Artemis lunar program likely to be delayed further
Surprise! According to two different news outlets today (Reuters and CNN) citing anonymous sources, NASA is about to announce further delays in its manned Artemis program to put humans back on the Moon.
Both reports state that the second Artemis mission, the first with humans on board, will not take place this year as NASA has been saying, but will be delayed until 2025. The third mission, the intended manned landing on the Moon, will be further delayed until 2026. Furthermore, Reuters reports that the actual landing might be delayed until the fourth mission, “giving SpaceX and other contractors more practice before making the first such landing in half a century.”
None of these dates will be met. I predict that further delays will be announced next year and the year after that, pushing all these missions back again, in small increments, even though it is obvious now that the entire program is years from making those first manned flights.
There are numerable problems. First the SLS rocket is so cumbersome it takes many months to assembly for launch. Any issues along the way cause delays. Second, battery problems were detected during testing of the Orion capsule to fly, requiring their replacement.
Third, and most important, the lunar landing requires NASA’s Lunar Gateway and SpaceX’s Starship. Gateway is nowhere near ready. All of its multiple components are still being built, with none yet launched.
SpaceX’s Starship is undergoing testing, but those test flights are being hampered by red tape at the FAA and elsewhere in the federal government. SpaceX had planned to do as many as six test flights per year. Right now the federal bureaucracy is slowing that plan to only one to two test flights per year. Under that restriction, the Starship lunar lander won’t be ready for years.
Pushing the manned lunar landing back one mission makes some sense, but the entire program remains fraught with great risks. Because SLS is so expensive and difficult to fly, NASA can’t afford to do the correct number of unmanned test missions before sending humans on it. For example, the first manned flight will be the first using the environmental system in Orion designed to keep people alive. Yet, that mission intends to circle the Moon with people on board.
For context, note that this program was first announced by George Bush Jr in 2004, with a goal of putting humans on the Moon by 2015. NASA did not even fly the first unmanned SLS/Orion mission until 2022.
Right now, if NASA gets a human on the Moon before 2030 it will be doing well.
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 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
Surprise! According to two different news outlets today (Reuters and CNN) citing anonymous sources, NASA is about to announce further delays in its manned Artemis program to put humans back on the Moon.
Both reports state that the second Artemis mission, the first with humans on board, will not take place this year as NASA has been saying, but will be delayed until 2025. The third mission, the intended manned landing on the Moon, will be further delayed until 2026. Furthermore, Reuters reports that the actual landing might be delayed until the fourth mission, “giving SpaceX and other contractors more practice before making the first such landing in half a century.”
None of these dates will be met. I predict that further delays will be announced next year and the year after that, pushing all these missions back again, in small increments, even though it is obvious now that the entire program is years from making those first manned flights.
There are numerable problems. First the SLS rocket is so cumbersome it takes many months to assembly for launch. Any issues along the way cause delays. Second, battery problems were detected during testing of the Orion capsule to fly, requiring their replacement.
Third, and most important, the lunar landing requires NASA’s Lunar Gateway and SpaceX’s Starship. Gateway is nowhere near ready. All of its multiple components are still being built, with none yet launched.
SpaceX’s Starship is undergoing testing, but those test flights are being hampered by red tape at the FAA and elsewhere in the federal government. SpaceX had planned to do as many as six test flights per year. Right now the federal bureaucracy is slowing that plan to only one to two test flights per year. Under that restriction, the Starship lunar lander won’t be ready for years.
Pushing the manned lunar landing back one mission makes some sense, but the entire program remains fraught with great risks. Because SLS is so expensive and difficult to fly, NASA can’t afford to do the correct number of unmanned test missions before sending humans on it. For example, the first manned flight will be the first using the environmental system in Orion designed to keep people alive. Yet, that mission intends to circle the Moon with people on board.
For context, note that this program was first announced by George Bush Jr in 2004, with a goal of putting humans on the Moon by 2015. NASA did not even fly the first unmanned SLS/Orion mission until 2022.
Right now, if NASA gets a human on the Moon before 2030 it will be doing well.
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 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
Video from the Youtube channel “SmarterEveryDay”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU
Well worth the watch
If Trump is the next President, watch for Elon to come by and say “I’ve got a deal that will save you billions, and get us to the moon in record time!”
“Remember how the Europa Clipper was supposed to launch on the SLS, and it just launched on Falcon Heavy? Well, we can do without SLS in other ways too! Here, hold my beer!”
Dave Ataman wrote: “Well worth the watch”
Much of what Destin Sandlin says in that video and in his referenced SP-287 document, What Made Apollo A Success?, was already in practice in unmanned spacecraft development when I started in the business, four decades ago. Destin’s astonishment comes from the complications associated with the Gateway lunar space station.
New in that video, however, was the reason for Gateway. (Hey! Look at that; I’m smarter today than I was yesterday.* Good work Destin.) SLS is underpowered for the task of recreating an Apollo lunar landing mission. It cannot get Orion into low lunar orbit. Thus, the wild orbit of Gateway, and the purpose of the lunar space station is to store a separately launched lander. SLS is more powerful than the Saturn V, but it has less capability during a Moon mission. Ugh. What a fiasco that thing is. One would think that NASA would learn better from Apollo, the Saturns, and all the other rockets made since.
Oh, that’s right. NASA didn’t design SLS. Congress did. That pack of rocket scientists who think they are so smart just because thousands of supporters helped them get their jobs in Congress. Meanwhile, the rest of us are smart enough to get our jobs on our own.
Ray Van Dune,
I think everyone has been treading carefully not to upstage NASA, such as waiting for SLS to launch and take the lead in the most-powerful-launcher-ever competition before launching the even more powerful Starship. Can SpaceX upstage NASA with a manned lunar landing before Artemis does? Can the company land on Mars before NASA lands the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon? And why is putting specific demographics on the surface the only purpose for NASA’s mission to go back to the Moon? Shouldn’t NASA’s purpose continue to be exploration rather than demonstrate its wokeness?
Sorry, Ray. I’m taking out some frustrations on you, and you deserve better. You need not answer these questions; just consider them as rhetorical ravings of a warped, frustrated, old man. (Where did I hear that phrase, recently?)
__________________
* Actually, I watched the video shortly after it came out, and I read the referenced SP-287 document right afterward. It is even easier to find now than it was then, with better looking versions. But I was smarter for having done both, so the timing is the only inaccuracy in my statement. Thanks, Dave, for the link.
Raiz Space’ has a great video called “The Best Possible use of NASA’s SLS—SLS Wet Workshop.”
Personally, I’d like to see work done whereby the SLS has a Saturn V-B thrust-ring arrangement with a central engine being an NTR.
Stretch the tankage, and you go from stage and a have to orbit…to a stage and a half to BEO…in one shot.
Popcorning foam no biggie now.
Well, NASA has delayed the landing until 2026., and the announcement included this little gem… “NASA said anomalies during the unmanned Artemis I test mission prompted the delays.”
I haven’t heard any allusions to that before, but maybe I missed it. At the very least it is new to the general public.
Ray Van Dune,
There were a couple of anomalies on Orion during the test flight, but at the time NASA didn’t suggest that they were long pole items.