Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion 20240703

Of international affairs. This is 2. 5 hours. Our keynote speaker Jim Bridenstine is here. And one of my former graduate its now at nasa headquarters is also online and we will have him in the first panel. The topic today on Publicprivate Partnerships in space. I think some person said, does this mean too big to fail . There are lots of uncertainties about these kinds of things. Concern about the Industrial Base goes back to the beginning of aerospace in the United States. The creation of the predecessor to the Nasa National Advisory Committee on aeronautic was funded by 5,000 carved out of the main budget back in the early 20th century. Several years after the ride the Wright Brothers have already flowed. Europe accelerated is plans. If you did not hear about American Craft in world war i. You heard about french and english and japan. America was not deprived prime leader in that time. In a concern, a natural Advisory Committee for aeronautics was put together which included industry academics and government folks. A clear violation of the federal Advisory Committee act. This would never be allowed to date, but the folks came together to agree on basic research. It could be argued it was an early Publicprivate Partnership. With retail and other basics integral to us today. For someone who has a fondness in his heart for aviation and waste, i would like to ask Jim Bridenstine to provide keynote addresses. His smiling face is here in front of me but he cannot see you. But i will put him on the microphone and hope for the best. Over to you. Jim thank you, scott. It is great to be here. I apologize that i could not be there in person. I wanted to be. I was all feeling good and thought it would be a mistake to get on an airplane was not feeling good and thought it would be a mistake to get on a airplane. I am grateful to the state policy institute and corporation for putting this form together. And honored to participate. When we talked about Publicprivate Partnerships in my view, nasa has done and lots, long before i was there. In large part because of the great work of scott case and others that have been working on this for a long time. I will tell you that it was apparent to me as a nasa administrator, i got criticized a lots a program called state law system sls. The space launch system is a government owned and operated system that was does not was not designed by nasa. This was not a project nasa would have ever undertaken. This was a product put on nasa by a politician who were not was not interested in how to create a program for the moon were going to mars. They were interested in maximizing the amount of dollars that could go to certain state and certain congressional districts. I can tell you, as a former member of congress, people are very transparent about what the purpose of sls was in the it was formulated. I will also tell you, it was a perfect example of how the United States of america will not be able to out plan china. As long as we have a very distributed system where a lots of interests are at stake, it is almost impossible for the United States of america to out plan china. What we can do is out innovate and outentrepreneur china bike who will require we do things differently than in the past. To be clear, with sls i want to make sure people understand that while this project is nothing nasa would have ever created itself. Nasa owns it and gets criticized for it. I will also tell you a lot of majoring things have happened because of that. I will give some examples. This goes back to the purpose of the conference which is Publicprivate Partnerships. Because when it was created, we had a lots of things we had to invent. Spending tens of millions, maybe even over 100 million on a nasa ball this machine to bring together things of different materials and different faces and differentthicknesses. When i went and visited blue origin as a nap administrator, i was shocked there was a welding machine that looked exactly like the one at the assembly facility. The reason it was the reason it was affairs because it was purchased offtheshelf after tens of millions, if not over 100 million was spent by nasa in the development of this technology. Even though this might not have been the most Efficient Program in history, it resulted in technology that commercial companies can benefit from and drive down costs and increase access. When we think about the sls rocket, heres why nasa would not have designed it this way. You are using space element inches which are one of the greatest in the history of mankind. They are also the most expensive and for a Space Shuttle, it makes sense because you can use them dozens of times for every time you go up into space. But for sls where you throw away the court staged on every vehicle, it might not make sense to buy an engine for 100 million apiece. Then you think about the rocket boosters and technology that came straight from the Space Shuttle program. Then the tanks on the Space Shuttle used for the course stage of the sls. A lots of capability that were legacy from the a lots of capability that were legacy from the 1970s was upgraded into rockets. The technology to the ability is important. We now have a vehicle that can take this to the moon and get our capability to the moon. We have the gateway, the Orion Capital and commercial service model. When we think about the future, how are we going to do things . We have to think, how do we take advantage of Publicprivate Partnerships to share in the costs and risks . How do we develop an Industrial Base that will make the United States of america competitive for the teacher. When we think about the development of the sos for deep bass exploration and think about starships, and who will revolutionize how we get to space. When you think about starships, if you are trying to maximize the cost per mass or space or to the moon and are trying to maximize for that, you want large volume and large mass vehicle so you have to invent the largest rocket that has ever been created and do things like transfers you in the environment with the vacuum and microgravity and all different things. This is challenging but if it is accomplished, or when it is accomplished, it will be transformational. I want to be clear and have said this frequently. The only thing worse than a government monopoly is a private monopoly of the government is dependent on. Which is the direction we are quickly heading. You could argue we are there right now when you think about reasons why we have the International Space station work screwed to the International Space station. If we are going to do you commercial development of these capabilities with a partnership with the government, the government needs to understand it is with the government interest to have multiple providers competing on cost and innovation. Each of those providers will get customers that are not the government, in this case specifically not nasa, and then we can drive down costs and increase access. We can improve safety at the same time. I think it is important to recognize that how we formulate Public Private partnerships for Space Exploration is critically important. The contracting tools that have been very instrumental in the past are going to still continue in many ways where there is no commercial capability. But where there is commercial capability, we need to change the way we do things. Can we create Publicprivate Partnerships with the development of capability and technology . Instead of owning and operating hardware, can the government buy services . Can the government buy data . If we can do those things, the competitive markets where providers have customers who are not the government, we can significantly read costs and risks. And at the same time, we can create the Industrial Base or may the United States of america is competitive in a way we cannot out plan china. Those are my thoughts it be upset of this conference. I will be watching the conference after my comments. We have some time. If you want to open up to questions were asked and questions yourself, i am here. Scott that is terrific. Thank you very much. [applause] i want to do two things. I want to open it up if there are any get questions for jim. Then i have a surprise keynote speaker. Any questions for jim right now . Either online or q a . I am looking around the room. There is a question from online. How do we get Program Offices to embrace multiple vendors . Still seeing in many cases where they preferred to pick a one too early to focus all resources on and one type of leadership is forcing them not to. Im sure you have no experience with that. Jim when i was at nasa, i was very clear. When you think about human landing systems on the moon, if we are going to buy services from a commercial company, we need to have multiple providers. The only thing worse than a government monopoly is a private monopoly that the government is dependent on. Nasa looked at as a budget and what we anticipate future budgets to be, you will have a single human landing system for the moon. They selected space x which they thought was the right approach. I am not making any judgments. Space x has a unique and Game Changing approach. While i will say is, you do not want to give any private Company Purchasing power over the american continent. That has happened in the past and can happen in the teacher. I was talking to members of congress, telling them that you need to have multiple providers. I was not the only one, i know a lot of others were. And we have bipartisan support for a second human landing system. And now we have that into a contract to achieve just that. It requires vigilance and it is also important to have Political Leadership at these agencies because apart from Political Leadership, some of these tough decisions go right back to what is the budget into what can we get for this . It drives you to solutions that in the short term makes sense but in the long term will result in a law higher costs and see the blessed capability. There is a of things that can be done to increase the number of providers. Political leadership is a key component. Scott terrific. We have to all pile on with additional thought. And a lot of time, people talk about having additional providers and pressing on prices. That is certainly true but in the space business, it is not a normal market. This is not the Principal Market of buyers and sellers. One thing nasa has burned into deeply is the value of redundancy. In the aftermath of the columbia accident, we would not have been able to maintain the station without the russians. And having similar redundancy. There is strong pressure to pick one provider in the case of commercial crew having two around. That is important because you do not know how people will perform. Even if you do not buy into the commercial arguments about competition and future growth, simply in selfdefense, there is similar redundancy. It is Something Program managers can relate to so you do not have to buy into arguments. Jim yes. You go back to the challenger accident. We had a period of three years where we had no access to space at all. He put all our x into one basket and that was the lesson of the past we need to be mindful of today. Scott, also, this was when you and i first met. I was a member of congress and had constituents every year that died in tornadoes. I was trying to figure out, how do we improve weather prediction . The jps as jpss satellite was way behind schedule and being delayed a couple years longer. The question was, how do we mitigate yet that we make ourselves dependent on a single system. We were asking questions on the science community, what happens if we lose the satellite that was the predecessor to jpss . It was beyond the end of his life and the jpss was not ready. They said we would lose the ability to protect up to 25 of severe storms. Here we are with dependency on a single system, a single government purchased owned and operated system without any redundancy that will have huge implications for mike lives in oklahoma. How do we create more diversity . He brought in experts like you. We talked about, can we do commercial hyper structural, can we do commercial radar . Can we do gps radar . The answer was, yes, we can do these things. We need budget. But the resistance we got from government bureaucrats was overwhelming. The original argument was, commercial gps and radio data will not fit the standards for the numerical weather models that no a user. Great. Tell us those standards and we will incorporate them into the commercial data set. Then we heard, we have this partnership with taiwan with the cosmic consolation. We do not want to undermine the relationship with taiwan. We can augment government provided gps gp has a radio occupation with commercial provided gps occupation. Lets do that. The other excuse was that the world of euros to go through efficiencies that if we buy any commercial data, we have to give it to the world for free. Therefore, we cant buy commercial data because nobody will select us if we have to give it to the world for free. It didnt matter what response we gave, there was a resistance that was going to be had. So he said, ok, lets create contracting mechanisms where we can license the data to the u. S. Government without having to give it to the world for free. We actually had to write a bill in congress in 2017 that ultimately forced noaa to buy commercial data, gps data and feed it into the weather logs. We got that bill created. A pilot program. After the pilot was finished, now noaa is by a commercial gps radio quotation data from multiple providers and the cosmic constellation continues to provide data and now we have numerous commercial companies also providing data. All of this results in, as you said, scott, it is not just driving down costs and increasing competition and creating innovation, all those things are happening, 100 percent. But we also have more resilient architectures and ultimately, more dissimilar redundancy that makes our weather prediction capability far more resilient. So we are not dependent on a single government satellite that if it dies, we lose the ability to predict any 5 of severe storms in oklahoma, which, by the way, is devastating for a state like oklahoma. Great, thank you. I would like to shift over to my surprise walkon keynote, my friend, steven sakowitz is here. We probably will not tell the story of how we met during the proposal for marking the Space Shuttle to ensure the future monopoly of the Space Shuttle program. He and i both have much sin to atone for. But i am thrilled to see him here with us today. Steve. [applause] thank you, scott. Hes had surprise keynote, i was, like, who . [laughter] i actually just wanted to say a few words. First of all sco of aerospace corporation, i am excited to be partnering with the Space Policy Institute on this wonderful event. Scott, thank you and your staff for putting it on and also our folks for the great work you have done putting this together. From my perspective, the whole issue of Publicprivate Partnerships actually goes back to when i was back in school, it was my final year of getting my engineering degree and i thought , wouldnt it be interesting to take an elective in partnership with the Sloan Business School . I did. I was, like, this is pretty interesting stuff. Wonder if theres something i can do in the space sector. I quickly realized in those days that if you have 250 million dollars, you, too, can have a startup. I went to a Consulting Firm that was primarily a wall street Consulting Firm which was doing a lot of work and trying to come up with Publicprivate Partnerships, and literally the first three assignments i got out of school, i was able to characteristically good, the bad and the ugly. The good, i got a Business Plan tossed in front of me and they said do some due diligence. Three guys that went to m. I. T. And harvard, they had this crazy idea to make an upper stage commercially on the shuttle called the transfer orbit stage and the company was orbital sciences, which a couple of years ago was bought for 9 billion. You could argue they are one of the true pioneers of the commercial effort from a long time ago. So that was good. The bad was that i also had some contracting work with nasa, trying to figure out how to commercialize the space station, because the space station was in the early days of development. We looked at things on the shuttle, protein crystal growth it was bad. The cost of getting it checked space was exorbitant, the cost of operations, exorbitant. There was no business case. Then scott back in those days, as i was going to monopolize the shadow, it was called the space transportation system. We would get rid of all expendable large vehicles. Nasa said we need somebody that can actually sell it ride on the shuttle. We teamed up with rockwell. This guy walking to my office to work on the proposal with me, his name was scott pace. We got ready for what i thought would have been an winning proposal. Then we moved away from the shuttle being the sole provider. That was that. Fastforward to today, so much has changed in these last few years that has really upended everything that happened to me when i first got out of school. The cost of launch has dropped an order of magnitude on a per kilogram basis. Accessed two space has opened up from multiple providers both large and small access to space has opened up from multiple providers, both large and small. Literally, we have kids in college now that are designing their own satellites and can actually put them in orbit, people in startups, starting with a few thousands and getting things going. That has dramatically changed and opened up the commercial space as were seeing it today. That is what makes this conversation so important. On the Publicprivate Partnership, its all about risksharing agreements, how do we find the right balance between government and private sector on leveraging it. I will tell you it is tough to follow Jim Bridenstine, which, by the way he is a board member in every space. When we have our board meetings, he knows a lot. But its not just civil space, National Security space particularly dod and the Intelligence Community has very strong interest and is putting serious dollars in trying to leverage the most in commercial. We have are literally agencies being overwhelmed today by the amount of activity, whether it is launch licensing, spectrum and space traffic management. What i find interesting is from the time i left school to now, it used to be the government was outspending the private sector 2 1. Now it has flipped. When we talk about quantum, aa, 3d manufacturing. The question is how does the government to take advantage of it . It boils down to the value that it gets back. The purity of the private sector is they are willing to see new things move faster then the government which tends to be more riskaverse. Also, you have the benefit of resiliency. Jim tried to point out and scott tried to point out, you have the opportunity to have architectures if you can get multiple players out there to truly give you resiliency. Back to the children to exit when we watched it go down, the ability to diversify multiple launch, multiple satellites, more exciting. It, we are entering the future where hopefully these constellations will do away with some of the ground infrastructure that is in place, which opens up new possibilities. Issues of standards and modularity become much more important. The government can have a very positive role if they can create the kind of industry standards that would allow many veterans to play without dampening opportunities for innovation. I will end at that point. Thank you, scott, i want to thank the panelists following. I think it will be a good conversation today. Thank you. [applause] and would like to invite the first panel up. C. Lets see. Great. This is not on. Ok. Ok, good. Henry hertzfeld here at the Space Policy Institute. We just heard two great sermons from stephen sakowitz and of course, scott as well of what we will talk about today. The first panel we have will be oriented a little more towards history. We have some great experts, you can read their bios in the leaflet. And we will start i think with patricia, who has long experience in the Communications Area working with government, brian wessel from nasa, general counsels office with background in Investment Banking as well before, and moon kim, one of our former students who is at california and i think on the link. Yes, good. Who wrote a dissertation on Publicprivate Partnerships. I think well have a great discussion as we move into this. Well think about what worked and what did not work. Because i think one thing i want to emphasize, Publicprivate Partnerships, the term is a bit misleading. In fact, when we were developing the agenda, we called it publicprivate synergy. The relationship between government and industry in the United States is, of course, extremely important and always has been, going way, way back, not just in the space sector, but it is important to note that there isnt one template, no one thing that is a Publicprivate Partnership, there are many different options. Brian will talk about some of those that nasa uses, commerce, with dianes experience there as well. And many other at nasa and other agencies. It is really trying to figure out that tension between companies that need to make a profit to survive, and government with often other objectives, benefits, Mission Performance and Mission Success and so on. Needing that in doing it successfully is really what we are interested in, and this umbrella term of Publicprivate Partnerships may mislead for a variety of reasons, including the fact that originally i think it was developed in europe and was oriented towards the delivery of basically Public Services. Space is not that way. We know there are differences which i hope this discussion will bring out later, and we can delve into that in a lot more detail. And of course, after m oons presentation, it will be diane howard who spent the last acquisition in the Commerce Department trying to encourage and incentivize industry and has been working in the National Space council for the last, what, two or three years . Two years, really putting together a lot of comments from industry and other government regulators in space and trying to make some sense and to look ahead as to how we best work this in the future. I dont know how much you can talk about the specifics today, because nothing has been released [laughs] but the process certainly mustve brought out a lot of things that arent quite that are quite relevant today. So with that, well start with patricia and welcome you. Thank you for coming. Panelist thank you, it is a pleasure. I wanted to bring some examples of the Publicprivate Partnership from my own background which is in the commercial and Communications Satellite world, and it turns out that arent many good examples in the last 20 years or so. There are a couple of hosted payloads here and there, a couple of attempts at using federal frequencies on commercial satellites, by the examples are a bit sparse. It occurred to me that this might be because the origins of the Communication Satellite sector really started with a version of a Publicprivate Partnership in intelsat. I propose that i will talk about it. Its a bit of a stretch. I will see if they can convince you that it was a Publicprivate Partnership and whether there are lessons we can learn from it. No disrespect to the audience, but looking at the crowd, i think it is worthwhile asking, a show of hands, who was involved in those years. I started in the 1980 area, but there were a number of decades before. Who can crosscheck me . Excellent. So there may be points of question or discussion that i may refer to to the subject letter experts that lived through it. I lived through the pan amsat years, then more recently at starlink. So, that really started with a premise back in the early 1960s that Communication Satellites were too expensive and too risky for Single Company or even a single government to undertake on their own. And that premise, i think, underlay the structure that was set up for intelsat, and also was fueled by the space race, there was an urgency to figure this out and invest and get to space and turn this technology into not just a usable service, but their diplomatic and geopolitical force. And i think that treatybased format, a Satellite Company based on an international treaty, it was quite successful in developing technology and proliferating services that were available around the world. It worked until the premise weekend. So that will be one of my points that i want to bring up, that other companies coming into the sector being willing to invest and innovate, broke the premise that made this work and that led to the end of every position. The lesson i think we want to listen for or think about is, what does intelsat tell us not just about setting up for Publicprivate Partnerships which is a great exercise right now, but how do you get out of them, and how do you think about the exit when you are planning the entrance . That is what i pitched to henry and he gave me some grace to explore. So it is not a perfect ppp, but i am going with it. Intelsat, a quick, almost disrespectfully short summary proposed, really in a speech by john f. Kennedy, then followed up with an act of congress that established comsat, a private company that would be later publicly traded, followed by that with the establishment of an International Organization with, i think it was seven countries originally there is a lot of data on intelsat so i wanted to make sure i got it right. 1962 established comsat. The organization itself formed with seven other governments the year after. The premise, is the country signatories would find the organization and the organization would make technical decisions and what we would call Business Decisions on how to deploy those assets and the services they would deliver. In the first 10 years or so, those decisions were made by comsat. So i look at the period after the first 10 years after comsat relinquished the role of making decisions about the collective pool of money funded by the signatories. That was turned over then to the organization itself. Comsat became one of many operating entities that managed the service, the u. S. Half of any service to any satellite. The upanddown link by the other country was managed by their corresponding company, which, in most cases, was a government owned foreign company. They would split the proceeds of the call and the service and there have circuit through the negotiated agreements, which sounds kind of crazy now, but was very common for phone service to be paid out on half circuits. So after this initial role of comsat migrated to a real operating entity rather than a manager an asset manager and network developer, i think comsat really turned into a Genuine Company with a government mandated monopoly. It was a private Company Publicly traded with with the opportunity and, in fact, the exercise of developing new product lines, competing with terrestrial alternatives, in some cases, to provide a satellitebased communication service. In addition, taking benefit standard rule of servicing the u. S. Lending or transmission of services for anything that its International Counterparts brought to service. It became it took on a comparable role later when a Service Called inmarsat was developed for maritime services. But from 1973 on, you see an interesting period until 2001 when comsat was acting like a private company with the benefit of relatively little Asset Investment except on the ground. They didnt have to pay for the satellites. It guaranteed access to the space resources, which no one else had. And, for the most part, a fair amount of influence in its pricing, until the fcc decided to rateregulate them like other carriers, which was the first chiang, i think, in there protected status. In 1972, the government decided they would allow open skies for domestic companies. A couple of telcos coming to the market, but not until the 1980s duly started seeing the investment, the boldness, the familiarity with the technology, the sense that there is a business to be had for this risky investment in satellites. You start to see companies that want to push and challenge and questioned the monopoly by the time the 90s coming around, Companies Like panamsat where i worked. Here, the interesting thing is that the treatybased premise started looking a bit out of date in that it primarily protected voice traffic. The purpose of the system in the late 1960s was to guarantee telephone connectivity to countries around the world. By the 1990s, that was not where the money was, the money was moving cable channels around the world, not protected by the intelsat trudy, that was not the monopoly. Or connecting companies and their farflung locations in private networks, not protected by the treaty. These other companies had a way of starting their revenuegenerating engines even without the monopoly falling by the wayside. So, by the time that those companies were flourishing, and in some cases, pretty happily pursuing markets that were outside of the fenced in Publicprivate Partnership that intelsat and the u. S. Government had with comsat, there was a receptivity to try to push for privatization. So intelsat privatized in 2000, Congress Passed an act to privatize any privatized shortly after and intelsat is now a private company, publicly traded. It has at its own interesting cycle. I would argue that that period of comsats privacy, genuine private activity and the creative drive that it was able to do for Satellite Services and Satellite Technology was certainly enabled the Publicprivate Partnership. The exit from that where the market no longer seems to need it, with pretty messy. There are a bunch of differences from a Publicprivate Partnership but i would say, the three Lessons Learned was that there was a clear purpose for both parties and clear rules, but that no longer fit the marketplace at some point, and holding onto that special relationships and the benefits it accrued ended up being a market distortion at some point. Monitoring for the validity of those benefits is probably a a good rule of tumb. And figuring out what you would do, what the market looks like when the time has passed. So, that is my observation from the world that i saw. Moderator thank you very much, patricia. And might i add that i think natalie the market changed, but changed a lot because of the technology and the capabilities changed over time. That is the ways regulation and other things are very slow to change. But we are recognizing that and trying to build it in part of the lesson. Panelist factor viii. Maybe that is a bellwether of, you know, the deadline coming to end things, is the innovation. The technological dynamism still coming from the public partner in the partnership. Or is it pushing against it and trying to hamstring those that are hoping to moderator and it can come from industry, it can come from government, from anywhere. Panelist from research, absolutely. Moderator good. We will go to the presentations and if we have time at the end, we will take a general q a at that point. Brian wessel is general counsel at nasa acting, and from your experience within the industry and now with all of the the whole map of options nasa has in contracting, we look forward to your comments now. Thank you. Panelist sure, before i start, i will give you my standard lawyers disclaimer, the remarks i will give today are based on my own opinions and observations, not necessarily sort of official position of nasa. Jumping into it, i want to talk about Publicprivate Partnerships and International Context. There are difficulties that arise in this International Context that are specific to publicprivate work across borders. There are also ways to overcome those difficulties. Starting out with the challenges , it is difficult for governments to work directly with foreign companies. And i dont think they should be a surprise. Government entities are generally funded with taxpayer money, and their mission easily involves things like spending that money, as Jim Bridenstine mentioned, in the domestic constituencies. Also things like developing the domestic industry arent generally a Government Agency is not tasked with spending taxpayer Money Worldwide or developing worldwide industrial capability. We want to do that within our own country. So where it is natural to work with domestic companies, the logic doesnt really extend to Publicprivate Partnerships directly between one countrys government and another countrys private companies. At nasa, have seen that from both sides. On the one hand, it is difficult for nasa to go directly and do some cooperative activity with a foreign company, especially if there is a Domestic Company that we could be working with. And then on the flipside, when we are looking at our sister space agencies in other countries, those space agencies. Usually want to spend their taxpayer money on american companies. They want to develop their own domestic Space Companies in a lot of countries with smaller space agencies, that is kind of the raison detre for the entire space agency, to develop that countrys home private sector capability. They want to spend their money domestically too. So, thats the big challenge to Publicprivate Partnerships in an International Context. Now, how do we overcome that . Usually it requires some level of government to government cooperation. So we will have one government working with another government, and then at that government goods and works with their private company. So, to give a hypothetical example, we have got country a that wants to have their private company put their instrument or whatever, nasa mission. Put it on a nasa mission. No site is not usually going to burn by that instrument directly from the foreign company, but country as space agency could go into a contract with that company, the foreign space agency buys that instrument and then partners with nasa and now, nasa has a partnership with our government partner. It could be Something Like that space agency provides the intimate that they just bought from industry. Nasa will provide the launch or integrate it into our mission and, bam. You have the participation from the private company in a foreign country on a nasa mission. But neither country has had to spend their taxpayer dollars outside of their own country. So we have seen that a lot, especially as in things like the artemis program, nasa is looking to emphasize international partnerships, and commercial partnerships. This is a way to bring those two together and shorter shoehorn in sort of shoehorn in intercommercial partnerships. We are starting to see some examples that break this model. That model, i would call the publicPublicprivate Partnerships. We are starting to see some private companies are actually acting as facilitators between two governments. A recent example we saw of this was the saudi astronauts who flew on the axiom straight to the International Space station. You have astronauts who were selected by the space agency of saudi arabia, and they are flying to the International Space station, which is a space station set up by other governments. And in the middle of facilitating that, you have a private company. So we are starting to see the emergence of publicprivatepublic partnerships, which, in my opinion, is a good thing, it sort of breaks the mold of siloing dollars within each country and then forcing complicated barters to work out every deal. The last area that i see success in Publicprivate Partnerships across borders is, what we call at nasa, reimbursable Space Act Agreements. Many of our Space Act Agreements are nonreimbursable or cooperative, where both side kind of bring something to the table and there is no exchange of funds. But we also do reimbursable ones where nasa would have something, a unique facility, unique goods or services that arent available on the commercial market from u. S. Providers. And if we have excess capacity there, rather than just letting it sit dormant, we can allow companies, either u. S. Or foreign companies, to use those facilities and reimburse us for the cost. Generally, nasa requires that these that the activities be consistent with nasas mission. In that way, it is kind of a winwin for the private company, they get to use this unique facility on things like wind tunnels or the big vacuum chambers nasa has, you can imagine the sort of things. And then on the government side, it is a win because we are not letting those capabilities sit dormant, we are having private companies from, either domestically or internationally, take advantage of the unique capabilities that we have. So that is kind of a brief overview of the challenges to doing Publicprivate Partnerships in the International Context. Some of the models we have developed to overcome those challenges. Moderator thank you. I have one question. Not to get too complex, but if you contract with the domestic Multinational Company and that company then contracts with a subsidiary in another nation, does that count as a domestic expenditure or a foreign one assuming, of course, export control and other issues are taken care of . Panelist we usually try not to pierce the veil of our subcontractors. When we do contracts with multinational companies, we usually like to do them with the u. S. Entity. We do look at, you know, what is going to be the domestic benefits from those contracts versus what is going to be the foreign benefit, you know, is the work bring to be done in the United States . Wheres the technology going, that sort of thing. Moderator thank you. I assume that moon is on the screen . Yeah. Good. Panelist can you hear me . Moderator yes. I cant see her, but i can hear you. If i look over here. Thank you. I was just going to say a couple of words. I am glad to see you. I know that you will be working in washington soon, but you are still in california and you are little you are with nasa. He will be talking more about your experiences with research and Publicprivate Partnerships than your job at nasa. I will turn it over to you. You are good. Panelist thanks for having me here. Super quote to be here as part of the distinguished speakers today. This topic of Publicprivate Partnerships and collaborations is very near and dear to my heart. I did my usually dissertation on this very topic and i did research on this topic at nasa where i was working as a researcher. So i want to talk about a series of studies i have conducted at nasa headquarters, in the Strategic Investments division, specifically working for the agency. I would like to talk about some of the studies have conducted so far. So one of the studies was to identifying in Publicprivate Partnerships and industry collaborations for nasa, identifying and categorizing. The problem is, as you know, we dont have a way of identifying in the space sector. [indiscernible] one of the things i created from a dissertation was a series of projects we have, we compared the projects into a to 2023 and what we saw, was that there was an increase in number of partnerships and dollars. Compared to 2013 and 2023, theres been a shift in the types of Publicprivate Partnerships and industry collaborations that we do at nasa. Compared to 2013, the partnerships involved more commercial or private sector involvement. Not merely just operational concessions that we do, now in 2023, there is a lot more private sector involvement. That was one of the studies that we did. The study that followed on that was asking the question of, how effective are these Publicprivate Partnerships and industry collaborations that we do at nasa . We did this in partnership with the administrators office, which showed [indiscernible] the question of how effective are ppps, we first realized, we dont have a definition of an Effective Partnership at nasa, and we also dont have an official way of measuring effectiveness of partnerships. So what we have to do is we had to first develop a measure of effectiveness to measure how effective. Those measures of effectiveness were based on cost savings, so how much did nasa actually saved on the partnership. Ken oh, so, capability of government, did nasa actually receive access to matter capability. And lastly, commercial market development. Through the partnership, was nasa creating more in the commercial market . What we found in the study, we look at programs that had already finished. What we found is that not all Publicprivate Partnerships and industry collaborations are effective. We found a mixed bag of effective, less effective, and inEffective Partnerships. What that allowed us to do was to realize that not all Publicprivate Partnerships are great. We always talk about how amazing , but we dont talk about Public Private partnerships to make that work effective. The findings of this study allowed us to start looking at things, understand what are the factors. Those are the series of studies i have done so far. To share some of the success factors we found, cost savings are more likely to occur when other customers exist which is quite obvious. When there are economies of scale with more customers, nasa is able to benefit from the decreased cost of services. The second factor was that clear demand signals from nasa would Service Acquisition contracts early on really helps with the Business Development side of the private entity. If and when nasa provides clear signals on how much were going to procure for the service and operations phase of the program, the private sector is able to better analyze and assess their business demand, which helps them to manage their resources better. The third factor was that communications of rules and responsibly are very important. Without having gone through Clear Communications of those factors, it is really hard to build Publicprivate Partnerships. One other failure factor that we found was that we see these programs over designed as traditional events but then they end up becoming a Publicprivate Partnership in the middle of the operations phase. A good example would be the shuttle operations, which we find to be an inEffective Partnership. Structuring a program from very early on as a Publicprivate Partnership all the way through the service, operations and acquisitions phase is very important in designing a successful partnership. As we are conducting more studies, we will try to do more studies on this topic. Some of the studies are, what are the implications of these Publicprivate Partnerships on nasa . For example, nasa relies on a Publicprivate Partnership type that focuses on, is the design and if it meant being done a private sector, what does that mean for nasas future workforce and expertise . Another study we are conducting is, we have identified types of Publicprivate Partnerships, categorized them, and know we are trying to understand the commonalities that take place. The next question would be what are the strengths of these different types of partnerships . The last one is, what are the conditions of success i talked about some of them the studies are looking at literature on this and focusing more on what are the conditions that set us up for a successful partnership. If any of you have any comments or thoughts about these studies, definitely reach out to me. We are continuing to do this research at nasa in the Strategic Investments division. So feel free to reach out to me. Thank you for the time. Moderator thank you for that very useful and concise summary of elements of success and failure. I think one thing i dont know if you have any thoughts on this now or you will save them for q a the importance of communications, not just during a negotiation, but during the performance of the contract, and with changes in all sorts of things, people and Technology Available in longerterm contracts, and all sorts of things, is very important. But how do you formalize Better Communications . Can you even formalize it, so that misunderstandings dont happen and you can turn what could be six failures into successes . That is something to think about as we move on. Finally, diane, you have had a lot of interaction with private and all the regulators and Government Agencies involved in these issues recently. The floor is yours. Panelist thank you very much. First annual caveat, if anything remotely provocative but here comes from me, not my involvement with the National Space council. I have a few responses to some of my panel members. First of all, further to your discussion about intelsat, i want to make the observation for the group here today that intelsat and comsat were a big impetus in the negotiations that the United States was adamant about doing the outerspace treaty negotiations for article six, which is the bane of my existence. [laughter] there you go. Ppps, i do know that my involvement with Publicprivate Partnerships, or synergy, did not start when i came to government, but i actually started thinking and writing about Publicprivate Partnerships long ago when i was in grad school. I also have something i would like to bring to brians a response to your very good talk and that is, more and more, we are seeing this track 1. 5 diplomacy, and the International Corporation models include both government to government, government to industry, and industries between the two governments also getting involved. The National Space council has been including these 1. 5s in the much more formal way when we do dialogues and that is precisely so that those Industry Partners can start to work with one another and then bring it to their governments and find ways to Work Together. Last but not least, moon, you are not off the hook, the really good observations we got earlier today about resilience. About how there are more benefits to Publicprivate Partnerships and signature than just the dollars and cents. I would posit that perhaps you could add the Resilience Impact is one of your metrics for determining the effectiveness of a Publicprivate Partnership. I will not wax fantastic for too long, but i will make a few points. When talking about Publicprivate Partnerships, invariably we are talking about at least two elements. One is that they are governed by a contract or an agreement. The second, that there will be some transfer of risk. They are creative. That is the thing about them. So, a way to address some of the exit strategy problem which is an incredible lesson learned, is through the fact that you can build in an exit strategy in the contract, so long as it is a legal contract. I would posit that that would be wearing would also get your clarity with regard to the roles and responsibilities under that agreement. Do your best and build in enough discussion and dialogue. There are models of Publicprivate Partnerships that run the government along a continuum run the gamut, along a continuum. They dont all look the same. The thing that make them look different is this transfer of risk, something that is, you know, you have all kinds of risk. You have project risks which are internal to the joint venture. In general risks, which are external, macro. They are sent and that is happening independent of that particular synergy. Right now in the government, we have seen not just a, but reliance among commercial capabilities become more acknowledged, which, from where i sit, is a beautiful thing. They have helped us ask questions about how we can better integrate these commercial capabilities in a way that is not just necessarily buying it when you need it, but actually building it into a procurement model. Finding ways to plug it from design to build the way to the strata financing model. All along that, these are all different publicprivate synergies. I will tell you that some of the discussions that we have had have forced us to look at what is actually inherently governmental. And that has forced us and see, what does that do when we start look into the private sector for these very important government functions that are inherently governmental, then, what, if anything, does the government owe to the private sector . How do we transfer the risk . Is it the same for everyone . Is it the same for different kinds of risk . Does it differ if it is these time are not peacetime . In a world where we dont talk about war we dont have war in ukraine, we have conflict, a situation of tension does that change it . Admits a big difference when talking about how risks are covered or included in the contract, something also to think about. I will give you an example, you asked us to give you something that was a failure, and one failure that comes to mind is galilea, which is a raving success right now. The crown jewel in the e. U. s programs, the european version of pnt. Originally it was anticipated to be a Publicprivate Partnership and it, was difficult for them to get industry people on board because of the issue of liability. Were they going to be covered . So this is not a new problem. Ultimately it became a Public Service model and governmentprovided. They ditched the ppp. There is a lesson to be learned. Right now the discussions in the u. S. Government have also involved something that comes out of this commercial integration and our increased reliance on things like imaging and telecommunications from the private sector, and that is looking for ways to do this protection. Looking to the civil air reserve fleet craft. And of course, its not an apples to apples comparison. I am sure you have seen press about this. Ssc just cut the ribbons on their center in chantilly. One of the things theyre working on is a space version of crafts, like the commercial augmented space reserve. The big issue is, how are we going to handle this issue of liability . So i will go back to what i started with. It is contract, and it is also transfer of risk. I will suggest to you that if you are allocating costs and your risks, you can do this through contract and if you take more risk, you get more money. You take less risk, you get more money. Less risk, you get less money. There are ways we can approach this and because they are creative and occur on a continuum and there is good reason for us to want to loved those innovations, for every reason he heard Jim Bridenstine give to you earlier, i would posit that that is a good way forward. Moderator thank you. I thank you. I think all the panelists for really very clear and short but still comprehensive coverage of some of the issues we have had in the past. Diane, one question for you intrigues me. The definition of a inherently governmental gear, new and [laughter] new alice case law does have definitions but its really amorphous. [laughter] new we have a lot of sick people here in d. C. And elsewhere putting on their thinking caps and talking to us and been princeton. Anybody that has good ideas on a set of metrics that that we can use to determine. But it is a sticky situation. I would posit to you that what is inherently governmental at one time may not be in the future. You kind of heard a bit about that situation in the resistance that jim first encountered with the radio quotation. Some of those conversations, we were at the tail end of those conversations during my time at commerce. Just getting that Big Government program to understand and they wanted to, but they didnt know how to implement it or bring it in in a way that was easy, so that will change as well. Moderator also there is not only a time element, but a cultural and social one. Panelist and geopolitical one. Moderator galileo started as a labeled ppp with guaranteed loans and all the rest and ended up being something that had to be paid for by public funds. Another example in europe the ault was the channel. There are other examples. But you end up really not only with the transfer and a sharing of risk, new panelist i think it is important to underscore your point that this is a moving target. Because i think it starts with a service that government feels is essential for them to provide. A bedrock piece of government. Its not a, i would like to have this new capability. That is not the nature of essential inherently government. The question is whether a commercial version of it is envisioned. Further other customers are there other customers for that service . The risk can get bogged down by its demonstration. And then at some point youre given certain benefits, some preferences to a company to develop something that no longer is inherently government, but important, or only reliable if supported by government. Panelist or modified in such a way such that it is available to government. Humvees, for example, they started out as a military vehicle. Panelist it can also depend on the competitive marketplace. To take pnt as an example, when the u. S. Was developing the first one, sure, that was primarily military in mind, but when they were working on the second one third one there are other options out there. So it is starting to look may be more commercial and less governmental. Panelist although that movement from the government believing it to be inherently government too is a very bumpy road and a very long road and it has a lot to do with trust and control. I think that is why you see in the dodmilsat kind of arena, so little relinquishing of partnership, and coinvestment. That is still overly really difficult concept there. And more effect on, say, whether we have seen it go away from government presumption. Moderator the liabilities as well. With pnt, we dont have it because it has always been a National Defense militaryowned and operated system. Other nations, some do, and some dont, with the same approach. We have any questions from the audience . We were just talking about pnt, and one of the things i noticed is there has been a struggle getting commercial Companies Involved in those because they are free services. You are essentially, giving the data away to noaa. Do you have any recommendations on how we can encourage companies to enter those spaces where we are currently a competitor to them . Panelist are you asking me . [laughter] i wish i had the answer to that question. Even in space traffic management, this is something that continues to come up. This is a real issue, this goes to distribution rates, it goes to and again, it goes back to what i said, if you take on more risk, you charge more money. If you are going to be distributed. I do believe there are ways to do it. Spd 3 tried to get back to that with the advanced and basic services. Some things are more bespoke than necessary. What should be the good aspect of something as opposed to what country market. What can drive a market. Moderator other questions from the Live Audience here . Are you monitoring . I dont, i dont, either. Scott, do you have any . Yes. You know, during the conversation, there was a lot of talk about the government benefits but not much discussion about the business side. One of the struggles i think that we are dealing with in the proliferation of contracts a commercial Service Agreement and those sorts of things is a general struggle with the government letting go of control over requirements for this program, and so we see agencies that will relieve contracts masquerading as service contracts, as requirements from the agency. And im just curious, how do we break that . What do you think is the way to redefine that . Because you cannot legislate the behavior, you cannot really regulate it. How do we do that . How do we break that . Dr. Howard well, i think you speak truth to power and you call it out. It smells like a duck and looks like a duck is masquerading as a service contract, you say ah, ah, ah. You cant let up. And there are benefits to the private sector for sure. I mean, it is a solvent customer, you know, its credibility in the investment world, government interest in the market, they are going to line up much quicker than if they dont, so there are benefits to both the there have to be. If there are, it is not really a ppp. Patricia i also think about this to a private partner, certainly for a greenfield services, using the government to accelerate or demonstrate or validate that that market exists. So others are sort of watching for risks and workability. And i think credibility is a big piece, in terms of safety and in terms of Technical Capability and seriousness, but i think one of the challenges in calling out the masquerade is that the Publicprivate Partnership definitions are particularly crisp, and crisper that you make them makes it easier to callout this procurement as a procurement, not a partnership. Has hallmarks in place to say should be about the service, not how it is delivered. It should be about the end result, not how you get there. The more this gift solidified, they should be easier to callout a line. I dont know if it wrecks that have a, but it certainly gets you something set. I dont know if it helps to have it, but it certainly gives you something said. To dianes point, by having before hundred pages of requirements, that may be reducing risk to the government, but they are also reducing the benefit of the Publicprivate Partnership, which is the flexibility, innovation, the lower cost, so, you know, i think governments will start to think, is this really worth it to us . Patricia i think that is an an important point of calling out, look what you are forfeiting. You are forfeiting the patient some of the flexibility, the nimbleness, the sort of bright ideas that you wanted to help accelerate this program and make it happen. Let me i see moon nodding a lot. What kind of relationship you are in is part of his dissertation. Theres two sort related questions here, combined together. One is, you know, from a policy perspective, you know, what can you do about companies that have such a technical or economic advantage that they outcompete all of their competition, provide assistance is make sure that some laggard can still compete . Related to that, even if you try to stir competition in a launch economy, considering the redundancy argument, it says here i would also apply it to the space economy. Hedging on a single project of a Single Company with stack speculation, so the problem right now, there is no Public Program, in my view, counteracting this, how to meditate mitigate this problem. Should this be a Public Program for is the real issue lack of sufficient private alternatives . Once there are private alternatives, then maybe you can be ok, but what you do in this interim period, where you have this dependency . What is the policy tradeoff . One other thing to that, i think Jim Bridenstine brought up, do they have to be domestic competitors . Patricia yeah. That is a good point. Understanding the government intent, you must have two domestic alternatives in space. It was with two different vehicles. The definition of what that is is not necessarily to different companies, but it is two different methods. You need to think about what youre trying to preserve and whether can be met with close partners, or speed up, this point in time as a gap, or is this a persistent one . On the satellite side, i would see a real challenge in thinking that a single project dominates for communications. If you look at any metric, seilai khoo indications as a platform to provide broadband, i think there is Something Like 5 million customers globally, which, by any measure for Global Broadband subscribers, is less than a drop in the bucket. So where i worked on starlight, currently being a dominated provider in the provision of broadband by use of a lower earth orbiting satellite, but that is a pretty modified category, and basically almost everyone else in the world is getting internet from other platforms, just because satellite exists. So think about not Just International comparisons but also others. Dr. Pace there are other innovations coming in that could potentially compete against some layers of fiberoptic cable, and that would certainly be another kind of a Game Changing sort of thing, because as you say, Global Broadband is a fairly narrow pipe, not a thick. Let me come back in the designing of the private sector, can you talk a little bit about the tension between, you know, being open enough to innovation but specific enough to be predictable . On the one hand, if nasa does not put in a lot of specifications, yes that is great, people have ideas that may be nasa did not think of, but on the other hand, try to understand, whether any customer will actually want to buy a sort of another problem. Businesses like pretty good believe will take risk, but they want to understand that risk exposure relative to the market and all about. Just to be open ended, sometimes too much risk. So how did the Program Offices at nasa go about being more specific and yet not so specific that they punish the areas of innovation they are hoping for . Brian i think one of the way that we look at that is by trying to define specifically what we want the service to do but being more openended in how the service goes about doing that. So the clips program, for example, we know we want the provider to be able to deliver x kilograms of payload anywhere on the lunar surface, and that is the requirement. We may have some, you know, specifics in there about im not a technical person, im just speculating, but vibration, acceleration, things like that, that might be specific, but in terms of how do you, you know, build the thing, how do you deliver it, especially for something that is more cargo focused . We let the Companies Run without a come up with their own solutions. Dr. Pace do you see, patricia do you see, based on the duration of the project, does it change by some of those metrics . Brian a lot of the artemiss death, we are still kinda in early days on, so i imagine we will have some variation over time, and i would imagine that that will probably develop in line with the markets, as, you know, we have multiple Companies Winning and deploying missions, i think that the market itself will kinda see what works and what doesnt. Dr. Pace moon raised his hand on this, so lets bring him up. Moon kim can you hear me . One of the subject that i talked about was having a draft early enough in the program that shows how much you can buy by how much money spent on the program. I think that allows the business to understand this type of service, able to scope their resources, go with them, also including something that will cost us a lot more. I think that is where the discussion comes from. I think we will able to limit the innovations, saying this is how much you can do a buyer, how much you pay for it. That set this up for successful, Effective Partnerships, early on in the program, so that businesses can predict what will be available in the future. Dr. Pace so classically things like, ive got 500 million to spend on commercial cargo, what can you do for me . Moon kim what to buy missions in the future for this price, can you do that . Dr. Pace ok. We are actually a few minutes over time from my schedule, but if anyone has one last quick question, let me take that, and then we will break for lunch. Hi. Hopefully it is quick, but im interested in the panel, because this has been interesting. Thank you very much. It is very thoughtprovoking. One thing that was that yesterday was going after these models of proliferation, and these different models, but soon those models will be old and out of date. Is this better . So those models will be old and out of date. You guys talked about Lessons Learned and be changing definition as time goes on, and steve talked about changing. How we make, and you also talked about how those changes are painful. Any thoughts on, we cant afford long, painful changes, so how do you make those models, changing models, those models move faster, as they no longer serve the government, and we moved to the next model . How do you make that process go quicker . Dr. Howard i have a thought. First of all, i think changes less painful when it is anticipated early on. So i think if you build in, and i said before, contracts, once again, creative, so if you build in some mechanism for modification and some indices that you are going to use, metrics are a good thank you that can help. I think you go in knowing that this is not a forever thing. This is a programmatic thing, and i think that can help. Patricia i think i heard most agencies, nasa, dod, they do a pretty good job of keeping their eye on emerging proposals. Well call emerging tech, because it may be on paper still. But the two things from my experience with the early days of starlike, with previews and, you know, it still sounded wacky doodle, honestly if you have to guard against you have to have an eye about the skepticism and how those companies are assessing risk and how they are appropriate, you have to make a judgment that from a government perspective it seems unlikely come about from a corporate perspective, they have got the parameters. Are they still going to make move forward with it . Understanding that skepticism is something new for government, i think, and the other is the more insidious one, which is the cost back of self protection. I approve this program 10 years ago, and i dont want to see it go away. It is my legacy. That is a very hard want to break and really can only be done from the top down. Brian one of the benefits we have seen from the expansion of the space sector worldwide is now the United States is not the only one trying to work through this. With so many countries that have new space agencies, new space programs, we get to learn from what everybody else is doing. We have competitors working on this, but we have a lot more friends than that, and we can Work Together with them and learn from them. Dr. Hertzfeld i think this is a great place to end. The next panel will pick up and discuss going ahead in the future a little more than we did, although we touched on that is well. So i think the panel, moon. [applause]