Main Engine Cut Off - T+300: Isaacman’s Confirmation Hearing, NASA and NOAA Budgets, NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 Awards

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Jared Isaacman was in Congress for a confirmation hearing for his nomination as NASA Administrator, which was followed up by reports of huge proposed budget cuts at NASA and NOAA. And as expected, SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin all received awards for NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 33 executive producers—nt, Frank, Joonas, Will and Lars from Agile, Pat from KC, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Josh from Impulse, Pat, Bob, Warren, Heiko, Steve, Theo and Violet, David, Kris, Donald, Joel, Fred, Jan, Lee, Russell, The Astrogators at SEE, Ryan, Matt, Stealth Julian, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Better Every Day Studios, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsIsaacman Insists NASA Can Pursue Moon and Mars Goals Simultaneously – SpacePolicyOnline.comTrump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA - Ars TechnicaPlanetary Science Caucus Co-Chairs Bacon & Chu Statement on White House’s Proposed Budget Cuts to NASA Science | U.S. Representative Don BaconNOAA budget proposal would affect weather satellite, other space programs - SpaceNewsSpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin win $13.7 billion in U.S. military launch contracts through 2029 - SpaceNewsSpace Force reassigns GPS satellite launch from ULA to SpaceX - SpaceNewsSpaceX secures majority of NSSL Phase 3 fiscal year 2025 missions - SpaceNewsThe 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 FireflyWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I'm Anthony Colangelo. Jared Isaacman had his day in front of Congress last week. He was there for his confirmation hearing, for his role as NASA Administrator. Now generally, confirmation hearings are kind of boring, honestly. There's, in many cases, the person that is up for the nomination, you kind of have a sense,

if you've been following along with the news, which if you're listening to this show you have, you kind of have a sense for where that person is at and why they've been selected to run whatever agency it is that they're talking about. That's kind of why they got selected to lead that agency is that they've at least, you know, been a known individual in many cases and probably have a good sense for where their minds at on whatever department you're talking about. And then on the Congress side, that's actually where I think more of the

information is for you to glean is that you get a sense for which people in Congress are asking which questions what things they're really trying to get the nominee on the record for the things that maybe they'll fight about or the things that will be the battlegrounds for the following you know two to four years however long that person is going to be in their role. And so it's it's worth watching you know know, I certainly as part of this, I went back and I watched some of the Jim Bridenstine hearings and the Bill Nelson hearings, the Bridenstine hearings, you know, the thing that that came out and that that was interesting

was, you know, he him being asked questions about his take on climate change. And that was a different answer than he'd given when he was in Congress. But on the space policy side, you know, he had been promoting legislation in Congress his last couple years in Congress there, when he was actually, you know, a representative, he'd been pushing legislation through, so you kind of knew where he was at policy wise. And then on the Nelson side, obviously, he'd been in politics forever. So the thing that was surprising to learn about that nomination hearing was, it was actually a good time for you to take a nap because it was so boring.

And so this is probably a little bit of both in the Isaacman case. Isaacman had made himself clear towards the end of last year, even on this very show about where he was out on the space policy side of things. We had heard talk of what things Ted Cruz was unhappy about in the run up to this confirmation hearing. ISS de-orbit timing being one of the key things. So that got a central focus from Ted Cruz on exactly how much Jared Isaacman does or does not agree with Elon Musk about de-orbiting the ISS as soon as possible. And Isaacman stated, you know, he's in for the ISS on its current schedule and as envisioned,

and that they need to maximize use of it. So that's gonna make the ISS contingent happy. On the SLS front, Jared Isaac Min stated that, you know, the SLS is not the thing for the long term of the Artemis program. It's not the thing for a sustainable program over the long haul. And that's not a revelation. He's not the thing for a sustainable program over the long haul and that's not

a revelation he's not the first person to say that he's not the first person in his role to say that. Jim bryanstein certainly said things to that nature. Mike Pence when he was vice president was up there you know talking about if these contractors can't get it done we'll find ones who will so questioning of SLS from the higher levels of NASA is not new. It certainly hasn't gone far, but it's not new. So that's not necessarily a revelation.

He was a bit, you know, they kept asking him whether he's committed to going to the moon or really just wants to go to Mars. And he had a we can do both attitude about this of one is enabling to the other. And, you know, I buy that to some extent, but I think that might be my biggest, um, criticism of Jared Isaacman's take up there. You know, he was now I should count this even in saying that I think nomination hearings are, I said this on off nominal yesterday, they're like dental work. You just kind of got to get through it however you can. Um, it's not fun. It's not great, you have to do all these meetings with Congress people, tell them what they want to hear. So there is a part of you that's sort of selling out the system to try to make sure everyone's

happy and find a way that, you know, you don't have to lie, you shouldn't lie in Congress, you can't lie, but you can find a way to word your answers that are carefully selected to not lie but not give them the answer they want, but still placate, or at least in the case of Ed Markey trying to get an answer of whether Elon Musk was in the room when Donald Trump offered Jared Isaacman the job, you could just continually say that your meetings with the president. And that got weird, but clearly somebody was concerned that if Elon was in the room that it would lead to trouble either for Jared or Elon

It's again. No one's surprised that Jared Isaacman knows Elon Musk or that Elon had a hand in picking Jared Isaacman. So The the answer there is not the revelation. So I don't know exactly what the Concern was there or what the thing they were trying to defend against by avoiding those questions But anyway, I you know, so I do think you have to get through these nomination hearings, but the criticism I have Jared Eisenman is that he was all things to all people in that meeting. He was, we're gonna run the ISS as long as we can go,

we're gonna do the moon, we're gonna do Mars, I'm gonna look at the gateway when I get in there, and left the door open for maybe this thing will stick around in the program. So he was all things to all people, all the planetary science, all the earth science, all the human space flight. And straight up, NASA is at a moment right now,

not just because of the fact that federal budgets are in a tough spot, not just because of that fact, but NASA, regardless of who's the president, of who's the head of NASA, regardless of whether Elon Musk is a special government employee trying to cut government funding, and you know, regardless of any of that NASA is at a moment right now in 2025, where there are too many things happening at the same time that cost too much money and they have to make tough decisions. Doing all of the things is not an option. All the

budget wedges are wedging up at the same time. Everything's expensive at the same time. The ISS is coming to the head at the same time as we wanna be funding the Gateway and SLS Block 1B and a new Boba launch tower and human missions to the moon on two different lunar landers and do all this planetary science in a really amazing way and Mars sound return. They're doing too many things straight up, right? Like that for the budget they're given.

They're not gonna be given a $40 billion budget. If they were, I bet they'd find a way to use it on all those things, but that is not the realistic environment to play in. A realistic environment to play in is the budget's gonna continue to grow about the rate that it always has, may it'll be cut here and there. So regardless of who's in charge,

they were still gonna be forced to make these tough decisions on which programs can stay, which ones can go, how much you're gonna spend where, what you're gonna prioritize. And so rolling into a confirmation hearing and being all things to all people is just not the situation that NASA has dealt with regardless of the policy decisions going on

in the larger federal government. So now I get his point in some of these cases where his point is NASA could be more efficient, they could make better use of the resources and enable themselves to do more things. And I get that and I could support that and I'm there for that. But also do you wanna tell that to the people

who are in charge of your budget? That's the fundamental tension with the Jared Isaacman take is that you're gonna tell everybody in Congress we could be more efficient with our dollars and do more. And so that's a pretty open area for Congress to say, all right, well then have a little less and do more. Or have a little less and do the same amount that you're doing now if you're telling me

you can be more efficient. And those incentives aren't quite there for the US government the way it's structured, right? I is a an issue with the government generally in the way that we've got it set up is that you send people to Congress to You know lobby for your Interests in your own area which oftentimes means projects in your area money spent in your area So there's not a lot of incentive for like, hey, you know, Goddard, you were really efficient on that one program, good job.

We're gonna cut your budget a little bit back because you don't need as much anymore. Now, Jake Robbins, my co-host on Off Nominal's argument is that the reward for being efficient is that you could do more on the same amount of budget. But it gets really tough to make these arguments against, you know, in these budget conversations for when your budget should go up, when it should go down, when it should stay the same, when you could do more, when you should be given more leeway.

So my point is that Jared Isaacman's role internal in NASA should be, we got to be more efficient, we got to, you know, be able to do more with the same amount of money because we got to think different about this, these programs if we want any of them to survive otherwise we're gonna have to cut back in certain areas so that's our internal prerogative is to be more efficient and think about things differently so that we can accomplish more but when he's out in Congress he needs to be you know stomping for his role really is to be stomping for fund these programs fully you know commercial was my biggest criticism of the Nelsa era NASA is that there was a huge geopolitical moment there where they could have stepped on the gas and gotten funding

for commercial space stations and they did zero of that. There was absolutely no effort to use that situation that was on the field for you in play to massively increase commercial space station funding at a time where you're talking up the fact that you want commercial space stations. And so there's a little bit of a miss there on the Nelson era, and I'm cautious about the fact that if Jared wants to go this way with the mantra, even externally being, we could be however much percentage more efficient then be ready for however much less come in your way and maybe that's good thing

right maybe that's also part of of what he wants his legacy at NASA to be is like I did lead a NASA that got X percent more efficient and and that led to these great results. And that would be awesome if that was his legacy. There's just not a lot of other people in the world of US politics that work that way. And so if you're out there spitting into a rainstorm, I don't really know if you are being the best leader

of that agency, you know, being the nice and efficient guy in the field when everyone else is trying to play tackle football So that's my concern We'll see where it goes. You know if and when he's confirmed it sounds like he'll be confirmed sometime in May Now two days later after we could do all things we can do all the the projects there was a budget proposal from the Trump White House that there was a budget proposal from the Trump White House that completely, you know, shattered the science funding at NASA. A nearly 50% cut for science programs generally.

The previous funding, fiscal year 2025, 7.5 billion, this proposed budget is down to 3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year. It starts in October 1st. Astrophysics got cut, its cut was two-thirds of its budget, so it's now down to $487 million. Heliophysics nearly a 50% cut. Earth science more than a 50% cut down to $1.03 billion. Planetary science a 30% cut down to $1.9 billion. So huge cuts all over the NASA science program under this proposal. Now, you know, there are others in the industry whose job it is to get worked up about proposals and start, you know, creating the momentum to not have this budget come to pass. So the Planetary Society is out there talking up, you know, their disapproval of this budget proposal. The Congressional Planetary Science Caucus, which is a bipartisan caucus, released

a statement. So Don Bacon, representative from Nebraska, has been someone who has been outspoken against, you know, Trump policies generally. He's been out there talking a lot about tariffs, and now he's fighting back on this one. He's the first Republican to really speak up in the wake of this science budget proposal. So there is some, you know, budding Republican resistance to this, and we'll see how far that goes. You know, the first couple of voices we heard from were the representatives and congresspeople from the area around JPL, because Mars sample return is cut as part of this project proposal. The representatives around Goddard Space Flight Center, because their programs, like Nancy

Grace Roman's space telescope, are massively cut back or eliminated entirely. So the parochial interests overlapped heavily with the party line interests. But that's what I want to hone in on is, is I don't, I don't think this is a good idea. Generally, I would not do this. I think this massive of cut is more disruptive than it is, you know, building towards some momentum that this administration wants to say are going to be a more, you know, austere austerity measures and a more thoughtful federal budget overall. I don't think this is the way that you actually build momentum towards that

cause of a huge cut in for things that are, you know, pretty unclassified net goods for society. Um, and things that are generally well supported by the American public and are our long lead programs that's when they deal with a cut back of a huge amount like this completely derails those projects and delays them more than, you know, the the mere timeout that they're put in when you start throwing these kind of budget numbers around. But what I want to hone in on is the fact that, you know, all the other times that NASA

changes hands amongst administrations in my lifetime, there's always a set of things where, you know, the Republicans are going to cut Earth science back, the Office of Education, Democrats are going to come in and tweak that, but cut other areas. And there's always a little bit of a on the margins back and forth. The programs that are the favorite of each party to make the budget numbers work, it's like, all right, well, these are the targets

that we zero out so that the numbers work elsewhere. And then Congress debates and they fund it at, you know, whatever level Congress sees appropriate. But there's kind of a game that always happens at these budget proposals. What's interesting here is that these are the first time, and they fund it at whatever level Congress sees appropriate. But there's kind of a game that always happens at these budget proposals. What's interesting here is that these are the first time, this is the first time that I can remember

where because the cut is so severe and so large that the typical interests are not where the cuts are coming. And so you are cutting areas in which Republican Congress people have major interests, whether that means locally or interest-wise, the support that has been there for the planetary science. The first Trump administration had the biggest planetary science budget we've ever seen. So you're cutting in areas where there is active support from your own party, and so

that's going to create pushback in a different way than we've seen before. So where will this go in Congress? Amongst all the other fights that are happening in the federal government over what's going to get funded, how it's going to get funded, what programs should be run like. There are so many different things going on right now that I'm not sure how much attention this will get. But at the same point, is this where the Trump administration wants to really, you know, throw its weight around and have these cuts stick when Congress comes back with their budget proposals? I don't

think so. I don't I don't think this the 40 chest scenario that we got a roadmap on off nominal yesterday was, you know, maybe you are, if you're somebody out there who wants to cut SLS, Orion, Gateway, some of these big things that are generally well supported by the political establishment, maybe you have a severe cut of a very juicy target that is going to cause a lot of congressional upheaval, and you sort of do some horse trading and say,

all right, well, we can add back all this science, but we got to cut the multi-billion dollar rabbit hole that would be Gateway, SLS, Block 1B, and pretty much everything after Artemis 3 on the current roadmap. And even in the confirmation hearing, you call back to that, Jared Isaacson stated pretty plainly that Artemis 2 and 3 should happen as they are planned, and then beyond that we should rethink the program from the foundations. I can't argue with that approach. That's what I would do if I was in charge of NASA and everybody, especially people that

email me a lot, and I feel like I owe you an email back about the Gateway and other programs, know where I stand on that. I think that is an area for that program to go and spend tens of billions of dollars for not a lot of great effect in an era when we're also funding a bunch of lunar landers. So if there's money to free up, it's over there in my head. It's not things like Mars sample return, DaVinciets grace roman space telescope even some of these budget proposals how they affect Noah and The the follow-on geostationary weather satellites that they're working on geo Exo You know, those are those are badass weather satellites. I don't want to see that affected

So, you know, I never buy the 40 chess Storyline when people talk about Trump administrations. I'm never quite So, you know, I never buy the 40 chess storyline when people talk about Trump administrations. I'm never quite able to get myself there. If they get there with SLS Orion, I'll give them props. I don't think that's gonna be how it turns out. It might turn out that way because Congress is interested in that. And that there is a, you know, as time goes on

and the Starships and the Blue Origins and the commercial way of doing things, as those goes on and the Starships and the Blue Origins and the commercial way of doing things, as those gain steam in the market and as senators and representatives age out and are replaced in those committees with the Maria Kent Wells and even Ted Cruz to some extent, who does support, you know, a lot of SpaceX activity in Texas, the guard changes over time. Now, there's Shelby around, obviously, you know, Bill Nelson is out of the picture now. There's no more Shelby around, obviously. Bill Nelson is out of the picture now. There are others in Florida that are rising. The people change and the momentum of the industry changes, and that would create a

groundswell for shakier support of SLS Orion. This could be that moment where we're going to see that wind change. So a lot of directions for this to go the congressional response here is going to be really interesting to watch is it just Don Bacon who's out there, you know, kind of being his he's trying to find his lane there and in the the Reagan Republican independent area that's going to be you know, the swing vote, and largely outspoken against Trump administration policies where he disagrees with them on like typical Republican grounds? Or is there going to be more people

that join in because they support Mars sample return because they support the Goddard Space Flight Center or you know, the different areas that are going to be affected by this? Is that support actually going to build to anything significant? That'll be what we'll be talking about for the next several weeks, I'm sure. All right, I want to mention the National Security Space Launch Program Phase 3 awards that got announced as well. But before I do that, I want to say thank you to everyone out there who supports this show over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 33 executive producers who made this episode possible. Thanks to NT, Frank, Eunice, Will and Lars from Agile, Pat from KC, Jo Kim, Josh from

Impulse, Pat, Bob, Warren, Heiko, Steve, Theo and Violet, David, Chris, Donald, Joel, Fred, Jan, Lee, Russell, The Astrogators at SEE, Ryan, Matt, Stealth Julian, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Better Everyday Studios, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this episode possible. You can get this show and Miko headlines if you support an extra podcast every single week-ish, depending on how much news is going on that I have to read through,

because that's the point. I read through all of the space news. I'm not even kidding you. I read through every story that comes in my RSS read. I throw some of them out when it's pretty obvious that there's no news there. But I read through all the space news, filter out the stuff that you don't need to know,

make sure you know the stuff that is worth knowing, worth tracking, talk about all the launches, all of the announcements that matter. And it's a great way, I think, to have me filter all the space news. I'm reading it anyway, let me filter it for you. Gets in your podcast feed, you support the show. It's a win-win all around.

So check that out if you're interested, but otherwise, thank you all so much. All right, I saved this one for the end of the show. It's a win-win all around. So check that out if you're interested, but otherwise, thank you all so much. All right, I saved this one for the end of the show because, to be honest, it's not that surprising. We heard about this arrangement, I feel like, months ago when this was starting to form. So, National Security Space Launch Program is where the US government, the US Department of Defense, launches all of their, not all of their, but most of their military satellites or defense program satellites. And there are two lanes now in phase three.

There's the lane one procurement, which is kind of like the NASA CLPS approach where they put out task orders, and anyone can bid on that if you've been on ramp with the program. And then there's lane two, which is a combined $13.7 billion launch service contract that gets divvied out amongst competitors,

and they get awarded a certain slate of these 54 launches that'll be awarded from fiscal years 2025 to 2029. So the next four years, the launches would occur about two years after they're awarded, so from 2027 through 2032 fiscal years. So that actually goes into 2023. That's what we're looking at here. Now, like I said, we've heard this arrangement months ago when it was

talked about. Typically there were only two providers in these kind of procurements in phase 1A and then phase 2. There was only SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. A couple of months ago, must have been months ago, might even be years ago at this point, we heard of this idea to peel off seven launches that could be slated for a third competitor, Blue Origin being the one that was identified as the competitor, for a new competitor to on-ramp three instead of two, and to give them a significant number of launches that allows them to take part in this program, would probably be things that are less demanding,

like GPS satellites or things that are able to take on a little bit more risk than the multi-billion dollar spy satellite that's going out to geostationary orbit. But that's exactly how this shook out. SpaceX won the 60% share. There's always somebody that wins 60% of the missions and then the rest get divvied up. So ULA got 35% of the missions

and then Blue Origin just got seven of the missions of the 54 total. So SpaceX got 28, ULA 19, Blue Origin seven. The monetary figures, SpaceX has got about $5.9 billion in anticipated awards over those launches. ULA 5.4 billion and Blue Origin 2.4 billion. That is a pricey couple of launches, but of course this doesn't just contain the raw buy launch off the assembly line kind of price. There's other things rolled into this,

which has been the source of internet fights for years, but we're not going to get too much into it today. The only reason I'm really mentioning it is because it is big news. You know, it is huge that Blue Origin won this set of missions from the Space Force. It's big news that SpaceX is the top winner of Phase 3 Lane 2 here, is that they are going to be the 60% share here. And overall, these are pretty pricey, I'm gonna be honest. You run the average price out, right? It's like 200 something million for SpaceX missions. Let's see, let me do the math instead of just spitballing.

5.4 billion divided by 28. 192, did I say that? No, 5.9 billion, okay, that's right. 5.9 billion divided by 28. 210 million dollars a pop if you were to do this at a launch cost price. ULA at Anthony Does Math Live on the Show. 19, carry the one. $284 million.

And this is where it gets pretty chaotic. $2.4 billion across seven launches. $342,857,142.85. Oh boy, that's a pricey GPS launch if you ask me. But of course, like I said, there's more in it than just the launch itself. But the Space Force also did assign the first nine missions here under phase three, lane two.

So the SpaceX won seven launches under phase three lane two. So the SpaceX one, seven launches worth 845 million dollars. They've got three for the NRO, four for the US Space Force. One of those is a GPS three satellite launch. ULA got two missions. They've got a second next generation overhead persistent infrared geo missile warning satellite and they got another GPS three follow-on mission. Now, Space News reported that they had sources saying this was going to be a 5-4 split rather than a 7-2 split, but because of the ongoing construction at ULA's west coast launch site, they could not fly those two missions.

So they'll get missions later down the line, right? The numbers will shake out in the end. At least so we think. Even now in phase two, the GPS missions that have already been awarded, yet again we had another GPS 3 satellite reassigned from Vulcan over to a SpaceX Falcon 9. We had that happen last December and they spun that as like a rapid response launch test plus also getting some of these GPS satellites out of the hangar. And here we are again, Vulcan still waiting to fly their first of the NSSL missions and GPS satellites getting reassigned. So again, they say they'll make up down the line a GPS 3 launch that was going to happen on Falcon Heavy.

They're switching that over to Vulcan in order to trade this one out. So they want the numbers to shake out in the end. But between that and this whole 7-2 to 5-4 split thing, I think it's just a good indication that Vulcan is really behind schedule overall. ULA has been sluggish off the block here. They say they're certified now after the investigation is solid rocket booster, but they've got this Atlas mission that has been delayed for a couple of days here to get the Kuiper satellites going They've got a ton of Vulcans to fly They are behind the eight ball on this and I don't know when their pace will pick up

They keep telling us it will so we'll see when that when that happens But for now it seems really slow over at the ULA barn, and we're seeing that reflected in the contracts, so worth mentioning that as well. But that is all I've got for you today. A nice juicy one for Miko's ninth birthday. I think I bought the domain on April 16th, nine years ago. First show was April 20th, so right around now is the ninth birthday, and I thank you all

for being along for that ride. It's been a wild nine years in the industry, and I've had a lot of fun tracking it here with you. So, yeah, thanks for listening, I'll talk to you soon.