Off-Nominal - 174 - Burning Bridges Together (with Eric Berger)

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica and author of Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age, to talk about the 2024 US elections, the return of President Trump, Musk’s role in the next administration, and what space policy looks like over the next four years.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 174 - Burning Bridges Together (with Eric Berger) - YouTubeWhat Will A Second Trump Term Mean for Space Policy? – SpacePolicyOnline.comReentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age | West Houston's Neighborhood BookshopReentry by Eric Berger - Audiobook - Audible.comReentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age Kindle EditionFollow EricEric Berger | Ars TechnicaEric Berger (@SciGuySpace) / XFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. Oh, Jake. We actually convinced Eric to come join us on the post-election day show, which we jokingly offhandedly said and then texted him last week. Hey, were you serious when you said you're coming out with this or what? Yeah, it worked. We did, yeah. Author, journalist, war criminal, he's here.

He's here to give us the rundown of the situation. We need that kind of perspective. that one. I don't forget about that one. Yeah. We're here. We made it. We made it through the week.

Everyone alive. Everyone get a vote in. You know, some of us live in Pennsylvania. So here we are. I got mine in. Tried to cheat. Tried to cheat. I stuffed five of yours in the bailbox on the street.

Oh, dear. Yeah. Well, we've got a lot to talk about. of many, many things to, I don't even know where we're going to start other than Eric also got a free Firefly shirt at a conference. Is that a conference shirt? I got one of those. I got this like six years ago, I think, during a visit to Firefly. Nice. Headquarters in Austin. Is that the one? We got the ones that I see they were like vacuum packed into like a puck. Like it was like, yeah. I had to wear it about 10 times to get all the wrinkles out.

Exactly. I've never seen anything like that. It was cool. That was money they didn't. They probably should have spent on the upper stage is what I was doing. What did you bring to Jake? Did you bring some a patito? What did you got? No, well, elections are serious business, so I'm getting serious here today. And I found this absolutely batshit crazy thing here. So this is Quetzel, which is made somewhere in Mexico. but it's beer with tequila in it. Yeah.

Oh my God. Show us the bottom of the can. Look at that. It has a picture of the earth on fire with Aztec Quetzel statues there. Wow. So. That's a good fun.

I got glass too because I want to see what color it is. It's one of those things where I'm just like not sure what's going on. So let's see. Let's have a look here. Very good. Okay. I'll give you a one shot. Yeah, it looks like what I'd expect.

Yeah, looks good. Looks like the color of beer and tequila. Yeah. What did you think? It was going to come out bright green, or what was your... I don't know, man. You never know what's going to happen. With a label like that, who knows?

Well, I got a cloud walker with a paper airplane on the front, much less fun front than Jake's epic Earth on fire, dragon, double-headed dragon thing. Is there head on both sides of that Earth? Yeah, it is, yeah. Yeah, you can see. Dragon. Wow. It's a new Artemis plan rendering.

Eric, what did you bring from the great state of Texas down there? I am not, I am not, don't have a call scheduled with an unnamed Rocket CEO this time. So it's just a bit of red wine. Yes. Man, I would look forward to whoever you book after you do off nominal. I figured that you just use this to warm up and then you're feeling. spicy enough to interview somebody about where they get their pharynx. We get to be your how now brown cow just to make sure that you really, really got the tongue.

Unique New York. All right. Well, as Eric put it in the email that we were corresponding with before this, what a fucking timeline we're on here. 100% accurate. I think the last time we talked about hypothetical administrators, Jake and I was throwing around the idea of Culberson. I think that was before Elon was super heavily involved in all this. Before Elon bought the campaign?

Vastly different, like tactical consideration now on who might be the administrator of NASA and what might actually be the plan. So I don't know, in nowhere exactly to dig in on what is going on. But I mean, there's the biggest question is like, what is the biggest question? like are the are the timelines of elon's mars missions that he's been tweeting for the last several weeks of like we're doing one in 26 and someone's flying there in 2028 was that just purely selected as he's been part of the campaign and it sounds good to Donald trump's ears or what what are the tactics there eric has the guy that's told me that he's taking a break from writing books about this

but apparently you're not because this is exactly book content i think he's genuinely believes it, it's possible. I'm sure he told Trump and Trump liked it. And by the way, oh, by the way, if you go back to when we were conceiving the Artemis program in the Trump One administration, if you remember those press conferences

or those Oval Office events, like they would say something about the moon and say, hey, and Trump would say, hey, why aren't we going to Mars? Remember that? He had a tweet that like dunked on the idea of like, we should stop talking about the whole caps moon, I think.

Dunt on the idea. but then like was pressing, I forget who the NASA official was in there that was saying, well, why don't we just go to Mars? Why are we going to the moon? Like in his own art of this event. Wasn't it like Peggy Whitson or something? Wasn't it like Peggy Whitson in the Oval Office or something? I forget.

Honestly, I forget who because I commiserated with the person afterwards. So anyway, Trump's been more interested in Mars clearly. And Elon has clearly told him that, you know, he wants to go to Mars. And I don't know why the hell my watch is doing that. I apologize. They may do it one more time. You're being tracked right now. I've got to go.

So the big question in my mind is how does this refocusing of Mars change Artemis, right? It could be, you know, pretty modest to like instead of it being, you know, right now the Artemis is moon than Mars, right? It could be moon and Mars or it could just be Mars. Like I don't think completely canceling the Artemis program is off the table because the architects of that are gone, right? Brydenstein is not coming back to lead NASA. Pence is not coming back to the White House. You know, I know that Scott Pace has an interest in joining the administration and obviously there's lots of investment in Artemis for international partners. But, you know, it's a brave new world, right?

And Elon has incredible access to Trump. And Trump, at least for the time being, is grateful to him for coming into his campaign in the last months and getting him elected president for a second time. You know, so anything is possible. I do think, you know, legitimately big picture items like canceling SLS or certainly canceling upgrades to SLS are probably more likely than not. It's just, you know, if they're serious about improving government efficiency, the obvious place to start is in with rockets where Elon has a reusable rocket that launches for, you know, 140th the cost of the government's rocket, which launches every three years, right? I mean, if you're serious about government efficiency, that's probably where you start in space. Yeah. So every three years and counting.

Yeah. Yeah. So actually, you caught me off guard because actually I hadn't fully even considered that idea of like a full pivot back from moon to Mars. And like that kind of like, I don't know, I feel like that costs so much time every time we do that. Who's going to say no to that? Yeah. I mean, it's going to depend on what the components are, right? because the congressional side's going to be like, I don't really care where you go.

Like which districts are you going to put jobs into? But there's some interesting stuff behind that, right? Well, Ted Cruz is going to be running space policy in the Senate. He's chair of CST in the Senate. The house, control of the house remains up for grabs. But there's a chance Babin is chair from Texas is chair of the House Science Committee. and then, you know, you've got to figure out appropriations. But, you know, Senator Shelby is gone, and this is a Congress now that is going to be, to some extent, especially if the House goes Republican, beholden to Trump's wishes.

I don't, you know, it's, I don't see a full-scale cancellation of Artemis, but I just would not say it's impossible. That's a thinker, yeah. I mean, it was just a few weeks ago that Mike Bloomberg wrote, you know, this $100 million plan to nowhere. And, you know, I think there is a perception that Artemis costs a lot as moving too slow. And really, NASA has not done a great job of articulating why, you know, why we're going back to the moon. I do still think, like, ultimately, the international partnerships and the competition with China will drive some kind of lunar activity. but it would not shock me to see NASA go all in on Starship if it's already betting Artemis on Starship as like,

no, we're going to the moon to prove out Starship and then to prove out the technologies we need to use it to go to Mars. No more of this nonsense, no more under this nonsense about like the Lunar Gateway being a test bed for a Mars vehicle that we're going to use a century from now, right? It's like, I just think they will cut a lot of the, stuff from Artemis that we all recognize as being extraneous to getting the job done.

You can almost see that as like a similar analogy to when the space race happened, right? So there was a race to orbit and the Soviets won and the American response was, well, actually, that's just the step one and we're actually trying to land on the moon and then they beat them there, right? So you could almost see that happening here like, oh, China, it's a race to the moon. And then America would be like, well, yeah, you got there first, but we're actually going to Mars and then they, that was what we were trying to do. But I mean, the implications here are pretty, pretty broad reaching across NASA's portfolio because, you know, supposedly NASA is going to announce the revised Mars sample return plan in December.

But if the goal is to put humans on Mars in 2028, and look, that's not happening, right? Let's be clear, from a technological standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint, very, very, very difficult for me to see that happen, even in a regulatory greenlight go universe. But if the goal is to get humans on Mars as quickly as possible, then you're not going to spend $5 billion or whatever on a sample return mission that may not even beat your humans to Mars mission, right? That's just nonsensical. So, you know, it's like I said,

what you have an entirely unique situation where Trump is, president, I mean, for the time being, I think Elon Musk is one of, if not his closest advisors. I mean, we don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but this is the guy who just won in the election in Trump's eyes. And that's all that matters. And so Elon is going to have broad latitude to make changes here. Again, at least for the time being, and of course, you've got to run things through Congress. But, you know, I think big changes are coming. and it's going to unsettle a lot of people and look, you know, Elon has made a ton of enemies in this process. He gambled big time and he won. And so I don't see him sort of being magnanimous

and taking input from all sides. I see him sort of as moving forward on his ambitions with the power of the White House behind him. Yeah. It's pretty incredible. I think a good, good check on or like a good proof on on that theory too is that like if all of this kind of NASA policy, the NASA plans, everything that the NASA and the Congress want to do in space, if all of that is truthfully a political process, we've just seen like in my eye a pretty dramatic political shift in the electorate with this election. Like there are, we're going to be writing about the changes in this election for years because like, you know, this is the way the demographics of the of the the voter base on each side changed is like indicative that we're moving from one era to another

to me that's kind of how I'm kind of seeing that right like there you know the Anthony what did you call it like the Obama era I guess was like it's sort of like the presidential block right like Obama Clinton Biden Harris and like that that chunk of time from you know call it in the mid early odds or whatever to now seems to be like bookended a bit and we're moving into a new political reality, right? And so if that is reflected in the NASA policy, then yeah, maybe there is some big changes coming, right? Because all these programs that we're talking about, SLS and Ryan, they kind of began at that era, right? That's a great point. I would just add that like, you know, this is an administration where precedent does not matter at all. Yeah,

that's another part of it. This is an administration where conflicts of interest don't seem to matter much at all either, right? There was ample evidence to that in the first Trump administration. And so the fact that Elon Musk is the majority owner of SpaceX as total decision-making power is not going to distract too much, at least in the White House eyes, from him sort of being divisionary for space policy in this country. And so the checks on that would be, okay, what do international partners thing? Well, that's Europe.

I don't think Trump cares. even though his administration set up the Artemis Accords. I mean, it's ironic, right? That, you know, Trump, one, created Artemis and created the Artemis of course and all this. And Trump, too, is coming in with someone who, frankly, sort of sees Artemis as a distraction from the real, real aim. And so the other check is Congress. And we'll have to see, you know, we'll have to see what happens. And I don't have a great sense.

I don't think anyone really does. but it's clear, as you said, Jake, that Trump was elected with a mandate from the U.S. people for change from what is happening. And as elections go in this era, it's a pretty resounding victory. And so I think they're going to bring that attitude to a lot of areas. And space will be one of them, especially since, like, space is Elon's passion project. So, yeah, big changes. How do you think, um, This tracks with the time period that you were covering pretty well in the book reentry.

I should have had it around for all the plugs, but I think it's right over my shoulder somewhere. The worry that I had about Elon getting involved with Twitter was the first that he wanted them to turn up the API, so it grew into the third-party clients that I loved using. That was my number one issue with the management of early days of Twitter. Number two is just like, this thing's a dumpster fire that I don't feel like you should be distracted. by when you do really good work in the physical world and innovating on like actual atoms, right? How do you feel like the distraction line has gone now that we're this far into the Twitter era

where he's been involved there pretty heavily? Do you get a sense from people that are working at SpaceX still that he's been around less and that's good or he's been around less and that's bad or he's been around the same because he's always been somewhat dynamic in the places he's appeared? So I think Elon is still making the big decisions at SpaceX, but he has very capable people working for him to carry out those mandates. Like in the book, I talk about Mark Junkosa, and he is absolutely driving the technical development of Starship, you know, multiple meetings every day on these issues to kind of keep the ball moving forward. I think the big thing here is not so much that Elon has been distracted by Twitter and his entrance into politics. But the really key change, Anthony, is that over the last few years, SpaceX all of a sudden is not resource constrained, right?

Even up through like 2020, they had only so much money to go around for different projects. it's become pretty clear that in the last few years as Starship has ramped up, they have had access to an enormous amount of capital to, I mean, look how many ships and boosters they've built. Look at the launch infrastructure they've built. I mean, it's incredible, right? And that is indicative of the billions and billions of dollars that they're pumping into this program, which again, SpaceX is really efficient with capital.

So, you know, they're doing a lot with the money. they've never had that kind of spend capability before. So they're moving further and faster. And I think Elon is still providing big picture guidance, but sort of is let the machine running itself. Yeah, yeah. You almost need to take a step aside and just kind of appreciate that for second, like the scale of Starships development.

Because like they've thrown five boosters into the water and kept the sixth one and thrown six ships into the water. that's like how many five they're like 200 rafters or something like almost 200 engines like more engines than like any other companies ever made or even thought of and they just like have casually thrown that in the ocean in the last like 18 months or whatever it is right so like yeah I cap not capital constrained is probably putting it lightly yeah right waste steel not time or waste money not time also I mean they're on ship what's getting stuck now 31 and booster 13 or something.

I know some of them were like half built and test beds and whatnot, but this is not, it's not like when someone walks in the room and you start counting your push-ups like a thousand, thousand and two, thousand and three, thousand and four. It wasn't that.

It's like they did mostly attempt most of those serial numbers. And there was metal for most of them. It is, yes. I mean, space for system two is ready to be stacked in Florida. and that's the second rocket in 15 years. They did drop that dome once, Eric, and they made that dome again, though.

Okay. So this is 2.1. This is a little bit, yeah. That bumps the number of it. 05. 2.05, yeah. There is no comparison, right? So there is a mandate for change and, yeah, you know, it's going to be fascinating to see what happens.

look, it makes a lot of people very, very uncomfortable. And I completely understand that. Actually, we get a lot of pushback on ours for writing stories about Elon Musk that are like anything short of, you know, this guy is destroying the country, right? We would get criticism for that. But, you know, if you sort of sit back and try to look at this neutrally, it is an unprecedented moment for spaceflight. And it's a chance to push back on 60 years of bureaucracy building up at NASA. I've got a piece coming out later today or tomorrow kind of looking at some of these issues.

And we're going to find out pretty quickly if they're interested in really improving government efficiency or whether that's just rhetoric. Yeah. Because Elon knows full well that NASA does not need 10 field centers, right? 100%. Yeah. I mean, it needs what? Three maybe? For Mamos? I don't know.

So, like, are they going to go and start closing field centers? You know, we'll see. Yeah, that's what I've been thinking about too, because it's like, you know, on the on the face of it, this idea of like improving government efficiency is like a totally virtuous endeavor, right? And so you have to, you have to kind of think of that. But there's lots of ways to go about that because, like you said, they could be doing the right thing, which is like thinking really long term and saying the electorate wants change and there's like,

this is just clogged up. Like this system doesn't produce anything anymore. The gears are so jammed up. And so you, you attack bad processes and, you know, streamline things and and break down barriers so that the agency can like just get to work and not have to focus on so many, you know, red tapey type things. The dark way that this timeline ends up is that they just destroy everything. and then finally, you know, it's like it's a bad cronyism thing, right?

Where it's just like every new NASA program is one that directly benefits SpaceX. And then it's just like, okay, that's not the efficiency. Bro, they don't need a government program to do that. No, they don't. That happens already by the way of SpaceX being really good at all this other stuff. That's why I hope they don't do that because it's just like you guys didn't need a competitor. You didn't need a competitor. But that's interesting because usually when you get to moments, if you want to like equate that to something like regulatory capture,

where the huge incumbent goes and says, you know, we really need to regulate the market we're in because it's getting dangerous to be this big. The people that vocalize that are usually at the top of the market, but not at the top of their game, where SpaceX is at the top of their game and the top of the market. You know, like, usually Zuckerberg rolls into Congress and is like, we got to really ratchet up these regulations on social media so that we remain like king shit on poop mountain and we can sell all the ads because we're not doing that well anymore and all the startups that pop up we buy for $1 billion.

And this is not, this is an inverse relationship where it's like, we are so much better at all the, at spacesuits. Take spacesuits as an example. There's no reason if this is truly Elon Musk's domain to roll in and say, like, we should keep these spacesuit programs running along at this clip because do you think it's going to be quicker to, for us to build a backpack or for them to build the whole spacesuit, right? That's where they're at on their spacesuit development track.

The same goes for brand new lunar landers. Do you think it's going to take longer to make that thing land on the moon or build a whole new lunar lander? So it's an inverse dynamic than what you typically see where people are trying to go in and snuff out competition. It's, we have the good versions of these things that are actually operating today. And I don't know another example of that. No, I mean, that's the whole, that's the whole conundrum here, right? Because if you bring in spaceflight, if you bring in Elon Musk as your space policy guru, right, to make decisions for NASA and then, you know, the U.S. direction in space. On one hand, it's an enormous conflict of interest, right?

Enormous. I mean, it's unparall right to describe it. It should not be understood. This is actually the thing that all three of us get tweeted us all the time of like replace NASA with SpaceX. Like that is the track that you're talking about. Right. And so there's like literally has multi-billion dollar contracts already. But on the other hand, like his intuitions have been pretty good on space. Like we need to go to reusable launch.

Well, the whole industry is moving to reusable launch. Oh, Leo internet broadband is really cool and we're going to do it. And everyone else is trying to do it now too. And there's many other examples of this where like he has changed, just as a small example, like autonomous flight termination system, just all these intuitions that he has had, you know, to change the way our relationship with space. So it's like, on one hand, it's, it's probably good to have someone like him setting space policy as opposed to like the chairman of a committee who represents the state of Alabama, right? Because that's going to be

parochial interests, whereas, you know, Elon's interests are generally, you know, exploration or and settlement. So it's such a, it's such a weird thing. So I, you know, it's, you get into a big means versus the end's discussion with that one. Yeah.

So let me throw one in that, in that regard where, Jake, you were talking about like it being a noble endeavor to increase government efficiency, which I wholeheartedly, I mean, I think I said on a recent show,

like the everyone's, that was running for president was like, I'm going to spend a shitload of money and tax no one. and I'm pretty sure both of us need to do the opposite. Like, I think I need to pay a little more taxes and you need to spend a little more, a little less. Like, probably need to balance that out a little bit. So I'm totally game for that.

And you spoke about it in a way that, like, it could just be completely destructive and not necessarily build a better foundation. It could also be the case where, like, a forest fire comes through and burns a shitload of trees, but that actually creates the fertile soil for more trees to grow. And it being a thing where it's short-term hurt

for long-term benefit. But if that were to be, be applied in a way that it would, it's the opposite for SpaceX. It might be a short-term benefit, but this could be long-term pain because of the political aftershocks post-Trump, post-Eon being involved that you've created such animus to SpaceX that you, like, you better, you better, if you're going to do this, Elon, you better get what's worth it to get in four years, or maybe eight years if, you know, that follow-on administration happens. Like, it better be worth it right now in a very short term for you. I was thinking about that too, because like,

up until this point, you don't, like, if you say, you know, why is SpaceX dominant in the space industry? Like, the only real logical argument is that they deliver and they deliver well.

Like they make good products and services and they deliver them quickly for a great price. Like, they are competitive. And there's no one that can really like argue with that in any kind of sane way, right? If you have- I could bring you to some discords that would argue. Yes,

yeah. That's why I added sane to that sentence. Yes. But, but if you. go through a period of that's measured in years where Elon is putting his fingers on all of the scales inside of the federal government, that there's now a, there's a way to argue against that, right?

It may not be correct, but there is now a way politically to say the only reason that SpaceX has all of these contracts with the government is because Elon bought his way into the, you know, the administration, right? And so like there is a risk there, like politically in terms of associating yourself with that end of the transaction, right? what you both said is is absolutely correct and I addressed that in the the epilogue of reentry I just basically said that the long-term consequences of his deepening political involvement probably are going to be negative but Anthony is exactly right for the next four years or as long

I think as he maintains a great relationship with with Trump and I and that could be four weeks it could be four months yeah I mean you know it's like it's like Trump has Trump ran through a lot of people during his first term. I also would say Elon has run through a lot of people. Elon has run through a lot of people. This is not exactly. Yeah. Type of type of personality who are not accustomed to being.

They might just love burning bridges together now, though. That may be a thing. None of them are accustomed to being told no. And so in that relationship, Trump is the actually, you know, obviously the ultimate alpha, right? But maybe Elon thinks, I don't, I don't know what is it, what's in his head. But he has, I agree, he has like a, most likely he has a four-year period to affect change. And my sense is the way he looks at that is four years as an eternity. And even if we're not launching humans to Mars, we will be so far down that road that even if the government were to stop funding, they can't stop us.

Like we will be in an unstoppable moment at that point. And it will be inevitable regardless of what happens. And the way he thinks is, is he says. sees that there's an open window for this that could close at any moment due to, you know, lack of access to capital, global conflict, you know, you can go on up the apocalypse chain. But like he sort of says that humans have a finite amount of time to reach, you know, Mars. And, you know, his lifetime he knows is finite as well. So if he, if there are four years where he can, you know, put his foot all the way down to the

accelerated in terms of resources, regulation, and all of the other challenges that go and get perfect alignment, I think he feels like he can make hay for four years and actually make this all come together. And we'll see. At best,

succeed at worst, just build massive momentum. Build massive momentum. Yeah, so it's inevitable. An unanswered question to me, though, is I don't really understand his full motivation. for going all in on Trump? Yeah. I don't think it was just because of space, right? Yeah, no, definitely not.

So, you know, we have yet to see where he's really going to put all of his energy, and he may sort of, you know, he may think, well, space is doing fine, so we need to focus on whatever priorities the administration has that he feels fit or he may get so bogged down. And let's face it, like, there's not that much government to cut outside of Medicare. Medicare, Medicaid, the entitlements, and the military. So it's interest payments, but I don't know that Elon's going to help with that. Who knows? I mean, I don't know.

I do not find that being in an environment where he is constrained by 500 and, is it, is it, 535 people or 565 people in Congress, he will find that very difficult to handle. sort of the, because even for Trump, there were lots of checks on his power during his first administration. And that will be the case to some degree in the second administration. And, and the congressman from Ohio is not going to want to see Glenn Research Center closed. And the congressman from California is not going to want to see a MAR stamp return canceled. So, you know, it's going to be an ongoing battle. And so it's going to be interesting to see where he spends his energies and, you know, it's going to be a tough.

And where he spends Trump's energy, right? Where he spends Trump's energy, right. Trump may, Trump may see Elon lose a battle and then decide this guy's a loser. And is like, and honestly, what does he need Elon for now? Like, he won the election. I don't think he's running. I don't think he's running again. So like, he can play golf every day or do whatever he wants, right?

he's the president. He is somewhat enamored by SpaceX rockets. He is. And I think he likes, now look, he will love the idea of humans going to Mars in his lifetime, right? Because I think he grew up in the, everyone who kind of grew up in that era has an affinity for Apollo, right? And so like if the moon, so the Apollo program is Kennedy's stamp, right? I think Trump, he would be very nostalgic in the fact that have like the Mars program B, the Trump program.

I think, yes, there is an affinity for that, for sure. There's a grand door to, I mean, because, and not just Starship. Remember, the first time around, he described Falcon Heavy very glowingly, like, I saw these two things come down and it was wild and all this crazy shit. And then the Starship thing that the Comla campaign tweeted as if this was a bad thing, but I thought pretty much everybody that watched that, all the responses I saw was like, yeah, it's kind of how I felt about seeing Starship get caught or Superabby get caught by these chopsticks. He described it in a very human way of being a completely unbelievable thing that no one

else has seen. So it's hard to know, though, does he love it because of the same reason that us three love it, that it is like an incredible technical achievement that is leaning in the direction of space development? Or is it an epic thing that he sees as like an American excellence thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's tough to tell. Tough to crack motivations, right? If you were, if you were going about this, if you were Elon Musk right now, you mentioned a bunch of things that could happen within NASA in terms of realignment and reprioritization, but the regulatory side as well has been a thing that obviously SpaceX has been publicly sparring with the FAA. Which things do you think have more of a long-term impact?

Where do you think they're all going to start? If this is, if this theory all does hold true that this is a legitimate thing that's going to happen with Elon Musk playing with space policy in this way? I think the one certainty is that there will be very significant, regulatory reform. If you go back and look at Trump 1, there was Space Policy Directive 2. Sorry for throwing the numbers out there, but Space Policy Directive 2 took a big crack at trying to, you know, streamline regulations for launches and other activities in space. And they had some success with like remote sensing. But the FAA and to some extent NASA kind of threw up the

barriers to meaningful reform. And then in the last few years, we've seen this part 450 realignment with commercial space launch. And I think the general consensus among industries that that has not worked. So I do think there will be a very meaningful and rapid regulatory reform for commercial space companies. In fact, I'm pretty much certain of that. And again, you're going to have strong alignment in the Senate. That's an issue that Cruz love him.

I mean, I guess some people do love him or hate him. I know people hate him. my senator from the great state of Texas, but Cruz has been very active in that area and been very interesting in commercial space, probably as much as almost any senator, I would say. So I would expect that to move in the Senate and probably in the House as well. And so I think they'll get the regulatory piece first, I guess. I'm really curious to see where that goes in the context of the Chevron decision, right? because now there's like, you know, the FAA theoretically now has a little bit less

authority on deciding the full breadth of the regulation, right? And so you could see a situation where they strip it down to sort of match that authority, right? It's like, okay, you don't actually have this much power. So we're going to reduce what you do and all these kind of thing, you know, just kind of match what that precedent is. But you also do have the possibility where Congress comes in and says, okay, well, if the FAA can't decide all.

these things and we're going to make some legislation to back it up, right? I don't think FAA regulations are a big priority for Congress, but there is still a possibility that that happens, right? And again, that's another situation where the executive has to figure out their relationship with the legislative and see which the hills do you want to die on, right? It's going to be one that stands out. You know, one area we really haven't talked much about, but where I think there are huge, huge implications is Starlink and megac constellations, right? Because it's pretty clear that the US government has been at least somewhat hostile to Starlink, right, with the broadband program and not using the one option that's affordable and available now for rural broadband.

So I would expect to see that change. And obviously it would benefit SpaceX, but it might have negative repercussions on trying to sell the service around the world, right, to countries who don't like the Trump administration. A lot to see. You know, speaking of regulation, like, we still got to figure out this whole situation of space debris and tracking space debris and managing all of that and communicating with China and everyone else who's flying large numbers of satellites up there in Russia. That is not a solved problem. And obviously Elon Musk coming in has a very one-sided viewpoint of that. I still remember when he had his initial media call with reporters and he was asked about, you know, are you concerned about, you know, having so many

satellites up there leading to a debris problem? And his answer was essentially space is big. So I'm sure he has a much, much more nuanced understanding of it than that. But, you know, it's like this is a problem. Like, like we are seeing increasing numbers of satellite conjunctions. And look, this basics team does a great job of maneuvering its vehicles and keeping this down. But right now, they're the primary operator up there. What is it? The two-thirds of the number of actors of satellites now are Starlink? What happens when, you know?

I just said it was way higher than that. But yeah, sure. It points to answer. It's something like that. And like, so what happens when Amazon has 5,000 satellites up there? And, you know, China has 10,000 satellites by two different providers. Europe has its iris squared. And Russia has a few hundred satellites with Sphira.

And Telesat and GlobalSat and Global Stars. I guess at geo. But anyway, there's going to be all these other ones, right? And Elon is going to want a competitive edge for Starlink. And so the other competitors aren't really going to really trust whatever policies he's setting. So that's a huge mess. And I think that's a very, very serious problem, obviously, right, that we're going to have to reckon with is as the number of satellites and satellite operators grows in Leo, and you start to see some conjunctions, you know, Like, Elon is not going to be the best person to work that solution out, right? Because he's incredibly biased, you know, by owning Starlink.

So. I never know what to do with that issue, to be honest. I don't know. Yeah. I feel like everyone just says, we're going to solve it by having a new database where you put all of your orbital elements and then we will visualize them and we will send you the text messages as you need. And that's what everyone says every time. And I don't know.

like, why is this one different than the other time that that was tried? Is this just a bigger database? I mean, all I'll say is that I've heard some things that have me concerned that this is a real serious, immediate problem that is only going to get worse. I, as I've also heard recently of, like, very close misses that I don't feel like they're not, like, things that were reported. Sometimes these things get reported out because somebody tweets it. Like, these things went one meter apart from each other. Other times, I've just heard, like, hey, this was a really close, really close moment for us. And you don't really hear those.

But, yeah, I mean, obviously at some point they're going to happen a lot more. And there will be an incident that causes tons of issues or another anti-satellite test. I mean, that alone was a huge moment, you know. Yeah. Yeah, we're one big collision away from some pretty severe awareness, probably, right? I'm pretty sure Elon Musk is not going to spend his political capital on orbital debris. No, he's not. He's not.

He's not confident of that. But I would put that pretty high in my list of space policy issues that all of a sudden become urgent during the Trump administration. So, yeah, yeah, over the next four years that it's likely there is a situation in that regard. And so if he's still the Trump's go-to guru or whatever position he's going to have, right? advisor or whatever, you know, like, other countries and companies are going to look to him for like an unbiased solution to the problem, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, those sort of like collective group problems are going to be all challenging, right? So the spectrum is probably another one. It's like very much going to be a tricky one for him to be a pilot, right? Even in like in space in general, like, you know, ESA and the European countries have long been partners with NASA, but now if space policy United States becomes tied to Elon, they're not going to be comfortable with, you know, working with NASA. Well, until they stop flying so many of their satellites on Falcon

Nines. It might be a small window until Arion 6 gets up and running regularly. Once they clear the backlog, then they can say they can talk about. Until they get Arion 6 flying, until they have a human spacecraft until they have the space station. You know, I mean, yeah, right.

Like they want to play, but, you know, I don't know. It's all like the job of the space reporter just got a lot harder this week, but it also got a lot more interesting because of just all the potentials for change and conflict and progress. So we'll see. So do we want to use some of the remaining time to do like our picks for administrator? Should we do some predictions? I was going to ask specifically the administrator, but if there's other positions, too, that, like, you know, we all don't count it as completely unlikely that the Elon and Donald Trump relationship goes out in flames at some point between now and four years from now, but people that are picked for the administration for different agencies will likely sustain. in NASA administrator obviously one

Do we care about any of the others? Like head of the FAA Other things? Are there other positions that you would track? We care, but I don't know enough about those areas To have any kind of insight into who would get those positions The NASA administrator one Because that's also interesting if NASA is

If they're coming for NASA centers There's going to be major resistance from NASA themselves But people that work there, political appointees, etc. So there will be some battles to be weighed We haven't heard any NASA transition team names yet, right? No, I mean, there's lots of people, like, there's some of the usual suspects for people who have been like angling behind the scene, right? There's Janet Cavandi, former Sierra Space person. Scott Pace is interested.

Greg Autry is interested. but I don't have any credible names for you guys because first of all the election was just a couple days ago. And second of all, I don't fully know Elon's role right in the new administration. But my sense is that space will kind of, you know, Trump basically is not all that interested in governing, I don't think. You know, he was president last time, but he sort of delegated the actual act of governing to different people. And so, you know, he largely left Space to Pence. In this case, I don't think he's going to leave it to Vance. Or I don't think Vance is going to want to take that on as one of his major.

But I think space will clearly be in Elon's portfolio. And so he will have some say in who the next administrator is. Ethically, I don't know if you could take someone like Kathy Leaders and bring her back as NASA administrator. Um, but. Girst. If, if that were legal, I think that's a possibility. Um, but I, you know, I, I don't, I don't know. Honestly, I, I, I don't have any good names.

I haven't heard names that I feel trusted. And, and if Elon is going to have a big saying it, you know, you kind of need to wipe the board clean and see where, see where it goes. Cause it's going to be someone he picks, right? Or it has a big saying. It makes me wonder if there's going to be some sort of like, proxy kind of situation where like instead of getting someone like competent like a like a scot pace and putting them in charge of it like you get kind of a figurehead like maybe some sort of like political appointee and then uh you know some something behind the scenes runs policy through that person right just to make the confirmation a little bit different i almost wonder if that's kind of an angle to to not to like break the rules but if like if Elon and Trump really want to like be a disruptor, they're going to like find a way to do things as quickly and get past as many checks as they can as fast as they can, right?

And that's kind of one way you could do that. I mean, if you go back to the, the Obama administration, I mean, Charlie Bolden was the administrator, but Lori Garrow was the person there who was doing the work of the actual work of the administration and had the president's trust. And so you could kind of see the same case where, by the way, I know Culberson pretty well. I can't imagine he'd be the next administrator. but boy, he'd be a great source if it was, so I'm all for that. But I, you know, you could see a situation where there was a political leader chosen to lead NASA, but then a deputy came in who was like maybe Kathy or someone like that who understood NASA

and knew where to make, where to make changes. We could ask her ourselves, but do you think Elon would talk Lori Garvin to taking a position in a Trump administration, NASA administrator position, since she didn't get the shot? under Hillary Clinton. Here's why, let me just, let me run this down. Also, Phil McAllister's deputy administrators just to really throw a wrench into things. I'm thinking of the type of person

that they're going to want to see in that position, if we are doing the whole government efficiency thing, talk about cutting costs, finding efficiencies, like, point me to a person that Elon would have more respect for in that role before than Lori Garver. Like, I don't know. I don't see it.

I can't imagine her saying yes to it, but... I think he would want some. who he knew had worked for him before and took orders, right? Yeah. Or took responsibilities. I mean, I don't know if you guys saw enough. He being Trump or he being Elon. Elon.

Elon. So I don't know if you saw it, but there was a story in the New York Times yesterday about how Elon had already been advising Trump to hire SpaceX people into senior DOD positions, right? So I could definitely see that at NASA, where even it's not like a deputy or administrator, but it could be like the AA position or something like that, which is the top civil servant or top position. You know, I don't know. Like Jim Free came in from during him.

But again, I think it's just really difficult without knowing Elon's actual role to name names of people who are likely to end up in that position. Let's name characters of people. people. I don't think it's going to be an astronaut. No, I can guarantee you won't be an astronaut. I'm not going to tell this story here, but he wants, it won't be an astronaut. Good enough. It's not going to be a politician. Probably not. Could be. I wouldn't rule it out. The last two of them politicians. Yeah, but if it's somebody that, I don't think Elon will have decision-making power over it. I think he will have veto power over whoever the name is. Why don't he have decision-making power?

I don't know because that's a good point. Hey, hey. The Senate has decision-making power. I think this person would be a good national administrator. And he loves you. He thinks you're a great president. That's true. Yeah.

Look at this tweet. Done. Booked. Like Trump has things he cares a lot more about than space. Right. So he's going to, I think, I'm going to say, yeah, whatever. Sure. That sounds good.

That's why I think in Obama administrative. Deputy Administrator coming back? No way. Sorry. You know, it's not going to happen. If I were him, I would do it because, like, if that's the point, I mean, I guess this gets at your earlier point. If we're going to find out quickly if they really mean it or if it's, they sort of mean it.

Yeah. For a couple of my canaries in the coal mine is an administrator pick. You mentioned the FCC and the broadband program that was out there. If they really mean it, they will just cancel the whole thing. if they sort of mean it, they will reaward SpaceX the money. SpaceX didn't need that money to do the thing. I find this as proof as that was a really shitty program that should have been canceled and not run. Not proof that SpaceX should get a billion point one dollars or whatever.

Right. So that is a moment where we'll find out if they mean it or not. Do they just cancel the whole thing or do they reaward the money? I still can't tell how much I will read into Artemis level manifest. it's trickier to me because I think it's I don't know it's it's a real a lot of that feels like a logjam that is better better got at by the direction of like we're shutting down some field centers we're realigning programs we are making more structural changes than updating the manifest that every president has updated for the last 20 years that's too easy like that there's

that's surface level if you're not addressing the things the way that we've gotten to that point within NASA policy. Yeah. Yeah, the structural changes will be the key, right? You got anyone, Jake? You got nothing. No thoughts from outside from your foreigner, your foreign nat. The foreign perspective, foreign nap perspective.

No, no. I don't even know if I'm allowed to go to the United States anymore, so we'll see how that goes. No. Not from the border you would cross from right now. You'd have to fly home for you. Yeah. Yeah, they're going to ask me a lot. lot of questions if I go over that way. No, the, I mean, I think I have the same insights.

Like, just the names that you'd kind of expect, right? Autry and Pace were two that were, that are on my radar. The Culberson one is still, I still like the theory. It's as a fun thing to think about, but I don't know how likely it is. I don't think it gets at the point of doing NASA more efficiently. It gets at running NASA with whatever his interest in Europe. The lander, but that's a book. Yeah, yeah. It's like, his point would be do more shit like that, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, what if we went to Europa? Honestly, after hearing, after hearing Zerbukin on here two weeks ago or whatever, the way that he talks about some of the money decisions behind the programs that were in his purview, I'm like, that's a pretty good. He's got a very frank way to look at it. Like, yeah, I don't mind that. No, I think my only other. like leading theory that feels in any way novel is like a figurehead. So like some sort of, you know,

a political appointee, like a political person that doesn't really have a ton of space background or space expertise, but someone who like you said, Eric would say yes, right? And, and that, that I can see happening. Like, I can imagine a lot of scenarios where there's someone like that. We're talking characters, right? I mean, Culberson's not a bad choice since he's someone who is interested in space policy and has fought those battles and is now out of office and is a Republican. I just don't think he'd want to do it, but maybe I'm wrong. Yeah. Who was Bridenstein's deputy?

I'm like totally brain farting on this. Who was the deputy under Bridenstein? Well, it was more hard at the end. Two, right? Yeah, there was. Wow. It's been so many years. I can't believe I remember.

I remember the name more hard. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. We're doing great, guys. We're killing it. Totally blanking. That shows how much air Brydenstein took out of the room when he was involved at NASA.

Yeah, James Moore. I was going to say that we did see Bridenstein give. David Newman. No comment. She was left over from the Obama administration, wasn't she? Oh, then it was just more hard. that says. Yeah, she was in there until January 2017, and then Morhard was all the way through.

Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard her name before. Seriously? Like, what we're learning from this conversation is the deputy administrator is a key role. It was under Obama. Absolutely. Sorry, Laurie. Yes.

So far in this show, we've insulted Lori's position and asked her if she wants an appointment in the front administration. She's never coming around. Quite frankly, the Pan Elroy. You know, the actual job instead of the one you had. Pam Elroy has done a lot of work for, you know, as deputy and NASA administrator. That was your vibe of if Kamala won she would have stayed on as admin? My sense is that if common one, yeah, Pam was going to be administrator. And there would be some changes, but nothing, nothing, no significant shakeups.

And I think, you know, my sense and started thinking about this and talking to people. That sounded like the last 40 hours. If, yeah, but just my sense is that there's the potential for so much more to happen now. And we'll see. I mean, like, we'll see. Like, I think you cannot overstate the fact that any big changes are going to have to be worked through with. Congress. And while there will be a lot of people in Congress who support the Trump administration, the power of parochial politics is very, very difficult to overcome. And that's really what's

driven a large amount of what we've seen from NASA the last 15 and 20 years and probably before that even. Well, this will obviously be what we talk about for the next several years. So I don't think this is the last of it. Eric, plug the book. I'm getting it. Plug it. Thanks, man.

Hey, it's doing really well. It's the story basically of how SpaceX built the Falcon 9 rocket and dragon spacecraft. And it's got lots of positive feedback. It was a USA Today bestseller. So, yeah, lots of people seem to like it. Check it out. I know we're all looking forward to book three, which charts Elon's path to politics. It's going to be good ones.

I mean, honestly, like... The rise and fall of Twitter. Someone already wrote that book, I think. Two times. The Lyfts off and reentry really were about, like, the company and not, they were not so much Elon-focused books, but they were focused on the engineers who did the work. And I think that was the right way to go. But now Elon is going to be the star of the show for the next however long this lasts.

And it's going to be fascinating to follow. That's on the next starship launch? It's going to happen in 11 days. What do you mean? I know. What's going to happen? Is it going to be a success? What are they going to do with this in-space propulsion situation?

They're going to light up a raptor so that I think they can start flying Starlings next year. I know. Which way are they going to boost it? This was my dumb theory last time. baiting on like when they light up the engine, which way are they going to be pointing the rocket? Because they can't go full orbit, right? Well, the big question is my mind is, are they going to try to start landing starships back at Starbase? Which, you know, I was a lot of really concerned about the regulatory issues of flying over Mexico and landing in Texas.

But in about two months, it may just sort of be just Cc going right in to Texas. Maybe we'll look at the dark timeline, though, is the next flight blows up on the pad because of some problem. And then Trump loses interest and no one loses all favor. And it's just, God, it's over before it starts. Jeez. That is dark. God. I have to say, I'll just as sort of, you mentioned that as being a dark timeline.

Like, I wrote a story yesterday on ours and basically saying, hey, look, they announced that their next starship flight is no order. than later this month, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The very first comment was, I hope the rocket blows up on the pad. So there you go, Jay. You found my alt account. Eric, you retweeted something that I tweeted like two weeks ago, and it got into that network of people that hate you, and now they tweet at me occasionally.

So I have like the smallest sampling of the people that come at you on the internet, and I'm like, this is an interesting look into that side of Twitter that Eric deals with all the time. So I was called a brown-nosed blogger. So that person definitely looked into what I do, which is great. I think it might have been Jeff Fowse's salt, apparently, Jake. What? A fan blog.

It was a long-standing dream layout about Jeff Fouse needing to cite us in Space News at some point and crediting us as a fan blog and me being distraught over that. And then I woke up and I was like, well, I was weird. That's pretty weird. That's pretty weird. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we got.

Anyway, yeah. Eric, thanks so much for joining us today. This is good, uh, let's speculate 15 minutes after the election talk is always one. It stands up in the test of time. Yeah, we'll all look really, really stupid pretty soon. Three years. It'll be like 12 weeks. This administration will be completely different than when it is right now.

All right, y'all. We'll see you later. Bye. Thanks, everybody. Peace. on end the bed.