The Ledger, every show

“When we return to the moon, America will not look down on the prime lunar real estate while our rivals occupy it. NASA astronauts will be on the surface, building President Trump's moon base, and we will realize the scientific, economic, and national security …”

“Regardless if we had a rival that is, again, within potentially a year of our schedule on this, it is still, the changes we announced last week is still in the correct direction.”

“NASA has stated we will achieve the national imperative to return, ah, to the moon and establish an enduring presence before the end of President Trump's term.”

“We're going to return to the moon before end of President Trump's term. We're going to build a moon base so we can stay.”

“I didn't blame Boeing. I blamed leadership failures and poor decision-making at NASA to make sure our culture is going the right direction.”

“We are going to get in a cadence of launching every 10 months. We are going to add a new mission. You know, Artemis III is supposed to land on the moon in, in, in, in, in twenty-twenty-eight. Not doing that anymore. We're going to launch Artemis III in twenty-…”

“This rocket built on 60 year old technology that's four and a half billion dollars of launch has an expiration date.”

“Even when a Starship gets to Mars, you're betting on, like, you know, a hundred consecutive miracles happening to top, to mine propellant there and bring it back.”

“I mean, you know, people can draw their own conclusions, but I think the direction that people are going is or thinking on this seems, seems to check out to me.”

“We are gonna get back into the habit of launching moon rockets in months, not years.”

“We are standardizing the SLS rocket, increasing launch cadence from years to months. We're inserting a new mission in 20, 27 to buy down risk and increase confidence for lunar landing attempts in 20, 28.”

“About 1.4 billion a year is lost in science and discovery. Because someone, 30 years ago or so, said there's these artificial hiring ceilings on civil servants, so 75% of the workforce became contractors.”

“NASA can do the What probably others wouldn't want to take on the liability of launching a nuclear reactor with power and propulsion so we can get to Mars someday and actually bring our astronauts back home.”

“We are going to embed responsible engineers in every one of the prime contractors, every one of the subcontractors that has components on the critical path. CEOs of these companies are going to brief me every 30 days on how they're going to meet our timelines”

“We've got Artemis through at least, or SLS through at least Artemis five or six. We're gonna make the most of it, and then we will continue to evolve our, ah, our architecture until we are watching, ah, NASA astronauts going to and from the moon measured in mo…”

“I promised him America will get underway in space on nuclear power before the end of his term.”

“And, look, I think, like, we're gonna see astronauts on Mars in our lifetime.”

“We spent two hundred million dollars last year on a canceled program.”

“Is twenty-five billion dollars a year plus the plus-up that came from one big beautiful bill enough to get the job done? Yeah, sure as hell is.”

“I would say that if we went and brought the samples back from Mars which is a program that people have been asking about for a while, was canceled in the last administration because it was super expensive I think the odds are extremely good you'd have direct e…”

“I would almost guarantee you we will get humans to Mars. And back before, like, point-to-point rocket travel is a big thing here on Earth.”

“Within, within years, we'll be able to send humans to Mars. It's bringing them back.”

“If I was on the board of any nuclear power startup right now, I'd be like, this is malpractice for you to put even a minute of time in space when we've got unlimited terrestrial demand.”

“I've only spoken to him you know, a couple dozen times, maybe over the years and almost entirely related to my commercial space missions, inspiration, Ford, and Polariston.”

“When we were replicating enemy tactics in 2015 in fighter jets, the gap between our capabilities and the bad guys was wide, and you felt very confident, and every year it started to shrink.”

“I would have deleted all that. Like not that people don't need to go, but they need to, you know, the amount of deputies, assistants, associate assistant to the deputy. The amount of committees, the meetings with 200 people on them. The review boards, like all…”

“They have this immense second mover advantage that is that is crushing across all technology.”

“My single largest political donation ever was to president Trump in this you know for, to support his inauguration.”

“I think it's like five or 600% overrun to build the mobile launcher two for the next generation SLS.”

“And if that skinny budget had come out you know, again, a day or two earlier, I would never have made it out of committee”

“We've already got paid for enough SLS hardware that if you were to terminate for convenience now, you got enough to launch like two or three of them.”

“Thank goodness for SpaceX, or we definitely be already behind in that regard.”

“75% of your workforce, not partners, not commercial partners in this, are contractors you know, through staffing agencies, so they're all using different software tools, collaboration tools, different HR systems, talking to different prime contracts, subcontra…”

“So if NASA is doing the same thing that industry is doing, we're screwing up. And that's going to make it very hard for us to recruit talent. It's going to make it very hard for us to retain talent.”

“Now, both SpaceX and Blue had to do uncrewed tests of their vehicle. It was already part of the plan. So they were planning to launch these you know, these spacecraft in in twenty-twenty-seven.”

“You've committed, again, a hundred billion of taxpayer dollars, you have an obligation to see it through.”

“It's NASA's job that we should be doing near impossible where no other agency, organization, company could ever close a business case on because your demand signal is one, and there's probably no logical revenue model to underwrite it. That's where NASA should…”

“I love the promise of point-to-point. I'm not, Sold on it happening anytime soon, because all right, now that you figured out how to go from point A to B in a rocket really fast, and it's like, now the rocket's there. What do you do with it? So now you have to…”

“A hundred percent of people feel different in space. You're either on the spectrum of like, well, five days was not great. It was like one of the worst hangovers of my life, or you're throwing up and it's not great for a while.”

“The agency is doing a lot of littles, a lot of things that other agencies, departments, companies are capable of doing. That's not why the taxpayers fund NASA. Like NASA is funded to do the near impossible that no one else can do.”

“I got a call Friday of last week that you know, the president has decided to go into a go in a different direction.”

“I know that, like, the news talks a lot about, like, the, you know, Democratic donations is the cause. That was not a new development. You just Google, you can, they're all public.”

“In the weeks ahead, America will send the brave Artemis II astronauts potentially farther into space than any humans have ever traveled in generations flying around the moon on a ten-day mission to test the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft befor…”

“With the immense support of OPM Director Scott Cooper, we are launching NASA Force. To rebuild NASA's core competencies.”

“You get no muscle memory if you're launching that during every three and a half years. People are working to launch the mission, and then they're gonna move on and go somewhere else, and you have to rebuild all those competencies again.”

“You've got a octocopter, nuclear-powered octocopter that we're launching to Titan in twenty-twenty-eight searching for life.”

“We literally bought over a hundred fighter jets. We were at one point the 12th largest air force in the world.”

“Falcon nine, probably not. I mean, you need Starship where your upper stage you're intending to recover.”