Trump, the UCF faculty president nominated for NASA’s chief financial officer, sees the moon as a stepping stone to Mars, but warns that if China is to abolish it, the US will need to fix the space game.
Trump hit Greg Autry for the Post on Monday. He enrolled in 2024 as a secondary proposal for space commercialization and strategy.
“We are honored to help UCF move forward with the incredible Space Enterprises and we want to come back after our service at NASA,” Autry said in a news release. “Our space agency has a long history of excellence in financial management and we look forward to joining an incredible team at NASA.”
Autry worked with the first Trump administration as part of NASA’s White House transition team. In 2016, he helped NASA plan to return to the moon through the Artemis program.
In January at Spacecom, a commercial space congress in Orlando, Autry discussed his 2024 book, “Red Moon Rising: How America beat The Final Frontier.”
“China is moving forward rapidly and for some reason we can’t even take people to the moon in eight years,” he said. “We thought we could do it faster than John F. Kennedy could have done it again when he didn’t know what we were doing, but we couldn’t.
“So we need to be honest with the program in the fact that we’re not doing it on time and the way the Chinese are.” China has plans to land astronauts on the moon before 2030.
He is pleased that they are competitors from a science and engineering perspective – it gives Americans something to keep themselves.
Although Autry has only been with UCF for a year, the school is called “Space Czar” and works at a business university to help establish executive and MBA programs. If confirmed by the NASA post, it is a position he must give up.
The CFO Post is one of four agency positions that the President nominates and requests confirmation of the Senate, along with administrators, assistant managers and inspectors.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman has been appointed administrator, but there is no confirmation hearing yet in the Senate calendar. Neither is scheduled for Autory.
In the case of Autry, the role of the CFO means overseeing NASA’s financial management and budget. The agency continues to run under a continuing resolution of approximately $25 billion in its 2024 budget. This is a 2% reduction from 2023.
Of that total, deep-sea exploration, including the Artemis Moon-Mars campaign, led more than $7.6 billion in spending.
Autry is high in pursuing Mars – something Trump was confused along with close adviser Elon Musk.
He said it is clear that Mars is the target of Trump’s Space Policy Order 1 in 2017, and that it is not that great under the Obama administration.
“They had what we call squid charts. This was basically part of the mysterious meat about how we work. We’re going to theoretically put humans on Mars,” Autry said. “NASA has never taken this task seriously and is happy that we are going there.”
He believes that focusing on the lunar efforts with commercial and international partners does not need to be separate from those targeting Mars.
“There are a lot of free technologies and features developed for both these goals,” Autry says. “There is no need to build an airplane to go to another plane from Miami.
One of the biggest financial dilemmas facing NASA is how much they spent on the Artemis program. Space Launch System Rocket rockets have cost $23.8 billion taxpayers since their conception in 2011, according to Planetary Society data.
The Orion spacecraft, which began under the constellation program during the 2006 George W. Bush administration, cost another $20.4 billion, and ground infrastructure won $5.7 billion.
By 2022, the program totals nearly $50 billion and is flying around the moon as it continues to prepare for next year’s crew Artemis II mission. The 2027 Artemis III mission was then proposed in 1972, which would bring humans back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17. Some experts are skeptical of the time frame.
Still, the moon is the gateway to Mars, he said.
“It’s a matter of cultural and economic relevance, and if the US wants to be more relevant in the 21st century, they have to be involved in the activities of the 21st century and become the best with them,” Autry said.
Original issue: March 29, 2025 7am EDT
