Jared Isaacman

But it's certainly not lost on us that the high ground has always been of strategic and

even tactical significance since the beginning of humankind.

Thankfully, we have a Space Force, a Department of War to kind of be out on the hill looking out for us as we undertake our mission, you know, and again, pursuit of peaceful science and discovery.

You know, and in China, for example, they blur those lines, you know, they don't really separate their version of NASA from their kind of military focus in space.

So that's something we're, you know, keenly aware of.

You know, at least with, I mean, we have to be real that when you take the people out of the equation, you know, is space a military domain?

Absolutely.

Right.

But at least when the people have been involved, even going back to the Apollo-Soyuz program, you know, those relationships in space, what they're doing there from a scientific perspective, transcended politics and geopolitics on Earth.

I would hope that would continue.

How do we get to Mars?

So getting to the moon will certainly help us get to Mars.

During my hearings, people were like, how can you talk about parallel tracking moon to Mars?

That makes no sense.

We have no budget for it.

Of course it does.

Said simply, if you can send a lander to the moon, when you see American astronauts step foot off a lander onto the lunar surface, we have the capability to send lots of mass to Mars, period.

Now,

There's a whole habitability thing.

You know, keeping them alive on a couple days to the moon is very different than keeping people alive six to nine months going to Mars.