Former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. says President Trump "talks a lot" about space, but "doesn't put any money on it."

"I'll be blunt," Bolden said in a weekend interview with AL.com. "Everybody likes space," he said, but "put your money where your mouth is. If you want to know what's important to you, look at the budget."

Bolden was in Huntsville Friday to give the keynote address at the annual Space Camp Hall of Fame induction banquet at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. Four people - two space scientists, a NASA astronaut and a Marine pilot - were inducted.

"The president had an opportunity after challenging NASA to show how we could put humans on the very first flight of SLS and Orion," Bolden said. He referred to the Trump administration's early request that NASA consider a crew on the first launch of the Space Launch System under development.

NASA said, "It can be done, but it's got a healthy price tag, so we think we ought to stick with the plan we have now...," Bolden said. "The president could have very easily said, 'No, I want to do what I said.' We're going to put a crew on it. Go for it. I'm going to work with Congress and we're going to give you the money to do it.' That's the way we did Apollo."

Asked his view of the future of NASA's center in Alabama, Bolden offered advice for the new administration. "The smartest thing President Trump and Vice President Pence could do now" would be name Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot to the post permanently. Lightfoot was director of Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center before becoming NASA associate administrator.

"One of the reasons I feel so good about NASA today is because of NASA leadership...in the person of Robert Lightfoot," Bolden said. "Awesome. You all know him. He'd be the right person to get us down the road. That'd be one thing I'd strongly recommend."

Bolden was asked if NASA was right to invest so much money in the Space Launch System being developed in Huntsville, a system built around a single-use rocket.

"I think so," he said. "When you look at how we got there, we did an inordinate number of studies. Things people don't ordinarily think about, like what is the probability of success. When (Wernher) Von Braun ... wrote his first plan in 1952, it was, like, 400 flights to get 70 people to Mars. We can't afford that, for one thing, and it's too risky. That's 400 opportunities to fail.

"We decided it would be best for the U.S. to invest in a big heavy-lift rocket that could take care of most of getting everything there, get Mars exploration started and then bring commercial entities and private enterprise along with us," Bolden said.

Those "commercial entities" will build the space stations, "on-orbit refueling stations" and space factories to assemble big ships in space, Bolden said. "Until we have those things...," Bolden said, "you're going to need a big rocket. Just like the shuttle, it's time will come. It will be time to say, 'We don't need SLS anymore.'"

Bolden believes China is the partner America needs for future space exploration. "We don't need them to go to Mars right now," he said. "We do need them to help us get humans back on the surface of the moon in this 10-year decade of time, the '20s, when we really need to be making sure that the technology that's going to take us to Mars is going to work."

Bolden said he loves the Russian space agency Roscosmos, but "I think the leadership of China is a little bit more predictable, if you will, or reliable than the leadership of Russia right now."

Inducted into the Space Camp Hall of Fame dinner were NASA astronaut Dr. Serena Aunon-Chancellor; Dr. Jennifer Heldmann, a NASA research scientist; U.S. Marine Maj. John Hecker; and Dr. Michelle K. Christensen, a propulsion engineer at Blue Origin.