Jim Bridenstine

I believe that the United States should be number one on Earth, and thus, we must be number one in space.

Direct-hire authority is something that we would love to have.

I do believe that, you know, NASA is an agency that can establish American leadership, that ultimately the NASA budget always returns far more than the investment.

Knowledge is knowledge, and we want them to be successful.

America takes giant leaps where others thought was impossible, and that's exactly what we're doing with James Webb.

James Webb is going to do the same thing for our understanding of how, you know, physics in the early universe worked.

The United States of America may have lost some ground when it comes to science and astrophysics on the international scene.

It is my recommendation that, you know, we move forward with WFIRST after we move forward with JWST.

This cost overrun is going to be a challenge going forward.

So what we have to do now is, as Mr. Young has noted, we are going back and we're going to make sure...

Specifications and requirements that come from NASA ultimately need to be very crystal-clear.

The European Space Agency has really stepped up to the plate on James Webb.

Space represents, in my view, a very strong soft-power tool for the United States of America to establish leadership.

I do fundamentally believe that NASA is a great investment for the United States.

So when you think about what space represents, it represents a fundamental increase in the standard of living not only for all Americans but for the entire world.

I would say that others have gained ground, how about that?

Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3), National Space Traffic Management Policy, recognizes that after more than 60 years of human space activities, orbital debris has become a serious problem to space operations.

American leadership might need to be a little stronger here so that ultimately we don't have collisions that beget more collisions.

The biggest risk to missions in low Earth orbit, the biggest risk is from objects that are too small to even track.

Ultimately, if we want to do robotic servicing in a way that is beneficial to our country and game-changing, we need to develop robotic technologies that can then be licensed to a dozen companies.

Absolutely. So just to be clear, Space Fence is not a NASA project; it is a DOD project.

NASA is an agency, we do discovery and exploration. We do science.

I would argue that, you know, as it relates to us right now in space, we operate due regard.

NASA is an agency that does science and technology. We do discovery. We do exploration. What we don't do is regulate.

Any government data would be available to the public.