Alice Carruth (8:14)

Indeed I do. Maria. There are two additional stories we think you should be aware of today. Norway has contracted Thales Alanier space for the Thor 8 telecom satellite and space journalist Michael Sheetz has announced his departure from cnbc. We wish him the best of luck with his new move and we're eager to find out where that is. We will of course share those details with you when we find out.

Maria Varmazes (8:37)

And Alice, where can we find those stories?

Alice Carruth (8:40)

Links to all the stories mentioned throughout the show are in the selected reading section of our Show Notes and can also be found@space.in2k.com just click on the.

Maria Varmazes (8:49)

Episode title Hey T Minus Crew. If you are just joining us, be sure to follow T minus Space daily in your favorite podcast app. Also, please do us a favor, share the intel with your friends and coworkers. Here's a little challenge for you. By Friday, please show three friends or coworkers this podcast. A growing audience is the most important thing for us and we would love your help as part of the T Minus Crew. If you Find T minus useful. Please share the show so other professionals like you can find us. Thank you. It means a lot to me and all of us working here on T minus.

Dave (9:40)

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Maria Varmazes (10:23)

Our guest today is Space Copies founder and CEO Madison Feehan. And I caught up with Madison at spacecom in Florida to find out more about her company.

Madison Feehan (10:35)

We are a woman owned small business based in the United States and Canada, and we are an in situ logistics and additive manufacturing company and we are focused on building 3D printing technology to power the next generation of space flight.

Maria Varmazes (10:49)

So not a small challenge to take on.

Madison Feehan (10:51)

It is not. It is super complex, but we operate both in space and terrestrial ecosystems. And something that is a little bit unique about us is that all of the feedstock that we're generating for use is completely derived in situ, in situ, as in.

Maria Varmazes (11:06)

So we are, we are on the moon and we are. That feedstock is coming from regolith, right?

Madison Feehan (11:11)

Absolutely. If you're on the surface of the moon, we're talking regolith. If you're in an extreme or austere environment here on Earth, we're talking about soil, sand, basalts, recycled metal, you name it, we can break it down and print infrastructure of various different sizes and capacities.

Maria Varmazes (11:26)

Okay, mind blown. I'm just going, wow. The challenges of doing that, impurities, I can't even. Additive manufacturing, to me, already on its own, seems like magic. And I know it's science, but when you're talking about just taking what's around you and using that as raw material that gets into. I didn't know if that would ever be possible. It's amazing to know that you are developing that. That is quite incredible. Please tell me more about, I mean, this mission, what you're making. I mean, that's just amazing.

Madison Feehan (11:55)

Well, it is certainly a really difficult technology process to wrap your head around, but it is an incredible one nonetheless. So how I like to break this down is into four different stages.

Maria Varmazes (12:06)

Sure.

Madison Feehan (12:06)

The 3D printing technology starts first with stage one, what we call beneficiation, or maybe the less technical term is mixing. So we Take whatever raw material that you have on site to work with and we break it down through a jaw crushing dual centrifuge. Mix a nice mechanical sieve in a vibrational separation process and that will take your biggest rocks and chunks and break it down into a fine powder like material. Once we've been able to achieve that nice fine particle size distribution, then we carry forward into Raman spectral scanning, just.

Maria Varmazes (12:37)

Basically what we're working with.

Madison Feehan (12:38)

Big old laser beam and scanning the chemical composition of that feedstock.

Maria Varmazes (12:42)

That's cool.

Madison Feehan (12:43)

Then stage three, the fun stuff, the actual 3D printing. We have two different systems by the way. We have a laser based system for really complex parts like precision tools, and we have an extrusion based system for the larger scale infrastructure like bricks and heat shields and launch pads. And then last but not least, stage four is AI and autonomy. So everything that I just explained, it's 100% autonomous.

Maria Varmazes (13:06)

I would imagine, given the locations that we're talking about. Using this anyway would need to be 100%.

Madison Feehan (13:11)

100%. We've got a little five axis robotic arm that's located inside that 3D printing chamber. It's actually going to lift those 3D printed parts off of that build plate and drop them into a collection bin so it's easy for astronauts to access them.

Maria Varmazes (13:23)

How do you anticipate this being used? I know it's evident, but just walk me through it anyway.

Madison Feehan (13:28)

Well, we've kind of got a little bit of a milestone timelines schedule in place. So first and foremost is the Earth based applications. Well, we can immediately use this technology in natural disaster areas and combat zones and places where it's just straight up logistically challenging to get infrastructure shipped into certain locations. So we estimate being able to deploy this tech into ecosystems like the Arctic or desert or even underwater as early as 2026, which is right around the corner. And then as for the lunar missions, we've got some fantastic partners that are helping us to make this happen with the lofty goal of being able to land one of our 3D printers on the surface of the Moon by 2031. And we are super excited to be having a cislunar flight test that is being planned for as early as the end of this year. So we're going to send out the world's most basic 3D printer halfway to the moon and back and see if we can't print with some regolith simulant. And you know what, if successful, we would be the first folks to ever do so.

Maria Varmazes (14:27)

Wow, I love when I get these, to have these kind of conversations where it's like, this is the sci fi future that I know I dreamed of and someone is working on that. Tell me a little bit about sort of like your long term vision for what you're working on. I mean you've already sort of outlined quite a bit of it, but I mean, Mars maybe? I mean.

Madison Feehan (14:45)

Oh yeah.

Maria Varmazes (14:45)

Oh yeah, yeah.

Madison Feehan (14:46)

You know, the space dreamer in us is always looking for let's land on Mars, let's get this concept going. You know what, as a matter of fact, I've been pioneering this concept since 2017. The business has been around for a couple of years now, but the idea has been formulating for much, much longer. And when I first came up with the concept, it was specifically around 3D printing for Mars.

Maria Varmazes (15:05)

Wow.

Madison Feehan (15:06)

That's on the peripheral. It's the long term goal. And you know what, if we're looking at the way that space travel is shaping up and we're talking about being interplanetary species sending humans to space in long term duration missions, think of this in the greater context of the mission planning requirements. Because right now launch costs from Earth to the surface of the moon, if you're talking per kilo, you're ranging from around 800,000 to US$1.2 million. It takes almost 22,000 kilograms to keep four astronauts alive for a year. You're talking over $6 billion easily in just infrastructure being shipped up. And that's not even considering what the cost would be to send it even further to places like Mars. So immediately you're seeing the need for the technology and you're seeing that not only is it possible, but it's needed. So when I look at the kind of long term vision five years from now, even 20 years from now, the goal is kind of a bit of a technical balance with a humanitarian balance. So not only being able to do some cool science because you know that's what we're all here for, but also having the benefit of changing the way that humanity looks at infrastructure development. That we look at sustainability.

Maria Varmazes (16:10)

Yes.

Madison Feehan (16:10)

And that we look towards the future of science as being proactive.

Maria Varmazes (16:14)

This is really capturing my imagination and my eyes is going, I'm just so curious like who you're working with, with and what kind of projects. I mean, so you mentioned really underwater. Sorry, I'm a little bit like, wow.

Madison Feehan (16:25)

This I know, right? There's so many different ecosystems that space copies technology can operate in. So yeah, let me run it down really quick. So those terrestrial applications we're talking Arctic desert underwater. And I say underwater because it's got that microgravity environment. Right. So it's, it's a really fantastic. What we refer to as like the lunar proving test ground. Right. Same thing goes with Arctic. Right. We're talking about extreme thermal gradients of space. Why not try to do that here on Earth first? And not only to validate the concept, but also to actually benefit the people working in those ecosystems already. Right. And then, yeah, as far as space goes, we're talking about microgravity, we're talking about cislunar, we're talking about lunar, we're talking about the deep space all the way to Mars. And then as far as actual timelines go. Yeah, I was mentioning that cislunar test flight that we're planning.

Maria Varmazes (17:11)

Yes.

Madison Feehan (17:11)

And then actually, actually we have a Arctic field test planned for 2026. For those of you who may or may not be familiar with the Mars analog test site, the Houghton Impact crater way up in the northern Canadian Arctic Circle. We've got some partners up there that are helping us to actually get a basic printer up there.

Maria Varmazes (17:30)

Wow.

Madison Feehan (17:31)

Get a prototype going, get some stuff printing. And the best part is that not only is it a terrestrial feedstock, but it's also the site of an asteroid impact. So you get some of that space based material too.

Maria Varmazes (17:43)

That is so you've got to love your job, what you're building.

Madison Feehan (17:46)

This is you.

Maria Varmazes (17:47)

I can just tell you're really jazzed talking about this. This is a really cool thing.

Madison Feehan (17:50)

I do love my job. I will talk to whoever will listen about this technology. Not only because I'm so proud of what we're creating and the incredible team also behind the story that has helped to create this and pioneer this, but also because of the proud partners that we've had, from academic institutes to government organizations like NASA. We've got such a huge repertoire of folks that have come through for us that are not only fascinated in our technology, but are looking for ways to support it. And at the end of the day, that's one of the things I really love about the space community.

Maria Varmazes (18:23)

Yes.

Madison Feehan (18:23)

Is that, you know, it's so dynamic, but also so supportive.

Maria Varmazes (18:42)

We'll be right back.

Dave (18:48)

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Maria Varmazes (20:09)

Today, February 11th is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This one's personal I grew up in a house where science and engineering were revered and encouraged at every turn. My peer group in high school were other science minded girls like me. There's a photo in my high school yearbook of our computer club that always makes me chuckle because there I am, off to the side, the only girl. It's a dynamic that you get used to even at engineering school and college, not unlike high school, it wasn't unusual to be the only young woman in a lab, or maybe one of a handful in a large seminar. It was easy for us to remember each other. Us engineering school women would often become friends, toiling away at problem sets and study rooms for hours every day, sharing notes, helping each other prep for exams, rotating who would go to office hours. And it's funny, outside of engineering, many of us probably wouldn't have been friends. We really didn't have all that much in common interest wise. But we knew what we were all up against. So we banded together for survival. I'll skip to the chase. We were the class of 2005, so it's been 20 years. Many of the women I knew from those days went into their chosen fields after graduating. But now, these decades on, of the dozens of women that I knew starting their careers in science and engineering, maybe four are still working in them now. Career changes happen for all sorts of reasons, like in my case, where it simply is just not the right field for you. It happens, but sometimes it's the result of a slow fade, where over the years you have to keep fighting an invisible war and sometimes you simply get tired of it. Whatever you want to call it, a retention problem, a cultural problem. It goes way beyond any federal mandate or national border. And there are conversations happening, said and unsaid, especially right now, about whose stories are celebrated, whose competence and credibility is celebrated, who rises in the ranks with like minded peers whose accomplishments are worth a damn, who is a merited hire? In other words, in science and engineering, who belongs? Well, women do. This is only the 10th anniversary of international Girls and Women in Science Day. So all you trailblazers toiling long hours over problem sets, labs, trials, reams and reams of data, connecting with that spark of joy that ignited that love of science. Ladies, I see you. Our world needs your perspective and your expertise more than ever. Keep fighting out of spite for the haters if nothing else. And please remember, even if you are the only one in the room, you belong. That's it for T minus for February 11, 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 and 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. N2K Senior Producer is Alice Carruth. Our producer is Liz Stokes. Were mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin. Peter Kilpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Ramazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

Madison Feehan (23:41)

T minus.