Hi.
This is part two of our interview with Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Gliza. If you haven't already stopped by listening to Poplam Elon Musk's plan to take O Vanessa.
There's this program at NASA that is known as Artemis, and it's a long range plan to explore the Moon and eventually Mars.
We are going to the Moon, to deep space and to Mars.
So NASA has had Mars and its long term plans, but currently it first wants to carry out a return to the Moon's surface, and it wants to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon with habitats and rovers.
Boosters ignition and left off for Bartamos.
Won we rise together back to the Moon and Yah.
Elon Musk's ideal is skip over all those things about the Moon and just start getting a Mars. And our reporting shows that at some parts of the US government he is getting the wheels training for his plans to move forward.
From Schwartz Media, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. As Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Glazer discovered Elon Musk is pressing NASA to abandon its planned journeys to the Moon, projects that have been decades in the making, with billions already spent and contracts already signed. But despite backlash from NASA insiders and politicians on both sides of Congress who view his plans as costly, disruptive, and politically toxic, Musk
remains resolute today. Emily Glazer on whether the SpaceX CEO can really upend NASA's return to the Moon. It's Friday, April eleven. So Emily, I know you've been speaking to people close to Musk, but you've also been talking to a lot of people within NASA, and I just wonder if you can tell me a bit more about what Elo Musk's focus on Mars means for NASA's current plans to go back to the Moon. How has that all shifted.
So there were officials from Trump's Office of Management and Budget, so this is like a division within the White House that controls federal spending. They've told people that there are discussions underway to move US government dollars toward Mars initiatives and away for NASA programs focused on the Moon and
science mission. So that goes back to this whole idea of like how much is this going to cost, and even if you move like all these other programs and shift priorities, you know it would be quite an undertaking. So NASA has been working on the Artemis program and its predecessors for many, many, many years, and even to the point where the cost for the government's programming on all this roughly thirteen years. They've projected it to be
ninety three billion dollars. And that's from the government's fiscal year of twenty twelve through the fiscal year of twenty twenty five, and that's all around Artemis spending ninety three billion. So this is a very expensive, very costly program. And Elon Musk has not been shy. In fact, he tweeted on x in January he said the Moon program is a distraction, and days earlier he criticized Artemis and said
something entirely new is needed. So if they were to kill those programs or dramatically remake the Moon programs, that would unravel so many years of development work. Though, we've also talked to people that say some of the hardware for Artemis it's just too expensive, it's too slow to produce, and it's behind schedule. So there are people that are
definitely in the camp of like, don't cancel this. There's so much time and energy and money that went into it, and then there are other people saying this is just not working and we got to rip it up. And sometimes you need to bring in an outsider to really throw things up in the air. And perhaps, you know, if Elon Musk is that person and Donald Trump can kind of like blame him for the people that get upset, then perhaps there could be benefits to that.
And just to take a slat step back, can you just tell me what the goal of atomis is.
So NASA launched Artemis one and that powered the Orion space capsule toward the Moon in twenty twenty two, and that was an uncrewed test flight that debuted Boeing's Space
Launch System SLS rocket. SOLS rocket is like a really big deal in the space community, and NASA plans to use SLS to send astronauts to orbit the Moon on Orion in twenty twenty seven, so two years from now, and from there a SpaceX lander would shuttle them to the surface of the Moon a year later from that, NASA aims to start using something called Gateway and a planned space station that would orbit the Moon so that future crews would fly the Gateway and then from there
they would board moonlanders to get to the surface of the Moon. SpaceX, Boeing and others have many billions and contracts to build rockets and ships and lunar landing vehicles and other technologies for the program, so there's a lot that's gone into this and SpaceX and other companies, including Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos's space company. There are many that are tied to different parts of this massive program.
But now MUSK wants to move up plans to go to Mars, and their goal is to launch an uncrewed mission to Mars next year, with crude missions as early as twenty twenty nine.
So Bezos would potentially stend to lose contracts if NASA switches SKIS to MOSS.
Well, it's interesting you say that, because if SpaceX gives up its roughly four billion in Moon focused contracts tied to Artemis, any changes to Artemis could affect Blue Origin. It has a contract under Artemis to develop a lander for a future Moon mission, so it's unclear if it
could benefit Blue Origin. Because if SpaceX is giving up something, then if those contracts still exist, someone would take them, and right now Blue Origin is the other company that has an active contract with this particular type of work. So it isn't totally clear to us if Blue Origin would be a winner or a loser, but I think there's an opportunity for it as well.
And how unusual is it for an individual, someone like Elon musk in this case, to have this level of influence over a government agency when at the same time they also have a very clear financial and personal interest in the outcome.
Well, there wasn't a Doge before President Trump, so let's start there. It's highly unusual. I mean, I don't think people have found in martyrn u ofs history something like this out in the open. That's the key thing here, Like we don't know how much would be going on behind closed doors for a business person with financial interest to have such influence over agencies that regulate their businesses. But this is unprecedented.
After the break, how Congress is trying to stop Elon musk.
Hi, I'm Daniel James seven Am tells stories that need to be told. Our journalism is founded on trust and independence, and now we're increasing our coverage every Saturday until the election will bring you an extra episode to break down the biggest political moments of the week. If you enjoy seven am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at seven am podcast dot com dotu slash support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work.
So Committee on Space and Aeronaux will come to order.
Welcome to today's hearing entitled step by Step the Artemis Program and NASA's path.
How much I suppose freedom does Moscow Isaacson have to make changes at NASA? To what extent would they need the approval or the corporation of the federal government or other agencies.
I think this goes back to the US lawmakers. So Artemis has really powerful supporters in Congress.
In two thousand and five, Congress directed NASA to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations, and.
A bipurtisan group of senators. So both the Democrats and Republicans recently introduced legislation that requires NASA and its leaders to continue supporting the existing plans and hardware for Artemis, including this base launch system or SLS, rocket.
Given the time and resource intensive nature of any space mission, successfully carrying out a crude space exploration program requires that the government maintained continuity of purpose over the course of several years. Changing direction isn't free and it is incredibly taxing on the United States industrial base.
So exactly to your point, they're going to have a hard time pushing through what they want because there are different checks and balances in the US government. So it's not like, Oh, Elon wants something, Jared is his guy in NASA, Therefore it's just going to happen. But again, it's quite unusual to have a private citizen also as a top advisor to the president of the United States, and there's a lot more power and influence in that.
So I would say, even though there's bipartisan lawmakers that are supporters of Artemis and don't want it to be disrupted, we haven't really seen ever in US modern US history the relationship that Elon Musk has with Donald Trump as a business leader with a president of the United States, at least out in the open like this, And.
What about through the Department of Government efficiency, can Musk exert much power through there to make changes at NASA.
Oh yeah, and it's already happening. I want to go back to early February. I was hearing from people about how nervous, you know, folks that NASA.
Were about Doge kind of landing.
At the building, you know, each agency, it's like, Doge arrives, their people are nervous.
There's a mystery around it.
What are they doing, what kind of layouts are going to happen, how will strategies change. So several weeks ago, NASA's top executives, top brass gathered on the ninth floor of their headquarters in Washington, d C. And there were DOVE staffers and part of the point of this meeting was that DOGE had arrived, and they were kind of like acknowledging that this was happening. DOGE would be analyzing NASA's work and started off on a really awkward note.
People are around the conference room sharing their names and titles, and one person who others knew to be a JOJ staffer described themselves as a staffer at the Treasury Department instead of part of DOGE.
And so it was just like, what's going on.
This is the elephant in the room, and they're not being totally honest, and so even before the meeting, we knew that some NASA officials had been concerned about how transparent dog staffers would be about what they were doing at the agency, and I think that meeting did not help to assuage fears. NASA has had layoffs, and so
some of that work has already started to unfold. I do want to say that NASA spokeswoman said that they're committed to optimizing their workforce and resources in alignment with DOGE, and that they ensure tax payer do off are directed towards the highest impact projects while maintaining NASA's essential functions.
That was a statement for NASA.
If we consider for a moment the possible end result of Musks Mars plans. As global warming accelerates, there's more natural disasters. If we were to see a small number of people who were able to live on Mars, that would presumably be something that would be under the control of Elon Musk. So are we entering this kind of like thought experiment where the richest people in the world can decide who gets to leave when things get bad?
Here you're making me think of those like compounds in New Zealand that really wealthy people have. Look first, I will say, if this happens, it would take a really, really really long time for there to be the infrastructure on Mars to even have people live there safely. But engineers at SpaceX have it time is it worked on unresolved questions about how humans might live off the land on Mars, like turning materials on the planet into usable resources.
You know. Technical leaders include an employee.
Whose job it is to focus on landing a future starship spacecraft on the Martian surface. We have some reporting about how even employees at Tesla we're working on a special like pressurized vehicle that could work on the surface of Mars.
So there are all these things that would have to happen.
I think right now they're talking about planting a flag on Mars, which is very different than people living there. But you know, I guess once you open the door to something to your point, a lot of other doors could open as well.
Emily, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Also in the news today, the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians and Government Efficiency to center nampujimper Price has cential audit expenditure across the Indigenous Affairs portfolio looking for waste. Senator Price signaled the possible cuts while saying she'll also look to reset the approach to closing the gap, citing
a lack of progress. And the environmental impact of dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than generally recognized, according to a new Australian review of scientific research published in the journal Pacific Conservation Biology. While the impact of CAATs on the environment is well documented, the paper says dogs cause extensive and multifarious impacts, ranging from polluting waterways,
disturbing wildlife, and contributing to carbon emissions. The review's lead author, Professor Bill Bateman of Curtain University, said dogs get a free pass because they're so important to us. I'm Ruby Jones and my co host Daniel James will be back tomorrow with a special Saturday edition of seven Am. Thanks for listening.