Welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. We are glad to have you back or if you found us for the first time.

Welcome. This is the companion to the weekly Planetary Radio episode that a lot of you

listened to, except this is the one where we concentrate on duh space policy and

we have a great time doing it and apparently you guys have a great time listening

judging from all of the reactions that we get I am Matt Kaplan the host great time

for space policy edition. I am Matt Kaplan, the host of planetary radio.

Join for the very first time for Space Policy Edition.

I am face to face with the director of space policy for the planetary society

Casey dryer welcome hey Matt nice to be here and you know never tell me I don't

make sacrifices for you. Yeah, any excuse to come down this way from the

Northwest, right? No. Absolutely. Yeah, sure. We are in the studio at Planetary Society Headquarters where we do some recording now and then.

In addition, we have another member of the Society's Space Policy staff online, but it's not our usual partner in SPE.

Well, I got a phone call from Jason Callahan today who is obviously our usual

co-host and he said Casey I have some bad news and I'm like oh no what's happened you know like that

Something in the budget or something really bad about the policy is like I'm sick. Oh, okay. Well, that's all yeah,, I was relieved that he was sick. So unfortunately you can join us today, but in his stead, we have Matt Renninger, who's our senior manager of government relations here at the planetary society.

Matt's joining us from Washington, D.C.

where he does most of our, I call him a professional extrovert who goes around

and makes a lot of our connections in D.C.

So, hey, Matt, thanks you you can thanks for joining us.

Welcome that thanks guys Casey Matt great to be here.

So we have a really really good reason to have you here because we're largely going to

be talking about something that happened just a few days ago, the State of the Union address.

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