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.
Milt asked: “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?”
This race came from Congress. Vociferously from Ted Cruz, especially during Isaacman’s interview with Congress’s committee inquisition, who wants his own daughters to feel like they have been to the Moon in the same way that Americans over the age of 60 feel that way. Trump chose to go to the Moon, not because it was easy but because there was nothing else that Orion-SLS could reasonably do.
SpaceX has a goal of colonizing Mars. Blue Origin has focused on settling the Moon and putting the most-polluting industries in space. Other companies have been pursuing asteroid mining, which could inexpensively supply those space industries. Even more companies are eager to create the space stations that would support all these activities.
The good news with the Beat the Chinese™ goal is that it has supplanted the woke goal of putting the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon. Instead, we can be sure that the first woman on the Moon will be fully qualified, and so will the first person of color. When Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, there was no doubt that she was fully qualified. When the Russians put Valentina Tereshkova in orbit — just to put a woman in space — she had been a textile factory worker and an amateur skydiver. Was she as qualified as the cosmonauts who had flown before her? Four of the five previous cosmonauts had been military pilots and the fifth had been in the army.
The national space policy may be to enhance America’s reputation, but commercial space has different goals — long-term goals — and different space policies. Being hired by the government may be an objective to help finance the long-term goals. Government rarely looks at the long-term. Most national politicians have to get reelected within two years, so they rarely look farther than the next election. Presidents may be looking at an election within four years, and if they are in their second — and last — terms of office, then they may want to look at their long-term legacies, which should be something important that lasts. President Kennedy accidentally created Man On The Moon as his legacy. Senators might look as much as six years into the future, but they don’t have to look much farther than that.
President Trump, on the other hand, is clearly looking at things other than space as his long-term legacy. He is spending much more time on creating a peaceful planet than in getting to the Moon. Social culture is higher on his mind than space. Space is so low on his radar that he has not worked very hard to get a real administrator for NASA. Instead, he has a distracted Duffy, whose real job is elsewhere.
President Trump is also proud of the construction of long-lasting real estate, buildings intended to last for centuries. He has a basic understanding of long-term projects and management. NASA’s FUBAR approach is due to the several changes in its directives from Congress and various presidents, using flight hardware that was not designed to perform the assigned mission — or any particular mission, for that matter.
“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?”
Would getting a permanent administrator for NASA be a better decision than letting commercial space advance into space without the distraction of a race to the Moon that we already won half a century ago? Do we really want an administrator who cow-tows to a Congress with misguided goals?
The real problem for NASA is that the Artemis Project has made the organization insignificant, a mere repeat of past glory, rather than the path to a sustainable lunar base, settlement, or colony. Commercial space performs more launches and operates more missions than NASA, and commercial space has far, far more satellites in orbit than NASA, with far more yet to come. NASA did not make space very useful to We the People, but commercial space is. NASA can keep satisfying some of the government’s desires for using space, for satisfying the national space policy, but commercial space is becoming very talented at satisfying the desires of the rest of us, We the People’s space policies, policies pursued with investor money (due diligence done), not taxpayer money (compromised by Congressional compromises).
Robert is right: “[Duffy’s] 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.“
” . . . feel like they have been to the Moon in the same way that Americans over the age of 60 feel that way.”
You are cruel, sir. ‘Of a certain age’; yeah, that’s the ticket :)
Yep, that’s what NASA should have done in 1959, to start. Gonna be tough to dig up the US manned space program, though, after it was murdered by obamanauts.
Edward. Thank you.
Understanding the convoluted workings of NASA and Congress has presented quite a learning curve for this non-engineer, but you have helped. An observation, however.
You observe, probably correctly, that “Government rarely looks at the long-term,”* and I can’t think of a more frightening statement about where we may be headed. Robert, of course, is correct in that in our culture’s traditional way of doing things the private sector takes the lead in creating most material aspects of life. On the other hand — unless you are a Libertarian — there is the issue of the long term sustainability of our government and other institutions (such as education and religion) that provide the social groundwork and scaffolding for what capitalism builds. Consider, if nothing else, all of the short term thinking that brought us a $30 trillion national debt. Likewise, “our” government’s baffling de-emphasis on civics education and (cf, Victor Davis Hanson and the Dying Citizen) the virtual abandonment of the idea that citizenship is a virtue that ought to be cultivated. From that we go on to elect people like Mr. Mamdani, on one hand, and Ted Cruz on the other. Sigh.
*Historically, the military seems — mostly, especially since WW II — to have been a happy exception to this. One also thinks of such occasions as the Louisiana Purchase, acquiring Alaska, the transcontinental railroad, and the sundry other visionary projects that Felix Rohatyn has described in Bold Endeavors, a lively history of positive government activism. (Caution, Libertarians will be triggered by
his narrative, lol.) Likewise, after the private sector has *built* something — say the automobile industry — it usually falls to government to facilitate it (cf, building roads and highways), to “regulate” it with such things as license tags, traffic lights, and safety requirements, and to bring some order to how this new institution impacts people’s daily lives.
In this case, it would be nice if the Trump Administration were indeed on the same page with Robert with respect to a sustainable path toward becoming a true space faring nation, and we would save a lot of time, effort, and money in the process. Alas, this is probably not to be, but at least as it is being talked about on this forum, and the private sector is forging ahead come what may.
Nonetheless, the idea that our government is apparently so poor at being able to “see the future” — or even to comprehend simple engineering and logistical reality — is not a happy one, and thinking about it makes my head hurt and my heart ache. Through Providence and the work of the Founders (and the sacrifices of all of the people who have bled and died to keep it over the last 250 years) we have been bequeathed a uniquely functional and freedom-centered form of government, and it would be a tragedy to simply throw it all away. Or, as Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum have suggested in their book That Used To Be Us (Caution, *conservatives* will be triggered by this one), getting back to the odd notion that government and the private sector might work in concert to build a better world.
Elon is not letting up in the banter against Sean Duffy today, and….it really is surreal to see this: the CEO of NASA’s most important contractor in an open flame war with its (acting) administrator.
Eric Berger’s newest piece last night at Ars Technica does a fair job of explaining how we got here: it’s a lot more sympathetic to Musk than I expected, but I think that seems mainly driven by Eric’s disdain for Duffy and how he has handled all this.
Trump can put an end to all this by simply nominating a permanent administrator, today. Most preferably Isaacman, who for whatever his limitations clearly has far more respect in the industry than Duffy and actually knows something about space, and can clearly get confirmed by the Senate.
Edward,
“Trump chose to go to the Moon, not because it was easy but because there was nothing else that Orion-SLS could reasonably do.”
It was also an objective which, so he was advised, was the only splashy feat NASA might be able to manage with it by the end his notional second term. Which it really wasn’t, or certainly not with the vehicles that it thought it had to use, and especially not after NASA took almost three years to award a contract for a lander.
But as I think most of us agree, that was the wrong conversation to have. If we really must go back to the Moon, it should be about doing it sustainably and entrepreneurially, not about doing it “before China.”
Three years to land people on the moon?
It will take longer just to approve any design for human flight then test it before actually using it.
And thats for Space X. BO would take at another ten years beyond that.
Elon needs to grow up.
It really does sound like Blue Origin’s team has the Mk1 lander in the final stretch: basically it’s in testing now. Seems like they have done a tremendous amount of work.
But few people are stopping to think about just what modifying it into a crew architecture would require. It’s not just about adding a crew compartment, crew controls, life support, hatch and egress, docking port for Gateway/Orion, but *also* making it into a vehicle that can go all the way to or from NRHO (that’s virtually escape velocity, by the way), not low lunar orbit. Even splitting those steps up into separate landers doesn’t make the problem go away.
And then NASA has to sign off on all this stuff.
None of this is a trivial exercise. And however good BO’s engineers are, the company hasn’t shown an aptitude for speedy work, even under Dave Limp’s leadership. And morale there hasn’t recovered from the big layoffs this winter, from what I can make out.
Milt,
You’re welcome.
You wrote: “Historically, the military seems — mostly, especially since WW II — to have been a happy exception to this.”
Good point. Some of the “bureaucrats” have a long-view. I would include NASA employees, many of whom probably joined NASA in order to facilitate their childhood dreams of space exploration, utilization, and colonies.
Another exception to political short-term thinking would be certain long-term policies or doctrines, such as Manifest Destiny.
I probably should have been more specific that I mean government in the U.S. has a short view of the future. This probably also includes most or all governments that are elected by their citizens. To stay in power, they must provide bread and circuses to keep the people happy until the next election. For us, we have a 38 trillion dollar national debt that was generated by attempts to appease voting blocks. Unfortunately, future generations will pay the price. They will be taxed, yet they have not been represented — only the current generations have been represented.
Religions, monarchies and other forms of government or organizations may also have a long-view into the future. When a president can only run the government for a relatively brief period, long-term is not so important, but a ruler or party that has decades or centuries to look forward to can start projects that won’t be complete for decades or centuries to come. They can afford enormous patience.
“In this case, it would be nice if the Trump Administration were indeed on the same page with Robert with respect to a sustainable path toward becoming a true space faring nation, and we would save a lot of time, effort, and money in the process. Alas, this is probably not to be, but at least as it is being talked about on this forum, and the private sector is forging ahead come what may.”
It may be more important to stay out of the way, but a helping hand with some of the nascent space companies may be a good help in countering the harm imposed by U.S. government policies, over the past two-thirds of a century. In addition, I am confident that SpaceX is not happy being a virtual monopoly.* There are signs that this monopoly will be short lived, but right now it is a potential problem. SpaceX is committed to low prices and to launching competitors’ payloads, so it is not a problem this year.
It is important that We the People, not the government, lead ourselves in space. When we let government be in charge, all we got was what government wanted. Now that we are in charge, we are beginning to get what We the Peoplewant. Again that is important. Government is supposed to be our servant, not the other way around, but many in government seem to think otherwise.**
There should be many different companies doing the leading in their own niches.
“… we have been bequeathed a uniquely functional and freedom-centered form of government …”
de Tocqueville called it Democracy in America, others have called it American Exceptionalism. The liberty from government-restrictions is a major factor that makes the United States unique. The intention of the Statue of Liberty was to be a beacon that showed the rest of the world that emulating America would spread the exceptionalism.*** Unfortunately, some idiot who didn’t understand France’s intension chose some silly poem that said the opposite: Escape your oppression and let it continue for your neighbors rather than change it for the betterment of the world.
______________
Richard M wrote: “It’s not just about adding a crew compartment, crew controls, life support, hatch and egress, docking port for Gateway/Orion, but *also* making it into a vehicle that can go all the way to or from NRHO (that’s virtually escape velocity, by the way), not low lunar orbit.”
Blue Origin’s concept is for another expendable rocket to be attached to the bottom of the Blue Moon lander to slow the craft enough for Blue Moon to land the rest of the way. Even this part of Artemis is a kluge.
Thank you for the heads up on Berger’s essay.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/elon-musk-just-declared-war-on-nasas-acting-administrator-apparently/
Good Lord! Duffy is an empire builder, the exit opposite of what Trump has promised he would do in government. This is a bad idea on so many levels and in so many ways.
______________
* Because they are also the major operator of satellites, these days, they are also the virtual monopsony. In past decades, that situation was held by NASA.
** While unemployed, I once talked to a teacher and pondered retiring before retirement age, but she insisted that it was my duty to earn money and pay taxes so that her salary could be paid. To her, I was only a revenue source.
*** It isn’t phrased this way, but this is the essence of the intention of the gift.
Let me get this straight?
A bunch of White guys, using 1960’s technology could supposedly put men on the moon. No problem.
But with all the amazing technological advances since then, and the wonderful diversity enriching NASA and our country, they can’t do it now?
Seriously?
Dwayne Armstrong asked: “A bunch of White guys, using 1960’s technology could supposedly put men on the moon. No problem. But with all the amazing technological advances since then, and the wonderful diversity enriching NASA and our country, they can’t do it now? Seriously?”
The project in the 1960s was designed with that goal in mind, and a major sub-project, Gemini, was used to develop the technologies, hardware, and methods to accomplish the task. Budget was no obstacle for the Apollo project.
Today’s Moonshot is not affected diversity. The Moon project in the 2000s was cancelled (oh, I might be wrong about the diversity comment), reinstated in the 2010s, but was required to use hardware that had not been designed for that mission, and in the 2020s we are discovering the ramifications of the limits of using that hardware. For instance, the Orion heat shield is not suitable for returns from lunar distances and needs a redesign for that use. Another for instance, the cost is too high for a sustainable lunar base, but that is OK, because the goal has changed to one of diversity (first woman and first person of color), then changed again to Beat the Chinese.™ (Huh. Diversity seems to be intertwined in anything NASA does, and it always interferes with the goal of a sustainable lunar base.)
Edward observed: “They will be taxed, yet they have not been represented.”
A point I have made. The current generation is not funding their retirement; they are paying for their grandparents’ retirement. I have not looked, but would be unsurprised if young people are not also paying for their now-deceased relative’s Social Security. At one time, the SS tax ensured a future of some sort; now, paying for past promises where the obligants didn’t get a say.
Richard M,
“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.”
In 2008, SpaceX and NASA needed each other about equally. SpaceX needed money – relatively little by NASA standards as it turned out – and NASA needed a way to keep its new space station going without the rapidly-sunsetting Shuttle. NASA had found that its stable of superannuated racehorses could barely manage an amble to the paddock. Their days of racing around the track were long gone. SpaceX, in contrast, was champing at the bit and eager to run for the roses.
Now, as you correctly note, NASA needs SpaceX vastly more than the other way around. Duffy either does not comprehend this or perhaps understands it too well. Picking a fight with Elon while apparently throwing in with the do-nothing-on-our-own-dime club – plus Blue – is either dimwitted beyond belief or is precisely calculated to “incentivize” a guy who very much could take his bat and ball to a different ballpark of his own construction to, instead, stay in the game NASA wants to play and even supply additional bats and balls out of his own pocket. That seems, now, to be what will happen and we may never know whether it was the result of a genius-level psyop or abject idiocy. Perhaps, in the larger scheme of things, it won’t really matter.
“They just blew up Starship S37 and the entire Massey’s test stand this summer!”
Actually, it was Starship S36 that blew up at Massey’s. S37 flew on Flight 10. SpaceX builds so many of the things I know it can be hard to keep track.
“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.”
The “anyone else” part is certainly true, but SpaceX might have delivered an HLS as soon as next year had it not spent roughly two years shooting itself in the feet anent wretched regulatory compliance work and wonky GSE at Pad 1. Absent all the Biden regime attempts at monkey-wrenching SpaceX, HLS might have been deliverable this year.
But 2028 now looks to be the likeliest year during which a proved-out Starship HLS is capable of doing its thing with an actual crew. That will be roughly seven years from contract award to initial crewed landing – about the same as Grumman took with the Apollo LM. Not bad under the circumstances. And likely more than soon enough to Beat the Chinese[tm].
“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.”
Back in the days when newspapers were still a significant thing there was a saying that one should not get into a feud with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.
“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.”
I suspect Kathy will have nothing much to say publicly until her memoirs are about to hit the bookstores. I expect them to be even spicier than Lori Garver’s.
“Eric Berger’s newest piece last night at Ars Technica does a fair job of explaining how we got here: it’s a lot more sympathetic to Musk than I expected, but I think that seems mainly driven by Eric’s disdain for Duffy and how he has handled all this.”
No doubt Berger has a low opinion of Duffy. But I think the piece was “mainly driven” by Berger’s considerable knowledge of all the players – OldSpace, Blue and SpaceX – and his appreciation that SpaceX is all we can reasonably count on at this late date.
“But as I think most of us agree, that was the wrong conversation to have. If we really must go back to the Moon, it should be about doing it sustainably and entrepreneurially, not about doing it “before China.”
If Elon follows through on building an SLS-Orion replacement in parallel with HLS, there seems every chance that we will be fortunate enough to do both.
“But few people are stopping to think about just what modifying it into a crew architecture would require. It’s not just about adding a crew compartment, crew controls, life support, hatch and egress, docking port for Gateway/Orion, but *also* making it into a vehicle that can go all the way to or from NRHO (that’s virtually escape velocity, by the way), not low lunar orbit. Even splitting those steps up into separate landers doesn’t make the problem go away.”
“And then NASA has to sign off on all this stuff.”
“None of this is a trivial exercise. And however good BO’s engineers are, the company hasn’t shown an aptitude for speedy work, even under Dave Limp’s leadership. And morale there hasn’t recovered from the big layoffs this winter, from what I can make out.”
Quite so. There is simply no way to quickly “MacGyver” a Blue Moon Mk1 into a second coming of LM.
Milt,
I don’t think Pres. Trump is making any detailed decisions about NASA. He has built a Cabinet he trusts, meets with frequently and to whom he grants considerable latitude once large-scale policy is defined. Trump – despite having seemingly buried the hatchet with Musk recently – might well approve Duffy’s jabbing of Musk after the fact if it gets SpaceX to concentrate more on the Moon in the near term. Just because Trump and Musk are not at each other’s throats anymore doesn’t mean the two men have a complete confluence of interests.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see Trump as having made any egregiously bad decisions other than his early-term moves anent Ukraine. Fortunately, he seems to be course-correcting on that.
Jeff Wright,
Musk grew up quite early-on. If he occasionally lets his inner cranky child out all I can say is the world needs more such cranky children. Decorum is far from the most important thing in the world as any casual examination of history will readily demonstrate. In any event, compared to other great men and women of world history, Musk ranks pretty low on the spleen-venting scale.
Blair Ivey wrote: “The current generation is not funding their retirement; they are paying for their grandparents’ retirement. I have not looked, but would be unsurprised if young people are not also paying for their now-deceased relative’s Social Security. At one time, the SS tax ensured a future of some sort; now, paying for past promises where the obligants didn’t get a say.”
It is called a social contract, and we are all born into them. We Americans got one with some amount of freedom, and the North Koreans got one where the government is mother and father and takes real good care of everyone in a utopia foreseen by Karl Marx himself. Or something like that.
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Dick Eagleson wrote: “NASA needs SpaceX vastly more than the other way around. Duffy either does not comprehend this or perhaps understands it too well.”
I don’t think that Duffy is a dummy, so he understands that NASA is losing relevance. This may be why he apparently is pondering absorbing NASA into his own agency, so that he can use what it has left for his own benefit and glory as an empire builder. This is how governments grow and become worse servants of the people, not how they shrink and serve We the People.
I think Robert has called it correctly, that Duffy played Musk like a violin, getting him to distract the press and even virtually everyone here, commenting on BTB, from the real problems at NASA to bogus problems. Duffy may even be able to sneak NASA into the Transportation Department with little notice, as long as he can keep a fight with Musk going long enough and loud enough. If it hadn’t been for the absorption of NASA idea, I could have been convinced that Duffy’s jab at Musk was just to get him to work HLS faster. Instead, I am convinced it is a distraction that covers several evils.
“Duffy’s NASA, where the elite meet to bleat. Duffy ain’t here!”
The Right trousers
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-robotic-exosuit-trousers-boost-astronauts.html
Mars challenges
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-mission-mars-space-exploration-human.html