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Speaker 1: On this episode of News World, the United States is

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Speaker 1: now embroiled with a brutal and autocratic communist China in

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Speaker 1: a new Cold War and a second, far more consequential

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Speaker 1: race to the Moon. Whichever country seizes the commanding heights

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Speaker 1: of the Moon will have preferential access to vast lunar

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Speaker 1: resources that will determine the quality of life on Earth

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Speaker 1: and the political and moral character of humans as we

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Speaker 1: advance into the Solar System. The United States should win

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Speaker 1: space Race two point zero and is leading an international

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Speaker 1: and commercial coalition to do so. Yet communist China is

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Speaker 1: giving no ground even as its rockets soar above us.

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Speaker 1: The clear risk, timid, and visionless policymakers in the White

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Speaker 1: House in Congress may well surrender the ultimate high ground

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Speaker 1: to Beijing. Here to discuss his new book, Red Moon Rising,

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Speaker 1: How America will beat China on the final frontier. I'm

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Speaker 1: really pleased to welcome my guests, author doctor Greg Autry.

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Speaker 1: He is the Director of Space Leadership, Policy and Business

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Speaker 1: in the Thunderbird School of Global Management and a professor

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Speaker 1: at Arizona State University. Doctor Artry served on the NASA

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Speaker 1: Agency Review Team and his White House Liaison and NASA.

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Speaker 1: He co authored Red Moon Rising with Peter Navarro. Greg.

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Speaker 1: Welcome and thank you for joining me on News World.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Nat. I can't be more excited than to

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Speaker 2: have an opportunity to spend a good deal of time

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Speaker 2: talking with you, which is always informative.

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Speaker 1: But why don't you start with why this is so important?

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Speaker 1: Thanks to the average American looking at all the other

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Speaker 1: problems we have. It's kind of like the space race

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Speaker 1: is interesting, but tell us why is it vital to

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Speaker 1: our future?

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Speaker 2: That's a good question, and frankly the main reason we

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Speaker 2: wrote the book. Peter and I open the introduction saying,

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Speaker 2: why spend money in space when there's problems right here

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Speaker 2: on Earth? Which you constantly hear. I think you know

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Speaker 2: the answer, but I'm going to share with the listeners.

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Speaker 2: It's that no major problem in all of human history

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Speaker 2: has ever been solved from inside the box. It's external resources, thinkings,

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Speaker 2: and opportunities that allow for the growth that lets you

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Speaker 2: get out of the dilemmas that you face, whether those

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Speaker 2: are economic, environmental, social, or political. And many of the

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Speaker 2: problems that we face here in the United States and globally,

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Speaker 2: I believe are because we don't have that frontier. We

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Speaker 2: don't have that economic front heer. We don't have that

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Speaker 2: place to send people who aggressively want to explore and

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Speaker 2: exploit new resources. That is a fundamental human driver. On

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Speaker 2: a more practical level, from the US standpoint, it's a

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Speaker 2: matter of national prestige. We talk quite a bit in

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Speaker 2: the book about how the fall of Soviet Union was

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Speaker 2: probably precipitated in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies

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Speaker 2: when they fell behind in the space race and we

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Speaker 2: took the moon. The credibility of communism globally took a

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Speaker 2: huge hit when they failed to match Kennedy's challenge to

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Speaker 2: get to the moon, and America from that point on

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Speaker 2: was just clearly recognized is the technological capable leader. And

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Speaker 2: then we talk in the book about all the benefits

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Speaker 2: that are going to come to us. There are incredible

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Speaker 2: opportunities for new materials, for new medical treatments, for new

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Speaker 2: clean sources of power that will be returned to Earth

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Speaker 2: and make the Earth a much better place to live,

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Speaker 2: even if you're not going to space.

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Speaker 1: In that context, with space being that important, how do

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Speaker 1: you analyze and assess the Chinese communist effort in space well.

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Speaker 2: To their credit, it's a very serious efforte One of

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Speaker 2: the things that I have to say impresses me about

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Speaker 2: them is they say what they're going to do and

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Speaker 2: then they do it, and they do it almost on

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Speaker 2: time every time. They haven't been nearly as creative as us,

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Speaker 2: and to be perfectly honest, most of their technology is

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Speaker 2: either stolen from the US or bought directly from the Russians.

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Speaker 2: There's nothing super new going on, but they've been executing

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Speaker 2: admirably and doing things that frankly, we've even had some

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Speaker 2: issues with. So they've got landers on the moon, and

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Speaker 2: as you might have noticed, a lot of countries and

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Speaker 2: several US companies have been attempting that and none have

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Speaker 2: had a perfect success. The Chinese have done a sample

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Speaker 2: return mission from the moon and another one just launched

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Speaker 2: on Friday. This is something that we're trying to do

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Speaker 2: for Mars, but we haven't gotten together. So they're serious.

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Speaker 2: On the military front, they are very serious, and they

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Speaker 2: intend to use the high ground, the ultimate high ground,

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Speaker 2: as a tool against us because they have seen how

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Speaker 2: effective space dominance has been for the United States in

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Speaker 2: the late twentieth and early twenty first century.

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Speaker 1: Just as an aside, you mentioned Russia. I mean, Russia

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Speaker 1: at one point was a major competitor. But I get

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Speaker 1: the sense that they just financially have not been able

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Speaker 1: to sustain beyond near where they have a military focus.

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Speaker 1: But when we think about going beyond that, since that,

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Speaker 1: the Russians have sort of dropped out of the game.

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Speaker 1: Is that your assessment.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it's a shame. I mean, again, although I

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Speaker 2: didn't admire the Soviet Union, what they accomplished deserved kudos

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Speaker 2: when you look at what they did in the nineteen

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Speaker 2: fifties and sixties and then putting up the first space

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Speaker 2: stations in the seventies. These were real accomplishments. But then

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Speaker 2: they fell into a maintenance period where essentially the best

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Speaker 2: that they could do is keep flying Soyuz with a

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Speaker 2: lot of American subsidies. Most people don't realize how much

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Speaker 2: an Assets subsidized the Russian space program from the nineties

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Speaker 2: through the two thousands, and then they didn't invest themselves,

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Speaker 2: and they had bad leadership with Dimitri Rogos and Putin's

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Speaker 2: apparatchik who ran ros Cosmos, and it's gone into total decline.

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Speaker 2: There's been a brain drain Russian scientists are trying to

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Speaker 2: get the heck out of there because they don't want

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Speaker 2: to be handed in Ak forty seven and sent to

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Speaker 2: the front in Ukraine. It's a sad situation.

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Speaker 1: Was it a mistake for us to rely on Sawyers

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Speaker 1: in the nineties, Well.

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Speaker 2: You know, when you had the opening up there with Gorbachev,

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Speaker 2: and in the post Gorbachev period where we thought Yeltsin

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Speaker 2: was going to be helpful. You can probably speak to

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Speaker 2: it better than I can. In my opinion, we should

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Speaker 2: have done everything we could engage with them and keep

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Speaker 2: them in the fold of democratic Western thinking and help

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Speaker 2: them progress on the path that they seemed to be on.

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Speaker 2: But the moment we saw backsliding there, we should have

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Speaker 2: been realistic. But at no point should we ever become

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Speaker 2: dependent on any foreign system, even if they are best friends.

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Speaker 2: And so it was a huge mistake not to move

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Speaker 2: commercial launch sooner. But to the credit of both the GW.

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Speaker 2: Bush administration and the Obama administration, they frankly finally got

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Speaker 2: commercial going, and they deserve credit for that too. Trump

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Speaker 2: expanded it enormously. It would have been great if it

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Speaker 2: happened back when you were talking about it ten or

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Speaker 2: twenty years before it did.

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Speaker 1: It's very ironic. Bob Walker and I Bob was onway

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Speaker 1: showing of the Science and Technology Committee in the late eighties.

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Speaker 1: We actually, as you know, we actually passed an amendment

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Speaker 1: and got four hundred million dollars for NASA to build

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Speaker 1: a reusable rocket, which they promptly hired Lockheed Martin, who

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Speaker 1: promptly failed, and then they gave up. And long comes

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Speaker 1: Elon musk ten fifteen years later, and he has the

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Speaker 1: persistence to recognize that this is just an engineering problem

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Speaker 1: that you can work your way through it. He sort

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Speaker 1: of revolutionized space both in cost. It's the most deflationary

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Speaker 1: single development that we've seen in terms of the collapse

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Speaker 1: of the price of getting a pound indoor. But if

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Speaker 1: he succeeds, as I suspect, he will eventually in building

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Speaker 1: a genuine starship that has thirty three engines. The fact

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Speaker 1: that it's reusable, the effect of that on getting both

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Speaker 1: weight and people into space should be pretty enormous. In

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Speaker 1: your judgment, is there anything comparable being developed in China?

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Speaker 2: Well being the Chinese guess what, they promised to copy

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Speaker 2: it all, so they've got CGI demonstrations of vehicles that

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Speaker 2: they claim they're going to be able to look guess what,

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Speaker 2: exactly like Starship, just as they've released pictures of vehicles

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Speaker 2: that look exactly like the Falcon nine. But to your point,

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Speaker 2: a really important thing, you know, I covered that history

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Speaker 2: in the book. There were several attempts in the nineteen

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Speaker 2: eighties and nineties for private launch companies to get going,

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Speaker 2: and unfortunately, besides you and Bob and a few voices

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Speaker 2: in the woods, there wasn't a lot of support, and

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Speaker 2: NASA often was more obstructive to those attempts than embracing.

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Speaker 2: I'm glad to see that change now. On the reusability standpoint,

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Speaker 2: it's also super important to note that SpaceX has never

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Speaker 2: actually yet returned the savings they get from reusability to

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Speaker 2: customer price. Their customer price for a launch hit sixty

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Speaker 2: two million, which was the low point before they started

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Speaker 2: doing reusability, and that was because Elon is also a

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Speaker 2: master at lowing the production cost of things. He's a

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Speaker 2: manufacturing production engineer, really, and what he's done is brought

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Speaker 2: the cost of making rockets down by bringing in automotive

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Speaker 2: people and using off the shelf parts instead of the

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Speaker 2: bespoke super custom method that Rockets used previously, and that

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Speaker 2: lowered the cost war and I think there's still another

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Speaker 2: drop ready to come. And when you have a technology

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Speaker 2: where the basic driver for the technology is increasing in

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Speaker 2: performance and decreasing in price every year, you have a

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Speaker 2: More's law like we did back with computing in the

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighties and nineties. And that promise is an incredible

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Speaker 2: boom because the applications, the things that you can do

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Speaker 2: with that that we don't know yet are about to explode,

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Speaker 2: and I think we're all going to be amazed.

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Speaker 1: What will the impact be on people going into space?

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Speaker 2: Well, first of all, there'll be a lot more of them.

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Speaker 2: So up until now, there's been about six hundred people

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Speaker 2: in space, but just in the last couple of years

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Speaker 2: that's begun to change rapidly. SpaceX has flown more people

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Speaker 2: to space in the last four years than China has

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Speaker 2: since they started their human spaceflight program back in two

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Speaker 2: thousand and three. So SpaceX and four years versus the

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Speaker 2: government of China in twenty years, that's incredible. I believe

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Speaker 2: we're going to get to the point, hopefully where you

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Speaker 2: and I are going to have the opportunity to finally

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Speaker 2: go at a reasonable price as an experience, but people

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Speaker 2: are also going to go up there to start working

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Speaker 2: and living and getting the benefits of it. And I

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Speaker 2: think in the next ten to twenty years there'll be

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Speaker 2: more people living in space than have flown in space

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Speaker 2: so far.

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Speaker 1: You keep hearing that there are things you can do

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Speaker 1: with zero gravity and it's very low gravity that create

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Speaker 1: all sorts of new openings, but they haven't really materialized

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Speaker 1: as commercial possibilities at this stage.

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Speaker 2: Interestingly, I chair the business Case Review Committee for a

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Speaker 2: NASA program called in in Space Production Applications, and we

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Speaker 2: evaluate manufacturing proposals to go to the International Space Station.

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Speaker 2: These are high TURL level experiments where the technology is

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Speaker 2: proven and we're looking to see if there's a business case.

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Speaker 2: And I have to say new, we're finally getting there.

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Speaker 2: A company called Flawless Photonics, who makes a fiber optic

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Speaker 2: cable called z bland at a quality that can only

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Speaker 2: be made in space, has produced five kilometers of usable

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Speaker 2: cable in their last run. Several of the individual pieces

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Speaker 2: were more than one kilometer long. This material sells for

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Speaker 2: hundreds or maybe thousand dollars per meter weighs very very little,

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Speaker 2: So it's actually a practical in space manufacturing application. Why

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Speaker 2: do people want better fiber optic cable Because with less

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Speaker 2: inclusions and perfections inside the cable, you get much more

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Speaker 2: better data transmission and you can maybe get a few

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Speaker 2: micro seconds faster between them in New York and execute

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Speaker 2: a trade worth billions of dollars. So this is actually

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Speaker 2: a real game changer.

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Speaker 1: Wow, that's a great example. When you look at the

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Speaker 1: Chinese side, how big a challenge should we face in

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Speaker 1: terms of if the Chinese do end up dominating in space?

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Speaker 2: Wow, Well, whoever holds the high ground controls the territory

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Speaker 2: underneath it. And frankly, I testified to the House Natural

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Speaker 2: Resources Committee in December and was asked that question, and

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Speaker 2: I said it was an existential threat to the United

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Speaker 2: States and to the values of the Enlightenment and Western civilization.

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Speaker 2: If the Chinese on the Moon and they own low

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Speaker 2: Earth orbit, they can do what they want with the planet,

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Speaker 2: and that is terrifying when you consider who their leadership

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Speaker 2: is at this moment.

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Speaker 1: One of the things is, you know that I've been

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Speaker 1: very concerned about, testified about, and wrote about, is electromagnetic pulse.

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Speaker 1: It's been very challenging to try to get the system

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Speaker 1: to understand how real this danger is and how plausible

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Speaker 1: it is. Could you talk just for a second about

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Speaker 1: your concerns about the Chinese potential with electromenic pulse to

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Speaker 1: literally wipe out whole layers of communications and intelligence satellites.

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Speaker 2: Great question, Newton. In fact, Peter and I opened the

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Speaker 2: book with that scenario because we think it's so important

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Speaker 2: people understand. So an electric magnetic pulse is capable of

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Speaker 2: basically disabling and, depending on the strength, completely destroying the

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Speaker 2: technology that drives our everyday lives by sending out a

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Speaker 2: wave of highly ionized atoms that will destroy the chips

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Speaker 2: inside your cell phone, the chips that drive your car

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Speaker 2: you're a refrigerator, and even frankly destroyed the electrical grid

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Speaker 2: itself by overloading the transformers that are critical to the

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Speaker 2: distribution of electricity. So what will happen is nothing will work.

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Speaker 2: But worse than that, new is nothing's going to get

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Speaker 2: fixed for several reasons. One, there's no vahicles capable of

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Speaker 2: driving anymore. Your electric car and your GRADU will probably

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Speaker 2: burst into a ball of flame. The non electric cars

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Speaker 2: all have electronic ignition systems and computer controls. They're all bricks.

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Speaker 2: Every highway will be jammed with dead cars and no

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Speaker 2: vehicles capable of towing them out of there. Plus, guess what,

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Speaker 2: all our electrical transformers are dead, and all of our

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Speaker 2: electronics are dead, and we have become nearly one hundred

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Speaker 2: percent dependent on China to supply us those things. We

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Speaker 2: can't replace them. The Chinese are not going to be

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Speaker 2: loading up boatloads of supplies for us. We are going

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Speaker 2: to be instantly transported into the Stone Agent. As we're

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Speaker 2: kind of sarcastically say in the book, the gen Z

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Speaker 2: folks are going to have to learn how to build

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Speaker 2: a fire and sharpen a sphere without a man splainer

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Speaker 2: on YouTube to show them how that's a terrifying day.

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Speaker 1: That kind of world would, in fact face the kind

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Speaker 1: of collapse that people warned about with the population bomb

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Speaker 1: of interview check away all the advantages of high civil

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Speaker 1: The carrying capacity of North America is probably three or

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Speaker 1: four million people.

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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, particularly if you return to small lot organic

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Speaker 2: farming like my crazy liberal friends think that they want

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Speaker 2: to have. You're back in the Middle Ages, And no,

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Speaker 2: you don't have that carrying capacity. You can't have six

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Speaker 2: billion people. Frankly, I think there's a strange group of

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Speaker 2: people who would like to see half of the world

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Speaker 2: or three quarters of us starve to death. But that's

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Speaker 2: where you would go in no time. The other thing

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Speaker 2: from a policy standpoint that worries me about emp's new

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Speaker 2: is both Russians and the Chinese have categorically stated that

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Speaker 2: even though EMPs are usually a nuclear based weapon technology,

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Speaker 2: that they do not consider them to be strategically nuclear weapons,

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Speaker 2: but rather to be cyber weapons and therefore usable on

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Speaker 2: the battlefield. And worst, the fact is, the Chinese are

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Speaker 2: attacking us with cyber attacks every single day in the

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Speaker 2: United States, they hack the United States government in a

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Speaker 2: multitude of ways, and so they consider cyber attacks legitimate.

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Speaker 2: So there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't use

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Speaker 2: one of these to achieve their goals.

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Speaker 1: I agree, and I think we have to profoundly rethink

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Speaker 1: our whole strategic posture and recognize us as society on

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Speaker 1: society competition. But let me go, I grew up when

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Speaker 1: science fiction was exciting and positive, and people like Asimov

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Speaker 1: and Heinlend and others. I want to go to one

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Speaker 1: of the most fascinating examples, which is a little bit

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Speaker 1: nutty but nonetheless plausible, and that is the asteroid Psyche,

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Speaker 1: which is estimated to have ten quintillion dollars of minerals,

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Speaker 1: which is six hundred thousand times the annual economic activity US.

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Speaker 1: So here's my question. We have identified this source, it

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Speaker 1: is outside our normal concern about mining. If you were

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Speaker 1: designing a strategy to exploit Psyche, did you want to

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Speaker 1: develop more effective barges to go back and forth or

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Speaker 1: would you want to try to figure out a way

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Speaker 1: to actually bring Psyche closer to Earth.

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Speaker 2: Well, that is also an excellent question. So Psyche's particularly

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Speaker 2: fairly big. There are a lot of other smaller targets

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Speaker 2: that would probably be more movable, but moving a metallic

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Speaker 2: asteroid closer to the Earth might be the best way

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Speaker 2: to exploit those materials and mine them so that the

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Speaker 2: actual transportation doesn't have to occur over and over and over.

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Speaker 2: One of the things we really need, though to achieve

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Speaker 2: things of that goal, whether it's transporting the loads of

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Speaker 2: ore or transporting the whole asteroid, is nuclear space propulsion,

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Speaker 2: and that's something that we actually worked on in the

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixties and had ready to go. Frankly, we could

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Speaker 2: have been on Mars in the nineteen eighties if we

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Speaker 2: hadn't dropped that. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville

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Speaker 2: is capable of ramping those programs back up, and there's

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Speaker 2: been some interest. So that's the top thing we need

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Speaker 2: to do to make that happen.

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Speaker 1: I thought I saw that NASA was actually working now

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Speaker 1: to develop a nuclear rocket force in space, not to

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Speaker 1: get to space, but once you're.

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Speaker 2: There, exactly to be clear nuclear launch as possible but

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Speaker 2: not necessarily as attractive for a variety of environmental issues,

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Speaker 2: but in space. Yeah, absolutely, and they have reinvestigated that.

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Speaker 2: I have to give credits to Bahavia Lull at NASA

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Speaker 2: who pushed for that program for both nuclear propulsion and

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Speaker 2: nuclear power on the surface of the Moon. But we

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Speaker 2: need to do that, and a lot of that has

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Speaker 2: potential to feedback to benefits here on Earth, because frankly, again,

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Speaker 2: if we continued with nuclear in the seventies, we wouldn't

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Speaker 2: be talking about carbon emissions or climate change or even

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Speaker 2: worry about approximate particulate pollution in our cities. We'd be

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Speaker 2: living clean, free with cheap energy and higher standards of living.

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Speaker 1: Now, beyond moving asteroids closer to Earth, we actually have

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Speaker 1: a huge satellite called the Moon, and the head of

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Speaker 1: China's lunar program said that the Moon is so rich

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Speaker 1: in helium three that it could solve humanity's energy problems

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Speaker 1: for at least ten thousand years. Can you walk us

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Speaker 1: through that? I will confess most of us are not

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Speaker 1: very knowledgeable about helium three.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So what can you get on the Moon? First

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Speaker 2: of all, every time you look up there, you see

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Speaker 2: a crater, and many of those craters are metallic asteroids,

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Speaker 2: and the cores of those craters may still be there,

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Speaker 2: or the material that was delivered in the core is

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Speaker 2: mixed into the regulith, so you can mind that. But

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Speaker 2: there's an isotope of helium. Normally a helium atom has

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Speaker 2: two protons and two neutrons, but if it only has

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Speaker 2: two protons and one neutron, which is extremely rare, it

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Speaker 2: is attractive for use in nuclear usion reactors, which give us,

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Speaker 2: again a fairly unlimited, clean, free energy without any of

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Speaker 2: the waste products or attendant secondary radiation that you get

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Speaker 2: from a fission reactor. So that's kind of the ultimate

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Speaker 2: dream for clean energy. We don't know whether it works

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Speaker 2: or not because there's not enough helium three on the Earth.

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Speaker 2: It's almost non existent. It's like four parts per billion

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Speaker 2: or something extracted from natural gas. But on the Moon

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Speaker 2: we believe it existed fairly a bonded quantities relatively because

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Speaker 2: the solar wind has been pushing helium into the Moon's

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Speaker 2: regulith for a long long time, so we believe we

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Speaker 2: can find it there. In fact, the Chinese insists that

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Speaker 2: they have with their last lander, and that we can

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Speaker 2: bring it back to Earth and basically the equivalent of

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Speaker 2: one Space Shuttle payload could power the United States for months.

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Speaker 1: You charge what energy? You also talked, I think in

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Speaker 1: a very interesting way about the opportunities in biology, both

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Speaker 1: in pharmaceuticals but also in cell growth and organ DeVoe

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Speaker 1: and being in a virtually zero gravity environment. Can you

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Speaker 1: expand on what the advantages of developing these kind of

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Speaker 1: approaches pharmaceutical and biological and a zero gravity environment.

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Speaker 2: Sure. Again, in the INSPUT program, I've had the opportunity

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Speaker 2: to watch a number of projects get funded by NASA,

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Speaker 2: and there are a number of private companies that are

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Speaker 2: now looking at creating microgravity environments in space where you

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Speaker 2: can do manufacturing. A company called Varda and I think

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Speaker 2: SpaceX Starship will do that. But in space you can

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Speaker 2: make molecules that you can't make in gravity because gravity

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Speaker 2: basically doesn't allow some of these structures to exist. And

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Speaker 2: then you can make compounds metallic alloys and other materials

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Speaker 2: that again can't be made Earth because on Earth, the

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Speaker 2: heavier elements all sync to the bottom of the container

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Speaker 2: as the material solidifies, and they create convection basically currents

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Speaker 2: inside the material that produces imperfections in the structure. In space,

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Speaker 2: you make perfect crystals that are much larger they could

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Speaker 2: be made on Earth. This is important for optics, but

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Speaker 2: it also has incredible medical applications. Crystallizing pharmaceuticals extends their

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Speaker 2: shelf life for non refrigerated applications, particularly in areas like

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Speaker 2: sub Saharan Africa or Latin America where it's hard to

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Speaker 2: get them, and you can crystallize really complex molecules in

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Speaker 2: space you can't do on Earth. You can also grow

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Speaker 2: stem cells at rates many many times faster than you

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Speaker 2: can on Earth. So for instance, if you needed a

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Speaker 2: new liver, we could send up some of your stem

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Speaker 2: cells taken from your blood, differentiate them in deliver cells

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Speaker 2: and grow potentially a organ in space, bring it back

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Speaker 2: to you, and re implant it. When we tried to

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Speaker 2: do that on Earth, the growth rates are really slow

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Speaker 2: and the liver turns into deliver pancake because of gravity

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Speaker 2: in the Patriot dish basically, so we then can give

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Speaker 2: you a liver that doesn't require immunosuppressant drugs, which are

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Speaker 2: expensive and introduce risk to you as a recipient by

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Speaker 2: reducing your immune system, and save frankly the government millions

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Speaker 2: and millions of dollars because people who are organ transplant

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Speaker 2: recipients cost a lot of money to maintain. Now, and

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Speaker 2: we can do it all without having the Chinese kill

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Speaker 2: a fallen Gong member to provide a liver or wait

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Speaker 2: for some poor person to die in a car accident.

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Speaker 1: So you're really talking about a potential revolution in both

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Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals and in the development of biology by moving it

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Speaker 1: into a zero gravity kind of environment.

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Speaker 2: If you go to a pharmaceutical plant, and what do

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Speaker 2: you see. You see these big mixing vats And why

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Speaker 2: are we mixing? Because the chemicals will not interact efficiently

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Speaker 2: because the mass of the chemicals varies that they stratify

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Speaker 2: in the solution. So in space, no problem.

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Speaker 1: Things mix properly, isn't one of the challenges that the

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Speaker 1: International Space Station is growing old?

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Speaker 2: Yes, and it's not frankly perfectly designed for anything. It's

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Speaker 2: kind of a jack of all trades of space stations, right, So,

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Speaker 2: actually having a lot of people in your manufacturing space

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Speaker 2: station isn't the best idea because they create vibrations, and

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Speaker 2: they admit chemicals, and they require a lot of energy

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Speaker 2: and maintenance, and of course having a manufacturing environment going

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Speaker 2: on when you're trying to do space tourism isn't necessarily

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Speaker 2: the best thing. So I think we're going to see

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Speaker 2: a shift, hopefully to commercial leodestinations, which NASA is supporting,

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Speaker 2: that will have specialized capabilities, and some of them will

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Speaker 2: eventually be manufacturing stations, because yeah, the space station is

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Speaker 2: going to have to go. Right now, the target data

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Speaker 2: is twenty thirty We believe that we could probably push

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Speaker 2: it to twenty thirty five is problematic though working with

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Speaker 2: the Russians and the Russian equipment in particular is getting

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Speaker 2: kind of scarily unreliable.

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Speaker 1: The notion of being able to move as the starship will,

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Speaker 1: to be able to have large numbers of people in

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Speaker 1: large amounts of weight into space. It seems to me

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Speaker 1: could be a liberating moment, almost a turning point. And

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Speaker 1: how we operate in space. Do you think enough young

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Speaker 1: people realize what kind of careers we may be on

436
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:10,480
Speaker 1: the verge of inventing Because it's a little bit like

437
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley around nineteen seventy. I mean, space could be

438
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: right at the edge of takeoff.

439
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:19,479
Speaker 2: It is, and I think they are beginning to see it.

440
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 2: When I speak to my colleagues, either here at Arizona

441
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 2: State University or at Purdue or at Imperial College London,

442
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 2: where I'm a visiting professor, the space classes are filling up,

443
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 2: and the professors have told me, you know, back in

444
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 2: the nineties or early two thousand's, you know, I couldn't

445
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:40,480
Speaker 2: get twelve students into my aerospace engineering class, and now

446
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:42,920
Speaker 2: I have five sections with two hundred students in each

447
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:45,320
Speaker 2: of them. They've gotten that message in space is the

448
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 2: hot new place to go. For my own program, I

449
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 2: teach executives, So these are pretty senior professional folks farther

450
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:54,360
Speaker 2: along in their career path. But a lot of them

451
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:58,120
Speaker 2: want to move into space from other industries, particularly from

452
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 2: the tech industry, because they know that it's the hot

453
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 2: new ticket. So yeah, that boom is here.

454
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 1: So things are moving in the right direction. Do you

455
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 1: think that we're likely to beat the Chinese to the moon?

456
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 2: Wow. When I was on the president's transition team in

457
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, we had a diverse group of highly qualified

458
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:22,160
Speaker 2: space professionals. Some of them, I would say, were what

459
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 2: you call traditional space folks, more aligned with the military

460
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:28,960
Speaker 2: industrial complex sort of organizations, and a couple of us,

461
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,719
Speaker 2: myself and Charles Miller, were the commercial space guys. And

462
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 2: sometimes we didn't agree on all policy things, which I

463
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:39,159
Speaker 2: think is healthy for a presidential team, but we did

464
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,440
Speaker 2: agree on returning to the Moon. We understood how important

465
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 2: that was and we really believed nobody could beat us.

466
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:47,919
Speaker 2: Now Here we are almost eight years later, and frankly

467
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 2: newt I am very concerned. The Chinese again say what

468
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:53,199
Speaker 2: they're going to do, and they do it, and they

469
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:55,119
Speaker 2: do it on schedule, and they've said they're going to

470
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 2: be there in twenty thirty. We should have absolutely had

471
00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:01,120
Speaker 2: boots on the moon this year. That was the plan

472
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,440
Speaker 2: back in twenty sixteen, and it was only eight years

473
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:08,120
Speaker 2: Guess what. Kennedy announced the Apollo program in nineteen sixty one,

474
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 2: and the roots were on the moon eight years later.

475
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 2: If we can't do today what we did fifty years ago,

476
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 2: something's wrong to our credit. Though. Our goal is to

477
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 2: return sustainably and permanently this time, not just plant a flag,

478
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:23,120
Speaker 2: bring back some rocks and declare victory. I think it's

479
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 2: a real race new and right now. I'd have to say,

480
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:28,639
Speaker 2: if there isn't a change in administrations, I'd have to

481
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,679
Speaker 2: probably put my dollars on the Chinese. And that's not

482
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 2: to disparage the hardworking people at NASSING, including the appointees

483
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 2: there who are doing I think a pretty good job considering.

484
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:41,440
Speaker 2: But there just isn't top level support for the program.

485
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 2: There was when you had Trump and Pence there, who

486
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 2: were both very focused on delivering America's space goods.

487
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 1: I worked with Vice President Pence in relaunching the Space Council,

488
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: and I really did think that he and the President

489
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: really they got the rhythm. They understood the importance of this,

490
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: and they really wanted it to happen.

491
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, he cared enough about it that he showed up

492
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 2: as a speaker at the Space Emposium. I had the

493
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 2: honor of being the speaker to go on stage after him,

494
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:11,439
Speaker 2: which was kind of intimidating. But now you need that

495
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:13,879
Speaker 2: level of top cover. I was at Space and Posium

496
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 2: this year and Vice President Harris sent in a video,

497
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 2: and it's nice that she had time to do that,

498
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:20,879
Speaker 2: but it is not the same level of commitment. The

499
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 2: Secretary of Commerce, wilbah Ross, was at Space Symposium and

500
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 2: he understood space. There were several people in the cabinet

501
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:30,480
Speaker 2: level who actually understood space, and that we don't have

502
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:31,120
Speaker 2: that right now.

503
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:32,960
Speaker 1: I want to thank you. I think you're one of

504
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:37,399
Speaker 1: the pioneers who has had the vision and the consistency

505
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 1: and the policy orientation. And if we do end up

506
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:44,719
Speaker 1: with freedom in space and with three people doing things,

507
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 1: you will be one of the figures in history who

508
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 1: helped make this happen. I think, really you are a

509
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: major force in the direction we're going in, and I

510
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 1: want to thank you for joining me. Remind people that

511
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 1: your new book, Red Moon Rising, will be China in

512
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 1: the final frontier, is available on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere.

513
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: I encourage everyone interested in the new Space race with

514
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 1: China to get a copy and then to call their

515
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 1: house and set up members and get them to do

516
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:13,000
Speaker 1: the right thing.

517
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 2: Thank you, n It's been a real honor to be here,

518
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:17,840
Speaker 2: and there's nothing I care about more than making sure

519
00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 2: that America and frankly, humanity get to the stars.

520
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest doctor Greg Audrey. You can

521
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: get a link to buy his new book, Red Moon

522
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: Rising on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld

523
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:37,480
Speaker 1: is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive

524
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 1: producer is Guarnsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson.

525
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.

526
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If

527
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple

528
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 1: Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give

529
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 1: us a review so others can learn what it's all about.

530
00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: Right now, listeners of newts World consigner for my three

531
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 1: free weekly columns at Gingrich three sixty dot com slash newsletter.

532
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: I'm Nut Gingrich. This is Nutsworld