Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: President Donald Trump hosting the Otomus two Astronauts of the
Speaker 2: White House this week, the visit coming nearly a month
Speaker 2: after that historic trip around the Moon.
Speaker 3: I'm really pleased to say that.
Speaker 2: In the studio here in New York City, the NASA
Speaker 2: Administrator Jared Isaac mund John, good.
Speaker 3: Morning, going to see you. It's good morning. It's great
Speaker 3: to be here.
Speaker 2: The pitches are Amazac. I understand it costs a lot
Speaker 2: of money. Can you explain to all of us what
Speaker 2: we actually achieved in the last month.
Speaker 4: Well, I would consider that Artemist two is part of
Speaker 4: a much bigger plan. So President Trump, during his first
Speaker 4: term created the Artemist program, America's commitment to return to
Speaker 4: the Moon. My first day on the job, he signs
Speaker 4: a National Space policy that says, pick up where Apollo
Speaker 4: seventeen left off, return to the Moon, but go back
Speaker 4: to stay this time.
Speaker 3: Build an enduring presidence, good luck.
Speaker 4: Build a moon base, which I mean it's going to
Speaker 4: be a hub for scientific discovery, economic potential. Maybe we
Speaker 4: have a lunar economy someday, but it will be the
Speaker 4: technological proving ground for where.
Speaker 3: We go next.
Speaker 4: Choose Mars, so all part of a bigger plan. Artemis
Speaker 4: two is just the opening act.
Speaker 2: In the period of time, we have changed space exploration
Speaker 2: a lot. We've introduced commercial space exploration. What does that
Speaker 2: mean for the role of NASA as we try to
Speaker 2: achieve these things.
Speaker 4: It's interesting I get that question all the time because
Speaker 4: there are some new names. You have your SpaceX's and
Speaker 4: Blue origins that get everyone's attention. It's like, where does
Speaker 4: NASA fit in? I remind folks, you go back to
Speaker 4: the nineteen sixties. You had Boeing, yet McDonald douglas built
Speaker 4: the gem and E spacecraft. You had a Grummin that
Speaker 4: built the lander that put the astronauts on the Moon.
Speaker 4: Many of those players still exist today, but we have
Speaker 4: some new and SpaceX Blue origin. NASA is at its
Speaker 4: best when we're doing the near impossible with no other agency, company,
Speaker 4: nation in the world is capable of accomplishing. And when
Speaker 4: we figure it out, if NASA can be one customer
Speaker 4: of many, we hand it off to industry and let
Speaker 4: competitive dynamics make it better.
Speaker 3: Costs less. Launch is a great example.
Speaker 4: Right now, dozens of companies brought down the costput mass
Speaker 4: in orbit, materially, NASA recalibrates. Like that picture you had
Speaker 4: on the screen, which was a nuclear powered spaceship, that's
Speaker 4: not something industry should be playing with. They don't need
Speaker 4: to mess around with highly enriched uranium launch you know,
Speaker 4: reactors over Earth. That's something that NASA is capable of doing.
Speaker 4: So we recalibrate again back to the near impossible.
Speaker 3: The capabilities allow us to explore the outer Solis.
Speaker 1: Just I think about the space race down back in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties and how much that put grants
Speaker 1: in all sorts of academic centers to try to get
Speaker 1: up new scientists, to get them into exactly that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Is this kind of what we're replicating here?
Speaker 4: Well, I like to think, and I just told this
Speaker 4: to Congress this past week, is every dollar you give
Speaker 4: us inherent in it is inspiration. So of course, the rockets,
Speaker 4: the rockets, the astronauts walking on the Moon, the explanes,
Speaker 4: the images that come back from James Webspace telescope or
Speaker 4: our rovers on Mars. But that's that's not enough, right,
Speaker 4: that's enough to spark the interest, you know, more kids
Speaker 4: dressing up as astronauts for Halloween. But we still have
Speaker 4: a huge grant portfolio that goes out to university. We
Speaker 4: have a top internship program right now, we take the
Speaker 4: top one percent of internship applications. And what I like
Speaker 4: about our moon based program right now, we're going to
Speaker 4: have landers on the Moon on a near monthly cadence
Speaker 4: starting in early twenty twenty Sivean. We could raid the
Speaker 4: pantry at every NASA center for science instruments, there won't
Speaker 4: be enough.
Speaker 3: So what does that mean?
Speaker 4: There's kids in universities right now in the United States
Speaker 4: and across the world that are working on hardware that's
Speaker 4: going to be on the Moon in the years ahead.
Speaker 1: There's an argument why focus on space when we have
Speaker 1: a lot of problems here on Earth to fix? Can
Speaker 1: you give us a sense of some of the scientific
Speaker 1: progress that's coming from some of these programs that has
Speaker 1: real world application beyond just necessarily hyperscalers on the moon?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, first, we've been hearing this since the
Speaker 4: nineteen sixties too, And what I would say, it's a different,
Speaker 4: different budgetary environment now versus then. So nineteen sixties NASA
Speaker 4: is about four and a half percent of discretionary budget.
Speaker 4: We're about a quarter of a percentage now, So I.
Speaker 3: Would argue we can do both.
Speaker 4: We can make investments into a brighter future for the
Speaker 4: for the world we want our children to grow up
Speaker 4: and try and address some of the hardships, the affordability,
Speaker 4: the challenges of the world we live in today. And
Speaker 4: does it matter for sure? Inspiration is a price worth
Speaker 4: paying for the next generation to take us even farther
Speaker 4: scientific economic potential, I mean, we go to the moon.
Speaker 4: What could a lunar economy look like someday? I mean,
Speaker 4: whether we are three D printing satellites like you described,
Speaker 4: or maybe we're mining helium three that could have quantum
Speaker 4: implications or futuresion or future fusion power, a source of
Speaker 4: future fusion power, not to mention to just look knowledge.
Speaker 4: I mean, what do we stand to learning game? We've
Speaker 4: only just begun this great adventure.
Speaker 2: Can you achieve these goals with budget cuts? They're the
Speaker 2: questions you've faced all through the last few weeks.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess, and I'll tell you the same thing
Speaker 4: I told Congress on that is, you can't just look
Speaker 4: at the president's FY twenty seven budget requests without taking
Speaker 4: it in combination with the historic ten billion dollar investment
Speaker 4: that came from the Working Family Tax Cut Act, that
Speaker 4: one big, beautiful bill, President Trump's signature legislation. You take
Speaker 4: that ten billion plus twenty six appropriations plus twenty seven
Speaker 4: what can we do.
Speaker 3: We can go back to the moon. We can do
Speaker 3: it with frequency.
Speaker 4: We can build the moon base, we can launch a
Speaker 4: giant nuclear powered interplanetary spaceship and do all.
Speaker 3: The other things.
Speaker 2: You've been to space, not once but twice, right, yes, sir.
Speaker 2: I don't have the imagination that you have about what
Speaker 2: this could be. When I hear things like data centers
Speaker 2: in space, I'm like, these guys are crazy. I just
Speaker 2: haven't flexed that muscle. I was never into sci fi.
Speaker 2: What could this be? What do you tell people? How
Speaker 2: imaginative do you need to be?
Speaker 4: Well, let let me let me hit that on two
Speaker 4: points one? Where do you know what I What is
Speaker 4: my takeaway from coming back from space more twice? At
Speaker 4: this point we are at with respect to even exploring
Speaker 4: our Solar system, let alone the galaxy that you know,
Speaker 4: or the or the two trillion other galaxies out there.
Speaker 4: We're at the equivalency of hollowing out a log and
Speaker 4: using it to float across a pond like that is
Speaker 4: where we are at in this great adventure.
Speaker 3: It is so early.
Speaker 4: I mean, you have no idea where this is going
Speaker 4: to take us in years ahead, and then how do
Speaker 4: we get there? Well, a space economy sure would be great,
Speaker 4: because I don't think we're going to have that sci
Speaker 4: fi future we imagine with lots of space stations in
Speaker 4: orbital outposts and a Mars space if it's entirely paid
Speaker 4: for by the taxpayers. So I want data centers in
Speaker 4: space to work. Why not take advantage of a giant
Speaker 4: fusion reactor that's already out there. I want, you know,
Speaker 4: I want to three I want us three D printing organs.
Speaker 4: I want us making cancer curing drugs in micro gravity.
Speaker 4: I want all that to come to fruition. We can't
Speaker 4: force it into existence at NASA, but we can do
Speaker 4: all we can to ignite it.
Speaker 2: You know, when Jared walked into the studio, one of
Speaker 2: my first questions to him was, you've made lots of money,
Speaker 2: You've had this great successful life in private business. Why
Speaker 2: don't you want to go to complement I've never heard
Speaker 2: someone so excited in that jomb On gomplment.
Speaker 1: He feels like you can make a difference.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's very exciting here.
Speaker 1: I wish I could hear you talk for the rest
Speaker 1: of the hour, frankly, because to me, this is really
Speaker 1: the exciting stuff where we could actually innovate and find
Speaker 1: new places. Do we want to find aliens though? Do
Speaker 1: we actually want to find other life?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Fers and the eye, No, I don't know.
Speaker 4: This is the heart of what we do at NASA's
Speaker 4: to answer the question are we alone? Okay, I don't
Speaker 4: know how across two trillion galaxies that we are not.
Speaker 4: I when I have this conversation with a lot of
Speaker 4: folks and we ad missions out there.
Speaker 3: Right, We're launched a.
Speaker 4: Probe to Europa called Europa Clipper looking for biosignatures. We're
Speaker 4: launching a nuclear powered octicopter to Saturn's moon of Titan
Speaker 4: to look for biosignatures. And we have samples and tubes
Speaker 4: on Mars and if we bring those back, we put
Speaker 4: it in a better ninety percent chance.
Speaker 2: To hint the bright life. And you know what farirasee
Speaker 2: theorists are going to say, they pulled the plug, they
Speaker 2: pulled the plugg would be he.
Speaker 3: Was about to say it.
Speaker 2: He was about to say it, Jared, thank you, sir, appreciate,
Speaker 2: thank you. Jered is the NASSA administrator,