NASA's Billion Dollar Artemis Spacesuits Won't Be Ready For A 2024 Moon Landing
NASA OIG: NASA’s Development of Next-Generation Spacesuits, NASA OIG
“NASA’s current schedule is to produce the first two flight-ready xEMUs by November 2024, but the Agency faces significant challenges in meeting this goal. This schedule includes approximately a 20-month delay in delivery for the planned design, verification, and testing suit, two qualification suits, an ISS Demo suit, and two lunar flight suits. These delays- attributable to funding shortfalls, COVID-19 impacts, and technical challenges – have left no schedule margin for delivery of the two flight-ready xEMUs. Given the integration requirements, the suits would not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest. Moreover, by the time two flight-ready xEMUs are available, NASA will have spent over a billion dollars on the development and assembly of its next-generation spacesuits.”
Keith’s note: Patricia Stoll, President, Space Systems & Engineered Solutions at ILC Dover responded to a @NASAWatch tweet on this issue – as well as one by @NASAOIG. Interesting. NASA might want to take notice.
@ILCDover has already made the investment in Astro, our commercial EVA spacesuit. We just need NASA to step out of the way and allow industry to get us to the Moon by 2024. pic.twitter.com/xybjC0aQDx
— Patricia Stoll (@PattyStoll) August 10, 2021
Did they cost a billion dollars in inflation-adjusted spending the first time we landed on the Moon?
According to Smithsonian Magazine, those suits cost $670,000 adjusted to 2021 dollars ($100,000) back then.
A billion dollars for suits defies imagination. That’s the cost of two Space Shuttle launches or 16 Falcon 9 launches.
That’s got to be the marginal cost of one unit. They spent plenty more to design them back then.
Perhaps the amortized non-recurring dev costs were factored into this price?
I doubt there will be much if anything ready for the moon in 2024
Indeed. Title should be “NASA’s Multi-Billion Dollar 2024 Moon Landing Won’t Be Ready For A 2024 Moon Landing”!
Except perhaps Starship.
*Groans*
Look, just… Are the guys who did the IVA suits for SpaceX available for a quick consultation followed up by a hard-schedule no-deliver, no-fee contract?
IVA suits lack a bunch of things an EVA suit requires. Like life support (independent, not supplied by the spacecraft), thermal control, lower body mobility, etc. Producing a EVA suit is much more difficult and requires some very different capabilities.
Quite sure there is a EVA suit design ready at Hawthorne for future SpaceX internal usage. Likely in the traditional scarlet and gold color scheme of a certain Avenger.
I never said it is the same thing. What I’m saying is to find out whether they can do it and do it fast.
NASA issued an RFP for EVA suits & services last month, and proposals are due August 17 – next week. Selections early 2022..
Given Musk’s tweet, they’ll be there.
The OIG has it completely wrong. The problem isn’t that ILC Dover and companies like them have too little money. It’s that they have too much. When we’re talking a billion dollars on space suits, there is no such thing as a “funding shortfall”. If NASA can’t do it with a billion dollars, get rid of whoever is making them.
So let me get this right.
First, they can project out a delay of nearly two years. Two years. For suits. What exactly are they doing? How does something get to be that late. Have folks been just sitting on their hands for a few years now or something?
Secondly, a billion dollars on suits. That moment when you realize designing and building space suits is going to cost as much as twelve F-35s.
This entire enterprise is a sorry joke from top to bottom. Cancel the suits. Give SpaceX a shot as Elon Musk hinted at today. Apparently there is exactly one US space company not designed around fleecing US Taxpayers and getting deliverables.
It doesn’t look like ILC Dover is involved in this. Another tweet mentioned and listed 27 contractors, and ILC Dover wasn’t on the list. Although I’d have to go back and confirm that 27 number. They were split out by subsystem, and some (e.g. David Clark) were working on multiple subsystems. So some companies may have been double counted.
When I hear a number like 27 contractors, my mind immediately turns to problems with cascading delays. A project like this screams out for vertical integration. When 27-some companies have control over a schedule, is anyone really in control?
When everybody is in charge, nobody is in charge. Who is the prime contractor for these suits? Or is there one?
This is based on a infographic in a tweet someone posted to an Ars Technica comment thread. So it’s not exactly what I’d call a reliable source. But…
It looks like they have separate efforts for different parts of the suit (torso, arms/legs, portable life support system, etc.) and that the different companies working on the same part are doing do independently and in parallel. At least to some extent. That may mean no single company is on the critical path, as opposed to all of them being on the critical path.
By the way, that infographic which didn’t mention ILC Dover, combined with the update to this story, makes it look like ILC Dover isn’t part of the NASA effort the OIG report was about. I guess they have their own design, and aren’t part of the NASA effort. I’m not sure how that suit matches NASA’s requirements.
I had the same thoughts. Could such things be ironed out in a year?
It’s possible. It isn’t probable, but it is possible.
(And bonus points to anyone who what movie that’s a quote from. As a hint, it was the serious version of Dr. Strangelove.)
Probably not the answer you were looking for.
Jack Sparrow on Pirates of the Caribbean.
Barbosa: (Sees Jack) It’s not possible.
Jack: Not *probable*…
Yeah I edited my comment. I don’t know where I read ILC Dover was involved, but they aren’t. Still though, the point stands: whoever is in the business of making a space suit with a cost on the scale of a naval vessel…. those people shouldn’t be in the space suit making business anymore.
And the 20 month delay stuff is just… so rich. What kind of business is this where that’s a thing.
Musk has volunteered SpaceX to do the Artemis suits
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/0…
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
Need be, Elon. Need be.
Let Elon do it.
The problem is the JSC EVA Office. It was formed in the 90s to help manage the ISS “Wall of EVA”. Since then it has searched for a reason to exist. It used to be staffed by some of the best and brightest in the EVA community, but has since become a dumping ground for people who’s careers ended a long time ago. In fact, it has more CS’s and contractors now then when the agency was doing up to 30 EVAs a year.
This week they’re doing a team building exercise at the Astros Game (wonder what they’re putting on their timecards?). Couple that with JSCs Flex Fridays & Quite Fridays it’s not hard to find out where the waste starts.
A major reorg is required, or you can just give it to Musk and SpaceX, that would probably get you a new suit faster and cheaper.
There are corporations all over America that have incorporated flex Fridays (9/80) and/or no meeting Fridays. That’s not waste.
Go bug the folks in Congress about waste.
Interesting that ILC Dover is blaming NASA bureaucracy and are saying that they already have a working prototype. Is NASA unnecessarily trying to reinvent the wheel for some reason?
From the ILC Dover PA person’s tweet. Their suit looks similar to a Russian ORLAN suit. A hard torso section with flexible limbs and rear suitport entry. Likely have to be custom fitted to individuals, so might not have mixed & match components liked with the current EMU suits. Also likely to have the same lack of flexibility as the ORLAN suits. Which was designed as space station EVA suits.
According to a message I received from ILC, despite the photo shown, their suit does not have a hard upper torso. HUT was never a good idea but works ok if you’ve got lots of time to maintain them and change out arms and legs. In any kind of gravity environment, HUTs are painful, settling in on the collarbone. Fine for HST repair, awful for walking in a gravity well. Something similar to the Apollo suits will do for now.
Here’s another example where I mutter to myself “If I were a better person…”
“…I wouldn’t immediately wonder how SX will, once again, eat NASA’s budget and timeline.”
Let’s face it, why should they be worried about the suits when they’re not close being on the critical path? Blowing the 2024 deadline doesn’t mean much when it’s obvious to everyone that the rest of the project can’t meet that requirement.
Go New Space!
Get ‘er done!
Whoot Whoot Whoot Whoot Whoot!
ILC, SpaceX, someone’s Grandma’s sewing machine, I don’t care.
(Ok, not the sewing machine bit…but I’d love to meet her if she could) 😉
International Latex Corporation was an old school bra & ladies goods manufacturer (Platex) before they split and the ILC Dover division made the Apollo EVA suits, so maybe Granny could ?
Spacesuits are not Moonsuits. Are we wasting resources trying to make one thing do both jobs?
Wow. For 14 years JSC has been making a suit that can be used for…. not only for space walks around the Station, but also for walking on the Moon. Requirements Run Amok?