Transcripts
What You Missed On The Vector Episode 23: Space as an Economic Force Multiplier: Building a Vibrant Ecosystem
Written by: Morsiell Dormu

In this dynamic episode of The Vector, host Kelli Kedis Ogborn engages with Kevin O’Connell, a leading authority on space commerce and the global space economy, to discuss the rapid acceleration and diversification of the space domain. O’Connell, a former director of the Office of Space Commerce and CEO of Space Economy Rising, shares insights on innovation, investment, and the future of space commercialization.
Key Highlights Include:
- The Accelerating Space Economy: Space innovation is progressing at an unprecedented pace, highlighted by major milestones such as New Glenn’s heavy-lift capability and missions advancing the cis-lunar economy. O’Connell emphasizes the integration of infrastructure and human elements as nations, including 50 U.S. allies, aim for sustainable lunar operations.
- Emerging Markets and Adjacent Industries: Beyond traditional sectors like satellite communication, new opportunities arise in areas like digital payloads, space-enabled technologies, and Web3. O’Connell notes the importance of adjacent industries—such as agriculture, artificial intelligence, and mining—embracing space as a growth frontier.
- Investment Trends and Economic Maturity: Reflecting on the highs and lows of space investment in recent years, O’Connell observes a shift toward pragmatic and diverse funding strategies. Investors now focus on scalable technologies and sectors with clear economic returns, including hardware, data markets, and space-enabled applications.
- The Role of Government and Regulation: The episode explores the symbiotic relationship between government and private investment, underscoring the need for efficient regulatory frameworks. O’Connell advocates for horizon scanning and agile policies to match the speed of innovation while ensuring safety and security.
- Global Partnerships and Geopolitical Strategy: U.S. leadership in space remains pivotal, but challenges such as export controls and regulatory barriers can hinder collaboration. O’Connell stresses the importance of strategic, value-driven international partnerships to foster economic growth and counter competitive pressures from adversaries.
- A Vision for 2025 and Beyond: The conversation concludes with a look at 2025 as a turning point in space history, with expectations for accelerated commercialization, deregulation, and global collaboration. O’Connell predicts transformative advancements fueled by private capital, public investment, and integrated strategies.
This episode provides a comprehensive overview of the evolving space economy and its implications for industry leaders, policymakers, and global stakeholders, leaving listeners inspired to explore their role in the space ecosystem.
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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 safe ecosystem. I am your host Kelli Kedis Ogborn, and it is 2025 and in the space domain, we are past the point of science fiction to science fact. Beyond the technical achievements we have seen in space, the domain is an integral part of our economy. Fueling innovation, creating jobs and unlocking trillions of dollars in growth space is an extremely powerful tool for economic growth with many facets. And fortunately, we are starting to better understand them and benefit from them. There has never been a time with more interest or activity in space. And while this is exciting, more players and capabilities creates more complexity and understanding how this multifaceted domain underpins United States and global economic positioning is critical to engaging ecosystems thoughtfully and effectively. For this conversation, I am bringing in the godfather of the space of Mr.Kevin O’Connell, who is a global leading expert in space commerce, the global space economy, and US national security. For almost four decades, he has focused on space commercialization and technological competitiveness, really looking at how to advance them in global markets and how these innovations impact the United States and the allies of national security. As the CEO of space economy rising, he advises companies and stakeholders on strategy, finance and regulatory matters in the growing space sector. Some of Kevin’s prior roles in the government include the Department of Defense, the department of State, the National Security Council, the office of the vice president, the office of the director of Central Intelligence, and most recently he was the director of the Office of Space Commerce under President Trump’s first term in his spare time, he is a professor, author, and podcast host, and most recently was the winner of the 2024 US Geospatial Intelligence Foundations Lud Hall Finney lifetime Achievement Award for his enduring work in geospatial issues and space commercialization. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin O’Connell:
Kelli, thanks very much. It’s great to see you as always and nice to be with everybody today.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yes, it’s always a fun time and we can get together and talk our favorite topic of the space economy and space commerce and particularly moving into this year that has already started off with a bang quite literally this year in space we’ve seen significant achievements, and this week in particular we’ve had a lot of big milestones. New Glen took flight, Firefly and ice space, launched systems going to the moon. And so I’m just curious from your perspective with this fast and furious pace, what do you think this signals for the space economy and space markets?
Kevin O’Connell:
Well, so as I like to say, the space economy is accelerating and diversifying and I think this week alone is an example of that. There’s hardly a week these days in which there’s not some exciting news in the space sector. As you full know on the new Glen, obviously we’ll now have a heavy lift competitor that will be able to be available to the United States and other allied countries. And then when you look at the two lands and there’s another one supposed to go next month with intuitive machines, I think first of all there’s a breathtaking set of scientific experiments on board that are going to fuel the infrastructure and our ability to work in the sis lunar economy and in particular on the lunar surface. But I think it’s also important to note that both with Blue Ghost as well as the resilience, slander, the ice space, resilience, slander, there’s some things on board that are actually very distinctly human.
And so for example, on the Blue Ghost Mission, a company I work with, Kanick Space has partnered with the space bit to actually put a digital copy of the Constitution, the US Constitution on board to take to the moon in anticipation of bringing a physical copy in the near future. And that’s just one of many digital payloads that actually reflect humanity’s interest in going to the moon, even for people that’ll never get there. And so whether it be a picture of my children or artwork or music or things like that, there’s a payload on board one of those lands, the Blue Ghost lander that actually has very human things. Same case for the ice base lander. There’s a commemorative plaque of things that we’re very proud of who have done here on earth.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
To that point about the human aspect, I think it’s a really critical component because when people think of space and space achievement and the technicality of it, your mind always goes to those verticals that are deeply rooted in that. But really what we are pushing for with this eventuality and the CS lunar landscape and beyond is going to take all of what we have on earth and just put it into a different sort of environment. And I think that to your point, these achievements and what they’re bringing on board signal new markets or new areas that finally have the opportunity to engage in space in a thoughtful way. And I’m curious, what new markets do you think could emerge from the success of these launches but also what’s also postured to go in 2025?
Kevin O’Connell:
So I think it’s all of the markets that we sometimes see here on earth. Obviously as we look at the lunar surface specifically, we know first of all we need all of the infrastructure or most of the infrastructure we have here on Earth at the moment. We’re still planning to go back permanently and sustainably to the moon, and that’s not just us, but at last count 50 of our allies going back. And when you go back permanently and sustainably, it’s very different than when you go from the Apollo era for four or five days, something like that. So we not only need the technical infrastructure to do that, but we also need the human infrastructure that will need on the moon. Similarly, as I just said, I think there are a lot of people that really will never go physically to the moon but have an interest in being pioneers in their own special way to get to the moon.
And so whether it be piece of artwork or music or something like that, those are going to be markets just like we have them here on earth. There’s also, by the way, a special link with the Bitcoin Web3 environment. You and I both spend a lot of time worrying about the size of the space economy and I think that specific technology as is currently being experimented with now, is going to help us do a lot better, not just accounting for the space economy, but also helping fractionalize it where people can’t afford a single activity on their own and making it more accessible to everybody. So I think the markets we’ll see are really endless in so many ways.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
And I think also to that point, the integrated nature and the necessity to have these sort of integrated architectures and these business models are really going to merge when a lot of these technical achievements are successful is really going to open up opportunity. But I think it’s also going to underpin the collective nature of what we are trying to achieve. And it’s not just governments, obviously commercial plays a major, major component of it and it’s only going to continue to rise.
Kevin O’Connell:
Definitely.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
On that point, I do want to talk, you can’t have a conversation around the space economy without talking about money and investment
Around it, and I think that’s a good place to start before we get into some of these other facets because fortunately we are starting to see a bit of a turn in the market where investor confidence seems to be returning. As you and I both know and our listeners like 2021 was a year of euphoria with 15.3 billion invested primarily around hype, not necessarily pragmatism, and then investor confidence took a dip and so did the private capital toward it. I think we’re starting to turn a corner, at least we’re starting to see more successful demonstrations of capabilities and more private sector investment. I’m curious from your assessment, you do a lot of talking about this topic globally. Are we smarter in investing now or what do you think the market is going to look like in the next three to five years?
Kevin O’Connell:
So I definitely agree with your premise. I mean when we look back to 21, the excitement of 21 summit was not as rigorously thought through as I think we have now. And I think there’s a couple of things that we have going for us today in 2025 that we might not have had as richly back then. The first, you and I spend a lot of time talking about the global space economy. We do a disservice by not diving down into specific market verticals. They have different levels of maturity, they have different behaviors, they have different economics. Sometimes I lament the fact that people often talk about the launch industry as being emblematic of the entire space economy and nothing could be farther from the truth. The launch industry is probably the outlier relative to data markets and certainly some of the newer things coming in.
So I think that’s one aspect where investors in particular are paying more attention what’s unique about this specific market vertical for space. The second is this won’t surprise you. We’ve always had, especially in the United States, this sort of spaces special approach where people could say, I’ve invented a brand new business model. Well, in the 2021, investors often went along and said, okay, we’ll go with you on this ride. That didn’t work out for most people. And so what you really find is these companies have to act, guess what? Like many other companies, they have a technology, they have customers, they have a regulatory landscape they have to deal with. And so being able to deal with those things and understand them in a way that business people and investors are accustomed to really, really important. So I think different market verticals will move at different speeds, obviously partly based on maturity.
I’ll say one more thing though and is that virtually every one of these market verticals is in disruption. We think about satellite communications as kind of being the grandfather, if you will, of the space economy. Well, it’s under serious disruption and disruption is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s bad and good at times for different players. My favorite in the satellite imagery world now being changed by new phenomena and artificial intelligence and things like that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, up into the newer areas. I think the question with all these things, I was just looking at the ISS list of accomplishments for 2024, there’s some breathtaking science that’s being done onboard the space station. The question is always, can someone actually make money profitably getting these things back to earth? And that just takes a hard hitting business calculation in addition to all the important things that go into building space capabilities. You
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Gave me seven things to pull the thread on, so I’m going to try to this, sorry. No, it’s good. Literally because I want to start with the point that you made about people thinking that the launch industry being the launch industry underpinning the space economy, because from the Space Foundation we quantify and calculate the space economy and we put it out for 2024 or 23 rather for 570 billion. And it really looked at these 11 sub-sectors cataloged by things enabling space. So those are the launch and satellites and these others, but two thirds of that revenue is actually things enabled by space. And it’s what you were saying, it’s like PNT and earth observation and these aspects that are really localized and growing because of satellite communication, satellite data, satellite imagery. And so when you start to break it down that way, you really realize that the economy is extremely local and it’s being able to recognize the way that space can serve you and you can serve space and sort of that connection to the value chain, which I think is really critical.
And the piece that you also mentioned about companies needing to make money, I think that’s one of the themes that we saw a lot is that the investors started to shift more toward traditional markets that they knew would make money. So like hardware and infrastructure and less of those risky bets. But what’s interesting about the way that the market is evolving, how I see it is I think it’s going to be anchored by these familiar segments, but really defined by these emerging markets. And so to your point about space being special, I think people also need to realize that we are doing things, there is a vibrant market and there are technical capabilities. So it’s not the gamble and risk that it once was during the Apollo era, although it’s still talked about in that way.
Kevin O’Connell:
Well, I think we understand a lot because of the decades of experience in space, we understand a lot about risk and that’s partly one of the enablers. That’s one of the enablers of why we’re able to do things on a commercial basis. On our favorite topic of counting, I’m still of the belief, I’m still very proud of the fact that the Bureau of Economic Analysis continues to do its work, so does the OECD on improving the rigor of how we count these things. I’m still of the personal view that we’re undercounting because analytically difficult, half the apps on your cell phone are typically somehow linked to space. And there are different estimates that, again, they’re rough estimates on how many times a day people use space. Most people don’t understand that the listeners here will understand that very well, but the diversity of how you’re accessing space, I still think we’re under counting. And so hopefully we’ll do better at that and we’ll see these markets mature as people have an understanding of what the economic value is going to be of those markets.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah. Well, and I think the baseline that a lot of people use is how we compare economic returns to other sectors. Two years ago I wrote a paper for IAC where I was trying to localize where we are in space economy, market growth to other markets, and I compared it to the cell phone industry and to aviation for the trajectory of having really heavy government intervention. And then there was this trend toward commercialization that then led to the establishment of new markets and we’re sort of in that trend to commercialization right now with space. If you had to, and I know that it’s hard counting because there’s so many different facets of economic return and verticals. How does the economic landscape and return on investment for space related programs compare to other sectors that people more understand?
Kevin O’Connell:
Well, again, I think you have to really be specific on which of the sectors you’re looking at. Some of them are more mature. Again, I talked about communications and sensing is kind of mid-level maturity. And then I have things like lunar regolith and other activities, space medicine, which are relatively immature. And so in those latter cases, they’re very uncertain in terms of what the economic parallels might even be to those things. I think there’ll be a substantial return on space investment if companies are focused on their missions, if they’re focused on their business and the regulatory environment they have to live within, that could change very quickly. Now we can come to that a little bit later, but staying focused as a business on these things, understanding customers as well as they understand their technology could provide substantial returns. One of the other benefits of the investment community being involved, the private investment community is that people are in that community that actually understand how to run and grow businesses. The foundations, which sometimes people in the space community are less familiar with, they’re more focused on the technology. We’re also seeing a lot of examples of companies from outside the space industry. This is one of the reasons for my excitement about it. Sectors that were never involved historically in space are now saying, Hey, this is accessible enough
That we can do an experiment. We can try something in space. And so we’re seeing people in the artificial intelligence world doing work in agriculture, in pharma, in other areas. And so I think that creates a whole next wave of innovation in the space community. This has been a push community for many years. I invented this. Let’s figure out how you use it. I think we’ll have that continuing, but we’ll also now have a whole set of other sectors saying, Hey, could you do this? Or what if we tried that? And we also have, because of the increased access to space, we now have a cycle where if I as an entrepreneur, you as an entrepreneur have an idea, we can get it launched in six months. Maybe it doesn’t work. Maybe I know how to adjust it. I can take another swing six months later and come into market. And so that’s part of the dynamic change we’re seeing in this industry.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I completely agree. And I want to pull on the thread about the adjacent industries that are now recognizing access to space. And it hits on an earlier piece that you mentioned earlier about making money and really being able to prove out the business case and viability. The example I’m going to use is asteroid mining. I think it punctuates this example perfectly. So it is often talked about as a major market driver, right? It’s on one of Morgan Stanley’s top 10 market drivers. And understandably, because the economic yield down the road that it could provide is massive, but really it also is critical for space missions because really what should be mined, it’s not the platinum and more the water and resources for i a portfolios and others, but adjacent companies are really drawn to that because they see, oh, well I have mining operations on earth, why can’t I just translate it to space? But they don’t actually realize that there are some fundamental technical challenges that need to be brought to fruition first before those missions would even happen. And then they need to figure out that how to get the mission to yield enough platinum that offsets the cost of the mission. So it’s this whole stepping stone approach. So what kind of advice or how would you talk about that for companies to not kind kill the enthusiasm but to get them to understand how a space strategy really needs to
Kevin O’Connell:
Evolve? Well, companies in different sectors, again, we can look at the medical field, we can look at mining your example, who better to start to look at that? I also just playfully, I remember talking to a company once it was in the debris business talking to them about space debris. That’s a different story for a little later, but who better than people that are in these very specific sectors to a understand the economics of what they’re doing to then say, Hey, if I can do this in space and create a brand new capability, I also should understand the costs of what it’s going to take to get there. And that’s going to require collaboration with the space community. So I think it’s really a learning experience that these industries will have to say, what is it going to take to get there? What is it going to take to get things back and absorb that cost or understand if they can absorb that cost into what will be a successful and profitable business?
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
And who do you think funds those gaps? So I think what’s interesting about this duality in space and it’s a necessary relationship is that we evolved from government programs. The government is still the main customer for space technology. However, a lot of the innovation and r and d and capabilities are being done on the commercial side, right, with the government as the end user. So there is this push-pull relationship and there are some government funded programs, there’s some commercial. How do you see that relationship evolving or how should it evolve to allow innovation to get to where it needs to be and to allow for those riskier gaps? Because part of the challenge that you were talking about earlier of private capital investors know how to scale and run businesses. Private capital investment has very different mission sets and ROI than the government does. Definitely when you combine both of those types of capital into this market growth, it just creates different stakeholder needs.
Kevin O’Connell:
Well, so I think a lot of talk about this goes on and what is commercial, et cetera. I think there’s a potentially very strong symbiotic relationship between government funding and private investment. And we’re even seeing the US government behave in this way in certain places, mostly on the defense side. And so we’re seeing, for example, in the S-B-I-R-S-T-T-R system, we’re seeing the government play small bets on technologies that are potentially interesting. I’ll just leave that as the bar. No guarantees, no social welfare program, but they’re potentially interesting technologies. The companies that receive those awards can then go out into the private capital markets and say, the US government likes this technology. And so they may then have a value proposition that says this can be truly commercial. And so in some instances, private capital may say, Hey, you’ll probably be a government contractor for the next 20 years and maybe that’s a great business and they may invest less in that because of that.
Or they may say, we see this being potentially wildly commercial. I’m being dramatic for effect here and could invest a serious amount of money. So I think that synergy exists. I think we need to do more of that. I think the government should also be a little clearer on how long it intends to invest in something. Now if it’s defense related, they’re going to invest in it for as long as they need to invest in it, but there may be other markets segments where they say, we’re going to explore this and we’re going to invest in it for the next say three to five years. The numbers can always be changed, but also by placing small bets and making sure that there’s a private sector view on this as well. I always like to say that government funding and private capital are both important, but I think that private capital actually accelerates innovation. Now, if you want to do a high risk public mission, the government is probably going to fund most of that at least in the early years. But the private capital community looks at differentiation amongst company ideas and they look at risk in a different way than the government does. And I think if we put that together correctly, there’s a nice synergy amongst the three and we have a large enough ecosystem in the United States, other countries and regions don’t have as large an ecosystem. I think that’s a powerful combination.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I agree. I really liked the point about the government signaling how long they are going to invest in something because I think that sometimes there’s an over-reliance on, I always joke like Uncle Sugar is the government keeping a company alive, but you have to start priming the pump about not just the capability handoff, but the impact and what is going to be necessary to scale it into adjacent markets that are not intuitive from when the tech was built.
Kevin O’Connell:
Right. I also think the government needs to do a better job of signaling and actually following through on it. I mean, this is a common theme in the defense community. We’ve seen many strategy papers over the years on buying commercial, leveraging commercial. I worry, I said this in my acceptance speech that for the U-S-G-I-F award, I worry that the rhetoric sometimes is outpacing the reality. There’s a lot of well-intended ideas about leveraging commercial, but the size of the investment behind it is not consistent with that idea. I’d make a parallel here to our adversaries who typically don’t have that problem. They say what they’re going to do and they go do it. And so we create risk for ourselves if we’re not very, very careful. If we’re going to leverage commercial and it’s the greatest idea that I think we should agree upon here, then we need to do it, but we need to be aggressive about it and we need to be as aggressive about it as we are in many other areas.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Do you see a tipping point, so in where that handoff can sort of come? So we are starting to see that with the commercial space stations that have been contracted to take over the ISS, and I know the concept of space as a service can be controversial, however people view it, but how do you see that evolving? It seems like that is starting to happen, but what do you think has sort of slowed it down?
Kevin O’Connell:
I think you’ve said it exactly right, which is that it’s starting to happen. We see a lot of as a service offerings out there and a handful of companies that are actually doing it. And what it means to do it is to understand not just the risk to the company when they offer something as a service, but also the risk to the customer as a service and use insurance and guarantees and other leverage to do that. We know a couple of examples of companies that are like that. Sometimes people just slap the phrase as a service on something because it’s fashionable and something they think they should say and they don’t think about risk in that context. And that’s very dangerous actually. I think that’s also harder as a concept in the government to buy something as a service. I think we’re getting there, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s interesting. Yeah, the SaaS model that we saw a lot in software as a service was the model du jour. Every company then had a subscription model, even if it was a company that didn’t need a subscription model. That always made me laugh, sticking on the government theme, but bringing it out a bit more global. So beyond the acting as a validator for technology and really growth for these markets, space geopolitically is also a really extremely valuable tool and the national security aspect of it and the economics of it really go hand in hand. And you travel the world, you talk to a lot of different countries about this issue. What do you think the value of these economic partnerships is in space and how does it help affect the geopolitical landscape in space?
Kevin O’Connell:
Well, they’re enormous. We could do an entire session on this issue specifically. I’ll start in defense. I mean, we’ve had a decades long history of space cooperation with our closest allies, and the value of that is incredible. We see other allies now wanting to play a similar role and that benefits in multiple ways. It gives us additional reach and space. It allows them access under the right circumstances to technologies they might not have capabilities to do. I think there’s a couple of things we want to look at as we change administration. I think there’s a couple of things we want to look at. Number one, what is the logic of a partnership? What does each party bring to the table? And maybe it’s just a bilateral relationship or maybe it’s something different. That’s one thing. The second is that partners have to be witting of what they bring to the table and understand actually how we forge the partnership. We can make nice speeches and have nice dinners and things like that, but partnership requires work. It’s what you tell your kids. It’s what I’ve told my daughters. Partnership requires work and it’s constant work. And so if we say we’re going to partner on something, we need to be able to continuously make progress in that partnership or else it’s just words and it doesn’t have the effect that we want it to have.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Can it have the adverse effect? And this is obviously a leading question. I know it can, but I’m curious for you to continue. But the US is and still is seen as a global leader in space, and that’s a good thing. And there are so many countries that want to work with us, either integrate into our supply chain or come over to the US and actually establish a company and really then become part of the US economic base. But I think often we’re hard to work with and I understand why because of the intertwined nature of national security, commercial civil, I mean space is infinite, but there’s also, it’s very intertwined with the activities. So if we signal that we want to open up the door for some sort of dialogue and then don’t do anything about it, what could that do for us in the long run?
Kevin O’Connell:
Yeah, it’s going to harm us obviously. And again, you and I have been party to conversations together where that phrase you’re hard to work with. And so number one, we should assess why are we hard to work with? What issues, export controls, visa requirements, whole host of other things. There may be certain places where there’s a reason why we’re hard to work with. We should be mindful of that and work toward easing those with people we really want to work with. The second is really a hard conversation about what does each party bring to bear to the table? Is there a unique technology? Is there geographic access? Is there something else that can be brought to bear? Because again, a true partnership has to do with value that’s created by both parties. And again, we’re the large party in the room, obviously, but each party brings something to the table. It’s done on a mutual basis and both countries in that case benefit from that partnership. And I just think we have to take a slightly harder look at what are we doing that impedes that progress, and secondly, what can others bring to the table? And again, with Japan and Europe and others, there are good answers to those questions they have to be dealt with on an individual case.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
It’s an interesting time because my assessment, we’ve always engaged in space as a national security posturing. I mean, that’s how the space race began. And of course there were friends in foes in space then there’s friends and foes in space now, but it seems to be more on the economic side. Posturing still exists, but it’s more what that partnership growth and economic return and intertwining of economies is really going to look like down the road.
Kevin O’Connell:
Definitely. Well, and one of the things I hope will be considered in the new administration is that we have a series of agencies in the US government that historically were not heavily involved in space and they’re the economic agencies. And of course I spent my time at Commerce, we got the XM bank reauthorized, but there are other finance and development agencies, DFC, trade and Development Administration, things like that. They need to be in the fight as well. Actually, I mean the extent to which this is an economic competition, make sure you’ve got all your economic agencies engaged as much as you have the Department of Defense in nasa. Okay? And so we’re not excusing them from the story. We’re simply saying that we really need to have a truly whole government approach to this. We talk about this certainly in the context of how we manage our space activities. It’s not unnoticed that the Chinese have thought about this in a very similar way when you look at the geospatial aspects of the Belt and Road initiative. And so getting our economic agencies more engaged in this, number one, it’s just good. It’s good for American business, it’s good for American foreign policy and national security, and it also represents an option for partners overseas who may only be facing an option from the Chinese. That’s not that attractive, but it’s the only option. And so we need to be in that fight. We need to have all of our agencies engaged in that discussion.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
It’s a really great point. Do you think it’s just more of a signal of understanding how space affects them or impacts them, or is it really the orientation that they are part of this collective growth?
Kevin O’Connell:
You mean the agencies or maybe Oh, no, I mean, I just think when we talk about the extent to which space impacts everybody’s lives, it means that every part of the US government needs to be involved at some small level. I mean, I’m not arguing for giant bureaucracy here of it’s simply to say somebody in every one of these agencies needs to have cognizance of their potential role in the space economy signaling to industry what opportunities there may be and helping with our competitiveness abroad against adversaries who are inherently unfair in the way they’re dealing with market economics for space activities.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah, there’s a comment from someone listening that says it’s difficult to work with the US for Europe to create these partnerships because of obstacles like IAR and information sharing and others. And so from a regulatory aspect, because obviously regulation needs to exist in some regard, and you and I have talked at nauseum about the fact of how innovation is pacing and there needs to be guardrails. You don’t want to overly regulate, but there needs to be sort of a north star that you’re going toward. Do you want to touch upon the regulatory landscape a little bit and how it can assist the growth of innovation and really what that push-pull should look like?
Kevin O’Connell:
Well, I think the regulatory landscape suspect, everybody on this call knows that we’re pushing hard on mission authorization in the United States. It’s difficult given the relatively dated landscape of regulation that exists in launch, remote sensing and communications. Those serve their purposes. But we have entrepreneurs now coming forward in dozens of other areas where number one, the government may not actually have the best advantage in understanding those issues. When the government encouraged commercialization of imagery and launch, they had decades of experience in doing them. They understood them deeply. We may not have that advantage in the government. We likely don’t in certain cases, in some of these newer industries where people are bringing capabilities into the market. So we have to be very careful how we think about regulation. We also need a regulatory framework. Again, we use this phrase mission authorization that I joked once in an op-ed that is too important to be left to the hands of lawyers and regulators.
I’m sure I’ll get a cranky note about that at some point. But the point is that with so much dynamic opportunity in the market, we need processes that are both efficient. Folks sometimes forget that part of the regulatory challenge is the process itself, opacity and inability to move quickly with the market. It’s a government process. It’s always slower than the market is obviously in addition to the substantive aspects of the regulation. And so we need to find a way to accelerate all of that to create a presumption of approval in the process for regulation. One of the things I’ll say, and we talked earlier about the private investment community. Private investors are much more savvy these days about cybersecurity and orbital debris mitigation and things like that than they were even three or four years ago. And that’s a good thing because they can also bring an additional pressure to make sure a company, especially a young company, is thinking about these things and actually pushing to satisfy whatever regulatory requirements are at the time.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s a really good point, and especially the lack of decades of knowledge that we can rely on about the behavior of these technologies and markets and the use case, because I think that there’s promise for tech. Tech always has sort of a dual use aspect, but you never really know from an integration or just a future utilization of where it’s going to go.
Kevin O’Connell:
And regulators, you think to yourself, I have a great innovation, and you go to a regulator and say, I’ve got a great new idea. Historically in the space business, we would say, oh, that’s interesting. We’ll see in about 10 years. In other words, there’s ample time for everybody to get their head around it. The challenge we have today is that a space innovation may show up not only in two years, but maybe two weeks given the spread of adjacent technologies and how people are trying to put them together. So it really puts a pressure for speed in thinking about this on the regulatory side or just saying, we’re going to assume approval from the get go unless we have an explicit reason. In other words, you’re pushing the burden of proof back on the government, not on the company. Taking a lot of my lessons here from the rewrite of the remote sensing regulations we did back in 2019 and 2020, we’re not saying you never say no, but the burden ought to be on the government why to say no, and in the regulatory process there are legitimate safety and security issues, but we need the entrepreneur to have a fighting chance.
This is why we suggested that well strongly recommended, probably a better phrase, that mission authorization be placed at the commerce department to make sure that the entrepreneur’s interest and the broader innovation interests of the country were given a fighting chance in that discussion.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
How do you think we do it better? Because thinking about, because you’re absolutely right. I always used to say back from my DARPA days that innovation and policy have a seven year gap, right? I mean, it’s figuring out what is possible. It comes to the market and then people are like, oh my gosh, what do we do with this? It’s actually a real thing. And with space it’s even more accelerated because it is on the backbone of other capabilities. But the integrated nature of it also I think makes it a bit more complex because it’s not just what it’s going to do in its tech vertical, but what it’s going to enable in the adjacent verticals that are really connected from infrastructure, policy, business, all of that. And there is a really critical role for innovation and for these new capabilities to accelerating the space economy, but also to creating efficiencies or educating folks on what the market’s going to come, especially the government. So how can we do it better?
Kevin O’Connell:
So I’ll focus on just two aspects. There are probably a number more, but I’ll give you two ideas. Number one, we need a better horizon scanning capability in the government because space capabilities and space plus adjacent technologies are coming so quickly. We need to have an ability to look out there. When I was at the Office of Space Commerce and in parallel defense innovation unit, we were one of the first offices to see people come into the market. People would knock on the door and say, Hey, I’ve got this capability. And as I’ve said many times, it was never our job to say an idea was a good idea or a bad idea. It was to advocate for them to be heard by other people in the government with technical expertise or whatever. And so understanding what’s coming in the market now, where this becomes interesting is that in one instance, someone could combine and they might be the only person that’s developing an idea in this space, and they only have a small amount of backing behind them. I consider that one way, but then maybe I have 10 companies coming to me, and again, I’m being extreme for effect here that say, oh, we each have a million bucks in our pocket, and so I really need to pay attention to that second cluster, that cluster of people to say, gee, whether it’s a good idea or not, I need to pay attention that a lot of people are focused on doing this. And so the government needs to understand that from a first use adoption case, and B , from a regulatory perspective, if that’s appropriate. The second thing, completely different areas, we need to give government program managers some flexibility in their programs. Imagine being, and you know this from your government time, imagine being in a program manager of a government program and you’ve spent your sweat and tears to get funded every year and you’ve got eight years under your belt and somebody knocks on your door and says, oh, I’ve got this capability that’s going to knock your program off the rails. I wouldn’t say it that way, but in a year and a half. And one of the structural problems is beyond people, disbelieving things can be done is I have no ability to comfortably send my program to retire, if you will. And there’s a lot behind that because of capabilities coming in the market now, scrutiny of that idea, is this person credible? There’s a whole much more to this, but allowing more flexibility in government programs to say, gee, something’s moving so quickly on the horizon that instead of continuing invest in idea that I actually think about ways to use it. And maybe we run in parallel for a couple of years just to see that one works another, a lot of human issues in there, a lot of technical issues in there as well. But I think those are just two examples of things we could do to do this better.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
And there’s a whole subtext about the acquisition process and how to be more iterative and agile and all of that.
Kevin O’Connell:
I didn’t want to give that answer. I mean, I assume everybody knows that answer. Yeah, I mean, yeah, again, processes exist for a reason, but they should be reviewed and updated and iterated upon to actually match the market and the capabilities. And really the current situation. There is a question that sort of really dovetails on what you were saying about how can we better educate government agencies? So how can the private sector do that better to make sure that it is discussed in all the committees that would touch it. So I think number one, people do understand need to understand the potential for space in most if not all, federal agencies. Again, we talk about a whole of government approach to this. They need to understand, agencies need to understand what their potential role is. I don’t think that’s that difficult. It doesn’t involve large bureaucracies. It involves people giving briefings to different agency heads, et cetera. And I’m hoping some of that conversation is underway right now. Second is the inevitable, and again, everybody on this call will know this. The inevitable lament that those people out there, good folks every single day really still don’t have an appreciation of how they’re benefiting from space. So many times there’s a counter argument that says they actually don’t need to understand that. They need to understand that GPS is helping them get around and make transactions and things like that. But I do think we need a more fulsome understanding publicly about why this is so important, why we’ll continue and invest in it, and frankly why it’s important to let the private sector take a lead. Where historically it was done a very different way. In other words, that transition, I think that’s especially not known publicly. Lots of people think when we talk about space, we’re only talking about nasa.
Everybody here knows that’s not true anymore. Okay? There’s a much more complex dimension of public and private activities. And so we need a little bit better understanding of that publicly on why we’re letting private investment in and exactly what we’re trying to accomplish with that, most of which has to do with speed.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I think that the more that people recognize that they are part of the collective space economy, whether as a beneficiary from what it brings to their daily lives or working in industries that are going to be really critical for its future growth and just capability offset I think is important. I got a bit of PTSD when you said that. I get asked all the time, why should I care about space? My own father asked me that. I’m like, how much time do you have dad? Because there are so many ways we could go with this, but I agree with you because everyone gets excited about space. No one looks at the sky and isn’t fascinated by the cosmos, but really understanding how they’re benefiting from it, not just taxpayer dollars, but commercial engagement and innovation toward it, I think is a really critical aspect. In the last couple minutes I have with you is I would be remiss we’re a couple days out from the new inauguration of Trump’s next presidency, and there’s been a fast and furious push for his cabinets and policies and all of that. So you were part of his first administration with the Office of Space Commerce. What would you speculate that people could anticipate to see in this next administration when it comes to space?
Kevin O’Connell:
I don’t think this is a hard answer. I think you’re going to see much more an emphasis on space in its many dimensions. The scientific exploration piece. The commercialization piece, especially. I think you’re going to see a focus on making sure that where we spend public dollars on space, they are heavily leveraging commercial, what I talked about before, the rhetoric and the reality. I think we’re going to see an attempt to push the reality piece much closer to the rhetoric for all the reasons we’ve talked about, speed and innovation that just come in a different way than they come in the government. And so that’s one issue. I think you’ll see a considerable emphasis on deregulation and making sure that regulation is not slowing us down. And I think you’ll probably see a restructuring of international partnerships, again, on a more concrete basis of how are we working together?
What are we going to accomplish together? And putting some timelines and milestones on accomplishments rather than just talking about problems and then hoping that they solve themselves in the next six months and talking about them again. And so I think those are just three areas. I think it’s a very exciting time for space. I think we’re going to see space accelerate and diversify. Where I started this, it’s a phrase I’ve used now for many years, and I think we’re really at an inflection point. We’re going to see things change very, very rapidly. The private investment community, at least in my travels and I suspect in yours, private community, now armed with better knowledge about what makes a successful space company is ready to jump in and play the incredible role that they are able to play in this area in compliment of government funding.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I agree with you, I think similarly to how we pinpoint 2021 as this very interesting year in space history and milestone. I think historically we’ll look back and say 2025 was a turning point in a lot of different ways. I really want to thank you for sharing your time and expertise. I always love talking to you. We could talk hours exactly, but I know that the listeners got a lot of value out of this and I always do as well. So thank you.
Kevin O’Connell:
Thanks. Always a pleasure and to be continued, obviously.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Always to be continued. To the viewers, I want to thank you for tuning in, for asking your questions, for commenting. You really are the reason we do this. And for everyone else, just please remember there’s a place for everyone in the global space ecosystem. We’ll see you next time. Bye.
Kevin O’Connell:
See you next time. Bye-bye.
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Space as an Economic Force Multiplier: Building a Vibrant Ecosystem