Today’s Space Race: To the Moon
September 15, 2026
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Jared Isaacman:
Good morning, everyone. We certainly have some good content to work with in our videos at NASA. No doubt. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to serve under President Trump, the bipartisan support of Congress alongside the immense talent within our workforce, with the Guardians out there watching over us, and with the mission objectives we have been entrusted to achieve.
On December 18th, 2025, President Trump signed his historic executive order on ensuring American space superiority, directing NASA to accelerate its return to the lunar surface, establish humanity’s first outpost, its first enduring presence on another world, a moon base, finally get America underway on nuclear power and space, launch more missions of science and discovery, and inspire the world through the breakthrough headlines only NASA is capable of achieving.
In the months since, we’ve brought extreme focus to this national imperative. Artemis II was just the beginning. Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy rode 8.8 million pounds of thrust to near Earth escape velocities, traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history before, around the moon, and back home safely on the first crude flight of the Orion spacecraft, a test mission in every respect, and it was a success.
Now, just a few weeks ago, as you saw in the video, at Johnson Space Center, the president awarded all four astronauts the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for their service on this incredible mission. Because of their courage, and most importantly, the contributions of tens of thousands across the NASA workforce industry and international partners, America is back in the business of sending astronauts to the lunar environment.
And we are not slowing down. Artemis III is being assembled in the vehicle assembly building at Kennedy Space Center as we speak and the crew is in training. In 2027, you’ll witness the three most powerful rockets in the world. Three most powerful rockets in the world, the crew on SLS alongside the Blue Origin New Glenn Rocket and SpaceX Starship is the Orion spacecraft rendezvous with our test landers to demonstrate interoperability, retire risk for 2028 when American astronauts make the grand return to the surface of the moon.
Now in parallel, we’ll begin laying the foundation of the moon base in early 2027 when on a near monthly cadence uncrewed robotic landers will make their way to the Lunar South Pole. Throughout phase one, we’ll be testing surface power, crude and autonomous mobility, PNT, early tests to support future habitation modules and all the science and technology demonstrations the mass budget affords.
This is the science of survival, and it has been a little over a half century, so we do want to get this right, because we are no longer designing programs that will be too big to fail, but really too costly to succeed. We are not spreading our resources thin, trying to make everyone happy, which I think as everyone knows, makes no one happy. We are not jumping right to the dream state, bypassing the playbook of success that achieved what many though was impossible when the Eagle landed on July 20th, 1969. We are standardizing our rocket. We are rebuilding muscle memory, clearing bureaucratic obstacles and empowering our team to execute on the world changing missions the taxpayers have entrusted us to achieve, and we have no intention of being late.
In fact, just a couple weeks ago, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched ahead of schedule and under budget. We did have a little help from our friends at the NRO, and we launched from historic Launch Complex 39A, and she began her voyage to L2. Now, when Roman opens her eyes nearly a million miles from home, in that instance, she will see more of the universe than anything we’ve ever put into space before. She will seek to understand the mysteries of dark energy, dark matter, and use the JPL built coronagraph to discover tens of thousands of worlds hidden behind the glare of distant stars.
As we seek to answer the question, are we alone? And are we alone even in our own solar system, in our backyard? We will send Dragonfly and nuclear-powered octocopter to Saturn’s moon of Titan in 2028, and Europa Clipper is already bound for Jupiter to study the complex chemistry on those distance moons.
In 2028, SR-1 Freedom will launch the world’s first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft to Mars and deliver the SkyFall payload of three ingenuity class helicopters to scout Martian environment using ground penetrating radar, looking for subsurface, water, ice, and potentially future landing spots. Now, SR-1 is just the beginning of what will become the nuclear NASA. There will be an SR-2 and SR-3 and 4 as we progressively build the capability to reach deeper into the solar system and commission a new fission-powered American star fleet.
Back in the atmosphere, we are rebuilding the X-plane portfolio. The X-59 has already quietly broken the sound barrier this past summer, but NASA is recommitting to flight test and will work alongside industry to begin flying higher and faster than we have in decades. And whenever NASA sets out to do the near impossible, we never go at it alone. Our partners across the national security enterprise have always aided in these great American endeavors. The Space Force was there for Artemis II. Guardians contributed to the safe ascent, tracked Orion through the cis-lunar corridor and provided continuous space flight safety support. The United States Navy and really contributions from all the services alongside the 45th Weather Squadron supported launch and recovery operations.
The cooperation only becomes more important as activity moves farther away from Earth. As the Apollo 11 plaque says, and NASA, “We do come in peace for all mankind,” but there are those that seek to challenge American supremacy in the high ground of space to threaten the scientific, the economic and national security potential of this new frontier. And unlike the United States, they do not draw a distinction between their military and civil ambitions.
The Department of War and the Space Force secure and defend American interests in this vitally important domain, and we could not be more grateful. Grateful for all you have done and all that will be required ahead as we continue on in this greatest adventure of all. You are witnessing a very energized NASA and we will need to be as we are in the midst of a very real second space race.
China will accomplish what the Soviets never could. They have an achievable two launch architecture to put their Taikonauts on the moon. They have demonstrated reusability with their rockets. They have the expertise and history has shown they could even be early and we could easily be late. They too seek to build a moon base alongside the Russians and put a nuclear reactor right in one of the limited parking spots on the Lunar South Pole and success in this endeavor will be measured in months, not years.
Our allies and adversaries are watching. So, is every nation deciding whose technology to buy, whose standards to adopt, whose security relationships to deepen and whose vision of the future to follow. And perhaps most importantly, our children will be watching and the hopes and dreams of a generation inspired by these kind of Apollo 11-like moments is really on the line.
Fortunately, we have a president who understands that great nations remain great by continuously undertaking and achieving the big, bold endeavors that define American exceptionalism. These are no longer just stories and history books. This is what you’ve been waiting for and this is our time. This is the golden age. We are going back. We are going back to stay, to build the base. We are doing it together to show the world once again what America is capable of achieving and inspire the next generation to pick up the fire of exploration and carry it farther than we ever could.
And none of this will be accomplished by NASA alone. We have the support again of President Trump, Congress, a clear mandate in the national space policy, but it will take brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, our allies, our Guardians from all services and Americans across the country who still believe that great nations can do great things because our children will either inherit the confidence of a nation still capable of the extraordinary or the memory of one that used to be. And that responsibility, that choice belongs to all of us.
So, when the history books look back on this moment, let it record that America did not hesitate any longer. We did not allow bureaucracy or complacency, waste, inaction or fear of failure to constrain what we could accomplish. We chose to go and we went. Thank you.
Voiceover:
Thank you, Administrator Isaacman. Now, please welcome General Kevin Chilton, three-time NASA astronaut and explorer chair of the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Wow, what a great time to be the NASA administrator.
Jared Isaacman:
Absolutely.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
I bet you’re not getting much sleep.
Jared Isaacman:
No, we can do that in the years ahead. We have much to do and very little time to do it, general.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. Well, thanks for joining us here today. This is so important for Air & Space Forces Association and the Mitchell Institute to have you here. It’s just terrific. So, let’s talk a little bit about Artemis II. I think, well, I know the whole world was watching once again, and just your feelings about the success of that mission and what it means.
Jared Isaacman:
Absolutely. And first just to say, sir, it is an absolute honor to share the stage with you. You are absolutely one of my heroes. And I would say Artemis II is a great mission. It was a long time in the making as you know, but in terms of all the things that we thought we could have been encountering on orbit, it went exceptionally well. SLS, I mean, perfect on inserting Orion into its highly elliptical orbit. Orion performed extremely well. I think that we had one of four water isolation valves fail and then the toilet didnt work, which as you know, sir, is pretty common across spacecraft.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
True.
Jared Isaacman:
But most importantly, look, it’s rebuilding muscle memory. It’s getting us back in the rhythm of sending astronauts to the moon. And we must. We’ve been making this promise to the American people for 36 years now. We spent over $100 billion in that effort. This is fulfilling a promise. This is going for the economic, the scientific potential, certainly the national security implications, but this will be our proving ground, sir, for where we master the skills for where we go next, which is Mars.
And if we come up short in this after all those years, all those promises, all that taxpayer dollars spent, it says something is broken. So, I’m happy that Artemis II got off on the right start, but we cannot slow down. We got to launch again in 2027 and ’28 until we put our astronauts back on the surface of the moon and then bring them home safely.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s great. Well, and to see it go so perfectly had to be a big boost to the engineers behind it, mission control, everybody. A first flight to have it go that well, it’s just got to lift the morale and inspire folks on the ground that have been part of that mission.
Jared Isaacman:
As I mentioned in my remark, sir, this is a very energized NASA right now. And then again, President Trump coming to Johnson Space Center just a couple weeks ago, bestowing the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on those astronauts who did an absolutely fantastic job. They had three and a half years to prepare for, but they did fantastic in that.
And not only that, again, it was recognizing the contributions from tens of thousands across NASA and all our centers. It was a shot in the arm for the workforce. And we need it right now. I mean, every minute counts. And that’s the attitude we’re putting out across every one of the programs, communicate daily. If we are losing hours, give us solutions to the problems. We cannot wait to solve an issue the next day that could be solved today. Not in this space race, not with what’s on the line.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
And salute to our contractors and the international partners that are all part of this as well. Can you talk a little bit more about the importance of going to the South Pole on the moon?
Jared Isaacman:
So, absolutely. So, you look up the moon, it’s big moon surface area of Africa. The South Pole is more akin to Washington DC, and there’s only so many roads, so many good parking spots that you’re going to want to occupy. Now, why go there? That is where the water ice is in the permanently shaded regions of the South Pole, which by the way is a far harsher environment than even operating on Mars. But the crater ridges can give you near continuous access to sunlight.
So, it’s very scarce limited real estate that’s going to give us the opportunity three days from home to test out our suits, which by the way, that’s taken a long time to dial in habitation, in situ resource manufacturing. It’s going to take an awful long time to get supply ships to Mars someday. So, we want to make absolute use of this environment three days from home to get very good for where we go next.
Now along the way, there certainly could be economic potential. Maybe we have a lunar economy, maybe we’re mining and refining lunar regolith. I don’t know. There absolutely is scientific potential. We’ll put radio telescopes on the far side of the moon. There’s certainly national security reasons to be operating in cis-lunar space, but we want to go there to master the skills for Mars.
And when you realize there are only limited parking spots that get us access to that training environment, it creates an urgency and we must because the Chinese are going to the exact same locations. They are partnered with the Russians. They are going to put a nuclear reactor there and they could potentially deny this training environment that is a necessity for America’s space ambitions.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. It seems, as you point out, being three days away matters when you got to develop technologies thinking ahead to go to Mars that you want to be highly reliable.
Jared Isaacman:
Yes, sir.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
So, it makes sense for that. And then when we discovered water ice on the moon, I thought, why aren’t we racing to get there? I mean, water’s really heavy to carry and if you can find it where you’re landing, it has so many uses.
Jared Isaacman:
Couldn’t agree more, sir. We did take a brief half century intermission in this whole going to the moon thing, but we are back now. We do recognize the opportunity that’s there and this will be the environment that takes us on the next stop on this great adventure, and that is Mars. We have the mandate now. We have the national space policy. The president absolutely loves NASA. He called in to our post-launch press conference on Nancy Grace Roman, which again, it’s extraordinary telescope we launched, but I don’t know if a president has ever called into a post-launch science press conference to congratulate the workforce on that.
So, we got a very excited president, congressional support. We got the best workforce industry of good international partners. We can do this. We can go to the moon, we can build the base and we can move on to the next stop, which is Mars. This is a really unique and exciting time at NASA.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s great. And you’ve made some changes in the approach, kind of an Apollo 9 revisit for the next flight of Artemis. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jared Isaacman:
Yes, sir. So, as you may know, the time between the Artemis I launch, which was the uncrewed launch and the Artemis II mission around the moon, NASA flew every one of the Gemini missions, including the uncrewed ones. That is not the proper cadence. You talk about safety and are we pulling things in launching every year? Throughout NASA’s history, on average, we launched our design spacecraft every three and a half months and we were on a schedule to launch every three and a half years. You don’t do anything well if you do it every three and a half years. Imagine what your golf game would look like if you played every three and a half years.
And as a result, as we were getting ready for Artemis II, we wound up relearning the same lessons from Artemis I, and we had to push the vehicle back into the vehicle assembly building. We had hydrogen leaks. We had helium flow issues in the upper stage. You can’t do that. So, what have we done? We’ve stopped all these external impositions, trying to spread the NASA meatball everywhere, make everyone happy, spread our resources thin. No, we are getting back to doing what we were supposed to do on behalf of the American people, and frankly, the interested public all around the world. We’re focused on our mission. If you’re focused on the mission, you’re launching a rocket that complicated as often as you possibly can, dialing in that muscle memory.
So, yes, we are launching again in 2027. We standardized the rocket. I mean, we’re not turning every one of these SLSs into a work of art, which was the previous plan. It’ll be an extraordinary mission by the way, three most powerful rockets in the world. I know I mentioned in the remarks, but I mean, it’s not only the right way to prepare for the lunar landing, but it’s an indication of the future of what on orbit assembly is going to look like in this new world that’s coming together. So, it’ll be a great show. We’ll gain a lot of confidence. We’ll learn a lot about the Orion spacecraft and the landers. We’ll roll that into the uncrewed test landings that we’ll do in early 2028 in advance of the actual crude landings on Artemis IV.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. Well, I can attest to that not only you don’t improve your golf game by playing once every three years, but it hasn’t helped me to only play once a year. So, that’s a great analogy. We’ll talk a little bit about China if you don’t mind. They’re seem to be the elephant in the room. A lot of your comments covered it. It occurs to me that when you look at their behavior on planet Earth in the South China Sea, making illegal claims for that, the Senkaku Island claims, the Taiwan Straits, their illegal fishing, crossing into exclusion zones of other countries, they seem to not want to play by the rules of the road that are laid here on Earth. Is there any reason we should suspect they would do the same on the lunar surface? It seems like you’re certainly concerned about that.
Jared Isaacman:
Of course. I mean, the ultimate high ground absolutely matters, as everyone in this room can appreciate right now. I’ll tell you, I mean, China has had this plan dialed in for some time, and frankly, in a lot of ways, it’s a more achievable plan. They have a two-launch architecture to put their Taikonauts on the lunar surface. Best case for NASA is four launches to do the same. They have reusability built into their Long March 10 strategy. We do not in SLS.
Now, we do benefit from an extraordinary commercial industry that’s pioneering rapid reusability and heavy lift launch vehicles. So, we have options, thank goodness, but we were not on a path to win this space race up until rather recently. So, I’ll tell you, I’m thankful for the reality that the Chinese have a plan to likely deny that critical area on the Lunar South Pole because it’s given us the latitude to fix what is broken, to stop all the external impositions, the self-inflicted wounds that we had in our strategy and bring extreme focus to the mission.
So, to tell you eight months ago, a substantial portion of NASA’s budget and resources were going into building a lunar space station to look down on what the Chinese were doing on the South Pole instead of building the infrastructure on the surface where the astronauts want to be, where the scientists want to be, where the technology and the development will actually be done. We had no lunar drones whatsoever at all. The Chinese, the Chang’e 7, that was scheduled to launch to one of the two most desirable parking spots in the South Pole, the Shackleton Crater. Now they ran into either some weather or mechanical related issues. We’re still trying to get our arms around that.
I mean, that one lander had rovers, had drones on it. Now we have our MoonFall drones. Now we have a strategy to put lots of landers, lots of rovers, and actually build up to that enduring presence on the moon. But yeah, we were not focused until we had the present space policy and now we have the resources and the proper latitude to do what needs to be done, what we should always have been doing as a space agency. And I have no doubt the workforce industry is going to respond extremely well and will deliver.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s great. I think during the Cold War, the race to the moon was certainly part of the war. It was a battle and it was a battle of ideology, like whose team do you want to be on? The Soviet communist team or the free US team? And do you see that still today as something that would resonate with the American public? I mean, Americans supposedly are very competitive and want to come in first and nobody remembers who came in second. Do you think there’s a theme there too?
Jared Isaacman:
Yeah, I absolutely believe that to be the case and I alluded to that in my remarks that there are real consequences for coming up short here. Does NASA have a national security mission? We are absolutely entrusted with the peaceful exploration of space. We’re thankful for the Guardians and the Department of War that look out for us. But if we come up short, if we fail in this regard and the Chinese are able to get there.
I mean, 25 years ago they had a single solo astronaut into space. I mean, that was essentially their John Glenn moment. They predominantly coal-fired locomotives. They have 25,000 miles of high-speed rail right now and they’ve got a more achievable architecture to the lunar surface than we do. It causes all our allies to question whose security guarantees again do you trust? Whose technology should I follow? Whose standards should I adhere to? I mean, these are real implications.
I’d love to think July 20th, 1969, it sent a message to all our adversaries around the world. I wonder what else America is capable of achieving and maybe I should think twice before I encroach on their interest. And I absolutely believe the inverse is true and it invites encroachment if you fail. So, the only difference now is there’s more than a handful of TV channels. So, the ability for the public, the interested public to follow along with the space race, a little different. There’s a lot more going on in our lives right now.
But every now and then there’s a moment, and I think one of those moments was when Artemis II was going around the moon and sent their imagery back where it captures the world’s attention. And we just have to build upon that because if we don’t, when those astronauts walk down from the ladder and they step foot on the lunar surface and the camera pans up in HD this time, not grainy, black and white, they may not see an American flag on the flight suit and we can’t let that happen.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Couldn’t agree more. There’s another distinction between the Chinese approach to this endeavor and ours, and it goes back for us to the ’60s when we established NASA as a civilian organization, whereas their organization’s run by the PLA, People’s Liberation Army, their whole space program is run by that. And although the US Air Force certainly was a big contributor to the Apollo program and the Mercury and Gemini portions and throughout that, they were supporting the civilian agency as opposed to being in charge of the operation. What are your thoughts about this?
Jared Isaacman:
I couldn’t agree more. I mean, as I mentioned in my remarks, the Chinese don’t draw a distinction between their civil and military aspirations in space. In fact, they’re always reorganizing. I think they’ve reorganized twice to now their moon base is very much originally had some scientific community connections that’s very much back within their military umbrella.
With NASA, for sure, we have that peaceful obligation, but we also can be very efficient in our limited budgets and collaborate where appropriate with the Department of War and have from the get-go. Our early astronauts, to your point, traveled to space on ICBMs. We’ve done a lot of things within the first day in NASA and our aeronautics portfolio that contributed to breakthrough capabilities, whether it’s ground collision avoidance system, fly by wire, thrust vectoring.
So, this is part of who we are at NASA. We should absolutely be collaborating, especially as we think about the cis-lunar environment on areas that benefit our civil ambitions, our scientific breakthroughs that we are pursuing, but also enhance our national security footprint farther out into space. I think that’s always been part of the NASA, DOW collaboration and should always be.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Great. The civil and commercial space companies have had a lot to do with the International Space Station, transportation to and from other experiments, et cetera. Do you see this cooperation continuing and you see an advantage to that?
Jared Isaacman:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, it is so enabling to our mission right now. I mean, there’s no question, launch observation and communications. I mean, NASA is one customer of many in that regard, and as a result, competitive forces have greatly improved the capabilities. I mean, you got self-landing rockets back on ships coming back to their return to launch site, and as a result, costs have come down materially, which benefits across the board of NASA’s mission.
So, from scientific pursuits, I mean, you can take more risk, launch more emissions, more probes because your launch costs dropped 80% over the last decade. Sending our astronauts to and from the space station, building the moon base. I mean, NASA created this CLPS program, I want to say more than a half decade ago. It was brilliant. And just for everyone’s awareness, the CLPS program is basically commercial landers to the lunar surface. So, it’s essentially a transport contract of payload to the surface of the moon.
The only problem was there just wasn’t a lot of demand. There’s one or two bespoke missions a year. You’re not going to get good at delivering cargo and payloads to the lunar surface if you’re only doing it every now and again. Now we can put a huge demand signal to the industry. Again, starting in early 2027, you’re going to see landings on the moon on a near monthly cadence, obviously robotic landings. This allows industry to dial in, scale up. They can get into an iterative approach, learn and roll it right into the next piece of hardware coming off the assembly line.
Now, hopefully in the decades ahead that we have that lunar economy and there’s a lot of customers for buying payloads to the moon, but in the interim, we can give enough of a demand signal for the foreseeable future to help them. And then obviously communications, when we think about all of the operations, the activity on the lunar surface, lots of rovers, uncrewed and otherwise, you’re going to have observation satellites. We’ll have that moon-based website in real time for folks to follow along. I think it’ll be very inspiring. We can leverage what is like a platinum age right now in our on-orbit communication capabilities. So, that greatly, it frees up our budget to do what no one else is doing, more Dragonfly missions, a nuclear NASA, and that’s just fantastic for the future of the agency.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
A lot of discovery can come out of those groups as well.
Jared Isaacman:
Yes, sir.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Can we talk a little bit about the president’s executive order with regard to space superiority? So, this is a message really to the Space Force, to the Department of War, but do you view NASA has a role in this, if not in a sporting role, in an integrated role? For example, back when I was in the space business in the Air Force, I always thought NASA’s probably going to be … If they’re going back to the moon, they’re going to be interested in traffic between LEO and lunar orbit and up and down. There’s an opportunity for cis-lunar situational awareness to be embraced by NASA. And of course, in those days I was thinking, how can I save money for the Air Force Base Command? But it’s a partnership. And do you see opportunities here based on that EO?
Jared Isaacman:
I mean, I was saying, I was thinking about how it saves money for NASA, a slight budget disparity between the two worlds. But no, I mean, I think the president’s clear intent was that superiority, while you would think would gravitate towards national security, national security missions, it’s just as applicable for NASA in terms of we want to be with delivering the world-changing scientific breakthroughs that come from our missions. We want to ensure that NASA astronauts are the first back to the moon to build a moon base, to go to Mars and have another one of those Neil Armstrong-like moments to inspire a whole new generation, that’s why both NASA and DOW are in that executive order.
And there is a lot of collaboration right now. I think General Purdy runs a great working group of which a cis-lunar working group of which NASA participates in on just where can we be efficient here in this? I think the worst thing, and I’m very big in fission power in space. I think it’s imperative for extending America’s reach farther into the solar system. You never know what we might find even in the moons within our own backyard, let alone all the other stars that are out in our Milky Way Galaxy.
I mean, it would just be so terrible in such an endeavor like that, that you have DOW with three different experiments, NASA doing two different reactors, and the end result we probably know is they wind up all getting canceled and that instead of, well, let’s try and narrow our scope here. We can make two bets instead of six bets and increase the probability of success for what DOW maybe applications are and what NASA’s applications are. I think that’s one example of many that the space superiority executive order gives us latitude to discuss and collaborate on.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. So, on top of situational awareness of the domain propulsion. And what about nuclear power on the moon?
Jared Isaacman:
I mean, that is absolutely one of the priorities. I like that SR-1 Freedom, which will launch in 2028, is a NEP design. So, that will have a lot of carryover potential for fission surface power. The executive order does call for a fission power plant on the surface of the moon. Again, China and Russia are collaborating on the same thing. And it’s going to be extremely important when you start thinking about the type of operations if we really get into resource manufacturing and utilization in the South Pole of the moon. I mean, the permanently shaded regions, again, is a harsher Environment than even on Mars.
But the farther you extend out into space, if you go to Mars itself, the chemical propulsion will get you there. I mean, you’re talking about negligible difference in the velocities, whether you’re going to the moon or Mars on that. Habitation, we’ve already figured out. How do you bring the astronauts back to tell us about it? We’re not doing one-way missions, sir, at NASA. You’re going to have to manufacture the propellant on surface and Mars. It’s really hard to do under 1G and under one in our atmosphere. There’s thousands of people that support launchpad operations.
You’re going to need fission surface power. You need a lot of robotics on the surface, but you could also use fission power transport ships to go back and forth and maybe diminish some of the requirement early on for surface propellant manufacturing. So, the bottom line is nuclear power and propulsion, whether on the surface of moon or Mars or for transport or exploring the outer solar system moons is just inevitable.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. One of your predecessors, I remember talking to him, when he was a young engineer, scientist joined NASA and was fired up to work on going to Mars. When he looked at all the technologies we had, what he realized was the biggest living factor was power. And we’re just not going to get there the way we want to get there, as you point out, without solving that problem first. So, he quit and went off to work on other programs before cycling back. So, that’s a great opportunity to cooperate with the Department of War. Who’s going to want to have space tugs going to and from LEO and cis-lunar and the Legrand points, et cetera, at some point, I would think.
Jared Isaacman:
Yeah. I mean, my understanding, I was out at INL not that long ago. In fact, NASA right now, our collaboration with Department of Energy is just exceptional. Even with the small module reactors, this requirement still requires co-location with the reactor operators. The world they certainly envision is there’s hundreds of SMRs all around the country and you’ve got a central command and control that can manage these all remotely. That doesn’t exist right now.
Well, here’s a great opportunity to test that out because we’ll test it out, I don’t know, a few million miles away from Earth and see how that works. Just like all things at NASA, the technology that we have to pioneer to get there has a direct benefit back here on Earth. So, as we look to improve high temperature materials and automations of our fission powered spacecraft, this will all have benefits back here for terrestrial applications.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Terrific. How about another one of those muscles that if you don’t exercise routinely is the acquisition arm. And so, is there any things that you’ve had to address or targets you’ve set for the acquisition element of NASA in your role now?
Jared Isaacman:
Yeah. I mean, we pushed out an acquisition directive very early on. We pushed out a lot of directives and I’ll tell you, the workforce at NASA has embraced it all. I mean, there’s very little resistance to change because look, you have tens of thousands of some of the brightest people in the world as you know, sir, that show up every day to work at NASA. They want to change the world in air and space. They know the pace of progress hasn’t been where it needs to be and must change.
So, you put out these directives, people respond incredibly well. First was like, let’s bring extreme focus again to the mission. We get $25 billion a year. It’s an awful lot of resources, but it won’t get you very far again, if you spread it out trying to make everybody happy. So, we’re going to bring extreme focus again back to the mission and how we procure things absolutely matters.
Now of course, people, you’d have one side industry would say strip out all of the requirements and let us just do our thing. Well, honestly, that doesn’t always work quite well. I mean, you can point to the success we have with commercial crew and cargo to space station. I mean, your batting average is 500 there. And when lives are online going to and from space and you wind up with headlines like stranded astronauts in space, that is not conducive for stripping requirements out.
So, you got to prioritize, this is areas that we need to get right. And these other areas which do not have life on the line or contribute to safety here on Earth, you give latitude to tell us how to do it. If we are truly one customer of many, buy it as a service. If it’s high TRL, do fixed firm price. If it’s extremely low TRL, you probably want some sort of a well-managed cost plus structure until you can off-ramp to fix firm price.
But you screw up the order on any of those, believe me, it doesn’t matter like firm, fixed, price, fix, you can screw up the procurement of any of these if you want to, and you can certainly make them extremely expensive. So, we put a lot of directives out on that to get back to procuring what we need as quickly and affordably as we can and be very, very outcome driven at NASA. And I think everyone’s responding really well to it.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s terrific. Yeah, the contract matters, doesn’t it?
Jared Isaacman:
Yeah.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Depending on the technology that you can deliver. Can you talk a little bit about the allies and partners have been important for the International Space Station as we return to the moon, their participation? Just talk about what your thoughts are on that.
Jared Isaacman:
For sure. And I’ll tell you, as you know, sir, when we go out and undertake the near impossible, we never go at it alone. It does take the contributions from the workforce, industry contractors, our partners across government agencies, the Department of War, but international partners as well. I will tell you though, and this is right from the top from the president of the United States, we’re only doing good deals and we haven’t always done good deals.
There was absolutely a time where we were trying again, make everyone happy and let’s get a lot of flags together for a great press release. And it can absolutely and has been at times a drag on the mission instead of accelerating it. And you can’t do that. And we’ve changed that now. And as a result, good deals are happening. You’ve got the Italians, great example of it. I mean, they’re committing over $5 billion to building one of the first habitation modules, likely will be the first real habitation module that makes its way to the lunar surface. And as a result, you’re going to see two Italian astronauts on the surface of the moon.
JAXA, the Japanese, I mean over, I want to say close to $6 billion is being committed to a pressurized rover. This is a mobile base on the lunar surface itself. And you will see JAXA, Japanese astronauts on the surface of the moon. And that’s the expectations we set from everyone. You’re not just going to bring us a list and say, “I will do this regardless if it helps the mission or it competes with US industry and what US industry is trying to accomplish on the moon, it’s not going to work. We need meaningful contributions now. This game has changed.”
I mean, we had one partner that said, “Look, I’ll give you a lander, a robotic lander that’ll go to the Shackleton Crater by the mid-2030s.” I was like, “The Chinese are launching there in two months. What good is that to us then? There will be no landing spots available at that point in time. We’ve got to get in touch with reality and make meaningful contributions to what NASA and the free world is trying to achieve with our space ambitions.”
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
That’s great. Now you mentioned aeronautics in your remarks. You want to add a little bit to that? We do have a lot of Airmen in the room as well as Guardians. And that seems to be an area that we hadn’t heard much about from NASA over the last 20 years.
Jared Isaacman:
And you haven’t heard much about it over the last 20 years because we weren’t doing what we were supposed to do within aeronautics, to be very honest. Another example of trying to make everybody happy. I mean, we were using a large portion. NASA’s aeronautics budget approximately is a billion a year and we have some pretty exquisite wind tunnels. Some of it goes to wind tunnels that haven’t been used in a really long time, may never be used again, which isn’t great.
But a lot of it went to help industry mature very high TRL investments, investments they should have done themselves. I’ll give you an example, engines that have been around 40, 50 years to get another 5% fuel efficiency out of it. That is not what your NASA’s aeronautics budget should go to. And we are very unapologetic and we are absolutely pivoting away from that. NASA is rebuilding flight tests, which we largely outsourced or lost.
So, those capabilities are coming back into the agency and we are putting our investments in radical airframe and propulsion designs. I mean, as I mentioned in my remarks, we are going to go higher and faster until we start blurring the lines of what is in and out of the atmosphere, the expectations I think that the public has that has potential for game changing civil, commercial, and national security applications like we did in decades past. We’re down to one X-plane right now that is not flying very often. That will change.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Yeah. There’s that domain between 100,000 feet and 400,000 feet that no one’s figured out how to operate in. And the first people who do will have a great advantage. Well look, we’re up against our time clock. We got a few minutes. Any closing remarks you’d like to make as we wind up the session here?
Jared Isaacman:
No, I mean NASA’s success in the 1960s through a large portion through our space program was based on such a close partnership with the Department of War. We’ve done a lot of great things together from the first space race to the shuttle program as you know, and we are recalibrating back in that direction. We are absolutely here to partner, whether it’s in aeronautics on those next generation X-planes that we are talking about or how we can make efficient use of the resources that are being spent in the cis-lunar environment.
We know what we’re going there for. We do come in peace and we have our peaceful ambitions for the lunar surface, but it’s not lost in us that our adversary does not draw that distinction and we cannot, absolutely cannot execute on our mission without the Department of War and the Guardians looking out for us on this great endeavor. And we’re just extremely, extremely grateful.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Well, listen, John Glenn flew on a space shuttle when he was 77 years old and part of that was to explore aging on the planet Earth with some of the things that happened to our bodies in space. I was taught as a test pilot though, you can’t build a graph with just a single point. So, in a few years, I’ll be 77 years old, so keep me in mind if you want to complete that graph.
Jared Isaacman:
Absolutely, absolutely, general.
Gen. Kevin Chilton, USAF (Ret.):
Thanks a lot.