Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: NASA's Congressional Logjam

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

A polarized U.S. Congress is juggling nearly half a dozen pieces of major legislation, several of which face time-sensitive deadlines that, if missed, could create significant disruption for major NASA programs. Brendan Curry, The Planetary Society's Chief of D.C. Operations, reports on the view from inside the beltway, and helps us understand how the current logjam of legislation could impact or delay NASA policymaking. Casey and Mat address NASA's major reorganization of its human spaceflight program and how scuba is a cheaper alternative to space tourism. Discover more here: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/brendan-curry-fall-dc-updateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome, everyone. It is the first Friday in October, so it's time for Planetary Radio's Space Policy Edition. I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio, particularly the weekly show that I hope you're all tuning into and enjoying. Thank you for that. I am joined by Casey Dreyer, the Senior Space Policy Advisor and Chief Advocate for the Planetary Society, with whom I have been co-hosting the Space Policy Edition for, I've lost track, years and years.

Five, more than five years. Going on five and a half years now. Hi, Casey. Hey, Matt. Happy to be here. And I guess this is, it's always, timing's a little awkward, but I guess this is our spooky Halloween edition of the Space Policy Show. And we have an appropriately scary situation to discuss congressionally with debt limits and potential government shutdowns and funding cliffs and all sorts of other wild stuff happening in the U.S. Congress that will impact NASA. And to talk about that, we have our colleague, Brendan Currie, our chief of DC operations. So we will be discussing

what is happening in DC later in this episode. Very much looking forward to hearing from Brendan in just a few minutes here. I guess, you know, in space, no one could hear you scream. In DC, everyone can hear you scream. And no one cares. No one cares frequently. It happens a lot. Oh, well, scary space kitties.

I'm sorry you had to drop back into this maelstrom after having what certainly sounds like a wonderful vacation that included getting your scuba certification, which is something that I've had for a long time, though I haven't used it in a long time. So congratulations. Well, thanks, Matt. It's the most affordable alternative to flying into space right now that I can do and get a sense of weightlessness while underwater. And I actually had a really fun time doing that with my wife. We went to Hawaii and we learned how to scuba.

And really what I found really amazing was that you're at neutral buoyancy and you can inhale and exhale and you can control your presence or your position in the Z axis. It's a very new way to think about navigating through space that you can control with your breath, which was just a very interesting way to engage with the natural world. And I saw some fish along the way. So something you probably wouldn't see in space, hopefully, unless things go very wrong or very excitingly right,

depending maybe on Europa, you'd see something like that. But yeah, it was great and very abrupt transition back to things here. But of course, always fascinating to follow what's happening in space policy. You know, that is always what I've loved about being under the water. It's that sense of weightlessness. And oh, Major Sai, I suppose it may be the closest you and I get there. Maybe you have a better shot than I do, but I'm still keeping some hope that we get to try that way above our heads as well. Well, I was going to say, I keep buying the weekly lottery ticket.

And if it wins, you know, it's a non-zero, it's not a good chance, not even a bad chance. It's an awful chance, but it's a non-zero chance. Matt, if I pull that off, I will buy you a seat next to me on the next Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic flight. Just remember, Casey, our schools win too. That's true. See, that's my selfless act to contribute to something like that. We used to laugh. That was a laugh line when I worked for a school district many years ago as

well. Let's get on to the laugh lines coming out of Washington. Well, you know, before we do that, something very serious but very fun. Please, if you have not already, you're listening to this show. I hope you're enjoying it. Planetary.org slash join is where you can help us create it, help us pay for it by becoming a member of the Planetary Society.

And it's easy to do. We have lots of levels. We have wonderful plans ahead of us and tremendous accomplishments behind us. You can directly support the terrific work that Casey and Brendan and others of our colleagues are doing across the world and most definitely in Washington, D.C. I highly recommend it. I'm a member and I know Casey is too. That's true. And I will support that, Matt, and also make a plug for the monthly Space Advocate newsletter

to sign up to get a news summary of all the great things happening in space policy and politics and an essay by me. Again, I always love reading and engaging the feedback I get from members in reaction to that newsletter. So that's just Google Space Advocate Newsletter. It'll be one of the top hits from the Planetary Society, or you can follow the link in the show notes to this month's episode. All right, let's get to what's going on. You know, in this week's weekly show, the one that premiered just a couple of days ago as this show is published, I had to catch myself because I was introducing Kathy Leaders as the associate administrator of a directorate at NASA that doesn't exist anymore as of only a few days ago. No worries about Kathy.

She is also the associate administrator of a brand new directorate. Give us the lowdown. This is important, I think, understanding how the bureaucratic state and the administrative state work to advance these types of goals is something worth paying attention to. And in this case, we're looking at how NASA organizes itself to pursue various aspects of human spaceflight. pursue various aspects of human spaceflight. What happened, so we saw this kind of surprise announcement, somewhat out of the blue from Bill Nelson and from NASA saying they had a big announcement to make the next day. And what it was, is that they are splitting up what's known, what was known as the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, HEO-MD. And maybe just to step even further back, directorates at NASA. These are basically the largest organizational constructs of NASA's bureaucracy. There's a science directorate called SMD, the Science Mission Directorate. There's the Space Technology Mission Directorate,

STMD. In these big programs, they have all of the sub programs that kind of grouped by behavior, right? So in SMD, the Science Mission Directorate, they have Planetary Science Division, they have Astrophysics Division, all you know, they go to a division level. And that's the divisions that then pursue these various mission projects. So HEO-MD, Human Exploration and Operations, was this very big chunk of NASA's, almost half of NASA's entire budget at this point. Will Gerstenmaier, managed both the implementation, the active operations of basically the International Space Station, and active development of future programs. In this case, particularly the SLS, Orion, Gateway, and Artemis-related human spaceflight programs. Development and operations are two very different needs.

Operations is really about maintaining. You've done the hard work of engineering, of designing and building something, of assembling it, and now you're into the, let's use this and maximize the value we get out of it, right? Development is something that takes roughly 90% of the entire budget of a project in its lifetime. It's figuring out what it will look like, how to make it, making it, fixing all the bugs and weird things, and just putting it into space. The operations tend to be much cheaper.

There's a different set of problems, of course, but development's really a different set of engineering approaches. HEO-MD, as we know it, is only about 10 years old. It was formed in the aftermath of the cancellation of the Constellation program in the early 2010s under the Obama administration. Constellation being NASA's first effort in the 21st century to return humans to the moon. You had an exploration division, and then you had a space operations division, two separate directorates at that point doing basically ISS and then Constellation. End of Constellation, there was functionally no long-term human exploration project anymore,

and so NASA decided to merge those two directorates together into this catch-all HEO-MD. Now, of course, with Artemis really kicking up and with really hitting into these periods of peak development for the Gateway, for the human landing system, the first development and operational tests of the SLS and Orion, They decided that this is, in a sense, or Bill Nelson feels, decided this is too big of a project for one person to manage

and to split these back out basically to what they used to be, to a separate exploration systems development directorate and into a space operations mission directorate. Kathy Wieters will maintain space operations, so the space station,

commercial crew, commercial cargo, and then Jim Free, this previously director of NASA Center, who had retired a few years ago, will be taking over as the associate administrator, is what their names are, of the new exploration systems development one. That's the kind of the reasoning and the history and why this is important is that now Cathie Leaders will be able to focus very much on operations at the space station, maximizing its use and working with commercial crew. And then we have the new exploration systems to really just focus on development. And so it kind of cuts down the bureaucratic responsibilities for the individuals at the top and their top lieutenants and supporters.

responsibilities for the individuals at the top and their top lieutenants and supporters. In a practical sense, what will this mean? Is this going to be basically transparent for, as we look at Artemis going into high gear and that collaboration with other nations? I mean, do any other nations, any other partners have reason to be concerned? No, this is all going to be very much under the hood restructuring of NASA. The external engagement will be very much the same. Really, the only real shift that'll happen will be, again, internally, because now when the budget process goes through, when NASA is developing its own budget proposal that it then tries to get approval from the White House for that,

then it ultimately submits to Congress. Now, human spaceflight will be you have two divisions of human spaceflight actually kind of jockeying for their funding priorities with each other, in addition to the other big directorates. Right. So and this doesn't necessarily fundamentally change. Right. There may have been internal jockeying just at a lower level right between the exploration and operations side. A way to step back and think about this, the value of having internal bureaucratic structures devoted to certain NASA operations, science, human exploration, human space operations, bureaucracies at a certain level, one of the things they're very good at is maintaining themselves, right? Persistence in themselves. And that can actually be turned into a very good thing if you want what they do to also persist, right? So you have created a system of internal advocates for their

operations because they want to keep their prioritization. They want to do well. They want to keep their own people doing these types of things. And so now you've kind of split out operations for human spaceflight from exploration. Again, this is somewhat theoretical here, but you could see that there could be a more muscular self-representation by either the spaceflight operations side or the exploration side. That could result in more, you know, potentially more resources for exploration or for, you know, it's just, they've split up in a sense, the internal jockeying and internal political system that they can speak for themselves in a more focused way. And that's not necessarily

a bad thing. It's just, it creates that tension that may not have existed at such a high level before. And it's nothing new. I mean, this is true in any organization or reorganization that might end up with two entities where there once was one. It's perfectly natural. Kathy Leaders will be able to focus on making sure that everything keeps running well. And we've got lots of new systems that are going to be handed off to her over the coming years as we head back to the moon and hopefully Mars. There was some worry from some in the space community that this is a demotion for Kathy

Leaders, but she's still an associate administrator, which is about as high up as you get in the NASA hierarchy before you're really into the very top level administrative suite. There's also some concern that bringing in a somewhat unknown individual to run the exploration systems compared to Cathy Leaders, who had done this very, who had led basically NASA's commercial crew project, right, this very new way of doing business style of NASA, the public-private partnership, that this new person coming in, Jim Free, doesn't have as much experience. He's not as much of a known quantity about really promoting those types of contracting agreements, private participation, and perhaps a worry out there that he will bring back more of a cost-plus, give contractors whatever they want structure. I think those at the moment are

unfounded. We just don't have really any data to say one way or another. Plus, a lot of the major efforts in the exploration program now, Gateway, human landing system, the human spacesuits, they're already being procured through these public-private partnerships. It's unlikely he will just, as a stroke of a pen, undo any of those. And so a lot of those have already been baked in. And we will see what he brings to the table in terms of priorities. So I think it's it's it's not necessarily a negative consequence. It's a very reason as we say that it's kind of a reversion back to the mean at NASA for having two separate directorates focused on exploration and human operations.

Let's move on to another topic as we prepare to bring in Brendan Currie. We've also talked recently on the weekly show about the expected release of the Planetary Science Decadal Survey, now expected in spring of 2022. But there are other decadal surveys, and you've been looking at a more imminent one, the astrophysics survey. Astrophysics survey is supposed to come out sometime this year. I feel like it's Duke Nukem forever, always in promised production, but keeps being indefinitely delayed. At some point, it has to come out. Again, the decadal survey, big effort by the science community through the National Academies of Sciences to put together a formal set of priorities for the next decade in every NASA science division, in this case, astrophysics. Again, we're waiting. We, of course, will dive into that report when it comes out. It's stated,

I think the latest I've heard is just fall of 21, which we are in now and we have rapidly diminishing number of months left in fall 21 to get through. One of the consequences of this delay that I think is worth considering is it at this point is coming out late enough that it will no longer influence NASA's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.

So NASA has to plan a year in advance for the request, which then Congress eventually adapts and funds the following year. So it's always a little hard to keep track of, but NASA is working internally now on its 2023 fiscal year request, which will be released sometime in February and ideally be approved by Congress sometime next September. So we're working almost a year in advance. However, without the guidance of the Astrophysics Decadal Survey, we will not have the official scientific community's priorities reflected in that request. So that's another year of, I believe this was originally supposed to come out last year. So this is two years now of that decadal period, 20%, without that guidance. Now, to some degree, this is a moot point because of the overwhelming presence of the James Webb

Space Telescope effort, and the effort to try to follow the priority of the previous decadal survey, the Roman Space Telescope, originally WFIRST, which is now moving into full production and consuming roughly a third of the entire astrophysics budget every year. We just had news that because of COVID and other problems that the project now won't launch until 2027. So again, really towards the end of the next decadal period anyway. So we're actually hitting a number of backlog issues that are really going to constrain what NASA and the scientific community are able to do in this upcoming astrophysics decadal period of the 2020s. I just wanted to acknowledge that this is one of the weird kind of second or third tertiary effects of the COVID pandemic, is the delay of these types of reports has these delays in terms of budgeting and can delay other major projects that at the end of the

day will severely curtail or limit the possible ability, you know, the ability to address these top scientific priorities. It's not a very happy piece of news, I suppose, but it's something that's worth paying attention to, really trying to understand how the gears of these systems work and why things do or do not happen. In this case, a delayed report can actually have a pretty serious consequence 10 years down the line. And of course, we are looking forward to finally the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, now scheduled for December 18th. I am told that it is on its way down to the launch site in French Guiana, where it will head into space on top of an Ariane 5 rocket and then spend the next month and a half, two months, fingers crossed, actuating all those things that have to unfold and drop into place and work perfectly so that we can have this very powerful follow-on to the Hubble Space Telescope and other space telescopes.

I believe our colleague called that the 45 days of terror. Yes. That will be. And I've heard people in the project call it pretty much the same thing. Yeah. It's going to be a nail biter over Christmas and New Year's this year to make sure everything's working right. But it's kind of amazing to say as we're recording this, there is an $8 billion telescope on a boat right now going down to French Guiana to be prepared for

that launch. And I know that they were, there's a great article, I think by Marina Cohen at the Atlantic talking about how they had to secretly do this to avoid pirates uh who might i don't know what they would do with an eight billion dollar telescope but uh nothing good probably if you had pirates attack that boat so there's all sorts of security and and secrecy around this that are required to ship something so i mean it cost eight billion dollars but it's an irreplaceable object, right? It is a priceless object at this point. So it's exciting to see this actually start to happen. I feel like maybe this is the real Duke Nukem forever moment that this has been finally

going to be released. Hopefully the outcome will be a slightly more positive experience. Don't worry, it's all going to work. That 100 and something single points of failure on the JWST, it's all going to work. I have faith. I also have faith in our colleague, Brendan Curry. Good segue. I think we're ready to bring him in. Let's bring him in. Let's bring in Brendan. We will go into all of the stuff that's happening in Congress right now, how it relates to NASA, and we'll see if we can work through what we can expect. Brendan Currie will join us in less than a minute. Hi again, everyone.

It's Bruce. Many of you know that I'm the program manager for the Planetary Society's LightSail program. LightSail 2 made history with its launch and deployment in 2019, and it's still sailing. It will soon be featured in the Smithsonian's new Futures exhibition. Your support made this happen. LightSail still has much to teach us. Will you help us sail on into our extended mission? Your gift will sustain daily operations and help us inform future solar sailing missions like NASA's NEA Scout. When you give

today, your contribution will be matched up to $25,000 by a generous society member. Plus, when you give $100 or more, we will send you the official LightSail 2 extended mission patch to wear with pride. Make your contribution to science and history at planetary.org slash S-A-I-L-O-N. That's planetary.org slash sail on. Thanks. Brendan, my colleague and chief of our DC operations here at the Planetary Society. Thanks for taking a break out of what seems to be a relatively calm and stayed period in Washington, DC to talk to us.

Well, Casey, it's always good to talk to you and Matt. And as I set down my cup of tea and just enjoy classical music behind me. Yeah, it's been a certain interesting situation right now over the past several months in Washington, that's for sure. So let's try to work through, this is a complex situation because there are roughly, I think from my count, about four, maybe even five arguably, pieces of legislation that are up in the air that at one level or another, all are going to interface with NASA funding and even funding more broadly for other space issues. Let's just say this is going to be somewhat topical. So we're recording this on the last day of September.

October 1st is the fiscal new year. Let's maybe address the most pertinent issue first. We need some sort of legislation authorizing the US Treasury to spend money in the new fiscal new year on October 1st. We don't have that yet as we're recording this. So this context, what's this particular piece of legislation that we're concerned about? I'm assuming you're asking about an appropriations vehicle that's euphemistically called a continuing resolution, also known as a CR. And what that does, Casey, it basically takes everything in discretionary spending from the current fiscal year and just keeps all the government departments and agencies on track at their current fiscal spending measure.

Right now, it's looking like that could last until very early December. I've talked with folks who think that it could drop or extend into early, mid-March. And I've talked to some other folks that say they're game planning for a year-long CR. And now normally, a CR, everyone in the space business gets a little cranky about that because it means, quote, no new starts. So if there's a space project that I work with, considering all the unpredictability their company and their co-workers in their workforce and their suppliers and subcontractors have had because of the virus, actually a CR isn't considered as bad as it normally would be because it simply provides some modicum of predictability.

They can tell their assembly line folks, their suppliers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Situation normal. Just do what we've done for the past fiscal year. You all still have a job. Supplier A, we need 100 widgets from you still. Supplier B, we need 100 widgets from you. And it provides some modicum of stability. And that's really needed right now is what I'm finding out. So the point of having a CR, if you have a CR in the context of a global pandemic, that's actually not the worst thing. I guess that's what it took for a CR to not be

the worst possible thing. Well said. And just to make it clear, so the CR, it's a temporary extension. Right now, it looks like maybe to December 3rd, they have the option of continuing to extend it. This is not unusual. We've gone through this the last few years. I don't know if we got this close to the cutoff limit, but usually, frequently, it's been the final appropriations. Yeah, well, frequently, it's been the final appropriations finally get passed in December. It's a month into the fiscal year, if not later. And so this is not unusual, but what's been unusual is that it's been, we're hours away from the government having to shut down.

And that's the consequential thing. We talked about this on an episode of Space Policy Edition a few years ago, when the government shut down and contractors that you were just talking about, they had to lay people off because they weren't getting their contract funding coming in from the government. They had no cash to cover labor and other overhead costs. It was very damaging and disruptive. And so no one really likes to have a shutdown, obviously. And so it's good to see this may get us through, at least to push that cliff off. So that's not the worst thing. The only thing I do kind of worry about in a year long CR might be the Neo Surveyor mission, which is getting a new start this year in the budget. They might be able to move some money around for that since it seems quite popular, but there are some consequences.

Conversely, you can't cancel missions in the CR either, right? So that would be Sophia would continue, which is up for cancellation this year as well. So you can't start or stop programs in a CR. Yeah, it's a really mixed bag. And what everyone has had to endure over the past year or year plus, I should say, I've never thought in my life being in D.C. my life being in DC for over 20 years, that people were simpatico with the notion of a CR that could go a year long to give our audience an idea of the depth and breadth of the situation we're looking at. It's a situation that I have not seen before. And the other thing is, is that if we did have a government shutdown,

and we've had them, sadly, almost routinely since the mid-90s, if we had a shutdown right now, it would be historic in terms of you had one party in charge of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. In the prior shutdowns, you had one party controlling the executive branch. You had another party controlling the legislative branch. That's propelling the immediacy of trying to avert that right now within the next few hours. Yeah. And I think even for the space angle to a shutdown would impact preparations of the launch of the Lucy spacecraft right now down at Kennedy Space Center, which has a three week window, but that's you don't want to lose days unnecessarily to launch something into space. from a very practical space level, not to mention just at the broader contract disruption of planning and also just taking up people's time and attention away from focusing on the actual work of getting things to go into space. Casey, you and I've always joked about

the fact that orbital mechanics doesn't care about the congressional schedule. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, it doesn't go on pause when Congress does. So, okay. So, that's the CR. That seems to be, at the time we're recording this, looks like it'll be doing okay. There's two other big pieces of legislation that I think we need to treat kind of as a unit. One of them will have money for NASA. The other one doesn't. So, we're talking about the infrastructure and the reconciliation bills. These are two bills that are large parts of President Biden's domestic agenda, includes a lot of democratic issues. But from what you kind of alluded to, I think the reason that we're having such an uncertainty around both of these is that even

though the Democrats control both houses in Congress and the presidency, they have a very, very, very narrow majority, like as narrow as it gets in the Senate, right? They have 50 plus one of the vice president vote. So corralling everyone on exactly the same page, that's the tough part for what is, I'd say, arguably quite an ambitious domestic agenda, right? These are kind of big things they're trying to pass with these bills. domestic agenda, right? These are kind of big things they're trying to pass with these bills. But let's just touch on the NASA aspect. There's nothing that I see, and correct me if I'm wrong, in the infrastructure bill. This is stuff for building roads and bridges and so forth across the country, which at the moment seems to have a relatively broad bipartisan support. The reconciliation bill, which gets its name from a, maybe you can

correct me, some sort of, it's not necessarily, it's a bureaucratic leverage ability that a 50 vote majority can't be filibustered by passing some funding legislation. Yeah, the reconciliation for our newer listeners, our existing listeners know I'm an old house guy. Reconciliation is kind of a legislative mechanism or vehicle that originates out of the Senate. And the Senate has these incredibly arcane and Byzantine parliamentary and procedural rules. And reconciliation is a vehicle to enable tax measures to be implemented, which means the tax writing committees in the House and the Senate have to find ways to pay for things. They are then

passed over to various authorizing committees dealing with parts of the federal government that said authorizing committees have oversight over. And I'm getting way into DC talk and I apologize. I don't want to say it's a gimmick, but it's kind of like a break glass in case of emergency type of situation. Because it allows them to pass in the Senate, the filibuster you need at this point, it's so regular, you need basically 60 senators to agree to pass legislation by standard process in the Senate. And in a 50-50 Senate, the minority party can stop legislation if they want to, right? The tyranny of the minority, it's called.

And so this has been used for a number of big pieces. I believe the Republicans used it to pass their tax legislation in 2017. I believe the Democrats used it to pass the American healthcare bill in 2010. And so it's been, they can write things in a way to avoid filibustering, but there's only so many things that can fit in there. It's usually has to deal with spending and taxation as you said, right? Yeah. And part of the issue is that there's been attempts to glom on other things to reconciliation, which for some reason, the Senate parliamentarian is like the most powerful person on the planet right now. Because they get to decide what counts, right? They're the head ref on the field right now making the call. It's excruciating on a variety of levels.

The other thing is, is that it short circuits the appropriators and they're not happy about it. These are the people who usually fund the government on an annual basis that we're generally focused on here at the Planetary Society. The appropriators, the CJS, our Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee. Yes, yes. And as Casey, you and I have talked, the House Appropriations Committee kicked out over the summer a CJS bill that included a really good NASA number. But the problem was CJS, the J stands for the Justice Department. And there was a whole host of things regarding community policing and things like that in which police departments get grant money and what's the metrics for why they deserve it.

It's a political hot potato, and that's why CJS never made it to the House floor. And the Senate, they haven't even marked up their CJS approves bill. As you and I have talked, what I'm hearing is they may just post the Senate CJS approves bill, which includes NASA, not even have a committee markup, just to essentially draw a line in the sand and take it from there. The reconciliation bill basically doesn't even address the normal appropriations, right? So these are all new programs. And it's paired with this infrastructure bill for a political reason, right? Again, it's trying to keep this very fragile, very narrow

caucus of the Democrats together, right? And a lot of people won't vote for one unless they get the other one voted first and so forth and so on. But again, from a NASA perspective, what we're looking at here, there's nothing for NASA in this infrastructure package. However, in the reconciliation bill as written, which is, as you will, I'm sure say is changing probably by the minute, what could or could not be in that reconciliation concept. My understanding is that there's roughly 4 billion and change for NASA, right? There's 4 billion for literal for ironically, there's no money for NASA in the infrastructure bill, but there's $4 billion of infrastructure funding for NASA in the reconciliation bill, which would actually be just wonderful for and that's to be spent over

10 years. That's a huge, basically doubling NASA's infrastructure account over the next 10 years, that's a huge, basically doubling NASA's infrastructure account over the next 10 years. They get roughly $350, $400 million a year for their infrastructure, general infrastructure account. So to double that would theoretically could do a lot for NASA's capabilities on the ground. And don't forget, for our loyal listeners, the NASA administrator was a former senator and former member of the house. And he's severely aware of the infrastructure, the infrastructure problems at NASA centers, but being from Florida, the Kennedy Space Center, you have these national assets that were built before I was born. It's a long time ago. Yeah. I think Matt at the time was probably in his big wheel or something like that.

Thank you for that. Apollo era infrastructure. We're talking about leaky roofs, right? Yeah, yeah. It's nothing exotic. It's nothing exotic. It literally is making sure the VAB at KSC has a new roof type stuff. Yeah.

Vertical assembly building, of course. If anyone wants to be a total hipster NASA budget person, like I consider myself, my favorite part is reading through the infrastructure section of the NASA budget request because it's just totally fascinating what they're asking from it. Because it's like exactly repairing roofs, replacing a road, repairing bridges, or like with the VAB taking out all the asbestos from the 1960s. It's that level of stuff that we're talking about. And NASA is one of actually the largest owners of infrastructure in the federal government, despite being on the smaller side of a federal agency. I was talking with a brigadier general, and he was saying the base that he has command over

needs new water pipes. And he said, big air force is telling him they don't have enough hangar space for their jets. So you're having a warfighter aircraft being left out into the elements. Those things are taking priority over something as mundane as sewage lines and things like that at Air Force bases. So it's not just NASA. So I'm not beating up on NASA or something like that. It's a congenital problem with government installations. And not just government, not just federal government. We know plenty of evidence that infrastructure across the United States is desperately in need of repair, renovation. So, yeah, NASA is just one piece of this. Yeah, entropy, man.

You just can't get around it. And so just going back to this reconciliation package that has been proposed, there's $4 billion for NASA infrastructure. There's a few hundred million for, I think, climate science and some very pithy little amounts for a few extra research areas. And oddly enough, $5 million for the inspector general's office, which kind of keeps NASA honest as an internal oversight for NASA activities and contracts. But originally, you talked about Senator or Administrator Bill Nelson, he had actually asked for a lot more than $4 billion for NASA in this bill. This is a, at the moment, a $3.5 trillion over 10 years package. NASA got foreign change, billion dollars over 10 years. He had actually proposed initially almost 16 billion that included infrastructure, but also money for a second selection of a human landing system that is currently in legal limbo between Blue Origin and SpaceX. And they didn't get it. So I thought that was kind of an interesting outcome. Do you have thoughts on where the congressional pushback has been on getting a second lunar lander funding to support a second lunar lander system?

Is that just completely out of the cards? I think there's going to be pressure to do something. Earlier this week, I was told that there's been essentially several million dollars in what I would say euphemistically as study money for the teams that did not get the HLS contract to kind of pacify them for the time being. We shall see. It's a sticky wicket. It seems like some of the Democrats in the House of Representatives are pretty skeptical about having a second selection, looking at previous statements. And I wonder if that's why you didn't see it in the, because it was the House Democrats who released the reconciliation draft bill with the money for NASA.

Yeah, I mean, that's a political hot potato. I mean, I know we're the Planetary Society. We're not the Military Space Society. But yesterday on the House side, House Armed Services Committee had the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Commander of CENTCOM called on the carpet with respect to what happened in Afghanistan. And the ranking Republican is from Northern Alabama. Right next to his congressional lapel pin was a Space Force pin. And the Colorado delegation had just fired off a letter saying cease and desist. Don't send this to Alabama. Review it, review it, review it, review it. You're talking about the headquarters for Space Force. There's still this fight going on where it was given- Space Command, yeah. To Space Command. The point I'm trying to make with that is that the ranking member from Alabama

on the Armed Services Committee is a Republican. The top Coloradan is a Republican on that committee, and he wants it. It's an intra-party fight. I mean, so this whole thing about HLS, I mean, there's a lot of drama going on in the space business in Washington, and it's not necessarily, everyone gets this idea that everything is Republican versus Democrat. It's much more nuanced, and it's much more deep. There's the parochial aspect, and I guess in a sense, that's what happens when things happen. We're setting up new programs, new armed services are coming in, all these new things are happening in space. And the establishment of new things is not necessarily an easier, straightforward process. Correct me if I'm wrong, but development of the human landing system is

still on hold. SpaceX may be proceeding somewhat on their own, but at least as far as NASA's concerned, it has to be held up. Okay. So yes, correct your signaling to me. And I did see that in court, apparently attorneys for NASA have had some pretty strong language for Blue Origin to contest their contesting of this award to SpaceX exclusively. So one wonders as that 2024 return to the moon fades even further into the distance, when we're going to be able to launch that human landing system toward its target. Yeah. Nominally, I think we're looking at a November resolution perhaps to some of this legal issue, but obviously we will see. I mean, again, that's this other layer beyond the political layer, right? And so even without the funding, you can see Blue Origin

pushing at a variety of levers here to try to move that forward. Don't forget, SpaceX, Starlink, and Amazon Kuiper are having it out at the FCC. Again, that's not in our ball of wax, but this is like mobster warfare right now. So let's go back to our two big bills are infrastructure and reconciliation. So we won't go into all the ups and downs. And those are very much in debate. And I, and I think I wanted to discuss them mainly to say, when you're hearing if anyone's listening to this, and then watching the news or kind of following the news and wondering all of this debate. I think we really have to see this

again through the lens of this is part of a very ambitious domestic agenda by the Biden administration trying to work through the slimmest of political majorities. That means individual senators in particular have an exceeding amount of power to sink or enable legislation to move through. I guess my larger point of this is that this is all happening now, but there's an additional wrinkle to this. And this is the debt ceiling, which is, I promise, connected to these things. And one more thing to keep in track. So Brendan, very quickly, the debt ceiling. Okay. So you and I talk about such tantalizing topics.

This is the beautiful aspect of it. This is why we all get into space. Yeah. Yes. Debt ceiling breach. You'll hear it called the debt ceiling, the debt limit. And it's basically the amount of money the US government can borrow to meet social security commitments, Medicare, military salaries, that kind of thing. Every so often, it's like if you have a credit card and you go to your credit card company and say, hey, I have a $3,000 limit. I got a big trip coming up or my kid's getting married or whatever. Can you raise it to 5,000 or 10,000 or something like that? That's kind of the quick and dirty version of what that is.

With the one quirk being that you would go to the credit card company having already spent the money. That's the thing I think that's really you would go to the credit card company having already spent the money. Like that's the thing that's really important here is that the credit limit. You're obligated. You're already obligated. You've already committed to spending the money. And so this is merely it's this weird quirk that we won't go into the history of why this exists. But it is merely to author to allow the Treasury to pay for the things we've already obligated to ourselves.

And it's it's one of those things where if we violate that, it's I think constitutionally we have to honor our debts. And it's it's this big it'd be a disaster if we didn't do it. Well, the financial markets would tank across the planet. Yeah, it would not be. I mean, it literally Casey, you made the reference to the Constitution. That's where the term full faith and credit comes from. We go through this ballet in Congress every so often about raising the debt limit. And in the end, everyone kind of eventually gives up the ghost and votes to increase it.

It was supposed to expire, I think, this week. And then Secretary Yellen sent a memo to Congress saying, hey, everything's cool in the gang. We can coast till October 18. That lowers the temperature for congressional leaders on that issue and gives them some breathing room to address a CR, infrastructure, reconciliation, and other things. And oh, by the way, the Senate still has a ton of Biden nominations they have to confirm. But the reason why debt ceiling is particularly relevant to, again, this all trickles, we have to pop back down the stack to where this hits NASA, right, is that it tends to be a political issue. And even though no one wants to breach it, I'd say the Republican Party now is refusing to vote to raise it, which means that the Democrats have to do it with 50 votes, which means they'd have to do it through reconciliation. And so it's

a way to throw off the wheels of the reconciliation package is my understanding of it, right, which then makes that more complicated politically for the Democrats trying to pass it, which then impacts the infrastructure bill, which then impacts NASA's infrastructure potential, right. And so it's a throwing a wrench into the cogs of the reconciliation process. In attempt, I would say, to stymie the Biden domestic agenda, which is why this is all, you know, the big picture of why this is all happening. Obviously, not to stop NASA funding, but it's this bigger issue. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, this is an entire political calculus.

And NASA, thankfully, is not being held up as a hostage to a certain degree, all of us listening right now, we're all going to blink and we're going to find ourselves careening into the 2022 congressional election cycle. This is on the Democrat side trying to throw a Hail Mary to get a very ambitious domestic agenda dragged across the finish line. On the Republican side, there are a lot of vulnerable Dems in the House and Senate that are up next year. And it's trying to box them in to take terrible votes that can be used against them in a little over a year from now. Yeah. Wheels within wheels, as always in DC.

And I mean, it occurs to me that- In Dune, it's plots within plots, I think. Yeah, yeah. And you need the spice to find your way through. I'm reminded that the vote regarding the continuing resolution today, there were 35 votes against giving money to allow the United States federal government to continue working. But we have to keep in mind those 35 senators, they probably knew this was going to pass. But now they can go back to their constituencies and say, look what I did to try and be fiscally responsible. It is so fascinating. Should we be pleased at least in all of this, that through all of these machinations,

NASA, space is still bipartisan? That's my cold comfort that I have. Well, let's say, so yeah, I I mean I think that's always really important but also again I think it's important for us space advocates to remember how much of NASA's fortunes are tied to these broader very intense often extremely partisan machinations and currents that are very hard to fight against NASA everyone agrees NASA needs more infrastructure funding, but because it's part of this larger thing, it seems unlikely that, you know, or who knows if that'll happen.

All of this is happening in the next month. That's kind of the point of why we're talking about this. Even if we get the CR extension, we still have the reconciliation and infrastructure. We still have the debt limit. And while all this is kind of sucking up all the oxygen out of the room from, Brendan, what you brought up earlier, the actual appropriations that we went and advocated for virtually at the beginning of

the year, if we can think back that far, that this is, I think there's a function of when things become so intense like this, is anything actually happening on the appropriation side, do you think? Or is everyone really focused on the immediate needs, the political intensity? Well, the House CJS subcommittee can say- They kind of did their job. They did their job. The second act is going to be seeing what the CJS approved subcommittee on the Senate coughs up. And then we'll have a better lay of the land. So maybe if we're lucky, we'll see something from the Senate in November, let's say.

If they can, one way or another, they resolve the reconciliation stuff and the debt limit, then it seems like perhaps November might have some breathing room for the Senate to work before the CR expires in December. They'll definitely have a shot clock on them that everyone's going to be paying attention to. But again, I still sadly go back to this scenario of it would be easier. And I don't, I hate saying that. The easier thing would be, let's go to March, CR to March. By then Biden will have coughed up his budget request to Congress for the FY23. See how that pairs. It's just the situation in Congress is, as you alluded to repeatedly, Casey, the Democrat majority is so thin.

And historically, whoever, whatever political party has the White House in that presidency's first term, historically, during that midterm, two years after that president takes office, that political party takes office. That political party takes a beating in Congress. And you have a, at best, five-vote majority in the House. And you literally have a one-vote majority in the Senate. It's in extremis in terms of a Democratic calculation right now. And the Republicans are kind of sitting back and just kind of eating the popcorn right now.

It's a wacky situation. Of course, we've got the whole Space Council thing being reactivated on the executive branch side of things. So there's a lot going on. I've said it before, what a way to run a superpower. Speaking of National Space Council, is it still set to gather again for the first time during the Biden administration toward the end of the year? Well, Casey and I have been talking about this. There was efforts to have a fall meeting. And so the Space Council, for our new listeners, usually has this thing called

kind of an ancillary entity called the User Advisory Group. The Space Council is populated by the NASA administrator, the Secretary of Commerce, a lot of cabinet-level officials whose departments and agencies deal with space. The user advisory group is non-governmental people who try to provide helpful input for the Space Council. Two weeks ago, word went out that they're accepting applications for the user advisory group, but the deadline for submission was September 27th. And then late last week, they said, oh no, the deadline is now October 29th. So if you're still going to be taking applications till essentially November and have to vet them and go through them and say, you're on the team,

no, you got cut, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know how you do a formal space council meeting unless it's really kind of thrown together. The vice president, her plate is full with a whole bunch of other stuff, and she is the chair of the National Space Council. So I don't know how much is the chair of the National Space Council. So I don't know how much she's going to be able to devote to that. So it may be more of something that kind of drifts into the new calendar year. The big takeaway is I follow this professionally and I can barely keep up with what's happening. Brendan, you're there in person. You have a slightly more advantage to see the intense ups and downs. But we are in a sense going to be almost witnesses to what happens over the next few months, pushing where we can to talk about our priorities. But it's a very intense time. And space is not high on the docket list, at least in the NASA area until we get through

this big thing coming up. So if you're listening and you're confused about what's happening, you're not alone. And we will continue to follow this. Brendan, I want to thank you again for coming with us and explaining this today. We will have you back on. Our poor listeners. Actually, just breaking news. The president is signing the CR right now. As we speak. As we speak. So it won't shut down. So one thing ticked off the list. We just got the other stuff to deal with. We will talk about it on future episodes of the Space Policy Edition. So thanks for joining us on the What is Crazy Happening in Congress special edition. And Brendan, for coming to us

and sharing your expertise and experience. I love being with you guys. Brendan, you say our poor listeners, I think that they count themselves fortunate as I do, that I get to talk to both of you guys and that you are looking out for we space geeks out here as we try to follow and maybe even have a little bit of influence over what is happening there in Washington, D.C., where you live and where you have been active, as you said, for over 20 years. Thank you so much for all you do and for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Casey, I think we can wrap this one up maybe by reminding everybody again,

you've just heard a more than adequate demonstration of why it is so important to have representation there within the Beltway. And we are happy to provide that based on your support. Planetary.org slash join is where you can become a member if you're not already. If you are already, then thank you so much for enabling these two guys to continue to represent our interests there and report back to us on everything that's going on and help us try, at least try, to understand it. Casey, you can get the final word here. here. Well, thanks, Matt. And we will be back in November and we will see if the Congress is still standing by that point and what we will cover that. And we'll go into a deeper, more fun, broad policy topic, I think, for that one, too. Casey Dreyer and Brendan Curry, the policy and politics people and advocacy folks at the Planetary Society. Once again, thanks for joining us. I will be with you,

of course, every week with the weekly Planetary Radio. It comes out every Wednesday morning. We've got some great stuff coming up. Hope you will be back with us again. We think, we hope, on the first Friday in November to talk more on the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. Thanks again for joining us at Astro.