The $100 Billion Promise: How NASA is Returning to The Moon | Jared Isaacman on The a16z Show

But you're going to get back into the habit of launching moon rockets in months, not years. Why is it so important for us to go back to the moon? This was a promise that was made, and a promise we need to keep. When we return to the moon, America will not look down on the prime lunar real estate while our rivals occupy it. NASA astronauts will be on the surface, building President Trump's moon base, and we will realize the scientific, economic, and national security potential surface operations provide.

A lot of people, when I came to this job, were like, “Industry's not going to let you do what you want to do, and the politicians aren't going to let you do what you want to do.” But you know what? They all understand the difference between America winning and losing on the moon. Saying “for 35 years and putting $100 billion in, and then coming up short, and that doesn't have national security implications” — you're completely mistaken.

It's great to be here with so many entrepreneurs, operators, investors, and policymakers who are helping us build the next golden age of space exploration. I love being around the people who not only look up and imagine what is possible, but possess the experiences and the will to bring ideas into reality. There is no organization I can tell you that appreciates that kind of determination more than NASA.

On that note, in the weeks ahead, America will send the brave Artemis 2 astronauts potentially farther into space than any humans have ever traveled in generations, flying around the moon on a 10-day mission to test the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft before returning home to Earth. President Donald Trump took the decisive steps of establishing the Artemis program during his first term. He recently — in fact, it was the day that I was sworn into this position — reaffirmed America's commitment to space superiority, giving NASA a clear mandate and a focus to return to the moon and build the base. This time, we return to stay.

Thanks to historic investments secured in the Working Families Tax Credit Act, NASA has received nearly $10 billion in support of that national imperative. The bipartisan commitment signed into law by the president gives us the resources to move forward with purpose and urgency, knowing American leadership in the high ground of space is on the line.

So we have the presidential mandate, we have the resources, we certainly have the historic experience, we have plenty of hardware, and we have domestic and international partners. So why does it all take so long? Why does it cost so much? And what are we going to do about it?

A lot of those answers are because we have lacked real competition for decades. After the last space race, we were the only game in town. So we built partnerships all over the world to spread goodwill. We spread ourselves thin with broad-based science. We took on lots of side-quest projects, some of which are very cool, but ultimately distract from the world-changing mission the taxpayers have entrusted us with.

It costs a lot because we outsourced a lot of our core competencies. Industry consolidated, we let stakeholders set the priorities to serve constituent interests, and adopted policies in the attempt to make everyone happy — maybe make everyone happy other than the American people, and really people all over the world who were waiting for the headlines that only NASA was capable of making.

As a result, you get moon rockets that fly only every 3-plus years — the worst cadence by far of NASA-designed rockets — hardware that is obsolete by the time it's delivered, and 51 nuclear propulsion programs that have never flown. Less flagship science and discovery missions, fewer X-planes, fewer astronauts in space, and fewer kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween.

I don't like this. President Trump doesn't like it, clearly, given what he's trying to accomplish in national space policy. But maybe this was tolerable to some when there were no geopolitical rivals capable of challenging America in the most important strategic domain. That's not the case anymore. Not anymore.

NASA has stated that we will achieve the national imperative to return to the moon and establish an enduring presence before the end of President Trump's term. Our rival has stated that it will happen before 2030. So it's not hard math. That's less than 1 year of margin, and they might be early. Recent history says that we certainly might be late. President Trump does not like to lose, and if I'm doing my job right at NASA, that won't happen.

I spent the first few months getting my arms around the challenges and the opportunities. The work generally revolves around ensuring that the extraordinary resources that are made available — NASA's budget is $25 billion a year — are concentrated on the most pressing objectives; clearing out needless bureaucracy and really any obstacles that impede progress; empowering the workforce; and making sure our capital allocation is done in a thoughtful way that ensures desired outcomes are achieved, ideally ahead of schedule.

To that end, we are standardizing the SLS rocket and increasing launch cadence from years to months. We're inserting a new mission in 2027 to buy down risk and increase confidence for lunar landing attempts in 2028. As I've said many times, Artemis is a program. Where we begin with SLS is not where we end. There will be dozens of missions living on long past where Apollo 17 ended, with the aim of affordable and repeatable crew and cargo missions to the surface for decades into the future.

We're also going to stop leaping right to the dream state as a service and build a moon base step by step in an evolutionary approach. We're just going to start with CLPS programs and LTV-style landers and rovers. We're going to provide a strong demand signal to industry for launch vehicles, landers, and rovers that we can outfit with power, navigation, communication, service and surface-improvement capabilities, scientific capabilities, and other capabilities that we can experiment with to ultimately inform the phase 2 infrastructure and move toward long-term habitation.

So, folks in this room, if you're ever coming to pitch me on the Mars base dream state as a service, where the only customer is NASA, it costs billions of dollars, and it's never been done before, I can assure you we probably won't be that receptive. We're not going to force an orbital economy where it doesn't exist, but I can certainly provide a demand signal for what we need in line with President Trump's national space policy. We are going to do everything we possibly can to ignite the space economy that we all know is inevitable.

When we return to the moon, America will not look down on the prime lunar real estate while our rivals occupy it. NASA astronauts will be on the surface building President Trump's moon base, and we will realize the scientific, economic, and national security potential surface operations provide. NASA will achieve the lunar objectives and do the other things.

We will invest in nuclear power and propulsion in space so we can undertake the next giant leap to Mars. We will ignite the orbital economy and launch more missions of science and discovery. We never pursue these grand endeavors alone. We have international partners and commercial industry, like many of those in this room, but we also require the scientific, software development, engineering, technical, and operational talent to execute the mission.

So I'm pleased to announce, with the immense support of OPM Director Scott Cooper, that we are launching NASA Force to rebuild NASA's core competencies. These term-based appointments from industry partners will provide mentorship and training, and help season and rebuild the core competencies within the NASA workforce. Similarly, these programs offer exchange opportunities for NASA talent to rotate through industry.

At NASA, we have no excuses. We have the policy, the resources, the will, the support of the most technologically forward-leaning industry, and the winning playbook that achieved the near impossible on July 20, 1969.

It starts with having a very focused plan, concentrating resources again on the most challenging objectives, staying organized, assembling the best and brightest from around the nation, instilling in them a culture that requires immense competence, extreme ownership, and urgency, partnering with industry, taking meaningful steps toward a larger goal, constantly listening to data and learning, and never accepting defeat. This is how NASA once changed the world, and this is how we're going to do it again. Thank you.

Good to see you. So good to see you. Hello, everybody. Administrator Isaacman, thank you for joining me here on stage. There's so much you just covered at the podium that I want to dig into, but first I have to start with this idea of NASA Force and this idea of bringing talent into NASA and making NASA great again, cool again.

People ask me, “What was your biggest surprise since taking the job?” I'd say a lot of things were actually as expected. I had an opportunity to prepare for it more than once. What stands out, having visited every one of the centers on this really epic road show, is how large a portion of our core competencies has either been lost outright over the years or been outsourced.

Then you take a program like America's return to the moon with Artemis, and you've got 5 prime contractors, hundreds of subcontractors, and 75% of your workforce — your workforce, not partners, not commercial partners in this — are contractors through staffing agencies.

They’re all using different software tools, collaboration tools, and HR systems, talking to different prime contractors and subcontractors. Is it a surprise to anyone that we’re $100 billion deep into this and years behind schedule? No. It’s right in front of you.

Things like mission control—mission control is outsourced. I have to imagine that would shock most people in this room: When the astronauts come over the radio and say, “Houston,” the person responding back is outsourced. Launch control, turning our pad—people have been freaking out since I said last Friday that we are going to get back into the habit of launching Moon rockets in months, not years.

Apollo 7 to Apollo 8: 9 weeks apart. We’re on this cadence of every 3.5 years, and they’re like, “That doesn’t make any sense. How are you ever going to be able to pull it in from 3.5 years? It’s an unrealistic plan.” It’s like, no, we’re going to go back to doing what we did before because we’re going to rebuild the workforce that knows how to do these things. But that’s part of our history.

Yes, we incredibly value the support from Scott and OPM to let us go out and bring the talent back into the agency for things like turning our launch pad so we can launch with frequency, managing launch control, and managing mission control. We definitely need our partners; we don’t do this alone. But NASA has to have those core competencies back within the agency.

So, move more quickly—and I’d imagine it sounds like also cutting costs in the process: bringing more of this in-house?

Yeah. When I went to every one of the centers and started talking to the workforce, I said, “Okay, so you work in mission control. You’re one of our contractors. I get it; we treat everybody kind of the same. Do you want to be a civil servant?” There are certain benefits associated with it, and they’re like, “I’ve wanted to work for NASA since I was a kid.”

They get paid exactly the same, but staffing companies put a 40% gross margin on it. So, the answer is about $1.4 billion a year is lost in science and discovery because someone 30 years ago or so said, “There are these artificial hiring ceilings on civil servants.” Seventy-five percent of the workforce became contractors—contractors that have been there for decades and will stay there for decades if we don’t change it.

I mean, we’re having these conversations actively. We’re seeing these conversations actively on the defense side: this idea of recruiting the best and brightest. What does that look like at NASA when you do talk about that competition with the tech industry and the private sector?

To me, NASA is supposed to be doing the near impossible, where you can’t close a business case, where there’s no obvious demand besides NASA. At one point, we had to open this whole thing up with heavy-lift launch vehicles and propulsion design. Again, we were the only game in town.

That’s not the case now. Launch, observation, and communication—there is a market for it. That is the foundation of the space economy. So, if NASA is doing the same thing that industry is doing, we’re screwing up. That’s going to make it very hard for us to recruit talent, and it’s going to make it very hard for us to retain talent.

So, what do you do? You pivot in a direction that others shouldn’t necessarily be working on. Nuclear power and propulsion is a great example. There are lots of great nuclear companies right now. I think there’s a lot of demand—terrestrial demand—for energy, so maybe that’s the near-term demand signal.

NASA can do what others wouldn’t want to take on: the liability of launching a nuclear reactor with power and propulsion, so we can get to Mars someday and actually bring our astronauts back home. That’s a great example of where NASA should be recalibrating again to the near impossible.

All right, let’s dig a little deeper into Artemis, because you just announced this restructuring. Artemis 3 is not going to put boots on the Moon. You’re returning to low Earth orbit to test out the human landing system technology there, too. You’re moving quickly, right? It’s been, what, 2 months—2.5 months since you got in? How did you decide on the restructuring, and how did this path forward emerge as the one that makes the most sense?

Yeah. To me, I think it’s obvious. I don’t know why these decisions weren’t made sooner, but you cannot launch a rocket as important and as complex as SLS every 3.5 years and think it’s going to lead to a good outcome.

We had hydrogen leaks on Artemis 1. 3.5 years later, what do we have? We had hydrogen leaks. We had helium flow issues on Artemis 1; 3.5 years later, why is Artemis 2 back in the Vehicle Assembly Building instead of around the Moon right now? Helium flow issues.

You get no muscle memory if you’re launching every 3.5 years. People are working to launch the mission, and then they move on and go somewhere else. You have to rebuild all those competencies again. It’s just not a recipe for success.

Again, we’ve tended to go right to the dream state and forget that you need to do things as challenging as returning to the Moon in an iterative, evolutionary way. We had Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo—an awful lot of Apollo missions before 11. Now, we should have learned some things since then. We do have the power of our great industry in order to help us.

I don’t think you necessarily need as many missions. You certainly need more than one trip around the Moon and then land and call it a day. That’s not going to work. So, we’re getting back to some of our basics.

We’re inserting another mission in 2027 to ensure that we have the muscle memory at the pad, so when we intend to launch, we actually can launch. Then you have to rendezvous with one or both of your lander providers in low Earth orbit, just as we did with Apollo 9. Get confidence in the systems and buy down risk before you send people to the Moon.

It’s the difference between, if something goes wrong, being hours away from being in the water or days away. We’ve got to get it right. It’s incredibly hard to return to the Moon. We’ve got to do it in a smart approach.

The SLS rocket is a very expensive, very exquisite, complicated rocket. You just talked about 3.5 years. Can Boeing turn it out quickly enough? Can you actually get enough of them to keep up with the cadence you want?

Yeah. Look, a lot of people, when I came to this job, were like, “Industry’s not going to let you do what you want to do, and the politicians aren’t going to let you do what you want to do.” But you know what? They all understand that we’re talking about months—the difference between America winning and losing on the Moon, with all of the associated implications.

If you don’t think there are national security implications to saying for 35 years, and putting $100 billion into it, that America will return to the Moon, then coming up short, you’re completely mistaken. Because that says, “If they’re broken here, imagine where else they’re broken.”

So, yes, I think industry and various politicians have forced our hand for a long time, and now everybody is waking up and realizing we’ve got months of margin. It’s time to start doing things differently. I’m grateful for what has become essentially unqualified support to do it the right way.

That includes industry saying, “We’re ready to get in gear.” Now, it takes more than promises, right? We are going to embed responsible engineers in every one of the prime contractors and every one of the subcontractors that has components on the critical path. The CEOs of these companies are going to brief me every 30 days on how they’re going to meet our timelines, because a lot is at stake and we have to get it right.

I’ve said it before publicly: The vehicle architecture for the whole SLS program was conceived before industry was landing rockets on ships. You can look at it and say it looks kind of like the Shuttle, but not really the Shuttle. That’s because a lot of the hardware there came from the Shuttle.

So, yes, it’s 50- or 60-year-old hardware that we’re leveraging now, but it’s the start, not the finish. The president created a program that’s going to live on as hardware evolves, which is going to be necessary if you’re going to undertake missions to and from the Moon at great frequency, because you’ve got a base there to sustain.

We’ve got SLS through at least Artemis 5 or 6. We’re going to make the most of it, and then we will continue to evolve our architecture until we are watching NASA astronauts go to and from the Moon measured in months, not years.

Yeah, and we’re seeing the demand signals even before your announcement last week with Artemis across industry in terms of, “Invest more, focus more on these lunar ambitions.” Before we move on to other topics, I do want to get to the human landing system piece of this, because it’s Blue Origin and SpaceX. Are they ready to go? Can they deliver as quickly as you need them to, especially if we’re talking about low Earth orbit rendezvous and they’re developed for something deeper in space?

Yeah. Again, when we went public with our plan to actually have an achievable strategy for getting to the Moon, we didn’t do it in a vacuum.

We spoke with industry and made sure we had commitments. That's why, when the announcement came, you saw every one of the players come out and put a tweet out in support, and a bunch of politicians did the same, because this is the way back to the moon. Now, both SpaceX and Blue Origin had to do uncrewed tests, so their vehicles were already part of the plan. They were planning to launch these spacecraft in 2027. Now, we're asking them to consider how we're going to rendezvous with us in Orion and start buying down risk, and they all acknowledged, “Yes, we need to do something like this.” We're going to work with them on it.

I will say, considering the technology that both Blue Origin and SpaceX are investing in, which is way more than just going back to the moon to put footprints and a flag there, I mean, that is the capability to truly build out a base, put lots of mass at low cost on the surface of the moon, and really, again, unlock its scientific and economic potential. It is a complex approach to do it. So, for them to rendezvous with us in low Earth orbit is substantially easier than it would be for them to rendezvous with us, for example, in lunar orbit, where that would not necessarily be a great trade if you're having to expend numerous launches that you could otherwise use for a landing. So, this is the right interim step.

Why is it so important for us to go back to the moon? As the administrator of NASA, what do you see as the potential benefits and rewards compared to the risk?

Well, I go back to this being a promise that was made and a promise we need to keep. Again, 35 years ago, we said we were going to do this. A hundred billion dollars have been expended along the way, for us to just come up short and say, “Well, we did it in the 1960s and 1970s, so what's the big deal?” That was the position you had to take 35 years ago.

Once you said you're going back, the new race is on, and you've committed another $100 billion of taxpayer dollars, you have an obligation to see it through. I'll say again, if we come up short, the implications are significant. Our rivals are going to say, if we're broken in space—which is probably the most important strategic domain—where else are we broken, and start encroaching on our territory across all the most important technological domains? That's a problem. That has real national security implications.

But what happens when we get there? We are going to learn things. That's why we're on the greatest adventure in human history, exploring our solar system and the galaxy and universe around us. We don't know what we may learn that could change everything. I will say it is absolutely the proving ground for future missions to Mars. To be able to get on the South Pole and do in-situ resource manufacturing, working with ice—these are the capabilities that we are going to need to use reliably on Mars if we're going to send astronauts there and back.

And I emphasize the back part. It's a lot easier to get them there; it's very hard to bring them back home. Let's use the moon as a proving ground when we're a couple of days from home versus 9 months.

Do you see this as a space race with China or otherwise?

Yeah, 100%. The only thing I'll just say, though, is that regardless of whether we had a rival that was potentially within a year of our schedule on this, the changes we announced last week are still in the correct direction. Whether you had a rival or not, you don't launch a moon rocket every 3½ years. You don't go from flying around the moon to landing on the moon. You still have to do things in a thoughtful, iterative, and evolutionary way in order to achieve grand endeavors, which was how we defined America for a period.

If we're going to get back to it, we have to do it the smart way. The fact that we have a competitor should motivate us, but it should also concern us if we come up short.

Hmm. What is the timeline now for Mars? How do we get there? What does that look like as you think about the moon in a bigger, broader, more near-term fashion?

Well, that's why, again, I have the best job in the world, and I have a national space policy that aligns the whole of government toward what we need to achieve and the financial resources to do it. The president didn't just say, “Return to the moon and build a moon base.” He also said, “Invest in the next giant-leap capabilities.” That's where nuclear power and propulsion come in.

I've checked in with the president multiple times on this. I promised him America will get nuclear power underway in space before the end of his term. That's going to be a huge breakthrough. Nuclear, especially nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) technology, is not going to be the fastest way to get from point A to point B, but it's going to be a way that we can move a lot of mass toward Mars. It's also going to be the same type of reactor technology we'll use for power on the surface, so we can mine propellant and come back.

We are taking meaningful steps in that direction. We will be able to use the moon base to prove out capabilities before we undertake it. And look, I think we're going to see astronauts on Mars in our lifetime.

What does it mean for the NASA budget?

I've told everyone I've come across, we've got the right top line to work within. We do have to be better capital allocators. We spent $200 million last year on a canceled program. I was like, “I don't understand this. It's canceled, but we spent $200 million.” We're not great capital allocators at all. We spread it out. We do lots of littles.

A lot of that is driven by external stakeholders. As I referenced in my prepared remarks, when you don't have a competitor and the idea is to build goodwill everywhere, fine. But when everything's on the line, you've got to concentrate your resources on the objectives that the taxpayers depend on you to achieve, which is why we were created in the first place.

So you ask me, is $25 billion a year, plus the plus-up that came from the One Big Beautiful Bill, enough to get the job done? Yeah, sure as hell it is. A lot of times people forget: a million dollars is a million dollars; a billion dollars is a billion dollars. $25 billion a year—that's an awful lot. World-changing companies have been started for less than a million dollars. We can do an awful lot with $25 billion a year.

Yeah, and of course, the relationship with the private sector and commercial space companies continues to grow, evolve, and change, too. So, to put a really fine point on it, since I know we have some space entrepreneurs in the audience, what do you see as their domain versus yours here?

Yeah. Look, again, I think it's NASA's job to be doing the near impossible—where no other agency, organization, or company could ever close a business case on it because your demand signal is 1 and there's probably no logical revenue model to underwrite it. That's where NASA should be putting our attention. When we have big breakthroughs, we hand them off to industry and let competitive dynamics improve the product or capability and bring down costs.

We owe industry demand signals for where we can forecast lots of demand, where it is possible that there will be other customers beyond us in the near to midterm. And that's what we're going to be doing in the near future with the moon base. You're going to have lots of launches, lots of landers, lots of rovers, and that's going to be an opportunity to experiment, again, with comms, navigation, in-situ resource manufacturing, scientific experiments, habitation, and power.

We are going to be able to give demand signals so industry knows where to concentrate its resources. I'll just say that, when we do it, we're going to do it with lots of littles, in an iterative way, and not jump to the dream state, because that's where no one listens. The taxpayers don't win, and no one gets the capabilities they want in the timelines that we require.

Yeah, NASA's really been on the forefront—this has been the case for a number of years—in terms of public-private partnerships and thinking differently about contracting. So, how does that continue?

It does continue. We can't go at this alone. There is no question. Right now, this is the most competitive, healthy commercial space industry in the history of America's space program.

When we need launches, there are lots of companies we can buy them from. When we need landers, there are lots of companies we can buy landers from. When we need comms, observation, and navigation capabilities around the moon, there are multiple companies capable of competing for them. This is good.

So, again, I don't think people have long to wait. We'll put the demand signal out there for what we require, and I'm grateful that we have, again, the most technologically advanced, well-financed, well-capitalized industry ready to meet the need.

Hmm. Life elsewhere—do you think we're going to find it?

Do I think we're going to find it? I would say that if we went and brought the samples back from Mars—which is the Mars Sample Return program people have been asking about for a while, and which was canceled in the last administration because it was super expensive—I think the odds are extremely good you'd have direct evidence that microbial life once existed.

But I don't think, no matter how many robotic missions we land that do analyses and phone home to say, “Yeah, it's like a 90% chance there was something there,” that anyone will buy it until we actually bring the samples back and make a conclusive statement.

But what I will say—I don't know about the rest of you—but if you're ever late at night, having cocktails with friends and looking up at the stars and being like, “Is life out there?” People generally say, “Surely it must be somewhere. I mean, you've got 2 trillion galaxies, and how many stars are in them, and how many of them probably have planetary formations within a Goldilocks zone?” Yeah, I'll take that bet.

But if you do find proof of microbial life at some point on Mars, when you bring those samples back, you know, we have the Europa Clipper mission out there searching for life. You've got a nuclear-powered octocopter that we're launching to Titan in 2028, searching for life. If you start getting biosignatures from other worlds within our solar system, it changes the dynamic entirely from, “Surely it must be out there somewhere,” to, “What if it's everywhere?” It might be possible in our lifetimes to prove that.

Okay, we're out of time. I have one quick kicker question for you. Are you going to go back to space at some point?

When you're done serving in the government, or maybe while you are?

I think I'm going to be very busy the next couple of years, but we'll see. That's the idea, right? We're trying to be able to open it up for everyone, and thankfully, you've got industry putting lots of good resources into bringing space from the few to the many.

Jared Isaacman, administrator of NASA, thank you so much.

Thank you.