Main Engine Cut Off - T+193: Marcia Smith, SpacePolicyOnline.com

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com joins me for a round up of space policy news, including how the Biden and Nelson administrations are doing so far, things that are being overlooked or sidelined, the Senate’s NASA Authorization bill, NASA’s Human Landing System contract and the battle for funding, the space tourism learning period, and we finish with a quick look at what China and Russia have been up to lately.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 41 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Hemant, and seven anonymous—and 613 other supporters.TopicsSpacePolicyOnline.com – Your first stop for news, information and analysis about civil, military and commercial space programsMarcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) / TwitterOp-ed | NOAA is stalling U.S. space traffic management - SpaceNewsFAA Introduces New System to Clear Airspace More Quickly Around Launches and Reentries – SpacePolicyOnline.comSpace Force Gets $2 Billion Boost in FY2022 Request – SpacePolicyOnline.comBiden Budget Retains Goal of Putting Astronauts Back on Moon by 2024 – SpacePolicyOnline.comSenate Passes NASA Authorization, SSA Legislation as Part of Sweeping China Competition Bill – SpacePolicyOnline.comNASA Offers $45M to Solve Risks for Astronaut Moon Landing ServicesNelson Sees Jobs Bill as Solution to HLS and Other Funding Needs – SpacePolicyOnline.comChina, Russia Lay Out Joint Plans To Explore the Moon While China Launches First Crew to Tianhe – SpacePolicyOnline.comPutin Wants Continued Space Cooperation With U.S. – SpacePolicyOnline.comThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterBuy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off ShopMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by NASA

hello and welcome to main engine cutoff i'm anthony colangelo as always and i do have yet another special guest with us it has been interview slash guest discussion uh time for a while here on the show just because it it's a good time to talk with people there's's a lot of stuff going on that I like to talk with other people about, and today is no exception. We've got Marsha Smith. She runs SpacePolicyOnline.com. She is the go-to person if you're thinking about space policy. There's been a lot of topics going on lately that I would like some additional context on to discuss, so, you know, couldn't think of anyone better than Marsha has been on before, but it's been a while. So I'm really excited to have Marsha back on the show. But before we get there, I want to say thank you to everyone

out there who makes Main Engine Cutoff possible. There are 654 of you supporting Main Engine Cutoff every single month at mainenginecutoff.com support. And that includes 41 executive producers. Thanks to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Laura, Melissa, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everdee Astronaut, Frank, Julian, and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, the Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Haymonth, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support for making this show possible.

Could not do it without you. This is entirely listener supported. So if you like what I'm doing here, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support and join the crew over there. Always as a reminder, you get headlines every single week if you are at $3 or more. It's an extra podcast in your feed where I run through all the stories of the week, everything important to know in space. So if you like that, if you want to stay up on the news with me, head over there, do that. You'll support the show. You get an extra podcast. It's a win-win all around. But without further ado, let's give Marsha a call. Marsha Smith, welcome back to the show. It's been quite a while since you've been on, but thanks for coming back. Thanks for inviting me. It's been a growing list of space policy topics on my mind, some of which I have opinions on,

but I think additional context from somebody who's really in the know about this stuff would be helpful on. So I'm excited that we're getting you on here to talk about this stuff. Might be best to start with your thoughts on some overview topics. We're, you know, a solid amount of time here into the Biden era, into the Bill Nelson era. I'd love to hear some like general trends that you've been tracking now that we're this far into the new administration. Well, you know, it seems as though it's been a long time because the passage of time seems to have changed with the pandemic and everything. But we're actually not all that far into the Biden administration. And I guess, you know, what's interesting to see so far is that with regard to many aspects of space, they're still following along from what the Trump administration was

doing. And everybody in the space community gets a little anxious whenever there's a presidential transition because they worry about all the pieces being thrown up in the air or landing somewhere else. And that didn't happen this time. So I think that that stability is going to be very good for the space program to the extent that, you know, the space program was on the right course. I think that the Biden administration adoption of the 2024 deadline for Artemis surprised just about everybody. And I'm still not sure there's universal agreement that that's possible. So I think that debate is going to continue.

And of course, money is a big part of that. And Mr. Nelson has incredible experience working with Congress. And we'll see if he's any more successful than Jim Bridenstine was in getting the money, because Bridenstine also had a lot of experience with Congress. But it's not just the money thing for 2024. It's actually can you get the technology? And can you test it enough to feel that you're really safe with it in just three and a half years? So I would say that that is something that is left over from the Trump administration that the Biden administration has embraced, that is still probably not universally agreed to in the space community and in Congress. I gotta say, I was not at all surprised by the embrace of 2024. Because when everyone was out

here saying 2024 is a political deadline, I went, sure is, but now it's someone else's political deadline. So you know, it was a thing that was a knock against it that quickly the tables turned on who thought 2024 was a good or bad idea? Well, I do think that the issue, again, it's money and technology as much as politics. And I still think that it's going to be a challenge to get a system that is tested and safe enough to put people on in just three and a half years. But there's a lot else going on, of course, and we're still waiting to see what Kamala Harris does with the Space Council. We're all eagerly waiting to know who's going to be Scott Pace's successor as executive secretary, because I think I don't know anybody who disagrees that Scott was very effective in that job. And so whoever steps in there is going to have big shoes to fill.

And I do think that there are some aspects of space policy that are languishing at the moment and really could use the attention of somebody at the White House level. Things like space traffic management and space situational awareness, whatever happened to designating someone to do mission authorizations. Everyone's talking about mining the moon and everything, but we don't even have a regulatory regime for satellite servicing in orbit. So there are a lot of these things. And again, I just get back to the fact that it is only July and early in July. And so they've had, what, six months or something to get their act together. And I think they've been a little busy on other things. For Scott Pace, I would call it a spicy op-ed in Space News recently about space traffic management and how that's gone nowhere. Those topics that you mentioned were things that we heard a lot about in the National Space Council. Now that we can look back on that era of the Space Council existing again for its second time or whatever it was, what were your takeaways from the existence of it,

the effectiveness of it? What things are things that actually changed in that era and are sticky and what things kind of fell by the wayside? Well, I think that, you know, they came out with, I'm trying to remember,

is it seven executive orders and space policy directives and I think two executive orders and all these other things. I mean, just the amount of policy issues that they were able to get enough consensus on in the executive branch to come up with those policies, I found to be very impressive. And I think that it takes somebody with the skill to work with executive branch agencies, you know, get them all at the table. I've heard these jobs in the White House being described as being like a marriage broker, because you only have as much power as, you know, in Scott's case, he had the vice president behind him, which is pretty good. But, you know, by and large,

you need something to get everybody to sit around the table and reach consensus. And I think he did a really wonderful job at that. We'll see how many of these have staying power. I think we're already seeing that the Space Force is here to stay. I still argue that that was a congressional initiative because they were the ones that came up with the original idea. But I think it is certainly true that when Trump threw his weight 100% behind it, that that got DOD off the dime and got them finally to agree to it. So I do think that the president in that case had a great influence on that one.

And they did get the regulations redone for commercial remote sensing and for commercial space transportation. Those were two achievements, getting all that done in a comparatively short amount of time. And they got the moon reinstated as part of the destination on the moon to Mars path. So I think a lot of what they did has staying power. And I really give them a lot of credit. Early on, it felt like something that was going to be big events that had great speeches and a lot of pomp, but not a lot of stickiness coming out of it. So, you know, to see that a couple of years on is, it's good to know that that was a bad feeling on my part, I guess. Well, it's interesting, as we talked about earlier,

everybody worries about these presidential transitions as being some big time when everything's thrown up in the air. But of course, it was midway through the Trump administration that Mike Pence threw everything up in the air, you know, moving up the moon deadline by four years. And so far, that has staying power, at least from a policy perspective for the executive branch. Yeah, as a thing we're talking about, that's for sure.

The other topics that, you know, Scott Pace was interested in are things that are, there's like space traffic management, mission authorization, as you mentioned. They're things that come up when we have a major need for them, right? Like if we ignored it for several years, someone eventually would be banging down agencies doors in DC saying like, I need someone to sign this piece of paper and I don't know who can do it, but somebody needs to. But there did seem to be a trend where it was like

Scott Pace and team interested in topics that the space nerds that are always talking about this stuff are interested in right now because we see it on the horizon and we see these as issues that need to be resolved. Even so far as like space resources bills that have made their way through the u.s luxembourg japan's got one now those are things that are you know we would like to see them resolved now they are still a little bit of a lead item in terms of like no one's really ready to do some of this stuff um so are there are there people out there we've heard a couple of names floated that would be involved in the space. So are there people out there, we've heard a couple of names floated that would be involved in the Space Council, but are there people out there that you're paying attention to that have a similar mindset of finding the issues that need to be resolved for the near

future that you would like to see play a big part in this administration? Well, I actually don't hear all that many names mentioned. There was the big thing about whether Kendra Horn was going to be the new executive secretary, and I gather she is not going to be that person. And you hear a few other names, but none of them that I would be willing to say in public because I don't hear that kind of weight behind them. Again, I think that someone who has experience in the executive branch and understands that culture and what it takes to get people sitting around a table and what you need to do to sort of, you know, make people feel comfortable with

things. I think that's an important background to have. And maybe someone who has only been a member of Congress is not the best in that job, but someone who actually has spent time in the executive branch. But I don't know yet how active, proactive Kendra Horn is going to want to be in space. Whoever runs that is going to have to be someone that she's very comfortable with. And, you know, obviously, as we talked about before, everybody's busy doing other things. And I think she's solving the immigration crisis and solving gun crime and all these other things. So it's going to have to be someone that she's comfortable with. And I think to be successful, it has to be someone that the head of NASA is comfortable with and the secretary of defense is comfortable with.

You can't have all these people fighting with each other. And one of the reasons that there was such a long gap in having a space council is because the last time they had it during the George W. George H.W. Bush administration, there was a lot of conflict between the space council and NASA. And you can talk to the principals who were involved at the time. And I think there was an overall feeling from NASA that it was just another part of the government that could tell them no, but would never tell them yes. And from their perspective, NASA was trying to be NASA and not being part of the White House, because the head of NASA does report to the president.

And so there was a lot of tension and conflict there, and they did not have a successful run. So I think you need to have somebody there who gets along with all the principles and understands the dynamics of the executive branch. And I'm sure there are people out there, I can think of people, but I don't really want to name any names. The interaction that you mentioned with Kamala Harris, the interaction that you mentioned with kamala harris and uh just to compare eras here you know you did have mike pence was the one who really cared about space in the dynamic duo of pence and trump trump seemed to like care about it enough to give a speech about it but pence really did seem to have an interest in it and that gave a lot of backing to the things that the national space council went for it almost seems not to the same extreme,

but a little bit inversed, where Biden seems more interested in space than Harris right now. That might just be because we haven't heard her talk about space much, but we have seen a couple of tweets and some comments and speeches and things like that from Joe Biden.

Do you think that matters at all if the vice president is running the thing but cares less about it than the president does? Or do you think's like you know if you only have to have one of them on your team you want the big guys yeah exactly you want the president and he's the one with the moon rock in his office so yeah that's a good point and he certainly seems to see space in the broader context of you know international relationships and national pride and all those other sorts of things and so i think that the fact that the president has a personal interest is going to be very helpful.

But as we all know, where the rubber meets the road is in the budget. And he did propose a very healthy budget for NASA. Trump had proposed a very healthy budget for NASA in his last year. First three years, not so much. And even in the last year, he still wanted to cut all these science programs and everything. But at least for human spaceflight, he proposed a big plus up. But Congress just hadn't come along to that extent. And so we really need to see whether or not Congress is willing to allocate the kind of money that you're going to need to do these sorts of things. But again, getting away from just the NASA programs and that kind of funding stuff,

you still have all the policy stuff of the Department of Commerce. And, you know, is there going to be a Bureau of Space Commerce? Are they going to get space traffic management and space situational awareness out of NOAA and put it someplace that maybe is more attuned to those kinds of issues? Because, I mean, NOAA really, it does weather satellites, terrestrial weather and space weather, not so much this other task. And so I'm not sure that that really is the best home for it. It's where it ended up. So I think, and those are policy issues and not so much funding issues. And I think that, you know, Congress has a lot of work to do on that. You mentioned in our emails before this, setting it up, you wanted to talk a little bit about the Space Act that got through the Senate.

This had a long history. I don't remember how far back this goes throughout the various incarnations of it. This was Wicker, who has been around a while. I think he was talked a lot about in the press when Bill Nelson is making his way through confirmation hearings because Wicker had a lot to do with the space policy of yore that created SLS. And I think, wasn't Wicker the kind of third leg of the stool there between Nelson, K. Bailey Hutchinson, and... I confess I don't remember how much Wicker was involved in that. I remember it as Nelson and Hutchinson. I might be thinking because of the whole test stand that got built

that was completely useless. That was a Wicker special, I believe. But anyway, pass things aside. What's up with the Space Act these days? Well, I think it's interesting that Wicker seems to be the person who still cares a lot about this issue and is trying to get something done. And, you know, they did finally, finally, they finally got money for the Office of Space Commerce

as part of NOAA to do this work. And it just seems as though the air has all gone out of the balloon since the administration changed. And a lot of the people who were there in the Office of Space Commerce were political appointees, or they were there on term appointments that have now expired. And the last I heard, NOAA was sort of doing, I'm not sure it's a formal analysis of alternatives, but something like that, sort of revisiting the whole thing all over again. And it's a shame because it had some momentum with the tiny amount of money that Kevin O'Connell and his team have.

They actually were making a lot of progress. And so it's perplexing to me as to why they're neglecting this after they finally convinced Congress to give them. this after they finally convinced Congress to give them, it's still a meager amount of money in government terms, but at least it's no $10 million, I think was the total instead of, you know, 2 million.

So they were making progress, doing a good job. And everybody that I ever heard of thought that they were really getting, getting further along in this. I can't remember the OADC. I don't remember what the acronym stands for. It's a data repository, open architecture data, architecture, I think, open architecture data, and they're really making progress on it. So I think that that's a shame that that's falling through the cracks. And Wicker seems to still care about it. And at least he's got a bill through the

Senate. But it's, you know, it's part of this gigantic U.S. Innovation and Competition Act that almost certainly is going to be broken into pieces when it's dealt with in the House. So we'll see how far the House comes on all these issues, that and the NASA authorization and all the other things that are pending. Yeah, let's get into the NASA authorization, which is probably what everyone thought we would start off with, but we'd like to just change everyone's mind on things, start off with something they didn't expect. But same situation here. The House is, we're waiting to see what they're going to do with this thing. I want to talk about some of the tactics behind the NASA authorization,

but not the appropriation. So they are now authorized by the Senate, we'll have to see what the House does, to spend $10 billion on another lander system for the human landing system. We always all are writing this is an authorization, not an appropriation, but there's a lot of people out there that might not know what to make of that. So tactically, what does that matter? And how does that impact NASA? Let's just say the House went for it. It was a $10 billion authorization, but not an appropriation. What does NASA do at that point with an unfunded mandate? Well, it's unfunded is the point. I'm not sure it's a mandate even. I mean, an unfunded mandate is by law, you must do something. But in an authorization bill like

that, you don't have to build the second lander. It's an unfunded thing that you might want to do. You should consider it. It gives you permission to build a second lander. It's an unfunded thing that you might want to do. You should consider it. It gives you permission to build a second lander, but in terms of the amount of money that's available to you to do that, it has to come through the appropriations. So again, it gives you permission. So why is there a money figure written into authorization then? Well, the authorizers very often put dollar numbers in there, even though they know that they may not match up with appropriations. Back in the day, NASA would get an authorization bill every year. And the authorizers who were big NASA supporters would put a huge amount of money in the authorization bills and the appropriators

who had other things they had to pay for would put in much less. And so, you know, if you've been around space policy for a long time, you know, never to pay attention to the numbers that are on an authorization bill. You learn that pretty early. More recently, of course, you hardly ever get an asset authorization bill. And what they've been doing is by the time they get done with the authorization, the appropriation is already passed and they just take the numbers out of the appropriation bill and stick them in there. So in this case, an authorization bill is moving before an appropriation bill. And we should see what's in those appropriation bills pretty soon, by the way. So the House Appropriations Committee is going to mark up the CJS bill. Is it next week at some committee? I think it's coming up pretty soon. So at least we'll know what the House wants

to do. But you can put any number you want in an authorization bill. And unless the appropriators go along with you, you don't have that money period. And it doesn't matter what the authorizers have said. All that matters is the money in the appropriation bill. And again, the authorizers are setting policy. So the policy can be that you should have,

and it doesn't actually say two HLS. It says more than one. So it could be three. It could be however many, but it does give them permission to have additional HLS and encourages them to have additional HLS. But the $10 billion there is a number that the committee came up with that they thought was the right amount of money that was going to be needed over five years. This wasn't all in one year, it was over five years in order to pay for that.

So is it, should we look at it more like the people on that authorization committee putting a statement out about what is important to them? And then we'll have the counterpart about, you know, well, okay, that's great that it's important to you, but we can only spend X, Y, or Z on it. And, you know, I guess a lot of times it's written about like the Senate wants NASA to do a thing. And it's like, well, that was the result of it. But it was a couple of people in Senate that thought one thing and a couple of people that thought it's something else. So when you're trying to have a lesson learned from this kind of thing going through, is the storyline as simple as X, Y, or Z, very powerful person on the authorization committee really cares about having this language in there?

Or is there a larger trend to take out of this? No, I think that's it. You have a person in a powerful position who feels strongly about an issue and is willing to put their weight behind it. And in this case, it's language and a dollar figure that's an authorization for what that person and those who feel similarly think is needed to get it done. And that's common practice in Congress. That is the way it works. Unfortunately, we have a representative democracy.

So it's always funny to see like, oh, well, this person only puts it in there because they're from so-and-so place. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly the system that we have set up here is that you vote for people that go there that get you things that you would like. And that's why you vote for them. And that's exactly why you vote for them and keep voting for them. Sometimes the drama added onto this is a little much for my taste. But there's too many storylines with this one involved, I would say, because at the same time of that authorization bill, we have protests going on with the original award to SpaceX. We have this follow-on contract that NASA just put out a BAA for that said, we're going to have this very small dollar figure follow-on sort of study contract.

And we have all of this authorization appropriation drama happening. So let's just shift our focus a little to the protests. The GAO has until August 4th to announce what they've decided about the protest. NASA has put out the Lunar Exploration and Transportation Services contract announcement with responses due to that RFP on August 2nd. There's been a lot of talk about the proximity of those deadlines. Is that something that you think that just fell randomly on the calendar like that? Or it was thoughtful from NASA to put the RFPs due the day before we hear from the GAO? I don't feel comfortable trying to

guess at the intentions of NASA when they did that. But I do think, you know, the point they're trying to make is that the SpaceX contract is not going to be the only one. And they've been saying that ever since they let the contract out, that there are going to be these future procurements for future human landing systems of however many there are. I think hoping to change the narrative about how they only picked one contractor. I don't know how successful that's going to be. Again, you have these parallel paths, but NASA trying to say, well, we're going to do this next contract, and that's when we'll get these additional suppliers. And then you have the NASA authorization thing in the Senate saying, do it right now.

So there are parallel paths, and we'll see which one gets there first. I think it's important for people to remember that this BAA really is not for another HLS. It's really just for $45 million study contracts. And then there's additional option that will get you a bit more money if you go for that one as well. So it really is not a big deal. And of course, they don't have a lot of money to spend on it right now anyway. Yeah. I mean, that does though with their the thing that they've been going to Congress with, you know, Nelson's entire era at this point has been him going to Congress and saying, well, you didn't give us enough money for that.

So this is what we've got. And that tracks exactly along with this Let's contract as well, is that the storyline has been you gave us enough money to pick SpaceX in the first one. So we're doing that. We have a little bit of money left over. So we're starting our follow on program and we'll add to it when we can. So they're at least internally consistent on the logic there. And I don't know, it felt felt like an aggressive move for NASA to approach this the way that or at least in my lifetime, I haven't seen NASA act this way

in particular about such a big contract saying that the way they always kind of acted was like, well, we didn't get all the money. So we'll try to do the same thing, but we'll stretch it over a longer amount of time and we'll spend less of each year on it. But, you know, our goal is the same. Our end result is the same. And this one seemed to be them going, not going back on what they had said previously, because they always left the option open to pick one provider. But they really doubled down on saying, we're doing this thing that we have with the money that we have. I'm just curious if that someone who's been around a lot longer than I have and more experience on the way these things go, was there a tonal difference in the way that NASA's

approached the HLS contracts? Or do you feel like this is something that was within the realm of possibilities in your head when you were watching all this happen? Well, I think the two big sea changes I've seen over the past, say, I'm going to say four years, but I don't mean to identify that with the Trump administration. I think it's just evolving over that period of time is NASA's commitment to public private partnerships, which is a huge change. I mean, they did start this back in 2006 under Mike Griffin, but I think it really took a long time for NASA as an agency to sort of embrace these PPPs. And they really seem hard over on doing HLS as a PPP, even though there are still some in Congress who are not really enthusiastic about that. So, you know, I think that's one big change.

And the other big change is keeping the deadline. And so I think that they have found that by having that very short deadline, it is causing people to think differently about how to do it. And instead of just saying to themselves, oh, well, we'll just extend it a couple of years and spend more money because that's the way it's always been done. So I do see it as a change in how NASA is approaching this. It's going to be interesting to see whether it's successful or not. But I do see a big change there. One last thing on this storyline would be the infrastructure deal that is, I don't know, by the time this posts, it will be out of date with the information we have about it. But there was not necessarily intense lobbying, but it seemed

sort of intense lobbying from Bill Nelson to say, you can put some money in this infrastructure bill for us. Is there precedent for getting a large amount of funding for a NASA project in this one-off bill? And how would that go? Like, how does that work when they get, if they were to get, you know, $5 billion or whatever it was in that bill, they just get it as a lump sum of cash to be used? How does that, how does that get structured? So I don't know the answer to those questions. It really depends on how the bill is written.

And as you said, that's a work in progress. So myself, I'm not counting on NASA getting, never mind the HLS money, but the infrastructure money. My guess, and it's only a guess, would be that of the two pots of money, they wanted 5.4 for each, 5.4 for HLS, 5.4 for actual facilities. They're more likely to get it for the facilities than for building basically a piece of space hardware. But there's so much negotiation going on there about the top line.

And this, I mean, it's almost inconsequential in terms of the big picture, but it is still a big chunk of money. So myself, if I were an HLS potential contractor, I would not be counting on getting that money. And the only time I can think of when NASA ever got like a lump sum of money for something was when they got the money to replace the space shuttle challenger. And they, they tucked that into a DOD bill. They basically made DOD pay for a endeavor, right? That was the fifth one. And, uh, and they did it all in a lump sum and just said, here's the money. But I'm not aware of doing it in a bill that's really completely unrelated to

the space program. They'll put a little money in bills sometimes, you know, to fix facilities at wallops or at Cape that are damaged by hurricanes. And some of the other facilities get hurt by natural events, but nothing of this magnitude this magnitude yeah it didn't seem likely it seemed more like a well everyone's right and else their their hopes and dreams and this bill too so we might as well throw ours in the hat and see what happens it seemed more like that kind of thing and by the way there's nothing wrong with that you don't get it unless you ask it's 100% accurate yeah again this is the system that we have and they're playing the cars the way that it falls so right yeah you can be annoyed at them for it or you can be annoyed at the system but you know that's it is

what it is pick your storyline there i guess um couple of non-nasa topics to round us out here we've got some space tourism stuff happening like imminently here we're gonna have branson flying on spaceship two a couple of days and then bez on New Shepard a couple days after that. Hypothetically, that would be leading into them actively flying mission after mission with people aboard. And we have this learning period that is set to expire on suborbital, well, I guess not just suborbital, right? Just passenger spaceflight generally. What's your take on where we're at with that? It's been around for what, 15 years, 17 years? Since 2004. 2004. So quite a while. How do you see that going as we transition into a different phase here of tourism? Well, the whole idea behind the learning period was that

they didn't want to put this difficult regulatory regime in place before you even had a commercial spaceflight industry. They didn't want to stifle the innovation that would come with it. And so they came up with this eight-year learning period that got extended time and time again, because there actually was no commercial human spaceflight. And the question really is, at what point do you have the kind of experience you need to come up with the right kind of regulations? Or can you have industry consensus standards instead of regulation? And I think the industry consensus standards, they started talking about those in 2015 with the CSLCA Act, and they haven't made much progress on that. So maybe all of this will give an impetus to the groups that have been working on these voluntary industry standards as an alternative to regulation. But if not, you can look at the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. They just had a hearing on all this. And the chair of the full committee, Peter DeFazio,

this is not a new theme for him. He feels very strongly that there should be more regulation and he does not want the FAA both promoting and regulating the commercial space transportation industry. And he's trying to break that up. He said he's going to introduce legislation to do that. And he said at the hearing that he's not really enthusiastic about extending this learning period again. So it'll be interesting to see if you have sort of a split between the space geeks in Congress and the aviation geeks in Congress. You know, Mr. DeFazio's big complaint, of course, is the integration of commercial spaceflight into the national airspace system and having to divert airliners

because you're having all these space launches. And as he talks about all the time, he doesn't think that airline passengers should be disrupted because some billionaire wants to take a joyride into space. So I don't know how representative he is of points of view of members of Congress like that. He's the one who's out in front. But, you know, you do have sort of the space geeks who are all for get as many launches as you can and get everybody up into space. But there is this other part of it.

And that's going to be an interesting dynamic to see how it comes out and whether or not this time when someone comes along and says, well, let's extend the learning period for another couple of years while we get more experience, if there's going to be some pushback on it. When the learning period expires, is that the moment at which they can start working on regulation? Or is that the moment that it is supposed to take effect? Like what is the, when that day comes, what happens? I think, so I would have to relook at the law, but I think that the FAA is prohibited from promulgating new regulations until the learning period expires. That doesn't mean they can't have people sitting and thinking about what kind of regulations are needed. So they can hypothetically have something ready to roll that day, but unless they do that, it doesn't change anything the day after. Unless they do that, it doesn't change anything the day after. Right. And you need to remember that the regulatory process in the U.S. government is very time consuming, as we saw with what they just did.

So you put out a notice of proposed rulemaking, and then you have comments on the notice, and then you revise the notice. So it's not like it happens instantly, because industry gets an opportunity to comment on these things. So it would not happen automatically. It would just begin a process if people wanted to do that. But, you know, there are a lot of industries where you get voluntary industry standards instead of regulation. And maybe this will just light a fire under that effort. Yeah, two things. It's tough to see how that's not happening when you've got,

you know, the heads of these companies, the billionaire heads of these companies stepping on their own spaceships. I don't that's that is a statement, whether or not you think that they're nuts or whatever. That's like getting on your own spaceship and going to space is a pretty big statement to say, I believe in this thing. I believe one of them more than the other. But that's a story for the other day. The other thing is that I have just decided that this topic is the real idea of space. This is going to just keep getting pushed forever and ever. that I have just decided that this topic is the real ID of space. This is going to just keep getting pushed forever and ever. And every time you go to the airport, it's going to say, now it's October 2023.

And then you get the next October, it'll be, we'll push it back to 2024. So I'm now declaring this the real ID issue of space. So I'm going to keep that in mind. Internationally, just to finish up on that, there's been a lot of China and Russia talk of late. So, I just wanted to check in and see. Well, there's too many storylines there, but let's start with the Russia ISS thing. They've been over the last couple of years with regards to the ISS. Do you see that continuing? Do you see it calming down at all? Or is this just kind of what we've got to get used to for the next several years? Well, I think that it's amazing that we've managed to keep such good relationships with Russia in this one little tiny corner of geopolitics. And one can only hope that it's going to stay true for the future.

politics. And one can only hope that it's going to stay true for the future. Everyone's making a big deal about how they're going to launch a science module, Nauka. And that is an indication that yes, they plan to stick with the space station. But I can't quite remember the timing of it. But even when Mir was coming to an end, they launched one of their last modules, Spectre or something, just a couple of years before Mir was coming to an end. So I'm not sure that that is a signpost that, yes, they're going to stick with ISS. But I think that in terms of how much money they have to do something new, one would expect that they would want to do something entirely new, like these lunar rovers that they're talking about and cooperating with China on a lunar base rather than trying to reinvent another space station.

You know, and everybody seems to love space stations and people want commercial space stations. And I point out that we've had space stations since 1971. It was the first space station launched by the Soviet Union. We had our first one in 1973. And everyone is still waiting for that killer app that is going to prove that, yes, this is why we need to have them. Manufacturing pharmaceuticals, I've heard that my entire career, and I've had a very long career. And I guess I'm still not convinced that there are profitable things to do in Earth orbiting space stations, other than things that satisfy government needs, like training astronauts. So I think that that

story still has to play out. But I'm not sure that Russia building, you know, they're talking about a Russian space station, and I'm just not sure what they would do with it that they haven't already done with their space stations over these many, many decades. Yeah, so I'm skeptical that they're going to build a Russian space station. And so why not stick with the ISS? It's working pretty well. So I guess I would be surprised if they walked away from it. But I think the United States could do a lot to help itself by settling this question of are we extending it to 2028 or 2030 or whatever?

The law right now says that we're going to support it at least until 2024. So 2024 is not a hard deadline. It doesn't say we walk away in 2024. But I think a lot of our partners think of it that way. And we need to talk with them if we want to extend it. And I think we've just been delaying too long on that because we're still figuring out the commercial space station stuff and everything. So I think that if the U.S. wants to keep Russia in and keep the other partners in until 2028 or 2030, whatever year they want to pick, it would help a lot for Congress to

actually pass a NASA authorization act or something else. It doesn't have to be in a NASA authorization act. They can tuck it away in something else to indicate that yes, the US government is on board, at least for this period of time. And then maybe all the other partners, not just Russia, will say yay, barely. Yeah, and Axiom Space would be probably the most thrilled of anyone to have that news come down. Well, they're looking at 2028, I think, for their Axiom Space Station. Yeah, but they're going to use that last four years to really build up their own thing. So they're actually going to pull the plan that Russia has been promoting, which is build out your own space station and then detach it. Well, you know, and I think I think I saw something in the Russian stuff about maybe Nalco would be detached at a later time.

Oh, yeah. So I don't know. I have the same thoughts as you do on space stations. I've long said that China is making the worst mistake because they're going to get stuck on a space station for 10 years or something. And it's going to delay. They're going to have the funding wedge problem later on that we have right now. And it doesn't seem that productive to me. So I feel very similarly. I'm glad to hear that. That is the end of my topic list. So is there anything specific that you did not get off into the airwaves?

No, no, we covered so much. I can't think of anything else. Well, thank you so much again. It's always a pleasure to talk so much. I can't think of anything else. Well, thank you so much again. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. I link to your stuff all the time. But if people are not aware of your work, can you just give us a little quick elevator pitch and what you're working on? Sure. Well, so I run the website space policy online.com. And I do cover space policy as a niche topic. I cover some stuff about the programs like we're doing something really, like the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. I just love that. That's not really a policy issue, but I write about it anyway. But I do focus really on the inside the beltway policy

stuff that most people find incredibly boring. But for some reason, I find it fascinating. So come on by. If you want to know about policy, my website is a place you can come to get that information. Absolutely. You're the best there is. So don't get bored with it like the rest of the world, I guess. Thanks again, Marsha. Okay. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks again to Marsha for coming on the show. As I said up front, it's always a pleasure talking with her. She is an amazing resource when it comes to space policy, really knows every little detail of everything going on. So the best person to talk to about these topics.

And I hope you enjoyed listening as well. Definitely find her online. I've got links in the show notes to her site and Twitter. Hit her up on Twitter if you liked her appearance here. But for now, that's all I've got for you. Thanks again to all the supporters out there. Head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support if you would like to join and help.

And until next time, thanks for listening. I slash support if you would like to join and help and until next time thanks for listening i'll talk to you soon