Happy Monday Dear Subscribers,
There’s a reason for the change in tone for this Transmission. I’m not just back from taking a wee national holiday break. I’ve actually got some news that will affect the format of The DownLink newsletter going forward.
The DownLink is now a Defense & Aerospace Report podcast! Thanks to the DefAero Report’s Founder and Editor Vago Muradian, this well-respected defense news organization has broadened its offering to now include Space.
The DownLink podcast’s new home
Vago also hosts the organization’s flagship podcast, the daily Defense & Aerospace Report Podcast. In that channel, he hosts the Northrop Grumman Cyber Report every Wednesday, and an excellent roundtable discussion on Fridays.
Also on the roster are Chris Cavas and Chris Servello, who produce and host the weekly CavasShips podcast on maritime defense. Servello has been instrumental in assisting me in getting The DownLink podcast launched (pun very much intended).
I do not intend to set aside writing, but I will need to be a bit more selective when I write longer pieces.
The good news is the podcast is weekly. You will still receive a newsletter, but instead of reading it, you can now listen to the very people who represent some of the organizations that I have been writing about.
What is “episode zero”
Episode zero is customarily used for sending out an RSS ping, an electronic signal, to the podcast platforms, to set up the audio distribution workflow, and to plant a flag. They’re usually pretty short introductions to what the podcast is about, with a promise that the next installment will be a full-blown episode.
I hate waste. So I instead used this opportunity to interview Jeffrey Hill, the chairman of Satellite, one of the largest – if not the largest – must-attend annual space industry conferences here in the United States. Because he regularly speaks with space industry C-suite executives to ensure his conference program is ahead of the curve, I wanted to hear his take on what trends he’s seeing that are driving the space industry and space in defense.
“On the government and military side, it really is the Wild West, because there is very little regulation or law that’s been established in the space environment. And I’m really surprised that it hasn’t gotten out of control already, but we’ve shown a lot of restraint.” - Jeffrey Hill
Listen to the rest of Hill’s take on the state of space on The DownLink podcast either by using the embedded player above or you can listen on your preferred player from the list below.
Random Signals
China reportedly successfully launched a test hypersonic glide vehicle, which is thought to be a nuclear-capable missile, into low earth orbit in August. According to the Financial Times, which broke the story on Saturday, this development took U.S. intelligence agencies by surprise. In the article, which is behind a paywall, an expert on Chinese nuclear weapons policy, told the FT that this new weapons system will help China “negate US defense systems that are designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles.”
Hypersonic weapons delivery systems are very difficult to detect and correctly identify not only because they travel at five times the speed of sound, but because they travel at low altitudes, through the bottom of low earth orbit. Unlike ballistic missiles that go up and then down, hypersonic weapons can glide around the globe on their own power before approaching their target. The U.S. Russia and North Korea are also developing and deploying hypersonic weapons systems. The Jerusalem Post has a free article and some additional reporting.
Starting today, Monday, U.S. Space Force Chief Strategy and Resourcing Lt. Gen. Bill Liquori will lead space policy development, according to Breaking Defense. This is a departure from the norm - a U.S. Senate-appointed civilian holding the policy-drafting pen. As you may expect, this development has raised some eyebrows. The counter-arguments are that a civilian-led air-policy directorate does not exist, and that any policy produced from within the chain of command will ultimately be reviewed by the U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s office before hitting the desk of the U.S. Secretary of Defense Llloyd Austin - both civilians.
Expect more changes to come as Kendall has already said he intends to move USSF acquisitions out of the Air Force Acquisitions directorate (SAF/AQ) into its own directorate for space acquisitions (SAF/SQ) and to is reorganize the Space Development Agency (SDA), known for speedy cutting-edge space acquisitions, into the Space Force.
Three taikonauts aboard a Shenzhou-13 spacecraft atop a Long March-2F rocket launched to China’s Tianhe space station Saturday. Zhai Zhigang, 55, Ye Guangfu, 41, and Wang Yaping, also 41 reached the Tianhe and started their six-month stay just over six hours after liftoff. Wang, who has traveled to space before, is the first woman to board the space station and is expected to become China’s first female spacewalker.
The actor known best for playing Captain James Tiberius Kirk in the 1960’s original sci-fi classic television series Star Trek, William Shatner, aged 90, became the oldest human to reach space, 106 km above the surface, on Wednesday morning. Upon returning to earth after the 10-minute 17-second flight, the actor had tears in his eyes whilst attempting to describe what he saw and how he felt. Here are 38 seconds from inside the capsule.
Sticking with the sci-fi meets real-world space exploration and colonization, Theresa Hitchens of Breaking Defense has a thought piece that’s worth your time. She takes one of the best sci-fi novel and television series ever written and produced, The Expanse by James S. A. Corey, to discuss what regulatory guardrails exist (spoiler: not many) and the debate humanity should be having about how we want off-world activities governed in the perhaps not-so-distant future.
And in other star-studded news, Russian director-producer Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild returned to earth this morning, after eight days of filming scenes for their movie Challenge on the International Space Station. In addition to shooting the feature, the duo got a taste of real drama, when a glitch in their Soyuz MS-18 capsule’s thrusters forced the station to tilt. NASA was able to regain control of the ISS 30 minutes after the incident. Perhaps Captain Kirk could do Peresild a solid and explain to her the perils of wearing the red shirt for off-world activities.
