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(upbeat music) (bell clanging) - Good afternoon, and welcome to the new wonderful City Club of Cleveland, which for more than 100 years has been dedicated to conversations of consequence.

It's aged well, kind of like their CEO, our friend Dan Moulthrop.

Happy birthday, Dan.

My name is Baiju Shah.

I'm the CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, and on this beautiful Chamber of Commerce day here in Cleveland, I have the distinct honor of introducing our guest, Jim Free.

Jim is a Clevelander who has one of the coolest jobs in the world and maybe in the entire universe.

Now his official title is Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Mission Director at NASA.

Rolls right off the tongue.

So let me translate that for you.

Jim leads NASA's Artemis mission, the mission that's leading us to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond.

That's a very cool job.

NASA is synonymous with inspiration and innovation, and with Artemis, NASA will pioneer technologies to explore and build a base on the Moon, and then NASA will take the next giant leap, sending astronauts to Mars, and they will do it with the most diverse astronaut crew in their history.

Inspired, innovative, and inclusive.

Some of us would call that all in.

Now at the helm of these efforts is Jim, as I said again, a Clevelander, and the mission includes NASA Glenn, a center once led by Jim and their 3,300 team members and many more partners, all of our neighbors right here in Cleveland.

So when you hear that the path to the Moon and Mars goes through Cleveland, you now know what that means.

And that inspires us at GCP to be such strong advocates for growing NASA and NASA Glenn.

The moderator for today's forum is Dr. Kirsten Ellenbogen, CEO of the Great Lakes Science Center.

Kirsten is also a great Clevelander.

Her work and her team inspire the next generation of scientists and astronauts, individuals who may be researching on the Moon or traveling to Mars and beyond.

For those that are listening in today, if you have a question for our guests, please text or X it in, meaning tweet it into the City Club.

The text number is (330) 541-5794.

Members and friends, please join me in welcoming NASA's Jim Free.

(applause) - Thanks, Baiju.

Appreciate it.

- All right, good afternoon, Baiju, thanks for the great introduction.

And I would like to thank the City Club, Dan and Cynthia for having me today and Kirsten for moderating the fireside chat.

It is really great to be home.

Last night I got to go to my first Guardian games at the game of the year, which I'm ashamed to say, but I'm proud I got to one.

To see so many friends here today is really great and I appreciate that you would take the time to be here to hear about what is really the coolest job in the world.

A lot of people say, why did I go back to NASA?

And I've told the story like, how do you say no when you get a call from the Deputy Administrator and the Associate Administrator of NASA who are both shuttle commanders, one of them only of the two of the female shuttle commanders where they say, "Hey, your country needs you to serve."

Okay, that's tough anyway to say no to.

And then "Would you like to lead the return to the Moon and then take humans to Mars?"

The fact that I had to think about that's a little embarrassing to admit, but it is great to be here today and share with you what NASA's doing and I made the conscious choice to not do slides not because I want you to look at me, but because I want you to listen to what I have to say and we'll talk about a call to action for all of you later.

So start thinking of your questions now and I look forward to hearing those.

So NASA's charged with pioneering space science and technology that propels the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Our organization, which someday I'll be able to tell the story of why it is titled what it is.

But that's gonna be a while.

I think that's highly classified probably for another 50 years.

But our Organization and Exploration Systems Development Mission Director is responsible for defining and flying the Artemis missions and planning our Moon to Mars exploration approach.

With Artemis, we're going back to the Moon for long-term scientific discovery of the solar system, our home planet, and even the human body.

And I'm excited that we'll be able to discover because everything that we learn fuels new scientific development.

And Artemis is different than anything humanity has ever done before.

It is a long-term effort and it's about three things.

First is science.

Science is what drives our missions.

And the value of the discoveries we'll continue to make is really impossible to estimate.

Artemis will change how we understand the solar system and our place in it.

The second thing is national posture.

We continue to make space for everyone as we welcome new partners, international partners in America and around the world from our industry, and ultimately US leadership is critical.

And the third thing is inspiration.

It's so great to see students here today because I believe that we're building the next generation STEM workforce, the Artemis generation.

We hope that the Artemis missions inspire young people around the world to connect space exploration and the STEM careers that go with it.

But Artemis is really a story of people.

I think any great effort is really about the people that it takes on and all those who make this journey possible through diverse thinking and ideas.

And every state in America and 10 European countries have contributed to that first mission of Artemis I.

In fact, more than 60 Ohio based suppliers contribute to the development of the Orion spacecraft, our human vehicle, the space launch system rocket and the ground systems in Florida.

Ohio, as you all know, is the aerospace state and our history is unrivaled by any other state when it comes to achievements in air and space.

It's the home of 25 astronauts, the birthplace of the Wright Brothers, the birthplace of John Glenn and Neil Armstrong.

And just as Ohio was instrumental in our nation's aerospace firsts, first flight, first American to orbit the earth, and the first steps on the Moon, Ohio is once again shaping the future of aviation and space exploration.

Recently NASA Glenn and the University of Illinois, Chicago published an economic impact report.

And let's talk about some of that.

NASA contributed $2.4 billion to this state's economy, $300 million of which came directly from NASA funding for our Moon to Mars exploration efforts.

Not because I'm from Ohio, but that's just how it worked out.

The agency's activities in Ohio supported nearly 11,000 jobs, increasing labor income by more than $835 million and generating $82 million in local and state taxes.

From testing the Orion spacecraft in the space environments complex out in Sandusky to the research and innovations in chemical, electrical, and nuclear propulsion technology, the work at Glenn is crucial in developing and innovating technology in support of our Artemis missions.

Last year we successfully flew our un-crewed Artemis flight test to the Moon.

And what a fantastic mission it really was.

It's still surreal to me.

It was our first step in a series of increasingly complex missions.

Artemis I, mission built on four generations of NASA human space flight experience, it demonstrated our leadership in human space flight and validated the safety and performance of the Orion spacecraft.

We performed 124 flight tests in orbit.

It performed so well that we were able to add another 21 to buy down the risk for our first human mission.

It was critical to ensure we're ready to carry astronauts on Artemis II.

And that's where our focus is today is on Artemis II.

That crew, I encourage you to read about these people, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, and our incredible commander, Reid Wiseman.

I'm so proud of this crew and we're happy to have an international astronaut on our first crew representing the global nature of what Artemis is for the long haul.

Their mission's gonna be a 10 day flight around the Moon, where we'll test our life support systems, the handling qualities of the vehicle, and really stress the human interface.

What we learned from Artemis II will help prepare for every human mission.

The commander said it best when he said, "I hope when people look at Artemis II, they're looking at it from how that helped us step foot on Mars."

And that's such a great perspective.

They're training today.

They just had a big event this week down in Kennedy where they practiced the run out to the launchpad, going up the launchpad, going out the crew access arm.

It's a tremendous milestone for us and we're well on our way to Artemis II.

The Artemis II Orion spacecraft, crew module, and European Space Agency Build Service Module, which is overseen by NASA Glenn are at the Kennedy Space Center today undergoing final testing.

The mobile launcher is out at the launchpad today doing testing as we speak.

The space launch system booster segments are actually on rail cars on their way to Florida.

I saw a tweet this morning, somebody saw the train going by, took a video of it, it's pretty cool.

The space launch system is assembled in New Orleans.

All four engines are installed and early next year, it's gonna be shipped to Florida and we're targeting late 2024 for this first but essential step back to the Moon.

Our next mission, Artemis III will mark humanity's first return to the lunar surface in over 50 years.

And will once again make history, not just because of that return, but because we will land the first woman on the Moon.

(applause) This time we'll land at the lunar South Pole where we know the history of the solar system is captured differently than where we landed around the equator with Apollo.

We also know that's where there's water ice, where we hope to use it to help our crews be sustained on the surface of the Moon.

Once launched, the Orion capsule and our human lander will dock in lunar orbit.

Two crew members will remain in lunar orbit and two will descend to the surface for their six and a half day mission on the Moon.

NASA, our contractors, our international partners and suppliers continue to make incredible progress on Artemis III.

The crew module is being built in Florida as we speak.

The heat shield is being populated.

The crew module adapter is in process.

We're building spacesuits today for that mission and our human lander is in development and will fly at least one un-crewed demo mission that lands on the Moon.

Keep your fingers crossed for that next SpaceX launch.

For Artemis IV and beyond, we will begin staging our missions from Gateway, our lunar space station in a very unique orbit around the Moon that gives us exposure to 98% of the lunar surface.

So wherever we wanna land.

Gateway will be a home away from home for astronauts equipped with living quarters, laboratories, and docking ports for other spacecraft.

Gateway will be instrumental in developing our autonomous technologies and capabilities to support Moon and Mars exploration for many years to come.

It will serve also as a platform for heliophysics and biologic science as well.

We're making great progress for Artemis IV and V. It's substantial work going on really across the world.

We actually have hardware right now through our Artemis VII mission.

And we have contracts through Artemis IX.

This is not a paper program, in subsequent missions, we'll add in rovers for the crews to travel farther away from the landing sites to do the science we need followed soon by living quarters on the surface.

We have 63 Moon to Mars objectives that have been agreed to with our partners and stakeholders.

We built the first segment of an architecture for the Moon, and in just a couple months we'll complete the initial plans for two more segments, including the segments to go to Mars.

These objectives in this architecture are NASA's plan defining both short-term and long-term missions.

It's not just our organization's plan, it's the entire agency's plan.

It's been developed with inputs from our workforce, industry, academia, and all of our international partners.

As I said, this is not short term paper only plan as you've heard about the amount of hardware that we have for these future missions.

So here's your call to action.

You can't just show up and listen to some government bureaucrat talk without being expected to have your call to action.

We need your engagement and support.

So when you leave here, I encourage you to go look at our Moon to Mars objectives, look at our architecture, see what interests you, where you want to participate and get excited about your space program.

This is not mine, right?

I stand here because all of you pay taxes to have a space program.

So this is your space program.

You'll always hear skepticism about spending dollars in space.

Perhaps some of you today here or listening to this are some of those skeptics.

But I assure you that every dollar of your space program is spent right here on earth employing people and creating tax revenue as I described earlier.

I assure you that it also creates the inspiration in a young person to pursue a career that only benefits this nation in the long run.

Ultimately, what we build, test, and discover on the Moon will determine the human capacity to live and work in deep space for long periods of time, setting NASA and all of us on a steady path for our next giant leap, sending the first astronauts to Mars.

Artemis missions will bring the world along for the journey, helping to change humanity's perspective of our place in the universe.

People around the world are helping create this future.

It is a global plan.

It begins with our NASA team.

Those that work on this team now have helped us take this first step and are essential to what we are doing in the next and future missions.

If you work in industry or academia, you have a place in our future.

If you're a student or early in your career, there are incredible opportunities for you to build a future in space while improving life here on earth.

It's really a dream that we can all share.

And I look forward to hearing your thoughts on that dream and your participation in that dream.

And thanks for being here today.

(applause) - Well that was great.

I'm inspired and I know a lot about what you do, but before we, I have a lot of questions, but before we jump into some of the questions on the very compelling mission you talked about, your bio at the beginning was pretty short and you have had a terrific career.

Give us some insight.

What was the spark?

What was the start of your interest in space, your interest in NASA?

How'd that happen?

- I think it probably started with airplanes.

We lived on the flight path in the Hopkins when I was growing up.

And so I would watch the planes land all the time.

Even just the other day I was flying somewhere, which I don't remember, but I heard the gear go down and I was like, I started timing in my head because I used to think about when I could see the gear go down and how far they were from the airport.

So that somewhere is still that kid in me.

And then you start reading about aircraft and explorers and you start learning about space.

So I've loved aircraft probably first and then space as a young person, probably five or six.

And then you start reading about Apollo, which had just ended at that point.

And then seeing the shuttle come online.

I think that's where it really all started for me.

- It's a good reminder that NASA's aviation and aerospace, it's like both.

Well, so then you focused on engineering.

You went into NASA pretty early.

But give us a sense of some of that trajectory.

I mean you could have gone in a lot of different directions.

- I put a lot of faith in the people who mentored me, probably formally and informally.

And I just trusted people, "Hey, we need your help over here.

Can you go do that?"

Or I would see, I told a story once about some, I was in a meeting at NASA Glenn where all the senior executives were at the table and now I'm one of those senior executives and I was like a person in the back row and everybody's like, yeah, this is a great meeting, it's a great meeting.

I was like, we didn't do anything in this meeting.

And I'm like, hey, to the deputy center director at the time, his name is Rich Christensen.

Hey Rich, what did we really do in this meeting?

He's kinda like, okay, well you're so smart, go figure it out.

So it's kind of like stepping in where I saw something need to be done or people trusted me to try and go do new things and I just kind of followed that path.

So I talked about the Pam Melroy and Bob Cabana calling me.

They are two folks who I've known for years, I respect tremendously.

And they asked me to come do something and I said sure.

- I love how trust is part of the career path.

All right, so let's dive into the mission.

And I tend to think I know a fair amount about the Artemis mission, so I did not expect you to describe it as a story of people.

Say more about that.

- I think I'll talk about it in the Apollo context first.

There's 400,000 people working on Apollo trying to achieve a goal for the nation that was set by the president.

And I include people because I see how hard people work every day, and I know there's folks here that can identify that you give your career, you give your life to your career and there's something very passionate about space, and you have to have passion to drive through some of the challenge that we face.

I think we, NASA, there's a reason we need more marketing people at NASA because we don't tell our story well enough.

Stuff we do is really, really hard.

It's hard to keep people safe in space.

And we do it every day on space station.

And we've been doing it for 23 years this year.

This is the 23rd year of continuous human presence in space.

That is really hard to do.

There's a lot of challenges out there and it comes down to people who wanna work hard and just have such incredibly unique knowledge to do that.

And for me that's what I see when I go around and have the chance to talk with people.

I always say, and I said this when I was center director too, there's not a thing I'm gonna do in a day that's gonna help somebody solve the technical problem.

I would try, right?

Hey, I have this great idea.

And they're like, yeah, it's really cool, Mr. Headquarters guy, but if I can take barriers away from people so they can get the work done, that's what I need to do.

I need to fight the battles on the budget.

I need to tell our story on Capitol Hill.

That's my job now.

I need to help make a decision that maybe takes a lot of risk because then I'm taking the burden off these people that are in the clean room every day or ultimately looking at those four human beings who I read their names to you and looking at them and saying, "Hey, we've done everything we can to bring you home alive."

There's a moment when you work on a human space flight mission where you sign a certificate of flight readiness.

And there's a whole bunch of those that move up as you go from like the engineer to the program manager to systems engineer, program manager up.

And I chair the flight readiness review and you sign that and it's like, I'm committing that I've done everything I can for those people's lives and that's ultimately what our job is is to bring them home safe.

- So it's a very different set of tasks in front of you at NASA.

All right, so take us back then.

I mean you've been at NASA for some time.

Talk about the changes you're seeing at the agency, and I know part of the story is the people, but the diversity's changed.

It's a different team approach.

Say more about that.

- I mean our core values, one of them is being inclusive and you heard Baiju talk about the diverse astronaut core and the diverse side of our workforce is just about that is bringing new ideas, new backgrounds, and making us look like the society I talked about, it's your space program, right?

Making it look like it's our space program.

So that's the first important part of it.

And then the other part is boy how we've changed, how the commercial industry has changed.

Because what I believe NASA's enabled, and this is another one where I'll say I don't think we talk enough about what we've done.

SpaceX has been incredibly successful at their launches both of crew and cargo for us and of their satellite launches, Starlink on top of that.

NASA was the first investor in SpaceX in terms of, "Hey, we're gonna give you a challenge of bringing cargo to the space station," which drove the development of their Falcon launch vehicle.

Falcon 1 then Falcon 9.

And then we're gonna trust you with crew, drove their development of the Dragon capsule being human rated.

And now they've opened that up, they've brought launches back to the US that were drifting away to other countries.

So I think NASA has enabled a commercial space industry.

They're flying private astronaut missions.

That's because of what I believe NASA has enabled.

And now we've taken that next step and given SpaceX a contract for our lunar lander, we've given Blue Origin a contract for their lunar lander for our later missions.

So we're hopefully enabling, and they've put in dollars, we have that for our space suits, that we're buying that as a service.

So I think the agency has changed into kind of the, I don't wanna say we're not monolithic anymore because ultimately we're a bureaucracy, but we're not this monolith, we're the only game in town.

And then when you look at Artemis, we've also brought in international community, we've signed what's called the Artemis Accords, I think it's 29 signatories now, countries to talk about how we're gonna operate in space, how we're gonna be transparent in space.

NASA has this unique political soft power that we've had for years that has benefited I think the rest of the US government.

So we're trying to be inclusive, both of our workforce, our commercial partners, our contracts, and then also the international community.

- Okay, so you're talking about the partnerships, bring that home to Chicago.

I know you're NASA HQ now, but come back to Ohio for a minute.

- [Jim] I do come home to Ohio.

- And we're very grateful for that.

And you gave really great numbers, right?

11,000 jobs, $2.4 billion in the Ohio economy.

You talked about 60 based Ohio suppliers.

You talked about $835 million labor income increase in the state, I mean, that's impressive.

So there's a lot of partnerships behind that.

There's a different way of really collaborating it sounds like that has happened over the years to make that kind of economic impact in Ohio.

- Yeah, I think it's making folks aware that NASA Glenn exists, that's something that I know Baiju and Marty and Marty going back a long way with me when I was deputy and center director here, making folks aware that it's there, but also how can it help the community?

How can the technologies that NASA has, that knowhow that NASA has, help businesses bring their products across a finish line or drive a change in their company or a new pursuit that they might have, let alone just having 3,000 jobs next to the airport.

And I know some of you have heard me say this, if we were trying to bring a company here that had 3,000 jobs, we'd be dying to do that for those numbers that you just went through.

We need to do everything we can, the community needs to, I can't say we anymore, I'm the headquarters guy now, but if I were a NASA Glenn person, I would say we need to do everything we can to keep it here.

And because of those opportunities, and NASA has great ways to partner, so NASA's small business program, I think it's one of the best in the government.

Somebody can tell me, Kurt, you probably agree with that.

There's so much access for small businesses into NASA.

We have prescribed goals, particularly NASA Glenn has highly subscribed goals for small business procurements.

Every NASA center has a small business advocate, small business resources to go to to help out, to create a partnership, to transition technology, to bid on contracts.

There's a partnerships office at NASA Glenn where folks can have a Space Act agreement with NASA, which is a way to exchange data that NASA protects yours and you get access to NASA data.

So I think as those have grown, those kind of partnerships have grown too, and I'm only hitting on the Ohio part of it.

- Which we love.

Just for this moment, we know we won't hold that to you all the time.

Well, all right, so now let's zoom way back out because you gave some very vivid descriptions of what's going on to get the crew ready for the launch.

Our crewed mission to the Moon is very exciting and I feel like I have those pictures in my head now of all the tests going on, the video even heading down the railway, it's hard to imagine what a crewed mission to Mars will look like.

So paint that picture.

- Yeah, I talked about our architecture review that we have coming up, and in that, there's like seven decisions we have to make that will cascade into like 100 around Mars.

And the first is, are you ready to go?

And that's a lot of why we're doing things on the lunar surface because partial gravity will make our systems behave a little bit differently.

Zero gravity makes them behave differently.

So we need a little bit of runtime on the Moon.

We also need to understand the effects on the human body of long duration space flight.

We're doing that right now on space station.

Frank Rubio just surpassed 365 days longest US mission, tremendous, he went up there thinking he was gonna stay six months and then he's like, "Hey, guess what?

You get to stay another six months."

It's been a tremendous sacrifice by Frank and his family.

But we learned so much from those long duration missions because right now, with our technology, six months to get to Mars, six months to get home and your body goes through so much in that adaptation to gravity.

And if you think about it, you go out for six months, you get adapted to zero gravity and then you have to land and operate in a partial gravity environment and you only have 30 days because you need to get back up to get home.

So you wanna maximize those 30 days, but that adjustment to gravity's tough.

So we need to design our systems to allow the crew to adapt and still get work done.

And then we need to put them on a vehicle to come back another six months and enter them safely back into Earth.

So it's challenges with radiation, galactic cosmic radiation outside of Van Allen belts.

Very strong effect on the human body.

Deterioration of muscle and bone.

You have to keep that updated, so you have to exercise all the time.

How do we keep food safe for that long?

We have a mission right now in Houston where we've locked four people in a simulated Mars habitat and they were locked in with all their food for a year.

They can grow stuff, they'll have that opportunity, but we gave them food for a year.

So how do we keep that food fresh?

How do we have enough water for them?

Ironically, if you put water in the food, you can recover water in the food, you don't have to carry as much dedicated water.

How do we deal with the carbon dioxide that's built up?

How do we generate oxygen?

We're trying to get to like 99% oxygen recovery so that we don't have to take all these supplies basically for 13 months of keeping them safe.

And you can't take everything down to the surface of Mars at once.

So you gotta launch stuff in advance and land it on the surface and make sure it lands before you launch the crew.

Which means your mission starts seven years before you wanna land the crew.

So all of that stacks up into what do we have to plan on each of our Artemis missions to be ready to take that step to Mars.

- That's incredible.

That's a very vivid picture.

Thank you.

Well I know we wanna move to questions soon, but let me ask one more because we do have a number of student groups here today.

We've got groups from Shaker Heights Innovation Center, we've got groups from Lutheran West, and MC2STEM High School.

So talk a little bit about what advice you have for them.

I mean, when we think about who's going to be going to Mars, well, they may be in high school right now, right?

So what's your advice?

- Well first, thanks for everything that you do at the science center to inspire folks.

It's really great.

(applause) Boy, advice.

I think I was not the best student.

It's great to watch my kids now because they're just so much better than I ever was.

I was not the best student.

And it took me a little bit of time to figure out like what was I good at?

And I learned that I was really good at asking questions.

And I still do that a lot today, ask questions for understanding, number one, usually the question that you ask is what everybody else wants to ask but doesn't have the courage to.

I'm not saying I am this ultimate courage person, but if I'm gonna be involved where my first job was very much about keeping people safe because we dealt with some hazardous chemicals, I wanna make sure I understand it.

But as you ask more questions, you can really develop how you think and break down problems.

And I still try and rely on that today.

All those statistics I just gave you about going to Mars are just me trying to understand it.

That's how I picked it up.

And I get to work with really smart people designing and working on these missions.

So I think first is asking questions.

I talked about a mentor earlier and there's formal mentoring or there's people that just kind of give you advice.

You can kind of look at a mentor that way.

And I've had very good people who've given me advice and listen to people who tell you stuff you don't want to hear because that usually means they're trying to challenge you and make you grow.

And then when I found a couple mentors, I always found that people see stuff in you that you can't possibly see.

I've said that line before because I think I live by that.

And if somebody asks you to do something, they believe you can do it, whether you really believe you can or not.

When I got that call to do this job, and really, I'd say almost every job, I don't think I could ever do the jobs that I do.

There's a lot of imposter syndrome, like what am I doing sitting up here talking about it?

But I think when people believe in you, they see potential you can't possibly see in yourself.

That's probably the advice I'd have.

- Well said.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jim Free.

(applause) - We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

I'm Cynthia Connolly, Director of Programming here at the City Club, and we are joined by Jim Free, Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Mission Director at NASA.

He is talking about what's next in deep space human exploration.

Moderating the conversation is Dr. Kirsten Ellenbogen, president and CEO of the Great Lakes Science Center.

We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, students, and those joining via our livestream at cityclubclub.org or our live radio broadcast at 89.7 WKSU IdeaStream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question for our speaker, you can text it to (330) 541-5794.

That's (330) 541-5794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have our first question, please?

- Yes.

All right, so we are gonna start with the text question.

It says, "With another government shutdown looming on the horizon, how is Artemis preparing to minimize disruptions to testing and meeting milestones as well as maintain employee morale and retention as these shutdowns occur?"

- I feel like somebody that works with me sent the question.

(audience laughing) So there's a process for the shutdown that we put this, this is the accepted list, like EX.

So everybody, we put a justification, here's why we think we need to move it forward.

For us we have the mobile launch tower at the launchpad today, but we don't want to like unplug it and walk away because it's millions and millions of dollars sitting out there.

And plus we want to keep the momentum and schedule going for Artemis II, we try and keep all the hardware going, Orion, SLS.

So we put a list together and then try and get that approved up the chain.

Employee morale, it's kind of interesting because everybody breathes a sigh of relief if you get a continuing resolution.

I believe that the hardest part for morale, and I'll only speak for myself here as a government person, is all the work you do and then the continuing resolution gets passed, that work goes unnoticed and that's a lot of work to get there.

So I worry about that morale, if we get a shutdown, we are in a bureaucracy that works in a government that works the way it does.

It's unfortunate that that has to happen.

I'm really walking a fine line here.

It's frustrating that it's gotta happen as a human being, but I the effect on morale, the effect on our budget, if we get a shutdown, we have to do a lot of things with our contractors that ultimately drives up our costs and our program costs go up and it's like, hey, NASA can't manage.

But that's one of the factors that drives up our cost in the long run.

And that's the frustrating stuff.

But like I say, when you join the government, you're signing up for the bureaucracy.

And I think NASA's this unique, we're this incredibly innovative agency that's a bureaucracy and those two tug at each other and when they're in balance, it's really good.

When they're out of balance, it can be frustrating.

So yeah, it's part of the job.

- Hi, thank you for your presentation.

My name's Kaylin Fazio and I'm a second year law student at CSU.

I have a question.

It might be hard for small businesses and startups to survive from NASA contracts alone, especially keeping and maintaining a skilled workforce.

There are a lot of regulatory barriers to entering commercial space outside of government contracts.

How does NASA support small space businesses and startups outside of awarding contracts?

Or is there another agency or mechanism to support these businesses surviving in the commercial space realm?

Thank you.

- So the head of NASA Glenn procurement's right there.

I'll defer to his... Kurt, go ahead.

So I talked about the resources for small businesses in terms of access to procurements and dedicated procurement dollars that are for small businesses only.

NASA also has some small business innovative research grants that go on, they're multi-phase, actually a lot of government agencies have them that deal with space, Space Force as an example.

And a lot of times, and NASA also has in our space technology mission directorate some opportunities for companies to partner with larger space companies to bring their technology forward.

And all of those have a tremendous amount of resources at the NASA websites, at the small business in particular at NASA.

And so it helps make connections with the larger companies so you're not just dependent on NASA needs four widgets and we're gonna buy four widgets and you have to tool up for this whole thing, not just tooling like machine tooling, but all the things that a government federal contract demands.

And then some of the things we have actually take some of those demands of typical federal acquisition things out of the way, federal acquisition regulations, the FAR.

Never by the way did I think I would ever give a talk where I use the phrase FAR, I think I just lost my engineering credibility.

But a lot of our contracts help move those out of the way so that small businesses can thrive and then hopefully make connections with commercial companies that can use their technology as well.

- Good afternoon, thank you for being here today.

I was teaching in 1986 when schoolteacher Krista McAuliffe was killed in the Challenger disaster.

And it was the first time my students saw me cry.

My question to you is when that happened, were you a little discouraged with the program or did it motivate you to try harder to make sure that didn't happen again?

- So I was actually sitting in the senior lounge at St. Ignatius High School when that happened.

And it was more, obviously it was incredibly disappointing and sad for Krista McAuliffe and the other six crew members on Challenger.

And what's very tangible for me is Columbia and the fact that we as an organization failed a second time for the same reason, with organizational silence.

And I think everybody in NASA, whether you work in human space flight or not, lives with what happened in both of those.

Now in Columbia, like less than 50% of today's NASA workforce was with the agency when Columbia happened.

So our challenge is how do we continue to convey that we can't accept organizational silence and kill people again?

And it's very tangible for me when we meet with the crew, but it's very tangible for me every day because I have to think about what words am I using that could be suppressing what someone wants to bring up, especially in my position, not because I'm in this lofty position and look at me, but I look at me as Jim, I don't look at me in the position, but other people look at me in that position.

So if I say I don't like eight and a half by 11 paper and I start the meeting that way, or I finish it before anybody else, who's gonna wanna say, I like A4 paper?

I'm using a silly example, but it's how you set a tone to allow that discussion to happen.

And we have a very formal process in NASA called the dissenting opinion process where anyone at any level can disagree with a position and there's a formal way by which their disagreement can be brought up the management chain so that they feel like they're heard and their concern is dispositioned.

I would say it's not formally exercised all the time, it's informally exercised a lot because we allow for the dissenting opinion to happen in meetings by calling it out.

Does anybody disagree with this?

We also all take training every year, training about Columbia to go through where the mistakes were made.

So what we do is very risky, but we try and take every bit of risk out and it's not just in the hardware, it's in our process and it's in hearing when people disagree.

So there's no guarantee that won't ever happen again because it is really hard, but I hope it never does.

- Thanks for your coming here and your great presentation.

I'm Ignatius '67 by the way.

And I'm gonna give you a choice of two questions.

The first is you mentioned SpaceX, I presume you were involved in the negotiations with SpaceX.

So your your first check, if you so choose, you can tell us a story, an interesting, startling, or funny story about Elon Musk.

That's option number one.

- How's the second question looking?

- Option number two.

Option number two is actually related to the last question which you had an exquisite answer to.

And that is, and before I ask it, I gotta say, there's nothing more exciting for me than a person stepping out onto the surface of Moon, that vision, that history is exhilarating.

That being said, I have recently read Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" and he made a pretty strong case for automated space travel over human space travel, citing the successes of automated space travel, the risks of human space travel.

And in fact, NASA has had an incredible success story with automated space travel, Explorer, the Mars rovers, the Hubble are incredible success stories.

You yourself have articulated the costs and the risks of putting humans on board.

Tell us what the benefits are.

Why are we putting people on board?

- Sure, sure.

The decision what you do with humans, what you do with robots is sometimes separate, sometimes the same because sometimes you want that pairing, eventually, you know, right now, there's samples being taken on the surface of Mars.

Some of those are gonna be picked up by the Mars sample return mission.

Some could be picked up by humans.

But the flexibility that humans bring to the equation when you get on the surface, I talked about our ultimate goal is science.

When we send an astronaut out and in the spacesuit they can walk a kilometer and a half, but I don't have to pre-program what I need that astronaut to do.

I can give them three tools and say, "Hey, take these three tools on your tool belt" and they can use them a variety of different ways and they can make their decisions without me having to decide five years before how to program that in, how to make sure I have all the right tools there for the robot.

Now it doesn't say robots aren't great, right?

What's happening on Mars and has happened on Mars is truly incredible.

And we're gonna send a rover to the South Pole called Viper.

NASA are gonna send Viper to look for volatiles, the water ice I talked about.

But I can tell the crew member, "Hey, go look for this type of rock."

They will all take geology training.

They're taking it now and they can determine, boy, that's a great rock or this isn't, or I might wanna walk 500 feet over here and not wait five days to transit 500 feet, and within a minute I can walk another 500 feet and look at a different rock.

So it's the flexibility of what the human brings in real time decision making and capability that really distinguishes it and return, the quicker return we get from that.

So it is a trade we do, but we don't do them exclusively from each other.

Whatever we could do with robots, we will do, but we also then trade it against how much does it cost, how long does it take?

And sometimes the human missions are gonna take longer, but they have a greater return.

And that's kind of a, as we look at the architecture that I talked about, our objectives are independent of for the most part humans.

Some things we say we're gonna do this with humans and then we trade in the architecture of how we're gonna do it, use cases we call them, and then the elements we need to do that.

So an element could pop out the end and say it's a robotic rover versus using a human for that.

Now sending a human into a permanently shadowed region of the Moon that has never seen sunlight and is gonna get to minus 200 degrees.

We may not want to do that with a human, but we might wanna send a smaller rover that the human can put out there and let it go down the crater and bring a sample back instead of building the whole rover to land, transit over, go down, bring it back, put on something to come back.

Instead the human just grabs it from the small rover and brings it back.

So it's a continuous trade against what we're trying to do to achieve those 63 objectives.

- Good afternoon, I'm a student at Solon High School and a member of the Youth Forum Council with the City Club.

My question is specifically with so many international signatories to the Artemis Accords, what are your thoughts on the geopolitical ramifications, particularly with Russia, China, and India?

- So the accords are the principles by which we're gonna operate.

So they are an important geopolitical message that we're gonna be open, we're gonna share our data, we're gonna be transparent about what we're gonna do, we're gonna operate with respect, we're not gonna disturb sites where other folks have already landed on the Moon, and we're gonna do things peacefully.

That's our statement.

That's what 28 other countries have decided to say that we're gonna operate the same way and we hope more people will sign on and agree that that's the way that they're gonna operate too.

That's a very important choice that every country has to make.

Germany just signed last week, I was fortunate enough to be at the signing ceremony for that and you would think, why does it take so long for Germany to decide to do that?

They had to make sure, not that they disagreed with the principles, but what were the implications for that on them as a nation, and they made that choice.

As I said, I hope other countries make that same choice because I think that's how we should all explore.

- Hello.

Thank you for being here today.

Kind of building onto that question that he just asked, like how will you split land on Moon and Mars with other countries?

Do you own part of it or is it like how countries are with Antarctica, how does that work?

- That's a great question.

Thank you for being here today and thank you for that last question too.

That's part of the principles.

The outer space treat, I think it's the Outer Space Treaty, again, I've said the FAR and the Outer Space Treaty in the same talk.

The Outer Space Treaty says you can't own land on the Moon.

And there's a lot of people that draw the similarity to Antarctica, right?

You don't own parts of it, you explore for scientific reasons.

I think the thing that we will have to deal with is when you use the resources, if there's water ice there, which we believe there is, how do we take that and use that for our purposes without impacting others?

So I talked about not landing by other people.

We don't want folks to land where our Apollo missions landed because we believe they're important sites for human history.

We don't want them disturbed.

We don't wanna land on top of country-wise rover, but we wanna access that.

But we're doing it for scientific purposes.

So that's the thing that the accords try and say is we're not just gonna abuse the land, we're not gonna leave the Moon like we did the earth, but we don't expect to own property.

But we would like to, the accords say, we'll respect the sites where we've landed and others have landed as well.

- All right, and our last text question.

"Are there any specific goals in the upcoming Artemis missions that has you particularly excited?"

- I mean, boy, I don't know that I'm not a...

I'm scared to death of some of these missions because our Artemis IV mission right now, I always talk about our schedule.

It has 11 lines on it and everybody's like, oh, 11 lines.

That's not bad.

Those are 11 different elements that have to come together for that mission to be successful.

I can't not think about Artemis II with the crew launching for the first time and going out and getting in that vehicle and then watching them as they go by the Moon and just hearing, hearing in their voices what they're seeing.

I think Artemis III, when we land, how can you not be excited about seeing someone step out on that lander?

I think much like Artemis I, I've said it before, I felt like I didn't breathe for 26 days on Artemis I and we landed in the ocean and like I kind of leaned over and put my hands on my knees and just took this big deep breath.

And I think that's what I'm most excited about is seeing the crew come home safe from every one of those missions, and they'll accomplish great things I know along the way, but ultimately that's probably what I'm most excited about.

- Absolutely.

All right friends, Jim Free with Kirsten Ellenbogen.

(applause) The City Club would like to thank our friend Baiju Shah for his support and also for providing the intro today at the forum.

Also would like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by Lutheran West High School, MC2STEM High School, Shaker Heights High School Innovative Center, Great Lakes Science Center, Greater Cleveland Partnership, and the NASA Glenn Research Center.

Thank you all for being here today.

Next Friday, September 29th, the City Club will host a discussion with writer Charlayne Hunter-Gault, winner of this year's Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award.

And be sure to join us on Friday, November 3rd for the 2023 State of the Great Lakes.

Dr. Richard Spinrad, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will join to talk about climate change's impact on our Great Lakes.

You can learn more about these forum and others at cityclub.org.

And thank you once again to Jim Free and Dr. Ellenbogen.

And thank you members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Cynthia Connolly.

This forum is now adjourned.

(applause) (bell clanging) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

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