Episode 4 — Space Debris: The Invisible Threat Orbiting Above Us

0:00Hello and welcome to a new and exciting episode of the Space Curious podcast. I'm your host Arn Terry and I have with me a fantastic guest Aleksander Lidtke. And the topic of the conversation for today is we are talking about space debris. The invisible threat to or well invisible threat that is orbiting above us. This podcast is hosted and supported by DE Orbit who is a recruitment business part of Daniel Ernest. So we are in the recruitment business game. So if you have any requirements, please do get in contact with us and we'll be here to help. But now over to the man himself, the main attraction, Alec, a question to yourself, just kicking this off is first of all, welcome to the the podcast and if you can tell us a little bit about yourself, what do you do and how do you do it? All right, thanks for for the invitation and thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. As for myself, I did a PhD at the University of Southampton more than 10 years ago now in the field of space debris. I was bridging the gap between operational collision avoidance which every spacecraft does but I can talk to you more about this later and also large scale pollution debris modeling if you will. This is kind of trying to bridge the gap between daily weather forecasting as well as climate modeling. But when as applies to space debris, I currently work at Astrosk Holdings which is the holdings company of this global entity or holdings entity of this global company that's working towards making space sustainable through provision of inorbit services which by the way also includes active debris removal which we can talk about more later as well. I report directly to the CTO. I'm responsible for managing and developing key technologies related to how we know where the spacecraft are, how we predict where we're going to be, making sure they don't collide with anything and and also trying to, you know, calculate the maneuvers that we need to make in order to fulfill our mission in a nutshell. Love it. Absolutely love it. And how did you start your journey in the space industry? How did it begin? What was that spark of inspiration, that knowledge that someone passed to you or a film or book that got you into it? >> Well, for me, it really started by choosing my my undergrad degree, the aerospace engineering, specializing with spacecraft engineering. What had led to

2:31that it's kind of difficult to pinpoint because it was not really a a theme that many people would I don't actually think I know anyone else from my high school or even primary school or any other school at that time that that would choose the same same direction if you will something really novel at the time especially you know in my I suppose it always been know the traveling books I loved I remember very vividly when Mars path finder landed I was a little kid at the time I remember that being a a big event. So, they're definitely committed to memory. I respect traveling and discovering new things. That was probably it. Absolutely. Love it. >> Yeah. So, and again, so setting the scene with space debris, the invisible threats with the stuff orbiting and going over ahead. Obviously to someone like me who is a novice and I'm the uninitiated, this is why I'm so curious because I always ask the questions, the wise, the what's, the hows, and this is why I'm bringing on experts like yourself who who know it. So I'm learning and learning from you. So and for the audience as well, when we hear space debris, what actually does that mean when we all people throw that term out there, but what does space debris actually mean? Well, I don't frankly speaking know what people imagine. It's a very wide spectrum of different types of objects varying from tiny particles like you know me the kind of size the slack from rocket engines nuts and bolts and going through larger paint flakes and things like this all the way up to you know massive intact spacecraft or upper stages from rockets which are you know size of a bus. That's pretty much every all of that in space, right? So, we've literally got the nuts and bolts flying around us, orbiting or whatever that word may be above us and and I guess obviously lost in space and this is why people like yourself are now thinking, right, okay, we need to do something about it. So, how how would you explain space debris to someone with absolutely no background or or in aerospace? Right. Okay. So, those objects are in orbit. So, you know, they're circing the earth constantly because if they ever stop, they will basically fall back onto onto the ground and potentially burn out of the atmosphere, which does happen actually roughly

5:02one, two, or three objects enter the atmosphere every day. Large object becoming a growing problem but that's a completely separate story very graphically you know you know I told you that you know space debris is you know a whole range of different types of objects you know very from very small to very big >> so graphically the way I think about it it's you know if you imagine an orbit where your satellite is located as a as a motorway space debris is just basically you know a lot of crash laying on this motorway you know you know old tires you've probably seen maybe some broken pieces of cars broken pieces of entirely sometimes even wrecks of entire cars which quite rarely but you do see also >> typically you know pushed to the side of the road but in case of orbit nobody's moving that's enough so basically left wherever everybody left it >> in a sort of more functional way I tend to think of space debris as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere >> is basically a side effect of human activity which does affect our society and which we need to mitigate and manage some so there's basically Do I what were way think about it? >> Yeah. And that's a great analogy just going back what you said to the motorway because I didn't even think about that like like this cuz like I said I'm learning from people like yourself cuz for the audience and and the listeners I think okay so what's actually happening but the way that you eloquently explained it it's like being on the motorway and some car may have a blowout or there may be some a bumper may fall off or something someone may throw some trash out. Obviously, we're not doing that in space, but someone may throw something out there. So, we literally will will set on the motorway and it will get shifted shifted to the side. And so, obviously, we've got the highway in space, but at the moment, the technology, correct me if I'm wrong, the technology has not caught up with that yet for people to actually be physically or a machine to be physically there to clean it up and take away the space junk at a rate that we need to. >> Well, okay. First of all, became going back to this thing that you said about throwing garbage into space or motorways. Now, people obviously throw garbage onto motorways, which we sure didn't do, but people do it. And previously, people also used to throw away pieces of spacecraft in orbit and just leave them there without any regard whatsoever for what's going to happen to this piece further down the line. So for the last couple decades, let's say 20, 30 years, there have been laws enacted and standards implemented to try and mitigate the growth of space debris.

7:32Call them debris mitigation guidelines basically and try this and you know one of the things that you know they say do not throw anything out like know keep everything attached to your spacecraft because obviously if it's very small it's very difficult to track. So once you know throw a net or a boulder spanner or whatever you know that's going to be very very hard to find later on and avoid those collisions. Now when it comes to the the technology to to remove objects it didn't really exist say 15 years ago that's more or less when I started my PhD and incidentally when also a scale of the company I work at was founded it was really you know kind of science fiction to imagine cleaning up space debris at the time but we've been catching up with technology quite rapidly and as a matter of fact right now we're building or we already have a mission in our hand that's going to launch and try and remove a piece face debris from morbid. There are other companies doing the same thing as well. So it's right now it's a bit of a race to see who's going to be able to do it first. >> Governments have done it already primarily to demonstrate their capabilities to their adversaries. >> But I would say the technology is is definitely catching up. >> Yeah, definitely. And the what you've just said makes complete sense about other companies doing it. And for us, that's that's great because competition always creates innovation. So if someone else is doing it, we we we want to race to be the the best, the safest, the cleanest, the quickest, the most cost effective. So what your companies do, Astros scale, what you're doing is obviously fantastic. So yeah, thank you very much for for obviously explaining that. Another question that I had if if sorry if I've already asked this is how much debris is actually orbiting Earth today and I know it's it's a big wide question but it's it's something that I wanted to know. >> Yeah. But it's an interesting question as well. So you know going back to this different scale of sizes you know the smaller the pieces the more of them there are we can only track objects which are more or less you know a fist in size. So you know 5 cm 10 cm across. So, and of these kind of options that we can regularly track, there's about 30,000 uh right now. And you know, the smaller you go in size, the more of them there become. So, there's about 1 million of objects larger than 1 cm, 100 million larger than 1 millimeter, and so on. >> Wow. >> Yeah. It just really depends on the size of the object.

10:03>> Yeah. And again another selfish question, but I'm sure this is what the civilians like myself want want to know is at what speed are these objects traveling at and where do they actually go? Okay, so we did touch on this earlier, but you know they are they they are in orbit. So they have to move at orbital speed or they will fall onto the ground. So orbital speed for low edge orbit, so you know up to two 2,000 kilometers altitudes is about seven to seven and a half kilometers per second. Obviously there is still some maybe not obviously but there's still some residual atmosphere at these kind of altitudes up to a few hundred kilometers. So even though you know they're in orbit and you know they're basically flying around the earth every 90 minutes or so they gradually lose speed due to the air resistance. So obviously there's not anywhere near as much resistance as here but you know if you imagine picking a ball and throwing it it will eventually fall on the ground due to gravity but also due to satellites do experience at drag as well and eventually you know they will lose this velocity lose altitude and eventually they will all burn up in the atmosphere or some pieces might even survive and hit the ground. There's a a lot of really scary looking pictures of, you know, huge metal tanks hitting the hitting the ground and a massive crater, >> which is, as I said, you know, a problem as well because, >> yeah, so far none of these things has ever killed anybody, but it's probably a matter of time. And also those things I mean the atmosphere you know there's a lot of chemicals being released that higher layers of the atmosphere or stratosphere >> that frankly speaking we don't even know what it's going to do for our environment >> the environment the earth and and also the ocean cuz I can only this is a guess this is my personal guess is a lot of it must be splashing down in the oceans as well as seeing oceans and that we're potentially not recording so we so it may be more than what we are saying because most of it is lost in the ocean. >> Yeah. [clears throat] >> Yeah. That's just that's just my my thought process. >> And what again another question is why should anyone care? Why why should why should we care about space space debris? You know to the people who say well I've got my bills I've got my mortgage. I just want to go on holiday. Why should I be thinking about space debris? Well, I would say that mortgage and bills to pay are definitely, you know, the more that we get and frankly

12:34speaking, even on the global scale, there may be more immediate threats to us. That said, space is definitely an important one. The way I see this is kind of similar to how I view technology and internet and computing and so on. So, if you think about it nowadays, most businesses, if not all, are in one way or another connected to technology, right? Everybody's using computers, obviously music using internet and so on. In the same way we know the connection to space is being built at the same time right now. So you know soon you know okay already there are many businesses running and that rely and they rely on space and you know this number is only going to increase as we go forward. So you know things like Uber, Lift etc. I mean you might not think of them as companies that you know have anything to do with space but if you think about it for a second all of them rely on navigation that comes from space and you know and you could basically draw this bar even further. So B is not like a remote and separate location, separate domain, you know, no has no influence whatsoever what happens on the ground and you know to human activity. So there it's very very interrelated to a couple episodes ago uh I watch it was a great episode with about telecom telecommunications where we actually explore this topic a lot. So I think I would just they recommend listeners to and viewers to to go back and uh and rewatch it. Um but I think we explore this topic pretty well there. Um >> yeah, we'll get a link um for that. So when this show goes live um we'll attach a link as well so people can obviously find that as well. >> Right. And also you know if if we are supposed to so you know economy being one thing but also know we want to tackle global challenges we need to have a global means to do this to address them. Uh so things like climate change climate monitoring population growth wealth and income and digital divides. Uh those things can and are being addressed with satellite and also on a more national level uh satellites are essential nowadays to uh to national security and uh that's perhaps one thing that we should not forget about that >> yeah plenty of reason why space is important >> exactly because we're all consumers uh and like you said no matter how um little we think we use it we do you know if you if you got a mobile phone, you you're a part of the the consump

15:05consumption. If you use satellite navigation in your car, in your phone, on any other device, you know, you're part of the the consumption. Um, anything from your mobile phone network. Again, we all we all we all complain that we want connectivity. We want clearer, crystal uh connectivity. So, that comes with technology. And at the moment, this is the the best way or the best solution for us, which is putting these satellites around Earth to make sure we have the the comfort in our own home. So, thank you very much for that. I I really really appreciate you explaining that. Um Um I've lost my train of thought now. So, I'll go on to what what parts of our uh everyday lives uh rely on satellites. Um you mentioned uh GPS, you mentioned uh I think we you was going to I'm not sure you did mention banking but what other parts of um satellites is important to us that we we take for granted >> right okay so uh navigation or GNSS or GPS if you will that we discussed before this is currently not so affected by space debris because the navigation satellites are located at a pretty high high altitude and you know it's not highly used orbit obviously It's highly used for navigation, but it's quite special. So, you know, people want to launch their satellites to observe the Earth, they go either higher or lower, much higher or much lower and so on. So, for now, it's not really uh it's not affected by space debris, I don't think. Although, you know, if you fast forward some decades, it probably will be. Um, and we're trying to lay some groundwork to be able to address this problem. >> You didn't mention banking. So banking itself doesn't really use satellites but it does rely on precise timing which comes from the navigation satellites. So whatever affects the navigation satellites will affect banking as well because you need this very very precise timing information to you know record when the transactions happen when money moves from one place to the other and so on. >> Yeah. Okay. And very soon uh new constellation will be put in place called telesat light speed which is going to be providing super accur super secure communications for banking and so on and that will be that could be affected by space debris as well. >> Okay. Weather forecasts I guess you touched on that already. >> Totally. Yeah. You know all the satellites that are 90% of the standards are used for weather forecasting are

17:36quite low. So they are basically flying through huge flow of space debris all the time. Some of them are located really high up at the geost station orbit which is >> not as dense but is also affected by debris as well. >> And the television >> well it really depends on how you get your television. You know when I was a when I was a kid was have the stuff like this that would point you know towards the well geostation orbit and try to you know get a reception. So that could be affected by by space debris but obviously if you get it from the internet probably not really >> right. Okay. Okay. And emergency services. We do use satellites for tracking to track aircraft, ships and so on to call them so-called AIS data which is basically the automatic identification system. So, you know, if a if a plane crashes or a ship starts to sink, you know, they can press a red button and then this immediately alerts the emergency services and they respond. So, that yeah, that's definitely going to be affected by by space debris. And frankly speaking, even some iPhones these days can do this. So they can connect to satellites and send you emergency messages as well. >> Wow. Wow. So literally like like an SOS message would be pinpointed or ping the phone. Okay. Never never knew that. And this is this is why I love having conversations with experts because it helps my knowledge as well. And hopefully the the the viewers, the listeners are really understanding and loving the amount of knowledge that you're sharing across across the the board and obviously reaching out to the audience. I'm not too sure if I've asked this or not. So let me know if I've not the internet as well. What's what's the situation with internet satellites? Are we using it? Is it merging? Well, some of the internet so know that's obviously you know deep down in the ocean or somewhere buried underground so that's not going to be affected but >> parts of the internet and that's you know that's an increasing trend right now are being routed through satellites so you know I think everybody has heard of staling there's Amazon as well and one web as well and some other constellations from other countries being put in place right now so obviously those will be affected and will actually are already affected by space Yeah. And like to because obviously there's the the excitement part of it as well which is fantastic but I obviously would I always go to the the yin and the yang just to make sure we are super

20:07aware of what's going on. So the the scale of the problem or the scale of the situation where way you want to phrase it. Is there a problem? Is is it noticeably getting worse with debris? Well, so yeah, when I did my PhD, you know, some years ago already, that already was being kned as a problem. In fact, first paper that stipulated that space debris would become a problem dates back to 1960s. Wow. Yeah. But to be honest with you, I did talk about the parl to global warming or climate change. You know, the first papers that stipulated that, you know, greenhouse gas emissions will become a problem stay to the same pure more or less. You know, we had this awareness of of the problem that might occur, but it hasn't really materialized. So, is space be a problem? So far, we've been quite lucky that okay, no, no piece of space has killed anyone when re-entering the earth. There have not been that many collisions on orbit, although there have been some, and they keep happening all the time. So not only things do things collide in orbit but also your old leftover stuff like sometimes explode because there are some short circuits somewhere your battery or the fuel explodes can explode as well. So right now people have been trying to really as I said mitigate uh the debris problem by you know for example venting the the propellant tanks disconnecting the batteries and passivating the satellites after you know of life making sure that they try to lower their orbit when the satellite is no longer dead to to make sure that they enter the atmosphere but you know then this creates potential problems on the ground. Yeah, >> we've been launching more and more things into the orbit, especially especially if you look at the last couple years, you know, 5 to 10, the number of objects and the mass in orbit has increased dramatically. >> And that's that's potentially a problem. A lot of those things that we launch nowadays are satellites that belong to mega constellations, some of which we already mentioned, and they try to avoid other pieces of debris and other satellites and, you know, each others not to cause collisions. And so far that would have been very successful at this. It's it is getting very very crowded up there and it's kind of shocking but there is not a lot of coordination when it comes to the rules of the road globally. So you know even though you know one constellation from one operator might be able to avoid collisions with everything else if you take your

22:39satellite and you want to fly through that constellation they might not know where you're going to be and they might not be able to avoid you. And so that creates a risk of colliding with >> and that's a big problem. I actually attended a conference a couple of weeks ago. Uh all of the big operators were really complaining. It's a huge problem >> because not only does it endanger the space environment but also >> exactly and I guess that >> Mhm. >> And okay, we've been getting much better at you know making sure we don't leave debris behind. That we know when we apply those mitigation measures but still know nevertheless there are satellites and upper stages of rocket and so on that get abandoned in orbit and that problem is still there. Yeah, let's let's all we we put our brains together and we figure this out quick because there's a lot of momentum going on to obviously launch more. So on on the debris side, where's where is most of the debris actually coming from? >> So I I just checked the the most recent data the other day and it is roughly an even split between active and dead satellites which we collectively call payloads, rocket bodies and front winds. So there have been collisions in orbit which I mentioned there have been explosions in orbit. There have been intentional collisions caused by weapon test. You know people have all different countries have been developing weapons to shoot down adversary satellites and they have demonstrated that they can do this in a couple of places and all of those pieces are still in orbits and obviously as we mentioned you know there's been a big increase in number of mega constellations in the satellites that are part of part of those and so they are now the dominant species. >> There's still quite a lot of really small object which we don't really know what they are unidentified. So >> okay. And can one small piece of debris really destroy an alvital satellite? >> Right. So it's all about kinetic energy. So if you imagine taking a small piece of metal, I mean if you just take it and drop it on on your foot or something, you're not going going to feel it. If you launch that piece at a speed of sound, it becomes a bullet and can obviously cause a lot of harm. Now if you take this piece and you launch at an orbital speed you know which I said is you know 7 and a half kilometers a second that has considerably much more

25:09energy because energy is proportional to velocity squared right and now if you imagine the headon collision with that piece you fly in this direction like 7 and a half kilometers I think flying the other direction the velocity is odd so you know instead of looking at 7 and a half you get 15 km a second velocity yeah >> and that has a lot of energy energy you know, more than enough to basically make the satellite explode. This. Okay, it will probably depend on where it hits just goes through the empty space inside the satellite and then just needs a hole on both sides or whether it hits a big component which then causes a lot of energy to dissipate into the structure and then the whole thing >> there that's interesting maybe interesting side remark but there are actually tests where heavy desert people still do those tests where they launch projectiles at really really high speeds at mo satellites invest to try to understand how those explosions and collisions happen and you know those things can destroy and we've actually tested this and we've seen this in >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it just it's all data, right? So when they've done the tests on Earth or else of in whichever orbit, collecting that data will help us understand what the impact is, how to mitigate it and if it can still be operational after an impact and where that impact has struck. So yeah, makes makes complete sense. Could we reach a point of no return? >> Right. So the point of no returning in kind of space debris is called is quite often referred to as the Kesner syndrome. So this is the paper I mentioned but actually it's from 1978 my notes not from the 60 which is titled collision frequency of artificial satellites the creation of debris belts around the earth. So the whole idea the premise is that you know there's so many pieces of debris that you know they they keep colliding with each other and generating more smaller fragments which keep colliding other debris creating even more fragments etc etc and becomes a self fueling cycle of collisions collision cascade itself for a very graphical demonstration of what it might look like I would recommend you watch a film called gravity with sand came out what 10 15 years ago I don't great film, >> right? So, you know, the film is science fiction, but this whole problem of of uh

27:39space debris and the caster syndrome is grounded in scientific work. Um, well, currently speaking, you know, it might be okay. I'm not sure what what is present in that film is, you know, too alarmist and I don't think this will actually ever happen. Uh, at least not at the time because there's simply not enough reason. We're not in a sort of Jenga situation where you know we've got this entire tower of bricks and you pull one brick out and the whole collapses regularly. We are not yet my personal opinion uh in a situation where you know one collision happens generate some debris and then all the other things start exploding. So I don't think we're quite there yet. >> That said it is definitely you know all collisions are problematic and more because they generate more debris which has the potent which have the potential to create even more debris later on. So it's a more of an incremental process and yeah we just need to keep pay attention to it and try to mitigate it early enough so that we don't have a much bigger problem further up the line again the analogy to greenhouse gas emission probably helpful again >> yeah prevention is better than the cure as we as we say and then also I've obviously mentioned we've reached the point of no return you mentioned obviously the the film with Sandra Bullet Gravity Now going on to my next point is cleaning up space. Obviously you're you're part of this new area, [clears throat] this new technology. Obviously the audience would love to know what what we doing in the cleaning up space business. >> Okay. I just had one one extra thought about the previous point if I may. So it could be that you know by some measures we already reached a point of no return. So I did tell you there were going like 100 million pieces, you know, smaller than one or larger than one. >> Realistically, nobody's ever going to be able to team that up. >> I don't think anyone will actually pay attention to this because, you know, we've got much bigger problems and much bigger pieces of space that we to remove. Okay. So right now, the way people see this is, you know, we've got those massive massive intact pieces, you know, dead satellites, dead rocket bodies and so on. And so the main focus is removing those because they have the potential to generate billions of pieces later on if they do live. >> Uh which kind of brings me to debris removal. So currently you know as I said we are building a satellite to go and remove one of those pieces and other companies are done this as well. So these are going to be precursor missions that will go and try to remove those objects. Is a demonstration and we hope that further on mission follow on missions

30:11we're moving more of those objects to try to prevent this point where you know collision start to happen millions of debris get generated and so on all of those missions are typically robotic based so you know details vary but they typically carry some robotic arm or several arms and some end vector gripper that just go and grab a piece of space debris or big intact piece And then the space will kind of pull it out of orbit. >> Yeah. What what I've got in my head as a as as a fan, I've got someone shooting lasers that vaporize the object or harpoons. So there's no lasers vaporizing stuff or harpoons at the moment. Well, actually all harpoons and lasers have been tried. So there was a mission a couple years ago called remove debris buat technologies limited if I'm not mistaken which did demonstrate powerful and net in orbit but eventually this technology is not being used right now so people have kind of opted for robotic arms instead because those are one of the reasons because they've been used for decades now and >> and it works. >> Yeah and they work very well. As for lasers, there's also there are also some initiatives to try to use lasers, not to vaporize things maybe, but to try use the light pressure or the pressure of the material evaporating from the surface of the debris to slow the debris down. >> Oh, okay. >> Space agency has an interesting project about this called omelets, which is basically using powerful lasers to try and move pieces of junk in orbit without actually physically touching them with anything. >> Love it. Love it. Right. Okay, we are touching on time here and we've still got a few things to go through. So, what ideas excite you the most? >> Well, it's totally biased, right? Because I wor in a company trying to build technology. >> Let me bias biased. Come on. >> That is pretty exciting. Yes. Said this technology did not exist years ago and you know that's you know a sat that can actually go and see through a window in there and that's very very exciting. That said, removing debris is not enough. So, you know, we need this mitigation to pick up the pace as well. It's been getting better over the years, but you know, we're still not there yet. There's still, you know, satellite, as I said, sun is being left on orbit, drops being kept on orbit. We to try get a

32:43rock together and better at this. And frankly speaking, neither prevention alone nor mitigation or the removal are sufficient on their own. I would say they're both necessary. Actually, I did publish a couple papers back in the day and also some of my colleagues here. I recommend the book by my former PhD colleague Adam White who's also published some papers on this and you know you cannot really rely one or the other. There's ever been more remediation or agreement. >> And my question obviously others as well about the kind of moral compass on this is should satellite operators have a legal responsibility once the mission ends. >> Well, that's not really something for me to decide or way on. As an operator myself, I can tell you that currently, you know, if if you want to launch a satellite, you need to present a plan of how you're going to mitigate the the regeneration whilst the launch. So, you know, if you want to launch a satellite from Japan, you have to go to the Japan Ministry of I don't remember which exact ministry you get those licenses. You know, in the UK, you have to go to UK space agency and so on and you have to demonstrate it. Thought about the problem that you're not going to, you know, produce any debris and you're going to do your best to make sure that your satellite does not stay in orbit for longer than it has to and that basically you're going to be a responsible person and responsible operator. >> So in a way this is already being legally enforced. >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I guess there's some governance and obviously the overwatch by whichever if you're in Europe or if you're in US depending where where it's where it's governed obviously Japan or Asia I guess it depends which territory you're under but obviously the governments that's why we have a government some may agree or some may not agree but governments do on the whole do a good job for us they do keep some sort of order um and some sort of overview of what good should look like whether we get there or not. Let's touch on that. You in fact you have actually touched on that a bit. So I don't know if you want to get into that or if you want to get to the next topics of conversation. >> Yeah, maybe just very quickly. So we did talk about space debris removal and then that's space debris that's called more holistically. But this is really just one aspect of this whole problem. Mhm. >> So, >> you know, and it's really just a space removal or active removal. It's a part

35:15of this much broader field of on orbit or inorbit services which put things like refueling, repair, upgrade, life extension, relocation. Going back to this analogy of a motorway like you know, imagine that you have a car and you're driving and then all of a sudden runs out of fuel. Then, you know, you're not going to just leave it there on the side of the road or in the middle of just, you know, go your own way. You're just going to go on trying to have it refuel and keep using it. Same, you know, if something breaks, don't just throw the the whole car away and you just try to fix this that's broken and just keep using it. But with satellite, we don't actually do it right now, which is kind of insane, but that's kind of how we've been how we've been operating for ever since the putting one. So you know and this whole idea of bringing in orbit services is about trying to improve the sustainability of space flight every mature industry has some service infrastructure. It doesn't matter if it's shapes, if it's aircraft or whatever, you know, we need some sort of way to maint but for space travel, it's going to be missing. And that's a huge commercial. Love it. And this is for the audience. So, obviously, I'm in the recruitment business. So, people who get in contact with me for their careers obviously are going to want to know from experts point of view. So, one of the questions is for someone someone watching this who's dreaming of working in the space industry, what skills would you recommend they develop to potentially take the next step into the the space aerospace career path? >> That's a very interesting question and kind of depends where you are in this career or where you are in life right now. But for sure I think okay you start from this in the previous episodes I will not repeat this too much but you know space is very rapidly growing market rapidly growing industry so and there's plenty of room for all specialities you know ranging from doctors biologists even historians lawyers just about anybody not just people in STEM per se so that's for sure a very yeah there's a very broad spectrum of people that skills that are useful Yeah. >> Yeah. As for skills, I I don't want to risk, you know, recommending one thing or the other, especially now with how quickly things are changing and how many jobs are kind of being hit by AI and

37:46but I think there are some skills that are going to remain useful for seeing the future. Love it. Love it. Okay. So, um, and my question that I love to ask, mythbusters time. So, what is one myth about space debris that almost everyone believes but simply but simply isn't true? >> Right. This is an easy one. I've been pondering about this for a while, but to be fair, I I cannot think of any any misgrated space degree that people believe because I I simply I don't I see those things kind of as they are. Yes. I suppose I know there are some people who believe that Earth is flat and I know that's one that people believe. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, >> we could have a conversation about that for a lifetime, but I I went down a rabbit hole about about this many years ago. But yes, it's very interesting the way that you know everything it's a sphere. It looks like a sphere, but still people say it's flat. But again, that's a that's a different conversation for and um a quick fire round. These are questions to yourself. So, whatever comes into your head first, Earth or Mars? >> Oh, definitely Earth. You know, there's no lakes, rivers, forest, fields, beaches, seas, and so on on Mars. So, yeah. Great. >> Yet yet. No. >> Or anymore. >> Yeah. Or any Very good. Very very Yeah. I love that way of thinking. Let's be a quick fire around. We will we could be speaking about that for a long time cuz then we we'll start talking about uh star um sorry Star Wars in in a pl distant some many many years ago when obviously there was life apparently life many years ago but it's all um disappeared right okay uh quick fire on question number two satellites or space stations >> why choose I don't know I think they're both for their own purpose >> love it coffee or tea >> coffee 100%. >> All the time. Uh, book or podcast? >> Books. >> Love it. Love it. I'm going to have to write a book about this and hopefully you'll be as entertained as well. Early bird or night owl? >> Uh, airy bird. >> Love it. Favorite space mission? >> Again, completely not biased, but you know, the mission that we slew as scale

40:18the last couple years ago, Albert J. >> Love it. Absolutely love it. Um, one technology you're most excited about. >> Yeah, I was wondering about this one for a while. I don't actually know whether I I would not think if you ask me this question more generally, I would not think of anything that applies to space off the top of my head. I would think of more space enabled things like drug discovery, drug manufacture of house gas and like this. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's whatever comes in whatever comes to your mind and if you could solve one challenge in the space industry tomorrow what would it be space traffic coordination so I did say that you know the all constellations are trying to avoid collision as much as they can but there's definitely a breakdown of communications between different groups of countries and there's literally no information exchange and it's pretty dangerous you know like this main the motorway driving without paying attention to what's happening in the other lanes. I mean that's going to cause a problem. >> Exactly. >> Definitely happens. So >> yeah, I I agree. Completely agree. So final thoughts. If our audience remembers one thing about today's conversation, what would you like that message to be? >> Right. Okay. So I there's only one thing to take away from this is that you know this realization that space debris is a growing problem. It is absolutely 100% possible to tackle it and there are people and companies working but what we really need to you know get around together and try to solve this which somehow you know everybody can have an impact on by you know pressuring applying the president the government and the companies and pushing them to try and uh try and tackle this leave it for fight forever. >> Love it. Absolutely love it. And obviously thank you for bringing this subject topic to light for the people as well. So just close it off. When can people follow your work? What how can people get hold of you? Is it your LinkedIn profile? >> Yeah, I think LinkedIn is definitely the best way. I don't use any other social media and yeah post but yeah like yourself you reach out to me then that's that's the best way. I'm always happy to have a chance to, you know, talk about ideas, help with research and things like this. That definitely is more

42:49always. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I really really respect and appreciate your level of education, your focus, what you've done, your commitment, and your your true excitement, excited nature in the company you work for. You you can I can I can literally feel the passion and as I said I'll keep this very short I'm in the recruitment business and I speak to so many people who are unhappy with their jobs and it's always a delight when I speak with someone who is not only passionate about the job they love what they're doing and they're spreading the knowledge as well and that's exactly what you're doing so I really really do thank you for for your time today because you've given your time to me to the audience as well to speak about that and this shows obviously you're passionate about what you Before we close, is there anything that I've missed that you would want to say before we close off this podcast today? >> No, thanks a lot. So, I think we kind of covered all of those all the topics that I want to touch on and I think that should give people an overview of what space is about. So, thanks for preparing this podcast and you know making this making this opportunity to share and also kind of driving the discussion. I think >> thank you so much. So closing off. Thank you so much Alexanders for your time today. Guys, tune in, like, subscribe and share. Thank you very much and have a good day. Thank you.