Happy birthday Bob Zimmerman for Behind the Black. I'm John Batchelor. We've got great promise in commercial space.

We're going to start with France and Germany working together. Bob, what has happened?

Well, actually what we have is we have three stories now about new startups in the rocket industry and in the space industry.

First, a French startup called the Exploration Company has won a major contract from Germany.

Germany Space Agency has issued a contract making it an anchor customer for the exploration company's Nix capsule. This is a reusable capsule that they're building to provide cargo to the various space

stations under development.

But these cargo capsules that are returnable to Earth safely have other potential profit

centers.

One of them is to do research and manufacturing in orbit and then bring the products back

to Earth.

Vodder, the American company has already demonstrated this can work.

And so the exploration company has gotten a deal with Germany Space Agency DLA to use NICS

for that kind of research specifically.

And so that's just another profit center of these new companies, and they

have demonstrated in Europe.

Similarly, another story,

an Australian rocket

startup, Gilmore Space, has now

finally gotten all its permits

for launching out of its own private

space port on the east coast of Australia.

I've got a map on behind the black, so you can see where it is.

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