RUBY:

Hi, this is part two of our interview with Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Glazer. If you haven’t already, start by listening to part one, Elon Musk’s plan to take over NASA.

EMILY:

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.

Audio Excerpt - NASA Artemis:

“We are going to the moon, to deep space and to Mars.”

EMILY:

So NASA has had Mars in 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.

Audio Excerpt - NASA Artemis:

“Boosters in ignition, and liftoff of Artemis 1. We rise together, back to the moon and beyond.”

EMILY:

Elon Musk's ideal is skip over all those things about the moon and just start getting to Mars. And our reporting shows that at some parts of the US government, he is getting the wheels turning for his plans to move forward.

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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

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 11.

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RUBY:

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 Elon Musk's focus on Mars means for NASA's current plans to go back to the moon. How has that all shifted?

EMILY:

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 from NASA programs focused on the moon and science missions. So that goes back to this whole idea of, like, how much is this going to cost? And even if you move all of 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 for roughly 13 years, they projected it to be $93 billion dollars and that's from the government fiscal year of 2012 through the fiscal year 2025 and that's all around Artemis spending. $93 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 criticised Artemis and said something entirely new is needed. So if they were to kill those programs or dramatically remake, you know, 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 is 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.

RUBY:

And just to take a slight step back, can you just tell me what the goal of Artemis is?

EMILY:

So NASA launched Artemis 1 and that powered the Orion space capsule toward the moon in 2022. And that was an uncrewed test flight that debuted Boeing's space launch system, SLS rocket. SLS 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 2027, 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 it's a planned space station that would orbit the moon so that future crews would fly to Gateway and then from there, they would board moon landers to get to the surface of the moon. SpaceX, Boeing, and others have many billions in 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 crewed missions as early as 2029.

RUBY:

So Bezos would potentially stand to lose contracts if NASA switches gears to Mars?

EMILY:

Well, it's interesting you say that because if SpaceX gives up its roughly 4 billion in moon focus 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.

RUBY:

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?

EMILY:

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 modern US 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, you know, financial interests to have such influence over agencies that regulate their businesses, but this is unprecedented.

RUBY:

After the break, how congress is trying to stop Elon Musk.

DANIEL:

Hi, I’m Daniel James.

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Audio Excerpt - Chairperson (senate subcommittee):

“The subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics will come to order. Welcome to today’s hearing entitled, Step By Step: The Artemis Program and NASA’s path...”

RUBY:

How much, I suppose, freedom does Musk or Isaacson have to make changes at NASA? To what extent would they need the approval or the cooperation of the federal government or other agencies?

EMILY:

I think this goes back to the US lawmakers. So Artemis has really powerful supporters in Congress.

Audio Excerpt - Brian Babin:

“In 2005, Congress directed NASA to develop a sustained human presence on the moon as a stepping stone to future exploration of Mars and other destinations.”

EMILY:

And a bipartisan 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 Space Launch System or SLS rocket.

Audio Excerpt - Brian Babin:

“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.”

EMILY:

So exactly to your point, they're gonna 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 gonna happen. But again, it's quite unusual to have a private, you know, 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 history, modern US history, the relationship that Elon Musk has with Donald Trump as a, you know, business leader with the President of the United States. At least out in the open like this.

RUBY:

And what about through the Department of Government Efficiency? Can Musk exert much power through there to make changes at NASA?

EMILY:

Oh yeah, and it's already happening. I wanna go back to early February. I was hearing from people about how nervous, you know, folks at NASA were about DOGE kind of landing at the building. You know, each agency, it's like DOGE arrives, people are nervous, there's a mystery around it. What are they doing? What kind of layoffs are gonna 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 DC and there were DOGE 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 analysing NASA's work and it 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 DOGE 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 DOGE 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 since then and so some of that work has already started to unfold. I do want to say that a NASA spokeswoman said that they're committed to optimising their workforce and resources in alignment with DOGE and that they ensure taxpayer dollars are directed toward the highest impact projects while maintaining NASA's essential functions. That was a statement from NASA.

RUBY:

If we consider for a moment the possible end result of Musk's Mars plans as global warming accelerates, as 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?

EMILY:

You're making me think of those 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 at times 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 including 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 were working on a special, like, pressurised 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.

RUBY:

Emily, thank you so much for your time.

EMILY:

Thank you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

The Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians and Government Efficiency Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, has said she’ll audit expenditure across the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, looking for waste.

Senator Price signalled 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 recognised”, according to a new Australian review of scientific research, published in the journal Pacific Conservation Biology.

While the impact of cats 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 Curtin University, said dogs get a “free pass” because they are “so important to us”.

I’m Ruby Jones and my co-host Daniel James will be back tomorrow with a special Saturday edition of 7am. Thanks for listening.

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