Space Policy Edition: “Science: A New Golden Age” - Reimagining U.S. science policy

**Casey Dreier** (0:19)
Hello, and welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreier, the Chief of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society. This is a show about the processes and policies behind space exploration. This month, we are looking at Science, A New Golden Age? Released by the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, Michael Kratzios. This is a big report and I'm going to quote a quick section.
Eighty-one years ago, Vannevar Bush wrote that the scientific progress would be an essential key to our security as a nation, to our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living, and to our cultural progress. Bush had seen a glimpse of science's promise for America and the triumphs of penicillin and radar in securing victory in World War II. His vision proved prescient through the eight decades that followed. And just a scientific inquiry demands that we revise our theories when evidence contradicts them. Evidence of scientific slowdown and serious competition from abroad should spur us to experiment with new systems, new models, and new ways of funding, conducting, and translating research. Vannevar Bush's pioneering spirit calls us to do what he would surely do today. Reimagine the entire enterprise for our time.
Those are bold words, and the report is correspondingly bold and assertive. I recommend that you read it. It's, for a report, surprisingly readable from something that comes out from a public policy perspective. And it says a lot. It identifies problems with the application of science, the pursuit of science in the United States, including excessive bureaucracy, long durations of wait between proposals and grants, the issues of young career scientists breaking into new fields, potential ossification of institutions, a host of them. But what it proposes are pretty dramatic, as it says, a wholesale almost reinvention of how the United States does science. It proposes faster grants, less bureaucracy, more integration of AI, support of individual scientists over institutions. And that's just to start. This report that came out in July of 2026 took quite a few people by surprise, not necessarily because of its contents, but because of the context in which it arose. That the White House that commissioned it has also proposed to slash the budgets of US scientific institutions by half or sometimes even two-thirds. That the number of new funding awards made by the National Science Foundation is down by more than half in this year, more than 20% at NASA and elsewhere across the government. That the Office of Management and Budget within the White House has proposed a wholesale revision of the rules governing scientific grants that add bureaucracy, that add additional reporting, that insert more overtly political control, approval and less insight and oversight into the funding and control of the scientific process itself.
How do you square these two ideas and what is actually going on in this Science of Golden Age? And I'll note that it has a question mark and maybe it unintentionally is an insightful addition to this. To help me answer this, I welcome two guests this month. First, my colleague, Jack Kiraly, who is the Chief of Advocacy here at the Planetary Society and Zach Pirtle, formerly at NASA and now the Deputy Director for the Consortium of Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University.
Zach wrote a very interesting article talking about this as a reformation of the mythos or mythology of what science is and how it's practiced in the United States. I thought it was quite insightful and a little more, I'd say, productive than some of the other responses that we've seen, however understandable they may be. I believe there are actually some very interesting and important ideas represented in this report and this discussion, the goal I have with this is to highlight, I think, where some of those are coming from, because not all of them are coming out a whole cloth and not all of them are partisan despite the context in which it arises. I believe it's very important to engage on these ideas, to not instinctively say that the system that we have now is perfect and does not deserve any sort of reform. I don't want to be on the side of bureaucracy for scientists, however, imperfect or inelegant or even completely out of step. Other actions by this administration have been with that regard. I don't want to be on the side of ossification of institutions or turning away from new technologies. I want those ideas to survive what is becoming a rapidly, highly partisan situation.
You will hear throughout this discussion are grappling with the good and bad aspects of this report, the inconsistencies, the broader actions taken by the administration that undermines some of the prepared proposals within this report. I believe you can see this report as a part of the administration arguing with another part. There is no uniform approach here. But again, I encourage you to read at least the overall summary and to engage with some of the ideas of how can we do science better? Are there better ways than what we just happen to have? But also, of course, to engage with the real failures in terms of budget cuts and draconian rules being proposed, the consolidation and the imposition of overtly partisan control over science as well. That's the way I think you see mythology of science, the practice of science, science as a philosophy, enduring beyond a political cycle, which is where I fear we may be heading, particularly for things like NASA, which require long-term thinking, which require large groups of individuals that defy the idea of an individual scientist in order to make a spacecraft, gather the data, to even do the science in the first place. Lots to discuss in this episode, but before we get to that discussion, the Planetary Society, the organization that produces this show, is a non-profit member-supported organization. We promote space science, exploration, we produce great policy, insights, and we advocate for what we believe in, space science and exploration in Washington, DC and beyond. Please check us out at planetary.org. If you're not a member, please consider supporting us at planetary.org/join.