I do enjoy engaging with some of the naysayers, not to blow up your feed, but in the respectful hope it helps others see a slightly different perspective. So your theory is that we created Artemis III to cover for the HLS landers being behind schedule. What I would tell you is that even if the landers were fully ready to go, I would not change a thing. I would still insist on Artemis III as a LEO rendezvous mission because it makes little sense to jump from a lunar flyby straight to a landing. It is imperative that we rebuild muscle memory with SLS and Orion and retire as much lander risk as close to Earth before committing NASA astronauts to the lunar surface. Do you know why you do not hear current or former NASA astronauts or engineers saying Artemis III mission is a bad idea? Because NASA wanted a LEO mission like this for many years. My job is not disruption for the sake of disruption, its actually much more about dusting off the NASA playbook from decades past. A playbook that worked on July 20th, 1969. It is giving NASA leadership and the workforce the flexibility to execute the mission the way they know it should be done. The reality, though, is that acceleration and programmatic change was necessary, as the Inspector General reports make clear. We have had to do a tremendous amount of work across the architecture, from the core stage and greater Orion component reuse, to phasing in lunar EVA suit capabilities and changing the upper-stage strategy, all with the objective of making a lunar landing, and then repeated landings, affordable and achievable within the necessary timeframes. Some in your camp seem to view any schedule pressure as a political whim. But President Reagan called for America to return to the Moon in 1988 in a National Space Policy, and we have had decades to get it done and spent over 100B in the process. So when exactly is the right political term to achieve the goal? If not now, which decade? And when we finally arrive, will the most valuable landing sites at the lunar South Pole still be available--or will someone else already be there.

Happy anniversary to Star Trek: Enterprise, which premiered on this day in 2001 with "Broken Bow," which took place 100 years before the events of The Original Series. Created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, it showed humanity's first foray into the final frontier. #StarTrek

Not sure what you mean by America’s space program being above politics. Leadership has been politically appointed since inception, national space policy is established by the executive branch, oversight and funding come from Congress, and industry lobbies everyone extensively. I would say it has always been very political, and if you love America’s space program, being politically savvy is an asset. I have also donated $30 million to charity this year, which is also not illegal.

In this recent clip, the Artemis II astronauts discuss the importance of describing visual information during their lunar flyby in April — and all the training they had to undergo to do it effectively.