The Hidden Economy of Space: Satellites, Servicing & Space Construction | John Rood, Chairman and CEO, Momentus

Send us Fan MailFor decades, we've thought about space as a place where we put satellites. But what happens when space itself becomes infrastructure - when we can move spacecraft around, refuel them, repair them, and even have robots build enormous structures in orbit? We're entering a very different era of space.Today we’re joined by someone who has spent more than three decades at the intersection of space, national security, aerospace, defense, and geopolitics.John Rood is Chairman and CEO of Momentus ( https://momentus.space/ ), a U.S. commercial space company developing the infrastructure needed to move, deploy, operate and ultimately service spacecraft in orbit.But John's background is almost as fascinating as the technology he's now helping build.Before entering the commercial space industry, he served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where he was the Pentagon's principal advisor on defense policy and helped oversee issues ranging from national defense strategy and missile defense to space, nuclear weapons, cyber policy and America's relationships with allies.Earlier in his government career, he served at the National Security Council and the State Department, including as Acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, and he has also held senior business-development and international leadership positions at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.Today, at Momentus, he's working on a very different - but increasingly important - frontier: building the infrastructure of the space economy.Momentus operates spacecraft such as its Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle, which can transport and support satellites and hosted payloads in orbit. The company is also moving toward more ambitious capabilities involving orbital infrastructure, servicing and in-space manufacturing.And perhaps most fascinatingly, Momentus is involved in a DARPA program investigating whether large structures can actually be assembled in space by autonomous robotic systems - potentially laying the groundwork for enormous communications antennas, manufacturing platforms and other infrastructure that would be extremely difficult or expensive to launch from Earth in one piece. DARPA describes the current demonstration as an autonomous robotic assembly of a lightweight truss in low Earth orbit.Today we're going to talk about the rapidly changing economics of space, the rise of commercial space infrastructure, why national security is becoming increasingly dependent on space, what it means to actually build things in orbit - and ultimately, what the infrastructure of a civilization beyond Earth might look like.#Space #SpaceX #SpaceEconomy #SpaceInfrastructure #CommercialSpace #SpaceTechnology #Aerospace #SatelliteTechnology #OrbitalInfrastructure #SpaceExploration #SpaceInnovation #NASA #DARPA #MissileDefense #GoldenDome #NationalSecurity #DefenseTechnology #SpaceRace #Robotics #InSpaceManufacturing #SpaceServicing #SatelliteServicing #Vigoride #Momentus #JohnRood #FutureOfSpace #FutureOfTechnology #STEM #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilitiesSupport the show