Is NASA Worth 25 Billion Bucks? with Casey Dreier

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Is NASA Worth 25 Billion Bucks?"

Podcast: Smart Girl Dumb Questions
Host: Nayeema Raza
Guest: Casey Dreier (Chief of Space Policy, The Planetary Society)
Date: October 14, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Nayeema Raza dives into the big question: Is NASA worth $25 billion? With guest Casey Dreier, she explores the societal, scientific, and political value of space exploration—and why human curiosity about the cosmos might be more than just dollars and cents. Together, they untangle the often irrational, sometimes spiritual, and inevitably political reasons the United States (and humanity at large) has invested in space, and what might be lost if budgets are slashed.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Spiritual and Symbolic Value of Space Exploration

• Civil Religion of Spaceflight:
  Casey references historian Roger Launius’s concept of a “civil religion” around spaceflight, expressing how for many Americans, space evokes awe, inspiration, and a shared sense of national purpose—emotions typically reserved for religious experiences:

  "When you think about spaceflight, it touches on something that is not just purely in the rational mind... it says something about us as a species or as a Nation. And that makes it special." – Casey (04:01)

• Astronauts as Modern Apostles:
  Astronauts hold a revered place in society, not because people know them personally, but because of what they represent—transcending earthly limitations:

  "People do treat them with reverence. If an astronaut sits down next to you...you want to shake the hands of someone who walked on the moon." – Casey (05:03)

• Profound Personal Experiences:
  Casey credits witnessing the Curiosity rover’s 2011 launch as a life-changing, quasi-conversion experience:

  "Rockets launches are a very powerful thing...I really recommend everyone should just go and experience that once." – Casey (06:05)

2. The Cold War, Apollo Era, and the Shift to Pragmatism

• Apollo as Peak Techno-Optimism:
  The rapid-fire achievements (Sputnik in 1957 to the moon landing in 1969) fueled a belief in unlimited human potential.

  "Within 12 years, you went from the US not being able to launch...to landing two people on the surface of the moon." – Casey (10:37) "Apollo evoked...emotions of awe, devotion, omnipotence, and most importantly, redemption for humanity." – Nayeema quoting Launius (10:08)

• Public Support Was Never Overwhelming:
  Contrary to nostalgic narratives, most Americans were ambivalent:

  "The majority of the public was never that supportive of Apollo...the only time it was ever above 50% was right after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon." – Casey (14:24)

• Why Did Momentum Wane?
  After winning the “space race,” spaceflight lost its urgency. Economic shifts in the 1970s and changing priorities (e.g., Vietnam War expenditures):

  "NASA, you will compete and elbow your way for resources like any other federal agency. You are no longer deemed...this priority thing because we won the race." – Casey (14:01–14:20)

3. The Modern Debate: Should We Spend Billions On Space?

• Cost Perspective:
  Nayeema challenges Casey on the morality of investing in NASA given pressing issues like child poverty and healthcare:

  "Given the state of healthcare in America…why are we then taking dollars and putting it into sending dudes to space?" – Nayeema (16:14)

  Casey provides context:

  "We spent $6 trillion last year. NASA was $25 billion of that. That's less than one half of 1%. Every six days, we spend NASA's budget on Medicare." – Casey (17:03) "If NASA was the thing standing in the way of eradicating childhood poverty...I personally would shut down the agency." – Casey quoting James Beggs (17:33)

• Indirect Societal Benefits:
  Space challenges inspire STEM careers, technological advancement, and national pride—impacting society beyond the technical goals.

  "The act of even doing it...gives you...education...dragging a magnet...all these iron filings pop onto it out of the blue." – Casey (18:22)

• Concrete Everyday Benefits:

  • GPS: "That's a good thing—literally tells us where to go." – Casey (20:45)
  • Semiconductor Advancement (from Apollo program)
  • Solar Panels: Developed/deployed for spacecraft, led to advances on Earth.
  • Communication: Satellite communications, global connectivity

• Unexpected, Long-Term Payoffs:
  Problem-solving in extreme space environments often leads to useful innovations (e.g., miniaturization, nuclear power for tight constraints, climate science inspired by studies of Venus and Mars).

4. The Political Wrestling Match Over NASA Funding

• Partisanship vs. Bipartisanship:
  NASA typically has bipartisan support, but shifting rhetoric and priorities threaten that fragile consensus.

  "It's not inherently partisan...there's nothing inherently that would drive one party to believe in one thing and not the other." – Casey (08:17)

• Current Funding Threats:
  At the time of recording, a proposed 25% budget cut to NASA (with a 50% cut to science) was being hotly debated:

  "That seems bad to me. Within that, science would be cut in half...and that's a lot to cut in one year." – Casey (28:22)

  Bipartisan pushback in Congress demonstrates continued symbolic consensus, at least at high levels:

  "Both House and Senate, which again are controlled by the President's own party, flat out reject that level of cuts to NASA." – Casey (28:49)

• Implications of Cuts:

  • Projects like "Mars Sample Return" (potential to confirm extraterrestrial life) could be canceled (29:53).
  • Reduced funding for telescopes like Hubble and James Webb would mean less science: fewer observations, fewer scientists supported, reduced discovery (38:36–38:50).

5. The Science vs. Human Spaceflight Debate

• Science Is the “Best Bang for Buck”:

  "Science is the most important thing, because it goes further. The universe is really big. Humans could probably only ever go to Moon and Mars...understanding how the universe works...is really, really important." – Casey (37:30)

• But Budget Priorities Say Otherwise:
  NASA spends more on crewed missions (with immediate media appeal) than robotic science, despite public preference for practical/planetary science.

• Commercialization and Privatization:
  The rise of private sector players (e.g., SpaceX) has reduced certain costs but hasn’t replaced the public agency’s role in pure science:

  "SpaceX will not make a Hubble Space Telescope...There's no incentive, even though they could pay for it themselves." – Casey (43:30)

• Science vs. Technology:
  Culture is shifting to value applied, profit-driven “technology” more than foundational “science.”

  "There's been a replacement of the word science in our culture with technology." – Nayeema (44:04) "The ability to assert that anyone who is smart in one area can also do something as equally well in a completely different field is folly." – Casey (44:07)

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Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Why Space Is Worth the Money:
  "We're a big and wealthy country. We can do lots of things at the same time. I think we have the right priorities...it's kind of adding to this long-term, high payoff investment." – Casey (17:03)
• On the Transformative Power of Space:
  "Rockets launches are a very powerful thing...I really recommend everyone should just go and experience that once." – Casey (06:05)
• On Science Losing Out in Budgets:
  "Would we lose some of these telescopes we love so much? ...They’d reduce the amount of science they do on the Hubble Space Telescope...You just pay fewer scientists. You just do less science." – Casey (38:36)
• On the Unique Role of Government in Science:
  "Commercial industry will not do science for you. There's no money in it, by definition...That's like why we have a public space agency." – Casey (41:42)
• On Techno-Optimism and Its Limitations:
  "There's no universal intelligence...That ability to do science is very distinct from engineering." – Casey (44:07)
• On Capitalism and Space:
  "We've become too utilitarian with it. And I do think there's a truth again...Going into space does make you feel something...To completely ignore that part for the idea that we can just take, take, take is, I think, diminishes the opportunity we have." – Casey (45:55)

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Notable Segments with Timestamps

| Time | Topic | Summary / Quote | |--------------|-------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:30–01:18 | The awe of rocket launches | Casey’s visceral account of a launch that changed his perspective | | 03:14–05:45 | Spaceflight as “civil religion” | The special, irrational reverence for astronauts in American culture | | 10:06–11:38 | Apollo: Peak “techno-optimism” | The mythic status and context of the moon shot | | 13:02–15:01 | Why Apollo momentum fizzled | The impact of Cold War priorities and changing national mood | | 16:14–18:22 | Budget debates: Is space “moral” to fund? | Comparative sizes of NASA budget to health/social programs (“Every six days we spend NASA’s budget on Medicare.”) | | 20:42–22:11 | Everyday benefits from space investment | GPS, semiconductors, solar panels, communications | | 28:13–30:06 | Current political budget fight | $25B threatened with 25% cut, Congress's rare bipartisan pushback | | 29:38–30:28 | Mars Sample Return – Cancelled? | “We have a hypothesis to test. Was this life or not? … This budget cancels the effort to do [bring it back].” | | 34:53–36:17 | NASA vs Space Force | NASA’s civilian, scientific mission versus Space Force’s military mission | | 37:30–39:12 | Science > Human Spaceflight? | Casey argues for priority of science—“goes further” | | 41:42–43:30 | Can commercial space fill the science gap? | “There’s no market incentive to go to Europa, is there?” | | 44:04–45:08 | Tech vs. Science in US culture | Tony Stark and the myth of the universal genius, science’s unique role | | 45:55–47:13 | Is space too capitalist now? | The value of awe, wonder, and public investment unique to exploration | | 47:28–49:12 | Casey’s “dumb” question about consciousness | When do children grasp the difference between past, present, and future? |

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Takeaways & Closing Reflections

• Space exploration, for all its spectacle and cost, is about much more than rockets and moonshots—it’s about national identity, inspiration, and the enduring value of curiosity.
• The science budget at NASA is under threat not because of its cost, but due to shifting priorities and the encroachment of commercialization and utilitarian mindsets.
• Many of the greatest benefits—from climate science to communications—arose as offshoots from ostensibly impractical “curiosity projects.”
• The future of space exploration and science in the US may hinge on preserving bipartisan consensus—and not allowing excitement for private rockets to eclipse the foundational, slower, but ultimately more transformative scientific questions.
• As Casey says, we must not “diminish the opportunity we have here and diminish something really, really valuable that it provides us.”

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Recommended follow-up:

• Casey Dreier’s podcast: Planetary Radio, Space Policy Edition
• Upcoming episode: Bill Nye discusses the fate of science in modern culture

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Transcript

[A]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never.

[B]

Miss a meme or milestone.

[A]

All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[B]

Learn [e-mail] have you ever seen a rocket launch before?

[A]

Only on my little screen of my.

[B]

Phone, never in person. So a rocket launch in person is a profound experience because you feel it. You don't just watch it. And you realize that the screen gives you a certain distance from what is, at its core something that's hard to process, which is like something the size of a skyscraper lifting off in front of you, and it almost knocks you over with its sound. And you feel it reverberating in your chest, and then all the thousands of people around you are reacting to it. And I remember thinking after I saw that all of these people, thousands of people, worked for 10 years to build this thing on top of what amounts to a giant bomb and shoot it off into just this red point in the sky, purely for the curiosity of what's on that red dot. And something was so moving about that to me, I was like, I need to do everything I can to keep this.

[A]

Yeah. I'm Naeema Raza. This is Smart girl, dumb questions, and do we need to go to space? Is my question today. It's one that I'm gonna ask to my guest, Casey Dreier. Hi, Casey. How are you?

[B]

I'm doing great.

[A]

Casey is the chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, an organization that's helmed by Bill Nye. Casey is also a huge history and science geek. Can I say that?

[B]

Yeah, you can.

[A]

I think your shirt is saying that, Casey.

[B]

Yeah, it's not too hard to figure out.

[A]

Casey's shirt right now has astronauts and NASA and NASA logos.

[B]

I'm spinning around and I have the drink equation.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. What's that?

[B]

That's a way to kind of estimate how many intelligent civilizations may exist in the galaxy.

[A]

What's the answer?

[B]

More than zero.

[A]

Oh, okay. I sometimes worry it's zero, including ourselves.

[B]

True intelligent.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They actually get around that by saying, capable of communication using radio waves.

[A]

Oh, we definitely qualify for that.

[B]

So that when there's a one in our galaxy. So is there two, I guess is the big question.

[A]

Okay, I want to know the answer to that.

[B]

Well, that's why Everyone does. Right.

[A]

So, chief of. Do you think there are other chief of space policies in other. Do you ever think about that? Like, oh, there's someone in other planets and galaxies?

[B]

I do often think about when you look up towards one of the stars that has an exoplanet, if you're kind of inadvertently collecting a few photons from the person looking back at you. But I've never thought about their professional career, but someone would have to. But that does assume that they collectively work together in ways that require a policy versus some other way of making coordinated decisions among a large society. If you even call them that, it starts to get pretty weird when you kind of assert complete unknown of other life.

[A]

Smart girl. Dumb questions. You know, one of the reasons I call you a geek is because the first time we spoke on the phone, which was just a couple weeks ago, you dug up an old paper by former chief historian at NASA, Roger Launius. Launius.

[B]

Launius.

[A]

Launius. Yeah. And I wanna read a bit of it so people kind of understand it. We spoke on the phone and you said, oh, I have this great paper I'm gonna send to you. And indeed you did. And it starts with, what if we viewed the history of human spaceflight somewhat less through the lens of Cold War politics, which admittedly was central to the race to the moon, but more as an expression of what might be called a religion of spaceflight? How do you read that? Now, that was written in 2013, so a year into Obama administration. Y think that we're still connected in this religious kind of spiritual quest to know what's out there.

[B]

I think we're more so. I love that paper. It's a great way to kind of map on an interpretation of why we do particularly human space flight, why it kind of occupies this kind of hallowed area within our politics. And I'd say that's only really increased in the last few years in this administration. But even with people like Elon Musk, who you can, within that framework would be like a prophet. Right. And what its point is is that when you think about spaceflight, it touches on something that is not just purely in the rational mind. And that's a unique place for a public policy issue to exist in because it makes you feel something, and then as a consequence, it can be symbolically used for something. And so what we do or don't do in space isn't just kind of an issue of numbers and technology and budgets. It's an issue of. It says something about us as a species or as a Nation. And that makes it special. And this is a way to try to examine why is there such a strong, at least among certain people, such a strong commitment towards it. So I love that way of looking at it. And the phrase he used, I think is civil religion.

[A]

Civil religion.

[B]

So it's like no one's praying to astronauts. Right. But you can.

[A]

Some people probably are.

[B]

But people do treat them with reverence. Right. If an astronaut sits down next to you and you don't know who they are. Most people don't know who their astronauts are these days. But then they said, oh, I've been into space on the space station. Most people start to treat them differently. You would meet or meet one of the people who walked on the moon. You want to shake their hands. Because then you've shaken the hands with someone who walked on the moon, right?

[A]

It's like you've been there. Transitive property.

[B]

There is some weird.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which is completely irrational. But I've done it, right? And that's like, I want to shake the hands of someone who's been on the moon. And so that space occupies some symbolic role still, whether we are conscious of it or not. And I think it's because it's just how we evolved. Like, literally, it was the heavens for the longest time, and now we get to go into the heavens. And so there's something special about that.

[A]

Right. How did you, Casey Dreier, come into this religion, the civil religion? You weren't born into it, presumably.

[B]

I was not. Well, yeah. I can get. My experience is the equivalent of a conversion, Right. In a sense. Cause I went and saw a rocket launch, and rocket launches are a very powerful thing.

[A]

When was that?

[B]

That was 2011, as the launch of the Curiosity Rover. So, I mean, I liked space as a kid, but a lot of kids do. But that was, I think, what made me want to actually do something on a practical level about this. Because it doesn't just happen. We decide to do this or not. And I really recommend everyone should just go and experience that once. Cause it is really powerful.

[A]

It's funny. My godson Jack, who is a young, young kid in elementary school, he sent me this question for you. Hang on. I want to pull it up.

[B]

I want to know how rockets work.

[A]

How do rockets work?

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

That's what's going through my mind as you're telling this story. I'm like, it is amazing that thousands of people worked, or a thousand people worked on getting that up. But how did they do it? What did they make?

[B]

Rocket is basically Mixing two propellants, an oxidizer and some fuel source, and it's controlling an explosion. So it's taking what would just normally explode into a giant fireball and slowing it down and then pointing it in one direction. And then you have Newton's third law. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. You're just basically pushing all that stuff out that shoots your rocket up at the very basic level. That's how a rocket works.

[A]

That's how it works.

[B]

Interesting. The New York Times claimed that rockets would not work in space in the 1920s and said that this whole thing about going to space is a pure fantasy. It'll never work. I think they formally retracted.

[A]

Was it the editorial editorial board. Oh, it's funny, when I worked at New York Times opinion, sometimes we would be like, looking back at editorial board opinions from past being like, oh, it's a famous thing we like to study.

[B]

But I mean, it's definitionally non intuitive. Right. Rockets have only existed conceptually for about 130 years, I think.

[A]

So much of how we talk about science and space right now has become political, has become partisan, as your colleague Bill Nye corrected. It's about the partisanship of it that's more challenging than the politics of it because you have to make resource decisions and that's policy and politics. But it's the division of it that's sad because it feels like a universal quest.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So I want to have a conversation with you that is as nonpartisan as possible, which I think is very possible, because in our conversations to date, I've seen you kind of laud.

[B]

There's been various actions on various. It's not inherently partisan. Right. There's no Democratic platform for space or Republican platform for space. Right. There's nothing inherently that would drive one party to believe in one thing and not the other.

[A]

It's not like Republicans are better at space or Democrats are better at space.

[B]

Right. I mean, John F. Kennedy sent us to the moon. Right. And it was. The essence of it is that it used to be and still broadly is a unifying endeavor because of this and I think because of this civil religion aspect to it. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Nixon flirted with ending human spaceflight altogether after Apollo, but ultimately he couldn't bring himself to do it, even though he wanted to cut the budget, because he saw astronauts as being heroes for that same reason. Right. They're these kind of holy cast. Right. And to walk away from that would be to diminish something about the nation. Right. So that's the symbolism always is applied to this thing. Right. So it doesn't just say something about NASA. It says something about the country. If we stop going into space is how Nixon saw it. And so politically, yes, anytime you have more than two people in a room, it's politics. Right. But partisanship is still generally free of that. You can put Earth science off to the side on that one, but everything else is generally broad. But I think what's been happening is that it's been. Who's been talking about it and how they've been talking about it is starting to infect and to kind of code certain aspects over others as partisan or not.

[A]

So before we get to how they've been talking about it and who's been talking about it, let's talk about how it was in this very romantic imagination or romantic recollection of the Apollo times. Because I think that is like this moment. And it was in the paper you sent me, talked about the astronauts and apostles. I mean, it was a very kind of religious, spiritual journey, these missions. Can you take us back? I know you weren't around then. You're a young person. For anyone listening, in case he's a.

[B]

Young person, slightly younger than that.

[A]

But he wrote in that paper, Apollo evoked in a metaphorical and absolutist sense, emotions of awe, devotion, omnipotence, and most importantly, redemption for humanity. Yeah, yeah. Nothing. Tuesday. Really low stakes. How did they do all of that amazing stuff?

[B]

It was so new.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. And I mean, space had just happened. The first satellite had only gone up 10 years before.

[A]

Yeah. Give us time and space and give us the whole setting.

[B]

Sure. The first satellite was Sputnik in 1957. Completely changed the United States idea of itself and what they thought of the Soviet Union. It breached the heavens for the first time. Again, these are powerful symbols. So within 12 years, you went from the US not being able to launch, like something the size of a grapefruit into space without a rocket exploding into landing two people on the surface of the moon and bringing them back safely. 12 years. Right. That's not a lot of time. And so you basically, that was the scene as this peak of techno optimism. Whatever we decide to do, we have the engineering, organization and capabilities to just figure out and do it. And that was seen as this, again, this broader symbol of, oh, well, what else can we. We must be able to do literally anything else. And obviously we can't. And we've been humbled, I think, since that. But these certain types of engineering challenges, I think, opened up for the first time, every single Apollo astronaut was born in the 1930s. Right. They're born in places, you know, in farmhouses and places that didn't have running water.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they Great Depression era. Yeah. And by time, they're middle aged, not even middle aged, they're walking on the moon. So it's kind of this apotheosis of this mid 20th century technological capability leap. But then there is this larger context around it. So, you know, like movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.

[A]

Yes. Yeah.

[B]

Came out two years before the landing of Apollo. What's that movie about? Right. And just for, I guess, spoilers, I guess for anyone who hasn't seen a 50 year old movie, but at the essence, it's about transcendence. Right. I mean, that movie is such an overtly religious type of thing. It's like a salvation of human space. By going into space, humanity will turn into something else. It will mediate this transition into a higher level of existence. Kubrick said, I'm gonna make a movie about the evolution of ape to angel. And so Apollo was seen as like, here's the inevitable process for this. Right? And so Apollo was seen by a lot as that's your first step. So of course we're gonna be on Mars. We'll have this and that and this within years. And none of that happened.

[A]

Why didn't more happen afterwards? It seems like there was a generation of kids who grew up thinking, oh my gosh, just like, you know, this generation that you're describing went from great Depression era family to walking on the moon. We're gonna know within our lifetime about life in other planets and other. Yeah, like what can't we do? What is there, Is there other life on the cosmos? Is there, you know, is there more potential? Why hasn't there been more learning in this time?

[B]

Well, everyone hates Richard Nixon, right? So we can blame Richard Nixon, but it's indicative of.

[A]

There's probably some Richard Nixon out there. I don't think there are my. I don't know if my audience is full of Richard Nixon Stans, but maybe, maybe someone's wearing his T shirt and haircut.

[B]

I mean, I think what changed was that because it was pitched as a race, we won the race. Great. You know, the political dynamics of the Cold War that spurred it, you know, in the early 1960s had calmed down a lot. And then clearly something changed in the 70s, right. All of these other indicators about economic growth and productivity and wages, all these things start to trend downwards in the 70s. Same with going into space. That kind of. We pulled back from that as a nation, we wanted to spend less money. And that was an easy way to spend less money. I mean, we're not talking about huge amounts. NASA at the time is getting maybe two times what it has now, which is not nothing. But as compared to the schema, they're spending the equivalent of Apollo every year in Vietnam.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That may have also been part of it too. Right. They're spending a lot of, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Money in Vietnam as well. And so it just. All of these kind of things. There is a big shift in policy. Basically what happened. Nixon's White House said, you know what, NASA, you're no longer special. You will be part of the annual process to give money. You will compete and elbow your way for resources like any other federal agency. You are no longer deemed, you know.

[A]

Like this priority thing because we won the race. And so now we can just like rest on our laurels a little bit.

[B]

And it wasn't just him like public opinion. Interestingly, you know, we tend to look back to Apollo like as you just kind of framed it with this romantic ideal that, oh, of course everyone is into it. And in reality, the vast majority, the majority of the public was never that supportive of Apollo really when they. There's public polling done in the arrow saying, is Apollo worth it or not? And the only time it was ever above 50% was right after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

[A]

That is so interesting because when I was reading that historian note from Roger Launius, he does say, despite less than full support for space exploration. And I was curious what that meant. It was like literally an unpopular idea.

[B]

Yeah. And the amount of people who said we're spending too much on space had been trending up.

[A]

And these days, what's the Gallup or Pew?

[B]

So in terms of do people think we're spending too much in space? No. It's like 20% of people think we're spending too much on space. Do people think we want to go to the moon? That's a bigger interesting question. When people rank what they want NASA to do, the very stuff that they put at the top is what we tend to spend the least amount of money on. It's climate observations called planet like, looking for asteroids that could kill us and space science. And again, going to the moon and Mars is at the very, very bottom of the list.

[A]

The practical stuff ends up at the top of this list. The less practical stuff ends up at the bottom. But we spend the money in the inverted world.

[B]

Yeah, just flip it upside down.

[A]

Just flip it upside down.

[B]

We spend the money.

[A]

Yeah, because it's like, because there's something sexy and media friendly about like, oh, here's a guy walking on the. I mean, to your point, like we wanna shake that guy's hand. Nobody wants to shake the hand of the computer that's doing climate observations.

[B]

Yeah, that's true. And I think also there's no single issue voters on space. Right. And so there's.

[A]

Are you not a single issue voter even?

[B]

I am not a single issue voter.

[A]

I mean, you're wearing that T shirt, Casey. I feel like it's an ad for space.

[B]

I'm about as close as one gets, probably. But even I'm not a single issue voter. Right.

[A]

So I'm probably a good stand in for the demo of people who are a little bit not cynical, but skeptical about or maybe a little cynical about space investment. Because I like many people think, okay, there's a lot that's broken on Earth and yet I think it makes sense to spend some money on it. Maybe not all our money, but like it's like spend some money, allocate some percentage of budget on it. But given like the state of healthcare in America today, given the state of education in the United States today, given the fact that we have like by some estimates 1 in 6 children living under the poverty line in America, it's hard to think, okay, well why are we then taking dollars and putting it into sending dudes to space?

[B]

Right. I have lots of ways to talk about that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. And they're all reasonable questions. And I think it's really important to talk about because that's a lot of space is so visibly dramatic. It looks expensive. Right. Rockets are big. As I just experienced the things rovers on Mars International Space Station, all these things, they're big and very dramatic looking. And we tend to talk about them with their cost as one of their adjectives. But we spend, if you talk about these childhood poverty, healthcare and social support, we do spend, that is the priority. If you look at, we spent $6 trillion last year. NASA was 25 billion of that. So that's less than one half of 1%. Every six days we spend NASA's budget on Medicare. So SNAP and food benefits get four to five times as much money per year as NASA does. So it's one of those things where would. And the administrative NASA, I think James Beggs back in the 1970s answ this question and said, if NASA was the thing standing in the way of eradicating childhood poverty in this country, then I personally would shut down the agency and do that. But that's not. 25 billion is not going to make that difference. Right. And so we're a big and wealthy country. We can do lots of things at the same time. I think we have the right priorities. I think we can actually increase and you know, by, by doing these things with NASA. What it is, it's kind of adding to this long term, high payoff investment.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So you make relatively modest investments in these kind of long term things because you don't know what kind of benefits you get from them. But the act of even doing it, I think is really important because it gives you talk about education the way that going into space and doing space missions. But they always pull students into them. They always pull people. They're like dragging a magnet and suddenly all these like iron filings pop onto it out of the blue, these types of things. You have a mission like that, people want to come. You draw out that talent and you feed them into these pipelines of engineering and science and critical thinking. And then they don't all work for NASA. They go and dissipate elsewhere.

[A]

Yeah. And to that point it's about the process too. It's not just the outcome. It's a process of trying to do the thing. Makes us better as a civilization.

[B]

I mean, forces cooperation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You have to cooperate together in thousands of people. No one person can go into space. Right. And build a spacecraft. It forces, I mean, it means.

[A]

Have you ever tried?

[B]

It didn't go well.

[A]

Right. I feel like when I was a kid I totally tried to do that.

[B]

Yeah. I mean there's, and there's also, I mean the theories of like the lone inventors who do things. Right. But that's, it's so complicated. And to go into space, it supercharges all these other aspects of our economy. Right. I always say it's like, why Does Mercedes build F1 racing cars?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. They're not selling them at scale. They're doing it to challenge themselves. So their engineers are the best because they're going into the most extreme situations.

[A]

I just felt it was like one guy at Mercedes executive team had like a, you know, desire to be an F1 guy.

[B]

It was really fast car racing.

[A]

You know, it's always like some, there's like a CM who says, Hey, I really wanna be an F1 driver or hang out with them.

[B]

Right. But it's so expensive. I guess they couldn't get away with that.

[A]

Right? That's true.

[B]

But it's like, or training For a triathlon. Right. Like NASA's, our National Triathlon that we train for.

[A]

I love that. A national triathlon that we're training for. Okay. What are the parts of this triathlon? It's not swim, bike and run.

[B]

It's like it's workforce, industrial capability and scientific novelty.

[A]

Okay, industrial. Okay, great. Scientific novelty. I love that. Give me three concrete ways that space and whether it's space science or human flight. And I want to talk about the distinction between those two things and the kind of warring budgets over those two things in a minute. But how does space make my life better? Three ways?

[B]

Yeah. Well, we have gps.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's a good thing.

[A]

I like that. I would be lost all the time.

[B]

Literally tells us where to go.

[A]

Esther Perel was on the show and she had one of her questions was, you know, why do some people have a good sense of direction and others don't? And I was like, well, those people do not have gps.

[B]

Yeah, we basically offloaded that onto our phones.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I mean that's a space based network. And we have to know how space works. Even like general relativity, we have to know how that works in order to properly make it effectively give us the right directions. Instant communication across the world is great. The fact that we have smartphones to begin with. One of the early benefits of NASA and Apollo during the moon race was the development of semiconductors and the creation of them to such high standards of quality because they had to work. You have no failure options in space. Right. You have one thing go wrong and you basically blow up. And so that degree again of challenge forces us to make really good components and that it actually forced us to miniaturize computers. One of the big sub projects of Apollo was making a computer that could fit into a glove box size thing. And so because space is such an extreme environment, it forces engineering to become extreme and become clever and efficient. Solar panels, very good example of this, right? These ideas that you have to use the sun because you can't bring the fuel with you. So you go into weird places. You are forced to think of weird and creative new things. So it's this engine for being creative and challenging yourself. Because we put these weird constraints on ourselves. So without that we don't have any of those things.

[A]

Okay, I like solar panels. I'm into gps, deeply into gps. I don't feel as good about my smartphone some days, but you know, I like these. But chips, sure. Okay. What about things that don't yet exist that might exist because we're investing by the Way you're bringing me along, you're making me less skeptical.

[B]

Good, I'm happy about that.

[A]

I don't know if I'm an easy mark, but what about things that we don't know yet? Like for example, energy and outer space, like space energy, is that going to fix climate change?

[B]

Well, think about it this way. Again, you're adding these constraints. Can you make. So you want to go to the moon? Yeah, I'm sending people on the moon. So the moon, nighttime on the moon, like everyone knows.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Two weeks long.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you can't use solar panels, you can't bring enough batteries with you the last two weeks. So you need some other source of power to power your life support and your radios and keep you alive. So it's basically nuclear power.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so can you make something small, reliable, safe, something you can launch on a rocket that's then really resilient? Right. Because rockets aren't gentle, they shake real hard. So again, you're adding constraint, constraint, constraint, constraint. So now we have to think of ways to build high density, high performant, high reliability little nuclear reactors that we can use to power things. That sounds like a great way to help solve our energy crisis. Again, even the fact that we're talking about climate change. Right. How did the idea of global warming, where did that come from? So the first time we started looking at Venus with radio waves in the 1960s, like this planet that we thought was, oh, it's probably some jungle planet full of rain and tropical, it was 900 degrees. They were like, they had to double check 900 degrees. And they realized the theory of global warming came from observing Venus. They were like, oh, well, could that happen here? What caused it? Oh, there's a ton of CO2 in that.

[A]

I didn't know that came from Venus.

[B]

Yeah, it was early 60s, the concept of global warming. Then they started to apply it to nuclear winters and kind of runaway global warming effects. All that was originally traced back because we didn't know the climate could change that dramatically. Mars presents this other outlier. It's like the three bears, Right. You have, you're too hot, you're too cold as Mars.

[A]

Yeah, Goldilocks.

[B]

Yeah, your Goldilocks. Yeah, you have your. Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold. So Mars, the opposite problem, its atmosphere functionally went away. And so you have these two outliers of what can happen, these catastrophic climate changes. Neither planet started like that. And so these types of things like, oh, our own climate can change too, and it can be dynamic and it could potentially change in really radical ways.

[A]

Do you think there are climate deniers in Venus and Mars?

[B]

There's always, like. I mean, you would have to accept that at a certain level if you deny climate is changing here on Earth. Right. But, I mean, it breaks our expectations to realize things. Like, even again, looking out into space, Mathematics was invented basically to track the motions of stars. And geometry was true. So space already did us a solid. Right. Inventing math for us that we can then apply to create the modern world.

[A]

I know Neil DeGrasse Tyson told me this. I asked him, if aliens were to come to Earth, what language would they speak? Oh, look, they're coming. They're coming in these sirens that we're hearing right now on this podcast in New York City. But no, I asked Neil DeGrasse Tyson, if the aliens were to come to Earth, what language would they speak? And he said, oh, math, Easy math. I'm like, well, I gotta learn good math. My trigonometry, my calculus. BC is really struggling.

[B]

We all better brush up on it. Well, it's like everything that we've sent out of the solar system, right? Like the golden record on Voyager. Are you familiar with that? Right. They put other plaques on the pioneers.

[A]

Page, explain what it is. We put a bunch of great music.

[B]

It actually is a ton of great music. It's the word for hello in, like, 140 languages. But imprinted on the COVID of the record is a representation of the spacecraft and where the Earth is, and they identify where the Earth is. There's, like, basic binary things that they create. They use mathematics as a fundamental language, and they try to identify the location of the Earth based on pulsar timings of various nearby pulsars. And so we've literally written ourselves a language of mathematics on two spacecraft we have sent that will never come back from the solar system. So that's our effort to try to have some sort of universal. Because at the end of the day, you know, there's atoms, and every atom has a discrete number of protons in it. So every advanced species will have to know how to count.

[A]

Okay, Right.

[B]

Because you're just. The physical things of which we're all made up on are quantized, and so everyone will have count.

[A]

Before we spoke, we counted, I guess.

[B]

Well, we have to think. Yeah, that's true, I guess. Yeah.

[A]

We had to at least conceive of number. Yeah, conceive of number.

[B]

You have discrete quantities of things that everyone can agree on the same number they are. Yes, right. Because that's the other Thing. No matter what cultural background you are, you can count to three. As you know, this means the same thing.

[A]

Yeah, right, exactly. We can all agree on what that means.

[B]

One hopes.

[A]

All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back, guys. Today's sponsor, Dumb Question is from me. I'm take the next minute to tell you a little bit about smart girl Dumb questions and to ask you for your help in continuing to make independent, fact based and curious journalism. No, I'm not gonna ask you for money. Here's what I need. I would love you to tell 10 of your friends about this show or 100, I don't know, blast that reunion group that you muted. And definitely tell your mom and tell your mom to tell her friends too. Even if you don't like the show and you're just like, hate watching it or listening to it, tell 10 of your friends to hate watch it too. Numbers are numbers, people. I want to spend the second part of this conversation really diving into what's happening right now in the United States as it relates to all of this. You have convinced me now. Space is important. We should be investing more in science as it relates to space. Explain to me right now what's happening with this political conversation. Because when we spoke a few weeks ago, on the table was a Trump budget proposal that would have cut NASA funding by 25%. 25%, bringing it to levels that were lower at any point then 1961, before.

[B]

The first humans went into space.

[A]

Yes. And you were alarmed.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Even as a non single issue voter, you were very alarmed.

[B]

That seems bad to me. I mean, it is bad. Right. And within that, science would be cut in half.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that's a lot to cut in one year.

[A]

And as we were taping this, there's been pushback on that proposal from the administration. So all of a sudden you're seeing congressional representatives across both parts of the aisle, both parties saying, hey, you know what? We don't really want to cut NASA by 25%. So what's up right now on September 26th as we're taping this, which might be different than when people hear about.

[B]

It very well could be different, that we have both houses of Congress, House and Senate, they make their own budgets and then they have to eventually kind of work out the differences between the two, but they start making their own in response to what the proposal was. And both House and Senate, which are again controlled by the President's own party, flat out reject that level of cuts to NASA, which Is great. I mean, this goes to. Why it's not a partisan issue. Right. And this level of rejection. It's rare to see that level of rejection among the party these days. And it just needs to kind of get over the finish line. So we've seen a lot of progress. In a sense, we've made the case successfully that this is a bad idea. And to do so would be to undermine a lot of these things we just talked about. But again, this also, this deeper symbolic. Are we a country that goes out and does this or do we just kind of stop.

[A]

Yeah. And let someone else do it.

[B]

And let someone else do it. Or just, you know, they just found hints of a potential biosignature, potential sign of life on Mars. It is wrapped up in a little tube ready for us to bring back to Earth. We can test that. We have a hypothesis to test. Was this life or not?

[A]

When will we know?

[B]

Well, we'd have to bring it back, which this budget cancels the effort to do.

[A]

How much did it cost to bring that little vial back?

[B]

We're not sure. Probably six to $7 billion altogether.

[A]

Six to $7 billion over the course.

[B]

Of 10 years, though.

[A]

And then we will know.

[B]

And then we will know if that was life or not.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So, I mean, we have the strongest Jupiter. There's a big ocean moon of Jupiter. Yep. Europa has a big underground ocean. There are things that we can do right now. Right. But I think that, for example, again, we have this potential biosignature on Mars. If we want to, we can validate if that's life or not.

[A]

Right. But that's under threat right now in the current situation.

[B]

It's completely canceled in this. In this idea. So do we see this and say again, this is why this bigger symbol. We are presented with the most exciting potential find in the history of science. Like life beyond Earth. You know, maybe. I guess we'll see you. We won't do this. We'll see. Well, that would have been interesting. Oh, well, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There's something really sad about that. To me, if we don't do that.

[A]

Part of it is like paperwork. I think people get bored by the paperwork. It's like everyone's excited and we're like, yes, we would love to know if there is other life in the cosmos. Yeah, we're curious about it. Yeah, we like gps. But then they're like, can you fill out the forms and.the T's and call your robo Congress?

[B]

This is why we have. Yeah, right. Well, I mean, this is why we have good engineers to do it for us. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's hard to get through that sometimes.

[A]

But also the paperwork of how this stuff happens in Congress. And like, so what, you know, there's that famous Schoolhouse Rock thing where it's like how a bill becomes a law. How does an idea for space science become a dollar toward that idea?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that process of, I mean, I go over back, how does it start in the spark of some guy's or some woman's brain as a spark of neurons to say, let's do this mission to bring back a sample from Mars. And then it has to incite enough neurons in other people's brains and this cascading consequence to finally have someone write that down, make someone's neurons fire to write this down into a piece of legislation. But I mean, saying that all happens. We want to do this. You have to work with these parts of Congress that, that have responsibility for funding NASA, which are. It's the Commerce, justice and Science Subcommittee of Appropriations as everyone cjs. But there's just, you know, they, the government's funded. They break it up into 12 committees because it's so big. And so this is the one that does NASA also does Justice Department for some reason and Commerce Department. It's just kind of all thrown into a grab bag and it's in these. You know, if you're a member on this committee, you basically get to kind of say what your priorities are. You get a chunk of money from your appropriations leadership and you can apply it to NASA for various things. Usually the White House will request to start a new program, like in this case, Mars Sample Return. And then Congress will give them money to do it or not. And so that's. And then they'll go through, they'll vote, and then president signs it into law. But that has to happen every single year. It takes a long time to build a spacecraft. You know, you're not just going to like the Walmart and swiping Uncle Sam's credit card and buying a spacecraft off the shelf. Right.

[A]

I would like to go buy a space.

[B]

That'd be a really cool store.

[A]

I feel like when I was seven, I would have liked to go, yeah, the Rover store. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think my credit card limit is sufficient to afford that. How much is a spaceship?

[B]

It depends what you want to do. I'd say it ranges from half a billion to about $5 billion.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, I can't afford any of that range so that's a good range.

[B]

Put it on credit.

[A]

We like it. Maybe one day I can buy the Mercedes F1 car, something to aim for. And also you said Nixon took it out of the hole.

[B]

Basically. For a long time, NASA was considered almost like a national security initiative. Right. So they got top priority. They got whatever money they needed and they got top priority for resources and personnel. And then when Apollo ended, he said, nope, you're just like everyone else.

[A]

So now NASA is just like everyone else still to this day. So it doesn't have. Despite. We do have like a US Space Force happening.

[B]

Which has a bigger budget than NASA now.

[A]

Yeah. Which is related to the Department of Defense.

[B]

Yes. It is a branch of the Armed Services.

[A]

Right. Or Department of War, as it's called these days.

[B]

Let's call it Department of Defense.

[A]

Right. And you're saying Space Force has larger budget than NASA. But can Space Force do what Space Force needs to do without NASA?

[B]

Probably.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah, because they're the national security priority. That's where the money is.

[A]

But like, they couldn't. But all the science and the exploration and the knowledge that comes out of NASA probably informs what Space Force is up to.

[B]

Right. It can help. Right. But I mean, NASA specifically was set up to not be national security. Right? Yes, it was written into. And this is. At the. At the time, it was very important that this be a peaceful expression of the United States, that it not be connected to Department of Defense, because it wasn't supposed to be in. You didn't want to incite the Soviets. You didn't want to make it a war. There's fundamental things. Yes. Rocket development technology will inform missile development technology. Right. But generally, I think the intuition is NASA's the nice thing. And NASA benefits from those types of investments backwards as well. So, I mean, that's the thing. A lot of people think NASA is the same thing or represents the same military industrial complex. It really doesn't.

[A]

It's National Aeronautics and Space Administration. And that is what it's doing. It's administering science, it's administering space. No, that's not at all what it's doing.

[B]

It's a funny name is when you think about it.

[A]

It's a terrible name.

[B]

Yeah, it's like administration. Why is it a NASA administrator?

[A]

It's a good acronym and a bad.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's one of those things where I think at the, you know, 1958 is when they're putting this together. I guess they thought it sounded like a. They actually took all the. There was all these, like aviation research centers across the country that they just kind of. You're part of NASA. That the first day in NASA. Right. Aeronautics. And then they kind of grabbed some other rocket centers and they pulled some things out of army bases that were developing rockets and they just all called that NASA.

[A]

Okay. So part of the debate over the NASA budget this year was about this tension between space science and human space flight or space exploration. Are those euphemisms, human space flight?

[B]

No, they're not. Actually. There's a. Cause, there's like the International Space Station doesn't explore anywhere. Right. Just goes around Earth. So that's what's called space operations. The least exciting section of NASA. But I think the point. NASA's broken up into chunks, right? And so what NASA does in science, science is all the stuff you do with robots and space telescopes, like the Hubble Space Telescope.

[A]

We love the Hubble telescope.

[B]

I love the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope and Earth science and climate observations. That's all in NASA science as well. And then the human space flight again, anything with people involved in it, and that involves being Katy Perry.

[A]

Going to the moon. Just kidding.

[B]

That's our new commercial and private space sector.

[A]

Going into eight minutes into outer space.

[B]

Space coming right back. You know, Captain Kirk himself, William, whose name flew on the blue origin flight. Right. And he saw space and basically lost his mind temporarily. Did you ever see that?

[A]

No.

[B]

He went into space and saw like how dark the blackness was and how blue and pristine the Earth was. And he really, you know, for playing Star Trek character, right. And going into space, he was like, space sucks. I don't want to. You live on Earth. He came back with this really intense, this emotionally driven response coming back. William Shatner, I should say. And that experience can be really transformative for a lot of people when you go up into space. Because again, space is like where you're supposed to live the least.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Right. The space wants to kill you all the time. And you do one wrong thing and you will die in space. Right.

[A]

Ain't no energy. Hard to get some water.

[B]

Yeah. And you bring up a bubble of Earth with you. And you. When you see exactly how harsh and unpleasant, you realize like what a comparative Eden we have here on Earth.

[A]

Okay, so like Stack rank them going to Mars, going to the moon, taking photos. Like, what's important? What do you think is important? This is your perspective.

[B]

I think science is the most important thing because it goes further. The universe is really big. Humans could probably only ever go to moon And Mars, because the universe is just too big to go anywhere else. So understanding how the universe works and where we're coming and where we came from and where we're going, that if you really want to test out if a theory of the world is correct is universal, test it somewhere else out in the universe. Right. You can't just assume everything you measure on Earth is correct. You have to go somewhere else to validate it. And that process of figuring things out and forcing ourselves to change our understanding of the world and how things work by going out into space specifically for Curiosity and looking for things is really, really important for us. Then I put, you know, human spaceflight's important, too. And then I'd put, you know, aeronautics is good, too.

[A]

Aeronautics is good, too. The A in NASA. So. But yet we spend all this money trying to get people into the moon and less money on science. You know, what are some of the things that would be cut in the budget if the. Not 25% cut, but even the haircut. Even the haircut happened. Even the haircut to science happened. Like, would we lose some of these telescopes we love so much?

[B]

Yeah, we'd lose some of the. So Hubble, they would reduce the amount of science they do on the Hubble Space Telescope. They'd reduce the amount of science they do on James Webb. They would literally cancel some of them.

[A]

When you say reduce the amount of science, you mean less.

[B]

What scientists do, they apply what's called for time.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so they say, oh, I want to study this thing in the universe with a Hubble Space Telescope. And if it's good enough, it's very competitive. They say, okay, you'll get however many days it takes to observe this. And here's some money to research the data when you get it back. Science doesn't mean anything unless you have scientists to figure out what the data says. And so when they have less money, you just pay fewer scientists. You just do less science.

[A]

And do more people want to be scientists now than like, 10, 15, 20 years ago or.

[B]

I hope so.

[A]

Is that going down? Like, doctors are going down a bit?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, is it similar? Is there a similar question?

[B]

I think a lot of people are questioning right now whether they want to also.

[A]

There's a lot of people who might want to do that, but then not be scientists in the academic sector, but also. But, like, go instead to work on, say, Elon Musk, SpaceX missions.

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, and there's an. Or just go into any tech or just whatever. Right. I think that would Be sad. I think not everyone needs to do it. And even people who go and get these degrees can also then go work for these places. Right? Google always used to snatch up the people who would design rover software because it cannot fail. You're designing the most reliable space software, so. Oh, that'll great for infrastructure for Google or something like that. And you can make a lot of money that way. And so again, it's like you're picking out these hyperbole of performant equivalent of athletes, right? But at the end of the day, I think this is why you need exciting things to do, because it inspires people to come and do them. And the fewer exciting things we do, the fewer people are going to come out and do it.

[A]

And I like the four time explanation because I didn't get that. Basically what you need for science to happen is a bunch of nerdy guys and gals to go to a library and rent a book. But not really a book, not a book in this case. But it's the access to the technology, it comes with a stipend. And then you basically go out and you figure some stuff out and you come back home with more pictures, more knowledge, more advancement of the actual infrastructure itself. Like you could make the telescope better even.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of these projects start with a single scientist or a group of scientists like, okay, we pushed the limits of our one tool. How can we even do better? What's the biggest question that we know right now that we don't know the answer to? How can we solve that? And that's actually how a lot of decisions get made on the science side. This we don't know. We all think this is important. Here's how we figure it out. We make this mission to do it. And that's actually to me like a really inspiring thing that we can just say, oh, what's curious? Let's figure it out.

[A]

Let's go figure it out. So right now, sitting here, you were alarmed before. How do you feel right now? Are you optimistic?

[B]

Slightly less alarmed, but still alarmed.

[A]

Because every year, even if you win this fight this year, it could come back in 2025. It'll come back. Because the thinking now is we'd rather send dudes into space than invest in.

[B]

The science that they've specifically deprioritized or under. They're saying science is just not what NASA does anymore. There's things in some of these budgets that says, Nope, NASA's job is to send humans to Moon and Mars.

[A]

But who's supposed to do science. If NASA isn't doing science and if universities are losing budgets to do science.

[B]

That'S the outcome, Right. Commercial industry will not do science for you. There's no money in it, by definition. It's a fundamental inquisition.

[A]

Some corporations have science teams that they do. Applied science teams.

[B]

Yeah, they do applied science. There's no market incentive to go to Europa, isn't there?

[A]

So much of our research in health like become like healthcare, which is crazy analogy, but one of the things we worry about in our health system, and you hear people in the kind of Maha movement worried about this, is that so many of the studies are paid by private enterprise to discover things.

[B]

I mean even that I don't even think they would bother to. So we have all these examples, right, of private space companies sending people into space. You were talking about commercial spaceflights, but there's.0,0 examples of any private company or any commercial company launching a spacecraft to do any kind of science. And so there's materials tests that they can do, but it's all very, very practical stuff, which isn't bad. There's nothing inherently bad with it. But if you want to address these bigger, more fundamental, more profound questions, there's no immediate. That's like why we have a public space agency is to do these things that have no other avenue by which to do them and has some of these bigger benefits and is done in a way that's intentionally meant to kind of bring the whole nation along with it.

[A]

You guys have how many thousand members?

[B]

Tens of thousands, over 50,000 paying members and then millions of people who follow us.

[A]

This is that planetary society.

[B]

That planetary society. Like we don't get any benefit from achieving these policies. Right. We beyond enjoying the pictures and the data and the excitement of it. Right. And it's nice because we're one of the few organizations that cares about just the science aspect of it. And it's a real pleasure to be able to do that because it is so exciting when you look at someone.

[A]

Like Elon Musk who's been invested more in the commercial aspects of space than the science of it, would you say? Yeah, but has he contributed to science? No, no, no.

[B]

He's launched. I mean, SpaceX rockets will launch science missions, but NASA buys them. Right. So it's helped lower the cost to launch some things. I mean, that kind of goes to my entire point, right, that there's. SpaceX will not replace any of these things. SpaceX will not make a Hubble Space Telescope. Yeah, I mean they theoretically could, but they've shown no intention or desire to do so. Right, right. And there's no incentive, even though they could pay for it themselves. That's just not what they believe in doing.

[A]

Do you think that, like, you used the word techno optimism earlier in our conversation. Do you think that there's been a replacement of the word science in our culture with technology?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Like we're going to invest in technology, we're not going to invest in science.

[B]

You know the thing that drove me the craziest about the Avengers movies? Oh, tell me. Tony Stark, like at the last one, solve some quantum equation for time travel or something. He's an engineer, he's not a scientist. He's not just gonna like. That's exactly the thing. Some wealthy engineer will not suddenly develop a whole new theory of science beneath it. Right. There are distinct skills and distinct capabilities. And the ability to assert that anyone who is smart in one area can also do something as equally well in a completely different field is folly. And I think we're seeing that to some degree. There's no universal intelligence. And so that ability to do science, it is very distinct from. It's related. But engineering is a very different discipline. Science is about fundamental conceptions of how things work that will enable us to use engineering or to apply and utilize that new knowledge, but it doesn't necessarily tell us fundamental truth.

[A]

And Bill Nye, who runs the organization, is an engineer by training.

[B]

How ironic.

[A]

Is an engineer by training.

[B]

He's an engineer by training, but a.

[A]

Science communicator and a science guy.

[B]

He is a science guy by vocation. But I mean, so that's what I mean. It's not that you can't talk about science. Right. And I think you have a science mindset. Is that kind of the skepticism, the idea that your priors can be changed, that data should modify your thinking as it comes in? Right, right.

[A]

The scientific method.

[B]

The scientific method is at the heart of it. And, and it's. The engineering is usually about solving a specific problem.

[A]

Yeah. Move fast and break things sometimes.

[B]

Yeah. Creating problems. But science itself is about addressing again, the fundamental truths.

[A]

Okay, penultimate question here. Is space too capitalist?

[B]

I think there has been a shift in the last 10 years that, yes, the way that we talk about it, particularly in this country, that space has become something to extract value from rather than say, what can it give us by going out and looking? It's not that we shouldn't be a part of that, but I think seeing it only as a way to enrich ourselves or to take stuff from. To Enable our existence. We've become too utilitarian with it. And I do think there is a truth again. We're starting with this religiosity of space. There is something fundamental to it. Going into space does make you feel something. Seeing a rocket launch does make you feel something. Looking at a Hubble Deep field of where every point of light is a galaxy, not a star, and seeing how big things are and how small you are, that makes you feel something. There are very few things that the government does that evoke that within you and that we do as a society that's secular and fully welcoming to everybody. No one has to have any special training to see this. Right. And so to completely ignore that part for the idea that we can just take, take, take is I think, diminishes the opportunity we have here and diminishes something really, really valuable that it provides us. And so I think the way that we've talked about it, again, as a pure way to give us something else, is becoming too narrow minded in it. So I hope we shift back a little bit.

[A]

All right, I end every episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. Asking my guest something that they are dumb about or don't know. A question that they have that they haven't yet figured out. Ideally not one in your domain. What do you got?

[B]

Lots of things I don't know. I wish I did. But I have a toddler right now and I'm particularly interested in witnessing the development of consciousness and the development of awareness. And I was just wondering the other day, when does a human, as they're growing up, start to differentiate between now and the past or now and the future? You think about it, it's pretty abstract. When does a little kid start to realize that there are things that will happen but haven't happened yet and things that have happened and are impossible to change?

[A]

So interesting, because I also think that's kind of like what you said about the universal language of math. Like, we all kind of agree that yesterday was yesterday and tomorrow is tomorrow and today's today.

[B]

We all. Yeah, we all agreed. Yeah, reality exists.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so there must be something really fundamental. But it's interesting. At what point does that awareness develop?

[A]

How old is your child now?

[B]

Two years and two months. And yes, she started to use the words yesterday and tomorrow in the last couple of weeks.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And so it's like, at what point did she figure that out? Because how do you. You can't teach it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You don't have the words to teach it. And she uses Yesterday for anything that's happened before.

[A]

I was gonna say that's the thing, like with my godkids. It's very funny because I will sometimes try to implement a sense of time. Like when they're upset about something. I'll say, if you're still upset in 10 minutes, let me know. And like invariably, 30 seconds or like 10 minutes later, I'm still upset. I'm like, it's only been 30, watch that clock.

[B]

But that's what it's gonna. I mean, so it must start. Has this very broad delineation before and after.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And now and then. So yesterday, then you can start adding refinement. Yesterday means after the sun has set and come back up or something like that. But there must be some fundamental intuition about before and after. And a lot of. I don't think animals tend not to have a sense of the future. Right. Refining. So I'd love to know more about that.

[A]

Well, I also am like, wait, is time a scam? I actually had this conversation with Neil DeGrasse Tuz. They were like, what is time? How does it work? How do we know it's real? And I've read a lot of Carlo Rovelli, so I know, I understand time, but it also still baffles me. And I'm always over time as we are with you. We gotta get you outta here. Today you sat down with me. Thank you so much for doing that. Tomorrow, if people listening or watching want to find you, what is the best way to find you? Casey?

[B]

Planetary.org also my podcast. If you love talking about. If you're curious about space policy, you want to go into depths. Planetary Radio Space Policy Edition is my monthly podcast. I think it's pretty interesting, but it's a fun thing for me to do, to explore things at very deep levels, but accessible.

[A]

I've listened to a few episodes in preparation for this. I loved it.

[B]

Great.

[A]

I particularly liked the view of space energy, Space vision. It was blowing my mind. And yeah, I really recommend it. So check out. Thank you very much Space Policy edition of Planetary Diaries Notes to Self. After that interview, I definitely need to go watch a rocket launch because it seemed like a very spiritual experience. I love speaking to Casey. I actually love having subject matter experts on my show and just going really deep with them into one core area of the world. I did enter this conversation a little bit skeptical about space. Not like a don't fund it at all shut down NASA girl. But I left it thinking, oh my God, we cannot lose any of this telescope imagery. And we have to keep this library open for the nerds in our world to come and do more science. And speaking of science, you cannot miss my episode with Bill Nye the Science Guy, which is coming up next on Smart Girl Dumb Questions. Make sure you hit follow or subscribe to this feed so that you do not miss the next episode. Bill is my childhood hero. He's Casey's colleague at the Planetary Society and we dig deep into what happened to science. And that's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. If you liked today's episode, you're Gonna love my third ever episode with Neil DeGrasse Tyson where he answered all my dumb questions about the cosmos. You can scroll down and check that out wherever you're watching or listening to the show. And also please leave us a review, a comment and share this show with your friends. Make it a curiosity party. You and they can search for Smart Girl Dumb Questions and hit follow or subscribe on Spotify or on Apple, on YouTube or wherever you get your shows. Today's episode was produced with Annalisa Cochran. It was recorded and edited by Desta from Wonder Studios. Our on site mixer was Jared Saldivira. I'm your host Naima Raza, who is lucky to have such an awesome team. See you next week on Smart Girl Dumb Questions.

[B]

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