Going To Mars with NASA director Laurie Leshin

0:28So I have an admission to make. director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and the first female director in JPL's history. And when so many companies are trying to colonize space for profit, her job is to help advance NASA's mission. Not for profit, but to explore space for the greater good of all humankind. This is a bit of optimism. Laurie, thanks so much for joining. This is a personal thrill for me. Oh my goodness, me too. Because I've been a space nerd and a NASA nerd my whole life. I went to space camp in Huntsville, Alabama as a 13-year-old. So cool. And wore my flight suit to school when I got back.

1:09Wow. How'd that go over? I mean, they all made fun of me, but I just think that they were jealous. Exactly. Were you a science or space nerd as a kid also? I was. I absolutely was. I grew up in the deserts of Arizona, and my very first space memory was the first pictures from the surface of Mars from the Viking landers. and I remember as a 10 year old girl standing in my mother's kitchen in Phoenix Arizona and seeing those pictures in Time Magazine and just being totally transfixed and thinking I want to reach out and touch those rocks and and that in fact has kind of animated um my career it wasn't that I knew right then I wanted to be a space person and that was it it was just a huge spark for me of the wonder of new frontiers of new vistas and of rocks which I've continued to animate my career since then.

1:59And it looks like home. It looks exactly like Arizona. It absolutely looked like home to me. And I do think that was a piece of it. Like I was like, wow, I want to be there. Like my home is on another planet. Yeah, that's right. So because, you know, at least for a lot of people, you know, me growing up in the space shuttle era, the older generations growing up in the Apollo era, going to space, being an astronaut was the thing. Yeah. So your space nerdiness, it wasn't to be an astronaut. It really wasn't. I mean, I was really fascinated by, so Viking was the mission in the mid seventies. Voyager was another that flew by Jupiter, flew by Saturn, just absolutely captivating images.

2:43For me, it was about sort of other worlds and that. And then, you know, Sally Ride was super inspiring to me as in high school. I was in high school when she first went up. First female in space. Yes. First American woman in space. American woman. First American woman. Valenia Tina Tereshkova was actually the first. Well done, sir. Well done. Thank you. Yes. And I'm fortunate to say Sally became a good friend later in both of our lives. She was amazing. Amazing mentor. Oh, that's amazing. She was incredible. I miss her a lot. Okay. So now let's jump forward many, many years. Yeah. And we're at JPL now.

3:14Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Yes. Which is a, it's not really owned by NASA. It's in a partnership with NASA. Is that right? And that's a longstanding relationship, actually. JPL predates NASA. We started in the 30s doing rocket propulsion and actually built and launched America's very first satellite, America's response to Sputnik. JPL is unique within NASA in that we are in many ways like a NASA center, but we are what's called a federally funded research and development center. We are not directly government employees. So it's a little bit of a both and kind of relationship with NASA. Do people who work there think of themselves as NASA folks?

3:52We do. We think of ourselves as part of the NASA family. And we're proud that we're a little bit different, that we can maybe do some things a little bit differently. We can lean forward a little bit more on things like innovation and technology and the way we're able to partner with the world. And so that's a capability that NASA has taken advantage of over the years. So let's get into the thick of it now. Okay. The question is, is NASA itself, is the NASA mission as popular as it used to be? Because, I mean, are kids dreaming, you know, kids are dreaming of being influencers? Are kids dreaming of being astronauts and scientists and, you know, rocket scientists again?

4:26You know, I think they are. I mean, I think, and it's not just because of NASA, but it's also because of the other companies that NASA's partnering with, increasingly places like SpaceX and Blue Origin. So much private investment happening in space. And we are on the verge of space being opened up in a whole new way to generations of people that otherwise would have had to go through the NASA process and compete against tens of thousands of people for a slot to fly with NASA. Now the ability is there to fly as a private citizen. Or be a pilot or be an engineer. That's right. Or design and build.

5:00And so the industry itself is growing immensely. and it's like our economy is growing beyond our planet to sort of envelop near earth space, cislunar space, so the space between us and the moon. And then ultimately for people like me who really care about the science, what that means is we get to keep our eye on an even farther out horizon, exploring where companies aren't really going to go. That's the$10 ,000 question, which is, does NASA have clarity of what its mission is? Right. My understanding was that because NASA's a government agency, it doesn't have a commercial interest, which means it can invest in things that don't necessarily have an immediate commercial return on that investment.

5:39You can do it for pure science and pure exploration, which would just be too expensive for - Correct. And not profitable. And not profitable. Any company wouldn't do it. And NASA did. NASA pioneered getting things to the moon. NASA pioneered, you know, the space shuttle became a delivery truck, you know? It was trying to be, yeah. And that seems beneath NASA, dare I say it. Now that NASA opened up that marketplace and private sector said, well, hold on. We can actually make a business out of this and we can sell that service to NASA, which ultimately is actually cheaper for NASA. That's right.

6:14We're doing that now. So the question is, is NASA having a bit of an identity crisis that it's actually still doing things that are the same as are competing with private sector? Like, why are we going to the moon? We've been there. We've done that in the 60s. Right. We don't need to do that anymore. I think you're really pulling on the right thread, which is NASA has this really interesting role of both enabling a sustainable economic model behind it. Right. And then reaching for the next thing where that model doesn't yet exist or reaching for the scientific thing, which no one else is going to do.

6:47And then moving away. And then moving on. Right. Although, you know, in some cases, you know, in the outer solar system, that's not going to be economically feasible for many generations. Right. And so there's still much more science to do or maybe ever. And so finding that right balance, it's hard. So I think what you're pulling on is that it's hard. I think we've done it with low Earth orbit. We have largely transitioned the transport of astronauts and materials to low Earth orbit to the private sector. NASA has supported that by enabling it and funding it, but not doing it. At the moon, there's a little bit of the government piece, and we're also working with the private sector to quite quickly fill in behind that.

7:24So cislunar space and the lunar surface is that next frontier. where NASA is working to do that handoff. And I think we'll see that over our lifetimes. Because you still hear debates in Congress, what their funding priorities are. And there is the debate of, I mean, far space exploration will always be there. But literally the debate is, do we put all our money in going to Mars? Do we put all our money in, you know, colonizing the moon? Yeah. Those policy debates are definitely still there. But I guess the thing where I'm struggling with this is why is that a debate at all? I mean, Elon is doing a great job of Mars-y stuff.

8:05I mean, he's made it clear. Well, he's never been anywhere near Mars, but yet. But he talks about it obsessively. But he talks about it obsessively. And he's got a pretty successful rocket program. He's launching way more rockets than NASA ever did. Yeah, absolutely. He's doing amazing stuff, supporting launch for NASA. And ultimately right now his focus is on getting people to the surface of the moon, which he's actually been supported by NASA to do. I have no doubt that longer term he will be a big part of NASA going to Mars. There's still scientific exploration of the solar system, though, that NASA needs to focus on.

8:37Elon won't. That other companies won't. That's the thing that we have to work hard to make sure doesn't get lost in these debates about moon versus Mars and things, is that there's still incredible discoveries to be made, and nobody else is going to do that, or at least nobody else in the U.S. is going to do it. Other countries might come in and do it if we don't. And so for us, the opportunity is really about making sure we stay on the scientific and technology frontier in those places that no one else is going to go. Congress will fund, let's be honest, Congress will fund what's popular. They will fund things that benefit their constituents.

9:11And if the American public demanded that, loved NASA, then questions of funding wouldn't be an issue.

9:24systematically. I mean, for the first time in a long time, JPL had layoffs, which is devastating. You know, these are people who are all able to get jobs in private sector from all the space agencies, but didn't because they had a loyalty to NASA and probably got paid less than they could have in the private sector, but they had a loyalty to NASA. And now they'll go get jobs somewhere else. I'm not too worried about it, but the odds of them coming back are probably slim. I think that people, you know, and this is where your work is so incredible, like the mission of an organization is such a huge draw, right?

9:58And a place like JPL, where basically we get paid to build things that nobody else knows how to build, because they're incredibly, you know, complex robots that to go explore other worlds, and that we get to make discoveries that are at the forefront of scientific exploration. Like that is hugely compelling to a group of folks. There are other people who are really compelled by going to be in an entrepreneurial startup, cool, you know, go a million miles an hour kind of thing, which is great. But, yeah, we're really fortunate to have that super compelling mission. And it's really disheartening that the funding has not always been there to support it.

10:32But it's a broader issue than just NASA support. In this case, we've been caught up in what is a federal funding issue. It's not about JPL. It's not about NASA. It's about the full federal budget environment. is so, let's say, uncertain and challenging right now. But the point is that when that happens, it has real human impact here locally. I mean, this to me is like, it's one of multiple things, right? Which is, I think NASA, and this is speaking as a supporter and a lover of the organization, so it's not by any means as a detractor, but NASA seems to have lost its narrative, which is, if I ask the average person, why do we have NASA?

11:09They can probably give me explore space. and I said, but why does it matter to you? I don't think most people would be able to explain or say back to me. And sure, it was easier during the Cold War. I get it. It was easier during the Cold War because it was actually a space race. Yes. And it was not only of military value, but of national pride. Yeah. I think this generation doesn't see NASA as a tool of American pride anymore. In the same way. In the same way. I think that's right. And I think it's, you know, as you know, it's very hard to get any message through these days. It's harder to get people to focus on one thing.

11:40There's so many different things going on. It's so much media coming at you, and it's a challenging thing to do. But look, I think it's hard to disagree. I do think that there is still extraordinary value. We've had more than three dozen countries sign on to go to the moon with us through the Artemis Accords, and it is still a huge tool of U.S. soft power in the world. We are right now on the space station with the Russians. It's one of the only places in the world that we are still really collaborating with Russia. It is super important to keep those lines of communication open, right? It's super important.

12:15We at JPL right now are building an earth science mission to look at Earth's surface and how it's changing with India. It's the single largest technological collaboration between our two nations. And it's going to launch from India in a few months' time. It's amazing. We've had 40 engineers over there back and forth working really closely with their counterparts in India. a huge partnership for our nation and NASA's at the heart of it. So I think there are many examples. I think those things are pretty easily lost right now in broader conversation. There's no broader narrative that encapsulates all of that.

12:47Right. You know, I mean, again, I go back to sort of like Star Trek, which is one of the things that exemplifies American influence and innovation is that though now other nations are coming with us to the moon and other nations are coming with us and other nations are launching satellites, et cetera, et cetera. It's only American satellites that have gone to the edges of the universe. The edges of the solar system, beyond our solar system now. Beyond our solar system. Built by JPL. And built by JPL. Sorry, just got to throw that in there. No, no, no, absolutely. And that to me, that to me is, and it goes back to NASA's original charter, right?

13:24Which is, it is a civilian organization. Yes, pushing boundaries. That is pushing boundaries, specifically designed that whatever we learn will benefit of all all humankind. I mean, that is literally in the charter. It can't get any better than that. And why aren't we talking about that? This is for the benefit of humanity. Yeah. Look, I think it's a really noisy marketplace right now, right? It's a really noisy marketplace. Fair point. So I love this concept of a worthy rival. The idea of competition, there's no winners here. It's all about advancing a greater good. But worthy rivals I find fascinating, which is there other organizations who their strengths reveal to you your weaknesses.

14:03Yeah. So somebody who does something so well that you're like, oh, we could do better. Right. Who are JPL's worthy rivals? Who do you look at and be like, oh, they're so good. And it can be in any capacity. It doesn't have to be scientific. Well, I think the one right now that is kind of animating a lot of activity at NASA is the commercial space sector. It's the SpaceX's of the world. Right. And I think they're not really our rivals. They're our collaborators and our partners. And we need to be learning as much as we can from how they operate. So what does SpaceX do so well that, so you could just collaborate with them and you don't need to worry about it, but what do they do better than you or that their strength reveals to you a weakness that you really, you guys can learn from them?

14:46I mean, look, I just, I think the intensity of the focus is really strong. I think the mission is frankly, and this is something I don't love about lumping the two together. The mission is totally different right now. They are building amazing launch vehicles and they're doing it better than anyone in human history ever has. We don't build launch vehicles. So like in that sense, it's in fact, we'd leverage their launch vehicles. We'd launch on their launch vehicles. We'd love working with them, but it's, there is an intensity for how fast they've grown and how they've really been able to keep their focus during that and, and how they've just been unwilling to accept the way things have always been done.

15:23So to me, like that's the nugget. It's the question everything piece. And as a mature organization, we're literally 86 years old at JPL. And you're still a government organization with all the baggage. That's right. We have a lot of the bureaucracy there. And so the whole like, why have we always done it this way? And why can't we do it better? And to show that you can take risks smartly and learn from them. Again, there are things about working in the government that the amount of oversight that we have, it's just, it's very different environment. But even within that, where can we carve out those places?

15:58And in fact, we have, I mean, things like the Ingenuity helicopter, the great little helicopter on Mars was sort of done in spite of the system, right? And so when we find those little places where we can really push on things, figuring out how do we leverage and scale that is something that I'm excited to be working on at JPL. How are ideas evaluated? What I mean by this is, I just know from business, when we're innovating, we put a bunch of harebrained ideas on the table. Whether it's a good system or a bad system, ideas get evaluated and something gets invested in. How do you choose which harebrained idea to spend billions of dollars on?

16:39I don't get to spend billions of dollars usually. You definitely spend millions. To answer, yes. So for the really big things like the Europa Clipper spacecraft that's being tested at JPL right now, which will go out to the Jupiter system and look for whether this ocean on one of Jupiter's moons is habitable, that's a multibillion dollar mission. Those decisions are made by a broad scientific community that come together once a decade through the National Academies here in the U.S. and come up with a list of ranked priorities of science missions to go do. And so that's the big ones. So the little ones, what you're asking about, is how do we do internal investments?

17:15Like a helicopter versus some sort of jet. So we do have the ability to make internal investments at JPL and to bring technologies forward. And we do it as a fly-off at multiple levels, right? You start with lots of seedlings, lots of little things. From those, we pick a few bigger things to try and pursue, and we see how far they can get. And then if there's something that really looks favorable, we work with NASA to try to get a place for it to be flown. So we build rovers and we now build helicopters. And there's rovers and roamers of all sizes and shapes that we have tested over time. We have test facilities, one that looks like Mars, one that has ice, where we can try out these different ways.

17:54And we do a fly off. We basically test out and decide which one looks most promising. And then we take it a bit further and see how it goes. And our job, really part of our job, is to kind of bring things to a point where we can really confidently say to the science community in one of these once a decade, they're called decadal surveys, say, hey, we have this technology. You have these science goals. Here's how we think they come together in a mission concept. What do you think? And so it takes many years. I call these big missions the modern cathedrals. They are generational quests that we go on.

18:28It takes sometimes 10, 20 years to get to the point of someone saying, great, let's fly that. And then it takes another five to 10 years to build it. And when you're going to Jupiter, it takes six or seven years to get there. So these are really long, long arc of innovation. So, you know, I think a lot of pressure is put on government agencies, NASA, DOD, of what you can learn from private sector. You know, because we're looking at private sector going faster than you. You know, military innovation cycles of 30 years. That's ridiculous. Like that needs to change. That can't be, that's not valuable anymore.

19:03You know, so you're constantly harangued, you know, that you should learn from private sector. Can you tell me a specific project that you have worked on that really private sector could learn from you? Yeah. Is there a system, a JPL way in how you find ideas, iterate ideas, invest in ideas that have lessons for young entrepreneurs or big companies? Because big companies struggle to innovate. Yes. They buy little companies. That's how they innovate. Yeah. And look, we're spitting out a lot of technologies that are launching little companies that then get bought up by the big companies. That's sort of the flywheel right now.

19:38I mean, so. So what can big companies, what can, you know, big tech learn from JPL about how innovation works? It's a good question. I'm not sure I've ever actually thought about it specifically. I really should. So, look, I think we build great teams as one. We try and empower them as much as possible and try and sort of, I started something when I got to JPL called the snowplow team, which is a bunch of us, you know, management types who run in front of the teams that are trying to innovate and clear crap out of their way. Right. Like I call it the snowplow team. Yes. Your job is to get rid of the bureaucracy out of the way to help the teams be able to do their work effectively.

20:19And I think it's sort of like you have to be constantly vigilant that you yourselves are not smothering your best ideas and your best people. It's so easy to say no, right? Yeah. So easy to find all the holes. You're like, well, that's just the way it is. Or it's too expensive. Oh, it's just, you know, well, I know you need five signatures to get this thing. But or, you know, I know this this this way we do it is not helpful to you. And so it's just about like coming in and saying no, either no to this just specifically or, hey, let's reorganize this and actually make it work. Well, there are a lot of things like that where we're just getting in our own way.

20:52I mean, it's hard enough. And you talk about this a lot in your books. You know, you're fighting the outside world. Like, let's not fight the inside world. Let's just do all we can to clear the decks to support. All right. So snowplow team, which I love, which is basically it's giving management, giving leadership a very specific role, which is your job is to clear the crap out of the way so your teams can actually experiment and try things. Okay. Snowplow team. Love, love, love. You talked about great teams. Is there a way in which you create great teams or collaboration in a way that is different than private sector?

21:27like how are you what's the unique way in which your jpl is doing it that we can learn from you so look i think we tend to uh you know we we fight against being super hierarchical we tend to fight for anybody on this team can have a great idea and we need to listen to them we put tons of value in people contributing to great thinking in teams interestingly you know in the long time past and maybe not that long time, the idea of people who were sort of, you're all dumb, my idea is the best, you know, like the sort of obnoxious way of doing that. To me, and the old white guy, I said it, they were mostly just for reasons.

22:09But, but just, yeah, the bull in the China shop kind of approach to innovation. And it's really interesting, because there are people who think like, that's the way you have to do it. You have to tell people they're stupid to get the right ideas through. And we're trying to turn that on its head. But it's sort of the genius model, right? Yes, the genius model. That's it. Thank you. Yes. To really try and overturn that and be like, no, everybody we hire here is actually super capable. Yeah. And then we're really fortunate. We attract great people and we try and put them in teams and empower those teams.

22:37Can you tell me something specific that JPL has done where the idea came from someone more junior that nobody expected? Oh, almost everything we do is like that. So give me one. Give me one. I mean, you know, the sampling system on Mars that, well, actually, I should go back to the helicopter itself, Ingenuity, was built by a group of kids, what you and I would look at and call kids, youngsters, who were, we kind of took off the constraints of, I mean, when you get the constraints only from physics, which is you are trying to fly in an atmosphere that is one one hundredth the density of Earth's, that's the density of Earth's atmosphere at a hundred thousand feet and helicopters on Earth only fly to like 20 ,000 feet.

23:16that means you have to weigh nothing so the ingenuity weighed four pounds like it's the lightest little thing you've ever seen and so you can't fly a flight computer that already has been that has been space qualified you have to fly something from a cell phone well that's not allowed really why not well let's try it and so like how do you figure out how you create spaces to give teams permission to fail give them permission to so you do something so you took a cell phone yeah and tried it out in space conditions yeah and it totally worked as opposed to saying oh it's not space qualified you can't fly you can't do it so saying no before you've tested it saying no before so again trying to create places where we can really just try things so it's questioning the no like that won't work well yeah do we think we do we know we know that like yeah right or is it and and again you don't you don't question it on a multi-billion dollar spacecraft you question it on something that costs less and you and you do those things and again that team it was you know 50 100 people it wasn't it wasn't a thousand people working on the little helicopter right and most of them were fresh outs or recent hires like a lot of them were quite junior that's super inspiring right to be fresh out of grad school or fresh out exactly and and And give the opportunity to invent.

24:37Invent a Mars helicopter. A Mars helicopter as opposed to serve the genius and one day I'll get to invent something. Exactly. And look, what we have at JPL is a mix of those kind of smaller, faster projects with some of the larger, sort of a bit more bureaucratic things that are probably too big to fail kind of things, right? And so to me, the interesting thing is how you make a culture that can handle both and can succeed with both. And I think it's challenging. That's such an interesting thought, right? Which is these things that are too big to fail. But the problem is, the problem with science is...