A “Star Trek” future: Your place in space

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What do Star Trek, space advocacy, and the fight to save NASA science have in common? We'll talk about it this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah El-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Today we're taking a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, USA for a very special panel recorded live at Creation Entertainment's STLV Trek to Vegas 2025 Convention. This annual Star Trek event draws thousands of fans from around the world. We'll hear from some of the Planetary Society's supporters who starred in Star Trek: Voyager, Robert Picardo and Tim Russ. Alongside members of our communications team, our own Andrew Pauly and Ambre Trujillo, they all joined together for a panel called A Star Trek Future: Your Place in Space. They share some of the stories of how science fiction inspired their real-life love of a space and space exploration, and how we can all turn that inspiration into action. Later in the show, we'll be joined by Jack Kiraly, our Director of Government Relations. He'll discuss a concerning trend, nearly 20% of NASA's workforce has left the agency this year. What does that mean for the future of space science? And of course, we'll wrap things up with What's Up with our chief scientist, Bruce Betts, including a look at the end of NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed by the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. Every year, fans of the Star Trek franchise gather in Las Vegas to celebrate the past, present, and future of Star Trek. With over 100 celebrity guests, cosplay competitions, panels, and parties, Creation Entertainment's STLV Trek to Vegas is one of the biggest events in Star Trek fandom. This year, the Planetary Society joined that celebration. We brought together some of our Star Trek friends and members of our communications team to talk about something. We all believe in the power of exploration and a hopeful future in space. Star Trek imagines a world where humanity has overcome its divisions, embraced curiosity, and ventured into the stars, not for conquest, but for understanding. That same spirit drives space exploration today. Investing in space science isn't just about going farther. It's about knowing who we are, protecting our planet and building a better future. But right now, that future is under threat. The United States is facing the largest proposed cut to NASA science funding in its history, jeopardizing decades of discovery and putting missions at risk. But this isn't just about budgets, it's about whether we choose to turn away from knowledge or fight for it. Many of us fell in love with space because of Star Trek, myself included, but science fiction alone isn't enough. To turn that dream into reality, we need to act. You don't have to be a scientist or an astronaut to find your place in space. You just have to cultivate a sense of wonder and care enough to show up. Two of my favorite Star Trek: Voyager actors joined our panel live at STLV 2025 on August 10th. Planetary Society board member and space advocate Robert Picardo, who played the emergency medical Hologram or EMH and actor and amateur astronomer, Tim Russ, who you may remember as the Vulcan Lieutenant Tuvok. They were joined by two of the members of our communications team, our director of marketing, Andrew Pauly and our digital community manager, Ambre Trujillo, who you may have seen on Instagram and all of our other platforms. Together, they explored the exciting state of space exploration and what we can all do to protect it in their panel called A Star Trek Future: Your Place in Space.

Andrew Pauly: Hello everybody. Welcome to A Star Trek Future: Your Place in Space. My name is Andrew Pauly, am the director of marketing at the Planetary Society. I'm joined today by Ambre Trujillo.

Ambre Trujillo: Hello.

Andrew Pauly: And ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage your emergency medical hologram, Robert Picardo, board member of the Planetary Society, space advocate extraordinaire. Bob, welcome to the stage.

Robert Picardo: Thank you very much. While I'm at it, since you're searching for aliens, let's bring up the half, I'm sorry, 100% Vulcan. I forget it was Spock was half. 100% Vulcan, ladies and gentlemen, Tim Russ.

Andrew Pauly: Tim, welcome to the stage.

Robert Picardo: Tim is a great, great, great long time supporter of Planetary Society and a huge fan of astronomy himself since he's a young man.

Tim Russ: Yes, I've been an amateur astronomer for about 35 years. I own a number of different types of telescopes. I got the opportunity to work with NASA on the Lucy Mission by imaging one of the asteroids in what's called an occultation. And that's only because of the gear that I have that's available to us now that we're able to buy and purchase. These thing, this technology that people are coming up with and developing is just wonderful for not only the James Webb and other telescopes that are going up in probes now, exploring our solar system, but also just right here on earth to be able to image the deep sky objects within the city that you live in. And I'm in Los Angeles and I don't have to leave out of the city to image these things. So it's just remarkable and I'm so happy to be living right now and having a chance to participate in this.

Andrew Pauly: Panel, can you tell me your space love stories? When did you first fall in love with Space, Tim, and start with you?

Tim Russ: Well, I was probably, I was in high school and college when I first became enamored with it. I started out with science fiction. I love science fiction and I think it was just a natural sort of evolutionary step, actual space science. And so I started to follow what was happening in terms of what NASA was doing. I was able to witness the first men on the moon when they landed in '69. It was just amazing. It was incredible and I never forgot it. And I think from that point forward, I became fascinated with space, all things space and space science, and was able to get my hands on actual telescopes and such when I was in my late 20s, early 30s. So it's been a really just a love of mine for that long of time. And I think just being exposed to those historical moments. I got a chance to meet Buzz Aldrin as a matter of fact, and that was an absolute thrill, wonderful time guy's kind of a, he is something else, he's a character. But he told me the story when he was actually in the spacecraft is as the lander was coming in to land because the computer failed. What a surprise. The computer failed when they were landing and Neil had to take over the manual flight of the craft and try to find a place to put it down. It was coming in on a field of boulders and it would've damaged the craft. They wouldn't not have been able to land. It might not have been upright, and they would've been stuck there. So he took over and flew the thing trying to find a place to land. And I know that Buzz says he looked over to Neil, says, "Neil, we got to put this thing down pretty soon or running out of gas." And he finally did find a place and put it down. And everybody in the world was watching this on television, waiting for them to report that they had landed. And that was such an important moment in our history, our first foray into leaving our home world and landing on another. And we're looking forward to maybe doing that again very soon.

Andrew Pauly: Amen. Bob, can you share your story?

Robert Picardo: Well, of course, same generation as Tim. I was glued to the TV as he was and most everyone in the world during the first moon landing. But I really have to say that I think it's working on Star Trek, which brought me to the Planetary Society, which really was the beginning. I don't know that I was a space lover when I started shooting Voyager. I became one mostly through my work with the Planetary Society and meeting incredible people like Buzz Aldrin and Alan Shepard and Alan Bean. I have met such incredible people who are astronauts, who are principal investigators of NASA missions, who I've been in the control room many times for various generations of Mars rovers. And seeing the kind of passion and thrill that of these other people who I've been along for the ride, let's say my 28 years of working with the Planetary Society has made me the space lover I am. And meeting science fiction fans who are passionate dreamers of our humanity, of humanity's future in space because of Roddenberry's original vision and because of each new iteration of Star Trek, we have a ever-growing audience of people who dream-

Andrew Pauly: He's talking about this room right here. He's talking about all of you.

Robert Picardo: Who dream about our future, you guys. And my first love in science was biology. I loved it as a kid. I wanted to study medicine. So I feel that my work with first Star Trek, into the Planetary Society, and now the fact that we are getting so close to the discovery of life off our world, even if it's only previous fossilized microbial life on Mars or on one of the icy moons of Jupiter, wherever we find it, I passionately believe that if we fight back against some of these cuts that are proposed, it's going to be during my lifetime. I want it to be during my lifetime.

Andrew Pauly: Hear hear, hear hear. And Ambre, what brought you to space?

Ambre Trujillo: So I was a little bit of a late bloomer when it comes to my love of space. I was the kid that loved questions, those types of questions that adults didn't know how to answer. But I was bad at math. And so I thought going to school, everybody said math is the language of the universe, which is absolutely true. But I was like, "Well, I can't do the math, so that means I'm never going to do science." And it wasn't until after high school I was wandering a library, I love public libraries, they're very nostalgic for me, and I have always loved philosophy and the human condition, and I was walking the aisles and I saw a book that said The Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. And I was like, "That sounds interesting." And it just so happened to be a book by a gentleman named Carl Sagan and it was The Dragons of Eden. And I read that book and I went, "I understand this." And that's because it was the first time for me, I grew up loving sci-fi, but when it came to technical science, it was presented to me like poetry. And I was like, "This is the way I think." And once I read that book, I became absolutely obsessed with space and I ended up going back to college a number of years later pursuing my degree in astronomy and planetary science. But I got into the industry before a degree because I was so obsessed. So you're reading all of that. School is amazing and it's great, but if you have a passion for this, there is something that is different, there's a grit that comes with it that will help you pursue your love of space. So if you're one of those people that are like, math scares you, I get it. But also there's a great poetry to science as all of you know, because this Star Trek is the best storyteller of space. So you guys are, I don't need to talk about that, because you know all the things.

Andrew Pauly: Amen. Well, and my first exposure to sci-fi, I'm not just buttering your bread, because you guys are on stage. I was watching Voyager as a small child on UPN with my parents on an old Mitsubishi tube television. So that's my story. And so you might think, where do I belong in all this? They've been talking an awful lot about the Planetary Society. Here's an old black-and-white picture of Carl Sagan. Yeah, you guys are a nonprofit. So what does that mean? Well, I'll tell you what it means. It means that we advocate for space science and the way that nonprofits advocate for their causes. Like the Sierra Club might advocate for conservation or the Audubon Society might advocate for birds rights and meadows and conservation. We advocate for NASA science conservation, and that includes traditional political advocacy. It also includes fun education and public outreach. Moments like this one. Share this clip of some of our outreach work.

[VIDEO BEGINS]

Robert Picardo: Hi, I'm here at the Griffith Observatory and it's a star party night. So the Planetary Society, along with other astronomical groups are all here looking up at the skies. I think the telescope is this way. Can I have a look through the historic Zeiss Telescope?

Laura Danly: Oh, absolutely. In fact, a friend of yours is looking through it right now.

Robert Picardo: You're kidding. Oh my God, it's Tim Russ, my buddy from Star Trek. I mean, I heard that he was an incredibly passionate amateur astronomer.

Tim Russ: Good to see you. Nice to meet you.

Robert Picardo: Nice to meet you? I was just... Tim, it's me. It's Bob Picardo. Bob Picardo. Star Trek: Voyager.

Tim Russ: Oh, you were-

Robert Picardo: 157 hours of television. p>Tim Russ: You were actually on the show-

Robert Picardo: No, I mean I was on all the time. All the time.

Tim Russ: Oh, you were?

Robert Picardo: Yeah.

Tim Russ: I had no idea.

Robert Picardo: Here is a picture of the Star Trek: Voyager cast and that's you. And then does this person look familiar?

Tim Russ: Oh, yes, yes. The bald guy that was in there. I recognize you now.

Robert Picardo: I was the holographic doctor, the computer generated... It was a very popular character.

Tim Russ: Do you carry this around everywhere you go? Would you like me to sign it for you?

Robert Picardo: No, I don't want... Just sign it.

[VIDEO ENDS]

Andrew Pauly: Bob, do you carry that around with you?

Robert Picardo: Everyone here knows that I do.

Andrew Pauly: So onto what's coming in the fall and it's not good news currently, as we're sorry to say that the space exploration budget is in grave danger. NASA's science budget is facing a 47% proposed cut by the current administration.

Audience: Boo.

Robert Picardo: Can I ask a quick question? Let's have a show of hands, how many of you think that NASA's budget is more than 5% of the government's total spending? Raise your hand if you think it's more than 5%. Raise your hand if you think it's more than 2.5%. Raise your hand if you think it's more than 1%. Okay. Shockingly, amazingly, NASA's budget historically, obviously not the big spend of the Apollo mission, but NASA's budget present before these proposed cuts has been one-third of 1% of government spending, 0.37%. And yet we're looking at these enormous cuts at deep space exploration and space science. Huge cuts where so many programs that we've invested over $12 billion, these programs will be canceled. I mean, that is just not smart. It's not strategic. We've made this investment. We're getting the data, we're learning so much from it, and yet we are threatened with pulling the plug on the-

Andrew Pauly: This is what that fraction of a penny of the federal dollar gets us. This is the current operating fleet for NASA. If the proposed cuts were to happen, 19 missions would go dark. 19 active missions. They're not ones that need research and development, need all this funding and building. They would just cease operations with the current proposed budget that is being decided right now in Congress. And this isn't all doom and... It's not great. We're going to get to what we can all do as passionate space advocates in a moment. I want to share this graph as well. This is the biggest science cut in NASA history ever. If you look at this chart, it's always like, a little here, a little there. That orange line is what's being proposed in the 2026 White House proposal for NASA science, which is what we need to speak up against. It's not all bad. That's why advocacy societies like ours, like the Mars Society and others have joined together for a Day of Action on October 6th, but there's hope. You can still speak up.

Robert Picardo: Tell us what happens at a Day of Action in Washington D.C.

Andrew Pauly: Ambre, would you like to talk about the Day of Action?

Ambre Trujillo: Sure. Who here has heard of the Day of Action? Has anybody heard of it? Yes, I like to see it. Okay, so the Day of Action is where we as Planetary Society, which is you don't have to technically be a member to join us, we go to Washington D.C. and we speak to our representatives in Congress about why space science is important. And you might think, "That's scary. I don't really like talking to people." We train you and we set you up and you go in there very confident to be able to talk to representatives about why space science is important and how it's helping not only figure out who we are, what we came from, all the cool existential questions, but also how it's beneficial to our economy. For every $1 that is spent on NASA, we get $3 back. So we all get together, we dress up real nice, and we go into the halls of Congress and we say, "Hey, this is what we care about." And we advocate and change actually happens. I know it sounds crazy, but it really, really does help.

Andrew Pauly: Your voice matters, especially because we're an independent organization. We're not professional lobbyists funded by the defense sector. We are, everyone in this image is just like you and I, just independent citizens who care about space science. They care about exploration. They care about Roddenberry's future becoming a reality. They believe that this is a good thing. It benefits both sides of the aisle. It's why we get to sit down When Bob and Bill Nye, we all go up. We get meetings with Marco Rubio and Chuck Schumer. We get both sides of the aisle. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. It can't be. It simply must not be.

Robert Picardo: As Ambre said, we are prepped. I often go in the room with other, in addition to Bill Nye, other Planetary Society board members who are by and large scientists, many of them are principal investigators of NASA missions. Some of the people on our board, what could come home more than your mission is threatened by these budget cuts. So they're very passionate, obviously about making their case. We go in informed. I usually sit and if there's a point that someone's forgotten to make, then I chime in. I consider myself back up Bill to Bill Nye. I usually just keep my mouth shut until one of the key staff of the Congress member says, "Oh, I love Star Trek." And then I say something. But I am there. I love going to this. My plan is I'll be shooting Starfleet Academy, but my plan is to be in D.C. on October 6th if I'm not shooting that Monday, and I hope you'll consider being there too if you feel strongly enough about this.

Andrew Pauly: We hope you join us. If you go right now to planetary.org, you can sign up for the Day of Action. You can become a member. You can just sign up for our emails and stay tuned to what we're doing. And you can also sign petitions digitally. Those matter too. In-person office visits are the most effective, but they have to read all the petitions, it's in their job descriptions. So please check out planetary.org.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be right back after the short break.

Jack Kiraly: This October, NASA needs you. Hi, I'm Jack Kiraly, Director of Government Relations at the Planetary Society. In response to unprecedented proposed budget cuts to NASA's science programs, the Planetary Society and a coalition of our allies and partners are organizing a special Day of Action to save NASA science. Join us in-person on October 5th and 6th in Washington D.C., you'll receive training on effective advocacy from our team of space policy experts. Then head to the Hill to meet directly with your representatives in Congress to advocate for protecting NASA's science budget and ongoing missions. If you can't come to Washington D.C., you can still pledge to take action online. We'll give you the resources you need to be part of the movement to save NASA science. This event is open to any US resident, no experience required. Space science benefits all of humanity, let's stand together to protect it. Registration is open now at planetary.org/dayofaction. We'll see you in Washington.

Andrew Pauly: So I'll come down in the audience. Yes, sir.

Audience member: I am a proud member of the Planetary Society and you should be too. I'm also a proud member of the Mars Society. In our nation now, we are facing the most serious, the biggest attack on education, science, space exploration we have ever seen in the history of our nation. And we're not going to take that sitting down. No, this is our nation. This is our democracy and our future is going to be a Star Trek future. Now we are fighting back. The Planetary Society, the American Astronomical Union, the Mars Society, and a half dozen other space organizations are joining together for the first time in a united effort to stop these attacks. We are not going to sit around and let NASA be destroyed by anyone. We're going to fight back. One incredible thing happened in Washington, D.C. a couple of weeks ago. For the first time, NASA employees, engineers, technicians, scientists came out from the Goddard Space Center, which is threatened with huge cuts, and they had a peaceful picket line in front of NASA headquarters saying, We do not accept the cuts and layoffs. Stop it. We're not putting up with that. We're going to fight back." Thank you so much.

Ambre Trujillo: 4,000 people from NASA have left. Out of the 18,000 civil servants at NASA recently.

Robert Picardo: Yeah, but we shouldn't look at this as a political battle. NASA is our greatest international brand name. NASA Space Exploration should bring us together.

Audience member: Hi, my name is Oren Whyche-Shaw and I was a government executive. I worked with NASA on several programs using space science for disease tracking, for animal tracking, for deforestation. Space is not just about going into space, which I am very much encouraged by and support, and I am a member of the Planetary Society. I've done the meetings on the Hill, but it's also about saving the planet itself. The space science that we get, that I use, that my team used helped with deforestation, with water transportation, with disease tracking, and I think you all are old enough to remember Ebola, which I was responsible for managing for, COVID. Space was involved with all of those things. So when people talk about space, sometimes it's, well, it's going to Mars or it's going to the moon. It's about saving ourselves and many of the products, not just the dollar to $3, but many of the products that were developed for NASA are used every day in your lives.

Ambre Trujillo: If anybody wants to look those up, they're called NASA Spinoffs.

Audience member: Exactly. I think everybody knows Tang. That's probably the one that everybody knows. But there's so many, including GPS for your cars. So really supporting the Planetary Society, the Mars Society. It's about not only going into space, learning about what's out there, are we alone? But also saving ourselves.

Ambre Trujillo: Well said.

Andrew Pauly: I'll go to the other side over here.

Audience member: Hi, my name is Rica French. I'm a professor of astronomy at Oceanside MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California. I'm also the Associate Director of the NASA Center for Astronomy Education. So I want to thank you all for what you're doing. I can't believe what, look at the turnout, look at this.

Ambre Trujillo: Also, can we just clap for you right now? Thank you.

Audience member: I'm one of many. I'm here because I'm standing on the shoulders of others. But the most important thing that I wanted to say is, if you're uncomfortable going to Washington, I've done that. I've done Congressional day visits with the American Astronomical Society. I'm also a member of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the International Astronomical Union. We have resources. If you would prefer to give your congressperson a phone call, your representative, your senator a phone call, if you'd prefer to meet with them in their local office, if you would prefer to write a letter or send an email, we have templates, we have boilerplate language that we can provide you. There is a way for everyone to contribute to this, and I'm glad to help you do that. Thank you very much.

Ambre Trujillo: Thank you.

Robert Picardo: Thank you.

Tim Russ: Thank you.

Robert Picardo: You're absolutely right. Today is all about what can you do the moment you leave here or the moment you leave the convention. All right, because we can all take action. You can find it on our website, on the planetary website, on how you can act with your members of Congress, what you can do personally and immediately to fight these cuts.

Ambre Trujillo: I also want to say that we also have another website. It's called planetary.org/savenasascience. So if you just Google Planetary Society save NASA Science, it will take you to our website that has all of this very succinctly put together, all of our graphs, all of the beautiful things that our space policy team has created. So if you're interested in any of that, that's the page to go to as well.

Audience member: I'm not a member, but I liked the page on Instagram, so I'm one step closer. Everybody like the page on Instagram. I'm a former teacher in biology. I have a master in divinity as well. So I'm very existential and spiritual and scientific. I can't think of a more unifying pursuit than pursuing space as far as the vision in our society right now. A collective vision to move forward, to say of all the division that we can be [inaudible 00:28:40] by. So my question is, why is there such a need to have advocacy from the people? Whereas in our history books we hear about NASA and the space race, how exciting it was during your generation. Why is it now such a huge plummet to where we need to advocate as a people for something that was so American in the past?

Robert Picardo: Well, first of all, science is under attack. Science and data have never been a political football before. Recently, carbon dioxide was declared no longer a problem. And as Neil deGrasse Tyson says, "Science doesn't care whether you like it or not."

Ambre Trujillo: And-

Robert Picardo: It may not be politically convenient for you, an actual scientific fact, but that doesn't change the fact. We can simply say, "Carbon dioxide, no problem. Don't worry about greenhouse gases anymore." That may be politically expedient for some people, but it not only doesn't solve a problem, it makes a problem worse. So just looking away from something, guys, is not going to save us. Looking away from these budget cuts are not going to fight against them.

Ambre Trujillo: Can I add something really quick? To answer your question about personal advocacy and why is to understand how NASA and Congress works. NASA is a government agency, which means that it is supported by our tax dollars. Congress is there to represent us. So when we go and we tell them, "This is what we care about." They have a civic duty to abide by that. And you might think they're not going to listen, they listen. I promise you those petitions, we had 60,000 petitions be sent out. It sounds like a lot that people aren't going to read, they read those.

Andrew Pauly: Especially if you're from a swing state.

Ambre Trujillo: Yes.

Andrew Pauly: They really listen.

Ambre Trujillo: Then they really... So something was just released not too long ago, which freaked everybody out and it was called the President's Budget Request. It has a very detailed budget about what they want to see. 700 pages just for NASA. What happens is when the president releases that and then Congress, Congress holds the purse, they're the ones that says, "Okay, we're going to allocate to these programs." So if they don't say, "We're going to save this mission." But it says in the President's budget Request that we're not going to save the mission, that mission is gone. So if we do not advocate for these specific missions and these specific things that help not only space, but here on life on earth, it's gone. That's it. And so it's so important that we talk to our representatives and they know what we care about so that they can go and represent us. So to answer your-

Andrew Pauly: Again, yeah. Oh, Bob, do you have something?

Robert Picardo: I want to add one other thing. You've heard so many success stories of our Mars rovers, how they have been directed to go to the most advantageous places on Mars to dig for soil samples that will give us the best possible science, the best possible clues about prior life on Mars and other things. These samples have been encapsulated and they're laying on the surface of Mars waiting to come back and the mission to bring them back has been canceled. So all of the money that we invested, all of that research in going and making the rovers and encapsulating the samples and leaving them there, if we don't bring them back, that is all wasted taxpayer dollars of yours. And you have a right to say, "I don't want to waste them. I want to know what those samples tell me." And that's a perfect thing you can write to your member of Congress about.

Andrew Pauly: All right, we have time for two more questions.

Audience member: Hi, my name is Matthew. I work at a planetarium in Vancouver, Canada. My question is that for those institutions, sibling institutions that are also doing space science advocacy and outreach that are in other countries, how can we be supporting the Planetary Society in those parts of the world, even though we're not part of the United States? How can we be a part of this fight and help you?

Ambre Trujillo: So we just finished a global petition where, so this is not going to answer your question because it's already done, but we did do a petition that was international where anybody could sign it. The best thing that you can do right now is share. Talk to people, share the petition, show your friends, word of mouth, what's going to help us because NASA is an international effort. So what happens to us is directly going to affect any partners, which is going to, it's just a downhill effect from there. So it's really important. If you don't have a US address and you still want to help, the best thing to do is continue to talk about this, send it to your friends in the United States and just have them sign the petition and talk to their congresspeople.

Andrew Pauly: All right, one more question.

Audience member: In contemporary history, there's a big swing towards anti-intellectualism, especially in America. What is your advice to people in terms of how to combat this issue?

Andrew Pauly: How do we combat anti-intellectualism?

Tim Russ: Wow. That's an awfully big question.

Robert Picardo: That's a tough one.

Andrew Pauly: Where do we start?

Ambre Trujillo: Where do I start?

Andrew Pauly: Well, you can start watching Star Trek.

Ambre Trujillo: Yeah. Here's Star Trek. I think when it comes to people that are anti-intellectualism, the conversation is going to be hard to start because it's not a conversation. There's no dialogue, there's no discourse. So when I think about this, I think of flat Earthers and I think about how I talk to people who are flat Earthers. A lot of people just want to be heard, and sometimes that's all they want. And so there's nothing you can do at that point. It's one of those things where it's like, "I hope the best for you." And I know that's hard to hear, but if they are open to dialogue, the best thing to do is to always approach anything with peace and try to have a dialogue and keep all of the emotions under check.

Andrew Pauly: Well, nobody likes to feel stupid either.

Ambre Trujillo: Where did you come from?

Andrew Pauly: Hello. I've been here the whole time.

Ambre Trujillo: Yeah, so it's-

Andrew Pauly: No one likes to feel stupid and everyone, if it starts off as combative of, "You're an idiot." "No, you're an idiot." "No, you're an idiot." No, you're an idiot." Then you're not going to get anywhere.

Tim Russ: I think it's about overwhelming the numbers with people who are interested in intellectualism. It's just, there needs to be more of us than them. And I think that is a very good possibility, especially in this day and age because of the way that you have access to so much information at your fingertips. When I'm out sometimes with the telescopes and I'm talking to people, they're asking me questions about some of the objects they're looking through the eyepiece and I tell them, "There's this wonderful instrument, this tool that you have, it's available. It's called the internet, and you can just look it up and all of the answers are right there." I mean, I can tell them, but if they have any questions about it, all you have to do is look it up and I mean literally just look it up. And there's hundreds of pages on whatever that object is and what it means and how it works and whatever. So the aspect of having that kind of access to information so quickly and so easily worldwide is very, very important. And I think that it's just going to come down to those people who are going to be against intellectualism versus those who are for it. And I think there's more of us than there are of them.

Robert Picardo: I know we have to close out so we don't run over. The other side of what Tim just said is there's a lot of disinformation on the internet, we all know that. There's an awful lot of crap and bad science and conspiracy theories and all that. So you do need, we have to encourage discernment among people, not just looking, but-

Tim Russ: Sure. You can go to the site that's going to have the accurate information.

Andrew Pauly: Yeah. And just one last closing thought on the theme of your question, you attract more bees with honey than vinegar is something that I think about a lot, especially with Carl Sagan and with Bill Nye. Get people excited. Intellectualism learning is fun. Think about the most contagious teacher you've ever had that gets you excited, it's because they're excited. And that's what I love about Trek fandom, if I can butter y'all's bread, because I've gone to a lot of cons and conferences and stuff like that for work, which has been a ton of fun. But my favorite, and I'm not just saying this, is Trek cons because y'all are so friendly and excited to talk about Star Trek. You're just like, "Yeah, come on in. This is a great fandom. Come hang out." Just that warm welcoming of like, "Hey, come and learn. Space is cool. Learning is cool." You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to put your guard up, get people excited and share that enthusiasm with everybody that you meet. And like Tim said, I think we'll outnumber the anti-intellectuals. Now with that, thank you.

Ambre Trujillo: Thank you.

Andrew Pauly: Thank you very much.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I think one of the biggest takeaways from our team's time at STLV was just how deeply people care about the future. Not just the imagined future of science fiction, but the real one that we're all trying to build today through space science and exploration. But that future is definitely at a crossroads. Since the beginning of 2025, nearly 20% of NASA's workforce has left the agency. To understand what's driving this wave of departures and what it could mean for space policy and science missions, I spoke with Jack Kiraly, our Director of Government Relations at the Planetary Society. Hey, Jack.

Jack Kiraly: Hey, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, we've had some really successes recently. You guys happily got to announce that both the House of Representatives and the Senate decided to try to push back against these proposed budget cuts to NASA, but we've already lost quite a number of people at NASA already. Can you talk a little bit about how people are leaving NASA and what kind of numbers we're seeing at this point?

Jack Kiraly: I sure can just, like you said, House and Senate have come back in full force to say, "We do not want these cuts that have been proposed by the Office of Management and Budget." Or OMB. But unfortunately, in a normal situation before full-year appropriations are ironed out. The administration in previous years, including in the first Trump administration, had respected the intent of Congress and would not try to implement budgetary policy or workforce policy before Congress gets an opportunity to act. Ultimately, Congress writes the appropriations bill that funds the federal government on an annual basis, but currently the Office of Management and Budget is trying to enact through various mechanisms. Enact the cuts that are only proposed that only have as much weight as the paper they're printed on do not have any legal standing as a piece of legislation or a piece of legal text. All it is is a proposal, but they're trying to act on it. And it's very concerning, not just for the potential termination of missions that we've talked about before or the cancellation of grants and contracts with various partners of the agency, but in this case, the workforce. So the workforce in the president's budget request, they basically look to shave off about 30-ish percent of the federal workforce dedicated to NASA. Now, NASA is a very small agency. Remember it's only 0.37%, that's like I think a high watermark in recent years, 0.37% of annual spending of the federal government. All told, including all of the folks over at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, which is a federally funded research and development center. So they're not civil servants at JPL, even though it's a NASA center. NASA is only just shy of 20,000 people. It's a very small agency in the grand scheme of things, but very accomplished agency. The administration is looking to shave off the size of the federal workforce across the government. And for NASA, it's about a 30% cut. And again, this is a proposed cut. Now, the way that they've gone about shaving down the workforce now about 20%, 20% of NASA is leaving, I think maybe some folks have seen the reporting. About 4,000 people are leaving the agency at the end of this fiscal year on September 30th. They officially be off the government payroll and it's voluntary. So this is the mechanism they used. So they can't lay people off. It's not a business, there's safeguards in place to prevent any administration from coming in and making radical changes to the workforce. There's workforce protection laws and various mechanisms. Well, that doesn't prevent people from opting out of continuing to work for the federal government. And so the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management, OMB and OPM, we love our TLAs, our three letter acronyms in the government, they have devised a plan where they are going to approach the budget and the future of the workforce with this air of inevitability. "We will eventually get our way, regardless of what Congress is saying. Congress, they can't figure things out. We're the only ones with a solid plan and we're going to enact this eventually." This feeling of inevitability has been very persistent across all of the federal government, specifically in NASA. There's the five things you did this week emails that that started early in February, various mechanisms to just make it more and more difficult for federal workers to do the job they were hired to do and to perform these additional tasks now. And so they opened up what was called the Deferred Resignation Program. Basically, it's a buyout. It says, "We will pay you through the end of the fiscal year, but you have to sign this agreement saying that effective immediately you're done working. You're not going to work for the federal government and come September 30th, you are officially no longer on government payroll. You're going to resign." A number of other programs that people could opt into. But the big one was this DRP, Deferred Resignation Program. And so we're functionally still paying folks for a full year's worth of work, but only getting up until when they signed that contract. And they had set a deadline July 25th for signing up for this DRP program. And at the end of that period of time, from the beginning of this year when they opened up the DRP program to July 25th, about 4,000 people at the agency took it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I remember Casey was talking about this with one of his guests on a recent Space Policy edition episode. Essentially, there was a moment where they were talking about the Apollo program and about why we haven't sent humans back to the moon. And in large part, that was because after the Apollo program spun down, a lot of people lost their jobs at NASA and they took that generational knowledge with them. And it's weird to think that we're reinventing the wheel or reinventing the rocket, in the case of SLS. That amount of knowledge that we're losing as these people exit could deeply impact our abilities going forward. What are some of the effects that we could see? Conceivably, if we managed to save NASA's budget through Congress, we might still be in a situation where we lack the human resources, the people themselves, to actually get these missions done.

Jack Kiraly: And so that's a scary proposition, because Congress is making its intent clear that they want NASA to remain whole. Well, NASA has taken a big hit. There's currently a freeze on new positions that aren't essential within the federal government. If they were to unfreeze that and hold a job fair, maybe we'd get a percentage back, because you've created a situation where there's now more distrust between these very competent, highly valued engineers and scientists and technicians and administrators and managers. You've created a culture of distrust with them. And so how many of them would come back? And if NASA's fully funded as both the House and Senate budget proposals indicate, we're still not going to be able to get all that experience back. And that creates a stumbling block for us, for the United States as it competes with namely China, but there's the European Space Agency and Indian Space Research Organization, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. There's other players in the game now who are trying to do amazing things like Mars Sample Return and Habitable Worlds Observatory and return humans to the moon and do these novel things throughout the solar system. They're putting their money where their mouth is and putting the people behind it and developing those domestic capabilities themselves. Whereas we in the United States are basically saying, "We could do those things, but we're going to give up on that." I worry about the mistakes we'll have to repeat to get back some of that experience.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's hard to even fathom all of the knock-on effects from this kind of thing. And if I think about it too long, I start spiraling into sadness. So instead, as someone who's passionate about space exploration, I'm trying to focus on what I can do. And we can't bring back the jobs of all these people that have left, but we can advocate for all the people that are still at NASA and for the future of space exploration. So I'm just personally grateful that our space policy team, you included, Casey Dreier, are working so hard to spin up a second Day of Action this year. Right now is such a pivotal time and if we can do anything to try to save more of these jobs, protect the workers of NASA and maybe all of the future technologies that would be spun off of all of this stuff, it is absolutely worth our effort. So I really want to encourage people, if you're available to come with us on October 5th and 6th to Washington, D.C., we need everyone's voice.

Jack Kiraly: Yep. It has a real tangible benefit. We can see where we are now is because people took part in this advocacy over the first part of this year, and now as we enter into the gauntlet that is the September through the end of the year appropriations period of time, it's ever more important.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks for the update, and seriously, good luck as you tromp around Washington sharing the joy of space with people we've accomplished so much so far. But there are so much left to do.

Jack Kiraly: Absolutely. So see you in October, but we'll be busy over these next two months. So looking forward to chatting about some of the stuff we're working on.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks, Jack.

Jack Kiraly: Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's moments like these that remind us how fragile progress can be even when there's passion, talent, and vision all there. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the end of a mission that we were all rooting for, NASA's Lunar Trailblazer. After launching on February 26th, mission operations, lost contact with the spacecraft the very next day. Despite all of the months of effort, they were unable to establish two-way communications, and the mission was officially concluded on July 31st. Dr. Bethany Ehlmann is the president of the Planetary Society's Board of Directors, but she's also the principal investigator for that mission. Lunar Trailblazer was designed to map water on the moon's surface and help us better understand its origins and behavior. While the spacecraft never had its chance to actually carry out that work, the mission team's dedication stands as a testament to the challenges and the courage of space exploration. We'll talk more about Lunar Trailblazer next in, What's Up with our chief scientist Dr. Bruce Betts. Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hello, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: While everybody else in the troop is off having adventures at Star Trek cons, and we're here doing science stuff. How have you been?

Bruce Betts: Science.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Science.

Bruce Betts: Reasonably, moderately, adequately okay. And you?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Pretty okay. Although I will say it was kind of a bummer to learn that the Lunar Trailblazer mission has officially been ended. We didn't get a chance to talk about it too much on the show because shortly after its launch, it had some issues. So we were holding off in the hopes that maybe the situation would turn around. But unfortunately, it seems like it's the end.

Bruce Betts: They tried for several months, all sorts of smart people doing creative things to reestablish contact. But fundamentally, the old cliche, space is hard. You do one thing wrong, you're hosed to use a technical term.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What was it going to be doing if it did work?

Bruce Betts: If it did work, it was going to teach us a lot more about where water is on the moon and what form it's in, and things related to water like hydroxyls and ice form and vapor. And basically we've had indications that water's there. Some of them were very indirect, some of them been direct. We feel there's water in the permanently shadowed craters of the poles. There's an interesting measurements of water, question mark, maybe locked into the rocks or otherwise. So it would've just given us more insights and detail on what we have notions of. But it would've done the serious mapping and used more, better spectroscopy than we've had before in terms of spectral resolution to really pull out what form the water is and how much of it there is and stuff like that. So it's rough. It's rough. And anyone who's been in this game very long has experienced failure, unfortunately in spacecraft because they're hard to do. It's a nasty, nasty environment. And this one, this was on the low budget side for NASA. It was a high risk, low budget mission, which they do sometimes. And well, they don't work as often as the low risk, really more expensive missions. And this one seemed to have lost significant power generation to keep it happy and functional and going. Now, the efforts have stopped after many months. It was lost in February. It would've been a cool mission. The principal investigator was our Planetary Society President, Bethany Ehlmann, and I feel sorry for her and the whole huge team she put together, science and engineering and everything else for a mission like that. So I don't know. I have no words. I've experienced plenty of failures, and it just hurts. By the way, only failures in space exploration, perfect successes in all other aspects of my life, just to want to clarify that

Sarah Al-Ahmed: 100% nailing it. I mean, you can't control everything and space is really difficult, but it's always just so hard when you think about how many people have worked on these missions and how important that kind of knowledge would be. We've already gotten a fair number of missions that have gone to the moon and tried to map the water, a lot of them from India, the Chandrayaan missions. But in the last year, between losing Lunar Trailblazer and not being able to launch the VIPER Rover, I feel like all this extra knowledge we could have learned about water on the moon just won't happen for a while. And that's a bummer.

Bruce Betts: You're bringing me down.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Bringing you down.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, no, and threats of cancellations and everything else throughout the solar system. Yeah, and things don't work, but things do work sometimes, and they do fly and we get more information and it's really cool and fascinating and let's keep focusing on that, because there are a lot of missions out there doing great stuff right now.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, honestly, when you think about the number of missions that have been launched and how many of them have been successful, and the scale of the difficulty, it's actually really, really impressive that we do as well as we do with how much we don't know about space. So I don't know. My heart goes out to everyone on the Lunar Trailblazer team, but I know they're all going to go on and do more amazing things. And eventually we will learn this knowledge because if we want to send people back to the moon and build maybe someday permanent lunar settlements, although that is like pie in the sky, but we would need that knowledge to do it. So I don't know, I have hope sooner or later, humanity will figure this one out.

Bruce Betts: We will. And it's largely incremental at this point. The big revelation was there, although we'll come back to something in another segment that may shed light on the history of this and how long we've been wondering about this.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, interesting. So not so random random space back this time?

Bruce Betts: No, not so random. I'm sorry. It's not.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So what is our random but not totally random random space fact?

Bruce Betts: Random-ish space fact. So water, the more you learn about water, the more you realize it is freaky, awesome, weird, and has all sorts of properties that are, many of which are responsible for why we exist on this planet. And you can go into those elsewhere. But one of its properties that I was introduced to taking classes in graduate school from Bruce Murray was that water has this interesting property that when you get it below, I don't remember the number, but 100 Kelvins-ish, it just is frozen and it just really doesn't want to go anywhere. It's a really chill dude or dudette. And so even back then, they were pondering whether there might be ice. First of all, we were starting to get indications of ice in Mercury's poles, which is freaky-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Which is crazy.

Bruce Betts: And ice in the lunar poles because when you have no atmosphere, you have no heat conduction through an atmosphere. And when you have light fluffy surfaces, you have terrible heat conduction through that. So if you can keep some part of your body nice and super cold or shadowed, then it'll become super cold. And by super cold, I mean below 100 Kelvin, tens of Kelvin's, even at Mercury or at the moon, if it's really permanently shadowed. And if water molecules come in from comets or whatever that slams into it and drops them up off in the equatorial region, it's like, "Oh, okay, this is chill." And then the sun comes out and goes, "Holy crap, that's hot." And then it migrates. At least this was the theory that you might end up having water accumulate in these permanently shadowed regions. And then starting with data, probably in the '90s, we started to get indications that, "Yeah, it really is there." Now we're still trying to figure out what form it's in and how it's interacted with the dust and the fact that micrometeorites are hitting it all over time. And so it's not a simple issue, but the fact that water, which generally is doing its thing, it actually chills hard at a temperature that's warmer than most other ices you find out there in the solar system. And by chilling hard, I mean it doesn't supplement away too easily. You can actually have a lifetime... If you stick a water ice cube at, I don't know, 50 Kelvins, whatever your favorite super cold temperature is, theoretically it'll just hang out and stay there for really hundreds of millions, millions of years. It's very, very, very, very, very, very stable. Now, obviously there are other things going on like micrometeorites and me giving way too long an explanation that can disrupt the process. But there you go.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Water in the permanently shadowed craters of Earth's moon was cool and surprising, but when I learned that that might be the case on Mercury, I don't know, that totally blew my mind. And it tracks, it makes sense. But when you think about what that experience might be like, you could go down into the crater and see actual water, ice, and then walk up to the rim and bake alive in front of the sun, space is cool. That's really what I want to say about that.

Bruce Betts: Some parts. Some are hot and some of them are very close to each other. Those different places, like the poles of Mercury and the moon.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: See, not a fully random random space fact, but a good one. I like that one.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, okay. Good, good. I'm glad. All right, everybody go out there, look up at the night sky and think about popsicles made of super cold, frozen water, ice. Warm it up before you put your tongue on it, please. Thank you and good night.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy or PB&J of space science and exploration by leaving a review and a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space and our member community app. Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by our members around the world. You can join us as we work together to advance space science and exploration at planetary.org/join. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreier is the host of our monthly Space Policy edition, and Mat Kaplan hosts our monthly Book Club edition. The second episode of that will come out this Friday, so keep an eye out for that. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor, Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed, the host and producer of Planetary Radio, and until next week, ad astra.