00:00Well, you know, I'm glad that, you know, you laid out kind of that progression for Artemis.
00:05I remember that by any means necessary speech by then Vice President Mike Pence.
00:09I remember it sounded like it was a poke with a stick, as I like to tell my staff when
00:14it's
00:14time to get things going.
00:16And I'm curious now that we've got Artemis II behind us in a spectacular fashion earlier
00:24this year.
00:25You know, what you took away from that mission, watching it unfold, knowing that, you know,
00:31you kind of helped keep that ball not just rolling, but setting it up so that that foundation
00:38was there to build on so that they could do that.
00:40And then if you think that that new goal of 2028 is on track now, we just got the Artemis
00:46III crew named earlier this week, and it seems like a lot more is happening a lot more faster,
00:52I guess, or a lot more visible for the for the public, at least.
00:55Yeah, no, I think that's good.
00:56And I think what Jared is doing is important and good.
01:00I do.
01:02I worry that we don't have a lander.
01:07The SLS rocket is working.
01:09You know, it's been criticized a lot because of cost and time and everything else.
01:13But the bottom line is the first time SLS launched, it was rated for crew and it was ready to
01:20go
01:20to the moon on the first launch.
01:23Like it's that's hard to do.
01:25And yet it did it.
01:26And in fact, on its first launch, it launched Orion to the moon with a single vehicle, one
01:32single launch.
01:34Orion went to the moon.
01:35The second launch, we had crew on it.
01:37It is a very capable machine.
01:39The RS-25 engines are stunning.
01:43The SLS rocket is the most powerful rocket ever built.
01:48You've got the ICPS upper stage, which it looks like will be replaced with Centaur 5 upper stages.
01:54You've got the Orion crew capsule.
01:57This system is fully integrated, designed from the ground to be human rated on day one.
02:04And it has all worked.
02:05Now, that doesn't mean it's perfect, but what it means is we know what works.
02:10What we don't have, and this is the challenge, we still don't have a lander.
02:14And without a lander, you can't land on the moon.
02:17It's really that simple.
02:19And I worry that over time, that's going to come back and bite us.
02:24I do think we need a lander, whatever it takes.
02:27Whatever it takes to build a lander soonest is what we ought to be doing as a country.
02:32So, that's kind of my outlook on it.
02:36And I guess I would just add, regardless of who builds the lander, it probably needs to be designed in
02:41such a way that it can fly on any of the major boosters.
02:46Because, you know, we know that Blue Origin is doing the blue moon.
02:50Now, they had that New Glenn accident.
02:53And, you know, one question that comes to mind is, can that be launched on a Falcon Heavy?
02:59And it's frustrating to watch.
03:01And as much as, you know, we really are all in for those companies to succeed, and the fact that
03:07they have skin in the game is remarkable.
03:10But it's just, I mean, I hear you from the sidelines here, not being anywhere near D.C.
03:16It really is frustrating to see the struggle with these landers.
03:20And I guess especially, you know, not to criticize anybody, but the SpaceX plan, for a person who doesn't really
03:28know much about engineering, seems very daunting.
03:30I mean, that is some really complicated choreography when you've got this orbiting stage with the cryogenic fuel boiling off,
03:40trying to refill it enough times to get to the moon.
03:42We don't know how many times yet.
03:45And it has to be human rated.
03:47Yeah.
03:48I mean, that's the hard part is people underestimate how challenging it is to do it to begin with, and
03:56then do it with the level of confidence and margin required for it to be human rated.
04:02Although, fortunately, with this unusual architecture that has been put together, it doesn't have to be human rated to bring
04:07them home, which I imagine will save a lot of time.
04:11Yeah, but yes, if you can get them there, bringing them home is kind of the next big step.
04:19But I'll just tell you, the architecture is extraordinarily complicated.
04:23I don't think there's any argument about that, and we need a lander.
04:28The genius of Apollo, and I'm just going to go back to Apollo, the genius of Apollo was its simplicity.
04:36They just said, we're going to go to the moon with a single rocket.
04:41We're going to do lunar orbit rendezvous, and we're going to go down to the surface of the moon, and
04:48we're going to come back up to our command module, and we're going to fly home.
04:51They designed that thing to be as simple as you could possibly make it, and because of that, they were
05:00able to land on the moon eight years after John F. Kennedy declared that we were doing it.
05:07It's really remarkable what they did.
05:10And that's including two years lost to the Apollo 1 fire, so when you really think about it, it was
05:15about five and a half.
05:16Although they did have, you know, let's be fair, they had a lot more funding than you did with Artemis,
05:22right?
05:22A lot of people say that, and by the way, I've been guilty of saying it too.
05:26They had a bigger percent of the federal budget for sure, a bigger percentage of the federal budget.
05:32Back then, it was like four and a half percent of the federal budget.
05:35Today, we're at less than one third of the federal, less than one third of one percent of the federal
05:42budget.
05:43So I would also say, yes, I think in real dollars, we're down significantly, but not maybe down as much
05:51as you might presume.
05:52And I'll tell you why.
05:54When you compare the spending relative to the federal budget, number one, your budget can shrink.
06:02Number two, the federal government budget grows.
06:05So because the federal budget is so much bigger than it used to be, it's a smaller portion of the
06:11federal budget.
06:11I want to be clear.
06:12I am a gomer for making sure that we have a bigger budget for NASA.
06:18I mean, the challenge with NASA is, we're talking about an agency that has a $24 billion budget.
06:27You could eliminate the entirety of NASA, and it does not have an impact on the debt or the deficit.
06:33It's just not that big of an agency.
06:37However, like I said, one third of one percent of the federal budget.
06:43So it's just not.
06:45So but here's the thing.
06:46If you increased NASA's budget by 50 percent, it would have a huge impact on the capability that we bring
06:53to this country.
06:54And if and if you crush it by 50 percent, it has a huge impact the opposite direction.
07:01And yet in either case, it doesn't really have an impact on the deficit or the debt because it is
07:08such a small agency.
07:09It is the best brand that the United States of America has by far.
07:15There is nothing close.
07:16When the NASA administrator shows up in Europe, when the NASA administrator shows up in Japan, people come in droves.
07:24It's like I'm Mick Jagger when I go to these other countries.
07:27And it is remarkable.
07:32Everybody has a thirst for NASA all around the world.
07:36And I think I think we cannot dismiss how powerful that is for our country.
07:41When when I was a NASA administrator, we landed Insight on Mars.
07:45It was the ninth time in human history that anybody landed on Mars.
07:50And and it was all every time it was done by the United States.
07:54And and we put a press release out and it was on the cover of every newspaper worldwide.
08:00Insight was just like trying to understand Mars quakes.
08:03That's what it was there to do.
08:06It wasn't like it was even looking for life or anything.
08:09It was just looking for Mars quakes.
08:10And and yet it was on the cover of every newspaper, including in Tehran, if you can.
08:17Wow.
08:18And it and the Tehran newspaper said it literally said the hardline newspaper of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
08:26And they had an article about landing on Mars.
08:30I mean, that's it's hard to get those types of good messages about the United States behind countries that really
08:38don't like us.
08:39And yet we can at NASA uniquely.
08:42And it changes the way young people think about our country in a positive way.
08:46I just don't think we can dismiss the power of that.
08:50Yeah.
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