Part 1 of 2: What NASA’s next administrator should do if SLS and Orion are cancelled
When George Bush Jr. first proposed in 2004 an American long term effort to return to the Moon that has since become the Artemis program, he made it clear that the goal was not to simply land in 2015 and plant the flag, but to establish an aerospace industry capable of staying on the Moon permanently while going beyond to settle the entire the solar system.
The problem was that Bush proposed doing this with a government-built system that was simply not capable of making it happen. Though this system has gone through many changes in the two decades since Bush’s proposal, in every case it has been centered on rockets and spacecrafts that NASA designed, built, and owned, and were thus not focused on profit and efficiency. The result has been endless budget overruns and delays, so that two decades later and more than $60 billion, NASA is still years away from that first Moon landing, and the SLS rocket and Orion capsule that it designed and built for this task are incapable of establishing a base on the Moon, no less explore the solar system.
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion
For one thing, SLS at its best can only launch once per year (at a cost of from $1 to $4 billion per launch, depending on who you ask). There is no way you can establish a base on the Moon nor colonize the solar system with that launch rate at that cost. For another, Orion is simply a manned ascent/descent capsule. It is too small to act as an interplanetary spacecraft carrying people for months to years to Mars or beyond.
These basic design problems of both SLS and Orion make them impractical for a program to explore and colonize the solar system. But that’s not all. Orion has other safety concerns. Its heat shield has technical problems that will only be fixed after the next planned Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon. Its life support system has never flown in space, has issues also, and yet will also be used on the next manned flight.
Thus, it is very likely that when Jared Isaacman, Trump’s appointee for NASA administrator, takes over running the agency, he will call for the cancellation of both SLS and Orion. How can he ask others to fly on such an untested system?
When he does try to cancel both however the politics will require him to offer something instead that will satisfy all the power-brokers in DC who have skin in the game for SLS/Orion, from elected officials to big space companies to the bureaucrats at NASA. Isaacman is going to have to propose a new design for the Artemis program that these people will accept.
Artemis without SLS and Orion
Before I propose what Isaacman should do, let’s review what assets he will have available within the Artemis lunar program after cancelling these two boondoggles.
Orion docked to Starship in lunar orbit
First he will have two commercially built lunar landers, SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon. Both have their own launch vehicles, with Starship launching on top of Superheavy and Blue Moon using Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Both have NASA contracts to fly astronauts to the Moon, but both are being built as part of each company’s larger profit-making goals.
Second he will have the Lunar Gateway space station, though completing it will require reworking. Two modules (built by Maxar and Northrop Grumman) will launch on a Falcon Heavy. Other modules however are presently relying on SLS, and will require different launch vehicles to get into space.
The present plan for all but the first manned lunar landing is for astronauts heading to the Moon to launch on SLS carrying Orion, which would bring them to Gateway. They would then transfer to Starship or Blue Moon for the lunar trip up and down, and come back to Earth on Orion. On that first mission Orion will bypass Lunar Gateway (which won’t be ready) and rendezvous directly with the Starship lunar lander in lunar orbit (as shown to the right).
Thus, to keep Artemis’ lunar landing goal intact without SLS/Orion, most people in the space industry expect Isaacman to turn to SpaceX’s Starship and Superheavy. Starship will get Americans up and down from space as well as land them on the Moon, replacing Orion with a much larger and more capable manned capsule that is also designed for quick reuse at a fraction of the cost. Starship/Superheavy combined will replace SLS, is more powerful, and is also designed for quick reuse at a fraction of the cost.
Under this arrangement, Superheavy would launch Starship manned to Lunar Gateway, where the astronauts would transfer either to the lunar landing version of Starship or to Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.
It is also possible to dump Lunar Gateway entirely. It is cumbersome and complex, having many players. Several of its components are seriously over budget and behind schedule. And it sits in a lunar orbit that is generally inconvenient for colonizing the Moon. Instead, a manned Starship could bring its crew to lunar orbit and dock with either one of the two lunar landers. After the crew completes its lunar mission that same Starship could be used to transport them back to Earth.
All of this sounds doable, but I think it is too focused on achieving another Apollo-like plant-the-flag-on-the-Moon stunt. I think Isaacman should instead shift the gears of Artemis entirely, and in the second part of this essay tomorrow I will say how.
And it isn’t what you might expect.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
All of this sounds doable, but I think it is too focused on achieving another Apollo-like plant-the-flag-on-the-Moon stunt.
Agreed. Right now, Artemis is still, in its essence, a rerun of Apollo.
The objective should be something more ambitious and more fruitful than just a 6 to 13 day lunar sortie every year for 4 government employees to pick some rocks and leave some instruments and plant some flags.
People need villains: Nixon, Proxmire—SLS seemed to be the one thing many space advocates agreed upon be they Left or Right.
That looks to end January.
I fear Elon will be an even bigger target soon…and there will come a time when “but SLS” won’t fly (pun intended) any more than “but COVID!”
Over at my other haunt–Secret Projects Forum–there is talk about how Mexico is really becoming yet more of a powerhouse in aerospace–even as folks in North Alabama look for work–despite voting for Trump who was supposed to stop all this.
But where people lament MSFC, judicial enforced redistricting in my state looks to be a bigger thorn in coming days –and be sure they will reach out to the disposed.
Remember, Bezos still has deep pockets and political reach into Alabama–and he and his lawfare may find favor with Britt and Tubby once they no longer have SLS…and Alabama was promised Space Command before.
Fool me once…shame on you
Fool me twice…shame on me…
(That’s how it goes, Dubya)
Many people have suggested that a Space Command HQ for SLS swap will be offered as a sop to the Alabama crowd. I’m not sure that wins more friends than it makes enemies in Colorado, but it certainly should be one of the many things considered.
What I’d really like to see, is to get the more heavily government associated corporations and agencies out of rocket building and even payloads as much as possible, and get them focused on technologies, missions, and engineering. Don’t expect companies used to milking the taxpayer teat for funds to actually deliver a complete rocket, lander, or capsule, they never will. But get them to engineer ground breaking life support systems, centrifugal life support wheels, etc. That gives them funds and things to do, and the products might actually expand our technological and engineering base and drive us forward.
SpaceX is developing nearly all the components and capabilities required to establish and sustain a lunar base.
The most challenging new capability will be that of returning from the moon to LEO. That will require “aerobraking” off Earth’s atmosphere, which will probably require a Starship with fins rather than the finless HLS.
Aerobraking is more akin to the technique that has been used by several Mars probes to slow from interplanetary to Mars orbital speeds. The specific amount of heat-shielding required is an engineering question, but is probably less than what is required to reenter from LEO to Earth’s surface, and certainly much less than a capsule free-falling from the moon, like Apollo or Orion!.
So I think the way forward is an “HLS+” that can not only land and launch from the lunar surface, but can fly to the moon from LEO, and return to LEO, refilling from tankers / depots as required.
This HLS+ would never land on Earth. Astronauts would ferry up to it (in LEO) in Falcon / Dragons, and return to Earth’s surface the same way, hopefully making the human-rating of HLS+ significantly more feasible.
Of course this is not to mention all the boosters, tankers, depots and supply ships that would support this undertaking. Going beyond “footprints & flags” is a complex and expensive proposition! But if we don’t achieve it, we will probably have a great view of the Chinese doing so!
To placate the Colorado’s loss of Space Command, Trump could move the Dept of Interior HQ out there.
Most of the land managed by Interior is west of the Mississippi and much of that surrounds Colorado.
Ding, ding, ding! (Art Bell listeners will recognize this sound.)
Ray Van Dune has it exactly right:
“So I think the way forward is an ‘HLS+’ that can not only land and launch from the lunar surface, but can fly to the moon from LEO, and return to LEO, refilling from tankers / depots as required. [With depots on the moon, too.]
This HLS+ would never land on Earth. Astronauts would ferry up to it (in LEO) in Falcon / Dragons, and return to Earth’s surface the same way, hopefully making the human-rating of HLS+ significantly more feasible.”
And unless your spacecraft is coated with Carvorite, there is no reason to want — or spend billions on — a vehicle that can both ascend / descend through the earth’s atmosphere *and* fly through the vacuum of space, and everyone from Arthur C. Clarke to G. Harry Stine* has been talking about this forever. It is no longer even “rocket science.”
* https://www.amazon.com/Halfway-Anywhere-Achieving-Americas-Destiny/dp/0871318059
Pushing the halfway to anywhere analogy, What NASA is doing is like trying to design a vehicle that will get your from your front doorstep in New jersey to Paris all in one hop. In the real world (where cost and efficiency matter), people use their cars (or Uber) to get them to the airport, and then they board a 787 to fly the rest of the way. Ditto for the return trip.
A few points:
1) Boeing has plans to increase the production rate of the SLS core stage to one every eight months. That doesn’t change your overall point. It’s just an FYI.
2) Good on you for including the cancellation of Orion. There seems to be a hate-on for SLS all over the internet right now, but while SLS is too cussed expensive for what it does, it does work. That’s more than we can say about Orion right now, and Orion’s been in development for six years longer than SLS.
3) A word about costs in the aerospace industry: NASA and every major aerospace prime have a lot of specialized equipment requiring a lot of specialized personnel to operate. This results in a very high overhead cost.
The Space Shuttle program cost about $3.5 billion / year for five missions per year. That broke down to about $3 billion / year in overhead cost plus about $100 million / mission. Cutting the flight rate by one mission per year only saved $100 million, not the $700 million people expected.
Likewise when the Space Shuttle program was cancelled, NASA didn’t save $3.5 billion / year, only about $1.5 billion / year. Instead, the Space Station program cost increased by about $1 billion / year, as did the EELV program. NASA’s internal overhead cost merely shifted from the Space Shuttle program to the Space Station program, and the overhead cost in the space industry shifted to the EELV program.
You can’t just get rid of that cost. You’ll break things all over the aerospace industry — things important to civil aviation, civil space, and national defense. You have to do what Tory Bruno did at ULA and wind it down. You have to figure out what you need and can’t do without, what you can safely get rid of, and what you need but can substitute with a less expensive alternative.
My wild guess is that if you cancel SLS then some other program at NASA will increase in cost by $1 billion the very next year. It might even be Starship. That doesn’t mean don’t do it. That means it’s going to take a skilled administrator several years to wind it down intelligently.
4) I know people are out for blood — SLS’s blood — but cancelling the program immediately won’t save much, if any, money. The SLS for Artemis II is already at the Cape being stacked. It would probably cost more to disassemble it and dispose of it than to launch it at this point. The SLS for Artemis III isn’t far behind. The engines, the solid rocket boosters, and the upper stage are all complete, and the major sections of the core stage are almost complete and ready for assembly.
5) Cancelling the Lunar Gateway won’t save much American money, and it would greatly upset our international partners. Only the first two modules of the Gateway (HALO and the PPE) are being paid for by the American taxpayers, and they’re almost done. The others are being paid for by Europe (I-Hab and ESPRIT), Canada (the robot arm), Japan (various components), and the UAE (the airlock).
6) The Gateway itself isn’t tied to any particular orbit, and its engine is both refuelable and sized to move it among NRHO and Lagrange orbits.
Heh. That was more points than I started with. I think I’ll leave it at that.
Alright, where do we go from here? My recommendations:
1) Cancel Orion immediately. The heatshield problems on Orion are far more serious than the thruster problems on Starliner, and NASA sent that capsule back unmanned. There’s no point to an unmanned Orion.
2) Cancel SLS after flight #3. The real expense for SLS going forward begins at flight #4. That SLS is early enough in production to actually save production costs, and that’s on top of saving the expense of the EUS and the billion-dollar tower.
3) Use the now unallocated SLSs to launch the Gateway. NASA is having trouble getting the weight of the PPE/HALO down to the capability of the Falcon Heavy. SLS would have no problem with it. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’m pretty sure SLS could launch I-Hab, ESPRIT, and the airlock using a Dragon XL as the tug. If not, shift I-Hab to the PPE/HALO flight.
4) Contract SpaceX for a Falcon / Dragon-based solution to get crew to and from the Gateway (it would almost certainly involve distributed launch). That would give SpaceX more time to work out the development issues with the many versions of Starship they need to build. It would also provide a dissimilar redundancy to Starship.
5) As I mentioned in a previous comment, Starship is really too big for Gateway, so don’t send it there. Use Gateway for Blue Moon missions to explore many sites on the moon: equatorial, north polar, south polar, and far side. Blue Moon can then be repaired and refurbished at the Gateway between missions.
Keeping Gateway keeps our international partnerships intact, provides lunar infrastructure for maintenance of lunar assets, and allows for some Mars analog missions to be tried out in lunar orbit.
6) Use the Starship lander for direct missions to build and supply a base. Serious tonnage would be a great help in that endeavor, and that is certainly something that Starship could supply.
This architecture keeps the best of Artemis and gets rid of the worst — much better than throwing the baby out with the bath water. IMO, of course.
No one has experience repairing and refurbishing spacecraft in Earth orbit, never mind managing the added logistical burden of doing such a thing while in a lunar or Earth-Moon Lagrange orbit.
Why no mention of the stark truth that NASA is another bloated, wildly inefficient Federal bureaucracy that needs to be downsized by the incoming new head of NASA. This should be the number one priority of the new Administrator. This should also include a ruthless review of all existing contracts with outside vendors. The political DC power brokers desires should have no say whatsoever over what needs to be achieved by NASA going forward. NASA is broken and in dire need of a sweeping overhaul.
“When George Bush Jr. first proposed in 2004 an American long term effort to return to the Moon that has since become the Artemis program, he made it clear that the goal was not to simply land in 2015 and plant the flag, but to establish an aerospace industry capable of staying on the Moon permanently while going beyond to settle the entire the solar system”
No where in the Vision for Space Exploration is the word “settle” used. Explore obviously, but not settle. Also, neither is “permanent” used.
Anyway, it is not clear how W would have even thought we could settle the entire solar system. You mean Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury? Seems likely beyond what Cheney would advise him.
“There is no way you can establish a base on the Moon nor colonize the solar system with that launch rate at that cost.”
The VSE did not have colonization in its text. It did have exploration bases which is what Constellation tried to do.
Junius: An excellent point, one in which I made in my policy paper Capitalism in Space. Come back later today to read Part 2 of this essay.
mkent – Do you think that your 6 point recommendations for a lunar plan will result with humans (Americans) on the moon before 2030? What arrives on the moon first Blue Moon or Lunar Starship (not necessarily HLS Starship)?
Regarding Orion heatshield, apparently the first Orion capsule returned from Earth orbit (2014) used a build technique used by Apollo which (apparently) minimized outgassing cracks and voids. It appeared to work fine. For reasons of cost and “manufacturability”, the build technique was changed to the segmented heatshield used in the more stressing uncrewed circum-lunar mission of 2022. This build technique resulted in the problems recently discussed by NASA.
The boys at NASA Spaceflight have a good discussion of this in the first 16 minutes of this long report video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb2WW8gZ0qU&t=998s
In regards to Junius’s observation, Eric Berger relayed this on X yesterday:
“Interesting comment from a senior NASA official yesterday suggesting DOGE would not be such a bad thing, and that the agency would benefit from losing some bureaucracy. “We’re in a space race and running in molasses.” Chatham House rules so I’m not naming the person.”
https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1866152612623741433
Milt – “… refilling from tankers / depots as required. [With depots on the moon, too.]” Excellent point!
Ps. Re my comment: “That will require “aerobraking” off Earth’s atmosphere, which will probably require a Starship with fins rather than the finless HLS.” – I do not however assume that these “fins” would need the heavy, complex, and problematic hinging mechanisms, which seem intended to more accurately control a reentry to landing on Earth. Rather, presumably fixed fins would function simply improve aerobraking drag. This is only a qualitative design guess on my part, of course!
Richard M. said
Agreed. Right now, Artemis is still, in its essence, a rerun of Apollo.
It’s worse than that. Even with the potential 8 month SLS delivery (which M. Kent had said Boeing had plans for frankly does not inspire confidence in me given Boeing’s woes of late) you’re at far lower rates than Apollo for example Apollo 7-12 occur in a period of 13 months, Apollo 14-17 cover ~24 months (I ignored Apollo 13 there was, of course, a stop to figure out WHY we nearly blew up a service module).
SLS may have initially been a way to get a more complete exploration under way but here nearly 20 years later it is just a jobs program to keep the old aerospace industry across the country fed and still breathing. It adds little or nothing to the process of space exploration or technology as it exists (other than the bits and bobs for the lunar lander which is really SpaceX cleverly getting NASA to fund Starship for Mars :-) ).
I would see 4 rough phases to exploring/exploiting tho moon
1) Preliminary exploration and a small base (likely at south pole) to explore whether long term habitation (i.e. 6 month+) is even feasible. In particular issues such as safety of lunar soil (i.e. Airlocks in and out) need to be resolved as lunar soil is fine and tends to have elements that react in presence of O2 and water. This was a major nuisance in the later Apollo work.
2) If 1 is found feasible move to a base with permanent occupation much like current Antarctic bases with regular resupply from earth. Start working on developing lunar resources for the construction of housing and materials for construction of various scientific projects. Also initial explore possibility of commercial value. Given the delta V to get anything back from the lunar surface this seems unlikely. Also work on growing food (plant and animal) to help reduce/remove support costs.
3) Build (using preferably locally sourced materials due to cost to get from Earth) scientific remote bases, Likely a Radio telescope of the Arecibo type and large (say 30 M) Optical/UV/IR scope on the far side of the moon. These may want to be remote and unmanned perhaps using lunar orbiting satellites for data/control links.
4) Look at exploitation of any resources found feasible and at more permanent residences. This can also serve as a learning testbed for Mars or other human colonies in the system as we need understanding of whether we can grow food and raise food animals in low gravity situations (and ultimately safely raise additional humans).
Big issue is this is a 20-30 year process. Our system works in 2 and 4 year fits and starts and right now it isn’t even doing that well. On top of that there is the ridiculous opposition to colonization driven out of the eco left. Like you can do anything to harm a large section of vacuum bathed in hard radiation on a regular basis. They just don’t like Mankind (Particularly western Mankind) to succeed.
I was wondering if NASA personnel count as government contractors and could thus be laid off without pay or are they union workers who can nor be fired and must just be offered other government work.
You have little chance of controlling the budget if you can not control the number of personnel.
As for SLS, Yes it needs canceled. Maybe use the rocket that is close to finished. Sell off all the rest of the materials unfinished or not. If a private company wants to keep building it then its up to them.
As for Orion, use what is close to finished and turn the rest of everything private.
End the stupid idea of having multiple launch providers. If some private company builds it and provides it without government cash then good for them. NASA can buy it or rent it all they want.
NASA should kick the Russians and their modules off the space station. If need be replace them with private modules as soon as possible.
As for ANY base on the Moon.
Any base on the Moon just for science should be stopped. It would take little more to expand it into something working towards permanency.
Think of it like the Antarctic base. It started very small and is now up to several thousand personnel.
Plan on expanding any Moon base instead of just throwing it all away.
It doesn’t have to be perfect but instead it could just be functional until it could be expand and upgraded.
Why throw away Hubble when it could be upgraded and saved? Get serious about it
A large part of old NASA was funded by and for the military. The military is moving toward a more private enterprise/contractor system.
Putin also backed massive cuts to nationally-funded space programs.
How did that work out?
By libertarian logic, the money Khrushchev threw behind R-7 was foolish, with Putin’s cuts were brilliant.
Uh-huh.
In a typical Western, the black hat railroad businessman who tries to rip off Ma and Pa Kettle–gets thwarted by the white hat sheriff (government).
There a true libertarian has to believe the railroad man is the hero and the white hat is the villain… which likely explains Trump’s wonderful quote about Libertarians getting 5% of the vote.