Satellite Builders and Rocket Companies are Ready to Get the Space Economy Rolling

Flexibility. Interoperability. Resilience. Sustainability. True multi-orbit integrated capabilities—described as the “real magic” of satellite development by keynote speaker Steve Collar, CEO of SES — were all topics of discussion among six panelists in the session that followed Collar’s Wednesday keynote at the Satellite 2023 conference, “Building a Secure and Dynamic Future Space Economy.”

In the future, there will be acceleration in a much more ubiquitous environment, all of that enabled by much broader interconnectivity and more agile networks, according to John Moberly, senior vice president of SpiderOak. “So just like Android, and iPhone, space assets will be able to securely communicate distributed data into terrestrial systems and it'll all be up there and ubiquitous,” he said. “The secure connection of that is where we come in, and that is going to be a key enabler for all of these highly distributed systems as they come together.”

Rocket Lab is already developing systems that can support research in space manufacturing, Richard French, director of Business Development and Strategy for Space Systems at Rocket Lab said.

Mike Gold, chief growth officer of Redwire, keyed in on that point: “As we talked about 20 years in the future, we will be manufacturing in space,” he said. “There'll be developments about replacing livers, kidneys, hearts,” he said. “I think in order to sustain that vision and achieve it, this only occurs if we continue to have a presence in Low-Earth Orbit. So we need to continue this public private partnership and continue to fund that so that we never give up on the legacy and the incredible work that the International Space Station started.”

Addressing the need for infrastructure in space next, Robert Lightfoot, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin, said that we need to take a minute and “get space down to Earth.”

“We talk about things we're doing in space, and what we’re going to do to continue to expand, " he said. “But there's a lot of the general public that doesn't understand what we do in space and what the benefits are.”

He told the story where he was speaking at an event about GPS satellites to a non-space audience, and made a comment that his company just shipped a GPS satellite. “Somebody said, ‘Why do I need GPS satellites anymore? I've got it on my phone.’”

But there is a point to infrastructure development that can ring true with the general public, according to Lee Steinke, interim COO of Orbit Fab/CIS Lunar Industries. “Infrastructure development creates the stories around which you can generate a conversation that will draw more awareness of what we're doing,” she said. “In reality as you develop the whole space economy, you're going to need all the dirty stuff that we do here. So having fuel depots, chemical supplies, whether that's source water or other sources, as well as just processing of materials, such as metal mining infrastructure in space, assembly and manufacturing, having the ability to produce and manufacture things at scale.”

Gold said he couldn’t agree more with Lee, adding that we're not going to be able to do any of this without power. “So please, please we look at the lunar surface. We talked to our friends at NASA and determined that we are going to be power constrained. We're not going to be sustainable, and I’m glad that NASA public-private partnerships with other programs to ensure that we develop that infrastructure.”

Moberly commented on infrastructure, beginning with the comment that we're kidding ourselves by spending a lot of time thinking how to connect all the data, securely, and in a trusted manner. “We need to analyze this,” he said. “We need to be working with everybody at this, and just about everybody in the audience, to connect all the dots. All these synergies of interconnectivity really come into fruition. That is a key foundational infrastructure need.”

Gold took that thought a step further. “I do think commercial space needs to stand up when it comes to forms of behavior and establishing the rules of the road in space because many of these operations are being conducted by the private sector,” he said. “We can't just leave it to the Department of State and others to figure these things out. So I hope that we engage with the United Nations and with our various actors to ensure that interoperability because we're the ones who figure out what that will be.”

He was referring to the development of standards. But, Lee said, when you're trying to develop technology that's supposed to be a standard, some of that may already be protected. “People are reinventing the wheel, even our best friends across the pond,” she said. “We can use the same tools to do this and solve the same problems. And I think that lack of communication is going to hold us back in terms of standardizing interoperability.”

Bottom line going forward is getting the regulatory framework in place immediately. “We must get the regulatory framework right,” Gold said enthusiastically. “We are about now to enter into Article Six of the Outer Space Treaty discussion, which is about the supervision of commercial space activities. This is the regime that's determined how we regulate commercial space stations, how we regulate satellite services, how we regulate what's going to happen with commercial systems. Industry must stand up and engage effectively with Congress and policymakers to ensure we get a regime that is inherently safe, supports interoperability and also creates an environment that can still be dynamic and innovative.”

Increasing the economic viability of the space is making it more accessible to more and more companies and more people, said Sarah Schellpfeffer, sector vice president and CTO of Northrop Grumman Space Systems. “We're going to be able to ship things to Australia in two hours, for instance,” she said. “I think as we migrate to robotic capability, being able to reuse components, being able to move satellites around, with issues such as being able to mine things on asteroids and the moon, and able to take materials and use them in different ways those are things that we can't even conceive of right now.” VS