Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetary Radio Extra: A Deep Dive into the New NASA Budget—A New Mission to Europa, But the End of Opportunity?

Episode Date: February 10, 2015

The just-released budget for the US space agency has much that fans of planetary science can be grateful for, though the news is not all pos.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guys, welcome to Planetary Radio. Casey, let me start out with you. Is this just-issued NASA budget something to celebrate? Yeah, I mean, we really think it is. I mean, for no other reason that the numbers are going in the right direction in terms of the top-line budget for NASA. So the president is requesting $18.5 billion, $18.529 if you want to be really detailed. In terms of the request, last year, they requested about a billion dollars less than this. Looking at the change from 2015's request to the 2016 request, it's very much a step in the right direction. Congress did a great thing last

year. They added half a billion dollars to the president's request, pushing NASA up to $18 billion. So this is an improvement onto that. And I think fundamentally what this means is that the administration and Congress are starting to respond to this real consensus among us in the space policy world that as a nation, we ask NASA to do a whole lot of things, from commercial crew to SLS to, of course, all the science and planetary science and aeronautics. And there's always the saying, they have 20 pounds of mission in a 10-pound bag. And this is getting us up to maybe like a 10-and-a-half-pound bag,

but it's a step in the right direction. And that's really important. And I think that even though some people are complaining that it's not as big of a boost as what other science programs are getting, it's still a boost. And I think we should really appreciate that, and it's definitely given them commendation for stepping in the right direction. Break this down for us.

Give us some of the most important elements or components of the budget. Let me actually take a bigger picture look at this and just remind those who are listening that, so NASA's broken down into these things called directorates. NASA doesn't get $18 billion to spend however it wants. It has these kind of somewhat competing internal divisions within itself. You have exploration, which does the SLS and commercial crew. You have space operations, which basically runs the space station. You have science, what's called SMD, Science Mission Directorate.

And that does all the science at NASA. That's roughly $5.3 billion they're asking for this year. So astute listeners will notice that all the science NASA does, earth science, planetary science, astrophysics, heliophysics, all of that science is less than a third of NASA's entire budget. And that's just the way it's been. And we do a lot of science with that. But there's an internal competition for dollars that's kind of important. And so the president is requesting 5.3. That's roughly what the Congress gave it last year. So it's not a huge bump in that, but it's still important because it's bigger than they've requested in recent years. And that gives us a little more breathing room for planetary science. Then drilling down, let's say we have the science at 5.3, we drill down planetary science

within that, they're requesting 1.36 billion. For years now, the Planetary Society has argued one and a half billion for planetary science. And that's what you need really to look at this, to have a balanced program between big flagship missions like the Mars 2020 rover, smaller missions like Discovery, like Dawn going to Ceres, the Discovery mission, and then also healthy amounts for the scientific community to actually do the research with all this data we're pulling back to maintain all the current spacecraft we have out gathering that data,

and then also develop the next generation of technology for these new places we want to go to, like the oceans of Europa, out to Uranus, dusty plains of Mars, and so forth. So that request is low. But again, it's one of those things where it's kind of this glass half full. 1.36 is the largest request that the administration has made in four years. So that's good. Again, kind of a pat on the back. That's a step in the right direction. We're not where we need to be. But honestly, part of that bad news is actually we can look past it a little bit because, A, we want to get it up, and I think we will.

But there's this more important thing that the administration made a request to start a mission to Europa. Folks who are listening may have seen some videos that we've been putting out. We're really excited about this. This mission to Europa, people have been wanting a mission for 20, 25 years. This new start, and we'll talk about this a little bit, but essentially this is the missing piece in the problem of getting a mission to Europa. Congress has been there the last few years giving money for a mission that didn't exist.

The scientific community has ranked Europa very, very highly in terms of its primary goals for big missions in planetary science. The missing piece was that NASA had to formally put the structure and bureaucracy behind making the spacecraft that actually go. That is going to happen now. That is, to me, one of the biggest pieces of news out of this 2016 budget request. And I want to mention for anybody who didn't come to this conversation from the February 9 edition of Planetary Radio that you can hear Bob Pappalardo, who may very well end up being the project scientist for that Europa mission,

talking about this very, very good news there. Casey, who loses in this budget, at least on the planetary science side? Are there some missions that have been left out in the cold? Yes, actually. Funny you mentioned that, Matt. Yes, there is. And so that's the kind of ugly surprise that we found. People could see my tweet stream of consciousness here as I was going through the budget. I was live tweeting. Surprised on, you know, just shocked. Every mission that NASA has obviously costs money to run, right? So you need to pay

for people, even if it's been out there 10 years, say the Opportunity rover on the surface of Mars. You have a team of people who operate it every day. You have engineers, you have scientists who work with the data. You have people planning all the operations and sending up the data. Not a ton of money, but it's not an insignificant amount of money. For Opportunity, it's about $14 million a year. And then there's another mission at the moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which costs about $12 million a year. Both of those missions were completely zeroed out in the 2016 budget, which to me was just kind of shocking, actually, because both missions, they had just finished what's called a Planetary Science Senior Review. And the senior review process, it's an independent board of scientists.

And they sit down every two years for all these missions past their prime life. And they sit down and they evaluate the mission proposals. So we want to keep operating this rover on Mars. What do you want to do with it? Is it actually good science? Is it worth the country's continued investment? LRO, Lunar Consonance Orbiter, and Opportunity, both were ranked very highly, higher actually than Curiosity on that list. And everything actually was recommended

to continue. So it's just kind of shocking that they would zero out both of these and kind of leave them in the cold, as you said, you know, despite doing fantastic science, costing very little money, and just being a great return on investment for the taxpayer. Yeah, literally in the cold. And funny coincidence, sad coincidence, I guess, just about the time that I heard that Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter might be zeroed out in this budget, I got this press release about some more new and very good science done by LRO

looking for water or at least hydrogen compounds up at the pole of the moon. Pretty cool stuff that we can get into another time. Cool, not cold, that is. Yeah, I mean, right. I mean, the point is, the science isn't what's right. It's not like they're not returning good science. They tried to do this a little bit in 2015. They were zeroed out in the base budget. But for pro-level readers, I give you a sticker if you remember this. There was this thing called the OGSI, the Opportunity Growth Security Initiative by the president that was kind of a bonus supplemental budget to go above sequestration level spending caps. Opportunity and LRO were actually tucked away in there. So they were zeroed out in the base, but they still had funding in this extra money request. This one is just flat out no money.

To clarify and to give NASA some credit, I do not think this is NASA's necessarily NASA's decision. I got a tweet response after I was tweeting about this from one of NASA's chief public affairs officers saying that, look, if we can find the money, we're not requesting any money, but if there's extra money, we're going to try to keep these going. So it's not like they're dead set on killing these missions. Most likely, NASA wasn't

allowed to request the money to balance out other priorities, and that's something we can talk about, maybe speculate on. But fundamentally, NASA wants to keep these going. Congress is going to want to keep these going. I'm not too worried that these are zeroed out, but it is, for lack of a better term, irritating. Before we get into a conversation about, more deeply anyway, about process there inside the beltway that we'll bring Jason Callahan into, implicit in all of these numbers is that this is as much a policy statement as it is a budget, right? This is something you talked about in your excellent February 3rd blog post at planetary.org. Yeah, and so that's actually very important to remember, too, that this is, I see, you know,

not surprisingly, a lot of discussion on the Internet. And honestly, I need to stop reading comments online of things. It's not good for your health, Casey. But the Internet, I always love how confidently people assert utterly incorrect statements, particularly regarding the budget. You know, people always talk about, sure, Congress is why are we talking about the president's budget? Congress is just going to tear it up and do their thing anyway. We need to focus on Congress. And that's not true.

Again, we actually filmed a whole video about this in the new Space Advocate video series that we're doing. Why is this important? And as you said, it's basically a policy statement by the White House on what they see as NASA's future direction. So the two important things to remember, NASA is part of the executive branch. So the White House is NASA's boss, dead stop. NASA is a political institution. They're run by the White House. They're funded year to year, of course, by Congress. And then you have authorization bills that help influence their direction as well. But fundamentally, it's calls by the White House. The other part is that the president's budget, unlike Congress, the president's budget request gives you a request for this year, 2016, coming up,

and four years after that, through 2020. And that is saying that this is where the White House believes that space programs and policies, this is where the White House believes that space programs and policies, this is what they're going to get. This is the kind of money they're going to get in the future. This is what's going to get funded. And it's all about working new programs in and where they fit in over this five year horizon. And that's a crucial statement, too, because if you don't have, you can't just depend on Congress year after year after year, if you're building a mission that takes 10 years to get to Jupiter or however long to get anywhere. You need to know that you have an institutional support for the near future in what you want to do.

And that's the other crucial part. So the president's budget is kind of a statement of policy beliefs and it's, for a degree, a statement of what the White House is going to allow NASA to do. Congress can come in and mess with it afterwards, but it sets this initial discussion, this initial starting point, starts with this budget. And if you can get your priorities, for us a Europa mission as an example, in that initial part of the discussion, you've won half the battle in a sense, and you don't have to do as much with Congress to act on it. Jason Callahan, you've seen a bunch of these budgets come down.

I mean, you worked on them as a consultant for NASA headquarters there in D.C. Is there anything that stands out about this budget that makes it any different from what you've seen in the past? Well, the real big difference this year, of course, is the Europa start. And the concern about the Europa start is that it's a flagship class mission, which means it's a very expensive mission. And it's going to be running concurrently or potentially concurrently with the Mars 2020 mission, which is another flagship mission. push everything else out of the budget. And so you really want to make sure that you don't just have the mission starts. You also want to have the mission phasing correct, which means the year-to-year expenditures on each of these projects. As they're going through development, you want to make sure that the bulge of the development cost curve, the really expensive years of development, don't

happen at the exact same time. So you want to stagger those by a couple of years. And it's not entirely clear yet how the funding profile for the Europa mission will look and whether or not it'll be an issue with the Mars 2020 funding. I think of curiosity in JWST, James Webb Space Telescope, more flagship missions that caused some grumbling among people who wanted to see other missions. Absolutely. And the really scary thing about the flagships is that if they by any chance go over budget, then trying to find the money to pay for the overruns comes at the expense of other projects and programs. So you start seeing New Frontiers missions or Discovery missions pushed out to later years, and that's where you really get the dissatisfaction from the scientific community.

And those are those other classes of missions that are a good deal cheaper than flagship missions, of course. You've used a couple of other terms that I hope you can save some more about that I've been hearing bandied about, New Start, Phase A, even Pre-Phase A. What does all that mean? Sure. So the term Phase A actually comes from NASA's Systems Engineering Handbook, which is basically the process by which spacecraft are designed and built. So you have Phase A through E at NASA. In the Department of Defense and other industries, there's also a Phase F, but that has to do with production, which NASA does

not do on their spacecraft. So phase A and B are the formulation phase. And during this phase, the project is defining the mission and determining the risks to completing that mission and figuring out how to mitigate those risks. So figuring out strategies to, if things go wrong in the design or the development of the mission, figuring out what they will do to mitigate those risks. So figuring out strategies to, if things go wrong in the design or the development of the mission, figuring out what they will do to correct those within the correct budget profile. Phase A is very, very important. If you get phase A wrong, then the rest of the mission is not going to work. So the important part about phase A and the difference between phase A and pre-phase A is that in in phase A you can actually start working with contractors,

working with the people who are likely to build most of the spacecraft, and bringing them into the process of determining the risks and determining the definitions of the various, basically the blueprints of the spacecraft, the hardware, the software, and the processes that will be required to complete the mission. As you are signing contracts with these firms, that also gives them the stability to plan their manpower needs, their resource needs for the project as it goes forward. The new start basically means that the project is allowed to enter phase A, and the project is allowed to start signing these contracts and doing this development work at a much higher level.

Well, thanks for clarifying that, because we were looking at JPL last week, and this is in the video that accompanies our conversations at JPL's Icy Worlds Day on the day the budget came out, Monday the 2nd of February. It's very interesting. There was actually some hardware there, something they call the Vault, which is sort of a preliminary hardware design for how they're going to protect the delicate electronics on this Europa mission from the intense radiation around Jupiter. But all of that, I guess, being done on their own at JPL, now it sounds like Europa is in this Phase A. I believe they're actually entering Phase A this spring. Technically, we still have a month or two, but the budget allows them to start that process.

a month or two, but the budget allows them to start that process. This is the problem that we had with Europa the last few years, because we had Congress giving money for what they called, quote unquote, pre-formulation slash formulation activities for Europa mission. And as Jason points out, before phase eight, in pre-formulation, they couldn't be signing these contracts. They were very limited in how they could spend that money. So what they tried to do is things like try to understand the things like building the vault. If you theoretically had a mission coming up, what would you need? What are the challenges? And so they tried to do some early technology investment.

They tried to get a lot of scientific research funding out there to help people understand the possible plumes or the movements of the ice on the surface of Europa. All these things that will help in the future, but they couldn't really progress that far down the line until the administration and NASA formally let them go into phase A. And this is why it's a big deal. Congress can keep giving them all that money, but they couldn't spend it very well. And so this is one of the reasons why it was so important to see this in the budget. Let's come back to process. Casey, you mentioned that video.

It's extremely entertaining. It's an installment of your new Space Advocate series that you do with our producer, Merk Boyan. I thought I knew the budgeting process. There are more steps involved there than I think I was completely aware of. More convolutions, I think. Both of you deal with this. I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about it and also recommend that people take a look at that video. Jason, is this pretty typical of how everything gets funded in D.C.?

Yes, absolutely. Actually, NASA's budget comparatively, say to like the Department of Defense budget or something, is actually fairly straightforward. Sorry, I find that humorous. Yeah, but NASA has very clear delineations with the centers and the various projects. So it's a fairly easy process to follow comparatively, although it is not an easy process. to follow comparatively, although it is not an easy process. Well, and so much involvement just within NASA, the centers being asked for proposals and those going to headquarters and it might go back to the centers. It's quite a process to follow. Yeah, it's basically a long negotiation. It takes about a year from the time that the chief financial officer requests budgets from all of the centers until

the budget is sent over to Congress. And in that process, there are negotiations at every level. I mean, all the way down to the people who are making instruments on a particular spacecraft have to negotiate their budgets with the project manager. The project manager then has to negotiate his budget with the program executives or the program chiefs at the centers who then have to negotiate with the center directors. The center directors then have to negotiate with associate administrators and the directors of their various divisions all the way up to the administrator of NASA. And then it goes to the Office of Management at Budget at the White House. So it's a very, very complex process.

All right. I'm really glad you brought up that semi-mysterious agency, the OMB, Office of Management and Budget. Talk about that. I mean, how powerful is that arm of the executive? That is what it is, isn't it? It is. To give you an idea of exactly how much power they have. The NASA budget basically entails the 17,200 civil servants at NASA, plus probably three times that number of contractors, all putting in their numbers. And it goes all the way through the chain of command up to NASA headquarters, who send it to OMB. And the entire NASA budget is then reviewed by a staff at the moment that consists of three people so it's a tremendous amount of authority given to a very small group I think of the OMB and Jason can correct me if I'm wrong but it's kind of the internal auditing slash accounting firm of the executive branch they're the ones who actually put out the entire president's budget, and they have to go and

make NASA's piece work with everything else that the president will be requesting for literally the entire federal government of that year. You have to work with them to get as much budget as you can, given all the other priorities of the entire federal government. So it's this very delicate balance and back and forth. And it's one of those things where fundamentally the Office of Management and Budget answers to the White House. That's it. They don't have, they're not elected. They're not, you know, they're civil servants. They're, you know, they're not political appointees, except for the director of the Office of Management and Budget. This is why, you know, just to plug the program that we do,

and this is why people, it's so much more than just writing to Congress and so much more than just talking to Congress. This is why we go and talk with our concerns and priorities at NASA headquarters and all throughout the process to every level matters. And every level has a part to play. And Congress is kind of the tip,

literally the tip of that iceberg. Not literally, I Congress is kind of the tip of that iceberg. Not literally, I guess figuratively the tip of that iceberg. They take it over after this huge, as Jason said, year-long process is finished. And the more that our priorities are reflected, again, in that by the time Congress gets it, our job becomes that much easier. Yeah, I just wanted to make one point there. Casey mentioned earlier that the NASA budget is not just a financial document. It is also a policy document. And that's an important distinction to make, especially when talking about the Office of Management and Budget,

because while they do have to meet certain accounting requirements from the White House and balancing the budget with all of the other agencies, they also have to look at the budget from a policy standpoint. So they're not just adjusting the amount of money going to individual projects, but they are looking at the policies that NASA is using as well. So the budget, let's say, comes back from OMB to the desk of the NASA administrator, and he sees something he doesn't like. What recourse does he have? Just the president?

Well, the process that you're referring to, so the OMB will review NASA's budget, and they come up with their recommendations, their changes, and they will send it back to the NASA administrator in a process known as passback. And the NASA administrator then will look at that. He'll go to all of the various affected parties at NASA, discuss the budget with the changes with them to see whether or not they're able to work within those confines. And if not, he'll take his findings back to OMB and they'll have another negotiation. Usually that's as far as the process goes, that the negotiation with OMB happens and they'll either say yes or no, and that's the end of it. And that happens again with this very small staff. If the president is, or excuse me, the administrator is still not satisfied, he can take it to the president. But it would have to be a very, very significant issue with serious political

ramifications for that to happen. I don't think it's happened since the Apollo era, and I don't recall that it was successful even then. Yeah, that does sound like it would be handy to have an awful lot of political capital before you made a move like that. Let's move to the other big, big player in this process that we probably haven't talked about enough yet. And that is Congress, of course. Casey, what are you hearing from congressional insiders about the chances? I mean, what might Congress do with this budget? This is the interesting thing about Congress, and I do this too all the time. We tend to talk about it as this uniform body. Congress will do this. Congress believes in that. But really, you know, it's 535 members each representing their own constituencies and back and forth. And it's a lot harder to get Congress to do things, right? I mean, if you think about it, it's easy for Congress not to do anything because there's

so many checkpoints in that structure to stop a law or stop policy or to stop, you know, things from moving forward. It's going to be interesting this year because we have this new setup of obviously the Republicans controlling the Senate for the first time in years, and the Republicans also control the House. And so there's going to be, and this is, I think, one of my larger, this is one of my actual fears for the budget. I'm not worried personally about opportunity in LRO because I think we've demonstrated in the past that with their strong political support, and they're small enough that they're relatively easy to save. You have folks like Adam Schiff, who covers JPL,

among other folks in his district. Yeah, congressman here in California, of course. Yeah, coming out right away and saying, this is ridiculous that these are canceled. I'm going to work to put these back in. Good. He's a very influential, powerful congressperson. We have, obviously, John Culberson in Texas, who loves Europa and is very, very powerful. And he's the chair of what's called the Commerce Justice and Science Subcommittee of Appropriations. He helps write NASA's spending bill in the House. So I'm pretty sure we'll see more money for Europa coming in over the $30 million, which honestly seems to us to be a little low for this stage of formulation.

So I'm not worried about that. However, you have, everyone probably remembers the Budget Control Act sequestration hanging over our heads right now. There are limits to how much the government can spend on discretionary and military and even I think cuts to Social Security come in or Medicare, excuse me, come in if certain spending targets are not met. The president's budget blows through those spending targets. It's a political document that blows through those spending targets. It's kind of daring Congress to cut things.

We will see exactly what they cut. My guess is it's going to involve things not NASA specifically, but NASA will have to bump up against a lot of other competing priorities through this upcoming congressional action. And if nothing happens and sequestration hits again, we have an across the board 7% cut. So NASA's 18 and a half billion starts looking more like 17.6. And all these nice bonuses that all these other parts of NASA got, not just planetary science, start to disappear. And so it becomes a much more complicated situation if that happens. So NASA, as usual, will ride along in these larger

political currents. And we're trying to do as best we can, but NASA is very rarely the driver or central to this process. It's along for the ride. And that's why it's going to be hard to stop if that starts happening. Yeah, Washington is not a science town. It's a town of politics. It certainly doesn't hurt, though, Jason, to have a fan of Europa who is as enthusiastic as Congressman Coberson. But there have certainly been missions in the past, haven't there, that have reached this level where it looks like there's a commitment, and yet they go away, they dissolve. Yeah, most recently the mission that was cancelled in astrophysics was the GEMS mission in 2012. They'd reached phase B in their formulation, and they were just about to be confirmed and their cost estimate was too high and the agency canceled the mission. Within planetary science, it hasn't happened in a while,

but the most recent missions were the CRAF mission, the Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby Mission in the late 80s, early 90s. And then again, within the surveyor program, the now defunct surveyor program, the 2001 Mars lander program was canceled after the failure of the Mars polar lander. Casey, with all of this, what are you hearing about the role that the Planetary Society played in getting the budget this far? Well, it's one of those things where we're hearing that we're doing all the right things. The issue is we have champions in very good places. We're giving them a lot of, I think, political support. I think the key thing that we've been doing is really, like no one else honestly has been able to do,

rally members of the public to write in support of these missions. We have our membership of 45,000 people, and I would add 45,000 and growing, is great at being able to write letters about planetary science, about Europa. And honestly, they do not get these messages usually. They're lucky if they get one letter a month about NASA issues, just any NASA issue, much less planetary science. So we've really raised the profile of this. And you see that last year, they had an actual hearing in the House of Representatives in the Science Committee looking at the future of planetary science. So we've been able to really drive this message. And I think we've maintained a great focus on

planetary science. And we've been able to, I think, create this basic consensus, particularly in Congress and in both houses of Congress, that planetary science is being underfunded, correction is needed, and here's the pathway forward. And I think we've been really crucial in shaping that consensus. What are your objectives going to be, sort of tactical objectives in the near term, as this budget makes its way through the halls of Washington? Well, the first thing is going to be, once again, getting our members to speak up. We have kind of a good problem this year, which is this is the best news we've had in a while. I'm not used to dealing with good news.

I started doing this for the Planetary Society right after the cuts proposed for the 2013 budget. And those were some pretty depressing budgets there for a few years, you know, every time we get Congress to put money back, and the administration would come and take all the money away again, year after year after three years in a row. Technically, this is the fourth year in a row of doing that, though the cuts aren't as bad. So, you know, that's me kind of glass half full. So the issue is basically, we need to get this money back to help primarily get opportunity in LRO, continued funding to operate through the next year until they can't operate anymore, basically get all squeeze all the science out of those that we can to get, you know,

fantastic return for the taxpayer. And then something else we haven't talked about yet, actually, which is new frontiers, which is this competed mission line that's capped at about a billion dollars. It's the mission line that has given us new horizons at Pluto. It's given us Juno going to Jupiter. It's giving us a Cyrus Rex going out to sample an asteroid and bring it back. That in this budget, actually starting last year's budget, has diminished significantly. And the decadal survey, the big consensus document by the entire scientific community recommended doing at least one of these every five years. And we've dropped to about one every eight, maybe even a little longer than that. And so we need to get that rate back up to keep getting these really nice little missions going out to the outer planets, maybe to Venus.

There's a couple options, really exciting missions we can do. And that would help if we got our budget back up to a reasonable level, about one and a half billion. So obviously getting our members to write. We are already working on first trips out to D.C. to talk with crucial stakeholders there. We're going to be doing probably some sort of event here coming in the spring. But right now it's just getting our ducks in a row, figuring out exactly, writing out our position statements. Jason and I are working on some really great documents, helping give guidance to what a great planetary program would look like. And then sending those out, Congress is going to be having their first committee hearings on the budget within the next month or so. So we're going to be ready,

we're going to be participating in those. Are there any other recommendations you would give to our listeners who also want to do what they can to be advocates beyond writing the letters? Yeah, well, obviously, the more you are in touch with your local representatives, the better. And that's just one of the simplest things to do. It's also hard in a way for folks, I think, who've never done it before. The first time I did it, I found it very intimidating because you're calling an office, you're going in to visit an office, and you're feeling, you know, what do I know about anything? And the answer is, it doesn't matter what you know, it matters what you're passionate about, because these are the people who are elected to represent you and your priorities. You don't have to defend

and defend every single part of it. They will listen to you. If you call and say, I support planetary science, I support NASA, I support Europa, whatever you'd like to say, they will say, okay, thank you. And those actually make a difference. We've heard over and over and over again from people in congressional staff who are congressional staff, former congressional staff, that makes a difference. And that helps them understand what to support throughout the entire appropriations process. So I would say calling your representatives, and actually, if you use our forms online at planetary.org slash space advocate, those forms will actually email you after you first send a message to your congressperson. It'll email you back with their

phone number. And it'll just say, hey, give these folks a call and say basically the same thing, give you some suggested talking points. That's a great thing to do. And it'll just say, hey, give these folks a call and say basically the same thing, give you some suggested talking points. That's a great thing to do. And then, of course, if you're really into it, which we hope you are, we do these congressional visit days with what's called the Space Exploration Alliance. It's a big coalition of public-facing space nonprofits.

And we'll be going in February 22nd to Washington, D.C. to do what we call the Legislative Blitz. We're going to do about 120 meetings in two days, D.C. to meet, do about, it was called the Legislative Blitz. We're going to do about 120 meetings in two days, all throughout Congress with congressional staff and representatives to promote space exploration and planetary exploration. So that's one of the biggest things you can do is just show up in person. They recognize that and they appreciate it. So it certainly doesn't sound like things are going to be slowing down much. Jason, I mentioned up front that you've been working on NASA budgets for a long time but used to do it from within the agency.

How does it feel to be dealing with this from an outside advocacy group? I've got to tell you, it's way more fun to do it on this side than it is to do it on that side. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, I've had a blast working with the Planetary Society. I think it's an excellent organization. I think they do really good work. And on top of that, it's a lot of fun to be able to say what you feel.

And when you're working within NASA, I fully support what they do, but they have to stay on message, and they have to listen to what the White House says. And when you're in that organization, you have to adhere to that line. And at the Planetary Society, we can really say what it is that we feel. And that's a tremendous luxury. It's a wonderful liberty. And I really want to stress what Casey was saying earlier. He's absolutely right. We hear from staff all the time that the most important thing you can do as an advocate

is contact your congresspeople. That's where they get their information as to what their constituents want them to do. And as I like to point out, when someone talks to them about NASA, you're going to stand out. They get 100 letters a day about Social Security. They get 100 letters a day about health care. If you're writing about NASA, if you're writing about Europa, just by its uniqueness, it's going to shoot above that noise. And they're going to notice that even if three people write in on the same day, they'll go something must be going on, we should check this out. And they'll start their staff is there. And they'll start doing the work and start figuring this out. And they'll pass that along to the representative. That does make a difference. And, and I think that's why even visiting and being in person,

the impact is so much greater when you do that. And so just by its very nature of being so specialized and being something that most people don't think about in Congress, honestly, NASA, that kind of to me shows one of those pieces of proof of why NASA is actually a very small part of the budget. Because it's not something most Congress people are really aware of who don't have NASA districts or personal interest in it. And so you actually have a significant amount of power just by writing. You're magnified by latching onto this unique, positive, bipartisan, I should mention, part of the federal government and something definitely worth continued investment in. Casey, leave us with how people can stay on top of the issues and the work that society is doing. Well, of course, planetary.org slash space advocate. Notice the new URL there. SOS still works, but slash space advocate will take you to our main homepage

for this stuff. You will see videos about the process. You will see blog posts from Jason and I about the news and really breaking down the budget. And then, of course, ways that you can write Congress through our website. We'll hook you up to the right people. We'll give you ideas on what to say. But really, it's all about your empowerment. It's, in a sense, your space agency. It represents you as a citizen. Or if you're not in the United States, you have the ability even to write the White House. And it becomes a part of that conversation. The more they hear from people, the more they know that people care about this stuff. And to a large extent, this is my personal belief, to a large extent, decisions are easy to happen when people don't pay attention. You know,

it's easy to kind of underfund important things like our space program when people aren't paying attention to it and demanding that we really give it the appropriate level of funding and support and direction that it really needs. And so the more they hear from that as part of building this long-term, and I emphasize long-term, constituency for space. Even one more thing I want to touch on that Jason said that I meant to follow up on. When we're saying contact your representative, we don't just mean once. You can contact them whenever you want. Don't call them every day and then you start becoming maybe crazy. Yeah, you get put on that list. Yeah.

Yeah. No, every couple months, shoot them an email. Call them every couple months. Or even better, we'll prompt you. We'll email you if you sign up on our mailing list at planetary.org slash space advocate. Or if you ever mail something through the Planetary Society, we'll ping you every couple of months saying now is a good time to write. Now is a good time to call. Be an issue.

Be that person who is in their district that they listen to. They'll expect to hear from. And they know it's more than just passing fancy. There's a real power you have there by being a dedicated space advocate. And then the key there, I think, is just pacing yourself out. Don't call every day. Call every couple of months. Yeah, don't be as obsessive as Casey and Jason are. Yeah. Yeah, that you have to weigh. Luckily, I have the Planetary Society to give me some respectability when I go in. That's the key. I got the pin.

Keep it up. Jason, very glad to have you on the team. Casey, thank you for the leadership and for the work that the two of you and the rest of the advocacy team are doing, not just on behalf of the Planetary Society, but all of us who believe in planetary science and the exploration of our solar system and beyond. Thanks, Matt. And actually, let me thank anyone who's ever supported the Planetary Society's advocacy program. I really feel this is the premier advocacy program for any nonprofit, and particularly a unique one. And Jason can back me up here as a historian, but there's not a lot of organizations who don't have direct industry

or even kind of research grant ties to the space program working to promote space. And the Planetary Society is one of the very few truly independent organizations out there. We literally could not do this without the very generous support of our donors. And that really helps to have a paycheck to be able to focus all of my time on this. And I'm sure Jason would agree. Yeah, and we really, I have to say, we really put a lot of time into this. And I think last year I spent the equivalent of about two months in Washington, D.C., despite living on the West Coast. And it's something we're committed to personally, but we're enabled to do by Planetary Society members and donors.

So I want to say thank you for helping us out. Jason, anything to add? I strongly second that sentiment. I am very, very grateful to be able to do this, and it wouldn't be possible without the contributions of the Society members. So thank you very, very much. And thank you again, gentlemen. able to do this and it wouldn't be possible without the contributions of the Society members. So thank you very, very much. And thank you again, gentlemen. Jason Callahan, he's now Space Policy Advisor for the Planetary Society.

He worked as a consultant at NASA headquarters on several of the past annual budgets for that agency and now is doing it on behalf of the Society. Casey Dreyer, of course, is the Planetary Society's Director of Advocacy. His new video series that we've mentioned is appropriately titled The Space Advocate. You'll find it at planetary.org. I recommend that very entertaining exploration of how NASA's budget gets created and approved. And his new Europa is In video. You can feel the enthusiasm emanating there as he talked to his webcam. It features a little bit of yours truly talking to JPL's Bob Pappalardo about this very subject. And as I said, Bob is also featured in the February 9th edition of Planetary Radio.

Thanks very much for listening.