On the heels of a predecessor saying otherwise, acting NASA administrator and The Real World alumni Sean Duffy says NASA will beat China to the moon, according to Julia Jester and Denise Chow at NBC News:

During an internal employee town hall Thursday, Duffy warned of “letting safety be the enemy of progress” when it comes to winning the new space race, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by NBC News.

“We are safety driven, and we should be safety driven, and FAA and DOT, we’re the same, but sometimes we can let safety be the enemy of making progress,” said Duffy, who also serves as Transportation Secretary.

“We have to be able to take some leaps. We have to be able to jump forward in our innovation and drive this mission, and there’s always a balance to that, but we can’t side on the side of doing nothing because we’re afraid of any risk,” he told NASA employees alongside newly named NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya.

A spokesperson for NASA said the agency remains committed to safety.

There have been times in NASA’s past where the “safety vs. progress” balance went too far in the wrong direction, and they usually end badly.

When Jim Bridenstine was named NASA Administrator during Trump’s first time in office, many folks (including me) were worried that a Congressional representative from Oklahoma was a bad choice, but by the time he was out of office, I think most people thought he had done a pretty good job at shepherding NASA through a couple of rocky years.

In the years since, he’s been working in the private space sector, and was recently questioned on Capitol Hill about where NASA is in its slow motion return to the moon.

Ryan Caton and Chris Bergin report:

In a pointed testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine expressed deep concerns about the complexity and feasibility of NASA’s Artemis program, warning that the United States is “highly unlikely” to land astronauts on the Moon before China due to challenges with orbital refueling and an ambitious architecture.

They go on:

Bridenstine highlighted the high costs and sustainability issues with NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, calling it “extraordinarily expensive”, but advocating for its continued use since it’s already developed. He also praised the recent “Big Beautiful Bill,” which secures funding for Artemis 4 and 5 missions using SLS Block 1B and the Orion spacecraft.

However, he stressed a critical gap: notably that the U.S. lacks a ready Lunar Lander.

Under NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) contracts, two vehicles are in development—SpaceX’s Starship HLS for Artemis 3 and 4, and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mk2 for Artemis 5.

I wish he had been more vocal about these issues when he was running the agency, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong now.