Main Engine Cut Off - T+248: Space Policy (Live from Space Symposium 2023)

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Live from the Redwire booth at Space Symposium 2023! I discuss current space policy topics with Lori Garver (former Deputy Administrator of NASA), and Karina Drees (President, Commercial Spaceflight Federation).This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 36 executive producers—Steve, SmallSpark Space Systems, Pat from KC, Matt, Chris, Tyler, Bob, Harrison, Ryan, Frank, Simon, Dawn Aerospace, Benjamin, Lee, Pat, Russell, The Astrogators at SEE, Moritz, Kris, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut), Stealth Julian, Donald, David, Brad, Warren, Robb, Joonas, Theo and Violet, Lars from Agile Space, Fred, Jan, Joel—and 845 other supporters.TopicsSpace Policy - YouTubeLori GarverLori Garver (@Lori_Garver) / TwitterEscaping 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.comKarina Drees (@karina_drees) / TwitterCommercial Spaceflight Federation (@csf_spaceflight) / TwitterCommercial Spaceflight FederationThe 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 John Kraus for RelativityWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello everybody, welcome back. We're doing another episode of Main Engine Golf here live at the Redwire booth. Thank you all so much for hanging out. Thanks to Redwire once again for hosting us. Just had a really cool session about international partnerships with Mike Gold and Masami Onoda and Josh Walney from the State Department. That was pretty cool to talk about.

But we're here now to talk about current space policy topics. Really anything you two are interested in talking about to be honest because there's a lot going on these days.

And Lori and I have done a bunch of shows together. I've never gotten a chance to meet you until now so this will be fairly fun. So for those of you out there, we've got Lori Garber here,

former NASA Deputy Administrator, space legend, space policy legend, certifiably. Still needed a badge to get in, which was a whole thing. And Karina Dries, the President of the Commercial Space Flight Federation. So to start, I'd love to hear about what day-to-day space interests are. You know, you've been on the book junket last summer and then been making the rounds since, but what's your day-to-day like these days in terms of space? You know, you do a lot of the fellowships that we talk about from time to time.

But I'd love to hear where your interests are these days. Sure. Well, thank you for having me. It's great to be back in Colorado Springs. I went to Colorado College down the road. So I have a lot of good Colorado Springs stories that I cannot tell you. And some don't remember. spring stories that I cannot tell you and some don't remember but these days I do a combination primarily of advising a couple of aerospace interests in addition to my main thing which

is the Brook Owens Fellowship. I spend most of my time doing that We're gearing up for our 2023 class and I also lead a project called Earthrise that utilizes climate data to address or uses satellite data to address climate change and my book, Escaping Gravity, is still in a

bit of a book tour mode, but if you haven't read it, you should read it. That's all I have to say. Required reading for the audience. tour mode, but if you haven't read it, you should read it. That's all I have to say. Required reading for the audience. Karina, how about you? Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here.

Appreciate the invitation. It's an honor to be here with Lori, of course, as you mentioned, the legend of the space industry for sure. So I run a small trade association called the Commercial Space Flight Federation. We're focused on commercial space initiatives. That's everything from launch, satellites, in-space services, habitats, commercial spaceports, and a lot of service companies that are providing support to the industry. So, CSF has really grown into this ecosystem of commercial space,

whereas 15 years ago when we started up, it was really focused on sort of the launch industry of the new space industry. So we focus our efforts on policy and regulatory issues that affect the new space industry, commercial space industry in particular. And that's everything from things that are happening at NASA to things that are happening within the FAA, within the Department of Commerce, topics at the National Space Council level. So we handle a wide range of topics within CSF. FAA in the headlines a lot last week as Starship finally got its approval to launch out of Boca Chica.

It's still sitting on the pad, unfortunately. It didn't go off. But maybe we can start in on that and its relation to the Artemis program overall because I feel like it's turned a little bit of a corner over the last couple of months with Artemis 1 finally flying and then Starship being on the pad. I feel like we're finally now able to have the next conversations

about this phase that we're in. It felt like we were a little bit stuck in the same arguments for a lot of years fighting over which was the right way and now we sort of well we got all this momentum so there's time to figure out what we're doing with it. So you know generally I'd be curious how you felt like there was a lot of focus on the FAA process to get to the Starship launch license. Is there anything particular there that you noticed that felt like you went really well? Did you feel like there was an area that we would like to see things go a little smoother? Any feedback on that process? So overall, you know, we have a really good partnership with FAA AST. They're an essential

component of the industry. We can't launch without them. They're incredibly under-resourced, and so there's this constant sort of feeling of backlog as they try to churn through these applications. Not only that, but there are so many new entrants coming online. So where you have sort of the more established companies that are launching more frequently, we also have a lot of new companies that are coming online that need a little bit of extra guidance from time to time from AST so we we work very closely with them we are also a resource for them we provide them a lot of feedback as well and then there's another opportunity through the CompStack which is the commercial advisory board to FA AST where we have various topics that will

introduce to the ComStack and those members will be able to provide recommendations and feedback to AST. I'm curious on your insight on where things are at at the moment, right? You've got a storied history with what is now the Artemis program overall and I feel like, you know, when this mission launches, it's going to be an interesting moment where people now are like, okay, well, now that happened, that flew, and hopefully it makes it most of the way to orbit and comes back in. And it feels like it's going to be a little bit of a what now moment. That's my vibe on it. I don't know if you think this is going to be kind

of more of the same from everyone else watching what's going on down in Boca Chica, or do you feel like there will be a moment when people finally start grappling with, wow, that big rocket built in a tent out by the beach is actually a thing that exists now? Well, hopefully it will be a thing, you know, and if it is and when it is, hopefully, well, I think people will start to, all of us, it's hard to internalize something before it happens. And I have said, of course, lots of people have, this will change the game again. But that's a big if it becomes operational as currently envisioned. But as it relates to Artemis, it's just fascinating, because I agree with you. We all were sort of, oh, SLS Orion, we're waiting, waiting.

We all were sort of, oh, SLS Orion, we're waiting, waiting. And as soon as they went, it's like, oh, I think the lander is the long pole in the tent. And before that, people weren't thinking that. Of course it was. They had a tenth of the money and planning time. So that makes sense. But I think we do have a fascinating couple of years ahead. I will say for the record from the day Artemis was announced that you can go back and check my social media feed.

I was a fan. I said I put this in the win column. We have, you know, wanted to name a program Artemis. I started there forever. Since grad school I was naming human spaceflight, Artemis. I've started there forever. Since grad school, I was naming human spaceflight programs Artemis. But I do want to just close this with that comment about the FAA because to me something people get wrong is that they think the FAA office, AST, is somehow playing politics with their licenses, and they are not. This is not what happens.

They are working so hard. These people are qualified. We want them there. And if things take longer, it's because of, as Karina said, them being undersourced. Nobody ever says, oh, Elon made a tweet we don't like, so we're not going to approve that license. Let's just put that to bed.

In terms of where we're going in the next couple years, I find that there's, you know, I look at the roadmap for Artemis overall, for Starship and its flights. And I feel like we're going to get into another phase that feels a little bit like we're having the same arguments right up until Artemis 3 flies. And Artemis 3 itself, it's hinged on Starship being able to fly to an extent that they're able to fly enough that they can fill a depot, transfer the fuel over to the lander, fly to lunar orbit, go down to lunar orbit. There's a lot that has to happen. And it's easy to think that and stop right there. The thing I find interesting is that if you just think about what happens the day after Artemis

3 lands on the moon, it's not like SpaceX is going to sit around with Starship and wait four years for what I've been calling the junk drawer mission, which is Artemis 4, because it's not like SpaceX is going to sit around with Starship and wait four years for what I've been calling the junk drawer mission, which is Artemis 4, because it's like everything else. The gateway is going to be there by then. There's going to be a habitat like cohabitated in the SLS block two exploration upper stage. There's so many things that are hinged on Artemis 4. There's going to be a big delay there. So from, I just find that three, four year gap, whatever it turns out, might be longer than that by the time it happens. That gap feels like a moment that is going to influence policy a lot

because it'll be a moment in which the momentum of the architecture that is outside of NASA's control accelerates beyond the political movement of the Artemis program, if that makes any sense. Starship will be flying frequently to pull off Artemis 3. It will continue flying frequently while waiting for Artemis 4. So how do you look at that, like, you know, the next 10 years of policy? Are there moments when you key in on and say, like, that's a moment where industry is going to push policy more than the other way around? And that's an opportunity to, you know, have a good influence on the industry overall? Yes, I think so. And I'm sure Laurie will have a lot to

add here as well. So I'll keep this relatively brief. So yeah, there's a lot of opportunity and there's a lot of opportunity to continue working with the administration, with NASA, with the Space Council. And the good thing about the Artist in the Ministry program is like it's transferred now

from the previous administration to this administration with relatively the same milestones. And within the NASA sort of community and framework, we've kind of transitioned to this more like competitive firm fixed price type contract model, largely thanks to Lori's efforts with commercial crew, commercial cargo early on. So there's going to be a lot of opportunity, not only with government options for the moon, but there will be private investment as well on the moon. It's not just the landers. There's going to be rovers. There's going to be the habitats, as you mentioned, the other infrastructure

communication systems so that we can create that base for a launch pad to Mars in the future. the future? You know, this is something that is harder for me because commercial cargo and crew were so obvious because they had an existing market. Not only NASA was paying big money to do these things, we knew that there were commercial satellites that would drive down the launch costs and therefore be worth companies' investments. And I think that helped us get where we are, but we still only have one provider on the crew side, obviously. Not all of these things have that market pull yet. And so I think fixed price has a place. I think actually, I think some of this requires a little more in the way of government assistance than we did on transportation. To me, the post-Artemis three-time period, I'm sure that'll be interesting.

But how about pre? Isn't Starship planning to fly a bunch of commercial astronauts way before they land astronauts on the moon? I mean, how kooky is that going to be? We're going to have all these artists, that mission. Is that first or is Dennis Tito first? I can't remember. But people paid to go around the moon in Starship before the astronauts that were just announced. So how are people going to, there's going to be a lot of questions about that.

And then I do think the government will be the first to land, the U.S. government. And so from there, of course, all, fascinating is, I overused this word, but it's because it is fascinating. It totally is. I mean, you're right. Like, there's going to be people going to free return around the moon. And that's why I just find it to be such a dynamic moment in time and policy, because people are going to ask questions in Congress and elsewhere that are like, so we got to wait every couple of years for the Orion to be ready to go meet up with this thing. And I just, I feel like that's such a chaos moment. I'm excited for that

part. But I mean, there was last year, I think it was Eric Berger that had a source that found, like, some internal NASA document. They're probably in earshot, that person that wrote this. But there was, they're behind the door. Yeah, they're in the secret room. But there was, you know, internal plans for, like, an Artemis 3.5. Because it was like, what do we do with this gap? And maybe we can use the old SLS stuff and fly another mission. So, I don't know.

There just feels like that is so ripe for some chaotic stuff to happen. I'm really excited about it. You brought up commercial cargo and crew, and those are obviously being used as examples for so many different programs today. And I feel like half of them is not the correct example for the way that the program is actually being run. And I would love to pick apart the differences from both perspectives, somebody who wrote some of this stuff and somebody who talks to the companies that are bidding for these things. There's a huge difference in the way that commercial cargo and crew were run, where there was a development phase that was a funded milestone-based development phase, as opposed to something like the commercial lunar payload services program, where they're task order based. You know, they're getting 70, 80 million dollars for a particular mission to fly.

But there are milestones in there, but it's not like a specifically a development contract. It's a different mindset. And on the space station side, we are seeing a development mindset where there's a design phase now, there's going to be down select next year or something like that, where they would lead into a development phase. So I just am interested in the differences between these things. And if you've heard from any particular company about having a task order based contracting mechanism, but preferring the development and trying to influence the way that those get selected, you know, there's

tons of examples. There's spacesuits that are sitting around here that are task order based, which feels kind of funny for a spacesuit to me. I don't know if you've got any insight into that mindset overall. So, I mean, it really depends. It really depends on the program, the mission. If there's investment behind those companies, if there are other applications for those specific products or services, every single one of those that you mentioned is very different and unique from each other. So it ultimately really depends. But I think this shift that we have where industry is becoming much more of a partner overall, we're going to see a lot more opportunities, not only for NASA, but for DOD. We'll see a lot of

opportunities for commercial as well. So that's the big thing in my opinion. It's not just the specific programs, it's this whole idea of shifting the industry to make commercial much more of a partner, much more of a stakeholder in the American space program. To me, building on that, it is. It's in the end goal for what you're trying to do. And the government should be deciding this. It's an appropriate role for them to make sure that what they're doing helps advance U.S. industry and our global competitiveness and doing that in a way that there will be some success in getting us where we as a nation, and in this case NASA, have a policy goal. So with lunar eclipse kind of thing, we shouldn't have those

because we're doing a lot of them. I mean, we don't need these milestones because some won't work and some will, and it's great to put that out there and see how that inspires and how much investment can be made. But on something like the commercial LEO destinations, you know, how that inspires and how much investment can be made. But on something like the commercial LEO destinations, if we really are going to see an end life of the space station, whether we like it or not, and if we as a nation want to have a presence, a human presence in LEO that includes government-paid astronauts,

we're probably going to have to pay a little more for that. And it's probably appropriate for us to have these technical milestones more akin to COTS, where I think the issue is we're not, it's more like we paid something like 80%, 90% for the space transportation systems, and we're only right now budgeting like 10% for the space stations without that market fully mature. And so I think something's going to have to give in there. I know that you just want to give up on the whole thing. And so I'm just going to try and talk you out of it.

Yes. For the record. I mistakenly. Lori did not mean to and totally convinced me that I, well, okay, let me couch it a little bit. Yeah. I think there either needs to be a significant uptick of budget. If it's something that we legitimately care to replace with a commercial alternative, there needs to be a significant uptick of budget commensurate with that.

And I don't know, like, is there a geopolitical moment in which that would be the right time to raise the budget significantly? Certainly seems like it. The partnership is in shambles and the ISS hardware is leaking from like eight places. So it feels like now would be the time. And the fact that that has not happened is what makes me feel like this is a like, okay, are we doing this or not? Are we really going to put some weight behind this or are we not? And the reason that if we're not going to, that I feel like it's a waste of money, to be honest, is that I've talked to all

of the commercial station providers, and they're all like candidly struggling to figure out the business model here beyond having a dedicated NASA slot. And the problem is that we do not have a set date on the calendar for when the ISS is coming down. We have like notional dates that keep getting pushed back. We now do have in this year's budget a de-orbit tug for the ISS. So we are like coming to grips with the fact that this is happening. But there's not a agreed to hard date for the end of the ISS. So that makes it really hard for companies to go out and actually do a business model because they might enter a market and they're competing against the ISS.

And that's not really going to work. So, you know, when you're one of these companies that I think at least a couple of them are the Commercial Space Federation members. How do you like go and make that case that the investment needs to come up a lot or the business case is not going to close? Is that a viable thing that you can go and say to the policy world and make a case for? Yeah, absolutely. And so we spend a lot of time working with Congress, working with appropriators and making those cases for various programs. And we can drill down to, you know, very specific program levels, like this, this would be a great program if you funded it for this amount, and

here's why. So we're able to make those cases in a lot of in a lot of ways to appropriators for those exact reasons. But you know, this this idea of transitioning from ISS to commercial habitats, it's not a new idea. Obviously, we know there are several companies that are working on these habitats, but the potential for them is really significant. And it's not just NASA astronauts. It's international as well, plus their own science research they can do or that they can collect from other

commercial companies. So there's a lot of potential there for the CLD program. The thing that companies often struggle with, this is another topic, is the regulatory uncertainty and what companies are going to invest in and how those investors are going to see those opportunities in an environment where there's some uncertainty from a regulatory perspective. So that's a big thing that CSF gets involved with. We try to do it as early as we possibly can to make sure that when new companies come online, they have a very specific roadmap to follow or not, but they know what the expectation is. The other weird part of this is the current industry that supports the ISS. There's a huge budget line item for transportation, for the actual contracting of the ISS component as well. So there is a little bit of a push and pull in that there are certainly some groups that currently make a good bit of revenue from supporting the ISS program. And they're not really going to go lobby for let's definitively end this program because they don't know for sure that they're going to make that kind of revenue on the next program.

So that's a kind of funny thing to manage. I don't know. Like, I've just a little bit flummoxed by like, I've seen these graphs forever of like, here's the ISS budget. And here's as it gets like, OK, here it comes down. And there's a new wedge of budget that opens up for whatever my pet project is. And that's exactly where all the money will go. And that does not seem realistic. It does not really feel like how the budget actually works.

Right. But these are huge efforts because NASA only has had really sort of these three human spaceflight efforts, Apollo, Shuttle, Station, and they last so long because there is so much invested in them that people don't want to, you know, loosen their grip and move on. And I think that is one of the issues for the space station. But I really believe that the key thing is that we have not found a market. The reason the government is still paying the majority of that is we haven't gotten that thing that we can do on orbit that since Reagan announced the space station in 1984 or something

was going to return to the taxpayer. But I will argue that it's because we haven't focused on that. We've been so intent on, which we had to be, building it and then operating it, and it costs so much money that the utilization budget has been tiny. So I would suggest that maybe there's a next few years, a time to really increase the utilization budget to try and prove that out, along with you could institute a policy where, I mean, legally the government is not allowed to compete with the private sector.

So if they can offer that service, the problem is you get into you get into oh well it's not exactly the same thing that they'd be offering so I do think there is going to be a transition period I hope you know there's not a gap because as much as we say and I think Casey Dreyer just said he on your program that he would bet we'll extend the space station to 2035. I think a lot of people would question whether we would still have it around that long. I think we really are hoping to keep it till 2030. Especially as the thing that you mistakenly convinced me on,

which was, okay, run the Artemis schedule real quick on that, and are we going to operate the ISS while there's a lot of interest in going to the lunar surface, building up infrastructure there? Because the more momentum there is there, the less interest there's going to be, even on a personal level of, like, if you're an astronaut, do you want to get assigned there,

or do you want to get assigned to the new base that's on the moon? That would be, you know, I'm sure there's people that love looking at the cupola, but you're an astronaut, do you want to get assigned there? Or do you want to get assigned to the new base that's on the moon? That would be, you know, I'm sure there's people that love looking at the cupola, but let's be real, they're astronauts, like they're literally signed up to like go do crazy things that no one else has done before. Setting up a new moon base wouldn't really be one of those. So in terms of the, you mentioned something earlier about when you were doing commercial cargo and crew, the thought was, okay, there's commercial launch. That would be a market that these companies would spin off into.

That isn't really the mindset that these current programs are based around. It's like we are building a spacesuit. Hopefully other people want to buy spacesuits. Who is going to buy spacesuits that isn't NASA? Do you have a sense for would it be other national governments that would also need to buy a rocket, a moon lander? Like there's, I just don't know who shopped for spacesuits. This is where the whole, like, I sometimes, I never asked you this and I feel like I should have asked you this at some point. Do you feel like people reference commercial cargo and crew

too much because it was a significant success that worked out and gave us, it helped birth the greatest commercial launch company that has ever existed on earth, right? By its existence. So now it gets referenced. If you want something to turn out, it's got to be based in commercial cargo or crew. Does, do we say that too much? Should we stop saying that? Or do you like it? Oh, of course. I'm sure you like it, but should we say it that much? I think it's a great, you know, it's like music to my ears, except that we shouldn't take a single lesson from it. There's a lot of lessons from it, and it worked for some very specific reasons,

and it isn't a cookie-cutter approach. So, yeah, I think we overuse the analogy in the sense that very rarely will you have a program that requires just that amount of investment to be successful and that you know there's this existing market. We also were building on years of success with this, really, from the 90s with early demonstration programs to COTS, which was the very first real thing that we were based on. And I think it is a great model, and Space Act agreements

have their place, and I'm thrilled that they're doing them, but it is not, they shouldn't be the same exactly every time. Something else that has been going on recently, I feel like I saw a comment from you at some point on the

suborbital crew, or not suborbital crew, that's NASA program, but the upcoming you're going to have to help me out on what the actual name for this thing was, like the safety period, the learning period, moratorium, that is currently set to expire in October or something like that. And there's talk of like, okay, is this, are we finally going to let it expire? Or is it going to get punted because we don't have enough people to actually let it expire, which is what it sounded like at the moment. But curious to hear your insight on what's going to happen there. We do now have actual suborbital tourism missions.

Neither provider is flying right now because Blue Origin had their incident a couple months back. They're getting back to flying in a few months, it sounds like. Virgin Galactic's got a whole thing going on. But there are active flights. There have been people that have been paying to go to space. So, like, what is the situation here? Is it still a valid thing that we should have? Did we learn enough from this first? There's only been 10 missions. It hasn't really been a lot. So where do we stand on that? We have not learned enough. It will be up to Congress. Industry is

pushing hard to have it extended. And there are a lot of reasons for that. So when the learning period was created, the intent was for both industry and the FAA to learn about the whole process of the vehicles, of the launch itself. And I want to just make sure I've mentioned this because there's a huge misunderstanding when we talk about the learning period. There's this impression out there that the FAA is not regulating anything, which is absolutely not true. So the FAA currently regulates to protect the safety of the uninvolved public. The only thing that would expire potentially in October is how we treat the people within the capsule or within the vehicle itself.

The folks that are not at all involved in that mission are already protected. They have a lot of regulation already that FAA works with those companies now. The problem is we expect it to be much further along as an entire industry than we are today. So to say that it should expire because we've learned enough is absolutely not true. We have not learned enough. Not only that, but we have new entrants coming online that are going to fall under the same rules, the same regulations, that have not even had an opportunity to have that learning period. So, you know, in my opinion, this would be like saying, as soon as the Wright brothers built their airplane, we need to start regulating the aviation industry. We're so new to this. And the challenge that we always have is people like to

treat us like a common carrier industry, and we are so not common carrier industry. So this is where, you know, FAA regulates commercial aviation. There's a lot of regulation on things like trains and buses and everything else that carries people around. But this is not the state of the industry right now. So we're definitely pushing for an extension to the learning period or just another opportunity for us to learn, continue learning. But in the meantime, the good news is the industry has come together over the past several years and started working on industry consensus standards. So that's really where the focus of industry has been over these past few years and where we want that focus to continue for the foreseeable future. Can you give us an example of some of those things that are the consensus?

Because even somebody who's versed in this stuff, I have a hard time knowing what is the actual language that we're arguing about whether it's time to write it down or not. I don't really know. I can make some parallels to flights I've been on, but I'm just curious in the space realm, because to my eye, when Blue Origin had their engine incident and the abort motor went off, I was like, man, they're doing fine. It's okay. I'm not that worried about it. It's got an abort motor. It worked. Everything's

good. I'll buy a ticket tomorrow if I had enough money. So is it that kind of stuff? Is it like, here's what a functional abort system looks like to keep passengers safe? I don't really have a sense for what that is. It's things like seatbelts. You know, do we need to have seatbelts? Do we need to be, do we need to have certain space suits on? You know, what, what are the oxygen requirements? What are the health and safety requirements of the individuals on board? So there will be potentially a design of the vehicle. Like that's going to be another huge element in this whole process when we get, you know,

the full-blown regulation, there's going to be some standards on the vehicle itself, which is really challenging because when you think about the aviation industry and every single one of us who got into a commercial airliner to get here, we got into something that looked like a tube that had wings that uses jet fuel and takes off on a runway. We know that as consumers, that there's some level, there's some standard there. When it comes to the suborbital flights, in particular, and orbital flights as well, there's no commonality. And so the challenge we have is, you know, we get a lot of pressure from FAA saying,

you guys need to speed it up. You know, what are these standards going to look like? But the vehicles themselves are so different. Like the business models for each one of these companies is so different. It's really hard to identify a common set of standards for the entire industry. It's also kind of funny in that it's like it's commercial space flight in the way that they are selling to commercial customers but it's not like mass commercial transportation which I feel like was what our crop of regulations are written to keep large amounts of people safe. Like you can't really run everybody on a commercial airline through like exactly how your system works and why it's so safe to fly on like the suborbital providers do right now they you go and you learn like everything about the system and why

it's safe and how to operate stuff and you're not doing that when nobody listens to the safety thing on the plane anymore so much so they started making them comedic bits on delta airlines and stuff so i just it is interesting we we i think because space is like so advanced we think we're like way further down the historical timeline than we really are um so i don't know just something i feel like i've never dug into and uh it's definitely a curious curious section of the industry so um to turn our eyes elsewhere for a minute i thought it would be interesting to pick your brains about uh some stuff coming out of europe recently they've been, for years, talking about what they should be doing in space.

There's a pretty good European consensus that they wanted to have a homegrown launch capability, so they have a big launch industry. There was recently this report that was like, we should invest super heavily in human spaceflight and be able to provide dedicated European spaceflight, human spaceflight. Whether or not they actually

are able to pull off that funding. I'm curious what your perspective is on on if you know there's really not a lot of human spaceflight out there right now. If if it does proliferate to be now Europe's got a human spaceflight alternative, China, Russia obviously do right now, India is working on a program as well. As there starts to be so many more of these systems, are there ways that you see the industry growing because of that differentiation? And would that kind of influence some of the policy that we're looking at with, you know, the commercial LEO stations are all like, what if NASA was the anchor tenant? But if everyone's working on a human spaceflight program, there are markets. It takes a long time to develop.

program. There are markets. It takes a long time to develop. I just don't know exactly like the way that our industry interacts with a program like that is quite interesting. I thought it might be interesting to bring up to see how you feel about, number one, how do you feel about them going all in on human spaceflight if that is something that they're able to pull off by 2025 as a budget item? Not that it would work by then. Yeah, well, I love the more the merrier. We have, for the history of human spaceflight, this has been limited to the United States and the Soviet Union for a long time. And now China is in the club. The Europeans have talked about this off and on.

And I think that it's, frankly, would be interesting if a government today would just decide it's worth brute forcing to get this human spaceflight benefit when, frankly, a lot of the benefit we've already gotten because being first, being that, you know, driving those technologies has been done. And as we transition to humans being transported to and from space by the private sector, I would question why a government and whether they would, given the costs involved, especially if they do it the old way, I wouldn't bet on it. But if they want to, that's fine, because I think it'll cost so much it won't compete with the systems that are out there. I'd say overall, I think it's really positive that they are focusing much more on space capability

within ESA or within the other European governments, because they really should have a lot of those capabilities. And the more the commercial industry grows, there's going to be a lot of opportunity for those partnerships, not only with NASA and what could happen with the CLD program, but, for example, having the air launch system that Virgin Orbit attempted from the UK, that's the idea, is to have these multiple sites around the world that can deploy satellites from anywhere at any time. Rocket Lab launches out of New Zealand.

It's still an FAA licensed activity, but there is already a significant international component, international partnership. I'm glad to see ESA taking a much stronger position just overall, whether they'll focus more on human spaceflight is kind of to be determined. And the other component is space situational awareness. It's everyone's space. It's the whole world. So having more stakeholders, I think, involved overall is going to get the buy-in that we need for things like SSA. is going to get the buy-in that we need for things like SSA. I'll just add that I do think non-U.S., non-superpower countries have historically utilized their space programs in ways

that are more connected to the public and existing markets and there's a pretty active commercial sector in other countries because they didn't just have a big Apollo, you know, big directed government program. So in some ways, they're more advanced commercially. It's not in human spaceflight. When we first came out with our 2011 budget that included human spaceflight being commercialized, my first trip to Europe as deputy administrator. We got a horrible reaction from our own Congress, but over in Europe, it was all envy. They were like, oh, you're going to eat our lunch in this.

They saw it because they recognized that leverage value. And I think we didn't have to in this country because NASA was doing such a good job. It's not a negative thing. But to me, human spaceflight has a lot of national characteristics. And the private sector now, looking at CLD and maybe even beyond, are looking for these countries to pay to be part of their market. And that's going to be a lot cheaper to do than their own systems. But again, I'm in general in favor because more competition is good. Yeah, that's kind of my vibe on it.

It's like at some point in the long history, there's going to be, I would hope, there's a lot more options to fly to space than like three because like you talked about, there's a lot of airplanes out there that are flown by all sorts of people and that's why it's cheap to fly on airplanes though it's expensive right now.

Whole different story. But point to point, when any of these companies start going point to point, that is, as you mentioned, Virgin Orbit, but with human spaceflight too, both Virgin Galactic and Starship have videos where they go point to point. So to me, that's a known market. A lot of things to happen between now and then, including the regulatory environment. And I would say that typically we do have technologies advancing faster sometimes than our ability to govern and regulate and create laws for them. So a lot of that work will be ahead.

But I think that will really make it clear there's money to be made. You mentioned launch a second ago, and you mentioned point to point. And there's a, we keep talking about it, there's a rocket over there that is now going to be doing suborbital hypersonic flights, which is Rocket Labs. Maybe we'll see each other at Wallops this time. I find it really interesting where the launch sector is right now in that there's a lot of launch companies that have started as pure launch companies and have grown to now do space flight components or, like this case, a niche launch market

that there's not going to be many buyers for that, but they're going to pay good money for those kind of launches. Or in the other way, I recently talked to Don Aerospace on my show who was originally just making engines and have been growing into a launch company. It seems like every launch company is now also a something else company. And it's at the same time

as there's a lot of look ahead to like the US Space Force contracting route that's coming up, this phase three, the National Security Space Launch Program, which is going to be structured differently. There's going to be a lane, very much traditional lane right now, where SpaceX and ULA flies their biggest satellites.

But there's this new lane that allows more of like a CLPS approach to national security launches. So, you know, from your membership perspective, the launch companies, that segment, is that kind of like the anchor customer that they're looking at in that small launch market in the next couple of years? Is there other stuff that you're looking at in the ways that they're trying to grow revenue beyond like their traditional market shares,

particular things that you've talked to them day to day and try to influence in the right directions? Yeah, a lot of the launch companies are sort of heading in that direction. So they might have the rocket capability, but hey, why don't we start investing in satellite technology? The SDA announcement for, I think it's Tronch 3, that they're making it much more free and open, that was great news. Like, CSF really supports that. The more the Space Force and DoD can promote free and open competition, the better technologies that come to market overall. So that's something that we really support.

I do think there are a lot of companies that are going to continue developing other capabilities other than just launch because launch is such a significant component of that business model. And the other thing I'll mention, because you mentioned this earlier, what is really the business case for some of these other programs? We couldn't see, like what the industry looks like today, we could not have seen that without Lori pushing for the commercial cargo, commercial crew program.

At the time, we didn't really envision the launch market that we have today back then. But at the same time, you know, you had these initiatives from NASA. We had CubeSat technology that was really coming online. So we had this capability of getting much smaller components up into space around that same time. And today we've got this launch market that's substantial, that can take on a lot of these new initiatives, plus taking on a lot of their own. So yeah, I think it's really encouraging to see these companies that started off as maybe a small, dedicated launch system

that are really growing their business models into the larger rockets, into more capabilities, into more technology. I think that's really exciting. You got a favorite rocket? That's what I got for you. That's what i got out of this one for you just you just love getting me in trouble you don't have to pick a favorite they're all they're all cool i remember you're you had a so it's not about the rocket for me so no okay i really don't i think they're all fire and smoke and it's so phallic. It's so boys and their toys.

What we care about is why we're doing it, what we're doing up there. The goal is how does this benefit, how can we utilize the vantage of space to benefit us all? And, yes, getting out of the gravity well has been really hard. Getting out of the gravity well has been really hard. And my book is named Escaping Gravity because we escaped it by really brilliant people focusing to do that. And the fact that we are where we are is fabulous. I shouldn't say it. I don't have a favorite because I love them all, just like my children. But the Starship, how can we not really be talking about this we could put all the other ones in it

so what's gonna happen this is where i started the show so we're definitely talking about it yeah uh and they didn't launch monday and again as we said if it becomes operational it's still an if but to me the whole model that we couldn't have envisioned of CubeSats, there were early people thinking that it was going to be smaller. Those who were earlier to do it benefited. Well, now it's maybe bigger. It's cheaper. And one of the companies I advise, K2 Space, is here. They are building a bus that will be standardized for these larger spacecraft, including Starship. And you can do

science missions for so much cheaper, as well as a lot of other things. So to me, you know, you got to be true to your brand and disruption is my name. So I'm not necessarily sure we know where that's headed. It won't necessarily be good for everyone on the current path. And so being nimble is always helpful too. You've got to find your specialty. Yeah, your point, that's going to change the way that people build things that go to space. It's going to make it possible to care less about mass and volume and care more about what the thing's doing

and not have to spend so much money getting it so small and weighing so little before you actually put it up there. So, I mean, that's a massive thing that's going to happen. But a tangent, and just because I had to mention the other company that I'm advising right now, Sierra Space, you wouldn't call Dream Chaser a rocket per se, but it's a favorite as if I was going to go do a ride in something that would be my favorite. That would be a good one. You like a little mini shuttle. I love it. All right. well, that's all the time we got here for now. So thank you both for hanging out with me. It's a pleasure chatting.

I don't know if there's anything that you want to point people to that either of you are working on. We talked about the book, Commercial Spaceflight Federation. So check that out. And we'll be back here tomorrow, 12.30 local time, for some more live shows. So thanks all for hanging out. Thank you two for hanging out with me.

Thanks again to Lori and Karina for joining me live on stage. Uh, and thanks to Omar Austin and everyone else from red wire for hosting us at their booth on the show floor. It was, uh, totally chaotic at times in the best way. There was a lot of people stopping by,

got to meet a lot of you out there listening. Uh, so super cool times uh at space symposium hope to do it again in the future um but uh you know it's always always awesome to talk with people in the space policy world that are that are so familiar with the issues and so deeply involved in the issues like lori and karina so very very fun times uh and thanks again to all of you who support the show that made it possible for me to go out to Colorado Springs and do this stuff live, taking the show on the road, trying

to spread the word and grow the listenership beyond where it is now. So thanks to all of you over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. You make this kind of stuff possible, including the 36 executive producers of this episode of Main Engine Cutoff. Thanks to Steve, SmallSpark Space Systems, Pat from KC, Matt, Chris, Tyler, Bob, Harrison, Ryan, Frank, Simon, Dawn Aerospace, Benjamin, Lee, Pat, Russell, The Astrogators at SCE, Moritz, Chris, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Stealth, Julian, Donald, David, Brad, Warren, Rob, Eunice, Theo and Violet, Lars from Agile Space, Fred, Jan, Joel, and four anonymous executive producers. You made this possible. You made this show possible. So thank you all so much. If you want

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Pineworks is a really awesome agency that I think you will enjoy working with. So check that out if you've got something to work on together. But otherwise, thanks for listening. We've got three more live shows to go in the feed. You'll be hearing those over the next couple of days. I'm very excited for you

to hear those conversations as well. So until then, thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.