I'm John Bachelor with Bob Zimmerman behind the black. We're headed to Mars. First, JPL asked for help, second. Mars sample returns getting a lot of help.

Bob, what's JPL one?

Yeah, these two stories are related, so I'll combine them, John.

JPL is the lead agency, it's not really government, but it really is government that's running

the Mars sample return mission, which the Inspector General has said is a mess and really

isn't going to work and it's going to be gigantically over budget, maybe 10 to 20 times,

and it's going to be way behind schedule so much

that it might not even work.

JPL's in charge of that.

And Gangers, having gotten a report of how bad it is, gave a blank check basically in

NASA. The House didn't want to give it the money. The Senate did. They passed the budget

and which basically said NASA can decide what it wants to do

it can you to do with the senate wants no money or the house wants to outside the house no money

or the senate a lot of money what what is that they're going to do it's going to across take the blank check if it could spend lots of money. Well, what is NASA going to do? It's going to cost take the blank check and it's going to spend lots of money for Mars

sample of return.

That's not good.

But what's interesting out of JPL is that they have now issued a request for proposals from the private sector for Mars exploration.

The timing of this right after that inspector report,

inspector general report suggests to me that JPL is now recognizing it can't do the job and

it's got to get help for the private sector. These requests for proposals

for studies, these are not full projects, these are low-cost studies to see if the private sector can do what JPL wants done

at the moon.

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