T+304: The Musk/Trump Breakup, Jared Isaacman’s Withdrawn Nomination, and Starship Flight 9 (with Lori Garver)

Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator, joins me to talk about the chaos of the last week: the withdraw of Jared Isaacman’s nomination for NASA Administrator, Starship Flight 9, and of course, the wild public breakup of Elon Musk and President Trump. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 33 executive producers—David, Donald, Matt, Frank, Better Every Day Studios, Warren, Bob, Russell, Pat from KC, Pat, Lee, Joel, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Ryan, Josh from Impulse, Joonas, Natasha Tsakos (pronounced Tszakos), Heiko, Will and Lars from Agile, Fred, Kris, Stealth Julian, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Theo and Violet, Jan, Steve, The Astrogators at SEE, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters. Topics Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts - SpaceNews Isaacman: people with ‘axes to grind’ about Musk caused withdrawn NASA nomination - SpaceNews White House to withdraw Isaacman nomination to lead NASA - SpaceNews NASA Copes with Details of $6 Billion Budget Cut, Leadership Uncertainty – SpacePolicyOnline.com NASA withdraws support for conferences - SpaceNews Cruz seeks $10 billion for NASA programs in budget reconciliation bill - SpaceNews Starship breaks up on reentry after loss of attitude control - SpaceNews Status Update on ispace Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon | ispace The Show Like the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack! Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to anthony@mainenginecutoff.com Follow @WeHaveMECO Follow @meco@spacey.space on Mastodon Listen to MECO Headlines Listen to Off-Nominal Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Artwork photo by NASA Work with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works