Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: This is part two of our interview with Wall Street
Speaker 2: Journal reporter Emily Gleiza. If you haven't already stopped by
Speaker 2: listening to Donald Trump wants to put humans on Mars.
Speaker 3: There's this program at NASA that is known as Artemis,
Speaker 3: and it's a long range plan to explore the Moon
Speaker 3: and eventually Mars.
Speaker 4: We are going to the Moon, to deep space and
Speaker 4: to Mars.
Speaker 3: So NASA has had Mars and its long term plans,
Speaker 3: but currently it first wants to carry out a return
Speaker 3: to the Moon's surface, and it wants to establish a
Speaker 3: sustained human presence on the Moon with habitats and.
Speaker 1: Rovers, bostergnition and left off of Artamus one we rise
Speaker 1: together back to.
Speaker 3: The Moon and beyond. Elon Musk's ideal is skip over
Speaker 3: all those things about the Moon and just start getting
Speaker 3: a Mars And our reporting shows that at some parts
Speaker 3: of the US government he is getting the wheels turning
Speaker 3: for his plans to move forward.
Speaker 5: So, Emily, I know you've been speaking to people close
Speaker 5: to Musk, but you've also been talking to a lot
Speaker 5: of people within NASA, and I just wonder if you
Speaker 5: can tell me a bit more about what Elo Musk's
Speaker 5: focus on Mars means for NASA's current plans to go
Speaker 5: back to the Moon. How has that all shifted?
Speaker 3: So there were officials from Trump's Office of Management and Budget,
Speaker 3: so this is like a division within the White House
Speaker 3: that controls federal spending. They've told people that there are
Speaker 3: discussions underway to move US government dollars toward Mars initiatives
Speaker 3: and away from NASA programs focused on the Moon and
Speaker 3: science mission. So that goes back to this whole idea
Speaker 3: of like how much is this going to cost? And
Speaker 3: even if you move like all these other programs and
Speaker 3: shift priorities, you know, it would be quite an undertaking.
Speaker 3: So NASA has been working on the Artemis program and
Speaker 3: its predecessors for many, many, many years, and even to
Speaker 3: the point where the cost for the government's programming on
Speaker 3: all this for roughly thirteen years, they've projected it to
Speaker 3: be ninety three billion dollars and that's from the government's
Speaker 3: fiscal year of twenty twelve through the fiscal year of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, and that's all around Artemis spending ninety
Speaker 3: three billion. So this is a very expensive, very costly program,
Speaker 3: and Elon Musk has not been shy.
Speaker 4: In fact, he tweeted on X in.
Speaker 3: January he said the Moon program is a distraction, and
Speaker 3: days earlier he criticized Artemis and said something entirely new
Speaker 3: is needed. So if they were to kill those programs
Speaker 3: or dramatically remake, you know, the Moon programs, that would
Speaker 3: unravel so many years of development work. Though, we've also
Speaker 3: talked to people that say some of the hardware for
Speaker 3: Artemis it's just too expensive, it's too slow to produce,
Speaker 3: and it's behind schedule. So there are people that are
Speaker 3: definitely in the camp of like, don't cancel this. They're
Speaker 3: much time and energy and money that went into it.
Speaker 3: And then there are other people saying this is just
Speaker 3: not working and we got to rip it up. And
Speaker 3: sometimes you need to bring in an outsider to really
Speaker 3: throw things up in the air. And perhaps, you know,
Speaker 3: if Elon Musk is that person, and Donald Trump can
Speaker 3: kind of like blame him for the people that get upset,
Speaker 3: then perhaps there could be benefits to that.
Speaker 5: And just to take a slat step back, can you
Speaker 5: just tell me what the goal of atomis is.
Speaker 3: So NASA launched Artemis one and that powered the Orion
Speaker 3: space capsule toward the Moon in twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 3: that was an uncrewed test flight that debuted Boeing's Space
Speaker 3: Launch System SLS rocket. SOLS rocket is like a really
Speaker 3: big deal in the space community, and NASA plans to
Speaker 3: use SLS to send astronauts to orbit the Moon on
Speaker 3: Orion in twenty twenty seven, so two years from now,
Speaker 3: and from there a SpaceX lander would shuttle them to
Speaker 3: the surface of the a year later. From that, NASA
Speaker 3: aims to start using something called Gateway, and it's a
Speaker 3: planned space station that would orbit the Moon so that
Speaker 3: future crews would fly to Gateway and then from there
Speaker 3: they would board Moonlanders to get to the surface of
Speaker 3: the Moon. SpaceX, Boeing and others have many billions and
Speaker 3: contracts to build rockets and ships and lunar landing vehicles
Speaker 3: and other technologies for the program. So there's a lot
Speaker 3: that's gone into this and SpaceX and other companies, including
Speaker 3: Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos's space company. There are
Speaker 3: many that are tied to different parts of this massive program.
Speaker 3: But now Musk wants to move up plans to go
Speaker 3: to Mars and their goal is to launch an uncrewed
Speaker 3: mission to Mars next year, with crude missions as early
Speaker 3: as twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 5: So Bezos would potentially stend to lose contracts if NASA
Speaker 5: switches SKIS to mass.
Speaker 3: Well it's interesting you say that, because if SpaceX gives
Speaker 3: up its roughly four billion in Moon focused contracts tied
Speaker 3: to Artemis, any changes to Artemis could affect Blue Origin.
Speaker 3: It has a contract under Artemis to develop a lander
Speaker 3: for a future Moon mission, So it's unclear if it
Speaker 3: could benefit Blue Origin because if SpaceX is giving up something,
Speaker 3: then if those contracts still exist, someone would take them.
Speaker 3: And right now, Blue Origin is the other company that
Speaker 3: has an active contract with this particular type of work.
Speaker 3: So it isn't totally clear to us if Blue Origin
Speaker 3: would be a winner or a loser.
Speaker 4: But I think there's an opportunity for it as well.
Speaker 5: And how unusual is it for an individual, someone like
Speaker 5: Elon Musk in this case, to have this level of
Speaker 5: influence over a government agency when at the same time
Speaker 5: they also have a very clear financial and personal interest
Speaker 5: in the outcome.
Speaker 3: Well, there wasn't a Doze before President Trump, so let's
Speaker 3: start there.
Speaker 4: It's highly unusual. I mean I don't think people.
Speaker 3: Have found in modern US history something like this out
Speaker 3: in the open. That's the key thing here, Like we
Speaker 3: don't know how much would be going on behind closed
Speaker 3: doors for a business person with financial interests to have
Speaker 3: such influence over agencies that regulate their businesses.
Speaker 4: But this is unprecedented.
Speaker 6: After the break, how Congress is trying to stop a.
Speaker 4: One musk So Committee on Space and Aeronauts will come
Speaker 4: to order.
Speaker 1: Welcome today's hearing entitled step by step the Artemis program,
Speaker 1: and that's his path.
Speaker 5: How much I suppose freedom does Moscow Isaacson have to
Speaker 5: make changes at NASA? To what extent would they need
Speaker 5: the approval or the corporation of the federal government or
Speaker 5: other agencies.
Speaker 3: I think this goes back to the US lawmakers. So
Speaker 3: Artemis has really powerful supporters in Congress.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, Congress directed NASA to develop
Speaker 1: a sustained human presence on the Moon as a stepping
Speaker 1: stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations, and.
Speaker 3: A bipurtisan group of senators so both the Democrats and
Speaker 3: Republicans recently introduced legislation that requires NASA and its leaders
Speaker 3: to continue supporting the existing plans and hardware for ARTEMIS,
Speaker 3: including this Space Launch System or SLS rocket.
Speaker 1: Given the time and resource intensive nature of any space mission,
Speaker 1: successfully carrying out a crude space exploration program requires that
Speaker 1: the government maintained continuity of purpose over the course of
Speaker 1: several years. Changing direction isn't free, and it is edibly
Speaker 1: taxing on the United States industrial base.
Speaker 3: So exactly to your point, they're going to have a
Speaker 3: hard time pushing through what they want because there are
Speaker 3: different checks and balances in the US government. So it's
Speaker 3: not like, oh, Elon wants something, Jared is his guy,
Speaker 3: and NASA therefore it's just going to happen. But again,
Speaker 3: it's quite unusual to have a private citizen also as
Speaker 3: a top advisor to the president of the United States,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot more power and influence in that.
Speaker 3: So I would say, even though there's bipartisan lawmakers that
Speaker 3: are supporters of ARTEMIS and don't want it to be disrupted,
Speaker 3: we haven't really seen ever in US history modern US history,
Speaker 3: the relationship that Elon Musk has with Donald Trump as
Speaker 3: a business leader with a president of the United States,
Speaker 3: at least out in the open like.
Speaker 5: This, And what about through the Department of Government Efficiency.
Speaker 5: Can Musk exert much power through there to make changes
Speaker 5: at NASA?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and it's already happening. I want to go
Speaker 3: back to early February. I was hearing from people about
Speaker 3: how nervous, you know, folks that NASA were about DOGE
Speaker 3: kind of landing at the building. You know, each agency,
Speaker 3: it's like DOGE arrives, Their people are nervous.
Speaker 4: There's a mystery around it.
Speaker 3: What are they doing, what kind of layouts are going
Speaker 3: to happen, how will strategies change. So several weeks ago,
Speaker 3: NASA's top executives, top brass gathered on the ninth floor
Speaker 3: of their headquarters in Washington, d C. And there were
Speaker 3: do staffers And part of the point of this meeting
Speaker 3: was that DOGE had arrived, and they were kind of
Speaker 3: like acknowledging that this was happening. DOGE would be analyzing
Speaker 3: NASA's work and started off on a really awkward note.
Speaker 3: People are around the conference room sharing their names and titles,
Speaker 3: and one person who others knew to be a JOJ
Speaker 3: staffer described themselves as a staffer at the Treasury Department
Speaker 3: instead of part of DOGE. And so it was just like,
Speaker 3: what's going on. This is the elephant in the room,
Speaker 3: and they're not being totally honest.
Speaker 4: And so even before the meeting, we.
Speaker 3: Knew that some NASA officials had been concerned about how
Speaker 3: transparent dough staffers would be about what they were doing
Speaker 3: at the agency, and I think that meeting did not
Speaker 3: help to assuage fears. NASA has had layoffs since then,
Speaker 3: and so some of that work has already started to unfold.
Speaker 3: I do want to say that NASA spokeswoman said that
Speaker 3: they're committed to optimizing their workforce and resources in alignment
Speaker 3: with DOGE, and that they ensure tax payer dollars are
Speaker 3: directed towards the highest impact projects while maintaining NASA's essential functions.
Speaker 4: That was a statement for NASA.
Speaker 5: If we consider for a moment the possible end result
Speaker 5: of masks mass plans as global warming accelerates, there's more
Speaker 5: natural disasters. If we were to see a small number
Speaker 5: of people who able to live on Mars, that would
Speaker 5: presumably be something that would be under the control of
Speaker 5: alone musque. So are we entering this kind of like
Speaker 5: thought experiment where the richest people in the world can
Speaker 5: decide who gets to leave when things get bad here.
Speaker 3: You're making me think of those like compounds in New
Speaker 3: Zealand that really wealthy people have. Look first, I will say,
Speaker 3: if this happens, it would take a really, really, really
Speaker 3: long time for there to be the infrastructure on Mars
Speaker 3: to even have people live there safely. But engineers at
Speaker 3: SpaceX have at times worked on unresolved questions about how
Speaker 3: humans might live off the land on Mars, like turning
Speaker 3: materials on the planet into usable resources. You know, technical
Speaker 3: leaders include an employee whose job it is to focus
Speaker 3: on landing a future starship spacecraft on the Martian surface.
Speaker 3: We have some reporting about how even employees at Tesla
Speaker 3: we're working on a special like pressurized vehicle that could
Speaker 3: work on the surface of Mars.
Speaker 4: So there are all these things that would have to happen.
Speaker 3: I think right now they're talking about planting a flag
Speaker 3: on Mars, which is very different than people living there.
Speaker 3: But you know, I guess once you open the door
Speaker 3: to something to your point, a lot of other doors
Speaker 3: could open as well.
Speaker 5: Emily, thank you so much for your time.
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