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On Episode 164 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss these concerning times for NASA with Casey Dreier, the Chief of Space Policy for The Planetary Society..
What a wild week it’s been for NASA. With drastic budget cuts looming — pending any action by Congress — then comes the sudden and unexpected pulling of Jared Isaacman for the role of NASA Administrator, with no replacement named.
Then came the very public split between President Trump and Elon Musk, and a flurry of furious Twitter/X and Truth Social postings, aimed at each other with razor-sharp edges.
And finally, the proposed and drastic cuts to NASA outreach and education budgets, slimming them to nearly nothing.
These are strange and concerning times for America’s space agency, a premier global brand and icon of peaceful American prowess. We turned to Dreier, who has been quite vocal in his concern, for context. These are critical times for spaceflight, so you won’t want to miss this episode!
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Space news of the week
Model Falcon 9!
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About This Week In Space
This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What’s happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?
Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.
Rod Pyle is an author, journalist, television producer and Editor-in-Chief of Ad Astra magazine. He has written 18 books on space history, exploration, and development, including Space 2.0, Innovation the NASA Way, Interplanetary Robots, Blueprint for a Battlestar, Amazing Stories of the Space Age, First On the Moon, and Destination Mars
In a previous life, Rod produced numerous documentaries and short films for The History Channel, Discovery Communications, and Disney. He also worked in visual effects on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the Battlestar Galactica reboot, as well as various sci-fi TV pilots. His most recent TV credit was with the NatGeo documentary on Tom Wolfe’s iconic book The Right Stuff.
Responsible for Space.com’s editorial vision, Tariq Malik has been the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com since 2019 and has covered space news and science for 18 years. He joined the Space.com team in 2001, first as an intern and soon after as a full-time spaceflight reporter covering human spaceflight, exploration, astronomy and the night sky. He became Space.com’s managing editor in 2009. As on-air talent has presented space stories on CNN, Fox News, NPR and others.
Tariq is an Eagle Scout (yes, he earned the Space Exploration merit badge), a Space Camp veteran (4 times as a kid, once as an adult), and has taken the ultimate “vomit comet” ride while reporting on zero-gravity fires. Before joining Space.com, he served as a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering city and education beats. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University.
