Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Why the SLS is a National Asset, and Why That Matters

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

How spacefaring nations prioritize funding can be just as important, if not more so, than the capabilities of the commercial sector, says Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar, President and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. She joins the show to talk how these complement each other, and why the SLS and Orion programs deserve support along with work by companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. Mat and Casey also catch up on the dizzying amount of space news in July, including important progress on NASA’s budget from the U.S. House of Representatives. Learn more here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. We have lots to talk about today and a lot to celebrate as well. And we will hold that celebration with the Senior Space Policy Advisor for the Planetary Society, our Chief Advocate. Welcome back, Casey. Casey Dreyer. Hey, Matt. Happy August. Happy August. You know, we actually do have some things to be happy about that have just taken place in the last couple of days and some major successes, things that I think a lot of people can be proud of.

We're going to get to that. First, though, our usual pitch for you to go to planetary.org slash membership and become a part of this podcast and everything else that the Planetary Society is up to by joining us, joining our little planetary science, space science, space exploration family, and become a member. Planetary.org slash membership, the place to go. Casey, I think you still have an advocacy campaign going on as this is published. Yeah, there's still time.

If you go to planetary.org slash advocacy, there's a link to take you to a donation page. We're almost to our goal of $100,000. And a reminder that every dollar that you donate up to that amount gets matched. So it effectively doubles your donation. So now is a great time to do it as we hit the finish line here. So please consider, if you can, throwing us a few bucks to enable us to do this great work on your behalf here at the Planetary Society. And by the way, even if that deadline is reached and that goal is reached, as we hope it will be, you can sure can. Don't worry. We're a nonprofit. Remember, we need this.

Most of our best supporters are also members of the Planetary Society. All right, we'll keep that short because we do have a lot of good news to talk about, and we have a great interview to share with you. Casey, just give us a bit of a tease for your guest today. Mary Lynn Dittmar is somebody who I've wanted to have on the show for a long time and was really excited when she was able to make this work to have this discussion today. She works for the industry group called the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. She really works with the big, let's say, prime aerospace contractors, but she's been

involved in spaceflight policy for years. She is very knowledgeable about this stuff and has this deep record of working with the ISS. She's worked on the committee side, working for things like the National Academies and the Space Research Board, National Research Society. She has one of those professional biographies that stretches many pages. So it's, I think, a really interesting perspective that we talk about in terms of what is the value of some of these large national programs, specifically the SLS and Orion, as seen from a national perspective. And I think this is an interesting kind of counterpoint to a lot of the perspective that we tend to hear on those programs

as being either a waste of money or slow, or very frustrating for a lot of people. And she really presents this kind of robust flipped perspective of this from kind of this geopolitical angle about why these are important efforts and why they're still relevant, even with things like SpaceX and other new entrants into the field of space exploration. I think it's a really important viewpoint to hear, even if you don't ultimately agree with it, because it's something that is widely held, particularly at the higher levels of Congress and the political system, at least here in the United States, and similar ideas in other nations around the world as well. So a very interesting interview with her. And again, she's just a very insightful, thoughtful mind in space policy and has been doing it for a long time.

It's a great conversation. I was monitoring it, of course, as you spoke with her. It is in itself a civics lesson, at least portions of it, which in fact she will make a reference to that you'll hear as she does some of her public outreach. And people you might think would already be aware of how the federal government works and how all representational government seems to work in this country. And it ain't a bad thing. All right, we'll be getting to that shortly. But first, let's celebrate a little bit. Casey, you must have been watching that splashdown of Crew Dragon Endeavor, weren't you? I saw, yes, I just got back from a bike ride just in time to see them land. And the crazy thing of seeing all the boats swarm around them they landed maybe

closer to recreational boating area than than humans have in a long time which was kind of a weird scene to see but so glad that they came back safe and just an amazing mission from SpaceX. You forget that this was the first test of this whole program, and it just went so smooth. So obviously, really exciting, really looking forward to the first four-person launch coming up in a few months here up to the station, and seeing these begin to happen on a regular basis. Very, just spectacular sight to see. Now let's clarify, first test with real humans. With humans, yes. Inside. Yeah. Yeah, because it was GM1, of course. You know, you mentioned those boats, and I'm sure some people out there have not yet heard the regular Planetary Radio episode that appeared this week, a couple of days ago, and I talked to astronaut and former director of space operations

at SpaceX, Garrett Reisman, and he said, really, everything went perfectly. It was white-knuckle time for him as he watched because he oversaw so much of the development of Dragon, both the cargo and crew versions. The thing that he felt was the biggest problem were all those boats, because it could have been very dangerous for the astronauts if there had been a problem in the capsule.

And it could have been very dangerous for the people in the boats. You probably heard the anchor people at SpaceX talking about how they go in with special suits and they sniff the air for fumes from those hypergolic fuels. Yeah, this tetroxide. Yeah, there's tetroxide. Yeah, extremely dangerous. And so apparently, Garrett told us that SpaceX has been talking with the Coast Guard, and that will not happen again if they have anything to say about it. But let's go back to this actual success and something else that Garrett and I talked about, and you've talked about many times, which is that there are a lot of heroes in this story at SpaceX, but some of them are

outside of SpaceX and were or are in the federal government. Yeah, none of this would have happened without NASA and NASA officials and White House officials, starting with George W. Bush administration and then really getting turbocharged under Obama, choosing to pursue a new way to do business in space. SpaceX obviously really stepped up and just hit it out of the park doing this. But it required good policy for this to happen and was not taken lightly. It was not an easy thing to achieve this situation politically. There was a lot of resistance from members of Congress who saw their existing kind of comfortable setups and funding and jobs in their districts threatened by this new entrant and new way of disruption that would just kind of throw them off their kind of expected situation.

We talked about this, but it really came down to the NASA authorization bill in 2010 that authorized the commercial crew program to move forward. Well, kind of the deal was at the time that you do basically you do both. You do the new commercial partnership method and you make the space launch system and you continue making the Orion capsule. So they kind of did an all of the above approach. And that is how you build coalitions in politics. But because of that, we are at this moment now

and SpaceX delivered once they had the opportunity to do it. But you have to give new people the opportunity to succeed in order to see anything new in space. So it was a very exciting day and a reminder that this stuff doesn't just happen by magic. And even if Elon Musk had wanted to do this by himself, he couldn't have because he needed NASA's cooperation and NASA needs SpaceX now just as much. So it's a very close partnership, but it takes two to tango, so they say. much. So it's a very close partnership, but it takes two to tango, so they say. So kudos to everyone involved inside and outside of SpaceX. And sure, looking forward to that.

Next, the first real operational mission coming up, I believe, in the fall with, as you said, four astronauts on it. I won't say that SpaceX topped itself because after all, it was just a hop, not a top, but we did see, it's a great piece of video, that Starship take to the sky. Also an incredible moment, just a couple of days after landing, I don't know how SpaceX engineers get any sleep. I kept thinking of the i don't know for those of you who remember apollo 13 when they go visit jim level's mother uh in the care facility and they say that something's gone wrong with the spaceship and she said oh well if they could make a washing machine fly my jimmy could land it and it really kind of felt like watching a washing machine or something as inelegant go up and down but also just an incredible when you

just look at the scale of it. And again, you see a perfect example of how Starship is being developed, the iterative process that SpaceX takes with its development, iterative and hardware. It's a very big difference to something like the SLS, which we'll talk about with Mary Lynn Dittmar, which a lot of that is done in advance through ongoing analysis and tests. And it's a very different type of somewhat more conservative approach to engineering. SpaceX tries to make the thing. If it blows up, they just make another one. Because the critical aspect of this is that while they're developing the process to make a Starship, they're also trying to develop the process to make a production line of the Starship. So they need to get good at building these fast because that's a critical part to success. And so both the willingness to

kind of just test out in the open to accept failure and to rapidly build a new one, it hits both the production line and the fundamental technology development needs of that program. So again, just kind of classic SpaceX method here. And of course, when you see it happen, it's just, it's a pretty wild scene to see, and it's just very cool. I have to quote one of our colleagues at the Planetary Society who said, it looked like a flying water heater. We promise it'll look much better once it has a real nose cone and a lot more engines. And I'm looking forward to that.

And if these successes continue, maybe it won't be too long. So yeah, at least a couple of reasons for SpaceX to celebrate this week. And one of the celebrants is well known for tweeting about things like this. I had not seen the tweet until you sent it to me, Casey. Happens to be from the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Here's the tweet. And when we say today, I'm talking about Wednesday, by the way, August 5th. NASA was closed and dead until I got it going again.

Now it is the most vibrant place of its kind on the planet. And we have Space Force to go along with it. We have accomplished more than any administration in the first three and a half years. Sorry, but it all doesn't happen with Sleepy Joe. You think it's an election year, Casey? with Sleepy Joe. You think it's an election year, Casey? Yeah, not exactly the type of tweet I'd like to see from the political side of a president about space. And obviously, there's a number of things factually incorrect about that. NASA existed three and a half years ago, 17,000 people worked there. They were actively working on the commercial crew program and missions like Mars Perseverance. And of course, SpaceX was doing

its own completely separate development process for Starship that does not depend on NASA. All that stuff that we talk about on Planetary Radio every week, much of which NASA has been responsible for in the last more than three and a half years. We need to get the president listening to the show, Matt. He's more than welcome. Yeah, no, it's the fundamental problem here. This is what worries me as a policy person. This has nothing to do with a political leading either way, is when you have, and this is, again, we've talked about this on the show. I've written about this on planetary., is when you have, and this is again, we've talked about this on the

show. I've written about this on planetary.org. When you have something like space, which is ideologically unmoored, right? There's no connection. There's no fundamental ideology of Republican or Democrat in this case that says you should like NASA or not. When that's the case, case that says you should like NASA or not. When that's the case, if you have the embrace of this type of politics or this type of issue by one party, or in this case, the de facto head of that party, right, very visibly, it incentivizes the opposition party to resist it. Because that's just how politics works, right? There's nothing ideologically mooring them to one position or another. So it's easy for that to shift in opposition because, well, we need to be an opposition party so we can't fully support this. You're starting to see this already happen with Artemis funding, which is very hard getting

through that, getting that funding through the House of Representatives run by the Democratic Party. And this type of tweet does not help. And, you know, what I love to see is that, you know, something like what Starship did or the commercial crew astronauts coming back or the Perseverance launch, that's an American success. That is, everybody contributed to that. All of those take, space takes so long to do that you require multiple administrations picking up, passing along that baton and keeping that pace going. And it's an American success, not a Republican or Democratic success. And that worries me again, the long term, how are we able to keep this kind of classically,

this bipartisan support for the space program, when you see a lot of pressure to make it partisan. And unfortunately, you know, this is kind of where we are in this country with literally everything. So it's not a surprise. But I really, you know, it's something we have to work very hard, all of us, whether you're a Trump fan, and love space, don't like Trump or you like Biden or whoever. We want to have everybody like space. So it doesn't matter which party is in control, that there's a consistent support for this type of work, administration to administration. As our boss says, the science guy, space brings us together and brings out the best in us. And we don't want to see that jeopardized.

You mentioned that House budget, stuff going on at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. You want to give us a quick look at what they've come up with for NASA that the Senate is now playing with? Yeah, just a quick update on this, since we just also saw House of Representatives action on appropriations for NASA this year, along with a number of other agencies. And I've updated this on our tracking page at planetary.org. I'll drop a link into the show description here. Pretty much what we talked about. They froze NASA funding at what it was last year. So for those who remember, the White House had actually proposed a significant 12% increase to NASA for fiscal year 2021, up to about $25.6 billion. Almost all of that increase was going to be used for Artemis, particularly for a human landing system. sized that out. They kept it flat at 22.6. They moved some things around. It's not all bad. They did some very good things. They restored funding for the outreach and STEM program in NASA, the

science, technology, engineering, and math outreach. As they do every year. As they do every year. Yep. I think I said I would eat my hat if that didn't happen. And so my hat is safe for yet another year. They also restored funding for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It used to be called WFIRST. So that will continue from the House perspective. And they threw a few extra bucks towards planetary science. They put an additional $40 million through an amendment to support the NEO surveillance mission, that really important space telescope to search for near-Earth objects that could be threatening to Earth. And they threw extra money towards Earth science.

And so science does a lot better in the House bill than in the White House version, but they basically took and lopped off the entire new Artemis growth. And again, I think you're seeing that happen because that is being so tightly associated with the president through the president's actions and the actions of his administration, that it incentivizes them to do that. There's historical precedents for this too. Very similar kind of situation with the Space Exploration Initiative back in 1989 and 1990, where George H.W.

Bush was proposing large increases for NASA that the Democratic Senate, in that case, basically surgically removed from their budgets. So it's not historically unprecedented, but it's certainly frustrating. And you just want to take this all back and say, hey, look, everybody wins from this process. So where are we now? So the House has passed this, completely voted on through the House of Representatives. The House has done their job. Now it goes over to the Senate. The Senate needs to, they haven't done anything publicly yet.

They have yet to release their version of the bill. They have to eventually release their version, pass their version. And then they also, of course, have to reconcile the differences between the two House and Senate versions. And then at some point, hopefully before October 1st, but unlikely, pass the bill that funds NASA and all these other agencies, some compromise. Very likely what we'll see as we're getting closer and closer to the election is, as I predicted, a temporary stopgap measure that basically extends current funding levels into the future, probably to be dealt with after the election later in November or December. But we are still not there yet,

but this is a step forward in that process. So there's another civics lesson for you. Casey, you've given us that little bit of a tease. Anything else you want to say before we go into a deep and very satisfying civics lesson? That's part of it. This conversation with your guest today, Mary Lynn. I do want to say something. This has just been such a crazy, busy month for space. But the Perseverance mission launched.

That was an amazing thing to witness. It's personal for me beyond more Mars missions, other Mars missions, I should say. Watching Curiosity launch in 2011 was a very pivotal point in my life. Seeing that launch made me want to come and work for the Planetary Society, which somehow I did. And it helped completely redirect my career into space policy and space politics. My wife, I should say, also is a scientist, a planetary scientist who works on the Perseverance mission. And she has been working on her end, on the camera team, for nearly seven years. Well, I should also say I was in the room when John Grunsfeld, the Associate Administrator of

the Science Mission Directorate, announced the Perseverance mission at Mars 2020 at the time in December of 2012. And so I feel like I was kind of at the genesis of the mission. And then I saw a very interesting perspectives as it was made through my wife's participation. And then getting to fruition and seeing the whole thing come together and launch is I've never experienced something like that before. We were supposed to be there at the launch this year. Of course, everyone knows why we weren't. But it's such a, you know, seeing a rocket, as you know, Matt, is a very moving experience.

It's a very moving experience. It's a very experiential thing to do. Watching it on TV does not do it justice. And so it was bittersweet to go through that. We got up very early for us and sat down and put up the speakers really loudly. A little surf around. Yeah. And we had champagne at, I think,

five in the morning or whatever it was, roughly when it was. So we did things to make it feel special. But it was a spectacular launch. The whole experience, I have to say, of a launch is so different when, in this case, my partner had seven years of work sitting on top of that giant bomb that has to explode downwards at a certain pace. Just like with watching a light sail launch, right? When it was 10 years of work by the Planetary Society sitting on top of that. An already fundamentally exciting situation becomes profound through that process. It's, it's, it's a Joseph Campbell would love this, you know, this kind of experience of that cathartic release of stress after the launch is successful,

but the buildup of, you know, it's, it's very much demarcates a major event. Thanks for indulging me on my, letting me share that. That there's a special moment to watch, but also again

the mission is itself obviously just astonishingly exciting through the instrumentation its ambition and its ability to you know hopefully find something very exciting on the surface and prepare things to bring back it's the first as i was saying matt this is the first of a trilogy of missions and and i was trying to think i don't think there's been any other science mission where sequels are baked into the plan. Right. This is like the start of the sample return extended universe of Mars missions. This is, it's a big deal, right? It's like the fellowship of the ring of Mars missions.

So there are sequels coming that have to, that depend on this succeeding, right? And so it's a big turning point too, fundamentally in Mars exploration. We are moving from, this is the last of the in situ, right? In-place science investigations at Mars by NASA for at least a decade.

And this is the beginning of the effort to bring samples back. And there's going to be kind of a cost to that, literal and opportunity cost, with the promise of that when those samples come back, the amount of scientific knowledge that they will contribute to our understanding of the history of Mars and potentially life, will be worth the wait. So it's a very exciting moment. I kind of prefer a sample return, the next generation myself, for talking about this franchise that has now begun with Perseverance. Please pass along my congratulations to Melissa.

I know that all of us, everyone who listens to this show is along with you and me and her and the rest of that Perseverance team. So looking forward to that day in February and those seven more minutes of terror and Perseverance doing its work down on the surface. I'm sorry I can't, well, hopefully I'll cross my fingers, but in case we can't share it together like we did with Curiosity, we'll find a way to have that experience somehow. Let's hope we're all vaccinated by that time. Yes. And standing with thousands of other people at another Planet Fest celebration. But, of course, the Planetary Society is not going to miss out on the next landing on Mars.

is not going to miss out on the next landing on Mars. And it's not just one landing, but three, because, of course, we also have the UAE's Hope and Tianwen-1 from China. Wishing them all great success. All right, you want to get us into Mary Lynn? Yes, let's talk to Mary Lynn. And, you know, just again, she has a very long professional bio. I'll just highlight a couple of things here. Dr. Mary Lynn Dittmar is, she's a fellow of the National Research Society,

an associate fellow at the American Institute for Astronautics and Aeronautics. She was a National Research Council committee member on the Committee for Human Spaceflight. She helped write the Pathways Report. Longtime listeners know that I really love this report, outlining the rationale for human spaceflight through the National Academies. She currently serves as the president and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, a nonprofit industry group that represents the kind of large aerospace companies' support for ongoing permanent capability to send humans beyond Earth. She's also on the user advisory group of the National Space Council, just a very well-connected, experienced voice on these matters.

And again, I think a very interesting perspective on the role of programs like the Space Launch System and Orion. So here's Mary Lynn Dittmar. Mary Lynn, thank you so much for joining us today on the Space Policy Edition. It's my pleasure, Casey. Thank you for asking me. Let's just get right into it. You wrote an op-ed that came out a couple of weeks ago that we'll link to called NASA's Mission to the Moon is About Far More Than Cost. And in that op-ed, you say that compared to commercial capabilities, there's a value to national investment in space. And it's justified due to two primary things you said, technical and geopolitical reasons.

Let's dive into that second aspect. What's the geopolitical benefit for these national investments into space? And how are what we're doing now with particularly, I think, the SLS and Orion programs, how do those address those benefits? That's a really great question. And I'm glad you've asked it because I spend a lot of time trying to explain this. It's more a function, I think, of the fact that people aren't as aware of the geopolitics that are associated with the space program as they are with newer development in space, those that have been more investor driven. And so I think people tend to neglect the geopolitical aspect, but that has been with us from the beginning. It's evolved, of course, right? I mean, it's not the same by any means.

We're no longer in a Cold War nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union. But the impetus for what became the Apollo program was, of course, that conflict and competition with the Soviet Union. that conflict and competition with the Soviet Union. And as you move forward into time, there has been a recurring theme of geopolitical interests associated with human spaceflight in particular, but not just human spaceflight, but I will stick to that just for the purposes of this answer. You know, a lot of people aren't aware

that the International Space Station program, for example, which I participated in, people know that it's international. I mean, it's in the name Space Station program, for example, which I participated in, people know that it's international. I mean, it's in the name of the spacecraft, but they maybe don't remember that part of the focus of the partnership, as it was broadened to include the Russians, was to try to address nuclear nonproliferation. That outreach by then the Clinton administration

occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union. And there was a great deal of concern that Russian scientists would find their way to what we can euphemistically call not aligned nations, those that didn't necessarily have the best interests of the US at heart, as well as Western allies. didn't necessarily have the best interests of the U.S. at heart, as well as Western allies. And so part of the reason, not the only reason, I mean, the Russians had a terrific developed space program on their own and more experience doing space stations than any other nation on Earth, I might add, which is still the case, actually. They basically, that outreach was in part driven by the geopolitical interest having to do with control of nuclear arms. driven by the geopolitical interest having to do with control of nuclear arms. And as you move forward in time to closer where we are now, as we've talked about going back into deep space,

and of course, these discussions have been underway for a long time, congressional authorizations, you know, which determine policy, have always defined the international partnerships as part of the goals of the human spaceflight program. I mean, that has always been the case. If you go back to the NASA Authorization Act starting in 2005 up to the last one we had, which I think was 2017, they've always spelled out, okay, international partnerships is a key component of it. always spelled out, okay, international partnerships is a key component of it. And the last point of that has to do with U.S. activity and security in deep space, right?

There is a difference in the way that nations look at the endeavors of private companies, however brilliant they may be. And so there was nothing about my op-ed. As a matter of fact, my op-ed talked about the fact that these other capabilities that are coming on board are a critical part of what the U.S. takes forward. But there's a difference in perception from government to government. You know, when you see a government investment in both the vehicles that are going into deep space and the humans that are going into deep space and the huge infrastructure that surrounds that right here on Earth, there's a recognition by those governments that that's a commitment on the part of the United States to exercise the partnerships that it's been discussing for decades to go forth in a way that entertains the peaceful uses of space, and that is allied with their interests also in space. That commitment on the part of the U.S. government can't be met by private companies

just because the private companies don't have the power to make that commitment. Those are the things that are really the distinctions in my view. Yeah, it's almost like a distinction in kind or of type. I'm trying to phrase this like if if the US government by doing something, right, by putting money into something and setting authorization, that's a function of policy of a nation versus a private company pursuing some sort of capability. I guess it's like the difference, I was trying to think of an analogy, maybe. It's like the US putting in lots of money to develop the F-35 versus Boeing's commercial sector side of the

company developing the 737. Yeah, exactly. One says something very different to the rest of the world than the other. I think that's very good. That's a good analogy. I think it helps the understanding along, right? And I think sometimes there's a misperception that this is an either or proposition. Or if someone is supporting the programs that represent the government, then that means that somehow they're opposed to commercial programs or commercial providers or the rapid advances that we've seen in technology. And that's not the case at all. It's that all of these things are needed, right, as we go forward. not the case at all. It's that all of these things are needed, right, as we go forward.

And the difference in kind or in type, as you said, is important because it addresses certain needs or stakeholders in a different way than commercial interest or commercial ventures may. I keep going back to Alex McDonald, I think, I don't know if he coined the term, but in his book, talked about how human spaceflight in particular is this great signal for use of nations, right? Hard to fake and hard to make, and kind of demonstrates a certain level of technological organizational capability to send humans into space and bring them back. Right, exactly. You were drawing this connection, right, of this history of human spaceflight in particular being used as a geopolitical signal by the United States to others and other countries, of course, doing the same thing with obviously the Soviets

starting that. You know, we have, as you said, now this kind of bifurcated policy program, in a sense, at NASA, you have these big national investments for deep space related about deep space human exploration, your SLS and Orion, your related ground systems and so forth. And then kind of this newer, and I hate to use the word commercial because obviously these are all companies, private companies in a sense. Exactly right, yeah. But maybe new contracting methods, right, of this public-private partnership method.

So we're seeing this kind of debate about what is this value of this national investment, this kind of quote-unquote classic structure of investing in this kind of debate about what is this value of this national investment, this kind of quote unquote, classic structure of investing in this type of capability. And I have to admit, it does resonate with me most strongly in terms of why we do this. Well, the government wants to create a capability that's guaranteed. And the government can't rely on a private company to just ensure that that capability exists if this is a critical aspect to the nation. So maybe to expand on further, how do you see deep space exploration for humans

serving that need? Why is this a justifiable use of government investment when there are commercial capabilities that may not serve exactly what the government needs, at least being pursued and developed separately. So what value from the US policy perspective does deep space exploration then provide that justifies the expense of this capability? Well, one of them, I mean, we just talked about, right, which is the geopolitical, it's a strategic value. Sometimes I think that's a little difficult for people who are caught up in, like today, I was sort of watching what's going down on Padre Island, right? To see whether or not the Starhopper is going to hop, right? There's a lot of discussion about that, that's happening on this date. People who are sort of caught up in that,

it's a little difficult to sort of step back and think about the longer term strategy, right? Businesses have strategies. So I've worked for a big aerospace, I've started three companies, and now I run a nonprofit. All of those have business plans. It doesn't matter, right? All of them have to have business plans. And so businesses have strategies too. For a government, the strategy usually has a very long horizon and businesses may have very long horizons also. And return on investment, if you want to think about it that way, is calculated differently. It's calculated on the basis of sort of the ability to develop and maintain these assets. I think referencing Alex's comment about this being a signaling thing is very important.

And it's really hard to calculate that. On one level, we're talking about soft power, right? What is it that a nation is communicating to other nations about their intentions, their commitment, and their openness to partner. I would argue that geopolitically, the benefits that have come from the International Space Station, for example, have been astounding. No one's ever going to put an ROI on it, right? Nobody's ever going to be able to characterize it. I mean, there may be products and capabilities that are developed on station as a result of the research that's done there that may in time generate return on investment, either for the government or for private investors

or, you know, public investors who are putting their money into seeing things to fruition. And that would be great. I mean, that's awesome. And everybody's hoping for that because we're also trying to develop a market over time in low-earth orbit, right? So that's another piece of the policy, and I'll come back to that in a minute. But the benefits that have been returned as a result of the fact that you've now got over 105 nations that have participated in some way with the original international partners on board the space station are tremendous, right? It's helped bootstrap up those countries. It's helped them develop their own technologies. It's provided them with an on-ramp to getting into space and to advancing their own technologies and to benefiting from

partnering with other nations and companies who are developing technology. And so it's impossible to characterize all of that. But I would say that the return on investment, if we sort of talk about it that way, as a justification for policy is massive, both in terms of international relations, and then also the development of those nations. And then the spinoffs that, you know, are going to occur, some of which we're simply not ever going to be able to track, but they're present and they're real. Now, when it comes to looking at other contracting mechanisms as a way of speeding development. We're talking broadly about public-private partnerships, although I will tell you that I also, similar to the comments you made about the word commercial, I have a similar response to public-

private partnerships because I think that the term is being, it's almost becoming a wastebasket term, right? It applies so broadly. What we're really talking about here are contracting mechanisms that shift risk. So in the case where you're having a government contracted system that's done, quote, traditionally, close quote, you do everything you can to lower the risk. You have a tremendous amount of overhead associated with meeting a great number of requirements that are implemented as a result of the framework that exists in the federal acquisition regulations. You have congressional oversight because Congress is charged with oversight of the federal dollar. And so they have a great deal of interest in taxpayer expenditures.

And then they also have a great deal of interest in the return on these capabilities, both in science and exploration, that they actually move forward and they do what they're supposed to do. In other transactional authorities or in public-private partnerships, which are other contracting mechanisms, the risk is shifted. In part, the government is taking risk, but in part, the private entity is also taking risk. This is shorthanded sometimes. People talk about skin in the game, right? On the part of the private entity or their investors. But it's essentially, it's a different way to manage risk from a contracting point of view. There's more risk, okay, in that system. But as a result of the fact that that private entity is agreeing to take some of that risk, then what the government does is step down on some of these other requirements. And then

what the private entity gets out of that at the end, okay, is essentially control of the asset, right? They own that asset. This has been practiced in the US government. It's actually long, actually, its history predates the US government. The English had a thing called the East India Trading Company, which some people may remember from their textbooks, which at various times spun off into public-private partnerships, had an unfortunate history of colonialism, which I'm not making light of, but it created a model that you could sort of bring it all the way forward to today and sort of see this. And then the U.S. has used this sort of model to invest in infrastructure, for example, in the United States. And it's been used worldwide with various levels of success. Sometimes it works really well. We have seen some great successes in NASA in space, okay,

but also at other times it doesn't work so well. And sometimes it takes a long time to see how well it's going to work. So it works best when it's entering into an already existing market, when there's already demand for it. When we're in a situation where it's a if you build it, they will come sort of situation where you enter into public private partnerships without really being sure about whether or not there's a demand, then there's obviously a much higher risk of failure because market economics take over there, right? And if demand fails to materialize, then there are problems no matter how good the technology is.

What I really like about the way that space policy is proceeding right now is that we have this mix. We have a mix of the government systems, and we've talked about some of the geopolitical aspects of that. We have the creation of and the use of other transactional authorities. We have space act agreements. We have public-private partnerships to develop capabilities in the private sector. And bear in mind, when NASA was created in 1958, the idea of bringing along commerce and bringing along the private sector, that was part of the thinking in 1958, the idea of bringing along commerce and bringing along the private sector, that was part of the thinking in 1958. So what we're seeing now is the fruition, we've been saying for the last 10 years in particular, it's always been some of it, but much more in the last

10 years, we're seeing now the fruition of this original idea, right? And a lot of these technologies that were developed originally in the public sector, okay, were then transferred into the private sector. And so you've got this virtuous cycle of these technologies being developed and funded heavily by the government taking the risk for that technology development. And then as those technologies mature, they're spun off and they're spun into the private sector. And then the private sector can improvise and innovate and iterate on those technologies and those capabilities and advance those technologies further for business purposes. And I think this is a great policy. So there's like eight things I want to follow up on. Sorry, I talked too long.

From that. No, I'm trying to just frame this from a big perspective, because I think the tension that we see, that I see online between people who become critical of, you know, again, these larger programs that are expensive versus this kind of new capabilities is really this idea of risk and who owns that risk is what you were saying. The classic model of cost plus contracting, the government basically pays to buy down that risk in advance. Right. And the public-private partnership or the, let's say, fixed cost or shared whatever, however you want to define it, you assume that if that fails, the government has to be willing to walk away with nothing.

Right. This is where it comes down to this idea of a national capability. So if you want something to be guaranteed to be there, you kind of have to pay to ensure that that will be the case for a long time. This is why I kind of said it's like this difference in kind, where the values of this kind of business mentality are being applied to public management or public oversight or public capability, which is by definition, not the same. It seems like there's this, that's maybe where some of this tension comes in because we see the incentive structures just being completely different in both of those two cases. Do you agree with that? Or is that like

too simple? Does that simplify it? think that I think that's really getting to the crux of the matter. I mean, part of why I wrote the op ed was to point out, first of all, that a lot, you know, from a technical point of view, a lot of these systems that are being developed for the government are currently being developed to meet needs for which there really is no market right now, right? You know, and they've been in development for a long time and, and we're getting to within striking distance of seeing them fly. You know, there's only one big piece of equipment that's not yet at the Cape. Everything is down there, right? We're waiting for the, for the core stage to finish green run testing for SLS.

Those technical capabilities have been, by the time they get down there, they've already been wrung out and then they're going to get wrung out some more. Right. And the government is paying for, for all of that to do exactly what you just said to buy down risk. Because once those things go into space, they're going to be flying for a long time. You know, that's the other thing, right? Well, I'm a business, especially an entrepreneurial business, started them a couple, you know, a couple of myself and I've had one success, one that I sold, which I guess was also a success because it was an exit. And then one that was actually sort of my favorite technically, there was an utter failure, complete failure from a business point of view. And I learned from all three of these, right? But one of the things

is that businesses have to be able to pivot. So let's say that you spend a certain amount of time developing a capability. And this is one of the challenges also when we talk about human space flight. Oh my God, the lead time is so long and it doesn't make any difference at one level, whether or not you're developing those capabilities for the government. I mean, it ostensibly takes longer, but nobody has ever brought a human space flight system in, quote, on time, close quote. Even nearing Apollo, like everybody goes, oh, well, we did it. Well, yeah, we did the entire thing by the skin of our teeth, okay, by the end of the 60s, which we promised to do.

But if you look at the development of the individual systems, they lagged too. I mean, this is just a hard, hard thing to do because the engineering is so exacting. I mean, this is what it boils down to. And all the pieces have to fit together and they'll have to work together. So I think when we think about all of this, people get caught up in the technology that they're seeing demonstrated by newer companies and entrepreneurial companies, right? And that's awesome technology. I mean, it's a wonderful thing to see from somebody like me, who my first efforts in commercial space were in 1998. I've been at this for 22 years. I've been people who've been at it a lot longer than that. For somebody like me who's been watching this, seeing these capabilities being evolved now in the private sector is great. which has to do with advancing the business case for those businesses, as well as other aspirational objectives that may belong to the founders or the investors or the boards.

But their first focus must be to advance the business case of those businesses. And they're developing technology. I mean, all of those pieces have to work for them too. And if they're able to put those at the surface of the government and they feel great about doing that, then that's wonderful. There is absolutely nothing, I would hope, that dictates that you have to have business objectives that are opposed to those of the governments or that just because you're in business, that means that you're not aligned with national objectives. I'm not saying nobody's ever seen any of that either. But the balance of effort,

and the goals, and the incentives, which you mentioned, which I think are very well mentioned, these are really different for government systems and government assets than they are for businesses. And there's no reason that they should have to be the same. Right. Well, and that's, again, just going to the idea of incentives. I mean, I think, again, to what people are keying off of here is seeing the rapid amount of iterative progress through a company like SpaceX, which is upgraded its Falcon 9, you know, however many times already. And it's just, it launches, it fails, it does something, you know, they just do it over

and over again, being able to land, being able to do those autonomous landings out at sea as well, reuse and so forth. The incentive structure for the national capability model doesn't seem to support that kind of rapid technological development. It seems like there's this contrast or there's this separation happening between the two where people see, oh, well, if you want the future to happen, you go to this new kind of mix of hybrid model, but with kind of this more capitalist business focus moving forward. But the existing national asset capability model hasn't been at at least publicly, or, you know, in the same sense of visually keeping up with that. So is that a function of just bad incentives or different kind of incentives? Is it irrelevant? Or is it just to have the US be able to say we can lift a lot of stuff to low Earth orbit and to the moon? Does it matter if there's new technology in that? Or does it matter that it's just big? Are these incentives aligning properly

here? Ultimately, I guess, to even take it to the bigger aspect of this, what does it say to the rest of the world if the rapid technological pace is not happening with the national assets versus the other types of development? Does that say something? Does that ultimately undermine in any way the kind of geopolitical role occupied by these? So one thing is that technical progress that you see broadcasts on Twitter or YouTube is what you're allowed to see by those businesses. And businesses vary tremendously in terms of what it is that they demonstrate. So if you compare the absolute showmanship of SpaceX with a more circumspect approach that's been taken by Blue, for example, I don't think that anything that we're seeing implies that SpaceX is better than Blue or Blue is better than SpaceX or

anything like that. I just think, first of all, one needs to be sensitive to the fact that you're seeing what those businesses think is in the best interest for the public to see. And when it comes to government systems, a lot of that government development is controlled in terms of public release by things like export control. There's a review cycle that is, trust me, tremendous, associated even with things like release of photographs. And the reason for that is because we've talked about this before, there are government goals associated with the development of those systems and how those systems are going to operate that have the national seal on them. And that information is just not going to be disclosed. So that's one thing. Social media has really distorted, in my view. I mean, there's a up and a down, right? So on the one hand, great,

promulgates information more broadly, gets you on top of information really fast, allows people to develop constituents and stakeholders, engages the public in ways that hadn't been possible before. I'm totally in favor of all that. But the downside of it is there is a tendency sometimes, at least it seems to me, for people to believe that what they're seeing on social media is all there is. That what's on social media reflects the sort of deeper realities of what it is that they're looking at. And a failure to recognize that people who are very adept at using social media are using social media. That's one thing I just feel like I need to say about the public discourse. And that's not to put anybody, I mean, obviously, I'm on Twitter, I use it, right? That's not to put anybody down. You guys have a terrific presence there. I think that it can be

used to educate in some ways that are really significant, but it has also got, it also has a heavy marketing component to it. That needs to be recognized on the, on the one hand. Now I'm not by any means saying that this is all optics. If what you're trying to do is develop reliable systems that will carry with them. Okay. That will operate at relatively low risk. And I'd say that relatively because there's nothing safe in human space flight, they're safer, okay, at relatively low risk for decades, then the technology that you're going to use, you will advance the technology,

certainly despite a lot of what you see, for example, in social media, the SLS is not, you know, four shuttle engines and two boosters from the shuttle slapped onto an elongated shuttle tank. From an engineering point of view, those items represent both assets for the system, but also constraints on the system, right? Because as soon as you have fixed functions like that, then you essentially have to re-engineer the entire system to sort of accommodate those. So this notion that somehow the whole system is antiquated technology is certainly not true. The methods for manufacturing include some things that have never been tried before, like some things that provided challenges. For example, you know, the deep stir friction welding. There was a lot of publicity about that.

It's significant. The deep stir that was used for SLS segments, the, I have to fall back on calling them SSMEs, my old shuttle days. The RS-25s that are being used or being built by AirJet, entirely new controller, operates with entirely new avionics and electronics.

They're using 3D printing to sort of drive those engines. They've gotten to a point now where they're going to fly on the first view and now they're undertaking the next iteration of those. And then that eventually, because it's a public program, right? Those technology investments will feed back into the private sector,

which is something I don't want to lose either, is that the money that is spent on developing these systems does eventually then filter back out, proliferates back out into the private system and then the private sector and the private sector can iterate and innovate on those. So that represents an indirect value to business. So yeah, technology development is continuing inside these programs. The Orion crew vehicle has transferred over 60 process and technology improvements that have gone, for example, been made available to SpaceX and to Boeing for commercial crew. You don't get that to go in the other direction, right?

It's because these are public systems that are being developed in that way. it's because these are public systems that are being developed in that way. If there was nothing of value, okay, in terms of process or technology improvements that was happening in Orion, then that transfer wouldn't be occurring. But that doesn't mean that the U.S. government is going to be taking out billboards saying, hey, these things are the things that have been made available. Some of them they do, okay, they do talk about those things, but they're not going to talk about all of them for any of these systems. So I think part of it is just a recognition of the fact that, again, the stakeholders are different, the constituents are different, the incentives are different. I don't see these things as either or. I understand why the public imagination is

captured by seeing flyback boosters. I think that the staging, for example, for the first flight of Falcon Heavy was awesome. It was some of the best I have ever seen. And that was an extraordinary, extraordinary sight to see those things come back to understand what it is that that represented. I am looking forward to Blue starting to carry payloads and passengers regularly. I mean, all that stuff, you know, the work that Virgin's doing is sort of a different thing. But, you know, I was there at the Department of Transportation when those two guys got their wings, right? I mean, it was our three, including Beth. So it was awesome, you know, to see all that stuff developed.

And I get why the public imagination is captured by those things. It sees rapid technology, it sees rapid iteration. But you're right. Again, this is technical risk that those companies can assume because they can then turn around

and walk away. Not so easy for the government. Casey Dreyer and Mary Lynn Dittmar. We've got the second half of their great conversation coming up right after this break. Greetings, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. Even with everything going on in our world right now, I know that a positive future is ahead of us.

Space exploration is an inherently optimistic enterprise. An active space program raises expectations and fosters collective hope. As part of the Planetary Society team, you can help kickstart the most exciting time for U.S. space exploration since the moon landings. With the upcoming election only months away, our time to act is now. You can make a gift to support our work. Visit planetary.org slash advocacy. Your financial contribution will help us tell the next administration and every member of Congress how the U.S. space program benefits their constituents and the world.

Then you can sign the petitions to President Trump and presumptive nominee Biden and let them know that you vote for space exploration. Go to planetary.org slash advocacy today. Thank you. Let's change the world. Do you see a divergence happening between public interest and kind of the discussions on the political side in terms of where congressional interest lies in this. Is that becoming a tension or a friction, or do you think that's kind of overblown based on where we actually see the policy happening?

Do you see pressure, I guess, from congressional perspective to take more of a... Are you seeing that SpaceX effect kind of hitting Congress, or is it mainly understanding the same kind of, well, these are very different programs, we need to continue investing the way we were? Yeah, so a personal note, the reason I took this job, and it's, it's funny, because I see comments made about me on Twitter. It's like, well, Maryland is really well paid, you know, Maryland took a pay cut to take this job.

The reason I took this job is because I was very concerned that with the constant pressure on discretionary budgets, I'm talking pre-pandemic here, so let's just set that. That's a whole other can of worms, but just set that aside for a moment. There is downward pressure on discretionary budgets, and there has been for a long time as a result of the growth of those things to which the government is committed and that are non-discretionary. And so as that portion of the federal tax dollar grows larger, this is simple math, the availability of funding for the discretionary sector, which includes NASA, but it's certainly much broader than NASA, continues to decrease. includes NASA, but it's certainly much broader than NASA, continues to decrease. Under discretionary budget pressure, given the advances that were being demonstrated, my concern was that Congress

might say, well, especially newer staffers, right, might not yet have had the time to understand and assimilate what the entire range of values are that are associated, the big set of value propositions for human spaceflight, let's say, that they might not have time to assimilate all those, they're going to be excited by what it is that they're seeing out here in the private sector and might start saying, well, why in the world do we need those government systems anyway? And unless there was a means to say, no, we need all of this, right? We need the government work and we need it for these sorts of reasons. And we need it for transfer of the private sector. We need it for creation of these technologies on the government dime, where the government takes the

risk, moving into markets that don't exist, you know, maybe wannabe markets or markets that might develop. Okay, we need all of that. We need it for the geopolitical reasons. We also need to see, we also need to make sure that government can manage this regulatory framework in such a way that it doesn't stifle the development of the private sector, right? And so all of those things were undertaken by the coalition when we rebooted it to try and sort of say, no, you know, we need all of this. I don't know that my perception was the correct one, that my decision to do this was

in response to a real concern, a real threat. It was my concern. And it was the concern of some others, by the way, also including people in the private sector. This wasn't just the founding companies here, right? But other people were concerned about that because they recognize that if Congress, under these tremendous pressures, I mean, and I don't envy Congress their job one bit, right? I mean, the challenge of all the balancing act they have to do day in and day out is tremendous. And also for the staffers, which is one of the hardest working people in the country, that if those pressures started to drive us in this direction, what we were going to lose. And this is also a real thing in terms of boots on the ground. One of the jobs of duly

elected representatives in a representative democracy, as I keep trying to remind people sometimes, like, yeah, a representative democracy has representatives. Part of the job of the representative is to return economic value to their districts. National programs do that. They engage the nation. One of my concerns was that if that pressure drives us away from that, then what actually happens to the allocations? What happens to the funding? What happens to the international relationships? What happens to the security implications of this, which are not insubstantial? Trying to balance all this. And that's what I was saying. I think the policy now is good because it's providing a means for private industry to step up and iterate and do technical development,

as well as to sort of have this government backbone and assurance behind it and driving forward to all of it. And my experience over the last five years is that people on the Hill understand this. They do understand this. They do balance these things. They may be excited about the, and some of them are, several are excited about sort of what they see in the private sector, but they also take very, very seriously their responsibility to steward national interests, which they see broadly, as I do, as representing both things like geopolitical

interests, but also interest in stimulating capital markets, technical innovation in the private sector, as well as the government sector, etc. And so they try to craft a policy that enables all of these. You said something really, I think, important that's worth dwelling on for a minute there in terms of the idea of a representational democracy, that each of these members of Congress are elected not by the nation, but by a group of people in a specific geographical area. And this idea of directing federal investment into those areas to provide jobs and improve their economy is not a new concept. It's kind of like baked into the system.

No, second thought now, Congress. And I mean, and that's almost kind of this goes to this original topic we talked about, which was this difference in kind, where a national program, it's not a bug of the system that it's kind of pricey, because it's spending the money in a lot of different places. And it's not wasting the money, really, right? I mean, it's enabling a lot of people to have good jobs in places they wouldn't normally get them. And so just from whether you like a person agrees with that or not, the political calculus is pretty objective. And I've always kind of joked people arguing for, let's say, dump the SLS altogether and go to SpaceX is going up to Senator Shelby, who chairs the appropriations process and says, you know, hey, I've got a great deal for you. How about we cancel this program and lay off 20,000 people in Alabama and generate a couple thousand jobs in Texas and California? How does that sound? Yeah, I know, by the way,

how's that election going? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm really glad you're raising this. You know, I do. I do a lot of lectures and I do a lot of work with universities and I do STEM outreach for private entities as well as public ones. In the last several years, I've found myself giving what amounts to a civics lecture, which I certainly never thought I was going to grow up and be teaching civics. But I don't think the high schools are teaching civics. So this may be why, you know, you sort of end up in this position, as unlikely as it seems. So yeah, this is how our government works. And you may decide that you don't like it76. And the idea is this, that, as you say, representatives are elected by their constituents in a specific geographic region, and they are sent to Congress, and they're sent to Congress really for two reasons.

One of them is to return economic benefit to those who elected them. And the second is to work in the national interest. There's tension there, right? Because the needs of the people who elected them may not always align with national interests. And as a matter of fact, in an increasingly polarized society, such as the one that we are sadly operating in now, we see those tensions spilling out all the time. We're talking about it in space, but it's been in a lot of other places, right? So we've had national investments in the federal

interstate system. We've had national investments in the railroads. We've had, I think, mostly transportation, but we've had national investments in sort of large infrastructure projects. And then people have turned around and said, well, how does that benefit us? Well, it benefits you through trade, it benefits you through all the mom and pop program, yeah, these are real jobs, okay, affecting real people's lives. Those jobs are sometimes in otherwise technologically not advanced areas. Some of these companies, you know, the majority of the companies inside the coalition, for example, are small companies. And we spend a lot of our time working with those small companies and trying to address their needs, right? A lot of those small companies are trying to keep like little

technology centers, if you think about it that way, or manufacturing centers, or design and development centers, or software centers going. And in some cases, they're one of the only options for jobs for young people who are coming up into those sectors and have interests and seeing it right there in their own backyard, you know, understanding that this company exists and it builds valves for this rocket, for example, or several rockets, some of the valve companies are building for several rockets, that actually does, that does leave an impression. And so, and it does absolutely positively create jobs. So it gets derided as pork. And I think it's clear when you have situations where basically jobs are being created in

a representative district, and I'm not speaking about House of Representatives here, I'm just using the word representative broadly, representative or senator. You see that being done in a district that looks like, well, why is that happening here? Would it be better over here? Well, because that's the outcome of many times of political horse trading, in which you can assume that there were other benefits or trades, you know, that were kind of made. And again, this is how the system works. So space, in my view, and the reason that tension is really important is because managing

that tension between these sort of local interests and these national interests allows people who go to Congress to begin to understand what the relationship is between the national interests and the local interests. And I'm not saying that all of them balance well. And I'm not saying that all of them behave well. They're people, okay, like any other group of people. But the folks that I work with there and have had really the honor of working up with their, you know, either staff or members, they do take very seriously, you know, sort of these challenges, but they need to remember that under our system of government, they are charged with returning those benefits, you know, back to their,

to the constituents that elected them. And space is no different than any other industrial sector, any other infrastructure project than defense, which is often pointed to because the workforce overlaps considerably. It's no different than those in terms of how those deals are made and those benefits are returned. It always kind of strikes me, maybe you know of another sector, but I don't, outside of space where a good contingent of its supporters tries to downplay or

criticize the fact that too many jobs are related to the industry. Like calling SLS a jobs program as a pejorative kind of sounds insane from a political perspective, because that's what everyone else opens up with how many jobs they create by investing in this system. The tension, as you were talking about, again, by this incentive structure in a national, in a representative democracy, when you have discretionary funds, and something particularly with space, where it's kind of an esoteric, abstract concept to begin with. I mean, of course, the incentives line up to choose and support more expensive projects will get a bigger coalition, because there's just more resources to go around to support it politically. I wonder if there's

actually kind of ironically, a political disincentive to make programs more efficient, because connecting, you know, overall, I'd say in a very general sense, the cost of a program generally relates to how many people are employed by that program as the primary cost. So do you see that as kind of the consequence? Like, why aren't you seeing huge cost savings? Well, it's because that's not the point. It's not a business trying to save money. It's a government trying to build a program trying to build political support by returning jobs and support throughout the country. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I agree with most of what you're saying there. I do think that as technology improves,

I mean, one of the things that's changed tremendously since the days of Apollo, right? And people keep saying we're repeating Apollo. And I'm like, boy, I don't see it. You know, I see international partners who want to play every day. I see this growing private sector. I see the private sector, as you pointed out, is what's been behind the successes all along, right? These are all companies that are returning value either to shareholders or investors. I see all those things happening. I mean, one of the really wonderful things about this cycle where you see the investment being made by government and the government systems, and then it spun off into the private sector is that the private sector, if those companies are successful, and we've been really fortunate

in the United States, I think to see successes, it's not always the case, right? I mean, I think the last count I had was 135 or something like that for a number of launch companies that were started around the world right now. I mean, this is not anything like a market here. It doesn't matter how great your investors are, your incentives are, your other transactional authorities are, it's going to be really hard to see that happen in a lot of those cases. But I think that recognizing that the jobs and the support of the workforce is part of the national asset, it is very different than a business operates. You know, you want that workforce to be available for the government, but also for private industry. for private industry. You want those centers to exist inside those states and those companies to exist inside those states to provide educational opportunities for people who are coming up

inside those states and to begin to do things that they start to do sort of naturally when they mature, right? They enter into partnerships with other businesses. They enter up into partnerships with universities. They provide internship opportunities you know they do there's i mean there's all kinds of again this is a chain of values of value return that are all linked and they're not all visible they're not immediately visible yeah there's much more cost associated with that but the returns are i would just talk about the workforce that workforce that aerospace and defense workforce, because the same argument can be had on the defense side, right? And it's growing on

the defense side, because people are saying, well, we can just do all the stuff that was being done by the Department of Defense, we can do more of that through the private sector. Well, yeah, that's great, okay, where it's applicable to do it. But there's some cases in which for the same sorts of reasons, you're not going to want to do it. That asset of that workforce, that's important to the nation. It goes beyond what's important to business, right? It is important to business. It's absolutely important to business. This is not an either or discussion, but that aerospace and defense workforce, those folks were deemed essential under the pandemic for good reason. We really need to maintain those skills and we need to maintain those skills and we need to

grow those skills and we need to make those skills more diverse and we need to bring more people into that sector, both for government advancement of capability and for private industry advancement of capability. And again, if all those jobs just went away, if you just said, oh, well, I'll just cancel this program, I'll cancel that program. Really? You think all those people are going to go find employment? Right. You serve on the user advisory group at the National Space Council, where you're kind of to this point of what you were just talking about, you're kind of grappling with these big picture issues, this whole of government approach to space and the benefits it serves not just for business, but from the national interest. I'm just curious, what's it like to

just serve on this? It's kind of a coveted role to be on the user advisory group. What are you trying to represent and develop as a group to help guide the nation's future in space? I want to take the second question first. The idea of the user advisory group and its users advisory group, actually, as its chair, Admiral Ellis, is want to point out the apostrophe after the X. The idea being that we're sort of all users, right?

It's made up mostly of industry, some educators, some long-term experts, and we have some astronauts, and then two association heads, right? Myself and my co-chair, Eric Stalmer, who's just been wonderful to work with on the Economic Development and Industrial-Based Subcommittee. The idea of the group is that it brings varying perspectives. And some people from the outside kind of looked at it and said, oh, there's all these industry heads on it. And of course, their perspectives are all going to be pretty much the same because they're all representing, you know, big industry. And it's like, believe me, that is not the case when you get down.

And it's not just because of interests that are differing from a business, you know, competitive point of view, but just because these are folks who have a lot of experience and they've been thinking a lot about these issues, the idea is that what we do is advise the National Space Council. Now, what that means practically is that we do work in the subcommittees as well as in the executive committee

and then generate findings and recommendations that we think the Space Council should be aware of or that help advance topics or issues that the Space Council, that we know the Space Council is already working on. And I'm going to ask you to forgive my cat, who's decided to sound off just now. So you may hear him in the background. He's got strong opinions about the users. Very strong opinions. He has to live with it all the time. And he may just be a cry for help, honestly. So the idea is to advise the National Space Council. I was going to say practically what this really means is forwarding findings and recommendations up to Scott Pace, who is the executive secretary of the National Space Council.

And then Scott and his staff work with the National Space Council or with the Office of the Vice President. The Vice President chairs the National Space Council, as you know, to sort of advance ideas having to do with policy. In some cases, some things that are sort of tactical. So, for example, our subcommittee looked at issues pertaining to Spectrum and raised some concerns, which you're now starting to see played out over the decision that got made, right, with regard to Legato. And I'm not going to, I don't want to go down that hole so much unless you want me to. But, you know, there's a lot of concern about the use of 5G and how 5G is going to be implemented. And oh, by the way, a whole lot of people in space use 5G, right? So the conversation, or they use bands that are adjacent to or the concern are maybe interfered with by 5G. And so we, you know,

we did a little bit of looking at that. That's the kind of issue, a spectrum issue is the kind of issue that has broad applicability, because satellites have interest in it, you know, both private and government ones, that industry has interest in it. The Department of Defense has interested in it. NASA has interest in it. The Department of Defense has interest in it. NASA has interest in it. As a matter of fact, it's hard to kind of imagine anybody that's involved in space that doesn't have some equity having to do with spectrum. That's a case where we had some discussions about that. In our case, it was just sort of trying to tease out and better understand what some of those issues were.

The UAG is also, Eileen Collins has a subcommittee that she chairs, which has been focused on STEM education and outreach. And Eileen's been looking really carefully at issues having to do with workforce and workforce development and technology capability in that workforce and also diversity in that workforce. And they're looking at a lot of recommendations that have been made previously by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is an adjunct to the White House, as you know, as well as the National Science Foundation, the National Science Board, as well as a lot of STEM-focused initiatives, both in and out of the government, and talking a lot to university students and to university faculty about what it is that they think are shortfalls for, not necessarily shortfalls,

but areas of improvement with regard to education. And they've made a recommendation that they think that the government should look at essentially what amounts to a new workforce education bill. Now, these recommendations as they go forward, and that's obviously another sort of whole of government implications. So these recommendations come forward as an advisory group. We don't advise NASA. We advise the National Space Council. And some of the findings or recommendations we may make could be related to things that are going on inside NASA, but not always. And the idea is just to sort of provide this outside body of industry and experts as a means to provide an additional input. So that's the idea of the UAG. What it's like to work on the UAG, which is your other question?

It's an advisory group. So I've sat on several of them. I'm on another one over at the National Academies, which is the Space Studies Board. And these are great opportunities, you know, for the individuals to sit there because, I mean, I learn at least as much as I give, you know, much more, I think, than I give. But the focus of this, you know, to be able to provide advice and counsel to the nation, it truly is a tremendous honor. And I take that very seriously. I'm also on the space transportation, the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee over the FAA. And all of these positions are sort of the same in the sense that you need to

realize that the focus of what you're trying to do is to be thinking about what are the national goods? What's in the best interest of industry, how do we think about these things holistically. But on a boots on the ground day-to-day level, you know what? It's meetings and phone calls and review of documents. And in my case, the person I talk to the most is Eric, right? As a matter of fact, we have a tag up tomorrow. It's conferring with my co-chair, kind of thinking about how do we help our subcommittee be as effective as possible and like that. So I mean, the day-to-day sort of tactical aspects of this are just, it's pretty much like being in any other advisory group. The joys of committee work. Exactly right. Exactly right. So when you serve on these types of committees,

and you served on many over the years in very high profile committees for various advisory groups and others on space, how do you balance or how do you approach the idea of balancing your personal views on space with your professional responsibilities? Is there a huge difference? So, you know, Dr. Mary Lynn Dittmar as the head of the CDSE versus Dr. Mary Lynn Dittmar as the head of Dittmar Associates. Is there, how do you try to balance that out or be aware of your own personal desires versus the members and others that you're representing? You know, this is a question that also goes sort of the representative government question, right? When you're in a leadership position, when do you trust your own perspective as best representing the broad interests of your constituents, even if all of your constituents don't necessarily see it that way?

Sure. Versus when do you feel like you really need to defer to specific, specific interests, right? In the case of the UAG, it really hasn't been very difficult. That may sound sort of funny, but in a lot of cases, and I would say this is true of the coalition too, it helps to start with an understanding of the sort of the high level goals of the organization. Eric and I are a little different than a lot of the rest of the folks that are serving, many of whom, not all of whom are special government employees, we were placed on the UAG specifically as industry representatives, meaning representatives of

industry, right? So we were placed there specifically to represent the interests of our respective associations, as well as to leverage, you know, our experience and thoughts sort of going into it. When we've gotten into discussions, for example, in the subcommittees, although actually when good discussions get going in the subcommittee, C&I just try to be quiet so we can let the subcommittee discuss. I mean, it's kind of also the role of a leader is to know when to be quiet. But I think I have to say that as the CEO of CDSC, you know, I speak frequently with my board about what the platform is, if you will, sort of the policy platform and the communications platform is for CDSC. It hasn't changed for the entire time that I've been in this position, which is that sort of our bedrock is that we support the government programs, you know,

the need to sort of have these government programs, but also in human exploration, but also in science. So, you know, I've spoken up some on the UAG about the science aspect of it, as has Les Lyles, who actually chairs the Exploration and Discovery Subcommittee, and, you know, on CDSC, and also to advance commerce in space. And this has been in our platform on our website for five years. So for me, given that that's the goal, the only thing I really cannot deviate from and wouldn't, because it's the reason I took the job in the first place, is advocating for the government programs, the government assets, the need for the United States to have national with US on the side programs. But since we also strongly support these other developments, then for me, it's really not that difficult. There have been times, though, not so much on the UAG, but I would say in some other settings periodically, where I've been aware that there's a tension between what it is that I think and what I need to do to speak on behalf of CDSC. I don't ever

say anything I don't believe. But there have been times where I have chosen not to say something extra, maybe, or, you know, not to hammer on a point that if I were left to my own devices, I might hammer on for better or for worse, to speak on behalf of the association that I represent, because you know what, that's my job. But if I've said something on behalf of the association that I represent, because you know what, that's my job. But if I've said something on behalf of CDSE, I found a way to say something that I can get behind. And as we look ahead, just very quickly in the minutes or two we have left, you can just sum up facing both for you and for the CDSE, what are going to be the most important policy challenges or issues that you're going to be dealing with over the next five years? What do you see as becoming the most important thing for the U.S. as a national capability to

deal with in space? Technology is proliferating around the globe at an astonishing rate. Computing capability, if nothing else, and there's plenty else, if nothing else, has driven transaction costs. I'm talking about this now in terms of technology development and engineering and systems engineering and all the rest of that has driven those transactions that are internal to all of on paper and now is done on software. Those capabilities are proliferating around the globe and they are driving, whereas it used to be the hardware that was driving all the engineering, now it's the software and the hardware that's driving all the engineering. And we may end up in a situation where that's flipped. Some people think it already has happened in some cases.

So as that proliferates more and more and more, and the technology is available more and more and more, you're going to have more and more entrants coming into this game. On the one hand, that's awesome. New innovation, new technology, new players, new opportunities for partnership, new discoveries, new advances. I mean, what's happening in science is amazing. I mean, if you look at it, I haven't had any time to talk about science this time, which is funny because I'm talking to a planetary society guy. But, you know, look what's happening in science. Okay, in space science, it's just stunning, right? I mean, it's just stunning in a really exciting way. then understanding how does all of this get orchestrated going forward? The U.S. is going to need to think very carefully about what the nature of partnerships are and who are those partnerships with. It's important for this nation to understand what it needs. Okay, what are its values? What are its goals? And it always starts with goals, right? Whether it's the CDSC or the

UAG or the nation or a business to understand what those goals are, and then to understand what the needs are of the others, others sort of writ large, right? That it will be dealing with and working with. How is it that we orchestrate all of that going forward? That's already a terrific tension. And it's one we've actually talked a lot about during this entire podcast, right? It's kind of surfaced in a bunch of different guises over and over again. That tension, in my view, is only going to increase. It plays out in some cases in great ways. Breakthroughs, people get on board, they get excited, they get really interested, they advance science, they advance exploration, that's awesome. Plays out in some other ways, not so great, right? Big debate going on right now about just how

advanced, for example, are China's capabilities and what do we know? How do we figure out how it is that we manage all of this stuff and orchestrate all of this going forward? Because from a strategic point of view, and I am at my core a strategist, From a strategic point of view, the strategic tools that you use, these things evolve over time. Right now, it's a very large rocket and a deep space vehicle and the ground systems that support them. But in 20 years, it may not be. Now we think about these things in terms of the work we've done recently on UAG. How do we secure U.S. and U.S. businesses' ability to be able to operate in space? And what do we start thinking about now to facilitate their development and the entrance of markets into that space and a lot of other things? But we need to be aware that these strategies, these tools that we use, those strategies and tools may need to evolve over time. And for me, that's the biggest challenge. That may not be the most satisfying answer, but it is where my head operates. And thinking about how we do all

of that while continuing to support national interest, while continuing to support business interest, while continuing to support science and exploration and commerce, and the interests of our partners, both international partners and industry partners and university and academic partners. It's really a huge interlocking universe, but we need to recognize that it's not static. It will continue to change. And how we meet that challenge requires a lot of really good heads, a lot of really thoughtful people, a lot of sort of brilliant technological work. I think we're up to it, but it will continue to be the challenge that faces us. Dr. Mary Lynn Dittmar is the president and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. Mary Lynn, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts with us today. Thank you for asking. I enjoyed the conversation. Casey Dreyer, Chief Advocate for the Planetary Society, in conversation with his guest,

Mary Lynn Dittmar. Great conversation, Casey. It really was fascinating. As you know, I was monitoring it, as I said earlier, and I also go through it again. Just a terrific get, as I told you a couple of weeks ago when you told me that she was going to be on the show. I hope that we will hear from her again. Oh, I had so many questions that we ran out of time to talk about. So absolutely, I think she will be gracing our audio space at some point in the future. All right. We'll close this out.

And we'll do that with one more pitch before we leave you. We'll close this out and we'll do that with one more pitch before we leave you. Planetary.org slash membership is the place to go to learn all about becoming a member of the Planetary Society, all of the different that Casey and the rest of our advocacy folks, prominently including Brendan Curry, do on your behalf as a space fan, as someone who wants to see us out there exploring the solar system and beyond. Once again, planetary.org slash membership. We hope that you will become part of the Society. Join us. Casey, thank you very much. Always great to do this with you, Matt. Thanks again. We will talk to you again on the first Friday in the month of September, as we then will have just about two months to go before a momentous political decision is made here in the United States.

Wherever you are around the world, remember that we are on our way to Mars and we are busy all around the solar system. And that is something to be very thankful for. I am Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio, Casey Dreyer, Chief Advocate and Senior Space Policy Advisor for the Planetary Society. We will be back and I hope between now and then you will tune in to the weekly version of Planetary Radio. This has been the Space Policy Edition. Take care, everyone. Stay well. Ad astro.