Roundtable | NASA's Project Artemis and their plans to settle the moon

Welcome to Orbit 12.20. You've been asking for it, so here it is. We've got you a very tiny roundtable. Yeah, thank you. I've got with me a Jade, a Jared, I am Cariann, and we have a Manju with us as well. Hopefully a face that you will be able to get familiar with. This is kind of our first go at this, and what we're talking about today is Project Artemis and going back to the moon. NASA has said that's what we're doing, and for those of you who are wondering why the name Artemis, why not like Apollo 2.0 or something like way cooler and sexier? Artemis is the sister of Apollo, and as Jared put lovingly in our notes that I can now read off of a huge screen, and it's really great, as of today it has been 16,971 days since the last humans were on the moon. Yes, that was December 14th, 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission with Jack Schmidt and Gene Cernan. Which is, that's crazy when you think about that. That means every one of us here has not seen a moonwalker on the moon at that time, like we might have met them afterwards or what have you. We have not had, none of us sitting here have been alive during the time when there was a crewed mission beyond low-earth orbit. Which is really really sad, and the other thing about Artemis I want to point out really quickly before we move on too fast, is that one of the one of the main points of this project, besides just not just getting boots on the moon again, is specifically getting the first woman on the moon. Yes. Which, as you can see from our particular demographic, we are very privy. Yes, and it's a noble goal, so yeah. Absolutely, so I'm really excited about that. So how did we get here, right? Like we already did Apollo, and then we stopped, right? We got into low-earth orbit, and that was cool, and it is cool, and I really like all that sort of stuff, but why, why are we going back to the moon? Like what, how did we get here? Does anybody know? Well, you know, it all started. So back in the early aughts, you had Constellation, the Constellation program. The Constellation project, yeah. Which was proposed after the Columbia disaster, as a means by which to shift focus from low-earth orbit to the moon, and then eventually to Mars. But Constellation had a lot of problems, a lot of underfunding, a lot of issues with timelines, and it was eventually canceled in 2010. Hence the joke, Constellation. Yeah, Constellation, and it was replaced by the asteroid redirect mission arm, which was going to go out and initially grab a small asteroid, and then later grab a small boulder off of a bigger asteroid, and bring it into orbit around the moon, and then launch a crew to come get samples of it back as well. But then a couple years ago, that was canceled as well, and the National Space Council, which is something that started in 1958 and then continued to the 70s until it was disbanded, and then brought up again by Bush 1.0 from 1989 to 93, and then disbanded again, was brought back again in 2017, and they've basically been working space policy to aim that. And then, you know, a couple of months ago, the administration put down, threw down the cards, and said 2024, y'all, so. And so it's 2019 now, and 2024 is only five years away, and Apollo was done in under a decade. Yes. Right? It was eight years, if I remember correctly. Don't quote me on this. Okay, so do we really think that we're gonna be able to get back to the moon in five years? I think, I mean, if everything worked like a beautiful, well-oiled machine, and bureaucracy just was super efficient, and everybody was just, like, hands-on deck, maybe. I think so, but sometimes it doesn't always work out like that, particularly, especially in aerospace, particularly with, like, lofty kind of goals like this. I mean, wait, but is this lofty? Like, we've already done this. The big joke is that the cell phone that I don't actually have in my pocket right now has more computing power, right? Yeah, and I always reply to that, well, how many times has your cell phone gotten you to the moon? Okay, to be fair, my cell phone has jumped out of my own pocket by itself. That's true. So, I mean, it has done a lot more than it was originally intended. I would also counter that with the fact that now we have private companies helping as well, right? We're not trying to do this under a decade by ourselves. We're trying to do this with SpaceX or whoever else helping us land on the moon. We're trying to help other, we're trying to get other private companies to help us collect samples and data, so we have a lot more help than we did when we tried to go back the first time, or when we tried to go the first time. Yeah, and I feel like what's happening, too, with this is that this plan that has been developed is looking at all of the programs that have already been developed and is trying to figure out a way to throw them into that and kind of work with that, like Lunar Orbital Gateway Platform, whatever they're calling it this week. Yeah. It's no longer just going to be like, you know, oh, you're gonna go visit it and then drop down. No, they're trying to actually develop a power and propulsion system on it that is going to enable this platform to actually go to different orbits, so that way you can go to different landing sites on the moon. So it's no longer just going to be in this, like, I think it was near-halo retrograde orbit or something like that. They're actually going to change the orbits on it, which is handy because, you know, you'd rather expend the energy with that as opposed to that, you know, you just save as much energy as you can so you can take as much weight to the surface of the moon. And so to do all that, the reason we want to go to different places on the moon is because, why? Like, I assume we want to explore different places on the moon, but, like, what are the benefits of going to, like, to the poles versus going to a crater versus going to, like, wherever, right? Because if I remember correctly, Project Artemis specifically is trying to get to the poles, right, for human settlement. Yes. But, like, why? Why do we want to go specifically there? Resources. Okay. Is there no water all over the whole moon? Not quite. Didn't, like, Vax Hedrum, our resident moon-a-bomber, prove that for us? Moon-a-bomber. Yeah. You know, it's just, it's difficult to get it out of, like, the equatorial regions. Yeah. Even the high latitude regions of the moon, there's, it takes a lot more energy to get it out of there. So just like on Earth, we have, like, more ice on the caps. Yeah. Easily accessible. Okay. Yeah, and we know that that ice is there. We're not exactly sure how much ice exactly is there or whether it's on the surface or directly below the surface, but it's there. And the reason we care about ice is because, like, obviously drinking water and what-have-you for us and, like, plants and what-have-you, but we can also separate it to, yeah, propulsion for fuel. Yeah, generate fuel. And then you can also just, you know, use it as well for atmosphere. And then other things you can do with hydrogen, too. It just really depends on what you want to enable with that, so. Okay, so. And I was gonna say, too, at the South Pole, as well, you know, in order to take that water and break it apart into hydrogen and oxygen, it does take a lot of energy to do that. And there's these nice things at the South Pole called peaks of eternal light. These are areas where, where it is consistently lit up by the Sun, so you could basically throw some solar panels up there and have power even through a lunar night, which would be very, very difficult to pull off. You have to have a lot of batteries if you're not going to go nuclear in the equatorial or high latitude regions of the Moon. But you can pull it off at the poles if you want to just keep it solar panel. Interesting. That's really interesting. Everyday Astronaut off of YouTube, which, by the way, hello, Everyday Astronaut, says, I think aiming for five years is reasonable, but seeing how hard the commercial crew has been to actually get going, add a few years for unexpected delays. Aim for five, probably more like eight. Yes. Well, and the original deadline was 2028, right? So I think kind of shortening it is shooting for the stars. If you miss, you land on the Moon kind of thing, quite literally. Right, right. Yeah, 2024, maybe it's 2025, 2026, but that's still earlier than our original deadline and still during what could be the administration's second term. Yeah, and what I'm noticing too, at least at this point, that's, that's kind of giving me, my hope comes from the motions I'm starting to see NASA do. So this was, you know, Artemis was announced in March of 2019. Right. And at this point, NASA has already awarded a firm fixed price contract to Maxar Technologies to build the power and propulsion module. So, and that's like, that's moving ahead. I would have not thought that they would have been doing that that quickly. Sure. Immediately after that. So that kind of does give me my hope on Project Artemis maybe actually hitting that 2024 deadline. Interesting. But like, there was the Google Lunar X Prize, right, which was the X Prize to get private companies to land on the Moon, potentially take some pictures, maybe roam around a little bit, you know, send some pictures back, you know, all that fun stuff. And that was never awarded. Yeah. And SpaceIL, it's Israeli, if I remember correctly, which was one of the Google Lunar X Prize teams, did actually get something sent up, did actually get to the Moon, impacted very hard, unfortunately. You know, they got some really cool pictures while they were there, which was really kind of amazing. But they were probably one of the furthest along. Yes. And yet still did not do all the things that they wanted to do. What makes us think that we're gonna be able, what makes NASA think that they're gonna be able to do anything different, I guess? Does that make sense? I think one of the things, also I just realized I misspoke and said 2025 or 2026 is the second term and it won't be. But yeah, aside from that. Okay. Aside from that, I think like one thing, because I got some, I got to work in the Obama White House in the Science Policy Office. And one thing that was really clear during my time as an intern, but yeah, it was really cool. But one of the things that I recognized there was that each administration wants to have their own mark on space. And so the 2024 is the way to make sure that we go to the Moon by the time the administration's second term is over, right? And that's why like every four to eight years we keep canceling projects or redirecting funding because every president wants their own name on something. So it's ultimately, it's like an ego race in a way. And it's hard to fund science that way because science doesn't run on a four to eight year cycle. Sure, but to be fair, Apollo was too, was it not? Well, it was different motivations for Apollo. Apollo was basically, my missile's bigger than yours. Well, and we know how that works, it's fine. Sorry, I know we have a very international audience. You know, there was obviously a lot of technological prestige that went with it, but it was also a lot of, a lot of essentially nationalistic grandstanding, which ended up doing like a lot of good actually out of it. But I mean, you're saying, but this is different. And then also like the guy who came up with, or the guy who advocated for it, not necessarily the guy who came up with it, JFK was very well liked by the American public and, you know, being assassinated and everything kind of left a very profound impact on everybody and said, got to do it for him. You know, got to do it for all these people. And, you know, beating the Soviets and keeping the legacy of JFK, two very powerful motivators at that time. So, I don't know if we have that kind of motivation at the moment. But I want to say that Neuroblog, Neuroborg in our chat room actually has a really good point, which I think is one of the really good motivators of this, which Neuroborg says, I actually think Jim Bridenstine might be one of the few who would stay on past 2024 for either party in the White House. And I got to say, I guess I'll just say it publicly, I was very much against Jim Bridenstine vehemently and very loudly. I think you're literally on camera saying that too, so it's okay, besides right now. But holy smokes, he's been an awesome administrator for NASA. And I feel like that he's one of those really big motivators. I don't want to say single-handedly he's going to be able to pull it off, but he's the right person to have in NASA's corner in order to pull that off. Yeah, which Lupe in the chat room also kind of had a similar sort of effect saying, so with respect to what is happening during, quote, the administration's potential second term, whose name is on the Apollo 11 plaque, it's Nixon, not Kennedy. If he does it right, and there's no legacy shopping, he'll be known for it without meeting the date, which is a really interesting point. Yeah, really, really interesting point. And I wonder if it would be Bridenstine's name, potentially, as opposed to the president, the current president's name. Whoever that president is at the time. Right, exactly. I also see Artemis as a stepping stone for Mars. That's why we want to go back to the moon, essentially. And so for me, it's like, yeah, the deadline matters, but it's also just how well we do this to be able to go back to Mars. Because if we don't do this right, and we try to rush it, and we have failures, and then funding cuts go after that, then we're not going to be able to go to Mars. It's going to push our Mars deadline. And that's like the main goal for at least me. I know I'm not running the country, but not yet. Yeah, and you know, we've been talking about going to Mars since the late 60s. I mean, that was supposed to be the Apollo applications project, you know, mid to late 80s, we were going to land humans on the Mars. That didn't end up happening. And then, you know, in the early, in the late 80s, early 90s, the Bush 1.0 White House really pushed to try to get that going. But it just didn't end up happening. And then, you know, a four-year administration change completely changed NASA's focus to faster, better, cheaper, and, you know, poof, went Mars and even a return to the moon off of the table with that. Also, I don't want to necessarily say that that mindset changed it, too. The Cold War thawing out, too, helped with that, where we immediately had the scramble and helped kind of help Russia keep their workforce within Russia and not to other groups with that there. That probably didn't, that definitely didn't help. But it's kind of been, even the past 15 years, it's kind of been pinballing around to different ways to go. And that inconsistency is not helpful at any point. So you brought up an interesting point. Scraptastrophe, there he is, I'm trying to say, oh my goodness, off of Twitch, says, this is why I want Musk or Bezos to do it independently, not tied to administrations. Let's crowdsource a space program. 10 million space fans donating a hundred a year could give us a $1 billion space budget, which is an interesting. So, I mean, I guess that's, as Manju already said, is the interesting part about NASA working with some of the commercial companies, right? Because then they are going to have like their own independent ideas, budgets, potentially, right? And we're talking about firm fixed price, which was something you and I were discussing before the show, which is something I didn't understand. Yeah. So if you don't understand firm fixed price contracts, Maxar Technologies being given $375 million by NASA to build the power and propulsion element of Lunar Orbital Gateway. But that's all they're getting. If it goes above $375 million, Maxar Technologies gets to eat that part of their budget. So a firm fixed price contract can often either make or break, and most often end up breaking programs with it. So we'll have to see what ends up happening with that. We've been talking a lot about the budget. And I think one thing, like when I'm thinking about this from a policy perspective, is even the NASA administrator has said if the $1.6 billion, because the White House, right, has proposed a $1.6 billion increase in the NASA budget to be able to fund Artemis. But even the administrator has said that if that increase doesn't happen, if Congress doesn't approve it, they have to go back to the 2028 deadline. So before we can even talk about if there's enough national enthusiasm or if NASA is capable or NASA and the private sector are capable, we have to wait on Congress to approve it. And right now it's not looking great because the administration has proposed pulling that money in from Pell Grants, right? And Pell Grants are the grants that support low-income kids to go to school and which have bipartisan support. So Congress most likely isn't going to pull money from Pell Grants. Yeah. And from my understanding, there's a lot of NASA administrative sort of pushback on that, too, because they look at a major part of their STEM workforce being enabled by those Pell Grants. And if you reduce that, you reduce the ability to generate a STEM workforce. And in addition to that, STEM workforce is already starting to basically reach a retirement age for a majority of it. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's kind of an underrated crisis that isn't brought up enough. The fact that we have such a large percentage of particularly in aerospace as well and engineering, they're all going to retire and we don't have a sustainable pipeline of STEM talent. So, yeah, getting to the moon by 2028 or even sooner or maybe a little bit later, that's great. But then looking even further into the future, when we do put boots on Mars eventually, we need to make sure we still have a good sustainable group of talent that can get us there and sustain us while we're there. Because, I mean, yeah, tech's great, but you also need the Yeah. And with that too, if you go all in on a project, it can build a STEM workforce as well. If you look at a lot of the people who worked on shuttle or international space stations, you'll talk to them and they'll talk about, yeah, well, when I watched Apollo, when I saw the moon landing, when I watched the moon walk, that was the moment for them. Yeah. That's really interesting. And I wonder if, again, as Manju said, not to only reference you, I apologize. But, you know, that if moon is a stepping stone to Mars, and I think that's what, you know, I'm older than all of you here, so I can say this. I think that's what the young kids today are getting interested in. You know, you look at some of the workforce, you know, of SpaceX, of Rocket Lab, of some of these, quote unquote, younger companies, and they are a younger group. So even if NASA isn't doing it themselves, and even if the government isn't doing themselves, I think people are still, young people are still interested in those fields and are still going towards that, you know, engineering base, those STEM fields. And a lot of that is because we're putting more attention into increasing the diversity of, you know, especially in the STEM fields. I mean, representation is so important. And, you know, one thing that Artemis wants to do is send a woman to the moon. And that's hugely important. So important. I mean, I don't think we can really over say how important that could be, because there's still a pretty big deficit between, you know, male and female. And not only that, but just diversity in general. Yeah, I was going to say, in aerospace, women only make up 15% of the workforce. Yeah, that's insane. So, which is like a completely skewed amount compared to other workforces, even in other forms of engineering, too. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And you look at all of the potential talent out there and the talent that has yet to be cultivated out there. I mean, think of all of the Einsteins and future musts that we're missing out on if we don't show them that, hey, like, you can do this as well. Like, you have every bit of potential. Yeah. And not just that, but this isn't a stated goal, just like the first woman on the moon would be, but we would also potentially get our first person of color on the moon. And to have a black man or brown girl up there. And like, I know, since four years old, I've been in awe of people like Kalpana Chawla or Smitha Williams, right? So getting to see that person who looks like you step on the moon, that's invaluable. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, astronauts like Ronald McNair and Charles Bolden were a really big part of helping NASA diversify themselves. Yeah. And even people like, you know, Sally Ride getting to see the first American woman to go to space. Joan Higginbotham. Yeah. Oh. Joan Higginbotham. Of relation or not? Yeah. With that. I'm sorry. I just got it. Subtly. Let me just throw that in real quick. And then, you know, even leadership as well, like Ellen Ochoa, you know, Johnson Space Center is a huge motivator for people to get to really want to go all in on something like that. So switching gears ever so slightly, speaking of diversity, but it will be switching gears ever so slightly. Astro YYZ in the chat room brought up an interesting question, which does this lunar mission mean a new generation of spacesuits specifically? The ones they currently use on station are decades old. And so I think that feeds into a little bit. I think, Jade, was that your story a few weeks back on Space News talking about the different, I can't talk, the different spacesuits and whatnot? No, that wasn't me, but we did interview. Who did we interview that actually? Space Systems. Oh, yeah. Because I did that interview of the guy who was making his own spacesuits. Yeah. And he's like 10 iterations in. He's up in Portland. Yeah. That was really cool. Actually, I think that might have been the one that Manju was visiting on. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So with all this diversity is going to have to come all of these other sort of things to think about, right? Like including the spacesuits and including, you know, they don't make helmets that will accompany a Mohawk. Jared, I'm sorry. Yeah, I know. Well, I kind of figured. I figure if I went to space, they're probably not going to let me bring product with it. So I'll just work with it. Would you sacrifice your Mohawk to go to space? Answer wisely. It can always be shorter. Because this is technically called a finhawk. I do a short one. They're called Rayhawks. The second part of our segment is not about Artemis. It's about Mohawks. Yeah, I would absolutely do it. I'd get it shorter and kind of tidy it up. I'd pull like a Mr. T because Mr. T's kind of got the Rayhawk style. Yeah, I could probably do something like that. Exactly. Oh, no, this is completely off track. I apologize. Haircuts. Yes, Artemis. So in the chat room, I'm seeing a lot of Catch-22. It's coming up quite a bit. Alomar says it's kind of a Catch-22. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. But without the Buck Rogers, it's hard to get to the public and Congress critters inspired to hand out the bucks. And actually, Adam Synergy from YouTube says the elephant in the room is China. That's right. We haven't really talked about China a whole lot. I mean, this is NASA's project. I'm Korean. Just kidding. My bad. Oh, my goodness. This is serious. So, I mean, are we maybe, we talked about how Apollo was sort of a bigger missile than Russia, for instance. Do you think that this, maybe some of this is in, what am I trying to say? In response to that? In response to China? China's been pretty quiet. Like China does these things where they send out a launch. China's been the blue origin of lunar exploration. That's the shirt for the show. They're just not really talking a lot. And then when they do, like, oh, yeah, we landed a rover on the far side of the moon. Right. And then you kind of look at the overall kind of like, I guess, geopolitical atmosphere. This is funny, Dutta. Thank you for that. Yeah, no, in response to that, like China being like a motivator for that. I mean, it would make so much sense, though. I mean, considering especially like the other sentiments we kind of have with China, not we, but like the collective American we, like towards China right now, especially with like the trade war and whatnot, like it would make sense that this is kind of like, oh, yeah, well, look what we can do. Yeah. Kind of thing with that. Very eloquent. I'm so sorry. Yeah. No, it's all good. All right. So we think that this is happening. You think this is maybe not happening. I feel like there's a divide here. More likely than not. Find it out. Yeah. Yeah. Ready? That's fine. Like, I think this is really inspiring. And I think things like this and like the Dear Moon project and, you know, SpaceX obviously says that they want to get to Mars and Blue Origin is clearly going somewhere and they're doing things. And I'm sure they'll tell us about it at some point. Right. Someday. Yeah, I think I I get excited about those sorts of things. You know, when Ben and I started this show, he said he wanted to talk about NASA. And I said that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard of because everything that's ever been talked about space has already been done. There's nothing else to talk about. But like, here we are still talking. So I think that that's I think that's really interesting. And I really like that part of it. And not only that, you know, four years before the show started, they were talking about going back to the moon. And here we are still talking about it. We're going to get there. And I believe it. Yeah. So you can shove that. Yeah. Have faith. Have faith, Jared. Don't kill it. All right. Try to convince me. Why aren't we actually going? Well, I think one of the problems is there's kind of a double side to this because we have some momentum on some projects going forward, like obviously Lunar Orbital Gateway, power and propulsion elements underway. That's going. They've been studying the engines to put the electric ion engines, electric propulsion to put on it. Right. And and that's pretty much squared away. It's going to be doing pretty good. Orion's done a test flight. One. Don't giggle at that one. I know it's done one EFT one represent with it. Yeah. Delta four heavy. Go to go. But like there's just so many things that have been bogged down, like Orion can trace its roots back to the multipurpose crew vehicle. Sure. That started in 2004. Here we are 15 years later and you've only got one flight on it. OK. And then like in addition to that, you've got the space launch system, which is sort of the leftover guts of the Ares five heavy lift rocket. And that's I mean, it's it's a big rocket and we like big rockets. But my gosh, it's been going on for years. And the combined budgetary total that that the space launch system and Orion have eaten since. If you want to throw in 2004 as sort of the beginning of it, if we throw that in there, it's about 30 billion dollars that has been thrown at it. And we don't have an S. We haven't had an SLS flight. We've only had one Orion test flight on a different rocket. And that just it's it's really tough for me to look at that and say that that has any sort of momentum that's actually going to allow it to occur within five because, you know, going back to the moon, you really just can't like do a crash program to make something like that happen. I know Apollo happened quickly. Sure. It went from eight years from we choose to go to the moon to one small step for mankind. Someone will correct me on the comments. It took eight years, but that was really fast. That was a much larger percentage of the United States budget. And that's just not there. So, I mean, like even budgetarily, people outside independent of NASA were basically saying, you know, you need six to eight billion dollars annually in order to pull this off. And they're Jade. Hmm. Arguments. I think this isn't happening. I don't see it in your eyes. I don't think it's not happening. I just think that it's going to take. I mean, as you had mentioned before, I'm now referencing you. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be a collaboration between public and private, you know, government and otherwise. And I think that having it having that goal of what was it, 20, 24? Yeah. I think that's quite ambitious, almost too ambitious. I think that by 2028, I think that's quite reasonable, especially again, because it's going to take it's going to take more than just NASA. It's going to take, you know, an actual collaboration and partnership. And I think, yeah, it's mentioned here. It's the notes. But yeah, no international partners mentioned no shared costs like the ISS. I mean, this is going to be quite expensive, justifying those costs, especially when you have, you know, a public that is already like I mean, the sentiments about NASA and space travel in general is like not obviously at a low at all. Right. But also, I mean, people are going to be like, you know, that the average person can like, why go back to the moon? You're already there. So I think a big part of it's just going to be explaining and justifying, you know, putting all these costs into it and making sure we do spell out the benefits and the fact that this is a stepping stone to Mars. Yeah. And I'm not going to like completely throw NASA under the bus for this, you know, because NASA is super important there. They're enabling a lot of things. You know, these I know a lot of people just love to bag on NASA and just say, throw that money at some at exit ABC commercial company, you know. Right. But like, you know, you wouldn't really have a lot of these commercial companies nowadays if you didn't have a destination. You know, when you started when you when airlines started back in the 20s, there was a lot of government work for that air mail, you know, moving mail back and forth. And then finally, when there was a sustainable profit to be made, it really started to start commercialization with it. So I don't think it's going to be purely commercial or purely NASA. It's going to be both working together. It might be a private company developing a rocket that NASA buys a launch on. And then that kind of stuff is already happening, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like there's and there's companies that people five years ago, people, well, I mean, we had heard of them, but we know there's a lot of companies that five years ago, a lot of people were not familiar with, like mass and space systems, I think, is probably my favorite for a lot of different reasons. Yeah, probably my favorite example of that is space systems. You know, five years ago, a lot of people had never heard of that name. And now they're winning contracts from the from DOD, right, from NASA, from that kind of thing. And they have always had like we found them because we were covering the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, the Lunar Lander Challenge. And that's what they made. They made a Lunar Lander. So I like I that's one of my favorite things. Wait, what did they make? I know. Lunar Lander. Yeah, I think. What? What did I do? You dropped it. It's okay. Compassionate, Cariann. I know. I am. That's probably because I made you say it again. I'm sorry. One more time. No, so I don't know. I think I I that's the kind of stuff that I get really jazzed about. That's the stuff that I get really excited about. And I know Ben hates when I bring this up, but any sort of spin off technologies as well. I really get excited about that, too. He can hate me all he wants. I'm just not going to look at him. It's fine. And then what you must have an argument for why you think this is going to happen, even if it's later rather than sooner. Yeah, I mean, I think so because I've gotten to work at two NASA centers as well. I've worked on Orion and stuff and just knowing like getting to work with these incredible people at NASA, like if you went to these NASA centers and you're like, we're going to the moon in five years, here's all the funding and the public's behind you. Yeah, NASA would get it done, I think, because the people there are people who have been dreaming of this day for years. Right. I think what I'm concerned about is the congressional approval. The fact that I don't know if one point six billion is quite enough and quite enough. I don't think it's enough. And then I think that, yeah, constituents calling their legislators, telling them that this is a priority for them wouldn't be the worst thing in the world because legislators listen to their constituents because those are their employers. Right. And so I think if those components were there, I think NASA could do it, especially because we have the opportunity to partner with these private sector companies. And I keep saying the chat room, you know, people are like, we should just hand this off to another company. But those companies are funded by NASA. Right. So you can't like you said, we can't do this work without. Yeah. Even SpaceX has got a lot. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Tremendous amount of money. Yeah. Yeah. And I just want to be like optimistic four year old girl in braids who's like, we're going to the moon like tomorrow. Yeah. We need that, though. Yeah, I think so. Totally. Totally. Yeah. And I mean, I still feel like there's some some problems with it, which is that the the overall idea is to have a sustainable program. But right now, it doesn't look like they're aiming for a sustainable program. Yeah. And sustainability has kind of become a really big thing. Right. Like the International Space Station works because it's sustainable and we have international partners who are able to enable us and we're able to enable them as well to make it sustainable. But without that, without that sustainability, it's just going to be like Apollo, big rock, big dumb rocket, land it, grab some rocks, put a flag, walk, walk around a bit, poop on the moon and then come back. Right. I mean, on the moon. That's amazing. Nuremberg in our chat room says Do not cancel program sustainability completely. I can't talk sustainably. Substantially. Thank you. Substantially completed flight hardware designing and building a spacecraft is way more expensive than the actual flight using said hardware. Apollo 18 was canceled with hardware already built. We need to go to the moon. Yeah, I was going to say, like, sustainability ever been a priority when the administration, each new administration wants, like I said, their name on it. So sustainability and continuing these long duration programs, that's not glamour if you don't get to put your name on it unless you're the one that finishes the project. Yeah. Well, and then go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, yeah, it's it's you know, I know the American public and the support of that's pretty big, but you also have to have the political support, too. We do have to realize that this is, you know, this is going to be congressionally driven for better or for worse. Yeah. A whole bunch of lawyers are going to be saying what engineers should be doing, which, you know, how's that turned out so far? But but we really do actually have to end up I don't want to necessarily say appeasing certain congressional districts. Sure. But it definitely doesn't hurt in order to make it palatable for them. So in other words, so using some of the stuff that is being built in certain areas. Yes. Is would be is a better way to convince some people to continue on. Yeah. Right. Because it's like, well, there's still jobs in your area. Yeah. And some of these representatives are pretty high ranking as well on these committees that end up sort of doling out the budget. So that ends up working in their favor, too. And and just kind of for those who don't know the political process here in the United States with budgets and things, the executive branch proposes budgets for the next fiscal year. It gets thrown into the House. The House makes their own adjustments to it. It gets thrown into the Senate. The Senate makes their own adjustments to it. And then it can ping back and forth between everybody for quite a while. And then once something's settled, the vote's made. And then that's how we make that budget work. And in the case of the United States, the fiscal year begins October 1st. Why, I don't know. But someone in the comments will tell me why and call me foolish for it. Exactly. But but I really do feel like if something cannot be done by October 1st, this year of 2019, game over for 2024. All right. So it will the 2024 goal will be killed not by funding, not by engineering, but by political turmoil with that. And I will say that is my one concern is the congressional process, because this administration, I think, has been very pro space. Like you've seen that since day one when the National Space Council was initiated again. But I am worried that they're not pro science. And that's also confusing for the congressional budget, because, like, for example, House Democrats do want to throw more money at NASA, but to the NASA science mission, things that are more climate change focused and stuff. So I think there's going to be some, like you said, some back and forth on what parts of NASA are going to get that additional funding. And there actually already is back and forth, you know, in order to fund part of that one point six billion bump, the executive branch proposed cutting $600 million from NASA science. But then when it went into the house where the budget's currently sitting right now, the house went, uh-uh, and threw that $600 billion right back at it. Or $600 million, excuse me. I would love $600 billion to do science. What are we doing here, man? Let's just go. Please, please. I want $600 billion with that. So yeah, it's just, it's. So then what's the end game of lunar exploration? All right. I mean, I think it's the one that we can all agree on, honestly. Not that we're disagreeing, but you know. Also resources, right? Resources, yeah. Resources and providing economic benefit back here on Earth. Yeah, but I don't know if you could sell it on resources first. Because resources, it's going to take a economy that includes the moon in order to do that. So, and that's, that's like, that's going to take a lot of money to get that going. Yeah, but I feel like. I do, go ahead. No, you first. I was going to say, I do see this as like a step towards that. And, you know, United Launch Alliance has talked about like Cislunar 1000. Right. And Blue Origins definitely, you know, coming in there with ULA to help them out with that. Yep. Yeah. But, but, but the resources aspect really does require an economy that needs it. And, and obviously the moon has tons of rare earth metals, tons of titanium. I was going to say, one of the things I forgot to mention, I apologize. Part of Project Artemis is to learn more about the moon. Yes. We don't know a whole lot about the moon. That was going to be my first thing. Sure, science is not really all that glamorous. But you know what? But we don't know anything about the moon. Seriously. I mean, like. We've only landed there six times. We brought back 800 pounds of material. Oh my gosh, I used Imperial. I'm sorry. Oh, I found it out. So, but, but like, we don't know much. That's something we bring up so often on this show, whether it's through a news story or an interview. And it's a great thing about science. It's so exciting is that like what we have with this great foundational knowledge about the moon has only opened up so many more questions and possibilities. And it's, you're right. Like literally, quite literally the tip of the iceberg with what we know, just purely scientifically. But you'd mentioned like, you know, in order to integrate lunar exploration into an economy, a feasible economy, I think that all it's going to take is like one successful model of like a commercial company going up there and then proving that it can be done, getting that benefit, getting that profit. And I think it's going to just explode. I think it's going to be the new industrial revolution, really. Because I mean, just the, yeah, it's going to be like a rocky start. Obviously get it. And it's going to, you know, it's obviously it's going to take some establishment, but I think that once it gets off the ground. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I want to say in the chat room, Isla Mar in our IRC chat has a really good point, which is, that's the thing, people act like when we spend money on a space project, we're just shooting bales of money directly into the sun. They can't seem to comprehend that every single dollar is spent right here in their communities, boosting the economy. And that, I mean, lots of people, you tell people curiosity costs two and a half billion dollars. They probably are like visualizing gold bullion bars just sitting on Mars being wheeled around. No, it got spent here. You know, it got spent at JPL in Pasadena. That helped out the city of Pasadena. It helped out the county of Los Angeles, helped out the state of California, helped out the United States. And then that data returned from curiosity is just handed out to the world. Whoever wants to use it. So it's not, I mean, economically it helps out here, but also scientifically, everybody gets a chance at going at it. And then the spinoff technologies as well, like we don't, we are never considering how much tech transfer comes from NASA. And I think NASA's number one are up there in the most return taxpayers get for their tax money in terms of tech transfer. We only give them half a penny of every tax dollar. Exactly. To be getting the crazy things that we get. And the return's insane. I remember reading that statistic somewhere. It was like, how much per dollar do we get back? It's insane. I've read somewhere, I've read anywhere from five to eight dollars back on every dollar. And we give them half a penny of every tax. Seriously, I mean, come on, talk about a smart investment. Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of our computers today, which is enabling basically all of this and you to watch us, can really actually trace itself back to the guidance computers and the flight computers for Apollo and the lunar module. And just simple everyday inventions. Like I know off the top of my head, the diaper, the technology behind the diaper actually originated from technology going to the moon. And all sorts of neat stuff. Yeah, memory foam, like you're comfortable and you sleep well because of NASA. Thank you. It's the new thanks Obama, but in a positive way. Awesome. So we're going back to the moon. We just don't know exactly when, but it's going to be soon. It's going to be in our lifetime. And I think that's the most exciting. I really don't want to like be down on project. No, for sure. It's an awesome project. It's going to happen. It's going to have a cool patch. But it already has cool patches. OK, good. No, I have it. I want that on exploration. Mission one. It's really cool. All right, cool. Got like SLS. It's got like a red and blue infinity sign around. It's pretty neat. It's like, oh, I get it. But I don't want to like completely be down on Project Artemis. Sure. Because when it was announced, I had a lot of people who didn't necessarily talk about space. All of a sudden, talking about space. It obviously was not as big as when Falcon Heavy did its first flight. We saw Starman and the Tesla and everything. But it definitely generated a lot more discussion amongst my circle of friends. Good. That, oh, yeah, so lovely. Ouch. It definitely generated a lot more discussion amongst my friends who usually don't want to talk about spaceflight or just think that spaceflight's a waste of time. But it was very, like, positive. So they were able to talk about that. Very cool. So it's definitely a worthy goal. I don't think it's going to happen. Oh, it is pretty. Isn't it? See? Oh, I like it. The M1's patch looks nice. It does look like Pepsi. Is Pepsi OK? Is the moon OK? Pretty good. Oh, I like it, though. That's really cool. Thank you, Dada. I know you just pulled that out of the thin air. Appreciate that. Yeah. And, you know, I don't think it's going to happen by 2024, but I think it's going to happen. Nice. It's going to be great. And it really is going to be the first stepping stone to getting us to Mars. Perfect. And that's the foundation of getting humanity off of this planet and throughout the solar system. Casual. Perfect. I could not have said that better myself. So I'm just going to thank all of our patrons because this was your roundtable. For those of you... You didn't kick it off. I know. We'll get there. And there you go. For those of you... Oh, I want to thank all of our Escape Velocity patrons. I actually want to thank just all of our patrons, just generally speaking. You guys are the people who actually make this happen. You are the people who make sure that we can have people like Jade and Jared and Manju and me and Lisa and Sarah and everybody involved here and Dada and all the people, general people, can come together and talk about all the things that you want to talk about, all the things that we want to talk about and all the things that we want to talk about with you. How's that for an answer? Then that way we can get this done and then we can all see people go to the moon sooner rather than later. Right? Amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And if you don't want to contribute financially or can't for whatever reason, of course, feel free to subscribe. Ring the little bell. It'll always let you know that we're around and you can tweet at us and hit up community and all the fun things and talk with us. And I'm sure we didn't get to every one of your questions. There's probably points that we completely missed or skipped over or what have you. Absolutely, as always. Please put those comments. Have a discussion down there about it. But be nice, be nice. Yeah, please be nice to each other. We're all trying to do this together. Yeah. And in case that is our show, that is 12.20 and we'll see you guys next week.