Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition #18: Jim Bridenstine vs. the Senate and First Meeting of the National Space Council

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

The likely next Administrator of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, appeared before a somewhat skeptical Senate committee to defend his nomination. Casey and Jason recap the hearing and assess Congressman Bridenstine’s chance of moving forward.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the November 2017 Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, our 18th of these monthly specials all about space policy, the stuff that really matters when you want to explore space, the cosmos. I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio, and I am joined once again by the Director of Space Policy for the Planetary Society, Casey Dreyer. Hi, Casey. Gentlemen, good to be here. Jason Callahan is right there at ground zero for space policy within the Beltway. Jason is our Space Policy Advisor at the Planetary Society. Welcome to you as well,

Jason. Hey, guys. Good to hear from you again. I'm going to begin by congratulating you guys on what appeared to be a swell get-together there right at the Capitol. It was swell, Matt. Thanks. We hosted, I was just in D.C. last week, we hosted an event to really celebrate the end of the Cassini mission. There really hadn't been any real formal acknowledgement of that, you know, from NASA on the Hill. So we said, hey, let's get some people together. Let's get partners like Lockheed Martin and Boeing and the Space Telescope Science Institute. Let's all take a moment, acknowledge Cassini, but then let's look ahead to say what else is out there in the outer planets and how can we get there? So we weren't just looking at spacecraft.

We were looking at space telescopes, we were looking at potential missions to the ice giants of Uranus and Neptune. It was a great crowd, we wanted to get scientists in face to face meetings with legislators and their staff to talk about all the incredible science that could, you know, really lies ahead of us. And we had Dr. Alan Stofan, the former chief scientist of NASA, there to address the crowd, four members of Congress, about 150 staff. Really great event, really beautiful room in the Library of Congress. And one of the things that we do year round at the Planetary Society to advance space science and exploration, sometimes it's as simple as getting folks in a room together to get them excited about space jason in your experience um this kind of thing really is an effective portion of of the space policy effort it really does make an impression on on staff and members of congress

well what i think a lot of people in the public tend to forget is congress is not that large and even with their staffs you're're talking about, you know, thousands of people, not tens of thousands of people. So the number of issues that they have to be aware of on any given day is just huge. I mean, the average staff member's portfolio can include everything from healthcare to defense to, you know, it's just, it's massive. So the idea that they have the opportunity to really pay attention to the details of something like outer planets exploration, it's just it's really down in the weeds for them. So the only way you can really get their attention is to have these kinds there to be noticed by our representatives in Washington, a campaign that's underway right now. Casey, do you want to talk about this petition effort? Yeah, we just kicked it off on November 1st.

It is budget time again because Congress didn't finish the job, to be honest, for this fiscal year. So NASA's budget is still in play. And we have two proposals, one from the Senate, one this fiscal year. So NASA's budget is still in play. And we have two proposals, one from the Senate, one from the House. One is much better than the other. Overall, the House increased NASA's budget, it increased spending for planetary science. The Senate cut both, though they did preserve funding for earth science. So there's good things in there. This is the opportunity right now for citizens in the U.S. to write your legislators to say in the final weeks of negotiation here, before you have to vote on a what they call an omnibus bill that we think will come out sometime in December, choose the good budget for NASA. Let's go for it and demonstrate that kind of citizen level support for space exploration and space science.

So we put together a petition for you at planetary.org slash petition2017. We've pre-written a bunch of talking points, but you can modify it, update it, delete it, write your own one, and it'll automatically send to the right congressperson and your state senators. It's very important for us because these just don't go into a void either. When you send this in, we show up to the offices later and we will point to your messages to say, look at the constituents in your district that care about these issues. This is something you should care about as well. So we're pushing this for about two weeks.

We hope to get thousands, tens of thousands of messages through. And it's something that can really make a difference. So planetary.org slash petition 2017, everybody. And you've already said something that is very reassuring to me, because I'll bet, like me, a lot of our listeners support a lot of organizations, and you get these appeals. Sometimes they come with make your wishes known to our leaders in Washington, DC, and they come with a petition, and they also happen to come with an additional request for a donation. But at least in the case of the Planetary Society, these kinds of efforts, these petitions, they really have made a difference in the past, haven't they? Well, yeah.

I mean, we can look at the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been added to planetary science in the last few years, hundreds of millions of dollars to NASA's budget. And again, we build off of this work. We are your partners in this. So again, it just does not go off on its own. It's part of a strategy that we're running every day. And again, the messaging that we're talking about here, space, the other benefit we have is that there's no organized anti-space lobby trying to counteract this effort, right? It is really an area where we have the

luxury of having it be essentially nonpartisan for the most part. So we get people excited about it. They actually have studies that show the more constituents talk about issues like space that don't have a strong partisan charge, the more likely your representative will reflect those values when they make their decisions in Congress. So this is a really good opportunity. And this is why we do it not just in the spring, but in the fall. And then we build on that relationship through our in-person office visits throughout the year. Jason, you've got this personal experience of the power of this kind of effort as well, right?

It seems to fit right in with what you were saying about that gathering on the hill. Yeah, absolutely. When we walk into a congressperson's office, they're interested in what we have to say because we represent 55,000 members of the Planetary Society, but they're particularly interested if we have members in their district. Congresspeople take their constituents' interests very, very seriously. And if people have already written in from their district, you know, stating that space science is an issue for them, it makes our job that much easier. We already have a receptive audience when we walk in. So there are two ways for anybody listening to this to get involved, to actually have some influence. have some influence. And we assume that if you're listening to this, you do care about space policy and making sure that we advance into the cosmos and across our solar system. And if you thought

you were going to get away with not having to hear a pitch for Planetary Society membership in this Space Policy Edition, sorry, I have to correct that, because that is also a very important way to make sure that things go the way we think they should in this area. It's easy to do. You can go to planetary.org slash membership. When you become a member, you are directly supporting all of these efforts that we talk about on this program

and everything else that the Society is up to. You are helping to pay the salaries of Jason, Casey, Matt Renninger, our really incredibly effective space policy staff that has accomplished and will continue to accomplish so much in Washington with your support. This is why we're particularly eager for everyone to sign up as a member, because, you know, we need to keep paying our mortgages, right? That's the, no, no, there's, it really does make a difference and it enables us to do this work. This program has grown. I always like to emphasize that. First I was hired, then Jason was hired. And now Matt, we have this Triforce of really great talent and we want to

keep growing eventually, right? And we do that by having a strong membership base that funds us every year. So I guess I feel like I'm channeling my NPR fundraising drive voice at this point. But just Matt has a really good idea. So if you're not a member, consider joining. lot because so much has happened since we last talked in October. Well, for one thing, just a day or two after that program went up, the National Space Council met, but we're going to get to that in a moment because as we speak, it was only yesterday that we finally got to hear from the man that has been proposed as the new leader of NASA on Capitol Hill. He was there for his hearing. And I know you guys were tuned in. I was listening as well. Yeah, woke up bright and early on the West Coast to watch the nomination hearing. Jim Bridenstine, let's make sure we say his name. He's a Republican congressman right now from Oklahoma. He is, I think, in his third term in Congress and had intended to retire.

He has a politician's background. He was a Navy pilot. He ran the Space Museum in Tulsa. But he doesn't have an engineering or science background. And that actually became quite a big point of contention in the confirmation hearing. It's actually been really interesting, Matt, you kind of brought up the idea that a lot has happened, which is true since our last recording, but also not that much has changed at the same time. We still don't have a NASA administrator. We still don't have any really new clarity in terms of NASA's ambitions in the National Space Council. We have lots of potential.

So the hearing again, man, I just felt kind of exhausted after it because it was him and three other people that kind of grouped them together in the committee in the Senate. Maybe, Jason, you can jump on this. This is the least friendly hearing for a NASA administrator I have ever seen. This was not an easy walk in the park for Representative Bridenstine. Yeah, I think that's sort of representative of where we are in political discourse at the moment in this country. But yeah, it was a shockingly contentious hearing for a

position that's usually not a particularly contentious position. Well, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who certainly cares a great deal about space exploration and development, he seemed, among other things, to be very concerned about the fact that Bridenstine is a politician, that he's coming directly from Congress, and said that that really hadn't happened before. Bridenstine countered by saying James Webb, perhaps the greatest NASA administrator of all time, at least that was his claim, also came, not exactly, he wasn't in an elected office, but he did come from elsewhere in D.C. Is that also partly responsible for the kind of discord that we heard yesterday?

It's related in the sense that I think there are two things Senator Nelson is going for here. And in the first one, I can, you know, I'm trying to be empathetic from his perspective in a sense where NASA is a cherished thing. NASA is a cherished thing. And a lot of senators, I think, particularly Nelson, cherish NASA as this unique part of government where it does still have bipartisanship or non-partisanship. But also NASA represents so much more than just a space agency. It is a symbol of America in a sense. And it is a symbol of American pride. And really, particularly with the history of Apollo, a throwback maybe, or a kind of a reminder of other eras of American society, where maybe things weren't as divisive and confrontational and troublesome. And so I can see how the idea of a politician coming in with the current political climate dragging in with them is fundamentally troubling to someone who sees NASA through a very through that lens, I suppose. particularly, Bridenstine, who was a Tea Party congressperson, you're going to represent and sound and spout off those Tea Party kind of beliefs in Congress. And Bill Nelson, who's a

Democrat was his party was the subject of those types of attacks. And so was a lot of Bill Nelson's more moderate Republican friends in the Senate. And you can tell he didn't want to let those go. And so just that act of doing that, even though it was in the past, now has consequences for Bridenstine as he's going forward. And Bill Nelson made sure those consequences were discussed. I would like to point out, you mentioned that NASA has sort of had a history of bipartisanship, which is true. Keep in mind that the fights over budgets have been contentious dating all the way back to the mid-60s during the Apollo program, where people on both sides of the aisle were concerned about the spending, even if they

weren't attacking each other politically. So there have been contentious fights over NASA in Congress in the past. But this is, I agree with you, is a different animal altogether. And it's partially that you have a congressman from one party and a senator from the opposite party battling back and forth on this issue. It's also important to remember that Bill Nelson is a former astronaut and represents the Kennedy Space Center. So he has a lot of interest in this particular issue. And Bill Nelson is engaged in what may turn out to be one of the most difficult political fights of his career for his next election campaign. Bridenstine also took a lot of heat for his at least past positions on climate change,

which of course, NASA has a major role in doing research on that very important topic. He did say that he acknowledges that we humans are responsible for some portion of climate change because of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. But there was a big effort by a lot of the Democrats to get him to say that we are the major cause, and he wasn't quite willing to go that far. Was that a fair thing to bring up in this setting? And were you guys satisfied with what he had to say? I think it was certainly a fair thing to raise, because climate change is one of those areas, it's so removed, the debate in politics is so far removed from the actual scientific debate of it's not the debate isn't whether it's happening, but the exact consequences of this overwhelming amount of

evidence. Bridenstine had said some very negative things about climate change years ago. To his credit, he admitted basically that he was wrong earlier, and he has evolved in his views. What I found really interesting was that that didn't help him. That didn't help him very much with the Democrats on the panel. And in some ways, I found that a little troubling, because this is ideally what you want to have happen, even if he didn't go all the way to say that humans are the primary driver, which they are. And even the way he responded to it wasn't necessarily denying that. But he was saying he didn't have the data and it's possible he didn't, or maybe he didn't read the reports or regardless, he's made a significant evolution in his stated views on climate change. And I think that's more worthy of, you know, if you want more people to do that, you don't just try to continue to destroy them because of what they used to think. And that was kind of an interesting situation where, again, I'm sympathetic to the fear that the person who kind of represents scientific exploration of the universe would not properly respect the process of science.

But from what I have seen Bridenstine say, he has accepted the vast majority of views of the vast majority of scientists. But that wasn't enough because of those past statements. So, you know, you can hear me working through this a little bit in my head. Basically, I'm, I feel okay with it. Also in consideration where this is a Republican led Senate and a Republican administration that is not exactly putting climate science, you know, in a very high priority, let's say. And so there was no reason for him to say that this was the case because he could be confirmed either way. He didn't have to admit that he had previously been wrong. So I think this issue is less important now. And obviously, a lot of it remains to be seen how he acts as administrator, should he be

confirmed. But I didn't hear anything that would disqualify him in this context. I think if there's anything we should say, great, he's made progress. That means we should be really eager to continue to engage him, particularly in the scientific community, to explain the rest of it, the primary human causation of climate change. And I'll go one step further than that, actually. What really impressed me about Bridenstine's testimony was his discussion of the decadal survey process. He seemed to recognize that that was really the driver of consensus within the

scientific community. And he respected that even if it turns out that he personally doesn't believe that humans are responsible for climate change. And I don't think that that's what he said in his testimony at all. But even if that were the case, as long as he respects the process of the decadal survey, his belief system is actually irrelevant. I thought that was impressive. Yeah. And again, it's one of those things where the bigger question to me, and I even hesitate

to even go into this all because it's become so vitriolic. And I think if anything else, it's more of a statement of just the utter lack of trust between the two parties right now, where you can have someone say basically, well, what I said before was wrong. I now say this. And the answer is, well, you still said that five years ago. What can you do? We should be trying to encourage people to change their minds. We should validate that. Now, again, we shouldn't just let people coast by it. But you know, it's a good thing. No, I agree. As a taxpayer and as a citizen, I would like my representatives to be convincible when faced with evidence, right?

Right. So that was contentious. And the other thing we should point out that they asked him, and again, these were good questions to ask because you can't take this for granted anymore. They said, will you protect NASA scientists from being reassigned or punished or, you know, any kind of top down consequences for pursuing climate change research or talking about it. And he said he would protect his scientists in that if should he be confirmed. So again, compare that to what's happening at the EPA. And the EPA, I think, is the fear that's leading all of this. He is not Scott Pruitt. From everything we see, he does not intend to run NASA like Pruitt runs the EPA.

Were you guys disappointed or surprised by the lack of real space policy questions from the members of the Senate committee? It seemed like most of the space policy that came up was addressed in Bridenstine's opening statement. I was surprised, I guess. Again, it's more, again, a statement of where we are in the Senate right now. I expected a lot of talk about climate, which I think is, again, was a totally valid topic. There was a lot of discussion about his previous statements on the rights of LGBTQ community. And he's a conservative Christian. So when we'd had the Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality and other issues, he did not like those and said as much at the time. He said that he would treat everyone equally and merit based. You know,

I don't think he's going to be probably running out and doing anything beyond that. But it basically centered on that and some other historical stuff. There was very little discussion about this whole new moon claim that I guess we'll get to in terms of the National Space Council, what you want to run NASA, how you would you run it differently, all of those pretty salient topics really fell to the wayside, which again, shows you where the energy and acrimony really is going right now is just that chasm of trust between the two sides here. Yeah. And Casey, you said you were surprised. I was disappointed, but not surprised. We'd been hearing a lot of the same questions that came up in the hearing itself when Matt and I have been up on the Hill talking to people from both parties. We've heard questions from Republicans

and Democrats alike regarding Bridenstine's nomination, and they all centered on the kinds of questions that were brought up. It wasn't surprising to me, but yeah, for somebody who's going to run one of the premier science and technology agencies in this nation, it was disappointing that we didn't have more discussion of science and technology. Though we did learn that he will continue to support Orion. Right. That was the most direct question. I think it was from Corey Gardner, was it?

In Colorado. I was like, will you continue pumping money into my estate? Yes, Senator. Thank you for your vote. Yeah. No, I mean, that was about it. I mean, obviously, a lot of the details have been discussed, because he met with all of the senators beforehand as part of the pre-confirmation process, and he had a chance to talk with them. I think it's actually telling, in a sense, that they didn't, particularly on the Democratic side, who is very much against him, it was telling that they didn't focus on the space policy questions. Yeah, that they focused on all

these other questions. Because at some level, that must mean that the space policy ideas that he's bringing are not particularly controversial. Right? We've worked with his office over the past year or so we, you know, talked with him about the Space Renaissance Act and a number of other pieces of legislation. We've always found them to be a very reasonable office to deal with. Never felt like there was an ominous partisan cast to any of our discussions. He's always seemed interested in our ideas and willing to work with us in highlighting space science. He tends to focus on the human spaceflight side of the house. Given this administration, given the current political situation that we find ourselves in,

I don't see anything necessarily disqualifying about the guy. I mean, he's not dedicated to the destruction of the agency he's been nominated to run. Quite the opposite. I think he's a real fan of NASA. Yeah. He does seem to be. He certainly came off that way. And, you know, in a subjective way, speaking only for myself, I found him to be pretty likable yesterday. Do you have any doubt that the full Senate will confirm him as the next administrator of NASA? Well, the only person I have a question about, I mean, the numbers are completely in his favor, right? Because the Republicans run the Senate. There's no,

no ability to block nominations anymore by the minority. So 50 votes he could pass. I don't think they want to do that. Right. And I think in some ways, it would be telling if the NASA administrator came in with 52 votes, or just like every Republican, but no Democrats, that would, I think, kind of would hamper him in some ways in terms of NASA would change in, you know, some hard to define way of like, now this is a partisan vote, the person running it is treated as a partisan. The person who was missing that actually was really interested in hearing from was Marco Rubio. And Marco Rubio, the Republican from Florida, had joined Bill Nelson, Democrat from Florida, earlier in the year to come out very strongly against Bridenstine's nomination for the kind of shared some of the same talking points.

But ultimately, when it came to the hearing, he was somewhere else. I think there was another hearing going on. It's open question to me, will he even get Rubio's vote? Ted Cruz was there, by the way, who chairs that committee. And Ted Cruz seemed pretty bullish on his chances that I believe he will be confirmed as the next administrator. But we'll get a sense, I suppose, on November 8th, they'll have the committee vote, which will approve the process for it to go to the full Senate floor. And we'll see if Marco Rubio is on board for that vote. Well, by the next time the three of us get together, we may very well, from the

sound of it, have a brand new permanent NASA administrator, and we'll talk about that then. Let's move on to the thing that happened one month ago, just before we recorded, I'm sorry, right after we recorded, yeah, just a day after we recorded last month's Space Policy Edition. And that was that almost ceremonial, I would call it, meeting of the National Space Council. They even did it with the space shuttle as a backdrop there and the Air and Space Museum facility at Dulles Airport. Guys, what did you think? Were there any surprises there? I think the big surprise, and I don't know that I would call it a surprise, What did you think? Were there any surprises there? asteroid on the way to going to Mars, which had been the plan under the Obama administration,

and instead wants to focus more on the moon. Initially, the plan sounded as though it was somewhat of a minimal impact until they stated that the plan was to go to the moon and create a sustainable program at the moon. That makes the journey to Mars then a bit more problematic because a sustainable presence at the moon, it brings into question, are you at the moon or are you on the moon? If you're on the moon, it's a very different argument. So I think that was for the civil space program, that was the big moment at the the first meeting. Usually you would have the council meet and then make a recommendation, right? I mean, that's kind of what they did during the National Space Council during George H.W. Bush. They at least had some meetings beforehand and kind of figured things out.

But this was, I mean, this was telegraphed a long way out in advance. The asteroid mission was good as dead. We all knew about that. But it was really the shift away from Mars, or at least talking about Mars. And so coming out right saying we're going to go to the moon. And then Oh, I guess we'll then figure out how to do that seems to be where they are. There's good and bad with that. This goes to some of our first discussions that we've done on this podcast of this never ending question and cyclical argument about moon or Mars, moon or Mars, moon or Mars, moon or Mars for human spaceflight. The answer, in my opinion, is just choose one.

They're both good places. Depends why you want to go. But the argument to say, as Jason said, if you want to get to Mars, you have to stop off at the moon. Makes no sense if you're operating within a world of limited resources. As Jason implied, you can go near the moon, perhaps, and you can demonstrate some of your deep space capability, figure out your long-term life support, maybe provide the equivalent of a national infrastructure that allows commercial or international partners to go to the surface. But if NASA can stay laser focused on Mars, you probably shouldn't develop a

whole separate system to land on the moon in a constrained budget situation. That is yet to be figured out. But again, it's just really not clear. He implied Americans were going to be on the moon, but no timeline, no budget, no clarity of mission, anything that we were able to decipher from that. Yeah. And from a technical standpoint as well, I thought it was really interesting. Well, first of all, Robert Lightfoot, the acting administrator of NASA, came out with a statement shortly after the meeting where he basically said, we support the administration's goals and on and on. We are talking with them about building this cislunar gateway facility. are talking with them about building this Cislunar gateway facility. It'd be an orbital laboratory, basically, orbiting the moon that could then double as a gateway to either the lunar surface or to Mars or to some other destination. NASA has been discussing this

in terms of their plans for the journey to Mars now for several years. So it's interesting that NASA is sort of looking at this in terms of, well, we're going to keep doing our plan and you guys can figure out what it is that you're going to do. The real key to this is if you decide to go back to the lunar surface, you're going to have to build a lander. And currently there's no money in the budget to do that. So you'll either have to increase the budget, find the money within the NASA budget by cutting other programs, and then you're going to have to build the thing. The last time we did this, it took six or eight years to build a lander. So this administration may or may not actually see this plan come to fruition. And it's an open question as to whether or not they're really going to pour resources into it. But Jason, what about private companies?

So that is an interesting question as well. So this is a big debate that's going on within DC, particularly regarding NASA, but it's true of other agencies as well. And this is an argument over the meaning of the term public-private partnership. And it's a term that gets bandied about a lot in this town at the moment. From the government standpoint, a public-private partnership means that the private industry will put forth a lot of money in an effort to alleviate some of the government's costs in order to accomplish some of these goals, say building a moon lander or something. In the eyes of the private sector, this means that government will subsidize this

in much the same way as we've seen in the past. And industry is happy to take government money and show that they're capable of building all of these capabilities, all these spacecraft that NASA says that they want to get to the moon. But the real trick will come in determining what that balance of cost is and whether or not government is willing to put a little more money in or industry is willing to put a little more money in. I've seen no strong argument to indicate that either is willing to take the short end of that stick. I want to make sure that our listeners know that the Pence that Casey referred to is, of course, Vice President Mike Pence, who was named by President Trump as the chair of the leader of the National Space Council.

But the bulk of the time in this first meeting of the council was taken up by private corporate spokespeople, the leaders of three of the old line aerospace companies and the leaders of three of the so-called new space companies, all of whom talked about how much they are pleased to be a part of this effort. Any thoughts about what they said or Or was it pretty much what you would have expected CEOs to say in front of the vice president? It was pretty much what I expected. We should just acknowledge again that they were there. Like that was, you know, for all the kind of critiques we just made about the plan, you can't say that this administration, or at least Vice President Pence, is not fascinated personally by space. They had CEOs of these major, major companies there in person for almost three hours. And it wasn't just CEOs, they had like half the cabinet there too. We had, you know, the Secretary of

State, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Transportation. I think we had the Deputy Secretary of Defense, like these were some heavy hitters who have lots of things to do. And these are all members now of the National Space Council that they were there in that role, not the corporate folks, but the government officials that Casey was just referring to. Those are all positions now on the National Space Council. And the purpose of this part of this meeting was to meet with industry to better ascertain what the capabilities of industry were to contribute to this plan of the administrations. It's also important to note, though, that this was only the civil space part of this meeting. There was also a defense part, which involved a bunch of other witnesses. The stated purpose of the National Space Council is really not to toy with the civil space program. It has far more to do with aligning the space

capabilities of the United States writ large. So in intelligence and defense, in commercial capabilities in civil space, so that you don't have duplicative efforts or efforts working at odds with each other. We tend to get really focused on this argument of whether or not we're going back to the moon. But in fact, that's a very small part of what the National Space Council is interested in. Right. In terms of budgets, right at the defense side of space is something like 24, 25 billion a year compared to NASA's 18, 19. Yeah, yeah. If you if you throw intelligence and defense together, it's about four fifths of the US expenditure in space as opposed to NASA. This defense side is not something that we probably will ever spend much time talking

about, either in the Space Policy Edition or on Planetary Radio. But it is of growing importance to a lot of people in the military and in Congress. I mean, even this discussion of the creation of another branch of the military, basically moving space out of the Air Force and creating a space force, I suppose, Starfleet, maybe. Is this something that you think the NSC, in this parallel line to civil space, that they will also be involved with? I think they'll absolutely be involved in the conversation, but I think they'll be involved in the capacity of pointing out that this is just adding layers of bureaucracy to an already over bureaucratized system. I don't think that the administration is coming out strongly in support of a space agency within the Department of Defense.

That's that seems to be a push from a small number of folks within within Congress. That seems to be a push from a small number of folks within Congress. Mike Pence obviously does care deeply about space, but he does have a few other responsibilities. Could you talk a little bit about the two of you? Would you talk about the guy who is expected to do a lot of the heavy lifting for the National Space Council? And that's Scott Pace, someone who has been involved with space policy for many, many years. sharpest policy minds I've ever run into. He cut his teeth working on GPS and spectrum allocation at the UN for the GPS system. He has since worked at NASA. He's worked in the defense apparatus. He's worked at the White House. He's a very, very bright man. I think he's the right guy for the job.

If anybody's going to be able to herd all these cats, it'll be Scott. But it's unclear as to how much authority he'll actually have. At the end of the day, the decisions will be made by Vice President Pence and President Trump. Where does the National Space Council go from here? What do you guys expect to see next? Is there even another meeting scheduled? Well, kind of. I mean, they didn't actually give us much heads up on this meeting either. The first one, they had multiple tasks which were publicly assigned. And among them was for NASA to develop a plan for its exploration efforts or human exploration efforts, which it was kind of already doing at the behest of Congress. And I think they just merged those together for a review of regulatory issues for commercial spaceflight. I think it's space strategic framework on the defense side.

And those all had 45-day due dates, which would put those at November 20th. It's kind of coming right up around the corner here. And they also said they might would have another base council meeting roughly around that same time. So it's possible we'll have another meeting here around Thanksgiving, but no public word on that yet. And it may not be public. It may just be a meeting internally. It's unclear. There's not a readily established procedure for this council because it's been a while since it's really been in action. And the last time it was around, I think CompuServe was the primary internet provider.

So, you know, there's stuff happening. And again, I think what's interesting, and Jason kind of brought this up earlier. So we have this new statement that kind of sets policy, we haven't seen a new formal presentation or publication of national space policy yet. So there's a national space policy document that the Obama administration last released its policy in 2010. We have not seen an official, I don't think, updated policy. So that was effectively the intent of Pence's statement. If you actually look at it, it's not actually clear how much changes

beyond the removal of asteroids from human exploration. And that really leaves you a really broad interpretation of what it means to go back to the moon. And I have a quote up though. So again, it's hard. Everyone's trying to read their entrails or their tea leaves or whatever metaphor you want to want to use here. But here's the quote from Pence during his speech. He says, we will return American astronauts to the moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond. The moon will be a stepping stone, a training ground, a venue to strengthen our commercial and international partnerships as we refocus America's space program toward human

space exploration. There's a lot of things you can read into that, but it's not clear exactly what those would be ultimately. Right. I mean, it's just as easy to imagine that that means building a large base on the moon that will be staffed much like the International Space Station has been for the next 30 years. Or it could also mean doing this sort of orbital gateway and allowing international partners or commercial partners to build the lander as they wish and just helping them in that capacity. Both of those strategies fit perfectly well within Pence's announcement. Right, exactly. You have a lot of wiggle room. And then I think what also gives a lot of particularly scientist pause

was this ending statement, refocus America's space program toward human space exploration. This may be something to chill down Jason's spine because he knows the budgets really well. But previously, I think particularly Constellation may have been a particularly egregious example of this because human space flights is so much more complex and expensive.

When you blow those budgets, you have very few places to take it from. And so science tends to be the source of that overrun money. Is that true? It's absolutely true. And you don't even have to overrun it. you just increase the goal of the human spaceflight program. Say you add a lander to the NASA budget, a lunar lander to the NASA budget, and you don't increase the top line budget for NASA by a commensurate amount. If you have to find that money internally, conservatively, a lander is going to cost, you know, 12 to $20 billion over six or eight years. That's a lot of money coming

out of a tight budget. Yeah. I mean, the only really big pot of money. So human spaceflight at NASA take up roughly, you know, rounding to about 50% if you count for the overhead and your station operations, exploration systems, research overhead for Johnson and Kennedy and places. Yeah, it's a little longer, but yeah. Yeah, you could just say for this discussion, so I don't have to correct myself. But then science is really the second biggest single chunk. Science is a little under 30% of NASA's budget.

And then you have aeronautics, space technology, construction, overhead, and some other things like that that take up the rest of those pieces. Roads and commodes. Yeah. The less fanciful aspects of spaceflight, right? That is the troublesome thing. And phrasing it that way, you know, refocusing the space program toward human space exploration. I mean, the most charitable and we, by the way, we talked about this in a long post, that's, I think, quite good online that we'll link to the most charitable way to read that, I think, is focusing on the exploration part as the keyword, as opposed to the human part as the keyword, right? So you could say that space exploration is pushing further out and going beyond, right? Not, not low Earth orbit, not the space station.

That could be very charitable. The least charitable way you could say is that, is read it as the human part and say that everything else at NASA is going to become subservient to this effort for sending humans toward the moon in some way. It's really unclear. Is it significant that in his opening statement at his hearing, Bridenstine said that he looks forward to pushing the transfer of the International Space Station to private hands, commercial hands? Wouldn't that free up money to do some of this other work, as we've talked about in the past? That's certainly something has to happen. So this could be a whole episode on its own. That's kind of the standard line, I would say, Jason, right? It's like, let's transfer the ISS to commercial partners. And then everyone just kind of trails off as they say that sentence, because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. has been saying it for six or eight years. It's now two different presidential administrations from two different parties who have been saying it. We've been hearing it from OSTP, OMB, from

industry, from academia. Everybody keeps talking about it, but it's completely unclear how that would actually work or who would actually take over that allocation. It doesn't at all make sense to me at the moment. It's one of those phrases that sounds good. And again, it's not just Bridenstine saying this. I'm not picking on Bridenstine here. This is what a lot of people, this is what NASA, this is what Robert Lightfoot says. This is what everyone at NASA says. There is no one who has yet said that I'm willing to pay as a private company billions of dollars per year to operate a space station according to NASA's

safety. You would imagine they would have to maintain NASA's safety regulatory system, which is not a cheap system to maintain. If you want to get down to it, there's already a private company that manages the space station. They're called Boeing, and they have the contract to manage the space station. And I mean, the idea is that maybe you turn over to an entity that NASA is renting from as opposed to managing for. But again, I don't understand how you could save that much money. Yeah, there's never cheaper than the mortgage, right? Exactly. But what Bridenstine did say, which I think was really encouraging in his nomination, his submitted testimony, was that basically figuring out what to do with the station is going to be one of his top jobs, what he considers one of his most important priorities, which is good, which is we need to start thinking about this now. whether we end it, whether we hand it off to someone else and hope they find some magic way to run it for less than $4 billion a year. That needs to be figured out because you're right,

we have, in a way, two human spaceflight programs, one that wants to angle for the moon or beyond, and one that is in LEO. And the LEO one is the actual one that's functioning. And that's hard to give up an extant program for one that doesn't exist yet. But it's hard to get one that's functioning. And that's hard to give up an extant program for one that doesn't exist yet. But it's hard to get one that doesn't exist yet up and running when you have an extant program sucking up half of your resources every year. Not just money, but just attention, effort, institutional focus, all these things that need to happen, need to exist to have a space station. It's not clear what the answer is there, but that's good that someone's thinking about it. Yeah. As the station ages, it becomes more and more difficult

to technically keep it up and running. At the moment, it's authorized through 2024, but by 2024, hopefully, we're going to have several commercial capabilities to get to low Earth orbit. And theoretically, we'll have SLS that can get us beyond low Earth orbit. So you'll have commercial interests and government interests that are outside of station. So hopefully that will sort of force NASA's hand in making these decisions. So we are maybe Americans headed back to the moon, putting boots on the moon, and then someday, somewhere down the line, Americans setting foot on Mars. And I wonder if Elon Musk will be waiting there for them to shake hands when they get there. to that. No, well, always good to point out, in some ways, the actual focus of the space program right now has not changed a bit since this announcement. NASA was already intending and wanted to institutionally pursue the Deep Space Lunar Gateway. That's going to the moon. So you

could always say that NASA was gonna go to the moon around the moon, no matter what in the next decade. The SLS, the the block 1a that is a moon rocket you you cannot launch people pretty much anywhere else in the in the one in the block 1a so we're building a moon rocket and we're building a moon capsule which is orion because that can't go anywhere else for more than a couple of weeks so we've been building a moon hardware we've been having a moon program since 2011. Really, we get down to it. All of NASA's hashtag journey to Mars stuff, the ubiquitous squid poster, you look at the plans that NASA's laid out over the past six or eight years, all of them have us in cislunar space

throughout the 2020s. So yeah, it's not a huge change at all, as Casey said. Yeah, it's rhetorical. And this, so let's just speculate, because this is all honestly it is at this point, about what could the role of these public-private partnerships be? Jason, you touched on that a little bit, but I think it's worth examining in full, because this is something I think that doesn't quite have enough, it doesn't have enough, we need to dwell on this a little bit to figure out what this exactly means. Where in the scope of things are these entities going to come in and for what purpose?

And this is what I talked about in my post online in reaction to the National Space Council was to what end are we going to the moon? And that was made unclear. But let's talk about some of these private partnerships. was made unclear, but let's talk about some of these private partnerships. So Jason, what's a reasonable program look like with keeping the SLS in Orion, but also working in these smaller new space companies at the same time? You could envision a deep space gateway that's built as a modular system, similar to the way that we built the ISS, that would require something like an SLS with these huge lift capabilities to get the larger modules up to this new structure. But then you've got to supply it. Once you've got astronauts up there, you're going to need food, you're going to need water,

they're going to need to send their laundry back to Earth at some point. So that's a real opportunity for the commercial capabilities. Right now, right now you're talking about groups like SpaceX and Orbital ATK who are launching commercial services to the ISS. You could envision them just extending those capabilities out to cislunar space to resupply this module. If somebody were able to make a business case for having a small commercial lunar base for tourism or science or whatever, or even robotic capability, NASA could, or these companies rather, could buy space on a commercial launch have to develop something to get from the gateway to the surface of the moon, which is a lot less expensive than if you had to develop your own rocket and develop your own orbital station and whatnot. So there are a lot of niches for commercial capability there, but we're still waiting to see if there's a market. I think the interesting thing, too, is I've heard people propose a COTS program, but for lunar landers, or for some forgetting that last leg of, can we turn over to a competitive fixed price contract, getting to the surface of the moon, as opposed to, I think we've used it so far to develop our rockets, you know, or SpaceX, the an orbital ATK built the rockets. I guess Sierra Nevada is doing their Dream Chaser spacecraft to resupply the station

in a similar situation. I suppose that's an option, too, where NASA says, we're going to build the gateway. We're going to use SLS and Orion to send people there. We'll use some of your rockets to supply it. And then we will hold a fixed contract competition for lunar surface access. Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin says he's ready to go. He'll bring your cargo to the moon. Not for free, though.

No, not for free. You don't have Prime yet. But I mean, so I see that as a reasonable thought. But at the same time, you have to think about there has to be competition in order for that to work. But at the same time, you have to think about there has to be competition in order for that to work. And you're taking a much more substantial risk in terms of those companies not pulling it off than for low Earth orbit access on a rocket. Right, exactly. If you look at the COTS program at NASA for ISS refurbishment, it's been, I think, overall a really successful program.

I don't think it necessarily reduced the initial cost for NASA because they paid a portion of development for several systems rather than just a single system. But NASA, in return, got to watch a bunch of different types of design happen. So they learned a lot of lessons internally. You ended up with redundancy in capability with these different systems. In the end, you ended up with NASA is just paying for the service to get things up to the station, which is exactly what the program was intended to do. However, it didn't do it on the schedule that had been promised. So if you're intending to make a certain date for any reason, that's probably not the most efficient way to go. So if you're intending to make a certain date for any reason, that's probably not the most efficient way to go. But if you're doing it in order to learn new capabilities,

to try new systems, to develop technical capabilities within industry, it's an interesting approach. The end of that though is, we still haven't seen the end with COTS, is there a customer outside of the government? And I think that's an even tougher case to make once you get to the moon. Well, notably with COTS, there was a commercial case, right? You could then have access to the satellite communication launch market. And that became a reason for investors to put in private money to match, at least in SpaceX's case, the public money that NASA put in to the Falcon development, at least. Commercial crew, totally different, right? Because there is as yet no commercial

crude market for going up to space, unless this International Space Station Mall of America opens up, I suppose, and that takes care of our operational budget. But again, you're even less so at the moon, right? You would have to, there is an even more abstract, ambitious, ill-defined business case at the moon to generate private investment to match public investment. Again, so many things with COTS were predicated on the idea that you were providing some effort, some help for a company to bootstrap its way into an existing market. And that allowed them to raise private capital to match public NASA investment. That was a requirement of that program.

It is different for the moon because there is no existing, there's no existing marketplace to get into, right? You would have to create something like this is why I was thinking if you think people were upset about Solyndra, remember that solar energy company that went out of business? Think about at the moon, having to not just bet on a company, but bet on an entire marketplace coming into existence or not. This is the subtlety. So this is why I think we can't just say, we just do cots at the moon and it'll work exactly the same because the fundamental environment is different. And all of that's true, but the resources available to exploit using the railroads or the passenger travel for the airlines, you could see how you would make a profit on that pretty easily.

The moon is less obvious to me. So I don't think that those comparisons are one-to-one. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great, great point. are one-to-one. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great, great point. We are almost out of time, guys.

But before that happens, since the Space Launch System has come up, it reminds me that it and another project that we're all looking forward to have announced delays just in the time since we last got to talk. This is delay season, I think, that we're in, actually. Because SLS, well, they were delayed a while ago, and they just announced that they still haven't told us, that they plan to soon tell us how long exactly they're going to be delayed. The announcement of the delay has been delayed.

Yeah, exactly. But Jason, I mean, you brought this up last time, James Webb, you want to give us a quick update on Webb? The James Webb Space Telescope, as people may recall, was originally budgeted at about five and a half billion dollars and overran in 2011 to a pretty significant degree, came within an inch of actually being scrapped. And Congress finally gave them the money that they needed, but wrote into legislation that the project should not go over its cost at all, or there would be no more money for it. Well, the project has been performing really well to its cost and schedule milestones from the rebase line up until about, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago when they announced that there would be a six month schedule delay due to integration problems. They're having difficulty

getting all the systems to work together on the spacecraft, basically. They have announced that the six-month delay is covered by the reserves that are held at NASA headquarters for that project. So there won't be an increase in the cost to that project, but this will absolutely deplete their reserves. This is a project that's not launching until mid next year, maybe late next year. And they're still not done with the integration and testing aspect of this, which is when your costs generally go up. So it's a very tenuous position for this project to find itself in at a really bad time. And again, those big ones, when they breach, they breach big, right? That's always the

lesson there. SLS, we're now looking at 2019, maybe? Optimistically. Wow. Optimistic first launch, because I think it's scheduled for like December of 2019. So 2020, probably. But at the same time, SpaceX Falcon Heavy, someone is reporting and SpaceX has not confirmed that its first launch will be December of 2017, December 29th or something. That seems very likely for me that that's going to slip into 2018. We've seen the launch date for our light sail spacecraft on the second Falcon Heavy continue to slip into the future as well. So everyone's having trouble with delays at this point. Space is hard, I guess. There's some tricks about it.

I've heard that many times. Casey, what's that petition link once again? It's planetary.org slash petition 2017. And it's going to be good for the next month. So check it out. Again, it only takes a minute to do it. And then you make a difference. And maybe also, can I put in one more plug?

I forgot to do this at the beginning. Sure. If you really want to step up your space advocate commitment, we are going to have our annual congressional blitz in February of 2018. That's where people just like you, other Planetary Society members, all congregate in Washington, D.C., and you do meetings, face-to-face meetings in congressional offices for two days, February 26th and 7th with the training day on the 25th.

Registration is early bird right now. You can save $15. We can send you a link. If you submit our petition, we'll give you an opportunity to sign up, or you can go to space we can send you a link if you submit our petition we'll give you an opportunity to sign up or you go to space exploration alliance.net and sign up there it's really fun it's a really it is statistically or just research shows that is the most effective thing you can do is show up in person and talk to those congressional offices that's why it just takes your time so but we'll provide training, we'll provide talking points,

and you get to hang out with me and Jason and Matt for those three days. So it's a win-win all around, I think. And we should say that's Matt. Matt Renninger, who, like these guys, Casey and Jason Callahan, knows his way around the inside of the congressional office buildings. I'll continue to just host Planetary Radio and encourage you to join us as a member of the Planetary Society at planetary.org slash membership. Make sure all this stuff continues to happen and continues to grow.

Anything, Casey, that people might want to take a look at between now and the next time we speak on the Space Policy Edition, which will be the first day of December, December 1st? You've got an op-ed piece out, don't you? Got an op-ed on Axios. They crammed it down into 200 words, so it's right to the point. But yeah, we got lots of good stuff on our website right now. We'll link to those in the show notes. But also, Matt, I was going to say, you're welcome to join us, and we'll set up some meetings for you in Capitol Hill if you want to come around in February

and freeze with the rest of us as we go around promoting space science and exploration. I got to say, I've done this a couple of times, not as part of the Blitz, but visiting congressional offices, I think both times with the boss, the science guy, and it was just a terrific experience. And there is no better way to see the inner workings of how our government, if you're an American, how the United States works. I strongly encourage people to consider participating directly in this way. There is much more to see on the website. You've got blogs from Casey. And I want to mention one from our colleague Jason Davis, who also wrote up a little summary of the Bridenstine hearing that took place before the Senate just yesterday as

we speak. Gentlemen, I very much look forward to talking to you in December. Have a great Thanksgiving and we'll talk then. Sounds good. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. So I've got one last little thing because Casey said, had a statement earlier that it's been tweaking me now for about a year and a half. Go for it. I hear it all over DC. People keep saying that space is hard. It is neither dense nor rigid. Space is difficult. Difficult and empty. Thank you. That's Jason Callahan, the Space Policy Advisor to the Planetary Society with Casey Dreyer, the Director of Space Policy for the Society. I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio. Casey Dreyer, the Director of Space Policy for the Society. I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio.

Like I said, join us on December 1st, but you can get another Planetary Radio fix next week with the weekly edition, the regular show of Planetary Radio. In fact, next week, we'll be talking to Andy Weir about his new novel, Artemis, which talks about a little village on the moon, a little vacation village, as a matter of fact. Have a great month, everybody. We will talk to you again on the next Space Policy Edition in one month.