Liz Stokes (7:30)

Liz Alice we have two additional links for listeners in the selected reading section of our show. Notes. The first is on the crew for the inaugural Titans Genesis space plane mission which is due to launch in 2029. And the second is the State of the Space Industrial Base 2024 report which has just been released by New Space Nexus.

Alice Carruth (7:51)

All good stuff for us to be reading up on. Liz, can you remind us all where those links can be found? Please?

Liz Stokes (7:57)

Links to all the stories mentioned in the daily episodes can be found on our website, space.n2k.com simply click through the daily podcast pages.

Alice Carruth (8:06)

Hey T Miners crew. If your business is looking to grow your voice in the industry, expand the reach of your thought leadership or recruit talent, T miners can help. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email@space2k.com or send us a note through our website so that we can connect about building a program to meet your goals.

Maria Valmas (8:41)

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Alice Carruth (9:20)

We recently caught up with Troy Morris from Cal Morris Inc. At the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Troy spoke to host Maria Valmas about KMI recent demonstration on the International Space Station.

Troy Morris (9:36)

Troy, good to see you.

Unknown (9:38)

Good to be here.

Troy Morris (9:39)

Yeah, nice to see you in person. My goodness.

Unknown (9:41)

Yeah, it's a fun change. And that's some of the joy of you know these conferences when they're well attended is finding the folks you've been talking to online for.

Troy Morris (9:47)

I know, right?

Unknown (9:48)

Long times.

Troy Morris (9:48)

I know. Well, it was a few months since we last chatted and then it was a while before then. So good to see you. For our audience who I feel like we should do an intro.

Unknown (9:56)

That generally helps.

Troy Morris (9:57)

Yeah, generally helps. So who are you? Troy.

Unknown (9:59)

Yeah. Hello there, I'm Troy Morris. I'm one of the co founders and I serve as CEO for Call Morris Inc. At kmi. We are an in space logistics and mobility company currently operating on the iss. But I'm sure we won't talk about that at all.

Troy Morris (10:11)

No, no, no. Yeah. So yeah. What else is going on? No.

Unknown (10:13)

So, yeah, we're proudly based in Marquette, Michigan, and so it's something that we're bringing innovation from a unique place. And so happy to talk more about a lot of things today.

Troy Morris (10:21)

Yeah. Okay, so I'm looking at this incredible facsimile. So this is. Tell me what I'm looking at here. Exactly.

Unknown (10:30)

Yeah. So for those that are able to see the static video, we'll. We'll also be able to share some of the video from Station. But what we're seeing here is my terrestrial model of the Reach arm end effector. So this is a mechanical linkage. This unit here is seven linkages. It is missing most of the fun parts because I have to take it through tsa, which they're kind of rough sometimes, as well as it's itar safe. So I can bring it around to international events and show a lot of our partners from around the world that are. Whoa. How are you doing that? This can be that first stepping stone to understanding. So the arm is about the length of my arm, but it's, again, smaller than what the Future Flyer will be, but very similar to what is currently on station. Yeah.

Troy Morris (11:08)

So tell me. So we did talk about this last time, but just to refresh everybody's memories, what Reach has done on the iss.

Unknown (11:14)

Yeah. So in a wonderful partnership and sponsorship by casis, the center for the Advancement of Science in Space, and through the International Space Station National Lab. I think I got the full titles there.

Troy Morris (11:24)

You got it. Yeah.

Unknown (11:24)

No, but working with them has been fantastic. So they helped work us from an early startup to where we're at now today of getting our arms on station. So not just one, but six of them. So we can test four of our arms at a time in each of the cardinal directions on the Astrobee. And so the Astrobee is standing in for our Future Flyer. And so by using the Astrobee, we're able to do now nearly 200 capture cycles of the Astrobee propelling forward like our spacecraft will. The Reach arms deploying just like they will and capturing again and again, a test target, a client that we've built that we can swap out from solar cell to Mylar to aluminum, you know, the major components that make up every sa humans have ever launched.

Troy Morris (12:06)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unknown (12:06)

So it's been able to give us, you know, not just a good example, hundreds of good test cases, and we've really pushed the bounds in some great scientific ways.

Troy Morris (12:14)

Oh, I was gonna say, I can feel that enthusiasm from across the table. That's so awesome. And I'm hearing a lot of the future statements about what y'all are working on next now that you've had this incredible many, many series of fantastic demonstrations on the iss. So what are you looking at now with the future?

Unknown (12:30)

Yeah. So the first thing is regrettably, we need to bring it home. And I say regrettably cause we first started with being given permission. Four sessions with the crew. Fantastic. Our team loved it. They learned so much, prepped so much with so much that we were working with from NASA Ames, Marshall, Johnson, so many great centers. And they went really well.

Troy Morris (12:47)

Yeah.

Unknown (12:47)

And so we were actually awarded two more sessions. So we're, you know, six for four, which is more than 100% always good. And we're trying to squeeze one more. But we do want to get the hardware back down with upcoming downmass, which is at a privilege and a premium on the space station. So there was conversation of should we continue and just keep testing more. I think that the crew might enjoy having a nice friend that they can play catch with. But it is something we unfortunately need the hardware back. The pictures we've gotten from Don and others on station are good. But once you can really tear into this hardware and check everything we need, there's the mission coming forth in 2027. So we need to get the hardware back now so we can really evolve the technology and be ready for that future case.

Troy Morris (13:25)

What do you look at when it comes back down? Is that something you can tell us about? Like what do you actually investigate when it comes back down?

Unknown (13:31)

So you know, it's something that's a little bit hard after seeing how many it's operated on Earth. And then on station, it's a little buddy reach has about the tensile strength of a toddler's hug, but the grip strength to move cars. So it kind of reminds me of that baby from the Incredibles.

Alice Carruth (13:47)

Jack.

Unknown (13:47)

Jack. Just like cute, adorable, but also extremely strong in the right ways. And so we have to dissect it.

Troy Morris (13:55)

You're taking apart. Jack, Jack.

Unknown (13:58)

It's hardware. It's just hardware, I swear. And so being able to dissect and evaluate some wear, tear, how some componen worked, there were some components that didn't fully function. That's perfect. That's what we're doing. You don't want to have everything perfect because that means you're not pushing it to the limit.

Troy Morris (14:15)

Right, right, right.

Unknown (14:15)

And so we've pushed it to the envelope, we've pushed it past the envelope. We've re established what the Envelope is. And so now it's just testing that, taking some components apart, comparing them to new productions as well as I can't make my engineers sit still. So every day that we have not been doing operations, they're, oh, what if we tweak this? What if we prove that now that we saw that data before we get hard numbers, they're just taking the video input and be like, we can improve that component by a percentage of a percentage. I'm like, yes. So comparison to what we launched nearly a year ago, to what we've been building now, to what it'll be in the future.

Troy Morris (14:48)

Yeah, I was gonna say the optimizing process and also I imagine the art of the possible, imagining what new things y'all could do, like new capabilities. Is that also part of that conversation?

Unknown (14:57)

It is. It's not directly tied to, you know, the downmass and the operations on iss. It's a lot of the conversations I've been having this week.

Troy Morris (15:03)

Yeah.

Unknown (15:04)

Being able to talk with some of those in national, some of those that are in the commercial space, it's really changing the conversation from, hey, we'd like to do something neat in the future. Sure, kid, whatever. To, hey, this is our capability we're demonstrating right now. And it's fantastic to have a colonel turn to his staff and say, get them on my calendar. Oh, I was never this popular in high school, but I can at least do something good now.

Troy Morris (15:27)

That's very validating.

Unknown (15:28)

So being able to connect with those customers and figure out partnerships that are going to be moving forward for everything from end of life, servicing, life extension. Cheers. To our good friends over at Space Logistics for their announcements to, you know, being that tow truck in space.

Troy Morris (15:42)

Yeah.

Unknown (15:43)

So it's something that this is really opening up the aperture for the appetite of the industry. I don't know if I could say that twice fast. But it's something that. It's really changing the industry in a good way.

Troy Morris (15:54)

You know, it's amazing. We met last year and, you know, we here at Team Mindus have sort of been watching y'alls journey since we started, what we've been doing. And it's been amazing how validating it has been for you all to see your vision really happening and being so, you know, enthusiastically brought on board by the industry. It's been just really incredible to see and what, again, a validation of the hard work that you all have been putting into this incredible technology.

Unknown (16:21)

I appreciate it. And it's also appreciated to all of our team, our partners, our backers I mean, again, like I said at the beginning, we're from Michigan. Not exactly the first state most people think of for aerospace excellence. Except for the NASA launches we had in the 70s, the amazing technical schools some up the road. We're trying to start our first actual major at my alma mater for space.

Troy Morris (16:40)

There you go.

Unknown (16:41)

I was in Ann Arbor on Friday talking to the University of Michigan for investment, national security and deep tech. That's us. We sit at the middle of that Venn diagram. So it's about bringing the capabilities of the arsenal of democracy that Michigan has historically been bringing that to the national space. And so yeah, we're authentic, we're real, we're raw, we're Midwestern, but. But we're making stuff happen that's so amazing.

Troy Morris (17:04)

Yeah, tell me a bit about all the other stuff that y'all are working on. Cause you as a company, you're also growing and doing, starting trying to get a new major at U. Michigan, also amazing school. So that's not a small thing either.

Unknown (17:13)

So I should correct. We are not Wolverines, we are Wildcats. So we're from Northern Michigan University.

Troy Morris (17:18)

Northern Michigan. Still.

Unknown (17:19)

One of our angels is alumnus of University of Michigan. So he brought us down there, you know, nothing bad going below the bridge for those that understand the two peninsulas. So yeah, we're, we're heavily involved in building that next generation. My partner who's out here with me now, he was just talking with Embry Riddle and some partnerships we're gonna be trying to do with them in the state of New Mexico.

Troy Morris (17:39)

Huge.

Unknown (17:40)

Cause we have representation across seven or eight states now with employees.

Troy Morris (17:44)

Wow.

Unknown (17:44)

So we've grown quite a bit.

Troy Morris (17:45)

Yeah, you have. My goodness.

Unknown (17:47)

So yeah, the growth is fantastic. We're still very capital efficient for those investors who might be listening. But it's something that we can do things the right way without the ping pong tables of startups in the past. There's a way to be effective, effic and do it the right way. And so that's what our growth is about, is investing in that next generation workforce development, something we continue to do. Local development, education. I spend more time than I might like in D.C. helping to educate our representatives, congress folk, senators. And they're receptive. I will say that they are receptive. So it's something that, you know, with all that's happening in this nation, in this world, there are things that we can make safe, we can make space safer, we can do things safely, we can help each other. Collaboration. And so I continue to try and beat that drum as best I can.

Troy Morris (18:35)

That's awesome. Thank you for doing that. And I've heard many folks in your situation saying similar things like, I'm in D.C. a lot, but it is so important. Onward and upward to all of you. It's so great to catch up with you. Trey, thank you so much for joining us today.

Unknown (18:47)

Thank you for having me.

Alice Carruth (19:02)

We'll be right back.

Maria Valmas (19:11)

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Unknown (19:48)

Foreign.

Alice Carruth (19:56)

Welcome back. We love a bit of space history on this show, and we especially love the opportunity to share the love for our favorite space telescope. On this day, April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope launched to orbit on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Yes, it's been 35 years of the Hubble Space Telescope. It's completely transformed the way that we see the universe. From unveiling the mysterious depths of distant galaxies to helping us peer into the birth of stars and planets, Hubble has been our cosmic time machine. Over these 35 years, it's captured some of the most breathtaking images I've ever seen, like the Pillars of Creation, the Eagle Nebula, and the stunning deep field images that show us galaxies billions of light years away. These images aren't just beautiful, they're scientific gold, providing clues about the universe's age, its expansion, and the way it evolves. But Hubble didn't just give us pretty pictures. It's been integral in shaping our understanding of dark energy, proving the existence of black holes, and helping scientists measure the universe expansion rate, which is still a hot topic of debate. And of course, it's inspired generations of scientists, astronomers, and curious minds. So here's the 35 years of groundbreaking discoveries and stunning images. Hubble may be nearing its final years, but its legacy will last forever. And go and check out the latest image of the Sombrero galaxy that's been shared to celebrate the occasion. Hubble still manages to take my breath away. That's it for T minus for April 24, 2025, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@space.n2k.com we're privileged that N2K podcasts like T Minus are part of the daily routine of many of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector, from the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Our producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eisenhower. Peter Kilpy is our publisher and I'm N2K senior producer Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening.

Unknown (22:23)

T minus.

Maria Valmas (22:37)

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