NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Wednesday that he supports "100 percent" the agency's Space Launch System program and the future of Alabama's Marshall Space Flight Center.
Bridenstine spoke to reporters in historic Marshall Building 4619 while taking his first tour of NASA's propulsion center in Huntsville since the Senate confirmed him as administrator in late April.
Building 4619 houses 60-foot-tall test stands for SLS components now, but the building has verified the design and construction of key parts of every American spaceship since the Apollo program. Marshall engineers are now pressure-testing a qualification version of the "intertank" that will connect SLS's liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel tanks.
"What this represents is a key piece of American architecture that is going to enable us to do more than we've ever done before," Bridenstine said of SLS. "A lot of times I hear folks say, well, these commercial companies are doing amazing things and the answer is, yes, they are, and so is SLS and so is Orion and so is the Marshall Space Flight Center."
Bridenstine said NASA plans to "buy access to space" and the International Space Station from commercial carriers such as SpaceX. "We want to be one customer of many customers," he said, "and that drives down our cost. And we want the providers to be many. If we have that capability ... they're competing on costs, they're competing on innovation (and) that means our access to space goes up and the cost to taxpayers goes down."
"And then we take American taxpayer dollars and use them on things like SLS and Orion to go further than we've ever gone before," he said.
Bridenstine spelled out the Trump administration's plan for deep space exploration. "We're going to use this rocket, ultimately, to get to the moon and to build an architecture that the president said will be sustainable," he said.
"It's not going to be like Apollo again, where we left flags and footprints over the course of six missions and never went back," Bridenstine said. "This time, we're going to stay."
A moon-orbiting space station, smaller than the International Space Station and built with "open source" technology, will let astronauts stay aboard and friends and partners dock and visit. A new, permanent base on the surface will let America "retire risk, prove capability, build reusable landers (and) prospect on the moon," Bridenstine said. The proven systems will prepare for a trip to Mars that America will make next, he said.
Bridenstine toured Marshall and spoke to employees. He said he wanted spouses and families of NASA employees "to know that what they do is important to the country."
"The history here is amazing," Bridenstine said. "We hope NASA is as important to Huntsville as Huntsville is to us."