A New Era for Deep Space Exploration & Development policy document from the White House.

A New Era: The New White House Space Policy

Michael Laine Transcript:
Intro
"Hi, today we're going to do something a little different and unexpected. Yesterday, there was some really big news that impacts not just us but the whole national and global space community. So, we wanted to jump in with that right away.
 
Overview
If this is the destination, the Moon is where we're going. If we're going beyond that to mars there are a lot of steps that we have to take before we get there. Just a few days ago when we started our playlist, we had this pretty extensive plan and we were kind of trying to do these in a certain order. Yesterday, this new piece of news just kind of threw that whole plan out the window but when we started that we thought about Commercialization, Space Force, and Pop Culture and in a way, this new document blends all three of those.
 
Framework
When we talk about building the Elevator, everybody always tends to focus on the hardware. Great. I understand that that's cool. That’s fun stuff but today we're talking about framework. The framework is law, policy, and kind of the overarching set of rules that everyone we and on everybody else have to comply with.
 
Space Council’s Document
The White House, the National Space Council yesterday released this very impressive and interesting document. It’s A New Era for Deep Space Exploration and Development. I encourage you to download this document and read it. We're going to spend the next couple days dissecting it and we're going to have some commentary on it over the next few days. It's important. It was unexpected. I think ultimately, it's very good news not just for us but for anybody in the commercial space sector, NASA, and around the world. This document has implications for anybody who's trying to do something in space so it's important.
 
Commercialization in Low Earth Orbit
What are we talking about? The idea of Commercialization in Low Earth Orbit. People have been doing that for a while. But there's language in here that is new. There's language in here that's different and that allows maybe a wider range of opportunities.

Returning to the Moon, To Stay
The same thing with returning to the moon, they've been talking about that for a little while. Certainly, the emphasis on staying on the Moon is kind of important. So, look into that and kind of dig into what they have in mind. There's some nuance there that I think is important.
 
Extending Humans to Mars
Extending Humanity to Mars. Now you're not a true-blue space nerd if you don't get excited about that. Even though Mars is not my focus, it sure is great to be talking about it.
 
Deep Space Science
Deep Space Science isn't new. There's nothing in there that's particularly revelatory but there are some enabling technologies that are referenced, significant, made this document powerful.
 
Education & Workforce
Finally, an element that I think is important personally is the Workforce and Education and Development. I've been fortunate to have a lot of interns work for me over the years and seeing them evolve into the space field is important but this goes a lot further than that. This is a National Policy about how to ensure future generations get involved with this advanced technology stuff.
 
Role and Programs
How is this all working well? First of all, this is a US government document so they talk about “What is the role of government?” “What are the current programs that we have?” and what are potential new programs that we could have? and I love our current programs but I am excited about some of these potential programs so pay special attention to that. I believe that there are some very important things in that section that could have implications far into the future. Not just to the United States but globally, not just to the Commercial sector or the National Security sector or the Civil Space sector but uh implications for everybody living down here on earth just doing their normal thing. It's pretty interesting because I think it opens a lot of doors. We're going to look into all of these things more carefully as the week progresses and we'll come back with some other stuff.
 
Easter Eggs
I want you to look for Easter eggs if this was a video game, I would say there are a couple of Easter eggs hidden in this document. Some of the folks who have been around the space field for a long time will smile when they see some of these pieces. We'll talk about some of them as well. That's what we got. We'll break out some more details in the next couple days and we'll take a deep dive into this. Have a great weekend, bye."