Celestial Citizen

On today's episode, we're thrilled to be joined by New York Times Bestselling Author Daniel Suarez to discuss his latest space-tech thriller and new book Critical Mass.  Fans of Delta-v, one of his previous novels, will be delighted to pick back up where the previous crew left off!  We’ll be discussing Daniel’s inspiration behind these novels, what to expect from Critical Mass which is set to publicly release on January 31st (you can pre-order now!), and what he believes lies ahead for the future of the space industry.

Daniel Suarez is a New York Times bestselling author, TEDGlobal speaker, and former systems analyst whose unique brand of high-tech fiction explores the causes and impacts of rapid technological change.  The author of seven novels, he has a track record of anticipating what's next, and his latest book, Critical Mass (due out from Dutton Publishing on January 31, 2023) brings readers on a daring journey to the new frontier of private space exploration.  The second book in the Delta-v series, Critical Mass realistically portrays humanity's urgent transition from an Earthbound to a spacefaring civilization -- and brings home the message of why that's critical to our future.

We also want to extend a big thank you to our sponsors this year for supporting our show!

Learn more about our Gold Sponsor Multiverse Media, an integrated media company focusing on space exploration, science, and technology, and check out the Cislunar Market Opportunities report produced by NewSpace Global, a Multiverse Media property, for a snapshot and user guide to the players and opportunities ahead for the cislunar economy.  To get your own copy please go to cislunar.report and use coupon code citizen10 for 10% off a single user license.

Learn more about our Silver Sponsor the Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program, a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary program that offers Certificate, Master of Science, and Ph.D. degrees for professionals around the world interested in the emerging field of extraterrestrial resources here.

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On today's episode, we will be discussing the intersection of space science, climate change and policy.  How can space technology and geospatial data improve our ability to tackle the daunting environmental challenges we see before us?  And what does a positive and integrated Earth-Space future look like?  We'll cover all of this and more.

On today’s show we are joined by Dr. Raha Hakimdavar.

Dr. Hakimdavar is the Director of Space Sciences at Ball Aerospace, where she develops civil space business strategy and leads engagements with the government and broader space sciences community.  Previously, Dr. Hakimdavar served as a hydrologist and acting national program lead in remote sensing and geospatial analysis research at the USDA Forest Service, where she developed innovative approaches to manage forest and aquatic resources in the United States and internationally.  She led research on the integration of space data into the UN Sustainable Development Goals and developed a whole of government framework for a global hydrology model to assess water risk during her Presidential Management Fellowship appointment at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  Dr. Hakimdavar has consulted for UN Environment and the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America, notably helping to establish the first remote hydro-meteorological network for disaster risk reduction, agroforestry, and hydropower development in the South Department of Haiti.  She is also an adjunct professor in water and climate science at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Dr. Hakimdavar earned a B.S. in civil engineering from California State Polytechnic University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering with an emphasis on hydrology from Columbia University.  She was a Fulbright Scholar in the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and was awarded the KLM Airlines Sustainability and Innovation award for her work and research on hydro-ecology. 

We also want to extend a big thank you to our sponsors this year for supporting our show!

Learn more about our Gold Sponsor Multiverse Media, an integrated media company focusing on space exploration, science, and technology, and check out the Cislunar Market Opportunities report produced by NewSpace Global, a Multiverse Media property, for a snapshot and user guide to the players and opportunities ahead for the cislunar economy.  To get your own copy please go to cislunar.report and use coupon code citizen10 for 10% off a single user license.
 
Learn more about our Silver Sponsor the Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program, a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary program that offers Certificate, Master of Science, and Ph.D. degrees for professionals around the world interested in the emerging field of extraterrestrial resources here.

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Welcome to another episode and another season of Celestial Citizen Podcast!

Today, we will be discussing all things asteroids – especially fitting given the recent successful NASA DART (or Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission toward the end of 2022.  We’ll be speaking with astronomer Dr. Martin Elvis and diving into his book – Asteroids: How Love, Fear, and Greed Will Determine Our Future in Space – it’s a fascinating and informative read for anyone interested in learning more about how asteroids could influence the future of space exploration.

On today’s show we are joined by Dr. Martin Elvis.

Dr. Elvis is an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory which is a collaborative research effort alongside Harvard University and it is now known as the Center for Astrophysics.  Dr. Elvis has obsessed for years over how supermassive black holes come to be seen as quasars, sources so bright that we see them out to the greatest distances and earliest times in the universe.  For his PhD, Dr. Elvis discovered that quasars emit X-rays.  And at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, using a fleet of space and ground based telescopes he mapped out the spectrum of quasars from X-rays to ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, and was able to suggest their inner structures.  Concerned about the growing expense of space telescopes, Dr. Elvis has turned to researching how astronomy is needed to enable asteroid mining.  He has since published widely on issues related to asteroid mining and the space economy, law and ethics, and even has Asteroid 9283 Martinelvis named after him.

We also want to extend a big thank you to our sponsors this year for supporting our show!

Learn more about our Gold Sponsor Multiverse Media, an integrated media company focusing on space exploration, science, and technology, and check out their new title, Space Education: Preparing Students for Humanity’s Multi-Planet Future, aimed at teachers, academics, parents, entrepreneurs, and leaders by educator Mark Wagner.

Learn more about our Silver Sponsor the Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program, a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary program that offers Certificate, Master of Science, and Ph.D. degrees for professionals around the world interested in the emerging field of extraterrestrial resources here. 

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Welcome to a special state of space episode from Celestial Citizen Podcast!

Today, we will be doing a deep dive into the current state of the market and space economy – a particularly timely conversation especially given the recent macroeconomic climate and potential slow down for the sector that has been the topic of many conversations in this community.  How concerned should we be for the future of space investing?  And since there is always a silver lining – where are the current opportunities and positive outcomes?

On today’s show we are joined by Justus Kilian.

Justus is a Partner at Space Capital, a $100M seed-stage venture firm investing in the space economy.  He serves on the Board of ClearRoad and Lunar Outpost.  Justus also leads Space Talent, the largest career platform at the intersection of space and tech.  He previously worked at Acumen, a $250M early-stage venture firm investing in emerging markets.  Prior to that, he worked at Merrill Lynch where he specialized in private market investments and managed $6B in assets.  Justus holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). 

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Can’t wait for Season 4 of Celestial Citizen Podcast?  Well, here is a special bonus episode while you wait… Earlier this year, the Celestial Citizen team had the opportunity to cover the Explore Mars Humans to Mars Summit 2022 in Washington, D.C.

How will humanity return to the Moon by the mid-2020s and go to Mars by the mid-2030s?  How can innovations that enable human missions to the Moon and Mars benefit humanity?  If we find life on Mars, what next?

These were just a few of the fascinating topics that were explored at the 2022 Humans to Mars Summit (H2M) that took place on May 17-19, 2022, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.  The Human to Mars Summit is the annual conference of Explore Mars, Inc., and is the largest annual conference in the world dedicated to the goal of a sustainable human presence on Mars starting no later than the 2030s.

And the Celestial Citizen team was thrilled to document the event through video, and now, audio!

In this episode, you can follow along as I talk to different speakers, panelists, and attendees of the Humans to Mars Summit.  Some of these guests you may even recognize from past episodes of the podcast!  And it’s not too late to start making plans for attending next year’s summit...

In fact, you can already register for the 2023 Humans to Mars Summit, taking place May 16-18th at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C: https://www.exploremars.org/summit/

Now, onto the Humans to Mars Summit!

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On this week's episode, we'll celebrate the wrap of Season 3 and take a look at some of the highlights from the past sixteen weeks of Celestial Citizen Podcast!  We hope you enjoy a recap of some of the conversations that are helping guide what a future space community will look like.  Let’s live up to our celestial potential together!

As we close out this season, I want to extend a massive thank you to our guests that have boldly shared their knowledge, insights, and perspectives on what it will take to make the future of space exploration more inclusive and representative of all humanity.  And an equally big thank you to our community of listeners who inspire the work that we do at Celestial Citizen.  Your attention, engagement, and passion for the space industry is something that we are privileged to be the recipient of and we strive to be worthy of it. We are honored to have you in our celestial community.

Thank you also to this show’s editor Victor Figueroa who brings these conversations to life, Graham Clark who created the amazing intro and outro music for this podcast, Evan Yee & Helen Floersh for additional support, and Morgan Denman for graphic design.  And of course, our wonderful sponsors this season: Zeno Power, Multiverse Media Group, and Mission: AstroAccess!

Until next season…don’t be afraid to take up space!

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On this week's episode, we're joined by the CEO and founder of IgnitedThinkers, Gitika Gorthi.  We’ll discuss how space education can extend the reach and impact of the industry, as well as, the best ways to ignite a passion for the cosmos in Gen Z.
 
Gitika is the founder and CEO of IgnitedThinkers, a non-profit organization that she founded in the 8th-grade to spread space education and her love for aerospace to students across the world.  She is an incoming freshman at Columbia University in their College of Engineering and Applied Science as a Davis Scholar.  Gitika is an aspiring aerospace physician, medical researcher, and astronaut.

Through IgnitedThinkers, Gitika is working towards breaking the glass ceiling for minorities in the aerospace industry, incorporating more hands-on research space science-based activities into elementary education curriculums, and igniting the passions of all students by providing them the opportunity to explore and create.  IgnitedThinkers' mission and vision statement are simple: to ignite, inform, and inspire students across the world.

Conducting medical research at the Baylor College of Medicine Space Medicine Center, researching wind turbines at the University of Central Florida at Raghavan Research Group, working with professor Dr. Prasanta Pal from Brown University to develop telemedicine technology, student researcher at Columbia Medical School Center for Radiological Research, and interning last summer at NASA Ames Research Center at GeneLab, Gitika is climbing towards her goals going into aerospace medicine research.  Gitika is extremely excited about the new understanding studying humans in space will bring to treat diseases here on Earth and the medical technological advancements that will occur on Earth with the greater utilization of telemedicine for deep-space exploration missions.  Most recently, Gitika was named one of the Top 100 Women in Aerospace and Aviation Professionals to Follow on LinkedIn in 2022.  The future of aerospace is exciting, and Gitika is working to make it a more diverse and equitable environment for everyone.

Furthermore, Gitika is a 2021-2022 Teen Board of Director of the Girl Scout Nation’s Capital and 2020-2022 Girls Advisory Board Member for Girl Scouts USA.  She provides strategic advice to help make the scouting program more diverse, equitable, and inclusive for all girls.

Also, a special shout-out and thank you to our sponsor for this episode, Mission: AstroAccess!  Mission: AstroAccess is a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion in space exploration.  AstroAccess is launching disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes, and artists on parabolic flights with the Zero Gravity Corporation as the first step in a progression toward flying a diverse range of folks to outer space.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz.  We’ll discuss the ethics of space exploration, the JustSpace Alliance, policing in space, and how to bring more of the public into conversations about humanity’s collective future both on- and off-Earth.

Lucianne is an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the co-founder of the JustSpace Alliance.  Walkowicz studies the ethics of space exploration, stellar magnetic activity, how stars influence a planet’s suitability as a host for alien life, and how to use advanced computing to discover unusual events in large astronomical data sets.  From 2017-2018, they were the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/LOC Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress.  Walkowicz is the founding director of the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program, an initiative to provide astronomy graduate students with training in advanced computing. Walkowicz speaks and writes regularly on topics at the intersection of science and society, which have appeared on TED.com, Slate, The Washington Post, Vox, and more.  Walkowicz holds a B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from Johns Hopkins University, an MS and PhD in Astronomy from the University of Washington, and held postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and Princeton prior to joining the Adler Planetarium.  They are also a TED Senior Fellow and a practicing artist, working in a variety of media, from performance to sound.

Also, a special shout-out and thank you to our lead sponsor this season, Multiverse Media Group!  For more information about Multiverse Media Group and their recent documentary, The High Frontier, check out https://thehighfrontiermovie.com/.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver.  We’ll be diving into Lori’s riveting new book – Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age.  We’ll also be talking about the pivotal role that Lori played in the transition to the new space economy and what lies ahead for the industry.

Lori Garver led the NASA transition team for President-elect Barack Obama and served as Deputy Administrator of NASA from 2009 - 2013.  Garver is the recipient of the 2021 Public Service Award for AIAA, the 2021 Heinlein Award for the National Space Society, and the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award for Women in Aerospace and has been awarded three NASA Distinguished Service Medals.

Also, a special shout-out and thank you to our lead sponsor this season, Multiverse Media Group!  For more information about Multiverse Media Group and their recent documentary, The High Frontier, check out https://thehighfrontiermovie.com/.

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On this week's episode, we’re joined by Hunter Williams to talk about a new concept for a lunar electrical grid and explore the various infrastructure, technical, and policy considerations that will be needed to enable lunar surface activities.

Hunter is the technology development manager at Honeybee Robotics.  His focus is on lunar space resource utilization technology, including oxygen production, water harvesting, and lunar polar electrical power.  He is a former NASA research fellow in solar regolith melting technology and a site expert in additive manufacturing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems at Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Hunter is pursuing a PhD in Space Resources from the Colorado School of Mines.

Also, a special shout-out and thank you to our lead sponsor this season, Multiverse Media Group!  For more information about Multiverse Media Group and their recent documentary, The High Frontier, check out https://thehighfrontiermovie.com/.

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