Space Policy Edition: The space policies of a Harris Administration

Casey Dreier: Hello and welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, the monthly show where we explore the politics and processes behind space exploration. I'm Casey Dreier, the Chief of Space Policy here at The Planetary Society. This month, we're going to look at the other presidential candidate and their potential space policy, Kamala Harris. Our guest to explore this topic is Lori Garver, who is the Deputy Administrator of NASA under the Obama administration and served on the Democratic transition teams for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. During her tenure at NASA, Lori Garver was a strong proponent of things like commercial space partnerships to lower the cost to orbit and fiercely defended the commercial crew and cargo initiatives. She's also the author of the book, which I recommend, Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age. Before she joins us though, I want to briefly mention that The Planetary Society, which produces the show, is an independent, member-supported organization. This show and all of the other work that we do happens because of those of you who become members and donate to our efforts. If you're not a member, please consider joining us at planetary.org/join. Memberships start at just $4 a month and you get all sorts of great things by being a member. If you're already a member, thank you. Really appreciate that. And consider increasing your member level to support us even more. That's all available at planetary.org/join. Now, again, as we look at the presidential administrations that lay possibly before us, either for Trump or for Harris, we don't have a lot of explicit policies laid out. Harris in particular, which began her campaign not very long ago because of Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the race, has not released formal space policy positions, though Harris herself has given us some ideas of her interest, just like the Trump administration by the fact that he was president previously. Harris is the chair of the National Space Council as the vice president. She has led a number of meetings and released fact sheets and demonstrated interest in a variety of areas, which we will use to help inform some of the speculation about the space policy issues and activities that may drive a potential Harris administration. Lori Garver, though not part of the campaign, brings an amazing wealth of information and expertise and experience from her roles in transition teams, working at NASA, and working in party politics for space issues over the years. Lori Garver, welcome to the show.

Lori Garver: Thank you. It is great to be with you, Casey.

Casey Dreier: Always happy to have you. It's been too long, but what a great topic for us to talk about. You have a long time of experience working in Democratic administrations, working in transition teams for NASA, working in the space industry, working as a consultant, working for nonprofit organizations that promote space. You have lots of insight to offer for us as we approach this upcoming election, and I'm eager to hear your thoughts and analysis and explore what a potential Harris administration could look like in terms of their space policy. Harris has been serving. Like Trump, we have some history even though they don't have an explicit space policy section of their websites. But Harris has been serving as the head of the National Space Council. How do you characterize from what you have seen of her activities and interests so far what her interest and approach might be to a space policy should she become president?

Lori Garver: Sure. Well, again, it's great to be with you. And I do speak from experience, although I want to be clear, I don't speak from current immediate information. I'm not speaking on behalf of a candidate or campaign, not with direct knowledge, but I'm not really sure many people do. In answer to your question, yes, we are all observers of the last four years almost with the vice president as chair of the Space Council. I know that on the other side, in your previous guest speaking about what space would look like under a Trump administration, has been, I think, really doing a disservice to the space community actually by mischaracterizing her as absent. I just, in fact, preparing for this, went through and looked. She's visited three or four of the NASA Center. She went to the Artemis I launch. It didn't launch then, but she went, traveled to Florida. She's been holding Space Council meetings. She has a user advisory council. There have been policies released. But I think most importantly, the space community has gotten what they all have said they wanted, which was continuity. They didn't get a big canceled program as they did when I was leading the transition team and President Obama came in. They got Artemis reinforced fairly early. They got the Space Council reinforced. They got the Space Force reinforced. So criticism's now tendering a little bit hollow, I think, because lots of folks, including myself, maybe would've advised they take a deeper look at some of these things to see how they were going because I was concerned at the end of the past administration that we'd really set ourselves up for failure. We were saying things about landing on the moon in 2024 and spending money, but there wasn't a lot of reality to that plan. And here we are. We've seen that as not true, and who's getting blamed? The Biden-Harris administration. So what we have to realize about space policies are, A, they really are a lot about personnel and sometimes about even personalities. And so coming in as I did a few times, been at NASA over 10 years on the ninth floor, I think who you appoint as NASA administrator is really critical. We'll talk about the Space Council, I'm sure, presuming that continued. Who you have lead that makes a big difference as well. Some other appointments around transportation, commerce, OSTP, potentially certainly National Security Space has a number of issues and personnel to be appointed and involved in those. I think those are really the important things, and what we saw with the Harris, well, Space Council, Biden administration with the appointment of Senator Nelson as head of NASA, Chirag Parikh as head of the Space Council, you got a lot of history of doing the things that were already in place, and that momentum continued for better or worse.

Casey Dreier: Do you see any significant changes likely? So I was going through, again, Harris's actions as VP as the head of the Space Council, and there's two big ones maybe that we should just mention here and then we can set up for the first part of my question. One is the establishing a framework for oversight and regulation of new commercial novel space launches. And the other one I thought was really interesting and interesting test of theory of US moratorium on destructive anti-satellite tests, which actually led to a number of other nations declaring that they would stop that too. And both of those were very, in a sense, practical, not that they're unimportant. Practical stuff is actually probably the most important stuff in some of these space stuff.

Lori Garver: Right, right, I agree.

Casey Dreier: And maybe that's where some of this public critique is coming from because Mike Pence, when he was head of the National Space Council, was very focused on the soaring human spaceflight part of NASA. And even though they did lots of practical space policy directives, the focus maybe was just more symbolic. Do you see that as maybe a defining aspect of a potential Harris approach of this practical, sustainable, and establishing in a sense norms of types of behavior for space rather than expanding human presence across the Solar System type of rhetoric? Do you see that as a defining aspect here?

Lori Garver: I think that is only significant in that it's related to who she picked and if she would pick similar, if not the same, people. I've met a lot of presidents from both parties, and presidents all love the space program, certainly the NASA part where I've had my professional focus. And you've had the vice president calling the Space Station on a number of occasions talking with Victor Glover, talking with astronauts because of the Brooke Owens and Pettigrew-Smith fellowships have had a number of occasions to go to the White House. She's giving medals to Bob and Doug from the first commercial crew launch. These same things happened that happened with Pence. I think she hasn't had a group of, frankly, sycophants out there running around screaming, "We've done all these things. My goodness, isn't she pro-space?" She's pro space. She is a bit of a space nerd. You have seen it in a number of occasions, but do we put that much meaning into it? Not really, because ultimately presidents love the space program and NASA, and they are going to, I think as we look at whether this is a human spaceflight versus robotic, within robotic Earth versus other planets, those aren't things the president's going to get all that super involved in. We had a unique situation with President Trump with Artemis. We should probably talk about how positive that was. We shall see setting up. Rhetorically, we're in a race to the moon with China. And literally I think Greg Autry said on your program, "If we have to settle for the silver medal..." The silver medal? We are six-time gold medal winners. This is a race for the 13th person, probably shouldn't be characterized as a race. I haven't seen Vice President Harris doing that as much as leadership. And yes, she characterized it as leadership, I think at the convention and in the platform, that these global technological economic advancements issues. Her specific focus on climate change and how we can utilize it toward equity is, I think, what stands out of her policies. And that's very clearly what she personally cares about and I would expect to see more of that.

Casey Dreier: A number of threads I want to follow here, but one in particular which is how presidents engage with NASA. And we're going to, just to be clear, focus on the civil space side of things really, because neither of us are national security experts. You pointed out, I think, an important aspect, which is I think presidents like NASA generally. How do you dislike it? It's hard to dislike it. But unless something really goes wrong, it's never going to really occupy a ton of their time given the range of things presidents have to think about. How does NASA then fit into their pre-existing worldview and issue space more than the other way around about what policies they'll bring to NASA? Is that a reasonable way to think about how presidents view the space program?

Lori Garver: Sure. And in fact, how all of us do or should in the sense that it's not a thing. I've heard you talk about this and it's in my book, I see space as a domain. It's just another place where we now have the ability to transport people and things into it and use that vantage to study things, et etcetera. So I don't think it requires a lot of thought, like we don't have, "Oh, how are we going to use the seas in my administration?" So the question is what do you want to do with your presidency? You want to have the United States lead the world economically. This is how when I came in on transition team, I saw the entrance of NASA. You look at the time that you are serving, so you can't really set that. "Here we are. We've got this number of programs. We've got a new Augustine report that says once again, we have 10 pounds of programs in a five pound bag. Do you want to just ignore that and kick the can like most presidents do, or do you want to expend some political capital and address that?" I have no idea what she will choose. Part of that will, I think, be signaled by who she selects as her leadership team. So if you, say, when I came in, the shuttle was ending. We had to list the priorities within on transition team your agency that needed to be addressed day 1, if any, first year, first term. And my day one issue really was the space shuttle transition. It was ending. We had no way to get astronauts to and from space in the United States for at least five years. And so today, what are those issues? I'm not sure we have any, day 1, but we have a number of year 1 issues, and space transportation is still one of them. We happen to be at a moment where we don't have, again a US... We've got Falcon 9 shut down, so we're looking at how to transfer astronauts now. We have a pretty robust system. That will probably be fine, so it's not day 1. But what if we can't get Starliner back up? And by the way, Space Station and its potential demise here by us or something premature is something that a transition team needs to tee up. Decisions could be made to accelerate commercial space stations and fund those, or then you've got exploration. Are we going to acknowledge that we don't have the money to land on the moon and what we're now saying? I don't even know because obviously it's well beyond even '25 where I think Bill Nelson said it would be when he came in. Gateway, all kinds of people saying we can't do that. I don't even know if we can fly Artemis II with the heat shield without another test to put people on that. So these are year 1 questions. And I can see the range of answers, but somebody needs to get in and find out what's actually going on and then start making decisions. We have big planetary science decisions, the Mars sample return being canceled or postponed until we can do it for a lower amount of money. That's a decision for an ex-president. Again, they won't spend time on it much themselves, but they're people that they appoint will have everything to do with the outcome.

Casey Dreier: Do you see continuity in personnel being likely? Again, we're just just speculating here, but Nelson is, he's older. He probably wouldn't stick around, but he could if it's the same party. Pam Melroy is there as deputy who could easily step in. Do you see advantage of... Or again we can just draw from your experience. When a president is choosing leadership, do they prioritize continuity in that sense if it's the same party, or do they look for someone? What decision process maybe do you think is at play here?

Lori Garver: Yeah, the two times I came in, two different administrations, Clinton and Obama, they were so different of how it was handled. And looking back at each new president and when their NASA administrator came is really interesting, but I'm not sure how much we can take from it. In this case, you could maybe say, okay, Reagan to Bush. If Harris wins, that's a vice president taking over. But that was them taking over from an eight-year president. So they did select a new administrator, Dick Truly. Bush did. And I've heard Harris wants a new team. Bill Nelson seems likely to maybe leave with President Biden, but I could see him not being asked to leave. Well, you don't have to be asked to leave. Everyone has to leave at noon on January 20th. Let's be clear. They are resigned then. It is a question of whether or not you are asked to stay beyond, and I could see both the administrator and deputy administrator being asked to stay because you wouldn't have someone most likely confirmed. This is also a unique transition. It hasn't started yet. When I was doing transition, I was already assigned and had my team in July and had already frankly written a lot of the policy by this time in the campaign. That is not yet happening that any of us can surmise, and there was just such a truncated period. Another question will be do you have Senate control? If you don't have Senate control, do you really want to put out there some new people when you've already got some folks who could remain who are confirmed. Now, that's for the confirmed positions. It gets really interesting when you think about the National Space Council staff because if the vice president then becomes president and the vice president, Walz in this case, would be chair of the Space Council, would they want a new team or would they say, "Wow, I really don't know this issue. I'll keep this team"? I think all options are open, but unlike with a transition between highly contested parties where there's an incumbent who's also running like last time, you are very likely, I think, to see the current team stay at least a few months until someone new's appointed. And then if you're like Dan Goldin, even he stayed and they didn't appoint one and he ended up staying after eight years. So all things are possible.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, that's an interesting point about Senate control and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. Apparently, everything else in national politics, it's a razor. It's a coin flip who will control the Senate, and likely it'll be very closely divided. I just want to mention two things. You alluded to this, the Democratic Party platform and the mention of space in Harris's acceptance speech. I'll just quote from the Democratic platform, says, "We'll continue supporting NASA and America's presence in the International Space Station and working to send Americans back to the moon and to Mars and keep America at the forefront of scientific discovery and innovation." And they mention AI, biotech, quantum computing. Space is implied maybe in the rest of that list. And we can say that was written for Biden. That was written before he decided not to run.

Lori Garver: But there's another mention in the climate portion as well. It says, "And we will continue to invest in climate research across NASA, NOAA, the National Science Foundation, other agencies to make sure that America leads the world in clean energy innovation." It's interesting to me where each of the NASA mentions are even within the document and even in the Republican one as well. We tend to be these days more on growing our economy and innovation and technology. On the Dems, we're also in climate.

Casey Dreier: Yep. And I think that's one of the core. That's why I was thinking earlier in terms of what can the space program do for the established priorities, top tier priorities of a presidential administration tends to be, I think, how you see it as a tool, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

Lori Garver: I do. I always have viewed it that way, and that was how I managed to get, I think, the agenda, that NASA was even in the agenda from the beginning.

Casey Dreier: Really, I think what I'm keying down into here is a lot of people want... We're space fans and talking to space fans.

Lori Garver: Right, right.

Casey Dreier: I want the president to love space and to be as into it as I am. And part of becoming a mature space advocate is understanding that people just will not have that and somehow, some way in their lives just don't think about space every day. But when they do, they want it to be it fills into something that they're trying to do. It serves some kind of utility. And so I had a question here which was how important is it that the president themselves love space in this? And it's like, have we even, even ever had a president who really loves space? Because sometimes people were excited with Biden that he put a moon rock in the office and it was talking a lot about space at the beginning and then just stopped. And there's a variety of major world crises that happen and so forth, but in terms of policy, it sounds like what you're characterizing is even if they like space, they're going to be thinking about other things. So it's really up to the people that they're putting into the positions of direct management over the space program. For the most part, the president's not going to come and say, "I don't like these Mars sample return budget numbers. I think these need to be higher." That just generally does not happen, right?

Lori Garver: Yeah. I think it's more than liking space because, again, people do generally. President Clinton, actually just whenever he was around us being at NASA, he loved space, and NASA budgets were cut under his leadership. Part of that was the NASA administrator was bound and determined to get a more efficient space program, and OMB and the time we were in economically, we were looking at balancing the deficit. You can't, as I said, plan your time and these overarching national policies, national crises play in. In the beginning of our term in Obama, we had a real economic crisis, but we were able to use that to our advantage because of the Stimulus Bill. That's where I got in some of the early hooks to be able to do commercial crew. It's how we got it done because Congress was dealing with a lot of things. And although Shelby wanted to exit, he didn't quite exit. He just got it down to around 50 million. I'd ask for 300 million, et cetera. I don't think it matters that much. They like it as they select someone who they trust, and that person is willing to do what you just said, really tie in and show how we can utilize space to benefit society, the nation, humanity. Those are the things that matter to presidents. Most people get to be president have pretty big picture thinkers, and space is truly connecting on so many levels. But if you don't make that connection, it's sort of you're not missed by your absence. I was a volunteer as I have been on Democratic policy candidates for, gosh, I think since Dukakis and for Biden. And on Biden's climate policy, the initial draft listed the agencies to be working on the climate council. NASA wasn't in it on this telecon with at least 50 people, "Hey, we ought to have NASA, everyone." "Oh yeah, good point." If you are not missed by your absence. And so making sure there are people, and this is what I've done as a volunteer for years, just doing it because I think NASA does connect in ways that the space community doesn't talk about enough. The space community loves the flags and footsteps stuff. And presidents like that too, but if it's not realistic, I worry it could really do harm to NASA's brand, which is a incredible brand. We just keep saying we're doing things and can't do them. That's way, way worse than setting objectives and connecting in real ways to things that the space program can do that advance our nation.

Casey Dreier: I'm going to ask you about state capacity here in a minute, but I still, let's finish off this kind of discussion about this relevance of NASA to presidential issues. There's an insightful statement from the vice president's office from earlier this year before she was running for president, which outlined some of the three main areas of policy interests basically for the United States, and I think this ties into what you're saying. One of them is climate, obviously, that we've touched on. The other two I just want to mention here because I think this maybe provides some insight into a potential Harris administration here, which is in terms of preserving space and US leadership and space enterprise, she lists three items, climate change, space STEM education and workforce development, and then expanding economic opportunity through small business. Now, that item in particular is exactly what I mean in terms of what can space do to address their pre-existing issue set. It seems to me, it's like how can NASA or whatever you invest in space improve small business access, and they specifically call out underrepresented-

Lori Garver: Women and minority owned businesses, yeah.

Casey Dreier: ... women. And it's hitting all these major issues of the campaign. And I think that for people who are curious about what a Harris administration space policy could look like, I would pretty much point them to this fact sheet and say that probably gives you a guide for what to expect, at least in a nuts and bolts practical level because, and this is my opinion here and you could agree or disagree, but I don't see any major civil space changes. I don't think they would just go and cancel Artemis. They might have to take as you point out a hard look at the architecture and the funding and whether they can do that in some kind of timeline, but I don't see them walking away from that necessarily. But I do see the focus maybe shifting to climate, STEM, workforce, small business because of the larger issue set of the interest of the Harris administration. Does that track with you or do you disagree?

Lori Garver: I think there are parts of it that track with me and a little bit that I disagree. The part that tracks is that would be a continuity with this administration. As you said, she's already said these things at the very beginning of the Biden administration and even prior during the campaign. The things that we were asked to do or get our whatever area we were in, mine being space, how it would impact these areas they care about, just like I had done with Obama. And these were the three you've outlined. That isn't going to change. That didn't mean they didn't do Artemis. That meant maybe instead of just saying it was the first woman, it was also going to be a woman and a person of color. It looked at are there tools we have from space that can help address equity, equality? How can we highlight STEM in disadvantaged areas? Those aren't going to be new. The administration over the last four years nearly has been more focus on that than you certainly you would see in a Trump administration. But overall, NASA has Bill Nelson running it and the policies and programs are nearly identical to those that were before. And most of those were very, very similar to the Obama administrations. And in fact, I would argue most of Obama's ultimately were very, very similar to the Bush prior. So we spend a lot of time worrying about these transition teams and presidential transitions, and I'm going to say 90% of the programs have continuity, very small adjustments. The big adjustments you see at NASA are geopolitical things like obviously Apollo being the biggest one if we look at your charts. But a shuttle being replaced, that was at other peak. These programs are quite stable, and that can be seen as positive because, yes, some of it is just the jobs in certain districts and those people continue those programs, but I think there's also a fundamental balance we have achieved where the public feels NASA is doing worthwhile things. Now, I will point to the especially active few public priorities for NASA studies that are done, and those public surveys continue to have the priorities almost precisely flipped from the NASA budget. And no one in the space community really likes to talk about because how much money we're spending to put people on the moon and Mars is the very lowest priority for the public and the very highest in what we are spending. Those things to redirect asteroids or climate or address climate issues that are public priorities, we spend significantly less money on. If you're going to get a president who's going to try and marry those, you're going to see some change. Do I get a sense that a Harris-Walz ticket is trying to do that? I do not. Most presidents haven't. In the future, I am probably the individual who came in most open to change because I happen to inherit the program at a time we were heading off a cliff. Are we headed off a cliff? A lot of people within the community say we are. I don't think publicly that is the sense of things. We might see it as a crisis that Space Station will retire or have a problem. We might see it as a crisis that we keep spending, I don't know, 8, $9 billion to get somebody back to the moon and aren't really any closer than when we announced the program. But I don't think the public has that perception and I don't think that... I think actually in many ways, Trump is much more likely to call out NASA on that than Harris.

Casey Dreier: I always thought it was interesting when Trump speaks or spoke extemporaneously about NASA, he would always talk about humans to Mars during his-

Lori Garver: Yeah, he clearly did not care about the moon, and there's just so much rich data there. But I hate to do what, again, I find just a negative thing. He didn't do it so much on your program, but in his writings talking about just how scary it would be to have a Harris-Walz administration as our head of the Space Council. Nothing scary about it. These are smart people who care about the country, and we would get President Trump live in the Oval talking about, "Shouldn't we just go to Mars and not the moon?" And luckily we had Jim Bridenstine who is level-headed and Mike Pence who could stand there and say, "Well, we've got this. We think we've got a plan we can produce." But there's no way you wouldn't expect Trump to come in and say, "Why are we doing this?" He and Elon have the Mars focus. Is Elon going to say, "No, let's go to the moon first"? I doubt it. We've got a lot more questions on that side if you ask me, but I'm not here to say there's going to be huge swings either way. That is not typical and probably not that likely this time.

Casey Dreier: Any administration changes have to be ultimately approved by Congress, and that's always been the sticking point for change, as you know better probably than most in that situation. How do you see space playing into the concept of global competition and China? Obviously on the Trump side or the Greg Autry side, people talk about this. It's framed almost exclusively as that. But Harris herself and Bill Nelson talk about this frequently as well. In her acceptance speech, her mention of space was that, "I'll make sure that we lead the world into the future in space and AI, that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century." So I see that playing into that. So how is this feeding into it and where do you see this as in terms of a policy priority potentially to leverage that? And I'll just, one more thing. I feel like it's also exclusively talking about Artemis when they pitch it as Chinese competition as we've already been seeing.

Lori Garver: But she didn't.

Casey Dreier: She didn't. No, you're right. That wasn't specific in them.

Lori Garver: She didn't use the words. And I don't know how much to read into that either other than as someone who has written words like that. Listen carefully, words matter. You didn't see Constellation in any Obama speeches once I was his advisor. It just did not occur. Not an accident. He had talked about it before then. She has talked about Artemis. I think she is probably very much committed to Artemis, to landing the first woman and person of color on the moon. I think that is important to her, but she was given it as a fait accompli. "We're doing this?" "What, you're going to rip the rug out from under those people?" Never. It's a different thing if that's not really happening anytime soon now. Good for her. She could be a president for eight years. We can undoubtedly do it by then. I would see her continuing to want to do that. As for the juxtaposition against China, as I said, I shudder when I hear us talk about being second to the moon from China. We have won. Everyone needs to stop with that. They have lost. I've said that in Beijing before. How do you win? How do you win the 21st century in space? You go in ways that are sustainable. You go in ways that are different than 50 years ago. You go in ways that enhance society and our global position. You don't do it in a race with China. And I differ with Bill Nelson on this. That has been his go-to now on Artemis, I think even more so than it was Trump's. It is Greg Autry's as well. That is a false goal, I think. And you had Ryan Peyton and he talked about this as "not going far enough upstream in the reasoning process with our goals". I just loved his phraseology on that, and I think landing on the moon next is one of those things that we haven't gone far enough. Where we really want to be are leaders in space and exploration. And I can see us being all that, but just landing on the moon next doesn't get you that, and maybe not doing it doesn't mean you don't have it, except that we've created this false fight. We do want to beat China. I think a President Harris, a President Trump, lots of us have this aligned goal. And just because we did it in the '60s with Kennedy makes it even more odd now to say. What the president asked back in the '60s was, "Give me a goal, a meaningful goal that we can win." And for us, there's a lot of things in the space realm to do that we are winning. The US is a global leader in space, make no mistake, and keeping that leadership is about much more than just the next moon landing, in my view.

Casey Dreier: We'll be right back with the rest of our space policy edition of Planetary Radio after this short break.

Bill Nye: Greetings. Bill Nye here. NASA's budget just had the largest downturn in 15 years, which means we need your help. The US Congress approves NASA's annual budget, and with your support, we promote missions to space by keeping every member of Congress and their staff informed about the benefits of a robust space program. We want Congress to know that space exploration ensures our nation's goals in workforce technology, international relations, and space science. Unfortunately, because of decreases in the NASA budget, layoffs have begun important. Important missions are being delayed, some indefinitely. That's where you come in. Join our mission as a space advocate by making a gift today. Right now when you donate, your gift will be matched up to $75,000, thanks to a generous Planetary Society member. With your support, we can make sure every representative and senator in DC understands why NASA is a critical part of US national policy. With the challenges NASA is facing, we need to make this investment today. So make your gift at planetary.org/ take action. Thank you.

Casey Dreier: I want to shift from analysis of the Harris thing because I have you here, because there's so much I'd love to just hear your opinions and thoughts on. Part of it is this. The way that I find it refreshing when you talk about this in terms of the competition with China, and for me personally, I find that I don't think China cares if it's racing with the US. They have a plan that they're executing, and to me it seems irrelevant whether what the US and their plans are doing or not. And I always prefer our space program not to be reactive in a sense, but to share what you were saying of just we have our own goals that we're trying to do it. And that doesn't mean we don't go back to the moon. It's just that as we go to the moon for either we're building alliances, for I think obviously the scientific value, getting better at just putting humans further out into space. The aspect of doing it is great as you know for all these practical reasons. And I worry sometimes about defining ourselves too much as against competition and that there's a seductive quality to it. And I've almost, I feel like it is working though in what we have seen, particularly through Congress, what they've decided to prioritize with Artemis versus not in science. Even though a NASA budget shrinks, Artemis is growing in order because that's the national security thing. And so it's tempting, I guess, to frame it that way because it's an easy way to latch NASA into a pre-existing ideological set and establish its importance. And so seeing how it moves forward then, now we're committed we better do it to what we say or else now we've set up our own opportunity to fail when it didn't seem necessary.

Lori Garver: Yes, I agree with that. And of course it has worked to the extent you say, which I know you have before even though it gives you discomfort, that if you're measuring success by dollars going into a program, which I just refuse to do. I just not want somebody who can do that. It's about what you're achieving. And we aren't achieving it. I think everybody acknowledges now, unless you're personally bought in and currently at NASA or these companies, that we're not going to achieve this anywhere near the timeframe that was stated. We actually did achieve it in the '60s, so this could look like failing. But since we've achieved it more than the last couple of presidents who've set a destination and deadline, meaning the money flowed for longer, we're getting there. So no, it gives me great discomfort to feel that Congress only is giving NASA these larger and larger budgets because they think we're going to beat China with it. We should be competing on more than just one thing like that. For one, we already have the experience of Apollo and we know that when that's your reason, it's very hollow at the end. And budgets started coming down for NASA a couple of years before the first moon landing once it was clear we were going to achieve that. And as you said, China's on their own path. We should be on our own path. The goals, I think, of incoming teams need to be to see, and I really don't know so I can't do it for today. But when on transition in '08, '09 timeframe, space transportation, lowering the cost of getting to and from orbit, and winning back some of that economic benefit that the French, Chinese, and Russia were all getting from launch was our core. I would love to see the next transition team have a core of what it is that we can achieve that will, and that was a bend your pick kind of thing, very leveraged. If you look at the launch rate today, I just take a lot of pride in what we did, and not just human spaceflight. COTS was before Obama. We were really just enforcing COTS D. I would argue all to access predated COTS, and that was the administration before. Again, very consistent, not partisan, but we do, I think, now have a little bit of a hollowness about our program. We've got Artemis where no one who is really educated about it and better educated than I am seems to think we have the money for Gateway as well as landing. Again, we've got some technical issues with Orion. We care a lot about the pomp and circumstance. We're announcing astronaut crews years before they fly. They're doing national, international tours instead of the work of the program. It wasn't easy, fun. I'm sure it didn't look that fun when I did it to be really digging into core issues. But look at the results. There are probably some key issues to dig into now where the results will come, and those results will come only if you are looking at a goal that is meaningful. Lowering the cost of space transportation was our meaningful goal since the moon landing. Nixon said it. The shuttle was supposed to do it and failed. But now that we've done it, look at all, not just commerce, but the science missions that can go. I argued to have Europa not be tied to an SLS when I was there, and ultimately Falcon Heavy allowed that to happen and that's why it's going to even be able to launch. So it's not the fun stuff. It's not the speech making stuff I say in my book that we wanted to make, and I was thrilled to work for a president who wanted to make progress instead of proclamations. That's where the personnel matters. I think Bill Nelson has liked his proclamations. He's stuck with him. He's gotten high marks. Bridenstine did the same. But whoever's in there next time's going to have to really see where the rubber meets the road and are we going to live up to those many, many proclamations.

Casey Dreier: Do you think there's a crisis in state capacity at NASA right now considering the Augustine report that just came out? We see this a slow motion crisis developing with all the Artemis elements, but also things like MSR, some with Psyche, other missions throughout NASA.

Lori Garver: I think we could be in a crisis in five years, but we also just might be at a fabulous spot. And it's really an odd place to be because the difference is probably SpaceX. If Starship is operational in five years to the extent that it is planned, you got no problems.

Casey Dreier: Politically speaking though, has that been an interesting story for you to watch in the last few years? You look at Elon Musk and ever wonder, have I created a monster? What have I done in terms of your-

Lori Garver: Oh, well...

Casey Dreier: ... your political viewpoints and how they've differed over the last few years? Because that seems to be like NASA's policy was to create basically its own competition. And now, and I wonder, and this is alluded to in the Augustine crisis, that NASA is losing or maybe having a workforce crisis because people are leaving to work for the industry policy helped create, but also creating incredibly powerful individuals who are wielding power that used to be the sole domain of a state. And so I mean that tongue in cheek, but also there's these interesting consequences that we're seeing now and Elon Musk who owns his entire space existence of SpaceX arguably to the Democratic Party functionally declaring them as his political enemy and working to undermine their power in politics.

Lori Garver: Yeah, there's so much in that discussion, I could spend another hour. And I just got interviewed for three and a half hours by HBO who's doing a documentary on Elon about this precise topic. And they even got me to cry, which you will not get me to cry because I'm not feeling that sad about it today. But yes, sometimes I do feel, okay, roll the tapes. We were not trying to just help one company. We were not specifically trying out be Elon, all those caveats that you know, driving down the cost of space transportation, getting us to not have to rely on the Russians. There's just so many ironies. And in doing so, I know because I'm the one who drew mine of this train and have the scars to prove it, the people didn't got on board right away. We wouldn't have had the program. And that program did help SpaceX and Elon in many ways. We had a symbiotic relationship. I think I know it was Rolling Stone or somebody had an article like that saying Elon and I did, we each needed each other to succeed. And ultimately I needed him more than I thought. I presume there'd be more than one, but now here we are so far, just the one. And to have watched over the last two years maybe, his turn, obviously Elon's more of a libertarian. I never really saw him being a card-carrying Democrat. I think I'm the person who structured the visit, the SpaceX facility, April 15th, 2010. Everyone else wanted them to see the shuttle facility, Charlie, but I pushed for, "No, this is about the future." So he met Elon there. They had positive relationship. I think early on in the Trump administration, Elon broke with Trump a little bit, and now he's back with a vengeance. I do get concerned that there could be a backlash or maybe at least a disconnect between a Harris-Walz administration and SpaceX because their leader has been so vocal and just saying horrible things about them and what will happen to the nation and the world they're elected. That's hard to ignore. I'm the person who has said, "Boy, in my times at NASA over 10 years on the ninth floor, never did I see a president come in and say, 'You're not doing this with this person or company because of their politics.'" Never. Did not enter it. I know a lot of people think the FAA is playing that. I don't. I think there are more just bureaucratic hurdles and so forth. I don't believe anyone's played politics in that sense, but this is really ramping it up. But the other piece that you mentioned that is in some ways more important is have we commercialized too much? And I think the Augustine report references were of interest to me as well. Coming in as we did and seeing the market for space transportation is very different than what has happened since with commercial lunar landers. And I said, and again in my book, the lunar landers would never have been a fixed cost type of contract if you didn't have Musk and Bezos putting in their own money. Companies, those aren't naturals for either proven technologies or a market beyond NASA. So we've used these tools that we learned, worked for a commercial cargo and crew for things that they really are not a cookie cutter for. And you would not find me doing probably as much now, which would make my followers very unhappy, but I'm not here to make people happy. I'm here to have a better space program. And in my view, we have hollowed out some of this. If you recall with our proposal, and this is why our compromise, the brand compromise didn't make sense to me. Our proposal wasn't just commercial proof. It was commercial proof and these technology programs and enhanced earth sciences, extending station, et cetera. We ended up giving SLS and Orion if they gave us commercial crew. And what did that do? That hollowed out the technology programs, any investment in that seed corn that Augustine is talking about. And he's so smart, he uses different language. But the Augustine report we were responding to, flexible path that get those technologies invest in things. NASA should be doing those cutting edge things. Freeing up the infrastructure for transportation was not hollowing out. I do fear we are doing that now.

Casey Dreier: Do you think that may be one of the big issues for whoever the next administration is, is I'd say shoring up, to me, NASA state capacity at some level? Because at the end of the day, I see also there's the seductive quality of it, which is what we've seen now with these wild experiments that we've seen with commercialization of space suits, lunar suits, commercial lunar payload, human learning payload, parts of Gateway that we're assuming those companies will stay in business to provide that extra funding. And there's only a handful of companies out there that have the financial resources to endure. Boeing, just to pick an example, not many companies can eat 1.6 billion of overrun.

Lori Garver: Yeah. And they may not want to eat anymore. And what's that going to do? Right.

Casey Dreier: Right. And so at the end of the day, you've traded that cost risk for program risk because these companies may just wink out of business. We're seeing that as we talk now with Axiom being under financial duress with commercial space stations and space suits. And before that, I suppose-

Lori Garver: You and I may find that seductive, but I don't think we have many examples of politicians finding that seductive missions are seductive. I don't think the next administrator is very likely to want to tackle that. You didn't see a lot of people running with this Augustine report. It was to Congress. If you are a responsible member of Congress leading one of these committees right now, it seems like you ought to be doing that. But as you said, they're doubling down on the existing program budgets, and that's what the Academy report was arguing against. So I think presidents and congresses are more likely to keep the status quo and keep trying to fit more things in the bag because it's really politically difficult to fix that.

Casey Dreier: Well, and the alternative of the cost plus models aren't exactly inspiring right now either, right? You look at the cost of mobile launcher too, that's building a tower will take longer than the entire Apollo program and cost the equivalent of a mission to Jupiter. So there just doesn't, to me, seem to be an easy path forward without some kind of internal Dan Goldin-like reformation or attitude at NASA. And I'm maybe getting a bit ahead of myself, but you just see that there's seems to be, to me, some very ominous warning signs that, and it's not really in a sense to blame commercialization because I think the experiment is worthwhile, but you have to have a good alternative too. You have to maintain your capacity internally, and that's what I worry about in the long run. So I'll put that pitch out for whoever the next administration.

Lori Garver: Yeah. And there's probably a reason we haven't had another Dan Goldin the last 25 years. He did it, and I think he himself, he's getting some credit now for things. And I give him a lot of credit in my book, but very unpopular. You didn't see him joining boards of big aerospace companies after just like me. People didn't like it. Okay, got it. But you know what, it helped over the long term. And I always feel looking and people ask me who I think the best NASA administrator was. I'll tell you, Dan Goldin. More people will today I would say than would've said that at the time. Maybe it's something to do with all those that have come since, but I think it's more he weathered well, and most of us who set policies at something like the space program have to recognize the real payoff maybe the long will certainly be long after you're gone. So that's the qualities you might look for an administrator. But the truth is people like to do the shiny announcements and not that many people have really railed against the fact that, yeah, the cost plus contracts are so much larger. I do find myself defending commercial space most often, and so I have to compare it to, sure, they took longer, little more money, but not compared to the cost plus programs. It's really about what are you doing and is it worthwhile? Look at Webb. I was at NASA during times when there were people who wanted to cancel it, but only because of Senator Mikulski. The administration was never going to put that forward. And Congress kept it, and it grew from 500 million to 11 billion. It launched and it worked. No one cares that it costs $11 billion because it was a fantastic, wonderful thing to do. I have no doubt if Mars sample return is completed for any cost, the cost will be lost just as it was with Apollo. The problem is when we're setting these goals, doing things that aren't that meaningful. A launch tower, these commercial companies throw in the launch tower. The space suits, they're throwing in the space suits. But we are in this tense time where things aren't equal for how we procure our space programs, and none of them are working great. So they could all, I think, stand some tweaking. But what is really important in my view is that we set goals and do things to achieve, as we were saying in the very beginning of the show, big important national goals, and then doing it in a way that does inspire people, that does get something done, that returns real science, that delivers on those goals. And I see that as the biggest mismatch, and I think the dollars follow when you're doing things well and right. And so my concern about the next five years, and if we don't get saved by Starship, I think we really will be in a crisis where we have promised a lot of things we won't be able to deliver.

Casey Dreier: That's a great point to end on. Just if I could summarize, you say there's no day 1 crises, but there are year 1 issues for the next president to solve. Lori Garver, thank you so much for being with us today, always a delight to talk with you, former Deputy NASA administrator and author of Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age. We will have you on again at some point in the future to discuss how these next five years are going.

Lori Garver: Oh, it is just so great to be on the show.

Casey Dreier: We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophy that power space, science, and exploration. Help others learn more about this show by leaving us a review or rating us on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your input and interactions really help other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your thoughts or questions or whatever at our email, [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment on the Planetary Radio space and our member community app. I'm there all the time and I love hearing from you. Mark Hilverda and Ray Paoletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Me, Casey Dreier, and Merck Boyan composed and performed our Space Policy Edition theme. The Space Policy Edition is a production of The Planetary Society, an independent nonprofit organization based in Pasadena, California. We are membership-based and anyone, even you, can become a member. Memberships start at just $4 a month at planetary.org/join. Until next month. Ad astra.