Next Artemis mission will be later than promised
It appears that NASA has already recognized that the next Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-3 and changed from a lunar landing to an Earth orbit test flight, will not happen on the schedule as first proposed by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.
During the hearing on Monday, Congressman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman emeritus of the committee, asked Isaacman about his confidence that Artemis 3 would remain on schedule, given the amount of money allocated for the mission’s landers.
“I’ve received responses from both vendors [SpaceX and Blue Origin],” Isaacman said, “to meet our needs for a late 2027 rendezvous, docking and test [of] the interoperability of both landers in advance of a landing attempt in 2028.”
That’s a shift from Isaacman’s statements during his Feb. 27 Artemis strategy presentation, during which he said, “Artemis 3 will have its opportunity, if we can, by mid-2027, which sets us up for an early ’28 and a late ’28 opportunity [for Artemis 4 and 5].” [emphasis mine]
In other words, Artemis-3 has already shifted from mid-’27 to late-’27. Though Isaacman is pushing hard to speed up the launch cadence of the entire Artemis program, reality is once again proving stronger. We should fully expect Artemis-3 to shift into 2028, partly because the lunar landers — especially Blue Origin’s Blue Moon — might not be ready but mostly because SLS is simply too cumbersome a rocket to stack quickly. Isaacman wants to speed up its launch cadence to once a year. The best we should expect is 18 months to two years.
As for getting two manned lunar landings in 2028, Isaacman might want it but the odds are slim to none. If Artemis-3 flies in late ’27 it will be almost impossible to get SLS ready for a landing mission before the end of ’28.
In the end, these delays will illustrate the need to replace SLS with private commercial launchers.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
It appears that NASA has already recognized that the next Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-3 and changed from a lunar landing to an Earth orbit test flight, will not happen on the schedule as first proposed by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.
During the hearing on Monday, Congressman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman emeritus of the committee, asked Isaacman about his confidence that Artemis 3 would remain on schedule, given the amount of money allocated for the mission’s landers.
“I’ve received responses from both vendors [SpaceX and Blue Origin],” Isaacman said, “to meet our needs for a late 2027 rendezvous, docking and test [of] the interoperability of both landers in advance of a landing attempt in 2028.”
That’s a shift from Isaacman’s statements during his Feb. 27 Artemis strategy presentation, during which he said, “Artemis 3 will have its opportunity, if we can, by mid-2027, which sets us up for an early ’28 and a late ’28 opportunity [for Artemis 4 and 5].” [emphasis mine]
In other words, Artemis-3 has already shifted from mid-’27 to late-’27. Though Isaacman is pushing hard to speed up the launch cadence of the entire Artemis program, reality is once again proving stronger. We should fully expect Artemis-3 to shift into 2028, partly because the lunar landers — especially Blue Origin’s Blue Moon — might not be ready but mostly because SLS is simply too cumbersome a rocket to stack quickly. Isaacman wants to speed up its launch cadence to once a year. The best we should expect is 18 months to two years.
As for getting two manned lunar landings in 2028, Isaacman might want it but the odds are slim to none. If Artemis-3 flies in late ’27 it will be almost impossible to get SLS ready for a landing mission before the end of ’28.
In the end, these delays will illustrate the need to replace SLS with private commercial launchers.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Stacking SLS components is certainly, compared to any other large rocket, a protracted process, but I think the more important limit on launch cadence, to this point, has been the production cadence of major SLS components. I thinkthat is what Isaacman is trying his best to get the legacy contractors to address in a meaningful way. How much success he will have in this respect we can only wait and see.
But a delay of Artemis 3 to “late-2027,” might not actually be a bad thing anent a notional Artemis 4 landing mission in 2028. Perhaps the extra time will allow Blue Origin to participate in Artemis 3 at all instead of being a no-show for a mission notionally conducted earlier. In the best of all possible worlds, the delay would allow Blue to show up to Artemis 3 with a prototype of Blue Moon Mk 2 instead of some much more marginal Mk 1.5 thingy.
Anent SpaceX, a delayed Artemis 3 would increase the odds of that mission being able to be quickly followed by an actual departure of the same HLS Starship used for Artemis 3 to the Moon for a landing, surface loiter and ascent test. The delay would allow SpaceX more time to not only demo on-orbit cryo propellant transfer from a tanker Starship to a prototype depot Starship, but to do so several times in order to accumulate a load of propellant on-orbit sufficient to support the uncrewed lunar landing test right on the heels of Artemis 3.
That, in turn, would improve SpaceX’s positioning to conduct its part of an Artemis 4 lunar landing mission in 2028 – though late in that year rather than early. If Artemis 4 involves using HLS Starship to push Orion to the Moon instead of an SLS upper stage, then – and assuming also that the last ICPS was also saved for Artemis 5 – the pacing items for Artemis 5 will likely be the first set of new-manufacture RS-25E engines for the SLS core stage and the full refueling infrastructure Blue’s lander will require, assuming it’s actually Mk 2 being used and not some cobbly Mk 1.5. All in all, I think Artemis 5 will take place no earlier than sometime in 2029.
Artemis 6, one hopes, would take place in 2030 and feature the debut of a Dear Moon-class Starship in place of the SLS-Orion stack.
“We should fully expect Artemis-3 to shift into 2028, partly because the lunar landers — especially Blue Origin’s Blue Moon — might not be ready but mostly because SLS is simply too cumbersome a rocket to stack quickly.”
None of *us* here will be put out if in fact it turns out that Starship *is* the reason for a mission delay (well, there are one or two regulars who might be), but expect the usual caterwauling from the usual gallery of SpaceX skeptics and haters around the online world.
But brute reality and experience tells us that you don’t just slap together a crewed lunar lander in just a few years, let alone one that meets all of NASA’s HLS requirements. The fact that NASA — partially under Obama (who expressly forbade even *discussion* of a lunar program), partially under the Trump Administration I, partly under Biden — took until 2021 to even contract a lander (and 2022 for the second one) is the core of the problem here, and that would have been true even if they had contracted a “conventional” lunar lander along the lines of the design reference. Obviously, Starship is a much, much more ambitious vehicle than anything like that. And it will be worth the wait — however long the wait takes.
Blue Origin, of course, is even further behind — though we don’t have enough information to tell just *how* far behind.
That said, our host is correct about the achingly slow pace of SLS mission preparation. I’m sure NASA ground systems will improve on that as time goes on, but there’s only so much they can do given the limitations of the rocket and the ground systems. They’ll never get as fast as Saturn V did, let alone how quickly Starship takes right *now*.
The lack of private Lunar landers is the hold up here…SLS is the only part of Artemis that exists other than the capsule.
But keep spinning
Jeff, exactly why do you think we have a lack of lunar landers right now?
Richard M, I would be happy if they got as fast as Shuttle did.
In SLS news today 12 bolts 3 screws and a wire were installed.
10 bolts 1 screw and a different wire were uninstalled to be replaced later.
Expected launch date has fallen behind again but the new launch date is expected to happen right on time.
In other news 10 more engineers were hired and are expected to be fully employed until their retirement.
And yet it has sent two human rated craft to the Moon. But if you like Tonka trucks moving back and forth, there’s Boca….and Bezos is keeping roofers happy, so there’s that.
In other news–I understand Trump will be recalling 5,000 of our boys from Germany. Thank you Mr. President.
Folks fussed about War Powers, wanting to undermine him…so he at last demobilized something FDR started.
A magnificent jest. Well played.
Jeff Wright,
You’re making this into us-versus-them. We all know what the SLS has done, yet most of us here are not impressed. Why is that? Because the SLS is not capable of scaling to match our ambitions for American spaceflight, not with any amount of support. Yes, SpaceX is exercising a fair amount of caution with their first V3-which, incidentally, is now scheduled to launch May 12-and yes, Blue Origin had a setback. These things happen, but what those two companies are doing, unlike NASA and Boeing, is fundamentally worth pursuing in spite of setbacks and challenges. I don’t expect you’ll change your approach, but your present attempts at arguing for the SLS fall completely flat.
Not for the 97% who agreed that Artemis was worth it, as per the article at NSF.
And unlike Mr. Zimmerman, many of them in turn are not impressed with Elon’s rockets launching Elon’s satellites to make more money for Elon’s bank account.
The ball is in the SpaceX court Tuesday next so as to wow them.
I did see the fly-like-you-test video, where Elon was actually absent. Now we know the faces behind Starship.
If the Great Galactic Ghoul grows its teeth back after SLS punched them out—and it bites into the Starship program again such that Musk calls it quits–I won’t be as callous towards them like NewSpace is towards SLS workers.
One significant reason starship isn’t ready is the four years of testing delays during the Biden administration. Rarely see that discussed.
Jeff Wright,
Your previous comment proved Nate’s point that “ your present attempts at arguing for the SLS fall completely flat. ”
Essentially, you argue that an operational SLS is better than a developmental rocket, but that is obvious. SLS is incapable of accomplishing the mission assigned to it, so it is in desperate need of the very rockets and spacecraft that you mock. Everyone here knows these limitations, so arguing in ways that pretend they don’t exist works against you.
The rest of us understand that Artemis is currently designed as a team effort, and we see that you are not a team player.
Perhaps you are afraid that SLS will soon be eclipsed by Starship, which has a capability of performing the Artemis mission without SLS. It will still take multiple Starships, but only one more than it currently would take by using SLS. Starship is being designed to launch often and at low cost, but SLS launches too rarely to support a lunar base — phases II and III — and is significantly more expensive than Starship. Continuing to use SLS for NASA’s next lunar mission phases will cause that mission to fail. We all know it, but you refuse to accept or adapt to that reality.
The perception of the public does not matter. Musk’s bank account does not matter, nor does Bezos’s. All that matters is accomplishing the mission.
What matters more, however, is making the Moon a commercially useful location. SLS cannot accomplish that in any way, shape, or form. It is too expensive and too infrequent for any commercial success. Starship and New Glenn are much better suited for long-term success. Other companies will, no doubt, develop even more equipment and rockets that will help make the Moon a commercial success.
The next major data point toward figuring out Artemis’s future trajectory will be the Flight 12 test of V3 Starship. That is now, notionally, 11 days off.
“And unlike Mr. Zimmerman, many of them in turn are not impressed with Elon’s rockets launching Elon’s satellites to make more money for Elon’s bank account.”
Elon’s rockets launched more than 50 flights for non-Elon customers last year, so they do a lot more than just launch his satellites.
I’m not a team player, Edward? The the SLS haters were NEVER team players. Unlike them–I actually don’t want to punish success by taxing space-launch…I am a better team player than you realize.
Refusing to use SLS out of ideological purity is what will doom Artemis. Musk and Bezos are near trillionaires, and they were left in the dust this past month. Having a lackey try to sabotage the only part of Artemis that works, and doing that from within? That most assuredly isn’t being a team player.
There is footage on the web of a son who was gifted an S-10 pick-up.
He immediately began to smash it because it wasn’t what he wanted.
That’s NewSpace.
Jeff Wright,
We detractors of SLS do not disdain it because of “ideological purity,” we do so because the thing is insanely expensive, entirely disposable and takes forever plus tax to build. None of these are problems that can be solved. All of these are problems that would prevent any significant US human presence on the Moon – at best a single jaunt by two or three people done maybe once per year at a cost of $4 billion or more. No thanks. To paraphrase Rhett Butler’s line about Scarlett O’Hara as applied to the Moon, “You should be visited and often and by somebody who knows how.”
Jeff Wright,
You are not a team player because you’ve got a very clear focus on prestige, pride, and bragging rights, rather than on the mission. You’re always talking about how unfair everyone is to you and unfair about the SLS, you don’t address anyone’s concerns except to reject them outright; you make disingenuous comments akin to this one, “I actually don’t want to punish success by taxing space-launch,” even though that is completely orthogonal to Edward’s point.
None of this is sensible or accurate. We argue against the SLS not out of ideological purity, but as I said before, it simply isn’t good enough. A lunar base would require hundreds, if not thousands, of tons of cargo shipped in. Let’s say that all the optimistic predictions about the SLS came true–block II flies three times per year. Assume a hydrogen-oxygen lander expended on the lunar surface. The upper bound for delivered mass is about ten tons per lander, or thirty tons per year. Say we want a small lunar outpost capable of supporting ten people; we’d need about fifteen tons of consumables delivered per year, taking up half your total cargo space. We’d need a habitat around 45 tons in mass, which has already exceeded our total mass budget and can’t be delivered by any of the SLS launches, singly or together. We’d need around 20 tons of life support systems, about 40 tons for the power system, another 30 for mobility, 30 more for spares-do you get the picture? At a bare minimum, assuming all the payloads could be broken up and then reassembled on the Moon, you’d need six or seven years just to launch everything for one year’s operation. Keep in mind this is the optimistic scenario for the SLS; A far mor realistic scenario leaves the SLS either completely incapable of landing anything on the Moon, or with 1b, optimistically it could manage five tons to the surface, doubling costs, time, etc. You say it works, and yes, the SLS does work in a very narrow sense-it can launch Orion on an orbital trajectory. I think my argument above definitively shows that if we hope to operate on the lunar surface, it doesn’t work. In the real world, the SLS would be hard-pressed to get a single ton of cargo to the lunar surface.
Your complaints about Bezos and Musk’s wealth, calling Isaacman a ‘lackey,’ etc. are tedious point-scoring that aren’t true and win you no support. I’m reminded of another well-known Southerner: “If he was wrong, he could not see it; if you disagreed with him, he thought you were perverse.”
I’ve seen you say that Congress should ban the use of methane for launches to punish SpaceX and Blue Origin, because you want the SLS and are angry the program is winding down. Perhaps some self-reflection is in order.
We don’t hate NASA or any of the old space companies.
We just hate they are the biggest pigs at the trough of government money.
I don’t hate BO or Virgin. I hate the fact they both sold the people a pile of hog wash.
Virgin obviously worked on a very limited budget and essentially just financed Rutans company. They were never serious about space.
BO is pretty much the same. They have been around as long as Space X and haven’t done a quarter as much.
pzatchok,
To be fair to Blue, for about a third of their existence they were a tiny research firm. Given their current trajectory there are wiser paths they could’ve taken, but at least they have a decent CEO now and more involvement from Bezos.
Jeff Wright
“Refusing to use SLS out of ideological purity is what will doom Artemis.”
This attitude is why you are not a team player. You put blame on other members of the team for the shortcomings of your favorite contributor to the team. Every team member has strengths and weaknesses. SLS’s strength is its lifting capability. Its weaknesses include cost, and lack of availability.
“Musk and Bezos are near trillionaires, and they were left in the dust this past month. ”
Left in the dust by the system that has a fifteen year head start. Your favorite team member is the tortoise, but it is competing with hares that are not resting on laurels, like you do with SLS. The other team members are likely to pass yours in a couple of years.
“Having a lackey try to sabotage the only part of Artemis that works, and doing that from within? That most assuredly isn’t being a team player.”
Actually, that “lackey” sees the future, and SLS is an expensive and detrimental part of the future mission. It is used today because it is the one that is currently available. It is barely available, today, but in a couple of years it will be the anchor tied around NASA’s neck. NASA will need a launch vehicle that has a higher launch cadence.
“That’s NewSpace.”
Incorrect. NewSpace is building the pickup that it wants. Actually, several pickups that it wants. Pickups that do the job better and cheaper, which is why NewSpace does not want the existing one. SLS has not been smashed and has not been ignored. It is being used because it is currently available. But better ones are in development, and these better ones are the ones with the availability to make space a commercial success and to develop a space economy that produces much of what we earthlings want to buy from space.
An example would be to consider where commercial space would be if all the communication constellations had to depend solely upon SLS to launch their satellites.
NewSpace is a success because it has the availability at the right price with the reliability needed for that success, with the added bonus that it is done without taxpayer subsidies (unlike SLS, which is entirely taxpayer funded). NewSpace is now much more than just the launchers. It is also the many different satellite projects that are now operating in orbit. Sometimes beyond.
Jeff, you just keep losing your argument, because you are focused solely on SLS and Alabama. There are others on the team, and they are contributing much more than your favorite team member. They are contributing the landing, to start, and the lunar facilities, to finish, and they soon will be contributing what SLS now contributes. They have plans beyond low Earth orbit and even beyond the Moon.
One of your biggest problems is that you are stuck in the past, advocating for dreams and ideas that have long ago been replaced by yesterday’s better ideas that have been replaced by today’s even better plans, real plans that are funded and developed by people and companies that bypass government funding and management, because they are doing a better job than the government ever did.
longer than that, even, given when the SSMEs started development; plus having the advantage of an existing workforce, a multibillion-dollar yearly budget, existing facilities, and more, all of which SpaceX had to build from scratch. Alabama is in the same position right now as the Soviet Union was vis-à-vis the United States after Sputnik I and II; yes, they had early victories that the USSR bragged about endlessly, but the US had a far more capable program over the long term. The analogy falls apart there, though, because it’s not Alabama versus the rest of the United States, Huntsville will benefit from Starship’s success too. I bet that companies will emerge there that will end up flying all sorts of payloads aboard Starship. Perhaps some started by ex-Marshall employees.
Why didn’t Artemis slow down and enter lunar orbit?
Then leave orbit?
Wasn’t it ready to show off its capabilities? Or wasn’t it built for that mission? Which means its was not the crafts version that would eventually used. So all its success is for nothing.
The dang thing was so small the passengers were complaining about always touching someone during the whole flight. Even when sleeping.
Is the lunar lander ready to fly yet. has it been tested in orbit yet?
I don’t hate Jaguars or the people driving them. I just see them as outside the useful realms of working people. Nissans and Fords will get you to work and leave money to live on. If you can afford a Jaguar, or Porshe, or Corvette and want one, go for it. Just not with my money.
I don’t hate multimillion dollar mansions or the people living in them. They are just irrelevant to the vast majority of the population and do nothing to shelter non-rich working people. If you can afford and want one, it’s none of my business unless you demand I pay for it.
I don’t hate yachts or the people that own them……………….
SLS/Orion on the other hand costs me money that I don’t want to pay for a product that doesn’t help me in any form.
Is it hatred to be opposed to a thief?
Nate P
“longer than that, even, given when the SSMEs started development …”
I stepped in that with both hooves. I asked the question, a month or so ago, which year that we should consider as the beginning of the SLS design. 2010, when Congress set their design? Earlier, with the Ares design, from which SLS was derived? The Space Shuttle, whose parts, slightly modified, are used on SLS? And since it is a launch system, including the ground support equipment, should we go back as far as the Vehicle Assembly Building, the launch pad structure, and the mobile launch pad and its crawler?
“… all of which SpaceX had to build from scratch.”
Building Starship and its facilities from scratch is definitely right. Everything about Starship is. different than other launch vehicles, from design, to manufacture, to facilities, to recovery. Starship is doing things so unique and unthinkable that the description is comparable to Kennedy’s speech about Project Apollo at Rice University: using new alloys and new methods in order to do the impossible. Instead of shooting the Moon as a goal, Starship is shooting for multiple launches per day on the same launch pad — which is blasted over and over by the world’s largest and strongest blow torch — using thermal protection tiles that must not require maintenance between flights, and launching enough mass to orbit that it makes the effort worthwhile and allows for a minimum of launches to refill tanks so that a spacecraft can go not only to the Moon but to Mars or the rest of the solar system. What audacity! The same audacity that NASA had in the 1960s. Starship advances the technological state of the art, and does it in an affordable way.
Two-thirds of a century ago, we thought we could figure out how to get to the Moon, but to accomplish such a complex project took the resources of an entire superpower nation, yet it was too complex for a second superpower to accomplish. What does SLS do? The same-old same-old, but at a lower cadence, a higher cost, and a lower capacity than the Saturn V. NASA has failed to advance the state of the art and has regressed back to 1960s technologies and methods. The audacity is gone from NASA.
These days, we are watching one single company do things that half a decade ago we had thought completely impossible. Catching a fly with chopsticks was something that could only be done in a movie, and only by using special effects. A belly flop descent with a last-second flip onto landing legs happened because miracle-workers worked their miracles. Taking to orbit the nosecone as well as propellants for a landing and two hundred tons of payload seems impossible, but we now watch this battle with the rocket equation.
No wonder so many people are so eager to watch Starship test-flights; this is pushing the outside of the envelope. We once were challenged by flying higher and faster (NASA recently bragged about flying higher, once again, and its astronauts viewing craters never before seen by human eyes), but today we are challenged to fly more mass more frequently at less cost. Especially less cost.
A future challenge is to use resources in space to produce goods and services to sell to earthlings. To do so requires that we win the challenges of today.
This is why SpaceX now has the reputation and attention that NASA once enjoyed. SpaceX performs more annual launches than America performed before, and SpaceX operates more satellites than America operated before, which are two of the reasons that SpaceX has replaced NASA as America’s space program. SpaceX has rapidly advanced the state of the art of many of the aspects of space exploration and utilization. We had once relied upon NASA to do these things, but that stopped being Congress’s task for NASA. We now rely upon commercial space companies to do these things, and Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and SpaceX have taken an early lead in this endeavor, with several other companies working to catch up.
NASA has been left in the dust by the system in which these endeavors are self sustaining, self funding, and profitable: free market capitalism. Profit is the reward for finding efficiencies in providing goods and services that others desire enough to pay for.
I wouldn’t go back so far as the VAB et al., but definitely the engines, as they are a core component of the vehicle, even if not intended for the SLS when the designers started. Though we can be magnanimous, and say RAC-1 (NASA’s Requirements Analysis Cycle), which started in 2010, is the origin of the SLS we all know today.
For now, though certainly not forever, NASA is still in the lead with many scientific endeavors, but I expect as scientific philanthropy à la pre-World War II reemerges that we’ll see private citizens funding all sorts of science missions that NASA cannot match, too. Perhaps one day SpaceX will operate a variety of large telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum, far larger than anything previously built, both in free space and on the Moon, and sell access at very low cost to researchers. Certainly any effort to colonize Mars, build industry on the Moon, etc. will both require doing plenty of science, and allow for experiments that couldn’t be readily afforded on their own to piggyback on the infrastructure the private sector builds for its own ends. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if by 2040 that science spending would be far greater than it is today, even if it’s a much smaller fraction of all spending on space. A sublime thought.
Nate P,
Ditto.
Nate P and Dick Eagleson,
Granted, commercial space is not doing much in the areas of astronomy or planetary science, but several technologies are being developed and advanced by several companies, especially SpaceX. These technologies include propulsion, communication, and navigation and collision avoidance. Several companies are developing efficiencies in costs for both launch and space operations.
By the way, I included the ground facilities and hardware in order to emphasize that SLS is not just the rocket. It is the entire system. How far back anyone wants to go to consider the beginning of SLS is a subjective matter of opinion. I usually only go back to the beginning of Ares, but the Shuttle engine timeframe is likely much more accurate. After all, SLS started with existing hardware.
_____________
Jeff Wright,
SLS is becoming obsolete because NASA was never tasked with bringing the benefits of space to the people of the Earth. The NewSpace companies are tasked with that goal. NASA stopped being innovative and regressed its technology to 1960s levels to make SLS, and the goals are also from the 1960s. Repeating history does not impress anyone, and Armstrong will always be the man. Obama phrased it “been there, done that,” setting the attitude for the country and the world. He then set NASA adrift, giving it no real leadership or desirable direction. His Asteroid Redirect Mission didn’t even excite astroid scientists. Making Muslims proud of their technological advances was a joke heard around the world. NASA never recovered from Obama’s disdain for America’s space program. Y,ou are so upset that NASA is not praised as it once was.
NASA was literally tasked with preventing the benefits of space from being attained. Congress tyrannically required all American launches to use the Space Shuttle, discouraging a commercial launch industry and creating a monopoly that resulted in high launch costs and low launch cadences. Congress tyrannically forbade NASA assets from being used by commercial companies to produce beneficial products, a ban that resulted in few benefits outside of communications, which was virtually the only commercial space industry until a quarter century ago.
You like to say that SLS has done more, but SLS has done less. The Falcons have launched more mass that has gone to the surface to the Moon than SLS has or ever will launch. That makes the Falcons better than SLS, especially since SLS will never launch anything except people to the surface.
Congress and presidents have set up the conditions that make you so upset. Then you take your anger out on us rather than the organization responsible for your anger. We cheer the freedoms to obtain these benefits; you jeer them, preferring the old, governmental ways over the new, commercial ways of using space.
You, Jeff, claimed that SLS punched out the teeth of NewSpace when Orion jumped over the Moon, like the poetical cow, thinking that this proves SLS is better than commercial-space. You mock the efforts of SpaceX and Blue Origin as toys and failures, ignoring that it took far longer for SLS to have its first test flight, despite having started from existing hardware. The SLS engineering team is laughable when compared to any NewSpace team. No wonder more people pay attention to NewSpace than to NASA. Your arguments to favor SLS were lost long ago, and none of your spin can help, especially when you emphasize that SLS is merely a jobs program, existing just for SLS workers.
The entire purpose of NewSpace is to be free to bring the NASA-fettered space-benefits to We the People. To do so requires that we fly more mass more frequently at less cost, and SLS does not do this. Commercial companies are working to achieve these goals in order to make profits by bringing the benefits of space to earthlings. Varda is developing space manufacturing, several companies are building commercial space stations, and AI may benefit from the solar power available in orbit. Profits are the rewards earned for finding efficiencies in delivering desired products to those who are willing to buy them.
In the decade and a half since NewSpace began reducing the cost of access to space, the number of orbital launches has increased exponentially, and the upmass has likewise skyrocketed. The space economy is growing rapidly, no thanks to SLS. It is why NewSpace supplants NASA. Last year, Falcon alone put somewhere around 2,000 tons into orbit. How much did SLS put into space in its entire existence? NewSpace wins over SLS hands down. NewSpace is very productive. You, Jeff, brag that SLS put two spacecraft around the Moon, but neither flight was productive; NASA treats this latest flight as an Artemis development flight in pursuit of the first phase of building a lunar settlement. SLS is not even capable of performing the task without the two companies you mock, their rockets, and their spacecraft.
Jared Isaacman may be the leader who can recover NASA’s reputation, but NASA may have been overcome by events due to Congress and Obama, making Isaacman’s leadership more difficult than necessary. NewSpace is achieving accomplishments that were once NASA’s purview. SpaceX alone is receiving the attention that NASA had in the 1960s. The rest of NewSpace is also receiving a great deal of attention. It remains to be seen whether Isaacman can turn NASA into a useful organization again, praised by the world as an innovative and topnotch contributor to world prosperity.
In the first fifty years of space travel, taxpayer-funded government-space abandoned the Moon and stuck to low Earth orbit. In the second fifty years, what will we see commercial-space do? In the first fifteen years of this second space age, investors gave us plans for using the Moon for resources and manufacturing as well as physical development of hardware to not only go to Mars but to colonize it.
When we had let government run space, all we got was stunted growth in space, even a regression to 1960s technology and methods. Now that We the People are running space, we see amazing growth and innovations in only a few years of the newly liberated commercial ways. Starship and New Glenn show far more promise for the near future than SLS does.