We have to make sure that we hit our milestones and we don't make mistakes and we don't have setbacks. To make sure that we don't have setbacks, we need to build redundancy into the architecture as much as possible. So instead of one lander, maybe we have two landers that can go from the Gateway down to the surface of the moon. Those are the kind of things that we're looking at to ensure success for the 2024 moon landing. In order to accelerate as fast as possible, one of my first initiatives even before the 2024 directive was given was to create what we call the Commercial Lunar Payloads Services program. CLPS [pronounced "clips"] is what we call it, and so we were turning to commercial industry and saying, "If NASA had a payload, who can deliver it and for what cost?" In other words, the access to the moon for small payloads is not going to be by NASA purchasing, owning and operating its own hardware, but instead buying a service from commercial industry.
展开▼
