The U.S. Senate returns on September 5, followed by the House of Representatives on September 12, to negotiate the FY’24 federal budget. While both houses want to cut down the president’s request for the Space Force and military space programs by more than a billion, it’s not yet set in stone. To understand what’s at stake, Laura Winter speaks with Chris Stone, Senior Fellow for Space Deterrence, National Institute for Deterrence Studies and author of the book “Reversing the Tao: A Framework for Credible Space Deterrence”; Peter Garretson, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and co-author of the book “The Next Space Race: A Blueprint for American Primacy”; and Sam Wilson, senior policy analyst for the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at The Aerospace Corporation.

Starting as early as Monday, August 21, Russia and India will make attempts to land their separate lunar lander missions on the moon’s south pole, where water-ice – space’s version of gold – has been found. Traditionally, Russia and India have been fast friends on earth, but competing visions and national interests in the space domain are revealing fault lines. Laura Winter speaks with Namrata Goswami, an independent scholar on space policy and great power politics and co-author of the book “Scramble for the Skies”; and Pavel Luzin, a space, Russia, and international security expert, lecturer, and author, and also visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

This week’s episode examines an experiment that will underpin the development of a crucial environmental technology that almost every spacecraft – crewed or not – and every off-world human habitat will employ. Laura Winter speaks with Purdue University’s Issam Mudawar, who is the Betty Ruth and Milton B. Hollander Family Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and the Principal Investigator for NASA’s Flow Boiling & Two-Phase Condensation Experiment (FBCE) for the International Space Station (ISS). The FBCE’s second module just arrived at the ISS.

On this week’s episode of The DownLink Podcast, Laura Winter speaks with Comtech Chairman, President, and CEO Ken Peterman, about hybrid space technologies and what value it will deliver to the end-user; why he reorganized the company; the latest contract with the U.S. Army; will it join the lunar economy; and why he calls himself an “imagineer”.

Weird reports of “disappearances and departures” from China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Forces, Venezuela signs up to the China-led Moon station, and more out China on space and defense in this week’s episode. Laura Winter speaks with Chris Stone, Senior Fellow for Space Deterrence-National Institute for Deterrence Studies and author of the book “Reversing the Tao: A Framework for Credible Space Deterrence”; and Brendan Mulvaney, Director of the Air University’s China Aerospace Studies Institute.

The U.S. Space Force asked the Rand Corporation to come up with a new officer workforce framework, “conceived independently of the existing [U.S. Air Force] structure.” This episode is the second in a two-part series examining the Rand Corporation’s novel proposal, which aims to balance space mission requirements and the careers of officers. It is highly recommended to first listen to Part 1, which posted last month.
In this episode Laura Winter continues the conversation with two of the proposal’s authors, Larry Hanser, a senior behavioral scientist, and Jennifer Li, a senior management Scientist, both from the Rand Corporation; and Chris Stone, Senior Fellow for Space Deterrence at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies; and Brent Ziarnick, an associate professor of Space Power at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

This week’s episode serves up an in-depth interview with Maj. Gen. (ret.) Kimberly Crider, who was the first Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for the United States Space Force and is now a founding partner of a new space business, Elara Nova. Laura Winter also speaks with Jim Townsend, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, and President of the Atlantic Treaty Association, who was in Vilnius, Lithuania this week for the 2023 NATO Summit.

It is time to take a look back at the first six months to see how the space market, space capital, and the space economy have fared. This episode also ferrets out the top space finance events from Q1 and Q2 that are shaping spending, investment, and business strategies for the next two quarters and beyond. Laura Winter speaks with Chris Quilty, founder of Quilty Space; and George Pullen, Chief Economist at Milky Way Economy.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the United States has produced a more dependable and powerful partnership not only in the Indo-Pacific region, but in space and defense. Laura Winter digs into the commercial, defense, and geopolitical details with Namrata Goswami, an independent scholar on space policy and great power politics and co-author of the book “Scramble for the Skies”; Ajey Lele, a Consultant at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses; U.S. Amb. (ret.) Atul Keshap, President of the United States India Business Council, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and Kranthi Musunuru, Head of Strategy, Dhruva Space.