Space Brings People Together

In “A Vision for America’s Next Era in Space” (Issues, Spring 2026), Brian Babin, chairman of the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, gets at the right question for this moment: How does America keep leading in space? Part of the answer is remembering why NASA and space exploration matter so much to our country. At a time when Americans don’t agree on much, NASA still brings people together.

Artemis II showed why. It wasn’t just about a spacecraft flying around the Moon. For a moment, it united America. Families gathered around TVs. Kids looked up at the sky and wondered what might be possible for them. We were all pulling in the same direction. That’s one reason I worry about framing space too narrowly through the lens of competition. Leadership matters. But our greatest strength has never been simply getting somewhere first. It has been our ability to unite around common goals that makes ambitious exploration possible.

That foundation starts with NASA’s science missions. For decades, NASA has built the most complex systems ever to push the envelope of exploration: rovers on Mars, spacecraft reaching Saturn and Pluto, and the Hubble and Webb space telescopes showing us the universe. For decades, NASA has pulled off these missions flawlessly, to the point that we take them for granted.

That’s why the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to cancel the next decade’s worth of scientific missions are so shortsighted. That would weaken American leadership and undercut future exploration. If we learned anything from Artemis II, we should be asking NASA to do more, not less. Over the next decade, we should have a goal of landing humans back on the Moon, sending rovers back to Mars, launching next-generation deep space telescopes, and more. Unless Congress acts, these missions, and dozens more, will be cancelled.

And look, space exploration is hard. One lesson I learned as a test pilot and astronaut is that complex systems don’t succeed because everything works perfectly the first time. They succeed because people learn and adapt. That’s true whether we’re talking about NASA science missions, human exploration, or commercial spaceflight. They all depend on the same foundation: long-term investment and technical expertise.

NASA’s commercial partnerships are a good example. Despite some setbacks, they have shown that when the agency sets ambitious goals and gives American companies room to innovate and compete, the result is more capability, lower costs, and new opportunities for exploration.

That’s why the greatest threat to American leadership in space isn’t a lack of talent or capability. It’s losing focus. Human exploration, science missions, and the commercial space economy all require sustained commitment across administrations, Congresses, and political parties.

The next step after Artemis II is not just getting back to the Moon. It is learning how to live and work there. That challenge will test new technologies and partnerships needed to sustain exploration far from Earth. Do it successfully and the Moon becomes a proving ground for Mars.

If we get this right, Artemis II will be remembered as more than the mission that sent Americans back around the Moon. It will be remembered as the moment we recommitted ourselves to exploration, discovery, and the belief that this country is still capable of pursuing ambitious goals together.

Mark Kelly

Representative Brian Babin lays out a coherent vision for America’s next era in space. NASA’s breadth in space is the source of its strength. The Moon-to-Mars Artemis program is the necessary backbone. China’s ambitions are real, serious, and a pacing threat. The author closes with the right call: The responsibility is ours.

What that responsibility requires of the House committee that Rep. Babin heads is worth pressing. His article supplies the standard. America must lead, he writes, “not for symbolism, but for principle.” Applied to the lunar architecture, the distinction shapes which firsts the committee should defend.

The choice America faces is between firsts that compound and firsts that fade. Some firsts shape operations for decades. The first fission reactor on the lunar south pole, for example, will set the safety doctrine, the site selection norms, and the coordination protocols other operators have to follow. The first interoperable deep-space navigation will set the standards others synchronize to. The first reliable in-situ resource utilization will define how sustainability gets incorporated in resource extraction and use. Habitation, surface communications, and safety standards follow the same logic.

Other firsts may win the news cycle, but are likely to fade. Apollo shows the difference. It was designed to beat the Soviets, not to sustain exploration. Once the race was won, the political coalition that funded it dissolved, and the country walked away from the Moon for over half a century. The author is right that arriving first matters. The question is whether arriving first means landing first. Defending the infrastructure firsts is what produces sustained presence. Presence is what makes the science, the resources, and the operating environment available to the country that builds it.

Rep. Babin puts the consequence well: “If the United States hesitates, other players will determine how activity beyond Earth is governed.” The country that lands first and the one that builds the infrastructure can be different. If they are, the country that lands gets the headline. But it is the country that builds the infrastructure that writes the rules others must follow.

The committee he leads has the authority to make America the country that writes the rules. Authorization is a powerful lever. The NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, as it moves to the House floor and to conference, can specify infrastructure deployment milestones alongside the crewed landing date, putting both on the agency’s schedule. The landing has visible milestones and a date. Infrastructure deployment has neither, until the committee writes them in. The Kennedy amendment to the reauthorization act addresses space nuclear systems. Surface communications, navigation, in-situ resource utilization, and habitation deserve the same statutory attention. Without the milestone, infrastructure is the first thing to slip when budgets tighten. With it, the agency defends the schedule. The responsibility is ours.

Writing it into law is what taking responsibility looks like.

Bhavya Lal

Representative Brian Babin makes an important point: The nation’s progress in space has never been accidental, but rather the result of deliberate and sustained commitment. The converse also is and will remain true. Without that commitment, what little progress we see becomes accidental.

The House has taken this challenge seriously. Language about continuity of purpose was made into law with the 2017 Authorization Act. In the past 10 years, that language has reappeared and been reaffirmed three times in subsequent bipartisan authorization efforts. It also appeared in NASA’s 2022 Moon to Mars Strategy.

Implementing that kind of consistency relies on more than just dependable congressional leadership. Without guidance, continuity of purpose can turn into a simpler, but less meaningful, continuity of programs, maintaining support even as underlying facts change operational context. Even as continuity of purpose is necessary, however, it is not sufficient; durable progress requires a continuity of concept—a persistent understanding of what we’re doing and why. As I’ve argued previously in Issues, durable progress requires deep engagement with space exploration at the level of first principles.

We are still developing the tools for the kind of deep understanding of space exploration needed to create a real continuity of concept. Space exploration is the disciplined process of finding humanity’s place in the cosmos—what we can learn, do, and sustain beyond Earth. That definition entails a lot. It spans different kinds of activity (scientific, commercial, security, diplomatic) and different kinds of knowing: what we can understand about the cosmos, what we can accomplish in it, what we can make endure there. NASA’s breadth speaks to the enormous range of activities this implies. But NASA alone cannot encompass the full range of human activity beyond Earth.

Every activity involves its own kinds of learning. Commercial space activity, in this light, is itself a kind of exploration: it is how we figure out what kinds of human activity beyond Earth work—what proves durable, what closes a business case, what holds up under the material conditions of the cosmos. Doing this well means resisting the temptation to legislate as if we already know all the questions, let alone the answers. The article warns against being tethered by red tape. A deeper risk is creating regulation that locks in answers before we’ve had the chance to learn the questions. Good commercial space legislation preserves the conditions of learning—keeping options open so that commercial activity can inform our understanding of what kinds of human activity beyond Earth prove durable.

The next decade will, as the article suggests, bear witness to all manner of new space activities—human and robotic, scientific and commercial, diplomatic and national security—by many countries. The question historians will ultimately ask of this time is not whether we acted, but whether we knew why we were acting and what we were trying to do.

G. Ryan Faith

Representative Brian Babin articulates a focused, strategically sound framework for sustaining US leadership in space. He is right to call for a deliberate strategy, sustained investment, and a national commitment to human space exploration rather than repeating the start-and-stop actions of the past. And he accurately describes the current moment of transition in which commercial actors are expanding, security concerns are intensifying, and China is pressing ahead with its own long‑term ambitions. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which he chairs, has provided consistent authorization, disciplined oversight, and an approach that aligns civil exploration, commercial growth, and international competitiveness.

The article’s portrayal of the Artemis lunar missions as the backbone of deep space exploration is both realistic and strategically compelling. Treating the Moon as a proving ground for surface power, advanced propulsion, in‑space manufacturing, and long‑duration habitation technologies ties near‑term missions directly to the prerequisites for reaching Mars. Likewise, the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, unanimously passed in committee, is rightly framed as a tool for achieving continuity of purpose. At a time when China is also aiming to land humans on the Moon, arriving first matters to how leadership translates into standards, norms, and governance for space.

I agree with the author that a disciplined division of labor is needed as NASA pushes into deep space and commercial industry assumes a growing role in low‑Earth orbit. The shift toward commercial stations, in‑space services, and orbital infrastructure, building on successful public‑private partnerships such as the Commercial Crew program aimed at achieving safe, reliable, and cost-effective human transportation to and from the International Space Station, is a fiscally prudent way to strengthen the overall space architecture and improve resilience. This is not privatization for its own sake, but a strategy to exploit and reinforce all national capabilities.

Within this strong vision, four additional points merit mention. First, realizing an integrated civil, commercial, security, and diplomatic approach will require robust interagency coordination among NASA and other departments and agencies so that authorization, development, regulation, and operations move in concert rather than in stovepipes. The challenges of space exploration are not NASA’s alone.

Second, sustaining the strategy that Rep. Babin describes across multiple administrations and congresses depends on broad bipartisan support and embedding key goals for Artemis, commercial low‑Earth orbit operations, and science in durable legislation. To this end, a strong, bipartisan science program would both benefit from and complement human exploration.

Third, the success of this agenda depends on NASA’s civil service and contractor workforce. Congress and NASA should work together to deepen the agency’s institutional skills, improve (not just preserve) critical in‑house capabilities, create and demonstrate new technologies, and systematically transfer appropriate operational functions—such as launch, ground operations, and communications—to the private sector.

Finally, durable space-based infrastructures in communications, navigation, transportation, power, and habitation are necessary to advance national and allied interests in space. This requires public and private actions beyond individual missions, however ambitious, to create a permanent presence beyond Earth.

Scott Pace