Off-Nominal - 193 - The Secretary of Land

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Jake and Anthony talk about Jared Isaacman’s confirmation hearing, and the apocalyptic NASA science budget.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 193 - The Secretary of Land - YouTubeIsaacman Insists NASA Can Pursue Moon and Mars Goals Simultaneously – SpacePolicyOnline.comIsaacman’s “Golden Age of Science & Discovery” on Shaky Ground – SpacePolicyOnline.comTrump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA - Ars TechnicaPlanetary Science Caucus Co-Chairs Bacon & Chu Statement on White House’s Proposed Budget Cuts to NASA Science | U.S. Representative Don BaconNOAA budget proposal would affect weather satellite, other space programs - SpaceNewsFollow 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. Hey, buddy, it's just us. Just us. Just me and you. Just the two of us. Best friends. Best friends. Remember that song?

Was that Will Smith? You know, it's more of my department than yours. I, uh, yeah. I messed up, um, uh, the, identifying the artist for the track on the last episode. That was, you know, after we, we shut it down, I looked it up. I was pretty embarrassed about it. Yeah, I was like, there's no way. That was all in us.

Yeah. Halling up. No, Frankie Valley. Frankie Valley. So, yeah. Jersey boys. I'm not taking shots anymore. I'm not even going to try. I'm like, I don't know who that is. No clue. So that's how it is. I think it was Christina Aguilera. I think it was a buff daddy.

Man. What's up, man? It's been, you know, it's been a couple weeks. We were talking about this on the pre-show. It's been a, it's been a couple weeks. It's been a minute. You know, lots of stuff going on. A weird two weeks to have missed. So we let a lot of news gather up.

We did. Yeah. And it's funny. This is actually like one of the rare times where you and I have like done really smart planning because like four weeks ago we were laying out all these interviews. And we said, you know what? There's like four or five energies like back to back here. Maybe we should just slot in a space for me and you to catch up and do the news.

You know, okay, that's so smart. I'm just kind of like didn't think about it. And then here we are. and like, well, yeah, we really needed this. I figured it would be after space symposium, there would be like anything interesting, but it turns out everyone just wanted to tell us they're working on their factories

and their sign-in agreements or something. Like, there was not anything. So, yeah. Instead, what we got, Jared Isaacman, budget mayhem. Got a confirmation hearing. Got an absolute bugbearer of a budget request. Apocalyptic situation there. Yeah, yeah.

We got to be a dig up all the planetary society language, and that's pretty appropriate for what it is. Let's do it. What are you drinking over? Apocalyptic. Well, I'm working through. I'm working through the mead. Oh, the mead, yeah.

I wasn't actually planning on having it again. Today's like three episodes in a row, whatever it was. But I just forgot to go get anything else. So it's the only thing I have in the house. So here I am. How much did you? What was your initial run? This batch was about 22 of these bottles.

So wow. Yeah. So we've got 18 weeks left or what? No, no, I've had some of it already and I'm probably going to give some of it away. So at the rate that I'm making it, like, I haven't been able to drink any until now. And so like I haven't had it a good sense for how much I'm making. But now it's like, now I'm drinking in and it's really, I'm like, shit, this is a lot of me. Like I'm going to have to.

And I got, I have a whole production chain. Like, you know, there's if it takes five months to make a batch that I've got like five or six going at any time and they're kind of rolling in, right? And so now I'm looking at my closet and there's all these batches that are in various states. And I'm like, this is all going to hit me pretty hard. I got to avoid some of this meat. So I'm like calling up for a, I'm going to have a block party. Then they'll give a bottle of that guy. Yeah, I had a contract over here.

I have a bottle of meat. It's going to be like that kind of situation. Like bartering for supplies at this point. Yeah, exactly. You go to the store. Can I pay in mead? I need someone to come dig a hole in my yard. I pay in mead.

It's so good. I just have good one. I have a Merlo that I'm working through over here. All right. I'm going to hit this button where it adds someone's comment to the stream. I'm pretty sure this is going to put it up

font size 72 point, but... Oh, no, now it's super tiny because it's a long message. All right, let's read it. I feel like commenting too deeply on the budget is a waste of time given the budget requests are never particularly reflective

of what Congress does. You may think, but I'm adding it back. I actually do think there's some good stuff to dig into. Let's save that, though. Let's talk about Jared Isaacman first, Jake. Uh-huh. Did you watch the confirmation hearing or did you just?

Yeah. I watched it. What is your, what was your primary takeaway? So, well, the first thing I noticed, because I hadn't watched a, like, full proper confirmation hearing in a long time. Like, I don't think I watched Nelson. So I'm thinking about it might have been like the Bryn sing one was the last time I watched. I totally forgot how rehearsed these are. And not just like, you know, not like I.

Isaacman had prepared answers, but like the senators and Isaacman had prepared back and forth. Like that was very, right, right. I totally forgotten that that was a thing that happened. So I'm just like, these jokes are really lame and they're just like totally awkwardly teed up and like, I don't know. Okay. So that was a little weird first. But yeah, that's my first random comment.

Okay. That's fair. Yeah. I mean, there's the senators being buddy, buddy to each other. And then desperately trying to get the nominees to visit their state so that they can. be on the photo shoot with the guy who does the thing, right? Yeah, competition in Alaska. You do the whole thing.

The worst was the worst ones. I forget who would do it. But like every, they probably all did it. It's like the center to be like, I'm going to ask you this question. And I really liked the answer you gave to me when we already talked about this in my office and we figured all this out.

But I want to say it again out loud so that you can say it again out loud. And we all know what happened. Which like in one way is totally fine, like getting things on the public records. Yeah, we know that's the point. That's an important. important thing that a democracy does, but it's also just like very awkward when you think we've already said this, but I want you to say it again now that everybody's watching you. Also, none of them, all those meetings, right? Jared was on this road show in DC for, I don't know, two weeks or

whatever, all these meetings and everyone still thinks his name is Isaacson. They could not stop, they could not stop saying Isaacson. Like, Jesus. Yeah, poor guy. That was driving me nuts. And then, you know what the funniest actually one of the funniest things i picked up on was that um so he had he had his polaris crew there with him and they had the artemus crew there with him yeah yeah and wait so who was all in the room there was it was both polaris crews right uh no it was just polaris dawn then the four artemus two astronauts artis two is there and then was there but they mentioned there was ten astronauts in the room at one point. I forget, man, I wish I looked this up again because I remember they counted the

astronauts in the room. I don't think, were they? No, I don't think they were. It was really funny. But at one point, somebody counted 10 astronauts but left out Jared and I thought that was really funny. And I thought he was going to. Oh, Inspiration 4 was also there. Yes. So there was the three from the Polaris, Dawn, three from Inspiration 4, four from Artemis 2. And they were like, well, we got 10 astronauts in the room. And I was like, ah, they didn't even include Jared in this. So, and no one corrected him. I would have like stopped my first remark and be like actually I'm also an astronaut and so there's a lemon in the room. So that was a bummer for him. But to me nomination hearings are like dental work. Like it's a thing to get through. You got to do it. Nobody likes it. Yeah.

And there's never. I went back and watched parts of the Bridenstein and the Nelson confirmation hearings. Because it's, I think it's easy at this point in time to think that this is like a really important moment. And it is to some extent, because it is with, with the absence of budget stuff that has now hit, but we didn't really have any, we had some rumors of what people thought about space policy or where they'd want to push. And it's more important that the people ask and the questions, I think it's a better

sense to get where they're coming from. We kind of know Jared's take on the thing, you know, with a rare exception, you probably know the NASA head nominees take on space policy. That's how they ended up being the head of NASA or the nomination for it. But you don't know the things that Ted Cruz is pissed off about or the things that they're looking to battle over. So that feels more useful to me. But otherwise, you go back and look at the other confirmation hearings.

And it's very rarely connected to the things that we all got heated up and fought about for the following two and four years. No, and I kind of think of them as, I mean, I agree, like, there wasn't going to be like a startling revelation of space policy. It's not what I was going there to look for. But what I was kind of interested in, you know, and I said this before, too, is like I wanted to know there, it's the stuff outside of space, how deeply does that penetrate into the NASA specific part of the government, right? There's general, like large scale political narratives happening right now. And it's like, you want to know, like historically NASA stays like, there's a little bit

of arm's length between NASA and like the rest of the political light geist, right? And seeing how far or how close that gets in a hearing, I think is what you can kind of learn from it. And I think it got about as close as I expected it to. Like there's no way we were going to get through that hearing without a mention of Elon Musk. And for good reason, I think there's some important questions to ask about that kind of thing. But I think broadly though, like it went pretty pretty under the radar. Like It wasn't. That's what I mean. Just get through it.

It's fine. Whatever. I think Jared was overly practiced in some instances, but in other cases, I think the practice that he has had for, what is it, four years now of inspiration for, Pilar's Dawn appearances on TV, certain popular space podcasts. Like, he seemed like pretty comfortable talking about most of the stuff. And then the several answers that were weird were the ones that clearly somebody was telling him if you tell them that Elon Musk is in the room, it's going to cause problems elsewhere.

Exactly, yeah. Do any of us know what that actual problem is, though? Like, I'm sure that that would have... Because, like, nobody's shocked that he knows Elon Musk. That wasn't the revelation, right? So was there some legal thing that if Elon Musk was in the room, that causes issues, or... No, so this was definitely the most interesting part, right, where he refused to answer this question. And this is, like, both similar to what I said, right?

It's like you want to know how much the bigger political narrative, which is like Elon Musk is eviscerating the government narrative, right? How much is that going to penetrate into NASA and the conflict of interest problem with those and all that kind of stuff? So like it's a whether he was in the room or not is irrelevant, but it maybe paints the greater picture, right? It's like, is this guy, like, how, everyone's trying to measure Elon's influence right now. Everyone's trying to like have a quantity value.

So what? It's a shitload. Who cares? Like, I mean, you can care, but I'm saying like, no one's like, wow, I would never have expected that. Nobody was shocked by that. Right. On either side, no one's shocked. But like you said, this is the public part of this, right?

So you're trying to get it onto the record and get that sound bite so that later when you go and fight this battle, you can refer back and have these things. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it helps the narrative. Did we know for sure? Before this, was there, was there, I can't remember if there was ever actual reporting on this that, one of the senders, I don't remember which one, referenced not only did you buy flights from SpaceX, but you have invested in them?

Like, it was unclear if they meant like an investment or like what you people say when they say, I've invested in this car when it's like, no, you've bought the car. Like, I don't know if they meant that or did they mean actual equity? That was the part I was actually like most disappointed in is that like the one like, concrete measure of whether there is a conflict of interest or not. Is this like literally do you own any part of SpaceX? No one asked them that. No one just said like,

what is your percentage shareholder value in the company of SpaceX? Because if it isn't zero, we want to talk about it. And like even there was like that ethical document that came out after. It was like, well, I'm divesting this, device and this and like some stuff around the shift for shareholder power, all that kind of, which is great. It was really good to see all that stuff. But it's like, I feel like we just have not heard a concrete answer there. And we know we wanted to, right?

That was like the origin story for Inspiration 4. He wanted to invest. And then at that time, there wasn't something available. So he bought the flight instead. But like, he just said, I'll be the Lorenzo Domenici of this company. Yeah. He obviously wanted to own SpaceX. Like, that's on the record.

Yeah. He wanted that in the portfolio. Yeah. And so like, okay, here we are like six, seven years later or whatever it is. Like, did you, did you accomplish that goal? And I don't know, no one seems to have. answered that. And I think that's interesting. That feels like a good thing to have on the record. And I don't know. But I think more at the same time, if there was good evidence, if anyone had in the

world had good evidence that that existed, I feel like that would have been part of it. Yeah. That would have been a heavier line of questioning, right? It wouldn't have been. Yeah. And maybe he doesn't. Maybe that's why. Tell me. Tell me who's in the room. Tell me in the room. Tell me in the room. Tell me in the room. What is your percentage? What is your percentage? What is your percentage? What is your percentage? And in fact that it might be notable. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe there's nothing there and no one found anything. And yeah, that's interesting. But yeah, I felt like the, you know, my one comment on it after was that I felt like the senators, like the senators who were going after him were so bloodthirsty for for going after Elon that they forgot that there's actually

a potential conflict of interest sitting right in front of you. Like there's things to investigate right here with the actual nominee. You don't need to like burn him by association to the big bad guy. right? I don't know. But I don't know. Maybe there is, I don't know, dude,

because if you look at his answers, um, I don't know. You know, he said, he doesn't think the SLS is the long term solution. And yeah, I think that gets,

you know, marketed around as like this was a revelation. But again, like, I don't think that's a take that's not existed before in, in the heads of NASA. I mean, if like the vice,

the last vice president, two vice presidents ago, uh, said if these contractors, aren't good, we'll find new ones. And that was like the vice president saying, and who cared about space at the moment, right? And you had Bridenstein in Congress saying, maybe we'll launch a Ryan

elsewhere. So it's not like he's the first person to ever have floated, maybe Artemis 4 doesn't happen in the way that it's envisioned. So to that end, I don't know that there's anyone who's particularly unhappy with the things that he answered in that confirmation hearing. He's supportive of Artemis 2 and 3 flying,

supportive of the ISS going as long as it can, thinks we can do all the things ever. So whether that was appeasing or not, you know, there's nobody that's like, no one's coming away from that hearing, like, this would be a true disaster for NASA if Jared Isaac can ran the thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, like, this has been the story with Isaac and the whole time. His qualifications are not the question. Jared Isaacson, the qualifications are not the issue, right? Like, no one thinks that that he can't do the job. Like, he's got a good head on his shoulders. He's good. He's capable. He

knows how to run large organizations. He's got, he's well connected. Like, this is, up a fine candidate to run NASA. I think the only outstanding issues for me were always just like, how deep is he into the, you know, how deep into bed is he with SpaceX? Because that's a big deal for the company that is increasingly winning every single contract that NASA puts out. That's a problem, right? See, but I, so I am on the other side of that, which I'm like, it's not a problem because

that's like saying that he's in bed with big oxygen. Like, man, it's all around you and it's everywhere. and it is the thing that runs the industry right now. Like, the issue is not that he's... Maybe this is the best time to have a SpaceX insider in the candidacy. You literally couldn't do more, you know? If anything, I fault, you know, the industry itself for letting SpaceX be such an outlier. And that's maybe like on some chill for, you know, big Elon, but...

But, I mean, I will say, though, like, even if you're right and that, like, the outcome... This is the thing with conflicts of interest, right? right, the outcome may be fine. That's never the issue with a conflict of interest. It's like there's that risk that it isn't. That's the problem, right? So if you, you know, if Jared Eisenman owns half of SpaceX and then legitimately never, ever lets that influence a decision and there's no bad outcome, that's still a conflict of interest,

right? The conflict isn't the outcome. It's the, it's the circumstance. So you have to be kind of careful with that. And so I think that like, yeah, maybe he's, he's a great administrator. And everything's fine. And there isn't like, you know, some unjust increase in the amount of SpaceX money flowing out of DC. And that's fine.

Yeah. But like still, like we need to. I think it's important for, well, for you guys to set the precedent that, you know, there are lines that you can't cross and things are okay and things are not okay. Right. And that's why I was really confused. I'm not trying to lobby for like we should put the people who have consequences interest in charge of everything. But like, uh, I think I'm like trying to provide.

the big issues at NASA at the moment. And I'm like, yeah, and that's a fair point. The goat is not one of them. If you step back and go, how can we make the American government better? It's not, you're having to zero in on the NASA administration. Like, this is where I should spend my time. Yeah, there's like, yeah, even just limiting it to space policy itself, right? There are many issues that you tackle first.

So, yeah, I mean, it was, it is weird for, uh, this hearing to happen and then was it the next day or two days later that the budget uh the proposed budget or the budget passback or all this everyone acts like they know these terms uh came out which was apocalyptic for the the science end um yeah what's the rundown on this i mean it's just it's this is that forest fire approach like i talked about before right it's just like literally burned down every major program and then see who's going to fight for what and what comes back, right? So Nancy Grace Roman, out the window. Mara Sample return, out the window. A bunch of other ones, like it's like a...

Da Vinci, I think, right? Yeah, Da Vinci. It was a 50% cut over. It was like a three or four billion dollar drop in the science mission director of budget, which is unheard of. Like, we've, I don't know if we've ever seen a cut that drastic before. It sets you back to like the 1980s in terms of, you know, money available and if you remember, well, you don't remember, neither do I, but anyone who studied history of planetary science, 80s was not a good time. That's like the dark ages of planetary science. It was like great in the 60s and 70s and it was great like, you know, mid 90s and onward, but 80s, not a good time. Shuttle is down. That was the only flight that we were allowed to use. And so a bunch of missions were just kind of sitting around. And everyone was basically going like,

when's the next Voyager flyby because we're bored like it's like when are they going to find a new planet with Voyager because like it's just like four years between results it was brutal so yeah it was uh it's not a good time so it's not a budget to aspire to

if you're interested in planetary science and that's not even to say anything about you know astronomy and stuff so yeah and then there's so for the thing that I highlighted at the beginning of like is there anything interesting to talk about here every time the administration changes there are the same, at least the last, you know, three or four change of hands that have happened at NASA.

Republicans cut, well, it was discovered until that started flying, that it was like, what, the STEM grants and the Office of Education and Earth science gets cut back. And then the Democrats win. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they cut the other stuff. I actually find this really interesting because, and we're seeing it now where the planetary science caucus is coming out with like, statements, bipartisan statements that they're going to fight this proposed budget to propose budget cut to NASA science. This is the first Republican to speak out against it, right?

This Nebraska guy. Yeah. Yeah. So Don Bacon, an excellent name. Great name. Nebraska, too. Huge space industry in Nebraska. Whenever you're done now.

I think about like the Spanish word, like Don Bacon, you know? Like, it's like her bacon. the patron don't bacon you know that's really good that's really good but this that's like this this amount of a budget cut is going to be fought back on

because you it touches enough stuff in a dramatic way that even if they come out of the woodwork parochially because it cut the thing in their district or their NASA center or whatever it's the first time that the party line don't match up to the lines of what's what and where is being cut.

And so you're going, maybe this is the first, but it's not going to be the last person who says, hey man, that's a lot. That's a big cut to a thing that is useful to my people. And so the more that that is drawn out, you would see different battle lines drawn than you would expect for a 12 years ago. Yeah, and I've said this all the way through this administration so far, but like, you know, there's this the big narrative of executive power, right? Is it right now the executive branch is like really flexing and no one's really pushing back

too much. And so they're, they're just kind of doing whatever they want, you know, like they're stomping all over both the other branches of the government right now. But it's not going to last forever. And I think that we have to remember that like we're 100 days into this administration. And that budget's not due to October.

It's a fucking lifetime. It's a so long. That's a brutal amount of time. Yeah. The earliest, do is October. Traditionally, they'll pass it in January or whatever, you know, and rolling some CRs for a month.

They'll continue passing that Biden budget for another year and a half or so. Just because they love it so much. Until the midterms. So, I mean, there's, there's plenty. It doesn't make political sense to fight the administration this early. You got to let, let the battle lines get drawn and let them, let them punch themselves out a little bit. And then you pick your battles and you go after him closer to the deadline, right?

So I think you're going to, this is the first, first Republican that's going to speak out. won't be the last. And so obviously, yes, this, this budget as requested will not be the one that passes in any, any way, shape, or form. But it's still scary, man. It's still, like, it's a, it's a, it's, even if it doesn't pass this way, it's a signal of, like, what this administration cares about. And whether Jared Isamund is a great guy or not, that those priorities are going to flow down in some way or another, right? Like, he's going to have to, even if Isopan wants to protect the stuff, he has to pick his own battles. Right. And so it's not a good statement of intent. You know, it's a little scary from that,

that perspective. Is there anything to, so the 80s, obviously, you said it was pretty dark for planetary science. And that's interesting in that, I feel like with these missions that can have long lead times, you could find yourself in these kind of like gullies of schedule where you worked on a bunch of stuff, it flew, or it's still flying, the stuff you're working on next takes a really long time. I think about actually starship, the time between the so-orbital flights and the orbital flights, like that gully. There's not a lot to work on right now because the things we are working on take a really long time to get to. Is there anything about the missions that NASA has in front of it right now that they're flying to really far away planets, which

means long transit times, but also the really tech complex, which means long development times, and then there's the Mars sample return thing, which is delayed because it's because of all the programmatic stuff that we talked about for the years. But did this era, like was this always going to be an awkward era and is now compounded by a crazy budgetary situation, or do you actually think that the budgetary situation can be totally excised from that? I mean, it's a little of both, right? Like, it was never the plan. For instance, I should put a finer point on it.

You were telling me, man, there's this big gap in the next Mars mission up, right? You were talking about that years ago. Mars, yes, Mars, yes. Right, but those were our flagships for so long. So. They were our flagship, but they were also our other flights too, right? there, you know, there was, there was smaller mission. That would have been here.

That isn't here right now. What is the flagship that would have been here? Well, I mean, you have Europa Clipper right now. So that one is there. Right. That's the, that's the freshest one. Right. And then Mars that's up was supposed to be, was supposed to be in a couple years, right?

So that's what I mean is that we've, we've kind of gotten into this gully that was going to be terrible anyway. This is not going to make that better, but I don't know what I should have expected for this next four to, eight years. But that's, that's thinking only in terms of flagship missions, right? And so that was never the, that was never the plan in terms of the overall science portfolio. There were supposed to be like the, both the cadence for, no, that's not a simplex. The cadence for new frontiers and discovery is supposed to be like twice as high as now. Every time we have a decayal survey, tell me it's a dragonflies fault. Go ahead. Yeah. It's, it's not dragonflies fault. It's like, it's, it's funding issue, right? Like, it's, oh, it's compound.

NASA takes all these missions and they, you know, we've talked about this lots. They take these tiny discovery missions, they blow them up to flagship size and they take twice as long, three times as long. So they're taking longer and longer with the missions they get. And then Congress is also not funding the cadence that has always been recommended and planned for, right? So like discovery is supposed to fly every like two years or something. Like it's supposed to be some like real hot cadence of like Insight style missions coming out.

And it's like, wow, not, not hitting anyone near that. Right. So these missions are not filling. out the space between the flagships. And if they were, we wouldn't notice a big gap of the flagships as our planet. But if they were, wouldn't that be a harder target, I think is where I'm inching myself towards as a take of like,

seems like an easy target if there's not a lot of like, because what's everyone coming out to bat for? Hey, don't defund my Mars Samproturn mission that we have all just spent months talking about how totally F it is. Hey, don't defund my Goddard Space Flight Center that flies a series of space telescopes and the next one's up in however many years, right? Like, they're kind of easy punching bag targets. I mean, kind of.

I mean, sure, politically, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's right. No, I don't think so. That's not my point. My point is that, like, in politics, easy targets are going to get punched. Yes, they will get punched. I think what I would say about that is that if you want to think about this politically and not, you know, objectively, I know, those are like two different things. But if you want to think about it politically, this is the fact is that you have these large programs that are, there's consensus around them, right?

If this is political and it's democracy and its public support, there is tremendous public support around Mars Napaltern and Nancy Grace Roman, right? MSR badly implemented should be fixed, but the question of whether to do it or not is not in question, right? And then you look back to the budgets that have been passed in the last four or five years, which, by the way, our numbers decided by the voters through their congressional representation, right? So the $7 billion that the science budget got last year was, in theory, selected by the American people. They chose to have that budget through the representation, right? So like, do you really think that over the last year, the Americans are like, you know what?

Actually, we were way off, 50% off. Like, we've been doing it this way for 10 years. Actually, we just realized that's not what we wanted in any way. Like, people don't change their mind that dramatically, right? And so. Yeah. Nor does that lead to good change if you change your mind that dramatically on an instant. Yeah.

If the budgets are representative of the sentiment of the taxpayers and the voters, then it'll probably be a smoother, you know, up and down as sentiment goes. it's not going to be a dramatic cut like this. And so I think being upset over the suggestion of 50% is pretty reasonable. Like it's not, it's like, no, this is not. Yes, you had a great mandate as the executive branch. But like you don't write the budget. This is not what people actually want.

So sip off is basically what the idea is here. Yeah, my, I think, I feel similar the first time we talked about all these potentials of Doge back in the day. We talked with Burger, I think, like, you know, minutes. after the election, it felt like I am the most susceptible of anyone that's been on this show to criticisms of federal government spending and local government spending that, like, shits out of whack. But I also am interested in the long term. And if you're trying to make progress in that area, the forest fire approach might expose

interesting things to learn, but I don't feel like it actually builds any momentum towards the thing that you care about. It creates a harder kickback to it. And then also, in this case, with... specifically to science missions, but space science missions because of the timelines involved, like a huge sudden change is, it sets you back farther than the timeline adjustments are because of the compounding nature of schedule and the follow-ons that have to happen and the way that all these are coordinated across like multiple divisions.

Significant damage. Yeah, it's more so than just like the acute moment that it's mentioned. Like, well, it's delayed this many years. We're going to take our foot off the gas. it's like, well, it's going to set you back double or triple that because of how it all compounds down the line. So that's, that is the, and even like, not even just on the NASA side, on the NOAA side, too,

the, the GOES satellites are being targeted under the same vein and also weirdly deconstructed where they're trying to disentangle NASA and NOAA who collaborate on that program. I'm not just saying this because I make a really cool free MAC app that use the GOES imagery. I think like you show anyone in the country or the world, those satellites, I don't know a lot of people to be like, I hate those satellites. Those are the worst ones.

Like that's kind of amazing. They take awesome pictures of Earth. They are the weather forecasting units that we use that drive a huge amount of data. Yeah, as someone who lives in a hurricane zone, literally depend on Noah for my life. Yes. Yeah, it's like truly a nearly un-inarguable good to have those satellites up in geostationary orbit. So, yeah, I mean, that the NASA-Noa thing. that they're trying to do there, where they're taking NASA out of,

they're trying to have NOAA, NASA not built the satellites or managed the satellite side of that program. Because that's the agreement there is that NASA builds and, kind of, they manage the satellite and the launch side. NOAA operates them and collects the weather data. That's where that partnership sort of breaks down, I think, roughly. But they're trying to say, no, it's just a NOAA program now. And it's like, great, we have to stand up a whole other department

that does the exact same thing at NASA. Like, this is not efficient. They already do it, you know? you can go back and forth on that, right? Because it's just like, you know, if, if Noah just needs this service, then like, if they can get that from, you know, I don't know, the private market or something, then by all means, like, go for it, right? Like, you know, do you, like, is NASA, like, is there, is there a mandate literally just like,

oh, if it has to do with space, it's a step off, a step out of our domain. Like, you know, we've talked about this before. There's no other department. There's no other department in the government that, like, owns like a physical location. Like, oh, no, this is on the land. It's from the, you have to go through the secretary of land because it's happening on land. I'm sure there's no other department that may be named the Navy. But I mean, it's specifically the Coast Guard exists or something.

That's specifically about the military though, right? No, you're right. You can sail a ship without talking to the Navy, right? Yeah, yeah. The Navy doesn't build your merchant marine vessels. Oil tankers? Yeah, got to go through the Navy. Like, you know, no one does that.

So it's kind of weird in a sense. Like NASA is a special status because space is so weird. But so you can have that argument. that you're totally right on the same side. It's like if there is a duplicated work, then why wouldn't you want to share, share the load, right? But yeah,

what do you think is going to happen though? You think what's the sacrificial lamb, right? Because something's going to get cut. I mean, if I have to pick, like if you need to knock off a big thing, I hate saying it, but like Marsnap return is the,

it's the one that's earned a cut the most, right? Like it's the one, it's the one that needs to be slapped a little bit. So you're putting them in time out. If you absolutely have to cut something that I like don't touch great like Nancy Grace Roman, that things like it's doing great. They're like at a schedule under budget. Fantastic program.

Perfect. That's how they should all be run. But yeah. I mean, and closing Goddard is, I don't know, man. That's one I don't.

I think a complicated question. Closing any sender is a complicated question. And I don't think I have an actual answer for that. Like, I don't know. They all do so much stuff. stated or just read into based on what was being cut? I thought it was, I thought it was specified.

Was it? Okay. I don't know. I don't remember. Yeah. Okay. But what NASA Center? If you had to cancel one, which one would it be, Jake? If I had to cancel.

You're already making enemies out there. Oh, you can't see. You know which center I have, I have a beef with. So. Oh, Johnson. Johnson. Big Johnson. Big Johnson.

so oh man that's really funny you're shutting it down just just for the just because of the just for all their shenanigans their conspiracy shenanigans yeah yeah no and it's and here's the thing right so okay let's say let's say you do decide that NASA needs a haircut like bad they need this real bad haircut this is like from a mullet to a buzz cut though yeah but like let's say let's let's assume that that's fact and true and everyone agrees on that like NASA needs Got it. So you put the whole NASA portfolio in front of your desk there and you're looking at all the different pieces of it. And you're like, yeah, definitely Nancy Grace Roman.

That's the part. That's the most wasteful. And like, are you kidding me? Like, you could cut all the nonsense out of the exploration department, all this EUS and Bechtel garbage. And buy an extra Nancy Grace Roman telescope and still save a couple Bs on the side. Like, it's unbelievable that, you know, so. Play 40 chess with me, Jake. If you were going to try to do that, where would you start by doing that or would you start

here and then do the other one? I love that conspiracy. Yeah. Let's do it. I don't think, I never buy into this administration. Okay, okay. Fine. We'll put Nancy Grace Roman back on the schedule, but we'll have to take, we'll have to

let's for five minutes, Jake, pretend that the idea was to unveil all the tariffs and then roll them back and then unveil them and unroll them back again. excellent economic, brilliant move, right? Let's play into that. So this on the space side is roll out a cancellation of NASA science so that you get a, all the Democrats to fight back against it and a couple of Republicans. And have you built enough of a consensus to say, all right, cancel SLS and Gaitway and you get back all your science and then some. I mean, if that's, if that's the play, man, well done. Like just love it. I'm into that. that. It's the one type of cancellation they haven't tried yet of like, you know, have all the

scientists get their knives out and come at SLS. Yeah. They would, though. Let's be honest. I mean, listen, they never were loving the program anyway, so they just weren't mad enough. Yeah. They got, they got an offer for a free ride on it. And they were like, no, thanks. That's a great point. Yeah. No, no, actually, we'll spend a quarter billion dollars on talking heavy things. Listen, all I'm saying is Jared was like, hey, we got to fly out of Miss two and three. But, you know, then we're, then we're bouncing. That's the only reasonable way out of it, honestly.

We've talked about that, right? Like, we still have it, we still have a chance to draw the line at U.S. and Block 2 or whatever it's called and the new tower and none, all that garbage. So, yeah. It's very obviously the line. It's very obviously the line. And Gateway lines up with that. Like everything lines up.

That's what I mean. It's right there. You can slip it right off and everything's fine. Yeah. Stepping over that line commits you to so much more time and money. Like it's just, it's such a clear. Yeah. So much.

Like tens of billions. Yeah. Yeah. And 10 years at least. So. I mean, if it plays out that way, it'll be really interesting. It will be interesting. Yeah.

And I will happily give credit to the admin for doing that. That would be. That's the. first time I would buy 4D chess. Like, that's, that would be truly remarkable. I don't buy it at all. I think they just were like, these seem like programs I've never heard of. Those people probably won't get too mad. There's probably not that many people that like it. Well, and like this, this is, I have no evidence for this. And it's like totally like a popular display. Without evidence. I love it. Yeah. Isn't the, so the Office of Management and Budget guy for this admin is like, he's one of

those anti-woke crusaders. Like, I think in some of the budget documents, he's like, we're going at it. We're removing the DEI program because it's evil and destroys live. You know, it really like, really, really like satanic language like this is. This is the most. This is the most egregious violation of human rights that it could ever have, you know, like he speaks about it like that. And so like, I'm not convinced that there isn't at one point where he would go on through all the projects. I don't know. This one's named after a woman. I don't hate the theory. Yeah. Yeah. There's a research paper in there.

Is that why James Webb was never canceled? What did you make of Isaacson calling out Webb so much in his confirmation hearing? Yeah, there were some, there were a couple, if you want to go back to it, there was a couple like rehearsed language that made a lot of appearances. There's that and there was stars and stripes on Mars kept coming up, right? But yeah, the web, the web callback was super interesting. I don't really know. It was like two or three times and no other administration got name dropped. trying to like, I don't know, like latch on to, is it, is it the sort of like American

exceptionalism of the Apollo era that they were trying to like hook themselves into? That's the best I can come up with. That was like, that was like, we are the best and we're going to prove it by doing America. Come on, Jake, we're always that. Okay, first of all, step off that one, right? But in space, that was like a very specific time. Like, literally like the- And the dude's got a really nice space telescope now, Jake.

There's a good branding. It's a good branding moment, as opposed to 10 years. ago, which was a bad branding moment for James Webb. It changed overnight, but you got to glow up after the, after JWST launched. Yeah, you definitely glowed up. Yeah. So that's the best I can come up with because there's been some of like, there's some of that same language that's appeared in other things, you know, like the whole like, what's the, the, the frontierism and the, I forget the term, like the self-digit. I don't know.

Not that it. What's the term? Manifest destiny. that's the one yeah they're like pretty pretty sketchy and totally on brand for this admin like viewpoint of just like we are americans and therefore everything belongs to us you know like it's that kind of like like viewpoint and apollo was kind of like that right and so i wonder if they're kind of like hook into that so that's my best guy it could have just been that Ted Cruz and one other senator referenced it in their meeting and then he was like i guess i'll reference james swept a couple

times yeah yeah i don't know i just thought it was interesting that it was interesting that it was I mean, what other administrator would he call back to, right? Yeah, I don't know. Is he just the most well-known administrator? Is that all it is? Like, is he trying to elevate himself? Be like, I'm on this, I'm on this level with web. Or maybe, I don't know.

It's an interesting play. You're right. Name the other administrators. Yeah, he wasn't like, oh, Golden, really did a, you know. Yeah. When he's had this epic quote that no one remembers, you know. I don't think administrator truly. would have

handled it that way. There's no other moments you would reference in the way of, you know, the one time

when they made the deal to save the space shuttle was not like a moment you'd reference, you know? Yeah, and you can't say Nelson because that's the other team.

When President Clinton wanted to cancel the ISS, like, you can't say Brynstein because he's on the out with that admin. And too recent to like quote in an epic way.

To reason. Yeah, you can't say golden. You can't say, Bolden? No, nothing really. No. Does the Annasid Administrator matter?

We're back, Jake. We are so back. We are so back. Yeah. Yeah. Yikes. So he's not going to get confirmed until May sometime, sounds like. Okay.

I don't really know what this, where the budget situation goes in the next month, but presumably he'll be around before. any of this gets truly down the line. So I feel like we'll know pretty, pretty quick on what the take's going to be here. Who do they go to Batford first? It's not going to be Marsempter turn. Or is it? Because it's so big and beefy and they

Maybe, maybe. Think Rockie-Lack. It's the one that you can, you can do executive stuff on the easiest too, right? Like it's... Why is that? because nothing is like formalized like Congress is like you gotta spend a little bit of money on it

but everything else is like totally open like NASA can decide things and they can make decisions and change things pretty easily like it's still within their purview right whereas like SLS not not you can't just be like written into the law like yeah yeah there's no there's no like

MSR shall use the European report turn order like that's not in there right so that that could be it yeah but it'll be interesting This is actually the thing I like most about Isaacman's answers is that like a bunch of times he was like, man, he's like, I don't get to look at the stuff. Like I got to get in there. My hands dirty and read and learn and figure out what's going on before I can make these calls. I'm committed to like gathering the evidence and making a sound decision. Like that was like, yes, obviously. That's like that's all you can really say in their confirmation hearing. But it was nice to kind of hear him say it aloud and and say that, which is also a politically like convenient way to dodge a question. But I got to get. through it, man. Got to get through those nomination hearings. Yeah. What did you think of the

we should do both answer? That was interesting to me. Like it was kind of funny. Because it was funny because Congress was like, really? Like, are you saying that the record? You think we should do both? Did you really think that? Say yes. Say yes. Like it was like kind of cornering. You're like, yeah, of course. I'm the NASA administrator. Like if you come to me, you write the damn budget, Congress.

You come to me and say, here's a umpting bill. billion dollars like go to moon and mars i'll do it of course they will like what the hell kind of answer do you expect me to give on this like yeah we can do both you just tell me how much money i have and i'll tell you what we can do like that's it and also the mask was off for a minute which was like congress does not believe nassah could do any of this even if given a limited budget that was kind of shitty feeling you know that was not great so even you don't think this is enough money to do any of these things that's not great yeah yeah so i was i was funny i love that that was my favorite I get his point. I do get his point. It does, it does feel a little bit like what I

criticized the Nelson administration for, which was, you have moments in which you have political capital behind you and you can take a shot to get more budget for a thing that would be useful and there's a political moment to take advantage of. And his answer was like, I mean, NASA could be more efficient with all their money and do better things, right? It's like, you could do that also internally, but you probably should tell Congress that you need more money to be a good steward of NASA. If you're a NASA, you should always tell Congress you need more money, period. Which is, again, to refer, no, but to refer to me being the one that's most skeptical of

government funding that's ever appeared in the show, like, that's how we ended up with all the money being spent by everybody. I said there's a natural circle of life element to like nobody. I think Casey, when he was on the show, not Dreyer, right? Casey Amher was talking about the, there's no real incentive structure to be cost efficient, right? You could be Nancy Grace Roman and be like really good and under budget and ahead of schedule and you're the one getting canceled. You could be Veritas and be in the same situation, right? So there's no really strongly profound motivating element to have to tell Congress that the budget you had last year was more than enough

because guess what's going to happen next year you're going to have less budget. And that's, I don't know how to balance. I'm not a smart enough thinker to understand like how do you achieve that, you know unless you go straight up to like a zero-based budget approach and say list all the things that you need to do or you give me the list of things we need to do I'll tell you how much it costs you tell me if you've got the money if not I'll strike out a couple of these other things that we're doing until we're both happy right like just straight up negotiating a contract like a like we do when we're freelancing you know web and iOS work but I don't know Jared should tell them that they need more money to do both

but he also should internally say we could do both with the money we have because the whole point of this era of spaceflight is that we could do more with less money because of reusability and efficiencies and we're smarter now and all these things and yet everybody always says if you don't have as much money as Apollo had

you're never going to get to the moon. And I take issue with this. I'm like, no, that's not the point. The point was we could do it for less. That was, we all say that. But nobody actually thinks that, even Congress. Yeah, I mean, my take on this is, I've said this before, is that we need more, we need more, more will to cancel shit.

I think that's the, that's the big issue with me is that like, you get a program approved and you get a budget of X dollars. And you allow a little bit of leeway with that for different circumstances, right? Like, maybe you give them like whatever 10% margin for unforeseen stuff because every project has unforeseen stuff. And then over a certain amount, you trigger reviews and over another certain amount, like you just get canceled. And like, you know, you just have to have that. we need to be not afraid of the like the sunk cost fallacy of those like like we need to be ready to go to a program that is spent a billion dollars and they're not going to come anywhere close and be like you're done move on because there's here's the thing that the

give me the list of stuff you want to do that list will forever always be bigger than the amount of money you can get like there will never ever be a shortage of cool things for NASA to do and so like the that's just true life not just NASA right like human ambition outstrips everything that you have. Here on Off Nominal today, we discovered the concept of scarcity. Like, you can almost want to want. But so like the incentive to save money can't be about saving money. It should be about doing more things. Right. So like, yeah, your incentive to like standard budget is so that you get to fly your mission because I'm going to cancel you if you don't. The next guy in line is ready to go and he's going to hit budget. Like that's got to be what it is.

Right. So you don't you don't do less. You don't save money and do less. You do more things for the same amount of money. That's the objective you have to try and get to. That's my take. Cancel shit when it goes wrong. We just need Dr. Z to get back in here. I just recommended canceling Mars sample return. I know you did, man. You're out here. You're out here laying it on the table. I love it. I love it. I mean, you're Steve Jobs killing the iPod right now, right? Like the one thing that's great. I love that. We need Dr. Z back up in this. We got to just get them back on the show and be like, what the hell's going on, man. Yeah, hit him up. Let's email them right now in the middle of the show.

Like, what is happening? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's probably got some takes, right? He would be excellent to dig through, like, all right, here's what you should do strategically. So hopefully Jared gives him a call. We should email, connect them. You guys should talk, as if we're the ones that would introduce them. I love it.

Hey, I wanted to introduce you to someone. It would be great if you two chatted. I think you'd get along. I think you guys got some similar views. That would be a really funny bit to do. You work in the same industry, so you probably, you know. That would be an incredibly funny bit that no one would read except us. Like introduce Tim Cook and Sunday-Bachar or something.

You know, get their publicly available emails. Tim at Apple. You should really meet. I love it. That's great. That's a joke for one kind of bit. You're the only people that enjoy that are the people use CC or BCC on that email as, uh... Yeah.

But he did have, when he was on this show, talking about the decision behind canceling a program and when it's the right decision and when it's not is tricky because, you know, your point is true that more cancellation, like enforcement of the budget caps would be a good start. Yep. And yet enforcement of the budget caps is a politically, not tasty thing for politicians. Be like, you spent how much, how many, now I say this, you spent how many billions of dollars

and nothing happened? And yet we have that test stand at Stennis or whatever that was like built for the canceled constellation program because apparently it costs more to preserve it than to finish it or whatever. I don't know. Yeah. Well, that's the thing.

It's like the, you know, if you talk in the scope of planetary science, it's like a little clearer, right? Like if you're like looking at just these, because they have cost caps and they're all kind of managed by the same group of people and they have similar culture and how they manage expenses. It's a nice tight window to like explore an idea like that. Then you expand it out to the agency level like at NASA. You're like, okay, the way they spend money on that side of the agency and the way they spend money on this side, just like just different games.

Like just the way it's done is just entirely different. You cannot go into the cost plus Bechtel Tower contract that just bleeds money. Like literally just shovels money into the, the, goddamn Indian River. Like, you know, like, you can't, you can't, you can't look at that program and be like, actually, your, your cost cap on this class to human spaceflight mission was only 1.2 billion. And so you're canceled. It's like, no, that's not how that works. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you're right. It just doesn't, yeah, it's different, completely different departments. Yeah, yeah. Almost makes you think you should be different agencies. Hey, just because it's happening in space doesn't mean it's NASA. That's a fun one. a whole show on what we would deconstruct NASA into. Where does the

U.S. government do the rest of the science that doesn't happen in space? Pregnant pause. Snarky joke. Paws, yeah. I don't know if I'm advocating for that, but it's an idea to think about. Well, what would you, let's with two minutes left in our actual show content today, what would you deconstruct NASA into?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I would do the directorate's cleanly. Here's the thing, like in the long run, like the long view of time. Like it does make sense for NASA to go away and for like as space grows, NASA will go away and these things will grow into their own and become part of the larger ideas that we're doing, right? Things that we do in space for military,

things that we do for science, things that we do for commerce, things that we do for transportation. Those are all separate, you know, secretariates in every government now. And so as those grow, they will eventually happen. So the question is not if it's when, right? And that might be the more interesting questions. It's like, is there a department that's ready? It's ready to be split off from NASA?

Are we, is it big enough yet to like earn its own place? I don't know yet, maybe. I mean, arguably, you could take all the earth signs and put it to Noah. Yeah. Right? Like, they're kind of already sort of already are a department that would be ready to handle that in terms of like its charter. Yeah. You'd have to add what's oceanographic and atmospheric.

You'd have to add like land. I don't know what word you'd use. You know, right now they're only. the oceans in the air, so they need to be able to do the grass and the dirt. Yeah, grass and the dirt people. Kind of join the... But then I think the humans need to be their own thing, right?

Like, an agency chartering, figure out how to live for extended periods of time in space, both in orbit and on planetary surfaces would be as charter. Like, specifically expand human presence. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's an interesting take there. about whether that should just be the military.

Hey, I was the guy saying that we should have the military astronauts. I mean, they all are anyway. Anyway, like it's not even that like big of a leap. Like every astronaut's also in the Marines or whatever. Right, yeah, right. That's a good point. Yeah, like, good point. They wouldn't even have to file any paperwork to move that over.

Like, yeah, I'm already signed up, man. I'm a colonel. It's fine. But then would there, so there would just be like a planetary science? department? Well, this is an interesting question, right? So like, where the government also funds, you know, geology and medical science and chemistry and nuclear is like all the, all that stuff is also being. So where, where is that all happening, right? Like, I'm, I think the part, the piece that you should start this question with is like, are there actual efficiencies

with having them under the same department? Yes. That's 100%. That's like the only question, basically right like keeping it this way actually benefit from that because i think they just inertia is it just inertia or are there actual benefits from you know how often does the planetary science side call up the human exploration side be like hey i want to run something by you let's let's put together on this one yeah i don't think that much my sense is never i've talked to more people within nassad have talked about the other sides than have actually talked about told me about working with them so if you want to answer that question go ask the irion team how much room there is for rocks to come back from the moon.

So good. There is no planetary scientist that is happy with that answer. Let me tell you that much. That's amazing. How much room is there for rocks? First question, where do the rocks go? What rocks?

If you guys just like, I could just hold one. Is that enough? If you go easy on the number two, we can squeeze it into the side of the, the waist basket here, yeah. So maybe just like plan your food.

Does that look good enough rocks? How much do you need? Like one rock's fine, right? Yeah, I mean, they're all the same once you're up there, right? Does any differences amongst these? Triggered. You're the one trying to cancel a sample return.

Listen, only one of us on this show said cancel the sample return. This has been a spicy episode. We had fun today. It was good. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times with these episodes, what people don't understand about our relationship, Jake, is that over the course of this episode, we've probably tried on five to six takes that we're not even sure we think, but we're just like, see how it works, you know? I don't think some of the emails we get sometimes people think that all of our takes are our takes, when sometimes we just like realize that we have to be the other guy for a minute and we try the other one on. That's called learning, yeah.

I love it. That's how we are, and it's why I love our conversations. I'm going to email me and tell me that I'm bad for not supporting Isaac. I was forgetting it next. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and I'm a shill. I'm a total shill for all Elon Musk things. Yeah, absolutely. And but we both want to cancel the gateway.

So the two people I desperately owe an email response to because I got a very long email about the gateway. I apologize. And I guess we'll talk again. Hit me up. You can keep gateway as long as Dragon X-L is they admit that it's not real. That's all I'm here for. Yeah.

Dude, I think we could get an answer on this. question. We're about to enter our apex of influence and access at NASA if Jared gets confirmed. We're getting the media accreditation policy changed. We are getting podcasts specifically included in the media accreditation policy. I'm just laying out all the plans for me. We're getting rid of ITAR. Yeah, we're canceling ITAR. No more handlers at KSC for foreign Nats from Canada. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Specifically, we're going to do a carve out, a tariff-like carve out for Canadians at KSC. of a big board.

It says all the countries and whether you get a chaperon. How many handlers you get? So good. This episode is over. Yeah, we're done. What do we doing next week, Jake? We got a funny one next week, I think. Next week.

Let me pull up schedule and double check before I say something wrong. Right. Roman is joining us. We're going to talk about space tourism and Katie Perry probably. Yeah, probably how she booked her flight to space. Yeah, yeah. How did she get in that? Yeah. Did they go through space VIP?

The Space VIP is the company that did Axiom mission, right? They did the first Axiom mission. They did the brokers for that. Yeah, we're going to talk to Roman about that and learn some stuff about going to space as a tourist. Try to get us a flight booked. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah, I have a lot of money left after buying this house.

A promotional, a promotional tour. Yeah. It's marketing budget. All right, y'all. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.

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