Hello and welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, the monthly show where we explore the politics and processes behind space exploration.

I'm Casey Dreyer, the chief of space policy here at the Planetary Society,

and I am very excited about today's guest and today's topic, which has just been a not necessarily

obsession of mine, but of ongoing interest, is Dr. Mike Griffin. He was the former NASA administrator under George W Bush from 2005 to 2009,

and most recently the former Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering

where he helped establish the space Development Agency within the Space Force.

Dr. Griffin gave a speech back in 2007 that has greatly influenced how I think about communicating the value of space flight

and the value of space science. It's called space exploration, real reasons and

acceptable reasons.

The idea is that there is a dichotomy

between how we justify spaceflight within our political system and the actual reasons for doing it

which tend not to map as well his so-called real reasons. The acceptable reasons are the ones that we can all list off the top of our head.

The economic value, the technological spin-offs, the inspiration and motivation for future STEM leaders, all sorts of very measurable, practical, useful things that are true, but tend to maybe miss the point, or at least as Mike Griffin would call them,

derive from the ultimate reasons, the real reasons, the things that we might even call right-brained reasons for lack of a better term,

the idea to do something, contribute to something bigger than oneself, to pursue the sublime, to discover and seek out things

that satisfy our curiosity that are innate to human existence, to help contribute something greater to the future of

the species than we might otherwise do, to basically make you feel something that maybe we don't normally

feel in society. Now these can all feel like somewhat wishy-washy

or subjective things, and they are.

But this is something that our founder, Carl Sagan,

I think, trafficked in expertly this aspect of ourselves that is hard to quantify but

doesn't mean it's any less important.

...