NASA Administrator Bill Nelson On The Agency’s Future

Like many at NASA, Bill Nelson has spent his career in public service. But unlike the engineers and scientists he oversees as agency administrator, Nelson spent the bulk of his 50-year career in Congress, representing Florida in the U.S. House and later the Senate. That, as well as a 1986 guest flight aboard space shuttle Columbia—the last mission before the Challenger accident—shaped Nelson’s views on the changing international arena NASA now navigates and the agency’s growing reliance on commercially provided services. Nelson, who has served as administrator of NASA since 2021, spoke with Aviation Week editors Irene Klotz, Joe Anselmo and Michael Bruno on Oct. 2.

AW&ST: You’ve lived through the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the melding of the U.S. and Russian human space programs that culminated in the International Space Station (ISS) partnership. With the station operations due to end in 2030, what do you see happening in the future? I have been very pleased about—but also very sensitive to—how it is good for our two countries to have a point of contact where we are working cooperatively together and have been ever since 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz mission. There is value in continuing that. With the ISS, clearly that is a necessity because you can’t operate the station unless you’ve got the Russians and the Americans working together. It has kept us together under very difficult circumstances, with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin rampaging all over Ukraine. Am I concerned in 2024 for something that is going to occur when the ISS program ends? I have a lot to think about, and I’m not worrying about that.

The ISS recently hosted the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crew Flight Test. Considering the problems the program has encountered, do you think NASA could have done something differently so that 10 years down the road Boeing would not still be trying to get this vehicle operational? Well, I bear some of the responsibility because [former U.S. Sen.] Kay Bailey Hutchison and I are the authors of the 2010 bill that set up the commercial program of NASA. That was very successfully implemented with the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon, though they had their rough starts to begin with as well. That’s part of bringing a commercial aspect to NASA spaceflight—you allow room for the creativity, ingenuity and outside expertise of private industry to get in the mix, with NASA overseeing it. That approach worked very well with SpaceX and then had some hiccups with the Boeing Starliner. This has been an evolutionary process, the creation of a new kind of relationship—like our international participation and partnerships, such as the lunar pressurized rover with Japan and the different components on the Gateway [planned lunar-orbiting outpost in support of the Artemis program]. That helps offset the cost.

Is NASA getting its money’s worth for what it has invested in the Starliner program? As soon as it becomes operational, we will. I gave the new Boeing CEO, Kelly Ortberg, a courtesy call before we publicly announced the decision to fly Starliner home without crew. I wanted to be straight up with him and also get a sense from him about their willingness to continue. I do believe he’s going to continue on the Starliner. And of course, we need that second access to space.

Traditionally, NASA has operated big programs under cost-plus-award fee contracts, which support the NASA workforce and some of the field centers. Does that need to change? Do you need the standing armies and the multibillion-dollar Artemis architecture in this new era of emerging capabilities in the private sector? We are trying to make an arrangement with commercial and international in a way that was never contemplated before. It has worked very well with the SpaceX Falcon 9, and we have optimism on the commercial lunar landers. It’s not a black or white answer to your question. It’s an evolutionary concept of trying something new which will be more efficient, cost less and be faster, and if we get anywhere near that, then we’ve succeeded.

Is the Artemis architecture flexible enough to stand down from the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft if SpaceX’s Starship becomes an operational system? You are making an assumption that I do not agree with: that these private companies will replace NASA and Artemis.

If they can do the job with less money and less overhead, should they? All I know is there is only one [Moon-/Mars-class] rocket flying and that is the SLS. The others are not off the ground and haven’t orbited yet, so I’ve got to take it one step at a time. Go back to commercial crew and cargo to the space station. SpaceX would never be where it is had it not been for NASA, which made investments early in the program and as SpaceX was blowing up Falcon 1s. I don’t see the implied question you posit coming into being—and if it does, it’ll be several years down the road. By then, things will have evolved and matured, and who knows? At that point, we may be building the big propulsion system to take us to Mars.

How and when do you see NASA making the kind of structural change, if need be, to adapt as the years and decades go on? As a far-reaching, far-sighted analogy, NASA has already demonstrated that and so much in science and exploration, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the two dozen climate spacecraft that are giving us a composite understanding of what’s happening to the Earth and its climate. NASA has been way out in front of a lot of others.

Now, having said that, change is hard, but you see the changes that are occurring. Take the last Norm Augustine report—he’s done three of these, and Norm knows what he’s talking about. He basically said that if NASA were a business, what it is doing is preparing itself to go out of business. Why? Because we’re not investing in the infrastructure and in the people the way we should.

We are taking immediate steps to turn that around. I go up to the Hill and I beg for $5 billion worth of infrastructure, and I don’t get it. The only way I get it is when a storm happens and the roof is leaking. NASA is saved right now by virtue of people wanting to work here. People will come here and stay because of the work environment that they love. But for the future, you’ve got to invest in your people, and you’ve got to change some of these old buildings that are being patched with chewing gum and baling wire.

Do you think the election will affect the budget environment that NASA now finds itself in? Absolutely, but I’m not going to get into partisan politics. NASA is a nonpartisan place. In that respect, we’re like the Defense Department. I serve at the pleasure of the president.

Is NASA doing enough to help the aviation industry with its sustainability challenge? We’re doing what we can with a budget that’s only about $1 billion per year. I think we’re showing some promise with the high fuselage and thin wing, which brings you efficiencies of flight. You can put a bigger fan jet engine, and between the two you should be able to get about 30% fuel savings. That will be huge on the most trafficked mid-range, single-aisle commercial airliner. We put in more money than Boeing did on this, the X-66. The same with our financial incentives to [electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicle] startups. Combined, these projects are going to give us what some call sustainability. I call it greater efficiency of aircraft so that you rely less on fossil fuels.

Is the X-59 going to fly this year? It should. I haven’t heard that it’s delayed. It’s been behind schedule.

Does China represent a threat to U.S. leadership? Chinese supremacy is what they’re trying. In the South China Sea, China is going into other peoples’ territorial waters—including the Philippines’—and paving runways and digging out harbors for their military ships and suddenly claiming that that is theirs. I don’t want that to happen on the south pole of the Moon. I don’t want China to get there before we do with astronauts and as result say, “This is ours, stay out,” when, in fact, if we have found water in abundance it becomes a very valuable resource on the Moon.

Do you think that could happen? Do you have confidence that NASA, with Artemis II and III and the whole lunar architecture, will be able to have that kind of presence on the Moon ahead of China? Let me separate that into two questions. First question is: “Do I think that China will try that?” I’ve always found that you can tell about where a fella is going knowing where he’s been, and China has clearly stated that modus operandi. Your second question is: “Are we going to make it to the south pole of the Moon before China?” The answer to that is “yes.”

Do you have any schedule concerns over Artemis III being dependent on unproven systems such as the Human Landing System (HLS)? I have a lot less concern after the very successful flight of Artemis I, but of course I have concerns about the schedule. There are some things that are out of our control and in the private sector itself. For example, some of the HLS delay is when Blue Origin loses the first round of competition and then sues. That delays everything for six months. There are delays with some of the environmental concerns and the fact that maybe the FAA doesn’t have enough people to process everything that’s on their plate. That causes delays on the new [HLS] Starship and its development. The FAA is even questioning the primacy of the space mission for Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. I’ve read the law, first passed in 1972, as well as the legislative congressional intent that says the space mission is the prime mission. Others defer to that. That is written in the law.

Does that have any implications for the environmental issues SpaceX is facing in Boca Chica, Texas? I’m not mixing the two in my description here. Hopefully for flying Starship at 39A, that is going to be resolved pretty quickly if they’ll go and read the law. But it’s another example about delays.

Do you have any concerns about the state of the commercial space industry? Do you think it’s healthy? There are going to be starts and stops, and there already have been. This is what startups are all about, particularly startups that don’t have a billionaire behind them. It’s part of the free market. This is to be expected.

Do you have any concerns about the supply chain feeding into NASA, not because of startups, but just in general? The short answer is “no,” and the longer answer is, “why?” Because if there is a business case to be made, it will come.

What about in cases where there’s not a business case, like for the Mars Sample Return mission? It is the responsibility of government to go and retrieve the samples and to continue to search for life. That is a financial responsibility of the government. The problem was that what the agency had come up with to do Mars Sample Return was going to break the bank, and it was going to be way too late. It was going to cost $11 billion, and we weren’t even going to get the samples back until 2040, and so I pulled the plug on it. I made that decision thinking that what we could do is go out to the centers, private industry and universities and generate new ideas for how you could get the samples back earlier and cheaper than $11 billion. I think this might end up being a win-win.

Would you be willing to try that same approach to the goal of sending astronauts back to the Moon? See if industry has other ideas of how to accomplish that without the price tag of the SLS, Orion and Gateway? We have plenty of incentive to send astronauts to the Moon to prevent any competitors from suddenly getting there and saying, “This is ours.”

Let’s try this again: In these days of precious budget dollars, are you OK with how much NASA is spending on the SLS, Orion and Gateway programs for Artemis? I wish it could be cheaper, but when you develop technology to do hard things, it’s going to cost money. I’m always looking to how we can do it cheaper, and that was one of the ideas that Kay Bailey Hutchison and I had in 2010 to get commercial partners—so that you could share the ingenuity, the ideas and the cost. That’s also why we are reaching out into the international community to share the ideas and cost on Artemis, such as the Japanese rover, parts of Gateway and the European service module on Orion. There are other reasons also, such as bringing people together across international boundaries.

There was a time that working with the Soviet Union and then Russia seemed inconceivable. Do you imagine that we’ll ever get to the point where China and the U.S. will cooperate in space more than what is going on now? I hope so, but right now they’ve pretty well expressed their intent—and usually when they express it publicly, they end up doing what they have expressed. Their actions in the Indo-Pacific theater are another indication.

You’ve had this long career associated with space. Are you disappointed that the last 25 years have been more about evolution than revolution? I’m exhilarated. I’m very fortunate as a country lawyer to be given some measure of leadership over a bunch of wizards.