In Conversation with Anne Weaver, Executive Vice President, Glen Echo Group, and Dan O’Mahoney, Managing Director, Inkhouse

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When Artemis II splashed into the Pacific a little over a month ago, more than 27 million people were glued to their screens. The 10-day flight captured America’s hearts, showering the country with hope, fascination, wonder, and faith in humankind. 

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According to Anne Weaver, an Executive Vice President at public affairs firm Glen Echo Group in Washington, D.C., who leads the firm’s broadband and connectivity practice, the draw to space has always been that “our journey to get there captures the best of humanity.” 

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At a time when headlines are littered with fears of technological displacement and economic instability, people cling to stories that make them feel good. This has always rung true, especially for space. 

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“The stories that catch attention [in space] aren’t the propulsion technology or the thermal protection systems. For the Artemis II mission, it was Carroll — the late wife of Commander Reid Wiseman — whom the astronauts honored mid-flight by naming a crater for her. It was the meals and the malfunctioning toilet. People care about regular human stories. In our work, it’s a reminder to lead with the human, the real, and the personal. We’ll get to the physics later,” shared Anne.

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Managing Director of Inkhouse Dan O’Mahony agrees. “Most of us grew up in a time when the entire earth was explored, understood, and cataloged,” he said. “We’ve read about explorers and people migrating to new places. Our world is so interconnected that a distant, mysterious, and dangerous place is incredibly unique and exciting.” 

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But Dan also believes there’s also “innate tension between the very visual representation of space exploration that we saw with the Artemis II mission coverage and the reality of the hardware and software that make up those very technologies that we rely on.” 

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That tension extends far beyond the launchpad. 

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There’s the public’s romanticized view of space exploration and the quieter realities beneath it—warfare, cybersecurity risks, questions of ownership and governance, commercial competition, and the infrastructure that powers it all. 

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Orchestra companies Inkhouse and the Glen Echo Group each have deep expertise in the space industry, with an understanding of the ins and outs of both private-industry communications and public affairs strategies related to regulation and policy. Telling the stories behind the technology of space changes depending on who you’re talking to, taking into account the differing perspectives between those in our nation’s capital (where space policy has always taken place) and Silicon Valley (where the privatization of space has taken shape) on the industry’s trajectory. 

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But even if the coasts approach the space economy from different angles, both agree that, for all its spectacle and symbolism, space is ultimately an infrastructure that touches every part of modern life.

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Below is our conversation with Dan and Anne, where they discuss how communicators in the space (again, pun intended) can navigate that tension and keep the story grounded in what has always mattered most: people. 

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What does the rise of commercial space and consumer satellite broadband say about the future of the space economy?

DO: Space is now not just government rockets and satellites. There are commercial entities sending people to space, satellites providing internet service, and talk of terraforming Mars. It’s a broader ecosystem. This has also made space a wilder and more contested environment, since orbit has gotten cluttered and we depend on space infrastructure in our day-to-day lives.

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AW: Space is now consumer-facing. For a long time, satellite broadband has provided services to governments and enterprises, supporting everything from military and GPS applications to weather services and cruise ships. But with the advent of low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband, consumers are now a key demographic for satellite companies. And that’s all because of innovation in this sector. This isn’t your mother’s satellite broadband — it’s fiber-like, and it’s a product that people actually want to use to connect.

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SpaceX’s upcoming IPO is bound to change the game. What should communicators keep in mind when looking to join the conversation about space? 

AW: Learn the landscape and the issues, and then talk about them so an eighth-grader could understand them. It literally is rocket science, but it also needs to be understood.

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DO: We also take for granted that the general public isn’t incredibly aware of how the space industry is taking shape right now. Not everyone is paying close attention to how many companies are raising millions of dollars and are launching assets into space. Nor do they realize how much of our lives is based on space-based machinery. 

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AW: Right, I do think there’s some conflict between the general American’s perception of space vs. the reality. We can get fixated on going to the moon, but there’s so much to think about. It’s not just astronauts. 

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DO: Exactly. Because SpaceX is going public, we can take a look at its financials. And while they have a launch side to their business, almost all of the company’s money comes from Starlink. 

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More often than not, space really is about what services you can offer to Earth. Space is so interesting, exciting, and evocative, but a lot of what makes up ‘space business’ is kind of boring.

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As a comms professional, how do you bridge those two realities? You’re launching a rocket with a satellite that goes into space, has thrusters, is solar-powered forever, and is used to track ships that move across the ocean. 

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So it’s the hardware that’s exciting, even if the service being offered is sort of mundane. Companies that highlight their team, their product, and their manufacturing facilities can generate real excitement. Often, the building is the most inspiring part, not their use case, but how hard it is to do what they are doing. 

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AW: It really is a story of logistics. 

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The way this stuff is happening is jamming and spoofing satellites in space – we just talk about it differently. A lot of conversations in Washington are about the need for a GPS backup. GPS is not only how we get Google Maps directions, but it’s also how we tell time as a society. If GPS goes down, the financial markets crash, and chaos could ensue. It’s pretty existential – the threats are really serious and could happen at any time, so companies also have to position themselves as leaders in the face of potential cyberattacks. 

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DO: And for any company that is operating in space domain awareness or that has assets in orbit, the challenge is that the things they want to say, they most likely can’t. I think it’s probably going to start to become a bigger deal over the next few years. Geopolitical incidents in space could affect everyday people’s lives, which will draw more attention to the companies in the industry. The same thing happened in cybersecurity. 

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What policy and regulatory considerations should companies engaged in the space industry be keeping in mind? 

AW: Space is a wildly interesting industry from a public affairs perspective because its issues cross so many different agencies and sectors. It’s not just NASA — it’s the FAA for launch and reentry, the Pentagon for partnerships with the military, the FCC for licensing and spectrum issues, the EPA for permitting, Commerce and NTIA for space traffic coordination, and some satellite broadband funding — and that’s just domestically. The Director of Space Commerce recently compared space regulations to the Spider-Man meme, where everyone is pointing at each other. It’s complicated!

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Today’s top issues are policies surrounding launch, licensing, direct-to-device offerings, and space sustainability. But one underdiscussed forum for these issues is the upcoming World Radio Conference (WRC) in Shanghai, a meeting of international telecommunications regulators that occurs every four years. It is, as I like to call it, the Telecom Olympics. At WRC-27, regulators will tackle several key policies shaping the future of satellite operators, including power limits and other technical rules that could create a new global framework for space policy. It’s something to watch. 

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What do you see as the biggest economic opportunities in space right now that comms leaders should pay close attention to? 

DO: I think there are a few markets that we’ll see continue to grow: 

1. Infra/services for Earth: If you look at SpaceX’s S-1, the vast majority of their revenue is coming from Starlink, which provides internet connectivity across the globe. There’s still room for TV/radio, telecom, emergency services, GPS, and many other services. 
2. Orbital intelligence: With more launches and more satellites, there is a need for increased monitoring of space activity to avoid collisions. 
3. Travel/tourism: This one catches the most eyeballs but still seems financially out of reach for 99% or more of people.

AW: I like Dan’s list, but I’d also add that satellite broadband still offers major economic opportunities for companies, both with consumer and business customers. More than 2 billion people globally still lack internet access, and this digital divide particularly affects rural populations. Today’s LEO broadband providers have the opportunity to enter new markets and connect these folks and their businesses. 

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Dan O’Mahony is Managing Director at Inkhouse. He oversees Inkhouse’s growth in the western U.S., building company culture, ensuring client service excellence, and helping drive the agency’s expansion into new services.

Anne Weaver is an Executive Vice President at Glen Echo Group, where she leads the firm’s broadband and connectivity practice.

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