"I don’t like to say we’re going back to the moon,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told POLITICO. “I like to say we’re going forward to the moon." | Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images POLITICO SPACE Trump's Moon Man NASA chief Jim Bridenstine talks to POLITICO about how he will sell a return to the moon as a stepping stone for Mars.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is responsible for making Donald Trump’s ambitious vision for space exploration a reality.

And like the president, he talks a big game about establishing a permanent human presence around the moon by 2023 and ultimately going on to Mars in the 2030s.


But he also has a major sales job, especially to those who question whether sending astronauts to the Red Planet really requires the time and expense of first staking a new claim on and around the moon. It’s a message he’s taking to Congress, where lawmakers on key oversight committees are still not sold on NASA’s plan to build a space station orbiting the moon known as the Gateway.

“The case we have to make, which is absolutely true, is that the quickest way to get to Mars is to use the moon and to use the Gateway,” insists Bridenstine, who has been at the helm of the space agency for seven months. “It will reduce risk. It will reduce cost, because anything you can do that ultimately can be tested around the moon is going to lower our cost to go to Mars.”

“I don’t like to say we’re going back to the moon,” the former Oklahoma congressman and Navy fighter pilot adds. “I like to say we’re going forward to the moon. Because for the first time, we’re establishing a sustainable architecture where we’re going to be able to stay. This is absolutely unlike anything the world has ever done before.”

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To that end, Bridenstine, 43, also has the difficult task of fundamentally shifting the NASA culture – he calls it a “transformation” – in order to fully leverage the growing commercial space sector rather than rely on the traditional and often slower government-driven approaches of the past.

“We’re going to move towards a day where we commercialize all of low earth orbit to where NASA is one customer of many customers in a robust commercial marketplace,” he says. “Then we can use NASA resources to do things where there isn’t yet a viable commercial market...We can build the architecture to get to the moon with our international partners.”

Bridenstine spoke to POLITICO about how the new moon race is different from the first one, why the lunar Gateway is the best answer for humans to explore deep space, and the remaining challenges with the Space Launch System program that is so central to NASA’s big plans.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Why should NASA be going back to the moon?

There’s a lot of reasons that the moon is critically important. The horizon goal of course is Mars. We want to be able to go to Mars. The challenge is that it’s about a seven-month journey there and then once you’re at Mars, you’re going to be there for 26 months...before you can come back. So it’s a multiple year journey to get to Mars.

The glory of the moon is that it’s three days there and three days back and we can prove all of the technologies and reduce the risk by taking advantage of our nearest neighbor. When you think about the architecture we need to get to Mars, a lot of those same capabilities are necessary to get to the moon. But the benefit of the moon is that if something goes wrong, it’s a three-day journey home.

The first reason to go to the moon is that it’s a way to demonstrate technology, retire risk and prove human physiology...If somebody’s going to be in a microgravity environment for a period of six months and then live and work on another world, the moon is the best opportunity to prove that humans will have the ability to do that. We don't want to test all of that out for the first time on a world that will take two years before you even have an opportunity to come home. That’s the biggest value of the moon.

The other thing that’s important about the moon right now is in 2008 and 2009, we made discoveries of water ice. Now we know there’s hundreds of billions of tons of water ice on the surface of the moon...When you crack [water] into its component parts, it’s air to breathe. It’s water to drink. It’s life support. But it’s also rocket fuel. Hydrogen and oxygen when put into cryogenic form is the same propulsion that powered the space shuttles and that will power the Space Launch System. So there’s literally hundreds of billions of tons rocket fuel on the surface of the moon.

The president’s space policy directive said we want to go to the moon in a sustainable way. In other words, this time...we’re going to stay. We’re going to have international partners and commercial partners and in the process, we’re going to utilize the resources of the moon, which is a new policy for the United States.

How will this moon race be different?

We want everything to be reusable. Reusable rockets, of course, have decreased the cost and increased access to space. We want the tugs that can go from earth orbit to lunar orbit to be reusable...The Gateway, which will be in orbit around the moon, [is] in essence a reusable command module. We want reusable landers that can go back and forth from the surface of the moon from that reusable command module.

This is really the most important piece of why the moon matters: it’s about American leadership and international partnerships. A number of times now I’ve had the opportunity to speak at international fora and when I start talking about going to the moon, it elicits spontaneous applause because that hasn’t been the policy of the United States for a long time and now it is. That has been the policy of most of the countries around the world for a long time. To now see that the United States is ready, willing and able to go to the moon in cooperation with international partners, that’s very exciting.

The architecture we’re building is not only reusable and sustainable, but it’s also open. The way we do avionics, communications, data, docking, life support -- everything is open architecture. The standards are all going to be published on the internet. So if there’s a country that wants to build their own tug or their own lander, they can build it to be compatible with the reusable command module that we call Gateway.

Critics of the Gateway say habitat in lunar orbit is not needed to prepare for a mission to Mars.

We could go to the surface of the moon...very, very soon. The challenge is, how does that benefit us long term? You go back to the Apollo program. We did six missions to the surface of the moon and it wasn’t sustainable. We haven’t been back since. What we’re doing now is entirely different.

I don’t like to say we’re going back to the moon. I like to say we’re going forward to the moon. Because for the first time, we’re establishing a sustainable architecture where we’re going to be able to stay with humans, but also with landers and rovers and prospectors. This is absolutely unlike anything the world has ever done before. The United States of America is leading the effort.

To accomplish a sustainable return to the moon, we need to have commercial partners, international partners, and reusability to include a reusable command module that is called Gateway. And it’s not just a reusable command module. It’s not just a space station in orbit around the moon, which I’ve heard some critics claim it is. It is a spaceship. It has the ability to be in an equatorial orbit around the moon, but it also has the ability to go to the L-1 point and L-2 point [Lagrange Points, or areas where competing gravitational pulls mean assets can be parked in space.]

It has solar electric propulsion, which means we’re going to be able to get to more parts of the moon than ever before and discover more about the moon...We landed on the moon in 1969. From then until 2008, most people believed the moon was bone dry...because we landed six times on the surface of the moon at the equatorial regions. Based on those six sites where we landed, we made assessments about what the entire moon was like. And we were wrong. What the Gateway enables us to do is get to more parts of the moon than we’ve ever been able to get to before.

We can go straight to the moon...very quickly and it won't be sustainable. And when we come home, there will be nothing there except for hardware, flags and footprints...That was the objective in the Cold War. That is not what we’re trying to do today. This is very different.

If we can prove a space station can stay in orbit around the moon and be successful with an almost autonomous capability around the moon, that’s how we demonstrate that a journey to Mars is possible. You don’t want to demonstrate that for the first time on the way to Mars. That’s crazy. Some people have suggested it, I think it is the absolute wrong approach.

How will you make the case to Congress?

The case we have to make, which is absolutely true, is that the quickest way to get to Mars is to use the moon and to use the Gateway. It will reduce risk. It will reduce cost, because anything you can do that ultimately can be tested around the moon is going to lower our cost to go to Mars.

This goes back to the pathways report of 2014, which was a bipartisan report chaired by Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University at the time...The pathways report indicated that the quickest way to get to Mars is by utilizing the moon. That’s got to be the objective and that’s what we’re focused on.

Can NASA really shift its culture to focus on reaping the commercial benefits of space?

We’re going through that right now...In 1975 -- really the height of the Cold War -- the United States and the Soviet Union decided it was time to start collaborating on space...Joining [the American Apollo and Russian Soyuz programs] in space and having our astronauts live and work with their cosmonauts on a space station that included both countries...was a tremendously valuable soft power tool for both countries to build confidence and trust between each other. That relationship has been steady ever since 1975.

The next step...is that we’re going to move towards a day where we commercialize all of low earth orbit to where NASA is one customer of many customers in a robust commercial marketplace. We want to have multiple providers...For example, we have launch providers launching commercial communication satellites and commercial remote sensing satellites. We want them to be the same providers who are resupplying the International Space Station or launching NASA’s own satellites.

When we accomplish that, we get more access for a lesser cost than we could ever accomplish if we were purchasing, owning and operating our own rockets and...our own space stations. So when we think about space stations, we want to be one customer of many customers in low earth orbit on commercial space stations. Those other customers would be industry. It would be people interested in manufacturing or producing pharmaceuticals in a microgravity environment. The thing a lot of people are excited about right now is the idea that we can use adult stem cells to print human organs in 3D. You can’t do that in a gravity environment.

Then we can use NASA resources to do things where there isn’t yet a viable commercial market...We can build the architecture to get to the moon with our international partners. When low earth orbit becomes commercialized, our international partners can see their economic opportunity grow as well. If we have people living and working in space in larger numbers...that means there’s going to be a higher demand for Soyuz rocket launches, for example, which can be good for our international partners.

This is a transformation that is happening and NASA needs to not just be aware of it but needs to be involved in it and benefiting from it. I think that transition has been underway now for about a decade and we’re accelerating it.

Are the moon plans still on track with the delays in the Space Launch System?

What we’re doing is extremely difficult. We don’t do production, we do development, which is very different than a lot of other government agencies. Each one of our rockets ultimately ends up being unique and challenging...We have to improve. We have to be really good as assessing costs and really good and delivering on budget and on time. With the SLS program, we have not been good. I’m here to tell you we have to get this fixed.

When legislator lose confidence in us, that’s when we lose resources and trust. That IG report is going to be a valuable tool for us as an agency to reassess and make determinations on how to get better. We’re going to use it in that way.

I don’t think [it will delay the administration’s timeline to get to the moon]. It’s true SLS and Orion are behind schedule...but the timelines we’re looking at right now to launch the first power and propulsion element [of the Gateway] in the year 2022 and to launch the habitation module in 2023...that gives us a space station around the moon...capable of human habitation in the year 2023. I think from where we are right now, we’re going to meet that schedule.