← Pod Force One
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- [00:00]
A
We are very much in a space race right now, and we're not going to lose. There's a natural expiration date on our sun, so you can't stay here forever. It is our destiny to go out and explore the universe and, you know, try and again unlock the secrets of the universe around us.
- [00:17]
B
Welcome to Pod Force One. I am Lydia Moynihan sitting in for Miranda Devine. Today we have Jared Isaacman, who is the NASA administrator on the show. Thank you so much for joining us here on Pod Force One. You may have the coolest job in the government, probably the only popular agency, I think, in the entire United States, certainly one of the most followed on social media. I want to start just a couple big picture questions here. You know, obviously, Artemis 2 really captured the imagination of so many Americans, brought a moment of unity in an otherwise sort of fractured world. Why is space right now so important to the American psyche, in your opinion?
- [01:01]
A
Yeah. So, first of all, you're spot on. I have the best job. I'm grateful every day to President Trump for being in this position right now to lead the world's most accomplished space agency as we return to the moon. And we're doing it differently this time. And maybe that's part of the answer to your question, is this is not a continuation of the flags and footprints, but an evolution past that, where we're actually building for the first time an outpost on another world. And why are we doing that? Well, it's been a promise for a very long time. I mean, every president for 35 years said we should do it. It wasn't until President Trump created the Artemis program under his first term that we actually took a positive step in that direction. And now we've got, through the Working Family Tax cut Act, that $10 billion investment in NASA is what actually gets us in gear. So not only a mission like Artemis ii, but an Artemis III next year and an Artemis IV in 2028, and really kind of build this momentum to be to go back to the moon for all its scientific potential, all of its economic potential, but really as the technical proving grounds for the next logical step on this extraordinary journey, which is for America to put the Stars and Stripes on Mars. So it's an unbelievable space agency. We've accomplished so much throughout our history, and we're really getting in gear again.
- [02:15]
B
Well, just big picture kind of getting to the gist of what NASA's mission is today, because I think there's a lot of Americans who are kind of aware we weren't that active in space for quite some time now. It seems like we're back at it. Can you just kind of briefly describe what NASA's mission is right now? Is it about getting to Mars, beating China, being an interplanetary species? What is really your mission today?
- [02:43]
A
I think we're here to change the world in air and space. Now, how do we do that? What are the objectives? The objectives are in the national space policy that President Trump signed on my first day in office. Return American astronauts to the moon. Establish the enduring presence, the moon base, which is super cool. Make investments in the next giant leap capabilities, which is nuclear power and propulsion in space, so we can take humankind's next grand leap to the surface of Mars and explore the outer solar system, usher in an orbital economy so that the future we all want to see in space is not perpetually funded by taxpayers. Launch more great missions of science and discovery and try and unlock the secrets of the. Of the universe. Those are the objectives that we have in support of our overarching goal to change the world in air and space. Now, I will say, in terms of, like, the popularity of what we're doing, we have a lot of audiences, right? Some people are just the total space nerds and just want to continue to see progress in space, of which we're giving them that. We're doing a lot more of it. You have the scientific community that's hungry for the data, and the way you get the data is to launch more missions. But. But then I think you just have the patriots, right? Those that wanna see American competitiveness on full display. And we are very much in a space race right now, and we're not gonna lose. I mean, there is a real space race right now between us and China. They will, without question, put their astronauts, their taikonauts on the surface of the moon. We'll do it first. They're building a. They have ambitions to build a base on the moon. We will do it first. So I think that's part of it too, is like the recognition that we're in a new space race and, you know, America's on the field to play and we're winning.
- [04:25]
B
I want to talk a little bit about you because this really is sort of the dream job, I imagine, for so many kids growing up. And yet when you got this, you had to step away from some pretty important stuff that you've been working on. I mean, was this something you always wanted to do? And then when you finally got the offer, how hard was it to actually take advantage of this? And Step away from everything that you've been working on in the private sector.
- [04:48]
A
Well, I had no idea an opportunity like this would come my way. I mean I had literally just come back from space on Polaris dawn In September of 2024 and early November, you know, shortly after the election, well, I guess it was early December, the President nominated me for this position. I mean I was never a politically active person on this. Now I think my most probably passionate political position is the competitiveness of the nation across all the most important technological domains, of course, including space, because it's been a, an area of interest of mine and where I've invested a lot of time for decades right now. But I had no idea this was going to come along. But when the opportunity present itself, there was no way I was going to turn it down. So I had no problem walking away from my other life. I will tell you, I've absolutely lived the American dream. I left high school when I was 16. I wound up getting my GED and a college degree. Later I started a company in my parents basement. It's a multibillion dollar company on the New York Stock Exchange. None of that should happen and only did because of the nation that we live in right now. So I had a huge debt to repay to the nation to be able to do that at NASA. Like I'll be eternally grateful for this experience.
- [05:52]
B
Yeah. And you, you have had a personal interest in space, right? I mean you were the first civilian to do a spacewalk and yet then there was some harrowing moments. Can you tell folks about what happened? And clearly that didn't scare you off from continuing exactly what you're doing.
- [06:12]
A
I mean I told my kindergarten teacher like I'm going to grow up someday and be an astronaut. She's like, sure, I'll be in a rocking chair and watching when it happens. And she was just being kind. I, I became a pilot because I thought that was as close as I'll ever get to the stars. And then in 2021 I had the opportunity to lead the first orbital mission to space for, you know, the first commercial mission to space with SpaceX. And then, and then in 2024, Polaris dawn and you know, sure, there was interesting moments throughout every, every mission. I mean space is incredibly dangerous and you know, there's still very few people who have actually been there in that environment. And it's, I mean look here, there's no atmosphere. There's what we basically we call it, MM bullets, you know, paint chips that come off satellites that are Zinging around at orbital velocities that'll punch through three feet of aluminum if it, if it makes contact with it. I mean, there's radiation out there. It is a harsh environment and you have to put so much energy into a tiny spacecraft to put human beings into orbit. And then you have to take all that energy out when they come back. And that's what the heat shield is for. But it's worth it, I mean, if it is our destiny to go out and explore the universe and, you know, trying again unlock the secrets of the universe around us. So we have to do these things. And I grateful to participate in them all. And now again, I'm here on Earth, so I'm not in space, but I'm able to support and work alongside the best and brightest in NASA. And it's just a dream come true.
- [07:38]
B
Do you want to go back to space? And I should probably ask, is your wife okay with you going back to space?
- [07:43]
A
Oh, sure. I mean, I would have, I would have kept going if I didn't have this opportunity. You know, we were going to, you know, fly the first starship. You know, we were going to continue to work on the EVA spacesuit so that when we have lots of people on the moon and Mars someday you can actually get outside your vehicle and explore and repair and build things and such. So I was on a great journey before, but this is a privilege of a lifetime to serve my country in this capacity right now. But look, the overarching goal of course is always to put more people living and working in space. And you know, when, when, when the job is done here, I hope there's a lot more people able to go into space and maybe there'll be opportunities for me to go back to.
- [08:20]
B
So you mentioned you started your first business at 16, went on to start quite a few more businesses. So you really bring sort of a private sector ethos into this agency, which is like any government agency has, has some bureaucracy. You know, before we started rolling, you were explaining just how hard you're working. I mean, 100 hour weeks. Having had that private sector experience, what are you bringing into NASA and how challenging has that been to implement into a government agency?
- [08:54]
A
Well, I'll tell you, certainly like having a, you know, an entrepreneurial background, leading a couple companies, you know, contributes into how I, you know, how I try and lead the space agency. But I draw a lot on NASA's own history. I mean, you know, this is the space agency that undertook and achieved truly what no one thought was possible in the 1960s. I mean, you know, we had Alan Shepard in space for minutes when President Kennedy came out and said, we're going to send astronauts to the surface of the moon and we're going to bring them home safely and do so before the end of the decade. And we did. I mean, so I'll tell you, the playbook here is a good one. Now. We had to dust it off a little bit. We had to recognize the reality that there is a global competition right now, and we do not want to fall behind in the ultimate high ground of space, which means we got to stop trying to please everybody right now. We need extreme focus. And private industry is good at that, right? I mean, you know, capital allocation is important. We only get so many dollars. There's no guarantee there'll be more money. Now, when you're a government agency, generally speaking, Congress is going to appropriate dollars to you every single year. But that shouldn't change the discipline with deploying those dollars and be able to put them on extreme focus. Why the taxpayers fund this space agency in the first place? What are we supposed to be doing? We're supposed to be doing what no other government agency, no company is capable of doing. No other nation around the world, right? So being able to bring ext. Extreme focus on those near impossible objectives and then after that, just run the playbook from the 60s. Empower the best and brightest, keep people in the lane, clear obstacles, and instill a culture of ownership and urgency. And I think there's no walkouts at NASA. There's no protesters here, because everybody who comes to work at NASA every single day wants to do so to win in this incredibly important and inspiring domain. And we're getting to do that again. And I think that's. Yeah, it's just extraordinary again to be here during this time period.
- [10:49]
B
Yeah, there's a reason you call it a moonshot. I mean, that's, that's interesting that Kennedy set such an ambitious goal. And of course, people sort of ridicule Elon Musk for saying we're going to be in space and interplanetary species in this year, but that's kind of what you got to do, it seems.
- [11:04]
A
You know, you're, if you're, if people are ridiculing them, you're ridiculing them for being late. Like, he's doing what no one, again, thinks is possible in so many ways. And his timelines on occasion, because sometimes his timelines are right, sometimes they're a little bit late. So when you say, like, I'm Gonna be like Matt, you know, when he came out with Starship, which again, it's going to be a game changing capability for the United States. It's incredibly important to what we want to do at NASA for going to the moon, building moon base, but it's incredibly important to the Dow and civil space and a future, future space economy. When he first announced Starship and he said, I'm going to have the launch pad catch the rocket like chopsticks. People are like, he's crazy. He's like, it's going to be done in the next three years. It's like it's never going to happen. Okay, it was four years, he did it right. So you know, he's another one. He's like, he truly delivers what no one thinks is possible just a little bit later than maybe his initial timeframes are. But yeah, I mean this is what we're doing. Like this is what inspires people to go do absolutely incredible things. And certainly SpaceX tackles some of the most demanding engineering problems, you know, in, in aerospace. But then a lot of Elon's companies quite literally tackle all the most challenging engineering problems literally in the world. But again, this is not that far from NASA's roots. I mean we, we literally ran a very similar playbook in the 60s and we're bringing it back.
- [12:27]
B
I want to walk through the timeline and sort of the sequence of what you, you outlined and you touched on this in the intro. But just in very simple terms, can you explain sort of the realistic sequence that we're hoping for? I know it's landing on the moon, but can you walk me through when you think this is going to happen and what that actually, what that actually looks like?
- [12:51]
A
The America's return to the moon has been troubled for a very long time.
- [12:54]
B
People are calling it a conspiracy. Yeah. That we, we never actually did in the first place.
- [12:59]
A
Yeah, the initial go, what we did during the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo era was just, I mean it's a work of art. It was just so incredible what, you know, what the, what the nation came together to achieve. But we did it in chunks. A lot of littles and we learned from every one of them. And in an iterative way what we learned we rolled into the next mission and, and we basically took baby steps to the moon. The repeat has been far more troubled. Like I said, for more than 35 years, every president said we need to go back to the moon. And, and we played around with different architecture. Not necessarily the architecture that was best to get the job done, but More what's the best architecture to make everybody happy? And you know, whether it's international partners or congressional districts. And as a result, it wasn't necessarily moving the way it needed to.
- [13:47]
B
What do you mean? President Trump's an example of that, trying to make everyone happy.
- [13:52]
A
Oh, well, for almost the. I mean, almost the entirety of the SLS vehicle that successfully launched the Artemis II mission was repurposed hardware from the space shuttle. And now you come to the end of the shuttle program and you've got this industrial base that wants to know, what should we do next? You could design a whole brand new program from the get go for what is an optimized vehicle to do the job. Or you keep everybody doing what they were doing already and you just repurpose it together into a new vehicle. And as a result, it's not necessarily perfectly optimized for the mission. And then I'd say you bring in international partners and when you're not faced with a global competitor and you try and make things work and then you get other parts of the vehicle that aren't designed to perform as you might want, as you might as what you would have initially hoped for in that. And then those are all compromises. So I would say the whole reboot of the moon program has had varying challenges throughout its existence. Now, the President put it on a better track with when he created the Artemis program, but then really reinforced it and truly got things in motion between the national space policy and the $10 billion plus up in the working family tax cut act. Now we have a believable, achievable path back to the moon. Yes, it's still leveraging a lot of older hardware, but that's just the beginning. That's not what Artemis 100 will look like. The President created a program that's going to endure beyond any one vehicle architecture. We started adding missions back. So instead of going, hey, we're going to go around the moon and then we're going to land on it. It's like jumping right to Apollo 11 and forgetting all the steps. Prior to that, we added a mission. Now we're rebuilding muscle memory here at NASA. We're going to launch big rockets with frequencies. We're launching again, 27. Bring down risk with the lander. It means hard. We haven't been to the moon in more than a half century. We might want to figure out some of the spacecraft lander interoperability dynamics when you're hours above the Earth and not days away from Earth. So that's what's Coming next year, that's Artemis 3. It's going to be incredible. By the way, three most powerful rockets in the world are going to launch in a span of about a week. It's going to be really, really quite cool. And then Artemis 4 in 2028 is where we'll take everything we learned from 3 and we'll put NASA astronauts back on the surface of the moon. But in parallel, we're building the base. You know, the President was very clear. He did not want flags and footprints again. He wanted an enduring presence. He wanted us to build the first outpost on another world. That happens in parallel. I mean, really, quite literally. Starting in the beginning of 27 on a near monthly basis, you're going to watch robotic landers and then rovers all over the moon on the south pole, the moon where we want to build our base.
- [16:29]
B
Wow. Wow. Okay, so the first stop, we're essentially building a fort on the moon, and people will inhabit that.
- [16:38]
A
Yes. I mean, just like the International Space Station. So for more than a quarter century, we've kept astronauts alive in space above us in low Earth orbit. We're going to take everything we learned over those more than 25 years and bring it right to the surface of the moon. So the International Space Station was kind of our initial proving ground and laboratory, and we will always have a presence in low Earth orbit. That won't change. But now we're going to bring our ability to keep astronauts alive in this challenging environment, and we're bringing it down to the surface of the moon and we're doing things different. We're going to be able to interact with things you can't interact with on the space station, like the rock, the lunar regolith around you. And we're going to extract water ice from it. And from water ice, we can make hydrogen, we can make oxygen, and we can use it for life support, we can use it for rocket propellant. And essentially the south pole of the moon is going to become our technical proving ground to get really good at the skills that are going to be needed to go to Mars.
- [17:33]
B
So the idea is that's going to be self sustaining. You can essentially extract water or some of these supplies that you need from the moon.
- [17:41]
A
So Elon often talks about, like, the desired end state on his goals, Whether it's a moon base or a colony on Mars is self sustaining in that if the supply chips, ships stop coming, does humankind endure or do they die off? And I will tell you, for the moon, for a very long time, you're going to want those supply shifts to keep coming. So I don't know if it'll truly be self sustaining, but it will. We will have water ice. You know, I don't know who's rushing to have the first glass of water, of moon water, but, but we will have the water ice and we are going to use that for propellant manufacturing, predominantly in situ resource manufacturing as we describe it. And that's going to be very important for missions to Mars someday.
- [18:27]
B
Okay, so, so lunar presence next couple of years, Mars presence couple years after that. Do you think the first person to walk on Mars is born yet?
- [18:40]
A
Yeah, 100%. It's going to be a little bit apt that. I mean, if you ask me, if we were given the direction for, you know, an accelerated program, send American astronauts to Mars, bring them home safely, fewest miracles required, it could be done by the mid to, you know, late2030s, that's very achievable now. Even though I said like, we've done a better job trying not to make everyone happy and concentrating our resources on the needle movers. There's still a lot of needle movers at NASA. So we, I don't think we have that flexibility to say like, sprint at it and make Mars happen.
- [19:14]
B
When you say needle movers, do you mean bureaucracy?
- [19:17]
A
No, I mean like the, what are the big things you need to accomplish right now? So we have to return to the moon, we have to build a moon base, we got to replace the International Space Station, we've got to certify some, you know, perhaps a new crewed vehicle. We're going to launch the first nuclear powered spaceship in 2028. We've got a number of big science missions, we've got X planes we got to rebuild. So we've done a good job, I think, consolidating down to the, to the big needle moving objectives, but there's still a lot of them. So that, that in my mind makes it hard to say, like, yes, we can sprint right now at putting astronauts on Mars, but if you had the flexibility and the resources to do so, mid-2030s, you could absolutely pull off a mission and send astronauts to Mars and bring them back.
- [19:58]
B
When you hear the phrase interplanetary species, what does that mean to you? Because I feel like there's, there's a lot of different interpretations. And how far away are we from that?
- [20:10]
A
See, I have like a, I have a slightly different view on this. I think generally the idea. And you know, Elon obviously is the one who talks about making life multi planetary Species and such. He's talking about, you know, protecting, you know, human consciousness. Like, like we are, we are at minimum, we are like an extremely unique species in, in the universe right now. Yeah. And we have a massive concentration risk on Earth now. There's a lot of things we can do to kill ourselves off with man made disasters. There are certainly natural disasters like go the way of the dinosaurs type asteroid impact. And then look, there's a natural expiration date on our sun. So you can't stay here forever, so why wouldn't you start distributing? And the moon is the logical technical proving ground to get to the next step, which is the first, first real planet you could inhabit, which is Mars. Now I will say it's not a nicer house in the neighborhood. I mean Earth is the nice house in the neighborhood. And Mars is going to suck to live in. You're not going to recreate an atmosphere anytime soon. You're going to live in a bubble. You're going to get pelted with radiation all the time. You're never going to have a beach day and you're going to work really, really hard your whole life there and you're still going to live in a bubble. Which is why it's probably more akin to like an Antarctic expedition. I'm going to go there, you know, a year and then I'm going to come back and maybe I'll go again or something like that. I look at it all as just one step on a never ending journey. I mean, we barely understand our own solar system. There are moons within our solar system we have not even visited or studied yet that could have signs of, you know, ancient microbial life for all we know, let alone all the other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, let alone the 2 trillion other galaxies. So to me it is an endless journey. It's humankind's greatest adventure. It will be never ending. Each step along the way. Our ability to keep humans alive farther from Earth, to extend our reach with new forms of propulsion will continue to evolve until someday we can make it to another star system. And then it will just continue on, my lord.
- [22:25]
B
Okay, but no Amman opening anytime soon on Mars. This sounds very unpleasant. You know, I'm like, I think I like Earth, but I guess as you said, this isn't going to be sustainable forever.
- [22:37]
A
Yeah, I have no doubt that at some point we will, you know, look, this is going to be, I don't know, a thousand years, you know, when we are going to have to get to true, you know, interstellar type travel Capabilities, you know, and now you're talking like antimatter, annihilation propulsion or something like that. You'll find exoplanets in other star systems that, you know, might actually be rather pleasant to live in. But it's safe to say pretty much everything in our solar system is going to be a significant step down from Earth. But, but this is part of the adventure and we have to go out and we have to explore, and you never know where it may take us or what we may learn along the way.
- [23:17]
B
What do you mean? Maybe some extraterrestrials. What do you think we might learn along the way?
- [23:22]
A
Sure. I mean, there are a lot of questions that I think people have been asking themselves since the beginning of human history. And the answer to a lot of it is out there. Namely, are we alone? And I think that that is not something that you're going to wait generations for. I think there's a very good chance we go to Mars and we bring samples back here to Earth to analyze, and we will prove that there was microbial life at one point on Mars. And I think that missions like Europa, Clipper, that's out there, or dragonfly that NASA's launching in 2028, it's a nuclear powered octocopter going to Saturn's moon of Titan could also provide similar indications. And then there's moons like Enceladus that might also provide similar indications. And if, by the way, you happen to find a planet and a couple moons in our solar system where there's strong evidence of once ancient microbial life, it changes the whole dynamic of surely life is out there somewhere too. What if it's everywhere?
- [24:18]
B
The real space journey is the friends you make along the way. Right. You mentioned the sort of importance of having nuclear power. And I mean, to a lot of people that sounds like science fiction to have nuclear power in space. How far away are we from that? How important is that to this whole journey?
- [24:40]
A
It's extremely important. I think it's absolutely imperative for NASA to pivot in this direction. The analogy I like to give is the nuclear Navy. So Admiral Hyman Rickover is like, he is a famous figure in the US Navy, you know, an extraordinary engineer, a very demanding boss, to say the least. But he is credited as being the father or giving birth to the nuclear Navy, which keeps our submarines, you know, underwater, you know, if you didn't run out of food near indefinitely, you know, or whatever the life of the nuclear power plant is. And NASA is faced with a very similar dynamic now where chemical Propulsion, we are going to reach the limitations of that potential very soon. So what do we mean by that? So that's whether that's highly refined diesel and liquid oxygen, or it's methane or liquid natural gas and liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen. When you bring them together and that combustion happens, for as impressive as it looks visually, you are unlocking a negligible portion of the energy potential of that matter. Negligible. I mean, and that's just like the simple reality. And you're expending it very quickly. So you might be able to send something really fast to Mars, but then you got no gas when you get there to come back home. So you got to make your propellant on Mars to come back. And that's a lot of. That's, you know, a lot of miracles. It's inevitable at some point we will do that, but it's way down the road. Now, fission power is actually also, it's. You're, you're definitely unlocking more, some of the energy, you know, some of the energy density potential of matter, but it's still fractional. It's like half a percentage. Even fusion power, you know, is less than 1 percentage the energy potential of matter. But each step along the way is going to be able to take you farther and faster into space with less need to refuel all the time so you can come back and tell us what you learned. So that's why it's inevitable in the same way it was for the Navy for NASA to evolve and unlock at least a slightly greater percentage of the energy potential of matter so we can extend our reach. Because conquering the tyranny of distance in space is hard for people to truly get their arms around. There is a lot of space out there that we're going to want to visit at some point.
- [27:09]
B
Yeah. And I mean, to be able to do that because there's so much chatter about, you know, building data centers and having construction, and you need to have an energy source to make that happen. And nuclear, it sounds like, is maybe the best way to do that.
- [27:23]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, the closer you are to the sun, you've got a giant fusion reactor there that can handle a lot. That's a good point. So Elon and others in the industry are like, let's take the data centers that no one likes in your backyard. Seems like there's a lot of consensus on that, and put them into space where they won't bother anyone. And by the way, it's not going to mess with your power bill because we're going to draw on the free solar power from our fusion reactor that's just sitting out there. Fantastic idea. The problem is the farther you get away from the sun, the less you can rely upon it. So once you get around Jupiter, I don't want to say it's useless, but you need to have solar panels the size of several football fields. And now you have to carry all the mass of those solar panels. So it's probably not as much of a good idea. So once you want to explore the outer solar system or you want to be able to go to and from a location without having to refuel, because a lot of the fuel in rockets is cryogenic. So as it gets warmer, it boils off and then you don't have it anymore. So as you want to go farther out into our solar system, and as you want to go far out and come home, that's where nuclear becomes key.
- [28:38]
B
When you're talking about the space economy, too, I mean, what does that mean to you? And what businesses do you think are really going to be booming in the next couple of years? Do you think it is going to be construction? I know there's now efforts to clean up trash in space, which is a good thing, is it? Billionaires going there holding daisies? What does that look like?
- [29:01]
A
I think ultimately, like, you know, a lot of space enthusiasts like myself, you know, we grew up with various, I don't know, dreams of what the future might look like that we grow up in with, maybe it's informed by science fiction books or otherwise, and there's lots of commercial space stations out there, and there's fleets of battle star ships that are taking us far out into the solar system or into other star systems or whatnot. And here's what I know. None of that is going to happen if it requires perpetual taxpayer funding. Because even though we may go through this cycle of the highs and lows of space, and we're on a high right now, the Artemis II crew did a fantastic job and they showed the world the moon again. And people are charged up about returning the moon. I think we're polling at like 70% America's support to return to the moon, which is. It's double that of during the Kennedy era, to be honest.
- [29:53]
B
So that's, that's exciting today than it was back.
- [29:56]
A
It is.
- [29:57]
B
Wow.
- [29:58]
A
Yeah. 35% approval versus 70%. It's. It's wild, but it is, it is cyclical. And I do believe, you know, there are times when people are going to say, why are just as they've done throughout the history of America's space program and say, why are we spending all this money to do this when we have starving people here and we have housing crisis and all that? And honestly, the answer is always, you have to do both. You have to fix the problems of today the best you can. But you also have to invest in a brighter future for our children. You can't hit the pause button on all forms of progress. But what it does tell me is if we do want to have that extraordinarily exciting future that many of us imagine, you have to have some sort of a space economy to fund it. And right now we have launch, observation and communications. And that's good because NASA can buy every one of those services for less today than we could in years past because we are one of many customers. So we're paying for rockets and the space Force is paying for rockets and commercial industry is paying for rockets. So rockets cost less and they're better. They catch them on ships now and they fly them again. Yeah, this is great. And same with communications. We don't have to build multi billion dollar bespoke TDRS satellites anymore. We can be one customer of many. So that's reducing our costs so we can put more money into doing the mission. Those needle moving objectives we talked about earlier. But if you really want it to get wild, I mean like again, lots of space stations, lots of moon base and everything, you have to figure out something else where you can extract more value from it than what it costs to be in the unique environment of space or on the lunar surface. And whether that's a cancer treating drug or we're 3D printing everyone a spare liver, which I'm sure would be very popular in dc. You know, we, we, whatever it is. Yeah, we need to figure that out. And then, and then you, you have a, again, then you can build this grand future in space without it being on the backs of every taxpayer.
- [31:54]
B
Yeah. Okay, I see. So I mean it's like any industry where initially only a few people have access to it and then as it becomes more ubiquitous, things get cheaper.
- [32:05]
A
Yes.
- [32:06]
B
And okay, the whole three. Because I've heard, I've heard people mention this before, like the 3D printing organ, some of these things. There is a belief that you can do a lot of research and develop things in space. Can you explain a bit more about that and how big you think that's going to become? Right, because I think a lot of people hear space industries and they just kind of can't really Wrap their head around what that would include beyond people just taking kind of a flight up there to see the view and coming down again.
- [32:36]
A
The answer is I don't know for sure. I believe in launch, observation and communications, foundational to a space economy. I would not bet against the orbital data centers, the AI data centers for a lot of reasons. And even if the economics don't close in the first five, 10 years, I think it'll get there because the economics didn't close on Amazon's model for the first 20 years and they got there. So I do believe that it will arrive. But beyond that, like I'll tell you with 25 years international space Station, we've done a lot of work where we've done experiments, where we've done crystal formulation for cancer fighting drugs. Increases kind of the density of the medication, if you will, and potentially the
- [33:19]
B
effectiveness because of the lack of gravity in the environment up there.
- [33:23]
A
Yeah, I guess it's the crystal formulation, microgravity, it's well suited for that environment. But I would say that it wasn't such a difference maker, I guess in terms of the, you know, the prognosis of the patient, that it was worth, who knows the 20x cost in order to manufacture the drugs there because the same drug is also made here on Earth. We've done work with, you know, you know, some like cardiac cellular experimentations in that, but we haven't 3D printed a heart yet. Now is microgravity a better environment to do it than in space? I would think so, but none of these things have, you know, and we've been at it for a quarter of a century have come into reality, but it doesn't mean it won't. And to believe in it and that the continued experimentation is important, especially as the cost to access orbit comes down is paramount. We are going to the moon. And I've said like, our goal there primarily is to learn the skills to go to Mars. Now also we will absolutely get all of the scientific value that we can from having a moon base and we will pursue the economic potential. But I can't guarantee that you will get more value out of the lunar regolith than what goes into it. And I don't think that's necessarily a firm part of NASA's mandate or if it was, then we'd be under the Department of Commerce. If along the way we can stimulate a space economy while we're pursuing these world changing endeavors. That's awesome. And we need it, we need it for that future we want in space someday.
- [34:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you mentioned how this has really captured people's imagination and the approval ratings are high. I'm curious who, like, the 30% of the haters are who aren't in favor of this, but they probably hate everything.
- [35:09]
A
How do you hate on, like, astronauts going around the moon? It is, it was one of the most unifying moments in, like, recent history.
- [35:15]
B
Yeah. And I think, I mean, obviously we had television and whatnot previously, but now with the presence on social media, you know, people are able to see these clips and see interviews with the astronauts and see so much more. And I've gotta think that plays a role as well in really sort of telling the story and showing people what's happening that's much more compelling.
- [35:41]
A
Yeah. I think, like, again, we have a lot of audiences, right. You have the space community that's been patiently waiting a half century to see astronauts get back to the moon, and now they believe it. So they're excited right now. The scientific community is certainly excited about this. I mean, we'll have radio telescopes on the far side of the moon. Moon someday. Right. And then I think you just got the patriots out there that just want the competition again. And believe me, they got it. There is a real competition on. And this is, you know, and NASA's on the field, like I said, and we're, we're going to win this thing. So I think we got a lot of, we got a lot of great audiences that are excited about NASA's potential. They know what we've done in decades past, and they're about to witness it all over again. This time it's going to be grander because we're going back to the moon to stay.
- [36:25]
B
Yeah, well, on the space race front, so China is certainly moving ahead. What does space superiority mean? And is, is the moon. Is the moon big enough for, for the two of us? Is this the kind of thing where they can have a presence? We can have a presence? What does that look like?
- [36:45]
A
There's, look, there is no doubt our. We have zero desires to conquer the moon and say, this is all for us right now. Now, what I will say is, like, things there is better real estate, and we do intend to land there. And it's better real estate for its tech development, access to water ice for its scientific potential. So in some respects, that kind of fuels the, the, the space race to some degree, as we, we both want to go to the moon, but we both are very interested in the same location to build our, our outpost, if you will. Right. But that doesn't mean there isn't cooperation or collaboration. I mean, I just came back, you know, from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. That's where Yuri Gagarin went to space. That's where Sputnik was launched. And so think about it, you know, was standing at the launch complex that ignited the first space race. And what was I there for? I was there to see a NASA astronaut climb aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and go to the International Space Station, because that's how our cooperation works. We put a Russian astronaut on American spacecraft, they put an American astronaut on a Russian spacecraft, and it guarantees continuity of operation operations on the International Space Station. And it's a good thing. So when we go to the moon, we're going to probably, we're going to establish certain safety standards. You know, if the, if we need something, maybe the Chinese are able to help us or the Russians or vice versa, like, we're going to be thoughtful on that. But there's a space race, and the space race is a good thing because it helps drive good outcomes for both sides that are, you know, that are in competition. And obviously it worked very well for NASA the first time and, you know, highly confident it will. So again, yeah.
- [38:23]
B
And pushes us forward to actually continue and move. Can you explain, and this is maybe a basic question, but can you just explain? I think a lot of people, you know, and you touched on this for decades, we weren't really that active. Why has it taken so long to get to the same place where we were decades ago, essentially? Right. Why is it taking so long to get back to the moon when we've done it?
- [38:48]
A
Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons here. So I'll touch on. One of which is, to be quite honest, it's competition. Absent this global competition that we're in right now, we would not have made anywhere near as much progress as we've done over the last seven, eight months here at NASA. We are able to stop trying to make everyone happy, which again, generally makes no one happy, and focus on why the taxpayers fund NASA in the first place. Because across all of our stakeholders, there is a genuine understanding there is a space race right now, and that is affording us some of the flexibility to do which needs to be done. Which, again, I think there's no one at NASA who disagrees. I mean, they show up to work every day because they want to change the world in air and space. So competition is one factor. We have a president that actually is extremely supportive of ensuring American superiority and leadership in the high ground of Space. He created the space force. He created the Artemis Accords, of which now 70 nations have signed onto. He created the Artemis program, which again, gave birth to this whole program. He gave me the National Space policy and the funding through the Working Family Tax Cut Act. That's a key ingredient. But the other factor, too, is like, is the technology itself now, you know, to send astronauts to low Earth orbit. The International Space Station, where we basically spent all our time the last half century is hard, nowhere near as hard as it is to go to the moon. So when we send astronauts on the Dragon spacecraft, the International space station, Falcon 9, under about 1.8 million pounds of thrust, accelerates those astronauts to 17,500 miles an hour. Artemis 2, to send those astronauts around the moon, 8.8 million pounds of thrust to accelerate them 25,000 miles an hour. That's a lot of energy to put into a spacecraft. And then when it comes back from the moon and slams in the atmosphere, it's a lot of energy you take out of it. So it's a whole different thermal problem when you're coming back from the moon. So, point is, we spent a long time focusing on low Earth orbit and not the moon. And then when we actually were committed to going back, we didn't have the President that gave us the direction and the resources to get it done. And we didn't have the global competition to align the stakeholders and industry on what needs to be done versus what everybody tells us should be done.
- [40:56]
B
Okay. Okay. Interesting. How is recruiting going? I've got to think you're seeing an uptick in people who want to be astronauts. What kind of feedback and momentum are you getting on that front?
- [41:09]
A
Well, I'll tell you what, I can't wait for Halloween because, I mean, I think that number of kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween is probably one of the best indicators of how good of a job we're doing at NASA. And I suspect numbers will be up this year. We take less than 1% of the intern applications. We have three intern classes per year at NASA. Like NASA, I think, is still very hot, and it's only gotten hotter in terms of the workforce wanting to come here. Initially, to me, the challenge that will remain, regardless of what we're doing, at least with our lunar missions, is retaining the talent. Because if NASA is doing what industry is doing, which is building conventional rockets, you'll come here for a while, because NASA has a storied history and you grow up and you always want to do it, and then you're going to Think about your families and the vacations you want to go on, the quality of life. And you're going to wind up at one of the industry superstar players where there's stocks going up or other. You know, you get, you don't get a stock portfolio at NASA, right? So now how do you fix that? It's then here comes the nuclear NASA again. The same nuclear pivot that came with the Navy is you have to work on what no one else is capable of doing, what no one in industry is doing, or other government agencies or any nation around the world. You know, the, the, you know, unlocking the nuclear NASA and the ability to explore the outer solar systems and send astronauts to and from Mars with the fewest miracles required is going to bring in a whole different, you know, cadre of engineers and technicians and operators that are going to want to work on only that. And that's where you're going to get kind of that long term retention, I think, is by doing the near impossible that no one else is capable of undertaking. And we've done that in decades past. And then we kind of lost our way a little bit. We started doing what other people are doing and making a lot of people happy. And now we're kind of making that pivot back in the correct direction. And I think that's how we're going to retain all the talent that wants to come into NASA.
- [42:51]
B
And you think NASA can be, is or will be doing work that's more high tech than SpaceX or some of the, some of the private sector competitors?
- [43:01]
A
Oh, it's just going to be different, you know. So do I think like SpaceX has the talent to build nuclear powered spaceships? Absolutely, of course they do. Do I think it's the best business case, Do I think they want to manage the liability and the regulatory environment of launching a fission reactor above Earth? No. And, and even if they did, is there, again, is there a good business case for it? Like they can sell chemical rockets to a lot of people, not to mention put their own, you know, data center satellites into low earth. We don't need nuclear power to do that. But for what we want to do for the future of NASA's, I think human and a lot of their science exploration missions, it's imperative that we do it. So it's not a skill set by any means. Like SpaceX talent is brilliant. Blue origin talent's brilliant, Rocket lab stoke, I mean across industry, ula, Boeing, Lockheed, brilliant people all around NASA needs to do what industry is not doing. And that's what we did in the 60s when we were very successful. And we need to get back to that.
- [43:56]
B
That how important too has this push for reshoring manufacturing been for NASA? Are you able to use supplies now that are coming from the US?
- [44:09]
A
Oh yeah. I mean I, I would say that, you know, like we, there's a whole waiver process to use foreign hardware in, in, you know, NASA and national security launch vehicles and satellites. And, and I would say like it's, you know, again, it's almost immeasurable. It's such an inconsequential portion of our vehicles. Like so for we are, I would say predominantly very self sufficient in the US when it comes to a lot of our hardware. What we're doing more is actually when you refer to insuring is we're actually rebuilding core competencies in NASA where we outsourced wasn't offshore. We started outsourcing like crazy over the last few decades. So much so that, you know, a lot of our talent, you know, we, you know, we had engineers. Well, we don't touch hardware. Contractors do that. And you know, we, it's going to take a month to get this in the test chamber because that's the contractor schedule on all that. And I mean, just so you know, like 75% of NASA's workforce, over 40,000 of our employees, if you will, are contractors from basically, you know, sophisticated staffing agencies. And as a taxpayer that should really bother you. It's four and a half billion a year that we are paying to rent our workforce in that regard. And they're not doing it for free. You're paying a premium for workforce flexibility, which they hate if you ever try and exercise that. And we've called about 14,000 or so civil servants, so we're actually reversing that and we're bringing contractors back into NASA as civil servants on our core competencies, which honestly it's designing spacecraft, it's building spacecraft spacecraft, it's testing spacecraft, it's launching them and it's the operations of them where, you know, we need these capabilities to win the space race of today. And who knows what space race in the future looks like. And so that's actually an important effort that's underway that's making us a stronger, more competitive space agency. And by the way, it's saving taxpayers lots of money without canceling a program or firing anyone.
- [46:09]
B
That's, that's wild. I mean, so you're sort of doing your own internal doge effort.
- [46:13]
A
Yeah, I mean, look, there is a, you know, I haven't in any of NASA's work like, and I've been, I've only been here eight months. Like I haven't found any fraud. You know, where people are. And I'm sure it exists. That's why you have an inspector general and such. But is there inefficient use of capital? Is there waste and some abuse? Absolutely. And some of it's self inflicted choices we made, some of it was externally imposed. Either way, not tolerable in this administration. Like we get 25 billion a year from the taxpayers. We should be trying to maximize the scientific and discovery value of every dollar of it. And I can tell you we're in a much better place doing that today than we were a year or so ago.
- [46:51]
B
What technology right now are you most excited about that you think can be transformative for the future of space?
- [46:59]
A
Well, I will tell you that on August 30, we are launching the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy. So it's the three rockets, three Falcon 9s, and two of them come back and land simultaneously. It's really an impressive display. That telescope is going to be America's greatest exploration asset. It's got 100 times the field of view of Hubble, 1000 times the scan rate. So in terms of going out and trying to unlock the secrets of the universe, we're only months away from the next big step in that direction. So that has me extremely excited. And when you pair that with telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, so you've got Nancy Grace Roman scanning everything as quickly as he can, see something really fascinating and then you point the soda straw at it, which is James Webb Telescope, to do a deep dive investigation that is going to lead to some extraordinary breakthroughs. And a lot of people are excited around that, I think. Other than that. Look, going return to the moon is awesome, building the base there. But nuclear power and propulsion, as you can tell from this conversation, I think it's just, just so imperative to recruiting and retaining the best talent and extending humanity's reach and American leadership farther into space.
- [48:06]
B
I am remiss if I don't ask you just briefly about Elon Musk. I mean, I know you've said before that you're not super close friends, but obviously you work with him a lot in this capacity. What is that working relationship been like for you?
- [48:22]
A
Well, I'll tell you, I've had, I mean, since I've been in this job, other than I think I saw him at a wedding, we haven't had any direct dialogue on that. I mean, SpaceX is way more than any one person now. He is again, I've said it many times, I think he's the greatest entrepreneur and engineer in modern history. I don't know, you picked the last hundred years. I mean, extraordinary individual that. But SpaceX is 35,000 people. The folks that I interact with every day and that the leadership team here at NASA, I mean these are your directors, the vice presidents, hell, even the engineer program managers that you're talking to that are inspiring confidence in the direction that they're taking hls, which we need to put astronauts on the moon and to build a moon base. But obviously I have a great respect for him. I did when I was at SpaceX with our two commercial space missions and geez, they put me into space and brought us home safely on some reasonably demanding missions. So obviously I have a lot of appreciation for that and what SpaceX can contribute to the nation and certainly with Elon at the helm.
- [49:23]
B
I just wanted to ask you if there's anything that you're working on that you can share that you haven't spoken about publicly.
- [49:29]
A
Well, I would talk about within our atmosphere for a second and say X planes are very cool. And NASA used to. So what are X planes? X planes are like totally radical. They're not your, you know, your grandparents 737 and NASA used to have lots of exciting X planes that could do really cool things in like the 80s and 90s and similar to other things, you know, trying to satisfy everybody. Our X plane portfolio shrunk. We have x59 now, which is the quiet supersonic demonstrator. So someday, if you're able to fly across the country on an airliner at supersonic speeds and no one hears the sonic boom, maybe NASA played a small part in that. But the answer is 1x plane is not enough. So in the years ahead, hopefully we fill the skies. Whether you're fairs or stadiums, the beginning of football matches or who knows what else, you'll be seeing some pretty exciting things from NASA and the skies above you.
- [50:20]
B
Yeah, well, Jared, really appreciate it. I know you have a bazillion things you're working on. So we really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us, filling us in a little bit more on everything that you're working on. And obviously such an exciting time to be at NASA and to be building the future.
- [50:36]
A
Grateful to be here alongside so many and serve under a president who's really excited about American leadership in space, like I couldn't. I'll be eternally grateful. I really will.
- [50:45]
B
Amazing. Well, we're grateful to you, so thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
- [50:49]
A
Thank you. Thanks for your time today. This is great.
- [50:52]
B
Thanks so much for joining us on Pod Force One. I am Lydia Moynihan, sitting in for Miranda Devine. Don't forget to like and subscribe and tune in next week for another episode.