Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at thequiz.fox and then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did. Play, share, and of course, listen to the quiz at thequiz.fox.
Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz. And this week, we're going to give some thoughts on the news, highlight the stupid, because, you know, there's always, always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. And then we're going to phone a friend. This time, we're going to have a conversation with former NASA administrator Jim Burdenstein. Jim served with me in the United States Congress, had the pleasure of being with him there. But he didn't last long in Congress because he was tapped by President Trump to become president.
the NASA administrator at a tumultuous time when basically Obama was trying to shut down the space program, thwarting our ability to get back up into space. And then here comes Jim. He gets tapped by President Trump and said, hey, we got to get back up in space. We got to be able to be self-sufficient, which gave rise to really some amazing things with SpaceX, Elon Musk and some other things. And
I don't know where this conversation is going to go exactly, except to really give some insight to what's something that is just absolutely fascinating to me. Something I wish I had spent some more time with when I was in Congress, and that is just space and exploration and everything that's going on in space. I think most people are oblivious to how much is actually going up out there with satellites and communications and science and science.
Anyway, I look forward. We're going to give a call to Jim and the former NASA administrator, Jim Bernstein. And I really look forward to that. But let's first take on a little hot take on the news. You know, if you if you really sit back and analyze what was Russia, why is Russia? Why did they want Ukraine?
You know, they did this incursion in Ukraine before in the Crimea region and took that over. They went into Georgia, the state of Georgia, not Georgia down south, but Georgia, the country of Georgia. It's something I got to do in Congress. They went out there and Russia came in and took 25, roughly 25 percent of Georgia.
And then Vladimir Putin signed some documents, and I think he's the one that signed it, but Russia nevertheless signed these documents saying, oh, we're going to withdraw. We just need some time to do it.
Meanwhile, they never had any plans or intentions of withdrawing. In fact, they locked it down. But when I went out there to Georgia with this congressional delegation that I was leading, they take you out just outside the capital city. It doesn't take very long to get there. And they give you these, you know, the great big, huge binoculars. And you go out there and you look. And as you look across, you see...
Where the Russians are supposedly going to dismantle and withdraw, that's the document they signed? Oh, no, no, no, no. What they did is they're fortifying it. We saw them converting a building that was erected pretty quickly to making it like cement with brick and fortifying that building in case there was some sort of pushback from Georgia or NAACP.
nato or the united states it's just a key indicator it's just a reminder that hey russia is an evil player they're a bad player you can't trust them with anything and i worry that at the end of the conclusion with russia with ukraine at some point i mean it's just amazing how well ukraine's been doing um
That they'll want to sign some peace treaty and, hey, why don't we just keep this land and we'll do a draw over this certain period of time. Don't trust them because of what happened in Georgia. That is, they absolutely lied. They got to be pushed out, totally out of Ukraine. But the big part I want to make here, the point I'm trying to make about Ukraine, why? Why did Russia, all the different places they could push out their territory and their boundaries, why did they want Ukraine?
Well, Ukraine is really a huge, massive breadbasket for this country or for the world. If you combine Ukraine with Russia, they account for between 25 and 30 percent of all the grain in the world. Think about how scary that is, because production in Ukraine right now with a war going on is just not going to happen.
The production is not going to happen. They're certainly not going to be able to harvest it, and they're not going to be able to export it. They can't get out with rail trains or shipments on boats and ships and those types of things. That whole production of grain is really going to hit the world. It was highlighted on FoxNews.com. But, folks, the impact we have felt with what's going on in Russia, and particularly Europe,
You're going to feel that at the supermarket. It takes a while for that to go through the system. But when you have 25% to 30% of the world's grain locked up in Ukraine and Russia with all the things going on, this is going to be a major impact. Now, fortunately, the United States does a good production with corn.
And if you're in Iowa or Nebraska or one of these big corn producers, thank goodness. We hope you have an incredible crop year this year because Ukraine accounts for about 9% to 10% of the world's corn, according to FoxNews.com. And so if suddenly there's 9% to 10% less corn than there normally is, guess what? Prices are going to go up.
So this is going to hurt us at some point when we get into the production. And think of all the things that we use corn for. It's the reason that... One of the reasons, but certainly a primary reason why Russia wanted Ukraine. It was because it's a food source. It's a breadbasket. They need to feed the people of Russia. Well, we also need to feed the people of the world. And that production is going to get hurt. And we're all going to feel it. We're going to feel it. So...
This is what President Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said. Russia has blocked almost all ports and all, so to speak, maritime opportunities to export food, our grain, barley, sunflower and more. A lot of things. There will be a crisis in the world. The second crisis after Energy One, which was provoked by Russia. End quote. Zelensky is absolutely right. This is going to hurt. It's going to be painful.
And look out. It's just foreshadowing what's going to come. All right. Now I want to also highlight, you know, I was going to put this in the stupid, but it's not stupid. It's not stupid. So I left it out of this category. It's just such a cute story. I don't know if you saw it. I just want to make sure everybody saw and heard this one. And it was on FoxNews.com. This is about a Texas mother of three, Kelsey Golden.
Very interesting that her name is Golden, right? Because she had a little surprise with DoorDash. When the driver arrived at her home...
with a as fox news calls it a super-sized surprise evidently her two-year-old son barrett he managed to get on her phone somehow some way he ordered 31 mcdonald's cheeseburgers uh spent 91.70 cents on the order including he gave her this two-year-old act gave the driver a 16 tip
I don't know how he did it, but mom said they don't even like McDonald's. That was kind of funny. But yeah, little Barrett there, he ordered 31 McDonald's cheeseburgers and somehow got them delivered. I just thought that was the cutest story. I could just see it happening like, what is going on? And then figuring out that the two-year-old on the phone said,
maybe hit some buttons he wasn't supposed to be hitting and i just thought that was cute but not stupid but you know it's just kind of cute all right but now it is time to bring on the stupid so let's bring on the stupid all right we gotta go to the bronx zoo for this one and uh give you a little bit of background this has to do with an elephant this elephant's name is happy happy evidently was captured i don't know what the circumstances were
but brought into captivity when this elephant was one years old. But there is a lawsuit in place now to give Happy standing in the court to free Happy. That he is, and I don't know all the technical jargon, but essentially illegally detained. Now this goes back and reminds me of a guy named Cass Sunstein. Now Cass Sunstein, you may recall, was the regulatory czar
Barack Obama. President Obama had Cass Sunstein in place. He's a Harvard professor, and I call him a nutty professor, a crazy professor, because this professor, this law professor, this Harvard professor is obviously very smart, but he is very crazy too. One of his legal theories, Cass Sunstein, is that animals should have the same standing in courts as people.
That is, if you were a hunter, say, and went out on a deer hunt or an elk hunt or whatever hunt it might be, and you killed that deer, you could be charged with murder. If you worked at a turkey plant or a hog plant or a chicken plant and you killed a chicken to make chicken, you could be charged with murder.
They believe, this crazy group of attorneys, that people and animals are the same and should be the same in the eyes of the court.
Now, think about how much chaos that would be if you got squirrels and donkeys and everybody else filing lawsuits represented by attorneys. If you really extrapolate it out and think about how crazy that is, this is the stupid that is happening at the Bronx Zoo as happy people.
Based on some attorney, I don't know what kind of conversation they had, but Happy is filing suit saying he's being illegally detained and wants release. Now, I don't know where he's going to go when he gets released, but...
But this is the case that is going on. Cass Sunstein, by the way, still involved with the government. He was brought back in by Biden. He's the guy that's leading the effort on immigration as it relates to the legal aspect. So when you want to know about all this Title 42 and all this stuff, this is the same guy, the guy who believes that animals should have standing in court. He's also the guy that's fighting to get as many illegal aliens into this country as possible.
It's just unbelievable how incestuous this group is with what they're doing. But they're both part of the Biden administration. And it's that same legal theory that's happened when playing out with the Bronx Zoo. And that to me is just downright stupid. All right. Time to move on now because we get to talk to somebody who's fascinating to me. Great guy. NASA administrator Jim Burdenstein. So let's give Jim a call.
Hey, Jim, this is Jason Chaffetz. Thanks so much for joining me on the Jason in the House podcast. It's my honor. Good to be with you. Hey, no, listen, I, you know, we had a chance to cross paths serving in the United States Congress there for a few years. You were the congressman and then, you know, I left and you went on to bigger and better things to becoming the NASA administrator. And I'm
I'm just fascinated by space. I am absolutely fascinated by space. And you had the front row seat. You had the realm. You had the con, so to speak, for a little while. I just want to talk about you, your background, and a little bit about the space program because there's a lot that goes on that I think a lot of people don't even realize about. Yeah. So, well, thank you for having me, Jason. I am.
As you're aware, I was a Navy pilot on active duty for nine years, plus another five years as a reservist. And so when I got to Congress, I was on the Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, which oversees all of our national security space capabilities. And then I was on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, Subcommittee on Space, which oversees NASA.
And then I was also on the subcommittee on the environment, which oversees NOAA.
which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And about 40% of NOAA's budget is space-related activities as it relates to weather forecasting and other things. Yeah, that's what I don't think anybody realizes, or very few, I should say, understand the depth of which NASA is so vital and such a participant in
in not just a day-to-day weather forecasting, but these climate models and everything else. I actually came and met with you while you were the administrator, and you were telling me about all these, how you can see droughts and other things happening from space all across the globe that nobody else could see.
Yeah, space is really transforming how we live and work in ways that I think most people don't understand. And I'll just give you a couple of very salient points. A lot of people don't realize that every banking transaction is dependent on a timing signal from space.
So if we lose that timing signal from space, we lose banking in the United States of America. A lot of folks don't realize that that same timing signal is used for the power grid. Again, if we lose that timing signal, we lose the power grid. These are, Jason, you know this, these are existential threats to our great nation.
A lot of people don't realize your terrestrial wireless networks, your cell phones are also dependent on a timing signal from GPS. So when we talk about regulating the flows of data on these networks, so those are all things that are critically important for how we live and work every day in this country. And if they were to be destroyed, they would, in essence, bring America to its knees.
And so there is a reason there is a reason that you see China and Russia launching anti-satellite missiles and co-orbital anti-satellite satellites. In other words, think of a satellite flying in formation with another satellite with maybe an intention to do something harmful.
So we see these activities because they know how dependent we are on space. Now, those are just some of the, I think, the highest profile things, but we think about how we communicate. Right now, we're communicating over the internet. There's a good chance that if we were communicating across the ocean, we'd have some kind of connectivity through space.
It's also important to recognize that the way we communicate, direct TV, dish network. You know, I don't know how it is in Utah, but in rural Oklahoma, if you don't have Internet broadband from space in rural Oklahoma, you probably don't have the Internet at all. And so Internet broadband is critically important for a lot of people in this country.
But that's just communication, how we navigate, how we produce food, how we produce energy, how we do disaster relief, national security, predict weather, understand climate. All of these things are dependent on space in ways that I think most Americans are not aware. The enemies of our country are certainly aware, which is why they're building capabilities to destroy space. And it's why President Trump was such a strong advocate in creating the Space Force.
We have to make sure that the enemies of our country know that no matter how much they invest in destroying space, they will not get an advantage over the United States of America. Yeah, I you know, for the the limited vantage point that I have not being on the committee of jurisdiction at the time, I was in awe when I got some briefings and was learning really for the first time about this.
How intricate. Everything, like every sector of our economy and our way of life is
has a nexus to space and how aggressive our enemies were being, you know, Jen Psaki in the white house, they kind of mocked president Trump with the formation of the space force. And Mike Pence, you know, was, it was doing all this stuff and they just make fun of them. But it was so a, I think it was disingenuous and it was, uh,
Taking a political advantage through ignorance. But it was just not cool in that they should have taken the opportunity to say, this is actually really important because my words, not yours. There's in part a war already going on in space. You've kind of alluded to some of that. But it's not just about sending somebody in space to go collect moon rocks or try to get to Mars. It is just so vital to our ability to have a good quality of life.
No, that's that's exactly right, Jason. And I remember watching even before President Trump started talking about the Space Force, there was a group of us on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee in the on the Armed Services Committee that were working to create the Space Force, you know, before President Trump really took the lead on it.
And what's interesting is we passed a National Defense Authorization Act that created what we called at the time the Space Corps. So think of like the Marine Corps reports to the secretary of the Navy. We were going to have a Space Corps, which would be a new military service that reports to the secretary of the Air Force in a similar way, which, by the way, is pretty much what got designed with what is now called the Space Force.
When we passed that bill initially in the House of Representatives, it got 344 bipartisan votes. Right. You know, when you're creating a new military branch, that is not an easy number to achieve.
So there was broad bipartisan support for it. It went to the Senate and Jason, as you know, everything that goes to the Senate dies. Right. So, so, but I think it's important to recognize that.
They got 344 bipartisan votes in the house. And then when president Trump took up the mantle, all of a sudden it was like this joke on all the late night, you know, talk, you know, the, the, the, the funny men that are on at night and things and making fun of the space force and how we're going to attack Mars and all this kind of nonsense. Yeah. Hollywood coming up with a silly show with Steve Carell and all that kind of stuff. But yeah,
Yeah. Let's go back for a second, though. Let's go back for a second because I want to come back to this. I want to come back to this. But people need to understand that I was elected same year that Barack Obama was elected. Right. So I came in office same time he did. And explain to people what happened, because we had the ability to get up into space through our space shuttle program. But then.
the obama administration president obama basically got rid of our ability to get into space right and yeah and so it relied upon the russians
So there was this challenge after the Columbia accident. And everybody said, OK, if we're going to take risks in space, we need to do big and bold things. We don't want to be in low Earth orbit forever. So after the Columbia accident, the goal was to finish the International Space Station.
retire the space shuttles and move on with a program called Constellation, which was a plan to go to the moon and then on to Mars. Well, interestingly, the Obama administration continued with the retirement of the space shuttles, but then canceled the Constellation program, which ultimately left us without a human spaceflight program for nine years, which was kind of...
kind of disappointing. And the reason it was so disappointing is we were spending, you know, at the end, we were spending almost $100 million. We were giving it to the Russians for every seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket to get our astronauts to the International Space Station, which we spent, you know, over $100 billion building. So we put ourselves, I say we, but our country,
was put into a position where we were dependent on Russia to get us access to the International Space Station, which we developed for $100 billion. And by the way, when we started flying on Russian Soyuz rockets, the price tag was like $20 million a seat. After we retired the space shuttles, it went up to almost $100 million per seat.
So and here's what the other thing is, a number of years ago, back, the head of Roscosmos said in an article is an aviation week in space technology. Somebody asked him how they were financing their kind of their national security space based communications and remote sensing projects.
And he said, we're financing it off balance sheet by launching foreign astronauts and foreign satellites. Yeah. Americans were paying for it. Yes. So the Russian space based capabilities are largely financed by the United States of America. It was a terrible, terrible position to be put in. I will tell you, one of the things I'm most proud of is NASA.
We did return America to launching its own astronauts on its own rockets from its own soil. And that was a glorious moment. And now we're back to not just flying in space, but we're putting together the Artemis program to go to the moon and onto Mars. And I will tell you, the new administration is.
has followed suit. They have not, they have not canceled these programs, um, that were advanced by the Trump administration. They didn't cancel the space force. They didn't cancel the Artemis program. And of course they're, they're moving, continuing to move forward with, uh, with commercial crew to the international space station. So I'll tell you, um,
Yes, there have been disappointing times in the past, but I do believe we've moved into a new era where both parties recognize it is not in the interest of the United States to start and stop multibillion dollar projects every time we have a change of administrations. Yeah. You know, I John Boehner, to his credit, used to say, look, you know, with weapons programs, with weapons,
military, you know, and I would assume they would include the space that you can't just be this light switch on, off, on, off, on, off. It just doesn't work that way if you're going to have any sort of continuity and the personnel that it takes. I mean, I think that's one of the great losses when Obama decided to shut down our ability to get into space with manned spaceflight is that talent dispersed. I mean, they needed a job and
There's a great documentary on Netflix. If I can give a shout-out to a good one. It's called Return to Space. It's largely focused on SpaceX and Elon Musk. But you play a very prominent role in that documentary.
I don't know if you've seen it yet, but it's is I thought it was very well done. And it has a lot of you personally speaking about the program and what you're trying to accomplish. I mean, the goal was we were going to have to have a public private partnership, correct? Yeah. So I have I have not seen the documentary. I've heard from a number of people about.
But I've not seen – look, Jason, you know how it is. I really don't like watching myself. And usually when the media – You're talking to somebody who maybe doesn't have the same philosophy. Right. I'm just teasing. Kind of.
It's all good. I was happy to do it. And I hope that America and the whole world can see that the United States of America still has the ability to do stunning things in space. And what I like about it now, like we're doing it not with government purchased owned and operated hardware. We're doing it with
The public partnering with the private sector to where the American taxpayer is not on the hook for funding every last ounce of it.
If the American taxpayer is the only one at the table in these programs, it ends up being a zero sum game where if you want to do something new, you have to cut something old. Or if you want to grow the program, you have to grow the budget. Well, when you partner with a private company that can put its own resources in,
all of a sudden it can take on many different directions and you can get capital from different places. And you get, like right now, we just saw Boeing launch what was called OFT2, Operational Flight Test 2, to the International Space Station, which was a human capsule that docked with the International Space Station. It's there right now. And of course, it's going to come home in a few days. But what this means is we've got
an entirely separate secondary system that can take American astronauts to the International Space Station. So you've got SpaceX with Crew Dragon and you've got Boeing with Starliner. And guess what? Both of them put their own
capital into these projects. And now we've got very different rockets, very different capsules. If one of them has a challenge or has a failure, the other one can continue to move forward. And we don't end up in the same situation we had with the space shuttle, where basically when the space shuttle had a setback, the whole space program shut down.
Like, I'm hoping that those days are behind us. And now we're going to move forward with public private partnerships with with commercial resupply, commercial crew and and soon commercial space stations themselves. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Jim Burdenstein right after this.
All right. I want to get your take on Donald Trump, but I'm going to ask you about Elon Musk. But let's go to Donald Trump first.
The president appoints you to this position. You passed just by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin the Senate confirmation process. But what was the direction or the vision that between the president and Mike Pence gave you? What did he want to see? What was the direction and kind of the management style, if you will, of Donald Trump as related to space?
So Donald Trump, I think really saw space exploration as a way to demonstrate American greatness, which obviously we all know he believed in fully. And, and I think in his, in his mind, you know, when, when the United States of America does not have a human spaceflight program and we don't have a moon program and, and, and Russia does, you know,
And and China does. I think in his mind, you know, his big thing was, how come we're not launching American astronauts yet? And when is it going to happen? And if you remember, you know, he he not only he not only wanted to do it, he actually put it in the State of the Union address. You know, we go about that in advance. Did you ask for that or did it or did he like just do it?
So the line was that we wanted in there was it's time to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. That's what we wanted in the speech. And then the speech happened and he said, we're going to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil by the end of the year. Yeah.
So that last phrase by the end of the year, you know, our jaws just kind of dropped and we were like, oh, well, he is dead serious about getting this done. You know how most presidents would say, well, we're going to do this, but, you know, we can push it off to the next administration. Then if it doesn't work, it's their fault. Right, right, right.
That's how most politicians think. That is not how President Trump viewed it. He wanted to get it done by the end of the year. He wanted to land on the moon during his time as presidency, which is why he put a date of 2024 on it. So, look, when it comes to that type of leadership, you know, it's impressive to say that
Not only are we going to do it, but we're going to do it on my watch, because even even if you go back to John F. Kennedy, when he gave his famous we go to the moon speech, he gave that speech in 1962 and he gave it to the end of the decade, which meant he would not have been in office. So put a deadline on it when he would be out of office.
President Trump wanted a deadline when he would be in office. Yeah, that seems like the Trump I can just and you're right. I bet you were sitting around the table with three other folks like, all right, we've got to put a hustle on it. But I think that's what makes such a successful president. Talk to me about Elon Musk. I mean, not only is he obviously had an unparalleled financial success, but he he really went out and took this risk consistently.
to great SpaceX. And he's got a love and a passion for it. And it comes out in that movie, The Return to Space. But I think he had dedicated, you know, $100 million, but probably went over that. But what was he like to interact with? What was...
Tell us about him and his vision. Obviously, his focus is Mars. He wants to send humans to Mars and he wants to get it done in his lifetime. And that drives pretty much everything that he does. When we think about the commercial resupply program to the International Space Station, the commercial crew program to the International Space Station,
Obviously, SpaceX made large investments into those programs. And then, of course, NASA came in and side by side invested in those same programs to to achieve success. And when I say we invested, it wasn't just money. We also put our engineers and our scientists with his engineers and his scientists. So I will tell you, working with Elon Musk was amazing.
From time to time, I mean, you know, like when you have any big organizations working together, there will be disagreements, there will be challenges. You know, there were times when we had a disagreement over what parachute system to use and the NASA engineers were saying one thing and
SpaceX engineers were saying something else. We had challenges with, you know, back in, I think it was April of 2019, we had a capsule blow up on a test pad. It was testing the launch abort system. And we had to change out all of the titanium to make it Inconel so that if it came in contact with nitrogen tetroxide at high volumes or at high velocities and high pressures,
It wouldn't explode. We had those challenges and, you know, disagreements, you know, from time to time amongst the engineers. But I'll tell you, when you deal with Elon, he is he is, in fact, the chief engineer at SpaceX. People don't realize that.
Like he's not, he's not just a figurehead. You know, we were meeting with the astronauts before they walked to the spacecraft and he's getting, he's getting text messages and phone calls about, you know, this valve or that valve that's not working exactly right. And, and, you know, how to solve the problem. And I was kind of taken aback. You know, I was, I was surprised he was the, he was the one getting those messages and making decisions and,
But that's who he is. I mean, he wants to be the chief engineer. He is the chief engineer. And that's not just for show. That's real. Wow. Well, that kind of comes to the degree that comes out, you know, based on what you're telling me. It comes out somewhat in the movie. I mean, it's obviously...
Yeah, he can stroke the check and make that happen. But boy, he really personally was involved and engaged. And how he found his engineers, I mean, there's one point where he's talking about
They're out there. I think it was the deserts of Utah. You know, you can get on the salt flats and launch some very small little rockets. And that has, you know, a lot of hobbyists and that sort of thing out there. And that's where he met some of the people that ended up helping him run SpaceX. And it's just amazing to me because they stepped up. They took huge risks.
They had to do things that hadn't been done before. And I don't know, it's just sort of a person who's watching from afar to be able to see that spacecraft land back on a pad in the middle of the ocean. It's just amazing to me. Yeah. Well, and when you see Starliner, which is the Boeing solution for resupplying or not resupplying, but taking crew to the International Space Station,
the, the, the Boeing starliner is actually going to land in New Mexico, which is even more impressive. It's not going to land in the water at all. It's going to land on, on land, which when, when you land under parachute power under, under a parachute descent like that, um, it's not an easy thing to do. So, but again, two separate systems, two, two different ways of achieving the same, the same thing. And, um,
I'm just, you know, I'm proud to live in a country that can, that can do these kinds of things. And to have somebody like Elon Musk who can step up at a young age and, and put together something like SpaceX and, and challenge companies across the American, you know, aerospace and defense industry to change the way they do business. I mean, he's, he has forced everybody to change the way they do business, which is,
Which is a good thing. And we've got to make sure that it continues. There has to be competition. And that's a positive development. Let's talk not only about current state, but where it's going to be or where it needs to go. Because it does take a significant investment by the American people.
But let's touch on some of the other things a little bit more in depth, if you can, on what the current space program does for us. Because like agriculture, for instance, we were when you and I visited whatever it was a couple of years ago. Yeah.
We were talking about how agriculture, those John Deere trucks are taking farm equipment or taking data from satellites. But NASA also had the ability to predict droughts based on rainfall and being able to understand droughts.
how that water was flowing off. I think we, the illustration he gave me was Australia. And you could see that coming like way in advance that anybody else could, or in Africa where, you know, some of these countries don't even have running water, let alone the ability to tell from space what's going on. Yeah. So a couple of things here, Jason, let's see. Number one,
One thing that gets me really excited is the ability to use certain parts of the spectrum to help inform what's called evil. What do you mean by the spectrum?
Oh, so when we think about spectrum, think about radio frequencies, even, you know, light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. You've got infrared light, ultraviolet light, visible light, and then parts of, you know, radio frequency spectrum. So just think of just, you know, wavelengths. And so if, if we use Landsat seven, for example, which is a satellite that's orbiting the earth and looking, looking at the earth,
in a certain part of the spectrum, we can actually see, we can measure something
evapotranspiration. I know that's a big word. People are like, what's that mean? Well, evapotranspiration, I think it's two things. Number one, plants transpire. They breathe. Just like humans breathe, plants breathe. Well, we can measure the transpiration of a plant and we can measure the evaporation from the soil and
And we can create from space, depending on the soil that you have and the plant that you have, we can create very precise irrigation metrics down to a quarter of a square mile. Not a quarter of a square, down to a quarter of an acre, which is even less. Wow. So what does this mean? This means, and this is the fundamental transformational technology.
This means that we can reduce water usage by about 25% and still increase crop yields while reducing the amount of nitrates by, I should say, preserving the nitrates in the soil because they don't have to wash away with the over-irrigation. So the bottom line is this. We can use
far less water and get far more crop yields. And so if you're in Utah or California or Nevada or Arizona,
Water managers have a really challenging time making sure that all of the needs are taken care of, from irrigation to making sure the reservoirs are full for fires, to making sure that the smelts have enough water in the streams that they're in, to even hydropower for electricity. So you've got all these demands on water. Population is growing. How do we manage it? Well, if we can save...
up to 25% of the water that we use for irrigation and use that for other purposes and increase crop yields at the same time, that can be transformation. So that's just one example of a technology that NASA is advancing. Now, NASA is not in the business of agriculture. I want to be clear. NASA is in the business of proving out the technologies, learning,
learning the science and then and then licensing it to the private sector so that others can take it to the globe and make it profitable and at the same time advance the human condition. This is, again, part of.
how absolutely amazing NASA is and how vital it is. It's doing so many things to help so many other sectors and parts of our life and communications and transportation and agriculture and national defense. And it's just really, truly unbelievable. All right. I got a couple of naive questions as somebody who's just gazes up to the stars and is just in awe.
I hear some things about space junk, like that there's always junk that's just floating around and every once in a while comes in the atmosphere or might hit a satellite. How in the world does NASA track all the space junk and how big is the problem? So NASA does not itself track the space junk. That's done by U.S. Space Command, which is largely organized by the U.S. Space Force personnel.
It's done at a facility called the Combined Space Operations Center in Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is now Vandenberg Space Force Base. And so all of this, all of this stuff, you know, that we have a network, I say we, I mean, the U.S. Space Command has a network of sensors around the globe, radar systems and telescopes that are
Tracking debris and all of this data goes back into the combined space operation center and it it it creates what are ultimately called conjunction warnings and analysis and it gives you a probability of collision if there's if there's a conjunction.
Conjunction is just a way of saying collision. Right, right. Space folks have different words. A little more sophisticated, yes. Yeah. But think, you know, it's doing all the combined space operation centers where all the calculations are done to determine if there's going to be a collision. And then a warning goes out to the operators. Now, here's the problem. The problem is that the U.S., the Air Force was doing this by default, right?
back in the 90s to make sure that our national security space capabilities were protected.
Well, it turns out that not only do we have national security space capabilities, but we've got civil space capabilities with NASA and NOAA. We've got commercial space capabilities now that are even much bigger than our government space capabilities. And we've got all of these international capabilities with the European Space Agency, the European Union, China, Russia, and then all these countries that have their own space assets from NASA.
India, Australia, et cetera, Canada. So you put all this together and you say the United States Space Force, or I should say U.S. Space Command, which is different, U.S. Space Command is not in the business of being the FAA for space. So one of the things that President Trump did in Space Policy Directive 3 is he said, we're going to not have
the military be the FAA for space, we're going to give it to the Commerce Department and we're going to stand up kind of a new way of doing it.
where the military can focus on fighting and winning wars in space through what's called the National Space Defense Center. And the Commerce Department can focus on being the FAA, basically doing space traffic management kind of functions for commercial, international and civil space capabilities. So, yeah, so that's that's the vision there.
The challenge has been the funding. Getting the funding for the Commerce Department to pick up that slack has been a challenge. It's starting to happen now, though. But I will tell you, this keeps me up at night. I'm telling you, Jason, we have got to get this figured out. Gosh, dang it. Listen to this. You just got me fired up. Imagine, Jason, for a second, a constellation that gets licensed to go into space.
Imagine this constellation is 15,000 satellites and the Federal Communication Commission, which is the entity that licensed the constellation, they determined that one and a half percent of those satellites are going to be derelict. In other words, they can't deorbit and they can't maneuver. So one and a half percent of 15,000 satellites is
is 225 satellites that can't maneuver and can't deorbit. In other words, this constellation is about to launch 225 large pieces of space debris. Like we we've never been in this position before. Now this is one constellation in one country.
And then you add that there are, say, a dozen constellations in this country that want to do the same thing. And then you say the European Space Agency, they have their own constellations, European Union, China, Russia.
They're all going to be launching these massive constellations. And this is, this is, you know, this is a big challenge that is not just for the United States, but the world is going to have to figure this out because, you know, when you, when you're, when you're traveling at 17,500 miles per hour orbiting the earth, um,
It when that thing when some when a collision happens, it results in many, many, many pieces of debris. And all of these constellations that are going up into space right now, they're all becoming even if they have the ability to autonomously maneuver around other objects and things like that. If one of them collides with another, it can set off a chain reaction.
And the more stuff we put into specific orbital shells, the more fuel we're putting, we're creating, we're putting more and more fuel there so that if a chain reaction does happen, it becomes that much worse. I will tell you, the regulatory environment of the United States is not keeping pace with what's happening commercially in space.
And it needs to be dealt with in a very serious way. And right now it is not. So this is something I'm going to dedicate my post NASA life to, to helping resolve, um,
And it's a big problem. But yeah, you just hit a nerve with me. Sorry about that. Well, it's good. I mean, it just makes sense to me, right? If something collides and it shatters or breaks up, then they're going all kinds of other directions. I mean, I played Asteroids when I went to the mall and played that. I could see how everything gets more and more complicated and
There's a lot of smart people that got to do this. But yeah, if we need the funding to do that, certainly seems like our government's bloated enough to go figure out how to reconstitute that money in the right direction there. I don't want to, gosh, I could just talk to you forever. But the justification for going to the moon and for Mars, what is the case for going to those two places? OK, well, I'll just start. I'll just start with Mars for a second.
And this is going to blow some minds. And I think that's important because the reality is we are on a quest to find signs of life within our own solar system that are not life that is not life on Earth.
So we think about Mars for a second because of spirit and opportunity, which were fantastic rovers, solar power. They're now dead. We know because of spirit and opportunity that Mars and its northern hemisphere was covered in ocean. Two thirds of the northern hemisphere of Mars was a liquid ocean. Mars had oxygen.
a thick atmosphere. Mars had a magnetosphere, just like Earth has a magnetosphere, that protected it from the radiation of the sun and deep space, just like Earth has a magnetosphere. So the magnetosphere, think of the molten core, the metal core of the Earth results in this magnetosphere around the Earth so that all of these, the radiation coming from the sun subsides
Some of it gets through, but not enough to kill us. That protection that we have here on Earth at one time existed on Mars. So we know Mars had an ocean. It had a thick atmosphere. It had a magnetosphere. That's important. Now what we know is that Mars has...
What are called complex organic compounds all over its surface. So the building blocks for life actually exist on the surface of Mars. They don't exist on the moon at all. Zero. But they're all over Mars. And of course, they're all over the Earth because we've got lots of life here on Earth.
So we now know that Mars had an ocean, a magnetosphere, a thick atmosphere. It's covered in complex organic compounds. We now know that the methane cycles of Mars match the seasons of Mars. That doesn't guarantee that there's life there. It could be geological in nature, but the probability of finding life just went up.
And finally, we have now found liquid water on Mars. In fact, we know that there's liquid water 12 kilometers under the surface of Mars. What do we know about liquid water here on Earth? Wherever there's liquid water, there's life.
Is that true on like when I when I say that, Jason, I'm talking about like your teardrop has life in it. A raindrop has life in it. Wherever there is liquid water, there is life. The question is, is that true on Mars? And that's the question we don't know. But we need to find out because whoever finds out whether or not life is on Mars or existed on Mars at one point in the past, whoever finds that out, it will forever disappear.
add chapters to science books and textbooks. Now, here's the question. It could very well be China that makes that discovery. It'd be just like instead of reading about Neil Armstrong, we could be listening about, you know, a cosmonaut from Russia that landed on the moon before the United States of America. In my view, it should be the United States of America that makes these stunning discoveries. It should be us with our coalition of nations that
that are willing to go with us, because this really is about what political and economic system is better. And it's about who has the ability to advance technology faster. I really believe that our system is superior. It's been proven throughout time. And certainly when we make these kind of discoveries,
It's going to inspire, it's going to, if we find life on another world, Jason, it's going to change how we think about space exploration. So I think Mars is the place where we need to go. I think that the moon, the challenge with Mars is that if a human goes to Mars,
By the time you get there, so Mars and Earth are in separate orbits around the sun. By the time you get to Mars, you're not aligned with the Earth on the same side of the sun anymore. That means you have to stay there for a period of about two years before you can come home. The value of the moon is...
The earth moon is a system. So wherever the earth goes around the sun, the moon is with us. And it's always a three day journey home, which means we can go to the moon. We can learn how to live and work on another world for long periods of time using the resources of that world, which is going to be necessary for a trip to Mars. And on the moon, we have now discovered hundreds of millions of tons of water ice, water ice represents oxygen and hydrogen. So it's, it's, it's air to breathe. It's fuel.
You know, hydrogen is fuel, oxygen is air to breathe and H2O, of course, is water to drink. So we can use the resources of the moon to learn how to live and work on the moon for long periods of time and as much as possible, create the capability to take that to Mars, where when you get to Mars, you're not going to be able to immediately come home. Yeah.
So these are just some of the things that get me excited. I can tell you about other destinations within our own solar system that are even more spectacular than Mars. Well, go ahead. We got another minute for that. Go, yeah, tell us. Okay. So one thing that gets me really excited is a little moon of Jupiter called Europa. Okay.
Europa is a world that's about the size of our moon, except it's pure water. The entire moon is an ocean, but it's sufficiently far from the sun that, that the outside of Europa is an ice shell. It is a, it is an ice shell. And because we've used Hubble space telescope, we have been able to see now and other devices, the, um,
the Juno probe around Jupiter as well. But we have now been able to see
that as Europa orbits Jupiter, it's got tides and those tides take the liquid ocean inside Europa and you see it spraying out into space. What does this mean? This means we know that there is a warm liquid ocean underneath the ice shell. The ice shell protects that ocean underneath. It protects that ocean from the radiation of deep space, from the radiation of the sun as well.
And so if you're interested in finding life in our own solar system, the highest probability in my view would be to go to Europa. Now, I'm not saying it's there. I don't know that it's there. Nobody else knows if it's there. But the probability of finding life in our own solar system that is not from Earth continues to go up day in and day out. And these are just some of the most unique destinations. And there are other ice moons that
in our solar system. I'll tell you one other thing that's fascinating. People say Pluto is not a planet. I say that's garbage. Pluto is a planet. Well, good. My fourth grade science, I didn't want to know that I actually failed. Come on. Pluto's a planet. I'm glad to hear the former. I'm going to use your name for the rest of my life and my kids' life. That's good. I'm sorry. Keep going. So Pluto is...
Pluto has a multilayer atmosphere. It has the largest glacier in the solar system. It's got five moons. It has, it also has organic compounds on its surface, which is interesting. And then the other thing that's even, even more fascinating is the way it, the way we have learned that it wobbles, we believe very strongly there is a liquid ocean inside of Pluto and
This is an amazing kind of discovery. Again, knowing what we know about liquid water here on Earth, I mean, these are fascinating discoveries that, you know, again, the probability of finding life on another world in our own solar system is going up significantly. Okay, now, you've probably heard of the James Webb Space Telescope. It is now on the other side of the moon about a million miles, and it's doing good work.
The James Webb Space Telescope is going to help us see not just distant stars, but it's going to help us see the atmospheres of planets that are orbiting distant stars. If you can imagine, we're going to be able to make determinations as to the composition of the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars. What does that mean? That means we might be able to see...
industrialized chemicals, chemicals that only exist in industrialized civilizations from planets orbiting other stars. I'm not saying we're going to, I don't know, but certainly the James Webb Space Telescope, if it can give us that kind of information, it's going to be absolutely stunning. Regardless, it should help us
see the composition of atmospheres of planets around other stars. I got to tell you, first of all, I can understand why the president appointed you as the NASA administrator. I love your enthusiasm, your knowledge base. It's just what an amazing organization and somebody who's actually, you know, on the forefront of science and discovery and
I just, I love what the people do there. I love the way they do it. And your insight on this is so good. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more right after this.
I could go on and on and on, but I have to transition because there's only so much space on the internet. I'd have to transition to asking you a few personal questions to kind of get to know you a little bit better. But your vision of what space and NASA should do is it's inspirational. And I hope a lot of people listen to this podcast because I do think we need to continue to have the ability. I do think...
Being the leader of the free world, this is a very worthwhile investment. And I'm just fascinated by it. And thank you for your service to that. But I also want to thank you for your service to our nation serving in the United States military.
You stepped up and did that. It's just really, really just great. Awesome. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure. All right. So I'm going to ask you a few rapid questions as we kind of wrap up the podcast here. All right. You ready? Okay. I don't care how many times you've studied Pluto and Europa, but you're probably not prepared for these. But let's give it a go, okay? To kind of get to know Jim Bernstein just a little bit better. All right. First concert you attended. Oh, my.
First, goodness. I was in, I guess I was in college and I went to a Jeff Beck concert. He's a guitarist. All right. That counts. Some of my, some of my roommates were, were all into it. I really wasn't, but I went because they went. Where'd you go to college? I went to Rice University in Houston. Oh yeah. Yeah. All right. What was your high school mascot?
We are the Jinx Trojans. Wait a sec. The Trojans? Yes. The Jinx Trojans. Interesting. All right. All right. Favorite vegetable? Oh, goodness. I'm going to go with carrots. Carrots.
Oh, safe choice. Good, good product. Good, warm, cooked, or even just raw, cold. That's good. Yeah, I go with the raw carrots. I like the crunch. What was your first job? I'm not talking with your parents, you know, hey, take out the garbage or mow the lawn. I'm talking to like your first job away from your parents, reporting to somebody else where you actually got a paycheck.
Okay, so I was a lifeguard at the Jinx Public Pool in Jinx, Oklahoma. That's a good job. It's a good summer job. Yeah. If you could invite one person over, if you just said, hey, you know, honey, we're going to have a special guest join us tonight, dead or alive.
And you could have that one person come join you and break bread and enjoy a meal, maybe a little dessert and have a dinner conversation. Who would that one person be? I'm going to go with Jason Chaffetz. Oh, yeah. All right, Josh. I'll come over there for a free slice of pizza. Are you kidding? That's easy. No, come on. Who would you invite? Like, it could be anybody in history, dead or alive. Oh, my goodness. I mean, could you...
I mean, how could I pick anybody other than Jesus? I'm a I'm a I'm a Christian. I mean, it'd have to be him. There you go. Good. Good answer. Good answer. Life's most embarrassing moment for Jim. Oh, OK. This is this is a good one. Oh, OK. I'm in college. I have in college. I am.
I had a 1972 Volkswagen Super Beetle. So basically a Volkswagen bug. And I'm driving from Tulsa, Oklahoma down to Houston, Texas. And it's pouring down rain. And I've got to get down there. I can't remember what the deal was. I had something I had to be at down at school. Right.
And pouring down rain, my windshield wipers are broken. I was a swimmer in college. So I literally rolled down my window and
I put on my goggles, put my head out the side window and I kept driving to Houston like that. And the storm, it lasted for at least another 30 minutes or an hour. People were driving by and my, you know, this 1972 Volkswagen beetle, it, it, I don't know, it might've gone 55, 60 miles an hour at the high end. And people were passing me honking and,
you know, I guess I looked ridiculous, but I got, I got there, Jason. I got where I needed to be. Perseverance. That's good. Never, never say never put those goggles on. That's good. That's great. That's great. All right. Last, last couple of questions. Pineapple on pizza. Yes or no? Yes. Oh gosh. We were on a roll. The judges do not like this answer, but we'll,
Giving your service to our country, we'll let it slide. Well, the bottom line is pizza, period. And if I got to put pineapple on it, we'll do it. Yeah, I don't know about that. But yeah, we got it. Unique talent nobody knows about. Things that something you can do that nobody knows. Like, yeah, I can actually juggle or I can do that. You just nailed it. I can, in fact, juggle.
Yeah. Yes, I can juggle. You know, when I was in flight school in the Navy, I had an instructor that told me, you know, you know, when you talk about, you know, flying an airplane and talking on the radio and, you know, flying not just the airplane, but flying in formation and operating a weapon system and doing all these things that you have to do in a plane. He said it's a lot like juggling. If you can figure out how to juggle, you can you can you can be a pilot in the Navy and
And I went home that night and I was like, I'm going to see if I can juggle. I spent the weekend practicing juggling. By the end of the weekend, I was juggling. Oh, that's good. Yeah. So so, yeah, that is that is unique talent. Now, I got to figure out how to how to make that valuable to me. Well, running NASA seems like a pretty good juggling act, as well as having to testify before Congress and, you know, deal with the White House and everything.
I that's you. You have proven yourself on the juggling. I can tell you that. All right. Last question. Best advice you ever got. Best advice. OK, the key is this. Whatever you're doing. And this comes from the military. Whatever you're doing, no matter how mundane you might think it is at the time.
No matter how much you think you're falling behind your peers, no matter what the circumstances might be, always strive for sustained superior performance. Wherever you happen to be, whatever mundane task you're given, strive for sustained superior performance and everything else will take care of itself. And if just focus on that, where you are, what you're doing,
focus on sustained superior performance and everything will work out well. Great advice, great advice and an amazing career. I can't wait to see what you're able to tackle next. And it's such a great perspective and I hope you continue to share the vision for space and NASA, wherever that might take you. And thank you again, as I said earlier, to your service.
not just stepping up at NASA, but certainly in the United States military. We appreciate that and all the sacrifices a family goes through with all the service that you've given through the years.
Jim Bernstein, I really, really do appreciate your time today on the Jason on the House podcast. Well, thank you, Jason. We'll talk soon. Can't thank Jim enough. Jim is just a wonderful, good guy. Pours his heart into things, served his country in the military. Just a fascinating person and we need him to continue to be involved in space and exploration and
And be able to, with a happy face, be able to explain to the American people what we're doing, how we're doing. And thank him for his service. And thanks for having him join us on the Jason in the House podcast. Hope you can rate it, subscribe to it. And we'll be back with more next week. Be sure to subscribe to us so you get it every week. But I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.
This is Jimmy Fallon inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at foxacrossamerica.com.
