In short
NASA’s Artemis lunar program versus proposed FY2027 NASA budget cuts that would sharply reduce science funding, plus how public advocacy, commercial space, and China factor into the “space race.”
Guest
Casey Dreyer, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society’s successor-corrected organization, the Planetary Science Institute (a major independent space advocacy group). He tracks space policy and funding.
Key claims
NASA science is a tiny share of federal spending, but the proposed cut would be the largest in NASA history and would roughly halve NASA science (~46–47%) while largely protecting human spaceflight. Artemis II “proved we can do it again” with modern hardware; however, telegenic success can mask science program “harms,” including canceling missions already collecting data (Jupiter to Pluto, climate-related observatories, Mars missions, asteroid/impact risk work). The administration’s repeated cuts create uncertainty that slows multi-year NASA contracting. Public pressure can help Congress reject cuts.
Notable examples
Artemis II’s successful far-side lunar crew return; carbon-fiber Mars helicopter landing legs; university students working Mars rover data; potential Mars biosignature samples from Perseverance; Wolf Amendment limiting bilateral NASA-China cooperation; ISS not prioritized for long-term.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Dual Nature of NASA's Success
0:45 to 3:01
Discussion on NASA's recent achievements and budget challenges.
“They just sent a crew of astronauts, a crew flight around the far side of the moon.”
Public Perception of Space Funding
3:01 to 6:13
Exploring public opinions on NASA funding and its importance.
“So, you know, all of NASA per year is less than one half of 1 % of what the government spends.”
Artemis II and Its Significance
6:13 to 8:33
Insight into the Artemis II mission and what it achieved.
“The knowledge of how to do that faded away.”
The Budget Cuts: Human Exploration vs Science
8:33 to 12:57
Analyzing the proposed budget cuts and their impact on NASA's science programs.
“And astronauts for all great things that astronauts did and the pictures they were taking, you don't get a lot of science from a picture on an iPhone.”
Political Motives Behind NASA's Budget Cuts
13:08 to 14:00
Discussion on the political motivations influencing NASA's budget proposals.
“I didn't really think about it like that.”
Understanding NASA's Budget Proposals
14:00 to 16:50
Explore the reasons behind repeated budget proposals and their consequences.
“So he kind of spelled it out like this wasn't an accident.”
Impact of NASA Cuts on Science and Workforce
16:50 to 19:25
Learn how potential budget cuts would affect scientific missions and employment opportunities.
“You hit on this a little bit, but I just want to drill down a little bit more.”
The Importance of Space Exploration
19:25 to 22:03
Discover why understanding the cosmos is crucial for humanity's future.
“And then going back down to the bottom and hunching over your iPhone and swiping left and right until you die, right?”
Challenges of Space Data Centers
22:03 to 25:14
Examine the feasibility and complexities of placing data centers in space.
“This idea that like we could solve a lot of our these AI problems in terms of, you know, energy and not having to deal with like the regulations and permitting around data centers if we just put them in orbit.”
The U.S.-China Space Race
25:21 to 28:00
Analyze the current geopolitical landscape surrounding space exploration and competition with China.
“Price and coverage match limited by state law.”
Show all 19 chapters
NASA's Challenges and International Relations
28:00 to 30:01
Learn about the challenges NASA faces with funding and international collaboration, particularly with China.
“So it's not a coherent story that's being told with this.”
Robotic vs. Human Missions in Space
30:01 to 31:55
Explore the debate between prioritizing robotic missions versus human missions in NASA's plans.
“If you want to look for places, you know, we know where there are potential biospheres in this solar system, right?”
Public Advocacy for Space Funding
31:55 to 34:28
Understand how public pressure can influence Congress regarding NASA's budget cuts and space science advocacy.
“I think it's really about the pushing out aspect.”
Future of NASA and Commercial Space Sector
38:30 to 41:35
Discuss the potential future of NASA in light of budget cuts and reliance on commercial space ventures.
“Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates and Third Party Insurers.”
Rapid Fire Space Questions
41:35 to 42:00
Engage in a lightning round discussion about key space topics and predictions.
“I was going to say that's a great place to leave it.”
The Future of Space Exploration and Life Beyond Earth
42:00 to 45:00
Discussion on the feasibility of finding life on other planets and the role of NASA.
“Is the International Space Station worth the cost to keep flying?”
Billionaires in Space: A Double-Edged Sword
45:00 to 46:42
Exploring the impact of billionaire involvement in the space industry.
“you'd think that he'd be the kind of guy to be like, wow, I could be the one to announce that we found life on another planet?”
Exciting Places in Our Solar System
46:42 to 48:31
Highlighting Europa as a prime candidate for life and discussing its features.
“A lot of reasons why that is, but also interesting that no one has really replicated SpaceX either, right?”
Favorite Space Movies: A Personal Take
48:31 to 50:32
The hosts share their favorite space movies and their cultural significance.
“It would facilitate our evolution into this kind of transcendent level of existence.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hello, once again, from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center in New York City. This is the 1600 and I am Carlo Versano. This country was stone cold dead. As you can see, if you're watching us on YouTube here, we are back in the confines of our lovely studio here in the office where it is 300 degrees at all hours of the day, which they do, I think, just to torture me. But that's OK. I hope everybody is having a wonderful, wonderful summer. Hard to believe it's already August. Our topic today, we're going to take another one of these little detours that we do. We're going to talk space today, particularly NASA.
0:34We're going to get a little bit wonky. We're going to get a little bit in the weeds here, so buckle up. But if space is your thing, if you're interested in spatial exploration, please do stick with us. We have a great guest for you today. In some ways, NASA is really coming off probably one of its best periods in decades, right? They just sent a crew of astronauts, a crew flight around the far side of the moon. to send astronauts further than any human has ever traveled in history. And yet at the same time, NASA's science programs, which I mean by telescopes, Mars rovers, asteroid trackers, things of that nature, they are fighting for their lives against the biggest proposed budget cut in the agency's history under the presidency of Donald Trump.
1:12So how can NASA be both winning and losing at the same time? Casey Dreyer is chief of space policy at the Planetary Institute, which is the world's largest independent space interest organization, great organization if you follow them. He tracks their money for a living, and he's here to explain how both of these things can be true. Casey, thanks so much for joining us, man. Happy to be here. And just a quick correction, Planetary Society is the - Did I call you the Planetary Institute? Yes. I'm sorry. That's my mistake. There is a Planetary Science Institute. They came after us. Sorry. I was going to say, we'll edit it in post, but you know what?
1:50Whatever. People make mistakes. So thank you for correcting me. I appreciate that. So I want to ask you about Artemis to begin with. So that happened back in April, which is a couple months ago now. It was awesome. I mean, I don't really consider myself like sort of a space nerd. I mean, I've always liked space. It's cool. I was totally taken by that. And I wrote in our newsletter, we followed it very closely as it was happening, wrote extensively around the whole mission. And it was notable to me that the audience response was, I mean, there were some people who were really into it with me. There were a lot of people who were either, you know, sort of like disinterested.
2:30A lot of people, especially a lot of boomers who were around during the Apollo days. And they said stuff like, you know, why are we even bothering with this? Like we already went to the moon, right? We know what's there. We know what's not there. And they're not even actually stepping foot on the moon. And then we had a lot of other, you know, sort of cynics, Debbie Downers, if you will, who were just like, yeah, it's cool, I guess. But like, why are we spending any money on this at all when, you know, take your pick, right? We have XYZ problems here on Earth. What is your response to the people who say that funding NASA just shouldn't be a priority in this moment?
3:01Well, I have a couple ways of responding. Usually I like to put it in context. So, you know, all of NASA per year is less than one half of 1 % of what the government spends. You could take it out. I mean, that rounds to zero, right? Like you're just rounding the whole numbers. You could actually erase NASA from history. You could erase the Apollo program, the space shuttle, all the robotic missions you mentioned. It could never have existed. Pile up all that money, adjust it for inflation, apply it to this year's deficit alone, and you would just barely pay it off for this one year. So it's not a ton of money.
3:34I mean, we spend on NASA every year what we spend on Social Security every six days, what we spend on Medicare every 12 days. So it's just not that much money in the scope of things. We tend to think it's expensive because it looks expensive. Rockets are big. They're on the order, but we pay for the interstate highway system or even less. But we drive in interstates every day. We don't think about that. Interstates aren't called the$18 billion interstate highway system. Rockets are big and they kind of stand out. So I mean, I always like to correct that first. Second, and I'll just echo what a NASA administrator actually wrote in 1972, I think it was, where, you know, if NASA's budget alone was standing between solving hunger in the United States or solving poverty and not, he would be the first person to shut down the agency.
4:23Right. But that's just not true. Again, we spend, all of our priorities are spent on healthcare, social programs, you know, and NASA, again, is this tiny, tiny fraction. And then, of course, you look at this, what are we doing with this? Those four people for Artemis II, what a joyous and great reminder that was of what these kind of positive things that we can do are. That was a multinational crew that worked together, clearly liked each other. the best of ourselves, you know, representing ourselves out there is for a brief moment, you can kind of transcend politics and partisanship and just say, like, we can do kind of some amazing things if we put our mind to it.
5:04Well, that's that's I'm so glad you said that, because that's exactly what my takeaway from the whole thing was watching these these these men and women, just the apex of humanity, right? Like the people who just know this stuff, like just the technical skill, the expertise, as you said, the teamwork while they were up there. And it's also, I remember, you know, I remember learning about the Apollo mission in high school. And I remember there was even, there was some of this even back then. I forget who it was, but there were members of Congress back in the 60s who were saying, like, why are we bothering with this?
5:34And I think, you know, in retrospect, like, is there anybody who was like, oh, the Apollo mission was a waste of money? Wish we hadn't done that, right? Wish we had put all that money into Vietnam instead. You know, one year of Vietnam, we spent one year in Vietnam in 69 and cost more than the entire Apollo project, right? So it's like, these aren't just that much money, people. No, exactly. Okay, so for somebody who hasn't really followed this closely, just backing up here, what did Artemis II actually prove that we didn't already know, sort of like scientific, technological perspective? Yeah, I mean, in a very basic sense, Artemis II proved that we can do this again.
6:09I mean, it's really as straightforward as that, right? Apollo ended in 1972. The knowledge of how to do that faded away. the hardware that we had was scrapped. We can't rebuild a spacecraft from 60 years ago. We can't build a TV from 60 years ago, right? The parts, the suppliers, how the components, where you build it, none of that exists anymore. And so this was just the first time doing this again with a modern capability. So that was really just seen as a test flight, and particularly with human spaceflight, often the success is when humans come back safely from whatever they were doing, right?
6:43it's somewhat tautological in that sense. We can do this. And that was the big demonstration of why Artemis II was important. Right. It's almost like the good news is that there was no news, right? Like they came back in one piece. It was a success in that regard. I mean, it was the first time flying humans on that rocket. It was the first time flying humans in that spacecraft. And if you're on the far side of the moon, you know, something like 300 ,000 miles away from Earth, if something goes wrong, you know, remember from the movie? Apollo 13, not much you can do about it. You're days away, right?
7:19And that's a very kind of scary place to be. No, absolutely. And do you think, I mean, it was obviously a very successful mission. It was a telegenic mission. I mean, one of the things that I thought was just so cool about it was the photography that these guys came back with. There's something about seeing some of these pictures from deep space shot on an iPhone. Yes. I don't know what it was, but it was really like touching almost in a way, just because I guess we're so used to shooting things on our phones that like there's something about seeing an image of us shot back to us on an iPhone that was sort of remarkable.
7:54But my question is, does a mission like this, successful telegenic, as I said, does it make it easier or harder to protect the funding for some of the less glamorous parts of NASA's overall project, its missions? In a way, harder, because it, as you kind of implied with your opening, papers over some of the actual other harms that are being done to the agency. So it can appear from the outside that everything's going great. We're achieving these brand new, particularly you look like you're born after 1972, as I was. So I've never seen humans that far from Earth in that lifetime. That stands out.
8:31And NASA is a big organization and it does and it's chartered and told to by statute to do lots of things, including advance human knowledge of space, including to pursue scientific investigations beyond Earth. And astronauts for all great things that astronauts did and the pictures they were taking, you don't get a lot of science from a picture on an iPhone. Right. As moving as that is, you have this whole other reason to have it. But if you actually want to gain knowledge, if you want to understand the cosmos in which we inhabit, you need a strong scientific program. And so it becomes more complicated stories sometimes when you say, well, yeah, we have humans around the moon again, but they actually want to terminate, cancel in flight half of the scientific space missions that are out there from the sun out to Pluto.
9:21That becomes a harder story to tell. Well, OK, so this is a perfect segue for sort of the meat and potatoes that I wanted to bring you on to discuss, which is this budget fight that I alluded to. So the White House is proposing a fiscal year 2027 budget request for NASA of$18.8 billion, which, of course, again, sounds like a lot of money to you and me, really not that much in the scheme of things. It would mark a 23 percent overall reduction in NASA's budget, something like five to six billion dollars. And again, in these proposed budget cuts, which have not passed, it disproportionately slashes science programs while prioritizing human spaceflight, human lunar exploration.
10:01Is that – I mean talk to me about the pros and cons. Putting aside the numbers, talk to me about the pros and cons of prioritizing sort of like human exploration versus some of the, again, like sort of less sexy but arguably more important science projects. I find Hubble very sexy personally. I do too. Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space and Mars Roeby. Sure. I mean I think there – obviously I think there are very few pros to it. What this does is, as you said, it cuts a huge, this would be the single largest cut to NASA's budget in percentage terms in its history. It disproportionately falls.
10:37It cuts science in half, roughly 47%, 46, 47%. And by doing that, you actually just, again, you're turning off. You're switching off missions that are already out there that have been paid for, that are collecting incredible science at Jupiter, beyond Pluto. Things that if you turn them off, you don't get them back. if you start tomorrow to try to replace it you're talking decades just to get back out to that point in space like some of these things are really far away you're switching off carbon uh observatories above the earth right trying to understand climate change you are turning off missions at mars where the administration says it wants to go so you don't understand the place that you want to send humans to you just lose a lot and you're throwing away tens of billions of dollars of things already built and paid for to save a fraction of this overall expenditure.
11:25And of course, you know, decimate the US scientific community in the process. The prioritization to human spaceflight, it's not so much that it's prioritized so much as that it's just not cut. It basically retains the same. Congress actually went out of its way last year to shower human spaceflight with an additional$10 billion that they can use over the next few years to kind of help this Artemis effort along. So they're doing great. Strangely, though, we have a commercial space program and commercial and individual actors in space now. They are themselves just kind of doing human spaceflight because they want to do it.
12:00So it's already something that private sector is investing in. You're talking about companies like SpaceX Blue Origin. SpaceX Blue Origin run by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. They want to send humans to space too. They're putting their own money into it. they don't do science. There's no SpaceX Mars science mission. There's no Blue Origin mission out to Jupiter to understand how big planets form. There's no mission to look for life beyond Earth. So ironically, this administration is investing in things that the private sector is already investing in while taking away funding from the one unique role that the public sector does have in space, which is scientific exploration.
12:38Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit Progressive.com. Find a rate that works for you with the Name Your Price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. I didn't really think about it like that.
13:09That's interesting. I mean, it's so hard to figure out the motives of this administration. What do you, like, why, if it's not, like, why would they prioritize? Why would they do this? Yeah, why would they do this, right? If it's not that much money, right? Right. Well, helpfully, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the budgeting office at the White House, Russ Vogt, laid out in a, actually, this was in some interregnum that he He was running his own workshop or in his own kind of think tank back in 2023. He released what he called an alternative budget for the United States at the time, kind of as a contrast to Biden's budget.
13:47And within that, he proposed cutting science at NASA in half. Right. With the clarity saying this isn't important. NASA should do human spaceflight and science. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff wrapped up with kind of COVID and other issues in the scientific community and kind of the overall political bent of the scientific community that Russ Vogt and others kind of see. So he kind of spelled it out like this wasn't an accident. This is his policy being reflected through the White House. He called a shot years before he was in this position. So it's not surprising. And actually, I mean, they tried to do this last year.
14:20They were resoundingly rejected by Congress, a Republican led Congress, I should add. Right. And they just cut and pasted the same proposal this year. And I'm not even exaggerating. There are references in the language of this year's budget request that applied to last year that are no longer relevant. They didn't even bother to copy edit their cut and paste from last year. So they're just putting these same cuts out there again. I can't say that surprises me. Why do you think that this administration keeps proposing? I mean, they sort of got embarrassed by Congress here actually doing its job since they have the power of the purse.
14:56Why do they keep proposing it if it keeps getting turned down? Just like if your goal is to just disrupt the activity to slow it down. I mean, if you just really don't want this to happen, even having that hanging out, it's easier to just throw it out there. Congress will fix it. But you have eight to 12 months of uncertainty. Right. Congress acts very slowly. The executive branch has been acting much faster. and that difference in terms of timescale means you can't make these long-term contract commitments to start building a spacecraft if you're not technically sure. Maybe Congress will come back and fix it.
15:28Maybe they say they want to. Will they? Until that legislation is signed, you can't assume the answer is yes. And because of laws passed like the Anti-Deficiency Act, you can't spend money you don't have in the U.S. government. So you can't make these kind of commitments longer route than you have funding for. The administration is saying, no, you won't have any money. Congress says, well, we'll restore it. You need to resolve that before you can work it. So just the uncertainty alone slows things down. And actually the number of new science missions that NASA has started is among the lowest in history as in the last year.
16:01So even though the money shows up, maybe it shows up, you got six months left to spend it. You know, it's just not the most, you've created the inefficiency merely by, it's easier for them just to put that out there even if it gets fixed, right? That's really, really the goal, which it seems to be at least from Russ Vogt's perspective. Interesting. Well, I think that's it, right? I think that their goal is the uncertainty, is to keep everybody sort of like on their back feet. And to your point, right, I mean, NASA works in, you know, with decades in terms of their... There's no spacecraft store, right, to go buy a Mars rover off the shelf.
16:34You have to design and build it. It takes years to figure out what you need to build. It takes years to build and test it. And then, of course, you launch it. At best, you're looking at eight months and sometimes longer to get where you're going. So it's, yeah, NASA works on this multi-year timescale that is sadly not a good match for kind of annual appropriations or every two-year kind of congressional elections. You hit on this a little bit, but I just want to drill down a little bit more. Walk me through what a regular person loses if this budget were to pass, not in dollars, but like in specific things that we would stop learning, that we would stop getting information from?
17:09Yeah. So I'll start at the very practical level. NASA science is not something that just happens in one or two NASA centers. NASA science spends money, has contractors, works with small business in three quarters of all the congressional districts in the country, all 50 states plus the territories. So you're losing contracts to businesses to provide incredibly, like just down the street or up the street from here in Seattle, there is a small company that built the little landing legs out of carbon fiber composites for the little Mars helicopter that ran along with the Mars rover that's currently on the red planet.
17:43I mean, that's a really, you need, this is kind of like training for a marathon. You keep your workforce and you keep your industrial base capable of creating these incredibly high demand, very skilled products to survive the harshness of space. So you lose that kind of pressure on the high tech industry here. You also then lose things like a lot of these missions, they are funding individuals at academia, universities, research institutions that themselves work with students. So another good example, even just here in Washington state, you have a professor who works on the Mars rover program.
18:18She has eight students this summer, undergraduates, who are working on Mars rover data every single day. They're making undergraduate summer stipends of a couple thousand dollars, right? Not a lot, But they have a job. They're working in data. They're being trained on actual spacecraft operations as students at a state university. What an incredible experience for them. And it pulls them into this, again, this high tech, high demand aerospace operations and other type of highly desirable jobs workforce. you start throwing that stuff away when you cut this out and then we can expand out to the the bigger picture there's a fundamental importance of understanding the cosmos in which we live right not just for feel-good stuff which i think is important but also you kind of mentioned this earlier there are things out there like big rocks that are flying around that we want to understand where they are uh we don't want them to hit us there's a natural desire to and kind of long-term survival issue of learning, you know, how to defend ourselves against asteroids and things, we lose that capability as well.
19:17So it's symbolically, it's functionally equivalent to just kind of crawling up a big, out of a big canyon, seeing this incredible vista at the very top, and then just saying, eh, right? And then going back down to the bottom and hunching over your iPhone and swiping left and right until you die, right? You just give up this incredible capability to know that also then keeps you healthy, keeps the society healthy, with constantly trying to integrate and understand new information about where you live. You just made me think of something that, you know, we hear about this idea of like mining the asteroid belt, right?
19:52Like, you know, finding these rocks and, you know, a lot of them may have some critical, you know, minerals on them, like these rare earth minerals that we need here on Earth to build iPhones or to build electric cars or whatever. It seems to me like that's something that's right up Trump's alley, right? like being able to essentially, you know, pillage the space rocks for commodities. Right. But I mean, isn't that something that would presumably be cut in this budget request? So I've made this exact argument frequently to the commercial space sector that, you know, your understanding, if you want to know where to look for resources, you need to understand the environment in which you're operating, or even to design and understand the environment which you're going to be operating in, if you're sending things to the moon or sending things to asteroids.
20:39This is where you need scientific reconnaissance and survey. This is why, you know, we even as a nation before we had this huge investment in public scientific exploration, we sent people like Lewis and Clark to do surveying. And, you know, the U.S. Geological Survey predates this. It's a valuable to industry to have good understanding of our environment. And yes, this hits the very things that you're identifying. Space weather, which is things like solar flares from the sun that can fry a spacecraft. Understanding the environment of landing on the moon, you know, dust on the moon is actually just little shards of silica glass and peppered broken rock that are basically like knives because there's no water or anything that kind of smooths out the edges.
21:22Does that get into the, it gets into the gears, it kind of electrostatically sticks to you, it gets in your mouth and eyes, you know, how do we manage this kind of stuff? Same thing on Mars. We want to understand this. So even if you have no bigger grand understanding or appreciation for scientific exploration at all, the practical nature of understanding and keeping yourself or your equipment and your investments safe should be a very high priority. So I think absolutely. Then again, you're turning off your ability to understand where you live, which is in, you know, not just Earth, but, you know, this Earth moon system, solar system, galaxy, so forth.
21:58The other thing kind of related to sort of like asteroid mining is, I mean, Musk's big thing right now is data centers in space, right? This idea that like we could solve a lot of our these AI problems in terms of, you know, energy and not having to deal with like the regulations and permitting around data centers if we just put them in orbit. I guess my first question on that is, is that something that you think is feasible? It's not impossible. And maybe that's how to answer it, right? It's not physically impossible. I'd say it's infeasible in the sense that there are a number of very technical and expensive solutions.
22:35It maybe suggests how difficult the local permitting and kind of NIMBY situation is in terms of data center buildouts. That it might be easier to build one and four. Launch things into space. I mean, you can think in space, the big issue is you don't have air. Air helps you or water helps you kind of take heat away from all these processors and dissipate them somewhere else. In space, you don't have that. You can only radiate through light, through photons, through infrared radiation. So you need these giant panels. The International Space Station, for any kind of close observers of it, has these big solar panels.
23:08It also has these big white radiator panels. Their job is to just give off excess heat. And you would need those really. So these things would have to be really, really big to give off the heat. You have things like, well, if something breaks, if a wire goes wrong or haywire, CPUs or GPUs break, Like, you're not going to fix them, right? You lose the whole thing. So you have to think about how they degrade, and it just becomes very complicated. Nothing is easier by putting it into space from an operational or design standpoint, right? Space is a very unpleasant environment to be in. But it's not impossible, right?
23:45There's nothing physically impossible about doing it. It's whether it's worth the investment and the effort. Right. But presumably answers to those questions would be given not by SpaceX, but by NASA and NASA's research budget. Kind of. I mean, so there's engineering aspects of it. This is where you actually kind of move away from fundamental research into applied research and engineering. I mean, there's enough money kind of obviously floating around, so to speak, the AI sector. I think it's no accident that SpaceX itself pivoted to suddenly talking about data centers and AI right before it went public.
24:25I mean, and if you noticed, and for those who read its prospectus, it says, oh, well, once we get the data center built out, our effective market goes from billions to literally$30 trillion a year. You know, this is kind of insane, line go up kind of situation. And so there's a motivational thinking happening here. I'm not saying it can't happen, but again, there's a lot of reasons to juice the AI aspect of what SpaceX does for its IPO. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget.
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25:06So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit Progressive.com. Find a rate that works for you with the Name Your Price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. I want to talk about China a little bit. There's been a lot of talk with, I mean, it's funny, we're talking about AI, right? Because one of the big sort of like scare tactics they're using in the AI industry is they're saying we have to keep going, keep going, keep going because we have to beat China, right?
25:39Something like that is also happening just in terms of this new space race, right? We keep being told, like, we have to beat China to the moon, even though we've already been to the moon. Is that real or is that just being used to justify spending? I'm of the opinion that if China gets to the moon, I think we're okay. Yeah, right, okay. It's used as, I mean, I'll add a bit of complexity to that. I mean, there's nothing wrong to me with healthy competition. and I think that's the right way to approach this in space, that it's not some existential crisis. It's a, you know, hey, we're kind of competing against our some rivals.
26:19Space is generally, you know, particularly with humans, a peaceful endeavor. You know, hey, may the best men and women win kind of an attitude. We did it with the Russians. Yeah, I mean, that was a little more tenuous. That was more of a geopolitical thing. I mean, the difference then, I think, why Apollo happened because of this, right? Right. There was the context of Apollo was not just that Soviet Union had launched Sputnik and had shown up the United States as in terms of technological capability. It was that this was happening at this postwar decolonization period where all of these European countries were pulling out of their colonies across the world.
26:56They themselves were then deciding about which political system to organize around. And so you had your pinnacles of kind of communism and free market capitalism. And so you had an audience. So Apollo is kind of, you know, you were it was the peacock feathers, right? It's showing like, look at the power of our systems. We can send humans into space or humans to the moon. Clearly, our system is the is the preferred capable one. in addition to signaling that kind of organizational technological strength to the Soviet Union or vice versa to the United States. We don't have an audience anymore of that, right?
27:31We don't have a, countries are pretty much fixed in their borders. They're not generally changing, dramatically changing their political structures anymore. And so you don't have that kind of motivation. So we've seen, I think, a lot of effort, primarily from the political side. This is definitely not a ground up attitude of trying to map the Cold War era Apollo motivation, which is when NASA was showered with money, to the situation with China, which kind of matches in some ways, but just generally doesn't match in most others. And I think that there's a limit there. And clearly, we've hit that limit, because instead of asking for more money as we go to the moon for the second time in human history, right, even a little bit more, this administration is actually trying to cut the agency that is taking us there and slash its workforce, right, like doing the most difficult thing possible.
28:22So it's not a coherent story that's being told with this. Do you think there's a world where we could actually, if not ally, at least compare notes with the Chinese, at least on Space Matters? I mean, is there a world? Yes. Is it anytime soon? No. I mean, NASA has been operating under an explicit ban of bilateral relationship with China on any activities imposed by Congress starting in, I think, 2009, 2010, called the Wolf Amendment. It passes every year as appropriations. It's only getting worse with this administration. And to be fair, I mean, China hasn't been a great actor here either. One of the reasons the Wolf Amendment started is that back in the late 90s, China was providing really cheap rockets to launch things into space.
29:08Commercial satellite companies were using them. And then China was found to be kind of stealing industrial secrets when they were getting integrated onto the launch pad. So there are real, I mean, China's not a perfect actor here by any means. Oh, of course, right. Yeah, they're putting an incredible amount of effort into space. rapidly have become easily the second most powerful space nation in the world after the United States and are aiming towards the moon. It's just the consequence of them landing. The moon's a big place. You know, there's room for both. Again, I think healthy competition is great, but it's also, I would like our space program in the United States to not be a reactive one and to only do something that China's going to do, right?
29:49I want the program to serve our needs and interests over the long term, not kind of drop everything, freak out and try to run to the surface of the moon and sacrifice a bunch of stuff along the way. Right. Just because the Chinese are doing it. On that point, if you had to choose, if you were the NASA administrator, if you took Isaac Men's job tomorrow, more human missions to the moon or would you do more robotic missions to places like Europa or Titan or some of these other moons off other planets? Which teachers does more? yeah i mean this is this is an easy i do robotic ones i mean this is the i think i get fired for not saying that too i mean that's our thing is space science but i mean honestly i mean i wouldn't stop it and i love obviously love human spaceflight and as a but as a kid what i drew in the 80s dating myself in the 80s i was drawing the voyager you know spacecraft the viking missions on on mars i mean they're able to go places that humans just cannot go if you want to understand the outer planets, you know, these giant planets that form that look like most of the exoplanets that we see, you have to send robotic spacecraft there.
30:57If you want to look for places, you know, we know where there are potential biospheres in this solar system, right? We have an ocean of water on this moon Europa that has more liquid water than the entire Earth does. That's just sitting there. There's an ocean moon around Saturn called Enceladus that's just kind of blurping out its its internal ocean into space. We have not explored those for life very vigorously. Those are these kinds of transformative discoveries. We have space telescopes that could start, that you build them big enough, they could look directly at Earth-sized exoplanets and look at their atmosphere, their biosignatures there.
31:35Easily to me. I mean, again, I think human spaceflight is actually doing, is really important though now that we're getting beyond Earth for the first time again in 50 years. And I want to keep that pushing outwards. I would actually kind of pull away from, do we need to keep people on a space station, you know, for another 25 years around Earth? I don't think that's as important anymore. I think it's really about the pushing out aspect. Well, it's good to hear because I wanted to ask you about the ISS. But before we get there, I want to bring it back to advocacy and the public's role in all of this, which I know is a big part of your job.
32:07The Planetary Society recognized you and your colleagues for organizing public pushback to these NASA cuts. What actually works in this stuff? Does public pressure move Congress on something that like sort of this wonky, if you will? It does. And it's actually better than you think. So the wonderful thing still about space that and, you know, there's always some edge cases here. But in general, space is you don't hit that wall of partisanship. Right. There's no natural Republican platform on space versus Democratic platform on space. You have parochialism. Right. And just by accident of history, most Republican states now have the human spaceflight center.
32:45of NASA and most Democratic states have the science centers of NASA. It was inverted when those were all established back in the 1960s. But parochialism is one thing, right? Space itself, and I think you saw this again last year when you had the Republican House and Senate completely reject cuts to NASA science, right? That wasn't through partisanship acting there, right? They had space to do it, so to speak, and a lot of public pressure. It's a much more of a classic i i call it a great starter issue for you know potential you know citizens who want to get into more advocacy because it's so welcome it's fun to talk about when you go you know we organized probably the largest gathering of individuals almost 400 people um coming to washington dc last year just to talk about space science and people love to talk about it it's exciting stuff and it's an easy fix for a lot you know we're talking not talking about a lot of money um Was that to civilians or to lawmakers?
33:44To lawmakers. So we organized a big congressional visits event. And I mean, the key there too is that you're also a signal that can jump above the noise, right? So they get tons of letters on gun control, social security, poverty, cultural issues, not as much about space. And so you get 10 people writing a day about space, that attracts their interest. And we've seen really incredible – I mean we're a humble 501c3 nonprofit, right? We don't even technically lobby most of the time. It's issue advocacy. And we've seen incredible reception to these ideas because, again, it's this non – one of the few nonpartisan areas left and so there's room to maneuver through basic citizen engagement and mobilization.
34:28Well, that's really interesting to hear. For somebody who's listening or watching this who cares about this stuff but has never considered themselves sort of like a political advocate in any way, never called the representative to complain about anything, what's the one thing that they could do this week in terms of these budget cuts that would actually potentially move the needle? Yeah, you can go to, I mean, easiest thing is go to our action center, planetter.org slash action dash center. We make an easy form there. You can fill out, it gets into our system. We'll let you know when there's other opportunities in the future.
34:59We have an online class that kind of walks you through space policy and space advocacy on our membership portal. And then we have for people who want to level up, we have an annual kind of in-person visit that you can do. And we help plan and schedule and train people to be really good space advocates. And it's interesting, the people who come, they walk out of there usually much more invested and feeling better about our democracy, which I think is always a good thing. And they always say, like, this was actually really a rewarding experience because you're going to talk about something you care about with people who don't otherwise get the opportunity to hear that perspective.
35:39I think the other important thing to emphasize here is, again, my organization, we're not representing industry. We're not representing big aerospace corporations. We don't take and have government contracts. We're just individually funded by members across the world. and that gives us kind of a unique, you know, the things we're advocating for, the best thing, we're not going to get any money from this, right? Our policies that come up, we don't have any vested interest beyond seeing amazing pictures or maybe discovering life beyond the universe, right? We get to share with that, but not benefit otherwise.
36:15And that gives a lot of credibility too and I think that's why people really enjoy that experience. Do you think the budget will survive this fight like it did last year? I think we've seen Congress queue up ready to reject it again. The House of Representatives have released a preliminary budget that rejects the vast majority, not all, but the vast majority of cuts. They basically save all NASA science except for Earth science, unfortunately, because of kind of pre-existing partisan kind of political things around climate change. The Senate is almost certainly will reject it in its entirety. They just have to have Mitch McConnell show up and vote.
36:55And again, there's some there's some of these external podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's a whole other one. But there's there's there's there's no I mean, Congress is irritated that they rejected it and then saw the same thing again. And it's they've been queuing up, obviously, that that's not their intention. So it's really not a situation where we have to convince that many people. It's just that Congress has a very slow process of doing this. And if the process can wrap up, then we can have an appropriation sometime before the end of the calendar year, sometime maybe after the elections. we're pretty confident because, again, we made the case successfully last year and that the same people are still in power.
37:39The same people want to solve this again, but we're just much better set up. Last year was kind of a frantic reactionary situation. We're much better prepared this year, but again, there's these kind of external factors in Congress plus the midterms that are just slowing things down. That's what I was getting at. The midterm is going to be the delaying factor here. But assuming that the budget survives intact or more or less intact, what do you think the agency looks like in five years from now? For a small business owner, every day is full of surprises. Some great, some not so great. Like when a client cancels their order at the last minute.
38:15But here's a surprise you will like. Progressive provides small business owners with 30 customizable coverage options to help keep their business going strong. So go ahead, surprise yourself. Get a quote in as little as eight minutes at ProgressiveCommercial.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates and Third Party Insurers. Coverage is not available in all states or for all vehicles and coverage selections. The only reason I hesitate is that we don't know what happens at the end of this presidential term, like whether this trend with NASA continues. um we have the agency now strangely so nasa lost 4 000 civil servants last year which is roughly 20 of its workforce it actually has fewer civil servants working for the space agency than at any point since 1960 right since i didn't realize that started um yeah just like in the first two years of its existence um they're hiring but then now they're hiring back again so it's just like again it kind of shows you that it was not really a well thought through thing they're trying to hire back thousands of people into the agency because going to the moon is hard.
39:23So in five years, I mean, I think the best case scenario is that you simultaneously have a vibrant lunar exploration plan with humans going there regularly. And you have a kind of a secured and reinvigorated science program, which kind of by surviving in a sense, a near-death experience really comes out of the gate with like, all right, We have kind of a leaner focused and much more ambitious set of options and people actually appreciate it more now because, frankly, we've been kind of maybe taken for granted a little bit. And that's I think that's best case scenario. But it really depends. I mean, we're seeing I think that the big uncertainty here is you have a huge reliance now on commercial space sector that in some places has paid off really well in terms of lowering the cost of launches into space.
40:13but in other aspects is a huge gamble um nasa's relying on the private sector to basically do most of the new things of landing humans on the moon uh robotics on this cargo on the moon to run at space stations to basically do everything new um they're banking on that all these companies are going to be a spacex but only spacex is spacex and there's other rocket companies that have failed uh that blow things up all the time that aren't a success most companies aren't that successful. Yeah, and SpaceX almost failed a million times, right? Sure, yeah. I mean, and SpaceX owes its existence today to NASA swooping in in 2008 with a big contract that kept them alive, kept them out of bankruptcy.
40:55And so you have a situation where NASA's and public has placed a huge bet on a private sector that's not, no one's sure if it's ready to deliver on its promises. I mean, even the spacesuits that the astronauts are going to wear on the moon are being procured through a commercial contract with a private company. Can they delay? I mean, this company has been around for five years, right? We have no idea. And hopefully they'll pull it off. But if not, NASA's out of luck and we don't have a lunar program yet. So it's a huge bet. And that's the biggest thing we're going to start to see in a few years, whether these companies can pull this off or not.
41:35I was going to say that's a great place to leave it. But I have a couple, some rapid fire questions for you, Casey, if you don't mind. I went around the office today and I was just like, give me your space questions because I feel like everybody's always got space questions. It's like we've got a great space guest today. So if you don't mind, I want to shoot through this little lightning round with you. Hit me. Okay. Moon or Mars? What's the priority? Should be or is? Is. Which one? No, should be. Mars. Is the International Space Station worth the cost to keep flying? I think I know your answer here.
42:08No. Yeah, I would agree with that. Will China put humans on the moon before the U.S. goes back? I honestly don't know. I'm not trying to hedge. I think it's going to be—it's harder than you think, right? And China's gotten really good at landing big things on the moon with their robotics. I think they have probably a clearer pathway. The bet that NASA has made of a SpaceX landing its giant, a giant rocket on the surface of the moon with Starship is very uncertain at best. So it's just hard to, you start going into it past an event horizon that's just honestly hard to say on something like this.
42:52All right, so easier question. Do you think we'll find life on another world, another planet in your lifetime? Yes. Really? I think so. I'll conditionalize that, which is if we make the effort to look. I think there's a good chance. I mean, right now, sitting on Mars in the belly of the Perseverance rover is a potential biosignature sample of a rock, right? They found something that can only be explained. And on Earth, you would say, oh, this was made by microbes making this particular pattern. And it's associated with kind of organics. all of these kind of chemical reactions and residuals that we see are consistent with what we would see on earth as a you know created by you know like a some bacterial mat billions of years ago is it the only way to make it no it's but it's unlikely right so it's a potential biosphere we have on mars right now if we we need to bring it back to earth study in the labs that we have here to really get the answer to that but that's just now right we have yet to send missions to Europa, to Enceladus, future space telescope missions to look directly at the atmospheres of exoplanets.
43:58And I hope to live a long time. I'd say in the next 40 years, it can be very likely if we put the effort in, given how mature this field has become, and if you kind of approach it through a statistical, you know, we're looking at the habitable environments in the solar system and then beyond in a focused way. Man, wouldn't that be something? When does Perseverance come back, the Mars rover? Well, the effort to bring its samples, Perseverance will never come back, but it's samples that are collected. The samples, yeah. Yeah. The administration canceled the effort to do that. So right now the answer is never.
44:36And that's one of those things. And that's what has kind of surprised me. Again, this discovery was just last year, last fall, that they have this potential biosignature. and that seemed to motivate nobody to come around and product this program, isn't it? It's a lack of imagination to me in this. So it's very disappointing. Again, especially with somebody like Trump, you'd think that he'd be the kind of guy to be like, wow, I could be the one to announce that we found life on another planet? Well, the problem is that you just can't get it back before the end of 2020. Yeah. All right. Well, there you go.
45:11There's your answer. Okay. Where were we? This is not the lightning round that I intended, but that's okay. That's not your fault, Casey. These are great answers. This is complicated stuff. A couple more questions for you here. Should billionaires be running major parts of the space program, billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos? You think that's – yeah. I think that's fine. Again, I'd qualify it on exactly what. I'm sure happy to have them launch rockets. As long as you have a healthy market, you have multiple of them. Right now, Elon Musk is basically the one choke point into space. That's not good.
45:42But they've obviously done – kind of the other way of doing it, had it shot for 50 years and did not deliver. And so I think certain parts of the space industry are absolutely appropriate to spin off. But we just need to make sure that we don't give too much control to one person, right? We have to have a distributed and healthy market. No, I agree. I mean, look, say what you will about Elon Musk. The videos of the, for a neophyte like me, the videos of these rockets coming back and landing on the launch pad is like one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen from like a technological perspective.
46:18It is. Like it's insane. It's insane that we can do that. It's hard to overstate how important SpaceX and successful it is as a company. It is an incredible company. And it did revolutionize the rocket industry, revived the rocket industry in the United States completely. It basically put out a business, not just in the US, every other country's kind of legacy systems. That's how innovative they've been. And that paid off as a bet. A lot of reasons why that is, but also interesting that no one has really replicated SpaceX either, right? You have a couple of companies struggling to kind of be number two, but they're really far behind.
46:56Fascinating. Do you think we'll have people living on the moon in 20 years? Yes. Define living, right? Long stays, yes, for sure. Yeah, I'd say six-month rotations at least. Wow. Okay, last question for our little lightning round that wasn't a lightning round. What is the most exciting place in the solar system right now to you? Oh, boy. I mean, I'm a sucker for Europa, right? Again, this moon of Jupiter that has so much liquid water protected by an ice shell. Europa has all the ingredients that we know are required for life. Plus, it has energy and it's been stable over billions of years, right?
47:32If you want to look for life somewhere, you can look in the oceans of Europa. Plus, if you're standing on the surface, your view is Jupiter filling like 80 % of your sky. Like, what a spectacular place to be. It is truly just an astonishing place. It's full of radiation, though. Nasty place. And you've got to get through, like, a three-mile ice sheet, which is why it's difficult. Nature does not spill, give up her secrets easily. Yeah, ain't that the truth. And a question that just popped into my head right now out of curiosity, what's your favorite space movie?
48:09It's like, which one of my children do I love the most? I mean, I think honestly, it is 2001 A Space Odyssey because it captures this particular era of the mid 20th century, this idea that space was more than just a place to go and extract money or resources or business. By going into space, we would ourselves become something different and better. It would facilitate our evolution into this kind of transcendent level of existence. I mean, literally, spoiler alert, it's about like we become angels, right, by going into space. And I love the idea of like this kind of the encounter with the divine isn't kind of a religious or aspect.
48:50It's a encountering in infinite, the infinite, the infinity of the world around us. And through that process, becoming and gaining a new appreciation, understanding and perspective on ourselves. So I love that movie for those reasons. Because you're kind of like, you're like our generation's Carl Sagan. I don't know. Has anyone ever told you that? The nicest thing, and that is so far from... Though he did found the Planetary Society, so I suppose... Oh, I do. Okay. Well, there you go. I was going to, on the movie question, for me, it's got, I mean, 2001's a classic. For me, it's Interstellar. Interstellar, we re-watched recently, and I loved it when it came out, but there's something about watching that movie once you have a kid once you become a parent that just makes it so much more profound um really sure one of my and it has a great i mean just a great representation of the black hole um yeah kip thorns and caltech uh physicist and who helped to present that uh no it's also that i'd say that's definitely up there in my in my top five i know where do i put the star trek movie you know like you know yeah sure those are up there too right does star wars count i don't know yeah that's It's more fantasy, I would say.
50:02But, I mean, it's got to be in the discussion. I mean, the other thing, too, is a lot of movies, space movies, tend to be monster movies, which I don't care for. Sure. And that always kind of turns, because, again, it's such a lovely place, you know, kind of a nice place to begin with. I'd say Project Hail Mary, frankly, is really high up there. I just watched that. That was quite good, I have to say. Andrew R. is very good at what he does. Yeah. Yeah. Casey Dreyer from the Planetary Society, not the Planetary Institute, my mistake there. Casey, tell everybody where they can find your work, and we will link to this in the description, of course.
50:37Well, I have a monthly newsletter, The Space Advocate. That's free to sign up for at planetary.org. I also have a monthly podcast if you like hearing what I have to say, but I can go on and on about it. Planetary Radio Space Policy Edition on all the main podcast aggregator and feeds out there. two great ways to find me. Oh, and then I should say, I'd be remiss. Or you can join the Planetary Society and find me on our online member community, planetary.org slash join. That keeps our lights on, keeps my salary going so I can keep talking about this stuff and doing the policy advocacy work that obviously we think are so important.
51:12And I think a lot of people agree, really exciting stuff we could be doing. A hundred percent. And it is important work. We'll link to all of these things. Please do consider giving if this is something that you're interested in, or even if you're not giving, writing a letter to your representative, this is, you know, NASA, it's, as Casey said at the top, this is a drop in the bucket in terms of what we in this country spend and waste money on. And it's, this is just, to me, it is just not a priority in terms of things that we should be cutting, as the Artemis II mission just showed us. Casey Dreyer from the Planetary Society.
51:46Casey, thank you so much, man, for taking the time. That was a delight. Thanks for having me.
From the publisher
NASA is reaching new heights with the Artemis program, but historic budget cuts could threaten some of the agency's most important science missions.
Carlo Versano speaks with Casey Dreier of The Planetary Society about the proposed cuts to NASA's budget, the future of the Artemis program, the growing influence of commercial space companies, and whether America is truly in a new space race with China. Plus, a look at what comes next for the moon, Mars, and the future of space exploration.
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