 We're here live in Las Vegas with theCUBE's coverage of Amazon remars. It's a reinvent, remars, reinforced. The big three shows called the Rees. This is Mars, machine learning, automation, robotics and space. It's a program about the future. It's a future innovation around industrial, cloud scale, climate change, the moon. A lot of great topics. Really connecting all the dots together here in Las Vegas with Amazon remars. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Our first guest is Howard Hughes, Program Manager at Nest's Orion Program. Howard is involved with all the action in space and the moon project which we'll get into. Howard, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Well hey, thanks for having me here this morning. Appreciate you guys inviting me here. So this show is not obvious to the normal tech observer. The insiders in the industry, it's the confluence of a lot of things coming together. It's going to be obvious very soon because the stuff they're showing here is pretty impressive. It's motivating, it's positive, and it's a force for change and good. All of it coming together. Space, machine learning, robotics, industrial. You have one of the coolest areas. Space, what's going on with the Orion program? You guys got the big moon project. David, explain. Well let me tell you, I'll start with Orion. Orion is our next human spacecraft that's going to take humans beyond low earth orbit. And we're part of the broader Artemis campaign. So Artemis is our plan, our NASA's plan to return the first person of color, first woman, back to the moon. And we're very excited to do that. We have several missions that I could talk to you about starting with, in a very few months, Artemis 1. So Artemis 1 is going to fly on the space launch system, which is going to be the biggest rocket. We call it the mega rocket, has been built since the Saturn V. On top of the SLS is the Orion spacecraft. And that Orion spacecraft houses four crew members for up to 21 days in deep space. And we'll have an uncrew test in a few months launching on the SLS. And Orion's going to go around the moon for up to 40 days. On Artemis 2, we will have the first test of the humans onboard Orion. So four people will fly on Artemis 2. We'll also circle the moon for about 10 to 12 days. And then our third mission will be our landing. So the moon is back in play. Obviously it's close to the earth. It's a short flight, relatively speaking. The Mars a little bit further out. Obviously everyone knows what's going on in Mars. A lot of people are interested in Mars. Moon's closer. Yes. But there's also new things going on around discovery. Can you share the big story around why the moon? What's why is the moon so important? And why is everyone so excited about it? Yeah, you know, come to this conference and talking about sustainability. You know, I mean, it is exploration is, I think, ingrained in our DNA. But it's more than just exploration. It's about projecting human presence beyond our earth. And these are the stepping stones. You know, we talk about, Amazon talked about day one. And I think about we are on those very early days where we're building the infrastructure. So Orion's a transportation infrastructure. And we're going to build infrastructure on the moon to learn how to live on a surface and how to utilize the assets. And then that's very important because, you know, it's very expensive to carry fuel, to carry water, and all the necessities that you need to survive as a human being in outer space. If you can generate that on the surface or on the planet you go to, and this is a perfect way to do it because it's very in your backyard, as I told you earlier. So for future missions, when you want to go to Mars, you're nine months out, you really want to make sure you have the technologies and you're able to utilize those technologies robustly and in a sustainable way. Yeah, we were talking before you came on, you came camera, camping in your backyard, it's a good practice round before you go out into the wilderness. This is kind of what's going on here, but there's also the discovery angle. I mean, I just see so much science going on there. So if you can get to the moon, get a base camp there, get set up, then things could come out of that. What are some of the things that you guys are talking about that you see as possible exploration upside? Yeah, well, several things. One is power generation. Recently, we just released some contracts that through fission power, so long sustainable power capability is very, very important. The other technologies that you utilize is regenerative air, water, things that you need for that, but then there's a science aspect of it, which is we're going to the South Pole where we think there's a lot of water potentially or available water that we can extract and utilize that to generate fuel. So liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen is one of the areas that are very interesting. And of course, lunar minerals are very exciting, very interesting to bring and be able to mine potentially in the future depending on what is there. Well, a lot of cool stuff happening. What's your take on this show here? Obviously NASA's reputation, its innovators and deep technologists, big moonshot missions pun intended here. You got a lot of other explorations. What's this show bring together? Share your perspective, because I think the story here to me is you got walkout, retail, like the Amazon technology. You got Washington Dynamics, The Dog Everyone Loves, that's what I mean. You got supply chain, robotics, machine learning, and space, it all points to one thing, innovation around industrial. I think, what's your take? You know, I think one of the things is normally we're innovating in our aerospace industry. I think there's so much to learn from innovation across all these areas you described and trying to pull some of that into the spacecraft. You know, when you're a human being, sitting in a spacecraft, it's more than just flying the spacecraft. You know, you have interaction with displays. You have a lot of technologies that you normally would want to interact with on the ground that you could apply in space to help you and make your tasks easier. And I think those are things that are really important as we look across the whole entire innovative infrastructure that I see here in this show. How can we extract some of that and apply it in the space program? I think there is a very significant leveraging that you could do off of that. What are some of the cool things you have on that one? To me, it's like, we're in that cloud business, we want to do that. But I didn't have the luxury to keep them in the current and trying to keep them in the current, but you look at what's going on and then I say, what are some of the cool things you're learning that people aren't following Well, certainly, you know, the Artemis mission, Artemis campaign is one of the coolest things I could think of. That's why I came into, you know, I think wrapping around that, where we are not only just going to a destination, but we're exploring and we're trying to establish a very clear long-term presence, that will allow us to engage what I think is the next step, which is science, you know, and science and the things that can come out of that in terms of scientific discoveries. And I think the coolest thing would be, hey, could we take the things that we are in the labs and the innovation relative to power generation, relative to energy, development of energy technologies, robotics to utilize to help explore the surface. And of course, the science that comes out of just naturally when you go somewhere, you don't know what to expect. And I think that's what the exciting thing. And for NASA, we're putting a program, an infrastructure around that. I think that's really exciting. Of course, the other parts of NASA is science. And so partnering those two pieces together to accomplish a very important mission for everybody on planet Earth is really important. And also, it's a curiosity. People are being curious about what's going on in space because the costs are down. And you got universities here, and you got the confluence of robotics and industrial. This is going to provide a new ground for education, younger generation coming up. What would you share to teachers and potential students, people who want to learn? What's different about now than the old generation? And what's the same? What's the same and what's new? How does someone get their arms around this, their mind around it, where can they jump in? This is going to open up the aperture for talent. I mean, with all the technology, it's not one dimensional. Yeah, I think what is still true is core sciences, math, engineering, the hard science, chemistry, biology. I think those are really also very important. But what we're getting today is the amount of collaboration we're able to do, I guess, organically. And I think the innovation that's driven by a lot of this collaboration, where you have these tools and your ability to engage, and then you're able to get, I would say, the best out of people in lots of different areas. And that's what I think one of the things we're learning at NASA is we have a broad spectrum of people that come to work for us, and we're pulling that. And now we're coming to these kinds of things where we're getting even more innovation ideas and partnerships so that we're not just off on our own thinking about the problem. We're branching out and allowing a lot of other people to help us solve the problems that we need. You know, I've noticed with Space Force, too, I had the same kind of conversations around those with those guys as well. Collaboration and public-private partnerships are huge. You've seen a lot more kind of cross-pollination of funding, technology, software. I mean, how do you do break, fix, and space and software? So you got to have, I mean, it's got to work. So you've got security challenges. This is a new frontier. It is. The cybersecurity, the usability, the operationalizing for humans, not just, you know, put a typical, you know, scientists and astronauts who work, you know, in peak shape. We're talking about humans. What's the big problem to solve? Is it security? Is it, what would you say the big challenges are? You know, I think information and access to information and how we interact with the information is probably our biggest challenge because we have very limited space in terms of not only mass, but just volume. You know, you want to reserve the space for the people and they need to, you know, you want to maximize your space that you have in spacecraft. And so I think having access to information, being able to utilize information and quickly access systems so you can solve problems. Because you don't know when you're in deep space, you're several months out to Mars, what problems you might encounter and what kind of systems and access to information you need to help you solve the problems. You know, both from a just unplanned kind of continuancies or even planned continuancies where you want to make sure you have that information to do it. So information is going to be very vital as we go out into deep space. And the infrastructure has changed. How has the infrastructure changed in terms of support services? I mean, see in the United States just the growth of aerospace you mentioned earlier is just phenomenal. You've got smaller, faster, cheaper equipment, density, it solved the technology. Where is there going to be the big game-changing movement? What do you see it go? Is it Artemis III kind of kicks in? Artemis I is obviously the first one, unmanned one, but really in your mind do you see key milestones that are going to be super important to watch? I think, you know, we've already pushed the boundaries in terms of applying our aerospace technologies for Artemis I and certainly II. We've got those in work already and so we've got those vehicles already in work and built. One already at the Kennedy Space Center ready for launch. But starting with III, because you have a lot more interaction, you've got to take the crew down with a lander, a human landing system. You've got to build rovers. You've got to build a capability which they could explore. So starting with III and then IV, we're building the gateway. Gateway is an orbiting platform around the moon. So for all future missions after Artemis III, we're going to take Orion to the gateway. The crew gets into the orbiting platform. They get on a human landing system and they go down. So all that interaction, all that infrastructure, and all the support equipment you need, not only in the orbit of the moon, but also down on the ground, is going to drive a lot of innovation. You're going to have to realize, oh, hey, I needed this. Now I need to figure out how to get something there, you know, and how much of the robotics and how much AI you need will be very interesting because you'll need these assistance to help you do your daily routine or lessen your daily routine. So you can focus on the science and you can focus on doing the advancing those technologies that you're going to need. And you've got to have the infrastructure. It's like a road. Yeah. You want to go pop down to the moon. You just pop down. It's already built. It's ready for you. Yep. Come back up. So just ease of use from a deployment standpoint. And the infrastructure. The things that you're going to need, you know, what is a hab going to look like? What are you going to need in the habitat? You know, are you going to be able to have the power that you're going to have? How many station power stations are you going to need? Right? So all these things are going to be really, things that are going to be driven by what you need to do the mission. And that drives, I think, a lot of innovation. You know, it's very much like the end goal. What are you trying to solve? And then you go, okay, here's what I need to solve. You build things to solve that problem. There's so many things involved in the mission that I can imagine. Safety is huge. Number one. Gotta be safe. Yep. Space is dangerous. It's not pleasant up there. Not for the faint of heart, as you say. Not for the faint of heart, that's correct. What's the big safety concern? Obviously besides blowing up and oxygen and water and the basic needs. I think, you know, I think you said it very well. You know, it is not for the faint of heart. We try to minimize risk. You know, ascent is one of the big, you're sitting under 8.8 million pounds of thrust on the launch vehicle. So it is going very fast and you're flying and it's light because we got solid rocket motors too, as well. Once they're lit, they're lit. So we have an escape system on Orion that allows a crew to be safe. And of course, we build in redundancy. That's the other thing I think that will drive innovation. You know, you build redundancy in the system, but you also think about the kind of issues that you would run into potentially from a safety perspective. You know, how are you going to get out of a situation if you get hit by a meteorite, right? You are going through the van Ellen Belt. You have radiation. So you know some of these things that are harsh on your vehicle and on the human side of this shop too. And so when you have to do these things, you have to think about what are you going to protect for and how do you go protect for that? And we have to find innovations for that. Yeah, and it's also going to be a really exciting year for engineering work. And you mentioned the data. Data is huge. Simulations, running scenarios. This is where the AI comes in. And that seems to me where the dots connect for me is when you start thinking about how to run those simulations to identify what's possible. I think that's a great point. You know, because we have all this computing capability and because we can run simulations and because we can collect data, we have terabytes of data. But it's very challenging for humans to analyze at that level. So AI is one of the things we're looking at which is trying to systematically have a process by which data is called through so that the engineering mind is only looking at the things and focus on things that are problematic. So we repeat tests every flight. You don't have to look at all the terabytes of data of each test. You have a computer AI do that and you allow yourself to look at just the pieces that don't look right, have anomalies in the data. Then you're going to do that digging, right? That's where the power of those kinds of technologies can really help us because we have that capability to do a lot of computing. And I think that's why this show to me is important because it shows for the first time, at least from my coverage of the industry, where technology's not the bottleneck anymore. It's human mind. And we want to live in a peaceful world with climate. We want to have the earth around for a while. So climate change is a huge topic yesterday and how the force for good, what could come out of the moonshots is the help for earth. Yeah, yeah. Better understand it in there. All good. What's your take on the show? If you had to summarize this show, RIMARS, from the NASA perspective, I'll tell you the essence space. What's the, what's going on here? What's the big story? Yeah, for me, I think it's eye-opening in terms of how much innovation is happening across a spectrum of areas. And I look at various things like Boston Scientific Robots, the dog just walking around. I mean, to think, you know, people are applying it in different ways. And then those applications, in a lot of ways are very similar to what we need for exploration going forward and how you apply some of these technologies to the space program. And how do we leverage that? How we leverage that innovation? And how we take the innovations already happening organically for other reasons? And how would those help us solve those problems that we're going to encounter going forward as we try to live on another planet? Well, congratulations on a great assignment. You got a great job. Super fun. I love being an observer and I love space. Love how the innovation's there. And plus space is cool. I mean, how many millions of live views do you see everyone stop and work to watch SpaceX land and NASA do their work? It's just, it's bringing back the tech vibe. You know what I'm saying? It's just, things are going, you're like a good tailwind. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Alright, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Okay, this is theCUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier, here's theCUBE here. Live in Las Vegas, back at Reinvent, Reinforce, ReMars, the re-series, coverage here at ReMars. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break.