Beyond Earth (10/14/22)

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In today's newsletter:🔍 RAND report📣 DC dispatch📖 Weekend recs

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RAND Releases Adversary Perception Report

RAND Corporation is out with a new report on how the US’ principal adversaries—China and Russia—perceive the American space program.

The overall findings are bleak, though they come as no surprise:

“The Chinese and Russian native-language primary sources reviewed for this project reflect a sustained perception that US military activities related to the space domain are threatening and reflect hostile US. intent.”

The methodology: To pull the report together, RAND surveyed two decades of Russian and Chinese media reports, articles, and policy, sussing out the opinions about US space activities driving decision-making and, to the extent possible, whether those stances were genuine. RAND also looked to figure out whether China and Russia’s perceptions of US actions in space drove them to take actions of their own.

Many of the materials reviewed by the analysts hearkened back to a few key events in the American space-faring canon:

1. The Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Reagan’s “Star Wars program," which proposed establishing a counter-WMD space-based missile defense system

2. The subsequent creation of US Space Command in 1985

3. The US’ withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002

4. Development of the X-37B spaceplane

Keeping the lines open: RAND analysts emphasized that in both Russia and China, estimations of US space activity and nuclear capability tend to be correlated. As tensions heat up, it will be important for DC to understand that Beijing and Moscow may link any military activity in orbit to US nuclear “capabilities and strategy.”

The long history of US-Russia relations has led to more dialogue between the two (along with a more nuanced appreciation for bilateral diplomacy). “Such a history and cultural understanding is nearly absent in the US relationship with China,” analysts wrote.

It takes two to tango: The US harbors similar dual-use suspicions about China and Russia’s space programs. The dreaded phrase “space race”—-which we’ve now regrettably used two days in a row—surfaces often in DC discussions concerning China’s space prowess. And though the US and Russia have maintained the ISS partnership over the past 20-odd years, the relationship is still tense and has degraded since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Dispatch from Beyond Earth (JK…from DC)

The International Space Station has served as a beacon of international diplomacy, ground-breaking R&D, and scientific discovery for nearly 30 years. Its commercial follow-on could serve as a movie set, thanks to Axiom and its entertainment partner.

The policy and regulatory challenges facing commercial space station developers were front and center at Thursday’s Beyond Earth Symposium in DC. Officials also discussed the sustainability of the Artemis program, base-building on the Moon, and cooperation with China (or lack thereof).

Kathy Lueders, the head of NASA’s human spaceflight program, emphasized that companies shouldn’t be working on an ISS 2.0 with the government as the primary intended customer. “I don’t want you building a platform for me,” she said. “If you’re doing that, you’re not thinking big enough.”

Opening space to the masses

Because the next generation of space stations won’t primarily be government-run research labs (Tiangong notwithstanding), companies say they need to think differently about how to serve consumers, movie crews, and artists. Instead of the austere, cramped living conditions on the ISS, visitors to Voyager’s Starlab will stay in accommodations designed by Hilton. No word on whether they’ll earn points, though.

“This isn’t a NASA space station,” Eric Stallmer, Voyager’s DC lead, said Thursday. “What’s going to drive investment? Because NASA isn’t going to be paying the full bill for this.”

Tech isn’t the biggest hurdle

The ISS proved that humanity can continuously live in LEO. But widening the aperture on who can access space raises lots of questions about safety, international cooperation, and the regulatory regime that should govern commercial fliers.

“The kinds of things that we wanted to do for an entire generation of spaceflight are now coming to a finer point, where we are resting on the challenges of policy…[and] economics in order to enable us to go and do all the good technical work we know is possible,” said Erika Wagner, Blue Origin’s senior director of emerging space markets.

One potential question Wagner raised is who will oversee science in orbit on commercial platforms. “If I want to do biotech work in LEO, how do I do that?” she asked. “The ISS has done it under the supervision of NASA. We are now under the supervision of the FDA.”

Earthly challenges

The pandemic also set back private space station developers. Axiom, the orbital outpost front-runner, won a NASA contract in February 2020 to build on to the ISS. As a consequence of Covid-related labor shortages, the company, which has the rights to the only commercial segment slot of the ISS, has pushed the launch of its first module back to late 2025.

Mary Lynne Dittmar, Axiom’s chief government and external relations officer, said yesterday that the company is on track to launch a second module six to eight months later, followed by a refurbished cargo module and a service module. “After that one is finally launched and integrated, then shortly after that, we’ll depart the station and become a free-flier,” she said.

+ Further reading: The Beyond Earth Institute released four policy papers in conjunction with the event, covering commercial space stations, a cislunar ecosystem, financing for infrastructure in space, and spaceflight safety.

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In Other News

• Starlink's burn rate in Ukraine is too high, SpaceX says, and the company is asking the Pentagon to foot more of the bill (H/T CNN).

• SpaceX and NASA are targeting Moon launches for days apart in November.

• Crew-4's trip home from the ISS was pushed back again due to weather. NASA and SpaceX will try again today.

• Skyrora shared more details about its failed suborbital launch attempt from Iceland.

• CNN profiled bluShift, a Maine startup developing biofuel-powered rockets. BluShift CEO Sascha Deri ate some of the rocket fuel on camera—well worth a watch.

• North Korea test-fired a short-range ballistic missile.

• NSF won’t rebuild the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.

• China has launched three missions in six days.

Payload Insights

Here’s Mo’s best guess as to what SpaceX’s 2022 revenue is. The tally, he believes, is ~$3.3B. Note that this estimate is based on known, publicly available data—and then plenty of assumptions on undisclosed figures. More here, for those interested...