Here’s how to revive NASA’s Artemis Moon program with three simple tricks

To get somewhere, Artemis must avoid going nowhere.

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[Heart of Dawn]

The need for a long term technology demonstrator for deep space human spaceflight is not addressed in this article. Gateway is the only US-involved project in the works that fills that roll.

Yes, but with NASA's current timeline and budget, it's not going to be able to do both. And of the two, getting boots on the Moon is the far more important one.

 

[VladGi]

Wow. This is a clear-headed and politically practical approach to actually returning to the moon this decade. Let's hope the next NASA administrator reads Arstechnica.

 

[buback]

I feel that gateway is on its way out, if that's all Nelson can muster in response.

 

[som1somwh3r3]

From the politics side of things, how likely would something like this be? How much pushback would such a plan face? Very curious how realistic this is. Any insight appreciated.

 

[stefan_lec]

This seems like a good, well thought-out compromise. Nice work Eric!

Have they built any of the Gateway modules yet? Maybe Gateway could be placed in LEO and Axiom could build on it instead of the ISS.

 

[blackhawk887]

Why not just cancel the SLS rocket right now? For $4.1 billion per launch, that is admittedly a tempting option from a budget standpoint. But for the time being, the most direct route to get NASA astronauts to the Moon is inside Orion atop an SLS rocket.

The only reason to not cancel SLS is politics. Starship could easily put Orion through TLI for a lot less time and money than SLS. Even if it had to expend a booster, it would still be way faster and cheaper.

 

[Achilles]

Totally unrelated, but I finally got my copy of Liftoff. It's like shooting a constant stream of Eric's writing right into my veins. I'm very happy about that.

Anyway, back to discussing what I assume will make up a future book.

 

[Victor Bitu]

Yes, but with NASA's current timeline and budget, it's not going to be able to do both. And of the two, getting boots on the Moon is the far more important one.

The most important is getting the maximum amount of pork money into the states from which the most influential senators are from .Everything else is secondary .

 

[stefan_lec]

The only reason to not cancel SLS is politics. Starship could easily put Orion through TLI for a lot less time and money than SLS. Even if it had to expend a booster, it would still be way faster and cheaper.

Yeah, agreed. I'm guessing he's including politics in evaluating the "most direct route" here.

 

[blackhawk887]

Disagree. Our (great)grandparents already did flags and footsteps. Then stumbled on every deep space human spaceflight effort since.

The only way to solve these problems is to keep working them instead of canceling every time the encounter difficulties. Cancelling Gateway would mean having to restart and refactor designs and supporting mission elements like reusable landers that are not designed for solo untended flight and communications relays. You would also lose the only planned lab that can do biological impact assessments for deep space habs (highly desirable for impacting Mars transit assessments).

Some call it a sunk cost fallacy, but the fact is that they plan the programs with absolutely minimal risk dollars to sell the programs and stretch the budget as far as possible. This is hard stuff to do, as evidenced by all the reports of contractors dropping out of related efforts. Costs have gone up significantly since COVID and funding has not kept up. Continually cancelling tech demonstration programs is why the deep space human spaceflight program stalled out after Apollo.

Gateway is key infrastructure to prove out a lot of tech that is needed for future lunar, Mars, and beyond missions. Companies like SpaceX leverage the tech developed and tested in other NASA programs.

NASA is not planning a lander that can't fly untended. Gateway doesn't make any sense in a world that also includes Starship - but NASA is already all in on Starship.

The main reason for Gateway is that it significantly increases the institutional and program inertia by creating international obligations that are much harder for Congress or the President to cancel.

 

[Miltonault]

Nasa will never do anything in this article BECAUSE it all makes too much sense!

 

[original_mds]

This seems like a good, well thought-out compromise. Nice work Eric!

Have they built any of the Gateway modules yet? Maybe Gateway could be placed in LEO and Axiom could build on it instead of the ISS.

They are under construction.

They aren't as roomy as the ISS modules due to the severe mass constraints needed to get to NRHO and use a variant of IDSS ports rather than CBE interfaces since they have to dock (they aren't berthed). They could probably be adapted, but would require a lot of rework.

They'd actually be a candidate for a Mars space station or an asteroid waystation. The Gateway conops includes a far retrograde orbit transition and return, which largely would demonstrate what is needed to have it depart for operations elsewhere. Since CMV is going to spiral out to the moon using electric thrusters and includes refueling capabilities, it could conceivably fly out to much further destinations.

 

[Danathar]

Given that the cost of an Artemis launch using SLS is between 2 and $4 (probably closer to four and maybe more) billion and that Saturn V during Apollo was canceled because it was costing between 1.5 and $2 billion per lunch really pisses me off. We waited over 50 years to pay twice as much?

One has to wonder where we would be today if we just had continued the Apollo program or morphed it into something else instead of going onto the space shuttle.

 

[Lexomatic]

NASA has a summary page that expands upon the international partners of the Gateway program:

• Europe (ESA):
  • habitation module ("Lunar I-HAB" f.k.a. I-HAB)
  • refueling module ("Lunar View")
  • enhanced lunar comms (part of the HALO ("Habitation And Logistics Outpost") module)
• Canada (CSA): external robotics (Canadarm3, for delivery NET 2029, built by MDA Space and developed by "hundreds of Canadian companies")
• Japan (JAXA): select life support components for I-HAB
• UAE (MBRSC):
  • an airlock (partnership announced 2024)
  • engineering support for the life of the station

All of those capabilities are generally applicable to a crewed station anywhere -- LEO, lunar surface, Mars. (Well, maybe not the Canadarm tech lineage-- it's designed for microgravity.) If Congress and NASA wanted to keep the partner agencies engaged, and in turn those agencies and their parent legislators wanted to keep their contractors funded (I'd have to dig deeper to see who they are), there are alternatives to a station in an awkward NRHO.

Thales Alenia Space is the prime contractor for the Lunar I-HAB, Lunar View and (since 2021) HALO. The mockup for I-HAB was built by Liquifer Space Systems, as of April 2024. Decades ago they built Spacelab for STS, and they're currently also working on the Axiom module for the ISS, as reported sometimes here on Ars. (Summary of their projects for the 2024 Space Symposium in Colorado.)

Additionally, ESA is providing the European Service Module for the Orion spacecraft, i.e., part of the Artemis architecture but not the Gateway station specifically.

Under "this contractor has other prospects," MDA Space is creating "MDA SKYMAKER, a full suite of scalable and modular space robotics" (product page). They're presumably aiming to serve maintenance of orbital habitats, transfer of product from uncrewed manufacturing stations, on-orbit assembly of large structures.

Edit 1: Contribution of airlock by UAE, supporting links. Edit 2: Indentation of contributions, MDA Space, Thales Alenia Space projects, European Service Module, Liquifer Space Systems.

 

[brdv]

Well, other than the nationalistic beating the Chinese to the moon on our second lunar mission pack, why? I get that the moon is close, so tempting, but little tech seems transferable to Martian operations given one is a vacuum and the other an atmosphere, etc. and unless I missed something in my physics class in university (well I know I missed a lot), slowing down to either land on the moon or dock with Artemis would seem to make it harder to yeet something to mars? Not to mention refueling would need to be a huge amount considering the size of planned Martian landers like starship is intended to ultimately be? Starship’s spec’ed at 1200t propellant which just bringing it to Artemis, transferring, storing, retransferring sounds both wasteful and risky? I’m assuming they aren’t filling up since then you have to land with the excess at the mars end? Although mars at least mitigates landing through atmospheric drag… Although the hand-wavy return fuel (“we’ll just make it on mars from water!”) 1200 tons’ worth? So not just exploring mars, you’d spend your entire surface time just making fuel!

Astronauts will not be breathing the air in Mars.
There are a lot of things that should be learned in the moon to prep for Mars, including
1) how to build and expand facilities
2) how to create facilities that are easy to enter and exit in such a hostile environment.
3) how people work/live in such facilities.

 

[original_mds]

I really don't understand why Eric is so concerned about China getting to the moon before the US.
The US was first to the moon. Full stop.
So why would it be such a geopolitical disaster if China gets there before the US returns?

There is a race to do basically a land-grab at the lunar south pole. Even though treaties prohibit nations claiming land, possession is 9/10ths of the law.

Whoever gets there first will likely control it until they choose to leave or are forcefully dislodged.

 

[Jack56]

I really don't understand why Eric is so concerned about China getting to the moon before the US.
The US was first to the moon. Full stop.
So why would it be such a geopolitical disaster if China gets there before the US returns?

That was the US that was, not the US that is. Do you understand that?

 

[original_mds]

One has to wonder where we would be today if we just had continued the Apollo program or morphed it into something else instead of going onto the space shuttle.

It's fascinating how much Starship stacks up against the Apollo evolution to Nova (capability-wise) and how similar it looks to some of the early Shuttle concepts.

 

[jason8957]

You make statements like:
"As for Johnson Space Center, teams leading the Gateway project could transition to working on more robust surface activities."
"The NASA engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center working on the upper stage program could be refocused toward propellant production on the Moon, propellant storage in space, and supporting the crucial work on lunar landers."
This implies that these resources are basically fungible. Are these resources easily retasked like this?

 

[InIgnem]

I think Eric's article is reasonable - he does truly know the business. I mean, what would be ideal is that Congress would a) stop funding pork for the sake of pork (any other company who went 2x over cost parameters and delivered more than 2x the original ETA late would just be fired and sued in to oblivion, but instead Boeing just gets more money) and b) actually FUND NASA and stop changing direction ever 2-4 years. Of course, our country's whiplash and lack of anything resembling meaningful long term planning is going to be our Achilles heel. We aren't just seeing it with NASA ... look at the general state of infrastructure in the US. Bridges, roads, communications... we just don't want to fund maintenance and it is catching up with us hard.

Will we do anything? Probably not. What happens next? I guess we'll find out

 

[smacktoward]

I really don't understand why Eric is so concerned about China getting to the moon before the US.
The US was first to the moon. Full stop.
So why would it be such a geopolitical disaster if China gets there before the US returns?

Because that was 50 years ago and today is today. China’s argument won’t be “we did it first,” it will be “that thing you used to be famous for doing is now a thing that we can do and you can’t.” It will reinforce the Chinese narrative that China is rising and America is declining.

I‘m not saying this is a great reason to go back to the moon, just that I would argue the optics are more potent than you think.

 

[SussexWolf]

They are under construction.

They aren't as roomy as the ISS modules due to the severe mass constraints needed to get to NRHO and use a variant of IDSS ports rather than CBE interfaces since they have to dock (they aren't berthed). They could probably be adapted, but would require a lot of rework.

They'd actually be a candidate for a Mars space station or an asteroid waystation. The Gateway conops includes a far retrograde orbit transition and return, which largely would demonstrate what is needed to have it depart for operations elsewhere. Since CMV is going to spiral out to the moon using electric thrusters and includes refueling capabilities, it could conceivably fly out to much further destinations.

Gateway is simply not needed for the return to the moon, including long term surface operations. It might conceivably be useful technology for programs beyond the moon, but there is no need to build and launch them now and waste money better spent on the near term lunar return. As the article and many posters have commented, Gateway is a political program now and like so many in the past (and present if you include SLS) it is sucking the life out of NASA’s primary missions.

 

[original_mds]

I think Eric's article is reasonable - he does truly know the business. I mean, what would be ideal is that Congress would a) stop funding pork for the sake of pork (any other company who went 2x over cost parameters and delivered more than 2x the original ETA late would just be fired and sued in to oblivion, but instead Boeing just gets more money) and b) actually FUND NASA and stop changing direction ever 2-4 years. Of course, our country's whiplash and lack of anything resembling meaningful long term planning is going to be our Achilles heel. We aren't just seeing it with NASA ... look at the general state of infrastructure in the US. Bridges, roads, communications... we just don't want to fund maintenance and it is catching up with us hard.

Will we do anything? Probably not. What happens next? I guess we'll find out

I'd expect Congress to stop funding pet projects about as much as I'd expect it to stop breathing. This has been the case with governments... basically forever.

Contracting processes are revisited periodically and they try things like firm fixed price for development projects - which in almost all cases has led to failure of the projects and often the company (the main exception being a well-known privately held company).

Space is hard. If you get something small wrong on a road, you get a pothole that can be patched by any number of available road crews. If it's a bridge, you may have to close while repairs are made, unless it is one of the very rare catastrophic failures like Galloping Gertie or 35W that become case studies. For spacecraft, you have a whole lot that has to go right and cutting corners to save a buck or speed things along most often means cutting something that significantly increases the likelihood of failures that can't be mitigated.

So yeah, it's expensive. Moreso when a lot of your experienced workforce has aged out and there isn't enough learning opportunities under proper mentorship for their replacements. It is hard to describe how much experience and engineering accumen has been lost from the Apollo teams because of 15 years of aerospace stagnation that started in the early 1990s from broad industry cutbacks.

Edit: typos

 

[boerner]

I would be curious what reaction the various stakeholders have when reading an excellent article like this from Mr. Berger. I would presume some are appreciative for the honest perspective, and others maybe not so much.

For the later category, I wonder if they mutter something under their breath such as, "Berger..." evoking Jerry Seinfeld calling out his nemesis "Newman..."

 

[original_mds]

There is zero scientific value to sending humans to the moon.

Are you saying that the five Apollo sample points (all Earth facing and of limited distance from the equator) and a handful of robotic landers are sufficient to fully characterize a surface almost the size of Asia?

 

[ubertakter]

Secondly, if NASA’s goal is to do better science in orbit around the Moon, it could build a few robotic orbiters at the cost of a few hundred million dollars. Spending 20 times as much to put four humans in orbit around the Moon for a few weeks every year or two is far less beneficial.

I suppose you could argue that Gateway is also a robotic orbiter, since it will also operate autonomously. I don't really like the idea of Gateway though, and think a better use of resources would be constructing a facility on the surface rather than in orbit.

Although the company has discontinued production of this stage, it has replaced it with a more powerful Centaur V upper stage featuring similar technology. While this is not a drop-in replacement for the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, modifications could be made to the core stage of the SLS rocket and its launch tower to accommodate the Centaur V.

I like this idea, but "not a drop-in replacement" is a bit of an understatement. There would be a lot of work in integrate it into the system: the structure would have to be qualified for flight environments (loads, vibration, etc), obviously new physical adapters, creating a system so the flight systems can talk to components on the stage, stuff like that. Now that I think about it, the loads might be the biggest issue if the Centaur V design loads were lower than the masses of Orion and it's associated "stuff".

I still think this would be better in the long-term if Centaur V can handle the loads.

 

[blackhawk887]

Or can the entire thing and spend the money helping humans here on earth, or spend it addressing or adapting to climate change.

We've already set foot on the moon - it was a political stunt that did nothing but signify our massive, outsized wealth and power compared to the rest of the world - for some reason we feel the need to duplicate this plumage display. Why? We've now got the technology to satisfy any amount of scientific curiosity we have about the moon with robots - up to and including returning samples.

There is zero scientific value to sending humans to the moon.

Most of the problems related to helping people are political, not scientific. So political demonstrations are not separate from helping people.