00:00You will not be surprised, Administrator, that my first question is about money.
00:04$20 billion. Where does it come from?
00:07And I guess, you know, your plans have evolved pretty rapidly since you took post.
00:15What does this figure signify in how you're doing it differently?
00:19Sure. I mean, it's interesting. A lot of people think NASA doesn't have the resources to execute on the mission.
00:25I'm like, our appropriations this year is $25 billion.
00:28$25 billion is an awful lot of money, not to mention we received a $10 billion plus up in the
00:33one big, beautiful bill,
00:35which is probably one of the most significant investments in human space exploration that we've seen in an extremely long
00:41time.
00:42Bottom line is, we have the resources. Are we concentrating them in the right direction?
00:46Are we doing a lot of little things and getting nowhere, right?
00:49So we talked today, hey, we're going to hit pause on the Gateway, which was a space station designed to
00:55orbit above the moon.
00:55We don't want to orbit above the moon. We want to be on the moon. We want to build a
00:59base.
01:00We want to interact with the regulars. We want to do in-situ resource manufacturing.
01:03We want to test out mobility on the surface, do power communications.
01:06We want to build President Trump's moon base that he called for in the national space policy.
01:11We have the resources to do this. We have a lot of resources at NASA.
01:15We just need to move them in the needle-moving direction.
01:17It's $20 billion over seven years, but all told over the decade, $30 billion.
01:21Is this something that you've been able to meet with Congress about and appropriate the funds through that mechanism,
01:27or it's just in the budget? It's planned based on the annual appropriation that you outlined?
01:32This is within the resource available, and, of course, we try and subscribe to a no-surprise policy,
01:37so we never formulate these type of initiatives in a vacuum.
01:41We've met with our international partners that are supporting us in our great return to the moon.
01:46We've met with leaders from authorizers in Congress, the appropriators, the White House.
01:53Everybody gets fully aligned around how we're going to achieve this.
01:56When you talk about these kind of dollars and you look at it across our budget, this is just small
02:01percentages of it.
02:03We definitely have the means within the resource available to achieve this.
02:07You think about it, we have a science technology mission director, right?
02:10Does lots of experimentation for future applications from the moon to Mars.
02:15Great. We're going to the moon.
02:16We concentrate STMD in that direction.
02:18We have a science mission director, right?
02:20They have a CLIPS program.
02:21We do lots of scientific missions on the moon.
02:23Great. We're going to the moon.
02:24We concentrate that on building the moon base and attaching scientific payloads.
02:28It's really across the board.
02:29ESDMD, which is tasked with the return to the moon and thinking through Mars.
02:34We've got a lot of resources there from Gateway, especially since that was plussed up in the budget.
02:38Diverted resources.
02:38And we are repurposing that to the surface where we all want to be.
02:42So NASA does not have a top-line problem.
02:44I can't emphasize that enough.
02:46Administrator, you have gone fast your entire life.
02:49You're building businesses in your parents' basement at the age of 16.
02:52You've got Shift 4.
02:53You move at the speed of founder.
02:56Do your partners, the Artemis partners, move at the speed that you need them to?
03:00Well, we've been talking to industry and we've been emphasizing now is the time to act.
03:05We have to execute with urgency.
03:08I've said it many times.
03:09President Trump and his national space policy says we need to return to the moon before the end of 2028.
03:16Our great rival has said they will return before 2030.
03:21That means success and failure is measured in months, not years.
03:25We don't have time to do things the way we used to do.
03:28We have to get in gear.
03:29That's why I said during my keynote this morning, we are not going to sit on our hands at NASA
03:33and hope industry delivers.
03:34We are going to do what we did in the 1960s.
03:36We're deploying our subject matter experts to every vendor, every subcontractor, every component on the critical path,
03:43not to be passive but active, to drive outcomes.
03:46We're going to do this with our commercial and international partners.
03:49You're a great competitor, being China.
03:51What do you need from a supply chain perspective that you can't get your hands on in the here and
03:55now?
03:55What keeps you up at night in terms of meeting your mission?
03:58Well, look, I think there's a lot of components on the supply chain that we care an awful lot about.
04:04As you would expect, I mean, going to the moon takes the contributions for many.
04:08When we talk about building a moon base, we need hypergolf thrusters.
04:11We were sending clips landers to the moon two or three times a year.
04:15I said this morning we're going to go from bespoke and infrequent to templated and routine,
04:20which means we're going to need a lot of hypergolf thrusters, right?
04:23So this is why we're deploying our subject matter experts into the field with our partners to drive outcomes,
04:29because if we wind up in a situation where we're going over budget or behind schedule, we are going to
04:35act.
04:35We're either going to act with our partners or we're going to apply some of the best and brightest minds
04:38from across the nation
04:39to build the solution ourselves to get to the outcome.
04:42You said this morning, and you've just reiterated, that you've asked industry to find ways to get back to the
04:50moon more rapidly.
04:51But I guess to try and make that a little more crystallized, what are the benchmarks that you'll hold them
04:59to?
05:00You know, what are the milestones that you need industry to hit?
05:04And then we can get, I guess, onto the Artemis program from there.
05:07Well, let's break into two categories.
05:09So just returning humans to the moon, we said we've got to get at a pace of launching a moon
05:12rocket with greater frequency than every three years.
05:15So we need you to pull forward production, pull everything to the left, set up for another mission.
05:22So Artemis 2 is going to launch in a week and go around the moon.
05:25Artemis 3 is going to be very a la Apollo 9.
05:28Launch in Earth orbit, rendezvous with one or two landers, and then we'll set up for Artemis 4 and 5,
05:35which will be a landing on the moon in 2028.
05:38So we've spoken to industry and told them, you have to start pulling things to the left.
05:42We will, again, deploy resources to help you in that process.
05:45We will also rebuild core competencies so we can turn our launch pad to meet launch cadence.
05:50But then there's also building the moon base, which is lots of landings in phase one, which is our test
05:55and experimentation phase.
05:56This is where robotics comes in.
05:58Yes.
05:58So this is where we've sent a demand signal to industry today.
06:02Again, not infrequent bespoke landers and rovers, lots of them, iterative approach.
06:07Land lots of landers, lots of rovers, do experimentation, comms, navigation, mobility, power.
06:13We'll learn in phase one, inform semi-habitability in phase two, ultimately get to phase three, where we're looking to
06:18have that enduring presence on the moon.
06:20This is the demand signal we're sending to industry.
06:23Industry is responding.
06:24Administrator Bloomberg reported this month that there are two proposals on your desk, so to speak, one from Blue Origin
06:31and one from SpaceX, different mechanisms for future missions that relate to the moon.
06:38In simple terms, in the proposal that Bloomberg reported, which related to SpaceX, Starship would be involved in some capacity
06:46with future missions going in low-Earth orbit, combining with Orion and propelling the combined entity to the moon.
06:57What are the status of those proposals and what can you say about them?
07:01And why do those two proposals came up in the first place?
07:06So, we, you know, my predecessor asked industry, what are your acceleration pathways?
07:12Because, again, we don't have the time here.
07:14Now, I will compliment both SpaceX and Blue Origin are not trying to build a lander to put boots on
07:19the ground to plant the flag and pick up rocks.
07:22They're building landers that allow us to put lots of mass on the moon so we can build the base,
07:27have an enduring presence, to go far beyond where we went with Apollo and be able to undertake frequent and
07:34affordable missions to the surface.
07:35So, in fairness, they are taking on a technically complex approach.
07:40We did ask, how can you accelerate?
07:42How can you simplify?
07:43Both have come back with options that kind of buy down some of the technical risk.
07:48And in both cases, it means different orbits.
07:52NRHO, which NASA originally designed in part to support the gateway, nobody likes.
07:58And administrative, in layman's terms, NHRO is the path around the moon.
08:03Could you just explain that that?
08:04Right.
08:04It is a relatively stable orbit around the moon.
08:07If you were going to put a moon space station, that's where you would put it, which was our kind
08:13of agenda up until now where we're concentrating on an actual base on the moon.
08:18It had less abort options to come home.
08:20It came, as we would say, a DV penalty or it came with a performance penalty for both SpaceX and
08:27Blue Origin to actually get to.
08:29So, it didn't really help anyone in that.
08:32One of our HLS, one of our landing providers, came back and said, I'd rather meet you in a different
08:37lunar orbit.
08:39And the other one said, I'd rather meet you into a high Earth orbit.
08:43In either scenario, it doesn't change the fact that Orion is going to get to those landers via the space
08:50launch system.
08:50It's just that NHRO is not included in either plan.
08:53Correct.
08:54Can we speak a little bit about Mars before we run out of time?
08:57Sure.
08:57We have a really exciting mission to Mars to be announced today.
08:59Explain it, and there is a date, there is a timeline for it, which I was a little surprised at.
09:04Yeah, so we will never give up an opportunity to go to Mars during the planetary alignment window.
09:09The next one comes in 2028.
09:11We've got a Mars telecommunication network orbiter that's going to Mars in 2028, which will carry a science payload.
09:17We have a joint mission with ESA, the Rosalind Franklin rover, which is going to go search for potentially organic
09:25matter.
09:26It's part of our larger quest for looking for life out in the universe.
09:32And then the big announcement today is we are launching the first nuclear interplanetary spacecraft, nuclear electric-powered spaceship,
09:40and it's going to drop the Skyfall payload, which is Ingenuity-class helicopters on Mars.
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