Good morning everyone. It is an absolute honor to be here at All-In. We are living through an extraordinary moment in history, aren't we? It took just 65 years from Orville and Wilbur's first flight to Neil and Buzz walking on the surface of the moon. Now, it's been 57 years since Apollo 11. And for a while there, pace of progress hasn't been all that inspiring, but look at what is on the horizon right now. We got artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, robotics, additive manufacturing, the promise of fusion energy, biotech to heal the disabled, autonomous transportation, this whole abundance thing everyone's talking about, all converging in the years ahead is beyond what most people can comprehend. Our world will fundamentally change. How we live, how we work, how we fight wars, how we reach out and touch the stars.
But we are not alone on this journey. We are living through a great power competition. Other nations understand the opportunities that can elevate nations and change civilizations. And perhaps nowhere are the possibilities, the competition, and the consequences of getting it wrong more apparent than in the ultimate high ground above us. Now at NASA, we are doing things differently and we are regaining our swagger and putting wins on the board. But absent this president, absent this geopolitical competition and the very real possibility of losing the second space race, I suspect very little would have changed. For too long, resources at the world's most accomplished space agency were spread everywhere, trying to make everyone happy. Much of it was through external imposition, but plenty of it was self-inflicted. We partnered for the sake of partnerships, oftentimes becoming a drag on the mission instead of accelerating it.
As a result, we have the Orion spacecraft that we can't inject into low lunar orbit like we did during Apollo. And the prior administration cancelled the Mars sample return mission that was on track to cost more than an aircraft carrier. We created programs that were too big to fail, too costly to truly succeed in the hope that they would survive administrations. The results being a rocket that was designed when China was predominantly operating coal-fired locomotives and now becoming operational as China operates 25,000 miles of high-speed rail and is just a few years away from their own Apollo 11-like moment. Core competencies and tens of thousands of the NASA workforce were rented, outsourced, or lost, which turned what should have been months worth of progress into years at tremendously greater cost. Eventually, too little was left to do things the right way. The way NASA showed the world how to do it in decades past. So, we invented this whole dream state as a service thing, forgoing the playbook of success and shifting the impossible burden onto others.
The result is that our moon rocket is in fact less efficient than Saturn V at converting launch mass into payload headed for the moon with more time between the Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 mission than all 12 of the Gemini missions that were flown 60 years before. A lunar space station that whenever it may have been delivered put our astronauts in a position to look down on the most desirable lunar real estate instead of operating on the surface and occupying it. One X-Plane that wasn't flying very much and billions spent on failed nuclear programs that had not left the laboratory since 1965.
Now, during the first space race, we were slow out of the gate, but NASA ultimately ran up the score. The second will be much closer than it ever needed to be. Since becoming the administrator of NASA last year, we have made a different choice. We are not going to try and make everyone happy. We are not going to spread every penny across every district or partner with every nation just to try and make everyone happy or because that's how people incorrectly believed it always was. I am certainly not here for the money to favor companies for the title, the notoriety, the politics. I'm not here to be your VC to entertain your dream or invent new markets if it detracts in the slightest way from the missions that we have been entrusted to achieve on behalf of the American people. You can take those conversations up with the Department of Commerce if you like. I'm here to execute on President Trump's national space policy to align and focus resources to work alongside and unleash the best this nation has to offer.
From the NASA workforce to our industry to our partners and deliver the world-changing outcomes. The kind of outcomes that put Neil and Buzz on the moon. The kind of outcomes that inspired many of you to be in this room in the first place. This is a very reinvigorated and energized NASA and America is back in the business of sending our astronauts to the moon.
Now, Artemis 2 was just the beginning. Those four heroic astronauts, recent recipients of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, rode 8.8 million pounds of thrust to near-Earth escape velocities, traveled farther into space than any humans in history around the moon and back home safely. And that was just the opening act. We are not waiting 3 years to fly again. We are not turning every rocket into a work of art. Artemis 3 is already being assembled right now at a pace many doubted was possible just months ago. Before year end, we intend to roll out to launch complex 39B for a tanking test and send a message to our workforce, our industry, and our rivals overseas. NASA is back and we are not going to sit idly by. We are not just a procurement organization. We are going to do the extremely demanding work and achieve our objectives safely, responsibly, and urgently because that is what meeting the moment requires.
Now, in the summer of 2027, Artemis 3 will launch on SLS into low Earth orbit and rendezvous with lander test vehicles from Blue Origin and SpaceX in what will be a remarkable display of the three most powerful rockets and spacecraft in the world. We will test interoperability and show what a future multi-launch campaign can actually look like. What we learn will inform the uncrewed test landings that follow. And then Artemis 4 in 2028 when American astronauts return to the lunar surface and this time to stay.
In parallel, we are establishing humanity's first outpost on another world, a moon base. And this time we are leveraging the NASA playbook of decades past. We are not jumping directly to the dream state. We will launch missions on a near-monthly cadence and undertake the science of survival. That means autonomous and crewed mobility, surface improvement, in-situ resource utilization and manufacturing, logistics, habitability, power, communications, and all the science instruments the mass budget affords. We will bring it to you live and HD on the moon base website. And we will leave no doubters this time. We go for the scientific and the economic potential. We go to learn about the formation of our solar system, but primarily because the lunar south pole, where the water ice is, is going to be the technological proving ground for where we inevitably go next, which is Mars.
In 2028, NASA will leave decades and billions of dollars of failed nuclear programs behind and launch SR1 Freedom, a 100-kilowatt fission reactor that will finally get America underway on nuclear power. The mission will transit Mars and release Skyfall, which carries three Ingenuity-class helicopters and using ground-penetrating radar to scout subsurface ice and future landing sites. This will mark the beginning of the nuclear NASA, pivoting our workforce and facilities back to doing the near impossible. Missions with no obvious business case, what no company, no agency or nation is presently capable of accomplishing, but that extend humanity's reach farther into the outer solar system.
And just like during the Apollo era, the technology that we pioneer to get there will surely benefit life back here at home. There will be lots of nuclear missions. SR2, SR3, SR4. Alongside our industry partners, we will push the boundaries of high-temperature materials, more efficient power conversion, more reduced radiator mass, and higher performance electric propulsion as we visit some of the most interesting moons like Enceladus, Europa, and Titan. These are worlds with oceans, with complex chemistry, and perhaps the ingredients for life. A reminder that some of the greatest discoveries in human history, they may be waiting for us in our own backyard. We could answer the question, are we alone? And are we alone even in our own solar system, let alone the galaxy and universe around us?
Someday, a chemically augmented nuclear-powered transfer vehicle, part of an American starfleet, supported by an armada of starships and other spacecraft, will carry humans to the surface of Mars and bring them home safely to tell us about it. And not just once. We are on this great destiny of human exploration, and we are not turning back. Along the way, we are going to do the other things. Commercial satellites are being printed off at a rate that will help us affordably understand the only planet that we presently inhabit, our home star and space weather, and better predict weather and perhaps respond to wildfires and natural disasters better, freeing up more resources to build the exquisite flagship science missions that only NASA can undertake.
Like, for example, the nuclear-powered Dragonfly octocopter. It's powered by a 2-kilowatt MMRTG, converting to just 100 watts of electricity, barely better than an old light bulb, but it will journey to Saturn's moon of Titan in 2028. Europa Clipper will arrive at Jupiter's icy moon in 2030.
And our great space telescopes like James Webb and Hubble will soon be joined by Roman. And with her nearly 300-megapixel wide-field instrument and JPL-built coronagraph, in the moments ahead, Roman will open her eyes. And in that instance, she will see more of the universe than any scientific instrument we've ever put in space before. Her surveys will seek to understand the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter and reveal tens of thousands of worlds that are hidden behind distant stars. Roman will return images so large and in such detail there is no screen on Earth large enough to display them.
Now other missions like NEO Surveyor will find asteroids and comets that can threaten Earth. While next-generation telescopes in development will seek out habitable planets orbiting other stars. The last few decades have shown us that the future in space that we all imagined as children will never be realized if they're perpetually funded by taxpayers. NASA will do everything within reason to support an orbital and perhaps even lunar economy someday, building on the proven markets of launch, observation, and communication. Whether the next frontier is in orbital data centers or commercial space stations or on-orbit manufacturing, regolith resource extraction, asteroid mining, or industries that none of us have even imagined yet. Now, it's not NASA's job to force an economy, but we will do all we can to ignite one as we pursue our missions.
And in the service of the first A in NASA, we are rebuilding our X-Plane fleet. The X-59 is researching quiet supersonic flight. But it's just the beginning as NASA recommits to flight test and works alongside industry to push the boundaries of airframe and propulsion design. It will not be long before NASA is flying once again as high and as fast as we have from decades past, and then even more.
But if this frontier is going to expand as rapidly as we believe it will be, we will have to cultivate the talent to lead it. The space domain deserves an institution focused on that future and call it what many already have and should, a Starfleet Academy. That is why the president established the commission for the United States Space Academy, a NASA federal academy to prepare the next generation of astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, operators, pilots, and leaders. And just as the need for Space Force became clear as the domain evolved, we should be equally forward-looking and preparing those who will build the moon base, operate nuclear-powered spacecraft, command missions to Mars, ensure our national security, and create industries in orbit we can barely imagine today.
And there is no time to waste. I want you all to think about where you were when Artemis 2 astronauts sent back those images from the moon. Who did it touch? Your parents, your friends, your colleagues, your children. Now, I want you to imagine astronauts climbing down the ladder. Only this time, it is not grainy black and white footage from July 20th, 1969. It's high-definition color streaming live to billions of people all around the world. The astronaut steps foot on the lunar surface. The camera pans up and the flag on the spacesuit is not American. There will be no footnote explaining that we spent more. No disclaimer that our architecture was complicated. No one will care how many studies we completed, how many meetings we held, what congressional districts benefited, who all the all-star lobbyists were for their hardware, who served on the committee, or how many times we slipped the schedule for what someone thought was a perfectly reasonable reason. The world will just see who got there.
China intends to put their astronauts on the moon by 2030. Its robotic missions are targeting the Shackleton crater of the lunar south pole next year and there are only so many good parking spots in that neighborhood and they intend to occupy them. They are working with Russia on their own nuclear-powered moon base. And to be clear, China will accomplish what the Soviets never could during the first space race. They have a very achievable two-launch architecture, the national will and capabilities to put their astronauts on the surface of the moon. And if America has not returned despite the decades of promises and the more than 100 billion invested, the shockwave will be felt around the world. Our allies will notice. Our adversaries will notice. Every nation deciding whose technology to buy, whose standards to adopt, whose security guarantees to trust, and whose vision of the future to follow will take notice. And perhaps most importantly, our children will notice.
That is why we must remain focused on the objectives that matter. Why NASA was established in the first place. There is no time anymore for lobbying against America's interests or further tolerating the status quo. Only extreme ownership, competence, and action. Those of us inspired by the pioneers and heroes of decades past know they set the bar high. But we do not honor them by living forever on what they accomplished. This is our time to pick up where they left off, return, and never give up the moon again, and then set our sights on Mars and beyond. And none of this will be accomplished by NASA alone. We have the support of President Trump. We have Congress. We have a clear mandate in the national space policy. But it will take brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, our allies, and Americans across the country who still believe that great nations can do great things. Because our children will either inherit the confidence of a nation still capable of the extraordinary or the memory of one that used to be. That responsibility, that choice belongs to all of us. And I believe when history looks back on this moment, let it record that America did not hesitate any longer. We did not allow the bureaucracy, the complacency, the waste, inaction, or fear of failure to constrain what we could accomplish. We chose to go and we went. Thank you.
