Welcome back to the tech policy podcast. I'm Corbyn Barthold. It has been way too long since we have done a space episode, but we are fixing that today.

If you're like me, you were glued to NASA's live feed of the recent Artemis 2 mission.

But that's only one piece of a much bigger story.

The space industry is thriving.

There's so much exciting stuff on the horizon.

New possibilities for satellite constellations, new kinds of rockets, the arrival of AI-driven space operations, new missions to Mars and beyond.

I am delighted to be joined by a proper astrophysicist for this conversation.

Dr. Mechie Desi works with slingshot aerospace on orbital situational awareness and the

challenge of making progress in space sustainable. She's going to walk us through the practical

details of satellites and space travel.

Don't worry, we'll also do the mind-bending stuff, black holes, gravitational waves, and of course,

the Fermi paradox. Mackey, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, COVID. I'm happy to be here.

So you have a very interesting background that is distinct from our typical wonky law policy type

guests. So I'm curious to hear about you. You did your PhD work in black holes and gravitational waves. Please tell us about that. What is it like

studying black holes and what do we learn from them? I did my PhD in the area of theoretical

astrophysics and I focused on what happens to space-time itself when two black holes collide.

So this does happen out there in the universe and when these enormous objects

crash together, they don't just merge quietly, but instead they send ripples out across the fabric of the universe,

and we call them gravitational waves.

So a good analogy is when two huge ships would collide in the middle of the ocean, waves would spread

outward from that collision in every direction, except in this case, the ocean is space-time itself.

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