 Thank you all for coming. I am indeed Patrick Barone, who according to Wikipedia has been a television writer for 25 years, which makes me the least properly credentialed person on this panel. Obviously, I'm here to round out the race, age, and gender diversity on the panel. But let me introduce the other members of our distinguished panel to, well. We're stuck on the serious panel. Well. Everybody else has been humorous. I know. The two panels were a lot more fun than this one. Well, let's see what we can do, Richard. To my immediate right, Richard Dalbello, did I pronounce that correctly, Virgin Galactics, Vice President of Business Development. Richard has had a long career in both industry and in government. Prior to his current position, Richard was the Vice President for Legal and Government Affairs at Intel Sat, and he also served as President of the Satellite Industry Association. In his government career, Richard has worked in both the White House and at NASA. So you will be the policy wonk on this panel. To his right, Professor Henry Hertzfeld, Research Professor of Space Policy and International Relations at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. He is an expert in both economic and legal issues of space and teaches the space law course as an adjunct professor of law at GW's law school. So you will be the academic policy wonk. You'll be the government policy wonk. You can be the academic policy wonk. And then to his right, Jeff Manber also had a long history of working in multiple government getting along on space exploration and utilization from heading up the Russian-based Energia USA and then the Dutch company Mircorp, which leased the Russian space station Mir for two years. And he's now working as the Chief Executive Officer of NanoRacks LLC, which is the market leader in ISS utilization. So you're going to be the rogue business man out there charging to make space. I'll handle that. I'll handle that. Good, good. So we all have our roles to play. So those of us who actually paid attention during the last two panels, I apologize. I was not one of them because you scheduled this opposite the Nationals Mets game. Stephen Srosberg and Matt Harvey pitching no score in the bottom of the second. But I got the sense from overlooking someone else's notes that Mars needs women and Mars needs space accountants. But let's assume that as the other panelists have described, we're close to actually going out there to Mars. We've got our rocket ships. We've got our astronauts. Once we get out there, what law governs? I want to get in my rocket. I don't want to be pulled over by a space cop. What is it that I have to consider as an entrepreneur, as a space person? Professor, why don't we begin with you? Excuse me. We have to start, of course, with the series of international treaties. And there are, well, four and the fifth treaty that have been ratified in space. The main one, the Outer Space Treaty, goes back to 1967. It's been signed or ratified by close to 130 nations. All space ferry nations are included in that. Then there are some specifics beneath it, such as the Rescue and Return Agreement. If something goes wrong up there, the Liability Convention. Again, if you're in space, something goes wrong. You have to prove fault. And Registration Convention, and then the Moon Agreement. The Moon Agreement is the one that's been only signed or ratified by about 19 or 20 countries. So that one is questionable, is whether it's legally in effect, but whether it's really practically in effect. And the treaty set up a bunch of principles. And I think those are going to last in space. They've been good for 50 years, and I don't think there's any serious effort to repeal that or withdraw from the treaties. And those principles are peaceful purposes in space. No sovereignty can be declared by any nation on celestial bodies. No weapons of mass destruction. And a principle of freedom of exploration for all nations and cooperation. So I think those are good ideals. And the details in them will also have an effect on how we go. It's up to each nation to implement those treaties so that the prior speaker spoke about the tax system in the United States. But frankly, the tax system in every nation that might be involved in a joint program is also important as to how you would fund, and in some ways financially anyway, behave up there. And there's room for interpretation and differences among nations. And if we have a cooperative program, we have a model, the International Space Station. There is a formal agreement. And there's also a crew code of conduct that applies and is signed by all the partners and the participants. So we've already begun to think about and to implement some types of rules. And the question is, what needs to be different if we were to go to Mars? Mr. Geer, nodding politely and looking like you want to say something else. I do. Because I think that the keying off Henry's point, the Outer Space Treaty, the 1907 Outer Space Treaty is kind of like the founding document. And it has one important phrase that we've been debating for the last several years, which does tie to the previous speaker's comments, which is that states at the time, of course, in 67, people didn't really think the commercial sector was going to be in space. They assumed it was government. And so what they did say is kind of a backhand comment in the Outer Space Treaty. They say, well, then states have to provide effective supervision and control of their private entities operating in space. And of course, there's a big debate about that now. Now that people are seriously talking about doing things like mining asteroids, one of the rules that I always make fun of is that there is a rule in the legislation for remote sensing satellites that says, if your spacecraft can image the Earth, you have to get a remote sensing license. So you have to go to NOAA, the Department of Commerce, and get a license. Well, this same thing would apply if you put a camera on a spacecraft to go mine an asteroid. And then you would say, I need a remote sensing license to go look at an asteroid. Why does that make any sense whatsoever? And the answer is it probably doesn't make sense. But what we do is we have these rules built for operation in and near Earth that are being applied in ways that are uneven. And so it's raising new issues for companies that do want to go beyond Earth orbit. Jeff, you've worked in space now for decades. Is that do you have anything to add to that? No, having worked in space for decades, I have nothing to add to that. No. The biggest problem that both speakers are alluding to is the way things are set up. How do you invest? How do you put private capital in a situation where you can't have private ownership? I mean, that's such a, from the American perspective, to have a situation where you cannot have commercial real estate, you can't have ownership. Do we really want to engage in a practice that we go explore but don't take one of the most basic parts of our value system with us? And that is individuality, private ownership, commercial. And the other thought is that just the whole question on International Space Station, how do you have private ownership there? Under the IGA, as Henry sort of alluded to at the Intergovernmental Agreement, it's a wonderful document. It governs how the member nations work together on International Space Station. And I often refer to it as the Magna Caterer space, and I think we should take it on. But for example, under the IGA, there's no room for individuals or companies. So the invest, never mind the tax situation, the investment to get that income, to get that ownership to begin to do the mining, as Richard was saying, the legal system regime is immature at best or just from another era of a post-World War II era that nations would solve all our problems. All right, so let's flash forward 10 years, say the final year of the Ted Cruz presidency when all, thank you for laughing at that prospect, when all government regulation has been disbanded. Is that the better thing, or do we actually need some kind of, say, US or Earth government regulation? I think it depends on where you are in space. There's a lot of very practical things. If you're in Earth orbit or near Earth orbit and you wanna communicate, there has to be some rules for how you use the radio frequency spectrum. So that's just common sense because if you don't have rules, people are just gonna interfere and communications will fail. So there's some things that are very practical. As you move out, it doesn't, as Jeff said, there's some things that don't make sense. Like if you got one of the almost infinite number of asteroids and you wanted to use it and own it, it doesn't make any sense that you wouldn't be able to do that. So the question is at what point are there limits to the bounds of the US laws? And there's one limit which is practicality like radio frequency spectrum. And then there's other limits like no ownership which presumes a finite view of the world and the universe doesn't exist on the same scale as the rules. Actually there is ownership in space. Anything that you put up into space, you do own. The equipment is there. And actually not only do you own it, but you're liable. You're liable for anything that might go wrong to pay for that damage to let's say an innocent party, a third party. Technically our government and every other government that's agreed to the documents I mentioned before is liable and then through national laws they pass down to private ownership. They basically, they transfer the liability and require insurance. We do that with launches, but frankly we have not given a lot of thought yet. We're just starting to how do we handle the issues that Jeff and Richard are talking about on orbit and in outer space? So we're talking about it now, but the equipment that you're gonna put up there is, can be privately owned. And in fact, our government's either. That's a different issue though. Obviously you're just saying you own your own spacecraft true or the state's, whatever the state of registry. But the question is, what's the status of exploiting and using the minerals, the celestial bodies? And right now there's a conflict. There are some people who argue that there's not a pure ban on ownership, that there's a ban on complete ownership. So you could use, for example, we have, I think it's 350 commercial satellites now, 300 or 400 commercial satellites in geostationary orbit. And the value of that orbit is that the satellites are turning at the same rate that the earth is, so it's fixed over a point on the earth. So, but the disadvantage is that you can really only have a few satellites in the same area. So you're effectively excluding everyone else in the world. Not surprisingly, the main aerospace nations, the United States, France, and others, own most of those spots. And the people who are coming along and in space, next generations of space leaders from other countries, those orbital slots are already taken. So in some sense there is kind of an ownership in space already. So the question is, can you extrapolate that to mining? If I establish a mining operation on the moon, I could say I don't own the moon. I'm just gonna take all the resources out. I think that's coming, and the resources themselves without appropriating the land. I mean there's a difference between sovereignty, appropriation, ownership, liability, and property rights. They're not all exactly the same thing. And there is room in the language of the treaties because ownership of resources is not specific, or making a profit in space is not prohibited. It is a question of interpretation. And we're on the threshold, I think, in the United States anyway of addressing some of those questions. Internationally, we have different problems. I just wanna add that we have a number of men and women living in space now, living on the International Space Station, and the rules, if I could just explain a little bit more about the IGA. They go sort of against, fortunately, what you were just saying, Henry, in that section eight of the IGA, no one can get sued. Third-party liability is a wave. It's an extremely robust, so we have a situation. It goes against the Outer Space Treaty. And at NANIRAX, we run into problems, for example, the UK Space Agency refuses to acknowledge the IGA. And they insist that customers of ours coming from the UK have to take insurance, as you were saying. And both the United States and other member nations of the International Space Station have told the UK Space Agency that this is not necessary, but they insist. And so you run the risk that a small payload on the space station has to take coverage for in case they bring down the space station. So the IGA, and I guess the subject of this panel is red tape, I mean, the governments on the space station have really come up with something that's remarkably robust. And again, I think it should be used as a starting point to go further. There are problems, we have run into problems with does my company own the hardware it has on the station, the microscopes, the centrifuges, or does that belong to NASA once it goes up? And so there's a lot of questions that we have on this. But fortunately, third-party liability is not one of them. If something goes wrong, we're not liable if we bring down the station. So that's a positive thing. And I don't know what the equivalent is. And let me just add one other thing. When you talk about red tape, the government, of course, is usually the originator of the red tape. And of course, we'll have it going to Mars. I have no doubt about it. The other problem, though, is if it's international and the cultural differences. And I deal every day with the International Space Station. And the cultural differences of how different nations and different societies handle day-to-day space operations. Let's say we went to Mars with emerging nations. They're viewing it maybe politically, symbolically. Let's say the members from the United States are viewing it in terms of commerce. The way you approach how you begin a project affects your day-to-day. And it's very important. It slows us down as much as, let's say, red tape, dealing with other nations, other societies, and differing views of, let's say, even the International Space Station. Let me do another question that I have written here on this piece of paper. Is space legislation partisan? Do we have a history in this country where John Glenn was a Democrat? I think a lot of the. Center, Kennedy Center. There seems to be. And a space center. And yet, should any Martian show up with a weapon, I think Republicans would be very much interested in making sure that we can defend against that kind of Mars attack. I think, actually, we've been blessed in that. By and large, and I'm going to place a look. If you look at the space policies of administrations all the way back to Nixon, if you look at the space policy, there have been some variances. There are a couple of things I could point out. But by and large, the core of those policy statements, that's when the president actually comes out and says, this is my policy for space. And if you look at those, they've been consistent over time. And there haven't been dramatic variances between Republican and Democratic presidents. I think where you have gotten into a recent fracas is the recent differences between Republicans and Democrats. When the Obama administration came in, there was a lot of focus on investing in new technology, as opposed to doing big missions right now, which gets to this issue of, should we be mounting a Mars mission now? Of course, there were some people who argued, you probably shouldn't mount a Mars mission until you can at least do some things on the ground, have robots there in advance making water, making oxygen. I mean, these arguments have been raging in the community. And I think that there were some fissures between Republicans and Democrats on those issues. But by and large, I think it's been pretty calm. I fully agree with what Richard just said. There is one interesting trend in those space policies, though, over time. It is starting about 1980. Carter and then Nixon administrations, you began to see words in there that recognized the potential of the commercial sector. And the number of words, paragraphs, and so on devoted to that and supporting, incentivizing the government to buy from private vendors and to encourage the private sector has grown tremendously since. And also, I think it's fair to say that if we have a government-launched Mars expedition, chances are it's more likely maybe push back on me here. If it's a Democratic administration that launches it, I think they'd be more open to international. And I think this is just my gut feeling. Republicans would not be as open to international participation. And when we did the International Space Station, it was the Clinton administration reaching out to the Russians. It was a very important move. It helped us greatly after the Columbia disaster. And I think it's just a fair sort of generalization that ever since Gore, the Democrats are more interested in international than Republicans. Just a sense. I think the funding issues are probably more driving this than the politics. When starting in on an expensive project, we're going to look for other sources of funding. Wall Street isn't enough. And we have to go and engage partners as well around the world. Well, let's talk about that in the sort of historic context that when we deal with a new frontier, so Ferdinand and Isabelle send Columbus off to find a new spice route. Jefferson sends Lewis and Clark out to build an arch and that sort of thing. And Kennedy sends men to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hot. And he wants to beat the Soviets. So what's out there for today's government? What's out there for today's globally world leaders? I think for us, it's beat the Chinese. I mean, I'm not saying I take that position. Just saying if I'm dealing with the Cruz administration, as you're saying, the argument, I have 30 seconds with the next president of the United States. And I would say to him or her, you know, if I wanted to play that game, which I wouldn't. I mean, I'd say private sector enterprise unleash American ingenuity, what we do best. But along the lines that you're saying, the next, I think, political thing is what are we going to do with the Chinese? Welcome them in or compete against them? So meanwhile, what are the Chinese doing? Why are they going into space? What's the benefit there? Well, when you look at their vehicle that went to the moon, it had a lot of very practical instruments on it. They were looking at O3s, I think it is. They were looking at different elements. You know, they say they're going to the moon for both political purposes, symbolism, but also for the practicality and commercial value of it. I think even closer to home, I think it's very practical. I mean, space technologies are very practical. And just as President Kennedy understood, they have an immediate impact in the national security community. So technologies for imaging distant objects help you to do reconnaissance on the ground. Space transportation capabilities that can propel humans to space are good at delivering weapons systems around the world. So these close connections have always have the GPS system, which has helped us all find our soccer games on Saturday, has also been instrumental in moving men, material, airplanes, and ships around the planet. So I think the Chinese get that fundamentally. And so I think one of the real questions of whether we're going to have a competition or whether we're going to have commerce in space has to do with where the Chinese and the Russians are going next with space-based military applications. We've kind of owned space for a long time. We've had a good 20 or 30 years where we were just completely dominant in space. And I think that one of the major shifts that's going to happen, and the Chinese embracing all of space technology is certainly directly related to this. And I think one of the next big inflection points we have is what happens next in national security space, in and around our own planet. I think this raises questions that we certainly are not going to answer today. The first question Rich just mentioned that is the national security aspects of all this, the dual use in space. But the second one, particularly if we're talking about long-term exploration in Mars is the humans in space question. It's expensive and probably the biggest ticket item that we're talking about. And if we want to do that, it would be in reaction to perhaps the Chinese or somebody else doing similar or having similar plans. But the robots and other exploration of Mars, we've been doing this for 30 years. We've learned a lot. We can learn a lot of science by continuing in the non-human robotic exploration. And I think that is a logical step, regardless. We're going to send robots before we send humans anywhere. And whether we just continue in that vein or we jump the budget significantly and include humans in that. I mean, NASA wants to, NASA is a human space flight agency. But coming back to your core question, why do we want to go out there? It's harder to answer if we're talking about why take people out there as opposed to why go out and find out what's there and for a variety of scientific and other reasons. Well, I guess I'm asking not just about government then. Talk a little about the business incentive, the motivation to go out into space. Obviously, there's plunder out there. Talk about that, Jeff. I mean, the commercial argument of going to Mars is not as established. And sometimes even business people would say we do things that are not for the bottom line. And I mean, I share the musky in view of exploration. And I mean, it is a desire. It is a goal. It is noble. It is uplifting. It's an extension of our value. So for me, one can make a stronger case right now for asteroids or the moon. I don't see a business model, as you're saying, to go to Mars. And yet that doesn't mean for a moment that whether we pursue a lot of things, whether it's Antarctic research or a certain basic research lacking a business model, how you obtain and get to Mars, I think you need the business model, the commercial, the vehicles, the services, the space stations on the way. The crew should be private. There should be competition. All that, I think, can be done in an open market situation. But the case to be made, in my view, for being on Mars in 30 years, to me, that's not a commercial case. If you see where I draw the line there. I guess it's ultimately whether the little green men have greenbacks then. I want to open this up to the audience here and anybody who has my cell phone number via text, if you want to ask a question, you're welcome to as well. Don't all raise your hands at once. There's one. Gary Olson, Space Frontier Foundation. And in the last talk and all during this panel, there have been implications of income in space. The only specific new source of income that I've heard has been mining. Could any of you talk to other sources of income, not necessarily at Mars, but anywhere along the path from the Earth's surface to Mars? Ignoring the obvious, I mean, SATCOM and that type of thing. I think we're on the cusp of finally having in-space manufacturing. We have several customers now that are really doing some basic, interesting, and I think tantalizingly commercial work on manufacturing higher quality things, products, biopharma, even basic materials, fiber optics, other things. And so it doesn't mean a reason to go to Mars. But I am seeing that we finally, after 30 years of talking about it, advances on the ground in research hardware are allowing us to take advantage fully of zero gravity. So that's one area that at least in low Earth orbit I think we may be finally seeing where we can have those factories we've long alluded to. And I think there's a role for providing basic infrastructure for the commercial sector. So if the governments want to go to Mars, you're going to need communications, you're going to need water, you're going to need fuel, you're going to need helpful robots on the ground. These are all things that you don't need the government to do everything. And all of those infrastructures, all that infrastructure that the government is going to need to survive, can parts and pieces of it can be provided by the private sector? And I think the lesson for both of the comments is that it's going to be incremental. Nobody has yet developed what's trade known as the killer app, the space application that's going to immediately yet make billions of dollars here on Earth. But the opportunities, either for selling to the government or for certain types of small manufacturer to begin with are there. And even the mining, there are many, many small steps that have to be taken before we can actually get to an asteroid and use those resources. The telescopes are one to find out what's out there and the equipment to get there, the equipment to return. All this has to be developed. One other element that I'd like you to talk about, which is space tourism. Well, my company among the first. I'm very much looking forward to the safety video that you produce because I can't get the song out of my head from the Virgin America space, the safety video. Those of you who've recently flown on a Virgin airplane, they have a very catchy, rather than doing the normal boring safety video. They have a very catchy song and dance number that does stick. The nearest thing that might be behind you, that one lyric. Yes, that's the. Well, Virgin Galactic has two products. One is the spaceship, which will carry up to six passengers up to 100 kilometers to give them an experience of entering space and coming back and experiencing weightlessness. For three to four minutes, we currently have about 700 customers who've already paid and are waiting for us to get started. We had a tragic accident in our experimental test program last year. We've got the next spaceship almost done. Should be rolling out this summer, early fall, late summer. And we hope to start testing again next fall. We're also building a small launch vehicle, which is more traditional, which will be launching satellites, smaller satellites, into low Earth orbit. So we are big believers. And our primary sponsor, Richard Branson, fully intends to be the first commercial passenger going to space. I guess the title of this panel is Red Tape and Going to Mars. But if the unfortunate incident of Virgin is any indication, we may be seeing more of a willingness on the part of the government. And obviously, I'm an observer and don't know what's going on in the inside. But from the outside, it seems the government has been extremely tolerant of the riskiness of the suborbital. And lives have been lost in getting us to the starting line. And despite all the people who say, oh, the government will not be involved in something that's risky, it seems to have taken a far different view. And so we will need that going to Mars. There will be further tragedies. People will die. And the government has to be accepting of that. And so far, you hate to say it this way, but there seems to be a duality between the society today with lawyers, and you can't do anything without whatever. And things like space tourism and being among the first in the new frontier, the government seems to be willing to enjoy that risk. But when there seems to be an actual business opportunity, if the government has historically been pretty fast to react, the first amendments after the XPRIZE was won to the Commercial Space Launch Act were passed in 2004. And there was a limited time for that experimental period, which has been continuously extended. They expected flights about three or four years after 2004, 2008. We haven't had them yet. But Congress has been very tolerant, as you just said, Jeff. Would Henry and Jeff refer into, just for the audience, I think we're not being clear. There's an actual moratorium on regulation for spaceflight safety. So Congress actually told the FAA, no, we don't want you to do spaceflight regulations until this industry matures a little bit. And every time this has come up, and they've extended, and they're currently discussing the very same thing again, it doesn't mean they don't do third party safety so that somebody doesn't blow up a rocket that hurts somebody that's not involved. But it's very much, every year, people make the decision, the personal decision that they're going to try to climb Mount Everest, or they're going to dive deep into the ocean, or they're going to get on a zipline, or they're going to buy a trampoline. I mean, we all are. Washington Metro. Or take the Washington Metro. We all make decisions that are empowering to us individually. And the question is, what is the role of government in those decisions? And I should say that wisely, Congress has decided that in this industry, that they're going to ask that there be a pause and let the industry develop before they start trying to regulate. And within that law, the government does have the right to march in with rules if there is a serious accident. And again, as you mentioned, even though there have been a couple of accidents, they've refrained from doing that. There are other questions here. Well, it sounds like you've answered every conceivable question. But one, which is this, is the noted space historian, Elton John, who said, Mars is a, what's the lyric? I forgot that Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's called as hell. So let's talk about colonization. Any of you planning on heading there? That's why they invented heating and air conditioning. I wouldn't be in Texas or Washington, DC before it was air conditioned. So I think it's more to it than the temperature. Well, the question is, would any of you go? I would personally be more willing to do a one-way trip to Mars than to go around and around in the space station for two weeks. Don't hold me to that. Yes, I would go. I wouldn't go as the first person, though. I can think of a few creature comforts on the ground. Let's send the robots first to build some stuff, make sure there's a cold drink when we arrive, make sure there's oxygen to breathe, make sure we have a little space, maybe make a little habitat. But then, yes, absolutely. I think I'll be the practical one and just say that I'm glad I don't have to make that decision. And most likely by the time that something like that might be available, I may not be here. So I doubt that I'll ever have to face that decision. Academic answer. Yeah, exactly. The correct answer is it all depends on what our robot masters want us to do. That's right. So with that, I just want to remind everyone that there's still plenty of astronaut ice cream out in the hall on behalf of New America and Slate. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.