The Exchanges

Q When you, when you did that, where would you, when would you fire? Like you'd, you'd turn around and get them behind them or what?

A Oh, for sure. I mean, that's that the whole idea essentially is to, is basically to force an overshoot, to get the, ah, you know, to get the guy you're trying to beat, to spit out in front of you. And, um, you know, you can, you can do a turning fight where you're just continuously, you know, in, in a, in a high G and trying to rate and get the nose around to get Behind the other person, or, you know, you can get where it's a, you know, a little bit more artistic, and go up in the vertical, and you try and get, ah, you're just trying to get behind the guy. Um, and that's, you know, when you start getting really slow, people get afraid to bring their nose up. Um, I love it.

AI assessment note: “basically to force an overshoot, to get the, ah, you know, to get the guy”

Q I love it. And, and, is there new talent you're gonna bring in? The other is not there? Like, what's missing? And how do you get top talent? Obviously, you're there, and obviously, as a, Basically a volunteer, relatives, everything else. Like, how do you get other people to come be there and do that?

A You know, the nice thing is we don't, we don't have a shortage on our funnel. I mean, NASA's got such a great brand. People want to grow, you know, uh, come work here. The hard part is how do you get them to stay? Because they come, they learn, they get experience, and then for sure they go to industry that's doing very similar things with rapidly appreciating equity. I mean, Jeff Dezos has a lot of money to pay people. Yeah, a lot of, you know, you've got to make sure we're working on what no one else is capable of doing. That's why NASA exists in the first place. Nuclear power propulsion. The president put in his national space policy. Do what they can't do, and you're going to bring in talent, and they're going to want to stay, because there's nowhere else to go to do it. I also give credit to, um, uh, to our OPM director, who established this new tech force initiative right now of doing exchange programs with industry, because there's a lot of people like me who want to serve their country. They want to come in for a period of time, make a difference, and vice versa. We can send people from NASA to those companies. He's putting together a hell of a lineup of companies, You know, all the, all the best ones to do exchange programs with. That's how we'll mature a lot of our talent.

AI assessment note: “Do what they can't do, and you're going to bring in talent”

Q lot harder recruiting challenge. It's a lot harder culture challenge. So, so, so it's not a surprise to me that things are maybe not working as well as they should there. This is, this is a hard thing you're trying to do now coming in and trying to make it live up to what it used to live up to. Like, how do you, how do you look at this?

A Yeah, I think everything you said is right. Uh, there's, uh, you know, amazing history of unbelievable history of doing the near impossible. Uh, it was a different time back then, right? We had great competition. It was, uh, you know, it was a national priority to, uh, to beat the Soviets to the moon, bring them back safely. We were able to recruit The absolute best and brightest that had no other, like, competing interest at the time could solely focus on a single objective. We built our centers around the country to do specific things. You build engines. You test engines. You launch rockets. You train astronauts and control mission control. Over time, you win. You have no competitor. People start to gravitate in lots of different directions. Everybody loves NASA, but not everybody agrees on, on what the priority should be. So you have a lot of, uh, external factors coming in, trying to shape the direction of the agency. At the same time, you have big consolidation amongst the defense players, right? Same thing that's probably, to some degree, almost plagues D.O.W., is like over consolidation, you know, really harms competition.

AI assessment note: “It was a different time back then... Everybody loves NASA, but not everybody agrees”

Q So stepping back, like, what is your mission at NASA? You love space, you love being an astronaut, but why are you there? What are you trying to do?

A Well, I mean, personally, this is, again, it's, I live the American dream. I have a detriment. Pay the nation, but I'm, I'm grateful to have an opportunity right now under, under President Trump during this administration to start course correcting, right, to get us back, and we have no choice. We have no choice. I mean, hindsight against the Soviets, we have, like, unlimited schedule margin. We, we, we won, and no one's been back since, ah, you know, since, ah, the Apollo, ah, you know, our Apollo series of, of moon landings. Right now, our competitor, we got a year of margin at best. They've said before 2030, we've said before the end of President Trump's term, that's late 20 28, we got a year in between here. This is at best. So we got to get moving, and sometimes having that kind of competition is a forcing function you need for change. So what are we going to do? 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. We're going to invest in the next giant leap capabilities. We're not going to slow down. We're going to build nuclear power and propulsion, what industry can't do, because they got other things to worry about. We should be doing the nuclear mission. There's no other use case for it right now other than NASA.

AI assessment note: “We're going to return to the moon... We're going to build a moon base”

Q the Soviets. They were the first in space. We were the first on the moon. We got, we eventually got way ahead. It's a little embarrassing that it's 60 years later and we're like, we're gonna be the first. We're gonna get 60 years, like, technology. Like, can we do something even, like, way more impressive in the next few years after that? Like, how are you thinking about this?

A Yeah, sure. I mean, that's, and the president, President Trump's already there. He said, uh, get back to the moon and build a moon base so you can stay. Realize the scientific, economic, national Security potential. He's told me multiple times, we're not going back for the rocks and flags. We are doing this to build a moon base. And, and the president is absolutely spot on. That is so much harder. I mean, when we're in low earth orbit on space station, if you had a real emergency within hours, you could be in the water. You may not want to be in the middle of the Pacific. That might not help the problem, but you could do it. Right. Versus a couple of days to the moon where look at the moon. I mean, it gets, it gets pelted all the time.

AI assessment note: “we're not going back for the rocks and flags. We are doing this to build a moon base.”

Q That was a long time ago. What were you flying?

A I was just kind of letting you know, we, we had this amazing team and we, we basically were on the road. It was during the government sequestration. So event, the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds got shut down and we became like the hottest ticket in town. So we're doing loops and rolls to music, 18 inches apart. Some of the most demanding and fun flying ever. And you're honestly, you're living life like this total rockstar going from show site to show site. And we were like, this is going to end bad for us. So first of all, we're all at peak weight. Like we're eating too much. We're drinking too much and we're flying. We got to pivot to something.

AI assessment note: “we became like the hottest ticket in town. So we're doing loops and rolls”