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Learn more at costconnection.org.

I think it's in our destiny. We cross the seas. We climb the mountains. We're explorers. Astronauts are going to go to Mars someday, and they're going to go

beyond Mars.

Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation. I'm Dasha Burns, Politico's White House Bureau

Chief, and every week on this show, I invite one of the most compelling and sometimes

unexpected power players in Washington and beyond in for a chat to find out how

they are navigating and shaping this incredible era of American politics.

This week, I spoke with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. You all know NASA, but if you don't

know Isaacman, he is a billionaire entrepreneur who's been to space twice himself, and in fact, he became the first civilian to perform a spacewalk.

Folks, this was a very special interview for our show. I traveled to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to speak with Isaacman ahead of the Artemis 2 launch.

If you're watching, you'll see us

chatting in front of NASA's vehicle assembly building, the VAB, where rockets and other space

vehicles are housed and assembled, including Artemis 2, which was rolled out to the launch pad

just before we arrived. Now, the goal of Artemis II is to take humans the farthest they've ever

been from Earth. You may or may not remember this from school, but the last time humans visited the

moon was over 50 years ago, and Isaacman tells me this mission is one small step towards building

a permanent lunar base and even getting humanity to Mars one day in the not-so-distant

future. Outside of the nitty-gritty science of Artemis II, I also got to chat with Isaacman

about the politics of it all, why this mission matters for the modern global space race,

and whether he thinks going to the moon is a priority with everything going on here on Earth.

NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman, joins the conversation.

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