Hi everybody. Welcome to Shift, a podcast about mobility. I'm Pete Bigelow, your host and reporter at the Automotive News.

Hi everyone is Leslie Allen, editor of Shift magazine. And it's Alexa St. John, covering

Tech and suppliers. We're going in a bit of an unusual direction on today's

podcast, leaving our normal ground-based mobility orbit, so to speak, and talking

about the burgeoning commercial space industry, not just because it's an interesting topic, but because there's a growing connection between the traditional auto industry and aerospace industry.

And because the 5G networks that autonomous vehicles might someday rely upon

will be underpinned by satellites,

and because there's actually a history of the

auto industry contributing to space efforts. You know Pete when I think the auto

industry and aerospace my mind almost automatically goes to

Elon Musk but you haven't mentioned him yet are you talking at all about Musk

and SpaceX here in the broadest sense a little bit we are. Yes, I think that's probably the most

obvious connection between a

Automotive icon and the the space industry of course, but today we're looking more at Michigan's efforts to join the

commercial space race and we're talking to two people who are leading those endeavors.

So Leslie, who do we have on tap today?

Well, first, we're joined by Adam Call.

He's the co-founder and director of technology at Carl Morris, Inc. a startup based in Marquette, Michigan that is pioneering the retrieval of space garbage, which is a necessary task as more and more satellites are launched.

Then we're going to be talking to Gavin Brown.

Gavin is Executive Director of the Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association. He is the brains behind an effort to create a

horizontal launch site in Northeast Michigan and the leader of a strategy to turn Michigan into a commercial space leader.

Leslie, he presented a plan relatively recently at the North American Space Summit in Traverse City back in August. What did you learn about that?

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