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Artemis

Large Artemis Delays Anticipated. Again.

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 1, 2022
Filed under , , , ,


The Honorable Paul K. Martin, NASA Inspector General,
“Specifically, NASA’s initial three Artemis missions face varying degrees of technical difficulties that will push launch schedules from months to years past their current goals. With all necessary elements for the Artemis I mission now being integrated and tested at Kennedy Space Center, we estimate that NASA is progressing toward the first launch of the integrated SLS/Orion space flight system by summer 2022. With Artemis II, NASA is facing additional schedule delays–until at least mid-2024–due to the second mission’s reuse of Orion components from Artemis I. Finally, given the time needed to develop and fully test the HLS and NASA’s next-generation spacesuits needed for lunar exploration, the date for a crewed lunar landing likely will slip to 2026 at the earliest.
Moreover, our detailed examination of Artemis program contracts found its costs unsustainable. Given our estimate of a $4.1 billion per-launch cost of the SLS/Orion system for at least the first four Artemis missions, NASA must accelerate its efforts to identify ways to make its Artemis-related programs more affordable. Otherwise, relying on such an expensive single-use, heavy-lift rocket system will, in our judgment, inhibit if not derail NASA’s ability to sustain its long-term human exploration goals of the Moon and Mars. In addition, the Agency has seen significant cost growth in the Mobile Launchers, spacesuits, and to a lesser degree the Gateway. However, since NASA is following its commercial crew model in the HLS procurement, cost increases may be controlled in part due to the fixed-price, milestone-based contracts where SpaceX, the contractor, shares the costs of development.”

Chairwoman Johnson
Chairman Beyer
Ranking Member Brian Babin
Ranking Member Frank Lucas
Mr. James Free, Associate Administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, NASA
Mr. William Russell, Director, Contracting and National Security Acquisitions,GAO
Dr. Patricia Sanders, Chair, Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel
Mr. Daniel Dumbacher, Executive Director, AIAA

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

31 responses to “Large Artemis Delays Anticipated. Again.”

  1. Winner says:
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    What a shocker.
    I wish Congress would get out of the way of NASA.

  2. Nick K says:
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    June or later now? If they say June now, in 4 months will it be 4 months later, maybe October? NASA has lost all credibility. Thank God for Mr. Musk. Someetomes he is late too, but not by decades.

    NASA has some sharp people. Musk has proven that sharp people can work effectively. You really have to wonder why NASA cannot.

    • tutiger87 says:
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      Because Congress wont let them. The old gods of aerospace must stay appeased.

      • Brian_M2525 says:
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        The number of civil servants is relatively small. Most workers, especially on Shuttle, were contractors. The problem with the NASA people is that 50 years ago and 25 years ago many of the civil servants still knew how to design and build spaceships and rockets. But in the 1990s you had several internal battles in which a lot of people took over within NASA who had zero experience. They figured since they did not know what they were doing, other civil servants need not know what they were doing, and so they made everyone into contract managers or monitors with the contractors running the show. The people with real experience left-many were getting old. The contractors did what contractors do best-took NASA for a ride and sucked off the teat of the government to make all the money and delay the schedules as best they could and with NASA people not knowing, overseeing them. Now they actually need to figure out what NASA’s job would actually be if the new companies, like Space X, are running the show.

    • rktsci says:
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      In part, NASA is very bloated for the missions they have. They didn’t adjust their Civil Service workforce size after Shuttle and ISS were done. They larded those people onto oversight of SLS and Orion. In the latter case, it caused a number of delays in getting early design documents finalized as the new people raised questions about design decisions that had been finalized for many, many months, which rippled through the schedule.

      • tutiger87 says:
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        They didn’t adjust their workforce size?

        Um…I was one of those that got ‘adjusted’ post-Shuttle.

    • Hmmm says:
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      I can think of 535 reasons why NASA can’t focus and solve their issues.

    • Tom Billings says:
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      No one really has to wonder. It is Congress that wants as much money spent in their own districts for any given goal as possible. That means there *will* be delays, because that means more voters employed, through more election cycles, and they will be voters dependent on their Congress members for their jobs.

  3. Egad says:
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    With Artemis II, NASA is facing additional schedule delays–until at
    least mid-2024–due to the second mission’s reuse of Orion components
    from Artemis I.

    The current Orion heat shield is a totally new design that was adopted after the first one failed to perform adequately in the EFT-1 test flight in 2014. It may or may not work, and if it doesn’t that will mean more years of redesign and delay.

    • gunsandrockets says:
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      The EFT-1 heat shield successfully performed its mission and experienced ~80% of the re-entry velocity (50% heating rate) for a lunar return for an Exploration Mission. The second flight test vehicle is the EM-1 mission which will have additional flight systems installed to fly to the moon and return. Heat shield design and producibility improvements have been incorporated in the EM-1 vehicle to meet deep space mission and programmatic requirements. The design continues to use the Avcoat material, but in a “block” configuration to enable improvements in the application processes as well as additional improvements in the carrier structure design and manufacturing operations. Incorporating flight test results and producibility improvements from EFT-1 for the heat shield system design and processes have improved the thermal protection capability, improved the producibility, and cost for the EM-1 flight test.

      • Egad says:
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        “The design continues to use the Avcoat material, but in a ‘block’ configuration to enable improvements in the application processes as well as additional improvements in the carrier structure design and manufacturing operations.”

        Exactly.

    • JJMach says:
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      Not exactly. The heat shield design change was committed to before EFT-1 left the ground. (Which led to a bit of grumbling on my part at the time, but there were other things to be tested on the flight beyond the heat shield.)

      The EFT-1 shield was very similar to the original Apollo design, which had the benefit of working the last time it was tried, but the problem of being extremely labor intensive and requiring lots of testing and re-work. This was less of an issue back in the Apollo days of inexpensive labor and an effectively unlimited budget. The construction of the new design is more similar to the heat shields that have flown to Mars recently, so it is not like the concept is completely unproven. However, I agree that we do need the data to show that it performs well during EM-1 before I would risk an astronaut’s life on it doing its job.

  4. Bad Horse says:
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    Guys, this is all a jobs program. Made with MFSC bad management, Boeing corruption and Jacobs incompetence. Mix it together, add a cup of “whatever” , a dash of “who cares” and you get 4 billion a launch. You could have flown 7-9 space shuttle mission for the cost of one SLS flight or 3 SpaceX starships. SpaceX Starship can lift so much more than SLS, With SLS no one is going to the moon, much less Mars. Its time to end SLS after the 1st flight (unless the delay is greater than 6 months as some are saying this morning – if so end it now).

  5. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    $4B per SLS/Orion mission, damn that is more than SpaceX is getting to develop the lunar lander. imagine what sort of lunar base we could have with Starship’s 100mT to the Moon and $4B a year for surface assets if we weren’t hemorrhaging money to SLS/Orion.

    • Nick K says:
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      NASA and their big money contractors have failed. Malfeasance? Or simply incompetence? Yesterday I saw a Lockheed presentation on future planetary exploration. They showed a concept for the interplanetary vehicle, which was several modules and a free flyer; they forgot to include Orion. I thought, ‘thats funny, they do not eben believe in the future of their own spacecraft’!

  6. rb1957 says:
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    This just a game … like Lucy and Charley Brown (with the football).

  7. Bad Horse says:
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    What weighs 1.6 million pounds and will never leave the ground? SLS

  8. Brian_M2525 says:
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    I suggest we let them fly this first one (if it ever gets off the ground) and lets see how the Musk Star Ship does this year. If Star Ship flies, then Orion and SLS have been overcome-by-passed by all of its contenders. We’ll have two other capsules, a winged flyer, launchers and a vehicle that can take large crews to the Moon or planets. Given how far Orion, SLS and Gateway have not come and the expense in developing, flying and maintaining them, just shut them down. There are plenty of alternatives that are further along.

  9. Steven White says:
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    Since Starship is a critical part of the Artemis program, what is Administrator Nelson doing to help SpaceX obtain a license to resume their testing program at Boca Chica?

    • PsiSquared says:
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      What can he do? The FAA has to follow their process.

      • Steven White says:
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        He could request a meeting with President Biden in which he could explain the importance of Starship to the Artemis program. Simply put, without Starship there will be no woman or person of color on the Moon. Next, he could ask that Biden issue an executive order to permit a Starship/Superheavy launch for testing purposes.

        • PsiSquared says:
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          You assume he can do that. How wise is it, if possible, to issue an executive order to help one company?

          As for “without Starship there will be no woman or person of color on the Moon”, uhm, SpaceX has already indicated their going to also do launches from KSC. Moreover, you’d think that SpaceX would have thought to get approval before building a launch tower and tank farm. They could have spent that time doing the work at KSC. Your mythical threat of no woman or person of color on the Moon is false because, it will happen. It may be delayed a bit, but it will happen.

          There’s no need for everyone to kowtow to Musk’s and SpaceX’s every need and desire. The FAA serves more people than just SpaceX and Musk. Doing the proper analysis to determine whether SpaceX can launch at Boca Chica is actually important, and it’s important to more parties than SpaceX and the space community and for more reasons than just getting humans on the Moon or to Mars.

          • fcrary says:
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            I don’t think the President can interfere with the FAA’s process, but he could speed it up. As I understand it, they are done with the analysis. The current delay is due to the written comments they received from the public. They’re required to respond to every one of them, and they got far more than they expected or normally get for similar environmental assessments. The President could contact the FAA, ask what’s taking so long, and what additional resources they’d need to speed things up.

          • PsiSquared says:
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            That’s possible, but is everyone qualified to respond to those written comments?

          • fcrary says:
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            At this point, I don’t think throwing more people at the problem will help. I’m sure the new people could learn to do the job, but that takes time away from the people who are currently doing the work. Even if they brought in people who were already doing similar work (there might be some working with Rocket Lab on a similar assessment for their Neutron and launches out of Wallops), it might not help. At this point, most of the work is probably sorting the public comments and attaching the right stock response. But to do that, someone needs to know what’s already been done and which stock responses go with which comments. Maybe it would help if they got some extra people for the clerical work of processing the comments and responses.

            That’s why I wrote “resources”. I’d originally written “people”, but then I realized that probably wouldn’t speed things up. There could be some other resources which would speed things up, and there’s nothing wrong with the President asking the FAA what those resources might be.

            I doubt that would happen; Mr. Biden and Mr. Musk don’t seem to be on the best of terms and Mr. Biden seems to think of spaceflight in a old fashioned, Apollo-was-great-let’s-do-it-again way. I don’t think he’d go out of his way to help SpaceX with the environmental assessment.

          • PsiSquared says:
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            But yet Biden helped push the Commercial Crew program into existence. While Biden and Musk may not be fond of each other, I don’t know that that translates to Biden being against SpaceX. I think his actual position on SpaceX and commercial companies doing more of what NASA used to do isn’t crystal clear.

  10. rb1957 says:
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    “surely” the Artemis booster can be changed to a SpaceX Booster … some fairing to blend the Boeing Starliner capsule with the booster. Of course not That simple, but also not That difficult if the parties are willing. And that is a very big “if”. I’d’ve thought that NASA would want to fly the CST-100, if only to say they have. I can see that SpaceX would say, “no, use our capsule”, but the NASA would offer enough money.