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On Episode 189 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with their favorite Newspace Buccaneer, Jeffrey Manber.

When so many people were touting their private spaceflight dreams in the 1980s, Manber took the next enormous stride and actually made it happen. He formed the Office of Space Commerce within the US Department of Commerce at the invitation of the Reagan administration, forged the first commercial relations with the then-Soviet Union, bridged that into the post-USSR period, and was responsible for the first commercial spaceflight to the then-mothballed Soviet-era Mir space station with a crew that stayed there for 70 days.

He then went on to develop a variety of commercial space enterprises, from the first commercial platform to release smallsats from the ISS to initiating the Bishop airlock that became part of the space station. He also started Nanoracks, the first privately developed and standardized satellite deployment mechanism to fly. Finally, he initiated Starlab, the private space station currently under development by Voyager Technologies and a consortium of aerospace companies.

Join us for this very special episode with one of the key founders of NewSpace!

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Space news of the week

• After years of resisting it, SpaceX now plans to go public. Why?

• NASA's loses contact with MAVEN Mars orbiter on the far side of the Red Planet

• 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' clip shows off hammy acting and teen drama, putting fans on yellow alert

• Voyager Technologies - Jeffrey Manber

• Dennis Tito

• How one CEO is trying to get space companies to talk to each other more

• Bishop Airlock

• Starlab Space Station

• Starlab Space

Model Falcon 9!

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About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.