BSV Podcast 0107: Cascade Space

Balerion Senior Associate Aidan Daoussis sits down with Jacob Portukalian, Co-Founder & CEO of Cascade Space, to discuss deep space communications. Cascade Space is building a commercial alternative to NASA’s Deep Space Network using arrays of smaller parabolic dishes. The company aims to expand communications capacity for lunar, Lagrange point, asteroid, and Mars missions.Timestamped Overview00:00 – Introduction and Cascade Space overview00:53 – Building a commercial alternative to the Deep Space Network02:32 – Founding story and the AstroForge connection05:15 – Why deep space communications differ from low Earth orbit08:16 – Signal loss, noise, and the physics of long-distance communications11:36 – Cascade’s dish-array approach versus single large antennas15:00 – Near-term demand from NASA and lunar missions21:17 – Y Combinator, founder-market fit, and early fundraising32:07 – Government demand, commercial missions, and future deep space markets36:04 – Infrastructure costs, deployment speed, and scaling strategy41:16 – How parabolic dishes, feeds, and digital beamforming work46:14 – Site selection, fiber, power, and RF interference challenges51:16 – Upcoming Cascade milestones and lunar downlink goals52:47 – Key takeaway: the scale of deep space communications54:23 – Contact information and closing This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit balerionspace.substack.com