The Fastwater Blog

Space & defense staffing, decoded

Where the space industry is headed and what it means for the engineers who build it — satellite programs, RF and payload talent, clearances, ITAR & CGP, and the hiring market behind it all.

NASA just bought a new phone line to Mars — and the engineers who build it are already scarce

Blue Origin's ~$700M Mars Telecommunications Network award replaces relay hardware launched in the early 2000s. Why it is a deep-space RF, optical, and navigation engineering story — and where the hiring crunch lands.

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6,500 Earth-observation satellites by 2035 — and the talent bottleneck is in the payloads

Novaspace's new forecast: 6,500+ EO satellites and $155.9B in manufacturing revenue by 2035, driven by sovereign ISR and SAR-optical-RF constellations. Why the hiring crunch lands on payload, RF, and constellation-ops engineers.

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China just landed an orbital-class booster. The reusability race is now global — and so is the fight for launch talent.

LandSpace's Zhuque-3 stuck China's first land recovery of an orbital-class booster the same week Starlink passed 11,000 satellites. What a three-player reusability club means for propulsion, GNC, and structures hiring.

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The Pentagon just turned satellite disposal into a market — and it will strain the industry's rarest talent

DIU and SDA tapped Firefly, D-Orbit USA, and Katalyst Space for deorbit-as-a-service. What the satellite-servicing wave means for RPO, GNC, robotics, and propulsion hiring.

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AI is moving into orbit — and it's about to reshape space engineering hiring

Compute payloads, orbital data centers, and onboard autonomy are jumping from concept to launch manifest. What the orbital-AI wave means for satellite engineering talent.

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Welcome to the Fastwater Staffing blog

Why a staffing firm is writing about satellites: what we'll cover here, from space-industry talent trends to ITAR & CGP hiring, and how to get it in front of your team.

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