Jared Isaacman：NASA与美国太空探索的新纪元

Ignition sequence start all engines up. It's good to have an aviator and astronaut in charge. Jared Isaacman, the new NASA administrator. NASA's still hot. Humankind will not be contained to planet Earth indefinitely. In the next giant leap capabilities, that's nuclear power and propulsion. That's what extends America's reach farther into the solar system. That's what guarantees the third race will never be in question. Please welcome Jared Isaacman.

Good morning, everyone. It is an absolute honor to be here at All-In. We are living through an extraordinary moment in history, aren't we? It took just 65 years from Orville and Wilbur's first flight to Neil and Buzz walking on the surface of the Moon. Now, it's been 57 years since Apollo 11.

For a while there, the pace of progress hasn't been all that inspiring, but look at what is on the horizon right now. We've got artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, robotics, additive manufacturing, the promise of fusion energy, biotech to heal the disabled, autonomous transportation, and this whole abundance thing everyone's talking about. All of that converging in the years ahead is beyond what most people can comprehend.

Our world will fundamentally change: how we live, how we work, how we fight wars, and how we reach out and touch the stars. But we are not alone on this journey. We are living through a great-power competition. Other nations understand the opportunities that can elevate nations and change civilizations.

Perhaps nowhere are the possibilities, the competition, and the consequences of getting it wrong more apparent than in the ultimate high ground above us. At NASA, we are doing things differently, regaining our swagger, and putting wins on the board. But absent this president, absent this geopolitical competition, and absent the very real possibility of losing the second space race, I suspect very little would have changed.

For too long, resources at the world's most accomplished space agency were spread everywhere, trying to make everyone happy. Much of it was through external imposition, but plenty of it was self-inflicted. We partnered for the sake of partnerships, oftentimes becoming a drag on the mission instead of accelerating it.

As a result, we have the Orion spacecraft that we can't inject into low lunar orbit like we did during Apollo. The prior administration canceled the Mars Sample Return mission that was on track to cost more than an aircraft carrier. We created programs that were too big to fail, too costly to truly succeed, in the hope that they would survive administrations.

The result is a rocket that was designed when China was predominantly operating coal-fired locomotives and is now becoming operational as China operates 25,000 miles of high-speed rail and is just a few years away from its own Apollo 11-like moment. Core competencies and tens of thousands of members of the NASA workforce were rented, outsourced, or lost, which turned what should have been months' worth of progress into years at tremendously greater cost.

Eventually, too little was left to do things the right way—the way NASA showed the world how to do it in decades past. So, we invented this whole dream-state-as-a-service thing, forgoing the playbook of success and shifting the impossible burden onto others.

The result is that our Moon rocket is, in fact, less efficient than Saturn V at converting launch mass into payload headed for the Moon, with more time between the Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 missions than all 12 of the Gemini missions that were flown 60 years before. A lunar space station that, whenever it may have been delivered, would have put our astronauts in a position to look down on the most desirable lunar real estate instead of operating on the surface and occupying it.

There was one X-Plane that wasn't flying very much, and there were billions spent on failed nuclear programs that had not left the laboratory since 1965. During the first space race, we were slow out of the gate, but NASA ultimately ran up the score. The second will be much closer than it ever needed to be.

Since becoming the administrator of NASA last year, we have made a different choice. We are not going to try to make everyone happy. We are not going to spread every penny across every district or partner with every nation just to try to make everyone happy, or because that's how people incorrectly believed it always was.

I am certainly not here for the money, to favor companies, for the title, the notoriety, or the politics. I'm not here to be your VC, to entertain your dream, or invent new markets if it detracts in the slightest way from the missions that we have been entrusted to achieve on behalf of the American people. You can take those conversations up with the Department of Commerce if you like.

I'm here to execute on President Trump's national space policy, to align and focus resources, to work alongside and unleash the best this nation has to offer—from the NASA workforce, to our industry, to our partners—and deliver world-changing outcomes. The kind of outcomes that put Neil and Buzz on the Moon. The kind of outcomes that inspired many of you to be in this room in the first place.

This is a reinvigorated and energized NASA, and America is back in the business of sending our astronauts to the Moon. Artemis 2 was just the beginning. Those 4 heroic astronauts, recent recipients of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, rode 8.8 million pounds of thrust to near-Earth escape velocities, traveled farther into space than any humans in history around the Moon, and returned home safely.

That was just the opening act. We are not waiting 3 years to fly again. We are not turning every rocket into a work of art. Artemis 3 is already being assembled right now at a pace many doubted was possible just months ago.

Before year-end, we intend to roll out to Launch Complex 39B for a tanking test and send a message to our workforce, our industry, and our rivals overseas: NASA is back, and we are not going to sit idly by. We are not just a procurement organization. We are going to do the extremely demanding work and achieve our objectives safely, responsibly, and urgently, because that is what meeting the moment requires.

In the summer of 2027, Artemis 3 will launch on SLS into low Earth orbit and rendezvous with lander test vehicles from Blue Origin and SpaceX in what will be a remarkable display of the 3 most powerful rockets and spacecraft in the world. We will test interoperability and show what a future multi-launch campaign can actually look like. What we learn will inform the uncrewed test landings that follow.

Then comes Artemis 4 in 2028, when American astronauts return to the lunar surface—and this time, to stay. In parallel, we are establishing humanity's first outpost on another world: a Moon base. This time, we are leveraging the NASA playbook of decades past.

We are not jumping directly to the dream state. We will launch missions on a near-monthly cadence and undertake the science of survival. That means autonomous and crewed mobility, surface infrastructure, in situ resource utilization and manufacturing, logistics, habitability, power, communications, and all the science instruments the mass budget affords.

We will bring it to you live and in HD on the Moon Base website. And we will leave no doubters this time. We go for the scientific and economic potential. We go to learn about the formation of our solar system, but primarily because the lunar south pole, where the water ice is, is going to be the technological proving ground for where we inevitably go next, which is Mars.

In 2028, NASA will leave decades and billions of dollars of failed nuclear programs behind and launch SR1 Freedom, a 100-kilowatt fission reactor that will finally get America underway on nuclear power. The mission will transit to Mars and release Skyfall, which carries 3 Ingenuity-class helicopters and uses ground-penetrating radar to scout subsurface ice and future landing sites.

This will mark the beginning of nuclear NASA, pivoting our workforce and facilities back to doing the near-impossible: missions with no obvious business case, missions that no company, agency, or nation is presently capable of accomplishing, but that extend humanity's reach farther into the outer solar system. Just like during the Apollo era, the technology that we pioneer to get there will surely benefit life back here at home.

There will be lots of nuclear missions: SR2, SR3, SR4. Alongside our industry partners, we will push the boundaries of high-temperature materials, more efficient power conversion, reduced radiator mass, and higher-performance electric propulsion as we visit some of the most interesting moons, like Enceladus, Europa, and Titan.

These are worlds with oceans, complex chemistry, and perhaps the ingredients for life—a reminder that some of the greatest discoveries in human history may be waiting for us in our own backyard. We could answer the question: Are we alone? And are we alone even in our own solar system, let alone the galaxy and universe around us?

Someday, a chemically augmented, nuclear-powered transfer vehicle, part of an American Starfleet and supported by an armada of starships and other spacecraft, will carry humans to the surface of Mars and bring them home safely to tell us about it. And not just once. We are on this great destiny of human exploration, and we are not turning back.

Along the way, we are going to do the other things. Commercial satellites are being printed off at a rate that will help us affordably understand the only planet that we presently inhabit, our home star, and space weather, and better predict weather and perhaps respond to wildfires and natural disasters more effectively. That will free up more resources to build the exquisite flagship science missions that only NASA can undertake.

For example, the nuclear-powered Dragonfly octocopter. It's powered by a 2-kilowatt MMRTG, converting to just 100 watts of electricity—barely better than an old light bulb—but it will journey to Saturn's moon, Titan, in 2028.

Europa Clipper will arrive at Jupiter’s icy moon in 2030. Our great space telescopes, like James Webb and Hubble, will soon be joined by Roman. With her nearly 300-megapixel wide-field instrument and JPL-built coronagraph, in the moments ahead, Roman will open her eyes. In that instant, she will see more of the universe than any scientific instrument we’ve ever put in space before.

Her surveys will seek to understand the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter and reveal tens of thousands of worlds that are hidden behind distant stars. Roman will return images so large and in such detail that there is no screen on Earth large enough to display them. Other missions, like NEO Surveyor, will find asteroids and comets that can threaten Earth, while next-generation telescopes in development will seek out habitable planets orbiting other stars.

The last few decades have shown us that the future in space that we all imagined as children will never be realized if it’s perpetually funded by taxpayers. NASA will do everything within reason to support an orbital and perhaps even lunar economy someday, building on the proven markets of launch, observation, and communication. The next frontier may be orbital data centers, commercial space stations, on-orbit manufacturing, regolith resource extraction, asteroid mining, or industries that none of us have even imagined yet.

It’s not NASA’s job to force an economy, but we will do all we can to ignite one as we pursue our missions. And in the service of the first A and NASA, we are rebuilding our XPlane fleet. The X-59 is researching quiet supersonic flight, but it’s just the beginning as NASA recommits to flight testing and works alongside industry to push the boundaries of airframe and propulsion design. It will not be long before NASA is flying once again as high and as fast as we have in decades past—and then even more.

But if this frontier is going to expand as rapidly as we believe it will, we will have to cultivate the talent to lead it. The space domain deserves an institution focused on that future, and we should call it what many already have: a Starfleet Academy. That is why the president established the Commission for the United States Space Academy, a NASA federal academy to prepare the next generation of astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, operators, pilots, and leaders.

Just as the need for Space Force became clear as the domain evolved, we should be equally forward-looking in preparing those who will build the Moon base, operate nuclear-powered spacecraft, command missions to Mars, ensure our national security, and create industries in orbit that we can barely imagine today. There is no time to waste.

I want you all to think about where you were when the Artemis II astronauts sent back those images from the Moon. Who did it touch? Your parents, your friends, your colleagues, your children. Now I want you to imagine astronauts climbing down the ladder. Only this time, it’s not grainy black-and-white footage from July 20, 1969. It’s high-definition color streaming live to billions of people all around the world.

The astronaut sets foot on the lunar surface. The camera pans up, and the flag on the spacesuit isn’t American. There will be no footnote explaining that we spent more. No disclaimer that our architecture was complicated. No one will care how many studies we completed, how many meetings we held, what congressional districts benefited, who all the all-star lobbyists for their hardware were, who served on the committee, or how many times we slipped the schedule for what someone thought was a perfectly reasonable reason. The world will just see who got there.

China intends to put its astronauts on the Moon by 2030. Its robotic missions are targeting Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole next year, and there are only so many good parking spots in that neighborhood. They intend to occupy them. They are working with Russia on their own nuclear-powered Moon base.

To be clear, China will accomplish what the Soviets never could during the first space race. They have a very achievable 2-launch architecture, the national will, and the capabilities to put their astronauts on the surface of the Moon. If America has not returned despite the decades of promises and the more than $100 billion invested, the shock wave will be felt around the world.

Our allies will notice. Our adversaries will notice. Every nation deciding whose technology to buy, whose standards to adopt, whose security guarantees to trust, and whose vision of the future to follow will take notice. Perhaps most importantly, our children will notice.

That is why we must remain focused on the objectives that matter and why NASA was established in the first place. There is no time anymore for lobbying against America’s interests or further tolerating the status quo. Only extreme ownership, competence, and action.

Those of us inspired by the pioneers and heroes of decades past know they set the bar high. But we do not honor them by living forever on what they accomplished. This is our time to pick up where they left off, return, and never give up the Moon again—and then set our sights on Mars and beyond.

None of this will be accomplished by NASA alone. We have the support of President Trump. We have Congress. We have a clear mandate in the National Space Policy. But it will take brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, our allies, and Americans across the country who still believe that great nations can do great things.

Our children will either inherit the confidence of a nation still capable of the extraordinary or the memory of one that used to be. That responsibility, that choice, belongs to all of us. I believe that when history looks back on this moment, it will record that America did not hesitate any longer. We did not allow bureaucracy, complacency, waste, inaction, or fear of failure to constrain what we could accomplish. We chose to go, and we went. Thank you.

Where do you want me? I was commenting backstage on how easy it is for NASA to come and do speeches, given the content and the capacity to show visuals like this. Can you imagine Housing and Urban Development trying to do a presentation?

No, we have unbelievable material to work with. I’m thankful every day that I don’t lead the IRS or Social Security.

1. Getting back to the Moon, creating new space industries

Yeah, right. We don’t have a lot of time, so I want to move our way through the universe, but can we start with the Moon? There’s kind of this case that NASA makes about the Moon being the starting point for getting to Mars, but is the Moon a potentially viable economy on its own? Is there an industry to be built on the Moon? Is there an ongoing set of operations that could be established on the Moon that make sense beyond just testing equipment before we go to Mars?

Yeah, maybe. I think we are extremely fortunate. We’ve been gifted a Moon 3 days away to test out everything we need on this great adventure of discovery. This is where you want to go to really dial in power, your spacesuits, habitation modules, in-situ resource utilization, and robotics. It’s taken us decades to build replacement spacesuits from the Apollo era. Let’s test that out on the Moon. Habitation modules, certainly in-situ resource utilization, robotics.

Look, EVAs are fantastic. Astronauts bouncing around on the Moon is going to be highly inspirational. That’s one of the last things you should do when you have a Moon base: send somebody outside in that extremely dangerous environment. Let robotics do it.

In order to accomplish all of this, you have to send an extraordinary demand signal to industry. Over the next 4 years, we’re talking about dozens of landers, dozens of rovers, and lots of in-situ resource utilization experimentation. You’re giving industry all the opportunity in the world to figure out how to unlock value from the lunar regolith.

But I can’t guarantee it. That’s my point on the Department of Commerce. They have an Office of Space Commerce that can work through that. I am going to make sure that NASA can master the skills necessary to go to Mars for its scientific potential. We’ll put radio telescopes on the far side to inspire the next generation. If, along the way, it ignites a lunar economy, that’s fantastic. But it costs an awful lot to get there—an awful lot to extract resources.

Sorry, one second. Then we have to map the south pole to figure out where we’re going. Is that right? Is that part of this PROMISE mission? That’s kind of the next big mission for the Moon.

I’m glad you brought up PROMISE. We have mapped the lunar south pole. There are only so many good landing spots. The surface area of the Moon is about the size of Africa. The south pole of the Moon is like Washington, D.C., and there are only so many good craters that have these permanently shadowed regions. By the way, that is a harsher environment than Mars itself. That’s where the water ice is.

The crater cliffs can also give you near-eternal access to light for solar power, so there are only so many good landing spots. Think about when a vehicle the size of Starship comes down to the lunar surface. Believe me, that’s going to blast out quite a few craters and send debris. There are really limited parking spots.

PROMISE is very awesome because it’s a radioisotope-powered rover that we built as a spare, essentially, for the 2 rovers, Perseverance and Curiosity, that are on Mars right now. Just to give you a sense, this thing is the size of a Jeep. We have some plutonium-238, or Pu-238, that’s decaying right now.

You only get so much life out of it. We want to take that, put it on PROMISE, and send it to the Moon. It can go in and start prospecting in those permanently shaded regions that almost any other hardware would die in. It's a very good way to make use of taxpayer dollars that have largely already been spent.

And Jared, you were informing me and educating me last night on this specific southern region of the Moon being absolutely critical for us to get to first, before China. Why is it so critical that we get there before China, and what's it going to take to do that? As a follow-up to that, what was the state of NASA when you got there? It did feel like, since the Space Shuttle program, they haven't been super focused or effective, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah. Just to be clear, you're talking about some of the best talent in this nation. They show up to work at NASA every day, and they want to change the world in air and space. For a very long time, everybody was trying to run NASA other than the people themselves who show up to work there.

As you heard from my remarks, let's make everyone happy. Let's spread our resources to every congressional district. Let's collect 25 different flags to partner on the next mission. That takes something that should cost a couple billion dollars—which is very cool, like going and getting samples back from Mars that could lead to the most consequential discovery in human history—and layers a bunch of other people on, makes it cost more than a carrier, and then it gets canceled.

NASA is back in charge now. We are in a space race, and people are giving us the latitude to do what we need to do. As a result, we are extremely focused on the president's national space policy: return to the Moon, build a base, get underway with nuclear power, and pursue the other things. The workforce is responding well, and I'm grateful alongside them.

We are in a different state today. Unfortunately, we don't necessarily have as much time as we'd like because years were lost in this new space race. The south pole of the Moon—we've been gifted a Moon that's 3 days away—to master those skills to go to Mars. There are only so many good parking spots.

The Chinese and the Russians know that. They were going to launch a mission a couple of weeks ago right to Shackleton Ridge. Maybe it was mechanical, maybe it was weather-related, or maybe they were smart enough to know that if they actually did it, it probably would ignite one hell of a fire and urgency in us. That would have taken up 1 of a couple of critical parking spots.

2. How to make Mars realistic

They're going to build a base there. They've partnered with Russia. They're going to have a fission reactor there, and they're going to do the exact same things we are, which is interact with the water ice and get very good. Then where are they going next? The third space race: they're going to go to Mars. They'll have that massive Neil Armstrong-like moment that will send a message around the world, and we are very committed to not letting that happen.

What is the big technological leap that you have to make from the current course and speed to actually make Mars more realistic? Is propulsion and thrust the main vector?

I think there are a couple of things there. Robotics are going to be critical in all of this. If you chose a path that was purely chemical propulsion, vehicles like Starship are going to be incredible at that. You will no doubt have the means to send astronauts to Mars. They've already figured out habitability a long time ago, and you're talking about very comparable velocities whether you're going to the Moon or Mars in that regard.

The hard part is how you come back. You're going to need to make propellant on Mars to do so. One solution is to say, “I'll have an army of robots that'll do it, and I'll have football-field-sized solar panels. The robots can dust them off from all the dust storms that'll happen, and then you'll make your own propellant and come home.”

The hard part is that it's really challenging to do that under 1 atmosphere and 1G here on Earth. You can see how many people show up at Stage 0 at Starbase to launch a mission. By the way, that is the right way to win the war: put lots of mass on the surface.

NASA can help by pivoting—by stopping doing what industry is already doing really well and investing in those next giant-leap capabilities that have no obvious business use case today. That's fission power. Then you can have chemically augmented NEP spaceships, transfer vehicles, and go to and from Mars. You don't need to refuel them until they come back, and what you're refilling is krypton or xenon.

3. Recruiting, moonshots, the "Nuclear NASA," new vehicles and the importance of humans in space

That, to me, is how NASA works alongside industry to invest in the capabilities necessary for American leadership in space. Those are the capabilities you want to go to Saturn's moon Enceladus, to Titan, and to Europa. You have oceans on 2 of those moons that could have life in them. We don't know.

How do you convince these incredible, learned people to work for NASA versus SpaceX or other private space companies, now in a world where there are so many ways in which you can contribute?

Great. I'm glad you asked that, because it's a double-down on nuclear. Right now, we don't have a recruiting problem. We take 1% of the intern applications that go into our Pathways program, which guarantees them a job at NASA. The question is, can you retain them?

If you're doing exactly what SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, ULA, and others are doing in industry, except you're doing it off 50-year-old shuttle hardware that, again, is not as efficient for missions like going to the Moon as Saturn V was, you're going to lose that workforce. What do you need to do?

4. Allocating capital toward scientific discovery and deep space research

When we have those near-impossible breakthroughs and there is a business case, like there certainly is for launch, where you can be 1 customer among many, you hand it off to industry and you pivot. That's how you retain talent that can only do these types of missions at NASA. NASA's SR-1 is just the beginning. That is our Nautilus. There will be a grand fleet of nuclear-powered spacecraft on the frontier, essentially. You need to keep pivoting to the next new thing.

Can you explain, just really briefly, a primer on how nuclear works for generating thrust?

Sure. Think of a lot of the Starlink satellites that you have up right now that use Hall-effect ion thrusters. They're generating electricity through solar power, and then, through electromagnetic forces, they're ionizing either krypton or xenon and basically accelerating it out of the thruster, which gives you very high exhaust velocity. It's extremely efficient, with very low thrust, and you can use that propellant for a very long time. In space, the faster the molecule shoots out the back, the more thrust it generates for the craft to move forward.

It's very low mass flow, but highly efficient, with very high exhaust velocities. The idea, though, is that this breaks down the farther you get away from the Sun. Once you get out toward Jupiter, solar effectiveness is negligible. What you're using is the thermal energy from a nuclear reactor.

You'll have 100 kilowatts; we'll scale it up to 250—who knows, maybe megawatt-class. You're going to want to run that reactor as hot as you possibly can, so that's your high-temperature materials. Then you're going to convert it through a closed Brayton cycle power-conversion unit into electricity, and that electricity is going to power the same thrusters that you would see on Starlink. They're just scaled up: 12-kilowatt, then 14-kilowatt, 25-kilowatt thrusters.

What is NASA's budget, and if you could have your druthers, what would it be?

I'm incredibly supportive of—look, I've said it many times—NASA does not have a topline problem. We're bad capital allocators and have been for a long time. A lot of that is based on NASA choices, and it's based on what other people forced us to do, but that's changed.

We have $25 billion. How many entrepreneurs are in this room? $25 billion is a lot of money. You can build some pretty incredible hardware.

You're one of the few entrepreneurs who has actually built a profitable company and taken it public. You showed a picture of the Blackbird up there.

Are you sure that's a Blackbird?

Well, okay. What was that picture that you showed up there?

Like I said, NASA's getting back in the business of flying high and fast again.

I mean, that doesn't seem like a space vehicle. It seems like an Earth air vehicle.

Yeah. The first A in NASA is our aeronautics portfolio. What we've contributed to over the decades, you may not realize this: when you go see an F-22 fly at an air show and it wows you, the fly-by-wire technology was ours. The thrust-vectoring technology was ours. NASA has been contributing to breakthroughs in aeronautics—civil, commercial, and national-security applications—for a long time.

And again, similar to the same theme, over the years, we've been forced to spend our aeronautics budget subsidizing high-TRL efforts from big prime contractors. An engine that's 40 years old—they want to squeeze 3% more fuel efficiency out of it. Get NASA to pay for it. I'm like, are you kidding? There is no way we're doing that.

You can underwrite that investment yourself for competitive reasons. You know what I want to do? I want to get back to the radical airframe and engine designs like we were always supposed to do. You're getting a little bit of a taste for that.

Tell us about the importance of having a human on these ships when we go to the moon and Mars, versus if Optimus and these humanoid robots are ready. Why would we risk a human life in these incredibly dangerous environments? Is it ego? Are we trying to prove a point by having humans in the loop, or should we just be sending robots?

Or it's our destiny, right? I mean, the same reason why we cross the oceans and seas and climb the mountains. This is who we are. Would many people have stopped—paused from the course of our daily lives—to look at those astronauts go around the moon on Artemis 2 if they weren't humans? I don't think so.

Now, don't get me wrong: we're going to need robotics, and there are some environments where, whether it's because of the radiation or other factors, we can only do uncrewed robotic missions. But we can go to the moon, as we've done before with our astronauts; we can go to Mars; and we can continue outward. Robotics will absolutely play a critical role in that journey.

What about the autonomous navigation systems you talked about—fly-by-wire? We still see, even just last week, the incident with Amazon Air. Now, this is civil aviation, but the overrun is ridiculous. That error mode was pretty shocking to people, I think. How do we push better and safer technologies, even if the more obvious solutions may actually disintermediate human involvement?

NASA has been playing a role with air-traffic safety and modernization for a long time. It was NASA that pioneered the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System. It's saved countless lives of fighter pilots. They pull too many Gs, they black out, the nose of the aircraft is pointing at the ground, and the aircraft recognizes it and safely recovers. That was NASA work.

To your point, we are obviously very involved as you think about a world that's going to have, who knows, millions of drones flying around delivering us medicine and other things. We have to work very closely with the FAA on that.

But I will tell you, we are thinking about AI and autonomous applications within the missions we're designing right now. One mission going to Venus, DAVINCI, will not last long in that high-pressure environment. We're only going to have so much time to gather as much information as we can to update the trajectory of the vehicle.

This is not interesting—disregard. This is interesting; I'm turning in that direction. We've already tested this with some of our rovers on Mars. In my last dying breath, this is what I choose to send back to the scientists on Earth to understand this environment. That's just one step toward a direction that will inevitably include more autonomy in our crewed and uncrewed spacecraft.

How do you think about allocating capital resources, Jared, to scientific discovery, observational systems, and future platforms for observation and deep-space research? Is there a view in your mind that it should be 5% of the budget? How do you think about rationalizing where we go with the spending there?

I would say right now science is approximately, call it, a third of NASA's budget. We recently reorganized, but your main mission directorates right now are human space exploration, which covers both the great work we're doing on the International Space Station as well as missions to, for example, the moon and building a moon base. You have your Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is shouldering most of the nuclear NASA effort. Then you have your Science Mission Directorate.

How I think about this is, you have to take advantage of commercial industry right now. Again, no one would doubt that launch, observation, and communications are real services where NASA is one customer of many. You've got all these great companies that are putting out satellites for Earth observation, whether it's for national-security reasons or otherwise. Leverage it for agriculture, leverage it for Earth sciences, give them the instruments if necessary, license it to them, and free up resources to do what industry is not going to want to take on.

That's building a nuclear-powered octocopter to go to Saturn's moon, Titan. Free up as much resource as we can to do that. I would always prioritize getting new missions out there to unlock the secrets of the universe over the researchers. If we get the data, there will be plenty of brilliant people at institutions around the country who will want to analyze it. But what's the point if you can't launch those next missions?

As we wrap up, can we watch the video of the helicopters on Mars, and can you tell us about the timelines for this becoming a reality?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. So, here it is coming in. There it is.

Yeah. I mean, how cool is this?

I mean, I'm telling you, you can't do this at HUD or the IRS. Imagine the IRS putting out a video. I only made the IRS joke because I know—here's the auditor.

I mean, it is really incredible.

So, what's the status of this program?

We tested one, Ingenuity, on our last rover mission to Mars. It did fantastically well. Can you imagine? This is near vacuum, by the way, on Mars.

Right. It's like a tenth of an atmosphere, right?

You know, fractional-atmosphere conditions, and they're flying around. Now we're going to send 3 of these with ground-penetrating radars, which I think is just awesome. But most importantly, consider how it got there: under nuclear power. A true fission-powered, 100-kilowatt spacecraft flew by Mars and released it.

This will launch in 2028. We believe it's approximately a year before the helicopters will get there. We're still doing some trades, but it's an absolutely extraordinary mission and the start of many more. Again, think about it: there is so much we can learn on the moons within our own solar system. Some really shocking discoveries are just waiting for us in our own backyard.

Are you going to test-pilot the Blackbird?

That's not the Blackbird. We have a lot of talented folks at all levels of the organization.

5. Space Race 2.0: China and Russia

Exactly. All of them, including the head of the organization, are quite a pilot. I know we have to wrap, but you mentioned China and Russia collaborating together. I just wanted to double-click on that. What are their capabilities? Russia can't even take Kyiv, and they've been at war for 4 years. Are they capable of getting to space and doing anything of material consequence? I mean this genuinely, in a very—

Please come back.

—but then China is copying a lot of what Elon is doing in real time. You don't have to listen to Chamath; this is a serious question. China is copying a lot of what Elon is doing in real time. Yes, what's their actual capability if we assume Russia is up against it and they're broke? Am I correct that Russia is up against it and they're broke?

I would just say, look, I obviously have a great appreciation for the history of the Russian and Soviet space program. Like I said in my remarks, they came out of the gate hot: first astronaut in orbit, first spacewalk. They've done a lot of great things, and they contribute to and collaborate with us today on the International Space Station. But yes, they have a conflict, and they're prioritizing resources there.

The Chinese are an incredible rival in space right now. They don't have the same reusable launch capabilities that SpaceX and others have. What they do put in space, even if they brute-force it there with hypergolic-powered thrusters or hypergolic-powered rockets akin to the Titan II of decades past, what goes into space is good.

I think there were some pretty interesting developments that came out of AFA today that our Secretary of the Air Force and others in the Space Force said that enlightened, I think, the general public about how contested that environment is. The bottom line is, the Chinese are extremely good in space right now. You couple that with some Russian capabilities in nuclear power, and they will return to the moon, get to the moon, and build a base on the south pole.

Where would we be if we didn't have SpaceX in relation to China?

SpaceX is our—I mean, they're incredible. They're our most important launch partner. We can't send astronauts to and from the space station without them. We can't have downmass of our science experiments from the space station without them.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is going out to pursue the secrets of the universe, was launched on a Falcon Heavy not that long ago. We are fortunate. There are a lot of great companies in commercial space right now, but the United States would be seriously challenged in the high ground of space without their capabilities.

Jared, I'm not a huge fan of government, but I think NASA plays one of the most important roles for humanity that no individual organization outside of government can play. I cannot think of a better person to lead it. I think you're an inspiration to so many. Absolutely. I truly, honestly respect your service that you've provided to this country and to the world. We're so lucky to have you. Thank you for being here.

Oh, grateful every day. Thank you all. Thank you. Don't forget your book. Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for coming.

Thanks, man. Thank you. Appreciate it.