Closing Bell - Manifest Space: A Stellar Human Spaceflight Summer with Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver 08/30/24

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

From astronauts stuck at the I.S.S. to Blue Origin’s latest suborbital spaceflight, it’s been a big week for human spaceflight. Commercial players have dominated the skies since the development of the Commercial Crew Program—helping to kick off a new era of public-private partnerships in space. Lori Garver, NASA’s former Deputy Administrator, was a key architect in the program. She joins Morgan Brennan to parse through how Boeing can recover from its latest Starliner struggles, Polaris Dawn’s prospects of launch, and space policy come the November 2024 election.

It's been a big week for human spaceflight news, starting with NASA. The agency announcing last Saturday its astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, will be coming home on a SpaceX Dragon, after NASA decided issues with Boeing's Starliner meant that capsule should return to Earth empty. It's an eight-day mission now stretching to eight months. A shocking outcome for Boeing, which over a decade ago, when NASA's commercial crew program was starting, had been viewed as the front runner over SpaceX. What I find historically inaccurate is people who now say, well, the whole point of commercial

crew was to have two competitors. And so we have to have a second. We were nearly forced by Congress and many of the leaders of NASA to just select one competitor. We'd gone through, of course, space act agreements and helped these companies develop their vehicles, but we were really receiving a lot of pressure to go down to one competitor. And the competitor that people wanted was Boeing. They wanted Boeing because they felt Boeing needed the lion's share of the money. And they thought Boeing had a better chance of being successful. Frankly it was really hard for NASA to grasp a company like SpaceX, you know, new to human spaceflight, new to spaceflight

generally, that for the amounts of money they proposed that they could do this was not fathomable for many people. Lori Garver was the deputy administrator of NASA during the Obama administration, from 2009 to 2013. She helped architect the commercial crew program that hired Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. She even wrote a book, Escaping Gravity, that details the experience. But with Blue Origin just completing its eighth crewed suborbital spaceflight and the historic

all-private Polaris Dawn mission on tap to launch soon, Garver, who also founded the Earthrise Alliance and co-founded the Brooke Owings Fellowship, thinks commercial space is forging the future. We have a need to be able to take some risks, honestly, that the government has become more reticent to do. So it's a moment for sure. On this episode, Garver, who is currently an operating advisor at Bessemer Venture Partners, shares what she's most excited about in commercial space and what the November election outcomes could mean for policy in 2025 and beyond. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. Well, Lori Garver, it's so great to speak with you, former NASA deputy administrator.

It's always good to get your thoughts on all things space. And certainly there's a lot for us to dig into here this week, starting with human spaceflight. And so that's exactly where I do want to start with you. Commercial crew program, you're a key architect. The fact that NASA has made this decision to have Boeing stand down, send Starliner home empty, and for SpaceX to step in. How do you see this moment in time for commercial crew? Black eye for Boeing, a win for SpaceX, or all of the above? Thanks, Morgan.

It's great to be with you as well. I would say both those things. Certainly a black eye for Boeing and a great opportunity for Dragon to continue to provide this crew transportation and to be a backup. When we created the program over 10 years ago, I honestly wouldn't have imagined this type of a scenario. Boeing did get significantly more money than SpaceX did. And for, I think, most of us, there was a sense that Boeing would come first. That is how it was scheduled. They're over four years later than SpaceX, and SpaceX has been performing well. So this is a moment that is not to celebrate.

We certainly wanted to crew providers and absolutely may still get that. I think that is the hope still moving forward. And if Boeing can return their capsule autonomously and fix the thrusters and helium leaks, they can be back at it. Do you think Boeing will want to be back at it? I have no insight into that.

You heard the NASA administrator say 100% Boeing will be flying crew. I think that is more Boeing's call, although it's a partnership agreement, and financially they are on the hook to do it. I guess I would bet that if they return without problems, we'll try again. And if NASA allows them to do it with crew next time, that would be a big win for Boeing. I don't think NASA has decided that. Certainly if there are problems on the return, it's a whole different calculation. And of course, Commercial Crew was stood up as this public-private partnership model that was so new for government and sort of changed the economic model. You were key to the creation

of it. So is there a scenario in which you could actually see this drop down to one provider? Or is because the fundamental aspect of Commercial Crew about creating competition, could it be a situation where you open it up to other people to bid and develop capsules as well? Yeah, all good questions. When we created this program, we in the Obama administration were really committed to having two competitors. But one of the reasons for that was really, you get, you know, a finer, maybe a sharpening of the pencil when you have competitors. And I think that actually has worked in that SpaceX probably really did want to be Boeing, they did. And they are making a go of this. Boeing staying in it would be helpful for sure.

But I see the program as a success because we've already gotten this one operational provider of astronaut transportation to the space station, which previously we had to count on the Russians to do. There's always going to be an opportunity for new folks to on-ramp. And we know Sierra Space has got their dream chaser. They're hoping to launch here maybe later this year, early next year with cargo. Always a chance they have their plans to evolve that as crew, that they will make that happen. But, you know, the space station is planning to de-orbit here in the next six years.

And so how much of a market the government space station will be is a question, I think, that Boeing will have to consider, any entrance will have to consider. What I find historically inaccurate is people who now say, well, the whole point of commercial crew was to have two competitors, and so we have to have a second. We were nearly forced by Congress and many in the leaders of NASA to just select one competitor. We'd gone through, of course, Space Act agreements and helped these companies develop their vehicles. But we were really receiving a lot of pressure to go down to one competitor. And the competitor that people wanted was Boeing. They wanted Boeing because they felt Boeing needed the lion's share of the money.

And they thought Boeing had a better chance of being successful. Frankly, it was really hard for NASA to grasp a company like SpaceX, new to human spaceflight, new to spaceflight generally, that for the amounts of money they proposed that they could do this was not fathomable for many people. And I watched SpaceX get a lot more credibility as they started docking with cargo to space station. And this run before you can, or walk before you can run type of program worked very well. Boeing here is coming in. Sure, they've been involved in human space flight before, but not on a fixed cost basis. They

aren't getting as much as they thought. And we probably all should have thought back to that at the beginning. It's so fascinating to me. What a difference a decade makes. Yes, absolutely. This was really hard to get support for a program that allowed entrants like SpaceX to be involved in those people. Some of them running NASA right now are reticent to sort of go back there and admit it. But that's absolutely not a problem because we had really strong views on it, and we were able to get those through. I think the cost-plus contracts that NASA still spends most of its money on, like SLS and Orion, are not as productive as this program has been, whether or not you get a Boeing onboarded soon or not. I mean, it is interesting to me because you have started to see more of a shift, and I've seen this on the Defense Department side of things as well, towards fixed price contracts. Perhaps because of this, it shifts more of the risk from the government back to

the companies. Another Boeing program, for example, the Air Force One program, I think, is a really another critical example of this. But it just seems so counter to the American ethos to me to not be encouraging more competition and speaks to how amazing or I guess unique Commercial Crew was in that sense that it was set up that way. Yes. And keep in mind, it was built off commercial cargo. So the commercial cargo program first really mined this. We planned to be doing this in the 1990s, and after the burst of the dot-com bubble, there wasn't the market for commercial satellites that came later. ventures like Lockheed's VentureStar mission didn't see to fruition. But lots of different companies have run at reusability and the kinds of things that would allow you to lower the cost. So lowering the cost was the key. I think now, certainly, as you said, the defense, mainly through SDA and the Space Force, you're seeing people see that they could take advantage of this.

Incentivizing the private sector to do better was our goal and giving that better value to the taxpayer. So if that is your goal, and you can have industry put in some skin in the game, but also sharpen their pencil, that's better for everyone. I want to go back to something you said, because what we've seen since 2020, when SpaceX started flying humans in its Crew Dragon capsule, is we're on the cusp of, and I'll get to that in a second too, the 14th human space flight for SpaceX. But we've done 13 so far. Nine of those have been for NASA and the others have been all private. And so just to go back to the point you made about the decommissioning of the International Space Station and what this market is going to look like, I am

curious to get your thoughts on that, because we do see this mushrooming up of commercial space station possibilities and companies right now. And so how you're thinking about that market? I am bullish on commercial space stations. I think in a natural progression from the ability to lower the cost of space transportation to low Earth orbit is then developing lower cost laboratories. We've been managing the space station, I think, in a way that is brilliant, allowing scientists to do that early research, now allowing more tourists or commercial customers, if you will. And the space station, for a lot of reasons, primarily technically, needs to be retired. But you also have the fact that we are literally linked to the Russians on the space station. And geopolitically,

that's a very uncomfortable position for us to be in today. So developing commercial space stations or these CLDs, commercial LEO destinations, is something where I would love to see the government investing serious amounts of money. They're not really doing that yet to, again, incentivize the companies. There's lots of interest to doing this, that does many things. It provides a market for these transportation systems that are being developed. It gives you that platform where we can really take advantage of the unique microgravity environment in a way that allows it to develop naturally where commercial companies want to take it. NASA can also save some of the $3 billion they're spending on space station, more cost plus contracts to date,

and be able to spend that money doing either actual research, having their own space station, and having their own astronauts on these space stations or going farther as they are attempting to do with RMS. So I do want to talk to you about Polaris Dawn, speaking of private human space flights. This is the next mission with SpaceX. It's been pushed. It's been scheduled for this week, but it's been creeping back because of different issues, mainly weather. It's now scheduled to lift off as soon as Friday morning. It's the second space flight for Jared Isaacman. But what's interesting about this is that

they're gonna be flying farther out into space than any humans have in more than five decades. They're gonna be orbiting through the Van Allen radiation belt, and then they're gonna drop down to a lower orbit and they're gonna do the first ever all private spacewalk. They're going to be testing out new SpaceX suits. And actually two of the crew are SpaceX employees too. This seems like a moment. This seems like a milestone for a number of reasons. I want to get your thoughts. It does to me too. It's really exciting. When I spoke with Jared last or maybe the time before, he asked me, has commercial space, human spaceflight, developed faster than you envisioned?

And I said, well, at first it was slower. And now, yes, it's become faster. Because when we started this in the 80s and 90s, as I said, there were a lot of entrants and we thought it'd be happening then. But it's now faster than I could have imagined from sort of full stop to here. Having all those milestones that you mentioned on a commercial flight would have been inconceivable. They're pushing on, I think, the ability to become a space-bearing civilization, which is Jared's and I think SpaceX's mantra. We have a need to lower the cost of spacesuits. We have a need to be able to take some risks, honestly, that the government has become more reticent to do. So it's a moment for sure. We wish them the best. And they are really, I think, going to capture

the public's attention once people start realizing what they're doing are first, even just if you were a government employee, and they are not. The Van Allen radiation belt. I mean, I'm going to go there. I'm going to go there, because there's the conspiracy theorists about whether we actually really went to the moon 50 years ago, right? And one of the things that they say is, oh, the Van Allen radiation belt. I mean, just in terms of, do we fully know or understand or appreciate the effects that that level of radiation has on the human body? NASA has been researching and studying astronauts who've been through the Van Allen radiation belt for over 50 years. But yes, there's more to be done. Frankly, I do think there should probably be more focus on these kinds of things, especially as we talk about going longer term missions into deep

space. So I think for the Polaris mission, five days, this is something that they can help add to the database. I don't think it's a particular individual risk for these people, but it is absolutely just on a list of things that this mission and reaching farther out with humans into space needs to understand better and figure out ways to countermeasures or at least manage the radiation. We also have this week, we also have this week, the eighth crewed flight by Blue Origin, suborbital. I would consider this probably more of a space tourist flight, although they do have a researcher on board, microgravity researcher on board too. I guess just how does all of it speak to how this ecosystem is coming together? Yeah, I'm not somebody who sees the

tourism moniker in a negative way. I know some people do. I made an attempt myself to go to space as a tourist back in 2001, 2002. I was paying and had sponsors to go on the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station. I never shied from the tourism moniker. There were, gosh, at the time, I'm sure it's probably similar, it was the third largest tourism, the third largest economic driver in the world. So it's not to be discouraged as a market. Doing research on orbit is something I felt strongly about doing if I'd gone. These folks on Polaris and even you saw with Virgin Galactic. I know that the Blue Origin people really are, I think, embracing this as a tourist event. And the eighth one, I'm just thrilled that we're at this point.

I think Blue Origin's done a fantastic job of getting interesting, diverse, important people on these flights who can deliver a message that is space is for all. Yeah, I would sign up to be a space tourism immediately. Wait, I didn't know this. What happened? Why didn't you go? Oh, it's just a great story. You got to have to read my book. I was working on behalf of a client at the time who was paying to go to space, Fisk Johnson. He's now the CEO of SC Johnson Wax. And he had to back out after 9-11. The Russians really needed to fill the seat. They asked if we could find someone else.

I called around. We had this great agreement. It was only $12 million to go to the space station for 10 days. I know I can hardly imagine it now. And it is a good agreement. I could get sponsors and started doing that, started the medical certification in Russia. Long story short, a agent of Lance Bass's learned about my flight, decided this business model might work, and he pitched it to Lance. Lance shows up in Star City.

We did some of the training together. It turned out the price went up when Lance arrived because I said, oh, he will pay a full $20 million. So I was going to train his backup with Lance for a while. They ended up not raising the money, and that meant the opportunity was gone for me as well. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. My name was Astro Mom. My kids were six and eight, and I learned Russian. We had a good time just considering this as a possibility, but it was a very different time and it was not popular either.

I think Jared Isaacman has said, hey, you know, he's concerned that people associate the billionaire space travel. But I was not a billionaire and trying to go through sponsorships. And that wasn't really that popular either. So and then having Lance Bass there ended up being, you know, the thing that kept it from happening, but also got a lot of attention to the space station, which was part of the goal of my mission. And of course, your book is Escaping Gravity. We'll note that as well. And it's a fabulous book. Okay, so are you signed up to go to space with one of these other commercial entities then now?

I am not. I have to acknowledge that when I thought I could get 10 days on the space station, getting settling is not something I've yet decided I have to do. I've been saying for a long time I think I'll go to space in my life. I still think that. But no, I don't have. the worldview balloon that goes not technically into space, but you get eight hours of the curvature of the Earth, the view of Earth from space,

and I think they'll start flying those in a year or two. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Okay, so we're in election year, we're in the midst of the political season here, campaign season here. I wanna get your thoughts on what this means for space from a policy standpoint, looking to 2025. Yeah, things have changed in that if you had a sitting president running for reelection, you might imagine that a second term would look very similar

to his first term. You also have the other candidate being a former president. So you can sort of imagine he would do similar things. We have a little bit of a wild card with Kamala Harris, although she's been running the National Space Council. So you could probably have some confidence that a lot would remain the same. If you look back, though, at vice presidents who come in after being vice president, they do change out a lot of, mostly all of the senior leadership. Certainly NASA folks, I'm sure, are recognizing that they serve the Biden administration and the Harris administration could be different. We, I am concerned, are having a little bit of a pushback. I think I saw Ralph Nader talking about these are just rich flights for billionaires. There's been people who've been pushing back against commercial space,

like it's somehow something just for the rich. And I would be the first to want to send the message that it was the Obama administration who started this program. It has saved tens of billions of dollars of tax dollars that is fiscally responsible. So really, space is bipartisan. And I think the only part that isn't tends to be earth sciences, because if you have Republicans primarily don't agree that climate change is something we need to address. Otherwise, it's more parochial. You tended to have the people who had space jobs in their districts, and those were sort of government cost plus districts like Alabama and Texas and

Florida being for space. I think one of the nice things about commercial space is it should spread out the support beyond just those classical space states because it improves everything. Our ability to now launch hundreds of satellites per year through SpaceX has really brought back and helped our balance of trade and increased our economy. So those are things everybody should want to do. But I think there's a lot of churn now about people nervous about what a President Harris versus a Trump would do. We've got people who want, I think, to be in those administrations, and they're arguing that the other presidential candidate would be terrible. I don't subscribe to much of that. I tend to, having met a lot of the presidential candidates and presidents, recognize I've never met a lot of the presidential candidates and presidents recognize I've never met a president who didn't absolutely love the space program. NASA is a crown jewel and commercial space is

just a natural offshoot of this country's leadership in space. Yeah. And to your point, it's sort of seen as a unifier across party lines. Okay, so final question for you, because you are an advisor at Bessemer Ventures as well. And that is, as we do talk about commercial space, investing in commercial space, and sort of just the innovations, the capabilities, the technologies, what do you see? What excites you the most right now, in terms of what's being developed and what's coming online? I am really excited for commercial LEO destinations. I do believe that this lowered cost of access to space with both cargo and crew can open up our ability to do things in microgravity that could be life-changing for those of us on Earth. A lot of the medical research that has been done shows us how uniquely you could utilize things developed in low gravity environment

of space here on Earth for things like pharmaceutical development. I think the Earth science is also ready for a leap. We have been looking back at the earth from space for a long time. The instruments, again, the lower cost, our ability to do these things has improved so much. It's time to go from sort of just being able to see what's happening to doing something about it. Lori Garber, it's always great to get your thoughts. Appreciate the time. Thank you.

Thank you. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts and by watching our coverage on Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.