60 Minutes - 03/03/2024: Operation Lone Star, 97 Books, Artemis

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

After President Biden and former President Trump’s visits to the Texas-Mexico border this past week, correspondent Cecilia Vega reports from Eagle Pass, Texas, where she interviewed Governor Greg Abbott. The governor’s controversial border enforcement effort, known as Operation Lone Star, has led to a showdown with the federal government. Correspondent Scott Pelley reports on the battle to ban 97 books in one South Carolina public school district and the role played by the national movement for “parental rights” inspired by a group called Moms for Liberty. The group says it is “fighting for the survival of America" but the book banning attempt was met with strong opposition in Beaufort, South Carolina. Bill Whitaker reports on NASA’s plans to send Americans back to the moon with hopes of building a lunar outpost and traveling onward to Mars. With a stated target date of late 2026, Whitaker reports from Kennedy Space Center, interviews NASA’s top watchdog, and visits one of its contractors, Blue Origin, where he asks tough questions around costs and timeline as they work towards this historic undertaking. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This land we're on right now was used by the federal government to further illegal activity, and I want her to put a stop to it. There were more than 3,000 book bans in public schools last year, 1,000 more than the year before. We went to one conservative southern town to hear how they're turning the page. Parents have the right to determine what their children are taught

and what they're allowed to read. But what we're having a problem with is parents that want to determine what other parents' rights are for their children to determine what other parents' rights are for their children to read what they want. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, two of the richest men in the world, are in a race to help NASA put astronauts back on the moon and then on to Mars.

And liftoff of Artemis I. It's not science fiction, but it's also not easy. And that's our story tonight. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. This past week, both President Biden and former President Trump visited the southern border in Texas. There's no denying immigration has become one of the most important and contentious issues in the presidential campaign.

And there's no better example of that than the high-stakes fight between the state of Texas and the federal government. Three years ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, deploying thousands of police and soldiers and miles of barriers to deter record numbers of illegal crossings. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that immigration is the job of the federal government, but rarely has a state so aggressively challenged that authority. In January, Governor Abbott ordered his state National Guard to block the federal government's border patrol from Shelby Park, a dusty stretch of border along the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas. To understand why, you need to see what happened there in December. We were on the banks of the river before dawn with soldiers from the Texas National Guard.

We heard the cries of people before we could see their faces. It wasn't until we moved closer that we realized how many people had just crossed from Mexico. The soldiers told them it was dangerous to cross here. Help us, they begged. Some of the women cried. We have children. We heard groans and found this young man twisting in the wire. He kept going. Stay calm, they told each other, as families pushed their children through. Nearly everyone we saw made it across and into the United States. Thousands of people a day crossed here in late December, a record for this section of the Texas border.

There were so many people, the U.S. Border Patrol had to transform Shelby Park into an open-air holding center. Weeks later, once the surge died down, Governor Abbott ordered his Texas National Guard to block the federal government's Border patrol from entering the park without permission. Governor Abbott argued the federal government had failed to fulfill its obligation to the states. And in that, some heard echoes of Texas's history of rebellion and threats of secession. I can't believe, Governor,

I'm going to ask you this question, but I'm going to ask you, do you believe that Texas has the right to secede? Is that what we're talking about here? Those are false narratives. What Texas and the United States have the right to do, and that's to enforce the law. You heard the argument against what you're doing out here. Each state can't control its own border policy. You're looking at a completely chaotic system. That's the job of the federal government. We're not imposing a Texas border policy. Texas very simply is enforcing the laws that are the policy of the United States Congress. What gives you the authority to tell the U.S. Border Patrol what to do? For one, as governor of the state of Texas, I have the authority to control ingress and egress

to any land in the state of Texas. For another, this land we're on right now was used by the federal government to further illegal activity, and I want her to put a stop to it. We went behind the guarded gates of Shelby Park in January, shortly after Governor Abbott had taken control. So this is called an anti-climb bearer. Texas Department of Public Safety Lieutenant Christopher Olivares showed us where state national guardsmen were installing fresh razor wire barriers along the river. Help me understand at the heart of this why Texas has a problem with the border patrol coming in to process migrants in this park. The issue is trying to

prevent another influx, because when Border Patrol is here setting up a processing center, it's going to attract, it's going to encourage more migrants to cross the river because they know where to go. It's one of many spots along the Texas border where coils of sharp wire have been going up ever since Governor Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in 2021. Since then, thousands of migrants have been arrested and detained on trespassing charges. State troopers have cracked down on human smuggling rings.

And the state has spent more than $150 million sending migrants on buses to cities like New York and Chicago, turning the trouble at the border into a political and financial headache for Democratic mayors. Once the site of ball games and flea markets, Shelby Park is now Governor Abbott's model of what the Texas border can be. Where we are right now, there used to be 3,000 or 4,000 people crossing illegally a day. For the past three days, there's an average of just three people crossing the border illegally. You don't just plant a flag just to plant a flag. It's got to be strategic, and it's got to make sense.

Raul Ortiz served as chief of the U.S. Border Patrol under President Biden and deputy chief under President Trump. He retired last year. When agencies are making a decision based upon politics or whether they're going to get media coverage, hey, we're going to put all our personnel in this two-mile stretch. What about the other 200 miles? In our interview, Ortiz criticized Governor Abbott for not cooperating with the Border Patrol and playing politics with immigration. But he also expressed frustration with President Biden.

I've never had one conversation with the president or the vice president, for that matter. And so I was the chief of the Border Patrol. I commanded 21,000 people. That's a problem. I just saw 50 people today who had just crossed the border illegally. So something's not working. We need to make sure that Central America, South America, Mexico, that those regions understand that if you pay a smuggler and you cross in between the ports of entry

and you do not have a legitimate claim to some sort of asylum benefit, you're going to be sent back. Do you believe that the White House has sent mixed messages to migrants? Yeah, most definitely. We spoke with Ortiz in an area just four miles south of Shelby Park. The ground was littered with wet clothes

that migrants had changed out of and left behind after crossing the river. Does all of this tell you that people are still crossing this river right here? Oh, yeah. The guides or the smugglers will bring the migrants over. This is all very calculated by the cartels that control these areas on the Mexican side.

About seven miles north of Shelby Park, we came upon this group of migrants who had just crossed the Rio Grande and were being picked up by the border patrol. This mother and her two sons took buses from El Salvador. She told us the soldiers on the U.S. side of the border weren't much of a deterrent. She feared the cartels in Mexico more.

Sometimes they kidnap you and expect payment, she said. The reality is people are still going to find a way to get in no matter how much manpower you have out here, no matter how much wire you put up. Disagree completely. You do? Yeah, because in Texas, anyway, we're going to be barricading every area where people are crossing until we get every area to have like this area is right now. Texas is going to barricade every area? What do you mean? Every area where the cartels use as a crossing, we intend to be barricading.

Border's going to look like a war zone. It is a war zone. Over the past three years, the Biden administration has carried out four million expulsions and deportations, more than the Trump administration. But it has also allowed a record 3 million people to remain in the country for years while their immigration cases are heard. And the Border Patrol estimates another 1.6 million people have entered the country illegally without getting caught. This past week, former President Trump visited Shelby Park with Governor Abbott.

On the same day, President Biden was also at the Texas border in Brownsville. Instead of playing politics with the issue, why don't we just get together and get it done? President Biden says that if Republicans were serious about securing the border, they would not have rejected a bipartisan immigration deal in the Senate last month after former President Trump opposed it. That deal would have increased funding for the Border Patrol and required the president to expel all migrants crossing illegally during surges like the one at Shelby Park in December. The latest battle between Texas and Washington concerns a

new law Governor Abbott signed authorizing Texas's more than 2,700 law enforcement agencies to arrest migrants for illegally crossing the border. Texas judges could then order migrants to return to Mexico or serve time, bypassing the federal immigration system entirely. Critics of the law say it is so broadly written, it fails to define when authorities can stop someone. We asked Lieutenant Olivares of the Texas Department of Public Safety, or DPS, about the concern that immigrants and people of color could be subjected to racial profiling. I can tell you that our troopers are not gonna be stopping cars and checking for immigration status.

They're not. But this law is not just written for DPS. Right, it's a Texas law. The reality is, this is going to be carried out far from the border. Right, Absolutely. So couldn't you get caught up in it? You're Latino. Couldn't I get caught up in it? That's not the case. They have to develop probable cause in order to stop a car.

You can't just go interview every single person in that car, ask them for immigration status. But of course, yeah, there could be some issues where maybe some other agency outside of a border area could take that into account. Is that making you nervous? It's probably because there's a lot of agencies here in Texas that operate, right? But I would think that every chief at a police agency would have to implement some type of policy and procedure to actually enforce this new law. This past week, a federal judge temporarily stopped the new law from taking effect while it's being challenged in court. The Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union are suing Texas,

arguing the law interferes with the federal government's authority over immigration. But Governor Abbott argues Texas is being invaded and has the right to defend itself. That idea has resonated with militias and groups opposed to illegal immigration. Some joined a convoy last month and descended on the Eagle Pass area. Everyone, I think, agrees that the immigration system right now is completely broken and there's a lot of blame to go around. But do you really, truly believe that invasion is the right word to be using here? Invasion is the word that's used in the United States Constitution.

Invasion or imminent danger. I use them both and we are in imminent danger because of what the drug cartels do every single day because of the known and unknown terrorists who cross every single day. So the convoys and militia have heard the language and they've started to come to the point that migrants have had to be relocated from some locations for their own safety. Are you not concerned about violence happening

because of language like the word invasion? There's no language that would spur violence, but I'll be clear about this. We don't want violence of any type. How does this end? Oh it is very simple and that's with a president of the United States who will actually fulfill his oath of office and enforce the laws of the United States of America and that means denying illegal entry into our country. Do you want to be Trump's running mate? No. What if he asks you? Listen I love being governor of Texas. I can best aid him

in my role by being a great governor of Texas. So far, the governor has committed more than $11 billion to Operation Lone Star. Over the last three years, the percentage of people entering Texas illegally has dropped while rising in other border states. Abbott's critics say that has more to do with other factors like crackdowns on migration in parts of Mexico. There are still more than a million illegal border crossings in Texas every year. There are also at least a dozen lawsuits being fought between Texas and the federal government over immigration issues. All that infighting worries former Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz. The National Guard's men, even to some degree the Border Patrol agents,

have become pawns in this political game between the two sides. Who's winning? The cartels, the criminal organizations, that's who's winning in all of this. They're sitting back, reaping all the benefits, while they watch the state of Texas and Washington, D.C. go at it. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling.

History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. With election season upon us, the forces of politics are pulling us apart. And among the sharpest battles recently is a campaign to ban certain books from public schools. There were more than 3,000 book bans in schools last year, a thousand more than the year before. That rise is inspired in part by Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based conservative group that says it is fighting for the survival

of America. You might expect a sympathetic ear in Beaufort, South Carolina. The county votes Republican and is home to many veterans who did fight for America. But when two people demanded the banning of 97 books, Buford found itself in a battle over the true meaning of liberty. Buford has a history in literature and learning. It's the hometown of the late novelist Pat Conroy, Prince of Tithes, and in 1862, it opened among the first schools in the South

for former slaves. Today, Beaufort County has 21,000 students, and Dick Geyer is vice chair of the school board. It is probably the most diverse district in the United States because we have tremendous wealth in Hilton Head and other gated communities here, and we have tremendous poverty. Half of our students are getting free and reduced lunches

because their parents are qualified as being in poverty. Geyer is a retired Army colonel, a Republican, who focused on improving math and reading until 2022. What was the very first notion that you had a storm

coming? We got a email from a citizen saying that these 97 books that we've heard about online that should be banned in the school, how many of those books do you have in your school? So we checked. We had virtually all those books in the school. They're mostly young adult novels with minority, gay, lesbian, or transgender characters. Some depict sex and violence. Most were in high school libraries. Four were in classroom curricula. Reasonable people

disagree about books and that's whyuford already gave the last word to parents. Karen Garris is a high school librarian after 27 years in the Navy. So the procedure would be that it's a conversation between myself and the parent, and if they don't like the book, they have every right to say that their child can't check that book out. And how often does a parent do that? I have never had a parent come and complain to me personally about a book. No. Garris also pointed to this opt-out form. Do not allow my child to check out any school library materials without my approval. Parents have the right to determine what their children are taught and what they're allowed to read. No doubt about it.

But what we're having a problem with is parents that want to determine what other parents' rights are for their children to read what they want. Please be seated. The board wanted to follow established procedures, but a few activists, agitated by conspiracy theories, threatened librarians and board members, calling them groomers, extreme right-wing hate speech meant to brand opponents as molesters grooming children for sex.

We've had a parent come in and tell a librarian that you are violating a state statute by providing pornography to a minor. I'm going to the sheriff. I'm going to have you arrested and storm out. Now, that's not just happened once. That's happened multiple times at multiple schools. I even got an email saying,

okay, the sheriff has said no, the solicitor said no, I'm going to the FBI. School superintendent Frank Rodriguez feared violence, so he pulled the books. From someone outside looking in, it's almost obvious that most of the books hadn't been read prior to being challenged, that some other source was used to gather these things together. So when that happened, I was like, okay, I knew we were in for a rough road. That road began here, a book review website called Book Looks, founded two years ago by a Florida nurse. She declined an interview but told us her book reviews are written by volunteers using Book Look's own standards. And this is where Buford's experience becomes a national story. Across the country, book bans are being demanded based on Book Look's

amateur volunteer reviews, often in the hands of Moms for Liberty. If someone is demonstrably harming our children, we are going to come together to fight to protect them. Moms for Liberty held a national convention last summer, which attracted major Republican presidential candidates. It had been only two and a half years since Moms was founded as a reaction against COVID mandates. Its founders include two Florida women with school board experience, Tiffany Justice and Tina Duskovich. The truth of the matter is that Tina and I are disrupting the balance of power in American education. Our moms, over 100,000 members across the United States of America, are disrupting the balance of power in public education.

For too long, unions have had an undue influence in the decision-making process happening in our local schools. And we see where that has gotten us, a system that protects itself and oftentimes leaves the needs of students behind, and that has to change. Conservative, anti-teachers unions, Moms for Liberty is part of the pushback against the diversity and inclusion movement. Moms supports new Florida laws that limit lessons on race and forbid lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity

through high school. We love teachers. My children have had the best teachers. I've had the greatest teachers that have influenced and impacted me. But there are rogue teachers in America's classrooms right now. Rogue teachers. Rogue teachers. Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology. What ideology are they being indoctrinated into? Let's just say children in America cannot read. They often dodged questions with talking points. You're being evasive. 21% of Hispanic students are reading on grade level.

You're being evasive. What ideology are the children being indoctrinated into? What is your fear? I think parents' fears are realized. They're looking at these books where sexual discussions are happening with their children at younger and younger ages. Tiffany Justice read from sexually explicit books written for older teens, but found in a few lower schools. Most people wouldn't want them in a lower school. But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of truth and concludes these examples are not rare mistakes, but a plot to sexualize children. Your critics say that you have an anti-gay ideology.

That is false. That is false. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have gay members. I think it's an effort to really try to marginalize us as an organization because parents are coming together across racial lines, across religious lines, across all of these different ways that we see Americans being divided so often. I want to thank you for carrying... But voters have not come together for Moms for Liberty. Last year, Moms endorsed 166 school board candidates. Two-thirds were defeated, according to the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. Moms also faces questions about its third co-founder, conservative education

activist Bridget Ziegler. She left Moms for Liberty, and now she's being asked to resign from the Sarasota school board. Last year, she told police she had three-way sex with her husband and a woman. Her husband, Christian Ziegler, had been accused of rape in another incident. Investigators concluded that alleged attack was, quote, likely consensual, but Christian Ziegler was forced out as chair of the Florida Republican Party. We wanted to know about the messages on mom's ex account which adopts the extremist smear with, if they don't like being called groomers they should stop trying to groom our kids. What are you trying to say? Well I'm

going to say that if we'd have to see the exact tweet Tiffany manages our Twitter account. So we read more exact tweets from their account. This targets a librarian. You want to groom our children and we're supposed to give you love? Again, Justice and Duskovich went to their talking points. I'm just asking, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by grooming? Parents want to partner with their children's schools,

but we do not co-parent with the government. Grooming does not seem like a word that you want to take on. You know, we did some polling and we asked, we really wanted to know, where are the American people on this issue of parental rights and what's happening in our schools. Dodging questions like those was not an option back in Beaufort, South Carolina. Critics of the book band said they knew what groomer meant, and they saw it as a threat to people of color and the LGBTQ community. Don't do that to these kids. They have the Internet. They're going to get to it anyways. What are you doing? You're wasting your time. You're only trying to make people feel bad about themselves,

and I am past the time where I'm going to allow anybody to make me feel bad about myself. You're going to go to the left and kind of around the curve, and you'll be there. Ultimately, Buford confronted fear and ignorance with civility and knowledge. The town asked volunteers to actually read the books. In meetings that looked like book clubs, over the course of a year,

146 community volunteers, plus teachers and librarians, discussed, deliberated, and voted. Ruth Naomi James volunteered to judge the books. She works for the schools and has a 16-year-old student. How many of the four books have you reviewed that you felt should not be in the school system? None. She's not a mom for liberty, but still a liberty-minded mom. I'm a combat veteran, right? There's no way I went to Iraq thinking that when I moved back home,

I would have to do this to make sure that the freedom that we fight for in this country is taken out of the hands of students and parents. The final votes came this past December. Five books were judged too graphic in sex or violence, but 92 returned to the schools. Dick Geyer says this lesson reaches beyond the classroom. Diversity brings tolerance. The more you understand what other people think and realize that what they say is important, but who they are, what their story,

what their background is, the more you know that, the more you see the power of diversity and then be kind and be understanding and don't make judgments because you haven't lived their story. They have. In the city that's lived a story of letters and learning,

one book that was banned and restored was The Fixer, a novel of anti-Semitism that won the Pulitzer Prize. In its pages, the book's hero expresses this opinion. a novel of anti-Semitism that won the Pulitzer Prize. In its pages, the book's hero expresses this opinion. There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them. A small robotic lander built by a private company and carrying a scientific payload for NASA touched down near the south pole of the moon 11 days ago and promptly tipped over on its side. Even so, it's the first American spacecraft to land on the moon in more than 50 years. NASA has a much more ambitious lunar program called Artemis, which aims to send people back

to the moon to establish an outpost at the South Pole and to push on from there to Mars. We previewed Artemis here in 2021, but there are significant questions now about the program's costs and its timetable. In January, NASA announced its new target for a manned landing late 2026, a year later than planned. But as we discovered, even that may be unrealistic. And liftoff of Artemis I. When Artemis I soared into space in November of 2022, it was the beginning of a nearly flawless mission. In its first test flight, NASA's new Space Launch System rocket sent an empty Orion crew capsule on a 1.4 million mile flyby of the moon before

a picture-perfect return to Earth. Splashdown. The next flight, Artemis II, meant to carry four astronauts on a lunar flyby, was supposed to launch this year. And then, a year later, Artemis III would land the first woman and first person of color on the moon. It's not working out quite that way. I think it is safe to say, without significant reductions in costs, better cost controls, better planning, this Artemis program on its current trajectory is not sustainable. George Scott is NASA's acting inspector general. Don't be misled by the acting.

He's been a top agency watchdog for more than five years. While NASA's engineers have their heads in the stars, it's his job to bring them back to Earth, particularly when it comes to costs. Right now, we're estimating that per launch, the Artemis campaign will cost $4.2 billion per launch. Per launch? Per launch. That's an incredible amount of money per launch. A lot of that hardware is just going to end up in the ocean never to be used again. The inspector general for NASA says that the costs for the Artemis program are simply unsustainable. Is he wrong? We didn't necessarily agree with their conclusions.

We feel like we've taken an affordable path to do these missions. Jim Free is NASA's associate administrator and directly in charge of Artemis. We met him at historic Launch Pad 39B, from which both Apollo and Artemis rockets have flown. We believe that the rocket we have is best matched for the mission and frankly the only one in the world that can take crews to the moon. Confirmation that the solid rocket boosters have separated… But as George Scott said, most components of that SLS rocket end up in the ocean.

They're not reusable. And with the goal of building an outpost on the moon, Artemis will need a lot of those $4.2 billion rockets. It's going to take launch after launch after launch to get all that stuff up there. Yes. So the number of launches is daunting, but it's hard to get people to the moon. Isn't that something? I had no different sight out here. When America sent Neil Armstrong and 11 more astronauts to the moon a half century ago... That's beautiful.

...they got to the lunar surface aboard landers... We leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return. Owned and operated by NASA. You're taking a different approach this time than with Apollo. What's the difference this time? The difference is we're buying it as a service. We're paying someone to take our crews down and take them up.

It's been an incredible year. That someone is Elon Musk. In 2021, NASA signed a nearly $3 billion contract with his SpaceX to use its new Starship mega rocket as the lunar lander for the first Artemis astronauts. It is by far the biggest flying object ever made. SpaceX is preparing for its third Starship launch atop its enormous Super Heavy booster. The first two launches both ended in roughly the same way. As you can see, the Super Heavy booster has just experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Rapid unscheduled disassembly is SpaceX speak for our Starship rocket just blew up again.

And now you've seen some of the perils of relying on SpaceX. We've seen some of the challenges they've had on Starship. We need them to launch several times to give us the confidence that we can put our crews on there. But right now, as we sit here today, you have no way of getting the astronauts to the surface of the Moon because of these problems that SpaceX has faced. Because they haven't hit the technical milestones. SpaceX's stated plan is to first put its Starship lander into low Earth orbit, then launch 10 more Starship tankers

to pump rocket fuel into the lander in space. Makes sci-fi real. Before sending it onward to meet astronauts in lunar orbit. And this has never been done before. There's been small scalescale transfers in orbit, but not of this magnitude. It just sounds incredibly complicated. It is complicated.

There's no doubt about that. You just launch 10 times kind of on a whim. If it's never been done before, chances are it's gonna take longer than you think to do it and to do it successfully and improve that technology before we trust putting humans on it. There's a long way to go. NASA's contract with SpaceX requires the company to make an unmanned lunar landing with Starship

before trying one with astronauts on board. But NASA still says the manned mission can happen in two and a half years. That just seems like the timeframe we're talking about, the end of 2026, seems ambitious, to say the least. What we're doing is ambitious, and it's a great goal to have. Is that goal realistic? I believe it is. I believe it is. Jim Fries' optimism is based on SpaceX's track record

with its smaller Falcon rocket. Once it got the Falcon up and running, it demonstrated it can launch a lot, 96 times last year alone, with both commercial and government payloads. But so far, Starship has yet to reach orbit even once. Does that concern you, that that's going to keep pushing that timeline back further? Of course, it absolutely concerns me because we need them to launch multiple times.

SpaceX ignored our multiple requests for an interview or comment. But in an interview with The Daily Wire in January, Elon Musk said this. We're hoping to have the first humans on the moon in less than five years. My view of that is we have a contract with SpaceX that says they're going to launch our crew in the end of 2026. Why does it really matter when we get back to the moon? Here's why. China has said it plans to send its taikonauts to the moon by the end of the decade,

and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has publicly expressed concern. Naturally, I don't want China to get to the South Pole first with humans and then say, this is ours. Stay out. To ensure that the U.S. will plant its flag first, NASA signed a new $3 billion contract last year with Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, to build another lunar lander. And Jim Free is crystal clear that he sees it as an option if SpaceX starships keep blowing up. If we have a problem with one, we'll have another one to rely

on. You know, if we have a dependency on a particular aspect in SpaceX or Blue Origin and it doesn't work out, then we have another lander that can take our crews. In this battle of the stargazing billionaires, Bezos' Blue Origin has far fewer launches than Musk's SpaceX and has been far quieter about its ambitions until now. So what we're looking to do is not only get to the moon and back, but make it reliable and repeatable and low cost. John Koulouris' title at Blue Origin is Senior Vice President of Lunar Permanence,

and it says a lot about the company's ambition. The landers that Blue Origin is going to be building are reusable. We'll launch them to lunar orbit, and we'll leave them there. And we'll refuel them in orbit so that multiple astronauts can use the same vehicle back and forth. Our cameras were among the first to be allowed inside Blue Origin's huge complex in Florida, just next to Kennedy Space Center. So this is where the future is being built. That's right. This is the main factory floor for the New Glenn rocket. New Glenn is Blue Origin's first heavy-lift rocket.

Its maiden launch will be sometime this year. So you can see over here we have three different second stages already in build here. The first New Glenn is already out at Blue Origin's launch complex. It's designed to carry all sorts of payloads, including the lunar lander being built for NASA. So this is the Mark I lander. We call this our small lander. This is the small one?

Yes. It's actually a mock-up of their cargo lander in Blue Origin's Florida lobby. John Kalouris used to work at SpaceX, and he came over to Blue to help speed things up. Is there a bit of a space race between you and SpaceX? So, the country needs competition. We need options.

Competition brings innovation. But you haven't had anything close to the accomplishments that SpaceX has had at this point, have you? SpaceX has done some amazing things and they've changed the narrative for access to space and Blue Origin is looking to do the same. This lander, we're expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today. 12 and 16 months from today? Yes. And I understand I'm saying that publicly, but that's what our team is aiming towards. But that's for the cargo lander. What about humans?

For humans, we're working with NASA on the Artemis V mission. That's planned for 2029. That's not so different from Elon Musk's forecast of when SpaceX can land humans back on the moon, even if it doesn't match NASA's. Like the Starship, Blue Origins lander will require in-space refueling, but Colouris insists that it and their rocket will help NASA trim costs. Our new Glenn vehicle will be a reusable vehicle from its first mission. That lander for the astronauts is a reusable lander. So now you're not just taking the equipment and throwing it away.

You're reusing it for the next mission. You do it again and again and again. Is that where the cost savings comes in? Exactly. We are now building with NASA the infrastructure to ensure lunar permanency. You have said that the Artemis program is the beginning, not the end. Tell me, what is the future you see?

I see us landing on Mars. Absolutely see us landing on Mars. But we have to work through the moon to get to Mars. These are magnificent goals, you know, going back to the moon, going to Mars. Do we have the ability to do what we're dreaming of doing? You know, this is NASA, right? This agency is destined to continue to do great things.

There's no question about that. What we're telling the agency is just be more realistic. There's nothing wrong with being optimistic. In fact, it's required, right? In this business, optimism is required. The question is, though, can you also be more realistic? Now, an update of a story Bill Whitaker reported six years ago. In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted, Pompeii and the seaside city of Herculaneum were buried.

At one villa, a library's nearly 2,000 scrolls turned into brittle, carbonized lumps. University of Kentucky's Brent Seals has spent years trying to unlock the scroll's secrets. The history of the unwrapping of the Herculaneum Scrolls is littered with failures. Everyone who had tried to open the scrolls had left behind a hideous trail of fragmentary result. Professor Seals co-founded an international competition to read the scrolls. Now, three students using SEAL's data and techniques have succeeded in deciphering one, a philosophical work on pleasure. The Vesuvius Challenge winners will share a $700,000 prize. I'm Cecilia Vega. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.