Off-Nominal - 239 - Let’s Go Swimming (with Jennifer Vaughn)

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Jake and Anthony are joined by Jennifer Vaughn, the new CEO of The Planetary Society to talk about her vision for the organization. Topics Off-Nominal - YouTube Episode 239 - Let’s Go Swimming (with Jennifer Vaughn) - YouTube The Planetary Society Meet Jennifer Vaughn | The Planetary Society Days after Artemis II, scientists warn of… | The Planetary Society The FY 2027 NASA budget request | 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

See, I let's go for main engine start. Welcome, everyone. How's it going? We got Jennifer Vaughn with us today. Jennifer Vaughn from the planetary side. You are a brand new, shiny CEO, and we're really excited to have you on the show to talk about this. All sorts of stuff. So shiny.

Yeah, so shiny. We were just joking before because we had called Danielle at your office to help set this up, and she said, oh, this might be one of the first interviews that you do. And I was like, ooh. And then you just told me we've been usurped. but we're still going to take the win. We're still excited to hang out with you. We generally don't do scoops.

You booked it first. Yeah, you booked it first. First on the calendar. That means that we had more enthusiasm, and I'm going to take that as a win. So, yeah. Nice. Awesome. Cool.

Yeah. So we'd like to start the show with drinks. I don't know. Did you bring anything, Jennifer? I did. I did. So I'm on the West Coast, so it's a little early in my time. Plus, I got a lot of work ahead of me.

So I'm not doing. something too strong here. But what I did do was get a fun little mock tail, which is called Havana Twist. And it's got lime, cardamom, cucumber, and mint shrub in it.

That's a different thing. That and mint. I have no idea. I did enjoy the whole shrub in the drink. It's pretty good. Cucumber is pretty strong, but it's good. I like it.

I love cucumber. like drinks. I don't know. I didn't, it's like a secret thing about me that snuck up on me and myself. I was like, why do I like this so much? And then I was like, wait, no, I really like cucumber water, cucumber, cucumber, cucumber, in water. I don't know. It's good. I'm into it. What about regular cucumbers? Where are we out on those? I had a cucumber sandwich for lunch today. Yeah. Apparently, I'm just cucumber guy. Was the cucumber, the bread or the interior? The interior sandwich. cucumber cheese. Okay. I didn't know if it was two cucumber slices. And then the stuff in the middle.

A little tied version. A little cucumber. Let us wrap. Kind of like a hot dog roll, cut it down the middle. What do you got, Anthony? Mixing up a little gin and tonic here. It's been a bit since I had a nice GNT celebrating. I'm a little slow off the start today, Jake.

I was at the Flyers game very late last night. We beat the Pittsburgh Penguins. dispatched them never to see Evgeny Malkin in this city playing hockey again unless he signed somewhere else. So,

good for you. That's it. Yeah. What do you got? I got a, other than your knock off NASA hat. Yeah, knock off NASA hat and a

doco chippo Paloma. Paloma. There is. Nice. Those are good. I love this one. There's like a little bit of beach sand on it.

So that's a little bit. It's even better. It's better. Yeah. So cheers. Yeah. Well, I don't know where we start here. So, I mean, why do you just tell us a little bit about yourself,

I think, you know, a lot of listeners, our listeners are really in the planetary society. I mean, Casey hangs out here sometimes more than Anthony does. All the time. Yeah, exactly. Extended versions of shows, yeah. I'm supposed to convince Jason Davis to come on and just vamp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I know you've been following the organization and many of the players within the

organization for a long time. So appreciate the way you bring us into your world and allow us to share ours as well. So it's fantastic. It's funny. I love your show. I love the energy on your show. I'll admit a lot of what you guys super nerd out on are not the same things I nerd out on, but that's what makes a fun. That's what makes a fun is just sharing it all. So I guess so with me, I like to always start with what I'm not. I am not a scientist. I'm not an engineer. I'm not a policy expert. I am none of those things. What I say that I am, though. Exactly. I say that I am. Exactly. I am, though, perhaps, if not the expert, one of the foremost experts on the planetary society.

So I am, although very new to the CEO role, I am not at all new to the society. So I am at the end of this year, I will be very proudly celebrating my 30th anniversary. So I have been able to have many jobs within the organization since I started at the end of 96. And I've been able to look at the organization from a lot of different perspectives. So live through different eras of the organization. And I think over that time really got a good sense of what makes the planetary society so special because we absolutely are. We hold a very special place in this world and optimizing those things. So the last 15 years I've been in the chief operating role, working very closely with Bill.

You know, Bill came in as the first kind of new CEO after our co-founder, Lou Friedman, stuck down. And so that was a huge transition going from founder-led organization to the next generation who is trying to develop an institution that will outlive us all, is what I like to say. We want to put everything in place that there will be a succession plan again and again and again and we'll be able to move into the future seamlessly. But it's been a lot of work in between, and the organization has grown and developed in so many ways over these last 15 years.

Yeah, it definitely has. I mean, I can remember kind of when that happened. And I just remember the first thing I, of course, I remember was like, wow, Bill and I can have a different job than just be the science guy. That's interesting. I didn't know that was a thing that could happen because he's just always in his name. Yeah. He's own his birth certificate. Do you have a James name from the science guy to something else?

He did. He did actually. He added planetary guy. He did that quite a bit. That's right. Bill by the planetary guy. Yeah. And now he's our chief ambassador too.

So, I mean, he's not gone. He just decided it's time for him to. do all the things he loves to do and maybe hold a little bit less responsibility for the organization as a whole. So he's now our chief ambassador having a good old time. Bill Nye, the cheerleader guy. Yeah, exactly. That's great. Yeah. No, but I remember that happening, you know, when he took over and it being kind of like a, it felt like a moment where, like you said, moving from founder to not founder is a change for any organization. And it felt like a very different.

time. I'm curious to know how you feel about this transition. Like what, what is, if he was going from founder to not founder, what, you know, what's, what's for you? What are you taking it from and to, right? What are you, what's your, what's the big, the big hairy goal that you have in the back of your mind rather than just the day to day stuff? That's an excellent question. And I have to say to be bigger and better than ever before is the short answer. But I will give you. I will give you. the longer and more nuanced answer, which is we learned a lot about ourselves in the last year. So we knew we've been on a very strong trajectory. We have been growing.

We have the systems in place. We have such a talented team. So everything felt like it was really moving in our direction. We had the momentum. Light sale, of course, was one of those moments for us. For those you don't know what light sale is, it was a hundred percent member. funded spacecraft, solar sail spacecraft in Earth orbit, probably almost broke the planetary society in getting it to fruition. It was a really, really, really hard thing for us to do.

We did it. We did really well with it. We got more, I think, more cachet and just name recognition out of it. And so there's just been all these things, little by little that we have been, oh, look at that. Look at that deployment of that. beautiful shiny sale. Back to shiny again. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so we've felt pretty good about ourselves. So like, yeah, we're doing well. And then crises hit last year. Just absolute crises. What a 50% cut to all of NASA science. How is this even possible? Everything has been developing and growing and evolving and everything's been moving the right direction. And then there is this huge existential threat that made us have to assess everything that we are and

everything that we have and basically redeploy all of our resources and make sure that we were doing everything we possibly could do to stop these cuts. And that's, we never want to be in that reactive state. We want to be in the proactive state. But this process of knowing that we had such a big job to do because there was no one better positioned than the planetary society to go out in front. front. There were a lot of people who cared, but many of those people, they couldn't do it because they were either civil servants or they had direct funding coming from other government sources

and there was a lot of risk or their institutions weren't willing to take the risk and were trying to keep, you know, the people who work for those institutions kind of in mind. All these different things were in play that we were the ones and we knew we were the ones. And with that in mind, it helped bring about a very clear focus for us, which is we're not all about this because ideally we don't have crisis moments like this. Ideally, we are actually doing proactive work and we're actually increasing funding and increasing scientific exploration. We're doing all these things to grow and develop and we're keeping the public super engaged and enthusiastic. But when the time comes and you have to rally, we need to make sure we can do it the way we just did it, but times 10. So we want to be able, that state of readiness.

And as much as I'm not a big fan of any kind of like war metaphors or military metaphors, in this particular case, it's one that it's easy to wrap your head around. of in peacetime, you want to make sure that you're doing all the things you need to do for readiness. And when the time comes, you need to be able to operate efficiently and effectively. And so I feel like this last year kind of just took all of our plans and then just kind of squeezed everything out of it. And now we say, all right, we're back to the basics. We were built to do this work.

We were built to prove public support for scientific exploration. public support for scientific exploration of space. And we need to make sure that we are doing that each and every day in whatever ways make the most sense given the external landscape. And when there are threats, like there are again right now, and I know you already talked about this at Lake of Casey. We're there. We're leading the charge. And we're going to get past this point. And then we're going to be pushing for more. I'm almost like the timing was not that different. I'm trying to think back to so when you know when Bill took over that would have been right around the time of the tea party stuff and all the austerity measures that would have hit right and I remember the planetary budget taking a pretty bad hit around that time like that's where things were looking really dark and you know perseverance was pushed and everything was kind of pushed back and do you see that as kind of like a similar moment like is this you know just the the stuff like

this with it, because the budget feels so different now because it's like, I don't know, there's something very different about this crisis, you know, but do you feel that's the same kind of moment where now you have to kind of like step into that? It's a, it's a great comparison because there are a lot of things that compare. Of course, this is worse. The threat is worse. Now, the congressional support was fantastic. But unfortunately, I've been having to kind of rally some of the

team a bit because it's exhausting, as you know, to fight, fight, fight, fight, get everything turned around. And then just weeks later, boom, there's another PBR and that PBR is basically the same one we did before. And we jokingly said it's a rinse and repeat. But, you know, internally, that just feels like such a slog of like, oh, we ought to do it all again. And so I remind people of that when we hired Casey, this is kind of, this was the state. of the world where Casey came in and it was during the Obama years where planetary science was getting hit really hard. It wasn't that science more generally was being hit so hard, but there was, in addition, austerity cuts and other aspects that were going on. But really from the Obama

administration, there was this attitude of, hey, planetary sciences had their funding. They've done all this amazing stuff. There's other science to do out there. So let's just, move the fund. And so our job at that time was to fight year after year, same process where PBR would come out. We'd say, this is terrible. We got to fight against it. We would rally Congress and they would say, nope, this is terrible. Here's the money. It's back in the budget. And then we'd do it again and again. And at that time, too, I remember Casey just saying, this is just exhausting. It's relentless. But I have to remind people that ended. This has not been going on since 20, well, that case we're talking about 2012, 2013, somewhere in there.

It hasn't been that way all the way through. We had all these years in between where the budgets were healthy, where we had different administrations, different party-led administrations, saying, no, we've got to do this. And the money's there for it. And you could tell in the types of projects that were being created, especially on the science side, they were becoming more inventive, they were becoming a little bit more risky. Yeah, just all the things that you want to see in a robust science program. So we're here now and it's going to be tough.

It's going to be a tough slog. We're not worried that it's going to, Congress will do their job. They already are doing their job. And we're not worried about it actually coming to fruition this time because everything is in place and the support is there. The bipartisan support is there. It'll happen. But what a freaking waste of time, you know, just for everybody. So obviously on our end, but there's the whole science community that just, you know,

doesn't even know what to expect anymore. Should they be looking for other jobs? Should they be switching industries? Is there any future for, I mean, are we going to ever get back to Venus? I mean, we thought we were going to go multiple times. And now it's like. We had that year when we got three Venus missions at the same time. That was like the good old days.

It was not that long ago. It's like two years ago. Psych, you know, no, no, no Venus now, no. So, yeah. Yeah, so it's just a waste of everyone's time to have to play these games. Yeah. Yeah, and even like, what, yesterday, the House appropriations put out proposing flat funding from this year that just was passed. Yeah, so it's not great.

And there was a Jared Eisenman Roadshow over the last week in both houses of Congress that were all like, yeah, we're. kind of doing the, like, can we just stick to what we just did? And can, well, you keep doing the thing that we just said to do, even though they're saying to do other stuff? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, Jared's, he's got a, he's got a tough road. I mean, that's, that's part of the job there.

I think he sends signals that he wants, well, I mean, he says explicitly, frankly, that he wants NASA doing what no one else can do. He wants extraordinary NASA missions. NASA work. And I'd say that deep space science is one of those things that no one else can do it. No one else can do it the way we do it. And so this is where you want to invest. And so I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that once we get past the, yeah, NASA doesn't have a top line problem here that we actually get to the point of, oh, there is funding. Now, now let's do, let's do the good stuff. Let's do the hard stuff. Let's do the exciting science that we all want to do.

There's been a funny thing of that where they're talking about space telescopes with him, and he's too deferential and not self-centered enough to be like, I tried to personally save one of the space telescopes one time, but couldn't. Like, there's a couple of funny instances here that are smash-cut, private Jared to public Jared, that I think are at least instructive for us to understand when people get put certain positions in government, like how they have to manage communications and what they're going to talk about and what they prefer to focus on. Great case studies. The very recent administrators have been all interesting case studies from either being in politics, then in the administrator

role, then out of politics, or not in politics and then into politics in the administrator role. We're seeing every permutation of this from both parties. It's just been really like kind of great 10 years as a study of how does this position interact. Of course, with one of our like founding mantra the show of like, does the NASA administrator matter? That was like the first two years of Jake and I's podcasting thoughts on policy positions. And we got three different versions of it mattering, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, how's that, yeah, how's the change for you over time? Total converts. We're like, hell yeah, matters. It matters a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It does. And I have to say that things like ignition, they, you know, that excited me.

Because I guess I'm guessing that really wasn't well vetted ahead of time. But I don't know. I don't want to speculate too much. But it seemed like it was a moment for the administrator to just put a vision out there before the reality of a budget came down. And that that gave me hope. And also just respect. I do respect clear vision. It's hard to have.

And so even if you're, even if you find out along the way some of the, some of your thoughts about what's going to happen need to be revised. I mean, the fact that he had it, he put it on record. He made such a big deal about it, too, that he really rolled out with it. That was a good signal. I actually, I was pretty excited about that. Yeah. Yeah, it was good for sure. I remember we were talking with Casey about, you know, the impacts of these PBRs.

And one of the things we talked about was like, well, you know, if Congress brings the budget back, then like, does this really matter? Like, does the administrator matter? Does the PBR matter? There's a second question for us. But, you know, he reminded us that it does because in the meantime, you know, in this budget cycle from when they release that to when, you know, the Congress actually implements something into law, NASA kind of has to operate in this gray zone where they're not really sure what's going to happen. And they have to be conservative, right? Like you have to kind of pull back on spending just in case you don't ever get that money. And so there's damage that gets done there. Do you think about, like, I guess step one is put out the fire. But how do you deal with that? Like as an advocacy organization, how do you think about how you can help, like, okay, you restore funding, but maybe for the next two years, the workforce is all disrupted. How do you help that like pass the money?

Like, what do you do to help those people and keep the wheel spinning, right? Yeah. Well, it's, I don't think there's just, you know, one thing to do there. One thing that's on my mind a lot these days, I know others are within the professional communities are thinking about this as well, is the timelines and how we end up in this situation where we're just, it's just ping pong, where there's money, there's not money, there's money, there's not money. And as I said, that's a huge waste of time, but also tremendous confusion. And then those people who are actually working on some of these projects that are always being told they're going to be canceled. what kind of how are you showing up to work every day if you if you're doing something important and hard and you really and you think that you genuinely think it's never going to go is that the same

where you bring in the same level of yourself to work as if you think it's really going to go and and these systems are truly going to be tested so um there hasn't i mean thankfully uh everything has been going along and and everything that's been um getting off the ground has been doing to do. But I do worry about these things with this messaging all the time of like, maybe this doesn't really matter. Maybe you won't have the money. Maybe you won't have this project. So I think I've said before in public places, I was, I was born in the U.S. I love so much about our systems. I love the fact that we can personally influence and this representative government. There's a lot that I love here. The one thing I keep questioning is like, can we do something different for those programs, those government programs that just absolutely require more time to get things done?

And space is one of those things. You just need the longer timelines. Can we do a little bit more to extend, I don't know, how long the administration, administrators in office or how long funding gets kind of locked in. places. Are there things that we can do? And again, this is all the question of, you put the questions out there, you get really smart people to debate it all and try to figure out if there's anything to do. But the fact that we can't commit in any kind of meaningful way to longer timeframes in space is going to hurt the U.S. when it comes time to looking at the whole, you know, new space race. Because this is something that China doesn't do. They don't, that They've got 100 year plans, you know. And when the commitment's there, the commitment's there.

It's the way they do things. We should be challenging. The U.S. should be challenging itself to say, how can we actually put ambitious plans out there and then put some real commitment with money and leadership and everything that you need to continue down these paths in 10-year increments or 20-year. I don't know. So I don't know what that looks. like a development track and an operations track where it's like things that we need to fund on an

ongoing basis and one and things that we're we know our longer term projects that are important or strategically viable or whatever that that take a different shape and funding profile than the other projects have yeah it's interesting yeah and then we have examples though like last summer right 10 billion dollars gets dropped that can now be yeah what's the phrase jake repurpose reprogram what is it i forget the four words i really need to make the shirt it got to make the shirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, so I have, that was an example of it, isn't it? Because it's like, here's money for Artemis, this is three, four, five. Exactly. But then, yeah, that was, now we can repurposing. So maybe that's not the point.

Yeah. Yeah, is that the model to follow or is it, yeah, but it is a hack. It's a hack for that model in our current system. Yeah. Yeah. Not, probably not healthy because it's not, like, like, if everyone does that every year, then we have a different thing going on. So. Yeah, yeah. So there, I was going to say, I've been thinking about this problem. Weirdly, this has been something to my mind recently. And I have this very weird, weird perception on it right now. And Anthony, this is going to confuse you because I'm going to say some very nice things about United States right now. Let's go, baby.

You know, I've been in the embargo mode lately, so that's going to sound strange. But I was thinking, I was thinking the exact same thing because it was like, oh, man, man, you try and explain. Imagine you had to explain this to like an alien, like what's going on. You're like, oh, this is this is the, this is NASA. the space program. It's like we can't find anything past like a year. The budget's never ever come on time. They're really unstable. They ping pong back and forth. You know, nothing is, nothing is sacred. Everything is like always on fire. And there's like bad political like division. And then you're telling all this to the alien and they must go, wow, so is that like a really bad

space program? And you go, no, it's the best one that has ever existed. And it's better than all the the other ones combined. And it's like, it's so incongruent, right? Like how do you explain that to someone and say like, how do you complain about that when the outcome of NASA is unbelievable, right? Like on the grand scale of space programs, nothing has ever come close to it. So I don't know how to reconcile that, right? Yeah, no, it's a good point. It's a really, really good point. This is my thing about our superpower, Jake.

You know my take, right? America's true exceptionalism is that we loathe ourselves more than everyone else in the world does, and we use that to continually make ourselves a little bit better every time. And that is, like, we love being underdogs. We love telling us how bad we are. And it just, it just hardens us up a little bit. And we scrap every little piece of goodness out of that. That's our true superpower.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think we'll stay there, though. Yeah, we won't stay there with 50% tests of science. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Not sure you could write a better, a better, like, arc for testing all those systems than what you're saying, Jake. This has done pretty well, but now we're faced with, like, truly the mold of the other way to do this and see, like, how does this compare? And to Jared's credit, that's been the message he's taking to Capitol Hill is we're at a moment now where, like, it's put to the test this way or that way. Yeah, I don't know. He's getting a lot of timeline.

Hey, your report's late to us. It was due 30 days ago. And, God, I was watching those hearings, and it took. like I was like this must take every ounce of his being of like when's the last time anything happened on time in this in this building like nothing ever happens on time here like y'all are talk to me about continued resolutions you know I'm I have a continuing resolution for this report coming your way it'll be there in three to nine months from now there had to be a piece of him that was thinking that yep yep yep yep my homework's late

yeah I was going to say that there's one other thing that it kind of relates to your your earlier question about, you know, what do we do? What do we do now beyond just fight for the immediate? And then my dog's saying, how long if you hear that. He's got opinions, strong opinions on the budget. He does, he does. He does. He does.

I'm telling you. The planetary advocate back there. Yeah, exactly. It's that the whole storyline and the drive of pursuing the unknown. I feel like is starting to get quite muffled with all the other discussions about space and all of the other drivers for why we're exploring and all the different angles. I love that there's so much complexity now, but that complexity also means that,

it's certainly from the planetary side's perspective, is we have to find ways to make sure that the story of, pursuing what we do not know, needs to be at the forefront. And I know Casey was talking a bit about this as well of this idea that science needs to be in the driver's seat, the idea of questions, deep human questions about why we exist and what is beyond us and is there any life out there, just understanding our natural world. That curiosity and that drive, it's not that we've, abandon that. But I feel like there's just this shadow coming over now that just getting the attention

to that piece of it is now it's a job in and of itself. So I feel like trying to get that message out to remind people of like, why do we really do this? I mean, the shiny rockets are fun. And this is how we do it is neat. So all the engineering that happens, that's really neat. But why do we do it? It's to expand human knowledge. It's to help humanity level up and understand the things we do not know now. So I feel like that's another thing for the planetary society to really focus on, is telling that story and amplifying that story and trying to make sure that there is these Carl Sagan moments where people kind of stop and go, oh, right.

That's what it's about. That's kind of the whole point and it's getting lost in some of this other stuff. And if we, if organizations like the planetary study, back to your earlier question, if we don't show up in Congress and say, don't forget about this, this is really important, it might be forgotten about. If we don't show up and start really sharing the curiosity and the joy of understanding, that's going to get lost. People are going to forget because there's so many other conversations.

being had that are so practical, you know, and again, it's just easy to, it's easy to put it off aside and forget about it. Do you think that's, the era of, you know, the 70s and the 80s, the messaging around going to explore other worlds felt easier to me because it was like, we're going to go take a picture of a place we haven't. Every couple years we've got a new planet, is what happened. Yeah, yeah, it was like literally like we haven't seen this place before in any real, resolution. So we're going to go and take a photo of it. And that was a very easy, oh, shit, that's what Uranus looks like. That's what Neptune looks like. I mean, you know, Pluto wasn't that long ago, right? And that's probably the last one that we'll have of we don't know what a place that's

very known to us actually looks like. And then we get it and we're like, great. But now we're like, but we got to find out if the salt is in water or the water was there. And then there was some salts and then the other molecules that are kind of big. These ones are longer chain. So that means this other, like all these other downs, we just get very complicated on this stuff we have to find out now. And it's not, you know, hey, that photo that you got. And I think most people probably have seen, like, this would be an awesome chart if we can figure it out. All humans on Earth, how many have either seen zero or one photo of Uranus and how many have seen two plus? Because I bet it's just a ridiculous long chale, right?

Like you either haven't seen that photo, you've seen the one photo, and then, you know, other nerds have seen more photos of Uranus. So it just went from really easy storylines to you have to be more of an expert. Yeah. So do you think that plays into the messaging challenge or is it just that our attention is much more divided? Yeah, I like how you said that, the messaging challenge. I think that there's still always the reminder of like, why does it matter? And that is when you're trying to explain, you know, salts versus no salt or lawn chains. It's this idea of we're trying to find out there's life out there.

We want to know if there's life beyond earth in any form at any time. And what do we look for and how do we look for? And this is only life as we know it. What if there's life as we don't know it? And so this storyline of, again, pursuing what we don't know, the big questions that actually drive us in space that help us understand what's out there, but also help us understand us better. We understand our own evolution better as we do this. So I think that the challenge is remembering as you're getting into this incremental progress that we do in science. That's also changeable, by the way, because more data can lead you in different directions.

And so that's also a messaging challenge that once you say that something seems to be true, it may no longer be true in a few years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a beautiful thing. And that's a wonderful thing. We should be celebrating that. That's science. So I do think that these are challenges. Now you're just the popper if you do that though, right?

Exactly. I think there's a lot of challenges. Yeah. But I do agree that the whole. I'll say it's almost like it's the middle. It's the problem, right? Because like what Anthony was describing was like the very first question? Like, what does it look like?

Easy. Everyone gets it. And then you're describing kind of the end game. It's like, why is life? It's like the most enormous question that you can ever imagine. And then there's all the stuff in the middle that we have to journey through from what does it look like to how did we all get here. And that feels like the hardest stuff to explain. Because then there's like all these like it's very operational.

It's very it's jargony. It's nuts and bolts. Right. Like it's that feels like the tough one. I don't know. It's a big problem. You have a hard job. Yeah.

Well, we love it. We love it. It doesn't feel hard. It doesn't feel hard. It's always just trying to test out these messages and which ones are. are actually breaking through, which ones are reaching new audiences, too, because you don't want to just always be talking to the same people who are like, yeah, I'm already totally on board for science.

But yeah, just like which we love testing different things, and we love using different platforms and different audiences to be able to do this better. Do you ever think about like, I'm going to now use this time to pitch ideas at the planetaries? Yeah, let's do short-tanked planters. I got a couple. Let's go. Let's do it. Okay. Well, so, I mean, I think a lot about the space community. And it is a, it's funny in that it's like both very, very niche and narrow. Like, you know, like space nerds in the world is a small group in the context of like any other like organization or community or whatever.

But at the same time, inside that group, the interests are so broad. Like you can be a space fan and be like, oh, I'm really into planetary geology or like, I'm really into rocket propulsion. or like I'm really into the economics of space-based communications or I'm really into, you know, like there's all these different disciplines inside space that are, they have nothing to do with each other. And like, it's funny to think about sometimes when all those people get in a room and like, what do they talk about it? Because they're just like, I like space. I like space. So that's the end of our Venn diagram. There's nothing else in between there. And so I think about that sometimes and realize that it's like support for space activities

ends up being this very strange coalition of people who don't really have a lot of common interest except for one very important one and that kind of brings them together. Do you think about how the planetary society could, I don't know, sometimes it feels a little narrow on the planetary, you know, the planetary geologist knows exactly what the planetary society is doing for them, but the rocket propulsion engineer maybe doesn't, right? Like I don't know if there's always a line going between there. Do you think about how you can be bigger? I don't know how you phrase that, but like how you can kind of reach out to those people or maybe expand.

I don't know if it's publications or activities or whatever, right? I don't know. I mean, because they do benefit from what you do, but it's harder to draw the line sometimes, right? Yeah, they do. But it's also really important to note that although a lot of our work directly benefits those who are working in space, we're not a professional organization. We're a public interest organization. So our whole, we are meant to serve the public interest. And our statement is the public interest is serve when you are better understanding the cosmos

and our place within it. So that's what we're doing. And in that, of course, it takes all of the players working together to truly advance us into, deeper into the solar system and help us understand things like exoplanets and help us be able to do something as difficult as digging under the ice and Europa. or sampling geysers on Enceladus, or it's going to take the best of all of us. And so I say that it is broad and it has boundaries because we are a small nonprofit. For a small nonprofit, they cannot do everything.

And so based on our founding, based on our name, based on our legacy, what we do is we focus on exploring worlds, fighting life, and making sure we don't get destroyed, or humans don't get destroyed by an asteroid comet. So that those are the boundaries. I like that very George Carlin explanation for what we're defending is that the Earth is totally fine. Like you are screwed this happens. Yeah. Love that.

Yeah, just we have to worry about it. Honorary member George Carlin. So indeed. So I don't, I guess I just kind of maybe punted. that a bit of just saying it is we are both broad in how we think and also very clear about who we are and what we bring to this world. And we like to form coalitions for this purpose because we also understand that other organizations, both professional and public, have slightly different focus areas. And so working together, that's how we can truly advance space

more holistically. But for us, it's always going to be driven by exploring worlds and finding life and plan of your defense. I have some messaging pitches for you. Here's my assumption here. Americans love a couple of things. Swimming and being number one.

I think we should have a whole camp. There's lakes on Titan. Let's go swim in that lake. We got to swim in that lake. Because who doesn't you see a lake? You're like, I should, what would it be like to swim in that lake? We got to swim in that lake. Number two, we are currently tied with Russia and Canada, let me know if I'm missing anyone in this list, for numbers of oceans that we touch. And I think we would like to be number one. Let's go touch all the oceans.

We got to have more. We got to be the undisputed number one champion of how many oceans we touch. Right. I'm down. Yes. We're only three. We're tied with you and Russia right now. Never come on this show again. Yeah, yeah. Not buying this. Let's go swimming and touch all the oceans. Let's go. All right. I love it. Touch all the oceans. Touch all the oceans. A swim A swimming-based marketing campaign, I think. I mean, let's go swimming, and it's just like a photo of the Titan lakes. Come on. Of the Titan summer.

Yeah, the Titan lakes, man. That's the thing. Like, that is the number one thing to me. That's, you know me, Jake. I love this. But come on. There's lakes out there. I'm crazy about Titan, and I'm crazy about Dragonfly.

I'm so excited about it. I know. Dragon was awesome, but like boat. We need a boat. Get the boat in there. We need a boat. I like how you're thinking. You might be honest up in there, Anthony, in terms of, like, is there anywhere else in the solar system that would feel more like an alien world than Titan?

The best one. They're very desolate sometimes, right? Like, if you went landed on like, you know, I don't know, like Oberon, like the moon of Oberon. Like, okay, it's a big gray circle. Great. And it's cool. Like, I'm interested in exploring it. But like, that's a hard pitch sometimes.

But like, yeah, Titan's got mountains and lakes and fog and wind and sand dunes. sky. Come on. Jesus. It's the coolest place in the solar system. Totally with you. And I'm convinced that weird stuff lives in those lakes. It's got to be.

Got to. I hope that's proven to be true. I hope so too. But like, my old thing is when you watch this, what was the episode I always quote? Is that Blue Planet, Blue Planet 2, season two has like a The Deep episode. And they just go down to the bottom of the ocean and they show you like what weird stuff lives everywhere, because everywhere on earth, weird stuff lives there. So I'm like, there's got to be some weird fish out there.

Yeah. Yeah. And if there's not, why not? Yeah, what do you want? Come on, there's lakes. They're weird. They're made of methane and methane or whatever, but. Right.

It's so strange. Yeah. Coolest body. So another question I wanted to pose to you was, you know, just thinking about the the yo-yo activities of the federal budget and how difficult and kind of whiplashy that can be. Do you think about kind of long-term ways where the, you know, the objective of exploring the solar system would not be so dependent on kind of one federal

government organization? Like, how do you expand or diversify the leaders in this space so that, like, if the NASA budget comes in bad, it's fine, like we'll handle it and it's not like a five-alarm fire, right? Like, how do you work with that? Do you have ideas for that? Yeah, so, sort of. No, no, there's no replace.

You have a hard job. Yeah, there's no replacement for great nations of wealth, putting funding into the activities that will just benefit humanity that have no business case. So there's no business case for, oh, did you to lose me? No, we're here. I just pushed a button by accident. Don't mention it. There's really no business case for sailing Titan.

It'd be awesome. It'd be cool. And we would learn a lot. And we would be leaders if it were U.S. and NASA that were the ones to do it. We would lead the world. And it would advance technologically. And there would be spinoffs that we wouldn't understand until much, much later, that that actually happened because we did this extraordinary exploration that we'd never done before.

That said, For companies to come in, they're going to want to know that there is a timeline of return that they can, they can pallet. That's palatable for them. If there's philanthropy coming in, they're going to want to know that their money is going to actually have an impact. That the project that they're helping to fund is going to go. is that they will have everything they need to actually make it fly and do whatever activity is that they're trying to do. Philanthropy wants to know that they're making an impact. And so where the beauty is, I think, is looking at this collaborative model where you have

government funding, you have university expertise that is coming in maybe a little bit less expensive, but probably broader engaging more people and certainly at different levels of careers. And so really feeding the pipeline of experts coming forward. And you have commercial coming in and saying, oh, well, yeah, we're not going to fund that thing to tighten, but we, but we'll make the bus of the spacecraft because we've made a bunch of other buses that look kind of like what you're looking for. Anyway, we can do that.

We can do maybe even a sense. that you've done multiple times for different missions, but it also makes sense here. And then maybe you have some philanthropy in there as well that says this matters so much to my own personal legacy that I am trying to leave here on Earth for the future, that I want to put some extra funds in and that's going to help you do those things that maybe you just couldn't quite afford given the original budget. That's where I think the magic happens is when you're looking at all of the interests of players with their own, their own vested interests, their perspectives, and line those up together. But recognizing that without the major national

investment, whether it's the U.S. or someone else, you're just not going to have the funds that you need to be able to do something that has never been done before. Because that's just expensive. It's expensive. It takes your best brains over decades. doing work that is completely bespoke and needs to be tested and hammered out. And we learn things along the way that don't work. And it just, it generates no revenue. Yeah, no revenue at all. I guess even if you're looking at things like, you know, the, what's the new telescope?

Is it one of the Schmitz doing a telescope? Yeah, the Schmitz. Yeah. The universities, like you said, or even private companies that are, you know, looking at all this moon stuff. Now, at the end of the day, if there's no NASA, that stuff's not happening either. So it all flows back, doesn't it? Right. And the reality is that we have been building up expertise over, what, 70 years now.

So that doesn't just happen. And we just noticed that with the human program. So you couldn't just say, well, because we did it back then, we can do it now. No, we had to build up to it. It took a long, long time. It was a more than 50-year pause before we were ready to do it again. And with it comes to, specifically like the robotic program that has been building and growing over decades. And we've been doing much more complex, heavier, far more sophisticated instruments going to other planets.

We're getting better and better and better at it. If we pull back, you're going to have fewer people that have that expertise, and you're going to start a slump period where you just don't have, you don't have the momentum you once had because you don't have the people who are putting forward the opportunities to actually pursue those deep questions because we just don't know how to do it all yet. And so you just want to keep putting one foot in front of the other in front of the other and going farther and doing harder work again and again and not pull back on your work. force. Yeah, that's one of my biggest fears with what's happening in Mars right now, right? Because we had this extraordinary idea to like just go every launch window for a while, you know, like starting in the late 90s, we just started doing that. And it's just all these missions are flying and flying and flying. And, you know, it started to make sense. If you were graduating from university in 2005, it was reasonable to say, I'm going to go and be a Mars scientist because there's always,

going to be work for me. And like you just you just go from one mission to the next. You could build a whole career on the backs of this chain of missions. And then something happened and we put all our eggs in one big basket that just did not turn out recently with our sample return. Well, we left one basket at one spot and we brought one basket with us to the other place. It was a one basket, Jake. We left a basket of some stuff at Jesuita Crater. But, um, we Easter bunnies. You know, left a little everywhere. Yeah. Gotta bring us a back. Yeah. What is it? are going to be like a, at best, are we looking at 10 years right now before like a big,

you know, big NASA Mars mission happens again? It feels like that the gap could be that long. And I'm really concerned about what, what that workforce does, right? Are they moving on to other planetary missions? Are they moving on to Earth science? Are they moving to other space agencies? Like, what are they doing, right? There's lots of different paths out of there. But it's, it sucks to squander that. And I'm, that's, that's something I worry about it specifically. And we need to do that, like we were lucky to have that with Mars. It was the only planet we really kind of had that sort of cadence and interesting stuff. Maybe Earth, you could count Earth because there's always Earth's stuff going on. But, you know, outside of Earth, not even the moon had something

like that, right? So it's tough. But, yeah. Right. The moon may have it now. So, yeah. So a lot of that might be moving, though, right? So, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. And I was just, I was just at the Air and Space Museum last week. And they have a nice replicas of the Sojourner Rover in 97 and then the Mars Exploration Rovers that flew in that landed in 2004. And then curiosity slash perseverance, which was 2012. And it's just astounding when you just see it all together like that to say, wow, look at what we were able to do. And this happens to actually be the timeline since I've been with planetary as well because I remember past finder landing and so

it's to be able to look at that and recognize we went from not really knowing how to land because it had been so long since biking this was going to be this was a whole new world for us to actually get our

expertise to landing on Mars which is really difficult and then to see us be able to grow these landed vehicles to the point where you have the Percy curiosity style, which is, you know, it's an SUV that we just dropped onto the surface of Mars. And it's just remarkable. We need to actually be able to do much, much more than that to ever get humans to Mars. So we play this game of we're sending to humans to Mars eventually.

Well, we're not even on the pathway yet because we have to move upward and be able to land heavier and heavier and larger packages on Mars safely. And in that process, Mars' sample return could be just beautifully slated in there as complex, large mission going and then getting off the planet again. We don't know how to do that either. We've never practiced that before. So why wouldn't we be going back and getting the samples and going through that process that does just continue our abilities to do harder things on Mars that would lead us

to be done to humans one day? if that's something that we collectively desire to do. But right now it's just off the, we can't do it. So you may as well not even discuss it. We can't do it right now. We can't even get samples back yet. So let's focus on getting those samples back and not lose the expertise at Mars

because it'll take a long time to be able to get back up to where we are now. It takes time. It's my theme today. It takes time. Yeah. It's true. MSR thing's so weird though. Such a crazy, like, it just, like, we're like, all right, I guess we're done that brand.

Like, it just died. That's, it's done, right? Like, I mean, Blue Origins out there, Rocket Labs out there, tweeting every once in a while, like, here's our thing. And I guess Mars Telecommunications Orbiter exists in the budget, so that has to happen legally. But there isn't any other, you know, policy talk about, and then what? do you think that's going is that something that you would think the planetary society would be pushing for

in the realm of hey we're funding this MTO thing like we let's what is it going to actually do when it's there it's going to do a couple of legacy missions for a bit but then like it's going to be there and nothing else is going to be talking to it so do you see that coming back in the policy realm in the next couple of years or yeah I do absolutely and we are pushing for it

so it's not that we're not pushing for it now it's just it's tied up with a much larger package of don't gut science broadly. But we are absolutely advocating for a sustainable mission plan to get the samples back. So we recognize that sustainable might be the key word there. So one, it's this upside down world where the realities of what things cost. And I have to always say, every dollar spent in space is spent here on Earth. So it's not like we just send money up to the sky.

There it goes. Goodbye that money. No, this is actually the economy on Earth. So, but the realities of how much these truly audacious missions cost. Because, again, you don't know how to do it yet. If you don't know how to do it, it's going to cost you more because you've got to figure things out as you go. So with that, trying to sell a multi-billion dollar project is challenging, as we know. And so there's this whole history of coming in and saying, yeah, yeah, we can do it for

less. And people who work within NASA do that. People in the commercial sector do it. They all do it. They all say, yeah, yeah, we can do it for less. And I understand that that's like, like how the system then starts saying okay and green lighting things, but then we end up in the same place over and over again. I'm like, what? It costs so much more than we knew. What? Oh, my gosh, it's double what we thought.

So it's trying to come up with how do you, and maybe it's a phased approach to Mars sample return. I don't know. This is certainly not my area of expertise, but where you can get the political will and literal buy-in, to do something that is going to be, have long-term benefit. So we get the samples back. We're going to get to study, really deeply study Mars on Earth with all of our equipment as it evolves and gets better and better here on Earth.

We're going to be able to do that for decades to come. So it's going to be tremendously valuable just in and of itself to bring those samples back. But the process for bringing the samples back is where the real, I think, benefits. are going to be. We don't understand them all yet, but because this is so challenging, because we're going to have to do things that we've never done before, and I'm totally starting to bore myself by saying the same things over and over again, that's where there's going to be potential tangible benefits to the humans here on Earth of like, oh, because we've broken through all of these barriers that we needed to get through. Well, now we have benefits to us

in our daily lives that we didn't understand. So I think that on all fronts, it's worth going through this process to get a solid mission plan to get the samples back. And for organizations, like our own, to bring people together to say, we really want this stuff. We really want it back.

And so, well, that's our job is to go out there and say it very loud and very proud. We want the samples. Figure it out. It's funny when you think about a mission like that, which is both like it has a really high immediate value. The science community has been very clear over many decades that this is like top,

top thing that we need to answer the best question. Like this is priority number one and two and maybe three. So you have that. And then like you said, there's all these knock on effects. This is a feed forward to humans on Mars. It's like, wow,

this mission sounds really valuable. And so I was kind of joking to myself because I was like, oh, we canceled it because it had ballooned to $11 billion or whatever. number that was too high. And I was like, what is it worth? I'm like, because I'd pay more than two for it. Like, perseverance was two and change, right? So it's like, well, it feels like it's more than that. So like, what's the right number? Is it four? Is it six? Is it eight? It sounds pretty valuable. And now I'm kind of like asking myself, like, where is the right? If it only ballooned to like nine

and a half, would we have been fine with it? I don't know. I don't know what the number is anymore. How do you price something like that? That's a really good question. That would be a fun. thing to kind of poke at. What was wet, web was 10 over 10, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That seems like it was worth it. We're all happy with it. Certainly now, yeah, certainly now everyone is saying, yeah, it feels really worth it. But it had some bumpy, bumpy times along the way of like, oh, we could possibly put more into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that's a good question. What's how much? How much is it worth? What is it worth? It's kind of like Anthony was saying we were talking about the SpaceX IPO and he says, you know, what is SpaceX worth?

And it's like, they do everything. So they're kind of priceless. So, you know, it's like same idea. Like in terms of like meeting all of our near term or long term objectives, this MSR feels very valuable. But yeah, yeah, yeah, can't crack it. I don't know. Yep, not yet. Not yet.

But I am optimistic. Yeah, I'm very optimistic, though. It's just we have to get through the near-term crisis first. Yeah, I'm sure. the Decatal survey is not dropping it down the list in importance anytime soon. So I think it's going to be, it's going to stay in top of mind for a while. We're getting close to that next cycle, right, of studies that lead into the decadal?

What's the timeline on this? Is it 2030? Yeah. You have to be correct on that, but it's also hard to imagine that that's true because it feels like it just came out. But yeah, I think that, yeah, maybe it's 2030. Jake, this is your beat. What are we got?

I know. I'm trying to think that. Oh, he's getting Starlink's eaten his connection. He started talking shit about the SpaceX IPO and his cut in a Starlink. Oh, there you go. You're back. You're back. What do we got?

What's the results? That one was published like 22. So, oh, it's pretty recent. No, it is. But like you said, it's,

yeah, probably makes sense that they're going to start working around. I bet within 18 months they're going to be having meetings. about it, yeah. Boy, that'll be another good chunk of content for us, Jake. Yeah. My Decadal Survey, what's it look like?

Pick up that rock, swim in that lake. That's Anthony's Decadal Survey. I love it. Those three things. Let's get to baseline Americans. That's a cool picture. That's an interesting rock. That was fun to swim in that lake.

Boom. Yeah. We're done. We're all kids again. I love it. Nailed it. Jennifer, if you need it. More advice like this.

Hit us up. We're available. We're available as a consultancy service. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, perfect. Marketing, strategy, whatever you need. Yeah. Web development.

This has been great. What do? You got to do your plugs. Like, you know, if people want to help out with Planetary Society, where do they go? How much money should they give you? What is the correct amount? Well, we make it very easy for you to find us. first off, and we do a lot of our work for free.

So while the gifts that we receive from members and others are the engine of what allows to do everything we do and allows us to keep our independence, we also are trying to recruit the largest movement ever to support the scientific exploration of space. And so you can do that on planetary.org. That's our website, but also all the socials. You can find planetary society. If you happen to be a member or you join as a member, we have a great member community, an online community that is for members only. Whenever I say this a lot, whenever I'm starting to feel a little bit down, a little bit of world wary, I go into the member community and find my joy again because everyone in there is so delightful and so enthusiastic and it just really helps center me and give me like a new boost of energy.

So member community and of course also as a member you get the planetary report in the mail a nice hard copy issue with a planetary report. But honestly, what we're trying to do is get people to feel the joy of scientific exploration all the time every day. And there are many ways to do it. We have a free newsletter with the downlink. We have a podcast, Planetary Radio, that of course has the special space policy edition that Casey Dreyer hosts, as well as our book club edition,

that Matt Kaplan, our original planetary radio host, still hosts the book club, book club edition. But a regular planetary radio every week. So I can just keep on going with all the things that we have out there for you to stay in touch with the scientific exploration of space and finding your own place in space. Love it. Nailed it.

Nailed it. Nailed it. Excellent stuff. excited for the Jennifer Vaughn era of the Planetary Society. So we expect very big things from you. Great. Bring it on. Bring it on. I also am expecting a lot. And again, with this team that we have, we're going to get it all. We're going to make it happen. We have, we have extraordinary talent on our team. 15 years from now when we interview the next CEO of the Planetary Society, we're going to tell them, Jennifer Vaughn got his samples back from Mars

So what are you going to do for us? There you go Swamming that lake What other lakes? You find the other lakes out there? We need new lakes. All right. I obviously have a lot to do

to get these samples back. Yeah, we'll let you get back to work. Let us know how much it should cost. Awesome. Yeah. We'll do that math. All right. What else you got, Jake?

Anything else to play? I don't think so I think I'm all out you're plugged out offnum.com slash discord you have a show for us next week what's going on you got a little ticker thing is it going to go is it going to flip behind you?

No because my stupid reason my open call guys I need to refresh off that does the board it's so dumb that I hate that I have that sense in my life Trevor I should have gotten a pronunciation guide on I've only read his name it's so many weird It's KJ. It's Jorlin.

Probably don't say the K, right? If it's KJ, you don't say the K? Sure. I don't know. Trevor. I don't even want to spoil the backstory on why Trevor's going on on this show because I feel like there's story time to be told on next week's show. So it's going to be great.

But he runs like a mobile planetarium. He takes it out on the road show to schools, sets up planetarian, does shows for scientific outreach. It's going to be a great time. It's good hang. Oh, that's so fantastic. That'll be fun. Used to work at the Canadian Space Agency.

Boys with Jeremy Hanson. Nailed it. Nailed it. So we're going to just circle Jeremy until he comes on the show. That's our goal. That's the effort here. Good stuff. Awesome. Well, we'll see you all in next week.

Thanks again, Jennifer. Thanks a week, everybody. Thanks so much for having me. Bye. Bye. Bye. 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, 4, 3, 2, 1, into death.