Off-Nominal - 236 - Juicy Red Fruits (with Casey Dreier)

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at The Planetary Society, joins Jake and Anthony to talk about the dichotomy of NASA right now: the Artemis II lunar flyby, and the FY2027 budget request. Topics Off-Nominal - YouTube Episode 236 - Juicy Red Fruits (with Casey Dreier) - YouTube What is the skinny budget and what does it… | The Planetary Society The Planetary Society urges Congress to… | The Planetary Society Save NASA Science Action Hub | The Planetary Society Charts and Data | The Planetary Society Follow Casey Casey Dreier | The Planetary Society The Planetary Society Follow Off-Nominal Subscribe to the show! - Off-Nominal Support the show, join the Discord Off-Nominal (@offnom) / Twitter Off-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Jake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Main Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘 Off-Nominal Merchandise Off-Nominal Logo Tee WeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hey, I had to decide before I would pull the frame down or the sound down first, Jake, but we're here now. I did it. We're live, baby. How's it going? It's a week of interesting comms technological mix-ups. That's true. I'll just call it that, yeah. Yeah, I'm sheltering in my wife's office instead of my normal studio to get away from the hardwood flooring sounds that are happening downstairs. but that means we're getting close to never having to contend with sound again, Jake.

So. Yeah. We'll see. This is the highest potential chance I have to be the BBC dad and have children run into this room. So we'll see if that occurs later. And maybe that'll happen out west too. Casey Dreyer's here with us. How's it going, buddy?

Hi. I'm happy to be here. Hey, guys. Do you have a BBC dad potential? What's the child situation? My kids in daycare. So a lot of things would have to go catastrophic. wrong. And I'm in the basement with a gate up at the top. So I'd be very confused.

Series of events, not zero, but very close to zero. Well, we've broken the mold here, Casey. It's a very outlier show. We've got, we moved the show 30 minutes early, not because we need to shift our time slot, but because we want to go long. And we knew where there's definitely not going to be just one hour of content after an epic lunar flyby, an insane budget request that's the exact same situation as last year that we had resolution on and then rekindled all these arguments. And there's just too much to unpack. I'm a bit cheesed. I'm a bit cheesed off.

I got a lot to say today. Let's see if I keep my job after. I think I'm trying to actually your job. How could you get? It feels like exactly. I can't think of any other guest who is specifically requested more time. Because usually our show is like, you know, know, in the format of like a half hour to an hour that most of our podcasts and history have

been, that's usually plenty for most people. They usually want shorter. You're the only one I think that says, we need more. Make it longer. There hasn't been a single episode of yours I've been on where I felt like I've said all I've had to say. People have felt like that, but I haven't. And so, you know, I figured why not? We've got a lot to talk about. We'll schedule a bit extra time. Well, we're trying to have. I think next time we should try to go three hours or something, you know. We can organize it. Yeah, we'll clear the decks and just go for it. I'm remembering of the Weimarians episode we did for the Decaturian survey.

We knew we had that time, too, and we just straight up said, we're going to do a double one and break it in half. So, yeah, it's always, it's always Casey. You're always the one doing that. It's always you. Well, I'm glad to agree as I tell people, right? And I make liberal use of that reality. an excess air. That's good.

Where should we start? You got something to drink today? You got something like you? I do. I do, but it's not too exciting. I have my Earl Grey hot, but I did a, I figured that the cup itself could be novel.

Wow. I don't think many people have the, oh wait, this is all tied to my focus. Anyway, it's the European Space Policy Institute Cup. So at least the cup is notable. I don't know where else one gets those except of course I'm sure everyone's been to the European Space Policy Institute took the family there last winter yes

vacation destinations so I figured I at least have a space themed I've got too much to do to have anything stronger right now as far as much as I feel the urge what you got Jake I went simple today too I just got nice a little patito you could take a Magar. I've got a dogfish head 60 minute IPA. I guess I should have got their 90 minute. They do make that. And I've got it, I've got it in a, in a JWST glass. Nice. Look at that. This was, we had a, who was it? We had on that made these.

Oh, on the spot. I can't remember her name. But it's from the, it's the, it's the, yeah, we'll link it. We'll link in the show notes. I'm not going to remember any of the names or any of websites. It was in the fugue state. So yeah. These are still great. We had the contest, though. And we gave one away to the listener and it was Dave and we couldn't find Dave. I think that's what it was, right? That's right. Did we ever? Yeah, we found him. It was like a whole hashtag like find Dave. Find Dave. That's right. I forgot

about that. That was good stuff. So. Cheers, Dave. Yeah, cheers Dave. Should we start with some just some flyby reactions? I think we need to look at some photos just real quick because we haven't talked since the yeah since the day we got talking about we need to hear we need to see if we can get Casey to at least wax poetic a little bit before he gets really hardcore Pauls all right I pulled a bunch of photos so if one of you shouts out a photo I probably have it in this stack so just shout out one and I'll throw it up and we'll see if I got it right How about the one with Orion and the total eclipse?

Oh, I don't think that's like literally the one I don't think I pulled. I just thought you would want the good one. I thought you'd want the good eclipse one. Isn't that, is that not the good one? I don't know. You have the one that's not an eclipse, right? That's the one you're thinking of. Oh, shit.

Okay, Casey, let's get a ruling on this because Jake's been all about this of the overhyped that this was an eclipse. pre-mission. He thought that this was not going to be, I don't know, Jake, make your case. Why isn't this an eclipse? Well, I was confused at first because I was like, they were describing as the first time that a human had ever seen an eclipse from the moon like that. And I was like, well, but it's not really an eclipse because like the distances are different. Like the point of an eclipse is like the moon and the sun are kind of the same size. So it blocks the sun, but you still see the corona. Right. That's like the whole magic of a solar eclipse is that you get to block one

and not the other. And so you see the corona. It's like your only time you can actually see it. But is it... Don't we call a lunar eclipse when the Earth's shadow covers the moon? We are Neil deGrasse Tysonites on this show about lunar eclipses and we're in the, they're absolutely boring camp. Yeah. I'm just saying in terms of terminology, they call it... I don't know.

Let's get beyond that. Definitionally, Jake, whatever. This is an eclipse. But he was saying, in the spirit, right? In the spirit of an eclipse, this isn't it. because he's a corona elitist, I suppose. And then I was like, but dude, it's going to be that, right? It's going to be, it's going to look like that.

And I think you had maybe a, you weren't thinking about the relative sizes in the right way or something, Jake. You thought that would be much closer visually? I thought they would be closer to the moon. And so this whole thing where you could see the whole moon and light all around it. But then, of course, I also found out that this isn't, this isn't the corona. This is the, is the day of the light. It's the corona Yeah, apparently the corona is

completely hidden in this photo So now I don't know what to think anymore I don't know what this is Well NASA put out a thing that this This left side I don't know if you can see in my mouse on this I guess yeah maybe like They put out a thing that said this was a piece of the corona

And while this is the is it zodiacal Zodiacal? Zodiacal I think Zodiacal I think Zodiacal Yeah they say at least this side is I'm giving this. full credit because it's fucking mind-blowing.

And the way they describe this. The photo looks awesome. It's the most important thing here. Protected, stamp. Approved. This is an approved photo. Sorry, Joe's spoken.

Yeah. You got one strike already, Jake. On you. I've already, I've already done the Mayor Coppola on this one. It's a great photo. Did you, okay, but did you, when you saw it or when you heard them describing it, the Victor Glover moment of describing this, you know,

seen it you've seen totality so you you've had a similar moment of right it's obviously this is more epic in many different ways but i think us all having seen total solar eclipses we have that that out of not out of body but like out of earth moment where you look you're looking at the solar system you're not on a rock you're like injected into the solar system like so did you connect with that moment from victor glover's description or was it until you saw this photo that you didn't give them full credit. The photo was important. Yeah. His description was lovely, but the photo made me understand better. I just the geometry was all wrong in my brain and I was like, this is just a sunset. What are you guys talking about? You have high standards, man. It's like just the moon occulting sun from the position

of basically the moon. Boring. Boring. Dang, man. You got a high bar. remind me of that. Yeah, I have space pictures. Your mind has been too much outer planet photography or something. Your expectations are different in the 1960s. Back in the 60s, they were just happy to have, you know, chairs, right, or whatever, right? Is that your expectation? Like, they're just happy to have food and lights that turn on.

And if they, damn it, if they see the moon occulting the sun, then they're just happy about that, too. there's a simpler photo. Yeah, but I've been in this game too long. What have you done for me lately? You know, I need something new. I need something different. All right. Jake, do you have a favorite that you want to shout out?

Do I have a favorite? I really liked the one where they turned it on its side. And so you had the moon and then the crescent earth behind it. And it's like just in the corner. That one is. Are we talking this? That's the one. Yeah, this one's pretty magical to me.

I can't stop looking at this one. This is a photo that exists in the world. Oh, yeah. It's an eclipse, I think. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Majesty of this eclipse. Yeah.

It's quite wonderful. Here's a question. Did you guys notice the color differentiation of the moon in these, like, digital photos compared to some of those Apollo ones? It's much more brown. Mm-hmm. And I wondered if that was just a calibration issue. I wondered if they calibrated these.

Or if it's something with the sensor difference. Anyone else fix it on that? We need all the astronauts to come back and look at these pictures on the same screens as us. And then we can say, is it right or wrong? And see if we can get a little more. It's the only actual calibration we can get, right? It's true.

Yeah, I mean, the, The whole thing that they played up of human eyes being better at color than sensors and how that actually does add some real scientific data, like ground-truthing almost. I thought it was good, but Casey's skeptical. You don't like it? Oh, come on. Give me a break.

Oh, this is going to be good, Jake, knowing who we got next week. The subjective experience of people that is literally impossible to then convey does not help that much. I mean, they don't see an infrared or ultraviolet, and their eyes certainly are not perfectly calibrated against, you know, dozens of known color sources and chromatic operation. Did you even have a pantone color swatch up there, Victor? I mean, geez. They were, they were working pretty hard to say this is useful, but that's not why we send humans to the moon. Let's be honest. It's, you know, their experience, what I loved was hearing, like, the tone of their voice experiencing it. That was to me, that was the spectacular moving part, hearing that kind of the

the, the, the, the Jody Foster, they should have set a poet kind of vibe coming from that. But, you know, come on. Hey, I see a green color. Well, what color is it? Like, we should know the wavelength if it's really important. Well, I can't tell you that. It looks kind of greenish blue to me. Great. I mean, this is what we have. This is why you send calibrated, you know, space telescopes and highly sensitive CCDs that you can actually measure individual wavelengths. And then that's where you get your scientific value from. And where do you work again? I'm just saying, look, I appreciate they're trying to, like, create some scientific justification.

But I guess, like, humans, there's the whole concept of humans doing science in space. And humans can work a lot faster in space. of like, yeah, kind of. I mean, they don't have the custom built tools to do science in space, right? They're using our eyeballs that were evolved to, like, look at juicy red fruits, you know, in trees millions of years ago and then say, hey, that's a straight, you know, that's an interesting color. And again, that's not, we shouldn't like try to force that into this, right?

The scientific value, I mean, I was also driving a bit nuts, too, because, you know, people also, who looks at the pictures that come down from like LRO? People do. It's still like people's eyes, see like the pictures themselves. Sure, that you get a slightly different dynamic range when you're seeing like,

you know, pure photons bouncing off the surface hitting your retina. But it's, again, the utility of it drops dramatically. So it was, but maybe again, I perhaps a bit,

but it was in a sour mood that day because I had just literally just finished reading the entire budget. So I wasn't the most of it. pathetic. Yeah. Two things. One, next week we're having Kelsey Young on this show, which will be great to follow up with

her exactly on this. Number two, do you think that this storyline happens if not for Jack Schmidt losing his shit over the orange rocks? Well, yeah, I think it happens. I mean, that's the story. I mean, and it is great. Yeah, he could respond to the orange. He knew intuitively what it meant as a geologist.

And yeah, it's like after you're there, of course, you can like react, you know, the Apollo instrument package by Apollo 17, each one of the instrument packages they had was roughly quarter billion dollars worth of instrumentation, probably more by Apollo 17. And so they had a bunch of built on stuff to this. But again, it's like if you're driving a rover around and you see orange, you stop the rover too,

and you go investigate it. Like it's not like a unique capability. It just happens on a slightly slower cycle. No, but one point is if not, exactly as that went down where he was like, holy shit, there's orange rocks. We wouldn't have this idea of like serendipitous discovery. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly part of it. I feel like the last time we were on, we were talking about my Max Q hypothesis,

that the only people keep people, the only reason people care about Max Q is because Challenger happened roughly around Max Q. And if not for that, nobody gives a shit about Max Q. This, I feel like the Jack Schmidt theorem is if he didn't freak out over orange rocks, we probably wouldn't have this same cultural, you know, within our niche, cultural idea that humans can pick up on this thing so much more quickly and uniquely. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying they won't pick them up more quickly, right?

Of course, they can pick them up more quickly. But the cycle, particularly from the moon, is like six seconds versus, you know, microseconds, whatever it takes for the moon. I know I'm just digging myself into a hole with this. No, it's fine. Keep talking. I'm playing this entire clip next week. But again, I mean, it's like, that's what I'm saying.

I'm glad they're trying to do science. It's important to train the astronauts to do that. It adds justification. But it's not a replacement for highly calibrated instruments. The best arguments for human spaceflight is that they'll enable more science to happen within this massive effort that has been marshaled to keep humans alive and to bring them back, right? The biggest scientific value that came from Apollo wasn't the verbal descriptions of the Apollo astronauts. It was them bringing back samples, right? of the moon itself that were then able to be analyzed for the next 50 years in labs and

radio, you know, isotope dated and analyzed and cut through and studied in very deeply. In addition to all the instrumentation they deployed on the surface. So it's, you know, there's a larger trend that I've been studying that I've been preparing to write more about, which is this idea of what does it mean to do science and what does it mean to do productive science? And what does it mean when we say NASA enables science? and what types of science occurs? Is it breakthrough science?

Is it the most high priority questions that we have in terms of, you know, the fundamental questions about the cosmos or as determined by the scientific community? Or are you saying, well, we gathered some data and sure, that's valuable, right? Is it the most important data always? Well, if it's not like intentionally gathered to be such, it probably won't be, right? This is the switch that I'm seeing of the science to being a passive. or a hitchhiker onto space missions rather than being in the driver's seat. And it's like being the naturalist, right, on a British commerce ship or something,

you know, take your... And, you know, it's like, oh, well, look, that island's got really weird birds. Well, sorry, you know, we're going to this one over here because that's where the sweet, sweet spices are. And it's like, oh, well, you know, I'll just pick up some bugs, I guess, and bring them back. And, you know, we'll learn something. Is that the most important thing? Probably not, because it's not a dedicated science mission. And that's what the immediate rebuttal to that is Darwin was one of those guys.

That was a much more dedicated mission, right? And an effort. He spent a lot of time at the Galapagos. That's what I was kind of alluding to, right? As if the merchant ships wouldn't necessarily do that. And so the, yeah. Well, I was going to say, you can finish your point. And then I have a-

I'll say it's just lower hanging fruit back then too, right? I mean, that's what you could do right along science. But you can think about like the first observation, like the first really like global scheduled, globally synthesized and organized scientific observations were the Venus transit, I think of like the early 1800s. And like ships were sent out intentionally to try to measure when Venus went in front of the sun, which would help you learn all the things about like the geometric scale of the solar system and so forth. And, you know, that's a very new phenomenon to be able to do something like that. Yeah. I guess the one thing you do have to remember, though, is that one of the values of, like, the return that you get from doing science on something like Artemis 2,

as you're right, no one's going to, like, have a groundbreaking thesis from this data, probably. But it does establish the precedent and set the example of, like, why should we send people out there into the game. It's like, well, what did NASA do when they went there? Well, they went there and they did science. It's like, oh, cool. Okay, that's what we're supposed to do. And it like kind creates like some goodwill and, and it's like some, some ideas about like that is a purpose for exploring versus there are some much darker reasons we could start sending people all over the place, right? You know, they could, it could have been gone going with, you know, guns instead of cameras. And that would have been a whole different, a whole different situation. So I do like

that NASA sort of puts this at the forefront and giving that science ops role and kind of making that a big part of the whole experience, especially on the critical fly-by-day. You know, on the fly-by-day, they were doing science. That's all they did all day. And so I think that's kind of cool that that happens, even if it doesn't actually produce a lot of productive data. Yeah. I mean, I certainly don't disagree with you.

I think the trouble comes from if that then displaces all the other types of science that we need to be doing, right? Sure, sure. I have, and I'm, and I, this is one of those things where I need to make it really clear. I'm, I share it with you. I'm very glad that they are highlighting science and that's that they want to put this in the forefront. My argument, which is actually a version that comes from, there's a great essay called, I know, the end of the barnstorming era in space, which is one of the few, like, real arguments against human spaceflight,

which I'm not fully endorsing, but the argument was, like, on human spaceflight missions. no matter what the other goals of the mission are, the number one goal of any human spaceflight mission is always going to be returning the astronauts safely, as it should be, right? Just to be really clear. Any other scientific goal, any other mission goal, all of that is secondary, tertiary, quaternity,

whatever you want to go down the list. And as a consequence, and then there's also some fundamental incompatibilities, right? These are really cool pictures taken, you know, with the DSLRs of the moon, but if you zoom in, you'll see that they're a little blurry because they're being held by someone's hands, right? Very quickly, people learn that if you want really precise pointing long exposures,

you literally can't have humans not just holding, not holding the camera, but not even present. The original concepts of the international, what became the International Space Station, it was like, oh, we'll have a telescope on it. It'll be a satellite manufacturing facility. It'll be a place where we can have artificial gravity and create medicine. It turns out literally all those were impossible to reconcile with each other, right?

Because you have people bouncing around, inside of a space station, you're always going to have like jiggly vibrating modes. You're not going to have stable pointing on a telescope. If you're building things and trying to weld, God forbid in space, you're shooting like tiny little bits of molten metal everywhere. Makes it really not safe for a variety of things, including humans. You know, times a million.

So it's just like the complexities and value of people, the value of sending humans to space I'm saying is generally orthogonal to the scientific return. Science is a really important, I think, philosophical and symbol to emphasize. But if you want really high scientific return, you need to design things specifically to achieve high scientific return,

particularly in space. And what I'm concerned about is that the displacement of the actual high scientific return stuff with more of a kind of veneer of scientific activity in Artemis, particularly at the political levels, oh, well, we're doing plenty of science with Artemis. You see all the stuff in Artemis too. And again, this is a hard line to walk because I don't want to diminish in any way what the astronauts were doing.

I want to keep saying again, I think it's great that they did it. And I'm really happy humans are going back to the moon. But we are also seeing like a wholesale deconstruction of NASA scientific endeavor with the only things moving forward are relatively small, very modest hitchhiker science that will collect some data. It'll do some things. but will it discover life beyond Earth? Will it discover the origins of the cosmos? Will it look into the exoplanet atmospheres? No, I won't do any of that because you don't get that with right-along science.

You don't get that with astronauts looking at the surface of the moon, right? And so there's a deeper worry that I have about the patina of science displaced in the actual hard work of doing space science. Are you saying that Victor Glover, pump and iron is incompatible with stable spacecraft? Because that bro was rocking the spacecraft all the way out. They were bringing guns into space, Jake. Come on, you just do that? Man, he was put on a clinic out there.

I feel so vindicated, Jake, for my years-long Victor Glover love on this show. I mean, the vast majority of this show's history has been Victor Glover fan club from Anthony. And I feel like I'm finally happy that everybody came around to it. I was watching it on the TV in one of the early days of the mission, just sitting on my couch living, I'm watching it. Just doing what we've all been doing for last week is just like spying on people in space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Life vlogging or whatever. Yeah. And my, my wife walked by and stopped dead in her tracks. I'm like, hello. During one of his shirtless workouts. During one of his,

one of his like, oh, whenever they needed a new tool, he always found a way to make it about his t-shirt. I'll get you that way in there. Best moment was when they, when they were like, sorry,

we didn't know if you wanted us to cut away and then Reed called back. Oh, we were fine with it going. it out. Yeah. Of course you were. This reminds us the benefit of like actual professional astronauts versus space tourists.

You know, real astronauts are in really good shape, right? They're like Adonisus. Yeah. They're just like outlier human beings. Like 14 PhDs. And I'll run a marathon in space because I need to. It's not even a choice. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like we've transitioned into the planetary budget requirement. as a topic. Yeah, this is my favorite photo. It's fucking badass. I love it. It's great. We can still talk about photos. I mean, I think their pictures are great. I'm in a lot of trouble. This is why I meant about losing. No, you're not. You're not in trouble. I get it. I think the one thing that I would push on, right, is, like, spend more time talking about doing human health science because I think that's an area that obviously, like, there's debates about exactly what we're

studying if it's microgravity versus partial gravity. I think one of the most useful things that we need to figure out is how much gravity is enough gravity to forestall the effects that we see in microgravity. Is moon enough? Is Mars enough? Do you need one full G? Like, that is one of the most useful future human questions we could possibly answer, and there's zero time being spent about talking about that specific thing. But if you ask, why go live on a moon base for six months, can you give me one single reason? I'm like, it would be really good to know if one six G is enough to forestall bone effects and I effects and all the other weird shit that happens when you're in space. then just a, just a, again, I'm feeling prickly on this, but even then that's a totological

argument, right? That's like, we need to go into space so we can understand what it means to go into space on the human body, right? So it's certainly services the need to go on the space, but there's, it's a self-reinforcing question, right? There's no broader independent science question that that answer is that is not itself like generating, done in service of staying out in space longer, right? Yeah. I mean, I guess if we were dolphins living in the ocean. On the space station, too, of various versions of this. I know what you're meaning is like levels of gravity and stuff. And it's certainly, it's an important question if like me, I want people to stay out in space longer, right? But it's not like a broader science. It's not a

first principle is kind of like scientific question that needs to be addressed. It's like an applied science question regarding the need, the pre-existing or axiomatic belief that people should be going out there and staying longer, right? I don't even, but I don't take it from a, I don't take it from a should-deligable. It's like a very self, it's a tautological argument. Yeah. Yeah, and my difference is that I don't, I don't take it from a people should be going out into space. My angle is like, people are going to. Like, I'm an inevitableist in this, right? Like, all of human history, all of history of life is, things don't live in that other

spot. I'm going to go live there and see if I can survive because maybe that'll be an evolutionary advantage to myself. And I see going into space from a human perspective the same deal. Like if dolphins had spaceships, they would definitely be flying out to space too. We're just the only ones with spaceships right now. So, but I do think it's a physical pressure to go out and go beyond. So I take it from the angle of like, this is happening. We should figure out, you know, if we lived only in the oceans, we would try to do some land exploration too because we'd be like, well, I wonder what goes on up there. And I just, this is no different to me. So, yeah, I get your point that like it only serves that purpose, but I think I end up on the end of like, well, it's happening regardless.

We should figure it out. Yeah. I mean, it's valuable for that end. And I think you bring up the bigger serious issue, which is people are saying that like the U.S. is in competition with China, but I think you raise the important point that we're actually in competition with the dolphins. That's a great point. You got to really step ahead of them because you give them one chance. They'll take it. They'll be at the moon before you know it. 100%.

And then they're going to either. They'll take a gallon, right? Yeah. Orcas are sinking ships over in Spain or whatever. They'd be, they'd be sinking Orion as quick as they could. You've seen what's been going on with the orcas, right? Like, they're getting pissed off. Yeah. Just wait until the dolphins are there.

Anyway, let's talk about the budget. Making use of extra time here. That's good. Yeah, yeah. Well, we had to get that out of the way. That's why we allocated the first 30 to that. So we got 60 for this crazy ship. Those are a beautiful picture. Allow me, can I, can I, can I, can I,

I wax poetic briefly before I get angry. Yes. About budgets. Like you guys, I am less than 54 years old. Right. And so my childhood and my entire life has been going to the moon has been not just a, it's been a piece of history, right? It has been something that had happened past tense, almost to the point, and probably for a lot of people of mythic history, right?

It's like a back in the age of, you know, gods and men, you know, striding upon the earth, and you could, pure will alone, could summon a rocket out of nothing and send people to the moon and back in 10 years. It has this epic mythos about it, and watching Artemis 2 launch,

and then watching, like, the TLI, and then seeing those videos and watching and hearing them in those voices, all of that myth, it was like torn out of history, and suddenly it was my present. presence, and it was my experience of witnessing a moon mission that I don't know how it ends, right, because it's not history anymore.

That was jarring in like the most wonderful way, and it was truly inspiring and just like uplifting to witness that. And so it was an amazing moment, is amazing moment to see this again, and to be back in the, to show, I think, how important that ambition is in human spaceflight to say, let's keep pushing this boundary. So it really was something to witness, despite my critiques of the scientific return. Yeah, I thought I would care 0% about breaking the Apollo 13 record.

I thought, I was like, this is so uninteresting because it's just a fact of this orbital trajectory and where the moon is and there's so many variables. And it's also not by that much. I totally cried when that happened. Because it actually hit me in a way of like, oh, in the same way, right? That my whole life was, we're doing less than we were doing

before I was alive. And finally, we were farther than it. And that sunk in at a level that hit, like, Anthony before some portion of him, his job was talking about space. Like, that guy, it hit that guy more than this guy right now. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it was. Well, it's also like a lot of the last 50 years have been about almost this nostalgia

for the 50 years that came before in some aspects. Like, okay, what was that line that we were promised, line cars but got 140 characters. Like, that was our revolution that we got to witness. Instead of watching people go to the moon, you know, what was it? If you were 54 years before

1969, right? You're talking about like 19, World War I. The airplane. Yeah. Yeah, you're like just starting World War I. The U.S. hadn't even entered the war yet. You were just excited about this new thing

called indoor plumbing, right? And it's like, wow, what a concept. It's just the ability to see something happening, even if it is in a sense, like a not entirely new, but it is functionally, completely new experience. And it's a radical departure from the last 50 years of spaceflight was really exciting to see that. And it really starts to this, I think, again, we pass this tipping point of inertia for this program where I think now, and particularly again, assuming, and we all obviously hope for the safe return of the astronauts on Friday, that this will keep going now,

that it's past any point where it wouldn't. Yeah. It's very special for me, too, because is no longer solely an American domain. And it's like even though the Canadian contribution to this was, you know, almost like the science, it was sort of auxiliary, right?

Like, you know, we didn't really make this mission happen. We participated. We helped, but we didn't. It was you guys that made it happen, right? But still, just that now, you know, there's a there's a record in space now held by a Canadian you know a Canadian holds the record

shared but holds the record for furthest to have ever gone from Earth and that's like it's hard to even imagine that 10 years ago and so that's uh that's pretty pretty it's almost like I'll keep a Canadian here this is like when a Gretsky record falls you know it's like wow I'd never I thought that was going to just be there forever like I didn't think that that was going to be a thing that ever happened in my life you know those were fixtures their institutions those records you know He might get his taken away before anyone beats it, though, based on how things are going up there, you know? Yeah, yeah, we'll see. You raise an interesting point, chick, which is, I would always say, though, that Jeremy is, like, the Canadian president, like, the international presence is actually one of the reasons this is happening, too.

Like, that was when Artemis was being, you know, in its creation. I call it a Scott Pace, the Pace doctrine of space policy, which is the geopolitical international aspect of using space intentionally to drive and strengthen alliances, kind of quaint sounding now maybe compared to some of the current politics, but in the first Trump administration, it was still like this, that value of it. And that's what helps sustain this. I mean, also the fact this mission wouldn't have happened without Europe building the service module that has performed flawlessly so far.

And it's an international mission through and through. And that has been so important to building the support for this, even though it's been challenged recently, it's still key, I should say, and critical to how we got here. Yeah, I agree with that. You can keep that arm, no, Jake. Add a justification. Keep that arm.

Keep the arm. We'll find a place for them. We'll find a place for it. Okay, so it'll pick up a little robots or something. Yeah. Casey, can you give us a quick rundown of what happened with this plan trade budget request? Because I thought that this was behind us.

And then it's like PBR2 electric boo-glu here. And we got, I mean, what virtually looks like kind of the same, the same hit. Like, it's basically rewriting last year's ideas. It is. what happened here? What's going on? So it did, we did wrap it up last year, right? Unfortunately, we have to work on an annual budget cycle. So this is, we had a 24% cut proposed for NASA last year.

Congress ultimately allowed like a 0.1.5% cut plus billions of dollars for NASA, is arguably actually a larger increase. But it was a very positive and very thorough rejection of that plan. That was just over two months ago when that happened. But not to be deterred. The White House Budget Office and the White House released its 2027 proposal for starting the next fiscal year. During this mission, which is actually one of the things that really, I thought,

frankly, wasn't a real insult to the astronauts here, putting their lives on the line, to the agency that is pulling this off, right, this incredible achievement, as we talked about. And you're right, they literally changed nothing. learned nothing. It's from this alternate political reality where they didn't get their ass handed to them by Congress in terms of basically losing every proposal that they put forward. It is exactly the same. They once again proposed to cut NASA by this time 23 percent because of that small difference in the in the numbers. But it's functioning the same. It's six billion dollar cut. They want to cut science in half. They want to get rid of all STEM outreach education. They want to

lay off more people, about 1,500 to 2,000 more civil servants, more of the same. Like, this is such a copy-paced budget that when it was released, they even highlighted the fact that they're going to cancel Mars sample sample return because it's an over-budget program and it will save money, right? For folks who listen to this, they may say, huh, the mission that was canceled last year? Yeah, the mission that was canceled last year, it has no money to save. They didn't bother, or Grock didn't know, right? I like to point out, even that the cover art for this budget request is AI generated, right?

NASA notably being an agency without a lot of good imagery to choose from, right? So they had to just. There are the West's or James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble actually asked for fiscal year 2026 money. Because again, they forgot to update it or Grock forgot to update it. the tables. So there's like it's there it's error filled. It's it is, uh, they make claims that aren't relevant. They and then they it's also incredibly I'll go into it later, but it's the least transparent NASA budget I've ever had I've ever seen. Um, so it's yeah, it's a, it's a hideous budget and and very confusing too because it contains many, uh, I mean, this is the official

request by the White House to Congress for what they want to do with NASA next year, basically. Um, And it's radically different in a number of ways from what the NASA ignition event was discussing a couple of weeks ago. So it's really not clear. It's actually added confusion and created confusion. So if you open this up in Adobe... I did not look at this picture, by the way. I'm putting this... Yeah, I generated.

Stars, it has the correct number of stars, at least. Yeah, you can see, like, that's a weird... Something's weird about the astronaut helmet kind of backset. But yeah, if you hover over it in Adobe PDF fewer, it'll say generated. It must have some, it has some metadata that says generate with AI. And the prompt is like an astronaut walking on the surface of the moon with the earth

in the back. That's the prompt with it. Yeah. Yeah. We did take a lot of those picks. Yeah. I know. We had a handful of them, right?

And we have lots of actual just art generated based on actual plans. So yeah, a lot of questionable choices. So, I mean, that's like part of it too. Like, even they couldn't even not be sloppy about. the wholesale destruction of the scientific enterprise at NASA. It does pertain to add more money to Artemis. When you kind of balance it out with the extra money that Congress passed last year that they incorporate, it basically works out to flat.

And so you have basically you keep Artemis flat and then you just really slash everything else pretty hideous amounts. So it's a, it's terrible budget. And so should I stop there before I go on to the transparency thing? Because that's kind of notable, too. I will say it cancels 54 science missions, almost half of the portfolio. So it's actually worse in some ways than last year, astonishingly. Was the, is it just the NASA part that's copy pasted or was the whole PBR kind of like that, too?

I don't know. I just haven't read the details of it. I would say I would be surprised if it was only the NASA part. But the NASA part is the only part I can speak to with any confidence. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Can I be a, I swear I'm a millennial for as Gen X, I'm about the sound. So why care?

Like, why, if this was just resoundingly rejected by even the Republican members of Congress, and then they went over the top last summer to get even more funny for everything, like, if they're running it back, why is this? Why aren't anyone else going to run it back, right? Like, do you think there is a difference that Congress be more amenable to this during an election year and everything else that's going on? So it's not, I'm relatively confident that through, again, our kind of consistent grassroots pressure and effort that it will not be approved as is. However, there's a, the White House has been exploiting the difference in speed between the executive branch and the legislative branch, where because now this is the official White House request, NASA officially has to make this as the

baseline plan for everything it does from now on until told otherwise through legislation by Congress, right? And until told by signing that into law, right? It can't just be, well, we saw what's the Senate proposed. It has to be all the way through the process. Yeah. I mean, there's a bit of a wiggle room with if both houses of Congress are clearly about to reject it, they'll lessen up a little bit if there is.

like a continuing resolution or thing. You know, there's a little bit of wiggle room that they have. But that doesn't mean that during the next six months, six to seven months, everyone in the NASA Science Division has to make plans to terminate missions that may not be terminated to wind things down. They'll be giving out fewer grants. They won't be starting new missions. They can't make contracts beyond the current fiscal year because they have to plan for no money next year, right, even if they assume Congress will fix it. They cannot plan beyond what they have. to spend. And so this baseline means a huge amount of effort will be wasted planning for this budget baseline that will not, probably will not happen. But again, it still could happen.

Like it's not zero. The midterms mix things up a lot. If probably it would just be delaying congressional action. And then of course, depending on how the midterms come out, if Democrats take control of Congress. There could be like an ongoing indefinite standoff between the two branches of government. The White House would be far less likely to work with Congress on this. So it's, it's not a fate of complete that this is going to happen. But in the meantime, it's just terribly huge amounts of uncertainty, huge amounts of wasted time, inefficient, right? I mean, it's just incredible inefficient use. NASA should be focused on its mission and executing its mission. and it will not be doing that.

And to your point, name a especially midterm election year when the budget has gotten sorted out prior to, I don't know, February of the following year? Right. It's like almost a full year of this. Yeah. And so it's a huge waste of time, which I think is part of that larger problem is that some of the elements

in the Office of Management and Budget, notably, are happy to have that disrupt. option and inefficiency, right? That there's a larger political ideology, even contrary, I would argue to Trump's himself about maintaining U.S. leadership and space of just going after science and NASA science. That's going to be a consequence here. So it's just a, it's very rough. And now Jared Isaacman, as a member of this administration, you may have already seen,

is now duty bound to defend this publicly as a consequence of that, because it's a statement of administration. priority policy. It's part of the administration. He has to follow his marching orders. Yeah. Yeah. The eyes man part of this is very interesting because like, I mean, we try to make a point

of not guessing people's motivations and trying to like judge them by their actions, right? But the you could really go kind of either way in this, right? Like it's almost like a really modern lesson in political pragmatism because it's like I don't know whether Jared Eisenman wants this budget or not. I don't know if he thinks this is a good budget or a bad budget for NASA. And he probably won't give us an honest answer until the book comes out many, many years from now.

But like either he does think it's good and he's kind of going after it. And that kind of lines up in a sense from the like all of his priorities have been very human space flight focus. Like his personal agenda seems to be like lots of magnification on Artemis and and the crew stuff. and sort of lip service to science, right? But then you could also argue that maybe he does think this is a bad budget, but from a pragmatist standpoint, you're like, well, if I am the administrator in this

administration, like, what is the overlap between what they want and what I want? That's where I can do the most good, and that's what I'm going to go after. And then that's like, that's the maximalist way to say, what can my impact be in the short time that I have here, right? And so it's very interesting to try and game that out and see, like, read between the lines and look at the policies and traffic. I'm nowhere on it, but that's like an interesting thing for me to sort of like ponder right now, right? For sure.

And I, yeah, I also can't claim any insight into the man's soul. And I take him at his word that he wants to have NASA stay, you know, invested in science. But I think you're right that his interest, if nothing else, it says natural interests. Yeah. I guess it's not wrong to want to be interested in home. He used to say, I don't want to make the case that he's incorrect there. But it's his personal philosophy. I think that's his passion.

I mean, that's where his passion winds up. It's clearly also the part of NASA that needed the most attention. Ironically, science tends to be just a healthy, it's smaller, it's cheaper, it's a healthier program that the goals and activities are far more prescribed

and constrained because you have, I think we've talked about this, it has the external value, you know, there's the external forcing function of just like, of reality that then drives, questions. These are the most important questions given what we know is an external piece of knowledge that then can drive consensus among scientific community. It's also much more diverse,

right? Like you have so many more projects under the science umbrella that, you know, some of them can do well and some of them can be poorly and it's okay. But like, and the human space light is a magnitude cheaper, right? Yeah. If Artemis doesn't go well, then human spaceflight is not going well, period. Like there's it's it's it's tied at the hip. It's a it's a monoprogram in a sense, right? Like you got ISS I guess, but really it's artemus. So it's yeah and and just like the scale of the screwups can be that much more expensive to right. It's I mean the the MSR, the poster child for this egregiously over budget and in bloated program is roughly like four years of SLS spending. Right. So it's just completely different scale. It's basically,

what SLS spent between Artemis 1 and June. Casey, we're still loving this mission, though. It's out there. It's a great crew, okay? That's a next week's conversation. I think most people should remember that I've been the lone defender of the SLS as a anchor point for why we have a moon program at all.

Bro, rocket road trip originalist right here. I was in on that rocket road trip. Hell yeah. it's impressive Jake and I are going to do part two once it shows up Jake we're doing part two we're doing it again that's a planetary society throwback

there hell yeah I fucking love that that was I remember being there and like really you have one they had one palette to move pieces of of SLS and it's like that's why we can't make for at the same time

and it's like okay man and then yet your wrap up at the end was like it's uncancellable it was right we ran that test last year again in case case i need to start putting money down on this um get some polling market odds up man yeah yeah that's right i guess i could put money down um where was i on that so the the the scientific aspect you know in terms of science itself uh you have these kind of clear

priorities and yes you have all these divisions and and the varieties of ways in which you pursue them And I think Isaacman, again, I think his passion aligns with and his interest is naturally line with human spaceflight, but also in order to be both selected and then confirmed, I mean, it's reinforced by that too. This administration is also primarily interested in human spaceflight and clearly not that interested in the NASA science portion. And that just kind of, I think, dovetails together. I mean, again, I don't think there's a NASA administrator of any political persuasion who would prefer less money to work with, right? I think there's nothing else. So I can't imagine he's excited about this. I don't know beyond it.

I mean, again, he came in very late. So again, he wasn't confirmed until December. This process that creates the president's budget request usually begins the summer before, the spring before. that. So it had already been pretty far down the line, passed back at one of the last stops of the train before. Well, as we can see, it was written a long time ago. Well, yeah, I mean, clearly, there's a lot of, there's a lot of like, traditional tenses and things of things that have clearly happened. There's a few things that acknowledge changes, though, like the gateway restructuring is in there, so that clearly they got that in there. It's very, it's very confusing. And this is what

I mean, like, there's also, I'm sure you talk about NASA ignition, right? This, I'd love to talk about this. Leo space stations, private space stations, don't make a lick of sense. There's no commercial value for them. There's nothing been made of value in them. No one has any interest to pay to go there. There's no market for it. It completely undermines this faith-based approach to commercial post-IS commercial space

station that we've been running down on this road for the last, I don't know, how many years now is seven, eight years. And so we admit this. When NASA said the hard truths, now we're going to build this new module onto the ISS. We're going to attach some other things to it. Maybe eventually I can free float off. We'll keep running the ISS longer.

Lo and behold, in this budget request, zero change to that program. ISS, the orbits in 2031. We're going to have two free-floating private stations. It's just, so what path is NASA taking here? It's, why did that not change? Why could they acknowledge Gateway, but not acknowledge the other thing.

What is NASA doing here? Not the great one. Rosalind Franklin Rover, right? The European first Mars rover. NASA had come on as a partner to launch the mission to provide landing capabilities, radioisotope thermal heating pellets to keep it warm on the surface. You know, it's about $200 billion partnership. And they hired a million, billion?

200 million. 200 million. Million. Yeah, different. A couple years of SLS on that front. It's not human spaceflight. It's more than four years of SLS. Yeah.

It's at least two or a relaunch. It's less than one launch of a commercial resupply. I paid out over like five years. And they highlighted this at NASA Ignition 2, where we've, and NASA sent a letter to the ESA director back in November, recommitting to the mission, which was, fantastic news, it's gone in this budget. So, I mean, is it okay? Why did they talk about it three weeks ago then, like as a highlight if it's no longer in the budget? It's, it's so many confusing things. It's because they named it after a lady. We've been here before with the Roman sales to go.

It's a branding problem with this administration. Yeah. But it's just it's it's, it's, there's, you know, so much confusion that I, we need answers to that haven't. come up yet. It's been interesting. I don't know if you've been watching the press conferences at Hunter Ryan. The first, and this is not my joke, but someone said the first rule of NASA budget is that you can't talk about NASA budget at this press card. They just refuse to talk about it. But we have, there's a lot of things they owe answers to based on what they just presented three weeks ago and then what we see now in the budget document. Two things. One, hold all of your commercial space.

Station Thoughts. And I'm going to, Jake, I'm going to do some live booking here on the show to see if Casey's available two Thursdays from now. Because I got a text from Eric Berger the other day that said he needs to do a part two of commercial lunar or commercial Leo discussions. When it was me, you and him, we got into a big fight on this show about commercial space stations. He wants to run it back. We can include Jake this time because he's not traveling. Let us know.

Number two, I've lost my train of thought number two. I think I can't, yeah, I should be back. I'll be coming back from our day of action. I should be back by that Thursday. I can say yes to that. Do you have something to say about the podcast you released today, Anthony? Is that where you were going? No, good call out.

I talked to Pam Melroy this morning to talk about a lot of space policy. Did she explain why we need a permanent heartbeat in Earth orbit? Because I still don't understand that one. No, we touched on a little bit. Awesome to, like, she was game for all. I've been very critical of the Bill Nelson era on a lot of fronts, and I rolled them all out. I read her that quote that Amit Shatria said during Ignition where he was like, this is like therapy to people.

Super game to talk about all of this. Some indications that one of my biggest criticisms was that they didn't request more money and fight for more money of commercial Leo when they had the geopolitical opportunity. I pulled up a Charlie Bolden quote that he posted on, I shit you not, Google Plus. They were blogging on Google Plus in 2014. That's where the NASA blog was. You can't even link to it anymore. It's not even on the wayback machine.

Unbelievable. but they use that as a geopolitical moment to get a lot of funding, and I said, you know, why didn't we do that then? It sounds like they requested it, but OMB shut that down in a very similar vein as we're having here. So we did talk a little bit about this drift between, you know, the requests and what Congress allocates. And sometimes I wonder if this might have been where I was going, Jake, good, good work. Like the, the, the, Isaacman always says we don't have a top line problem, right, at NASA. Sometimes it feels like the request. are just purely top line driven things.

Like, we'll just keep zeroing out STEM because we have to hit a certain number. We know Congress will add it back, but this at least lets us get that storyline out that we requested so-and-so amount. And, like, I think your best point, KZ, is that, but the churn that creates for the intervening six to 12 months

is not worth what is actually going into it or what you're getting out of it. But it feels a lot like that. Like, well, we have to hit $18 billion for NASA because we have an overall mandate to hit this amount and spend $1.5 trillion on the military or whatever. So it's just is what it is. We know Congress will add it back, but it's a little bit of a House of Cards that we have to just build it this way because we know it'll fall down. But whatever it is, like, you know, without regard.

Congress seems willing to give it to them. Like that the easiest solution is just you don't even have to increase it. Just keep it the same. Congress will be happy to do it. Right. I think that's the lesson they learned. But it gets rolled up into this larger storyline they need to tell. Yeah, for sure.

I think there's other, it's a political document as much as anything else, the president's budget request. It's rarely this out of sync with the current program of record, I think, and that's where, to an ex, a version of this game happens, as you point out pretty much every single year. But again, they're not talking about cutting science in half or getting completely good of the... It's 5% not. two or three percent that they actually want the difference to be it. You know, which isn't great. But yeah, I mean, it's like when the disparity is as large, then you have, how do you run a program that way when you have like your, your two potential pathways or just a chasm,

right, separating them? Interesting question about commercial stations in 2014. I mean, the ISS hadn't even really gone fully operational by that, right? That was 2015, I think, is when it was. No, no, so 2014 was, they hadn't gotten. I mean, I think I used one of your charts on this, but they hadn't gotten full funding for commercial crew. And that was the first year that they even got close because Charlie Bolden went out and posted on Google Plus, which was obviously the place to exert congressional pressure in 2014. You know, that this is the moment to fund, I don't know what's going on back there.

If you have construction noises, it's not my house. This was the moment to fully fund this program because of this situation that we're in when Russia invaded Crimea. Crew, okay, yeah, for commercial crew. Yeah, my point was in 2022. which I cannot believe that was 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine again or additionally, I guess. Never really stopped

invading Ukraine. But that Charlie Bolden was willing to use that geopolitical situation to get the funding they asked for for crew. And my point was that's a moment where you could exert that pressure and say this partner is not only tweeting at our

journalists that they are war criminals, but also antagonizing that. I was still Ragozan era, right? He hadn't gone to the warfront yet. He was antagonizing NASA with the trampoline talk and everything else that if you ever wanted to ask for a billion dollars for a space station, that was the moment. It was February that you could have rolled it out in that budget request. And there was from what was visible from the outside, absolutely zero effort to do that.

So I'm left with the fact that they just truly don't value it, right? And even I think NASA's right on the assessment of the commercial station market, but I think they're absolutely wrong in the way that they're handling it here, which is, I'd rather them just say, we don't have the money to make this worth it to us. We think there's a market here. We're happy to be a customer, but we just don't have the budget available

to fund the development in the way that we wish we could. So if it develops, great. We'll obviously be a great customer of yours, but we cannot participate in this era of the thing. But here's our straight answer. We're syncing the ISS in 2030. We'll buy services beyond that. the continuous heartbeat thing is the real mystifier.

Like, why is that valuable? And that's what's causing all the trouble. They've like asserted their own policy that is an incredibly high bar and would be a lot simpler not to have, right? Then you could have many more options, potentially even commercial ones. But to have a continuous presence and lower the orbit, which again, I just do not, I don't understand the absolute requirement to have that beyond just pride at this point. Yeah.

That's a cool thing to say and it means absolutely nothing. Yeah, yeah, it's, to me, it's slightly a weird, like, way to say. I mean, you can put like... I mean, it's cool, objectively, you would agree that no, not, not all the humans have been on Earth since Halloween 2000. Like, that's cool. You just put a pig heart up there. You know, shock it.

Just keep it rolling. A little small little thing. There you go. It goes heartbeat. I mean, I think going back to 2014. though you it's real I don't think that would work because the context then was that SpaceX was still seen as unproven like SpaceX hadn't happened yet the way that it's happened since then and there was a hideous as you said like there was a hideous amount of political pushback

by moving in that direction and that's why they underfunded commercial crew for so long it really wasn't until they got Boeing on board that the money started to flow a little more for that but that without that buy in and confidence, I think it would have even, and with ISS having just finished or roughly about to finish full operational configuration, I don't think Congress was in any mood to further go down that commercial line yet. That really didn't explode until, I'd say, the first Trump administration when they really bought into that 100%. And now it's moved into, like, to me, faith-based economics in terms of just asserting and hoping a market will show up for commercial stations when every study ever shows that it's impossible to work.

And so I just don't see a good solution. I thought their path that they, I thought it was the best thing of NASA Ignite at the ignition event personally, is that they said that and that they were so plain and honest with it and that they put forward an interesting proposal of how to deal with it. And there's also the fact that I don't think this Congress will ever let the ISS end sooner than it. But don't, so you don't, you're not susceptible to what I would describe the Phil McAllister argument that that obviously NASA doesn't see this being a commercial market because they don't have the mindset to look at it the way they would need to to run a commercial market. And by openly stating the fact that there isn't a commercial market, you're sinking any attempt to generate one. Was that trackable enough? Should I restate it?

I just don't think there's a commercial market. I just honestly don't, I think they're not treating it like a commercial market. I mean, I think Phil has a money. But is it NASA's job to go out and state that? But it's not their job to go out and like create fantasy either. Like that's, but that's what I'm saying. They don't need to weigh in that way.

Just say this isn't our priority. We don't have the money for it. Yeah. We'll be a customer if there is a market, but we don't have the development money. That's the difference to me. Saying we don't have the development money is different than saying this is not a viable market because they don't they don't know that's not their job they've never done the studies on that from a business perspective they do it from a no no no no no they do it

from the not does this serve nasa's needs perspective there's a there's a zero base difference in the way that they do that i don't to be clear casey i don't think there's a market here i've argued on this show vehemently i think this is all some bullshit but but i don't think it's nassas role to say well We have done all of the homework, and there is not a business case to be found here. When you have Vast saying, well, no, in your dumb way that you set out originally, there is not. So we're going to go around the system entirely, fly our own space station modules, and I bet we can find customers there. Like, they left that out as already decided that that's not going to work. And Vast is outside of this program entirely.

Right. So I think that's kind of shitty for them. Yeah, I know. I heard it was like a funeral vibe in the crowd when that section was happening. And you could see it in the pained look of, it was her name, Dana Weigel's face when she was saying it. It felt bad for her. I see where you're coming from. I think, so Stippy, the Science Technology Policy Institute put out a paper, a research report on viability of commercial stations back in like 2017.

I guess it wasn't NASA, but it was a business case study of them. and they weren't completely negative. There's like, if you assume they make maximum revenue and decrease costs by this large amount, then there's one little quadrant where theoretically the financials could work, but it's probably not going to work. That's such a generic business assessment. Yeah. If boss plummet and customers show up, you have a business.

Exactly. It's like all we have to do is just assume a lot of, of revenue, billions of dollars of revenue and lots of customers. And then we're golden folks. I mean, I think, but I see you're coming from, but at the same time, I think NASA has a responsibility to speak honestly, too, of like, we don't see this working for the needs of the nation, because that's also what NASA has at play. Like, it's not just that NASA should blindly throw out billions of dollars and say,

please commercial market help us get this what we have declared to be a national priority. Abra-cadabra market. Yeah, like we can't, like, what is it? Hope is not a plan. And I think doing the opposite, kind of maybe the worst case, we can all agree, maybe the worst case scenario was just kind of underfunding it while not saying anything to make it impossible for this to possibly work, and then also not acknowledging that they don't believe it's going to work.

I was going to say, Phil, I'm sure, has much more personal experience seeing the type of people and type of discussion. So I obviously believe what he says in that context. But I mean, I've just seen so many other parts of NASA in the last seven, ten years, 100% buy in on the commercial fixed price thing. Like, I can't, maybe one thing in Gateway was like a, was like a cost plus sole source contract, right? Everything else was like fixed price.

Everything knew since that has been basically a fixed price or commercial procurement. So it's hard. I just don't quite understand like what would make it work. If you're, if you need to spend billions of more dollars to make a, a private sector marketplace exist, then it doesn't sound like that much of a private sector marketplace to me. If only the government had spent billions of more dollars that have a real effective market. My problem is, I have a general policy in my life that I don't do math in other people's heads. I do my math, and I take responsibility from my math. And that's what the Jared Isaacman mantra has been,

of like, NASA's going to own their part of it. There's areas where we haven't held ourselves the standards that we should. So we're just going to speak about NASA's things. And my problem was this violated that rule by saying, but their business models don't work, which, like, all I've heard from people internal to these companies is that doesn't. So I believe that more, but I think it's wrong for NASA to say that in that way, because it's doing their work for them. And that's a violation of the separation that I think Jared Isaacman has espoused that he would like to exist. But at the same time, that's a double standard because the companies have wanted NASA to also give them like the to say that it will work right like in any and i'm saying just not even commercial

stations it's been now policy that nassas must you know support the private space uh economy like that's so this is maybe part of the the the faustian bargain you get when you invite the government into your nascent economy and market and say oh you're only supposed to give us the good stuff right you're not supposed to have any broader opinion than that. Because then it's just one way, and it distorts it in a different way, if they can't speak honest. And I think this is why NASA is just not, they've never really been comfortable in that position, right? Their job is not to be solely a booster for private aerospace.

They have been kind of grafted onto their responsibilities and an expectation, right? but NASA should really just be a customer and support it through, you know, just by procuring their services, not also acting as this development investor, you know, picking, you know, the classic picking winners and losers that they find themselves in. So I wonder if that's the tension. Well, in this case, they just pick all losers, to be honest. They were like, you know, all a bunch of losers we're out on peace. I mean, yeah, I mean, what was discordant to me about that whole discussion is that they're like, okay, there's no market. This isn't kind of work. Nothing in space has ever been commercialized to be useful.

And that's why we're doubling down in our commercial payload delivery systems on the moon. But these spacesuits, let me tell you. And those are all, those are all just fine. Those are clearly unlike space stations that people have a chance of getting to and could theoretically be something with somebody. We have actual tourist missions being the guy that bought two of them. yeah it's like those however gravy we're good those those will always work um so there's still like a weird you know they haven't quite figured it out but i mean it's been it's what's allowed ardomas to

progress with a third of apollo's funding overall right with one large government you know a couple large government aerospace contracts within that um that the promise that external money will come in and fill the gap that nassad doesn't have to to spend um and then i guess that's what we're going to test here. This is, I find it also interesting going back to Artemis 2. The last gasp of the old aerospace prime model of doing things, but it's, fuck if it's not working, like it's really, it's pulling it off, maybe with the toilet issue. For some definition of working, yeah. Yeah. For our first shakedown cruise, right? The, is this the last one or will this be the reminder when we're waiting like in 2035?

watching China land on the moon multiple times while SpaceX is six weeks away from launching Starship again. They're like, oh, well, we still got our commercial money. I don't know. Jake, what do we need to hit before we lay Casey out of here? We got not that, we have long left, but not that long left relative to how long we could talk. What do we got to do? We got to do Gateway.

What else did you want to get out of ignition? Well, I mean, okay, let's tie them together. We got 15 minutes left here. Let's try and tie together in some future. I'm going to try, you're going to be mad at me, Anthony. I'm going to try and ask this question again.

But like, game this out, right? So we have the, we have the PBR getting with these weird numbers. I have a weird crackpot theory that this administration is fully cognizant of the fact that they're going to get their asses handed to them in November. And there was like, why I waste time on this PBR than when it's just going to be like,

that's a, that's a random theory I have. You know, maybe they're, maybe they're being really efficient here. What would make you think that, Jake? What about public opinion polling right now would make you think that? But getting this out there, right?

So we have this PBR and then we have all this ignition stuff here. Like how do we get through the next two years? Because it feels like there's like just all this like weird, unanswered questions. And this has to reconcile and there's an election. And the schedules don't make sense. And the money's all going to war. And like, I just don't know how we reconcile all this. and what is the likely path forward here?

Like from your experience watching this, you know, put your biggest Cynicat on and be like, well, actually, this is all just noise. This is all just noise. The real thing that's going to happen is this old, same old story and it's going to be, what is that, right? Yeah, boy, I thought I've had, I've been trying not to wear my Cynicat team.

I mean, I've been putting on my Cynicat pretty a lot during this episode. I'm in space, right, We all have to be professional optimists, but I'm also like, but I also like frequently fixate on, you know, the difficulty thing. Mainly out of like a humility, I think, of trying to just how hard this stuff is. The, I need to step back for a second, right? Because it's like, we are in a situation where we are returning now to the moon for the first time, right, in 50 years. We have a real shot at making this a long-term program. at the same time, like, the level of destruction being proposed for science is hard to imagine.

And the damage, even if it gets funded back, like we saw last year that NASA awarded a quarter fewer scientific research grants than it had the year before with the same amount of money. The actual process of science is slowing down with all of this friction. there's a lot of other internal policy stuff that they've created. A lot of red tape now just to do science on top of everything else. And so you have this weird bifurcation of human spaceflight kind of returning almost, but in a weird way, kind of like this nostalgic apotheosis of hitting the moon again. And this time we'll do, you know, all the stuff will finally happen. It'll all open back up and we'll be, now we'll get our moon base.

now we'll do X, Y, and Z, and we'll land, you know, there's a big higher level theme in that, in that statement there, the modern day politics, that's for sure. The nostalgia, right? Yeah, and it was, you know, Apollo 8 happened at a pretty rough period too, right? There's a lot of really nasty stuff going on and tension and discord politically and nationally. And so I'm, it's hard to, what I see is the main problem is, I mean, first, I do think this is a solvable problem. I think we should have a lot more confidence that the political pushback can work on this. But the tool that we have for political pushback, it's like a, it's a very kind of broad tool. It's not refined. And so I'm confident, but at the same time, people can't take it for granted that it just will happen, right? That's the problem. We need to take this seriously, even if I'm confident we can fix it because we still need that.

political pressure to make it rise up to be a point of awareness to fix. Don't have confidence that'll happen. Have confidence that you will do it. Yeah. It says they have confidence. You can help change it, which I think we should. We have already, you know, just a couple of weeks ago before this budget came out, we helped circulate a letter within Congress. We're like 103 members of Congress in the House, a quarter of the House of Representatives,

signed on to a letter saying, we want to increase NASA science by a billion almost $2 billion, right, to $9 billion a year. So that's like the polar opposite of this. So there's a lot of support for this. But legislation, again, it's a blunt tool. And if you don't have an administration that's dedicated to making it work, and I'm not talking about Jared Isaac, man, I'm talking about like at the higher levels of the budgeting office

and elsewhere in the White House, then there's only so much that can do. You can have an inefficient deployment. basically my, my goal is to basically protect science as much as possible to keep it from eroding away too much in the next few years to get to a point where we can kind of rebuild it and restart. Because again, our pipeline of new missions is just drying up.

There's just almost nothing. Last year, NASA approved one science mission to move forward into further study. That's one of the lowest periods of mission development in 40 years. and it was a tiny, you know, it's a decent mission, but it's a small heliophysics mission. It's less than $200 million. So it's a very small mission. So we're in a period where we're going to have to do a lot of rebuilding. What I don't want to see happen and what I'm worried that may happen is that because science is being attacked, again,

that's the science, aeronautics, space technology, STEM, and the NASA workforce itself, it'll be seen as being attacked in order to enable Artemis. And so you have a different administration come in or different Congress come in. And suddenly, oh, hey, this moon thing, isn't that what you were using to like take away my favorite program or to destroy my, this thing that I think is important? It's destroying the unity, the political unity that NASA enjoys in order to, I don't know, win some cultural political points or whatever. Like it's taking away the longer term nature of support that you need to make this a truly successful dinner program. And so if you rush to try to do like a lunar base and a lunar landing before Trump leaves office, on the backs of like the nation's science program, education, all this other stuff,

it'll be seen as a non-legitimate program to continue forward with or to be reduced down in size or to be corrected back or something, you know. And that's to me the longer risk that we're seeing here, that these are short-sighted political decisions that are going to create reverberations and induce. disuse opposition because they'll become associated with this highly partisan environment. I mean, it shouldn't be, right? I think we've seen from Artemis too, how kind of joyous and uniting and unifying that experience can be. And so it's not guaranteed that it'll happen, but I think that's the risk. And so this is why the more that Congress can, in a bipartisan way, which is the first time,

reject these out of hand. And ideally, if the administration just like, just attack something else. man, you know, you're going on lots of things. I guess you want to attack, like, why NASA science? Like, who's that hurting here, really? Why are you going after like the wind, heliophysics wind mission that's been up there since like 95, like reliably collecting like solar wind data? Got it out for wind in this situation.

Wind is not a good marketing line. It's killing all the birds. It's like, it's like, it's like a, it's like a, You've seen the humpback whales washing up on the beaches of New Jersey and Long Island? That's a East Coast story. You guys are not attuned to this. I think we can do it. And I like what you said.

So, you know, we did start our Save NASA Science campaign again at planetary.org. We're going through the budget, giving that information out. We have political actions people can take. And, of course, there's our day of action two weeks, less than two weeks from now, 10 days from now in Washington, D.C., where we'll get a chance to, speak to Congress directly on it. And just today, actually, the heads of the Planetary Science Caucus, Don Bacon, Republican from Nebraska and Judy Chu, Democrat from California, released the first bipartisan letter attacking this budget.

So it's not popular, at least, you know. We know it's not popular. It's just how much that division between the legislative and executive, how much can be eroded down in the meantime? You want to end on a happier note? I guess we still have a few more minutes. Do we pull up the videos of Victor Lifton or what? I still can't believe they did it while the astronauts were like going around the moon.

I think that actually, if I sound like extra irritated on this trip or on this trip on this podcast, it's because like it was this extra thing. It was like, why you took away my enjoyment of them going around the moon knowing, because I'm in reading this pile of dog shit. that you call a budget. And it's like, it took away from my enjoyment of it, right? Because that was such a sullying thing and such an insulting thing to be to this agency that I love. That's achieving these really spectacular, very spectacular things for the first time.

So I think it was a, that extra bit was what made you pretty irritated with it. It's definitely a community. It's definitely a community. But, yeah. Well, I have two uplifting things. Let's save the one about how our kids. kids have enjoyed this for the end. We'll go out on that. I have evolved my thinking. You mentioned, you know, the 60s were very crazy in terms of political moments and how there's Apollo contrasts.

I had our friend Paul Field on Miko, Jake, and we were talking about he was the artist in residence at NASA during the Apollo missions. So I brought him on to number one, just nerd out about Artemis, but also talk about some comparisons between the two. And I'm susceptible to that storyline about, you know, Apollo 8, save 1968. 60s, obviously, very, you know, a lot of upheaval in the culture. I've evolved my thinking to, it always sucks, but only occasionally are there beautiful things. And I think we need to separate that, because we have the storyline where this happened and it was beautiful, but it was in contrast to this thing. When if you look at all of human history, it's always bleak and terrible.

And I think generally, because I'm a congenital optimist that we are getting better over time, but there always are very bleak storylines that you can find and only occasionally do we have really, really beautiful ones that everyone can come together around. So I think we should not feel bad about celebrating that and we need to be able to do both. And if there's anything that America is exceptional at, it is, we have the best self-loathing complex in the world.

Like, we are more willing to talk about our bad shit than most people are, and we rake ourselves over the coals for it, and that's what's made us better for all these years. And I think that's truly our superpower. is that we're game to talk about it. There's a lot of other places that won't talk about it. And we will, not all of us will, but a lot of us will. And I think that's truly our superpower,

but we need to also be able to realize that only occasionally do we have these really awesome human moments, and we should celebrate that, and still be able to say, and all this other shit sucks too. But that's kind of the default resting state of the world. It's like all this other shit sucks too. And now we're just more exposed to it because we have access to every little corner of the world.

And yet still, like, these four humans are the most lovable people I've ever encountered in my life. Like, are truly wonderful people that I just love hanging out with. And I'm going to be sad when the Truman show is over. Also, just like how amazing is that we get to watch them live as opposed to waiting for grainy or like 16 millimeter film to get developed, you know, weeks later. Or the nightly broadcast or something. Yeah, I was reminded that, you know, the famous Apollo 8 Earthrise, that was process. like two weeks. I think it was published like two weeks after they got back.

Right? Because it's just on film. You have to, you know, wait and then it has to be distributed. And there's so much more we can follow along with. They weren't pulling it up on the viewfinder and showing each other, which like you could also see those moments, which are awesome. They didn't even remember who took it, I guess, right? They argued about that. Wasn't even the first orbit. I was, I was thinking about that two cases because like we got to watch everything, right? And one of the great things about, you know, NASA and just the general concept of public space programs is that they belong to us, right? Like, we're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they belong to us, like quite literally, right?

Those, those people are funded by our pleasure and work for us. And we get to, you know, we get to have this, which is not the same for, you know, these private missions, which are very cool. They don't belong to us, right? Anything we get to see is by their pleasure, right? And so there's like a, There was a nice thing about that. Like, I hadn't really felt like I'd participated in a space light like that in a while. And it was a very refreshing thing. Reminded me that this stuff's important and worth funding. That's funny, because most of my mourning was like, are you guys up yet? Like, what's the...

Come on. Yeah. Let's get to it. What are you lazy astronauts is floating there? I want to know what you have for breakfast. Go. And you know what? NASA will tell you.

I mean, that's, you're right. I don't tell you. And it's worth dwelling on that because this is a worry that I've had for a long time, which is we treat private astronauts and give a lot of grace to like SpaceX and others for sharing stuff, but it's completely because they want to do it and it's convenient for them. But we have those expectations because we all grew up with NASA, who does owe it to us, right, as a public entity. And it is, I love the fact that they do daily press briefings, right?

And I love the fact that they're making themselves open, that they have all these details and just want so badly to people to pay attention to this, right? That is very refreshing and important. And it reminds us that one of the values, again, as you said, this public program, is that it belongs to us. And NASA institutionally wants to bring us along with them. And you don't have that guarantee with a private program. and they do it to the extent that it's convenient

or in their self-interest and no more. There we go. Can we talk very briefly about your favorite space art because you brought that up about the Apollo era? Do you guys have like a favorite, the Apollo artist, you said? Oh, yeah, Paul Fyeld. Yeah, he's just the man. Favorite space art generally?

What do we talk? Where are we constrained in this? From the NASA, like Apollo art program, do you have like one that stands out? I don't know if I did. Do you know the book, NASA Art 50 years? That's a, oh, it's worth getting. It's a hard to find.

Go get it. Go get it. Is it in that bookshelf? Yeah, it's in that bookshelf. Is that a shuttle Saturn? It kind of looks like you have that set up. Yeah. That's a huge ass.

Look how big that thing is. The shuttle? Yeah. That's just the, is that the Lego thing? Yeah. I don't know. When he rolled over there, it's so big. It's very big.

Damn. Where is my heart? It's the scale of that thing. Now we're getting a view of how Casey organizes all his books. What shelf is what? Here, this is the. Ooh. Wait, there we go.

You got to angle it because it's like a hologram. It's like a Pokemon card. I recommend everyone. I don't know if it's still important. print, but there's some really spectacular pieces here. There's like a Norman Rockwell, which is kind of awesome. But my favorite, you brought this up. He's the one that made the space shuttle, right?

Yeah. There's a painting in here. I think it's like called the New Olympus. You reminded me of it by bringing up the art program, but also kind of thematically what we're talking about, right, of this, the role of scale and size and and kind of like being witness to this something that's like literally bigger than ourselves. And it's an image that I cannot find. It's like the Smithsonian I think owns it.

And they don't share it. Texas is getting it back, baby. Maybe if. Yeah, it's part of the deal. NASA shall send one space painting that may include a specifically. Yeah. To the Donson Space Center. Yeah, the really classy NASA arts.

Oh, the other one I like is first look. Like, I love that look. I like, oh, is that William Shatner when he looked into the blackness of space? I can see the champagne on his face afterwards. Yeah. I love that one. It's like the horror of the emptiness. Anyway, this is a long term.

My favorite NASA art, I've amended my answer is whatever John Krauss is up to today. It was called New Olympus. This one. Why is it doing this? Why's it doing? It's chasing you out of frame. Where's it going? Oh, my God.

Oh, my. All right. I'll put it in the show. Yeah, here we go. Does that work? Most people are looking at this in. Oh, look at that thing. It just really wants to look at your beautiful face.

Yeah, it does. You are the New Olympus. It goes right from the microphone. But yeah, this is a really cool. one and I love the, again, it's like the scale of the VAB. And there's something about that. It's like the classic kind of, the idea of, you know, I think the 19, the mid-20th century idea that space was almost like as accent, that whole sublime, right? That that was a displacement for the old gods

and becoming this kind of new to, to grow not just technologically, but spiritually. And it was like a, yeah, that kind of 2001-ish. era. And I, you know, I felt a spark of that with Artemis, too, despite all the other stuff, to your point. So that was a very long way of circling back to that. Stuck the landing. So plug the day of action again, because that's what you want people to come with. We come to. Planetary other words slash day of action. April 19th and 20th. We are asking that people be planetary society members this year, because we lose a lot. I mean, we don't make money on this. but also you can just go to save NASA science,

planetary.org slash save dash NASA-science, and you can write Congress for free and follow along of all the news of the budget excitement there. There we go. There is, Jake. I figured I was getting played off the stage. Yeah, yeah, we're playing out. Next week, Jake, Kelsey Young of now Artemis ScienceOps fame,

here to refute all of Casey Dreyer's statements about it. I'm in testing ship. I'm very excited to have her own. I like them doing it. Just tell her that I like to do. I'll tell her. I'll let her know. I'm glad, though, Casey, because those are all the questions I was going to ask her.

Now I can just say that it was you asking him, and then you can take all the heat. Yeah. That's true. Really hates humans. A friend of mine said. So good. Is this true? All right, y'all.

Thanks so much, Casey. Ranging out. You're the best. Thanks for doing extra long. Yeah, man. See everyone. Bye. Good. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 2, 2, 1, and the best.