Stephen McCall followed his passion for aerospace and defense by establishing Cislunar International in 2024. Prior to his current role, Stephen was Head of Government Relations at Firefly Aerospace, where he led global affairs at the federal, state, local, and international level. Before joining Firefly, he served 23 years of federal service. Most notably, he was a senior advisor in military space, missile defense, and defense innovation in the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). In this role, he provided critical authoritative research and analysis to Members of Congress on various foreign and domestic issues relating to space policy, missile defense capabilities, national security space launch, and innovation in the Department of Defense (DOD).

Prior to his legislative appointment, Stephen served nearly 20 years as a career civilian in the Defense Department as a level Ill space professional. He held various leadership roles to include division branch chief for the Science & Technology Branch at Headquarters Air Combat Command, Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. He culminated his executive branch tenure as a Congressional Fellow for the U.S. Senate.

Stephen is a distinguished military veteran of the U.S. Air Force. Outside of his national security career, Stephen is a proud single Dad of two sons (Santiago and Julian) through international adoption. He is also an international keynote, Amazon best-selling author, an off-Broadway playwright, producer, and performer and was recently honored as "Top Lobbyist of the Year" for 2023.

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The United States has not been back to the moon since 1972, but other nations certainly have. Today we talk about the ups and downs of the lunar initiatives both domestically and internationally.

Image Credit: Intuitive Machines

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Visit Chasing-Space.com for more content!

You can also find us on:

Twitter: @ChasingSpacePod

Linkedin: Chasing Space

Special thanks to Jóse Arcos with OOOTWD for outstanding branding & graphics!

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are solely those of the host and do not reflect the views or opinions of any affiliated organizations or entities.

Jake Cornish has led the progress, launch, and deployment of small satellites to the International Space Station and launch vehicles across the space industry. To date, Jake has coordinated the launch and deployment of 200+ satellites into low Earth orbit, across seven different launch vehicles, collaborating with satellite providers around the globe.

After graduating with a degree in Spaceflight Operations from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Jake started as a Mission Manager at Nanoracks deploying satellites from the International Space Station, primarily for NASA customers. Eventually he worked his way to a Program manager position overseeing all payloads from Nanoracks that ended up external to the ISS, hosted payload or deployable. While in this position he interfaced with NASA, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, and a host of other customers around the world and Small Launch Vehicles. He led design efforts for new products, built a team of experienced mission managers and even aided in the efforts to launch the Bishop Airlock on board the ISS. Eventually after 5 years at Nanoracks, Jake moved over to Exolaunch to help their team establish a strong US presence, and build a pipeline of government and commercial customers in the United States.

As the US Launch Director at Exolaunch, Jake is responsible for maintaining Exolaunch's US based contracts, ensuring execution of all aspects of a satellites lifecycle, up to and through launch. Jake supports launch campaigns as a Mission Manager, but also helps ensure Exolaunch's US business is prepared to take on the biggest of Government and commercial customers.

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You can also find us on:

Twitter: @ChasingSpacePod

Linkedin: Chasing Space

Special thanks to Jóse Arcos with OOOTWD for outstanding branding & graphics!

The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are solely those of the host and do not reflect the views or opinions of any affiliated organizations or entities.