Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Lori Garver on what a NASA Administrator (and Deputy) actually does

Episode Date: April 6, 2018

Lori Garver, former Deputy Administrator of NASA, talks with Casey about what the Deputy and Administrator jobs are like day-to-day, how decisions actually get made at the top, and why the current lack of confirmed leadership hurts the space agency. Casey, Space Policy Advisor Jason Callahan and Planetary Radio host Mat Kaplan also review the great news about the NASA budget, and reveal the possible fallout from the further delay in launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.More resources to explore this month’s topics are at  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/space-policy-edition-24.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome, Space Policy Wonks. This is the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, your monthly review and deep dive into all that is happening with the stuff that really determines what we're going to be doing in space exploration. with the stuff that really determines what we're going to be doing in space exploration. I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio, joined by, as always, the Director of Space Policy for the Planetary Society, Casey Dreyer. Welcome, Casey. Hey, Matt. Hey, Jason. Happy to be back and doing a full episode here. You bet. And Jason Callahan, already mentioned there by Casey. Jason Callahan, in the Belt Beltway is our space policy advisor within the Planetary Society, part of our extremely effective space policy staff, which we'll be talking about for a few moments in just a moment or two here. Welcome back to you as well, Jason.

Hey guys, how you doing? Good to be back. Before we go on, just a little bit of a tease for a terrific conversation, extremely informative conversation. The case he had with somebody on the inside of NASA. It's with Lori Garver, the former deputy administrator under Charlie Bolden, the just-past NASA administrator, the last one to actually be approved by Congress. the last one to actually be approved by Congress. Lori, who has been a space policy expert, insider, and space exploration fan and promoter for many, many years. You won't want to miss this. So let us make you proud if you are a member of the Planetary Society as we talk about the NASA budget and what appears to be a clear reflection of the influence of these two guys and the other member of the space policy staff, Matt Renninger, and of course, some of the rest of the people there. There's a guy named Bill Nye, who's also taken part in some of the activities these guys have had on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in D.C.

Oh, what? You're not a member? Well, then you really didn't contribute to their success, did you? But you can fix that by going to planetary.org slash membership, and you can stand behind the great work that these guys do. Yes, this is the upfront commercial for the society. We would love to have you on board. Obviously, if you're listening to this program, you care about this stuff. So why not stand behind it as well and stand behind all the other great work that the Planetary Society does in addition to the work of the Space Policy Team. Gentlemen, I'll leave it at that. Of course, if you have anything to add, feel free, but

we need to talk about some of this great stuff that you've been involved with. Well, absolutely. We have this new NASA budget, and Matt, you and I talked about this a little in our regular kind of series in Planetary Radio. You so very graciously let me pop on to talk about policy and join Emily and Bruce and everyone else. So we can just touch on it here. I've written about this on planetary.org, but the news is good. And we just got to savor moments like this when the news is good. And as I pointed out on the show, we had a situation with NASA. The White House had proposed to cut NASA by about 1%. It was actually the best, least cut in the entire government that year on the 2018 president's budget request, which would have

brought NASA in at roughly $19.1 billion. The Senate had proposed a $19.5 billion budget for NASA. The House had proposed in 1908, and the compromise was $20.7. It's a very, very good compromise in my opinion. And that really allowed everyone to win. Planetary science, obviously our top focus, went up to $2.2 billion. I think Jim Green just said that that's its best budget in history. Jason, I know you've done a lot of work in terms of what a historical planetary budget looks like. It does get hard to compare as you go back just because the programmatic shifts around. But is $2.2 billion, would you say that that is one of the best budgets for planetary science ever?

And Jason, before you answer that, just Jim Green, head of the Planetary Sciences Division, right? Correct. Yeah, Jim runs Planetary Science at NASA headquarters here in Washington, D.C. And I agree with Jim's assessment. I think this is a really remarkable budget for planetary science, arguably the best that we've seen, certainly in a generation. It's really, it's fantastic. Yeah, and what a turnaround. A lot of our listeners will know that we were working hard for years to get to 1.5. And I remember sitting with an unnamed senator pitching this idea that we bring planetary science up to 1.5 billion. And I think at the time, the cuts were really bad. It was pitching maybe a 1.2, 1.3 billion dollar program.

the cuts were really bad. It was pitching maybe a $1.2, $1.3 billion program. They looked at me in the eye and said, this will never happen. You will never get to $1.5 billion. And now we're at $2.2, so never let a senator tell you what's possible or not. I mean, it's really remarkable. And a big chunk of that increase in planetary science goes to Europa. Europa just got a stunning number, $595 million for the Clipper and a lander. They kind of leave it up to NASA of how to distribute that money. The lander still has a long way to go. So this isn't necessarily ensuring that we'll have a lander in the future, but this allows a lot of work to continue on studying the concept and bringing down the cost. A big increase went to

Mars. And Jason, do you want to just kind of summarize this Mars increase? We got a $75 million boost above what was requested. One of the things that Matt and I have really been focused on here in DC is looking at the Mars sample return program, which has sort of languished for many years. But in the past year or so, NASA has finally been allowed to start talking about actually doing sample return. And we've been pushing hard on Congress to try and support that effort. So one of the things that we've been looking at is the telecommunications capability at Mars. The orbital assets that we currently have at Mars are old and getting older, and we don't currently have a replacement in the budget. There are a

number of options on how to do this. So one of the things that we've been doing in DC is bringing that to the attention of Congress people, sort of educating them on what those options are and what the cost profiles would be. And they fortunately listened and were able to provide some money for NASA. So hopefully we can move forward and not need to worry about the telecommunications capability. There's a lot of distance between here and there, but that was a huge win for us. Yeah, I was very, very happy to see that and to see that Mars is still getting this attention. It's just one of those lingering problems or outstanding problems, I should say, because Mars feels like it's doing really well because we have

Mars 2020, which is the big flagship mission that's right hitting its peak of development right now. We have all these missions that are there. But if you look just down the road a few years, there's nothing coming down the pipeline to follow up on Mars 2020, nothing official. And so this type of money now helps NASA really put in some of this tech investment to really get ready to address this next level of Mars exploration. And this is something we will very, very much be working on this year too, in this current budget cycle to make sure that this funding remains or grows

really to support these programs. Something else I wanted to mention, Jason, that I know you're particularly proud of is that we saw $35 million directed towards NEOCam, our Near Earth Object Camera. It's a space telescope. And why don't you just talk a little bit about that and what you in particular have done a lot of work on supporting investment in this mission. And I'd just like to hear your response to that. Sure. One of the main areas of focus for advocacy and policy for the Planetary Society is a program called Planetary Defense. And this is basically trying to detect, categorize, and mitigate the impact of near-Earth objects, be they comets, asteroids, whatever it is that's out there that could hit

the Earth and do a lot of damage. Again, our other sort of main focus this past year was trying to find money to keep two particular programs alive in the planetary defense line. One is called NeoCam. This is an infrared camera that would be in orbit around the sun, looking outward past the earth, trying to find near earth objects, particularly in the infrared wavelength, because a lot of these objects are very dark and can't be seen through visual wavelength telescopes. This project has been around for about 15 years and has just been bouncing around, trying to find a little bit of money here and there.

And we were finally able to get them through phase B with this money. So hopefully this will keep the project alive long enough to see it go into confirmation, and hopefully we can get this thing built. The other project we've been working on is DART. This is the dual asteroid redirect test mission. If NeoCam were the, the detection aspect of this, the DART program is the, the mitigation aspect.

This is a test to see if you could actually change the trajectory of an asteroid. There's a lot more to it and we can talk about it at a later time. But the important thing is they needed a little bit of money to get them into FY19 when the White House has already requested money, a lot of money for that project. So we were able to get a little bit of cash into the FY18 budget for them as well. So the short of the story is that we're trying to keep both of those projects propped up and we were able to find money to do that. So that was another huge win for us. And that DART mission, Jason, that also is a big collaboration, isn't it, with the European

Space Agency? It was. It is no longer. There were supposed to be two spacecraft involved in the mission. The DART spacecraft, which would launch an impactor into an asteroid orbiting a larger asteroid. And then there was a second spacecraft that ESA was going to supply that would do measurements of the trajectory and a lot of science to determine what exactly had happened. ESA was not able to find that money in their five-year budget process. So that mission is no longer moving forward, but DART was able to figure out how to get a lot of the science done using ground-based resources, telescopes and radar to track the impact. Kudos as well to our friend, Amy Meinzer,

who leads the NEOCAM mission. Thank goodness that that's continuing to move forward. So Jason, something that really struck me reading through the final congressional budget was just how, in a sense, ineffective, ultimately, the White House's budget proposal was. Literally every cut they proposed was undone by Congress, with the exception, I think, of one RBI instrument in earth science, which NASA canceled on its own because of its own cost growth and cost overruns. But every other earth science mission that was proposed to be cut was funded and directed very, very specifically to be funded by Congress, which was really remarkable considering that earth science now is basically maintaining its record high level of funding itself for the

third year in a row of about 1.9 billion. The education division was fully funded after the White House proposed to remove it completely. They didn't lose a dime and then you had all this extra funding on top of it. And really in the context of the broad federal budget, every cut they proposed to science was effectively not just undone, but often a lot of these agencies got increases instead. What did you feel? That seemed to be a really clear statement from Congress to the White House about what these priorities should be. Yeah. So I think this was absolutely Congress sort of pulling the reins on the White House and saying, look, you can come up with all the plans that you want. But the fact of the matter is that the White House proposes and Congress disposes, as the saying goes. There were a number of factors

involved in this, probably the major one being the bipartisan deal to end the sequestration numbers for the next couple of years. That freed up a tremendous amount of money, but the method used to end sequestration through bipartisan means was really by increasing spending both in defense and non-defense discretionary budgets. So there was just a lot of money available that has not been available for a number of years, which certainly helped. The other issue though, is you're absolutely correct that Congress rebuked the White House on the funding aspect, but there were a lot of issues having to do with reorganization within the agencies that

Congress didn't have a whole lot to say about. So at NASA in particular, the Space Technology Mission Directorate has been wrapped back into the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. There have been a number of smaller changes throughout the organization. Those are big reorganizations and will have impacts on funding going forward. But doesn't that apply to 2019 fiscal year? Does that have to be approved by Congress before then? That's almost separate from 2018, isn't it? That's true. That's true. They hinted at some of this stuff in the FY18 budget, but the FY18 budget was the skinny budget. So there wasn't a whole lot of detail.

But the FY19 budget has come out and this would have been an opportunity for Congress to actually address some of those issues. And they were remarkably silent. And on top of that, what we've heard on the Hill is that at least at NASA, a lot of this reorganization is not very controversial to Congress. Yeah, we should point out that this budget for 2018 did pass about six months into the 2018 fiscal year. And so they didn't have a lot of, in a sense, they get all this extra money that they then have to obligate, right, in the next six months before 2019. Yeah, which is, it's a nice problem to have, but it's still a problem. Yeah, this is why government funding can be inefficient, because if you get a windfall after some very mixed signals halfway through your fiscal year, you suddenly have to make lots of decisions in terms of how you spend that money. One other question I just had for you, Jason, I just want to hear your opinion on this. We did get a surprise second mobile launcher for the Space Launch System,

the mobile launch tower that's going to launch the Block 1A of SLS. They were thinking about upgrading that one to support the 1B version, but that would have taken 33 months and that would have been this complete shutdown of the SLS program. They couldn't launch anything during that period. So they're just going to build a second one to try to speed that up. What do you think of that? They just said, here's 350 million in this fiscal year. You got six months to spend it. Make a second tower. Putting on my program management hat, the decision makes sense from a risk mitigation standpoint. It leaves a lot more options open than working with a single launcher. That said, the cost estimate, I think, is optimistic.

As we're going into the testing and integration phase for both SLS and Orion, which is when projects tend to overrun, this just puts even more pressure on a whole system that is going to be putting a lot of pressure on the rest of NASA. Well, speaking of overruns, you like what I'm doing here? I want to call out, Jason, something that you have been predicting for, I mean, I think we can go back to the very first episode of the show. And probably you've mentioned this, which is our good, exciting potential future science mission, the James Webb Space Telescope, officially announced that they're going to miss. Well, they were supposed to launch in 2018. They'd already slipped to 2019.

Now, not until 2020-ish. We don't fully know. This has happened right in that phase D, right? That integration and testing and things to start to fall apart. I don't know if you want to take a victory lap because that seems a little foolish. No, I really don't. I hate being right about these things. You want to just talk about a little bit. Have you heard, what have people been saying about this? And do you have any insight into really what went wrong here? amount of innovation on this mission. And it's really difficult to make predictions about technologies that you've never built before. Despite the fact that NASA is probably the best in the world at being able to do that, they're still not perfect at it. And that's what resulted.

It's a really good reminder that there's this weird incentive in space exploration. We just associate it with innovation. But really, most spacecraft design is strongly incentivized to be conservative for this very reason that we're watching now with James Webb, when you try to do something new, things may go wrong as you as you figure it out. Yeah, absolutely. If you look at the missions that are most successful, meeting their cost and schedule milestones, they're usually missions that are using less innovative technologies, you know, far more proven hardware. That's just the nature of the beast, right? So with James Webb, it was not at all surprising that they ran into unimagined problems. 50 plus years to add enough margin in both their cost profile and their schedule profile to account for any unknown occurrences. But again, if you're working on a technology you've never worked with before, it's hard

to predict exactly how much cash and schedule you're going to need for that. So I think their estimates were pretty good, but they weren't enough. What is this going to do, if anything, to the NASA budget going forward? I would guess particularly to the astrophysics budget, which is where this project is. Well, one of the things that we saw coming out of the FY18 omnibus budget was that Congress supports the following mission to James Webb, which is called WFIRST. It's another infrared telescope. We were talking about the infrared camera on NEOCAM. This is another infrared telescope. This one is far different. It wouldn't have the same capabilities as NEOCAM at all, but similar wavelengths.

Anyhow, WFIRST in the FY19 president's budget request was canceled. The White House proposed to get rid of this next space telescope. Congress in the FY18 budget had continued to fund it. It will be very interesting to see what happens next. These pressures placed on the astrophysics budget by the web overruns are really not helpful to that next telescope. To say the least. And I wrote about this too on planetary.org. WFIRST was really counting on what they call a funding wedge to open up. So as James Webb would decrease in its annual funding needs as you kind of roll engineers and things off the project as you basically have it built,

you open up this new area of money that WFIRST was then going to use to build itself. NASA had proposed to take that and give it to the moon program. And this is why we don't have WFIRST going forward, at least in the president's budget. But even going forward, if they were going to survive, they were still going to kind of count on that. So the longer James Webb stays at a high spending rate, the less room there is just in general to go forward. I think they needed something like 350 million next year for W-1st to really keep it on track. And that's a significant

boost above the 150 million they got in 2018. So it just becomes a lot harder without James Webb kind of freeing up some of that cash. Ripples in the pond. Jason, we haven't heard from you in a while, but you've been pretty busy. You've been going to some meetings. Can you say a word or two about that? Sure. So week before last, I was at the Space Science Week of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Specifically, I went to the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science meeting, which was sort of an update to the National Academies by NASA and the scientific community of what's going on in planetary science and astrobiology. There's a lot of really good information. Most of it is not anything earth shattering. It was just good to see that most of the programs and projects at NASA seem to be on a pretty good trajectory. And certainly the FY18 budget is very helpful in that regard. Then this week I was at the MEPAG meeting, which is the Mars Exploration Program Analysis

Group meeting. This was a meeting for the Mars community to take a look at their current program and start aligning themselves, going through the activities that they need to accomplish leading up to the next decadal survey, which is the document that sort of determines the scientific course for planetary science. And that was a really fascinating meeting, if you're really into process, which I am, but I won't bore people with most of the details. We should do a whole bonus episode on every piece of that process. I mean,

that's why people listen. They're talking about this now, and when's the next decadal survey get released? I don't think it comes out till 2022. Yeah. So four years in advance, they need to start thinking about this as they go into this process. And it's not just Mars, right? We have every other part of planetary science thinking already about the next decadal? Yeah, absolutely. So there are a number of these groups out there. There's VEXAG for Venus. There's LEAG for lunar exploration. There's SBAG for small bodies. There's the OPAG for outer planets. All of these groups are putting together their plans to best position themselves for the decadal survey process, in which they will go and present their case to the committee and the subcommittees of the Decadal Survey. Those committees will then take all of those recommendations, try to thread the needle and create a balanced program that makes as many people happy as they can. That will become the report that then goes to NASA and to Congress. And that will be the report that sort of dictates what missions NASA will be

looking at going forward for the next 10 years of planetary science. This is the report that'll help them give the recommendation for what NASA does in the late 2020s. So this is long-term thinking. Yeah, absolutely. Casey, I agree with you. I think we should devote a show in the near future to this whole process that leads to the creation of the decadal surveys, because it is so influential and so important to our future of space exploration. Are you guys ready now, Casey, to get us into this really fascinating conversation that you had? that you had. Yeah, there's this big issue going on, you know, above all of this churn and good news with NASA's budget and the bad news with James Webb Space Telescope and WFIRST, that we still don't have leadership at NASA in the sense that we don't have an appointed NASA administrator. We don't have a deputy administrator. We actually just got a CFO, a chief financial officer,

We actually just got a CFO, a chief financial officer, just started on the job a couple days ago as we record this in April of 2018. Robert Lightfoot has been acting administrator ever since Charlie Bolden stepped down when the Trump administration began in 2017. And he has announced that he's going to retire at the end of this month in April 2018. And that really doesn't leave a lot of people left in NASA's leadership. We wanted to really kind of talk about this question. You know, when we say we need a NASA administrator, when we say we need these people in these positions, why is that? Can NASA just continue functioning along with an empty ninth floor leadership suite or with acting positions, you know, getting promoted up. And so to that end, I interviewed Lori Garber, who was one of the more, I'd say, notable deputy administrators in NASA's history, which is incredibly knowledgeable, experienced person in the space business. And she was NASA deputy administrator for four years at the beginning of the Obama administration, worked with Charlie Bolden. And we have this great discussion about what she actually did day to day as a deputy administrator, and what her relationship was like with an administrator and where those

decision processes come in. But before we get to that, I really wanted to talk a little bit with Jason about what does it mean to actually have NASA leadership and how does NASA itself make decisions? Because we are in this strange position, right, where we have a National Space Council that is changing the direction, particularly of NASA's human space flight program. As Jason alluded to, they're proposing to change NASA's internal bureaucracy and to absorb its space technology mission directorates into its human and deep space exploration efforts. And absent people at NASA's leadership, who gets to think about these decisions and who proposes them and who is there

to really advocate for NASA? So, Jason, I guess just to kind of step out in a big picture, for NASA. So Jason, I guess just to kind of step out in a big picture, how does NASA make decisions from an executive level, at least decide to try to do something because ultimately they have to be approved by Congress. Talk through a little bit of how NASA works and what we mean by the ninth floor of NASA. NASA as an agency is actually spread out into a bunch of centers and a bunch of directorates and lower level divisions. The coordinating aspect of all of that is NASA headquarters, which is located in Washington, DC in a building down just like two or three blocks off of the national mall. It is a nine story building. And the ninth floor of that building is the administrator's floor. There are a couple other divisions up there as well, but the administrator's suite takes up most of the ninth

floor. The administrator's suite includes the NASA administrator, the deputy administrator, and a sizable staff that support them on matters of policy and legislation and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The decision-making process itself is actually quite interesting. As I mentioned, there are a lot of NASA centers and there are also a lot of NASA directorates and divisions. There is a Venn diagram of those, but they don't completely overlap. It doesn't make a circle. Leaders of various divisions, various directorates, and leaders of centers tend to sit on different councils that are decision-making bodies. But any of the decisions that they make, or even centers or

directorate managers, also known as associate administrators, can come up with decisions regarding their own parts of the institution individually. But even those decisions still have to go through an executive council. Now, there are usually three or so executive councils, depending on the function. There are two primary ones at the moment. Those councils are made up of the administrator and the deputy administrator, and then a number of other high-level people within NASA. At the end of the day, the final decision, the final sign-off by law is made by the administrator of NASA. At the end of the day, the final decision, the final sign off by law is made by the administrator of NASA. It's written into NASA policy. It's written into federal law that any major decision made by an agency, basically any decision made by an agency,

has to have one person who's responsible for it. And the larger the decision, the higher up the food chain it goes. So at NASA, the person responsible is the administrator. So what does it mean, in your opinion, to have an acting administrator versus one that has been approved by the Senate and nominated by the White House in this process? The real issue there is the fact that Congress has approved the White House's decision for an actual administrator. The acting administrator, although it's somebody who I believe has to have gone through some form of Senate confirmation previously, they've not been approved to be administrator. So there's not as much buy-in from all of Congress. There's not as much buy-in from the community as to this person's authority. As an acting administrator, it's

basically understood that you're there to keep the agency running, but you're not there to change directions of the agency or make major decisions. Now we have it's Robert Lightfoot. And because there wasn't even a deputy confirmed beforehand, I don't think he's had any confirmation. He was just a civil servant, which is just a full-on government employee. And he occupied what is called the associate administrator position. And Jason, why don't you just elucidate a bit? What does that mean? What's an associate administrator compared to a deputy administrator? Sure. Good question. So it becomes even more complicated because there's more than

one associate administrator at NASA. There's an associate administrator for the science mission directorate, for the human exploration and operations mission directorate, for what used to be STMD. There are many associate administrators, but there is one particular associate administrator. I don't remember the precise title of the position, but it's often referred to as just the associate administrator of NASA. And this person is the highest ranking civil servant, so non-political individual at the agency. And they are really responsible for running the day-to-day operations. One of the things that astounded me when I was at NASA headquarters, I was there when Charlie Bolden was administrator. It never ceased to baffle me how often he spent giving speeches

at various functions. I could never figure out how he actually got anything done because he was so busy being the public face of the organization. And I think that's true of any administrator. And the deputy administrator's job is also very public facing. The office relies fairly heavily on the associate administrator to really deal with the day-to-day workings of the agency as a whole. And they sit on these executive councils, right? The AA, the top AA. That is correct. The types of people you would see on these councils would be the associate administrator, depending on the council, the relevant associate administrator for a directorate. You would also see people like the chief engineer or the chief scientist or even the chief technologist sitting on these councils. It's very high level folks at

NASA. It just seems like it just requires a lot of people to decide to do something, not to be too flippant about it, but do we really need that many people, do you of people to decide to do something, not to be too flippant about it, but do we really need that many people, do you think, to decide whether we should send a mission to Mars or send a new robotic mission to Venus? Well, this is both the beauty and the difficulty of a democracy, right? Is that institutions are set up specifically so that no one person is making all the decisions. The benefit of having that process set up or that institution set up is that if you have a number of people involved in the decision making process, then you have far more buy in from a larger constituency of people and you're far more likely to succeed in whatever your endeavor is. If you're dictating down to people, if they don't agree with you, they're unlikely to execute your vision the way that you would like it executed. If they all agree with you, it's far more likely that that's

accomplished. And that's sort of what these councils serve. So even though there is the one person sign off for large decisions at NASA, it's less likely that an administrator is going to accomplish whatever the goal is if they get that sign-off without buy-in from the rest of the agents. Yeah, okay. So it's really like one person is signing off on a large amount of buy-in from others, signing off on a broad agreement. And that just makes it easier then, right? As you were saying, people aren't going to be fighting you.

And I would say there's examples of that in the past. Would you say the, or maybe this is NASA in general fighting things like the National Space Council, which is kind of this outside layer of bureaucracy. The classic example being back in 89 with the Space Exploration Initiative, which was proposed by the Space Council to go to the moon and then Mars. But NASA seemed to be very protective of the space shuttle program and space station program and ultimately seemed to fight things like that. Right. And when you have that situation, when you have that disagreement or lack of buy in, it becomes very easy for opponents of these initiatives to exacerbate those divisions.

We're actually in a very interesting circumstance at the moment. If you look at NASA's history over the years, for a very long time, the NASA centers had a whole lot more power than NASA headquarters did for a variety of reasons. But one of the primary reasons being the fact that NASA is in DC, and so it has no political representation, whereas the centers all have two senators and a congressperson. That makes for a bit of a power imbalance between organizations that are supposed to be structured underneath NASA headquarters leadership. So this was a recognized problem for 15 or 20 years. Congress, through the Government Accountability Office and through congressional legislation, instructed NASA to sort of realign its setup for a very long time. In the early 2000s, that pendulum seemed to swing, where NASA headquarters seemed to sort of

get some control over what the senators were up to. But that was under a White House, a couple of White Houses that believed in sort of this centralized power within NASA, that they listened to the authority of NASA headquarters. Well, now NASA headquarters really has no leadership from a White House standpoint. The White House doesn't seem to be particularly interested outside of the National Space Council as to what's going on at NASA. That provides an opportunity for the centers to sort of have more of an impact on policy moving forward. So you see the pendulum swinging back the other direction again. Ironically, yeah, it's strange because we have the Space Council

that may in some ways be easier for them, do you think, for the Space Council to kind of run the show or at least have a lot more influence than it would be otherwise without a strong, empowered NASA leadership that specifically looks out for the institution of NASA in addition to its goals beyond the Space Council, which is just a little more separate? So ideally in a White House, what you have, if you're going to establish a National Space Council, you would also appoint a NASA administrator who is in line with what the White House's goals are for NASA. It would actually be easier for the National Space Council if they had the person that they wanted in the office to implement their plans throughout

NASA. However, if you have inherited a NASA administrator or you appoint one who then has their own agenda, then that can make things actually far more difficult than having nobody at the helm. Should we just acknowledge that we have a new CFO very quickly? This is the first actual NASA appointee that was confirmed and began to serve Jeffrey DeWitt. Not a super controversial pick. The Senate expedited his nomination and didn't even have a hearing on it. Jason, what does the CFO do? What's DeWitt going to be working on as chief financial officer of NASA? And what will that help having him there versus an acting CFO? Sure. Chief Financial Officer runs all of the finances at NASA. So this is all on the eighth floor of headquarters. It's one floor below the administrator suite. It's sort of broken into

two functions. You have the budget office and you have the accounting office. The budget office is sort of looking forward. So at the moment, they're working on getting the FY20 budget put together and out the door while also working with like the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and other organizations within NASA to educate Congress on the FY19 request. request. At the same time, the accounting side of the house is looking at the FY17 budget and the FY16 budget and making sure that all the contracts are closed out, that all the money got to where it was supposed to go, and it's all traceable, and you end up with a clean audit of the agency. NASA had a lot of difficulty with that for many years. CFO a couple of years back named Beth Robinson came in, and under her direction, they were able to finally get clean aud CFO a couple of years back named Beth Robinson came in and under her direction, they were able to finally get clean audits for a couple of years at NASA, which was a huge achievement for them. But all that said, the CFO's job is to oversee all of those functions. And it's not just the budget, but it's also performance functions that are mandated by

Congress. It's a huge office. There are a couple hundred people in both sides of the house. Without all of this coordination, NASA basically doesn't end up with a budget request and taxpayers can't trace the money. So it's a pretty important function. That is an excellent introduction, I would say, to this conversation, Casey, that you had not long ago with Lori Garver. She's been on Planetary Radio, the weekly show, several times. I actually first met her back when she was still with the National Space Society, something, Casey, that you mentioned in introducing her, talking about her long background.

But you give her a pretty good introduction in this conversation that you had just a few days ago. Shall we go ahead and get that started? Yeah, let's listen. I am very excited to have as our guest today, Lori Garver, who is not only the previous deputy administrator of NASA or two back, I guess, right, Lori, but just a stalwart space policy expert and player in the space industry for what, since the 80s, a long time. You've basically been on every side of the space industry,

in the industry, at NASA, at the National Space Society. Lori, thank you for coming on, and thank you for talking with us today. It's great to be here. Thank you. Okay, so you were nominated for Deputy Administrator at NASA back in 2009. I said, I think, in your NASA bio that your first day as deputy after you were confirmed was July 17th, 2009. And you served for just over four years. Does that sound right? That's correct. Like any good space policy person, I fired up notice NASA's online directives information system, which is all the policy directives at NASA, in prepping for this interview. And I pulled up the official description of what a deputy administrator does. It said the

deputy administrator advises the administrator on overall leadership planning and policy direction for the agency. You would perform the duties and exercises, the powers that were delegated by the administrator, and the deputy administrator acts for the administrator in their absence. And that's pretty much the entire formal description of the deputy, which technically says what you did. But at the same time, I have a hard time picturing the details of that. So what was it actually like to be the deputy administrator? Well, it was a wonderful job. I enjoyed all aspects of it, I would say, day to day, as well as overall trajectory of what you're trying to accomplish. As any deputy, it really does depend on the top person. So the administrator sets the tone and the direction of what it is they want you to do. And I think your description was a great one because it said, you know, you serve as an advisor to the administrator and you fulfill your delegated responsibilities. So for me, Charlie and I came in together, confirmed on the same day. I had already been

their leading transition team for a while, and he did not want to delegate to me any sort of narrow range of things to do. He said from the beginning, he wanted me to be his full deputy, advise him on all things. I don't think that's always the way things are. A lot of times people have a focus. I even think David Newman following me focused differently. But that's how we began. And we stayed that way throughout. Charlie delegated direct reports to me because there's about 15 different directors that would be reporting up to the administrator or the deputy. So for me, I was having as the offices that reported to me, the general counsel, the CFO,

HR, legislative affairs, public affairs, and the mission support directorate. Oh, I also had the CIO. In my case, the administrator was having the center directors and the heads of the, at that time, for mission directorates report to him. So when you talk about someone reporting to you, what does that entail? Like literally, you have a meeting every day with all of these people, or you're getting literal reports in email. How much of your time is spent just interacting with these key individuals? your time is spent just interacting with these key individuals? Well, you know, as any large organization, you can't do much yourself. So it's all about delegating. In a classical organizational structure, you have leaders and the people under that level report up to the leadership. So we had a weekly meeting, certainly on my team. Charlie invited me to his

meetings as well. We had daily tag-ups that were a mix of people, legislative certainly, public affairs, but not the programmatic people, just sort of what's on for today. And I ran those when Charlie was out. So we did just seamlessly run the place like any very, very large organization. By direct report, that means I, for instance, did their annual reviews and set their pay and figured out what goals would be for the next year, just like in any organization. Right now, NASA has neither an administrator nor a deputy administrator. But even before we kind of go into that implications, what were the differences to you between your role as deputy and Charlie Bolden's role as the administrator? What did he, what kind of responsibilities did he have that were unique to that position?

that were unique to that position? Well, I think most importantly, I mean, he set the policy, he made every decision and reported to the president. And while I was, I think, especially at the beginning, a little more versed in the policy because I had run transition, ultimately, those were all Charlie's decisions. I mean, the budget was the major thing that drives any government agency. And that process is, you know, many years. And so when we started, they were well into the next couple of years budgets, but he had that impact and really my role and any deputy or vice president, you know, people complain about being vice president. What you have is the ability to influence. I was more of an influencer and Charlie was more the leader. He had the bully pulpit to when he said something, everyone listened. It had to be

him saying it to, I think, have the community and have the force of NASA behind it. So how much power does an administrator actually have in that sense? In addition to having a deputy, there's an associate administrator, I think the top civil servant leader within hierarchy in terms of hierarchy at NASA. And then you have something called the executive council that helps make decisions. How much is that required for the administrator to make policy decisions or implementation decisions versus how much is just a wise thing to do to build internal coalitions? Is it essentially a dictatorial, if they want to be, power vested in the administrator in a situation like this? Yeah, I think the administrator has a lot more power than they typically use or than people think.

I've been, you know, lots of people, oh, but the administrator couldn't do anything anyway. And I disagree. I mean, I was at NASA during Dan Golden administration, and he really figured out since he was there over 10 years, and I didn't come until he'd been there nearly four, how to use that power effectively. You mentioned there's an executive council and an associate minister. No, there doesn't have to be. That's not written in any law. Only the administrator and the deputy. He doesn't have to have an executive council. We created that. We created the AA position. I think an administrator or two before us recreated it from earlier. But you can have any structure that you want. And as far as the SES personnel goes,

you can change those positions, those people out. It would be pretty difficult to change the whole center structure and so forth. But for the most part, I think the administrator has ultimate power. So is that really the difference between the concept of political leadership of NASA and the civil servant leadership of NASA is that you're just imbued with this significant amount of ability to shape your own management structure at the agency? No, I don't think that's a major thing. I mean, the major thing is set the direction and the course of the agency, the budget, and really the process, the people, the structure of the management should fall in line with that. When I came in on transition and we're really looking to align with the goals of the full administration, a brand new president, a change of party, technology was a driver, Being able to leverage commercial investments was a driver. We had all kinds of unique things they wanted done, like we want to be transparent. So FOIA was something that NASA had a big backlog in.

So, of course, we immediately hired a new person to lead that office to get the backlog of FOIA requests done. We started a new technology office and requested a large budget. So yes, we had to hire a chief technologist. Later, we even separated out a whole mission directorate for it. We wanted our sciences to be a huge focus for ours. We were told, we were asked to get a separate department for our sciences. Now, that didn't end up being something what Charlie wanted to do. So we didn't ultimately do it. That's the kind of power I'm talking about.

In this case, Dr. Holdren, the science advisor, asked us to do this. On transition team, we had set this up. We had candidates to run it. And the administrator came in. And of course, the current science mission directorate didn't want that to happen and got Charlie to agree with him. Those are just day-to-day decisions that are supposed to advance your overall goals. And you should be setting missions to advance those goals. You should be going about those missions in a way that advance those goals. All methods can be changed. What you're doing,

how you're doing it, and who is doing it are decisions from the administrator. And again, the administrator, do you feel they're there to implement the president's overall policy objectives for NASA? They're, in a sense, the president's manifestation or representation of their will in the space program? Yes. And this is where you get your power. Various administrators over the year have done this better than others. So if the deputy can only influence in the broader sense, the administrator can only influence White House policy as well, right? That's all about your relationship with

the executive branch. And I came in having known most of the people in the executive branch because we'd served on transition team and Charlie had to establish those relationships. It works best when you have excellent relationships and you're all, you know, rowing to the same. I used to think about it when I would be driving to work across Potomac and you'd have these crews in their skulls and they're in unison doing their rowing and moving fast in a straight line. And I just so wanted to work every day to have that be from the president on down through NASA. And so much of it, unfortunately, was the same to me. We're going in circles and splashing each other. But that is, I think, the administrator's responsibility as well to connect with the executive branch. And by that, that's the science advisor, that's OMB, that's the economics

team, that's the Air Force and the sides of space that are not included in NASA, FAA, Commerce. We would have senior meetings at the White House with leads of those organizations. Sometimes they were deputy meetings leading up to principals' meetings. But when you were in lockstep, that was a very powerful thing. Next question, meaning that then goes to the Hill. But for now, you're talking about the administration. You've got to be in line. You've got to be strong because you know you are going to have to go to the Hill.

Is it in a sense also that you're competing with other aspects of the executive branch for attention or resources or priority? I never felt it was a competition like that. We were never told, well, you can't get this money because someone else is. I looked at it completely, I turned that upside down, which was how can we align to things the president wants to do so that resources are funneled in, right? I knew from transition, technology, technology, we believe that the government can invest in these technologies and it will ultimately help the U.S., our economy, society, et cetera. Same with the commercial programs. Anytime I would brief anyone on transition, this is what excited them about what NASA did. And I knew the administration

was not going to request a bunch of money for something that they weren't excited about doing, which at that time was consolation, given very early in the administration, they had a blue ribbon panel tell them it was unsustainable. So we doubled down on those things that I knew were priorities for the administration. And I'm a student of political science, and to me, that's how it works. The people voted, they spoke, they elected somebody, and that somebody chose people, and those people all are working to do what the elected person really believes is best. Right. It seems valuable in a sense as well in that terms of that you're imbued with this implied representation from the president or the support of the president, particularly when,

you know, maybe talk about a little bit what it's like to go back and forth with the Office of Management and Budget, which is an executive branch function, but there's not necessarily a hierarchy, is there? How do you, when you argue with the Office of Management and Budget about what your funding needs are, who wins that and how do you win an argument like that, unless it's always resorting to what the president's priorities seem to be? More than once, the ultimate decision was made by the president, in our case, during my time there. And that meant Charlie Bolden going up to the Oval Office to meet by the president in our case during my time there. And that meant Charlie

Bolden going up to the Oval Office to meet with the president, along with the head of OMB. And usually the head of OSTP was there as well. If the administrator of NASA wants an audience with the president for a particular issue that's important enough, he can get it. That's who he reports to. So I was lucky. I had this relationship and a knowledge from transition of the other science technology agencies, of the OMB. Our senior political OMB official was sitting next to me in transition team because she did the transition team for NOAA as I was doing NASA. Those kinds of things were very helpful. And we were not battling OMB during my time there too much because we were all in sync of what we wanted to propose.

There were times when Charlie didn't agree and he would go to the president and he would get a decision. Let's turn it to now where we have a NASA administrator nominee not yet confirmed. And so we've had an acting administrator for over a year. We have no nominee for deputy administrator. What do you see as the implication for NASA? People talk about, well, NASA needs an administrator. Absent this person who has that kind of stamp of approval by the president, is it just that much harder as an acting position to be able to win these types of arguments internally within the executive branch? the executive branch? Oh, of course. I'm sure that, and I've talked to Robert occasionally during this time, and of course, he's doing everything he can to keep a lot of balls going by himself. And he has, I know, gotten a very close working relationship with now the National Space Council and OMB. He, being the senior career person during the last

number of years with Charlie and I, he knew exactly what needed to be done. So he's the perfect person to do it. People have a lot of confidence in him. So taking nothing from that, you don't have $20 billion corporations. Their board does not allow for an acting CEO for an extended period of time. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Organizations need leaders. And those people in the organization need to know that that person is empowered. And acting for a long time is a challenge for an organization, and they aren't going to feel as connected to the overall administration of which NASA is a part. Now, NASA's unique.

I know that Hill, in many ways, probably likes this because then they're able to manipulate the NASA budget more. So it is a balance. the NASA budget more. So it is a balance. But to me, per the Constitution, this branch of government should be able to have their own leadership. And that leadership can then carry out the goals as set by the president. You brought up an interesting aspect we haven't really talked about much, which is Congress. What's it like in NASA leadership? What types of interactions do you have with Congress? Because obviously, I mean, you went through a particularly big debate in terms of what NASA's major programs were. But I mean, this must happen all the time where you and we see this to this day where members of Congress take certain interests at NASA. I think Sophia was a good

example of this and institute a certain spending or policy authority in contrary to what the administration is proposing. And so in a situation like that, where the official position is to, let's say, end a program or start a program and Congress disagrees, what is the role of the deputy and the administrator in a situation like that? In my view, it is to advance the administration's goals and to deliver and message as well as you can why that is the direction you intend to go. I think that's pretty clear. You're part of that branch of government, and I don't know why there's a lot of confusion about it. But certainly, our role with Congress was a very important one. We could not get our budget through without congressional approval. And in the past, the appropriations committees had dictated a lot of NASA programs back when there was even more directed funding, shall we say, they made a lot of these decisions. So we knew they were going to play a big role, but we also, at the time President Obama was coming in, had Democrats in control in both houses. So we thought we had a bit of running room.

We thought we had a bit of running room. We went about working with Congress as you normally would, brought staff in as much as possible. But we definitely have the practice that in the back and forth with the agency and OMB, that is still an internal decision that has not gone to the Hill and you are not allowed to leak to the Hill. It is considered forbidden to do that. So we had several passbacks between OMB and it wasn't until a couple of days before the budget's released that you know exactly what you're getting and you don't want any outside lobbying. So we kept that pretty, pretty tight. Not that that doesn't always the case. A lot of times you get leaks from agencies, but

you know, the Obama administration really, really stuck to their no drama Obama. And we did not want to feel that. I was wondering if you could walk through an example of how a decision gets made, kind of from start to finish in a sense of committing to a new project. And I was thinking maybe Mars 2020 would be a good example, because you were there through the landing of the Curiosity rover. You were there for NASA's announcement that they would pursue a Mars 2020, a big flagship follow-up mission. And because flagships are directed missions,

they're not competed like Discovery or New Frontiers lines are. I imagine the decision process has to go pretty high up in NASA hierarchy. Is that something we could walk through and just kind of summarize how the idea comes up to the leadership, how the leadership pitches the idea and ultimately decides to pursue a new flagship mission. When did discussions for Mars 2020 begin getting up to your level and up to Charlie's level at NASA headquarters? Well, of course, we had the drama of earlier proposed missions with Europe and being part of those. Well before Curiosity, follow-ons, of course, from Mars are discussed and debated. And I'll first state that, you know, there's always been so much concern that we pulled away from those missions and somehow canceled our participation

when this process that I'll outline of decision-making was not complete. And so we had never committed until you have requested the money in the budget and the, at least initially the administration, and then ultimately Congress signs off. So in the case of post-curiosity Mars missions, there was a lot of debate. You had the decadals that you want to follow. You have all kinds of constituencies. You have centers that want to do different things. And ultimately, this comes through the budget process. And this would be under SMDR, the Science Mission Directorate. Now, they have, of course, a number of centers that Now, they have, of course, a number of centers that they are responsible for, JPL being one of them, as well as contractors, to debate.

But what they put forward is then reviewed by this executive council, which we put together, which included the administrator, the deputy, the AA. We had the chief technologist and the chief scientist and the CFO. So that group would hear briefings and make decisions. But ultimately, really, the administrator could overturn them. And I know, I remember a couple of times when he did. What was interesting about 2020 was not that we were going to do it, but what was it going to include? You know, caching was the big issue. And we always thought that we would be able to do sample return. And then when you get the real costs and you can't, it's a huge disappointment. So then it was a question of working with OMB, how many missions are we going to do before we can get sample return? Because that was our goal. And do you need that before you send people? The Mars questions are just huge and fascinating. And we were in constant communication with OMB

about what these follow-on missions would include because they don't want to do something that's not worthwhile to get you to the long-term goals. There are competing interests in things like Europa missions, and you can only do so many large direct missions, especially since we had the Webb telescope that had grown, and it's unbelievable, latest news, not unbelievable, sadly. We had a more than full bucket. And so the executive branch was very committed to having that make sense and not committing to a bunch of things that would be unnecessary.

But ultimately, it came through and was, of course, submitted to Congress and put in the budget. We, at least with Mars, I think, recognized there's going to be support for planetary science in Congress. We had Congressman Schiff, Congressman Culberson on our side. And of course, as long as we funded the Webb telescope, we had center. So in a sense, you hear directly from centers themselves and center directors or the representative of the centers feed into headquarters. And then is it literally just all of this council sitting around in a room with a representative from OMB kind of saying, well, can we afford this? What's our projections look like? from OMB kind of saying, well, can we afford this? What's our projections look like?

No, no, that's a good question. So our council didn't have anybody external. Our council had the head of SMD, Ed Weiler. Certainly Charles Elachi would come, the head of JPL at the time. And that was the extent of it. Typically, I would work with OMB and the CFO would work with OMB because you're working at a staff level. And we would be able to bring to the executive council, these are OMB's views. So it's constant communication with the White House and OMB. And of course, the Ed Weiler's and Charles Elachi's head of SMD and head of JPL are also briefing OMB. And of course, the Ed Weiler's and Charles Olachi's head of SMD and head of JPL are also briefing OMB. So we would hear it and say, you know what, you need to go tell this information to OMB and let them ask their own questions. So how, it seems like, again, OMB is such this

key player ultimately in what you're even allowed to ask for, right? I mean, that's the, Congress can approve this new program start, but they can't really initiate new programs on their own. They can give the money, but it's hard to make these long-term contracts or commitments without the administration being online. I mean, this is not new, what you went through, right? This was post-Apollo, right, during Nixon's OMB or the budget office at the time, rejecting this idea of spending more money because they just have, it seems like it's this different mandate of having to be good stewards of federal, dispassionate maybe good stewards of federal

spending. Under what circumstances, in your opinion, has that changed in a sense that do they allow significant increases to a program like NASA? What do they have to feel is the case? Is it literally the president calling them up and saying, add 15 billion to NASA this year, or to take, let's say, a very optimistic example? Or how does that logjam ever break when you're dealing with all of these competing resources? Yeah, so I never considered us against them in any way or them more powerful or anything because we were always aligned in my view. I found it very similar to many other organizations where I have worked, where you have really the senior leader,

in this case, the president of the United States. And the president of the United States has too much to watch every second. So he trusts people who trust people who trust people. And all of us are aligned because we all work ultimately for that same person. So this was never to me, I don't know what it was like in Nixon, OMB telling us, oh, you can't have this. And them being good stewards of the taxpayer dollars, I considered equally my responsibility. Of course, I didn't want to waste taxpayer dollars. Yeah, I didn't mean to put the phrasing that way, but in the sense that they are more naturally supposed to be skeptical of everything, right? They don't have an agenda necessarily to push. I think they do have an agenda and their agenda is the same as ours, which was the president's.

And what is important about them is they have more access regularly to the president and the very senior advisors than we do. A lot of times people at NASA don't want to hear that, and they're going to blame OMB. But this is misplaced. You, as the leadership of NASA, if you're the administrator, have the opportunity to go to the president directly and make your case. Now, if your case isn't good, OMB is going to win. And guess what happens to your credibility and your request next time? So just like in any job, you have to manage your power. And I felt that we worked so well with OMB. I knew when they would have any kind of interaction with the president or a senior people, memos would go up to the president and

you'd get handwritten things in the margin. That was sometimes direction. But most often it was Peter Orszag, the head of OMB, and John Holdren, the science advisor, talking with the president or getting a message from the president, I want X, I'm interested in Y. So we aligned our budgets in that way. Now, the difficulty at our end was the bureaucracy didn't want to do it. And so they went and fought to the hill. But this is more of an academic discussion. So the academics of it are pretty straightforward. The bureaucracy that you're talking about, that was NASA's bureaucracy? Yes. of NASA persists, right, between administrations. It is civil servants who serve significant portions of their professional and biological lifetimes. What was that like to engage with

that? Is it a struggle at times? Are they hesitant for new people coming in? Is there just a strong natural inclination towards persistence, in a sense, or inertia? persistence in a sense or inertia? Of course, it's a mix. I had worked at NASA before. I've been, as in your intro, in the space community a long, long time. And I felt very welcome. Walking in the day after the election as head of transition team was a very, very happy day. And I had so many friends there who welcomed me. And yes, we were cordoned off in a closed part of NASA and the head of NASA at the time didn't want people talking to us or sharing information. There was that drama going on. But overall, with the bureaucracy, we met with every single center director. We met with everyone who ran a mission directorate and anyone else we asked came to see us and other than on Constellation really worked with us.

It was during this time that Curiosity needed a two-year delay. And Charles Elachi came to us and said, I don't know that we can get everything done to make this launch window. If we don't make it, we need this couple hundred million more dollars and two more years. And remember George Whitesides and I just looked at each other and in the moment, like, well, of course you need to take the time. They knew there was new political leadership coming. And by and large, the NASA leadership is used to that just like in any bureaucracy and was looking to get us fully up to speed as quickly as possible.

Because if you knew about their program, and their program was worthwhile and doing well, you'd keep it going. And that's how it worked. And 90% of the programs operated that way. When I came back as deputy with Charlie, things were a little different. Because at that point, Things were a little different because at that point, I think Charlie did feel like he was more the leader. I mean, in transition, I was the leader of the Obama stuff. So playing second chair and going out to the centers with Charlie, our first tour, we did together all the centers. I remember having a blast. I mean, we had our little shit going, Charlie would take the lead. And it was a great reception. Of course, they loved having him, Astronaut Hero,

coming back. At least they knew me. And honestly, I think a lot of the NASA people were thrilled with the Obama administration's new focus on science and technology. And before the cancellation of Constellation became apparent to everyone, the reception was very good. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? Well, just wrapping up here, Laura, I was just thinking about the role of deputy. I imagine it was a significant amount of work. You must have been working, I don't thinking about the role of deputy. I imagine it was a significant amount of work. You must have been working, I don't know how many hours a day for those four and a half years, but there must have been some just incredible moments. I was just thinking even the opportunity to go and visit the extent of NASA's facilities across the country would be

this incredibly fun opportunity just to see the extension of what the space program does. Is there anything you just want to leave it like just some highlights of just experience that you had as deputy that really are staying with you? Oh my gosh. Yeah. My time was, was busy. It was, um, incredibly rewarding those hours that you, you put in. I started that job in July. I remember my youngest was playing quarterback in football. And I finally was able to get out on a Friday night and get to a game. And I was on the phone and I looked up and it was the first time I realized I had thought about anything other than NASA in months. And I just said, I got to put down the phone. You know, you can't really explain how intense it is. I remember giving a talk and looking down

and saw that my jacket that I had on still had the silver on the buttons from the dry cleaners. Like, you just didn't notice little things. But I will say that, for me, some of the more unique things, other than launches, landings, curacy landing, the people. I mean, it's all about people. It was international travel. When you travel internationally as a deputy of NASA, it's like a state visit. Japan, just so welcoming. Europe, I'll highlight a luncheon in France with a member of their parliament who was very thankful for not only what we have done as NASA, but they see you as a representative of the United States.

we have done as NASA, but they see you as a representative of the United States. And he started talking about what we did in Normandy and raising toast to you and tears all around the table at what the country that I'm representing there, because NASA does seem to be this beacon for our country. It was just an incredible responsibility. And it really caused me to focus on the ways that NASA can advance this country and the world and take that responsibility even more seriously every day. It's like my boss says, NASA just brings out the best in us. Indeed, it absolutely does. And it just gives me a smile every time I talk about it.

Lori Garver, I want to thank you again for joining us on Planetary Radio Space Policy Edition. Lori Garver was previously the deputy administrator of NASA and is now the general manager of the Airline Pilots Association. Casey Dreyer, the director of space policy for the Planetary Society, talking with Lori Garver, the former deputy administrator of NASA. former deputy administrator of NASA. I want to add, Casey, I the administrator suite is at NASA headquarters in DC, and that it's pretty quiet up there now, and it's kind of disturbingly quiet. Jason, are we hurting without having an administrator, a fully vetted administrator in place? Well, I think it was really interesting the timing at which Robert Lightfoot decided to retire. It was a really good piece of timing on his point. NASA was in a period of relative calm. There weren't any hair on fire decisions to be

made. It looked like the budget process was working as well as it ever does. It was a good time to get out. But that said, there's a whole lot on the horizon that's going to require some pretty significant decisions to be made at NASA. Everything from SLS and Orion going into testing and integration, James Webb having its problems, large spacecraft that'll be landing on Mars and orbiting Europa relatively soon. All of these are going to present challenges and opportunities for leadership to really change the direction of NASA. And if there's no leadership there, it's a power vacuum and somebody else will make those decisions. If it's not somebody who is representing NASA, it's less likely that those decisions will

benefit NASA. Casey? Yeah, it really seems, as Jason really put it nicely, I think in a power vacuum, you'll have a lot of jockeying for position within it. You won't be able to have that person to help drive internal consensus and external consensus in that person. And they're, again, not just the administrator, but a deputy having a full suite of leadership at NASA, whose job it is to look out for the agency and its goals. It really just, I think, emphasizes that this process needs to move

forward. And whether that's with Bridenstine or without, the Senate should just do their job and vote up or down. And then this process can just continue. And maybe the White House nominates someone new. Maybe we'll have an administrator. But we should at least also probably get a deputy nominated here relatively soon if NASA is as important as they seem to say it is for them. And you want good leadership there to make sure, as Jason said,

all of these things are coming up. And I would say not to mention this whole new direction towards the moon. You want someone to really implement that well. And if they're serious about being successful, they need people there to ensure that that happens. Well, perhaps it's appropriate that we started with all that great budget news, but we end on this sobering note about- Nothing like ending on a down note.

Yeah, that's what I like to do on the show. Leave people feeling bad. Well, it's the real world that we live in, right? Gentlemen, at least we can the former deputy administrator of NASA. You've made it this far. You obviously love this stuff as much as Casey, Jason, and I do. Why not stand behind it? Help us keep bringing this show to you.

Help them to continue to do the good work that is having such good results in Washington. Best way to do that, become a member of the Planetary Society. You can do it by visiting planetary.org slash membership. We have lots of different levels for pretty much anybody to come in at, and you will be able to share the pride that we have in this organization that does so much in space policy, has had so much influence, but also is doing so much great work across the entire universe of space exploration. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Great fun once again. As always.

Thanks a lot, guys. That's it for the Space Policy Edition for this month. Join us on the first Friday in May when we will celebrate the second anniversary of this program. And between now and then, of course, the weekly Planetary Radio will be bringing you all of the best news and analysis and great background conversations about space exploration as we learn much more about our solar system and beyond. Thanks for joining us. This is Matt Kaplan. We'll see you next time.