Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: NASA’s Gamble Pays Off

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

SpaceX's Crew Dragon safely carried 2 astronauts to the ISS, nearly a decade after NASA made a huge bet on commercial partnerships to solve a problem of access to the space station. Casey and Mat explore how NASA gained the political will to fundamentally re-imagine its relationship with the private sector. Will it spur a new market for sending humans into space? Chief of D.C. Operations Brendan Curry offers an update on Congress and the outlook for NASA's major programs in a period of unrest and uncertainty. Learn more about this month’s topics through links at  https://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2020/space-policy-edition-50.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the fourth anniversary plus one show of Planetary Radio's Space Policy Edition. I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio and the co-host of Space Policy Edition with the Planetary Society's chief advocate and our senior space policy advisor, Casey Dreyer, who is also on the line. Welcome back, Casey. Hey, Matt. How are you doing? You know, strange times. It's been better. Which we will be talking about with our other colleague, particularly your colleague in space policy and advocacy at the Society, Brendan Curry, shortly. They are very odd times. I mean, anybody who's heard, as we speak, the most recent episode of the weekly version of Planetary Radio knows that it opened in a way that we've never done before with a statement that I made and a period of silence. We are, all of us at the Planetary Society, dealing with, I mean, we were already dealing with a pandemic. And now, of

course, the unrest and the reactions to the injustice that we have witnessed in this country. Of course, there's plenty to go around, around the world. As all of our listeners know, it has really shaken the United States. And the Planetary Society is considering how to respond. As the days go by, we've taken a few actions. There's much more to come, but it's something that is still a work in progress. And I, for one, am very glad to see our organization, which upward, we also focus on human needs. And one of those is we think the human need to discover and explore. But you have to make room for people to be able to do that and to be able to look up and wonder. And that's something that we have great concern about and we will be responding to in the coming days.

I kind of went on there for a bit. Yeah, Matt. I mean, obviously, this has been a painful week since we've been recording this to watch. And of course, for people in this country, it's just reminds me more than ever, right? When we talk about space, just to kind of play on your thoughts there that what happens in space, it depends on what is happening here on Earth. And it's an extension of ourselves. You can't separate them entirely. the Dragon crew launch, seeing it in context of this horrific, unjust consequence of these deep divisions and deep stains in the original sin of this country, it should tell us something. And as you said, I was very proud to see the Society release, I thought, a very good I was very proud to see the society release, I thought, a very good country, and try to do what we can individually and in our larger organizations to improve the situation for people.

I don't know if that's a good... No, I think that was lovely. I think that was perfect. And of course, you're referring to the statement that was made by our CEO, the science guy, which, you know, we'll put a link up on this page where you can to where you can find that statement. I can tell you that all of us, you, my other colleagues, our other colleagues at the society, we all feel very strongly about this. And I think we're all pleased to see the direction that we're going in. But as I said on the weekly show, you know, you folks out there, you need to help hold us to this commitment as you need to hold other people to theirs. I said during the weekly show, and I'm not the first to point this out, that our mission begins with the words, empowering the world's citizens. It goes on to say to advance space science and exploration,

but it's that empowering human beings, men and women, many of whom lack power in their lives, agency over their lives, that we're focusing on here because we need to empower them in that way. If we're going to do, as I said, look up and wonder. Of course, there's so many comparisons now to 1968 in the United States, which was just a very hard year, particularly of racial injustice and civil unrest and rioting and protests throughout the country in the context of the crescendo of the Apollo program. It was these weird echoes of that. I mean, Apollo is not, or Commercial Crew is not Apollo in terms of that, but it's a very visible and contrasting image to compare. Absolutely.

And it does run the risk, and I think this is what, you know, it's important to remember in the post-A and during Apollo actually while it was happening kind of NASA lost its its role in that kind of societal agreement about its importance or its role you know it seemed superfluous or irrelevant because there was so much happening at home that seemed so and was so important. You know, NASA needs to be able to do what it needs to do, but at the same time, it is hard to see those contrasting images. And you see the kind of horrible racial injustice against black Americans

and then look up and you see a launch to the space station and say, what does that say about our society? And I think, I mean, it's a long and complex answer that I am not capable of addressing, I don't think fully, but I think it says something about how we're in this big, complex society. and we have to find ways to integrate and, as you were saying, empower everybody, and particularly those in this country who have been systematically oppressed over the years, to have this future and to have the optimism to look forward. And so, again, I think at minimum self-reflection and humility and saying, what can we do better to bring more people into this future? Hear, hear.

And to make sure that there's a place for everybody. And that really goes back, again, we talk about the original sin of this country. It's the same kind of, in a sense, the original sin with NASA and its astronaut corps, having its own systemic racism of keeping out and sexism. Not only was that just morally wrong, right? It ultimately was practically for the organization, it made it so people who were not white men could not see themselves as part of the future of space for a long, long time. long, long time, right? It ultimately damages any organization when the full breadth of its population, particularly in the public organization, cannot see themselves as participating in its activities. And NASA has obviously gotten a lot better over the years, but there's still, of course, lots of work to do. So we're probably going on about this. I don't know what more to...

You could hear us maybe processing this in real time. You bet. And I think that's important to acknowledge that we're all processing this in real time and struggling with it, but trying to do and being open to it. And I think, again, our statement from Bill Nye, who speaks for the organization, I thought was really well-written. And as you said, Matt, a start.

And I think that's the most we can say for now. You're right. Just a start. And you're right in that we are processing this. Stay tuned, everybody, as we used to say in the golden days of radio. we used to say in the golden days of radio. This is a nation of extremes. Let's go to the other extreme that everybody, I'm sure, is expecting us to talk about this month. And that is the wonderfully rewarding success just days ago, as we speak, of SpaceX and NASA in getting that Crew Dragon and Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley up to the International Space Station. And what a start that was. Historic, Casey, and just thrilling to watch. I hope for people around the world. And you were watching, weren't you?

Yes. Yes, I was watching. Wouldn't miss it. were watching weren't you no yes yes i was watching wouldn't listen i i put it in my calendar just in case uh i mean i i watched uh both attempts uh this obviously it was happy they launched on the second attempt and i and i got up very early on sunday morning my time to watch the docking of course as well and basically watched i probably watched more more NASA TV that morning than I have in toto leading up to this. And we'll have a, I'd say, Matt, you and I will talk a lot about the policy consequences and kind of what this means.

And I think it's an opportunity to really reflect on this program. But we also have our colleague, Brendan, here, who we wanted to kind of talk about in just a quick update. I've been getting messages and calls from society members and supporters kind of asking about, in the context of everything that's happening, space is still happening, right? Space is still an issue. There's still policy and politics to happen. And they wanted to know what was going on in terms of Congress and what NASA is facing more broadly after seeing this launch. And so we thought it'd be a good idea to bring Brendan Currie, who's our chief of DC

operations, he's our person on the ground there every day, onto the show to kind of give you all an update about the updates on DC and what we can expect coming forward in terms of our major policy issues from the organizational perspective of the Planetary Society. And we recorded this conversation with Brendan just before this conversation that Casey and I are having. So we'll go to that now. And I think it'll become apparent, Casey, among other things, that Brendan, other than being just a tremendously valuable representative of the

Planetary Society in DC, he has this terrific network that he's able to rely on as a past congressional staffer. You'll hear him mention that. I will just say before we get to Brendan that those of you who are members of the Planetary Society, you should be very proud of the ongoing activity that Brendan and Casey and others, including the boss, Bill Nye, conduct in D.C. on your behalf, on our behalf, I should say, since I'm a member as well. And I'll make that

little plug that if you are not a member of the Planetary Society, but you believe in what the organization is up to, planetary.org slash membership is the place to go. So now let's go to that conversation with Brendan Curry, Chief of DC Operations for the Society. Well, welcome, Brendan. And before we really go into a discussion of Congress and kind of what we're facing here politically, I just want to ask, how are you doing and how's your family doing in Virginia? Well, Casey, thank you very much. We're doing fine. Northern Virginia, due to its proximity in DC, is still in a kind of what's called a phase one reopening. The rest of Virginia is now going to be in stage or phase two. But Northern Virginia

is going to be held back. But I appreciate you asking and hope you, Melissa, are doing great. Thanks. And we are, fortunately. So, Brendan, I really wanted to talk to you this month. And I've had some inquiries from members and other folks who follow the society. With everything going on right now, it's kind of hard to just keep track of what we're supposed to be doing politically in terms of where we should have been in a sense, if things had been normal, so to speak, this year. So kind of give us a sense of how off nominal are we politically at the moment? And what are you looking forward to that's going to really be impacting planetary society interests? Off nominal is being generous, Casey. Right now, normally, I hate having to use that

adjective lately, normally, Congress would be well underway in terms of marking up legislation that the Planetary Society would care about. That is namely the NASA authorization bill and the appropriations bill that funds NASA. And all of that has been paralyzed. Additionally, there's something at the White House called the Office of Management and Budget, OMB. They like to henpeck, if you will, all the various departments and agencies across the federal government, not just NASA, but everybody throughout the year, they're taking a decidedly light touch right now with everything that's going on and letting the various departments and agencies address how they see best to deal with this virus issue.

The other thing about OMB is right now they would start notionally sketching out what they think would be the next fiscal year budget submission to Congress. They would be starting to kind of trying to get an idea of what it would look like. But because of the extension of the federal income tax filing deadline into mid-July, the Treasury Department can't tell OMB how much money they have to essentially play with. So OMB is essentially not doing anything. It's a paralyzing situation. If you're a senator and congressman, you have your D.C. office staff, and they work on legislation and policy. Well, there's not a lot of legislation and policy getting put out the door right now. You have your home state staff.

They usually deal with constituent issues, making sure your Aunt Sally's Social Security check arrives on time. What I'm finding is a lot of congressional staffers who are on the D.C. team are being repurposed to augment the home state staff. I've talked to two Senate offices whose space staffers are now just focusing on repatriating constituents who've been stranded overseas. So there's not a lot of space stuff going on. You'll see press releases cranked out about how legislation is being diligently worked upon and things like that. But when I talk to my staff or contacts, they'll essentially say there's a general feeling of uncertainty about everything. All of June for the House of Representatives has been wiped out.

It's been called remote committee work, which means the members can be back in their home districts campaigning and do some sort of a semblance of work with their committees virtually in some way, shape, or form. We may see the House get back for votes in July. The Senate thinks they may possibly try to get a NASA authorization bill to the floor sometime in the summer. Any congressional hearings that are going on, not with government decision makers, but with outside experts and academics pontificating about things. It's a situation that is certainly not ideal. So I guess maybe the way to think of this is we have two budgets that you kind of acknowledged or referenced here. One budget is the one that was proposed, the FY21 budget from the White House back in February. That's Congress's job to work on now. And that's just disrupted.

That's not really happening because they're focusing on the virus response and they're not meeting in person. And then the other budget from OMB, the 22 budget that they should be planning to release next year, that planning has been disrupted as well. So it seems like in all areas, everything is just getting pushed back. And then you also mentioned, obliquely referenced the fact that we have elections coming up, and that's going to complicate matters too. Do you see how we move forward with, I mean, not just space, but appropriations? We have to have appropriations with the government shuts down. So how does appropriations happen this year?

There's something called a continuing resolution that Congress can implement, which means basically the funding levels for discretionary spending, and that includes NASA, is just given a reset. is just given a reset. Whatever the previous year's funding level was, is automatically just implemented for a certain period of time. It's not unusual during an election year for Congress to kick out a continuing resolution, and whoever the president is will sign it in the law, and it usually expires sometime after the election. Congress sees where the dust settles after the elections. Then they kind of suss things out. At the very least, there'll be a continuing resolution, also known as a CR, lasting well into the holiday season, if not longer. Programs that the Planetary Society cares about will be funded at their current level right now. July, and August, and usually Congress takes August off, by the way, that they may be back

in session in August, which is in the 20-something years I've been in Washington is, I don't think I've ever seen before, some sort of an infrastructure bill. Now, space projects aren't exactly shovel-ready, but what I could see from a space perspective, there are a lot of NASA facilities that have test stands, launch pads, wind tunnels, etc., etc., etc., that need to be refurbished, updated, and things like that. And there may be an opportunity to have some infrastructure work done at the space facilities that handle the missions we care about. I think you're going to see an effort for some sort of aid bill also for the cities that have been terribly impacted by the rioters. It's a lot of, I said a lot of uncertainty right now, but that's kind of when I'm going around the horn, the feeling I'm getting. People's interest in space is still there, and their concern for major projects and things that the society cares about and exploration,

you know, those are still there. How do we or how do listeners engage on these topics in a way that's constructive right now? And we've talked a little bit about how, you know, you don't want to be tone deaf, and you have to acknowledge who you're talking to. For these things that we care about Mars exploration, Neo surveillance mission, overall NASA funding and exploration, can we still engage on these at the moment? What's the best way forward from what you're hearing from staffers and other people on the Hill? They still care about it. The Dragon mission that went up over the weekend, we needed that as an industry, as a community, but I think we needed it as a nation. There is still an opportunity for us to reach out to our members of Congress and senators, engage with them and let them know that we're still here. Matt and Casey

and I are very lucky to work in a very forward-looking, futuristic, optimistic industry. And I think people are thirsting for that. You can have a light touch and just remind folks, the staffers I deal with are space fanatics. They love the Planetary Society. fanatics. They love the Planetary Society. They're just being saddled with having to deal with, instead of dealing with space legislation, they have constituents whose businesses are having problems. There's a time and place for everything. When I talk to them, they want to talk about space. They're still excited about space. Their bosses still care about space. You just got to modulate yourself in a manner that comes across not as tone deaf. This will pass and we will keep going on. Planetary Society members who engage with their members of Congress, you know, let them know that there still should be a priority for the United States of America.

I was on a call with Major General John Shaw, who's out at Vandenberg Space, going to be called Space Force Space, but right now it's still Air Force Space, out in California. And he was talking about how much planetary defense is important to him. Down at the Cape, they got two more Starlink launches coming up. They're excited about Perseverance, and they got a Delta IV Heavy going up in August. The Europeans are opening up Karoo. They got a Vega launch this month. They got an Ariane 5 going up in July. And they've got another Vega launch going off in August. You know, everyone's talking about U.S. Space Command and Space Force, but there's two other things coming down the pike. There's something being developed called Space Operational Command, which is the acronym is SPOC. And there's another one coming up called the Space Training and Readiness Command.

They're calling it STAR Command. Work on the SLS is opening up now. I mean, so there's, we as an industry are still going on and we're still, it's not easy, but we're going through this. We're going through this and we're still doing great things. And it's important for the nation. The immediacy of the challenges we got right now can't be ignored, but there is a longer time horizon that we can still as an industry and as a community advocate for. Something that you and I have talked about, which I thought was interesting, and I think valuable for listeners and people who do engage on this issue to remember is that the congressional staff and the congressional members themselves, they're still people. And as you pointed out,

they're under extraordinary stress in their jobs that they're serving in. Having that acknowledgement that you're connecting to people and being aware of them and just if you have previous connections to them, just even asking how they're doing and just acknowledging that they're having very busy times for them seems like a good way to me to have that light touch you were talking about yeah casey and thanks for reminding me of that some of you may not know i was an congressional staffer on 9 11 and then i had the enjoyment of having anthrax sent to my place of work at the time i saw three types of. I saw folks that were beaming in saying, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. I can't be helpful, but I'm here. In my mind, I referred to them as the hand waivers. And then you had the jerky lobbyists who were making all types of demands on me because, you know, they needed to make payments on their second vacation home and were cavalier and blase about everything.

And then you had the folks that would reach out to me and ask me how my wife and I were doing and tell me everything that they were hearing at that moment, and try to give me actionable information to help me do my job better. And I would tell them everything I knew so they could do their job a little bit better. How I've been conducting myself and how the Planetary Society has been conducting itself with decision makers on the Hill and in the executive branch is to be not the hand waver, not the jerk, but to be a trusted source of information and someone they can count on. And Casey and I have been working diligently on that throughout this entire crisis.

Well, Brendan, thank you again for keeping at it. I know you're, in a sense, we've talked about this word, the normal job that you have involves being in crowded places, shaking hands with people and spending time with them a lot. So your day to day has changed significantly. It's been a strange time for you as well. So I hope you stay safe. And thank you for representing us still on the Hill every day. Brandon, before you go, I mean, it's somewhat off topic, but because you spend so much time in DC, and we know that that has been a hotspot in recent days. Have you been witness to any of the unrest on the streets there?

No. Ann and I and the kids live in a place called Fairfax, Virginia, and we have not had anything like that. Not to get emotional, but when I see some of the violence and unrest in places that I normally would walk around when I go into town on business meetings is killing me. It's killing me to see that, you know, walking by the White House, you know, I took it for granted. And we would bring our kids into town to go to a museum or or go to a nice restaurant or something like that and that's all gone it's all gone you know you got to admire the protesters who have stood up to those who are committing violence against property in general against these businesses and trying to to keep the focus where most people believe it should be. We'll simply hope, along with virtually all of the nation and many around the world, that the protests make their mark without any more of this violence.

Thank you, Brendan. Stay safe. And as Casey said, it's great to have you back on the show and great to have the two of you and others at the Society continuing to represent us in these very strange and difficult times. Well, Matt and Casey, it was great being with you guys. Wish we were doing this in person. Maybe someday we will. Thanks for all you do. And thanks to all the society members for supporting space exploration. Well said, Brendan. Thank you. Casey, I bet I speak for you. I look forward to as well to doing this in person, whether it's there in the capital or out here at headquarters in Pasadena. And again, that was Brendan Curryrie, Chief of DCU of Washington

Operations for the Planetary Society. And he brings tremendous insight and a really interesting viewpoint to these discussions. Casey, I'm glad you invited him to join us again. Yeah, always good to check in with Brendan. He's doing a lot of work every day on behalf of society members. And I'm glad he's the one doing it. He's doing a lot of work every day on behalf of society members. And I'm glad he's the one doing it. He's a natural at it. All right, back to the good news. There was this mission. A couple of guys visited a station or visiting a station. They may be up there for as many as four months, we're now being told by NASA. So congratulations to Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley and to NASA and to SpaceX for pulling off something that has never happened before. Matt, did you watch STS-1?

Did you witness that? Not only did I watch the launch, I was a young reporter on the dry lake bed at Edwards when it came in. Yes, with hundreds of thousands of other people. And I have this great photo hanging in my office of Enterprise. Remember Enterprise, the sort of test-based shuttle? Yes. public walking around Enterprise, sitting on the tarmac at what's now Armstrong Base in the desert. It means a lot to me because you have this spacecraft and just regular folks, regular

Americans strolling around it. And yeah, it was one of the great experiences of my life. So how did this compare? Because this was the first time since STS-1 that we saw humans ride on a new spacecraft going into space. So that was almost 40 years ago. So what was that like, those two moments for you watching the landing or the launch of both STS-1 and of Crew Dragon? Surprisingly similar. I mean, I even surprised myself by the level of excitement that I felt as we went through the countdown. And the disappointment, of course, on the first attempt, damn Florida weather.

It was just thrilling. And it happened that Saturday, my wife and I were away for the weekend. We were up in the mountains, and I was worried about whether I'd get a signal. Thank goodness I was able to participate watching on my iPad with a few dropouts here and there. Because it was, as I said, it was absolutely thrilling to see this happening. I was more excited than I expected I would be. Yeah. I mean, I love robotic space exploration, probably more than the vast

majority of people. But man, it is a different experience when you know there are two human beings sitting on top of that rocket compared to a spacecraft. In a brand new spaceship. It was the level of anxiety I had. And you know, even though the Falcon has flown so many times now, Crew Dragon has flown successfully, it just, there's something about that moment. And then how that turns into this kind of triumphant feeling when it succeeds. At least here initially, they've gotten there. And I have to tell you matt the the video if you haven't watched the video of bob and doug in space before they dock god i hadn't seen anything i have never seen anything like that in literally in my life happened live that there's

astronauts in a capsule and it's gorgeous it's a gorgeous yeah the quality of the video seeing them do flips in like a capsule i mean growing, growing up with a shuttle, you would get the kind of the shuttle stuff, but the interior of the Crew Dragon just looks completely different, right? It's free of all the stowage and handles and wires. It's very clean. It's obviously got the touchscreens, but just seeing the two astronauts speak in a capsule, I mean, that was right out of the 60s experience

of seeing astronauts on Apollo. It's right out of Apollo 13 I kept thinking about, the movie. And something about that broadcast from space of the astronauts in a new spaceship, that almost sits with me, hit me in a deeper level than watching the launch. And I don't necessarily know why that is, but that really stuck with me. You know, we had Garrett Reisman, the astronaut who led much of the development of Crew Dragon

at SpaceX. We talked about design elements and how he was won over. This was just a couple of weeks ago on the show. And that he now believes that, you know, function comes first, but design is very important. They achieved it. I mean, it reminded me so much of the clean look that we saw in the movie 2001 in the spaceship Discovery that's headed out to its destiny on Jupiter. It's so impressive that way. I got to tell you one other thing that didn't occur to me until a minute ago. Do you remember where you were during the seven minutes of terror as Curiosity descended to Mars?

And we could not remember that too. You remember where I was too. I do because we were standing right next to each other. And it was that same excitement and anxiety and then joy when it was successful. You know, we shared it at the Planetary Society. My wife had a number of her students on a Zoom call all watching it at the same time. My parents were watching it. Friends were watching it, right? It was this level of awareness that we tend not to get. It was just a triumph for that moment.

I've been getting a lot of inquiries from press and others and kind of asking about what this means for commercial crew and for SpaceX. So I thought that the rest of this episode, we can really dive into just to remind people the history and really explore kind of the consequences of this, in a sense, the good consequences, but also put this in context. Yeah, that's what we're here for. Well, it's, you know, because I think the big question, I mean, a lot of people who follow this close, I mean, listeners of this show, of course, know that there's nuance here. But for the people that you're talking to, if you're just casually paying attention to

the news, it's very easy to get this impression that Elon Musk just kind of came to NASA and said, hey, I'll launch your astronauts into space. Here's a rocket and a spacecraft. And here we go. Yes. And here's the check. Thank you very much. And kind of the save the day kind of a thing. And it really wasn't that. It was much more of a purposeful partnership initiated by NASA and not to denigrate in any way the capability that SpaceX brought to the table. But I think it's very important to go into the history of this. And Casey and I will explore that history and much more,

including Space Force, the TV show, not the real Space Force, in the second half of this month's Space Policy Edition. Stay with us. Where did we come from? Are we alone in the cosmos? These are the questions at the core of our existence. And the secrets of the universe are out there, waiting to be discovered. But to find them, we have to go into space.

We have to explore. This endeavor unites us. Space exploration truly brings out the best in us, encouraging people from all walks of life to work together to achieve a common goal, to know the cosmos and our place within it. This is why the Planetary Society exists. Our mission is to give you the power to advance space science and exploration. With your support, we sponsor innovative space technologies, inspire curious minds, and advocate for our future in space.

We are the Planetary Society. Join us. You've been doing the show probably since the time where, did you have an episode of Planetary Radio about the end of the shuttle program or the announcement when the vision for space exploration was announced? Yeah, we did both of those. I mean, the last shuttle launch, we actually did a live show with Bill Nye early morning when that craft took off. So yes, we've been around long enough to be able to cover this. I mean, well, the vision for space exploration was what, 2004?

Where did this come from? Well, let's even go back further while I'm thinking about this. The concept of commercial space didn't begin with SpaceX. Congress passed in 1984 the Commercial Space Act. In 1984, this really started to kick up with Reagan administration and the shuttle, ironically.

Back when the shuttle was saying that they would be launching dozens of times a year, it would just lower, does this sound familiar? Lower the access of cost to Low Earth Orbit, create a marketplace in Low Earth Orbit, launch private space stations. There was a concept for private space stations.

So there was a big push for privatization and commercialization in space as early as the early 1980s. And with the shuttle being the means to do it, the shuttle, I mean, NASA even created up brochures to advertise, quote unquote, the delivery costs of the shuttle. They had fixed price delivery. And they had a slogan, NASA, we deliver. And the idea being that the astronauts would be delivering commercial satellites into orbit. That obviously didn't last. It was a wonderful dream.

Well, it was interesting at the time because it's hard for, in some ways, government to do this. Government is a product of public interest and public representation. The incentives built into public systems are different, by definition, than the incentives built into the private sector. So something like the space shuttle, which part of the reason that Nixon first approved it in the early 1970s was he was worried about the loss of aerospace jobs in California during his re-election of 1972. That already tells you the motivations behind something for the space shuttle isn't to make the lowest cost vehicle that can deliver competitive cost to access to orbit. There are deeper political issues behind it as well. So when NASA was trying to set the cost of what it would cost to launch

commercial stuff into orbit, you had a bunch of pushback from other aerospace industry people saying that you're going to undercut our own production here because you don't need these to exist, right? The public sector wouldn't go out of business. The space shuttle wouldn't go out of business if it didn't get enough commercial business. And so NASA was trying to select kind of an arbitrary number that was not reflective of the true cost of operation. So in effect, you had the government underbidding against private companies who said they wanted to deliver things into space. And so you had this whole battle, political battle in the early 1980s about whether the

shuttle was allowed to compete in a sense, and what those prices would be. And of course, that all ended with Challenger. be. And of course, that all ended with Challenger. And suddenly, the cost of lives was no longer a valid... Losing life to deliver commercial satellites to orbit was no longer a valid risk. And so here we are now, come early 2000s, you had the loss of Columbia. That's when George W. Bush announced his visions for space exploration about Constellation, and at the same time, the retirement of the space shuttle in the next five years or so. And that was kind of the turning point to what got us going here, that these original ideas for the shuttle had changed so much, and the shuttle, which had kind of, you know, soldiered on as this long-term program that could have been probably still been going

to this day if you hadn't had Columbia happen, that they had built a space station, but without the shuttle, you no longer had a way to deliver significant amounts of cargo to it. Constellation was conceived under Mike Griffin, the NASA administrator at the time in 2004, 2005 period. And you had this problem of, okay, we're building this new Ares I rocket that can carry a capsule that could go to the space station. So that's our crew delivery. We're going to build the Ares V, this big heavy lift launcher to send people to the moon. And then we'll build the Altair Lunar Lander and so forth. How are we

going to get cargo to the space station? And so it was under Mike Griffin around 2005 that they began to propose this idea of this cargo. What if we re-evaluated this privatization model? And can we partner with other entities to find a lower cost way to deliver cargo to the space station? And it was a pretty modest program at first. So Matt, in that period for you, how much was that on your radar when it was first beginning in the mid-2000s? I don't remember how much we were doing with this on planetary radio. We got started 2002. We focused pretty heavily on, no surprise, planetary science and robotic exploration, but we did cover some of this. But we weren't talking a whole lot about policy and politics back in those days. So I

think we missed out on quite a bit of it, but I was following it personally because I have always been such a fan. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's not unusual either, because the point of the program for commercial cargo when it began was that it was actually so small, relatively speaking, in terms of NASA expenditures, it kind of flew under the radar for a lot of people. I mean, it began with a total, I think, expected expenditure of around $500 million, which for government terms is pretty modest, right? And because of that, everything was, you know, you had your classic large existing aerospace contractors, they were all going after Constellation programs, which were spending many, many times

that total amount every year. You kind of had this opportunity for experimentation at the commercial cargo plan that wasn't really taken seriously by either political institutions or by the kind of established aerospace companies themselves. And that was almost kind of a key enabling factor of this because it allowed NASA to do two things. It allowed NASA to first find and open up the opportunity space to new companies to participate, so including SpaceX is where this enters the picture, to get some NASA funding.

And it also allowed NASA to take politically otherwise difficult problems like ending contracts with companies that weren't performing. And so as the commercial cargo program was moving forward in the mid-2000s, NASA approached it with the idea of changing these incentives we were talking about. Can you create an incentive structure where companies are incentivized to be efficient, where they're incentivized to save money themselves, and then by definition on behalf of the taxpayer, and are incentivized to save money themselves, and then by definition on behalf of the taxpayer, and are incentivized to innovate. And the classic model of, of course, government contracting is

cost plus, where if you want to make a moon lander, and you've never made one before, and you don't want to put every company out of business trying to make one on a fixed cost, because you have no idea how much it costs to make a moon lander. You do cost plus because you're asking a lot of these private industries, right, back in the 1960s, or a space plane in the 70s with the space shuttle. But now with commercial cargo, they're saying, okay, getting to orbit, that's a quote unquote, known problem. It's not a huge unknown. It's difficult, but it's not an unknown set of difficulties. Therefore, the government can give you some money, a fixed amount, and NASA required that these other companies put in 50-50 their own private investment into this effort to build commercial cargo supply services. One of the most important things that happened in that period was Rocket Plane Kistler

was one of these early companies participating in the cargo program. They did not meet their investment requirements that NASA's mandated. And NASA cut them out of the program. And they stood by that decision even when they tried to challenge it. That kind of meant business. That added a layer of reality and a layer of seriousness to this program where it's like, if you, NASA is serious, if you are not making your milestones, NASA will stop paying you. That reinforced that incentive structure to say, we make milestones, you get the money. If you don't, you don't.

And that was, I think, an incredibly important moment in the early 2000s. And so, of course, from that program, the commercial cargo, SpaceX got about $400 million from NASA. They matched the other part to build the Falcon 9 and, of course, the original cargo dragon, which they built with a forward thinking mind. And then, of course, Orbital Sciences, now Northrop Grumman, developed the Antares rocket, which they still use to supply the station. And so that was very successful. The Cygnus capsule with that. Yeah, right. We jump forward a little bit here. We're now, you know, Obama comes in to the White House, and they're evaluating the NASA portfolio. And they're seeing that Constellation is over budget

and far behind schedule. They are seeing this problem. Again, it's like, okay, we still haven't proved cargo, but it's looking good right they they were starting to do test launches but they hadn't actually delivered cargo to the space station yet they were seeing constellation running behind budget they were wanted to shake things up this is where they doubled down on this idea of like what if we solve this if we can if we have toation, how do we get people to the space station? I mean, obviously, they're using, they're going to rely on the Russians for some period of time after the shuttle retires. But the shuttle was very expensive to operate, right? So they couldn't

just indefinitely run the shuttle. That was an option back then. So I looked it up, the shuttle was approximately $3.5 billion a year, $3.5 to $4 billion a year. That was the overall cost of the shuttle program by the last five years on average of its program. And that got you about four flights a year. Of course, you can carry a ton of cargo. You can carry seven people, right, up and down, very capable. But that's just a huge chunk of NASA's budget at the time. You know, that was in addition to the space station itself, right?

You just didn't have a lot of wiggle room. I think we'd kind of established over the previous 30 years of the shuttle program that the cost of the shuttle was kind of precluded any significant investment in developing a replacement capability. Politically, they just couldn't muster the money. And so having the shuttle end was a prere capability. Politically, they just couldn't muster the money. And so having the shuttle end was a prerequisite. And I think not just for freeing up the money, but actually for creating the political space to seriously invest in a replacement. Because as we talked about going

way back to the beginning, the shuttle was meant to address political needs of investing in various parts of the country, right? So California, obviously Texas, and Kennedy Space Center in Florida and various other areas that supplied shuttle parts, you would have very comfortable, very stable, politically stable program for those 30 years of keeping jobs in those areas. There's not a lot of political incentive. It's not just the money, right? But it's to say, well, let's start investing in a way to completely upend this comfortable political situation. So the shuttle in a way had this end in order to create the political space, I think, for commercial or any sort of cargo or crew

replacement. With the end of Constellation, which was enormously controversial, like the ending the shuttle program, you know, Lori Garver on Planetary Radio was talking about the heat that they took. And yet, you know, she said that people were saying one thing about the success of the progress they were making with Constellation, but it just wasn't happening. Basically, they were lying. And it was just a money sink, and they had to put a stop to it. Looking back now, it looks like these were the right decisions about Constellation and the shuttle. Fundamentally, the shuttle was not really safe to fly. I think that was the ultimate outcome of the Columbia disaster. I mean, you flew the shuttle 135 times, you had two catastrophes. That's a one in 65 chance of mission failure, you know, of like catastrophic failure.

That's not a very safe vehicle. There was just fundamental design flaws. And people realize, I think, didn't realize that until later on in the life of the shuttle. That's the case that they were dealing with. And so, yeah, you had to replace that. Constellation was way behind schedule. And it wasn't just Lori Garver's opinion. They had, you know, GAO analysis. You can read these from 2009.

There's significant problems with that program. You had a new administration and they said, why don't we try something new? And so they looked around and they saw, I mean, cargo, this cargo program, which for less than a billion dollars had basically was about to provide two new launch vehicles and cargo supply ships to NASA, less than a billion dollars of NASA expenditure, which is like, unheard of, right? Quite a bargain. Yeah. Yeah. So they said, what if we extend this to crew? Now, there was a huge, as you said, there's this huge battle, because this was just the worst, in a sense, the worst possible timing. You had the simultaneous end of the Constellation program with the end of the Space Shuttle program in the midst of a once in a century, at the time was considered once in a century, at the time, was considered once in a century recession. And so you were having huge amounts of job losses in these key areas, Florida, Texas, California, Alabama, and so forth.

And the political representatives from those places reasonably saying, we can't support this. We need to address this situation. But the answer of commercial crew, in a sense of like, because it's commercial and more efficient, by definition, it just employs fewer people. And the people are going to be in different places. That's one of the strange incentives of just, again, public incentives versus purely private incentives. However, the deal, they made a deal, right? And this is what is kind of interesting here. The deal was

they just kind of do both. And this is where you had the birth of the SLS, the continuation of Orion. And if you look at the law that created the SLS, it says you have to use the same providers of the shuttle and Constellation in terms of contractors. And the same workforce. It's literally written into the law.

Fine. All 50 states, I think, right? Well, yeah. And, you know, to be fair, Commercial Crew uses supplies from all 50 states just at a smaller scale. Fine. All 50 states, I think, right? Well, yeah. And to be fair, commercial crew uses supplies from all 50 states just at a smaller scale. But the interesting thing, I think, is that then it's like, okay, and fine, you can do your commercial crew thing too. But there was a lot of resistance from that. And folks, Eric Berger was writing about this a lot

in Ars Technica, and others have well documented this. Very skeptical, generally bipartisan, kind of parochial interest. So people from the classic aerospace places. Last week, I found on YouTube, I was watching the congressional hearing at which Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan were talking about how much they hated this new plan. Talk about going up against true heroes. It was pretty courageous and they put it out there. And I think it's important. I mean, we're looking back now with the 2020 vision of history behind us. It was not unreasonable to be skeptical of saying we're going to turn access to low Earth orbit with people and astronauts over to a private company.

It was not unreasonable to be skeptical of that idea in 2010, right? That was before the first cargo supply, successful cargo resupply to the space station by SpaceX. So SpaceX had yet to prove itself at this point. This had never been done before. And I'd say, you know, the memory of Columbia was still very fresh in the minds of many people at NASA. Can NASA retain safety by stepping back from a regulatory perspective, by trying these new companies who have never done this before? You know, by putting our reliance in this, it was a gamble. It was a policy gamble. It's not unreasonable to be against it at the time. I think that was a very

rational response. And this is why, in a sense, the solution was, well, let's do both. That old line from the contact, first rule of government spending, why build one when you can build two at twice the price? Why not do both? And they did. And so you had the SLS kicking up a billion and more dollars per year, Orion more than a billion dollars a year. And the original plan for Commercial Crew, as proposed by NASA and Lori Garver and Charlie Bolden and the Obama administration in 2010, was to do it in five years and spend about $6.5 billion. Congress immediately began to underfund the commercial crew.

Yeah. Lori talked about this as well. And we didn't say, you know, former deputy administrator of NASA under Charlie Bolden. She said, you know, you'd ask for a billion, they'd give you half. And so if anybody's wondering why it took so long, that's what she points to. Yeah. I ran the numbers. So the launch of Crew Dragon, I recommend everyone check out this blog post. We'll link to it on the show.

But it was a lot of fun putting these numbers together, the list of what NASA of the program, Congress purposely underfunded the request for Commercial Crew, kind of showing their general attitude towards the idea. They kind of grudgingly gave some money. And it wasn't until 2016 that Congress finally gave what NASA asked for. Congress finally gave what NASA asked for. And then by 2018, they no longer even kind of specified it, which means it was basically completely agreed to, like it was no longer controversial. So it took a long time. And it basically took, SpaceX proved itself with cargo.

And another, I think, critical event is that as NASA was able to start spending money, they were able to start a similar competition process for selecting at minimum two providers to launch crew into space. And it ultimately became SpaceX, of course, and Boeing. And I think once Boeing was in the final selection, a certain number of members of Congress saw the word Boeing and realized that this is serious. And they trusted the name Boeing more than that this is serious. And they trusted the name Boeing more than SpaceX. And it became less of an issue by the time a major aerospace contractor was also included in this. And those awards, again, were made in 2014.

And I'm going to guess that Boeing, at least in 2014, still had a much more sophisticated and large lobbying force in Washington, DC than SpaceX had. Yes. Boeing is one of the largest, in terms of expenditures, you can look this up on actual lobbying. Boeing is the largest with about 16 million a year, which is really minor compared to the tens of billions of contracts they win for that. SpaceX has actually really increased its lobbying over the years. They're up to like, I think a million and a half, maybe 2 million. And I remind you, those are formal lobbying.

So that's probably maybe a multiple of two beyond both of those numbers, at least for the informal lobbying expenditures. It pays off, right? There's actually interesting political science debates about why don't more people spend money on lobbying, because it seems to work incredibly well. It's a really high ROI, put a plug in there for Planetary Society advocacy work. But it's one of the best things that companies can invest in. But yeah, I think that was a really critical turning point. And the contracts that NASA provided to SpaceX and Boeing were also kind of interesting in and of themselves.

So they're called CCT, Commercial Crew Transportation Capability Contract. They had given some earlier study money to both companies and Sierra Nevada, which is looking at a kind of a mini shuttle program that ultimately wasn't funded. But it's still moving forward for cargo, the Dream Chaser. Yeah. That actually came through as cargo, which is interesting. It kind of shows you where they kind of, I imagine, hope to take that in the future to bring it back into the crew program. Cargo with wings and windshield.

Right. Yeah. What a coincidence. Yeah. What else can we do with that? Yeah, what a coincidence. Yeah, what else can we do with that? The big awards, the big contracts to Boeing and SpaceX were $4.2 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to SpaceX.

And what those contracts covered is development, testing, and evaluation of the capability and up to six flights each with four people per spacecraft. So those numbers, the 4.2 and the 2.6, this is a common misconception. Those are the total potential value, potential value of the contracts. Of those top line numbers, NASA doles out that money based on milestones that's achieved by both companies. So if they don't make the milestones that they can't deliver,

NASA does not owe them the rest of the money. They only pay on performance. And that's that commercial cargo model. That's that milestone-based fixed price understanding. And this is what, again, it really comes down to for me. The model itself is predicated on the idea that the problem itself is no longer an unknown difficulty for companies to step into. And again, why did we have cost plus contracting? It's because companies had no idea what financial risks they were running to try to build something brand new that had never been done before. That makes sense. The government doesn't want to put these companies out of business. They would never get anyone to bid to work with if that was the case. But for low-earth orbit, the idea was that if you

want to send people into orbit, it's hard, but it's not an unknown level of difficulty hard. And you should be able to get private investment to augment the funds that the public trust is going to give you, public treasury is going to give you. And you can be incentivized then, because you're getting a fixed amount of money and NASA steps back from a regulatory perspective. And at the end of the day, you own that intellectual property. So you can find revenues in the future to offset your investment now, in addition to what NASA is going to give you. And that's that critical difference, right? SpaceX entered into cargo,

NASA helped them pay to build the Falcon 9. And then SpaceX like went out and fundamentally shook up the entire global launch industry with the Falcon 9 and its reusability and undercutting the prices of all these other nations and aerospace companies, right? And SpaceX now makes money launching commercial satellites, there was a market to break into, and NASA helped them break into that market with that initial investment. Kind of like the federal government funding the early airlines with airmail. I know that's almost a cliche how often it's been mentioned, but it did get us to where we are today. Right. And that's the partnership model, right? That's why it's public policy to not just provide a service to the government, but to try to create a marketplace that then industry can occupy on its own. The difference, though, of course, is that there is no obvious marketplace waiting for SpaceX once it has the capability to send humans into space. There's a handful of companies that will pay you to launch their private communication satellites. That is private, fully private space exploration. It's not real exploration. It's like launching

commsats over rapidly developing population areas of the world to provide cable TV. That's private space. They have the money to pay $80 to $100 million to launch those $500 million satellites up there to serve that need. We don't have that waiting now for human spaceflight. This is what's going to be a really interesting outcome. Well, now we've kind of put the cart ahead of the horse a bit and said NASA and the US government is helping to build the capability for a marketplace that does not exist. It's the field of dreams approach, right? If we build it, will people come? Yeah. And so that's the big, big difference here. And that brings into a larger discussion of when

people talk about this, what lessons can we draw from commercial crew and commercial cargo? We don't know the lessons from commercial crew yet. It's just beginning. I think that we're still in that evaluation period. So we've had the successful launch. They've had the successful docking. It went incredibly smoothly, by the way, just stunning how well SpaceX pulled this off. I mean, the astronauts have to come home first. But then I think really critically, you have to demonstrate reliability and safety. And that takes more than one successful mission. That takes many missions over time. We need to show that Boeing, the other company in this commercial crew program, can also deliver on this promise and provide independent secondary access and maintain

pressure on SpaceX for competition. And then we need to see, is there an actual market? Does that part of the predicate hold up in practice? Does sending people into space make sense beyond NASA being the only customer? I'd say we have no idea on that one yet. It's a fascinating position that we're in, as exciting as all of this has been, that we still have so much more to learn. And, you know, they call it Demo Mission 2 for a reason. It is still a demonstration.

I mean, the first real commercial mission is ahead. But I don't know. I'm hopeful. And at least there are still a handful of billionaires out there who are willing to pay SpaceX or somebody for a seat. Well, that's the interesting thing to me, too, when you look at this more broadly. First of all, how lucky is NASA that SpaceX exists, in a sense, right? SpaceX is a very unique company. Here's the comparison. Look at commercial

cargo. What is Northrop Grumman doing with the Antares rocket and Cygnus? They're doing nothing but serving NASA, right? They haven't gone out and shook up the launch industry with the Antares. They haven't gone out and tried to secure commercial contracts for Cygnus, they're just going to serve NASA. In a sense, it served NASA's needs. It's a decent price to launch stuff to the space station that got an independent access. But in the broader policy sense, it was a failure of creating a more broader based industry and competitive industry in the United States. In a sense, we're kind of lucky that SpaceX happens to be led by someone who has this intense long term dream that he's putting into SpaceX that is aligning with NASA's needs, but that SpaceX is willing to basically kind of do all of this extra work on its own because it has its own ambitions. And I think we're seeing a similar

thing for Boeing with the Starliner. What are Boeing's plans for Starliner beyond serving NASA's needs compared to with SpaceX, who's already trying to sign up people to fly to orbit to access the space station? We're lucky that we had a company who is willing to embrace the more, had a company who is willing to embrace the more, not outlandish, but kind of maybe far-sighted perspective on this. But it's not a guarantee. I mean, it could have easily been. A SpaceX, you know, Elon Musk likes to ride things right on the edge of failure, right? That's what makes him in a sense so successful. He's very risk-taking. If SpaceX had gone out of business, or the Falcon 1 had exploded a fourth time, and we just had some other company, it's a very good possibility that nothing in the broader

launch industry would have changed beyond the fact that you'd have two additional companies now serving NASA as kind of these pseudo contractors that were on a slightly different cost structure. The reason that SpaceX pursued reusability so much is because they want to go to Mars and they need to have all these fundamental shifts in the cost of spaceflight. It's interesting to me that we're in this situation where we really are dependent on SpaceX. And I'd say you obliquely referenced this,

people like Jeff Bezos who are independently wealthy and able to fund their own things, but based on their own long-term visions for space. It's somewhat of a tenuous position for NASA to be in. But also, I mean, NASA just got very fortunate in this sense. So I think that's worth considering too. And so, you know, we're starting to see NASA say, where can we apply these lessons now? The amount of money that NASA spent on commercial crew in total is about $7 billion when you adjust for inflation. And that's for everything paid out to develop. So that doesn't include all the future costs of

delivery for commercial crew to the space station. That's the Boeing, that's the SpaceX, that's the Sierra Nevada, that's all the stuff that they initially kind of paid out at the beginning. That's a great deal. I mean, in the sense that it saved NASA money, it saved NASA a ton of money. And if you look back to both the Starliner and Crew Dragon cost for those capsules to develop those, and you compare those historically, those are the cheapest capsules, in a sense, to develop since NASA worked on the Mercury program. That's, I think, kind of stunning. Definitely. By magnitude, order of magnitude.

I'm so glad you brought up Blue Origin, because as we look to the future, that company, along with SpaceX and Dynetics, have just been asked by NASA, hired by NASA to develop lunar landers. They're not all going to be making it to the moon. They're not at least not going to be funded by NASA to do that, whether they continue on their own. Where are we now with this new approach to getting stuff into space and perhaps to other destinations than the International Space Station? I think that's the big question we're about to see experiments run now. It's exciting. And I think these experiments are worth running, but we should be really clear that these are experiments.

Now, we don't know how these are going to turn out. So we're seeing, as you said, human landers. And then also, of course, there's CLPS, the Commercial Lunar Payload Delivery. So basically doing a cargo equivalent of delivering things to the surface of the moon with, I think, at least three or half a dozen companies kind of getting various levels of contracting, fixed price contracts now. And three big groups getting money, including SpaceX for the human lander contracts.

You're seeing fixed price contracts for the Gateway, the orbiting space station, for elements of that with Maxar. The question is, though, again, to me, fundamentally, is what domains does this fixed price contracting work? And again, it comes down to this idea of, is landing on the moon a known difficulty problem or still an unknown level of difficulty problem? Great question. Our companies, exactly, right? There's no marketplace really for humans in low Earth orbit yet. Maybe you. Our companies, exactly, right? There's no marketplace really for humans in low Earth orbit yet. Maybe you could argue tourism maybe, but there's definitely no

pre-existing marketplace at the moon. The fundamental predicate that made commercial cargo and crew work just do not exist at the moon. So this is really applying this method of public-private partnerships. It's applying this to a whole new domain of problem, a whole new level of difficulty. We don't know if that'll work. And the lessons of commercial crew and cargo, I think, are very limited in informing us of the potential outcome here. And it doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that it's a risk. And we should be super clear about that. NASA is taking a policy gamble here again, and applying this very widely. For all the reasons I just mentioned, I don't know. It's very possible to me that there are areas of space exploration where this public-private contracting process

does not apply well for all these basic things. Fascinating. We live in interesting and exciting times. Casey, now for something completely different. You haven't seen Space Force yet, have you? No, I've seen the previews. I've only seen the first episode, so I can't say much. I can tell you that our colleague, Brendan, before we started recording, he was telling me that he's out to episode three with his wife and he's loving it. It's great fun. And that actually a lot of the people who are being made fun of in that show are also enjoying Space Force with Steve Carell. Yeah, it's interesting to see it leaking out into broader pop culture. I mean, I've seen the previews and it's interesting that they kind of conflate the military side of space

or the national security side of space with launching people and going to the moon and basically all the things that specifically they decided not to do in national security space that we have a national, that we have a civilian space program for. Thank you, President Eisenhower. Right, right. And I have a, I don't want to be a buzzkill, I guess, on the show, but those are the types of kind of lazy conflation that worries me in terms of long-term support for NASA is if people see it as the same as national security or militarization, so to speak, of space. I don't like to see that. I wish maybe they had done their homework a little more. But at the same time, a Space Force show about managing GPS satellites from ground stations is not super exciting.

So I understand why they're playing with the facts a little. I have to make the comparison to a show that I think you have seen. I watched a couple of episodes and was deeply disappointed. Avenue 5. It looked like it was going to be great. Yeah. I wanted it to be Veep in space. And it wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. I didn't expect that one to have a high level of reality,

adherence to reality. It seemed a little more of a setting contextual use, but it could have been better. I'm sorry. I don't like that. Well, what's a good space show? Let's focus on the positive. What's a good space show that you've seen recently, Matt?

Well, funny you should ask, I am running in order through every episode of Deep Space Nine, which I was not a huge fan of when it was in first release. And I'm doing okay. I'm enjoying it very much. I even kind of like Sisko, who I didn't care for that all that much. But now it's the beginning of the fourth season and Worf, Michael Dorn has come back. Thank goodness. What a great character. Things are heating up with the Dominion. It's great fun. And I think it is an example of, you know, not a comedy except for an episode here and there, like the baseball one and a holodeck against the Vulcans. But it's great fun. I hope we'll see more of that. Deep Space Nine is also a show that grew on me. And it's actually probably my second favorite Star Trek now after Next Generation. But I'll toss one show out there, which is, I think, an interesting in terms of overall content. It's a show about exploration. But what happens when exploration, kind of the bad consequences side of when it doesn't turn out well.

on Hulu now. And it follows the two ships that launched in the mid 19th century from Britain, trying to find the Northwest Passage. And the two ships were the Terror and the Erebus. So the Terror. And they get trapped in the ice. And in reality, when they did this, this is based on a true story, the ships were never heard from again. They failed. The crew perished, basically. The show is kind of this fictionalized account of that process. And I could not help but... It's just a great show. Very good writing, very thoughtful, and not a happy show necessarily. But I think really insightful about what happens to civilization when stressed. And I could not help but think about the first Mars colony going through a situation where suddenly their food is getting limited, survival is becoming

very restricted, difficult, and what would happen to people in that concept. And we always look back at exploration as this grand, exciting endeavor, right? And there's also, you know, there's a pretty strong survivor bias. So if you've survived your exploration, you're the one writing your stories about it. But there is this side of exploration about failure, which is unpleasant and violent and horrible for those who went through that aspect of it. So I think it's a good reminder that exploration is full of risk. and what can go wrong is something we should ethically grapple with when we're talking about putting people's lives on the line, but also just a very entertaining and thoughtful show. Well, thank you for that recommendation, and thank you for a truly wide-ranging edition of this show. It has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you, Casey,

and thanks to Brendan as well for joining us and bringing his expertise to this. Well, I was going to say, and I think you're about to say it, thank you for four years of doing this show with me, man. We missed the anniversary celebration last time. My fault, because I thought it was this month, but you bet. We are underway in the fifth year of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. We hope that you'll be sticking with us throughout this year and perhaps beyond. And if you're not a member of the Planetary Society and you want to be a part of this effort, not just Space Policy Edition, but all of the great space policy work that is underway by the Planetary Society, please visit us at planetary.org slash membership. And stay safe, stay well. We will, as we always

have, gotten through this together. Casey? Matt, I couldn't say it better myself. Thank you, everybody, for listening to us for these years. We will see you in a month, the first Friday in the month of July 2020. In the meantime, of course, the weekly Planetary Radio will be coming your way every Wednesday morning, Pacific time, we post that show. And we hope you'll continue to visit planetary.org and follow the Planetary Society on social media. Take care, everyone, once again, and Ad Astra.