Fmr. NASA chief has Artemis moon lander concerns on "This Week in Space"

Well, you know, I'm glad that that you know, you you laid out kind of that progression for Artemis I remember that that by any means necessary speech by then vice president Mike Pence. I remember it sounded like it was a Poke with a stick as I like to tell my staff when it's time to get things going And I'm curious now that we've got Artemis to behind us in a spectacular fashion earlier this year You know what what you took away from that that mission watching it unfold knowing that you know you kind of helped keep that ball not not just rolling but setting it up so that that foundation was there to build on so that they could do that and then if you think that that that that new goal of 2028 is on track now We just got the Artemis three crew named earlier this week and it seems like a lot more is happening a lot more faster I guess are a lot more visible for that for the public at least yeah No, I think that's good. And I think what Jared is doing is important and and good. I Do I worry that we don't have a lander? The the SLS rocket is working, you know, it's been criticized a lot because of cost and time and everything else bottom line is The first time SLS launched it was rated for crew and it was ready to go to the moon Yeah on the first launch like it's that's hard to do and yet it did it And in fact on its first launch it launched Orion to the moon With a single vehicle one single launch Orion went to the moon the second launch we had crew on it It is a very capable machine. The rs-25 engines are stunning The the the SLS rocket is the most powerful rocket ever built You've got the ICPS upper stage which it looks like will be replaced with Centaur five upper stages You've got the Orion crew capsule this system is fully integrated designed from the ground to be human rated on day one and It has all worked now. That doesn't mean it's perfect. But what it means is we know what works What we don't have and this is the challenge. We still don't have a lander and Without a lander you can't land on the moon It's really that simple and I worry that over time that's gonna come back and bite us I do think we need a lander whatever it takes whatever it takes to build a lander Soonest is what we ought to be doing as a country So that's kind of my my outlook on it. Yeah, and I guess I would just add Regardless of who builds the lander it probably needs to be designed in such a way that it can fly on any of the major boosters Because yeah, you know, we we know that blue origins doing the blue moon now They had that that New Glenn accident and you know, one question that comes to mind is can that be launched on a Falcon heavy and it's frustrating to watch and as much as you know We really are all in for those companies to succeed and the fact that they have skin in the game is remarkable But it's just I mean I hear you from the sidelines here not being anywhere near DC It really is frustrating to see the struggle with these landers and I guess especially You know not not to criticize anybody but the SpaceX plan It for a person who doesn't really know much about engineering seems very daunting I mean that is some really complicated choreography when you've got this orbiting stage with With the cryogenic fuel boiling off trying to refill it enough times to get to the moon. We don't know how many times yet And it has to be human rated Yeah, I mean that's that's the hard part is people people underestimate how challenging it is to do it to begin with and then do it with the level of Confidence and margin required for it to be human rated Although fortunately with this unusual architecture that has been put together It doesn't have to be human ready to bring them home, which I imagine will save a lot of time Yeah, but yes, if you can get them, they're bringing them home is the is Kind of the next big step, but I'll just tell you the architecture is extraordinarily complicated I don't think there's any argument about that and we need a lander the the the genius of Apollo And I I'm just gonna go back to Apollo the genius of Apollo was its simplicity They just said we're gonna go to the moon with a single rocket Alright, we're gonna do lunar orbit rendezvous And we're gonna go down to the surface of the moon and we're gonna come back up to our command module and we're gonna fly home if they they designed that thing to be as Simple as you could possibly make it and because of that they were able to land on the moon Eight years after John F Kennedy declared that we were doing it It's it's really remarkable what they did And that's that's including two years lost to the Apollo one fire So when you really think about it was about five and a half, although they did have you know, let's be fair They had a lot more funding than you did with Artemis Right there a lot of people say that and by the way, I've been guilty of saying it too. They had a bigger percent of The federal budget for sure a bigger percentage of the federal budget back then it was like four and a half percent of the federal Budget today. We're at less than one-third of the Fed less than one-third of 1% of the federal budget so I Would also say yes I think in real dollars were down significantly but not maybe down as much as you might presume and I'll tell you why When you compare the spending relative to the federal budget Number one your budget can shrink number two the federal government budget grows So because the federal budget is so much bigger than it used to be It's a smaller portion of the federal budget. I want to be clear I am I am a gomer for making sure that we have a bigger budget for NASA I mean the the challenge with NASA is it's a we're talking about an agency that has a 24 billion dollar budget You could eliminate the entirety of NASA and it does not have an impact on the debt or the deficit It's just not that big of an agency however, like I said one-third of 1% of the federal budget So it's just not so but here's the thing if you increased NASA's budget by 50% It would have a huge impact on the capability that we bring to this country And it and if and if you crush it by 50% It has a huge impact the opposite direction Yeah And yet in either case it doesn't really have an impact on the deficit or the debt Because it is such a small agency That it is the best brand that the United States of America has by far There is nothing close when the NASA administrator shows up in Europe when the NASA administrator shows up in Japan People come in droves. It's like I'm Mick Jagger when I go and and It is remarkable Everybody has a thirst for NASA all around the world And I think I think we cannot dismiss how powerful that is for our country when I when I was a NASA administrator We landed in sight on Mars it was the ninth time in human history that anybody had landed on Mars and and it was all every time it was done by the United States and And we put a press release out and it was on the cover of every newspaper worldwide Insight was just like trying to understand Mars quakes. That's what it was there to do It wasn't like it was even looking for life or anything. It was just looking for Mars quakes and And yet it was on the cover of every newspaper including in Tehran if you can Wow, and it and it's in the Tehran newspaper So it literally said the hardline newspaper of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they had an article about Landing on Mars. I mean, that's it's hard to get those types of good messages about the United States Behind countries that really don't like us and yet we can at NASA Uniquely and it changes the way young people think about our country in a positive way I just don't think we can dismiss the power of that. Yeah