Main Engine Cut Off - T+294: Elon Musk and the Trump Administration, Potential SLS Cancellation (with Eric Berger)

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins me to talk about Elon Musk and the whirlwind start of the second Trump administration, and what the future may hold for SLS.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 31 executive producers—Will and Lars from Agile, Fred, The Astrogators at SEE, Ryan, Stealth Julian, Warren, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), David, Frank, Lee, Joonas, Josh from Impulse, Joel, Matt, Steve, Pat, Bob, Pat from KC, Theo and Violet, Better Every Day Studios, Donald, Jan, Russell, Kris, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsEric Berger (@SciGuySpace) / XEric Berger | Ars TechnicaBoeing has informed its employees of uncertainty in future SLS contracts - Ars TechnicaNASA will swap Dragon spacecraft on the ground to return Butch and Suni sooner - Ars TechnicaConcern about SpaceX influence at NASA grows with new appointee - Ars TechnicaThe 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 Blue OriginWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

All right, Eric, welcome back. It's been almost a year since I've booked you on this podcast because I keep booking you on the one where we drink beer. And unfortunately, for the people that only listen to this show, I don't know why they do, to be honest, they should listen to both. But you're finally back. I'm happy to be back. I love coming on Off Nominal, but I love really getting in the hardcore space and policy stuff here too, so.

Well, that's good because I've been having, I've been just like, maybe I'll do a show about the European Argonaut lander, or maybe I'll do a show about this other thing that's happening. But the last two weeks have been sufficiently hard to keep up with what is actually happening and, uh, it's not directly related to space, but it certainly is impacting space now and in the future significantly more.

So, and I don't know where I land on any of it. And on those days when I like to just think stuff out, usually I just end up texting you or calling you, but I thought this time we should record it because maybe we'll find somewhere interesting to go. And also you had a ton of news in the last week that you were breaking over there. You don't know where to land. I mean, the United States doesn't know where to land. Are we going to land on the moon? Are we going to land on Mars?

Or, you know, we're not going to land anywhere. It's kind of all up in the air. Or it's all up there. Or in space, even. In space. All in the vacuum. All right, so there's like eight different ways to go on this, right? There's where we all started, which

was the Elon Musk influence of it all, right? Through the campaign was we all could have our theories on what he was doing, whether he was. With any political story i find everyone can like dial their own storyline right roll your head back to the bridenstine era. When he was in his confirmation hearings and start talking about climate change you then had the dial like which was the real jim was at the one. In the confirmation hearing for his dream job or the one where he was being elected to a position. for his dream job or the one where he was being elected to a position and had to appease voters, right? Which was the real person. And then this, the Elon territory that we're in now feels very similar.

Is he in it because he believes in all of the political things he's going after? Or is he in this as a way to ingratiate himself and get some space policy objectives move forward since that's the thing that he's professed to care most about in this world. Everything got haywire in the Twitter era of like, we're doing this now? Yeah, I said this on the headline show I do. I feel like that scene from Star Wars Force Awakens when they, Wraith drives the Millennium Falcon through a Star Destroyer and Finn looks back

and he's like, we're really doing this? That's how I feel since Elon bought Twitter and I can't figure out what the prime directive is. Is there one? Are you able to suss this out? So we are really doing this. It's become painfully obvious or, depending on your perspective, wonderful over the last two and a half years. But yes, we are definitely doing this. doing this. I go back to probably the greatest living historian who is Robert Caro. He wrote four-part biography of Lyndon Johnson, which if anyone is interested in history should read because the books are wonderfully researched. He wrote a book called The Power Broker. Have

you read that? I have not. I've heard of it. I have not read it. Thousands of pages about the architect of New York City, Robert Moses. And the basic thesis of this wonderful, wonderful book is that power drives actions. And so the accumulation of power is the goal that a lot of people have. And I think in Elon's case, he has all the money in the world. So money and power are kind of the two crucibles or the two anvils that really drive humans, a lot of them. And I think certainly Elon is driven by money and

power. He certainly wants to change the world for the better in his perspective and he has had significant positive impacts. But I think getting involved in politics was kind of the final frontier for him in terms of the accumulation of power. He's done it in the corporate world and now he's seeking to do it in politics. And so for a quarter of a billion dollars, he was enormously successful.

What an amazing bet from his perspective to now be in a position where he can put his people inside all of the agencies that run the United States government. So my sense is that it wasn't about, I don't think it was ever about space. I think it was ever about cars, climate change or anything. It was about sort of, he felt aggrieved

about the way he was treated by democratic politicians in states like California. I think he was very upset about his son who transitioned. And I feel like he sort of has been seduced or really won over by Republican arguments about the culture wars and government size and just all the other stuff. And he now has fully drunk the Kool-Aid, which about half of the country did, right, with the last election. So he's all in. And in characteristic style, he is going after the United States government as if it were

one of his companies. And we'll see what happens. There's no question that the United States government has all kinds of bloat, and it's super inefficient. The only agency I only know kind of well is NASA, right? And NASA is filled with inefficiency, right? But there's also lots of really good people that work for the government trying to do the right thing and doing important things for everyone in this country,

so, and abroad for that matter. So it's a matter of like, do you bring a hammer and like just start whacking it, beating the hell out of everything and with the idea of breaking it, or are you bringing a scalpel where you're trying to really lance the boils and save the patient? So I don't know where it's going to come out. But I do think in answer to your question, that Elon's motivations

just basically are to have more and more control over what happens and he hit the jackpot. One of the things I find interesting is that the you're right, like taking a hammer versus scalpel, right? They're fighting all the battles at the same time, which is what I find interesting because I was like, well, like they're not the pick and choose, like, do they really want to cancel SLS when they're talking about doge generally, right? And it's like, well, hell at this point, probably because they're fighting all of the battles at the same time. I don't know if that's an effort to fight as many as you can.

So as many stick or, you know, so that basically you asked for way more than you were able to end up getting. He floated, I want two trillion of government cuts, but if we end up at one trillion, that's okay. That is a style that we know it from our world, and, you know, I want this to launch in eight weeks, but it launched in 12, at least it launched. I think it's two things.

I think it's two things. First of all, the first Trump administration kind of came into office unorganized, right? And they didn't get a lot of stuff done. And they were fought kind of tooth and nail by the government, the civil servants. They were fought by the media. They were fought by the courts. I mean, they, and they were fought by opposition politicians. So they had their ducks in a row,

much, much more. They were very much more organized. And especially I saw it on the space side. They came in with pretty clear ideas about the changes that they wanted to make, big picture changes. So on one hand, I think this is a product of being better organized and really basically having a blitzkrieg. And it's also, I think it's the great Steve Bannon quote, flood the zone with shit. And so they are flooding the zone with all of these changes, knowing that some of them are going to get stopped or blocked. But if you're starting a thousand fires, as we saw recently in California, you have a limited number of firefighters and water to fight those fires, then you're going to have success in some of the areas you want to.

And so I think it's a product of just being sort of ready to go right at the gun, the outs of the administration, and then just having a strategy of doing all of the things right away to see what you can get through. There's one end of the spectrum where Elon is a guy who's talked about existential risk a lot in many of his ventures. That's a prime motivator for him to want to make life multi-planetary or affect change in the sense of climate change. There's always been a talk of existential risk. And for that matter when he was you know talking to Putin a year or two ago he said it was because he was concerned about the potential for

nuclear war. So yes. And so there is an extent to which his existential risk of the US federal government is if it bankrupt, it all goes away. And I'm susceptible to this feeling, to be honest. Is going this far into debt every single year and increasing that debt at this rate every single year, is that going to go on forever? It can't. I don't think that is physically possible to go on forever. So at some point, it will come to a crash.

And so do you fight that battle when it happens or now? Do you fight that in this way or do you fight it trying to make marginal gains here and there and increasingly chip away at it, right? That's the argument that I am most susceptible to is that we're hitting the iceberg at some point. I'm going to start steering now rather than trying to figure out how to get the lifeboats when we hit the iceberg. When it comes to to talk about like the impact on the Elon sphere of companies, right? That's something that a lot of people are focused on is like, is this going to be a conflict of interest? Is this going to just result in him driving all this money to his own pockets? That's this that's the spot where I find it a little bit interesting because. Spacex has become the prime contractor of nasa because they are so good at what they do and they have won all these things because they are the far outlier of the space industry.

To a certain extent. You know i think we can talk about like if mars funding is part of this. If mars funding is part of this. I'm has space x because of the success of starlink to this point because of where they're at with the starship program already to this point. Is there like an escape velocity that they have achieved in which. You know ten billion dollars of nasa funding for a mars program certainly makes a difference but it doesn't it doesn't go from zero to one of is this gonna happen or not. It goes from like 0.5 to one of like, this will happen a little quicker with a little bit more funding,

but SpaceX certainly seems to be already significantly down that thread that they need to be in terms of the access to funding that they've had. And now the revenues from Starlink that's gonna drive this. They don't seem to be as dependent as this storyline would be of, Elon's just doing this to capture

all this money for himself. Yeah, I think I don't buy that at all. And Elon is absolutely in a position for self-dealing and the conflicts of interest are myriad, but I don't think he's doing it to personally enrich himself or his companies. It does not seem, I can't speak to Tesla, but SpaceX is, I think they have reached escape velocity. Starlink is profitable, the business case is sound, the competitors are years behind. And so they have a clear runway ahead of them. I wrote, I actually wrote about this in the epilogue of reentry where I kind of tackled kind of the biggest existential risk to SpaceX. And I said it was Elon, right? Because on one hand, Elon has been and remains

kind of the driving force of the vision for the company. And if you take that away, I think it turned SpaceX into just another aerospace company. On the other hand, if he'd self-destruct, then it could have catastrophic effects for SpaceX downstream. So in the short term, this is all good for SpaceX. But I don't think SpaceX needs this, as you say, to be successful because I agree. They're going to get Starship

into some kind of operational form. And after that, the business is going to continue to take off. And after that, the business is going to continue to take off. And so, yeah, I agree. $10 billion from NASA doesn't really move the needle for SpaceX. It's kind of a crazy sentence to say, but it's true. And the thing that's been the most gross and the most annoying is this handling of the Butch and Sunny saga, which are you the only one with the reporting that the Chen Dragon will not? Yes. Okay, so unveil what you put out last week. I just found that NASA had coalesced around a plan to swap Dragon spacecraft for the Crew-10

mission. They're going to pull forward the vehicle that was going to fly Axiom 4 because they were originally going to fly a new Dragon, Crew Dragon vehicle. I think there are some battery issues with it. SpaceX has never really said publicly what's going on, but NASA now thinks that that vehicle probably won't be ready until at least the end of April. So they haven't announced it yet. I'm not sure why. Maybe they're going to have some big political to do around it. They've saved the crew. But so I tried to get out ahead of that, basically saying, look,

they're just going to swap the vehicle. It's going to allow them to come back. Basically, it's going to allow the Crew 10 mission to launch in mid-March as opposed to late March, so about two weeks earlier. And then I think that's dependent on the intuitive machines launch actually happening first in terms of the state. But basically it needs to go in mid-March and then that'll allow Butch and Sunday to kind of come back around the last week of March. So again,

it's bringing forward the timeline a couple of weeks earlier. And so you're going to setting up a situation where this is a decision NASA has been considering for months and they probably would have got there anyway. But the Trump administration is likely to claim this as some kind of win that the Biden administration screwed all this up and they're coming in to save the day. And so it's politically, it is very unsavory to watch because space people know the truth, right? Which NASA made this decision last August. To the best of my knowledge and all the reporting I've done, there was no political interference from the White House. Even though Kamala Harris was nominally the head of the Space Council and running for president, my reporting is that

Bill Nelson made the decision without any interference from the White House. So, could be all wrong on that, but I don't think I am. So, this was potted months and months and months ago. Elon signed off on it, and now they're coming back in February and January, January and February. They're saying, oh, we're going to, I directed Elon to go save the crew. And it's just, Elon knows better, right? It's basically a deal, it seems to be between him and the White House to give the Trump administration their early win, quote, win in space. And yeah, it's not great. It's not great.

What's annoying is that there is a way to go about it to give them the win and have the same effective result by just saying like, yep, we'll get them as soon as we can. We're already working on it. We have people that work on this ship right now. The ship's already up there. It's waiting to bring them back. There's there's a way to say yes to your boss and win points. And the problem is that that happens between the Trump to Musk level. But that happens between Musk and SpaceX to where like, say, Elon was a little distracted for the last several months from August now, which is likely and didn't know that was already the plan, right? He then tells SpaceX, Hey, let's go get these astronauts.

Susie can the first person in SpaceX could say, yep, sir, we're already working on it. We got the ship up there waiting for him. Like he knew, I know he knew, but my problem is that everybody in the chain can get this is kind of like a how do how does like shit go wrong in the Chinese space program? It's because it's an authoritarian system where reporting, repeating success up will always work out and repeating failure up never works out. Everyone in this chain could have been like,

yep, already working on it, it's good. Or better yet, Musk could have just said, yeah, sure. And Trump probably in the press conference somewhere would have been like, we went up, we got those astronauts, Biden left them out there. He would have done that anyway. He didn't have to go out and partake in a plainly false storyline that really drives wedges

between you and all the other people in the space industry. And it's gonna make things harder for people that work at SpaceX because it creates this tension by making it a political game that it didn't have to be. It just feels like a really stupid way to expend political capital. And they're blaming NASA, but really they're blaming the Biden administration. But really, they're throwing NASA under the bus. They're saying, well, these nincompoops didn't have this figured out until we came in with a Deus Ex Machina sort of

rescue scenario. It's not true. Like NASA had a plan and I know they're like really sensitive about the word stranded in space and for Elon to just come out and say they were stranded, I mean that's treating NASA poorly. And, you know, I'm sensitive to that because, like, you know, they're doing kind of the best job they can with this stuff. It was a difficult situation. They made a hard decision.

You know, they brought the Boeing spacecraft back without crew. That was a very difficult decision for NASA. And, yeah, so then to be beaten with a stick for six months later for that, for what was, you know, seemed to be the right decision at the time. Doesn't make a lot of sense. And of course, the crew could have come back much sooner, but they stayed up there for reasons. I don't think Butch and Sonny are particularly unhappy about being up there for the extra time. So. Yeah, astronauts mad about extra time and space. More at 11. It's not a story here. Yeah, astronauts mad about extra time and space more at 11. It's not a story here. What's what's concerning about it and the reason I'm harping on it so much is that it is the

the level to Elon's always been a weird political figure, right? Like he was championed by democratic politicians back in the day, the famous photo shoot of him and Obama walking around the Cape infrastructure. He was always somebody who could get things that progressives cared about into a conservative ecosystem. You could take this amazing entrepreneur, I mean he is undoubtedly the greatest entrepreneur of our generation, of our collective generation that spans me and you, not saying you're old but you know. No, I agree.

I agree. What's going on here. And so there was a way that, that he connected this bridge between. Political ideolog ideologies in a way that was confounding to certain extents, right? Like you had Republicans on the Hill. Champing him and his efforts in Congress when he is the leading figure who has done the most active work on climate change at the time, right? And there were all these weird political connections to the the harder and harder he's went to be partisan. It is it feels it feels like he's now operating on political short term timelines, not long timeline thinking

Elon Musk of the past. And that's a concerning thing that I think is really potentially hazardous to the future of SpaceX. Say this does not result in JD Vance becoming the next president in 2028 and there is another kickback and Democrats get elected again. He has burnt all of his political capital and he is himself saying that government is corrupt and is resulting in all these weird deals that is channeling money in these different directions and now has put himself in a these weird deals that is channeling money in these different directions. And now has put himself in a position where then it will channel away from him

if his theory is correct. And it feels so four or eight year focused. I don't get that as somebody who has done long-term thinking for his entire career at this point. Yeah, I don't see how any of this is good for Tesla, right? Because this is not a pro electrical car government, but more broadly, he has turned off. We just saw the sales numbers in Europe that came out

and plummeted, right? Because Elon is a deeply, deeply unpopular figure in Europe. And half of this country, there was a recent poll of his approval ratings in the United States. I think he's down to 38% positive approval rating. And I think there's probably 30% or 40% of the country that absolutely hates the guy and will never buy a Tesla. And so it's just like, he took his whole, he really narrowed the

market for his car company. And the concerns for SpaceX are longer term, as you say, like, one thing I've worried about a lot over the last five years is commercial space being too closely tied to Elon and Jeff Bezos, right? Because if people perceive commercial space being too closely tied to Elon and Jeff Bezos, right? Because if people perceive commercial space as a handout for billionaires to get their jollies on building rockets and going to space, then that's really bad because that's not what commercial space is about, right? Commercial space is really about opening up low-earth orbit and beyond to commerce and more people living and working in space and just kind of untapping the limitless frontier to quote a phrase of space. And that's not how a lot of people now perceive commercial space. They perceive it as Elon and his rockets that blow up and we need to do everything we can to oppose

those efforts. And that's disturbing to me when you really care a lot about commercial space. Yeah, that's the long versus short-term thinking thing is always something that I've felt drawn to with space generally, right? Like it takes a long view to care about the development of space with you and i do that it's it's not a short term. Area is not a short term industry it's something that is like decades generations generations long to establish. The infrastructure is gonna drive you know what we think where we think it's heading and i think i think i think what you want is probably thinking is is he is always. I think what Elon is probably thinking is he has always viewed this as a window that could slam shut at any time. The capital markets could go away, could have some kind of existential crisis.

So my sense, I haven't talked to him about this, but my sense is he just sort of views this as like the next four years is like this golden opportunity to advance his Mars program so much that it's really unstoppable. So in four years from now, Starlink is banking 10 billion a year in profit and SpaceX is launching on crude vehicles to Mars and NASA has a credible humans to Mars program like that ship will have sailed and it will be difficult to end that program. And if NASA were to stop the program, SpaceX could still go forward with it. So, you know, I think that's probably part of the bet he's playing. But again, you know, I don't think much of his calculation right now is based on humans becoming a multi-planetary species.

All right. We got that out of our system. Let's spend a couple minutes at least on space policy, what else. I went on, by the way, I went on at length. I will specifically address this because I got several unhinged emails that were people like, you need to do a show where you talk about Elon for more than two offhanded comments. There's people that want me to specifically denounce various things that he does. The Nazi. Oh yeah, I get that too.

I'm totally an Elon sock puppet because every story I write, I don't write that he's a Nazi doing terrible things. Right, which like my Nazi salute take is like, yes, he functionally did a Nazi salute. Do I think Elon is a secret Nazi and would unveil himself being a Nazi by doing a Nazi salute at a presidential event. I usually don't think that Nazis are secret about being Nazis. That's kind of the point of being a Nazi.

That's where I land on the Nazi salute. We're going to get a bunch of emails about this too, by the way. I'm sure we're going to get some crazy tweets. I have lots of problems on a personal level with some of the things that Elon has done. But my job at the end of the day is to cover the space industry. And so I'm trying to do that dispassionately when it comes to the other factors at play. Except for your obvious anti-SLS bias.

The bias I have is pro-progress. And the problem with SLS is it was the most backward-looking technology and program in my lifetime when it came to space travel. So yeah, it's a quantitative and qualitatively bad thing. That's what people miss about you, I think. They're like, well, he's biased because he doesn't like this thing. It's like, no, no, he doesn't like this thing because he's biased in this way. It's not because I'm biased against NASA.

I'm pro NASA. But like they're building a rocket with 40 year old technology for exorbitant costs that's holding back distributed launch in space propellant depots and just a much better reusable future that we all ought to be vectoring toward. And it held that at bay for a solid decade. And that was very frustrating to live through. Well, you've used a lot of past tense. So let's talk about it. Last week, was this Friday when it was the All Hands

SLS meeting at Boeing? Yeah, Friday, I had a day off. I was going to pick up my dad at the airport because my daughter is the star in the high school musical. And they're coming in to see the show and start getting messages on Signal about how Boeing is gonna have an emergency all-hands meeting for the SLS workforce.

And I was like, shit, guess I'm gonna have to work this afternoon. So there's some numbers in here that I don't think I know. So 800 people is how many people at Boeing are on the SLS workforce? Roughly, yeah. I don't know what I expected it to be nor why I've never looked up a number, but 800 just wasn't where I thought it would be.

Well, it was more than a thousand and then they had some cuts reported on it about a year ago. It was actually the same source who told me about that all hands meeting. So the workforce has come down in size, but it's basically production of core stage and development of the exploration upper stage. And they've given a 60-day notice that half of those people might or will be gone by April. I couldn't understand this. I don't know.

Okay, so it's not entirely clear, but basically they had a meeting where they told the workforce this could be coming. I don't think they formally issued the WARN notices yet. I could be wrong about that, but I haven't checked the WARN website to know for sure. But basically they said that these are coming and that it is possible that in 60 days half of you will be laid off and other people will be reassigned within the company. So what do you take out of this? Do you take that they are just reading the tea leaves

or they know this is coming or this is a good opportunity to trim where it feels like it's... I thought my equivalence was that I think there's a lot of companies that announced we're ending our diversity programs, or we're doing this thing that is like of the vibe of the new administration

because they wanted to do it for a while and this was a good time to cover when everyone else is doing it. The same reason that like all the tech companies had layoffs the same week was because Meta laid off 40,000 people and if you laid off 300, you wouldn't really get covered. No, not at all.

You don't think this is that scenario. No, no, no. So there's some interesting little data points here to consider. First of all, Boeing did not tell NASA. So after a story I did came out, I think Bloomberg had a story at about the same time. Those stories caught NASA headquarters completely

unaware. Wow. Like running around hair on fire type emergency. I know that from multiple sources and then on Saturday, Saturday, I got a, out of the blue, I got a just a statement from NASA saying, please, please include this in your story. And it didn't really say much, but it's clear that they wanted to, Janet Petro, the acting administrator, wanted to have something to say to basically say, NASA is not ending these contracts. What are

you talking about? We're committed to SLS, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so they didn't tell NASA. So NASA was not their audience. So who was the audience for this? And the other interesting thing is like within 45 minutes of me asking questions of Boeing's communications department, they had a statement and a pretty detailed statement back to me. So I think they were prepared from the communication side for this to come. My sense is that this was a strong signal to Congress that, hey, if you don't protect us, you know, we're, we're cutting all these workers, and you've

you've protected us for 1314 years. You got to do it again, or that's the end. And so I think that's that was the purpose of those meetings. Like we said, up front, the fight all the battles at once. So why not fight this one, too? We really have no sense on how most of the flurry of the last two weeks is going to land with Congress as a whole. We've got, you know, there's interviews here and there's the Sunday shows where people will talk about this kind of stuff. And but it's not the it's fine for politicians to be concerned

about waste, fraud and abuse when it's on a general level. But once it starts talking about their waste, fraud and abuse, I feel like then everyone gets a little bit like, let's show yours in a little bit. And so Robert is going to meet the road. So in a little more than a month now, not sure, probably sometime the second of March, the Trump administration can apply his first budget proposal.

It could be a skinny budget like they did in 2017, which is basically like just budget priorities without all of the underlying data that goes into a president's budget request but I think it's gonna be more than that it's gonna be a little more detailed but basically that's where the Trump administration for all the federal agencies is gonna outline its priorities and so that's where you're gonna see huge cuts probably for like the National Science Foundation a significant cut for NASA but not like a 30 or 40% cut, I don't think. And then that's where you'll see what they really decide. I don't think NASA has fully decided that yet. So that will then

put the ball in Congress's court and Congress will then have specific things to react to because right now they're just reacting to, oh, our partner art technica you know they could just be making that stuff up you know it's the fake mainstream media or whatever mainstream ARS technica yeah so so the the person to watch in all of this you're gonna love this is Ted Cruz nice yes even at local Ted Cruz is is a senator from Texas, much loved senator from Texas, who actually has a pretty deep interest in commercial space. He's been one of the board plugged in senators

on this stuff for a while. But he tried to, right at the end of last year, put out an authorization bill that basically had some protective language in it for the SOS rocket. That didn't pass, got set aside. The question is, are you going to try to rush that authorization back in before the president's budget request comes out? We don't know. We'll have to see. Congress isn't moving particularly fast and they've got a lot of different priorities that they're working on. But he will be an interesting person to watch on what happens with SLS stuff. So there's a lot of moving pieces, but I do think like a callous for a lot of this

stuff will be the president's budget request that comes out in the second half of March. Probably don't hold me to that timeframe. Again, that's where there'll be specific proposals that Congress will then kind of be forced to react to because they write the budgets. You mentioned Janet Petro and the acting administrator kind of kerfluffle came to mind where everyone was assuming... Something else that caught NASA leadership completely off guard. Yeah, they had updated the website that Jim Free was acting administrator and he wasn't. And it was Janet Petro who was out of KSC, I believe. Yeah, she's KSC. The most interesting turn in this story was when Lori Garver tweeted about this, that

they had considered doing something similar back in her day when she was second in command at NASA. And I guess that was on transition team at the time. It was before she was, yeah, before she was confirmed. And that she wishes they did what happened under this administration. I found that the most interesting little factoid that it, because it was like, oh, it's always just been the AA that becomes the acting administrator. But if her throwing that little factoid out there, it was interesting.

Is there anything behind the scenes that you learned about that whole situation? Yes. Well, anything you want to talk about. First of all, Lori's exactly right, that they wanted someone, the White House wanted someone who was not of the old order. NASA was not the only agency that got this treatment. The Trump administration basically said, whoever is next in line to be the acting administrator, find someone else. So like the space poobahs got together and kind of all decided Janet Petra was the best choice. Now she is of NASA. Like, for example, there are people involved with the transition who just want to cancel SOS like today. And she has been arguing, no, let's fly Artemis two and Artemis three on SOS as planned and get to the moon and then, you know, go, go, go your separate ways.

The reality is she doesn't have much power in this. I mean, hopefully Jared Isaacman will get confirmed within the next month or so. I was going to ask if you had any ideas on the schedule there. The schedule, my limited understanding is that there is still some uncertainty. Again, it kind of comes back to Cruz. He kind of is going to be setting the schedule. And he may be more interested in getting his authorization legislation through than confirming Jared Isaacman.

So it's kind of all to be determined. I do expect- I have a sense that the space stuff is coming soon because the Detroit Mink, Secretary of the Air Force, oppo research is starting to hit the presses and there's been reporting the last week about how he guided contracts or maybe he didn't. I think it's a little bit of groveling from Elphic Harris and a protest that they wish they filed and they didn't. That's an interesting aspect of this all, but it felt like that indicated that these are coming up now that we're through the RFKs and the Tulseys and all that.

Yeah, yeah. Certainly we're on the second tier now of appointees, not to diminish Jared, but NASA does kind of fall in the pecking order behind the big cabinet agencies. And I think he's going to start to meet with senators pretty soon. And then that's a precursor to the actual hearing, which could be later this month. It could be early in March. I don't have a, I'm not sure anyone knows the timeline yet. So yeah. Well, what's your prediction?

The Artemis, the fly Artemis two and three and then cancel it sounds like a politically viable thing to me because it punts a major decision out of this current electoral term. It keeps it alive a little bit. You let Starship and Blue Moon develop and make a decision based on where they're at at that point. It feels politically doable more so than a wholesale cancellation. Well, so that's something that Ars Technica advocated for a few months ago in a feature that I wrote, basically saying, look, let's cancel Gateway and cancel the Block 1B version

of SLS. And if you want to fly SLS, the original blocks start flying it with Centaur upper stages. There's a problem with that, though, which I just realized recently. There's a problem with that though, which I just realized recently. There's two problems. First of all, you're a young whippersnapper, Anthony. So you may not remember sort of the 2008, 2009, 2010 period when it was clear the space shuttle was going to end. And so you had a gradual bleeding off with the workforce and you were losing key people that you needed to complete those final spatial emissions. So the workforce issue was a problem. There were concerns about

sabotage, people losing their jobs and all that. The other thing, and this I think is probably the bigger issue, and it hadn't really occurred to me until someone mentioned it to me in a conversation was that if you're Boeing, if you're Lockheed, if you're Northrop and the end of these contracts is kind of Artemis 3, then what is your incentive to be ready on a timely manner? Because that's like the big problem with the cost plus contract, right? You get paid as long as you keep working the contract. So I think that would, people say, well, the fastest way to get to the moon is to fly Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 on SLS.

And I understand that line of reasoning. I don't necessarily disagree with it, but the incentives on the contractors are all going to be weighing against going slow. And you can certainly, you can walk that by saying, well, you know, we, of course, we want to do all the safety checks necessary. You know, we don't want to put the crew in danger. This is an unprecedented mission, you know, you know, so I, so I think there's a real tension and I don't think it's been decided yet whether the Trump

administration ultimately is going to say, no's pull the band-aid off and just cancel everything and reset versus Let's try to fly Artemis to an Artemis three which which has those problems like I said sort of when you get to the end of line with these programs you get workforce issues and then and then The this the incentives are not to go fast. Mm-hmm Well, it'll be a crazy couple of years here. It'll be a crazy couple of months. Any other recent stories you want people to point to or if somehow they're not reading

Eric Berger, what they should check out? Man, there's so much happening. I'm going to have a story probably later on Monday or Tuesday. Sorry, when is this coming out? Like a couple hours from now. Maybe a couple minutes. I probably won't have it out. But I'm just talking about all these rumors going around about why Yuri Borisov was fired

as head of Roscosmos. It sounds like the most plausible is that he and his son had been skimming money. I mean, imagine that corruption in the Russian aerospace industry. It's really hard to believe. It sounds like the most plausible is that he and his son had been skimming money. Imagine that corruption in the Russian aerospace industry. It's really hard to believe. But apparently, I got a soft spot for Borislav because a couple months ago, he did an interview with a Russian person. He mentioned the fact that he'd read Liftoff and he liked it. So, yay, Yuri. And they liked it. So, yay Yuri. But, um... You're one and one with the recent

heads of Roscosmos and your relationship. So, let's see how the new guy is. The new guy looks like Chris Kemp. Have you seen that picture? He totally does. That's amazing. So, we'll see how that goes. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out why he was fired.

There's lots of interesting speculation about that. That's great. Oh man. All right. Well, thanks for hanging out with us. What a show. I'm sure we'll get emails, but we're used to them. I love the haters.

The haters love me. I'm ready to show this up on. I think I have a suspicion, which it will. Thanks, Eric. Okay. Take care, buddy. Thanks again. Okay, take care buddy. Thanks again to Eric for coming on the show. It is always great to have him on and talk about things where I never know where they're

going to end up at the end of the show. Other people I need to have a defined start and finish Eric just comes on and we figure it out as we go which is the best part. So thanks again to him for always being game and thanks to all of you who support this show and make this possible. There are almost 900 of you out there supporting cross patreon and sub stack and get the show at either place, whichever one you like. Sub stack the new hotness but you can get to it at manage cutoff.com slash support and join the crew there. There are 31 executive producers who made this episode of the show possible thanks to Will and Lars from Agile Fred the Astrogators at SCE Ryan Stealth Julian Warren Joe Kim Tid Dodd the Everyday Astronaut

David Frank Lee Eunice Josh from Impulse Joel Matt Steve Pat Bob Pat from KC Theo and Violet Better Everyday Studios Donald, Yon, Russell, Chris and four anonymous executive producers Thank you all so much for listening for the support as always. You can join up, manageacutoff.com slash support and get access to Miko Headlines, a show that I do every single week-ish, depending how much news there is. It sometimes takes me a little longer

to read through all the news, but what I do is I read through all of the space news, filter out the stories you don't need to know about, tell you about the ones that you do, give you some initial takes on stories that might appear later on the main podcast here, or maybe they never appear because they're just smaller things that I'm tracking as they go and don't really warrant a big analysis piece. So it's a great way to keep up on the space news to support what I'm doing and keep this whole thing happening. So thanks, y'all for supporting there. If you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up on Twitter at we have Miko on Mastodon at Miko at spacey dot space.

on Twitter at wehavemiko, on mastodon at nico.spacy.space. I am on the blue sky, I think I'm at acolangelor.com, it's like my personal domain on there, and email anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com are the places to talk. I'm sure some of you will be writing in about our various Elon takes, so we'll see what comes in. But otherwise, from a very, very happy Philadelphia Philberts.