Space Policy Edition: Change for the Sake of Disruption at NASA

Casey Dreier: Hello and welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreier, the chief of space policy here at The Planetary Society. Welcoming you to another show that looks at the policies and processes behind space exploration. This month, I welcome back Marcia Smith for the third or fourth time, I'm not sure, probably the most recurring guest on this show. Founder and editor of Space Policy Online, to talk about something we talked about a year ago. The challenges of change at NASA and given everything that's happened in the year of 2025, whether we need to reevaluate and reassess what some of our models and ideas were, about what can and can't change and how things can and can't advance with or without Congress.

It was an opportunity for us to revisit claims and beliefs and discussions we had made a year ago before this wild year of space policy. And it's also an opportunity to see what didn't change, despite the rhetoric. And I'd say some of the biggest things generally did not in some ways. It's a fascinating discussion. I hope you stick around for that.

And at the end of the day, I think we can summarize this as maybe not so much change as disruption. And what are the challenges of disruption at NASA and what are we going to look for here in 2026 that will tell us whether we're in for more disruption or maybe some actual change? Before we get to that, I'd be remiss if I did not mention that The Planetary Society, my organization that puts on this show is an independent, nonprofit membership based organization. Anyone, anyone in the world can be a member of The Planetary Society. Memberships cost just four bucks a month to start, and it keeps us independent. It keeps us producing content like this. Great outreach, funding our scientific and investigation and technology development projects.

And I would say without too much objectivity here, but strong belief, funds our advocacy outreach and policy program, something that I think really stepped up and presented a sophisticated, effective, and relentless effort to support space science and exploration this year at NASA during this period of immense disruption. And we have a lot to show for it. I recommend anyone to check out our 2025 Impact Report available at planetary.org or follow my newsletter at the Space Advocate. Just search for it.

But what I'd really love you to do, if you're inspired and if you aren't already, is to join us as a member of The Planetary Society at planetary.org/join. Again, memberships start at just four bucks a month, planetary.org/join, I hope you'll consider it. Thank you for all of you who are already members who enable us to do this work.

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And now, Marcia Smith, founder and editor of Space Policy Online, joins us to examine the challenges of change and disruption at NASA, what we got wrong, what we got right, and what we still don't know, still quite a bit. She joins me now. Marcia Smith, thank you for joining me again on the Space Policy Edition. I'm delighted to have you back.

Marcia Smith: Oh, thanks so much for inviting me. It's always fun.

Casey Dreier: Marcia, what made me think of talking to you again was almost exactly a year ago, I published a discussion between the two of us. I titled it The Challenges of Change at NASA. This wasn't on you. Right before the incoming administration took over in early January of 2025. I think anyone who listens to this show knows that 2025 has been, let's say, an abnormal year for change or disruption or anything in terms of space policy, particularly at NASA.

And I thought it'd be really interesting to revisit our assumptions that we had in the start of this year, look back on what's happened and see what has happened and what hasn't, what may be permanent and what isn't, and what may be in store for us. So it's an opportunity for us to see how strong our hypotheses and models of the world are.

Marcia Smith: Oh, dear.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, exactly. So I'll open this way. Did NASA change in 2025?

Marcia Smith: I wish I had an easy answer to that. There certainly was a lot of disruption, but it really wasn't NASA centered. It was government wide and we're still seeing changes and we're still seeing fallout from it. And we only just now finally got a NASA administrator. And I think until he really settles in and starts looking at what he thinks needs to be done, I don't think we're going to know how much change, other than the fact that so many people have left. And to me, that is the real wild card because 4,000 people have walked out the door and the ones that I know personally are like really top-notch. Good news, a lot of really top-notch people are still there, but I think that if they still have a big bucket list of things to do, I'm a little concerned as to whether or not the right people are still there to do it.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I mean, I think you make a good distinction between change and disruption, which are related, but one seems strategic and one just seems chaotic. And I think we got a lot of chaotic disruption at the space agency. As you point out, the workforce thing is a shock. In the history, and I ran the numbers, losing 20% of the agency's workforce in a single year has just never happened. Maybe the closest parallel could be in the years after Apollo or the 1990s during Dan Goldin's tenure, NASA lost 20%, but that was over to five years. This was over multiple years, never in a single year.

And from your position the departures and the loss of workforce, was there any strategy that you saw behind it? And we'll just say we don't know the exact distribution of who left, but it seemed like they just pretty much let anyone walk out the door.

Marcia Smith: Yeah. The strategy was to reduce the federal workforce. That's all it was, and they succeeded.

Casey Dreier: Right.

Marcia Smith: They met their goal of reducing the workforce, but as you're saying, it was not a strategic thing. They didn't decide that certain people should leave and others should stay. And of course, in agencies like NOAA and the weather service and everything, they had to bring a lot of people back. It happened at NIH as well, where they shove people out the door and then suddenly realize, "Oops, we actually need those people." And then they had to try and bring them back. And that's really hard to do because you just destroy morale and you destroy trust.

So I don't think that there was a good strategy behind how to deal with reducing the federal workforce. And we are where we are today and how much it changes over the next year, two years, three years, we're all just going to have to wait and see.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I mean, there's also untold numbers of long-term contractors who've been let go that just aren't reported anywhere publicly that we haven't been able to count. I think there's probably a good case one could ... Here's what I would predict. Again, we don't have the actual numbers of departure. That the people who left probably could either retire or they felt like they had options or any number of reasons, but it seemed from leaked data that most of those departures were people in the technical and skilled part of the agency and less so in the administrative managerial support staff part. At least at the time, I think the political article covered this back in the summer.

And if that stayed to be the case, then I'd say there's a good chance that the actual ratio of administrative overhead staff to actual skilled experts has actually gotten worse as a result of this, rather than better, which I think was the nominal argument behind it. But I think you're right. It was just about reducing headcount over anything else.

Marcia Smith: Yes. As you said, it was not a strategic decision for NASA example, how to reduce it so that NASA can do its job better. It was just to get the numbers down. And they came out with the numbers and they said, "We want you to meet this target." How you got there, that's up to you. We are in a very strange situation, and you're right that you can draw some parallels to the post Apollo timeframe, when there was a big exodus and what was going on then. And I would say that period of time was probably a little worse because there really wasn't a forward plan other than doing shuttle.

And at least now they talk about the forward plan, but I still want to see some of the details of that plan. Isaacman is talking about establishing permanent presence on the Moon and everything, but I haven't seen anybody lay out what that means now. We knew what it meant prior to the second Trump administration, at least NASA had an idea for where they were going and they had a certain number of Artemis flights laid out, but we really don't have anything after Artemis III at this point.

Ted Cruz put in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was to continue with a couple of our Artemis flights and we'll see if that actually happens. It's in law, one would hope that it happens, but there's still all the time period after that. We know that they want to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon, but when anybody's going to be there to actually operate it, I think is still up in the air.

Casey Dreier: There's so much to follow-up with that, but I think jumping back to your analogy, or talking about the post-Apollo era. I mean, you lost a lot of skilled technical expertise at NASA, after the end of Apollo, but there was also just a diminishment of ambition at the same time. I mean, you were moving towards ... I mean, shuttle is the first reusable spacecraft, but low Earth orbit only, you were no longer Moon bases, going to Mars. This whole post-expansive era of grand space exploration was curtailed by the Nixon administration.

So you were losing workers and civil servants, as you were reducing your ambition, but this is the opposite. They're losing 20% of their staff as they're trying to do some of the most hard and difficult projects in space flight, which is send people back to the Moon and maybe further beyond. So it's just directionality.

Marcia Smith: I think there is more capability in the private sector now than there was post-Apollo. So there is a private industry that's trying to do some of this stuff, but I do think that people are losing the connection between the government and the private sector, and they somehow think the private sector miraculously is going to do this all on its own without anything from the government. And I think we talked about this last year, that the government does a lot of technology development. It has a lot of money. I don't think a lot of people, maybe a couple, but not many, want NASA to just be a pass through of money from the government to the private sector. It really is a partnership.

And I think people lose track of that. They just think, "Oh, well. Just turn it over to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and be done with it." And it's not that easy.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Well, particularly if you are like me, a fan of the science aspect of NASA, which has very little commercial payoff. I mean, we did talk about that quite a bit, and that was one of the areas that you identified last year was the fragility of the private sector and the ability of the commercial sector to deliver on some of these things. And that was actually ... You identified Starship, as it's making progress. I'm quoting here, but it's not ready yet. And is it going to be ready by '26 or '27? How quaint of Starship being ready by 27? That was followed up by almost immediately two weeks later we had the first explosion of one of the test launches followed by two subsequent ones. Have they publicly acknowledged it? It's reported as ... SpaceX is saying late '28 as the earliest possible time for a human landing on Starship.

You are seeing CLPS be mixed successful at best. You've had Firefly Blue Ghost have its successful landing, but not really. Maybe at best a partial success elsewhere. That's still, I'd say out ... The verdict is still out on CLPS. We talked about Axiom providing the space suits for Artemis, which ... They have not gone out of business yet, but their finances certainly don't seem any better. So we still seem to be running headlong into this commercial dependency with still, I'd say, an uncertainty of the strength of that market.

Marcia Smith: And the commercial space stations.

Casey Dreier: Those. Right. Yeah.

Marcia Smith: So the government wants the private sector to do it and the private sector wants the government to give them money to do it, but the government, at least from the executive branch side, wants to reduce federal spending. So there's really a clash there between what people want to do. Isaacman put out this interesting tweet the other day., where he was listing all the things that NASA's going to do and it's like, "Yeah. Well, let's do it." And then you think, "How much is that going to cost and where's the money going to come from?" So I do see a real disconnect between the aspirations and the connection that people are not drawing between the private sector and the government because they really do have to work in partnership. Where are we going? I don't have an answer. I don't.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. As you said, it's a complicated response. Going back to our original thoughts at the start of this administration or before they took power, we talked about ... You brought up this very good perspective on, who wants change and what change do they want? How would you now, looking back on this last year, how would you answer your own question for that in terms of NASA? Who wanted change and what type of change did you see trying to be imposed or inadvertently imposed?

Marcia Smith: Well, I think the change that the administration wanted was just change for the sake of change and they wanted disruption and then they talked about shock and awe and they certainly succeeded in that. So I think that was just change for the sake of change and it wasn't aimed at NASA in particular. I think that Janet Petro did a really good job of protecting NASA during all that early chaos. And the rifts at NASA headquarters were really limited and it's a shame. There were some really good people who left and offices that were closed. Like the office of the chief scientists and OTPS and everything.

It's not like it was not affected, but compared to agencies like NOAA and NSF and NIH and these other science agencies, NASA really did pretty well. So I'm not sure that there was much desire for change at NASA targeted from the Trump administration in this first year. The big change, of course, that Trump wanted when he made his inaugural address about going to Mars, seems to have faded a little bit. I think people have become educated as to what exactly is involved in sending human beings to Mars. And they said, "Well, maybe we're not quite ready for that." If someone in the private sector wants to do it, well, we'll face that when we get there, but I don't think that that's going to be NASA's immediate focus.

They clearly are back to the Moon and getting to the Moon. And the drumbeat to beat China is what really has ramped up. And maybe if there's any change in human space flight at NASA, it's the desire or the impetus to get back to the Moon before China. I read an awful lot of stories by an awful lot of smart people saying that the chances of us doing that are not looking so good right now. That's because they're looking at what we're doing. People are following what China's doing, but China is not the most transparent country, so I'm not sure they're going to get there by 2030 either.

Casey Dreier: They may all underestimate the difficulty of landing humans on the Moon. You bring up really some several good points there. I'd say maybe Russ Vought and maybe he had it out for NASA a little bit, maybe it just wasn't his primary issue. At least NASA Science, I think that was clearly targeted when we saw that was ... He had written that in his own documentation years before he became director of OMB again. But you're right, it didn't have the same level of, I'd say, ferocity that NIH and NSF received.

And I wonder if that's because ... In terms of the juice they could squeeze from that, in terms of their base or culture or politics, it seemed like much more fertile territory for various aspects of NSF or NIH research given their political coalition. And the space program doesn't have that same kind of a partisan meat to it, it seems like. You can try to cancel NASA Science, but is that going to be ... Do you win many points for that in your broader political culture war that they see themselves fighting in? And I wonder if that's actually helped NASA quite a bit as well, this plan of being abstracted out from this more immediate parochial, not parochial, but philosophical or political concerns.

Marcia Smith: NASA Science was certainly targeted in the budget request, but it wasn't targeted with the rifts that you saw in the other agencies. So I do see it as being really different for NASA. So I think NASA has fared ... I mean, overall it's been incredible chaos and disruption and everything, but I think NASA has been hanging in there pretty well and you have to give some of that credit to Janet Petro and Sean Duffy, and now they've got an actual Senate confirmed administrator in there.

I think one of the most hopeful things I've heard lately was when he did his town hall meeting and he said, "Well, I've met with the president four or five times when I was getting renominated and I met with him a couple times since." And so having a direct line to the president is really helpful, especially when you're fighting budget battles. So I think that when you have an administrator who has that close relationship with the guy at the top, even if you have Russell Vought, right next to the president who wants to cut budgets. At least you have someone. And Isaacman said that he found Trump to be a real enthusiast. So whether that's an enthusiast across the board for everything that NASA is doing or just for the human space flight part. He wasn't that specific about it. That was a little bit of good news against the backdrop of everything that NASA has been through this year.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. And I think that's an important ... Again, going back to your framing of who wants change and what type of change you would see, to reiterate what you said at the beginning. This idea that a lot of change was just broad ... Whatever they were doing broadly in government and NASA could have been a lot worse. Again, I'm trying to figure out why they ... Certainly Vought targeted NASA Science, is he going after it the same ferocity that he's going after various NSF activities or climate research that we've seen? I don't think we've seen that, despite that still being the proposal.

So having a defender of NASA internally that can pull sway within administration, I agree could be very helpful, particularly in this administration and the ability to protect the agency or at least take it out of ... Seeming to offer some short-term political win by going after a various aspect of it, I think is also really helpful and important.

I want to go back to this idea of the humans to Mars, because that was a part of change that we talked about last year as well. And you had identified that, saying there's the discussion, is it time to ... Will they reevaluate again the direction of the Human Space Flight Program and reorient it to Mars? This is back in the heavy days of Elon Musk as the president's what, first buddy, is that what he called himself? This tight bond relationship that flamed out relatively spectacularly a few months later, six months later.

I think that's actually been an understated and really remarkable shift in policy, at least how it was presented. And I think a lot of this goes to the coalitional aspect of the Trump coalition, which is a strange mishmash of various political philosophies that sometimes may be vying for influence and power within it. If you look at the '26 budget request, I find that to be a very pro ... I mean, you talked about ... What happens after Artemis III, according to that budget, it's time to go to Mars for humans and you have-

Marcia Smith: Or at least get ready to. I mean, they only put a billion in it. For Mars, that's not very much.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. But after ending ... They would end SLS, they would've ended Gateway right away. After Artemis III, all that money shifts towards commercial procurement for human and Moon, Mars. Mars is always just a huge part of it. And then we had though capped off at the end of the year, just a few weeks ago, the executive order of clarifying space policy. Mars was now definitely pushed down the stack of priorities to say, almost like Obama era, journey tomorrow. Let's prepare for some thinking about, eventually on to Mars, but first the Moon.

I mean, as you point out in the president's State of the Union or first State of the Union, this call to put the Stars and Stripes on Mars, that is not anywhere near reality anymore or even talked about. So you've had this shift, I think exemplified in that budget request. The people who wrote that budget request have functionally all left NASA and now you have the incoming leadership saying, "And now through executive order. Actually, no, we've been serious about Artemis this whole time because we have to beat China back." And that's, I think, a rather remarkable yo-yoing of priorities within human spaceflight, even if the actual programmatic level didn't change dramatically during that period.

Marcia Smith: And it's actually interesting you talk about Artemis, I'm not clear what Artemis is. Is Artemis the plan where you have one SLS launch a year for 10 years and then you focus on Mars? Is Artemis Moon and Mars? Is Artemis SLS? And if you go with the private sector, it's not Artemis anymore. I felt that I used to know what Artemis was, and I'm not quite as certain of that anymore. And Isaacman has said this very recently, that we're going back to the Moon and we're going to have a permanent presence there and all that.

As I said before, I haven't seen the plan. Are we going once to ... I hate to say it because this is so 1960s to plant the flag, to say we beat China and then there's like 10 years before we go again. And the only thing we send there is the nuclear reactor because we said we'd get that there by 2030. I don't think you need people to deposit it on the lunar surface. And I'm still not sure that gains you very much. There seems to be this feeling that whoever puts the first nuclear reactor there is going to be setting the rules for all the future nuclear actors that go on the Moon. I'm really not sure that's the way it's going to work out, even if there is language in the Outer Space Treaty that suggests that whoever's first is tops.

But anyway, I'm very unclear as to what Artemis is and to what the plan is to implement what Isaacman says we're going to do. And I would like to see that. And maybe we'll see that in the next budget request. I don't know. We still have to get over this budget, which is still up in the air and there's all this talk now again of another shutdown come January 30th. January 30th is just around the corner and Congress is not going to be in session a whole lot in January. I think it's 12 days for the House and 15 days for the Senate, and the House isn't even going to be in session that last week of January.

I'm not sure anybody really wants to have another shutdown. That last one was pretty bad, but you hear people talk about it. There was progress in the Senate. There was bipartisan agreement on a new set of these bills, called the minibus. Five of them are going to be in there, including the one for NASA. And then suddenly Russ Vought said, "Well, we're going to close down the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado." And so they lost a lot of Democratic support.

So as we begin the second session of the 119th Congress, things are still very much up in the air with the budget. Nevermind what might be in the next budget request. We need to get through this budget and figure out how much money NASA is actually going to have and all the other agencies. So they've been told to work to what the House Appropriations Committee recommended, which is pretty good for NASA. Compared to the budget request, it's really great but whether that's going to persist through the end of the fiscal year or not is up in the air.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Would you say that's something that surprised you in this last year, the various shutdowns, continuing resolutions, inability of appropriations to move forward or the degree to which that was the case?

Marcia Smith: Well, we've seen this show before, of course, but it's unusual for the Democrats to be the ones causing the shutdown. I think a lot of people were questioning why they stopped it when they really didn't know what they wanted for healthcare. So that's still a little bit of a mystery to me, but it had to end. I really think it had to end and I don't think people are ready for another one.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. At the risk of having to revisit this a year from now, I'd say I'm fully expecting at least a temporary shutdown, I guess. I'd love to be wrong. I'll say I want to be wrong on this one, but I just see that. As you point out, the time is against them increasing divisions around almost seemingly ... I don't know, I can't call it intentional because I don't know, but oddly timed effort to go after that program to create division, I'd say within this approach to funding at least parts of government, but we could just end up with a CR and that might just be the default and they'll have it over with. At which point then we wouldn't have appropriations for two years if that happens.

Marcia Smith: Right. And that would actually work to NASA's benefit if they get to use the House number as opposed to the request because the request was so dire. So it could work out for NASA, but it's not good for the country to keep going on CRs, year long CRs.

Casey Dreier: Last year we also talked about the idea of executive orders and we were responding at the time to reports that Goddard and maybe several other NASA centers were being considered for being closed down. Talking about some BRAC-like process. And you said in the show that you can have executive orders, presidents can do things by themselves, but they can get challenged. I said, "Maybe I'm not thinking broadly enough but I don't think a president could close a NASA center just by an executive order." Is that what's happening right now with Goddard?

Marcia Smith: Well, he hasn't issued an executive order.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, an executive order, but yeah, through an administrative process almost. I think is maybe expanding. Or maybe another way to phrase this, are you reevaluating yourself the power of a presidential administration to act without the support of Congress? Or do you think that question is still not able to be answered yet given the lack of appropriations?

Marcia Smith: I think the biggest surprise to me this entire year has been Congress's willingness to give their power to the executive branch. I really never would have guessed that after all my years here in Washington because Congress usually jealously guards its power under the Constitution to do things like appropriate money and their willingness to do whatever it is that the president wants is a big surprise to me.

I hear that Congress is going to start pushing back, but time will tell. And what's interesting in the House, of course, is that the margin is so slim and you only need one or two people to leave or one or two people to join to change the dynamics. And so they are about to have Marjorie Taylor Greene leave. So there's one fewer Republicans and they're about to have two Democrats coming up from elections, from people who passed away last year. And so there'll be two more Democrats and one fewer Republican.

So the closeness is just getting more intense and there are just a handful and you only need a handful of Republicans who are pushing back against Mike Johnson and Mike Johnson's willingness to do whatever the president tells them to do. So I think that this coming year is going to be even more strained and stressful in the House. And as little as they were able to get done in 2025, it may look like they got a lot done compared to what they do in 2026, and it's an election year. So they're not going to be in session as much because everybody wants to be home. Well, everybody who's running for reelection wants to be home to be with their constituents and build support. Election years are always tough to get anything done in Congress, and this year especially so.

Casey Dreier: And I wonder almost sometimes the closeness of the party control for the House almost makes it more likely that they can get full support because the consequences for defecting in one direction or another are so consequential, that it's almost easier to hold everybody together. I don't know if that's a fully formed idea, but it does seem ... I've been surprised also by, I'd say the congressional overall activity and certainly share your perspective on giving up power to the executive.

But another aspect I'd note though is the ... I think I was surprised this last year about the consequences of the gap in speed between the legislative response to what the executive can do if they want to very quickly. And so that mismatch, so you can have executive orders or just internal administrative decisions that end up pushing people out of jobs or consolidating. Buildings, functionally closing down parts of NASA agencies, fundamentally changing the aspect of peer review for grants, canceling contracts.

And maybe you get some of those back, maybe some people are forced to come back after going to a judge, or maybe there's a law that's passed eventually that restores some support or funding for them. But you're talking months, maybe years in some of those cases before the legislative acts, particularly now. And in that space, in that differential, you see a real advantage to a very aggressive interpretation of administrative power, executive branch power. And even if it gets rolled back, they've still created quite a bit of disruption in that meantime.

Marcia Smith: Exactly. I mean, Trump has taken executive orders to a new level. As you said, if people disagree with the executive order, they can take him to court or Congress can try to pass legislation, but Congress hasn't been able to pass a whole lot, at all. And the court system just takes time. It does work. I still think our court system is in relatively good shape, but it just takes time to go through the process and somebody wins and then it's appealed and then it's appealed again and appealed again. It takes forever.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. And so in that meantime you can ... The buyouts, like the DOGE actions at the beginning of the year and the buyouts that ultimately resulted in 20% of the NASA workforce leaving. Those were never really formally endorsed by Congress. They were just not countermanded in any of the things that they have done. So that was all through executive administrative decisions. And so that's what I mean. It's like maybe they could change it. We have a different party in control of the House next year. They could pass the legislation forbidding that, but it won't matter because everyone will have left.

So you have this differential ... That differential again, I've been seeing very powerfully. And I think that's what ... When I'm revising my models of how these things can work and what the challenge is to change or not, if you have a motivated executive, it seems like, who may not particularly care if there's ... If it's rough or inefficient during the process, but want to impart some side of disruptive change, then you can actually do quite a bit, despite all these other institutional inertia aspects still being in place.

Marcia Smith: Right.

Casey Dreier: Are you revising? What have you revised, if any, about your ideas of how government works? And we can restrict it to space policy from the last year.

Marcia Smith: Well, as I said, my biggest surprise has been Congress's willingness to give the power to the executive branch, instead of trying to protect their own rights and responsibilities. And the Democrats, of course, are trying and they send letters down to NASA and other places in the executive branch and they don't seem to go anywhere. I think that's probably true in years past, but it's particularly true this year. So I don't see the ...

It's not so much three branches of the government anymore. It's like the Supreme Court is there or the federal court system and the White House is there. And Congress is really in the background, instead of being front and center as an equal player with the other two parts of the government. I don't know how long it's going to last. I wouldn't have expected it ever. So part of me thinks, "Surely, next year they're going to start pushing back." But I'm not confident about that.

As more members have to run for reelection, A, the Republicans need to have Trump support, so they're not going to want to push back. But the Democrats are going to use that to try and build their own power base. So it's going to be interesting to see what both parties do in order to try and win more seats in ... Well, the Democrats to win more seats and for the Republicans not to lose seats in the midterm elections.

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: We talked about the budget. Oversight has clearly been an issue, but some things though, however, talking about Congress. When they still want to, they can move pretty quick. I'm thinking about, as you mentioned earlier, the One Big Beautiful Bill with the Ted Cruz amendment that showered within a week of the budget request coming up that canceled SLS after, that would cancel SLS after Artemis III, cancel Gateway immediately. Came out this Cruz amendment that provided $10 billion over seven years to SLS, to Gateway with mandatory minimums of spending on both of those. You couldn't have had a faster rejection, I feel like, of a policy proposal.

Ironically, I feel like we have now Jared Isaacman coming in as NASA administrator and talking about moving things faster, being a change agent, and bringing a more dynamic and commercial minded approach to NASA, but having to functionally agree to, in a sense, the most indefensible projects from those framings of the SLS, Orion, Gateway big prime architecture, which is passed through and now is written into law by Congress.

There's still an aspect of this that has ... Regardless of the proposed degree of change, was able to snap back and reject it pretty quickly. Do you agree with that? Is that as locked in as I am framing it? Do you think it's a weaker position than people would think?

Marcia Smith: Well, one thing that I have not seen, I'm not sure ... Well, I'm pretty sure that OMB is not being transparent about it is what's happening with all that money. So Congress puts it into law, but OMB is the one that has to distribute it to the agencies, and whether it's NASA or DOD or whoever it is, you have to have the money apportioned. And I'm not sure how much of that money has actually found its way into the NASA coffers. And it is a portion throughout that period of time ... I mean, a portion. It is distributed over that period of time. So it's not as though they were going to get all $10 billion in fiscal 2026 anyway. So it comes out piecemeal, but I don't know how much of that is actually available on December 29th, 2025 for NASA to spend. So it's there. It's sitting there and somebody says NASA's going to get this money, but I haven't seen that they actually have it.

Casey Dreier: I think that's almost a deeper issue of the executive versus the diminishing legislative. But I guess I was thinking about just the intention though behind that action, however, was to contermand it. I mean, there was for certain aspects of the space program, the institutional, parochial, political coalitions that have maintained certain types of projects over the years, seem to attempt to assert themselves very strongly in this year, despite all of the talk of change. And to me, that's maybe ... I'd say is maybe not a surprise. I've always said to never underestimate the SLS political coalition. And I think the last year validated that. And I would imagine a lot of people who are confidently predicting the end of that project at the beginning of the Trump administration are not as confident about that now.

But you're right, maybe there may be kind of nefarious ... That almost gets to impoundment and some other unsettling breakdowns of the broader political system. But you did see, I'd say ... I was questioning at the beginning of the year whether parochialism in space politics, but in the politics of civil space in this country would survive a very strong and charismatic executive. And I'd say it's alive and well. Thriving, in fact, based on what we've seen actually happen in terms of legislative activity.

Marcia Smith: Well, certainly you have some senators who were looking at their constituents and looking at SLS and Orion and recognizing that politically they could not just stand by and let them disappear. And on the other hand, as even Isaacman said, if you want to get back to the Moon, SLS is the fastest way to get there because you don't know when anything else is going to be available. So it gets back again to this drumbeat about beating China as being the motivation for the Artemis program. And that's why I wonder if we're not back to the 1960s and once we put footprints back on the Moon, wherever on the Moon that may be, because if you just want to beat China, you may not want to go to the South Pole because that's really hard. And there are easier places you can get on the Moon.

Maybe they'll leave the South Pole for next time and just go someplace maybe on the far side because we haven't landed on the far side, on the equator. Start building that radio telescope everybody talks about. Anyway, we'll see what we do. But if the only motivation is beating China, even if you say we have the plan for a sustained presence, you don't have a timeframe for that. And so do you stop after the first one and wait for the commercial systems to come along? And so you do one SLS, because that's really what the plan was at the beginning of the year. One SLS for Artemis II, and then you're done until you get the commercial systems coming along.

And what Cruz did in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was saying, "No, no, no, we need at least two more." So is it two more or three more? If Starship suddenly comes along, is it just one more? Those are all the questions that are still out there that I don't have any answers to.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I mean, I thought it was notable that the two more gets you past the end of this administration. It carries you through this administration and that the mandated spending basically carries you through that. It has to be obligated by a certain date, expended by a few years after that. It's one of the few times that NASA's had a multi-year appropriation functionally, though is that technically an appropriation? It must be a technically-

Marcia Smith: No, it's an authorization.

Casey Dreier: Authorization.

Marcia Smith: Close enough. In this particular case, reconciliation bills are their own entity.

Casey Dreier: Okay. Yes. Mandated spending at least on this, right?

Marcia Smith: Yes.

Casey Dreier: Just that level of detail and precision for it, I think is remarkable given that. And I think a demonstration of that lingering power of that coalition. It's almost to just survive this disruptive period and to really cement it ... Seemingly, maybe to cement itself even further. The idea to me that we will, again, still see anything in this administration landing on the Moon, given how few years are left. I wonder if that's what's driving maybe the language and rhetoric around China. Because I would say that to me is my other surprise or thing that I'm reevaluating for the year, how strongly that rhetoric has really kicked up.

You, I think, identify something that I'm worried about as well, which is we are, in my feeling, trending towards the ... You see it in congressional hearing titles now, Space Race 2.0 or the new Space Race. It's like, "I thought we learned never to say that again. I thought we had 50 years of political science saying that that was a bad idea. But you see the seductive nature of it because ... And I've been in those congressional offices. When you frame it that way, you don't have to defend it anymore. People accept that rhetorical framing, but you're selling out then those future steps. Then what happens if you win the race? And what do you do then? How do you keep justifying it? And Artemis was explicitly designed not to do that.

I mean, China was always a part of it. Competition was always a part of Artemis, but this real explicit race framing. And even how Isaacman now is talking about his job to not let the US lose or to make sure we land on the Moon before the end of this term is a really remarkable turnaround or change to that.

Marcia Smith: Right. And it is the opposite of what the plan was. The plan was that we were going back in a logical fashion. We knew what we were going to do. We're doing it with commercial and international partners this time, and it was for long-term sustainability, not necessarily by NASA because we're leading the way, so that the commercial and international people can stay on the Moon while we NASA are going off to Mars. And now it's just beat China, beat China, beat China, just like beat the Soviet Union, beat the Soviet Union.

So I do feel that we've turned back the clock and I'm not sure that's for the betterment of human space exploration. It may be good for politics. It may be good for just getting us through this difficult period of time, when people want to cut money. But if you're looking at the broader picture of how we move out into the solar system, I'm not sure beating somebody else is really the approach you want to take.

Casey Dreier: Particularly because it seems like China is not racing us, that they're just doing their plan. I mean, they don't officially acknowledge ... They don't frame it that way. I think it's just been part of ... I'm sure they'd be happy to land before us again, but it doesn't seem to be the animating political motivation. It's just China landing on the Moon in and of itself is important and it will be notable in a huge demonstration of capability, regardless if it's before or after the United States.

Marcia Smith: I have to go back and check, but my recollection is that during the Constellation program, when we were going to get back to the Moon by 2020, China was saying it was going to be on the Moon by 2020. So they started this race theme back then. And then when we canceled Constellation, you just never heard about China landing on the Moon. So they were doing that. And I think that there are a lot of people in China who were trying to get money for human space flight because they're cash-strapped as well. We play off each other. They say, "Well, we got to get there because the Americans are going." And the Americans say, "We got to get there because China's going." So I think it's a little bit of a game in that way.

But in the meantime, I think that China has been working slowly but steadily to develop their systems. It's the tortoise and the hare thing all over again. And so it may well be that they've been quietly working in the background on all these technologies and now you're seeing a little bit of the testing. Again, they're not transparent, but you see just a little bit of stuff every now and again, and they may well be ready by 2030, but it's no sure bet by any means. As you said, it's tough to land human beings on the Moon and get them off again and back home.

Casey Dreier: Back safely. Yeah.

Marcia Smith: It's not just landing, it's the whole thing and it's hard to do. And I'm not sure that we're going to be able to put humans on the Moon by 2030, but I'm not confident that China will either. And then the question is, does the whole thing just evaporate? People lose interest because they move on to other things. It would be such a shame to do that. We were doing so well. We finally had the plan. It might've been a little unrealistic in terms of the timing, but at least we had the plan. Bridenstine brought together this public-private partnership thing, really got NASA to embrace that. And we were just marching along and Biden kept it like, "Hooray, we finally got this from one administration to the next." And suddenly Trump comes back in and throws it all up in the air again. I don't know. It's such a shame.

Casey Dreier: I made this point in last year that the second Trump administration can't really be seen as a ... It's almost a new administration, who just happens to have the same president just because the personnel are just so dramatically different. And you don't have a Pence, or a Scott Pace running the show on the space policy side. A Cold War era or neocon era, republican global outreach party coalition building process. It's a much very different set of individuals and a very different set of motivations. And I think we're certainly seeing that on how space has been treated in this administration or the lack of any individual ownership of it until arguably recently with Isaacman, but also Kratsios at OSTP starting to embrace that or bring that into the planning fold.

But as an outcome, you're right, I think this policy disruption was very ... I really do feel like there was this strong perturbance to this plan of Artemis that is now what we're starting to see the resonance of. That we're grafting on a geopolitical horse race narrative in order to gin up support for it. But the program hadn't been moving like it was in that dire must win scenario. It was moving at a rather stately pace, funded at a rather modest amount. Of course, you're going to be behind if you're not investing. As you know, I've done the numbers on Apollo. They spent a lot of money really fast to get Apollo where it was, and they haven't done that with Artemis.

Now we're in a race, but we only have three or four years left of like ... "Well ..." You can't really make that up on the backend. It's almost impossible. I did a quick bit of analysis the other month. The last time any human rated spacecraft in the United States, whether it was public or private or privately funded, went from a startup development to first flight with humans in it, in fewer than five years was Gemini in 1965. That's the last time.

Marcia Smith: Interesting.

Casey Dreier: SpaceX, every project has taken seven to eight years. Shuttle obviously took something like 11. Orion is 20, I think will be 20, it's the outlier. If you're Blue Origin, and obviously they've been working on it, but who knows how much. If you're saying that you can develop a new moon lander in fewer than five years, you would ... I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be historically notable and akin to an era of a very different level of risk and technology and safety attitudes in human space flight.

Marcia Smith: And I think that's the key for the next couple of years is risk. You're absolutely right about that. And maybe one of the reasons Gemini got done was because there was such a drumbeat then to beat the Soviets. And so they were willing to take more risk. We certainly were taking a lot of risks early in the space program, probably up until the Apollo fire. And then people stopped and said, "My gosh, we're making really bad mistakes and it's costing lives." And I think that the human spaceflight program overall has ...

I'm not going to call it risk averse, but more risk aware. I think that since Columbia, we've seen more and more of that. We certainly saw that with Starliner and how long it took them just to make the decision as to whether or not they were going to bring the crew back in Starliner or not. And I worry a little bit that with this intense desire to beat China, if they're going to be more willing to take bigger risks, just to get there the way we did it back in the Apollo era. We all know what happens when you start taking risks or you start taking shortcuts, or when you don't think things through. Seventeen astronauts have died in the American program over the decades. People look back on it after they do the failure analyses and they say, "Well, this really didn't have to happen." And I would hate to see that happen again with the Artemis program.

Casey Dreier: That does certainly add that, if nothing else, an implicit, if not explicit pressure all the way down the system. You bring up something that reminded me another item you brought up last year that I wanted to follow-up with you on, was this idea of transparency. You had brought it up specifically about the heat shield issues with Orion during Artemis I, which delayed Artemis II by two years. Do you think NASA's gotten any better with transparency, particularly again, I was thinking about Starliner and the safety issues around it returning the astronauts, not to mention other aspects of the agency we've seen in the last year?

Marcia Smith: Obviously there's been a lot of loss of transparency and I give Isaacman a lot of credit. He didn't want to do his town hall in public, but he did very quickly post a video of it, which made it easier for the rest of us because Keith Cowling ... Thank goodness for Keith Cowling because he's been able to get some of these things that were never released officially by NASA, town hall meetings. And so it was nice that Isaacman decided to do it on his own. And maybe that's a step forward, but I think that there's so much lack of transparency. And you talked about Goddard and what is actually going on up at Goddard. And there certainly have been Democrats in Congress who've been trying to get details about what on earth is going on up there. And it's very hard to see. And it's obviously not confined to NASA. It's across the government and I'd see it way worse than it was even last year. I mean last year being in the Biden administration.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, there were serious ... I'd say relatively not transparent about what was going on with Starliner too. And we just saw the Aerospace Safety Board just a few weeks ago say things were actually seemingly a lot worse than was reported publicly at the time, in terms of the issues on that spacecraft. As I know as a person who loves data, the number of public reporting for NASA grants have just been taken offline with no explanation. Reporting for NASA's space science data archives and catalogs just disappeared. Issues with not responding to things on the record, advisory councils being canceled or shuttered or closed.

And again, you're right, I'm hopeful that Isaacman can bring that ... Now that there's someone maybe in charge who has that implicit ability to provide cover, a lot of that may have just been uncertainty or fear or that unempowered managerial mid-levels over correcting or reacting or being uncertain, given various types of input and control, but not feeling like anyone at the top has their backs.

Maybe Isaacman as a leader, who wants to promote transparency can give them down the chain ability to start putting things out there again without facing summarily being fired or who knows, through some tweet by Elon Musk or whatever the issue was at the beginning of the year. I'll put that maybe as a cautious note. We can revisit in a year if that happens. I've always noted though, Isaacman has always said ... And careful to say that he personally will commit to transparency, but he hasn't ... I don't know if that's an intentional quirk of the language, but it always seems to be an individualistic presentation. I'll be the most transparent NASA administrator, I think is what he has said, but I'm hoping it translates to the rest of the agency.

We've hit the really big parts. I'd like to just generally mention just science with you a little bit. The NASA budget request, was that a surprise to you this year when it came out?

Marcia Smith: Totally.

Casey Dreier: Yeah.

Marcia Smith: Totally. And I'm a big science fan just like you are. To see that kind of a cut. We should point out it was not just science because the science space technology mission director also got really whacked and so did aeronautics. It was really just human space flight that fared well in that request. But in terms of science, I was so surprised. I don't know how anybody copes with that. And I give Nicky Fox such credit. I was at the Women in Aerospace Awards dinner a couple of weeks ago, when she got the Lifetime Achievement Award, and she is just so enthusiastic, despite the year that she's had. I just give her tremendous credit for holding everything together.

And they are allowed to work towards the House appropriations number, which is not all that bad. It's not all of it, but it's like six billion instead of ... What was it? Seven and a half billion, but it's not 0.3 billion. And so they can still do a lot of stuff. I still want to know what's going to happen to Mars Sample Return. There are people who think that we shouldn't let China be the first one to bring samples back from Mars either, but I think that the Mars Sample Return community needs to come up with a better solution.

Maybe you're not going to get every single pristine sample that you're going to get, but maybe you're going to get enough just to get started. I just have to think that there's an easier way to do this. And I don't know anything about Rocket Lab's proposal, but they are just insistent that they can do this. And I know people are skeptical because Rocket Lab doesn't have years of experience in sending things to Mars. Very few people do. But if there's even just one idea out there that's got a shot and it's not going to break the bank too badly, maybe it's worth it. I don't know.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's one of those areas where you need leadership internally from NASA to solve that problem. There's only so much ... Particularly us, advocates on the outside or even Congress can do because it's ultimately an engineering problem. Sample return as a concept does not close budget-wise. And so there needs to be an approach to it. I can't evaluate whether Rocket Labs is a realistic one or Lockheed to put out a similar number with their own. But I think what makes ... I'm more open to something like Rocket Lab because it would become the priority for that entire company in a way that it just wouldn't. Lockheed is just too big. They'd love to have three billion dollars but that's like what? A couple of F-35s compared to their trillion dollar thing with that. And so it's just having that level of commitment to it.

And I think that's one of the things that we've seen where those partnerships have worked is where it's a really priority of the company to make it work. And you put a lot of energy and effort into it. It's clearly one of those issues, where you do need some new thinking. And then I think when I look forward to 2026, what can I be optimistic or maybe less pessimistic? I'm always hesitant to say ... But something I said, maybe after this initial shock and now that we have someone in charge of NASA who is empowered, but also ...

I think by all accounts, I don't know if you've met him, but he seems earnest and well-meaning and wants to do a good job. He's not bringing hostility to leadership in the way that we've seen in some of these other agencies. That maybe people can start to rethink some of these assumptions and say, "Okay, now that a lot of the stuff has been disrupted and changed and we've lost a lot, maybe there is room to actually try to find something that works with someone who wants to bring a good will to try to figure out that as well." And Mars Sample Return could certainly be one of those. It's like, "Okay, let's get that one bio-signature potential one back. Let's start with that one. If it's really good, maybe we can get the other ones. Wet our appetite." Do you see some green shoots in this going forward into 2026?

Marcia Smith: I would like to think so. I really don't like this, let's beat somebody else at it attitude, but maybe. And I don't know this, I really don't know this, but I have to think that part of the reason that Mars Sample Return is so expensive is, again, risk. How much risk are they willing to take? And maybe if they were willing to take a little more risk, they could get it done less expensively and sooner. I'm making this up. I have no insight into it, but you just ask yourself, "How can it be an $11 billion program, when just a few years earlier they were talking maybe five billion?" And it wasn't set in stone. I mean, think it was set in stone because it was in a decadal survey, but that's double the price.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, with ESA providing one of the spacecraft already.

Marcia Smith: Exactly. Exactly. So now what happened that suddenly the cost doubled? Was it really engineering or was it, they wanted every little screw tightened to a certain amount of whatever? I don't know. I just don't know.

Casey Dreier: I think they designed-

Marcia Smith: I don't have that level of insight. I would sure like to hope that there is a way to do this for an affordable price, even if you don't get a 100% of what you want.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I'd love to see someone write that book someday. I always think about it is that ... I think NASA created it modeled after a human space flight program, in terms of political coalition building, so everyone got a piece of it, but it wasn't big enough to actually get the attention. It wasn't expensive enough, but it was too expensive for science. And so it collapsed under its own weight of inefficiency by design to build a political coalition that didn't show up to say that because Marshall was in charge of the launcher. Originally, Glenn was going to build the wheels on the Fetch Rover, which fell away at one of those initial revisions. JPL obviously, but then Goddard was building a big piece and it was like five different NASA centers. No one was really in charge. Science is not used to doing that coalition development project.

And then when it was canceled, I don't think anyone in Marshall even noticed it was gone because they had so much else invested in other projects. So it didn't pay off I think maybe the way they hoped. That's my read on it, but who knows? We'll see if that validates.

Marcia Smith: And I'd just like to bring up, you mentioned ESA, and I do worry a little bit about our international partnerships. I mean, ESA, they have been a stalwart, despite all the ups and downs, because the ups and downs in the science program and in the space program here have been pretty pronounced over the decades. And ESA has just been there and they've stood with us, and all the changes. And I worry that there's going to come a point when they just say, "Forget about it." And that would be a shame because I think these international partnerships are just ... They're good for the countries. They're good for the people. They're good for the future of science. It's just one of those good things. And I would hate to see it disappear because of the inconstancy of US policy.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I got a good number of people from Europe reaching out to me and trying to be purposely vague, asking what was going to happen with Artemis because like, "Oh, we're building the service modules for Orion. We have a contract to build six of them. Are we still building those? Is there still a Mars Sample Return project?" That budget that we mentioned, I think that canceled something like a dozen just science projects. And then of course, the Gateway was a big international contribution engine. I feel terrible for ESA, though interestingly, you see that and I wonder spurring ... You saw their largest obviously budget commitments from their ministerial meeting just the other month. Probably in response to this, realizing they cannot, which I think is the sad realization that they cannot depend on the US to be a reliable partner for a number of key technologies that they need.

Marcia Smith: And that's a shame.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. So what are you going to be watching for in the next year, whether some of these things stick or change or change is happening for the good or under any strategic focus at all? What should we be watching for here or what are you watching for?

Marcia Smith: I got to admit, I'm just so focused on budgets.

Casey Dreier: Yeah.

Marcia Smith: Just get the budget done and then see what they're going to send up for '27. Is it going to be another heartbreak coming up from OMB and then Congress has to try and fix it? I don't know. I don't know. I remember back to the Reagan administration, the first year Reagan was like this. They came in and they were not fans of NASA. And that's when we walked away from another partnership with ESA and they eventually got their part done, Ulysses. And we did give them the launch and we gave them ... What the RTGs, I think?

It's like what we're doing with the ExoMars rover filling in, but we were supposed to do the International Solar Polar Mission as a joint mission with one of their spacecraft above, one is part of the Moon and we'd be below it and all that. That was a really tough year with Reagan, but Reagan changed his mind or his people changed their minds. And so things leveled out for NASA after that. And of course, Jim Beggs came in and actually got the space station going. It took him a little bit of time to win over everybody, but he did.

I'm not giving up, but I think that next year will be very interesting for NASA and for the government overall, because we still have to see how all this is going to play out. But I think for NASA, we'll just see whether or not with Isaacman there, and he seems to have a good relationship with the president. And as I said before, nothing beats having a NASA administrator who has a good relationship with the president because that helps so much, especially when you get into budget battles. So I'm going to be looking at the year optimistically, at least as the new year arrives and see what happens. But budgets are the key.

Casey Dreier: Yeah.

Marcia Smith: Follow the money. We talk about that all the time.

Casey Dreier: Indeed, that certainly strikes at my core and focus as well. And I think the interesting thing ... One of the things I've been trying to do is track the outlays in addition to obligations. A lot of those moved through this year at NASA, there wasn't secret backdoor impoundments. There was a market decrease in spending in the early part of the year, but then picked up and almost had to get shoveled out the door at the end. You did end up the year with a quarter fewer new science grants awarded, but the overall money stayed the same because they, I think, gave years in advance because they ... There's a number of issues that are still plaguing the agency.

The key here, I think we may be circling around is that we have the confirmed administrator with a good relationship with the president, and particularly this president, that means quite a bit. And if that can turn some of this around. They made their run at NASA, they got their pounds of flesh and lost all the people from the agency. And so is it still going to be worth that effort to continue hammering it on these core things? I hope not. And bringing up that earlier ... The Reagan administration, when I work with an intern or a fellow or somebody, I always have them read John Logsdon's paper on The Survival Crisis of the US Solar System program back in '82, which was ... And JPL on a precipice during that first year of the Reagan administration through their budget request.

And so we've been through some tough times before, so I share your pseudo modest optimism. I'm not giving up on it yet, but we have seen, I'd say ... I've revised quite a few of them. My Overton window has expanded significantly, but I've also been really, I'd say, encouraged by people's responses. And of course, even internally congressional responses, even though they're getting caught up in larger politics. I will continue to read Space Policy Online to keep abreast with this, which I will have already, but will remind our listeners to continue following a critical coverage of this.

I wonder if in the next few weeks, what I will be looking for is actually Isaacman's ... When he starts making his mark on the internal bureaucracy at NASA. So that's going to be my other thing, in addition to budgets. How much of his Project Athena document is going to filter into his current management style because there were some pretty aggressive timelines in terms of announcing X, Y, and Z, in terms of internal policy changes, workforce changes, evaluations, strike teams and so forth. We haven't seen anything like that, but of course we've had the holidays in between his nomination and confirmation, I should say, and taking his role as administrator. But I wonder if in the first few weeks of January, we'll start to see some of that. So that's the other thing that I will look for.

Marcia Smith: Well, it's one thing for him to be writing a document like that when he is only nominated to be a NASA administrator, as opposed to actually being in the building. And I think he's been very upfront about the fact that he has to learn the agency from the inside, before he makes any decisions. And I give him a lot of credit for that. I really do. And one thing that I find encouraging is that when you see interviews with the people who have flown with him on his two Crew Dragon missions, they talk about his leadership abilities and that he really knows how to bring a team together and get them all working towards a common goal. And if one person starts falling behind ... Some of them talked about they go on these treks up Mount Washington and everything. And if somebody needs a little bit of help, he's right there to help them up. And that is really encouraging in any agency leader.

I'm optimistic. He still has to face all the headwinds of Washington, so he can't do it alone. He certainly knows that. He's politically astute enough to have gotten himself renominated. So even though he's a newbie inside the beltway, he obviously knows how to-

Casey Dreier: I'm sure he learned quite a bit in the last year through his process.

Marcia Smith: I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did. I'm going to remain optimistic until something happens to change my mind.

Casey Dreier: That's a great framing to end it. Marcia Smith, founder and editor of Space Policy Online. Thank you so much. Maybe we'll follow this up in another year and see how things are going for our ideas and models of the world and NASA itself. And hopefully we'll continue to be maybe even more optimistic a year from now.

Marcia Smith: Sounds great.

Casey Dreier: Okay.

Marcia Smith: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Casey Dreier: Anytime. We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, but we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space science and exploration. Help others in the meantime learn more about space policy and The Planetary Society by leaving a review and rating this show on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to this show. Your input and interactions really help us be discovered by other curious minds and will help them find their place in space through Planetary Radio.

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