About the show
The quest is the story.
Quest to Space is a podcast for the engineers and scientists actively trying to get hardware off the ground. Every episode is one long, practical conversation with someone on the quest — or someone who has already made it — about what the work actually takes.
The show is about process, decisions, and constraints. Not hype, not spectacle. We are interested in how a project moves from an idea to something real: the tradeoffs nobody publishes, the tests that failed, the month the schedule slipped and why.
The host
Host & Founder
Founder of StratoStar — a near-space flight-test company that has flown more than 1,000 missions since 2006.
Season one runs backwards on purpose. Before asking anyone else about their quest, Jason sat on the other side of the microphone: Macy Bussberg interviews him across the opening episodes — how StratoStar started, what two decades of flight operations actually taught him, and why this show needed to exist. From season two the format settles into its normal shape, with Jason asking the questions.
Who it’s for
Engineers and scientists at an undergraduate technical level or higher — most of them actively working on a project, or seriously considering space as a destination. People who want realism, clarity, and community rather than inspiration.
We keep explanations accessible without dumbing them down. If a guest wants to go deep on a subsystem, we go deep on the subsystem.
What every episode should leave you with
A sense of shared struggle
Every team believes they are the only one falling behind. They are not, and hearing someone else say it out loud changes how you read your own schedule.
Something concrete you can use
Specific decisions, specific constraints, specific mistakes. Enough detail that you think more clearly about your own path forward.
An honest look at the road
Progress is nonlinear, uncertain, and shaped by setbacks. We talk about the setbacks, because that is where the useful information lives.
How we interview
The host is a curious peer and a translator of complexity — not an expert handing down advice. We ask clarifying questions to reveal how a guest actually thinks, and we encourage reflection on the decisions that mattered: the tradeoffs, the failures, the recoveries, the things that turned out harder than anyone expected, and what they would do differently.
The guest is the subject. Always.
Who makes it
Quest to Space is produced by StratoStar, a near-space flight-test provider that has flown more than 1,000 missions since 2006. Near-space flight is one possible step among many for the teams we talk to — it is not the point of the show, and it is not what most episodes are about.
The show exists because this knowledge almost never leaves the room. Every team relearns the same hard lessons in private. We would rather put those conversations on the record.