Hello and welcome to the space policy edition of Planetary Radio, the monthly show,

where we explore the politics and processes behind the space exploration.

I'm Casey Dreyer, the chief of space policy here at the Planetary Society.

In 2022, buried within the tens of thousands of lines of legislative text that comprise the Chips and Science Act was a request from Congress that the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and Medicine

establish an independent committee tasked with evaluating the state of NASA's core capabilities,

its workforce, its infrastructure, and its ability to develop technology.

The committee that ultimately came to be encompassed a broad swath of expertise in the space community, including space scientists,

engineers, senior managers, space policy experts, and even veterans of the commercial

space industry, including some from

SpaceX. This committee of 13 people spent nearly two years visiting NASA facilities

throughout the country, interviewed hundreds of staff and contractors, including NASA's

most senior leadership.

What they found was disturbing, the essence of which is captured in the title of the report

that came out of their evaluation, NASA at a crossroads.

This report, which I think is one of the most important reports to come out from the National

Academies in recent years, made seven core findings about what they saw, and then eight

major recommendations for how the space agency and Congress and all of its supporters can help fix it.

The key, though, I think, is this.

The report committee found that for decades, NASA has underinvested in itself.

It has underinvested in maintaining its infrastructure, which is unique. It has

underinvested in its workforce, which is under incredible competition, not just from commercial

space companies, but from the growing tech industry that wants to siphon off some of NASA's

...