Kennedy questions NASA's Jared Isaacman on moonbase, Chinese tech in CJS Appropriations Subcommittee

Senator Kenny, thank you very much. And no doubt this was a collective achievement across the entire NASA workforce, our contractors. This is really the best and brightest have come together for years to undertake this mission. And it is hard. There's a reason we haven't been back to the moon in 53 years. That is challenging to send those astronauts safely farther into space than ever before. I think it's a proud moment. It was absolutely a collective effort, but I don't know the last time four people were able to make such a difference in the world as what we witnessed with Artemis 2. And sir, we are just getting started. With respect to the two centers that you referenced, Stennis, I mentioned it before that we are trying to get to good center specialization. It makes it easier for the work we do at NASA and not to mention reimbursable work for others. Stennis is our propulsion center of excellence. There's no doubt. They're the experts for testing our current engines and they are also probably the most forward-leaning of any center to go where the puck was going, which was working with commercial industry as they develop their next generation engines which are being tested there. I also point out, sir, the center director from Stennis is the one who's leading the overall agency workforce initiative right now. He's retiring in nine months. He said nothing more than I want to leave the agency in a much better place than I found it from a workforce perspective. With respect to Michoud, I mean historic contributions going back to the landing craft during World War II, Apollo era, shuttle, SLS now. So we put out a demand signal to industry. We want to increase the production of SLS. We want to launch with cadence again, not every 3 years, make it every year. And they're responding incredibly well to it. And we just put out an RFI to industry because we funded through our Working Family Tax Cut Act through Artemis 5. But if we're building a moon base, sir, then we're probably going to want to go there with frequency. We said we want to go to the moon every six months, two different pathways so we never give up the moon. I have no doubt that those who are working at Michoud are going to continue making hardware in support of that effort. Sir, and I'd refer to them as the advanced manufacturing center of excellence.

I think what I would say on the subject, Senator, and of course you certainly know who to speak to when you get deeper into the national security area on this, is just that I'm not sure we can refer to the Chinese space program as a near-peer. And I think they're a lot closer to their peer. And I certainly see it on what I would call the peaceful exploration of space, the civil side, except they draw no distinction over there. They continue to merge those departments. They recently just responded and merged their moon base with their human spaceflight program. They're moving incredibly fast. I think anything that we know from 6 months ago is so dated. I mean they will have gone two generations past that already. It's a lot to keep up with. That's why I think it's so important that we've implemented change of late, standardize our approach, rebuild core competencies, rebuild muscle memory. Because for decades when we didn't have a geopolitical competitor that could rival us in the high ground of space, it was one thing to try and make everyone happy. But if we continue to do that right now, no one's going to be happy because we're going to see the taikonauts on the moon before us.