Main Engine Cut Off - T+303: The Trump 2024 Transition (with Mark Albrecht)

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Mark Albrecht joins me to talk about his time on the Trump 2024 Transition Team, the thinking behind some of the policy decisions we’re starting to see in the space and national security spheres, and more.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 33 executive producers—Joonas, The Astrogators at SEE, Will and Lars from Agile, Theo and Violet, Frank, Russell, Kris, Bob, Lee, Pat, Ryan, Fred, Matt, Heiko, Pat from KC, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Donald, Josh from Impulse, Stealth Julian, Jan, Steve, Better Every Day Studios, Warren, David, Joel, Natasha Tsakos (pronounced Tszakos), Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsMark Albrecht (@MarkAlbrecht68) / XFalling Back To Earth: A First Hand Account Of The Great Space Race And The End Of The Cold War: Albrecht, Mark: 9780615447094: Amazon.com: BooksMark Albrecht on X: “Today concludes my service for the 47 transition team (4th time) We have charted a bold, aggressive, and urgent agenda for civil and national security space based on the direction and guidance of President Trump. It will be a golden era of US Space exploration, innovation…”Second Trump administration begins with confusion on acting NASA leadership - SpaceNewsWhite House budget proposal would phase out SLS and Orion, scale back ISS operations - SpaceNewsNASA budget proposal draws strong criticism - SpaceNewsSpace Force chief makes case for increased funding before House panel - 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 NASAWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to the Main Engine Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo and we've got a returning guest today. We've got Mark Albrecht back again. Mark was the executive secretary of the National Space Council back in the late 80s early 90s. He has been involved in several transition teams, including the first Trump administration and most recently just wrapped up work on the transition team for the space side of things for this Trump administration as well. So you know, he runs pretty tight circles up there in the the top of the Trump policy sphere. So it's always interesting to hear some perspectives directly from the source from someone who's in these rooms, having these conversations about where things

should go, understand some of the some of the guiding forces behind these decisions and some of the inspiration or the, you know, the true reason behind some of these decisions, especially now as we're starting to see actual policy and directives and budget requests make their way through we got the skinny budget, which is, you know, big cuts across the board, but really steep at NASA, a big, you know, push in the national security space for the Golden Dome program, how much of a space impact that's going to be. There's been you

know, a lot of hypersonic work that we just talked about with Caleb Henry. So a lot of things going on that's going to be. There's been a lot of hypersonic work that we just talked about with Caleb Henry. So a lot of things going on that were relevant to the work that Mark did on the transition team just a couple of months back. So I value having these kinds of conversations to hear directly from sources on what was going on behind the scenes and what's going into some of these decisions, whether or not I get emails when Mark's on the show on either show, because there's a lot of people that fervently disagree with him, which is great. And I get emails when Laurie Garver show and the show because a lot of people that firmly disagree with him which is great and i get emails when you know lorg are on the show a lot of people firmly to screw thirst and i love that and that's the point is car station so you know i know he's a scary product twenty twenty five author but i do think it's worth hearing. What is got to say in this world because he's involved in a lot of these different decisions and conversations that that drove the session so.

different decisions and conversations that drove these decisions. So I thought it was a great conversation to hear about things that were going on, and I hope you do too. So without further ado, let's give Mark a call. Mark, welcome back to the show. It's been a couple months since we've talked. I think so. I think it has been. Yeah.

It's been quite a few months on your side, especially. So yeah, can you fill us in on, you know, you were involved with the transition last time, this time with Trump administration. So give us a sketch of what your role was there and obviously you're just Mark Albrecht today. You're not part of the administration officially. So where does that roll off? Okay, good. Thank you very much. Well, back in 2016, I led the space transition for the first Trump administration, and that's national security, civil, all. And in 2024, I participated in the leadership of the space transition. Very, very different cats, very different cats.

And as I can see, you can begin begin to see I remember telling people back in November and December going this is very different this is going to be very very different and I think obviously since rolled out we're at 106 days and as people say it feels like 1006 days which is great that was that was not an accident that was quite intentional. So that was my role and responsibility. In both cases, presidential transitions are to get the new team ready to hit the ground running both substantively and in terms of personnel. And it's, it's a time-honored tradition. It goes back to 1963 with the Presidential

Transition Act of 1963, where it was obviously seen and recognized that in the pace of modern government, waiting until January 20th for a whole team to take over was inefficient and wasn't in the nation's interest. So since then there have been funds and resources provided for both teams, two teams, to prepare for a new administration. And so that's really what the foundation is and how it works. One thing interesting I learned this time is it all ceases on January 20th, obviously once the president is there. But many of the people are the same, many of the issues are the same. And the reason that it shuts down so hard for all administrations on the 20th

is that before the 20th, you're private citizens doing private citizen activities. And after the 20th, we now have a president and all of the presidential documentations, FOIAs, congressional subpoenas, what did you do, what did you say, all of that becomes public record. And so every administration on January 20th, the transition shuts down hard. Sorry, let me just turn that off. Last time you were on the show, the vice president called you too, I think. I know. It's the storyline.

It happens every time. I just won't leave you alone. Obviously, a ton of topics to cover on. Anything you want, anywhere you want to go. I don't even know what's the right angle to start at. Civil or defense might be the best break point to start on. You want to pick which one we start with? No, up to you.

Whatever you think is more timely. You know your viewers better than I. Yeah, let's just go chronologically to the things that people were talking about. Early on, early on, there was NASA drama where Jim Free was associate administrator. NASA updated the website that he was going to be acting administrator.

He was not. Janet Petro became acting administrator. Your pal, Lloyd Garver, even was out there tweeting, like, I wish we did this when I was involved in the transition back in the day, but we didn't do that. So there was a lot of intrigue around that moment in time. Janet's been out there, you know, pretty visible in terms of the communication in the transition and the initial days of the Trump administration in ways that

sometimes just reflected the standard administration communications. Other times people thought she was going farther than they would have expected. So any context there on like, number one, what happened with Jim Free? What was the situation there? Why did that end up the way that it did with you guys being out of step with NASA updating the website? How did that all go down? Well that's a lot of insight baseball, but let me tell you what I'm happy to tell people because it's come up And it still comes up not just with Janet but others and I said imagine a cartoon Where you have one character in the cartoon with a thought bubble and that character in the cartoon is the transition or new administration whatever you want to put in that character and the cartoon is the transition or new administration,

whatever you want to put in that character. And that thought bubble is populated with a phrase that says least worst choice. And the other character is the person inside the government, whether it's air force or space force or NASA or whichever, and their thought bubble says anointed. So you're looking at two people, you're looking at two characters, the transition and the person who's in government, one who will be acting and the acting person is thinking anointed and the transition people are thinking least worst choice.

And what happens is that gets worse as time marches on. So for somebody who perhaps for four days was acting Secretary of State, not a big problem. Some of the departments and agencies and some of the lower down nominees and appointees and conferres, when it gets months and months and months, what happens, there's a so what to the story. I know you're getting there. Okay. For months and months, if it goes on for months and months and months, the person in the acting role gets a lot of feedback by the administration after January 20th. They're real, things are happening.

Actions are being passed down, etc. So what happens is the pat on the backs or pat on the heads or whatever you want to call them, atta boys, atta girls, etc. Just confirm the anointed sense. So these people, these people, acting people tend to start saying, well, you know, I'm doing a pretty doggone good job here. You know, this, this suit fits pretty nicely. And I just look at this, a director of OMB, a personal note that said, Anthony, great job on the rollout of the executive order. Hey, you know, I am somebody.

So one of the problems is, particularly in long standing vacancies because of congressional action, that there is a problem that the acting can begin to think that they're on the short list. After all, they're anointed. They were chosen out of the primordial ooze of everybody in the FAA to be the acting administrator. So there are some lessons learned from that. And I think, and again, there's a rambunctiousness

with NASA, you know, it takes the independent and independent agencies and capitalizes all the letters. And rather than saying independent of a standing department or agency, which is what the independent means, they see independent from everything. So NASA will make assumptions. There's almost no modesty to the bureaucracy. So their assumption is Anthony will be the acting. Why? Well, because he's number three in the department and agency. So as a matter of fact, I might even go so far as to kind of doing presumptive things because we presume since it's we're independent. So sometimes you have to you have to remind the department and agency

that they're not independent independent. They are part of the executive administration. So I think in some of the actings, we won't go into details of ones or another, but in some of the actings, you see the new administration demonstrating a little internal discipline that says, no, actually, we're in charge or the president is in charge. You actually work for the president. You're

independent agency, but only independent of a department. You are not independent of the executive branch. So that's probably enough said on that story. Well, one more question. Is that that was any of this influenced by the fact that first time around back in 2016 we had a really long wait to get all the way to Bridenstine that there was a huge I mean I forget exactly how long it went but it was made end of May yeah so basically where we sit today right when yeah and then that took a while more to work through the confirmation hearings and finally getting confirmed

So it was a really long wait in that case Right, right and that a lot of decisions were being made and again is that what colored this particular approach this time? Well, I all of them there were a number of them a number of appointments not just at NASA elsewhere where actings became Well not problematic, but you needed to send a message of discipline to the system that you really work for the president. So rather than bills of particulars, it was, and particularly NASA is very aggressive in kind of making assumptions. So. And lightning.

And as you know, Janet, here we go, is doing a really good job. assumptions. So. And lightning. And as you know, Janet, here we go, is doing a really good job. I mean, she is executing to the best of my knowledge, the directives that are coming down from the White House and the OMB and OPM. She's executing them with fidelity and if not enthusiasm, certainly authority. So anyhow, that's the long and short of it. I have a sense that there's more to the story, but we're going to get it out of you today. So then we heard the Jared Isaacman nomination in December, I think it was, not

for nothing. He was on this podcast right before he was announced as a nominee. Oh, good for you. Oh darn. I was hoping you would say, no, you're the kingmaker. You're the guy that... No. Jesus. What did you make of the run up to his nomination or his confirmation hearings in terms of, we heard a lot coming out about things that Ted Cruz and others weren't happy with on some of the takes that he's had in the past and things that they questioned Cantwell and Cruz were making statements while voting for his confirmation out of the subcommittee. They still had to have a couple of statements of like, well,

he committed to this thing in particular, Space Station or second lunar lander. Yeah, in terms of the pieces at play there with the congressional side, how did you make all that out with? Well, first off, I think he's a great choice and he's entirely consistent with the kind of selections the president has made in almost all these positions. And it's not surprising. I mean, he's not a govey. He's not not surprising i mean he's not a govey he's not somebody deep and moving up chairs etc. He's independently wealthy these are all things that matter to the new administration he's a free thinker he's smart as hell and like so many others he doesn't need this job which makes him. Very very. which makes him very, very consistent with what the president wants to do. So there are a lot of Jared-type people in all kinds of senior important positions.

So he fits the mold perfectly. He's obviously enthusiastic about space. He wants to do the job. He's eager. He's got a lot of ideas. So I think a lot of the things you saw was the normal process in Washington, you know, what's normal. But anyway, the process is that the nominees usually come from government experiences, previous administrations, and they right from the get-go have a background that can be gone through when you were undersecretary of blah blah blah. You did blah blah blah You said blah blah blah. There's also a sense

This is mark speaking there's also a sense that even from day one minute one Many nominees in the past have been thinking about post-employment. I mean, I hate to say it, but it's true. They've got a life ahead and they know that, hey, I'm going to be the under secretary of blah, blah, blah. And while I'm going to do that, I'm committed to the new administration, et cetera. But in the end of ends, you know, I've got a young family and I know what's going to happen next. These guys don't. Jared doesn't. I mean, he doesn't need this job. And whatever he does afterwards will be enormously successful. Whether it has something to do with his tenure as NASA administrator or not isn't a make or break.

So I think there is a little bit of casting about and there is on the Congress and the Senate because the normal nomination process of going through people sifting through the decisions they've made and the things they've been involved, the things they've written, etc. So they're kind of feeling their way out. They're in new territory when they're looking back through the backgrounds of the people than they're used to. So I'm not surprised at that. And that's kind of where we are.

Yeah, it's just, you know, it's interesting and space is always a little bit funny in that it doesn't follow the same, you know, partisan lines that you have elsewhere. There's different lines drawn that we all know where those things come down, you know, how close to Johnson do you live and how close to the Seattle companies do you live? It's much more parochial in that way. So it's never surprising, but it does make for interesting turns politically. You know, the last couple confirmation hearings you've had, you know, the Nelson one was really just like a bunch of old buddies that were happy for their friend getting the gig and moving on up. Right. And Marco Rubio, this time around at Secretary of State, that confirmation hearing

felt similar, which is like, you know, I ran into you when we were just young senators in the hallway and I'm so, no matter what party, they were like, I'm just happy that you're getting the call up. And so it can go into that or then in the Jared case, it's like, well, you commit to going on a fishing trip with me back in my thing so I can have the head of NASA come through my district. And so I never try to, I don't think I take, I said this on the show, which is that, that, you know, confirmation hearings are just like dental work. Like you just want to get through them and you got to do what you got to do to get through them. And there

was a little bit of, of, I guess my question for you is like, how much of the content that are in those hearings or something that should be gleaned into of like, all right, this is what Jared is going to do with NASA versus, you know, more of a politics game. Yeah, I think you've got it. What you what you don't see is it's a little bit like water polo. There's so much of it below the water. What you're watching with the guys with the ball, etc. is one thing. But below the water, there's kicking and grabbing and pinching. And so, you know, a lot of these and look, the senators want a good confirmation hearing, just as much as the conformity wants to have a good hearing. It's everybody has the same interest. It's a little bit like a wedding. I mean, so there's a

lot of choreography going on. This is a question I'm gonna ask you, what are you gonna answer? And then you do it and they go, ah, I really, that's not enough, that's all I can do, I can't do anymore. Well, I don't want you on the record to know. So how about we agree that the question will be, if you had to do blah, blah, blah,

what of three things would you choose? As long as one of those three things are what I want, I can go back and say, he said he was going to do that or she. I mean, I will do this gender neutral. So there's a lot of choreographing going on. There's very little spontaneity. Occasionally, you can watch confirmation hearing, which we call goes off the rails, right? When either the questioner or the confirmee kind of goes off script, then everybody, believe me, all the knuckles get white on the, and

the down, et cetera. So I watched it. I liked it. I thought it was good. I thought it in my reading of it and my knowing of the process Jared was made it through a Quite successfully and be with a lot of latitude. I mean there were there were things he committed to but there was also independent review authority and independent judgment that he reserved consistently that in my view would allow for a certain latitude of action. And I think that's in everyone's interest. So that's my take on that. There is a lot of pre-choreography that goes on in those hearings. And I think that's appropriate.

Really, what are you trying to get to? You're trying to get to a confirmed nominee where there is an understanding of what their intentionality is. And on the same time, a desire to keep their own independence so that when they do get the job and they see the real actual facts as they really and actually are prevented presented they can exercise their judgment which is one of the reasons they're hired so i i think it went very well and i think everybody got what they needed and wanted out of it the biggest source of maybe a little strides and effect was the uh markey back and forth about, was Musk in the room when he got presented the job. Um,

and I thought the Streisand effect held true here, which I don't know if you remember that out in your neck of the woods in the West coast where, uh, Streisand was like, would she not want her house on like Google street view or something like that? And like, or Google, I forget exactly the situation. She tried to get it or photos of her house taken down, which led to everyone looking up photos of her house and everyone seeing what her house looked like. So that is this phenomena that occurs where this exchange felt like it to me that it became

more news than I think either of them. I mean, Markie wanted this all on the record of Jared avoiding answering the question of whether Musk was in the room. I don't know if, I don't really know what the specific, we all know Elon Musk was involved with, you know, different else aspects of policy from before the election all the way through. So that isn't necessarily the surprising part to me. I don't know if you know what the specific concern was. Is there some legal concern about if he was in the room when this was presented that no, it's also applies over on the DOD side with Troy Mink. No, no, no, no, no. Same problem.

So could you enlighten us a little on like, you know, specific behind the scenes concerns there? I can't give you any blow by blow, but I can tell you this, that, you know, clearly, Elon is a very nice target if you don't want to go shoot right at the president. I mean, if you don't want to aim at the president, you don't want to, I don't know. I don't want to use these bad words in public anymore. Who would have thought target and who would have thought target and aim were, uh, were charged terms. But if you want to oppose the president, um, Elon is a very, uh, good stand in and becomes an even better stand in because of his.

good stand-in and becomes an even better stand-in because of his again his freedom of action which is extraordinarily high so I think the whole in the space context trying to get Elon in the Frame so to speak is a way of discrediting either the individual, i.e. you're not really independent, you know? You say, well, you're not independent of Ted Cruz. Well, you're not independent of Elon Musk. And also to discredit Elon,

and it has a cascading set of objectives. Objective one is to kill the nomination. Why? Jared is bad? No, it's just a black mark. It's just a, you know, what do they call them? Pelt on the wall, etc. If he can't do that, I want to rough them up and scare them enough about whatever bones I'm rattling in the hearing that their behavior will be modified when they're in the chair. And the final one is, if I can't do either of those, I want to dust up somebody like Elon

so his sustained influence will be diluted. Any of those will do. And that's really the general motivation when people go after people like that. I mean, the question is, you have to begin with the beginning and counting votes. Is this gonna make a difference? You know, what did they say in Blazing Saddles? I guess I can't repeat it. You know, are we making history here? Dot, dot, dot.

So that's kind of the way I interpret it. And I interpret the same situation with Troy, that it has those set of objectives in that order. that it has those set of objectives in that order. Yeah, and I thought, you know, certainly politically people have many opinions on Elon Musk, and many of those I find valid. I just don't find any of the space ones compelling because, you know, I thought the whole time the media at large was setting themselves up for failure if they were going to come very hard against the space influence when it comes to SpaceX because they are, you know, the incumbent as we sit here in 2025 because they have executed so well over the last 10, 15 years, whatever you want to

call it. And so, you know, I thought that that was not the juiciest target I would have went for in those departments. Just because when you really, all right, let's go ahead, crack open the books and let's dig into which of these contractors were doing well, which ones are doing poorly, which ones were taking advantage of situations, which ones are not, which ones could have made more money than they have made on several of these contracts. None of those answers are going to come back as SpaceX as far as I could tell. Yeah, well, they're under intense scrutiny and will remain under intense scrutiny. But you know, Elon and his team are very, very smart. They've been government contractors for a long time.

They know the rules. They've been on both sides of investigations and protests, etc. So full-blown lawsuits. And Elon's a detailed guy. So it's not like, oh, gee, I had no idea. It's like, oh, no, no, no, no. He knows what's going on. So... Well, were there interactions with the transition team from Elon or people around him, or was it...

No, and I got asked that frequently. And there was absolutely no evidence of Elon or any of Elon's team on anything we did on either side of the transition. I mean, you know, at one or two points, the transition team after its outreach to the department and agency to get up to speed on what's going on goes out to industry and industry people, but it was a very kind of formal setting, you know, knock on the door of Northrop Grumman go, hi, we're here from the transition team. We'd love to hear what you think is working,

what's not working and what you'd like to see the new administration do. Of course, they're on the other side of the table and their main objective is tell me everything you can about what you're going to do, particularly to my programs. And so it's a little bit of a, you know, we told our guys your job is to be like Soviet arms negotiators, say nothing, you know, and get as much information as you can. And of course the people on the industry side were just the opposite.

Learn as much as you can. Who are the people? Is Anthony going to be the head of the FAA? One day, listen, I keep talking to you. I'm getting one of these spots someday. I am doing real good. Anointed is in my head now. So when you are approaching a transition, right,

is your key focus personnel and sort of like strategy road mapping or are you involved on the budgetary side of things now too, to shift our focus over to the more recent news? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's all of the above. Although this time, again, I said 2016 and 2024 were unbelievably different. And one of the most important ways it was different

is that in 2024, the leadership of the transition team, obviously the president-elect and vice president-elect, et cetera, one of the major lessons from 2016 was it's people, people, people, and people. So there was an unbelievable personnel process right from the get-go, right from election day, even before election day. That was completely distinct from 2016. They ran their process down at West Palm Beach and they were literally running hundreds of people through interviewing, talking, et cetera.

The people knew each other, had been working on things together, so the domain expertise. It is unbelievable the coherence of the entire Trump 2.0 team. I mean, they talk to each other on the phone, cell phone. I mean, again, I was just telling somebody last night, in my experience in government, when the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense are going to have a conversation, that just doesn't happen. It's sherpaed. There is an appointment scheduled. There are point papers made back and forth. There are who's, how many people are going to be on the phone. It's a little like a confirmation hearing. The State Department, you know, Knights and Nobleman

and the Defense Department Knights and Nobleman, you know, match up and have, there have shirping conversation till there's this final sound, the event, when the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State have a phone conversation and there are dozens of people on the line listening, listening, oh, no, no're sitting, god damn it,

and writing memcons, et cetera. That is the federal government I'm used to. These guys are on the cell phone with one another. Hey Marco. In some cases, Signal. Well, and that's okay too. By the way, by the way, we were all given Signal on transition.

The equipment, back in 2016, when they took GSA money, we all got issued a transition cell phone, we all got issued a transition laptop, we had transition.gov, little did we know we were not the only people on those accounts. And this year, there was none of that. There was no government issued anything. It was all on your own. And yes, from day one minute one on transition, they said, hey, load signal onto your phone.

You know, we use- Just let me in a few of those, man. Come on. So anyhow- Watch it go up on your phone as A, you know. It'd be great. Yeah, big A. So anyway, that's, they were involved in personnel.

So absolutely, personnel was a huge initiative from day one minute one. They wanted to be ready. They wanted people that were already done and in the locked and loaded when they started. We, I was more on the policy side. Obviously there were questions, hey, who should be, should Anthony be the head of FAA? Well, I think he'd be great, blah, blah, blah. So, but that wasn't

our primary responsibility. Our primary responsibility was to try to set the policy agenda. And what are the first, so the broad policy agenda, based on what the president had said, all you always start, what's your source document? You come through everything the president said in the campaign about space or activities related to space, even when he wanted to launch us and was talking with people to get as much because that's what you want to start with. That's your foundation. What does the president say?

What is he committed to? How do we institutionalize? Then it's into what are things that must be done immediately? What's the first hundred days? What's the first 100 days? What's the next 100 days? Et cetera, et cetera. So that's how you start building that out. And then as the clock is running, you're in January getting faster and faster and faster.

Can we turn these into draft directives, et cetera? They're not finished products. They didn't go directly. They go to the people like the general councils, etc. who are actually drafting up executive orders and administrative orders that come out of the Department of Agency and agencies. So they're taking those things that we suggest and modifying the whole point with speed to be ready so that when the team is in place, they could move out.

Obviously those things as reality presents itself, they change and modify. But that's the main function of the transition. And so when it comes to the budget process, right? There's a lot going on now with the skinny budget being out there. Yep. You still got Jared not confirmed fully yet and in place.

So there's talk of how much has he seen or influenced the budget or what's he gonna do when he gets presented with this? Was any of this huge cut to NASA floated in the Skidgy budget? Lot of cuts across the board, not just to NASA. Yeah, yeah. And so I think maybe some context from you on what that plan looked like going in

and if you had any, not you particularly, but the transition, if you had any influence on where that was going and where some of the decisions came down. Yeah. Um, first off, it, it's a general rule of thumb that if you're a nominee until you are confirmed, it is. Fairbooten to have any contact or the last thing you want, if you want to, if you want to, uh, deny a confirmation, the biggest smoking gun would be you were seen at HUD headquarters taking meetings and giving assignments to people before you were confirmed.

Now you're stepping on Senate prerogative. You're setting on the regular order. So that nothing will get you deeper, faster, and potentially dismissive than that. And all nominees know that. I mean, that's just one of the ground rules. You go, Anthony, okay, good news is you're going to be FAA Director of the Bad News. Until it's done, you can't be giving interviews. You can't be out there. You certainly can't be attending meetings, you can't be giving direction, be careful of your contacts, etc. So having said that, there was a general guidance from the OMB part of the transition, led by of course, Russ, that the entire discretionary part of the budget, the rules that were coming down, is that we're pretty much taking large, they wanted to roll back government that had grown disproportionately. Let's just take NASA for example. Since 2019, in almost 10 years, the CPI, consumer price index, has gone up by 12, 12.5% depending what you like in or out.

NASA budget has gone up 40%, 4-0%. Okay, what up with that? What do we get? What was it? Well, a lot of it had to do with a big emphasis in science on climate, climate, climate change, etc. Big emphasis on STEM research. I mean, when I left the movie, there was a hundred million dollar budget item in NASA called education. Each center had large education programs. So you had you had climate, climate research and focus in science, you had education, STEM, a lot of is it science, is it education, etc. And DEI had a huge influence of activities, people, headcount, etc. And that all is replicated in NASA from headquarters, all is replicated in NASA from headquarters and at the center level. So everything I tell you about the NASA budget writ large at the at the NASA level is replicated to some extent at the center level. That is to say there

are science activities even at Johnson Space Center on climate research. Climate research. Each center kind of looks after its own activity and wants to complete the circle for itself. So there was a general sense that that stuff is that stuff a significant portion though of that budget growth that has happened or is even when you're canceling named programs, you know, sample return and some of the gateway

and post-S3, SLS, Ryan, like to me, to me, let me tell you, this reads as somebody over here, right? Is that this reads a lot like the Trump administration generally saying we're going to do a huge cross the government cut, but we're not going to touch national defense. We're not going to talk about social security. We're not going to talk about Medicare, Medicaid. That okay, so you're fighting on the fringes where it's, you know, tell me how much all of the climate DEI and other scientific research calculates up and

then look over at the gateway going away and how much that impacts. So I feel like there's a difference in the messaging around what's being cut versus the actual budgetary impact of that when compared to these other programs that, you know, I would draw up if you actually gave me one of these positions. Apparently it's the FAA. I got to rewire my thinking. But I think I even told Jared in November last year that we should get rid of the gateway and bail off after a certain point on SLS Orion. So I think that's the difference I want to understand is that to me those things sound

fringy and not as additive as these other budgetary items do. Okay, so therefore I mentioned one, climate education, DEI, and the fourth one, the one that you were just touching, is the abysmal performance on major acquisition programs. Just abysmal performance on major acquisition programs. Just abysmal performance. Unbelievable overruns, delays, lack of systems engineering and integration and architecture. I mean, there are those, and I count myself among them,

that believe that the current Artemis architecture, would you just brief it? Just give me the briefing. Is unexecutable. It's not executable. And it reminds me exactly of where we were in 1989 when I was running the Space Council and we had Space Station Freedom out there. It was just blowing through everything on budget. It was blowing through everything on schedule. Everything was overweight, over cost, et cetera. And we finally, it took about three months to get as far under the hood as we did

to say this is a non-executable program. It's never gonna be done. And so there was a general sense of the non-executable. So what goes into that bin? Mars sample return. I mean, even Bill Nelson at the end said, ah, ah, I'll tell you what, let's spend three days at JPL

and kind of do the best we can and roll it all up and roll that down to the new team and say, there's some options up to you. So you start with SLS. I mean, come on, it may be a wonderful rocket, but it is horribly over budget. It's horribly inefficient and it's too slow. And so you look at things like gateway.

Again, in the architecture, I mean, you said it yourself. Well, what does it do? So if you take those four things and the fourth is the biggest because it yourself. Well, what does it do? So, if you take those four things and the fourth is the biggest because it's lumpy, it's things like gateway, et cetera. But again, the theme is it started with a sense of things that were going on that needed to be addressed. And it was a bottom up approach.

So the stuff I read, and again, I mean, this is the world we live in, the stuff I read and again I mean this is the world we live in the stuff I read about these ad hominem attacks on this budget 25% reduction oh my god it's like a meat axe we wanted a scalpel not a chainsaw the bottom line is it wasn't done that way nobody went in and said we want a 25% reduction they said okay dig dig dig what did we find in those four categories? What did you do? Draw a line. It was 25%. Now, here's the good news, and I is entirely consistent with what Jared said, is that that's not a forever. That's not like NASA shall

never breach $20 billion annual expenditure again. No, but you got to earn it back one by one. If you've got science programs, you know, and I harken back again, that's one of the things of being old, you're too young. One of the things of being old is that you've seen everything. Dan Golden did this back in the day. His response to not those four items, but certainly the fourth one was he started the discovery program and And the Discovery Program was $100 million. That's all you get. If you go over it, you're canceled.

And it's $100 million to do things. And it forced a discipline that NASA never had before. And many of those Discovery missions, we did have a problem, I always say it, remember the Mars, that missed Mars because they were using a problem. I always say it. Remember the Mars that missed Mars because they were using a metric. Wrong units.

But that was a discovery program. But again, why was it there? It was there because NASA had this habit, this nasty habit of just blowing through programs of budgets. And by the way, the only reason what's so disappointing about Mars sample Return is the one center that always performed best in that regard was JPL. And the reason was twofold. One, JPL never grew its employee base. It was all contractors from Caltech and out into the contractor community,

number one. And number two, with planetary exploration, you were always limited by the size of your launch vehicle. And that was determined on orbital mechanics. And there were very few windows of opportunity, particularly from distant planets. And what that meant is if you missed it by a week, you were out for seven years. Yeah. So hard constraints. JPL always did things differently the rest of NASA and Mars sample return was a real disappointment to the faithful who said Wow, if JPL can succumb to this What's left?

So anyway, it's a bottom-up process. That's how they got the number. It didn't start as a top-down shoot for 25% and again What I'm disappointed is you're not hearing specifics and particulars, and this is the Elon's argument about Doge. Everybody says Doge is mindless cutting, etc. He says it's all on the web. We publish what we're doing. You tell me which one of these things you want back in. Well, you never hear that that so we'll go through a process and There will be stout defense of things that perhaps fell under the line in the proposed budget and the Congress reserves the right of course

To add back in whatever it wants, but there'll be an oral debate about it. There'll be a discussion about it So it's a good starting point. I think it's and it's certainly Defensible I think when the when the new team gets in place and starts their testimony on the budget, you'll find a very rational, reasoned, bottom-up rationale for the decision space. Yeah, it's gonna be, I mean, the congressional fight amongst this budget request, and it's gonna be good for the show content over the next several

months as that works its way through. So I don't want to keep it too long because I only I think I'm over my calendar invite I sent you but Oh no, I want to do this. There's so much we haven't even I know. We could probably talk for three hours today but my kids need to be picked up from school before that would come. Very important. I do want to talk DOD side real quick because we've got Golden Dome top of mind here. One area that is not getting shrunk on the budget side of things is this program. Another thing that probably feels similar to where you were back in the day in the late

80s of space. You know, it's so funny to hear the boo birds come out and I'm on the phone with reporters and colleagues and going, we know the line of arguments. We know how we know the line of arguments we know how they're gonna go we know how they're gonna start we know what they are and and and the defenses are already there I mean these battles were fought out I mean it was simple the first line of defenses it has to be leak proof I just saw I haven't had a chance to read it yet CBO says it could cost $450 billion for an iron dome. Well, I know it's the bottom of that.

We fought that in the mid 80s. And where that starts with is saying, well, it has to be leak proof, i.e. nothing has to, it has to be impenetrable or it's worthless. Well, where did that come from? Now, how expensive is it to make it impenetrable? Well, okay, that's where I get up to the $450 billion.

So we fought all those battles and we know how it goes. Anyhow, I do want to answer your question about it. Big deal. Yeah, I don't even know if I got the question yet. I'm just ruminating on it. But you know, there's been probably some of the run up to this has been the space development agency over the last couple of years going out and acquiring, you know, some of the proliferated constellations and that's ruffled some feathers here and there and it's gotten attacked in the press recently in terms of are they actually acquiring these things the right way and Derek Tornier was out for a bit and he's back at

SDA now after an investigation or something. So there's it's been an interesting storyline to follow but that does feel like at least one of the preludes to this modern iteration. Yeah. Yeah. And this is a really significant initiative of the president in the way I describe it. This is me is that and we put this in some of the transition documents, the Space Force is incomplete. It stood up, it's operating, it exists, it's doing well, but it is incomplete. It's incomplete in as much as it has not fulfilled the entire mission of the Space Force, which is to be space priority. And the Golden Dome and Space Priority Mission are the same mission. A lot of it is the same mission.

And there's all kinds of words in the transition documents. Don't treat these as separate activities. Don't go out and create two different things that in the end of ends are very much the same. So the Golden Dome is gonna have a huge space layer probably. The administration still hasn't made decisions about how it's going to be organized, who's going to lead it. Hopefully those are shortly forthcoming and then there'll be an architecture. But one of the things that we strongly recommend is don't let these become two separate activities.

In many regards, the kill chain for a ballistic missile defense and a kill chain for an anti-satellite capability and space control, it's the same kill chain, you know, the find it, fix it, put a weapon on it, target it, and do assessment afterwards, did it work, etc. Those are all the same functions. And so let's not spend a lot of duplicative. I will say one thing about Derek and SDA, which is where it gets controversial. The Biden administration acknowledged the unbelievably rapid and substantial threat by the Chinese, in particular Russian to some extent, against our space

assets makes absolutely total sense. Our entire military force on the ground is completely dependent on space assets. And as John Hyten was always fond of saying, the way we did it when we thought space was a sanctuary is we made big juicy targets. I mean, it was just efficient. So the Chinese quickly tumbled to the fact that the best way to level the playing field on the ground with the United States is to attack or threaten or eliminate their space assets, which would cripple the capabilities on the ground.

So the Biden administration reluctantly, but finally said, this is a big deal and we have to address it. Their ground rules for three and a half of the four years they were in were you could do anything you want in space to deal with this threat except counter force operations. And so what's the response that came was what they called resiliency and redundancy. And the whole notion of proliferated LEO is that we will make our eyes and ears in the sky that enable our ground forces so diffuse and disconnected and disaggregated

that there will be no benefit in reducing getting any one of the other so you can you can cripple it a little bit, but then we're at war and we can hit you back with other things, but you can't just say, okay, they put all their eggs in that basket. There was no other egg in that basket except resiliency and redundancy writ by the proliferated Leo system. So, proliferated Leo system is extraordinarily expensive and extraordinarily slow. I mean, it's hard. There are a lot of hard elements, but most importantly, it has virtually no deterrent capability until it's hard. There are a lot of hard elements, but most importantly, it has virtually no deterrent capability until it's absolutely finished.

It's the last brick in the wall because up until the last brick goes into that wall, you got a hole in the wall. So this was the main complaint, not that that proliferated Leo is not a good idea, but as the only idea, it's wrong. So I think you're going to see a rebalancing in the new administration as new counter force capabilities come on, there may be a dialing back on the proliferator Leo, not in a negative

sense that it's no good, but just that it fits in the basket of our response to the threat in a way that says I don't need it there first. It's not the only line of defense. Traditional deterrence, offensive-based deterrence will be the...and the best part about offensive-based deterrence is that it starts working with the first element, the first thing you send up. Whereas resilient and redundant, proliferated Leo, it's the last element where you get 100% of the benefit. And oh, by the way, just in the large strategic chess moves,

which we've been doing with the Russians for 70 years, the Russians look at that. Remember the Indiana Jones movie where Indiana Jones is there on the ground in the desert and there's this guy, giant Arab with the scimitars and everybody goes, oh my God, he's just going to get, this guy is gigantic, he's just going to kill him. And Indiana Jones is looking at it and finally just reaches in and goes boom.

That's kind of where we are with offensive capabilities. And, you know, we can we get so much out of it by by doing it on offensive first. So I think that's what's going to be happening there. It's and it's a big deal and Iron Dome Golden Dome, pardon me now we would call it iron. Sorry, I didn't I didn't get the gilding to gold it up. Yeah. This is your second time around, man. You should be ready for that.

I know. I know. So that's, it's very exciting. I will say that boy oh boy, the leadership of the Space Force read our transition documents, almost everything you hear week to week, minute to minute by the leadership of the Space Force is right out of the book and God bless them. They got it. They know what they're trying to do. It's gonna be hard,

but they know what they're trying to do. Well, Mark, it's always awesome to hear straight from the source on what's been going on. So, I think we'll probably get some emails about the show and things that you said, which I like, and probably things that I said too. But I like having kind of hear some of the inspiration and the conversations that went on and the things that drove decisions that we're seeing play out. It's helpful to have that context.

And obviously, most of these stories are not over yet. This is, like you said, we're in the very early days of many of these different proposals and even budgets and actual architectures, there's a lot still to be written, still to be fought about. I'm sure that's gonna be a huge thing that I talk about over the next year or so as it actually makes its way through the system.

So yeah, always great hanging out. I appreciate it. I'm glad to talk anytime. And by the way, I hope I've left you with the impression and your listeners with the impression that space is important in this administration. Space has an aggressive agenda in this administration. And space has got some leaders with incredible capability and independence. So it's going to be exciting times. You know, it's it's not going to be something that doesn't that lacks for excitement

or attention. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks again. Buckle up. Thanks again to Mark for coming on the show and having a conversation as always. He is other than not really wanting to tell us the fun story behind the Janet Petro situation, which I know there's more I know there's more to that story there. And we'll get it one day publicly, but you know, he's always game to talk about anything and answer any question to the best of his ability on what can or cannot be public and I appreciate that as somebody who's in these arenas and yeah, I hope you did too. So thanks again to everyone who supports at main engine cutoff over at main engine cutoff.com slash support. There are 33 executive producers of this episode who make this particular episode possible.

Thanks to Eunice, the Asher Gators at SCE, Will and Lars from Agile, Theo and Violet, Frank, Russell, Chris, Bob, Lee, Pat, Ryan, Fred, Matt, Heiko, Pat from KC, Joakim, Donald, Josh from Impulse, Stealth Julian, Jan, Steve, Better Everyday Studios, Warren, David, Joel, Natasha, Sakos, Tim Dodd, Theverage Astronaut, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support for making this episode possible. If you want to join that crew, mainenginecutoff.com slash support is where you can go. You get access to Miko headlines over there as well. An extra podcast I do every week or so running through all the stories that matter in space.

It's a great way to stay up on space news, support the show. It's a win-win all around. So that's what I've got for you. Thanks so much for listening and I will talk to you soon.