Congress Still Wants An Artemis Plan From NASA
House space subcommittee chair still seeking NASA plan for 2024 lunar landing, Space News
“The chair of the House space subcommittee says NASA has still not convinced her that the agency has a viable plan to return humans to the moon by 2024. Speaking at a Wilson Center event Oct. 6 about the geopolitics of space, Rep. Kendra Horn (D-Okla.) said she was waiting to see a plan from NASA that explained how the agency’s Artemis program could meet its goal of a human return to the lunar surface in four years. “We still haven’t seen a plan that shows us we can get to the moon on the 2024 schedule,” she said, including the ability of NASA to manage “multiple, simultaneous, large” development programs and the various demonstrations leading up to that crewed landing.”
Keith’s note: Actually NASA did issue a thing with the word “plan” in it except it skips the whole concept of answering important questions as to how it will actually happen.
– Important Artemis Questions Will Be Answered Today (Update), earlier post
– House Appropriators Just Made Doing Artemis Landing More Difficult, earlier post
– NASA Hits The Pause Button Again On The Back-To-The-Moon Thing (Update), earlier post
– NASA Releases Its Artemis “Plan” – 5 Months Late, earlier post
– NASA Really Really Needs An Artemis Plan – Soon, earlier post
– Where Is NASA’s Plan For Sustainable Moon/Mars Exploration? (Update), earlier post
Plan: We’ll launch in four years, oh BTW – we need another $5billion.
Repeat annually for ten years.
True, “it skips the whole concept of answering important questions as to how it will actually happen”, but doesn’t it make you feel good, reading all that optimism ?
There’s a comment (from a ’70s Britcom) that’s appropriate to ppt …
“Never mind the quality, feel the width”.
The plan is: retain access to the VIP suites at things like the Paris Air Show, keep taking notes for the autobiography, etc. There is no plan since NASA knows that they cannot make it and they just want to delay being fired as long as possible.
On Nov 4, the urgency to get to the Moon by 2024 has gone away no matter who is elected. If the White House changes hands Bridenstine is gone. Then the civil servants just try to hold on to some job while the new Administrator tries to figure out what the new Administration wants – that could take a year.
Like you, I wonder about the future of the Administrator. I’d be the last one to assert he’s the absolute best for the job; but I’d be first to argue he’s been steady, sober, competent. Leaving him in place would not be horrible.
I would also argue that NASA has had an Administrator in this
Administration only half way through the term; more disruption can’t be good. On the other hand, the senate vote was 50-49.
If Biden wins and says “Lets go to the moon”.
How long do you predict it will take the republicans to start chanting “Deficits” and we can not afford to go to Luna.
Vlad: The case can be made that the ‘space community’ is doing exactly as the entire Republican Party has done: mainstream Republicans have sold their souls because the President has given them some spectacular
few– edited as I don’t know how that word was included -policy wins; they hold their noses.Similarly the space community, getting support for long-cherished programs. It’s impossible to predict what will happen when the country regains a steadier hand on the tiller.
Policy wins? For who?
For those with conservative thinking.
I imagine that NASA will be a background issue for Biden similar to Obama. If the Obama years are any indication, it’ll be the Republicans chanting “Lets go to the moon” and Biden looking for ways to save money on the space program.
I don’t think it really matters who is President – given the massive debt we’ve racked up this year it has to be paid for somehow.
U.S.A. Inc. could simply declare bankruptcy and rewrite the international debt and write off the debt owed to US citizens..
“write off the debt owed to US citizens”
77% of Federal debt is owned by the public.
exactly .. settle on pennies on the dollar .. and the national debt is cleaned up over night
Settle for pennies on the dollar, with the taxpayers holding the debt? The taxpayers would revolt if we told them that their $100 savings bonds are now worth $1 but if you want to get up in front of a crowd and suggest that – let me know when and where because I love a good show.
Actually that is already the case due to inflation as a 2020 dollar would just be worth 7 cents in 1945 when average folks were buying War Bonds by the bushel. So in those terms the current National Debt of around $21 Trillion is worth just $1.45 Trillion in 1945 dollars. About 70% ($14.7 trillion) of the National Debt is held by Americans while Japan and China own about a trillion each of the 30% ($6.3 trillion) owned by foreigners, about $69 billion in 1945 dollars.
BTW as a reference point Total Wealth in the USA is around $105.8 trillion in 2020 dollars, about 30% of global wealth with American Billionaires having a total worth of around $3.8 trillion.
Here we go again. Folks, federal debt isn’t analogous to personal credit card debt. A few points:
– Debt interest is below the rate of growth
– interest rates are stunningly low (the argument that the US should bond trillions in infrastructure improvements depends on this()
– a modest rise in inflation, as recommended by the Fed, can be a big part of debt reduction
– similarly, recent tax cuts have added to debt with no economic gain
– most US debt is owned by US taxpayers
– importantly, many don’t realize that debt is not financed by ‘printing more money’
It’s complicated, but it is in no way leading to catastrophe.
First NASA needs a long term strategy. Maybe that is establishing a permanent presence on the Moon? What is its purpose? Mining accessible in situ materials for habitats and to support continued presence? Then exploration might make sense to support these functions. You might even be able to figure out the critical steps towards making it happen.
Right now NASA is developing a rudimentary and far too expensive and unaffordable transportation system. They are 2 decades behind on that job which means their credibility is lacking. Can NASA do what they set out to do any longer?
They have a small underpowered Apollo-like capsule for carrying people to and from Earth. They have an idea for a small space station in the wrong Moon orbit which serves no useful purpose except as a waystation for their underpowered Orion. And they have a lander that, while it will carry little, is enormous in order to make up for the lack of performance on the Orion. Because it has to be so large and complex, in order to descend from such a high orbit and high velocity, and then take off to get to a similar high altitude and velocity, it is dangerous. NASA set out on an architecture that does not mesh more than a decade ago and now they are trying to make it work, but with inadequate funding their hands are tied behind their back.
NASA might do well to put their faith in someone like Musk who seems to be on a roll, which means his people are now experienced and thinking and moving positively, and who work cheap; things NASA is not doing. If Musk can meet some near term milestones then it might be time to augment his development activity in order to get a moonship flying in the near term.
If Trump wins the election then maybe NASA could make these changes and make this ‘new plan’ work. If Trump does not win, then the program could go away in its entirety. In that case maybe Musk can make travel to the Moon a reality. If there is a NASA they could buy tickets.
NASA threw away much of its engineering expertise in human space flight over the last couple decades. NASA made some very deliberate but very wrong decisions on the ‘architecture’ and the placement of underperforming systems that are in the critical path in the hands of the internationals.
It’s hard to come up with a plan when your tied to a launch system that’s perpetually behind schedule and over budget.
And even if the system that has been in development works, it still does not allow anyone to land on the Moon. There are some big, significant and expensive pieces missing for that plan.
Finally, someone says out loud what anyone paying the slightest attention already knows. It’s just like the disrobed Emperor; and the entire Administration is terrified. Now that the election is near, finally Director Wray stood up (on a different issue, but still). What a f**ked up way to run a country. And now we have a man high on dex with his hand on the football. It is terrifying.
There is no viable plan because there is no viable leadership; there’s a fair amount of huffing, and puffing, but a science-based realistic plan? Nope.
I wonder how many other agencies are kicking the can down the road, waiting on the election, hoping to hold onto a job for just a few more weeks.
The lack of a plan predates this Administration by at least 8 years. Remember, Obama/Biden was using Orion to send people to Mars and.then maybe a Martian moon, and later an asteroid and then recover an asteroid rock from an unmanned spacecraft that had recovered it. The Moon, ‘been there, done that’. Mars, Mars moons and asteroids were not credible certainly not with the Orion SLS or with NASAs budget during the Obama/Biden years. Trump has told NASA a goal, which is more achievable and logical and with potential real purpose. But there are missing pieces to make the system work. Trump did not tell NASA how to get there. I suspect if Biden wins, we will be back to a nonsensical program.
Newsflash: Congress is where the caution is being exerted.
From Coastal Ron over at Space News:
“1. Vice President Pence announced the 2024 date WITHOUT NASA having any clue if they could make the date. No plan, no giving Congress a heads up that this was going to be an effort that exceeded NASA’s EXISTING budget profile from the Trump Administration. Totally out of left field.
2. Despite the short notice, Congress asked NASA and the Trump Administration for both a plan and a budget for the 2024 date, and NASA only gave it to Congress just recently. So it is NOT Congress that is dragging their feet, NASA didn’t even know what it was going to take to make the 2024 date.
3. The schedule Congress goes through to create the funding legislation every year is well known, and the Trump Administration was late in providing budget guidance for the FY2021 fiscal year funding bills.
As to your last point (and I’ll repost it):
“I said if they choose to NOT fully fund the lunar lander development (as is likely) then any possibility of a 2024 landing is effectively zero.”
The 2024 date was NEVER realistic. Never. You thinking it was ever realistic means that you’re either ignoring the reality of how long it takes NASA to develop human-rated hardware these days, or that you are unaware of how hard it really is.
Let’s assume it was the latter, in which case I’ll repost what recent history tells us about NASA developing human-rated vehicles:
Orion MPCV – 18 years from contract award to when it is planned to be operational
Dragon Crew – 10 years from contract award to when it will be operational
Starliner – 11 years from contract award to when it hopefully will be operational
In order for the Artemis Human Landing System (HLS) to be ready for a landing in 2024, the design, development, production, testing and certification of an HLS would have to happen in a record 4 years. And have NO delays – everything would have to work right the first time.”
House space subcommittee chair still seeking NASA plan for 2024 lunar landing
https://spacenews.com/house…
There is and was NO WAY this was going to happen in 2024.. NEVER.
I think before Trump the Gateway or LOP-G or whatever it was called made sense and was feasible given a modest increase in NASA’s budget. The Gateway makes sense from a research perspective and a national security view point too. Landing on the Moon again while exciting makes no sense. Nor is sending people to Mars. For what? Send robots instead for research.
Of course there is a plan, the plan is to rely on the innovation and ingenuity of the US space industry, let them design and operate the lunar landers, fund multiple landers based on different technologies and launch vehicles for redundancy, and fund them using fixed cost, milestone based contract under public private partnership, just like Commercial Cargo and Crew. This is Artemis 101, I can recite it in my sleep, why doesn’t Horn know? The answer is obvious, she’s too busy trying to sabotage the plan, her only aim is to change the lander contract to cost-plus, force it to launch on SLS, and hand over billions of tax dollars to her corporate master Boeing.
To see what this is really about, read about HR 5666:
House introduces NASA authorization bill that emphasizes Mars over moon
H.R. 5666 will launch the U.S. in the wrong direction
I wonder if Artemis was doomed from the beginning as it was announced by Trump who uses it for campaigning like USSF. Also I have the most difficult time absorbing how it will go to the moon and back. I don’t really know the rocket equation or all the particulars of various baggage at NASA HQ.
As a little boy in the 1960s it seemed quite obvious how Apollo can work. A really big rocket to get everything into orbit, a moderately big rocket to send it to the moon. A lunar bug to land men to the moon and bring them back like using a small boat to go to shore from the big boat. Then a capsule to bring all three men back.
There’s so many various methods and options by Artemis, it takes time to explain various elements, or at least I have not found a concise description. I’m sure many will point out it is all easy…. Regarding Apollo back in the days 60% disagreed about US spending money and resources on that program, SIXTY PERCENT. I think reason of little disagreement is little knowledge of Artemis in the general public.