I'm John Batcher. Behind the Black, Bob Zimmerman keeps the website behind the black, space engineering and space exploration. We begin with a new term for space engineering. Golden Dome. Contracts have been issued. Space Force issued them. I thought Golden Dome was about defending North America, defending the Western Hemisphere, but I believe it has a low-earth orbit element.

I'm not sure, though.

Bob, what is Golden Dome?

Who is participating that makes it into low-earth orbit?

Good evening to you.

Good evening, John.

Well, you know, the truth is we really don't know what it will be yet.

The idea is to develop some kind of defense system that is maybe orbital, maybe not,

that will protect the United States and North America from attack, from airborne attack,

from missiles, from drones, from whatever. It's an upgrade of the idea that Reagan

opposed the strategic defense system back in the 80s.

Trump has proposed that as Golden Dome is a more sophisticated approach.

Of course, we have better technology today, so there's a possibility that might be much more practical than even then.

And then it wasn't that impractical.

So this week, the Space Force issued preliminary contracts, developmental contracts to 12 different companies. The total worth of the

contracts, all 12 of them, is $3.2 billion. This is not going to build Golden Dome. It is proposed to the, it is contracts for

these companies to, quote, develop prototypes of a space-based architecture that can shoot down

enemy missiles after they have launched. And of course, there's other components involved. Not some of

the companies that are one of contracts, spaced, very clearly aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX. But others such as Anderrell and I think True Anomily and Turian are more based software in other areas. And so we're going to have to see how this plays out.

This is preliminary contracts to see what kind of ideas these companies come up with.

And then they'll go further and with bigger money down the road.

Space stations, their new startups.

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