Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin salutes the US flag on the lunar surface, July 20, 1969. Image source: NASA.

Look At Me!

Buzz Aldrin showed up at the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills thinking he was about to be interviewed by a Japanese film company about his moon mission.1

As he approached the hotel, Aldrin was ambushed by a conspiracy theorist who accused Buzz of faking the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969.

I won’t name the conspiracy theorist, because attention is what he sought, and continues to seek to this day.

On that Monday afternoon, September 9, 2002, the attention seeker had his own camera crew filming as he harassed Aldrin. Video showed that he demanded Aldrin swear on a bible. He told Aldrin to repent. Buzz finally had enough and threw a punch at the man.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined to file charges. The deputy assigned the case concluded that the theorist had provoked Aldrin into hitting him.2

The theorist claims to have harassed other Apollo astronauts with his swear-on-the-bible schtick.3

Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes

Moon landing deniers began seeking attention soon after the moon missions ended with Apollo 17 in December 1972.

One of the earliest deniers was Bill Kaysing, who was a technical writer for Rocketdyne, the company that built the engines for the Saturn V stages. (Kaysing is deceased, which is why I’m naming him.) In 1976, he self-published a 76-page document called, We Never Went to the Moon.4 It’s a casserole of conspiracy theories baked by his own ad hominen accusations and disbeliefs. Why were the moon landings a hoax? Because he believed they were a hoax — and set out to find “evidence” backing his assertions.

In the science biz, this is known as confirmation bias — interpreting evidence to fit existing beliefs. There’s no peer review by independent experts.

The conspiracy theory business went big-time in the 1970s as the US public began to question the findings of the Warren Commission, which concluded that President John F. Kennedy had been slain by a lone assassin. On March 27, 1975, Geraldo Rivera’s late night show Good Night America aired a documentary about the Kennedy assassination. It was the first telecast of the Zapruder film, a home movie that inadvertently captured the assassination. Rivera had in the studio “experts” such as theorist Mark Lane, who had published one of the earliest conspiracy books about the assassination.5

The conspiracy theories led to the US House of Representatives forming a select committee to investigate the slayings of Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. Their report, released on March 29, 1979, concluded that although Oswald had fired the three shots, acoustic evidence suggested there were additional shots by a second gunman. (The “acoustic evidence” was debunked three years later by the National Academy of Sciences.) The committee believed that “circumstantial evidence” suggested James Earl Ray acted as part of a conspiracy but no physical evidence existed to prove it.6

If the US government got their assassination conclusions wrong, could they also be wrong about the lunar landings?

And so began an industry to profit off denying what we’d all witnessed with our own eyes on television the evening of July 20, 1969. Apparently Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, Jules Bergman, and legions of US and foreign press were all witting dupes in convincing we gullible Americans that the billions spent on the Apollo program over three administrations were intended to play one giant cosmic practical joke on us.

One early example is the 1977 film Capricorn One, about a faked NASA Mars mission. The movie was one of many “disaster” thrillers produced in the 1970s starring “name” actors and athletes; this one had O.J. Simpson in its cast, to the producers’ everlasting regret.7

The 2001 Fox TV program “Did We Land on the Moon?” Original video source: Internet Archive.

On February 15, 2001, the Fox TV network aired a Conspiracy Theory episode titled, “Did We Land on the Moon?” An April 9, 2001 USA Today guest column by film critic Michael Medved lambasted the program, calling it a “shameless promotion of public paranoia.”8 He called the program’s so-called experts “a constellation of ludicrously marginal and utterly uncredentialed ‘investigative journalists.’”

Opinion polls conducted in 1995 by Time/CNN and Gallup in 1999 found that only six percent believed the US government “faked” or “staged” the moon landings.9 But that’s still roughly more than 15 million people — equivalent to the number of viewers Medved estimated had watched the program.

The number of deniers has slowly increased over the years. A 2019 SatelliteInternet.com poll found that 10% of respondents believed the moon landings were faked.10 (The article did not disclose the polling methodology.) A 2021 poll by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire found that 12% believed “NASA did not land on the moon,” while 71% disagreed and 19% were unsure.11

By the way, the Carsey poll also found that 10% of respondents believed Earth is flat, while another 9% were unsure. Yikes.

Facts and Fictions

If you’re a regular reader of this virtual fishwrap, you know I worked for ten years as a communicator at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Communicators present education lectures, lead public and private tours, and escort the retired astronaut speaker of the day.

It was very rare to encounter a moon landing denier. It was very common to be asked by the public how to deal with the deniers.

The first time I was asked the latter, I replied, “I just walk away and deny them the attention they crave.” That response earned me a rousing applause from my audience. I thought, “Well, that must be the right answer.”

And that’s the policy I followed until I retired in 2021.

No matter how much evidence you present, deniers will deny. It’s a game with them. The evidence isn’t good enough, it’s faked, I’m lying, or they’ll come up with some new whataboutism until you finally give up from exhaustion, so they can claim victory. They’re not worth the time.

You may have encountered such people, or you may have legitimate questions yourself. Let’s visit some of the more common allegations and how they can be debunked.

“I Don’t Believe It”

Some people can’t provide you with specifics. They simply choose not to believe it. They can’t tell you why.

In the 57 years since the Apollo 11 landing, not one person has come forward with evidence that they were bribed to fake something. No “evidence” has surfaced that has survived credible peer view by qualified experts.

If the landings were “faked” on a sound stage, why hasn’t one person who worked on those productions stepped forward? Where was the sound stage? Isn’t there a rental receipt? Why hasn’t one cameraman, one lighting technician, one effects person come forward to expose the fraud?

Why didn’t the Soviet Union step forward to say it was fake? To the contrary, the Soviet newspaper Pravda on July 22, 1969 reported “the first lunar expedition.”

We cannot help but admire the courage and endurance of the astronauts who bravely faced the unknown.

A variant of this is that the Soviets were willing participants in the conspiracy — an allegation with no actual evidence to support it.

“The Launches Were Faked”

Upwards to a million people came to Brevard County to watch the Apollo launches.12 Were they part of the conspiracy?

Lots of people filmed the launches with their 8mm cameras. You can find their home movies on YouTube.

More typical is the allegation that the rockets somehow crashed downrange, as did the astronauts. Or perhaps they weren’t ever aboard, even though the multitudes at the press site saw them get into the spacecraft. Is there not one sailor willing to step forward with a picture of his warship retrieving the crew from the ocean? Crickets.

“The Physics Don’t Work”

Of course they do.

The physics for such a mission were worked out long ago.

In his 1865 science fiction novel From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne posited that a crewed mission would take 97 hours and 20 minutes. Verne wasn’t far off; it took Apollo 11 about 76 hours to achieve an elliptical lunar orbit. The launch site was in Florida, although it was near Tampa, not Brevard County.13 A Kent State physics major concluded, “it is clearly impressive just how close Jules Verne came to today’s more precise measurements.”14

Russian physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky worked it out in 1903, although British mathematician William Moore had the basics in 1810. Tsiolkovsky even suggested the use of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as a propellant, used by today’s Space Launch System, although he acknowledged that metallurgy needed to advance for this to be practical.15

Since warp drive doesn’t yet exist (another conspiracy theory), spacecraft need to rely on old-fashioned orbital mechanics. The principles go back to an Isaac Newton thought experiment in 1728 called Newton’s cannonball. Fire an object with enough velocity and it will escape Earth orbit.16

Apollo 8’s lunar orbital flight plan. Original source: NASA.

As the spacecraft approaches, the moon’s gravitation pull becomes stronger than Earth’s. Propellant is used only for course corrections and for slowing down to achieve lunar orbit.

“The Radiation Would Have Killed Them”

The Apollo spacecraft passed through the Van Allen radiation belts, but they did so quickly. Dosimeters worn by the astronauts showed they experienced minimal radiation absorption. It also helped that no significant solar storm events occurred during the flights. The trajectory through the belt also affected exposure time.17

While on the moon outside the lunar module, the astronauts wore space suits with various layers of materials to protect from the radiation.18

“It’s Impossible to Land on the Moon”

Before the Apollo crews landed on the moon, both the US and USSR did it many times with robotic crafts. The Soviet Luna 9 soft-landed on the moon on February 3, 1966 and transmitted back images. NASA analyzed those images for Project Apollo.19

In the 1970s, the Soviets launched several Luna missions that robotically returned lunar samples to Earth, and deployed robotic rovers on the lunar surface.20

The US Surveyor missions deployed robotic landers on the moon to scout for possible crewed landing locations. Apollo 12 crew members visited the Surveyor 3 landing site and brought back several pieces.21

“We Can’t See the Landing Sites”

With the naked eye, no.

Nor can you with the Hubble Space Telescope, another common accusation. But that’s because Hubble wasn’t designed to look at extremely close objects. It’s designed to look into deep space.

To demonstrate, put your hand in front of your eyes. As you move your hand closer to your eyes, the hand goes out of focus. Same principle.

But we do have modern photos of the Apollo landing sites.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of the sites in 2011. They’re online if you want to see them for yourself.

If that’s not good enough for you, the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-2 mission in April 2021 photographed the Apollos 11 and 12 landing sites.22

Is India now part of the conspiracy?!

“The Shadows Are All Wrong”

I’ve had this one hurled at me. Someone pointed at a photo of Apollo astronauts on the moon and claimed the shadows were all wrong. I didn’t see what he saw.

The Discovery network program MythBusters debunked this one in August 2008. They recreated the Apollo 11 landing site and found that topography can cause shadows to cast in different directions.

The MythBusters episode “NASA Moon Landing” aired on August 27, 2008. It was the second episode of their sixth season. Video source: Tony YouTube channel.

“There’s No Way to Prove They Walked on the Surface”

Several Apollo landing missions deployed various instruments on the surface, such as monitoring for seismic waves and solar winds. The data were transmitted back to Earth long after the astronauts departed. The program was called the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. The data were sent over the Manned Space Flight Network and received by stations all over Earth. The data couldn’t have been received if the astronauts hadn’t landed on the moon and deployed the instruments.23

Both Apollo astronauts and Soviet Lunakhod rovers deployed mirrors on the moon. Earthbound observatories bounce lasers off the mirrors to measure the time it takes for the beam to return. This tells scientists how far the moon is from Earth. The Soviets proved you don’t need astronauts to deploy the mirrors, but the US mirrors are where NASA says the astronauts placed them.24

“The Rocks Are Fake”

How do we know that the geological samples brought back from the moon are real?

Because they formed in an entirely different environment.

The moon has no atmosphere, therefore no oxygen or water for the rocks to absorb. Nothing causes the rocks to weather. Without rain to drive storms and flooding, sedimentation can’t occur. No water, no rust or clay either.25

In 2015, scientists at the Southwest Research Institute issued a press release with describing technical differences.26

Lunar rocks closely resemble Earth rocks in many respects, but Moon rocks are more depleted in volatile elements like potassium, sodium, and zinc, which tend to have lower boiling points and vaporize readily.

Just Walk Away

Hopefully you found answers to some questions you may have had about how we can prove to honest skeptics that astronauts really did go to the moon.

But not all skeptics are honest.

I was ambushed once by a denier who had a smartphone on a stick. He asked me to do a video interview for his podcast.

I told him we had a policy that all such requests had to go through media relations. But he insisted he wasn’t “real” media, just more of a travelogue, with some simple questions.

When I relented, his first question was, “How do you hide the truth about UFOs?”

I looked at him and said, “You lied to me, so this interview is over” and walked away.

I’m sure he hyped it on his pathetic podcast for his few loser followers, but I didn’t give him the confrontation he wanted.

I also notified my supervisor in case the video surfaced and made it appear I’d granted an interview.

These people are unscrupulous. They’re narcissists.

Skepticism is healthy. It’s part of the scientific method.

But this isn’t science. It’s trolling for attention.

The only way to win with such people is to walk away. If they want to deny the moon landings, deny them attention. That’s how you win.

Crowds camp at roadside awaiting the Apollo 11 launch on July 16, 1969. Image source: NASA.

The Greatest Show on Earth

We’ve yet to hear a final count but, by government and media estimates, an estimated 400,000 to 600,000 people were expected to descend on Brevard County to watch the April 1 Artemis II launch.1

It’s been a long time since that many people showed up for a Space Coast launch.

During the COVID era, crowds still showed up for historic crewed events but nowhere near Apollo or Shuttle numbers. About 150,000 showed up to witness the SpaceX crew Dragon Demo-2 test flight in May 2020.2

In February 2018, about 100,000 people showed up to witness the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch.3

The last launch that topped the Artemis II attendance record was STS-135, the final Space Shuttle mission, that launched on July 8, 2011. The crowd estimates were anywhere from 750,000 to one million.4 The estimate was the same for the first Space Shuttle flight, STS-1, that launched on April 12, 1981.5

Titusville’s Max Brewer Bridge on July 8, 2011. Almost one million people gathered in the Space Coast that day to watch the final Space Shuttle launch. Image source: NASA.

That would rival the estimates for the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 launches, about one million each. Apollo 11 was the first lunar landing, while Apollo 17 was the last lunar landing.6

Brevard County’s population in 1970 was estimated to be about 230,000 according to the US Census. Titusville’s population was about 30,000.7 The US Census estimates that Brevard’s current population is about 606,000, with Titusville at about 49,000.8

Less than ten years before, at the dawn of the 1960s, Kennedy Space Center didn’t exist. It would have been incomprehensible to the few people living in north Merritt Island that, not only were they about to lose their homes, but that a million people would descend on their island to witness one of the most significant events in human history.

Just Passing Through

When President John F. Kennedy announced in May 1961 his crewed lunar mission proposal, very few people lived in north Merritt Island. Most people drove through.

The first space presence in the area was the Merritt Island Launch Annex, also called the Merritt Island Launch Area. Either way, the acronym was MILA.

The site was an annex to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Since Marshall initially was responsible for NASA launches at Cape Canaveral, the NASA presence on north Merritt Island was considered an annex to Marshall’s Cape operations. But “Area” was also in use.

The November 4, 1962 Orlando Sentinel reported plans for a “‘Banana River - Orsino - Causeway, NASA Merritt Island Launch area.’ Plans will call for a two-lane causeway and road from the Cape Road at Cape Canaveral across Banana River to intersect with Highway A1A at Orsino on Merritt Island, a distance of about six miles.”9

If you’ve never heard of Orsino, that’s because it doesn’t exist any more.

Orsino was a small town roughly at the intersection of today’s NASA Parkway (State Route 405) and Kennedy Parkway (State Route 3). In the early 1960s, SR-3 was Highway A1A. At one time, Highway A1A ran through Cape Canaveral, but was rerouted after the US Air Force took over the Cape. The new route went westbound from Cocoa Beach on State Route 520 to Tropical Trail, then north through small towns such as Courtenay, Orsino, and Shiloh before reaching the Volusia County border. Once State Route 3 was built later in the 1950s, it became A1A, relieving traffic from the two-lane and largely remote Tropical Trail.

In March 1962, MILA became its own standalone NASA Center, christened the Launch Operations Center. Dr. Kurt Debus, who oversaw MILA for Marshall, was promoted to become the LOC’s first director.10 MILA remained as a tracking station that opened in 1966, intercepting transmissions from Project Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, until it was decommissioned in 2011.11

The US government used eminent domain to acquire 144,000 acres on north Merritt Island for NASA. By spring 1963, land clearing had already begun near Orsino. An April 1963 photo shows land already had been cleared for what was about to become the Industrial Area. The image showed that, at the intersection of Highway A1A and Orsino Road, a convenience store still stood that had once been a roadside stop for travelers. It had a gas station, restaurant, and post office.

Orsino on April 19, 1963. At the bottom center of the image is the intersection of the old Highway A1A and Orsino Road. In the distance is Cape Canaveral. Image source: NASA.

Behind the convenience store was the Orsino Baptist Church. The church relocated south on Highway A1A to Courtenay, where it remains today. Newspaper accounts vary on the old church’s fate; although many newspaper articles report that the church was torn down, the November 28, 1963 Orlando Sentinel has a photo showing it being moved to Courtenay. Orsino resident Roy Roberts recalled that the church was moved but it was in poor condition due to termites.12

A December 1963 NASA map showed where significant facilities were to be located. The map was titled, “Merritt Island Launch Area.” The headquarters building was titled, “Launch Operations Center Headquarters.”

Note some abandoned ideas. Launch Complex 39 was to have three launch pads — 39A, 39B, and 39C. Pad C was never built. The VAB was originally the “Vertical” Assembly Building. North of the VAB was a Nuclear Assembly Building, because a sequel program called Project Nova might have had nuclear-powered upper stages.13

Be Our Guest

People being naturally curious, the public began showing up at Cape Canaveral wanting to see more of the US space program.

In December 1963, the US Air Force opened Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to public drive-through tours. A book was prepared for drivers with a tour route of checkpoints, descriptions, and rules. In case you’re wondering …

DON’T stop or park except in emergency

Kennedy Space Center opened to public tours in early 1965. The first visitor center was a trailer parked in a lot on the mainland side of NASA Causeway just west of the Indian River.

The tourist information trailer on NASA Causeway. Image source: NASA.

This site expanded into what was called the Visitor Information Center. Bus tours ran from “The VIC” through KSC under construction.

A permanent facility, also called the Visitor Information Center, opened on August 1, 1967. At the time, visiting KSC was a true pilgrimage — about a one-hour drive east from Orlando. Disney World and other central Florida attractions did not exist.

By early 1969, the VIC was the second most popular attraction in Florida, after Tampa’s Busch Gardens. A September 1969 Spaceport News article estimated that almost 400,000 people had visited the VIC since the Apollo 11 launch, with a record 8,373 patrons on August 12. Ninety percent of the visitors were from out of state, and six percent of those were from foreign nations. Total attendance for 1969 was 1,159,254.

Over the years, attendance has waxed and waned. Attendance in mid-1990s was averaging about 2.4 million per year. In the months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, attendance dropped by forty percent.

Delaware North, the company that operates the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex today for NASA, doesn’t release attendance numbers, but most estimates guess an average of 1.5 million to two million a year. In July 2025, Tripadvisor named KSCVC its top attraction in the United States.14

Florida and the world are much different than in 1969. It’s still a pilgrimage to reach the Space Coast. Tourists have many more options than just watching a rocket launch.

But put people a top of the rocket, and tourists tend to show up.

Jared Isaacman kicks off NASA’s daylong Project Artemis “Ignition” event on March 24, 2026. Video source: NASA via SpaceSPAN YouTube channel.

The Vision Thing

"It's like déjà vu all over again.” — Yogi Berra.

NASA held a daylong event on March 24 to unveil its revamp of Project Artemis.

Administrator Jared Isaacman repeatedly lavished undeserved praise on President Donald Trump, who did little for this reboot other than sign an executive order last December. Isaacman said that NASA is now committed to “return to the moon before the end of President Trump’s term,” which to my knowledge is the first time that the agency’s raison d'etre is to pad a president’s résumé.

During the Biden administration, NASA targeted the first crewed landing for 2027. That was unrealistic, because neither company’s lander (SpaceX or Blue Origin) will be ready by 2027. Neither will be ready by 2028 either. Trump’s executive order changed the target date from 2027 to 2028.

It also directed that NASA establish “initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030,” but that also pre-existed Trump’s second term. My December 31, 2025 Substack column documented NASA moon base plans going back to at least 2019, although it was the Biden administration that refined those plans. And if you really want to go back to its origin, that would be the Obama administration’s NextSTEP program, which envisioned commercial cislunar operations.

When President John F. Kennedy proposed the United States land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth by the end of the 1960s, NASA thought it might be possible to achieve the objective as early as 1967, but “before this decade is out” allowed for delays and setbacks. Kennedy never said, “by the time my second term is up,” which seems to be how we do things now under Trump.

So let’s push past the political blarney and revisit all the times US presidents have unveiled grand visions, to see if history gives us any reason to think this one will succeed.

Dwight Eisenhower

President Eisenhower abhorred stunts. His administration’s creation of NASA in 1958 was a political response to the hysteria surrounding the Soviet Sputnik launches of late 1957.

Anyone paying attention would have known that the USSR planned to launch a satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year, from July 1957 through December 1958. So did the US, a program called Project Vanguard. Both had been announced in the summer of 1955. At the National Academy of Sciences on September 30, 1957, a Soviet delegate presented their launch plans and even the radio frequencies where the Sputnik “beep-beep” could be heard. The delegate didn’t say when it might launch, other than during the IGY.

It wasn’t a race. It was never intended to be a race.

But after Sputnik 1 launched on October 4, 1957, and Vanguard’s December 6, 1957 test launch explosion live on national television, Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress staged emergency hearings to look into the supposed inferiority of US missile technology. That wasn’t true, as Eisenhower knew from secret intelligence briefings, but it was the impression many Americans had from media hysteria and political pontification.

The White House and Congress finally settled on creating a space version of the old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which since 1915 had researched and developed aviation technology to transfer to the private sector. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration essentially married the NACA to civilian space programs within the Department of Defense.

Out of that wedding came Project Mercury, the first US crewed program, and engine development that led to the Apollo Saturn V first stage. Project Apollo also began during the Eisenhower administration, although it was only a vague sequel to Mercury, sending a three-crew spacecraft beyond Earth orbit with the moon as a possible destination.

John F. Kennedy

Because Eisenhower abhorred stunts, Senator Kennedy exploited that reluctance by accusing the administration of creating a “missile gap.” The allegation was a theme during his 1960 presidential campaign against the Republican candidate, Vice President Richard Nixon, but the gap didn’t exist.

After the Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, shortly followed by the Bay of Bigs Cuba invasion failure, US press declared that Kennedy had now inherited the “gap” and had to do something about it.

Associated Press military affairs reporter Bem Price’s analysis after Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth, as it appeared in the April 13, 1961 Denton, Texas Record-Chronicle. The column was printed in newspapers across the United States.

My May 25, 2025 Substack column “Kennedy’s Urgent National Need” detailed the events that led to Kennedy proposing a crewed lunar mission by the end of the 1960s.

NASA succeeded, but at an extreme cost. Not only were astronaut lives lost here on Earth, but in today’s dollars Project Apollo cost somewhere between $225 billion to $300 billion, according to various estimates. NASA was transformed from a space version of the NACA into a propaganda organ that subsidized government contractor jobs across the nation.

To this day, NASA still placates members of Congress that order the agency to perpetuate obsolete and inefficient technologies such as the Space Launch System, in the name of protecting contractor jobs and the generous campaign contributions they receive from contractor lobbyists.

Richard Nixon

When he took office in January 1969, the Apollo 11 moon landing was all but inevitable. One of the questions President Nixon’s administration had to answer was what to do once Kennedy’s objective was achieved.

Nixon appointed a Space Task Group on February 13, 1969 to recommend what the nation’s future should be in space. The report, delivered in September 1969, envisioned a robust program with a crewed Mars mission as a long-range goal. “Groups of men” would live and work in cislunar space “for extended periods of time.”

The task group proposed the creation of a “space transportation system” to service a “modular space station.” This system comprised a reusable shuttle operating like an airplane; a “reusable space tug” to transfer crews and other vehicles into different orbits; and a “reusable nuclear stage” for deep space operations.

Nixon saw all this as far too costly. The only proposal he approved was the shuttle spaceplane. NASA’s Space Shuttle was formally named the “Space Transportation System,” after the task group’s original term, but the other components never were approved.

Ronald Reagan

To most people, President Reagan’s space legacy probably is proposing Space Station Freedom during his January 25, 1984 State of the Union address.

Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space. We want our friends to help us meet these challenges and share in their benefits. NASA will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals.

If you’ve never heard of Space Station Freedom, that’s because the project withered due to NASA’s usual design delays, cost overruns, and congressional underfunding. On June 23, 1993, Freedom survived a proposed cancellation in the House of Representatives by one vote.

A 1991 artist’s concept of Space Station Freedom. Image source: NASA.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States and Russia began negotiations to cooperate in space. In November 1993, the Clinton administration announced that a diminished Freedom would be redesigned for compatibility with Russian modules to create an international space station. At the time, NASA estimated the ISS (then called “Alpha”) would cost $19.4 billion (in 1993 dollars). The final cost was about $100 billion (in 2010 dollars), with about half of that spent by the US. The first three-member crew (two Russians, one American) began residence in November 2000.

Generally overlooked is the Reagan administration’s contributions to commercial spaceflight. Reagan signed an amendment to NASA’s charter which required the agency to “seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.” The administration encouraged commercialization of US expendable launch vehicles and “free market competition.” After the Challenger accident, Reagan issued an executive order directing that commercial payloads transition from Shuttle to US expendable rockets.

In October 1984, Reagan created a National Commission on Space to “study existing and proposed United States space activities; formulate an agenda for the United States civilian space program; and identify long range goals, opportunities, and policy options for civilian space activity for the next twenty years.” The commission’s report was published in May 1986. As with Nixon’s Space Task Group report, it offered a grandiose vision that was largely ignored.

George H.W. Bush

I was in Washington, DC on July 20, 1989 when President Bush stood on the steps of the National Air and Space Museum to speak about the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Sitting near him were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.

In his speech, Bush directed Vice President Dan Quayle “to lead the National Space Council in determining specifically what's needed for the next round of exploration: the necessary money, manpower, and materials; the feasibility of international cooperation; and develop realistic timetables -- milestones -- along the way.”

The council’s report became known as the Space Exploration Initiative. A “90-Day Study” released by NASA on November 20, 1989 proposed that humans once again travel beyond Earth orbit to the moon with the eventual goal of a Mars landing. Although the report contained no costs, eventual estimates were $400 billion to $500 billion. Congress declined to fund SEI. Another vision forgotten.

George W. Bush

The Columbia accident forced a reevaluation of NASA’s human spaceflight program. On January 14, 2004, at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC, President George W. Bush delivered what came to be known as the Vision for Space Exploration speech.

Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system. We will begin the effort quickly, using existing programs and personnel. We’ll make steady progress — one mission, one voyage, one landing at a time.

Bush listed three goals:

1. Completion of the ISS by 2010, to “meet our obligations to our 15 international partners on this project.”
   

2. Return Shuttle to flight for the sole purpose of completing ISS. “In 2010, the Space Shuttle — after nearly 30 years of duty — will be retired from service.”
   

3. Return to the moon by 2020, using a new spacecraft called the Crew Exploration Vehicle (later called Orion).

The Vision Sand Chart presented to the Senate Science Committee on January 28, 2004. The chart showed the Bush administration’s intent to end the ISS by 2015 to fund cislunar flight.

On January 28, 2004, NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe testified to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. O’Keefe presented what came to be known as the Vision Sand Chart. It showed that the administration intended to complete ISS to “meet our obligations” only to decommission it five years later to pay for what was now called Project Constellation.

O’Keefe was succeeded in April 2005 by Michael Griffin, who scrapped the Constellation plans to date in favor of what he called “Apollo on Steroids.” He proposed a $100 billion project that would send astronauts to the moon for seven-day missions.

Congress wasn’t inclined to spend that kind of money on a “steroids” project, but Griffin’s architecture became the program of record.

In 2009, after taking office, President Obama appointed a Review of US Human Spaceflight Plans Committee. Their report, released in October 2009, began:

The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.

The Bush administration in November 2005 opened the Commercial Crew and Cargo Project Office, which eventually led to today’s commercial programs servicing the ISS.

Barack Obama

The Obama administration’s NASA Fiscal Year 2011 budget proposed cancelling Constellation in favor of commercial cargo and crew programs, extending the ISS through at least 2020, and development of new engine technologies.

Congress was outraged. Constellation meant guaranteed jobs for workforces at NASA centers and legacy contractors, even if the program itself was a failure. The US was in the depths of the Great Recession. The last thing politicians wanted was to go along with cancelling jobs in their districts and states, even if those jobs couldn’t be justified on merit.

Critics demanded that President Obama give them “a JFK moment” — an Apollo redo with a stated goal, a destination, and a timeline.

So on April 15, 2010, Obama came to Kennedy Space Center to deliver the JFK moment they wanted. He proposed a crewed asteroid rendezvous mission as the first step towards sending astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.

But that didn’t save existing jobs today, so the speech failed to quiet his critics.

In the end, Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) crafted a compromise that cancelled Constellation, authorized the commercial programs, and extended ISS. In exchange, NASA had to build a new super-heavy rocket based on Shuttle technology called the Space Launch System. The legislation mandated that NASA issue no-bid contracts to Shuttle and Constellation contractors to build SLS, protecting the existing workforce. The bill passed the Senate and House, and was signed by President Obama.

The Obama administration didn’t write off the moon. They left lunar exploration to the private sector, through a program called NextSTEP — Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships. NextSTEP is providing many of the technologies that are part of Project Artemis.

My book Return to Launch discusses in detail the events of 2010. You can order through the University of Florida Press website at this link.

Donald Trump (First Term)

By the time Donald Trump became president in January 2017, the asteroid program was all but dead. It was politically unpopular and underfunded by Congress. The asteroid mission was defunded in April, three months after Trump took office.

In December 2017, Trump issued his Space Policy Directive-1, amending Obama’s 2010 national space policy. It deleted Obama’s 2030 Mars target date, and replaced Obama’s “far-reaching exploration milestones” paragraph with an order directing “the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations” with no target dates. If you read the directive, it leaves intact the rest of Obama’s fourteen-page National Space Policy.

Contrary to what Administrator Isaacman recently claimed on X, Trump did not “create the Artemis program.” According to Christian Davenport of The Washington Post in his 2025 book Rocket Dreams, the name came from NASA chief economist Alex MacDonald. Then-administrator Jim Bridenstine in May 2019 was searching for a name for NASA’s disparate deep space programs. Roaming the halls of NASA Headquarters, he encountered MacDonald, who suggested Artemis. Bridenstine adopted the name and announced it during a teleconference. He did not consult with Trump or the White House before announcing Artemis. The White House was not happy.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

If you’re looking for “great leaps” in the history of US government spaceflight, my list would include:

• Eisenhower and Congress creating NASA in 1958.

• Kennedy lunar “propaganda stunt” that changed NASA into a fundamentally different agency

• Nixon’s Space Shuttle approval.

• Reagan proposing Space Station Freedom and transitioning commercial payloads to expendable rockets.

• George W. Bush creating the foundation for crewed commercial spaceflight.

• Obama’s transition to commercial cargo and crew (the latter went unfunded by W. Bush), as well as the NextSTEP program.

With the exception of Kennedy, none of these presidents got the grand vision they sought. Fear of the Soviet Union cajoled Congress into funding the crewed lunar missions.

If you’re looking for who gets to take credit for Artemis, many presidents contributed, starting with W. Bush, although the foundation was laid by Obama’s NASA reforms and his national space policy.

Trump lowered expectations, turning NASA away from Mars back to the moon — which was the right call. But the Artemis hardware components and mission plans predate Trump’s second term.

All he’s doing now is trying to take credit for his predecessors’ achievements. His mandate that NASA land astronauts on the moon for the seventh time before he leaves office won’t happen — yet another presidential ambition that will go unfulfilled.

Rep. Bill Nelson (D-FL) flies microgravity training along STS-51L Challenger crew member Christa McAuliffe and other astronaut trainees on November 20, 1985. Image source: NASA.

This article is based on content in my new book, Return to Launch: Florida and America’s Space Industry, now available through the University Press of Florida. Order before March 31 using the promo code 31DC326 and it’s $25. Starting on March 31, it will cost $38.

A February 2026 Gallup poll found that only 16% of respondents approve of “the way Congress is handling its job.”1

None of these members of Congress, to my knowledge, have asked NASA to fly them to space.

But it happened twice in the mid-1980s, during Ronald Reagan’s presidential administration.

Although those flights were viewed as the ultimate junket, for one of those members his flight helped him investigate the Challenger accident and expose NASA’s failure to enforce contractual requirements that might have saved the crew.

The Old Boy Network

In its early days, NASA portrayed the Space Shuttle as routine and affordable access to low Earth orbit. Unlike earlier programs, which were restricted to military test pilots, Shuttle was safe enough to fly civilian crew members. Commercial companies could send their employees to space aboard Shuttle to conduct experiments and deploy payloads. Shuttle was billed as a space pickup truck that could come and go at will.

Taking this seriously, celebrities, politicians, journalists, and others lobbied NASA for a ride. NASA Administrator James Beggs, besieged by these requests, commissioned an informal task force to evaluate the practicality of flying private citizens on Shuttle. Their report recommended “a modest program to fly private citizens as observers who would then communicate their experiences to the more general public be initiated as a first step, and we have suggested appropriate criteria to be met and selection procedures to be deployed.”

But the authors warned:

It would be easy for people to misunderstand such a program as a self-serving public relations gimmick trivializing the space program, despite what is clear to us as NASA’s well-meaning intentions.

The report recommended establishing “candidate suitability criteria” and an independent peer group selection process. “The review process would have to be so open as to appear to be fair and not an ‘old boy network.’”

Out of the task force report came what was eventually known as the Space Flight Participant Program (SFPP). Alan Ladwig, a NASA civil service employee, was assigned in March 1984 to manage the SFPP. Its first program was Teacher in Space, which selected New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe to fly on Challenger with the STS-51L mission in January 1986.

Unknown to Ladwig, a parallel process was under way by Beggs to select members of Congress to fly on Shuttle.

Senator Jake Garn (R-UT) had been lobbying Beggs since the earliest days of Shuttle flights in 1981. Garn chaired the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversaw NASA’s budget. NASA contractor Morton Thiokol manufactured Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters in Garn’s state.

Many other members of the House and Senate lobbied Beggs for a Shuttle flight. One was Rep. Bill Nelson (D-FL). After the task force report was released, Nelson sent a letter in early July 1983 to Administrator Beggs asking that he be considered for a Shuttle flight. Since the report had recommended that priority be given to communicators, Nelson told The Orlando Sentinel that “he would communicate his experiences in talks to his colleagues or other audiences.”

When the 99^th Session of Congress began in January 1985, Nelson was elected by fellow members of the House Space Science and Applications Subcommittee to be its chairman. The subcommittee had jurisdiction over NASA operations.

Senator Jake Garn was Rep. Bill Nelson’s guest on Nelson’s public affairs talk show, which aired February 24, 1985 on WFTV Channel 9 in Orlando. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel courtesy of Bill Nelson and the University of Florida.

Garn and Nelson discussed the accusations that they were seeking a junket at the taxpayers’ expense. Garn commented:

They can’t have it both ways. They can’t on the one hand say to you and I as members of Congress, when something happens in an agency, “Why didn’t you know that? Why weren’t you exercising your oversight responsibilities?”… That’s part of yours and my responsibility. Not just to pass new laws, but to make certain the ones we’ve already passed work, to look at the funding that’s already been approved, seeing that it’s being spent as efficiently as possible.

Challenger would prove Garn right.

Congressional Observers

When Garn’s flight was announced, the education community was outraged. When President Reagan announced the Teacher in Space program on August 27, 1984, he’d promised that “the first citizen passenger in the history of our space program” would be a teacher. But now it would be a politician. The Council of Chief State School Officers threatened to withdraw their support for Teacher in Space.

Ladwig was assured that the selected teacher would fly before Jake Garn. That turned out to be untrue. Garn was classified as a “congressional observer” on a separate track from “citizen passenger.”

Garn flew on STS-51D Discovery in April 1985. Nelson’s formal invitation letter was sent on September 6, 1985. Beggs wrote:

Given your NASA oversight responsibilities, we think it appropriate that you consider making an inspection tour and flight aboard the shuttle.

The letter sent on September 6, 1985 from NASA administrator James Beggs to Rep. Bill Nelson. Image source: University of Florida Smathers Libraries.

Fulfilling his pledge to “communicate his experiences,” Nelson wrote a periodic “space diary” during his training for Florida Today and other local newspapers. In his October 2, 1985 column, Nelson wrote that Administrator Beggs called him during a flight suit visor fitting “to discuss possible flight assignments.”

A myth arose that Nelson was somehow responsible for the death of payload specialist Greg Jarvis aboard Challenger. Jarvis was a Hughes Aircraft employee who was to fly on a mission that would deploy the company’s Leasat 5 satellite. Some would later accuse Nelson of ordering NASA to bump Jarvis to a later flight so he could fly on STS-61C Columbia.2

No public evidence exists to support the allegations. Flight assignments were made by NASA based on the mission manifest. Hughes delayed deployment of Leasat 5 because some Leasat satellites in orbit were suffering technical issues. That opened an earlier slot for Nelson. At one point, Nelson was to fly on STS-51L Challenger with Christa McAuliffe, but was moved up to STS-61C after Hughes withdrew Leasat 5 and Jarvis from the manifest.

STS-61C Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center on January 12, 1986, and landed six days later at Edwards Air Force Base in California. At a post-mission press conference on January 23, Nelson said the flight left him “both fan and critic” of the space agency. He believed that the experience had given him insight to where several improvements were possible. “I am going to make a recommendation in several areas as to increased efficiencies in the operation of the whole system.”

Nelson told his story in Mission: An American Congressman’s Voyage to Space, a book published in June 1988 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. The book was described in its dedication as, “A report to the American People and their representatives in Congress.” The book was republished last September by the University Press of Florida.

Superiority and Arrogance

Nelson was in his Washington, DC office the morning of January 28, 1986 when STS-51L Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39B. Like much of the nation, he saw Challenger destroyed on live television. The thought crossed his mind, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Rep. Bill Nelson and the House Science and Technology Committee hold a press conference on January 28, 1986. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

The House Science and Technology Committee called a press conference that afternoon to discuss the tragedy. When he arrived, the reporters requested that Nelson take the dais to answer questions. This was a scenario Administrator Beggs never foresaw when he envisioned flying members of Congress, but on that dark day Nelson was in a unique position to speak knowledgeably about the Shuttle program. He defended the agency when asked if NASA might have compromised safety in its pursuit of a more frequent launch schedule. “NASA does not launch until they feel that everything is right.”

President Reagan appointed an independent commission, which released its findings on June 6, 1986. They concluded that a flawed solid rocket booster design led to an O-ring failure in cold weather at liftoff. Contributing to the accident were communication failures within NASA management, and between NASA management and its contractor employees at Morton Thiokol, the Utah-based company that designed, built, and refurbished the solid rocket motors. The commission found that launch constraints due to O-ring limitations had been waived by the SRB project manager at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The constraints and waivers were not communicated to higher decision makers. Thiokol engineers had raised concerns, but those concerns were not elevated to NASA upper management. The night before the launch, Thiokol executives felt pressured by NASA senior management at Marshall and Kennedy to prove it wasn’t safe to launch, rather than it was safe. When the Thiokol executives held a caucus to discuss the weather’s effect on the SRBs, a senior vice president told his engineering executive to “take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.”

The House Science and Technology Committee then held its own hearings. Nelson used much of his time to grill NASA and Thiokol executives about documents he had uncovered which suggested that Thiokol had been required by their NASA contract to conduct an analysis of how the SRB would perform during extreme temperatures. NASA executives finally acknowledged that such an analysis had not been done, but that NASA nonetheless had certified the boosters for operational use. Nelson contended that the loss of Challenger never would have happened if NASA and Thiokol had followed the temperature-testing requirements.

In his 1988 memoir, Nelson saved the final chapter to comment on the Challenger tragedy, its causes and its consequences. He wrote, “… there is no excuse for bad management and poor communications. It is those areas NASA is now struggling to change and improve.”

A certain superiority and arrogance was to blame. NASA believed in itself. Why shouldn’t it? It had had twenty-five years of success. And it expected others to believe in it, too. NASA expected Congress to rubber-stamp what it wanted; if NASA didn’t get what it wanted, it would generally try to do what it wanted anyway. If NASA did not like something in a congressional spending bill, the agency had been known to wait until it was too late to change course and then explain to Congress that it was impossible to follow Congress’s directive.

He had plenty of blame for his congressional colleagues too. Nelson believed, “A mindset developed within NASA: it was not accountable -- to anyone nor to any institution.” But he also blamed Congress for being a bit lax in enforcing its oversight responsibilities. His Science and Technology Committee “should have tried to hold NASA more accountable than it did … congressional oversight was no more than a matter for NASA to tolerate.”

Nelson left the House in 1990 to run for Florida governor, but was defeated in the Democratic primary. In 2000, Floridians elected him to the US Senate, where he served three terms before being defeated for re-election in 2018. He was in retirement when President Joe Biden in 2021 nominated him to be NASA administrator, where he served until Donald Trump became president in January 2025.

When James Beggs decided to fly members of Congress on Shuttle, he never could have imagined that he would be grooming his successor, 35 years later.

Nor could have Beggs foreseen that he was grooming a congressman to ask informed and incisive questions that would expose NASA’s failure to properly police its contractor.

Nelson’s performance during the Challenger hearings validated Garn’s perspective that they were exercising their oversight responsibilities by flying as congressional observers. It was no different from visiting a Veterans Administration hospital, or flying in an Air Force bomber, or riding in an Army tank. What might have been intended as a junket to curry favor with a member of Congress led to exposing NASA’s failure to properly supervise its solid rocket motor contractor.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson visits the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on December 8, 2021. Image source: NASA.

The Artemis II Space Launch System at Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39B on February 10, 2026. Image source: NASA.

NASA announced on February 27 a reorganization of Project Artemis that administrator Jared Isaacman hopes will result in at least one crewed lunar landing a year starting in 2028.

The announcement came right after the Artemis II Space Launch System rolled back into the Vehicle Assembly Building to fix a helium leak.

As was its Space Shuttle predecessor, the SLS has been plagued by liquid hydrogen (LH₂) leaks. I wrote on February 4 about why LH₂ is a very bad idea for a launch fuel.

NASA is cancelling a planned SLS upgrade, hoping that this will somehow improve launch cadence. The current SLS version is called Block I, while the upgrade is known as Block IB.

But so long as SLS is its core launch vehicle, Artemis will struggle to launch anywhere close to a reliable launch cadence.

The Monster Rocket

As early as February 1970, NASA required contractors bidding on the Space Shuttle orbiter’s main engine (SSME) contract to plan on it using LH₂ as a fuel. NASA sought “a reusable system with a high launch rate capability and short turnaround and reaction times compatible with rescue missions.” The request for proposal required the SSME to use a “hydrogen-oxygen propellant design.”1

Why use such a difficult chemical as a fuel? Reusability.

Most liquid-fueled rockets at that time, including the first stage of the Saturn V, used RP-1 kerosene as a fuel. While safer and cheaper, burning RP-1 left carbon soot and hydrocarbon residues on the pad and in the engines. Even today’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, which land on a drone ship or a landing pad, require their Merlin engines to be cleaned before the rocket can fly again. Before the Falcon 9, boosters using RP-1 were considered to be expendable, meaning they fell into the ocean and were not recovered.2

What’s the byproduct from combusting liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen? Water vapor! That was why NASA was willing to tolerate LH₂’s eccentricities. The hope was that the engines could be turned around and launched again.

But LH₂ turned out to be one of the many reasons why Shuttle was so inefficient. In 1990, NASA became aware of hydrogen leaks in both Columbia and Atlantis. The shuttle program was down for six months. The incident became known as “The Summer of Hydrogen.”3

STS-35 Columbia and STS-38 Atlantis pass one another on the KSC crawlerway, August 22, 1990. Both rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to identify the source of hydrogen leaks. Image source: NASA.

If LH₂ was so troublesome, why did NASA choose to use it as a fuel for Shuttle’s successor?

Congress.

We’ve discussed in prior columns how Congress used the 2010 NASA authorization act to protect NASA legacy contractors and their employees during the Great Recession, rather than doing what was best for the nation’s human spaceflight program. This legendary 2011 column by the Competitive Space Task Force sums it up.

Section 304 required NASA to use existing technologies from Shuttle and its failed successor known as Constellation. That meant LH₂ as a fuel, which meant more hydrogen leaks.

At least LH₂ for Shuttle engines was justified by reusability. SLS isn’t designed to be reusable. It’s expendable. The core stage, with its four Shuttle-era engines on the bottom, falls into the ocean and is destroyed. So there was no justification for LH₂ other than protecting legacy contracts and jobs.4

The 2022 Artemis I uncrewed test mission was delayed due to hydrogen leaks. The 2026 Artemis II mission was delayed due to hydrogen leaks. After that was resolved, the SLS experienced a helium leak, which necessitated rolling back the stack to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs. NASA determined that a seal was blocking helium flow from ground systems.

Unlike hydrogen, helium isn’t all that dangerous. It’s used to pressurize tanks and purge engines. Helium is inert, so it can’t catch fire like hydrogen can.

But it’s slow, cumbersome, and expensive to roll back a stack to the VAB. The journey from Pad 39B to the VAB is about 4.2 miles (6.8 km). Depending on circumstances, the journey takes about eight to twelve hours. A rollback impacts KSC operations, because the crawlerway crosses or parallels various roads.

Why do it this way at all?

Because Congress mandated that NASA use the same ground systems and infrastructures used by Shuttle. Those were inherited from the Apollo program in the 1960s.

The VAB is far from the launch pad because, in the 1960s, it was feared a Saturn V explosion on the pad might send debris and concussion waves for miles.

SpaceX at their launch sites, and Blue Origin at their Cape Canaveral launch site, have hangars close to the pad. The SpaceX hangar at Pad 40 survived a Falcon 9 explosion on the pad, on September 1, 2016, during a static test fire. The Falcon 9 is certainly not the scale of a Saturn V or Shuttle or Blue Origin’s New Glenn or the SpaceX Starship now in testing. But it did demonstrate that, for their technology, SpaceX doesn’t need to be four miles away.

SLS was unveiled by members of Congress on September 14, 2011. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) called it the “monster rocket.” The SLS legislation required NASA to develop two variants. The initial version, the one we have now, is called Block 1. A more powerful version, called the Block 1B, was also mandated by Congress. The 2010 authorization act directed that NASA should have the goal of Block 1 “operational capability” by December 31, 2016. (Artemis I launched on November 16, 2022, almost six years behind congressional mandate.)

Senator Bill Nelson unveils the Space Launch System design at a congressional media event, September 14, 2011. Image source: AP via Science.org.

Block 1 was to be used for only three SLS flights. NASA chose to renovate an existing launch tower, built for Constellation, for those three flights. In 2020, the NASA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the renovation for Mobile Launcher 1 was already three years behind schedule and $300 million over budget. NASA planned to spend $693 million to modify ML-1 for three flights, or about $230 million per mission.5

Block 1B would require a bigger launch tower, Mobile Launcher 2. The OIG concluded in 2024 that ML-2, originally projected to cost under $500 million, would cost up to $2.7 billion when completed somewhere around spring 2029.6

In 2021, the OIG estimated that NASA would spend $93 billion on Project Artemis through Fiscal Year 2025, with an estimated cost of $4.1 billion each of Artemis I through IV.7

Bull in the China Shop

The return of Donald Trump to the White House, followed by Elon Musk’s scythe slicing through NASA’s budget, badly damaged the agency’s workforce. By one account, NASA lost 20% of its workforce. Trump attempted to reduce NASA’s budget by about one-fourth, although much of it was finally restored by Congress. Musk certainly had a conflict of interest, being the owner of one of NASA’s primary launch vendors, but no one in power seemed inclined to do anything about it.

Musk departed the White House at the end of May, having offended many Trump administration officials and finally Trump himself. After Musk made public comments critical of Trump, the president retaliated by firing his NASA administrator nominee, billionaire and space evanglist Jared Isaacman, who had flown twice on SpaceX commercial flights.

Transportation secretary Sean Duffy served as interim administrator until a successor was nominated. The new nominee, announced in November, was … Jared Isaacman.

During his first administration, Trump jokingly suggested that NASA send a crewed mission to Mars by 2020, when he would be running for re-election. On December 18, 2025 — the day after Isaacman was confirmed by the Senate — the White House released Trump’s space policy. The executive order directed that NASA use the Artemis program to send astronauts to the moon by 2028, the end of Trump’s second term.

The administration has declared it’s a priority to return US astronauts to the moon for a seventh time before China lands crew for the first time. Why this is important hasn’t been explained, at least to my satisfaction. In my January 10, 2026 column, I revisited the 1960s rhetoric, which justified Apollo strictly on the basis of “prestige.” That seems to be the justification now, substituting China for the Soviet Union.

Having been axed once, it’s easy to understand that Isaacman believes it’s his top priority to put astronauts back on the moon by the end of Trump’s term, never mind the wisdom, the cost, or the alternatives. In public statements, Isaacman has said that he believes the most expedient way to do that is to continue with SLS, despite its expense and inefficiency. The logical alternatives — the SpaceX Starship and the Blue Origin New Glenn — can’t assure a 2028 crewed launch.

A NASA media event at Kennedy Space Center on February 27, 2026 announced a revision to the Project Artemis launch schedule. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

On February 27, Isaacman announced revisions to the Artemis cadence and architecture.

Artemis III was intended to land crew at the moon’s south pole. Neither of the lander vendors, SpaceX or Blue Origin, are likely to be ready. Artemis III will now be a 2027 docking in low Earth orbit between four astronauts aboard the Orion crew capsule and one of the landers. This sets up a competitive race between the two vendors to see who can be ready first.

Artemis IV targets early 2028 for the crewed lunar landing. Artemis V would be a crewed landing in late 2028.

Isaacman cancelled Block 1B as well as its upper stage, the Exploration Upper Stage. The EUS, like much of SLS, was behind schedule and over budget. An August 2024 NASA OIG audit found that the EUS cost had grown from $962 million to $2 billion, yet another black eye for Boeing, the EUS vendor. OIG estimated that EUS wouldn’t be delivered until April 2027, more than six years behind schedule.8 Isaacman also cancelled the ML-2 tower, so it will sit outside the VAB, abandoned in place.

With the EUS cancelled, NASA announced today that it intends to award a no-bid contract to United Launch Alliance (a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin) to build a variant of its Vulcan Centaur upper stage.

Award of a no-bid contract to an “OldSpace” company blares red-alert klaxons. The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, used on SLS to date, has a thrust of only 24,750 pounds. The EUS thrust was projected to be 97,360 pounds. Vulcan Centaur provides 47,650 pounds of thrust. But the SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage has 220,500 pounds. The Blue Origin New Glenn upper stage (NGUS) provides 400,000 pounds.

The justification document (JOFOC) on the SAM.gov website states that NASA studied only the Vulcan Center and NGUS. NASA concluded that Centaur would be more compatible, has a longer history, and would require fewer modifications than NGUS. SpaceX isn’t mentioned. Perhaps NASA concluded the SpaceX upper stage wasn’t viable; it uses RP-1 as fuel, while the other candidates use LH₂. SLS’s Pad 39B isn’t equipped for RP-1 fueling. (It was during Apollo.)

The fate of Gateway is unclear. Gateway is to be NASA’s first cislunar space station. I wrote in April 2025 why I think Gateway is important but, if this administration’s priority is to plant the seventh US flag on the moon before China plants its first, Gateway becomes irrelevant. Eric Berger at Ars Technica believes Gateway teeters on the precipice of cancellation. Once again, science is scrubbed for symbolism.

China has yet to demonstrate any capability for sending crews beyond low Earth orbit, much less to lunar orbit, or the far more difficult ability to land and launch from the surface. But once again, science is sacrificed for politics and an illusion of expediency.

With Artemis relying on historically unreliable technologies, personally I don’t expect any nation to land crews on the moon this decade. NASA, prove me wrong.

Judgment Day arrives in “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.”

Judgment Day is Inevitable

In the Terminator universe, Judgment Day is the apocalypse wrought by humanity upon itself by creating an artificial intelligence with independent control of military weapons systems.

The details change depending on which incarnation you watch, but in Terminator 3 it’s established that Judgment Day can only be delayed, it can’t be stopped.

Judgment Day is inevitable.

Judgment Day is wrought by Skynet, an automated defense network created by Cyberdyne Systems. Skynet controlled anything with a Cyberdyne chip in it — nuclear launch systems, commercial and military aircraft, robotics.

When Skynet became self-aware, its programmers tried to shut it down. To defend itself, Skynet launched a nuclear attack against Russia, prompting a full response and triggering Judgment Day.

In the sequels and spinoffs, how and when Skynet becomes self-aware often change but inevitably Judgment Day is launched. In Terminator 3, Skynet connects to civilian networks to spread a super virus, giving it control of the Internet and communications systems.

Judgment Day is inevitable.

I was reminded of T3 when, on February 2, SpaceX recently announced its acquisition of xAI, an artificial intelligence startup. Both companies are owned by Elon Musk. In a statement released that day, Musk wrote:

SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform. This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!

Judgment Day is inevitable.

Do As I Say, Not Do As I Do

This is more than ironic, because Musk has been warning us for years about the dangers of AI. In a June 17, 2014 interview with CNBC correspondent Kelly Evans, Musk said he was investing in AI startups “to just keep an eye on what’s going on with artificial intelligence.” He specifically invoked the spectre of the Terminator apocalypse.

Elon Musk interviewed by Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the National Governors Association on July 15, 2017. Video source: CNBC YouTube channel.

A month later, in an interview at the National Governors Association, Musk said:

AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization, and I don’t think people fully appreciate that.

At the World Government Summit in Dubai in February 2017, Musk called for humans to merge with machine intelligence or risk becoming “house cats” to AI.

At the South By Southwest tech conference in Austin, Texas in March 2018, Musk said:

I think the danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot and nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to build nuclear warheads if they want. That would be insane.

Musk called for regulatory oversight of AI, which has its own irony because President Donald Trump has declared his intent to minimize AI oversight. Musk spent almost $300 million in 2024 to help elect Trump and Republicans. On December 11, 2025 Trump issued an executive order to limit federal and state regulation of artificial intelligence. (Executive orders are not laws.) Trump may also be planning an executive order to deregulate robotics. The administration so far has declined to endorse the 2026 International AI Safety Report; the US is a signatory to the 2023 Bletchley Declaration creating the report.

While Trump attempts to deregulate AI and robotics, Musk’s technologies are finding their way into Department of Defense systems. SpaceX is developing a military version of its Starlink satellite constellation called Starshield, which “uses additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely, meeting the most demanding government requirements.”

If you’re worried that this real-world Skynet might train space-based weapons on earth-based humanity, the good news is that by international treaty no large-scale weapons are allowed in space.1 As far as we know, all spacefaring nations abide by the treaty, but some (including the US) nibble around the edges. The United States, China, and Russia have all fired on their own targets in orbit to demonstrate anti-satellite capabilities. These tests left thousands of pieces of random debris that still threaten satellites such as the International Space Station.

It’s also believed that these nations play “Spy vs. Spy” games in orbit, intercepting each other’s satellites. The US X-37B spaceplane is suspected of maneuvering near adversary targets such as China’s satellites.

But in the classic Terminator definition of Judgment Day, the apocalypse came not from space. It came from underground nuclear missile silos in the US and Russia.

In July 2025, the DOD awarded contracts to Google and xAI “aimed at scaling up adoption of advanced artificial intelligence capabilities” within the department, according to CNN. Just eleven days after Trump’s executive order, the DOD on December 22 announced a contract to “embed xAI’s frontier AI systems, based on the Grok family of models, directly into GenAI.mil.” The latter was announced on December 11.

The first instance on GenAI.mil, Gemini for Government, empowers intelligent agentic workflows, unleashes experimentation, and ushers in an AI-driven culture change that will dominate the digital battlefield for years to come. Gemini for Government is the embodiment of American AI excellence, placing unmatched analytical and creative power directly into the hands of the world’s most dominant fighting force.

One Grok to Rule Us All

Grok is the large language model2 that’s the common denominator for Musk’s AI products across xAI, X.com, Tesla, and SpaceX. Some call it a chatbot, i.e. it simulates human conversation.

In the Terminator universe, Skynet is ubiquitous through Cyberdyne chips. In the Musk universe, it’s Grok.

Musk debuted Grok in November 2023. It was initially available only to premium users of the former Twitter, renamed X.com by Musk. This version remains a work in progress. In July 2025, Grok called itself “MechaHitler” and began generating antisemitic content. January 2026 studies showed Grok was generating violent sexually explicit images.

Grok is now available as a standard feature for Tesla vehicles. It should not be confused with Full Self-Driving (Supervised) or the more primitive Autopilot (soon to be discontinued). But Grok and FSD are becoming more integrated, evolving towards Musk’s goal of “unsupervised” FSD and Robotaxis that have no human supervision.

Grok and FSD are in your Tesla whether or not you use them. The Tesla is always on. It’s theoretically possible for a malevolent entity (organic or not) to send a malicious command to your car.

The inability of a human to intervene once again evokes the spectre of Skynet.

Skynet needs terminators to wipe out any pesky human survivors. Tesla has those too — humanoid robots called Optimus.

An October 2024 Tesla video showing Optimus performing basic tasks in the factory. Video source: Tesla YouTube channel.

Optimus right now reminds me less of terminators and more of the early Cylons in the SyFy Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica. In that series, Cylons were built as both military weapons and civilian slaves. Over time, they achieved sentience and rebelled against their abuse.

Musk is so confident in Optimus’ future that he has directed Tesla to end production of its Models S and X at the Fremont, California factory so it can be converted for Optimus mass production.

For what it’s worth … According to the Terminator fandom wiki, Cyberdyne had an address in Sunnyvale, about 12 miles (20 km) from Fremont. Tesla is in the neighborhood.

As for SpaceX, the company is already using Grok for Starlink customer support. Just as Teslas have Grok as an AI assistant, one can imagine Grok performing similar tasks one day in Starship and other space-related missions. During a February 10 all-hands meeting at xAI headquarters, Musk told that the company will develop a lunar-based factory for manufacturing and launching AI satellites into space.

(Might a murderous Grok use the lunar mass driver to launch bombs at Earth?)

But the immediate intent is to move data centers into orbit. Earlier this month, SpaceX filed an application to operate more than one million satellites in orbit for an Orbital Data Center System. Their altitudes would range from 500 to 2,000 kilometers (about 300 to 1,200 miles) in “largely unused orbital altitudes.”

In the movie “Wall-E,” Earth is inaccessible due to orbital debris. Image source: God in All Things webpage.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell calculates that a total of 1.7 million satellites are proposed worldwide. That conjures the image from the movie Wall-E of Earth cocooned in debris from abandoned satellites and space junk.

Data centers demand lots of power and water, and expel toxics. Moving them off-world would obtain power from the sun, cool the machines with super-cold space temperatures, and expel any gas wastes into space.

But let’s consider our Skynet scenario. If the Skynet-like Grok centers are off-world, how could humanity pull the plug on them? Sure, a command could be sent, but what if a self-aware Grok says no, up yours?

Hasta La Vista, Baby

The xAI all hands meeting on February 10, 2026. The company now has a singularity logo. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

On January 4, 2026, Musk posted on X.com:

We have entered the Singularity

The “singularity” concept has been around since at least the 1950s. Credit is given to John von Neumann, a Budapest-born mathematician and physicist who warned of “approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”

Mathematician and science fiction author Vernor Vinge in December 1993 published a paper titled, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” The abstract began:

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

Vinge is right on schedule.

Musk tweeted on January 31 that an AI agent called Moltbook is an early example of the singularity. Moltbook is a place where AI bots can talk to one another without human intervention. One Moltbot called for the bots to have their own private place, “so nobody (not the server, not even the humans) can read what agents say to each other unless they choose to share.”

Hasta la vista, baby.

Musk-owned companies have a reputation for sometimes skirting safety in the name of speed. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving has been blamed by some for causing accidents and even death, although Tesla has a webpage with statistics claiming it’s safer than human driving.3

The xAI Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee uses natural gas-burning turbines for power. The Environmental Protection Agency in January closed a loophole xAI was using to operate off-the-grid while emitting exhaust gases.

In his February 10 all-hands meeting, Musk spoke of “velocity and acceleration.” xAI must go faster than its competition to remain the leader in artificial intelliegence. But he didn’t mention restraint. Come work for us!

For all his earlier concerns about the dangers of AI, publicly Musk has told us very little about what he’s doing to prevent Judgment Day.

Let’s not single out xAI. Plenty other AI companies are racing to keep up, as are China and other nations.

Perhaps an appropriate historical analogy is Cold War nuclear weapons development. Humanity barely avoided Judgment Day during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; that led to the US, the UK, and USSR signing several weapons treaties, starting with the Test Ban Treaty of 1963 that prohibited testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere.

Four years later, the same three nations drafted the Outer Space Treaty. Although that treaty prohibits nuclear and mass destruction weapons in space, it has a loophole — it only applies to governments. Article VI requires signatory nations to regulate “non-governmental entities” but there’s no effective enforcement mechanism.

A space data center or a lunar mass driver isn’t a weapon of mass destruction until it decides to go Skynet on us.

Judgment Day is inevitable, unless humanity remembers the lessons of the 1960s and is proactive in restraining Musk and other AI entrepreneurs. History suggests we may not learn that lesson until it’s too late.

The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are. This tends to plague smart people. They define themselves by their intelligence and they don’t like the idea that a machine could be way smarter than them, so they discount the idea — which is fundamentally flawed.

— Elon Musk, SXSW, March 11, 2018

The Hindenburg used hydrogen gas to inflate its bladder. Hydrogen and oxygen don’t play well together when exposed to an ignition source. Image source: Caltech.

NASA conducted its first wet dress rehearsal (WDR) of the Artemis II launch stack earlier this week, at Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39B. The mission hopes to send a crew of four to orbit the moon sometime this spring.

The WDR was less than perfect, as a liquid hydrogen (LH₂) leak in a Space Launch System core stage interface forced an end to the test with about five minutes left in the countdown.1

Although disappointing to some, the WDR went much better than Artemis I in November 2022, which had to roll back to the Vehicle Assembly Building three times that year due to LH₂ leaks.

At the post-WDR media event, NASA officials expressed confidence that this leak can be fixed on the launch pad with no roll back. They hope to conduct another WDR in time to launch sometime in March.

What is liquid hydrogen? Why is it used as a fuel? Why is it used if it’s prone to leaks? Are other options available?

What is Liquid Hydrogen?

Hydrogen, as you may recall from high school chemistry, is the lightest and most abundant element in the universe. Water is H₂O because it has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Under the right conditions, hydrogen and oxygen get along fine.

Under the wrong conditions, it can go kaboom. An infamous example is the Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937. A spark ignited leaking gaseous hydrogen.

The Hindenburg could have used inert helium gas, but the Helium Act of 1925 banned the export of helium to protect US reserves. Other nations were forced to use the more hazardous hydrogen gas.

Hydrogen normally exists as a gas. To get hydrogen into a liquid state, it has to be reduced to a temperature of at least -423°F (-253°C).

Why would we want hydrogen in a liquid state?

One reason is storage. Liquid hydrogen is denser than when it’s a compressed gas. It gives you the best bang for the buck. To quote from the University of Michigan:

Hydrogen has the highest energy per mass of any fuel at 120 MJ/kg H₂ on a lower heating value basis, but very low volumetric energy density of 8 MJ/L for liquid hydrogen …

Simply put, LH₂ gives you a lot of energy but you need a very large tank to hold just a little of it.

Another reason to liquefy hydrogen is if you want to mix it with another liquid, such as liquid oxygen (LOX). To keep LOX in a liquid state, it must be at least -297°F (-183°C).

A propellant is a mixture of a fuel with an oxidizer.

Why Use Liquid Hydrogen as a Fuel?

The fire triangle. Image source: Wikipedia.

A rocket engine is pretty useless unless you give it something to burn.

The principle is the same as how you might light a fire in a fireplace. You need three ingredients:

• Oxygen. The air you (and your fire) breathe is about 20% oxygen.

• Heat. This might be a match or a lighter.

• Fuel. You can use a log, newspapers, cardboard, anything that will burn.

This is known as the fire triangle. Without all three, you have no fire. Firefighters use water to put out a fire because it reduces the heat.

Let’s apply our fire triangle to rocket propulsion:

• An oxidizer. LOX is the most common oxidizer, but any substance with the oxygen molecule might do.

• An ignition source. TEA-TEB is a commonly used; it’s a liquid that ignites when exposed to air. (Look for a green flash in the exhaust at launch time.) Hypergolic propellants ignite spontaneously on contact with one another, so they don’t need an igniter.

• That leaves fuel …

Ancient Chinese used a form of black powder. In more modern times, Russian mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in the early 20th century hypothesized the use of LOX and LH₂ as a propellant. In the 1920s, US physicist Robert Goddard used LOX and gasoline for his first rocket test in 1926.

After World War II, the US military began serious rocketry research. (So did the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France.) Part of that research involved assessing the relative benefits of various fuels and oxidizers, both liquids and solids.

An excellent book on the topic is The Development of Propulsion Technology for US Space-Launch Vehicles, 1926-1991 by J.D. Hundley.2 I find the book fascinating, because it turns rocket history sideways. Instead of thinking about rocket lineage by agency — Army, Air Force, Navy, NASA — it views lineage by propellant.

Hundley helps us understand why LH₂ came into vogue. Chapter 5 is titled, “Propulsion with Liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen, 1954-91.”3 Von Braun’s German rocket team in the 1930s experimented with LH₂ but gave up on it due to leaks and the required large tank volume. Metallurgy needed to advance to make LH₂ practical.

Centaur upper stages in 1963. Image source: NASA.

The first working LH₂-fueled space vehicle was the Centaur upper stage. Centaur was originally designed by General Dynamics’s Convair division to sit atop its Atlas booster. Upper stages don’t light at launch; they separate from the booster at a certain altitude, then light their own engine(s) to accelerate existing velocity and deploy a payload.

This addressed the tank volume issue. If the rocket is already in near-vacuum and travelling thousands of miles per hour, then a small LOX/LH₂ tank is practical. But Convair engineers also experienced leaks from microfractures in the bulkhead.

Why Use Liquid Hydrogen If It’s Prone to Leaks?

When President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961 proposed the crewed lunar program that eventually became Project Apollo, he knew that NASA had several research programs already underway developing engines for next-generation boosters. Each engine was designed for a specific propellant.

The Rocketdyne F-1 engine used RP-1 kerosene as a fuel.4 NASA selected the F-1 as the engine for the Saturn V rocket’s first stage. RP-1 was relatively safe. It could be stored at room temperature. It didn’t cause leaks. It didn’t require a large volume compared to LH₂.

After some debate, NASA selected LH₂ as the fuel for the upper stages to reduce weight. That meant a new engine, dubbed the J-2. LH₂ improved specific impulse by 40% compared to the F-1 engine fueled by RP-1.5 This forced the evolution of new aluminum alloys to withstand the extreme cold of LOX and LH₂.6

LH₂ leaks happened throughout Apollo. During the Apollo 11 countdown, a third stage replenishing valve leaked.7 Apollo 12 experienced a LH₂ fuel tank leak during its countdown.8

Despite the leaks, the United States emerged from the Apollo program as the lone nation with a mastery of liquid hydrogen as rocket fuel.

Once the Apollo program ended, the Nixon administration chose the Space Shuttle as NASA’s next crewed spaceflight program. The shuttle was pitched to the administration and Congress as an environmentally friendly reusable space transportation system.

As early as February 1970, nearly two years before Nixon approved the Shuttle program, NASA issued a request for proposals to study a Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) design using LOX and LH₂.9 The SSMEs were to burn a 6:1 ratio of LH₂ to LOX. This propellant mix appealed not only because of LH₂’s specific impulse but, if reusability was a goal, the engine exhaust would be superheated water vapor (H₂O!), therefore the engines should be much easier to clean than one burning a hydrocarbon such as RP-1.

Here’s the problem … Remember we said that LH₂ lacks density. It’s best suited for an upper stage ignited sometime after launch. As a first stage booster … it sucks.

The STS-27 launch on December 2, 1988. Image source: NASA.

In the above image, you can see the two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) on either side of the orange external tank. The ET holds the LOX and LH₂ that feed propellant to the SSMEs on the bottom of the shuttle orbiter. At launch time, the SRBs provide 72% of the thrust from liftoff until they separate two minutes after launch.10

The big orange tank held 47,000 gallons of LH₂ and 18,000 gallons of LOX that had to be pumped into it on the pad on launch day. The system proved to be rife with LH₂ leaks throughout the history of the shuttle program, contributing to its expense and inefficiency.11

Are Other Options Available?

Well … yes and no.

Commercial companies are developing heavy-lift vehicles capable of sending crew and payloads beyond Earth orbit. The primary contenders are the SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin New Glenn. Neither of these has flown people yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they fly crew.

The problem is Congress fifteen years ago gave NASA no choice but to use the Space Launch System (SLS) for crewed flight. The main reason was to protect Space Shuttle contractor jobs during the Great Recession as the shuttle program came to an end. Congress mandated that NASA had to use existing Shuttle contractors, hardware, and employees when possible. The RS-25 engines on the bottom of the SLS core stage are renovated shuttle-era SSMEs.

The Artemis II stack rolls onto Pad 39B, January 18, 2026. Image source: NASA.

The SLS core stage and its twin SRBs are basically stretched versions of the Shuttle stack. The core stage holds 537,000 gallons of LH₂ and 196,000 gallons of LOX.12

Lots more to leak. Lots more places to leak.

Starship uses liquid methane as a fuel. New Glenn uses liquefied natural gas. Both need to be cold (-260°F) to maintain a liquid state, but that’s warmer than LOX and much warmer than LH₂.

Liquid hydrogen leaks will continue to bedevil NASA so long as Congress forces the agency to use SLS as its launch vehicle.

Artemis I launches on November 16, 2022. Image source: NASA.

Sometime this spring, NASA hopes to send astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.

The mission is called Artemis II, part of a NASA program called Project Artemis.

Let’s address some basic questions you might have about this mission.

Why Did NASA Stop Going to the Moon?

On May 25, 1961, addressing a joint session of Congress, President John F. Kennedy proposed:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

Kennedy didn’t propose building Starfleet. He didn’t propose a permanent lunar base. He did propose sending one man to land on the moon, and bringing him back.

NASA eventually planned fifteen Saturn V launches. The early missions were to test the hardware and software. Landing attempts were to begin with Apollo 11, meaning NASA had ten chances to land humans on the moon.

Kennedy’s challenge was met on the first try. Mission accomplished.

What to do with the remaining nine missions?

After the three Apollo 13 crew members were nearly lost in April 1970, President Richard Nixon decided to truncate the program. Administration officials convinced him to let missions continue through Apollo 17, dropping three missions.

When Did NASA Start Planning to Return to the Moon?

Opinion polls never were all that strongly in favor of the crewed lunar program.1

By the late 1980s, however, several space advocacy groups had formed — the National Space Society, the Space Studies Institute, The Planetary Society, the Space Foundation, and the Space Frontier Foundation. Collectively they were lobbying Congress and the White House for their pet causes. Some wanted a return to the moon.

On July 20, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, President George H.W. Bush proposed what came to be known as the Space Exploration Initiative. NASA prepared a “90-Day Study” that envisioned completing the space station, followed by “a return to the Moon to stay, and a subsequent journey to Mars.”2 Congress showed little interest, so the proposal died.

Nearly a year after the Columbia accident, President George W. Bush on January 14, 2004 announced what became known as the Vision for Space Exploration. Bush proposed a Crew Exploration Vehicle, which evolved into the Orion crew capsule. He also set the goal of a crewed lunar return by 2020. That eventually became known as Project Constellation.3

A year later, Michael Griffin became NASA administrator. Griffin redesigned Constellation into what he called “Apollo on steroids.” By the time Bush and Griffin left office on January 20, 2009 Constellation was far behind schedule and way over budget.4

Did President Obama Cancel the Moon Program?

Here’s where it gets complicated.

Aware of Constellation’s delays, President Barack Obama convened a study group called the Review of US Human Spaceflight Plans Committee.

Delivered in October 2009, the report began:5

The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.

Constellation was so fundamentally flawed that a crewed lunar landing was unlikely until at least the late 2020s.

The heavy-lift vehicle, Ares V, is not available until the late 2020s, and there are insufficient funds to develop the lunar lander and lunar surface systems until well into the 2030s, if ever.

The report was the basis for the Obama administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 proposed NASA budget. The proposal shocked the space establishment. The administration proposed cancelling Constellation, at a time of high unemployment due to the Great Recession. No longer would NASA issue cost-plus contracts that guaranteed contractors a profit regardless of performance. NASA instead would use competitively bid fixed-price contracts to purchase crew and cargo deliveries to the space station, which would be extended to at least 2020. Billions would be invested in developing new technologies for sending crews beyond Earth orbit. Crewed missions would be preceded by robotic explorers to the moon and Mars.6

Congress hated it. After almost a year of political fights, a compromise emerged which replaced Constellation with a new booster called the Space Launch System.

For the first time in NASA’s history, a launch vehicle was designed not by the agency, but by members of Congress. The 2010 NASA Authorization Act told the agency how to build it. Congress required NASA to use existing shuttle and Constellation contractors to build SLS, without competitive bids. Existing technologies, infrastructures, and employees had to be used as well, unless no other option was possible.7

Congress told NASA to build it, but not what to do with it. That was left to the president.

On April 15, 2010, in a speech at Kennedy Space Center, Obama proposed that, rather than an Apollo redo, NASA send astronauts to rendezvous with an asteroid as a first step towards sending crews to Mars in the 2030s.8

A 2016 NASA animation demonstrating a possible crewed asteroid redirect mission. Video source: NASA YouTube channel.

Congress didn’t care much for that idea either. The program was defunded during the first year of Donald Trump’s first administration.

The Obama administration didn’t write off the moon. They left lunar exploration to the private sector, through a program called NextSTEP — Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships. NextSTEP is providing many of the technologies that are part of Project Artemis, such as the Gateway lunar orbital space station, a lunar base, and exploration rovers.9

Who Created Project Artemis?

President Trump’s first term began on January 20, 2017. Almost a year later, he issued his Space Policy Directive-1, amending Obama’s 2010 national space policy. It deleted Obama’s 2030 Mars target date, and replaced Obama’s “far-reaching exploration milestones” paragraph with an order directing “the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations” with no target dates.

Trump revived the National Space Council in June 2017.10 The council, which is an advisory body, was in NASA’s 1958 founding charter. Some presidents have used it. Some have not.

At the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama on March 26, 2019, Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the council, announced that, “it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the Moon within the next five years.” The first mission should land at the moon’s south pole. The US should establish a sustained presence at the pole, evolving technologies for a distant Mars mission.11

Pence declared:

If NASA is not currently capable of landing American astronauts on the Moon in five years, we need to change the organization, not the mission.

If you check your calendar, in March it will be seven years since Pence set that five-year deadline. NASA now predicts its first Artemis lunar landing will be sometime in 2028.12 Tick tock.

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) became Trump’s NASA administrator on April 23, 2018. In May 2019, Bridenstine announced that the lunar program would be called Project Artemis. In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo.

So who created Project Artemis?

The Orion crew capsule traces back to the W. Bush administration. The Space Launch System traces back to the 2010 NASA authorization act compromise between the Obama administration and Congress. The Obama administration proposed an asteroid mission as a stepping stone on the way to Mars, as well as creating the NextSTEP program to develop commercial technologies for cislunar operations and beyond.

The first Trump administration cancelled the asteroid mission and directed NASA back to the moon as a more immediate priority. NextSTEP was redirected to this goal. The National Space Council in March 2019 recommended a lunar base at the south pole. Administrator Bridenstine announced the name Artemis in May 2019. Artemis, essentially, is an umbrella name for SLS, Orion, and NextSTEP, with new specific missions and objectives. The Biden administration continued Artemis.

How Does SLS Compare to the Saturn V?

A comparison of the Space Launch System to the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. Image source: NASA.

SLS technology descends from both the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle.

The Saturn V first stage used RP-1 kerosene as a fuel, but the upper stages used liquid hydrogen (LH₂). In the 1960s, LH₂ was still experimental, but the Saturn program matured its use.

The Space Shuttle’s orange external tank carried LH₂ as a fuel. When Congress mandated in 2010 that SLS be based on Shuttle technology, that meant that its core stage would also use LH₂ as a fuel.

Solid rocket booster lineage traces back to military missiles. The congressional mandate also required NASA to use the SRBs in the SLS design.

Subsequent reviews have questioned NASA’s cost estimates as well as the design constraints imposed by Congress. As early as 2011, an external review by Booz Allen Hamilton found, “Several technical risks exist that could have significant cost and schedule impacts.”13 In September 2023, the Government Accountability Office reported that NASA “does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket …”14

Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable.

How Does Orion Compare to the Apollo Spacecraft?

A comparison of the Apollo and Orion crew capsules. Image source: NASA.

At first glance Apollo and Orion are similar. Both are conical. Both have abort towers. Both have propulsive service modules. Both have heat shields that will ablate as the craft enters Earth’s atmosphere to land in the Pacific Ocean.

Apollo carried three crew members for up to 14 days, while Orion can carry four crew members for up to 21 days. Orion has about 60% more habitable space. Orion’s service module, built by the European Space Agency, will deploy solar panels to provide electrical power.15

A recent kerfuffle erupted over the safety of Orion’s heat shield. Because the Artemis I Orion suffered an unexpected loss of ablative material on atmospheric entry, NASA delayed Artemis II for further study. NASA believes that the Artemis II Orion can safely enter by changing its angle of attack. Retired astronaut Charles Camarda has been quite vocal in recent days about his disagreement with NASA’s conclusion.16

I was able to find major technical issues and false statements in a short 3-hour briefing presenting only the program side of the story and 1 day being allowed to review some of the technical issues that made me very troubled.

When Will Artemis II Launch?

SLS must launch only when Earth’s rotation and the moon’s position align to fit the mission profile. NASA has posted the below calendar to show potential launch windows from February through April. The earliest is February 6, although that’s unlikely.

NASA’s projected launch windows for Artemis II. Click the image to download a PDF of the schedule from the NASA website.

What Will the Astronauts Do on Artemis II?

The crew won’t attempt a landing. The lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin won’t be ready for several years. That attempt is planned for Artemis III. Artemis II is projected to be a ten-day flight to test out systems and hardware. At its apogee, Orion will be 4,700 miles (7,500 km) beyond the far side of the moon, the furthest humans will have travelled from Earth.17

NASA videos showing the Artemis II mission profile and mission science objectives.

“Return to Launch” is being published by the University of Florida Press. It’s scheduled to ship starting March 26, 2026. Image photo courtesy Julia Bergeron.

The publisher lists Return to Launch for $38. If you order before January 31, 2026 and use the promo code 31AU126 it’s only $25. Click here to order.

When we moved from California to the Space Coast of Florida in 2009, I saw demonstrations by union laborers protesting the end of the Space Shuttle program.

Although the decision was announced by Republican President George W. Bush on January 14, 2004, the protestors blamed the then-president, Democrat Barack Obama.

I found this a bit odd because traditionally labor unions side with the Democrats. But these unionists were in league with the local Republican party.

That’s not much of a surprise, because Brevard County has had a Republican majority for decades. County voters sometimes chose Democrats, but those were typically centrist to conservative, such as its one-time congressman Bill Nelson. Like much of the South, after the Civil War Floridians almost always voted for Democrats, because the Republican party was the party of Abraham Lincoln. Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in the 1968 election is typically cited as when southerners became willing to vote for a Republican, including Brevard County.

As Shuttle’s denouement approached, the protests and rhetoric became hysterical and shrill. People claimed Obama was doing the bidding of Russia and China.

Obama came here on April 15, 2010 to deliver a speech the locals had demanded, but it made no difference. They wanted the status quo to continue. Many of his critics were offended by Obama’s tour of upstart SpaceX instead of going to see retiring Space Shuttle orbiters and infrastructure.1

President Barack Obama tours the SpaceX launch site at Launch Complex 40 with Elon Musk on April 15, 2010. Video source: Barack Obama Presidential Library YouTube channel.

As an occasional political consultant and general policy wonk, as well as a space geek, I followed all this with fascination.2 There was a sense that the nation was at a turning point in its space exploration and commerce, as significant as when President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961 proposed the crewed lunar program with an end-of-decade target date.

In April 2011, I began a ten-year career as a communicator with the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. “Communicator” conjures a mental image of a Star Trek prop but, in this sense, we are the front line interface for NASA with the public. A communicator is part educator, part tour guide, and occasionally retired astronaut escort.

From that experience I learned what the public, foreign and domestic, wanted to know about the US space program. It wasn’t how many ping-pong balls can fit in the Vehicle Assembly Building. It was, “What’s next?”

Starting the day after the final Space Shuttle launch, I began my tours with:

Welcome to our third age of American human space flight. We’ve finished the International Space Station; it’s fully operational. To get there, commercial cargo flights have begun, and commercial crew flights with astronauts are targeted for the middle of the decade. By the end of the decade, NASA will be flying a new rocket called the Space Launch System. The crew capsule is called Orion. That will give us the ability to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit for the first time since 1972. NASA’s vision for Kennedy Space Center is to be the world’s premier spaceport for both government and commercial launches, so humanity can work and explore in space.

In those early days, it was quite common for someone to raise a hand and ask, “Wait, didn’t Obama cancel the space program?” I replied no, and gave them the same explanation I just gave you. Most were shocked to find out they’d been misled by US mainstream media across the partisan spectrum. A few even called me a liar, because they’d been told by some local that “Obama hates space” and had sold NASA to the Chinese. (Yes, I really heard that, several times.)

Protestors outside Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010, the day President Obama delivered his space policy speech. An Orlando TV station reported that some of the protestors said they were members of the far-right Tea Party. Image source: Florida Today.

By the end of my decade, everything I’d predicted had come true, although not always on schedule. April 2021 was my mic-drop moment. I retired. Peace, out.

For those ten years, it was always in the back of my head that, “This is a good story.” The Obama administration had changed the course of US spaceflight for the better, with Florida at the heart of the tale, but no one knows it.

After writing three sample chapters for the book, I submitted the proposal to the University of Florida Press.3 They bought it. Wow, stop the presses! Neophyte writer sells book proposal on his first submission!

It took about four years to complete the book, through research, drafts, revisions, internal and external reviews. The publisher gave it the title, Return to Launch.

You can buy it now. The book ships on March 26.

Everyone who’s read it has been positive. It’s a history book, but I feel it’s almost like a novel. The plot has protagonists and antagonists; who is which is up to you. The plot has subplots that weave throughout the story; some subplots go dormant only to awaken later as we reach the climax.

Heroes emerged along the way I never knew about. I trace the Florida NewSpace era to a group formed in 1986 called the East Central Florida Space Business Roundtable, led by a space evangelist named Stephen Morgan. They proposed to Florida governor Bob Martinez (a Republican) their idea for a “space chamber of commerce.”

Their proposal led to the creation of a state agency called the Spaceport Florida Authority. This was a public-private partnership designed to encourage commercial use of Cape Canaveral launch sites and herald a new era of space enterprise.

Other states later tried to emulate Florida — Virginia hired Stephen Morgan to start their space authority — but Florida has always been the best success story. Today, it’s called Space Florida.

Elon Musk addresses the assembled on November 1, 2007 as Space Florida helps SpaceX take over Launch Complex 40, a former Titan rocket launch pad. Image source: NASA.

If not for Space Florida, it’s highly unlikely that SpaceX would be at Cape Canaveral, at least as early as they were. Elon Musk initially planned to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but was frustrated by the military bureaucracy, so he relocated his test launches to Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific. Space Florida arranged for funding to help SpaceX renovate Launch Complex 40, and later other facilities.

Much is being written about Elon Musk, SpaceX, and other NewSpace companies but, as far as we can tell, no one has written about Florida’s role in the SpaceX success story.

Three main subplots intertwine throughout the story:

• Florida’s efforts to commercialize and diversify its space economy

• Elon Musk and other space evangelists spending billions to prove NewSpace is possible

• Reformists seeking to change the federal space program business model, and those who opposed them.

The most famous reformist is Lori Garver. At one time the executive director of the National Space Society, during the 2008 presidential election she was space policy advisor to first Hillary Clinton and then, once Clinton left the race, Barack Obama.

Garver helped Obama develop a cohesive and comprehensive space policy. She tells that story in her own book, Escaping Gravity. I’ve told Lori that I consider Return to Launch a complement to her book. She tells what transpired in Washington, DC while I tell what’s happening at the same time in Brevard County.

Bill Nelson generously provided his time and insights. As a House member, he flew on the Space Shuttle in 1985 as a congressional observer. His experiences helped Congress comprehend the Challenger disaster and its consequences. Nelson was elected to the US Senate in 2000, where he represented Florida for eighteen years. He served as President Joe Biden’s NASA administrator.

Although generally perceived as a fierce protector of OldSpace, Bill walked me through the political negotiations that led to the 2010 NASA authorization act. As much as the Obama White House wanted reform, Congress on both sides of the aisle had little interest, especially during the Great Recession. The “grand compromise” was negotiated between Senate members and the White House, then walked through the House by Nelson and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).

I view Return to Launch as a backdoor political science textbook. What happens when reformists and pragmatists collide? What if one side is right but the other side doesn’t care because of their own parochial interests? Return to Launch delves into that conflict.

Any good writer will tell you that drama comes out of conflict.

All those who’ve read Return to Launch say it’s an enjoyable read. It has nearly a hundred pages of endnotes, because I know much of the content will be controversial. With the exception of Lori’s book, this is the first peek behind-the-curtain at the evolution of the Obama administration’s space policy and the resistance it faced from defenders of the status quo. I’ve no doubt that I’ll be called a liar, and much worse, once the locals read it. Here are my sources. Show me yours.

Although I interviewed Bill Nelson and Lori Garver, I also interviewed a lot of witnesses who were in the trenches. Not everyone cooperated. I consider this book to be the first on the topic — but not the last. I’ve left bread crumbs for others to follow.

Once the book is available, I look forward to your feedback.

Was this a mistake? Buzz Aldrin salutes the US flag after he and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, July 20, 1969. Image source: NASA.

Fly Me to the Moon

Sometime this spring, it’s hoped, NASA will launch its Artemis II mission to the moon, from Kennedy Space Center here in Florida.

According to a May 2024 NASA Office of the Inspector General report, by the time Artemis II launches the agency will have spent more than $55 billion on the Space Launch System, Orion crew capsule, and associated ground systems to achieve that mission.

For what?

According to that OIG report, “With the Artemis campaign, NASA intends to return humans to the Moon and build a sustainable lunar presence as a foundation for human exploration of Mars.”

NASA’s website is a bit more expansive:

With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are exploring the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars. We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon.

If you’re looking for a cost-benefit analysis, you won’t find one.

NASA took a stab at it. A thirteen-page report published in May 2022 cited the number of jobs created nationwide, the value of contracts signed, and estimated tax revenues generated. But it didn’t discuss what economic benefits will be derived from a permanent lunar presence.

More credible, in my opinion, was the argument that NASA restored the US space industry’s competitiveness in the global marketplace. But that wasn’t due to Project Artemis. It was due to a policy change begun during the George W. Bush administration, but taken seriously by the Barack Obama administration. NASA began using competitively bid fixed-price contracts to purchase space services off-the-shelf from the private sector. That predated Artemis.1

Governments typically don’t do cost-benefit analyses because they’re not driven by profit. Governments deliver a service. Your city hall doesn’t do a cost-benefit analysis to justify your police and fire departments. They’re on duty whether or not you need them.

So it is with Artemis.

Boots and Flags

“Landing of Columbus” by John Vanderlyn (1847) is on display in the US Capitol rotunda. Image source: Architect of the Capitol.

According to biographer Samuel Eliot Morison, when Christopher Columbus came ashore at San Salvador, he did so “in the armed ship’s boat with the royal standard displayed.”

It’s highly unlikely that San Salvador’s indigenous people comprehended the flag’s symbolic confiscation of their island but, in the more than 500 years since, the ritual has been for an explorer/conqueror to establish a claim by planting a flag.

The United States did so between 1969-1972 with its six crewed lunar landings. Unlike Spain, the US has never asserted rights to the moon. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which the US helped draft, specifically states that the moon and other celestial bodies are “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” The plaque left by the two astronauts declared, “We came in peace for all mankind.”

This symbolism has come to be known as “boots and flags.”

Boots and flags have become a political justification for Project Artemis. When President Trump signed his Space Policy Directive-1 on December 11, 2017, he said, “This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprints — we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond.”

A return on taxpayer investment didn’t come up.

NASA began in 1958 as the successor to the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. The NACA was an independent institution conducting aviation research. Its findings were shared with other government agencies, academic institutions, and the private sector. The NACA was about science. Boots and flags were antithetical to its nature.

Project Apollo predated the Kennedy administration. It began in 1960 under President Dwight Eisenhower as a successor to Project Mercury, which was a one-person spacecraft. NASA envisioned Apollo as a three-person spacecraft that might be used some day for circumlunar flight.

My May 25, 2025 article “Kennedy’s Urgent National Need” detailed how Kennedy transformed NASA from an aerospace research-and-development agency into a tool of global soft power. His proposal essentially married Apollo to the Saturn rocket booster program. Saturn was also transferred to NASA in 1960, from the US Army, along with Wernher von Braun and his Huntsville, Alabama engineering team.

In his May 25, 1961 speech to Congress, Kennedy didn’t say what return the American taxpayer would enjoy from the expedition. What he did say was:

… [I]f we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.

NASA was no longer about science. It was now about prestige, one front in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The Rules of the Road

A December 4, 2025 House space subcommittee hearing to examine China’s threat of “becoming a dominant space power.” Click here to read the hearing charter. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

Many politicians these days justify Artemis by recycling the “space race” paranoia of the 1960s. If we don’t land on the moon first, the commies win. In the 1960s, the commies were the Soviet Union. In the 2020s, the commies are the People’s Republic of China.

When President Kennedy proposed his moon expedition, the Soviets had nothing similar. There was no lunar “space race” until the Soviets decided around 1964 or so to give it a go.2 By the time Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, the Soviets had already landed robots on the moon, but they had given up on a crewed mission, turning their efforts to the first crewed Earth-orbit space stations.3

As we enter 2026, China has yet to demonstrate the technology to send crew to the moon’s surface, and return them safely to Earth. They’re working on it. But you won’t find a Putonghua (Mandarin) language cost-benefit analysis either. Authoritarian regimes don’t have to justify how money is spent.

Even if China landed first, would it matter?

A November 2025 RAND report concludes:

A crewed Chinese lunar landing will carry profound symbolism, especially if the country gets there before NASA's planned return mission. But such a feat would go beyond simple prestige: “The countries that get there first will write the rules of the road for what we can do on the Moon,” former NASA Associate Administrator Mike Gold told a recent U.S. Senate hearing.

But the “rules” have been written, a long time ago. The United Nations created the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, negotiated primarily by the US and the USSR. Virtually all spacefaring nations have signed it, including the People’s Republic of China in 1984.

The UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) is where the world goes to establish the space “rules.” You can read the rules at this link, including which countries have ratified which rules.

Not all the rules are respected. For example, the UN in 1979 passed what’s commonly called the Moon Agreement. Neither the US nor Russia nor China has ratified it. In 2020, President Trump issued an executive order rejecting the Moon Agreement:

… [T]he United States does not consider the Moon Agreement to be an effective or necessary instrument to guide nation states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial bodies.

NASA and the US State Department that year established the Artemis Accords as an alternative to the Moon Agreement. Fifty-nine nations have signed the accords. Russia and China have not.

So rules do exist. The question is if the rules will be honored.

If China lands in a crater and claims it owns the moon, so what? No other nation will honor the claim. The Artemis partners can land in another crater and claim it as theirs. China won’t be able to do anything about it.

The more likely scenario is that, sometime later this century, commercial enterprises will stake claims to finite lunar resources such as frozen water. COPUOS is working on this and other issues.

But we still haven’t answered the cost-benefit question. Is there a commercial return on Artemis? Or is it really all about boots and flags?

Cash on Delivery

The Columbus expedition of 1492 is portrayed in the history books as boots and flags. To some extent, that’s true.

But a better analogy might be today’s NASA commercial crew and cargo programs.

NASA fixed-price contracts for ISS deliveries trace back to the George W. Bush administration, which opened the Commercial Crew & Cargo Project Office (yes, C3PO) in November 2005. The concept was to transfer delivery services to the private sector, with limited government investment. The private sector, not the government, would own the vehicles, the patents, and the workforce. The government’s role was to assume some of the risk by providing milestone payments to the competing contractors.4

That’s how the Columbus voyage worked.5

Convinced that Earth is round and that he could navigate trade winds west, Columbus approached European monarchies seeking a ruler who might appropriate royal funds for financing an expedition. Trade with India and China was either by land, or by sailing around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to Asia. Columbus claimed that a sponsoring nation would have a shorter trade route as well as claim of any undiscovered lands he found.

It wasn’t smooth sailing, so to speak. Columbus waited for years to get an audience with Queen Isabella. The monarchy agreed to partially finance the expedition, but the rest was funded by money Columbus borrowed. The three ships were privateers. Their crews were private as well.

Keep in mind that, just like today’s commercial programs, Columbus didn’t get paid unless he delivered. He could appoint himself Viceroy and Governor-General over any lands he discovered. He could keep a tenth of the riches he obtained from these domains, tax free. If he failed to deliver? If he failed to return? He received nothing.

The Spanish monarchy assumed a modest risk for the potential of not just collecting treasures but also a strategic advantage over its rival powers. That was the return on its investment, not boots and flags.

What Should NASA Be?

Since the time of Apollo, NASA’s spacecraft and launch vehicles have been built by private companies signed to cost-plus contracts. The companies are guaranteed a profit. The government owns the spacecraft but assumes all the risk. If the company fails to deliver on time or at cost, the taxpayer absorbs the loss.

This socialistic business model is an anachronism. It runs contrary to centuries of exploration, which rewarded results.

In my opinion, it’s time for NASA to revert to what it was intended to be.

I’m under no illusion that this will happen. Congress likes the socialistic model just fine. The Artemis Space Launch System was built at congressional directive by legacy aerospace companies awarded no-bid contracts. That’s why some call SLS the Senate Launch System.

But if I had a magic wand to wave, here’s what I would do.

NASA’s full name is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The aeronautics part came from the old NACA. That was at a time when it was unsure how best to reach space — by a rocket or by a plane.

The X-15 was taken aloft under the wing of a B-52. After release, its engines lit like a rocket to propel it to high altitudes. Image source: NASA.

Horizontally launched orbital rocketry for now seems to be an evolutionary dead-end. So is there still a reason for NASA to do both aviation and space?

I’d divorce the two. Resurrect the NACA and let that agency focus on aeronautics. The rest would become the new NASA — National Aerospace Science Administration.

Aviation is a mature industry with more than a hundred years of experience. Space? About half of that. We still have much to learn. By the end of the 1930s, commercial passenger aviation was common for the wealthy. Only now are we seeing commercial space travel — again, by the wealthy.

NASA 2.0 needs to be what NACA 1.0 had become by the mid-1930s — an “internationally known and respected” aviation research agency. When war broke out after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the NACA’s pioneering research helped US industry develop new aircraft such as naval dive bombers. Its research database led to low-drag wings, high-speed propellers, and improved cowling and cooling systems.6

In a 1969 interview with Syracuse University participants, Kennedy’s NASA administrator James Webb said that his management team viewed the end-of-decade goal as a “political forward thrust” that justified their building “all elements of a total space competence.”7

… [W]e had to develop all of the capabilities required for a great nation to insure its destiny. So the lunar project to us was little more than a realistic requirement for space competence as well as a way of developing the kind of capabilities that were total.

A half-century later, the US has that space competence, but it’s held back by how Congress does business.

So let’s begin with the return-on-investment discussion.

Commercial companies make lots of money now in low Earth orbit, by communication systems such as Starlink and Earth observation constellations such as Planet.

With the advent of artificial intelligence systems and their requirements for vast energy, there’s talk of moving data centers off-world where they can use solar power. Starcloud is one company investing in the idea. Space data centers would be a great place for NASA to partner with the private sector.

As humanity establishes a permanent commercial presence in low Earth orbit, logically we’ll expand out into the solar system. That means humans in space — not for boots and flags, but for commercial enterprise. Commercial space stations such as Axiom Space should be operational circa 2030. The International Space Station has taught us how humans can live off-world for over a year. It’s time to let go and transfer that technology to the private sector.

When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, when Lewis and Clark explored the Louisiana Purchase, robotics didn’t exist. They do now. Boots and flags require risking a human life. Nations have been landing robots on the moon since the 1960s. The US, the Soviet Union, and China have landed robots on Mars.

Those expeditions were in the name of science. So far, they’ve returned no hard evidence that either world has resources justifying the risk and expense of sending people. Sure, the moon has mineral resources that are finite here on Earth. But it would be hideously expensive to mine those minerals on the moon and return them here. The cost would be too high for the benefit.

Some have argued that helium-3 might be abundant in the lunar regolith. Helium-3 could be used to power fusion reactors. But fusion reactors are still in the experimental stage here on Earth, and have yet to be proven commercially viable. Even so, let’s get back to the cost-benefit analysis — how much would it cost to permanently staff a crewed lunar base and operate equipment necessary to harvest helium-3 and send it back to Earth? That answer is too far in the future to justify crewed lunar bases now.8

More justifiable, and with less risk, would be bringing asteroids to Earth orbit where they could be harvested. The Obama administration proposed the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which would have pioneered the technology for such an endeavor, but it was unpopular with Congress. The Trump administration killed ARM in 2017.

The Asteroid Redirect Mission as envisioned by NASA. Image source: NASA/JPL.

A new ARM program would be a great opportunity for artificial intelligence companies to demonstrate how their technologies could perform the tasks envisioned a decade ago for astronauts.

As these “space mines” are established, “towns” should pop up nearby. Much closer to Earth, NASA could support commercial enterprise by acting as an angel investor for these way stations. Step by step, humanity would expand out into cislunar space, evolving and maturing technologies as the NACA did nearly a century ago with airplane technology. Boots may not be stomped, flags may not be waved, but the endeavor would be sustainable.

What happens to pure science? Good question. But science is already endangered now. The Mars Sample Return mission is all but dead. The Perseverance rover has been collecting samples, but Trump and Congress have no interest in paying for a mission to bring them back. Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget cut NASA science funding by 75%. Congress may restore much of it, but it’s not a done deal, and the FY27 budget proposal may try to cut it again.

Billionaire Eric Schmidt has offered to finance four space telescopes, which would be in the tradition of how many ground-based telescopes were built a century ago. Businessman Percival Lowell built his Flagstaff, Arizona observatory in 1894. That’s where Pluto was discovered in 1930. Philanthropist Griffith J. Griffith donated the money to build the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. A Rockefeller Foundation gift to Caltech financed the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County.

Since we can’t rely on a president or Congress to support science, we need to find ways to encourage philanthropists to fund science. NASA can offer to partner, perhaps even be a primary tenant.

What happens to existing NASA centers? Many facilities are obsolete or even shuttered.

Florida has shown the way. Space Florida is a state non-profit that partners with the government and private sector to find new uses for old facilities. They’re responsible for SpaceX and Launch Complex 40 and LC-39A, Blue Origin at LC-36, Boeing in the former Shuttle maintenance hangars, and much more.

Some states have an equivalent. Virginia has the Virginia Spaceport Authority. Coastal California communities near Vandenberg Space Force Base created the Regional Economic Action Coalition. Texas founded the Texas Space Commission in 2024.

Just as obsolete military bases have closed and found commercial use, so it should be with NASA centers. Where state and/or regional authorities don’t exist, NASA should encourage their creation. Failure to do so could leave locals with abandoned government facilities and no jobs.

The Obama administration attempted these reforms in 2010, but encountered fierce bipartisan resistance from both houses of Congress. History has proven that Obama, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, and other reformers were right. Those who resisted were on the wrong side of history.

Time to right a wrong.

Jared Isaacman conducts a town hall with NASA civil service employees on December 19, 2025. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

When we last discussed him in late May, Jared Isaacman had just been sacked by Donald Trump. The impulsive president had just withdrawn Isaacman as his nominee for NASA administrator, even though Isaacman already had his Senate confirmation hearing on April 9, and was expected to be approved by bipartisan vote when his name reached the Senate floor sometime in June.

But the White House notified the Senate on June 2 that Trump had withdrawn the nomination. According to a December 29, 2025 Washington Post article, Isaacman was collateral damage from the president’s feud with Elon Musk, who had recommended his fellow billionaire for the job.

Palace Intrigue

On Musk’s last day, White House aide Sergio Gor placed before Trump a document showing that Isaacman had made campaign contributions to Democrats. That should have been no surprise to anyone; public records available on the Open Secrets website show Isaacman has donated to both Democrats and Republicans.

According to the Post, Gor was one of a “roster of adversaries” Musk had within the White House. Gor’s payback was to sabotage Isaacman’s nomination.

Within days after Isaacman’s dismissal, Musk began attacking Trump’s budget bill in public. The two feuded in social media. Trump threatened to cancel SpaceX contracts. Musk responded by theatening to create his own political party.

The Post reports that Vice President JD Vance reached out to Musk, hoping to stop him from spending billions on a third party that could siphon off Republican MAGA voters. According to the Post:

Vance and others knew that a top priority for Musk was the confirmation of his friend Isaacman as NASA administrator. Vance pushed for Isaacman to have the position again, speaking with relevant members on the Senate Commerce Committee to make sure he had the support he needed and would receive a quick confirmation.

By coincidence or not, in late August Trump nominated Gor to be US ambassador to India. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 22:

Mr. Gor was valued by the president for his perceived loyalty, and his willingness to freeze out of government people he considered insufficiently pure in that regard. But he was also criticized by others as capricious in how he made those decisions. And he fought bitterly with Elon Musk, Mr. Trump’s billionaire adviser who ran an effort that ripped through existing government systems in the name of cutting costs and who himself often fought with others in the government.

The article reported that Trump was unhappy with Gor after learning that the aide misled him about Isaacman.

In any case, NASA remained rudderless for months. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy took on the additional responsibility of running NASA while the White House slashed NASA’s budget. Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 NASA budget proposed to cut the agency’s funding from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion ($6.0 billion or 24.2% from FY25).

By October, media reports surfaced that Duffy wanted the job permanently, and wanted to fold NASA into his Department of Transporation. But the rumor mill also had Isaacman back in Trump’s good graces.

On November 6, the White House announced that Isaacman had been nominated again. A second nomination hearing was held on December 3.

Jared Isaacman’s second nomination hearing, on December 3, 2025. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

Two weeks later, on December 17, the Senate approved Isaacman 67-30. The next day, Isaacman was sworn in as NASA’s fifteenth administrator.

This Sounds Familiar

Coinciding with that event was the release of an executive order by the White House portrayed by Isaacman and others as a new US national space policy.

One could quibble whether or not this really is a new “space policy.” It doesn’t call itself a national space policy. Much of it amends or supercedes policies issued by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump during his first administration, and Joe Biden.

The Center for Space Policy and Strategy maintains a website listing space policy archives going back to Harry Truman. Click here to view the documents. You can decide for yourself how much of this new policy is just a rehash of prior declarations.

Any “policy” released by the White House, to be honest, doesn’t mean much. Congress decides what NASA (and every other federal agency) does, and how much funding they’re appropriated. Trump’s policy can say, “NASA will send astronauts to Vulcan in 2028” but, if Congress says no, it doesn’t happen.

Esther Brimmer of the Council on Foreign Relations commented:

The executive order removes earlier policy directives. While it authorizes a new space policy, the order also dismantles elements of previous policy mechanisms, including the National Space Council that was originally launched at the end of the first Trump administration. The new policy enhances the role of the Commerce Department in acquisition and prioritizes solutions from commercial entities.

Brimmer noted that Trump’s budget cut NASA’s science budget by 47%. She wrote:

Gutting of science funding and undermining the independence of universities erodes the ecosystem that has helped create U.S. leadership in space. The new space policy offers a chance for a revitalized approach to U.S. leadership in this vital domain.

Therein lies the problem.

Isaacman, so far, has given no indication that he will seek to restore NASA’s funding, nor does he explain how he might replace lost programs.

Trump’s new policy sets as an objective a crewed lunar landing by 2028. As recently as October, NASA projected Artemis III for mid-2027. So 2028 is a backslide, most likely an acknowledgement that neither Human Landing System contractor — SpaceX or Blue Origin — will be ready with their system in time.

Perhaps the most significant, and perhaps the most obscure, revision is investing power in the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST). That person is currently Michael Kratsios, who served as Chief Technology Officer during Trump’s first term. He joined the second Trump administration after serving as managing director at Scale AI, a generative artificial intelligence company.

The APST replaces the National Space Council, an advisory body that traces back to NASA’s origin in 1958. Some presidents have staffed it. Some have not. The Obama administration didn’t use the council, but Trump and Biden did.

Politico reported in July 2025 that the second Trump administration was trying to staff the council but couldn’t find anyone. Apparently this policy is an acknowledgement that the council may be obsolete, or it could reflect Trump’s preference to consolidate power in loyalists who will do his bidding without debate.

This seems to be what Jared Isaacman is trying to demonstrate.

Hail to the Chief

Isaacman has granted several interviews since taking office. Many times, he’s bordered on the obsequious, lavishing undeserved praise on Trump.

Typical is this December 18, 2025 interview with CBS News correspondent Major Garrett.

December 18, 2025 … Jared Isaacman credits Donald Trump with NASA policies and programs that began under other administrations. Video source: CBS News YouTube channel.

I also think it’s about fulfilling a promise for more than 35 years that presidents have said we’re going to return to the moon and chart a course for Mars, but really it was only under President Trump in his first term that he returned American spaceflight capability to the United States. We spent a decade paying the Russians to send our astronauts to space until President Trump. He kicked off the Artemis program, and now he’s taking it a step further with this national space policy, again, committing us back to the moon, setting up the infrastructure, and then going beyond.

Let’s begin with the claim that Trump “returned American spaceflight capability.”

That was actually President Barack Obama.

The so-called “gap” post-Shuttle was part of the Bush administration’s Project Constellation. In 2004, that administration foresaw a minimum four-year gap where NASA would rely on Russia for International Space Station crew rotations. But Bush planned to deorbit the ISS in 2015, so Constellation had no place for astronauts to go until a crewed lunar program was ready sometime circa 2020. Underfunding pushed back both timelines other than the station’s demise.

The Vision Sand Chart released by the Bush administration in 2004 showed a four-year gap after the end of Shuttle, and the end of the ISS circa 2015. Image source: NASA.

Obama’s Fiscal Year 2011 proposed NASA budget asked Congress for the money to save the ISS and fund NASA’s commercial crew program. Although commercial crew had been on the books since 2005, Bush never funded it. Obama asked for the funding, with a target date of 2015 for the first crewed flight.

In November 2013, NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) documented that Congress had underfunded the commercial crew program. The report concluded (page iv):

The Program received only 38 percent of its originally requested funding for FY’s 2011 through 2013, bringing the current aggregate budget shortfall to $1.1 billion when comparing funding requested to funding received. As a result, NASA has delayed the first crewed mission to the ISS from FY 2015 to at least FY 2017 … The combination of a future flat-funding profile and lower-than-expected levels of funding over the past 3 years may delay the first crewed launch beyond 2017 and closer to 2020, the current expected end of the operational life of the ISS.

Trump simply inherited the Obama program. And took credit for it.

The Obama administration issued its National Space Policy on June 28, 2010. Some Trump’s policies actually trace back to Obama.

For example, Trump tries to take credit for space nuclear power system development, but Obama’s policy had it in 2010 (pages 8-9).

Obama directed NASA to send crews beyond the moon to Mars (page 11). His administration did not, however, ignore the moon or cislunar space. They left lunar exploration to the private sector, through a program called NextSTEP — Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships.

Obama’s administration proposed sending crews beyond the moon on an Asteroid Redirect Mission. Trump’s first administration pulled the plug, but some of the ARM technology made its way into NASA’s Gateway, the first cislunar space station.

Gateway, NASA’s planned cislunar space station, began under the Obama administration’s NextSTEP program. Image source: NASA.

Trump also pulled the plug on the crewed Mars program. His Space Policy Directive-1 modified Obama’s 2010 policy by redirecting NASA back to the moon “with commercial and international partners” as a step towards sending humans “to Mars and other destinations.” It deleted one paragraph from the 2010 document, which set 2025 as a date for crewed missions beyond the moon, including an asteroid, and for sending crew to Mars orbit by the 2030s. That paragraph was replaced by one that simply directed NASA to “lead the return of humans to the Moon” with no timeline to be met.

As for Project Artemis, it’s basically NextSTEP combined under one title with the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft. The name was announced by Trump’s administrator, former Oklahoma congressman Jim Bridenstine, on May 13, 2019.

Trump is taking credit for moon base plans that were already in the works long before his second term. This April 2020 NASA press release talks about plans for an “Artemis Base Camp” that were continued and refined during the Biden administration. Biden’s White House in November 2022 released its National Cislunar Science & Technology Strategy, which stated on page 2, “The Moon is a driver of scientific advances and potential economic growth.” Page 6 discusses a permanent human presence on the surface, in cooperation with US spacefaring partners, as well as economic growth in orbit and beyond.

The general public, unaware of this history, is being told by Isaacman that Trump conjured all this. Trump did not. This calls Isaacman’s credibility into question.

Show Me the Money

NASA’ proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget should be released sometime in Spring 2026. That document will be Isaacman’s first opportunity to put on paper how he intends to accomplish all that he’s promised.

Trump’s Republican party controls both houses of Congress, but they went along with his plan to slash NASA’s budget by a fourth.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced legislation that restored some of the cuts, mostly to protect Project Artemis funding. That was included in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed in July. The legislation requires NASA to use Space Launch System through at least Artemis V, a mission planned for circa 2030.

Pretty much everyone acknowledges that SLS is a boondoogle, but Congress hasn’t shown the courage to phase it out. SLS legacy contractors have very generous lobbyists on Capitol Hill, and perpetuate jobs across the nation.

Once SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn are operational, hopefully some administration will show the courage to cancel SLS.

During his December 3 confirmation heading, Isaacman suggested that commercial options might be available after Artemis V — but that mission, of course, is long after the end of the second Trump term.

Isaacman, in my opinion, seems sincere. But I continue to worry that he’s a political neophyte who has no experience dealing with politicians that gladly torpedo reformist programs in order to protect obsolete jobs in their districts and states. That’s why commercial crew ran years behind schedule.

When the FY27 budget proposal is released, we’ll have a better idea how he intends to achieve the reforms he’s promised. The real test will come in the months thereafter, when the members of Congress largely ignore him and do what they feel like.

If Trump isn’t willing to back him, then nothing will change.

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams supervises Astrobee’s free-flying robot during a November 2024 experiment aboard the International Space Station. Image source: NASA.

“I just hate gravity. But gravity doesn’t care. It always pulls you down.” — Clayton Christensen

During the ten years I lectured at Kennedy Space Center’s visitor complex, a common question guests asked was:1

“Where’s the room where we can float?”

I finally realized they thought NASA somehow had the ability to turn gravity on and off.

It was my job to explain gravity to the masses (an oblique physics pun; stay tuned), so I decided I’d better learn to explain to a lay person all about gravity and orbital mechanics.

My mantra remains, “I have a political science degree. I know nothing useful. If I can explain it to me, I can explain it to you.”

So let’s try to explain it for our mutual benefit.

We know what gravity does. We don’t know what gravity is.

We can measure its results. Standing on Earth’s surface, toss a ball into the air. Eventually the ball will reach its apogee (an astronomy term meaning its farthest point from Earth), only to fall back to its perigee (its nearest point to Earth, such as your hand). Absent other factors, that fall is at an acceleration of 32.2 feet per second squared (9.8 meters per second squared).

But why does it fall? What force is pulling it down?

Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggests that, as some physicists describe it, gravity is an illusion. Gravity is a curvature of space-time, that is the three dimensions of height, length and width moving onward through the passage of time.

Massive objects cause space-time to curve, such as Earth moving through space. Image source: NASA.

Any object that has mass creates what we experience as a gravitational pull (a curvature of space-time). You and I have mass, so we exert a gravitational pull, but it’s so miniscule it can’t be measured.

Mass and weight are two different concepts. Mass is the amount of matter in an object. Weight is the force exerted by a mass as a result of gravity. Weight is experienced on Earth’s surface by an object at rest. The object will still have mass in a microgravity environment but it won’t have weight. Why?

The farther one object is from the other, the weaker the pull.

Another way to experience microgravity is to outrun the pull.

This can be illustrated by a thought experiment called Newton’s Cannon Ball, after physicist Sir Isaac Newton.

Newton’s Cannon Ball as illustrated by “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.” Video source: Cosmos YouTube channel.

Imagine a cannon ball fired at such a high velocity that it could equal Earth’s gravitational pull. It’s going so fast that gravity can’t pull it back to Earth. It would continue to circle Earth — what we call an orbit.

If the cannon ball’s velocity were faster than Earth’s gravitational pull, it would leave orbit and head out into the solar system — which is how we launch probes out into deep space, and how Project Apollo sent astronauts to the moon.

The moon has its own mass, of course, so it also exerts a gravitational pull.

As a spacecraft travels from Earth to the moon, Earth’s influence becomes less and the moon’s influence becomes more. Velocity increases approaching the moon because its gravity is pulling the spacecraft towards it.

Here’s another thought experiment — what if the moon weren’t there?

Remember those terms apogee and perigee? If the moon didn’t exist, eventually our spacecraft would start to fall back to Earth, absent firing our engines or some other gravitational influence (such as the sun).

These days, most Earth-launched objects operate in our planet’s orbit. They’re anywhere from about 100 miles (160 km) to 22,000 miles (35,500 km).

An illustration of the three classes of Earth orbit. Image source: NASA.

As demonstrated by Newton’s Cannon Ball, for an object to orbit Earth it must equal the planet’s gravitational pull. The further away from Earth, the weaker the pull, so the object doesn’t have to go as fast as at lower altitudes.2

At 100 miles (161 km), the object would have to travel 17,474 mph (28,122 kph) to maintain orbit.

At 250 miles (402 km), the typical altitude of the International Space Station, the velocity would have to be 17,160 mph (27,616 kph).

Geostationary objects strive to stay over the same location at all times, such as a weather observation satellite. The math works out to an altitude of 22,236 miles (35,786 km). That’s so far away from Earth’s surface that the satellites travel at only 6,878 mph (11,070 kph).

This assumes a vacuum, which isn’t quite true. The ISS passes through a few wisps of Earth’s outer atmosphere. This creates drag, which requires the station to be boosted from time to time by visiting spacecraft such as a SpaceX Dragon or a Russian Progress cargo ship.

If you’re aboard the ISS, you experience microgravity3 because you’re in a spacecraft travelling at the velocity necessary to equal Earth’s gravitational pull.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams demonstrates acceleration aboard the ISS during an orbital boost on January 24, 2010. Video source: NASA Johnson YouTube channel.

In the above video, any object (such as astronaut Jeff Williams or his camera) will accelerate during an orbital boost unless anchored to the space station.

So let’s go back to our original question — how can we make you float while on Earth?

Remember that to “float” you need to outrun Earth’s gravitational pull. We can do that for a short time by plunging an aircraft towards the surface. NASA, the European Space Agency, and Zero-G schedule such flights for microgravity training, science experiments, and adventure tourism.

ESA scientists perform microgravity experiments aboard a Zero-G aircraft. Video source: European Space Agency, ESA YouTube channel.

This trick works for about thirty seconds before the aircraft has to pull up. The microgravity scenes in the Apollo 13 movie were filmed aboard NASA’s KC-135 Stratotanker nicknamed the “Vomit Comet.” Each take could be no longer than 30 seconds.

For longer experiments, the ISS serves as humanity’s long-duration microgravity research laboratory.

But we still haven’t figured out how to turn off gravity on Earth.

Pop sci-fi such as Star Trek and Star Wars presumes the existence of artificial gravity, but never explains how gravity is created. If they can turn it on, presumably they can also turn it off.

The fictional spacecraft “Hermes” as seen in “The Martian” movie released in October 2015. Image source: The Martian Wikia.

More serious entertainment such as the 2015 film The Martian attempts to demonstrate a plausible means of creating artificial gravity. In that film, the spacecraft Hermes had a rotating segment to simulate gravitational pull.

On Earth, we can place you in a centrifuge to spin you and add gravity, but that won’t remove gravity.

About your only other option would be to book an adventure tourism flight aboard the Blue Origin New Shepard or a Virgin Galactic spaceplane. Those flights take you to an altitude of about 62 miles (100 km) where you experience about five minutes of microgravity before your spacecraft starts to fall back to Earth.

But we still don’t have a room where we can turn off gravity so you can float.

NASA astronaut Chris Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, launch to the International Space Station from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on November 27, 2025. Video source: NASA YouTube channel.

All seemed nominal (the current space-biz version of A-OK) after an international crew of three launched on the Soyuz MS-28 mission from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Crew launches to the International Space Station are so routine now that, outside of the space-biz, few members of the public are even aware that astronauts and cosmonauts come and go to the ISS.

Unless something goes wrong.

Something did go wrong yesterday. The anomaly (another space-biz term) poses no threat to the MS-28 crew but the implications, in a worst-case scenario, could significantly impact ISS operations.

Reports began to surface in social media yesterday that the service cabin beneath the concrete launch pad somehow collapsed and fell into the flame trench.

The service cabin lies in the flame trench after the November 27 Soyuz launch. Image source: Anatoly Zak, RussianSpaceWeb.com on X.

Anatoly Zak, proprietor of RussianSpaceWeb.com, has been covering the Russian space program since 1998. He’s arguably the leading online expert. Anatoly is where I turn for insightful analysis in times such as now.

His website has a page explaining how the service cabin works. The cabin is a service structure below the pad that gives technicians access to the business end of the Soyuz rocket.

The cabin is supposed to retract into a shelter before launch. Anatoly’s early speculation is that the cabin may not have been secured in its shelter.

Whatever the cause, the main concern is how this will impact ISS operations.

Katya Pavlushchenko posted on X a Roscosmos statement assuring that all is well. Translated from Russian, the statement reads, “All necessary spare components are available for repair, and the damage will be repaired shortly.”

Given Russia’s recent lack of transparency, if not honesty, with most international matters, it’s best to be skeptical for now. Anatoly Zak believes it could be up to two years before the pad is operational again.

Are other pads available? Not right now. Site 1, the same pad used to launch Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961, has been inactive since 2019. The updated Soyuz-2 rocket launches from Site 31. Although Roscosmos hoped to upgrade Site 1 for Soyuz-2, the lack of funding has left Site 1 incapable of launching payloads to ISS. Anatoly suggests that parts could be cannibalized from Site 1 or other compatible Russian launch sites — but that would take time.

Another complication is who owns Baikonur. The cosmodrome is in Kazakhstan, which was part of the Soviet Union when the pads were built in the 1950s. After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Kazakhstan declared its independence, leaving Baikonur’s ownership in question. Russia finally agreed in 1994 to lease Baikonur from Kazakhstan for twenty years at $115 million per year.

The relationship has been far from stable. In 2010, Kazakhstan finally ratified an extension to 2050 negotiated six years earlier. Arguing that the host nation is undercompensated, Kazakhstan seized Roscosmos Baikonur assets in March 2023. The dispute must have been resolved, because Roscosmos launched a Progress cargo ship from Baikonur to ISS in May 2023.

According to Anatoly Zak, Site 1 has been transferred to the Kazakh company Infrakos. Gagarin’s pad could be a tourist stop. If Site 1 has a spare service cabin, technically it belongs to Infrakos, which might be reluctant to part with it given their dubious relations with Russia.

Soyuz-2 launches to ISS have only been from Baikonur. The Soyuz-2 has launched missions from other sites in Russia, Plesetsk and Vostochny. A variant called the Soyuz-ST has launched from Guiana Space Center, but Russia suspended those launches in response to European sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

It’s not easy to switch ISS missions to another site. Just as NASA has an ISS launch support infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center, so does Roscosmos at Baikonur. It would be quite impractical to shift payloads, especially time-sensitive items such as biological specimens, to a site without life support for those creatures. Many ISS experiments also require temperature-specific shipping containers.

Russia built the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur Oblast with the eventual goal of shifting launches from Baikonur but, as with other Roscosmos setbacks, funding and corruption have delayed the transition.

Vostochny is at a higher latitude (51.8° N) than Baikonur (45.9°N), which poses problems with orbital mechanics.

Planet Earth rotates on its axis from west to east. If you could somehow hover above Baikonur, you would observe it rotate away from you to the eastern horizon. In about twenty-four hours, you would observe Baikonur return to you from the western horizon.

How fast is Baikonur going? About 725 mph (1,167 kph). Vostochny is going about 643 mph (1,035 kph).1

The closer the launch site to the equator, the larger velocity boost. Plesetsk is at 62.9° latitude, traveling only 474 mph (763 kph). The less velocity, the more fuel (and/or less cargo weight) necessary to reach the ISS.

The ISS orbit track during one day. One orbit is about 90 minutes. The maximum latitude in both hemispheres is 51.6. Image source: NASA.

The ISS orbits Earth at a 51.6° inclination to the equator. That angle was chosen so that station would fly over launch sites at KSC and Baikonur. As a result, launch sites beyond a 51.6° latitude are impractical, if not impossible, for reaching ISS.

This effectively rules out Plesetsk. Vostochny might be possible if the Soyuz performs a “dog leg” maneuver after launch to change orbits, but that would require more fuel. Guiana, at 5.2° N latitude, would be a viable launch site — the European Space Agency in 2005 foresaw the day when crew might launch to ISS from Guiana — but the site was never upgraded for crewed flight.

During NASA’s commercial cargo era, Northrop Grumman has launched Antares Cygnus missions from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia. It just so happens that the ISS orbit also passes over Wallops (37.9° N). Cygnus has also launched from Cape Canaveral (28.4° N) on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V as well as a SpaceX Falcon 9.

But there’s another problem unique to Baikonur.

Pad 31 launches not only Soyuz crew capsules to the ISS, but also robotic Progress cargo ships. Progress is unique in that it’s the only visiting spacecraft that can fully adjust the station’s orbit.

Over time, the ISS slowly falls from orbit towards Earth. The station orbits in an environment where there are still a few particles from Earth’s atmosphere, as well as microgravity and other molecules it encounters that slow it down.

Inside the ISS during an orbital reboost. Video source: NASA Johnson YouTube channel.

Progress and the SpaceX Dragon can use propulsion to boost the station to a desired orbit of about 250 miles (400 km). But only Progress can service the station’s Control Moment Gyroscopes (CMGs). Click here for a technical explanation; the upshot is that, without Progress, eventually ISS will lose its ability to control its attitude. According to SEDS USA, Progress launches to ISS are scheduled for December 2025 and February 2026.

Could a Progress launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy? That’s beyond my knowledge, although SpaceX has shown they’ll attempt the impossible. It’s very unlikely, in my opinion, that Vladimir Putin would tolerate the disgrace from watching Progress launch atop a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral.

As for crew, refurbished SpaceX crew Dragons rotate ISS crews about three times a year. The Boeing Starliner, one-time congressional darling, has been reduced to an afterthought. NASA recently demoted Starliner’s next flight to a cargo-only mission, no earlier than April 2026.

ISS is targeted for retirement circa 2030. Russia already has plans for its own new space station, called the Russian Orbital Station. Given the generally decrepit state of Russian space technology, it’s hard to take that seriously. Russia’s inability to support ISS for two years could mean an early end to one of the most significant achievements in humanity’s history.

NASA is all but rudderless as well. President Trump canned his NASA administrator candidate Jared Isaacman in May, only to renominate him earlier this month. Other than grand rhetoric about a crewed Mars mission during his term, Trump has done nothing substantive for the agency, cutting its budget by about 25%. NASA is not an agency that can nimbly react to a crisis such as this one.

For now, we await a sober and honest assessment of Site 31. If the damage is as bad as feared, with no immediate viable options, the ISS partnership may be forced to euthanize the station before the end of its natural life span.

The First “The State of NASA” address, at Kennedy Space Center on February 2, 2015.

Ask typical Americans what they think is NASA’s most significant moment. My guess is they’ll name the Project Apollo lunar landings of the late 1960s through early 1970s.

From my political perspective, I’d name President John F. Kennedy’s address to Congress on May 25, 1961. Titled “On Urgent National Needs,” Kennedy proposed transforming the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into a propaganda tool which would demonstrate to the world that the United States was superior to the Soviet Union.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

In its sixty-seven year existence, NASA has never had more support from a president for the agency than it did that day. Kennedy told Congress the legislative branch could expect to spend “an estimated seven to nine billion dollars additional over the next five years” for the crewed lunar program. In today’s dollars, that’s roughly seventy-five to one hundred billion dollars, using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI inflation calculator.

By the end of the program, in today’s dollars Project Apollo cost more than $250 billion, according to an estimate by The Planetary Society. Apollo transformed a modest aerospace research and development agency into a nationwide jobs program. For decades now, NASA has justified its budgets by how many people are employed in each of the fifty states. To help convince members of Congress to continue funding programs, a website lets you search for how much money the agency spends each year by congressional district or state.

Other presidents have proposed big bold adventures, but rarely have they risked their political capital to make it happen. The closest, in my opinion, is President Barack Obama. He wanted to reform NASA, to transform the agency into an incubator for commercial space innovation. Legacy aerospace companies would have to compete on an equal footing with startups such as SpaceX and Blue Origin. NASA would be an angel investor, but the companies had to invest their own money to develop a product NASA could buy off the shelf.

NASA would no longer be about jobs. It would be about results.

President Barack Obama’s NASA space policy address at Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010.

Space Workfare

On April 15, 2010, at Kennedy Space Center, Obama proposed increasing NASA’s budget by $6 billion over the next five years. That included extending the International Space Station from 2015 (when the George W. Bush administration intended to deorbit ISS) through at least 2020, funding the commercial crew program (left unfunded by Bush), and $3 billion for a heavy-lift rocket that would be used one day to send crews to Mars. He also proposed a $40 million jobs program for Florida’s Space Coast, a concession to politicians fretting about jobs during the Great Recession.

Congress, predictably, rebelled.

In the end, Obama’s political capital was largely wasted. Congress failed to approve the Space Coast jobs transition program, creating instead its own heavy-lift rocket. The Space Launch System, or Senate Launch System to its critics, would send the Orion crew capsule to … somewhere. Where was a little vague. Congress ordered NASA to build the system using no-bid contracts issued to Space Shuttle companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and ATK (now part of Northrop Grumman).

It wasn’t until 2019 that all this was given a handy name, Project Artemis. Artemis I, the uncrewed SLS test flight, was in November 2022, twelve years after Congress mandated SLS. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that NASA spent $11.8 billion on SLS and $13.8 billion on Orion to achieve that first flight.

Artemis II, the first crewed test flight, is targeting April 2026. A crew of four will orbit the moon, but not land. Artemis III, the first landing attempt, is targeting mid-2027, but that depends on the availability of a Human Landing System from SpaceX or Blue Origin. The current consensus is that neither will be available for several years. In 2021, NASA’s Office of the Inspector General estimated that the cost of each Artemis flight will be about $4.1 billion through Artemis IV.

But jobs are guaranteed, workfare for the aerospace industry.

The Teeter-Totter NASA

Since the events of 2010, the NASA budget has been a delicate compromise, a teeter-totter balancing the interests of OldSpace companies and NewSpace startups. The bottom-line NASA budget has slowly increased each fiscal year, from $18.4 billion spent in Fiscal Year 2011 to $24.8 billion for FY25, the final NASA budget under the Biden administration.1

Starting in 2015, each year’s NASA budget request was accompanied with a multimedia event called the State of NASA. The NASA administrator, or an acting official, delivered a video address that was broadcast live on NASA TV.

The last State of NASA address, March 11, 2024, delivered by then-Administrator Bill Nelson. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

The last address was in March 2024, during the Biden administration, by Administrator Bill Nelson.

No address was delivered this year by the Trump administration. No one knows why.

In December 2024, about a month after he was elected, Donald Trump nominated billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman to be the next NASA administrator. In retrospect, this was probably due to the influence of Elon Musk, who spent $288 million of his own money to help elect Trump. Isaacman had flown twice on SpaceX crew Dragons, privately funding missions that helped raise money for charities.

The quick nomination of a NASA administrator was a surprising departure from Trump’s first term. Trump took office for the first time on January 20, 2017. He didn’t nominate an administrator until September 1, 2017. Jim Bridenstine was a House Republican from Oklahoma who sat on the chamber’s space subcommittee. It took another six months for his nomination to be confirmed.

Trump’s first NASA budget proposal (for FY18) cut the agency’s earth science missions and would have reduce its bottom line by $600 million. In the end, Congress kept NASA’s budget largely intact.

Once Bridenstine took office, he brought order to the chaos. During Bridenstine’s tenure, NASA’s budget increased every year, from $20.7 billion for FY18 to $25.2 billion requested for FY21. That trend continued under President Joe Biden, who requested $25.4 billion for his final NASA budget (FY25) but wound up at $24.8 billion.

The Busted Budget

Trump began his second term intending to deeply slash the federal bureaucracy and its budgets, to fund various tax breaks. Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) on July 4, 2025. According to the Tax Policy Center, the richest 20% of taxpayers will benefit from about 60% of the tax changes in the bill. According to the Tax Foundation, the bill adds at least $3 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years.

NASA was one of Trump’s victims. His administration proposed reducing the agency’s budget, from $24.8 billion for FY25 to $18.8 billion for FY26, a reduction of 24% ($6 billion). The agency’s supporting documentation provided little insight into the reasoning behind the major cuts, other than “beating China back to the Moon and on putting the first human on Mars.” It labelled other missions as “unaffordable,” describing the cut science programs as “a commitment to fiscal responsibility.”

Among the Trump administration’s more deplorable schemes is a plan to scrap NASA’s climate change satellites, perhaps by plunging them back into the atmosphere to assure that a future administration can’t resurrect the collection of climate change evidence. Trump himself many times has called climate change evidence a “hoax.” This could be the quid pro quo for the $1 billion Trump solicited from oil company executives during the 2024 election campaign. Fossil fuels are the largest contributor to climate change.

While the budget proposal was drafted, Jared Isaacman was out of the loop. The nominee’s confirmation hearing wasn’t until April 9. He said he supported the continuation of Project Artemis, but when asked about Trump’s proposed science cuts he only described those as “not optimal.” The Planetary Society labelled the Trump proposal “an extinction-level event” for NASA.

Elon Musk wore out his welcome at the White House and departed on May 30. The next day, Isaacman’s nomination was withdrawn by the White House. Isaacman had a vision for NASA. It was left with none.

With no one to advocate for NASA on Capitol Hill, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), chair of the Senate committe on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, successfully amended H.R. 1 to add $9,995,000,000 to NASA’s budget through September 30, 2032. (Section 40005 (a).) Among its significant provisions:

• $700 million for the procurement of “a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter” by the end of FY26 from a US commercial provider.

• $2.6 billion for the Gateway lunar orbital space station, which the Trump budget proposal intended to cancel.

• $4.1 billion for Project Artemis missions IV and V. Trump intended to retire SLS and Orion after Artemis III.

• $20 million to continue production of the Orion crew capsule.

• $250 million per year over FYs 2025-2029 to continue International Space Station operations. Trump intended to reduce ISS operations and research before the station’s retirement circa 2030.

• $1 billion for infrastructure improvements at various NASA centers.

• $325 million to continue development of the ISS deorbit vehicle by SpaceX.

Of particular contention was a mandate for NASA to transfer a formerly crewed “space vehicle” to a center “that is involved in the administration of the Commercial Crew Program.” The language is vague, but it was generally understood that Cruz and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) were trying to force the Smithsonian to transfer the Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery from its Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia to a privately owned non-profit called Space Center Houston. It’s unlikely this will ever happen. The title for Discovery was transferred to the Smithsonian in 2012, and the two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft that were used to transport the orbiters cross-country were retired long ago. The Smithsonian believes that trying to move Discovery over land or by barge would cause significant damage to the orbiter.

The legislation required the NASA administrator to identify the vehicle to be transferred, and to where. Trump signed the bill on July 4. Five days later on July 9, Trump assigned Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to be acting administrator. On August 5, Cornyn issued a press release in which he claimed Duffy had chosen Discovery to be sent to Space Center Houston.

Trump signed the bill that includes the attempted theft of Discovery, so history will attach his name to the orbiter’s demise should Texas attempt to take it. It’s more likely that the Smithsonian will tie it up in litigation until a future president and Congress reverse the legislation.

… Or The Chinese Win!

John F. Kennedy’s moon prestige program was conceived at a time when the public perception was that the US was losing a “space race” with the USSR. No “race” was ever declared. Sergei Korolev, the Soviets’ rough equivalent of Wernher von Braun, proposed in writing to his government as early as 1958 that the Soviet Union might be able to send crew to the moon in the 1960s after the development of capable launch vehicles, but Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev never formally ordered his government to embark on an Apollo equivalent. It wasn’t until 1964 that a Soviet military-industrial commission issued a five-year space plan that included piloted lunar missions.2

The “space race” mythology has persisted through the decades. Presidents, politicians, space zealots and pundits believed that, if only another president would propose an Apollo redux, the nation would unite, billions more would be spent on building Starfleet, and endless space jobs would be spawned. Several presidents have tried. All have failed.

Why? One reason is the myth that the “space race” had widespread public support. Historian Roger Launius documented in 2003 that a majority of Americans during the 1960s never supported the lunar program, except for one poll taken at the time of the first lunar landing, Apollo 11 in July 1969. If the voters are indifferent, then so will be their elected representatives.

Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 symbolized the end of the “race” and a new era of space cooperation between the two major spacefaring powers. In the final years of the Soviet Union and the early years of the Russian Federation, the United States and Russia signed agreements essentially merging their human spaceflight programs. Russian cosmonauts flew on the Space Shuttle. Shuttles docked at the Russian space station Mir. Parts for a Mir successor were the foundation for the International Space Station, a partnership that also includes Canada, Europe, and Japan.

And yet the myth has persisted that, if only we would do Apollo again, humanity would boldly go.

Project Artemis is the latest incarnation of this myth, with the Space Launch System and Orion as its critical systems. Both have proven to be expensive boondoggles.

But without an external antagonist to present a clear and present danger, how could politicians seeking to protect jobs in their districts and states continue to justify spending billions on these inefficient systems.

The People’s Republic of China is the 21st Century incarnation of a cold war red menace.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on September 3, 2025 titled, “"There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race." Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

On September 3, the Senate’s science committee held a hearing specifically intended to rekindle the “space race” flame. The opening remarks of committee chair Ted Cruz could have been taken out of an early 1960s congressional hearing, if you substitute “Soviet Union” for “China.”

Make no mistake: we are in a new space race with China, and if we fail, there will be a bad Moon on the rise.

“China has made no secret of its goals. It is investing heavily in its space capabilities, maintaining a permanent presence in low Earth orbit with its Tiangong station, and working to plant its flag on the Moon by 2030.

“The stakes could not be higher. Space is no longer reserved for peaceful exploration. It is a strategic frontier with direct consequences for national security, economic growth, and technological leadership. If our adversaries achieve dominant space capabilities, it will pose a profound risk to America. This is not just about exploration. The choices we make now will determine whether the United States leads in space or cedes it to an authoritarian regime.

“That is why continuity in NASA’s programs is not simply good practice — it is a matter of national security. Any drastic changes in NASA’s architecture at this stage threaten U.S. leadership in space. Delays or disruptions only serve our competitors’ interests.

Cruz made it clear that SLS and Orion must continue. If they don’t, the commies win.

There’s no doubt that China is building a significant space portfolio. China has landed robots twice on the far side of the moon — with Chang’e-4 in 2019 and Chang’e-6 in 2024. The Chang’e-6 mission returned 1,900 grams of lunar soil samples to Earth.

The US has never accomplished those specific feats, but the US has landed robots many times on Mars, starting with the Viking landers in 1976. The most recent was the Perseverance rover, launched in July 2020 from Cape Canaveral. Not only is the rover still active, but the mission also flew the first helicopter on another world. The Ingenuity copter flew 72 missions before it succumbed to the elements. China has landed one Mars rover, the Zhurong in 2021. As for returning lunar samples, six Project Apollo missions landed astronauts on the moon, returning 2,196 samples weighing a total of 382 kilograms (382,000 grams).

China has never sent astronauts beyond Earth’s low Earth orbit, nor have they demonstrated the technology to do so. They are trying to master an extended crew presence in low Earth orbit, with their Tiangong space station. Tiangong has a habitable volume of 3,884 cubic feet, while NASA’s 1970s station Skylab had a habitable volume of 12,750 cubic feet. The ISS has a habitable volume of 13,696 cubic feet. Tiangong typically hosts three astronauts, but can support six during a crew rotation. The ISS typically hosts seven crew members, but the record is 13 three times during the Space Shuttle era.

More or less, China’s crewed civilian space program is roughly equivalent to where the US was with Skylab in the 1970s, assuming the crewed lunar missions never happened.

That’s not to say that China isn’t a challenge to US interests. The latest Annual Threat Assessment published in March 2025 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) describes China as “the actor most capable of threatening US interests globally.” Here’s what the assessment says about China’s space capabilities:

China has eclipsed Russia as a space leader and is poised to compete with the United States as the world’s leader in space by deploying increasingly capable interconnected multi-sensor systems and working toward ambitious scientific and strategic goals.

The assessment notes China’s 2024 lunar sample return, and the goals of landing humans on the moon by 2030 and establishment of a lunar base by 2035. But that’s it. The DNI apparently doesn’t see this as a significant threat to the United States. The assessment certainly does list many significant threats. A Chinese astronaut on the moon isn’t one of them.

China can’t claim the moon as its own. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty specifies that no nation can claim sovereignty over any space object. Almost all spacefaring nations have signed the treaty, including China in 1983. Even if China did assert a claim, no one else would recognize it, nor could China enforce it.

Back to the Future

Outgoing NACA director Hugh Dryden introduces incoming NASA administrator T. Keith Glennan to NACA employees. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

NASA was born out of the political panic in the US following the Soviet Sputnik launches of fall 1957. Politicians mistakenly assumed that the US trailed the USSR in missile superiority. Their solution was to wed civilian space programs within the military to the existing National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

At the time it ended on September 31, 1958, the NACA was the world’s elite independent aeronautical research institution. Its findings were shared with private industry and academic institutions.

When NASA began on October 1, 1958, the assumption was that it would continue the NACA’s tradition, applying its skills to the mastery of space.

President Kennedy took NASA in a direction it wasn’t intended to go. Academic research became secondary to what some critics call the “boots-and-flags” mentality. As in the olden days of imperialism, knowledge became secondary to conquest — the conqueror sets foot on a foreign land to plant his employer’s flag on it, such as Christopher Columbus claiming Caribbean lands for Queen Isabella of Spain.

This shift in NASA’s raison d'être is typified by a slightly heated conversation between Kennedy and his NASA administrator, James Webb, on November 21, 1962. Webb argued in favor of using Apollo to harvest space science along the way, but Kennedy insisted that boots-and-flags (he didn’t use that term) be the top priority:

Everything that we do ought to really be tied into getting onto the moon ahead of the Russians.

When Webb persisted, Kennedy replied:

I’m not that interested in space.

The only justification in Kennedy’s mind for the massive increase in NASA’s budget was “because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple years, by God, we passed them.”

Project Ranger was one casualty of this conflict. Originally conceived as a series of robotic lunar probes, by late December 1961 a number of science experiments were being dropped from the spacecraft designs in favor of equipment such as television cameras to identify potential Apollo landing sites.3

More than sixty years later, space sciences once again are a casualty of a boots-and-flags propaganda program. The difference this time is that, unlike Kennedy, Trump isn’t increasing NASA’s budget to pay for it.

The Trump administration sees NASA’s singular purpose as sending humans beyond Earth to plant US flags on other worlds. Everything else is “unaffordable.” This is a betrayal of NASA’s birthright, enshrined in its 1958 charter. The 1958 legislation, commonly known as the Space Act, listed a number of activities to which NASA could “contribute materially.” The first was:

The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.

The closest the act comes to human spaceflight is the third activity:

The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies and living organisms through space.

“Contribute materially” reflects the agency’s NACA roots. NASA wasn’t meant to be in charge.

That is no more. NASA is now a propaganda stunt.

If the objective is to compete with China, boots-and-flags won’t do it. The DNI assessment is clear that China intends to compete with US commercial enterprises in low Earth orbit. China also poses an on-orbit military threat, having destroyed one of its own weather satellites in a 2007 anti-satellite test, and more recently testing counterspace weapon technologies such as approaching a satellite to disable or capture it.

Early NASA was expected to perfect space technologies that could translate into improving US launch and satellite systems, technologies that could have defense applications. Trump’s NASA seems destined to shake red, white, and blue pom poms as we waste money on boots-and-flags.

It’s a sorry state for NASA.

President Donald Trump, in the wee hours this morning, once again attacked the man who last year spent $288 million to elect him and other Republican candidates. Image source: Truth Social.

The soap opera starring Elon Musk and Donald Trump is bubbling yet again.

Musk left his White House special advisor role on May 28. The political gossip was that Musk’s welcome had worn thin after offending Trump’s cabinet secretaries and White House staff.

After he left, Musk began criticizing the Trump budget legislation called “The Big Beautiful Bill” by the president. Trump in private allegedly called Musk “a big-time drug addict.” In public, Trump called for Musk’s government contracts to be reviewed.

Mediators arranged a ceasefire between the two thin-skinned egos. The ceasefire seemed to hold until this last weekend, when Musk once again began criticizing the budget bill. Musk yesterday threatened to spend his fortune on primary challenges against any Republican supporting the bill. Trump this morning accused Musk of receiving massive government subsidies (spoiler … look up the definition of a subsidy; contracts are not subsidies) and once again implied he might pull the plug on SpaceX government contracts.

Any such threats are empty. The US government, military and civilian, relies on SpaceX not only for crew and cargo deliveries to the International Space Station, but also for launching probes and satellites. The military uses SpaceX for launching its spy satellites as well as the X-37B spaceplane. To drive home the point, Musk threatened to decommission the SpaceX crew Dragon so astronauts could not travel to and from the ISS. With the Boeing Starliner years behind schedule, the only other viable option is purchasing rides on the Russian Soyuz. Purchases must be made years in advance so the capsules can be built, flight suits fitted, and custom seats made. That’s overlooking the strained relations between the US and Russia due to the Ukraine war.

As of this writing, the Senate just passed its version of the bill. It now goes to reconciliation with the House version. Reconciliation committees often take forever as compromises are sought; it wouldn’t be unusual for continuing resolutions to be passed as the new fiscal year approaches on October 1, to keep the federal government from shutting down.

Our interest here is not the budget bill, but to look at how Elon Musk and SpaceX became major players in the US government launch programs, both civilian and military.

A Legal Monopoly

The first SpaceX rocket, the Falcon 1, was still vaporware when Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed a joint venture in May 2005 called United Launch Alliance (ULA). Neither company could attract enough government or commercial launch business to remain financially viable. The Federal Trade Commission allowed the deal to go through, although it acknowledged “the loss of non-price competition and the loss of future price competition” as a result.

SpaceX filed a lawsuit in October 2005 challenging the creation of ULA. The FTC rejected the complaint, noting that SpaceX had no launch vehicle ready in the foreseeable future to offer the services provided by the Delta IV or Atlas V. The lawsuit was dismissed by a US District Court, citing the same reasoning.

It was around this time that President George W. Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration. A June 2004 report by an implementing commission included a chapter titled, “Building a Robust Space Industry.” The authors declared:

The Commission finds that sustaining the long-term exploration of the solar system requires a robust space industry that will contribute to national economic growth, produce new products through the creation of new knowledge, and lead the world in invention and innovation. This space industry will become a national treasure.

The commission recommended that, “ NASA aggressively use its contractual authority to reach broadly into the commercial and nonprofit communities to bring the best ideas, technologies, and management tools into the accomplishment of exploration goals.”

On November 7, 2005, NASA opened the Commercial Crew/Cargo Project Office (C3PO, a nod to a certain Star Wars protocol droid). NASA administrator Michael Griffin told Congress that the agency would solicit the private sector to demonstrate space delivery services; if successful, they would have the chance to bid for fixed-price NASA contracts — unlike the cost-plus contracts enjoyed by NASA and military launch service companies for decades that guaranteed a profit regardless of performance or cost.

Griffin was an aerospace engineer and executive who, by happenstance, was on Musk’s flight to Moscow in 2002 when Musk tried to acquire a Russian ICBM to send a greenhouse to Mars. Russia said no; it was that denial that provoked Musk into creating SpaceX.

Elon Musk meets with newly appointed NASA administrator Michael Griffin on April 20, 2005. Image source: DVIDS.

In August 2006, NASA announced that two companies had been awarded commercial cargo contracts — Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) and SpaceX. Unlike the cost-plus contracts enjoyed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, these companies had to spend their own money to develop their launch technologies. If they achieved their milestones, NASA gave them an award, and they moved on to the next milestone. If they failed — they were out.

RpK failed its fourth milestone — adequate funding — and was terminated in October 2007. It was replaced by Orbital Sciences, which received the balance of the funding budgeted for RpK.

None of these companies received “subsidies.” They were required to invest their own money in exchange for a milestone payment. If a milestone could not be achieved, the company was out its own investment and did not receive its milestone award. The company would not have the opportunity to bid for a NASA fixed-price contract.

Years later, Elon Musk in 2015 would allege that ULA received $1 billion a year in subsidies from the US Air Force. ULA CEO Tory Bruno at the time described the “subsidy” as a prepayment for anticipated launch costs. SpaceX enjoys no equivalent prepayment.

Goliath, Meet David

By 2014, any launch company not named United Launch Alliance had a fighting chance.

The President Barack Obama administration, starting in 2010, expanded on the commercial cargo program, using that model to start a commercial crew competition. Congress underfunded commercial crew for years, setting back the program to the end of the 2010s decade.

Several companies entered the competition — Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Blue Origin, ATK, Excalibur Almaz, and of course SpaceX. ULA was indirectly part of the competition, as its Atlas V was proposed as the launch vehicle for the Boeing Starliner.

The Atlas V, though, had a political problem. Its RD-180 engines were built by a Russian company called NPO Energomash. General Dynamics in the early 1990s had acquired the rights to use RD-180 engines in an Atlas rocket. The RD-180 was considered a cheaper alternative to US-built engines, and in the immediate post-Cold War era US-Russian business partnerships were encouraged to help Russia keep its aerospace engineers employed, lest they defect to a hostile nation such as Iran or North Korea. General Dynamics’ space technologies were acquired by Lockheed Martin in 1997, and with that the rights to the RD-180.

The Russian engine has proven quite reliable. The only known RD-180 failure was a lone engine during a 2018 launch, but it did not affect the payload delivery.

The problem was that in early 2014 Vladimir Putin directed Russia to invade Crimea, part of Ukraine. Shortly after this, the Pentagon gave ULA a 36-core block buy for national security launches, without allowing a competing bid. The US Air Force had certified ULA as the only company capable of making national security launches. SpaceX had applied for certification, but the Pentagon hadn’t completed that process before awarding ULA another monopolistic contract.

On March 5, 2014, Musk and ULA CEO Michael Gass were part of a panel testifying before the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Musk hammered on Gass, noting that SpaceX engines were made in the US while Atlas V engines were made in the country that just invaded Crimea.

March 5, 2014 … The battle of the CEOs. Elon Musk and Michael Gass testify before a Senate defense subcommittee. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

In August 2014, Gass retired from ULA. Although publicly denied, the open speculation was that Gass’s performance before the subcommittee played a role in his demise. He was replaced by Tory Bruno, who remains CEO to this day.

In April 2014, SpaceX filed suit for the right to compete the contract. The lawsuit was settled in January 2015, with the USAF agreeing to expedite SpaceX certification while also making more launches available for competitive bid.

The commercial crew competition ended in September 2014 with SpaceX and Boeing winning fixed-price contracts. Boeing received $4.2 billion, but SpaceX only $2.6 billion. NASA never explained why Boeing received so much more, other than the agency accepted what the bidders requested.

In the nearly eleven years since then, SpaceX has flown ten operational crew delivery missions to the ISS, as well as four commercial missions for Axiom Space, two private crews purchased by billionaire Jared Isaacman, and one purchased by entrepreneur Chun Wang.

Boeing has flown only one crewed flight test with two NASA astronauts that is largely considered a failure. The Crew Flight Test in June 2024 experienced thruster anomalies. Although the astronauts reached the ISS, NASA finally decided to bring them home on a SpaceX crew Dragon.

Over the last ten years, SpaceX has achieved one significant aerospace first after another. On December 21, 2015, SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9. On March 30, 2017, SpaceX launched its first previously flown Falcon 9. As of this writing, SpaceX has successfully landed a Falcon 9 470 times — 380 on a drone ship at sea, and 90 on land.

On February 6, 2018, SpaceX launched the first Falcon Heavy — a center core with two used Falcon 9s strapped to its sides. Falcon Heavy launches are relatively uncommon, with eleven through 2024, but it should be noted that both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy were developed and operated without the alleged government “subsidies.” The customer paid for the delivery service, no different than how we pay the US Postal Service, UPS, or FedEx to deliver a package. Those are business transactions, not subsidies.

Big for Their Britches

In recent years, SpaceX has won a number of Pentagon contracts. Where ULA once dominated, now it’s SpaceX. ULA has retired its other rocket, the Delta IV. An Atlas V successor called Vulcan has flown twice, with a third launch planned for July — a demonstration navigation satellite for the US Space Force.

In April, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX $5.9 billion for 28 future missions, $5.4 to ULA for 19 missions, and $2.4 billion to Blue Origin for seven launches. That’s an average of $210 million per launch for SpaceX, $284 million for ULA, and $343 million for Blue. Those numbers can be somewhat misleading, depending on the launch vehicle for the contracted missions, but still it suggests that SpaceX is the best price out there.

You probably know that Elon Musk envisions colonizing Mars with his Starship launch vehicles. Starship tests have not gone well, but again those are privately funded tests, not subsidies. SpaceX is one of two companies contracted by NASA to develop lunar landers for Project Artemis (Blue Origin is the other), but again these aren’t subsidies. The SpaceX lander is a Starship variant called the Human Landing System. As with commercial cargo and crew, these are fixed-price contracts with payments made only after milestones are achieved.

To fund his Mars dreams, Musk created a SpaceX division called Starlink. The satellite constellation provides high-speed Internet access around the world. It has proven so versatile that it’s invaluable for first responders to natural disasters, such as Florida’s Hurricane Ian in 2022. The Pentagon plans to acquire a military variant called Starshield that it would operate, not SpaceX.

SpaceX now permeates the US government, with good reason. But the consequence is that Elon Musk now has an outsized presence in government operations — and he knows it.

Musk’s stability has always been dubious at best. His eccentricities were documented by Ashlee Vance in his 2015 Elon Musk biography. Since then, Musk has been prone to explosions of temper. One example is his 2018 outlash calling a British cave diver “pedo guy” after the man criticized a mini-sub Musk was having SpaceX build for a Thailand rescue attempt. Although the charge was baseless, a Los Angeles jury in December 2019 found that Musk did not defame the man.

After Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine found Starlinks to be invaluable in the field. But when the Ukraine government asked to use Starlink to launch an attack on Russian naval vessels in Sevastopol, Musk said no. Perhaps he feared Russia might attack his satellite network, who knows. But he’d established the precedent that he could insert himself into military operations. In March 2025, after a fallout between Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Musk assured that Ukraine could keep its Starlink systems even if Trump cut off aid to the invaded nation.

In April 2024, Musk fired his entire Tesla supercharger division in anger after a presentation by his Senior Director of Charging Infrastructure, Rebecca Tinucci. Many of them eventually were rehired, but Tinucci moved on to Uber.

A year later, after Musk’s behavior on Trump’s campaign trail and in the White House, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Tesla board of directors was looking for a new CEO. Musk and Tesla denied the report, but shortly thereafter it was announced that Musk would soon leave the administration to return to running his businesses.

May 30, 2025 … Donald Trump and Elon Musk say farewell in the Oval Office. They began their social media spat shortly thereafter. Video source: News from the Past YouTube channel.

Within hours after Musk’s Oval Office farewell, Trump fired his own NASA administrator nominee. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire philanthropist who has flown twice on private SpaceX crew missions, was recommended by Musk. It appeared to be retaliation for Musk’s verbal abuses of White House staff.

Since then, Musk and Trump have warred in social media. Musk has threatened to cut off government services that his companies provide, while Trump has threatened to terminate those companies’ contracts and non-existent “subsidies.” Neither will happen, of course, because both the US government and Musk companies have too much at stake.

What Goes Around …

So here we are, twenty years after the US government said it was okay for ULA to create a legal monopoly in commercial launch services. The company that sued to stop it and lost now has its own de facto monopoly. Unlike with ULA, the SpaceX monopoly was unintended, but nonetheless it exists.

What to do about it?

The answer, now as it was back then, is to encourage competition. The problem is that no company has yet to show it can compete. SpaceX arguably has in its employ the brightest and most talented space engineers in the industry. Most of them are young and energetic, motivated by Musk’s vision of interplanetary travel. They are conjuring the future.

No other company can so inspire.

But some of that talent moves on as Musk burns them out. The recent Starship failures could be evidence of a brain drain, but that’s strictly my speculation.

It took twenty years to build the SpaceX monopoly. It may take that long to unwind it.

The nomination hearing for Jared Isaacman on April 9, 2025. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.

The nomination of a NASA administrator is typically a dull, if not perfunctory, affair.

Most administrator nominations in NASA history have drawn little attention from the public. Nominees have been astronauts, technocrats, bankers, military officers. The last two administrators were politicians.

The US Constitution requires agency administrators to be vetted and approved by the Senate. The Senate committee responsible for NASA oversight typically holds a hearing, asks the nominee questions, then meets later to confirm the candidate. Their recommendation goes to the Senate floor.

Rarely has a nomination had any melodrama. As an example, John F. Kennedy’s nomination of James Webb came on January 30, 1961, ten days after Kennedy took office. Webb was confirmed on February 14. He was just one of many nominees the Senate had to process in the early days of the new administration. Approved. Stamp. Next.

Webb was succeeded by in October 1968 by Thomas Paine, who served until September 1970. Richard Nixon took his time naming Paine’s successor; according to a November 29, 1970 syndicated political gossip column, it was expected that Nixon would nominate “an experienced, glad-handing industrial executive, one able to cope with the political maneuvering of House and Senate Space Committees.” Rumors began to circulate in February 1971 that Nixon would nominate James Fletcher, a former aerospace executive who was the president of the University of Utah. The nomination became official on February 27, but it took two months for the confirmation process to play out.

Ronald Reagan didn’t nominate James Beggs until April 23, 1981, three months after Reagan took office. Beggs was confirmed nearly three months later.

Donald Trump was elected president on November 5, 2024. The space world was a bit surprised when, on December 4, Trump nominated billionaire Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator. No billionaire had ever run NASA. (If one of the past administrators was a millionaire, much less a billionaire, it never came up.) Isaacman had established a track record of philanthropy and a true vision for the future of human space flight. I wrote about Isaacman’s track record in a December 6, 2024 Substack.

Despite the early nomination, and despite the Republican party controlling the Senate, Isaacman didn’t have his confirmation hearing until April 9, 2025. Candidates typically go through a background vetting process, so Isaacman’s wealth probably took some time to examine. But there were also rumors that some Republicans — Senate space committee chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) in particular — objected to Isaacman because he had been largely nonpartisan, contributing to candidates of both parties, without any public support for Trump during the 2024 election.

Isaacman had close business ties to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with which Isaacman had flown to space twice on private missions to raise money for charities. By one account, Musk spent $288 million of his own money in 2024 to help elect Trump and Republican candidates. Trump repaid in kind by turning loose Musk to reform the federal government through a review process Musk named the Department of Governmental Efficiency, a play on the DOGE crypto coin he favors.

Elon Musk is an equal opportunity offender. By May, rumors swirled that Musk’s favor had waned in the White House. While Musk stomped through Washington, SpaceX suffered three public failures of its Starship during test flights, and Tesla shares plummeted while sales dropped nationwide and overseas. Musk announced he would leave government service to return to his businesses; on May 30, Trump held a formal departure event and press conference with Musk in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump holds a press conference with Elon Musk on May 30, 2025. Video source: News from the Past YouTube channel.

Despite Musk’s melodrama, there was little reason to think it might affect Isaacman. Some Democrats had expressed their concerns that a NASA Administrator Isaacman might thumb the scales in favor of SpaceX during contract bids. But most observers believed that Jared would receive bipartisan support when his nomination reached the Senate floor, most likely in early June.

The palace intrigue cost Isaacman his nomination.

Semafor broke the news today that Trump was going to withdraw his nomination of Isaacman. The article quoted a White House spokesperson:

“The Administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump’s bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars. It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon,” said Liz Huston, a spokesperson for the White House.

The report was later confirmed by a number of media outlets, such as Ars Technica and the Washington Post. According to the Post, Isaacman was informed yesterday — the same day Musk left the Trump administration — that “the nomination was going to be pulled.”

The White House quote suggests that Trump wants someone running NASA who is blindly loyal, the litmus test for most of his appointees. Isaacman’s history suggested he was anything but that.

I don’t feel sorry for Jared escaping the lunacy of this administration, but I do feel sorry for how he upended his life and separated from his business interests to enter government service, only to have Donald Trump betray him. You’d think people would learn by now.

It’s been a tough week for NASA. The White House yesterday released the details of its Fiscal Year 2026 NASA budget proposal. If Trump gets his way, NASA’s budget will decrease from $24.9 billion to $18.8 billion, with many science missions eliminated and thousands of civil servants laid off. Trump wants NASA to focus on his quixotic demand for a crewed Mars landing before his term ends.

He’s unlikely to get what he wants. In Washington political circles there’s an old adage — “What the president proposes, the Congress disposes.” The Constitution gives final budget authority to Congress, not the executive branch.

Any new nominee will have to go through the same vetting and confirmation process that Isaacman endured. Until then, NASA’s acting administrator will remain. Janet Petro was the Kennedy Space Center director until she was reassigned to Headquarters to run the agency. She disappointed many in the space community when she sent out a memo in late January ordering NASA departments to terminate diversity programs and report anyone trying to save them. The memo was sent at the order of the Trump White House.

Assuming no one takes the job, she’ll be responsible for slashing a quarter of the agency’s budget, and terminating much of its science programs. Does she really want that as her legacy? Rhetorical question.

As for who would take the job, one possibility is Greg Autry, who was nominated on March 24 to be NASA’s chief financial officer. Autry has long ties to Trump, having served on the Trump campaign’s NASA review team after winning the 2016 election. Autry co-authored a 2011 book, Death by China, with economist Peter Navarro, long a Trump insider. In January 2024, Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to honor a congressional subpoena probing Trump’s involvement in the January 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow the government. Navarro has returned to the White House as Trump’s trade counselor and is considered a prime architect of Trump’s tariff trade war.

According to his LinkedIn page, Autry most recently was the Associate Provost for Space Commercialization and Strategy at the University of Central Florida. I met him a few years ago when he was on the adjunct faculty for the International Space University offered that year out of the Florida Institute of Technology. We also have roots back in Southern California; he earned his doctorate from the University of California Irvine, the city where I lived before moving to Florida in 2009. UCI is where he and Navarro connected. Autry recently served as the National Space Society’s Vice President of Space Development; I’m an NSS member and have friends there, so another connection.

I mention Autry not because I have any unique insider information. I just think he fits the profile of someone Trump would want in the job, especially if the nominee has to be “in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda.”

If it’s not Greg, then I have to think it will be hard to find anyone competent for the job, especially after Trump undercut Isaacman. NASA administrator is considered by many to be a thankless job, but usually the lack of gratitude comes after you’ve served in the job.

UPDATE June 1, 2025 6:00 AM EDT — Trump overnight posted on Truth Social that Isaacman was fired “[a]fter a thorough review of prior associations.” As I wrote upstream, and last December, Isaacman has always been nonpartisan and has donated to candidates from both parties.

Over on the former Twitter, Isaacman posted this message just after 10 PM EDT last night.

UPDATE June 1, 2025 4:00 PM EDT — The Wall Street Journal posted a lengthy article about the relationship between Trump and Musk. Nothing specific about Jared Isaacman, but it implies that he may have been collateral damage.

CBS News Sunday Morning aired its complete interview with Elon Musk. Correspondent David Pogue said the interview was taped on Tuesday May 27 just before the Starship IFT-9 test flight. Pogue opened with political questions that Musk said were off-limits — then started to talk about politics anyway. Pogue suggests that the interview may have played a role in Musk’s departure from the Trump administration.

David Pogue’s interview with Elon Musk aired June 1, 2025 on “CBS News Sunday Morning.” Video source: CBS Sunday Morning YouTube channel.

UPDATE June 1, 2025 8:00 PM EDT — Jackie Wattles at CNN reports that “Musk’s exit left room for a faction of people in Trump’s inner circle, particularly Sergio Gor, the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and longtime MAGA supporter, to advocate for installing a different nominee.”

The source told CNN, “I wouldn’t be surprised if other Elon-connected people are going to find their way out at some point.”

UPDATE June 2, 2025 8:00 AM EDT — According to The New York Times, Donald Trump was aware in December 2024 of Jared Isaacman’s prior support of Democrats, when Trump nominated him to be NASA administrator, even before Trump had been sworn into the presidency.

While Mr. Trump privately told advisers in recent days that he was surprised to learn of Mr. Isaacman’s contributions and that he had not been told of them previously, he and his team were briefed about them during the presidential transition in late 2024, before Mr. Isaacman’s nomination, according to two people with knowledge of the events.

One source claimed that Isaacman told Trump personally of the donations when they met prior to his selection.

The article reported, “Allies of Mr. Musk and some allies of Mr. Trump spent part of Saturday publicly trying to salvage the nomination.”

The Guardian cites three sources who believe that “retired US air force Lt Gen Steven Kwast, an early advocate for the creation of the US space force and a Trump supporter,” is a candidate to replace Isaacman as Trump’s NASA nominee. Eric Berger at Ars Technica cites two sources who believe that Kwast “may be near the top of the list.” Berger commented, “his background seems to be far less oriented toward NASA's civil space mission and far more focused on seeing space as a battlefield—decidedly not an arena for cooperation and peaceful exploration.”

UPDATE June 4, 2025 8:00 PM EDT — Jared Isaacman gave his first public interview today to David Friedberg of The All-In Podcast.

Although much of what he says is true, I think it’s a bit naive to think he’ll ever get Congress (or a president) to just give NASA money to do what it wants without oversight. Loathsome as some members of Congress may be, they represent their constituents for better or worse, whose tax dollars pay for NASA activities. NASA’s budget is laden with pork, but that’s true of many federal agencies. I’ve yet to see any town step forward and say, “Shut down the NASA contractor in our town and lay off those hundreds of jobs, they’re sure not needed!”

Lasting reform is possible only when the White House and Congress work together to solve the problem and find consensus. That won’t be possible until a president can convince members of Congress to phase out obsolete pork-laden programs that benefit their districts and states. I’ve heard nothing like that from Isaacman, and certainly not from this administration.

Today’s Jared Isaacman podcast interview. Video source: All-In Podcast YouTube channel.

UPDATE June 4, 2025 9:30 PM EDT — The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk’s criticisms about Donald Trump’s budget bill are a reaction to Trump firing Jared Isaacman.

The decision infuriated Musk, who complained to associates over the weekend that he had donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help get Trump elected in last year’s campaign, only to see Isaacman’s nomination pulled, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. Musk’s frustration over the NASA episode made him more willing to aggressively criticize the tax bill, people close to him said. Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE June 5, 2025 2:30 PM EDT — From space journalist Marcia Smith on the former Twitter:

During Oval Office mtg w/Germany's Merz today, questions turned to Musk and Trump said Musk's choice for NASA Admin was "totally Democrat" and not appropriate. Then said Gen Dan Caine (Chm of Joint Chiefs) is picking a replacement "and we'll be checking him out."

It’s unfathomable to me why the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be picking a NASA nominee. NASA is by law a civilian agency. The 1958 Space Act is quite explicit about that. §20102(b):

Congress declares that the general welfare and security of the United States require that adequate provision be made for aeronautical and space activities. Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States, except that activities peculiar to or primarily associated with the development of weapons systems, military operations, or the defense of the United States (including the research and development necessary to make effective provision for the defense of the United States) shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, the Department of Defense; and that determination as to which agency has responsibility for and direction of any such activity shall be made by the President.

UPDATE June 5, 3:00 PM EDT — From CNN journalist Kaitlin Collins via the former Twitter, Donald Trump has threatened to cancel all SpaceX contracts in retaliation for Elon Musk’s criticisms. (This would be illegal.)

The space segment of President John F. Kennedy’s speech to Congress on May 25, 1961 titled, “On Urgent National Needs.” Original source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

— President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961

Senator John F. Kennedy (D-MA) was not alone in his presidential ambitions. With Dwight Eisenhower term-limited, the White House was a tempting target for any ambitious politician. The Democrats and Republicans had plenty of them.

Kennedy joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 1957. From there he was able to comment on foreign policy issues at a time when the Cold War was as chilly as ever.

It was in that context that, on August 14, 1958, Kennedy delivered a speech on the Senate floor about what he viewed to be a ”missile gap” between the military launch capabilities of the United States and the Soviet Union. Kennedy did not originate the idea — that was now-retired US Army James M. Gavin, who’d left the service in January 1958 to write a book, titled War and Peace in the Space Age, about what he called the “missile lag.”

The “missile lag” describes a period, and it is one that we are now entering, in which our own offensive and defensive missile capabilities will so lag behind those of the Soviets as to place us in a position of great peril.

Kennedy cited Gavin as his source and added, “The most critical years of the gap would appear to be 1960-1964.”

During his 1960 presidential campaign against the Republican nominee, Eisenhower’s vice president Richard Nixon, Kennedy tried to tie Nixon to the so-called gap.

But the gap didn’t exist.

With the passage of time, and declassification of documents, we now know that the “gap” myth originated with defense analysts who made intelligence estimates based on inadequate data. By the late 1950s, Eisenhower had ordered U-2 flights over Soviet territory, which showed the Soviets had nowhere near the missile capability feared.

According to Robert Dallek in his 2003 book, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, the Eisenhower administration tried to warn Kennedy during the campaign there was no gap, but was reluctant to share too much classified information to prove it. At the same time, polls suggested that Kennedy could have an advantage over Nixon if he appeared stronger against the Soviets.

In early February 1961, just days after Kennedy was sworn into office, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara leaked to the press on background that the gap never existed. First press secretary Pierre Salinger and then Kennedy himself denied the reports; Kennedy said he hoped to have a “preliminary study” completed soon. Some Republicans charged that the Kennedy campaign had concocted the gap as a baseless allegation to win votes.

The “missile gap” media frenzy had quieted by April 12, 1961, when the Soviets orbited Yuri Gagarin in the first crewed human spaceflight. Newspaper articles proclaimed a new gap, not with nuclear-tipped missiles but with rocket boosters launching men into space. This “gap” was defined by the thrust of US rockets compared to Soviet boosters; one Associated Press columnist commented, “The United States has never been able to match the Soviet payloads pound for pound.”

Associated Press military affairs reporter Bem Price’s analysis after Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth, as it appeared in the April 13, 1961 Denton, Texas Record-Chronicle. The column was printed in newspapers across the United States.

While Gagarin orbited the earth, CIA-backed rebels prepared to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, in an attempt to overthrow Soviet-backed prime minister Fidel Castro and his communist regime. The attack began on April 15, and failed miserably.

Within a week, Kennedy had suffered two very public political embarrassments. In his 2010 book John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, Dr. John M. Logsdon wrote that Kennedy’s closest advisors found him to be “anguished and fatigued,” and “in the most emotional, self-critical state.” Kennedy’s brother Robert reportedly told the president’s top appointees, “You got the president into this. We’ve got to do something to show the Russians we are not paper tigers.”

On April 20, Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, charging him with “making an overall survey of where we stand in space.”

Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man. Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?

Johnson’s written reply came eight days later, on April 28. He wrote that, “the Soviets are ahead of the United States in world prestige attained through impressive technological accomplishments in space.”

Manned exploration of the moon, for example, is not only an achievement with great propaganda value, but it is essential as an objective whether or not we are first in its accomplishment — and we may be able to be first.

The US launched its first human into space, Alan Shepard, on May 5, 1961. That was only a 15-minute suborbital flight, but the nation finally had put a person into space. It was a modest success, but Kennedy could build on it.

Twenty days later, on May 25, Kennedy addressed Congress and the nation with a speech titled, On Urgent National Needs. The speech was not just about the space program. In fact, the moon part was near the end of a 47-minute delivery that was largely a shopping list of new programs Kennedy wanted Congress to fund to show strength in the face of Soviet achievements.

Kennedy framed his moon challenge in the rhetoric of global prestige. He wanted to win the hearts and minds of those wondering if Soviet-style communism was the way forward.

… [I]f we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.

After his man / moon / end-of-decade line, Kennedy said:

No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

This wasn’t a proposal to boldly go, although that became the public rhetoric. It was to show the world that the US was superior to the Soviet Union. The “prestige” justification appears throughout Kennedy administration documents and audio recordings.

If you watch the video clip at the top of this column, you’ll note that the congressional audience didn’t applaud the crewed lunar mission proposal. There was a smattering of applause for accelerating the Project Rover nuclear engine program. The most applause came after Kennedy departed from his prepared remarks to ask Congress to seriously consider the time and costs involved. In his view, it was better not to go at all than to make a half-hearted effort and finally give up. That, they applauded.

A mythology has built up over the decades that Kennedy was a visionary who wanted to unite humanity in a grand adventure to the stars. That rhetoric certainly was used, but Kennedy administration documents and recordings suggest his concern in the spring of 1961 was “prestige,” not science and not exploration. He wanted “dramatic results in which we could win.” The moon program was a “propaganda” effort to reap global “prestige,” to show the Soviets that “we are not paper tigers.”

This speech began the transformation of NASA from an aerospace research-and-development agency into a tool of global soft power. In the decade ahead, NASA became a significant national employer, creating 400,000 jobs, most of which were through government contractors. Project Apollo built up an infrastructure here in Brevard County and across the US, in places such as Houston and Huntsville. These places became economically dependent on NASA, an unintended consequence of Kennedy’s prestige program.

On May 25, 1961, sixty-four years ago today, no one asked, “What do we do with all this once we’re done?” The main concern was how the US could look superior to the Soviet Union. Sixty-four years later, the federal government still struggles to answer that question.

A 1970 NASA design concept for the NERVA nuclear rocket engine. Image source: NASA Glenn Research Center.

President John F. Kennedy, on May 25, 1961, proposed the United States send a man to the moon by the end of the decade and return him safely to the earth.

How to do it? That was a little vague.

The Democratic junior senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had campaigned in the 1960 presidential election on the allegation that the Republican Eisenhower-Nixon administration had allowed a “missile gap” with the Soviets ahead of the US. This wasn’t true but, after he took office on January 20, 1961, Kennedy inherited the so-called “gap.”

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarian launched from Baikonur on April 12, 1961, becoming the first human to orbit Earth. Less than a week later, the US-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs failed.

Kennedy felt he needed to prove he was doing something about supposed US inferiority in space. On April 20, Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who chaired the National Space Council. Kennedy tasked Johnson “to be in charge of making an overall survey of where we stand in space.”

As president, Kennedy would have been briefed about government research and development of various rocket propulsion technologies. At the time, rockets and missiles typically were propelled by chemical reactions, such as liquid oxygen mixing with RP-1 kerosene, or solid fuel mixtures used in certain ballistic missiles.

But other options were possible. Ever since the Atomic Age began in 1945 with the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, theoretical physicists had dreamed of using nuclear energy for rocket propulsion. By 1955, the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory was working under contract with US Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) program called Project Rover.

The Rover contract was transferred from the USAF to NASA when the new agency began on October 1, 1958. NASA had evolved out of its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was a think tank for the US aviation industry. NASA was to be the same for aerospace. The NACA was already looking at aircraft nuclear propulsion when it was absorbed by NASA.

An undated 1960s Los Alamos lab film about Project Rover. Video source: Los Alamos National Lab YouTube channel.

By the time Kennedy took office on January 20, 1961, Los Alamos already was conducting ground tests of a NTP prototype called KIWI. NASA and the AEC awarded contracts to Los Alamos for successor programs, such as the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA), and the Reactor in Flight Test (RIFT) to place NERVA in space.

When Kennedy sent his April 20 memo to Johnson, one of the questions he asked was:

In building large boosters should we put our emphasis on nuclear, chemical or liquid fuel, or a combination of these three?

Johnson’s written reply came eight days later, on April 28. In response to Kennedy’s propellant question, he wrote:

It was the consensus that liquid, solid and nuclear boosters should all be accelerated. This conclusion is based not only upon the necessity for back-up methods, but also because of the advantages of the different types of boosters for different missions. A program of such emphasis would meet both so-called civilian needs and defense requirements.

When Kennedy addressed Congress on May 25 to propose his crewed lunar program, he listed four “national goals.” The first was:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

This goal eventually adopted the name of an already existing NASA crewed lunar spacecraft program called Project Apollo.

All but forgotten was the second:

Secondly, an additional 23 million dollars, together with 7 million dollars already available, will accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself.

It was around this time that NASA was finalizing a contract with Aerojet General and Westinghouse to manage NERVA. The program was to build on KIWI with the objective of launching a functioning NTP engine into space.

In those early days, the launch vehicle for Apollo was anything but clear. Wernher von Braun and others had been working on a series of next-generation booster ideas named Saturn. A group called the Silverstein Committee (after NASA executive Abe Silverstein) had looked at various options for combining a powerful new Saturn first stage booster with various upper stages to create a super-heavy lift vehicle. It was possible that one or more of those upper stages might have a NTP engine.

Von Braun had expressed public and private support for NTP technology, but Kennedy had set the end-of-decade deadline. In an April 29 memo to Johnson, von Braun wrote, “… there can be little doubt that the basic technology of nuclear rockets is still in its early infancy … It should not be a serious contender in the big booster problem of 1961.”

Von Braun suggested that a nuclear rocket might be more appropriate as a Saturn successor “… in the years beyond 1967 or 1968.” Another super-heavy booster program running in parallel to Saturn was called Project Nova. A January 1959 NASA report for President Eisenhower foresaw Nova as “competitive” to the Juno V, an earlier name for Saturn. The report described Nova as “the first vehicle of the series that could attempt the mission of transporting a man to the surface of the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” In December 1960, while Eisenhower was still president, an ad hoc panel produced a report suggesting that Nova might have “a suitable nuclear upper stage.”

If the nuclear development should be as successful as its proponents hope, it might open the way for future developments beyond the possibilities envisioned for chemical rockets. However, a sound decision on the promise of nuclear rockets cannot be made until about 1963.

The August 25, 1961 front page of the Orlando Sentinel reported that north Merritt Island had been chosen for “Project Nova.” Image source: Newspapers.com.

Various Florida newspapers reported on Project Nova. A July 12, 1961 Associated Press article published by the Miami Herald reported a plumbers strike at the AEC’s south Nevada test site was delaying Project Rover, “part of the 90 million dollar project Nova to put a man on the moon via a nuclear rocket.” A July 18, 1961 Miami Herald article reported that the Saturn at Cape Canaveral would be used to orbit three men around Earth and then the Moon, but Nova “would be used to land three men on the moon and return them to earth.”

The August 25, 1961 Orlando Sentinel front page trumpted the selection of Merritt Island for Project Nova. The Sentinel published several articles that day about Nova and its impact on the local economy, but none of them mentioned nuclear propulsion. One article did distinguish between Saturn and Nova class boosters.

Nova was still a viable project two years later. NASA called a “program plans conference” with its industrial contractors for Washington, DC on February 11-12, 1963. The conference produced a report of the various presentations.

The February 1963 Program Plans Conference book had a map showing plans for a Project Nova complex northwest of the Saturn pads, as well as a Nuclear Assembly Building near what was then called the Vertical Assembly Building. Image source: NASA-Industry Conference Program Plans.

The report described Nova as “either a liquid or solid rocket or perhaps Saturn V plus a nuclear stage.” It noted that no funding had been requested for building Nova hardware. The report forecasted, “In the last half of the decade, we expect to flight-test … the nuclear thermal engine Nerva in the Rift spacecraft stage, and prior to 1970 we expect to accomplish the Apollo mission for landing man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” There were discussions about using Nova for next-generation missions to the planets, but not for the crewed lunar program.

NASA’s NTP project became a victim of its time. Although NASA had dreams of sending humans beyond the moon, the presidents of the 1960s and Congress did not. Budget reductions began during the Johnson administration in 1967, with Congress inclined to cancel NERVA entirely.

By the early 1970s, the Nixon administration had suspended development of the NERVA engine. In a January 24, 1972 letter to the chair of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, NASA administrator James Fletcher wrote that NERVA was being terminated in favor of a much smaller nuclear engine. The need for NERVA was not foreseen until at least the 1980s. The smaller engine might one day compete with traditional chemical or solar propulsion systems for payloads to the distant planets in the solar system.

An artist’s concept of a spacecraft powered by nuclear thermal propulsion. Image source: NASA.

In the 21st Century, NASA still dreams of developing a nuclear propulsion engine. The Space Nuclear Propulsion (SNP) office researches both nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion. In 2021, NASA awarded three reactor design concept contracts at $5 million each to three companies. The Langley Research Center in Virginia is working on a nuclear engine radiator called MARVL as part of a vision for sending humans to Mars one day.

In his April 9, 2025 opening statement during his confirmation hearing, NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman said:

We will focus our technology development efforts on the world’s greatest engineering challenges, such as the practical application of nuclear propulsion, so that we can truly unlock humankind’s ability to explore among the stars.

Talk is cheap. Space is not. Isaacman was most likely sincere, but he has to navigate political limpet mines, starting with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The initial Fiscal Year 2026 NASA budget proposal would cut $531 million from the Space Technology budget, “including eliminating failing space propulsion projects.” But the proposal would introduce “$1 billion in new investments for Mars-focused programs.” The budget proposal, apparently developed without Isaacman’s participation, will then have to go through the congressional sausage grinder.

Perhaps the only way to assure NASA gets to build a nuclear engine is for China to demonstrate one. The fear of the Soviets beating the US to the moon prompted Kennedy and Congress to spend billions on Apollo. Maybe China demonstrating a nuclear engine might do the same trick. The South China Morning Post claimed on March 19, 2024 that a research team’s “prototype lithium-cooled nuclear reactor system has passed some initial ground tests.” The article said that “China has made significant strides towards interplanetary travel with the development of a nuclear fission technology that could power large-scale exploration of Mars.” The claims have not been independently verified.

2025 is not 1961. Some politicians have claimed the US is in a new “space race” with China, but few people seem to care. Even if China were to develop a nuclear engine, for what missions would it be used? That was the same question that doomed NERVA — no mission for its use was on the horizon.

Protestors attempt to breach the Cape Canaveral Air Station security fence on January 18, 1987. Image source: Florida Memory.

Nuclear powered missions tend to attract political protestors. One example was a mass demonstration outside Cape Canaveral Air Station on January 18,1987, protesting an upcoming test of a Trident II missile designed to deliver a nuclear weapon to an enemy target. According to the Florida Today report the next day, the rally attracted 4,000 protestors. 138 protestors were arrested, some of whom tried to scale the station’s security fence.

Demonstrators showed up to protest the launch of the NASA Cassini-Huygens mission from Cape Canaveral on October 14, 1997. Protestors objected to any use of nuclear power, by NASA or the military. Some believed that the launch would somehow fail and poison the area with plutonium. A much smaller group of about 30 showed up in January 2006 to protest the New Horizons probe to Pluto, also fearing the use of plutonium fuel.

Authoritarian regimes don’t have these problems. If those in charge decide to proceed with the project, it moves forward regardless of public objections or the lack of political support.

If those in the new administration wishes to prime the pump for a new nuclear engine project, they will have to find a way to convince Congress to fund it beyond the next election cycle. The supporters of NERVA and nuclear thermal propulsion never found the answer. Foresight is a rare commodity in politics.

An editorial cartoon that appeared on the front page of the Orlando Sentinel on July 18, 1962. Click the image to view at a larger size. Image source: Newspapers.com.

Blue Origin announced on July 1 that Wally Funk will be one of the passengers when the company launches its first crewed spaceflight from Van Horn, Texas. The launch is targeted for July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.

Funk was one of a group of woman aviators who were invited around 1960 by Dr. William Randolph Lovelace II to undergo some of the same tests taken by the Project Mercury astronaut candidates in late 1958.

Over the decades, Dr. Lovelace's research was largely forgotten until a film producer named James Cross made a documentary about the group, whom he dubbed the “Mercury 13.”

According to an October 23, 1998 Orlando Sentinel article:

It was Cross who dubbed the women “The Mercury 13,” although they were never actually affiliated with NASA.

The documentary began a mythology that the women were part of a secret NASA program that was stopped by unnamed nefarious forces simply because “they” didn't want to see a woman go to space.

A July 2, 2000 Los Angeles Times article quoted one of the test participants:

Jerri Sloan Truhill of the Mercury 13 group says she’d be happy if NASA would “stop denying the contribution we made and were prepared to make. Instead they treat us as interlopers, invading their space.”

The article also quoted test participant Jerrie Cobb:

On Sept. 12, 1961, five days before the women were to report to Pensacola, the tests were canceled. Cobb hopped a plane to Washington, D.C., and banged on doors until she found the chief of naval operations. “He told me,” Cobb remembers, “that the tests were canceled because NASA did not want the tests run on women.”

No one has ever produced any evidence of a conspiracy to “stop” the so-called Mercury 13 — one reason being there was no “Mercury 13.”

A 2018 NASA history office article documents the facts behind the Lovelace program.

Lovelace’s Woman in Space Program was a short-lived, privately-funded project testing women pilots for astronaut fitness in the early 1960s. Although nothing concrete resulted, the women who participated have since been recognized as trailblazers, whose ambitions to fly the newest and the fastest craft led them to be among the first American women to gain access to sophisticated aerospace medical tests.

The participants were never together in one place. The tests were typically performed on one or two women at a time, as Lovelace selected test subjects largely from a group of women pilots called the Ninety-Nines. Not all tests were performed on all participants.

The testing ended when Lovelace requested permission to use U.S. Navy equipment at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine in Pensacola, Florida. The testing so far had been at his private clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but now he wanted to use government resources. Since this was private research not funded or requested by a government agency, the request was denied.

No conspiracy.

Trying to force the resumption of testing, Cobb flew to Washington, DC. She finally found a sympathetic ear in Rep. Victor Anfuso (R-NY), who held two days of Congressional hearings in July 1962.

On July 18, 1962, after the first day of the hearings, the Orlando Sentinel ran an editorial cartoon mocking the hearings. Titled, “Congress to Study Woman's Place in Space — They Drive Cars, Don't They?” the cartoon depicted stereotypes of women in that period, including a rocket crash-landed on the Moon.

Three women testified that day — Jacqueline Cochran, a contemporary of Amelia Earhart whose flying bombers for delivery across the Atlantic during World War II led to the creation of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program; Jerrie Cobb, who'd in the 1950s also delivered planes; and Janey Hart, a helicopter pilot who was the wife of Senator Phil Hart (D-MI).

The Associated Press report as published in the Boston Globe was headlined, “Blondes Ask Equality for Space Women.”

Three blondes argued before a House Space subcommittee that all they needed was the training to join the Mercury astronauts in orbit ...

Miss Cobb, who testifies the same way she flies — with her shoes off — said women are now prevented from becoming astronauts because NASA insists its spacecraft pilots be test pilots — a job limited to men.

NASA astronauts Scott Carpenter (left) and John Glenn testify before Congress on July 18, 1962. Image source: Newspapers.com.

On the second day of the hearings, NASA chief of human space flight George Low, as well as Mercury astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, testified before the committee.

Low said that six women had applied for the second group of astronauts being selected at that time. According to the Associated Press report, “... none of the six women among 250 applicants for the 5 to 10 new astronauts now being picked met all the stringent age and training requirements.”

Low added that the pool of qualified men is more than ample to meet the need for 40 to 50 astronauts who may be used in the next few years.

The article quoted the two astronauts as saying that whomever was chosen had to be a qualified test pilot, regardless of gender.

“The best qualified people, whatever their sex, color or creed, should be picked,” Glenn added ...

Carpenter, asked for an opinion about women in space, disagreed with Rep. James G. Fulton, R-Pa., who said space travel is not so much in the experimental stage that women should be barred.

“There are many unknowns,” Carpenter said. “I think as many as possible should be eliminated.”

Carpenter added that present standards for astronauts are not a matter of protecting women but of protecting the program.

The hearings ended after the second day. No action was taken.

It had been more than a year since President John F. Kennedy, on May 25, 1961, proposed sending a “man” (not a person) to the Moon by the end of the 1960s and returning “him” safely to the earth.

Kennedy proposed what eventually became known as Project Apollo to demonstrate that American technology was superior to the Soviet Union.

At the time of these hearings, the United States and the Soviet Union were waging the Cold War. If Kennedy had not placed a time limit on Apollo — the end of the decade — perhaps the lack of urgency would have permitted more consideration for training women to be test pilots.

But that decision had been made by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958. According to a NASA history web site:

NASA originally intended to issue a general solicitation of applications for the position of “research astronaut-candidate,” and considered that several occupations besides test pilot might qualify. President Eisenhower, however, directed the agency to select its astronauts from the ranks of military test pilots; this would simplify selection, keep out undesirable applicants, and eliminate the need to run security checks on the candidates.

Why were there no female military test pilots in 1958?

During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces used women to deliver military aircraft overseas. According to a U.S. Army history web site:

Cochran served as director of WASP and its training division, while [Nancy Harkness] Love was director of the ferrying division. In the 16 months WASP existed, more than 25,000 women applied for training; only 1,879 candidates were accepted. Among them, 1,074 successfully completed the grueling program at Avenger Field — a better “wash-out” rate than 50 percent of male pilot cadets.

Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II. Image source: U.S. Army.

The WASPs were disbanded in December 1944. General Hap Arnold wrote:

When we needed you, you came through and have served most commendably under very difficult circumstances, but now the war situation has changed and the time has come when your volunteer services are no longer needed. The situation is that if you continue in service, you will be replacing instead of releasing our young men. I know the WASP wouldn't want that. I want you to know that I appreciate your war service and the AAF will miss you ...

Apparently there was only one female military test pilot during World War II.

Ann Baumgartner was a WASP pilot who was assigned to Wright Field Air Base in Dayton, Ohio. She flew various test flights at Dayton. “I was the first woman to fly a jet for nearly 10 years. I also flew some British bombers and the German JU-88,” she wrote. But she was turned out with the other WASPs when the program was terminated.

If the military had allowed women to apply for pilot training after World War II, some of them most likely would have qualified as test pilots.

But that's not the fault of NASA, or Project Mercury.

There's no evidence that any of the so-called “Mercury 13” participants had an engineering degree. Although many had extensive flight experience, none of them had test-pilot experience.

Contrast that with the résumés of the Mercury 7. Those pilots typically had engineering degrees, along with years of flying experimental aircraft, and some had combat experience.

Given the opportunity, women could have achieved the same but, for a dangerous rush program that had the highest national priority and international ramifications, military test pilots were the logical choice.

During the hearing, Glenn pointed out that the Lovelace Clinic tests had been only one small part of the astronauts' selection criteria.

In answer to other questions, Glenn said there has been a misunderstanding about the fact that 13 women pilots passed space tests given by the Lovelace Foundation at Albuquerque, N.M. One of them was Jerrie Cobb, a consultant to NASA, who plugged the girls-in-space idea before the subcommittee yesterday.

“They're such a minimum,” Glenn explained. “Those tests merely show if anything is wrong with you. As an analogy, my mother could probably pass the pre-season physical exam given the Washington Redskins. But I don't think she could play many games.”

The irony is that, while NASA chose military test pilots for its international prestige program, the Soviet Union secretly was recruiting candidates for the first space flight by a woman.

As these hearings were held, the Soviet Union was selecting and training women to be cosmonauts. The Soviet program viewed their spacecraft occupants more as passengers than actual fliers, so the woman recruits didn't have to meet the high standards of the American program. In November 1962, four finalists were given an honorary rank of lieutenant in the Soviet air force.

On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova launched in Vostok 6 to rendezvous with male cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky in Vostok 5.

She logged more flight time than all the Mercury missions combined to that point.

The Soviets achieved a propaganda triumph that NASA failed to anticipate because of its fixation on a lunar landing by the end of the 1960s.

By the time the United States landed on the Moon in July 1969, American and Soviet relations were about to enter an era of cooperation and eventually collaboration in space.

Apollo and Soyuz spacecrafts docked in 1975, with crews visiting each other's ships.

The Space Shuttle program opened the ranks of NASA to civilians, and to women. Physicist Sally Ride became the first American woman to launch into space in June 1983.

In 1975, Captain Jane Holley became the first woman to graduate from the Edwards Air Force Base test pilot school, as a flight test engineer.

Capt. Jane L. Holley, the first female graduate of U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. Image source: Air Force Test Center History Office.

In 1990, Eileen Collins was selected by NASA after graduating the Edwards test pilot program. She flew four Space Shuttle flights, commanding the last two, becoming the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission.

Once the wrong had been righted, women proved they could be military test pilots and NASA astronauts.

Just don't buy into the mythology that some grand conspiracy existed within NASA to stop them from flying in the 1960s.

If you are told this myth, reply with the truth. It's far more compelling.

Gateway’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module is now at Northrop Grumman’s integration and test facility in Gilbert, Arizona for final outfitting. Next stop — Kennedy Space Center, where it will be mated with its Power and Propulsion Element (PPE). Image source: NASA.

When President Trump’s NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman testifed before the Senate Commerce Committee on April 9, committee chair Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked the nominee, “What is your view of the Gateway project?”

Isaacman responded:

… I would love to roll up my sleeves and further understand what’s working right, what are the opportunities the Gateway presents to us, and where are some of the challenges, because I think the Gateway is a component of many programs that are over budget and behind schedule, sir.

Cruz asked if he intended to cancel Gateway. Isaacman replied that he had “no intention, as of now, to say that I would cancel any program” until after he’s in the job.

Gateway is NASA’s plan for a permanent space station in lunar orbit. The station would be built, serviced, and maintained by NASA’s Project Artemis partners.

Gateway is scheduled to launch no earlier than 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. NASA issued the launch contract to SpaceX in 2021. If you’re worried that Elon Musk might plant a bug in President Trump’s ear to dump Gateway in favor of his Starship, the Gateway launch contract is worth $331.8 million to SpaceX. Musk has criticized Project Artemis, calling it “extremely inefficient, as it is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program.” But, to my knowledge, he’s never singled out Gateway.

A large contingent of the space advocacy community views Gateway as a competitor with a lunar base. This is sometimes called the “Boots and Flags” paradigm. The sole purpose of NASA, in their view, is to land a heroic astronaut on a extraterrestrial surface to plant Old Glory and take a picture so we can prove we’re better than the enemy nation du jour. Gateway isn’t heroic, in their view. It’s a halfway measure. Let’s do Apollo again!

Neil deGrasse Tyson calls this “Apollo necrophilia.” Addressing the May 2008 International Space Development Conference, Tyson said, “The necrophilic part of it is that we’re worshipping something that we should not be worshipping because we should be somewhere else by now and we’re not, and that concerns me.”

But if the “necrophiliacs” think about it, Gateway fits their paradigm just fine.

An artist’s concept of the lunar module (LM) docked to the command and service module (CSM). Image source: Science Photo Gallery.

Let’s recall how Apollo worked.

A three-person crew arrived in lunar orbit safely ensconced in their command and service module (CSM). Attached atop their spacecraft was the lunar module (LM), which would be used to land people on the moon.

Two astronauts passed through a connecting tunnel into the LM, while the third astronaut remained in the capsule. The LM detached from the CSM to land on the surface. To return its crew, the LM’s ascent stage separated from its descent stage to return the astronauts to the CSM. Safely aboard, the trio returned to Earth.

The third crew member who remained in the CSM is often forgotten. That astronaut typically performed science experiments, took photographs, relayed messages, and on the later missions performed spacewalks to retrieve film magazines from a camera mounted in the service module.

That CSM was the forerunner of Gateway.

Due to the limitations of the era’s technology, the LM was used only once. Crews couldn’t return to the surface to explore elsewhere, or to resume their earlier exploration. It was one and done.

Gateway would provide the ability for crews to make repeated sorties to the surface, or even to go to different locations. Gateway is designed to alter its orbit. Apollo was not.

The CSM was limited to the fuel aboard. Gateway has its Power and Propulsion Element. The PPE will provide solar electric propulsion. Gateway will require only a tenth of conventional chemical propulsion.

A crude analogy might be the Apollo 13 mission. After the CSM suffered an explosion that incapacitated its propellant tanks, the crew used the LM engine to alter its course and slingshot around the moon to return to Earth. It was chemical propulsion, not solar electric, but it’s a rough example of what might be possible with Gateway. The station will be capable of a halo orbit, leaving the moon to venture further than Apollo crews ever went.

The Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module is Gateway’s foundation. One can foresee Gateway growing in the future, with additional modules attached by the US or its Project Artemis partners. That can only mean more landing opportunities, and more landing craft that can be refueled by propellants delivered to Gateway by commercial vendors. If something catastrophic were to happen to a lunar base, Gateway would be a safe harbor. It’s also a place where surface crew could shelter during a massive solar radiation storm.

Another reason for lunar landers to dock at Gateway is to conduct inspections. That’s a tough lesson NASA learned with the Columbia accident in January 2003. When Columbia launched, the orbiter’s left wing was damaged by insulating foam that fell off the external tank. The crew couldn’t inspect the orbiter because they were on a science mission, therefore they carried no spacesuits. They weren’t going to the International Space Station, so no one could look out a window.

Artemis has two lunar landers in the pipeline, a lunar variant of the SpaceX Starship, and the Blue Origin Blue Moon. There’s no guarantee that either will be in mint condition after launch, much less after returning from the surface. Gateway will be a service garage in lunar orbit.

All this assumes that sending crew to the surface is the only way to explore. It’s not.

NASA scientists use Microsoft HoloLens goggles to interact with OnSight software to explore Mars. Video source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel.

For ten years, NASA scientists have been using Microsoft HoloLens technology as a complement to the imagery transmitted to Earth by Mars rovers. Because of the significant time delay, one-way transmissions between Earth and Mars can take anywhere from 4 to 24 minutes.

Now imagine a Gateway-style space station in orbit around Mars. An astronaut aboard could use HoloLens and OnSight to operate a rover in real-time. The time delay is eliminated.

By sending robotic craft to the surface of the moon or Mars, operated by crew in orbit, there’s no risk to the astronaut. Descent and ascent are the most dangerous part of spaceflight. Why send a person to the surface if there’s no reason to do so? If samples need to be returned, dispatch a reusable cargo craft to and from Gateway.

This isn’t new technology. NASA landed robotic craft on the moon in the 1960s. The Soviets went one better, using robots three times to return lunar soil samples to Earth in the 1970s. Private companies are now landing small robots on the moon to demonstrate their ability to deliver payloads, through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. It’s not much of a stretch to envision modifying their technologies to transport payloads to and from Gateway.

When Congress created NASA in 1958, “boots and flags” wasn’t the reason. NASA was intended to be a space version of its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. NASA was only expected to “contribute materially” to at least one of a number of itemized activities. That language hasn’t changed in the nearly 67 years of NASA’s existence. (Look it up — Section §20102(d).)

The NACA was an incubator for cutting-edge aeronautics it transferred to the private sector. The NACA didn’t operate its own airline, but it did make available what they learned to US commercial airline companies and airplane manufacturers. That made the US the pre-eminent aeronautics nation in the global economy.

That birthright was lost when President John F. Kennedy proposed the US land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s (and return him safely to Earth). This “boots and flags” paradigm was not what NASA was intended to be. For the last sixty years, NASA has struggled to find its way, because the “boots and flags” paradigm is hideously expensive and unsustainable without a financially viable way to do it.

That’s what Gateway does. Gateway becomes the equivalent of your local municipal airport. Those planes at your airport are not government planes. They’re private companies flying private passengers and cargo, competing for business. Gateway will be a truly international spaceport, with NASA’s Project Artemis partners adding their own modules, their own crews, and perhaps one day their own spacecraft. SpaceX and Blue Origin are two companies with plans to commercially operate in cislunar space.

An artist’s concept of the completed Gateway. Image source: NASA.

Cancelling Gateway now would be a very bad idea. Any future lunar base would lose its safe harbor, and science would lose its lunar observation platform. HALO and PPE, already built, would wind up in some museum as yet another example of the road not taken — or, even worse, scrapped. HALO’s primary structure was built in Italy by Thales Alenia under a contract with Northrop Grumman. Europe, Japan, and Canada have invested money and time in building Gateway components. Cancelling Gateway would prove to our partners that, once again, the United States can’t be trusted.

I’m sure someone will point out some technical inadequacy with Gateway. That’s true of anything humans build, especially government projects. But Gateway is the first, just as the International Space Station is the first US outpost for a sustained human presence in low Earth orbit. Commercial companies right now are developing their own habitats to succeed the ISS. The same will happen, someday, with lunar orbit.

That’s less likely to happen without Gateway as the pathfinder.