Generalist, Newt Gingrich and Michael Jackson, push a plan to reduce moon rates

Newt Gingrich and an eclectic group of NASA skeptics are trying to sell President Donald Trump to a reality show type program aimed at boosting the return of humans to the moon, at a fraction of the estimated price of the movie. space agency.

The proposal, which other advocates are going from a three-star air force general to former pop star publicist Michael Jackson and Prince, plans to create a draw. $ 2 billion. billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other space pioneers to know who can establish and manage the first lunar base, according to a summary of the plan shared with POLITICO.

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That's way less than taxpayers' money versus NASA's planned lunar plan, which relies on traditional space contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin and is expected to cost $ 50 billion or more.

Proponents of the new approach informed officials of the National House Space Council administration, confirmed several members of the group, although they refused to provide details on internal conversations.

Trump still has to weigh in on the idea, at least publicly. But the proposal, designed to provide a great incentive for private players who are already planning their own missions on the moon, comes as the president has expressed skepticism that NASA can achieve its goal of sending American astronauts back to the moon. by 2024 without leaving the statute with audacity. quo.

Gingrich argues that space contractors such as Musk and Bezos can take up the challenge. And some of the companies told POLITICO they were intrigued by the idea of ​​such competition.

"I think people would be shocked at how quickly they can move," said the former speaker in an interview.

Proponents of the lower-cost backup plan insist that NASA's current approach is not sufficiently reliable to ensure that America retains its lead over its new competitors in the world. space, such as China, which aggressively prepares the preparatory work needed to establish a sustained presence on the Moon. its vast energy, mineral and other resources.

"Right now, China is on the way to [have a moon settlement] in 20 years and we are on track to be there in 50 years, "said Air Force General Steve Kwast, co-author of the plan, in an interview. "We are not aggressive about it, we have the wrong strategy, the bad ideas, the bad doctrine. We are trapped in a model of the industrial era of thinking about space. "

White House spokesman Will Boyington declined to discuss any interaction involving the proposal. He referred the questions to NASA, who said he had not yet received such a proposal.

"At NASA, we look forward to working with new partners as we focus on the execution [Trump’s] The Space Policy Directive 1, which instructs the agency to send American astronauts back to the moon and continue human exploration of Mars and the solar system in general, "said to POLITICO Bettina Inclán, the Associate Administrator, in an e-mail, Artemis Program that will send the first woman and the next man to the lunar surface by 2024. "

Trump set the deadline of 2024 this year as part of an ambitious vision to create a permanent lunar establishment that would serve as the basis for a trip to Mars.

But he also questioned NASA's ability to meet the timetable. Last month, he Jim Bridenstine, director, begged the administrator to consider alternatives proposed by other members of the space community who are wary of the current plan. This is part of a trend in which Trump is paying close attention to the costs of other aerospace programs, including the new Air Force One and the F-35 jet fighter.

NASA's lunar planes are based on a rocket called Space Launch System Boeing is developing it, as well as the Orion Space Capsule built by Lockheed Martin. According to the Government Accountability Office, both projects have experienced delays and cost overruns of several billion, jeopardizing NASA's plans. NASA spends about $ 2 billion a year on the Space Launch System alone.

The Agency's vision for a permanent human presence on the Moon also includes a lunar space station in orbit called Gateway, which some critics call unproven, useless and overpriced.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is skeptical of the space agency's approach in recent years. He put Bridenstine on the spot last month when commemorating the lunar landing of July 1969 by the Oval Office. Aldrin, the second man to walk on the lunar surface, expressed his "great disappointment" with NASA's recent efforts to return to the moon..

This prompted Trump to turn to his NASA leader and ask him to "listen on the other side as well".

"Because some people would like to do it in a different way," the president told Bridenstine. "So you'll listen to Buzz and some of the other people. … I know this has been going on for a while and we are so advanced, but I would like to hear the other side as well.

The other part in this case is an unusual collection of personalities – an "eclectic trust in the space brain", as described by Greg Autry, who was part of Trump's transition team in 2017 with the NASA. idea.

General Kwast, who is about to retire this fall, recently led the command of flight training and training, where he clashed with the leaders of the Force. aerial about his candid point of view about what he sees as The overly narrow model of the administration for the proposed space force, which he says should be structured to assist the industrialization of space for the benefit of human beings on Earth, and not just to militarize it.

The moon contest the idea sprouted in May under his leadership at the Air Force Air Force University at Maxwell Air Force Base.

Among his architects are also several NASA advisers, as well as former representative Bob Walker, a Pennsylvania Republican who chaired the House's scientific committee in the 1990s. And another leading force is Howard Bloom, a Figure from the 1960s counterculture who became a prominent publicist in the music industry,launching rock bands like KISS and AC / DC and promoted Bob Marley and Billy Joel.

Bloom, who describes himself as the "philosopher at the end of the universe," has also written books on Islam and human evolution. His labyrinthine public career took a different turn in 2005 when he founded the Space Development Development Committee, a loose network of advocates for the burgeoning commercial space industry, which placed Aldrin among its leading promoters.

Since then, he has become a booster to Musk, Bezos and other space entrepreneurs – and a virulent critic of the management of some of NASA's major programs. Bloom said the Space Launch System, Orion and Gateway programs "have cut American capacity to launch Americans into orbit on US vehicles."

He told POLITICO that he hoped that part of the lunar mission would be "entrusted to a new set of players – players who do not operate in a way to maintain the cash flow of the SMIC with a constant delay, to always maintain it, "he invented. for what he calls the "spatio-military industrial complex".

The proposal for a lunar contest outlines what she describes as a simpler and more cost effective way to achieve Trump's goals while captivating the public's imagination.

According to the plan's bottom line, "would provide $ 1 billion to the first company or organization capable of reaching a spacious and comfortable human base on the moon and provide a billion dollars to the society capable of setting it up and managing it. ".

"In the past, building permanent housing on the moon cost between $ 50 billion and $ 500 billion," the proposal adds. "But several private companies have developed their own Moon programs, so we are now able to buy transportation and housing from private US companies at an incredible cost.

According to the plan, potential competitors in the competition for the construction of a colony on the Moon include the Blue Moon landing vehicle under construction by Blue Origin of Bezos; the 100-passenger spacecraft developed by Musk & # 39; s SpaceX; and the conceptual Xeus lander of United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Other possible players include inflatable lunar structures designed and tested by Bigelow Aerospace, founded by Las Vegas hotel mogul Bob Bigelow, and emerging concepts of 3D-printed lunar bases, proposed by the European Space Agency.

"Jeff Bezos said that he could put his Blue Moon undercarriages on the moon by 2023 and that he could follow shortly after with a human," said Walker, a former congressman. from Pennsylvania, today a space science consultant. "The people of SpaceX have publicly announced their intention to make a lunar trip with possibly paying passengers somewhere between 2022 and 2023.

"So it's based on the fact that there are nominally qualified technologies that would be available in that time frame if NASA could not deliver," he added. He said that any further delay in Boeing"s The space launch system would make it "difficult to imagine that the SLS could be used for this first landing on a moon" in 2024.

Walker also raised growing concern that "Congress can not find the kind of money needed to meet the President's timetable."

The Google Lunar X Prize is a basic template for this contest. It is a ten-year-long space competition in which privately funded teams have attempted to set up a 500-meter robotic spacecraft on the moon and transmit video and images to the Earth. The $ 30 million contest ended in 2018 with no winner.

The group has recently held several meetings with senior administration officials, including a first strategy session starring Gingrich, who advised the Trump team..

The former speaker was one of the main proponents of the launch of the space sector, but the "lobbying system for contracts in Washington" is ignored or "stifled by bureaucracy".

Autry, who is now teaching at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, said, "We all share a bit of frustration with traditional linear thinking."

However, Gingrich acknowledges that Bridenstine deserves NASA to take advantage of new investments and commercial innovations, including through a series of public-private partnerships for designing lunar vehicles.

"The test will come if Congress does not fund [the current moon plan] or NASA simply can not move at this speed, "said Gingrich. They have not arrived at the decisive moments yet. "

Several weeks ago, key members of the group also organized what Walker described as a "broad discussion" with Trump's board members about what "the space community commercial considers as the emerging ability to do things that they have not done before. " past."

Gingrich said that he considered Vice President Mike Pence, who chairs the Space Council, as a key ally. In a speech this year on the future of the Spatial program, Mr. Pence said that "history is not written by those who stubbornly cling to the status quo".

"What Pence says to the status quo is, 'If you can not deliver the goodies, you will not be status quo & # 39; "" Gingrich I said. "We will find out how sincerely he thinks, and we will determine if the president will support him."

Some potential competitors in such a moon contest are intrigued by this idea.

Blue Origin declined to comment, but a spokesman for SpaceX said Musk had publicly supported the idea of ​​such a contest. Musk recently tweeted this The "best way" to arrive on the moon is to make commercial space companies compete for a big prize. "Incentive result, no way," he advised.

Blair Bigelow, vice president of corporate strategy at Bigelow Aerospace, e-mailed that "this idea is interesting, but where will the money come from?"

Pete Garrettson, a retired Air Force officer and space analyst who also contributed to the design of the plan, said the purse was not intended to cover the entire lunar program. Instead, it is meant to motivate companies that are already considering commercial operations on or around the moon – and pushing NASA in a new direction.

"It goes to the heart of NASA's cultural war about what its role is supposed to be," he said in an interview. It is important to know whether he should remain the main player in manned space operations or, as he and his allies believe. , "a convening power where this is not the main member."