Regardless of the outcome of this year’s election, the United States will have a new president in a few months. Although there are myriad issues of greater importance than spaceflight to most Americans, a new leader of the country will inevitably take a fresh look at the nation’s space policy.
Among the highest priorities for the next administration should be shoring up NASA’s Artemis plan to return humans to the Moon. This ambitious and important program is now half a decade old, and while the overall aims remain well supported in Congress and the space community, there are some worrying cracks in the foundation.
These issues include:
The first crewed flight on the Orion spacecraft, a vehicle that has been in development for two decades, remains in doubt due to concerns with the heat shield.
The first lunar landing mission has no reliable date. Officially, NASA plans to send this Artemis III mission to the Moon in September 2026. Unofficially? Get real. Not only must Orion’s heat shield issue be resolved, but it's unlikely that both a lunar lander (SpaceX’s Starship vehicle) and spacesuits (built by Axiom Space) will be ready by this time. The year 2028 is probably a realistic no-earlier-than date.
The space agency’s plans after Artemis III are even more complex. The Artemis IV mission will nominally involve the debut of a larger version of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, a new launch tower, and a stopover at a new space station near the Moon, the Lunar Gateway.
There is increasing evidence that China is pouring resources into a credible lunar program to land two astronauts on the Moon by 2030, seeking a geopolitical “win” by beating America in its return to the Moon.
A flat or even reduced NASA budget compounds all of these issues, and the space agency is unlikely to receive significant increases in the near term. The fundamental problem with Artemis, therefore, is that NASA is trying to do too much with its deep space program with too few resources. We have already seen evidence of NASA cannibalizing its science programs—including significant cuts to the Chandra space telescope and the cancellation of the VIPER mission—to support Artemis' ballooning costs.
If the agency continues down this path, like a frog in boiling water, the Artemis Program is likely to end in failure.
A simple plan
Fortunately, I have a solution. It may not be politically popular, and there are losers. Among the biggest ones are Boeing, SpaceX, and two NASA field centers, Marshall Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center. However, if Artemis is to succeed, difficult choices must be made.
For policymakers, there are two strategic aims at risk here. The first is losing the geopolitically important race against China, Russia, and their partners back to the Moon in the 21st century. The second is sacrificing a sustainable lunar program for one that is unaffordable in the long term.
With that context, here are the principal policy choices I believe should be made to shore up the Artemis Program both in the near and long term:
Cancel the Lunar Gateway
Cancel the Block 1B upgrade of the SLS rocket
Designate Centaur V as the new upper stage for the SLS rocket.
That's it in a nutshell. Read on for the details.
Get away from the Lunar Gateway
The concept of the Lunar Gateway is now more than a decade old. Initially, it was conceived because the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft had no “destination.” The rocket, Orion, and its Service Module did not have enough performance to place the spacecraft into low-lunar orbit and then subsequently fly back to Earth.
The solution was to build a small space station, the Gateway, in a higher orbit around the Moon—a near rectilinear halo orbit—that Orion could reach and depart from.
Since then, NASA has modified its deep-space program to include landings on the surface of the Moon. So the Moon is now the actual destination. In government, though, the longer a program lives, the tougher it is to kill. Accordingly, NASA has come up with other rationale for the Gateway.
This summer, in advance of an interview with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, I provided several topics I wanted to discuss. One of them was simply why he believed the Lunar Gateway was necessary for NASA's lunar ambitions. He had time to prepare. Still, this was Nelson's answer, in full:
You are going to have not only a way station for astronauts, you are going to have an ability to do science around the year, even when astronauts are not on the Gateway. And if you want a more detailed answer than that, we'll get you the scientists and talk about the science.
That's the administrator of NASA, with advance notice, explaining the rationale for the Gateway. First of all, astronauts don't need a way station. In the Artemis III mission, Orion will dock directly with Starship. So Gateway is just not necessary to reach the Moon.
Secondly, if NASA’s goal is to do better science in orbit around the Moon, it could build a few robotic orbiters at the cost of a few hundred million dollars. Spending 20 times as much to put four humans in orbit around the Moon for a few weeks every year or two is far less beneficial.
Beyond Nelson’s response, there are other reasons NASA has cited for the Gateway. One is that it could be a “staging point” for human missions to Mars or elsewhere in the Solar System. However, the Gateway is only expected to have a 15-year lifetime and will therefore probably age out before NASA needs it for Mars missions. This point was underlined in a recent report from the Government Accountability Office.
"The Gateway program is currently working to launch its initial capability in 2027; thus, the Gateway could have exceeded its planned 15-year on-orbit life as early as 2042 when crewed missions to Mars are potentially just beginning," the report states.
(All of the happy talk about Gateway serving as a staging point for Mars missions is silly, regardless. The only vehicle being designed or built today that could reach Mars in our lifetimes, with humans on board, is SpaceX's Starship spacecraft or its successors. And those are designed to be refueled in low-Earth orbit, not at the Moon.)
Some Gateway supporters have also noted that such a station extends the successful partnerships established during the International Space Station program. This is probably the soundest rationale in support of Gateway. Key partners in Europe and elsewhere plan to eventually build modules to attach to the Gateway. However, NASA might ameliorate this by committing to a semi-permanent settlement on the lunar surface. International partners could substitute rides down to the Moon, and the potential to build habitats there, for Gateway modules.
I want to state something clearly here. I am not opposed to a space station around the Moon, and I certainly harbor no ill will to those working on the Gateway program. It’s just that the Gateway introduces costs and complexity into the Artemis Program at a time when NASA is already contending with a superfluity of both.
Should Gateway be canceled, the biggest losers would be SpaceX and Johnson Space Center in Houston. SpaceX has a contract, potentially worth billions of dollars, to supply the Lunar Gateway over a 15-year period. SpaceX has plenty on its plate, so losing a logistics contract like this is salvageable. As for Johnson Space Center, teams leading the Gateway project could transition to working on more robust surface activities.
NASA would gain several benefits from canceling Gateway. This includes a reduction in energy, or delta-v, needed to carry out lunar missions. Eliminating Gateway also simplifies lunar landings. Requiring both Orion and Starship to dock with and undock from the Gateway is needlessly complex. There's also the pesky problem that because Starship is so much larger than Gateway, it might destabilize the smaller station.
There's also money to be saved. The initial construction of the Lunar Gateway is expected to be $5.3 billion. Annual maintenance will probably be on the order of $1 billion. Finally, there is one more important reason. And it’s a big one—canceling Gateway buys NASA the ability to cancel the costly Block 1B version of the SLS rocket.
Block 1B or not to be
NASA and Boeing have been working on the Block 1B upgrade to the SLS rocket for a decade now. This essentially entails the development of a more powerful second stage, known as the Exploration Upper Stage, to be placed upon the top of the core stage. Boeing is developing this new upper stage. Additionally, NASA is working with Bechtel to build a larger launch tower for this new vehicle.
Both the upper stage and launch tower are behind schedule and—because these projects were bid as cost-plus rather than fixed-price—significantly over budget. NASA now anticipates development of the Block 1B rocket to cost $5.7 billion by the time of its completion in 2028. (Originally, the rocket was due to be ready in 2021 for far less.) As for the launch tower, its cost has grown by nearly a factor of 10—to an estimated $2.7 billion. It was due to be completed by now.
The main benefit of a new upper stage is that it increases the performance of the SLS rocket from 27 metric tons to 38 tons to the Moon. This allows the rocket to launch not just the Orion spacecraft but to “co-manifest” a payload to lunar orbit. However, NASA’s primary use of this co-manifesting function is to deliver elements of the Lunar Gateway where Orion’s crew can install them.
That’s right. Essentially, Block 1B of the rocket exists solely to build out the Gateway. There is no need for this new SLS stage for human landing missions. Nor is it needed to deliver material to the Moon. NASA’s two largest lunar landers under contract, SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon, plan to use their own large rockets. Far from needing the expendable SLS rocket, NASA will have two reusable means to deliver large cargo to the Moon.
By canceling Block 1B, NASA would not only save billions of dollars in yet-to-be-expended development costs but also significantly reduce the per-launch cost of the SLS rocket. That’s because the cost of a single Exploration Upper Stage is likely to be around $1 billion, which is ludicrous for just a rocket’s second stage.
Especially when there is a better option.
Centaur V comes alive
For the first three launches of the SLS rocket, known as Block 1, NASA has purchased an “Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage” from United Launch Alliance. This is a lightly modified version of the upper stage formerly used by United Launch Alliance's Delta IV rocket.
Although the company has discontinued production of this stage, it has replaced it with a more powerful Centaur V upper stage featuring similar technology. While this is not a drop-in replacement for the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, modifications could be made to the core stage of the SLS rocket and its launch tower to accommodate the Centaur V.
Why not just cancel the SLS rocket right now? For $4.1 billion per launch, that is admittedly a tempting option from a budget standpoint. But for the time being, the most direct route to get NASA astronauts to the Moon is inside Orion atop an SLS rocket. The only essential function these vehicles fill is getting crew into a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon and back.
The good news is that Centaur Vs should be relatively cheap, certainly a tiny fraction of what NASA will pay for the Exploration Upper Stage. This is because United Launch Alliance already plans to build two dozen of them a year for its Vulcan rocket. Adding an additional stage on top of this would be little trouble for a company that has invested heavily into more rapidly producing boosters and upper stages.
The cost of canceling the Exploration Upper Stage would result in a financial loss for Boeing. However, the company has been performing poorly on the contract, according to NASA’s Inspector General. Additionally, Boeing would still be responsible for the core stage, a lucrative contract. The NASA engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center working on the upper stage program could be refocused toward propellant production on the Moon, propellant storage in space, and supporting the crucial work on lunar landers.
This doesn’t solve every problem, but ...
These solutions don't solve NASA’s immediate problems regarding Artemis—namely, concerns about Orion’s heat shield and the readiness of the Starship lunar lander and spacesuits for Artemis III. However, canceling Gateway would free up resources to support those programs and focus on their success.
Additionally, there are no good near-term alternatives to Orion and Starship that will get us to the Moon faster. Orion is the only deep-space human vehicle available for the next several years. And there are no other good lunar landing options. While some old-space advocates have said NASA should ditch Starship for a simpler, Apollo-style lander, this would substantially increase NASA’s budget, and traditional contractors would almost certainly not deliver space-ready hardware for many years.
In the long term, making the policy changes described above would be enormously healthy for the Artemis Program. They would make NASA’s aims clear: focus on lunar surface activities, establish settlements near the South Pole, and determine what resources are there and harvestable. This would give NASA a solid chance to outcompete China on the Moon. That country is not messing around with a lunar space station but would rather concentrate on the surface.
These policy changes would save around $2 billion a year in NASA’s deep space budget. The space agency could use these funds for various purposes, including ensuring that its Lunar Transport Vehicle, pressurized rover, surface habitats, nuclear power stations, and other lunar programs are funded for success rather than starvation.
After decades of confinement to low-Earth orbit, NASA finally has a credible program to send humans back into deep space. But with its current approach, the agency is trying to do too many things for too many reasons. It can't simultaneously build a robust presence on the Moon and in high orbit around the Moon. A simpler approach—focusing on the lunar surface—is the path most likely to succeed.
Proponents of the Lunar Gateway argue that it adds sustainability to the Artemis Program by providing a way station. The problem is that this way station, in an orbit far from the lunar surface, really isn’t on the way to anywhere.
To get somewhere, Artemis must avoid going nowhere.
