US and Japan in talks to boost space ties, send Japanese astronauts to moon in 2020s, The Mainichi
“NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine proposed to the Japanese government during a visit in September 2019 that it join the U.S. in a plan to put Japanese astronauts on the surface of the moon in the latter half of the 2020s, multiple sources familiar with the matter said. Bridenstine then held an unofficial meeting on Sept. 24, 2019, in Tokyo with figures including Yoshiyuki Kasai, head of the government’s Space Policy Committee and honorary chairman at the Central Japan Railway Co., Takafumi Matsui, deputy head of the same committee as well as the director at the Chiba Institute of Technology’s Planetary Exploration Research Center and a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, and Takehiko Matsuo, head of the National Space Policy Secretariat among others. At the meeting, Bridenstine is reported to have petitioned the attendees to carry out a forward-thinking assessment with a vision of having Japanese astronauts stand alongside American ones on the moon.”
Keith’s 2 Jan note: I have asked NASA PAO if this is accurate. Stay tuned.
Keith’s 3 Jan update: NASA PAO sent the follow in response to my inquiry: “NASA’s Artemis program relies heavily on the support of our commercial and international partners and several of our international partners have expressed great interest in potential collaboration. We’re aggressively pursuing ways that other nations can contribute going forward. As he has done with other countries, Administrator Bridenstine discussed potential opportunities with counterparts in Japan during his visit there in September, but specific contributions and timelines have yet to be worked out. Various nations, including Canada, Japan, Australia and the member nations of the European Space Agency, have all expressed their strong support for Artemis Program and plan to join us for this new chapter in lunar exploration.”
That would be good, as would inviting Canadian, ESA, Russian and other national astronauts along. In 1969 Apollo went to the Moon “in peace for all mankind”, so it would be the logical next step to bring the world along this time.
I would not mind, but only under some conditions. I think it should be a partnership not a charity or public relations thing. So let’s have the other nations make a meaningful contribution to the project. And I have mixed feelings about some nations. You didn’t mention China, and there are other nations with human rights records I’m not comfortable with. And I might object to a partnership with a country who’s space program is run by a man who once said, “tanks don’t need passports.”
Agreed. Russia is a borderline case, but we are partners with them now…
Credit where it’s due, Russia’s experience did help us get ISS up and running (actually beginning with Shuttle-Mir). And of course with getting our astronauts to ISS during the current gap. But I don’t really see what they can contribute to a lunar program that would be worth the hassle of dealing with them. Nothing against the people in the program itself just the government.
True. But in retrospect NASA would have probably been better off without ISS which only resulted in NASA HSF program getting stuck for decades in LEO.
Disagree, and strongly.
There are things that NASA does make little policy sense to me. But I am grateful that there is an official project of any type.
HSF at NASA would not have ended without the ISS, it would just have taken a different direction. The Porksters would have ensured the NASA budget remained around same level with or without the ISS.
Perhaps without the ISS eating up the HSF budget the way it did there would have been enough funding for a second generation shuttle, cheaper and more reliable. Or it would have been spent on a reusable deep space vehicle supported by the Shuttle.
But the 20 years wasted on the ISS killed any hope of doing anything beyond LEO while ISS was being built. And the $3-4 billion it takes to operate it requires NASA to receive a lot of extra money to go beyond LEO. At the moment there is support for it, but that could change overnight with an election, as was shown when President Obama killed constellation and NASA will remain stuck in LEO.
The lack of any space policy from the Democratic field, let alone support for Artemis, along with their focus on climate change, makes it unlikely that Artemis will continue beyond the next election if Democrats win. Indeed, EM1 might well be the only time the SLS flies before becoming a rocket without a mission. The only hope for it might be if it’s so entangled in international treaties agreements, as the ISS is, that it becomes too difficult to kill, which returns us to the topic of this post.
The need to fulfill commitment to International partnerships could keep the SLS running long, long after it’ll need to be retired. For better or worse.
It’s an interesting collection of what-ifs. What if we didn’t do Apollo. Or Shuttle. Or ISS. There are arguments for each that if we hadn’t done them we would have advanced more rapidly. But of course that is conjecture based on the assumption that something better would have replaced them, which is an unknown. I’m not saying there weren’t better ideas out there, but no guarantee that those projects would have actually occurred if they didn’t have the political backing that these projects did at least in their initial development.
It is all what-ifs, but I think there is one thing we can say about what if we hadn’t done the Apollo program. Whatever we did do instead (and it might not have been much) wouldn’t have been a crash program to meet an arbitrary deadline.
Another possibility is the reverse, what if Apollo had been extended and accomplished many more Moon landings, beyond even Apollo 20. And meanwhile kept Skylab running for several years. Besides a large amount of additional scientific knowledge and spaceflight experience gained, by then “Shuttle fever” may have passed and the successor to Apollo might have been something completely different.
Ya. That and “trampolines”.
Bridenstine seems to be worry about NASA being irrelevant for human space flight. He should be.
Since does anyone think the Artemis & SLS programs will get someone on the Moon by 2030? Never mind the 2024 Artemis program goal.
There are commercial options to go to the Moon before 2030. It will be tempting for JAXA to just booked a ride to the surface of the Moon following the #dearMoon flyby exclusion. The perfect one-upsmanship with their mainland neighbors.
Hopefully NASA will take advantage of the Starship to build a base on the Moon. The experience building modules for the ISS could be easily transferred to building modules for a Moon base. The Starship’s larger cargo bay and payload should make it easy to transport them to the lunar surface along with the equipment needed to build and support a base.
NASA could even keep the program name, calling it Moonbase Artemis.
Interesting thinking about ISS type of modules on the Moon, makes you realize that the volume will be used differently. In microgravity you can work in the entire space including the ceiling with no real difference. But on the Moon if you want to get into an equipment rack on the ceiling you will have to get out the stepladder. What will probably happen instead is they will use the ceiling area just for storage, everything else will be at arms reach when standing on the floor of the module. Although they already tend to orient most things “vertically” as it seems the human brain likes to have a sense of up and down, so maybe it won’t change things that much from how they already have it laid out.
Also moving large pieces of equipment through the modules won’t be as easy, actually have to carry them even though of course they will be much lighter. But even though a 300 lb equipment rack weighs only 50 lb you still don’t want to drop it on your foot. On ISS you do have the momentum issue with heavy objects but that can be mitigated by moving slowly. But nothing helps if you drop something.
Hmm. The Starship is a Lunar habitat module as soon as it lands on the Moon.
NASA gets to name their base as they wish. But it wouldn’t look good being the second or third Moonbase after someone else pay for Starship rides to the Moon before the Congressional critters woke up.
The folks from Hawthorne will not turn down paying customers if NASA (more precisely the Congress) slow walks a Moonbase program.
It’s plausible for Artemis to get to the moon by 2030. 2024 is just reckless fantasy who nobody really believes except Pence and his yes-men underlings at NASA.
We could work with Russia and China and countries with which we have long term competition – but it needs to be managed. We could give them an Interface Control Document and fly experiments (etc) that comply with that. But countries like Russia (in my direct experience) are here to take advantage of programs.
The current goals of the space program seem to be more about firsts and breaking records rather than defining a long-term and sustainable effort of doing anything with humans off Earth. Such behaviors will end in short lived, highly expensive programs and years of limited advancement. This is where we are now and what no one seems to want to learn from from the past 50 years.
I was privileged to be the training manager of the first Japanese astronauts, Mororu Mohri, Chiaki Mukai, and Takao Doi. All flew on the shuttle and all performed magnificently. I also worked closely with their managers, engineers, and scientists over a number of years. The Japanese will make great partners on the moon as they have a pragmatic approach to spaceflight, seeing it as an important part of not only their national prestige but also their economy. They will be a good influence.
Sadly, it is very clear that the current Artemis program is USA-centered, the vice president has made it clear that it is a competition even with our allies. Hopefully this could change.
I worked Spacelab a long time and worked very closely with international crew members (for instance Hans Schlegel) and our European and Japanese and Canadian crew members brought tremendous advantages to our crews. We will be very well advised to change our nationalist statements about future crews to be inclusive of international crew members. This will mean that some seats go to international people and not to US citizens but it will bring ideas and resources to the total program.
The one exception is Russia – they are NOT here to be a partner but to take advantage of any joint program or mission.
Although the Vice President directed NASA, an arm of the U.S. government, to pursue what has morphed into Artemis, I’ve never heard him say he doesn’t want International partners in space. With that said, however, I am most excited by pragmatic American companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin heading outward. Their success will pull along the entire world.
The examples of where pence has injected nationalism into speeches about space are numerous – probably the best single example was on Mar 26, 2019 in his speech at MSFC. He repeatedly said that we were going to return Americans to the Moon, he said that we were going to renew American leadership. He falsely claimed that we were in a space race with China. He said that we would return American astronauts to the Moon.
I have had the good fortune of attending meetings at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters, and getting training on the RMS manipulator there, and Canadians are also residents of North America – they are Americans. But pence was not talking about Canadians on the Moon even though he said that they would cooperate on the Lunar Gateway.
The Japanese for example brought a lot of ideas and resources to the Spacelab program – and they could bring those same ideas to Artemis.
Will the administration’s Artemis program be open to international crew members? So far it sounds like it is not. Now pence has NOT said that we would not fly international crew members but he has often emphasized the nationalist foundations of his program.
In my opinion that is a big mistake. We have plenty of highly qualified crew members and they will not be enthusiastic about “giving up” seats to international crew members but a combined program will give us all a much better program.
Just because the first of the NASA missions would only have American Astronauts doesn’t imply they all will. Just as with Commercial Crew, once the first flight or two is done it will take on a more international flavor.
My opinion is that you are interpreting these speeches to leave room for a more cooperative program. The words chosen are very clear – this is an American program for the benefit of America. The fact that we wish that it was not being presented this way does not change that. You say that after a few flights the program will take on a more international flavor – from Tokyo or London or Berlin how does that sound? Why would they invest resources and time into a program in hopes that it will take on an “international flavor” whatever that means?
ISS and Spacelab (and all of Shuttle) was an international program from the start – our Canadian partners provided the Shuttle RMS at the beginning of the program.
I do HOPE that this will be an international program but the administration’s words are very clear.
Actually it already is an international program, remember ESA is building the Service Module for Orion. Yes, they are being paid, but I expect they are also expecting some of their astronauts to ride in Orion. And don’t forget that in October 2019 Administrator Bridenstine affirmed in a speech that Australia, Canada and Japan will be partners in Artemis, just as NASA’s PAO noted in their response to Keith. The key is looking where the contracts and MOUs are going, not speeches made for domestic political audiences.
Now that they mention it, does anyone know the current status of Canada’s involvement? They were going to provide a robotic arm, but that’s apparently on hold for after the 2024 landing. Maxar is building the power and propulsion module, but they’ve just announced they’re selling off the Canadian part of their company (MDA). It seems like Canada is interested in being a partner, NASA is interested in having them as a partner, but they don’t seem to have a place in the current architecture.
This illustrates how few other nation could benefit from the very expensive program that Artemis would be. What matters is the per-seat cost of sending an astronaut to the lunar surface. For Artemis, it is so expensive that very few nations could afford it.
By contrast, if we were to pursue the development of an end-to-end, commercial transport system to the Moon then the per-seat cost could be low enough that about two-thirds of the countries could afford to send at least one of their astronauts to the lunar surface.
This approach and the calculations behind it is described at:
– DevelopSpace.info/internati…