all space cooperation with china, but it did not and has not banned space cooperation with russia. now, you ve been one of nasa s leaders over the last decade, or two or three. do you acknowledge that the increased dependency of nasa on cooperation with russia, particularly in the last decade, has been a major strategic mistake? i think at this point, what we re seeing is that now we have our own servicing, our own ability to fly the space station. we re not dependent on russia to do that. we were at one time. i think we then realised. if i may say so, we had the prospect even just weeks ago of the russians leaving a us scientist in space because they were so angry about the imposition of american sanctions on russia as a result of the invasion of ukraine. the russians have told nasa that future cooperation will not happen as long
it s also about privateers. it s about the billionaires like elon musk and jeff bezos, who are determined to play a huge role in space exploration, and nasa s invited them in as partners. do you think that was wise? well, nasa s not only invited them in, we welcome them in open arms because, you know, 15 years ago, we started that whole concept of, of doing more commercial activities you know, we funded them as start ups. of course, we want them to come in and be part of this grand move as we use space in new and creative ways. you know, there s many commercial aspects. hang on. what s new and creative about it when you ve got individuals paying roughly $55 million each to get a ride on this axiom mission into low orbit?
my guest, jim green, retired as nasa s chief scientist earlier this year. are problems of money and geopolitics undermining nasa s mission? jim green in silver spring, maryland, welcome to hardtalk. thank you so much, stephen. it s a pleasure to be here. well, it is a real pleasure to have you on the show, and you have had a pretty remarkable four decades long career inside nasa. but if you are being honest with me, would you accept that nasa s golden era came and went long before even you arrived at the agency?
we will work together as a world. right. but we, jim, have been talking about nasa s clarity of purpose and mission going forward. and it s going to get confused, isn t it, when the privateers and these guys are super wealthy and super powerful they start believing that they should have a say in how nasa does things. for example, we ve got jeff bezos, who s taken legal action against nasa because he felt he was frozen out of the of the competition to deliver the landing gear for the artemis moon landings. and elon musk got the go ahead and notjeff bezos and he s going to court. this is going to make nasa s future extraordinarily complicated and difficult. it does, but it s always been that way, which you haven t recognised as every time we put out a request for a proposal, obtain those, make a selection, many times we ll have protests. many times we ll have to go to court and resolve those.
so when nasa bosses told astronauts like scott kelly to tone down their criticism of russia on social media, you were supportive of that, were you? i was. nasa needs to speak as one organisation and our approach is one of a peaceful means and our interaction needs to continue in that area. that s how we re going to, i think, work through some of the more thorny problems as we get to the moon. all right. notjust us, but the russians and the chinese and many others. if we can establish that space is for peace and continue in that way and demonstrate that, i think that s important. those are fine words. whether they can be realistic in the geopolitical world that we see right now is another matter. and it s notjust about state actors, is it?