Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: America will never again give up on the Moon. Those
Speaker 2: are the words of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in a
Speaker 2: press conference this morning discussing new plans for the space Agency.
Speaker 2: The core of it is twenty billion dollars of investment
Speaker 2: over seven years, the focus to build a moon base.
Speaker 2: But there is so much more to it than that.
Speaker 2: And delighted to say that NASA Administrator Jarediseeman joins us
Speaker 2: right now here at the Hill and Valley Forum, but
Speaker 2: on Bloombogue Tech. You will not be surprise Administrator that
Speaker 2: My first question is about money. Twenty billion dollars. Where
Speaker 2: does it come from? And I guess you know your
Speaker 2: plans have evolved pretty rapidly since you took post. What
Speaker 2: does this figure signify in in how you're doing it differently?
Speaker 1: Sure? I mean it's interesting. A lot of people think
Speaker 1: MAASAID doesn't have the resources to execute on the mission,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, our appropriations this year is twenty five
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Twenty five billion dollars an awful lot of money.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, we received a ten billion dollar plus
Speaker 1: up in the one Big Beautiful Bill which is probably
Speaker 1: one of the most significant investments in human space exploration
Speaker 1: that we've seen in an extremely long time. Bottom line is,
Speaker 1: we have the resources, are we concentrating in the right direction.
Speaker 1: Are we doing a lot of little things and getting
Speaker 1: nowhere right? So we talked today, Hey, we're going to
Speaker 1: hit pause on the on the Gateway, which was a
Speaker 1: space station designed to orbit above the moon. We don't
Speaker 1: want to orbit above the moon. We want to be
Speaker 1: on the moon. We want to build a base. We
Speaker 1: want to interact with the regular if we want to
Speaker 1: do insitu resource manufacturing. We want to test out mobility
Speaker 1: on the surface to power communications. We want to build
Speaker 1: President Trump's moon base that he called for in the
Speaker 1: National Space Policy. We have the resources to do this.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of resources at NASA. We just
Speaker 1: need to move them in the needle moving direction.
Speaker 2: It's twenty billion over seven years, but all told, over
Speaker 2: the decade thirty billion. Is this something that you've been
Speaker 2: able to meet with Kong rest about and appropriate the
Speaker 2: funds through that mechanism or it's just in the budget,
Speaker 2: it's planned based on the annual appropriation that you outline.
Speaker 1: This is within the resource availament of course, we try
Speaker 1: and subscribe to a no surprise policy, so we never
Speaker 1: you know, formulate these type of initiatives in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: We met with our international partners that are supporting us
Speaker 1: in our great return to the Moon. We met with
Speaker 1: leaders from the author from authorizers in Congress, the appropriators,
Speaker 1: the White House. Everybody gets fully aligned around how we're
Speaker 1: going to achieve this. We talk about these kinds of
Speaker 1: dollars and you look at it across our budget, this
Speaker 1: is just small percentages of it. You know, we definitely
Speaker 1: have the means within the resource available to achieve this.
Speaker 1: You think about it. We have a Science Technology Mission
Speaker 1: Director right, does lots of experimentation for future applications from
Speaker 1: the Moon to Mars. Great, we're going to the Moon.
Speaker 1: We concentrate STMD in that direction. We have a Science
Speaker 1: Mission Director right, they have a CLIPS program. We do
Speaker 1: lots of scientific missions on the Moon. Great, we're going
Speaker 1: to move. We concentrate that on building the Moon base
Speaker 1: and attaching scientific payloads. It's really across the board ESDMD,
Speaker 1: which is tasked with the return to the Moon and
Speaker 1: thinking through Mars. We've got a lot of resources there
Speaker 1: from Gateway, especially since that.
Speaker 2: Was plus type in the budget resource.
Speaker 1: And we are repurposing that to the surface where we
Speaker 1: all want to be. So NASA does not have a
Speaker 1: top line problem. I can't emphasize that enough.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Administrator. You have gone fast your entire life.
Speaker 2: You are building businesses in your parents' basement of the
Speaker 2: age of sixteen. You dot shift for you. You move
Speaker 2: at the speed of founder. Do your partners to artimist
Speaker 2: partners move at the speed that you need them to.
Speaker 1: Well, we've been talking to industry and we've been emphasizing
Speaker 1: now is the time to act. We have to execute
Speaker 1: with urgency. I've said it many times. President Trump and
Speaker 1: his National Space Policy says we need to return to
Speaker 1: the Moon. You know, before the end of twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Our great rival has said they will return before the
Speaker 1: before twenty thirty. That means success and failure is measured
Speaker 1: in months night years. We don't have time to do
Speaker 1: things the way we used to do. We have to
Speaker 1: get a gear. That's why I said during my keynote
Speaker 1: this morning, we are not going to sit on our
Speaker 1: hands at NASA and hope industry delivers. We are going
Speaker 1: to do what we did in the nineteen sixties. We're
Speaker 1: deploying our subject matter experts to every vendor, every subcontractor
Speaker 1: every component on the critical path, not to be passive,
Speaker 1: but active to drive outcomes. We're going to do this
Speaker 1: with our commercial and international partners, your.
Speaker 2: Great competitor being China. What do you need from a
Speaker 2: supply chain perspective that you can't get your hands on
Speaker 2: in the here and now? What keeps you up at
Speaker 2: night in terms of meeting a mission?
Speaker 1: Well, I look, I think it's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: components on the supply chain that that we care an
Speaker 1: awful lot about as you would expect. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: going to the Moon takes the contributions for many. When
Speaker 1: we talk about building a moon base, we need hyper
Speaker 1: golf thrusters. We were sending clips landers to the Moon
Speaker 1: two or three times a year. I said this morning,
Speaker 1: we're going to go from bespoke and infrequent to templated
Speaker 1: and routine, which means we're gonna need a lot of
Speaker 1: hypergl thrusters. Right, So we are deploying this. This is
Speaker 1: why we're deploying our subject matter experts into the field
Speaker 1: with our partners to drive outcomes. Because if we wind
Speaker 1: up in a situation where we're going over budget or
Speaker 1: behind schedule, we are going to act. We're either gonna
Speaker 1: act with our partners. We're gonna apply some of the
Speaker 1: best and brightest minds from across the nation to build
Speaker 1: the solution ourselves to get to the outcome.
Speaker 2: You said this morning, and you've just reiterated that you've
Speaker 2: asked industry to find ways to get back to the
Speaker 2: Moon more rapidly. But I guess to try and make
Speaker 2: that a little more crystallized. What are the benchmarks that
Speaker 2: you'll hold them to, you know, what is it the
Speaker 2: milestones that you need industry to hit, and then we
Speaker 2: can get I guess onto the Ultimus program from the well.
Speaker 1: I get. Let's break in two categories. So just returning
Speaker 1: humans to the Moon, we said we got to get
Speaker 1: at a pace of launching a moon rocket with greater
Speaker 1: frequency than every three years. So we need you to
Speaker 1: pull forward production, pull everything to the left, set up
Speaker 1: for another mission. So Artemis two is going to launch
Speaker 1: in a week and go around them moon. Artemis three
Speaker 1: is going to be very alla, Apollo nine launch in
Speaker 1: Earth orbit, rendezvous with one or two Landers, and then
Speaker 1: we'll set up for Artemis four and five, which will
Speaker 1: be a landing on the Moon in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: So we've spoken to industry and told them you have
Speaker 1: to start pulling things to the left. We will again
Speaker 1: deploy resources to help you in that process. We will
Speaker 1: also rebuild core competencies so we can turn our launch
Speaker 1: pad to meet launch cadence. But then there's also building
Speaker 1: the moon base, which is lots of landings in Phase one,
Speaker 1: which is our test and experimentation.
Speaker 2: This is where reportings comes in.
Speaker 1: Yes, so this is where we've sent a demand signal
Speaker 1: to industry today. Again not infrequent bespoke landers and rovers,
Speaker 1: lots of them. Iterative approach land lots lots of landers,
Speaker 1: lots of rovers, do experimentation, comms, navigation, mobility power. We'll
Speaker 1: learn in phase one and form semi habitability in phase two.
Speaker 1: Ultimately get to phase three where we're looking to have
Speaker 1: that enduring presence on the Moon. This is the demand
Speaker 1: signal we're sending the industry.
Speaker 2: Industries responding Straits of Bloomberg reported this month that there
Speaker 2: are two proposals on your desk, so to speak, one
Speaker 2: from Blue Origin and one from SpaceX different mechanisms for
Speaker 2: future missions that relate to the Moon in simple terms.
Speaker 2: In the proposal that Bloomberg reported, which related to SpaceX,
Speaker 2: starship would be involved in some capacity with future missions
Speaker 2: going in lower orbit, combining with Orion, and propelling the
Speaker 2: combined entity to the Moon. What are the status of
Speaker 2: those proposals and what can you say about them? And
Speaker 2: why to those two proposals came up in the first place.
Speaker 1: So we you know, my predecessor asked industry, what are
Speaker 1: your acceleration pathways? Because again we don't have the time here.
Speaker 1: Now I will compliment both SpaceX and Blue Origin are
Speaker 1: not trying to build a lander to put boots on
Speaker 1: the ground to plant the flag and pick up rocks.
Speaker 1: They're building landers that allow us to put lots of
Speaker 1: mass on the Moon so we can build the base,
Speaker 1: have an enduring presence to go far beyond where we
Speaker 1: went with Apollo, and be able to undertake frequent and
Speaker 1: affordable missions to the surface. So, in fairness, they are
Speaker 1: taking on a technically complex approach. We did ask how
Speaker 1: can you accelerate? How can you simplify? Both have come
Speaker 1: back with options that kind of buy down some of
Speaker 1: the technical risks, and in both cases it means different
Speaker 1: orbits NRHO, which NASA originally designed in part to support
Speaker 1: the gateway nobody likes.
Speaker 2: And emitiate Layman's terms. And HRO is the path around
Speaker 2: the Moon. Could you just explain that that right?
Speaker 1: It is a relatively stable orbit around the Moon. If
Speaker 1: you were going to put a Moon space station, that's
Speaker 1: where you would put it, which was our kind of
Speaker 1: agenda up until now, where we're concentrating on an actual
Speaker 1: base on the Moon, it had less aboard options to
Speaker 1: come home. It came, as we would say, a DV penalty,
Speaker 1: or it had it came with a performance penalty, okay,
Speaker 1: for both SpaceX and Blue Origin to actually get to.
Speaker 1: So it didn't really help anyone in that one of
Speaker 1: our HLS, one of our landing providers came back and said,
Speaker 1: I'd rather meet you in a different lunar orbit, and
Speaker 1: the other one said I'd rather meet you into a
Speaker 1: high Earth orbit. In either scenario, it doesn't change the
Speaker 1: fact that Oriyan is going to get to those landers
Speaker 1: via the Space Launch System.
Speaker 2: It's just the NHRO is not included in either plan.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 2: Can we speak a little bit about Mars before we
Speaker 2: run out of time?
Speaker 1: We have a really exciting mission to Mars.
Speaker 2: Explain it and there is there is a date, so
Speaker 2: there is a timeline for it, which I was a
Speaker 2: little surprised at.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we will never give up an opportunity to
Speaker 1: go to Mars during the planetary alignment window. The next
Speaker 1: one comes in twenty twenty eight. We've got a Mars
Speaker 1: Telecommunication Network orbiter that's going to Mars in twenty eight
Speaker 1: which will carry a science payload. We have a joint
Speaker 1: mission with ISA, the Rosalind Franklin Rover, which is going
Speaker 1: to go search an anal you know, search for our
Speaker 1: or potentially organic matter like it's a part of our
Speaker 1: larger quest for looking for life out in the universe.
Speaker 1: And then the big announcement today is we are launching
Speaker 1: the first nuclear interplanetary spacecraft, nuclear electric powered spaceship and
Speaker 1: it's going to drop the Skyfall payload, which is Ingenuity
Speaker 1: class helicopters on Mars. He did it well, shared Aiascman,
Speaker 1: NASA Administrator, with a lot of news