Podcast Episode Details
Back to Podcast Episodes
🚀 NASA and the New Space Age: My chat (+transcript) with James Meigs
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,
America is embarking upon a New Space Age, with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin ready to partner with NASA to take Americans to a new frontier — possibly as far as Mars. Lately, however, the world is witnessing uncertainty surrounding NASA leadership and even an odd feud between SpaceX boss Elon Musk and the White House. At a critical time for US space competition, let’s hope key players can stick the landing.
Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with James Meigs about the SLS rocket, NASA reforms, and the evolving private sector landscape.
Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is a contributing editor of City Journal and writer of the Tech Commentary column at Commentary magazine. He is also the former editor of Popular Mechanics.
Meigs is the author of a recent report from the Manhattan Institute, U.S. Space Policy: The Next Frontier.
In This Episode
* So long, Jared Isaacman (1:29)
* Public sector priorities (5:36)
* Supporting the space ecosystem (11:52)
* A new role for NASA (17:27)
* American space leadership (21:17)
Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
So long, Jared Isaacman (1:29)
The withdrawal of Jared Isaacman . . . has really been met with total dismay in the space community. Everyone felt like he was the right kind of change agent for the agency that desperately needs reform, but not destruction.
Pethokoukis: We're going to talk a lot about your great space policy report, which you wrote before the withdrawal of President Trump's NASA nominee, Jared Isaacman.
What do you think of that? Does that change your conclusions? Good move, bad move? Just sort of your general thoughts apart from the surprising nature of it.
Meigs: I worked sort of on and off for about a year on this report for the Manhattan Institute about recommendations for space policy, and it just came out a couple of months ago and already it's a different world. So much has happened. The withdrawal of Jared Isaacman — or the yanking of his nomination — has really been met with total dismay in the space community. Everyone felt like he was the right kind of change agent for the agency that desperately needs reform, but not destruction.
Now, it remains to be seen what happens in terms of his replacement, but it certainly pulled the rug out from under the idea that NASA could be reformed and yet stay on track for some ambitious goals. I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic that some of these things will happen, but my sense is that the White House is not particularly interested in space.
Interestingly, Musk wasn't really that involved in his role of DOGE and stuff. He didn't spend that much ti
Published on 3 months, 3 weeks ago