Podcast
Conversations with the people building the capability
Long-form interviews with leaders in space exploration technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, policy and more — the disciplines that determine how far the numbers in the Expansion Report move.
Who we talk to
Guests are drawn from across the fields that decide whether operating beyond Earth becomes routine:
| Field | What we ask about |
|---|---|
| Space exploration technologies | Launch, power, propulsion and the hardware that has to survive somewhere else |
| Robotics | Surface and orbital systems, mobility, manipulation, and operating without a person in the loop |
| Artificial intelligence | Onboard autonomy, planning under communication delay, and what a spacecraft can be trusted to decide |
| Policy | How missions get funded, authorised and sequenced, and what that does to the pace of capability |
| And adjacent fields | Materials, life support, planetary science, and anyone whose work changes what is possible off Earth |
Why it exists
The Expansion Report records outcomes: how much hardware operates without ground in the loop, and how many missions it takes to reach somewhere new. It does not capture the reasoning behind those outcomes — the constraints a team worked around, the approach that was abandoned, the problem that turned out to be harder than expected.
That reasoning is where the next decade of the figures is decided, and most of it is never written down. The podcast is an attempt to record it while it is still being worked out, in conversations long enough for the technical detail to survive.
Episodes are intended to stand on their own. Familiarity with the report is not assumed.
Status
The podcast is in development and no episodes have been released. This page will list them as they are published, with transcripts. To suggest a guest, open an issue or write to corrections@example.org.