Isaacman favors many small science missions over flagships

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 33:54

   you've identified as some of the challenges in NASA? Or are those more management challenges? Does budget create a constraining force here that fixes some of the issues with respect to focus and concentration of capital into the right projects for you from your point of view? Yeah, it's a it's a it's an excellent question. So so first, like, look, the the the reduction, the big budget reduction is a great forcing function for change. And I know there's a lot of people that probably don't want to hear that, but it is true. That doesn't mean I would have landed at 19 billion in this whole thing, but I fully support the president and with the goal of shrinking the budget and getting back to responsible footing. And I do think billions can go a very long way. So I will just start with that. Everything you just said directionally is

2. 34:41

   is kind of in the right direction. We've already got paid for enough SLS hardware that if you were to terminate for convenience now, you got enough to launch like two or three of them. It's enough to get you back to the moon, check that box, to make sure that you don't have any economic or scientific or national security reasons to stay on the moon and put your energy much more towards commercial industry. Look, nuclear thermal propulsion, I'm not a fan of. I like nuclear electric. Nuclear thermal, to test it, you're spewing radioactive debris here on Earth. It's really solve your refueling problem. You still need to top it off with hydrogen in space if you want a reusable space plug. So I don't like that either. And it's subscale. It's a program that sits in a lab forever. Like what you need in nuclear electric, I'm passionate on the subject,

3. 35:25

   is you need us to get back to the good old days. Like we went from the atomic bomb in 1945 to laying the keel on the Nautilus in 1951. Five, six years. We didn't keep it in the lab forever. We said, you know what? We're going to do big, bold things. And that's what we need to be doing in space when it comes to nuclear. Look, a lot of the science programs I'm huge fans of. Mars sample return, the best thing to do is when the astronauts get there, to bring the samples home. Why would we spend billions to send a robotic mission? We can put that into commercial industry and accelerate their timeline. So I wasn't a fan of a pure robotic mission on that one.

4. 35:59

   And you know, a lot of the big science programs, to see James Webb's and Hubble telescope programs launching annually, if not more. Flagship programs definitionally are billion-dollar spends. And if you spend a billion, then you got to get it right. And that means lots of requirements and we can't take unnecessary risk. And a billion becomes a three billion program and it's never on time. We should be challenging the best and brightest. Give me 10 $100 million missions a year. Let's try that. And let's accept that three fail and get act you know i was going to introduce like time to science as a kpi like how why don't why do we accept things taking 10 years when they could be a year even the decadal process of prioritizing scientific missions over a 10 year span is kind of insane 100 100 and i i think a lot of people hear budget cuts and i hear this on the nih side as well now

5. 36:51

   that the administration and budget cutting is going to take lives people are going to lose lives. We're going to lose science. This is an anti-science agenda. But if you can get more efficient with how you deploy capital and how you manage the deployment of that capital and the utilization of that capital, you actually accelerate science. You accelerate outcomes and you improve the condition and the prosperity for humanity and for America.

6. 37:17

   And it's completely a misdirected statement when people say that a budget cut is an anti-science movement. It's about finding the right places that you get more outcomes and redeploy in a smarter, more efficient way. It drives me nuts. I just see it, you know, all over right now. That's just I mean, it's just politics. I do think overfunding leads to complacency leads to bureaucracy, which actually leads to a slowdown in discovery, a slowdown in invention, a slowdown in progress. Anyway, I'm sorry for my rant. I agree. Look, as I mean, as entrepreneurs, we know, like some of our probably best decision making is always when we were running low on cash. So, you know, it kind of drives efficiency and it is a, you know, necessity, mother of all invention there. Yeah. Well, I think that's just a product of some of

7. 37:58

   our, and I'm not familiar with any of the NIH or, and I'm not pretending to go deep on that at all. Just, I do think this is kind of a product of, of, of the politics of our time. It's a very divided country. You know, people have to take an opposing view and, and, and go to extremes. People will die over, over this, but the government is terrible capital allocators. come on we should all know that and you know we should as taxpayers we should be contributing to the things that no one else is willing to do where there is no good business use case or economic model you know it is in you know if competition is working they can solve a lot of problems and we should put our energy to what they won't solve um and and look i think kratzios by the way in science he's a great leader i i've spoken a bunch of times um you know he's not a quag he doesn't

8. 38:39

   think wild things like that he he wants you know the golden age of science and discovery i'm fair Good science. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about Artemis. I think this is a big piece that the American public doesn't fully grok, that we have this effort. And maybe you can just lay out for us the case for Artemis, lay out for us the case for Mars. Tell us about the relationship between the two and the timelines.