00:00Tell us, Lauren, about what this implication really means for how new actual astronauts,
00:05humans, beings get to the moon. Right. So under the original plan,
00:11Boeing's built SLS rocket, which NASA owns, would have played a substantial role in propelling
00:17astronauts to the moon. So astronauts flying inside the Orion crew capsule would have launched
00:25on top of the SLS, which would have sent them to the vicinity of the moon. From there,
00:30the capsule would have gone into the moon's orbit and it would have met up with SpaceX's
00:34Starship rocket there. But that plan is now changing. So the plan now is for the SLS to
00:40launch Orion to Earth orbit, much closer to home. And in that orbit, Starship will meet with Orion.
00:47They will dock and then Starship will propel Orion to the moon and put it into a low lunar orbit.
00:55So what does that all mean? Basically, the heavy lifting of sending Orion to the moon is now being
01:02done by SpaceX's Starship, not the SLS as originally designed. Lauren, there's a few other things we
01:10should say, which you and I have been over in great detail in the last 24 hours. The first bit
01:15is that
01:15there are two plans that have been greenlit. There's a Blue Origin proposal in parallel. It's just that we
01:22don't know what's in the proposal yet. We're working on it. And then the other part is just
01:27reiterate SLS still plays a role. And then you've got SpaceX with a basically two year deadline to
01:34prove that Starship can do a mission end to end. Yeah, I think you laid it all out pretty clearly.
01:40So just to be clear, NASA has challenged both SpaceX and Blue Origin to move more quickly with their
01:47lunar lander designs. This is the result of them studying an accelerated plan. And you're right,
01:53you know, Blue Origin is working on its own accelerated plan. And Jared Isaacman, NASA's
01:57administrator, said that whoever is ready first, whether that be Starship or Blue Origin's plan,
02:03will be the one to land humans first. So it's very possible that they could go with the Blue Origin
02:09plan
02:09if they are faster. And yes, Starship still has quite a lot of work to do in order to be
02:15ready
02:15to send humans to the moon. And one thing that we weren't able to get into, but it still has
02:20gone
02:21unchanged. Starship relies on a very untested technology with cryogenic refueling. So it has
02:28to refuel when it gets into space. Imagine filling it up at a gas tank. But that involves sending
02:34multiple Starships back to back to back in order to get enough fuel to send to the moon. That's no
02:40small feat. And they have yet to even demonstrate that in space yet.
02:45Lumex, Lauren Grush, top reporting. Thank you very much. Let's stick with U.S. space ambitions
02:50and bring in Laurie Leshin, former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, now a professor
02:56of space futures at Arizona State University. And back in 2010, actually, a little more involved in
03:02human spaceflight, right, is an associate deputy administrator of Exploration Systems Mission
03:08Directorate at NASA HQ. So Lauren laid out the reporting, right? And, you know, when we broke
03:12the story yesterday, industry took a long time to analyze what the proposed changes are. But
03:19basically, SLS or Starship, your evaluation of the options on the table?
03:26Well, it's both and, in this case, that, in fact, we're still going to be launching a lot of SLSs.
03:34And
03:34so in some ways, the changes to the Artemis program that NASA has already confirmed, which, by the way,
03:41this change, they haven't confirmed, right? So we need to wait and see for sure. But they have
03:47announced a lot of changes, including more frequent launches. More frequent launches of the SLS is very
03:52good for Boeing. So it's good for SpaceX. It's good for Boeing. I really have to give Jared Isaacman
03:57at NASA a lot of credit for pushing everyone to go faster, for taking a hard look across every element
04:04of this program. And those that, where it's behind and there's another option, trying to take those
04:10roads. Absolutely right. And Lauren, my and Julie Johnson's reporting is all according to sources.
04:17You're absolutely right that the status of the SpaceX and Blue Origin proposals is is not yet confirmed by NASA.
04:25NASA also says, by the way, it's completely committed to SLS through Artemis five. But, you know, I'm really
04:33interested in your evaluation of Starship as an option, bearing in mind that for all of the testing so far,
04:40Starship has
04:40not really ever completed a test mission end to end. Factor that in, please.
04:48Yeah. I mean, look, when I was at NASA, as you just mentioned, my earlier role was right at the
04:53beginning of our investments in the commercial crew program. And Elon used to have to come in and
04:57pitch to us about the status of them getting ready to do that. And what I would say about
05:02about SpaceX is I'd never bet against them to eventually get there because their capability is
05:08so strong. But they've got a ways to go with Starship. They haven't yet had a fully successful
05:16orbital test flight. And that's just getting the thing into orbit. Then you've got to learn how to
05:21use it, operate it in space, learn how to refuel it before you even get to transporting astronauts,
05:27you know, across interplanetary space to the moon and then landing on the moon, which is no easy feat as
05:33well. So a lot more steps to go. But, you know, they're making progress. And NASA is pushing them
05:40and Blue Origin and all of our fabulous industry partners involved to get, you know, to meet their
05:47commitments, to meet their schedules. It's time to move. It's time to move. And they're all pretty busy.
05:52Blue Origin, we understand there's reporting elsewhere that Blue Origin's busy thinking about
05:56getting satellites up in space so it can help with data centers and powering data centers in space.
06:02Laurie, just from a focus of what should be prioritized at this time, is it getting humans
06:09to the moon should be number one focus right now? It is the number one focus. And I think we
06:15have,
06:16you know, back from back in 2010, 2011, when I was in NASA human spaceflight was when this program
06:22was born. Okay, it's when the SLS came into being, it's we had the Orion. And, and yet here we
06:28are 15
06:29years later, and still haven't sent astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. And we'll do that very soon
06:35with the upcoming Artemis 2 mission. But it's time to go and get this and establish our presence in deep
06:42space for good. And that's really what the Artemis program is about.
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