Newt Gingrich, along with an eclectic mix of other interested individuals, believes staging a contest among some high-profile tech entrepreneurs can jump-start a return to the moon. | Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Dentons space Newt Gingrich trying to sell Trump on a cheap moon plan A general, Gingrich and Michael Jackson's publicist are proposing a $2 billion contest to return Americans to the moon.

Newt Gingrich and an eclectic band of NASA skeptics are trying to sell President Donald Trump on a reality show-style plan to jump-start the return of humans to the moon — at a fraction of the space agency’s estimated price tag.

The proposal, whose other proponents range from an Air Force lieutenant general to the former publicist for pop stars Michael Jackson and Prince, includes a $2 billion sweepstakes pitting billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other space pioneers against each other to see who can establish and run the first lunar base, according to a summary of the plan shared with POLITICO.


That’s far less taxpayer money than NASA’s anticipated lunar plan, which relies on traditional space contractors, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and is projected to cost $50 billion or more.

Backers of the novel approach have briefed administration officials serving on the National Space Council, several members of the group confirmed, though they declined to provide specifics of the internal conversations.

Trump has yet to weigh in on the idea, at least publicly. But the proposal, designed to offer a big incentive for private players who are already planning their own moon missions, comes as the president expresses skepticism that NASA can achieve his goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2024 without bold departures from the status quo.

Gingrich maintains that space entrepreneurs like Musk and Bezos can rise to the challenge. And some of the companies told POLITICO they are intrigued by the idea of such a competition.

“I think people would be shocked how fast they can move,” the former speaker said in an interview.

Advocates for the lower-cost backup plan insist NASA's current approach is not reliable enough to ensure America retains its lead against new space competitors like China, which they say is aggressively laying the groundwork to establish a sustained presence on the moon to tap into its vast amounts of resources, including energy and minerals.

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“Right now, China is on a path to [have a moon settlement] in 20 years, and we are on a path to be there in 50 years,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast, a co-author of the plan, said in an interview. “We are not aggressive about it. We have the wrong strategy, the wrong ideas, the wrong doctrine. We are trapped in an industrial age model of thinking about space.”

White House spokesman Will Boyington declined to discuss any interactions involving the proposal. He deferred questions to NASA, which said it has not yet received such a proposal.

“At NASA we look forward to working with new partners as we focus on executing [Trump’s] Space Policy Directive 1, which instructs the agency to return American astronauts to the moon and pursue human exploration of Mars and the broader solar system," NASA spokeswoman Bettina Inclán told POLITICO via email. "NASA is implementing this plan through the Artemis program which will send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface by 2024.”

Trump set the 2024 deadline this year as part of an ambitious vision to create a permanent moon settlement that would serve as the staging ground for a journey to Mars.

But he has also questioned NASA’s ability to meet the timeline, and last month he implored Administrator Jim Bridenstine to consider alternatives from others in the space community who are wary of the current plan. That fits a pattern in which Trump has taken an abiding interest in lowering the costs of other aerospace programs, including the new Air Force One and the F-35 fighter jet.

NASA’s lunar plans rely on a rocket called the Space Launch System being developed by Boeing and the Orion space capsule being built by Lockheed Martin. Both projects have been dogged by delays and billions in cost overruns, imperiling NASA's moon plans, according to the Government Accountability Office. NASA is spending roughly $2 billion per year on the Space Launch System program alone.

The agency’s vision for a permanent human presence on the moon also includes an orbiting lunar space station, known as the Gateway, that some critics call unproven, unnecessary and overly expensive.

One skeptic of the space agency’s approach in recent years has been Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who put Bridenstine on the spot last month during an Oval Office commemoration of the July 1969 moon landing. Aldrin, the second man to walk on the lunar surface, expressed “great disappointment” in NASA's recent efforts to return to the moon.

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That prompted Trump to turn to his NASA chief and instruct him to “also listen to the other side."

"Because some people would like to do it a different way,” the president told Bridenstine. “So you'll listen to Buzz and some of the other people. … I know this has been going on for a little while, and we're so advanced, but I would like to hear the other side also.”

The "other side" in this case is an unusual collection of personalities — an "eclectic space brain trust," as described by Greg Autry, who served on Trump’s NASA transition team in 2017 and has also been pushing the idea.

Kwast, who is set to retire this fall, recently led the Air Education and Training Command, where he clashed with Air Force leaders over his outspoken views about what he considers the administration’s unduly narrow model for the proposed Space Force, which he believes must be structured to help industrialize space to benefit humans on Earth, not just militarize it.

The moon competition idea was hatched in May under his leadership at the Air Force's Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base.

Its architects also include several advisers to NASA as well as former Rep. Bob Walker, a Pennsylvania Republican who chaired the House Science Committee in the 1990s. And another leading force is Howard Bloom, a 1960s counterculture figure who went on to be a leading music industry publicist, launching the careers of such rock bands as Kiss and AC/DC and promoting Bob Marley and Billy Joel.

Bloom, who describes himself as the "philosopher at the end of the universe," has also written books on Islam and human evolution. His labyrinthine career took a turn in 2005 when he founded the Space Development Steering Committee, a loose network of advocates for the burgeoning commercial space industry that has counted Aldrin as one of its leading boosters.

He has since become a booster of Musk, Bezos and other space entrepreneurs — and an outspoken critic of the management of some major NASA programs. Bloom has said the Space Launch System, Orion and Gateway programs "have amputated America’s ability to launch Americans to orbit on American vehicles."

He told POLITICO he hopes some of the moon mission will be "handed over to a new set of players — players who don't operate in the delay-forever-to-maintain-cash flow manner of the SMIC," an acronym he coined for what he calls the “space-military industrial complex.”

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The proposal for a moon competition sketches out what it describes as a simpler, more cost-effective way to achieve Trump's goals while capturing the imagination of the public.

It would "offer a billion dollars to the first company or organization that can land a roomy, comfortable human base on the moon and offer a billion dollars to the company that can set up and run that base," the plan’s summary reads.

"In the past, putting permanent housing on the moon has been estimated to cost between $50 billion and $500 billion," the proposal reads. "But several private companies have developed moon programs on their own dime. So we are now in a position to buy transportation and housing from private American companies. At an unbelievable drop in cost."

Potential contestants in the competition to build a settlement on the moon, according to the plan, include the Blue Moon lander vehicle being built by Bezos' Blue Origin; the 100-passenger Starship being developed by Musk's SpaceX; and the conceptual Xeus lander from United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Other possible players: inflatable lunar structures being designed and tested by Bigelow Aerospace, founded by Las Vegas hotel mogul Bob Bigelow, and nascent concepts for 3D printed moon bases put forward by the likes of the European Space Agency.

"Jeff Bezos has said that he can put his Blue Moon landers on the moon by 2023 and could follow shortly thereafter with a human," said Walker, the former Pennsylvania congressman who is now a space consultant. "The SpaceX people have said publicly that they intend to do a lunar voyage with perhaps paying passengers somewhere in the 2022-2023 time frame.

"So this is based upon the fact that there are nominally qualified technologies that would be available in that time frame if NASA can't deliver," he added. He said any further delays in Boeing’s Space Launch System would make it "hard to imagine that the SLS could be used for that first moon landing" in 2024.

People watch as the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on April 11 in Florida. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walker also cited growing concern "that Congress will not come up with the kind of money that will be necessary to meet the president’s time schedule."

A basic model for the proposal is the Google Lunar X Prize, a decadelong space competition in which privately funded teams vied to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon that could travel 500 meters and transmit video and images back to Earth. The $30 million contest ended in 2018 with no winner.

The group has held several recent meetings with administration officials, including an early strategy session featuring Gingrich, who has advised the Trump team.

The former speaker has been a leading booster of the space startups, which he has said the "Washington contracting-lobbying system" either ignores or "smothers in red tape."

Autry, who teaches at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, said: "We all share a bit of frustration with the traditional linear thinking."

Gingrich gives Bridenstine credit, though, for getting NASA to tap into the new commercial investment and innovation, including through a series of public-private partnerships to design lunar vehicles.

"The test will come either if the Congress won't fund [the current moon plan] or NASA just can't move at that speed," Gingrich said. "They haven't gotten to the big decisive moments."

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Several weeks ago, key members of the group also held what Walker described as a "broad-ranging discussion" with members of Trump's space council about what "the commercial space community believes is the emerging capability to do things they haven't done in the past."

Gingrich said he sees Vice President Mike Pence, who chairs the space council, as a key ally. In a speech this year on the future of the space program, Pence said, "History is not written by those who stubbornly cling to the status quo."

"What Pence is saying to the status quo is, 'If you can't deliver the goodies, you ain't gonna be the status quo,'" Gingrich said. "We will find out how deeply he means it. We will find out if the president will back him up on it."

Some potential competitors in such a moon race said they are intrigued by the idea.

Blue Origin declined to comment but a spokesperson for SpaceX pointed out that Musk has publicly backed the idea of such a contest. Musk recently tweeted that the "best way" to get to the moon is by getting commercial space companies to compete for a large prize. "Incent outcome, not path," he wrote.

Blair Bigelow, vice president of corporate strategy at Bigelow Aerospace, said via email, "This idea is interesting, but where will the money come from?"

Pete Garrettson, a retired Air Force officer and space analyst who also helped conceive the plan, said the prize purse is not intended to cover the entire moon program. Instead, it is meant to motivate companies that are already eyeing commercial operations on or around the moon — and push NASA in a new direction.

"It goes to the heart of a culture war in NASA of what its role is supposed to be," he said in an interview — that is, whether it should remain the primary player in human space operations or, as he and his allies believe, "a convening power where it is not the starring member."

