Jim Bridenstine

I do think this goes back to Representative Cartwright's question regarding kind of new approaches.

I think at this point we are in good shape.

NASA is doing a lot of things, I think, rightly, that are accelerating processes.

When we use different types of rockets, we have dissimilar redundancy.

Having a Gateway in orbit around the Moon is important for a lot of reasons.

The more launches, the more one of them could have, you know, a problem.

I think, Mr. Ranking Member, that would put us in a position to make landing in 2024 very, very difficult.

If we are putting American astronauts on those vehicles, without question, it is not just up to them, it is up to us as well.

The only rocket that is going to be available to take humans by 2024 is the SLS rocket with the Orion crew capsule.

I think there is a concern that I have heard and the concern is schedule pressure.

Do we want to lead the world in space or do we want to yield that to somebody else?

You can't land on the Moon if you don't have a landing system.

The SLS rocket, the biggest, most powerful ever built that will take our astronauts to the Moon, is at Michoud.

We are doing the all-woman space walk here in a matter of days. We are very excited about it.

It should be noted that the spacesuits are in essence little spaceships. Each one of them is designed specifically not just for the astronaut, but also for the mission. The challenge is, we only have a certain number of spacesuits.

It would be really bad for NASA. It would be really bad for our private sector partners. Please, reauthorize it.

I think that is a fair assessment.

We need to get new money, because those will create political or parochial divides between Members of Congress that we don't want to create.

To get to the Moon on schedule, we are going to need to use the SLS rocket.

The goal here is to have as much as possible we want NASA to be a customer of services.

Well, I think we have pretty good oversight capabilities already.

I think it is important that we recognize that what the commercial providers ultimately provide, a lot of it could have already been tested.

This has to be bipartisan and I think, if we put ourselves in a position where, you know, one side of the aisle is not happy with what we are trying to achieve, we will not be successful

The return on investment, we are less than half of a percent of the federal budget, and you look at what we have been able to deliver...