Main Engine Cut Off - T+263: Space Policy Roundup (with Marcia Smith)

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com joins me for a roundup of space policy topics—the House Speaker mayhem, the outlook for budgets over the next year, what to do about the ISS and its related expenses, and a lot more.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 35 executive producers—Frank, Kris, Tyler, Fred, Lee, Pat from KC, Dawn Aerospace, Stealth Julian, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Theo and Violet, Steve, Benjamin, Warren, Pat, Donald, Joel, David, Ryan, Will and Lars from Agile Space, Bob, The Astrogators at SEE, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Jan, SmallSpark Space Systems, Joonas, Brandon, Harrison, Matt, Chris, Russell, and four anonymous—and 838 other supporters.TopicsSpacePolicyOnline.com – Your first stop for news, information and analysis about civil, military and commercial space programsShutdown Averted, Government Funded Until November 17 – SpacePolicyOnline.comSpeaker Mike Johnson: “The People’s House is Back in Business” – SpacePolicyOnline.comNASA Safety Panel Issues Clarion Call for ISS Deorbit Tug – SpacePolicyOnline.comNASA Upbeat About Future of Mars Sample Return Despite IRB-2 Report – SpacePolicyOnline.comSpaceX Warns Government Regulations Slowing Starship, Could Let China Get Ahead – SpacePolicyOnline.comNASA IG Skeptical of Major SLS Cost Savings From Services Contract – SpacePolicyOnline.comThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by Stoke SpaceWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Glantelow and for this Halloween, the spookiest show I could imagine, a space policy show. It's been a while since we've had Marsha Smith of Space Policy Online on the show to talk about all sorts of different space policy topics. So, uh, call her up. We're going to get into some of the congressional mayhem that's been happening here in the U.S., uh, as we've been without a Speaker of the House for a while, but now we do have one. Um, we'll talk about how that affects the budget scenario over the next couple of months and how that applies to the space side of things. And then we'll talk a little bit about a recent hearing in Congress regarding the FAA and some of the regulations around space flights, some OIG reports on SLS. And as always, debate

exactly what to do about the space station side of policy. So I hope you enjoy the conversation. I always love talking to Marsha. She is very, very informative. So please enjoy. Marsha, welcome back to the show. I have no idea how long it's been since you've been on, but whatever it is, it's been way too long. So thanks for hanging out with me today. Well, thanks so much for inviting me. We have the good part about waiting so long is that we have a ridiculously long list of stuff to get to um that's true we've got everything from congressional mayhem that's been happening uh you know that we're in a continuing resolution right now headed into who knows what on the budget side of things and then there's been some interesting hearings on the hill and a bunch of different reports released so not sure what the

what the best place to start is maybe we should start with just the house situation and how that impacts the budgets um so we got a new speaker now everyone learned who mike johnson was uh for the first time which is great i'm sure there's a couple people out there who knew him but couldn't i can't find many people that were like yeah i know about mike johnson before this no even even the republican senators don't know who he is. Yeah, they're like, great. Sure. It's a learning experience for everybody. It helps that he has an incredibly generic name for the United States of America. It's a good name. It's a good name. There's just a lot of Johnson's out there.

As a Smith, I appreciate Johnson's. Totally right. So we're in ACR for another, what, two and a half weeks? Um, so we're in a CR for another, what, two and a half weeks. Um, and he has now said that he would be open to going to the beginning of the year, which then leads us into a presidential election year. So when you look out at the budget scenario, uh, wider, but also focus on space, how do you kind of see this stuff playing out? Well, I think it's still a question as to whether or not he's going to get a CR passed by the House. I mean, Kevin McCarthy did it by working with the Democrats, and that's how he lost his job.

So you have Mike Johnson, who voted against the CR, now running for Speaker and sending out this dear colleague letter saying, I'm going to get another CR. So, you know, he may still be like in a honeymoon period so that, in fact, the Republicans who ousted McCarthy will not oust him for doing the same thing. I don't know. I think it's still a question about the CR. Obviously, I think everybody, including the Senate, is hoping that a CR goes through and he's saying all the right things at the moment, but it's a big change for him. He's changing on other issues. You know, he was against funding more aid to Ukraine, but now he says he's in favor of it. If there are certain conditions met, the president has to say how the money's being spent. They need oversight of how it's being spent, but he was just opposed

to it before. So I think, you know, he's finding his way. It's one thing to be sitting on the back bench saying a lot of stuff or, you know, being an obstacle and it's very different, you know, he's finding his way. It's one thing to be sitting on the back bench saying a lot of stuff or, you know, being an obstacle. And it's very different, you know, sitting in the big chair. So we have to see how things are going to work out with him and how things are going to work out just with the CR, nevermind appropriations. The House is finally back to work. Now that is good news, regardless of whose speaker, at least they're back to work. And they did get one more appropriations bill passed last week. They're back to work. And they did get one more appropriations bill passed last week. They're hoping to do three more this week, even though they're not coming back into session until Wednesday. But the bills they're passing are not going to pass the Senate.

The funding levels are too low, and they've put in all these social policy issues that a lot of senators are opposed to. So they've got a long way to go on getting the regular appropriations bills passed. So things are very much up in the air. We have this one tiny bit of good news that there is a speaker and the house is working, but we still have all the same old problems that we had a month ago as to what the funding levels are going to be and when anybody's going to know what they are. When you're looking at the space side of this all is are there particular priorities that um you're focused on to see how that will play out with the budget process um you know in years past it's always been you know the top line uh projects that have gotten most of the attention in terms of you know what's the funding going to be for SLS Orion and Artemis and now in my eyes space station

is the area of concern um but there's always a host of other smaller issues that get glossed over because of that, whether it's, you know, FAA funding levels or certain NOAA line items in years past. What does it look like for 2024 for you? Well, I think for NASA, I found it very interesting that the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said, you know, what they said about the ISS, the orbit tug, that it's not optional. And this is the first year NASA is even asking for money for it. And they're saying it's a billion dollar program. So that's, you know, a billion dollars over five years, basically. And you got their safety panel saying, this is not optional. We don't care what the budget

situation is. You absolutely positively must build the sea orbit tug. So that's a big lean on, we'll call it the human spaceflight budget. So they already were struggling to spend all the money, to get all the money they need to spend in order to do Artemis. And now they've got this big outlier out there for an ISS Sea Orbit tug. And, you know, the safety panel and even Jim Bridenstine, back when he was administrator and since he has left that job, keep pointing out correctly that we don't know that ISS is going to last till 2030. NASA is very optimistic. Boeing is optimistic. The partners are optimistic. Oh, yeah, 2030, maybe even beyond.

But it is old and it's getting older. old and it's getting older. So, you know, I think the safety panel is absolutely correct to say, no, we can't assume we have until 2030 to get this built. You have to do it and you have to do it now. So I think that's going to put pressure on there. The chair of the safety panel, Pat Sanders, she made this comment and I'm still trying to track it down. She said that the money was in a supplemental, an emergency disaster relief supplemental. I've looked at the supplemental that the president set up a week or so ago, and I don't see this kind of money in there. So I have to track that down because I wasn't aware it was in the supplemental. But a lot of things do get put in supplementals. Sort of get buried in there. So maybe that's why the regular budget process is working so well, though.

Well, it's hard to get supplementals through, but at least it's an additional avenue when it comes out a different bucket of money. So we'll see if they have some way to fund this, maybe at least for fiscal 2024. I don't think they could use that method for all the years they're going to need to build it. I don't think they could use that method for all the years they're going to need to build it. But I certainly see this, the orbit tug, as a big requirement and a big lean on top of everything else NASA was already struggling with. It's obvious that planetary science budget is really having a hard time.

They were having a hard time before, before all these budget constraints came along and certainly Mars sample return seems to have surprised even the science mission directorate as to what the independent review board came in with. So NASA has struggled over the decades with trying to fit 10 pounds of potatoes into a five pound sack. And they had a few years, a few good years when they were getting more money than they were requesting, you know, and it's slowed down. And now you still have a president who's requesting a lot of money. Trump did and Biden is, but I'm not sure that they're going to get all that. I'm pretty sure they won't, at least for fiscal 24. We'll see what 25 brings. But you know, the guidance they've been given is assume that you're going to get your fiscal 23 funding for fiscal 24. And in 1% increase for 25. I mean, that's not even inflation. Yeah. And it's funny that, you know, that I feel like in my adulthood,

where I'm paying attention to like budget line items at NASA, I felt like we went from an era of getting, getting a lot of money, but being indecisive about what projects you want to work on, because parties kept flipping who was in charge and having different ideas. And now we're in an era where everyone agrees what we should be working on. But nobody can find the right money. And you know, there's, I wouldn't call the deorbitog like a surprise expense, because we should have probably been thinking in this direction at, at some point. Um, but certainly the, the fact that, you know, the, the ASAP is saying like, you got to spend the money on this now.

That's a really concerning situation if, if I'm NASA, because, you know, for years I've been criticizing the, the prioritization of the commercial space station program not even necessarily that i i'm i'm really still conflicted of whether that should be a priority for nasa to fund but they kept saying that it is and then half-assing it on the budget side of things and i felt like that incongruity made no sense when you looked at the timeline of iss um so now you factor into that they're gonna have to spend all this money on a deorbit tug i don't really see a world in which both of those things get funded, you know, and at that point, I don't know, I'm just trying to work through like, is this a forcing mechanism to really make us decide if we're going to do commercial space stations as follow on to the ISS or if we are going to deorbit the ISS and move on to the surface or at least the orbit of the moon. You can't do all three.

You can do two at best, in my view. Well, I do think that for strategic reasons, the U.S. is not going to give up on LEO. So they're either going to, and I think the safety panel even said this, if you don't do the deorbit tug, you're going to have two really bad choices. And one is to just abandon LEO. And the other is to keep ISS going. And they see them as both bad options. And I think they are, as we were just talking about, the ISS is just getting old.

It does already have leaks, air leaks. And then you've got, you know, the other kind of leaks that the Russians have been having. So something needs to be done. You know, and in the beginning, when NASA started the commercial legal program, they did ask for like $150 million two years in a row, and Congress gave them a pittance because they just hadn't explained what they were going to do with the money. So it got off to a very slow start. And finally, Congress said, oh, that's what you're going to do with the money.

All right, you can have some money. But now, like you said, it's been now delayed for two years, and time is marching on. And I think the reality is hitting the companies that want to do this as to where is the market. And that's been the question all along. Who is this going to pay full price to go up to space station? Because right now it's so heavily subsidized by the governments. And maybe that's going to be the answer that the government's going to have to keep subsidizing the people who want to do the experiments up there. So I think it's a big question, but I certainly think that the U.S. government is not going to, I shouldn't say this. I was

going to say the U.S. government is not going to abandon LEO. I thought the U.S. government would never have even a four-year gap between shuttle and commercial crew. And of course it ended up being a nine-year gap. I can remember, because I've been doing this a very, very long time, the gap between Apollo and shuttle. And the space community, not the public, but the space community at the time was horrified. Six years, the US doesn't have the capability to put anybody in space.

Meanwhile, the Soviets were launching space stations like they were going out of style. And, you know, the space community was saying never again, we'll never have a gap again. And then of course, we end up with another gap. And we have to, we're going to say it again. And so I shouldn't be so cavalier and saying the US government is not going to abandon Leo. But I do think that they don't want to just have, they won't mean to, they won't mean to do it. But I think they will not want China to be they won't mean to they won't mean to do it but i think they will not want china to be the only country with a space station of course russia is talking about it and you know putin even said something the other day about launching the first module of the new russian

space station in a couple years so i'd be surprised if russia could come up with that money but yeah i'm gonna sit that one out if that happens my 5 chess, the only way that I can make this all make sense is that, well, number one, I think, you know what you're talking about, the company's sort of re figuring out what they're actually going to do with these commercial space stations and reforming partnerships and dropping out of the program on part of Northrop Grumman. It sounds like we'll hear something soon about blue origin and Sierra space go in their separate ways or however that will shake out you know the more that that field kind of whittles down the better for the opportunity at the commercial leo destination side of nasa because if they're not going to get enough money at least they can divide it less ways

and you know maybe bank on there being someone someone interested enough to spend their own cash to create a space station that they can offload to and that may work out. The other aspect that I've been continually interested in is the Voyager Space Starlab project has Airbus as a partner, which means, you know, there is at least some European interest there. So here's where my 5D chess kicks in. You've got the european space agency the astronauts and some around the space agency are lobbying for a commercial human space flight program or a human space flight program i should say of some variety they keep talking about it in the launch sense that they're going to build a crew capsule stack on top of an arian 6 and head up to i guess

destination unknown at the point at this point um i'm like all right can we work a little something out here where the european space agency is actually going to take over funding a low earth orbit destination in partnership with nasa to then get access to the lunar surface on the artemis missions so it kind of takes the budget line item off the nasa side is probably in the ballpark of a of a program that isa could fund over you know a period of a decade or something like that a couple hundred million dollars a year um with some private investment on the parts of the u.s companies airbus some mixture there and that kind of becomes the additional barter for access to the lunar surface uh i'm like

you know i'm not somebody in this field but i feel like there's at least enough of a workable situation there uh that could kind of thread the needle and give you know europe a human spaceflight program they want while at the same time taking the budget uh log jam off the nasa side and i don't know it seems like europe's got a vested interest in not having russia do a thing that that looks better than the thing they're doing right now, too. So that helps for sure. So I don't know. That's my like wild theory that's out there.

But I don't know if you have any other 5D chess that you're thinking. No, I think it's a very interesting idea. The key, of course, is the money and whether or not Europe's going to be able to get the money. I think that historically human spaceflight has not been at the top of Europe's list. They are much more interested in Earth remote sensing and things that have more direct benefits to the people of Europe. So I think that it's been a challenge. And of course, ESA has tried in the past to have a human spaceflight program and didn't work out, in part because I think they just don't have that kind of public support. I'm still not sure how much public support we have here in the U.S. I look at these Pew polls with great interest, you know, where sending people to the moon and Mars is at the

bottom of the list. And at the top of the list is defending Earth from asteroids, which is a very important thing to do. And, you know, that doesn't get very much of the NASA budget. It gets some, but not a lot. So I'm not sure that the U.S. program is in sync with public priorities, but it is in sync with political priorities. So, you know, Congress likes human spaceflight, and they like all the dollars that come to their districts and states for it. So I think, you know, the U.S. is going to have some money in there. And I do think that there's a lot of policy support for Artemis on Capitol Hill. But, you know, policy is one thing, funding is another thing. And that's been the challenge these past 50 years, which is, you know, there have been other periods

of time when everybody's been on the same page for policy, like during the George W. Bush administration, everybody was in favor of the Constellation program until they weren't, because we had this tremendous crash in 2008. And the economy was falling apart and, and budget priorities changed. So we have this nice moment of time where we had a nice moment where the policy and the funding were marching along together. And now we've got the policy still, and the funding is a question. So it's a challenge every single time. Congress definitely does like human spaceflight, as was displayed in the hearing, what was that, a week ago or so, where we had representatives from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and was it Comstack was the other seat there? I forget who the other person was. forget who karen schrenimer she used to be with spacex and relativity space and now she has her own consulting company but she's on comstack okay cool um and wayne monteith yes

it was an interesting group it really was and uh i't know, there was there was less grandstanding than usual. Everyone just gave their shout out for what was going on in their district space wise, and then sort of got on with the topics, which I found interesting. Obviously, the most headline grabbing part was, you know, good old Gerst up there saying that regulations getting in the way of Starship test flights, which has always just sort of been, you know, stupid tweets elon and not necessarily an officially stated position of spacex so i did find that quite interesting that that you know and they were even hitting the press junket before that i think they had the interview the day before

on ars technica with eric berger um putting some of this stuff out there to then be quoted by ted cruz uh in the hearing did you take anything note, the fact that they are kind of going that direction officially now, openly in Congress? So I think, you know, Bill Gershenmaier is a very interesting individual to be doing this because he was on the NASA side of it for so long, and now he's in the private sector. But this program serves both of them. So yes, they need Starship for Starlink and all the other things that SpaceX wants to do, but you have to have it for the program that Gersh used to run, which is Artemis. So he's looking at this, I think, through kind of a different lens. It's not just the commercial lens.

It's the national priority lens. And he brought that up a lot during the hearing. He said something along the lines of, we were charged by NASA to do this program to get to the moon before China. So he was playing the China card. And he talked about how these other agencies involved in the approval process, he didn't, I don't think he said Fish and Wildlife Service, but I'm sure that's what he meant, that they need to work at a speed that's conducive to national priorities. So he is, you know, that's conducive to national priorities.

So he is bringing to the forefront the fact that this Starship is not just an Elon Musk commercial project. It's not just Elon Musk sending a million people to Mars. It is Elon Musk getting NASA astronauts back on the moon. And he's sort of the perfect guy to talk about it because he's lived in both worlds.

But the bottom line is you do have people who think that he was saying you know safety is important but so was innovation true but i think that where individuals fall on that line is very different so there are a lot of people say that safety is more important than innovation and and people like spacex would say innovation is more important than safety, but you have to make these trades and how important is the environment? It's really important to an awful lot of people and they do have to live by the same regulations as everybody else for the environment. So it's, it's a bunch of different balls being in the air. And right now they're getting very impatient. They say they're ready to go. You know, they said they were ready to go the first time and ah, that concrete pad will be just fine when 33 engines fire on it, you know, and they were wrong. So I think that people want to make sure that it's not the same situation with

the second launch as it was with the first. Yeah, I mean, it's and I think after that hearing is when started to come out that there was I forget exactly what the situation was, but fish and wildlife service had some updates to their licensing process or approval process. And we're actually looking at the deluge deluge system now on the pad, which is different than, uh, the last time around when the paperwork submitted.

So still unknown exactly how that'll shake out. I just, I found it quite interesting that the shift in, in tone that it became this like, you know, both in the media in congress um we'll see what that shakes loose i guess um part of that as well was was that uh they were talking about doubling the budget for fa ast um that's something that has again been talked about in the budget process for years uh about how few people they have in the office there. I mean, you're fairly close to where they all work. So I'm wondering if you've got any

inside intel on what the situation is within that office right now and how you think that effort will shake out. Is it just like the years gone by where it'll get a little bump, but not a lot? Or do you feel like it's going to be different this time around? Well, I think the new regulatory regime that they have that, you know, they just redid all the regs during the Trump administration. And I think it's making it somewhat easier for them to get licenses pushed out the door. But I think there are limits to what human beings can do. And I think they are understaffed, as the folks at the hearing were saying. And this is just not a good time to be asking for more money for anything including

for staff to process license applications so i think it's going to be challenged to get them more money but i certainly think that they could use more staff um the other angle that i guess is somewhat related to uh i mean i feel like the theme here of the show is stuff that has been talked about for years. Took like an interesting new flair over the last couple weeks where just something changed in the in what was being said in public about all these issues. I feel like a lot of the stuff that we've said in the space nerd community kind of made it out to like official statements over the last several weeks or months um in in different places than they had before and one of them was uh the nasa oig report which you know they've got these sls reports that come out i don't know it's every six months every year and we all read it go yeah yeah that sounds like uh you know i said this on off nominal the other show that i do that

nasa oig reports are kind of like that thing that gets said about the supreme court that it's downstream of culture so like wherever the American public gets to, like 10 years later, there's a Supreme Court decision that kind of affirms that. And I feel like OIG on NASA's side is sort of like whatever we were arguing about three years ago is kind of what they write in these reports now with official numbers and stats that we can all quote and point to. And it's great. But this time they went a little further about the situation the SLS program is in with trying to move to this production contract effectively versus the development contracts and trying to achieve a 50% cost reduction and how that's, you know, not going to happen at all. It's going to be just as expensive, essentially. But they do throw a line in there that's about how NASA should look at upcoming commercial alternatives that can do the job that SLS is doing. And that being explicitly stated was never in these reports in the past.

It was always kind of between the lines or something that they weren't going to really touch. That's what I took away from the report. I'm not sure if you read it in any detail and found anything particularly interesting to pull out and comment on. So it strikes me as the debate about commercializing the shuttle. So, you know, this is, I've been there, done that. So they wanted to commercialize a shuttle, you know, beginning, I think before Challenger. And then of course, Challenger changed everything, but then they talked about it again and they finally turned it over to, you know, United Space Alliance, which was sort of commercial.

And this just sounds to me like the very same thing. And I don't know how you go back in history and say whether it saved you money or not. You can look and see how much it cost before USA and after USA, but how much it would have cost if you never had USA. I don't know how you would calculate that. So sure, they may turn this over to an entity i've forgotten what the initials are deep space something yeah logistics dsl something like that whatever the name of this company that's going to be that's north of groman and boeing you know but you know how much money is going to save in the long run i think so much so much of the cost of sls depends on the launch rate which was true with shuttle as well.

And I just don't see it there because I don't see any other customers. And NASA itself, there's these big gaps now in the Artemis schedule. So I don't see how you're going to save money on SLS. And you either have to decide that you need it for national reasons, And you either have to decide that you need it for national reasons, because, you know, workforce and jobs and all the other reasons which spurred SLS in the first place, you know, and maybe you keep it just for those reasons. But in terms of actually needing a great big rocket like that, or that particular big rocket, instead of Starship, or any anything else that comes along, I don't know. It's a tough one. Yeah. How do these reports filter through to the side of things that really make a difference? To put differently, I think we can draw up all of our imaginative architectural diagrams of how the Artemis program should work and what would be the right level of funding for different parts of the program, but it's completely divorced from the actual politics that goes on behind the scenes to actually achieve the budgets here and set these programs in place. And, you know, there's been very little, if any, political support of SLS

that has been eroded over the last several years. If anything, it flying now, flying people to the moon the end of next year or beginning of the year after will increase that because, I mean, hell, there's going to be pictures of our astronauts flying around the moon. It's going to be pretty awesome. So there's been very little that has ever even touched the political support of SLS. Do these kind of reports filter into that conversation? Or, you know, what, aside from enlightening us, the public, what purpose does the OIG report serve, you know, within the Beltway? Well, I think that SLS is very popular on Capitol Hill and the people who control its fate are very powerful. And even with Richard Shelby gone, there are still very powerful people who are going to keep it going. And the OIG report just,

you know, it's something you're going to put on the shelf. And when things go badly, someone will pull it off and say, see, I told you so. So I really don't think it has that much influence, but that doesn't mean it's not important. I think it is important to get this issue out on the table and to be as honest as one can be about the cost, you know, and I think they're doing the best job anybody can do to let people know exactly what the cost is. But in the case of SLS, no, I don't think it's making any difference in terms of its support on Capitol Hill. Yeah, for sure. I don't want to knock the effort that goes into them and the result. I feel like, you know, you can't, their purview is not like change political minds with your calculations that you're doing these programs. It's like,

give an honest assessment and investigation in these things and put the information out there to be used like you know for all of our ills i feel like that's the thing that the u.s government does pretty well compared to those around the world is that you know the america's superpower is our self-loathing complex in a lot of ways and uh we're really good at that uh compared to everyone else in the world, I will say. That is my one piece of American exceptionalism is we are great at criticizing the stuff that goes poorly internally. And I feel like these kind of reports are very illustrative of that, where it gets really down in the details on... I mean, part of this report was like, where did the 50% idea come from of like 50% cost reduction?

It was like, I don't know, somebody just made it up one time and started saying it. There was never any basis in facts. And it's those kind of things that it's important to have that written down in official capacity because, you know, hopefully someday that will matter, that will filter into a political conversation and it's a decision point at some point. But I feel like a lot of times, you know, we want to like take these reports and say, oh, this, you know, this time we got them. This is the one that will change the political support.

But it's much more complicated than that. And it seems more likely where we started this conversation that there are sometimes these surprise expenses that come up in a deorbit tug or, you know, two different wars that are going on in the world now that are going to attract a lot of political attention that are going to change the funding outlook for programs much more radically than any hard assessment of what we've been doing so far. Um, so yeah, I mean, I'm not sure we've provided a lot of people hope for the budget scenario that NASA's

into this point, but, um, you know, going into an election year, we've, we've mentioned how there's political support across parties right now, where it's programs have gone from, uh, Obama to Trump to Biden and, and been relatively untouched. Maybe not the Obama to Trump one as much, but the Trump to Biden one has been, you know, they've just glommed onto the Artemis program just as well as anyone. Um, so you feel like that's going to remain for the 2024 cycle that, uh, the programs we have going on now will kind of remain untouched or do you see something coming out of left field that would, uh, radically reshape priorities? Oh, I wouldn't dare to begin to guess what's going to happen in the 2024 elections and,

and, and what might happen to any program, including the space program thereafter. And again, as we were just discussing, you can have agreement on policy and still not make progress, because ultimately it comes down to money. And people have to make priority decisions as to where the money is going to go. And like you said, we now have Ukraine and Israel as things that are very important politically and geopolitically. things that are very important politically and geopolitically. And if those start eating up more and more of the budget, I think other parts of the budget are going to have an even harder time than they would have, you know, months ago.

Well, it'll be an interesting year to say the least. So if people are not following along, where would you like them to head to see what you've been working on lately? Oh, well, I'm always happy when people come to my website, space policy online.com. I can't begin to keep up with everything. You know, I follow the space program for so long and there've been ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs and we are on an up and it's a lot of fun, but there is so much going on across the spectrum, you know, civil, commercial, national security, domestic, international,

it's just impossible to keep up. So it's a lot of fun. And I just wish I had a better crystal ball to let anybody know where all this is going to end up. That's half the fun though. So well, thank you so much for hanging out. It's always great to chat policy. And hopefully it's not forever until we talk again. Okay, thanks so much for hanging out. It's always great to chat policy and hopefully it's not forever until we talk again. Okay. Thanks so much for inviting me. as well. Space Policy Online is in my feeds and in the priority slot. So she's got great insight and does a great job following all the policy things that you might miss otherwise. So definitely check that out. And before we get out of here, I want to say thank you to all of you who support Main Engine Cutoff. There are 873 of you supporting over at mainenginecutoff.com

slash support, including 35 executive producers who produced this episode of the show. Thanks to Frank, Chris, Tyler, Fred, Lee, Pat from KC, Dawn Aerospace, Stealth Julian, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Theo and Violet, Steve, Benjamin, Warren, Pat, Donald, Joel, David, Ryan, Will and Lars from Agile Space, Bob, The Astrogators at SCE, Tim Dodd, The Everdashnaut, Jan, SmallSpark Space Systems, Eunice, Brandon, Harrison, Matt, Chris, Russell, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support, for making this show possible. If you want to join the crew, head over to ManagingCutoff.com slash support.

Join up there and also get access to Miko Headlines if you join at $3 a month or more. Get a whole separate podcast feed wherever you're listening to this right now. And I run through all the stories happening in space, keeping you up to date on the things that you should stay up to date on and not cluttering your mind with the things that are completely missable. So I think it's a great way to stay up to date and support the show. So do that if you want. But otherwise, thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for the support and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.