powers of four

"At NASA, we provided astronauts for exploration," he said. "A lot of that exploration and experimentation today and in the future will be done on the International Space Station. So what we are doing is relying on commercial capability to get us access to low Earth orbit, to get us to the International Space Station.

"But to get to places like the moon and Mars and other beyond LEO places, that, we feel, is the responsibility of your government. Because that's risky, that's an investment that we can't really count on a commercial entity taking until we've demonstrated the ability to do that and do it safely."