Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Happy Fiscal New Year!

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

October 1st kicked off federal fiscal year 2020—a day that should also have kicked off a new budget for NASA. But Congress has not funded the space agency yet, instead passing a temporary stopgap measure to keep the government open until November 21st. Brendan Curry, The Planetary Society's Chief of D.C. Operations, joins the show to discuss the latest political developments in Washington, good news for planetary defense, and how the funding delay could spell trouble for the space agency's 2024 lunar goal. More resources about this month’s topics are at http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/space-policy-edition-42.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Greetings, space advocates. This is the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, coming to you, well, okay, one week late, but still here in October to review all that is happening within the Beltway in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere that affects how we will explore and do other things in space. That's why we get together each month welcoming back a couple of my colleagues. Casey Dreyer, our chief advocate, is here as he is for all of these programs right from the start. Casey, good to talk with you. Oh, as always, Matt, five weeks since the last episode of Space Policy Edition. I think not that much has happened, so I think this will be a quick episode.

You think? Well, to help us get through that tiny amount of new developments, is Brendan Curry, our Chief of Washington Operations. Brendan, who is actually based there within the Beltway. Brendan, welcome back. Fellas, it's great to be back with you. Happy to do it and looking forward to a good conversation with everybody. Great to be back with you. Happy to do it and looking forward to a good conversation with everybody. Casey, somehow I suspect that we are going to have plenty to talk about, largely because you've laid it out. The two of you have laid it out.

It actually has been a pretty busy five weeks. But before we get to that, let's start with encouraging anybody out there who has still not taken the plunge and become a member of the Planetary Society, why don't you visit us at planetary.org membership. Check out the benefits. The biggest benefit of all being what these two guys and my other colleagues at the Society do to keep us in the game in space exploration, to stay on top of things in DC and help drive the things that are being talked about in DC that are within the mission, the agenda of the Planetary Society,

an agenda that we hope you share. That's where you can learn about all the benefits and sign up, join us. It's planetary.org slash membership. But Casey, I know that you've got at least a couple of other things that are pretty important to you, beginning with that day of action.

Yeah. You want to take more than just a step to be a member or want to really level up your space advocacy-ness. I'll say that that's a word. The day of action is coming up in 2020. The registration is open. That is the day when Planetary Society members from across the United States come to Washington, DC. They join me and Brendan, they train to

prepare themselves and engage with Congress directly in support of space exploration. It is by number of surveys demonstrated to be the most effective way to influence members of Congress as showing up directly and telling them as a constituent what you believe in. In this case, space exploration and the search for life, planetary defense are real core focused issues here at the Planetary Society. Come to DC with us and we'll make you the best advocate you can be and you'll really make a difference. That's February 9th and 10th of 2020. And you can sign up right now, save a few bucks if you do it before January 1st

at planetary.org slash dayofaction, all one word. You can find it on our website, find testimonials, learn about the experience. It's a lot of fun. And it really, really, really does make a statement about the importance of these issues to the people who really control the future based on funding and fundamental US space policy.

And Casey, as you know, I hope to join you there. I hope that that works out. Brendan, this is what you do on a daily basis. What's special about the Day of Action for someone like you who's always walking the halls of Congress? Yeah, I just want to echo what Casey said. As a former congressional staffer, there is a special connection and impact when you actually have a constituent from your congressional district or your state. Normal, everyday, taxpaying Americans come in and tell you that they're taking time out of their work schedule, juggling childcare, and traveling all the way to Washington and taking the time to tell you that they want to see that member of Congress

or that senator vote for a positive NASA budget in a positive direction for America's space efforts. I cannot stress that enough. It's one thing if, as a congressional staffer or a member of Congress, you're visited by a paid-for lobbyist. I'm not a lobbyist. Casey's not a lobbyist. The Planetary Society, we are an independent nonprofit. We don't have any lobbyists on retainer. So the fact that in my day to day life, I can go up to folks and be an honest broker and talk about what's good for space, but even more so to have our members from across the country come down really does make a statement. One of the things I want to also emphasize is that last year we did it in March. This year, as Casey mentioned, we're doing it in

February, which is a great time of year, believe it or not, to do it because we'll at that point have just had a State of the Union address. The President's budget submission will have been sent to Congress. So we're going to be showing the professionals on Capitol Hill that we ourselves are professionals and know what we're doing. getting out there right at the start of the congressional session when budgets are being analyzed and hearings will start to happen and the congressional appropriations process will start. We're going to be on the ground floor of that. And so I think that speaks volumes about what we're doing as an organization and what the wonderful men and women who are

our members are going to be doing in February with Casey and I. Plus, it's just great fun. Yes, yes. We try to do that too, right, Casey? We do have a meet where people get together. We have meetups before and after the event. We have special opportunities to engage with folks at NASA and special presentations by scientists.

It's, yeah, we try to make it an event worth your time, no matter what your meetings are like, if they're positive or negative, though they usually tend to be positive. And I think just the final point on this, just to keep in mind, is what Brendan said, is that there are people going up and talking to their members of Congress every day about space issues. You won't always agree with them, particularly if they have an agenda or they're lobbying on the behalf of an industry that stands to benefit from a particular policy. Coming as a member of the Planetary Society, as a member of the public, as a member of, you know, an independent organization, you get a chance to add your voice to that too. Because if you don't do it, someone else will, and you have no idea what they're advocating

for. So it's good to be heard in that context. So really consider coming. It's planetary.org slash dayofaction. You can learn all about it at that address and sign up there. Casey, there is one other event that we can talk about before we get to the news of the last few weeks. And this is about a really thrilling mission that we have talked about several times on the weekly Planetary Radio episodes and will continue to. Yeah, absolutely.

This is Dragonfly, our new so-called mid-sized planetary mission. It's a quadcopter that's going to be sent to the Saturn's moon Titan to fly around. I still can't believe they're doing this. Fly around and explore, you know, just like explore the surface and really completely rewrite, I'm sure, whatever the textbooks say about Titan that launches in 2026, I believe, and it won't get there until the 2030s. But this is a major planetary science mission, a very exciting mission, and a perfect concept or topic to discuss with this Planetary Science Caucus that we helped put together this year. And I'll turn it over to

Brendan because he's the one really responsible for this. This caucus, again, is made up of members of Congress who have effectively just raised their hands saying that I care about planetary science issues, the search for life, and how these impact universities and my local district. And they're just excited about it. And Brendan really used this opportunity to connect them to the people who work on Dragonfly.

It was a great event. Now, you hear about things that are congressional committees, and caucuses are a little different animal than a congressional committee. Congressional committees, they draft legislation, they appropriate funding for agencies, they conduct oversight hearings. Caucuses are a little bit more informal. They're a group of members of Congress who share an interest in wanting to support something. There's a hunting and fishing caucus. There is a sea power caucus about raising awareness about children with autism and things like that. And so the Planetary Science Caucus is co-chaired by Derek Kilmer, a Democrat from Washington, and Stephen Palazzo, a Republican from Mississippi. And that's one of the nice

things about these caucuses, because I think a lot of times people see mainly through cable news and social media, they see congressional activity, and it's a very visceral, heated, partisan event or exchange going on. And one of the nice things about space in general is that it's blessedly still very much a bipartisan belief that both Republicans and Democrats share. So it's nice, but it's nice to have this caucus where we have at least 45 members right now, both the House and the Senate and Republicans and Democrats that care about space and care about the things that the House and the Senate and Republicans and Democrats that care about space and care about the things that the members of the Planetary Society, the folks who are

listening today, they believe and care about the same things. And so Casey and I were talking and the Dragonfly mission just got awarded and we were like, wow, this is a really cool mission. We are friends with some folks up at the Applied Physics Lab in Maryland, not too far out of Washington, D.C. APL is going to be doing most of the work for Dragonfly. And so we went to them and said, hey, you guys want to come down to Capitol Hill and do a breakfast briefing about this Dragonfly mission and explain it a little bit more and get people excited about it and want to be supportive of it. So we had about at least half a dozen people from APL come down and we had a packed room in the Rayburn building. It was so well attended. I had to ask the caterer to set up extra chairs around the perimeter room to accommodate everybody. And it was just a positive gathering of folks that were hearing about a super cool,

exciting, brash, daring mission to an exotic moon that floats around Saturn, which many people consider the crown jewel of our solar system. And our CEO, Bill Nye, was good enough to come into town and give remarks as well. And of course, he did a million selfies, but he's used to that. It was just a great event. And we were proud to work with our friends at APL. Casey and I are, as we speak, talking about programming for the next caucus event and working with folks. As a matter of fact, there was folks from NASA Legislative Affairs who, they're the folks at NASA headquarters that interface with members of Congress and their staff, approached me about maybe working with NASA on something for a Planetary Science Caucus event down the road. That's great.

with the hyper-partisanship going on. It was just great to see everyone get together to talk about something hopeful, exciting, and future-looking, forward future-looking in science and technology. It was just great all around. Everyone walked out of that room and started the day with a warm, excited feeling inside. This is such a great example of the kind of advocacy work that goes on because of the existence of the Planetary Society, because of the support of our members. It is a thrilling mission. I'm going to make a correction. I was corrected by the Dragonfly principal investigator, Zibby Turtle, up there at APL, when I called it a quadcopter. It's an octocopter. It has eight little propellers to help it fly over the frozen surface of that world

that is in every way except for temperature so much like our own Earth in that it has flowing fluids on the surface and canyons and seas and rivers. It's just going to be amazing. And I'm glad we were there in DC to help bring the good news about it to all those folks in Congress. And it really is something, it's a simple idea that I very much believe in Congress, members of Congress and their staff are constantly inundated with information, with requests, with proposals, with topics from every imaginable aspect of US policy, from agriculture, to city planning, to urban development, to healthcare policy, you name it, right? So in a sense, the fundamental challenge for any group

trying to advance some sort of broad agenda, like the Planetary Society to expand human and robotic presence in space, we have to compete for their awareness, right? We have to compete for their just attention. And the nice thing about space exploration is that it's really easy to get your attention and so the act of doing these things on a regular basis of having these caucuses you're building in the infrastructure to create these opportunities to bring members of congress and their staff face to face to have these face-to-face interactions with the scientists and engineers who are responsible for some of the most exciting things that we can do as a species. In some ways, our goals are as simple as that, is to facilitate those interactions, to create this excitement, these positive feelings. So when they make these

decisions about how to fund things like NASA, planetary science, they know they have these personal connections, they understand the motivations, the context, the science. And ideally, it will help increase the flow of funding and priorities for these types of things. So this work, and again, it's just that face to face connection, priceless. Well said. It wasn't just congressional folks who were there, we had folks from industry. And we had people from the Japanese Space Agency, the French Space Agency, and even some folks from the Pentagon attending. So it was a very diverse group of folks who were interested in what we were doing. Fascinating that the French, the CNES, I assume, was represented as well.

That's very cool. Gentlemen, let's go on to the news. represented as well. That's very cool. Gentlemen, let's go on to the news. And I want to wish both of you a happy federal fiscal new year. Of course, we're a week and a half into it now. And it's so good to know that the Senate, the House, the White House all got together, and there's a beautiful budget in place that will take us through the next year, right? Oh, Matt. Thank you. You know better than that.

In my dreams. We don't have the bouncing baby fiscal new year budget baby. It's a little late on delivery again. Not unsurprising or unexpected. I believe we mentioned this last time we spoke, Matt, or a couple weeks ago on the regular planetary radio. But yes, so usually, or a couple of weeks ago on the regular Planetary Radio. But yes, so usually, or maybe not usually is the wrong word. Technically, the US is supposed to have a budget by October 1st of every year. That's beginning of our fiscal year. So we're technically

in fiscal year 2020. It's offset by the calendar year by three months. And it didn't happen. There's a number of reasons for that. The biggest probably being the delay of the agreement on overall spending available to Congress for discretionary programs didn't really get hammered out until late in the summer. So even though the House had provided a NASA proposed budget in response to the president's budget for 2020, earlier this year in May, the Senate hadn't really done anything until I think they released their budget late September. So just a week before the fiscal new year.

That's not enough time for the Senate and the House to then try to hammer out their differences between the two bills. And so we are in, again, what's called a continuing resolution, the extension of last year's budget right now through November 21st. So a two-month basically extension to give them some breathing time to compromise on the two different budgets, one from the House, one from the Senate.

Take us through where we are, because they both have come up with their own ideas. because they both have come up with their own ideas. How does it look as you look across these two proposals that are, I take it they're similar, but certainly not identical? It is in a sense, surprisingly, at a certain level, quite similar. Based on the president's budget request, which came out, there were actually two president's budget requests this year, very unusual situation because of the sudden announcement of the 2024 lunar landing initiative. The White House released a supplemental request requesting more money for NASA later on than its original request. But a White House budget proposed to cancel a bunch of missions at NASA. Both the House and the Senate completely rejected those cancellations

uniformly. And so in that sense, they're very similar. And then they do differ on some important parts, particularly around how to spend money on the Lunar Initiative, and also some heavy lift SLS, and a few other small programs. But Brendan wanted to jump in there as well to kind of talk about some of these differences. All I was going to say was that I was at a NASA headquarters meeting with the CFO and obviously the appropriations bills were item number one. The Senate bill overall does a bit better for NASA. There is some feeling that, funnily enough, in the end, what it comes out of what's called the conference committee where the House and Senate kind of iron out the differences of the bill and harmonize the legislation that the final number may be even better for NASA. So everyone seemed to be in decent spirits over there.

The one funny thing I was telling Casey about this, the NASA budget is in a spending vehicle that includes the Commerce Department and the Justice Department. And one of the goofy areas between these two different bills, the House bill and the Senate bill, is how the House designated funding for the Commerce Department for the census in the Senate did it in a different way. And what's exasperating for us in the space community is that, number one, it's not a space issue that is at play here that's, you know, driving us nuts and impacting everyone's favorite space agency, NASA. But doing it at census every 10 years is one of those things that are enumerated in the Constitution that the government's supposed to do. So this isn't, this shouldn't be a surprise for anyone that there had to be a census to get ready to pay for. So it's just, it's just DC wackiness.

Yeah. Just to add some context to that, back in the early, about 12 or 13 years ago now, Congress kind of moved where NASA was bookkept in terms of congressional committee appropriations funding. And NASA was moved into this new committee called Commerce, Justice and Science, which is obviously a grab bag, right? Because Commerce and Science and Justice Department are all just kind of, there's no real thread connecting those agencies together. The chunk of money, each of these subcommittees that funds federal agencies, gets a chunk of money called an allocation. And then they have to, within that chunk of money, provide funding to all of their responsible organizations that they're responsible for. So in what Brendan is saying

here, that because Commerce Department runs the census, and the census runs every 10 years, and it costs a lot of money, billions of dollars, more than $10 billion to run the census. The census runs every 10 years, and it costs a lot of money, billions of dollars, more than $10 billion to run the census. There's a big hump of spending increase required to run this constitutionally mandated activity by the federal government. So it's very strange. If your overall size of your allocation to this committee does not grow to accommodate this requirement of the census. It really squeezes all the other agencies, including NASA, because they have to kind of work. It's like a snake swallowing this big, let's say, opossum or something through it. It's the census funding. Ironically, you have these, based on this classic policy, interesting, actually very fascinating aspects of this, but it's a classic situation where the very structure of how Congress decides to fund things like NASA

can impact the ability of funding to appear based on needs totally unrelated to the space program, but that fallout as a consequence of self-organization. So in this case, it's the census. You know, Casey alluded to it. I was one of the appropriation staffers that made that, was part of that change that he alluded to. It was worse before because NASA used to be included in an account that dealt mainly with veterans affairs in the Housing Urban Development Agency. So NASA was always pitted against funding for our veterans and funding for people who need public housing. The politics and the optics of it were quite vicious at the time. And while it's not ideal to have it in commerce justice account, it's better than it used to be, believe it or not.

Wow. Can we drill down a little bit? I mean, can you talk a bit more about funding for science and science missions specifically? Yeah, let's step back. We should clarify where the Senate bill is. So in this context, just to give maybe some of these contrasts as well, then we'll get to the science aspect, Matt, because it is important to acknowledge, to put top lines here. To put top lines here, with the two requests, the White House requested about a 5% increase to NASA's budget for this next fiscal year, about $22.6 billion is what they asked for. The House provided $22.3, slightly less. The House provided no funding for the Lunar Initiative. They restored all the science programs.

They boosted Earth science in particular. They restored all the science programs. They boosted earth science in particular. The Senate that just had its bill, proposed bill come out a couple weeks ago, they have a top line of 22.8. So on the higher side, that's great. That money goes to it also, again, I said, uncancels or funds all the proposed missions that were canceled by the White House. And it really provides about $750 million for a lunar lander program, and bumps up the SLS program pretty high as well, like beyond where the White House even requested. So in a sense, the 22.3 and the 22.8 House and the Senate numbers, overall, those are all very good, relatively speaking to last year. They're all increasing. And as Brendan said, we're in a happy situation where the compromise might just to be to give NASA even more, which I am fully behind, by the way, and I encourage them to do that. And so within this increased budget, you have a little more breathing room internally to the science directorate. Both the House and Senate increased science funding. They kind of moved them around in slightly different ways. The biggest difference

is that the Senate provides even more money for the James Webb Space Telescope than was requested by the White House or provided by the House. That is to help get the James Webb Space Telescope through these last couple of years that we all hope is the last two years of development as problems have mounted on that mission. They kind of bring down planetary science a little bit, which I'm concerned about. And then they also provide funding for WFIRST, both of them, the Wide Field Infrared Space Telescope, survey telescope that is going to hopefully now launch in the mid-2020s, that has been proposed to be canceled and uncanceled by Congress for the last three years in a row at this point. So I hope the White House gets the message that this future space telescope is very important. Where does this leave Artemis, the administration's plan to put humans

back on the moon? with some funding for a lander from the Senate, as you said, though, I'm not sure if it's going to get them very far, and none from the House. Just to put this in context, the White House ultimately requested a billion dollars to build a lander just for this next fiscal year to start building a lander. The House gave them nothing, and the Senate is proposing to give them three quarters of what was requested. Historically, what spacecraft development project has ever gone on time when it received less than its needed funding? I think the answer is zero of them.

The Senate even acknowledging the request, but giving less, is basically saying that the 2024 deadline is not being taken seriously, in my opinion. Okay. Well, that was my next question. On the other hand, and I don't disagree with Casey's assertion, on the other side of the street over at NASA headquarters, they're trying their best to move ahead on lander development. They want to, quote, soon, we'll see what that means, start awarding lander contracts to three, maybe four providers, and then eventually down select to two. It's almost like they're being willfully ignorant of the smoke signals that are getting across the street from Congress. We'll see where that goes. There's also

some stuff with the Lunar Lander program being assigned to be managed by Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, which did not sit well with the Johnson Space Flight people in Texas. In the meantime, afterwards, the Orion management duties have been assigned now officially to JSC. the Orion management duties have been assigned now officially to JSC. Johnson Space Center. Oh, and we should, for anybody who, in our audience, the small number who don't know, Orion, of course, is that capsule that has been under development for many years and appears to be making pretty good progress finally, that will be an important part of getting humans back to the moon

or anywhere beyond low Earth orbit. It's worth dwelling on this for a minute. So let's kind of talk about this in a larger context, this Artemis implications from where we are budgetarily. And as Brendan pointed out, these political consequences of trying to implement this new high profile large scale program in the US Senate and Congress more broadly. But NASA is being told by the White House to move forward very quickly. But at a fundamental level, and I think we've seen this now from the president who has given, I would say significantly mixed signals about the value of a moon program compared to a Mars, human Mars program. NASA still is being told to move fast. Congress is hesitating. And I would point out to the partisan aspect of this is that the House is run by the Democratic Party,

no fan of the president, obviously, and not very much disposed to fund a presidential initiative that's tightly aligned with the partisan leader of another political party, right? That's just fundamental political issues. We've seen repeated statements from the Democratic leaders in the House that they haven't received good enough excuses from NASA or the White House why a 2024 landing needs to happen. That's certainly driving the sum of the fact that they haven't provided any funding in their bills. The Senate obviously is run by the Republican Party, more disposed to support the presidential initiative. But at the same time, you see them exercising their own initiative in terms of what their priorities are. So the very fact that you saw the lunar lander

request underfunded, and then provided even more money beyond that difference to the space launch system, which is a big Senate priority, you see them basically saying the same thing that they're not necessarily feeling that urgency around a 2024 landing. But at the same time, that they're not necessarily feeling that urgency around a 2024 landing. But at the same time, despite this, NASA still has to execute the White House's prerogative, right? They're part of the executive branch. So we're stuck in kind of a bad situation. And we're seeing this now. So NASA, the Lunar Lander contracts, the proposal is out. They're accepting proposals, I should say. They said they're going to select by November 1st coming up. So maybe we'll be able to talk about this next month. But they've already had to relax

a lot of important programmatic constraints that I think really validated the effort. So two key items being that you have to dock with the Gateway orbiting space station at the moon, and that the lunar lander has to be reusable. Those have both been pushed into an optional status for these first lunar landers. And so there's a real possibility that NASA may be trying to move forward with a lunar lander program that will be a technical dead end for long term Mars exploration. And that is the whole purpose of designing these lunar missions, not just in our opinion at the Planetary Society, but as stated by the president. So this 2024 deadline, I feel is becoming increasingly problematic in terms of that

timeline pushing poor choices for long termterm enduring aspects of this design. And we have heard Administrator Bridenstine tell us, and by the way, I have sympathy for his position between this rock and a hard place. Yes, I think that- Actually, between a moon and a planet. Make no mistake, he said, our focus is Mars. But the evidence seems to be, uh, beginning to counter that. Casey brings up a good point about the fungibility of different, uh, technical requirements for lunar lander. And as he was mentioning those, it w it was evocative to me and Casey, you may have different,

different thoughts, but I just felt like it was deja vu with respect to SLS because there were a number of years where we were going through this, will we or will we not have an initial upper stage or just go right to an exploration upper stage or no, we have to have one or the other, when, both. That makes me a little antsy. The fascinating aspect of this is the original White House budget request deferred this second stage, upper stage development program for the SLS, cut back on it. You heard Mike Pence, the vice president, kind of implicitly critique Boeing for its poor performance for the SLS development. As most people know, it's years behind schedule. Very expensive rocket. Generally seems to be, I think, falling behind the technological curve we're seeing from a lot of modern rocket development programs.

At the same time, ultimately, the consequence appears to be more funding for that program from its strongest congressional supporters. And I think we've seen that not just in the Senate, but in the House, and a good example of how some of these projects themselves have and serve different needs than you would just kind of design out of whole cloth and a pure starting point, right? There's a lot of politics wrapped up in this. And so, it will be somewhat ironic, but not unpredictable, that the consequence of originally going, maybe undermining or pulling back or cutting the SLS budget will be a higher

SLS budget provided by Congress at the end of it. Wow. Congress does have a few other things on its mind. So let's talk about the elephant and the donkey in the room. And the fact that everybody in DC is really just talking about one topic right now, and that's impeachment. Space exploration. Don't we wish. How is this affecting not just the sort of appropriations work that we've been talking about for space, but everything that's going on in D.C. It's not as dramatic as you would, as it's being portrayed outside of Washington. It really, I mean, it's there clearly, but it's not this Aaron Sorkin screenplay being played out behind closed doors or something like that.

It really isn't. I used to work as a staffer out of law school on the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment. That was literally the center of the political universe. And believe it or not, Congress was able to pass authorization bills. The president who was being impeached dutifully signed into law. Appropriations bills eventually made their way throughutifully signed into law. Appropriations bills eventually made their way through and were signed into law. There was a modicum of business as usual. I have not seen everyone clutching their pearls. I'll turn on the TV and see on social media. It's upsetting to me

as someone who, before we did this podcast, I was literally on Capitol Hill talking to Republicans and Democrats, and there weren't knives drawn, you know, everyone wasn't screaming at each other and everything like that. So I think there's a bit of a hype there. That said, it is a larger political atmospheric phenomenon that we're having to deal with, as also, by the way, we're going to be careening into the 2020 election cycle where the president's up for reelection. The entire House of Representatives is up for reelection and a third of the Senate. So it's still going to get depressingly ugly. But day to day, it's not the way it's being portrayed. Congress is populated by people.

People aren't perfect. People make mistakes. So our institutions aren't always perfect. So, you know, there'll be things that, you know, when we do our next episode, there'll be things that we'll be exasperated about. And in the meantime, Casey and I will be venting to each other. But right now, it's not doomsday scenario that everyone's saying. So that's my two cents.

So it sounds like you're bullish on appropriations getting signed still for 2020, ultimately. Yeah, I was actually just hanging out with Senator Shelby's guy. And he was pretty sanguine about the processes moving through. I've not heard anyone from leadership in the House or the Senate, Republican or Democrats, talking about holding the appropriations bills hostage. That's good. Yeah. How does this work?

How will the House and Senate reconcile? The appropriations bills or impeaching a president? Let's stick to appropriations bills or impeaching a president? Let's stick to appropriations. Well, no, I mean, you know, the Senate's basically coughed up their thing. House, as Casey, you know, are very articulately detailed, you know, got theirs out. And so they go to this thing called conference committee, where a number of Senate appropriators and a number of House appropriators get together in a room. You know, many ways, a lot of times these bills kind of sync up with each other on a lot of things, not just NASA,

but other accounts. They just got to say, okay, Matt, you wanted to spend X amount of dollars on such and such. I wanted to spend a different amount. Let's split the difference. They kind of iron things out. And again, it's a rather business-like and professional process, believe it or not. There's not a lot of screaming and yelling. And they kind of quietly go about their work and come out with what's called the conference report. And Speaker of the House, she'll bring the conference report for a floor vote. And the majority leader will bring it out to the Senate floor for a floor vote. 99.9% of the time they'll pass out and the White House will have already quietly said whether the president will sign it into law. Most of the times it will. If there is a real

poison pen, that's when you'll see the White House screaming and yelling that they're going to veto it. But I haven't heard this White House say they're going to veto it. But I haven't heard this White House say they're going to veto any appropriations bill yet this year. You've calmed me somewhat, Brendan. So thank you for that. It's good to hear that things are still working in some of the back rooms and some of the front rooms up there on Capitol Hill. Well, I can't remember who said it, but the line is something like democracy is an awful form of government, but it's the best one we have. Yeah. If you guys are ready, we can go on to another topic, which has come directly out of NASA this time. And it should be good news, I think, to anybody who wants humanity to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs. Casey?

wants humanity to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs. Casey? Yes, I'd say we can, this is unequivocally good news, which is NASA has announced through Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, the head, the associate administrator of its entire science mission directorate, that it intends to pursue the creation of a space-based infrared telescope solely dedicated to finding near-Earth objects that could threaten the Earth. This is something that we've needed for a long time, something that the Planetary Society has been supporting for years now, and something that will fundamentally maybe revolutionize is too strong of a word, but greatly accelerate the search and characterization of these near Earth objects. So it's basically a surveillance telescope to hunt these down.

So we have as much heads up just in case there's any of them heading our way. So this is a huge development. This is the first time that NASA has signaled its intent to be willing even to build something like this. So this is big news. I mean, I've lost track of how many times we've talked about the need for an infrared telescope in space dedicated to finding these extremely dark objects, most of them, that you really have to use infrared to find because that's where they glow in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. And we've talked about it as recently in the last couple of weeks on the weekly version of Planetary Radio. But usually this has been in the context of talking about another mission proposal called NEOCAM, which seems to be pointedly not exactly what we're talking about here, though, with many similarities. Yeah, this whole story, I just find this also fascinating. It's frustrating in some

ways, but it's also just fascinating to see how again, how policy works in this context. Let's jump back even to 2005, which is where a lot of this kind of motivation is coming from. That's when Congress passed a NASA authorization bill that included a directive for NASA to find 90% of all near-Earth objects 140 meters or larger, basically your city, killer, regional, destructive asteroids and comets by 2020. So that was an official directive in the law that NASA's had since 2005. NASA will not make that directive, they will not find it in the time given to them by Congress. Congress neglected to provide funding for this, and NASA didn't even request funding to achieve that for many, many years. And so we're stuck in the situation where in order to find a

lot of these very quickly, you do, as you pointed out, Matt, really need a space-based telescope dedicated to finding these. NASA has not had until very recently, any sort of programmatic vehicle to promote or to provide funding for planetary defense missions. The question is, where does a mission like NEOCAM fit into NASA's portfolio of human exploration, aeronautics, technology development, or science? We tried running that experiment. NASA's Small Planetary Mission Program Discovery, which gives opportunities every couple of years for,

you know, so-called small missions, about half a billion dollars, has an open competition for anyone who wants to propose a mission. NEOCAM, you know, Asteroid Hunting Telescope, went up, I think, was it two or three times, Matt? Do you remember exactly? I know about two for sure. You could be right about three, but two definitely. Let's say two, at least two times. And ultimately, you know, the last time I made it very far along the selection process, and ultimately, it could never really compete on the science goals against other science focused missions. And it's not fair in a way to ask it to compete on those science goals, because its primary goal isn't science, its primary goal is to find things that could destroy all of humanity, right? And that didn't get it any extra bonus points in that selection process. Because again, these structures that we build for ourselves have consequences in terms of what can then exist within them, right? The very contours of how we design our structures has long lasting implications. And so planetary defense did not have a home at NASA up until very, very recently. And it began to change over the last few years, and particularly with the selection

of this DART mission that you've also talked about on Planetary Radio, the double asteroid redirect test, right, that's going to launch in 2022 and slam into a small asteroidal moon to test deflection technology. You actually now have the establishment of a flight line within NASA dedicated to planetary defense. You've seen planetary defense bumped up in terms of budgetary hierarchy within NASA's budget request. It's its own program line within planetary science. And what we saw from Dr. Zubukhin announcing this new mission, it's called NEO-SM, the NEO surveillance mission, right? Notably not NEO-CAM, but functionally NEO-CAM and everything but name. He announced it as these are not science missions anymore. These are planetary defense missions.

And these are directed missions, strategic missions that NASA says is a priority for the agency. So they're not an open competition. But NASA selects them because it's an important goal. And so NEO's surveillance mission is now apparently going to be on the books going forward for the space agency. I want to suggest that our listeners go to planetary.org and read a piece, Casey, that you posted on September 26th, how NASA's planetary defense budget grew by, wait for it, more than 4,000% in 10 years. Of course, that happens when you're funding missions.

1000% in 10 years. Of course, that happens when you're funding missions. Are we now then looking at, in effect, a new division of NASA as you seem to be leading toward? It is, in a sense, an expansion of NASA's stated goals, or responsibilities, maybe is a better word for that. It's still within, technically, it's still within the planetary science division, which is part of the science mission directorate, right? So it's, it's still located within science in terms of how they consider it budgetarily. But it's been promoted out, it used to be just what was called Neo observations program. And that was located within the planetary science research and analysis Division, like it was very buried down in there. So this has been bumped up, it's basically sits at the same kind of rubs budgetary

shoulders with the Mars Exploration Program, or the New Frontiers Program, or the Discovery Program. So it's much more independent in that sense, it has its own set of directives. The key takeaway here is that there's been a fundamental shift internally within NASA, that they're willing now to prioritize these types of missions, in addition to other science missions, in addition to human spaceflight, and so forth. This has never happened before. This article where I kind of explored this budgetary history of planetary defense funding, where I kind of explored this budgetary history of planetary defense funding. As you implied, 4,000% goes up. You can do that when you start with very little funding to begin with. And for years, NEO observations, which was all of what NASA was doing for planetary defense, kind of

limped along at $4 million a year. That's less than NASA's travel budget for employees at its headquarters. That's how small it was. What they basically funded was ground-based telescopes. They rented time on ground-based telescopes just to search for sky surveys for near-Earth objects. That began to change. And I point out, and I kind of make this argument in this post that, you know, the ideas for why you look for NEOs hasn't changed in 20 years. So why did we get such an increase? And part of it, I believe, is that for a while during the Obama administration, the needs of very important high priority aspects within NASA, the human spacefly program, aligned with opportunities provided by the NEO observation program. And sometimes those alignments between your goals and a larger built-in institutionally

high priority goal can really be leveraged to justify increases in funding for programs that otherwise have languished beforehand. And I believe they did this with planetary defense. And you saw when NASA started to propose sending humans to an asteroid, or the ARM mission for some of our listeners to capture a small asteroid or boulder and bring it to the moon, you needed to find those asteroids you could send humans to. And the same years that they announced those programs, NASA made very significant quintupling or doubling of planetary defense observation searches. And so, that type of alignment is a good reminder in terms of when we're talking about how to increase funding or to drive resources to these important programs, that sometimes finding a partner, a strange bedfellow, perhaps, right, in political speak, can really pay dividends.

And so you've seen this develop and grow over the last 10 years. There's a big role for National Academies reports establishing consensus, and that these are important. And the most recent development here, in terms of why we're getting a neo-surveillance mission now is not just because of the work that we've been doing here at the Society, and there's been a big scientific push, but because the National Academy has released a report basically saying we absolutely need a space-based infrared telescope to find these asteroids, because without it, we're never going to, or decades, we're going to be decades and decades late in trying to reach that congressional mandate. And as we have heard, these things can sneak up on you. This became a story in the regular mass

media, not just for us space geeks, when we missed a rock up there in space and there were some internal documents that were shared. But really, this was not a surprising thing considering the lack of the tools that we need to discover these objects that are still big enough, as you said, to kill a city. Yeah, I mean, exactly. But again, the fascinating thing to me is when I was looking at, again, this history of when we saw these really stepwise budget increases for planetary defense related projects. We all remember Chelyabinsk in 2013. That actually had no correlation between when we saw the budget increases for NEO observations. So, even though those, you know, these high impact, so to speak, visible events still didn't really drive the outcome the way that more prosaic needs in terms of human spaceflight or other related kind of

consensus building activities, it has not compared in terms of direct success, correlation to success in terms of funding increases. So it's a good reminder. We see those media events, right, where we say, oh, that was a close one. And then the response historically has been like, well, on to other things. one. And then the response historically has been like, well, on to other things. And so, seeing this development from NASA, again, reminds us that these concerted efforts in terms of establishing credibility, aligning priorities, basic, you know, politics 101 is still a very effective way to ultimately build up these brand new programs and to really get these exciting

things. We should also clarify here what this means in terms of what NASA is going to do is not that right now that anything changes in the NASA program. This is a signal of an intent for NASA to ask for money to start building this in the next decade. So there's lots of work yet left to do to make sure that we get this neo-surveillance mission. We still don't know the exact contours of folks like Amy Meinzer, who was such an integral part to NEOCAM, how she and her science team is going to be integrated into what is now technically not a science mission. But obviously, it seems like there

should be a role for them. Then also, Congress still has to fund it. The White House has to approve the request, they have to find ways to pay for this mission. It's a $600 million mission over the next few years. So that adds another layer of budgetary pressure within planetary science. You know, where does that funding come from? Who is going to give up their priority to allow planetary defense missions to go forward. Lots yet to figure out. But again, the initial idea that NASA now has endorsed the validity of this idea that they intend to fight for this as a role that they should take on, that is huge. And that will really help this mission be realized, I think, in the next decade for sure.

Brendan, I don't know anybody with a better sense of the sense of Congress. How is planetary defense regarded by the members? Like anything else, members of Congress are deluged with information, data, news, et cetera, et cetera, constantly. Your average congressional staffer, literally, even though in this day of emails and texting and things like that, still literally get about two feet of paper documents, mail, reports dropped on their desk every day. mail reports dropped on their desk every day. So a lot of times it's concerns are driven by whatever's the current affair. You know, every time there's a wildfire or a hurricane or

something else happens, you'll get everyone kind of focused on that thing for a while. And then, you know, whatever the next issue or crisis that pops up, everyone kind of starts following that. And so when you do have something in the regular media, talk about what essentially is a near miss. People do pay attention to it. You may even get a congressional hearing about it. But there hasn't been the sustained interest in planetary defense the way, say, on Mars exploration. These near-miss events are certainly something that catches people's attention. The fact that NASA seems to be reorienting itself to make it something that's a priority in their vast portfolio and something they will be going to talk about and advocating for is good.

It's helpful. As Casey said, still a lot of work to be done. We talked about earlier in the broadcast about how the president's budget will be released in late January, right before our day of action. Right now, NASA has submitted their FY21 budget submission to the White House, which is actually relatively early in comparison in the cycle. So the White House's Office of Management and Budget, OMB, they are literally, as we speak, already crunching NASA's numbers for the president's budget request. And so I hope that when the budget request does come out, we will see planetary defense priority. That'll be very telling. And if it is, great.

It's going to be something that our folks for the day of action can point to and say, it's in the budget submission, Congress. Please do your part. Or if it isn't, it's something that we can complain about and tell members of Congress. It should have been in the budget request, and it's your duty to include it. And one other thing, I was recently with the French space attache, and this fall will be what's called the European Space Agency Ministerial, which they have every few years. And he actually said planetary defense is going to be on the agenda for the ESA ministerial. So not only are we starting to kind of wake up and take it seriously here

in the United States, our friends and allies across the Atlantic are doing likewise. That's encouraging. Gentlemen, I think maybe that'll do it for this time around, except maybe to once again, make our pitch for our listeners who are not already members to go to planetary.org slash membership and consider supporting the kind of great work and the great people that you've been listening to. I'm talking about Casey and Brendan, who are representing our interests as fans of space exploration in Washington, doing such a great job of it. Casey, a reminder about the Day of Action? February 9th and 10th, 2020. You can

register or just learn more about it if you're curious at planetary.org slash dayofaction. Guys, it has been a great pleasure. Brendan, very good to have you back with us on the monthly Space Policy Edition. Very glad that you are continuing to do your work on our behalf there in Washington as our Chief of Washington Operations. Thanks for doing this. Oh, happy to do so anytime. And I'm proud to do the work for the Society here in Washington. Casey Dreyer, our Chief Advocate for the Planetary Society. Casey, I'll be talking to you again next month, of course, and probably I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there aren't some developments that get you on the weekly Planetary Radio show between now and then for a brief update.

And I assume that we can also watch for your work at Planetary.org. I hope so. If I can get through the editorial process, I'll get some posts up there coming up soon. I guess also we'll be celebrating the Apollo 12 50th anniversary in November. I'm sure we'll be just as widespread and aware as the Apollo 11 50th anniversary earlier this year. Believe how that works. Well, one can hope. Again, thank you guys. And thank you all of you for listening to the Space Policy Edition. We will be back, we certainly expect, on the first Friday in November, perhaps with much more to talk about as we hit some deadlines and the budget negotiations continue in Washington as we head further into FY20, federal year FY20. I hope you will join us then, and I hope you'll join me every week for Planetary Radio, the weekly edition that comes out every Wednesday morning.

Until then, everybody, Ad Astra. Thank you.