The New Space Race: NASA, Artemis, and the Race to the Moon

0:00Jared Isaacman:We are 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 was like, industry's not going to let you do what you want to do.

0:30Jared Isaacman: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. What does it take to win a new space race? For decades, space exploration was defined by a single moment. Landing on the moon. But today, the challenge is different. It's not just about getting there. It's about building the systems, infrastructure, and cadence to return and stay.

1:03Jared Isaacman:NASA now faces a new kind of competition. One that is measured not in decades, but in years or even months. That shift is forcing a rethink of everything, from how missions are built to how capital and talent are deployed. The question is not whether we can return to the moon, but whether we can do it fast enough. Recorded at the A-16Z American Dynamism Summit, Morgan Brennan speaks with NASA Administrator Jared Isaaclund about what it will take to get there. 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.

1:47Jared Isaacman: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 II 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. Now, President Donald Trump took the decisive steps of establishing the Artemis program during his first term.

2:26Jared Isaacman:He recently, in fact, 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, build the base, so 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.

3:03Jared Isaacman:We have the resources. We certainly have the historic experience. We have plenty of hardware. 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? So lots 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.

3:40Jared Isaacman: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 that were waiting for the headlines that only NASA was capable of making. As a result, you get moon rockets that fly only every three plus years, the worst cadence by far of NASA-designed rockets, hardware that is obsolete by the time it's delivered, 51 nuclear propulsion programs that have never flown.

4:19Jared Isaacman:Less flagship science and discovery missions, less X-planes, less astronauts in space, less kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween. I don't like this. President Trump doesn't like it. Clearly, President Trump doesn't like it, and doesn't like it given what he's trying to accomplish in national space policy. But maybe this was tolerable to some when there was no geopolitical rivals capable of challenging America in the most important strategic domain. But that's not the case anymore. Not anymore. NASA has stated, we will achieve the national imperative to return to the moon and establish an enduring presence before the end of President Trump's term.

4:56Jared Isaacman:Now, our rival has stated before 2030. So it's not hard math. That's less than one year of margin, and they might be early. And recent history says anything, 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. Now, I've spent the first few months getting my arms around the challenges and the opportunities, and it generally revolves around ensuring that the extraordinary resources that are made available, I mean, NASA's budget is$25 billion a year, and concentrating them on the most pressing objectives, clearing out needless bureaucracy and really any obstacles that impede progress to empower the workforce and make sure our capital allocation is done in a thoughtful way that ensures desired outcomes are achieved and ideally ahead of schedule.

5:44So to that end, we are standardizing the SLS rocket,

5:48Jared Isaacman: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 going to start with CLPS programs and LTV-style landers and rovers.

6:28Jared Isaacman:We're going to provide a strong demand signal to industry for launch, landers, rovers that we can outfit with power, navigation, communication, surface improvement capabilities, scientific and other capabilities that we can experiment with to ultimately inform the phase two infrastructure and move towards long-term habitation. So the folks in this room, if you're ever coming to pitch me on the Mars-based Dream State as a Service, where the only customer is NASA, 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, and we are going to do everything we possibly can to ignite the space economy that we all know is inevitable.

7:14Jared Isaacman: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.

7:50Jared Isaacman:We have commercial industry like many of those in this room. But we also require the scientific, the software development, the engineering, technical, and operational talent to execute on the mission. So I'm pleased to announce with the immense support of OPM Director Scott Cooper, 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.

8:24Jared Isaacman:At NASA, we have no excuses. We have the policy, the resources, the will, the support of the most technologically forward-leaning industry, and we have 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 around the nation, instilling a culture in them that requires immense competence, extreme ownership and urgency, partnering with industry, taking meaningful steps towards a larger goal, constantly listening to data and learning and never accepting defeat.

9:01Jared Isaacman:This is how NASA once changed the world, and this is how we're going to do it again. Thank you. Now, please welcome to the stage, Morgan Brenner. Hello, everybody. Administrator Isaacman, thank you for joining me here on stage. 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. Yeah, I mean, people ask me, what was your biggest surprise since taking the job? And I'd say a lot of things were actually as expected. I had an opportunity to prepare for it more than once.

9:38Jared Isaacman:But what I'd say was what stands out, having visited every one of the centers on this really epic roadshow, is just, you know, what a large portion of our core competencies that have either been lost outright over the years or we've outsourced. And then, you know, you take a look at a program like America's Return to the Moon with Artemis and you got five prime contractors, hundreds of subcontractors, and 75 % of your workforce, your workforce, not partners, not commercial partners in this, are contractors, you know, through staffing agencies. So they're all using different software tools, collaboration tools, different HR systems, talking to different prime contracts, subcontractors.

10:15Jared Isaacman:Is it a surprise to anyone that we're 100 billion deep into this, years behind schedule? No, I mean, it's right in front of you. So, look, things like mission control, mission control is outsourced. I mean, I gotta imagine that would shock most people in this room to say, like, when the astronauts come over the radio and say, Houston, and the person responding back, it's outsourced. Launch control, turning our pad. People have been freaking out since I've said since 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, nine weeks apart, nine weeks apart.

10:51Jared Isaacman:We're on this cadence of every three and a half years. And they're like, that doesn't make any sense. You're never going to be able to pull it in from three and a half 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. That's part of our history. So yes, we incredibly value the support from Scott and OPM to let us go out, bring the talent back into the agency on things like turning our launch pad so we can launch with frequency, managing launch control, managing mission control.

11:21Jared Isaacman:We definitely need our partners. We don't do this alone, but NASA's got to have those core competencies back within the agents. So move more quickly. And I would imagine it sounds like also cutting costs in the process, bringing this in-house, more of this in-house. Yeah. I mean, when I went to every one of the centers and started talking to the workforce and said, OK, so you work in mission control, you're one of our contractors. I get we treat everybody kind of the same. Do you want to be a civil servant? I mean, there are certain benefits associated with it. And they're like, I've wanted to work for NASA since I was a kid.

11:51Jared Isaacman:They get paid exactly the same, But you have, you know, tech companies that put a, well, 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's these artificial hiring ceilings on civil servants. So 75 % of the workforce became contractors. Contractors that have been there for decades and will stay there for decades if we don't change it. We're having these conversations actively. We're seeing these conversations actively on the defense side, this idea of recruiting the best and brightest.

12:21What does that look like at NASA when you do talk about that competition with, you know, the tech industry and private sector?

12:28Jared Isaacman:Well, so, I mean, to me, NASA is supposed to be doing the near impossible where you can't close a business case, where there's no obvious, you know, demand besides NASA. You know, so at one point we had to open this whole thing up with, you know, heavy lift launch vehicles and propulsion design. I mean, we, again, we're the only game in town. That's not the case now. Launch observation and communication, there is a market for. I mean, that is, you know, the foundation of the space economy. So if NASA is doing the same thing that industry is doing, we're screwing up. And that's going to make it very hard for us to recruit talent.

13:03Jared Isaacman: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. Lots of great nuclear companies right now. I think there's a lot of demand, terrestrial demand for energy. So maybe that's probably the, you know, the near term demand signal. So NASA can do the what probably others wouldn't want to take on the liability of, 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, you know, recalibrating again to the near impossible.

13:35All right. Let's dig a little deeper into Artemis because you just did announce this restructuring. Artemis 3 is not going to put boots on the moon. you're turning back to low Earth orbit to test out the human landing system technology there too. I mean, you're moving quickly, right? It's been what, two months, two and a half 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?

14:00Jared Isaacman:Yeah, I mean, to me, I think it's obvious. I don't know why, you know, these decisions weren't made sooner, but you cannot launch a rocket as important, as complex as SLS every three and a half years and think it's going to lead to a good outcome. You know, we had hydrogen leaks on Artemis 1 three and a half years later. What do we have? We had hydrogen leaks. We had helium flow issues on Artemis 1. We have three and a half 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 that during every three and a half years.

14:33Jared Isaacman:People are working to launch the mission and then they're going to move on and go somewhere else. and you have to rebuild all those competencies again. It's not a recipe for success. Again, we also have tended to just go right to the dream state and forget that you need to do things as challenging as returning to the moon in a iterative evolutionary way. We had Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and 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. So I don't think you necessarily need as many missions.

15:05Jared Isaacman: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 you know we're getting back to some of our basics um we're inserting another mission in in 27 to again ensure that we have the muscle memory at the pad so when we intend to launch we actually can launch and then you got a rendezvous with one or both your lander providers in low earth orbit just as we did with apollo 9 get confidence in the systems buy down risk before you send people to the moon i mean it's the difference between if something goes wrong you're hours away from being in the water or days away.

15:37Jared Isaacman:So we got to we got to get it right. It's incredibly hard to return to the moon. We got to do it. And, you know, again, a smart approach. The SLS rocket is a very expensive, very exquisite, complicated rocket. You just talked about, you know, three and a half years. Can Boeing turn it out quickly enough? Can you actually get to enough of them to keep up with the cadence you want? Yeah. You know, look, I mean, a lot of people when I came to this job was like, industry is 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?

16:06Jared Isaacman:They all understand that we are talking about months, the difference between America winning and losing on the moon and all of the associated implications. If you don't think there's national security implications of saying for 35 years and putting$100 billion in that America will return to the moon and then coming up short and that doesn't have national security implications, 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 in the hand for a long time. And now everybody is waking up and realizing we've got months of margin and it's time to start doing things different.

16:40Jared Isaacman:So I am grateful for like what has become essentially unqualified support to do it the right way. And that includes industry saying we're ready to get in gear. Now it takes more than promises, right? Like we are going to embed responsible engineers in every one of the prime contractors, every one of the subcontractors that has components on the critical path. 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. And I've said it before publicly, look, the whole SLS program was vehicle architecture was conceived before industry was landing rockets on ships.

17:16Jared Isaacman:You can look at it and say it looks kind of like shuttle, but not really shuttle. That's because a lot of the hardware there came from shuttle. So yes, it's like 50, 60 year old, you know, type hardware that we're leveraging now, but it's the start. It's not the finish. You know, the president created a program that's going to live on as hardware evolves, which is, it's 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. So we've got Artemis through at least, or SLS through at least Artemis 5 or 6. We're going to make the most of it.

17:47Jared Isaacman:And then we will continue to evolve our architecture until we are watching NASA astronauts going to and from the moon measured in months, not years. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing the demand signals even before your announcement last week with Artemis across industry in terms of, you know, invest more, focus more on these lunar ambitions. So I do want to just, before we move on to other topics, I do want to just get to the human landing system piece of this because it's Blue Origin, it's 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 space?

18:22Jared Isaacman:Yeah, I mean, so again, when we went public with our plan to actually have an achievable strategy to getting to the moon, we didn't do it in a vacuum. We spoke with industry, 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 do the same because this is the way back to the moon. Now, both SpaceX and Blue had to do uncrewed tests of their vehicle. It was already part of the plan. So they were planning to launch these, you know, 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.

18:58Jared Isaacman:And they all acknowledged, yes, we need to do something like this and we're going to work with them on it. I will say, considering the technology that both Blue and SpaceX are investing in, which is way more than just going back to the moon to put footsteps and a flag here. 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 be not necessarily a great trade if you're having to expend numerous launches that you could otherwise use for a landing.

19:40Jared Isaacman:So this is the right interim step. Why is it so important for us to go back to the moon? What do you see 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 was a promise that was made and a promise we need to keep. I mean, again, 35 years we said we were going to do this. I mean,$100 billion that have expended along the way for us to just come up short and say now, well, we did it, you know, we did it in 1960s and 1970s. So what's the big deal? Yeah, that was the position you had to take 35 years ago. Once you said you're going back and the new race is on and you've committed, again,$100 billion of taxpayer dollars, you have an obligation to see it through.

20:20Jared Isaacman:And I'll say, again, if we come up short, I mean, the implications are significant. Our rival is going to say if they're broken in space, which is probably the most important strategic domain, where else are they broken? And start encroaching on our territory across all the most important technological domains. That's a problem. That's 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 of exploring our solar system and the galaxy and universe around us. We don't know what we may learn that could change everything.

20:50Jared Isaacman:I will say it is absolutely the proving ground for future missions to Mars. I mean, to be able to get on the South Pole and do institute resource manufacturing, working with ice, these are the capabilities that we are going to need to be able 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 nine 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 if we had a rival that is, again, within potentially a year of our schedule on this, it is still, the changes we announced last week is still in the correct direction.

21:37Jared Isaacman:Whether you had a rival or not, You don't launch a moon rocket every three and a half 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, you know, was, you know, how we defined America for a period of time. Like, 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. What is the timeline now for Mars? How do we get there? What does that look like?

22:05as you think about the moon in a bigger, broader, media or near-term fashion.