Fake blather from NASA administrator Sean Duffy to hide more Artemis delays
Sean Duffy: “Look at the shiny object!”
During a press interview yesterday, interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy revealed almost as an aside that NASA’s mid-2027 launch for the first Artemis manned lunar landing is no longer realistic, and that NASA is now targeting a 2028 launch date instead.
Duffy managed to hide this revelation by also announcing that he is re-opening the bidding for the manned lunar lander NASA will use on that third Artemis mission. To quote Duffy:
Now, SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III. By the way, I love SpaceX and it’s an amazing company, but the problem is, they are behind. They pushed their timelines out and we are in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president’s term. So, I’m going to open up the contract and I’m going let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin. Whatever one gets us there first to the moon, we are going to take. If SpaceX is behind and Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin.
By the way we might have two companies that can get us back to the Moon in 2028.
The propaganda press of course is going wild about this SpaceX announcement, making believe it signifies something of importance. “SpaceX is behind! Elon Musk can’t do it! Duffy is giving Jeff Bezos the job!” And as I think Duffy intended, everyone is ignoring the fact that NASA has now admitted it won’t meet that 2027 launch target.
The irony is that Duffy’s decision to re-open bidding on that manned mission is utterly meaningless. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon manned lander is just as unlikely to meet that new 2028 launch date as SpaceX. In other words, Duffy’s announcement is just more Washington swamp blather, designed to hide the swamp’s failures. It is designed to make everyone look at a shiny object of no consequence so that we don’t notice the much bigger problems.
So what is the real story here? It is that NASA’s entire plan to get back to the Moon has been an unwieldy management disaster from the beginning, put together haphazardly simply to give the Congressionally-mandated SLS rocket and Orion capsule a mission. It requires SLS to launch the astronauts in Orion, while the lunar lander is launched separately on another rocket. Both will then rendezvous in a somewhat inconvenient lunar orbit, chosen simply because that is the orbit NASA’s improvised Lunar Gateway station will eventually occupy.
None of it has ever made any logistical sense.
Worse, there is the demand that this Rube-Goldberg mission meet a schedule, regardless of engineering realities. The desire of Duffy (and Trump) to land Americans on the Moon before Trump leaves office, whether or not Starship or Blue Moon are truly ready, is beyond stupid. It is Challenger and Columbia all over again, worsened by wild improvisation by NASA during every step of the program.
Duffy’s announcement also illustrates the overall stupidity of this “second space race” to get back to the Moon ahead of China, a one-time stunt that will do little to establish a lunar colony. We already did that in the 1960s, and got little for it. Why go down that route all over again?
There is one aspect however of Duffy’s announcement that is promising. His decision widens the competition, and asks the commercial space industry — not NASA — to provide what the government wants and needs. This is what needs to happen, more than anything else. The federal government should be encouraging the private sector to get it done, because the government can’t.
If NASA does this, we might finally see a profitable and thriving space industry colonizing the solar system. And China will be left in the dust as freedom and competition takes over.
In the meantime however I fear that more NASA astronauts will die, because our political class is more interested in having its photo ops on its political schedule then building a real American industry in space.
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Duffy didn’t go out of his way to keep people from concluding that the delay is due to SpaceX, did he?!
Elon should suggest maybe BO just use the ready to fly New Shepard… except Duffy might not realize it was a joke!
The posts on X and Threads are pretty ridiculous. Everyone is jumping on the blame SpaceX bandwagon. I feel it a moral imperative to correct the false statements as best as I can. SpaceX is late because of NASA and FAA nonsense. Of course the entire program is way behind schedule due to a lot of really bad decision making, including poor funding allocations. Every part of this program is behind schedule but now suddenly it is SpaceX’s fault? Right.
In the long run this is going to turn out mostly like the UK’s efforts to promote airships before WW2, a useless waste of time and money for technology that quickly becomes obsolete. SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy and Axiom’s spacesuit are the only parts that might be useful in the long run.
Logged on to X today, and saw that Elon woke up and chose violence this morning.
I’m not endorsing what he’s doing, but it’s hard not to appreciate that this surely reflects in no small part how the relationship between SpaceX and NASA has changed since 2008. We really are at the point now where NASA needs SpaceX more than SpaceX needs NASA, and I’m not even sure it’s close.
“SpaceX is late because of NASA and FAA nonsense.”
Eh. Yeah, that’s surely part of it, but let’s be fair – it’s not the only reason. They had very real development hiccups, especially with V2 Starship. They just blew up Starship S37 and the entire Massey’s test stand this summer! But that was to be expected.
It was just never realistic that SpaceX or anyone else was going to have any shot at delivering a lander before 2028. And I think everyone involved knew it
Another exchange on X a few hours ago, revelatory of intentions at work:
Eric Berger: “Based on a lot of reporting over the last two days one thing seems clear: Jared Isaacman was on a good path to being re-nominated to lead NASA. Sean Duffy and his chief of staff, Pete Meachum, have increased their lobbying to stop that. Trump will decide what happens next.”
Patryn: “Eric, was Duffy not on good terms with Elon up to now? Seems a risky move for him to cross this line now, unless they were never aligned from the start.”
Eric Berger: “Attitudes change. At this point his message to aerospace contractors seems to be, “I will stand up to SpaceXs dominance.””
Elon had a reply to this exchange, but I’m not sure if it’s printable here.
P.S. Great summation of the situation, Bob, as always.
Richard M: There is no doubt now that SpaceX does not need NASA any longer, and if NASA wishes to denigrate its work Musk could simply take his bat and ball and go home.
Musk of course won’t do that. He recognizes there is still great PR value in doing things for NASA.
The speculation that Duffy made this announcement to try to shore up his position as NASA administrator, feeling threatened by the return of Isaacman, is most intriguing. I suspect there is some truth to this speculation. I also think that it is possibly a mistake by Duffy.
Richard M: For some unknown reason this comment ended up in moderation. I approved it as soon as I saw it.
You however posted it again when it didn’t appear immediately. Please don’t double post. Be patient. I will get to it.
Hi Bob,
Oh, sorry, my phone kind of glitched, and it seems it just submitted it twice in rapid succession. Sorry about that!
But on your substantive point….I agree, it’s really more about the prestige and PR. Starlink this year will pull in as much revenue as NASA’s entire HSF budget; by 2027, they’ll be making as much as the entire NASA budget. And Elon knows it. Elon doesn’t need NASA any longer to go to the Moon or Mars (regulatory FUD notwithstanding).
Meanwhile SpaceX is really NASA’s only ride to space for nearly all of its needs right now. And Sean Duffy has got himself in a fight with a guy whose tweets (on the platform he owns) get 5 times as many views as any appearance Duffy can manage on Fox News.
Or host said
” and if NASA wishes to denigrate its(Spacex) work Musk could simply take his bat and ball and go home.”
And at least for the present SpaceX is like the kid that owned the bat and ball used in the pickup baseball game. if he goes home its game over until someone else can save up for a bat and ball.
Honestly Blue Origin is all bluster, at present they have launched precisely 1 New Glenn. China would be, unsurprisingly, unwilling to help, Russia has 13 launches this year vs 135 for SpaceX, and honestly, it’s quality was never great and has been headed downhill for a decade or more. Will NASA use its other Contractors? Boeing can’t get Starliner to work, ULA has nothing man rated and their Vulcan/Centaur isn’t much better off than New Glenn. Honestly you wouldn’t get me to climb into an Orion, and even then they can only crank one Artemis out every year or so (and that only until we run out or RS-25’s). This is the classic make the other guy the long pole in the tent of a scheduling issue. Except here if the other guy picks up and leaves (moon is NOT SpaceX/Elons goal at all) or gets cranky you have some serious issues.
It feels like Mr. Duffy has been fed some nonsense by internal NASA folks and he is not sharp enough to know whats up.
“not sharp enough to know whats up” sounds about right.
“And Sean Duffy has got himself in a fight with a guy whose tweets (on the platform he owns) get 5 times as many views as any appearance Duffy can manage on Fox News.”
Which is why Elon is calling him Sean Dummy.
Responding to Elon’s latest promise/threat to do the entirety of lunar missions with Starship, Homer Hickam reflects today: “I always thought (& said so at the time) that Kathy Lueders awarded the #HLS contract to SpaceX because she thought it would ultimately do the entire mission when the American gov’t finally woke up to the fact that the SLS/Orion/Gateway Artemis mission design was an unworkable Rube Goldberg plan. And I begged Jim Bridenstine’s team on the same day as Mike Pence announced Artemis to please take SLS out of the critical path because Mike had given NASA an open field to get to the moon in five years “by any means necessary” but nooooo. So here we are.”
Of course, people who matter rarely listen to the wisdom of Homer, so here we are, indeed.
It would certainly be interesting for someone to put the question of Lueders about whether this was lurking in her thinking at the time, when she’s free to talk about it.
Robert wrote: “Both will then rendezvous in a somewhat inconvenient lunar orbit, chosen simply because that is the orbit NASA’s improvised Lunar Gateway station will eventually occupy.”
The Gateway station’s orbit is chosen because SLS and Orion’s service module are too underpowered to get Orion into low lunar orbit and back out again. Therefore, the Human Landing System’s vehicle must be capable of landing from almost escape velocity and then getting back to almost escape velocity after launching from the lunar surface.
Boeing is off the accepted vendors list, and it may not be getting back on any time soon. No one else has anything remotely available, except Blue Origin, a company that does not work with rapidity, so developing Blue Moon could take half a decade.
Why Congress decided to pretend this ridiculous race to the Moon is beyond me. It distracts from the actual goal of a sustainable lunar base or settlement. I’m sorry that Duffy fell for this bogus space race. Isaacman may have been playing to Congress when he said he was in favor of beating the Chinese, but most likely he would have followed the same race mentality, too. NASA is, after all, Congress’s toy that the president (or more accurately: the vice president) gets to run.
Commercial space is the space program for the rest of us.
Tory
“Where is Lunar Starship?”
The (orange) elephant in the room is still Donald Trump. Secretary Duffy is doing what he is *told* to do, no more and no less, and if what passes for a national space policy is that we are in a race with China to the moon, then whose thinking (and limited understanding / vision) does this reflect?
In contrast to this, the discussion on Behind the Black has always centered on the longer term prospect of building a successful and sustainable space industrial base along the lines outlined in Robert’s Capitalism in Space. Adhering to this model, SpaceX is creating an affordable and sustainable means of going into space *to stay,* and it is not focused on reprising a “stunt” that was done better, faster, cheaper more than a half century ago. Nor is it a jobs program for needy bureaucrats whose products and performance have little import in the real world. Instead it’s the Real Deal in terms of becoming a space-fairing civilization, with everything that this might portend for our future as a nation.
The tragedy is that anyone — echoing the commentary by Mr. Musk — with an IQ much above room temperature can clearly discern the difference between these two approaches and can easily enough conclude that going after a sustainable presence in space for the *long term* is the better course of action for us to take.
The salient question is whether or not Mr. Trump believes this, and if he understands any of the long term ramifications of NASA’s present FUBAR-centric approach*. For all of the good that he is doing, President Trump seems to have no understanding at all of any of this, and he appears to be utterly clueless of how the real world of engineering works in this respect. Worse, he seems far more preoccupied with settling scores with Elon Musk than he does with setting a rational long term agenda with respect to space.
*We’ll go out on a limb and guess that he has never read Capitalism in Space or any of the posts on Behind the Black.
So, the bottom line, our “national space policy” effectively is being set by someone who (1) seems essentially clueless about how any of this actually works, and (2) whose agenda may be driven more by negative personal feelings and a desire for revenge than a real desire to
“Make America Great Again in Space.”
What would it “take,” does anyone think, to make Mr. Trump see the light and start making better decisions? And, given his personality, is such a thing even possible? It would be a terrible irony if the man who has essentially saved the nation from the onslaught of the Jacobin Democrats turns out to be the same person who squanders our resources on a race to the moon that — paraphrasing John Kenneth Galbraith — “American is not winning, cannot win, and ought not want to win.”
PS — Yes, I left out the worthies in Congress. Invincible ignorance — and the eye on the main chance — pretty much characterizes most of them, and yet such is the system that we have, and probably, in a fallen world, the best that can be had. But we keep on trying to push the rock up the hill.