At the end of a long day Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked across a table full of microphones and jokingly called Carlos Garcia-Gallan, the space agency’s new moon base manager, the “lunar viceroy.” It was a bit humorous, but it also reflected Isaacman’s affection for a longtime NASA employee who was willingly accepting a major new challenge.
García-Galán was, in many ways, the rising star at the day-long Ignition event in Washington, DC. Before this he had been a largely anonymous engineer at NASA, who has now been thrust into a very public role of leading the agency’s ambitious moon base initiative. (By the way, his official title is Program Executive.)
Ars had the chance to talk with García-Galán about NASA’s plans and, more importantly, how they might be implemented. Here is a lightly edited (for clarity) transcript of that conversation.
arse: YYou were previously involved with the Lunar Gateway, which has been effectively canceled to make way for the Moon Base, so I’d love to hear if that’s been a difficult transition for you.
carlos garcía-galan:That’s why change is always difficult. But it wasn’t hard to focus on doing something that was directly related to our objectives, which were returning humans to the lunar surface and building an outpost. So while I believe an orbiting outpost has value in overall exploration goals, that doesn’t mean we can’t do it later. We need to focus on the surface, and everyone wants to live on the surface. So I’m very excited, and I’m sure the rest of the Gateway team will too once they start turning their attention to that.
arse: : I could tell from your conversation that you were really excited about this.
carlos garcía-galan: Absolutely. Who wouldn’t? Yes.
arse: : I mean, I would. But as you said, I also think it’s a huge challenge. What is the most important thing you want to do first to deal with this?
carlos garcía-galan: So first of all, one of the things we talked about today is devoting all of NASA’s energy and resources to this. So I think, immediately, we’re going to be working with all the programs and projects that are doing something related to lunar exploration, including the Gateway with the previous architecture, and trying to tie it all together. Because a lot of good work has been done so far. We just need to basically focus on things that are more relevant to the critical path.
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