Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Policy Edition: Change for the Sake of Disruption at NASA

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Marcia Smith, the founder and editor of Space Policy Online, joins the show and revisits a conversation we had one year ago, recorded just weeks before the second Trump administration took office. That episode, “The Challenges of Change at NASA,” explored the institutional and political roadblocks to radical change at the U.S. space agency. A lot has happened since that show, including DOGE, mass staff departures, a draconian budget cut proposal, a dramatic shift toward sending humans to Mars, and the rapid departure of 20% of NASA's workforce. But at the end of the year, much remains the same. The SLS and Orion programs continue unchanged, with funding locked in through 2032. The humans-to-Mars policy has effectively vanished; returning U.S. astronauts to the Moon, to stay, is again centered within civil space policy. NASA's science missions, though still facing a serious budgetary threat, have not gone away. So, did we see real change at NASA? And to what end? Or was it merely disruption masquerading as change? Marcia Smith and host Casey Dreier revisit their original analysis and discuss what they got wrong, what they got right, and what surprised them about 2025 in civil space policy. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/spe-2025-a-year-of-disruption-and-change-at-nasaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome to the space policy edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreyer, the chief of space policy here at the Planetary Society, welcoming you to another show. looks at the policies and processes behind space exploration. This month, I welcome back Marcia Smith for the third or fourth time. I'm not sure, probably the most recurring guest on this show, founder and editor of space policy online, to talk about something we talked about a year ago, the challenges of change at NASA, and given everything that's happened in the year of 2025, whether we need to reevaluate and reassess what some of our models and ideas were about what can and can't

change and how things can and can't advance with or without Congress. It was an opportunity for us to revisit claims and beliefs and discussions we had made a year ago before this wild year of space policy. And it's also an opportunity to see what didn't change, despite the rhetoric. And I'd say some of the biggest things generally did not in some ways. It's a fascinating discussion. I hope you stick around for that. And at the end of the day, I think we can summarize this as maybe not so much change is disruption. And what are the challenges of disruption at NASA?

And what are we going to look for here in 2026 that will tell us whether we're in for more disruption or maybe some actual change? Before we get to that, I'd be remiss if I did not mention that the planet-teriors. Society, my organization that puts on this show, is an independent non-profit membership-based organization. Anyone, anyone in the world can be a member of the Planetary Society. Memberships cost just four bucks a month to start. And it keeps us independent. It keeps us producing content like this. Great outreach funding our scientific and investigation and technology development projects. And I would say without too much objectivity here, but strong belief, funds our advocacy, and outreach and policy program, something that I think really stepped up and presented a sophisticated,

effective, and relentless effort to support space science and exploration this year at NASA during this period of immense disruption. And we have a lot to show for it. I recommend anyone to check out our 2025 impact report available at planetary.org or follow my newsletter at the space advocate. Just search for it. But what I'd really love you to do, If you're inspired, and if you aren't already, is to join us as a member of the Planetary Society at planetary.org slash join. Again, membership started at just four bucks a month. Planetary.org slash join.

I hope you'll consider it. Thank you for all of you who are already members who enable us to do this work. For those of you who want to take the extra step, registration is now open for the 2026 Day of Action, April 19th and 20th in Washington, D.C. Join me, my colleague's Jack Carali, Ari Capel, other members of the Planetary Society in Washington, D.C., to advocate directly for space science and exploration, planetary.org slash day of action to learn more, registration discounted through March. And now, Marsha Smith, founder and editor of space policy online, joins us to examine the challenges of change and disruption at NASA, what we got wrong, what we got right, and what we still don't know, which, you know, still quite a bit. She joins me now.

Marcia Smith, thank you for joining me again on the space policy edition. I'm delighted to have you back. Oh, thanks so much for inviting me. It's always fun. Marcia, what made me think of talking to you again was almost exactly a year ago. I published a discussion between the two of us. And to be, I titled it the challenges of change at NASA. This wasn't on you.

Right before the incoming administration took over in early January of 2025. I think anyone who listens to the show knows that 2025 has been, let's say, an abnormal year for change or disruption or anything in terms of space policy, particularly at NASA. And I thought it'd be really interesting to kind of revisit our assumptions that we had in the start of this year, look back on what's happened and see what has happened and what hasn't, what may be permanent and what isn't, and what may be in store for us. So it's an opportunity for us to see how strong our hypotheses and models of the of the world are. Oh, dear. Yeah, exactly. So I'll open this way. Did NASA change in 2025?

I wish I had an easy answer to that. There certainly was a lot of disruption, but it really wasn't NASA centered. It was government-wide. And we're still seeing changes and we're still seeing fallout from it. And we only just now finally got a NASA administrator. And I think until he really settles in and starts looking at what he thinks needs to be done, I don't think we're going to know how much change other than the fact that so many people have left. And to me, that is the real wild card because 4,000 people have walked out the door.

And the ones that I know personally are like really top-notch. Good news, a lot of really top-notch people are still there. But I think that if they still have a big bucket list of things to do, I'm a little concerned as to whether or not the right people are still there to do it. Yeah, I mean, I think you make a good distinction between change and disruption, which are related, but one seems strategic and one just seems chaotic. And I think we got a lot of chaotic disruption at the space agency. I think the, as you point out, the workforce thing is a shock. That's in the history, and I ran the numbers, losing 20% of the agency's workforce in a single year has just never happened. Maybe the closest parallel could be in the years after Apollo or the 1990s during Dan Golden's tenure, NASA lost 20%, but that was over five years.

It was over multiple years, never in a single year. And from your position that the departures and the loss of workforce, was there any strategy that you saw behind it? And we'll just say we don't know the exact distribution of who left, but it seemed like they just pretty much let anyone walk out the door. Yeah, the strategy was to reduce the federal workforce. You know, that's all it was. And they succeeded. Right. They met their goal of reducing the workers.

But as you're saying, it was not a strategic. thing. They didn't decide that certain kinds of people should leave and others should stay. And of course, in agencies like NOAA and the weather service and everything, they had to bring a lot of people back. It happened to NIH as well where they, you know, shove people out the door and then suddenly realized, oops, we actually need those people. And then they had to try and bring them back. And that's really hard to do because you just destroy morale and you destroy trust. So I don't think that there was a good strategy behind how to deal with reducing the federal workforce. And we are where we are today, and how much it changes over the next year, two years, three years,

we're all just going to have to wait and see. Yeah, I mean, there's also untold numbers of long-term contractors who've been let go that just aren't reported anywhere publicly that we haven't been able to count. I think there's probably a good case. Here's what I would predict. Again, we don't have the actual numbers of departure, that the people who left probably could either retire or they felt like they had options or. any number of reasons. But it seemed from leaked data that most of those departures were

people in the technical and skilled part of the agency, and less so in the administrative, managerial support staff part, at least at the time I think the Politico article covered this back in the summer. And if that stayed to be the case, then I'd say there's a good chance that the actual ratio of administrative overhead staff to actual skilled experts has actually gotten worse as a result of this rather than better, which I think was kind of the nominal argument behind it, but I think you're right. It just, it was just about reducing headcount over anything else. Yes, I think that, as you said, it was not a strategic decision on, for a NASA example, how to reduce it so that NASA can do its job better. It was just to get the numbers down. And they

came out with the numbers and they said, we want you to meet this target. How you got there, that's up to you. We are in a very strange situation. And you're right that you can draw some parallels to the post Apollo time frame when there was, you know, a big exodus and what was going on then. And I would say that period of time was probably a little worse because there really wasn't a forward plan other than doing shuttle. And at least now they talk about the forward plan, but I still want to see some of the details of that plan. You know, Isaacman is talking about, you know, establishing permanent presence on the moon and everything, but I haven't seen anybody lay out what that means now. We sort of knew what it meant.

prior to the second Trump administration, at least NASA had an idea for where they were going, and they had a certain number of Artemis flights laid out. But we really don't have anything after Artemis 3 at this point. We have what Ted Cruz put in the one big beautiful bill act, which was to continue with a couple more Artemis flights, and we'll see if that actually happens. It's in law. One would hope that it happens, but there's still all the time period after that.

So we know that they want to put a nuclear reactor on the moon, but when anybody's going to be there to actually operate it, I think is still up in the air. There's so much to follow up with that, but I think jumping back to your analogy to, or talking about the post-apollo era, I mean, you lost a lot of skilled technical expertise at NASA after the end of Apollo, but there was also just a diminishment of ambition at the same time. I mean, you were moving towards, I mean, a shuttle is the first reusable spacecraft, but lower Earth orbit only, you were. were no longer moon bases, going to Mars, right? This whole kind of post-expansive era of grand space exploration was curtailed by the next administration. So you were losing workers and civil servants as you were reducing your ambition. But this is the opposite.

They're losing 20% of their staff as they're trying to do some of the most hard and difficult projects in spaceflight, which is sent people back to the moon and maybe further beyond. So it's just directionality. There's more capability in the private sector now than there was at post-apolitan. So there is a private industry that's trying to do some of this stuff. But I do think that people are losing the connection between the government and the private sector. And they somehow think the private sector miraculously is going to do this all on its own without anything from the government. And I think we talked about this last year that the government does a lot of technology development.

It has a lot of money. I don't think a lot of people, maybe a couple, but not many, want NASA to just be a pass-through of money from the government, the private sector. It really is a partnership. And I think people lose track of that. They just think, oh, well, just turn it over to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and be done with it. And it's not that easy. Yeah. Well, particularly if you are like me, a fan of the science aspect of NASA, which has very little commercial payoff. I mean, we did talk about that quite a bit. And that was one of the areas that you identified last year was the fragility of the private sector and the ability of the commercial sector to kind of deliver on some of these things. And that was

actually, you identified Starship as, like, it's making progress. I'm quoting here, but it's not ready yet. Like, is it going to be ready by 26 or 27? How quaint of Starship being ready by 27? That was followed up by almost immediately two weeks later. We had the first explosion of one of the test launches, followed by two subsequent ones. And now, I think, have they publicly acknowledged it or is reported as that SpaceX is saying late 28 as the earliest possible time for a human land.

landing on Starship. You are seeing clips be mixed successful at best. You've had Firefly Blue Ghost have its successful landing, but not really, maybe at best, a partial success elsewhere. That's still, I'd say, out. The verdict is still out on clips. You identified, we talked about Axiom providing the spacesuits for Artemis, which they have not gone out of business yet, but their finances certainly don't seem any better. So we're still seem to be running headlong into this commercial dependency with still, I'd say. say, an uncertainty of the strength of that market. And the commercial space stations.

Those. Right. So the government wants the private sector to do it. And the private sector wants the government to give them money to do it. But the government, at least from the executive branch side, wants to reduce federal spending. So there's really a clash there between what people want to do. And, you know, Isaacman put out this. interesting tweet the other day where he was listing all the things that NASA's going to do.

And it's like, yeah, well, let's do it. And then you think, how much is that going to cost? And where is the money going to come from? So I do see a real disconnect between the aspirations and the connection that people are not drawing between the private sector and the government because they really do have to work in partnership. And where are we going? I don't have an answer. I don't. Yeah, I mean, I think there's, as you said, there's, it's a complicated response. So this going back to our original thoughts at the start of this administration before they took power, you know, we kind of talked about like who you, you brought up this very good perspective on who wants change and what kind of change do they want? And how would you now looking back in this last year, how would you answer your own question for that in terms of of NASA? Who wanted change and what type of change did you see trying to be imposed or inadvertently imposed?

Well, I think the change that the administration wanted was just change for the sake of change, and they wanted disruption, and they talked about shock and awe, and they certainly succeeded in that. So I think that was just changed for the sake of change, and it wasn't aimed at NASA in particular. I think that Janet Petro did a really good job of protecting NASA during all that early chaos, and the RIFs at NASA headquarters were really limited, and it's a shame there were some really good people who left in offices that were closed, like the office of the chief scientists and OTPS and everything. So it's not like it was not affected, but compared to agencies like NOAA and NSF and NIH and these other science agencies, NASA really did pretty well. So I'm not sure that there was much desire

for change at NASA targeted from the Trump administration in this first year. The big change, of course that Trump wanted when he made his inaugural address about going to Mars seems to have faded a little bit. I think people have become educated as to what exactly is involved in sending human beings to Mars. And they sort of said, well, maybe we're not quite ready for that. And if someone in the private sector wants to do it, well, you know, we'll face that when we get there. But I don't think that that's going to be NASA's immediate focus. They clearly are back to the moon and getting of the moon and the drumbeat to beat China is what really has ramped up. And maybe if there's any change in human space flight at NASA, it's the desire or the impetus to get back to the moon

before China. And I read an awful lot of stories by an awful lot of smart people saying that the chances of us doing that are not looking so good right now. That's because they're looking at what we're doing. People are sort of following what China's doing, but China is not the most transparent country, so I'm not sure they're going to get there by 2030 either, but they may all underestimate the difficulty of landing on the humans on the moon. You bring up really some several good points there. I think, I'd say maybe Russ vote, and maybe he had it out for NASA a little bit. Maybe it just wasn't his primary issue, at least NASA science.

I think that was clearly targeted when we saw that was report, you know, he had written that in his own documentation years before he became director of OMB again. But you're right, it didn't have the same level of, I'd say, ferocity that NIH and NSF received. And I wonder if that's because in terms of their, you know, the juice they could squeeze from that in terms of their base or culture or politics, like it seemed like much more fertile territory for various aspects of NSF or NIH research, given their political coalition. And the space program doesn't have that same kind of a partisan meat to it. it seems like. So, yeah, you can try to cancel NASA science, but is that going to be, you win many points for that in your broader political culture war, middle you that they see themselves fighting in? And I wonder that's actually helped

NASA quite a bit as well. It's kind of being abstracted out from this kind of more immediate parochial, not parochial, but philosophical or political concerns. Well, NASA certainly, NASA science was certainly targeted in the budget request, but it wasn't targeted with the rifts that you saw any other agencies. So I do see it as being really different for NASA. So I think NASA has fared, I mean, overall, it's been incredible chaos and disruption and everything, but I think NASA has been hanging in there pretty well. And you have to give some of that credit to Janet Petro and Sean Duffy. And now they've got an actual Senate confirmed administrator in there. And I think one of the most hopeful things I've heard

lately was when he did his town hall meeting and he said, well, I've met with the president four or five times when I was getting renominated. and I met with him a couple times since. And so having a direct line to the president is really helpful, especially when you're fighting budget battles. So I think that when you have an administrator who has that kind of close relationship with the guy at the top, even if you have Russell vote right next to the president who wants to cut budgets, at least you have someone, and Isaacman said that he found Trump

to be a real enthusiast. So whether that's an enthusiast across the board for everything that NASA is doing or just for the human spaceflight part. You know, he wasn't that specific about it. But I think that was a little bit of good news against the backdrop of everything that NASA has been through this year. Yeah. And I think that's an important, a lot of, again, kind of going back to your framing of

who wants change and what type of change you would see to reiterate what you said at the beginning, this idea that a lot of change was just broad, whatever they were doing broadly in government. And NASA could have been a lot worse. And that's, again, I'm trying to kind of figure out why it, I certainly vote targeted NASA science, but is he going after at the same ferocity that he's going after various NSF activities or climate research that we've seen? And I don't think we've seen that, despite that still being the proposal. So having a defender of NASA internally that can pull sway within the administration, I agree it could be very helpful, particularly in this administration.

And the ability to protect the agency or at least take it out of seeming to offer some sort of short-term political wind. by going after a various aspect of it, I think is also really helpful and important. I want to go back to this idea of the humans to Mars, because that was the part of change that we talked about last year as well. And you had identified that saying there's the discussion that is at time to, you know, will they reevaluate again the direction of the human space flight program and reorientate tomorrow's. This is back in the heady days of Elon Musk as the president's first buddy,

is that what he called himself? and this tight bond relationship that flamed out relatively spectacularly a few months later, six months later. I think that's actually been a understated and really remarkable shift in policy, at least how it was presented. And I think a lot of this goes to the coalitional aspect of the Trump coalition, which is kind of a strange mishmash of various political philosophies that sometimes may be vying for influence and power within it. But you had in the, if you look at the 26 budget request, I find that to be a very pro. I mean, you talked about the, what happens after Artemis 3, according to that budget, it's time to go to Mars for humans, right? Or at least get ready to.

I mean, they only put a billion in. For Mars, that's not very much. Yeah, but after ending, they would end SLS. They would have ended Gateway right away. After Artemis 3, all that money shifts towards commercial procurement for human and moon Mars. Mars is always a huge part of it. And then we had, though, capped off at the end of the year just a few weeks ago, the executive order of kind of clarifying space policy, Mars was now definitely pushed down the stack of priorities to say, almost like Obama era journey tomorrow.

Let's prepare for some thinking about eventually onto Mars, but first the moon. And so you really saw, I mean, as you pointed out in the president's state of the union, or, yeah, first state of the union, this call to put the stars and stripes on Mars, that is not anywhere near reality anymore or even talked about it. So you've had this like shift, I think exemplified in that budget request. The people who wrote that budget request have functionally all left NASA. And now you have the incoming leadership saying now through executive order, actually, no, we've been serious about Artemis this whole time because we have to beat China back. And that's, I think, a rather remarkable yo-yoing of priorities within human space flight, even if the

actual programmatic level didn't change dramatically during that period. And it's actually interesting. You talk about Artemis, and I'm not clear what Artemis is. Is Artemis the plan where you have like one SLS launch a year for 10 years and then you focus on Mars, is Artemis Moon and Mars is Artemis SLS? And if you go with the private sector, it's not Artemis anymore. So I'm, you know, I felt that I used to know what. Artem's was, and I'm not quite as certain of that anymore. I do think, again, and Isaac Mann

has said this very recently, that we're going back to the moon and we're going to have a permanent presence there and all that, but I haven't, as I said before, I haven't seen the plan. Are we going once to, I hate to say it, because this is so 1960s, to plant the flag, to say we beat China, and then there's like 10 years before we go again, and the only thing we send there is the nuclear reactor because we said we'd get that there by 2030. I don't think you need people to deposit it on the lunar surface. And I'm still not sure that that gains you very much. There seems to be this feeling that whoever puts the first nuclear reactor there is going to be setting the rules for all the future nuclear reactors ago on the moon. And I'm really not sure that's

the way it's going to work out, even if there is language in the outer space treaty that suggests that whoever is first is tops. But anyway, I'm very unclear as to what Artemis is and to what the plan is to implement what Isaacin says we're going to do. And I would like to see that. And maybe we'll see that in the next budget request. I don't know. We still have to get over this budget, which is still up in the air. And there's all this talk now, again, of another shutdown come January 30th. January 30th is just around the corner. And Congress is not going to be in session a whole lot in January. I think it's 12 days for the House and 15 days for the Senate. And the house isn't even going to be in session that last week of January. And I'm not sure anybody

really wants to have another shutdown. And that last one was pretty bad. But you hear people talk about it because, you know, there was progress in the Senate. There was bipartisan agreement on a new set of these bills called a minibus. Five of them are going to be in there, including the one for NASA. And then suddenly, Russ Vogt said, well, we're going to close down the National Center for atmospheric research in Colorado. And so they lost a lot of democratic support. So as we begin the second session of the 119th Congress, things are still very much up in the air with the budget. So never mind what might be in the next budget request. We need to get through this budget and figure out how much money NASA is actually going to have in all the other agencies. So

they've been told to work to what the House Appropriations Committee recommended. which is pretty good for NASA. I mean, compared to the budget request, it's really great. Yeah. But whether that's going to persist through the end of the fiscal year or not is up in the year. Yeah. Would you say that's something that surprised you in this last year, the various shutdowns, continuing resolutions,

and ability of appropriations to move forward, or the degree to which that was the case? Well, we've seen this show before, of course, but it's unusual for the Democrats to be the ones causing the shutdown. And I think a lot of people were questioning why they stopped it when they really didn't go what they wanted for health care. So that's still a little bit of a mystery to me, but it had to end. I really think it had to end. And I don't think people are ready for another one. Yeah, I would, at the risk of having to revisit this a year from now, I'd say I'm

fully expecting at least a temporary shutdown, I guess. I'd love to be wrong. I'll say I want to be wrong in this one, but I just see that, as you point out, that the time is against them, increasing divisions around almost seemingly, I don't know, I wouldn't, I can't call it intentional because I don't know, but oddly timed effort to, to go after that program to create division, I'd say, within this approach to funding, at least parts of government, but we could just end up with a CR, and that might just be the default and they'll have it over with, at which point then we wouldn't have appropriations for two years. Right. If that happens. And that would actually work to NASA's benefit.

fit if they get to use the house number. Yes. As opposed to the request, because the request was so dire. So it could work out for NASA, but it's not good for the country. Yes. To keep going on CRs, year-long CRs. Last year, we also talked about the idea of executive orders. And we were responding at the time to reports that Goddard and maybe several other NASA centers were being considered for

being closed down, talking about some sort of Brack-like process. And you said in the show that, you know, you can have executive orders. Presidents can do things by themselves, but they can get challenged. He said, maybe I'm not thinking broadly enough. I don't think a president could close a NASA center just by an executive order. Is that what's happening right now with Goddard? Well, he hasn't issued an executive order. But yeah, through an administrative process almost, I think is maybe expanding. Or maybe another way to phrase is, are you revaluating yourself the power of a presidential kind of administration to act without the support of Congress? Or do you think that question is still not able to be answered yet, given the lack of appropriations?

I think the biggest surprise to me this entire year has been Congress's willingness to give their power to the executive branch. And I really never would guess that after all my years here in Washington, because Congress usually jealously guards its power under the Constitution to do things like a money and their willingness to do whatever it is that the president wants is a big surprise to me I hear that Congress is going to start pushing back but you know time will tell and what's interesting in the house of course is that the margin is so slim and you only need one or two people to leave or one or two people to join to change the dynamics and so they are about to have marjorie taylor green leave so there's one fewer Republicans and they're about to have two Democrats coming up from elections from people who passed away last year. And so there will be two

more Democrats and one fewer Republican. So the closeness is just getting more intense. And there are just a handful and you only need a handful of Republicans who are pushing back against Mike Johnson and Mike Johnson's willingness to do whatever the president tells them to do. So I think that this coming year is going to be even more strained and stressful in the house. And as little as they were able to get done in 2025, it may look like they got a lot done compared to what they do in 2026. And it's an election year. So, you know, they're not going to be in session as much because everybody wants to be home. Everybody who's running for re-election wants to be home to, you know, be with their constituents and build support. So it's election years are always tough to get anything done in. Congress and this year especially so and I wonder almost sometimes the the closeness of the party control for the house almost makes it more likely that they can get full support because the consequences for defecting in one you know direction or another are so consequential that it's almost easier to hold everybody together I don't know if that's a fully formed idea but it does

seem I've been surprised also by I'd say the congressional overall activity and and certainly share your perspective on giving up power to the executive. But another aspect I'd note, though, is the, I think I was surprised this last year about the consequences of the gap in speed between the legislative response to what the executive can do if they want to very quickly. And so that mismatch, so, like, you can have executive orders or just internal administrative decisions that end up pushing people out of jobs or consolidate. building, functionally closing down parts of NASA agencies, fundamentally changing the aspect

of peer review for grants, canceling contracts, and maybe you get some of those back, maybe some people are forced to come back after going to a judge, or maybe there's a law that's passed eventually that restores some support or funding for them. But you're talking months, maybe years in some of those cases before the legislative acts, particularly now. And in that space and that differential, you see a real advantage to a very aggressive interpretation of administrative power, executive branch power. And even if it gets rolled back, they've still created quite a bit of disruption in that meantime. Exactly. I mean, Trump has taken executive orders to a new level. And as you said, if people disagree with the executive order, they can take him

to court or Congress can try to pass legislation, but Congress hasn't been able to pass a whole lot at all. And the court system just takes time. It does work. I still think our court system is in relatively good shape, but it just takes time to go through the process and somebody wins and then it's appealed and then it's appealed again and appealed again. And it takes forever. Yeah. And so like in that meantime, you can, again, I think the, the buyouts like the Doge actions at the beginning of the year and the buyouts that ultimately resulted in 20% of the NASA workforce leaving, those were never really formally endorsed by Congress. They were just not countermanded in any of the things that they have done, right? So that was all through

executive administrative decisions. And so that's what I mean. It's like maybe they could change it to me. So maybe, you know, we have a different party in control of the House next year. They could pass legislation forbidding that, but it won't matter because everyone will have left, right? So you have this differential, that differential again, I've been seeing very powerfully. And I think that's where. When I'm revising kind of my models of how these things can work and what the challenges to change or not, if you have a motivated executive, it seems like, who may not particularly care if the consequences are, you know, if it's rough or inefficient during the process, but want to impart some side of disruptive change, then you can actually do quite a bit, despite all these other institutional inertia aspects still being in place. right are you revising what what have you revised or if any about your ideas of how government works particularly that's and we'll can restrict it to space policy from the last year well as i said my

biggest surprise has been congress's willingness to give the power to the executive branch instead of trying to protect their own rights and responsibilities and the democrats of course are trying and they send letters down to NASA and other places on the executive branch and they don't seem to go anywhere. I think that's probably true in years past, but it's particularly true this year. So I don't see the, it's not so much three branches of the government anymore. It's like the Supreme Court is there, or the federal court system, and the White House is there, and Congress is really in the background, instead of being front and center as an equal player with the other two parts of the government.

And I don't know how long this is going to last. I wouldn't have expected it ever. So part of me thinks, surely next year they're going to start pushing back. But I'm not confident about that. You know, as more members have to run for re-election, A, the Republicans need to have Trump support, so they're not going to want to push back. But, you know, the Democrats are going to use that

to try and build their own power base. So it's going to be interesting to see what both parties do in order to try and win more seats in, well, the Democrats to win more seats and for the Republicans not to lose seats in the midterm elections. We'll be right back with the rest of our space policy edition of Planetary Radio after this short break. Greetings, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. We are a community of people. dedicated to the scientific exploration of space or explorers dedicated to making the future better for all humankind. Now, as the world's largest independent space organization, we are rallying

public support for space exploration, making sure that there is real funding, especially for NASA science. Now, we've had some success during this challenging year, but along with advocacy, we have our step initiative and our Neo-Schumaker grants. So please support us. want to finish 2025 strong and keep that momentum going into 2026. So check us out at planetary.org slash planetary fund today. Thank you. We talked about the budget. Oversight has clearly been an issue. But some things, though, however, talking about Congress, when they still want to, they can move pretty quick. And I'm thinking about, as you mentioned earlier, the one big beautiful bill with the Ted Cruz amendment that showered within a week of the budget request

coming up that canceled SLS after that would cancel SLS after Hardness 3 cancel Gateway immediately came out this cruise amendment that provided $10 billion over seven years to SLS to gateway with mandatory minimums of spending on both of those you couldn't have had a faster rejection I feel like of a policy proposal and ironically I feel like we have now Jared Isaacman coming in as NASA administrator and talking about moving things faster, being a change agent, and bringing a more dynamic and commercial-minded approach to NASA, but having to functionally agree to, in a sense, the most indefensible projects from those framings of, you know, the SLS-Irion Gateway kind of, you know, big prime architecture, which has passed through and now is written into law by, you know, by Congress. So there's still an aspect of this that has, regardless of the proposed degree of change, was able to snap back and reject it pretty quickly. Do you agree with that? Is that as locked in as I am in framing it?

Do you think it's a weaker position than people would think? Well, one thing that I have not seen, I'm not sure, I'm pretty sure that OMB is not being transparent about it is what's happening with all that money. So Congress puts it into law, but OMB is the one that has to distribute it to the agencies and whether it's, NASA or DOD or whoever it is, you have to have the money apportioned, and I'm not sure how much of that money is actually found its way into the NASA coffers. And it is a portion throughout that period of time, I mean, it is distributed over that period of time. So it's not as though they were going to get all $10 billion in fiscal 2026 anyway. So it comes out piecemeal, but I don't know how much of that is actually available on December 29th, 2025 for NASA to spend. So it's there,

it's sitting there and somebody says NASA's going to get this kind of money, but I haven't seen that they actually have it. I think that's almost a deeper issue of the executive versus the diminishing legislative. But I guess I was thinking about just the intention, though, behind that action, however, was to contraband it, right? So, I mean, there was for certain aspects of the space program, kind of the institutional, parochial, political coalitions that have maintained certain types of projects over the years seem to attempt to assert themselves very strongly in this year, despite all of the talk of change. And to me, that's maybe, I'd say, maybe not a surprise.

I've always said to never underestimate the SLS political coalition. and I think the last year validated that and I would imagine a lot of people kind of who are confidently predicting the end of that project at the beginning of the Trump administration are not as confident about that now but you're right maybe there may be kind of nefarious that almost gets to empowerment and some other unsettling breakdowns of the of the broader political system but you did see I'd say you know my I was questioning at the beginning of the year whether parochialism in space politics and but you know the politics of civil space in this country would survive, you know, a very strong and charismatic

executive. And I'd say they, it's, it's alive and well thriving, in fact, based on what we've seen actually happen in terms of legislative activity. Well, certainly, you have some senators who were looking at their constituents and looking at SLS and Orion and recognizing that politically they could not just stand by and let them disappear. And on the other hand, as even Isaacman has said, you know, if you want to get back to the moon, SLS is the fastest way to get there because you don't know when anything else is going to be available. So it gets back again to this drumbeat about beating China as being the motivation for the Artemis program. And that's why I wonder if we're not back to the 1960s

and once we put footprints back on the moon, wherever on the moon that may be, because if you just want to beat China, you may not want to go to the South Pole because that's really hard. And there are easier places you can get on the moon. So maybe they'll leave the South Pole for next time and just go someplace maybe on the far side, because we haven't landed on the far side on the equator. Start building that radio telescope everybody talks about. So anyway, we'll see what we do. But if the only motivation is beating China, even if you say we have the plan for sustained presence, you don't have a time frame for that. And so do you stop after the first one and wait for the commercial systems to come along?

And so you do one SLS, because that's really what the plan was at the beginning of the year, right? One SLS for Artem's 3 and then you're done until you get the commercial systems coming along. And what Cruz did in the one big beautiful bill act was saying, no, no, no, we need at least two more. Mm-hmm. So is it two more or three more? Yeah. You know, if Starship suddenly comes along, is it just one more? Those are all the questions that are still out there that I don't have any answers to.

Yeah. I mean, I thought it was notable that the two more gets you past the end of this administration. It carries you through this administration and that the mandated spending basically carries you through that. It has to be obligated by a certain date expended by a few years after that. It's, you know, one of the few times that NASA's had a multi-year appropriation functionally. though, is that technically inappropriate? It must be a technically... No, it's an authorization.

Authorization. Close enough. In this particular case, reconciliation bills are their own entity. Okay, yes. Mandated spending, at least, on this, right? Yes. And, you know, just that level of kind of detail and precision for it, I think, is remarkable, given that.

And I think a demonstration of that lingering power of that coalition, but it's almost to just survive this kind of disruptive period and to really cement it's seemingly maybe to spent itself even further. The idea to me that we will, again, still see anything in this administration landing on the moon, given how few years are left. I wonder if that's what's driving maybe the language and rhetoric around China, because I would say that to me is my other surprise or thing that I'm reevaluating for the year, how strongly that rhetoric has really kicked up. You, I think, identify something that I'm worried about as well, which is, we are, in my feeling, trending towards the space, you know, you see it in congressional

hearing titles. Now, Space Race 2.0 or the new space race. And I was like, I thought we learned never to say this again. I thought we had 50 years of like political science saying that that was a bad idea. But you see the seductive nature of it because, and I've been in those congressional offices. When you frame it that way, you don't have to defend it anymore. People accept that rhetorical framing but you're you're kind of selling out then that those future steps like then what happens if you win the race and and what do you do then how do you keep justifying it and artemus was explicitly designed not to do that so i i mean china was always a part of it competition was always a part of artemus but the this real explicit race framing and even how isaac

man now is talking about his job to not let the u.s you know lose or to make sure we land on the moon before the end of this term is a really remarkable turnaround, I feel, a change to that. Right. And it is the opposite of what the plan was. The plan was that we were going back in a logical fashion. We knew what we're going to do. We're doing it with commercial and international partners this time.

And it was for long-term sustainability, not necessarily by NASA, because we're leading the way so that the commercial and international people can stay on the moon while we're going, we NASA are going off to Mars. And now it's just beat China, beat China. to beat China, just like beat the Soviet Union, beat the Soviet Union. So I do feel that we've turned back the clock, and I'm not sure that's for the betterment of human space exploration. It may be good for politics. It may be good for just getting us through this difficult period of time when people want to cut money. But if you're looking at the broader picture of how we

move out into the solar system, I'm not sure beating somebody else is really the approach you want to take. Particularly because it seems like China is not racing us, right? That they're just kind of doing their plan. I mean, they don't officially acknowledge that, you know, they don't frame it that way. I think it's just been part of it. I'm sure they'd be happy to land before us again.

But it doesn't seem to be the animating political motivation. It's just China landing on the moon in and of itself is important and it will be notable in a huge demonstration of capability, regardless if it's before or after the United States. Well, you know, I have to go back and check, but my recollection is that during the Constellation program, when we were going to get back to the moon by 2020, China was saying it was going to be on the moon by 2020. So they sort of started this race sort of theme back then. And then when we canceled Constellation, you just never heard about China landing on the moon. So they were sort of doing that. And I think that there are a lot of people in China who were trying to get money for human space. spaceflight because they're kind of cash-strapped as well, that we sort of play off each other. They say, well, we got to get there because the Americans are going.

The Americans say we've got to get there because China is going. So I think, you know, it's a little bit of a game in that way. But in the meantime, I think that China has been working slowly but steadily, you know, to develop their systems. And we've been, you know, it's the tortoise and the hair thing all over again. And so it may well be that they've been quietly working in the background on all these technologies and now you're seeing a little bit of the testing again they're not transparent but you see just a little bit of stuff every now and again and they may well be ready

by 2030 but it's no sure bet by any means as as you said it's tough to land human beings on the moon and get them off again and back home back safely it's not just landing it's the whole thing yeah and it's hard to do and i'm not sure that we're going to be able to put humans on the moon by 2030 but I'm not confident that China will either. And then the question is, does the whole thing just sort of evaporate? You know, people lose interest because they move on to other things. It would be such a shame to do that. We were doing so well.

We finally had the plan. It might have been a little unrealistic in terms of the timing, but at least we had the plan and, you know, Bridenstein brought together this public-private partnership thing, really got NASA to embrace that. And we were just marching along and Biden kept it like, hooray. We finally got this, you know, from one administration to the next. And suddenly Trump comes back in and it throws it all up in the year again. I don't know.

It's such a shame. I think that I made this point in last year that the second Trump administration can't really be seen as a continuation. It's almost its own, a new administration who just happens to have the same president just because the personnel are just so dramatically different. And you don't have a Pence that kind of world or a Scott Pace running the show on the space policy side, you know, kind of a. a Cold War era or neocon era, Republican, you know, global outreach party coalition building process. It's a much very different set of individuals and a very different set of motivations. And I think we're certainly seeing that on how space has been treated in this administration.

And we're the lack of any kind of individual ownership of it until arguably recently with, with Isaacman, but also Kratzio set OSTP, starting to kind of embrace that or bring that into the planning fold. but it has an outcome of you're right i think this this policy disruption was very i really do feel like there was this strong perturbance to this plan of artemus that is now we're starting to see the resonance of that we're grafting on a geopolitical horse race narrative in order to gin up support for it but the program hadn't been moving like it was in that dire must-win scenario right was moving at a rather stately pace, funded at a rather modest amount, and of course they're going to be behind if you're not, you know, investing as, you know, I've done the numbers on Apollo.

They spent a lot of money really fast to get Apollo where it was, and they haven't done that with Artemis. And so now I say, no, now we're in a race, but we only have three or four years left of like, well, you can't really make that up on the back end. It's almost impossible. I did a quick bit of analysis the other month. The last time any human-rated species, spacecraft in the United States, whether it was public or privately funded, went from kind of start of development to first flight with humans in it. And fewer than five years was Gemini in 1965. That's the last time. Interesting. Yeah, SpaceX, every project has taken more like seven to eight

years. Shuttle obviously took with something like 11. Orion is 20, I think will be 20th to L. So in order to have, if you're coming in, you know, if your blue origin, and obviously they've been working on it, kind of, but who knows how much, you know, if you're saying that you can develop a new moonlander in fewer than five years, you would, you would, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be historically notable and akin to an era of a very different level of risk and technology and safety attitudes in human spaceflight. And I think that's a key for the next couple of years is risk. You're absolutely right about that. And maybe one of the reasons Gemini got done was because there were such a drumbeat then to beat the Soviets. And so they were willing to take more risk. We certainly were taking a lot of risks early in the space program, probably up until the Apollo fire. And then people sort of stopped and said, my gosh, we're making really bad mistakes and it's costing lives.

And I think that, you know, the human spaceflight program overall has, I'm not going to call it risk averse, but more risk aware. And I think that since Colombia, we've seen more and more of that. We certainly saw that with Starliner and how long it took them just to make the decision as to whether or not they were going to bring the crew back in Starliner or not. And I worry a little bit that with this intense desire to beat China, if they're going to be more willing to take bigger risks just to get there the way we did it back in the Apollo era. And, you know, we all know what happens when you start taking risks or you start taking shortcuts that when you don't think things through. And, you know, 17 astronauts have died in the American program over the decades.

And people look back on it after they do the failure analyses and they say, well, you know, this really didn't have to happen. And I would hate to see that happen again with the Artemis program. That does certainly add that. If nothing else, an implicit, if not explicit pressure all the way down the system. You bring up something that reminded me another item you brought up last year that I wanted to follow up with you on was this idea of transparency. You had brought it up specifically about the heat shield issues with Orion during Artemis 1, which delayed Artemis 2 by two years. Do you think NASA's gotten any better with transparency, particularly again, I was thinking about Starliner and the safety issues around it returning the astronauts, not to mention other aspects of the agency we've seen in the last year? No, I think obviously there's been a lot of loss of transparency, and I give Isaacman a lot of credit.

You know, he didn't want to do his town hall in public, but he did very quickly post the video of it, which made it easier for the rest of us because Keith Cowling, thank goodness for Keith Cowling, because he's been able to get some of these things, you know, that were never released officially by NASA town hall meetings. And so it was nice that Isaac Ben decided to do it on its own. And maybe that's a step forward, but I think that there is so much lack of transparency. And you talked about Goddard and what is actually going on up at Goddard. And there certainly have been Democrats and Congress who have been trying to get details about what on Earth is going on up there. And it's very hard to see.

And it's obviously not confined to NASA. It's across the government. And I'd see it way worse than it was even last year. I mean, last year being in the Biden administration. Yeah, there were serious. I'd say relatively not transparent about what was going on a Starliner, too. And we just saw the Aerospace Safety Board just a few weeks ago say things were actually seemingly a lot worse than was reported publicly at the time in terms of the issues on that

spacecraft. But then also, yeah, as I know as a person who loves data, the number of public reporting for NASA grants have just been taken offline with no explanation, reporting for NASA's space science data archives and catalogs who just disappeared issues with not responding to things on the record advisory councils being canceled or shuttered or closed maybe and i'm again i you're right i'm hopeful that isaac man can bring that now that there's someone maybe in charge who has that implicit ability to provide cover a lot of that may have just been uncertainty or fear or that kind of midmetly you know the unempowered managerial mid levels over correcting or

reacting or being uncertain given various types of input and control, but not feeling like anyone at the top has their backs. And so maybe, maybe Isaacman as a leader who wants to promote transparency can give them, you know, kind of down the chain ability to start putting things out there again without facing summarily being fired or who knows, right, through some tweet by Elon Musk or whatever the issue was at the beginning of the year. I'll put that maybe as a cautious note we can revisit in a year if that happens. But it's, I've always noted, though, Isaacman has always said, been careful to say that he personally will commit to transparency, but he hasn't. I don't know if that's an intentional

quirk of the language, but it always seems to be an individualistic presentation. I'll be the most transparent NASA administrator, I think is what he has said, but I'm hoping it translates to the rest of the agency. We've hit the really big parts. I'd like to just generally mention to science with you a little bit. The NASA budget request. was that a surprise to you this year when it came out? Totally. And I'm a big science fan

just like you are and just to see that kind of a cut. And I think we should point out it was not just science because the space technology mission director had also got really whacked and so did aeronautics. It was really just human spaceflight

that fared well in that request. But in terms of science, I was so surprised and I don't know how anybody copes with that and I give Nikki Fox such credit. I mean, she, I was at the Women in Aerospace Awards dinner a couple of weeks ago when she got the Lifetime Achievement Award. And she is just so enthusiastic despite the year

that she's had. And I just give her tremendous credit for holding everything together. And they are allowed to work towards the house appropriations number, which is not all that bad. It's not all of it. But it's like, you know, $6 billion instead of, what was the $7.5 billion? But it's not, But it's not $3.3 billion. And so they can still do a lot of stuff. I still want to know what's going to happen to Mars sample return. You know, there are people who think that we shouldn't let China be the first one to bring samples back from Mars either. But I think that the Mars sample return community needs to come up with a better solution.

And maybe you're not going to get every single pristine sample that you're going to get. but maybe you're going to get enough just to get started. And I just have to think that there's some easier way to do this. And I don't know anything about Rocket Lab's proposal, but they are just insistent that they can do this. And I know people are skeptical because Rocket Lab doesn't have, you know, years of experience and sending things to Mars. Very few people do.

But if there's even just one idea out there that's got a shot and it's not going to break the bank too badly, maybe it's worth it? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of those areas where you need leadership internally from NASA to solve that problem. There's only so much, like particularly us on advocates on the outside or even Congress can do because it's ultimately an engineering problem. It's sample return as a concept does not close budget-wise.

And so there needs to be an approach to it. Yeah, I can't evaluate whether Rocket Labs is a realistic one or Lockheed. to put out a similar number with their own. I think what makes I'm more open to something like Rocket Lab because it would become the priority for that entire company in a way that it just wouldn't. Lockheed is just too big. You know, they'd love to have $3 billion,

but that's like what, like a couple of F-35s, right, compared to their trillion dollar thing with that. And so it's just having that level of commitment to it. And I think that's one of the things that we've seen where those partnerships have worked is where it's a really priority of the company to make it work. And you put a lot of energy and effort into it. But yeah, it's clearly one of those issues where you do need some new thinking.

And then I think when I look forward to 2026, you know, what can I be optimistic or maybe some less pessimistic? I always hasn't to say optimistic. But something I said, maybe after this initial shock and now that we have someone in charge of NASA who is empowered, but also I think by all accounts, I don't know if you've met him, but he seems earnest and well-meaning and wants to do a good job, right? He's not bringing hostility to leadership in the way that we've seen in some of these other agencies, that maybe people can start to rethink some of these assumptions and say,

okay, now that a lot of the stuff has been disrupted and changed and a lot we've lost a lot, maybe there is room to actually try to find something that works with someone who wants to bring a goodwill to try to figure out that as well. And Mars Sample return could certainly be one of those. It's like, okay, let's get that one biosignature potential one back. Let's start with that one. If it's really good, maybe we can get the other ones, you know, wet our appetite. But do you see some green shoots in this going forward into 2026?

I would like to think so. You know, I really don't like this. Let's beat somebody else at it, attitude. But maybe, and I don't know this, I really don't know this, but I have to think that part of the reason that Mars Sample return is so, expensive is, again, risk. How much risk are they willing to take? And maybe if they were willing to take a little more risk, they could get it done less expensively and sooner. I'm making this up. I've no insight into it, but you just ask yourself, how can it be an $11 billion program

when just a few years earlier they were talking like maybe $5 billion? It wasn't set in stone. I mean, but like it was set in stone because it was in a decadal service. But that's double the price. Yeah. With ESA providing one of the spacecraft already. Exactly. So what happened that suddenly the cost doubled? Was it really engineering?

Or was it they wanted every little screw tightened to a certain amount of whatever? I don't know. I just don't know. I don't have that level of insight. But I would sure like to hope that there is a way to do this for an affordable price, even if you don't get 100% of what you want. of what you want. Yeah.

I'd love to see someone write that book someday. I always think about it is that I think NASA created it modeled after a human spaceflight program in terms of political coalition building. So everyone kind of got a piece of it. But it wasn't big enough to actually get the attention. You know, it wasn't expensive enough, but it was too expensive for science. And so it collapsed under its own weight of inefficiency by design to build a political coalition that didn't show up to save it.

Because, right? Because Marshall was in charge of the launcher. Originally, Glenn was going to build the wheels on the fetch rover, which kind of fell away at one of those initial revisions, right? JPL, obviously, but then Goddard was building a big piece and there was like five different NASA centers. No one was really in charge. Science is not used to doing that kind of coalition development project. And then when it was canceled, I don't think anyone in Marshall even noticed it was gone because they had so much else invested in other projects, right? So it didn't pay off, I think, maybe the way I'd hope. That's my read on it, but who knows, we'll see if that validates. to bring up, you mentioned ESA. And I do worry a little bit about our international partnerships. I mean, Issa, they've been a stalwart, despite all the ups and downs. Because the ups and downs in the science program and in the space program here have been pretty pronounced over the decades. And ESA has just been there and they've stood with us and all the changes. And I worry that there's going to come a point when they just say, forget about it. And that would be a shame because

I think these international partnerships are just, they're good for the country. They're good for the people. They're good for the future of science. It's just one of those good things. And I would hate to see it disappear because of the inconstancy of U.S. policy. Yeah. I got a good number of people from Europe reaching out to me and trying to be purposely vague, asking what was going to happen with Artemis because, like, oh, you know, we're building the command, you know, service modules for Orion.

Are we going to, we have like a contract to build six of them? What are we, you know, are we still building those? Is there still a more sample return project? And, I mean, they've, that budget that we mentioned, I think that canceled out something like a dozen just science projects. And then, of course, the Gateway was a big international contribution engine. And it, I feel terrible for, for ESA, though, interestingly, you see that and I wonder spurring.

You saw their largest, obviously, budget commitments from their ministerial meeting just the other month, probably in response to this, right? realizing they cannot, which I think is the sad realization that they cannot depend on the U.S. to be a reliable partner for a number of key technologies that they need. And that's a shame. Yeah. So what are you going to be watching for in the next year, whether some of these things stick or change or changes happening for the good or under any sort of strategic focus at all? What should we be watching for here?

Or what are you watching for? I've got to admit, I'm just so focused on budgets. Yeah. Just get the budget done and then see what they're going to send up for 27. And is it going to be another heartbreak coming up from OMB and then Congress has to try and fix it? I don't know. I don't know. I remember back to the Reagan administration, the first year of Reagan was sort of like this.

You know, they came in and they were not fans of NASA. And that's when we walked away from another partnership with ESA. You know, and they eventually got their part done Ulysses. And we did give them the launch and we gave them the, what, the RTGs, I think. So we, it's sort of like what we're doing with the X-Mars rover, you know, filling in. But we were supposed to do that, you know, the International Solar Polar Mission as a joint mission with one of their spacecraft above, one's part of the moon, and we'd be below it and all that. Yeah. And so that was a really tough year with Reagan, but Reagan changed his mind or his people changed their mind.

minds. And so things sort of leveled out for NASA after that. And of course, Jim Beggs came in and actually got the space station going. It took him a little bit of time to win over everybody, but he did. So I'm not giving up, but I think that next year will be a very interesting for NASA and for the government overall, because we still have to see how long this is going to play out. But I think for NASA, we'll just see whether or not with Isaacman there, and he seems to have a good relationship with the president. And as I said before, nothing beats having a NASA administrator was a good relationship with the president because that helps so much, especially when you get into budget battles. So I'm going to be looking at the year optimistically, at least as the new year

arrives and see what happened. But budgets are the key. Yeah. Follow the money. We talk about that all the time. Indeed. That certainly strikes at my core and focus as well. And I think the interesting thing, You know, one of the things I've been trying to do is track the outlays in addition to obligations. And a lot of those moved through this year at NASA. There wasn't secret backdoor impoundments. There was a market decrease in spending in the early part of the year, but then picked up and almost had to get shoveled out the door at the end. You did end up the year with a quarter fewer new science grants awarded, but the overall money stayed the same because they, I think, gave years in advance because there's a number of issues that are still plaguing the agency. But I wonder, the key here I think we may be circling around is that we have the confirmed administrator with a good relationship with the president and particularly this president, that means quite a bit.

And if that can turn some of this around, you know, they kind of made their run at NASA, they got their pounds of flesh and lost all the people from the agency. And so is it still going to be worth that effort to continue hammering it on these core things? I hope not. And kind of bringing up that earlier in the Reagan administration, I always kind of, when I work with an intern or a fellow or somebody, I always have them read John Logstyn's paper on the survival crisis of the U.S. Solar System program back in 82, which was N.JPL on a precipice during that first year, the Reagan administration through their budget request. And so we've been through some tough times before, so I share your pseudo modest optimism. I'm not giving up on it yet. But we have seen, I'd say, I've revised quite a few of my, my Overton window has expanded significantly. But I've also been really, I'd say, encouraged by people's responses. And of course, even internally congressional responses, even though they're getting caught up in larger politics.

So I will continue to read space policy online to keep up with this, which I will have already, but we'll remind our listeners to continue following a critical coverage of this. And I think I wonder if in the next few weeks, what I will. will be looking for is actually Isaac Minns, when he starts making his mark on the internal bureaucracy at NASA. So that's going to be my other thing in addition to budgets. How much of his Project Athena document is going to kind of filter into his current management style, because there was some pretty aggressive timelines in terms of announcing X, Y, and Z, in terms of internal policy changes, workforce changes, evaluations, strike teams, and so forth. We haven't seen anything like that. But of course, we've had the holidays in between his nomination and confirmation,

I should say, and taking his role as administrator. But I wonder if in the first few weeks of January, we'll start to see some of that. So that's the other thing that I will look for. Well, you know, it's one thing for him to be writing a document like that when he is only nominated to be an asset administrator as opposed to actually being in the building. And I think he's been very upfront about the fact that he has to learn the agency from the inside before he makes any decisions. And I give him a lot of credit for that. I really do. And one thing that I find encouraging is that when you see interviews with the people who have flown with him on his two crew dragon missions, they talk about his leadership abilities and that he really knows how to

bring a team together and get them all working towards a common goal. And if one person starts, you know, falling behind, you know, some of them talked about they go on these treks up Mount Washington and everything. And if somebody needs a little bit of help, he's right there to help them up. And that is really encouraging in any agency leader. So I'm optimistic. He still has to face all the headwinds of Washington. So he can't do it alone. He certainly knows that. He's politically astute enough to have gotten himself renominated. So even though he's a newbie inside the beltway, he obviously knows how to. I'm sure he learned quite a bit in the last year. I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did. And so I'm

I'm going to remain optimistic until something happens to change my mind. That's a great framing to end it. Marcia Smith, founder and editor of Space Policy Online. Thank you so much. Maybe we'll follow this up in another year and see how things are going for our ideas and models of the world and NASA itself. And hopefully we'll continue to be maybe even more optimistic a year from now. Sounds great.

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Anytime. We've reached the end of this month's episode of the space policy edition of Planetary Radio. But we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space science and exploration. Help others in the meantime learn more about space policy and the planetary society by leaving a review and rating. this show on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to this show. Your input and interactions really help us be discovered by other curious minds and that will

help them find their place in space through planetary radio. You can also send us, including me, your thoughts and questions at planetary radio at planetary.org. Or if you're a planetary society member, and I hope you are, leave me a comment in the planetary radio space in our online member community. Mark Hilverda and Ray Paletta are our associate producers of the show. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor.

Me, Casey Dreyer, and Merck Boyan, my colleague, composed and performed our Space Policy Edition theme. The Space Policy Edition is a production of the Planetary Society, an independent, non-profit space outreach organization based in Pasadena, California. We are membership-based, and anybody, even you can become a member.

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