Carlos Garcia-Galan<\/strong>: So change is always hard. But it was not hard from the perspective of having the focus on doing something that\u2019s directly related to the objectives we have at hand, which are bringing humans back to the surface of the Moon and building an outpost. So while I do believe that an orbiting outpost has value in the overall exploration goals, it doesn\u2019t mean that we can\u2019t do it later. We need to be focused on the surface, and everybody wants to be on the surface. So I\u2019m super excited, and I\u2019m sure the rest of the Gateway team will be, once they pivot and start shifting their focus to that.<\/p>\n Ars<\/strong>: I could tell from your talk that you were really fired up about this.<\/em><\/p>\n Carlos Garcia-Galan<\/strong>: Absolutely. Who wouldn\u2019t be? Yeah.<\/p>\n Ars<\/strong>: I mean, I would be. But I also recognize, as you said, that this is a huge challenge. What is the most pressing thing you want to do first to tackle this?<\/em><\/p>\n Carlos Garcia-Galan<\/strong>: So first of all, one of the things that we talked about today is bringing the entire NASA might and resources to bear on this. So I think, immediately, we\u2019re going to be working with all the programs and projects that are doing something related to lunar exploration, including Gateway with the previous architecture, and trying to stitch it all together. Because there\u2019s great work that has happened so far. We just need to basically focus on the things that are more relevant to the critical path.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n You know, the cadence (of launches and landings) that we previewed today is not in our experience base at NASA. It\u2019s very demanding. I think it\u2019s important, it\u2019s critical that we set it that way, to identify the stress points. We want to find the choke points that are slowing us down. It\u2019s the same with human transportation, with demanding two landings on the Moon a year. Like, what is it that prevents us from doing that? We need to identify that. In my case, for the Moon base, it\u2019s the entire industry of people doing launches, in-space transportation, landers, payloads, rovers. So is it the supply chain? Is it the manufacturing capacity? I want to work with our partners to identify the stress points so we can actually tackle them. And close after that is bringing in our international partners and identifying where they want to play.<\/p>\n NASA released this rendering of a Moon base that will be built over the next decade.<\/p>\n Credit: Ars<\/strong>: Yeah, I think a lot of people have been wondering about Europe, Canada, Japan, and others. You\u2019ve been talking to them. What\u2019s the reaction been so far from the international partners to canceling Gateway and building a Moon base instead?<\/em><\/p>\n Carlos Garcia-Galan<\/strong>: Everybody\u2019s excited about it. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve seen one negative response. Of course, making a hard pivot on architecture, like with Gateway, you\u2019ve got to think about the investments people have made, emotional and resource wise. But look, we\u2019re all trying to do the same thing. We could all make more money somewhere else. We\u2019re into this for human exploration. The Moon is the next place. Being on the surface is the right objective. So we\u2019ll all get there.<\/p>\n Ars<\/strong>: Isaacman has made it clear that a Moon base should be NASA\u2019s priority and has told people at the agency to focus on this. Before there was talk about going to lunar orbit. There was talk about the surface. There were the commercial landers. But it seemed like there was no clear vision for what NASA was going to do at the Moon. How helpful is this clarity on NASA\u2019s goals and purpose?<\/em><\/p>\n Carlos Garcia-Galan<\/strong>: This mandate is a total game-changer. I\u2019m gonna call it the Jared (Isaacman) factor. I have not been a lunar surface person in the past. I\u2019ve worked on Orion. I\u2019ve worked on Gateway. I was a flight controller. But I\u2019ve seen all the great work over the last month or so that we\u2019ve been doing to stitch this plan together. Seeing all the great work that everybody has been doing is super energizing. And it has been clear that we all need to be focused on one thing, not 10 things. So to me, that is a game changer.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n Ars<\/strong>: Does the budget exist to support all of the activities you have planned on and near the Moon? It seems like an awful lot.<\/em><\/p>\n Carlos Garcia-Galan<\/strong>: We have forecasted $10 billion per phase, or so. A lot of that comes from the different pieces that we\u2019ve already been doing. Like, for example, we talked about a constellation of communications satellites around the Moon, five assets we had in the budget already. But now, every single thing we do to those spacecraft is going to be oriented to what we need for a lunar base. CLPS (the Commercial Lunar Payload Service program) already had money, and we\u2019re drastically expanding it. And some of that money will get drawn from other things that we\u2019re going to refocus. So the money, especially for the initial phases, as far as how budget procurement or appropriations gets forecasted, is there. Of course there\u2019s going to be some challenges when you move accounts and change things. There\u2019s some inefficiencies, but there\u2019s also opportunities. Maybe we can co-manifest a bunch of stuff that is going to the same place, you know, drones with something else. So, yeah, it\u2019s going to be a challenge. You always want more money, need more. We may have to adjust, but we\u2019re in the ballpark.<\/p>\n Ars<\/strong>: What would you say to people who looked at today\u2019s presentation and say, well, it all seems pretty fanciful. Or they say it\u2019s aspirational, or we\u2019ve seen this before with Constellation 20 years ago. Is it going to be different this time?<\/em><\/p>\n We have to make it different. We can\u2019t do the same thing and expect a different result. So it starts with me. Well, it really starts with the administrator, but he already laid down the vision and the management chain, and I absolutely intend to do things differently. As a matter of fact, I\u2019m not focusing on fancy things to begin with. I\u2019m focusing on how do we remove the blockers and chokeholds? Like, let\u2019s look at the supply chain. Let\u2019s hear from our vendors. Those are the brass tacks that I\u2019m going to be focusing on. And we\u2019re leveraging the team. I mean, we\u2019ve gotten top cover from the administrator to bring whatever we need to bear. Like, if it\u2019s expertise from JPL, bring it on. If it\u2019s facilities that we already have, what\u2019s happening in those facilities, and is that directly oriented towards the key objectives that we have? And if it\u2019s not, then we\u2019re taking priority. So the intent, absolutely, is to do things differently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the end of a long day on Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked down at a table littered with microphones and jokingly referred to the space agency\u2019s new Moon base manager, Carlos Garcia-Galan, as the \u201cLunar Viceroy.\u201d It was a bit of humor, but it also seemed to represent affection from Isaacman for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/moon-base1.webp\")
<\/p>\n
\n NASA<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n