Welcome, welcome back to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio.

I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Planetary Radio.

Yes, we're a little bit late this month,

but very happy to be joining you with this monthly look at space policy and space

advocacy and for that we are joined as always by the chief advocate for the

planetary society Casey dry, welcome Casey.

Matt, as always, I am happy to be here,

unfurloughed and present as part of a nonprofit organization,

obviously. Yes, and I guess for once that gives us a bit of an

advantage over many of the other folks that we're going to be talking about

today because our yeah our main focus is going to be the ongoing government shutdown.

Now we are speaking the day before this program becomes available, but I think it's a safe bet

that the shutdown sadly will still be going on if people catch this program early on

Indeed unfortunately there seems to be no way out at the moment and even if it does

Government does reopen tomorrow, the impacts are felt one way or another. This is day 27 of the government partial government shutdown which impacts all of NASA. That's a long time. This is the

longest shutdown of NASA and government history and it is not a good thing for

either the space program, the employees who work there, and the thousands of contractors who depend on NASA to make their payroll.

So we're going to get into this and we have a couple of very special guests who are right at the center of the shutdown and and the

damage that it is doing whom Casey will be introducing in a moment but we have to

start with our usual appeal.

You will hear in moments why being a member of the Planetary Society

is maybe more important than ever because of the efforts that Casey and the rest of our space policy

...