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Artemis

Moon Landing By 2024? NASA Has No Crystal Ball

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 18, 2020
Filed under
Moon Landing By 2024?  NASA Has No Crystal Ball

NASA Updates Date, Time for Media Teleconference with Administrator, New Head of Human Spaceflight
“NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will host a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, June 18, to introduce Kathy Lueders, the newly selected associate administrator of the agency’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.”
Keith’s note: I asked Kathy Lueders: “I have a simple yes/no question. Given delays due to COVID-19 and chronic cost overruns and launch date slips will NASA be able to land people on the Moon by December 31, 2024? yes or no?” she replied “I don’t have a crystal ball. … I wish I knew the answer. It would make my job a lot easier. We’re going to try. … You need to start. One step at a time, right? If you say I can’t get there, well, you’re not going to get there. … If things come up along the way where technically it takes us longer … we’ll go figure it out, but right now the team is trying. It is tough.” Jim Bridenstine added “asking a yes/no question is the wrong approach. If you ask me I will answer “yes” and we are working at this every day.”

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

47 responses to “Moon Landing By 2024? NASA Has No Crystal Ball”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    That is all they are able to do, try their best. As least it’s a goal that is challenging them to move forward. It will be interesting if it is still a goal if a new Administration takes office after the election.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      I disagree with you, Doc. Keith’s crafty question contained land mines.

      I don’t know Ms. Lueders. Folks around here give her high marks. I don’t know anyone connected with NASA except once being star struck shaking hands with our host, and a couple of scientific types in many pre-911 JPL Open Houses.

      But responding to a long-time journalist and space advocate with 6th grade BS? It’s maddening! What frame of mind is able to craft that response? Where are the serious people?

      “Try”. Of course that is exactly what Ms. Lueders and her team will do. They will “try”.

      Bigger view: NASA, and NASA HSF, are at a huge disadvantage. Until very recently the entire NASA effort, everything they do, was a one man band. There was no point of comparison from any quarter on any NASA effort. We just knew that, well, gosh darn it, they had keen projects, and they were really really trying!

      Those days are over. The entire organization is now in a position so often summarized as “Lead, or follow, or get out of the way.”

      Ms. Lueders will do what she can while swimming in a huge vat of molasses that is NASA. And she will properly support her boss.

      But it’s a new day at NASA. The new guys didn’t succeed by putting one foot in front of another. Official Policy has changed: You are expected to jump forward with both feet. At the same time.

      “I wish I knew”.

      Imagine Mr. Musk hearing that answer.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        I find few engineers are really trained in public relations so I cut them a lot of slack. As for Elon Musk, with Dragon2 safe at ISS, no major Falcon 9 launches and Tesla on autopilot, he is busy working at Boca Chica to reach the Moon ASAP with his Starship. Expect to see a lot of activity, and some loud noises, down there in the near future.?

        BTW Raptor engine iteration number 30 is supposedly at McGregor and it’s by far the most powerful and most rugged Raptor so far.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Cut her some slack? OK. You are probably right.

          Swimming at NASA for 24 years is going to leave a person covered with a lot of molasses.

          • CB says:
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            You have to remember though that, up until a week ago, Kathy spent her career managing programs at NASA Centers.

            As the program manager, she had to be laser focused on what what happening in her program. She was in the ISS program at JSC and oversaw visiting vehicles (including ISS oversight of commercial cargo, in collaboration with C3PO, the office that managed the cargo SAAs, and after that the CRS awards in 2008) and moved to KSC to head up the Commercial Crew Program in 2013. So seven years at KSC shepherding CCP.

            And a week later, you expect her to be fully conversant in programs fully managed at MSFC and JSC? I’d be disappointed if she, as an experienced technical professional and NASA leader could reasonably say anything more, even if she’d been studying 24/7 since DM-2 less than 3 weeks ago. (I mean Doug Loverro only resigned a month ago today.)

            I don’t recall you bringing up molasses when Doug Loverro came on board. And I don’t recall you bringing up molasses when Ken Bowersox testified that he wouldn’t bet his daughter’s birthday present against a 2024 landing in front of Congress.

            So how about you definitely cut Kathy some slack to at least have time to settle in, handle a move from Florida to DC, and get up to speed.

            (And if I sound like I have a bone to pick, it’s probably because I do. There are a lot of people who supported a lot of innovative ideas and initiatives who got shunted aside by managers who didn’t want to get crosswise with new leadership. So we left. And now I’m watching from the outside and seeing Kathy getting grief after she’s supported both commercial cargo and commercial crew and can’t say what NASA’s plan is a week or two into her new job?

            Because to the best of my knowledge nobody actually knows what the plan is, NASA still hasn’t delivered the Artemis plan it owed Congress last fall to support its appropriations request.)

            /RANT OFF

          • kcowing says:
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            I asked a simple question. A really simple question. I did not get into the weeds.

          • CB says:
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            Oh no, sorry I wasn’t criticizing your question at all. I just got sort of torqued up by the idea that Kathy as the new AA of HEO should be able to say today, as a technical matter, whether the Agency can meet the 2024 date. I just don’t think she is in a position to answer that question.

            (Plus the molasses thing, given that NASA’s managed to run off some really innovative pre-retirement folks due to management attitudes. And Kathy has stuck with it – haha molasses, I’ll show myself out.)

            It occurred to me that she was the CCP program manager when Congress was cutting CCP requested funding by 50% for years while the Agency was getting beat up for sending money to the Russians. So one thing she does have experience in is being tagged to produce a 10/10 program on a 5/10 budget.

            And when you don’t get your budget, as the CCP program shows, you have to get there in time. Without a good story for Congress, NASA’s not going to get the budget and it won’t be Kathy’s fault if we don’t get to the Moon in 2024.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Maybe not but as a higher level NASA she would be well aware of talk about the water cooler. I can not imagine there is not “rumblings” inside NASA about the state of MAJOR programs. From James Webb,, to the ISS and everything in between.

            With the attention the white house has given the moon landing I just can not imagine she has not heard anything.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Ms. Lueders’ experience, and her sensibilities with respect to CCP, aren’t the point. And no, I wouldn’t “expect her to be fully conversant…”

            But then again, how much does a person need to know in order to answer the question?

            “I don’t recall you bringing up molasses when Doug Loverro came on board.”

            I don’t recall Keith asking him the question.

            Ms. Lauder continued: “If things come up along the way where technically it takes us longer … we’ll go figure it out, but right now the team is trying. It is tough.”

            Sure it’s tough. You are NASA.

            The more I read the quotes the more they read like the nonsense of Bizzaro World, inside some sort of bubble where some are ‘in’ on the ‘truths’ not seen from outside.

            There are too many built-in excuses in that response. Appealing to ‘the team’ as some sort of greater gestalt won’t work when it is so obvious that the greater gestalt is fully broken.

      • Granit says:
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        I am sorry, Keith, but asking ‘gotcha’ questions is not very useful. Perhaps asking about the SLS delays, HLS implementations, or international partnerships would have been a better use of your time.

      • kcowing says:
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        I was not only interested in what her answer was – as I assume everyone is – but also how she answered or tried not to answer it.

  2. ed2291 says:
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    It was an excellent question in light of the fact that humans have not been out of low earth orbit since 1973 and an entire generation has seen the can continually kicked down the road.

  3. Synthguy says:
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    I’m willing to bet it will be pushed back – certainly it will be if we have Biden as President, but even with a Trump second term, too many challenges are mounting up, both within the space program, and across the nation as a whole, to make a Christmas 2024 landing for Artemis 3 likely. If Artemis isn’t cancelled outright by a new administration (unlikely given the political implications of such a needless step), it will be pushed back to 2028. But it may well emerge as a political football – which will be sad.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      I’d say that a new Administration will want to know WTF is up with an orbiting lunar “not-space station” and how it doesn’t support landing, and how does Artemis fit into the Big Picture.

      This will cause delay. Great wailing will ensue. I’d welcome it.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        The Lunar Gateway actually dates to the last Administration so VP Biden’s space policy team should be up to speed on it. All this Administration basically did was get rid of the asteroid retrieval mission, downsized from visiting an asteroid, and replace it with a lunar landing.

        • kcowing says:
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          Yes Gateway is the Asteroid – rather the Boulder – Retrieval Mission – minus the boulder. Someone needs to keep the marching army fed.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        I thought gateway was always about Mars and NEVER about the moon. Phase II for Gateway had nothing to do with Luna.

        Remember at the time of gateway the moon was been there on to mars.
        https://uploads.disquscdn.c

  4. Steve Pemberton says:
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    I wonder if anyone at NASA ever thought that 2024 was possible, much less thinks so now. Of course no one is going to admit publicly any doubts about such a high profile deadline, but eventually I expect that there will be one or more parts of the program which will become far enough behind that 2024 will clearly become no longer possible, and the schedule will officially slip. I’m just waiting to see how long it takes for that point to arrive.

    But I think even when that does happen, other than possibly being somewhat upsetting to those who originally set the deadline, it won’t be a huge disappointment to most people if it winds up taking a little longer. In fact missing the deadline by only a year or two would seem like a model of efficiency compared to how things at NASA have been going the past few decades. Of course you need goals, but personally I am more interested in the pace than what I view as artificial deadlines, and currently things seem to be moving at a pretty good pace. Again compared to how things have been in the recent past.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      “I wonder if anyone at NASA ever thought that 2024 was possible”

      I wonder if anyone at NOAA thought the hurricane would hit Alabama.

  5. TLE_Unknown says:
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    …”we’ll go figure it out, but right now the team is trying. It is tough.” Jim Bridenstine added “asking a yes/no question is the wrong approach…”
    Says it all right there, we all know the answer is NO. Where is the “will” to get this done?

  6. Chad Allen says:
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    If Biden is President, I hope he keeps Bridenstine on and pushed forward with the moon thing. There is only 1 thing I’ve liked about the Trump admin, and that is their aggressive space policy.

  7. robert_law says:
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    They have got to try , I have always thought 2024 is pushing it but at least NASA has a date to try and meet . never give up keep going .

  8. Jeff2Space says:
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    Moon landing by 2024? No. Between NASA’s late start on this, COVID-19, and uncertainties concerning funding in Congress, it’s just not going to happen, IMHO.

    But, managers are going to try to keep the message positive to keep morale high even when the news is decidedly negative. I get that. But there is a fine line between keeping the message positive and simply telling the workforce that everything is fine when clearly it’s not. Unfortunately the only “colorful metaphor” I have for this situation is not suitable for posting on this site.

  9. Michael Spencer says:
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    Keith wants to know “will NASA be able to land people on the Moon by December 31, 2024?”

    Ms. Lueders says she doesn’t have a crystal ball. But I do! And here’s the answer:

    “No”

    (Ok, ok, I’ll show myself out…)

    • kcowing says:
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      Seriously – she is in charge of the whole Moon thing. I think it is important to know if it is even possible. So I asked. And she answered – sort of.

  10. rb1957 says:
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    similar to others, I have no axe to grind, but I find that answer somewhere between naïve and possibly the truth (and no one wants the truth !). And as we all know … do or do not, there is no “try”,

    possibly she didn’t want to sound defensive, but surely a reasonable answer would have been … “Keith, thank you (so much) for your question. I honestly don’t know. I have just landed in this job, so I don’t know the situation on the ground in detail; I don’t know what we’re capable of. Certainly, 2024 is the direction the agency has been given and certainly that is the goal of the agency. I will spend the next couple of weeks understanding the situation and our capability and I will get back to you on that, Keith.”

  11. JJMach says:
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    I know Elon Musk gets a lot of flack for setting and then missing overly ambitious milestone dates. What often gets lost in the buzz, is that, usually, his companies do end up meeting the milestone, late, but at a date far sooner than when anyone else reasonably expected them to accomplish it.

    I’ll be honest, in that when I first heard the announcement that we would be on the moon in 2024, I gave it very little chance of success even then, but I appreciated that they were taking a page out of Elon’s book and, by setting an ambitious deadline, they were trying to refocus the effort and get things moving faster and in the right direction. In physics, politics, and life in general, “an object at rest shall stay at rest unless acted up on by an outside force.” So, 2024 is unlikely, but I’m pretty confident it won’t be as late as 2028.

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      My biggest concern with the 2024 goal from the beginning was that it seemed too aggressive. If the rhetoric was to be believed that they fully intended to meet that deadline, then that would result in a rushing type of mindset that would have long term consequences and also make it actually take longer in the end (think SLS).

      However I later concluded that it was in fact just rhetoric and that more likely they have always been aware that something like 2026 is more realistic, even though that still requires keeping things moving along. Meanwhile keeping up the 2024 mantra publicly until it becomes more acceptable to mention at least the possibility of a slip. I think Keith’s question seemed to initiate a read between the lines hint of the possibility of a slip, which as time goes by will probably become more directly acknowledged as a possibility, leading towards eventually announcing that they will likely not land until sometime after 2024.

  12. Brian_M2525 says:
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    Moon landing by 2024? Maybe. I think the US can do it. Maybe NASA will have a hand in it. But I think NASAs job will be to get some funds to Space X to make their lunar fly around and subsequent landing succeed. Perhaps in exchange Musk will carry a couple NASA astronauts? Maybe Musk can make use of a piece of NASAs hardware, like an Orion capsule for crew return? I do not think it will be NASA returning to the moon so much as US industry. I think Space X is far enough along and they have the hardware and expertise to make ít happen. Perhaps NASA can contribute?

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Sending a Dragon2 capsule around the Moon with a FH without a crew would be a great morale builder. It could give the flight controllers practice for the Artemis I mission. The U.S. Navy could also use it as a practice for recovering the Orion after a lunar mission. At a cost of around $200-300 million it would be a real bargain, far less than the SLS/Orion cost overruns.

      • Nick K says:
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        I think Musk could arrange this within a matter of months, and assuming his cheese wheel does not melt, could put humans on the next flight a few months later. He already has an operating planetary lander. It lands on Earth regularly. The Moon is easier.

    • ed2291 says:
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      The Space X Starship with in orbit refueling from another Starship could land and return from the moon. That is both the best and fastest route.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        And it could well be done without any money from NASA as there are ways to make the first trip pay for itself.

    • Nick K says:
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      There is no doubt about it, Space X is the leading and most experienced human space flight organization today. They are also the leading organization in rocketry. NASA has been demonstrating that it has really lost its edge in manned space for most of the last couple decades. Boeing and Lockheed have also demonstrated they cannot get their collective acts together.

      From a NASA perspective it is a different situation if one is directly managing the program, design, development, integration, and operation which is what went on in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle and early in ISS prior to turning over much of the manned base to the internationals to build, in the 1990s, versus the ‘Commercial Space’ mode of hiring a company to deliver services and capabilities. Its kind of like ‘design at arms length’. NASA is aware and OK with whats being developed but with little or no hands on responsibility. If NASA insists it wants something ‘special’, then it has to be willing to pay for it; otherwise the burden is on the commercial provider to figure out the best and most cost effective way to do the job.

      It has now been so long that NASA was integrally involved in the design and development of a manned spacecraft I do not think they even remember how it was done. Loverro came out of a different world and perhaps had different knowledge, though much of USAF/DOD purchase of modern jets is probably more similar to commercial space procurement than NASA’s earlier ways of doing business. Remember, for Mercury, and the early Saturns, NASA built [and flew] the prototypes before writing contracts and turning it over to industry. Even for station, prior to about 1993, NASA did much of the early design and wrote the systems architectural requirements before selecting contractors. For a man and woman on the moon NASA need only write a performance requirement.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        “There is no doubt about it, Space X is the leading and most experienced human space flight organization today”

        The Russians might disagree.

        • Nick K says:
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          The Russians might have been pre-eminent in some sense a couple decades ago or maybe in the 50s-early 60s but they have not built or flown anything new in decades; maybe a half century. They keep talking about building new things but that is all it is-just talk. No evidence they have any new rockets, or new manned spacecraft nearing completion. They have not even been able to get their latest ISS module into orbit and its several years overdue and was based on the same infrastructure as FGB. Most of the experienced workers are gone. They were Soviet/Russian Apollo era.

  13. Thomas Irvine says:
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    Perhaps the correct answer from Ms. Lueders was, “Yes, that’s what I voluntarily took this job to accomplish. But we haven’t had time to fully assess the impacts of the events that you’re asking about.”

  14. mfwright says:
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    I wonder about the attitudes on who sets a date. A government agency sets a date but misses it, then it is considered a total failure. A company sets a date on product release but misses it, gets blame for causing loss of business use or cost overruns, etc.

    I wonder if Ms. Lueders has to deal with a lot of baggage i.e. contracts of different companies each containing proprietary information, demands by elected officials, dealing with aging infrastructure and workforce but faced demands to reduce costs.

    Seems to me how things are really done is very mysterious. At least Keith and Marc use their connections, like Miles O’brien, to give us some insight.

    • Richard Brezinski says:
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      I don’t think Ms. Leuders has a lot of baggage. Proprietary or classified design information, infrastructure, workforce issues and demands of elected officials are mainly a concern if you are running a government contract in which serious hardware is being developed for the government. In the commercial programs, Dragon, Falcon, Cygnus, Dreamchaser, CST100, NASA does not own any of these systems and has little to do with the hardware design, development or even operation. I think all of these systems, except for the Atlas 5 used for CST, are US-made and so the companies need to keep their controlled information proprietary for competitive reasons, if they want. The Atlas motors are purchased from a ‘competitor’, the Russians. In the past Ms. Leuders had some role in the international logisitcs carriers provided by ESA, JAXA and RSA. Those systems are not owned or developed by NASA and its up to the different countries providing the systems to protect any proprietary or classified information. Ms. Leuders represents the new NASA in which NASA is buying services from service providers. She may have more experience doing that than others in NASA today. The BIG question in my mind is what is NASA’s role if they buy all of their services from commercial providers? NASA has a lot of engineers, operators and public affairs who’s jobs are being supplanted by commercial industry.

  15. ed2291 says:
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    “Should we have a landing day pool?” How about a landing year pool? I say 2025 with Space X.

  16. Matthew Black says:
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    Barring some major problems: the SLS and Orion certainly should be ready by mid-to-late 2024. But the Lander? I don’t see how, unless Musk really has stellar successes with the Super Heavy and Starship combo’s testing… Perhaps if they down-select soon to the Blue Origin Team or the Dynetics, they can throw money at that solution and get it done(?) Trouble is – without ‘Gateway’ Orion lacks the delta-v to both enter *and* leave low lunar orbit.

    Perhaps with whatever Lander is chosen, they MUST give it enough delta-v to fly down to the Moon and back from high Lunar orbit, where the Orion met it first. I imagine in such a scenario; the Lander would not yet be re-usable.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Postulating an operational Starship in 2024 is simply laughable sci-fi. No flightworthy shell has been complete; nor is the design complete. And this ignores what could be the most difficult part- avionics, flight control, life support, in-flight (non-propulsive) energy sources, on-orbit refueling…it’s a long list.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Beware the exponential curve of breakthrough technology. Remember, Elon Musk is not merely developing a revolutionary new rocket, but an even more revolutionary method of mass production for it. Also no one outside of SpaceX knows how much work has been done on those systems, but the last incident hints they already building the refueling technology into it.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Points taken, Dr. M. But since when has the lack of actual data stopped anyone around here from commenting and criticizing? 🙂

          When composing that post I was mindful of how little we know; and mindful as well of Mr. Musk’s penchant for surprises.

          Still, the list of required technologies is incredibly long – so long that the prediction seems safe. And, I hope, incorrect.