well, indeed. nasa has had, actually, several golden eras and it is a matter of perspective. you know, the programme has not only humans that explore beyond ea rth s boundaries, but also we have missions that study the universe or move out into the solar system and explore, and we have absolutely exploded in those areas that you may not be aware of. well, i kind of am aware of them because i ve done plenty of research into you, and you ve been intimately involved with research missions to mars, jupiter some remarkable work has been done. but isn t it true to say that the public imagination is only truly 100% captured when nasa is sending human beings to explore rock, celestial bodies, beyond our own? isn t that the truth? well, of course, we have that
so, what portion do you want to use on domestic programmes, what portion do you want to use for nasa to explore space? and, in fact, congress has been very bipartisan in terms of its support of nasa, allowing us to continue on at a steady rate, making some spectacular discoveries. well, you, jim, clearly are an optimist, because what you appear to be avoiding there is the issue of underfunding. jim chuckles. the politicians, for years, have been talking about their enthusiasm for nasa s mission to take human beings back to the moon as a prelude, then, to pushing on to a crewed expedition to mars. they think that is something the public would like and is enthusiastic about, but they re not prepared to pay for it. you ve had to already, before you left nasa s chief scientistjob, you had to accept that the money wasn t there to deliver on getting this mission up to the moon again by 2023.
what nasa is for in a very brief mission statement, what would it be? exploring the universe and answering some of the top questions we want to know. are we alone, and how did we get here? does the fact that the funding coming from the federal government to nasa has been slashed? if one looks at the history of this, around the time of the first moon landing, i think the us government was pouring 4% or more of the entire federal budget into the space programme. these days, nasa is lucky if it gets 0.4 or 0.5% from the federal government. does that suggest you that the politicians and the the public, too, have lost interest or faith in nasa s mission? i don t look at it that way. indeed, we have a large amount of our budget going into building the infrastructure that we use
to establish, it seems, the notion of satellite supremacy? isn t that where you and other americans are probably going to have to focus your interest from a national security point of view? indeed, the us has national security needs. space is an integral part of that. we use space as from a vantage point of looking down. that s always the high ground as we know it. and therefore, we re going to have to deal with these issues well into the future. did you when donald trump developed this notion of a space force which i noticejoe biden hasn t abandoned, the space force project continues were you supportive of it or, as a scientist, did you feel it was somehow a perversion of what space science should be about? well, my personal opinion is that nasa s not the only
by way of preparation, of course, for a mission to mars. my guest, jim green, retired as nasa s chief scientist earlier this year. are problems undermining nasa s mission? are problems of money and geopolitics undermining nasa s mission? jim green in silver spring, maryland, welcome to hardtalk. thank you so much, stephen. it s a pleasure to be here. well, it is a real pleasure to have you on the show, and you have had a pretty remarkable four decades long career inside nasa.