 Hello, everyone, and welcome to TomorrowOrbit 12.26. You're here at Station 204, so pull up your chair, get your popcorn ready, and we are going to have a fascinating show for you here today, because our guest, Kathy Loreini, the president of Osari Space Consulting Group, is with us. And we're going to be talking about international development of space and other things, sort of the side of space flight that you don't really get to hear about very often, but is still super, super important. So, Kathy, you have quite a background with NASA. You have almost four decades of experience with NASA. So that kind of puts you a lot on the front lines of how space flight works and how to do that. And you've done some collaboration as well, working with NASA and other space agencies. Yeah, that's right. And I worked for NASA for my whole career up until last January, when I left and started this consulting company and always in the human space flight arena. And so that meant I started working on the Space Shuttle program and then the Space Station program. And both of those programs have an international component. The Space Shuttle had an arm that was provided by the Canadian Space Agency and a laboratory that went in the payload bay that was built in Europe. And the International Space Station is a partnership of NASA, the Russian Space Agency, the Japanese, European, and Canadian Space Agencies. And it's a very international project. So I really worked closely with international space agencies on those major programs. And then the last 10 years of my career, I sort of took the experience working on operational and development side of programs and turned that into a more strategic role, helping work with other space agencies to plan the future of space exploration. So where will we go? What would we do? Who could contribute? What, those kinds of things. So my career is just filled with interactions with international space agencies and international players. And you led the development of something called the Global Exploration Roadmap, which was done by a massive collaboration of space agencies. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, that activity was born when the Constellation program was canceled. And Constellation was a program that the second president, George Bush, started to take astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars. And when President Obama came into office, he canceled the program. But he kept alive the transportation system, basically, because we can talk about this later today. But there's a rationale for space agencies now to start pushing beyond low Earth orbit to the moon and on to Mars. And so when the Constellation program was canceled, we knew at NASA that we were going to explore and we wanted international partners. But we didn't know where we were going to go. For a while, we thought maybe asteroids, then Mars. But the Global Exploration Roadmap was about working with interested space agencies to talk about what were the challenges and opportunities about going beyond low Earth orbit and how would we accomplish it? So there were 15 space agencies. And we talked about our goals and objectives. We wanted to be sure we had a common enough set of goals and objectives that would make such a roadmap possible. And we found that we did. And then we talked about, given our goals and objectives, what kind of architectures would we need to realize them? What would we need to build? What kind of transportation systems or habitation systems or science-type technologies would we need? And then given that we still had a lot of work to do to get these capabilities developed, we talked about how we could collaborate with each other in the preparatory work. How could we leverage our investment in technologies, for example? How could we coordinate in addressing the human health challenges associated with these future missions? So the idea was, while we prepared for this future, what could we do today to leverage all of our investments? Because everybody who participated in that activity knew that it was too big for any one agency to do on their own, too expensive. And there's a lot of benefits of doing it together. And so it made sense to talk about how to leverage our investments. So it was really a strategic planning roadmap exercise. It was used by NASA to demonstrate that we were engaging with international space agencies. But it was also used by the international space agencies to help build support for space exploration in their countries. So it was a pretty successful product. And it still serves as sort of the roadmap of what space agencies are thinking. So Elias1981 in our YouTube channel is asking, what are the short term and the long term goals? And it kind of sounds like in the short term, there's a immediacy of collaboration and sort of like a narrowing of focus as to here's what we would like to be at. So is there anything else in the short term that kind of came out of that? And then also, as Elias was asking, what about the long term goals out of that as well? OK, yeah. I'm going to start with the long term goal. So the long term goal is exploring Mars together, enabling humanity to extend its presence to Mars and live and work on Mars. And that's a common long term goal. But it's going to take some technology and capabilities that we don't have today. So in the near term, though, the priority is I'd say building a sustainable endeavor. What we saw when President Obama became President and he canceled the consolation program. And we saw in the past the impact of politicians and changes of administrations, changes in governments. We saw that that kind of behavior doesn't really enable a lot of progress in a multi-decadal effort. So the near term goal is really to try to figure out what would make human expansion into the solar system going first to the moon and then on to Mars and beyond what would make it sustainable and sustainable in the sense that governments will continue to support it, continue to pay for it over the years. So defining a sustainable endeavor, I would say, is the priority. But within that, that means engaging the science community to understand what are the near term science priorities, engaging the private sector who's thinking about extending the Earth's economy to the area around the moon. People talk about mining the moon. People talk about harvesting the water ice for propellant generation on the moon. People talk about tourism around the moon. So there's some excitement in a lunar economy. So what's the role of space agencies? What can we do with our first steps to what can they do? I need to get out of the habit of talking like I still work for NASA because I don't. But what can be done to enable the economy to grow there and to thrive there? What kind of partnerships do need to be developed both international and commercially to enable a sustainable endeavor? So I would say that's the near term priority of NASA and the other space agencies. Yeah, and in our YouTube chat room, Lisa Stojanski is asking, how do private companies fit into the roadmap? And I feel like that's a really good question because when Constellation started, SpaceX was only two years old at that time. And then when Constellation was wrapped up as well, SpaceX hadn't even flown a Falcon 9 yet. So how do those private companies come into play in this roadmap? So in the roadmap, we talked a lot about how the existence of the private company interest should influence government planning and government actions, government spending. Governments spend public money. So they need to do it for a broad public good. The government money is not supposed to enable Elon Musk to be successful, for example. But the presence of SpaceX and Blue Origin and all the other companies that are working on capabilities, little lunar robots, for example. Robotic missions, robotic landers. They provide opportunities for coordination. So there's a consensus among space agencies that this is a great opportunity to collaborate, to look for common interests and common goals and ways to collaborate. And you see NASA doing more of that, right? You see NASA, as they think about going to the moon together with international partners, the first step is establishing a small gateway around the moon. And so the approach has been, the approach of NASA has been, who else has reasons to be in this area that we might be able to partner in the development of the gateway or in the use of the gateway? And in fact, the first element of the gateway is a partnership between NASA and a private company, Maxar, who is interested in testing out solar electric propulsion technology, a bus that they would use for other applications, perhaps Geo-satellites or other applications. And this provides an opportunity for NASA to invest some money and get a capability out of it that they would have paid a lot more for if they had done it through traditional acquisition methods. So that's an example of how the existence of these private companies wanting to do things in the area around the moon creates opportunities. So going back specifically to SpaceX and Blue Origin, who both have, are both sort of millionaire, billionaire funded companies, right? That are interested in seeing a vision develop not wanting to pay for the entire vision themselves because it is so cost prohibitive, but willing to say, hey, we're willing to put a lot of our own money into realized capabilities that would help you space agencies also achieve your goals. So let's talk about ways to facilitate that. So the interest in exploration beyond the Earth orbit is very interesting in the planning for space exploration. I will say it's even more, you know, transformational in low Earth orbit where the space station is, you know, NASA has an international space station partners have been operating the ISS for over 20 years and they have, through all those investments, you know, bought down a lot of risk and developed a lot of the key technologies. So to the point where we can envision private companies building crew transportation capabilities, right? Like the commercial crew activity that NASA is funding that the test flights will hopefully be before the end of this year, but also the commercial cargo and NASA is looking at commercial modules on the space station and commercial free flying modules all with the realization that, you know, low Earth orbit doesn't need to be a government dominated domain anymore. It's really ready to be a, you know, a market driven, you know, a market driven sphere. So NASA, it's not quite there yet in that the demand for these commercial services is still a little bit soft, but the commercial service providers are raring to go and perfectly capable of developing everything that you need to do research on low Earth orbit. So I think we'll see as we see a economy flourishing around humans in their infrastructure and low Earth orbit, we'll see more players that bring more private sector money and capabilities to the table that can help space agencies think about going beyond as well. So, you know, and I have to think that, you know, an economy in low Earth orbit is a precursor to one around the moon just because, you know, it's transportation costs are significant and it's very, to get to low Earth orbit, they're even more so to get to the moon. So, you know, the visions that the Elon Musk said that Jeff Bezos has have really depend on, you know, an economy to keep supporting it. And so, you know, both the they and governments are hoping to enable that. And like I said, everybody thinks that the low Earth orbit or we're on the verge and hopefully the area around the moon will follow shortly thereafter. So with international collaboration, is that something that is essential to getting humans beyond low Earth orbit or can a country do something solo? I will, from everything that I, you know, I've worked extensively on that. I've seen Russian detailed studies of what it would take and the Russians concluded they couldn't do it on their own. The Chinese, they know they can't do it on their own. Not because they don't have the technology but it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money because it's not just developing the ability to get there. It's also doing meaningful things when you're there, right? So that drives you to have the capability to support people there and help them be productive. So I'm convinced and I believe there's a consensus around the world that nobody can do it alone. It's just too expensive. And you know, there's also other benefits to doing it together, right? You, if you look at the Apollo program and how, you know, we were reminded recently with the, what, 50th anniversary that, you know, that Apollo was an achievement for the world, not just for the US. We certainly beat the Russians, beat the Soviets, but it was celebrated all around the world as humanity's triumph. And that's certainly what going back to the moon and onto Mars will be once we do that. So, you know, let's bring the best of what everybody has in terms of technologies and ideas and pool our resources and do it. I think to do to, that's the only way it can be a meaningful enough endeavor to be sustainable. And Johnny Spacer on YouTube has a really cool question that sort of hits at the early days of the space race which is, could we do something akin to the international geophysical year like having an international Mars year that would kick off a coordinated international effort to send humans to Mars? Is that something that would maybe work out particularly better than just asking for that collaboration? No, I think it's a great idea, right? Because it's a forcing function and it helps provide a framework for people to think about how they might fit in. And people have thought about that in terms of a lunar, international lunar geophysical year. So it's been proposed I think by the National Space Society but I happen to think it's a good idea and anything that can leverage non-traditional people and communications methods and frameworks to get something so ambitious planned I think is a good idea. And with international collaboration I would imagine that there are some difficulties that can come with that. It's just like a band when they come together to record an album, everybody sort of wants their own thing and there's a little bit of a give and take that happens in that in order to actually make that album occur. So what from your perspective having actually been involved in international cooperation what are some of the big challenges that happen when you move to a collaborative mission? I'm gonna talk a little bit about when we brought the Russians into the International Space Station Program because I think that provides some good examples of the clash of cultures. The Russians had been operating space stations already. They had Salyut and they had Mir and the US had Skylab and the Space Shuttle and we had with the Europeans, the Japanese and the Canadians already initiated the Space Station Program and started to plan and it was in the early nineties when the decision was made to approach the Russians and see if they wanted to participate and the geopolitical reasons I think are probably known to this audience but when the two programs came together the Russians had been operating space stations and the NASA led effort hadn't and we had our own approaches to solving problems they had their own approaches to solving problems. I remember when we had some early meetings on how we were planning what we were gonna do to do science on the Space Station. We wanted to start the planning years before they thought they knew that if you start something that early it's gonna change and so don't waste your time don't start planning that until it's closer to actually being executed and they were right and they also have, if you talk about hardware they have the simple approach to providing a function. We had all sorts of bells and whistles and automation and alarms and they have basic simple ways of getting the job done that are reliable and safe. So we learned from each other really the benefits of both approaches so that was good. The language and other cultural type barriers are things that you see but there are more I'd say challenges to be overcome. We agreed early on that English would be the language on the Space Station and the Russians came and they didn't wanna speak English and they wanted to speak Russian because there's not enough English speakers in their control centers and in their programs and projects. So really there were cosmonauts had to learn some English and our astronauts had to learn some Russian and on board every crew has their own habits that they fall into and food. You want to, the Russians want their typical Russian food and others want their comfort food. The Japanese want the food that they like. So figuring out ways to build menus that can satisfy everybody. So there's all sorts of issues from the small little ones to bigger ones but that's the success of the program that everybody has found a way to address them and to thrive. So I think if you ask people in any of the space agencies participating in the International Space Station program, they'll tell you that they've learned a lot through this collaboration and it's been very positive. So Lisa in our chatroom on YouTube is asking about the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, asking if it's like the UN for space. And I kinda wanna throw into like asking like is this how we make Starfleet actually end up happening with that. So what's sort of the background a little bit about the International Space Exploration Coordination Group? Yeah, so the International Space Exploration Coordination Group was formed in 2007 and it's a space agency coordination group, right? It's where space agencies that are interested in space exploration that are investing in space exploration and interested in collaborating with other space agencies can join and have a dialogue. They, in the group, space agencies talk about all sorts of things from the road mapping, the global exploration road mapping effort that I described earlier, but there's other things. They work on a common view of the benefits, right? What we found early on in the 2007 through 12 timeframe, was if space agencies needed help explain to their governments what were the benefits of investing in space exploration. So agencies coordinated on a product that's called the Benefits White Paper. So it's an agency coordination forum. Now, it's not a program management forum. So it's voluntary, its decisions are not binding. And so it's not really a governance mechanism for space exploration. So it's not really an international organization that would manage space exploration. And some people have called for an international organization to manage it and I can see the benefits of it, but coming from the U.S. where we're such a dominant investor in the capabilities, right? It's hard to imagine giving control over something to an international group when you are by far the largest shareholder. You know what I mean? So I think if we get to the point where a number of space agencies around the world are significantly investing and such an international governance mechanism makes sense. But until then, I think it would be hard to get the attention of the biggest investors to do something like that, right? Because you're basically seeding control and I spent a lot of time in Europe and I watched how the European Space Agency works and it's what, 22 member states now, something like that. They've been growing in the last 10 years, but the process of preparing decisions and taking decisions is really laborious. And once they take one, they stick to it and that's nice, but it's a long time to get there. So you trade some agility, you trade some efficiency by going to a multilateral governing body. That said, if a lot of people are investing, they're gonna want more control over how things go and they deserve it. So I think if there's a massive migration of humans into space and it's managed by governments, then something like a, whether it's UN or not, or something like an international organization to manage it makes sense. But as long as it's exploration and the funding is really significantly provided by the U.S. and I don't see it happening. So Lisa also has a really good question too, which is talking about the original roadmap that was written by that group. It was done a few years ago. So how do countries new to space like Australia or even a country like Luxembourg, which is doing a lot of sort of more aim towards economic development of space? How do they end up contributing if they're fresh on the scene? Oh yeah, that's a great question because I watched like the Australians and the UAE for example, they're new to the game come into the International Space Exploration Coordination Group and the roadmap, the first version of the roadmap was released in 2011. It was updated in 2013. So these are space agencies that came in in the lead up to the most recent roadmap which was released early last year. And they were watching space agencies that have a lot of experience in space operations and space exploration robotically and even a lot of human space flight experience. They're watching a lot of agencies that have done a lot of things in space with a lot of capabilities and expertise and people. And what they were really trying to do by participating was look for a niche that they could play, right? What could they do to help contribute to a global effort? So I'll use both the Australians and the United Arab Emirates participated in the ISAC to understand what other space agencies were doing. And they use that to inform their technology investments with the idea that investing in certain technologies would then lead them to the ability to develop capabilities that would be useful to the global effort. So they each went through a very impressive systematic effort to develop their own technology roadmaps. In fact, you can find both what the UAE did and Australian Space Agency did. I think the Australian one was done by CSIRO but you can find those online I think. And both of their efforts were informed by participating in the ISAC. So that was good. If you take another space agency like the Chinese, the Chinese participate in ISAC but they came in with a different motivation. They were investing in some robotic missions but they were building a space station in low earth orbit, right? Soon as they get there along March 5 working they'll start deploying the space station. And their goal in participating in ISAC was to let people know that they were working on these capabilities, share a little bit more information that was shared publicly. They didn't share much more than was shared publicly but a little bit and let everybody know they wanted cooperation, they wanted collaboration. And so that was their goal both in low earth orbit with their space station. They were welcoming agencies to contribute capabilities for their space station or science experiments for their space station. And as they thought in the future of going to the moon they envisioned a future where we can be more collaborative as agencies doing human exploration. So maybe we can think of ways to cooperate. There are some restrictions that are pretty strong in the US about working bilaterally with the Chinese and other space agencies around the world that have concerns about technology transfer that prevent too much. But in the future where China is better able to protect and respect other people's technology then they can bring a lot to the table in a collaboration. And I'm sure everybody else that participated in ISAC was hoping in the International Space Exploration Coordination Group was hoping that we would get to that future because the capabilities that they could bring would really strengthen the overall effort. And Stella Ford in our YouTube chat room is actually asking a really interesting question which is about the newer, sort of the newer national space agencies but also sort of talking about a standalone commercial market as well. How long do you think until that commercial market's gonna be there? And also do you think that these newer national space agencies are kind of getting a little bit of an edge on it since they're coming in with that already in place? I would say no. There's nobody better at working with the private sector than NASA, frankly. NASA is leading the way on ways to do it and what to do. And the newer space agencies are seeing it and welcoming it and learning from it. And that's great. That's great. And it will help them get to the point where they can make significant contributions quicker. So that's super. I think when will a standalone market exist? I mean, like I said, I think Leo is the first low earth orbit, is the first place where we'll see it. And a great place to watch, to gauge that is the International Space Station and the efforts to use the space station by private companies, right? So when NASA first really made, once the assembly was finished of the space station, NASA made a big push to private companies to do research on the space station, biomedical companies and consumer products companies, people that offered products that taking microgravity out of the equation would help you learn about a fundamental physics principle and how it impacted your product. And so they enticed a number of private companies to do work on the space station, but they're still, in the beginning, it was NASA really still trying to figure out how to make the environment more friendly to the private sector. And it's something NASA's been working hard on for the last five years. And as they do that, they realize that not every I has to be dotted and T has to be crossed and everything has to be risk-free. They end up creating an environment that it's more friendly to private sector use and experimentation in space. And so I think from what I'm seeing and hearing from groups like the ISS National Lab coming out of the Space Station Research and Development Conference that just took place in July, I have the latest one, there's a lot of new great ideas for things to be done in space around humans and their infrastructure. And so people are saying that the market for this Leo economy will be multifaceted, right? They'll be governments will want to purchase the ability to do research and test technologies and get their astronauts some experience before sending them beyond the Earth orbit. So that'll be probably the biggest part of the market. There will be private companies, whether they're biomedical or consumer products or others who want to do research, basic research in microgravity or maybe even produce things in microgravity. There'll be other people that want to just produce things. There's a company that tried to produce an optical fiber with the idea that if you can produce it in space it will be a lot more efficient and they're working on that. There's other companies in the biomedical arena that are thinking about how you could actually manufacture things of use in space. And so that would be a key, in space manufacturing will be a key part of the economy. Tourism will be a part of the economy. Advertising will be a part of the economy. So there's enough things that, taken together I believe later next decade we'll see the ISS being retired. I think the ISS will be retired not because it's knocked on wood because it's stopped working but because there's already alternatives up there and the governments don't want to compete. So the ISS will be retired then. So I would say, mid next decade, later next decade for sure we'll see low earth orbit really as a vibrant commercial market. And having worked on the front lines of international collaboration. What was that like for you? I'm sure there was like lots of cultural differences and lots of differences in desired outcomes. So what was that like personally to be working with that and trying to enable that? I mean, it was fascinating because you get exposure to so many things that are just amazing. It was wonderful. I'd say in order to be an effective leader in a multicultural environment like I had to be you need to understand each of the other space agencies and understand the people and understand what the space agency's priorities were understand how they made their decisions. It would be useless for me to suggest we make a decision on a point at the next meeting if I knew several agencies had a lot of things to do before they would be in a position to make a decision. So you had to understand how they made decisions and getting to know the people was also just was fascinating. And I think when you, if you do it right you can create an environment where people are free to throw out their ideas. It's easy when you've got a NASA badge on and you're leading to think that you know everything you know the best way to do it. But what I tried to do was say, hey, here's the 70% solution, here's what we think but we're open to your good ideas. And so we talk it through and good ideas always came up from the international. So just recognizing that it's just the reason why diversity is so important and talked about a lot in organizational behavior now and is the same thing. When you get a diverse group of people and cultures together and they look at a problem differently and good ideas come from it. So I really enjoyed it. And I got a chance to visit so many different places all over the world where space agencies were based but also there's a international astronautical Congress that's held every year in a new place. And the organizers of this are often trying to stimulate interest in space and other parts of the world where it may not be so interesting. So there was one in Cape Town, South Africa several years ago and that was fascinating. So the chance to see something so different and so interesting. So I derived a lot of personal satisfaction from getting to know the people and the cultures both work and their country cultures and then trying to work together to solve problems. So during your international collaboration what was the best way that you ended up solving those problems? What worked best with all the other countries working together in order to push ideas forward? Yeah, I talked about it just a second ago but let me go a little bit deeper. But what I found was in this group there were a lot of space agencies and as one of the previous commenters noted some are newer space agencies that don't have the history and the expertise. So they are participating in a group activity for their own reasons to help inform their growth, their prioritization, their development program. So you had a different group and then you had other people that were operating the space station and they knew all about space. So what I found is the best way to approach something was to recognize that if you started out with a group that was so desperate, so widely varying, if you start out with a clean sheet of paper you get nowhere because some, the beginning of an activity, say you want to write a white paper on the benefits of space exploration or you want to develop a roadmap or you want to do a technology mapping exercise, whatever. You start out from the beginning, you've got to figure out where are you, where do you want to go, what does the product look like, how should you get there and all along the way. If you start out with a blank sheet of paper there's questions and ideas thrown out and it's just really hard to converge a large group. It's impossible. So what I tried to do was working with my NASA team and sometimes with a smaller set of agencies, right? I would work to prepare, if we decided to do something, I would work to prepare the 50% solution or an idea, give people something to shoot at, right? It's better than starting out with a blank sheet of paper. So we're going to go do XYZ and here's what it might look like, what do you think? And then we could talk about whether what I had proposed or the team might ask to propose something had proposed and how does that help and where does it fall short? And if you were open to accommodating, the good idea is that always came from that discussion, the product would be excellent and better, stronger at the end. So I think advice I would give your listeners is just recognize that if you want an international product you need to value everybody's input but don't be afraid to take the lead in guiding the discussion with some specifics but be open to comments and change along the way. And where we'll... Yeah, so from our YouTube chat, Lisa Stojanowski is asking, what was your favorite idea or solution that came out of those meetings where you or NASA took a step back and listened to what that collaborator may have said? What was your favorite thing? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite is it's an easy one and it's a great question but during the constellation program days, that's when the International Space Exploration Group, Coordination Group started and NASA had to engage this group to help lay out a plan for exploring the moon. Those of you that remember constellation may remember that NASA was providing the entire transportation system to the lunar surface. So the rocket that would launch the cargo and the crew and the lander. And we were not open to international collaboration on those capabilities, which I believe was a mistake but we were open to collaboration in lunar surface exploration. And NASA's baseline plan was to start out with some sortie missions. So these were seven day missions to different places on the moon. And then after a few years, start building an outpost in one location at the South Pole, we were gonna build a massive outpost. And that was the plan. And so our goal in starting the international discussions was to introduce these plans to the other space agencies and begin a discussion about who wanted to contribute what. And in the process of that discussion, one of the international working groups inside this effort came up with this idea of extended stay missions. So the idea was to basically not go for seven days to some place, but in place a pressurized rover and allow the crew to stay for 42 days, a lunar day, a lunar night, and then another lunar day in one location. And so that was called an extended stay missions. And then the rover would move when the crew wasn't there, the rovers would move to a different location. And then the astronauts would come and land at this new location and explore this new location for another extended stay mission. And we brought this back to NASA management, and the NASA administrator at the time, Mike Griffin, was very married to the constellation plan. And the program manager for constellation was Jeff Hanley. And we brought these ideas that came out of this discussion with the partners to Jeff and to Mike Griffin and told them how excited we were about the ideas and they agreed. So NASA was in the process of changing our approach to exploring the moon because of these ideas that came out of the international discussions. Now the constellation program got canceled, but those basic ideas stuck with the international community and you still see that architecture in the latest global exploration roadmap. The idea now of space agencies is to have that capability to do these extended stay missions. And how many you do depends on, if you build an outpost and where and when, but those types of missions were, there's a lot of good reasons for them, including science and advancing technologies that you need for Mars, allowing a lot of agents, a lot of different space agencies to contribute to play a big role. So it was an idea that came from the international discussions and it sort of stuck with the community. And to kind of talk about constellation a little bit because you played a pretty good role in constellation, you were literally the project manager of the Altair Lander for constellation. So that's pretty high up for that there. I know, that was pretty fun. Yeah, and Lisa in our chat room is sort of asking, tell us more about why you think constellation was canceled but also just if you'd tell us a little more about, like, what was it like to work on constellation at that time as well? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it was, it was fantastic. You know, it was, you know, just to provide a little bit of context, right? In 2003, we lost the Space Shuttle Columbia when it was coming back after a successful mission. And there was a commission that was formed to study it and make some recommendations on what happened. And one of the discussions that started after the findings of this commission were that, hey, you know, really spaces becoming more mature of a domain. Even at this point in time, there were, you know, Elon Musk was starting to talk about building rockets and then people were imagining, you know, private commercial, you know, commercial space push. And so, and that was embraced by the, a lot of the, you know, many in the community at the time. So constellation was sort of a recognition that, you know, in the past people, presidents have had ideas will go beyond low earth orbit. Even after Apollo, there were proposals to go do more on the moon and go to Mars. Werner von Braun was proposing Mars. But, you know, so there were proposals in the past, but now was the time to start getting serious about it, right? Now is the time to start seriously planning about beyond low earth orbit work. So constellation started in that context. And the idea was to build a rocket that could take, you know, one of the other things that happened after the Columbia accident was the recommendation to retire the space shuttle. And so, we started planning with constellation to be able to deliver astronauts to the space station as well as this whole Moon Mars program. And it was, you know, it was a fantastic time because the Apollo astronauts were, you know, were still, and many people that worked on Apollo were still, you know, able to remember and provide lessons learned. So there was a lot of work, you know, going back through all the Apollo data and how they made decisions and why they were so successful and what lessons could we learn from it? A lot of people talk to people that built spacecraft, you know, some of my guys talk to the Northern Grumman guys that built the LEM module for Apollo. And, you know, I got to be in a meeting, a chair meeting with Neil Armstrong and Jack Schmidt and Gene Cernan and John Young to talk about a particular issue that we were facing that they also had. So there was that excitement about, you know, now we're passing the torch to a new generation and we're gonna go to the Moon and this time we're gonna go to stay and then we're gonna go on to Mars. So there was that excitement too that was really nice. And so, and it was well funded. The agency did a lot of shuffling of money to make room for constellation and that turned out to be not such a smart idea, right? When you've got an agency that has, you know, a healthy science program and aeronautics program and a human spaceflight program and they're kind of balanced, not equally, but, you know, let's say in a symbiotic relationship when you disturb the apple cart then people get unhappy, you know, stakeholders get unhappy and that created some problems for constellation. And then, you know, just the typical challenges of developing these capabilities after so long a time of, you know, not really having development teams. The shuttle was pretty mature by then. So, you know, the design and development of a major human spaceflight system is a big endeavor. So there were, you know, NASA was kind of rusty and so was, I would argue, the contractor-based. So costs rose. And so when you combine the rising costs with the unhappiness of various stakeholder groups, it provided an opportunity for the Obama administration to say, look, let's step back and do things differently. And at the time, basically the Obama administration was really looking to fund, you know, by now the commercial space effort was roaring. You know, Lori Garver was the deputy administrator and she was very strong pushing for commercial space activities and public-private partnerships and changing the role of NASA. And so, you know, the administration, you know, had this desire to push commercially and public-private partnerships and in an environment where, you know, there were a lot of, you know, people that lost when the constellation took their budget and rising costs of constellations. So just, you know, I believe those are the main factors that caused the program to end. I will say it was such a shockwave to the community because so much money had been spent at the time it was canceled on, you know, the Aries rocket and the Orion and the Aries five little bit of money had been spent, a little bit of money on the Al-Tarra lander had been spent but a lot of money had been spent across the board and, you know, that's a lot of money. A lot of money was really wasted, I would say, with that big decision. So it was nice to see when this current administration came that they didn't make the huge changes that previous administrations had done saying, you know, just because it was the previous guy's idea and I like it, so let's cancel it. So it allowed us to stay sort of on a steady path, which was very good. So the constellation was great. It was fun to be part of going back to the moon. We were attracting, you know, young people out of college, the brightest and they were so excited and so everybody was. So it was a lot of fun. And to kind of wrap up our amazing discussion that we've had so far today. What does the future of international collaboration look like and is there a seat at that table for like a specific private company that may want to be considered as an international collaborator with that? So what does that future look like? Oh yeah, definitely. So the future is, I think NASA's got a great plan right now going, building the gateway, going back to the surface of the moon and then on to Mars. And they are working with international space agencies, you know, the ISS partners to build the gateway. Oh yeah, there's the chart from the roadmap. So this is really what everybody's working on. So, you know, let's get low earth orbit ready for the future platforms and then let space agencies push beyond low earth orbit but doing it together with partners from the private sector. So the gateway and lunar surface activities will have, if NASA successful, you know, significant international partnerships both the traditional space agencies and new space agencies. Through this work that we did in the Global Exploration Roadmap, a lot of space agencies are busy working on capabilities and having discussions with NASA that are really productive, leading to collaborations on the lunar surface. And so then that will just strengthen the international partnership with more nations and then at the right time, agencies will lead the push to go to Mars. So I think that agencies are very, you know, they see the benefits of the public-private partnerships and so that will ensure that significant public sector entities that are investing and wanna see things happen and have a stake in the game. We'll have a seat at the table in the planning and execution of the mission. So I think it'll be really a future of exploration with international and private sector partners. And I really hope that we can stay on tracking and get it done. I hope we can get humans to the surface of the moon by 2024 or shortly thereafter. And I hope that that will lead to a real, they'll do it in a way that is sustainable, that we'll have international partners in significant ways, do good science and enable the private sector to meet their needs as well. So the whole, so it's a sustainable effort. All right, well, Cathy Lourini, the president of a Sorry Space Consulting Group, a fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk about international collaboration. So fantastic to have you. Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, it's great to get that out there and kind of get that inside perspective too on something that we really don't think about very often in spaceflight, that international collaboration. And also with international collaboration, you the viewers help do that for us as well here at Tomorrow. We are a show that is essentially funded by you the viewer. You can reach certain levels with us if you'd like to and get certain things for that. So like our escape velocity citizens that we have right here are orbital citizens. You get access to some really cool stuff. And if you'd like to help fund the shows of tomorrow, you can head on over to patreon.com slash tmro. And also now you can do it on YouTube as well. You can go to youtube.com slash tmro slash join. And for as little as a dollar per month, you can help support us and help make these shows possible because we can't have the studio. We can't have all this amazing equipment and we can't get these amazing connections with these people without your help. So if you'd like to help financially, those are ways you can do it. You can also head over to community.tmro.tv as well in order to find other ways you can help us out and also do that as well. So thanks for watching orbit 12.26. Until the next episode, we'll see you later. Bye-bye everybody.