Main Engine Cut Off - T+328: Pam Melroy, Former NASA Deputy Administrator and Space Shuttle Commander

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Pam Melroy, Former NASA Deputy Administrator, Space Shuttle Commander, and three-time Shuttle astronaut, joins me to talk about space policy past, present, and future. We talk about the most critical decisions and moments during her time as Deputy Administrator under Administrator Bill Nelson, and her thoughts on the Isaacman-era space policy from Ignition to Commercial LEO, and what to do about Mars Sample Return. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Steve, Lee, Russell, Stealth Julian, Warren, Miles O’Brien, Josh from Impulse, Joel, David, Natasha Tsakos, Joakim, Will and Lars from Agile, Frank, Better Every Day Studios, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Donald, The Astrogators at SEE, Jan, Joonas, Pat, Matt, Kris, Fred, Theo and Violet, Ryan, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters. Topics Pamela Melroy (@Astro_Pam) / X NASA Statement on Nomination of Pam Melroy for Agency Deputy Administrator - NASA Pam Melroy Sworn in as NASA Deputy Administrator - NASA As Artemis Moves Forward, NASA Picks SpaceX to Land Next Americans on Moon - NASA NASA Selects Blue Origin as Second Artemis Lunar Lander Provider - NASA NASA Selects Companies to Develop Commercial Destinations in Space - NASA Op-ed: NASA’s New CLD Strategy Will Lose Mars, LEO to China NASA Sets Path to Return Mars Samples, Seeks Innovative Designs - NASA NASA to Explore Two Landing Options for Returning Samples from Mars - NASA The Show Like the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack! Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Follow @[e-mail] on Mastodon Listen to MECO Headlines Listen to Off-Nominal Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Artwork photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls Work with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Managing Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo, and I've got a great show for you today. I have Pam Melroy with me, who was the former NASA Deputy Administrator, under-administrator Bill Nelson, just in the past couple of years. She was also a space shuttle commander, three-time shuttle astronauts, all-around, great person to talk with. We're going to talk about past space policy, how it impacts current space policy, all sorts of topics. And obviously, Artemis II, as we are on the eve of its return, more to come on that, I'm sure. But for now, let's get into it with Pam.

I was about to do the intro, Pam, and then I'm like, man, which title do I go with? Because I feel like Deputy Administrator gets said a lot, but we're glancing over the three shuttle missions. What do you prefer? Typically, what I do is just say, former astronaut, former deputy administrator of NASA. And, I mean, those are the titles. I think that most people are interested in. I mean, it's, you are known to work with people that have a lot of titles. So the, very famously, nobody knew which titles went in which order for Administrator Nelson. But I guess,

I guess you have the same battle. It turns out that Senator actually outranks the administrator. So, um, so either, either was appropriate. And that's kind of what we told everyone. Just use whichever one you prefer, they're both okay. Whichever one you knew him as. And where does astronaut fall? He bumped that down the list? You know, Bill was really sensitive about using that word. He knew the difference between a payload specialist and a professional astronaut. I think he gracefully gave in when he was administrator because it was important to his credibility. But, you know, even now, I mean, I talk to him about once a week, and he almost always says,

commander, this is payload specialist one. I like that. I like that. All right, we got a ton of space policy topics to talk about. But we can't not talk about Artemis II. I've talked about it a bunch on the show, but I feel like I can't have a three-time astronaut on the show and not talk about the human return to the moon here. So give me your take, how the mission's been going, what you've been interested in?

How's the week been for you? Wow, it's been an emotional week and a busy week because I think, Certainly, I'm interested in keeping up with things, but what's fascinating is nearly boundless attention from the media. I am getting multiple text messages and emails every day asking, you know, are you available for this, that, and all the other astronauts I know are also in the same shoes. And I think that's exciting. I mean, I knew this was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen that no one had any idea we were going back. to the moon until suddenly there was a human on their way. But I've been delighted by the fact that

this has sort of erupted into the consciousness. Finally, I think it's just such a long time coming. I mean, I worked on Orion 20 years ago when I was still in the astronaut office. So I have to say it's a sustained effort by multiple administrations and literally thousands of people. people to get to this point. It's funny that you talk about the eruption of attention, because I think I was leading up to launch, more critical that nobody knew about it. And then as it on, you know, I think that's, because in a lot of ways, I think that's an indictment of the vehicle that you can't make a lot of noise for a particular launch date

because it was not very good at the schedule up until astronauts stepped on at the first time, and then it was great at the schedule. But nobody would have bet on that. I wouldn't have, certainly. Me neither. Yeah. And that's one thing that, you know, people like us get all twisted up and knots about. But it almost is more of a fit for the media cycle these days that once it launches, we knew the timings that are going to matter.

And that actually fit fairly well in what is a typical news cycle to make a lot of press. So I've backed off my criticism of the pre-launch hype because I do think there was kind of a rubber band snapping moment of like, holy crap, this is happening. People are going. This crew, we love them. They're so fun. They're shooting 80s sitcom intros on the way to the moon. It was charming and exciting. And nobody else had to be exposed to our dumb arguments about hydrogen fueling and ground systems.

All those are good conversations for us, and nobody else cares about that. That's absolutely true. And I have to say, I am not surprised that this happened overnight in the public's view. It really, it's just hard to, like you said, with the news cycle, it's hard to get people's attention. But no matter what, we're still kind of a niche in society. Yeah. Well, it's been a very interesting niche the last couple of years, honestly, right? There's the twist and turns of this program.

A lot of people are like, well, when did this start? And I'm like, well, once there was a program called Constellation, like, you got to roll it way back. And even beyond that, you're like, well, once there was the space shuttle. And then we decided we were moving on. And the storyline is very long. There's been obviously twist and turns. You've been involved in various elements of that. I think you were, the first time you were floated as deputy administrator,

the concept of it was when Lori Garver departed, right? The previous two previous administrations before that you were in that role. So you've been kicking around this field as we've had moon, then Mars, an asteroid, then moon, a little bit of Mars stills in there. Now they're talking about Mars again more than they were the last couple years. And then two weeks ago, ignition, this big event, big role. out from the Isaacman administration. I wonder how some of those announcements sat with you,

specifically with regards to Artemis, we'll unpack all the different levels there. But on the Artemis front and the roadmap, it's obviously, I don't think it was any secret that the times that they've said the previous administration in that rollout was more of a cutting criticism cross administrations than we've seen in at least my lifetime as a space nerd. So I wonder, as somebody that was in that and backing some of those elements

that are now canceled, how did that sit with you? And what do you make of the shifts there? Yeah, I think your point about this being a long program is really important. Actually, I had just left NASA and gone to work at Lockheed Martin as one of the deputy program managers for part of the Orion program when Constellation was canceled. And anyway, that was a really tough time. It was a great experience for me. I learned a lot about industry. I learned a lot about what it is like to actually be the people who, who are building the vehicle. But in the end, I ended up laying a lot of people off, and that included me because the size of the program had to get, had to tighten up, and we needed to reduce some of the layers of management. So I came to Washington partly to try to understand what happened.

So I have been watching closely. I've talked to a lot of people about it. And I came to the conclusion that no one ever spent, anything up by canceling something. It's better to try to fix it if you can. I don't know if that's true or not. That is just my working hypothesis. And so when I did become deputy administrator, there was a lot of chatter about canceling Artemis because, well, you know, in the Biden-Harris administration looked at all the things that the first Trump administration had done and wanted to cancel everything. But fortunately, you know, some folks on the transition team headed up by Ellen Stofen, Pavi Lal,

we advocated successfully that continuity of purpose was a better solution for NASA. With regards to the recent announcement, what's interesting about it, I think, is I would say that I have no issue with the diagnoses of problems. Certainly, they're not surprising to me. knew very well where all the problems were. I think you just have to pick what kind of a solution you're going to approach. And the way I just described it is trying to fix things, make them better, make them work together in a productive way rather than a cancellation. So this may speed things up. It may not. I think the solution space remains to be seen how that's going to unfold,

but I certainly don't disagree with the diagnosis of the problem. How about the way that the gateway fits in, I think, is, you know, because the landers and the spacesuits are a can of worms that everybody talks about. But the gateway side of things, I think, is where it gets interesting because that is a ton of resources in the out years and a really kind of messy roadmap that was in place for a while where, you know, the Artemis 4 mission, the amount of things we needed ready for the Artemis 4 mission

to head out to the gateway was an incredible amount of stuff that just never really seemed reasonable to me from a scheduled perspective, that it would be, you know, coalescing at the exact moment. So that aspect of it I'm very supportive of because I think it does clear out the back end of the roadmap. But one of the key aspects that Isaacman was talking about in this event was that the international partners would all really like to go to the surface. And I've agreed with that for the years that, like, people were in the gateway program because they want to put their own boots on the moon as well.

But as somebody that was in administration where the gateway was the thing, Did that, was that evident, element, was that evident at the time that there would be support there for the moon base program? Do you think it's still out for debate that that is actually going to be embraced in the larger partner sense? Well, here, here's the big challenge. The big challenge is to start a moon base, you need to be able to land a substantial amount of mass on the moon. And the only thing that's in the pipeline right now, even, well, there's two things in the pipeline. pipeline. The first thing is, of course, the cargo variant of the human landers. So should we stop working on the human variant and focus on the cargo variant? Maybe that will, you know, the experience,

for example, that SpaceX had with Dragon as a cargo vehicle definitely helped them get certified much faster to carry people. So maybe that's the right thing to do. On the other hand, with the geopolitical pressure to land, you know, will it have the same impact to land cargo the first time as it will humans? I swear we landed tens of tons on the surface. Yeah, exactly. So I think there's a, you know, a political dynamic there that you have to be pragmatic about. The good news is that Europe is, was seriously looking for contributions to the Artemis program

beyond Gateway. and so they're working on a cargo variant as well, and they're talking about that. I think it won't be as much mass, but I think it will be significantly greater than clips. And I think this is, so I'm a little bit concerned. I don't, I mean, clips, there's a, there's a pretty good chance they'll be able to get viper down to the surface. I mean, but I'm sorry, you know, 500 to 1,000 kilograms is, just not enough to start a moon base. So I think, you know, we'll see all that stuff was in the plans. It's just that it was in the out years because we knew about this transportation problem.

Getting back to Gateway, I think that one of the big issues when we came, when Bill and I came into the administration was the international partnerships. And unsurprisingly, once Gateway was, proposed and you know it's a long history there whatever came from the asteroid mission etc etc and and then they accidentally named lunar orbiting platform gateway yeah an amazing branding moment right and and and so when we came in though our ISS partners Issa Canada Japan had all piled on they're like yes we know how to do this. We know how to build elements for a space station.

And they just started throwing things at NASA. And this is before our time. We did sign a deal with UAE to do the airlock. But that was very late in the administration. So now you have international partners who have let contracts and are using those contributions as leverage to get to get their astronauts, even into cis lunar space, as you can see with Jeremy Hansen, what a huge deal that is. And I think that was challenging to back away from.

You know, Jared is doing it. But the problem for the partners is what can they contribute that's equal to a seat? And that's a big problem for them. I think the moon to Mars strategy really was about setting up some objectives so that when people are bringing contributions, they can be measured against some objectives in the architecture and say, does this really add to the architecture or doesn't it? And I think that's one of those things that in the future is going to help NASA is rather than having people, you know, throwing ideas from other countries about, well, we could do this and we could do this. and we could do that. I think it's a more structured approach now. And, you know, we chose not to dismiss our international partners.

That was a very key part of that decision. Jared's going down a different route, and I'm sure he will work with them to find something to fill the gap. I'm just saying it's not going to be easy. Were you at all surprised on the domestic side, what seemed to be a pretty big about-face and in support, You go from last summer, big, beautiful bill, a huge amount of money for the gateway. A lot, you know, a lot pointed at Ted Cruz's direction saying, oh, he got this through the Senate in this way.

A lot of Houston-specific stuff in that bill. And then a couple of months later, we've got this ability to reprogram and reallocate that budget over to a moonbase. So a lot of people in the industry, that seemed like a surprise that reportedly in the summer, Ted Cruz kind of rejected that idea of having a moon-based program instead of the gateway, and then a handful of months later, a turnabout on the Jared Eisenman front, we're able to get that support domestically. How do you read those changes? Is it as extreme as it feels from those outside or inside it doesn't feel that different to you? I think it feels like a little bit of a power struggle between the White House and Congress, to be perfectly honest. That's what it feels like. You're telling me NASA is in the middle of that?

Oh, yes, surprise. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think what's confusing to those of us out here, right, is that it seems like an obvious choice of like, you know, this is all going to be based in Houston. Would you rather the gateway or a lunar surface program? I'm like, I don't really know a lot of people to be like, I just love near rectilinear halo orbit. Honestly, I think the Artemis II mission seeing the distances to the moon that humans are, I'm like, that was kind of a really annoying orbit from somebody that wasn't. to go and actually see the moon, like, you only ever really get farther away than they were, and they were already, you know, far enough to have a great view. But a lot of, you'd be spending a lot of time 70,000 kilometers off the lunar surface, which does not feel very close to the moon

at all. So from a human element, I feel differently now about NRHO than I did then. But at the time when you're comparing those as putting your political support behind it, why were people drawn to the gateway? Was it purely that they thought, like you said, they could get larger support from the world for this thing? And it was more achievable. And obviously, the SLS Orion component of the European service module only being able to get there versus low orbit. What is the mix that prevented them from supporting that before and now embracing it in the way that they are? Yeah, I think it's, boy, that's another story that is, I mean, I think you, you know,

captured the fact that it was originally the asteroid mission, but I think there's more to it than that. With the smaller variant of SLS, it really just wasn't. possible to put a lander on SLS along with Orion. It just wasn't. And so that put you automatically in a position of doing some kind of docking. And I think it's well known that Orion has significantly less delta V than Apollo did. And so that was one of the big challenges is how to figure out the Delta V issues and the halo orbit was part of the solution to that problem. The halo orbit also offered a really good solution to the communications problem of being able to have constant access,

which is going to be very hard on the South Pole of the Moon, right? So I think there were a lot of pieces that went into that. Now we're in a situation where both landers have enough delta V that they can dock with Orion and go down to the surface without requiring, you know, basically they're making up for the lack of Delta V on Orion, which is great, except both of those solutions also heavily depend on the ability to refuel. And so that's, you know, it physics, it's like a tuba toothpaste, right? The delta V's got to come from somewhere.

So all of these options add operational complexity or none of them are perfect. Let's put it that way. I think that's one of the challenges now is that canceling Gateway puts NASA in a situation of having try to try to unpack all that in a very different way. And it was, you know, already planned, actually for the first landing with the SpaceX lander. But I think, I think, you know, there's going to be significant technical work that has to be done to resolve all those things. I want to talk a little bit about not just the programmatic decisions, but the differences within the NASA side of things, right, both the workforce initiatives that are announced. But I want to read a quote from

Amit Shatria, who is the associate administrator right now. Eric Berger of ours Technica asked him a question during ignition about how the workforce was feeling about the changes. And this quote, I feel like shocked me and did not get enough coverage, but I would love to throw it at you because maybe you can read between some of the lines on this and tell me. So he was asked about how the workforce is feeling about the changes. And this is Amit's quote. I would say in general, the workforce is hungry for leadership and they've got it now.

The clear vision is there. We're making reallocations and we're being honest about where we are in a lot of cases. generally speaking, almost all the workforce is very appreciative. We've had feedback saying some of the things we're saying are like therapy to them in terms of things that we've known, but we haven't been able to because of the constraints we've been under to deal with. And then he goes on to say, a lot of folks have been just kind of like, wow, we can say what we think and do the things that we know we're supposed to be doing.

This was a shocking quote to me to just say that, like, we couldn't say stuff before. And I think because of the constraints we've been living under is a loaded term, because you can kind of architect that storyline, is that the constraints imposed on them by Congress. I think Jared's take has been its constraints that NASA is imposing on themselves about how they communicate some of these things. How do you read that quote from somebody who's, it's not like he's new to NASA, he's been around for quite a while as well, so he knows some of the ins and outs that has happened over the years. What do you make of that? I think there's, by the way, it's just important to know there's always a diversity of

opinions at NASA. So, Um, it can only be capturing a part of that story. Um, it is a part of the story that I think is important to bring out. I interpret that to say that the year 2025 was very difficult for the agency. And, um, there, there was a lot of swirl in the A-suite with politicals who had different opinions as well. And I do think that it had a very chilling effect on the agency. I mean, you had to kind of just look around the rest of the federal government and see that the last thing anybody could do would be to raise their hand and say there was a problem.

You just didn't want to stick your neck out in any way, shape, or form because you weren't sure how that was going to be interpreted. So I take that statement to mean that now that there's clear leadership in alignment with the White House giving direction, yes, that is very welcome at the agency. I think, you know, people have different opinions about what should be done. They're not all in a place to see across the big picture. And some of them are, you know, really focused on whatever they're working. working on. So maybe they really support Gateway or they really don't or they really support

this approach or they really don't because it reflects on the work that they're doing. And so I think, you know, I'm just going to take it from the simple standpoint of 25 was a tough year. And now we, now we know what our instructions are and we can go move. I feel like this is a quote I should read to every guest in the show because it's a good Roar Shock test of like what, what you thought ailed NASA before, right? Because I'm like, well, I had it out for gateway. I'm glad that they're finally saying, hey, well, let's go to the surface instead of gateway. And everyone can it's, it's, it's kind of opaque enough to paint with, you know, your own colors and say, oh, well, obviously, the thing I think is right is what he means they can now say and they're

unsheathed. So it, I don't know, I feel like there needs to be a little bit more unpacking of that. I'm not sure we'll get it, to be honest. They seem to be moving on. But, all right, let's move on to some of the low Earth orbit stuff that's going on, because there's been a lot of activity there as well. The Starliner type A mishap classification. I feel like this was the first moment that the new administration kind of unveiled their theorem on NASA, that there was a tone when they approached that podium to reclassify this as type A, that it was, it was kind of this like serious tone that we're going to stand up here, release this report, and talk about things that did not come out before that. We've had little drips and drabs about the Starliner stuff

from reporting and different things that were talked about. But this classification, why didn't it happen before? Why did it happen now? And can you help me figure out some of the pieces there that are different from when Starliner occurred? You know, how long ago was that now? Year and a half, two years ago? When was that?

I forget what day it is? Yeah, I think there was, so I'll tell the story, at least from my perspective, because I was at the agency when the mishap itself occurred. and I think there were a lot of operational considerations going on at the time. Even once the decision was made to keep Butch and Sonny up there, then Starliner had to come back and then we had a crew changeover and then we had an election. And I think there was a pretty strong sense that it was going to be important to really fully do the investigation after the crew was back, because there was a lot, a big part of it

that they needed to be, you know, probably one of the things that I regret is not ensuring the clarity on that before we left in January. On the other hand, you know, we were being told, yes, an investigation will happen. Yes, there will be a report. And so I think I was just as mystified as everyone else at the long silence in 2025. And I just, you know, but again, I think it was a very difficult time for NASA. There's probably people who felt like talking about NASA's mistakes early on in the administration when things were, you know, it was like, are we just painting a target on our back? I'm sure there are people who felt that way. I don't agree with that.

It needed to get done. It needed to be announced sooner. It should have been buttoned up within a few months. But what can I tell you? I think it was just tough. So I was thrilled. Can you put on astronaut Pam hat for a minute too and talk about this from the perspective of if this was your mission,

how soon after your return would you expect, you know, the type of a misapp thing. I feel like gets a lot of headlines because it sounds cool, but there's also like, you know, the WV-57 that landed with its gear up is also a type A. So I think it's often said, while Challenger and Columbia, it's like, yeah,

and there's a lot of other stuff too. Like, you crash a really expensive truck. That's going to be a type A mishap because it's more than $2 million in damages and things are expensive now, so it's easy to, you know, get the bill up pretty high. So I do feel like that's a little bit overdone. But on the astronaut side, I mean,

some of the initial Butch and Sunny reports afterwards was much more, you know, much more of a risky moment for them on that mission than we got the picture of externally during the summer. So what, from the crew side, is that a disappointment that it takes, that it isn't something that comes out right away? Or would they expect that to be sort of like

kept within the family for a year? No, the crew office feels very strongly about this. I think in general, based on, you know, past mishaps, Challenger Columbia. I think, I am sure that the crew office was pretty frustrated and unhappy. Yeah. All right.

Where Starliner is going in the future? Let's talk about commercial Leo, because that's something that you've been, you wrote an op-ed last year in the wake of the Sean Duffy era decision to switch the commercial Leo roadmap up, which I thought it was interesting that you came out swinging for that. one. So clearly you've got some thoughts in this matter on how commercial Leo is going. Roadmap's taken a little bit of twist and turn now during this ignition event, kind of like an open dunking on the business models of commercial Leo providers. So, you know, you were, it sounds like from the op-ed that was now, it feels like it was 18 years ago, but it was, you know, a handful of months ago,

you know, you were pretty against the idea of moving that roadmap from the long-duration human spaceflight to something that would support short term, but still say we're achieving the goal of commercial Leo. Now we're in an era where the ISS just got another extension. We're going to dock these to ISS before they're free flyers. I don't feel like anyone's actually confident that this is the roadmap in front of us. So how would you diagnose if you're rolling back into the office today and saying, I've got the fix for commercial Leo. What is the realistic roadmap from your view? Yeah. I think this goes back. back to a little bit I talked about the moon to Mars strategy and the importance of the objectives.

And I think, so I realized actually at the agency it would have been sometime in 20203 and early 24 that we needed to do the same thing for commercial Leo destinations. So I think it's really important to understand that you have to make sure that all the state, stakeholders have had their say about what good is going to look like in the future and that you actually realize the implications and the whys of what you're doing. Like, what is it you're actually trying to achieve and what would perfect look like? Because otherwise, you lurch from architecture to solution to different architecture, to moving pieces around, to changing your acquisition strategy. And those things are very inefficient. They really slow things down. And in the end, you don't always get what you want. And so the commercial Leo destination was, what I asked

everyone to do is to do the same thing we did for moon to Mars except for Leo microgravity. Like what are we trying to get out of this thing? Why do we even care? Should we just like walk away from it? It was really a blank sheet of paper. And what started to come out of that when you get people forcing them to articulate, all of a sudden you're hearing things like, hey, we can't go to Mars without six months in microgravity or more. And six to nine months either way. So there's a lot of technology, but the medical piece, especially the long duration flight, is really important. So I was like, okay, good, keep telling me. Keep it coming, folks. You know, keep telling me these things. Let's write it all down and put it into a place. We had, you know, consultation with industry, workshops with international partners to kind of talk through this. It didn't have as much time to settle in, I think. But one thing that it did do was it helped people understand the significance of a change that you're making. So if you're going to be a change, so if you're going to be a good, it did do was it helped people understand. So if you're going to,

going to make a change, like no longer worrying about long-duration flight, all of a sudden that's impacting your Mars plans. It's impacting national posture because you won't have continuous presence. The only way to have continuous presence for a 30-day mission is to have literally to pay for the crew and all the cargo to go once a month. I mean, there's no way that's in the NASA budget. So I think all the implications were there. They were in that strategy. So what's interesting is, once again, I feel the same way. Yes, we do know that the commercial low-Earth orbit space station demand signal wasn't high enough to get venture capital and private equity to give as much money as I think some people thought they would initially.

So the only solution from my perspective, and this is what we tried to do for several years, was to have NASA put more in the development phase. So there's a significantly less contribution for commercial Leo destinations than there was for cargo or for crew, which were both over 50%. In fact, cargo was probably closer to 80% of the contribution to develop the system came from NASA. But it was around 20% for commercial Leo destinations. So really the answer was to get more money for the development phase. At least that was the approach that we were taking and to carry two potential providers as long as possible, up to CDR, ideally or beyond.

And so this solution, you know, I think there's pros and cons. It probably would have been a really good idea 10 years ago to do something like this. And I think that could have made a difference. I think there's going to be real concern about the concept of benefiting one provider more than others. That's a situation that could really create problems for NASA if they're not careful. Not everybody was planning on going to 51-6. Now they have to do that.

Now they have to dock to the station. Just one was. Yeah. So it's kind of a, it's, you know, not that we don't like the one that was, but it's just, how does that, it feels a little bit like bait and switch. and when I read through it, it's a government space station. It's basically a follow-on to ISS

that's a government space station. Okay, let me challenge the get more money for commercial Leo thing because this was my, honestly, my biggest criticism of the Nelson era NASA was a stark contrast to the Bolden era in that.

I was trying to pull up this link before the show so I could post in the show notes, but I can't because it was posted on Google Plus. I kid you not. Charlie Bolden. was blogging on Google Plus back in the day and posted some NASA statements. Specifically, I'm pointing at the time in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. And NASA specifically used that moment to apply pressure to get full funding for commercial crew

in that it was, if you look at the funding graph every year, NASA would ask for a certain amount of money and get a paltry amount. And then it was climbing, it was climbing, it was climbing, but it was not until that year when there was a geopolitical moment of importance to say, we need this, that they got full funding, from Congress full by, you know, a couple decimal points off or whatever. But it was a substantial jump up at that moment. And I thought when Russia invades Ukraine in, you know, I forget what you're was now, 23? Was that 23? 22. It's so long. 22. 22. Four years ago, right? To me, that was the moment to say, we should put political pressure on Congress to say, this thing's

important. Our partner is a bad partner in all ways, except for. were the little part of Ross Cosmos that isn't at the time actively tweeting and harassing NASA officials on Twitter and whatnot, right? Dimitri Gozen was a bull in a China shop at that moment. But that seemed like a really strong opportunity

to make the same case that Charlie Boland built in 2014 to significantly up the funding for commercial Leo, but NASA didn't seem to request much more than they were in prior years. It was, you know, tens of millions at the beginning, it was $150 million.

I think it's something around the $230 million market. now. So why wasn't there a moment to take advantage of there from NASA's perspective? Or would that another argument that I would make was would a billion dollars have been helpful at that time? Yeah, I don't know if a billion dollars is helpful in a lot of ways as a single tranche, because frankly, your contractors can't spend it fast enough. So I think it's, it was, you know, but 500 million would have made a huge difference. So, um, you know, you know, Yeah, boy, there's a lot to that story.

I think the first point that I would make is the difference between not being able to get your astronauts to the space station and the difference between that and, oh, in five years, we could have a problem. The level of urgency that is felt in Congress about those two things is completely different. I will say over and over and over again, we tried to communicate to Congress. This was an emergency because you don't just magically overnight solve the problem. Cargo or crew was far enough along that getting that extra money did make a really big difference. But of course, once that happened, Congress is like, okay, we're done. We're in good shape. We got a U.S. vehicle now.

We don't have to worry about this. And then now NASA is saying, uh-oh, uh-oh, it's coming in five years. It's coming down the road. We're going to have a problem. And it's just so much harder to get that sense of urgency. As far as NASA's budget requests, I would just remind all of our listeners that OMB plays a role in what the president's budget is and what NASA told OMB they needed and what OMB publishes in the president's budget are not the same thing. A very topical thing to bring up at the moment, you know? It's almost like we're going

through that again. NASA has been through this. I think I can think of examples of every administrator that I know that was put into a situation where the policy, side of the White House, whether it was OSTP or Space Council, said, NASA, you need to go do this, and OMB would not cough up the money. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, if you're a politically connected administrator, sometimes you can elevate that issue, and sometimes you win when you elevate, and sometimes you lose. So that's one angle of it, right?

But then in the modern era, I don't know how different, I'm only 35, so I've not been along for that many administration cycles. But in the modern era, there is a huge divergence between the congressional support and the congressional budgets that come out and the presidential requests.

So was there a moment where it would have been viable to kind of just ignore the budget request side for commercial Leo and then go try to garner the support for that on Congress and have them come out

with a drastically different budget, right? Last year it was a $7 billion swing between the budget as enacted and as requested, and this year will probably be in a similar boat. how would that have played out? Were there the constituents there at the time where that could have

been a congressional pressure rather than a budget request side? It can, but I will tell you that in general, what I was told was, hey, we can't give you more than you asked for. If you only ask for X, the Appropriations Committee is never going to give you more than that, whether they know you needed or not. Now, the authorizers typically knew exactly what you needed and what what the issues were, but the appropriators have a very difficult problem. And so from their standpoint, it's like, well, I'm not going to give you more than you asked for. I think the specific situation of the last year's president's proposed budget and the one that just came out, that also is actually not really popular with the Appropriations Committee. They kind of like it when all the numbers stay

within 2 to 3 percent of what they were last year. They don't really like these big swings. And of course, they knew what the impact to NASA was as well. Certainly, there was a lot of pressure from the authorizers, I think. So, yeah, it's possible. And it has happened before. I mean, a great example is OSTEM. The Office of STEM zeroed every year in the Biden administration zeroed through, I think, the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, and Congress always put it right back in. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, there's a larger conversation about, like, how problematic is this departure between the two wings here. And from the NASA perspective, it's like, all right, well, if we know that's the game on the field, how do we play it, right? That's not like the best healthy signal for how the system's working overall. But, you know, one ISS thing that did come about.

was the deorbit vehicle in your time. Did that fit into any of the strategy that it was first, you know, the first notable signal that the end was coming for ISS and we needed to deal with that? Is that play in it all from a messaging perspective? Without a doubt. And actually, I think that it, in many, many ways, it sort of sums up the difficulties of starting a new program or asking for more money for CLD. And again, this was kind of a strategic discussion of, okay, what order does this need to happen in? Well, we need a commercial Leo destination up and operating before we de-orbit. So theoretically, the money should have gone to CLDs. At the same time, though, there was real operational concern about, you know, when we really unpacked everything,

realizing, wow, we're just not sure Russia is up to this. And what if they pull out and we have to do something. So I think, you know, I think both of them were urgent. And so, again, this gets to how do you, how do you have a big plus up in a single year in one set of the budget, you know, in one line item in the budget? It just doesn't go. So, you know, the good news is I think the deorbit vehicle, there was a lot of work put into it in advance. And, you know, you probably have seen there have been recent demonstrations, both Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, in the capacity to boost the space station and things like that.

It's still a rough challenge, but I think it's, technically it's a little more manageable than a new CLD. All right, let's talk about Mars. This is probably the last thing on my list. I'll leave you with a couple open items at the end if I've still got a couple minutes. but the Mars Semper Turn storyline was very complicated through the administration you were part of,

has remained complicated. We've now ended up with a nuclear-powered spacecraft hurling a couple of your former boss's favorite little helicopters at Mars, which probably makes his day. But the MSR moment was interesting, right? Because we had a couple of months before the end of the administration, this announcement that, you know, the current plan was unworkable. We need to go back to the drawing board in many ways. But we kind of left it at a very floaty, like, there's these two options available, but we're leaving it up and open for the next administration, which I thought was a weird way to phrase it. And I was kind of wondering what you thought that path looked like. If that went well, what would that have looked like? Or was it truly like, this is a problem too big for the amount of time left on the board for us, but at least we are moving this storyline forward?

Yeah, I think what that really boils down to is that I think there's one of the, I'll tell you, one of the most challenging issues that we had was a decision that was made to go single source for the human lander system that was done about a week before the administrative. came on board. I looked up. It was the day that you got announced as the nomination for nominee for deputy ministry that the Starship HLS decision was made. It was the same day, just a wild, a wild time. And Bill, Bill had already been announced and was, you know, on his way. I think he'd already had his hearing.

And he was on his way to being voted in. In general, in general, those kinds of major acquisition decisions, are you going to go with two or are you going to go with one? It just, they should be, you know, what difference would it make to that program to wait a month so that an incoming administrator could look at it and think about it and weigh in if necessary? In general, if you can, I think, especially when it's clear you're on your way out and someone is coming in, that is the right thing to do, in my opinion. Sometimes you don't have a choice. There were some, like the Artemis Heat Shield, if we didn't make that decision and there

wasn't an administrator for six months, which as it turned out, there wasn't a full administrator for a year at that point, that could really put back the whole schedule. So those decisions were all based on how much time do we have to make this decision? decision. And there was enough time for someone else to make that decision. And I don't think any of us expected it would be a whole year. But I think, you know, that's a long story in and of itself. It's a story of many poor program choices from a long time ago and all the people who are involved have heard from others about whether that was the right decision or not. So I do think, you know, what it really boils down to is you got to get the thing on a sky crane

because if it's not going to fit on a sky crane, then, you know, then of course the cost is going to balloon. It's interesting that you kind of give me that lay of the land on decisions made at turnovers because, yeah, the HLS decision has now come under fire from the administrator that had just left office at the time, right? Brydenstein was out there saying, hey, that decision was made without an asset administrator, which there's a lot of shifting sands on that front. But I was also told, you know, the prior time when Bridenstein was coming into office, that at the time, Lunar Prospector was canceled, like, a day before he was sworn in or maybe the morning before he was sworn in. and there was a, Viper was kind of born out of this moment of, hey, why did you cancel that thing right before I took office?

Let's get that back on the schedule. So I'm just tracking like, you guys might have broken a streak of let's not foist a huge decision on the incoming administration. So yeah, maybe you're fighting against the stream of history there that has occurred before and past administrators. You always leave them with a little parting gift. Yeah, well, and so it was very annoying to us. And so the last thing we wanted to do is, yeah, pass it on, exactly.

Yeah, it's a weird program in that, you know, it's, it's clearly, I think, falling through the cracks because people don't want to deal with it. Like, that's how it feels now, right? That this is such a big open question. You've got Rocket Lab and Blue Origin out there talking about their Mars telecom orbiter, which has also been inserted at the budget, and those are sort of extracted from this larger Mars Sempertern architecture that they want to propose. So there's still some of the contractors, you know,

beating the drum for it, but otherwise it just seems like we're not going to talk about it. That's how this administration has handled it. Like, we're not going to talk about Mars Samp return. You know, it's just kind of over. And it's this weird fade out that is a huge unanswered storyline. I don't think this SR1 freedom spacecraft really answers it in any way on what the future direction is there. Because getting mass to Mars is not the problem with MSR. It's getting mass back from Mars.

So, I don't know, like, is it coming back? Do you foresee that ever returning in the next, I don't know, 10 years, like in the near future, are we going to talk about MSR again, or is it just gone? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I suspect there's a lot of people who just feel like, hey, we'll be sending people and they can pick it up. I don't actually believe that's true.

I think it's not clear that where those samples are is the ideal place to send a human. That discussion is happening right now. You know, there was a recent National Academy's report on the science. that needed to be done for Mars. And I think that was really helpful at pointing out the kinds of places you might want to go. I think it's, it is, you know, this is going to go quiet for a while. Really, the only people who can do this in my view is JPL. Certainly, you know, of course you have contractors saying that they could do it. But I think it's, it's really about JPL. And, you know, it's just been a very tough couple of years for them, not just the wildfires, but all the other things going on. And so it's not, you know, it's not a popular decision to say, sure, we'll throw another two or three billion dollars at JPL for this. I think that's part of the problem is that whole dynamic. It is going to become an emergency in a few years when the Chinese launched their Mars sample return mission.

Here we go again. Here we go again. All right. Well, I don't want to keep you too long. Is there anything that you were hoping to comment on that we didn't talk about, anything you want to leave us with? No, I just want to say, I really do want to say how thrilled, I think, both Bill and I are to see Jared in that position. The leadership at NASA is very important. And having somebody in place who's in direct contact with the White House and is navigating.

these are really hard things to do. And we appreciate it. And I think he's doing a good job. Well, Deputy Administrator, Pam Melroy, Shuttle Commander, Pam Melroy, thanks so much for joining me. You bet. Thanks. Thanks so much again to Pam for coming on the show, being game to talk about all that. A lot of people that don't want to go out and actually talk about these things. And I always admire those that do.

So very, very thankful for her coming on the show. And thanks to all of you who support this show, who made this possible over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are over 900 of you support in every single month. I am so thankful for it, including the 32 executive producers who made this episode possible. Thanks to Steve, Lee, Russell, stealth Julian, Warren, Miles O'Brien, Josh from Impulse, Joel, David, Natasha Saccoos, Joe Kim, Will & Lars, from Agile, Frank, Better Everyday Studios, Tim Dodd, David Aichan, Astonaut, Donald, the Astrogators at SCE, Jan, Eunice, Pat, Matt, Chris, Fred, Theo and Violet, Ryan, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support, as always. Mainenginecuttoff.com

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