This could be NASA's last chance to have a human exploration program worthy of the name.
Share to twitterNASA’s plan to return U.S. astronauts to the Moon, dubbed Artemis, is under a lot of political pressure. The Trump Administration wants to see results faster. Communities with a stake in the human spaceflight program want assurances they will be involved. Traditional and non-traditional suppliers want a slice of the pie.
And that’s before we even get to the scientific community, whose needs are the main reason for funding Artemis. When so many interests are engaged, you have to worry that decision-making might be distorted by politics. That’s one reason why NASA needs to stick with the plan it has laid out for returning to the Moon, and then making it the jumping-off point for a human mission to Mars. But there are many other reasons too. In fact, eight of them are listed below.
The current plan involves constructing an evolvable super-rocket called the Space Launch System, and then wedding it to a 27-ton crew vehicle called Orion. Boeing, the rocket builder, and Lockheed Martin, the vehicle integrator, both contribute to my think tank. So I have heard an earful over the years about why the companies are executing their parts of the program the way they are.
Musk can be forgiven his optimism because he is a hardcore space enthusiast with a longstanding vision of mankind’s future in the cosmos. Jeff Bezos, creator of Blue Origin, shares a similar vision, and has spent billions of his own dollars pursuing it. But that doesn’t mean either entrepreneur is postured to supplant or supplement the industry team currently executing Artemis.
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