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"It is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline."
Jim Bridenstine testifies before a US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee on September 30, 2020. Credit: Nicholas Kamm-Pool/Getty Images
As part of its efforts to shore up NASA's flailing Artemis Program, the Trump administration earlier this year proposed two major changes to the agency's deep space exploration plans.
First, in the president's budget request for fiscal year 2026, the White House sought to terminate NASA's costly Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after the Artemis III mission, the first human landing. And second, to focus on "direct-to-surface" exploration, the White House sought to cancel the Lunar Gateway, a small space station intended to orbit the Moon.
Essentially, for long-term sustainability, the White House decided it was best to use lower-cost, commercially available rockets and focus NASA's limited resources on surface activities. For example, the Gateway's $854 million budget in 2024 would be better spent in future years on a lunar base.
The president proposes, and Congress disposes
The US Congress, however, was not pleased by this.
As part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill" legislation this spring, a provision written by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) added $6.7 billion in funding to support additional flights of the SLS rocket and Orion, as well as to continue construction of the Gateway. And on Wednesday, at the beginning of a hearing to discuss NASA's Artemis Program and the agency's efforts to compete with China for influence at the Moon, Cruz warned the White House that it must not cancel the SLS rocket and Lunar Gateway.
"It would be folly to cut short these missions after much of the hardware has already been purchased and, in some cases, delivered with no commercial alternative readily available," Cruz said. "I look forward to working with the administration to ensure those funds are utilized in accordance with Congressional intent."
The hearing, titled "There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race," had no witnesses who disagreed with this viewpoint. They included Allen Cutler, CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, the chief lobbying organization for SLS, Orion, and Gateway; Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator who now leads government operations for United Launch Alliance; Mike Gold of Redwire, a Gateway contractor; and Lt. General John Shaw, former Space Command official.
The hearing before the committee chaired by Cruz, Commerce, Science, and Transportation, included the usual mishmash of parochial politics, lobbying for traditional space, back slapping, and fawning—at one point, Gold, a Star Trek fan, went so far as to assert that Cruz is the "Captain Kirk" of the US Senate.
Beyond this, however, there was a fair amount of teeth gnashing about the fact that the United States faces a serious threat from China, which appears to be on course to put humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program. China aims to land humans at the South Pole before the year 2030.
NASA likely to lose “race”
Bridenstine, who oversaw the creation of the Artemis Program half a decade ago, put it most bluntly: "Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface," he said.
Bridenstine and others on the panel criticized the complex nature of SpaceX's Starship-based lunar lander, which NASA selected in April 2021 as a means to get astronauts down to the lunar surface and back. The proposal relies on Starship being refueled in low-Earth orbit by multiple Starship tanker launches.
"The architecture is challenged, significantly, in the current format," Bridenstine said. "That architecture is extraordinarily complex. It, quite frankly, doesn't make a lot of sense."
So what to do about this? Cruz and other senators have made a lot of noise about the importance of beating China back to the Moon, and some have, like Bridenstine, complained about the complexity of SpaceX's architecture. What the elected officials have not done in any public forum is to articulate a realistic alternative. And on Wednesday, not a single US senator asked the panelists what they would do to reach the lunar surface faster with a simpler architecture than the current plan.
Should NASA choose a new destination?
To his credit, Bridenstine took the initiative and asked this question of himself. And then answered it.
"The question is, what do we do?" Bridenstine said. "And I think one thing we can do is we can say, look, we're not going just to put flags and footprints on the Moon as we did back in 1969 through 1972. What we're doing now is we're going to go, we're going to go forward to the Moon. Mike Gold, I think correctly, talked about the Gateway, and how that could be basically our Moon base around the Moon. And then we can have commercial and international partners join that Moon base to be able to have access anywhere on the surface of the Moon, at any time we want."
This exchange occurred near the very end of the hearing, when most senators had already left the room. But it was nevertheless remarkable. Here was Bridenstine—the original architect of the Artemis Program, the administrator who said NASA would land the first woman and person of color on the Moon by 2024—essentially saying NASA no longer had a chance to beat China back there. Instead, he suggested, since NASA is now likely to lose that race, we should position the Gateway as the ultimate high ground and declare establishing this outpost in the late 2020s as a win.
Perhaps this makes sense? From there, at least, NASA will have a good view of Chinese astronauts exploring craters for water ice and building an outpost at the south pole.
Jim Bridenstine testifies before a US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee on September 30, 2020. Credit: Nicholas Kamm-Pool/Getty Images
As part of its efforts to shore up NASA's flailing Artemis Program, the Trump administration earlier this year proposed two major changes to the agency's deep space exploration plans.
First, in the president's budget request for fiscal year 2026, the White House sought to terminate NASA's costly Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after the Artemis III mission, the first human landing. And second, to focus on "direct-to-surface" exploration, the White House sought to cancel the Lunar Gateway, a small space station intended to orbit the Moon.
Essentially, for long-term sustainability, the White House decided it was best to use lower-cost, commercially available rockets and focus NASA's limited resources on surface activities. For example, the Gateway's $854 million budget in 2024 would be better spent in future years on a lunar base.
The president proposes, and Congress disposes
The US Congress, however, was not pleased by this.
As part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill" legislation this spring, a provision written by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) added $6.7 billion in funding to support additional flights of the SLS rocket and Orion, as well as to continue construction of the Gateway. And on Wednesday, at the beginning of a hearing to discuss NASA's Artemis Program and the agency's efforts to compete with China for influence at the Moon, Cruz warned the White House that it must not cancel the SLS rocket and Lunar Gateway.
"It would be folly to cut short these missions after much of the hardware has already been purchased and, in some cases, delivered with no commercial alternative readily available," Cruz said. "I look forward to working with the administration to ensure those funds are utilized in accordance with Congressional intent."
The hearing, titled "There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race," had no witnesses who disagreed with this viewpoint. They included Allen Cutler, CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, the chief lobbying organization for SLS, Orion, and Gateway; Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator who now leads government operations for United Launch Alliance; Mike Gold of Redwire, a Gateway contractor; and Lt. General John Shaw, former Space Command official.
The hearing before the committee chaired by Cruz, Commerce, Science, and Transportation, included the usual mishmash of parochial politics, lobbying for traditional space, back slapping, and fawning—at one point, Gold, a Star Trek fan, went so far as to assert that Cruz is the "Captain Kirk" of the US Senate.
Beyond this, however, there was a fair amount of teeth gnashing about the fact that the United States faces a serious threat from China, which appears to be on course to put humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program. China aims to land humans at the South Pole before the year 2030.
NASA likely to lose “race”
Bridenstine, who oversaw the creation of the Artemis Program half a decade ago, put it most bluntly: "Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface," he said.
Bridenstine and others on the panel criticized the complex nature of SpaceX's Starship-based lunar lander, which NASA selected in April 2021 as a means to get astronauts down to the lunar surface and back. The proposal relies on Starship being refueled in low-Earth orbit by multiple Starship tanker launches.
"The architecture is challenged, significantly, in the current format," Bridenstine said. "That architecture is extraordinarily complex. It, quite frankly, doesn't make a lot of sense."
So what to do about this? Cruz and other senators have made a lot of noise about the importance of beating China back to the Moon, and some have, like Bridenstine, complained about the complexity of SpaceX's architecture. What the elected officials have not done in any public forum is to articulate a realistic alternative. And on Wednesday, not a single US senator asked the panelists what they would do to reach the lunar surface faster with a simpler architecture than the current plan.
Should NASA choose a new destination?
To his credit, Bridenstine took the initiative and asked this question of himself. And then answered it.
"The question is, what do we do?" Bridenstine said. "And I think one thing we can do is we can say, look, we're not going just to put flags and footprints on the Moon as we did back in 1969 through 1972. What we're doing now is we're going to go, we're going to go forward to the Moon. Mike Gold, I think correctly, talked about the Gateway, and how that could be basically our Moon base around the Moon. And then we can have commercial and international partners join that Moon base to be able to have access anywhere on the surface of the Moon, at any time we want."
This exchange occurred near the very end of the hearing, when most senators had already left the room. But it was nevertheless remarkable. Here was Bridenstine—the original architect of the Artemis Program, the administrator who said NASA would land the first woman and person of color on the Moon by 2024—essentially saying NASA no longer had a chance to beat China back there. Instead, he suggested, since NASA is now likely to lose that race, we should position the Gateway as the ultimate high ground and declare establishing this outpost in the late 2020s as a win.
Perhaps this makes sense? From there, at least, NASA will have a good view of Chinese astronauts exploring craters for water ice and building an outpost at the south pole.
