The following is an excerpt from Davenport’s book, “Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the
Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race,” released by Crown Currency on Sept. 16.
In May 2019, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine convened a meeting with his top communications aides. Just a couple months earlier, Vice President Mike Pence had sent shockwaves through the space industry by proclaiming American astronauts would return to the moon by 2024, and a woman would be among them. But it was bothering Bridenstine that the first, uncrewed flight in the program was known clunkily as Exploration Mission-1. There was nothing lofty, like Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo.
“There’s no cohesive story,” he told his staff. “I’m trying to mobilize people, but we don’t have a program. We have parts and pieces.” He paused for a moment. “We need to name it. We need a brand for this.”
Some on the team were against naming the program. Give it a name and Congress can kill it, longtime NASA staffers warned him. That’s what happened to the Constellation program, which was canceled during the Obama administration. But Bridenstine didn’t want to hear it. The right name, he believed, would bring national pride and support. China knew the power of a good name. Its moon program, Chang’e, was named for the moon goddess celebrated in Chinese folklore and culture. Its Long March rocket program got its name from the historic six-thousand-mile trek by Chinese communists in the 1930s that led to the emergence of Mao Zedong.
Suddenly, Bridenstine popped out of his chair and left the room, telling his puzzled team, “I’ll be back.” He started roaming the hallways of NASA, asking everyone he ran into if they had any ideas for what to call the moon program. He poked his head into offices and cubicles. Finally, a few days later, he ran into Alex MacDonald in a snack area. MacDonald was NASA’s chief economist and the author of “The Long Space Age: The Economic Origins of Space Exploration from Colonial America to the Cold War.” He was also something of a Renaissance man — a historian and academic, with an appreciation for modern art. His father had been a fan of the classics, and when MacDonald was a child, he recounted the Iliad and the Odyssey from memory as bedtime stories.
“We could always go back to Artemis,” MacDonald told Bridenstine.
“Artemis?” Bridenstine said, looking curious but also a bit confused. He was aware that Andy Weir had just published a novel with that title, but he couldn’t quite place the name.
Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo, MacDonald explained, and also the goddess of the moon. The only problem was that NASA had already used the name for a mission years earlier, involving a pair of spacecraft used to study the moon and solar wind.
No one had ever heard of the earlier mission, Bridenstine thought. And no one outside of the scientific community cared. “Artemis” was perfect.
“That’s it,” Bridenstine said. “That’s the name.”
Bridenstine was in love with Artemis and wanted to announce it as soon as possible. Normally, such a decision would need sign-off from the White House and the National Space Council. NASA’s Capitol Hill liaisons would be dispatched to give a heads-up to the appropriate congressional committees and make them feel like they were a part of the plan. But Bridenstine didn’t have time for a bunch of meetings on the subject. That would only delay the inevitable.
That same month, he decided to hold a press conference, ostensibly to announce that the White House had agreed to boost NASA’s budget by $1.6 billion. But he also wanted to drop the Artemis name. Late in the day, as his team scrambled to prepare for the teleconference, which was to start at 7 p.m., Bridenstine called Gabe Sherman, his chief of staff, who was already headed for his train ride home, for a gut check. Sherman didn’t answer, so Bridenstine went running after him and was out of breath by the time he caught up to him.
Was he making a mistake to name the program? Bridenstine wanted to know. Or should he go for it?
“Let’s do it,” Sherman said.
Shortly before the teleconference started, Trump scooped Bridenstine in part by crowing on Twitter: “Under my administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, and then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!”
On the media call, Bridenstine said the funds would “accelerate our return to the lunar surface.” It was an attempt to demonstrate momentum, that NASA did in fact have a plan — and the money, or at least the first deposit — to meet Pence’s 2024 deadline. But he also sought to manage expectations, acknowledging that “in the coming years, we will need additional funds.”
At the end of the call, after fielding questions from reporters skeptical about the timeline and whether Congress would really pay up, Bridenstine said he had some closing remarks. It was time for his own surprise announcement.
“The first time humanity went to the Moon, it was under the name Apollo,” he said. “The Apollo program forever changed history, and I know all of us here in this room and on the phone are very proud of the Apollo program. It turns out that Apollo had a twin sister, Artemis. She happens to be the goddess of the Moon. Our astronaut office is very diverse and highly qualified. I think it is very beautiful that 50 years after Apollo, the Artemis program will carry the next man and the first woman to the Moon. I have a daughter who is 11 years old, and I want her to be able to see herself in the same role that the next women that go to the moon see themselves in today. This is really a beautiful moment in American history, and I’m very proud to be a part of it.”
The White House was not happy with the breach of protocol and let Bridenstine and his staff know they should have given them a heads-up. But it was too late. The name was out there. There was no taking it back now.
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