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

A New Era - Background & Easter Eggs
 

Michael Laine Transcript:

Intro
"We were talking about this new development and document that came out of the administration this week. I want to say that I'm excited about this. I think that it's pretty important. As usual, if we are going to go here, there's a lot of stuff we have to do to get there. We've talked this policy document about Hardware, Business, Outreach, and Frameworks follow solidly into the framework section, law, policy that sort of stuff. These documents are linked in the description here. I encourage you to go read it. I hate to say this about a policy document. But there's a lot of cool stuff in here. When I was reading it, I was smiling. I assure you I've never done that reading a policy document before.
 
Five areas
 
These are the five areas that this document goes into. We're going to tackle kind of the background of this. These two documents; The Space Policy Directive 1 and the National Space Strategy. These are not interesting but worth reading. It's important as context to the rest of this but they're kind of a slog to get through. Typical of this administration, it focuses on Peace through strength if that phrase resonates with any of you. If you remember any of that, that comes straight out of the 1980s Ronald Reagan space policy mutually assured destruction mindset and language us. I was surprised to see in this document however I do know that some of the folks that have been writing space policy for one, two, three decades are involved with the administration now in writing the current document. While I was surprised to see this phrase in there, I guess it shouldn't have surprised me once I thought about it. The background of this thing is that we're in a constrained environment. The world is in a constrained environment. Certainly, the government is. One of the things they keep talking about is sustainability. Requirements for such missions to be sustainable to involve commercial and international partners include resource utilization. That is a new language. We've all had international partnerships going back for decades but specifically, calling out international partners and involving the commercial community. That's so new. This whole language about resource utilization is using what we get and where we're going. That's pretty amazing. Again, I just told you I was smiling when I was reading parts of this. So, I'm pretty happy about that kind of language. This executive order that came out earlier in the year focuses on private recovery and the use of outer space resources. Again, that kind of stuff hasn't been around. That hasn't been available before. So, it's pretty neat to see this evolution occurring all the time just around us regularly.
 
Sustainability
 
This piece is I want to focus on sustainability. I think that I saw that phrase in this document six, eight, ten times. No exaggeration. It's in there a lot.
 
Different meanings in Sustainability
 
Sustainability has three cases of different meanings; Financial sustainability, Technical, and Policy. What is policy mean? We're about to have an election. Does this policy sustain past the new election? A lot of people are unsure about that. I certainly hope that this policy is maintained. Is it technically sustainable? Is the level of risk versus the reward acceptable?  Acceptable in this document is in quotation marks. What does acceptable mean? What does acceptable technical risk mean? There's no answer to that. In the last video, I talked about this document giving political cover for people to take risks. I feel like this stage, page, and paragraph allows different organizations to take a technical risk. Financial sustainability going to the moon is hard, and it's expensive. Going to mars is hard, and it's expensive. Developing a Cislunar Econosphere is hard, and it's expensive. Within realistic manageable budgets, what are we able to achieve? Sustainability should be this cornerstone idea that we build everything else around like Financial, Technical, and Policy. That's it for the background. I want to know if any of you all caught any Easter eggs.
 
Easter Eggs
 
I'm going to share the ones that I saw. I'm not claiming to have any inside knowledge about the drafting and creation of this document. But I saw some things that made me chuckle a little bit.
 
Things that made me chuckle
 
The first one is in the name itself Space Exploration and Development. I don't know how many of our viewers are part of SEDS. SEDS is Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. Data SEDS person crafts this document, are they in the background somewhere? I don't know. But we do know that SEDS as an organization has been around a little over 35 years or so. They have had a lot of influence on how things happen in the space community. If there's a SEDS person in the background of this, good on you for slipping in. I don't know if that happened in reality. But that was my first impression when I read this document. Of course, there are lots of other things that could say Exploration and Development of Space but in my heart, I hope it's a SEDS person who got that title in there.
 
Cislunar Econosphere
This page, these two paragraphs have two different Easter Eggs in them to my way of thinking. The first is the Cislunar Econosphere. My friend and classmate from International Space University, Ken Murphy is the one who kind of created this concept of the Cislunar Econosphere. I encourage you to search for the phrase he wrote a terrific paper at the Space Review. We're going to put a link that in this document and video.
 
Live, Work, and Play in space
 
The other one Live, Work and on the next page Play in space. That's been the tagline of the National Space Society for I think about 15 years. I might have my timing a little bit off.
But Live, Work, and Play in space has been around as a philosophy for a long time. Although I need somebody to fact check me on this, I think that George Whitesides. When he was the director of the National Space Society helped coined this phrase. George up until just a few weeks ago, was the CEO of the Virgin Space group. He is a guy who's been around in the field for a really long time. I think his team crafted the phrase to Live, Work and Play in space. I saw some of that in here and I don't know again. I don't know if it's just because those messages have resonated. “Cislunar Econosphere”, “Live, Work and Play in space”, and “Exploration and Development” those phrases have been in our field for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. Is it just because those phrases resonate with people? That's how this document was peppered with that language or is there somebody who hearkens back to heritage a part of this document writing process?
 
Questions?
 
I knew it is purely conjecture. But I smiled when I read this. I am sure there are questions. Please post them in the comments. I will do my best to answer them. I hope you are well. Take care. Bye."