cyber-warfare doctrines thanks to the invasion of the Ukraine. All this and more, today on the undiscovered Country.
Hello and welcome to the “Undiscovered Country”. I am your host Bryant A.M. Baker. Today, I will present the top 5 most important things happening in the world of space. Let’s get started.
1.
Eight former SpaceX employees filed unfair labor practice charges against the company on November 16, 2022. The charges allege that SpaceX violated the National Labor Relations Act by terminating the employees for engaging in protected concerted activity.
Specifically, the employees were fired for being part of a larger group that drafted a letter to SpaceX’s executive team expressing concern about recent allegations of sexual harassment by CEO Elon Musk, and his harmful behavior on Twitter that hurt the company’s reputation and also the company culture. The letter called on SpaceX to take appropriate remedial action including condemning Musk’s harmful Twitter behavior, holding leadership accountable, and seeking uniform definition and enforcement of SpaceX’s “No Asshole” policy.
The charges allege that SpaceX fired five employees the day after the letter came out, and four more over the course of the following two months. Two of the former employees, Paige Holland-Thielen and Tom Moline, filed charges, with six others joining anonymously.
In a statement, Ms. Holland-Thielen said that: “As a woman engineer at SpaceX I experienced the deep cultural problems firsthand and spent countless hours comforting my peers and colleagues going through the same things and worse. It was clear that this culture was created from the top level. Part of what was supposed to be so great about SpaceX was that any person at any level could escalate issues to leadership and be taken seriously and treated with respect. We drafted the letter to communicate to the executive staff on their terms and show how their lack of action created tangible barriers to the long term success of the mission. We never imagined that SpaceX would fire us for trying to help the company succeed.”
Additionally, Mr. Moline commented: “As a senior engineer at SpaceX, I was entrusted with the design and operation of systems that were critical to SpaceX's overall mission of achieving interplanetary spaceflight. My teammates and I were given significant autonomy to achieve this goal, and were repeatedly told to do whatever it takes to accomplish it as soon as possible. Management used this ‘ends justifies the means’ philosophy to turn a blind eye to the ongoing mistreatment, harassment, and abuse reported by my colleagues, much of which was directly encouraged and inspired by the words and actions of the CEO. We drafted the open letter to bring these issues to the forefront and start the hard work of building a culture that was worthy of these lofty goals. I hope that this NLRA claim will demonstrate that no one is above the law, and empower SpaceXers to continue to speak up and fight for a better, more equitable workplace.”
What do you think? Is this just another indication of misunderstandings that are a common part of any large-scale organization? Or is this an indication of concerns for the future of SpaceX? Let me know by leaving a comment.
2.
Breaking Defense recently reported on the way that the invasion of Ukraine has changed the way the US is seeing and preparing for cyber warfare. After watching Ukraine take on Russia in both the real world and in cyberspace, a top American cyber official said the Defense Department must “think very differently” about how it will fight in both realms in the future.
Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, told the Aspen Institute Cyber Summit on November 16th that the war “is a really important conflict” for DoD to understand, and one of the things she’s seeing “is the context of the armed conflict dwarfs the cyber impacts” of the war.
“When you think about the physical destruction relative to the cyber disruption of what happens here, things that Russians tried to disrupt via cyber… did not have the strategic impact that they wanted, and they sought to destroy those things physically.”
Eoyang said the DoD is now thinking about cyber operations in the context of armed conflict in four ways:
First, making sure government-to-government communications and networks are secure. This point has manifested itself by how the DoD’s communications with Ukraine have helped enable its defense and intelligence sharing.
Second, the importance of secure communications within the military, like how Ukraine’s military has been able to share information with forward commanders.
Third, in the informational space, thinking about what it means for Ukrainian citizens to be able to communicate with the world and tell their stories through social media platforms like TikTok, Twitter and Facebook. This ability “has denied Russia the information environment that they want to prosecute this conflict.”
And fourth, the inherent value in ensuring “essential” government functions. Eoyang stated that “As you look at attempts to destroy the kind of essential data that makes a country a country…such as passport records, birth records, property records…What do governments need to be able to continue to operate its essential function?”
She concluded that “As we think about that in the Department of Defense, those first two things are things that we have a lot of expertise in and can help countries deal with. . . . Some of those other things are new to us and are part of whole of government efforts. But I think that we have to think very differently about how we think about armed conflict and cyber in light of this conflict.”
As space and cyber operations become a larger portion of the future of warfare I predict a boom in the perceived importance of this field. What other lessons do you think the world should be learning here?
3.
At least three senior engineers and program executives left satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital late last week amid disagreements over the company’s direction.
CEO Marc Bell in an interview on November 14th confirmed the departures of Adam Thurn, the vice president of engineering; Austin Williams, their chief technology officer; and John Abel, then senior technology fellow.
Bell said the executives resigned over disagreements with Terran Orbital’s top management over the company’s decision to focus primarily on the national security satellite market.
He stated that “They wanted to build cubesats. They don’t want to build military satellites and protect national interests.”
The company on the other hand wants to produce larger buses, ranging from 150 to 500 kilograms, in order to compete for Defense Department, U.S. intelligence agencies and NASA contracts.
Bell said the pivot started last year when he and co-founders Anthony Previte — who passed away this summer — and Daniel Staton agreed to shift their focus to military satellites and support its largest strategic investor and customer Lockheed Martin. Bell said Lockheed Martin to date has invested $160 million in Terran Orbital.
Lockheed Martin selected Terran Orbital as its satellite bus supplier for the Space Development Agency, a U.S. Space Force agency building a mesh network in low Earth orbit. Lockheed won a $187.5 million contract in 2020 to produce 10 satellites for SDA’s Transport Layer Tranche 0 and a $700 million contract earlier this year to produce 42 satellites for the Transport Layer Tranche 1.
Bell said in an interview that “I want to do things to protect the national interest. I have no interest in building cubesats. . . They were great at the time. But there are other companies out there that can do cubesats. Our future is working for the DoD and the IC.”
According to sources, the resignations last week capped a period of aggressive growth and change, along with pressures to boost the company’s stock price and build value for shareholders after going public in March in a SPAC merger.
These sources said supply chain problems that affected the entire industry impacted Terran Orbital’s production of SDA’s Tranche 0 satellites. As the company increased hiring and demanded longer work hours to meet production goals, disagreements increased between the engineering and manufacturing departments on how to best meet these demands.
Months of rising tension came to a head last week when Thurn, Williams and Abel resigned in protest. According to one source, there was significant discontent amongst engineers and employees who had been with the company for a long time.
Do you agree with this business shift? This may be an early indication of the saturated field that the cubesat industry has become, as well as an indication that the military is being recognized as a big player in the future of space. Do you agree with this? As always I’d love to hear what you have to say about it.
https://spacenews.com/terran-orbital-sees-staff-departures-as-it-turns-focus-to-military-satellites/
4.
An English airport has secured a first-of-its-kind spaceport license from a British regulator that brings it one step closer to hosting the country’s first orbital launch.
The United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced on Nov. 16 that it had issued its first spaceport license to Spaceport Cornwall, located at Cornwall Airport Newquay in southwestern England. The license will allow the spaceport to host launches by Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne air-launch system.
The license, analogous to the launch site operator’s license issued by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, confirms that the spaceport can host launches without endangering public safety or the environment.
Richard Moriarty, chief executive of the CAA, in a statement announcing the license stated that “This is an historic moment as we license the first ever spaceport in the U.K.. . . We’re proud to be playing our part in facilitating the UK’s space ambitions through assessing the safety, security and other requirements of these activities.”
Melissa Thorpe, head of Spaceport Cornwall, said in the statement that “The regulatory environment created by the Civil Aviation Authority ensures that U.K. launch will set the global bar in terms of responsibility and transparency.”
Ian Annett, deputy chief executive of the U.K. Space Agency, commemorated the announcement in a statement that “The first ever spaceport license granted by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority is another major milestone as we look forward to the first satellite launch from U.K. soil this year.”
5.
The National Space Council on Monday held its first “listening session” with commercial industry on new space activities — including debris removal and on-orbit manufacturing efforts supported by the Pentagon — to survey the playing field, and feed into development of new regulations designed both to spark innovation and prevent risks.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the council chair, tasked members at their last meeting on September 9th to come up with “a proposal for the authorization and supervision of commercial novel space activities within 180 day.”. That period of time will expire March 7.
Diane Howard, the council’s director of commercial space policy made a statement at the meeting that “Novel space capabilities can be new and unprecedented space technologies, but they can also be novel combinations of more established activities. . . So, for today’s meeting, we’re using the term ‘novel activities’ to relate to those missions and activities that are not directly reviewed under existing regulatory regimes at the Department of Transportation, the Department of Commerce and the FCC.”
The meeting featured 16 speakers representing a wide variety of companies and interests — from defense behemoth Northrop Grumman’s Space Logistics subsidiary that builds robotic satellite servicing spacecraft, to tiny startup Zeno Power, which designs nuclear power systems based on alternative radioisotopes to the (non-explosive) plutonium 238 currently used by NASA.
Each speaker gave a three-minute presentation, which ranged in substance from “Shark Tank”-like sales pitches to airing grievances against various space-regulatory bodies.
For example, the non-profit National Space Society’s Clark Thomas gave a sales pitch for a $500 million, five-year “system level demonstration” of space-based solar power funded by the Energy, Commerce, or Defense departments “or a combination of all three.” Noting that China, Japan and the United Kingdom have ongoing programs, he asserted: “Whoever leads in space solar power has the opportunity to lead in the development of near space and the US needs to act quickly to be a contending leader in this technology.”
In general, the industry presentations stressed the need for a more coherent regulatory regime that didn’t require them to go to multiple agencies, multiple times to receive licenses for their planned on-orbit operations. They also stressed that any new rules shouldn’t be so onerous as to discourage startups and small companies.
https://spacenews.com/spaceport-cornwall-receives-first-u-k-spaceport-license/
Thank you for joining me. Links to all the stories are in the description. The world of Space law, policy and business is changing every day. Keep ahead of all of the most important things happening by watching the other recent episodes I have put together for you. I would love to hear your thoughts on everything I talked about here today? If you feel like This information has been helpful for you, please consider giving it a like or a rating, and subscribing and following the content. I am honored to be a part of this community of citizens in this Undiscovered Country of ours. I’ll see you again next time.
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