Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetary Radio Extra: Checking in on NASA's Budget with the Planetary Society's Director of Advocacy Casey Dreier

Episode Date: August 18, 2015

Mat Kaplan sits down with our Director of Advocacy, Casey Dreier, for a deep dive into current space policy.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matt Kaplan sitting in the brand new Planetary Society video and audio studio to do, I guess this will really be the first extended conversation I've had with anybody in here, Casey. So congratulations. Thanks. Yeah, no, I'm excited. It feels a little bit like the attic still, but I'm seeing some really great path forward for this place. Absolutely. Yeah. And Merck, our ace video producer, is going to do some great, great stuff in here.

But I'm very happy to have you in here for the first of these, we haven't done this in a while, of these extended conversations about advocacy efforts. And of course, you are the right person to talk to about that as our Director of Advocacy at the Society.

This is the long version. I want to warn people up front. If you heard our little tease on the radio show that was only maybe three minutes, this is for the real policy and advocacy wonks out there. And I know I'm sitting across from one, so you're in good company. Yeah, and I wouldn't warn them. This is like a treat, right? That's right. This is everyone gets to hear this.

You're welcome, everybody. All right. Let's start where we did on the radio, which is with the dwarf planet in the room, and that's Pluto. Huge success. I know you were as thrilled as anybody about that mission, but you know that we here at the Society, our members and others, have even more reason to be thrilled about the success. Yeah, that's really true. This is something long-time members, I think, will remember this. And new members should really take this as an example of what we can do together.

But back in 2001, 2002, New Horizons was canceled each year. It was canceled multiple years in a row. At the time, Planetary Society rallied together. We got tens of thousands of, at the time, physical letters. We still weren't really in email land yet, even though we were kind of moving towards that. And we had Bill and we had, I think, even James Cameron and other folks going around Congress to rally support for New Horizons. We even got an award from Aviation Week for our advocacy work for Pluto, and we helped it get money back each time to keep that mission going. Now, 10 years later,

again, this is the long game we have to play here. Seeing those pictures come, literally seeing a world form from nothingness or from formlessness. From a point of light. Yeah. That is the result of Planetary Society members and space advocates a decade ago taking the time to write their support for Pluto. And everyone who did that should feel particularly proud, just a little bit of ownership. And what I am trying to remind people, we have the same opportunity now with Europa. They're kind of similar in a lot of ways, Europa and Pluto, the missions we're trying to get out. Both of them are something that the public is really excited about. The public had wanted a Pluto mission for, you know, well, years, many decades.

And actually even throughout the 90s, five different missions to Pluto kind of popped in and out of existence and, you know, it got too expensive, got canceled. And Europa's been the same way. Back in the early 2000s, there was going to be a mission. It was canceled. Then, oh, maybe there's going to be a mission in the late night. Nope.

You know, now we have this nascent new start to a mission to Europa. But we need to support that. We need to make sure the money is going to be there for that. And for anyone who has just seen and loved these pictures from Pluto, keep that in mind when you get emails from me or Bill asking you to write your congressperson, write the president, donate to the advocacy program to help make sure this mission happens. Because this stuff does work, but it's a delayed response. And that's what we all have to keep in mind. So it's exciting to think that maybe in 10 years,

we'll be seeing the surface of Europa come into form from formlessness. You know, we don't have any high-res. We have those big couple pictures, but very, very few high-res pictures from Galileo. The Europa Clipper is going to be able to give you incredible close-up, meter scale, 3D topographic views of Europa. meter scale, 3D topographic views of Europa. And when that happens, everyone who stands up now for space, everyone who takes time to write, to donate, can feel a little bit of that same ownership.

Of course, what I'm even more excited about, I mean, the pictures are going to be great, but it's that ability to sniff that mist coming up out of that moon. And who knows what else, right? I mean, that's where we go. We have no idea what we're going to find. That's what's so joyous about doing this. Again, comparatively cheap that we're talking about here, right? We're looking for a couple billion dollars over 10 years.

That's nothing in the drop of the proverbial government bucket. What strikes me about what you've said, of course, is that this is an ongoing effort, not to call it a fight, although it frequently becomes that. It feels like it sometimes. Yeah. Well, and this line that I know you've used, you certainly didn't invent. It's a longtime cliche in Washington, but no less true. If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. Yes.

We have seen that, demonstrably seen that in the past. And that's what we've really been doing in the last few years since I took over as advocacy director. And I shouldn't say took over because there was no position for that at the society previously. The society has been investing in the advocacy program, having a full-time staff person, me, and then this year we actually hired a second full-time staff person, Jason Callahan, and we work with a part-time consultant and lobbyist on Capitol Hill. It's a big step for us. And the reason why we're doing this is that we do see there's real potential out there to influence the process on behalf of our members. There's lobbyists and people working out there, working for major aerospace industries.

There's, you know, some degree of that going for professional scientific societies, but they're generally quite, they're covering a lot of area, right, for a lot of different sciences. There's no one else out there fighting for exploration on behalf of the public, essentially, particularly planetary exploration, robotic scientific exploration. exciting about building this program and turning it from we're asking you once a year to write into this year-long strategic program where when we do ask you to write, you're fitting into this larger strategic goal. And, you know, that's the right time, the most effective time to spend your time. And then we kind of take it from there and we run into the congressional offices and the NASA administration buildings and so forth. And we're able to say, look how many people just wrote.

Right now, in the last month, we've had almost 40,000 letters going to Congress about planetary science, about Pluto and Europa. They don't get that many about NASA in general, for the most part. And so, you know, we're able to make a real big splash in awareness of this. Again, as you said, it's just, you just can't give up because you have to stay constantly engaged, constantly pushing for these things, just turning the ship a few degrees. But it takes a long time to do that. We're seeing this happen with planetary science. We want to see it happen with humans going to Mars and just NASA's budget in general.

We want it to just match at least a realistic level for what the nation asked them to do. So much more for us to talk about that just came out of what you just said, including the campaign that is currently underway, which I do want to talk more with you about. And you mentioned that award that we got from Aviation Week a while back for the success of the Pluto campaign. Isn't there an even more tangible indication of our success? Because you hear it from Congress members and their staffs, right, that we are making a big difference. Yeah, we hear over and over again we're doing all the right things. We're getting out there.

We're making policy prescriptions. We're rallying people to contact. I mean, here's the thing. When Congress people don't have strong opinions on an issue, they're very in tune with what they believe their constituents want. And honestly, very few Congress people innately have a really internalized, strong opinion about planetary exploration versus NASA. You can actually look at the statistics. They do analyses of these and various foundations analyzing the civic behavior of Congress people. If they're on the fence and they see letters coming in from their constituents saying planetary science is important, for example,

they will respond to that and they will become more supportive of that even if there's not an immediate, for example, NASA center in their district. So we actually have an incredible amount of opportunity here because it's not a divisive issue, right? No one is, there's no rallying anti-planetary exploration crowd really out there. There's nothing organized. And that means it's up to us to get out there and build that support. And so we hear that, yes, over and over again from folks in NASA, from folks in Congress and around. You guys are doing great work. Talk more about Europa. Are we definitely going? Is this mission going to

happen? I think 85% chance that it's going to work. We have a kind of this unusually advantageous combination of events in that we have a very strong supporter in Congress, and that's Representative John Culberson out of Texas. It's not just that he is very supportive, because there's a lot of people who are supportive. He's willing to go to bat for Europa. And that's always the kind of finding that key congressperson who's willing. Barbara Mikulski has been this. She was that for New Horizons. She went to bat for New Horizons. She got that money in there to keep it alive.

John Culberson is that for Europa. He kept that mission alive the last few years basically single-handedly by adding tens of millions of dollars to NASA's budget in the law that they had to spend on Europa, even though NASA itself hadn't requested a new mission. What happened this year, what was very important in the 2016 budget request from the White House, they requested, all right, fine, you want to keep throwing money at Europa, we will finally accept that money, which is always kind of crazy to me. This gets a little into the weeds of the technical things of how it works, but they requested a new start.

That's formally asking Congress that they plan to make this a long-term program. They're going to work it into their budgets down the line. It's not they're just going to get, it's hard for Congress to make a space mission happen because Congress appropriates money year to year, right? And it takes a decade or more to build a spacecraft, to launch it, to operate it. And so if you're not, if you're a manager and you don't know if Congress is going to be able

to give you that money next year, how can you for sure make a contract, for example, for someone to make the spacecraft a part of it or an instrument? So you need this buy-in from the administration, from the White House, saying we are going to commit to this project. We're going to make sure institutionally that this is going to move forward. And we're always going to request the funds that we think it needs from Congress until

it's done. So that happened this year. That was very important. That was kind of the missing piece that really needed to happen to make this mission move forward. What you have is kind of, again, this story is playing out again a little bit, where the White House then said, okay, we're going to do the new mission, we're going to request 30 million. That's 70 million less than it got the previous year. Now, there's going to there's debate about how much they need. And you know, it's hard to know exactly how much you need,

they probably need more than that to move the mission planning and design forward. John Culberson came out in the House side and said, I'm going to give them $140 million. There's a discrepancy, but fundamentally, at least there's an agreement that this mission should exist. And that's the big step forward. This is why it's very exciting. And so that's why I'm giving it. And that's the big step forward. This is why it's very exciting.

And so that's why I'm giving it. John Culberson, he's the chair of what's called the Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee of Appropriations. This is where I'm sorry if people's eyes start to glaze over here. CJ, yes, for sure. But this is a very important position. And why it's important is that it's this committee writes the draft of the House of Representatives budget for NASA every year. And so it's his office writing the language of this bill to fund NASA. So if he is a huge fan of Europa, he will put that language in that bill every year. And he has a significant amount of control over the language in the House side of things.

That's a very good position to be in as the chair of that committee. And he is chair of that committee for six years. The Republicans in the House have a term limit. So it's very likely to me that he would like to see this mission launched by 2022, because that roughly coincides with the end of his chairmanship. And he won't have that, depending on where he goes, he may not have as strong of an oversight control of where that funding is coming from. The level that the White House was giving Europa, hard to say, probably not until the mid to late 2020s when that would be ready to launch. And so we're talking 15 years versus 10 years, let's say.

So this explains some of the pressure to get that mission underway in the early 2020s rather than much later. And that puts a lot of pressure, of course, on the JPL and other folks who are developing it. But that's just fascinating. Culbertson himself, I mean, you talked about Barbara Mikulski. Whatever enthusiasm, personal enthusiasm she has, she has the other agenda, of course, that APL, which has been running the New Horizons mission, that's in her state in Maryland. Culbertson is, my impression is that he doesn't have as much of a political agenda here. He just really believes in this mission. So there are true believers in Congress.

That's absolutely true. Culberson is roughly in the Houston area, and he does also give a significant amount of support to the Space Launch System rocket. But you're right. For Europa, there's no immediate local concern. He is just, and I've met him, and he is honestly just a passionate supporter. He is deeply curious about the oceans of Europa and if there's life there. He wants to find life. And I really commend that attitude because he sees an opportunity for himself to make a difference in humanity's knowledge of life elsewhere.

And he is able to actually do that. He's able to make that difference. life elsewhere. And he is able to actually do that. He's able to make that difference. John Culberson has the picture of Europa with a little ball of water next to it and then the amount of volume of water next to the earth. That's what he has in his office. That's cool. John Culberson reads the science papers as they're published about Europa. He is very, very knowledgeable about this. Impressive.

It is, yeah. There is a terrific video you did. It is the best thing I've ever seen about how a budget gets created in Washington. And it's quite revealing about the role of Congress, which at least in the initial creation of the budget is much smaller than you might think. Where are we in this year-to-year process? I mean, we're not very far away from the start of the federal government's 2016 fiscal year. That's true. What Matt is referencing here is when the president's budget request is released, that essentially creates the starting conditions of that year's budget discussion.

All of that happens pretty much behind closed doors. All of that happens pretty much behind closed doors. That's happening right now as we're recording this in 2015 for the 2017 fiscal year, which will be requested next February. So it's hard to keep track of these. Right now, it's on Congress's plate. So Congress has, they received the president's budget request in February. The 2016 budget request. The 2016 budget request. And because, just to add that extra level of confusion, the 2016 fiscal year begins on October 1st of 2015. It's just offset a little bit. It's like car model years. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. So it was delivered to Congress, the Republicans controlling the Senate, and you have the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives. You cannot filibuster budget bills. However, you can slow things down. On the House side, the House has passed, I believe, all of their appropriations bills.

There's 12 subcommittees. So CJS, Commerce, Justice, Science, that covers NASA, that's one of the 12. Each one of those passes a budget for its part of the federal government. Ideally, it's supposed to work with this way. And then it would go, the Senate was supposed to do the same. All of those would then be worked out the differences and they would vote on the joint bills and then the president would sign them or veto them. That hasn't happened in years. Even though the House has passed all of its appropriations bills, the Senate has not moved forward with that.

The Senate has created their version of NASA's funding bill, and it has been through their committee, but the full Senate never voted on it. And we're running out of time. The Senate right now and the House are on summer break, basically. They're all back at their home districts the entire month of August. They don't come back until after Labor Day. That's like six weeks. Yeah, that's a good deal. But when they get back, they have about 12 working days before the new budget year begins on October 1st. That's not very much time to reconcile all of these differences. And by the way, time to reconcile all of these differences. And by the way, what has passed, what has been put out by the Republicans on both sides of the House and Senate, all of those have been threatened with

vetoes by the White House. And fundamentally, what we're coming down to is, if a lot of you may or may not remember the sequestration battle, that's called the Budget Control Act, which institutes automatic cuts unless certain spending caps or revenues are made. Yeah, across the board. Yeah, so that's coming back this year unless they can find some solution to it, some legislative solution. It's a presidential election year. No one is seeing a path forward for a solution here. And so actually, we're in a very worrisome position where it is not likely that there will be a budget by the start of the fiscal year.

So that means one of two things. There will be a shutdown of the government again, which is, I think, a pretty high probability. The other possibility is what's called a continuing resolution, where they basically temporarily extend last year's spending until they work something out. You may get a variety of continuing resolutions going for a while. But again, you can have people in the Senate, particularly, who can slow that down and force a government shutdown, say, if they wanted to increase the awareness of their presidential campaigns, that's going to be a mess. Who would be so small minded? Well, there's a variety of people.

I mean, you have actually half the Senate's running for president, I think right now. But the fundamentally you have that. And then at the same time you have the debt limit needs to be raised in the fall. Again, that's a separate issue.

And if that doesn't happen, the government starts to run out of money to use, to spend. And what's called the Highway Trust Fund also needs to be renewed. And that's a separate line item that pays for basically all highway, most of the highway construction in the United States, it's going to be a very rough September. Your listeners may not be surprised to know that NASA does not raise to the top of that priority list for a lot of these people, much less planetary science. And so we're, I always think of this, we're the flea on the back of the flea on the dog, you know, that's sitting on a boat in a tropical storm in the ocean. You know, like we're really stretching this metaphor.

Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe I should use a space metaphor. You know, we're like we're Mercury in a massive, I don't know, red giant planetary star system. The point is our problems won't amount to a hill of beans. We're going to just be along for the ride. And it's going to be scary because last time this government shut down, you had delays. You have missions like the James Webb Space Telescope that doesn't have a lot of room in there, but in their time and their schedule to let things slip.

You have things like last time they almost delayed a launch to Mars with MAVEN. You have a launch coming up to Mars in March. You have OSIRIS-REx, which needs to launch in September of 2016. If you shut down the government, those missions cannot move forward. James Webb Space Telescope, you don't want to have another budget-busting delay of the James Webb Space Telescope. And this is just a couple things in NASA, you know, writ large to the government. So it's going to be rough. And this is where it's just, you mix in the presidential politics, you mix in the whole Budget Control Act, and you mix in a very contentious,

divided Congress to the White House. And it's going to be interesting. With all these vital competing priorities, does that make it more or less important for us to be asking people for help in an advocacy campaign that's underway right now? Surprisingly, no. It's actually really important still. Because again, I believe it's important that we are positioned as well as possible for when the solution, something will reach some stasis in the future, right? The government, even if it shuts down, will not forever remain shut down.

If we are in a continuing resolution, we want to make sure that our priorities of planetary exploration and NASA are given that priority in that if they have to shift money around internally. So the more we can do to build support now, the better we can position ourselves for when the solution does come down the pipeline, the better off we're going to be. And so we have to, this again goes back to what you were saying, we have to be at the table.

We have to ride this through. We have to understand that we are not going to be able to affect the larger, no one can, honestly. There's not even the best lobbying organizations with millions of dollars to dispose of are going to be able to change this. This is a fundamental issue that's been building in American politics for the last eight years, basically, 15 years. You can even go back. There's nothing we can really do. But we have to be engaged where we can. And we can, again, fundamentally, we've been going through this the last few years.

We have been making a difference. We've been getting more money for planetary science. We have the mission to Europa. Mars 2020 rover is on track and doing well. That's because we were well positioned. And when things did sort themselves out, planetary science did well. NASA did well. So what else is on our agenda now? What other than Europa

do you go in and talk to Congress people and their staffs about? We talked a little bit about this. You've had some guests on in the past, but the future of human spaceflight, no small task there to solve. That's a major one. And as a new presidential administration enters office in 2017, you will likely have a new NASA administrator. You will likely have, and depends actually, not necessarily likely, there may be a new direction on space, there may not be. Something we need to do is make sure that presidential candidates are aware of the opportunities that NASA presents to them in terms

of optimism for the nation, industrial-based development, excitement, STEM engagement, and the possibility is there to really renew the space program and really make it engage with the American people. And that's something we're trying to do. Again, space tends to be relatively low. For those of you who are old enough, I suppose, you remember Newt Gingrich talking about the moon base in 2008. Much to, honestly, my horror. He was lampooned for that, because he was forward thinking. And because it just made him seem out of touch. So I think a lot of candidates have internalized the wrong lessons from that. We need to make sure that they're engaged and they see space as an economic growth opportunity, an engagement opportunity, a scientific and engineering and industrial development opportunity,

and it's not just some wackos and moon bases. No, there's real good consequences that can come out of investing in space. So that's something we're really talking about now, and that's something we're going to be asking our members to be engaged in as the presidential season moves forward. You have candidates out there on the ground, particularly in New Hampshire and Iowa, trying to get them at least aware of the issues relating to space. Fundamentally, what we need is consistency, I think, in the space program,

a focus on Mars, a real long-term architecture that's sustainable, to know what we need, to know when we need it, to really drive the decisions about what gets priority in human spaceflight. That's something we're working on as well. How about the Humans Orbiting Mars workshop that we sponsored in Washington? It seemed to be a terrific success at the time. What's been the fallout? What has been the influence from that, and what's the current status?

We're still waiting for the major report, right? Yeah, final report is we're nearing the point of publication for that. We've been working on it. It's quite lengthy. We're trying to summarize a lot of information that was presented in that day and a half. The idea of a stepwise, a rational stepwise approach to getting humans on the surface of Mars, I think is really resonating with people. Once most people, particularly in NASA, I think, got over the idea that it's not orbit only,

that it's just a step, but also a kind of a critical step, and it helps. There's a lot of really good logical reasons to approach it that way, just like we did with Apollo, right? Apollo 10 was a whole dress rehearsal for Apollo 11. Apollo 8 didn't orbit. It just looped around. But even then, you know, you're understanding a lot of, buying down a lot of your risk.

The JPL concept that they presented was published in a peer-reviewed journal called New Space Journal. And that has been making the rounds through NASA leadership, through a lot. It's been getting a lot of discussion in the space policy circle. And I think it's making a real impact in thinking about how people are approaching the problem to human spaceflight. Now, I don't think NASA itself is ready to commit to a detailed long-term plan, but I get the feeling that this stepwise approach is becoming, you know, the question is how do you beat that in practical terms? And so far, I haven't seen a better answer. in practical terms. And so far, I haven't seen a better answer. Let's talk about some other things that the society is up to now, where we're looking to people listening to this program, to our members, to help us out. And some of that is raising more money so people like you, Jason Callahan, can be even more effective as you do

your work in D.C. There's this very cool, impressive dashboard now on the website that sort of tracks some of the major metrics regarding our advocacy efforts. Talked about how you had traveled nearly 50,000 miles last year. Are you going to break that record this year? You know, I feel like I did most of that already in the first six months of the year. It's very possible. of that already in the first six months of the year. It's very possible. So something that we've been, I like to divide our advocacy program into kind of three major areas where we're, in terms of how we're engaging people. We're focusing on engaging policymakers in Washington, D.C. That's legislators, that's NASA headquarters. Our members, of course, the most important group, members and

future members, space advocates and other supporters. And then also organizing in the scientific community, the actual planetary scientists and people who professionally benefit from these missions, but also drive the scientific, the fundamental scientific questions and provide the analysis and our understanding of how these work. And that means going to a lot of science conferences about planetary science. That means going a lot of trips to Washington, D.C., engaging with our members, getting people to D.C. in front of their legislators. That takes a lot of travel. So I'm pretty sure I'm going to break that this year.

I'm well on my way, particularly with the human spaceflight stuff. Something that's kind of exciting is I just got back the other day from the landing site selection workshop for the Mars 2020 rover, which is the second in a series of ones that will go over the next few years to determine where to land the rover. In October, they are having the first landing site selection workshop for humans on Mars. And it's going to be, I would imagine, a slightly longer process than a couple of years.

But the fact that they're starting to think about where would we actually land people? What would we need at that site? And it's fascinating. They would need not just the scientific spheres of interest, but also they want hydrated minerals so you can get groundwater, you know, you can get water or ice. You know, you have to have all of these interesting things. We want to be there at those discussions too. We want to push this idea of Mars as the destination. If it's the goal, then it should be the goal of NASA. That should be driving all the priorities in terms of the human spaceflight program. So that takes a lot of travel as well. And what was it?

Woody Allen said 90% of success is just showing up. And I like to think it's a little different, but I mean, fundamentally, we need to be there and cost money to travel. And we try to be as efficient as possible with the generous donations from our members. But having the resources to be able to get out there and we're adding that extra layer

of the presidential candidates going to meet them to their offices, to their leadership. That's just a lot of work. It's a real test, I think, of this idea that I firmly believe in, which is, is advocacy a sustainable program from the community of space advocates? A significant amount of our budget, honestly, now comes from general operating funds at the Planetary Society. I don't know if we've ever been completely independent from specific donations to our program. But I feel in my

deepest heart that this is one of the most practical direct things people can support if you love space. You look at the return that we've got in the last few years. We've added $367 million to the planetary science budget that would not have been there. No one can donate that kind of money. You can't do a Kickstarter for $369 million. That's the role of government, supporting research that has no business case. And we helped get that money there.

We helped provide that political support. That is a great return on what people are donating. It's a terrific ROI. Yes, that's what IKEA is in the thousands of hundreds of thousands of percent. And the more I'm convinced, the stronger our program can be, the more resources we have, we can have an outsized impact on the future of planetary exploration, human and robotic. If we can build this consistent, aggressive, focused, and fundamentally respectable campaign, which is what the society brings and its members bring. And our board members and all of our advisors, we have this really unique combination of history, size, resources, and respectability.

And it's very exciting. So this is kind of the test. Can we sustain a dedicated group of policy and advocacy staff at the society? We will see. This is why we're trying to raise money. And fundamentally, we're trying to position ourselves in the future. We're not always going and asking people for money, but we need this right now to help build the program and for all of the work that we have coming down the pipeline. So what are the specific steps that you hope

people will think about taking right now? Sure. Well, right now we're asking people, fundamentally, it's the time to write Congress. They're back in their districts. They're interacting with their constituency. Their ears are open and they're willing to listen. So minimum, write your congressperson. We have a form online at planetary.org slash stand up, which will make that whole process very easy for you.

It will then email you and give you a phone number to call the offices of your representative. Call them and just say that you support. They won't argue with you. That's always, I think, a misperception. They just want to hear what you have to say. You can go extra step if you want. You can then say, I'd like to make a meeting with one of my local staff members or my local congressperson. This is an issue that's important to me. More practically, donate to our program if

you have the means. And any amount that you can give is deeply appreciated because that tells us that this is something our members are willing to support. And that enables us then to take, you know, we kind of, it's like passing us the ball. We run with that. Then we can go into the policy discussions. We can write our plans and our policy positions and give solutions to people in Congress and the White House and NASA. We can go around and rally the scientific community.

We can be there during these important decisions, and that only happens with having those resources. And then beyond that, we're asking people – you'll be hearing more from us, but we have plans to help you engage with the presidential process coming up, questions to ask, submitting questions to debates, all these kinds of things coming up. And fundamentally, though, the first step starts with writing your representative. And fundamentally, though, the first step starts with writing your representative. So the website and this new section, planetary.org slash standup, that's where you can really get at all of this and probably also stay aware of what we're up to and get reports. You'll continue to write, I'm sure. And, of course, this conversation is a part of our making sure that people know what we're about in this effort.

Absolutely. Writing the petition, you'll get future emails from us if you want. And we have a whole section planetary.org slash space advocate, pretty straightforward that has a lot of the news and updates about what's going on. Following us on social media, we have a lot of ways we try to communicate and rally people. And again, I emphasize, one of the most amazing things about the Planetary Society is its size. We are the largest, by far, of any nonprofit space advocacy organization, space organization. We are here in this really unique, privileged position of representing people. I don't run a business that benefits from increased NASA funding, right? I don't have skin in the game beyond the fact that I want to see more exploration and

science happen, just like my fellow members of the Planetary Society, which I was a member of for years before I had the pleasure of working here. And that's really unique. There's no other organization that's able to kind of muster that kind of voice and numbers in this process than the Planetary Society. That's something as a member, if you're listening as a member or a potential future member, you can take real pride in that. And that's what one of the things that makes us so special. People know when I walk in, when Jason Callahan walks into an office in Washington, D.C., they know that there's 50,000 members of the society behind us. And that's a unique ability we can bring. 50,000 people who care passionately about what you're there to talk to them about. And your

passion always comes through. Makes it a pleasure to talk to you when we do this, Casey. And I think we ought to do this again, if not shortly before October 1st, the beginning of the federal fiscal year, certainly very soon after. Yes. I don't know if you can guess, but I do like talking about this stuff. Like I said, it's a great pleasure. Casey, thank you. Matt, happy to be here. This is fun.

Casey Dreyer is the Director of Advocacy for the Planetary Society, and he's joined us for this conversation from the new headquarters of the Society in Pasadena, California. But no doubt he will be back in Washington, D.C. before too long.