Off-Nominal - 178 - Weirdest Midlife Crisis (with Tim Fernholz)

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by journalist and author Tim Fernholz to talk about the election aftermath, the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA Administrator, and whether Anthony is a space warmonger.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 178 - Weirdest Midlife Crisis (with Tim Fernholz) - YouTubeDid Joe and Kamala Fumble Space? - Tim FernholzJared Isaacman Tapped to be Next NASA Administrator – SpacePolicyOnline.comTrump selects Isaacman to be NASA administrator - SpaceNewsHow did the CEO of an online payments firm become the nominee to lead NASA? - Ars TechnicaFollow TimTIM FERNHOLZTim Fernholz (@TimFernholz) / XTim Fernholz, Author at PayloadTim Fernholz | SubstackFollow 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

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, Jake. Hello. It's been a minute since I talked to you, almost literally. Yeah. Yeah, we actually had a conversation yesterday, but we're doing some... Nobody knows that. Unless that they do.

Unless that they do, yeah. We're doing the old travel, uh, shake up the schedule and Q1 up. And Tim, Fernholtz, is here with us again. You were on, I don't know, when that was. A year ago? We fought about the Space Force. last February. Last February.

I remember it being a lovely conversation in which I felt like we were fighting the whole time and yet agreed on multiple things. That's kind of how it felt. All right. Well, maybe we can achieve the same result here today. We agreed very aggressively last time we did. Conflict friendship. It's all happening. Yeah, we, I mean, we don't really have a rundown for the show, but we absolutely have a rundown for the show.

because there's only one story these days. But Jake, it's a little early on the schedule here. Did you bring a drink of any particular sort? I did. You know what? It's Friday, so it's like, whatever. But I have something fun to kind of show here. So, well, it's December.

I'll just show it first. So, of course, I'm doing a little eggnog here. I don't know how well you can see. I always think it's a paralyzer the first time. I know you can't see a top. I got a little cinnamon on top there. But this was fun because I actually, I made this in October, and this is an aged eggnog. So, yeah, so you like mix it all together with all the

alcohol and stuff, and then you stick in the fridge. It's been in a carboy in the back of my fridge for the last two months. So the meat is not going well. The meat's getting better. Actually, I tasted the meat yesterday, one of my most recent batch, and it's, it was good. I finished the sample. So it's, uh, things are coming along. That was a meat shop. He's ended as an aged egg Nog location. Yeah, and Nog. So anyway, I'm trying this today. We'll see how it goes.

Cheers. Yikes. Yikes. Tim, it's even earlier for you. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not boozing over here. Seems pretty ill-advised if that was, uh, yeah. But I have a special festive mug.

Where's the camera? Here we go. That's fantastic. Merry Christmas, everybody. Yes. That's a great mug. Love it. Excellent mug.

I need that mug from the Christmas vacation bucks. No, you should have the, the moose one from Christmas vacation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you got to get some of those. If I could send you anything, I would send you some of those. Yeah, yeah. I made a little genitonic in our Yetis from sea,

Space Exploration Engineering, branded ginatonic. Made it straight in the Yeti, so a little bit of a tallboy, I think. Didn't really have a good scale for how much was going in. So, you know. skyball on it. Just winging it. It's good. It's good.

I put a lot of lime. That was a shitload of lime. Almost a whole lime, I feel like. But it's good. That's how it feels like the afternoon. I worry about you guys in times. Yeah, me too. Hey, you're on substack now.

Come on. You're doing the whole substack thing these days, which is actually why we said, hey, we should have Tim on, is this little substack article you have here. Yeah, I was doing a little post-election thinking about how everything happened. And, you know, I was just thinking about space policy in the Biden administration and how it was sort of the dog that didn't bark. We had under the previous Trump administration all kinds of stuff happening in space, military space, civil space, going to the moon, national space council.

And it's sort of, after that, we didn't see as much activity. my colleague Jacqueline Feltcher just released a payload, her review of the last year in space policy, noted that there were zero space council meetings, which sort of those priorities. And it was a campaign year and all of that. But I think it sort of spoke to missed opportunities for the Harris administration. And now with the news this week, we're seeing all kinds of exciting things happening in the U.S. space policy. and it's like, okay, we're back to business. Action is happening.

Yeah, that's whether the things that happened are good or bad, it's definitely like no one can say that there wasn't things happening. That's the key point there. I laughed so hard. I read when you read your piece here, the byline or the subtitle thing or whatever it's called, this newsletter is my constitutional right, which was, I thought was really funny. Well, I think, you know, there's a certain inclination among, journalists or writers, whatever, there's a presidential election to like explain it only in the

frame of the thing that you care about. Yeah. Like you look at all of the post-election writing. It's like the election was won or lost because of my thing. So I mean, it's a little joky saying that, but I think it maybe it has some truth in it. Well, yeah, run us through because it's, it's, you know, when you say that people can write in their head like, oh yeah, obviously it's your pet issue. but your thing wasn't a pet issue.

It was like a drumbeat of a movement and a realignment maybe in certain individuals that ended up playing a big part in the, you know, downstream. I was interested in was obviously the relationship between the Biden administration and Elon Musk, which was tepid at first and combative by the end. And it just seemed like a missed opportunity because the Biden administration has supported SpaceX with a lot of money to do a lot of important things. It's been pretty helpful on the regulatory front. Obviously, the starship back and forth is a big deal,

and there's a lot of complexity there. But at the end of the day, they got permission to fly 25 times. So, you know, but at the same time, as all of this was happening, the Biden administration was sort of holding off Musk with one arm. A lot of it was outside of space. A lot of it was about EV stuff and Biden not giving credit to Musk, for what Tesla was doing. But I think the job of the president is to try and get things done.

And one of the things that people have been talking about in this election is whether, you know, Biden or the Democrats or Harris could work with people pragmatically who have maybe different views on things. And, you know, I was thinking about it in context of what happened with Hurricane Helene, where we saw North Carolina really get hit hard. There was obviously a big federal government. in response to help out, but also SpaceX was sending in folks with Starlink terminals to bring communications to the area. And it was just sort of a classic case of SpaceX encountering the government,

where the government was like, we have a big national emergency, we're flying in people, we're organizing this, we're not letting private people come in right now. And Elon was like, well, I just want to do help and do my thing and contribute and why are you keeping me out? And it was like, well, actually, there are good reasons. And there had to be an adult in the room. And it turned out to be the Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, who got on the phone with Musk and figured it out and got permission for the Starlink deliveries to take place. And then Musk was like on Twitter, I'm still going to call it Twitter, saying, you know,

hey, that was pretty good. And it's like, well, why didn't administration officials take that sort of approach in other areas? And, you know, the substack piece goes into other discussion of why that might not have happened. But at the end of the day, you know, SpaceX is a big deal for the U.S. government and space is a big deal for the U.S. economy. And it just felt like there might have been a different narrative around Kamala Harris if she had leaned into her role as the head of the National Space Council. And it was sort of like when Biden stepped down over the summer, you know, we had seen, obviously a lot of folks in the VC and Silicon Valley world saying, you know, we don't really like Joe Biden. We like Trump. Notably, Mark Andrezen and Ben Horowitz, the partners at A16Z.

And when Harris became the Democratic nominee instead of Biden, Ben Horowitz, who had a long relationship with her, was like, well, I got to step back a little from the Trump stuff. I'm giving Kamala some money. And it's just like, well, what if she as the head of the National Space Council had cultivated a relationship with Elon Musk and would that have been different? You know, and who's to say? It was a very close election. Obviously, again, anyone voting, probably space was not top of mind. You know, I think if you look at the top 10 issues that voters cared about, it was not space. But I think there were like sensibilities and feelings in the world that I think it hurt the Democrats that they were always fighting with Elon Musk.

And politicians need to figure that out. I don't know. But, now we're going to see perhaps like a big revolution in space stuff. You know, the early, you know, reports and leaks dribbling out of Washington is that the SLS is finally going to get canceled, which has been something that anyone who's been followed the SLS. The most lovely place would have finally of all time. That's incredible. And it's like, well, and, you know, this is not me like dumping on Boeing or the SLS program, but it is objectively just had a lot of issues. It also delivered a successful mission, but Price is a real thing.

But it delivered a successful mission. It's the criticism. But what I'm saying is like, why did the Biden administration put in place, you know, an NASA administrator who was from a previous era, let's say. And we did not see a lot of, and I'm curious where you guys think, we didn't see big course changes in NASA's policies and approach to things in any direction. But I think a lot of people asked when Biden administration came in, are they going to cancel SLS?

I think everybody was wondering if they would, and they didn't. And I don't think that anyone looking at the situation, you know, today thinks that is maybe the best choice. I don't know. So what I'm curious to see is if, you know, a NASA led by Jared Isaacman does a lot of sort of pragmatic, bipartisan stuff to advance the space program, that's all low-hanging fruit that someone else could have plucked. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I think you're, you nail. Like this piece was was perfectly.

There was, there was, because it's, you're exactly right. Is it like no one was at the ballot booth being like, well, I like Harris, but, you know, space. Policy Directive 1 was pretty fucking great. You know, like no one was doing that at the ballot box. But that being said, you're right. Like it was a very tepid four years. Like it was just like lukewarm, keep the status quo, don't shake the boat, you know, like that was basically.

It was like tepid at a policy level. Like the folks at NASA were still doing a lot of cool stuff. We've seen mission success. successes. We've seen important science being done. Like, I'm not digging NASA, but it felt like the energy went out of space policy under the Biden. I'm going to ding NASA entirely. This was a complete swing and omiss of a four years in my estimation. My, Jake Will probably could say this entire next minute and a half for me, because I've said it so many times, but they just, they didn't make decisions in many areas where they had opportunities to apply pressure politically or to front-run

any particular issue. So I think Jake could speak to Marr's sample return better than I can in terms of the way that was managed. And explicitly, they punted that decision to not their administration. The way it was not managed. Yeah, they did not manage it. And then they punted the decision until after the election, and probably after Bill Nelson was out of NASA anyway, I don't know that he would have stayed on another four years if Kamler were to win. I don't know that he would have been extended offer, he's a Joe Biden buddy. So they like kicked that out of their purview. The biggest thing, though, to me was that they were presented with the greatest opportunity to actively go out and fight for funding in the commercial space station market and to

increase their their low earth orbit portfolio when Russia invaded Ukraine and the partnership was falling apart as the ISS is actively falling apart. And they took no action to ask for more money in that department to put any increased focus on it, but they kept it in the portfolio of things, like, $200 million is actually doing it for us this year. That's not doing it for us this year if we actually care about it. So, like, this is one area where they just didn't decide. Do they care about it or not? If they care about it, they could have probably went to bat and got a billion dollars a year for a Leo piece of the budget. They would have had to sacrifice something, whether that is gateway or whether that was pushing SLS farther out. But, like, tell me if you care about

this or not. That's my biggest frustration. This was your opportunity in the same way that commercial cargo and crew got funding after the original Crimea situation and after, you know, the original incursion into Georgia and all that. Those were, if you look at times when Russia has went outside of their borders, it was times where commercial cargo and crew got more money. This was the commercial space station time to get another six digits of money or nine digits of money. And they just didn't even take, they didn't even try. And that's insane to me. So cancel the program. Go get a billion dollars or cancel the program.

That's where I'm at with commercials, Leo. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there are definitely places where you wonder what sort of NASA's priorities are. And I think that's certainly one of them. I think, you know, the complexities around the relationship with Russia and the ISS are very difficult. And I also wonder when it comes to the commercial stations what, like what we've been hearing from Axiom recently, you know, there was reporting on their financial situation. You know, how much how much can NASA rely on commercial Leo destinations? You know, I think that is their trepidation.

And I think one of the consequences of the Isaacman, if he is confirmed, if he is even nominated, people forget, you know, Trump has to send an official letter with his signature on it. once he gets inaugurated, and, you know, two or three months is a long time in Trump world, so we'll have to see how it'll go. But you could see, you know, Isaacman not having any trepidation about what commercial Leo folks are capable of. And that may be all the difference. He also has personal experiences to like, man, free flying missions are fine. Like, you can do a lot on those. We're good.

We'll keep doing a series of those. And that's the other thing is maybe like the station concept of operations. operations is not the one that will be the future of human spaceflight and Leo. I don't know. I mean, we can all fantasize about a world where, you know, what is the volume of starship compared to the ISS? You know, if you just had a starship in orbit, what would that be like? You know, and I mean, that's all fantastic at this point.

So many blogs have been written about that, Tim. He can. Yeah, yeah. It's another piece for your substack if you want. You could take that. That fruit is too low hanging. Yeah. and well-eaten.

Well-eaten from out. But I guess my point about them actively not making decisions in these areas is that it has led to a situation where no matter who won the presidency, no matter who was nominated to be the head of NASA, this administration of NASA was handed a set of questions that need to be answered. And they're forced to answer these questions because of the timelines involved with the programs at play, Gateway, ISS. demise or extension, SLS flying again, Starship being ready. All those things are due to happen in these four years.

So whether you like it or not, these questions are forced upon NASA. Something's going to get canceled or delayed or, you know, downranked in its priorities. Something is going to happen in this. And we've just kind of now figure out, like, who's the one that's going to sign the paper that answers the question. Well, I mean, the one thing I would say is that you have to remember that NASA does not have a CEO. It has an administrator. And that person's job is to administrate Congress's priorities. And so I am going to be very curious, you know, we've seen Isaacman tweeting about what he thinks NASA should be doing, canceling Blue Origins, Moonlander, canceling SLS, refunding Chandra, all of these other things,

having a commercial company, Rae's Hubble. These are sort of the policy things he's talked about. But a lot of those will not happen without Congress saying so. And so, you know, we've heard reports from Eric Berger at Arstechnica that there is going to be a grand deal where the SLS cancellation will be paid for by Space Command moving to Alabama from Colorado, which is something that Trump tried to do in the previous administration anyway, not cancel LSLS, but move space command. And, you know, maybe that will happen and that will cancel SLS. we'll see what the Colorado delegation has to say about it. But the other stuff that he wants to do, he can't do unilaterally. He needs Congress to back him up.

It's a very evenly split Congress still. And I am curious to see what his charm offensive is going to be like to these members to get them on the same page as him. And I'm going to be curious to see what the message from Jared Isaacman is to senators and congressmen versus from Elon Musk and from Donald Trump. If Jared Isaacman is being like, I am a centrist and I care about space policy and we need to do all these things together. And Elon Musk is funding primaries against the members. I'm curious what their coordination will look like as they try and execute this strategy. And I think anyone who's pretending they won't be

coordinating is being a little naive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, It's definitely interesting because it's like, I mean, so you're right in that like, you know, Jared Isaacman. Administrator Isaacman is not going to be some autocrat for NASA that's just going to be able to do it every once. That being said, there's still like there's still a role for administrator. Like we've seen administrators, you know, put, if they put the effort in and do the lobbying and make the relationships and have the conversations and work the deals, you can you can shape the policy from Congress, you know, maybe not entirely. but you can nudge it in the directions that you want it to go in. You can admit, we are in our administrators matter era on this show. Yes, we are.

Yeah, we started out the first show, we were like, who gives a shit? And then we were like, oh, they matter. And then we were like, wow, they matter a lot. So yes, we are on the up swing of that. Yeah. So, I mean, like, you know, they can do something. And I'm 100% like excited to kind of just as a spectator, just watch like what sort of moves they try and make and how they do it. Like just as a policy geek, like that's just going to be kind of fun to watch.

Like, how do they approach that? But I'm still, I'm just kind of drawn back to your point there, Anthony, of like, there were decisions to be made, right? And I think that what this past administration did was just not make any. Like, I'm trying to think back of any of the, like, last four years, what are like any, were there any large new program starts or big program changes? Or did they kind of just execute existing? Second Lander was the one thing that.

Nelson went to bat for it though was it yeah he went to he went to bat for that in Congress and now was the pressure being applied from Congress to do that sure but that's that's the one thing I could chalk up and say like I know Bill Nelson went to Capitol Hill and had their discussions and I would even paint on the Jared Eisenman point on that I would even paint in the corners of what he said about that I think it's getting I think it's getting shade in a way that it shouldn't his statements on the the second lander. I think his criticism was we funded a second lander and we can't fly frequently enough to use a second lander. Was his criticism? Like he's there for a second lander, but we currently have like a

really slow flight rate so we can't make use of that second lander. I'm pretty sure that was his point through tweets, but I should ask him about it directly. You should. I think that's a general I will defend him in that he is he is going to be written about as like a tight Elon ally and I think he only ended up that way because SpaceX is doing the best like it's the same criticism you can say for why does NASA keep picking Falcon Heavy to fly all their science missions yeah but they're like oh NASA must be such buddy buddy with Elon they're flying all their science missions on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy's like yeah because it's the only one that are that are appropriately priced and flying a lot.

So if Blue Origin was in their era of flying a lot and they had a capsule and they were flying a ton to orbit, he would probably be flying on Blue Origin capsules just as much as he would be on a dragon. Yeah, I think you're totally right about that. But I think, you know, in the world we live in, that is not what happened. And, you know, the one thing about, you know, there's been a lot of talk about what his actual formal relationship is with SpaceX. He released a letter saying that he's going to reduce the voting power that he has at his company,

which will mean that he is no longer controlling shares in SpaceX because Shift 4 is an investor in SpaceX. So that's nice to see. I wish he would say I'm not going to pay for or go on my Polaris missions. Because right now, presumably, he owes SpaceX hundreds of millions of dollars to go on those two Starship missions, for Polaris, I think that's a conflict of interest. And so I'll be curious what he discloses about that. And what he says his plans are for those missions. Like, I don't know, this is like putting on my dorky America hat,

but I would love him to say that, you know, as an NASA administrator, I'm going to send astronauts on Starship missions instead of myself because that's who should be doing this or something. You know, I would like him to separate himself in a public-spirited way that would reassure the people who are concerned about those financial conflicts. We'll see if there's anything at the hearings. Yeah, yeah. That's the end of moving on to the Isaacman thing now.

It's like there's sort of like two, I'm conflicted on Isaacman because there's sort of two perspectives. Like there's like, as an individual, will Isaacman be a good administrator? And I think on that side of it, I'm like, I think you'll probably do a pretty good job. And then the second question is just like, is the process that got us Isaacman? as an administrator, one that makes the government healthier, right? Like, you know, is, is that, is that happening in the right way? And, and I think a lot of that is going to come down to whether the Senate does a good job in their confirmation bid or not, right? Because those are huge questions I have too. It's like, you know, I don't know if we, have we ever got an official

answer and if he has any personal stake in SpaceX? I know he's like wanted it, but I don't know if he has it or not. But either way, like it doesn't really matter to me, but it's like whether But he either needs to like come out really loudly and say, I don't have a personal stake and, you know, like, I'm good. Or I do and here's how I'm divesting and what. Like, you know, he needs to be like super, super transparent about that. And the Senate's got to do their job to make that happen, right? And I will say there's like a process for this where the Office of Government Ethics is going to, you know, talk to him and release an opinion on what the appropriate thing is for him to do. So, I mean, there's time for them to figure this out. But it's also like.

Like, I get the worry about it. And obviously, nobody wants shady things happening. And at the same time, I'm like, it's not like he's going from not rich to rich if he were to make a lot of money on SpaceX. There's a relativism that, like. His personal financial gains, what I'm concerned about is the impartiality of decision making in the government. Because, like, I'm old enough that I started covering SpaceX back in the day when they

were the outsider. And every time somebody went from ULA to the DoD or from the DoD to ULA, you know, Elon would be on Twitter being like, these guys are corrupt. These guys are taking brides. Maybe not taking bribe. And he was like, and that's a pretty good idea. And so like, I don't know. I think that. There's concerns about financial conflicts of interest. And it's interesting to see who was, like, mad about, you know, good government and who was mad that it just wasn't their team in charge. So we'll see how it all plays out. I mean, I think there's a lot to recommend Isaacman for the job, especially, you know, compared to

the whole universe of people that could be appointed for that. I think he's got some very cool and unique qualities. And he's said a lot of the right things so far. and we'll see how it goes. Yeah. How crazy is it, though? I've realized this this morning, that this is the first time

we are getting a NASA administrator who we've seen run a space program before. We know what he would do if given a space program. We have now witnessed that and a flight of it and a roadmap. So we have previous performance. I had no idea what Bill Nelson would do

if given a space program, or Jim Brian Stein, or anyone, because no one ever was given a space program before. I think that's kind of generous, too. Did he run a space program? Yeah, hell yeah. Polaris program is a private space program. He is drawing a roadmap for what a space program of his design would be like with that, which is...

Do we know how much he's designing it versus how much SpaceX is designing it to prove out their test program priorities? Let me find. I thought it's infoil around here somewhere, but... No, I asked him about that. Last month, I had him on... done, but like, I don't think he was like, for example, for inspiration four, I don't think you would say, like, well, if I had a space program, I would send four people into low Earth orbit and raise a lot of money for charity. Like, those are cool things to do, but that's not what we need

a space program for, you know? Well, and like if a space program should test out new and better space suits. Like, okay. I don't see him as like this creative space thinker who's like articulated a vision. I see him as a very pragmatic person who like wants to push the envelope forward. And if NASA was doing exactly what Polaris was, which was, this is the current state of the commercial industry and what there is to take advantage of. And the thing they're not working on is this. I would like to incentivize the existence of that and continue to drag it forward one step at a time, I think we'd be in a better spot. Well, maybe, but what of my concerns actually right now is, you know, the commercial

partnerships that NASA has, some of them are doing really well, some of them are doing okay, some of them are doing quite badly. You know, there have been a lot of concerns about the structure of fixed price contracts, a lot of complaints from contractors about fixed price contracts, and a lot of concerns about execution. We have a series of Clips missions coming up in the next few months. It would be really nice if somebody stuck the landing. Because if nobody sticks to landing on those next Clips missions, it's like, boy, what are we doing these commercial moonlanders for?

And, you know, one of the things that concerns me a little bit about Isaac Min is, you know, the NASA administrator has to hold contractors to task. And I don't know if you guys remember when Bridenstein was the administrator and we were getting all up about commercial crew, he at one point had some stern public words for Elon and SpaceX because they were spending too much time and money on Starship instead of meeting their NASA contract. And he called them out publicly.

Do you think Jared Isaacman will ever call out Elon Musk and SpaceX for being distracted or not delivering? Yeah, that's the tough one. That's sort of like, maybe he won't have to, you know, let's hope. Yeah. How much time does the teacher spend on the, kid that's answering the most questions in class. Mostly they're yelling at the kid in the back who was like throwing gum through the classroom.

So at that point, SpaceX was being a kid throwing gum through the classroom. And now they're like a straight A student for all the NASA programs. So like, you know, apply for elsewhere, I guess. I think what you're saying, though, I think is also part of that Senate confirmation thing. I think that because it's two-sided, right? The Senate needs to come forward and sort of like do their due diligence and ask the right questions and get everything out in the open. But like Isaacman has a role in the confirmation process too, which is to define who he is

and how he's going to behave. And, you know, if I'm Isaacman, I don't know how possible this is, but if I'm Isaacman, I'm trying to think of a way that I'm putting a little bit of distance between me and Elon as a way to sit, like, just as a way to say like, we are different people and I'm not just like his puppet, right? I'm not a lapdog for the for the the musk regime or like that, right? I don't know how you do that and I don't know what he can do without making everyone mad above him, but that's that is something that I'm kind of watching for to see what he can do for that, right?

One thing I'm curious about in that vein is Mars, right? Because, you know, we have like the moon to Mars program that ostensibly is sort of keying us up for going to Mars. And, you know, one thing we've heard rumblings of, obviously that's Elon's priorities to to Mars. So I will be watching to see, like, is there more emphasis put on Mars or does, or do we say clearly, like, the moon is the first priority? I think China will drive that, but that is sort of like one way he could differentiate himself, perhaps. Yeah, yeah. Could we talk about the China thing real quick? Bill Nelson is such a wild China hawk in space

that is kind of unbelievable to me. In that, in that Artemis thing earlier this week, he was like, we can't cede the South Pole to the Chinese or something. It's like, did you see what Isaacman's statement was when he first came out? No, I didn't, not about the Chinese thing? I don't think I feel like I picked up the Chinese part.

When he starts talking about how the U.S. will never be second in space, who do you think he's worried about? No, no, I'm not saying there's not a legitimate worry there. I'm saying like, Bill Nelson just went to 300 state dinners signing the Artemis Accords, which is like, we will not like, you know, claim land. Also, we should claim the South Pole before the Chinese is, So it's like a really head spinning thing.

I think that that speaks to why NASA's budget has been going up the last couple of years. The paranoia around this. The reason that Artemis is happening is God love it. It's not for scientific exploration. And it's not really anymore. When Bridenstein and Pence sort of first rolled it out, there's a lot of talk about like sustainability and staying there for long periods. And there's like talk of that. But now it's really, we got to beat the Chinese.

And like, if you think Nelson is a China hawk, you know, whatever I think, like the rest of the Trump administration, like that is why Space Force happened under Trump. I mean, one reason. So, I mean, the China scaremongering or just like concern about China. And the other things, it's very opaque to know what China is actually on track to do. Obviously, the things that are accomplishing right now are impressive. but like when they talk about building a moon base, like, is that going to happen on their schedule? But, you know, that is going to be what the administration comes to Congress to say. And that will probably be why Congress gives them money.

Maybe I'm a cynic. If you're a cynic, then I don't know what the hell I am for my take being, if you're scared about China, the best thing we could do is promote the Russian space agency to immediately work with the Chinese space agency as fast as possible. so they begin to have their space stations fall apart, not ours. That's my take. I mean, I don't think we've seen the Soyuz fly to Chengang One yet, have we? Nope, but that's kind of like the space hardware Stuxnet edition. Yeah.

We're going to very slowly introduce some vulnerabilities to your space hardware by way of making you collaborate with Russia. The only problem with that plan is that Russia hasn't actually really built any new hardware ever. Yeah, yeah, that's your point. Like the last new piece, besides just just, just rolling up more Zoyuz off the line like the last new piece.

Well, they got some one web satellites. They could launch. Yeah. I guess now go right. It's the last new piece. Your house somewhere in Kazakhstan? Pretty sure. Yeah.

Wow. It's probably one in like Putin's like foyer of his vacation home or something. Which one? We ought to buy one someday. His Turkish piece out. You got to find them and buy one of those one web satellites. I am impressed. I assume they would be pretty expensive.

That's what I said one day. I'm not buying it right now. If I was buying it right now, it wouldn't be on this podcast. Jesus. Yikes. Yikes. Here's the thing that I wondered about is my biggest worry about Isaac Min is that I really admire that he's a good example of what can happen outside of the NASA structure.

And I don't know that I want him immediately sucked up into the NASA structure. I liked that there was an option for there to be a Jared Isaac-Isaac Space Telescope that he bought rather than was named after him 20 years from now by a NASA administrator that wasn't him. It's a really interesting dynamic because like one, like the reason that SpaceX has been able to succeed and the reason that people in NASA are excited about these commercial partnerships is they're basically outsourcing risk. They're like, we have some capability we want. go do it without bureaucracy and without Congress and without, you know, hearings. And that's great.

And now with Isaacman in charge, like, are they trying to bring that culture inside NASA? I don't know if that will work. Are they trying to double down on the outsourcing of risk? Probably. But again, with the way the commercial partnerships have been going, and which, you know, I think are like important in the future, but they need to be better. You know, is that going to work willy-nilly? It's just like, I don't know.

I, once again, being an old man, you remember when Obama came in in 2008, and they were going to cancel constellation and it's going to go away and we're going to, you know, do an asteroid, you know, do all this other stuff and a tiny little money for SpaceX, hooray. Congress and NASA got together and gave us SLS instead. And so I'm going to be curious to see what the dynamics are when Trump says, you know, we're canceling X, Y, Z. I think that the political calculus on SLS is now at the point where, you know, that is easier to happen. And also, Boeing is so crippled as an organization. They're not going to be a lobbying powerhouse.

I think, honestly, like, Boeing would be very maybe not happy. I think the CEO of Boeing would be like secretly pretty pleased if he didn't have to worry about the SLS anymore. But I do think there are going to be things that they really want to try to do and they're going to find, oh, there's like a congressional coalition that really cares about having facilities in these places. And oh, there's like a subcontractor who is important in this region. And I'm going to be curious to see how they can sort of overcome the, if I may, deep state of NASA to do the things they want to do. And not just of NASA, but of just like economic and political incentives and the way things are done and all of that. Yeah, as I said, if you're a space policy wonk, time to get the popcorn, it's going to be a pretty exciting batch of fireworks for the next 12 to 24 months, I would say.

In that vein, Tim, what would be your, let's say you are the president or Elon Musk, you can pick which one you'd rather be? And you sit down in a room with Jared Isaacman and you're like, this is, like, if you were to work out one-on-one with Jared Isaacman, what are the ideal goals for this era of NASA? What is, are there generic targets that you would give them or are there specific targets? Like cancel XYZ or promote these attributes of NASA? Well, you know, so I will first of all say, like, I am not like a space policy expert. I'm a journalist, so I follow this stuff. and I don't have a lot of normative views about what should be. But one thing that I think about was there was a National Academy of Sciences report released earlier this year,

led by Norm Augustine, the now ancient former Lockheed chairman who's done like every big report about NASA in the last 30 years. And he was talking about like real structural issues with the space agency. You know, we are cutting the infrastructure. and the foundations of the agency to spend more on missions, and it's not a sustainable path forward. And so I think a lot of energy has gone into people thinking about what is the role of NASA in a world where the government does not have a monopoly on space technology anymore,

which is the world that we're in, and does it look like, you know, NASA is a real frontier research organization, which is in some ways, but also is not in a lot of other ways. And, like, I think it would be incredible if Isaacman could find a model of a new space agency that is maybe more distributed across academia and across industry. But I think a lot of it is like, what do we need a space agency for now? Like, what is the point of it? Because it's about national prestige. It's about scientific research.

But, like, a lot of the frontier stuff is not so much happening. NASA, you know, we saw them cancel the OSAM 1 mission this year. That was a priority. That was a choice they made. And they didn't because industry was ahead of them, essentially. Like, industry was already deploying these technologies. And it was like, well, why is the government doing this? Now, there's still a lot of stuff that NASA is commercializing. Like, everything SpaceX has ever done, basically, was previously a NASA project. And they just make it better. And they make it manufacturable. And they make it something you can get a return on investment for. But I don't, I think what's happening and what Augustine worries about is that we're eating that seed corn.

I don't know what the next technology, SpaceX, is going to spin out of NASA is. I think they've run out of things, maybe. And so figuring out what NASA does in the 21st century, what it is, where it really adds value, is the challenge. I wonder if, like, if on the table should be a big kind of coordinated effort between the executive and the legislative branch to update the NASA charter, right? Because it is, it's kind of vague, and it was written at a time when, you know, space race was top of the mind the whole time, right? So there's like, you know, some of the concepts in there need a lot of clarity in the context of 2024, you know, like, I think in the charter is specifically like developing space vehicles.

And like that is probably one where it's like, that really is not where you need to be spending a lot of effort right now, right? So I wonder if that would be kind of something, like if you wanted to have, you know, if you, if you're an administrator and you know, you only got like a four year, um, a potential chance to make an impact on this agency and you want it to last beyond just like, oh, I, I spun up this program and cancel this program or something, you know, like maybe that would be something that would be. Yeah. I mean, and you say you involve Congress and you get that updated and then like you can set the tone so that the next 10 administrators have some, some, you know, firmer ground to work with, right?

That would be a big thing. And the other thing to think about, too, and this is bigger than Isaacman and probably not possible, but we're also thinking about, like, what are the agencies that should regulate spacecraft and space launch at satellites? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going to be the civilian agency in charge of space traffic management. So it's in the FAA, it's in the Department of Commerce, is at the FCC, it's at NOAA. and like I think probably people who have thought about this have probably said, you know,

if there was probably a single dedicated space office, like that would be really smart. And so like, and similarly that is a lot of what came out of why we have space force now is we needed a center of expertise for that. You know, one thing I was talking to, I forget where I garnered this information, but in China, China's space force is part of its cyber and information warfare, like, department. So, like, cyber and space are connected, whereas they're siloed in the U.S. It's not really a NASA thing, but, like, we have space stuff happening across the government, across military, across civil. It's not always super well-coordinated.

The National Space Council is supposed to be doing that. You can imagine someone coming up with a big reorg. I don't think Trump has the... congressional majorities to make that happen, but I think there's like org chart stuff that would be basic fixes. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I've heard, you know, the acquisitions, agencies as being a potential target of Doge and whatnot,

because there's a billion of them, like within the DoD side specifically. There's so many different three and four letter agencies that acquire space technologies. This whole thing did make me think of a dumb and potentially scary question that I would like to ask. between now and forever, when do we start doing crude spaceflight under the DoD again? There were anonymous reports that the DoD wants to buy a starship when they're flying again. Yeah. I mean, I think of the name Space Development Agency. And I'm like, that feels like a thing that should be excised from NASA.

Again, that's a DOD firm. But like NASA, their charter is like science and research and the development of, you know, space knowledge. It does feel like a different thing to develop the capabilities to, like, expand humans outside of Earth. And I don't know that that's ever going to be well encapsulated within NASA itself.

And I'm like, why, yeah, why? So this is the thing that led me to, like, why don't we fly to space as like a DOD? Why aren't there DOD professionals flying and landing on the moon? Because wouldn't that be, like, if we are going to be China Hawks about it and the Bill Nelson kind of thing, then, like, why are we fucking doing it?

If you ask space, like, security experts, they would point to, like, a very carefully balanced world of sort of, like, dayton and an understanding that, like... Bullshit, that's happening nowhere else. No, no. No, you're just ignoring it if that's your thing. It's, like, screw that. Space has always been militarized. It's always been a thing of DOD focus. I always pretended that it hasn't been, and that's... I know, and that's stupid. I don't know. I don't think it's dumb. World War III. I give Nukes the credit for that. I will offer you a normative opinion, which is that I don't think the DOD should be in charge of human expansion into space. No, I don't.

That's what I'm saying. I don't think that. I just like the name Space Development Agency. Like, I think that as a name is a good brand. You think the space technology mission director should be spun out as its own agency? Kind of, yes. It does, because it's in conflict with

some of the other, like, scientific goals. It's the greens and the Reds thing from, you know, the Mars trilogy. Like, the people that want to develop space are always going to fight with the people that just want to study pristine space. And is having all that infighting in the same agency? Is that healthy or do we want it that way? I'm fine if we want it that way. Well, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. Like, I have found people within NASA who are very excited about a lot of the stuff SpaceX is doing because it enables them to do more science.

Like, it's not, I don't think it's a binary. And I think there may be people who. view it that way, but I don't know if that's like the consensus. The mass appeal version of it, yeah. Well, I'm coming out strongly in support of having DOD members fly to space once again.

Count me in for that. We have them on the ISS all the time. It's true. Again, it's always been militarized. We just make it up like it's not. And I think that's a good thing. You know, I would rather I think, and for all the, like, the point of all the geopolitics, right, is to show off that,

A, the U.S. is technologically powerful, but we should also show off that we're like cool and not assholes as well. It would be interesting if there was like, not space peace corps, but like a civilian. And like one one way to think about NASA in the 21st century was, I think it was in the 1980s they added to the charter. I think it was a Reagan executive order maybe that NASA should be about developing a space economy. And maybe that is what NASA's job is in the future is being the regulator and facilitator of that and not like the... Do you mean the Polaris program? Because it sounds like you're describing as a Polaris program. I mean the Polaris program as a space program. It is like Elon getting somebody else to pay for his

test flights, which is cool when it is not a space program. Describe the difference between that and and that's a policy right now, though. Between two private space flights and a $24 billion agent. I feel like SpaceX has always found a great way to have other people pay for their

test flights. That is supreme strength amongst all strengths. But that is because, you know, NASA is going to get something back in the end. And so did Jared. He got a ride to space. Yeah. And he's pretty cool and what did you say? Cool and not

an asshole? What was the priorities to expanse of the world? Those are the things. I would like to see more public figures put an emphasis on not being an asshole. It is a, yeah, a funny thing that we have to ask for these days. It would be nice if. Yeah. I was, the one that a lot of things we haven't talked about would be like, You mentioned like regulatory reform and definitely a place they do.

I have a take right now that planetary protection like policy is like on a cliff right now. Like we are just about to brush up against a big kind of conflict in that area because, well, Mars sample return is is the one driving right now, but humans to Mars would be the other drivers. Like those two, those two things are coming up against a policy edge like a where there's just like a no man's land of, no one knows what the what the actual answer is. The policy doesn't support either one of those things.

And it's not to find how you would. And no one knows who's going to change it and who's going to enforce it. Like it says those are all just like completely unanswered questions that we are going to like head crash headlong into. And I'd be nice. I'd be nice if the next administrator would tackle that. But at the same time, I don't know if I want the Elon crowd running planetary protection policy. Because I'm not confident there's a lot of respect for the whole idea. Yeah.

I was going to say, chances that's over. gets named the head of that department? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I hope that there are very reasonable and good policies put in place on that. I think the moon stuff is going to still be like the first thing we have to figure out. Like, I think it is fun to think about people going to Mars. And I know that Elon says he's going to send some starships there in the next few years,

but I don't think that will happen in the current or like the next presidential administration. I don't see that happening. And I do think this is something that made me laugh a little. You know, Elon was saying the other day, like, we got to cancel the F-35 program because we can't have humans flying these machines when robots can do it better. The robots should be doing this. And it's like, why are we sending cars?

That's some of the robots. And I mean, he has his reasons. But I do think it's like, hmm, what are we going to actually? And I mean, it will be curious, like, The other thing to keep in mind for this next administration is all we have heard about are budget cuts and tax cuts. So, like, I don't think NASA's budget is going up next year. You know, I don't think it's going up the year after. Yeah, we shouldn't be talking about what they're going to do with more of what they're going to stop doing.

Yeah, seriously. And so I also wonder how Isaacman will do managing cuts rather than, like, launching a ambitious program. Or if he can somehow do both, he will be a bureaucratic hero. Yeah. That's the politician dilemma, right? Campaign on cutting stuff and then govern on adding stuff. I mean, he's definitely bitten off a big bite. It's going to be fun to watch him chew.

I kind of can't believe he said yes, to be honest. I mean, I can't. believe it because, I mean, one, he's been running his current company since he was 16, you know? That's true. You know, I talked to, you know, it's a hard job. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of hours. And I'm, and obviously he's like way more excited about space than payments technology at the moment.

So, yeah. I mean, I totally get it. I mean. Weirdest midlife crisis, though. It's like all of a sudden run NASA. I mean, I. Well, buying their Lamborghini is not. about the back story behind it and what the conversations were like with Elon,

if he ever met Trump before he was nominated, or did he just get it on Elon say so? Because, you know, I assume he's making a calculus where he's like, I want to accomplish some things. If I can be the NASA administrator, will I be able to do that? And presumably he has gotten the assurances or the convincing he needs that he'll be able to do some things.

And I mean, if I was a billionaire, One of the things I like about Isaacman is like, you imagine people who are billionaires or you imagine yourself as a billionaire. What would I do with all that money? And most billionaires don't do any of those things. They just like make more money. Continue to be billionaires and do the work. They've got them to billionaires because it turns out they're addicted to work, not the money. Exactly. And that's why that was one of Elon's earlier charms is that he sort of was like, oh, I'm just doing cool shit with money. And Isaacman is certainly doing that. And so I admire his life concerns. instruction. You know, I'm a computer guy. I'm going to get rich. I want to be a fighter pilot. I start my fighter pilot company. I want to go to space. I buy my ticket to space. And now I'm the head of NASA. It is crazy. Like, if Jared Isaacman had not bought a ticket to space, would he be the head of NASA now? I don't think so. Nope. Yeah. Definitely not. And he's only, he's in his late 30s, early 40s. He's a young man. 41, yeah, 41.

in Washington terms. So it's got a lot of runway ahead of him to do other stuff too. You said that it was charming that Elon was like that in his earlier days. I actually was thinking about the other day that like him not flying to space still is a thing that is underappreciated. That like he's had like middling interest in like maybe one day. He's just so uninterested in flying to space when you look at the typical comparison of brands. and a Bezos, which is like, fly to space, immediately ignore it to some extent. You're right. That is also pretty charming for Elon, I will say.

He's still got it. It's still in there. It's still in there somewhere. Somewhere. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, it's going to be a very intriguing couple of years. Well, we appreciate you hanging out with us. You need to plug some shit. You need to plug, yeah, a book, a substack, payload. You need to plug so many things. We're going to payload space, baby.

Become a subscriber at payloadspace.com. You will see me there most mornings. We have a lot of scoops, a lot of fun news. You will see there first at payload. That's my pitch. Hey, there it is. Look at that. Good work.

Payload. And I do have a substack if you want to sign up for that. It's just timferenholtz.substack.com. Follow me on Twitter. Follow me on blue sky. Follow me down the street if you want. increasingly creepy. I hope that's not my personal brand now.

Nah, you're good. You're still good. You're good. Jake, it's time for the off nominees, baby. Next week, coming up. Tim, every year we do a thing called the off nominees where we take the wackiest,

craziest stories in space and figure out who was the winner. Things that went the most wrong, most comedically. Can I get a preview? you? You could see if you can remember anything that happened this year that was wacky, because I guarantee you, you will not even think of the ones that were the best. I mean, I am also about to start on my year-end round-up coverage, and I have not yet started.

So really, I'm just trying to get you to do my work for me. I collect these all year because there's sometimes ones that happen, and you just totally forget about them. But we had three funny moonlanders this year, Tim. Two and a half. Well, they're pretty funny. I'm generous to intuitive machines. I'm generous to intuitive machines. But it's funny.

It's funny that it landed on its side and an underappreciated part of the story. I'm pretty sure they were really close to crashing in the moon, and they've never told anyone how low they came in to lunar orbit at, and they still won't tell me. Well, I'll ask the next time I see. They won't tell you. Well, I'm very persuasive. Single digit kilometers is my assessment.

Hey, not everybody gets out of that, if that is true. Actually, I remembered my favorite weird space thing of the year. Remember that Chinese rocket company that was doing a hold down test and forgot to hold it down? That was wild. Incredible. The static launch, the static fire that was an actual launch. That was really good. Now, there's, I will say, there are always some smaller ones that everybody forgets.

There's obviously a handful of Starliner ones that happened this year. There was, you know, weird sounds coming out at speaker. and like kind of chaotic, weird Starliner stuff. Oh, yeah, the weird sounds. Weird sounds. It was kind of like a fart smell on the ISS recently, too, wasn't there? Was it farts? Yeah.

Death by farts. Last year, I'm just going to, here's what I'll do too. I'll run you through. We'll do a little preview. I'll run you through the last five years of winners and see if you remember some of these. So we'll go in reverse chronological order in 2022. In 2020, I don't know. I didn't update the website, Jake.

Who won last year? I got to update. I didn't update the website. We always forget to update the website until the next year when we notice it's not updated. Okay. So in 2022, Oleg Artemyev threw a cube set into the solar arrays of the ISS.

I don't know if you remember that. I do. I love hand-deployed cube sets. Yeah, that's the greatest. That's like, you know, when it's like when Star Wars is good, it's because space is old. It's like when space is good, it's like dudes chucking satellites off of space.

2021, winner was just Nauka, that won for all of its travails. Just spawn the space station. 2020, the Florida boaters, I need to pull this up full screen. The Florida boaters that photo bombed the DM2 splashed down. So that was an incredible one. let's see 2019 Omega's observation when they

did the static fire and they said we've had an observation Oh yeah excellent got new terminology out of that year and 2018 as we described it

the daggering of Soyuz MSO9 when they cut into a Soyuz with knives and scissors on a spacewalk Like that that's up there with checking the satellites off Like, that's how you're doing very well every year.

They're always good for one. So that's next week. That's next week coming up. Yeah. So stay tuned. I think that's all we got, Jake. All right. Tim, thanks so much for hanging out with us.

This was awesome. I think we had another great session of aggressively agreeing. Yeah, we fought about a couple things. It's good. We always are smiling and fighting. I love it. Our disagreement, I guess, is whether the military should lead the conquest of space. I guess so and I'm like

all of a sudden into it so Anthony is a war monger I think so I'm a Lindsay Graham of space so whatever you and R. Gerger will have a great time to get in now

oh man all right everybody we'll see you later bye thanks everybody happy all that is