We got an audience with the "Lunar Viceroy" to talk how NASA will build a Moon base - Ars Technica

Overview

We got an audience with the “Lunar Viceroy” to talk how NASA will build a Moon basevar abtest_2147038 = new ABTest(2147038, 'click');

“It has been clear that we all need to be focused on one thing, not 10 things.”

Details

At the end of a long day on Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked down at a table littered with microphones and jokingly referred to the space agency’s new Moon base manager, Carlos Garcia-Galan, as the “Lunar Viceroy.” It was a bit of humor, but it also seemed to represent affection from Isaacman for a long-time NASA employee so willingly taking on a major new challenge.

Garcia-Galan was, in many ways, the emerging star at the daylong Ignition event in Washington, DC. Heretofore he has largely been an anonymous engineer at NASA who has now been thrust into a very public role of leading the agency’s ambitious Moon base initiative. (His official title, by the way, is program executive.)

Ars had a chance to speak with Garcia-Galan about NASA’s plans and, more importantly, how they might be implemented. Here is a lightly edited (for clarity) transcript of that conversation.

Ars: You were previously involved with the Lunar Gateway, which has effectively been canceled to build a Moon base, so I’d love to hear about whether this is a difficult transition for you.

Carlos Garcia-Galan: So change is always hard. But it was not hard from the perspective of having the focus on doing something that’s directly related to the objectives we have at hand, which are bringing humans back to the surface of the Moon and building an outpost. So while I do believe that an orbiting outpost has value in the overall exploration goals, it doesn’t mean that we can’t do it later. We need to be focused on the surface, and everybody wants to be on the surface. So I’m super excited, and I’m sure the rest of the Gateway team will be, once they pivot and start shifting their focus to that.

Ars: I could tell from your talk that you were really fired up about this.

Carlos Garcia-Galan: Absolutely. Who wouldn’t be? Yeah.

Ars: I mean, I would be. But I also recognize, as you said, that this is a huge challenge. What is the most pressing thing you want to do first to tackle this?

Carlos Garcia-Galan: So first of all, one of the things that we talked about today is bringing the entire NASA might and resources to bear on this. So I think, immediately, we’re going to be working with all the programs and projects that are doing something related to lunar exploration, including Gateway with the previous architecture, and trying to stitch it all together. Because there’s great work that has happened so far. We just need to basically focus on the things that are more relevant to the critical path.

You know, the cadence (of launches and landings) that we previewed today is not in our experience base at NASA. It’s very demanding. I think it’s important, it’s critical that we set it that way, to identify the stress points. We want to find the choke points that are slowing us down. It’s the same with human transportation, with demanding two landings on the Moon a year. Like, what is it that prevents us from doing that? We need to identify that. In my case, for the Moon base, it’s the entire industry of people doing launches, in-space transportation, landers, payloads, rovers. So is it the supply chain? Is it the manufacturing capacity? I want to work with our partners to identify the stress points so we can actually tackle them. And close after that is bringing in our international partners and identifying where they want to play.

NASA released this rendering of a Moon base that will be built over the next decade.

Ars: Yeah, I think a lot of people have been wondering about Europe, Canada, Japan, and others. You’ve been talking to them. What’s the reaction been so far from the international partners to canceling Gateway and building a Moon base instead?

Carlos Garcia-Galan: Everybody’s excited about it. I don’t think I’ve seen one negative response. Of course, making a hard pivot on architecture, like with Gateway, you’ve got to think about the investments people have made, emotional and resource wise. But look, we’re all trying to do the same thing. We could all make more money somewhere else. We’re into this for human exploration. The Moon is the next place. Being on the surface is the right objective. So we’ll all get there.

Ars: Isaacman has made it clear that a Moon base should be NASA’s priority and has told people at the agency to focus on this. Before there was talk about going to lunar orbit. There was talk about the surface. There were the commercial landers. But it seemed like there was no clear vision for what NASA was going to do at the Moon. How helpful is this clarity on NASA’s goals and purpose?

Carlos Garcia-Galan: This mandate is a total game-changer. I’m gonna call it the Jared (Issacman) factor. I have not been a lunar surface person in the past. I’ve worked on Orion. I’ve worked on Gateway. I was a flight controller. But I’ve seen all the great work over the last month or so that we’ve been doing to stitch this plan together. Seeing all the great work that everybody has been doing is super energizing. And it has been clear that we all need to be focused on one thing, not 10 things. So to me, that is a game changer.

Ars: Does the budget exist to support all of the activities you have planned on and near the Moon? It seems like an awful lot.

Carlos Garcia-Galan: We have forecasted $10 billion per phase, or so. A lot of that comes from the different pieces that we’ve already been doing. Like, for example, we talked about a constellation of communications satellites around the Moon, five assets we had in the budget already. But now, every single thing we do to those spacecraft is going to be oriented to what we need for a lunar base. CLPS (the Commercial Lunar Payload Service program) already had money, and we’re drastically expanding it. And some of that money will get drawn from other things that we’re going to refocus. So the money, especially for the initial phases, as far as how budget procurement or appropriations gets forecasted, is there. Of course there’s going to be some challenges when you move accounts and change things. There’s some inefficiencies, but there’s also opportunities. Maybe we can co-manifest a bunch of stuff that is going to the same place, you know, drones with something else. So, yeah, it’s going to be a challenge. You always want more money, need more. We may have to adjust, but we’re in the ballpark.

Ars: What would you say to people who looked at today’s presentation and say, well, it all seems pretty fanciful. Or they say it’s aspirational, or we’ve seen this before with Constellation 20 years ago. Is it going to be different this time?

We have to make it different. We can’t do the same thing and expect a different result. So it starts with me. Well, it really starts with the administrator, but he already laid down the vision and the management chain, and I absolutely intend to do things differently. As a matter of fact, I’m not focusing on fancy things to begin with. I’m focusing on how do we remove the blockers and chokeholds? Like, let’s look at the supply chain. Let’s hear from our vendors. Those are the brass tacks that I’m going to be focusing on. And we’re leveraging the team. I mean, we’ve gotten top cover from the administrator to bring whatever we need to bear. Like, if it’s expertise from JPL, bring it on. If it’s facilities that we already have, what’s happening in those facilities, and is that directly oriented towards the key objectives that we have? And if it’s not, then we’re taking priority. So the intent, absolutely, is to do things differently.

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Key Takeaways

• We got an audience with the “Lunar Viceroy” to talk how NASA will build a Moon basevar abtest_2147038 = new ABTest(2147038, 'click');

• “It has been clear that we all need to be focused on one thing, not 10 things

• At the end of a long day on Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked down at a table littered with microphones and jokingly referred to the space agency’s new Moon base manager, Carlos Garcia-Galan, as the “Lunar Viceroy

• Garcia-Galan was, in many ways, the emerging star at the daylong Ignition event in Washington, DC

• Ars had a chance to speak with Garcia-Galan about NASA’s plans and, more importantly, how they might be implemented