 Well, hello everybody. Welcome. My name is John Hammery. We're glad to have you here. I understand we've got fires on the metro So we've probably have a few people that are delayed in coming But we look forward to having a few more join us here this morning Before we begin let me just say when we do events with outside guests. We always begin with a little safety Discussion I am your responsible safety officer. It's my job to make sure you're all going to be well and safe So I'd ask you to follow my directions if anything happens The exits are right here and back here and in that corner is the escape that goes down to Down to the street. We will go out there. We'll go across the street to the beacon hotel and I'll pay for drinks Okay, so let's sort of just follow me. I just ask you to follow me and everybody's gonna be just fine Well, I know you and I'm not gonna pay for your drink Let's this is a real pleasure to welcome two colleagues. They they were the slowest guys in town and I caught them and Asked them if they would come here and spend some time with us today Talking about about space. It's a it's a topic that gets too little attention in the Washington policy community and we would like to try to Correct that a little bit today. I won't spend a long time on backgrounds Sean O'Keefe I first met Sean back when he was the he was the chief clerk for the Senate Appropriations Committee and then that took him in subsequent journey in life He became the comptroller at the Defense Department was the secretary of Navy and then eventually became the head of NASA and Is now with Maxwell Yeah, but Syracuse University, I think 17th University professor ever so and we're glad to have him here at CSIS as a senior advisor Jim Cartwright started off as a pilot in the Marine Corps. I Was used to I thought was helicopter was turned out. You're a you're a fast burner He was one of those guys that you know, you know, it's willing to have a rocket strapped to his butt and get thrown off Of an aircraft carrier, which I've never figured out But he's been and my my life experience with him has largely been when he's When he became the J8 and then ultimately became the vice chairman and It's such a deep intellectual thinker about all things associated with kind of the cutting edge Defense for America. So we thought these two guys would be the best to help us think through This rather confusing time We were talking about back before we've got so much Energy and innovation in the private sector and yet it's hard to fight a focus here for our government. Where what are we going? The rest of the world is alive in space activity and we're just kind of desolating and so we want to probably explore a little bit of that Today, let me let me just begin Sean with you and of course having been The administrator of NASA and I know that you keep current with it Then why don't you just just set the stage with your own personal thoughts and concerns right now? And I'll ask the same of you Jim and then I've got some questions to dig in on I think it's as an opening You know proposition the changes would seem occur in the broader Dimensions of space access exploration and capacity to Really engage in the broader space community Have in the last decade or so have encountered three really remarkable shifts in trend the first is a Continuous incremental improvement to chemical propulsion capabilities to propel rockets into outer space I mean it's a variant and a derivative of the same Chemical propulsion capabilities that we've relied on since the Apollo era and before But it is now to the point of a much much more extensive Improvement in incremental capability that's lowered the cost as well as increase the performance in terms of the ability to Launch access and ensure access to space The second is a major development. I think in terms of the US position Of what I would otherwise call a loss of leverage By virtue of the fact that we have no secure access to space as a nation for any human being Indeed, there is only one reliable mechanism of methodology to access space through the Soyuz capabilities to Engage and crew return on the International Space Station which operates 24 7 365 and Has for the past 15 years on that basis without interruption. It's been a remarkable track record, but the Dependence that all of us across the globe now have on the Russian capacity to to maintain that accessibility for human exploration is Confined to that that capacity and the third I think development is probably the most remarkable which is with a couple of MIT Professors have have written a book to describe as the second machine age This is a defiance of the basic principle that there is Just a step function improvement in access to capabilities with each Improvement or or change that is introduced the industrial revolution clearly being the first machine age What they argue is now in the second machine age what we're seeing is exponential growth in capacity by virtue of not only the means to Accelerate the pace of computing But also to make it readily accessible to anybody on a real-time basis that combined with all of the improvements to Make the the capacity to access that information readily to do so on a very extensive scale and to then Apply it to a wide range of applications or capabilities Has remarkably shifted The scale to the point we're going to see an incremental advance They argue in the course of the next generation here that's going to be exponentially faster Than what we ever witnessed during the course of the first machine age Is all those improvements in the access to information and the technology insertion is going to step up that rate of Capacity building and it has other implications. They argue but for this purpose for the purpose of technology and information sharing and The ability to really capitalize on this that has made a huge difference and that in turn I think has mobilized energized Several entrepreneurs To really invest in that potential and are making that opportunity combined with the other two factors that I've just mentioned a More accessible market opportunity potentially if the right things fall into place So those three factors I think are probably the driving features of what we've seen in the past decade They're remarkably different from where we were in the middle of the last decade to be sure and at any point in the in the recent past That's that's a stage I You know, I think I'd like to pick up and where's Sean left off And and more on the national security or military side of the equation, but Whether you call it the second machine age or the third offset strategy or you pick it I mean basically at the end of the day both of them are acknowledging that Here to for if this country had a problem Military or otherwise you've built a platform to solve the problem and it took you 15 to 20 years to get through that evolution to some level of reliability and and what this Change has created is a construct in which if we can get through the The social challenges of it The opportunities for solutions not just Things Is exponentially greater than it is today The third offsets talks about robotics and autonomy and immediately everybody's head goes to drones But the reality here is that it is learning machines That are able to carry out our instructions And to adapt which is really the key issue here and to be resilient in Environments that here to for we really couldn't do it and space is tailor-made to that kind of activity Drones and cars get our nerves a little unsettled Which should tell us something about it in the in that it's the cultural issues associated with these kinds of transitions And what they will do to established architectures and established business cases are going to be hugely disruptive and so the question becomes Do you do you go hard now which some people are just now starting to get into this market activity? Or do you wait for it to all be Settled out before you invest and the problem is you can't leave the holes in capability in space, but If you look particularly at the military Senior level schools and junior level schools at the papers they're writing They're talking about differences in warfare, which is their terminology for this activity Or their focus, but the reality of the ability to move from entities that Called me lays Strategy where you know It's just a bunch of people run into a crowd and fight amongst each other And then the last man standing is the winner to the second iteration and generation which was massing forces To the third generation which was maneuvering forces to now what is being discussed heavily is swarm so in other words Entities talking to each other controlled centrally in some cases for objective, but then being allowed to work Think of on-orbit activities where Assets talk to each other for a common purpose. It may be safety. It may be security. It may be functionality calm Etc control what is being covered in footprints, etc And they are substantially smaller, but substantially smarter and asymmetrically so than they exist today So what I'm trying to say is We're in that transition between an architecture that was Useful and served us well in the basics of being platforms put up in space to do a certain function To an at an environment which can be disaggregated Move to problems adjust to challenges adjust to changes be able to look inward at the earth and as the 2010 Strategy called for outward Such that we're in space and beyond now not just in space And start to think differently about it But trying to do that whether it's at the commercial level Or at the government level Encourage all of the rules that we'll ensure that we don't make progress I don't want to be pejorative to itar and and other things But but they really are to lock in what we were doing Not the potential of what we could do it and to the extent that there are disruptors out there and Things like SpaceX and things like other companies that are looking at fundamentally different approaches to how you might do business out there both in near space and in far space They've got to fight through not just acceptance by by industry and in creating a business case, but they've got to fight through the cultural issues, you know, it's more It's well-known you pick your poison here, but we as humans would almost rather fail than change Or we at least have to be threatened with failure in order to change It's a difficult road to hoe To get the changes that are going to be essential To do the work that we need to do to get the competitive juices to get the broad R&D base can't just be in NASA. It can't just be in the Air Force it's got to be a much broader base for the the Innovation that's going to be required My last piece here, I mean all of the strategies that have been written and I look to the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review and National Defense Panel and the Quadrennial Defense Review. I think there was somewhere around 60 Iterations of I've got a problem and the solution is innovation and there's nothing more in there other than that word Okay, and and I think if you went to the Policy text you'd find that almost every policy ensures innovation cannot be used Okay, that we must stay with what we are doing and so I mean this is going to be difficult We tend to to go at this, but we are at a point where the technologies are starting to become Substantially real and the opportunities are becoming Far more substantially real and the question is will we allow that and will we go after it? We've always had a divide in Government between NASA and DOD But we had patterns in the past to connect them But in recent years it strikes me that we've lost the focus especially in DOD for senior advocacy space Why I guess that one's mine Offer an uninformed view Well, I mean when when we were both Serving We had a group that met pretty regularly At least once a month to get together and talk about what we're doing at that time We were going through the transition for NASA in particular from an inward-looking architecture comms Or but vehicles everything else to an outward-looking architecture which DOD Did not really see an essence or a need for at that point And so they started to be a separation we worked hard to not allow that separation to occur But the goals were clearly Substantially different at that point in architecture and so it's difficult to partner in commsats It was difficult to partner in many of the activities because the goals were fundamentally different My sense is that's starting to come back together You know we're not trying to militarize space, but the Architecture and the ability to do what we need to do is is certainly coming back together in comms coming back together in remote sensing in space so in other words a very sophisticated architecture, which you see stratcom and Air Force space working hard at the Joint Space Operations Center To get something FAA like up there and get it published I saw just recently We used to have to go through some incredible gymnastics to advise China when they were launching of what was out there so that people would not run into things Now that has been allowed to be direct Which is a big step forward But we need that kind of architecture that kind of awareness at a level of resolution That de-conflicts not only the physical entities in space, but the electromagnetic patterns that come out and de-conflict all of that in a real time with some sort of authority and Regimes and norms appear to be the approach rather than law But but that advocate inside of the department right now I the guy I listened to would be John Highton Out at Air Force Space Command. He just has the right vision That's for Jordan He has a vision that seems to understand many of these issues and the experience Incredibility and authority to start to do things and I see a lot of progress out there No, I'm heartened by that is it it's that's very That's an ingredient. I think that's essential in order to get this cooperative engagement working correctly I mean in my mind is the the notion that there's a separation or a dividing line between civil and military space is A policy issue and it's one that is focused Dominantly in that part of the debate since the origins of NASA in the late 1950s the whole notion was this would be a Peaceful exploration of the universe. This was the objective Now that was the public monfer of course But the reality and the reason why John Kennedy, you know founded so hard on the notion that we're gonna do this within one decade Get to the moon was a demonstration of resolve and capability That served an entirely different purpose than simply exploration of the universe Or as if that was simple But it was a stronger statement intended I believe For the purposes of consumption by those who lived on the other side of the planet that if we can do this Imagine what else we could do when we set our minds to things and There's going to be a bifurcation and a separation of these things We never want to imply even for a moment It would ever want to use this for anything other people peaceful purposes now that that notion has been perpetuated throughout the literature as well as the basic terminology ever since the reality is There has always been a very strong kind of linkage between NASA and the Defense Department on very specific kinds of programs capabilities technologies information sharing so forth that is not anything that's been secretive or sinister It's more a notion that that idea behind how technology is developed Analyzed in turn different processes explored is open Architectural literature at NASA go on the website you can find anything you'd like that did dives into these kinds of questions beyond the issue of a vital applications and so forth but the the notion of capability is a widely accepted proposition within The civil space community if you will that makes an awful lot of information available that fits exactly with what general Cartwright just mentioned in his earlier comments of a shift in approach within the Defense Department from the notion that everything is platform-centric To then thinking in terms of capabilities and how they're inserted For application and that becomes then a much broader Potential for applying technologies that are developed in a more open source manner to Leverage a broader range of capabilities that could be built into Assets used for military means the other way I think there's been a lot of interconnection there where leadership has been shared between the department and NASA throughout the course of its history at varying intervals has been in terms of launch capacity and launch capability There have been a lot of efforts Some that I think both of us were were deeply evolved at various points of our respective time To try to find common ground in terms of where you meet those objectives and in many cases It it failed and just it was a divergence that couldn't be reconciled because of either weight mass capacity something else that would drive the The design that would put it out of the question for the other application But in many cases it worked very on a very common basis and in terms of operational use of assets and so forth It's worked very well In terms of design of capabilities and so forth That has really been probably one of the more consistent success stories That you could trace in terms of application for UAVs Hypersonics any number of different technologies That have been then applied to different purposes quite successfully because of that Regular sharing arrangement. So it's it's been a mixed story But one that has to maintain I would argue from the on the front end that there is this division That when you get right down to it isn't as sharp a line as what it would otherwise appear to be And so the leadership question I think is almost a shared governance responsibility that has been Generally, I think reconciled this time And I admire The commander of space commands Personal vision and commitment, but you need somebody in Washington That champions this somebody in the pentagon that champions this. I mean sinks usually can't mobilize Major resource directions Yeah You know stratcom commander Has as when we shut down US space command picked up that responsibility along with four or five others Certainly for me at the time when we went through that I had the advantage of already knowing the players And so that made it a little easier, but There's no question that the amount of time available To the stratcom commander is going to compete with cyber and nuclear weapons and Just small things like that And you know it's it's It's going to be a challenge to get that focus there It's certainly there in the articulation of need, but it competes with everything else So if your quota is 10 important things And they've got to range through all of those issues. That's that's a bit of a problem. We have never been Successful And it's one of the reasons I worry about a cyber command. We've never been successful at having domains Be combatant commands Okay, the services are organized by domains the combatant commanders are organized by the art of war and so You know, we're going to have to figure our way through this To to get the advocacy voice that we need particularly in washington And particularly You know both on the joint staff, which is more focused on the war fighting capabilities But also with with the services and their domain responsibilities The integration of domains is a particularly challenging activity. So that makes it difficult I think it was Seven years ago that China demonstrated it could destroy a satellite In orbit and since that time there have been quite impressive Advancements, I think we probably think other countries might have some of this how reliable is space our space assets for us as a Practicality these days you do you feel that we are we can count on complete assurance of Space assets if we need them in a future conflict. Well The assurance side of the equation is is the important part versus the reliability and the resilience to recover and Maybe the ASAT test was a little bit of a a reawakening because it's not something new and That's an extremely expensive way to do business. So you're not going to do it in large numbers and it's for the most part for low orbit But but with the emergence of You know new speed of light activities, you know with directed energy cyber things like that Space is not so far away In time, you know and in effect And so the threats that the architecture is trying to be resilient Against are new And you're dealing with platforms again that were built 10 15 years ago The great news is they've lasted 10 or 15 years The bad news is they've lasted 10 or 15 years and the threats in the world have changed and so trying to organize An architecture that is resilient to these newer threats You know is going to take Some creativity of what you have on on orbit and then a serious thought process Which is what particularly here in washington and think tanks has been going on of What does a new architecture look like in an environment of the second, you know second Machine age or whatever we're going to call it. What does that look like? How do we control it and how do we obtain resilience? I mean there are different techniques You don't want to rely on just one because it could be defeated But whether it's smaller and more Or whether it is focusing on assured launch and getting them up there and You know repopulating quickly whether it is servicing on orbit Adjusted I mean there's any number of strategies All of which will probably require Most space-based assets to be able to communicate with each other about the environment they're in Change that environment and change their objectives with a reasonable agility Which is just not there today And so the laws of physics will still apply. I'm pretty sure But we'll have to use energy to adjust And getting that energy on orbit and making it you know smart and efficient as possible It's the things of autonomy and robotics and Activities like that. It'll be interesting to watch that transition go, but we're in that transition It's not something that hasn't started the question is You know how disruptive it will be and how soon we'll get through it It's just to pick up on on this point. It's a really powerful point which we're making Jim. I think it's in that Combined with your earlier comment of how policy That's as currently constructed today Is designed to protect what we have and how we do things And yet at the same time the pace of change is happening so rapidly What we're doing is virtually guaranteeing that what we have is built in controlled obsolescence We own it you bet, but it's also been far surpassed by whatever the technology is today And the and the best analogy to this one in terms of how You can apply that same thought process that fits the the pace of Computing as well as capacity to share it on a ubiquitous basis that anybody can can utilize Is when you look at the at the the developments just in the past decade plus Where instagram, you know basic idea of how do you send a You know a photo Across the the internet to anybody you'd like of how you know the grandchild was just born or so-and-so his third birthday or whatever else immediately Was something that sold just the thought the concept was sold for over a billion bucks For that purpose and became something that now is taken for granted. We use all the time senate staff around forever Kodak at the same time went out of business because they anchored themselves exclusively on the proposition that you're going to use a capability to Perform an image on a piece of paper and share it that way that way When was the last time you ever saw a photograph on a piece of paper that you know something that you actually took And so the entire enterprise the whole structure went away As a result of just that one basic technology shift That same thing is going to happen with regularity if you argue the point that this is now an exponential rate Moore's law kind of application of of abilities That's being applied within the information technology sphere It basically means we're going to see this happen on a repetitive basis and we're going to have an entire inventory that Yeah, well rather than saying boy that lasted 15 years It's going to be damn It's lasted 15 years and we can't basically argument on how to get rid of it because the technology is now firmly Developed to the point where anybody can overcome what we're using as a regular course That's a real challenge particularly in the manner by which the The policy and the technology are coming into very very profound confrontation. You can see it this morning or last night NASA posted at sunset here A picture of sunset on mars at the same time the blue light of mars in the sunset and it's just Think of our other assets that take pictures and The idea that you could share even a sunset on the same day is foreign to our minds Both of you referred Times to itar, you know, and I remember my time in government Arm wrestling with the interagency process about technology release and cooperation with international partners And it seemed we had a rather perverse Basic philosophy, which was we will share technology will allow american companies To partner with foreigners only when the american company can prove the foreigner already has the capability You know it's pretty dumb And it seems if we're going to have I mean it's becoming much more of a globalized Industrial base it is much more energy in foreign countries than there is here Seems to me one of our problems is our own domestic security paradise, too. How do we change that? It's you worked you worked on the space station So you found a way to bring international participation But how do we deal with this? This is an incredible policy struggle. It's one that I guess part of the best description of this was at one point I had the privilege of serving on norm augustines In commission on deemed exports and so I was one of that group of national academy panelists And after delving into the argument over Deemed exports, which is just an electoral property essentially and the transmission of information How do you control that? How do you deal with it within six months after Our examination of the issue and traveling off to different places and looking at the question and talking everybody Norm augustine Determined that the best thing to do would be to rename the panel the doomed experts Okay, because there is no way to get past the intractable differences between The amazing ability and ease by which you can transmit information and yet this 1950s notion We can control it if you put a big enough parameter around it And you know post the marines and get the arm guards out there boy We'll control that forever and the answer is you bet. It'll be useless information. We're doing a wonderful job I'm making sure nobody gets Over time because of the pace of change and how this will occur And it's sort of the result the only way that this is going to work right with all the effort at export control You know diminution and reform That's been really exerted over the past several years by this administration Started at the beginning of the obama years and really accelerated during the course of that time Is is really the idea that you're going to erect much higher walls around much fewer numbers of things Okay, you know that's that's got a a neat kind of public Currency of here's how we'll redeploy our efforts and acknowledge the fact that a wider range of information Is readily accessible anyway. So what are we doing trying to protect all that? Well until we take the next leap that basically says The fastest way to stay ahead of the problem is to always use this exponential rate of technology advancement as a means to overcome and conquer the prior generation of what we've got And so readily make it available to anybody. You want this trash? It's all yours Matter of fact, we'd like to see you insert it as often as possible because now we know how to defeat it That's not likely to be a policy position that's going to evolve anytime soon But it is the reality of how the technology pace is moving as an information flow Is moving as fast as it is and it may be the only way to conquer it In the meantime we warm ourselves in the idea that we build higher walls around fewer things We're going to be just fine. Thank you very much. That's A myth that I think is constantly demonstrated to be false I think there's not much to add to that really To not overly demonize the itar people It is substantially better today than it was a year ago. Yes And and it's and it is getting better But it is again getting better on a construct of patent law not on a construct of moore's law Yes Part of the problem is it's not just the Munchkins that work the itar process honestly, it's that Both parties tend to try to demonize the other party if they make a mistake that they can exploit as a national security risk Absolutely And until we become more mature in saying how are we going to save an industry? We can't lose Uh, we're going to have to address the political dimension where politicians have got to get smarter about what real risk is And it's not just the you know, is there an american mailing address to a u.s company? Yeah, anyway, so let me let let me move on just let me if I could uh Come back again to the space vulnerability. I mean we we tend to because of the expense of getting to space We tend to produce very high fidelity assets That go up because we want long life. We want lots of performance because they're very expensive and of course that gives us critical nodes is You both battled on this. I know in previous days. Do you feel we're at the Tipping point where a new architecture is possible and who's leading the cause for a new I I believe we're at it We were at a tipping point probably five years ago at least That the path that we were on of Okay, it needs to be bigger because I need more fuel. I need more fuel Therefore it needs to be bigger more fuel to make it work bigger more computers more mass bigger launch vehicle I mean it's just we're at the point of we can't build at any bigger Technology is limiting us and the cost of an incremental improvement Is just unreachable at the you know at this point and so You are at that point you've you've passed that point the question now is What are the technologies that really are asymmetrically leveraging to change that equation? and and we talked about those as we started but On orbit you've got a lot of technologies that are commercially out there available and whatnot But the issue of getting there and in and sustaining your position there And doing it in a way that you have maneuverability Which requires energy Is is what people are chasing right now and so whether it is reusable launch Which the shuttle kind of burned the trail for that In a very positive way Or whether it is reusable components to get us up there New energetics to to change the equations in different ways But the thought process is how are we going to get things up there that can be sustained for longer periods of time? Refueled whatever You know and then can be resilient And how we can respond to catastrophe man-made or otherwise In space is is All linked into that and so to me right now the The leverage and the focus is In one camp on getting to space and trying to figure out how to do that in a far more economical way and then once in space introducing the second generation machine revolution In a way that is useful And doesn't commit to okay if I put a satellite over place x But place x is no longer interesting to me for whatever reason Why is an alternative for that satellite at an affordable cost? You know and and and moving around and thinking that way We we tend to think in a single phenomenology with a single spot beam You know of energy of whatever kind and that's just not the way we're building Architectures down here on earth anymore, and it really shouldn't be the way we're doing it on space And it's this there's an interesting parallel. I think on the on the commercial side that is Very Compatible with this same you know challenge that's that's being encountered. I think what you're seeing is development of communications capability satellites, etc that are vastly more Um capable But as long as the cost to launch is always going to be the deciding feature There's an awful lot of you know if you're in the business of looking for You know growth industry the warehouse business for satellites that are designed is a pretty pretty good market right now Because they're all waiting for at what point do you see that? Cost uh reduced to the stage where you can you can accomplish that and that's coming It's it's it's rapidly emerging. We're starting to see I think a very different You know launch capacity capability is again exactly as jim described um The propensity to keep it's got to be bigger to carry more fuel you got to have more fuel So it therefore needs to be big this closed loop argument Is beginning to top out at the stage where folks are looking at Uh the capacity from a commercial launch standpoint To bet on the opportunity that cost will decline because lighter materials Part of the development. I think of the technology is a reduction in the weight of materials The the basic principles of how to launch it are about the same as what they've always been In the last 50 years, which is 90 percent of getting anything in low earth orbit or out of space Is getting off this rock and so the capacity to To develop the the the means to carry that much fuel for that purpose has remained a relative constant But in the course of doing so you can design the capacity and this is what the commercial space industry is beginning To really go out and market as a new opportunity Is if you've got enough of a Uh a demand captured as part of your basic framework And you have a deep pocket enough entrepreneur who's willing to bet on the cum that that's where it's going to go You can reduce the cost to orbit By virtue of some of the newer design modern capable contemporary incrementally advanced improvements in the technology to launch and that clearly is what SpaceX has achieved Is a means to take a contemporary current technology For the purpose of applying to basic conventional launch services Doing so in a much more, you know modern manner With advanced technology and with a baseline built in of assured government contracts that have been secured For cargo replenishment on the international space station for several years to come Uh plus the commercial capabilities that are starting to come forward that combination with a number of very very You know bet the the farm kind of folks Who want to take the risk to develop the assets to do that? Have really turned this into a market that's worth exploring to see where it's going to go and the old notion that Somehow we were going to darken the sky with lots of communication satellites that'll make the ability to To you know pass from transfer information That notion quaintly disarticulated more than a decade ago Is right on the cusp of reality and you don't need to darken the sky with it because you've got now capabilities that are dramatically improved from a satellite communication standpoint That could achieve that for a much lower cost based on the launch services that are available and or could be available soon For the purpose of that cargo capability so hosted payloads and numbers of Assets being combined together for the purposes of deployment suddenly makes the cost of entry A lot lower and finally hits that price point or close to it that makes that opportunity Bring the stuff out of the warehouse put it on board You know hbo Whoever you know direct tv get ready for the opportunity to really deploy at a much lower cost and that's What they're selling that's the argument they're advancing and it's that close to really really happening in that case how that translates into government Intelligence community satellite capabilities, etc Is going to be the the stumbling Challenge that we're going to be dealing with and I think Jim has articulated very carefully All the things you've got to do in order to protect the the capacity for that information Is always going to make it a heavier asset as a consequence of those defensive deterrent mechanisms One last question before I turn to all of you and and that is I think the last time We had a kind of a buzzword to try to capture a vision was when president bush Talked about moon mars and beyond but for a combination of reasons that didn't really take off. I guess another word do Do we need a new vision that's going to mobilize government action? I think we see what the private sector is doing but the private sector sees Genuine business opportunities, but I'm still looking for what's the vision that guides us from a national security standpoint Maybe we don't have one anymore and let me just ask you to reflect on that and then we'll turn to the audience I am let me give you a terribly biased comment because I was certainly there at the creation of particular last articulation of vision by the president of the united states Uh, and I still think it holds true what he argued and would often got confused with destinations Was instead how do you develop a capability to go to go explore anywhere? Name your place Live it up figure out where you'd like to go and what you think would be interesting out there space scientists or Just us looking at uh at the internet or you know websites or whatever else But the reality is today we don't have the means to accomplish that is what his view was And so therefore identify what are the What are the limitations? What are the basic laws of physics that have to be overcome essentially? To accomplish any of those kinds of lofty ambitions of exploring anywhere beyond low earth orbit And that was the the the framework of it It then got tagged the line as well. You want to go back to the moon? You want to go to mars? Well, shoot, that's you know in the greater scheme of things That's like saying I think we all ought to get up and go over to arlington now Because in in the in the overall continuum of the expanse of what there is to explore The moon and mars is like throwing a rock over to the next place And if that was the scope of what the The earliest explorers would have ever embraced we would not be sitting here Instead this would have been deemed as too hard to find or too too tough to get to Uh and so as a result, you know, I think that the the challenge is really looking at what are the the underlying limitations which I have To accomplish those kinds of objective now stepping past that broader philosophy the reality the limitations become the case of Looking at the means to get anywhere we've talked about that a fair amount A lot of that is the means just to get off the gravitational pull that's required or that is is present To get to any other place you'd like to go in space That consumes a ferocious amount of resource assets capabilities all of that to get anywhere Second one is once you get there we have no means to go any further than that There is no real extensive in-space propulsion capabilities We're still reliant all of us globally are still reliant on basic laws of physics and orbital mechanics The means by which you arrive at any location is not by propulsion It's by utilizing the basic laws of physics to achieve that That till we get to the stage where there's an in-space propulsion capacity We're going to be restricted to what those laws of physics and orbital mechanics tell you with the limitations It sounds fast, but the distances are so vast that it really isn't The fastest mean to get to you know Mars again like going to Arlington Is not more than you know the fastest route is six months and back So unless you want to just go there for the purpose of saying you've tried to go You're going to consume at least a year to two years just achieving that round trip mission to Arlington In the solar equivalent of where we are These there is no you know potential to get there any quicker than that So you got to overcome that limitation and the last thing I think this is a big deal is is the The capacity of how a human being could achieve that goal The answer is once you get past a certain distance, which is not too far from here Your human effects and the consequence of that are so overwhelming that the likelihood that you're going to come back in any condition That would represent that if at all is so low as to be de minimis We've got to overcome the human factors challenges the biological factor issues Physiological challenges that would otherwise be encountered in that case. We're never going to achieve it But the reality today There's really only one one mechanism left on this earth To launching a human being on a reliable regular basis Off this rock to anywhere else and that's defined as 250 miles straight up And that's going over to Kazakhstan hop on a Soyuz rocket pay the you know 25 30 50 million whatever it is the russians are Charging these days and you're on your way to about 10 days in space. That's it That is the sum and substance of our ability to access any human being beyond the earth beyond The gravitational pull all those were basically still at start at at beginning Of the means to accomplish that objective and not making a lot of improvement in that direction at all Long treatise, but that basically comes down to The kind of strategy and philosophy that has to be articulated Is to go back to the basics of saying what is it that motivated Human beings as a as an instant to want to explore and know what's on the other side of the ridge And until we yield to that again, which we have throughout the course of human history on a repetitive basis To we yield to that and say that's that's the means we're going to accomplish this and here are the problems We've got to overcome to achieve it We're basically going to be stuck where we are uh My sense if you're looking between now and 2030 2040 It's it's going to all revolve around the word assured I mean, that's that's where the investment particularly in near space is going to be The the transition that will go on during that period My crystal ball is no better than anybody else's but if I were a betting man It will be on the commercial side for commercial product Whether that's in near space or whether that's going to some other celestial body in mining it Um and bringing it back It'll be subject during that period To the things that Sean has just talked about, but that will create the investment opportunities to start to change Fuel energetics launch movement to and fro other places And it's more likely to be Through that venue that we develop the capabilities That would allow then exploration well beyond what is Physically possible today And we can do those things between now and then Remotely so to speak With vehicles. I mean, we're we're already now seeing substantial activities occurring around mining Here on earth If you go look at Volvo and some of these other they're driving their vehicles from a central location at the factory In a mine in brazil And mining and doing one of those types of things And so the the technologies are already starting to be developed that would enable this kind of activity And so for the next 30 or 40 years my sense is if there is a source of resource Dollars and sands That's going to come it's more likely to come in quantity and with Capability out of this commercial sector than it is out of the government sector Okay, let's open this up for a conversation. Yeah, we can take question right here and we'll come back here We'll bring a microphone down to the third row Well, you go ahead and then we'll break it down here. You'll get the next one That's thanks. Let me jump the gun there Victoria samson secure world foundation Neither the panelists mentioned something that I think is really crucial for continued access and resiliency of our space capabilities And that's international cooperation What are the challenges and opportunities for the united states to work with international partners on our space program? Thank you Well, I mean the one we have been been really pursuing in with great Zeal and success. I think over the past 15 20 years is the design construction Deployment assembly and now operation of the international space station This comprises a a partnering consortium arrangement of international partners of 16 I believe 17 nation states across the globe The canadiens the japanese the russians the united states and the international space agency which comprises its full Compliment of nation states that are participants And I believe to date Most if not now all of those nation states that are all part of that consortium for that Colossal laboratory in space that is now fully complete and operational with a crew consistently of a half a dozen at least Uh members of the crew on on any given day at any given time you name it Operating from all the different countries that are involved and it's a constant rotating effort Is probably the most extraordinary international cooperative engagement That we have ever attempted and has worked Very very successfully. I'm convinced to this to this day that it is One discovery away from being the next wonder of the world. I mean it is a astonishing capability to work In a microgravity condition with a wide range of different scientific experimentation Challenges that are common to all of us across all those nation states that are participants That once that particular breakthrough occurs This will become the next Darling of the scientific community that discovered that particular capability and it's it's close I think there's any any time now you're gonna can see that kind of result occur But that is one amazing achievement that really By and large most people aren't even aware of Despite lots of efforts to talk about and engage it and You know having a means to uh to communicate verbally By voice with the crew members at any time at all times and the fact that it comes around Every 90 minutes just check out the nasa website. I'll tell you where it'll be, you know and where you could see it You know, it's just an astounding capability and one that Really has worked as a cooperative engagement even with the The the political tensions that have occurred between and among nations over the course of that same You know decade old period of that time We've overcome that in order to maintain efficient and Consistent and assured operations without interruption For that span of time with all those cooperative partners involved. It was a it's one heck of a story Two examples that need to be improved on but are out there one is The paradigm of the past was and unfortunately still for the u.s. Government is if you build a particular rocket You can also assure yourself that you've built the launch site sites. In other words, the two are linked They're not Delinked but in the commercial sector both in the united states and globally The the rockets move to the most advantageous launch site And they're not dependent on a singular launch site or a single country for that And that's that's a big move the second one. I think that's really important just getting going is the I probably don't have the acronym right anymore, but the commercial integration cell Out in vandenberg that now deconflicts commercial physical space and and electromagnetic For all willing countries and will give that information to any country that asks for it That's a big step forward It's going to grow. It's only going to grow. It doesn't make any sense to You know reduce the number of players in a particular activity launch or on orbit management, etc That's all become global and it will continue to move in that direction the right down Third right down here the third from the front and then we'll come over here after that Hi, this is Chen Weihua, China Daily. I'd like to continue on this international cooperation exchange And you mentioned the international space station, which the US and Russia continued the cooperation even after Ukraine And the US and the Soviet Union cooperated even in the dark days of the Cold War But now it seems that China is being treated worse I mean than the Soviet Union even no one in this town seems to suggest that China is a Worst enemy than the Soviet Union. I mean under I want you to talk about as a former NASA chief U of u on this frank war fact, which forbids cooperation space between China and the US And do you agree with that? Do you think the politics here is going to change for the better or worse? Thank you And this is this is a matter where again As so many times in this conversation we've talked about the The challenges of reconciling the pace of capability with policy views And while I will not speak to the question of whether or not or why The existing relationships with with China Are as they are I think some of the folks that are far better informed to speak to the matter reside a little bit south of here by a few blocks and I'll leave it at that but The reality is I think the the relationships have improved. There's a lot more discussion back and forth over the capabilities, but I think what's really consistently Stymied the ability to broaden that rate of exchange Has been the deep suspicions on both sides of what the intentions are And what the capabilities are and the concerns over industrial espionage and every other issue that clouds the debate consistently And then ultimately what the intentions of that set of arrangements would be Um the as you suggested in the question the the normalization or improvement I shouldn't say normalization is nothing normal about it the improvements in relationships between the soviets now the russians Over the course of time didn't happen overnight This was something that had been building for a considerable period of time And it was an avenue a means a mechanism to start that dialogue Looked at in that same context. We're about the same rate of that change from a policy standpoint With china I think as we were With then the soviets and that has progressed in said time and and you're right it has withstood largely The kinds of challenges with independent of the the the political atmospherics in the time to make that Relationship mature however very slowly and that's I think going to be replicated or maybe replicated Across the the board as well with both the chinese as well as with the indians I think those are two very important features that are on the verge Of seeing I think of improvement in china as well as india on our relationships there because of the realities of where we see the The pace of change occurring I I mean I would follow probably kitchens yours axiom of Would china try to get at the low hanging fruit the things that are easy that we both agree Need to happen start there And and and space awareness is a key area for that So start working in that area build the confidence and the mechanisms that allow transparency Don't inhibit the ability to trust each other And move along those those lines It probably and so again I kind of come back to that's that's the thought process here An awareness is something we both desperately need It's something that neither one of us could afford at the you know solely at the detailed level And so it only makes sense to start to cooperate there Because of the economic leverage we'd get out of it and the leverage that we'd get out of our space capabilities by being able to do that I think that's where we start general paul down here in the front, please Good microphone to you here today government has made some extensive encouragement into satellite communication encouraging them and imagery to expand their use Out of space there's been some disappointment by those who've made that investment that the use each of it Is not there yet. Is that encouraging to come or We are where we are The hope and the The bet on on More reliance on commercial rather than uniquely governmental communications capabilities Is technically We could have done that 10 years ago quite frankly, but But now the requirements and the bandwidth, etc. Are creating an imperative I would say the government's still a little bit denial on that imperative in other words, they believe they can satisfy all the requirements internally and You know a business case is there the problem with it is it tends to be episodic And that's hard for business to respond to and so with the newer satellites with the more maneuverable Satellites and the more maneuverable footprints It really puts commercial industry in a place to To take up that burden build a business case between their commercial partners and their governmental partners to move bandwidth On demand around the planet As that starts to mature And the launch site starts to make it even more feasible because again, I think commercial will find that before Government finds that it'll be very hard to justify why we're not using more commercial The question is just like with other spacex And other companies are the pockets deep enough to wait for that promise? And and of course the promise is oh just next budget cycle it'll be there and You know industry can go dry waiting for the right budget cycle to finally come But the momentum and the inertia and the technologies are all in favor of the commercial side of the equation on this Now what the commercial sector has to do that they can't avoid quite frankly for their own good reason also is Hardening of those assets to be resilient against You know at least raising the price of trying to come after them in either cyber or directed energy or other types of threats So that they're they do Generate some level of resilience probably higher than where they are today Right here in the second row, please And I'll come over here I am so to us other, uh, miss which heavy industry America I used to be engaged in the Japan space program for more than 30 years I have a question about exploration on the moon United States is not Interested in Exploration on the moon anymore, but on the mass On the other hand, China has a plan to explore the on the moon and we sent the human being to the on the moon And I'd like to know the reason why you are not interested in Moon um, my understanding that you sent the human being More than 50 almost 50 years ago, and you found nothing on the moon You understood Moon is a moon is not useful For the for the United States. There is that too. That's all yours Again, this this gets wound into the you know, the destination arguments over Where do you want to go and what's the right place to why would you want to go there or whatever? uh, and Inevitably it turns on the kinds of debate of what's the value at of achieving this particular destination versus Another whatever and yet the reality the baseline argument is you can't get to any of these places anyway Or or to get there you've got to expend a tremendous amount of energy effort Resource capacity all that for what then will become argued as A limited set of objectives now That's the wrong way to think about this is again. I think part of what we've been wrapped up in and frankly stuck at Standstill over Is debating what what is it we think we will discover there? Well, you know if the proposition were like that posed to lewis and clark They wouldn't have gone It would have been just a curiosity-seeking adventure So, you know, there's this you know You can trace any number of exploration missions towards that goal until you can set up the capacity to actually understand what the range of Potential may be You're not going to know And we're learned we've learned a whole lot more to be sure about The lunar surface about mars about lots of different Of celestial capacity to bodies within this particular solar system But again, we're talking about On the periphery of anything It was we're still looking at you know a set of planets around a very old star That's not in in the downtown milky way, you know category. It's on the periphery of this galaxy And yet there's an entire universe beyond that that we know little if anything about were it not for Our ability to use a telescope to be able to visualize what happened in the past That's about the extent of what we know right now So until we set up the capacity to Access it on a regular basis, you know how to do it now one argument that I've always found compelling as to why it's worth the time To establish a regular access means to get to the lunar surface Is once you get there you defeat the problem I talked about earlier of 90 percent of going anywhere is off this rock The consequence of launching from that rock is a whole lot less because You know that the gravitational pull there is so much more navigable means To accomplish that task put in a very simple term So as a result of you want to go somewhere else anywhere. Nope, you name it The means to get there from there is a whole lot easier than getting there from here Once you've achieved that that goal You've set up the capacity to stage it to do the kinds of things necessary To support future missions. It becomes a really readily accessible Launch capacity capability from the moon that it does here on the surface of this planet So, you know, there's a lot of basic logistical reasons as well as Scientific reasons to continue that exploration, but that's not good enough to be a sound bite To motivate folks to say let's go look at that potential because it sounds like a excursion for yet another ill-defined purpose And so therefore one we just hold off on that until we have a better understanding and that's consistently been the The challenge we've needed to overcome That until we can establish something that universally could be accepted as why you'd want to go back there It has been been kind of put in the category. I've been there done that got the t-shirt enough is enough We don't need to go figure out. What else is there because we already know Well, we're kidding ourselves into understanding what it is We we know Which is change and accelerator over the course of time plus we haven't really thought more more broadly About what the potential could be of being there versus Here On the front, please Colin Clark breaking sense On the one hand, you know, we've got all of this talk about Opening things up making things faster more cooperation But on the other we've got general heightened and bob work talking about increased space control another five billion in the ic and the government on this And we've got Fair range of uh, I won't call them Luddites Folks on the hill who have a very static view of life because they're afraid Of making a mistake How do we square all of this In the next 18 months, we've got the rd 180 debate on the hill You know, we've got all of these essential conflicts between policy and politics And then we've got, you know, China and Russia on top of it as a threat. Um I'm not expecting a simple forward. I know how to do this Is what kind of way ahead is there? Well, um, I'll start and you can think Thanks, marine I mean One um While people on the hill probably aren't steeped in the engineering side of it. I think they have gone a long ways in understanding The broader issues associated with it. So I've And and I think they see Certainly I I feel that Some of these issues are worth taking on right now because there's an An alternative. So what do you do about launch? What do you do about commercialization? Of capabilities that the commercial sector can easily handle given the opportunity. How do you start to think about that? Um, how do you start to think about alternative architectures without getting drifting way off? You know into never never land here and imagining things that won't be happening So, you know yours, it's easy for us to sit here and talk about 20 years from now It's much harder to talk about next week. And and that's what you're trying to get at and my sense is that We're for the most part sticking with what has been successful up until now Awaiting the opportunity and trying to incentivize the opportunity for some sort of 10x improvement in architecture and launch etc Um and Not trying to chase that before the risk is Until the risk becomes manageable get those risks down to something realistic You're starting to see that in the in the Structure of the bus You're starting to see that and how people are thinking about Hosted and diverse payloads and maneuvering Both the the payload and the vehicle You're starting to see that in the launch vehicles In and how people are trying to one go to the best site to figure out how to recapture as much um in the expendable Out of the expendable regime that you can whether it's recovering the first stage recovering the payload whatever You're starting to see DARPA work on things like resurfacing or servicing on orbit To allow us to have the energetics that are necessary to do things differently So the technologies are in those Show me and work off some of the technical risk Stages right now and are likely to stay that way You know in a broad statement for the next few years Although there are areas like bus structure payload structures things like that that are really Already starting to emerge and for which there are good commercial examples of how you could instead of a government You know Holy government activity start to get a commercial activity and get the technologies At a rate that are more associated with Moore's law than with Again, we're consistently stuck with Where the the policy is limited by our abilities to Collaborate cooperate on a broader political level. I think you phrased that properly um, and that has become the chief impediment on a public objective To achieve the kinds of things that I think General Hart right has just uh enumerated And If you had to bet The places where we're going to see a paradigm shift or a policy referendum or something that's going to change that view is largely because uh, you know folks named Branscombe and Bezos and Musk and Bigelow and people like that don't feel inhibited by that And they've got oh by the way, you know the capacity to actually support their ambitions in those directions And it isn't it doesn't become a public referendum when they fail and they will I mean there's just a question. This is this is hard stuff This isn't easy to do to begin with And again, you know john used a very apt expression of You know questioning, you know my my good friend to my rights Senses when he decided to become a marine aviator to strap himself on to a rocket well Take that by a factor of a bunch And anybody who wants to get aboard a controlled explosion That's going to hurtle you in a space in eight and a half minutes Uh, and then when you get there you're basically, you know Past the g forces and everything else that really is a questionable judge, but you were really saying about your view I want to cut me your defense on that this is I mean he would play to say finding folks and You know the zeal to want to do that Is now no longer a public domain because the nature of the policy and the acquisition system and everything else It's all about how do you develop? You know design develop and produce things for which you've reduced the risk Which therefore means a long time And the tolerance for any Setback on that has become Progressively harder and harder to overcome as a public debate Again, once those other entrepreneurs go accomplish this as we you know just Tragically saw happen in the mavi desert here in october of last year Uh, this is a you know a real horrific tragedy has befallen The you know the virgin galactic attempts to try to accomplish this But it isn't going to be something that's going to turn into a public referendum about whether they should even be permitted to try All right, and they're going through all the challenges You have to deal with with a setback and they're doing it admirably and with great, you know diligence and so forth Trying to accomplish that when a public setback of that proportion is made It brings you to a grinding halt Been there done that one too. Okay And it's it's a real hard sell and it's a difficult thing and it takes a lot longer To convince anybody That we as a public ought to go run out and take that risk again because much like some of the earlier questions You've got to demonstrate why you assumed that risk For whatever goal you think you can achieve And if it isn't specific enough it fails in the public argument Entrepreneurs, they don't need to pass any of that except to the extent That they've got limited resources or they've got a board of directors Opposes the same argument and that's what's going to move us Potentially that's going to be a catalyst That will move us in a different frame in our debate in the time ahead and that's to be celebrated That's a that's an element that I think is going to be A tremendous achievement and there fortunately enough people out there Interested in taking that kind of risk to accomplish those kind of goals and We may yet see some Interesting breakthroughs that changes the paradigm of the discussion as well We take one last question what right down here, please right in the front and then we'll I'm sorry If it's a short question we might get another one Short question. My name is pavia lull from the science and technology policy institute You've mentioned a whole bunch of high level policy changes, which are all great Can you come up with a few specific action items the agencies can take in the next 18 months or so? That would you know that are specific not just general broad policy changes I think on the awareness side Getting getting the complete data package Out and make it public Today on a website you can go and see bodies that are orbiting the earth or debris that's orbiting the earth But it's in You know, it's kind of like the space station at nine o'clock. It'll pass over you. That's about as much as you get You need much more comprehensive data. We need to get that out We're worried that that somehow compromises us But quite frankly we just need to get that information out to improve the awareness get get a policy associated More like what the f a a has than what we're doing right now in space. So that that would be one to Do As we talked about a little earlier really take a good look at itar And we're looking at it from the lens of protecting our knowledge and our What we perceive as advantage everybody else has knowledge and advantage You know, so this is something that you know, you could do Independently, but you'd much rather do in a an alliance type of approach in other words I'll share with you if you'll share with me You know, it may not be in kind may be that for instance Japan has one set of knowledge that we would like Just by their physical location may be potentially You know scanning the sky or or a technical knowledge from their launch capabilities When we get to that point and that needs to be a much more comprehensive sharing activity And do the same with china etc and start to look for groups of willing And push in that direction. So those two areas I would say you can do that very quickly We need to then declare in a more public way for commercial assets How do you how do you compete lower the barriers to competition for government contracts? And allow them to compete Without you know, some of the barriers that exist today Let me just give you one quick example there was Among the many very interesting things I had the great privilege at nasa to do Was to hear all manner of ideas some of which a lot of which Are really way off the mark and you know, you thank you very much for your input And in other cases you get some interesting stuff that comes from this one came from tom cruise of all people Who came in and visited the offices one day and he's big space Not hold it And he told me, you know, you've got this great website with all this information on it And it's perfectly designed for A lot of research faculty across the globe. I I guess That is going to be of interest to them, but to the rest of us It's three clicks to oblivion you go to the next thing and you know, you're fine yourself nowhere And he said how about I loaned you one of my tech heads. He calls them Who designed my movie trailers to take what you've already got all the information's already here And just make it more readily accessible So I took him up on the offer And it changed the the appearance of that website in a way that made it inviting interesting Folks wanted to participate, you know, here it is it can jumps out at you And all it was was a platform just a means to access the information that's already there In a friendlier manner that's gotten nothing but better since that time So I would invite you anytime you like take a look at the website and you'll get an inventory of current examples Of how these kinds of cooperative efforts are underway right now Because it is that much more available than it's been and I Every time I encounter situations like this of trying to how do you make the information available? I got a thank time cruise for his Is you know blinding flash of the obvious To say how do you take what's already available forget about all the regulations would prohibit it Just make it easier for anybody to see And that's exactly what nasa's done and I think that's a brand job with exactly that Colleagues, I'm sorry at the end of the time I'll let you individually approach our two speakers, but would you thank them with your applause? This was really a very