This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Uncategorized

What We Know About Biden And Artemis At T+2 Weeks (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 4, 2021
Filed under
What We Know About Biden And Artemis At T+2 Weeks (Update)

Keith’s update: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki just made the following comments at the daily press briefing: “Kristen … asked a great question about the Artemis program – which I dug into and I am very excited about it now to tell my daughter all about it. So .. for those of you who have not been following it as closely, through the Artemis program, the United States government will work with industry and international partners to send astronauts to the surface of the Moon – another man and a woman to the Moon – which is very exciting, [It will] conduct new and exciting science, prepare for missions to Mars, and demonstrate America’s values. To date only 12 humans have walked on the Moon – that was half a century ago. The Artemis program, a waypoint to Mars, provides exactly the opportunity to add numbers to that, of course. Lunar exploration has broad and bicameral support in Congress, most recently detailed in the FY 2021 Omnibus spending bill – and certainly we support this effort and endeavor.”
We Interviewed the New Head of NASA About SpaceX, China, and Aliens, Futurism
“Question: Your predecessor laid out a lot of highly-ambitious plans, like landing the first woman on the Moon by 2024 and establishing a long-term lunar base. I assume Artemis isn’t being abandoned, but are you still pursuing those same timelines?
Jurczyk: Every indication we have so far, in week two of the new administration, is that Artemis will not be abandoned.”

Message from NASA Acting Administrator Steve Jurczyk and Senior White House Appointee Bhavya Lal, earlier post
“We are excited about the opportunities that await us -the Perseverance Mars landing; the next Launch America mission; our focus on the study of our home planet; and returning American astronauts to the surface of the Moon, and then on to Mars.”


“Q: One more space question: NASA’s Artemis Program which was the Trump era program to return American astronauts to the Moon by 2024 – what is the President’s plan – what is he going to do with that program – is he going to keep it intact?
Jen Psaki: I am personally interested in space. I think it is a fascinating area of study – but I have not spoken with our team about this particular program – so let me see if we can get you a more informed overview of that.”

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

25 responses to “What We Know About Biden And Artemis At T+2 Weeks (Update)”

  1. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
    0
    0

    so between this and the senator letter of support will there be a mid year budget upper passed for the HLS to give them enough money to actually be able to afford some lunar landers? words cost nothing, but actually getting to the money costs money.

  2. Jonna31 says:
    0
    0

    I mean, as an issue of general safety, the 2024 landing shouldn’t happen. It is now February 2021. Artemis 3 is planned for October 2024. Three years, 8 months to design, build and test the HLS? Without any of the in space shakedown tests of it that were part of Apollo? With the three teams involved having no experience with human landing systems at all (I don’t count SpaceX landing Falcons in this case).

    This is all a real quick way to get people killed.

    Even if we could fund it to levels well beyond its request, the lack of time to design and build this vehicle, analyze its performance on repeated flights in space and improve on a vehicle designed to carry people before landing them, is completely insane.

    Did we land on the moon before? No. Not “we”. Different people did, at a different time, in a different NASA, with different technology, in a different vehicle. And they did it just six times. “We” are doing this for the first time, and we should advance this project with the prudence and humility that that comes with. The Apollo generation earned its six landing on the moon the hard way. The Artemis generation has to similarly earn it from square one.

    For someone who grew up in the 90s and remember the proclamations that we’d be landing on Mars by 2018, it is a bit weird to say “you know what, let’s land on the moon in 2026 rather than 2024”, but that’s the difference between being a stargazing kid, and an adult who recognizes that we’re sending men and women with families to places of extraordinary risk.

    Do it right. Not fast. Right. 2026-2028. Safety first.

    • mfwright says:
      0
      0

      >90s and remember the proclamations that we’d be landing on Mars by 2018,

      It’s an old story, Mars is always 20 years away. I heard in the 60s there will be men on Mars in the 80s.

      >Do it right. Not fast. Right. 2026-2028. Safety first.

      A good reminder of good, fast, cheap. Pick any two.

    • SouthwestExGOP says:
      0
      0

      Agree! The 2024 goal appears to have been based on an election year need for mike pence, hopefully he has subsided into obscurity. The goal was 2028 at one time and that might be reasonable.

    • tutiger87 says:
      0
      0

      You know we went to the Moon in 6 years using slide rules and computers that took days to run trajectories, right?

      • Zathras1 says:
        0
        0

        True enough back in 63-72. BUT….that was not a sustainable effort, either. If we go back it should be sustainable and to build a permanent presence. It should not (either quickly or slowly) kill either the astronauts or the workers on Earth supporting them.

  3. Philippe says:
    0
    0

    The question was asked by Kristin Fisher, who is Anna Fisher’s daughter.

  4. Half Moon says:
    0
    0

    I wonder if “Not being abandoned” = Being redirected to Mars

    • james w barnard says:
      0
      0

      If that becomes the philosophy, the Chinese will get to both before us (depending on how willing they are to sacrifice the people they try to send to Mars first).
      We must establish crewed base(s) on the Moon to learn how to operate long-term in REDUCED gravity, as well as how to conduct insitu resource development, and protect the crews from solar and cosmic radiation. The Moon is the place to do it. In case of emergencies, it is only three days away from Earth. Until better propulsion is developed to drastically cut the transit times between Earth and Mars, going there without learning how to insure crew survival…on the Moon…is an invitation to disaster! Chances are SpaceX will beat NASA and anybody else there!

      • Nick K says:
        0
        0

        Maybe you forgot, the US has had people on the Moon. Maybe we need to ask whether the ability to do it once counts for anything as compared with the continuing ability to do it?

        • Daniel Woodard says:
          0
          0

          China is not in a race. They have their own motives and their own timetable.

          • Larry leszcynski says:
            0
            0

            Yes the Chinese have their own time table. Its called 2049. Their motives are not benign. Ask Taiwan and Hong Kong.

  5. Nick K says:
    0
    0

    2024? Based on Apollo, Orion and the SLS experience, I would guess 20 years. Sometime in the 2040s for a Moon landing.

    Orion by comparison to a Moon lander was relatively straight forward and made full use of an already existing spacecraft, the ESA ATV. And yet it took more than 15 years. Orion’s reduced capabilities made the lander harder to pull off and the lander was already much more difficult.

    Only way around this is if there is already a vehicle far along in its development, perhaps like the Space X Starship.

  6. Ray Gedaly says:
    0
    0

    Whatever the date that the first landing might have occurred, in my opinion the program was headed towards what would have been a one-time stunt followed by a cleverly worded “pause to reassess tong-term goals,” i.e. cancellation.

    Whatever Artemis becomes under the new administration – and whatever hardware we use to get there – I hope the program will truly lead to a sustainable program.

  7. Dr. Malcolm Davis says:
    0
    0

    It’s no good going once. The goal should be a permanent human presence on the lunar surface, in an expanding, and largely self-sustaining base. I think achieving that is actually more important (in some ways) than getting to Mars, because it opens up the prospect for space resource utilisation that could see a large human presence in Earth-orbit and in Cislunar space. I do worry that government doesn’t get that bigger picture. They simply see flags and footprints again, and the risk is Artemis III will land, perhaps by 2026 but more likely by 2028, and then they’ll be a review, a funding cut, and we’re back to LEO again. History repeats itself. If it were just NASA doing this, that outcome would be highly likely, but thankfully, we have a rapidly growing commercial sector to take us to new places.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
      0
      0

      So how does the commercial sector take over? SpaceX and Blue Origin have reusable launch vehicles that can build infrastructure in LEO, then expand from there. If you can’t sell tickets to private citizens, it’s probably too expensive.

  8. Larry leszcynski says:
    0
    0

    If the Obama administration is any guide then we’re not going anywhere. Once ISS is gone space will be China’s to take. Thank God for spacex.

    • kcowing says:
      0
      0

      Um .. you do know that there’d be no SpaceX commercial crew and cargo if it were not for the Obama Administration. The Republicans Congress tried to under fund it every year.

      • Larry leszcynski says:
        0
        0

        I also remember Obama underfunding Orion/Constellation, then canceling it and then saying “Been there, done that.” The end result was that on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing the US lack the means to put astronauts into orbit. Spacex success had more to do with Musk’s risk taking than Obama’s vision.

        • kcowing says:
          0
          0

          So … Biden says he supports Artemis but you ignore that and go back 10 years to a previous Administration to get one more lick in.

        • Daniel Woodard says:
          0
          0

          The goal of the Obama Administration was to transfer the funding to Commercial Crew, which has been quite successful. The Ares I was cancelled because the Orion spacecraft became too heavy for it to carry. The Ares V, now the SLS, is extremely expensive to fly, in part because Congress dictated that it be constructed of Space Shuttle components, designed 40 years ago to be reusable but now used as expendables. There is unfortunately no way to reduce the cost of the system to a sustainable level.