Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition #21: Bill Nye and the State of the Union

Episode Date: February 2, 2018

Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye attended the State of the Union address on January 30th, he also spent the day meeting with sixteen different members of Congress to promote science on Capitol Hill. In this special abbreviated show, Casey Dreier and Mat Kaplan welcome their colleague Matt Renninger, who joined Bill on Capitol Hill, to discuss the goals of The Planetary Society and the reasons why it was important for Bill to attend.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 Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. We are glad to have you back, or if you found us for the first time, welcome. This is the companion to the weekly Planetary Radio episode that a lot of you listen to, except this is the one where we concentrate on, duh, space policy. And we have a great time doing it. And apparently, you guys have a great time listening, judging from all of the reactions that we get. I am Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio. Join for the very first time for Space Policy Edition. I am face-to-face with the director of space policy for the Planetary Society,

Casey Dreyer. Welcome. Hey, Matt. Nice to be here. And, you know, never tell me I don't make sacrifices for you. Yeah. Any excuse to come down this way from the Northwest, right? No. Absolutely. Yeah, sure. We are in the studio at Planetary Society headquarters, where we do some recording now and then. In addition, we have another member of the Society's space policy staff online, but it's not our usual partner in SPE. Casey? Well, I got a phone call from Jason Callahan today, who is obviously our usual co-host. And he said, Casey, I have some bad news. And I'm like, oh no, what's happened? You know, like the something in the budget or something really bad about the policy. He's like, I'm sick. Oh, okay. Well, that's all. Yeah. I was relieved

that he was sick. So unfortunately you couldn't join us today, but instead we have Matt Reniger, who's our senior manager of government relations here at the Planetary Society. Matt's joining us from Washington, DC, where he does most of our, I call him our professional extrovert who goes around and makes a lot of our connections in D.C. So, hey, Matt, thanks for joining us. Welcome, Matt. Thanks, guys. Casey, Matt, great to be here. So we have a really, really good reason to have you here because we're largely going to be talking about something that happened just a few days ago, the State of the Union Address. But before we do that, let us do our usual pitch up front

for you to become even more involved with all of the good work that Casey and Matt and Jason Callahan do on the Space Policy Team and everything else that the Planetary Society is up to. How? How, you ask? You're chomping at the bit. By becoming a member, go to planetary.org slash membership, and you can stand behind all of the good work that these guys are doing, behind LightSail, behind PlanetVac, behind Planetary Radio. It is our members who make all of this possible. So please consider, take a look at that page. You can see all the great benefits we provide to memberships.

And we have many different fun levels to join us at. And we hope you'll consider it. I have nothing to add to that, Matt. That was a great pitch. Thank you. I second. Years of practice. Okay, the State of the Union.

As we speak, it was only about less than 72 hours ago. I hope we can talk a lot about the wonderful future of space exploration laid out for the next 30, 40 years. It was laid out by President Trump during the State of the Union, or was that an alternate universe? Yeah. This is why it's a short episode this month. No, no mention of space this time around. He actually had mentioned it last year in his pseudo State of the Union, his first address to Congress. They had a couple lines about space. And I wasn't necessarily expecting any mentions of space. But you know, he had done I think he's done three very public signing ceremonies for various space policy presidential directives.

His first or second piece of legislation was NASA related. That's true. The NASA Authorization Act of 2017. And so I just assumed that there was a chance it would be in there, but it didn't make the cut, which in some ways, if you look at certain political scientists that argue about this stuff, actually to not be in the State of the Union helps your topic stay more bipartisan. Because as soon as the president brings it up, it immediately turns it into a partisan statement because the president tends to be the leader of their party. So in some ways, it's actually good. This space doesn't always make the cut as a primary priority of every administration that helps it persist across different administrations. So big few, I guess, that it wasn't mentioned. And yet, there was a presence, there was a space

exploration presence within the gallery there for the State of the Union. Well, Matt, you were there, right? I wasn't in the gallery, but I was on the hill all day. But Bill, the CEO, Bill Nye, our CEO, was in attendance up in the gallery. I don't know exactly- Bill went? Yeah. You heard about this, did you, Casey? I had just been passing, I guess. I wasn't aware. You should try to get a blog out about it real quick before anyone asks. We should say, all irony aside, there is a blog out about this, right? Which you put out, what, right after? Right before the State of the Union. Right before, right.

Because Bill making the decision to attend the State of the Union became somewhat controversial, at least among some people, right? Would you give us some of the background? Sure. Bill was invited to attend the State of the Union address by Jim Bridenstine, who is a conservative member of Congress, House of Representatives from Oklahoma. He's also the current nominee for NASA administrator and has had a very contentious process. We've talked about him many times on this podcast, but Bill and him have a good working relationship. And this goes back the last few years because Jim Bridenstine serves on the House Space Subcommittee and is involved really closely on NASA policy. And so he invited Bill

as his guest. Bill and, you know, he talked with us here at the Planetary Society. We fully supported him going. And we knew it would be a controversial decision because Jim Bridenstine in the past has made incorrect statements about climate change and other issues that you don't want your NASA administrator to make. Now, he has since walked back a lot of that in his NASA hearings, but the vast majority of people and opposition that's against him has centered on those previous statements. And so for a lot of people, Bill's presence with Representative Bridenstine was, and I think also just at the State of the Union,

was seen as this implicit endorsement, which I think says more about the state of our politics right now than if you know Bill, he's not going to suddenly switch all of everything he's ever done immediately gets wiped out and he shows up. But I understand. I mean, this wasn't a surprise to us. And so it was controversial. We got letters from our members who expressed concern, but also a lot of members who expressed support about it. I honestly really enjoyed engaging with our members who wrote both in support and to express their concern. Because as I posted in this blog that I wrote, really kind of putting out a lot of my thoughts about why we did this. A membership organization like the Planetary Society allows us to have that

communication and feedback with our membership. And in a sense, they enable us into being, and we need that feedback from them on what we do. They're my gut check in a certain way. It's always really encouraging because when I have these discussions with them, particularly our members, even if I ultimately don't agree with them, they're saying, here's our reasons why we both come from a place of respect and the members who write us are always so thoughtful. And so I really valued that experience through what was a controversial decision. So it was interesting, but ultimately we turned it, I think, into a really good thing, as Matt will tell you about what they did on the hill that day. And the big picture for me, which we can go into more, Matt, if you'd like, is at a certain point, when you have someone who has expressed good faith into engaging you, it is a responsibility of the scientific community, I think, to be able to attempt to engage back. And that really goes to the core of my thing. If you just ignore someone you disagree with, I do not see a pathway

to how that person then will just magically agree with you at the end of that. Matt? Yeah, I think that's exactly correct. As Casey pointed out, not just Bill's relationship, but the society's relationship with Congressman Bridenstine goes back several years. Congressman Bridenstine didn't invite Bill to the State of the Union out of the blue. This is a direct result of the dozens of meetings we've had with his staff, the handful of meetings we've had in person with him, me, Jason, and Casey, and also the meetings that Bill's had with him and frankly, the other members of the Space Subcommittee, whether they be Democrat or Republican over the years. This invitation was in Bill's capacity as CEO of the Planetary Society, which isn't just a bipartisan organization. We like to think of it

just as spaces, as nonpartisan. I think Casey said it exactly correct. Bill has a responsibility then to respond to those sorts of invitations when he's asked and to continue to engage in these issues and move that engagement forward. This is next level engagement. This is built on the foundation of those other things that we've been doing over the years. So it's just the natural next step. And I think it was incumbent upon him to respond the way he did. And Matt, that's correct. And again, this is the responsibility of a sense of an organization. And I really encourage everyone to read my piece because it was an important piece for me to write, not just as the director of space policy for the society, but just also in the sense of expressing some of my

personal philosophy about what does it mean to be a space and science advocate. And for issues that are so important about our future as a nation and as a species, we have to be able to bring people into our side ultimately. And this just goes back into what does it mean to be an advocate? Do you treat people and shun them if they disagree with you, even if they've expressed some effort to move on the issue? It's natural. And again, this is not a politics that we're in that is very forgiving or really engendering of mutual trust. And that's fundamentally part of this.

And it's not an irrational reaction to be upset to hear that bill might go without fully hearing our side of it. And I completely understood that initial feeling. That's part, I think, of a bigger problem. And here's where I think the optimism comes in. Space, as Matt said, is still nonpartisan, and edges of it are starting to collapse from that. Obviously, earth science is the part that's collapsing from that. But fundamentally, a lot of space is still nonpartisan.

And it gives people a space to engage with each other on an issue that they have a mutual interest in. Once you have an opportunity to engage in person, there is a chance, you know, it's not guaranteed, but there is a chance that you can build some sort of personal interrelationship that builds that mutual trust that allows you to not even successfully argue, but even to be heard. Because if two opposing sides that we're really at right now can't even hear each other, which is pretty much where we are, you can't even begin to address these fundamental problems

we face. And so this is where I go back as a responsibility of an organization like the Planetary Society. We have to take the optimistic opinion. We have to take the optimistic approach and say, if there is a chance that we can build bridges between people and facilitate, I would say, which we'll talk about a little more, facilitate a space where others can come together and build relationships we have to take that that position we have to our ideals demand that we take that position and and that's where we run into and not everyone will agree with that but i think that's the great opportunity we have

and one of the many reasons that space is so important to me is that it's not just amazing things that we discover it's not just that we can go and challenge ourselves with technology and learn new things. The actual application and the effort has so many benefits to us as a species and as a nation and as a civic society. Why wouldn't we do this as much as we can? So this brings back a lot, you know, and I encourage anyone who is listening or who read about us and disagrees or worries about our position to contact me. And that's always been really, again, a pleasurable thing for me to engage with people who approach I would, I would emphasize in good faith to come and talk to us. And we have lots of thinking behind what we're doing. But I'm also really

interested to hear what people have to say about it. So that's been a really interesting part of this last week. And ultimately, I think we had a really good experience from it. And so we can move on and say what we actually use this opportunity to do, which is more than just have Bill show up at the State of the Union. Yeah. And I'll try to put an exclamation on that, Casey. I just want to reiterate to our members, we're accessible to you, right? One of the things I've really enjoyed this week is the conversations that have come out of the controversy around Bill attending the State of the Union and watching the threads that we've been in with our members going back

and forth. And there is this reasonable initial reaction, but again, your blog does a great job of laying it out. But when we go through the points that you present in your blog and arrive at a different place of mutual respect and understanding in these conversations with our members, I think it's been a really worthwhile exercise. I want to add one other thing that you brought up in your blog. Oh, and first, I want to congratulate you because I saw it was also picked up by Scientific American, which is actually the first place I saw it before I saw it on our website. That's busted for, yeah. It's all right.

My first or second favorite, most favorite magazine. But you brought out the fact that the society, this is not the first time we have positioned ourselves sort of in the middle of a warfare is too strong a term to use, although it was during the height of the Cold War that the Planetary Society was once the late 80s, we did Space Bridge, the Planetary Society, which was trying to get the Soviet Union and the United States to work together on a human mission to Mars for the specific goal of reducing tensions between the two nuclear superpowers. While I will fully admit it is maybe a little extreme to say that we're not at a nuclear standoff, Cold War, destruction of the universe situation or world. We are at a position where anything that can give people a space to engage in a common cause is so important and honestly rare. And space has once again stepped in to

fill that opportunity. And I think the more we can provide an opportunity, you know, the more we can support that. And I say not just we as the Planetary Society, but we as a community of advocates and scientists and pro-science citizens and supporters across the world, the more we can position science as a means to bring people together in mutual respect, even if you have these fundamental disagreements with political views, that is a better opportunity for an improved outcome than staying completely divergent. Because then there's almost a guaranteed sense that you remain reinforced almost in your opposition from each other. And so it's that radical optimistic thing. So the International Space Station exists for that reason, bringing different groups of nations together to reduce tensions. And we've seen the ongoing benefit of having the International Space Station as we've had increased tensions with Russia over the last, let's say, eight years. And that has kept the two countries talking and

working together at a very tight level. So space is good, Matt. As the boss man says, the science guy, space exploration brings us together. I want to hear about the day that Matt and Bill spent on the hill, Bill on the hill. It wasn't like just showing up five minutes before the president walked in, right, Matt? It was actually showing up about, I would say, 16 hours before the president walked in was what it ended up being with an 18 and a half hour day in total. So yeah, it was a wild experience. So Jason was with us along for the ride as well. We met up with the boss around 830 and got started. We kicked the day off with the ranking member of the House Space Subcommittee,

Congressman Ami Berra from California. And then it just sort of snowballed from there. We set out that day with a goal of hitting nine congressional offices. So having nine meetings, face-to-face meetings with members of Congress. And I guess it's worth emphasizing that that goal that we set for the beginning would have already been the most prolific day of face-to-face member engagement, advocacy, on-the-hill advocacy that the society's ever had. And we ended up actually more than doubling that. It was pretty incredible. You weren't just shuffled off to staff like I was the one time I went on a lobbying trip there for a different organization. You were actually

talking to the representatives? That's right. So when Jason and I do our day-to-day engagement here, I would say 85% to 90% of it ends up being with staff. But that work laid the groundwork, built the relationships, the trust, and the credibility that we need to get access directly to the members, the decision makers, the policymakers. So we leveraged that, and that's what we did this time around. So we leveraged that, and that's what we did this time around. As I said, we had those nine scheduled in-person office meetings. But the great thing about being present and on the hill and up there burning shoe leather is that it's sort of a small, confined space. There's these six arterial buildings around the Capitol where everyone has their offices, and it's not like you see on television. You have nine to 15 people on the house side crammed into some pretty tight spaces. It's a little bit more spacious on the Senate side, but it's several thousand people packed into a relatively tight area. And so there's a lot of accessibility.

In between the nine meetings that we had scheduled, Bill managed to pull off another nine in the hallway with members of Congress. So both chambers, bipartisan, bicameral, doubled our goal, which was already far and ahead of what we've been able to achieve previously. And Matt, really talk about when you're in these meetings, particularly this time, what were the highlights that Bill was there and you were there to talk about? You know, I don't want to get too far ahead, but we'll tease this a little bit. And Bill makes a mention of it in a blog post that I think went live today that recaps his experience with this. The principal thing we were there to do

really wasn't the State of the Union. We were there to solicit membership in a new initiative that we're helping to lead with members of Congress on Capitol Hill, and that's the establishment of a Planetary Science Caucus. I'll just briefly lay out what a caucus is, but I want to leave the meat and potatoes of this for a couple of weeks because Matt's going to have the co-chairs of our new caucus on the show. They're going to have a much more unique perspective from the inside, I think, than I have to give you guys a sense of what it's all about. But a caucus is an idea, really, in a sense. It's a place where members agree to come together on a particular topic to cooperate, to organize,

and try to advance a particular agenda. So in this case, for the very first time ever, there's never been anything like this. For the first time ever in the United States Congress, there now exists a dedicated group of members and an official registered legal infrastructure dedicated to the advancement of planetary science, space science, and exploration. We have the leadership of that set up. It's Congressman Kilmer from Washington State, a Democrat, and Congressman John Culberson from California, who's been on the show before, a Republican from Texas. Exactly. Yeah. As I was saying, yeah. And even though caucuses are unofficial in the Senate, the interest over there has, has been so high that we've, we've even gotten membership set up on, on the Senate side. So Bill was there to educate members about this new group that's being set up to ask them to join, to try to get them excited about it. And as a result of that, we're already pushing 20 members before we've launched the event,

which for context, we were discussing this going in and setting our goals. What would be our goal for membership? And our initial goal by May was to have 20 members. So we haven't even started and we've already reached it. It's really exciting. This is a hell of an accomplishment. And I want to congratulate you guys and Jason and Bill to be able to pull this kind of thing off.

It's pretty impressive, isn't it? Yeah, I'll say it though. Yeah, I bet Matt would say so too, because he did most of the work for it. This is something, as much as I really want to go in this now, we need to save this for the big reveals that are coming up the next few weeks. So this is just a tease, but I just want to say, yes, Matt, it is a big deal because as Matt was saying, this has never happened before. And what it does is it creates a built in constituency of Congress people who support planetary exploration. Like we know these people are signing up to, they're raising their hands and say, planetary science, planetary exploration, space exploration is important to me. And I have a strong interest in this issue. So this is what you were talking about when you made a reference earlier, Casey, to facilitating

the society's role as a facilitator of this, exactly, this kind of coming together. That's exactly right. And you look at, this is always core from the beginning, that it be bicameral and bipartisan, Senate and the House, Republican and Democrat. Which is the main challenge, right? That's the main challenge, getting four members of Congress from two different parties on two different sides of Capitol Hill to coordinate on something. Yeah, to take the lead on it. Yeah. And it's another great example of what Casey was talking about earlier about space, bringing

people together and being something that is still nonpartisan and folks can coalesce around. When we met with Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who is the ranking member of the Space Subcommittee in the Senate, we were telling him about what we were doing. Bill was giving him the pitch, explaining to him what was going on. And Senator Markey was saying, oh, this is so great. This is going to be a tool for the committee. I'm so excited to use this. I'm going to get on the phone and call up Ted and tell him about it. Well, Ted is Ted Cruz, the chair of the space subcommittee in the Senate. And I can't think of anything that first I can't, I can't imagine.

I can't imagine that Senator Ed Markey, the champion of fuel standards and the author of the legislation that says fuel economy for cars in the United States and one of the most scientifically literate and most progressive members is referring to his counterpart, Ted, that he's going to call up and find something that they agree on. It's just extraordinary. Another key word that Matt said was credibility. When you have the credibility to walk into the office of both parties and they listen to you, you have the ability to facilitate these types of things to form. And you don't know always the outcome, but you have a really good chance at building something and doing something truly amazing and supporting something really amazing.

And so bringing people together on this is really important. And this is a really exciting development for us that we will be talking about, I guarantee, a lot more over the next coming months. The caucus and other scientific issues that Bill talked with him about, again, that's a benefit of, you know, in a sense of showing up, right? 80% of life is showing up. Being there on the Hill all day and having the opportunity to talk with Democrats and Republicans before going to the State of the Union really just helped the planetary society truly represent its members, space science exploration, and being that pro science voice in Congress that people of both parties listen to. And it's not just our members, too. It's also the community. I know that you and Jason and Matt have discussed the near-Earth object issues and some of the missions related to that that are in a

tight spot because of the ongoing continuing resolutions. And that's another thing Bill was there doing. He's there recruiting for the caucus, but we also are constantly having conversations, folks in the community at NASA, at the NASA centers. And they're filling us in on what's going on with particular missions and where the shortfalls and where the problems are. And sometimes even folks on the space subcommittee aren't aware of that stuff. And so Bill got to go in and explain, you know, here are where the budget challenges are. He got to kick it to Jason, really, and have Jason be a nerd about it and dig into the numbers. Take it to Jason, really, and have Jason be a nerd about it and dig into the numbers.

But also educating members, not just on the big picture ideological stuff that we're pushing, but really specifics, budget line items, nitty gritty, in the weeds things. One minute from us could save a staffer who has to work on it an hour. So it makes us invaluable and it makes us sort of a household name up there. So it was a great exercise. Guys, we are nearing the end of this abbreviated edition of the Space Policy Edition. We've got people out there who've gotten used to us talking for well over an hour saying, what are you talking about, abbreviated? Well, some of you will remember that last time in our January show, we said that we might delay this

Space Policy Edition for February until after the proposal comes for the NASA budget for 2019. We decided to go ahead and do this short version because of all of this that has happened over just the last week with the State of the Union and this wonderful announcement of this new caucus. But we are going to come back and we're going to talk about that budget. Casey, how far off does that look right now? Right now they're targeting February 12th. They had said February 5th before and they obviously didn't make it. So we will see. I think a lot of it depends on if the government shuts down again before now and then, which is a possibility. The current funding resolution runs out on the 8th. It could be a couple of weeks. That's what we're targeting. Things are pretty crazy up there right now. Matt can probably tell

you that. As soon as there's a budget comes out and we have a budget request comes out and we have time to look through it, we will devote a full episode to parsing through what we're seeing in there because it may be some really interesting stuff. And we're already seeing some stuff leaking out, including the end of the, or at least end of funding for the International Space Station by 2025, launching pieces for the Deep Space Gateway on commercial rockets and other hints that may be controversial or interesting. We will have lots to discuss. So as soon as that comes out, we will see it. Mid-February is what we're looking at. Absolutely could change between now and then. So stay tuned because there will be a special version

of the Space Policy Edition coming up, as you heard from Casey, later this month. Anything to add about what's come out of just this past week? It leaves us, leaves me certainly, with great optimism. Yeah, it does. And I think the one thing I think people can take away is that the Planetary Society has really invested in its space policy program over the last few years.

Matt didn't exist with us, you know, before last year. I did exist. No, you fully formed. I was a sentient carbon-based light form. I was here. To me, he was just an inanimate carbon rod. But Matt joined us last year. Jason joined us a few years before that. I came into a role that didn't exist years before that. We built something. The

fact that we had our CEO at the State of the Union, regardless of how you feel about the politics now, you had an invitation from a sitting member of Congress. You had 18 meetings on the Hill in one day. You had the formation of this new caucus. This is showing us that the investments that our members have allowed us to make are really paying off in terms of the presence, capability, credibility, and overall return of the space policy program. So it's just really exciting for me to see this and exciting to see our members react to this. And again, to be engaged in some of these grand debates going on right now about the future of the space program, the role of science, and that the Planetary Society, you know, as a membership organization, we represent you and we have your back on Capitol Hill.

And that's what Matt is doing every day and what Bill comes to do. And this is just a perfect example of it. And it's not just the financial investment that our members make with their membership. It's also the investment that they make with their time. A lot of the offices that we met with on sort of this marathon day weren't offices that are on the space subcommittee or have a NASA center in their district or have a direct industry tie to space that's apparent in their district. There were districts where we had a high response rate from our advocacy petition drive. So our members opened the door for us into those offices. They gave us a reason to reach out and say, hey,

we'd love to come by and talk to this member of Congress or that member of Congress because this X number of members in your district wrote it and said this is important to them. And it opened the door for us. So our members are also empowering us that way. Matt Reniger, thank you for joining us this time around and giving us this report from under the Capitol dome from the State of the Union address in that busy day that you spent with our boss, the Planetary Society CEO, Bill Nye, the science guy. Stay sentient. I'm going to try unless Casey forgets about me, and then I think I just sort of dissolve and fade away.

Yeah, it's like infants, right? If I don't see you, you cease to exist. It's been a long day for Matt on the Hill, so I think he needs to be unsentient for a few days. I recommend it. Get some rest. Casey Dreyer, you as well. So glad to have caught you here while you are in town in Pasadena at Planetary Society

headquarters. He is the director of space policy for the Planetary Society, who likes to use the M word a lot. That's membership, planetary.org slash membership. If you like what you've heard, if you want to become part of this very successful effort in Washington, D.C., and all the other work that we have underway, that's where you go, planetary.org slash membership. And we will be back before the end of February, as soon as that budget proposal comes out, or well, give us a couple of days after. Give the guys a little time to think about it.

And we'll be back with another Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio, and stay tuned. Lots of good stuff ahead.