Transcripts
What You Missed On The Vector Episode 22: Shaping the Future: Space Mobility and the Commercial Space Revolution
Written by: Morsiell Dormu
In this engaging episode of The Vector, Kelli Kedis Ogborn, Vice President of Space Commerce & Entrepreneurship at the Space Foundation, hosts Kevin Lausten, President of Morpheus Space, to explore the transformative role of space mobility in the rapidly evolving commercial space industry. With 23 years of industry expertise, Kevin shares insights into how private companies like Morpheus Space are driving innovation and accessibility through advanced satellite propulsion technologies.
Highlights include Kevin’s insights on:
- The Role of Space Mobility in a Congested, Contested, and Competitive Environment: Kevin explains the increasing challenges of low Earth orbit (LEO) due to the proliferation of satellites and heightened geopolitical tensions. He highlights the importance of Morpheus Space’s propulsion technologies, which enable safe and efficient satellite maneuvering to ensure sustainability and operational success in space.
- The Interplay Between Regulation and Innovation: Kevin praises recent FAA regulations mandating active deorbiting plans for satellites. He notes how such policies enhance the safety and sustainability of LEO while simultaneously driving demand for propulsion solutions like those offered by Morpheus Space.
- The Need for International Collaboration: The discussion emphasizes the importance of cooperation among allied nations to establish norms for space operations, ensuring a safe and collaborative environment for both commercial and governmental stakeholders.
- Lessons from Other Industries: Drawing parallels with air traffic and maritime management, Kevin identifies the need for standardized communication protocols in space to prevent collisions and ensure efficient traffic management.
- Space Weather and its Operational Challenges: Kevin details how space weather events, like increased atmospheric drag from geomagnetic storms, impact satellite operations. Morpheus Space’s propulsion systems are designed to counter such effects, ensuring mission continuity and customer satisfaction.
- Opportunities for Innovation in Space Mobility: Kevin envisions advancements in autonomous maneuvering, communication systems, rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), and in-space manufacturing. He encourages entrepreneurs to identify gaps in the industry and develop innovative solutions that build upon existing technologies.
This episode offers a comprehensive look at the future of space mobility, shedding light on the challenges, innovations, and collaborative efforts needed to sustain growth in the space ecosystem. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, policymaker, or industry professional, Kevin’s insights provide a roadmap for navigating and thriving in this transformative era of space commerce.
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Episode Transcript:
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Vector where we discuss topics, trends, and insights shaping the global space ecosystem. I am your host, Kelli Kedis Ogborn, and as we close out 2024 and move into the new year, there is no denying that commercial space is booming. With any growth comes the need for better coordination, ways of doing business and technology to stay ahead of the curve, especially as we look towards a future with more and more assets being put into space. My guest today is Kevin Lausten and he is well versed in both the technical and geopolitical needs of sustainably maneuvering and growing in this domain. Kevin is the president of Morpheus Space, which is a leading innovator in satellite propulsion technology. His strategic vision has been instrumental in enhancing the technological capabilities of Morpheus, focusing on making space access more achievable and efficient for a wide range of satellite operations. An example is their novel go-to propulsion system, notable for its use of field emission, electric propulsion technology providing scalable, modular and cost-effective satellite propulsion solutions. Previously, he was the chief revenue officer at SA Major and held key roles at Maxar Technologies and Digital Globe driving technological innovations and geospatial data applications as a prominent voice in the space industry, particularly concerning the modern space race. He champions the importance of advanced technologies in space defense and mobility, making satellite operations more accessible and efficient for diverse stakeholders. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin Lausten:
Thanks so much, Kelli. It’s great to be here. I appreciate the invitation to participate in the show and looking forward to our conversation today.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I am too, and I think that your perspective is really critical because you can tackle this conversation around space mobility from a lot of different areas. And I have a lot of questions I want to ask you, but to start off, I think a good framing piece of understanding is what Morpheus does. I mentioned it a little bit in your bio, but it would be good to know what you focus on day to day.
Kevin Lausten:
Sure, yeah. So Morpheus Space, we’re a space mobility company and we’re here to make space mobility safe and simple. The space environment specifically low earth orbit is becoming increasingly congested, contested, and competitive, and it’s these problems that Morpheus exists to solve. By congested, we mean spaces getting busy. You’ve got more and more operators operating within lower earth orbit. You’ve got starlink, you’ve got other communications constellations, you’ve got earth observation constellations, iot wide range of capabilities existing within low earth orbit. And as space becomes more congested, you need to be able to maneuver effectively to maintain a reliable access point to your spacecraft and your constellation to be able to continue to support customers, generate revenue support on users. So with space becoming increasingly congested, we provide the mobility capabilities that allow people to operate within that environment successfully. Space is becoming more and more contested.
Space has been talked about as the next war fighting domain and Western allied nations are seeing the moves that adversaries are making and they’re increasingly aggressive in space. And so to counter that, you need to be able to demonstrate comparable capabilities and be able to maneuver away from aggressive maneuvers made by our adversaries. So that all speaks to an increasing need for mobility. And then finally, space is a competitive environment. You’ve got companies that are driving revenue and driving profit based on the data and the services they’re providing from their space assets. So as things change on the ground, those who are operating in space need to be able to dynamically adjust to the conditions on the ground to best support the needs of their end customers. And those that can adjust effectively and do it efficiently are going to be the ones that win in the space economy and create the best returns for their shareholders and provide the greatest value to their end customers.
So we see the notion of space as being congested, contested and competitive as a problem that we can solve and we can bring capabilities forward that enable our customers to be successful in this complicated environment. And the way we do it today is through the use of our propulsion technology. You said it in the intro. We leverage a technology called the Mission Electric Propulsion, which is a highly efficient form of propulsion that affixes to the side of a spacecraft and enables those spacecraft to maneuver with confidence. And we’re proud to be supporting a range of customers to today, and we’ve built some compelling technology that’s highly reliable that enables many customers in the future to be successful in this challenging space economy
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That has to give the customers some peace of mind. Just knowing that the technology and what you provide from a maneuverability aspect will allow them to grow as challenges grow and the environment becomes more used. And I appreciate you breaking down what we mean when we say congested, contested and competitive. Those are three words that we hear a lot, right when people talk about the future of space, but oftentimes the definition of each is not necessarily known. My question for you, being a commercial company working in this space, there are lots of dynamics that really shape current trends and current needs in the future. There’s things like policymaking, innovation, public private collaboration. How does one maneuver within this environment when there are so many different stakeholders, but also interests and ways of approaching the conversation around space mobility
Kevin Lausten:
Space? Yeah, listen, we’ve got to pay attention to all the different factors that are underway. We’ve got to pay attention to geopolitical issues. We’ve got to pay attention to policy constraints and regulations that get implemented. We’ve got to look for ways to collaborate effectively with stakeholders and partners, both commercial and government. So we have to really pay attention to the overall ecosystem, and that includes government, that includes commercial, that includes policy and regulation, as I said. So a couple examples that I’ll touch on. We are big advocates for creating a safe and sustainable space environment and there’s a lot of space debris that exists in low earth orbit as a result of companies and organizations launching spacecraft and not having sufficient propulsion to perform active. So what I mean by active deorbiting is at the end of a mission lifetime, you’ve got to reserve sufficient propulsion fuel to control your reentry into earth’s atmosphere and do it in a way that is controlled from a timing standpoint and also you can ensure that there isn’t any impact of space debris in highly concentrated urban environments.
So recently the FAA put out some regulatory updates that said, any company that’s launching a spacecraft needs to have a plan for how you actively de-orbit, and this is we applaud those decisions and think that that policy choice is a good one. We’ve been advocates for it and we believe that policies of that nature will have two benefits. One, it creates a safer and more sustainable low earth orbit environment where you don’t have satellites and space debris that are just hanging out there hoping that gravity does its job and atmospheric drag does its job and brings spacecraft down to earth in a safe way. Fingers that at times has been the hope and the intent. Now you need to have a plan and you need to have propulsion systems on board. So that creates the second benefit. First, it creates a more sustainable low earth orbit environment.
Second, it drives demand for products like the ones Morpheus space provides. So at times regulation can ultimately have the intended effect while also stimulating economic growth for certain companies that have seen the strategic direction where things are going. And our company has seen that low earth orbit is getting increasingly congested, and so we invested in technology and products that can help address that challenge. So that’s one point. Another point is the international collaboration between commercial organizations and international governments. That is starting to increase and we pay close attention to ongoings within the governments of allied nations, specifically the US Space Force put out their commercial integration strategy recently and highlighted the importance of international cooperation, and this is another message from a government entity that we support and we applaud and we’ve been advocating for some time and I think that space is owned by no one and it needs to be governed by all. And this signal from the US Space Force is a really important one saying the US is prepared to continue to take a leadership position in the norms of space, but the US government also needs to collaborate effectively with international allies to ensure that it’s safe for all and it’s the kind of environment where there’s collaboration that occurs across borders and that ties to projects that are being envisioned for future missions that also ties to policies and regulations and establishing the norms between allied nations to make space a safe place to operate.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I think those are a lot of important points to bring into the conversation, especially the one about international collaboration with Allied nations because as you look toward a future engagement in space, I mean it’s both collaborative and competitive and it needs to be because you have national security aspects and commercial endeavors really growing. I also thought the point you made was interesting about regulation also. I mean having its intended consequences or ways of doing business, but also being able to spur potentially more commercial because it is allowing this environment to be cleaned up in a way that’s going to allow more engagement, which I think is a critical point to this. I do want to pull on the thread that you mentioned just about space debris and a lot of these satellite constellations being put in low earth orbit. We talk a lot on this program as well as just generally in the space community about satellite proliferation and how there are more and more being put up year after year. And as you mentioned, space is already congested. I’m curious, how close are we to reaching an unsustainable level of orbital congestion or do you think that the activities being done like companies like yours and others in the space will sort of level out?
Kevin Lausten:
Yeah, so space is pretty big. I’ll say that that’s a pretty self-evidence statement, but space is big enough for us to grow by orders of magnitude more than where we are today in terms of assets in low earth orbit. There’s plenty of room on the space highway though it’s a highway and we need to be able to speed up and slow down and put our blinkers on and be able to assess and interpret and observe what everyone else is doing to be able to navigate effectively. So 10 years ago it was as if you’re driving down a highway and there’s no one else on the highway and you could just put your car on cruise control and if it was straight, you could take your hands off the wheel. Now it’s starting to get a bit more congested. It doesn’t mean the highway is full, it just means that we need the ability to communicate and observe and perform maneuvers in a way that is predictable and we can signal to other operators in space what we’re doing that’s akin to a blinker on a highway. You tell somebody else that you don’t have a personal relationship with, Hey, I’m going in this direction, so don’t cut me off. That’s not good for anybody.
We need the same type of behaviors and norms in space. There’s plenty of room for orders of magnitude more capability, and I’m excited to participate in that industry that will achieve that kind of growth because I think it creates opportunities for businesses. It also creates opportunities for people and advancing our society here on earth. So I want to continue to see companies come forward with big visions around how they’re going to take advantage of low earth orbit and populate it with capabilities that advance our society. Though we need to be thinking about not just building the next car to drive on the highway, we need to think about capabilities and systems that are adopted by every operator so that it’s safer and easier to operate within this environment because there are a set of norms that have been adopted.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I really appreciate the optimistic view toward the future because I think it’s an important point to make that even though we talk about the challenges and they’re important to know as you grow within this space, but there still is to your analogy, a lot of runway and a lot of highway for people to engage with, and I think that’s a critical component, especially as we move into the new year and more and more companies and capabilities and technologies and people really want to become part of our industry. Sticking on the concept of an analogy, I do have a question for you. So I think that being able to locate where space is adjacent to other industries, so I think there’s a lot of lessons that we can learn from the aviation industry and the cell phone industry in terms of the boom of commercialization and locate space within that. When we look at the growth of space and specifically like the transportation and use case, are there lessons we can learn from other industries like aviation or maritime that can really help guide the safe and equitable expansion of space activities? I feel like there’s always lessons that are transferable across industries.
Kevin Lausten:
Yeah, yeah, good question. And this is an interesting topic. There are parallels to air traffic management and maritime traffic management, one of which I think we’re doing well and we’re making good progress on, and one of which I think is a problem area that we need to solve and I challenge our audience to think about because there could be a great company that’s built to address this problem, and I’m not convinced that there is one today. So the first one that I think we’re making good progress on is knowing where everyone is building kind of a dynamic database of activity so that we can understand where potential conjunctions might occur. So conjunction is basically a space collision, so of course something that everybody wants to avoid. To avoid it, you have to know where other space objects are at this very point in time and where they will be in the future.
And so they are some really interesting companies that have come online in the last five, 10 years that are adopting different types of technology to create this dynamic map and air traffic management, maritime traffic management, there’s great systems, radar technology IS technology that are used to create dynamic maps of those traffic spaces. Same thing’s happening with the space industry. So I think we’re making great progress there and kudos to the companies that are making those investments and providing that service to government agencies and commercial entities. It helps in making space a safe and sustainable environment. So I think we’ve made good progress there. We need to keep pushing the envelope and improve the quality and innovate in that sector to explore ways that we can create even higher quality data sets and more UpToDate data sets. But the data sets are being created and they’re being used today to avoid conjunction, so kudos to those companies.
I think the second area is around the communication of traffic pattern and traffic management. That doesn’t happen today. There isn’t a standard language that’s used to share information. There isn’t a standard communication protocol between everybody who operates in space. There is for maritime, there is for air traffic, there isn’t for space traffic. And so how do you announce who you are and where you’re going and what you’re doing and what your intent is that happens in the air that happens in the maritime environment. That doesn’t happen in the space environment. It certainly happens on a point by point basis where one company or one government entity contacts the other, but there isn’t a central norm for how that communication occurs. And I think that’s a gap. I think that would be a tremendous benefit to the industry as a whole. It would reduce risk and therefore likely drive additional interest from an investment standpoint. If you can pull risk out of the equation, then investors perhaps are more likely to participate. And when you pull risk out, then you are less likely to have a miscalculation or a misunderstanding between companies or organizations. So I think that’s a parallel that should be solved, and I’m not convinced that we’re making great progress along that path.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Do you think the gap exists because we’ve experienced such a significant boom in space assets where we’re now realizing that it is a problem or is it something different?
Kevin Lausten:
That’s certainly a part of it. The pace of innovation has been incredible. The number of objects in low earth orbit has increased by an order of magnitude in the last 10 years. Now that’s heavily driven by one company, SpaceX with their starlink constellation. But even without the move made by SpaceX with starlink, we’re tremendous advancements across a number of sectors, whether it’s earth observation or weather monitoring or communications, these are all areas that have experienced exponential growth. So I think that this will continue to be a problem and we need to think about how to address it, but I think the technological innovation has sparked that and the speed at which it has occurred is really driven that I think there’s a geopolitical conflict element to this as well. Who’s going to set the norm? Who’s going to implement the policy? You need every operator in space to agree and conform. And in this day and age, I see that as unlikely, and I think that’s why it’s such a hard problem to solve is because you need to get a lot of different parties at the table that don’t traditionally agree on things like norms.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think that there’s a coalition of the willing and then there’s others and being able to kind of move together in a way that’s going to grow the industry as important. I think one of the next things I’m curious about is when you talk about establishing norms and particularly around communications and infrastructure, shifting to geopolitics slightly, what challenges really arise in ensuring that that type of telecommunications infrastructure is reliable during conflict situations? And I’m curious if satellite technology has really reshaped telecommunications role in conflicts.
Kevin Lausten:
It most certainly has. I alluded to starlink earlier in the conversation. I think that’s probably the best example to speak to with regards to how communications are shaping future geopolitical conflict and what space can contribute there. Famously in the conflict in Ukraine, there was a substantial spin down of communications in the region and hats off to SpaceX for stepping up and delivering services to that environment to replenish the ability to be able to communicate on the battlefield.
I’m not going to weigh into specifics there, but on the surface, there was a conflict and communications were shut down. The standard approach for communicating on the battlefield was neutralized. Then a new form of communication was to allow for Ukrainian soldiers and allied soldiers to be able to tap into communications provided by satellite assets, and that is far more difficult to neutralize on the battlefield. Unfortunately, that does create potential for the battle to be taken from the ground space, and that’s challenging. That’s scary. I hope that doesn’t happen though my pessimistic side sees that that is a likely future place where the conflict goes. But today it’s great to see that these innovations that we’re making in the space industry are being adopted and implemented to advance society and provide greater service to individuals and communities and nations as a whole. And then when a conflict arises, those who can adopt technology effectively can level the playing field even against an adversary who’s got other strategic advantages. Those who can adopt new technology and implement it effectively have the opportunity to level the playing field to a certain extent,
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
It really can be a great equalizer. And I think what’s interesting about the geopolitical situation that you referred to is us in the industry have always known that space is a critical domain and the infrastructure and the assets are really critical to protect. I think that situation only punctuated because it gave a real world example about if satellite communications, if space is cut off, it really does destabilize ground operations, and it just shows how important it is to not only continue the innovations and technology in these areas, but to have increased access and connectivity.
Kevin Lausten:
Yeah, that’s right. And listen, there’s other examples where satellite technology provides great value on the battlefield and there are steps being taken to influence and affect those capabilities. And specifically I’m talking about location technology in the US we use GPS and there are certainly examples where jamming has been demonstrated, and we need to be mindful of that. We need to pay attention to it, and we need to innovate to develop alternative precision navigation and timing systems. GPS is an example of a PNT system, but we need to establish more resilient PNT systems above and beyond what we currently have today to be able to ensure that we have that location information that’s so critical to many different elements of our economy, but also it’s foundational to success on the battlefield. And so that’s just one other area where space is contributing to a range of activities on the ground, however, there are steps being taken to neutralize that capability and we need to continue to innovate to stay ahead of the curve.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Oh, absolutely. And there was a comment that came in that just mentioned that communication obviously needs to be more than war, and the whole point is to allow connectivity for socioeconomic purposes and for people to be able to get access to space for other use cases to benefit life on earth. And certainly that goes into your message about making sure that it’s less congested and safe and sustainable because space has so many impacts to other industries that are not directly implicated or wouldn’t think that they’re implicated in the space ecosystem.
Kevin Lausten:
Yeah, it’s an interesting comment. If you think about the two examples we just talked about communications and GPS with starlink, great progress was achieved in advancing communications, and that was largely driven by commercial use cases to legitimately bring a connectivity to everybody, literally everybody in the world, if you’re in a remote corner of northern Canada or somewhere deep in the outback of Australia or in the remote corners of Africa, you have access to that stream of information just like anybody else does. And it ended up getting adopted for military applications specifically the example we were talking about with Ukraine. GPS on the other hand started as a military capability and then transitioned into a dual use capability used by commercial industry, and now we use that every time we hail an Uber. So it’s interesting to see how space develops and evolves. Some technologies start in the defense sector and then transition into commercial and vice versa. So we just need to keep pushing the envelope, keep innovating, and just because something is a defense investment today doesn’t mean it doesn’t turn into a commercial investment tomorrow and vice versa.
Kelli Kedi Ogborn:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the dual use technologies and innovations, it’s really just finding out kind of a creative way to bring the capabilities to bear. Right. I think it’s an important point to mention. I do want to pull in a question from one of our viewers because I think it’s an interesting one specifically because on this topic of sustainability that you mentioned before, and it’s about space weather, so they obviously address that space. Weather poses a lot of significant challenges to satellite operations, launch schedules, et cetera. They’re curious how your organization addresses these impacts on operations and if there are any strategies being developed to mitigate those risks.
Kevin Lausten:
Yeah, totally. Great question. So we do play in that sector. There was a recent space weather storm that those of us in North America were able to see the Aurora Borealis in places where we don’t normally see it, and that’s sort of the benefit of space weather as we get this beautiful sky in the evening. The negative impact is that it changes the atmospheric density in the environment that low earth orbit satellites are operating in, and that increase in the atmospheric density creates greater drag, which pulls the satellites closer to earth at a faster rate than what they would normally experience. So it’s basically forcing satellites down to earth. And the way that our company participates and addresses those challenges is when you need to keep your satellite or your spacecraft on a desired orbit, there are maneuvers that are fall into the category of what’s called station keeping, where you counter drag that is created by the atmosphere that you’re traveling through by performing a very short burst maneuver to ensure that the spacecraft stays at the desired altitude.
So our technology is actually really well suited to address these sorts of needs because the go-to propulsion system that Morpheus space sells commercially has incredibly high what’s called total impulse. What that means is it’s a very efficient system with a very large fuel tank relative to the amount of thrust that it creates, and so it can perform these station keeping maneuvers for an extremely long period of time. The next time there’s a space weather event go-to systems are firing in space to maintain the orbit of satellites that need to stay within their current trajectory. In the absence of that kind of technology, the increase in atmospheric drag will end up pulling satellites down closer to earth, and that negatively impacts a mission which ends up negatively impacting customers, including those of us who are trying to make phone calls or trying to hail Ubers. So you need to have that kind of propulsion on board to ensure that the satellites stay within their formation and their constellation and stay at their desired altitude.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s really interesting. I think that a lot of people don’t realize that there are weather events in space like there are on earth, and the ability to not only maneuver around them, but protect critical assets is something that I think catches people outside of the industry off guard because they just don’t think of environment in that way. You think of it as just this desolate vacuum.
Kevin Lausten:
Not so much, and the weather on the earth can be predicted much more effectively than the weather in space. This most recent one really caught a lot of people off guard and not that we didn’t know it was coming, we just didn’t understand the magnitude of it. So was I was just recently reading an article about a mass migration of satellites that had to occur to counter effect the impact that they all had from this space weather event. If you’re tracking a bunch of satellites and you see them all sort of move in formation back up to the altitude that they needed to be at, and that all happens at about the same time, well, that’s after a space weather event, and that could have been avoided. If you’ve got good forecasts and you’re performing those station keeping maneuvers that we were talking about, if you perform those effectively in line with the forecast that you see coming, then you can keep the constellation in formation and continue to provide a compelling service to the end customer.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Absolutely. So when you look toward the future, so I think space weather is an interesting point to bring into the conversation, but there’s obviously lots of other challenges that are going to occur not just from the conditions of space, but as it becomes more congested and utilized and competition increases when you look toward the future, what opportunities do you think exist for new entrants to really innovate within this space mobility and satellite technology arena?
Kevin Lausten:
Sure. Listen, we’ve made great advancements in space propulsion and there’s different types of propulsion for different types of spacecraft. There’s big thrusters, small thrusters, long duration thrusters, short duration thrusters. There’s still a lot of innovation to occur there, and I believe that there are new technologies out there to create that will drive increases in efficiency and increases in performance and increases in reliability. So I see there being opportunities to continue to invest in the core propulsion sector. I’m excited about the work we’re doing here at Morph Space and I think we’re bringing some innovative products online that are going to really create a substantial impact in the industry. And listen, I want to see other companies do the same, and I think competition is good. And I think when you do that, then you create an opportunity for customers to select from a wide range of capabilities and then get more creative with the end use cases that they’re pursuing.
So I think that’s one sector right now. A lot of maneuvers are controlled by people on the ground. There’s literally an operator who’s calculating what a maneuver should be in a time at which that maneuver should be performed and then uplinking that command to the spacecraft to perform the maneuver. I envision a future world where a lot of that’s done in an autonomous fashion. To do that, you need to have some way of communicating amongst satellites to notify other operators of what you’re trying to do. So there’s a couple ideas like the autonomy piece and then the communications piece. I think those are both important areas to innovate around. Let’s see, there’s a term called rendezvous in proximity operations or RPO.
So I think that there’s a lot of interesting innovation happening in this sector where you’re basically creating the tools and the capability to allow one spacecraft to approach another spacecraft. And sort of the peaceful way of thinking about that is conducting repairs on a satellite. If you’ve got a billion dollar asset in space and you need, and there’s a small malfunction, if you can repair that by sending up a repair satellite, that could be a way to extend the mission duration and get more value out of that billion dollar asset. There are capabilities being developed to go up and observe spacecraft, and that could be for peaceful reasons, that could be for conflict driven reasons, but understanding taking images, closeup images of spacecraft requires you to basically move in close proximity to another spacecraft and do it in a quick and efficient way and then collect data against that spacecraft and then send that information back to someone who can make a decision on it.
I think that’s pretty interesting and that requires a range of space mobility capabilities. I think a final one that I’ll touch on is the whole notion of in space manufacturing, and there’s a lot of applications for in space manufacturing. This is the notion of building space assets for space where you’re sending a 3D printer to space to then create some capability that can be used. There’s also the idea of idea. Certain chemical processes can only be performed in zero gravity environments, and so having a way to manufacture these sorts of items in space and then return them back to earth, for example, there are certain pharmaceuticals that can only be produced in zero gravity environments. So creating that, bringing it back down to earth, that’s a mobility. There is space mobility as part of that problem. There’s a lot of problems, a lot of challenging engineering and science that feeds into that particular use case, but it all requires things to get moved around. And so we think a lot about how space mobility fits into these different sectors of space, and I’m pretty excited about all of these different use cases. It’s cool to see new companies coming online with big bold visions of manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space or performing non earth imaging using these RPO kind of technologies. So there’s a lot to innovate around, and I’m hopeful some of the members of your audience today are thinking about the company that they’re going to start to go pursue some of these problem sets.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I think they are, because someone asked the question about how the medical care industry can get more involved, and you mentioned manufacturing and space and pharmaceuticals, and I think your point really illustrates nicely something that we say all the time just about all of the opportunities that are going to be available with the expanse of technological capabilities, especially in Leo. And what I always tell folks is to think about where the market vertical is going and then look at all of the industries necessary to grow and sustain that area both upstream and downstream. And when you start to think about the problem creatively in that way, like you mentioned, you rattled off all these different industries that are really critical to its growth, and there is a place for lots of different ideas. It’s just the insertion and how it fits within the architecture.
Kevin Lausten:
That’s right, yeah. Whose shoulders can you build upon? There has to be investments that you then build upon to create the next great idea. And so to be an innovator, to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to be paying attention to the Lego blocks that are being created, and then you’ve also got to be thinking about the end problem set that your target customer is facing. If you can figure out a way to put the building blocks together and create your own piece of the puzzle that then creates, that unlocks value for that end customer, then that’s when you’re onto something. That’s when you can go raise money or win your first customer and build a business around it. It’s an exciting time.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
It is exciting. And for a final thought or sort of imparting words as we look toward that future with optimism and as was discussed in this conversation, space is increasingly vital for use on earth and applications and impact on earth, what would you want our listeners to know are some of the most pressing changes that are needed to ensure that we grow this domain sustainably?
Kevin Lausten:
Yeah, let’s see. We touched on a lot of the issues earlier in the conversation that I think are really critical for us as a society to be thinking about space has the ability to impact almost every industry here on earth. So it’s important. Okay, we agree on that. So what do we need to do to ensure that space continues to be a viable zone of operation? And being sure that we can know where space debris exists, being sure that we know how to manage and mitigate space debris or other objects, knowing how to ensure that communication is happening effectively and people have the capabilities to maneuver effectively in space to avoid this doomsday scenario of one piece of space debris hitting the next, and that creates five pieces of space debris, and then it creates an exponential effect where certain zones of low earth orbit could get basically closed off because there’s so much debris.
We have to avoid that, but we can do that. We can pull this off, but we need to establish some norms in communication, and we need to keep taking steps like what the FAA did to ensure that safe and active deorbiting is not just a norm, but is a requirement. We need to continue to take steps like that to ensure that lower earth orbit and geostationary orbit, cis lunar environments, all of those environments, we need to have smart policies that ensure the safe operation for everybody who’s within that space. And that has to be adopted globally. It can’t just be a select few set of nations. It has to be a human decision.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
It certainly needs to remain a domain that generations to come will be able to engage and continue to further expand all the work that we’re doing now.
Kevin Lausten:
That’s right. Couldn’t agree more.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with us. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. I know our listeners did as well, so we really appreciate you coming on today.
Kevin Lausten
Yeah, thanks so much, Kelli. I enjoyed the conversation as well. I’ll just make a quick plug at the end Morpheus Space, Space Mobility Company. If you’re interested in learning more about what we’re up to, check us [email protected]. And yeah, I appreciate the time today. It’s been a lot of fun talking about space mobility and all the challenges and opportunities that exist within space.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yes, especially RO into a new year where they’re only going to increase. So thank you again and to all of our listeners, appreciate you listening in. And remember, there’s a place for everyone in the global space ecosystem. We’ll catch you next time. Bye.
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Shaping the Future: Space Mobility and the Commercial Space Revolution