 Good morning. This is Ian Christensen for our next presentation. I have the honor to interview Mr. Richard Delbello Who is the vice president for global engagement with Virgin Galactic? Rich will be speaking to us about his perspectives on the topic of commercial spaceflight new opportunities for science and research Good morning. Rich, I wonder if you might begin with introducing yourself in your background in commercial space Good morning, Ian. It's a pleasure to be here today. I have I've been blessed with a long and enjoyable background in space I started way back in the 80s and Got to see the first space shuttle flights and the first announcement of the space station I've worked across both government and industry I've Led an industry association. I've had the opportunity to work at NASA to work in the White House to work at the Commerce Department And so I've had a really a fun career and and across a lot of interesting boundaries I've seen the industries grow dramatically over that time when obviously perhaps most Dramatically was the growth of the launch industry which went from a few government dominated providers to the Veritable free-for-all of launch opportunities that are in the marketplace today I've seen the satellite industry go from global consortium of governments to really a wildly competitive both technically and From a business perspective a wildly competitive market Originally, of course, they were all the focus was on a few large geostationary satellites Positioned as relays today, of course, we are reinventing communication with constellations of satellites So over the span of my career I've seen just tremendous exciting change and Everything that I'm seeing tells me that that that change is going to continue for the next several decades Just we we are by no means at the end of a process So I think we are at still very much in the middle of a dramatic change of the space industry Rich you just told us about how in the last few years the commercial space industry has grown in a number of seconds For example telecommunications space launch your viewpoint. Why has this growth occurred so fast and how will it continue in the future? That's a great question. There is undeniably a Tremendous amount of activity in the US marketplace and many people ask why why is that and I think if you look at the history of space in the United States you you see a couple of key Elements coming together to create this momentum The first is that over the last 20 or 30 years there have been in place relatively permissive regulations and policy Encouraging commercial so on the regulatory side by permissive. I don't mean Dangerous I just simply mean that the policies have been focused on protecting the uninvolved public as opposing to ensuring the That some specific activity is 100% safe as a regulator would do for example with a commercial airplane so by adopting a different understanding of Safety and regulation and it has allowed the kind of experimentation that we saw in the early days of aviation From a policy perspective the government has also played a very large role One of the primary ways that the government has encouraged Commercial is by willing to be a buyer of early commercial services Whether that satellite communications or launch or remote sensing Or more recently in the work that NASA is doing in low-Earth orbit on the commercialization of Leo all of those things have been promoted by a Government policy that seeks to use the government as a buyer In addition to that There has been There's been an environment over the last 20 years perhaps Which is where there's been a tremendous amount of available capital and the Availability of capital is probably a more complex issue than we can cover in this one session but Just to highlight a few points Overall, this was a period of growth and prosperity The because of the various financial Setbacks that we've had over the during that period the the Federal Reserve does adopt adopted a policy of very low interest rates Which has made capital formation easier? And there's been a tremendous appetite starting in the 90s for Technology Investments, so we've had an investment community that has been focused on the the next technical step so so those elements together have created a Environment where innovators and startup companies have often been able to find ready cash to fund their to fund their investments Finally and This this cannot be underestimated the technologies have changed dramatically in the past 20 years Where we are in microelectronics communication technology launch technology Those elements are Just dramatic there was just a dramatic shift Towards greater efficiency more capability in all of those areas. So so satellites imagery Interabilities the digitization of imagery all of these elements came together over the last 20 years to create the Potential to do what we are doing with constellations of communication satellites Constellations of remote sensing satellites. So it was that combination that balance of technology available funding and Government regulatory and policy support that have created I think within the US a unique Microclimate that has been very supportive of commercial space Thank You rich just talked through some examples of how the US government has developed policy to encourage the growth of the commercial space industry For instance how NASA has worked to encourage Leo commercialization. I wonder if you go deeper into those policies How has the US government developed policy to encourage market growth and competition in commercial space? Yes, I think there are a number of important examples going back perhaps to the 1980s the government that time began to Take the concept of commercial space activities seriously one of the first manifestations of that came in Satellite communications as you recall recall when it was established Intel sat which was then the single global provider for satellite communications was Basically an arm of the United Nations, and it was a intergovernmental organization The US began to talk at that point about privatizing Intel sat That dialogue which was an international dialogue took many many years But and it was consistent with the dialogues that were going on internationally about the privatization of other services like post telegraph airplanes So undersea cables so there there was a huge sea change that started there where the means of communication The dialogue began how do we turn these over to the commercial sector? Not just in the US but globally and that dialogue went into the 90s when Intel sat was privatized the result of that privatization was a robust and energetic Global market a lot of new investment a lot of new creativity new satellites new more powerful satellites And so immediately the world saw the rewards of that step shortly after that there there was a dialogue about Moving launch from Government control to commercial that was a little bit more complicated Because launch of course has a component which is deeply tied to national security launch vehicles a Vehicle-belaunch vehicle is could also be a weapon and so There was a lot of international dialogue and concern about how to manage that sort of transition and But gradually through the 80s and 90s and 2000s we saw the that shift continue and it first started with Allowing commercial to exist and the next step was to Treat commercial as a parallel to the government capability and I think the phase that we're in now where the governments are asking themselves What unique launch capabilities do we the government need? Whereas everything else can go perhaps to the private sector So that transition Has happened and again that this goes to the issue that I mentioned before about the importance of Forward-leaning policy so the government's decided that they were going to do this and then they worked on the implementation Twinned with the issue of policy is always the issue of regulation the Regulatory system needed to manage Global telecommunications is tremendously complicated involving individual regulators and regional regulators and the international process under the ITU We don't really have time for that this morning, but The launch vehicles are a different thing entirely There are some international rules primarily from national security-based rules about launch vehicles, but most of the launch vehicle rules are domestic And I think the big step that the US took in in its thinking about launch vehicles Was to focus on the safety of the uninvolved public so What the regulations should focus on is People not associated with the launch should never be in a situation where they might be harmed But to allow Launch vehicle companies to experiment including including human launch vehicle companies like my own virgin galactic and our Colleagues at Blue Origin and and and now SpaceX and soon Sierra Nevada and the all of these companies wanted the opportunity to try to innovate and so Instead of requiring absolute safety, which would have been very very difficult at the beginning again the parallel like I mentioned before It's very much like the early days of aviation where Many individuals many companies tried out airplane concepts Some of those did not work and The that is those early experiments that were the impetus that gave us the aviation industry that we have today Along the way, I mean obviously now we have regulations which seek to ensure 100% safety for the for the commercial air traveler But had we had those rules at the beginning of the industry it would have Prevented the vibrant growth of that industry. So it's a question of balance. It's a question of balance How do you balance the public need of the public? expectation of safety and security with the need to innovate and And the way the US is balanced it again is to is to have this concept of acceptance of risk by those people who are involved in the potentially dangerous activity But a complete commitment to safety of the uninvolved public. So that kind of balancing act Has been the guiding light through the US policy and US regulation So rich you were just talking about the need to balance innovation and safety the need to balance a regulation and promotion of commercial space You also represent one of those innovative launch companies you were talking about Virgin Galactic is certainly developing some innovative new services I wonder if you might tell us about where those services are going and what that means for the future of the commercial research market Certainly well, I think the service that we will soon be offering which is a flight to Between 80 and 100 kilometers or essentially taking people to space and back Primarily as a as a voyage of experience for For people, but also and increasingly for science and technology research Clearly the the regulatory the balance between regulation and risk acceptance is evident here in These products which which seek to involve the public more generally in space flight So there has to be an understanding that that you know, these are these are activities which involve risk so the regulatory balance has to be that the person has to be fully informed has to understand that they're accepting risk and Then the government has to be assured that The passengers understand the risk they're taking and then the government is responsible for Ensuring the safety of the uninvolved public again And I think we've seen that balance working very well in our industry and and we believe our customers understand What what our services and what risk they are taking? This is not like a walk in the park, you know going to space is still a A High technology higher risk than normal activity for people to engage in This is not like getting on a commercial airplane but secondarily, I just wanted to say that we're also seeing a Introduce when you introduce a new technology people are very creative And one of the interesting things that we've seen is that for these suborbital missions, whether it be Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin or whoever else will offer these services There's also tremendous demand for to have access to these platforms for science In our flights you get somewhere between two and four minutes of microgravity, which is Of course, nothing like the kind of extended microgravity you can get on the space station but we can do it for a very fraction of the cost of of and Definitely a fraction of the time that it takes to get something space station So we're super excited about this new market that's developing and we think there's going to be tremendous growth there So we're approaching the end of our time here today. I just want to ask a wrap-up and conclusion question in your viewpoint Rich, how does the expansion of the global commercial space sector create opportunities for markets and exchange? Well space as as we've discussed through this throughout our dialogue here Space has always been broadly international And I think you've you've seen that there are there have always been robust international markets for satellite communications robust international markets for launch And I think as new technologies come along the new more The many technologies for Imagery from from space. I mean, I think that the markets for all of those will continue to be global And and that's an opportunity for the commercial sector obviously and for the commercial players from around the world Though this global market also comes with a set of global responsibilities And I think that there is still a substantial amount of work to do For governments and industry to address those responsibilities First on and perhaps foremost An issue on many people's mind is the issue of debris More activity particularly the focus now on constellations of communication satellites and imagery satellites Literally thousands of satellites being launched into space. There there is a renewed Focus and concern about Maintaining the environment of space the sustainability of the environment of space We don't have time in this segment to talk about the specific issue of space debris But suffice it to say that it's an issue that I think policymakers around the world recognize is a real issue and one that needs to be dealt with And with all of these new technologies some of our older issues are also harder to address issues like the allocation of global spectrum for communication and the Tremendous growth of all of these new technologies all have a demand for satellite communications now And that requires access to the radio frequency spectrum It may come there may come a day when we move to laser communications and some of the current bottleneck we have on Radio frequency use may may be resolved but today we are definitely still heavily reliant on the on the spectrum and The world is of course Still very concerned about the proliferation of launch technologies which can have a national security implement implications um So I think that we are one global community when it comes to space. It's a global marketplace It's a global regulatory challenge and I think that as the Many spacefaring peoples of the world It's our responsibility to address all of these issues together And to try to resolve it so that future generations will have access to space in the same way that we do Well, thank you rich. I wish we could keep talking for a longer time here, but we We have other presentations to move on to so I I it's a pleasure being here today, and I'm only sorry that I can't be at the conference in person