Pascal Lee: Moon Bases, Mars Myths, and Android Astronauts

[upbeat music] My guest today is Pascal Lee. He's a planetary scientist at NASA, the SETI Institute, and the Mars Institute, and he spent his career actually studying what it would take to get humans to Mars. He was Carl Sagan's last teaching assistant. He spent an entire year living in Antarctica, and he recently discovered a volcano on Mars that may actually change where we would land. He's going to tell you that the Moon and the water and the other minerals there may not be the game changer that we think they are, and that we're gonna have to come up with other practical solutions.

And then again, when we go into space, will we be sending humans or will we be sending DNA? It's a fascinating discussion you won't wanna miss. Pascal Lee, welcome to The Puck. Thank you, Jim. Good to be here. So you've got a fascinating background, and one of the things I wanted to start with is how and when did you get interested in Mars and space? I think I was interested in science fiction first. When I was a kid, I, I couldn't get away from the TV with Star Trek and Lost in Space.

I sort of realized early that there was a bigger picture out there that I thought was very exciting to, to explore. I think as a teenager I read some formative books like, especially Carl Sagan's The Cosmic Connection. So he's, he's better known for Cosmos and, but this is a book that he wrote before he was completely world famous,

and it was a very personal book about his journey as a planetary scientist. So I think as a teenager I decided that planetary science is what I wanted to do, and, and that book is, is still wonderful. It's, uh, it's a good read, The Cosmic Connection. So Carl Sagan, it sounds like you studied before you were his teaching assistant? Well, teaching, being his teaching assistant, his last teaching assistant was, was, happened a lot later, but yeah, I grew up...

Uh, I was born in Hong Kong, spent my little childhood there. Then I grew up in France

in a boarding school from age eight on, but I, I still wasn't in a place where I could fulfill my dreams, I felt. I mean, France is a wonderful place for astronomy, but if you're interested in human space flight and human future in space, I, I had to somehow go to America. America, in my, in my mind was and is the place that, you know, sends people to the Moon and, and, uh, it's just an incredible

idea. So I, I came to America after doing some grad school, actually, in France. I got a master's in geology and geophysics,

and spent a year in Antarctica, actually, because at the time there was a draft in France and I, I wanted to do something interesting for it. So I applied for this one position that they had for a geologist each year there at the French base in Antarctica. So I landed that job, spent a, over a year actually at the, the French base wintering over. That was a life-changing experience, by the way. And then while I was in wintering over, I got this, uh, telex.

There was no email at the time. Got this telex from Cornell telling me that I was accepted in grad school there. So I, I joined Ithaca, New York in the next fall. Studied, um, I mean, got my PhD in planetary science, essentially in the Department of Astronomy, and my advisor was actually Joe Veverka, who was a post-doc of Carl's, but he was a wonderful advisor, Joe Veverka. He's retired now. But, uh, Carl was, of course, also around and, uh, ended up being his last TA, which was quite...

You know, for somebody who grew up in, who started off in Hong Kong in a place that's maybe the least astronomy oriented in the world, being a, an urban jungle in the tropics, I was, I was quite happy. Cool. Well, so let's circle back to Antarctica. You said it changed your life. How did it change your life? Well, Antarctica is like a different planet on our planet. It's covered in ice. I was at a base. We were isolated, remote.

I mean, I'd grown up in big cities, Hong Kong, Paris, and the next thing you know, I'm in Antarctica with not a lot of camping experience, actually, myself at first. But all of a sudden I was doing exactly what I was dreaming to do, which was to explore the world. And so here I was, dropped off in Antarctica with, with a team of, we were 31 in total.

But only guys at the time. The Antarctic program in France was not open to women. And also,

you know, I mean, this was again before the internet age, so we were allowed one message per week of 70 words max with our families. I mean, you know, it's not like the days of Shackleton or,

or Amundsen, but nevertheless, it was quite an isolating and remote experience. And so that was like living on a planet for a year, and I thought that, hey, that's exactly what I wanna do and what I want humanity to do more of on the Moon, Mars, and beyond someday. When you talk about living on the Moon, there's a lot of talk now, like a gold rush. People are talking about different minerals. They're talking about water.

I know you have some skepticism. So what's the truth about the Moon? Well, you know, we're returning to the Moon, which is a great thing. We're finally doing a Moon base, which is the right thing, because until now, until Jared Isaacman took office, the Moon, we were bound to essentially repeating what Apollo was doing, which was to land here, land there, and not really

upfront starting to build a base. At least now we're, we are on that track,

and I think that's a very important approach or strategy to establish yourself on a new world and, and really explore it thoroughly. So- You know, I had, like I said, I had this Antarctic base experience before, and I'm a big believer that a base is what you need to, to establish a foothold and then, and then explore from there the rest of the, the continent or, or the rest of your moon.

But I think that what's very important as well in the choice of a base is location. In fact, the most three important- the three most important things are location, location, and location. It's just... You know, and right now,

our focus in the NASA Artemis program is on the south polar regions of the moon. And the reason why we're driven there is partly because of science. There is water ice at the poles of the moon. This water ice is very interesting scientifically. We wanna know where the ice comes from, how much there is of it. And also at the South Pole, there we are sort of sitting on the edge of a giant impact basin, so it's, it's bigger than...

An impact basin is even bigger than an impact crater. It's a huge, you know, several thousand kilometer wide punch in the crust of the moon, from an asteroid or from a large object in the past. Anyway, right there at the South Pole, we're straddling the rim of the South Pole-Aitken basin, it's called, uh, where we have a chance of collecting samples from the mantle of the moon, from, from the inside of the moon dating back to when the moon was very young.

Okay? So it's a scientifically interesting place potentially. But

what people I think don't realize is sort of two things. One is how difficult the lunar south polar regions are in terms of terrain and lighting conditions and temperatures to set up an effective exploring base that would allow you to access the rest of the moon. So that's a logistical dead end, in my view, to set up shop at the South Pole of the moon. And second, the amount of water that there is, which is sort of the other

reason why we're so interested in the South Pole, which is the, not the science, but the potential for resources. The wa- the amount of water at the South Pole of the moon is not that large.

I mean, you often hear advertised that,

you know, there's over 200,000 worth, I mean, swimming, Olympic swimming pool sized worth of water at the South Pole of the moon.

And that may be true, but

it's, it's scattered over a very large region. And in fact, if you look at the map of

water concentrations on the moon, which is essentially a map of hydrogen concentration in the soil of the moon within the top meter of the, the lunar soil, the lunar regolith, it's called, uh, you realize that in the areas that have the highest concentration of hydrogen, and therefore water,

only have 0.5 weight percent

of water equivalent hydrogen. Which means that if you excavate one metric ton of dirt

in this highest concentration area of water at the South Pole of the moon,

you would at most, if you're 100% efficient, extract five kilos

of water. So one hundred... one metric ton of dirt,

five kilos of water. Well, if you do the math to fill up a single Starship, because that's sort of the idea, right? You wanna get to the water as a resource because not only could you use the water for hydration, but the hope is to use water to break it down into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel.

Okay? So let's say you extract it with 100% efficiency all the water ice that is in the top meter of the soil of the moon, which is where we know it is, which is how deep we can see it. You would need to plow

an area that's equivalent to 24, almost 25 football fields and be 100% efficient at extracting all that water to fill one single Starship rocket.

All right. So, you know, there's a lot of... Therefore, there's a lot of wishful thinking here in, in thinking that the water ice at the moon, at the South Pole of the moon... And by the way, there's more at the South Pole than the North Pole, so the, the problem's even worse at the North Pole. There's a lot of wishful thinking there about using the water ice

as a resource down the road. And real- you know, the reality of, of the universe is cruel. It's, it's indifferent to what we want it to be. You know, we have this notion that somehow we wanna live off the land, like, you know, old explorers used to do. They were on Earth. That's a very different thing. There are lots of fundamentals that are covered, like the atmosphere being breathable and, you know, liquid water being running, at least in most places.

This is, it's possible that the water ice at the South Pole of the moon will remain forever just a scientific curiosity, not something that is economically viable to extract. And this goes back to the location.

Where this water is,

is in places on the moon either, that, that are either never receiving sunlight, okay, so there are areas of the South Pole and North Pole that are called permanently shadowed regions, PSRs. So in a PSR, you never see the disc of the sun. You're in the polar regions of the moon, so the sun is either grazing or sunlight is either grazing or below the horizon. And the South Pole of the moon is actually very mountainous, so there's a lot of shadowing going on.

And, and so there are places that never see the disc of the sun, and in, in those places, the temperature remains year-round at about

40 to 50 Kelvin in temperature. I mean, that is essentially minus 300 Fahrenheit or so.

That is the temperature of the surface of Pluto.

All right.

We don't have robots, let alone allowing humans to go into places with such temperatures- Wow ... that can operate mechanically Uh, at those temperatures. I mean, we've sent deep space probes like Voyager 1 and New Horizons past Pluto, but, but they don't have moving parts anymore that are really needing to be lubricated at those temperatures. They, they just, you know, spin around, move their cameras by moving the whole body of the spacecraft with some, some jet fuel, some rocket fuel.

So first of all, we don't have the robotics, not even close, to operate at those kinds of temperatures. Second, this is a really extreme environment and, and it's not like the areas that are not permanently shadowed are constantly sunlit.

The vast majority of the areas of the south polar moon,

regardless of whether they are permanently shadowed or not permanently shadowed, receive very little sunl- sunlight year-round. And in fact, it's, it's of order, uh, in, in most places you see about 15 to 25% of solar illumination during the rest of the year. And that is really very low to operate in. I mean, if you imagine a crew there, you know, your landscape around you will be pitch black most of the time with some slivers of sunlight on the hilltops.

That is a difficult environment to explore. And we don't even know where to go exactly to explore, to extract the water ice at the south polar moon. I mean, there are some candidate locations where we can see some concentrations of hydrogen,

but setting up shop there with humans to me makes no sense whatsoever at this point. What we should be focusing on, especially in the context of a competition with China,

is to set up a base at a much more friendly location, much more predictable in lighting, much more easy to operate in,

so that we can explore from that location the rest of the Moon. And in fact, if you look at the strategy of the United States in Antarctica,

you know, we have a big base at McMurdo, which is,

turns out to be an interesting spot, but it's not why we are there. We are there because it's logistically a relatively easy place to access to set up shop.

And from there, once you've established a base

or if you were sort of thinking in military terms a, a beachhead, you then fan out to explore the rest of the continent, and what you need for that is sort of good vehicles that allow you to do that. C-130s. Same thing with, I think, that sort of the same strategy should be applied to the Moon. We should be setting up shop in a place that's easy to operate in, easy to access,

where lighting is friendly, et cetera, et cetera. And then, uh, sure, we continue to explore the south pole of the Moon, look for water ice, but we do that with robots. Robots are supposed to address the four Ds. It's either too dirty for us, too dangerous for humans, too, too dull for humans to do, I mean, too boring.

That's why we have robotic orbiters around planets, not, not people taking pictures. And finally, too dear, too expensive to do by, with humans, and cheaper with robots, okay? So well, all four Ds are met at the south pole of the Moon.

And if the concern is, well, you know, we really have to be there to occupy the location, otherwise China is gonna go there, well,

we, we have something called the Outer Space Treaty,

which already says, and China's a signatory, so is the United States, which already says that if you have any asset at any location on the Moon, all of a sudden you establish a perimeter around that, which is not defined quantitatively, but there's a perimeter around that where other nations should not be doing stuff,

uh, to protect and, and keep undisturbed the first landing at that location. So therefore, if we are concerned about occupying the south pole, well, we can do that much more efficiently with robotic missions, multiply them, and then we're covered,

uh, you know. Uh, so, so this notion of somehow being there in person with people, and it's not like we're gonna be very efficient there. Artemis IV, which is the, now the first Moon landing, envisions having two people walk on the Moon for six days,

just a few hours a day, venturing no more than a few kilometers from your landing site, okay? I mean, you know, and re- meanwhile, we're struggling with this new Moon spacesuit, which is coming along, will, will, will happen, but it's a complex spacesuit because there are lots of requirements placed on it. It has to be much more beefy than the Apollo spacesuit. It has to have much more safety redundancies. Anyway, the message...

But still, it's gonna be really facing a huge challenge to be operated at Pluto temperatures. You know, when we're in Earth orbit, and we go into the shadow of the Earth every 90 minutes for 45 minutes, you know, the temperatures plummet, but

the spacesuit is still warm. And by the time it exits the shadow of the Earth into sunlight, you know, we're, we're back to being baking in the sun. But, you know, in these permanently shadowed regions, you spend more than

45 minutes in them, you are, you're basically...

Well, first of all, the temperatures in those regions are colder than in the shadow of the Earth. But second, uh, you know, you're, you're in deep trouble,

and it's gonna be very limiting to have humans do work there. So anyway, I think there's a conflation right now between

wanting to set up a mining operation if and w- when we do find water that's economically viable to extract, if that ever happens,

versus setting up an exploration base, which is really what we wanna be doing to explore the rest of the Moon,

conquer, so to speak, the rest of the Moon and, and occupy it. So not to mention the science that you can do, of course, with all, with, with a setup like that.

You know, and the other, there are other arguments that are somehow being branded to go to the south pole of the moon like, okay, so there are peaks of permanent sunlight, you could have solar panels there that could power your base. But

first of all, solar panels is not a way to go for powering a base. A base is very demanding in power. Solar panels, you need a solar farm to produce the power that's needed, and, and meanwhile, at the base you have Starships landing every Tuesday, which are kicking up a huge amount of dust onto your solar panels. It's gonna be a nightmare to, to maintain in practice, okay? So solar panels is not the way to go. And sure enough, NASA has already decided to go nuclear for powering a base on the moon, which is of course a good thing.

So,

so if you're going nuclear, then you don't need the solar panel

farm to power your base. You might still use, want solar panels to power this and that element, but that's very different from powering your base with that.

Well, I mean, there, there's just no good arguments that, that withstand the logic of how you should set up an exploration base versus a, a mining operation. And, you know, the other thing to realize is that

I said whe- if and when it's ever economically viable to extract water ice, okay, from the south pole of the moon. Well, what's the alternative? The alternative was to bring it to the moon from the Earth. Now, there's practically an infinite amount of water on the Earth. To first order, it's the water planet.

Okay, there's more ocean area than there's land area on the Earth,

and a single landing of a Starship could bring 125 metric tons

of water from the Earth. I'm talking clean, purified water from, you know, Fiji or Evian, from the Alps, okay, to the surface of the moon. It would now be sitting in a water tower with a tap at the bottom of the rocket. I mean, you could have 125 metric tons of water, which you would recycle and use multiple times,

any way you want at the surface of the moon without all the complexities of extracting it at 50 kelvin, transporting it, the cost of that to places where you can actually operate and want to explore from. So there's a real bandwagon of groupthink right now about extracting water on the moon that is driving the location of this base that to me makes no sense, and I'm doing everything I can to sort of

move us away from the south poles, from any poles,

with regards to setting up this base. And Pascal, as I'm hearing you talk about this, y- you're passionate about it, and I'm also listening and hearing a little bit of a concern. So one question I have is if we keep fumbling like this, are you concerned that China's gonna clean our clock, so to speak? Well, China's been talking about establishing a base as well, including collaborating with the Russians on that, which

I don't, I'm not worried about anymore because the Russians are really far behind in terms of their technology for space.

So China's really the, the main driver here.

China's very pragmatic. I mean, they've done things very efficiently, systematically,

skipping a lot of the steps that matured our own space program. I'm not worried about China other than the fact that my guess is that they're not actually gonna set up their base at the south pole of the moon,

and in spite of some claims to the contrary. They are already landing robotic missions at the South Pole. This year China's supposed to launch Chang'e 7,

which

they say will be landing, you know, on the southern rim of Shackleton Crater. Well, if you look at what the southern rim of Shackleton Crater is, that's the south pole of the moon. So they're sort of

avoiding,

uh, drawing attention to the south pole, so to speak. But they- that's where they're landing, and what that means is that once landed, they will occupy the south, the, their landing site, and there'll be a perimeter around them where nobody else is supposed to go unless they,

they would disturb them. But I can see where that would really lead NASA and the Defense Department, and the big powers to wanna be there as well, I mean, from an ego perspective and also a practical perspective. Right, which is why the, you know, robotic means to conquer the cold,

permanently shadowed or mostly shadowed regions of the South Pole and the North Pole is a real strategic asset to push for.

Cryorobots. And how are our robots doing compared to China? I mean, I know they have a bigger manufacturing capacity, but are we, you know, and with what Elon Musk is now doing with robots, is that part of the reason there's such a push to robotics right now? There's a bigger picture to that, right? Because we're in- indeed entering an era where robotics, especially humanoid robots, are making strides, and of course I have some thoughts about that.

But, but in terms of just the robotic capability, I mean, China and the US are

really very competitive with each other in terms of the maturity in their robotics and the know-how.

You know, which makes China a real threat. I mean, it's a real, it's a live competition that is still in progress as to who dominates robotics ultimately and does the best robots.

But definitely China is up there, but the US I think is still ahead in a lot of ways. But, you know, again, we have

with robotics the right means to occupy the south pole of the moon and the north pole of the moon if that is the concern, to be there, if not before competition. Humans, I think there's a longer term and a bigger picture there, and my concern with the base at the south pole of the moon or even wasting any of our initial assets to setting up a base at the south pole of the moon- Is that we'll start accumulating assets on the moon for human exploration that are in the wrong place to really explore the rest of the moon properly.

And again, most important decision to make about the moon base is location, location, location. Yeah. And you wanna be in a place that's a lot more friendly, uh, easy to operate, easy to access, easy to maintain, in better visibility of the Earth with better lighting. All of this can be secured if you just set up your base at the edge of the South Pole, but in places where you have your typical 14 days of daylight on the moon, followed by 14 days of night.

14 days of night sounds like bad news, but it's actually pretty good. It allows you to get a break. You're powered by nuclear power anyway, so you have power. So we've talked about real estate, and again, location, location, location. So now let's talk about kind of the economics and practically what's actually going on. So for instance, SpaceX, and you look at the recent public offering and you look at what's going on.

How does that technology, how is what Elon Musk doing, how does that change the equation? Elon fundamentally is chasing Mars. SpaceX admittedly explains itself as a company designed to send humans to Mars. The Starship is something that

could be actually useful in terms of its design scaling to get humans to Mars, although it assumes that you can make fuel at the other end to come back, 'cause otherwise it gets to Mars empty.

But it's not at all designed to land and occupy efficiently the lunar surface.

Maybe at some stage when we have an infrastructure on the moon, it becomes sort of the way to get a lot of cargo to the moon. But for now, it's this behemoth that by the time it lands on the moon, it's out of fuel, or at least very low on fuel, and it can make it up to the surface only if it leaves the Earth's orbit full of fuel, which is a big problem, because in order for it to do that, it has to be refueled. So a Starship, in the current scenario to land on the moon, has to be launched into orbit first, and then it has to refuel, which takes multiple other Starships carrying just fuel to refill it.

Once the Starship that's gonna go to the moon is full of fuel,

it flies to the moon,

and then it waits

while the fuel slowly escapes, because it's hard to contain cryogenic fuels

in tanks just in open space like that.

So then a crew launches from the Earth on a SLS rocket, which is this multi-billion dollar giant rocket that we have. Beautiful rocket, but can only be used once at a time. Just like the Artemis II astronauts flew around the moon lately, that same rocket and same cabin would take astronauts to the moon, where they would not land, but would rendezvous with a Starship that is full of fuel but also venting fuel.

So the timing of this has to be very well coordinated. And then the Starship lands on the moon.

It still has fuel on board because it sort of got there with quite a bit of fuel left. It launches back from the moon, and by then it's almost empty of fuel. The crew transfers back in lunar orbit from the Starship to the Orion module,

and the Orion module flies back to the Earth, okay? Just like we did with Artemis recently.

So it's a very complex scenario. I mean, compared to the Apollo program, where what we were landing on the moon was tiny, and therefore all of this could fit in a single giant rocket. In the Starship scenario, we're landing something gigantic on the moon, which is oversized for what we need, at least at first, therefore makes any single mission to the moon extremely complex with refueling in space, which by the way, has never been done before.

Has yet to be done. Starship is, is just not ideal for initial exploration of the moon like this. And then the other contender to going to the moon for NASA is Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, the MK2 lander.

And the Blue Moon lander is much smaller than the Starship, so that's good news. But it still needs to be refueled, except the scenario's a little different. You refuel in lunar orbit for that one. But still, you have to carry the fuel from the Earth there, and before it can carry fuel to the Earth, it has to refuel in orbit around the Earth as well.

Not quite as much as Starship needs because it's smaller than Starship, but still not a single launch to the moon and come back like Apollo was. So we're faced with some very complex systems that are devised by the commercial sector for a brighter future in space, but that are really not optimal for

getting us back quickly to the moon in a very efficient way. They're sort of predicated on some sort of a regime where we would have assets on the moon, fuel depots, and in that context they would be more efficient and would make more sense. Right now, they are liabilities, because China's going the very efficient way to the moon. You're, you're covering a lot of ground, and at the end of the day, this is, you know, hugely important in terms of where the world is going.

When I visualize going to the moon, you know, I look back, as you said, to these smaller capsules. When you talk about, you know, billions of dollars for this rocket and you're talking about landing something, a Starship that's huge, I, I'm not visualizing what you're talking about. So for instance, let's break it down. Have we built this multi-billion, you use the term billion dollar rocket yet, and have we tested it, or is that still in development?

Yes. The SLS has been built and tested. It has cost taxpayers multi-billion dollars, okay? I think it's a magnificent rocket.

I think that we should go ahead with maturing the later generations of this rocket, which would be actually big enough.

Once they are matured and built to actually get us to the moon quickly in one l- rocket launch, but also could be used to get humans to Mars in a sort of non-Starship scenario, but at least good for initial mission. So in my view, the SLS rocket that NASA has built,

as opposed to letting private companies do whatever they want, the SLS rocket is built to NASA specs, but it's very expensive. It has already flown twice,

once uncrewed, and the second time very recently crewed, in other words, with a cabin containing astronauts, and that- Right ... was the Artemis II mission. Got it. This SLS rocket is beautiful, expensive, and also not reusable, unfortunately. Of this lined up, and I wish that NASA would pursue those because those would really be a very important asset for us. I'm still trying to visualize this. So this big rocket, right, it, that's gonna, that's launched into space is gonna start taking equipment and people to build this base on the moon, and you said when it lands, it's gonna be a lot bigger than the capsules that we use for the Apollo missions.

I can visualize the space shuttle. I've seen it in person. How big is this landing, you know, capsule that we're talking about? The Starship is a gigantic rocket, right? It lands pretty much... What lands on the moon is pretty much what you see atop the Starship launch. It's a, it's, it's a, it's a behemoth of a rocket. It's towering several hundred feet above the ground. It's the Starship moon lander, or HLS, human landing system, which is just Starship intended for the moon, is a huge rocket, unnecessarily large for initial return, for our initial return to the moon.

Although, once we have an infrastructure going and maybe a base construction going, it could actually be useful, but it requires multiple refueling flights before it can do a single flight to the moon,

and we're talking about not four or five refueling flights. Apparently, it's between 8 and 12. Is it bigger than the space shuttle? I mean, how big is this? Yes. Yes, the Starship is bigger than the space shuttle. We're now up to 10 launches of this thing. Uh, it has yet to achieve Earth orbit.

It's been doing suborbital flights, so it launches from Texas and eventually splashes down in the Indian Ocean typically. Uh, so that's what's been done multiple times now. I mean, it's a magnificent rocket, but this gigantic

booster that sort of rides at the top, which is the Starship, is a huge thing to land on the moon. And, and again, it can ma- cannot make it to the moon in one launch. Once it's in Earth orbit, it has to be refueled eight to 12 times. Uh, no, I get the logistics. You're ta- Yeah. It, it, it's... I get that we're not there yet, but once we get there, if we get there, the, th- this Starship, like, I, you know, the Jupiter 2 was, was, um, lost in space, and then we have the Enterprise for Star Trek.

I mean, how big is this, is this spacecraft we're talking about? It's several hundred feet long. It's larger than a Boeing 747. It's a massive, it's a massive rocket. I mean, you can see pictures of it where human beings are dwarfed next to this thing. Uh, it's a magnificent rocket, and don't, I hope nobody's getting me wrong on this. I have complete admiration for what SpaceX is achieving in terms of launching large payloads to, to, to space.

It's just that where it becomes sort of the, the wrong horse is when NASA somehow wants to promote commercial,

you know, partnerships and commercial enterprise in space, contracts a company that is building a rocket that is really not designed for what we need in the short term to get to the moon. So what I'm hearing, Pascal, is that there is a space race, and whether or not it's

for defensive purposes or offensive purposes or finding helium and different things, that China is going about this in a more practical way, and in the same way that drones kind of are out maneuvering, you know, $30 million aircraft, it sounds like you're a little concerned that our, our institutions are not being practical, and we may build these aircraft carriers that can get taken out by a drone, and that China's gonna get much further ahead of us because we're, we're, we're not being practical.

That's a good analogy, Jim.

It's not so much that we're not practical because I think quite a few people would see the logic of all this. What, what happens is there's a lot of inertia in the space program. In other words, it takes years and billions in funding to mature any system. It's easy for me to say, "Well, we should switch from this to that." It will take a few years to do that, and nobody wants to be in, in transition. Everybody wants to be doing ac- you know, is action-oriented, wants to see moon landings happen faster.

But I tend to think that we are,

we're very efficient when it comes to tactics with what we have, but we're not very good at strategy, and that could have to do with just how we're structured constitutionally. I mean, you know, we have four-year presidential terms, eight years at best. We have Congress that's only elected for a few years at a time. It's not very efficient for a long-term systematic approach to, to a space program, which requires continuity, strategic thinking.

You know, I mean, China, for all its shortcomings from a sort of a, a way of life standpoint and a regime standpoint, has the benefit of

long-term strategy,

and that is something that we really have to be mindful of.

And I th- I'm in some ways very happy that NASA is, to a large degree-

Decouple from politics, you know, in general and what it does. But at the same time, there's some big decisions that

should have been made or should not have been made in recent years that are really affecting how, how we're sort of set up now.

And I still think that it's a good... Now that we're starting a moon base, which is a new thing, okay, and a long-term thing, that we should really be very strategic about that.

And

while when we were in the mode of thinking Artemis should first go to the Moon by landing here, landing there, landing here, all of those spots where we would land were near the South Pole

for very short-term human exploration, and then eventually build a m- moon base. That was sort of the strategy before. The new strategy now is we gotta get a moon base going as fast as possible. So that is actually the right decision, but we're still stuck with the same locations. I understand we're stuck with location, but I am trying to understand the timeline, 'cause we wanna see where the puck is going, and, you know, whether or not you invest in SpaceX or there's other companies you can invest in that are gonna take advantage of all this.

Another factor that I'm trying to understand is

are we gonna be able to actually get this base established in the near future, or do we really have a problem? Because you talk about all these refueling challenges and the size of the rockets, and at, at the end I'm left nervous, are we gonna actually be able to do this? We ought to be able to do this because the more infrastructure we set up on the Moon, the more it will be

easy to do these missions. But ultimately, we need a different rocket

to reduce the number of flights to the Moon, to, to, to reduce the number of refueling flights, to allow us to get large payloads to the Moon. And that rocket is sort of not quite being pushed yet as hard as it needs to because it won't be ready in the next few years. I think part of what's really the problem

is that there is an obsession right now with beating China back to the Moon.

And, you know, to me,

getting humans to the Moon is a battle that has already been fought and won by the United States 50 years ago. There's no need to relitigate that,

and in fact to, to somehow say that we need to get humans back to the Moon before China does is not the right race that we should be engaged in, and it's not the one that matters. Now,

it could be that, you know, w- whoever is leading our space program, sort of in a broad sense, c- including Congress, uh, is aware that, you know, that's a battle we fought and won before, and that w- really what we're trying to do here is to, to stimulate the space program to get to the Moon as fast as possible. But the claim is that we have to somehow make it back to the Moon before China, and that, in my view, sets us up for, number one, relitigating a battle that was already won, and second, it sets us up for failure potentially, because China has a lot...

a, a way to return to the Moon, to go to the Moon that's a lot more efficient, and requires fewer launches to, to achieve right now.

When in fact the real race that we should be engaged in and declare as our race should be to be the first to establish permanent presence on the Moon, in other words, a base.

And that, of course, would be longer term for both the US and Mars, but it would defuse this rush to use all these existing assets, which are really not efficient to get us to the Moon quickly.

And by the way, they're super risky scenarios.

I mean, Starship has yet to fly any human on board. It's a, it's not a human-rated rocket. The Blue Origin moon lander is not a human-rated

rocket. This hopefully will be

changed sometime next year when both Starship and Blue Origin are supposed to launch their moon landing rockets in Earth orbit, and for humans in Earth orbit to sort of try them out and,

you know, dock with them, et cetera. But until then, we're talking about systems that are not human-rated. The SLS rocket, NASA's giant rocket, is human-rated. It's flown twice, and once with people.

It's super expensive, but in my view, we should do more with that rocket, and if we're really intent on winning a race here, we should do more with that rocket, build its next generation versions as fast as possible, and have a real capability that will allow us to get to the Moon with large payloads and land them efficiently with fewer refueling flights if... I actually sympathize with Administrator Jared Isaacman, because he's sort of caught

with a particular, you know, set of cards

and is doing the best he can, but everything is sort of focusing on the next few years, you know, the administration's term and to try to get some major things done at the Moon, when in fact what we really need is some good strategic thinking and some decision-making that are longer term to win this race against China for long-term presence on the Moon. I understand, I mean, again, our political system versus their political system that's more dictatorial and doesn't have the same kind of political challenges that we have.

We have real competition right now, and it's gonna be interesting to see how that all plays out. Figuring into that, though, you do have Elon Musk, who is very determined to get to Mars, and h- how much... I mean, is there room for optimism because he's going to continue to have the ear of NASA and that we're gonna ultimately get practical here? I think Elon has gotten lately more excited about the Moon and has been willing to put Mars on pause,

mainly because he does realize that, you know, he can't just quite go to Mars alone and needs a few more systems to get matured before he's ready for the Mars show. And meanwhile, he likes the idea of a moon base.

So, I mean, you know, his, his philosophy, so to speak, is about making humanity a multi-planet species. Okay, so all right, let's, let's start with the moon. It's not a planet, but it's off world, so let's get humanity established on the moon. He's seeing some things that are of interest to him in the establishment of a moon base.

I'm not entirely sure that when Elon talks about a moon base, that he's talking about NASA's Artemis moon base. I think Elon likes the idea of setting up a moon base and a human settlement on the moon that, that would grow. There are other things he's interested in about the moon, is creating a, a magnetic linear... a mass driver, okay? A, a mass driver, which is a, a way of launching stuff from the moon using accelerating electromagnets, uh, that could launch things into lunar orbit and allow you to, to then move things around in space efficiently.

So there's some technology that he's interested in, and in that sense, I think he's gonna put in his best effort to, to get us to the moon as well.

But yeah, this... If you take a sort of a snapshot at this minute of what's going on, we've lost a giant launch pad lately with this big explosion of a, of a New Glenn rocket, which is a Blue Origin rocket at the Cape. We're still not launching Starships into low Earth orbit, let alone testing refueling. We have a scenario that involves refueling multiple times regardless of who we go with, Blue Origin or Star- SpaceX.

Meanwhile, China's making, you know, one step at a time, inching closer to getting humans to the moon with a very lean and mean approach, if only it's sort of old style,

almost Apollo style, but with, with modern technology. I mean, you know, it's a difference between an old BM- I mean, a Volkswagen and a, and a modern one. You know, and so China is,

is, is going the Apollo approach, but with some very modern systems for their moon missions. And so I wouldn't be surprised if China got to the moon before Americans are able to get back and land on the surface. But to me, that is not important, not nearly as important as setting ourselves up correctly to build a moon base in the right place, and with the right rockets to do that. And so as long as we're chasing this return to the moon thing, which is a very short-term issue, we're postponing the, the good strategy for later.

I think the takeaway for me is location, location, location, and you know, that the long way may be the short way, and that ultimately we really have to come up with a practical way to establish a base on the moon, and that we can have all these great intentions and complexity, but at the end of the day, if a drone on a string is very hard to shoot down and can take out a $100 million

plane or ship, you know, at the end of the day we need to be practical here, and you're gonna push the government and Congress and leaders, so to speak, to really, really focus on what's gonna work as opposed to kinda some fancy high in the sky thing. We need to really get down to strategy and be practical. I usually have a very positive message in my talks, but I really appreciate the opportunity here to, to not be a naysayer, but just to really try to shake us up in terms of seeing what's flawed here in our, in our strategy.

No amount of engineering can fix a bad concept. We can't reverse engineer here our strategy. We're sort of stuck with what we have, and it takes... It's tough to basically cut our losses and, and sort of start afresh when we're pursuing something that is as meaningless as being the first to return humans to the moon right now. And meanwhile, there's some sort of a big strategy at play that, that's in the slightly longer term.

Asco, it's interesting. Your timing, in a sense, could not be better because when you look at the debriefing that's gonna have to go on with respect to what's going on in the Middle East right now, the fact that, you know, we're using million-dollar, multi-million dollar missiles to shoot down $300 drones, I mean, I think you got a lot of people standing up and saying, "Wait a second," you know, "Is this practical?" And I know they've made a lot of changes and earmarked a lot of money, for instance, entrepreneurial to build drones.

We're like, "Hey," like, "We need to catch up to this." Maybe your message [chuckles] is now gonna be heard, and you gotta keep making it because you've got a perfect analogy, which is, look, I mean, we do not wanna win the battle and lose the war here. We've got to be practical. Very well said, Jim. You should've spoken first. That would have spared us a lot of time, and we could've spoken about other things. I think that we have a bright, exciting future on the moon.

Regardless of how rough the start is gonna be here of returning there, we have a very bright future on the moon. The moon is an exciting place. It has potential resources, but that needs to be verified and validated. But it has incredible vistas and scenery to explore, caves that are very mysterious and could contain ice in them and offer somehow shelter down the road for, for human assets at least, if not themselves.

The moon is also the,

the testing ground where we will get ourselves ready for Mars sort of in a big way. And then the moon is, is also, I think, open season for tourism. You know, just like Antarctica has remained mostly a continent for science

exploration, the one commercial activity that is booming in Antarctica is sort of tourism. And I see the same analogy here for the moon, where

once we have a base set up, you know, we... the base might share a common airport with a resort facility. That's sort of the commercial side of the thing, and also a, an industry park where people would be testing- ... robotics or perfecting pharmaceuticals. But the, the, the tourism resort would be really interesting. I mean, imagine having a sort of a enclosed space on the moon with a Olympic-sized swimming pool. Well, no, I mean, look, as you're talking about this, I'm ready to buy my timeshare.

I mean, I r- I'm working on a paper with a student on water sports on the moon, and it's just incredible. I mean, think of a swimming pool on the moon, okay, where you could jump from the top, top highest dive board, you know, where I never go because it's too scary, but you could soft land on the surface of the wa- of the pool and do all this in lunar gravity, which is one-sixth of what it is on the Earth. It sounds like we're talking about bungee jumping without a bungee cord.

You could almost do that, yes. Yes, exactly, and you would s- soft land and enter the water very gently. So it sounds like from the perspective of Disneyland Japan, you know, it sounds like Disney really should be thinking about its next resort. Yes, I think so. I mean, Disney might actually have the means to, you know, partner, I don't know, with SpaceX or something to, to build the, the first human resort on the moon and push on those items of activities that would really make people wanna go.

Well, and with the younger generation sometimes pretty angry with the boomers, maybe we could start building retirement, you know, communities [laughs] up there, too. It is unimaginable. I mean, when you think about the Louisiana Purchase, I mean, the fact that we are literally talking about location, location, location, which is what everyone learns when they study real estate in terms of, you know, w- in what, what block in Manhattan do you wanna own, so to speak, the fact that we're now talking about location, location, location in a legitimate way on the moon is, is just amazing.

I mean, the w- Yes ... how quickly things are changing. In fact, it really brings it home. It's interesting you say that because in 2015, NASA convened the very first workshop ever for scientists and engineers to propose landing sites on Mars, and to me, that remains the kickoff of humans actually going to Mars. Until then, it was just, uh, paper studies, view graphs, PowerPoints. But in 2015, when we started to start thinking about where would we land on Mars if we went there, that to me made it about location, location, location, and therefore made it real, real estate.

Look, you go back to Star Trek and Lost in Space, and you think about

the evolution of consciousness and wh- where Gene Roddenberry was and what he was able to envision, and you think about when human consciousness can conceive of something, when we can create a word, right, to describe something, we literally change the universe. And in our lifetime, right, we're literally witnessing going to outer space in a realistic way where we could expand the whole notion of mankind, and whether or not you ...

Th- th- this next generation is gonna live through some unbelievable change. I mean, we should also expect to see androids with artificial intelligence pervade our lives on Earth intimately,

and to the point where

they will also have a role to play in the opening of the space frontier. And I can actually see that as being one of the most underestimated concepts for our future in space, which is that it will, we'll be sending a lot of android astronauts into space. They don't need to be fed. They don't need oxygen to breathe. They don't need to have waste disposed of. They obey, at least we hope, and they can work 24/7. They just need to be recharged.

Danger, Will Robinson. I mean, the robot in Lost in Space, and then you look at the robots in Star Trek, in, in Data, the, the, you know, the android. That's right. What's fascinating is in our lifetime, right, we've gone to these fantasy television shows that were just ideas in the minds of these creators, and now 50, 75 years later, it's becoming a reality. Yep.

Everything is in Star Trek if you look carefully. No, I mean, it, it's, it is ab- abs- absolutely. The, the, the, the, the ... When you go back to, again, how Gene Roddenberry saw things, and, and even today, like, people are so worried about AI replacing humans and what are we gonna do, and talking about universal income and all these other things. And even, even in that capacity, Gene Roddenberry

envisioned this kind of world where people could be explorers and where a lot was done by machines, but instead of that being bad, we could use it to really enjoy and, and, a- and expand our consciousness and have that wonder and awe that comes from exploring the stars. Yeah. I completely agree, Jim. I share your positive vision about this. In fact, every now and then I get questions about, you know, "Aren't you worried about AI and our future?" And I think we have to be mindful, of course, where AI is headed and what it can do for us.

But the answer to me in terms of our jobs as humans and job security is that we have to be adaptable. Gone, in fact, already now are the days where you hold the same job for your entire career, uh, and it's gonna become even more true with AI. You, you have to be adaptable and willing to, to change in order to survive. And so

that's always been true in nature, but it's even more true sort of in a, sort of within a generation now.

That's the secret to, to being okay. And so I think most people will, once they realize they just need to be flexible and adaptable, they, they will worry less about AI taking their jobs. Absolutely. Cha- change is scary, but we gotta keep moving forward. Pascal, this was wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today, and I'm not gonna forget to remind people, when we think of space, think location, location, location.

Thank you. Thank you, Jim. It's great talking with you. Thank you. Okay.

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