WEBVTT - Why NASA Hired a Chief Economist 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:13.960 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.400 Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Blots podcast. 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:22.840 I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:23.760 And I'm Joe Wisenthal. 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:26.720 Joe, have you ever met anyone at a party and 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.320 you start, you know, you ask them the standard question 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:32.600 what it is that they actually do? Yeah, and you 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.040 just get a response that kind of blows your mind. 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:37.760 It's something that you've never even thought of before. 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:41.479 First of all, can I say my favorite question at 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:43.599 parties is what do you do? I've heard that. 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:45.000 I know some people look down at. 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:48.560 Ask me about my hopes and dreams. I don't care. 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:50.479 I don't care. I don't care. I want to know 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.239 what you do. No, I do like, oh, where do 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:54.360 you live? Whatever? 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:54.520 Who? 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:56.280 I want to know what you do? I mean, look, 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:58.680 in some instances, maybe people don't want to talk about it, 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:00.880 but I figure people devoted big chunk of their lives 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.640 to work. That's a pretty good icebreaker. So we need 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:08.640 to renormalize that absolutely. And as podcast hosts were always 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:10.000 looking for interesting people. 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:12.000 That's right, and sometimes you meet them at parties. This 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.280 person that we're going to be speaking to, we actually 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.920 met at our party our ten year anniversary party. Someone 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.120 else brought them and I was introduced to him and 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:24.840 I said, what is it that you actually do? And 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:28.800 the answer that came back was I was NASA's first 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:30.080 chief economist. 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:32.520 Amazing, sold have you ever heard of that before? I 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.520 would I would have not. I mean no, I definitely 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:37.399 would have never heard of that before. I mean, I 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.319 guess I'm not surprised in some sense. I'll say the 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.200 one sense that I'm not surprised that NASA had a 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.400 chief economist, which is like economists seemed to sort of 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:49.320 be in every organization these days. They have a lot 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.480 of tools and their toolkit that can be applied to 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:54.120 a lot of things. They're pretty good with statistical analysis, 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:54.600 et cetera. 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:58.240 But then also, you know, but this is stats in space. 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:00.160 Well, then the other thing is, you know, you know 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.920 that there's growing interest in the commercial applications in space, 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:07.600 and so satellites are another r one area obviously defends 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:11.040 people talk about asteroid mining. I don't know if we'll oversee 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.320 that in our lifetimes, but I know that there's the 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:16.600 thing people are interested in. So although I would not 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:19.000 have necessarily thought it, you know, so I guess I'm 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:21.240 not totally surprised that NASA's like, all right, let's bring 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:22.280 it an economist in well. 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:24.400 I was pretty surprised. I guess I'd never thought about 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.000 it yet. I never thought of But it turns out 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.960 that not only does this role exist, but it sits 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:32.639 at the sort of intersection of I guess a lot 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:36.560 of public and private investment space exploration. And we've talked 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:40.399 about this before, this idea that NASA has perhaps been 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.360 seeding a lot of territory in many ways to private 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:49.760 capital SpaceX especially, we've done tons of industrial policy episodes 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:52.000 at this point and what the benefits are of government 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:57.160 investment versus again, private capital. And so I'm very excited 0:02:57.200 --> 0:02:58.720 to talk space economics. 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:00.240 But do it the. 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.440 Perfect guest we're going to be speaking with Alex McDonald. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.600 He served as NASA's first chief economist, as I said, 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.120 and he is now a senior associate at the Aerospace 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:14.280 Security Project at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Alex, 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:16.040 thank you so much for coming on all thoughts. 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:17.679 Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.800 Thanks for coming to our partner, Yes too, party, I 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:21.200 enjoyed it. 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:25.079 Thank you so excellent, So obvious question. First, I suppose 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:27.720 what does a chief economist at NASA actually do. 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.280 So, the position of chief Economist is essentially one of 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:37.440 the three independent technical advisors to the administrator. I'll point 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.680 out that all three of those positions were basically canceled 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.640 at the beginning of this Trump administration, but they had 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:46.240 been essentially people who'd be brought into the agency to 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:51.160 advise the administrator on technical issues related to economics Chief economist, 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.240 Technology chief technologist, and science chief scientist. These are not 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:58.720 positions that are responsible for implementing programs. They are essentially 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.560 independent technical advices to the head of NASA. NASA is 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.080 a twenty five billion dollar agency. It has ten different 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:10.080 centers across the US, it has international partnerships, and of 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:12.800 course it has an extensive amount of contract for the 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.440 private sector. And so the role of the chief Economist 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.679 is essentially to advise the administrator of NASA on whatever 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.320 the administrator of NASA needs advice on. But it tends 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:25.400 to be related to what are the markets that we're seeing, 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.679 What level of investment can we expect in a given sector. 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:33.680 Has this company actually raised money or are they perhaps 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.800 maybe misrepresented? These are all questions that come up in 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.560 procurement and in strategy. I started at NASA in two 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:42.200 thousand and eight, so that was when the Space Shuttle 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:46.360 was still flying. We were beginning to think about partner 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:50.120 with the private sector. SpaceX had received its first essentially 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:52.560 contract from NASA, but it had not launched anything to 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:55.760 space yet. So as you can imagine, over the last 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.880 fifteen plus years, the role of the private sector has 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.360 become very significant within NASA's portfolio, and as a result, 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:10.240 economic analysis became one of the types of internal services 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:13.280 that essentially the senior leadership at NASA decided they needed. 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.960 That was fantastic, just real quickly backing up even further, 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:19.200 how did why you in that role? What were you 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.320 doing prior to that role such that you got brought 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:22.719 in for this? 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.400 So for me, space economics was a real passion. I 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.359 remember very distinctly two thousand and five when I was 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.200 a master's degree student in economics up at the University 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.960 of British Columbia and Canada, and I remember two things 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.240 that happened that year. One was the flight of Spaceship one. 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:43.320 This was the first privately funded, privately built spacecraft to 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:47.120 take humans above the Von Carmen line above one hundred kilometers, 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:50.560 which is the kind of international definition of where space starts. 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:53.360 And I remember, as an economist kind of saying, that's unusual. 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.160 How long have we been building our own spacecraft and 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.200 doing that with private money. That started my PhD into 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.640 the long run economic history of space exploration. That became 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.479 my first book called the Long Space Age, essentially on 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.479 the economic history of where the money came from for 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:10.760 astronomical observatories. And when you look at that, one will 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.240 find some very interesting parallels. For example, the people who 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:16.520 built the largest telescopes in the early twentieth century. These 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:19.840 are the Mount Wilson and Mount Palamar observatories. They were 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.600 funded by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, the two 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:26.840 richest people in America at the time. Sound familiar. So 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.080 this was a type of parallel that a number of 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:32.120 us were starting to think about in terms of how 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:34.120 are we going to get new money onto the table 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.360 to advance our objectives in space exploration. And then the 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:39.039 second thing that happened in two thousand and five was 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:41.479 essentially the announcement of what was then called the Vision 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.080 for Space Exploration, and this was the George W. Bush 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:49.480 Era plan to return to the Moon, build a moon base, 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:54.320 and ultimately use the capabilities to autavirus. And that basically 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:58.640 told me that eventually we're going to need economists in 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:02.520 space because if you're building a permanent habitat somewhere else 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.760 outside of Earth, Yes, that's the technology problem. Yes it's 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:08.719 an engineering problem. It is also an economic development problem. 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:10.720 You're going to need to think about where the revenue 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:12.680 source is going to come for this, Where might you 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:16.960 see cost savings for new types of technologies? And so 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.239 I had decided to go pursue space economics as a field. 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.240 Did my PhD in that. I used to joke that 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:24.680 once you do a PhD in the economics of space exploration, 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:27.320 there's nowhere else that can really employ you other than NASA. 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:31.240 These days, that's not quite the case. These days, there's 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.320 such a growth in venture capital and private equity investment 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:37.040 in space that actually it's a bit of a booming field, 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:39.160 to be honest. So I started my work at NASA 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.640 Ames's Research Center. So this is one of NASA's ten 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.080 centers out in Silicon Valley, and I was brought out 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.680 there to essentially start doing some of the economic analysis 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.480 related to venture capital, how do we leverage these private companies? 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:53.800 And essentially, as I did my work, I started managing 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:56.680 some of the programs related to encouraging commercial space development. 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.720 Made my way to Washington, d C. With kind of 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:01.800 these experiances that it had in Silicon Valley, working with 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.560 some of the investors and some of the startup founders, 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:07.600 found my way to the Office the Administrator and during 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.239 the first up administration that was when the chief Economist 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:11.040 position was created. 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.520 I have so many questions already, and I'm already struggling 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:17.680 to choose a particular path to go down because there 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.360 are so many. But one thing that stood out to 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:22.440 me just then, you know, you talked about the sort 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:26.400 of history of space exploration and the idea that you 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:30.920 had these very rich industrialists who are funding the early 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:35.360 stages of I guess astronomy and observatories. At what point 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.840 did the US flip into more of a government funded 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.240 model for space exploration and how did that actually happen. 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:44.600 Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's instructive 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:46.760 to think about kind of how do we develop the 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.199 capabilities to go in space in the first place. So 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.720 the history of astronomical observatories in the US really begins 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.640 with these wealthy funders, and there's a mix of motivations. 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:57.800 I break it down to these two types of motivations. 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:02.080 One are signaling motivations and economics. Signaling theory is the 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:06.520 idea that you can credibly transmit information by costly action. Right. 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.080 This is kind of how you know something about someone 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.920 when they're driving a Lamborghini versus you know, say, a 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.720 Ford Pinto. Right, you have some information about the individual 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.960 even if you know nothing else. Similar with education. The 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:20.840 classic signaling product that I can think of, though, is 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.240 if you know that one country has launched something around 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.440 Earth and another country has not, you know something about 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:30.800 the technical capacities of that country. Very similar in terms 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.880 of astronomical observatories. These were very complex projects. They were 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.440 about billion dollar projects if we do the kind of 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:39.960 inflation adjusted metrics today, and so the wealthiest people did 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:43.160 these things. Fast forward to the nineteen twenties and thirties 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.640 when the technology for liquid fuel rocketry is being developed. 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:50.600 This year is actually the one hundredth anniversary of the 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.520 first flight of a liquid fuel rocket by Robert Goddard. 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:55.560 That's why we did this episode. It was all time 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:56.720 for one hundred year anniversary. 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.440 That's right, I always love it, Unsentiary, you know, thanks 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:03.480 for that. So he's working on this technology because he 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.600 wants to be able to go to space. He receives 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:09.080 the vision of space expiation by reading science fiction when 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:11.360 he's a teenager. He reads a War of the World's 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:13.800 in his local newspaper, and then a sequel to it, 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.000 an unauthorized sequel called Edison's Conquest of Mars, And he 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.640 actually writes in his diary about a vision that he 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.439 had while trimming a cherry tree on his aunt's farm, 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:24.880 and he decides that he's going to dedicate the rest 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:26.880 of his life to space expiation, and every year after 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:29.559 he celebrates what he calls his Cherry Tree Day. So 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:31.440 he's going out into the world trying to figure out 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.120 how's he going to get resources for this project, and 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:36.720 it turns out that the largest funder for his early 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.600 phases is in fact the Guggenheim family. He manages to 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.120 actually convince the Gudheim family to fund this work. But 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:46.640 when the Second World War starts, which is really when 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.000 the US government starts to get involved with Rocket Tree 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.600 a very significant level he starts working with a number 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:55.280 of the generals and essentially gets funding to develop a 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.360 genesis to take off rocket to help planes take off 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.400 more quickly, and he starts get funding that way. So 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:04.040 the Second World War is really when governments across the 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.040 world really start to get involved with rocketry development, most famously, 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.360 of course in Germany, but also in the Soviet Union. 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.560 And so after that point, the technology for rocketry is 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:18.200 essentially co evolving as a weapon system and as a 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:21.720 technology for taking humans off of the Earth. That's really 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.839 when the US government gets involved. NASA gets created in 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:28.000 nineteen fifty eight after the flight of Sputnik, and then 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:31.199 you have the kind of dual development of essentially the 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.439 civil program which is what NASA is, as well as 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:38.400 a Department of Defense programs, and both of them are 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:40.800 roughly kind of equivalently funded for quite some time. 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.480 Well, why don't we talk then about the flip side 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:47.960 or the other direction. You mentioned that when you were 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:52.160 at NASA we still had the shuttle program. I've never 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:53.920 understood what I mean, why do we get rid of that? 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:56.880 Like why aren't we still launching shuttles and so forth? 0:11:57.200 --> 0:12:00.520 What was the sort of economic logic or national security 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:04.559 logic or whatever such that from the perspective of the government, 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.559 we don't need to keep launching shuttles, and maybe we 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:09.880 can begin the handoff for some of this more directly 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:10.760 into the private sector. 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.080 Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, the Shuttle really 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:16.040 was an incredible vehicle. But of course, as I'm sure 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:19.000 you're familiar, there were a couple of fatal accidents with 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.719 the Space Shuttle, first the Challenger disaster and then the 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.679 Columbia accident. So essentially the decision was made after the 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:27.800 Columbia accident that there was no way to make the 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:33.079 vehicle sufficiently safe at a regular rate of flight that 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:36.040 would be economical, and that it was time to move 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:41.600 on to a safer, more economical form of human spaceflight. 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.920 What's interesting in many ways with the development of vehicles 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:49.120 like Starship is that the idea originally behind the Space Shuttle, 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:50.880 it was very much the same idea that is now 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:55.800 motivating the development of Starship at SpaceX, low cost, refully 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:59.920 reusable aircraft like operations. You know, that was not ultimately 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.760 achieved in the Space Shuttle. You can look back at 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:06.280 the original economic estimates for what NASA thought they would 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:09.160 be able to fly the spatial app and they turned 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:11.679 out to be rather optimistic relative to what was delivered. 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:14.280 We'll see where we get to on Starship, but I 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:16.440 think it's just important to recognize that that it's really 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:22.800 part of the same engineering and economic capability thrust Shuttle 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.680 to Starship. It's the same idea, we want low cost, 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.480 reusable aircraft like operations so that we can do more 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:31.120 in space. Ultimately, the Shuttle was deemed to be no 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.240 longer safe after the Columbia accident. Blue Urban Commission was 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:36.240 kind of fielded, and they decided that it was time 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.720 to move on to what then became the commercial crew program, 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:41.920 and that came around at the beginning of the first 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.720 Obama administration. At the time, it was very controversial. You 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:47.960 can certainly go back and watch some of the hearings 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:50.600 where you've got people like Neil Armstrong who were arguing 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:52.120 that this is not a good idea for the nation. 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:56.280 At the same time, there was essentially a need within 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.920 NASA to figure out how to offload some of the 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:04.200 operational responsibilities for human spaceflight because NASA was seeking to 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:06.480 go back to the Moon and ultimately on to Mars. 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:11.040 One of the things that's defining for NASA's strategic landscape 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:14.800 is its budget history. Budget history is very easy to describe. 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.760 It starts in nineteen fifty eight at a relatively low level. 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:22.600 It peaks massively in nineteen sixty five sixty six at 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.040 the peak of the PALL program, and then it declines 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.240 very significantly until nineteen seventy two, and it has basically 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:33.000 been inflation flat ever since. Our ambitions, however, have not 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:36.560 been inflation flat. Our ambitions continue to increase, and so 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:38.920 as the agency has been figuring out how do we 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:42.840 achieve our ambitions, we figured that we would basically partner 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.560 and figure out how to leverage commercial capabilities and private investment. 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:04.680 Have you ever seen the chart of the NASA budget 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:08.400 as a share of the federal budget? It's unbelievable. In 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:11.760 the mid sixties, fought over five percent of the entire 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.800 federal government budget, at least according to this chart that 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.680 I pulled up on Reddit just now. No, but I'm 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:19.520 pretty sure i've seen this chart before. I think it's 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:20.720 ye right, I think I know the one I mean 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:23.760 to take. A staggering level of the federal government spending 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:26.160 was at one point through NASA and then, of course 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:29.400 it's sort of declined into relative oblivion, but it's kind 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:30.120 of extraordinary. 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:33.840 Well, on this note, Alex, you're talking about NASA's ambitions, 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.840 how would you broadly define those, Because it seems if 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:41.160 you say that NASA exists for security and as a 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:44.600 signal to other countries that we have superior technology to them, 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:48.360 you could justify basically any element of spending as we 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.120 seem to have done in the nineteen sixties. But if 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:53.360 you say that we actually want some sort of return 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.720 on investment in terms of jobs or i don't know, 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.720 some sort of multiplier effect on the economy, then you're 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:01.640 kind of thinking about different things. 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.880 Sure, of course, one of the challenges that I always 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.200 ran into is that there's this perner request for calculation 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:10.400 on the return on investment, which I always had to 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:14.200 patiently explain that this is not an investment, it's an expenditure. Right, 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:16.840 You can't actually calculate a direct return on an investment 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:18.240 in the way that you can for an actual private 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.640 sector investment. You can, however, calculate the economic impact. And 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.040 so every two years I would be responsible for the 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.520 release of our Economic impact report, and for those curious, 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.760 that is the highest level resolution data that NASA releases 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:33.800 publicly about where it spends its money, and it spends 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:36.360 its money across all the fifty states. 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.240 Oh yeah, this is famous, right, it has to. 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.000 It has to exactly because it is a public it 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:43.560 is a public program. It is there to meet the 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.160 needs of the American people as determined by their representatives 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:49.600 in Congress. And so that is a kind of part 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:52.720 of the agency's responsibilities and mission, and its missions are 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:57.640 essentially defined by that combination of congressional mandates and presidential direction, right, 0:16:57.760 --> 0:16:59.920 just like any agency. And so what have been the 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:04.680 consistent requests by Congress and presidents to NASA? Well over 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.560 the last forty years, let's take the post Apollo era 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.960 and even the post Shuttle era. We are now on 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:15.160 the third attempt to return to the Moon and build 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:18.440 a permanent habitation there. The first was called the Space 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.040 Expiration Initiative under George HW. 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:21.480 Bush. 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:22.919 Then it was as I mentioned in the Vision for 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:24.719 Space Expiration under George W. 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:25.280 Bush. 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:27.760 And today we're working on the Artemis program, which I 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:30.600 was intmately involved with, and essentially it is very much 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:33.040 we're using a different strategy now than we've used in 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:37.160 the past, but it was essentially the same interest. There's 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.879 only one world relatively nearby, only three days away, that 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:44.840 is the Moon. There's also only one planet nearby that 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:48.160 you can plausibly land on, that is Mars. I happen 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:50.119 to personally be a big fan of flybys of Venus, 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:53.440 but that's actually kind of pouter intuitively, because it is so. 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:55.919 Important When you say personally, you don't mean that you're, 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:58.800 you know, flying past Venus yourself, right, just in theory. 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.320 I'd be happy to, but I don't think I've got 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:04.040 millions for that. But the benefit of Venus is that 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.080 it is literally so hot and high pressure that it 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:10.200 is impossible to land on, so it stops both engineers 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:14.040 and politicians from trying to. That's actually a benefit from 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:18.160 a program management perspective sometimes. But anyways, the real goal 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:20.320 continues to be Mars, because Mars you can land on, 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:24.320 and there is increasing signs of potential previous life having 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:26.439 been on Mars. We continue to learn a lot by 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:29.680 our robotic missions there. There's starting to be some very 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.480 interesting indications that there may have been a life there 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:35.159 in the past. It's a very interesting world, and of 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:38.320 course NASA also does robotic missions out to the outer planets. 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.399 The moons of Saturn and Jupiter are truly some of 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.719 the most incredible objects in the night sky. In our 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:48.560 Solar System. You have moons like Io that have volcanoes, 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:53.159 few lava, hundreds thousands of kilometers above the surface of 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.960 these planets. You have worlds that are actually ocean worlds 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:02.119 underneath these massive ice caps, like Europa and Enceladus. Enceladus 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:05.520 has water geysers, so it's actually possible to imagine building 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:07.639 a probe that could just kind of land under one 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.440 of these water geysers, open up an aperture, and then 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:13.520 assess what might be in that water. And then one 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.119 of my favorites, of course is the moon of Saturn, Titan. 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:18.720 Titan is the only moon that we have that has 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:21.159 an atmosphere. It's actually I can't really see through it, 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:24.040 but it does have lakes, except the lakes are not water, 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.679 they're made of methane. And we now have a mission 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:29.520 on the books Dragonfly, which is for me one of 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.879 the most exciting missions that NASA is doing, to send 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:37.440 a robotic helicopter to this moon of Saturn and explore 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:41.040 it to learn about this different type of liquid cycle 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:43.040 based on methane rather than water. You know, it's a 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.480 fascinating solar system and one of NASA's cormanate is to 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.520 explore that. And I could keep going. You've also got 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:53.680 the largest number of Earth scientists employed by one agency 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:56.119 in the world. Huge amount of the climate data that 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:59.000 the world relies on comes from NASA and also responsible 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.480 for aeronautics basically search. A lot of the basic research 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:07.520 for fundamental green aviation electric aviation is funded through NASA, 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:10.119 so it has a huge mandate, which is why at 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:12.399 the end of the day, NASA is always looking for 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.840 ways to make that tax dollar go farther, leverage partnerships, 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:17.280 leverage private sector investment. 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.879 That was great, and I just want to say, like, personally, 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.640 I'm very pro going to space. I'm very pro landing 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:26.840 on the Moon. Again, I think it would be really 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.239 cool if in my lifetime someone landed on Mars. I 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.400 think it's very cool. But why so if there's going 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.439 to be private money invested in this other than the 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:38.840 fact that, okay, maybe there can be a return from 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:41.239