The sense is to point out the horrific state that SLS puts us in, to point out how wrong the powers that be are, to point out more efficient ways of completing the goal. Without the ability to grouse and point out the deficiencies, then progress is suppressed.

“Now what this means is that—if SLS, Starship, New Glenn and Falcon Heavy launch within a few days of each other–you have a near-ISS mass object to be assembled right there…so it is best to combine all of thses.”

Best? The cost of the launch of a single SLS consumes the funding to launch scores of Starships, New Glenns, and Falcon Heavies. Combined. Leaving less funding for the more efficient launch vehicles. For a tiny percentage of the cost, any one of the other three launchers could perform what the one SLS launch can perform.

So, which is best? The other three, not the first. Plus, with the other three, we still have the desired variety but at far lower cost. More can be accomplished at the same price. To me, that sounds best.

Once again, Jeff convinces me that Marshall is obsolete.

Now what this means is that—if SLS, Starship, New Glenn and Falcon Heavy launch within a few days of each other–you have a near-ISS mass object to be assembled right there…so it is best to combine all of thses.

In technology news

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-strong-material-egg-whites-cool.html
“Furthermore, by combining the material with epoxy resin (a polymer typically used with thermal fillers to enhance adhesion), the team successfully fabricated a practically applicable composite suitable for real-world use.”

For air liquid interface
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-metamaterial-bridges-air.html

Which is why they are not yet an option. Once Starship is operating with crews and able to refill tanks, The low price and frequency of those missions will make it difficult for Congress to keep spending billions of dollars on SLS, and they will probably have to give up Orion, too. SLS-Orion is seen by Congress as being operational enough to fly Artemis II and III.

Of course, if Artemis II fails, Congress will have an investigation in which no one will dare point out that Congress was pressuring NASA to rush to the Moon, resulting in downplaying the risk of the Orion heat shield for Artemis II or the risk of testing the life support on a long mission to the Moon rather than a long mission in the much safer low Earth orbit. Despite not being ready for manned Moon missions, Orion is in NASA’s toolbox.

Isaacman’s hearing, the other day, made clear that Congress has two priorities for him: 1) to beat the Chinese to the Moon — Congress is fixated on this mission, as though it were their idea rather than Trump’s or Bush’s — and 2) for Musk to have not been in the room when Trump asked Isaacman to be NASA administrator.

Isaacman can only convince Congress to switch away from SLS-Orion after an operational alternative method for beating the Chinese can be presented to them. Congress seems to prefer that Musk have as little to do with American success as possible and seems to regret that SpaceX was chosen for Artemis III.

Government is in charge of NASA, and all we get from NASA is what government wants us to get. We the People are largely in charge of the American space program, and we are now getting much of what we have always wanted — happening because we are reducing our dependence upon NASA’s priorities.

Do We the People want to go back to the Moon with a sustainable lunar base? Not as much as Congress wants to beat the Chinese.

Edward wrote, “None of those options is yet an option.”

I strongly disagree. SpaceX and Blue Origin are as close to landing humans on the Moon as SLS and Orion, if not closer. And the other commercial options will have far greater capabilities than SLS or Orion in only two or three more years. All that has to happen is for the government to want to use them.

Instead, we will see NASA continue to pour money down the drain of SLS while we get one or two flag plantings of little worth.

The only tool in NASA’s toolbox for Dragon is ISS, and that is already in use. Dragon is not yet ready for lunar prime time.

Blue Origin also does not have much ready for use, and neither do the newer startups.

The problem I see is that there are three billion dollars to spend, and the only thing that NASA could spend them on is to help develop the soon-to-become-operational launchers, spacecraft, and space stations, which would result in NASA poking around and imposing their own requirements for these commercial vehicles. Do we really want that?

If NASA spends money on them during development, then NASA will impose requirements and milestones. NASA oversight and participation in preliminary design reviews and critical design reviews and other reviews will become part of the development process, and I don’t want NASA telling these independent providers how to build their hardware and software.

This is already happening with Starlab, which has its critical design review later this month and has achieved 27 of 31 milestones:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/space-ceo-explains-why-he-believes-private-space-stations-are-a-viable-business/

This is not NASA being a helpful research organization, like NACA was, but being an overbearing customer with its own demands and oversight, making our new commercial companies very similar to the contractors of old.

The other Commercial LEO Destinations companies have the same problem. Most of Starship is independent of NASA oversight, but the Human Landing System contract imposes these kinds of requirements and milestones. This is not the method that we had desired for our commercial space companies, having them create their own products and providing them to customers, similar to automobile companies presenting their cars for government to choose. This is more like the government telling the car companies how to make their cars, then the general public choosing from among the now-similar cars.

Because NASA is now a jobs program, it is difficult to turn off the jobs and put the money into something useful without ruining the something useful. This is the reality of our situation. Would Congress allow NASA to change to a support role like the one NACA had? NASA would surely stop being a toy for Congress.

Maybe that is the problem. Congress holds the pursestrings, so the various government departments and agencies have to dance to Congress’s tune. Congress has stopped caring about results and only sees government employment and monetary distribution (to friends, donors, and certain voters) as the desired goal of the spending. Thus, we cannot stop Congress from spending money on make-work projects or just throwing money around like it buys them votes.

I guess the problem Isaacman has is: What can he do that improves NASA’s usefulness and reduces its wastefulness without him being impeached for insubordination (or whatever)? Look at the trouble that Trump had in reducing waste at NASA, and look at the pushback we here on BTB keep getting every time we even suggest reductions in spending in the Alabama region of the country. What a job Isaacman is about to have. He is about to come up against Congress’s irresistible force, and I don’t think that he is an immovable object that has a chance of defeating the forces against him, us, and the overburdened taxpayer.

Edward wrote, “Unfortunately, NASA does not have better choices lined up in its own toolbox.”

I don’t want NASA to have any choices in its toolbox. And that it doesn’t is great!

Its choices however are many, all in the private sector. First it has SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy. It also has Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy and Dragon, which if NASA had any imagination could all be used to put together some form of lunar exploration.

That’s just SpaceX. Blue Origin is now an option, with a great potential to be even superior to Starship/Superheavy for NASA’s needs.

Then there’s the newer startups. It should be NASA’s job to devise exploratory plans that will not only use these resources, but help them grow.

NASA has plenty of choices, as long as it looks to the American people, rather than itself, for solutions. The problem is that we still look too much to the government for those solutions.

Even Apollo, which moved faster than Artemis, was better vetted. This is what we get when government goes “cheap.”

SLS was supposed to be inexpensive and quick to develop, because it used existing hardware. Something went wrong, somewhere. Probably because SLS turned into a jobs program rather than a program to do any real exploration. It is a little like California’s Bullet Train To Nowhere, which cost tens of billions of dollars over the past two decades and is only now beginning to build test track. It, too, is merely a jobs program, not a transportation program.

Orion became expensive because of the SLS delays, a standing army and its management and facilities needed to be paid for over the extended time and slipped schedule. Orion’s working heat shield was swapped out at NASA’s behest for a poorly understood heat shield.

“It will condemn NASA to many more years wasting time and money on this cumbersome, inefficient, and over-priced mess, when it would be far better for the nation and NASA and the American space industry to dump it and move on to better choices.”

Unfortunately, NASA does not have better choices lined up in its own toolbox. The better choices are commercial, and NASA’s $3 billion-ish annual budget for SLS-Orion does not fit well with commercial space. If NASA gives up SLS-Orion, it will have a large budget with nothing in the pipeline to spend it on. All NASA has is a hammer, so they are treating their return to the Moon as though it were the only nail in the board.

Starship is. not necessarily an elegant solution to the lunar landing problem, but it can be finessed into doing the task from launch to landing to return to Earth, but probably not the same ship, in the 1950s science fiction way.
____________
Dick Eagleson,
Those are all good goals, but we must remember that NASA is Congress’s toy and is only operated by the president. The president is assigned to nominate an administrator, but the vetting process is for Congress to assure itself that the administrator will follow Congress’s wishes and will not run the agency as his own toy.

This means that Isaacman has a line to walk as he tries to appease his oversight committee(s) at the same time that he reforms this expensive — yet low-productivity — agency.

It’s politics, not business. This is why we end up with expensive, non-productive programs in government. Some people think that if no one is happy then the negotiations (politics) were successful, but with thinking like that we should nuke New York City, because no one would be happy about that (except the terrorists, who would be surprised that we did there job for them). We taxpayers hand over a lot of money, and we should be happy with what we get in return, not unhappy. The politicians do not understand that, because we keep reelecting them no matter how unhappy we are with them. They have no incentive to improve. The Founding Fathers had intended for us to oversee our politicians and make sure that they had the incentive to improve.

We went wrong somewhere.

Removing crew from Artemis 2 would be a gutsy move. But it would also be an unambiguous take-charge move – an earnest of intent as it were.

What it would not be is any sort of “personal risk.” Jared is not a man looking out for his next bureaucratic promotion or political campaign. He also stands in no need of any post-retirement sinecure with a legacy contractor. Congress could impeach him or Trump could fire him. Other than those two unlikely alternatives, once he’s in the Administrator’s chair, he’s pretty much untouchable.

That gives him considerable latitude to lay about him with the flat of his sword. In addition to de-crewing Artemis 2, I’d like to see a formal unfunded Space Act Agreement with SpaceX for the SLS-Orion-replacement Starship variant Elon is already committed to developing, delivery of which is to be contemporaneous with that of HLS Starship. If he wants to do the same sort of deal with Blue for a Mk. 1-based crew lander, deliverable on the same schedule, I say he should go for that too.

Jared is about to be in an unprecedented position of independence to radically alter NASA for its now-and-future role as a sidecar to private-sector spacefaring and not as the center of the US space universe. I hope he seizes that opportunity with both hands. It seems we won’t have much longer to wait for our hopes to be either realized, dashed or wind up somewhere in between.

Richard M: I think I will have more to say about this in an essay tomorrow. Stay tuned.

I just hope we get another 15 years of Elon (and Gwynne) at the helm. To make sure that gets far enough along that it doesn’t get derailed.

When it stumbled, he wanted a smaller craft.

He will say something else tomorrow.

Richard M: What is really important is my last statement. Whatever happens at NASA and Artemis is becoming increasingly irrelevant. In the end, I don’t think it will matter, because the real action will be with SpaceX as well as the commercial space stations and the various related space industries.

They are going to colonize the solar system, not NASA.

I can’t really disagree with any of that.

The only thing we can say about Jared is that he might be slightly more willing to call a time out than any of the sorts of other candidates (including Sean Duffy) for the job would be. That’s not much, though.

And….even if he is confirmed before Christmas, he also won’t have much time in the job to do much about it, or build up the confidence to take that kind of bold personal risk.

Richard M: My sense at this moment is that Isaacman is going to bow to the demands of these senators and fly Orion manned on the Artemis-2 mission around the Moon. This of course could change once he is confirmed and reviews the situation, especially if that confirmation vote is fast-tracked in the next two weeks, as has been rumored.

I am increasingly doubtful whether Isaacman has the courage to defy the swamp however.

If Orion flies manned, I can see no good coming from it. First, there is the real fear we will lose the crew. That would be unforgivable based on what we know now, but it would be par for the course for NASA and the federal government, based on now several decades of incompetency and corruption.

Second, if the mission flies successfully and returns the astronauts safely, I dread how that success, a Pyrrhic victory at best, will be used by Congress and NASA to boost SLS and Orion for far longer. In a greater sense, this will be a bigger disaster for the U.S. It will condemn NASA to many more years wasting time and money on this cumbersome, inefficient, and over-priced mess, when it would be far better for the nation and NASA and the American space industry to dump it and move on to better choices.

Worse, it will make everyone complacent about the next Artemis SLS/Orion mission, which will put Americans back on the lunar surface with a system that has not been vetted properly.

In other words, if Artemis-2 flies manned, there is no result that will be positive for America. Trump, and NASA officials, and blowhards in Congress will pump and primp themselves about how wonderful it is that the U.S. flying lunar missions once again, but in the long run we will be achieving less, while spending more.

Either way, however, the real American space “program” will not be coming from NASA or Artemis. I once again predict that the real American space “program” is SpaceX’s, and that fact will become entirely evident to everyone in about two years.

Somewhere, Richard Shelby is smiling.

P.S. Speaking of Artemis, there is an entertainingly flaky new essay by Robert Zubrin on Unherd today, in which he relentlessly trashes SLS, Orion, and Gateway in expletive-laden flourishes I can’t even quote here without violating our host’s rules, while also indulging to the hilt his profound loathing of Donald Trump.
Non-paywall link: https://archive.is/2XZWo

A process to produce clean water:
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-modular-simultaneously-purified-hydrogen.html

Ramanujan’s work continues to inspire
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ramanujan-formulae-pi-modern-high.html

Nitric oxide
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-chance-discovery-toxic-nitric-oxide.html

Uh-Oh….. Time for Avi Loeb to make another announcement.