Hello again, everybody. Welcome to the March 2021 Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio.

I'm at Kaplan, the host of the weekly show that you can catch all the time at Planetary.org

and all over the web. All those places where you can also find this monthly program for which I am joined as always by our Chief Advocate, the Senior Space Policy Advisor for the Planetary Society, Casey Dreyer and Casey.

My goodness, do we have a great interview with one of one of our space journalism heroes that you've conducted for us today?

Eric Berger, he's the Senior Space Editor at Arts Technica. He's a great reporter in terms of space topics. I recommend if you don't read him to read him.

And he's got his first book out, which is all about the early days of SpaceX and the flight of the Falcon 1 rocket.

And kind of how SpaceX almost didn't make it. Really interesting book, interesting piece of history, particularly as we see the company now trying to, in a sense, repeat the style of approach

of developing their not just single engine little rocket, but a mega rocket starship and the super heavy. So it's an interesting context and reminder that this company is really new.

It's only 15 years ago that this story happened and a lot can change in that period of time. So really interesting book. I recommend the interview, Eric's a great guest.

And we really go into the history and kind of broader implications about what it means to have that kind of company culture, commercial space flight,

and the role of public investment in it.

So let's get through some other business, including our regular reminder to you to go to planetary.org slash join.

Oh, man, I have a better reminder for people.

Oh, I know what you're going to get to. It's even more immediate. But for this one, if you want to help us create all the other stuff that's going on, join us, become part of the planetary society.

Casey has something else, which you still have time to be part of.

For the next few weeks throughout March, you can still join us for our virtual day of action. That's happening March 31st this year. If you live in the US, we will arrange meetings for you virtually with your members of Congress, give you some training, give you talking points, opportunity to meet other planetary society members.

And really speak up for space exploration for space science for planetary defense. It's our first virtual day of action for all the obvious reasons this year.

And so it's an experiment, but we're looking forward to it. So you can go to planetary.org slash day of action to learn more about it. And again, you can sign up as late as March 24th.

So consider doing that and hopefully see you there.

How is this going to work? Is it going to be as much as possible? A virtual version of everybody getting together and going off to their various congressional offices?

That's the idea. So we're working with a partner that is going to be organizing individual Zoom meetings with the offices of the various members of Congress.

So you will join those Zoom meetings with fellow constituents, fellow society members, and speak to either the member themselves or their staff representative.

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