Space Policy Edition: The Space Policy of a Second Trump 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. As I record this, we are mere months away from the 2024 presidential election here in the United States. And as is normal, space isn't the highest on the priority topic list for most of the candidate interviews. Even though, as we will discuss, space has grown as an area of concern and priority for national security. And of course, the geopolitical symbolic aspect of space and the congestion and activity in space has greatly increased in just the past decade. Now, the US President sets space policy. They nominate the personnel who lead NASA and they propose annual budgets for space activities. Their Vice President will chair the National Space Council and help coordinate a broad governmental approach to outer space. Regardless of who wins, the next President has a lot of significant decisions to make about how to continue NASA's troubled Artemis Exploration efforts, how to prioritize scientific exploration, and how to manage this growing competitive and contested and congested space environment. So in this episode and the next episode, we will look to explore what a potential space policy could look like under a second Trump administration or under a first Harris administration. So we will have... This episode, we will focus on Trump. And next episode, we will focus on Harris. Before we get to that though, I want to briefly mention that The Planetary Society, which produces the show, is an independent, member-supported organization. I also want to emphasize, we are nonpartisan. We don't get involved... Even though we talk about issues, we don't get involved in electoral politics, and the organization is committed to work with whoever is in power, in the United States and elsewhere, to advance space science and exploration. The show is an example of that type of outreach to you, our listeners and members. And if you're not a member, please consider joining The Planetary Society to enable us to keep being independent. Memberships start at just $4 a month at planetary.org/join. And if you are a member already, first, thank you. You literally make this all happen. You can consider, if you are a member, increasing your membership level to support us even more, to really continue this investment in the type of advocacy, policy, outreach, and education that we do every single day here at the organization. You can learn about that and more at planetary.org/join. I hope you all consider it. Okay. So our guest this episode is Dr. Greg Autry. Dr. Autry is currently the Associate Provost for Space Commercialization and Strategy at the University of Central Florida. He served on Trump's NASA transition team back in 2016, in advance of the first Trump presidency, and was nominated by President Trump to serve as the Chief Financial Officer of NASA in the summer of 2020. Though he wasn't confirmed in time before the Biden administration took over the following year. He is the co-author of the new book, Red Moon Rising: How America Will Beat China on the Final Frontier. And co-author along with Robert Walker of the editorial called Make Space Great Again, which ran in SpaceNews on August 16th, 2024. He joins us now. Greg Autry, welcome to the Space Policy Edition. Thank you for being here today.

Greg Autry: I'm excited to be here, Casey.

Casey Dreier: I'd like to start with a reference to your book, your new book, Red Moon Rising, that you wrote with Peter Navarro. That opens with a question that we've talked about a lot here on this show and I'd be curious to hear your response to it. So you start with, and I'll just quote from the book, why should the American government or billionaires be spending money in space when we have problems here on earth? This is a question that advocates for space exploration, space development, and space tourism are frequently forced to answer. It's a fair question and, all too often, the answers of scientists and engineers have not satisfied. So I'd be curious both to hear how you answer that question. And then, what aspects need to be focused on that are deficient in your perspective?

Greg Autry: Yeah. Well, my essential arguments are... And we're talking to the space community here, so I don't think that these will surprise a lot of folks. But sometimes, they surprise people in the broader community and we need to communicate this, right? First of all, there are a lot of good high paying jobs in the space field and that's an important thing for our economy. We've shipped a lot of our good high paying jobs abroad. And by this, I mean, the blue collar jobs. People think space and they think, "Wow. It's all a bunch of PhD rocket scientists nerds." But it's not if you walk in a SpaceX factory, you walk in a Boeing facility, or you go to Lockheed where they're making satellites. There are a lot of people there who are machinists and electrical engineers and production managers. And even the people carting the materials around on the floor in these facilities actually make enough money to raise a family. It's a good thing for an economy at the first level. At the secondary and tertiary levels, there are benefits that come from what we do in space. I've got my phone and, obviously, it has GPS in it. It's got a camera. The CCD was developed for space imaging or that technology originally entered smartphones. From that angle, a lot of the miniaturization of the chip components and other things all has serious benefits that came from space. Even some of the design software that's used to put these together give us products that are amazing. "Let me get an Uber or a Lyft," those just would not exist, right? And then, there's the tertiary effects. What happens when Starlink provides a service to the South Pacific, right? And kids in Tonga or the Tuamotu Islands... Where I actually used Starlink just a few months ago. It was amazing. Suddenly have access to quality broadband? This is going to change things in the world in ways we don't predict. If you care about the environment, what would we know about climate, the Ozone Hall, or even a lot of local environmental challenges if we didn't have space? Most of our good environmental data either comes from space or is often transmitted from space. So even if you want to know the ocean temperatures in the South Pacific to predict that El Nino, La Nina cycle that changes the weather in California every year, guess what? Those NOAH buoys only communicate via satellite, right? So I could go on about that. In the near future, there's the possibility that in-space manufacturing, it's something I'm particularly excited about, could revolutionize our lives in a lot of ways. Biomedical advances, advances in new materials, semiconductors that are better because making things in 0G is better than making them in 1G because 1G flattens out a lot of products. You want to be three-dimensional. It makes crystals grow imperfectly. It causes convections and fluids and materials that are congealing and hardening. So anyway, you can make things better. Space has also brought us together here on Earth in a lot of ways. I mean, nothing works right now, between Russia and the West, except the International Space Station. Not a fan of what Mr. Putin is doing and I've been a critic of how their space program's gone downhill recently. But it is actually one area that is functional. It's something everybody in the world looks at and is excited about. Planetary mission's the same thing. When you see gorgeous pictures from Cassini and Saturn or Galileo or Juno or Jupiter or you see the New Horizons Missions across Pluto, the world is united and excited about that, because that's us here on earth doing something out there as a people. It returns immense value, way more than we spend. One solid anecdote I love to give is Motorola did a study years ago and showed that long-haul trucks in the United States save $52,000 a year because of GPS technology. That's fuel savings, driver time, cheaper insurance, wear and tear on the vehicle tires, all of the things that go into the truck. We have a million of these trucks in the United States. That's 52 billion a year return to the United States' economy just from trucks. That happens to be about equal to the combined NASA and Defense Department's base budgets, we get back every year because our trucks are running more efficiently. Not taking Pokemon Go or anything else into account.

Casey Dreier: I like that anecdote. What do you think people are asking when they ask that question? It always feels like... Is there something deficient in how we talk about space or what do you think they're looking for in an answer?

Greg Autry: No, it's the immediacy. I mean, if I'm at home and I have issues paying my mortgage because the interest rates are higher or I go to the store and eggs cost an outrageous amount of money, that's right in my face. That is a problem right here on earth. And gosh forbid, you're even in a more egregious situation where... There are people living on the street in this country. We've got to be realistic about that. And I tell my space people, "Every time you come out and say, we want X billion dollars for Mars Sample Return, realize there are people living on the streets." There are people who couldn't go to college, right? If you look at a big mission like JWST, that literally could have sent hundreds of thousands of people to college. That's a lot of money. We have an obligation as a space community to return value and be parsimonious with the taxpayers' money. So I'm not dismissing the problems right here in earth. They're very real to most people outside the space community. And they're right there in your face. And these ideas that, "Oh, I might get something really amazing in the future that will really make the whole world better," that's more abstract. It bears constant repeating in the face of problems right here on earth.

Casey Dreier: I wonder if part of it is that because we ask for money so frequently that it just sounds expensive, where we don't really necessarily frame the cost of interstate highways every time we talk about them or drive on them, even though they're billions of dollars themselves to develop. So it could just be the framing, as what you said. We're asking for billions here and billions there. And in the scope of a multi-trillion dollar US expenditures, it's a drop in the bucket. But to most people, a billion dollars is a lot of money, including me-

Greg Autry: Yeah. So I didn't overexaggerate the James Webb Space Telescope. Although frankly, if I didn't ask the CFO, it would've been my nightmare. We can do better on those, but we're still spending 0.3 something percent of the Federal budget, right? To put that in perspective, during the Apollo days, we were spending an order of magnitude more than that, almost 5% at times. So space is getting done on the cheap. And in fact, it's woefully underfunded. People inside the community know that. NASA has all these centers that were built out during the heyday in the 1960s that it still has to support. And infrastructure is expensive, and in many cases, degrading because Congress only wants to give them money for things that are cool and right now. And maintaining stuff that was built in the 1960s or even trying to get rid of it, they're not going to help with that. That takes money to even dispose of assets or take down asbestos-filled buildings. So we don't get much money. We're really living thin in the space world, even though some of these projects, on total, cost big. But they're nothing compared to any number of big military projects. They're certainly nothing compared to Medicare. Another fun one is the fraud, waste, and abuse that the Governmental Accounting Office, the GAO, identifies every year at Medicare is 50 to $100 billion a year. That's two to four times bigger than the NASA budget. We're not talking Medicare. We're talking just the money that we know is being stolen from the Medicare system by fraudulent doctors and other criminals we know is way bigger than the NASA budget.

Casey Dreier: That's a lot of Mars Sample Return missions. Circling towards our main topic here, which is what the next presidential administration top space issues would be like. I'm struck by maybe a perceived shift. Even though we're obviously inside in the space community, I feel like there is a case for space being made for relevancy among the public in the last ten years, particularly with maybe the increase in notoriety of commercial space that didn't maybe exist before. Do you see changes happening in terms of both, I think, at the public level, but also at the policymaker level, of understanding the importance of space in the last decade? What would you identify as some of the things that have been changing these understandings?

Greg Autry: Yeah. I think, frankly, we've got to give hats off to Elon Musk who, whether you hate him or love him, brings a lot of attention to things. Whether that's electric vehicles or social media censorship or space, and he's brought a lot of attention to space. He's enthused a whole new generation of folks. Some of them are just, I think, obsessive SpaceX fanboys. But good for them, they're on our team. And he's caused people to look at that. Of course, you've got Jeff Bezos doing something similar. He's a little quieter. But still, he flew a group of civilians into space yesterday and he's done that several times. And some big name people like William Shatner. And I think that helps create a new sense of space in it, I think, makes it seem more accessible to the average person, when it's not just a big governmental academic ivory tower thing. And I know some of my academic ivory tower governmental people get a little cringey when these unqualified, crazy people out there are doing space, just because they have a pile of money. Jared Isaacman is going to send people into the Van Allen radiation belts any day now and do an EVA with a complete evacuation to the capsule. But frankly, this helps us all. When we want to get money from our sample return or something, at least people are a little bit more aware of that. There's also, I have to say, another big upside to commercials where we're lowering the cost of things. Launch being the first one, right? I remember meeting with Kevin Hand. Years ago, I wrote a nice article I liked in Forbes on Europa missions. And at the time, everybody there at JPL said, "It has to fly an SLS. That's the only way you can do it." I said, "Well, you know the Falcon Heavy has just come out and that might be an option." "No. No, it has to be SLS." I'm like, "If you didn't have Falcon Heavy right now, you wouldn't be flying Europa Clipper at all next month because there's no SLS available. And Artemis is going to consume whatever is available for the foreseeable future." So I don't know. I think that's changed the dynamic, made it more of a talking point. The fact that people who have a lot of money and influence on both sides of the aisle are engaged in this space business forces the candidates, both at the congressional level and even at the presidential level, to consider the reality of space. I mean, obviously, you had President Trump on a 2-hour long rambling conversation with Elon about everything including space. And wow, I don't think that would have even happened ten years ago, that some space company executive would lure a presidential candidate into a conversation and even talk about space. Most of the time, space gets no attention in a candidacy.

Casey Dreier: I wonder if... Something I've noticed is that with the rise of commercial space and then options for individuals like Jared Isaacman to go into space, that we've re-introduced adventurism into space. Which was always originally pitched as one of the core motivations, but was mismatched, I think, for the role of governments going into space. Where it's like the role of the community and the public, but if you go back to the so-called Golden Age of Exploration with Edmund Hillary and others, it's always individuals mounting some daring expedition and they... It's very risky, but they're risking themselves and people volunteer with them. And you just didn't have that as an option for space. It was always mediated by a governmental entity.

Greg Autry: Yeah. Let me challenge that and go back even further though. If we go to the Golden Age of Exploration in the 15th and 16th century, these were governments that made certain policy decisions-

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I mean, governments were so different. They didn't have a... Yes, I thought about, right? It's like you could go to the Crown or ask for some money. And they would put up some money, because there wasn't a broad societal commitment to anything else, right? It's not like governments back then were providing Medicare or social security for their people. It was a much more individualistic. These weren't democracies, right? These were kings and-

Greg Autry: No, but we shouldn't underestimate the influence that a number of people had in these courts. So it wasn't just the king and queen or the emperor of China make decisions. And the Chinese, by the way, had a massive maritime exploration program in the 15th century and it was canceled because of court machinations. The emperor, the third Ming Emperor, Yongle Emperor, had funded this amazing exploration which went all the way to the Middle East and Africa. And perhaps, beyond. And it was canceled because the Mandarins and the court who had other problems right here on Earth they wanted to address told the emperor he couldn't do it anymore. So it wasn't just one person. But nonetheless, it's always been this mix between the individuals, the Christopher Columbus, the Sir Edmund Hillary's, and some sort of government that either enables them or doesn't let them do it for some reason, right? And yeah, I think the adventurism in space, because it started out as such a big government program... And that's important to realize, it started out as government and military. A lot of people don't want to admit that, they're concerned about militarizing space. What does that even mean? It was military from Day 1, absolutely. And the trend has been more towards civilian and commercial, but nobody's militarizing it because the military's owned it since 1942 when von Braun put the first object out of the atmosphere. So I do think that it'd be more interesting if it was a Robert Heinlein universe where some guy in his garage built his own rocket, had emerged out of the blue, and started a space company. But I don't think it would've happened because the government accelerated the development of rocket engine technology and other things in a way that commercial market would not have done because it didn't have a war to fight. I think, eventually, it would've happened. And now, the commercial sector's moving faster than the government, but it's a back and forth.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Well, they have an avenue again, I think, if nothing else, right? That we can agree on. That there's a pathway for individuals to take risks that, clearly, governments don't want to do or haven't been-

Greg Autry: What excites me is I think we're going to see on the science side and the robotic science side individual adventure too. I don't think it'll be too long before somebody puts up orbital space telescopes in Leo that I can rent time on, right? Instead of using my backyard beauty there. It may not be too long before you can put up... I mean, you can put up your own CubeSat now with a few thousand dollars. High schoolers do it, right? So individuals will be able to do, at least earth science, exploration pretty soon if they wanted to, right? It may not be that long before you can hitch a ride to the moon with your own private tens of thousands of dollars contraption. So that could be a very interesting different world and there might be groups of people who could fund a mission to Mars. It's not inconceivable. Rocket Lab has talked about a private mission to Venus. So yeah, I think that at the individual level, it doesn't always have to be human space flight but it could be.

Casey Dreier: I'll be really... I mean, this is... I obviously thought about that quite a bit as a domain of interest for me and The Planetary Society. I wonder though because-

Greg Autry: You did the solar cell so-

Casey Dreier: Exactly. That was a big crowdfunded effort and I think you're right. And earth orbit with things like CubeSats, you can do some types of science. I guess the question is how much of the individual ego needs to be included in this adventurism for an individual to spend hundreds of millions of dollars? We've seen... Obviously, Jared Isaacman is spending quite a bit of money, but he himself gets to go along with others and that's clearly part of it. Tourism and people buying their way up to the International Space Station, it's them that they're sending for the most part. And then, you have... I think maybe the example would be the Breakthrough Enceladus concept that Yuri Milner declined to fund, because science is so much more uncertain and you can't necessarily predict an outcome. And you don't even get necessarily the same thrill unless you get some very philanthropically-minded... Which again, I think we clearly have a history for before the Space Age of the United States of building great observatories, ground-based observatories. But I wonder if we can depend on or we will see individuals want to take the next step in scientific private space missions. I'm a little dour on that right now, but maybe I can be convinced. But maybe, I'm just not-

Greg Autry: If you go back to the 19th century again and you look at some of the voyages of exploration that occurred there, Charles Darwin paid his own way to go on the Beagle. It wasn't a government expedition. He was a paying passenger doing science. Now, he luckily had enough money that he could pull that off. And there were a lot of people, particularly in Bretton, who funded science for other people. They weren't robots, but they funded other people to go around the world and bring back all sorts of biological samples and do geology and stuff. It was a big and important contributor to science at the time, that private funding.

Casey Dreier: Do you think people will do that with the competition, so to speak, of public funding? This is what my other thought was. We have such a, well-funded public-

Greg Autry: Yeah. Sometimes when we create public funding, we disincentivize the private sector to step up and do their part. And you often see the argument about Americans give more to charity and the Europeans pay more taxes. So maybe, they feel they can't or don't have to. Yeah. That's true. But no, I think it's going to happen and I think Milner and others have funded some interesting things. They can't fund everything. They have to make choices. We may not always agree with them. I like the Enceladus thing probably more than an Interstellar Mission that I'll never see.

Casey Dreier: I want to just note two more things that I think have changed policymakers' perception of space and I'd be curious about your reaction to those. One is the invasion of Ukraine and how Ukraine, in particular, has utilized space for... And also, I think for outside observers have utilized space assets to monitor the invasion and to persecute the war. And then, the other I would identify would be-

Greg Autry: Persecute or prosecute?

Casey Dreier: Prosecute.

Greg Autry: Some people have been persecuted with it-

Casey Dreier: Prosecute, yes.

Greg Autry: Absolutely. And people are using that in cold wars and in humanitarian issues that you want to identify the Uighur concentration camps in China. That data's available there from Maxar or Planet or whatever. Communications into closed areas is going to be problematic for... Communication constellation providers. But clearly, it exists and we're seeing it most notably with Ukraine. So yeah, that changed the world and it appears to me the American commercial assets are on par. But probably, even superior to the Russian military grade stuff, so that's cool to see.

Casey Dreier: Well, I think it really demonstrated the value of having redundancy... The whole distributed approach to space assets, rather than a handful of very expensive, easily manageable space assets that the US had been building. And also, again, as you said, the role of the private sector which adds an interesting level of complication to everything. We've seen Elon Musk himself try to walk this line about where he allows Starlink to work and not, which is a lot of power we start to invest in one person. But he owns the assets, right?

Greg Autry: That's why I'm excited. I want to see more than one constellation. I mean, I love Starlink. Like I said, I've been using it. But I hope we have competitors who may have different political opinions about China, for instance. We'll see what they do. But it's going to be a complex geopolitical and domestic policy issue that the government at the highest levels is going to have to deal with.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Well, the other item was going to be China's increasing capability in space which is, obviously, the topic of your book. And setting this up as a... You frame it as a return to the Cold War. I don't know if everyone would agree with that, but I think we can say that there's an increasing geopolitical competition expressed in some of these space assets being deployed. I think that's really influenced how... Again, particularly at the US strategic level, how space is being seen as we've seen through the elevation of Space Force as its own branch of the armed services.

Greg Autry: I got to be honest. I've been a China Hawk and cynic for a long time on all sorts of issues, from military to environmental to human rights issues. I'm going to be honest, 90% of the people in the hill agree with me, we're in a flat out Cold War with the Chinese. The Chinese are attacking us every single day with cyber technologies and industrial espionage. And that is happening. They are building more nuclear weapons at a faster rate than has been built in decades. And who are they aimed at? They're aimed at our homes, right? So it's unrealistic not to think there's a Cold War. Space is a component of that. And once again, we have a Space Race 2.0 along with a Cold War 2.0. And frankly, I think the Space Race was the best thing about Cold War 1.0. And people look at me like I'm crazy. What do you mean the best thing? Well, actually, nobody launched those nuclear weapons. Even though I, as a kid, was under my desk every week for the drill, that didn't happen. But we did get the Apollo Program. We got some amazing science. We got all sorts of technology spinoffs, including the frigging internet out of that. So there were really good things that came from that. Just like there were great things from World War II: microwave ovens, jet engines, and nuclear power. So you get things out of war, it's better if you don't fight it. So I have no problem with Cold War 2.0 being competitive with China. We don't want to see conflict. Same thing with space. Competition is really, really good, Casey. A lot of people want to sing Kumbaya and save the whole world. Work together on one UN-led space program, imagine what we could accomplish? And I'll tell you what we could accomplish, Casey. Nothing. Because I watched what happens when the UN and the whole world gets together and tries to do something. Basically, it's ineffectual and corrupt and slow. And there's no urgency because you're not racing anybody, right? So nobody goes to the Olympics to watch an event where all teams hold hands and cross the line at the same time. It does not motivate anybody to perform better.

Casey Dreier: Well, let's just jump right into this because I think this was an interesting perspective in your book that I, frankly, just am not used to seeing, which I think was really provocative. This idea of cooperation being a downfall of the development of space itself. Just to paraphrase. I mean, I have here from the book, "Cooperation has resulted in stagnation," which I think is just... Basically, just re-summing what you're saying here. You said, "In the five decades since the celebrated 1975 handshake from the Apollo Soyuz Project between astronauts and cosmonauts, nobody traveled more than 350 miles from the earth." Again, it's a really interesting way to frame it. And I think, to some degree, we've seen this with commercial opening up, in a sense, competition and we've seen progress and development there. But I wondered... So the thought that I had... And this is just me trying to process this and think about this critically, was in the cost of slowing down development. Do you gain something else in a bigger domain? So this is where is the cost of a more global ordered peaceful earth going to be the speed of development of things in space technology? And if that's the case, it might be an acceptable... For me, that might be an acceptable cost or price to pay. So I wonder, it's like when you're in competition, you're flirting with conflict. And so, you have this tailend probability of something could go really wrong even if you get really good rapid access to the moon versus. Maybe we're just hanging out in lowered orbit, but that tailend global conflict is much more diminished as a consequence of that. And so, that's what I wondered if seeing... Is that a price worth paying or is this... Are you seeing anything larger with this or you're just framing how we approach space development and motivation of why we do things?

Greg Autry: Yeah. Well, two points there. I mean, it's the fundamental risk equation, which is what is the cost of the negative outcome times the probability of the negative outcome, right? The cost is really huge, so it doesn't take much of a probability to dissuade you from having a Cold War. But the second point, Casey, is I'm not advocating that we have a Cold War. I'm just saying, "Here it is. There are upsides, right?" If we in the space community, leverage it, right? And I'm going to be perfectly honest, I served on the Trump transition team in 2016 and advised on space. And I was happy that if I said, "Hey, China's going to do this before us," that I would get the attention of decision makers both in the new White House and in Congress on both sides of the aisle, who would say, "We can't let that happen." So fine, take advantage of that. I'm not proposing that we look for conflict or Cold War. But if it exists, then let's try to channel it into something more productive as we did, thankfully, in the 1960s and '70s. So yeah, that's my spin. And yeah, there's good things that come from international cooperation. I started out by talking about the benefits of the ISS, for instance. But to be honest, 1957 Sputnik, 13 years later, Buzz Aldrin's on the moon. I mean, Sputnik's a basketball that goes... Does no science, did nothing. It just went... And 13 years later, you have a human being on the moon, which right now we seem to be having a problem doing again and we did that because the sense of urgency. We don't have that sense of urgency today. So that's my point.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. It frames things. I think NASA has always done best when NASA's goals have slotted into pre-existing structures of priority, so Cold War. Basically, what you're saying. That we're in this clear geopolitical conflict, this Cold War 2.0 as you put it. And to align NASA with the goals, then you don't have to then argue from basic assumptions about establishing value with broader parts of government. You say, "Oh, it fits into their pre-existing framework of understanding and priority," and say, "Oh, this is a way to invest in it." And framing it, in a sense, that way.

Greg Autry: Letting China put human beings back on the moon before us is a national embarrassment. It can't happen. Letting China return samples from Mars and discovering the first life off of Earth and probably making the most important scientific discovery of the millennium can't be allowed. And there are people in Congress who will instantly understand that. And then, suddenly, getting an extra billion dollars to solve the engineering problem is a lot easier.

Casey Dreier: We'll be right back with the rest of our Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio after this short break.

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Casey Dreier: So let's switch to... You wrote an op-ed recently that we'll link to called Make Space Great Again in the August 16th SpaceNews. I recommend folks read it. You write this with Robert Walker, I guess, space consultant and former member of Congress and-

Greg Autry: Yeah. To be clear, he was the chair of the SciTech Committee for many years. He and my co-author in my book, Peter Navarro, established the Trump Space Policy originally in October 2016.

Casey Dreier: As you said, you, yourself, served on the transition team in 2016 and was a liaison for NASA in the White House and were nominated as CFO. I just ultimately confirmed by the end of the administration for NASA.

Greg Autry: Yeah. There was no vote to be clear.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. So you know what you're talking... I mean, in a sense, you have some ideas of what you're talking about. I think we can establish your credibility here. I want to pivot to what you see. We've already been, again, talking about this. But what are going to be the major issues facing the next presidential administration that starts in January of next year? And then, we can go beyond that to where you see a Trump administration priorities within that. How do you address those big issues?

Greg Autry: So I assume we're talking in the space context when you, what issues are we going to be facing-

Casey Dreier: Yes, space.

Greg Autry: Clearly, we've got a war in Ukraine and the disaster in the Middle East and inflation and border issues and all those things, right? That's a problem because getting attention for space is going to be harder than it was in 2016. Everything wasn't perfect in 2016, but it was reasonable to have conversations about space. I do recall one inside anecdote here being on the transition team. There was arguments sometimes about whether we should do this or that, between well-meaning and highly qualified people on the team. And Rick Dearborn, who was heading the transition team, Jeff Sessions, his former chief of staff, came in the bathroom one time and said to me, "Autry, why am I hearing so much about NASA when we have these other important things going on?" And I said, "Because we care, Rick," and it is. It's true, because we were passionate about what we thought-

Casey Dreier: I mean, it's basically the same question I opened up this conversation with, isn't it? It's a reframing of that. Why should I care about space when we have problems here?

Greg Autry: Yeah. And so-

Casey Dreier: Right?

Greg Autry: What is the administration going to have to do? Well, personally, I think we've got some issues and I framed them in this article. Some people have complained, "You're being partisan." And actually, if you look, I have a very long history of being non-partisan. I greatly admire, for instance, most of the Biden space appointees. Nelson's done a great job. He makes me look like a dove when it comes to China. Pam Melroy's done a great job. I'm excited about my friend, Richard Dalbello, at the Office of Space Commerce. These people are trying to do good work. I don't think they get the cover that they need at the White House that we were lucky enough to get during the Trump administration, just because that was our priority and it's not here. But Artemis is off track, every single component of the Artemis system is behind schedule and has issues. And I know the SpaceX fanboys are going to say, "Oh, well, let's put everything on Starship." Well, honestly, Starship, the human lander system, is one of the components that's behind schedule along with the Orion capsule and issues with SLS and it' launching system. Along with the space suits-

Casey Dreier: It's going to take longer to build a tower than it will have taken to go to the moon the first time at this process.

Greg Autry: Yeah. Exactly. And it's that sense of urgency, Casey, that I'm getting at. People are, "Oh, it can't be done. I'm sorry." Kennedy decided we were going to go to the moon. In 1961, we were there eight years later. We are now eight years after our transition team got President Trump to say, "Let's go to the moon." Eight years later, we've done nothing except get ready. These problems are engineering problems that can be solved with sufficient money and sufficient passion. We need alacrity and we don't have it. So Artemis is off track. The science budget situation is a disaster, right? The current Speaker of the House is not Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy understood space and it was valuable to have him there because he was real close to JPL. He spent a lot of time out in the Mojave Air and Space Port where I talked to him many times and I visited him in D.C. and he cared about it. Not to criticize the current speaker, but it's not his domain. And so, getting money out of Congress is hard. The current Vice President is not doing the job that Mike Pence did during the last administration of really, really being engaged. Nobody's going to Congress and yelling at them about the budget. And what's happening? Well, basically, we're getting either extensions on continuing resolutions or we're getting no net increase in the NASA budget. But more and more money is going to Artemis because it's out of control and all of those components are taking longer and need more money. So what's getting crushed? Mostly the science budget, right? And I wrote about this in Forbes a while back. And so, bipartisan blame here, the Congress and the Vice President not doing anything about it. We need to, as space advocates, speak to the people that we have access to, whatever party you're in. And criticize the people who aren't doing the job regardless of what party you're in and make them do it. But Mars Sample Return is basically disintegrated as far as I can tell and NASA's asking for suggestions from a bunch of companies. Although, we're spending $300 million a year to look at those suggestions, right? Viper, the lunar rover, got canceled even though AIM said that it was basically built, right? The thing was ready to go. The mission launch is still happening, the lander is still happening. They're really saying, "We're going to put a mass simulator," which means a rock, right? They're going to put a brick of lead or something. Might as well put a block of gold in there at the cost to send nothing to the moon on this commercial lander. "We're canceling this program because it's a few hundred million dollars over budget." It shouldn't be. But is that really the wise thing to do? I don't know. I could go on. But it's an ugly thing and so many programs are at risk at this moment.

Casey Dreier: I think that's a good summary of some of the major civil issues. Do you just want to briefly mention some of the national security space issues that the US will be facing?

Greg Autry: Sure. The one that scares the hell out of me is Putin's reaction to Starlink which is, "I'm going to orbit a nuclear anti-satellite weapon." My god. Why there isn't more talk about this? There was some dust up about it when the rumor came out in February. And then, what I noticed was people were saying... The original story was Putin's going to launch a nuclear space weapon. And as soon as they realized it was just targeted at satellites and not them, the story went away because CNN didn't care if all their satellites are destroyed. Who would that bother, right? They realized it wasn't going to attack cities and it's a non-story. But it's still very much a real story, right? Chinese anti-satellite testing, although it hasn't been as destructive, is still going forward, right? And you mentioned the fact that a nimbler, more distributed constellation of satellites was harder to attack. And US Space Force clearly understands that they've got a conference called Space Mobility, making things that can move around and are redundant as well as Responsive Launch a program that Firefly has been leading out of Vandenberg. Super important. So I'm actually more excited about what's happening on the DoD side. It's been more effective than what we're seeing in civil in the last few years. And to be clear, I think all the things on the civil side can be fixed if we have a sense of passion and alacrity in somebody who can go to the White House and make it happen. And a White House that answers the phone and calls up the Congress and bangs heads together or makes threats, right? Even if you don't have your own party in power, you can still pick up the phone and threaten to do something else they don't like if they don't do what you want. So politics works, you can get things done. And we're not doing that. But on the DoD side, it's better. Salty, General Saltzman, I think, has done a great job with redefining the Space Force mission. And he's added clarity there that part of the Space Force mission is defending commercial assets in space, which is super important.

Casey Dreier: You identify in your essay that, again, I encourage people to read, that the first Trump administration was unusually active in space policy. Not just, of course, with Artemis and establishing the Space Force, but also with a number of policy directives released by the National Space Council, reconstituting the Space Council. A lot of that, to me, was a result of Mike Pence as, obviously, the head of the Space Council. He won't be here in a second Trump administration. Do you see that as a challenge or an issue going forward into a potential second Trump term next year or... Another way of putting it, where do you see JD Vance standing on space issues?

Greg Autry: This is a great question, Casey. And one that should concern the space community more than anything, I think. So I'll be honest, we were lucky with Pence. It wasn't that he created these things, but he listened, right? And the person who may deserve more credit than anybody is Scott Pace, who is one of the most quiet people in the space world, who was the Executive Secretary of the National Space Council and helped guide through a lot of what we saw. So we got six space policy directives that were really great. We've seen one out of the Harris-Biden administration. We had eight meetings of the National Space Council and people that were on the council, and cabinet level officials and the industry people in the user advisory group, all felt they were dynamic and things were actually happening and getting done. We've had three of those meetings under Harris-Biden only because one is required every year. And in fact, Harris threw the last one up on December 20th, 2023 because she had to have a meeting legally. And then, she made a 10, 15 minute speech and walked out of the frigging meeting and handed the gavel to, I think, the national security adviser because she didn't have time for space. That pisses me off. So anyway, it's the difference between the Vice President. So yeah, Vance, I've had a very brief personal conversation with Vance. Very brief. I've spoken to other people who work with him. I am hopeful. He does have some space in his state. You've got a massive center there at Glen, plus you've got Plumbrook so he's somewhat familiar. He's done some work and commented on some Space Force issues. So we will see. I think he tends to probably be a supporter of public-private partnerships and commercial approaches the same way that Pence was, but I think he's realistic about what government can do. Then, you've got Waltz. I don't know, I cannot find anything that suggests Waltz has ever thought about space or commented on it and that would concern-

Casey Dreier: Actually, we found something when he was a member of Congress. He mentioned space and his fondness for... I forget the exact terminology. But space is highlighted in one of his old Congressional webpages, even though he's not from a space district. So we found that encouraging, but we're reaching out to... The Planetary Society is reaching out to both candidates-

Greg Autry: Yeah. Please do.

Casey Dreier: Obviously-

Greg Autry: Both sides needs to. I'm trying to talk to Vance and his people because I can and the people who can talk to Waltz should. So nothing would make me happier if the Harris team were elected to find out that Waltz will embrace space science and exploration. I'd be concerned that he would be a problems right here on Earth person though. He certainly is very focused on social issues and issues of equity and things. Many of those people tend to be less excited about space and see it as a waste of money. So we got to keep that narrative going.

Casey Dreier: How critical do you think it's going to be to have a Vice President step into this role as the head of the National Space Council in the next term? Particularly... Let's just keep this for now under... Let's say, assuming Trump wins a second term. How important is JD Vance's interest versus Trump himself, given your knowledge of both?

Greg Autry: It's super important. The Vice President is designated as the head of the Space Council by law and specifically tasked with developing national space policy and strategy and being the President's primary advisor. Now, to that end, Trump knows that he did things in space and he got credit for them. And I believe that was a positive feedback loop. And so, I'm hopeful that he'll enjoy doing that. Again, it's something he'll care about. Personally, he's not an expert, but he likes technology. He likes technological solutions. He tends to be somebody who sees the solution to problems not being by cutting and reducing, but by growing out of problems. So he's talked he wants to grow the economy out of our issues, rather than being parsimonious like we're seeing with the Congress. So I don't think that he'll be fearful of making investments that he believes, as a business person, have actual returns to national value. But you've got to prove that with him. He's really happy to fire people. He had a whole TV show at that. So it always surprised me when people complained that he would fire people in the White House all the time. There's a hit TV show about firing people, right? So if he doesn't think things are going well, he'll change the track. But if the Vice President isn't onboard to execute, it won't happen. And we've got to have the right person as Executive Secretary of the Space Council and the NASA Administrator early on. Otherwise, Artemis is off track. And frankly, if the Chinese beat us there, I don't see why Congress or the White House would fund a silver medal, as we say in our editorial.

Casey Dreier: Mm-hmm. What lessons, if any, can you take from Jim Bridenstine's tenure as NASA administrator?

Greg Autry: So I knew Jim before he was NASA administrator when he was in Congress. We have talked a lot of issues about China and I was happy to be one of his early advocates. Buzz Aldrin and I wrote a piece in SpaceNews pushing for his confirmation as well. Jim went in carefully to NASA and listened a lot, right? He hadn't had a lot of experience there, but he was space aware. He had developed some ideas. Including a really nice website about the American Space Renaissance Act as he called it. But he was careful not to step on toes and I think that was valuable. Honestly, Casey, there was a lot of mud thrown at him. And I'm going to be honest, I think the media tends to be biased against Republicans and very biased against anybody associated with Donald Trump. So when he came in, there were a lot of people saying really negative things. That he was going to be a tool of the oil industry because he was from Oklahoma, an oil state. Or that he was homophobic and wasn't going to respect the rights of individuals in the agency. And he had to spend months proving that wasn't who he was, because he's a really good human being. He really is. And he turned out to be a good manager. There were a lot of people criticizing his record. And again, Buzz and I wrote on it why we thought he was going to be a manager. The guy had three college degrees. Going in there, this is a smart individual and he did a good job. He trusted people who did a good job for him and he responded well. And so, I think when he left, he was generally missed. There were definitely people saying, "Oh, couldn't we keep him?" He did not volunteer for that. Whereas, previous NASA administrators have hung on and clung and said, "Keep me on," in a way that's embarrassing, but Jim quietly walked away. I wish we would've had him for four more years. Although, I'm not complaining about Nelson. Like I said, I admire what he has to say. So anyway, Jim, I think was mostly it was the interface with people. And he had a Vice President and an Executive Secretary of the Space Council he could go to when he had a problem and get the problem solved. And they were capable and willing to go to Congress and the money flowed in. But bipartisan support, right? There was good support regardless of who was in charge of the House or the Senate and wasn't a lot of fighting over space because he was a people person.

Casey Dreier: Mm-hmm. Do you think going forward in the next four years that NASA needs to re-evaluate its relationship to commercial partnerships in space, either by increasing them or decreasing them?

Greg Autry: Wow. It's all a case of applying them at the right place at the right time and I think NASA has done a fairly good job of that. I mean, everybody pretty well realizes COTS is a miracle. Now, if you hadn't have done that, where would we be today? There'd be no International Space Station. You'd have a real hard time launching any science mission because it's all flying on SpaceX, right? If you didn't have commercial crew, again, I don't think there'd be an ISS. It would've had to be abandoned. And I don't even know how we would've de-orbited and had to pay the Russians to use progress modules or something, but it just wouldn't be there. So commercial has paid off in that regard. And then, we've tried other things that haven't worked perfectly yet, like CLPS. But I think Thomas Zurbuchen did a really good job with that program and failure is an option in the commercial model. And so, we've had one failure and one half success there with CLPS. I think we'll see a full success this year. So that works. There's areas where commercial doesn't work. Nobody's going to build a frigging Europa mission commercially. There's just no business model that closes on that. And so, we need to keep doing those programs. But we're going to get cheaper launch, we're going to get cheaper components as we launch a lot more satellites. A lot of things in the power systems and communication systems are going to be commoditized and we're going to be able to do space cheaper. Everything doesn't have to be a bespoke $1.5 billion JPL Mission. I love those things. I love going to JPL, watching through. When the Europa Clipper is assembled, I hope to go see a launch. But you don't get that all the time. So I think that we've got a pretty good balance and it just requires management to understand when it works and is appropriate and when it's not. And there are some vendors who love it, like SpaceX. And there are other vendors who haven't done as well at it, like Boeing says they don't want to ever do it again. I think Boeing with a new CO, I hope might rethink those approaches. It's a matter of what, when, where, and who. And you've got to make the right decision because you understand where the market works and where it doesn't.

Casey Dreier: Do you think NASA has an issue with state capacity right now? I bring this up purposely as a follow-up to that question. Sometimes, I worry that by incentivizing and fostering a vibrant commercial space industry, NASA's actually started to lose, whether from its prime contractors or from NASA itself, some of its best individuals to a different workforce. And I wonder if we're seeing that reflected in, as you point out, the broad set of delays to every Artemis component, issues with Mars Sample Return completely falling apart. Other issues with Psyche. And some of this is all COVID related. But it's so broad and it's not just in... I just highlight some planetaries. We're seeing this in Earth science missions with NISAR. We're seeing this just across the agency with OSAM. It makes me wonder if there's something more fundamental here.

Greg Autry: I think there is and I don't think it's the private sector stealing jobs from NASA. Although, that certainly happens. On the other hand, I see great people go from the private sector to NASA like AC Charana, Charity Whedon. People who I love and respect have gone into NASA, right? And I was happy to consider going into NASA in the CFO position as well. And obviously, probably would have if offered another position. So it's not just that. There's a back and forth and that happens within the industry labor force too. So I saw a story that's said half of ULA's launch operations team had been recruited out by SpaceX or Blue Origin. And certainly, I've heard people at both SpaceX and Blue complain that the other companies is poaching their workforce. So that happens in a healthy environment. And the great thing, Casey, is that when people move from place to place, they learn new ideas and they develop networks that are valuable to their new employer, right? Now, we lost 800 people at JPL. I think it was 800-

Casey Dreier: At least 800.

Greg Autry: A lot of them were able to land in the commercial sector though. So that was a safety net too that was good to have. But what is the problem? I think it's more about the supply chain and America's decision more than a decade ago to say, "Let's just offshore our manufacturing capacity." Because this undermined a whole value chain of operations, from resource extraction to processing, to manufacturing materials, to manufacturing components, subcomponents' assemblies, all the way up. And it's made it hard to get stuff. When I see systems like Viper fail, the answer I usually get from HQ is, "Supply chain problems." And I heard this from several CLPS vendors and I've heard this from people working on Psyche and other missions. The supply chain was a problem. And then, of course, all the people who would normally work in that supply chain are now trying to fight for jobs at retail, because we don't do that anymore. And so, they don't go to school to learn production engineering and then find out, "My god. There's jobs in space and I could go work on a really cool project at John Hopkins or at JPL or AIMS," because they never bothered to even look at how to make things because it's not a thing America does anymore. And so, I think that was a tragedy. Another soapbox that I've been on for years. I wrote a book called Death by China more than a decade ago, warning about this problem. So I think we've underlined our supply chain and our labor force of people who know how to build things.

Casey Dreier: How does NASA solve that problem? Or is it just part of a large... I mean, it almost has to be part of a larger solution, but what can NASA do, do you think, within this set of issues that it's-

Greg Autry: Yeah. The bully pulpit, right? Wow. I go all over the world and you know this and you see NASA logos on kids, right? So NASA inspires people to be astronauts and scientists. But in my opinion, not doing enough about talking about engineering specifically and production engineering even more specifically. And they could get in front of that and talk about their jobs where you can, even if you just have a high school diploma, go work on space stuff. Because people welding together Starship, they are not PhDs and that's pretty cool. So I think NASA could use their bully pulpit more to attract people of all career paths into space. And I think, also, to bring to light these supply chain issues that threaten not only NASA but our national security. So Space Force has got the same problem, I guarantee you. And they are concerned about it, but we need to get out publicly and talk to our lawmakers too and say, "It's important that you make automobiles so that you have the supplies that you can to make airplanes, so that you can also make rockets." Because a country that doesn't make either automobiles or airplanes... And frankly, Casey, we're not that far away from being that country, is not going to make spaceships. It's just not going to happen. You have to have a whole national supply chain.

Casey Dreier: Greg, is there anything else that you want our listeners to think about for a second, Trump administration in particular, or just issues facing the next President beyond what we talked about?

Greg Autry: Well, let me say, be open-minded because I know everybody's not from the same party. But at least when it comes to space, I think you've got to have blinders on to not see that good work was done there. And whoever is the next Jim Bridenstine and the next Scott Pace, cut them some slack. Don't go on NASA Watch and immediately start criticizing the heck out of them when they're trying to probably do a really good thing for the things you care about. And feel free to criticize the heck out of the party you oppose about the topics you oppose. But when they do something right, give them credit. Like I said, I'm happy to point out the really great appointments that were made in this current administration at NASA and Space Commerce and other places because it's true. So please be honest.

Casey Dreier: I'll second that. I mean, that's... Obviously, at The Society, we're nonpartisan and, always, we've found, without fail, space really does transcend partisanship still. It's one of the rarefied aspects of modern politics that does and it's very precious-

Greg Autry: And the same thing in Congress. Good people trying to get things done there. They actually listen and care about this stuff. And when they do it right, pat them on the back. And if they don't do it right, call them out.

Casey Dreier: Greg Autry is the Associate Provost for Space Commercialization and Strategy at the University of Central Florida. He's the co-author, along with Peter Navarro, of the book, Red Moon Rising: How America Will Beat China on the Final Frontier and the essay, Make Space Great Again, written with Robert Walker. Greg, thank you for being here this week.

Greg Autry: Thanks, Casey. Great talk.

Casey Dreier: We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. We will be back next month with an exploration of the very same set of topics, but from a perspective of a potential Harris administration. I hope you will join us then. You can help others learn more about space policy and space advocacy by leaving a review and rating us on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your input and interaction help other people and other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your thoughts and questions at our email [email protected]. Or if you are a Planetary Society member, and I hope you are, leave a comment on the Planetary Radio space in our member community app. 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 of Planetary Radio is a production of The Planetary Society, an independent nonprofit space outreach organization based in Pasadena, California. We are membership-based and anyone even you, yes, you can be a member. Membership starts at just four bucks a month. You can learn more at planetary.org/join. Until next time, ad astra.