Space Law & Geopolitics

Will Caterpiller and John Deere become Space companies ?

The sixth session of the Course on “The Business and Economics of Space” was on Thursday, Nov 18. This session was on Space Law, Geopolitics and Sustainability. From a commercial viewpoint the session would help answer questions about appropriate legal frameworks if you wanted to find, own, use or sell space resources. It was also very timely due to a recent geopolitical event with the Russians blowing up one of their defunct satellites with no warning to the rest of the world.

The key takeaways were in the following areas
– There are a variety on National and International Legal Frameworks on Use of Space Resources
– What the Regulatory Roadmap would look like for Commercial Space Miners
– A primer on Geopolitics from our cohort member, Joseph Abakunda
– The need to enforce responsible behaviour of space for the benefit of all

To guide us on the legal aspects of exploiting space resources we had a guest professor Christopher Johnson. In his in depth presentation he discussed

· the 1967 Outer Space Treaty - Rights, Obligations and Prohibitions
· the 1979 Moon Agreement
· National Approaches ; USA, Luxembourg, UAE, Japan
· International Approaches; UN Working Group on Space Resources 
· NASA and USA led Artemis Accords
· Regulatory Roadmap for Asteroid Miners

I won’t get into the details of the legal frameworks that he outlined. Interested readers can find resources online on each of those treaties and legal frameworks. As a Canadian , who grew up in Northern Ontario hard rock mining country, I was very interested in what the regulatory roadmap look like for space miners , whether asteroids, lunar or other planets. There will be a role for Canadian mining and geophysical expertise in such ventures (plus I am old enough to remember when the Apollo astronauts came to my hometown of Sudbury, ON to train for their eventual lunar missions because of our black rock !)

United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space

The Artemis Accords drafted by NASA and the U.S. Department of State, the Accords establish a framework for cooperation in the civil exploration and peaceful use of the Moon, Mars, and other astronomical objects like asteriods.They are explicitly grounded in the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which signatories are obliged to uphold, and cite most major U.N.-brokered conventions constituting space law.

Even under the Artemis Accords there remain many open questions to space resource exploitation;

· What governmental agency should you seek permission from ?
· What is the application process like ? What do you need to disclose ?
· How long does it take, how much does it cost ?
· How is an interest in a space resource perfected
   a) Just claim it and its yours ? Or do you have to protect it first
   b) What is to prevent a "gold rush "of claims ? Klondike days in space !
   c) Whats the review process for applications of claims ? Interagency ? International ?
   d) Will a regulator enforce claims against "claim jumpers" ?
· What are the limits or boundaries of a permit to mine space resources ?
   Time bound ? i.e. you can mine location x for y years
   Extent bound ?  i.e. you can recover x tons or resource y (but nothing else)
   Activity bound ? i.e. you can mine, but must sell to x, or utilize only for y purpose

That led me to think that there are a lot of similarities to the law and practices that have evolved in other frontiers such as the Ocean, Antarctica, the Internet and radio. There are two great books that come to mind for those interested; “The Pirate Organization : Lessons from the Fringes of Capitalism” by Rodolphe Durand and Jean-Philippe Vergne and “The Outlaw Ocean : Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier” by Ian Urbina. You can find more about them here and here

We then got a primer in Space Geopolitics, from Joseph Abakunda of the Rwanda Space Agency. Joseph told us of the activities of China, on the African continent, with their Belt and Road Initiative . China would finance enormous loans to developing nations for building infrastructure . The loans became a Debt trap when the nations could not afford to repay and were forced to cede China with goods, land, strategic resources or ports. Often there were corruption scandals, and human rights violations. This is underreported here in North America.

We then had two distinguished guests; Dan Ceperley, the Founder and CEO of LeoLabs and Christopher Johnson of the Secure World Foundation. We had a lively hour long Q&A session mainly centred around the recent Russian DA-ASAT test .

LeoLabs image with ISS in Orange and Space Debris created as thos white circles

Russia’s surprise direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missile test on Nov 15, blowing apart a defunct Russian satellite raised important legal and policy questions about the prohibition on the use of force in outer space. The highly destructive weapons test – which forced astronauts aboard the International Space Station to seek shelter and created a long-lasting field of space debris – underscores the need to urgently develop and enforce international standards for responsible behaviour in space.

Two hours went by quickly but we were able to at least get a taste of some of the very complicated issues in the Space law and Geopolitical realms.

NewSpace

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch

The first session of the course on “The Business and Economics of the Space” was last night, Monday Nov 8. The topic was the History of Space and the Contemporary Space Agency. My key takeaway from the session was the rise of the NewSpace industry.

Earlier this summer I wrote about “Space; the final telco frontier” here. Much of the subject matter of the history of space is covered there. I did get a great comment on my post from Charles Miller, the CEO of Lynk who was also co-founder of NanoRacks and founder of ProSpace, a non-profit that lobbied to space policy legislation on Capital Hill including passage of the Commercial Space Act of 1998. He went on the be Senior Advisor for Commercial Space at NASA. He told me that he was part of the movement to jump start the industry and helped coin the term “NewSpace” in the early ’00s.

Access to space used to be limited to governments, specifically those of the United States, Russia and China. The “Space Race” in the 1960’s between the Soviet Union and the Americans during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs could only be funded by national governments . Government contractors built the rockets and other equipment and they were typically subsidiaries of the defence industry. Those contracts were for cost-plus and programs were large, expensive, bureaucratic and slow.

There was a commercial space industry in SatCom after the USA passed the 1962 Communications Satellite Act that enabled private companies to own and operate satellites. We saw the launch of the Telstar satellites , Intelsat and our course Canada’s own Anik 1. The world could relay television, telephone and high speed data communications across the oceans ! It was an application of space that was private and commercial and not tied to civil, defence or the military.

NewSpace accelerated the move to privatization and commercialization of space beyond just SatCom. Through those early efforts of people like Charles, NASA and other space agencies expanded the playing field beyond Prime Contractors and Cost Plus programs. They moved to Build-to-Order and Public-Private Partnerships which was a game changer for the space industry. Contracts based on competition, performance and fixed price milestones moved more of the risk from governments and space agencies to the private sector.

With New Space we have witnessed the emergence of novel actors, primarily private and their ventures and implications for the global space sector. Some names are known widely like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin. There have been billions invested in startup ventures, not only by VC’s and private equity, but also by the public markets. A dozen NewSpace startups have gone public, or are in the process of going public, using SPACs. The space industry is ready to explode with opportunities that have been unleashed by entrepreneurs.

I am looking forward to the rest of the sessions in the course as we dive deeper now into those opportunities and ventures.

Ad Astra

Back to School

Some of you may have noticed that I write on here about more than just international telecom. There are book reviews, conferences that I attend, the fight against telecom fraud and space. On my twitter feed and LinkedIn there is also more and more about space. Why is that ?

The NewSpace industry is one that has captured my attention and interest. There are so many parallels between what is happening in space right now and where we were in telecom back in the go-go days of liberalization and deregulation in the ’80s and ’90s. From a telecom perspective, there is over a petabyte of data coming down daily just from the Earth Observation satellites. The amount of bandwidth available for providing broadband from space is about to increase 30x ! Telecom edge computing is not just migrating from the data centre to the hyperscalers (AWS, Azure and GCS) but also 1000 km up into Low Earth Orbit (LEO )

Need less to say I am excited about the opportunities. So I am going back to school ; I am lucky enough to have been accepted into the cohort for a live course on the Business and Economics of Space.

The instructor is the brilliant Sinead O’Sullivan. Sinead is a global expert in space economics and early-stage space businesses. Currently at Harvard Business School, she works with governmental space agencies, CEOs and investors to understand space market dynamics, identify sector opportunities, create strategies for growth and execute in challenging environments within the aerospace & defense sector

Beginning her career as an aerospace engineer, she project-managed human spaceflight missions at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, designed a satellite constellation with the Brazilian Space Agency and worked on astronaut training for long-duration missions at the European Space Agency.

Now working in the business and economics of space, she works with emerging national space agencies to develop local space economies within the private, startup sectors. She sits on the Board and Advisory Board of over $1 billion of early-stage space investment funds. She advises and invests in several startups from the earliest pre-seed stage right through to IPO. She is in space-specific leadership positions within prestigious organizations such as Sainsbury Management Fellows, Royal Aeronautical Society, the International Astronautical Federation, the US Center for Climate and Security and the Harvard Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

The course is aimed at Aspiring Founders, Investors and those seeking a career in space related startups or enterprises. There will be guest speakers and cohort members from all aspects of the space industry including SpaceX, NASA, LeoLabs, Virgin Galactic, Axiom Space , RocketLab, Varda, Lux and Founders Fund. The chance to work and build a network of space business leaders is invaluable.

The sessions will cover topics like
1 – The History of Space and the Contemporary Space Agency
2 – Private Sector Space
3 – Space Financing
4 – A Deep Dive into Launch and Satellites
5 – A Deep Dive in Space Tourism and Exploration
6 – Space Law and Geopolitics
7 – Case Study ; Varda Space and In-Orbit Manufacturing
8 – Case Study – Hadrian and On-Earth Manufacturing

This will be vary exciting but also a huge challenge ! I will still be operating AurorA and Amitel, doing my Movember fundraiser by doing 200 Kettlebell swings a day and taking these courses all throughout November. Plus making sure everyone in the family gets a good breakfast and that we eat together at dinner. Nothing I cant handle !

If you are interested you can find more details on this course here

If I find the time, I will try to post an occasional summary on here of what we are learning.

RAG London 2021

Timo selected to the 'Wise Head" Panel
Timo Selected to the ‘Wise Head” Panel

We are only a couple of days away from the Risk and Assurance Group (RAG) London 2021 Conference. I am beyond excited to be able to attend a live, in-person event after so many virtual conferences on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic

The conference will cover revenue assurance, fraud management, cybersecurity, credit risk, billing accuracy, enterprise risk management, data integrity, nuisance prevention, margin optimisation, cost management and other kinds of business assurance.

The formal agenda will be completed by our traditional ‘Wise Heads’ panel of industry veterans who will review the themes covered during the conference and the state of the telecoms industry as it stands in 2021. The wise heads will include: senior manager and long-standing RAG contributor Andreas Manolis of BT; expert consultant and former Ooredoo Group Risk Director Lee Scargall; and Timo Vainionpää, the owner of Canadian wholesaler AurorA International Telecom.

I am honoured and humbled that they would include me as a “Wise Head”

As in previous RAG events, I hope to be able to provide some coverage of the days events here on my blog. Stay tuned as I cross the Atlantic to join my telecom industry fraud experts at the fabulous Sheraton Skyline Hotel.

You can find more details about the RAG London 2021 conference here.

AurorA guests on RAG-TV

Timo appearing on RAGTV S2E1
Timo on RAGTV S2E1 with hosts Eric Priezkalns and Lee Scargall

On Wednesday, June 17, 2020 I had the honour of appearing on the opening episode of Season 2 of RAG-TV, the online streaming show of the Risk and Assurance Group. Their virtual conference in May was seen by over 2,000 telecom industry pros in over 93 countries ! Read more about that here and here.

RAG ia an association for telco professionals involved in all aspects of Revenue Assurance; fraud management, enterprise risk management, law enforcement liaison, credit risk, market assurance, capex analysis and security. Actually, association sounds too stuffy, a club is a better description. A club of like minded telecom fraud and risk managers wanting to get better and improve.

Commsrisk described the episode like this
“Telcos come in all shapes and sizes, from the hundreds of millions of customers served by an Indian mobile network like Jio, and the extensive multi-country operations and carrier function of a group like Vodafone, to telcos that serve tiny island nations and small, focused international carriers like AurorA International Telecom, based in Waterloo, Canada. They all need to work together in order to connect phone users whilst fighting the rouge elements that plague our industry.”

“AurorA’s Timo Vainionpää and LATRO Services’ Donald Reinhart were the guests for the first episode of the new season of RAG Television, giving me the opportunity to ask them about the factors that encourage bypass fraud and what can be done to identify and compete with gray routing. Watch the replay of the show below.”

Watch here !

Elon is not coming to rescue Canada’s remote broadband

Elon Musk and StarLink
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and the StarLink constellation

The telecom press in Canada has been gushing over the news that Elon Musk and his company SpaceX has visions of coming to Canada to provide super-fast Internet service to rural and remote Canadians via their StarLink LEO (low Earth orbit) satellite constellation.

Please take a step back. Pause. Take a deep breath. Just stop it.

This is not imminent, it may never happen. In fact it probably will never happen.

First off, SpaceX only applied for a BITS licence. BITS is Basic International Telecom Service. AurorA has a BITS licence (in fact I believe AurorA had the first BITS licence provided to a non-facilities based carrier). This does not provide StarLink the spectrum required to operate in Canada. OneWeb had licensed Canadian spectrum (through 1021823 B.C. Ltd.) and so does Telesat for their proposed LEO constellation. SpaceX hasn’t yet applied for a Canadian spectrum licence (as far as I know).

The model of “connecting the unconnected”, providing broadband Internet service to the 3.5 billion people in the world that don’t have it has been around for decades. I remember the old Teledesic and Skybridge proposals, ICO, Iridium and GlobalStar who all went bankrupt. Iridium emerged from Chapter 11 eventually after a huge amount of drama (see my review of a great book on Iridium). More recently OneWeb who had already launched 74 satellites went bankrupt in March (read here) and before that LEOSat last November. As an aside, even Intelsat went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May.

Elon’s SpaceX has 362 satellites in orbit, but to actually provide service their plans call for 4,000 satellites just in the first phase deployment. To do this takes money; SpaceX need billions, and soon, to satisfy its high cash burn rate. It’s not making near enough revenue launching satellites (and astronauts) from others to cover the costs of it unpaid Starlink launches. This is also why they are desperately trying to be included in the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction to get a piece of up to $16B in funding, even though they cant demonstrate that they can actually provide service (and may be fudging the latency numbers, hard to prove since you cant actually test it) !

There are very few investors that can write the cheques big enough to fund an LEO sat constellation. Even large investors like Softbank balked at committing additional risk capital to a single investment like OneWeb. The history of bankrupt constellations would bear that out. COVID-19 has made raising money for risky ventures even harder. Building the business case is difficult; it costs too much money to make money, even for a SpaceX that has re-invented rockets and dropped the price of launching satellites.

LEO satellite constellations, especially using small nano satellites can provide great services for many use cases; Earth observation, low data rate iOT or M2M, remote asset tracking, weather data and even imaging. GEO sats can provide great high throughput required for TV and telecommunications, but they provide poor connectivity at Northern latitudes like Canada’s Arctic. The use case of providing broadband Internet for the unconnected is just not suited for LEO.

To connect those 3.5 billion people to the Internet requires not only the huge investment in satellites and ground infrastructure (plus legal/regulatory, and non-trivial insurance costs) but also an inexpensive antenna/receiver for the consumer to be able to plug in themselves to access the service. Given that the terminals will be in remote areas they will need to be low power usage. By definition those places are off the grid. Since the LEO sats move quickly across the sky, the tracking antenna must be sophisticated, like a electronic phased array. No one has yet to produce such a low-cost, low power terminal device.

When the constellation is finally setup, the satellites would cover the entirety of the Earth’s surface. Ninety percent of the time this would be over open water, frozen tundra, wilderness and deserts devoid of people. So a business case dependent on a use case like consumer broadband would not generate revenue 90% of the time ! In areas like Africa or the Amazon, the surface is covered by jungle. The signal won’t penetrate through thick vegetation, limiting its usefulness. Finally, how much would people actually pay to use the service ? Has Elon gone out and talked to the people in emerging markets and asked them what they need and what they can afford ? What about when that area finally gets served via a cable or fixed wireless that can provide service for an order of magnitude less ? Eventually even Nunavut will get service by one or more sub-sea fiber optic cables.

So where exactly are the customers going to come from to justify the immense capital cost of building the constellation ?

The other problem that LEO sat constellations have to solve before we actually see this service launched is the one that they create themselves by launching thousands of satellites to do so. Space debris. Low Earth orbit is already crowded with dysfunctional satellites and space debris. What happens if, no when, a StarLink satellite malfunctions or becomes derelict or collides with other satellites or space debris. The attraction of low cost sats is that they are made with commercial off-the shelf components for a fraction of what traditional GEO sats cost. But given their disposability we are going to have a huge increase in space junk.

Without strict regulatory oversight (and who would be responsible for this in space ?) and the non-zero chance of failures and malfunctions, we could see a runaway feedback loop creating tons of space debris, called the Kessler syndrome. These concerns and liabilities have still not been fully addressed for the large volume LEO constellations.

Until StarLink (or any other LEO Sat constellation) actually builds and operates a constellation without going bankrupt, solves the physics of providing low cost-low power consumer terminal equipment and can guarantee they won’t destroy low Earth orbit with space debris for succeeding generations don’t hold your breath for cheap sat based broadband service in Canada’s rural and remote areas.

Instead of waiting for Elon, Canadians should take control of their own future and build more Arctic fiber optic cables.