Ted Cruz, a typical Congressional porkmeister

The Senate hearing that was held yesterday, entitled “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race”, was clearly organized by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to promote a continuation of the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway parts of NASA’s Artemis program. And he was able to do so because senators from both parties felt the same way. They all want to continue this pork, and don’t really care whether those expensive assets can really accomplish what they promise.

Furthermore, the hearing was also structured to allow these politicians to loudly proclaim their desire to beat China back to the Moon, using this pork. They want the U.S. first, but they are almost all want to do this through a government-run program.

As such, the choice of witnesses and the questions put to them were carefully orchestrated to push this narrative. To paraphrase: “We have to beat China to the Moon! And we have make sure a NASA program runs the effort! And above all, we mustn’t let Donald Trump cut any of NASA’s funding, anywhere!”

It was therefore not surprising that the most newsworthy quote from the hearing was the comments by former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine about Starship and how its choice as a manned lunar lander was a bad one, and that it was likely going to the prime reason China will humans back to the Moon ahead of us.

Jim Bridenstine at yesterday’s hearing

He started by stating bluntly, “”It is highly unlikely that we will land on the moon before China.” He then went on to criticize the decision of NASA, after he had left the agency, to pick Starship as the manned lunar lander.

Instead of buying a moonlander, we’re going to buy a a big rocket. … The architecture is [complicated]. We need to launch Starship. That first Starship is a fueling depot that’s in orbit around the Earth. Then we need … up to dozens of additional Starships to refuel the first Starship. So imagine launching Starship over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, dozens of times, no delays, no explosions to refuel the first Starship. Then once it’s fully refueled, then that Starship has to fuel another Starship that is in fact human rated, which that process hasn’t even started yet.

He then outlined the complexity of launching SLS and Orion and having it rendezvous and dock with that manned Starship in lunar orbit, all of which seemed to him a bad idea. “This is an architecture that no NASA administrator that I’m aware of would have selected had they had the choice.”

What was fascinating about Bridenstine’s comments was that while he questioned Starship extensively, he said nothing about the significant questions about SLS and Orion. SLS did have overruns in the past but that’s “behind us. It’s done.” Orion meanwhile was “a shiny object … usable today.” No mention of its questionable heat shield or its as yet untested environmental system that must keep its astronauts alive.

Other witnesses lauded the medical research on ISS, without noting that none of that research produces products for sale on Earth. None mentioned the new commercial sector that is doing the same, but actually providing those products to Americans while making a profit. Over and over both senators and witnesses proclaimed the need to fund NASA, because without NASA nothing would happen at all.

The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

The bottom line is that there will likely be no cancellation of SLS, Orion, or Lunar Gateway in the near future. Congress wants all three, and is willing to throw money at them for years to come to keep them alive. Though Starship might delay things a bit, as Bridenstine claimed, the reason China will get its lunar base built first will be because of SLS, Orion, and Gateway, not Starship. SLS and Orion are inefficient, cumbersome, and too expensive, and Gateway puts our assets not on the Moon but in space. You can’t build a manned lunar base with a rocket and capsule that only launches at best once a year, carrying four people. Nor can you do it building a lunar space station in an orbit that makes landing on the Moon more expensive and difficult.

Yet Congress wants them, and it held this hearing expressly to convince the country that these projects should be funded forever. And unless something dramatic happens, such as Orion failing during its first manned mission next year, or SpaceX leaping ahead with its own manned missions to Mars, we should expect Congress to fund SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway endlessly for many years to come.

There was at least one small hope during this hearing. One witness, Lieutenant General John Shaw, former deputy commander of the U.S. Space Command, made it a point to repeatedly advocate for a wider view outside of funding a government-run NASA program to plant a flag on the Moon.

John Shaw

My bottom line up front for the committee today is that I am an advocate for and a champion of a unified grand space strategy for our nation for the earth-moon system and beyond. Yet such a grand strategy which would unify and synergize our national efforts across civil, commercial, and national security activities in pursuit of common goals, opportunities, and capabilities does not currently exist. And I believe our mission to return Americans to the moon can be a powerful and a central driver as well as a beneficiary of such a strategy.

In his testimony he consistently focused on encouraging many different capabilities by the private sector across a wide spectrum, not on simply funding SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway, noting that by doing so the government would be enabling its goal of establishing a lunar base far more effectively. This is the concept I put forth in December last year. And though a majority of the senators seemed uninterested in this approach, there were more than a few that appeared to agree with it.

Thus, though the boondoggles will go on, it does appear Congress is also willing to shift focus away from them, albeit with some reluctance.

We can only hope that given time and events, this reluctance will eventually fade and be replaced with a more coherent approach, focused not on funding NASA but helping the American people themselves colonize the solar system.