Jim Green: Has Nasa lost its way?
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2022
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Sackur speaks to Jim Green who has just retired as chief scientist of Nasa. He was involved with extraordinary missions to Mars, Jupiter and Mercury but he also saw Nasa funding slashed and ever more reliance on co-operation with billionaire privateers. Has Nasa lost its way?
(Photo: Jim Green appears on Hardtalk via videolink)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:04.6 | My guest today has just retired after more than 40 years inside the American Space Agency. |
| 0:10.7 | The last four of them spent as NASA's chief scientist. |
| 0:14.6 | During that time, Dr. Jim Green has been intimately involved with some extraordinary achievements, |
| 0:22.6 | including the New Horizons spacecraft flyby of Pluto, the messenger mission to Mercury, the Juno spacecraft to Jupiter, |
| 0:30.1 | and his personal favorite, the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. All exhibited a remarkable mix of imagination and technological innovation. |
| 0:41.8 | Nonetheless, there is compelling evidence that NASA is in the biggest sense struggling to define its mission. |
| 0:49.3 | The moon landings took place five decades ago and plans to return there and then head to Mars |
| 0:55.8 | are already being pushed back. NASA's budget, as a proportion of overall US government spending, |
| 1:02.4 | is just a fraction of what it once was. Billionaire privateers like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos |
| 1:08.7 | have become indispensable partners for a cash-strapped federal agency, |
| 1:13.7 | which has also become embarrassingly dependent on cooperation with Russia, |
| 1:19.3 | cooperation thrown into doubt following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. |
| 1:23.8 | Perhaps most worrying of all, the public seems to believe space exploration is something of a luxury when our own planet is beset by existential challenges. |
| 1:35.4 | Does that mean NASA's golden age is gone? Well, Jim Green joins me now from Silver Spring, Maryland. |
| 1:43.2 | Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you so much, Stephen. |
| 1:46.0 | It's a pleasure to be here. Well, it is a real pleasure to have you on the show. And you have had a |
| 1:51.4 | pretty remarkable four decades-long career inside NASA. But if you were being honest with me, |
| 1:58.3 | would you accept that NASA's golden era came and went long before |
| 2:04.3 | even you arrived at the agency? Well, indeed, NASA has had actually several golden eras, and it's a matter |
| 2:11.8 | of perspective. You know, the program has not only humans that explore beyond Earth's boundaries, but also we have missions |
| 2:20.6 | that study the universe or move out into the solar system and explore. And we've absolutely |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.