Lori Garver: NASA, Commercial Space, and Changing an Institution From the Inside

[upbeat music] I wanted Lori Garver on the Puck because this conversation is not really about rockets. It's about how America builds and whether we still have the political honesty to reform our own institutions. Lori, a former deputy administrator of NASA, and in my view, one of the most important figures in the modern space era who's not named Elon Musk. And Lori helped drive the shift towards commercial space flight, the change that made companies like SpaceX central to America's return to orbit.

She tells that story in her book, "Escaping Gravity," and today continues her work through Earthrise Alliance and the Brooke Owens Fellowship. Lori Garver, welcome to the Puck. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. So most people trace the new space race back to better rockets and Elon Musk's ambition, but you've been pretty clear that the real revolution haps- happened inside government in procurement rules, budget lines, political will.

So why don't we start there? What did NASA have to stop being for all of this to take place? Sure. I, I think people aren't wrong by recognizing the value SpaceX brings to this, and I think even Elon Musk would say there's an acknowledgement that they couldn't have done it without these government policies. There was a- actually, I think a

Esquire article at the time saying that

Elon Musk and Lori Garver had a symbiotic relationship. We ne- each needed each other to succeed. And this so very often happens in early stage development, where government needs to sort of get out of the way, and in doing so, that helps open up opportunities for outside investors a- as well as entrepreneurs to get involved and improve efficiencies, and that is exactly what happened. Uh, aerospace, space, uh, has been something this country's been doing, and most people when they think of the space age, who are at least my age or older, think of Apollo, and those were, of course, all government contracts.

And NASA was stuck after Apollo without really a means to lower costs because part of the military industrial complex is about getting contracts, and that isn't about, uh, innovation, for sure. [chuckles] So I had learned in the 1990s when I was leading the policy office at NASA for an administrator named Dan Goldin, that the holy grail really was to reduce the cost of getting things in space. You can do, I'm sure we'll talk about, the many things in space that can help benefit society, our economy, our national security, but we had to lower the cost to get there.

So we structured programs in the '08, '09 framework to do that, and it

returned and is returning huge benefits because we have managed post-Space Shuttle to lower our costs for transporting people and stuff to and from space. And, and what was it like trying to get Congress to actually change some of these systems like cost plus and, you know, the, the protecting their own districts and so forth? I mean, how did you accomplish that? Well, no surprise to you or your listeners, that was not easy.

It took a long time and

in a sort of typical classic way, it took longer to do that than the actual building of the rockets. We started this effort, as I said, in the '90s. Dan Goldin really tried to champion government turning over the reins to the private sector so NASA could do that harder thing, you know, going exploring beyond low Earth orbit. But in fact, Congress held on really, really tight. So I came in on the transition team in 2008 with the Obama president-elect team, and getting to brief him right away, because I had previously been with Hillary Clinton, I was not super enchanted by him, and he said he'd been lobbied to extend the shuttle, and is that what I recommended?

And I said, "No, I do not. Uh, and you know, we've not only shown how risky that system is, killing 14 astronauts, but it's several billion dollars a launch, and it is holding back our space program." And he said, "Oh, what should we be doing instead?" And I laid out this fixed price, cost, we call them Space Act Agreements at NASA, and we have the legislation that allows us to do it. So we got our nose under the camel's tent through a very small program that was begun during the-- as part of the stimulus package.

You know, you can't get these things through regular appropriations, or we couldn't back, back then because it was unproven, and the lobbyists for the big aerospace companies all told people that no one could ever

operate in this domain other than them, who've had, you know, these 50-plus years of experience. And in fact, they hadn't operated fully safely, and I didn't make a lot of friends by pointing that out. But ultimately, that stimulus bill was allowed to go through without a lot of amendments, and we got our first little $50 million in to start a commercial office that with our next budget submit, we proposed $500 million to, and I think we ended up getting $150 million that year.

So they cut significantly every year, and at the same time, they were giving $3 billion to the cost plus contracts, which frankly, you know, haven't gotten us as far. So it's very... It was very challenging time. I was not popular. This was bipartisan hate. It was Republicans and Democrats wanted, wanted to avoid-

Having our space program be opened up for the private sector. And I, and I do understand, you know, here we are years later, and Elon Musk is a very controversial figure. But fundamentally, this program has helped not just SpaceX, but the cost being reduced that is largely due to SpaceX's advancements are, uh,

ha- have created, I think the latest is over a half a trillion dollar positive to our GMP. We weren't launching commercial satellites from this country before this program. We were stuck with a monopoly provider that was a merger of Lockheed and Boeing called United Launch Alliance, and they launched

two-a-year government military satellites, exquisite $400 million launches. And now SpaceX came in, said they could do that for 40 million. I'd say they're about twice that. They didn't get to the price break that they promised, and we need more competitors, for sure. But it was a breakthrough that came only

because we were able to start small at a time when the larger dollars were going to those contracts and districts where the senators wanted them. So help me understand commercial cargo and commercial crew and, and what changed, and again, who bore the risk, who captured value. And from the outside, it just looked like NASA is now buying from SpaceX instead of Boeing. What, what's actually different about the new model?

Yeah. There's many things different. And again, sort of starting this in the 1990s, NASA has the ability to acquire goods and to actually put money on contracts that are for fixed price or through these Space Act Agreements, which are partnerships. And we started one called Alternative Access, Alt Access to space in the '90s, very small dollar amounts. And by... So that was in the Clinton administration. But by the Bush administration, there were people there who wanted to continue those efforts, and they put together COTS, which is the cargo program in the '05, '06 timeframe.

That competition meant that companies could apply without going through the Federal Acquisition Regulations, the FARs, and that, of course, reduces a lot of the bureaucratic costs involved in procurement. It also allowed them to put skin in the game, so we did not, at NASA, get the intellectual property rights. They could keep those and therefore grow their business beyond just the government or NASA as a customer. Those are sort of the critical differences.

And then it's a pay as you reach milestones. You don't just get money

for the privilege of doing business a- and allow that to just slip year after year, so you end up getting more and more money, which is what Cost Plus do. You were able to say, "If you can make this milestone," and we worked these milestones out together. Two companies who won that were SpaceX and, at the time, uh, Kistler Aerospace. Kistler actually didn't make one of their milestones. So the system worked, and they couldn't continue, and NASA put their next best bidder on it, and that was Orbital Sciences, which is now Northrop Grumman.

So we had two competitors delivering cargo to the space station at a fraction of the cost of

the space shuttle, which w- had been our way of doing that.

The issue came really when we wanted to add crew. And NASA's very protective, of course, of who's gonna transport the astronauts. But because we were already able to get that program that offered cargo,

you could see how somebody like SpaceX, they hadn't done it yet, but if they were able to dock with cargo with the space station, certainly they could also dock with crew. So it worked out to be a very elegant solution because they were paid really to prove themselves with cargo. They offered a service that NASA required, and then we were able to approve them for crew about six years ago. In 2020, they made their first docking with, uh, astronauts to the International Space Station.

Boeing was our second winner of the crew competition, and they,

by most estimates, were going to be first, and in fact, Congress at the time of the award in 2014 urged us to only select one bidder, and of course, that was going to be Boeing. And Boeing was awarded almost twice as much as SpaceX to do the same thing and has not yet fully delivered crews and returned. If you recall last year, they delivered astronauts to the space station. They had some problems with the thrusters. It was really touch and go.

They l- they were able to dock. The astronauts stayed on station for

six months, much, much longer than the couple of weeks that they were intending to stay because we did not trust the Boeing system to return them safely. So s- they came down in a SpaceX vehicle. So Boeing's got another try at this this year, although I'm hearing already this week it might be slipping to next year. But at this point, we still have SpaceX able to do this. Ideally, you want redundancy, not just for purposes of getting your cost down, but in case you do have problems, because these systems are very high-tech and finicky.

When you talk about redundancy, and you, you talk about, you know, the government's role with SpaceX, and you talk about Elon Musk being controversial, you know, how much

do you think this really is- ... a result of the fact that Elon Musk is, you know, once in 100 year type of entrepreneur? And, you know, i- is, is that really the secret sauce here that's gotten us where we are, or, or did the government really accomplish this? I truly believe you needed both. I used to believe it, the government policies were what mattered. You'd put these out, you'd put money on it, and all kinds of creative people would, uh, want to either create a company or create a line of business with an existing company to do this work.

It hasn't turned out that way, so clearly we need both. On the other hand, probably Elon would say at, at some point he would've done it anyway. But he so far has very much acknowledged [chuckles] NASA's critical role in the beginning of this when it was really risky. We were giving him sig- significant amount of money. And I'm one of these

rare individuals who have a, a range of feelings on Elon. Most people love him or hate him, and, uh, I used to say, "For me, it's neither," but my, my children sort of

narrowed that down to, "Actually, Mom, it's both," and it is. I love him. [chuckles] I think what he has done for our space program i- is incredible, and I hate him for what he has done as far as politicizing this, that was started in a Democratic administration. I was working for President Obama when, when we started this. We wouldn't have the Crew Dragon, which has literally put Elon on the map. He was successful in many things.

But launching astronauts is the coolest thing he does, and when he's on Saturday Night Live, he said, "You know, I'm sending astronauts to Mars. You really think I'm going to be this cool, chill dude?" Like, no, you're not sending astronauts to Mars, yet. We hope to get there, but, you know, this is really fundamentally the way it's supposed to work. The government shouldn't be spending taxpayer dollars to do things that we've done for 50 years at a cost, you know, that's multiples of what the private sector could do without us.

There are other launch companies which show SpaceX is not alone. Boeing has stumbled with the human spaceflight portion of their vehicle. There's another vehicle developed by Sierra Space. They've gotten significantly less money, and their vehicle's called Dream Chaser. It's commercially developed, and it's more like a glider when it lands, like the space shuttle. But we also have launch companies like Rocket Lab who have launched a dozen times a year.

They're Australian,

New Zealand company. Many, many startups still coming. Blue Origin is the one people are keeping track of because it is Jeff Bezos' company, and they have a really interesting competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin for landing on the Moon. I do say this in the book, it's very unique to have two of the richest people in the world take this interest and have, you know, a personal stake in developing space. So that has certainly helped.

But Boeing bid, Lockheed bid, Northrop Grumman's part of the cargo program. I liken this to, as m- most people do, the early computer age and when IBM

s- was focused on big computers and you had Apple and Microsoft developing. IBM didn't go away, you know? They went into the niches that they were good at. They improved. And I think our aerospace industry is fundamentally improved because of this new structure that rewards production, that rewards success versus just time in your seat, a contract in somebody's district. You know, that has kept us, frankly, in low Earth orbit for a very long time.

The mission we just saw, Artemis II, and celebrated, was a NASA-developed

rocket that started on our watch because the senators demanded a big government-owned rocket. They were not comfortable with just the private sector, which is funny since private sector builds these for the government. It's really, as we were saying about how you structure the contract. And that SLS vehicle, they told us at the time could be done in five years for $5 billion. Well, it, it grew to 8 billion. That was for it to launch in 2018.

It ultimately launched in 2022,

and that was without crew, and the first launch of crew here was in 2026. So the money they got for development in that 20 years was over $50 billion. I think with the capsule and the ground systems, it's at $100 billion.

Okay? So

the missions to low Earth orbit that are done by the private sector, we spent around 2 billion for

SpaceX and three and a half for Boeing. So the order of magnitude and difference in cost, fully, fully, any space people are gonna be saying, "They're not the same thing. They're not the same thing. They are not going to the Moon." That, the SLS Orion that costs $100 billion has a capability beyond those. But I don't know anyone who believes that we couldn't have done those missions in a private way for less. And in fact, both Blue Origin and SpaceX have been investing in heavy lift vehicles to go back to the Moon.

That's the competition to land on the Moon. People are arguing they're late, and they are, but they were not even contracted till 2021. And here we had the rocket and the capsule back, the capsule dates back to 2005. It was a Bush program. So these have been going on for decades at a pretty high price, and I think the current NASA administrator has been very open about wanting us to get off of those vehicles as quickly as possible.

And, or, or allow them to compete. We need to compete future missions and allow for some cost reduction. And it's not just cost reduction, it's innovation. The, the rocket was thrown away that took the astronauts to the moon, and the rockets that both SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing for deep space have recoverable elements. In Starship's case, it's

going to be, if it becomes operational as planned, fully reusable, and therefore the cost really, really significantly lower. When you look at the whole process, and I don't mean to be cynical, but I want to really kind of zero in on what really works. How much do you think really pushed it over the edge because of the fear of China? And, and in the same way that the Cold War motivated America to do things that it otherwise would not do.

Is, is some of this change just candidly that you can get senators and Congress people on both sides of the aisle to come together when there's an existential threat? There is an element of that as it relates to Artemis today. We had been trying really my entire 40-year career to go back to the moon, and presidents from

George Bush first, uh, as president in '89, it was the 20th anniversary of Apollo. He said, "We're gonna go back to the moon and on to Mars," and we were so excited about this program. NASA put it together in the same old way. The price tag came out of $500 billion,

and it was not... It was dead on arrival in Congress. Later, George W. Bush also made announcement about getting back to the moon. Similarly, NASA put together a program that was going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and that is when I entered the room with the new administration, looked at it, had a blue ribbon panel chaired by Norm Augustine. You know, he's the former head of Lockheed Martin, a status quo guy, and he said, "This is not worth building.

They're five years behind in their first five years, and they're not gonna get there certainly within any frame of the likely budget." What changed was China, in a way, because we had to build these rockets, as I said, because Congress wanted them. But once

10 years of investment in that, uh, and China's ambitions in space are becoming much more clear, I think it's really mostly been a marketing scheme to say, as Trump did in his first presidency, and then as Biden and his NASA administrator, Senator Bill Nelson, did. S- They're, they're all again bipartisan. We've got to beat China. We should not lose sight of the fact that this is not a race for the first time to the moon, and in fact, if China happens to get there before us, it's probably not as big a issue as China beating us on some of the things here on this planet that seem to be of greater urgency to me.

However, it has definitely helped get bipartisan support for this big government program because we want to beat China. And it's ironic. You've got Ted Cruz out there, Mr. Budget Cu- Cutter, self-proclaimed deficit hawk, just throwing money at this stuff when he's got Elon Musk and SpaceX launching these reusable rockets in his state that will cost much less when we get there. But

I think

every administration has its own way of managing NASA. I feel like everyone loves it, but in, in the Obama case, I was able to argue that the goal was really to

have the best, highest tech, sustainable program that helped our industry, that helped our economy, that helped our national security, and by lowering those costs, you can do more exploration. You can do more of the science that is so inspiring to people. You got to give Kennedy props. He said 10 years. He wasn't gonna be president then, even if he lived through two terms. We are now, I think Trump said it would be in 2024 when he was in office the first time.

Now it's 2028. I don't know anyone

with much knowledge to think that's reality. So I would say

it's, it's helped with the marketing, but it's a bit hollow because we have already won. Being next is less important in my view than going back in a way that is sustainable and that has

really helped create a very healthy aerospace and defense industry. And we have a lot of challenges in aerospace like Golden Dome. They're trying to do things in new ways, and NASA and the current administrator wants to get us out of these old programs to have us be able to go back to the moon in a way that is sustainable also. But we- we're still carrying around these big programs, and they've performed magnificently with Artemis II, captured the public's imagination.

And I think going back to the moon this time is not just about flags and footsteps. We say that every time too. These are all just words until you do it. But we say we're going to go to the South Pole.

That is a unique location because you could be able to have access to what we know is permanent permafrost ice trapped in the South Pole because it's a permanently shaded part of the moon, and those are volatiles that you could use to sustain a colony, that you could even use potentially to make fuel. There are other interesting elements in the lunar regolith that you could mine, that this could become a, a real economic positive.

And is there room for more than one country on the moon? Certainly. Is the prime real estate enough for everyone? That's what I think we're arguing over here in the next five years. Yeah, it's interesting. I've spoken to a couple people recently about the water and how important it is, but they've also talked about how it's spread out over a pretty large area, and that the cost of extracting it could be more than the, the-- than putting the water on a rocket and shooting it to the moon.

But it, it is something that's been motivating people and creating this sense of, "Hey, we can create hydrogen and fuel going forward," and that it would be a better launch

place to go to Mars because the atmosphere is easier to get out of and so forth. So a lo- a lot's gonna happen going forward, obviously, and, and our imagination can only wonder. Um, so, so let's... Let me, let me ask you a practical question.

You know, government doesn't work all that well in a lot of people's opinion. You know, half the country wants a smaller government, I guess half the country wants a bigger government. But we have other challenges, like healthcare for instance. Uh, one of my big issues is the budget deficit. I just feel like, you know, we're, we're not able to make the tough decisions. But when you look at healthcare, for instance, and other governmental areas, retirement and so forth, what do you think we can learn from your experience that might help us reform healthcare, for instance?

Yeah. I, I have talked to people about reforming different aspects of government procurement based on the lessons from our experience. And in the book, I talk about those directly. They are more in the sort of military defense side, big technical acquisitions. I think that for something like healthcare, frankly, you know, a policy needs to be always-- I, I think that one of the things that drives

the success of what we did is being able to just work toward the end state, okay? Streamline the bureaucracy to support a goal, have a known goal that does not

change, is not maneuverable. And in healthcare, it just seems so obvious to me, it's to have healthier population, and those would start with investments in preventative kinds of things and instead of, you know, waiting until people have very expensive, sometimes not very curable diseases. And I do think there are aspects of what we're doing now that are trying to refocus it. There isn't a one-to-one lesson on procurement, but in my view,

taking in the full

life cycle cost of what we invest in is something that we just have to do. And our system of being able to set a goal and

pay people to deliver it could do that better than just paying to push paper. We cannot continue to incentivize unhealthy behavior through the tax code. We cannot, you know, incentivize... It, it's all about incentives, and that's the unique thing the government has. And, you know, the concern is you have so much money in campaigns now. I would guess, m- in my view, Citizens United, one of the worst things that has helped with our ability to be efficient in this country, is because then you feel like you owe those people contracts.

And that's really silly. That is really silly because our example shows... You know, Senator Nelson was the Florida senator, and he chaired our committee, and he'd been to space, and he said he cared so much about the space program and the Florida space coast. And so we went in and briefed him on this new way of doing business and said hundreds of rockets could be launching from the Cape every year instead of four or five that you have now.

Absolutely opposed to this, pushed for SLS, called it his monster rocket. He's so excited. That rocket has launched twice in those 20 years. SpaceX has launched, I, I think, 1,000 times. Uh, I mean, the, it's just, it's very hard to get over the hump, but once you're there... I feel the same way with energy. I can't believe we're still incentivizing coal. It, this-- Like, the long-term health effects of all this, the, the things we're putting out that our country will have to spend money on.

And again, it's not-- I was raised Republican, conservative, Michigan family. My grandfather was in the state legislature pushing for conservation for the land because he was a farmer, and helping his fellow farmers, taking that long-term view. How do you beat China? They have a long-term view. You combine that with the entrepreneurial spirit, setting goals that are achievable, that people can agree across the aisle. Okay, which party is gonna say they don't want better healthcare at lower cost?

No one's gonna say that. We all want the same things. And so being able to

really break the rice bowls of people getting the money now is what's hard. I was pushing on behalf of the American people for the very best space program we could have, and that was my job. I was Senate confirmed, and I felt like if the president wants to fire me, he can. It's possible he wanted to a few times because he got so much hate over this program. But ultimately, it worked, and I think that was the most important thing.

When you look at, you, you said, you know, healthcare, for instance, versus where other things have a-applied, w-what is going on in defense today, for instance, in terms of changing the procurements? And, you know, when we look at issues like drones, right, where we are way behind, or w- you know, these important minerals that go into a lot of these weapons systems, when you see what's going on in Congress today and the discussions and what's changing, is it, is it changing?

Are they copying what you did at NASA? In many ways, they, they are. It's very difficult to turn the Defense Department much harder than turning NASA. And in those early days, I was over at the Pentagon because I thought we could do it together, and that would be really helpful, and I was laughed out by these giants. But

nothing wins like success, and once SpaceX started lowering the cost, those contracts came, and I knew it would. Now, I, I was thinking of drones when you started asking the question as well. We would've been much better off to invest in new technologies, uh, like cheaper drones w- than we're wasting, you know, these, these very expensive, exquisite missiles.

That, that's a loser for our economy and for our national security to be spending so much, and we have missed a generation of technology because we didn't make this shift soon enough. I think def-

at least so the, the Space Force has the benefit of as a new organization, it didn't have all the barnacles. So I think on our military side, space is moving quickly. They're utilizing these entrepreneurial companies. They... I, I was really as proud as I've been of anything I did, even though I didn't do it for, for these purposes, a New York Times article just a few years after I left NASA, and the head of the secretary of defense at the time saying while they had not supported it in the early days,

the national security has been so improved because of these lower launch cost rockets and satellites because we are more resilient. Because in the old days, if you had your satellite knocked out, it would take a year and a half to replace it. We are now much more nimble, much more agile in the space war fighting domain. We need that more quickly

here with the more conventional warfare, and we are losing the ability to, I think, be first in that, but there's, there's no future in, in not doing it. So I, I certainly have read no particular insight, don't have my clearances anymore. But it does seem they're trying to shift, and if anything can shift, it's due to a crisis. I, I should've mentioned, the only way we were really able to do what we did was the second space shuttle accident, which after that time, the president then, George W.

Bush, said we have to retire the shuttle in 2010, and we wouldn't have been able to get the money to do this commercially if the shuttle were still flying. There's just too much support. Again, the, we called it the giant self-licking ice cream cone of Washington, where

the lobbyists get their way with the members, and that is not innovation. And, uh, I think for NASA, that doesn't really have a set goal. NASA's not in the Constitution. We only exist if we can contribute toward, you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And in our defense department, that is fundamental, and the fact that we haven't been doing it in a way that is taking advantage of the very best that America has to offer is tragic.

I do think it's changing. When you look at, for instance, Boeing and Starliner and how it's stumbled a little, and you look at, as we said, the dependency on SpaceX right now and, and what... and Elon Musk's unique kind of genius. When you look at the commercial model and what's been unlocked because of the work you've done in creating this kind of government private sector partnership, what, what from a business perspective are, are you seeing out there that would be interesting to, again, our listeners in terms of...

I mean, I know people talk about Helium 3. I know people have talked about building data centers in space. But as somebody who's hearing these discussions and seeing what's going on, what, what's most exciting to you and what should people be looking for? Yeah, you know, you gotta have a business case, and for space launch, it was a no-brainer.

Things have to go up in space to get that benefit of that unique perspective, whether it's for microgravity, for observation, for communication, for geolocation.

Uh, I do think there's some microgravity research on commercial space stations for healthcare, and, and for 40 years people have been talking about these things, but we haven't fully had a platform that is

able to function at a cost where pharmaceutical companies can legitimately send researchers and do this. Similar, we haven't had any infrastructure transportation to the moon, so I see commercial efforts on the moon as being farther off. So you look at other low Earth orbit activities, and to me, I do think there's always improvements in communications that, you know, we've, we've made over time. Think of all the broadband use we have.

But it's satiated, so it's, it's pure gold. Anything more you can get out, like things like Starlink of, of communications and from space, as well as satellites that look back and look at a combination of things. We can do research, uh, and help fire... He- help eliminate or at least reduce damage from fires. Satellites can detect even very small wildfires from space. Data storage,

I, I read it all, and I think it probably is something that will eventually happen, and people will make money at it. I think it's probably farther away than we think. There's a lot of things that are positive, you know, with cooling and lack of, you know, the

resource of water here. We should be focused on those things that help-

Us on Earth primarily, and

I think the

money to be made is from markets that include us. I'm actually fairly bullish on point-to-point transportation. This is something that these companies have talked about. We can get in a suborbital launch around the world, so halfway around the world, in an hour. Flights from Washington to Japan on any of these rockets, uh,

are, are doable. We have in this country had, not just our country, but we were the first in aviation, you know, seen the value of those kypes- types of technologies, and people being able to get anywhere on the planet in less time. I think there's a market for that. And ultimately, there will be, if we are on the moon in a cost that is sustainable, things, possibly helium-3, elements to be mined, that if the infrastructure costs are down, become something of value.

Probably farther off than people want to think. For 40 years we have been t- been talking about some of these things, and they're only just now able to be tested because of the launch costs being lowered. That's why that was so important. I think the next important thing is a low Earth orbit, more than one platform, whether it's human-tended or not, because automation is so improved. Some of these can, experiments can be done and could really return great value in manufacturing semiconductors and testing for metabolites, things that you can't do in 1G.

Having a laboratory in microgravity could be a game changer. And I'm sad that it seems like NASA currently is stepping back from that. They're very enamored with the moon. If we're going to sort of make the case that we can return to the moon within this president's term, we gotta focus on that, so that's what we're doing. But that, that is what happens when you get a government space program instead of one that is driven by private sector incentives, and yet the government still needs to lower the cost of the infrastructure.

When you look at, for instance, climate change, and you look at satellite data, and you look at people, some people like space exploration because they were Star Trek fans or they're just explorers at heart, but there are people that feel strongly about climate change, for instance. Are there things about space and satellites that can help in, in, in our fight to understand our climate? Absolutely. NASA and, and NOAA have played a huge role in helping us understand what is happening on our planet, and frankly, y- you know, I don't, I don't think there's much controversy about that.

You, you can argue about the causes, I suppose. But no, the satellite that first looked back were all remote sensing and helped us understand that. NASA has, uh, over 50 Earth remote sensing satellites currently. NOAA, of course, has the weather satellites, saving billions of dollars with predictions of hurricanes. And the sensors that we have on these satellites combine with the information from drones in the ocean and so forth to give us these predictive models, and they are getting better and better.

And

when you're looking at mitigation, when you're looking at insurance, you know, there are private markets for a lot of that data, and there are companies like Planet making money doing that. I'm on the board of one called Hydrosat, which is managing water usage for farmers. And it, it's all related to climate change because we know we have limited resources, certainly water, and we want to have more productive food sources.

And we want, as we said, healthy populations. So it, it shouldn't be controversial. There's a definite market for it, a growing market. Another place that I would love to see NASA doing more. It's being cut in the budget in the Trump administration significantly, like by 50%. Congress will most likely put some of that back, but it's, it's probably a billion less than in the Democratic administration. So this is one part of NASA's budget that does seem to be a little partisan.

But for the private sector, it should be positive because, like the NASA administrator currently, you know, we could privatize some of these existing satellites and get that information for a lot less. So as you look at NASA, if I, uh,

gave you the opportunity or if the president gave you the opportunity to run NASA for a year, what, what would you change? You know, you have to get in there and see how things are going from the out... Having been out for a few years now, it was great to come back in, 'cause I'd been there for five years in the '90s and I came back on transition team. People had to, like, show me stuff and tell me

what the current status of programs were before you could run at things. I think the current NASA administrator has done a pretty good job of that. He's changed the Artemis program. He has said he wants to get off of these big, expensive vehicles. I would shift and not have so much focus be on this arbitrary date. We could, that could drive us to do something risky, and if we lose astronauts in this program, the setback would be tremendous.

We should be carrying out our space program in a way that allows us to take advantage of the unique things the government does. Those are

the extended science missions that go beyond where there's any return. And we should be helping

national security, economic security- By working with everyone to help solve the problems we have on Earth. We have a unique platform, the atmosphere. Think about if you'd been alive the first time we were able to cross an ocean, or with the Wright brothers and the first jets.

We're benefiting from the 50, 60 years in space now, and just beginning to see what that vantage of space offers. And I think I would focus more of their budget on helping the people here on this planet who pay for those resources, and in doing so would dramatically win, you know, the next generation. Surveys show when they prioritize what NASA does, they put sending people to the Moon and Mars dead last, and they put things like diverting a potential asteroid hit or addressing issues of climate change, studying the Earth and its resources from space at the top.

And NASA's budget is entirely flipped. NASA's budget is around $25 billion, and we only spend

a couple hundred million on asteroid detection. We only spend two and a half billion on earth sciences, and the majority, over 12 billion of it, is spent on human space flight, going beyond to Moon and Mars. And, and it'll be a couple of people. I know it's a really hard time to say that because Artemis II was so amazing. I, I'd be interested in your views on that balance. I mean, if you could say 50/50, that would be great, but it would, I think, lead to a larger NASA budget than a smaller one because more people would be seeing the benefits.

What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think, look, there's pros and cons of democracy. It's certainly, from my perspective, the best system that exists. But

unless we change people's attitude... I'm l- I, I've written a book on debt, for instance, which, which talks about short-term benefit versus long-term benefit, and I think one of the challenge is with, with a democracy is it's only as good as we are, and we the people have to recognize that there's the benefit of kind of, you know,

working either from love or fear. I mean, the things you just listed, when you think about asteroids and so forth, I mean, people are really focused on the fear aspects of it, but, but there's also kind of the awe and wonder and, and the long-term balances and, and being really strategic. And I, and I think that really is gonna come down to people becoming more educated and, and really focusing on critical thinking and being willing to make more short-term sacrifice.

Love or fear. Yeah. Yeah. I, I called in the book fear, greed, and glory, and I mean greed in a good way. Those are the things, and I, I attributed it to a Neil Tyson speech, but he told me his... He didn't use those words, so I'll, I'll keep it. I, on the deficit, you know, NASA's such a small budget. It's less than one half of 1% of the budget. But just stepping out of my lane into yours, I really don't understand why we don't just eliminate the cap on Social Security.

And we would solve it. When those years where I was making more than the cap, you wouldn't have even noticed it.

And they cut it off, and you don't have to pay on money over 150,000 or something. Those are the people who can afford it. They're in their working years. You wouldn't have people being upset 'cause you're taking money they already earned. I don't know.

I never hear anyone talk about that. Why is it? Great question. I mean, I, you know, certainly we know that certain demographic groups vote more than others. You talked about the Citizens United decision, the, the, you know, disproportionate influence of, of big money. You know, it's, it's complicated. And, and that leads me, I guess, 'cause we're getting close on time here, to my final question, which is, are you optimistic about America's ability to, in the future, you know, continue to fix things based on your experience as the deputy administrator?

You know, when you look at what you've learned since 2009, when you look at where we are today, are you more optimistic about where things are going? Sadly, I don't think I am. Partly because of the experience, having seen how entrenched these systems have become, and we aren't really addressing them. We at least are talking about addressing them, but then we go about and make even worse bureaucracies. So that's difficult.

I am optimist about human nature, and sadly, I think we're probably gonna have some harder times before we can really all pull together. My current top project that I am most excited about is writing a musical called Space Age with my daughter, and we are writing about this in a way that hopefully is sort of like

Book of Mormon, makes fun of [laughs] more, like, makes fun of these things that we do that are so silly, like trying to find a way to connect with people who are smart and understand the bigger picture. And I think we need to just elevate a lot of what is happening, be more transparent, and hopefully people will take the lead on getting it right. So I've always said I'm a pragmatic optimist, and I, I still am, but my pragmatic side right now thinks, wow, we're pretty bogged down in some issues that maybe are less important than others.

And I find when I talk to my neighbors who are in different parties, you can just meet people on their level. We do all want the same thing. Pushing you a little, you were successful, and so when you say you're not as optimistic, I mean, and you go back to this notion you just said of pragmatic optimism, I mean, i- is part of it just that it's tiring? That, that, that you can get there, but it takes a lot of work? Well, I wasn't fully successful.

I mean, the goal was to have more than one provider. We only have one. The goal was also not to be wasting the tens, hundreds of billions on cost plus, and NASA's still spending well over for cost plus than they do for innovation. So

seeing such w- you know, we have an example of how this works, and yet it hasn't quite made it through to... A- and, and I know now it's politicized because it happens to be Elon, and the billionaires, I, I agree, rightly, you know, love him and hate him, we, we shouldn't be allowing them to do these programs in a way that they didn't really save us money 'cause they're a monopoly provider. So our- there's still work ahead.

But is it, to, again, and, and human nature being what it is, we, we do want major change. But I, I remember you, you, you brought up a few quotes, and o- one of my favorites is that revolutions don't succeed, that we, we, we actually grow through evolution. And you're right. You're not all the way there. We have one provider, costs are still up. But you, you really did from an evolutionary perspective really change how things are done in space.

Yes. I, I, you, you sound like my husband, who's always tries to remind me when I have, uh... There's still challenges ahead, you know? People like me, we s- we see stuff we wanna fix, and it is super, super rewarding to see the evolution working. I'm going next week. It's a 20th anniversary of a association in Washington that supported this effort, and they're celebrating it because there's a $500 billion

economy built off of this. So of course, that's, that's a wonderful thing. It's a glass half full.

I struggle with this as well, but when I look at the whole notion of each generation, you know, if we finish the job, there'd be nothing for our children to do. And, you know, e- going, going back and using a famous Judeo-Christian story, you know, e- essentially that, that essentially, you know, King David turned the kingdom over to Solomon, Moses doesn't make it in the Promised Land. I mean, I think these stories that have been around for thousands of years are to say, "Lori Garver, you did pretty good," and the fact that the job's not completed is, is, is, is the nature of the human experience.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, and, and what I love about the way you approach this, again, putting politics aside, whether or not you're a Democrat or a Republican, at the end of the day, you're calling balls and strikes. And at the end of the day, you're talking about the challenges that these big government programs have, and you're talking about bureaucracy, and then the question is how do you change it? And these are hard things for either party to address.

Absolutely. And, and I well agree that because the speed of change and innovation has been so fast, even being alive to see it is rare. You know, in our musical, we start with, you know, Galileo. He didn't get to live to see [laughs] this. He didn't get out of, you know, house of rest. But the real benefit, I think, or, and one of the things we're pulling on in calling it Space Age, is that passing from generation. I mean, I know the Apollo guys, and it was wonderful to learn from them, and they were slow to come around to this, and that was hurtful for both Elon and myself.

But ultimately, people now know it's, it's on a, a better track. And, and it is. I mean, if you knew, you know, my, my, uh, obviously I was appointed by the Obama administration to be so positive about a Trump appointee as head of NASA. It's very positive, because that is... He, he's carrying out, and he tells me, you know, "I loved your book. I want to continue that path." So you're right. That's a good reminder. Well, again, Lori, thank you so much.

I couldn't agree with you more, and you are an inspiration to other people to go in and break some eggs and do what you did, because it does work. It may not get you all the way, but it's, it's a call to the next generation to step up and to learn from your experiences. Yes, but they need to be addressed, and it is pretty simple. It is about leadership and transparency. And whether, I don't know, whether you had term limits or something might help, but it is ultimately, to me, fixable.

So, so that is a first step. We, we still have too many of the old guard in these positions doing things for the wrong reasons, not helping America in a more broad way. Constituent interests have a place, but really, it, it isn't very hard if you were gonna take, again, an end state goal of a healthy country, meaning all that that means, secure,

physical, and rewarding, having kids grow up with an ability to see how they can contribute to the greater good. Everyone wants to see that, and you could come up with policies to get that done.

It's cracking those rice bowls, breaking the systems, and of course, being willing to have temporary disruptions. And don't be afraid if you really know you're working on something that can, can be positive for the greater good. Even, even if you take some arrows, you'll survive it. Lori, thank you. This was great.

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