Jared Isaacman: NASA's Moon Base by 2028, Optimus Robots on the Moon, The Truth About UFOs | Ep #274

The mates chat with Jared Isaacman on NASA’s plan for a Moon base by 2028, Optimus Robots on the Moon, and the truth about UFO’s. Get access to metatrends 10+ years before anyone else - https://qr.diamandis.com/metatrends Peter H. Diamandis, MD, is the Founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University, ZeroG, and A360 Salim Ismail is the founder of Open ExO, a GP at Exponential Venture Capital/The Organizational Singularity Fund and a sought after global speaker and thought leader. Dave Blundin is the founder & GP of Link Ventures Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross is a computer scientist and founder of Reified Jared Isaacman is an entrepreneur, pilot, and commercial astronaut who has served as the 15th administrator of NASA since December 2025. – My companies: Apply to Dave's and my new fund:https://qr.diamandis.com/linkventureslanding Go to Blitzy to book a free demo and start building today: https://qr.diamandis.com/blitzy Your body is incredibly good at hiding disease. Schedule a call with Fountain Life to add healthy decades to your life, and to learn more about their Memberships: https://www.fountainlife.com/peter _ Connect with Peter: X Instagram Substack Website Xprize A360 Connect with Dave: Web X LinkedIn Instagram TikTok Connect with Salim: LinkedIn X Join Salim’s 10X Shift Subscribe to Salim’s YouTube channel Exponential Venture Capital Connect with Alex Website LinkedIn X Email Substack Spotify Threads Connect with Jared: X Instagram Listen to MOONSHOTS: Apple YouTube – *Recorded on July 21st, 2026 *The views expressed by me and all guests are personal opinions and do not constitute Financial, Medical, or Legal advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  2028, un timeline agresivo para el aterrizaje en la Luna. Pasos para llegar allí, cuándo entran robots humanoides en esa ecuación. ¿Puedes darnos algunos detalles?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  La parte más cara de hacer eso no es el combustible nuclear, no son las modificaciones necesarias para el surfe lunar. Nosotros nos encantaron los títulos de Artemis II, pero nos recordó lo posible y nos emocionó. No queremos esperar varios años entre el próximo episodio, ¿verdad?

• 0:25Speaker 02

  Me encantaría escuchar tus tiempos para implementar robots humanoides con tu regla de NASA.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  En cualquier área donde tengas involucración humana, eventualmente sería loco no hacer un multiplicador de fuerzas y poner robots humanoides allí para hacer parte del trabajo.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Esta es, creo, la pregunta en la mente de muchas personas con las que he hablado. ¿Somos solos?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  En mi opinión, yo pensaría...

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Acabamos de volar a humanos alrededor de la Luna por primera vez desde 1972. Anunciamos planes para aterrizar a los astronautas estadounidenses en el surcoeste lunar en 2028. Dos aterrizos en la luna están siendo construidos ahora mismo y hay planes para dirigir a la NASA, una agencia de 25 mil millones de dólares. Más como una startup que una burocracia. Y el hombre que condujo todo voló a la espalda dos veces como comandante de misión privado antes de incluso tomar el trabajo. He conocido a la mayoría de los administradores de la NASA en los últimos 40 años. En mi humble opinión, nuestro invitado hoy es el más grande de todos. Quiero saludar a todos a los Moon Shots. Sabes, tu podcast número uno en todo lo que es AI y tecnología exponencial. Tu asiento de primera fila de la singularidad. Hoy, mis amigos de Moon Shot y yo vamos a profundizar en el futuro humano en el espacio con nuestro extraordinario invitado,

• 1:40Speaker 00

  Jared Isaacman, el 15º administrador de la NASA. Déjame tomar un momento para introducir a Jared. No llegó a través de la ruta regular de ser un miembro de la corona de la Aeronave o una agencia gubernamental. Es un construtor. Fue el primero en fundar su empresa, Shift 4 Payments, a la edad de 16 en el garaje de sus padres y luego construyó una empresa de pagos procesando cientos de billones de dólares anualmente. Es un piloto de avión que ha vuelto en show aéreo y marcó récords de velocidad en todo el mundo. Y luego hizo algo épico, comprando dos misiones Falcon 9 privadas. Comandó Inspiration 4 en 2021, la primera misión orbital a todo el mundo civil. Y luego en 2024, comandó Polaris Dawn, donde realizó el primer viaje espacial comercial,

• 2:25Speaker 00

  saliendo de una capsula de dragón en el vacío del espacio. Durante su estreno en la NASA, estableció cinco objetivos clave. Get America back to the moon. Construir una base lunar permanente. Iniciar el uso de la energía nuclear en el espacio. Ignitar una economía orbital real y reinvigorar la ciencia que nos permite buscar la vida entre las estrellas. Jared, bienvenido a los Moon Shots y a los Moon Shot Mates. Sabes, hemos conocido el uno a otro durante 17 años y no podría ser más orgulloso de tenerte en el programa.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Bueno, Peter, gracias por invitarme al programa. Es un placer absoluto volver a conectar. Voy a desafiar un poco en eso. Agradezco la introducción generosa. Es muy temprano ahora mismo.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Lo sé.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Pero tengo mucho tiempo para arruinar las cosas. Pero te diré ahora mismo, todos en la NASA, desde el liderazgo hasta los ingenieros y técnicos, estamos pasando un gran momento ahora mismo. Estamos avanzando muy rápido. No hay una persona que venga a trabajar todos los días en la NASA que no esté emocionada por cambiar el mundo en el aire y el espacio. Y todo el mundo está realmente entusiasmado por hacerlo.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Sí, estoy de acuerdo. Sabes, dijiste algo muy bueno, que 17 años atrás en Baikonur te iniciaste en esta misión. ¿Es eso realmente verdad?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Eso es. No, quiero decir, desde el kindergarten, quería ser astronauta, como muchos niños. Solo mira hacia el cielo nocturno y imagina las posibilidades. Nunca pensé que estaba incluso cerca de posible o alcanzable. Es por eso que me convertí en piloto y empecé a realizar algunos mini aventuras, como volar alrededor del mundo con esos récords de velocidad. Y de alguna manera, a lo largo del camino, me encontraste y me invitaste a Baikonur. Y fue durante ese viaje que pensé, bueno, tal vez es una posibilidad. Así que tú absolutamente me ayudaste a dirigirme en este camino. Y solo para que te digas, quiero decir, solo han sido días desde que regresé de mi segunda visita a Baikonur. Tengo que decirte, es muy diferente de la primera visita.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  No tenía delegaciones rusas que salieran a reunirse conmigo cuando tú y yo estábamos en ese viaje.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Sí, esa fue la misión, creo, Richard Garrett, que volaba a la espalda. En realidad, llevó a Eric Schmidt, Larry Page y Sergey a esa misión también. Mira la misión desde un bunkero de aproximadamente medio kilómetro de la pista de lanzamiento y luego salió afuera para verlo. Fue como un épico. Fue como el huracán de Dios antes de ti.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Sí, no, siempre lo describo como que estábamos a una par 3 cerca de la pista de lanzamiento cuando estábamos allí. Han avanzado un poco, puedo decir, a partir de este lanzamiento actual. Pero todavía, quiero decir, caminé a Neil Menon directamente hasta la pata de Soyuz y luego estaba involucrado en una discusión bilateral con nuestros contrarios en Rusia, 100 yardas de distancia. Quiero decir, un edificio justo al lado de ese vehículo completamente lleno de combustible. Así que es un poco diferente.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Estás loco.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  ¿Ese primer recorrido fue el que dijiste que si algo sale mal con este lanzamiento?

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Sí.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  ¿Qué pasa?

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Así que Sergey estaba allí. Teníamos dos o tres rusos de la era soviética allí, con vestidos increíbles en el bunkero. Y cuando salimos afuera, Sergey preguntó la pregunta. ¿Entonces qué pasa si algo sale mal en Rusia? Y la respuesta que tradujo fue como, disfruta, será la última cosa que experimentes.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Bueno, quiero decir, había mucho riesgo antes de que lleguemos allí. Como que todos teníamos que ir en un avión soviético TU-154. Quiero decir, este es el mismo avión que creo que eliminó mucho del liderazgo político polaco hace unos décadas. Así que todo el equipo de liderazgo de Google, no para mencionar a quien sea el que te invitó en el asiento, tuvo un riesgo de concentración grave en ese viejo avión soviético incluso de llegar a Baikonur.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Sí, fue así. Era como Eric estaba diciendo, no dejes que el medio notará que estamos aquí.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Bueno, te digo, es muy cool tener a alguien tan sin miedo dirigiendo una agencia gubernamental. Eso tiene que ser raro. Pero tienes el ADN para eso. Eso es realmente cool.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  Jared, déjame empezar. Sabes, en este podcast hablamos mucho de AI, exponenciales, robótica. Y tengo que imaginar que viviendo en este momento en la singularidad, tiene la oportunidad de realmente acelerar el timeline de la NASA en la Luna, Mars y todo lo demás. Y la primera pregunta es, sabes, hablamos mucho de los grandes modelos de lenguaje, los pequeños modelos de lenguaje embebidos que van en robots y todo. ¿Puedes imaginar un momento en el que la NASA básicamente permite la autonomía completa en todos sus robots y probas? Y estos robots y probas, ya sean en Titan o Mars o saliendo a Europa, están por su cuenta investigando lo que es interesante y decidir qué experimentos ejecutar independientemente de los científicos de la Tierra.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  100%. Así que, quiero decir, todavía, no importa qué, queremos recuperar los datos. Es solo que si tienes una ventana limitada de oportunidad para hacerlo, ¿dejas que el AI en la misión tome la decisión de qué es el dato más interesante y en la menor cantidad de tiempo que tenga disponible posible y lo envía a casa antes de tal vez la destrucción? Y ya hay una misión diseñada para eso, que es Da Vinci, que va a Venus y en ese entorno de presión, esa misión no vivirá mucho. Así que la estamos diseñando desde el principio para tener, sabes, AI en la misión y determinará qué acciones necesita tomar basado en los datos que puede recoger tan rápido como sea posible, usarlo para informar su dirección de misión

• 7:50Speaker 01

  y luego enviar lo más útil de vuelta a la comunidad científica. Así que ese es probablemente el primer y mejor ejemplo, pero solo el comienzo para donde deberíamos ir con esta tecnología.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Los tiempos con todo lo que es AI están comprimiendo y comprimiendo y comprimiendo. Así que ahora estamos hablando mucho en el podcast sobre lanzar Star Trek y llegar a esa destino en algún límite de tiempo. Pero dos preguntas para ti. Una, AI aquí en el suelo, ¿cómo está acelerando la velocidad en la que diseñas nuevas barcos, nuevas misiones? Y luego también los humanoides en el espacio haciendo mucho de lo que un astronauta como tú habría hecho históricamente. Ahora puedes tomar mucho más riesgo si estás lanzando un robot humanoide que un astronauta.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, good question. Maybe just if I can reframe it just a little bit to say like, what are we doing with AI right now and how is that informing NASA's mission? And I'll tell you, one, like, we are structurally very disadvantaged relative to any of the hyperscalers. We're a government agency. I mean, if you think about even NASA's budget, which you said at the beginning of $25 billion a year, I mean, the hyperscalers are investing many times NASA's budget into just, you know, hardware procurement right now. So, how do you even be smart, knowing you're somewhat of a disadvantage at NASA, to get the most out of the capability to further our mission and ensure America's competitiveness in the high ground of space? And I'll tell you, President Trump and with OSTP Director Kratzios have come up with

• 9:14Speaker 01

  a really good idea, the Genesis program. I don't know how familiar you are with it.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  We are.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Okay, so you're all tracking, everybody in government is kind of kicking into this.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  But the audience may not be, so if you want to hit that, yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So, I mean, again, it's recognizing even whole of government, you know, is disadvantaged. And the worst thing possible is for every government agency to throw what little dollars it can at the problem and hope for good outcomes. Instead, it's kind of collecting, consolidating resources into the Department of Energy, which, by the way, for a very long time, it's had some pretty substantial computing power available to it. Obviously, that, even that gets quickly outdated. But they've always had the budget for investments in, you know, in compute and consolidating your, you know, your AI strategy, leveraging some data that's very unique to government agencies, just based on the work that's being done, and having a whole of government approach

• 10:11Speaker 01

  to leveraging the potential of AI. And NASA's job, we submitted two overarching themes to leverage the Genesis program. Number one is, what have we missed and what are we likely to miss? That's just my way of describing it. We have collected so much data over the decades from various NASA missions, what have we overlooked in it? I mean, there wasn't just that long ago headlines were made from a, you know, a teenager in Texas who leveraged AI and went through some archival NASA data and found new galaxies. I mean, that's not something we should generally want to overlook. And we've since extended an internship offer to him, and I think he may start next year.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  But that problem's gonna, and maybe you call it a problem or an opportunity, is only gonna get worse. When you think about the constellations of satellites that are going up, even for Earth observation and space weather, let alone new missions like Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, which will launch August 30th on a Falcon Heavy, I mean, you know, 100 times the field of view of Hubble, 1,000 times the scan rate, you're gonna be gathering so much data. And then there's so many new missions, again, that will be going up. So, how do we just leverage AI to go through this immense amount of data that we have for scientific breakthroughs we might have overlooked or could likely overlook? And that kind of goes to the heart of NASA's mission of unlocking the secrets of the universe. The second category is extending our reach.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  And that kind of goes to your advanced, you know, spacecraft design. I'm kind of concentrating that into propulsion. But, you know, so whether, you know, you have on orbit or on mission robotics, whether that's actually necessary or not, what I care about is, you know, overcoming the tyranny of distance in space right now, which, you know, appreciating that we barely, barely even scratched the surface in our solar system, let alone the next closest star system. And industry is doing a fantastic job of maturing chemical propulsion, you know, so from rapid reusability or, you know, like, you see the evolving performance that they get out of even Merlin, let alone Raptor, which is very early in its, you know, its

• 12:21Speaker 01

  kind of design cycle. How do we go, how do we leverage AI and go well beyond that and try and unlock a little bit more of the energy potential from matter, which is almost, you know, I mean, immeasurable in chemical propulsion to, you know, I don't know, 1/10 of 1% with fission or 1/2 of percent with fusion until we ultimately get to the desired destination of, you know, any matter annihilation, which maybe actually gives us the real potential to start thinking beyond what's in the reach of our solar system. So, those are two overarching themes.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Alex, over to you, pal.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Amazing. Well, Jared, I would say NASA has a storied history of human spaceflight on the one hand, and on the other hand, sending lots of non-humanoid robots throughout the solar system. I'd be curious to hear your timelines, what you perceive as the future in the context of Artemis in the near term or other planets in the solar system for deploying humanoid robots with your NASA hat on throughout the solar system and what role and what timeline you perceive humanoid robots, to the extent friend of the pod Elon has characterized the optimist as the ultimate von Neumann probe for the solar system. What role you see humanoids in constructing Artemis and other facilities elsewhere?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think any place that we believe there is a realistic probability of building a, you know, an eventual human outpost, so the moon for sure, I mean, we've been blessed with having, you know, this proving ground, you know, three to four days away from Earth, we are absolutely gonna build a base there and make the most of it. So, any area that you're gonna have, you know, human involvement eventually, it would be crazy not to, you know, make a force multiplier and put humanoid robots there to do some of the work. I mean, honestly, like, when you think about having human beings on the moon base and saying, well, what's their job gonna be? It's like, I mean, the least possible.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I mean, it's still incredibly dangerous the moment they walk outside. It's incredibly dangerous to be there in the first place. So, leveraging robotics there for all things from infrastructure build-out, logistics, is imperative. I mean, you want there to be no alternative but to put an astronaut outside the habitat for an EVA. And the same would be applicable for Mars, which is the next logical destination, you know, the next stepping stone on this grand journey that we're undertaking. But there's plenty of places, obviously, where, why would we even need to, you know, require a humanoid robot there? Like, we, you know, you think about exciting missions to seek out signs of life or ancient life that could have existed in our solar system.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  So, take Europa Clipper, or I'm very, you know, optimistic that we might be able to commission a mission to Enceladus at some point in time. Or, you know, Dragonfly, for example, going to Saturn's moon of Titan. We just need to build the best probe or discovery instrument for that mission to get us the data that we're excited for. And it doesn't necessarily have to, obviously, take on any sort of humanoid form.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  You like that, Slane, I bet. Dave, back to you, pal.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love that split focus of, hey, we have reams of proprietary data, let's AI it, and then trans-solar, you know, nobody in the commercial world, you know, I totally get the big budgets, but nobody in the commercial world is gonna work on fusion or antimatter annihilation to get to other solar systems. So, that's just incredibly cool. But at the same time, orbital data centers have stolen the spotlight recently. What's NASA's position on orbital data centers? And, you know, it's gonna create a huge amount of launch capacity, so maybe assembling things for trans-solar in space is part of the stepping stone there. But what is the position on orbital data centers?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Well, first, just to hit, I mean, even unlocking fission forms of propulsion, I would still argue would be a major distraction for a lot of commercial industry right now when, I mean, there is so much potential else there, not to mention all the terrestrial applications for fission power when we are trying to win an AI race, which I think is, by the way, just to point out, extremely healthy for NASA. Like, I think the worst thing for NASA is the world's most accomplished space agency is trying to do, you know, what the rest of industry is doing. Like, I don't think that is a good thing for recruiting the best talent or retaining it or workforce development. Right now, I see NASA, like, I mean, this is our opportunity to have the Hyman Rickover

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Nuclear Navy transition and start working again on the near impossible, what others are not focused on, that have no obvious, you know, business use cases, where, you know, NASA will not be one customer of many and truly have those kind of pioneering breakthroughs for the benefit, again, for all humankind, enabling capabilities for surface power on the moon, for Mars' surface power at some point, and to be able to undertake, again, realistic exploration missions, the outer solar system. So, I even fission power, by the way. It was a huge step in the right direction for, you know, for NASA outside of where industry should rightfully be trying to raise capital and put their attention to it. In terms of orbital data centers, right, so, if, you know, if Elon and SpaceX are

• 17:27Speaker 01

  betting on this right now, there is no reason to believe this will not come into existence.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  Never, ever, ever bet against Elon.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  100%, right? And I never bet against an extremely well-capitalized Elon. So, people ask, you know, and my position as NASA administrator, what do I think of, for example, of SpaceX as an IPO? Like, first of all, I'm thrilled with any of our partners that are essential to undertaking and achieving our mission, like, again, number one, national space policy objective, return American astronauts to the lunar surface, build the moon base out. We can't do it without them. So, the fact that they're extremely well-capitalized right now is a fantastic thing, not to mention the engineering talent that's in there and, you know, that I think without question, you know, the greatest entrepreneur and engineer in recent history at the helm. So, I think that's all very good, no doubt it will come into existence.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  What I kind of care about beyond the potential of, you know, space-based data centers and harnessing our free fusion reactor that's, you know, that's out there is the prospect of an expanded space economy. Because I will tell you, I'm a little bit more measured in this, maybe just having started my company in 1999, when you started to see the, you know, the final days before the dot, you know, the dot-com bubble there is like, you know, we at times, you know, get enamored by the potential of things, as it was with the internet then, and how it may be today in some respects with commercial space. You know, launch, observation, and communications, those are the only things we know for sure.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  And people say that all the time, like, you know, it's your obligation for NASA to go to the moon and establish a lunar economy. I'm like, what does that mean? Like, I can't guarantee that we can get more value out of the lunar regolith and all the costs that goes into getting there and extracting what you need and then bringing it back to Earth or manufacturing there. There's no, there's kind of no guarantee on all that. Like, our job is to go out, try and change the world in air and space. And if along the way, you know, you can have pioneering breakthroughs in commercial space, fantastic, because I don't believe we will all live in that exciting future we imagined as kids if it's entirely funded by taxpayers. So, to see perhaps another leg beyond launch, observation, and communications and say,

• 19:44Speaker 01

  orbital data center's a thing, the math closes, you know, the economic potential there is real, and it will help fund a lot of the things we are all excited about in space, like, maybe lots of commercial space stations or the infrastructure we want to see on the moon, fantastic. We should all be really excited about it.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Amazing. Saleem, over to you, pal.

• 20:03Speaker 04

  I have a quick anecdote where I used to be the head of innovation at Yahoo, running their incubator in San Francisco, and we had NASA speakers come and speak because I wanted these developers to understand what real innovation looked like. And we once had this kind of 70-plus-year-old fellow who'd worked on the Apollo program. You have to imagine 300 tight jeans, white sneaker, gelled hair, MacBook developers all sitting in this room. And during the Q&A, I asked him, "What's the biggest difference in the space industry between when you were launching on the Apollo program and today?" And he said, "Huh?" And he goes, "Maybe it's computers, because back then, all information was transmitted via carbon copy paper. The pink sheet went here, the green sheet went..." And you could see these 300 developers look

• 20:45Speaker 04

  up, and I could see their brains exploding one by one as they looked at the implications of this. Totally incredible. You've kind of locked, looked at this unbelievable transformation of NASA, where you have launch capacity, you have capital, you have technical expertise all locked up, and those are now becoming abundant. As those become abundant, how do you steer NASA? What does it enable? What does it provide for the private sector to take it to the next level?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Again, kind of use this as an opportunity, maybe hit on another point, too, because I would have loved that, for that NASA, you know, scientist or engineer from the Apollo era, beyond just computer, I think there's something else that's very different, which is focus. And that's going to be even more important, you know, as launch costs continue to come down materially, and what we see from commercial industry and private capitals willing to fund is available, is how well do we wield it and use it? And, you know, who's a great example of this, of focus? It's Elon and SpaceX, right? Like, this is a person, and it's not just, obviously, it's SpaceX, he did it Tesla, too. This is somebody

• 21:54Speaker 01

  who has no problem executing, you know, the Cortez model of burning the ships, right? I mean, you know, could have the greatest rocket with an unbelievable economic model to support it, and endless demand, and says, "Nope, obsolete, time to focus on the next thing."

• 22:10Speaker 00

  He's going to shut down Falcon 1, and he's going to shut down Falcon 9. But it makes great video, doesn't it?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  You know, and you think about that during the Apollo era, and I mention this from time to time to members of Congress to help them, too, is that if you go back to, I think it's the 1965 NASA Authorization Act, it's five pages, and it's got some, you know, standard template language, but more or less, it says, "Beat the Russians to the moon." X dollars that go to Apollo, X dollars that go to Gemini, right? And outside of that, like, all this flexibility, but essentially to focus on one or two incredibly important things to the nation. You see, again, SpaceX is very good at doing that, Tesla's, "Okay, this generation of vehicle, its time has come. I'm now focusing on doing one or two things extremely well." That has changed considerably at NASA from the space race,

• 23:00Speaker 01

  where for a very long time, and I do believe this is kind of, you know, absent global competition, have been asked to do everything for everyone, and try and make as many people as happy as you possibly can. And as a result, you generally make no one happy.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  In as many congressional districts as possible.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you know, even now, I think about it, I was, you know, forgive the kind of DOW example, but, you know, we were talking about procurement of next-generation aircraft and such. I was like, "Isn't it so fascinating that right now, at a time where, I mean, the F-47 has been available, so you're sixth-generation fighter, that we will still advocate for production of fourth-generation, fifth-generation, and sixth-generation, and as a result, probably what you want to buy from sixth-generation is several times more expensive than it needs to be, and you'll get a lot less of them, because you're divvying up your resources in so many different directions." You would never see that happen with some of the entrepreneurs we're talking about in their companies. It'd be like, "Why would I be doing that? It's 50 years old. It's literally a half-century ago. I'm going to focus everything I can

• 24:03Speaker 01

  at doing what I'm supposed to be doing today really well." And NASA is something, that is something President Trump has been able to give us with our national space policy, and now, actually, global competition being in a second space race has enabled us to do is say, "We can't do everything for everyone anymore. We're going to go back and dust off the playbook from the 60s and start focusing on doing a couple of things that are extremely hard, very well." And to your question, having things like lower launch costs available and private capital willing to make investments alongside government, so it's not 4.5% of the discretionary budget anymore, hopefully helps us get back to some of those headlines that were made in the 1960s, but on a different level today.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Well, you know, when you have all of the capability, you know, the biggest constraint for NASA has always been the rate-limiting step, right? When do you see fleets of humanoid robots out there doing things, and when do you envision the moon becoming almost a platform that a broader ecosystem can build off of?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Well, look, I think in terms of rate, the biggest driver there is going to be just, I mean, it's going to be the breakthroughs in rapid reusability until, I mean, Starship is obviously the first example of a vehicle where we don't throw away the, you know, the upper stage, building multiple factories to mass-produce that hardware, multiple launchpads, and of course, you know, Blue Origin is New Glenn's vehicle, you know, is going to have, obviously, already proven reusability with the first stage. I think Stoke is trying to do reusable first and second stage. I'm sure Rocket Lab with Neutron is going to get there. All of that is critical to bringing down the cost to accelerate mass to orbit, and in which case, it doesn't matter if you're using it for commercial space stations,

• 25:47Speaker 01

  for commercial purposes, scientific missions, or transporting lots of mass efficiently to the surface of the moon. Now, that's key to everything in NASA. Like, we're going to be able to get far more of our dollars doing the near-impossible task than simply paying for the cost to get there. You know, great example, I said, you know, "We're thinking about repurposing something the taxpayer has already paid for, which is the Engineering Development Unit of the Perseverance and Curiosity Rover. It's just sitting there at JPL." I mean, that's probably, like, I don't know, a half a billion all-in that's just sitting there. No question, I'm like, "Well, you know, we were all talking, why don't we just put it on the moon? It'll be a great rover, and it can survive in the, you know, the permanently shaded regions." The most expensive part of doing that is

• 26:30Speaker 01

  not the nuclear fuel, it's not the modifications needed for lunar surface, it's getting it there. And that's getting it there in, you know, the most mature and competitive launch environment that we've had in the history of the space program. So the next breakthroughs that come thereafter with full rapid reusability is going to be enabling for everything we want to do, not least of which is on the lunar surface. Now, again, once you have, you know, if you're talking about armies of humanoid robots on the lunar surface as well, that are actually going to start building out the infrastructure, you'll start to go from what NASA's vision of a Phase 1 moon base, which is a lot of broke-down stuff everywhere, as we learn the science of survival, which I refer to almost as a junkyard in

• 27:10Speaker 01

  early days, to that more utopian dome of a city, you know, that probably some of us envision. That's what's going to bridge the gap between those two worlds.

• 27:20Speaker 05

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• 28:25Speaker 00

  Let's talk about the moon in a second, Jared. 2028, an aggressive timeline for landing on the moon. Thank you for that. It's super great to have aggressive timelines, once again. Once we land on the moon, give me a step-by-step, if you would, for getting a lunar base there, because getting a permanent lunar base, where humanity, for the first time, is ever existing off the planet of Earth, beyond Earth's orbit, is huge. Steps to getting there, when do humanoid robots enter that equation? Can you give us a few details?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  I think it's imperative that we do a lot of littles at first, which I think is fully akin to the space race in the 1960s. We had Mercury before Gemini, Gemini before Apollo, you know, lots of Apollo missions before we landed on the moon. And in this world that we've been in absent competition for some time, where I told you that, you know, focus is a problem, and we are distributing money everywhere to make everybody happy, we kind of are forgetting all of those interim steps to getting to the exciting outcome, and we just design a dream state. A dream state is a service sometimes, and it's usually very late and much more expensive than we want, and none of us want that. We all enjoyed the headlines of Artemis II, you know, even though we had done very similar things, you

• 29:39Speaker 01

  know, a half century earlier, you know, it reminded us of what's possible and got us all excited. We don't want to wait several years in between the next episode, right? So I think getting back to doing a lot of littles up front and learning what does and doesn't work to inform the next phase, it worked very well for NASA in the 1960s. We're bringing it back. So what I described, phase one, and this is before the astronauts ever get there in 28, we're going to be dropping landers and rovers on a near monthly basis. We're going to take advantage of the commercial market that exists today, the CLIPS program that started years past, we're going to start printing these things off, we'll learn from every one of them in that incredibly harsh environment on the lunar south pole, because if we're going there and we're going to build a base, we better at least do it near the

• 30:21Speaker 01

  water ice, or what are we doing there? And we're going to learn how to survive in that environment, and we're going to do it before we lock in the dream state. So I'm like, I don't want to hear how we're locking in lunar comms, surface or orbital yet, or what our power source is going to be, or what the interface is going to be between the rover and some future state nuclear reactor. Let's start landing stuff now and learning in this environment, and we'll use it to roll into a subsequent design. And phase one's going to leave a lot of debris everywhere like that, like a lot of dead rovers and landers, but we're going to learn from it, and then we'll roll into phase two. And I think, you know, once starships are launching with frequency and they've, you know, worked out orbital

• 31:02Speaker 01

  prop transfer, and once Blue Origins got their on-orbit aggregation strategy down, then when you're moving mass very efficiently to surface, that's when you roll in the humanoid robots. Again, you want the least, you want the fewest reasons possible to ever put an astronaut in a suit outside the base unless there was no other alternative, and humanoid robots are going to give you that.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Best guess, under/over, when we see the first humanoid robot walking on the moon?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  In my mind, I would think that on the uncrewed lander demonstrations, which both Blue Origin and SpaceX need to do in advance of the lunar landing, that's already contractual, I'd kind of be shocked if somebody didn't smuggle one onboard. But we're not waiting that long, right? I mean, you're talking the next four years, maybe six years as a window as these start showing up and building that infrastructure.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Boots on the moon, except they're optimists or figure boots on the moon circa 2028, 29. That's great. Alex, over to you, pal.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, pulling on this lunar theme, Jared, 20 years ago, you were civilian pilot with ambition, and you, in some sense, you bought your way into space. There are many civilian pilots out there right now, some of whom have written to me, that would absolutely love a path to the moon, a path to be basically a civilian settler corps, including apparently Peter, who would love to be civilian settlers or reserve astronauts with a way to the moon. Question for you, does NASA, do you and/or NASA have any plans, or have you contemplated, setting up a civilian settler corps to enable those trained civilian pilots who want to

• 32:38Speaker 02

  move to the moon or spend time on the moon, to travel and move to the moon or to Mars? Or do you perceive that pathway as being purely commercial and not flowing through NASA?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  So there's a lot there to that. Let me just first say that having an aviation background is hardly a requirement anymore. I mean, there is certainly advantages that come in, but if you think about what a crew of astronauts should look like, going from the Earth to the moon or Mars, having one or two people with that background, important and helpful for sure, if you want, I think number one in this, and this also very much qualifies Peter, is medical professionals. It's like, the technology to enable humans to go to Mars is going to happen far, far faster, or sooner than having the countermeasures

• 33:30Speaker 01

  in place for, you know, how demanding physiologically it is to be in space, not to mention psychologically as well, especially when you get to extreme distances like Mars. So I just don't ever see a world in our lifetime where, you know, you're not going to have, you know, considerable investments in medical professionals supporting outposts on the moon and certainly Mars someday. Now, what does that mean? You know, again, what is NASA's charter again? I mean, I think we're out there trying to, again, unlock the secrets of the universe, and every step, moon, Mars thereafter, is just a step on that journey for crewed and uncrewed missions. And, you know, there will always be a need for NASA astronauts, and I'd be shocked if

• 34:13Speaker 01

  you didn't see at some point in time that NASA astronauts played a role in helping train and certify commercial or private crews going on those missions. The same way that as a pilot, you know, whether it's an FAA examiner or an FAA designee, is verifying that a pilot is safe to fly in national airspace, to take off and land in what is something that is inherently dangerous. Well, you know, several times that, once you start leaving our atmosphere. So there'd be a role for NASA astronauts in this, and hopefully as costs come down, again, back to rapid reusability, and you have the ability to put hundreds and thousands of people in space through, you know, through government programs, you're going to require

• 34:55Speaker 01

  a lot more NASA astronauts. But no doubt, there is going to be a time period where private and commercial will far overtake that in terms of the number of people living and working in space, on moon, or elsewhere. And I'd love to think that the expertise inherent with NASA will help set up those private and commercial astronauts for success.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Alex, we're going to speedrun "The moon is a harsh mistress," without the rocks falling on Earth.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Rods from God, Peter, rods from God. Dave, over to you, pal.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, you mentioned a second ago that the south pole of the moon is a particularly harsh environment. I'd love to drill in on that. And is it harsher in particular, or is it just the moon in general is harsh that you're referring to?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Well, I think the moon in general is rather harsh, but I mean, you're talking about negative 400 degrees in some of the permanently shaded regions. I mean, we actually, you know, have survival problems in the south pole of the moon that exceed that of Mars. So, you know, it's certainly, it's certainly going to be the, as I've said again, the optimal proving ground that we've been gifted several days away from Earth for everything else that humankind should hope to achieve in space someday. So at least it's close enough to come home if we run into some challenges.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  So then what does that mean for this race that's on right now? Your launch costs are coming down like crazy, and that's because of reusability. And at the same time, the idea of having mass drivers on the moon as a way to get more things into orbit is a really compelling idea. And so that idea, you know, is moving at a pretty good clip, too. So, you know, there's a view of the world where launch costs come down so much that, you know, when you watch one of these launches, the amount of energy it takes to get a ton into orbit is just mind-boggling, and not being in the gravity well is really compelling. You know, you can just railgun it right off the moon instead. On the other hand, you were just describing how harsh an environment that is. So actually, manufacturing

• 36:48Speaker 03

  the first railguns on the moon and then getting something significant, you know, manufactured there to launch is a pretty daunting challenge. So how do you see the timelines of those two ways of getting things into space competing with each other?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Well, it's a really interesting question. Here's one where, again, you don't bet against Elon and his big engineering brain on the subject. I think, I mean, how cool would it be to have a mass driver on the moon? I'm all for it. But it does, you know, it kind of does beg the question a little bit, that if starship is, and just again, broadly, rapid reusability is such a game changer, where you're turning around these vehicles in a matter of hours, and your cost is essentially the consumables, if you have to bring a lot of the materials necessary to assemble, build whatever it is you're looking to accelerate off of the moon with the mass driver to the moon, could you not

• 37:42Speaker 01

  just bring it from the get-go? So you'd have to be highly confident that, again, the costs to, you know, refine, extract, manufacture from the regolith on the moon, unless we're starting to get really, you know, going and retrieving asteroids and everything else, will be lower than, and then essentially, you know, 3D printing it on the moon and using the mass driver to accelerate will be lower and more economical than transporting the materials to the moon in the first place through what should be an extremely economical form of bringing mass to the surface of the moon. So, but that's again, you know, people that are far smarter than me are thinking out the long-term picture on that. I just want to get us back to the moon because we've been waiting damn long enough.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, we have. Saleem?

• 38:31Speaker 04

  You know, there's a huge tension in geopolitics where the going to space is really kind of a humanity effort, and I love the way NASA is always positioned that way. How do you take into account all the geopolitical tensions with China, India, Russia, all trying to get to the moon? And long term, do you see that resolving in some way? Or does it just stay a tension and you just figure out how to navigate it?

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Is the competition better than the collaboration for your budget at least?

• 38:59Speaker 04

  For all mankind.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course it is. Look, there's nothing wrong with having good, healthy competition. We're Americans, we like competition. It worked very well for us in the 1960s. And now, now what happens? Peter and I go to Baikonur in 2008, and the same rocket we were competing against was helping, I mean, was really the beginning of the commercial space era in a lot of ways. And then, you know, again, just days ago, I was able to take a, you know, a close friend and NASA astronaut and walk them to the ladder of Soyuz. So what an example of where competition fueled so much for the benefit of all in early days, and now turns into a collaborative effort of which without, you would not be able to

• 39:40Speaker 01

  sustain the International Space Station, especially in cases like Crew 11 where NASA had to recall our crew complement, and yet you were able to have continuity because there was an American who was up there, Chris Williams, via the Soyuz method. So, look, where competition starts can lead to really totally fine outcomes in the end. Right now, China and the US for sure are both very committed to getting to the moon. The Chinese and their roadmap, it will, it will lead to success. There's no doubt. I mean, they will absolutely do what the Soviets could not in the 1960s. We would certainly like to get there before them. They're building a base. We're going to build a base. This is, this is fine.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  This is, this is all good things, and certainly we've shown that even having a space race, you know, can help, and it's eventual collaborative mean, you know, if it turns into collaborative means like we have in the International Space Station, can transcend a lot of the geopolitical strife that can happen here on Earth.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Chinese on the moon by 2030, that's their goal, do you think they hit it?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. I think that they're, they have a second mover advantage in a lot of ways. They do not have any baggage. What do I mean by that? Like, if you look at the way they're, I want to say their civil space program, but they've recently merged that back again into, into their military efforts. It's allah the Manhattan Project and the Apollo era. I mean, they, you know, they're building centers and recruiting the people they need to do one thing, you know? Stennis just doing propulsion, for example. Kennedy Space Center just launching rockets. You know, Marshall doing a lot of the engineering, Texas being the operations and training center. That's how they all began, you know?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  If you think about it, you know, even it's analogous again to the Manhattan Project of what did we need Los Alamos for? What did we need Oak Ridge for? And, and what happens absent competition is all those centers that were built to serve a specific purpose, where you recruited talent to do a specific job, turn into doing anything other than maybe what they were doing in the first place, or at least adding on a lot of other things that can distract from, from its original intended purpose. Now, what are we doing at NASA? We're going around and refocusing everybody back into that original direction. The Chinese do not have any of that baggage right now. They're literally starting from scratch and highly focused in their effort. They're drawing on a playbook that worked very well for us in the 1960s.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  I have no doubt they're going to achieve their goals.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  And they have five-year plans, not annual budget cycles?

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  When you look at the constraints that you're facing culturally at NASA, you know, there used to be this huge mantra that failure is not an option, right? And you're clearly, your mindset is one of non-stop experimentation and learning. What are the biggest hurdles that you're facing in shifting the culture inside NASA to something like the new model of how we build organizations?

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Well, I would just say that I don't think the culture of, and I don't even say accepting more risk, it really, a lot of what you see, at least in my opinion, when you see some of the things that SpaceX have done and how they choose to operate, is very similar to how NASA operated, you know, in the 1960s. I mean, we had the same 20-something-year-olds that were, you know, burning themselves out, you know, brilliant minds, doing incredible things, making tough decisions, extreme ownership, moving with urgency. And, look, how many, you know, people talk about NASA doesn't blow up rockets. Go back into the 19, late 1950s, early 1960s on YouTube, and you can see plenty of examples

• 43:33Speaker 01

  of our iterative design philosophy not working out initially, and then rolling in what we learned into, you know, into subsequent versions. So, in a lot of ways, they've drawn on the, of what worked well for NASA during that time period. They were, they're far more efficient with their capital allocation than any government agency, there's, there's no doubt about that. And we are just going back. I mean, that's what we're trying to do, is pivot a little bit more in the direction of where we started, and focusing, again, our resources on those kind of, you know, those near impossible type objectives. Now, where I'd say there's sometimes resistance is when people, people generally hate change,

• 44:13Speaker 01

  that's just, that's just human behavior, and absent competition and a policy of trying to make everyone happy for so long, trying to get people to stop doing what they're passionate about or what they've been working on for a long time, which could be awesome and very cool work, but saying, we got to get back to the moon, we got to build the moon base, we can never give up the moon again, we have to help industry, you know, to the extent possible on rapid reusability as a true game changer, enabler for all the other things we want to do. You know, science is fantastic. I love Hubble, I love James Webb, I love all that we're working on, we just need to do more of it. We can't get comfortable launching flagship missions every 10 years, we want to be doing it annually.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  And even now, I'll tell you, in meetings, when somebody brings up, like, we're really excited about this, it's going to launch in 2035, we're really excited about this, it's going to launch in 2045, it's like, I don't want my grandchildren to be excited about this mission, I want to be excited about it. We, so those are the things where culturally implementing some change can be, you know, a challenge, but we're getting there.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  I love you for that. You know, let's talk about nuclear one second. Thank you for reigniting nuclear as a propulsion system and an energy source. So, on the nuclear propulsion side, you know, I will, I will sort of jokingly say, how long before we can make the Kessel run in 12 Parthax? Or, more near term, how long before we can get to Mars in 90 days? What's your plans on nuclear propulsion?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  So, first plan is just put a win-up on the board, which is what SR1 Freedom is. It's a lot of repurposed hardware, no doubt. You know, it's funny, I think Politico put an article out today on, you know, NASA Administrator intends to spend $2.5 billion on his nuclear power and propulsion spaceship. It was like, actually, the taxpayers spent that money over the last few years already. I'm just repurposing it into something that has real, you know, practical value instead of sitting in a warehouse or in a lab for some time period. So, the power, you know, PPE element, power propulsion element from the Gateway, we repurpose, that's basically the main spacecraft, all of its electric thrusters, it's already integrated into it. We have a nuclear reactor, at least, you know, components of it that have been matured

• 46:27Speaker 01

  and funded by other services for decades at INL that we're going to use as the baseline for, for the reactor. So, look, this is, this is what Nautilus was. Nautilus was a diesel boat, and it got repurposed as a nuclear sub. A lot of people don't know it, but even, you know, Rickover said, hey, it was the 70% solution, but it gave birth to the nuclear navy. We're trying to do the exact same thing at NASA. So, SR1 is not going to, it's not going to knock your socks off out of the gate, it's not mass optimized by, by any means, but it's a step in the right direction. What comes thereafter will continue to be optimized until what I think is the ultimate goal is to be able to bring astronauts to Mars and back with the fewest miracles required.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  And that may not always be the fastest way, but if it doesn't require cryogenic refueling as a step to getting the boots on Mars, that's a win. So, I actually think that the first human mission to Mars will be, at least if it was, you know, as NASA would be chemically augmented nuclear electric propulsion, and be able to send astronauts to Mars and bring them back, not the fastest, but without having to require a lot of extra miracles along the way. And, and we just got to keep going, right? This is, this is the whole point of taking it out of the lab, getting into practical application, budgeting it properly, because material sciences, the hotter we can run the reactor, the more mass we can save, because we don't need football field-sized radiators that are up there, the better we can do with power conversion, the more we challenge solar

• 47:53Speaker 01

  as the optimal pathway, at least, you know, inside of Jupiter. But there's no doubt, if you want to go in the outer solar system, and you want to at least delay the necessity of cryogenic refueling for missions to, crude missions to Mars and back, like, we got to be making investments in nuclear.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Love it. Dave?

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, if you if you achieve that goal, it seems like the technical risk is seems like a very doable challenge, you know, it's it's out there, but doable. Then you have this kind of foot race between are we trying to put boots on Mars so that we can then back up humanity on Mars someday? Or is it more likely that we start putting humans in orbit in O'Neill colonies in the asteroid belt and using that material, which is, you know, surprisingly abundant? Because you've got these two science fiction views of the world, you know, or the future of humanity, one where there are many, many space stations out there, and they're huge, they have 10,000 people on them. The other is, no, we've colonized Mars, and that's our backup copy of humanity. And there's kind of a an equal foot race between those two views of where we're going to.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Do you have a you have a preference?

• 48:59Speaker 00

  Sort of Elon versus Bezos in that regard.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, very much so, very much so.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, look, step one, we need rapid reusability and on orbit assembly, because whatever spacecraft are going to take humans to Mars, whether it's just the lucky few for, you know, to to support an outpost versus necessarily a colony or actually achievable missions, the asteroid, on orbit assembly is everything. Rapid reusability is our is our step in in that direction. Look, from my perspective, you know, we cross the oceans, you know, for a better life. And, you know, you're it's extremely unlikely in the near term that you're gonna, you know, go to Mars and have a better life or live on a space station and have and have a better life. Like, I think a lot of initial motivation in our lifetimes will probably be very more

• 49:47Speaker 01

  much more akin to, you know, you know, going to Antarctica for an extended scientific duration, you know, or or campaign down there. But it's it's just a step. I mean, again, we're trying to conquer the tyranny of distance that is inherent in our solar system and our galaxy and beyond. And we have to start somewhere. And we're lucky we've got a moon that's nearby to help us learn. The next step is Mars. That is going to be another learning environment. Generally favor gravity, again, for the, you know, overcoming the the physiological challenges of being in space. So I, you know, I guess if we're getting totally, we've evolved to be born and live in a in a space in a mega space station is not, I guess, out of the realm of possible.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  But I think a lot of the problems that we know we encounter when even keeping people on the space station for six months, even a, you know, a sixth, a third of gravity is going to make a huge difference along the way. But presumably, we will have conquered artificial gravity and such in that effort, too.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  I love the saying, if God had wanted humanity to become an interplanetary species, she would have given us a moon. And and we have one. Saleem, over to you for asteroid mining.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  You know, asteroid mining has been this promise, Peter, you and I, you've kind of tracking that, you've invested and built companies around that. Do you think it's a real thing or is it perpetually 20 years away? And if it is, does NASA take an active role or do you just enable the private sector to go down there?

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Well, I think we can be helpful. Again, I think about, again, our primary objective is, you know, if you if you want your NASA's sole focus to be on, you know, stimulating the economic potential of microgravity or from asteroids or on the lunar surface, like, put it under the Department of Commerce. You know, the Department of Commerce has a space office and that, like, again, I do think foundational, our job is to go out and answer the questions, you know, are we alone? Unlock the secrets of the universe, you know, world-changing, pioneering technological breakthroughs in air and space. So from my perspective, if we are investing in the capabilities that are necessary to undertake missions to the moon, to build a moon base, to go to Mars, and along the

• 51:55Speaker 01

  way, you can have demonstrations or work with industry that bring us closer to asteroid mining, we should do it. And we actually have some some methods that we're exploring to do that. So the Americas Competes Act actually allows us to put prizes out there. And I'm very open to doing it, not not trying to compete at all with the X Prize and that. But we could work or partner, yeah, potentially partner in that. I'll let the lawyers weigh in on that. Of like, go and do something cool with an asteroid. And we could put up $25 million, I don't know, hypothetically is. But but I want I would like to believe that by making investments in that, it's going to give us, I don't know, the hypergolf thrusters that we need for to reduce the cost for landers on the moon or or Mars someday, you know.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  I think always has to be furtherance of our scientific and exploration objectives as a as a space agency.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Welcome to the health section of Moonshots, brought to you by Fountain Life. You know, AI is having an outsized impact on every aspect of our lives, how we teach our kids, how we run our companies. It also is having a huge impact on health, helping you prevent heart disease, one of the key things. I'm here with Dr. Dawn Musalem, our chief medical officer at Fountain. Heart disease has been personal for you as well, hasn't it?

• 53:04Speaker 06

  It really has, Peter. And my daughter was five, my husband died of sudden cardiac death. And so this is a topic that is one that I am mission-driven to try to eradicate. Prevention first and early detection is absolutely critical. 50% of people die of heart attacks with no warning signs.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  No shortness of breath, no pain, no nothing.

• 53:23Speaker 06

  No, silent killer.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  They just don't wake up in the morning.

• 53:26Speaker 06

  They don't wake up. And so, you know, AI, this is our mission, to advance science, to try to help to one day democratize wellness. We know at Fountain Life, when we do this CT angiography with AI analytics, we are actually finding that 88% of people coming in have detectable coronary disease. But Peter, what's more alarming to me is 23% of those individuals had soft plaque. This is the plaque that would not traditionally be seen on CT, looking at calcium scores alone. And this is the plaque that we must intervene with, with the multimodal testing we're doing, including diagnostic laboratory studies, partnered with healthy lifestyle recommendations.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  So, listen, make sure you understand what's going on inside your body genetically, metabolically, and cardiovascularly. You can know, and it's your obligation to know. So check it out at fountainlife.com/peter to find out more. And really make sure that you're the CEO of your own health. All right, back to the episode. Jared, let's talk about getting to Mars. So Elon is very aggressively committed to going to Mars. And, you know, I was there with him when he was having the conversation, and he basically said, we're going to shut down Falcon 9 because it's not going to get us to Mars. And we're going after Starship All In, you know, burning the boats, as you said.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  So the question is, when he decides to make those missions, is that funding from that fully private? Or do you imagine you're going to be able to step in and help fund those private missions? And what's a timeline? When do you think the earliest will set boots on Mars? You know, optimist boots and then human boots. What's your what's your under over on that?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, again, I'm pretty excited about the the TAM that, you know, that SpaceX and others are pursuing right now with orbital data centers and such. Because, again, I don't, you know, you saw the, here's an interesting stat. It's actually, I was on a Fox interview, and somebody started bringing up polling. And I was like, oh, man, I'm way out of my depth on this one. They were like, did you know that 69% of the American public supports NASA returning to the moon, in contrast to 30-some-odd percent in 1967, you know, at a at a comparable time period? Sorry, anyway, on that note, I think that SpaceX SpaceX right now, if they were to

• 55:52Speaker 01

  put all of their capital and focus on going to Mars, it would be very different timeframe than right now where their stated intention is going to the moon. So when you ask the question of like, look, we're going back, boots will be on the moon in 2028, we're going to build the base and learn from that that environment. And SpaceX, pursuing this this mega TAM that allows them to make investments in capabilities for the good of all humankind, which is probably, again, why it's 69% approval rate versus in the 1960s, when it was 4.5% of the discretionary budget. And and I'm sure that that was a big factor in why we were in the 30% range for going to the moon. Because, hey, we got a lot of other problems here back here on Earth. So good companies like SpaceX that are pursuing these massive Tams and all this economic potential

• 56:37Speaker 01

  in space allows them to make investments alongside NASA to do all these great things for humankind is probably why you generally have greater public support for for what we're pursuing. But the fact that moon is step one for them right now, or at least stated intent, is certainly going to change some of the timelines on Mars and absolutely would change, like, the quantity of people we're talking about on Mars. So we can make investments in nuclear power and propulsion as part of the national space policy, it is the next giant leap, and and potentially put a pathway with the fewest miracles required, I don't know, put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years. That's not, obviously, the Elon vision of, like, millions of people someday in a self-sustaining city on Mars, but that's the NASA can do some things governmentally through through

• 57:21Speaker 01

  taxpayer funding, leveraging investments, you know, in nuclear, you know, nuclear investments over many decades, plus plus industry coming alongside it. SpaceX saying, forget the moon, we're going all in, like, you know, Elon was saying a couple of years ago, is much faster, for sure, because now you're concentrating all that brilliant brain power and and their capital and resources towards achieving that objective. So seems like we're on step one, going to the moon. It's going to happen in 2028. We're going to learn a lot there. In parallel, we're going to make investments in nuclear power and propulsion. SpaceX will unlock this, you know, and along with the rest of industry that's pursuing all the economic potential in space. And hopefully, that will free up a lot more resources for the next stop on this journey, which is which is Mars. That's a different timeframe. Again, I think, you know, you're probably in that 15-year timeframe.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  Best guess, first mission, first mission to Mars is private, first mission to Mars is NASA. I mean, when you say mission to Mars, I mean, landed astronaut mission.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  I would bet on on NASA would be would probably be first. And that that's just because I I do think your first mission, if you want to bring back people to talk about it, like NASA is not doing one-way missions. And as a result, you know, I think your dependency on chemical propulsion, you know, has to be limited in that because you're going to, you know, otherwise, you know, you're going to need a lot of Optimus robots on Mars and they're going to be walking around dusting off all the solar panels without nuclear for making propellant. And then it's hard enough to do, to do, you know, it's hard enough to fuel a launch pad here in 1G and under one atmosphere, let alone making the propellant on another planet, reloading a rocket and bringing it back.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  I love that view because if you scratched and clawed with chemical propellant your way to Mars, you'd be exactly repeating the 1960s moon mission where, yeah, we barely got there, but not in any kind of thing we can build on, not in a sustainable, reusable kind of way. But if you do it with nuclear propulsion, then you actually have a, you know, a pathway to doing it repeatedly and not just going as a one-off. It's such a cool vision.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  It just initially, right? I mean, so there's no doubt, like, to me, starship and everything it hopes to achieve is just when, you know, it's, there's no if on that one. So step one, get it going, put up a lot of depots in low Earth orbit, make the moon, you know, efficient transport of mass to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure, master a lot of institutional resource skills you need, because those are all necessary if you want to pull off Mars in a return trip without nuclear. But even then, minimum, you're still going to want nuclear surface power if you can, and we're testing that on the moon as well. Or else, again, you'll need a lot of Optimus robots cleaning off football fields of solar panels. But, but step one to start that foundation, imagine like the, the space shuttle orbiter

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  equivalent, obviously assembled, on orbit assembly of these NEP, chemically augmented NEP spaceships, and yes, it might be three years round trip, you know, with 30-day surface time, but it's a start and you get in a rotation until eventually the, you know, the V6 starships are rolling and you've got armies of Optimus robots and nuclear power on the surface of Mars. And then, then you could be, you could just, you're just extending what you've already proven you can do to the moon to Mars.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Dave, you want to continue?

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, okay, so you've seen For All Mankind, right? I'm sure.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  I gotta admit, I was there a lot during the first couple of seasons and I've been really, you know, busy of late and stuff.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  Imagine that. Well, you know, the way it plays out in the TV world is, you know, the US and Russia at the time are cooperating in space because everybody's just trying to, you know, build and create and survive. And then something back on Earth, you know, creates tension. And then they radio up and say, stop cooperating with the Russians. So here we are in a moon race with China. The competition is good, as you said, it's going to get everybody there faster. Do you have a counterpart in China that you talk to, or does it all get tied up? And, you know, we talk a lot about it on the podcast about Kimi K3 coming out in a couple of weeks, that's going to create all kinds of drama. Does that drama then come back to you?

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  Six days, Dave, six days.

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  Six days now? Oh, jeez. Yeah, that's a turning point. Now, give us the inside baseball, how's it actually work with, can you talk to China or do you have to go to the White House and call from the bat phone, or how's it work?

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, the foreign, foreign policy is, is established by the president and the Secretary of State. Now, a lot of that policy's already been established with the International Space Station and our cooperation with the Russians for a while. So I have, I would say, you know, regular sounds like a lot, it's probably more quarterly, maybe a little bit more frequent than that communication with my counterpart in Russia, Director General Bakhanov, I was just with him during the Soyuz launch, because there's already established norms of operation and have for more than a quarter of a century. And that certainly, again, has proven to transcend a lot of the, you know, you know, the political climate that happens here on Earth.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Now with the Chinese, you know, the Wolf Amendment pretty much restricts NASA from establishing any sort of norms, you know. So there is some scientific data sharing outside of NASA with universities and such, but that's, you know, so I would say we are very much squarely in the competitor lane. We obviously watch what they do and have an appreciation for their approach, they very much watch what we do. I would just say, in terms of your For All My Mankind, I don't think it's a secret that, you know, the ultimate high ground of space at this point, I mean, that is a, that is a warfighting domain.

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  So, you know, in the, you know, in the horrifically unlikely event that, Dave, we never want to see come where, you know, that things have devolved, I don't think it's going to be a shooting war on the surface of the moon between troops of, you know, I think that there's a lot of things that would go down in space that have far more strategic implications back here on Earth to affect whatever warfighting means they're trying to achieve before whatever require, you know, boots on the moon duking it out on the surface. I hope that, I hope there is no scenario where that ever seems like a good idea.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  But what about, just a quick follow-up on that, what about the, just the more narrow case, you know, when the SpaceX IPO came out, it was very, very clear that it's first come, first serve in low Earth orbit. And it's been a long time since on Earth we've had land grabs where, you know, hey, our navy is finding new islands, we're just going to claim them. Well, that's a long, you know, long past idea, but now in space, low Earth orbit is first come, first serve, the moon is first come, first serve. So that, that seems like, is there any cooperation or does, when the White House is deciding what the rules are, do they call NASA and you all get together and say, look, this is, this is the rules as we see them, or how's that, how does that part work?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Well, we're not, I don't think anyone is talking about new rules. So we have the Outer Space Treaty, and in some respects, sure, that is first come, first serve, in that if I'm putting a, you know, if we need to put a lander in a certain spot and we value that spot for whatever reason, you know, the first person to get it there is it. But I mean, look, it's a big moon, even when you think about the South Pole, it's still rather, you know, it's still rather large and, you know, we're still, even in NASA's moon-based plan vision of dozens of landers over the next few years during, during Phase One, there's still a lot of moon to go around. And, and look, I think even, you know, even when we think about low Earth orbit and the orbital regimes that are available for data centers comms, there's a lot of opportunity

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  there. I think just, you know, making sure we have, we are sharing information in terms of the orbital trajectories is obviously vital. And I know, you know, many in industry have spoken out and pointed, you know, pointed out that if we fail to disclose information about where these orbital constellations are going to, you know, where they're going to propagate, then that creates collision risk and problems that impact everybody. And that's, that's something, again, that I think everybody, even in times of conflict, when we have airliners flying around the world, we, we're communicating with each other, there's transponders, and we're, we're avoiding potential hazards in that respect at all costs. That needs to, that needs to happen better in space.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  You know, when you look at how you try and manage a government department, you're, every time your, a new cycle comes through, you're trying to negotiate and juggle budgeting, right? How do you make long-term commitments when the budgeting cycle goes up and down like a yo-yo with the political cycles? Is there a way of solving for that? Because I know previous projects have been really hampered by that lack of budgeting capability.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  How do you preserve the budget over the next five years to get the base built?

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  And can we help you increase it?

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:05Speaker 04

  Can we donate?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  You know, it's an interesting thing. I mean, people have talked about when I came in that, you know, the, the continuity between administrations and the variability in the budget cycle is what forced us into certain situations, like creating programs that are too big to fail, but in my opinion, they're, they become too costly to succeed. Like, I'm, you know, NASA gets, it gets $25 billion a year, right? Like, it's a lot of money. Like, when people start saying, we don't have enough money to do the job, it's like, really? I mean, I know some of the most, you know, extraordinary companies in the world were founded for far less and have built some pretty impressive capabilities. If that's not the right number, you know, what is? What I think is important is preserving flexibility between administrations.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  So you talk about Phase One of the moon base. If I'd come out and said, all right, here's the vision, it's going to be glass and, you know, it's going to have this amazing closed-loop ecosystem in it and a Ferris wheel, and we're going to have big crop farms on the, on the surface, and it's only going to cost $100 billion, but we'll be able to pay it off as a service to these three companies over time, going to get canceled. It's like, it's going to be under assault constantly. But what did we do with Phase One? We said, look, we're going to do, we're going to do low-cost landers every month and we're going to start learning. And, and now, when a, you know, if a new administration comes in and says, you know what, once a month is, it's too much, we can dial it back to eight and we still feel like we can, we can get where we want to go, that's fine.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Or you have somebody, you know, very forward, we're going to go 15, we want to pick up the pace, like, in this, great. That is, that is much better. Same with our nuclear program going from SR1 to SR2, you know, we're not jumping right to the, to Battlestar Galactica here, we want, we want to start with the Nautilus and, and maybe we'll do a nuclear mission to, I don't know, Enceladus or Uranus, that's, that's another good one, any of the outer solar system missions would be nice, and start testing out high-temperature materials and better power conversion, a lot better than saying, we're going to just build the Battlestar Galactica or something and then that gets canceled. So I think we, this is just smart capital allocation, guys, you know, is really what it is. It's focused, $25 billion is a lot of money every year, a lot, lot of money.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  The entire Manhattan Project, you know, over four years, adjusted for inflation, was $33 billion. We can do a lot every year with a reload of $25 billion, just focus it on the needle-moving objectives and design the programs, the architecture in such a way, not too big to fail, that keeps, you know, on the chopping block. Do it in a logical, evolutionary way to get to where you want to go.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Amen. Alex, over to you about life in the universe of science.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm curious, Jared, you've made public comments in the past commenting that you estimate a 90% probability of life or former life on the Mars subsurface. I'd be very curious to hear, what is your mental model of non-Earth-based life in the solar system, in the universe? Is it, does it look more like panspermia? Does it look more like life is ubiquitous, life is rare? What is your mental model at this point?

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  First of all, I think the only, I was discounting when I said 90%. I think if you talk to some of the brightest minds here at NASA, they would give you almost 100% certainty that at one point there was microbial life on Mars. And I think really we're in this, you know, seeing is believing, I can't, no one's willing to make the declarative statement based on, you know, I would say, I don't want to say failed efforts, but, you know, they were, yeah, they were kind of swinging and misses in the past that people said for sure it was there and then they walk it back. I just don't think the scientific community is going to reach that consensus unless you bring those samples back to Earth and you get enough people looking under a microscope or, you know, that's just an example, you know, not quite literally in that to say,

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  okay, it was there. Now, if it turns out to be the case, and I think we're very much talking, again, very dead microbial life, I mean, for all purposes, Mars is at vacuum. I think it would be extremely unlikely, like, you know, virtually nonexistent chance that there's anything still active there, but that if you can prove that there was at one point microbial life there and then Europa Clipper starts sending back some interesting data and Titan, you know, you send Dragonfly to Titan, you get a mission off to Enceladus, and this is all in our backyard. This is our star system, right? Let alone, you know, the billions of other stars out there, the trillions of other galaxies

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  and all of the exoplanets that would be in Goldilocks zones. It changes the, you know, the dynamic a little bit from surely it must be out there somewhere to what if it's everywhere? Now, look, there is certainly, you know, an evolutionary nature to this and, you know, a technological, you know, filter you have to break through to some extent to actually have the, to cross into the intelligent life to, you know, come and visit us, you know, to, you know, which I think just, look, there's a lot, again, with the tyranny of distance in space that makes that, you know, a substantial obstacle.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  But I certainly believe that as we undertake more missions like Dragonfly and Europa Clipper and get even more events where nuclear power and propulsion maybe can take our probes there and back with greater ease, that we might reach conclusions that at least, you know, that, you know, probably to answer the question that we've been entrusted to solve is whether or not we're alone.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  You're arguably the NASA administrator during the most extraordinary time of scientific missions as well. I mean, Dragonfly, looking for the chemistry of life on Titan's pretty extraordinary. Can you imagine a time where you're like 10Xing or 100Xing the science missions out there with AI and robotics? I mean, the price of manufacturing is plummeting by increase, you know, allowing yourself to increase the risk and just really aggressively sending out probes?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Here, here. I'm 100% Peter. I think what we've, you know, what we're faced with at to some extent, right, is, and maybe this is a budgetary cycle, you know, point is, I do think that once big flagship programs have been greenlit, you know, there is a risk element to it too, which is it can't fail, so therefore, you know, I have to build in more and more redundancy and if it's going to cost this much, then it better do even more than what I originally intended. And a $1 billion by definition flagship program becomes $3 billion and as a result it takes a really long time to come to fruition. But I think there's another element to it too, the fear that of what comes next. And that's like, but that's also a human nature thing and, you know, a lot of us, you

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  see across people's professional careers, they kind of entrench themselves and build, you know, moats and, you know, walls around whatever they do for almost, you know, job security to some extent and never want to engineer themselves out of a job. And then there's some extraordinary companies out there where people can't wait to engineer themselves out of a job because they believe whatever they work on next is 10 times cooler. Like, we need to do the same thing here. So that's kind of the human side of it, aside from where technology will benefit us, is that if I'm working on Dragonfly, I'm going to bang this thing out so fast because whatever I work on thereafter is going to be 10X that and then get all of our teams, our science

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  mission director at budget, $7 billion a year. Do you believe with what you know to be coming into existence between AI and additive manufacturing that with $7 billion a year, we couldn't be cranking out seven Dragonflies a year?

• 1:13:53Speaker 00

  Hundreds, hundreds.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? So I'm totally with you. We have to move in that directions and that's a cultural change too, not to mention it, you know, obviously that technologically enabling, but that's, it's just a matter of time.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  Can I ask you a follow on to that? Your access to that AI, you know, being a government agency, like when Mythos came out and now, you know, Fable 5, did you get preferential access and can you use your government position to get the latest, greatest stuff? Because that's going to become an issue very, it's already, you know, it was an issue just a few weeks ago for the first time in history, but that's the bellwether for the future. But do you get, do you get special access to frontier AI going forward?

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I mean, I really have no interest in wading into any of the policy discussions in terms of what has to be made available to government in advance and whether it's optional or not. Like, I think that Director Kratzios at OSTP and all those that contribute to ensuring government agencies are armed, you know, with the best technology for really the good of the nation and human, they're doing that well. Like, leave that over there. I'll just say where we have some access, you know, when you think about things like nuclear power and propulsion, you know, again, giving birth to NASA's nuclear navy equivalency,

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  you know, you have a lot of data that would have come from a world that needs to be constantly doing analysis in that arena for a variety of programs. And that could be an accelerant for some of NASA's ambitions that, you know, wouldn't be as applicable, I'd say, in the commercial or in the private sector, if that makes sense.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  Alex, as we enter our final segment, let me give you the leadership here. Please take.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Beautiful. I have to ask administrator, this is, I think, the question on the minds of many people I've spoken with who would just love to hear your perspective, a bit of context. The Department of War recently dropped their fourth release under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP encounters. The White House and the Department of War and other cabinet level agencies have seen sort of, I would argue, a sea shift in terms of how they talk about UAPs and the possibility of non-human intelligence. As we speak, I think, based on the headlines I was seeing right before we started this

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  recording, Representative Burleson is introducing right now an amendment to the NDAA to encode in statute a variety of UAP oriented reporting requirements. So I have to ask you the biggest question, I think, and you may be gestured at this earlier by speaking of NASA's ultimate mission as answering the big questions of are we alone? What is your position on the allegations regarding the possibility that there's been an 80-year-long legacy program? What is your position on the so-called Fermi paradox? What is your position? NASA had a study group a couple of years ago that was publicly announced and held a press conference on UAP studies.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  If I could bundle this all up into one big question, what is your position on all of these allegations that there has been such a legacy program?

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  So what I would say is since the, first of all, there's already, you know, statutory language that goes back to, I want to say, 2022, that created the Arrow Group within the Department of War where it's mandatory, you know, public disclosure of any information related to UAPs. So I don't know if we, if this is a matter of law anymore because that got supercharged under President Trump and his, what we interpret as a direct order, the executive order, he put out a truth that said, release everything. And within a week of that, you know, I was, you know, in the Situation Room with the

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  heads of, you know, almost every government agency and we all went in there like, is there, what do you know? And what I'll tell you is there is a top-down push from the President, you know, and the Homeland Security Advisor saying, if you have any data on this, I don't care what classification level it is, it has to be disclosed and this is under the pursue effort. And if you go through those four tranches, I mean, I'm telling you, there, we have released video footage, photographic evidence, eyewitness account, some of them are, you know, from FBI agents that took the footage on some of these.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  I mean, you're talking highly credible individuals on sightings that we can't explain. Now, I do want to be very clear here, you know, can't explain right now does not mean it's unexplainable. We are gathering data in, I mean, it's, the best example is think about your doorbell cams. We have cameras on everything. I mean, you got drones that are up continuously right now in combat zones, right? And there is absolutely, I mean, I can't tell you it's conclusive, you got a drone with an IR camera that catches something flying in the bottom corner, it's almost off frame, right? And is it a, is it a missile because it's in a combat zone?

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Is it another drone or is it something else, right? And we put, and the President said, put it out. It turned to basically citizen scientists, put it out there. We want to combat the notion that this is not a subject that people want to be transparent about and that there's stigma associated, put it out there. And again, like some of it, pretty wild stuff when you look at it, some of it I look at and say, you know what, if I had a couple scientists and I had a few other video, I'm pretty sure it's a balloon or I'm pretty sure it's a bird or I'm pretty sure it's an Iranian, you know, one-way attack drone, but based on the angle, I can't say that for sure. But then there's other stuff that honestly we don't, we can't explain what it is and the President is pushing it out.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  I will tell you, I have immense access and have been at a seat at the table since the get-go on this. I have no information, no knowledge, I take a lie detector test on any crashed spaceships or bodies or biological organisms on this, but for sure, we're gathering a lot of data and there is some unexplained anomalous phenomenon and we are putting it out there as part of these disclosure efforts.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  What is your, just a quick follow up then, there have been a number of House and Senate hearings where a number of whistleblowers have testified under oath that there has been an 80-plus-year-long U.S. government and contractor effort to to collect and reverse engineer UAPs. Again, in speaking with folks before this interview, this was the single biggest question they wanted me to ask you. What is your position on these allegations that other government agencies, perhaps portions of NASA even, have been involved in such an effort, even though, I take you at your word, haven't seen anything firsthand, but

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  nonetheless, there are a number of whistleblowers and enough whistleblowers that Congress has already taken steps, as you mentioned, via, I think it was the 2022 NDAA, which incorporated the RO statutes. What is your position, speaking either as an individual or as administrator of NASA, on all of these allegations?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  My my position on this is that, look, I don't want to comment as to the credibility of individuals. Look, I get, ever since I was first nominated to this position, I get like dozens of emails every day, you know, from, you know, some very bright and smart people, giving their views and thoughts on things NASA should be doing, or NASA, things that NASA has done, and some of it, I look at and say, this is really insightful, and some of it, I say, is that that falls outside the bounds of of what I think is, you know, perhaps credible on that. Just because somebody worked for the government or had a clearance does not necessarily mean that their interpretation of what they saw

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  is accurate. So, meaning, I saw the same videos that, you know, and they've been disclosed, by the way, that people were referencing, saying it was 100% an alien spaceship. And we've put these videos out, and you can look at them and determine whether or not you you think that to be the case. And I think some of it is certainly unexplained, based on what we know. And I think some of it, if you probably put enough people behind it, you'd say that was a that was a weather balloon, you know, that was, you know, that was an Iranian one-way attack drone, or something, something of that nature.

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  It would be, it would be great if we had alien spacecraft. I mean, that would definitely move the timeline forward by a couple of decades, if nothing else.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  I assume, Jared, you'd be quite excited if all of these allegations amounted to something non-trivial?

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I mean, it's what our job is here, right? I mean, you know, you know, whether you're a space enthusiast or the head of NASA, don't you want to know if there is intelligent life out there? Isn't that, again, I think, part of the greatest adventure in in human history? If there was some crashed, you know, ET-level kind of technology that allowed you to, you know, exceed the cosmic speed limit, then we'd be doing everything we could to reverse engineer it and get it going, because I want to know what's in other star systems out there. So if it were true, we're terrible at reverse engineering, because I don't think anyone would argue that what the B2 or the B21

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  or the SR71 was capable of doing is well within, you know, the realms of physics and our technological means at those time, at that time period, not something that would have been derived from aliens, and certainly not something that would have helped aliens get from another star system, you know, to the to Earth in that time period. But look, again, we're putting things out, it's very forward-leaning, but I have not seen anything, there's no secret programs that I'm aware of related to biologics or crashed.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  When I've interviewed Elon in the subject, he said, I would know. But shouldn't we have better photographs? We have great, we have got great cameras, why are they all so crappy? Saleem, you want to close this out with a question?

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  I would also just put, and just say, like, you know, look, if I if I came all this distance from another world, I'd be very curious about, I mean, some of the best people watching ever is in Times Square. It's on the Las Vegas Strip. Like, why are they showing up where we where we test our weapons?

• 1:24:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, in a blog in Mississippi, yeah.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  You know, they seem to be, they seem to be, and I'm not trying to be dismissive. Like I said, this is what, this is a subject that if you are a true space enthusiast, if you're excited about, you should want to know, you should be excited about. So I'm not being dismissive of any of the claims, I'm just saying that they tend to seem to show up where we keep our naval ships and where we test our advanced weapon systems.

• 1:24:55Speaker 00

  You want to ask Imad's closing question here, Saleem?

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  Which one? I can't remember.

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  So, Imad asked, when we went to the moon, you know, the saying was, we went to the moon because it's hard. So what's the new organizing goal that, you know, keeps everybody reinvigorated? You know, you said before, Apollo had a singletarian mission, and now we're sort of spread out. Is there sort of one thread that pulls them all?

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and I think just in the same way that going to the moon was hard, all of the pioneering technology to get there had a direct benefit back here on Earth, the same is, I think, equally applicable. To me, this is all setting up for the day that astronauts plant the stars and stripes on Mars. We are going to the moon, and we are building a moon base, first and foremost, to master the skills to go to Mars. It's just as you said before, Peter, we've been given this gift of a moon, you know, three to four days away from us, to test out all of the capabilities from the space suits to the Eclus habitation, the physiological countermeasures for being in the harsh reality of space, for in-situ resource manufacturing, for propellant life support systems, to get

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  to Mars.

• 1:26:08Speaker 00

  Amazing. I hope everybody watching agrees with me that, you know, Jared is one of our most extraordinary administrators. Buddy, I have known many, I have never been more excited in my life for what NASA is going to be doing. Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for stepping into this role and really bringing all your entrepreneurial energy, your vision, your engineering, your science, your passion to this. Grateful so much.

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  Well, can I just reciprocate and say, thank you for your endless, extreme optimism in every one of the subjects that you take interest in, and every one of the companies you create, and where you choose to put your energies and resources are all for the betterment of humanity, and it's infectious. So, thank you, Peter.

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  Thank you, buddy. Thank you. On behalf of the Moonshot mates and everybody listening, awesome, can't wait to to watch your success next year, and thank you, administrator.

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  Thanks, guys. Take care.