Off-Nominal - 96 - Lori’s Mom’s Favorite

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined once again by Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator, to talk about the newest class of Brooke Owens fellows, what she’s been up to lately, and who knows, maybe we’ll randomly argue about commercial space stations on this one, too.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 96 - Lori’s Mom’s Favorite (with Lori Garver) - YouTubeEpisode 66 - My Next One is “Fiction” (with Lori Garver) - YouTubeEscaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age: Garver, Lori, Isaacson, Walter - Amazon.com: BooksBrooke Owens FellowshipPatti Grace Smith FellowshipMatthew Isakowitz Fellowship ProgramFollow LoriLori GarverLori Garver (@Lori_Garver) / TwitterFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine start. Hello, Anomalies. Welcome. Welcome to Off Nominal. That's it? That's the whole interview. That's the whole intro. I'm just, I just got thrown off.

I got thrown off. I got, the YouTube thing was playing on this screen, and then it came in like three seconds behind me, and I just threw my own rhythm off. Look at that. This is, this is a, the problem was, I haven't let you do the intro for so long that you forgot how to do the intro. It's just like, why am I hearing myself all over you?

and you forget about how to start them. Jesus. Who was here with us today, Jake? We have a great guest with us today. We've got Lori Garver back, returning guest to the show. Lori, you're kind of doing like a tour here. We were on Main Engine Cutoff a couple weeks ago, which was a great show.

And, well, you know, once we knew that you had some spare time, we had to get you over here, too. That's what I was going to say. People are going to start realizing I don't have that much to do. Yeah. No, you guys are just really. high priority because you are in the sweet spot of people who agree with me, I think. A welcome surprise after I fought Eric Berger last week on the live stream.

We're going to fight about that, too. That doesn't mean we aren't fans. That's true. That's actually, that's a thing that I enjoy thoroughly, that we can get spicy about stuff. And then be like, okay, well, next topic. So, Jake and I do that all the time. We do. We do that a lot.

About a lot of things, it turns out. But one thing we don't fight about is drinks. And Lori almost told us what she was drinking before we started this. Oh, because I had to work so hard to decide I would drink a beer for you, gentlemen. Wow. It is called Parkway. Parkway. Parkway.

That's it. local beer that my husband banks. And so I am here with you. It says, get bent. My P-A. It's a indie pale ale. And I am not usually a beer drinker, but it is local to where we live now in the Shandot Valley.

So, cheers. Yeah, it's a different parkway than my parkway. Yes. Yeah. Mine is the Garden State variety. Yours is the Blue Ridge variety. Yeah. Yeah.

That's some local East Coast knowledge for you, Jake It's a mid-Atlantic trivia there I don't know what's going on there Oh dear Okay cool What do you got Anthony So if you just kept driving up that mountain range a little bit

You would eventually end up near Hershey PA Where one of the old classics Jake lives Which is Troeg's perpetual IPA This is a go-to, it's a go-to day for me. Needed something a little delicious at 60 degrees.

This is a nice warm weather beer. So enjoying my warm February. When you led with Hershey, I almost expected

you to have some sort of cool chocolate drink or something. No. Then I was like, no, Anthony doesn't do that.

No, I don't do the thick beers. Not into that. No, no. Hershey's chocolate a real, a real hidden secret out there. So,

not really a hidden secret at all. People just don't go to Hershey. It's called Hershey. It's in Hershey. Like, everyone goes to Hershey Park, which is the real thing to go to. I've got a black rush today. Real simple. That's dark. Yeah.

What's in there? Calua. Oh, nice. I didn't hear what you said it was. It's a black Russian. Normal. Very plain. With some square ice.

Yeah. So these are clutch, Lori. These are metal ice cubes. So when I make the drink 10 minutes before the show, and it sits at my desk, it doesn't water down. You see? If the Russians are good at anything, it's cooling systems. My right.

We're going there. Five minutes in, baby. Plink. Anyway, that wasn't on the topic list for the day. That's what let us down the fight last week. So let's avoid that one. Oh, man. Okay.

Well, what we're actually here to talk about, not picking on the Russians, Small pieces of metal. Is that we're here to talk about? Small pieces of metal. No, okay. Okay. I'm going to just keep derailing until you can get to the official topic.

I'm like trying not to laugh too much here right now. Lori, so we really wanted to get you on because you have been picking up the pace on some new work with a great organization that we're really big fans of. Brooke Owen's fellowship. So we had, I'm trying to think that was August. We had Emily Calendrell on to talk a little bit about this. That was really fun. And I think that was like right when they were opening up the applications for this year's class. And now we're on the other side of it.

So we've got a new class that's been picked and you're doing some more work there. So maybe to start off there, like what are you working on? What's going on over at Brooke Owens? Sure. Well, this is a joy of my life for sure. and I have recently sort of re-enlisted in the day-to-day work of the fellowship having been a co-founder in 2016. We are just starting our seventh class of fellows. And as you all know, these are women and gender minorities in the Brook Owens Fellowship who are recruited from around the world.

We have around 50 a year. this year we have 47 in our class and they as you are scrolling through there intern at aerospace companies for the summer we also provide them a senior level executive mentor they get a now because we have six classes of alumni an alumni mentor and we bring them to Washington DC for a big annual summit we missed two years had to do that during COVID virtually But we'll be back again this year. We were with this 22 class last year. So this class makes it, if you can believe, at 300.

I think we're at 298 officially of Brook Owens Fellows so far. And when I, my friend Brooke Owens passed away in 2016 of cancer at the age of 35, my initial plan, and I sent this little email to people just within 24 hours of hearing that she died saying, you know, we shouldn't let her light go out. And if we could just get five a year, this would, you know, turn into something. And our industry really needs these early career people from different background. And so now here we are almost at 300. In addition, there have been other fellowships based on this model that have begun and are really successful. the first one that said to come along because another dear friend, Matthew Isockowitz, passed away the year after Brooke.

And his family asked if they could use our model to start the Matt Isaacowitz Fellowship. And that program has got, I think, nearly 200 now in their sixth year. Again, alumni. It's like the Marines. You know, once you're in one of these, you don't get out. And then Patty Gray-Smith, who was the head of commercial space at FAA, a true leader in our field and in the African-American community, passed away actually around the same time as Brooke. And I worked with all three Matt Patty and Brooke closely. And so we now have a fellowship in Patty's honor.

The Patty-Grace Smith Fellowship is for black students, collegiate students, and we have the third. third class, the 2023 class starting this year, so almost 100 of those so far. Really an exciting thing to work with these young people. Having this come at the same time, really that there is, I think, so much more within the space arena for people to do and bring in these new ideas and different experiences. Most of them are aerospace engineers, but not all, most of our fellowships are in engineering, but not all. I noticed we have a journalism one this year with Space News. We also, yeah, we have some science ones, mostly engineering. And we do the gamut from where everyone pretty much prefers to work. This is a matching process. It's actually

fascinating because we let the companies interview people and then the brink. Brookies themselves, we call them Brookies, are able to rank who they like best. And one-to-one matches are like, I ring a bell. And SpaceX is the most requested internship, but we now have so many new companies. ABL has got people this year. NASA has one, FAA, Commercial Space Office, has their first this year. It's an amazing thing. So I'm digging into planning the summit.

We're doing the paddy and the Brookie summit together here in D.C. And got a bunch of fun things in store. Wow. Okay. So this is basically, I'm trying to read between the lines here. The reason you're going back to here is because you just need to get your hands dirty with the factory producing these talented people, right? You're trying to imprint upon them the Lori Garver way. Is that what's going on here?

Well, I do send them all books. Yeah, okay. I actually sort of wrote the book because every year I was answering these questions to, you know, from Brookies. And we'd be here. I always have them at my house. And we would just go through so many of these things. And I said, you know, I really need to write this down. And by the way, we have a thousand people applying for these 50 brooky spots.

And so it isn't just for them. You know, it's for all these people who now want to be in our community. And they wouldn't be wanting to do this if we were just doing the same thing as we had been doing. Right. So it's, it's, I think I got re-involved mainly because someone had had to get off of the executive team because her job got really busy. But I was promoting the book is just like, all the podcasts aren't as fun as yours. If you can just, let's just start there. We're blurbing that.

That's going on the site. For sure. I might even make that a T-shirt. And after six, after all the title of a podcast. And after six months, you don't really have to invest so much time. in that your publicist gets to go away. And I do have enough time. I will talk about some of the other things I'm doing, but this is the thing that when I have a minute, I'm going to jump back and say, okay, what crazy thing can I plan for the Brookies? And reading through the applications, interviewing them during the interview process, which is in the fall, calling to let them know they got in. These are, these are all things that you don't generally get out of a, out of a day job. And I'm a point in my life where I can do it. And I sort of found, and I do say this in the book,

I, while I accomplished a lot in my NASA career, I'm not willing to say that my NASA career is over, but in my NASA career so far. And the, but nothing will have made as big a difference as doing the fellowship, you know, and now fellowships because there are these just great minds coming in and everyone is a little ripple in a pond. So it's it's what we should be doing. And when I was in a position to be a leader at NASA, you leave and, you know, there's there's this aura that is given to you. I'm not even sure I earned it, but people want to hear my stories. People return my calls. I left to the field and didn't go into lobbying for some other aerospace companies. So the favors that I call in now are all for the Brookies and the Paddies.

And it's like, I really don't get a lot of people turning me down because people want to host. People want a mentor. And so it's, you know, I'm finally calling for a reason that I think people are universally agreeing. This is a positive thing. I'm sure it's an interesting time too where, you know, a couple years in now, like the people that were the original Brookies are now at places full time and moving up the ranks and companies now know like, oh, wow, that person that we took a shot on, you know, so many years ago is like now a key contributor here. So let's get some more of them in here. And it's probably a cool cycle that you start getting into there. It was a real breakthrough because at the time we started this, many of these individuals said they weren't getting the jobs.

They were interviewing and not being hired. And many of the companies were saying, we just don't get enough applicants. You know, so it's like, okay, well, you can't say that anymore because you get a thousand a year. But even companies that are taking Brooke Cohen's fellows as interns, we share the list of people who didn't get in, but who were highly rated and they get jobs too. The alumni are pretty special. It's really fun to watch what they're doing. I do, again, in the book, talk about one of them who's at SpaceX and has been. And that's not where she interned.

She interned at Maiden Space. But I tell the story in the book, so I won't tell it here. But she is somebody who, I don't know, there's going to be a lot of astronauts from the bookie class. We haven't had our first yet, but counting on her for that. At one point, one of the bookies said to me, because, you know, the portraits of the deputy administrators and administrators of NASA are in the hall. And she said, I saw your portrait there, but, you know, there's no women on the administrator hall.

And I want to be the first female NAS administrator. And I said, well, I hope you get to be a female NAS administrator, but I hope you're not the first one. Because you know, you're 20. Yeah, you don't want that. You don't want to wait that long. Is your portrait, is it a painted portrait? No, I'm imagining that it's like you had to pose for like. You can imagine I, my, I got to be true to my brand.

My brand is not that you sit there for a long time and get a $30,000 portrait of the taxpayers. It's a cons portrait. That is literally what they need for me. And I was like, no, went to someone who took a picture and like, paint it over. That's amazing. It's really nice, though. You use the lens, AI thing to make your portrait.

Yeah. And I think it has been the standard ever since. I'm pretty sure from looking at them that they changed. We lost a huge contract. And I went to the Airline Pilots Association after that, you know, and they had the same thing. Their presidents sat for these long painting portraits. And the pilot, the Delta captain, who had recruited. me, wanted me, because he was seeking a change agent, and he is the first, and this is from

1930-something when the first Air LAMP Association President was. He's the first union, pilot union. That's what it is the measure of, which is pretty interesting how early they were, you know, I was going to say, that's actually pretty early. It was really important back then because the companies were making them fly. in bed weather and things and, you know, so they had to band together. But they stopped with the portraits, too, other than the kind where you take the picture. Portrait killer.

Lori Garver portrait killer. Just let, yeah, let's get the artists against me now. This I realize. They're all hard about AI art. Don't worry about it. They're on a whole other culture worse than. You're small change now in the big battle. They don't care about the hallways anymore.

The actual Kremlinology. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder what the Kremlin's doing these days for portraits. They still doing velvet paintings? Well, we could stand if they had some more to paint, right? Let's get some new blood over there. The next guy's got to do digital photography portraits. Yeah, yeah.

I would spring for the painting if they would get somebody new. We could crowd fund it for sure. Personally, yeah. I wanted to ask, so over like seven years now of Brooke Owen's classes, how are you seeing like things change in terms of like the skill sets you're getting in for the applicants, the skill sets you're matching to employers, what employers are trying to be a part of the program? Like how are you seeing a change over time compared to the first class? That's a great question. You know, the first year, it's like so many things now. I'm glad I don't have to compete with these people.

You know, they're just off the charts. And I have a couple of boys who are the age of like the first class and they'd be reviewing applications with me. And they'd just be like, oh, we are toast. We would see, you know, 5.0 from Yale. Like, oh. They started taking up velvet painting. They were like, this will be a better route for us.

Yeah, that has worked out very well for them. The class caliber, however, has just gone up. I mean, it's impossible. We really do try not to, there will be 4.0 students from an Ivy League school who don't get in. I mean, that's just part of what this fellowship is about. And so we like to take a range of students. We typically take, you know, juniors,

the sweet spot for where aerospace engineering interns can be placed. But we take a couple younger, couple seniors, and we have over time evolved from first, the companies were anybody I knew who would take my call. And there were 36 the first year. And now, and initially there was nobody like a Boeing or a Lockheed or an Airbus. And, our agreement is a page and a half long with the host company for employment. And, you know, they have to pay them a living wage. We say what that'll be and so forth. But that's on them.

That's, you know, there's to do. So over time, Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus all came to us and said, can we host Brookies? And, you know, our first thing is absolutely we'd love to do it. These have to be special. You know, we want these interns to have a challenge. and by the way, it's a page and a half agreement. The first time, the biggest company we got initially was Airbus, and they came back and their lawyers had just bled all over the agreement.

And it's like, no, sorry. I was going to ask that, though, because you say a page and a half agreement, and I imagine lawyers are buying are like, where's the rest? They figured it out. They figured it out. The first pushback was, well, you have to agree that you're going to drug test them. like no we're not doing that like whatever it is you need as an employer you're going to have to do um but they figured it out and so here seven years in we we we have the lacquins and bowings

uh as well as um some companies that weren't even known or you know started seven years ago i'm loft off the top of my head there's um i don't think abel was around back then. ABL probably wasn't right. And we have a wait list of companies. This is a really tough thing because if you've got companies willing to hire candidates and we have great students applying, that's why we're up to 47 now. But the goal of this is to create a cohort of people who then can bond as a group.

They have a class. And this is about the size that we think limit. can do that. But I'm always trying to think of ways to expand, thinking maybe this is a summer fellowship we could do a fall and a spring. Potentially, although aerospace engineering requires you just sort of be in school most of the time, I'm told. So I'm not sure that's going to work. We have just gotten such support and a couple of big things happen. One is we got one of the contributions that Blue Origin made when they auctioned off that first seat. And I think they gave 10 organizations, a million dollars.

We received one of those, we being Brooke Rowan's Fellowship and Patty Grace Smith Fellowship together. And then when Dylan went up on Blue, he made, he did that, you know, buy one, give one. Mike Flakeer. And so we received a major request from him. And so we now were able to have an employee to help manage some of the back of house stuff. Anyway, it's evolved in all positive ways. And I'm really, I could not have envisioned how important this would become, not only for the people themselves, but the community.

And for me, it's when I go and I give a talk somewhere and people come up to me who are early career women and gender minorities. And they say, you know, I applied and I didn't get in, but I felt better just knowing that there was a fellowship out there for this. And this energy around it makes people, again, feel welcome. and the companies are really terrific. We have had just a handful of issues where I've had to make a call and say, you know, this is inappropriate behavior or something, but it's very, very positive that these hosts want to have these people in their organizations. And they, I believe it's 100%, certainly anyone who, that got hired.

afterwards. So you're in your internship and you're going to get a job, whether it's yours, where you internship or not. And sometimes, you know, I get a lot of random requests for Brookies. Can you find me? And I include in that people who've applied because we do, Brooke was very creative in addition to being a pilot, engineer. And so one of our essay prompts, you have to respond with a non-written response. And we get all kinds of things from sculptures two videos. One candidate did a dance with a drone. Like, this is just amazing stuff. Like they were dancing with the drone or was a drone footage of a dance? Someone else was driving the drone and it was like a ballet and the drone was a partner. It was one of the

cooler things I've seen. That's some Cirque desolation. Yeah. We need to start interviewing some these brookies, Anthony, so that they can submit our show as their non-written. That's what we need to do. That'll go well. That's a good thing for somebody out there. Lori Garber said this was more fun than the rest of the podcast. So this should count for something. Yeah, the drone one, I'm going to need to see some drone ballet footage.

So that would be a good one if we can get the name of the drone ballet footage person. I have to dig that out myself. All right. Because I don't really fully understand the concept. So it might be a thing I need to learn visually more than more than I can imagine it. You just got to remember it's just AI and blockchain. And then it'll all make sense. It's a Web3 drone kind of thing.

Web three drone. Machine learning. We brought AI a lot today. It is having a cultural moment. It is. Yeah. It's a thing for today. It's probably going to last.

It seems like it. It's got some legs. More than Web 3. Unfortunately for the Web 3 people. Yeah. I was about to take us in a weird, this whole thing this week where Launcher got acquired, this is a random Web 3 side quest. That company Vass that acquired Launcher was like the Mount Gox founder.

Oh, really? Yeah. So that was a bunch of words that wouldn't make a lot of sense to anyone. Okay. We'll just skip that topic. But if you're out there and that, If that sounds made any sense to you, you just had the reaction Jake had, which is, what the hell's going on here? And you can decide for yourself if that makes you more or less excited for what just happened to launch.

It's like a planetary resources thing all over again. Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting one. Yeah. Oh, dear. Okay. All right. Yep. They were hosts who isn't anymore.

I was going to ask if you have a list of those and we can pour one out a little in memoriam of. planetary resources to be one of them. Yeah. R.R.P. Oh, dear. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about, you know, what the, so you talk with Anthony on Managing Cutoff this was last week, the week before. And the theme was upcoming policy. What does Lori Garber think about, you know, looking forward rather than looking back at your book?

And I'm trying to like imagine, because this is important now as we're talking about all these fellowships because this is the world that these interns are walking into and they're and they're going fresh-faced, do-eyed into a workplace that is changing pretty significantly. Like it is very different than it was even when the fellowship started seven years ago. So I kind of want to talk about a few things there, but maybe we'll just kind of kick it off generally like that. Like how is the work environment different than when you started and what sort of new things do you have to prepare these students for? Yeah, well, for the, I think the biggest change, well, there's, I think it's all positive,

but in general, some of these companies that were startups hadn't had a young female staff before, maybe any female staff at all. So there's a bit of a learning curve there that has, I would is improving. And as I mentioned, we've had a generally positive experience. But these are things that it's part of why we did the fellowship, so that people would become more accustomed to recognizing how you work in today's world with the workforce of, well, it's today now. We could say it's tomorrow.

But then there is the type of companies. And a bunch of these, as we said, weren't here before. But I think the work generally is, you know, in the very first year, we always do this thing called a grand challenge because I love grand challenges because it's all about the why. So we put out a why statement and we team them up in six people in each team. And the why might, the grand challenge might be to plan. I would put a combination of, you are supposed to bring to this team the skill set of the

company where you're working. So I'd make sure there was a launch company. There was a satellite developer, you know, and a policy person. And they now there are companies that I wouldn't have even known how to categorize back seven years ago when we started. You know, like we said, there wasn't a loft. And I really think that... Mount Gox was still around.

And we do have CSIS, we have AIA, we have some of Bryce, Avesant, sort of the analytical side as well, Maxar. And together now, I think you're... you're really getting a representation of how aerospace has changed in that you aren't either just a launch company or a satellite company. There's a lot of different things you can do. I mean, the fact that like this is the first year that there's someone that's in the journalism side is that's an interesting note as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the one we'll have to have on, Jake. Yeah, I was also when you would be most interested in dealing with our podcast would be somebody that's ready to go. right at Space News. When you eventually get an applicant that says I want to become a space podcaster, then we can finally be. We will have made it. Yeah, they can come intern with us. We probably can't fulfill most of that one-and-a-half page agreement, but we can try.

Yeah. You have to pay them a living wage, for instance. Yeah, that's the real problem for us. That's the big tough one right there. Yeah, we're, I mean, yeah. Yeah, you think these metal ice cubes growing trees? I mean, come on. I was going to say, we should probably get the page and a half of our cell first and see what we're missing out on.

And then we can move up the chain. You guys get a wage? Offnom.com slash discord. Never fly ride share. Yeah, never fly ride share. So we can host a brookie. That is one of the things that changed the first year. I'm by far the oldest person of the co-founders, but the other two co-founders and I put together a private Facebook page, and that was how they all met and conversed at first.

And now I can't even tell you, you mentioned discourse there on Slack and discourse, all these things. And I am not keeping up well. To be fair, no one really is, because one of the big ones is about to be outlawed or something. something and it's a whole thing. Yeah, don't worry about the social networks. Yeah, one of them is getting run by Elon Musk in a weird way. Oh, yeah. Social networking is in a weird spot anyway.

They'll figure it out. Social networking has jumped the shark and we had him on the next thing. This is it? You're declaring it? It's over? Yeah. That was the end. But it feels very old to say, will you send me an email?

Hey, man. Email. I'm coming back around on email. Nobody owns email and it's going to stick. around that's the thing about it so nice that's a little like pirate radio kind of vibe there jane yeah yeah that's where that's where my vibe is right now i'm all over that well you know my public has had me doing uh ufa call in the middle night so i'm i'm with you there i don't even know can you just explain that a little bit i don't know what am what are you talking about am a m radio you're doing like

uip research no there's like people calling in who want to talk about a sighting they saw. And you were talking to them as this was book outreach that you were doing? Yeah. They buy books, it turns out. They buy books, but I'm just trying to figure out. You know, the Venn diagram between people doing UFO sightings and space policy. You know, I'm here for it.

Tom DeLong of Blink 182 is here for it. But I think that's probably where the list is. It came full circle because one of the first agents who wanted to represent me, I had shared a draft. They said, do you got anything on UFOs? Like, no, no, that's not what the book's about. That really sells. And sure enough, even though I didn't write anything about it, they've got me talking about.

So I think of myself as really a straight shooter. And they'd be asking, like, okay, we got to say, you know, what's NASA hiding? And you just have to play along. Like, well, if I knew, I couldn't tell you. We got these big balloons. That's what we're hiding. Well, you must have picked up the politician's skill of just answering any question as the question you want to answer, right? That's the one you've got to be able to pick out.

I think in publishing a book, I finally did. That's a great question. What is NASA hiding? And the real answer there is, let's talk about the thing. What we really should be asking is, what is NASA discovering? Well, and the key is they tell you, you know, don't tell the story. You have to leave, like, wanting more. So it's fine to not say and to be a little leading.

Perfect. All right. I had one more Brooke question, Brooke Owen's question. So just in terms of the companies again, you know, we're seeing, maybe I should be careful about labeling like this, but like I feel like we're seeing. a little bit of extra churn these days in company, kind of like popping up and then going away and that kind of thing. Does that affect you at all?

Or do you kind of stick to some of the more stable places to put these brokies? You know, it has affected us a couple of times. We had, I think, two interns out in Mojave when, Who just went bankrupt last summer at Maston at Maston? Got them placed right away with others. Stealth, I don't know if they were ever known as anything, but stealth, they similarly, I think, had someone and didn't. Oh, Paul Allen's company, similar.

So, and if you look at the list, it is not all trying to true. We, it's trying true to the extent that one of the leadership knows it would be a great internship. Right. So it hasn't happened too much, but it happens. And I think that is an interesting part of, you know, the cycle. Gosh, Ursa Major. I had my list here. Yeah, I love this.

I love it. I love it. The paper sound of like, I have so much to sort through Jake, I can't even give you an answer. That's what this says to me. No. Long Star Lunar. I don't even think I know about that. No.

No. Let's go in the research file. Okay. All right. Twitter, at least. Twitter. We Martians podcast. I didn't even acquire that one.

We should have done that. We should have done an acquisition. I should have acquired Wee Martians. Yeah. And then shut it down. Damn. Yeah, yeah. Sold it for web three parts.

Yeah, keep that in mind when we shut down one of our other projects. Yeah. Okay. All right. Put that on the back. Now you're never getting an intern. No, never. Honestly, though, that is an interesting aspect.

Like, if you are somebody who, ended up in a situation like that and got a front row seat to something like that happening, that's a pretty good base level experience to know what was going on at a place like that at that time so that when you're in the next situation in your full-time job, you're like, oh, I'm picking up, just picking a little scent up here of maybe not the best situation that I'm in right now. And you know, when we're placing, we try to suss out in the interviews, whether you are more suited to a startup or something more traditional. But there's no knowing really.

I mean, some of these people are pretty young. So I don't know what I would have even thought of questions like that. But of course, in my day, they wouldn't have had them. Yeah, yeah. I teach a little bit of web development on the side. And I tell that to some of my students too, because sometimes they come to me with like, oh, I did like some hackathon and it was a disaster.

Like it just, I have paired up with a group and they were all terrible and we didn't produce anything. Like we literally had nothing to show for it at the end of it. And it was a complete waste of time. And I was like, no, it was not a complete waste of time. Right. Everything you do is an experience, whether it's a positive one or a negative one. I know it's hard to like swallow right now. But like that made you a better developer from having gone through that because now you know all the things not to do.

You know, and so there's, yeah, there's got to be an aspect of that to, you know, being inside a sinking ship, right? Yeah. You know, because the last couple years, I wasn't as involved in the day to day, and now I have the time I have gone back because, of course, we survey, we're data geeks too. So we survey everybody after every internship and every summit and, you know, who are your best mentors and hosts. And there is no one who has ever said anything like that about their internship. But they are very open and we, you know, make these anonymous so we can hear everything. Of course, we could track who went to what company, obviously. But I think they're very aware that that experience might not be what they wanted every day,

but they learned a lot. At one point, I was at a, gosh, how can I do this without just, okay, I'm not going to say the organization, but it was a luncheon and a rookie sitting across from me and a person speaking going on and on. And she texts me. So is this training for the future of sitting through space conferences where you have zero interest in what this being said while trying to still look attentive? That's exactly what this is. Totally valuable experience.

Oh, dear. Okay. That's cool. I mean, I'm excited. Like I said, I've got to cross paths with a few brokies. And they've always been, I always described them as a. force of nature. So that's kind of how I see them. They exist in my, my head canon is forces of nature. I'm excited for, I'm excited for the first astronaut one. Now that you said that, I'm like,

oh, yeah, you're right. Like seven years, that means we're starting to get, because if they start as a junior, that puts them like, yeah, we're starting to start to get into astronaut age here of that first class. So not quite NASA administrator yet, but not quite NASA administrator level, but a couple more classes before we've got the NASA administrator. Yeah, I think of them as a force of nature as well. And, you know, for all of us who, you're around your own kids, but for me, it's just, I have learned so much from them. And every mentor tells me the same thing. Like, they got as much out of the relationship as, as the Brookies.

So it's very special. Good, good. Is Lance Bass doing a fellowship this year? It would be tough for him. Given, you know, I mean, he is encouraging on our podcast beat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. His podcast might be able to afford, though,

one and a half page agreement, though, so we'll see. And it's a history podcast, right? Yeah, it kind of kicks ass. I was listening to the first two episodes this week. Oh, it's already out? The first two are out, and it's awesome. It's a really good. It's really good.

He's got an amazing surprise. He's got a really good podcast. voice. Oh, I mean, as I said in the book, he's a joy. It was fun. He's fun to be around. We had a whole stick as you- No Lori Garver mentions yet in the first two episodes. I'm a little bit, I'm a little scoutsical about that. I'm waiting for it. I'm like, am I, should I pick up? Should I note that for a reason? But I don't know. Well, I had not heard from him since the book. So I felt it was quite positive, but I don't know. Maybe he took offense. All right. Let us know, Lance.

I don't think so. I don't think so. As I said, he did a great job at it, and he sincerely wanted to go. The fact that he's not on dear moon is driving me nuts now. He should have been on that. That's a Lance Bass situation, if I've ever seen one. Totally is. Oh, yeah.

Lance is going to find his way in his space. But he says in the podcast, he doesn't want to go up on a suborbital flight. He only wants to go up if someone's going to hire him to do research up there. I'm like, that's a, I like where you're at on that. That's a tough gig. Love the ambition. Yeah. That's a tough gig, Lance.

Not a lot of hiring going around right now for medical research. There's about six of those jobs in the world. One of them is Peggy Witson, and I don't think she's giving it up anytime soon. Or Mike L.A., yeah. Yeah, yeah. They seem like they're locked in. So maybe if this Tom Cruise thing ever, ever actually happens. So.

Are you guys going to get over that? that it didn't happen. Yeah. Don't you blame Jim Bridenstein for that? Yeah, he killed it. So, Lori, yeah, are we going to get over the fact that our podcast might have killed the best movie in space deal? I don't know. Maybe we'll get over it.

Or is it still a thing we should reference occasionally? Sorry for us referencing our one scoop that we got. I didn't know what was your scoop. It's our scoop. It's our one scoop. Yeah. The one time we were ahead of news. Yeah.

we enjoy our our jake and i are have very few things where we're like prideful of one of them is we sometimes are like is jeffauss going to have to listen to this episode and if if the answer is yes we're thrilled that's like our that's our meter as people know my history with jeffausd in my dreams uh in which he just called our products a fan blog and i was like incensed by that and it's that is a dream that i told them about this once so it's fine but yeah that's our that's our measuring stick so Yeah. Yeah. So how can I know?

If you have another scoop on the Tom Cruise thing, that would be huge. We could get our second Wikipedia footnote. Maybe third. Last week we learned Eric Berger's birthday. So that should be our second footnote. Tom Cruise was not one of the people who we were pursuing in the 90s. At that time, the people who were talking about wanting to go that I reached out to were Tom Hanks. and James Cameron, as I say in the book.

Hanks said Rita wouldn't let him go until his kids grew up. I think they're grown up now, so maybe we ought to pursue that. And Cameron was too tall. Oh, is he tall? He's really tall, huh? He's tall. I never knew that. But he went on this little submarine.

Is he too tall for Soyuz? It was Soyuz. It was Soyuz. Because see, that's when I got Fis Johnson. So that was a scoop that was in the book that I never saw anybody really cover much. I guess people don't care about the CEO of SC Johnson Wax. A family-owned company that makes cleaning products

and an amazing array of other things. Now you've now channeled our vibe on scoops. Look at this. You're giving us shit. And now here you are doing the same thing. This is good. So, I mean, you've had more than that scoop. But I just, quick breaking news, we are quoted here on Wikipedia as being the source for Eric Berger's birthday.

So hang on. Why are we number two though? There's a number one there. I know. What's that all about? Oh, my goodness. I don't know. Oh, it was a, he must have got a feature from the Houston Chronicle.

I don't know. We got scooped on our scoop. scooped on our scoop. The worst. Do you think that he likes that he's Eric Berger a meteorologist or does he not like that? It's a pretty funny thing, hey?

What would our Perens thing be here, Jake? Podcasting. Probably. Former corporate middle manager? Is that what I'm going to say? I don't even know what mine is. I think I have had

trouble with mine. People say policy. analyst. That's like, that's one way to put it. Now, you are, you are non-suffic. You are important enough that you do not have a suffix. You're just Lori Garver. You're like a Brazilian soccer player.

You're just your name. That's it. Sounds like you like that. You're into that. Okay. She's thrilled. Cool, cool. Well, that was random 10 minutes of this podcast. Yeah, that was a good. I don't know where that leaves us.

What else are you working on, Lori? Is there anything else going on besides Brooke Owen stuff? What's what's happening? What's the Lori Garver calendar look like these days? You know, I am advising a few entities. As you can see on the dust jacket of my book, escaping gravity. Plug it. My quest.

thing. There it is. I am, it's called an operating advisor to Bessemer Venture Partners. They're a big venture capital firm and the deep tech team allows me to

sit in basically on a whole bunch of really interesting pitches and help evaluate which ones to fund. So I never knew anything about venture capital and that has been a fantastic thing. I am also a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfour Center.

And so you will occasionally see me as you will in I think a week and a half in Boston teaching, guest lecturing. I serve on the board of Hydrosat, which is a great startup company looking at the hydrology of plants and how we can help that with they're launching a consolation of thermal imaging satellites. That's the new hotness right there, thermal imaging. That's like the new hotness.

Everyone's getting into that lately. Keep your eyes peeled, folks. Web four. That's a scoop right there, Jake. And one in the news, while they aren't in the news, but Worldview, I'm an advisor for them as well. They are launching balloons for all kinds of fun purposes. Balloons, baby. Balloon made out right now.

Yeah. I love balloons. And then maybe to transition into the policy topic debate you had with Eric, I'm an advisor to Sierra Space. and so I would say that my views on commercial Leo destinations might be a little biased, so I'm not as ready as you are to give up on Leo. And I'm prepared to discuss that. Listen, I know you do your homework. So you've probably heard me say you literally convinced me of this view on Rico.

I texted Eric and I said, by the way, that was not my argument. I didn't say it was yours. I just say you convinced me. You got me there. You talked me into like, oh, shit, yeah. That's exactly what's going to happen. In a way, I was taking the different position. Like, I don't think the moon should overtake Leo.

And I hope NASA doesn't get too distracted with the moon because to me, Leo is. still going to give us a lot of potential for humanity and those eight billion of us down here. And I've been thinking about, I mean, I don't have any, you know, I don't have any, any more insight than you do. And I can see why your takeaway would be we've been in Leo all this time and we haven't really come up with this. All true. And even the experiment, in the 1990s that we were trying to do, you know, didn't, haven't yet at least amount to anything. But there's really something true to NASA's saying, you know, we haven't fully run the experiment because we don't have a lab dedicated to this, that the astronauts are really pulled doing

different things. We don't have the scientists up there themselves. And I really think the lack of gravity for things like biotech will prove, prove out. I think there will be a market for that. If you think about the hundreds of billions of dollars that go into developing pharmaceuticals and the fact that the uniqueness of how you can test new metabolites on tissues in space compared to in the one eventual one G here. Listen, man, I'm sitting in Philadelphia. We got nothing but false. in this city. So if that's going to happen, I am here for it because I will find myself right at the center of the space industry as soon as it's happened. So like, you know,

here's my new, my new measuring stick to bring this all together. If and when Lance Bass has a job in Lower Earth orbit, I will have, I will do the George W. Bush Mission accomplished banner. Like, I will reenact that scene. I'll go to the Intrepid. I'll hang it up on the command deck. I'll take that picture when Lance Bass has a job in Leo. So this is our new campaign, us three are going to get Lance Bass a job. In space. In space. The Lance Bass Fellowship is going to be only for commercial astronauts. That's the new, that's the expansion there, Lori.

But like George Bush's moment on the carrier, it was not necessarily meaningful. Wait, do you know, okay. It was not an indicator of anything. You referenced our episode, Jim Brynstein, and the second scoop that we got out of that one was that he was part of that carrier. So he was like, his duty was flying the planes off of that carrier so George Bush could take the mission accomplished picture,

which is the best thing in the world. Oh, God. And he didn't, he wasn't there for it, though, because he had to fly the planes off the deck. That's an amazing, amazing moment in time. Imagine being quite close to a meme.

That's like a forest-sump kind of moment, yeah. That should totally be in a Forrestcope movie. Except Forrest would have been there, holding up the sign. Yeah, he would have got back on the ship. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you're thinking about how quickly something like that could happen and how much money would go into it outside of NASA, I think it has some legs.

But of course we have to get. Farmers got the cash. Yeah. Right. I see what they're doing around town here. They got the cash. And it's a meaningful thing. I mean, just physically there's big differentiator.

And so going to the moon, what are those? And I don't really get the commercial market for the moon before something like Leo, because there are other materials processes that benefit from microgravity as well. And maybe we'll find some for one-sixth, but, you know, it may be less likely. Moon Advil. My take still is just that it doesn't matter at this point, whether we know for sure if the business cases are going to pan out because like, spend a million dollars a year on supporting commercial deal.

Like, it's no-brainer. Of course. If the commercial, if the private sector is going to throw in the rest, let's do it. Let's go. Let's see what happens. That's a gamble.

No-brainer. No-brainer. No-brainer. No-brainer. And especially since those first lunar missions, we're not going to be there full time. I mean, leadership in space is still, I think, meaningful in Leo.

I'm here for space stations I just oscillate wildly on my opinions on the matter I go from like sink the ISS tomorrow to like build the other half of the ISS back so that we don't have to rely on the Russians to yeah let's just make a new ISS to then I'm back to see

where's the art of gravity right? I'm all over the place yeah I'm all over the place so you catch me on any given day I'm like I'm over it or I'm here for it I have that as well and that's why I so enjoyed that discussion with Eric knowing that I seeded this thing in your brain.

I thought about it all week and then Eric provoked me, so it's good. Yeah. Well, it was also fun to to Eric defend the Leo destinations. Meteorologist. He's just a meteorologist based on Wikipedia. Yeah, Eric, for a meteorologist. Well, at least he has a name.

At least he has a Wikipedia, you know. We're still working on that. We're cited a couple times here. We're just working on it. So we're, we have two campaigns today. Lance Bass needs a job in Leo and we need Wikipedia pages. That's the, uh, well, you can do a link to mine. Keep it going. I just got, you know, is what we're going to be in charge of and then we'll get a Wikipedia page. So that'll be great. Yeah. I can be on as many times as Eric Pura than maybe it'll have them. Yikes. There it is. I guess we have to look at the schedule. There is. Yeah, I guess I'll have to look at the schedule. and pick some new, some new spicy topics to unpack.

That's going to be good. Well, I've caught up in the last six months, so that's good. You guys waited for you to have me on. Yeah, well, the mean, the meantime between Lori appearances, it's going to get smaller and smaller now. So, yeah. That's 100% true. Because when you said that you were on in June,

I was like, that's not even accurate. You were on like two weeks ago. It was June. It was June. It was totally June. It feels a lot closer. I'm sure it feels like not any time has surpassed at all for you, though, because you were on the junket for so long. No, yours was one first ones. And add my mom's favorite. Also going on the website. That's on the back of the T-shirt. Lori Garver's mom's favorite podcast. And that one with those two guys?

New best moment of the show ever. They know. They know so. many things. Oh, man. I don't even know. She's 92. She's 92. I think we might have to end this podcast also, Jake.

Like, this might be the last episode of this show. That's not your target audience? Honestly, the best. You are the best. 100% the best. You and your mom are the best. Yeah. Cash.

Shout out to your mom on. Yeah. Jake. where do we go from here? Do you have anything to plug? Join the Discord, I guess. Yeah, you got to join the Discord. Pop in Offnom.com slash Discord. Lori, if you want to learn how to use Discord, we got a great place for you to try it out. You would love our Discord.

We got into like a six to 12-hour argument the other day about whether the space shuttle is a rocket or not. This is the kind of pedantry that we dabble in in our Discord. It was a lot of fun. I was not there for that. Was there a conclusion? I don't know. It was pretty heated. So I think, I think some lines were drawn.

And I don't know if there was a lot of movement on that wedge issue. So we'll see. That is hilarious. Yeah. It's at least part rocket. I mean, plus, you know, you have this whole naming thing of the, what does the space shuttle? Is that the whole name? That came up.

That came up. Allfnom.com slash Discord. Do it. And you should never fly a ride share so that we can send Lance Bass to space. That's 100% our entire campaign. Yeah. Lori Garber, thank you so much for hanging out. If people have not checked out the book yet, where should they buy it?

At your local indie bookstore or at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or anywhere online. Escaping Gravity. Or they're free and free. the Capitol Hill Libraries because I keep stashing them in those little houses. That's amazing. And then, of course, yeah, you should check out the other episode with you, Lori, where we talked specifically about books so we can do the review. Is anyone done planning to look up that episode number so we can plug it?

Episode 66, it's in the show notes, Jake. It's all good. Okay, awesome. Excellent. Episode 66 with Lori Garvin. So check that out. See you later, everybody. Talk to you next week.

Thank you.