Main Engine Cut Off - T+312: Starship Flight 11, Space Policy, and Priorities (with Miles O’Brien)

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Miles O’Brien, science correspondent for PBS News and CNN space analyst, joins me to talk about Starship Flight 11, the current space policy landscape including the ongoing government shutdown, the possible return of Jared Isaacman, and what to do about all the competing budget priorities at NASA.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Joakim, David, Heiko, Ryan, Jan, Kris, Frank, Josh from Impulse, Steve, Russell, Joonas, Joel, Matt, Will and Lars from Agile, Natasha Tsakos, Donald, Lee, Better Every Day Studios, Warren, Theo and Violet, Pat, Fred, The Astrogators at SEE, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Stealth Julian, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsMiles O'Brien Productions - Miles O'BrienMiles Ahead | Miles O'Brien | SubstackSpaceX finally got exactly what it needed from Starship V2 - Ars TechnicaMore layoffs at JPL - SpaceNewsTrump, Billionaire Isaacman Said to Meet About Top NASA Job - BloombergFormer NASA nominee Jared Isaacman in talks to become agency's chief | ReutersThe 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 I've got Miles O'Brien joining the show. You probably know Miles O'Brien, because this man has been around a while. He is the science correspondent for PBS News, CNN Space Analyst. He was all up in CNN back in the day, too. and hey, it was the guy responsible for getting me on CNN. So really fun conversation coming up here. We're going to talk Starship.

We're going to talk about a lot of space policy. So I hope you enjoy the conversation with Miles. Miles, the long-awaited debut of you on Managing Cutoff. I'm happy to finally have you here. It's a thrill. You know, I'm a huge, huge fan, as you know. And I love listening to what you do. Years ago, I did a short-lived endeavor called This Week

in space. And that was back in the day. This was 2008 time frame right after I left CNN. And we were trying to put together a little weekly TV broadcast. And sadly, if we had just, you know, said, let's just do this newfangled podcasting thing. Although, who knew what a podcast was then? If only we had done that, I'd be where you are. But you now have global domination in this space. You have a man. And I, you know, what you do is so important because, as you well know, we are a we, meaning the space cadet community, are a small community that doesn't really have a lot of, we don't get above the fold and a lot of the big publications typically, you know. And so it's very important that we have

platforms like yours to do those deep dives on the things we really care about because you don't get that coverage anywhere else. So what you're doing, Anthony is vital, and I'm here to tell you you're probably better off doing this than becoming the NASA administrator. I'm lobbying to be it. You're lobbying to keep me out of it. But we decided if I do become the administrator, I will keep doing the show, and it will just be daily dispatches from the desk of the administrator.

Actually, I think it's brilliant. Why not? Why not lead that way? Bring me on board. I'll help you out with that. You can be my deputy. I'd love it. That'd be a ton of fun.

we got it we got its whole organization in the running it's going to be awesome um i am excited talking to it because there's about a thousand things to go over it's been a pretty crazy week you at starship flight there's a lot of political drama and uh tea leave reading that we can do um where do you want to start you want to start with starship since it was uh the big flashy thing this week yeah i you know nothing succeeds like success right that was a good mission and uh what will happen with with version three, who knows, it's, I'm sure there will be more problems, right? That's the way this goes. But I do think that Starship is extremely exciting prospect, but I keep wondering what the reality of it is going to be. You know, the idea that we would, NASA or SpaceX would have to

refuel a starship somewhere between 10 and 40 times in orbit, in order just to get to the moon, that sets you back a little bit when you start thinking about the realities of getting to the moon in a reasonable period of time. So I'm a huge believer in the concept of starship. It still is not delivering on payload, and it certainly hasn't reached orbit. Let's not forget that. So there's a lot of work ahead here. And when you consider the deadlines that people have set for putting footprints back on the moon, I'm not sure, well, I think it's, we can almost say with certainty that Starship

is not going to get NASA there in time to meet those deadlines. So it's very likely that there'll be a Chinese flag planted. and a declaration of some kind of zone of influence on the moon and the South Pole. And then what? Then where do we go? It is a weird situation right now because you have a lot of that talk going on on like, what are we doing at a policy level? And what is the relative priority of landing before Chinese astronauts are walking on the surface?

On the other side, you have the program that was, you know, to remember the original pitch for the Artemis program in this way was that we're going to go back and we're going to build a sustainable infrastructure that lets us continue to fly there a lot. And that's increasingly, that sounded great in 2018 or 2019, 2021, even when Starship was selected and the timeline was more hopeful on, okay, this thing will be up and flying, we'll be able to do this in a reasonable number of refuelings. We can go and start doing these landings this way. Now we're in the time period where it's, it has slipped to the point at which, and we've seen tests out of China that have led to people to start and talk again of like, oh, who is going

to be first here? You could very easily see political influence going in a way of like, no, no, we need to hot rod something to get back on the surface and, you know, shelve the idea of the sustainable, reusable architecture that's going to build out a whole moon base. And like, is that, is that better? Or should, is, you know, this is probably going to be the battles, right? Is it better to hot rod it and go back and be first on some like hot rodded blue moon, Mark I lander like Eric Berger's out there right in about, or stay the course. Let's do the sustainable thing. I mean, I think no action is the action because there's so many other priorities in the policy sphere. But those seem to be the two forks in the road ahead. Well, let's not forget, we've already

won the sprint. We did that in 1969. So what? We can sprint back. Yes. Listen, we could probably take the remnants of Apollo 18, 19, and 20, which are sitting as lawn ornaments in Texas, Florida, and Alabama, restack them and sprint back to the moon and have a complete, you know, nostalgic deja vu mission, right? Failure is not an option, right? That would be fine. But I think the idea that there is a piece of the moon that we're after, we like the South Pole because of for a lot of reasons, including the fact that we can probably get some water out of there, which is a good thing if you're trying to run an outpost. And if, in fact, the Chinese get there first and do declare, you know, a keepout zone and put up some no trespassing signs, which they can do by charter and treaty, that's a little different wrinkle on the whole thing. It's a little more than a sprint. You have to sprint in order to stay in the marathon in this case. So, but I don't, I don't see how, I don't see a path that makes that work with Starship in the critical path right now.

We've got years to wait for that. And, you know, the Chinese don't have a messy democracy to play with, and they work with decadal assumptions all the time, and they follow through on them. What a novel concept, right? And that allows them to play a long game in space and deliver in the long run. And so what happens if they get to the South Pole first? Is there a place there? I don't know enough about the desired ideal locations.

You might know, is there something, you know, 100 or so miles away from a potential Chinese outpost that NASA could set up an outpost? Does it become a little bit like Antarctica where we kind of divvy up sections? Maybe all that could happen. But I just don't see the budgetary priorities. I don't see Congress showing up for work. One of what is really happening in the real world matches the Trump administration rhetoric. There's this weird disconnect here, cognitive dissonance between what is said and what is really

happening. And we're seeing an agency that is being dismantled before our very eyes. About a quarter of the civil servants are gone or about to be gone. Poor JPL, my favorite NASA place, Disneyland for nerds, you know, dare to do mighty things, all that, to see it being, all those smart people being shown the door there is just so disheartening to me that, and frankly, if you look at NASA's most, the successes which have resonated with the general public most, it is on the science side of things. Let's face it, right? You know, the landers on Mars, the James Webb telescope Hubble, the science endeavor, which is, you know,

cut by a half now, is really the heart and soul of NASA. So I can't help but be discouraged, you know, cheer me up, will you? I don't know. It's been a bleak year on Miko, man. It's, I don't know. I try to take it in like a very storybook kind of way, right? There's always a bit of darkness that occurs in the story before something truly, you know, change making happens. And maybe that's this part in the flow that we're at. with the Starship stuff, it's, it's odd because, I mean, this flight seemed to go really well. You know, that's what everyone's saying, but then you watch the video of the dissent and they're like, man, that's a lot of stuff coming off this thing.

They had to burn through in a couple spots on the ship. So, you know, is that, is that all heat shield related? Because if it is, I think that's the part that we expect them to be at of like they're trying the hardest thing possible, which is making a reusable heat shield and reusing it multiple times, ideally with less work than the shuttle was. That's been the hardest thing in spaceflight engineering that anyone has tried. So that part's expected. If it's other stuff, if we end up finding out that like the burn through or any of the tank issues they had are other things that's still stamping out, you know, making progress, but it's slow progress.

And you better hope that 2026 is a much different year than 2025 was for them in terms of how much they can advance their technical roadmap. I do find this funny in where we're at where people are like, all right, but if starships taken a while and we can't get these refuelings done, is there another lander that we could put together in time to do this landing on a reasonable schedule? If these companies were reversed, if there was any other company working on a lander that had an architecture that was slipping and years late and unclear on what its roadmap was to actually do the thing. And SpaceX was the one saying, hey, we've got this hot-rodded version of the thing that we're planning

on flying soon. We could make this work. The entire community would be like, we're stupid but did not take advantage of this thing. We've got to go for it. So there's a potential future here where the Eric Berger prescient article about the Blue Moon Mark I lander, say they launched this thing in early 2006 and they stick the landing

with a lander the size and shape of which they would need. Now they're going to have to land multiple on the lunar surface to do the architecture. But if they stick that landing, I feel like the ballgame's changed. Like we're in a different era at that point. You know, Blue Moon could be the dark horse.

couldn't it? You know? It would be weird. It would be weird and unexpected and a lot of fun. Yeah. And suddenly we're seeing numbers that indicate Glenn might have a little more payload capacity than Starship. Did I read that correctly?

I don't know. The freak out over the Starship payload thing, there's a series of stories we'll talk about today that I don't buy in the way that they're posed. And this is one of them that I'm like, I don't think SpaceX is worried about the payload capacity of Starship yet. I think they're using what they have available to solve many different problems and figure out what they need to with these vehicles. And like, I mean, shit, if this thing's fully reusable and it launches 20 tons to orbit and it's that size and it can land anywhere at once, I'm like, that's still pretty good. Like, the failure scenario here is pretty good.

But I also think this is the way that they tend to work where they start with pretty tight, you know, like bad margins and then tighten them up and they actually get the performance as good or better than they were aiming for in the first place. So I'm still a believer in that. Yeah, it's kind of a bad bet to bet against them. There's no question about that. But, you know, this does get to one of my pet peeves. You know, I come from a little different generation of space reporting. Back in my day, Sonny, we would go and, you know, there was transparency on coverage of these events. You know, the way we cover SpaceX and Starship is not unlike the way.

the networks used to try to cover the Soviet Union during the dark days of the Cold War, where they would try to figure out who was in power by which lights were on at the Kremlin. And so we're kind of in this weird environment where we have very little visibility. And I will take this opportunity to complain publicly. I made a serious pitch and proposal to the SpaceX folks to, you know, come down there as a PBS news crew and do a story on Starship and, you know, I requested, I was assuming Elon would be too busy to spend time with me, maybe Gwen Shotwell, whatever, tour the facility there in Boca Chica. And they, it was literally a one-line response, no, just absolutely would not even entertain the notion. And so, you know, I think as a

legitimate representative of the media to be stiff-armed like that from a company that owes its very existence to the taxpayers, which would not have happened had it not been for Lori Garver pushing through commercial space at a time when nobody wanted it, and which still relies heavily on taxpayer support. For them to stiff-arm a reasonable request from the media bothers me. And I, you know, when I was, I was on the NASA Advisory Council during the Charlie Bolden years. And repeatedly, at every meeting I go to, I would, I would say, you know, we've got to change these contracts with SpaceX to insist on a certain level of transparency for the media covering these missions. And it just went nowhere. And I made a direct appeal to

Elon and he pretty much kicked me out of his office. Didn't want to do that. This leads me to a thing that I've been, I decided to tweet twice this week, and it was a bad idea. So, all right, that doesn't. Two bad ideas. But then you called me up. So we're back. We're back on track. Yeah, absolutely.

So your story does not surprise me because that is how SpaceX has acted since probably their founding. I guess there was a couple years there in the Falcon 1 era when they were doing big press events and really needing the, the. Oh, no. I used to be able to be able to. I could get Elon frequently respond to my emails, etc. Probably pre-Falcan 9 era, right, right, early days, quadulent, quadulent days, right?

So then we went into the era of Falcon 9 when there was a radical openness to what SpaceX was working on in that they weren't afraid to put their failures out there for everybody. And I, this week with this Starship flight, and this happened occasionally with some Starship flights recently, but this one in particular, a live stream was the live stream. and I probably have some other live stream-like examples, not from Starship of my point that I can point to for all the people that were tweeting at me. The videos they put out

after the fact, they fade to black and they cut them off right before the explosion, which is how every single other launch company in the world does it, including all of the state-run organizations in China. And my point is not, I wish they would show the explosion. My point is

they used to show the explosion. And they have now turned into releasing videos like every other organization that does this. stuff. And I, like, I don't really care about the details of that of what they do and don't show. What I care is it's very different than what they were doing for the last 10, 15 years of their company history. And, you know, all the, there's, the reason it was bad idea to tweet was all the dumb response they got that were just calling me names for no reason that I assume were bots. The others were just like, oh, they're given ammo to the people that might write this up as a

failure. I'm like, that, that's always existed. And they've always fought that back by just putting out so much compelling progress and they can work their way out of that storyline. And now they seem to be doing it like everybody else. And that's the concerning part to me. It's interesting because, as you point out there, they have actually proven that doing it out of the open works, that people will accept failure as failure is an option. And people do understand that. And they understand it's space and space is hard. And the way that it was framed for all those years, people kind of were, you know, along for the ride and rooting for its success. But to, you know, drop the curtain at the key moment and go to bars or black or whatever,

to me, you know, that's, it might as well be the Soviet Union trying to cover up the N1 explosion, right? Which we, I don't know if we saw a film of that for 40 years probably, right? But it's that kind of thing. And I don't like the idea because when you put that in the context of the larger things that are going on in our society right now, and the trends against a reasonable queries by the public to understand how their taxpay money is spent, either directly or through the media, everywhere I look, I see the screws being tightened on that. And this seems to fit into that overall trend. And that's very worrisome to me. Yeah, it's, I don't know, people, people hate this take, but it's just, it's a different thing. And I'm noticing.

a difference. Well, I just sort of say to the, you know, that the Elon fanboys out there that, you know, grow up a little bit. Come on. You know, I mean, I realize, you know, you're rooting for this and we're all rooting for its success. But, you know, we want to root with our eyes wide open and an understanding of what's happening. And I don't feel like we get really the full picture at all. As a matter of fact, we don't come close to it. We get dribs and drabs. that SpaceX chooses to release. And this, after all, is a piece of hardware that is in the critical path to arguably the top priority mission for NASA, which is the U.S. government taxpayer-funded space entity. I believe we are owed more than we are given right now. And fading to black

just doesn't cut it. I'm glad you're with me. Twitter's going to love that take. All right. So when you get that corner office, when you get that ninth floor corner office. I want to be right next door to you. I'll be there. I'll be on the flame desk. I'll just be responding. All right. I have a stupid theory if you want, if we're here. For 20 minutes in, I think this is the time. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Elon over the last, I don't know, year or two, as his relationship with Trump has gone up and down and Isaacman's gone in and out and whatever else. There's been a couple times where he's offhandedly said, like, oh, we're just going to Mars. Like, we're going straight to Mars, which some people read as, what he means is when

they launch to Mars, they're not doing a staging orbit, they're not doing this. And whatever else reads as like, no, he means he doesn't want to do the whole lunar landing thing. And he thinks that we should bail on it, which was the reporting in the early days of the Trump administration, that he was lobbying to shed the Artemis program and go ahead of Mars. SpaceX's strategy all along has been, let's take on the NASA programs that are are heading in our direction and get us a little bit more on the path where we're going. And we can also pick up a couple contracts, do some good work, develop technology, interesting ways. It was a symbiosis there.

Yeah, which is kind of genius, too, by the way. You know, it really is the way it should be, right? This is the way NACA worked. This is back to the origins, right? Anyway. But it conflicts with the Starship architecture generally, where if the goal was get to the moon, the fastest. And that means we need to go fly 50 starship flights to refuel, to test refueling before we do refueling. And also, we really haven't built the lander yet because we're building all

these other ones. They stacked a lot of stuff in front of the landing contract. So I think to paint it in a nice light, maybe they were taking the bet that, you know, they would get through that schedule faster than the Artemis program sluggishly was getting along anyway. To paint in a bad light, like, what if they realized they could stack a whole bunch of stuff in front of the landing attempt to snuff out the lunar program and make it uncomfortable enough that they either NASA and the political, you know, leadership decide to go a different way with the actual lander and SpaceX just continues on their way to Mars, or they get it so late and they get Starship so developed that they're like, yeah, screw it. Let's do the Mars thing

instead of Moon. Interesting theory. It's a terrible stupid theory, and I can't really believe this, but I want to float it. I, I, I, just off the top, I, why not, right? I mean, that it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? In a cynical, bleak way. This is 2035, Anthony speaking. He doesn't wear T-shirts that say, Occupy the Moon, right? Yeah, Occupy Shackleton. Ours has always been the thing, right? So you're right about that. And to the extent, you know, this has always been the argument, you know, is the moon, you know, a proving ground and a way station, or is it a cul-de-sac? And do we just end up there? And I, you know, I think, frankly, if you're going to go to Mars, you should be able to operate an outpost on the moon.

I mean, you know, a four-day flight versus, you know, a year is a different story entirely, right? And, you know, real time, communication, et cetera. So I think you have to do both. But I do think that politically there is this idea that, you know, NASA, well, let's face it, NASA is so oversubscribed as it is. You know, the idea that it is going to go to Mars seems, I mean, to call it a pipe dream would be, you know, euphemism. Beneficial. Yeah, it would be generous to it. Yeah, it would be very generous, right? So my non-cynical version of this is that SpaceX's take was we're going to progress on our, on our pipe, on our technological development trail.

And when NASA's ready for the moon, we'll go do the moon thing. But we're betting that we'll be faster than their sluggish half of the schedule. And certainly you see Axiom CEO shifting out and the spacesuits as a big open question. Maybe that's still true. But what would SpaceX do if this whole idea of like, let's get there before China launches their mission, we have to find a lander that works

without waiting for this whole refueling roadmap. What would SpaceX do? Would they bail on the moon entirely or would they come up with some solution that is sort of... Is there another idea out there that, gosh, I don't know about that? At one point they bid like a Falcon 9th, derived thing, but I don't even know what that means. Well, I mean, what is the point, though, of sprinting again back?

I mean, we did a completely non-sustainable program in the 1960s, and we won whatever that race was with the Soviet Union. Do we have to win this sprint? Is the real important question here? How much does that matter at this point? Certainly, it is entirely on us that it is a sprint, right? We could have been there a long time ago and could have set up an outpost. I mean, how many attempts have we had along the way that have been thwarted and, you know, canceled and programs that, you know, started and stopped?

Again, this goes back to, you know, the Chinese thinking in decades while we think in, you know, two and four-year cycles. So I really, the idea of flags and footprints on the moon, does that really thrill you on its own right? I mean, except to declare this zone of influence, I suppose, at the South Pole, right? But other than that, is, is it worth the sprint? Is it worth the effort? Is it worth when it clearly, we do not have the architecture in place to make it happen? Yeah, the then what, after we did it, would be very odd. Yeah.

Yeah, that's why I don't know. And then there's the aspect of it that we should talk about, which is just like all of our politics and does it even allow for either of these things to be taken action upon, right? I mean, we're in a weird spot. Government shut down, really no-ended sight. Jared Isaacman is having meetings again? Do you buy any of this Jared Isaacman stuff that's happening? What's your take?

I don't know. I mean, I just, I'm a big fan of him. And, I mean, obviously, he'd be number two after you, of course, for an administrator. But, you know, he is, but, you know, why on earth would he take? Why on our offer? Would he take the job? I mean, he's inheriting an entity that is, you know, being dismantled as we speak. Important missions have been canceled, derailed, lots of good people out the door. And, you know, he's obviously a very canny entrepreneur. But coming into that, what is the, you know, he doesn't have a lot of latitude.

to do much of anything. You know, it's always bad when OMB is dictating space policy, right? And, you know, the reason the space shuttle became this, you know, horse designed by committee was because of Casper Weinberger, the head of Office of Management and Budget in the Nixon era, who, you know, reduced the amount of R&D budget significantly so much so that they had to go with this hybrid reusability instead of a flyback booster, which would have been. we probably might still be flying the shuttle if they had gone fully reusable at that time, right? But who knows? But the point is when OMB is in charge of space, hang on to your

wallet. Yeah, it's chaotic. It's chaotic. And there's no, there's no, you know, if the space people are not at the table, you know, if it's the politicians trying to preserve jobs and if it's OMB trying to cut dollars, you're going nowhere. And, And that's where we are right now, I think. Especially when you could, yeah, I mean, the fact that I still can't quite buy this story that he's getting interviewed again. I don't know. I don't know. Where is that coming from?

So Lauren Grush, Bloomberg had it. And Joe Roulette put something out in Reuters. So like, I don't, I don't not believe them. That's my point, right? I don't, I just don't think, maybe I just don't want to believe it because I can't believe that when the whole thing went the way it did with Jared Isam. that he didn't just go off and go do something else and know, like, oh, that means I'm going to go do this other idea that I, or go back to my own space program and run that thing again.

He's got its own thing going on, you know? Yeah. So why come, I don't, right? That's why I'm, that's why I'm lobbying to be the head of NASA, because I do not have a space program at the moment. He does have one. So go do that one, right? If you only had a billion dollars, you'd be like Jared.

A space program or a bill, like whatever. You'd have your own fighter pilot fleet and fighter flight. And you'd have all the things that you'd, need. And instead, you want that job. And that's what I keep going back to is it would be, you know, I think he, under normal circumstances, he's an exciting choice. But with the budgetary constraints that he will inherit, I don't know what even the great Jared can do. He's, you know, at age 13 in his basement, figured out how to be a billionaire. So he's a smart guy. But, you know, you still are constrained in ways that, frankly, even coming up with a

payment system in your basement in New Jersey, you're constrained in further ways when you're dealing with NASA politics and rockets, you know? I do have a basement in New Jersey, so maybe I should just go down there. I believe you're in it right now, aren't you? No, no, I'm above ground at the moment. Okay. You don't really want to hang out in my basement. It's all being weird.

So here's the other aspect of like the pieces that he's given, right? Let's just play that he comes back. So we're in a shutdown that has no end in sight. the presidential budget request was a huge cut to NASA, and Congress responded saying, no, we're not going to cut all that. We're going to reassign a couple things, and roughly where we were before. And that's the, the House budget is the one that they were told to go ahead and plan on during the shutdown. But what comes out of this, you know, I have people that say their theory is it's going to end up a lot closer to the presidential budget request than it is

to the congressional things that have been passed by the time the shutdown's over and the layoffs or recisions happen, whatever the case is. And then, you know, he gets in office next spring. You're running up the heels of midterm elections. And then you've got about a year before you're in a presidential election

that doesn't have an incumbent. It's going to be, you know, Vance, Ted Cruz might run again. A lot of the players involved in this Republican space policy side may be running for president at that time. So like, if there's an election, assuming there's an election. I'm going to go out on the limit, say we have one.

Please, if there is a God in heaven, give us an election. I'll run for that one, too, just to help you out. You've got my support all the way around. I'm a big fan. But none of that makes for a good, like, there's not a stable period in there to institute space policy. You've got one year that isn't an election and might have a budget. That's it.

I doubt, they have recalibrated the base. such that I don't know. It's already such a deep hole that you're right. There may be dribs and drabs will come back, but I'm not actually optimistic about that at all because I don't see Congress doing its job right now. And so you've got an administration determined to do this and they're acting with what's the term plenary power we're hearing now. And so I, you know, I think that Isaacman is smart enough to see that and understand that. He has enough, maybe. I mean, if we take Trump at his word that he would take great pride in, you know, a vibrant NASA piloted space program, you know, Isaacman could be somebody who could turn that around, but he'd have to have not a blank checkbook, but at least some latitude, a checkbook of some kind. Not an overdrawn checkbook, right? There's no point otherwise. And so I'm sure that he's thinking about it. Hold on.

Let's play this game because let's say he gets nominated again, gets confirmed in 2026. His man has a shot at being administrator for 10 years. Well, that's, I like that idea. I like that idea a lot. I think he, you know, the interesting thing about Jared is he's, you know, first thing, he's like, he's one of the nicest billionaires you ever meet, first of all. And he really is. a fly guy, a space guy, which is good in every good sense of the word.

So I think the idea of him helming NASA for 10 years and maybe riding out the storm here and trying to keep things from going completely off the rails, although I don't know, maybe it's too late for that. That's an attractive idea. Maybe he would have enough charisma and force and leadership capability to, keep, you know, get NASA back on track. But as you well know, you know, NASA really typically has not run by the administrator. It's run by, you know, OMB, it's run by the science and technology.

It's run out of the White House generally, right? And unless the White House, you know, says we choose to go to the moon and do the other things, yeah. That's pretty good. Unless they do that for a while. because they are hard. But if you don't have that kind of, you know, leadership at that level, it really doesn't go very far. And Trump, I don't think, has the desire, the attention span, the understanding of how to do that. I think the White House is run by Russ vote.

and J.D. Bans, and they don't care, right? Honestly, do you think they care about space and it doesn't seem like, I don't think so, not a bit? No, and I've asked people about Pence the first time around and like, you know, did he have this like deep interest in space and nobody's told me yes. The only, the best I've heard is that like, no, he thought it was a project he could helm that would look really good for when he went to try to succeed Trump. Well, I mean, listen, to let's be bipartisan. Listen about it. Kennedy didn't give a shit about space either, right? It was a means to an end for him. But that's, you know, frankly, let's not forget that means to an end, that idea of projecting soft power. What NASA means to the world and to this country, it's really hard to overstate it, right?

Can you think of anything? I've been trying to think about this. In the history of humankind, the idea that 16 or 17 nations who may may not always get along with each other, could come together and build this giant orbiting facility, you know, with parts that never saw each other on Earth and only met in space and pull this thing off is such an extraordinary thing and is what makes space unique. We don't, as a collective human society, we don't come together except when there's a war. And so the idea that space is kind of can bring people together and unify, I think is proven. And so that is a worthy goal aside from all the other things we are talking about, just the idea of pulling nations and people and the fact that we still have creaking along here,

some kind of partnership of some kind with the Russians through all of this, says something about the power of space. But these are nuances that I don't think the MAGA crowd fully understand because you look at, look at what's happening to science across the board. This is a, we're going from the Enlightenment to the Dark Ages. We're cutting not just NASA. We're cutting NOAA. We're cutting the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, systematically going through reducing our ability to put renewable energy online. We are literally giving whatever primacy we still have to the Chinese anyway.

So maybe we're not serious about wanting to win. Maybe that's really the honest to goodness truth. Always follow the money, right? Maybe the Chinese, maybe there's something there. What does Elon need from China, maybe is a question to ask. Yeah, I mean, last week I talked to Phil McAllister, who, you know, ran the commercial space side of NASA for a while. while and about commercial space stations more and how like I didn't buy that they really cared about it at NASA because there's no money going towards it. There's no money for it. The answer was like pretty much, yeah, you're right. Nobody cared about it. They didn't go for it when they had the chance. Because they love their ISS. They love it. I mean, you were just here waxing poetic

about it. So cool those jets over there. It's true. I talk out of both sides of my mouth. But I will say there's a time. Everything has its time and place, right? And I think it's time to move on, right? Don't you think? I'm, yeah, I'm like, sink-it-t-tomorrow kind of guy. Yeah, me too, at this point. I'm ready to burn the boats and get on to what's interesting. So much so that I've, I don't know if I've revised this in 2025, but my theory has been that China was going to get stuck in Leo the same way we have and then have an asset

there that they spent too much money on and couldn't, you know, scrounge up the budget to go do the lunar thing. Maybe that'll still be true. I don't know. I have no idea how their finances are run over there. and what the relative budgets are. But I don't know. They just seem to go outside and put a lot of debris shielding up on Tyeongg.

That seems to be like 85% of the work is putting more debris shield. I'm like, did they launch it with any? What did they do? What did they launch this with that every EVA has been putting more shielding on? I'm very confused. Well, you know, you can't. Space Station is never going to be sustainable with all the EVAs that we all do. I mean, it's kind of crazy.

How many hundreds of hours of EVA did it take to get to where we are in the Space Station? They're still going out there to tinker around. Anyway, I'll be honest with you, you have to tell me, Anthony, what is the real business case for a commercial orbiting tended by humans space station? You're not going to get that out of me. I don't see it. I don't see it. I don't see it. I mean, what researches will tell you is that the microgravity environment on the space station is shitty because somebody gets on the treadmill and that's the end of that, right?

I mean, frankly, you know, unpilited free flyers is probably a better way to go if you really want to understand what happens when you remove gravity from the mix. And that was offered as a service by SpaceX for a while and nobody bought it. Nobody buys. There you go. So is there a tourism enterprise to be developed? Maybe. It's like one guy that buys that and he's trying to be the head of NASA. He's going to get an inside deal on the whole thing, right?

Yeah, maybe that's it. He's going to harder, better rates. I just, I'm not very sanguine on the commercial space station prospects, frankly. If you were working up a business plan on that, I think you'd have a hard time closing that case, don't you think? Oh, absolutely. And when we're this close to an era where we can all see a path towards doing interesting things on the lunar surface, it's, I'm an all in on that kind of guy because all these other budget wedges get in the way and that there's momentum towards that. And I think we're at the best point we've ever been to do that. And I think we should just double down on it.

And so I guess I'm supporting the stay the course methodology here versus the hot rod of blue moon to beat the Chinese back. And meanwhile, those budget wedges. I mean, talk about perfect storm at NASA, you know, to, I mean, everything is happening at once here. All could all, of course, all predictable. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know. It's, it's really discouraging. I don't know, you know, what the, I don't see a clear path forward, even.

if the great Jared Isaacman ends up in that corner office. I don't know how the agency comes out of this. I think we're unfortunately hitting the iceberg and we're going to see who's driving the ship when we do. That's the bleakest take of this. But I think, I don't see anybody correcting the situation at the moment or really having the, there are people that, I mean, Jared Eisenman speaks of this situation a lot, but we don't really see that he has levers available to make significant changes because of all the different players involved here. And so something else external has to force that

moment. And for the ISS program, maybe that's the Russian half having structural leaks and the head of Roscosmos talking shit all the time about the U.S. half. But even that wasn't enough to like force the hand and say, yeah, it's time to move on from the ISIS. Now they've funded a

USD orbit vehicle, but there's not a lot of... Another wedge. Another wedge. Another wedge. It's all another wedge. You're going to take that space station from their cold dead hand, right? It's something. But, you know, you got to have a place to go to, I guess, right? That's the thinking. If you don't have space station and, you know, the old mind the gap here. Yeah. And where are we going to go? Well, we haven't, we haven't really set up any sort of meaningful plans to really go and set up an outpost to the moon. And that would

truly be exciting, wouldn't it? I mean, really, how cool would it be to do that? And it's a shame, you know, it should have happened in 1971, really. Here we are. This was a fantastic, Miles. I don't want to keep you all day because I feel like we could probably talk for eight hours in a row and both not notice that we've missed dinner. I'll be happy to come back. Absolutely. Yeah.

Here, off nominal, we got to have you on. This is my favorite subject. So, all right. Well, plug some stuff. What should people follow if they're not following long? Well, so I, you know, like all the cool kids these days. I am on substack. So find, you know, miles ahead, Miles O'Brien on Substack.

And pretty much everything I do, I funnel through there. I've got a little podcast. And maybe I'll do a home and away game, ask you to come on it. Oh, yeah. Or I'll just replay this. So it's called Miles to go. But if you go to my Substack, everything's there. And I am going to Antarctica, January and February.

I'm going on a South Korean. icebreaker to Antarctica, to the Thwaites Glacier, the so-called Doomsday Glacier. And this is, fortunately, it's a South Korean icebreaker because the U.S. icebreaker is now in mothballs, but it's a 10 days across the southern ocean. And then about six weeks on site at Thwaites with 40 scientists on board. And one of the ideas that we're going to be exploring is, could a sea curtain be built underwater to prevent the warm water from reaching the glacier, geoengineering. Very controversial subject.

Anyway, so I'm very excited about that. I'm going to bring a Starlink. Thank you, Elon. Can we do a show while you're on this trip? I'm going to be on the whole time. I'll be blabbing. All right. Let's do a show while you're there.

100%. Yeah, because it is a game changer to have that kind of bandwidth in Antarctica. And you know, you've got to hand it to SpaceX. It's good stuff. Yeah. All right, Miles, thanks for hanging out. We will definitely be talking soon. It was a great pleasure.

Keep up the great work, Anthony. You're doing important stuff for the space community, and I really enjoy listening to what you do. Thank you very much. Thanks again to Miles for coming on the show. I actually could have talked to him for eight hours, so we're going to have him back a lot, a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoyed it too.

This episode was produced by 32 executive producers who made this episode possible. Thanks to Joe Kim, David, Hiko, Ryan, Jan, Chris, Frank, Josh from Impulse, Steve, Russell, Eunice, Joel, Matt, Will & Large from Agile, Natasha SACOS, Donald Lee, Better Everyday Studios, Warren, Theo and Violet, Pat, Fred, The Astrogators at SEE, Tim Dodd, the Everd Ashinaut, Stealth, Julian, and Four Anonymous executive producers. If you want to hit me up, Anthony at Managing Cutoff.com is the email. Do that there, not the Twitter account that I talked about getting dumb tweets to. Just email me. It'll be better. But until next time, thank you all for listening, and I'll talk to you soon. You know, I'm going to be able to be.