Who can measure optical performance under vacuum, for U.S. defense customers?
The four-way comparison behind the FORGE thesis. The columns are the strongest alternatives, the cells say only what the sources support, and anything unverified says uncertain. The Constanellis cells say in build-out, because that is what they are; the day they say yes, they will say it with data.
| Capability | Federal labs Government, in house | Commercial test houses U.S. environmental screening | Foreign commercial Allied nation, export-controlled path | Constanellis FORGE Colorado, build-out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-vacuum optical performance characterization Screening proves a part survives the environment. Performance characterization proves what it does inside it. | in house only | no | yes | in build-out |
| Optical and mechanical verification under vacuum, sold commercially | no | no | yes | in build-out |
| Environmental screening (survival) Screening is the commercial test houses' core business. | in house only | yes | uncertain | in build-out |
| Available to U.S. defense customers (ITAR) The ITAR constraint is a row, not a footnote: sending controlled hardware to a foreign provider requires export authorization most programs will not pursue for test services. | in house only | yes | not available to U.S. defense customers | yes |
| Vacuum optical test with NIST-traceable calibration chain Calibration-chain details for the other providers are not published at the level this table requires; marked uncertain until verified. | uncertain | no | uncertain | in build-out |
Sources: internal market research, verified 1 August 2026. Cells marked uncertain are unverified. Last reviewed 2026-08-01.
The lunar test ecosystem's own reference directories do not track optical, metrology, calibration, traceability, interferometry, wavefront, or alignment as categories at all, and U.S. commercial companies are almost absent from them. There is not yet a word in the field's own index for the capability this table is about. Detail behind that census is available in a briefing.
Every lunar system is an optical system that has never been measured in its own environment.
Laser retroreflectors, ranging arrays, star trackers, optical comms terminals, landing sensors: the hardware the cislunar build-out runs on performs in vacuum, at temperature extremes, and is almost always qualified somewhere else and hoped into service. The nation that closes that measurement gap sets the standard everyone else qualifies against.
That is the seam FORGE is aimed at, and it is why the measurement corpus, not the equipment, is the asset.