Main Engine Cut Off - T+239: Space Policy with Lori Garver

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator, joins me to talk about a whole host of space policy topics, including Artemis and lunar politics, the legacies of Commercial Cargo and Crew, the status of Commercial LEO Destinations, and also Lance Bass.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 42 executive producers—Simon, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian, Lars from Agile Space, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Fred, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, Benjamin, SmallSpark Space Systems, Tyler, Steve, Theo and Violet, and seven anonymous—and 814 other supporters.TopicsLori GarverLori Garver (@Lori_Garver) / TwitterEpisode 66 - My Next One is “Fiction” - Off-NominalEscaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age: Garver, Lori, Isaacson, Walter - Amazon.com: BooksEscaping Gravity by Lori Garver | Audiobook | Audible.comLance Bass To Host Space History Podcast Series ‘The Last Soviet’ – DeadlineBrooke Owens FellowshipMatthew Isakowitz Fellowship ProgramPatti Grace Smith FellowshipThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen 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 NewsletterMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by SpaceX

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo and we've got a great show today. I got to sit down and talk for a half hour or so with Lori Garver, who is the former Deputy Administrator of NASA back under the Obama administration. She was a critical element to the commercial cargo crew and general commercial space strategy that has really flourished at NASA over the past decade and a half at this point. And she released a book last year. We had her on Off Nominal, episode 66, the other show that I do.

If you've not checked out Off Nominal yet, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts or over on YouTube. I've got links in the show notes. On there, we talked with her about her book, Escaping Gravity, which is a memoir. We'll talk about it with Lori, I'm sure. So that's a great episode if you want to go back and listen to some of the topics about space policy in the past. But what I thought would be cool to talk to Lori about is space policy now and into the future. You know, if she was back at NASA, what would her take be on some of the stuff that's in front of us in the policy realm today? So we'll get into ISS politics, lunar politics, the way to manage SpaceX being this extreme outlier or something that I'm interested,

per a suggestion from Jake in the most recent episode of Nominal, interested to get her take on. So without further ado, let's give Lori a call and hear from her. All right, well, Lori Garver, welcome to Managing Cutoff. Long overdue, mostly my fault for not getting you on closer to when we had you on off Nominal a couple months back, but how have you been? I have been great, thank you. How about yourself? Good, I feel like there's, well, I guess, so when were you, I should have looked up the date that that off nominal happened. That was pre Artemis. Oh yeah. Right. Obviously storing the junket. Yeah, totally. Uh, so it's actually good. Cause we, we got to witness the entire Artemis launch campaign and maybe we can kick that around a little bit, But before we get into topical stuff today, we have not talked about the book on Managing Cutoff yet,

and I consider it required reading for anyone that listens to this show. So can you give, if people somehow missed your appearance on Off Nominal, because I assume everyone listens to this, also listen to that. But just give them the rundown of what your book is about. assume everyone listens to this also listen to that. But just give them the rundown of what your book is about. Oh, of course. Escaping Gravity, my quest to transform NASA and launch a new space age. You can tell I'm off the book tour just a couple months here. But it is a memoir. It is about really the policy decisions and my experience in leading up to what culminated really with the Dragon commercial crew first launch. And my involvement started in the 1980s. So I feel like it's the backstory before the billionaires got involved and list some people who I don't

think get enough credit for that kind of thing. And starting with the policies set really back in Dan Golden's tenure in the 90s. And it includes Lance Bass's first foray into space. I heard he's coming back in some sort of space podcast format. I saw he is doing a NASA history space podcast, and I find this a wonderful turn of events. Training in Russia with Lance to go to space made a minor part of one chapter of the book, but it's a lot of people's favorite. So maybe I should have written on NASA more. Yeah, that's the demo that was reading your book, I guess. And it's generational as well. There's this group of people who knows who he is.

Otherwise, no one has any idea who he is. Yeah, today, if you said I trained in Russia to go to space with Lance Bass, that's like, did Lori say this? Or is that an AI written thing? I do not lead with that. Did Lori say this or is that an AI written thing? I do not lead with that. I often just skip it altogether, but it really was a fun time. And the fact that he's doing a podcast on it now reminds me that the day we first met,

he had given me tickets to his concert because he'd heard I was training for the same flight. I reciprocated by having the Air and Space Museum open to just him and his entourage and us one evening. And we watched the IMAX, must have been the Dream is Alive. They showed a Russian Soyuz returning and it landed with its capsule on a parachute. And he turned to me and said, that's how we have to land? He turned to me and said, that's how we have to land? I was like, have you really thought this through, my dear? Apparently not.

I felt very motherly toward him. Our differences in age and the media hype this as sort of a mom versus rock star. Boy band. It's boy band, but as I probably said on your show, my family, like not a band, no instruments. I have music snobs in my family. But I really enjoyed him and that experience. He, I thought genuinely did want to go certainly and care about it. And he was great at the training. Well, that's the Lance Bass review, a topic I didn't have on the list.

Let's talk about Artemis I. I'm curious how it, things that you took away from it, it went pretty well overall. I'm curious maybe more to talk about the general reaction from people that aren't necessarily interested day to day in space and then even some of the follow-up to that and how you're seeing it being positioned, if it's different than what you would have expected after it flew like that? Sure. It was hard to know what to expect. Obviously, had it gone the first time it was scheduled, there probably would have been more hype and media attention to it. By the time it went, there was a lot of focus on the delays, but then it went in the middle of the night.

So that hurt it as well with a lot of other things going on, but it hardly really matters over the longterm because it was a success. And I think achieving that technically was really important. It has given NASA, of course, and the team a lot of energy and good feelings going forward. I've been at space conferences since, and people are just sort of accepting now. You know, there's this feeling. I said there was a detente in the book, but there are certainly levels of detente, and we're at a new one. You know, hey, if it's's gonna go and they're getting money

from people because they want to fund these jobs let them have it and we're all looking toward spacex and starship as we knew we would be anyway for the lander and it was never in my view and i specifically say this in the book a competition competition between Starship and SLS because SLS had 20 billion plus from the government and Starship wasn't even an announced program at the time and the government wasn't putting money into it until recently. But I think it's very positive in the sense that the community is moving forward with a plan. I have always been, as you go back, that is one good thing about social media. You can just see on that date that it was announced by the vice president and administrator Bridenstine. I said, I'm going to

count this in the win column. Love the name. I've always been a return to the moon before Mars person. And this is a good, good thing. There are aspects to it that I like more than others, but it is a good thing. Um, yeah, the part that you're getting into there about like, the detente is really true, because like, if you're excited about any part of Artemis now, you don't want SLS politics to throw that off, right? Like you don't want this to take us through another round of new administration,

rethinks all the plans, decides the other planet was better than the one that they thought last time. Like you don't want that churn if you're excited about any particular part of Artemis program. And it could be that you're pumped about Starship or I don't know if there's really gateway diehards out there, but I assume somewhere there's a gateway diehard. I think you don't want that going away.

So it's interesting that we've we've hit this equilibrium where everyone's kind of got a piece of the program overall. So now it's almost we've just added on some vested interest into keeping the status quo. Like we just have a new status quo now that is supported by, well, now SpaceX is a huge Starship fan or SLS fan because it keeps Starship, you know, front and center of, of a return to the moon. So, uh, it's, I don't know if we stumbled into that and it was not like a masterful plan to arrive at this point, but it is where we are. And I think, I guess overall it could be worse. Yeah. there were people who argued to me and others at the time, you know, just accept this and it's going to be good. And they were right in some sense, because we still, we can never know if we hadn't spent that money, what we would have done with that money.

So here it is. what we would have done with that money. So here it is. I think typically I'm not a be all things to all people kind of person for our space program because there are resources that limit this and there are incentives then that aren't as strong because you're doing other things. But oddly, this is okay because Starship is not probably taking any concern over SLS because they know if they're up and working, it's going to not be an issue. This is something that most people don't talk about. We talk about, I know you had your show with Casey Dreyer not too long ago and all this political support for SLS just means it's going to continue for 40 years. Like every other human space flight program.

I differ with that view because I don't think either the shuttle or the space station would have lasted those decades. If a private thing had come along for a lot cheaper doing the same thing so that's a big if but if that happens i i do think it is a different situation it injects some chaos into it i mean i mean can you imagine we would have had like a commercial space station and we would have still spent three billion dollars on iss probably not and the the success uh successful version of that would be like starship works so well and gets up to a cadence that it's annoying that we're not using a lunar lander that exists because that's really the

the scenario that is set up is if if there's a starship to go land on the moon, very like a couple of times a year, we're not going to want to wait a year and a half between missions to go land on the moon. There's going to be incentive at that point to like, all right, well let's just get up there some other way or fly up on something else. And when SLS comes wrong, next that's the ride that's available.

So, you know, whatever lift pulls up in my doors, I'll hop in that one. I don't care if it's a, an escalator, a Ford focused or whatever, you know, like I'll just get into one that's there to go to the place that I care I don't care if it's a, an Escalade or a Ford Focus or whatever, you know, like I'll just get into one that's there to go to the place that I care about,

which is the moon. So, you know, Starship can fly their way into that position. Uh, but it requires getting up to a cadence that is, uh, that would make us annoyed once again at SLS's flight cadence. Yeah. But to me, I was at the FAA conference this week and Gwen Shotwell talked. She got a lot of coverage of her talk. I don't think this part got as much coverage. She said before they put people on Starship, they want to not have flown one or two times,

but more like 100 times. So it's flying 100 times and then we put people on it. And in their world, that takes place over a period of just two years, going to be hard to see why the government is still paying all that much. On the flip side, completely agree. If it's not, if it's not working working if the lander can't get there that there will be this some brilliance in the gateway strategy perhaps yeah let's let's get into that side of things as well um because we've had all our internal politics obviously that we've fought about space policy forever but the international side is is interesting where uh for the first

couple years of the the lunar program, uh, gateway was where we were kind of pushing all these international contributions to, cause it was easier for certain partners to say, all right, we'll build, you know, this habitation module or that logistics module or an airlock. Um, but I don't think it was a secret that they were all doing that in hopes that they will then have an astronaut on the lunar surface someday um so how do you see that kind of thing playing out do you think that as this gets more real the international partners are going to want to shift to focus more on the actual surface and gateway will would kind of just go away or is that still going to be an area that they want to contribute to uh as an in-kind contribution to get people down to the surface

i'm just curious, like, that feels like a log jam that's yet to be solved. Because after a certain point, it's not useful to continue putting things at the gateway if we have a buildup at the lunar surface. Right. But you're seeing, I mean, there was this interest in gateway, even when I was at NASA from the human spaceflight people. And I think there continues to be for a lot of reasons they did the international agreements to try and keep it sold that's a great strategy and the people who want to focus on mars more than the moon like it um thinking in some way might help them but that's a theory i've heard a lot in like yeah let's go out for drinks at night and talk about stuff with people that work in the industry has been like yeah this is actually just a a low key way to build like the Mars transport vehicle that they're eventually going to need to do these longer duration missions that it's just a secret way to do it around the moon. I do believe that was some people's agenda. It's never clear to me if that is reality-based,

but I do think once we are able to go, if the lander works successfully, people, Gateway will become less important. The bigger aspect of that, of course, is Orion. Because if we are continuing to fly Orion, we have to use Gateway. If we are going with Starship and carrying the people and launching them and having SpaceX do all of that, there's obviously no purpose for Gateway gateway and it will seem silly if that's the case but i think we should remember now that we are at a point where we might need it because we do not know about

starship bar you know yesterday's test very nice quite successful. But I never like to oversell something until it works. Yeah. Changing topics a little bit. We've been talking about SpaceX a lot, and I'm actually curious to dig in on something that I mentioned on the most recent episode of Off Nominal to Jake that we would be chatting. And he was like, this is a thing you should talk about.

So this is solely from Jake's mind. And I was like, that's actually a great thing to bring up. Um, the we're, we're far enough into commercial cargo and cruise legacy at this point that we can look back. And I mean, this is part of the book, right? Looking back and how did it go? How's it going still? One of the interesting things is that SpaceX is an enormous outlier of the entire industry in every way, right? In human spaceflight, satellite operations, launch logistics, they are such an extreme outlier that it's hard to understand that gap there. And when we look at the commercial cargo and crew strategy of picking the two providers so that there is redundancy and there's a little bit of difference between things,

at the time, were you thinking it would be great if these both worked, but there would be one that is such a significant outlier and one that's kind of just doing the bare minimum to pass the class at school? Like there's in both cases, right? Northrop Grumman not doing a whole lot with Cygnus. They keep proposing it in every NASA program that they can as like, maybe it can be a space station. Maybe it can be a space station near the moon. Maybe it could be the thing that tugs the human landing system to lower lunar orbit. Starliner still continues to struggle. And it looks like they're only going to fly those six flights for ISS. And my bet is that's probably the only Starliner flights we'll see.

And then in both cases, SpaceX turned the commercial cargo program into being the top commercial launch entity that has ever existed. They have turned their crewed spaceflight into the only crewed spaceflight, orbital spaceflight, commercial company that's ever existed and continues to sell missions. So I'm just trying to figure out, did you think we would get that disparity where one was way ahead and pushing, or were you more hopeful that there would be,

that the commercial side would ring true for all the entrants into that program? Since lots of us had been thinking about this before there was a SpaceX, it is something that we did not presume they would have run the table, but I don't think I presumed anyone would run the table. I wish I had thought about that. I mean, we recognize that competition was important and the key thing, we weren't looking to just fund one because I guess I always assumed if there was just one,

they'd turn around and give us monopolistic prices. Yeah. You know, like we had with ULA and so forth. That's how it works. But once the competition began and on cargo, when we picked Kistler and SpaceX, I was quite familiar with Kistler and very hopeful. I was quite familiar with Kistler and very helpful. Orbital getting picked just because of the rocket they're using. I always felt, well, this has a limited use and they didn't have any down mass.

But the Boeing SpaceX competition wasn't just Boeing and SpaceX. And in fact, the last three, I think the problem with just saying this is an outlier, it's only SpaceX. You weren't saying this, but I believe Casey Dreyer and others have that. I'm kind of saying it, to be honest. You are. The commercial crew isn't necessarily the success. It's SpaceX that's a success and i think that just presumes that had we selected someone other than boeing to be the second they wouldn't have that they wouldn't also seen the same kind of yeah and i'm still hopeful certainly for dream chaser they're they're planning to

on ramp and cargo and the fact that they're doing that without having gotten all the money. And that's quite close to their Dream Chaser 200 with crew. And now that it does seem like Boeing may not be in it for the long term, I think NASA will continue to want two providers. They've got a good hook with Blue Origin for the orbital reef. I think Blue Origin, while slow with New Glenn, again, not getting $20 billion, making progress, flying suborbitally, and likely to be back doing that this year. All credit to SpaceX. And in a book, it's nice because you get to really think about your words. And I very clearly say in there a few times, I'm well aware this would not be happening

without SpaceX. I wouldn't have gotten a victory lap. And so I think we can hold both thoughts in our head. I think there was the timing correct because we had the technologies, we had the interest in the companies and somebody at least who could deliver, but no, we need more. And I think we'll get them. I mean, we have Rocket Labs, we have some launch companies that I think will still make it. And a lot is going on again this faa conference you just get this sense that whole team arrangements i'm very excited about because lots of people actually just want to be

elon yeah totally i the way you're drifting at the end there is exactly what i'm curious about right because i think this the like outlier criticism is mostly from people. Well, it's from two factions, right? It's from the, the super SpaceX fans who are like, SpaceX is the goat.

Like no one's ever going to do this, but it's, but from the, from, and I'm not putting words in Casey driver's mouth, but I think the thing that he and I agree on is that like, we're anxious to get another one like that. And so when you're in this situation

where we are now, how do you help that side along? Like, not that you want to put your thumb on the scale and like add a new provider that's like, you know, that we're going to fund to actually be competitive SpaceX, but SpaceX is becoming the entrenched interest in the industry in so many ways that like, there's no reason for them to lower their launch costs at all until someone starts putting pressure on the back end of those. So it's, it's just this thing that we're trying to figure out of like, who is actually going to be the legitimate competition? It's going to be rocket lab with neutron that they're going to build is new Glenn going

to come in and put some pressure, some downward pressure on stuff. Cause right now, like you're seeing the bids that SpaceX is getting with the Space Force and others, it's like, you know, Atlas five minus a dollar and they're going to win every time. And then even on the human landing side, you know, they go and they sweep that first round of contracting and then SpaceX by law, and then we'll figure that one out. Like, okay, but is that actually how you incentivize some competition to someone that's been that successful? I'm just not smart enough to figure out like, what is the effective way to handle that situation that we are in now where there's a company that can run the table? there's a company that can run the table. Right. And, you know, it's, it's Elon, and that makes it more difficult in a real way, not, not just an emotional way, because it's a company that isn't publicly held, held by an individual. And a lot of people have had since the beginning, but growing concerns about that. And I, I believe that, you know, there is some pressure when you are a privately held company even to on on the cost because we would NASA would incentivize others using more of their money if they started really taking advantage of that

position. I know they are extremely frustrated at NASA about Boeing not being there when they thought they would be and people are excited for that to happen. But continuing to incentivize on-ramps has to be the way and doing so not just because there's only one provider, but because of SpaceX is clearly the motivation that some people have. So, so sure. I'm, I'm very happy that there are still quite a few companies going at it. the FAA conference yesterday about caring for commercial Leo destinations, um, companies. And she's saying there isn't enough investment to carry for, I think they need to down select quicker. You know, that's a self serving comment for her, although be careful what you wish for. Um, we had the same issue with, um, crew. We did not think there were more than two and really there's not more than one need you know because spacex could fly a lot more often than nasa is using them um and ultimately i think they nasa will only fund two or fewer but for the reasons we're talking about, they want to in the CLD. So this is a policy area that is new.

And to me, you want to learn from the good parts as well as the bad parts. This shouldn't be a cookie cutter approach. I would never say that what we did needs to just be put in place for these other programs because we have to learn from it. And we pipped Boeing, I think I was told largely because the program wouldn't be funded by Congress unless we did. I never agreed with that. I felt if we argued more articulately, if we really and believed, first of all, almost no one believed that it was the right way to go, we could have made that argument. And just think about it, we could have paid more, just how much money Boeing got for that. If you had given that to Sierra Nevada, for instance, you really think

they wouldn't be there? I mean, you can't know for sure. But I wouldn't take from this, no one can ever do it but SpaceX. I would take it that it can be done, but SpaceX is rocking the house like no one else. If you have a couple extra minutes, I know we're up against the time to put on the calendar. So if not, that's cool. If you have a couple extra minutes, I know we're up against the time we put on the calendar. So if not, that's cool. But on the CLD front, this is a program that's in a really weird spot as well.

International politics, right? There's obviously no couch on the fact there's issues with Russia at the moment. And I've personally been annoyed that we're not taking advantage of that situation more, which sounds really shitty to say, but like we, we are, if you are somebody who cares about the ISS or Leo destinations, like this is the moment to make the point that there needs to be legitimate funding there to actually push that program forward. And, you know, I do think back to how similar it feels to the era that commercial cargo and crew grew up in where, uh, it wasn't real serious until, I don't know, I do think back to how similar it feels to the era that commercial cargo and crew grew up in,

where it wasn't real serious until, I don't know, 2008. What else happened around 2008? And then 2014. What happened in 2014? Like, it always seems like there's Russian geopolitical situations that happen to coincide with times at which low Earth orbit stuff gets a lot of money in the budget. And this felt like a really big opportunity for that. And Congress is providing what is full funding, but NASA didn't really ask for very much for this program.

And then even apart from that is the timeline consideration where Russia, even the other day I saw some tweets talking about that they're going to review if they can fly the Russian segment beyond 2025 because everything's leaking and they're having a bunch of problems. So I wouldn't be shocked if they were like, yeah, this isn't going to make it much longer. But what do we do? Is it purely people at NASA and the administration going to bat for this program and trying to add a zero to the budget and turn this into a real funded thing? Or is this a trickier

problem because of how many weird, you know, things are strung up to it between geopolitics and ISS timeline? And do we actually need all that utilization in Leo? Like, you know, how does that, if you were back today, what would be your commercial Leo approach? Yeah, boy, I sort of hate even saying that because I always worry they will do the opposite. I'm a real supporter of this program. And I think back to our very first part of this conversation. This is one of the things that is challenging about a kumbaya time where we're just doing all things because you're not maybe funding anything enough to make it really work and this is one of those things and

it's very similar in my view to commercial cargo and crew where we had a and crew I know better, we came in with just budget profile that started lower but ramped up. But when Congress pushed back so much, we just ended up asking for less. And over time, that meant it was strung out. And that was a threat to that program. If, for instance, SLS and Orion had stayed on schedule and would have launched first, the threat to that program. If, for instance, SLS and Orion had stayed on schedule and would have launched first, the threat to this program now is similar. The longer it takes, will we have a gap? And then people will say, oh, now we're on the moon. We don't even need Leo. There's this natural bifurcation in NASA between the human spaceflight people who want just to explore now, they're like, fine, you got Leo, take it. We're going to go to the moon and beyond. And those who recognize

it is NASA's role to advance space development, including the more than likely economic benefits that will come from Leo before they come from the moon or Mars. And so I think Leo destinations is somewhere NASA should be investing more. I'm thrilled that Congress is finally sort of acquiescing. I agree. It's it's at it's at risk because of the space station and we should be whether it's using it's in in this case like sometimes we do use geopolitics but this is real yeah totally right using it yeah we're not making it up that this is a threat to the ISS totally as I said since the beginning like do you think invading ukraine was the last unpredictable thing that russia would do or just another one right i mean i think people following it fully expected it

yeah and it goes to say you know we at nasa are a little bit in a bubble i admit that we we were as well i tried to think bigger but a lot of times nasa i would say well we should talk to the state department because we could do these things say say these agreements with countries in Africa and China's making these agreements and we should do them instead. But NASA didn't want to break out like that because then someone else might control our spending rather than ourselves. It's very insular. And so this is a pretty big policy issue. Who's NASA for? And if it's for the astronauts and they want to go to the moon and Mars, that's where most

of the money goes. But is it for the rest of us and really expanding our economic sphere and finding ways to utilize the space environment to help the rest of us? That's a different role. And I think we have underfunded that role. Man, the last couple couple minutes put a couple things in my head that are really interesting to consider uh like that one that you just mentioned about what if someone else controls their budget it's like yeah what if what if half the space shuttle

development budget came from the air force so what would that have done to the space shuttle which is exactly what happened to it and that's why it looks like it did and i was gonna say but that we did run that experiment yeah and then what happens if the space station freedom became a moment of geopolitics in the 1990s what would happen then would we get strapped to the russian space program by any way i don't know let's see we did that and and you can argue it worked you can that's the thing right both of them happened with significant budgets and they are the things that you're mad at Casey Dreyer for saying they stuck around for so long.

Like, oh, maybe if we attach another arm of the government to a program, it has staying power. And when we don't, it's, so how do you, then the last thing we'll talk about is the Artemis Accords is kind of that direction that you're just saying, right? Going out and getting agreements in place with It started with traditional space partners. It's ended up being really anyone who's curious is now getting involved, people that weren't on the list of ISS partners. Is that kind of in the vein that you were hoping to see, or does this feel just somewhat different and Michael's doing his thing. I do think so. I think the same as Artemis I've been since the beginning, that's a positive thing.

I know a lot of people are surprised on that because it was started in a Trump era, but those are not super meaningful, but they're positive. You know, they're not to the level of a treaty. They are goodness. And I think a positive step to get more countries to want to do this with us, frankly, and see us as leaders. And that's a big part of the geopolitics. Yeah. It's kind of has that political momentum sort of thing behind it, where it's like a slow trickle that every once in a while just perks up in the headlines and you're like, okay, like more things are being signed. All right, cool. Now what? this goodness around having Russia on there. And we see that really didn't keep them as a good actor.

So they, and that was a, you know, a huge partnership. So by itself is, it's not going to make a huge difference, but I really think I do like returning to the moon and the Artemis records.

And I think that is a positive thing i would focus probably more on areas like the lunar destination i mean the leo destinations that have maybe a more near-term payoff yeah that other thing that you made me think about was that leo destinations is actually in a race against artemis to some extent not actually the retirement of iss that like if artemis beats it then that's in a tougher spot than if we did did have a leo gap but nothing else was going on in a void that's a really interesting one to consider so i get concerned that the people there are people at nasa who would just as soon go off to the moon and Mars. And some of the NASA people speaking at this conference here, it is an FAA conference on,

you know, commercial space and they give lip service for five minutes first to that topic and then talk about Artemis. And that's what they're excited about. Yeah. Well, thanks for letting me keep you a couple extra minutes than I told you originally. But this is an awesome conversation.

And Escaping Gravity, like I said, it's mandatory reading if people are listening to this. So thanks for hanging out. Always enjoy chatting. And hopefully we can, well, you'll be on Off Nominal in a couple of weeks, in like two weeks. It'll be on there. Yes, talking about Brooke Owens' fellowship and other things. be super cool so thanks again laurie thank you thanks again to

laurie for coming on the show it's always great chatting with her and uh like i mentioned she'll be on off nominal in a couple of weeks uh on the february 23rd episode so if you uh liked listening to her and i chat then uh enjoy the additive of Jake in the conversation. And that'll be a fun one as well. If you like hearing this kind of stuff, if you like what I'm doing with the show here, this is an entirely listener-supported show. So head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support and join the crew there. There are 856 of you supporting the show every single month.

I'm so thankful for that. And many of you are getting an extra podcast every single week in your feed called Miko Headlines that I do for the $3 and up level on Patreon there. So if you want an extra podcast every single week,

anyone helps support the show, head over there and join up. This show is produced by 42 executive producers. Thanks to Simon, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ronald, Ronald. Thanks to Simon, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, TheAverageAstronaut, Frank, Julian, Lars from Agile Space, Matt, TheAstrogators at SCE, Chris, Fred, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, Benjamin, SmallSpark, Space Systems, Tyler, Steve, Theo and Violet, and seven anonymous executive producers.

Thank you all so much for the support. As always, you made this episode possible and I could not do it without you. So thank you all so much. And that's all I've got for you today. If you've got any questions or thoughts you want to send them my way, hit me up on email, anthony at managementcutoff.com. On Twitter, though I'm not reading it much anymore, we have Miko. And on Mastodon, at Miko on the space.space instance. So head over there and check it out if you want. But for now, thanks for listening. I will talk to you soon.