Bill Nelson

>> The final frontier, this week on "Firing Line."

America has always had a frontier.

Now that frontier is upward, and it's out into the cosmos.

>> A child of the Florida space coast who became the second sitting member of Congress in orbit.

>> We have liftoff.

>> Now Bill Nelson's been asked to lead NASA into the future.

The agenda is ambitious and expensive -- put an American back on the Moon by 2024, then on to Mars.

>> Mars is the goal in the decade of the 2030s.

>> There's competition from China and Russia and the space race among billionaires to be the first.

>> Liftoff as the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon... >> There's also a brand-new government report about unexplained sightings in the sky.

>> Look at that thing, dude.

>> And it may have raised more questions than answers.

>> Look at it fly!

>> What does NASA Administrator Bill Nelson say now?

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... And by... Corporate funding is provided by... >> NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, welcome to "Firing Line."

>> Thank you so much.

I love to talk about space.

>> You have said that NASA is in your blood.

You grew up on the Space Coast and became the second sitting member of Congress to travel into space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986.

But a decade ago, NASA seemed adrift in space.

The space shuttle program was ending, and the U.S. had no means of reaching space.

Compared to 10 years ago, Senator, where does NASA stand today?

>> Well, it was specifically 11 years ago that Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and I wrote the bill that put NASA on the course that it's on, a dual course -- one-course commercial companies that NASA would hire, specifically the delivery of crew and cargo to the International Space Station.

And then the other course, NASA, to get out of low Earth orbit and go explore the heavens.

And that's the course that we're on.

Now, in that period of time, the space shuttle was coming to an end after the destruction of Columbia.

It was strongly encouraged to shut it down and come up with a design that was more safe for human life.

And that's what we have now.

And you will see that in the largest rocket ever will launch at the end of this year.

The space launch system with its spacecraft, Orion, on the top.

>> I'd like to ask you about the SLS space launch system, which is NASA's enormous launch rocket, a project that you have supported going back to 2011 when you were in the United States Senate.

Let me ask you, the office of inspector general says that that project is costing billions more than it was supposed to and is at least two years behind schedule.

As NASA administrator, your job now is to keep the project on schedule and within budget.

How are you going to do that?

>> And more recently, it's just been delayed further because of a protest of the bid that NASA earlier this year had awarded to a competition of the lander, a commercial lander.

So that's another delay of 100 days and then on the basis of what the General Accounting Office decides.

So you have these delays.

But the fact is, once GAO decides, we're ready to go, and we're going to push full steam ahead.

>> The goal was to launch Artemis in 2021, and then.

ultimately, land astronauts on the Moon by the end of 2024.

So is that going to stay on schedule, or will that be delayed?

>> We're going with crew in 2023, and then, depending on this competition for a lander in the commercial sector, then that's going to determine when we actually land on the moon with humans.

And that's what we've got to keep on track and we've got to try to speed up.

>> You said you're ready to go as soon as the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, says so, but in May, they said, quote, "The ambitious schedule decreases the likelihood of NASA achieving its goal."

So what gives?

Who's right here?

>> Well, that report was actually written on materials and information that they had received earlier that have since been changed.

However, space is hard, space is risky.

And when you have human life in it, it's important that you do it right.

The entire space program all the way back from Project Mercury, look at all the delays there, after the Apollo 1 fire that we lost three astronauts.

They had to redesign the spacecraft.

You've seen these delays as a result because space is hard.

>> How confident are you there will be a woman on the Moon in 2024?

>> Well, don't hold to that.

I've said space is hard.

That's the goal.

So whenever that is, it will be the first woman and the next man.

And in the course of all the landings will also be the first person of color.

>> So there's a chance it will be delayed from 2024.

>> We'll see.

That's the goal.

>> Listen, in 1968, astronauts on the first manned mission to the Moon, the Apollo 8, sent back a photograph of the Earth, which gave us a new perspective on our planet, and it even helped propel the environmental movement towards the first Earth Day in 1970.

One of your first interviews, you mentioned that climate change would be a top issue for you as the NASA administrator.

How will NASA's new Earth System Observatory help protect the planet?

>> It's five missions over the next decade, yet once on orbit, it's all going to talk to each other as they measure every detail about land, the seas, ice, and the atmosphere.

And that is going to give us a three-dimensional picture of the Earth's environment and what are the changes and what we project in the future.

That is already, in the scientific community, is just being greeted with extraordinary excitement.

Because if you want to mitigate climate, you've got to measure it.

And that's what NASA is going to do.

>> The Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, which cost a relatively inexpensive $85 million to build and operate, just went on its ninth flight.

It was about 1/200th of what the SLS rocket, which hasn't flown yet, has cost so far.

Ingenuity has been so successful that NASA extended its mission for at least another 30 days.

Should NASA focus even more on smaller missions like this that it's so good at?

>> Well, Ingenuity is the result of a very large mission and a very successful one.

We have been putting landers out on Mars since the 1970s.

And so the one that is there now is the size of a Volkswagen, the rover.

And so they got this idea of attaching this little helicopter to it just to see if a helicopter could fly in an atmosphere that is one percent of the density of Earth's atmosphere.

And lo and behold, it worked.

And then they said, "Well, it's working so well, let's try to do some other things."

And now, after nine times flying, what it is actually, it's a scout for the rover.

So we now have a scout on Mars.

>> It's extraordinary to watch.

You know, William F. Buckley Jr. spoke to astronaut Alan Shepard in 1973, two years after Shepard walked on the Moon, in a program that was entitled "Was It Worth It?"

Watch this.

>> I think we have the first amount of data back from the lunar surface that's going to tell us a tremendous amount of the geology of the Moon, its relationship to the geology of the Earth, how the two are related, how we can better determine what's going on on the Earth.

These are the kinds of things that we have to assess in the next five or six years.

Now, I can't honestly say what's going to be the answer five or six years from now -- do we, in fact, want to go back to the Moon again?

Perhaps the answer will be no.

Perhaps we don't want to go back for 100 years.

If you say, "All right, in 1985, automatically, fund $3 billion annually for the second expedition to the Moon," I would say I couldn't give you an honest answer.

If you had to force me to make a decision now, I would say no, let's wait five years.

>> And would that reasoning apply to Mars?

>> Oh, I think so, yeah.

>> Why is now the time to return to the Moon and to go to Mars?

>> Because in going back to the Moon, we're going to learn how to go to Mars.

Now, as a practical matter, we're not going to be there until late in the decade in the 2030s, so as we get prepared to go to Mars, first of all, how long is it going to take you?

It's going to take you 8 to 10 months to get there.

Once you get there, you're going to have to stay a minimum of a year because the planets have to come back into realignment where it's closest so that you can get back to Earth.

So we're going to learn habitats and protection and systems and new technology on the Moon that will enable us to go to Mars and to stay as long as a year in order to be able to get back to Earth.

>> A year ago, the Pentagon officially released three videos that were already circulating online.

The videos were from 2004 and 2015, and they showed unidentified objects on radar, performing in uncharacteristic ways.

>> My gosh.

They're all going against the wind.

The wind's 120 knots west.

Look at that thing, dude.

>> The director of National Intelligence has just declassified a nine-page report that is a preliminary assessment of UAPs, unexplained aerial phenomenon, what we all used to call UFOs.

Of the 144 UAP reports between 2004 and 2021, only one was identified in high confidence.

The other 143 are still mysterious.

What did you think of the key findings of that report?

>> Well, I've read that report, and two years ago, in a classified setting in the Senate Armed Services Committee, I talked to the pilots, and they are absolutely convinced that they saw something.

They locked their radar onto it, they followed it, and then, all of a sudden, it would move.

And it had no exhaust.

It had no plume.

It had no visible wings or any kind of engines.

So we don't know what it is.

But it's something because, as you mentioned, over 140 sightings and maybe a couple of dozen that are really very specific sightings by very credible sources.

And so, what is it?

We don't know.

NASA has a program searching for life in the universe.

It's called Space Astrobiology.

We're looking for signs of life on Mars.

We're looking in the project that's going to Venus now to see is there life in that atmosphere.

We also listen in the universe.

We have a grant program for people listening in the universe for any kind of intelligent signal.

So we don't know what this phenomenon is, but we sure need to find out.

>> According to the report, more, quote, "scientific knowledge" may be needed to understand some of the objects.

The report reads, quote...

Senator, they're saying that our science is not good enough to understand the phenomena that was observed.

I know you say we don't know what it is, but what do you think it is?

>> Well, I don't know.

I hope it's not an adversary here on Earth, because then they have technology, if that's the case, that we do not have.

But the answer to your question is, I do not know.

>> Do you believe there's life in another part of the universe?

>> I sure do.

And let me tell you why.

The universe is 13.5 billion years old.

We're even finding now other suns that very likely have planets, that we call exoplanets, circulating around, and we're looking for signs of one with a habitable atmosphere that would duplicate what we have in our solar system with planet Earth.

And so do I think in a universe that is so big that there is another sun in another galaxy, that that sun has planets revolving around it?

You bet I believe that.

And very likely, if there is, the chemical composition, as all those gases amassed around and formed the planets, the chemical composition could produce life.

And that's what we're exploring.

>> Does NASA have a plan, Senator, for what it would do should a UAP turn out to be a space alien?

>> No, but the first thing we'd want to do is to find out if it's friend or foe.

But, you know, we're not to that point because we just don't know what this phenomenon is.

I think with all those sightings that you referenced, there's something there.

This is not an optical illusion or a radar blip that's a mistake.

When you talk to those Navy pilots, they're convinced because they saw it, and they tracked it.

>> Senator, of course, one of the possibilities is that this is a foreign adversary's advanced technology or perhaps our own advanced technology that is highly classified.

What is the probability that that's what this is?

>> Well, I hope it's ours that is highly secret, because this kind of propulsion that has no wings and doesn't have an exhaust and suddenly darts from here to there in an instant, covering a distance at speeds that are incredible, I hope it's ours.

But according to our government, they're telling us it is not.

>> Well, then you can understand the curiosity that we're out looking for other life, we believe it's there, we have unidentified objects flying in our own airspace, but we don't have a plan for aliens?

>> Well, I had a wonderful plan when I watched Steven Spielberg's "E.T.," and he was a friendly little fella.

But we just don't know.

We don't know what this phenomenon is.

>> All right.

Richard Branson is scheduled to join Virgin Galactic, a space test next week.

Jeff Bezos plans to be on board his own Blue Origin spacecraft during the first manned mission later this month.

And I know you think that this is a great thing.

How does NASA think about itself in the context of private-sector investment in space exploration and its own role?

>> More power to these space billionaires.

Now, they're not going into orbit.

They're just going on an 11- or 15-minute ride to the edge of space, have about three minutes of zero G, and then come back.

You will start to have private astronauts early next year start going into orbit around the Earth.

And we will have private astronauts that will come under the tutelage of a professional former astronaut that will visit the space station.

So there's a whole new explosion of new kind of uses of space in the private sector.

>> SpaceX rockets built by Elon Musk have already been used to power NASA missions.

And SpaceX is designing a lunar lander that is intended to take humans back to the Moon.

You know, there are some who argue that NASA should stay out of the business of building rockets and that this should be left to the private sector.

There is a view that NASA's role in space exploration should be to set the vision for the country and then partner with the private sector who can do a better job of controlling costs and meeting deadlines.

What's your response to that?

>> Well, that was the whole theory of the space bill, the NASA bill of 2010, was to have the best of both worlds.

Now, always, NASA has depended on the commercial sector.

All of our previous flights to the Moon, for example, were all done with private companies, with NASA overseeing them.

In effect, you're having a version of that right now as we're going back to the Moon with the first woman and the first person of color.

>> Let me ask you -- because China and Russia have announced that they have plans to launch a spacecraft as soon as October to look for ice on the Moon, and they say that they are going to also build a permanent research base at the South Pole of the Moon by 2030, it begs the question of are we entering an age of a new space race, Senator?

>> Personally, I think we are, because I think the Chinese have a very aggressive space program.

Just within the last six months, they've landed on Mars.

They're only the second nation to have landed on Mars.

Now, we've been on the surface of Mars since the 1970s, but they're the second.

Look what they've done just a few weeks ago.

They now launched a space station, and now they have it occupied with their taikonauts.

And this announcement that they're partnering with Russia, that should give us pause, as well, because Russia has been our partner when they were the Soviet Union in 1975 when we had Apollo-Soyuz.

And they have built the International Space Station with us.

And my opinion is that they will continue to be our partner on the International Space Station.

But we've got to watch a new space race with the Chinese government.

>> Is a space race good for innovation and exploration?

>> Competition is always good.

>> The critics would say even with Russia and China teaming up, they really don't present enough of an existential threat for us to focus as uniquely and singularly as we did on the space race in the '60s and '70s.

>> Well, it depends on how you want to measure that.

Do you want, for example, for China, to have them land all of these missions that they're planning on the South Pole, which is the place where there should be a lot of ice, and, therefore, you have fuel and you have oxygen?

They say it's an international scientific mission.

Well, what happens if they suddenly get there, and we're not there, and they say, "No, it's an exclusive economic zone.

You can't come in"?

So you always want to be prepared?

I don't think the United States wants to be second on anything.

And I think that's why you're seeing the vigorous support of the Biden administration with our space program.

>> One "gee whiz" moment on the horizon is the launch of the new space telescope that is being advertised as being able to look much closer at the beginning of time.

This is the James Webb Telescope.

What does NASA hope it might find, Senator?

>> It's going to look back in time to the beginning of the development of the universe.

As a result, we're going to find out more about the development.

In finding out about that, we're going to find out how did all of these solar systems occur in all of these millions and millions of galaxies.

And so we're going to be able to determine what happened that we are so fortunate on planet Earth that we had a habitable atmosphere that will sustain life.

And by the way, the more and more that we find out about that, we can be better stewards of our own planet and protect the life we have here on this planet.

>> One final question.

Given what we know about the UAPs, when is the right time, Senator, for us to come up with a plan to handle intelligent life that we're looking for?

>> Well, we better identify it first.

And once we identify it, then we'll know what to do.

We don't have any idea if suddenly an alien is going to appear.

This is still great speculation.

But we're in the search for life out there, and this phenomenon that these Navy pilots have seen, let's find out about it.

What is it?

And then we can deal with it.

>> For all the contingency plans that the U.S. government has on every shelf, in every binder, I would think that we would be more prepared for that possible eventuality than you say that we are.

>> It is what it is.

>> Senator Nelson, thank you very much for joining me on "Firing Line" to talk about space and NASA under your leadership.

>> It's my pleasure.

Thank you.

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... And by... Corporate funding is provided by... >> You're watching PBS.