Press
The other half of the story is the finance.
Every space story you run has two halves, and you have the first one covered: somebody explains the rocket and your audience learns how it works. The other half is where the story usually is.
A vehicle fails on ascent and a nine-figure loss has just crystallized. Do you know which financier is counting it? A company announces a Moon mission and nobody asks on air whether a customer has paid for the flight. A stock falls eighty percent and your viewers want to know whether anybody saw it coming, and an analyst usually did. I answer all three on camera, in the time you have, without a graphic.
What I won't do. I'm not a scientist, and I'll tell your anchor so on air before anybody has to guess. Orbital mechanics and propellant chemistry belong to a propulsion engineer or a mission director, and your booker can find excellent ones. Finance is my discipline and it is the only half of this I will speak to. I don't sell anything on television.
Call me when
- A mission fails
Call me and I will tell you who underwrote the vehicle, which financier is counting the losses, and whether the operator has the runway to survive the quarter.
- A big announcement
Whether a paying customer stands behind it, or a rendering does.
- A program is cut
Not the policy fight, the payroll. The machinist in Decatur, Alabama has a stake in that vote and is rarely asked about it.
- A company reports
Lists, merges or folds. The financials, in the language your audience speaks.
- Sovereign money
The Gulf states, India, Japan, Europe. What it buys, and what it expects back.
The questions I get asked
"That rocket cost how much, and who carries the loss?"
Rarely the operator, and rarely the party your audience assumes. The loss is distributed across underwriters, reinsurers and the customer's own balance sheet, and the allocation is usually already a matter of public record.
"Is there a customer, or is there an announcement?"
That's the whole question, and the language gives it away. The memorandum of understanding, which is a document in which two parties agree that they have had a conversation. The "partnership" that was an email thread. "In active discussions," a phrase that has never in the history of commerce meant anything at all.
"Is this a bubble?"
Wrong question. Ask which segments of this industry are already generating revenue against signed contracts, and which are still trading on the benefit of the doubt. I will give your audience both lists, with company names.
Logistics and the kit
I answer my own mail.
Producers: I am on Central time, and I can come to a Houston studio or join you remotely. I do broadcast, podcast, print, on-record quotes, and background when you are not ready to be quoted yet. Live is fine, unscripted is fine, and hostile questions are welcome. You do not need to send your questions ahead.
Running tonight? Email press@meagancrawford.com with URGENT in the subject line and I will call you back inside the hour. If I can't do it, I'll tell you who can.
Two studio headshots at print and web resolution, four working photographs, the biographies at three lengths as plain text, the quotable lines, and the kit itself as a PDF. Event organizers want the speaker kit instead.