 And welcome to tomorrow's season 9 episode 37 for Saturday, November 12th, 2016. My name is Benjamin Higginbotham, and before we get started, a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who helped up to make this specific segment of this episode happen. These are people who have contributed $10 or more to this episode. We are Crowdfunded Show. Every single dollar helps. That list keeps getting longer and longer. So thank you to all the patrons of tomorrow. Head on over to patreon.com slash tmro for more information on how you can crowdfund the show. Now before we get into the interview today, I did just want to remind everyone this is a fairly touchy subject. We do have three basic rules here at tomorrow. They're all very simple. The first is no dying. We do work in the aerospace industry. A lot of people work with explosives and whatnot. So be safe, be smart, no dying. Rule number two, don't be a dick. Treat people like you want to be treated. And rule number three is you debate the idea, not the person. So no name calling, no debating people and their personalities. You debate ideas themselves. Head on over to tomorrow.tv slash rules for more information. Now because of the particular topic, you know, the citizens tomorrow, you guys are awesome. We traditionally have great comments in our comments area. You all treat each other with respect even when you disagree. All I ask is please continue to do that even with the fairly heated topic. So on that news, we're going to bring on Jeff Faust. He is the senior staff writer over at Space News, or a senior staff writer over at SpaceNews.com. And we're going to be talking about the Donald Trump policy for space. So Jeff, first off, thank you very much for taking time out of your Saturday and joining us today. No problem. Pleasure to be here. All right. So we don't know a whole lot about what a space policy under Trump would mean, but some of these pieces are starting to come together a little bit. Can you tell us a bit about what we know? Sure. You know, the Trump campaign didn't talk much about space during the campaign. That's not surprising. Space is in a big issue. There are a lot of their much bigger issues that got all the attention during the campaign. It was really in sort of the final weeks of the campaign leading up to the election where the campaign did bring in a space policy advisor. He is Robert Walker, former congressman, former chairman of the House Science Committee. He helped formulate sort of the framework of a policy and that framework really calls for some very basic, more almost philosophical points. That includes promoting commercialization, promoting human exploration, less of an emphasis on earth science, more cooperation between the various branches of the government where it comes to space, issues like that. So not a lot of details, not a lot of depth, but you get sort of an idea of what a Trump administration might do once it takes office in January. So the big one, the big item you mentioned to us in human space exploration is the space launch system. Under Trump administration, have they said anything about SLS? Do we have any insight as to what might be happening with that particular program? Yeah, that's a good question. They haven't specifically said anything about SLS or Orion or the other parts of the exploration program. You can read that to mean that they're not particularly interested in SLS. That they might make changes to that in the future or simply because they haven't gotten down to that level of detail. And I suspect for the time being, that's really the latter explanation. They really hadn't had the need to think about what they would want to do with SLS, what they would want to do with Orion, what they would want to do with these other systems because space wasn't a priority with a new administration coming in and some decisions to make about who's going to be NASA administrator about flushing out some of those policy basics that they unveiled during the campaign itself. You'll start to see some more details about what they might want to do with some of those key programs. Keeping in mind, I think, and I think this is important, that what a campaign says during the campaign and what it attempts to do maybe two different things, what it attempts to do once elected and what it's actually able to get through Congress can also be two very different things. And how long does something like this take, right? So when Obama took office, it wasn't right away when there was suddenly like day one, he had a space policy. How long do these transition periods generally take? Yeah, that's a very good point. A lot of people tend to think of the transition as taking place between election day in November and the inauguration in January. In reality, that transition can last months longer. Case in point with the Obama administration, you know, they took office in January of 2009. It was four months later of May when they finally nominated Charlie Bolden to be NASA administrator after going through a number of other potential candidates for the office. So I wouldn't be surprised if it takes the Trump administration a while to fill that position simply because it's going to take a while to fill all the cabinet and higher level positions out there in the federal government. Likewise, it wasn't until January of 2010, actually February of 2010, when they actually unveiled their plan to cancel the constellation program, to develop the commercial crew program, things like that. So there's going to be a period of transition that will last for many months and until the Trump administration is really able to put its own stamp on space policy. So for the time being, we just sort of look at who's involved and what they're saying and trying to guess from there what they might do in a year or two. So when it comes to the United States president, how much does that matter? There's actually a question in the chat room from I think it's Furkeep, which is how much of the total space business can change or in how much is set in stone for the long term? Yeah, I mean, you know, the federal government, NASA runs on annual budgets, so you can change things on an annual basis if you decide you don't want to continue a particular program or if you want to accelerate a particular program by adding more money to it. That's certainly a possibility. But again, we're almost ready to get the 2017 budget done. That's one of the priorities for Congress when it returns next week for its so-called lame duck session after the election. The new administration will have to quickly develop a 2018 budget proposal shortly after it takes office. So there won't be much time for them to make major changes to NASA there. It's really going to be the 2019 budget proposal which will come out in early 2018 that they've really had their first opportunity to make major changes to NASA programs. So there's going to be a period of time running for, like I said, up to a year after the inauguration where NASA programs may more or less continue as they're going now as the new administration tries to figure out what changes they want to make, what new programs they want to implement, or what existing programs they want to cancel. But it's not just the president, right? I mean, the president can set some stuff, but ultimately it's a combination of the president and Congress together that are going to tell NASA what they're going to end up doing over time. Absolutely. You know, the president proposes Congress disposes, as the old saying in Capitol Hill, about budgets. You know, the president proposes a budget, but ultimately they have to Congress to come up with the appropriations bills to cover that. Likewise, you saw in the 2010 debate about the efforts to cancel the constellation program. You know, they ended up did canceling the Ares-1 and the Ares-5, but they came up with a space launch system which looks a lot like the Ares-5, in many respects, and the Orion program continued. So if a Trump administration came in and said, well, we really want to cancel the space launch system, I suspect you will see members of Congress who have their own stakes in the program because of activities going on in their districts or states stepping up to fight that effort, with no guarantee that the Trump administration would be successful in any of these efforts. It will depend a lot on their relationships with the Congress and also what sort of priority that they put on space and how much effort they would put in to try and implement their plans if it faces any sort of congressional opposition. One of the things that will also be happening is we're going to be getting a new NASA administrator. Has there been any word, do you have any insight as to who that might be or who they're looking at at this time? Yeah, the rumor mill is really starting to spin up now with the election now in place. One of the first themes that's really emerged is a congressman from Oklahoma, Jim Bridenstine. He was just re-elected to his third term in Congress. He represents the Tulsa area. He serves on the House Science Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, so he's seen a lot of both civil and military space issues, and he's been very active on space policy. Back in April, he introduced legislation called the American Space Renaissance Act, which was a very broad-reaching space bill with a number of policy provisions regarding military space, civil space, and commercial space. And so he's definitely thought a lot about it, so he would be a very interesting choice to be a NASA administrator if that does go forward and if, in fact, he's interested in doing so. He's also apparently also being considered for the position of Secretary of the Air Force, so it may not be the only job that he has to consider. A couple other names you might hear. One of them is Mark Albrecht. Back in the George H.W. Bush administration, Bush 41 administration in the early 90s, he was Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, which was this interagency body that oversaw space policy, and the National Space Council hasn't been in existence since the Bush 41 administration, but one of the tenets of the Trump campaign space policy was to restore the National Space Council, and Albrecht is involved with some of the NASA transition issues as part of the Trump transition team, so he's got a role there. Another name you might hear is Eileen Collins. She is the former astronaut, flew on several shuttle missions, was the first female commander of a shuttle mission, as a matter of fact, now retired, but she spoke at the Republican National Convention very briefly in support of a reinvigorated space policy and in support of the Trump campaign, so that's another name you may hear. I suspect in the weeks that come you'll probably hear other names, how seriously they'll be considered or how seriously those people are interested in the position remain to be seen, but just because you're starting to hear names now doesn't mean that a selection is imminent. It may take weeks or months, like I said, as was the case with the Obama administration before the Trump administration finally settles on a pick for NASA administrator. There are a couple of questions in the chat room all kind of relating to themselves, all focused around kind of commercial space. Has there been any murmurings about what's going to happen to the commercial space side of NASA, the COPS program and commercial crew and whatnot? Not specifically to programs like commercial crew, but one of the priorities that the Trump campaign mentioned in their space policy was supporting space commercialization. Robert Walker in some of his op-eds that we published in Space News and some speeches that he made talked about turning over low earth orbit entirely to the commercial sector, bringing in new partners to help support the International Space Station. So I think if anything, a Trump administration would be more strongly supportive of commercial space, a commercial crew program, greater commercialization of the International Space Station and so on because that would allow them to free up resources to do deep space exploration whether that's the Moon or Mars or elsewhere. It sounds like they're also wanting to work more closely with our international partners on things like space station, possibly extending the life of space station. One of the things that's been missing up until now is China. We've not allowed China onto the space station. Have there been any talks of allowing them in to the space station program at all or is that no one said anything in that realm? Yeah, Walker has talked a little bit about that. He is supportive to some degree of enhanced cooperation with China, whether that represents just his opinion or a opinion shared by the broader Trump campaign remains to be seen. I think any effort to do so is going to face some congressional opposition because it's Congress that has imposed the strict limitations on cooperation between NASA and China and space in a series of appropriations bills such that NASA has to get permission from Congress in essence to do any sort of cooperation with China, even on issues like aviation and air traffic control or earth sciences or so on, let alone human spaceflight. So this kind of deviates a little bit from what we're talking about, but it is an interesting question from Space Cookie 84 which is, is there a way to isolate science and space from advancement from turmoil of politics because it only takes one bad administration to hamper what's been done so far? Or I think a different way of looking at that is it's very difficult for an agency like NASA who has very long-term 10, 20, 30, 40 year goals to have to shift every four to eight years into a new way. Is there any way to prevent that from happening? Not under the current structure. We do our appropriations on an annual basis and that's true whether you're at NASA or the National Science Foundation or NOAA or the National Institutes of Health to mention several agencies that do science and related research. And so it's each administration's prerogative trying to put their own stamp into place and their own policies into place onto these agencies. So trying to separate these agencies from politics isn't feasible because they are part of politics. They are part of policy. They are federally funded. They are run by either federal appointees or people who are nominated and then confirmed by the Senate. So one of the other, no, I'm bouncing around a little bit, but one of the other things that was mentioned is they want to require that all federal agencies develop plans of how they would use space assets and space development developments, as you mentioned a little bit earlier. What could that mean? All federal agencies, that's very broad. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in a lot of cases. Yeah, and that might be one of those issues that they really haven't thought through to that grade of detail in terms of how they would implement that. I think that would go back to this decision to reinstitute the National Space Council because one of the issues the National Space Council dealt with was sort of bringing together all the different space programs across the federal government, whether it's NASA, whether it was in the Defense Department or elsewhere and making sure that they are aligned to some degree and that there's no duplication of effort. You'll hear that, I think. Continue from the Trump campaign and desire to make sure that there is no duplication of effort among these agencies, that there's no waste of funding or so on. And that's done to some degree already through the White House and through the space policy that's oftentimes handled by the National Security Council or the Office of Science and Technology Policy. I think you may see a greater emphasis there, but again, asking all of these federal agencies how they intend to use space, maybe sort of more of a make work exercise than any sort of substantive policy directive. So it sounds like the budget's going to generally... No one's expecting the budget to really increase as well, right? So it kind of sounds like it's going to be generally the same path forward for human spaceflight with a reduced path forward on Earth sciences. Yeah, I mean, Bob Walker has mentioned in conversations that he wasn't expecting great increases to NASA's budget. Exactly what NASA's budget is going to look like or even the federal budget's overall is one of the uncertainties that is part of this transition process, given all discussions on topics ranging from massive infrastructure investments to removing or replacing Obamacare. So space is sort of a small part of that much bigger picture. So that remains to be seen there. One of the issues that comes up when you mention Earth science is the idea that... And this is not new to the Trump campaign, but it's been mentioned by a number of other Republicans in Capitol Hill in the past is a belief that there are other agencies doing Earth science and that NASA should be focused on space exploration and that those efforts should be handed over to an agency like NOAA. Well, if that happens, then the funding, presumably, for those programs would have to be handed over to NOAA as well. So it would not be as if you're freeing up money within the NASA budget. You're simply redirecting where that money goes and it may turn out that NOAA may have to go back to NASA as it does already with a number of its weather satellite programs and works with NASA to actually carry out some of these satellite programs because NOAA itself doesn't have the same degree of satellite expertise that NASA does, which is why the two agencies often work together on programs like the GOESR weather satellite that will be launching a week from today is a NOAA program but done in close cooperation with NASA. So even if a new administration attempts to divest Earth science from NASA, those other agencies may have to go back to that expertise within NASA to carry out those programs. There's a lot of talk that the Trump campaign kind of wants to or Trump presidency and wants to kind of kill off Earth sciences entirely, but that's not the whole story like you mentioned. It's actually just shifting the focus to another agency and even if that agency has to go back to NASA and they have to work together, that doesn't mean that we're getting rid of Earth sciences or more to the point it doesn't mean that we know anything yet about Earth sciences. It's too early to tell. Would that be a fair statement? I think too early to tell is a good explanation for that and for a lot of the other policy issues too. Simply given it's been only a few days since the election that the transition efforts are only now ramping up and there's been so little details about space policy in general that trying to for example figure out what's going to happen to a specific program as a result of the campaign and the election really remains to be seen in many respects and also keep in mind that all these changes will have to go through Congress and in recent years for example the house has attempted to cut funding for NASA's Earth science program. The Senate has come in and restored that and you may see that continuing in the years to come that the Congress particularly the Senate which is almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats may be willing to compromise or temper some of the more extreme proposals that may come out of a Trump administration. What about military space? Has there been any rumor or talk about what's happening in the military space? Well you know the Trump campaign mentioned in their policy they're very concerned about threats to our military satellites posed by Russia and China in particular both have tested or suggested they may be testing anti-satellite weapons of some kind China famously tested an anti-satellite weapon nearly a decade ago and created a tremendous amount of debris they've been continuing testing but in not quite the same destructive way since then so I think you may see more of an emphasis on technologies to either prevent such attacks or to mitigate their effects they've talked for example about the use of small satellites which has been a topic that the Obama administration has been supporting in recent years making greater use of them to deal with any threats to the larger satellites that they have another technology area they've mentioned is hypersonics the concern there is that Russia and China may be developing hypersonic technologies for missiles that could defeat missile defense systems so you may see an emphasis on military development of hypersonic technologies but that could also have civil and commercial applications as well I think the takeaway is that really it is too early to tell at this point however for people that are worried that there are going to be these huge sweeping changes it doesn't really sound like it there might be possibly some shift in like how things are done but generally it's the same path forward at least that's what it's starting to look like as you mentioned again we're only a few days into it at this point there's potential for sweeping changes down the road but certainly not immediately as was mentioned simply because of the timing of the budgets there will be a 2017 budget likely in place by the time Trump takes office in January a 2018 budget proposal will have to come out shortly thereafter so there's going to be some time for them to develop a policy and even if they develop a policy that attempts to make major changes in much the same ways the Obama administration did in 2010 with their effort to cancel the constellation program there will be a debate in Congress and no guarantee that those changes will go through so it's a lot of wait and see and keep close tabs on what's going on in terms of what sort of people are involved with the Trump transition when it comes to NASA military space as well as some of the policy positions that they may make in the weeks and months to come Alright, before we go to break, we're trying something new with our guests we've got six really quick questions these are not related to politics at all these are all just your personal answers to these questions first thing that comes to mind when I ask you each of these here we go, first question is Moon or Mars first? Moon first Liquid or solid propellant? Depends on the application I like that answer That's what I say, that's what I say, it's a constant debate here What should the name of the first vehicle going to Mars be? That's a good question I would call it Armstrong 1 Armstrong 1, I think Blue Origin would probably agree with you When do you think humans will first land on Mars? Probably in the late 2030s In that orbital area whenever that opens up? One of those windows that opens up around then Maybe surprises When do you think humans will set foot on the Moon again? I will say 2025 2025? Alright, and last question, why space? Because I think it's essential to our future and to both our survival and our growth as a species Awesome, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us Where can people find more information about you, space news and space politics? Well, go to our website, spacenews.com It's updated all the time with the latest coverage on both the transition and all the other space issues taking place today