Gateway Is An Option – Not A Feature – For The Moon 2024 Thing
Gateway No Longer Mandatory For 2024 Lunar Landing, Space Policy Online
“The head of NASA’s human exploration program said today that the lunar Gateway that has been a linchpin of the Artemis program no longer is a mandatory component of getting astronauts back on the Moon by 2024. NASA has decided to “decouple” getting to the Moon “fast” versus getting there “sustainably” and Gateway is not needed to get there fast. This dramatic turnaround was driven by the need to meet the Trump Administration’s deadline to put astronauts on the lunar surface before the end of a second Trump term if he is reelected.”
NASA takes Gateway off the critical path for 2024 lunar return, SpaceNews
“We can now tell the international partners] 100% positively it will be there because we’ve changed that program to a much more what I would call solid, accomplishable schedule,” he said. He added there were unspecified changes to the Gateway design to reduce its cost “so I don’t get into a struggle” between the cost of the Gateway and human lunar landers, suggesting there were cost overruns with the Gateway. “Frankly, had we not done that simplification, I was going to have to cancel Gateway because I couldn’t afford it,” he said. “By simplifying it and taking it out of the critical path, I can now keep it on track.”
The key being that this also decouples Artemis missions from a further connection to SLS, since SLS has no way to get humans onto the Moon, much less sustainably, by 2024, or any date short of 2030, in anything other than Senator Shelby’s fantasy folios.
Translation…
Rob the LOP-G budget to achieve the 2024 Lunar Landing on current funding.
Boeing asks and Boeing gets.
More like, rob the LOP-G budget to fail badly at achieving a 2024 Lunar Landing. On their record, the current iteration of Boeing will never have EUS or a lander ready in time for 2024 no matter how much money we throw at them.
I guarantee you if they get away with this, they’ll come back for a top-up every year – then come 2024, no matter how much they got, they’ll say it wasn’t enough and they’re not ready.
But, they will meanwhile have control of the lion’s share of the program cashflow – which has been the real objective all along.
F9H, fully recovered, can park 40ish metric tons in 250 km due east LEO out of the Cape. Core-expended, 55ish mt.
As for how fast can SpaceX turn F9H launches around, I suspect the answer would be, how fast can we pay for – but for this project done the way I’m about to propose, it’d likely be surprisingly affordable
So. If we actually want to get to the Moon in 2024, we will fire Boeing, sideline their sponsors within NASA, and put together a tiger team to configure and commercially contract those F9H launches, plus a lander and upper upper stages(s) launchable within those limits, plus a Dragon 2 crew capsule upgraded as needed for Lunar mission duration and return, all designed for Earth-orbit rendezovous and docking as needed then launch to the Moon in one or more docked packages.
Otherwise, fageddaboudit.
Just sayin’.
That’s the point, isn’t it? The objective of the Artemis program isn’t to go to the Moon, it is to pay Boeing, NG-ATK and LM to develop whatever they tell NASA is needed to go to the Moon, sight unseen and no questions asked.
That’s why NASA will still be trying to get humans out of LEO (and promising ‘cool things soon’) whilst Musk is livestreaming a zero-gee classical music concert from LLO.
NASA is not a monolith. It’s a whole bunch of different local and regional organizations, flying in (very) loose formation. Maybe half of NASA overall has anything to with human space exploration, and even that half is nothing like a monolith.
What’s interesting about the current situation is that significant parts of NASA (including NASA HQ) do think the objective of Artemis should actually be to go back to the Moon in a timely manner. The current White House of course strongly agrees, while the Congress (the fraction that cares) is divided.
In other words, there are possibilities for reform here.
No guarantees, but possibilities.
Reforms only come when an organization is hit hard by an crisis. That is when an opportunity emerges to purge those behaviors and elements that have put the organization in danger. Other than SpaceX it is difficult to see any crisis that would provide the drive to change NASA.
It depends on what you mean by a crisis. I can think of institutions (and countries) with a strong leader with no plans to retire or train a replacement. When people like that die, it leaves a vacuum, and often some serious changes to the organization. You might call that a crisis, but certainly not an external one. That example isn’t applicable to NASA, but it’s just one example. Let’s see, the actual fall of the Berlin wall was the result of a missed meeting and a incorrect sentence at a press conference (which was once described as the largest administrative error in history.) I might say a triggering event, rather than a crisis, is necessary for reforms.
A bit off topic, but prompted by your “live-streaming” comment: what does SpaceX use for their space communications network? USN?Just curious…
Presuming you meant the Shiny vehicle. SpaceX don’t really need the DSN. All they need is a large deployable radio dish out of a cargo port for a direct link to Earth.
Well, current practice and eventually SS. They still need ground stations even if DTE… that was what I was referring to. I know of USN and DSN, there probably are others. Just wondering what they use…
I don’t know what SpaceX uses for Falcon launches, but it isn’t the DSN. There is a minimum altitude for even asking for DSN time, and that’s well above geostationary orbit. A lunar mission by Starship would qualify. But if the flight rates even get close to some of the SpaceX claims, the DSN wouldn’t have the resources to support it.
There are 2 large steerable radio antenna dish at Boca Chica. For communicating with future Dragon mission AIUI.
Additionally SpaceX have sites at Richmond WA and Irvine CA for testing and operating the Starlink Constellation.
If SpaceX need more global ground station sites. Quite sure the South Australia and the Brandenburg administrations will help to bring them online.
If Gateway is off the critical path, because high-power electric propulsion is “We’ve never done that before”, and docking elements in lunar orbit is considered a similarly risky development, I suspect Earth orbit rendezvous is also off the table.
Of course, I disagree with that. We have done high-power propulsion, if “we” includes the communications satellite industry as opposed to just NASA. The Gateway Power and Propulsion module would be a bit higher power than what they use to get from a transfer to an operational orbit, but not dramatically so. It’s not fundamentally new or different technology. And PPS is a modified communications satellite bus. Similarly, autonomous docking isn’t new. Once you get the spacecraft within a few kilometers of each other, they are pretty much on their own. So I don’t see how doing it in lunar orbit is a big, new development. In terms of navigating them to within a few kilometers of each other, well, the Cassini navigation team could routinely put a spacecraft within a tenth of a kilometer of a target point, when it was 10 AU away from Earth.
The launch rates for a Falcon Heavy could be an issue, but not a big one. I don’t think SpaceX could manage more than two per month, and that might be pushing it. I think the choke point is LC-39A. They have one launch complex for both Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9/Crew Dragon. I don’t think they could reliably turn the pad around in less than two or three weeks. On the other hand, your suggestion would involve designing a new propulsion module. The ability to sit in low Earth orbit and wait for a couple months would just be a level 1 design requirement, and not even a particularly challenging one. It might rule out cryogenic propellents, but that’s not a huge problem.
As you imply, old school NASA can get remarkably subjective about what is and isn’t “unacceptably high risk.” I tend to lean toward EOR because we have done variations on it hundreds of times, and simple docking interfaces for the same reason, also because, well, KISS. It’s also quicker and easier in LEO to launch and swap in a spare as replacement for any one element that develops problems post-launch.
But I’m not married to any one detail. It’s the overall principle that matters: Fire demonstrably incompetent organizations, hire provably competent ones.
Given four years leadtime plus support from the landlord, I expect SpaceX could be paid to bring up a second Cape launch site plus anything else needed to launch F9H at whatever rate might be needed. (Or, a second site elsewhere? Brownsville perhaps. A Texas site could be good for the politics end of things.) But every two weeks might well suffice. Yes, make the propulsion modules dirt-simple storables – again, KISS – so they can sit in orbit for a month or two if needed. Yes, they’ll mass more – but LEO mass gets a lot cheaper when you’re reusing 95% of your booster. I don’t think that fundamental shift has been properly internalized at NASA yet.
The real risk tradeoff is, proven orbital procedure risks that are relatively low, versus Usual Suspects cost and schedule risks which approach 100%. They will be years late and billions over budget. It’s what they do. Why keep on pretending otherwise?
I was really just trying to interpret the statements, not say how I thought they should do things. Mr. Loverro said they wanted to avoid doing new things which might take longer or cost more than anticipated. He listed the Gateway PPS and putting together a multi-component lander in lunar orbit as examples. Whether or not I agree, I think that means they would also like to avoid Earth orbit rendezvous.
When it comes to launch facilities for SpaceX, I don’t think building more is a short term proposition (i.e. to support a 2024 lunar landing.) I remember an interview with Mr. Beck of Rocket Lab. He mentioned that, although having their Mahia site is great, building one from scratch was took _way_ more time and work than they had expected. SpaceX would probably be better off converting an existing pad at Canaveral than building a new one. But I’m not sure if there are any unused pads suitable for a Falcon Heavy. At some point, especially if Starship works as planned, they will have to build new facilities. But that’s a long-term prospect, not a way to meet a tight deadline.
This is what you get when NASA is struggling with no vision other than ‘maintain the status quo and keep the pork flowing’. Every new administration comes along and changes the mid-term goals meaning that nothing is ever achieved.
Or in this case, changing the goals multiple times within the same administration.
Flags and footprints it is.
Sigh
Don’t stress, it’ll never happen. No way are the politicians going to fund it. SLS and Orion for a couple of short test flights and I predict that’ll be it replaced by another LEO Grand Scheme to keep the current military-industrial complex i.e. donors, happy and some retirees in employment.
Let’s hope that EM stays alive and kicking a la R Bigelow.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Cheers
Neil
Gateway was nothing more than promises of grandeur to get people aboard. Promise the moon the planets and the stars. Rip it all away and instead offer the same as what has been done before.
What leaps out of this article was that Boeing will build one SLS per year, for one launch per year at close to $2bn per launch – and it won’t have the capacity to do more simple direct to the Moon mission for Orion. In the meantime, SpaceX will be building one Starship Super Heavy per week, fully reusable, 150 MT into LEO, and the cost of $2m per launch. A launch every week – perhaps a higher flight tempo – with the Starship vehicle able to take significant crew and cargo direct to the Moon following on-orbit refuelling. If SpaceX developed a pure cargo variant of Starship, that would make Artemis mission planning even more flexible. But of course, that would require NASA to replace SLS with Starship-Super Heavy… I know…that’s a nice dream.
A pure cargo version of Starship is explicitly in the works.
There will actually be 3: Crew, Cargo, and Tanker. The Crew version will have room for cargo space, but the pure Cargo version will take out all the habitability to make room for more cargo and be built with a large cargo bay door system. The tanker will be little more than a flying set of fuel and oxidizer tanks.
Last I heard, the plan was to build Crew Starship such that, fully topped off in orbit by a series of Tankers, it could fly to the Moon and land with sufficient reserve fuel to take off and return to Earth. If you want to go down a deeper gravity well (i.e. Mars), then you need ISRU to have a LOx / Methane fuel depot waiting for you on the surface to be able to take off and fly back to Earth. It remains to be seen what the final performance stats will be, but that at least was the plan as I had read it.
I would assume that the Moon / Mars flights would be augmented by precursor fleet of autonomous Cargo Starships hauling all the heavy gear (rovers, fuel production equipment, hab and lab modules).