Back To The Moon – By Any Means Necessary
Keith’s note: After months of being shy about how much it will cost to send Americans back to the lunar surface by 2024, NASA Administrator Bridenstine has finally started to get specific. Upon hearing the numbers no one is really experiencing sticker shock. We all knew it would be a large number range that is beyond anything NASA could be expected to get. But Bridenstine is undeterred and is marching forth trying to make this whole thing work.
The cost numbers appeared in a CNN article yesterday: “NASA has touted its bold plan to return American astronauts to the moon by 2024 for months. Now we’re starting to get an idea of how much it will cost. The space agency will need an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion over the next five years for its moon project, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told CNN Business on Thursday. That would mean adding another $4 billion to $6 billion per year, on average, to the agency’s budget, which is already expected to be about $20 billion annually. Bridenstine’s remarks are the first time that NASA has shared a total cost estimate for its moon program, which is called Artemis (after the Greek goddess of the moon) and could send people to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century. NASA wants that mission to include two astronauts: A man and the first-ever woman to walk on the moon.”
Let’s take the high end of the cost range = $30 billion. NASA has asked for $1.6 billion as a supplement to its FY 2020 Budget. So lets round out the remainder to $28 billion. In order for the whole Artemis Moon 2024 thing to happen that additional money needs to appear – dependably on time – over the course of FY 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and likely 2025. Let’s ignore ramp ups and other things associated with typical programs and divide this amount by 5. You get an additional $5.6 billion every year. Or, lets be charitable and assume that they hit the lower number i.e. $20 billion. After deducting the current $1.6 billion request that leaves roughly $18 billion in additional funding or $3.6 billion in additional funding per year. So NASA needs somewhere between $3.6 and $5.6 billion a year for 5 fiscal years in order to meet the vice president’s goal of landing Americans on the Moon by the end of 2024.
Over the past several years NASA watched the lifetime of ISS extended again and again. Now the target seems to be in the 2028-2030 range. NASA had hoped to totally hand over LEO operations to the private sector so that they could pivot several billion a year into the Moon program – and that was the program aimed at a 2028 landing. Now that goal post has been moved up by 4 years. This ISS hand off is not going to happen. None of the business ideas presented to NASA recently work unless NASA is still paying the lion’s share of the bills. So NASA is going to be funding ISS operations for the next decade.
Add in chronic SLS delays and cost increases, problems with JWST, and pressure to increase funding in its various science portfolios and NASA is already totally over subscribed and under equipped fiscally to achieve all that is on its plate. Using commercial alternatives is smart and will decrease costs but NASA will still be billions of dollar short – at the onset – as it embarks on the Moon 2024 effort. The only way to possibly meet the Moon 2024 deadline is to find throw out the program of record and try something much more spartan. But we all know that SLS and Orion are not going to be cancelled. Full stop.
Regardless of how NASA does this much more money is going to be needed. And that money will have to be fought for. The Administration is going to have to champion these costs increases for the remainder of this term and the entirety of a hypothetical second term. And they they will have to do so while pursuing cuts to other parts of the government – as they have claimed that they will be doing. Congress is not likely to go along with this lopsided support of NASA while other science and technology efforts are cut.
If a new Administration takes over in early 2021 then one has to wonder if Artemis and the 2024 deadline will survive. High visibility, pet projects touted by prior Administrations rarely survive intact when the new folks show up.
So – its all gloomy and impossible and foolish to even attempt this Moon 2024 thing, right? No. Not at all. We have unfinished business on the Moon – and if we do not go back, other nations will. The only way that Artemis can succeed in meeting a 2024 deadline is if it is conducted by NASA using the smartest approach available and if NASA is willing to walk away from expensive mistakes, eat the costs, and accept the criticisms that go with admitting failure.
Moreover, to ensure that the Artemis program is not guaranteed to drop dead in 2021, NASA needs to equip it with a simple, internally – and externally consistent reason for being. Even if this Administration gets a second term, Bridenstine is going to need Democratic buy-in to get the $1.6 billion. He is going to need it for another 5 years to get all of the money. And if the White House changes hands, he will need that buy-in even more.
But we do have a solution. A few months ago Vice President Pence said “But know this: The President has directed NASA and Administrator Jim Bridenstine to accomplish this goal by any means necessary. In order to succeed, as the Administrator will discuss today, we must focus on the mission over the means. You must consider every available option and platform to meet our goals, including industry, government, and the entire American space enterprise.”
NASA has only danced around the whole “by any means necessary” option. Now that the immense monetary needs are coming into focus it is obvious that NASA needs to revisit the means whereby this Moon project is accomplished. The current assumptions under which it is proceeding simply will not work. The money will not be there.
If Jim Bridenstine can craft the proverbial “elevator speech” that gets everyone, everywhere on board with Artemis – whether it is in the Halls of Congress or in a Walmart parking lot in ‘Flyover Country’ – then there will be no stopping NASA. Right now, PR slogans aside, the only clear reason we have is a directive from the White House with a delivery date that is equal to the length of a second term.
Why isn’t all of America buzzing about going back to the Moon? If NASA and Jim Bridenstine can answer that question then they will be well along the path of understanding how to find that elusive “Why” that Artemis is currently lacking.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that half of Congress, and probably half of NASA, aren’t interested in returning to the moon if it means Trump will get any credit for it. This is unfortunate, because this was NASA’s one and only shot at remaining relevant for future manned lunar exploration. A notional 2028 (or whenever) return isn’t going to cut it, as Elon Musk and (possibly) Jeff Bezos will be there before then.
As an American, I’ll be just as proud to see either of those two get there first, as I would be if it were NASA. But also as an American, I will be sad to see as storied an institution as NASA fall by the wayside.
Good analysis of the various moving parts in this thing, Keith.
The proposed solution though, Bridenstine laying out the vision to inspire a popular majority to back steady funding for the project, strikes me as (unfortunately) impractical.
My rule of thumb over the years: Maybe two-thirds of the American public vaguely thinks space is sorta neat and NASA should continue being funded more or less at current levels. Maybe a tenth of that (maybe less) cares about the details or thinks funding should be increased for any specific goal. I just don’t see a popular majority for five years of 20-30% NASA funding increase as achievable from that base.
My take: The least unlikely path for this thing to still happen would be some sort of of WH grand bargain with SLS/Orion’s political sponsors: They give up the huge boondoggle projects currently holding NASA back, in exchange for equivalent regional funding out of some other part of the government. (Expanded DOD missile defense, perhaps, to employ a lot of the same regional engineering/technical talent.)
Mind, that doesn’t strike me as all that likely either. Too much regional face tied up in the current projects.
I think what we’re seeing here is the process of yet another White House “wouldn’t it be nice if” hitting NASA then dying the death of open-ended budget increases and indeterminate schedules.
I think what we’re seeing here is Bridenstine telling the White House that under current conditions – Congress mandating both SLS/Orion use and management by the existing NASA organizations – this is what it’ll cost. Implicitly he’s saying the White House can either take on the political heavy lifting to get that extra funding, or the political heavy lifting to change the current conditions, else forget the whole thing.
My best guess is, we’ll see “forget the whole thing.” But this White House has been known to surprise before. My advice, if anyone there is listening, is that if they do want Artemis badly enough to take on the political heavy lifting, they’ll have better odds of success if they aim at changing current conditions rather than just shoveling more money into the current setup.
It’s basically never worked like that, at least from my reading of the history. The Apollo Program got off the ground despite tepid public support because of Johnson’s strong support and some very good political engineering of contracts and NASA centers in Congress. The Space Shuttle did a smaller version of the same thing (plus relying on Nixon not wanting to be the President who cancelled the human spaceflight program), and ISS was explicitly done as an international space project that other governments could participate in (especially the Russians).
If you want a space program to get going, what you need first and foremost is a strong congressional advocate who can push to make sure it gets its funding (Europa Clipper is going because of the now-gone John Culberson giving it political protection).
Increased international support and cooperation (particularly when it comes to the science to be conducted on the Moon) would help Artemis tremendously at this stage. It would make it harder for Congress to ignore or unfund future commitments to cooperation. Given ESA’s and JAXA’s track record of science exploration and their willingness to return to the Moon, I think they could lend some credibility to the research part of Artemis and help fund future landings if they get to land their first astronaut on the Moon from 2025 onward.
I agree. Getting an international coalition on board with the mission (sort of like what we did with ISS, albeit hopefully more focused) would be quite useful, although we’d probably have to broaden it to a Moon Base rather than just sortie landings.
I agree, it would be surprising to get the kind of increment in funding that Bridenstine seems to be counting on, and without it keeping to the schedule seems challenging to say the least. There will be pressure on other parts of the NASA and federal budget to transfer funds, but whether this will occur is anybody’s guess. At the same time Blue Origin and SpaceX are both coming on line with new LVs, Glenn and Starship. Maybe a complete shift to commercial launch vehicles would be enough to stay within budget, but that would create friction with the congressional delegations from areas that build the current launch system.
I agree and disagree. You are quite right when you say the average American has never been strongly in favor of heavy spending on space exploration. That’s never been the case and probably never will be. But I don’t think what we need is a strong advocate in Congress, to get sizable funding even though there isn’t a whole lot of public support. That only goes so far, maybe to the tune of $1 or $2 billion more than NASA’s business as usual budget would be.
What I think we need is NASA work on the technology, and on advances which will lower the cost of future exploration. And by that I mean things including non-NASA exploration. Just get the costs down to the point where they are not, literally, astronomical. Then we wouldn’t need widespread public support or a special friend in Congress. Some moderately rich guy with a fixation about space could underwrite a mission to Mars. We are already at the point where ultra-rich people are trying to do that (Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk) and moderately rich people can do it for small, Earth orbiting spacecraft.
I agree, cost is king. The Aerospace Corporation study concluded that to achieve a self-sustaining market the cost of sending a human to orbit would have to be $1 million or less. Yet we have NASA essentially blocking SpaceX from man-rating propulsive-lift landing for the Crew Dragon. Offshore recovery is more expensive, complex, and in some ways more hazardous.
“Some moderately rich guy with a fixation about space could underwrite a mission to Mars. ” I don’t think so. As you state just a sentence later it has taken the ultra rich and the super-ultra-extremely rich to get to LEO and get to “somewhere soon”. You want to get to the moon on the pockets of the rich, you better find one of the top 30 or so billionaires to jump into it.
You’re taking that out of context. I said NASA (or someone) needs to improve the technology and the state of the art, in order to substantially reduce costs. If that can be done to the extent that a moderately rather than absurdly rich person could fund a Mars mission, then it might happen. Note that moderately rich is a relative thing. There are 2153 billionaires around. The poorest of that top 30 you mention “only” has $29 billion.
Comparing the Falcon Heavy with a Delta IV Heavy, SpaceX has already taken launch costs down by a factor of five or so, relative to the assumptions which put budgets for proposed missions (which usually came out as something over $200 billion.) And no one has to sink the money into developing a Falcon Heavy. Mr. Musk has already done that. If (again, if) that can go down another factor of ten or twenty, perhaps by NACA-style technology development, then there’s a pool of a thousand rich people who could afford it. And only one would need to be obsessed with space and craze enough to sink most of his fortune on it.
“another factor of ten or twenty”
I have wondered here and elsewhere for a simple answer to a not simple question: in general terms, what has SX done that resulted in the dramatic cost reductions?
Is the engine simpler and this cheaper? Are there included COTS hrdware inclusions? Is there a dramatic use of construction techniques adopted by SX?
I’m not sure anyone knows.
I really think it’s lots of little things. Yes, they use some COTS parts; the flight computers use a voting system of radiation soft COTS processors. Yes, the engines are cheaper; I’m not sure if some 3D printing is used, or if they’re just building them on a production line as opposed to one-off craftsmanship.
But mostly, I think someone just went down the line of all the usual practices, both of the aerospace industry and of NASA, and asked, “Why do you do it that way?” Every time the answer was, “Because that’s how we do it,” they looked for more efficient alternatives.
I’m not sure if it’s a matter of SpaceX doing something right, as the traditional approach doing something wrong. There are thousands, if not millions, of small, minor inefficiencies and they add up. But that’s also why it’s hard to reform the traditional organizations. There isn’t any one big thing to point at, and many managers don’t like hearing that the big picture is really about getting thousands of minor details right.
Kieth I agree with your comments completely. NASA and the supporters of going back to the Moon need to come up with the reason why. If there isn’t an aggressive goal to make progress in human exploration, then human exploration is pointless. Building SLS and Orion with no clear near term goal is a colossal waste of money. Congress should either go along with this or cancel SLS and Orion immediately.
In a sense, you’re describing the history of NASA’s human spaceflight program since the end of Apollo. “No clear near term goal.” The problem is that SLS, and Orion, were originally conceived as general purpose vehicles which could be used for whatever we eventually decided to do. But then budgets and the lack of near term goals turned them into something that won’t affordable and isn’t exactly flexible or versatile.
That’s not too different from the Shuttle, which was supposed to be a low cost truck to help us build a space station, which was supposed to be the construction shack and port for very capable missions going to the Moon and Mars. But once they decided on a goal of a reusable spacecraft, somehow affordable fell by the wayside. When the Shuttle budgets couldn’t handle all the requirements and they had to make compromises, they forgot that low cost was the goal, and stuck with reusable. And, once they had the Shuttle, it was all about building a space station. Not infrastructure to support ambitious missions to the Moon and Mars. Somehow, that got forgotten. And the goal became building a space station for some mysterious reason, because, well… we built the Shuttle to build a space station.
At this point, I’d really like to see a focus on near-term, achievable goals (not vast, impressive ones like making a rocket even bigger than the Saturn V), which would actually contribute to long term goals. The closest thing I’ve seen to that the the PPE element of Gateway. Not because Gateway is useful, since I don’t believe that. But because the selected design for the PPE element seems like a fine electric propulsion tug. And I can come up with all sorts of uses for something like that.
As a general purpose vehicle making Orion with too small of service module without the delta V to get to low lunar orbit and back make it a lousy general purpose vehicle. As for the PPE, I agree and can see many interesting uses for it including in unmanned planetary exploration.
I didn’t say SLS and Orion were good, general purpose vehicles. I said they were originally conceived of as that. And somewhere in the design stage, that goal got lost. Probably in the process of trying to satisfy too many requirements.
Isnt the reason to go to space a simple one? Because we want to live there someday?
Space-related efforts would benefit greatly if associated with other, similar historic national efforts: the Lewis and Clark bicentenial was quite popular, as these things go, as a for instance.
Importantly, space travel has far too many “strangeness” cooties. Too many “space is hard” memes. Too much association with hard math and science. And while all of those associations are central, and critical, they take the shine off the apple, so to speak.
And recent announcements from Bigelow are not helpful.
Think of Space as a new planned community you are proposing. How would you market it? The view is great, but the cost also needs to be affordable. What we need from NASA is what we had from NACA, a facilitator of technology development that will work with industry to lower costs and improve practicality.
What a great question! And it’s one I have to think about.
Settlement may be a good goal for the average America, but not to NASA which has never shown any serious interest in it. For proof just look at the various NASA advisory committees, planning committees, etc., which are composed almost entirely of scientists and engineers who show zero interest in the settlement of space or even its economic development. Their only interest is answering what are to the average American are only philosophical questions like SETI, how life originated, how the Universe works, topics that are of serious interest to only a handful of Individuals and have zero impact the daily life of the average American or the American economy. So why should taxpayers care what NASA does?
Exactly so. Why not change the conversation? Take it out of the hands of the aforementioned? Get a marketing guy who knows how to sell cars (“what color would you like, ma’am?”) or home lots (did you otice the view!?).
Get the magic into the conversation. Nobody gives a dman about how hard it is to build a bridge. They just want to cross the river.
Actually my Ph.D. is in marketing and I have approached it from that perspective. Remember, before you sell something it needs to satisfy a need or want.
Surveys I did before and after the Columbia accident to determine needs and wants in regards to space showed that the two space goals that gather far more than single digital support on a forced choice question are planetary defense and SBSP, something space policy experts, NASA advisory groups and most space advocates have zero interest in as space goals. The other goals like searching for life, going to the Moon or Mars, and settlement get lost in the noise of the sample size. Not surprising as they don’t satisfy the basic need of safety as the other two goals do, basically the safety from a NEO impact and safety from running out of energy.
So bottomline is that you have no basic needs/wants to really link your promotion campaign to. All you will be doing is preaching to the choir, which is what space advocates have been doing for decades. Incidentally, Apollo worked because it was actually promoted in this context, as critical to the security (safety) of the nation during the Cold War. The hidden message was that if we didn’t prove superiority in technology the Soviets would underestimate our abilities and be likely encouraged to be more aggressive.
That is why the focus should be on developing a bootstrap space strategy that doesn’t require large budgets, strong public support or an agency that is guided by the whims of Washington like NASA. It needs to be a strategy that requires a lot on intermediate steps to build revenue markets until you get to doing a space element. Unfortunately space advocates are just too impatient to listen to such a strategy, let alone work to implement it.
As a result you have the present situation, with space advocates holding conventions where they keeping convincing themselves Space is important, policy experts focusing on things most Americans could care less about and Congress Critters channeling useless pork like SLS/Orion/Gateway to their districts because they are able to get away with it.
I imagine the number of people actually interested in settlement is about the same order of magnitude as those interested in the “philosophical” questions…
I don’t know… Maybe because we *might* want to live there? Other reasons… to see what’s out there, to better understand our place in the universe, to be the first to experience a place. To explore.
I thought Paul Spudis had a pretty fair formulation: To learn how humans can live and work on another world.
Yes, not all lessons learned on the Moon are fully applicable on other worlds – but many of them are.
And if it can be made into the basis of a bootstrapped cislunar economy, then it could even be made to pay off in the long run.
“If a new Administration takes over in early 2021 then one has to wonder if Artemis and the 2024 deadline will survive. High visibility, pet projects touted by prior Administrations rarely survive intact when the new folks show up.”
Indeed. However, if this happens yet again, NASA as we know it should be dismantled and reformulated. How many times can a workforce be redirected before the whole exercise just becomes an absurdity?
Yes, indeed. The Mars myth certainly isn’t helping #Moon2024 along as it squanders time and focus by our public servants and confuses Congress, the White House, and the public. https://homerhickamblog.blo…
Thanks for using your writing skills and research to point this out! I never thought it was Lowell who began the myth which everyone continues to this day. Let’s first work on able to land someone on the moon and bring them back safely routinely, more importantly do it as a economic development purpose.
The only way in which people will be on the moon in the next 10-20 years is if someone like Musk or Bezos decide to make it happen. NASA can’t come up with any reason for a new Moon program,let alone explain what they are trying to do with the ‘Gateway’. That is just a make work project to keep contractors working. What a waste. In fact requiring the lander to have to get the crew back up to a thousand mile altitude over the Moon makes it far more dangerous; Apollo’s LM only needed to get to a 10 mile orbit. And BTW I think having the entrepreneur, or the venture capitalist, or commercial industry pay for the program is the appropriate way to do it. Government’s role is what? Science? Mining? Establishing a new US territory? Military defense against aliens? or Chinese? or meteorites or asteroids hitting Earth.There are a few things that might be reason for the US government to be involved, but very few. Bridenstine and Gerstenmier cannot tell you why we need to go or what NASA’s role is, because so far they do not know and there is none. Gerstenmier had been a bit too much like a blade of glass blowing in the wind. He goes with pretty much whatever has been proposed especially by the contractors who are supposed to work for him. He shut down Shuttle prematurely. He failed to get Orion flying on a reasonable schedule, and he chose a poor design for Orion that does not meet anyone’s needs. He selected or permitted a lame set of people to manage Orion, Ares, SLS, ISS, CASIS….The program we used to know is over. NASA put peopleon the Moon…not a chance.
I agree with your assessment of needing a Musk or Bezos – namely a billionaire who doesn’t care about short term returns. On the other hand I think you are completely off in saying that an entrepreneur, VC or commercial industry should pay for it. All those entities require short term ROIs. The moon is not going to give that … unless NASA is footing the majority of the bill. If you are funded by VCs you have to answer the same questions you pose. Why is “MoonExp Corp” going to the moon? Mining? Government-funded science? Government-funded defense? The first has a very long term horizon, the later ones put you right back in the government’s payroll.
Not that in the SpaceX and Blue Origin contexts I do not consider Musk or Bezos entrepreneurs. Had SpaceX been funded as a normal new venture it would have died early in its life. It succeeded because Musk was willing to take a personal loss in the name of the greater good. Blue Origin is getting cash infusions from Bezos far above what any reasonable VC would give.
Either the government puts up the money, or the super rich. No other options.
This is probably why they chose the program name of Artemis. And why the talk is “…first woman on the moon”. Anyone questioning the program’s cost will be labeled a sexist misogynist.
A big part of the problem is that technically and financially the ‘current’ SLS and Orion cannot do the intended job. Besides the fact they won’t be ready to carry crew for years, they are both underpowered, and they cost immense amounts of money to build-and then throwaway. One of the reasons Shuttle was shut down was the $500 million price tag of each flight. Orion-SLS costs 4X this amount and because of the expense they will only do a single manned flight a year. Not only is the new Moon program not affordable, NASAs hardware cannot do the job. It is time to turn the job over to a commercial entity.
NASAs hardware cannot do the job
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I agree. It appears almost every decision NASA has made regarding hardware has been not well thought out. Each bad decision has had a snowball effect. I think Gerst should be fired or taken off HSF and his office moved to a closet.
Leave Gerst alone. Blame Congress and their lack of leadership.
The reason folks are not excited is that when it comes to crewed exploration of the Moon and Mars the public is incredulous. I answer my phone… “You have been selected for an all expense paid trip to Cancun.”…Aaaand I hang up!
I have a better chance of upgrading my Chevy Silverado to fly to the Moon than this Congress has of passing ANYTHING budget-wise, this year or the next, other than a continued spending resolution. This accelerated Moon date is an executive vanity project intended to make Donald Trump look good and the current speaker of the House of Representatives will grind her fingernails flat and grab and hold every doorway, kicking and screaming, along the way to anything that strengthens the current White House.
If one party or the other OWNS the Presidency AND both houses of Congress at the end of 2020, THEN the U.S. Government MIGHT have the resolve to pass a budget…only then can Artemis ask for more money for NASA for 2022, and that is not soon enough to put boots on the ground by 2024. Ain’t happenin’.
Donald Trump is the all-time top Presidential hit-getter on Google…with far more searches than all former U.S. Presidents combined. He and the continuance or termination of his Presidency is this nation’s top issue and eclipses everything else. The satellite issues of that make up the rest of the priority list. Everything else is on hold until that is resolved. Moon exploration doesn’t even make the top 10.
Everything NASA does between now and 2022 (or longer) will have to be done on their current budget or not at all.
NASA is back to needing to be better salesmen. They need to show that they have come up with good ideas for how to get what they are directed to do. To many time in the past they come up with these fantastic complex tech studies. Then when they present the studies they get great presentations and the sticker price is hidden away. Instead look at all options and furnish the American public and Congress with high, low, and medium cost options with blunt truths of the cost of each one of them up front, but with the advantages that each method would allow as well.
If a plan to go back to the Moon, a rather specific and limited phrase by the way, calls for lots of extra money, a quick measure of being well thought out or not is to ask if you think this should happen vs. asking why it will happen. The more you hear “should” the less you have a plan, the more you have wishful thinking. Other obvious questions are holding on to the funding over enough time to get the project done. To do anything of import for that matter.
Being inclined to a fight is not an indicator of how likely someone is to win. When the parts of a plan include magic, elves and an invisibility cloak, it’s imaginative, even entertaining, just not likely. Not a plan.
There’s reasons we are in the mess we are in. Decades worth of reasons. List what changes people, organizations, and incentives, and what persists over time, and then we may stumble on a real plan.
Why isn’t all of America buzzing about going back to the Moon?Americans don’t feel misty-eyed over soft landing a woman on the moon for Trump by 2024 because they feel in their gut there is a crash landing coming to America for themselves by 2024.
https://www.zerohedge.com/n…
On a less downer note, rather than focusing on how NASA’s long term financial planning is like someone saying they plan to win the lottery, or inherit lots of money from Aunt Em (who is 52), there is one other “by any means necessary” option. Albeit it will take courage at the top.
First, ask for ONLY lander money, and nothing else. For the rest, the first PPT plan is already out there, that SLS/Orion 37 launches delusion. The 2nd PPT plan you come up with is a plan that does not require SLS/Orion (or KSC Grd Ops, as ground ops are already in any commercial launch services). You start to contrast possibilities, FOR FREE. The actual payments for SLS/Orion and Grd Ops or for just commercial launch providers would be at least a couple years in the future anyway. In the mean time, get everyone thinking. Socialize possibilities. Open minds. Yep, the hard part. The “by any means” part.
If you can’t get the additional funding (somehow) for two commercial lunar lander partnerships (includes test flight and first crew flight like commercial crew), but targeting even less than commercial crew Starliner and Dragon to make finding funds easier, both plans are a moot point anyway. Nothing is lost.
If you do find funds only for these landers and nothing else you will have advanced industries capabilities on landers. Again, a strategic investment even if never used by NASA. In a couple of years THEN your decide on the non-lander elements plan/funding – which will have received ample (and free) contrast by then.
I would think the first step is to find out who really wants to go to the moon and how much they are willing to pay.
What exactly is going to cost $30 billion? If they are already planning to fly round the Moon in 2024, surely all they need is a lander.
The old plan was to fly around the Moon in 2023. (At least I think it was 2023, not 2024.) But not to get into orbit, and not to land before 2028. In effect, they are trying to compress the schedule, and do everything they hand planned to do in the next nine in just five. That means moving funds forward, and it also means a crash program. Those tend to involve people working shifts, and throwing money at any technical problems which put the schedule at risk.
Excellent post Keith. Time preasure prevents reading the comments My answer: Internationalise! Male EuroLunaNaut Female American one.
Other options Russian Cosmonaut? Trump obviously has Putin’s ear P:!
Off topic, but does anyone else find it ironic that a conservative politician like Pence would co-opt a phrase from a Jean-Paul Sartre play which was introduced into popular American culture by Malcolm X?
I would consider it ironic if I thought he was aware of the phrase’s origins. I’m not even sure if Mr. Pence knows who M. Sartre was.
Maybe one of the reasons people aren’t excited about going back to the moon is the constant 50 yearlong celebration of the 1st lunar landings. Two generations have grown up with the idea “we just did the moon”. Because we keep celebrating the 1st lunar missions the culture has been unable to move on to the next steps. By next steps I’m talking about exploration beyond LEO. We need take the nations focus away from Apollo and place it on new missions like Artemis. NASA needs to sell the idea that next missions are steps to the stars. Not just Mars.
Mars should never be sold as a closed ended achievement like Apollo was. It needs to reach out in ways that gets things into the hands of people that allow them to connect with the new programs. Back in the 60’s companies put out models of spacecraft, toy companies developed space themed products. Many companies sold all kinds of products for adults that allowed them to connect with Apollo. We don’t see that today. No model (or toy) of Orion spacecraft is available to buy. Try finding a SLS model kit or toy. You will find none. Nothing for the American people to hold and think about. Space exploration stays an abstract idea. NASA’s not building a personal and emotional investment from the American people in Space exploration. The most popular museum in the world, Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has over 20 million visitors a year. A very clear indicator of support for space exploration.
50 years Is long enough. Think forward not back. The money can be found, NASA needs to sell a capable, credible plan to the American people.
No bucks……..
Ya’ll know the rest.