https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...w-earth-orbit/

NASA may alter Artemis III to have Starship and Orion dock in low-Earth orbit

Although NASA is unlikely to speak about it publicly any time soon, the space agency is privately considering modifications to its Artemis plan to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon later this decade.

Multiple sources have confirmed that NASA is studying alternatives to the planned Artemis III landing of two astronauts on the Moon, nominally scheduled for September 2026, due to concerns about hardware readiness and mission complexity.

Under one of the options, astronauts would launch into low-Earth orbit inside an Orion spacecraft and rendezvous there with a Starship vehicle, separately launched by SpaceX. During this mission, similar to Apollo 9, a precursor to the Apollo 11 lunar landing, the crew would validate the ability of Orion and Starship to dock and test habitability inside Starship. The crew would then return to Earth.

In another option NASA is considering, a crew would launch in Orion and fly to a small space station near the Moon, the Lunar Gateway, and then return to Earth.

To discuss these options, Ars asked for an interview with Catherine Koerner, a deputy associate administrator who oversees Exploration Systems Development for NASA. Instead, the space agency offered a noncommittal statement.

"NASA continues to work toward the Artemis II crewed test flight in September of 2025 and the Artemis III test flight to land astronauts near the lunar South Pole in September of 2026," the statement read. "The agency evaluates element progress and status on a daily basis and uses that data to make decisions at the right time for each mission as a part of prudent programmatic and mission management.

“Should a particular hardware element not be available to support a mission as scheduled or planned, NASA will evaluate the readiness of available hardware for options to make those decisions with crew safety as the number one priority."…..

NASA has asked SpaceX to look at a mission where Orion would rendezvous with the Starship vehicle in orbit around Earth. Such a mission—whether called Artemis IIS or Artemis III—would solve a lot of problems for the space agency and appears to be the preferred option at this time. ….

Critically, it would verify the ability of the two spacecraft to dock in an environment where, if there were a problem, it would be much easier for the crew to return safely home. It would also validate the ability of astronauts to live inside Starship and perform some ascent and descent maneuvers.

Perhaps just as importantly, such a mission would allow the space agency to avoid a long gap between Artemis II and Artemis III.

No one is quite certain how long it will take SpaceX to deliver a Starship vehicle that is capable of landing safely on the Moon and then taking back off. The company is known for moving very fast in the development phase, but it still has a tremendous amount of work to do with Starship….

Is it man capable yet? Not until bits stop falling off in 4KUD video.

NASA just told its inspector general to piss off.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...-ii-readiness/

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e7bfc32ab2.png
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First crewed launch scheduled for 10:34 PM EDT. Aboard will be astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Fingers crossed!

- Ed

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...icles-problem/

NASA’s Lunar Gateway has a big visiting vehicles problem

As the opening para of that article states I think for some time now quite a few people have been asking: “Lunar Gateway err….why exactly”.

Gut feeling, between Starliner and this, Boeing is finished in the manned space business - maybe in the space business altogether……

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...ed-work-force/

A new report finds Boeing’s rockets are built with an unqualified work force

Sounds pretty much like Boeing’s airliners…

Replying to a two year old post, but the cost of Raptor engines is reported to be less than $1M, perhaps much less, and they are being built by the dozens while being greatly and continuously refined. Hard to see the old school economics winning out here.

The cost of the RS-25s being used is around $70M each according to one NASA report/audit, but that figure may not include all relevant costs. The engine "set" is what is around the half billion dollar ballpark.

Lord help us, the new cost estimate of NASA's Mobile Launcher-2 project is now a mind-boggling $2.7 billion......

The original cost estimate was $383 million......

https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-inspe...her-2-project/

NASA’s Management of the Mobile Launcher 2 Project

NASA is developing a second mobile launcher (ML-2)—the ground structure used to assemble, transport, and launch the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion crew capsule—to support larger variants of the SLS beginning with the Artemis IV mission.

ML-2’s cost and schedule are not sustainable despite NASA’s efforts to improve project performance.

Download (2.94Mb) https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uplo...=66cdfbd5e7e80

It's not just the mobile launcher program, ORAC, it's the entire organization, I fear.

"From day one, the Biden-Harris administration announced it would overhaul every single agency with the ideals of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It ensured there were DEI bureaucracies in place to impose its agendas regularly."

NASA DEI Policy

- Ed

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/0...ision-to-make/

After Starliner, NASA has another big human spaceflight decision to make

"We still have a lot of work to do to close out the heat shield investigation.”

A sobering read.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2...onal-disgrace/

SLS is still a national disgrace

$100 Billion - corrected for inflation - is ballpark to what the entire Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs spent going to the moon - and they literally had to invent the technology as they went. SLS has had two test flights to show for what we spent going to the moon - repeatedly.
NASA has morphed from a 'can do' organization into just another bloated government bureaucracy, while Space X has taken over the 'can do' title (at least when the other bloated government agencies don't stop them).

@ORAC -an excellent article! Though I am an American and rather proud of our leadership in space exploration, your link is, as you warned, completely sobering. It's not just NASA suffering from the nonsense of DEI and suckling the "Big Gummint" teat. This fine and glorious nation is being driven to its knees by such idiocy. We have had a good run; it is time to reformulate our policies if we are ever to regain the respect and admiration of the world.

- Ed

Artemis slippages on schedule….

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/1...5-launch-date/

Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...colossal-waste

NASA’s $100 Billion Moon Mission Is Going Nowhere

The Artemis program — years behind schedule and billions over budget — should have taxpayers and presidents demanding answers.

There are government boondoggles, and then there’s NASA’s Artemis program.

More than a half century after Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, Artemis was intended to land astronauts back on the moon. It has so far spent nearly $100 billion without anyone getting off the ground, yet its complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward. The next US president should rethink the program in its entirety.

As someone who greatly respects science and strongly supports space exploration, the more I have learned about Artemis, the more it has become apparent that it is a colossal waste of taxpayer money.

The problems start with the mission, which is more political than scientific. There is little humans can do on the moon that robots cannot. Technology has come a long way since 1969, to put it mildly. We do not need another person on the moon to collect rocks or take scientific measurements. And the costs of putting people on the moon — and of planning for their potential rescue, should complications arise — are truly astronomical.

To understand the level of wasteful spending, forget the $1 billion in spacesuits that have yet to be delivered. That’s pocket change compared to the rocket, called the Space Launch System. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s inspector general estimates the program has so far burned through $23.8 billion. Each launch will likely cost at least $4 billion, quadruple initial estimates. This exceeds private-sector costs many times over, yet it can launch only about once every two years and — unlike SpaceX’s rockets — can’t be reused.

Even if the Space Launch System is completed, there’s a hitch: It isn’t even powerful enough to actually get anyone to the moon, at least not in its current configuration. It will instead deposit its capsule, called Orion, into what’s called near-rectilinear halo orbit. Here, the capsule — which, despite $20 billion being poured into it, currently has a faulty heat shield — must rendezvous with a landing spacecraft, which will then take the astronauts to the lunar surface. And getting the landing spacecraft into orbit, before it can be propelled toward the moon to meet Orion, is itself a complex process.

Simple, Artemis is not. A lot could go wrong. And that’s before NASA adds its new space station into the mix. Known as the Gateway, it will cost more than $5 billion to build, require perhaps $1 billion in annual maintenance and has no clear rationale. The idea is that, in future missions, Orion might dock at the Gateway, two astronauts will exit and board the lander, and the remaining crew will sit in the station and observe their colleagues collecting rocks.

Unfortunately, that’s not all. To build Gateway, NASA is adding a second stage to the Space Launch System, called Block 1B, that is six years behind schedule, expected to cost $5.7 billion and will add about $1 billion to every launch. To accommodate Block 1B, the agency is erecting a new launch tower called ML-2, which is expected to cost $2.7 billion, more than seven times initial estimates, and doesn’t have a plausible completion date. (The company building ML-2 has billed the government for 850,000 overtime hours in the past two years.)

A celestial irony is that none of this is necessary. A reusable SpaceX Starship will very likely be able to carry cargo and robots directly to the moon — no SLS, Orion, Gateway, Block 1B or ML-2 required — at a small fraction of the cost. Its successful landing of the Starship booster was a breakthrough that demonstrated how far beyond NASA it is moving.

Meanwhile, NASA is canceling or postponing promising scientific programs — including the Veritas mission to Venus; the Viper lunar rover; and the NEO Surveyor telescope, intended to scan the solar system for hazardous asteroids — as Artemis consumes ever more of its budget.

Taxpayers and Congress should be asking: What on Earth are we doing? And the next president should be held accountable for answers.


Michael R. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, and chair of the Defense Innovation Board.

A sad commentary on the once-mighty and respected NASA, as well as the general disinterest in space exploration by the US populace.

- Ed

The writer appears to have completely missed the point why Artemis is required.
It's not to collect moon rocks but to establish a base and learn how to live 'off world. It's a step to Mars and beyond.
Having said that, SLS is an abomination. The visionaries of the 1960s must be fuming.

I think he understands that - but is making the point SpaceX is so far ahead that, by the time they reach Mars, they'll have to call ahead to book a room and apply for a visa......

The success of Space X and Starship has made SLS redundant at best - and more accurately a multi-billion dollar boondoggle.
Right now, the only reason for NASA to even be involved in the development of launch systems is to prevent Space X from gaining an effective monopoly - and they are doing a really terrible job of that.

tracer, I refer you back to the article at #7....

https://www.pprune.org/space-flight-...l#post11284288

To be clear we are *far* from anything being settled, but based on what I'm hearing it seems at least 50-50 that NASA's Space Launch System rocket will be canceled.

Not Block 1B. Not Block 2. All of it. There are other ways to get Orion to the Moon.….

Scott Manley sharing his views on, amongst other things, SLS.

Going to send a lot of ripples through the supply chain if they do. Be a brave call, but one I think needs making.

If the Orange Man has his way, there are going to be a lot of 'vendors' who've become used to sucking at the government teat who are going to be unhappy.

I don't like the idea of giving one company an effective monopoly on anything, but unless someone can come close to duplicating what Space X can do, it become pretty hard to justify spending tax money on much more costly alternatives.

The first manufacturer to win on time, cost and quality earns the right to the monopoly. Let's have competition by all means, but at the tax-payer's expense ? Nasa need to wake up and smell the coffee, the days of dining out on past success are over.

NASA has always served two purposes and one of them is the broad distribution of federal dollars to STEM-related industry in parts of the country that would otherwise be doing nothing but growing corn and raising pigs.

So whenever NASA spends money, it's already succeeding in that mission.

The idea that the purpose of NASA is to get into space as aggressively and efficiently as possible is a gross misconception. NASA exists to spend money, and the nature of the spending is aerospace technology. I honestly don't have a problem with that. The idea that NASA needs to be "efficient," or that it should be, doesn't reflect the reality of why the agency exists. The vital function that NASA serves is not space access. The vital function that it serves is funding aerospace R&D.

I would suggest moderating enthusiasm that SpaceX would replace NASA and thereby improve something. It will not and cannot.

The fact that SpaceX has achieved such success in a relatively short period of time is laudable, but they are a commercial enterprise. They have nothing in common with a government agency and there is almost nothing that SpaceX does that is what NASA does, nor is the success of either entity measured in any similar way.

I don’t think the suggestion is that NASA should go away, rather that - as you suggest - it has far more areas in which to spend money fruitfully than in carrying on with the SLS and its waste -such as the $B to build a new launch platform.

FLCON/Vulcan/New Shephard etc can take Orion to the moon and beyond. NASA can concentrate on areas such as exploratory probes, new space telescopes, and that air part of its name….

Remi
The problem is that there is precious little 'new' technology being funded by NASA in the last couple of decades - and almost no new technology for the SLS. In fact, SLS was sold as leveraging 'existing technologies as quick and cost effective (0 for 2, since it's been neither). SLS uses the same liquid fuel engines as the Space Shuttle, and the solid fuel strap-ons are simply longer versions of the Space Shuttle solid boosters. During 1960's and 1970's and into the 1980s, NASA spending was contributing greatly to the overall technology base of the USA - developing Apollo, the Saturn V, and the Space Shuttle literally meant developing the technology from scratch. SLS is simply repurposing technology that already exists (and not doing it very well at that - actually moving away from useable and back to single use components).
NASA has had some positive effects in their unmanned programs (Webb telescope and some interplanetary missions, for example), but SLS has been nothing but a multi-billion-dollar boondoggle.
IF we want to continue the mission of NASA as a technology development tool, it should be to develop new, cost effective technology and platforms to place payloads into space safely and at low cost. Perhaps a 21st century reuseable space shuttle type platform - incorporating all the lessons learned from 30 years of experience with the original Space Shuttle. SLS simply spends tax money, costing more per pound of payload into orbit than the original Saturn V, using largely the same technology.

Here is a small part of last year's "precious little 'new'" technology:

https://d2pn8kiwq2w21t.cloudfront.ne...ual-report.pdf

SLS has the air of an expensive project going nowhere, but we've already covered the fact that it's the subcontractors (alternative spelling: "Boeing") that aren't performing:

https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uplo.../ig-24-015.pdf

Well, yes, and no, coming down on the side of "not really."

https://www.sme.org/globalassets/sme...zzle-liner.pdf

What Musk really wants to do with "NASA" is make sure Boeing isn't ever a viable competitor, but I don't think he needs to choke off NASA funding to accomplish that mission. McDonnell Douglas management did that already. Meanwhile, Elon will never be able to make even a dent in LockMart's business.

Even though it seems like technology creates things "right now," in aerospace (and military in particular), systems don't really mature in less than a decade after initial deployment. Many continue to just get better as they move through different "Blocks" for several decades.

NASA has released a high resolution photo of the Artemis 1 heatshield, alongside a detailed explanation of the mechanism behind the unexpected char loss during the flight.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemi...eld-char-loss/


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....035f10a59.jpeg
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Boeing limbering up for big job cuts in the Artemis program....
https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...fs-2025-02-08/

Even jobs and contractor enrichment programs like the SLS have their limits--after too many headlines of "billions over budget and years behind schedule" without showing results, even the most bought-and-paid for politicians start asking questions. I strongly suspect Musk has been whispering in Trump's ear that SpaceX can do it better/cheaper/faster.

Well...SpaceX can.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4935/1

Redirecting NASA’s focus: why the Gateway program should be cancelled

The Gateway, a small space station intended to orbit the Moon, has been an integral part of NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface and establish a permanent presence on the Moon. However, it has become increasingly clear that the Gateway is a poor use of our limited resources for space exploration. This article delves into the reasons why the Gateway program should be cancelled, with the Gateway funding redirected to the Artemis program and to landing the first humans on Mars.

NASA’s Artemis program is years behind schedule, its costs have ballooned out of control, and the architecture is too complex. The remedy is to eliminate costly parts of the Artemis architecture that are unnecessary, namely the Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion spacecraft, and the Gateway. My recent article described how the SLS and Orion programs could be phased out and replaced with an architecture based solely on the Starship.

This article calls for an immediate end to the Gateway program.....

The first company to fly a methalox engine successfully in production: Blue Origin
The first methalox powered launch vehicle to reach orbit: New Glenn

Is it really that clear who's in the lead?
SpaceX isn't doing methalox cheaper and faster yet.

The Raptor burns methalox, first flew in April 2023 and is in mass production with V3 entering production. Current production rate is 500 a year but will need to ramp up to 4000 a year with current Booster/Starship production plans.

Blue Origins BE-4 first flew in January 2024 with a current production rate of 42 a year.

If you want to go back and argue who flew the first methalox engine to put a payload in orbit - it was the Chinese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TQ-12

https://www.spaceintel101.com/post/c...powered-rocket

Simply pointing out the facts, which are that SpaceX is testing, and Blue Origin is in production in two separate launch vehicles.

Calling New Glenn “in production” when the booster failed to be recovered and the prototype pathfinder put in orbit is technology demonstrator - but decrying Starship as testing when they’ve successfully caught to boosters and water landed 3 starships is being economical with the truth.

They’re also in different classes - New Glenn is in competition against Falcon Heavy, not Starship.

Once Starship is in productive service the economics will make both the above into niche launchers.