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Artemis

GAO Wants To Remind You That Artemis Is Lacking Detail

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 13, 2020
Filed under

Keith’s note: This is interesting. GAO usually just issues its reports and that’s that. However, they are now overtly mentioning the recently released FY 2021 budget and are directing people to a report “NASA Lunar Programs: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Analyses and Plans for Moon Landing” that says:

“In March 2019, the White House directed NASA to accelerate its plans to return humans to the moon by 2024–4 years earlier than NASA had planned. To meet this new goal, NASA made some changes to its approach. But it is still pursuing an array of complex efforts, including a small platform in lunar orbit called the Gateway, where crew could transit to and from the moon. Some have questioned the path NASA is taking and NASA has not fully explained how it arrived at its plans. So we that NASA document its rationale for these decisions. We also recommended that NASA develop an official cost estimate for the 2024 lunar landing mission.”

Not very subtle – especially for the GAO. If the GAO is publicly reminding people that NASA needs to provide more details then it is a sure thing that Congress will be asking for the same thing – since the report that GAO is referring to was delivered to Congress on 19 December 2019 in response to a request from the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

8 responses to “GAO Wants To Remind You That Artemis Is Lacking Detail”

  1. Henry Vanderbilt says:
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    Hard to pin the details and costs down when there’s a death-duel still underway over SLS/EUS/unitary-NASA-lander versus Commercial-transports/Gateway/modular-commercial-lander.

    Only way that gets settled soon is either A: the White House decides it has other higher priorities and surrenders, or B: the White House cracks the whip on the bureaucracy and cuts a deal with Congress. (Maybe give Huntsville lots of missile defense money instead?)

  2. Not Invented Here says:
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    Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to hear the answer.

    Why do we have a Gateway? Because SLS/Orion ate all the budget, so there’s no money for lander, but SLS/Orion still needs a destination, otherwise all they can do is circle around the Moon. So Gateway is created to give them a place to go. This is something leftover before the current Artemis program.

    And before it is obvious that this administration would support a Moon landing, all the primes include Boeing is supportive of Gateway, because it gives the boondoggles they’re building a purpose. Now some Boeing puppets in congress suddenly come out of woodwork and beginning questioning Gateway (In GAO’s term “Some have questioned the path NASA is taking”), because Boeing lost the bid to build Gateway and wanted the money redirected to EUS and lander they plan to build, how’s that for an answer, GAO?

    In the mean time, how about GAO asks some real questions, like: Why are we still funding SLS when FH is already flying, New Glenn is being built and Starship is not far behind?

  3. mfwright says:
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    So we will have to wait even longer to see what the lander will actually be?

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      No, we know what it will look like.? It’s being built down Texas way and will start suborbital flights in the near future.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        Hopefully. I’m sure Starship development will lag Elon Musk’s aspirational schedules. But if they are successful at landing on the moon, the insanely high payload capacity for lunar missions will quickly make Starship the lander of choice, at least for cargo.

        CATS (cheap access to space) has been the one thing I’ve been waiting for since I stumbled upon the sci.space newsgroup in 1988. Fully reusable Starship/Super Booster has the potential to finally make CATS a reality.

    • Zed_WEASEL says:
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      The lander prototype should be flying hopping by the middle of this year.

      However, should it be successful. Brings up the issue of the relevance of the entire SLS/Orion/Gateway/multi-element lander plan to go to the surface of the Moon. Since the operational version of the Texas lander prototype in theory could replaced every element in the NASA plan plus being cheaper and available earlier.

      If NASA passes on the Texas lander, than quite sure a paying customer will booked a Moon landing on the Texas lander. Heck, maybe “Lord British” will fly again.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Yes, he would finally be able to take delivery of the slightly used Russian lunar rover he bought some years ago.?

  4. MAGA_Ken says:
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    From GAO report: In March 2019, the White House directed NASA to accelerate its plans to return humans to the moon by 2024–4 years earlier than NASA had planned.

    ————————–

    That 2028 “plan” was just a fiction. The WH rightly realized that the only way to get things done was to expend to political capital on the effort, thus the 2024 deadline.