The 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing being celebrated this week shows the United States must have further "stunning achievements" in space, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Thursday.
"What we have to make sure we do is have stunning achievements to inspire the next generation," Bridenstine told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"I'm the first NASA administrator in history not alive the last time we landed on the moon. President [Donald] Trump has put out very clearly, he wants to put an American flag on Mars."
Trump is also "all in on the Space Force, which is a good thing for our country," he added.
Bridenstine said the moon landing came among "great power competition" with the then-Soviet Union, and "of course, it was about technological prowess."
"We were trying to demonstrate our political and economic system was superior to theirs," said Bridenstine. "At the end of the day, the United States of America won and has changed the course of history in a positive way. But even more so than that, people are watching this right now, maybe on DirecTV, Dish Network. People will watch it on the internet, broadband from space in rural Oklahoma."
A mission to Mars, however, would be different than the moon missions in the 1960s because now there are commercial partners involved in driving down costs, said Bridenstine.
"The goal of NASA is to be a customer in lower Earth orbit," he said. "We want to be one customer of many that will drive down our cost, and of course have numerous providers competing on costs."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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