U.S. space science in flux: Grant rules, rockets, and reorganization

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Big decisions could be reshaping science funding in the United States this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Space policy is moving fast and the choices that are being made right now could reshape the future of US science and exploration for generations to come. This week I sit down with Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations, for an update on everything that's shaking up NASA right now. And in What's Up with our chief scientist, Bruce Betts, we'll be revealing the long awaited names of the Artemis III astronauts. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed with the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.

This week we're covering a lot of ground. Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations, joins me to walk through some of the biggest developments in US space policy right now. We will be talking about the ongoing fight over NASA's science budget, but there's an even more pressing matter right now, a proposed rule change at the Office of Management and Budget that would hand control of federal research grant decisions to political appointees. This is a proposal that would bypass the peer review process that's underpinned US science for decades. We're also going to be discussing a proposed major reorganization at NASA and a new competition for the management of the Jet Propulsion Lab. We're going to go out with the bang discussing the fallout from the rapid unscheduled disassembly, less technically described as a giant explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on May 28th and what that means for the future of Artemis.

Before we get into this grab bag of topics, I want to say something. The things we're going to be discussing today might feel really heavy and for good reason. There's a lot at stake right now for space science and exploration and science in general in the United States. But I also want you to know that across The Planetary Society and organizations throughout the science community, there are people working every single day to support space science. We're trying to protect the missions that we've built and stand up for the people that make it all possible. So while this episode might feel like a lot, know that you're not alone in caring about this and that really matters. When enough of us come together to work for the betterment of humanity, we always have a chance of making a brighter future, especially in space exploration. Here's my conversation with Jack Kiraly.

Hey, Jack.

Jack Kiraly: Hey, Sarah. How's it going?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, there's so much going on in space policy right now that I feel like it's hard to take it all in right now and I bet that means that your life in D.C. right now is even more hectic than all of us that are just kind of trying to learn and deal with these things as they come, right.

Jack Kiraly: I guess when it rains, it pours. Because you're right and it feels like it's something new every day and some stuff out of our control, pads exploding, rockets not rocketing, but then some of it is massive reorganizations of NASA and policy updates going crazy over here. So yeah, it's been nonstop few weeks for us.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right. I mean, honestly, a nonstop two years for us, right. I mean-

Jack Kiraly: Right.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: ... all of this is kind of in the context of what's been going on with our Save NASA Science Campaign and for people who've been following along with the adventure, there was a situation last year where the office of management and budget proposed this almost 50% cut to NASA science funding and we rallied together and we won and then they came back again this year with another proposal to cut NASA science by 46%. So before we get into anything else, I think we should take a little time to give an update on where we're at with the progress for the Save NASA Science Campaign.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. So I will say the state of the campaign is good. We are continuing to flood Capitol Hill with messages on a near daily basis. We've had number of events including our big day of action in April. I know many of folks are familiar with this flagship event, but it's been a very, very exciting few weeks. So since Administrator Isaacman testified to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, and I think that was maybe a few shows ago, though both feels like yesterday and much longer ago, the House of Representatives has put forward a budget and that budget includes a pretty substantial cut to science, not nearly as much as the OMB has proposed, but a 17% cut to science, all part of keeping NASA's top line flat. And I think we talked about this recently, but the important part of that is that the House of Representatives, the more we'll say conservative, fiscally conservative of the two chambers right now, although I will note Republicans are in majority in both the House and Senate.

The House is the lower of the two always, at least in recent memory. The House has put forward the lower end of the error bar of potential funding outcomes for this budget cycle. And so even with that cut to science, which we're not happy about that, that's not great, keeping the overall NASA top line flat is, I think, should be the headline item here. And that means that the lowest possible, right, the lower on the error bar, the lowest possible path forward for a budget this year is flat. And so that's really good for the Save NASA Science Campaign. Again, we still have these cuts that we're facing. The administration, despite calls from senators and members of the House of both parties calling on administrator Isaacman to be transparent about the missions that are at risk and the programs that are at risk under these budget cuts, no information has been provided to Congress or the public.

As we've talked about before, the part of the problem with this budget proposal is in the lack of transparency and we don't really know what's ... There's no formal accounting of what's at risk, which is very odd for a process that's supposed to be like pretty open book. "Hey, here's what we're putting forward." This has been a total reversion on all of those points of transparency for the budgeting process. And Congress has taken note and complained and the administrator has not fulfilled that obligation to make a publicly available list of proposed canceled missions. So we made our own. Anyway, that's all to say we're in a very good place if the lowest of possible outcomes is a flat budget. We're still waiting on the Senate to put forward their funding proposal. That'll then be the top part of the error bar and then somewhere in the middle is where compromise sits.

The Senate was expected to do their markup in early June, but related to issues not concerning NASA or science in general, the J of the CJS, Commerce Justice Science, the Department of Justice issues related to that has really upended a lot of the deliberation on the budget process and so this should be new to longtime listeners of the show and of followers of space policy, that something completely unrelated to space has thrown the future of the budget into an uncertain place. But we have hope that the Senate will convene at some point in the next few weeks to put together their budget proposal. Hopefully it's something that's higher. The Senate put forward an authorization that called for a two and a half percent boost to NASA's budget. So not a huge increase, wouldn't even offset the cost of inflation over the last year, but it would be an increase, it'd be the first increase in four years for NASA's budget.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Good that they're making progress on it, right. We were kind of just waiting on the edge of our seats for a lot of last year before we got this kind of level of progress, right. So I think this bodes well.

Jack Kiraly: Well, and I'll just note there, I'm expressing a frustration that they're not moving fast enough. They're moving faster now than they did at the same point last year. We got the budget around the budget request from OMB around the same time as we got it this year and Congress is moving about two months ahead of schedule. It's still June. We didn't see the first budget proposal sort of counter proposal to the request until July of last year. And so for us to be able to say that it is early, mid-June, and we already have one proposal on the books and we're maybe days or weeks away from the other chamber submitting their proposal, that's huge all before July has even happened. We are then going to be at a point where we have both proposals and the PBR will officially be dead.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Fingers crossed.

Jack Kiraly: Fingers crossed.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. But this is just kind of on front in the fight to save NASA science right now because what's going on with the budget is one thing, but just in parallel, the Office of Management and Budget is trying to enact other ways to kind of control funding for science. And we did a show on this. This is actually the topic of last week's space policy edition, but I think this is an important enough topic that I want to bring this to the rest of our audience, which is that, the Office of Management and Budget is trying to change grant funding rules in the United States. And this is something that's not just going to be impacting space science but also medicine in general, all research in the United States that is given through grant funding. So for listeners who aren't caught up on Casey's whole show last week, can you give us kind of the general top headline of what OMB is trying to actually propose here?

Jack Kiraly: Yeah, this kind of came at a surprise and is like you said, the other side of the equation, right. It's not just funding, it's the policies and procedures that govern these things that matter. And what the OMB has proposed is a wholesale rewriting of how science is done. So let's take a step back. Science involves coming up with a hypothesis, developing a methodology to test that hypothesis, collecting data, determining whether or not the hypothesis holds up or not, right. Basics of science. Another basic tenet of science is peer review is that if you're going to publish something and say, "My hypothesis is that X will happen and here is the data to prove it and my methodology to prove it." You expect that a group of that scientists, peers, people who have a similar maybe understanding of the issue would review it and say, "Yeah, this actually does advance the body of scientific work, actually answers some fundamental question that the original scientist sought out to answer." That's how this is supposed to work.

This is how the allies won World War II, right, was that you had a federally backed fundamental science program and that's how we have super computers in our pockets. The result of that is commercial products, but also is just the society in which we live, right. It's the fundamentals of modern life, would not exist without peer reviewed meritorious science. In comes OMB. The proposed rule set, all 412 pages would rewrite federal regulations so that a political appointee, someone who is aligned with an administration, a political person, would have not just oversight. We're not talking about oversight here. We're talking about absolute control over whether or not certain science activities are funded.

Doesn't matter what the topic is, doesn't matter the discipline or the agency involved. Every single dollar that goes out the door from the federal government would have to be reviewed and approved so that it conforms to a set of political ideological principles, not the meritorious peer reviewed consensus-based science that has underpinned modern life. And the number of changes are astounding. Clearly Russ Vought or somebody at OMB had done their homework and figured out how science works so they can fundamentally change the rules. And so this isn't just a threat to space science or to NASA's priorities, but to all of science.

It is a complete reversal of how science has been done, how capital S science is done across the country. And some of the other changes, so in addition to a political appointee, grants can just be terminated for any reason for convenience, put quotes on that, "for convenience." So awards that are already out the door can be rescinded for scientists who are in the middle of doing work for those that aren't familiar with scientific process, you're working on timelines of like three or five years, sometimes longer, but typically when we're talking about science on kind of three to five year timescales. And so you hire some graduate students or some research assistants and they're kind of on these term bases that allow them to do their work and they have like some funding stability for that period of time. This throws that out the window. These rules would prevent scientists from without prior written approval.

So even before they get the grant, they have to get approval to possibly use the funds to submit their research that us, the taxpayers are paying for to scientific journals, which is where these conversations happen, right. Also conferences, right. So every scientific discipline, I mean, you talk about the mass spectrometers, people that deal with mass spectrometry. They just had a conference in San Diego. You'd think the scientists that do mass spectra have a science community. Every discipline has a science community and people that gather to talk about the latest developments in their very niche, nerdy scientific interest. You wouldn't be able to use federal money to go to those conferences to share the research that we, the taxpayers have paid people to do and then share the results of. And then also public outreach. And so you can't even use this to go to your local astronomy club or to your local community association and talk about the work that you're doing, maybe even in the community that you represent.

So you can go to our website, planetary.org/savenasascience. We have a couple resources there. There's actually a new dashboard on our site that allows you to go line by line through the federal register and see exactly where these changes would be made. And so this would totally rewrite how science is done and how science is then presented. So even if something gets funded, say it does "align with administration priorities," which again, that's not how science has ever been done. Science is guided by the greatest questions. I don't expect a political bureaucrat to understand the nuances of some scientific discipline. All of this information is buried under 412 pages of pretty out there partisan ideological content, text that this was "presented" to the public as. So you can actually go through and you can skip all that, go to our website planetary.org and then we have a dashboard right there that lets you go line-by-line and see what this would change.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. I've been trying to speak with friends and family about this and it's an interesting thing. It's one thing to say to someone, "Hey, there's a budget proposal that's literally cutting half of NASA science that feels very concrete." Here we're talking about procedural, nitty-gritty rule changes and it seems like an interesting tactic given that they already have this lever of power over having the presidential budget request and trying to dictate funding. And given what has happened over the last year with grant funding in the United States, I can't even begin to express to people what a massive change this would be for the scientific community, right. And because it's not the same as like the normal process for dealing with budgets in Congress, there's a different way that Congress can deal with a rule change like this. So what are kind of our tools for maybe fighting back against this?

Jack Kiraly: There's a couple pathways. So the first and foremost, this is not enacted. So maybe I should have said that upfront. This is not enacted rules. We are facing a proposal to change the rules in such a dramatic fashion. Because it is, they're going down this path of adding regulations to the federal register, they have to go through according to the Administration Procedure Act, have to go through a period of public comment. And so they have to have a minimum of 45 days, which is a very short amount of time I will say, for maybe something that's a handful of pages long, sure, 45 days, but 412-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: [inaudible 00:18:15] pages-

Jack Kiraly: ... pages of changes and you expect us to review all of that, the public to review that and share information about this over 45 days is a very quick period of time. But regardless, they have to have it open for 45 days for public comment. As of this morning, there are more than 10,000 comments on the federal register site and we have a tool at planetary.org/action that allows you to write a comment. And this is not reserved for people withstanding or who have a degree set, like, any person. This system is set up so that you, the individual, the member of the public can have a meaningful impact on how regulations are written and that's what this is.

This is a series of brand new regulations that kind of came out of nowhere and over the course of 45 days, I think they had anticipated it was going to largely fly under the radar. Radar, by the way, also an invention thanks to basic fundamental research and it's through that process. So through July 13th, unless there is an extension, there is a possibility of an extension. Through July 13th, the public can make comments. And the important part about this is it's not just you saying, "Hey, I don't like this. Rescind your proposed rule." Again, using some of the tools on our website, you can actually go in and if you cite specific source sections, specific sections of the regulation and say, "I don't like section 200, please don't do this. This would have these disastrous effects." If you do that, just that extra five minutes of work in writing your comment adds to the body of substantive complaints that then Congress and the courts can use to strike down this rule. So again, this is a huge change. It's sweeping.

We're working with other organizations who are identifying areas in which this affects their scientific disciplines that they care about. The more we can get this out there, the more we can point out where areas of these regulations will cause substantial harm to science and to the American economy, to jobs, to all of these things that we care about the better chance we have that Congress will come in and enact what they call a CRA, which is called the Congressional Review Act and Congress can actually come in and override a regulation.

Congress is the ultimate legislative body in the nation and can override regulations. Regulations are not laws, right. They're the application of law. And so Congress can come in and implement a CRA and say, "We don't approve of all of these changes." The courts equally, a co-equal branch of government can come in and say, "We see that this is going to cause demonstrable harm." In particular, what they're looking for is, how do these regulations hurt the agencies themselves 'cause Congress writes a lot of laws and says, "NASA thou shall return humans to the moon for a sustained presence." If we can draw that connection that these rule changes will demonstrably harm NASA's ability to pick the right landing sites to select the right samples, which I think it would, because it would put political reviewers over peer reviewers. You'd have landing site selection being done by political bureaucrats, not by scientists.

That causes demonstrable harm to the agency. And so for all of these reasons, planetary.org/savenasascience, we have all of our resources available there. It's the top thing that we're asking people to do. And so before July 13th, please submit your comments and then after July 13th, stay tuned for how this story plays out because as with the budget request last year, as with a lot of things that this OMB in particular is doing, it's one, not aligned with the policy priorities of the rest of the administration. I can't see how administrator Isaacman or anyone at NASA currently could support these proposals. So this is coming on from the OMB, from again, a very partisan standpoint that they're implementing these, not building coalition, not trying to socialize this and get this put into law, but just trying to get through as much as they can. But we also don't know where their red line is.

And this is, I think, an important element of it. It is flabbergasting looking at these proposed rules and I don't think anyone in their right mind would implement these rules as is. It just simply does not make sense. You don't need a graduate degree in the history of science to understand that peer review is very important. That is a very fundamental thing. So where is the red line that OMB is looking for? Same thing with the budget cuts. They don't want to cut NASA science by 46%, but they want to get somewhere between zero and 46%. Where is that number? And we can't let them succeed because if you give them mouse a cookie, they'll want a glass of milk.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I want a glass of milk.

Jack Kiraly: In the same way, we can't give Russ Vought any cuts to NASA science, any demonstrable changes to the way science is done because then they're only going to come back for more and we've beat Russ Vought before we've beat OMB before. I think we can do it again.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I want to pivot now. You mentioned a little bit earlier that NASA also recently announced that it's going to be going through potential reorganization. They announced this back in May. Can you talk a little bit about basically headline version, what kind of reorganization is NASA going to be going through?

Jack Kiraly: This is probably the largest reorganization of NASA really, I mean, at least in the last three decades. I mean, yeah, really since the beginning of the Dan Golden era of NASA. So top line version of this. So human exploration, human space flight broadly up until 2021, it was the Human Space Flight Mission Directorate as pretty self-explanatory name. Then they split it into deep space exploration systems, which is your Artemis space launch system, Orion ground system support, human landing system is your exploration systems mission directorate. And then you had Space Operations, which was the International Space Station crew and cargo. The proposed reorganization, I emphasized proposed reorganization, would have them merge back together really with the idea that, well, exploration, deep space exploration, meaning beyond low earth orbit, has become operational, which I think requires maybe a very loose definition of operational given that we've only had the Artemis two test flight, right.

And we're about to have the announcement of the crew for Artemis III. As of recording this, we don't know who that crew is, but you'd have human space flight merged back into one human space flight mission directorate. You would also see aeronautics, the first A in NASA and space technology merged into a new research and technology mission directorate. And now this is also a relic of the past. This under a very similar name existed prior to I believe 2008 where they had been merged together into one entity. And then you have a number of directives. Science overall stays the same, although there are some proposals to consolidate spacecraft operations into one like extended mission operations, things that are like well beyond their designed lifespan where you'd have this space operations center that the idea being that if you could centralize the management of missions and extended operations, which remember this is like paying people to monitor the spacecraft and send command functions when necessary and solve problems.

I mean, each mission is so distinct from one another, just by moving them all under one roof doesn't necessarily guarantee there's going to be cost savings. I guess maybe save on HVAC and the coffee pods, but that's one of the proposals. It would change some of the direction for the Office of Legislative Affairs at NASA. Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty wholesale reorganization. This is something that had sort of been thought was in the pipeline for the past year and a half and it's finally kind of come to fruition though it's gone through a number of different iterations as I'm aware.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Jack Kiraly after the short break.

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Sarah Al-Ahmed: I also understand that the mission directorates are now going to be reporting directly to the administrator instead of going to the deputy administrator and the assistants. There used to be a different structure of reporting and I'm wondering what is the driving force behind this proposed reorganization? Like, what are they trying to gain by making these changes?

Jack Kiraly: Well, I think there is a streamlining of the chain of command. Administrator Isaacman seems to be someone who cares a lot about being directly involved in day-to-day operations of the agency. That's a very demanding job to be NASA administrator. And so it involves the direct administrator into these procedures. And then within the mission directorates, within human space flight, you would have sort of these verticals of people working on Moon Base and people working on Artemis and people working on the space station. I think with the idea that if you just had everybody in house with this very, again, I think it's a very streamlined kind of corporate structure where you have these very clear divisions of labor between each of them. It does overwrite maybe some of the lessons learned in the past, maybe things that aren't necessarily written down, but there's a reason that NASA exists the way that it currently does.

But that's also not to say that that is the best way to go about it. And so I think every administration, new administrator, especially in their first few months, identifies some problems, especially things that maybe have been burrowed under the surface for a little while and you're like, "Why is this person reporting to that person? Why don't they report directly to me or report directly to a different associate administrator?"

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Should we be concerned that this reorganization would result in some kind of reduction in force or any kind of changes to the NASA facilities?

Jack Kiraly: Administrator Isaacman has been clear that these changes are not going to include a reduction of force, are not going to include layoffs or center closures. They've been very clear about that, which I know a lot of folks in the community are very happy to hear that. Of course, that needs to be backed up by action, but at least the words are there, because after the last year, I think that's the first thing everyone ... I remember about a year ago when there was the RIF plan, the reduction in force plan. Phase one was about to begin. No one knew what the plan was going to be, but it was maybe going to be upwards of 20% of the agency was going to be laid off over the course of just a few months. And of course then, people left under fear that their jobs were going to be terminated anyway and they took the DRP, the deferred resignation program. But so as of yet, there is no announcement of any reduction in force or closure of any centers.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: The very same day that they announced this potential NASA reorganization, they also announced something really interesting for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here in Pasadena. JPL traditionally has been run by Caltech since the 1930s, but for the first time ever, they're proposing that they should put that relationship up for competition. NASA's kind of reframing this as a routine stewardship and efficiency check, essentially, but do you think that's a fair characterization of what they're trying to do here?

Jack Kiraly: I think so, yes. So JPL has a very different relationship to NASA itself. It's FFRDC, Federally Funded Research and Development Center, much like things like the Aerospace Corporation. It's not a part of the government, but it is almost entirely federally funded. And so the taxpayer pays for it, but the administration of it, the overhead is handled by an outside organization. And so in this case, JPL has been managed by Caltech for almost 90 years. And routine is a very weird way to put it because it's never been fully done before.

There was an attempt I think in 2017 during the first year of the first Trump administration where they had put together a proposal to potentially recompete the JPL management contract and then they didn't go through with it. But other FFRDCs do go through this every so often. It depends on the term of, the length of the management contract. I think that the approach is benign and they want to see what proposals are out there, what other institutions might be willing to manage this location in Pasadena. The facilities would stay there. It's just the management, what name is on the paycheck type relationship.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Is this the kind of thing where they would be looking for another university or an academic institution to potentially take over management or would this be open to say the broader kind of private space organizations as well?

Jack Kiraly: It's a pretty broad open competition. So what NASA did in Industry Day, which is just parlance for, they invite a bunch of people from interested parties to come and learn about a potential opportunity that's coming down the pike. And so they held this industry day about a year ago and had people from private industry, had academic institutions, both public and private institutions, research institutions as well, not just academic ones, here in D.C. to learn about what it means to manage JPL. Like, what does the lab look like, which you'd think if you're applying to manage the lab, you've maybe been there before, but this is like one of those sort of open informational sessions. And from the response to that, NASA sees that there is at least some interest from the community, the broader space industry to potentially take on management of the lab.

In the same way, there's nothing written in stone that the NASA structure is the way it needs to be. There's also nothing written in stone that Caltech needs to be the one managing JPL, but at the same time, there's nothing written in stone that anybody that comes in to do it otherwise is just intrinsically going to have some secret sauce that's going to make it however much cheaper or more streamlined or more effective. And so I think it's going to then be up to the proposers for this proposal to make their case to NASA and to, I'm sure, congressional stakeholders as well that, "Hey, we are the right people to take this on." And so I do know that Caltech is one of the folks that are competing for it, right. Why wouldn't you?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right.

Jack Kiraly: But I'm sure there's other institutions out there across the country that see the prestige that Caltech gets from managing JPL. I mean, these are the people that landed on Mars. You don't think you want those people on your payroll? Like that certainly helps with institutional credibility.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Before I let you go, the last story I wanted to talk about was a rather explosive one. We've been seeing a lot of effort with commercial space trying to take on all these steps that we need to do, check all the boxes in order to do the next steps for the Artemis program. And as part of that, Blue Origin and for many reasons other than just Artemis, but they've been working on this new Glenn rocket for quite a while and their most recent test went horrifically wrong. And this has some potential big impacts on not just the Artemis program but other space companies as well. So I wanted to at least acknowledge what happened there.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. I saw the footage the night it happened. I was tuning in. I mean, it was a routine, I think it was a hot fire test and wet dress rehearsal at the same time. They were trying to, 'cause I think there is this push from both Congress and the administration to really put the gas on for the Artemis program and you had that massive fireball, the mushroom cloud that rose above Launch Complex 36. And my immediate reaction was that, "This ... Well, one, this can't be good. That's not supposed to happen." But no, I mean, it's that this is a huge setback for the Artemis program. Blue Origin is one of the main partners on Artemis. And so I think this is a pretty big setback. After SpaceX had their less than successful test, flight test 12 of the Starship vehicle, where the booster reentered off nominal and into the Gulf of Mexico and space is absolutely hard.

And this underscores the bet that NASA has been placing for years, investing in these commercial companies, which not to mention that both SpaceX and Blue Origin are owned by two of the wealthiest people in the world who are certainly putting up their own funds to make sure that this is possible. But NASA has put a stake in these companies to potentially buy down costs later on for future Artemis missions. And so I think it's a very optimistic timeline to see Blue Origin launching by the end of this year. More intense things have happened, more difficult things have been accomplished in less time for sure, but that is a very ambitious timeline, especially as we're on the eve of the Artemis III crew being announced, I guess the day after if you're listening to this, but you have the Artemis III crew, the solid rocket boosters are being integrated down at KSC.

I think the last few built by Northrop Grumman are leaving their facility in Utah. I mean, we're going back to the moon and I think the enthusiasm is really high and there's plans, the Moon Base plans that are starting to materialize at least the kind of fabric that we're going to be pulling from for these plans. But something like this, like, the disaster that happened there, I mean, really one, it's a reminder that space is a very difficult endeavor, that there's a reason governments do this and why government, the US taxpayer is underwriting a lot of this, but also just goes to show, like, this is the new approach, right, is that commercial companies are going to be able to provide these services. You look at SpaceX and the Falcon 9. But the US put a lot of money into the Falcon 9 very early on in its development to make sure that that was a success so that we had domestic access to space. And that's, again, all underwritten by us the taxpayer.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'm just so grateful that no one was hurt. I mean, that was like the definition of rapid unscheduled disassembly. That blast was so huge. It just obliterated their launchpad. The fact that no one was hurt is just almost miraculous at this point.

Jack Kiraly: Well, it's why you have the regulations in place, the safety rules for doing those things, those things are important, but yeah, I'm with you on that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. But unfortunately we need Blue Origin to hopefully be on a good timeline for this because it was only just a couple of months ago we were talking about this ignition event announced by NASA and the speed-up of the timeline for going back to the moon and this change in Artemis III, which is now essentially like an earth orbiting mission that's specifically designed to test these human landing systems. So if SpaceX is on target but Blue Origin isn't, that could potentially derail the entire timeline, which I think was actually something that we talked about when we first announced that Ignition Day event. Like, what happens if ... Well, here's the moment it exploded.

Jack Kiraly: Right.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How is that going to change everything that comes after?

Jack Kiraly: Right. So you have the notional plan for Artemis III being the astronauts, whomever they be, will dock using an Orion crew capsule, right, the vehicle that they're going to take to the moon and they're going to dock in earth orbit with one or both of the human landing system providers. That's SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. And if neither of those vehicles are ready, that's the forcing function for the Artemis III mission architecture, right. If neither of those are ready, I think it's something that NASA will have to address upfront because yeah, that is a huge setback. And again, SpaceX has not been accelerating their timeline. It was six months between test flights and they need to get to a point where they can do orbital flights on a daily cadence to get enough fuel to low earth orbit to do the trans-lunar injection burn and get to cislunar space and land the astronauts on the lunar surface.

And that doesn't just happen overnight where you go from a launch every six months to a launch every day. That needs a ramped up schedule as well. NASA's putting a lot of stock into the commercial providers and that was the bet they made with commercial crew and that's what we got SpaceX out of. But the whole architecture hinges on these handful of providers being ready and as it stands, it's a very tenuous timeline. I mean, we're supposed to be doing Artemis III in mid 2027. I don't think I'd be the first person saying that that's probably not going to be the actual timeline.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: A little ambitious.

Jack Kiraly: Maybe a little later in 2027 with then accrued landing in early 2028, which I think then also the more that this slips to the right. But also let's remember where we were just a few months ago, where Artemis III, the first human landing was supposed to happen maybe in 2028 anyway. And so we've accelerated the timeline only for maybe the timeline, the reality to set in a little bit. And so we're finding, I think there is a resting place for these timelines and there's just been so much change over such a short period of time and it is impressive to see how much that even an incident like this that should have been a massive setback for a company has I think really emboldened at least the company's leadership and I know their workforce as well to solve the problems.

And so I think that mindset change is also I think a significant thing is like they realized that there were problems and they're like, "We have to fix them now." It's just, can they do it at this timeline at the cost? I mean, again, these are fixed price contracts. You hear a lot of people talk about firm fixed price contracting as like the preferred mechanism so that you don't get rampant cost growth as you get with the space launch system, but there's a downside to that where there is only so much money allocated to this contract. And if they need more money to rebuild the pad or to do anything related to getting the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander ready for prime time, that might require supplemental appropriations from Congress, which I know is not ideal and there's only a handful of session weeks left before the midterm elections.

Then Congress is going to change over. So the timing of this is also kind of fraught. So there's just all these factors that I'm keeping in mind when I'm thinking about these things. Oh, and something I did also want to note was that it wasn't even just that the ignition event, Blue Origin won two contracts, two delivery contracts to deliver the lunar traverse vehicle or the two Astrolabs and Lunar Outpost's lunar traverse vehicles to the lunar surface just earlier that week that the incident happened. And so Blue Origin has been accelerating both their crude and uncrude manifests in support of the Artemis program, but then the sort of larger effort to build a permanent or sustained human presence with the Moon Base.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Man, a lot to pay attention to and keep track of these days. Things are moving so rapidly, but I mean, that's a double-edged sword. It is both a little scary and weird and also a bit exciting to see so much changing and having no idea how it's all going to pan out. So I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and unpack a lot of these because honestly, each and every one of these topics could be a whole episode on its own, so ...

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. And it's been one thing after another. And so again, I joked when it rains, it pours. I mean, it really is been probably the most ... There have been the most new initiatives out of NASA at least in the past two years. And that's of course acknowledging that the last year NASA was under interim leadership really since January 20th when Administrator Nelson resigned and when the new administration was sworn in and then December 18th of last year when Administrator Isaacman was sworn in, right. That's a whole year that was lost of, I think, pretty substantive policy that could have been formed. And of course, the budget cuts were being proposed. And so there really wasn't much wiggle room in there either as to what NASA could have done because OMB was really running the show. So yeah, I mean, it's been a very, very interesting few weeks.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And I'm sure we'll get even more interesting with all the announcements coming out in the next few days.

Jack Kiraly: Oh, exactly. Exactly.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, thank you, Jack. And again, thank you for all the work that you and the people in Washington, D.C. are doing right now, both on our Save NASA Science Campaign, but also on this broader effort to try to combat these rule changes at OMB. I think this is not just absolutely pivotal for the space science community, but for the science community in the United States in general, this is such a big moment. So thank you for all your time and for everybody out there who's helping in this effort to go to our website and find resources to help put your name on this and say what you feel about it. So I really appreciate it.

Jack Kiraly: I appreciate you. And just remind everybody, July 13th is the deadline for comments. Get them in. Even if you don't feel like you have a stake in this, you do. You are a US taxpayer. You are a beneficiary of our investment in science overall, right. This isn't about any one discipline or another, but please share your story. All of that goes to a body of meaningful comments that really can show that science has a lot of allies right now as it has needed for the past year. And so planetary.org/savenasascience, you'll find all the resources there.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks so much, Jack. Let's do this.

Jack Kiraly: All right. Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: As Jack mentioned, the Artemis III crew announcement was literally just around the corner when we recorded that interview, but through the magic of media, the wait is finally over. On June 9th, NASA held a press conference with updates on Artemis III, including the announcement of the Artemis III astronauts. I'm going to post the link to the entire video on the webpage for this episode of Planetary Radio, but next up in What's Up with our chief scientist, Dr. Bruce Betts, we're going to be revealing their names. Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hey, there, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There are so many stories going on in space policy right now. And so, you know, Jack kept referencing the fact that we weren't going to be able to announce the astronauts at some point during that conversation. And I'm glad that we actually have the time to do that now, even though it's past the conversation with Jack, because we need a little happy something after all of that. I mean, man.

Bruce Betts: So let's get into it. Where do you want to go? Where are we going today?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, we now officially have some Artemis III astronauts. And while Artemis III is no longer going to be the first mission to go back to the moon and land, we actually have a whole new group of astronauts. We can be excited to see them go on their next adventure, although it's going to be a low earth orbit test of the human landing systems and things like that. But they just announced it this morning. And I got to say that NASA press conference felt different. It was very musical. It felt kind of like the Oscars, like them coming out on stage and doing their little waves. It was pretty cool. Well, I'm going to give the honors to you.

Bruce Betts: Oh, thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Who do we have on the roster?

Bruce Betts: I'm going to start big. We have Randy Komrade Bresnik.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Bresnik.

Bruce Betts: Yes, his nickname is Komrade. He will be the commander. He is a two-time astronaut, former space station commander, retired US Marine Corps Colonel test pilot with over 7,000 flight hours. He likes walks in the rain and smelling flowers along the way. I made up that part. Sorry. We move on to Luca Parmitano, a ESA astronaut, European Space Agency. He will be the pilot. He's a two-time astronaut in space and the first Italian space station commander and Italian Air Force Colonel and not surprisingly, test pilot. We then move on to our two mission specialists, Andre Douglas, test engineer, US Coast Guard Reserve Commander. It's his first space flight. He was actually a backup crew member from Artemis II. And then finally, Frank Rubio, mission specialist. He was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot. I mean, he didn't do much. He was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, including combat hours. Oh, and then he became a doctor, a US Army flight surgeon, family medical physician and he holds the record for the longest American space flight at 371 days.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Man, that's an impressive group of people, man.

Bruce Betts: They usually are. For the backup crew who is Bob Hines, test pilot, US Air Force Colonel, former SpaceX crew-4 pilot, has spent 170 days in space across two ISS expeditions. And there you have it. The people will fly in space and do good stuff. Those are our astronauts. Round of applause [inaudible 00:51:25].

Sarah Al-Ahmed: No, that was also really fun about that press conference, watching everyone, like, the crowd goes wild. And then all these astronauts from across both the previous Artemis mission, but also just across ESA and the United States. Also still some people that are representing the Japanese Space Agency. So that was cool and a good moment to celebrate everyone. And I hope they make a new astronaut poster.

Bruce Betts: I think you can assume they will.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I hope so. I still need to get a good print of that Artemis two poster. It's awesome.

Bruce Betts: I'm not even sure which one you're referring to, but I'm sure you will inform me after the show in great detail. We'll get you one. We'll get you one, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. No, I got to celebrate this new round of astronauts. I mean, I'm still really excited. I need a little something to look up at the moon and feel hope for the future 'cause we're going to do this, Bruce. Keep fighting for space science.

Bruce Betts: Oh yeah, let's do it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Let's do it.

Bruce Betts: Crowd goes wild.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Crowd goes wild. Woo.

Bruce Betts: And what is the crowd chanting? Random space flight. Random space flight.

The International Space Station, which we've just been talking about oddly enough, it's about the size of a football field. Now that's mostly measured in the solar panels for power generation, but it's still, it's a pretty big beast and it's also obviously got to unlike football field, say third dimension. I mean, technically they have a third dimension, but not. Anyway, there you go. Pretty exciting. It's big and it flies in space, but still it amazes me how bright it is even if you put that much stuff up there and you put it 400 kilometers away-ish. It's bright. It's like Venus bright going across sky.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It is.

Bruce Betts: And if you haven't checked it out, go find NASA or others will tell you when to look in your area for ISS when it passes over and lest we forget, there are plenty of astronauts and cosmonauts hanging out on there. They just had a little fun diving into the Orion Capsule, the Americans anyway, when they were ... Yeah, they've got some leaks in the Russian side and I don't know why, but for some reason that worries them.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I don't know why.

Bruce Betts: They've had them for a long time.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, and they're hard to find. And I heard a really interesting trick that some of previous astronauts used, where they'd put just a little tea leaf into the air and watch where it moved-

Bruce Betts: Oh, neat.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: ... to try to figure out where the leaks were. Usually you don't want to be throwing stuff willy-nilly into the air on the International Space Station, but sometimes-

Bruce Betts: So it's the first time anyone, to my knowledge, has read tea leaves and they actually told them something real. All right, everybody. Go out there and look them the night sky and think about happy balloons and stuff, mostly stuff, but a lot of balloons. Thank you and goodnight.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with more Space Science and Exploration. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at planetary.org/shop along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place and space through Planetary Radio. And right now we could use every voice behind us as we work to support Space Science. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email, [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, you can leave a comment in the Planetary Radio Space in our online member community. Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California as made possible by our members.

You can join us as we stand up for [email protected]/join. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreier is the host of our Monthly Space Policy Edition and Mat Kaplan hosts our monthly book club edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmed, the host and producer of Planetary Radio. And until next week, ad astra.