Future Outlook for Commercial Space Stations

Hello and welcome to the Space Policy Eedition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreryer, the Chief of sppace pololicy here at the Planetary Society. Welcoming you to another episode that explores the politics and processes behind space exploration This month We look at commercial space stations, commercial Lo development or at least the promise of the plans for the hopes of. that are currently going through, let's say some turbulence, though those seem to have smoothed out by the time we have released this NASA lookingoo at the post interternational Space Station future takes its place To talk about this with me, I welcome Clayton Swope He's the deputy director of the Aerospace Security proroject and a senior fellow. att the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., former Cgressional staff member general space expert Wh has written on this topic and a bunch of other topics And he will give me kind of the generally pro version of commercial space station development I come at this a bit more skeptical There are numerous reports that show the lack of an existing commercial or market interest in human tended space stations There are major questions about the feasibility, financial stability, capability. of commercial space stations and whether they can or will work. Nonetheless, NASA and the U.S. government are Dumping in. Decentent amounts of money, hundreds of millions. to support at the moment, two companies potentially more in creating a post ISS future But even NASA itself seems to be having second thoughts At its ignite event earlier this year, the head of the Space Station program, Dana Weigl, said some things that are relatively rare for a NASA official saying that The commercial impact of this space station is limited that there is no real viable budget level that NASA can support to enable multiple independent commercial stations in time for the end of the ISS. just a few years away. and proposing a radically different idea of build out, extending the ISS, building out a commercial module that commercial stations could attach to That idea died within about a month of that proposal. But nonetheless, it's very instructive that there are some serious second thoughts about the viability of this program I'm also a skeptic on the idea of the what's called continuous heartbeat policy the United States needs to maintain continuous occupation of low Earth orbit to some degree four reasons that Clayton will try to convince me of and other people may still yet But that drives a lot of the higher level and more challenging requirements about having to continue to maintain a relatively expensive low Eth orbit program for astronauts whileile we're going to the moon So I'll bring my skepticism, my open minded skepticism to this discussion But before we get there I'd like to remind you that this show and the planetary society itself, that enables it is meembers supported So if you like the show If you like what we do with the Planetary Society, please Please consider joining us at planetary. org slash join Literally without you, we cannot do the show. We cannot do our great work here in educating and getting people excited about space about promoting a science driven approach to space exploration, doing policy, advocacy, all the incredibly important things that we need to be doing right now to support a space program that answers to and is responsible to and serves value. to the broad public That's planetary d. org slash. Join to join us. If you remember already, thank you so much. If you' donated, consider donating again. plananetary d. orotash join And now layon'ope Clayton thans for joining me month on Space Policy Edition Sure Casey thanks for the invite. One of the reasons I wanted to have you was this interesting drama that we just went through. You characterize it as a Greek tragedy But hopefully a comedic one of the commercial Leo Destinations program, commercial space Stations program at NASA. You covered lots of other things, but this was I thought you had a great piece about this on your CSIS website that we'll link to in the show notes Very briefly, why don't you catch us up to speed about What were you writing about? what just happened And I think we even have some like very recent updates as we're recording this that puts a little cap on this story and we'll go from there Yeah, I think if you go back to the start of this saga, I go back to twenty nineteen when NASA rolled out a commercial Leo development strategy And the idea here was looking over the horizon to when we wouldn't have the International Space Station anymore. what comes next So this at this stage or at that stage, the idea was that probably be some opportunity to use a service, a commercial service, a station in some shape or form. that would be operated by a company NASA could buy a service from Maybe not initially, but maybe down the road, NASA wouldn't be the only customer. It would be one of many But that at that point, twenty nineteen, there was a recognition that NASA was probably going to be an important customer for whatever commercially operated station existed. So a strategy was laid out, how they would get there. That included concepts like free flying space station. So that is like the interternational Space Station. And then other ones that maybe weren't free flying, they maybe started out attached to the International Space Station And then eventually this transitioned to something that we knew as CLD. So the other commercial Leo development, you could say that was CLD too, but the real CLD was commercial Leo destinations. This is essentially the program that we've had now for about, let's see, about five years And the idea here was that you'd have a free flying commercially operated space station You'd have a number of vendors, maybe that NASA could choose from. NASA may narrow it down to a few from many that it was looking at There are a variety of ways that NASA was encouraging that development, both through agreements that had funding and others that were referred to as nonfunded space act agreements And then you fast forward to last year, when we were expecting NASA to announce a new phase of that initiative of CLD. NASA changed it a bit. This is in November of last year, but kind of stuck with the original idea of these free flying space stations And then all of a sudden, in March, NASA took a big U turn and came up with a different way than it wanted to do the successor to the ISS. So this was a new entirely new plan that would have a government owned and operated module that would be attached to the interternational Space Station. You would attach commercially operated modules to that station the module, and then that module would eventually become a free flying space station on its own. And then somewhere down the road you could maybe envision, which was originally the CLD plan, these free flying commercially operated space stations. But that was somewhere off into the distance ure So you know, really in the course of, you know its twenty twenty six right now, since twenty nineteen,'s about seven years We had a variety of things on the table from NASA about how they wanted to pursue successor to the ISS, and all al though, we all knew we're really getting close to when that space station would have its end of life around twenty thirty. We may extend it a few years, but really it's already twenty five years old would be thirty years old at that point. K of a question of how much more you could keep adding on a couple more years to it before really you have unacceptable safety risk to the astronauts and to the mission itself. So we are really approaching that end and getting close now with these changes over the last seven years to just not being able at all to be able to have a station operating when the ISS retires You mentioned the kind of this reformulation of the CLD program or at least proposed back in March with this ignition discussion. And I just want to go back to that because I think it's I found that extraordinary, frankly. There was a moment in there where you had Dana Weigl, who's the program director of the ISS go in front of every, you know, publicly and in front of I think a lot of the repepresentatives of these companies with the CLD program and say like this market does not work. This program is not working. We don't have enough money She said, we haven't seen evidence of scaled space derived product that manufactuure on Earth or in space We've had a lot of technologies that have been adapted, but there's no commercialization. You see these stories, but there's no continued demand for access to space. tourism is fizzling out international partners are not interested in long term. like basically undermining the entire C see of the CLD program. and I just found that I just rarely see that much honesty from NASA program officers in that context But here we are just a few days ago, NASA basically said, well, we call back seas on that We're going to keep going forward with this program that we just outlined all the ways in which we expect it to fail Your piece came out before that return, but after the ignition event. So What did you see as important from what Dana was saying. And did you find that accurate or was there some other fundamental aspect that was missing from this argument that makes this program viable in your opinion? I go back to the original strategy in twenty nineteen, which was pretty clear that NASA is is the customer right now for at that time commercial Leo development. And the idea that there would be many customers was one that NASA could envision in the future, but it didn't seem to be one that it was basing as a foundational assumption for the plan That's not unique to CLD. There's a lot of things that NASA does today as a service where it's hard to think of another customer outside of NASA I think of the Clips program for transportation service to the Moon Sure, there's customers on those missions that are not NASA that are not government customers, but NASA iss really subsidizing what they're doing. So without NASA subsidizing those missions, they wouldn't be flying on those spacecraft. We wouldn't have landers, commercial landers on the moon The same could be said of what NASA is doing for MAarth communications right now. NASA is even talking about doing science as a service NS has just kind of gone in big time on this notion that we could do things where we use a service model. So essentially, instead of building a system that NASA then owns and operates, it's going to have a company build and operate that system. NASA will buy it as a service. That's not unique to NASA either for space. you see this a lot at the Pentagon. You see a lot of what SpaceX is doing now in Space it's doing it as a service So it's not surprising that you might have these capabilities that a company is developing that they're selling to the government as a service. And in many cases, though, the government doesn't like to admit it, it is the core customer. The remote sensing industry would not exist today if there was not a government customer. The only part of the space economy independent of the government customer is thatACOM, and it's always been that way. So everything else is dependent on the government as a customer So I hear that. I hear the statement you just read. I thought Well, that's obvious. That's just that's space. That's doing business in space right now. Without the government, everything goes away. It's literally a house of cards that falls apart And commercial space stations are no different than anything else other than Satcom, including launch, which is essentially an enabler for Satcom. So without the Satcom business, you wouldn't see as many launches. You wouldn't see nearly as many SpaceX launches as you do today, which are mostly Starlink. Yeah. own Exactly. And they're one profitable area of the company right now is they Basically their satcom business I mean, I think that's a an important perspective. and it's just interesting that it gets mixed together because I think There has been, as you said, the shift towards services model. It's all I'd say predicated or built on this a wild success of launch shifting to that. And I guess you could say commercial crew to a degree, even though the kind of the desired market never really or even multiple providers has not pureity, you just have one very capable provider and it's being applied everywhere And I think the clips examples you gave are an interesting one to me because I'm still kind of on the fence, whether that's Sure not work, right? And there's like a number of experiments going on But it still strikes me that NASA kind of went back to this fundamental claim of, and I think maybe it's the broader claim of CLDs that this is something that's going to live on its own, that NASA iss kind of bumping it up,, helping develop it to this broader market And she just goes back and that just says like, well, there is no market. We don't see any feasible market. The tests we've done don't exist And That's valid Right. And I think that's true NASA is the market. Right. Maybe that's the misnomer of commercial Le develop. Mbe they should call it that. Right. And I think the companies building commercial space stations, they haven't helped themselves in a lot of cases where they have implied that well, it's not really that we need the NATA business alone. We have all these customers lining up to buy time on our space station. We just need the certification that we'd get out of the next phase of the CLD program. So I think you had this you could say kind of facade of maybe this perception that there was this market outside of NASA that could really drive the commercial space station business so that NASA would be buying on the margins. If that existed today or that would exist the moment that these stations are flying in orbit That still do you think that's a narrative that's required for these programs though? Like it's almost like a political narrative that that be maintained. It's a fiction that everyone politely agrees to hold together. Yeah, I think everyone wants Everyone has a reason to have that perception that there is this broader space economy that is not dependent on the government customer. And again, I don't think this is just NAS. I want to point out I think government customers at large want to believe that. And you do hear it I think inconsistency is when even Someone in the Pentagon talks about this that when we talk commercial, this is why I think the term commercial is really not useful in the conversations that we have today. But when I hear commercial Sometimes a Pentagon official might say, well, this is something that we're buying where we're just one of many customers so that we're not the dominant one, we're not the core customer. We're not the anchor customer. I hear that and I think well, that's just flat out not true. I don't know how you could even believe that, but I hear it so often that there seems to be more like a trend in this belief that spaces this broader ecosystem of not just investors. so private investment, that's one thing on one side of the inputs, But the customer side, again, the facade to me is that there's this customer set that's really diverse and broad and not just anchored around the government, governments Right. I mean, I think it's the to the extent that there's markets in space, it seems to be for things that go up and point back down Right? And whether that's government or and Wries is primarily SatcO, which Most you've done if I remember correctly, decent amount of spectrum policy work andpectrum, which is the incredibly important, but not what most people think about when they think about space Rightight. Well spectrum is a limited natural resource that It is entirely a state directed administratively directed process. zero property rights. It's very different than anything else we think of when we have a valuable natural resource. And a source of revenue too. Absolutely And it's just it's one of those things though that I think people, as you said, they hear commercial. and again, I kind of keep going back this polite fiction. And I think that's what NASA kind of popped a little bit But then yeah, remarkably, I mean, at the end they say, like we can't go forward with this because this is going to fail. We need independent data showing that this is not going to work and then just days ago as we record this, they say, Well, we've heard back from our commercial partners and apparently everything's hunky dory, so no changes. If we go forward like Where's this independent? like You said all this stuff, right? Like where's this coming from? And I'm not naive. I mean, I imagine and you point out that there's a core here, a challenge has been funding from NASA to these commercial stations. If I recall offff the top of my head, I think the first year was at twenty nineteen that they did request money for this program Congress provided ten percent so like fifteencent. I think theyave zero. I think NASA's for Mayia, Congress said zero, Goo. So that's a rough start. Act kind of very familiar sounding story to commercial crew, actually, right where they underfunded that for many years But yes, and I think that's undeniable. It has been underfunded And you point out another issue that NASA has been kind of changing the shifting the goal posts on what you know, they even need to provide. So I mean, just going back to that, what do you think is air to kind of lay blame at from a government perspective here in terms of why we're not seeing, as you said, seven years and we don't it's not like we have stations about to launch. We're still pretty far away from those What is NASA one? I think that's been the big question that I've tried to figure out myself. Why are we doing this? Why do we need a station in Leo? commomercial or otherwise? And I do think when we say commercial, and I was thinking about this as you were talking to, why do we all believe in this fiction I think the root of it is that The reason why government want commercial in today's day and Asia, whyy they say so much that we're going to have more commercially oriented acquisition processes and development mindsets is that that seems to be what we think is innovative. that when we say commercial, that means innovation. So it's of synonymous with innovation. So we want to maintain this idea that we want commercial And then at the end, it just means we're looking for innovative solutions and out of the box thinking. So the Henry Ford apocryphal quote, If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. The government wants someone to help them figure out. so they're not just buying faster horses anymore. They're buying something else. So say I think the garbment says commercial. Can I add something to that though? I think that's an interesting framing. I think you're right. And I would also say though that there When people say commercial, they say free money R that then suddenly someone else is footing a large portion of the bill and therefore we don't have to. I think all of Artemis is predicated on the hope that someone else puts in a good chunk of the money, which to some extent we're seeing, right? I mean, that's And that's paying off. and you even quote O reference some congressional testimony from I think wasn' it Maryilyland Ditmar at Axium who's building very small percentage of government money It's like a five, they're putting in five to one of their money. Yeah. Yeah. And so there is some truth to that I agree and and they're doing that because they think there's going to be payoff. Let me point that out recognition in this case is probably these savvy investors. They do think we need the nSA money. We are expecting a government customer, but at the same time, maybe down the road, they'll be non government customers too. But no one that is smart that's putting money into these companies would bet on that. non goovernment market is the first customers out door Yeah. They want a long term like it's like with SpaceX that they've had twenty billion dollars in NASA contracts give or take, you know, since becoming a, you know, building the Falcon nine Yeah, this is so I also was thinking about that with your question about why are we doing this Commercial, this is where it does, you have to really wrap your head around this. So I do think there are requirements that the government might have, the Pentagon might have, NASA might have. There's absolutely zero non goovernment interest in that. They're not going to, this is not something that's going to create When I say non government interest, I mean as a customer, there's no other customer waiting to bu space exploration, for example. I might put forward though that for the most part, maybe there aren't non government customers waiting to buy time on a human operated space station. There's probably some But a lot of what could be done and included in the microgravity strategy from NASA a year or two ago, a lot of that could be done by robots. full stop So this idea that we're answering the question of why we need a commercially operated space station or space station in general in terms of things that I look at that. and I say, well, a lot of that could be done by robots. too me, I'm still left scratching my head Why are we doing this? And that I think was part of the issue with the funding throughout the last seeven years Why are we in Leo? So I mean, to me, I just try to answer that question. I just like, well, I have this vision in my head. We're going to have humans living on a place that's not Earth in the future. Is that five years from now? ten years, twenty fifty? I don't know. But on the road to that, the journey to get to that vision, the destination there, you got to have people living in Leo. You gott to have a Leo space station. So that's it, boom. And that may be a a requirement that has no non government customers. NASA may be the one who should be paying for that. I'm fine with that. I mean, that's to me why we're going to space for vision like that. And the government should subsidize that. I'm sorry, that flat out. And that's the market for maybe for Leo human occupied space stations Yeah, I want to key on this because I think that was I appreciated your honest assessment of that because I think this is why it can feel so discordant and unreliable. I mean and you even say it's like a dogmatic belief. It's a dogmatic belief. Yeah, whichich listeners of the show as I have heard me talk about this for many years, this this kind of like pseudo religious, you know faith based system of like humans, you know, which I share, which I'm a proud member of, right? But I have to admit. you were before I was. Yeah,. it's a feeling and it's not it's fundamentally does not map well onto a policy sphere because it is more of this kind of it's a belief system expressed through policy rather than serving a policy need. That's why you tend to I think you see people bending over backwards and saying, oh, well, they'll invent and have some kind of microgravity. Right, I know, you know, another justification Christes or something. R which Yeahah, you can read back to You know, space Station freedom documents in nineteen eighty four and ' eighty five. Crystals are great, but Marna can do that and there's no people on their capsules. Right, yeah. And now's that's supposed to do with Skyfall. It's it's very little. You can uniquely do it well, there's very little. You can uniquely do in a space that requires people and I would even say that that That goes back that the role of people goes back to the establishment of space as a concept, particularly in this country to the mid twentieth century that predates the existence of computation and computers where you had you could not have viable any other way, any sort of operational station or activities because computers just unless they were represented as robots, which then they were kind of presented in this Eduwardian servile, you know subservient attitude towards what a human was. humumans were the centered thing And all I'd say even like the vast majority of early to mid twentieth century, like science fiction is even about space as a means of transcendence for the human into something We were centered ourselves in it, right? this whole thing. Oh yeah,, if you look at the foundation Foundation tririlogy And then I think it's the next one It's called Foundation's Edge. Or it is it which one where they say Well robots? they're like we've never heard of that term. I think it's Foundation's Edge. So essentially, o,'s like it's this and it kind of looks like a person. think it's foundations it's the next book after the trilogy. So there was a gap after he wrote the trilogy and I think he wrote foundoundations ed like late seventies or early eighties, So the earlier books to your point, they don't really talk about automation in the way that we talk about the computers in the way that we talk about. But but of a sudden, fast forward to the eighties or late seventies when he wrote the next book, we're talking about that. So he introduces that, but it's interesting to see how you know, he tries to mash it together and make it somewhat consistent with the trilogy, which there there were no robots, right? Well, I mean, I mean, it even goes back to, I mean, you see Apollo itself was like the big actual technology miracle was like making a computer small enough, right to fit in the module on top of that. But you go back to like the von Brun descriptions of a space station and it's like, oh, you have astronauts down there taking weather reports for Earth. It's as if that's the required thing. I feel like that has infused so deeply the role of why we need. And I think this is where it's become this kind of difficult policy because if you can't quite say that Which it isn't By definition justifiable in a policy sense. It's a belief system or a belief a value assertion, right? Right. Then you kind have to back it up and say, okay, well, now our policy is continuous heartbeaten in Lowowerthorbit, which NASA wrot out at the end. But I think you just have to answer the why. So there's another think I ran across Agrippus Trileba at some ancient Greek philosophers. It's hard to prove a truth and answer the why question. there's really only three ways to do it dogma which I'm accepting here.. A never ending series of Y questions, which you could also or circular reasoning And if you try to if you try to think about why you believe in or why you believe some, why? Yeah I found like, wow, that's true. It's usually one of those three things. There's really no way to actually, oh, it's that. It's anchored. The anchor is usually dogmot. Why is the moon strategic? Yeah because China. Why Why is China interested in the moon? Because it's strategic And damnth, we're not going to be strategic. more strategic. Well, mean that's such a great context because you're right. I mean, and it's particularly now as a father of a toddler. I get the why questions. I'm astl I have a five year old and six year old. No I hear you. I've been there. The dogmatic aspect. But I think it's because you're a domain era where it's taking a belief and an emotional kind of almost, an internalized belief and then applying it to irational structure, which it's not really apt for, right? It's you can't then that way, right? A budget justification is not a for dogma. But I think you can lead down into traps this. So I mean, I guess I feel this much more strongly the belief side of it with like not hanging out in Lewarthorbit, but doing the, you know, I say doing the moon thing as if that's like this guy like going to the moon and going beyond And the Leo thing I've just never got on board with in that terms of belief. that's hard for me to accept why that needs to be likeike that the continuous heartbeat, which this is where I think we go back to these changing if NASA's un the practical consequence of this is that NASA is unable to create a set of requirements or and they've been shifting for what they actually need from these commercial stations because I think tracing back that this is a dogmatic belief with no necessarily immediate practical need. So how do you then you actually create the policy implementation creates a conditions for failure here? Yeah, well, I think they also haven't tried to make that case. This is a step on that journey They made the case for Artemis I don't think the case has been made for humans and Leo. It also just sounds like it's got an acronym in it. It's just like Leo. What is that? basically, I'm just saying humans in orbit closer to Earth. Yeah. know, I think if we even look at things like situations that could arise from a medical standpoint or just a learning how peop's are in space standpoint. I just don't to me, it makes no sense to do that on the mood. Just people are going to dial a. But haven't we had twenty five years to do that already? I mean, like I don't think we've answered all the questions I mean, even just, you know, the medical we've just seen medical events on the ISS. Yeah just howick how quickly we can respond to that and things that we can't really do in space So until we can like, smmooth out those rough edges, meaning like the rough edge meaning like, oh, that happens. We have to immediately get that person back to Earth I just don't feel comfortable giving that up until we figuure that out how to do stuff that keep people healthy in space I don't know how we just jump straight to the lunar surface or something in the lunar orbit because it's too far away. If there's an emergency, I don't think we'll be able to handle it. Yeah And so you spent a number of years working in the private sector in I'd say space business, right as part of Amazon's is it Kuiper, Kuiper? What's Kuper. But it's Amazon Leo now cases so you're lucky. Amazon Leo, Well, you can just say Leo, but I still say Kuper because that's who I work for. but yeah it's Amazon Leo now How did you see the decision process there? wasas that just a much more relentlessly practical relationship about what the requirements were, what we were trying to do? Or was there a core of this romanticism, dogma of, you know, pushing this forward I would say deffinitely less dogma, more just you're thinking about the dollars and cents of the space economy. And to me, that's just the same dollars and cents everywhere. It doesn't matter if you're on Earth and you're in space. So really it's just What is the product you're selling? Who's gonna buy it? And then you build product around that customer in that market and then you try to do that as quickly as you can to reach scale. And as much as you can provide Amazon would say minimal lovable product, not minimal, viable product, but just the sense that you can get something out the door that satisfies that customer and you can start selling it. So anything that takes away from that Esentially that's a distraction. And this is where you just have to have really good discipline to be like, ye, no o, if we just batify it this and then someone else will buy it and no you're focused on what you think is gonna because the time you get off of that, that's a delay. That's cost and delay and you're further away from getting to where you want to get. That is what like we have had the exact opposite with CLD. So it's just that right. I think, you know, the discipline piece, you know, like you're getting at too that And I you know, I' tempted to say, keep your eye on the prize, but it could shift too. You could say, well, you know, when we started the Project Kuiper. idn't think there was you know the directed device market didn't really think about that. Things have changed now So like things do change in the market and you have to adapt to that, but that doesn't, I think, take away from the point that you're really disciplined about what you're trying to do. and you're trying to build that capability at scale to do that. And you're trying to keep yourself away from distractions as much as possible Well, I guess that's where you're starting with like a practical, probably measurable. I mean, that's the thing with business, I guess you can count dollars in and dollars out at the end of the day, right? I mean,'s that's a core s it's quantized. And for something, right, the value of keeping humans in Leo, that's not a accountable thing, really beyond like you can k aer number of people there, right? It's harder to than science isn't either Well, in what sense? I think it is in some ways, right? There's in terms of it's, I mean, there's countableata I suppose. but you're saying like motivationations behind scientific exploration? I just be like when is it done You know, like in the case of like a company, to me, you're like, we we got there. We're profitable, for example. You know, there's like a kind of like a you know, North star, if you will, that you can be aim you know pointed at. and you at least get over that hump and you're like, we got there. I just my only analogy there with science and discovery is that Sometimes you don't really know what you're And you get there, and you just you keep trying or like it's just kind of a You may never get there in your lifetime or where you wanted to get. and and it's not because You didn't try hard. It's just because you never quite knew what the discovery was that you miss out on, I guess, is my best way to put it. but you keep trying There's a great book by Bruno Latour that I love called Laboratory Life, where he was a sociologist and he embedded himself in a biology laboratory. This is like back in the seventies. and he had this great way of explaining science as this you look backwards and you can see a path to where you got to. Yeah. But if you put yourself at any point in that path in the past It's not directional. likeike these Yeah peopleople are just kind of grabbing like is it is this? Yeah. and there's so many dead ends, there's so many things that don't pan out, that narrative collapses though into that linear path to where understanding came from And so at any given moment, you don't even know necessarily you can maybe have a directionality But you don't know what's going to pay off by definition, almost, right? And you have no idea what if there's something that you just missed, right that would given you some big answer or not necessarily It's a strange and frustrating process, which I think is again, why science is a fundamental public good rather than a generally R and D program, right? I mean, I would say it is an R and D I mean, I look at spectrum, so wireless technology. It think how important that is we mentioned it earlier. that Maxwell, when he was coming up with his equations that predicted essentially electromagnetic spectrum and waves. he have any idea? and then Hertz comes along and proves the existence of these things? And then later Marcony comes along and makes wireless technology at the end of the nineteenth century. And here we are You know, one hundred and whatever. twenty seven years later. Like there's no way Maxwell knew that. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't spend on it. I guess that's not the directed That's the in terms of like a private R and D program, right? That tends to be applied research and development. Is that true? I would saying not no, I mean, I'm saying the Maxwell stuff, that's not applied at all. Well ye Yeahah, I meanm saying, yeah, thats that's like why you have I think that's the core, right of why you have at least some level of public investment. I agree. But I mean, it's saying to me, that's comparable to like this vision offul living because I'm like, no, I'm not saying the payoff is anytime soon. I'm not saying that we're going to have a return on that. The U.S government certainly isn't going to have a return in the sense that You've unlocked the potential of spectrum and wireless technology for economic development and general good. No, I'm not saying we're gonna to see that, but to me, it's comparable because it's an investment I think the government should be making. Yeah. Is Maxwell like a caveman inadvertently digging up an oil well and is like, Ohh well, I don't Yeah see. Well, he's probably a really smart guy. I assume he was a really smart guy. yes, The uncave manan, Ne But be a really a smart cave manan too. Yeah,'s true. Just not knowing that didn't have the superstructure of other things We'll be right back with the rest of our space policy edition of Planetary radio after this short break Hi, I'm Kirby Runan, Pletary Geologist at the Planetary Science Institute and founder of Planetary Experience Consulting of your favorite photograph. from the Moon or Mars Have you ever wanted to read the stories recorded in those rocks? You can learn how This October, I'm co leading a three day expedition to some of New Mexico's finest planetary Geology analog sites. And I'd love for you to join me october fifteenth through nineteenth, we'll explore tube fed lava flows at Carizozo soak in the volcanic desolation of Kilborn Hole, volcanic crater and stand at sunset over the sublime White Sand National Park These are some of the same landscapes. where Apollo and Artemis astronauts have trained We'll also visit Spaceport America the New Mexico Museum of Space History, and the Las Cruis Challenger Lening Center Space is limited to just twenty people And for every person who registers, the planetary society will receive a donation. Head to planetary d. org slash travel to learn more and save your spot to see you there I mean, I'm still kind of fascinated though, in terms of what you saw in terms of how the policy then this proposal comes out from NASA It seems to take a lot of the companies themselves by surprise. And we were just talking about this idea of being kind ofble private companies being nimble at really focused on what they want. And you can see this kind of classic distinction in a particularly a democratic system where you have The companies wanted what was maybe not the most rational thing from like a policy perspective because they wanted their CLD funding to continue. They wanted the programs to continue. And so they were highly incentivized to sure to stop it. All that private investment And yeah, I point it out because again, I would imagine you'd have to go back to your investors and say like, I know NASA said there's like literally no other market here But we have to convince you that NASA was wrong or or that N as you said, maybe the only market is the NASA market. main market. It's the anchor. The main anchor market. Yeah. I was kind of just again, fascinatingated how that came out because how quickly of a turnaround it was. Right. O just maybe that the other pathway wasn't feasible to begin with because as you point out, ISS is it's leaking again, which is never a good thing. you want to hear from a space station. It's still old or a submarine But that issue, I think of just how How quickly the industry itself tamp down this claim, which I don't know if you have any insight into how that process unfolded or developed But where do you see this in from a policy framing about did NASA just really mess up here and create a mess for themselves? Well, one thing that st out to me, and I think I might have alluded to this is that it did seem counter to where NASA was going with a lot of other accquisitions There's an interesting substory that like NASA's kind of undermining its entire claim for every other That's what I thoughterally. was like I don't get it. So that one didn't fit. So I'm like,'s just, I don't understand the message there. So outside of the criticisms that you pointed out for CLD, I did think, well, this is definitely an outlier. I don't understand how that's really sustainable to have this one program. Yeah where you're having this burden on it. to have a market outside of just the NASA customer when that's all these other programs, including there's the same thing, I think in ignition or subsequently, maybe it was the Moonbase announcement but we're talking about the lunar landers, which are being purchased as service. Yeah. Yeah. so like we're going to double down on clips, which definitely has not really worked Yeah, Or I was thinking of service vehicles too. those are required, I think if I'm not mistaken, that contract is like a services contract in clips too. you're right, prettyret much everything. So to me, I was like, well, that just seems weird., that's not sustainable. So I did think that. And then the other thing I think, you know, you pointed out that the critique was the business model, but I think it was deeper too, it was that you can't do what you say you're going to do. You can't deliver what you say, you're going to deliver when we want it We don't trust you to deliver. We think there are a lot of technical things you haven't figured out yet And you're not going to be able to build this thing and operate it the way that you say you are. That was the thing that to me was the bigger critique outside of the business model. To me, the obvious answer d NASA is the market Yeah was a technical piece I was like, Well, that is an interesting critiqu Because for one thing That's that has a lot to do with the changing requirements and the funding piece. If you kind of have everyone on a starvation diet, I don't know how you can expect. and you're trying to have a lot of companies they are all essentially begging for scraps No, I don't think you're going to have something that really develops the way you want it to do. And then the, you know, I think the other side of that was that, well, okay, well, if there is technical challenge, I've heard the EcLus system mention a lot. So the environmental system. and life support. So Okay, if that's really hard and NASA, you're like, we just don't think they've been able to figure it out help them But also is it really I mean, is it essentially the same stuff we're already using on the ISS? And if it's that hard, obviously some companies have figured it out because they're building human landing systems for the moon. And one of them is the same company that's trying to ha it. I mean, so I mean, it's all these things that I just it's all interrelated, but again, if it's You know, if you're critiquing one, I guess you're critquing the other. but at the same time if you're saying it's really hard, these companies can't figure out but we know is NASA help the companies. I think I kind of implied that in my article too, like just help them out And then the other thing that I'm like, I didn't quite get. was that there's no international market for this and that other countries just want to barter. I'm like, I guess that's true, but the way I understand it is that in a lot of cases these companies are figuring out how to work within that system, meaning, okay, ESA You don't want to pay us to do something commercially in our station or Jacks up What you would do is maybe we'll have some infrastructure within Europe that can support European astronauts, We'll have supply so cargo supply from a European company. So it's not necessarily just here's some money, operate this for us as a service, there are some like trades in there that allow that economic development piece to happen in these other countries But it doesn't look like the regular barter mechanism that NASA has used before at the IIS. it takes NASA out of the picture. So to me, it seemed like there were workable ways around that one too. So like just from a variety of angles, I looked at this decision, and I thought, I just something just doesn't add up here. So it's less in my mind that NASA just something changed and more just that the pieces of the puzzle that you know, NASA put together one way that led to the ignition announcement With all the feedback that they were getting from external stakeholders, they said, o Maybe We looked at it slightly wrong and let's try that again and we're like, okay, Got it. That makes sense We maybe should stick with this. So to me, it wasn't that there was a lot of new information out there. It was just Sometimes I think when you You look at a set of information and you want to, you know, You can look at it one way and then you move the pieces around and you can look at it another way and Maybe you're like, o okay, that makes sense at the end, it's like, I'm not saying anyone can have a fully operating space station by the sunset of the IS. that's if we're looking at twenty thirty.. I think we've gotten to this point and a lot of it has to do with the funding piece and the requirements that have kind of shifted I'm not sure if anything could get, you know, I'm worried about if we're not going to have anything after ISSD orbit, but If you switch now this drastically, you're delaying it more and it's probably going to cost more money. And I guess my analogy, I was thinking about this. my spouse and I, we've been like I'm not even joking like five years renovating this Abin in West Virginia We put a lot of time into it. It's been slow. we've changed our mind a lot of things. But if we just decided now we're like, e Let's just knock it down and build something new. That's going to be really expensive. and everything that we've done in the last five years basically goes out the window and that doesn't it's probably going to take longer. So you could do that But that's pretty drastic, and I don't think it's going to save you any money or any time I wonder and this is just speculation just to be clear, but if there was a They were almost getting like too smart for themselves and saying like, well, this will make us happy with the Texas contingent to keep ISS going as long as possible. through that alternative plan. And because there's a lot more money, there's a lot more institutional inertia, there's a lot more built in coalition about just keeping ISS going because it's been a you know, roughly four billion dollar program for almost thirty years more than thirty years now And I believe pretty deeply that the ISS will never end until there's a calamity because Congress will just never let it end. I mean, you saw this with Shuttle, right? that even after The shuttle only barely ended. They extended it and they kept wanting to extend it, even it was clearly unsafe and they didn't have any need for it And ISS, I think is a very similar thing. And I wondered if they were thinking, oh, you know we just gotten just had a couple more years. Yeah, We've just gotten into a bunch of trouble with a twenty six budget request that proposed to like stop rotating crews to ISS and stop doing all activities and science up there. basically. Mbe this is a way to kind of buy some goodwill. You know, I wonder if that was a factor in. And they said, o and the CLD companies, they got some other contracts, they're smaller It won't be as much of an issue. But I wonder if there is an aspect. I mean, just institutionally NASA is also going to know go what it knows with R. Yeah. and I mean, I kind of thought along those lines too. I think one thing to think about is that, you know, it rewinded like a year ago, Johnson Space Center would have had Gateway You know, around the moon. Now there's no gateway. rightight now if there's no ISS What about those people that are working at Johnson? So I do see an impact to the NASA workforce and For sure. I mean, they're trying to take the money that they specifically gave the Gateway and do a completely different right. So that to me, though, is not, that's not the fault of CLD. I just want to point that out. Yeah. oh yeah. exactly. yes, that is true Do you see broadly a, you know you've been in various aspects of government. You're national security side, you worked a member of Congress. you worked in now a private industry and now you're working for a think tank Do you see kind of a through line in terms of how non space people see space activities like this that How much do they depend on or how do they queue in their decision? Be most people don't have degrees in or you know, with orbital mechanics, mathematics or understand spectrum allocation or you know fact that you can't just the space is anything but like sci fi movies and you can just fly around wherever you want. How do you best engage with folks like that who don't have kind of a deep understanding of the domain that they're making decisions on? Yeah, this is where the dogmatic belief sometimes is not helpful. But at the same time, sometimes it's the only thing that you can lean on. And what I mean is that you know, it's if outside the economic benefits, which There are, including in things that don't have government as a customer like Sat comom. There are national security benefits, which I talk about Then I go back to things that kind of the science piece and I kind of group that in with the prestige and national honor. So in some ways, I'm talking about it in a way that I would be talking about watch watching the Olympics and a U.S. team win the Olympics. We should do it because it's important for our country. but at the same time The Olympics are something that brings everyone together in a way that I think kind of speaks to the come together, we compete and we all want to kind of be part of something together as a planet and all the countries get together and We we all enjoy the Olympics, even though it's a very competitive envirment. So I guess space is kind like that. I try to say that at the same time, we do have competition there is there is opportunities for cooperation. I think I often point to Paulis Sws in nineteen seventy five. So you know looking at this vision of the future where we do have this competition between the U.S and China in space, and potentially in a lot of different areas in space, including the moon. But at the same time, just thinking about a day when Maybe we start with something like consultation today. I'm not saying we're ready for cooperation, but where countries do have a more collaborative way that they work together in space. And this is essentially captured in NASA's mission in legislation and statute. So like this dual mission to cooperate, at the same time, compete and be a leader I guess I talk about it in that sense that you know the U.S has always been a dominant force in the world for two hundred and fifty years and that But I expect for that to continue into space and it's so different than any other activity or domain that we've engaged in. But I think the costs are what really is kind of going back to why we need to really think about why we're in Leo. It's just that that costs money. And it does it is very hard to tie that in that cost when you were talking about this broader narrative of what the government should be spending money on. So I do find that very difficult to try to tie that together. Science and research, I think it's the same thing in general, but that's where I say this is really just the It's the seed, it's the fuel that powers everything that has made America successful over two hundred and fifty years. And that without that investment from the government, no one else is going to do that. And we won't see the effects next year or five years from now, but we will in ten and fifteen and twenty years, and we didn't make those investments today. I do think there is a way to get beyond that dogma a bit. It's hard I mean I'm assuming you probably find that true. You've been doing this a very long time. It absolutely is. And I think what it is I've kind of gone back and forth, but I do think that developing dogmas' obviously got a lot of connotations to it that aren't great, but just in terms of a leaning into the more experiential or I've been talking about the sublime, and just like it's a way to access the sublime and do something kind of that does, as he said, feel good or inspiring, and that's actually, I think a real social need, particularly right now. Unifying things are incredible, important social need about binding a society together Apollo, there's a great article about Apollo as a civic religion, right? And it' a it's a it's not something you pray to or worship, but there is a there's a reverence you hold and it's part of a common story that a culture and a society tells itself faces Perfect for that But yeah, good luck. I mean, so and it's not even so much. you don't have to convince everybody. I think that you found particularly a lot with space as well is that you just have to convince enough people to Push on it You don't need to get ninety percent buy in. R? You just need a couple of people in the right places because there's usually not a ton of opposition It's more about the effort to push it forward and who's going to be going to bat? that I think makes the most difference. And so in that sense, you can kind of find converts and, you know, who will, you know proselytize where you to go f on the language. Yeah, it is a story, it's an inspirational story. It's a story about cooperation, unity. I do think though it'ss it's y the yang to that is it is a story about competition. Do you think the competition is what is driving it all right now? Is it purely China? but only and seems like a human space fllight? Is that a strong enough narrative Have you seen that shift in the last five to ten years? Be I feel like I have It feel Yeah. Well, I think, you know, we testify on this just last. Yeah, when George W. Bush talked about going back to the moon, I don't think anyone was thinking of that in terms of a competition with China at the time.. What do we do now? We just said, you know, we're coming off the Colombia disaster. Yeah Things have changed. So in some ways, I guess the case is a little easier to be made like it could have been in the nineteen sixties. Would we have landed on the moon in nineteen sixty nine if we weren't in the geopolitical competition we were in with the Soviet Union? I don't see any chance. And really the kind of space investment from government and even in missiles really, atrophied right after the end of World War two, why? whyy do we even need any of this technology? It really only took off again in the fifties. so you could see outside of that competition But really the justification just the raising to Era kind of goes away. So in some ways, yeah, that competition does help us see why it's important but I think maybe to I don't want to words in yourouth, Both of our points, I think kind of always that consistent undercurrent that we should not forget about is that more inspirational side where you know this is something we're doing for humanity And it's not something that is just, even though competition is a part of it, it's not just a competition where you have winners and losers What are you looking for next in the CLD Now that NASA's kind of a little bit, what needs to happen for this to be successful So the House appropriations, the subcommittee that funds NASA, Commerce, justustice and Science, they've put out A marker four hundred million for CLD There's been some public chatter from the companies, the vendors who say, that's good. That could support two commercial space stations. Okay Let's see if that happens. So to me, this that's just twenty twenty seven We're still going to have twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine I want to see what happens with some of these tests of Maybe incremental capabilities. a lot of the companies had kind of an idea of what the first phase would look like Then we have more of a free flying space station. So that all should happen pretty soon You know, things that I don't know how it will impact this, things like we still have an operational Starship Im pretty sure at least one of the vendors's architecture is assuming there's a starship I don't know how much the new Glen was baked into this. Maybe. it could certainly affect Blue's plans If there are technical challenges associated with some of the systems that would be needed, how much is NASA willing to help A lot of vendors who maybe haven't won the contracts yet but maybe need that help to kind of get to where they could. So this is where I don't know exactly how that's going to play out But I would hope that there is a willingness to try from NASA's standpoint to help as many companies as they can mature these technologies to have an operational system. But you know, I think in the end it will come down to can NASA afford more than one commercial space station? One thing I just want to throw out here is Does NASA need to Cadillac? human rated space stations. Does it need just one that maybe is rated to NASA standards, similar to the ISS where you could have You could have that continuous presence, that heartbeat And another that maybe is somehow used only more sporadically, but still could house humans for a bit of time, not all the time, but maybe that's where you have more of the experiments. So kind of you're trying to have the two well, we want humans to be able to be there a lot of the time Also recognizing that a lot of things can happen without humans there all the time So you're trying to do both. So one could be more expensive than the other. You know, I have the the Honda Civic. I also have the BMWX five. And I don't use them for the same purpose, but I have both. I don't have two X fives. I can't afford it I actually don't have either those typ of cars I have a twenty year old car just You know, in that theoretical case, you know, I could see a scenario where but again, that's going to require a little bit of out of the box thinking to do this in a way that fits the budget And I think the big thing is though, to get to what I just said, you really have to figure out what those are your requirements. And if you change them too much, you're going to get to the same problem we just had over the last two months. You've made it hard for the vendors to build what you say you want. And then in the end is NSA is going have to pick Pick who would wants to pay I think that's going to be a hard thing too And again, I think just even I'd say more fundamentally, just What exactly do you want to do? And I keep going back to the beyond the intent If you can't clarify that, it's not easy to say that tells you something about why and how effective we can do this. And I like your idea though, like maybe we have two civics and we just try we have continuous heartbeat because we're just going back from one to the other, you know, we're launching to one, then one goes down. Yeah. we have another crew to the other one You're right. They've probably introduced all sorts of complexities about what happens in the interim period.ough I guess we've got some Soviet stations Who you pick is going to be a bit right now there are four companies or groups of companies doing this And for a variety of reasons, the U.S government has a hard time Kicking And I think it doesn't like to be perceived as picking the winner But that's kind of what's going to have to happen now You know, I guess I just look back just one quick historical analogy. World War O, the U.S. government needed, I think it was like a turbo supercharged engine for airplanes. They knew the French could build it We couldn't build one. They just literally went to they said, oh, this this company General Electric, which made it was Thomas Edison's power company. they made turbines, gas turbines for power. Maybe they can figure it out, Hey guys, hi, can you do this Sure, we'll try. But like I just don't see that we just don't like to do that anymore. Like basically pick, oh, I'm not just going to pick, you know, oh axiom and vast. We're just gonna to pick you. sorry Voyager, sorry Blue. We're just gonna to pick you. And you all guys having a hard time. You have a little different ways you want to do. We're just going to pick two. I that's really hard for the US government to do something like that today, even though I do feel like they're going to be confronted with that situation now. Eventually they'll have to Yeah, I mean, that's There's just I don't think there will be the resources for that Or maybe there'll be an economic downturn and suddenly some of that investment money dries up could also That's true too, right? I mean, I think there's market cycle issues here and how well capitalized. I guess Blue is infinitely capitalized effectivelys long. they'reos. They they got their attention on other stuff right now. Clearly. And that's where they want to put it. And it I think it's totally logical for them. Yeah All right, well, if any of those things happen, Clayton, we'll have you back. and we'll check in on this. Where can people find you or your writings online? Go to the CSIS website for the airspace Security project and findind me under staff We will we'll put a link there for folks, but you have a lot of you put out a lot of great content and thanks interviews and other things and I very much appreciate your insights. And again, I think that it's rare and frustratingly rare to have people to say what they think I make good arguments in the space world, which is why working for thinkink tanks is great. So I'm happy to you don't have to do anything. You just get to appine. It'ounds good. Try sometime Clayton Swoope, thank you so much. We will have you on again Now thanks Casey Thank for chatting. We've reached the end of this month's episode of the space policy edition of Planetary Radio But we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space science and exploration others. In the meantime, learn more about space policy and the planetary society by leaving a review and rating this show on platforms like Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen to this show Your input and interactions really help us be discovered by other curious minds and that will help them find their place in space through planetary radio You can also send us, including me, your thoughts and questions Planetary radio at planetary. org or if you're a planetary society member and I hope you are, Leave me a comment in the plananetary radio space our online member community Mark Hilberta and Ray Plltta are our associate producers of the show. 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