This Week in Space 223 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Rod Pyle [00:00:00]:
Hey, space fans. This week we're going to be talking to the godfather of space policy himself, Dr. Scott Pace, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Join us. Podcasts you love.

Rod Pyle [00:00:19]:
This is This Week in Space, episode number 223, recorded on August 14th, 2026: The Lunar Domain. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of This Week in Space. This week we're calling it the Lunar Domain Edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief at Ad AStra Magazine, and I'm here with my special guest co-host Dale Skran, the COO and Senior Vice President of the National Space Society. Hello, Dale.

Dale Skran [00:00:51]:
Hello, Rod, and hello, Scott.

Rod Pyle [00:00:54]:
Welcome and thanks for coming on. And today we are honored to have a special guest, Dr. Scott Pace of George Washington University, who's held at least a dozen high-ranking positions in American spaceflight. I was— I started making a list of them and I thought I might just let him tell us all about it. But Scott, you've done well since your departure from the National Space Society where you were EVP for a while. Thanks for coming on.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:01:23]:
I'm kind of like those veterans. I did my 20 and I retired in the space movement and turned it over to capable people like Dale and others. So all good.

Rod Pyle [00:01:37]:
That's very good. But I'd have to say you've done well since then. So gentlemen, I apologize in advance, but before we go any further, I have to tell a space joke from show veteran Tucker Drake. A guest of the Asteroid Hotel rings the front desk. Hello, give me the manager, he says.

Dale Skran [00:01:57]:
Speaking.

Rod Pyle [00:01:59]:
What kind of rundown place are you running here? I'm mad as hell and I want to report this place to the Interstellar Health Patrol. Calm down and tell me what's eating you. I don't know, but you'd better send someone up here quick to kill it.

Dale Skran [00:02:16]:
Okay. Hmm.

Rod Pyle [00:02:19]:
Now, I've heard that some people want us to have been eaten by the Andromedans when it's joke time of this show, but you can help, and please do, by sending us your best, worst, or most indifferent space joke to TWiST@twit.tv. We'll be happy to blame it on you when it's on the air. All right. So let's get right to it. Scott, once again, thanks for joining us today. Now, what I have in a brief resume for you is you're the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Director for the Institute of International Science and Technology Policy and director of the master's program in international science and technology, also at GW.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:02:57]:
And fortunately, I fortunately got rid of those last 2 jobs.

Rod Pyle [00:03:00]:
Oh, did you?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:03:00]:
There was a time when I was triple-hatted, and I'm, I'm fortunate I'm now back just to one.

Rod Pyle [00:03:05]:
Oh, congratulations.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:03:06]:
The director of the Space Policy Institute. That's, that's busy enough.

Rod Pyle [00:03:10]:
It is indeed. And, and, and chairing any program at a university is not a piece of cake, as I learned in my short academic career. You're also, of course, a professor at GW. You've worked at RAND, the USRA, the DOD, multiple presidential administrations, Department of Commerce. Did I miss anything critical in there besides being the executive secretary of NASA Space Council?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:03:36]:
I used to work for the Shuttle Orbiter Division at Rockwell and Downey when we were building shuttles as opposed to putting them in museums. So there's that.

Rod Pyle [00:03:44]:
I didn't know you were in Downey.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:03:46]:
I was in Downey.

Rod Pyle [00:03:47]:
Wow, we were practically neighbors. And as, as mentioned, you were the EVP of the National Space Society, perhaps the most important distinction of all. So, uh, welcome back to the fold.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:03:58]:
Thank you.

Rod Pyle [00:03:59]:
What years, uh, were you with the NSS?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:04:02]:
Uh, I, I, well, if you count their predecessor, uh, L5 Society, which I was part of in '78, '79, and then up through— oh gosh, up until the time I sort of rotated into government in '90, and then stepped out for a while, came back in after '92, and then rotated out again, oh, I guess around 2000, 2010 or so. But, well, no, maybe more about 2000, when I went into government in 2001 in the Bush administration. So I had done roughly 20 years in the space enthusiast movement.

Rod Pyle [00:04:52]:
That's a long time in that movement.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:04:55]:
Yeah, yeah, it is. We were around for the— maybe one of the more interesting ones was the merger of the old L5 Society with the von Braun-founded National Space Institute. And so trying to bridge those 2 very, very different visions of space future. So, you know, after that, you know, White House interagency fights, you know, really weren't that challenging, you know, compared to that merger.

Rod Pyle [00:05:24]:
Different visions and certainly different cultures. I was sitting in the living room of the I think it was the founder of Oasis in Los Angeles when the merger was announced and everybody jumped up and down and made a lot of noise. But I didn't know that much about the L5 at that point, so I stayed quiet. Well, I guess my first question, after which we'll probably go to break and then Dale's up, is what are your current priorities and concerns regarding NASA and US space efforts when you, when you look at what's going on?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:05:59]:
NASA itself, US space efforts generally, or both? Both or either. Well, I think for— this is probably arrogant on my part, but the policy stuff is fine. I mean, basically in Trump 1, we kind of pretty much took care of most things. A couple of things that were left on the cutting room floor we didn't get to. Updating space transportation policy, mission authorization we didn't complete, but we pretty much dealt with a lot of the big heavy lift stuff, including, um, you know, the, um, um, uh, what do you call the, uh, Space Force standing up. So the policy itself is fine. Uh, really what we're about now is, um, um, uh, is about the, um, uh, implementation of that policy. And, uh, So, uh, implementation issues are the primary ones.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:06:58]:
And you can kind of see that, uh, in the, um, uh, work going on now. We don't have national space policy directives that we did in Trump 1, but we do have a bunch of executive orders. Legally, space policy documents— this is kind of down in the weeds, but national space policy statements are legally the same as executive orders. They're basically the president says do X. But executive orders tend to be more focused, like, you know, we want you to do the following things. Whereas space policy documents tend to be, you know, here are our goals and objectives and priorities. So a difference in style, but legally the same thing. And really the focus now has been on like execution, execution, which is, you know, what you see in Isaacman, what you see in the Space Force, what you see in some of the regulatory reform efforts that are going on.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:07:47]:
So I think the primary, you know, concerns that I have are not, fortunately, about policy, which I did have going in, say, back in 2016, at the beginning of the Trump administration. Grateful for the continuity that the Biden administration did provide. That could have gone off the rails in a number of ways. And really now it's like, do the work.

Rod Pyle [00:08:09]:
Yeah, it was interesting when Biden came in. Certainly none of us knew what to expect, at least the those of us on the civilian side of things. But I was kind of shocked at how smooth the transition was on the NASA side and how the continuity of the Artemis program in particular seemed to stay in place.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:08:30]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, the thing is, and probably what I would suggest about that is that there— that was kind of benefited from both the strong interagency engagement that happened during the policy buildup and engagement with the Hill. I mean, Jim Bridenstine spent a lot of effort making sure he engaged with the Democratic side. And so there was bipartisan support for Artemis. There was bipartisan support for Space Force. There is a fairly deep understanding of what the policy priorities were, which had been kind of developed in consultation, at least with the career civil service. And so it met the fundamental requirement of sustainable space policies or sustainable policy generally is you want to be so aligned with enduring national interests that you can have a new political team come in and go, yeah, those previous guys were idiots, but this policy is okay. And that's kind of what happened. Certainly, you couldn't imagine, you know, 2 very different administrations in terms of Biden and Trump.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:09:42]:
But common agreement on space policy and both security issues, commercial issues, and civil exploration issues. I mean, I count that as a big win. And so that's why I say we're fortunate to have the problem now of implementation, not ones of arguing about what's the meaning of life. Very good.

Rod Pyle [00:10:03]:
All right, we're going to slide into a break and we'll be back in about 10 seconds. So go nowhere, stay with us.

Dale Skran [00:10:10]:
So Scott, um, you're well known as an advocate of return to the Moon. I've read a lot of book chapters and papers with that general theme that returning to the Moon is a national priority for the, for the US. So, okay, we got it. You won. How happy are you with the direction of Artemis in terms of fulfilling your goals for our future on the Moon?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:10:34]:
Oh, you know me. I'm not happy with anything. Um, You know, there's, there's always, uh, always, always more to do. I, I think the things that are, uh, really, really concerning now— I'm happy with the policy direction. I'm happy with the embrace of the idea that this is not just a government-only or NASA-only activity. The fact that it has strong international and commercial, uh, aspects to it, I think, is really important, uh, because when— If you look at the prior 2 efforts for return to the Moon and onto Mars, the Space Exploration Initiative program in Bush 41, the Vision for Space Exploration in Bush 43, both of them were technically logical, start with the nearer problem and go to the farther problem. But they both faltered in part for many reasons, but you can do diagnostics on it, but in part because they didn't really reflect geopolitical conditions. Human spaceflight Exploration is one of those things that is primarily, not solely, but primarily driven by geopolitical concerns.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:11:40]:
And the major geopolitical reality today that's very different than Apollo and the Cold War was the role of commercial and international. It's just a different world. So the fact that SEI and VSE really didn't envision a large role for commercial and international. I think was a weakness. And in the SEI program, maybe for Bush 41, maybe it was just a little early. You didn't have quite the commercial industry there, and the internationals were the usual suspects. You could have argued for maybe a stronger role and the beginnings of one role for commercial and international in VSE later in Bush 43. But by the time you get to Trump, commercial and international is just so obvious that incorporating them was pretty direct.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:12:31]:
And you say, well, okay, that's just smart, but so what? Well, the reason I would argue, and others can disagree on this, but the reason I would argue that that incorporation is important is not just because it's political reality of those other forces, but because what we want to accomplish is to shape the space environment in such a way that it's conducive to our interests and our values. I mean, I got started in the L5 Society. My first political operation was trying to kill the Moon Treaty and, you know, raising money and paying lobbyists and making sure the 1979 Moon Agreement, you know, never made it because Article 11, I can still remember, basically banned private property in space. It banned the idea of commercial mining, is that everything would be subjected to this international, transnational, international authority. So while a lot of parts of the Moon Agreement were perfectly fine, that part was just antithetical to everything the L5 Society and other space enthusiasts who wanted to see a human future in space. So had to kill it and had to politically— but what that pointed out was that politics was important. The international environment was important. So the reason why we do Artemis the way we do it Uh, with these commercial international aspects to it, uh, is not just to have a technical demonstration, but to actually shape the rules of the road, uh, for that environment so that it reflects our values, democracy, human rights, uh, private property, uh, rule of law, all those sorts of things, which, you know, we're imperfect about, but which are important to our future.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:14:13]:
So if there is a human future in space, it has those values that we find, uh, important. And the reason why that's hard is because we can't control space the way we can lots of other domains on Earth. We can't control it the way we can the land, sea, and air. And so what you have to do is get other sovereign states to agree with you that they want to be part of your club, that they want to align with you voluntarily. And that voluntary alignment on values is part of what Artemis Accords represents. It's inclusive of things like commercial and international partnerships. It's using commercial capabilities to provide new opportunities for developing countries that maybe wouldn't be able to participate in. And it's important for creating the rules of the road that shape an environment that we are greatly dependent on, but which we can't own and control in the traditional way we can control other things on Earth.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:15:10]:
So there's a larger purpose, or a larger set of interests, that I think Artemis fits into. And that fact that I think the acceptance and realization of that is one of the reasons why it's survived the last political transition and still survives today.

Rod Pyle [00:15:28]:
Well, speaking of commercial fulfillment in government operations on the NASA side, we saw the agency make a major pivot in that direction, you know, with commercial for-hire fulfillment of space goals around 2010. In your view, when you look at the last 15 years or so, how has that worked out when compared to your hopes?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:15:53]:
Well, in some ways, you know, it's just been a wild success. When I was in the Commerce Department, you know, in Bush 41, we reformed the rules for remote sensing regulations. And we would have been thrilled if we got 2 viable companies competing with each other. You know, we would have been thrilled. And so we had a burst of and then they sorted themselves out and collapsed and mergers. And it's still a market that is still very reliant on government purchases, but it also has a thriving commercial aspect to it. So some things like that survive. Private launch vehicles, we don't really have government launch vehicles anymore except for the SLS.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:16:33]:
It's all privately owned. We probably haven't made as much progress on private launch facilities, with the exception of Space Force, but I mean, privatization of facilities. Kennedy, after shuttle, made, I think, really great progress toward more commercial opportunities there. But, you know, it's still a government-owned spaceport on the NASA side. Does NASA really need to be doing that? Is that something that's a core capability? I mean, one can maybe argue about that. In general, I don't believe that NASA should be in operations if it can at all help it. But maybe there's some reasons there. In some ways, the COTS and commercial crew though, people, and I've seen this internationally, kind of take incomplete lessons from it.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:17:25]:
They go, oh, we just put out a big contract to buy a service and it'll sort of magically appear. What they oftentimes, and again, I particularly see this internationally, What they don't realize is how much NASA was a co-investor in COTS and Commercial Crew. And we paid for lots of things along the way. We missed by about a factor of 2 the kilograms per pound— the dollars per kilogram targets we were aiming at. Still made money, still came out, saved money, came out ahead and everything because of the greater efficiency that the private sector provided. But we paid all along the way, every step for performance. So we paid to develop a capability, we then paid to use the capability. It wasn't something that just sort of magically happened.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:18:16]:
And so I think a lot of times people think that fixed-price contracts and buying as a service is somehow the easy button. Press that button and it's fine. And it's not. It's a much harder thing to do. That doesn't mean the government should try to direct it. The government has no ability to commercialize anything. That is really what the private sector does. But the government, as a co-investor in milestones, where it gets value at each stage, it's a more expensive and difficult thing to do.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:18:47]:
It is better in the end, if you can do it, than traditional development contracts. But then there are going to be times where traditional development contracts are the only thing that make any sense because there is no private buyer. There is no market other than the government. So trying to pretend otherwise is, you know, just, you know, cosplay, not really, not really real. So I think that people wave around the COTS and commercial crew successes, and they are tremendous successes and brilliant that it was done. But it doesn't work in every case. And so each situation is a little bit different, and I think people should look more closely before just signing up for a singular model.

Rod Pyle [00:19:34]:
All right. Well, speaking of commercialization, we're going to go to one right now. So stay with us. We'll be right back.

Dale Skran [00:19:40]:
Okay. I have a question for Scott. You've been known as an advocate for the Space Launch System for many years, or perhaps as a defender of it. But recently, you testified before Congress, relatively recently, and said that it was time to plan on an off-ramp for SLS.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:20:00]:
Yep.

Dale Skran [00:20:00]:
And so Administrator Isaacman has, I think, shocked a lot of us by his aggressive and, I'm gonna say, good engineering sense approach to kind of modifying the SLS program to increase the launch cadence, have more testing, cut risk out, you know, get rid of the extra tall launch tower that cost an endless number of billions of dollars. So I think he's definitely implementing an off-ramp of a kind. And so how do you think this is going? Is it going in the right direction? Are you happy with it? What do you think?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:20:41]:
Yeah, I do. In the early In the early days, there really wasn't an alternative to the heavy lift capability of SLS. And pretty much every Mars and Moon architecture you ever looked at, particularly Mars architectures, said you needed the biggest launch vehicle you can possibly get to make anything kind of work. And the idea, you know, at the time of a, you know, commercial heavy lift vehicle making any sense like Starship, that was, you know, nice fantasy, but people could talk about it, but it wasn't real. And of course, you can be accused of, I find your lack of faith disturbing, kind of argument, but that's not a policy argument. And so, as SpaceX has demonstrated itself, I mean, and brilliantly so, we come to a different world. And in that world, you also look at the flight rate that SLS was looking at, and it was just terrible. I mean, people have been trying to get up to 2 flights a year.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:21:48]:
And it really was pulling teeth to even get to 1 flight a year. So the idea that we needed to basically transition off of that, find some other way, don't give up the stuff we have, don't give up the hardware we already have. The near term, I think getting through, like, use the next 3 cores, I think still makes a lot of sense. But I think what Isaacman is doing, which is great, Is he's pulling the trigger on a lot of things that, you know, kind of everybody knew needed to be done, uh, shifting around the Artemis III and IV mission, uh, doing the in-orbit, you know, demonstration, uh, paying attention to the cadence rate, um, pausing on the EUS and the mobile launch platform, particularly at a time when we're seeing some more in-space transportation ideas starting to happen, not there yet. But starting to happen. In cooperation, we're seeing the Space Force with the National Space Launch Program looking to expand a range of vendors to include more in-space people. So, you know, Impulse and Stoke Space and folks like that coming along, which to me is the next really big thing, is not getting to LEO. It's like, how do you transport in space? And so NASA's attention to nuclear power, for that.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:23:09]:
I'm frankly more favorable toward nuclear electric in those debates because I don't find nuclear thermal propulsion that compelling. I'll probably start a war over that comment. But, you know, it's nice to have, but later. Right now we need, you know, RTGs, we need lunar surface fission reactors, and we need to demonstrate nuclear electric, you know, propulsion. Other companies working on the in-space propulsion. So, I see a lot of things coming up, and I see a lot of decisions about SLS as kind of like, again, pulling the trigger on decisions that needed to be made, but probably not satisfying to people who just would like to just, you know, stop the whole thing now and be over with. Because as I've said, the idea that that money would then suddenly magically transfer over to things you favor after you stop funding the things you don't favor, that's just not the way the system works. You got to provide an off-ramp and transition for it, clear milestones.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:24:12]:
And I think Isaacman and current NASA team is doing that. So I am happy with that. I think the areas where I'm unhappy, or not unhappy, but not complete yet. Look, you know me, I used to be program analysis and evaluation head. Okay? So I like studies and analysis. not regulation, but I like studies and analysis. And I want to get to a point where we have a 3-ring binder with the masses and delta-Vs schedule and joint cost confidence level cost estimates, at least the level of fidelity that we had within the Constellation program. So I'm like, look, I know what people think of the Constellation program, but we at least had a 3-ring binder with You know, the data, we're not there yet.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:25:00]:
Okay. And I'd like to see more of that kind of, uh, more transparent sort of analysis. Here's the numbers. Doesn't mean you have to know everything now. And in fact, you should be wary of anybody who says they got all the answers right now. But, you know, for the launch campaign, uh, schedule, say over the next, uh, you know, 3 to 5 years, uh, it should be possible. to have a lot more fidelity and a lot more sort of trade-offs. So, obviously, an old analyst arguing for more analysis.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:25:34]:
I mean, I realize I'm the stereotype there. But that's probably the main thing that I want to see. The decisions being made, I think, are fine. They show they have a really bright team. But what you have to do is create an organization that does this routinely, not just because you get a bunch of really good people in there. But because you create a system and a governance process and analytical process that has top-level policy directions, but then grinds out the answers quarter by quarter in a way that's traceable and defendable, and a new team can pick it up who maybe is not as smart as the current team, but there's going to be a future. There's going to be a future team. And so, What foundations are we laying for them?

Rod Pyle [00:26:22]:
All right. Well, let's lay our own foundation here and go to a quick break, and then we'll be back with my next question. Stand by. Well, speaking of lunar programs, the White House and NASA have both made beating the Chinese back to the moon a priority. We landed astronauts there 6 times and did a lot of good work. So as a child of the space age, I'm a little older than you, Scott. You know, there's a part of me, the nationalist part of me, that says, yeah, yeah, we got to do that. We got to be back first.

Rod Pyle [00:26:53]:
That's urgently important. And the administration to some extent seems to echo that. On the other hand, does that really make sense? Or should the US simply claim that we aim to be first in lunar infrastructure and let this first very short Chinese sortie mission go ahead and do what it does? Yeah.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:27:14]:
So there are things that make, you know, technical or even strategic sense, and there are things that are short-term political sense. You know, I got asked the same question, you know, on a 60 Minutes piece, and, you know, I wouldn't want to downplay the fact— would it be tremendously embarrassing, you know, if Chinese beat us back to the moon? Yeah, of course it would. It would be. You know, I can see the headlines now. Would the Chinese make hay out of that? Yeah, they would.

Dale Skran [00:27:44]:
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:27:44]:
And I would actually wish them well. I would hope they succeed and, you know, don't die. I mean, I don't wish that on anybody. So I'm not saying it wouldn't be a bad thing, but I don't think that should be really animating us because I think it misreads the nature of the geopolitical contest that's for us now. Totally different set of reasons as to why we did Apollo and why getting there first was important in the context of the time. I think the Chinese actually understand that infrastructure development and sustained ability to be there is really the long game, is really what matters, because they understand the importance of shaping the domain, which is again the geopolitical reason why we're doing sort of Artemis, is so that it's our values that are out there. Do the Chinese have a right to be in space? Yes, they do. It's a province of all mankind.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:28:36]:
They have a right to explore and be there and so forth under an international law. Do I want them there without me and my friends? No. And I want the infrastructure that's there to be based on me and my friends. We have influence in Antarctica and we have influence in the Antarctic Treaty System, in part because we have 3,000 people on the ice every summer, ships that go there, planes that land, communications. what the power outlets look like, the steel case furniture in McMurdo Station, the fuel types, all this stuff is a result of being there. Now, there are Chinese on the ice and there are Chinese doing stuff there. And again, that's fine. But our dominance, if you will, of the infrastructure and the norms and practices is tremendously important to ensuring and upholding The treaty system that we have come to agree to.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:29:36]:
And same way for doing stuff in space. You know, as I've said multiple times, and people sometimes find this irritating, but rules are made by people who show up, not by people who stay behind. So if you don't show up and you're not there, you don't get to make rules. And the Chinese, I think, understand that maybe in a more blunter fashion than we do. I think we're a little bit more collegial about it. But nonetheless, we need to be there if we want to have a say in it. And so power, communications, navigation, transport systems, all that stuff is the long game, not, you know, who lands, takes a picture, and comes back. You know, flags and footprints doesn't do it anymore.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:30:16]:
They're important. They're politically important. They're necessary and symbolic, but it doesn't stop there. You know, we don't speak Norwegian. in the South Pole. Some do, but, you know, even though, you know, the first people to make it there, uh, you know, were not, not, not Americans. Um, and, uh, so what matters is, is sustainable presence. And we don't know, you know, what it would cost, what it takes to maintain being there.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:30:41]:
Could it be like another McMurdo Station? Uh, is there something that would be economically self-supporting on the Moon? Maybe, maybe not. Uh, but again, I think Isaacman kind of has this right, and he says Well, we need to go find out. And if we do find something that's economically possible to do, well, then we ought to hand that off to industry to go do it. You know, not make NASA into a state, you know, finance corporation to mine helium-3 or something, but to explore, find out, move on, you know, what's next. If it turns out that it's like McMurdo Station and we can survive there, but there's nothing really economically— useful to do, okay, that's one world. If we find out there are economically useful things to do, that's also great, but, you know, that's not NASA's job. That's somebody else's job. So exploration is finding out what's possible, not just, you know, assuming a future that we don't really— can't really know yet.

Rod Pyle [00:31:40]:
Dale, wow us.

Dale Skran [00:31:42]:
So Look, I want to get to something that maybe is a little more disagreement. I find that, you know, we've been pretty supportive at the NSS of what Isaacman's done with regard to Artemis. And I can see from your comments that you're pretty happy with it as well. I think there's not a lot of daylight.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:32:00]:
I can find things to criticize if you want me to.

Dale Skran [00:32:03]:
I understand that. But basically, I think we're a lot happier than we were a couple of years ago with what's going on. But there is an area where I think there's been a lot of tension between Isaacman and industry, and that's with the commercial LEO stations. So there seems to be an element on the 9th floor that really doesn't like the commercial stations. They constantly talk about how there's no way they're going to actually make money, and they propose this so-called core module.

Rod Pyle [00:32:32]:
Sure.

Dale Skran [00:32:32]:
And the NSS is very active in working with industry to push back. And I'm pleased to say that they seem to have listened. They just backed off the core module, which was basically like a NASA mini station. It was a dreadful idea in 100 ways. And now we have an RFP that NASA's put out to actually fulfill their commitments to the CLD providers. And, you know, we weren't too happy with that, and industry wasn't too happy with that. I mean, it was an RFP, but it was a lot more of a traditional RFP than it should have been.

Rod Pyle [00:33:07]:
Mm-hmm.

Dale Skran [00:33:07]:
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so like, where is this gonna go? What's really going on here? Um, what are your thoughts on this?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:33:14]:
Change is hard. People want to keep doing what they're used to doing, and people tend to be most conservative about things they know the most about, you know. Um, and so you have parts of NASA which know a lot about, you know, running a space station. Um, they have decades of hard-won experience on it. And so the idea that somebody else can come in and do it, you know, differently or do it without, you know, their pedigree, that's a little, that's a little hard, hard to take. And so I think that, um, uh, on one hand, there's, there's probably a healthy skepticism, uh, about the size of the market and how fast it'll come around. And, and you can see people who believe that we should have humans in orbit and we should have these facilities going, you know, I just don't want to take the risk of, uh, of letting it all slip away and maybe, you know, be, uh, taken over or attempted to be done by a bunch of people that I don't think have the right, uh, skills and capabilities, uh, to make it successful. And therefore they propose things like the, the transition module, um, kind of out of caution and And, uh, I don't know, more out of love than hate, they just kind of like want, uh, there to be something there to work.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:34:32]:
And they thought they're being conservative and helpful. And of course, obviously industry didn't think of it that way, see it that way, because the sense of, wow, the investor community, you know, reacted to that, which is not a sensitivity NASA necessarily has. Um, I mean, Isaacman I think does, but I, I don't think, you know, that's not a normal thing in the system. Um, the other is there is this really painful transition coming up, which is not going to be doing the same things that we were doing. It's like telling people at Kennedy that they're not going to be launching shuttles anymore. And it's like, well, oh my God, what comes next? And so you had people like Bob Cabana who did a marvelous job and the team down there at KSC who led the transition. So KSC is a thriving place. And in fact, it's packed to the gills these days.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:35:19]:
But I don't think other centers necessarily see it that way, and they're wondering what their future is. I think they do have a future, but it's not doing the same old thing. So I think we're talking about is cultural transition, what the future of these centers are, and getting them to think more about unique things like doing lunar surface operations, We haven't done surface operations in a long, long time. We've gotten good at putting people in little pressurized cans going around, but surface operations is a whole different thing. Well, that's a skill set we need to be working on and developing. There's things like infrastructure that I think centers like Glenn and Marshall should be thinking about for power and comm. Surface operations, I think about for JSC. The mission control behind me is likely to be, of course, obviously there's a newer version, but, you know, the newer version is going to be probably, you know, obsolete because, you know, do you need these kind of mission control centers to run private space stations? Probably not.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:36:27]:
Uh, you know, so again, change is hard. Um, and, um, uh, but I think that you really don't have a choice because the station itself is not gonna last forever. I mean, you know, Elon said, you know, we're not doing anything, you know, important on station and we should just like bring it down now and end it and move on. I think he's wrong. I think there is a lot of good stuff that people are learning aboard station. There's worthwhile work going on. But on the other hand, he's correct in that we need to be prepared to bring the station down at any time. You know.

Dale Skran [00:37:01]:
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:37:02]:
I've gotten those phone calls where I get woken up at 6:30 in the morning to be told there's a leak in the pressurized module and like, what's the state the crew and all that kind of stuff. And so I think we should be prepared and preparing for that transition at any time because the hardware gets a vote. And the longer we pretend we can put that off or pretend we don't have to adjust it is, I think, is delusional because I think you convince yourself that, well, I don't want it to happen so it can't happen. Been there, done that. That's not the way the world works.

Rod Pyle [00:37:38]:
So, all right, well, we're going to do it our way into a quick break and we'll be right back. So hang around. So at this point, for a lot of us civilian observers anyway, a big part of NASA's lunar efforts are kind of standing under this 170-foot shadow called Lunar Starship. And, you know, we've got to have a lander to go. And we're not going to do it, do our lunar landings the way we did during the Apollo era with this barely enough to get the job done hardware. We want to have something larger and with a longer duration and more lasting. So we have SpaceX working, we hope diligently, on their Starship lunar lander, Human Landing System. And of course, Blue Moon working— Blue Origin working on the Blue Moon lander.

Rod Pyle [00:38:30]:
If you would comment on how this is going, is anyone in the lead? Can we possibly make that first landing by 2030?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:38:41]:
Well, you know, if, you know, if this is at risk of sounding like, you know, in the old days, you know, in the old days, you know, kind of what I would be doing is I would be having a studies and analysis team, you know, Working on the, what we call the agency mission model and projection of the schedule, and we'd be doing cost estimates that included joint cost and schedule risk elements. We'd be doing probabilistic risk assessments, maybe killing it with maybe more analysis than maybe is needed. And I think the probability is low, not zero, but it's low. They're going to make it because a lot of things have to happen. I would be putting margin money aside for more flight tests. If flight tests go well, great, you scoop up the money and use it to solve some other problem. If it doesn't go well, you're going to need flight test money. So I would be putting, you know, more margin.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:39:40]:
I wouldn't necessarily slip the schedule, but I would be putting money aside to make sure I can handle contingencies. As you see what happened with, you know, Blue Origin, you know, with their pad accident. Um, you know, stuff happens, uh, and so you need to have the resources, you know, to, uh, to deal with it. Um, I think the architecture, uh, probably, uh, despite the improvements that I think Isaacman has made, uh, still could use more work. Um, uh, the in-space transportation, uh, between Earth and Moon, um, still could use work. Something like a reusable transport stage, you know, still sort of cries out. If you look at the commercial reliances, you know, we have multiple ways of getting up and down to low Earth orbit. Great.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:40:26]:
We hopefully will have multiple ways to get up and down from lunar orbit to the surface and back. You know, to date with SLS, you know, we've been dependent upon a single stage system for going from Earth to the Moon back and forth. Love to have more options there. There are some potentially emerging. Again, maybe more from the military side, but again, And maybe with the nuclear side, although a nuclear reactor coming back toward the Earth is probably not likely to get approved. But something— that middle part of the architecture, I think, still needs work. And I believe in a name from the blast of the past, Bob Zubrin had some ideas, what would he call not a starship, but a starboat, a more A smaller system for, you know, going down to lunar surface and back again. It's like, yeah, that's probably a sensible thing to look at.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:41:20]:
If you have only what you have, well, then you have the architecture baseline we have now. Are there things that would be a marginal improvement significant enough to be worth investment?

Dale Skran [00:41:32]:
Yeah.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:41:34]:
Looking at Starboat, looking at an in-orbit transfer system, What variances are possible there. So I'm not as worried about getting to low Earth orbit. I'm worried about getting to the lunar surface and back. That's kind of like the thing that will hopefully be demoed, at least the beginnings of it, in Artemis III. And longer term, I'm worried about sustainability of in-space transportation. You know, the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey had a lot of the pieces pretty, pretty correct. You had something to get yourself, commercial thing to get yourself to orbit. You staged through low Earth orbit, maybe at a station, maybe not.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:42:11]:
Then you got to the moon and then you had more specialized vehicles when you got there. So looking at the whole architecture and having some specialized options, we're able to do— what's different from Apollo is today we're able to do some fairly complex rendezvous and proximity operations. that, you know, probably in an earlier era we would have waved off from because too many things had to happen. Well, we have a community now that is pretty good at that, and I'd like to continue them to be able to do those sort of complex in-space operations. To me, the biggest near-term risk is, you know, demoing cryo refueling. I mean, I used to work on, you know, fluid transfer and shuttle during— back in Rockwell days, and It's not trivial. Swapping a tank in and out, sure. Going through an umbilical line, that's a different problem.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:43:07]:
So cryo management, Blue Origin has issues doing low boil-off cryo, which is a very demanding technology. SpaceX has a demanding, not quite as demanding and cutting-edge technology, but has some demanding operations to demonstrate. themselves. So it's, it's pretty sporty. It can work, but I would make sure I had lots of margin to deal with almost inevitable contingencies.

Rod Pyle [00:43:36]:
Gosh, I wonder if we could get Buzz into the conversation, if he'd suggest repurposing Gateway modules for a lunar cycler. I bet he would.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:43:43]:
Please no. I know that answer.

Rod Pyle [00:43:47]:
Okay, Dale, you're up.

Dale Skran [00:43:50]:
So look, I want to go back to some of your earlier comments. One thing that we think about some in the background at NSS and the Policy Committee is, you know, how can we kind of help NASA deal with the future by making sure that the teams at Marshall and Johnson have something to do that's constructive so they're not constantly trying to run head-on into commercial activities? And one idea that's been put forward by Isaacman is the idea of an academy at Johnson to train. It's a little vague, you know, whether that's commercial and NASA astronauts or that includes military astronauts. It's an interesting idea. And I'm just curious, you know, as a policy expert, I mean, there's some pros and cons, I think. Uh, some of us find it intriguing. It's an interesting idea that might, you know, enable commercial activities, uh, by providing a kind of certification for astronauts. Other people are worried that it'll crowd out commercial training systems.

Dale Skran [00:45:00]:
So what do you think? I mean, from a policy perspective, does this make any sense? Sure.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:45:05]:
I'm probably a little colored by this because I remember when friends of mine were looking to sell zero-g aircraft flights to the movie Apollo 13, and, uh, they had a commercial solution, and they got crowded out, you know, by, uh, by NASA, uh, you know, to come provide the zero-g time. Well, okay, the movie chose the lower, lower-cost approach, um, and, uh, if not lower cost, at least maybe more immediately useful. Anytime the government is, is in something, there is going to be this kind of crowding out you know, kind of a risk going on. I think the thing that I probably would, you know, with the end of International Space University, maybe they need a new campus in Houston. I don't know. But I would rather that Johnson and NASA in general work on problems that are really hard that no one has solved yet. You know, reducing the weight of fuel cells such that the lunar rover particularly like the Japanese one, which, you know, has a mass issue because of the weight of fuel cells. You know, bring those down.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:46:14]:
That's a, you know, battery technology problem. How about, you know, working on that? Problems of lunar dust, demoing that. Got some problems with that. I've got a bunch of maybe a higher cadence CLPS program, you know, 10 a year, I'm told. Well, what payloads are going to go on there? And what's the budget line to pay for those payloads? Oh, well, maybe not so obvious. Well, maybe that's something some of the other Artemis signatories could do and provide the payloads for the CLPS program. So we get the cadence up, they provide maybe the payloads and become, you know, really real stakeholders, not just observers, but real stakeholders. Well, what should they do? How about— we know a lot of the problems that are there.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:47:00]:
I don't want to say a decadal for exploration because decadals don't really apply in the human spaceflight world. But there are serious problems and technologies that need to be demoed and demonstrated, no shortage of them. Being clear about those things and clear about those priorities for NASA to go work on. Reaching back to earlier discussion about the ISS, one of the things a few years ago that was really a problem is you'd have companies go into NASA and say, Well, you know, what are your requirements for the future? And so we can plan what we're gonna provide. And NASA comes in and drops this giant pile of paper and said, well, here are our requirements. And the companies, you know, kind of go through it and go, well, I can give you a good price on this glove box 'cause I've got other people wanting to use it. But boy, if you want that furnace over here, you're the only one using it and I'm gonna have to charge you a lot for it. And the NASA guys would just be kind of blank.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:48:04]:
They'd go, well, these are my requirements. And the idea that there's differentiation among those things, one of the reasons why, say, companies like Vast are interesting is not just because it's smaller, stripped down, whatever. It doesn't do a lot that, frankly, I think Axiom and Voyager will be able to do. But they have a pathway there to look at a variable-G facility. Well, we've wanted a variable-G facility forever. Maybe VAS can do that. Well, you know, other people, you know, do different things. But NASA's unwillingness to really set priorities, it stresses, it culturally stresses consensus.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:48:48]:
And consensus means you kind of put everything together and we love all our requirements equally. That's not the way, again, the commercial market works. Differentiation, segmentation, setting priorities, what are demand signals. I think those similar kind of principles or processes is what we should be thinking about what NASA should be doing next. They should be helping develop the technologies, demoing the technologies such that private sector can make better decisions about what to go do. In many ways, it's kind of something that NSS has talked about forever, which is the old NACA model. In this case, it's NACA model plus thinking about infrastructure. I think NASA should be, as a requirements driver, driving foundations for lunar comm and nav, not because that is their business in the future, but the requirements and services and needs will drive the development of that infrastructure.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:49:49]:
I have a whole separate, you know, rabbit hole I can brief you on and bore you to death on solar system internet and communications across the solar system, you know, in future systems. But NASA as a part of that, power is the same way, transportation the same way, creating infrastructure, solving technical problems, solving scientific problems in the decadals. There is plenty for NASA to do. It's just not you know, the old thing of I've got this, you know, giant program, shuttle or station, that I'm charging my time to. It's much more broken down into pieces, but NASA still has this utterly crucial role as the system integrator. In fact, as you have more international and commercial partners, NASA's role in analysis, interface, system integration actually becomes more important, not less. These things don't magically integrate themselves. And so I think NASA should be fairly confident about what its future needs are.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:50:50]:
What it should worry about is, does it have the talent and skill sets necessary to meet that world? And I think that's what Isaacman also worries about. And, you know, nobody asked me, but I would say you should really be worrying about, you know, hiring, you know, this talent, which I think he is, and don't stress about running operations. There's plenty of other contractors can do ops. What you should do is, do you have really the smartest scientists? Are you giving the best technicians? Are you giving people something really useful to do? If I was a young engineer now, of course, I'd be looking at SpaceX or any number of entrepreneurial companies because it gets me closer to hardware, and closer to reality and stuff that's going to fly, you know, at speed. You want to make NASA that attractive as well, not because it's going to ever be a commercial company, but because it provides opportunities to attract really great people who do a time at NASA and then maybe go move on, don't spend their entire life there. Well, I—

Rod Pyle [00:51:55]:
that, that was a great answer. Uh, I think I have one more question. In an age of increasingly more sophisticated artificial intelligence systems and more sophisticated and capable robotics, what are we left with in terms of an inspirational message, messages about innovation and the larger uniting value of large-scale human spaceflight in this environment?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:52:24]:
Well, look, you know, back in the Back in the Clinton administration, showing my age, I was a support contractor, you know, for the White House, and I was asked, you know, why I didn't think that establishing virtual presence across the solar system, you know, wouldn't be just a great idea. And the guy asking me the question was, you know, a senior OSTP guy, and really great to work with, but he was also a scuba diver and a sailor. And I said, Skip, do you like scuba diving or do you like watching Jacques Cousteau movies? Well, I like scuba diving. Right, but I like Jacques Cousteau movies. Right, those are different experiences. Okay, you want to have both. You want to find out where can humans go, what can they do, what are they capable of. I mean, I recently came across some colleagues in the Planetary Science Institute who had done work on human missions to Titan.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:53:21]:
You know, as to what that might be. There's lots of places in the solar system where humans are never going to go, okay? You know, surface of Venus, maybe, maybe not. Surface of Jupiter, probably not. But so where can humans go and what can they do? That's always going to be a question that you want to ask as you're trying to answer the larger question of what— do humans have a future in space? And if so, where? What can they do? What can they survive? What can they— how can they earn their way? So I don't think robots, you know, replace that. AI doesn't replace that desire for personal experience. And I think in many ways it makes it more possible. I can easily imagine, you know, an AI and robotic-powered group of robots building the Martian colony long before humans ever show up. Same thing maybe even on the moon if we can solve the dust problem and other things.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:54:15]:
So I think robotics and AI make it more possible for, you know, realistic and sustainable ways of humans to go out there. It doesn't ever replace it.

Rod Pyle [00:54:26]:
Well, that's an inspiring and uplifting answer. So thank you for that. And I want to thank you and Dale Scranton and everybody in our audience for joining us for episode 223, we like to call The Lunar Domain. Scott, where's the best place online where we can keep up with you and your work?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:54:45]:
Oh, just Google up the Space Policy Institute, um, and, uh, the institute website has, uh, you know, speeches and presentations and, and, uh, things like that, uh, going on. And, uh, and if people, uh, want to get a master's degree in science and technology policy, uh, you know, come on down.

Rod Pyle [00:55:05]:
Is it too late for me?

Dr. Scott Pace [00:55:08]:
No, actually not. You'd be amazed.

Rod Pyle [00:55:12]:
I certainly would be.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:55:13]:
Any books coming up we should know about? No, I'm finishing some work on reports on space and cybersecurity I've been working on with the ITU. And I had done earlier work, a chapter on application of law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law to space rules of engagement. Um, so I'm probably more on the, the dual, uh, dual-use end of it. Um, and, uh, in the, um, international realm, uh, I was at the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space back in, um, in June and trying, trying with other colleagues to, uh, create a lunar activities consultative mechanism, uh, whereby we can have multilateral, not bilateral, multilateral discussions of lunar operations, because we need to find a better way of sharing information with each other, and we don't have it yet. So we're trying to see, you know, what kind of mechanism we can build at the UN, given all the other geopolitical realities that are going on these days.

Rod Pyle [00:56:21]:
All right, that sounds like it'll be interesting. Dale, I suspect you may have a book you want to tell us about.

Dale Skran [00:56:29]:
Well, look, you should The National Space Society has brought out a book. It's co-edited by myself and this guy sitting over here on my left, Rod Pyle. It's called A Dream Renewed: Space Settlement in the 21st Century, an Update of the O'Neill Vision. You can preorder it on Amazon or from the publisher, BookCrest Publishing. It's the first book of the NSS imprint, and it's going to be officially launched at the Space Settlement Summit in the end of October. So I think you'll find it very interesting. We got together a workshop with about 60 engineers, scientists, economists, and, uh, the director of the Orville, uh, TV show. So, um, it's a real interesting crew and, uh, I think a lot of interesting material and a lot of stuff that's different since the time of O'Neill.

Dale Skran [00:57:21]:
So check it out, preorder the book and read it. Thank you.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:57:26]:
Cool. Congratulations.

Rod Pyle [00:57:28]:
Well, as long as we're flogging books, in about 4 months I have a book coming out, which is a biography of Jerry Griffin, friend of the show and one of the few Apollo flight directors. And I think the only one that hasn't actually written an autobiography or a biography yet. So looking forward to— well, as the author, I'm just looking forward to getting it done, frankly, but looking forward to having that out. And getting people's feedback. Now, speaking of feedback, you can always drop us a line at twis@twit.tv. We do welcome your comments, suggestions, and ideas. And don't forget to send in the space jokes so you don't have to listen to mine. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, and give us reviews.

Rod Pyle [00:58:14]:
We'll take 5 thumbs, claws, whatever digits you got. As long as there's 5 of them, 5 stars, we're happy. You can also follow the TWiT Podcast Network @TWiT on Twitter and Facebook and TWiT.TV on Instagram. Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure. Scott, it was great having you on, and I hope to see you at NISDC in the near future.

Dr. Scott Pace [00:58:35]:
Okay, take care. Good to see you guys too.

Rod Pyle [00:58:38]:
Thanks, Scott.