Main Engine Cut Off - T+288: The Return of President Trump

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Donald Trump has been reelected President of the United States, and the main character of spaceflight, Elon Musk, is one of his top advisors. Some thoughts on where things may go from here, and a bit of my wishlist.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 31 executive producers—Lee, Russell, The Astrogators at SEE, Theo and Violet, David, Fred, Donald, Stealth Julian, Josh from Impulse, Joel, Harrison, Warren, Ryan, Pat from KC, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Will and Lars from Agile, Frank, Steve, Joonas, Bob, Better Every Day Studios, Pat, Kris, Jan, Matt, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsNASA faces disruptive presidential transition - SpaceNewsElon Musk on X (DOGE statement)Eric Berger on X: “To be clear we are far from anything being settled, but based on what I'm hearing it seems at least 50-50 that NASA's Space Launch System rocket will be canceled. Not Block 1B. Not Block 2. All of it. There are other ways to get Orion to the Moon.”The ShowLike the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack!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 SpaceXWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I'm Anthony Colangelo. I feel like I got back to podcasting after my son was born, just in time for the oxygen to be totally sucked out of the environment by the election. There was a, obviously I've done a ton of the environment by the election there was a obviously i've done a ton of headline shows in the last couple of months the last two months or so with a lot of uh launches and announcements and things that are happening uh that's the show that i do for the supporters but there hasn't been a ton of the kind of analytical stuff going on which is you know what i focus the main feed on. It's my analysis of space news, not just

reading it off to you. The election was the thing that was really the big outlier. We had two interesting scenarios facing us in the course of the election. At least, seemed like there were two interesting outcomes. I talked with Mark Albrecht back in August about presidential transitions, especially when it's the same party, and what to expect from that. Because it was both easy to foresee not a lot of change happening if Kamala Harris were to win, and it was also easy to foresee change happening. Because it seemed at that time, strategically logical to me, that she would want to open up some space between her and joe biden as the campaign went on um infamously that was not the case right she had that interview where she said i couldn't think of a thing i would do differently than joe biden

maybe potentially a lot of the reason that she lost uh so some that's maybe a bit unclear on how much would have changed if she were to win but at least was an opportunity for changes to happen and obviously in the era that we are in now, the timeline we're on now with President Trump returning in just a couple of months and Elon Musk being one of, if not his biggest advisor as these early months unfold, really chaotic in terms of space policy

or potential to be chaotic. So, you know, there's a lot of takes out there about this. Honestly, there's not a lot of info that we have yet. We don't have a lot of the names that we would need to project some of this, but I thought it was at least helpful to run down a couple of thoughts that I've had in the last week. And, you know, this may age like milk, but at least, hey, you've got a thing that we can look back to a year or two years down the line on where my head was at and some of the wishes that I have in terms of space policy given what we know about the environment so first a handful of obvious things um obvious takes that people have had about elon musk and his proximity to donald

trump as donald trump takes presidential office again we have no idea how long this relationship will last um we joked on off nominal last week that the only way that it kind of lasts in the long term is if Elon Musk and Donald Trump realize that the only thing that they like more than burning bridges is burning bridges together. That's really the only way that their relationship sustains. I think both of them are individuals that like being the individual in a room, and there a wake of of relationships they have in their past um working relationships that have not sustained so it's it's very foreseeable that this could burn out it's going to burn bright could be burn fast and it could burn out and um who knows what results in that if that's just kind of a uh you know they've both gotten over it and they're kind of moving on to what they wanted to do anyway, regardless of the presidential election, or more animosity. Those are all

plausible scenarios, but completely unpredictable. So it's really not worth analyzing those. The other thing that's obvious is that it's unclear how much power the position that Elon holds will have in this new administration. He's obviously got the president's ear how much power the position that Elon Musk holds will have in this new administration. He's obviously got the president's ear a lot of the days, right? I mean, even this morning as we record this, Elon Musk is tagging along with Trump into a Republican House meeting. So he's there for those kind of things. He was on the phone with Vladimir Zelensky when Trump won re-election. with Vladimir Zelensky when Trump won re-election.

So he's being brought along to some of these high notoriety events and high importance events. But it's unclear on how much exact power that is and how much control that exerts over any particular decision. And those could be small decisions or those could be huge decisions. It could be the decisions on who's running NASA to what programs at NASA are getting cut or getting funded or whatever. The Department of Government Efficiency that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be running, you know, everyone's out there saying this could just be a commission that has no power and makes a bunch of recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget. or it could have a lot of power.

And that trail kind of results in a lot of fighting between them and Congress and the institutions that they're trying to cut back on or efficient size, whatever word they want to use there. That could very well result in a lot of congressional resistance, institutional resistance, and major battles over big portions of the budget. Because then you get into

what we've always talked about with space policy, which is parochial interests and people that have special interests in certain programs continuing, but don't care about other ones, who's in the position of leverage at that point to actually save their program and get the other one cut. You know, if that thing that Elon and Vivek are going to do has a lot of power, it will result in those kinds of battles. If it doesn't have a lot of power and it's setting kind of roadmap and direction, then what are the results of that? Okay. So those are the obvious things off the mat. One thing though, I do want to mention that is obvious, but is harder to remember. It is hard to remember how long ago the first Trump administration was. It feels so recent because pandemic time, right?

Trump administration ended in the middle of the pandemic or in the early parts of the pandemic. Time has felt compressed since then. So it feels really short from now to the Trump administration. But go to the beginning of the Trump administration. It was, you know, 2016. Falcon Heavy was years away from flying. Artemis I, years away from flying.

Dragon with people on board. An entire presidential administration away from flying. There were projects that seemed, at least were still talked about in a way that they were very close. Both on the SLS Orion path, but the Gateway, and some of the initial Artemis missions were talked about in a way that they were very close, both on the SLS Orion path, but the Gateway and some of the initial Artemis missions were talked about in a way that they felt much more imminent to the uninvolved public, I guess, back in 2016. So it was a vastly different space industry then. Starlink wasn't the massive constellation and broadband provider it is today. So those are just the SpaceX components, right? Let alone all the others.

There was a wealth of small launch companies working on hardware, but a bunch of them have come and gone. A bunch of new vehicles are in development and getting close to launch. Ariane 6 has had some launches already. New Glenn is rolling to the pad, you know, back and forth, hoping to get there for launch by the end of the year. Vulcan has flown at launches already. New Glenn is rolling to the pad, back and forth, hoping to get there for launch by the end of the year. Vulcan has flown at this point. So the stuff that we were banking on happening in 2020 has ended up in 2024. But that eight-year span, there's just so much different now than there was when we started. So the context that you're dealing with is vastly

different. Even if we were talking about all these current programs at the beginning of the first Trump administration, none of it was actually happening yet. So it was all still theoretical. You can call them paper rockets, you can call them PowerPoints. Now it's all happening. And the relationship between programs that are happening and programs that have activity on them, it just feels vastly different. Starship was a twinkle in our eye back in 2016. Look at where we're at now. And that's the last thing I mentioned amongst all of those other programs that have significantly advanced in the last eight years. So you put that in context with the fact that it's an entirely different set of people

this time around for the Trump administration. I think Scott Pace might be the only one whose whose name is popping up in headlines that was around then and is still around now. Mike Pence ousted. Bridenstine seems to be, you know, there was reporting towards the end of the Trump administration the first time that he was not going to be staying on if Trump were to win a second term. So he appears to be exiled from the space policy scene that will be taking power here. And again, Scott Pace was kind of the third leg of the stool there in terms of who was driving space policy in that original era. Mike Pence was oddly into space. Jim Bridenstine had a obviously deep interest in space from a non-parochial perspective.

Both of them did, really, which made for an interesting dynamic, having those two politicians interested in the ways that they were. And then you had Scott Pace, who was a real clear-headed policy thinker that obviously was a huge part of the National Space Council back then, but has remained someone who's out there speaking about these topics. So it's a bit of a shakeup in terms of the personnel. And the other interesting fact here is that we have not heard any names on who is in the NASA transition team yet. We have not heard any names on who is in the national NASA transition team yet.

We have not heard any rumors. It doesn't even hasn't even come together. Whereas in past administrations, you know, the names have been circulated either before the election or very close to, you know, winning the election. So we don't know who those names are yet. And again, we don't know the process of arriving at who they're going to look at for administrators. That's somebody that Elon Musk is going to pick and whisper into Trump's ear? Or is that someone he has a veto power over? Or is he totally unrelated because he's worried about much bigger things? That's the other aspect here. Elon on this arc of the government efficiency

is reportedly trying to cut $2 trillion of federal budget. Now, that sounds extreme, but I will remind everybody that's like putting us back to just pre-COVID budgets. Now, it's a different, again, different environment because the interest that we're paying is significantly higher than it was five, six years ago. But if you look at how much the federal budget was right before COVID, it was about a $2 trillion cut from where we're at now. So this is not like resetting the clock 30, 40 years. It's a handful of years. The decisions on where that $2 trillion comes from is what will make this so dramatic. But I think the top line figure is less dramatic when you look just a couple of years back than it felt otherwise. But even if that's the case, $2

trillion is a ton of money when you compare it to the NASA budget or the smaller programs that you'd be interested in outside of NASA, whether that is NOAA programs or smaller space programs within the Department of Defense. They're really kind of peanuts. Now, if you get enough peanuts, you eventually end up with a bag of peanuts. So it certainly could be a component. And certainly when you look at SLS Orion, the obvious targets in the way that this architecture is kind of scribbled out by people watching the tea leaves, that's tens of billions of dollars that have been spent over the last couple of decades that would contribute to major cost cutting. So that's obvious as well, but it's unclear to me how much the space portion of the federal government is going to be a focus of this branch of effort.

And the last final kind of obvious thing to mention before I talk about my wish list, I guess, is that this is going to be a mad scramble. Donald Trump, the day that he takes office, is a lame duck president. Lame duck presidents have 100 days, you know, two years to get stuff done, because then you get swept up in the midterm cycle, which generally doesn't go well for presidents, especially divisive presidents. election. And, you know, will J.D. Vance be running for president? Will there be other challengers in a post-Trump world for the Republican Party? It's going to be an open primary on the Democratic side as well. So there's going to be a lot of political upheaval in that time period as well. Now, in those moments, NASA has tended to kind of fly under the radar and get a lot of stuff done in those environments that they've been operating in in the past couple of years. So maybe that's not a bad thing. but it certainly in terms of, of large sweeping change limits the scope of time that you're

going to see that kind of activity is NASA going to be the first thing on their, on their list to tackle? Probably not. Will it even be a battle they want to fight if they're fighting all these bigger battles, uh, in terms of, of cutting the federal budget and focusing the federal government. Unlikely, seems unlikely to me. Now, that will all be told by who they put in position. And also, you know, now we're getting the makeup of Congress in terms of who's in charge of the committees there. The big SLS Orion defenders are no longer, you know, top of the Senate, top of the House. So there's definitely opportunity for less parochial interest to be exerted, but that doesn't mean there's zero. And that doesn't mean that the 10 NASA centers that are around the country don't have a huge interest in certain programs continuing.

So it's all to say there are some obvious elements that we're tracking, but there's a lot of unpredictability here. to get in my wish list i think i've said this before and on the show that i think we did with mark albrecht is probably where it's come up but worth restating why i find this era really interesting and so we'll do that in a second but i do want to say thank you before i get carried away to everyone who supports main engine cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com support there. There are almost 900 of you across Patreon and Substack, including 31 executive producers who made this episode possible. Thanks to Lee, Russell, The Astrogators at SEE, Theo and Violet, David, Fred, Donald, Stealth Julian, Josh from Impulse, Joel, Harrison, Warren, Ryan, Pat from KC, Tim Dodd,

The Everyday Astronaut, Will and Lars from Agile Space, Frank, Steve, Eunice, Bob, Better Everyday Studios, Pat, Chris, Jan, Matt, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this episode possible. If you want to join that crew, head over to mainenginecutoff.com support. You can sign up and get, like I mentioned up front, Miko headlines at whole other podcast feed that you get. Wherever you're listening to this now, I run through all the stories that are worth knowing about in the world of space. I read all the news so you don't have to. Great way to support what I'm doing and get more content in your feed. So if you like this show, I'm pretty sure you'll like that. I run

through the stories, give you some quick thoughts, things to know about those and get you on your way. So thank you all so much for the support. Let's get back to my wish list. So I find this era interesting, regardless of who won the presidential election, regardless of who is put in charge at NASA, regardless of who the president's advisors were. This would be my take regardless of those things. This is sort of the last moment with the current NASA architecture that's in front of us from a human spaceflight perspective to take action on many of these things. Because the hardware timelines for all these programs have slipped through the years.

And yet we are actually seeing metal in many of these cases, right? We've got the first SLS that has flown. The second one is coming along. Orion has some heat shield issues to work out, but all of that hardware exists. The gateway is really sluggish to get going, but we are starting to see the metal

for the gateway come together. Starship's obviously doing its thing. The ISS continues to fall apart, I suppose. And the commercial LEO stations that are supposed to follow it, we haven't seen a ton of hardware for those yet, but we are seeing positioning of hardware. We are seeing positioning of business models. So those are probably where all the other programs were the last time around that there was a transition. But point being, many of these programs are at a point where there isn't a lot of sunk cost fallacy to be had in terms of we've launched this hardware and we need to make use of it. We are right on that cusp where the hardware somewhat or mostly exists, but this is the last moment to decide that we should do something else with the hardware or we should not fly that hardware or we should redirect funds elsewhere.

Because if the schedules go even a little bit worse than as written right now, the next time there's a presidential transition in 2028, some of those things will have flown and the other ones should be so close to flying that it really doesn't matter. We're going to be flying those anyway. So this is the last moment where there's a little bit of an opportunity to take a breath and say, all right, what are we doing here? What's the roadmap? And what should we be doing given the larger environment that we're operating in as a federal agency? And the way that NASA has attacked the human spaceflight architecture is problematic because all of the budget wedges for these development programs are happening at the same time.

So we've got lunar landers that are supposed to be flying their initial uncrewed missions and then their crewed missions over the next several years, spacesuits that are supposed to fly with those over the next several years, commercial space stations that are supposed to supersede the ISS over the last several years, at the same time as we're building a de-orbit vehicle for the ISS and operating the ISS for the last several years of its lifetime. All of those things are happening at the same time. All of them are very expensive, and to varying degrees, NASA has embraced them as an official policy. They felt forced to do it on the U.S. deorbit vehicle to make sure that they can deorbit the ISS because of the geopolitical situation that's happening between NASA and Russia. But they've really been sluggish to actually go after and get full funding for commercial LEO stations, for example.

that those budgets are all growing at the same time by the nature of where they are in the development um is problematic because they can't all grow at the same time and still fit through the budget wedge that they have i didn't even mention the gateway launch and operations which is due to happen in the next you know in this administration coming up as well so when you're looking at that log jam and you see all these pieces the obvious one to me is to redirect every bit of attention on the Artemis program down to the lunar surface. Bail on the gateway, bail on SLS Block 1B with the exploration upper stage, because the only reason that exists is to service the gateway. That frees up many billions of dollars in the budget over the next several years, and redirects all of the focus, like I think it should be, and like I think many others in the budget over the next several years and redirects all of the focus like I think it should

be and like I think many others in the industry are interested in on the lunar surface in an era where we're funding lunar landers and there's an intense interest in going down to the lunar surface. The biggest argument against that that you would have other than the NASA programmatic argument is but the international partnerships. The gateway exists because NASA and the space policy world wanted to take the agreement that was in place for the ISS program and extend it to lunar orbit. So they wanted to take the IGA, the intergovernmental agreement that exists for the ISS and have that still operate in lunar orbit because it brought Russia along with the other partners in a way that was achievable. And that's the other aspect. Where we were at at the time was,

we didn't really know what the landscape would be for funding a lunar lander, interest in landing on the moon whatsoever. And it was an easier jump for not only the US space policy world, but the Europeans, Canadians, Japanese, to come along if we were just going to lunar orbit and they could contribute something very similar

to what they've done on the ISS. And that's how we got there, was this was an achievable thing for the ISS partners and it was covered by the current agreement. But that has fallen apart since. It's fallen apart in two ways. Russia is definitely not flying to the gateway. They've said this is a much too US-centric policy. They're not interested in it.

They're not going to have any part in it. That is that. And with the exception of Canada, who is contributing Canadarm to the Lunar Gateway, all of the other partners have expressed some interest in what they would build on the lunar surface. So Japan's talked up this pressurized rover, ESA's talked up habitats. Like I said, the Canadians would need to figure out what they're going to do with Canadarm. And then obviously all the commercial partners that are part of the ISS program have varying things they're interested in doing on the lunar surface as well, from spacesuits to

actual landers to services and spacecraft and power supply and all the CLPS companies are getting involved. So it's hard to find anyone in the current ISS ecosystem who hasn't yet expressed an interest in what they would do on the lunar surface. And let's be honest, every bit of contribution to the Gateway from international partners, ISS ecosystem who hasn't yet expressed an interest in what they would do on the lunar surface. And let's be honest, every bit of contribution to the gateway from international partners, from commercial partners, whatever, was about an interest to get their astronauts on the lunar surface. Canada's getting one to fly around the moon and Jeremy Hansen on Artemis II.

But all of them had the idea in their head that this is our ride to the lunar surface. We will contribute to this program along the way because we know at some point our flag will be on a shoulder that'll be picking up moon dust on the lunar surface. Whether anyone's going to expressly state that or not, that is 100%. You and I all know that is 100% the interest in participating in the Artemis program. Because why would it not be? That would be ridiculous if somebody was like, I'm just really passionate about lunar orbit at the same time as you're funding two giant lunar landers that is meant to take a bunch of people down to lunar surface

over the next 10 years. It's ridiculous to think that. So if all the partners are amenable to a change of focus, especially if that focus was on the lunar surface, and you can get there by cutting out several billions of dollars from the budget and avoiding Gateway, avoiding SLS-1B, avoiding the EUS and ML2, the mobile launcher 2 that has been a huge source of pain.

That whole branch is a couple of billion dollars that Gateway Logistics Services for DragonXL, that'll make Jake happy. It's a couple of billion dollars that could be avoided with the focus then going to the lunar surface. And that's really what I hope happens here. I think that would be, even if that funding doesn't come back to NASA, I think the entire program would be more efficient without that, that it would make it for a better program overall. I would be willing to say, yeah, that funding should just go away and not exist anymore anywhere in the federal government.

And I still think the program would come out the better, the other side for the better. The other aspect is the commercial space stations and what to do about the ISS. The last piece that I have real thoughts on. Like I said, NASA has been, the thing I've been most critical about in the Bill Nelson era of NASA is that they have not used the geopolitical situation that is in front of them as a way to get more funding for the commercial space stations that they want to fund per NASA policy. The ISS actively falling apart with a partner that is engaging in war, in a war of conquest that the entire country and entire partnership the ISS has all fundamentally

disagreed with and fought against. That is like the best environment ever to go to Congress and say, look, clearly we need to shore up our future we've already had this program going we want to you know double triple the budget to really focus and make sure that we can get on with our life in low earth orbit beyond this uh beyond the iss beyond this conflict in ukraine they did not do that at all they took zero advantage of that geopolitical situation in a way that I found telling, really, that they weren't that interested in these commercial space stations. And now they're talking about, you know, extending the ISS continually, continually, continually, which is going to eat away at the market for the commercial space stations. So at the same time, we had Pam Melroy at IAC

a couple of weeks ago talking about, well, when we said continuous capability or continuous human spaceflight in low Earth orbit, was that continuous heartbeat in that there was always a person in of weeks ago talking about, well, when we said continuous capability or continuous human space flight in low Earth orbit, was that continuous heartbeat in that there was always a person in low Earth orbit or continuous capability in that we always could fly to low Earth orbit if we wanted to? What did we really mean when we said that? Floating the fact that they might just mean continuous capability, that if the other programs they have sustain a space flight capability, is that good enough? Do we need someone in orbit at all times? And that's the thing that they really have to prove.

Is the research that we're going to get out of having a human, not even the same human, a human in space at all times, is that worth several billion dollars a year? Or are we redirecting all of our focus? Like I said, 100% of human spaceflight focus in the same direction. Lunar surface, there's a lot of talk about Elon's interest in Mars and if this would be redirected to Mars. I just feel like at some point, this really needs to be grappled with. You know, is there a viable enough and valuable enough thing to be had with continuous habitability

in low Earth orbit that can warrant the $2 or $3 billion a year not going to the all-out effort to get a lunar base set up and to build out some lunar infrastructure? That's the question I think should be asked. And I'm willing for that to be yes, by the way. I would be fully supportive if the entire NASA establishment came back and said, yes, this thing that we're after, this long-term microgravity human living situation, that is worth the several billion dollars a year because we're this close to figuring out X, Y, or Z and we need that for the next step. of why it is worth it and why it's not worth putting all of that in a singular focus for the human spaceflight program for the next four or eight years to establish humans on the lunar surface for an extended period of time. I really think that needs to earn its keep because it hasn't been so far. NASA is putting very little attention on funding this to the level that it would need to, to

actually have commercial LEO stations. The LEO stations themselves seem to be having trouble closing a business case, even with NASA being the anchor tenant. So those questions fundamentally need to be answered. If it's worth it, then let's do it. If it's not worth it, stop trying to do it. Now, all this sets aside the fact that current NASA administration kicked the Mars Emperor Turn question into this next administration. So that's another huge thing to unravel. But I feel like I've talked about that a lot recently on Off Nominal. I don't have anything particular to add there. But it will be very interesting to see what this review team comes up with, and what the decision looks like in terms of budget applied to that. The only thing that I

would say is that I'm very supportive of the idea that let's spend five years, however long it takes, to focus all that budget on let's land a huge amount of mass on the surface of Mars and then figure out what to do with sample return, then I would be in a huge investment in a one-off kind of mission or architecture to get a couple of samples back from Mars. I think we'd benefit from a massive amount of down mass to the surface of Mars, and we'd be in a better position. Ironically enough, the capabilities approach might make more sense in this case because we are at a hard limit of what mass we can learn land on the surface of Mars right now. And that is going to be the limiting factor going forward until you know, whether it's

Mars sample turn or humans on Mars, got to get over that, that, you know, hard limit that we have right now. And that feels like a an achievable thing that is not complicated, but is very clear headed, and would put us in a better situation going forward. So that's, that's where I'm currently at here, November 13th. Uh, come back and laugh at this in a couple of weeks when we hear names and we actually see what, what the movement is, but wanted to put that out there for y'all to digest. So I appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the thinking through and, uh, curious to hear your thoughts. So hit me up on Twitter at we have Miko or on email, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com.

Once again, support at managingcutoff.com slash support. Join up, get Miko headlines every single week in your feed and help support the show. I thank you all so much for the support. I'll talk to you soon.