The resounding landslide victory by Donald Trump and the Republicans yesterday is going have enormous consequences across the entire federal government. As a space historian and journalist who has been following, studying, and reporting on space policy for decades, this essay will be my attempt to elucidate what that landslide will mean for NASA, its Artemis program, and the entire American aerospace industry.

The absurd cost of each SLS launch

The Artemis Program

Since 2011 I have said over and over that the government-designed and owned SLS, Orion, and later proposed Lunar Gateway space station were all badly conceived. They all cost too much and don’t do the job. Fitting them together to create a long term presence in space is difficult at best and mostly impractical. Their cost and cumbersome design has meant the program to get back to the Moon, as first proposed by George Bush Jr. in 2004, is now more than a decade behind schedule and many billions over budget. Worse, under the present program as currently contrived that manned lunar landing will likely be delayed five more years, at a minimum.

For example, at present SLS is underpowered. It can’t get astronauts to and from the Moon, as the Saturn-5 rocket did in the 1960s. For the first manned lunar landing mission, Artemis-4, SLS will simply launch four astronauts in Orion to lunar orbit, where Orion will rendezvous and dock with the lunar lander version of Starship. That Starship in turn will require refueling in Earth orbit, using a proposed fuel depot that has been filled by multiple earlier Starship launches.

Once Starship is docked to Orion the crew will transfer to Starship to get up and down from the Moon, and then return to Earth in Orion.

You think that’s complicated? Later lunar missions will require Orion and Starship to dock with the Lunar Gateway station to do these crew transfers. To do this however will require that Gateway be built, launched, and assembled in lunar orbit, something that has never been done before.

Under a new Trump administration, working with advice directly from Elon Musk, I predict that the entire Artemis program will be drastically restructured. SLS and Orion will be eliminated completely. Starship can do the job for all, and do it cheaper, quicker, more simply, and with much greater capabilities. For example, while each SLS launch is expected to cost about $4 billion, Starship launches will cost far less than $50 million, and maybe far less. For the same money NASA will be able to fly dozens more missions, and do so fast.

Whether Lunar Gateway will remain is unclear. It has its uses but of a limited kind. Right now SpaceX has the contract to use its Falcon Heavy to launch the station’s two main modules, so Musk might thus advise keeping the station, but reshape it to use commercial rockets, such as Starship, Falcon Heavies, and possibly New Glenn (once operational), for resupply and crew ferrying. Most certainly it will be separated from the lunar base project. Crews might go to both, but missions to the lunar surface will no longer be required to dock with Gateway first.

If this happens the U.S. will likely return to the Moon much faster, and for a much lower cost. And the change will enliven America’s entire aerospace industry. The jobs lost in the federal government and NASA by eliminating Orion and SLS will be overwhelmed by the new jobs created in hundreds of new space companies providing service and product to each other and NASA.

Deregulation

During Trump’s first term he imposed a complete halt to the issuance of new regulations by the federal bureaucracy. Though he left the staffing of most agencies alone, in certain cases, such as the EPA, he aggressively worked to reduce its power and staffing.

Expect Trump’s anti-regulation hammer to strike with much greater force in his second administration. In regards to space, expect the immediate elimination of the FAA’s Part 450 regulations that it imposed in 2021, supposedly to “streamline” things. Instead, it has choked off all new development, and slowed the efforts of already established companies significantly. I expect Trump to cancel it quickly, based on advice from Musk, who has been directly impacted by its absurd rules and also has good inside knowledge of how it has impacted everyone else in the rocket business.

Similarly, expect Trump to neuter the efforts of the FCC to expand its regulatory authority into areas where it has no statutory authority, such as regulating the de-orbiting of satellites. This regulatory mission creep will stop, accompanied quite possible with major staffing cuts.

The result, if done successfully, will be an end to the regulatory burdens that since 2021 have shut down new rocket companies in the U.S. This in turn might help renew investment in such companies, something that dried up in the past three years, partly because of rocket failures but just as much because investors saw these new rocket companies hindered so much by those regulations that success had become questionable if not impossible.

Freedom to go to Mars or anywhere

By eliminating the ability of the administrative state to obstruct new development, expect SpaceX to quickly fly many Starship/Superheavy test flights, at least one every two months, so that it can get that rocket to operationality by the end of next year. The company will then proceed with Musk’s plan to fly one or more Starships to Mars in the first launch window in 2026, and to follow with more Starships in every subsequent launch window every two years hence.

Finally the only thing stopping Musk from his dream of dying on Mars will engineering problems. He will be able to function like all Americans once did, freely and following his own dreams.

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Or to put it more grandly, Trump’s space policy will essentially get the government out of the way of everybody, thus allowing Americans and private enterprise to step up to do the task, in its own way and as it wishes. Though this resurgence will begin with SpaceX dominating the field, others will quickly rise to the challenge, and we shall see a cornucopia of new private space missions, some to the Moon, some to the asteroids, some to Mars, and some to Venus.

Nor am I talking through my hat. Private companies are already developing and even building missions to all these places. The freedom that Trump will create will energize all these projects.

This new birth of freedom will also help the four commercial space stations presently under development. Every one of these stations will provide infrastructure needed for all those interplanetary projects. They will thus suddenly have more customers then they will know what to do with, which will in turn further their own success.

Or to put it another way freedom will mean that demand will exceed supply, the ideal situation for promoting fast and exuberant growth.

As always, freedom works. It raises all boats, and makes everyone prosper. And this fact is likely what Trump’s space policy will bring to America, more than anything else.

Hardly the actions of a tyrant, I’d say.