Main Engine Cut Off - T+304: The Musk/Trump Breakup, Jared Isaacman’s Withdrawn Nomination, and Starship Flight 9 (with Lori Garver)

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator, joins me to talk about the chaos of the last week: the withdraw of Jared Isaacman’s nomination for NASA Administrator, Starship Flight 9, and of course, the wild public breakup of Elon Musk and President Trump.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 33 executive producers—David, Donald, Matt, Frank, Better Every Day Studios, Warren, Bob, Russell, Pat from KC, Pat, Lee, Joel, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Ryan, Josh from Impulse, Joonas, Natasha Tsakos (pronounced Tszakos), Heiko, Will and Lars from Agile, Fred, Kris, Stealth Julian, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Theo and Violet, Jan, Steve, The Astrogators at SEE, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsMusk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts - SpaceNewsIsaacman: people with ‘axes to grind’ about Musk caused withdrawn NASA nomination - SpaceNewsWhite House to withdraw Isaacman nomination to lead NASA - SpaceNewsNASA Copes with Details of $6 Billion Budget Cut, Leadership Uncertainty – SpacePolicyOnline.comNASA withdraws support for conferences - SpaceNewsCruz seeks $10 billion for NASA programs in budget reconciliation bill - SpaceNewsStarship breaks up on reentry after loss of attitude control - SpaceNewsStatus Update on ispace Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon | ispaceThe 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 Managing Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo and today we've got Lori Garver returning to the show, former NASA Deputy Administrator, co-founder of the Owens Fellowship, the Brooke Owens Fellowship, Space Policy Mind, and boy howdy, do we have a lot to talk about today. The topics are probably obvious, and I will not spend a minute more on this intro. So without further ado, let's give Lori a call. Lori Garver, welcome back.

We planned this show out several days ago. We had a list of topics. I think they're largely the same topics, but the entire environment in which those topics exist has shifted. It's all about the context. Yeah. Give me a rating on how the last week, what word would you use to describe last weekend to this Friday in terms of a space policy context. Let's scope this a little bit.

Embarrassing. Good one. This is not how a space policy should be made, nor in my experience has been largely made. So many lowlights that will be highlights are, I'll start with the fact that the President of the United States says, I'm going to cancel these contracts that are frankly only good for America. We all know this. And I'm surprised Biden hadn't done it. Okay, well, that's not legal, ethical, you know, any any of the kinds of ways you're supposed to govern. And it's a good thing to be that Biden didn't do it. If he had, it would have been an abuse of power. You know, this isn't just a personal grievance that can close down important national programs,

government contracts, any more than really Elon's reaction that he's going to disassemble? Decommission. Decommission. Yeah. Yes. You know, we've got a couple more contracted. He can't walk away from that. He could not extend.

That would not be in their best interest. All that he's done is raised the question for government leaders to say, how much can we really trust into this company that has one man at its head that is not responsible to shareholders or seemingly a board. And also, it's not like there's not stories in history where he wanted to get rid of Falcon Heavy and Gwen Shotwell, there was some report of her having to run into a room and be like,

no, no, no, we're not canceling this rocket. We have signed up major launch contracts. So it's not like this is not in the realm of possibility of a thing that he would actually legitimately not just be you know shit posting on Twitter but actually trying to take effect in the company. So you know. And it's probably not Dragon and he did walk that tweet backwards the other ones I don't really think he has so Gwen was able to get in there, probably shake him. But the there are things that SpaceX

is doing for the government that I'm sure are lost leaders that he might not want to keep doing. And all of this brings to question everything about our current civil space program and agenda, starting with Jared. And I think where you and I were going to have this conversation and to start with was going to be that. And I believe when you look at the lineage, although most mainstream media don't cover it this way, that was really the impetus for Elon's pushing back more on the big, beautiful bill. He was mad that the president pulled Jared. Rightly so.

It was just nonsensical and a travesty for progress. I've been thinking through whether he would have gotten confirmed and this happened. Would the president have, you know, you work at the pleasure, withdrawn it at that point. I don't. Well, Troy Mink is still there at the Air Force. Exactly. That was going to be my same example of why if we'd just been able to get it through, this whole thing might not have happened.

Which is wild to think about. It's wild to think about and you could tell, I listened to that entire wonderful interview Jared gave the two days ago now. Yeah, it's moving quick. And he really, really carefully crafted his comments around, was this because of Elon, didn't say it, but it was clear. He implied it so heavily that he might as well have just said it, and it was more annoying that he didn't.

Yeah, except that it sort of gave you a little bit of, oh, this guy's so genuine, he doesn't want to even say it, even though we all know it's true. Which is totally how Jared is. But, yeah. All right, let me ask you this. Before we talk about him getting dismissed right out of DC before he arrived,

how do you think with the combination of timeline that we had, where we had the confirmation hearing and then the skinny budget was like a day later, I think, maybe two, how do you think Jared was positioned to operate as NASA admin in that environment? Because he is a guy that has personally tried to save a space telescope, so I'm pretty sure he would not love canceling space telescopes, just to name one very specific instance. He has obviously been critical of SLS Orion, Gateway, etc., now very publicly,

the Ryan gateway, et cetera, now very publicly. But was very supportive of scientific efforts and of the role that space can play in society. I mean, that is why he's structured Inspiration4 and Polaris Program in certain ways. So I don't know how he would have done in that environment. Yeah, it's a very interesting question. Jared had not, as again again he said on the podcast, really shaped that budget, had of course been briefed on some things, would not have shaped it into what it became, But wouldn't have would have had to support it. And I think it's really clear now that would have been difficult for for him to do. I happened to work for a NASA administrator who couldn't do that.

And we saw what happened. If there's any daylight at all between you and the president as NASA administrator, that's something that Congress will exploit. Yeah. But I think Jared- But what's the best strategy? Is that pick your battles and figure out the areas of the budget that you like and go harder on those

and try to mitigate disaster in the other aspects? Like what's the best game plan if you are someone going into that role? Yeah, so ideally it's your budget. And in my case, you know, it was in that first round and you defend it and there of course are parts you might not have done, but I found it within the overall themes of where we were headed to be so defensible. Later when we started funding SLS and Orion, my consistent refrain was, we've been told to do them, we're going to attempt to do them in the very best way possible.

Never pretended I hadn't previously very much strongly opposed them, that's just not my style. But it would be more difficult if you came in the very first year not being on board. I actually think there would have been some room had NASA really delivered a first year or six months even under Jared of getting some things done that the budget could have opened up in future years for some of these things if NASA started showing better behavior you know but it's not like Jared had a magic bag of beans like Jack in the beanstalk and all of a sudden everything would have been wonderful in a way because he got pulled.

He can always be that in our eyes. Yeah, totally. People were joking in the Discord the other day that like, what would have happened if it was Jared is going to be a refrain in space policy for the next several months if not years? A very like, this wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs was still around kind of essence to that. if it was Jared is going to be a refrain in space policy for the next several months, if not years. This wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs was still around, kind of essence to that. But yeah, he can kind of be the force ghost in the space policy window for us for the next couple of years. Yeah, and it's interesting that it was also positive for so many of us. That's the craziest part too, man. is like, this was the most widely accepted NASA official

across the policy spectrum in, I don't know, decades. Like, when's the last time somebody has been, I guess there was an administrator that did span a couple of parties there, so. That might count, but. No, but he was not super popular. I worked for him. Okay, there you go.

From the time he was in Golden, you know? I mean, with the aerospace community, partly because he was very, very much pushing for change. And in a way that the politicians, especially the presidents really supported, but the contractors less so. I learned a lot of, as I say in my book, so many of the strategies I took from

Dan Goldin because he was able to bring people in the office, close the door and say, you are charging us too much or you are not delivering. And those are things that not everyone's really comfortable doing, especially if you come just from wanting to be popular. I think that I really would have enjoyed Jared watching him craft that, but undoubtedly as he went forward to defend the president's budget, his popularity in the community would have gone down at least somewhat. Yeah, you would, I mean, he's somebody that has been in the spotlight under certain shades of light, right,

over the past couple years. He wasn't exposed to the breath of exposure, I guess, to use a word that he would have been if out there. And honestly, I think in that all in interview, there were times where he's getting into areas where people probably haven't read every tweet that he's put out in the world. So I think there was areas that I was like, damn, that wouldn't have, that probably wouldn't have played well as a, as a take in, in on space Twitter, you know, a couple of years ago.

So the more exposure that people would have had to him, I wonder how, yeah, would he have cleaved off some of the fan base that's out there. But still, even then, I think he is a someone who's expressed his thoughts in a really clear way with sort of first principles thinking in the way that many of us appreciate, even if you disagree with where it comes down, you can tell there's thoughtfulness, not just like, this is a guy that's totally made up his mind. He's arrived here by thinking about it and having experience in different areas of business and aerospace and that's such an interesting mix that somebody, just the fact that somebody could do the first private spacewalk and then be the head of NASA like a couple of months later was just a fantastic storyline on its own. And such a different skill set for him to encompass the breadth of it is fascinating to me.

Astronauts in general, and he was not your typical astronaut, having created his own programs, are really never held to a policy standard. I've hit up several of my astronaut friends who are now running commercial space efforts who fought me tooth and nail. It never sticks to them, you know. Hey, they were excellent at being astronauts. But to me, this would have been an interesting and probably positive thing for him to have bridged because you get a lot of credibility having done what he's done across different fields.

I really think that Jim Bridenstine similarly was seen as so successful. Again, I don't really give as much credit as a lot of people only because things like Artemis that were put in place aren't really positive and haven't been. They just are getting money so people think they're successful. But he was able- Wow, man. We still got to have the Casey Dryer, Laurie Garver fight about that.

Oh, yes. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. He was able to bring together traditional and new space constituencies, be, I think, very much respected across the aisle, which, having gone through what he did in confirmation, was incredible. All this is really different than the day when Charlie and I were unanimous consent. And I guess, well, Bill Nelson was as well, that Lawson being pick a Senator because they're very collegial and vote for each other. I've been thinking maybe this is Ted Cruz's goal in the future. Ooh, I love this. Oh man, not now, right?

This is not a Jared replacement. You're talking administration or two. Or like, are we talking, give me a relative anchoring on- How old was Bill Nelson when- Wait, so Ted Cruz has to go to space first. I would guess that would be part of the kind of thing he would want to model from the Nelson. Hell yeah. I'm so in on this theory. I love this. Because other people were comparing him, I was seeing to Shelby and I know it's Nelson,

because sort of the authorizer of the party getting into appropriations, trying to steer the appropriators where you want to go, saying you're for commercial, but really putting the money into the big programs, that's right on in Nelson's playbook. Yeah, and they both love telling stories, man. I don't know if Ted Cruz has a Homestead story, but he's gotta get one. I bet he does.

Probably from Starbase. He's probably got a better storyline if he launches out of Starbase. We'll see where he goes from. All right, well, who is up next? Where are you? There's weird comments that more defense-minded people are gonna be picking the new NASA administrator.

Knowing what we know now about the budget and where that's headed, give me a relative weighting on how you think it matters. What matters more right now? Is it what's happening on the Ted Cruz budgetary angle, or is it who's gonna be the new NASA admin? Well, and as a different today than it was yesterday, I think that track from a military space is going to be the thing that this administration is most wanting to grow over their time made made that rumor

Seem seem like it might run true. I still think that it's Likely, I have a lot of concerns out of fallout of yesterday's Posts, but one is that they will turn against this sort of Innovation driving change at the agency and go for again more SLS Orion kinds of programs. I hope they won't take that to the administrator position and get some sort of old-school industry person. I'm sure whoever it is will have to say they're for all these things. But how can you after what's transpired in the last 24 hours, pick someone

who you think is going to be favorable to SpaceX? This just boggles the mind why anyone would have gotten into this battle. The president still does get to select the head of NASA. And the head of NASA is critically important to shaping the future of the program. Now, they've got their budget out there. They had that strange comment out of the NASA spokesperson yesterday. Where does that take you for an administrator, for Mars, for Artemis,

for anything? It was an opaque statement. I don't have any names for you. The bottom line is I don't have names for you on future administrator because anyone I like, if I put them out there, that would hurt them. Nice. But I do think the military space is probably a through line. And hopefully someone who, not from the, I mean, there is no one else like Jared Isaacman, but some of the people we were thinking of before had all been former SpaceX. I mean, I don't think you get that now. Man, this is a crazy timeline. Yeah. I don't even know. It's also a long time.

I mean, Jared was nominated in December. At the time, I told everyone I just really would have loved anyone I had worked for at NASA, any of the Democrats getting to NASA that early. Just drifted and drifted, and now we're June, and now no one's nominated. So, you know, I think Bridenstine was 18 months or so into the administration. This really is a setback because they're developing. He might be again.

He might be again, but then you're missing more and more. I mean, he might be again. Oh, no, I don't believe that Relationship has recovered. I don't think so, but maybe there's this is the moment. This is the moment Hey now I'm working for the old space crew over here This is as rumors are that Bridenstine is tied up with the deep space coalition And potentially other other members of the deep space coalition military background

Maybe he could kiss it. Go ahead. Listen. I was a I was a loyal fighter out there other members of the deep phase coalition, uh, military background. Maybe he could, in case you call it. Listen, I was a, I was a loyal fighter out there. I held the traditional contractors to account. I told them to get their shit done. And if they couldn't, I'll find other ones. Run it back. Yeah. The white house would do well to get Jim Bryan saying to do this.

I don't think that the president forgives, like I don't even know what he was mad about. But that never really came out, right? Why that deteriorated towards the end? He was too supportive of Pence. I think they were, yeah, the Pence and Bridenstine crews were tighter. And then obviously that that relationship deteriorated. then obviously that that relationship deteriorated. But truthfully one of the major downsides of having a next NASA administrator who is somebody we're all going to respect is they're going to be signing up it's now very very clear to do and say anything exactly that the president wants and nothing more. And that, I mean, Jared wouldn't have maybe lasted long in that anyway, but it just really

constrains who you're going to be able to get. The thing that's tricky too is the positioning of this all is is very much. It's it's not like. The criticism I would apply to the general flow of the past several months, space and non-space alike, is that Jake on off-nominal keeps saying this forest fire analogy of like you burn everything and hopefully some good stuff regrows. And that appears to be the approach.

The problem is that I haven't seen anyone state what stuff they hope grows back, just that like the best we can assess is that that is the approach. So when you're looking at NASA budget in particular, right, it's just like cut everything, not strategically applied. When you look at the science side specifically, it's like, man, that's just all the future stuff. That's like everything in development, all of the interesting missions that are coming up, even some of the currently operating ones. There isn't a, you know, like someone going in and saying, these missions are ineffective for X, Y, and Z reasons. We're going to cancel those because they're over the cost cap or they're ineffectively

run or we've got all the value out of them and we're going to apply it elsewhere. It's just cut with no real vision beyond that. And so if you're somebody coming into this role, are you going to be allowed to apply the vision beyond that? Or is it like, no, no, no, we are just trying to put a speed bump for a couple of years and not spend anything but not necessarily rebuild the fundamentals of like how we got into that problem in the first place. Yeah, I, I would be hopeful and we're all, you know, just looking for something. So Forest Buyer thinking there's some strategy behind it is wonderful. Whose strategy is it? Who's really pulling the strings?

Because having served in some of these roles is, you know, it's not always obvious. Different people over history have played different roles. And I'm not exactly sure who in this White House we thought was Elon Musk. And I think a lot of us were pretty comfortable with the Jared Elon Musk. Elon can be there as top cover. I don't think either of them were thrilled with these science cuts. That was obviously OMB directed. But if you could start doing some science missions

that were delivering on the end state science, I love the way Jared put that in his interview the other day. That's the measure and then you'll be allowed to do more. But it's not clear to me that's what's happening. We all know that takes much longer than the amount of time they have. And in the meantime, you really are wiping out the capable people who would be there to do it. I'm not someone, obviously, who things all change is bad. And so there's going to be things about moving forward that hopefully are positive. But the concern is now it will be in fact the opposite. The strongest lobbyists are those who are for these strongest lobbyists are those who are for these less accountable programs. And I don't know where you get these others starting up. The good people at NASA are leaving have left, they're disgusted.

There will be new people. We will see our way through this and the arc of justice is long, whatever you want to quote. But the real goals of the space program are going to be, I think, undercut by this period of time where we are somehow managing to cut NASA a tremendous amount, keep the biggest least productive programs among it. That's what's difficult. I was lucky to have been able to start Commercial Crew in an era of growing budgets, or we never could have started it. We only got kernels, and the big dinosaurs were getting multiples of what we got, but we delivered. Those things that were funded then continued to be funded without delivering.

So Artemis, that's I assume our next question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we're pretty flexible at this point. We're everywhere right now. Come on. Is it realistic that cruise has put back into this budget somehow enough money for two more SLS Orion missions? How do you marry that with all that we have even talked

about on lunar development? I was at the Washington DC event yesterday for iSpace when we are all the sort of senior Washington space community sitting, hearing people talk about how we're going to be building bases on the moon out of lunar oculith. And you know, as we're going to be building bases on the moon out of lunar oglala then you know as we're waiting for the spacecraft landing time i was thinking at the time wow everyone's sort of presuming a lot i've been many of these were it didn't didn't work and within that period of time the texts we all start with each other with these tweets while tweets the. The Twitter program. I suggested to someone, one of the sponsors, maybe you want to just put these on the screen

because we're waiting to contact iSpace. I think they're going to have a lot more impact on the future of our space program than whether we make contact with the spacecraft. I felt a little bad about that, but just hearing everybody, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop. Like, couldn't wait to get to the section the spacecraft, I felt a little bad about that. But just hearing everybody, like, couldn't wait to get to the section in the back of the room with the with the wine, there wasn't

any champagne pop. But we have enough really to be on a trajectory where where we aren't continuing clips and lunar development in addition to a couple more Artemis missions. I still don't know what that gets you. The point was to lower the cost, to do things that are sustainable. I guess that morphs into the Starship discussion. Well, first, don't let Ted Cruz off the hook. There's this $10 billion reconciliation package, I guess, is the piece that would go in. And I don't understand, maybe you remember enough from your days how this works, that they can allocate these funds as to be available through 2032.

Is this always an option? If so, how has this not happened for SLS Orion until this point? It feels like that would have been a good... Also, it doesn't... Number one, it feels like kind of a good way to develop space technology to decide now that we're going to spend the money that we need through 2032, but that is not how things work. Is this a weird...

The way that this bill is going, this is how it can work, but normally this is not allowed? Well, it's my understanding that this isn't the real money discussion. So allocations are allowed, authorizing committees used to before my day, in fact, authorize much more money than appropriators ever gave. And it did not matter. So yeah, we were authorized. Oh, you can do all these things. You can spend $3 trillion, but you're only going to get $10 million.

Frankly, I was sort of counting on that and the authorizers and the appropriators got together for, they so hated what we proposed. So the act of an authorizer doing this doesn't mean the money will ever materialize. However, I think it is a meaningful signal of where Ted Cruz and a lot of people follow him on his committee stand. And I think we in the space community can certainly take from it. He did not add back to science. He did not add back even I don't think to space station. Oh, they added the 250 million dollars a year. Was it a year? Annually, yes. And 325 million for the de-orbit vehicle. And 20 million for Orion. And 20 million for Orion. Yeah, a real spending spree there. All that reused hardware is really saving us some money there.

So it's really the science piece that is while there's been a huge push to get money back that didn't make it to Ted Cruz, again, not sure he'll get this money or where it would come from anyway, but it's authorizing, not appropriating, but it's a signal. And I think in some ways, great that people are thinking about adding money to NASA, but those aren't the programs where I think I would add. No, no. You and I are probably in for the forest fire over in the Artemis Department, but not elsewhere, I would say. I mean, also the fact that it's named, you know, this money is for Artemis IV and V SLS

cores and stages. After all this talk from Jared himself and others of like, well, we'll fly Artemis II and III and then we'll cancel it because Artemis, and that's the cleave point, right? Artemis IV is when the budgets get completely haywire because you've got all those SLS and Orion flights, you've got Gateway, you've got EUS, you've got the Mobile Launcher 2, everything hits at Artemis IV.

So it is a very natural breakpoint if we are taking an off-ramp somewhere, that that is the off-ramp. And that is, now that we know that that's the case, you look back a couple years on the way that the Artemis roadmap developed, and you're like, holy shit, they really set themselves up for a train wreck.

You've got to hope that you've got someone like Ted Cruz still in this position. Otherwise, this is a train wreck of amount of stuff that has to happen on Artemis foreflight. Not only technically to actually fly the flight, but to actually continue to get funding up until all those things are ready. It is a huge roadblock.

And I guess you just gotta hope that Ted Cruz is able to shepherd this stuff through, or else I can't really see this getting done otherwise unless someone really hardheaded in Congress that's going to bash through the Artemis IV gate that we've got in front of us. Yeah, I don't think it will get through. It's still disappointing that this is even something he would want and you can you know write the ads yourself even though he doesn't come up for election for six years hey this was a guy who said he was in favor of deficit reduction and he's throwing in nine billion dollars for programs that are so over budget and beyond their schedule, they're not meaningful.

It also doesn't happen to be how you out-compete China is throwing together parts of old stuff to maybe get there a couple of times. But that I think is part of the reason maybe Artemis II and III, I wouldn't necessarily ask for funding for either. First of all, this administration will only see those through.

They won't get anything beyond that. Even I doubt would get Artemis III within this administration. So you're gonna have spent your whole time, and I worried about this for Jared, now who knows who it will be, but everything will be put off. It's nice to be able to say, as he did in the hearing, you can do both, we can do a lot of things. NASA does a lot of things all the time. Of

course, that is true, but these programs have taken all the air out of the room for too long. All right, let's talk about Starship before we turn into pumpkins today. Just a pretty bummer of a flight, to be honest, in Flight 9. You know, they made it through where they'd have the last two flights, but it otherwise went pretty poorly all around. They didn't get to any of the interesting tests that they had set up for the ship so they're not progressing on that. They're stalled out in terms of new data on ship development because they keep not making it to reentry. So hard not to be bummed about it. There was happy talk coming out of Star

Base in Hawthorne but I feel internally, a little bit darker of a mood than is let on externally. But what's your, where's your Starship concern dial set to right now? As the event was happening live, I was really relieved when we made it as far as we did, frankly. Thinking, okay, you know, since the last one didn't even last as long as the one before, it lasted longer. But you are correct. Technically, they didn't get to the points for the test. And I think the people at Starbase, even Elon was pretty open about that. If they can test again this month and get to a cadence, that's the way it is with all these things. If it ends here and it starts being successful, we're fine. And that's still the case. But I did have been listening to you and Jake and I think you're both sort of where I am. This is not progress. Progress being this slow is not good. That tied into the politics maybe leaves some real cracks. Knowing some

of the investors of SpaceX, uniquely SpaceX doesn't have shareholders or that board that's going to I think do anything dramatic against its CEO but ultimately how long would it be before there start being cracks in that we haven't tested that out I really think the threats were to Starship going to be part of Artemis and Elon will want them just going to Mars, but that's such a leap, it's not realistic. And that's right. All that talk is completely gone.

Right, and will the President of the United States even walk back the Mars comment? I mean, this is part of the problem when you have been so disingenuous for so long. You have two fairly unreliable narrators. Why would you ever believe anything they say? So to the space community, Starship has been for a while now taken as a given that this will allow sustainable exploration, this will allow lower cost science missions. It's the reason I haven't flipped out over these cuts. I am opposed to them but yes we could reorder things and in a starship world, make huge leaps in our space program.

Without it, that becomes much harder. So I think that's why you and Jake and the people who follow you are feeling, oh, you know, just anxious about this vehicle. We've put a lot on it, but we have to remember it is in order of magnitude harder than just doing what SpaceX has done before, which seems miraculous. That's the whole thing, right? They are so far ahead of everyone else in just what they do operationally every other day. And then

here they are taking another swing at something that's even grander. But yeah, the next closest thing is not close. I was so careful in my book because you know it'll be out there forever to say if Starship becomes operational. And you don't hear that from most people. It's one starship. Yeah, yeah. It's operational. Uh, you guys are starting to talk about it like it's an if that that becomes a real challenge for those of us who believe in long term space sustainability. I still think it's a win, but I don't. It's SpaceX has not dragged the industry along as a whole in a way that a lot of people would have expected. No one has really caught up in any of the verticals that they operate in.

They are still such an extreme outlier. You know, like when Neutron starts flying, maybe Rocket Lab gets inching towards them, right? But New Glenn's not there yet. None of the other launch vehicles are there yet. No one has, I mean, the fact that no one is putting pressure on SpaceX is launch costs right now. Launch price is crazy. It is 2025 and nothing is making SpaceX drop their prices of launches. That is astounding.

And so this is why a lot of people that are in the industry buying launches are like, yeah, they've they've definitely dropped the price of launch, but not that much. Like it's if you can fit on a transporter, then yeah, you're gonna get a deal, but otherwise, it's still pretty tough to book a flight out there. So the effect they've had on space flight is massive. The effect they've had on the space flight industry

right now is like, they are still operating on their own, and no one else is, I mean, you look at, there's a lot of talk in the last couple days of OneWeb, and Caleb Henry's gonna make a lot of noise because he's writing this OneWeb book and they're talking about like, man, this thing, like nobody's gonna make money on this thing. I don't know that they can fund a Gen 2. And that's like the closest thing to Starlink and it's unclear on how this is gonna go and there's like all these different people that are actually owning pieces of it and they're

selling their shares and it's very murky, and no one else is remotely close. That is what's distressing to me, is that I still am there on when Starship, but it is unclear to me that in the near term, anyone will catch up in a way that actually changes things on a grander scale than just the Starship program. The angst from these last couple of days, well, really, it's just been one day from our conversation, might inspire the government, which is one of the reasons it was just really a bad

idea to have this battle if you're Elon Musk, would inspire the government to say, you know what, would inspire the government to say, you know what, we have to invest in competitors. I mean, I've been saying that, we tried to do it at the beginning, we thought we had, there's no reason. If you were threatening now, I mean, the threatening of Dragon was to me, first, why even jump to SpaceX the president was talking about

having a Eliminating contracts and subsidies that's pretty much Tesla To have jumped to SpaceX and to say I'm gonna you know not do this I know how they feel because SpaceX has all along said hey make my day come at us you you have to have us US government I think we do Steve Bannon gave gave the go-ahead to the president to take it over who knows knows? Who knows what will happen? But if you're in the federal government right now, you want competitors and maybe that's the best outcome we can hope for. But it's not obvious even how to do that or who they

would be. Yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, and the ones that I would point to are far off, you know, in the early days, the Stokes out there off, you know, in the early days. There are the Stokes out there and, you know, people that are still a long way from being in that position. Yeah, I mean, this week has been, we always knew this kind of week would arrive, right? The week that the negative kickback starts against SpaceX because of the politics that Elon's done for the last year plus. I didn't think it would happen in June 2025.

I thought this would be more distant. Maybe late Trump years, probably the next administration was my vibe. My concern was the Democrats' reaction and coming into power the next time. Even just midterms, right? Midterms was maybe a good gate but i did not see it come in this quick and and i thought you know the only reason to go all in on this if you're Elon Musk is that you can like you know try to slam the gas pedal for a couple years when you've got

sway but it was a couple of months and here we are with yeah that that the look of them effectively holding the ISS program hostage is not going to go well internally at NASA or anywhere else. The liberals in the country, I think he's holding on to those true conservative lower budget people, but they are going to side with the president ultimately and certainly

in Washington. So he's really sort of making himself on this smaller island, understand there are around him 200 million followers. But, but really, it's not a positive thing for the space program to be so isolated and negative. We never have been. We've been bipartisan. We have been showing the world that we're in this together. I was in Europe a couple weeks ago. The Europeans are aghast that all this is happening. And that was before this storm. So it's not, yeah, we weren't expecting it. And I think it's nothing but negative so far. That's a bummer. This is a super good way for me to end your Friday. So I appreciate

it. I'm so glad it's Friday though. Although I guess that doesn't mean anything. No, no. Last weekend was nuts. Who knows, you know? You and I, we may be admin and I'll be deputy by the time the weekend's out. Well, I... I would do it, for the record. I'll do it.

Oh, under this president, I would not. This is, okay, this is where I'll end the show. This is the single greatest moment to become NASA administrator, because you go in with 100% of the expectations set. You already know that the Gen Pop out there knows the budget. They know the last guy got tossed before he was in office. They know you're fighting an uphill battle and that you're going to

have to concede certain things to make any progress and any progress you make will be rewarded. This is like, you set the bar so low you could trip over the thing. And so no matter what, if you go in and you get fired in a month, you made it at least a month, that's longer than the last guy, there's not a better time in the world

to be the NASA administrator. I like it. Yeah. I like it. So I'll do it, is what I'm saying. Get someone as good as you who thinks that way. Listen, you circulate on your side of the aisle, I'll call Albrecht, he'll circulate my name in that side, and I got a shot, I think.

Then I'll call you. We'll do the unity ticket thing. Lank yourself out. Yeah. Lori, what else did we miss? What else did we not talk about? Because then we'll just roll that over to off-nominal in a couple weeks and we'll talk about that.

So many things. So much. I don't know. Space station. I mean, really those cuts? Are we really just going to not have full compliment of astronauts after all this time? I think we're just not gonna have Starliner.

Not even waiting for the budget. Yeah, that's just happening. I think we're gonna not have Starliner. That's the play, I think. Even now. I think we're gonna go to eight month rotation SpaceX missions, no Starliner, stretch the SpaceX missions over the rest of the ISS program, maintain four crew, but cut the other flights out.

You don't think the president has somebody today looking at that Starliner and saying, what do they need? Maybe he can buy one from Qatar. What do they need? Do you think they're going to get, oh, they're going to get rescission funded? No, just take the money from what you were going to pay SpaceX. I mean, threatening, a threat. Do you just ignore it?

Uh, I mean, it takes one to know one, you know? Nothing like this, I want to be clear, has occurred in the past at these kind of levels. We would never have been told who we could or could not contract with. Uh, people have asked, I mean, obviously the Biden administration upset Elon over not inviting Tim to a EV conference that was that a smart thing to do? It was not like just do that kind of thing. Or now I know in a position where a lot of people think that the regulatory environment is driven by politics and FAA was dragging their feet on SpaceX in the Biden administration. I personally don't subscribe to that.

I never saw that. But now we know it's true. Now we know this is something Trump does. Is FAA gonna start scrutinizing space starship flights? What a timeline this would be if like one year later we have the same story but the other way around. The range of tools the president has are many and unlike previous presidents, he's willing to use them for personal vendettas. That is the concern. And we in the space community like to think of ourselves as

special little snowflakes. Yeah. That and even I in the midst of yesterday's storm, was called about the potential pulling of SpaceX contracts. And I said, oh, the president didn't say SpaceX contracts. He said contracts, I'm sure, you know, he means these other companies, SpaceX. For one, they've earned their keep. Anyone who researches it, and I keep telling everyone it's not a subsidy, it's saved the public money. Those programs are valuable and very hard for the government to walk back, but it isn't, there are barriers that the president, when he's willing to use it as his president is, can wield. And the budget is only one of them. I if he were doing the budget now,

who knows what it would be? Man, well, we'll have you back to figure it out when it happens. So when your administrator went on the administrator, yes. Listen, the last administrator nomination appeared on the show very shortly before nominated. So maybe we have once again invoked that and you'll be tapped. Maybe you have but you've had some other people as well recently. So that's true. Maybe we'll look in stripe. Listen, we'll figure it out. Lori, thanks for hanging out. You're the best.

Always always great to talk with you. Definitely needed it this week. I'm glad we got some time to chat. Thanks for all your work. This has been a time we all need to talk and just hear friendly voices and realize we'll get through it. Thanks again to Lori for coming on the show and helping us figure all of this out. Always great to have her join us.

And I'm sure she'll be back in the not too distant future when things kick off once more. But for now, thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for the support. This is a 100% listener-supported show. If you like what I'm doing here, head over to meanenginecutoff.com slash support. Join up the crew there. This show was produced by 33 executive producers. Thanks to David, Donald, Matt, Frank, Better Everyday Studios,

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It's a great way to support the show, to current on the news it's a win-win all around for now thank you so much for uh listening and for putting up with me as I moved to a new house and we've got base camp established here so I should be back to my normal schedule from this point Thanks for watching!