Commercial Space Transportation Conference Panel Discussion

From The FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference Website The Commercial Space Transportation Conference is the premier commercial space event hosted annually by the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. Hundreds of attendees gather annually for a day-and-a-half symposium that features respected Government officials, policymakers, and thought leaders from around the country. The Commercial Space Transportation Conference discusses all aspects of the industry, ranging from launch infrastructure to airspace integration to the future of low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and beyond. Attendees come away with a better understanding of the policy landscape and an enhanced network of professionals within the industry.

What is said in the film

All right. Welcome back. As I mentioned yesterday, you've got to be buckled in because we are. Moving and moving fast. In fact, we are a few minutes behind schedule.

But I think it's worth it to hear what. Everybody. Has to say. And I think this conference is an incredible value to everybody here. So with that, our next destination.

Leo, sir. Okay. Hello, everybody. I'm Phil McAlister from NASA headquarters. Welcome.

This is one of my favorite conferences. It's got the word commercial in it. So I really like that. And also now this panel commercial, Leo Destinations is obviously something that is occupying a lot of my time. As I've said before, I believe commercial Leo Destinations is probably the most important commercial human spaceflight program we are going to have for about this next decade.

And it's going to be very, very interesting to see how it plays out over that period of time. I know you might be thinking, well, Phil, you oversee the program, so you should be able to ensure how it's going to play out. And one thing I ever like that's really easy, but one thing I have learned is that nothing is easy in commercial, human spaceflight. We are going to need everybody in this room in the community to make that successful, which is one of the reasons why I really like this panel. We've got a really good cross-section here of the community to talk about what they're doing and what their concerns are and what they're going to be.

See seeing over this next decade. So I'm going to have to go to the glasses here. So our panelists today to my right is Mary Ellen Dittmar. She is the chief government and external relations officer at Axiom Space. To her right is Eric Stormer, executive vice president for government affairs and public policy for Voyager space.

Then Angela Rice, senior Vice president of Mission Assurance, Sierra Space Corporation. And then batting cleanup. Kathy Leaders, Associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate, NASA's headquarters. So we'll just go down the down the aisle here and we'll start with Marilyn. Thanks, Phil.

And thanks to the commercial spaceflight Federation for the invitation to be here today. Really appreciate that. I'm here representing Axiom Space, and I threw out my remarks that I was planning to do when I listen to the first couple of panels today, because it was such a great lead in to talk about national security. And I spent a little time doing that today. It's a little unusual to think about human spaceflight and national security.

There's been some tension between those communities for decades and decades that it's not really a tension. But the United States made a decision pretty early on to kind of partition civil space, national security space. And then, of course, we've had the rise of commercial space, which is now being leveraged both by civil space and by national security space, as well as is beginning to generate all kinds of innovation and new market development of its own. So we now sort of look at this as a three legged stool. That's kind of the basis upon which, you know, United States space policy and leadership is continuing.

And I want to talk a bit about the intersection between human spaceflight and national security space. Axiom Space was founded by the former co-founded by the former ISS program manager Mike Suffredini, along with Dr. Kim Ghaffari in. And both of them have a very international perspective with regard to both commercial space and and national security space, which of course the United States does also both on the civil side and on the international, you know, national security space and feel really strongly that for us to secure our Leo continuing to maintain as is written in legislation now to ensure continuing American presence in perpetuity in low-Earth orbit, that that's going to need to be an international lead based effort, one that involves pathways that are being created for international entities to come on board via a commercial space station. But also with regard to our competition in low-Earth orbit, which is most notably China.

Tiangong is complete. They are flying payloads on a regular basis. The Chinese have entered into a couple of years ago a relationship with the U. N. Office of Outer Space Affairs to essentially open the door toward payload developers around the world and set up what was essentially a come one come all call for over 1000 payloads to enter into that program.

We've already got us folks who have are running companies that are interested in Leo okay, who have been losing customers to the commercial side, to the Chinese space station. And so from an axiom point of view, our, our belief is that if we can't secure Leo, okay, then we're not going to be able to have a real competition in low-Earth orbit. So our interest is in what happens. Is everybody here? Okay, our interest and Phil's leadership in the program is what happens at the end of it, says So one of our worries here is and again, Phil, all deference to the program that you've sort of kicked off, what I'm about to say is is pretty well known already.

You know what my concern here is and axioms concern here is that the acquisition and approach that were taken with all of the Benefits of Space Act agreements with which we agreed, okay, all the benefits there, which you're not telling companies how to do something, you just sort of telling them, you know, what it is that they need to achieve. We're concerned that with four competitors in the game for very much longer, we're diluting what is only a nascent market. If there is a market where diluting business opportunities in low-Earth orbit, because essentially everybody's chasing the same verticals and we're worried that without very clear milestones for down select and consolidation, we're actually going to extend the period of time that it takes to get things on low-Earth orbit after ISIS. From our point of view, from an international point of view and from a national security space point of view, we have some concerns about that approach. So I'll stop there.

Thanks. Thanks, Marilyn. That's great remarks and and thank you, Phil and CSF and and the FAA is Calvin here and it got me it got me thinking a little bit as we look forward to what commercial low-Earth orbit destinations look like. I think you've got to really look to the past a little bit and and I think Phil, you and Cathie have really been integral part of the history of what we're we're going forward. We would not have commercial LEO destinations if it wasn't for the success that you had with commercial cargo and commercial crew and the other commercial programs that you guys have really steadfast stood behind and with the leadership.

And I know I'm isolating you too, because you're on stage, but also Nassau as a whole, the leadership that NASA has provided and especially the leadership on the SSA, that's a great platform that that has been for the past 20 years. So. So without that, we could not have the vision and the opportunity that we have looking forward with building these clouds. And I'm really excited about it from a voyager perspective as we go down this path of the partnerships that we're making, the progress we're making to to develop commercial geo destinations and what what it really means to be in low-Earth orbit and what are the opportunities. And so from a voyager perspective, the real quick commercial is, you know, we're a single launch platform.

We hope to have 100% of the research capacity on our star lab as as they currently have on the International Space Station, Although only about a third of the size we are. We're looking at a lot of different partnerships all over the world. And I think Marilyn hit the nail on the head when she talked about international partnerships. When I think of the SS, I think the most important thing about the ISS, the eye is the international component with our European partners, our, our, our, our Asian partners and all over the world, the work that we're doing. But I really think that we need to expand on that international partnership.

I think there's a lot of parties out there that aren't involved. And I think through the development of these clouds, it's going to open that aperture for for work to be done all over the world and work in critical areas. You know, the microgravity research to the real issues that are there affecting our environment today, the challenges that we have, food scarcity and other and biological and agtech issues. I'm really excited the work that we have that we're doing and the legacy that we have. We're partnered with Nanoracks, who has one of the richest legacies on working on the International Space Station, working with over 25 different space agencies, getting payloads on, on and off to the International Space Station.

So we feel like we've got a great mix of partners. The the leadership that we've seen at Nassau, it really is truly a partnership. It's as as we're going each step of the way, each milestone, we're drawing off that expertise that you guys have through the commercial commercial partnerships that you have done and the success that you've seen and where the challenges lie. And that has helped us move forward on that. So looking forward, I think we're going to we're shooting for 20, 28.

And I think we I feel really good about that. I feel that the partners that we've brought in and the work that we're doing now is going to be ripe. And I think the lessons learned from the ISIS and the rich heritage that ISIS has had is going to really enable a huge growth to the LEO economy. So I'm excited about that and turn over you, Angie. All right.

Thank you. And thank you for having me. And let me represent Sierra's space here at this this conference for aerospace. We already have a commercial cargo contract and that's our Dream Chaser program. But for even if we have a transportation method, we need to have a place to go.

So we're in partnership right now with Blue Origin to build an orbital reef that's a commercial low-Earth orbit state space station. And it is with these partnerships that we have with NASA where they're enabling commercial industry to go off and produce something we've heard already today about how innovation is kind of outpacing some of the policies right now. So what we are doing, both Sierra SpaceX and Blue Origin, is trying to work with NASA to leverage, like you said, the lessons from International Space Station. There's a lot of things that work really well on the space station, and there's a lot of things that we've learned that can enable us to have less maintenance on the space station, not only just use Nassetta as a partner up there where they have a transport to a place to go, a destination to go. But by having that partnership, we now have a lot more industries that can start coming up to these space stations as well.

I don't think we even fully understand the amount of innovation and commerce is going to happen on a space station when we allow more access up to space. So that's why I'm extremely excited about these low-Earth orbit destinations and partnering with our government agencies to help us get started to tap into their resources. They know more about space than any of us, but then allowing us to still figure out new ways to do things in a commercial way. So thank you. That's so it's always nice to kind of come up at the end because everybody is.

It's nice to hear what everybody's talking about. You know, the reason Phil and I are here is because we have a problem. We want to continue to stay in low-Earth orbit. I really appreciated Marilyn's comments because for us, we would like and we have very concrete exploration research, human goals to be able to continue to to be able to work and live in. Leo What we don't know yet is exactly how.

And, and that's where these discussions are really, really important for us to continue to have. We're trying a couple of different ways, actually. Eric bringing up commercial cargo and crew is, yes, those I think we're in relatively successful models and we're still working through that, but we still need to know how to do commercial destinations, how to do our other activities that we have going forward. And so this is really the time where we need to be listening. We need to talk about our problems that we have.

We need to be here, and we're here to help us solve the problems. And the problems are on multiple levels, right? We as a as a service buyer still need to figure out how to deal with the regulatory issues that are out there. The other framework issues that we've talked about by now numerous times. Well, we also want to hear how to best support our exploration partners that we have within the agency, our international partners that we have out there, and and be able to support, obviously, our national goals to continue to learn and work in.

Leo. So I love being on these panels. I'm really looking forward to hearing the questions that folks have and the information that's gained from them as we go forward. Thank you. All right.

Well, thanks, everybody. Those were great comments. I really you know, it seems like whenever we have these panels and a lot of the questions are like, well, what about this problem and what about this problem? And Kathy, you made a great point that we ought to at least just take a minute to acknowledge where we are as an industry. You know, for we have commercial cargo capabilities.

Anybody can can buy transportation for cargo to low earth orbit. We have commercial crew capability. Anybody can buy a ticket and go to low Earth orbit in space, going to a private company for the first time in human history. And once we get Boeing certified, first time in human history, that any country will have two independent means to get humans to space, I'm really looking forward to that. And we're actually working on destinations.

Angie, you made a great point. You need all three of those things really to have an ecosystem. And the fact that we're working on that last leg of that stool, I think is really exciting. Are there challenges? Oh my gosh.

You know, we would need a whole nother hour to talk about all the challenges, but we ought to really take a moment to to just embrace where we are today and the progress that we made before we start fussing about the challenges. So anyway, that's really good. I, I always like to hear questions from the audience because you never know what they're going to be, and they're usually kind of curve balls. And it is good to know what sort of you guys are thinking out in the industry. I have some questions, but if we've got any from the audience now, let's go ahead and bring them out.

And if you guys are thinking about questions, please bring them forward. Not yet. Okay. So that means I got to kick in here. So the first question I would have is a word that we've heard multiple times now.

I think everybody used it was the word partnerships. Obviously, the NASA's private you know, the NASA private sector partnership is important. And that is one of the cool aspects of what we are having right now. I think both Eric and Angie mentioned it is being able to share the 50 years of human spaceflight experience we have at NASA with our partners and having them take those lessons and apply some of their own current knowledge and experience and capabilities and coming up with something totally new that we haven't even thought of that has been really gratifying to see that interaction in that partnership. So what I'd like to ask everybody, even Kathy, at the end, there are what obviously, other than the public private partnership that we have with commercial cargo or commercial geo destinations, what are there partnerships?

Are you guys really emphasizing and leveraging going forward and feel like are important to make seal these successful. So I can go ahead and start. I mean, obviously we have a partnership just with Blue Origin and Sierra Space. So two aerospace companies coming together to build one space station and being able to see that two industries can come together like that and build a space station. But also we are leveraging not only our NASA's partnership and their knowledge, but to make this commercial we need to have additional customers.

So we're looking at our biopharma different. We're looking at the partners and making sure that they understand the benefits of space so that they know that they can come to our space station and that's what will continue to make them viable. So public, private. And then just going out into industry and making sure that they fully understand the capability and the why they really need to go to space. From our perspective, you know, it starts with you.

It starts with NASA, really, when you have the the meatball on your on your side as that partner that's going to bring that's the Good Housekeeping seal, whether it be to investors or to corporations that want to be a part of this. And so we're looking at this from a unique perspective because it's going to take all different types of partnerships. And and those partnerships, you know, as we look at there's actually math involved with here, you know, that NASA's only funding so much of this, it's really going to be a small percentage that NASA's going to be funding of the space station. So we need all of our industries need to go out and raise capital to do this. So some of the unique partnerships that we looked at is, one, looking just from an engineering perspective and a technical assistance.

We're working with Airbus. We think the value of a transatlantic partnership is is critical, is key. It leverages the expertise that Airbus brings with their rich heritage working on the station and that now with the gateway. But it also it brings and ties in the European Space Agency and the great work that the European Space Agency has done and their astronauts and they're going to they're astronauts that are going to need a place to go. So that, I think, is just a critical and crucial partnership and a great partnership so far, too, to be working with them.

Another kind of out of the box partnership that we have is with Hilton Hotels. Hilton has really been involved in space and has really been not involved as much involved in space, but it had the desire to be in space, going back to the Apollo era. They really, truly want to be the first hotel in space. And so we're working with Hilton on on designing, you know, the habitat that the crew is going to live in and what what's the accommodations going to be. But it's not just like, you know, mints on the pillow type of things.

It's the really the detailed work, the micro by my microphone. What's the that the germs killing the germs microbial bacteria research that they have done partners to see that see NASA's I'm always there to help me out so so it's things like that to do make this experience if people are going to be in a long, long duration spaceflight, you want to make it as comfortable as possible. And I think Hilton has a great reputation in that comfort area. And then and we've also partnered with research parks. What's going to be critical, I think, for all these space stations, each one are going to be purpose driven.

But we see the research that's going to be done. And so we've partnered with Ohio State University to do a terrestrial research and analog research park right in Ohio and working with the International Research Parks Associations on what type the value of the research that can be done, but also looking at agtech in other areas. So try to make. So I certainly add, you know, double down on the relationship and the partnership with now. So we're in the middle of a rolling city are right now our our shelf our first modules complete actually it's on the floor at tell us Elaine in Italy and we're going through the city are for this for the first and second module which are essentially clones of each other.

And we're doing that absolutely side by side with NASA. Our contracts, a lot of space. That agreement, it's a little bit different. It's actually a commercial database where we provide basically the data that we're developing to now. So NASA's has to make modifications to the ice in order to be able to accept our modules.

And so it's a very clear partnership and a very close partnership. And we we just we we get tremendous value from it. So thanks again of course, to NASA and the work that we're doing. They're our next partner that we're talking about is Space X. You have a great partnership with space X, Space X is our provider.

Actually, for the first floor private astronaut flights. You saw the video here on x one. We're getting ready to fly X to right now, targeted for not earlier than May of this year. So right around the corner And so space X is our is our provider for that and they're they're a tremendous partner we benefit from we benefit from the, you know, the expertise that they've developed through the commercial crew program. And it's been terrific to be able to work with them.

We have additional partners, largely the mentioned before international. For me, one of the really fun things with this, you know, current era in the development of commercial Leo Destinations is hearkens back to my days at Boeing when I did systems and oversaw systems subsystems integration for about half the assembly flights and we were also doing a lot of work then thinking about commercial developments, you know, that could be done on the SS and sort of trying to pioneer these new business models, which were like business to business, business to government, to business, business to government, to business to government and seeing all of that happen now and being able to do it in this context is fascinating. So, for example, we've signed an emoji with Italy and we're we involved in a working group with Italy where Italy is actually looking across all of the all of their country to look at industries that may be interested in entering into microgravity. So how can we help them right. Sort of think about that based on also our experience and then also sort of provide access to them to be thinking about our modules capabilities that just sort of develop that we're flying an Italian astronaut or we hope to be flying Italian astronaut.

He's currently on the backup crew actually for x two from the Italian Air Force. So the approach that Italy is taking is interesting. It's broad based. It it starts in the Italian air force and also sort of looks across some aspects of civil society as well as commercial development there. So we're seeing in a way sort of the legacy of all the work that that that NASA did on the International Space Station sort of now flowing down and and, you know, preventing sort of giving us this opportunity to sort of create these new sorts of partnerships and relationships.

And we have several of those going actually around the globe. So these partnerships are absolutely crucial to the development, both of the work that we're doing and also, again, the stuff I talked about before with regard to continuing to build international alliances beyond the initial tremendous revolutionary work actually that was done with the International Space Station being able to sort of extend that like legacy and open up opportunities for more nations to come to low-Earth orbit. Hey, I'm going to account coming from a totally different perspective. I actually feel like selfishly, from NASA perspective, these kind of partnerships allow us to provide new experiences to our employees, and we're all in a talent fight right now and one of the things that we can do and we can tell people is obviously as an agency, we've been able to work on really cool stuff for 50 years. But now with the way we're we're working with industry and different and and academic institutions, we have the ability through these unique partnerships to be able to give our employees selfishly a really great wealth of experience.

And if you're working for the Commercial U. Destination program right now, you get to work with a bunch of really cool companies and be able to see their innovation along with obviously working as a space station program, continuing to evolve our on orbit capabilities. One of the neatest things I got to experience was listening to a CO up do their out briefing and talked about doing entry descent and landing with four different with three different spacecrafts and a winged vehicles. I'm telling you, no other company can offer that experience to anybody else. So let me just say we're looking for a pathway internships right now and I'll do my plug there.

But I also feel like us having that workforce that can work on these problems ensures then that we can be there to help you solve your problems in the future. And so what we've all been talking about and you brought it up in the green room, she said, You know what? We're really when we have a problem, we can go to NASA and say, Can you give us any information you have on clouds or batteries or what did you do to go solve that particular problem? And for us to continue to be that source of information and to continue to be, to me, the Premier space agency, very selfishly saying that out there, it's us having these experiences and being able to work on these types of things. So I feel like these kinds of partnerships Bob talks about talked about a whole series of different kinds of partnership that gave those people working those programs the ability to be able to learn from that whole vast set of industry that's out there is really selfishly also helping us grow a really great set of NASA talent that you all are stealing from us.

But that's okay. We're going to get them all back again and then cycle through again. So thank you. All right. Thanks, Kathy.

That was a great answer, by the way. Not just saying that because my boss, but was a good answer. It's interesting, Kathy, you're really touching on kind of a cultural shift that we had in the agency that we don't talk a lot about. I will tell you that as as we were sort of implementing some of these commercial partnerships, there was a lot of hand-wringing with NASA that we would just become contract monitors, right? That we were just outsourcing all of this cool work to industry.

And that was a concern of our workforce. And I would tell you, I would have to confirm what Kathy said. It has turned out to be the reverse. I am constantly not not fighting, but constantly working with all the other programs that need these expertise that we have at Nassau. And they're becoming just super, super valuable within the agency.

You know, we might only have a couple dozen, not even a dozen fracture control people that really know that area or or parachute experts. And they get to work on all these different systems and they become critical subject matter experts that we can then leverage to the entire industry. It has turned out to be the actual reverse of what we were concerned about, and it's turned out to be a real, real benefit. So I really like that. I'll have one more question.

I don't know. Do we have any audience ones yet? We do. I don't know. I got one more first before we go to that, Karina, which is Oh, wait a second, I just forgot it.

What it was. It was a good. One. Yeah, it was a really good one. It was, Oh, I got it out, came to me.

I knew it would come. So Marilyn mentioned the contract that we have with Axiom. We actually signed that in 2020. And then when we asked for proposals for the commercial destinations, free fliers, that was sort of early to mid 2021, very, very different global economic situation. Right.

I think we've all seen it in our personal finances, right? Oh my. 41k, it's up. Oh my God, it's down, it's up, it's down. Let's go on a vacation.

Let's not. And that kind of has whipsawed us. I think it's even more critical for our our private sector partners because they not only have to get investment, as Eric said, we're not paying the whole the whole way for these destinations, probably even a small portion. So they have to get investors. But it also invests, it affects their customer base.

Obviously, as much as we have made significant progress, it is still expensive to do things in space. So it affects your customers and your markets as well. So if I could, just for the industry participants, how has the global economic outlook and current situation change? How has that affected your your overall efforts in this field? Yes.

So just an observation, which is that global economic changes have very often the same effect on nations that they do on companies, which is that they tend to sharpen competition. Um, so from a company point of view, as Phil mentioned, people compete for investors, right? I mean, we all compete for investors and, and so investors are concerned and Jeff, me and Brian were on a panel with at the chamber a few months ago and Jeff expressed a real concern that we may be losing a next generation of investors just because of the global economic issues. And there's been a downturn in the space. I mean, in terms of the investment portfolio, you know, in terms of value.

And so concerns about that, what we're seeing internationally is that countries are aware of that and are beginning to kind of look at each other in terms of what investment they're making, what engagement they're having with commercial entities that are destined for low-Earth orbit. And I would imagine everyone is seeing this. I think this is not a thing that's not specific to axiom space. So as is often the case in situations like this, you know, you'll see companies that'll do things like pull back from marketing or pull back from investment or pull back from business development because they're a little concerned about the economic outlook. And then you'll see other companies that will look at that and go, no, no, no, no, we're going to double down on marketing, We're going to double down on business development, we're going to double down on pursuing those opportunities.

And we're seeing that. And I can tell you that's that's the perspective we're taking. But also we're seeing that among nations. So it's really interesting to kind of watch all of that play out right now. You know, certainly echoing what Marilyn said, there are there are challenges out there in the financial markets.

I think some of the the the challenges that were in 2021 with, you know, a lot of companies going public, some companies that maybe weren't ready or poised to go go public, and the impact that that's having on some investors. But I think, you know, we're casting, you know, a little wider net than historically the you know, so often. And I think, you know, from there's probably a good statistic on this, but from like 2014 to about 2020, how much of the investment in the commercial sector was from the U. S.? It was a really high.

Now I think it was about 75% or so, and that's not the case anymore. I think you're seeing a lot of international investment from the Middle East, from Europe, from Asia, and you just got to, you know, be willing to cast that that net and go, you know, meet with people and explain what you're doing and what's the value added for them. You know, what's in it for them. This you know, we're working with Nassau on the space station. We're looking forward to having Nassau astronauts and we'll figure out how many and when and for how long.

But we're also looking at international, you know, like ESA astronauts and maybe UAE astronauts and Azure Bijan and all these countries around the world, because everyone has a yearning to be in space. And I think I think that that's the benefit that we're seeing. You know, as you look, you know, wider and you look at that space is really a global economy. I think that's kind of that, you know, as we look at challenges, I see that as an opportunity. It's an opportunity to help change humanity and grow humanity are the challenges that we have on Earth.

A lot of these problems can be solved through space. I agree with both of you. I think there's actually opportunities still to get those investments. But there's a couple of things that we have to show. One, by having that partnership with NASA gives confidence with our investors so that they know that we have this deep wealth of knowledge behind us.

But it also requires us to really focus on performance. We have to deliver on our results. And I think that is what's really causing us as commercial companies to become more innovative, because if we're not delivering, we're not going to get those investments. So it is allowing us it's it's forcing us to really focus on success. Very good.

And we'll go to audience questions now. Excellent. I'm I don't agree. Okay. Can the panel respond to the importance of intellectual property rights that are enabled, we're sealed and how that impacts their investment strategies and focuses on customers.

Had to get a question from a lawyer, obviously. So that's that's a good one. I'm going to hand that over to you guys. Well, I'll just jump on it since I'm on from the China Hawk on the panel. But I am a China hawk.

If if you want to go fly on that Chinese space station. So I always tell everybody, check your IP at the door, the hatch. I think all I don't want to speak for all the companies, but I imagine all the companies are highly sensitive to IP considerations. I mean, you know, we know that for investors to be able to put money into stations or into aspects of stations or into industries that are interested in putting money into stations, okay, They're all very concerned about IP. And so, of course, we're doing everything we can to be physically protected and then protected in the cyber domain.

How it is that all that's going to be managed? You know, security is a huge, huge, huge issue. How it is that you're going to essentially sequester data and make sure that it's protected, whether it's resident in the cloud or resident physically on a station or resident in a downlink or wherever it's living. Basically, that's that's a huge issue. So absolutely, at least, you know, certainly at Axiom Space, we spend time, you know, figuring out how it is that we're going to manage that.

And then that's part of all of our contracts, right? That's standard, frankly, in business contracts that you're going to see. You're going to see certainly language associated to IP protection. So that's certainly present in all of our business dealings. Pretty much similar to what Marilyn said.

And, you know, it's always a question that comes up in negotiations and and I always default to some great advice. I got from my career in the Army CIA, which means different things to different people. But for for me it was call your attorney so I'll defer to our counsel on a lot of those issues. But but it's certainly an issue that everyone's looking at and especially as you go through these partnerships. And it's challenging and it's tricky.

You know, as you walk down and the the enthusiast of all of us, you know, when we're getting together, like we can build a station, we can do all this, and then you get, you know, dare I say, the lawyers and the contracts people get in the room and then things get a little little more harried. So but I think we're all working through those issues and it is a top priority for everyone. And I don't think I have anything to add to that arena. All right. I've got more.

Get go. All right. In the transition from ISIS to the next field, what do you foresee as being the top challenges in accomplishing that transition? Do you think those challenges can be overcome in time for the ISIS's eventual retirement and the orbiting? So I'll start, even though I'm not a panelist, I'm going to pull the moderator card.

The biggest challenge and I've said this to our partners and I think I've also mentioned this publicly, is that we have to stop thinking that we're building a space station. You're building a business, right? That is a very, very different prospect than just building a piece of of space hardware, which is hard enough as it is, especially a piece of human spaceflight hardware. That's one of the hardest things we do. But in this case, this has to work as a business.

NASA is not going to be able to close the business case for all of these companies. So you have to think about that development effort. I think that's the biggest challenge is getting out of the mindset that we are building a space station and get into the mindset that we are building a business that has to work financially, legally as well as technically in order to make this work. And when I step back and I look at the grand picture, that's one of my my thoughts is one of the challenges we've got going forward. I 100% agree with that.

And I think that the engineering is actually the least difficult part of this. I mean, it's not that it's not difficult, very difficult. Anybody that's been in this business knows that, you know, in their bones. But it's the building, the business aspect. And one of the challenges for businesses, of course, is uncertainty.

Right. That's the worst thing you can do. It's like I'd rather have a really poor investment outlook that I could be sure of than a totally unpredictable outlook with regard to anything. And so one of the things that where I think we're collectively concerned about is regulatory uncertainty. We're worried about, you know, for example, mission authorization.

I can do an hour on it. I promise I won't. But the whole issue of, you know, how is it that all of that's going to be managed on orbit for commercial entities? This is an ongoing concern. It's been a political football is getting kicked back and forth between agencies and it's one that we really need to come to a resolution in the United States.

I can sort of go through the whole list of regulatory issues. I a fun one right now, which is I went to the State Department, said, okay, I'm going to launch a module. It's going to attach to the space station. And do I have to register under the outer Space Treaty? Under what circumstances am I guided by the IG?

Under what circumstances am I not? What happens when I become a free flier? What happens in terms of change of state? Okay, Phil, I'm making your day. Okay, But but the bottom line, I mean, those things a lot of this is just really new territory.

And so the law and the regulation don't exist yet, right. In order to be able to sort of create that certainty. So these are things that we're all going to have to contend with. I don't hear the word challenge. I like to think of them as opportunities to excel in a lot of these areas.

And and Mary Lou, she had the list and I could add the six or seven additional things to them. Here's the nice thing. You know, this is a total ecosystem I'm this you're spot on, Phil This is a business but we're all in this together. We can't get to low-Earth orbit without lift. Right?

So. So if the launch companies have issues, we have issues. If they're spectrum issues, we have issues. You know, So that's the benefit of here's a little plug for CSF and the other trade association is out there that this is an opportunity to represent the industry on the issues that we have. We've worked, you know, for years.

When I was at CSF, working closely with the FAA on launch and regulatory reform, and they've been a great partner. So each one of each steps along the way, whether it's mission, mission assurance or authority, mission authority and all the other things, working with State Department, working with Commerce Department, remote sensing issues there, all our issues. So we're all in this together on these on these opportunities that we have going forward in the next five years. And so there because I think what the biggest thing is, none of us want to see a gap. None of us want to see a gap in humans in low-Earth orbit.

So we're all working together and I would say we all do work together. You know, Mary Lynn and I have been going at it for four for 12 years working together on that. You find your common ground and working with blue Origin and Red Wire and Sierra and all the other partners that we have that we're not going to get there alone. You know, we got to work together on some of these issues and and again, the partnerships with the government and work and the relationships we have with these government agencies have really been streamlined. But there are opportunities to excel in some of these areas.

So many opportunities. Yep. So we have opportunities for sure. When I think about what I do, I work in mission assurance and space flights inherently risky. So I spend most of my day looking at how we can build the safest and most reliable destination.

That's the design path that's a solvable problem and. Most cases we can figure out what can go wrong and how we can design around it, but we are no longer going to rely on the NASA's human rating process by the book. How do we do that commercially? How do we change how we're going to go human rate something and still have it acceptable for NASA or any other government entity? And that's that negotiation and process that's a little uncertain right now.

So that's a challenge we have. But to your point, we're all working together because we have a deadline. We have to have another capability up there before the ISS decommissioned. And we all know that when you have a deadline, you're going to work harder to meet that. So by having that that end goal in sight, I think we're going to get there together.

But what's safe enough is something that I deal with every day. I know I know what one of Cathy's biggest challenges is, and that's making the chat function work on her teams. So I can just answer that for her. So, oh, man, you're like, you know, we've real things we need to do. And.

Leo And so our big challenge, honestly, is how do you make sure that the researchers are our academic partners, our exploration partners are continuing to get the work done on a LEO platform. And when you've got this beautiful Leo platform right now, that's amazing. And it takes it takes time to be able to get to get the work established, you know, years to get that those experiments and protocols and everything works through. And we are going to have to figure out how to do that on the International Space Station while at the same time we're legitimately transit listening also to these new LEO destinations. And we also want to be able to do it in a way that doesn't necessarily tie the hands of the new providers.

It's a big challenge. You know, Robin yesterday talked about the work that we want to continue to do in Leo and us coming up with our strategies for how we're going to continue the national lab or continue to look at what are the exploration goals that we want to be be working on. And we have to figure out how to work and do science. We've been working with the Science Mission Directorate on how do we do flexible science, continue to do it on the International Space Station, but also be thinking about how you could potentially do it on different platforms moving forward. And so this is an area that, you know, we have a team at headquarters that's obviously working with the commercially, you know, Space Division and the International Space Station Program Office to make sure that is as seamlessly as possible.

We're able to transition this critical work that we are supporting across the platform. So it's very it's going to be a very, very critical job for us because we we don't want to lose the science. We don't want to lose the continued exploration, technology, development, human research, the work that we're doing that's so critical or supporting our different institutional and and other agencies work and continuing to provide this really critical service to the U. S. that we've been building up for so long.

All right. We're getting the hook. So sorry. We got to go. Thank you for the panelists.

This were great and we appreciate the opportunity to talk to everybody. Have a great conference.

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